Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let there be snark.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

This really is a full service blog.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

“More of this”, i said to the dog.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Why did Dr. Oz lose? well, according to the exit polls, it’s because Fetterman won.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

The revolution will be supervised.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / The voice of experience versus buzzwords

Reader Interactions

127Comments

  1. 1.

    rp

    What’s the saying? For every complex problem there’s a solution that’s simple, easy, and wrong?

  2. 2.

    Yarrow

    Not enough white men working on the problem. Go get another white man. That’ll solve it.

  4. 4.

    Tom Levenson

    This has made my day. That, and an excerpt from a late 17th century bit of travel reporting that describes the 1 percenters of the day as “Swarthy Buggerantos…Bumfirking-Italians…[and] strait-lac’d monsters in Fur and Thrum-Caps” (Dutch merchants), among others.

    (My own Sephardic forbears — my family history includes merchants in Livorno, Amsterdam and Morocco — were described in the same passage as “the Lords Vagabonds the Jews….the Hawks of Mankind.”)

    They had a way with words, those proto-Augustans.

  6. 6.

    Tom Levenson

    Also, don’t these folks know that if you rely on the algorithm method, you end up with unintended consequences?

    #SorryNotSorry

  12. 12.

    Comrade Colette Collaboratrice

    From a Cole retweet in the sidebar: “jesus fucking christ these fucking clowns.” I think we’ve found the replacement for “Christ, what an asshole” as the all-purpose caption for New Yorker cartoons, ads for Ivanka Trump-branded goods, and news photos of any member of the current R regime.

  13. 13.

    MattF

    And, just for the record, there are well-known problems that algorithms can’t solve. Specifically, Turing’s Halting Problem is the mother of all algorithmically unsovable problems. And there are many other unsolveable-by-algorithm problems derived from the Halting Problem, e.g., the Busy Beaver Problem. The Busy Beaver is interesting because it rests on the mind-boggling fact that there are sequences that increase faster than any algorithmically defined sequence.

  14. 14.

    rikyrah

    Their tears and envy are so delicious. ? ? ?

    I hope the Obamas make GAZILLIONS post White House.https://t.co/PMAMTbmwgp

    — Nerdy Wonka (@NerdyWonka) April 30, 2017

    “Always stay gracious. Best revenge is your paper.” https://t.co/HjjeoqLCE7

    — Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) April 30, 2017

    They’re going to be real salty when Bo and Sunny find an agent and start raking in cash for public petting tours. ?https://t.co/PMAMTbmwgp

    — Nerdy Wonka (@NerdyWonka) April 30, 2017

  16. 16.

    Humboldtblue

    @Tom Levenson:

    I have just started Vulcan and I was tickled to see the mention of Herschel. His sister, Caroline, was a renowned maker of lenses for telescopes and she appears in the Aubrey-Maturin series (my fave) and teaches Jack Aubrey how to properly grind the lenses for his observatory (much the chagrin of Mrs. Aubrey who knows of no such thing as astronomy and observatories).

  18. 18.

    Mnemosyne

    @rikyrah:

    I’ll bet Yale puts them all in the same dorm room or quad. You do not want to be the roommate of someone with multiple siblings going to the same school.

    When my BFF went to Michigan State for a year, they put her and her two sisters in a quad room without another roommate, because the dorm managers knew not to put an innocent person in the middle of that family dynamic. ?

  19. 19.

    trollhattan

    A radio report this a.m. on automation’s impact on the jerb force cited an investment bank that went from 200 commodity traders to 2 while adding 200 programmers. Progress!

  22. 22.

    Mnemosyne

    Dang. Adult coloring books are still so huge that even the University of Chicago press has come out with one: Doodling for Academics.

    It’s not 100 percent free, but with that link you can download sample pages and then get 20 percent off the hard copy if you buy it directly from them.

  24. 24.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    Since this is an open thread, got a question for people here…

    Last Thursday, Venezuela announced its intentions to withdraw from the OAS, citing the organization’s “meddling in it’s (Venezuela’s) internal affairs”…

    “We’re not going to continue allowing legal and institutional violations that are arbitrary and surpass any moral, ethical and licit boundary that nations in this regional organization should respect,” Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez said Tuesday, according to the AP.

    Prior to this, it appears Venezuela took a $1.5BB loan from Rosneft, pledging just slightly less than 50% of Citgo (owned by Venezuela) as collateral… so if Venezuela were to default on that loan, Rosneft, meaning Russia, meaning Putin, would be w/in a fraction of a percent of of a controlling interest in Citgo, which provides about 4% of the US’ daily petroleum needs.

    So the question is: Is Venezuela’s withdrawal form the OAS a prelude to increased Russian influence in Venezuela, and therefore the Western Hemisphere?

    And if this does transpire, how the the Trump Administration deal w/ what could be easily construed as a deliberate (and potentially hostile) Russian intrusion in an area we (the US) has always considered our exclusive domain?

