One thing’s for sure: whatever fresh hell the Trump White House offers up each day, one community in our great society has to be unbelievably grateful. Scaramucci is just the latest gift to surpass understanding delivered w. a sMooch* by an administration whose signature accomplishment seems to be The Late Night Comedian Full Employment Act of 2017.
See, e.g., exhibit A, Stephen Colbert:
Here’s the thing, though. For all our (my) attempts to remember what actual ordinary politics were like, it’s hard to keep up with the massive fail that lies behind so much wonderfully immolating wit.
The Mooch isn’t just a Master of the Universe about to discover that presidential-level politics is not the same as the rigged casino from which he came. He is the communications director, ultimately the outward facing representative of executive power in the United States. In Beijing news studios last night, some poor folks had to figure out how to express the essence of Scaramucci’s autofellatio image to a Chinese public trying to make sense of the state of affairs across the Pacific. In Berlin, government officials are (I’ll bet) as I type attempting to figure out who remains in DC to talk to, when a one week administration veteran seeks to bring down the FBI on the President’s chief of staff.
All of which is to say that this is so far from normal you couldn’t see ordinary DC politics from where we now find ourselves with a fully functional James Webb Space Telescope. Scaramucci’s hilarious, awful, unspeakably revealing rant is indeed funny as hell. It’s also the mark of an American government that cannot represent American interests in the world. We’ve traded actual engagement with the day to day business of running the most powerful country in the world for an extended Game of Thrones cosplay fantasy.
This is how empires fall: a surface wave of bathos obscuring the deep, ongoing, and never normal tide of malice, incompetence and chaos.
On the upside, my son and I have tickets to see Colbert live next month. That should be fun.
*See what I did there?
SFBayAreaGal
I saw what you did there ?
schrodingers_cat
I am not willing to write the epitaph for America yet. We cannot let T and company win. America is worth fighting for, we should not let T and his R party define it.
For too long we have let Rs wear the mantle of patriotism while they go merrily destroying everything that has made this country an exception.
Tim C.
@schrodingers_cat: So say we all!
Jeffro
Speaking of the end of the American Century, here’s one sign that we are getting closer to endgame with Trumpov & Co: It’s Time to Start Thinking About the Unthinkable
And that’s just the start of Ignatius’ column today. On top of the Pentagon refusing to immediately discharge (or do anything to/with, really) transgender troops until they hear directly from the president* about what his stupid fucking tweet meant, and warnings about “the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency“, it’s a big deal.
rikyrah
House Republicans want a special counsel for Clinton, not Trump
07/28/17 11:16 AM
By Steve Benen
Sometimes, the line between House Republicans and their caricature becomes blurred.
In other words, if Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee have their way, we’d have two parallel investigations: one special-counsel probe examining the Trump-Russia scandal, and another special-counsel probe going after Hillary Clinton.
There’s no reason to believe the Justice Department will take such a request seriously, but we live in deeply strange times and it’s probably best not to make any assumptions.
Also note, even if there is no second special counsel, the House Judiciary Committee is poised to move forward with a Clinton investigation of its own. The Washington Post reported this week that the GOP-led panel has begun requesting documents for a new round of Clinton-related scrutiny.
All of this, coincidentally, follows Donald Trump’s recent insistence that Clinton’s imagined “crimes” face an investigation.
The House Judiciary Committee’s actions are laughable on their face, but they’re all the more jarring when one remembers that this same panel has refused to do any meaningful work on the Russia scandal. A foreign adversary launched an espionage operation to subvert an American election – the most serious attack against the United States since 9/11 – and the Republican majority on the House Judiciary Committee, which has unique responsibilities in this area, has largely ignored the entire affair.
The Dangerman
There once was a man nicknamed Mooch
Who one night drank too much Hooch
He became a loose canon
And took on Herr Bannon
Sorry, no fifth line; need more coffee.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
This all feels like Trump has given up on actually being president and just squatting in the Whitehouse and acting like a brat to punish the world for not letting him be god king. The Mouch is just Trump surrogate to punish Banon, Prience, Sesssion and the rest who spoiled Trump’s fun by demanding Trump act serious. I figure we are in for something like four years of an incapacitated presidency.
Yarrow
Not just in China. I made a point of watching the network news this morning. The Today Show covered the healthcare vote and then turned to Scaramucci’s rant. They mentioned one excerpt from it, then for another part, they just had asterisks all the way across and said it was too profane to say any of it on television. I know CNN, MSNBC, etc. had shown portions of it with asterisks, but this was morning TV and they weren’t going to show one bit of it. If someone had been in a bubble yesterday and woke up and saw that, I wonder what they’d think of it. Asterisks all the way across.
Rasputin's Evil Twin
Question of the day: If the Trumps and the Kardashians traded places,would there be much of a difference? A co-worker is convinced the families are related. Also, plastic surgery would be covered by K-Kare
lollipopguild
All of us here at the Balloon Juice Commentariat would like to send out an extra special sMooch to you Tom and John and all of the other front-pagers who do so much work to keep this blog up and running. Mucho Appreciado!
Yarrow
@schrodingers_cat:
Agreed! The Dem convention last summer was great in being about what this country stands for in all its varied ways. Very patriotic. Even Republicans were saying the Dems had stolen their shtick.
rikyrah
Donald Trump’s War on the 1960s
To the president and his fans, the ’60s undermined what was good and virtuous in America.
BY LEONARD STEINHORN
JULY 27, 2017
Donald Trump and his supporters may be waging battles against the press, immigrants, voting rights, the environment, science, social welfare programs, Planned Parenthood and what they label political correctness and the deep state.
But to them these are mere skirmishes in a much larger conflict. The president has essentially declared an all-out war on the American 1960s.
What he and his followers hope to do is not necessarily turn back the clock to the 1950s, but rather restore a social order, value system and “real America” that they believe was hijacked by the liberal culture, politics, thought leaders and policy priorities that emerged from the ’60s.
An October 2016 PRRI survey found close to three-fourths of Trump voters and white evangelical Christians bemoaning an American society and way of life that to them has changed for the worse since the 1950s. Donald Trump has become their cultural and political reset button.
To be sure, no immigration policy or insistence on saying Merry Christmas will reinstate the 1950s in America. A nation that was 87 percent non-Hispanic white in 1950 will be 47 percent in 2050. Seven in 10 Americans claimed church membership during the ’50s, but now just 20 percent of millennials say churchgoing is important and almost 40 percent say they have no religious affiliation at all.
