Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

We still have time to mess this up!

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

The willow is too close to the house.

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

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

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

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

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

Fight them, without becoming them!

Republicans in disarray!

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

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68Comments

  3. 3.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Spanky: it’s a virus launched by Michelle Malkin that redirects all your internets to Hot Air

  4. 4.

    hovercraft

    Is that West Virginia? It’s beautiful. I couldn’t live there though, all that fresh air would make me itch, I need the smell of car exhaust and city noise to keep me healthy.

  11. 11.

    Miss Bianca

    @Major Major Major Major: don’t know if you saw it, since we now have a nice new shiny Open Thread to play with, but I left a query for you on the previous thread…because Inquiring Minds Want to Know, dammit! : )

  12. 12.

    hovercraft

    So are we going to get a 5:45 news dump or do you think they’ll time it so that it hits when he lands in Riyadh?

  14. 14.

    Brachiator

    Also, if you are not using malkwarebytes, why not?

    Also, always useful to check to see if any of your email has been compromised. Very easy to check here.

  15. 15.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @hovercraft: or does the IC want to keep him (relatively) calm till after the (gods help us) speech on Islam and Jerusalem, then drop a MOAB on him when he gets to Brussels?

    there was was a tidbit last night that Priebus, allegedly part of the calming and norm-maintaining Establishment faction, was contacting JD officials to get Comey to back off a bit. I’m surprised that isn’t getting more play today.

    Oh, typed to soon, there’s an NYT alert, something about trump and the Russians, but it vanished to quick for me to see

    ETA Wheeeeee!

    Firing Eased Pressure, Trump Told Russia
    President Called Comey ‘Nut Job’ in Oval Office Meeting

  16. 16.

    NCSteve

    Because I discovered that, at least on my hardware mix, Malwarebytes + Norton Antivirus + Windows 10 = repeated system disk crashes.

    I’ll pop it up and run a scan periodically, but after two instances of my whole goddamn system disk getting screwed so bad I had to wipe and start from scratch, I’m really not willing to give the combination another whirl even knowing all three have been significantly upgraded and patched. (And yeah, I know I should have had a system disk backup).

  17. 17.

    NotMax

    Gosh, hadn’t the slightest idea that coal slurry now came in designer green.

  20. 20.

    LurkerNoLonger

    @hovercraft: I kind of wish that headline writers were barred from using the question mark in headlines. It’s a big cop out. Say something definitive, don’t ask a question.

  21. 21.

    JPL

    This was on May 10th…

    President Trump told Russian officials in the Oval Office this month that firing the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, had relieved “great pressure” on him, according to a document summarizing the meeting.
    “I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Mr. Trump said, according to the document, which was read to The New York Times by an American official. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.” Mr. Trump added, “I’m not under investigation.”

    NYTimes. It’s not even five yet..

    Ryan will simply mention there’s nothing to see here folks.

  22. 22.

    Miss Bianca

    @Brachiator: oh, interesting! Apparently my work emails are fine but my personal one says “Pwned on 1 breached site and found no pastes”. Should I be concerned?

  23. 23.

    NotMax

    @NCSteve

    Easy-peasy. Ditch the Norton. Anti-virus packed integrated with Windows is plenty fine. Not sure if it is still called Windows Defender in Win10.

    In fact, if that is enabled plus bloatware Norton is as well, that could well be the reason behind your disk probs.

  24. 24.

    Jeffro

    Just in case anyone was wondering about sentiment abroad towards Trumpov: “Donald Trump Is a Menace to the World” (der Spiegel)

    The U.S. elected a laughing stock to the presidency and has now made itself dependent on a joke of a man. The country is, as David Brooks wrote recently in the New York Times, dependent on a child. The Trump administration has no foreign policy because Trump has consistently promised American withdrawal while invoking America’s strength. He has promised both no wars and more wars. He makes decisions according to his mood, with no strategic coherence or tactical logic. Moscow and Beijing are laughing at America. Elsewhere, people are worried.
    …
    In “Game of Thrones,” the Mad King was murdered (and the child that later took his place was no better). In real life, an immature boy sits on the throne of the most important country in the world. He could, at any time, issue a catastrophic order that would immediately be carried out. That is why the parents cannot afford to take their eyes off him even for a second. They cannot succumb to exhaustion because he is so taxing. They ultimately have to send him to his room – and return power to the grownups.

