Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

“woke” is the new caravan.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

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

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

I was promised a recession.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

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

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Bark louder, little dog.

You are here: Home / Nature & Respite / Faunasphere / Late Evening Open Thread: Always Good When the Cavalry Comes Over the Hill!

Reader Interactions

126Comments

  5. 5.

    Adam L Silverman

    @NotMax: And Germans. And Iraqis. And Afghans. And southerners pining for the Confederacy. And the British. Etc, Etc, Etc.

  6. 6.

    Jean

    I watched that video the other day. It is fascinating how the herd responds. There has been another video of an elephant saving a baby who had fallen into water where alligators threatened. Animals are herd-bound for good reason. Wolves, for example. And horses. A stressed out horse is one who is alone in a field. The horse is forever looking over the horizon and can’t rest. In a herd, they take turns lying down while others guard and watch for danger.

  9. 9.

    NotMax

    @Adam L. Silverman

    Afghanis

    Afghans. Please to fix. You’re the last person here would expect to commit that error.

    (Blog was getting overdue for a pedantry interlude, though.)

  24. 24.

    debbie

    @Adam L Silverman:

    He can’t free us soon enough. Jared’s now saying there’s no way there could have been collusion because the campaign was too disorganized to even attempt it. Bet this becomes the GOP’s new talking point.

  25. 25.

    Yarrow

    @Adam L Silverman: I think this one is my favorite:

    A veteran federal prosecutor recruited onto special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is known for a skill that may come in handy in the investigation of potential ties between Russia and U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign team: persuading witnesses to turn on friends, colleagues and superiors.

    Andrew Weissmann, who headed the U.S. Justice Department’s criminal fraud section before joining Mueller’s team last month, is best known for two assignments – the investigation of now-defunct energy company Enron and organized crime cases in Brooklyn, New York – that depended heavily on gaining witness cooperation.

    An expert in flipping witnesses. Sounds perfect for the Trump crime family.

  26. 26.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: At the rate Mueller’s going every experienced, top notch prosecutor/investigator is going to work for him, not the DOJ or the FBI. He will then rename the Special Counsels office the DOJ and his investigative shop the FBI. At which point AG Sessions will just make fudge stripes and pecan sandies all day long.

  28. 28.

    Adam L Silverman

    @debbie: That’s not how this works. The whole point of the type of HUMINT that was part of the active measures is to find the oddballs and misfits and less than functional folks who are greedy and avaricious. Makes it much easier to flip them. Also tends to make them unreliable.

  30. 30.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Yarrow: Not only that, he was Felix Sater’s handler at the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of NY.

  31. 31.

    NotMax

    The piece in its entirety is more than depressingly troubling, both for the information disclosed but also for the bending over backwards to softsoap Jared.

    The question put to Kushner was about how he plans to negotiate peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, and what the Trump administration brings to bear that is unique.

    Kushner spoke for about seven minutes total.

    All in all, his talk was “not very encouraging,” says Hussein Ibish, a senior scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. “It reads like a young man who really lacks any kind of detailed or nuanced background.” Source

  32. 32.

    Adam L Silverman

    @lamh36: Smart move by the little one to zig zag. With her shorter legs and lower center of gravity she corners much better than Mom.

  33. 33.

    Adam L Silverman

    @NotMax: As I wrote in the previous post’s comment’s thread:
    1)

    If I can figure out how to do it without violating classification, I intend to write something tomorrow about Kushner’s caught on audio remarks about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and peace process. Given that I worked on the last attempt.

    2)

    I’ve listened to the audio. What I want to do is provide some context as to why it’s important to do exactly the opposite of what Jared is suggesting. That one needs to read the history of the dispute – broadly and deeply, as well as the history of past attempts by the US and others that have failed. I just have to make sure that when I write it up I’m on the right side of the line.

  35. 35.

    efgoldman

    @NotMax:

    “It reads like a young man who really lacks any kind of detailed or nuanced background.”

    Surprise! The sun is also coming up in the morning, and the tides are going in and out.

  36. 36.

    NotMax

    Is schrodingers_cat around?

    Crop-damaging temperatures increase suicide rates in India
    [snip]
    …estimate that warming temperature trends over the last three decades have already been responsible for over 59,000 suicides throughout India. Source

  39. 39.