But while the president and his supporters can’t reverse demography, they are trying through rhetoric, symbolism, policy and politics to resurrect an iconic post-World War II Norman Rockwell version of what it means to be authentically American.
To them, the ’60s undermined what was good and virtuous in America. In their sepia-toned view of our history, it was a triumphant military, a white working class and a Father Knows Best conception of nuclear families, moral values and suburban bliss that made America great.
In this America we saluted the flag, revered the police, attended church, trusted authority, respected tradition and venerated sturdy, stoic, upstanding lunch pail heroes who earned their American dream without griping or government assistance.
It’s not that religious and ethnic minorities are absent from this history — they gave America character, after all and we all need to show our melting pot tolerance. But how nice it was that they knew their place, didn’t get too uppity and honored the primacy of Christians and whites who, the story goes, steadied and built the United States.
America was much more of a community before the agitators caused all the problems, wasn’t it?
MomSense
@The Dangerman:
who was at home licking himself like a pooch
Another Scott
Donnie’s back on the Twitter machine saying (again) that McConnell and the GOP should blow up the filibuster/cloture system. I assume he won’t get his way on that, either.
Cheers,
Scott.
rikyrah
“The movement to save Obamacare takes its place among the great social causes in American history.” https://t.co/fueq9wNbgw
— Topher Spiro (@TopherSpiro) July 28, 2017
The Dangerman
@MomSense:
Winner on one.
MattF
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: It’s all dominance display. Trump is pissing on everyone. Republicans are only now figuring out that it’s his whole political repertoire. And now it’s aimed (so to speak) at them.
raven
Another NK launch.
Yarrow
This has to be one of my favorite tweets ever.
MomSense
@The Dangerman:
I’m just a couple cups of coffee ahead of you!
Peale
@rikyrah: they will not stop until that black attorney general is in jail. She somehow insults them. If they can drag Holder in it’s a twofer.
Miss Bianca
@Yarrow: And I had leftier-than-thou friends who poured venom and gall all over that convention, telling me what major sell-outs the Democrats were. I finally realized in that moment that I must no longer be a leftist, but a dyed-in-the-wool, juice-of-the-grape moderate Democrat. And DAMN proud of it, I might add.
rikyrah
Obamacare Lives
By Jonathan Chait
I remember where I was and how it felt when the House of Representatives held the deciding vote to establish the Affordable Care Act. It was a feeling of elation, but, sitting in my living room by myself, an oddly solitary one. I ran out into the street of my residential neighborhood, half-expecting jubilant V-J Day–style crowds. But it wasn’t just that my neighbors were at work. The months and months of legislative grinding had cast a pall of depression over even many enthusiastic Obama-voting liberals, who saw the health care law as hardly worth celebrating.
The death of Obamacare repeal, in the early morning hours of Friday, July 28, was a very different experience. “Nothing in life is so exhilarating,” as Churchill is reputed to have said, “as to be shot at without result.” Obamacare has gained not only positive approval in broad opinion polls but a genuine mass following. Hundreds of thousands of Americans rallied to its defense, making its repeal impossibly painful for the Republican government that had once assumed it would sweep the law away in a January lightning strike.
…………………………….
That commitment to destroy the law became an albatross around the governing party’s neck. Perhaps even more than Trump’s buffoonery, the party’s relentless drive to please its activist and donor base by fulfilling the promise of repeal has broken the faith of the downscale white voters who rely on the law for their access to medical care. The repeal crusade is a fiasco of historic scope, opening the door for Democrats possibly to recapture Congress.
Health-care policy will change. The Trump administration has powerful weapons to sabotage the functioning of the markets. But the world before Obamacare will never return. Health-care reform defied progressives for decades because the uninsured were a disorganized and politically voiceless group. Obamacare has transformed the non-constituency into a constituency. Republicans have had to promise to protect them, and when they tried to break that promise, it summoned a backlash unlike anything they could have imagined. The outpouring of political organizing to save the law shocked its would-be repealers. The movement to save Obamacare takes its place among the great social causes in American history.
Lulymay
@The Dangerman:
and eventually, he did get the “bootch”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@MattF: Oh yes, that’s the central core to this- Trump is trying to dominate the whole nation, if not the entire world and it’s not working so he’s lashing out at anyone he thinks he can punish. Like an angry kid kicking the family pet.
Miss Bianca
@The Dangerman: Doesn’t quite scan – drop the “at home” and it will. Still a win, tho’!
Peale
@rikyrah: unfortunately, until voters who like the social change start voting their numbers for candidates who share those values, demographics don’t mean jack shit. They don’t now and sure as hell won’t matter in 2050.
Sergio
How come nobody came up with the obvious — Scaramooch, Scaramooch would you dance the fandango?!
Gretchen
Orrin Hatch actually wiped away tears during McConnell’s speech last night. Hahahaha.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: 60s? They want to go back to the days where you could imprison heretics and send them to prison. Like the RC church did with Galileo.
p.a.
Would love for a foreign service/intelligence service dossier on their perceptions of tRump’s intellectual and emotional status to be leaked; never mind his financial shenanigans.
Kent
All I gotta say is I absolutely can’t wait to see what SNL does with the Mooch. Whoever plays him, it is going to be epic.
What would really fuck with both Trump and the Mooch is if they found another female comedian to play him like they did with Spicey. God that would be rich.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Miss Bianca: I am just amazed that the hard left don’t get Obama and the Dem’s quite delibertly made ACA quite conservative to make it as hard as possible for the Republicans to undo when they were in power. I think it’s pretty clear if Obamacare was single payer the repeal would have breezed threw a Republican congress.
A Ghost to Most
@Sergio:
Check a couple threads down – the Scaramooch Fandango has already been defined.
bluehill
This is what a real slippery slope looks like – gradual acceptance of ideas, conduct etc that eat away at the protections that keep us from becoming an authoritarian state. It’s ironic and depressing that the party wrapping itself in the constitution are so eager and willing to burn it.
Yarrow
I also want to thank President Obama for working so hard to get the ACA passed. He made a huge difference in so many people’s live. it has saved lives and will continue to do so. It’s made people healthier. I hope he’s savoring today. His signature legislation of Obamacare is much more secure now. I am forever grateful to him for sticking with it, not giving up, and, along with the Democrats in Congress, getting the bill passed. It’s not perfect, but it’s so much better than what we had. I’m forever grateful to him.