    Yeowch!!

  25. 25.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: WASHINGTON — President Trump told Russian officials in the Oval Office this month that firing the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, had relieved “great pressure” on him, according to a document summarizing the meeting.
    “I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Mr. Trump said, according to the document, which was read to The New York Times by an American official. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.” […]
    A third government official briefed on the meeting defended the president, saying Mr. Trump was using a negotiating tactic when he told Mr. Lavrov about the “pressure” he was under. The idea, the official suggested, was to create a sense of obligation with Russian officials and to coax concessions out of Mr. Lavrov — on Syria, Ukraine and other issues — by saying that Russian meddling in last year’s election had created enormous political problems for Mr. Trump.

    the Great Deal Maker. FFS.

  26. 26.

    polyorchnid octopunch

    @NCSteve: God, don’t use Norton Antivirus, that’s a steaming pile. Seriously. I can almost guarantee that’s the reason why your system disk was getting corrupted.

    And I don’t use any of those because they don’t make linux versions. I don’t do windows. I haven’t run Windows in nearly ten years… and zero regrets on that score.

  28. 28.

    divF

    The photo suggests this song , written by U. Utah Phillips, and sung by Emmylou.

    ETA: My favorite cover of this is by Rosalie Sorrels, but I couldn’t find that one on youtube.

  31. 31.

    hovercraft

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:
    But he’s in for such a warm reception:
    POLITICO
    ‘People Here Think Trump Is a Laughingstock’

    On the president’s ill-timed world tour.

    By Susan B. Glasser

    May 19, 2017

    “Chaos.”
    “Circus.”
    “Laughingstock.”

    Those were just a few of the comments I heard in Berlin this week from senior European officials trying to make sense of the meltdown in Washington at just the moment when a politically imploding President Trump embarks on what he called “my big foreign trip” in this morning’s kickoff tweet…………..

    Trump’s tumultuous last two weeks – from firing his FBI director to allegedly sharing highly classified information with Russian officials even as a formidable special counsel was being named to investigate his campaign team’s possible collusion with the Kremlin—has them still confused about his foreign policy. But now they are more appalled than afraid of the man with whom they have no choice but to partner.

    Many I spoke with said they had made a fundamental mistake of viewing Trump primarily as an ideologue with whom they disagreed rather than what he increasingly appears to be: an ill-prepared newcomer to the world stage, with uninformed views and a largely untested team that will now be sorely tried by a 9-day, 5-stop world tour that would be wildly ambitious even for a seasoned global leader.

    “People are less worried than they were six weeks ago, less afraid,” a senior German government official with extensive experience in the United States told me. “Now they see the clownish nature.” Or, as another German said on the sidelines of a meeting here devoted to taking stock of 70 years of U.S.-German relations, “People here think Trump is a laughingstock.”

    “The dominant reaction to Trump right now is mockery,” Jacob Heilbrunn, the editor of the conservative journal the National Interest, told the meeting at the German Foreign Office here while moderating a panel on Trump’s foreign policy that dealt heavily on the difficulty of divining an actual policy amid the spectacle………………

    SAD, so SAD!

    I think they’ll make sure that every part of his “tour” is miserable.

  32. 32.

    efgoldman

    @NCSteve:

    I discovered that, at least on my hardware mix, Malwarebytes + Norton Antivirus + Windows 10 = repeated system disk crashes.

    I stopped using Norton about 12-15 years ago in favor of Avast! I even got Norton for free from my work, but it never played well with other software,

  33. 33.

    hovercraft

    @Jeffro:
    Great minds and all ; )
    I’m not sure if I hope someone is letting him see these headlines so he knows what he’s in for, or if they are making sure that he doesn’t see them so he gets to walk in thinking he’s the shit, when they are all laughing at him behind his back. Hmm……….

  35. 35.

    efgoldman

    @hovercraft:

    they had made a fundamental mistake of viewing Trump primarily as an ideologue with whom they disagreed rather than what he increasingly appears to be: an ill-prepared newcomer to the world stage

    We tried to tell you, but did you listen?
    Noooo!

  36. 36.

    Miss Bianca

    @Jeffro: Brutal. But accurate, my God. If only some of our MSM thought they could afford to be so honest!