  25. 25.

    aimai

    @rikyrah: The whole thing is so enraging–even to his White fans. I mean how have they managed to vanish down the memory hole the fact that George Bush senior left the White House and went into private business with the Carlyle Group? I remember being very shocked at the time since it was the very definition of influence peddling.

    Obama and Michelle are literally writing and speaking for their money–earning it without influence peddling or grifting. I just can’t even with these assholes, especially the fake leftist ones, who discovered their outrage that presidents don’t just vanish in a puff of smoke after they retire only when we have our first black President (well, they pulled the same shtick with the Clintons, its only Democrats who are not supposed to earn money).

  26. 26.

    SFBayAreaGal

    @Tom Levenson: Reminds me of a Mad Magazine cartoon about religion. It went something like this “See this Catholic family. They have seven children. For birth control they practice the rhythm method. This family is off beat.”

  28. 28.

    prob50

    But Donald Trump just can’t figure out why his Walgorithm isn’t working. It worked just fine during the Presidential campaign.

  30. 30.

    dmsilev

    @aimai: Hell, Reagan was giving multi-million-dollar speeches (and that’s in 1989 dollars) after he left office, and yet somehow Obama speaking at a healthcare conference is proof that he’s corrupted and fallen and so on and so forth.

  31. 31.

    TenguPhule

    @Thru the Looking Glass…:

    how the the Trump Administration deal w/ what could be easily construed as a deliberate (and potentially hostile) Russian intrusion in an area we (the US) has always considered our exclusive domain?

    A deal will be made involving Trump hotels in Moscow in exchange for total Russian control of South and Central America.

  32. 32.

    The Moar You Know

    Totally OT: For the first time ever, I’ve pulled a left-wing news site off my bookmarks. To wit, the Guardian. Their non-stop slamming of Obama for doing what any other president does, and for having the audacity to treat retirement like retirement, well, I’ve had enough. Fuck those people. I can get the same news elsewhere.

    He has the right to earn money and the right to not get engaged in politics anymore. He fucking earned that the hardest way possible.

    ETA: that, once again, he’s expected to folow a special set of rules that only apply to him, well, I’m not going say it’s racist, but it’s racist as hell.

  34. 34.

    Tilda Swintons Bald Cap

    @The Moar You Know: Has he actually given that damn speech yet? Has he actually done anything with the money yet? Maybe we can wait and see what happens….

  37. 37.

    ? Martin

    @MattF: That’s generally not an issue and that’s not really where the industry is looking right now. For practical problems you can almost always narrow the scope and accept an incomplete ‘good enough’ answer. The nxn Go board is exponentially hard and therefore unsolvable, but we’re never really interested in an arbitrary board – rather a specifically defined one which, while still exponentially hard it at least limited. Additionally, we’re not interested in the ideal solution, just one good enough to beat a human. With those two constraints in place, we can takes something like Alpha Go and call it a success, because though it’s knowingly flawed, it’s better than any human solution.

    Autonomous cars don’t need to be perfect, they just need to result in fewer than 40,000 deaths per year and 4,000,000 injuries. From a marketing perspective, probably much fewer, but that number doesn’t need to be 0. So the car doesn’t solve any given problem completely, rather as a real-time system it gives the best result it can come up with in a given amount of time (some fraction of a second) and acts on that, trusting it’s better than the same decision a human would come up with in the same limited amount of time, averaged over all journeys. Same goes for any policy – healthcare, etc.

  38. 38.

    Gelfling 545

    @aimai: Just got a notice from Barnes &Noble that Chelsea Clinton has a children’s book about influential women of the past coming out soon. The title? Nevertheless She Persisted. The Republicans have a collective fit. I’ve preordered 2 copies for gifts.

  40. 40.

    Mnemosyne

    @aimai:

    I went off a bit yesterday at the notion that writing and giving speeches is “money for nothing.” It’s hard fucking work because the vast majority of people don’t just stand up there and improvise for 45 minutes, much less improvise an accompanying series of Keynote or PowerPoint slides (yes, I know PowerPoint sucks, but it’s because most people suck at using it).

  41. 41.

    Brachiator

    @aimai:

    Obama and Michelle are literally writing and speaking for their money–earning it without influence peddling or grifting. I just can’t even with these assholes, especially the fake leftist ones, who discovered their outrage that presidents don’t just vanish in a puff of smoke after they retire only when we have our first black President (well, they pulled the same shtick with the Clintons, its only Democrats who are not supposed to earn money).

    People, people, people. You do not understand!

    The net worth of the high ranking members of Trump’s administration is a mere $14 Billion. These are some hard working, salt of the earth plutocrats. Just like God and Republican voters intended.

    Obviously, Obama must take a vow of poverty and promise to be as poor as the average American will be after Trump gets through with them.

  42. 42.

    TenguPhule

    @? Martin:

    Autonomous cars don’t need to be perfect, they just need to result in fewer than 40,000 deaths per year and 4,000,000 injuries.