MattF
@schrodingers_cat: Oh, the good old days of torture and auto-da-fé.
A Ghost to Most
@Kent:
Kris Kattan as mooch.
Amir Khalid
@Sergio:
It’s so obvious that everyone thought of it as soon as they heard Anthony Scaramucci’s name.
JCJ
@MomSense:
Dang. I had “pooch” as the last rhyme, but did not come up with anything as good as that.
Laura
@Yarrow: what you said!
Thanks Obama.
GregB
The US had a special place in the post WWII world largely due to our geography. The rest of the world was in ruins.
Trump’s nomination began the the quickening of the end of that order. His election and subsequent actions and rhetoric have destroyed it.
It is never coming back.
The US will still be a big player in the great game if geo-politics but our leadership role as we knew it is done.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@rikyrah:
So we know in past investigations of Clintons nothing has turned up because nothing is there. Are the House R’s capable of making up evidence to support their predetermined conclusions. Are even they that far gone?
Miss Bianca
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: The number of things that I am amazed the hard left doesn’t get continues to pile up. For example, how American politics actually works. That a boutique vote is a vote for the opposition. And that the worst Democrat on a national level is better than the best Republican, any day of the week and twice on Sundays. And that if these white leftist purists – and they almost invariably are white – oppose Democrats on a purity kick, that they are cool with women, minorities, LBGTQ folks – in other words, all the constituencies that they pay lip service to honoring and fighting for – getting the shaft. Yeah….fuck ’em, as efg likes to say.
A Ghost to Most
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: yes, and yes. See Rep. Nunes for latest example.
MattF
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Yes.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@GregB:
I don’t know if that’s the worst thing in the world. Being the sole world’s policeman hasn’t worked that well for us and many people around the world. Maybe if other nations (the EU?) took up more slack things would be different. The US would not be the world leader but one among many democratic states keeping order. A bloc.
Another Scott
@Kent: They should have Chris Kattan come back for that.
The Mooch at the Disco?
Cheers,
Scott.
A Ghost to Most
@Miss Bianca:
If you envision the political spectrum as a circle, where hard left meets hard right, things start to make sense (at least to me).
Another Scott
@A Ghost to Most: GMTA. :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
O. Felix Culpa
@bluehill:
They’ll keep the sacred 2nd amendment and dance around the golden gun. The rest they’ll burn.
rikyrah
@Yarrow:
BRAVO
BRAVO
BRAVO
Luthe
@rikyrah: If they want to bring back elements of the 50s,they can bring back a 90% maximum tax rate, high levels of unionization, and a livable minimum wage.
O. Felix Culpa
@MattF:
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
schrodingers_cat
@MattF: I am sure fundies love the Inquisition.
MomSense
@JCJ:
Have to get “Bannoning” in somehow.
MattF
@A Ghost to Most: I think the big distinction is between extremists and non-extremists, and it’s not really political. See the interesting NYT article about the Horowitz family.
rikyrah
Couple caught in ‘financial spiral’ jump to their deaths
By Shawn Cohen, Tamar Lapin and Natalie Musumeci
July 28, 2017
A pair of Manhattan parents claiming financial woes jumped to their deaths early Friday – leaving double suicide notes pleading that their two kids be cared for, law-enforcement sources told The Post.
The bodies of the man, a 53-year-old chiropractor, and his wife, 50, were found in the middle of the street on 33rd Street between Park and Madison avenues in Murray Hill after the pair jumped from the ninth-floor window of a 17-story corner office building on Madison Avenue at about 5:45 a.m., police said.
The man, whose office was on the same floor of the building where the couple jumped, claimed in a typed suicide note found in his pocket, ““WE HAD A WONDERFUL LIFE.”
The woman had a suicide note in her pocket that read, “in sum and substance,” according to a source, “‘Our kids are upstairs, please take care of them.’”
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Jeffro: Lame duck already (thank Tao)
Tokyokie
@Kent: Sarah Silverman with her hair slicked back and wearing sunglasses could do a killer Mooch.
rikyrah
I Went to Harvard Law with Anthony Scaramucci. Here’s What He Was Like.
Like the president whom Scaramucci would go on to serve, getting rich was the goal, and winning was everything.
by Richard D. Kahlenberg July 28, 2017
Like the president he serves, Anthony Scaramucci, the flamboyant new White House communications director, likes to reference his Ivy League credentials. In a recent interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Scaramucci was asked whether he would have attended a meeting with a Russian lawyer who promised to supply dirt on Hillary Clinton. While Donald Trump Jr. took the meeting, Scaramucci bragged that as a Harvard Law School graduate, he probably wouldn’t have gone himself. When asked about whether Trump could pardon himself, Scaramucci offered that he wasn’t sure, but he did get an A- in constitutional law from Harvard Law professor Larry Tribe.
What was the young Anthony Scaramucci like at Harvard Law School? And what might those early years tell us about President Trump’s new favorite aide, whose brash New York style is rightly earning Scaramucci the moniker, “mini-me”?
Scaramucci was in my first year section at Harvard Law School more than 30 years ago, and even then, he was known as a big personality. He was an exuberant figure who proposed to his girlfriend on a Times Square billboard. He made a brief appearance in a book I wrote called Broken Contract: A Memoir of Harvard Law School. In the volume, I used the real names of professors—who were well known—but gave the young, non-famous students pseudonyms. Anthony Scaramucci’s was Joe Sisorelli.
…………………………………..
I don’t remember whether Scaramucci had already embraced right wing politics back at Harvard, but if he had, he was nevertheless a popular presence. He was a showman then, is a showman now, and he may just succeed in advancing Trump’s agenda.
In retrospect, though, there was another side to the gregarious and wise-cracking Scaramucci that was more unsettling. Many of us had come to law school hoping to be the next Thurgood Marshall advancing civil rights or Ralph Nader promoting consumer protection. Two-thirds of us entered law school saying we wanted careers in public interest law, but most of us instead became corporate lawyers. Referencing the then-popular TV show, “LA Law,” I wrote: “A number of students come wanting to be Atticus Finch and leave as Arnie Becker.” If most of us sold out, we nevertheless agonized over the decision of what type of law to practice.
Scaramucci, however, skipped law altogether and went straight to investment banking at Goldman Sachs. He would later go on to found a group of global hedge funds known as SkyBridge Capital.