  37. 37.

    psycholinguist

    Post just published that a current close advisor is a significant person of interest. The hits just keep on coming.

  39. 39.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @hovercraft: somebody sarcastically tweeted out a quote from trumpy from, I think, that Time piece, about how “no one’s laughing at us anymore”, wanna bet, chief?

    @Omnes Omnibus: done and done, I’m buying gold, seeds, ammo, and learning to filter my urine

  40. 40.

    Peale

    @Omnes Omnibus: CNN was breathlessly speculating that Biden opining that Hilary was not a good candidate means he’s now throwing his hat in the ring. If we do end up stuck choosing between Biden, Cuomo, and Bernie? Yeah, we’re giving up on 2020 if that’s what it comes down to. (Thankfully! I think we’ll find our champion!)

  42. 42.

    moops

    I wonder how foreign nations that are not Russia are going to try and take advantage of our man-child President.

  43. 43.

    psycholinguist

    Anybody else think McMasters is actually one of the primary leakers? I can’t believe he’s suddenly lost all competence – I swear, I can squint really hard and see him as the new deepthroat, staying in there and taking one for team USA.

  45. 45.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @psycholinguist: oh yeah, I think so, him and his staff
    ETA: Kinda how Colin Powell never did, and never has, reined in Larry Wilkerson

  47. 47.

    The Moar You Know

    If we do end up stuck choosing between Biden, Cuomo, and Bernie?

    @Peale: Kind of a no-brainer, actually, it’d be Biden.

    Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

    Malwarebytes + Norton Antivirus + Windows 10 = repeated system disk crashes.

    @NCSteve: As others have stated, it’s Norton. They used to make a fine product. By 2008 that really wasn’t the case any longer. I tend to be pretty permissive as to what I let our employees put on their laptops, but have had to go with a “no Norton” policy. Just too many crashes, weird issues.

    Could be worse. The “McAfee = fired” policy was the first thing I did on coming to work here back in the early 00s. Anything made by that company will, sooner or later, cause massive data loss.

  48. 48.

    kindness

    I own Apple computers at home. I use a virus program but it isn’t one of the normal ones. Apple….they gotta be different you know.

    Last PC’s I had I use Kapersky (although that is a Russian company) Didn’t take over the CPU time as much as Norton or McCaffee

  49. 49.

    chopper

    if you are not using malkwarebytes, why not?

    well, apparently they had a database error and my realtime web protection would have been blinkered for most of the day.

  51. 51.

    Miss Bianca

    @The Moar You Know: Wow…well, good to know this *now*. McAfee was causing me major headaches last year…had a terrible infection that took the combined efforts of Malwarebytes and a bunch of other programs working together to clean out…we replaced with SonicWall and things seem to be much happier.

  52. 52.

    efgoldman

    @Peale:

    If we do end up stuck choosing between Biden, Cuomo, and Bernie? Yeah, we’re giving up on 2020 if that’s what it comes down to.

    Ain’t gonna’ happen. Biden and Wilmer (and HRC) aren’t running again because of age/viability. I’m not sure Boy Andrew can even win the NY primary.

  54. 54.

    Hal

    Past this tidbit while scanning Facebook and I almost rolled my eyes right out of my head.

    Ruben Gonzalez got a job installing new water lines in his town with a history of arsenic problems, paid for by a federal program that Donald J. Trump could eliminate.

    He credits the job for helping him lose 100 pounds and for giving his family financial stability. “I regret voting for him,” he said of the president.

    Trump told everyone who he was and still this man is shocked when he reveals he is who he said he was.

  56. 56.

    Brachiator

    @Miss Bianca:

    oh, interesting! Apparently my work emails are fine but my personal one says “Pwned on 1 breached site and found no pastes”. Should I be concerned?

    Yep. You might want to consider changing the email, and reviewing your password.

    I had a pwned alert that was related to a reported earlier breach of a well known site. Fortunately, I did not have any attempts to hack or use my email.

    However, I noticed that I used this particular email for other, more important sites. So, it seemed the better part of valor to change the email address and the password, and to use the opportunity to create a stronger password.

  57. 57.

    andy

    Some kid in the town I’m living in had her yearbook statement make its way through the proofing process undetected, and now wingnuts from all over the country are sending threatening messages to our high school. One of our deranged locals sent a clipping to Scott fucking Baio and it spread from there. I’m told that the girl in question had many people threatening her on her facebook page, including posting pictures of guns, before she deleted her account.

