Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

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

Come on, man.

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

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

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

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

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

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

This blog will pay for itself.

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

Second rate reporter says what?

No one could have predicted…

A Senator Walker would also be an insult to reason, rationality, and decency.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

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

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Open Thread: Now, the Happy Part Is Over…

Open Thread: Now, the Happy Part Is Over…

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Okay, the Secretary of Commerce thinks criminalizing protests isn’t such a bad thing, since he got ‘two gigantic bushels of dates’ from his security detail. One look at Wilbur Ross’s face, you can understand why dietary fiber is so valuable to him!

Reader Interactions

92Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    The Lead CNN ✔ @TheLeadCNN
    Rex Tillerson is supposed to demonstrate importance of a free press, but held a news conference in Riyadh without alerting any US reporters

    Why don’t you talk about Hillary’s lack of press conferences some more? That’ll make you feel better.

  3. 3.

    randy khan

    I seem to recall that Santorum is a lawyer. Surely he knows better than to say that statements made months after the executive order was released are unlikely to have any bearing on how a court will view the intent at the time of the order (and that’s not even considering that the speech had nothing to do with the ban itself).

  8. 8.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Rex Tillerson is supposed to demonstrate importance of a free press, but held a news conference in Riyadh without alerting any US reporters

    Beth Fouhy, a reporter was just on my TV talking about what a great visit trump had in SA. As an American, she was impressed with the fact that fundamentalist Wahabist dictators projected a giant image of trump on his hotel

  9. 9.

    Baud

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: What you’re saying is that the failure to include American reporters was a function of quality control.

    Plausible if it were any other president. Trump doesn’t do quality control.

  10. 10.

    Shalimar

    Waiting for the next stop, where Trump reads a psalm to the pope and leans over to whisper, “don’t tell anyone, but anything that starts with piss makes me laugh.”

  11. 11.

    MisterForkbeard

    Gotta love Santorum’s response, and I see this all the time from RWNJs. Dude, if Trump is told his ban was demonstrably racist because of the racist stuff he said beforehand… saying “Muslims are great!” afterwards means nothing.

    Not only would it have been done expressly to counter a publicly stated legal objection and obviously couldn’t be trusted to mean anything, it’s in contravention to many other statements he’s made concurrently or in the past. A single positive mention to an audience of Muslims doesn’t make his other statements to a bunch of racist assholes any less real.

  13. 13.

    feebog

    @randy khan:

    I seem to recall that Santorum is a lawyer. Surely he knows better than to say that statements made months after the executive order was released are unlikely to have any bearing on how a court will view the intent at the time of the order (and that’s not even considering that the speech had nothing to do with the ban itself).

    Nobody said he was a good lawyer.

  15. 15.

    Baud

    You guys, the funny thing about Santorum’s statement isn’t that it’s legally wrong. It’s that Trump will say something nasty about Muslims in the next couple of days that will completely negate the argument.

  16. 16.

    SatanicPanic

    @Baud: Someone needs to coin a term for defending Trump only to have Trump pull the rug out from under them the following day. “getting Trumped” seems too obvious.

  17. 17.

    Baud

    BTW, for the “Can you imagine…” files, can you imagine how the right and the media would react if Turkey had dressed down Obama or Clinton about how their body guards were treated? It would be nonstop about how the world no longer respected America because our president was weak.

  19. 19.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    I’ve got to say so far Donny First Big International Adventure is going as I expected with the host countries moving heaven and earth to avoiding diplomatic incident. Extra points to the Saudi’s for sacrificing a underaged vigrin fashion model to the Loc Nar, they mean buisness (I assume that’s what that glowing orb was about)

  21. 21.

    Jeffro

    Have you guys seen Mike Flynn’s latest excuse for why he can’t testify or produce any documents ? If he produces anything that verifies that they exist , and if they exist he’s guilty , and so therefore he has to ignore the Senate subpoena to prove his innocence .

    Something like that .

  23. 23.

    Quinerly

    @Weaselone:
    I saw the segment. Honestly, my takeaway from it was she was reporting how impressed Trump was by the projection. Beth Fouhy is generally a pretty good reporter.

  25. 25.

    mai naem mobile

    Did anybody notice that Melanoma didn’t just slap Dolt’s hand when he tried to hold her hand,but she seemed intentionally walking as far from him as possible. Some of the distance appears to be related to where they were walking from but the difference between Bibu & his wife, and Dolt and Melanoma is stark. I am thinking Melanoma was planning a divorce before Dolt pulled this POTUS run.