Ken
@rikyrah:
IIRC, John Stewart on The Daily Show had a segment with various conservatives lamenting the changes since the good old days – but each claimed different good old days, ranging from the 50s to the 80s. He pointed out that in each case, the good-olds were when that person was in their teens – basically the stage where you notice the world around you but your parents still provide for you.
If that’s the case here, it suggests a lot of Trump voters and white evangelicals are in their 70s and 80s. Not the greatest demographics.
rikyrah
Health Care Fails and the Reckoning Begins
by Martin Longman
July 28, 2017
I learned a long time ago not to put my hope in John McCain, but I did always have it in the back of my mind that he’d be the kind of guy to know that revenge is a dish best served cold. He could have ended this from Arizona without coming back to Washington at all, but he showed up in person, voted to let the charade proceed, kept everyone needlessly in suspense, and then shivved the president with a smile on his face:
Given that he caused needless stress to millions of Americans and set up Mitch McConnell to look like the biggest ass in the world, a desire to hurt Trump in the most theatrical fashion possible is the only real explanation for why he had things play out this way.
dmsilev
@Yarrow:
You mention the Democrats in Congress, but let’s highlight Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Reid got Every Single Senator in his caucus to sign on to the ACA, and Pelosi pushed things through, especially when it looked like things were going to fall apart after Scott Brown won the special election in MA. Compare that effort with what we saw last night.
Mike in NC
Read in my email that Trump was heading to Long Island today to deliver a rant about fighting the criminal gangs that have taken over our cities. Perfect material for the FOX News idiots. No doubt he’ll squeeze in lunch with Hannity.
Happily, all of my wire’s relatives on Long Island are dead and buried so we never have to go back there.
Yarrow
rikyrah
A battle is done. The war continues.
Liberal Librarian July 28, 2017
Last night I was speaking on Twitter with our very own Churchlady, and I had this realization:
……………………………………………
The war didn’t start on November 9. It’s a war as old as the Republic. It’s just that now it’s in its terminal phase. It’s in the part where it does the most damage, destroys the most lives.
Trump often says that we’re in a war to save civilization. In this he’s right. This war is to define what kind of civilization we will have, and Trump and his fascists are on the side of the barbarians. It’s a war to determine whether our world advances or falls into the chasm. It’s a war between hope and nihilism. It’s a war to put an end to the proposition that some people are more equal than others.
Last night we won a great victory. It was all the sweeter because it was unexpected. It showed that all the work we’ve done since November 9 does have a payoff. It’s hard. It’s frustrating. But that’s war. War is not easy. War is not kind. War demands sacrifice. And it will demand more sacrifice over the coming months and years.
Enjoy the victory. But the struggle continues.
Yarrow
@dmsilev: Never underestimate Nancy Smash. And Harry Reid was continually underestimated. He did a great job of getting the caucus to vote together.
JCJ
@MomSense:
How about “Who was bannoning himself like a pooch”?
donnah
@The Dangerman:
And I know he’ll somehow screw the pooch
Bex
@The Dangerman: Because Mooch was a certified douche.
Ohio Mom
Last night I got another one of those telephone town halls from my Republican Representative, Brad Wenstrup. He does them fairly frequently.
What struck me was that for the first time, about a third of the questions were from our side. Questions that included facts and figures, were logical and articulate.
Now Wenstrup gave the usual BS answers you’d expect, but up until last night, these telephone town halls have been callers regurgitating Fox News talking points, and Wenstrup answering, “That’s true and that is why I am working to (fill in the blank.”
It was encouraging to hear people claiming their power, especially on a night when I thought the ACA was about to be voted out of existence.
By the way, Wenstrup did explain why after seven years, Republicans still had no replacement plan: it is because every couple of years there are elections and the make-up of Congress changes. LOL.
Fair Economist
@MomSense: Doesn’t anybody care about meter anymore?
There once was a man nicknamed Mooch
Who had too much bad cocaine and hooch
He became a loose cannon
And took on Steve Bannon
Who was licking himself like a pooch
Ruckus
@Luthe:
Those are not the parts of the 50s that they want to bring back.
But you knew that.
There’s only one part they want to bring back. That number. 87% non Hispanic white.
Jim Parene
@Mike in NC: I agree with you on returning to L.I. I was born and raised there. I loved the fishing available to me. However, I was in Pete King’s district (NY-2…..Asshole) and the jerks that populate it are as bigoted as any from Mississippi.
I was severly damaged in Superstorm Sandy. My claim was lowballed. We survivors are often severely PTSD. The result is I am losing my home.
My point here is that as I was lamenting the problems to a neighbor, the Asshole blurted out: “Well, if you were a Nig-Clang!!! you would have everything you need!!” This is a good example of King’s district.
Sadly, this asshole is a Union Operating Engineer. He is trump ignorant, a fox “news” devotee and a stone cold racist. I hope he is miserable.
pamelabrown53
@JCJ:
Me likey. It fits with the profanity of the man.
Chris
@Ken:
One thing I find interesting about the pop narrative of the mid-20th century or so is how perfectly it maps on to Baby Boomers’ life stages. The fifties are remembered as an era of idyllic comfort and security – as it happens, that’s when most boomers were children. The sixties are remembered as a time of optimism and looking hopefully towards the future – as it happens, that’s when most boomers were teenagers. The seventies (though starting in 1968 or thereabouts) are remembered as an age of disillusionment, with the dreams of the sixties broken by contact with hard cold reality – as it happens, that’s when most boomers became grown-ups. Sure, there are objective reasons why those decades would be associated with those things, but it also corresponds pretty well to the stereotypical mindset for each life stage the boomers were going through at the time.
Jeffro
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: Yup. The Hill had a piece up about how this is effectively/legislatively the end of Trumpov’s presidency. I don’t know about that…but from here on out, the likelihood of Rs turning on each other and/or making an effort to distance themselves from the Trumptanic increases by the day.
Boussinesque
@rikyrah: I just wanted to thank you for always posting links to articles like these–I only read a small cross-section of sites regularly, and your links do me a great service in expanding the variety of stories and sources that I’m exposed to.
scav
@Bex: so now I somehow end up with the earworm fragment of “The little douche mooch! You don’t know what you’ve done!”
Ralphie247
@Kent: Joe Pesci.
NotMax
@The Dangerman
And ended up screwing the pooch.
lgerard
The arrival of The Mooch reminds me of the time when Itchy and Scratchy tried to introduce Poochie, the character with an attitude, into the show…..and The Mooch will probably meet with the same fate.