    Brainerd High School is at the center of a social media storm set off by actor Scott Baio, the former “Happy Days” star and supporter of GOP President Donald Trump.
    Baio tweeted and posted on Facebook a page from the school’s yearbook that was filled with criticism of Trump by students. What set him off was one comment by a student that read, “I would like to behead him. I do not like him.”

    Baio tweeted the yearbook page on Friday morning, copying the president’s personal Twitter account as well as those of the FBI, presidential spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway and Fox News commentator Sean Hannity.

    By early afternoon, commenters were flooding the Brainerd High School Facebook page with angry criticism.

  58. 58.

    NCSteve

    @NotMax: @The Moar You Know:

    I hear you all. I used to do system administration for my old firm and spent two decades dealing with the fact that anti-virus works by being only just barely less bad than 1990’s vintage viruses. I am well aware that the “real” culprit is NAV, but given that the problem is that the two wouldn’t play nicely together, as between NAV and Malwarebytes, I deemed the latter to be the one I could do without most of the time.

    Yes, NAV is problematic. The latest version is stable and relatively un-disruptive, but every few years, you can expect them to force a version on you that’s going to fuck your computer up. But, sorry, no one will ever be able to convince me that Windows Defender is an adequate substitute.

    But McAfee. Jesus. What a marvel. I mean, you can only marvel at how a company whose main product is so atrocious, so broken, so downright destructive and dangerous that you have to suspect actively malicious intent can stay in business year after year without a monopoly. I didn’t have the authority to fire people for not unchecking the box when Adobe or something tried to sneak it onto a machine, but Christ did I ever lecture the hell out of them about it.

  59. 59.

    NCSteve

    @Peale: Gillibrand is sooooo thinking really, really hard about running. Says she isn’t, but anyone who got onto her mailing list ought to know otherwise. At this point, I’ve begun to conclude that Cory Booker’s invisibility is a strategy, not evidence he isn’t in. I mean, no senator of his public prominence keeps as low a profile as he has been unless it’s strategic.

  60. 60.

    NotMax

    @NCSteve

    Can always install the free version of Malwarebytes, turn off live tracking and just run the program periodically.

  61. 61.

    steverinoCT

    Allow me to put in a plug for what was formerly OpenDNS, before being bought by Cisco and rebranded as Umbrella. My company is a Cisco partner, so we have begun pushing this for businesses, but there is a free single-user option available. You set your nameservers to their DNS servers, and they will block any requests to known bad sites. Since it’s all “in the cloud”, little to no overhead. And if you are infected already, malware can’t get out, because its requests will be blocked. On top of anything else you run, an added layer of defense. (I’m running Norton AV + Malwarebytes on Win10 with no issues).

  62. 62.

    HW3

    @steverinoCT: I want to second this. I have been using the OpenDNS nameservers for nearly a decade now as the perimeter defense for my home networks and it works great. Additionally, they offered at one time a family filter namesever which added “adult” content sites to the blacklist; great tool when you’re raising wee ones with access to the home network. Also, too, I am using Malware Bytes + Norton + Windows 10 without issue on multiple boxes.

  63. 63.

    Miss Bianca

    @Brachiator: dead thread, but it seems to be my LinkedIn account (which I never use) that was the one that got nailed in the May ’16 hack.

  65. 65.

    Another Scott

    @Miss Bianca: For some reason, our workplace no longer had Norton/Symantec AV available, but had McAfee, so I used it on Win7. For some other reason, Intel bought McAfee a few years ago, but spun it off again in April.

    Win10 disabled McAfee and basically insisted on my using its built-in Windows Defender stuff. It seems to be working fine, without the mysterious slowdowns that were often associated with Norton/Symantec.

    YMMV.

    But given all the weirdness that goes on with MS and Win10, the days of Winders working well with external AV programs is probably numbered (if they haven’t already passed).

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  68. 68.

    J R in WV

    @Brachiator:

    I think it’s a raft of shite.

    It said I was pwned by sites I never gave intimate details to, and sites I never visited. I did install Linux Mint once, but I don’t think I ever gave them any passwords. That was the closest to reality their list of “pwned” sites could get.

    Stratfor?? Really!? not.

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