Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Let there be snark.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

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

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

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

I was promised a recession.

Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.

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

Infrastructure week. at last.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

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

You can’t love your country only when you win.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Second rate reporter says what?

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Hail to the Hairpiece / Late Night Off-Off-Off-Broadway Open Thread: “Trumpism: To Seize the Production of Meaning”

Late Night Off-Off-Off-Broadway Open Thread: “Trumpism: To Seize the Production of Meaning”

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Less David Mamet, more Samuel Beckett

twitter egg noun
(1) The default profile picture on Twitter.
(2) A person who uses the default profile picture on their Twitter account. The poor souls are not taken seriously by other users, and their picture is an easy target in any argument. – Urban Dictionary

WORLD’S BIGGEST MOST FAMOUS CELEBRITY EGG –

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

Reader Interactions

86Comments

  1. 1.

    Major Major Major Major

    Ivanka Trump ✔ @IvankaTrump

    “If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.” – Albert Einstein #quote #sunday
    10:58 AM – 23 Jun 2013

    This tweet sums up something nicely, but I can’t put my finger on what.

  2. 2.

    debbie

    These business guys all think they’re so fucking smart, but then are dumbfounded when it turns out running a government is so much harder than running a business. Accountability sucks.

  3. 3.

    Felonius Monk

    Yes, she certainly inherited the Trump genes — she can blow smoke out of her ass just like the Old Man.

  4. 4.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    Ivanka Trump… jeez.

    “What a maroon. What an ultra maroon!”
    — Carl Sagan

  6. 6.

    Felonius Monk

    @debbie:

    These business guys all think they’re so fucking smart

    Don’t confuse Scaramucci with a business guy — he was a hedge fund manager. :)

  10. 10.

    Wyatt Derp

    The Ivanka quote has both hallmarks of the perfect Trump quote. It’s stupid and it’s a lie.

  11. 11.

    Wyatt Derp

    And apparently her point is she is lying but Einstein said it’s ok. Clearly the turd doesn’t fall far from the anus.

  21. 21.

    mike in dc

    The President of the United States has the unrestrained power of granting pardons for treason, which may be sometimes exercised to screen from punishment those whom he had secretly instigated to commit the crime, and thereby prevent a discovery of his own guilt.
    –from George Mason’s objections to the Constitution.

    The above is the strongest argument for the courts to throw out any pre-emptive pardons related to the Russia matter.

  22. 22.

    andy

    This sort of comes back to the previous post. I have a lady friend (and long time cat owner) down the street who told me once that cats have a brain the size of a peanut, and you have to expect an animal with a brain the size of a peanut to do really really stupid things.

    Hence, the trump people, pissing and shitting in the corners. You can’t expect a lot out of them, but you have to wonder why so many people prefer this kind of thing out of the people they deliberately voted for. Lots of people love cats, too, and they never get to run the household.

  23. 23.

    Mnemosyne

    @andy:

    She was off by a bit — a cat’s brain is actually about the size of a shelled walnut. I saw it at the California Science Center. ?

    ETA: That is, a walnut that’s still in its shell. Not sure of the right term.

  26. 26.

    sdhays

    @mike in dc: I don’t really understand how preemptive pardons were ever legal. It seems to me that the President should at least have to wait for a conviction before issuing a pardon, and I don’t see anything in Article II Section 2 of the Constitution that suggests that he has that power. Ford preemptively pardoned Nixon, but was that challenged in court or did the Ford Administration simply accept it and the Carter Administration decided not to pursue it after they took over “to spare the nation the unpleasantness”?

  27. 27.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @andy:
    Lots of people love cats, too, and they never get to run the household.
    I think I see the flaw in your argument.

  28. 28.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Mnemosyne:

    An unshelled walnut, paradoxically, is still in the shell. The shell in shelled/​unshelled refers not to the noun but to the verb denoting the process of removing the nut from its outer covering.

  30. 30.

    TenguPhule

    @mike in dc:

    The above is the strongest argument for the courts to throw out any pre-emptive pardons related to the Russia matter.

    The Constitution obviously doesn’t mean anything anymore. Therefore we can disregard any and all Trump pardons and call it a mulligan.

  31. 31.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    The quote is apparently attributed to Einstein on the internets. One of those widely misattributed quotes. There’s no evidence that Einstein actually said anything like that, or who else might have.

    Apparently Spinoza said something close to that: If facts conflict with a theory, either the theory must be changed or the facts.

  32. 32.

    Mnemosyne

    @Steeplejack (phone):

    Lots of people love cats, too, and they never get to run the household.

    Uhm, I’m pretty sure I know someone right on this blog whose housecat has her very own heating pad that must be set to her specifications at all times. ?

    Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go serve as a pillow again for an hour or so.

  33. 33.

    dmsilev

    @Major Major Major Major: Since Einstein is perhaps best known for changing a theory (gravitation) because it didn’t fit certain annoying observational facts, it says that Ivanka Trump is basically her father except with better hair.

  38. 38.