    Yarrow

    @Adam L Silverman: Yep. I’d bet he’s well into dealing with some of the lower level folks. Lots of rumors about people having deals but of course no confirmation until everything’s ready to go.

  41. 41.

    Adam L Silverman

    @seaboogie: I’ve been loathe to write about the Israeli-Palestinian stuff because I don’t want to have to worry about crossing the line. And I don’t want to have to police myself to the point of writing: “the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is the dispute between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Open thread!” I’ll work it out tomorrow.

    And thanks for the kind words.

  42. 42.

    efgoldman

    @Yarrow:

    rumors about people having deals but of course no confirmation

    If the current WH and the campaign were half as circumspect as Mueller’s shop, there wouldn’t be an investigation. Assholes brought it on themselves.

    Fuckem

  43. 43.

    Kraux Pas

    Typical, elephants always gots each others backs while the rest of us are just trying to feed ourselves…

  44. 44.

    Adam L Silverman

    @NotMax: While I met Gen. Zinni once when he was CENTCOM Commander, and met his son (at the time a Marine major) a few years ago, the Special Envoy in 2014 was Gen. Allen.

  47. 47.

    Mike J

    Looks like comer November, Seattle will have a woman mayor:

    Live election updates: Jenny Durkan leads in Seattle mayor’s race, followed by Cary Moon, Nikkita Oliver

  49. 49.

    Felonius Monk

    @Adam L Silverman:

    At which point AG Sessions will just make fudge stripes

    Sorry, we regret to inform you that the KKKeebler Elf and Racist Garden Gnome only works with “white” icing.

  52. 52.

    Burnspbesq

    @NotMax:

    Before the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a lot of antics that would have been bribery under U.S. state law, but weren’t criminal under the laws of the recipient’s country, escaped the reach of U.S. law because everything was done offshore.

  53. 53.

    Mike J

    @Adam L Silverman: Last graf of the Reuter’s story:

    Others on the special counsel team include Andrew Weissmann, chief of the Justice Department’s fraud section; Andrew Goldstein, former head of the public corruption unit at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan; and James Quarles, who was an assistant special prosecutor in the Watergate investigation that helped bring down President Richard Nixon.

  56. 56.

    Burnspbesq

    @debbie:

    Somebody should give Kushner a copy of the crim law Nutshell. Black-letter law: you don’t have to achieve the objectives of a conspiracy in order to get nailed. The agreement is the offense.

  62. 62.

    MobiusKlein

    @NotMax: The FCPA* has guidelines about what sort of bribes are allowed. Some facilitating payments are ok. The company I work for does not allow them under their watch.

    *foreign corrupt practices act. Yes, we just finished ‘compliance’ training.

  63. 63.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Adam L Silverman: Even more specifically, it’s a dispute over water.

    But that’s so MEGO to the vermin of the Village.

    Just like it’s not kosher to discuss drought and famine as why Syria is an utter mess right now.

  69. 69.

    GregB

    Trump and his rollicking gang of clowns have all of these plates spinning furiously.

    The confluence of world events is about to make them go wobbly and start crashing to the ground very soon.

  72. 72.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Villago Delenda Est: Last Cubs game I was at, opening day back in 2011 or 2012, I ate four or five Chicago dogs, three brats, and at least two Italian dogs. One may have been that composite Italian beef sandwich/Italian sausage combo. I did work out before going to the game. But there’s something about stadium food that just doesn’t fill me up.

    Had great seats too. Right down along the third base line just about 1/2 way between third base and the foul pole.

  74. 74.

    Emrys

    @Adam L Silverman: During his time at CENTCOM Zinni visited Egypt for a Bright Star exercise. At a meeting with the press Zinni responded to a question by saying the region should be free of nuclear weapons. The inevitable question regarding Israel was asked. Without missing a beat, Zinni reponded “Israel isn’t in my AOR.”

  80. 80.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @Adam L Silverman:
    It’s funny. Didn’t Christie get some surgery to lose that weight. Doesn’t seem to helped him much, judging by that recent video of him trying an intimidate a heckler.