  28. 28.

    JPL

    Survey USA has Ossoff up 51 to 44 with a 4.3 margin of error. Wow.. I’d love to see the 6.5 million in ads that the PAC associated with Ryan bought lose their money.

    No wonder Handel has decided to debate. She said she would but hadn’t scheduled any. lol

  29. 29.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Comey’s House testimony delayed while he consults with Mueller about what he can say

    Gabriel DebenedettiVerified account @ gdebenedetti
    Some R operatives breathing small sighs of relief that Comey won’t testify Wed, just before MT votes: may not’ve hurt, def wouldn’t help.

    Josh Barro Retweeted Gabriel Debenedetti
    Leaves the newscycle unobstructed for the CBO score saying what the AHCA will do to healthcare

  30. 30.

    Roger Moore

    @SatanicPanic:
    An interesting question. On a related note, we know what it’s supposed to mean when somebody plays the Race Card or the Gender Card. What should it mean when somebody plays the Trump Card?

  31. 31.

    schrodingers_cat

    Sarfaroshi ki Tamanna Ab Hamare Dil Me Hai
    The desire to fight is now in our hearts
    This famous poem was the rallying cry of Indian revolutionaries who fought for independence between the two world wars.
    This version is from the 2006 movie, Rang De Basanti
    What you see is the enactment of lathi charge that killed Lala Lajpat Rai, who was leading a peaceful protest against the Simon Commission in 1928, which was to decide India’s future but did not have a single Indian member.

  34. 34.

    mai naem mobile

    @SatanicPanic: I dunno. By the time Dolt is done Trumped will probably be able to be applied to a lot of stuff. Maybe ‘Donnied?’

  38. 38.

    rp

    @Baud: I’m pretty sure it is legally wrong. I don’t think Trump can cure the problems with the orders with post litigation comments.

  40. 40.

    JPL

    @Baud: The negative ads are running non-stop. He’s either going to turn us into hippies from San Francisco or terrorists from Iran. The poll was after non-stop republican pac ads.

  41. 41.

    piratedan

    @Baud: it’s fucking EVERYTHING about these guys…. everything Faux News and many members of the Right accused Obama of, Trump does, metaphorically beats his chest about it and they say Not A Fucking Word.

    If there wasn’t a propaganda arm dedicated to their very existence, spinning everything on its head and gish galloping every fucking issue, they’d be no bigger than the Greens.

    They aren’t a political party, they’re a fucking cargo cult of hatred, bigotry, ignorance and stupidity, who have just the right amount of cunning hucksters to package it and sell it to folks who will take any answers that don’t require the tiniest bit of introspection.

  42. 42.

    SatanicPanic

    @Roger Moore: Oh that’s an easy one. It’s what you do when some dummy suggests that you need an outsider to get in there and “shake things up” in DC. “Oh stop playing the Trump card, it could work if it were someone smarter/less corrupt/with better hair!”

  44. 44.

    randy khan

    @Baud:

    I play in a casual bridge group sometimes. Quite a few of us are much more enthusiastic about bidding No Trump.

  45. 45.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @JPL:

    Dave Weigel‏Verified account @ daveweigel
    Dave Weigel Retweeted Nate Cohn
    This after Trump and Ryan campaigned for Handel.

    I missed trump campaigning, was it a robocall?

  47. 47.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @JPL: and from what I’ve heard, Ossoff isn’t even talking about trump? I imagine the debate moderators will

  48. 48.

    Brachiator

    Trump supporters are thanking the baby Jesus for this Middle East trip. I’ve heard pundits and and other asswipes resurrect the idea of Trump the Great Deal Maker eager to bring peace to the Middle East.

    There has also been a palpable sigh of relief that a “realist” like Trump has dropped all the Obama bullshit about human rights and Arab Springs. I guess this is a win-win. If authoritarian Middle Eastern rulers viciously suppress their people, this will spout anger and revolution and anti-American reactions. We can then freely hate the people and bomb them into submission again. Using weapons that we sell to Middle Eastern authoritarians. It’s the Military Industrial Complex Circle of Life.

  49. 49.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    You Californians have quite a bench of Dem talent, from what I’ve seen recently

    Roger Stone‏ @ RogerJStoneJr
    RepSwalwell is a punk-ass coward.Hides behind his Congressional immunity and defames me #Liar has NO proof of Russian Collusion.