    NotMax

    @sdhays

    Acceptance of a pardon (yes, one can refuse to accept a pardon) is deemed an open admission of guilt in that it removes one from claiming 5th amendment protection and/or seeking immunity in exchange for testifying in cases directly related but involving non-pardoned individuals.

  39. 39.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Mnemosyne:

    I’m pretty sure I know someone right on this blog whose housecat has her very own heating pad that must be set to her specifications at all times.

    Samwise gets mad if you move his box*, but otherwise, as long as you feed him, he’s fine. Must be a low-maintainence cat.

    *it’s a banker box I keep, like, insurance bills in

  41. 41.

    Mnemosyne

    @Major Major Major Major:

    One time, we took Charlotte to the vet and one of the first things he said was, “This is a very anxious cat.” So we have a super high-strung cat (Charlotte), a fairly high-strung cat (Keaton), and a fairly mellow cat (Annie) who nevertheless gets freaked out relatively easily.

    I miss my very relaxed Boris kitty. A lot.

  42. 42.

    Villago Delenda Est

    My hatred for Donald and his vile Ivana spawn is limitless.

    All of them need to die in prison.

  43. 43.

    TS

    Love Senator Franken – “When he brought it up I thought it was a disinterested intelligent person who said that”.

    We need more SNL folks to become senators – they use truth to break through the b.s.

  44. 44.

    NotMax

    @Steeplejack

    The perfectly good term nut meat has sadly gone out of fashion.

    Trivia: The bunya bunya is the largest type of pine nut (although the tree from which it comes is not a true pine). One can sustain serious injury if unlucky enough to be directly beneath when one of the cones drop.

  45. 45.

    TenguPhule

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    All of them need to die in prison.

    That doesn’t exactly narrow down the cause of death.

    Just saying.

    /Tongue only half in cheek since Cheryl managed to push every single one of my buttons in her post.

  46. 46.

    Yarrow

    @brianstelter: Trump lies about voter fraud and wire tapping.
    @KellyannePolls: “He doesn’t think he’s lying about those issues.”

    This pretty much sums up Trump’s relationship with the truth. Whatever he says is true and if he says the exact opposite thing a moment later it is also true. All the things he says are true for him. He doesn’t think he’s lying about anything.

  47. 47.

    Psych1

    @NotMax: Acceptance of a pardon (yes, one can refuse to accept a pardon) is deemed an open admission of guilt in that it removes one from claiming 5th amendment protection and/or seeking immunity in exchange for testifying in cases directly related but involving non-pardoned individuals.

    For some reason this. Is accepted here as true. But, it is not. If one still faces jeopardy in state courts, as this gang does, they still have protection against self incrimination.

  50. 50.

    NotMax

    @Major Major Major Major

    Can’t resist low-hanging fruit, eh?

    ;)

    @Psych1

    “Cases directly related” was perhaps not specific enough for you in that it referred to federal courts/investigations (in the case of presidential pardons).

  52. 52.

    Mike J

    @Psych1: I don’t think if you’re pardoned for a federal crime, you can’t be tried in state court form the same underlying crime, even on a separate charge. It’s double jeopardy. One of our many lawyers could probably give you a better ruling on it though.

  54. 54.

    stinger

    @TS: I think he said “disinterested Intelligence person”; i.e., someone in the intelligence community. But “intelligent” in the context is both hilarious and true!

  55. 55.

    Mike J

    And three nil, three nil for the Sounders. I was singing that like a football chant when they were inches away from the fourth.But it’s still just three nil, three nil for the Sounders.

  56. 56.

    NotMax

    @Mike in DC

    Am not in any way even close to being a lawyer but an off the cuff layman’s opinion is that there is a strong argument for no, as that would be a separate criminal offense committed after the fact of the pardon.

  61. 61.

    JCJ

    @Wyatt Derp:

    the turd doesn’t fall far from the anus

    OMG. I just read this out loud to my wife and daughter. We all laughed so hard that we scared the cat. This is pure poetry.

  62. 62.

    Yarrow

    @Smiling Mortician: Is he afraid of NY AG Schneiderman? Rumors are Schneiderman is preparing a couple of cases involving Trump. Money laundering, RICO, could be bad news for T.

  64. 64.

    Suffragette City

    The simplest explanation of greed may apply to this Moochie fella, but dang if his sudden turn around last May to support Orange Cheeto Jesus and then selling his hedge fund before he had a WH job..how odd is that?
    Does not make a lot of sense to me unless there is other info out there I’m not aware of.

  66. 66.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @NotMax: They are local around here. While they aren’t a pine, they are a conifer.

    There is speculation that the cones are big and meaty so that dinosaurs, and later large mammals, would eat them and distribute the seeds.

    One of the reasons for their modern small area of distribution is that all the big animals that used to eat them are now extinct.

  67. 67.

    NotMax

    @Viva BrisVegas

    Curious as to whether the needles/foliage have any particular or distinctive scent. The little have read about the trees is silent about that.

  68. 68.