  81. 81.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Emrys: He was absolutely correct. Israeli and the Occupied Territories are in the EUCOM AOR. Different CENTCOM Commanders have handled this differently. GEN Petreaus actually asked Congress to move it into his AOR as he had no authority to do anything about the problem set yet was being held responsible by all the Arab and non-Arab Muslim leaders he dealt with within the CENTCOM AOR.

    There are good arguments for keeping it in EUCOM AOR and good arguments for moving it to CENTCOM AOR.

  83. 83.

    Kraux Pas

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    The sun is also coming up in the morning, and the tides are going in and out.

    You can’t explain that.

    My flat earther sister says magnets. Seems legit.

  84. 84.

    Adam L Silverman

    @? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: It was reported that he either had lap band or gastric bypass surgery. Given that everyone else I’ve known of who have had it and what it did to their body mass either the reports were wrong or he has managed to somehow defeat the surgical intervention through his dietary and exercise habits.

  94. 94.

    Yarrow

    @Adam L Silverman: He had the lap band procedure. They don’t always work well, complications develop and sometimes they have to be removed. The patient also has to watch what they eat and they don’t always do that well, so they gain weight back despite the procedure. Christie doesn’t look particularly svelte and it does look like he’s regained some weight, so something hasn’t worked out for him with the procedure.

  96. 96.

    M. Bouffant

    @Adam L Silverman: I blame whoever typed it first.

    Also: Why couldn’t Christie leave his nachos at his seat? Afraid someone else would eat them while he was gone? If His Cowardice had come up to me (w/o his thug bodyguard) & gotten in my face while holding them they would have ended up on his shirt or shoved in his face.

  99. 99.

    Darkrose

    @Yarrow: I’ve been acquainted with four people who’ve had that done. All of them gained the weight back in less than a year. One of them died. When I have a doctor who suggests that procedure it’s time to find a new doctor.

  100. 100.

    Yarrow

    @Darkrose: Yeah, it seems like a dangerous thing to do. I also feel like the more we learn about the gut and how integral it is to how our bodies function, it may be deemed risky in ways we don’t understand well now.

  103. 103.

    Emrys

    @Adam L Silverman: Arguments on both sides. However, not having Israel in the CENTCOM AOR gives the CinC the ability to do what Zinni did – push the idea of a region free of WMD without having to criticize or excuse Israel. It also meant the countries in the AOR didn’t have to worry about the Israelis pushing the CENTCOM CinC for information about them. Not that they don’t assume we tell the Israelis everything anyway.

  104. 104.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I got out of the boat to look at this twitter feed to find a tweet threatening Jared in particular (“ten stories”!), but apparently he deleted it

    Mike Cernovich ??‏Verified account @ Cernovich 1h1 hour ago
    Yes I’ve been sitting on some huge stories about McMaster, Jared, others. I am going nuclear on everyone in Admin now. No more holding back.
    McMaster’s personal life is…let’s just say it’s “interesting,” and leave it at that.

  106. 106.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @M. Bouffant: I would hope I’d have the presence of mind to say, “Could you step back? Your breath smells like trump’s ball sweat”

  107. 107.

    Anne Laurie

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Who the hell goes to Milwaukee to eat stadium nachos? Like going to a game in Chicago you get sausages and hot dogs in Milwaukee.

    Depending on what kind of bariatric surgery he underwent (back when he thought he could be a contendah), Christie may not be capable of digesting sausages or hot dogs, IIRC. Losing big chunks of one’s intestines means making some permanent sacrifices in that regard…

  109. 109.

    piratedan

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: hey, if they want to drown in an internecine battle of innuendo and snipe, I’m willing to sit on the shore and watch them devour each other. Those RWNJ want to bathe in the purity waters of conservatism and dry themselves on what they believe to hopes and dreams of liberals, and finding out that their side has no cohesion other than to be adherents to Cleek’s law.

    fuck ’em

  111. 111.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @piratedan: I see his name everywhere, but I don’t know how influential that guy actually is. I guess he has some links to Bannon, which might make things interesting.

  112. 112.

    Anne Laurie

    @Adam L Silverman:

    It was reported that he either had lap band or gastric bypass surgery. Given that everyone else I’ve known of who have had it and what it did to their body mass either the reports were wrong or he has managed to somehow defeat the surgical intervention through his dietary and exercise habits.