    Rep. Eric Swalwell Retweeted Roger Stone
    Hiding? I’ll be on Capitol Hill tomorrow for a #RussianHacking hearing. Why don’t you show up & explain why you helped Russia? See ya there?

  50. 50.

    JPL

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: When he was in town for the NRA convention, he went to a fundraiser for Handel. Nice pics and they haven’t been used yet. I hope that as the election nears, there will be a new ad. Pence has already committed to come next month and campaign. That should help. The CBO score should help also.

  51. 51.

    SatanicPanic

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: yeah, I think getting Rosensteined is what happens when you blithely throw a subordinate under the bus.

    Whenever Trump undercuts his approved explanation by telling the truth it makes me think of a cartoon character sawing off the tree branch that some other character is standing on. Needs to be some way to convey that.

  52. 52.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    BOMBSHELL

    Trump asked intelligence chiefs to push back against FBI collusion probe after Comey revealed its existence

    President Trump asked two of the nation’s top intelligence officials in March to help him push back against an FBI investigation into possible coordination between his campaign and the Russian government, according to current and former officials.

    Trump made separate appeals to the director of national intelligence, Daniel Coats, and to Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, urging them to publicly deny the existence of any evidence of collusion during the 2016 election.

    Coats and Rogers refused to comply with the requests, which they both deemed to be inappropriate, according to two current and two former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private communications with the president.

    in other words, Trump pressured lintel community to fabricate narrative to shut down investigation and obstruct justice

  53. 53.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    An Army veteran who was awarded a Bronze Star for his service in Iraq will run for U.S. Rep. Kevin Yoder’s seat as a Democrat.
    Joe McConnell, a 35-year-old Johnson County native who works in operations strategy for the business networking site LinkedIn, moved back to his home state with his wife and 2-year-old daughter after spending the past eight years in California.

    Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article152006097.html#storylink=cpy

  54. 54.

    Humdog

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: we Californians offer up a mixed bag. For every Pelosi, Harris or Spierer we seem to send an Issa, Nunes, Rohrbacher…. crap! Are we even net positive? If you count historical bad Californians like Nixon and Reagan, I fear Californian political men are dragging us down

  55. 55.

    Gravenstone

    One can only hope that the dates Ross was given were the “bad dates”, a la Indiana Jones.

  58. 58.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    Today’s Bombshells as of 6:30 PM Eastern

    ► Trump openly admits he blew Israeli deep cover agents

    ► Flynn takes 5th

    ► Trump pressured intell chiefs to interfere with FBI

  59. 59.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Humdog: that’s true… and my “favorite” wingnut maybe of all time: Bob Dornan.

    I was surprised Feinstein never got a serious primary challenge, that I’m aware of, especially post-Iraq. I”m glad she’s there now, ’cause she gets almost as much Beltway love as McCain and Graham, so she’ll be a useful voice over the next few months.

  60. 60.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    NIXON
    We’ve got to turn off the FBI. You
    just go to the CIA, Bob, and tell
    Helms that Howard Hunt is blackmailing
    the President. Tell him that Hunt and
    his Cuban friends know too damn much,
    and if he goes public, it would be a
    fiasco for the CIA. He’ll know what
    I’m talking about.

    HALDEMAN
    All right.

    NIXON
    Play it tough. That’s the way they
    play it and that’s the way we’re going
    to play it. Don’t lie to Helms and
    say there’s no involvement, but just
    say this is sort of a comedy of
    errors, bizarre, without getting into
    it. Say the President believes it’s
    going to open up the whole Bay of Pigs
    thing again. Tell Helms he should
    call the FBI, call Pat Gray, and say
    that we wish for the sake of the
    country — don’t go any further into
    this hanky-panky, period!

    Nixon was impeached for calling on the Intell community to impede an FBI investigation

  61. 61.

    HeleninEire

    @Baud:

    Just got a Facebook “memory” from a year ago. Big NYC meet-up. Thanks Reddirtgirl. You picked your cabinet from those pics.

    Jeez. Good, quiet, funny times.

  62. 62.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @JPL: damn, numerous fatalities, and it looks like there were a lot of young kids at the concert

  64. 64.

    mai naem mobile

    @JPL: I’m sure it’s the money but she cold have threatened to divorce him after the election and gotten a better pre nup deal. I wonder what happens to a couples assets or estate if the feds convict him on money laundering/bribes etc. Same for the rest of the family and I assume their trusts.

  65. 65.

    ruemara

    @Baud: The American media are rage inducing.