    The advertising team is gonna have a fit over this.

  43. 43.

    TenguPhule

    @Brachiator:

    Obviously, Obama must take a vow of poverty and promise to be as poor as the average American will be after Trump gets through with them.

    Will you be paying in white chickens or brown chickens?

  45. 45.

    Another Scott

    RollCall:

    The White House delivered conflicting messages on Monday about whether there are enough votes among House Republicans to pass President Donald Trump’s long-promised overhaul of the 2010 health care law.

    Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters White House officials and GOP leaders are “closer and closer” to securing the votes needed to pass a measure that would reconfigure the Obama administration’s signature domestic policy achievement. White House officials still “feel very good” about intraparty talks about getting the House GOP votes needed this week to pass a partial repeal and replace measure. There has been little evidence of movement toward passage of the House GOP measure in recent days.

    [How Trump Became the Vacillator in Chief]
    The House is slated to leave late this week and be on recess next week. That means the White House and GOP leaders could lose votes if their members get a collective earful from constituents worried about losing their health coverage. So a vote this week seems optimal if they do indeed have the votes.

    But Spicer stressed that Trump is more interested in negotiations securing the necessary number of House Republican votes, not just teeing up the revised bill for a vote.

    “I think the president has made it clear he is not instituting a timeline,” Spicer said, acknowledging “we’re not there yet” on locking in the votes to pass it.

    The president’s top spokesman appeared to contradict Trump’s chief economic adviser, who earlier Monday said the votes were there for passage.

    “Do we have the votes for health care? I think we do. This is going be a great week,” White House National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn Cohn told “CBS This Morning.”

    “We’re going to get health care down to the floor of the House,” Cohn said. “We’re convinced we’ve got the votes, and we’re going to keep moving on with our agenda.”

    Speaking with one voice? Being on the same page? What’s that?

    (sigh)

    Of course there is a timeline. If they want to use Reconciliation, there’s a set-in-stone timeline. If they can’t get it done by the end of the month, it’s dead.

    Clowns, dangerous, brain-damaged, clowns….

    Keep fighting, everyone!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  46. 46.

    Joyce H

    @dmsilev:

    Hell, Reagan was giving multi-million-dollar speeches (and that’s in 1989 dollars) after he left office, and yet somehow Obama speaking at a healthcare conference is proof that he’s corrupted and fallen and so on and so forth.

    This is something that you really don’t notice… until you start noticing it. But every time, EVERY time, a company or organization starts to question the perks of upper management figures, it is ALWAYS when that upper management position is held for the first time by someone who is not both white and male. “Does the [President] [CEO] REALLY need [a full time car and driver] [the skybox at the sports arena] [the country club membership]?”

    So long as it’s the white male, they explain away the perks by assuring us that DEALS get made on that golf course, in that skybox, but of course, the woman or the black guy, they don’t know how to schmooze on the links.

    It makes you feel a bit First World to complain about it – equal skybox rights for women and minorities! But can’t they for ONCE start bleating about ‘shareholder values’ when it’s the old white guy getting the perks?

    And I think it goes all the way down, it’s not just corporate front offices. When your local branch of LIttle Regional Bank decides the branch manager no longer rates a reserved parking spot, check out who the new branch manager is – I’d bet money it’s either the woman or the black guy.

  47. 47.

    MattF

    @? Martin: One does wonder, though, what these ‘deep learning’ systems will do when presented with something entirely unexpected. We shall see, I guess.

  49. 49.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    @TenguPhule: It has been rumored that Trump got a stake in Rosneft when 20% of the company got sold to parties unknown back in December…

    If that is true and Rosneft does end up owning 49.9% of Citgo soon, that would mean Trump also has a pretty good sized stake in the US petroleum industry…

    Seems like a fantastic way for Putin and Maduro to hoist a really big middle finger to the US…

    Wonderful… just how farkin’ convoluted and insidious can this get?

  50. 50.

    Joyce H

    And BTW, just have to add – I’ll start wondering if fees paid to ex-presidents might be excessive if Barack Obama starts getting paid more for an appearance that Kim Kardashian.

  51. 51.

    hovercraft

    @Gelfling 545:
    I think this was the catalyst for last weeks Twitter attacks on her by “journalists”, how dare she write a book about influential women when everyone knows that her Mother is/was influential, it’s obviously the first step in her campaign for_________ , and unless and until she pledges in her kids blood that she will never force the media to cover another Clinton candidacy, they have every right to parse every word she says and everything she does.
    So far the strikes against her are:

    Her name.
    Her husband.
    The Clinton Foundation.
    She worked for an evil Bank.
    She gets pregnant and pops out kids for political gain.
    She wrote a book to either cash in on her name and or to launch her campaign.
    She’s boring and ugly, and has zero charisma.