Further proof that The Simpson’s foretells all.
Jeffro
Btw y’all have to read Rubin’s take-down of Ryan and McConnell: about a sly a piece as she’s ever written, using their own anti-Obamacare arguments against them.
Take a look: Can McConnell and Ryan be Repaired, or Must They Be Repealed And Replaced?
LOL
I’m sure they’re likely to not take even one of her five suggestions, but still…it’s good to see them called out for sending the GOP into a “death spiral”!
NotMax
@Jim Parene
Lemme guess – either south shore or Suffolk County.
Ohio Mom
@Chris: I am a boomer and there may be something to that theory. I’ll add that for our parents, the 1950s were a sigh of relief after WWII. Also, they were in that lovely stage of life of starting families, nothing like having babies and toddlers around.
I don’t have a description off the top of my head for the 60s but the 70s, with the oil shocks and inflation, were a punch in the stomach. I know for my mom, by then divorced with three kids to support, there was a feeling that inflation might eat everything up.
germy
And so it begins…
(From Newsweek)
zhena gogolia
@Boussinesque:
Same here. I’ve seen people criticize her for it, but I strongly disagree. I don’t have time to read all these sites, and she picks them so well.
Jim Parene
@NotMax: BINGO! Copiague, NY Suffolk County. I grew up in Oyster Bay and really was shocked to meet true racist assholes.
mai naem mobile
Dang it I forgot to watch Fox News right after the vote and this morning. I love watching them after a loss. I know this makes me a bad person. Just to make it clear, this is not something I do in my personal life.
NotMax
Politically, it’s a new world today. Marginally better but as they say, the longest journey begins with a single step.
germy
@lgerard: Except Poochie said “Don’t take drugs!”
Yoda Dog
@mai naem mobile: If that makes you bad, I must be going to hell.
They were VERY pouty-faced this morning. It was fucking beautiful.
lgerard
@germy:
Mo Brooks is running for Senator, and will probably win
NotMax
@Jim Parene
Yeah. South of Mineola or east of the Nassau County line are … questionable, with some few exceptions.
chris
@lgerard:
Maybe not. “Judge” Roy Moore, the 10 commandments guy, is leading in the polls going into the August primary.
http://www.westernjournalism.com/roy-moore-remains-front-runner-to-fill-sessions-seat/
Yoda Dog
hell, the whole TPM front page is just all GOP butthurt, all day long…
I’m not getting too excited til we perform well in 2018, but I’ll take it. Beats the shit out of it passing..
Lee
Late to the thread but wanted to impart this bit of info about going to the Colbert taping.
Get ready to wait…a lot.
You will wait outside & get your number. Then come back to line up in numerical order & wait to go in.
You then wait standing up in a crowded foyer with the rest of the audience. I think we waited almost 2 hours. They had TV running previous shows with an arctic wind of an AC blowing down on us (it was summer).
Once in the theatre you then wait for another little bit for the warm up act to start. Then shortly thereafter the show starts.
Once it starts it is great and fun and don’t be afraid to strike up a conversation with the people sitting next to you.
germy
Monala
@rikyrah:
Trump cares not a whit about any of those values, and it’s becoming more and more clear that most of his supporters don’t, either. What they do care about is this:
different-church-lady
@Fair Economist: I care, and thank you.
Ohio Mom
@NotMax: An old friend, a minister’s wife, was very unpleasantly surprised when her husband took a pulpit in Suffolk County. She thought she was finally going to be sharing pews with fellow liberals.
trollhattan
The Hill is almost as good as Edroso in aggregating Republican wackos in one place. Behold.
Eggs=broke
Tom
@The Dangerman: “His privates, to give them a smooch.” Too much?
bemused
@Boussinesque:
I very much agree.
@germy:
This. It’s predictable by now that is his pattern. Terrifying how unstable and untethered he is.
MomSense
@Fair Economist:
Hey I’m going on three days of almost total trumpsomnia! Guess I needed more coffee after all.
hueyplong
@Yoda Dog: ‘Bout made myself blind on GOP butthurt porn today.
trollhattan
@Lee:
Good insights. Wonder what Thursdays are like when they tape two episodes the same day?
Pro tip: if you’re given a low # (frontish rows) it means you’re teevee attractive. Celebrate. If you’re assigned to a balcony…look for radio work. I’ll see you there. :-)
schrodingers_cat
@germy: More ICE raids, deporting children.
StringOnAStick
@Jim Parene: I am sorry you are losing your home because of, well, because of anything really; no one should have to go through that and to have it be because you got low-balled on the damage claim from Sandy is one more insurance company insult and damage to someone’s life. I hope things get better for you and yours.
Kay
Well, the failure of Obamacare repeal is a very hopeful thing. Boy, that is one resilient law.
It’s like a Jenga puzzle for conservatives- they pull one piece and the whole thing comes crashing down :)
Good job drafting! Now we know why they were afraid of the page count, huh? LOTTA words!
germy
@bemused: @schrodingers_cat: He wants to screw up the Affordable Care Act. Starve it to death. I’m glad the vote went the way it did, but it isn’t over until he and his crew are gone.
schrodingers_cat
@germy: 10 people have already died in ICEstapo detention since T took power. People are dying and we are not supposed to comment on the fact that T’s crew look like they crawled out of a horror movie.
Tom
@germy: Lily Allen, F**k You!: “Cause we hate what you do, and we hate your whole crew, so please don’t stay in touch.”
Felanius Kootea
@schrodingers_cat: Yes! This! America is worth fighting for.
I called my senators (Kamala Harris and Dianne Feinstein) to thank them for voting against skinny repeal and their interns seemed surprised and happy. Also called Murkowski and Collins but didn’t get through to a human so left messages thanking them. Haven’t called McCain’s office. Don’t yet know if I will.
different-church-lady
@trollhattan: You wanna have leopards, you gotta eat some faces.
karensky
@MomSense: oh, ya! Good one.
catclub
News Headline: British driver totals Ferrari one hour after purchase.
Was it the Mooch?
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Ohio Mom: The 60s (really from 1965 to the early 70s) felt like we were in an internal war, generation against generation. 1968 stands out in particular as a low point in my memory (assassinations, riots, bad news from Vietnam, more assassinations, more riots) when 11-year-old me thought that society was falling apart around me. I remember being stunned that LBJ decided not to run for re-election, though I can’t remember why that hit me so hard.