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Fantastic. It would be great to do a regular update once or twice a week on key local races or even do a a 50 states, 50 posts where state races and candidates can get a shout out.

  70. 70.

    Mary G

    @Humdog: We might be getting rid of some of them. OC Register says recent poll not looking good for the four Republican incumbents right now. So Issa, Rohrbacher, Mimi and whoever is the other one may be going bye-bye.

    Orange County’s independent voters heavily favor a Democrat Congress member in the county’s four Republican-held congressional districts, underlining the GOP’s vulnerability in these longtime strongholds, according to a poll released Friday.

    The Register is somewhere to the right of the John Birch Society, so if even they are admitting it, things are pretty bad.

  72. 72.

    Old Broad in California

    @MisterForkbeard: Reminds me of how, during the campaign, my RWNJ (former) friend posted a photo of Trump with Don King and thought that “disproved” that Trump was racist.

    Just because he doesn’t have the nerve to tell people what he really thinks of them to their faces, doesn’t mean he doesn’t think it.

  74. 74.

    aimai

    @SatanicPanic: Maybe something like “trump speed” as in “he contradicted himself with trumpspeed.

    Or I thought we were friends but he betrumped me in a new york minute.

    Or, of a vicious, stupid, and ultimately self contradictory statement “It was pure trumpery.”

  78. 78.

    Steve in the ATL

    @JPL: Ossoff is opening a campaign office in Johns Creek this week. Johns Creek!!! Normally every candidate here fights over who is the farthest right nut job and that guy wins. Oh, this could be a beautiful thing.

  79. 79.

    bemused

    @sharl:

    Is Ross the guy that likes to wear very expensive velvet slippers in public? I can get it if one has bad feet but he’s wealthy enough to have orthopedic type shoes made that look like actual shoes, not that you just got out of his pj’s and forgot to change out of slippers.

  82. 82.

    daverave

    Would love to see CA Rep. McClintock gone but he is a cockroach with some serious baggage who nevertheless seems to survive every attempt to oust him.

  83. 83.

    JPL

    @amk: lol I’m not there yet, but it’s looking good. The area is so conservative, and he needs a strong turnout in DeKalb. He did not get that last time.

  84. 84.

    sharl

    @bemused:

    Is Ross the guy that likes to wear very expensive velvet slippers in public?

    Well I’ll be damned! – Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross Wore $645 Luxury Slippers.

    There’s a high-end label lover among President Donald Trump’s inner-circle. And it’s not his daughter Ivanka or first lady Melania.

    Indeed, when Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross attended Trump’s speech to Congress on Tuesday in Washington, D.C., he stepped out in $645 bespoke velvet slippers by Stubbs & Wootton — and they were embroidered with the Commerce Department’s logo. The brand is based in Palm Beach, Fla., the posh community that’s home to Trump’s exclusive Mar-a-Lago resort.

    Of course, with a net worth estimated by Forbes to be around $2.5 billion, the 79-year-old investor can certainly afford the slick slippers.

    The label’s shoes retail for around $495 to $600 for men’s styles, but customized versions, such as Ross’, cost more…

    Le Sigh…I can’t relate.

  87. 87.

    J R in WV

    @Baud:

    I know that making your bid in No Trump gets the highest score in bridge, IIRC. It was a very long time ago that I played bridge. But No Trump has high appeal for me nowadays.

  88. 88.

    Roger Moore

    @Old Broad in California:

    Just because he doesn’t have the nerve to tell people what he really thinks of them to their faces, doesn’t mean he doesn’t think it.

    And thinking there are some good members of a group doesn’t mean you don’t discriminate against the group as a whole. It’s no better an argument than “some of my best friends are [group]” as evidence you aren’t prejudiced.

  90. 90.

    TenguPhule

    @Jeffro:

    If he produces anything that verifies that they exist , and if they exist he’s guilty , and so therefore he has to ignore the Senate subpoena to prove his innocence .

    Er, not quite.

    He’s arguing that if he produces anything, he’ll be forced to testify about any conversations the documents may show occurred and he will not be able to invoke a fifth amendment then because he would have waived the defense by supplying the Committee with evidence that such discussions did in fact occur.

    A weasel’s argument, but he has a lawyer who’s forced to work with what they got, so there you have it.

  91. 91.

    TenguPhule

    @Humdog:

    If you count historical bad Californians like Nixon and Reagan, I fear Californian political men are dragging us down

    The obvious solution is to ban all CA reps from having dicks.

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