    I wonder what she’s supposed to do with the rest of her life, stay home and make sure she drums it into her kids heads that they should never ever consider running for office as it would show just how greedy and power hungry the Clintons are.

  52. 52.

    dmsilev

    @Another Scott: I suppose we should in some sense be grateful from a damage-minimization perspective, but the House just got back from a long recess a week ago, and you’re saying there’s another one coming in just a few days?

    Nice ‘work’ if you can get it.

  53. 53.

    Tenar Arha

    @rikyrah: At this point I’d buy any book by Bo & Sunny to spite everyone criticizing (& I’ve got a personal moratorium on purchases because my TBR is out of control).

  54. 54.

    rikyrah

    Jean-Claude Juncker calls Theresa May ‘deluded’ after disastrous Brexit talks

    The European Union has warned that it is “more likely than not” that Brexit talks will fail after Jean Claude Juncker accused Theresa May of being “deluded” in the wake of a tense Downing Street dinner.

    The President of the European Commission launched a scathing attack on Mrs May after the meeting on Wednesday last week, the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung reported, telling the PM “I’m leaving Downing Street 10 times more sceptical than I was before.”

    He reportedly claimed during the meeting that Brexit “cannot be a success” and threatened to end talks without a trade deal if Britain refuses to pay a “divorce” bill.

  55. 55.

    MattF

    @hovercraft: And the whole concept that belonging to a ‘political family’ is important in American politics is just so totally un-American.

  60. 60.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @Gelfling 545: She had a nice twitter response to Trump asking why there had to be a civil war. It went something like: Short answer: slavery. Longer one, Jackson “owned” over a hundred human beings when he died.

  61. 61.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    @Another Scott: Sure and that doesn’t stop Putin from getting a bigger toe hold in the Western hemisphere… even more so if Venezuela does collapse, which it appears to be on the verge of…

  62. 62.

    dmsilev

    @Iowa Old Lady: I’m at work so I’m not going to risk the experiment, but I assume your search turned up what I’ll euphemise as adults-only coloring books?

  64. 64.

    hovercraft

    @Brachiator:

    Obviously, Obama must take a vow of poverty and promise to be as poor as the average American will be after Trump gets through with them.

    Poverty my ass, Ruth Marcus said that in addition to the roughly $ 15 million from his books, plus the $ 60 advance for their upcoming books, Barrack and Michelle have enough, any attempt to earn more is just greed. FSM knows that if Marcus was worth that much, and someone approached her offering hundreds of thousands to give speeches she would just say no. The Obamas’ do not need anymore money, they’ve earned enough, we wouldn’t want them to rise any higher, they are already uppity enough as it is.

  65. 65.

    Another Scott

    @dmsilev: In January they had planned on being “in session” for 145 days (12 days in May, 0 days in August, etc.) this year.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  66. 66.

    Mnemosyne

    @hovercraft:

    I wonder what she’s supposed to do with the rest of her life, stay home and make sure she drums it into her kids heads that they should never ever consider running for office as it would show just how greedy and power hungry the Clintons are.

    Meanwhile, the same assholes cover George P. Bush’s political campaign with excited comments about how awesome it is that he’s a 4th generation politician.

    I’m almost reluctant to call it a double standard because it’s even too blatant for that.

  67. 67.

    ? Martin

    @MattF: Well, in most cases they should stop as safely as they can. Now, that’s not necessarily the right thing to do, but somehow we need to come to terms with the idea that there will be unforeseen events that simply cannot be solved, even by people. How many fatalities are the result of people swerving to avoid a squirrel – because their lizard brain says ‘don’t hit that’ with no evaluation of whether or not to hit the telephone pole next to the road, simply because it’s not the thing jumping out at them. But a tree falling across the road may not be a solvable problem, not because the computer can’t make a decision to this new event, but also because the car would need to exceed the physical limits of its design in order to avoid it. After all, the whole point of wishing on the meteor is that nobody can escape from it.

    One thing these systems should not do is panic. That’s why autonomous cars are easier to envision getting regulatory support over autonomous planes. The former have better failure modes than the latter. But yes, it’s going to be interesting.

  70. 70.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Joyce H:

    This is something that you really don’t notice… until you start noticing it. But every time, EVERY time, a company or organization starts to question the perks of upper management figures, it is ALWAYS when that upper management position is held for the first time by someone who is not both white and male. “Does the [President] [CEO] REALLY need [a full time car and driver] [the skybox at the sports arena] [the country club membership]?”

    One time my mom got a peek at the compensation figures for the rest of the leadership at the firm she was with at the time. She was earning the least, even though she was producing the most revenue, and was also the only woman. She confronted the paymasters about these figures and they said nervously “well you aren’t even including your company car!”

    And she said, what company car, you never told me about a company car.

    She quit and her branch soon found itself up shit creek without a paddle.