It got a little better after that awful, awful year, with the 1969 moon landing. And then Watergate and then Nixon was suddenly gone and it seemed to naive little me that the hippies had won and it was all going to be peace and flowers and liberalism happily ever after.
And then Reagan was elected. Every Republican presidential win since 1980 has shocked and appalled me to various degrees. 1980 was a fairly big one (though 2000 was much much worse and 2016 was of course unspeakable).
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
Ironically, Norman Rockwell grew up and embraced the Civil Rights Movement, so these jackasses are trying to turn the clock back to a time that even its creator realized was immoral and unsustainable.
StringOnAStick
Germy is right, the next thing the Mango Moron and his congressional enablers will go for is sabotage of the ACA to try to create the death spiral that their bill would have created and that they claim the ACA was about to enter any day now. It won’t be as obvious or telegenic as this vote was, but we have to defeat them on this too. Messaging from the democratic party needs to start now on the idea of “we want to fix the problems with the ACA so you, dear citizen can live a life free of the fear that health care will bankrupt you”.
I like the lady who cuts my hair but I have had to dance around the ACA individual mandate with her. Her husband is a truck driver and so they make too much for any premium assistance and she says their cost on the exchange would have been half his paycheck. I’d love to see premium assistance go higher on the income scale for people like this, or better yet a national system where health insurance payments are just a base level thing that comes out of your taxes. I know, I know; tax increases are political death but having the premiums be automatic and paired with a Swiss style system would solve a lot with people like this.
frosty
@Fair Economist: We do care! A limerick is ruined if there are too many or too few syllables or the emphasis isn’t on the right ones.
This is better but go look at your second line again. One too many syllables.
Jim Parene
@StringOnAStick: Thanks so much, String! The insult to injury is that the National Flood Insurance Program is a Federal program, paid for by taxpayer $. The insurance is not risking a dime of their own $. They are paid to administer the program. The insurance companies take no risk.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but this seems to harken back to Regan putting industry insiders to run the agencies that regulate and administer their industries.
I would be willing to guess that the SBA , another agency associated with my Sandy problems, is run by insiders from the payday loan industry.
I truly admire the commenters on Baloon Juice, btw. I expect that there are commenters who know a lot about insurance malfeasance in other areas of insurance, not just health insurance. Their input would be very welcome.
Lapassionara
@Ohio Mom: Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. I grew up in the 50’s. Being female, I could not get an after school job like the guys, and my family could have used the money. My high school was supposedly one of the good ones, but even then there were some really awful teachers, especially chemistry and geometry. We were expected to be good children, no talking back or arguing with our parents or teachers. We were expected to conform to a white bread standard of conduct, bland and unimaginative. And then there were the drills that were supposed to save us in the event of a nuclear war. Why people think of those years as a golden age I do not know?
Petorado
What shouldn’t be overlooked in all of this is that the players in this political farce are all guys who have been at the controls of this nation’s economic engine. Their complete disregard for the law, willingness to damage millions of others for their own own self-interest, and utterly depraved behavior are the motivations they used for shaping the business community’s economic positions. We need a better class of rich people. We need a better class of business people. And it’s obvious government should never be run like big business people run their businesses.
StringOnAStick
@Jim Parene: I have been hearing since Sandy that some people got screwed on the recovery side; of course not the ones who were featured on This Old (Rich Guy’s) House, to hear them tell it everything was resolved perfectly. I guess it usually is for the well off.
I think you are onto something about who works for those agencies and what their underlying goals are. tRump’s minions are planting people in agencies to do that on steroids though I do like how Murkowski can now jack up things but good for Zinke over at the dept of Interior after they tried to strong arm her into voting yes last night. That should at least slow down the destruction at Interior. The fact that they can’t get their act together to even get some nominees for many of these open positions is good for that reason, and bad for the reason that those jobs have important duties involved.
Spanky
Note to Betty: You might consider relocating;
Fair Economist
@frosty:
Ooh, so it is! Take out the “bad” then.
Vhh
@JCJ: The meter doesnt work. Try “who was licking his b*lls like a pooch”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@trollhattan: The hilerious bit is they are talking about Trump’s handpicked staff “The Mouch” was hired to clean up. It’ s pitty some reporters doesn’t have the snark to ask the Mouch “So it sound like some real idiot hired these losers in the West Wing, you going to go after that twit too?”
TenguPhule
@rikyrah:
Sometimes?
TenguPhule
@Rasputin’s Evil Twin:
Yes, we wouldn’t be embarrassed by the Kardashians.
germy
@schrodingers_cat: They’re rounding up people in Saratoga Springs NY.
M31
“less credible than Lyndon LaRouche”
needs to be in there somewhere :-)
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat:
Prisons are for the optimists.
bemused
@germy:
And those die hard Trump supporters are going to die hard. I just hope some of them figure out their hero doesn’t give a rat’s ass about them and the GOP is the death panel before they do.
TenguPhule
@bluehill:
Its Depressing because it was obvious and predictable.
Tom Levenson
@Lee: Thanks!
germy
@bemused:
But who will tell them that? They won’t hear it from hannity or the talk radio hatejocks. They only know what they hear.
We watched our local sinclare station TV news. They’re VERY polite, but basically ignore certain stories, and highlight other things. Last night they did a whole segment on “leakers in the FBI”. They gave the story a good ten minutes, with help from CIRCA (whoever they are).
TenguPhule
@MattF:
Never forget, Trump ran on those as campaign promises. And there has been a rather unnerving silence about whether or not he’s actually ordered it.
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
You would be very very wrong on that.
Our army and policy failures aside, American Naval Dominance has been essential to establishing the trade between countries that we all enjoy the benefits of today.
Nobody else can do it. Literally.
germy
Mnemosyne
@Lapassionara:
Two reasons:
(A) The people who were children/teenagers remember it through a veil of nostalgia as “a more innocent time” because they themselves were more innocent.
(B) Media — especially movies and TV — was heavily censored, and not just for language. Movies had to be made in such a way that Black performers like Lena Horne or the Nicholas Brothers could be easily snipped out of the film by racist exhibitors. Censorship rules made it impossible to show Jim Crow or other discrimination. Even if a filmmaker wanted to take on a tough subject like miscegenation, he could only cast white actors in the roles.