    Many people who undergo such surgery do manage to “rebound” — they can’t always eat what they used to, but someone who uses food for emotional support (or just as a way to keep their hands/mouth busy) will find ways to get around that. Someone can nibble stadium nachos non-stop for an entire game, for instance. And since Christie’s motivation was not “I want to be less hefty” but “I want to look like a guy Americans would vote to be their President”, now that he’s not running for President (or anything), he’s got no incentive to keep up the diet/exercise routine that would help him keep the weight off.

    Losing weight and keeping it off is a continuous struggle, especially for those of us who’ve always been fat… or who, like Christie, seem to have put on weight steadily since adolescence.

  113. 113.

    piratedan

    Cernovich is part of that cadre of RW true believers and “deep thinkers” that emerged out that Breitbart/Hoft/generic RW hootenanny of guys that are elevated because they sometimes use complete sentences while espousing positions and ideas that are devoid of thought, substance and only have a tenuous link to reality.

  115. 115.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym

    @Adam L Silverman: He defeated the surgery through his dietary habits. That isn’t actually hard to do. Those surgeries only work if the subject is also prepared to change their behaviors. They make it easier to lose weight through proper diet; they don’t guarantee it.

  116. 116.

    TriassicSands

    @Yarrow:

    An expert in flipping witnesses. Sounds perfect for the Trump crime family.

    By the time this is over, Kushner may have a new nickname: Flip or Flipper. I can’t see him risking jail for anyone — he might even bail on what’s her name — Ivanka. He strikes me as the kind of heroic character, like his father-in-law, who would use a small child as a shield if bullets were flying.

  117. 117.

    jl

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    I thought Cernovich was on the Trumpster team. So, is he just a freelance asshole now, firing in every direction?
    Does this guy have the capacity to produce any useful information, or is he just gong to throw a bunch of salacious and dubious BS on the wall and see how much money and attention it brings in?

  118. 118.

    Debbie(aussie)

    I had gastric bypass surgery in March 2016. Have lost 35kgs, down to 77 from 112. Had to have a lap band removed that was causing issues and that didn’t work (from 1999). No longer on mets for hypertension or suffering from sleep apnea. Hasn’t helped with my chronic pain, sadly, nor with my depression (did not expect that it would). Surgeon says weight loss generally occurs in first 2 years. I have done exceedingly well, apparently, loosing over 80% of excess weight. In circumstances such as mine it usually averages about 60%. The really big challenge continues to be keeping it off.

  119. 119.

    Brendancalling

    My 13 year old and I drove home from dinner singing Bohemian Rhapsody, in its entirety, in Elmer Fudd’s voice.

    I see a widow siwouwetteo of a man/ Scawamooch Scawamooch can you do the fandango/ Fundaboats of whitening vewy vewy fwightning/ Gawiwayo Gawiwayo…

    Dad skills.

  120. 120.

    Mnemosyne

    @Debbie(aussie):

    All of the evidence I’ve ever seen is that the primary thing that helps keep weight off is exercise, but that’s got to be tough when you have chronic pain issues to boot. I’ve heard that swimming or water aerobics can be good for people with chronic pain since you aren’t putting weight on any of your limbs. And weight training is good, too — even just stretchy bands.

    Full disclosure: I used to work for Weight Watchers. The science we were given at the time I still worked for them was that watching your food intake was more important than exercise while you were losing, but that those flipped after you got to your goal and exercise became the primary way to maintain the weight loss while you stayed at the same food intake.

    ETA: And I forgot to say — good job! Even with surgery, losing weight is hard work, so you should be proud of yourself.

  121. 121.

    jl

    @Mnemosyne:

    ” watching your food intake was more important than exercise while you were losing, but that those flipped after you got to your goal and exercise became the primary way to maintain the weight loss while you stayed at the same food intake. ”

    That is what I have read as well, and that is also my experience. Exercise itself only works if you can do it, and heavily, all day long every day. When I spent long periods on family farms dong heavy manual labor all day long, I could eat as I damn well pleased and stayed thin. But even on the farm, that only works if you stay away from driving machinery all day, which I tended to do, since that was boring and noisy.