  71. 71.

    ruemara

    @Joyce H: When I started my job doing broadcast work for local gov, my position was allowed to order dinner if council ordered dinner. Never a problem for years, before me. Once I started doing the broadcasts solo after my first month, that perk stopped. I asked what happened and they laughed in my face. Once my position was eliminated due to budget cuts and my boss had to return to the late nights, the perk came back in a couple of months.

    Welcome to liberal California!

  73. 73.

    rikyrah

    @Another Scott:

    Of course there is a timeline. If they want to use Reconciliation, there’s a set-in-stone timeline. If they can’t get it done by the end of the month, it’s dead.

    Clowns, dangerous, brain-damaged, clowns….

    Keep fighting, everyone!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

    that’s right..keep on fighting.

  74. 74.

    hovercraft

    @MattF:
    As has been mentioned so many times, the Bush family has spawned three generations of politicians and no one seems to have a problem with that in spite of all of their failures. At least Bill and Hillary were successful, they were not as liberal as many wanted, but they did not leave behind a steaming pile of shit at the end of their terms.

  76. 76.

    Major Major Major Major

    @hovercraft:

    As has been mentioned so many times, the Bush family has spawned three generations of politicians and no one seems to have a problem with that in spite of all of their failures. At least Bill and Hillary were successful, they were not as liberal as many wanted, but they did not leave behind a steaming pile of shit at the end of their terms.

    The Bushes also got their dynasty’s seed money from actual fucking Nazi gold, but, y’know, both sides.

  78. 78.

    TenguPhule

    @rikyrah: And yet they still think she’s better then Corbyn, because “reasons”.

    The man won two elections. She hasn’t won one.

    And yet he’s the loser, because sexism is always second to punching liberals.

  79. 79.

    Gelfling 545

    @hovercraft: you know that the f she serves on the snack committee at her kids’ school it’ll be taken as a move toward political office. I hope she feels free to do exactly as she likes. And I hope she sells a bazillion books. I’d add “and confusion to our enemies” but they’re already sufficiently confused.

  80. 80.

    The Moar You Know

    This is something that you really don’t notice… until you start noticing it. But every time, EVERY time, a company or organization starts to question the perks of upper management figures, it is ALWAYS when that upper management position is held for the first time by someone who is not both white and male. “Does the [President] [CEO] REALLY need [a full time car and driver] [the skybox at the sports arena] [the country club membership]?”

    @Joyce H: Remember when Congress cut the term of Secret Service protection from lifetime to ten years, right before Obama was going to take office?

    W didn’t need it for himself, he was white, conservative and safe, but I’ll give him this; he made sure Congress put that lifetime protection limit back in place, and I’m sure it was because he knew Obama was going to have people coming after him for the rest of his life.

  81. 81.

    rikyrah

    Facing Abject Failure, Trump’s Delusions Are Expanding
    by Nancy LeTourneau May 1, 2017 1:50 PM

    At this point in his presidency, Donald Trump’s ego is coming into conflict with the lack of any actual accomplishments. In order to sustain his delusions about himself, he is becoming increasingly untethered from reality. We see that as he continues to obsess about his “historic win” over three months ago and his claim that he has accomplished more than previous presidents in such a short amount of time.

    But in a couple of interviews lately, the delusions fed by Trump’s own ignorance are quite astounding. When the topic of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict came up in his discussion with Reuters last week, the president said this:

    “I want to see peace with Israel and the Palestinians,” he said. “There is no reason there’s not peace between Israel and the Palestinians – none whatsoever.”

    The implication is that everyone who has worked on peace in the Middle East over the last several decades — including U.S. presidents dating back to LBJ — was simply unaware of the fact that this was a relatively easy problem to solve. Or perhaps none of them had the exemplary deal-making skills that our current president possesses. Either way, that is nothing short of a delusion based on ignorance.

  82. 82.

    Brachiator

    @hovercraft:

    Poverty my ass, Ruth Marcus said that in addition to the roughly $ 15 million from his books, plus the $ 60 advance for their upcoming books, Barrack and Michelle have enough, any attempt to earn more is just greed.

    If only these crusading journalists could be as diligent in digging into Trump’s wealth and its sources.

    And although the Clinton’s may have been criticized for their greed, Marcus went further and outrageously saw herself as worthy of declaring what the Obama’s income should be limited to. What an asswipe.

  83. 83.

    TenguPhule

    @Thru the Looking Glass…:

    If that is true and Rosneft does end up owning 49.9% of Citgo soon, that would mean Trump also has a pretty good sized stake in the US petroleum industry…

    Which means its doomed. Everything that man touches turns to shit and he always bails out just ahead of the angry mob to the next disaster.

  85. 85.

    rikyrah

    Fact-Checkers Can’t Keep Up With Trump’s Lies
    by Nancy LeTourneau May 1, 2017 4:06 PM

    In this Trump era, we really should give a shout-out to the people who have the overwhelming job of trying to fact-check what the president says. Glenn Kessler and Michelle Ye Hee Lee, who do that job for the Washington Post, just admitted that they can’t keep up with the president’s lies.