Massive, systematic media censorship has led people to believe that what they saw on TV and at the movies is how it really was back in the 1940s and 1950s, and it’s just not true.
Brachiator
@MomSense:
We have a winner!
bemused
@germy:
True so many of them clueless but there has to be a few who realize or suspect who is really screwing them over but just don’t want to believe it or admit it. I want them to suffer the deepest, worst regrets of their lives when they are in job/economic/healthcare hell.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: People who were born in 1950 are 67 today. So the people who were are talking about people in their late 60s and older.
ETA: 50s nostalgia seems more wide spread than that.
TenguPhule
The most punchable face in the world is asking to get what’s coming to him.
If I were his lawyer, I’d be considering a new career right about now.
Quinerly
A somewhat subdued Trump speaking. He’s bragging about the size of the crowd.
patrick II
I was watching the video of McCain walking in and voting and it seems to me that McConnell did not know that was going to happen. McConnell was standing in front overseeing the vote, arms crossed and with a small smile on his face. McCain does his thing, looks at McConnell for a moment (I wish I could see that look from another camera angle) and walks off. McConnell frowns, drops his head and seems a little shaky as he walks back to his desk. No need to oversee the vote now.
So, I think McConnell was surprised.
The Thin Black Duke
@Mnemosyne: “Mad Men” is, as far as I know, is the only TV series that refused to romanticize the era.
Isua
@Jim Parene – lurker here just saying high five, I also grew up in Oyster Bay. Long Island politics is of course batshit but man that was a good town. Sometimes I want to go back just so I can go to the library there.
Gin & Tonic
@schrodingers_cat: And people in their 50’s and early 60’s, who “remember” the 1950’s from watching Ozzie & Harriet or Leave it to Beaver in the 60’s. Which, as Mnem points out, was a completely artificial view.
Brachiator
@germy:
From the Wikipedia
Trump brand fake news with a wrapper of legitimacy.
Yarrow
@Gin & Tonic: Yep. Kids who maybe grew up in the 70’s with a single mom who was worried about putting food on the table might have watched Leave it to Beaver, where mom was always home to feed the kids and take care of any problems and dad provided for the whole family, and thought that didn’t look too bad.
Quinerly
Very good piece. What went down all in one article. I’ve been playing catch up: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/inside-the-chamber-obamacare-senate-vote
Yarrow
@Quinerly: Hey! Aren’t you at the beach in NC at the moment? I saw some headline about having to evacuate the Outer Banks because of something. Not a hurricane–a water or electric issue or something. Everything okay where you are?
KithKanan
@Yarrow: Hell, I grew up watching reruns of Leave It To Beaver,
I Love Lucy, and Happy Days in the 80’s.
It was interesting when I became old enough to actually read books from the era. Quite a different and at least somewhat less censored view than you get from movies and TV.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Brachiator:
Only fox news is fair and balanced
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Gin & Tonic:
Also really shitty acting and bad, boring writing, too
Quinerly
@Yarrow:
Yep. I’m in Pine Knoll Shores,NC (Bogue Banks). Ocracoke non residents were evacuated….something about electrical lines. Thanks for thinking about me. Poco is keeping an eye on everything. Keeping us safe.?
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@KithKanan: Happy Days in the 80s was pretty recent was obviously a rose-tinted version of reality. We’re there any POC on HD?
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
50s nostalgia dates back to the Reagan Era with shows like “Happy Days” and “Laverne and Shirley,” plus constant re-runs of shows like “Leave It to Beaver” and “The Andy Griffith Show” and “Father Knows Best.”
As G&T says, a whole generation of Gen-Xers watched those shows in the 1970s/1980s and wondered why their lives sucked in comparison.
ETA: Also what Yarrow said — I kind of conflated their comments.
tobie
@StringOnAStick:
I agree the threat is real but I also know that Trump & McConnell have been badly hurt by this loss, and their ability to twist arms in the Republican caucus is now diminished. Independents and moderate Republicans (few though they may be) will clamor for bipartisanship and for the work of governing to begin again. The outlook today is radically different than it was yesterday. I suspect we’ll begin to see Republican defections on other pieces of legislation.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
@Gin & Tonic:
Movie censorship began in the 1930s, and insisted on presenting goodness and wholesomeness as positive values. Racism in movies ran on a parallel track for venal reasons. Southern exhibitors would not show most films that depicted blacks favorably, so movies were shot so that scenes with black actors could be excised. Obviously, some exceptions where blacks were depicted as cowardly or servile.
But clearly some creators found ways around these restrictions.
And early tv could be very tough minded and honest. One local broadcast station here in Southern California has been binge showing entire seasons of classic shows. “Route 66” depicted lower classes, immigrants, non-whites. And one especially hard hitting episode featured a young Robert Duvall as a junkie trying to go cold turkey and get off heroin.
Nostalgia is often a deliberately phony assertion of the good old days. They used to talk about the Gay 90s, the 1890s, before the horror of World War One. Also the period with the greatest number of lynchings in America.
Albert Z.
Funniest thing I heard today – on NPR, Amid Russia Scandals, Conservative Media Provides Air Cover For President Trump
Mnemosyne
@patrick II:
I bet McConnell thought he had some kind of leverage over McCain and was shocked to find out that McCain didn’t give a shit about whatever it was.
McCain’s doctors have probably given him the same diagnosis my father in law got with glioblastoma — 6 months. McCain may have decided he’s tired of kissing McConnell’s ass because, really, what can McConnell do to a dead man walking?
Yarrow
@Quinerly: Glad you’re both safe. Hope you’re having a good trip. Have you linked or sent any photos to Alain that I’ve missed? I’m bad about reading the On the Road threads, but I loved your pictures of everything from Poco’s point of view on your trip earlier this year.
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
There was the guy who ran the diner who was Asian. I don’t remember any more than that, but only caught it randomly in reruns.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
And then they watched contemporary shows like Friends and Sex and the City, and wondered why their lives sucked in comparison.
Yarrow
@Mnemosyne: I have to say, McCain looked like he was having the time of his life last night. Maybe sticking it to McConnell and Trump at the same time was even better than he’d hoped it would be.
Monala
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Once. There was a black kid at school, and Richie Cunningham went out of his way to befriend him and invite him to a party he was holding. Fonzie called him out on that – basically, if you want to befriend the kid, do it because you like him, not to prove something to other people.