    Anne Laurie

    @Viva BrisVegas:

    There is speculation that the cones are big and meaty so that dinosaurs, and later large mammals, would eat them and distribute the seeds.

    One of the reasons for their modern small area of distribution is that all the big animals that used to eat them are now extinct.

    You probably know the same claim has been made about avocado trees. Wrapping those huge seeds inside a costly, nutrient-dense fruit makes more sense if they co-evolved with giant ground sloths. But, fortunately for the avocados, some of the remaining megafauna — including, apparently, jaguars — took up the seed ingesting-and-spreading slack until the migrating humans showed up.

  69. 69.

    Amir Khalid

    Bernie Sanders should start his own political party, saith a Salon editor. Of a politician who joined a party only very late in his career, and only for the sake of his presidential candidacy; whom his Senate colleagues find difficult to work with; who can deliver idealistic speeches from the stump, but who, as far as I can see, lacks the intellectual, political and executive substance he would need to keep a party going.

  70. 70.

    Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]

    @Psych1: I think you might be missing the point: “an acceptance of a pardon is an official and legal acceptance of guilt”. Every democratic talking head needs to say this a thousand times, every single time they are on air, starting tomorrow.

    If you want to salt the metaphorical earth for Trump, this is the best way to do it. When he pardons his inner circle (which he will), then the script changes to “the self-declared Russian colluder ,, said X” and damn all who say that is uncivil.

    I hope we make it out, but we don’t have to make it easy.

  71. 71.

    sm*t cl*de

    including, apparently, jaguars

    At one point after reading Barlow on “The Ghosts of Evolution” I got bored enough to chase down the trail of citations back to the primary sources like Cook (1982) and van der Pijl (1972). But they reveal a dearth of observations — no-one has actually recorded seeing jaguars eating avocados, and instead those sources are all “everyone knows that jaguars eat avocados, so it must be true.”
    And it is pleasant to think of jagulars projective-vomiting avocado pits at one another (because they certainly aren’t pooping them out).

  72. 72.

    sm*t cl*de

    @Viva BrisVegas:

    There is speculation that the cones are big and meaty so that dinosaurs, and later large mammals, would eat them and distribute the seeds.

    Mine own theory is that araucaria cones evolved so large so that they would kill any tourists that they land on. Hey, free fertiliser!

  74. 74.

    Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]

    @Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]: Edit: Unproven by snopes, but a coconut will kill anything less than a person if the tree is less that 60 feet (and I’ve seen a lot taller than that).

  77. 77.

    Anne Laurie

    @Amir Khalid:

    Bernie Sanders should start his own political party, saith a Salon editor.

    Nothing (other than the complete implosion of the GOP) would make me happier than Bernie Sanders starting his own political party! Maybe his new party members and Jill Stein’s Greens could stage performance-art “gang wars” for the media cameras in 2020!

    I checked Salonista Keith Spencer’s twitter; sure enough, he’s got a red-rose emoji in his header. It’s meant to identify him as a proud Democratic Socialists of America member, but it’s come to symbolize the sorriest specimens of the “dirtbag Left” — not-as-young-as-they-pretend-to-be mostly-white men outraged that just being a white man no longer gets them an express pass to the front of the leadership line.

  78. 78.

    opiejeanne

    @Steeplejack (phone): I just had that discussion with a waitress, about shelled vs still in the shell. I asked if the shrimp was shelled and she said no, that the shells had been removed. She was young and I was nice about explaining it to her, but it was an upscale joint so I was surprised.

    Well, the prices were upscale.

  79. 79.

    Amir Khalid

    @Mel:
    It’s a butterscotch-blonde Squier Affinity Telecaster; it’s not here yet, but it and the Fender Champion 20 amplifier should arrive any day now. For some reason, the online vendor has decided to ship the cable and the thumb picks I ordered a fortnight later. So I’ll have to go to an actual guitar shop and buy those. Hmph.

  83. 83.

    opiejeanne

    @NotMax: @sm*t cl*de: Years ago in White Park in downtown Riverside, CA some genius planted a couple of monkey-puzzle trees, which are close relatives of the bunya bunya. Half the year they used to fence off huge sections of this small park because of the danger of falling cones. No one liked the trees particularly but no one wanted to cut them down because they’d been there for so many years. In that town certain buildings and trees became sacred and their removal caused many years of angst. The beautiful old Carnegie Library was torn down in the early1960s and I know that people were still angry about it in the 90s. Probably still are. I’ve seen photos of the place and it really was a nice library building. The excuses ranged from rats in the basement to termites in the wood but the real reason was the need for more space. They float the idea every few years of replacing the facade of the current modern building with a Mission-style front.

    Oh, and in case you missed it there is movement to shut down public libraries, and I mean lots of money is being poured into campaigns against using tax money for them. One county in Oregon has closed all of their libraries after a vote regarding funding. The Koch brothers are being blamed but I wouldn’t put it past the Mercers to be involved too.

  84. 84.

    different-church-lady

    Facts may be stubborn things, but that doesn’t mean they’re immune to rumor.

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