    President Trump is the most fact-challenged politician that The Fact Checker has ever encountered. He earned 59 Four-Pinocchio ratings during his campaign as president. Since then, he’s earned 16 more Four-Pinocchio ratings.

    ………………………..

    To mark the first 100 days of the most “fact-challenged politician,” they took a moment to count up the lies. Even I was surprised at the volume.

    488: The number of false or misleading claims made by the president. That’s an average of 4.9 claims a day.
    10: Number of days without a single false claim. (On six of those days, the president golfed at a Trump property.)
    4: Number of days with 20 or more false claims. (Feb. 16, Feb. 28, March 20 and April 21.) He made 19 false claims on April 29, his 100th day, though we did not include his interview with “Face the Nation,” since that aired April 30.

  86. 86.

    TenguPhule

    @The Moar You Know:

    W didn’t need it for himself, he was white, conservative and safe

    Say that again in 15 years, after the Iraqi children from the war have grown up.

  87. 87.

    rikyrah

    To avoid a shutdown, Congress ignores Trump’s demands
    05/01/17 12:30 PM—UPDATED 05/01/17 12:51 PM
    By Steve Benen

    When Congress passed a measure on Friday to prevent a government shutdown, it was a stopgap measure that kept the lights on for a week. Lawmakers were really just buying themselves a little time so they could finish a broader spending package that would fund the government through the end of the fiscal year.

    That deal came together last night, which is good news for those hoping to avoid a shutdown, but bad news for Donald Trump, who made specific requests for this budget agreement, each of which were largely ignored.

    “Early on in this debate, Democrats clearly laid out our principles,” [Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer[ said. “At the end of the day, this is an agreement that reflects those principles.”

    Democrats stressed that there is no money not only for a border wall, but also none for a deportation force, and they said there would be no cut in funding for so-called sanctuary cities.

    …………………….

    Remember, we’re supposed to believe Trump is a world-class negotiator, who knows how to strike deals that ostensibly work in his favor. And yet, we’re now presented with still more evidence to the contrary.

    As for the road ahead, there are two things to watch. The first is this week: Congress will have to pass this bipartisan compromise by Friday, and though the agreement enjoys the grudging support of the GOP leadership, it’ll be interesting to see just how many rank-and-file Republicans balk (and just how much GOP leaders have to rely on Democrats to pass the bill).

    The second thing to keep an eye on is the fall: Democrats are pleased with how this process unfolded, but it was a four-month spending bill on the table. Republicans are likely to fight far more aggressively in the fall, when Congress takes up spending for the next fiscal year.

  88. 88.

    hovercraft

    @Major Major Major Major:
    Shame on you for bringing up that ancient history, everyone knows that the Bush’s and the Pierce’s are distinguished old money. Any unseemly acts by their antecedents is completely irrelevant, they are patrician and America’s version of the Royal Family. Now shut up!

  89. 89.

    TenguPhule

    @Major Major Major Major: Yes, but in relation to the rest of the Labor leadership, he’s FDR. New Labor are so stupid that they couldn’t find their ass with a map and all of Scotland Yard to help them.

  91. 91.

    dogwood

    @hovercraft:
    There’s no doubt there is a double standard when it comes to Republicans and Demoracts in regard to this issue and most others. But we can’t ignore the fact that the Clintons and the Obamas have a celebrity status the the Bush family doesn’t have. The interest in everything the Obamas do isn’t going to die down. There is a demand for photos, stories etc.

  92. 92.

    TenguPhule

    @Major Major Major Major: Corbyn is smarter then his opponents. I realize that’s a mighty low bar, but give the man credit, have you seen the kind of bullshit nitpicking he’s up against? They were literally making stories about his “disrespecting” WW I Rememberance Day out of nothing. It was and still is a theatre of the absurd.

  94. 94.

    hovercraft

    @rikyrah:

    “There is no reason there’s not peace between Israel and the Palestinians – none whatsoever.”

    So how long before he tells us that having spoken to his good pal Bibi, that he “discovered” that the Israeli- Palestinian conflict is “complicated”, who knew? You’d think that this would be something that his two Senior Advisors who just also happen to be very strict Orthodox Jews could tell him about.

    The stupidity at this point doesn’t just burn, it’s leaching out of the TV spreading and making us all dumber. Arguing with stupid people is making me dumber.

  95. 95.

    Jeffro

    Speaking of OUCH, the WaPo is leading with “eight ways Trump got played by the Dems on the budget extension”

    It was in print, not cable news, so he’ll never see it…but still…

  97. 97.

    TenguPhule

    @Major Major Major Major: Everybody is hating on him for no reason. It’s Clinton Rules x1000. Take a step back and look at it from an objective viewpoint. Most of the “incompetence” is coming from a biased media who spins EVERYTHING (and they actually did the research on it) against him. Every outlet that reports on him spins it negatively and carries water for complete horsecrap that is later retracted in small print whenever called out on it. Labor is in the dumps because New Labor started a Civil War within their own party right when the Tories were at their most vulnerable with May and allowed her time to build a narrative that was then sold to the public. And then New Labor lost the vote again….AND STILL KEPT ON with the infighting.