    I think the trick is that when you reach the weight you want, since you’be been controlling your weight mostly by diet, you got there with a chronic calorie deficit, and now you want to end the chronic calorie deficit, that is tricky, since you’re metabolism is operating a somewhat slower than it would otherwise. Not as much as people say, since I think research says that you have to be really starving for the ‘starvation effect’ to really kick in. But there is maybe a 10 or 15 percent difference. I think that is why some people really gain weight quickly if they go off their diet quickly and don’t do something about the extra calories on a depressed metabolism. Then they get discouraged, don’t exercise and things get out of hand.

    I think this is a real thing, since I am working out and the muscle body fitness people obsess over this topic and have all sorts of personal algorithms for how to control their fat increase when they want to gain muscle or get ready for a race or some such. I don’t have the time or interest to do that kind of thing, but if it wasn’t a problem, these fitness people who are into looking just the ‘right way’ while being able to do the activities they want wouldn’t be talking about it all the time.

    I solved the problem by just changing the way I eat permanently. Focus on foods that will fill you up but don’t have enough calories to cause fat gain if you get sloppy (I always will get sloppy). So, lots of fibrous vegetables, then filling but low calorie fruits (the fruit itself no smoothies or juices) , then lean meat, then roots, whole grains and beans. Lots of water and tea. And then exercise.

    It’s easy for me, since I grew up on a farm that grew vegetables and fruits. So I was raised to believe that if you don’t eat those at every meal, you are some kind of uncouth savage, who will taking dumps on the floor or eating the dog raw next thing you know.

    Edit: another thing is to have a Tunch-style (aka strictly rationed) bedtime snack, which you can look forward to every day. And one or two meals you can eat anything you want to let of steam every week. And also figure out when you tend to lose control, and try to eat your regular meals then. That means, against traditional mommy advice, I eat light early in the day, and save for a fairly big dinner, when I tend to cheat.

  122. 122.

    Anne Laurie

    @piratedan:

    Cernovich is part of that cadre of RW true believers and “deep thinkers” that emerged out that Breitbart/Hoft/generic RW hootenanny of guys that are elevated because they sometimes use complete sentences while espousing positions and ideas that are devoid of thought, substance and only have a tenuous link to reality.

    Nah, from everything I’ve read, Mike “Gorilla Mind” Cernovich doesn’t even have the dubious distinction of being a ‘RW true believer’. He’s a would-be new-millenium Rush Limbaugh who jumped aboard the Trump Train when his target market (#reddit readers / ‘men’s rights’ activists) were fanboying the candidate who brought Pepe memes into the mainstream, and now he’s stuck with a deflating mis-administration that can’t stop doing mockable stuff. You’d be grouchy too, if you’d gambled everything on a dark horse and the nag broke a leg at the first post!

  123. 123.

    Debbie(aussie)

    Thanks Mnem, I do feel rather proud of myself. Yes, I have physiotherapy visit in my future. I’m thinking strength exercises might be required, lost too much muscle, struggling to eat enough protein. I walk at least 5 times a week. Have to have both hips replaced. The first as soon as our bathroom renovations are finished, about a month. Need to be fit for that.
    Want to tell you how wonderful it is to hear about the progress of your novel. Keep up the great work.
    Want you all to know how wonderful you are in your fight against the shitgibbon. Know that you have at least one (I’m definitely not alone) Aussie who is rooting for injuries for them and an easy passage back to “normal” for the rest of US citizens.

  124. 124.

    jl

    @Debbie(aussie):
    ” strength exercises ”
    Work magic. Not my favorite way to spend the time, but do so much good for weight control and ability to do more fun exercises and activities, that I make myself keep at them

  125. 125.

    Shalimar

    @jl: Cernovich is on the Bannon racist-as-hell team, and is thus doing his part to disparage rivals for Trump’s attention. As to capacity to provide useful information, he claims he has a contact within the administration, either Bannon or one of the sycophants Bannon brought on board with him. If his claims are true, Cernovich is a conduit for whatever his inside source wants made public.

    @Anne Laurie: That is my take too from following Cernovich back to the early GamerGate days when he first got attention. He’s a self-promoting conman latching on to the same causes as his suckers rather than a true believer in anything.

  126. 126.

    schrodingers_cat

    @NotMax: This has been an ongoing problem for years. Cash crops like sugarcane etc that are water intensive, grown in semi arid regions, exacerbates the problems. Think California’s central valley and nuts.

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