Quinerly
@Yarrow:
Haven’t sent anything in to Alain. It’s been too hot for Poco to spend time on the beach. We get out really early for a long walk, then late for another long walk. I start heading back to St. Louis Thursday. Will try to snap a couple of pics before we leave. Thanks for your kind words.
Brachiator
@Albert Z.:
Some people just want to be fooled.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Monala:
Huh. I’m sure Black Kid was never seen again. Never watched the show, but have heard a lot about it.
Mnemosyne
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
It wasn’t a terrible show for the most part — “gently satirical” probably captures the tone — but there’s a reason it’s the origination of the phrase “jumping the shark” when it comes to a show or story.
The modern show that’s probably most similar in tone was “That 70s Show.”
HeleninEire
The empire is not going to fall. America is not over. We do this shit all the time. Churchill (who was half American) had us dead to rights “America always does the right thing. After they have exhausted all the other possibilities.”
B
a sMooch? that was nice, but it’s more like a ssMunch.
Fleeting Expletive
My theory is that McCain and McConnell worked this out, and are both realist enough to make a toast to a beautiful deal. McCain gets the Last Hurrah and Mitch gets this monkey off his back and can end the embarrassing charade. Too bad for Heller and Flake, who may have cost themselves their re-elect with unnecessary yes votes, but were gentlemanly enough to go along and Let John have his moment, or maybe they’ll be well rewarded, who knows. Bloodbath and derision averted, amen.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Mnemosyne:
I loved that show! The only person to have much a career afterwards was either Kutcher or those with well-established careers, like the guy who played Red.
Ruckus
@Chris:
You do understand that no one age group is to blame for this malaise that we find ourselves in. Yes it is a big generation. Yes this is a generation that grew up with everything you mentioned and the timelines do align as you state. So what? I know far more boomers who are democrats than republicans. I know people of this generation who argued for civil rights and still do, who marched in protest of Vietnam. I also know people on both sides of this generation who voted for drumpf, who are died in the wool republicans. The older ones remember having those kids and the younger ones are just as complex or simple, racist or not as every other generation. Boomers don’t get the blame for drumpf any more than any other group, even the old white males who made up his largest segment. This country is politically fucked up and has been from before I could vote. And I’m 68. Is it worse now than when I started voting? Of course it is, but it’s been on this path for a long time. A few generations worth. Don’t confuse a snapshot of history as an overview.
TenguPhule
@Fleeting Expletive:
Mitch has too much to lose.
Sorry, your theory doesn’t hold water.
germy
@Ruckus: People in the 1950s were fascinated with the 1920s. People in the 1920s were nostalgic for the 1890s.
Seth Owen
@TenguPhule: This is an excellent and little noted aspect of globalism. With rare and transient exceptions — occasional pirates and terrorists — the entire world ocean is completely open to safe trade. This is hugely important in the global prosperity of the last generation. Nobody is especially interested in upsetting that, not even the up and coming Chinese.
bystander
The President Show has a hilarious sequence with Mario Cantone doing Scaramucci.
Up there with Melissa McCarthy’s Spicer potentially. Time will tell.
Omnes Omnibus
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Mila Kunis.
Ruckus
@KithKanan:
I grew up reading the books and so the TV, while a new and entertaining medium, seemed entirely fake. Also just looking around in the course of a day told me that those idealized worlds in fuzzy black and white were bullshit. No body that I knew lived like that. Not a single one.
germy
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s the name I was trying to think of. She did pretty well for herself after that ’70s show.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
I think that’s why we call them fools. Or if you are having a bit rougher day, Foolish fucking morons.
Ruckus
@HeleninEire:
And it is very exhausting every time isn’t it?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: Remember the “kids” in Happy Days weren’t the evil Boomers, they were Silents.
Ruckus
@germy:
The 20s had prohibition and illicit drinking, much more exciting than 50s TV. And if you were young then and had any idea of history you looked at your parents and wondered………
Also the 20s was just after a major war and the 1890s were when the kids that were dying in that war were born. My grandparents were all born in or around 1890, just as a point of reference and my parents were born in 1917/1918.
Ruckus
@Seth Owen:
Most nations send some bit of their navies to the Indian Ocean to fight piracy that is rampant in the area. This includes China. It is a world problem and it’s not just the US that fights it. That said we have a larger navy than anyone else and have decades of experience in keeping it afloat and sending it to all corners of the globe. Most nations don’t have that wealth of experience. One of our 11 carriers has more personal on it than some navies have in their entire fleet.
Tom V
There once was a man, nickname of Mooch
HeleninEire
@Ruckus: Yes
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Quinerly:
Quinerly
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Kinda sad for people who had planned their vacation around taking the ferry being over there for the weekend.
Ken
@bystander: There’s a thought for the first SNL of the season. They bring on a dozen guest comedians, and introduce each saying “In July we were in talks with Mario to portray Scaramucci, then Scaramucci was fired in early August. Then Bill here absolutely floored us with his impression of Scaramucci’s successor, who sadly had to resign after one week when the photos were published. Then….”
Gelfling 545
@lgerard: I first read that as Mel Brooks and thought, well, that works for me.
Gelfling 545
@Lapassionara: Because the war was over, mainly. The country went essentially from depression to war and at the end of it people felt a possibility of actually doing something again other than scrimping by and waiting for the next bit of bad news.
LAC
@rikyrah: I just did a loud church amen on that post too. Righteous!
sm*t cl*de
@Brachiator:
From Scaramouche’s BBC interview (douchsplaining how Trump is really an outsider to the elites):
Please to be noticing the social sectors for whom Trump does not have unbelievable empathy.
Tehanu
@Lapassionara:
I was in high school in the early Sixties — graduated 1965 — and in the small town I grew up in, those years were still the Fifties for all practical purposes. They were still telling girls, for example, to lie about our feelings; if a boy asked you for a date and you didn’t want to go out with him, you were supposed to tell him you couldn’t because you were going to wash your hair — an outright rejection, even a polite one, would hurt his poor wittle ego too much. It took me decades to get over that kind of crap. I think the Sixties really began on Nov. 22, 1963 … and it took another 4 years or so before the changes really started hitting in places that weren’t big cities. I also agree with you about the white-bread conformity etc., which is why I could never watch Mad Men — 2 minutes back in that world literally made me sick. (I’m sure it was a good show, but I just couldn’t stand looking at it). Every time some idiot talks about how great the Fifties were, I always loudly agree “because the top tax rate was 90% and the unions were strong!” That usually shuts them up.