    Its insane. Labor’s MPs are determined to hang separately.

  98. 98.

    TenguPhule

    @hovercraft:

    The stupidity at this point doesn’t just burn, it’s leaching out of the TV spreading and making us all dumber.

    Wait till he endorses an Israeli Wall, a huge wall the Palestinians are gonna pay for.

  99. 99.

    Chris T.

    @Thru the Looking Glass…: Interesting. This suggests one of Russia’s long term plan options here is to gain enough control over oil markets to force the US to drop sanctions so that we get the oil we need. As long as the US is not energy independent in terms of oil, we are vulnerable to this kind of blackmail.

  100. 100.

    bemused

    @rikyrah:

    I’ve been thinking he sounds even more incoherent lately which I didn’t think was possible! LeTourneau makes a good point. He’s panicking over his abject failures.

  101. 101.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @? Martin:

    Autonomous cars don’t need to be perfect, they just need to result in fewer than 40,000 deaths per year and 4,000,000 injuries. From a marketing perspective, probably much fewer, but that number doesn’t need to be 0.

    Really. By your standard, based on data from 2015, any number of airplane deaths less than ~5,000 per year ought to be perfectly acceptable to the American public. (I’ll post the numbers upon request.)

    IOW, you are FULL OF SHIT.

    And don’t start whining that the modes of transport aren’t comparable. They are EXACTLY comparable w/r/t driverless cars: In both cases the passenger relinquishes any control over the conduct of the conveyance to an external agent & therefore any ability to affect whether s/he is involved in a (possibly fatal) mishap. This is the primary reason so many people are afraid of flying. Those same folks will by&large be scared shitless not only of riding in a car driven by a computer but even riding anywhere near a computer-driven car. And they will vote to keep the goddamn things off the roads. And it won’t matter what the motherfucking trucking corporations (who are pushing this as a way to cut costs & put more $$$ in their owners’ pockets) want.

  103. 103.

    Major Major Major Major

    @TenguPhule:

    Everybody is hating on him for no reason. It’s Clinton Rules x1000. Take a step back and look at it from an objective viewpoint.

    I’m hating on him because I think he’s an idiot, and his shite milquetoast ‘opposition’ to Brexit is one of the reasons they’re in this mess.

    Labor is in the dumps because New Labor started a Civil War within their own party right when the Tories were at their most vulnerable with May and allowed her time to build a narrative that was then sold to the public. And then New Labor lost the vote again….AND STILL KEPT ON with the infighting.

    Or it could have something to do with the fact that Old Labour is basically cranky old dudes who like protectionism and hate immigrants and are pro-Brexit, whereas new (lowercase) Labour is younger and more urban and with a tendency not to vote, where have I heard this before.

  106. 106.

    SFAW

    @TenguPhule:

    He blamed the constitutional checks and balances built in to US governance. “It’s a very rough system,” he said. “It’s an archaic system … It’s really a bad thing for the country.”

    The Moron-In-Chief has to get his moron on, at least once per day.

    Hey, I know! let’s ask Al Paslow and Joe Peterson, or some other economically-anxious WMC* voters whether they still loveLoveLOVE him!

    *White Mooching Class. Because, after all, those two morons aren’t gainfully employed, are they?

  107. 107.

    zhena gogolia

    @The Moar You Know:

    Oh, they’re doing that too? I subscribed to them in post-Trump hysteria but I never read it. Guess I’ll have to cancel that subscription.

  108. 108.

    Mnemosyne

    @dogwood:

    But we can’t ignore the fact that the Clintons and the Obamas have a celebrity status the the Bush family doesn’t have.

    Well, sure, because both the Clintons and the Obamas are popular politicians that people like and are interested in, while W basically had to slink out of office while the crowd sang, “Na Na Hey Hey Goodbye.”

    There’s no logical reason to penalize the Clintons and Obamas or demand that they take less money because they’re more popular and better liked, but that seems to be what commentators like Marcus are demanding. It’s like the Obamas and Clintons are supposed to face some kind of penalty for Bush’s well-earned unpopularity.

  109. 109.

    efgoldman

    @TenguPhule:

    The conman who believes his own lies thinks our government needs to work differently.

    Except…. He doesn’t have the first fucking idea how it works or how it’s supposed to work, to start with.
    “Hey, mechanic, what do you mean you can’t fix my car; just make it so I can pedal faster.”

  112. 112.

    john fremont

    @dmsilev: Alan Greenspan was hired in January 2008 as a consultant by John Paulson after stepping down as.Federal Reserve Chairman. Paulson went on to make billions shorting the housing market that year. I wonder what Greenspan got paid. The media has dropped it down the memory hole. Yet Obama shouldn’t get paid for a speech about healthcare despite being a two term President. A President who succeeded in reforming health care in America where others couldn’t.

  113. 113.

    hovercraft

    @dogwood:
    That’s because our side nominates smart charismatic people, not just charismatic people who can get elected. The media love the who would you rather have beer with test, but seriously who wants to hang out with Twitler or Shrub, one would spend the whole time bragging about how great they are, and the other would plot about who to give a wedgie to while regaling you about their greatness back in high school. Our guys and girls for that matter would want to know about you, would know interesting things about all sorts of topics, they would be fun to hang out with, they don’t take themselves too seriously. People want to know about them because they seem interesting and interested in the world and people around them.
    The GOP love celebrities, but celebrities don’t love them, the fact that our side gets to hang out with A-listers increases their celebrity, just look at the guest list of any of their parties, so of course they are bigger “celebrities”, whereas apart from Country Music stars they can’t get anyone to attend. let alone support their side. America loves celebrities, heck 60 million of them just voted for a jackass just because he’s rich and famous, never mind he’s a know nothing. We may like and admire celebrities, but you have to have a brain and common sense to go with it. Maybe since the picking are so slim on their side they’ll take anyone they can get. SAD!

  115. 115.

    Chet Murthy

    @Joyce H: Joyce, actually, I claim you shouldn’t worry even then. The problem isn’t that Kim K gets paid too much per appearance. it is that there’s an entire cadre of richies who get paid too much for merely existing.

    If the Guardian’s line were “BHO’s gettin’ 400k for a speech! Unfair! Confiscatory progressive taxation now!” I’d be 100% behind them. To pick on ANY ONE particular example is “to be taken in by the con”. So for example, my fave go-to is Richard Grasso. Nobody even remembers him, but back in ’03, when the NYSE went public, he got $188m. For basically guiding a publicly regulated monopoly. [yes, there were lawsuits, but AFAICT in ’08 the courts ruled in Grasso’s favor, and he got the whole schlemiel.] Nobody on the right remembers this, b/c it would cut into their narrative of “we -earned- our gazillions.” yeahright.

  116. 116.

    Chet Murthy

    Hm. Wonder why I’m in comment jail. Don’t think I put anything verboten into that comment. Ah, well.

  117. 117.

    Jeffro

    @TenguPhule: Just picture the suck-ups who are now busy drafting multiple amendments to make it easier for Trumpov to ruuuuuuuuule the world.

    It’s a shame he didn’t run back in the 80s…he could have been president for the past 30 years once we amended that pesky Constitution for him…just think of how much better off this country would be! ;)

  119. 119.

    Chet Murthy

    @Chris T.: It’s possible that that’s Russia’s plan. But ISTR reading that Venezuela’s oils is heavy, sulfur-laden, and hence not really suitable for US refineries. So not sure how that affects this ostensible plan.

  120. 120.

    dogwood

    @hovercraft:
    Absolutely. But let’s be fair it’s not just country music stars they attract. Kidd Rock, Ted Nugent, and Meatloaf add a lot of diversity to their all-star cast.

  121. 121.

    TriassicSands

    World War II. Why? No one ever asks that question.

    If only Chamberlain and Hitler could have come to some agreement the whole war could have been avoided. Same goes for “Old Hickory.” If he could just have lived another 100 years he could have prevented WWII. He was tough, but he had a heart.

    Brought to you by “More Lessons in History” courtesy of renowned historian Donald J. Trump.

    Next up: Korea. Why? No one ever asks that question.

    (Note: Amazingly, our president is onto something. It appears that no one ever asks about the causes behind wars. There have been no books written about why any of the wars the US has been engaged in happened. Is this just an oversight by historians? Or, more likely, a conspiracy. Tune in as historian superstar Donald Trump solves the mysteries behind human warfare. Trump brings his encyclopedic knowledge of human history, as well as his profound understanding of human behavior, to explain why we can’t all “just get along.”)

  123. 123.

    TenguPhule

    @Jeffro: Trump is Cobra Commander from the 80s, only without the loyal army of goons with their wonderful toys.

  124. 124.

    TenguPhule

    @efgoldman:

    “Hey, mechanic, what do you mean you can’t fix my car; just make it so I can pedal faster.”

    “I’ve seen the movies, you can make it go underwater and shoot missiles from the tail lights if you try hard enough!”

  125. 125.

    Elie

    @rikyrah:

    I believe that the GOP House and Senate are going to ignore Trump more and more in order to keep things going. The only danger is that by doing that, they more or less allow him to do and say almost anything because they will try to take care of the major responsibilities. I dunno — at least it seems that way

  126. 126.

    TenguPhule

    @Elie:

    I believe that the GOP House and Senate are going to ignore Trump more and more in order to keep things going.

    Cites facts clearly not in evidence.

    The GOP House clearly has no interest in keeping things going.

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