Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

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

Usually wrong but never in doubt

People are complicated. Love is not.

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

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Shut up, hissy kitty!

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

How stupid are these people?

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Fear and negativity are contagious, but so is courage!

We are learning that “working class” means “white” for way too many people.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

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

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Hail to the Hairpiece / Friday Morning Open Thread: Strange Days

Friday Morning Open Thread: Strange Days

by | 215 Comments

This post is in: , , , ,


[Possibly NSFW]
.

Apart from taking bets on the contents of today’s inevitable news dump, what’s on the agenda as we wrap up another severely Not Normal week?
***********


Reader Interactions

215Comments

  6. 6.

    Betty Cracker

    Turns out the person whose eclipse meme Trump retweeted is an anti-Semite, as recent tweets from that same account demonstrate conclusively. It’s an amazing coincidence how often that happens — Trump retweets someone, and it turns out the person he retweeted is a Russian bot, Nazi, white supremacist, etc. It’s almost like he has no impulse control at all.

  8. 8.

    ThresherK

    @Betty Cracker: A story about my wife’s friend at a concert:

    He goes to the venue, gets into his seat, and the PA says “Ladies and gentlemen, we regret to inform you that Marianne Faithfull cannot sing tonight…” to which he shouts, “Whaddya mean tonight? We knew that when we bought the tickets!”

    It’s now my all-purpose bumper sticker for Trump voters or latecoming, still-surprised media types.

    Donald Trump: You knew that when you bought the tickets.

  9. 9.

    p.a.

    @Betty Cracker:

    t’s almost like he has no impulse control at all.

    or he’s in the process of distilling his open supporters to its pure essence of human scumbags.

    ETA: O’Billy beat me to it…

  10. 10.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Yeah, but Hillary is such an elitist that she hooked up with and married the dirt-ass poor son of a struggling single mom. And she gave some speeches to banks about female empowerment and being ethical. So both sides are the same!

  11. 11.

    PsiFighter37

    Back in the U.S. after 2 weeks in Europe. I wish I could go back and skip the next 3+ years…

  13. 13.

    OzarkHillbilly

    As a 3700 year old broken clay tablet shows, there is much we don’t know:

    “The huge mystery, until now, was its purpose – why the ancient scribes carried out the complex task of generating and sorting the numbers on the tablet. Our research reveals that Plimpton 322 describes the shapes of right-angle triangles using a novel kind of trigonometry based on ratios, not angles and circles. It is a fascinating mathematical work that demonstrates undoubted genius.

    “The tablet not only contains the world’s oldest trigonometric table; it is also the only completely accurate trigonometric table, because of the very different Babylonian approach to arithmetic and geometry. This means it has great relevance for our modern world. Babylonian mathematics may have been out of fashion for more than 3,000 years, but it has possible practical applications in surveying, computer graphics and education. This is a rare example of the ancient world teaching us something new.”

    Pretty cool stuff, and the best may be yet to come:

    “A treasure trove of Babylonian tablets exists, but only a fraction of them have been studied yet. The mathematical world is only waking up to the fact that this ancient but very sophisticated mathematical culture has much to teach us.”

    They suggest that the mathematics of Plimpton 322 indicate that it originally had six columns and 38 rows. They believe it was a working tool, not – as some have suggested – simply a teaching aid for checking calculations. “Plimpton 322 was a powerful tool that could have been used for surveying fields or making architectural calculations to build palaces, temples or step pyramids,” Mansfield said.

  15. 15.

    p.a.

    @GregB: yes. If we’re not nice they might vote Nazi instead of neoNazi!

    ETA: Old joke. Hitler’s Germany: Nazi. Mussolini’s Italy: semiNazi. Franco’s Spain hemisemiNazi. Salazar’s Portugal: demihemisemiNazi.

  16. 16.

    bystander

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    And she gave some speeches to banks about female empowerment and being ethical. So both sides are the same!

    But I thought she got up in front of a room full of banking tycoons and laid out the payment schedule they’d be using for sending funds to the Clinton Foundation in exchange for “special” regulations.

    Everytime I heard those jerks complain about the “missing” transcripts of her talks at banking institutions, it left me slackjawed. ETA. I did in fact attend one of those talks Clinton gave during the 2007 campaign, and the Count’s précis is exactly what I recall.

  17. 17.

    Lapassionara

    @GregB: to Trump’s base, those words are not insulting. They are proud of their ignorance and prejudices.

    Good morning, everyone

  19. 19.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Betty Cracker: Commenter jacy put up a GoFundMe link to help with some troubles she’s having. The night crowd is such a bunch of vicious jackals they doubled her goal in a couple of hours.

  20. 20.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @GregB: I can’t help it. My every breath is an insult to them. And speaking of insults, I mentioned this a week or so ago: Turd Reich: San Francisco dog owners lay minefield of poo for rightwing rally

    When a group of far-right activists come to San Francisco to hold a rally this Saturday, they will be met by peace activists offering them flowers to wear in their hair. Also, dog shit. Lots and lots of dog shit. Hundreds of San Franciscans plan to prepare Crissy Field, the picturesque beach in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge where rightwing protest group Patriot Prayer will gather, with a generous carpeting of excrement.

    “I just had this image of alt-right people stomping around in the poop,” Tuffy Tuffington said of the epiphany he had while walking Bob and Chuck, his two Patterdale terriers, and trying to think of the best way to respond to rightwing extremists in the wake of Charlottesville. “It seemed like a little bit of civil disobedience where we didn’t have to engage with them face to face.”

    Tuffington, a 45-year-old artist and designer, created a Facebook event page based on the concept, and the dog owners of San Francisco responded in droves. Many have declared their intention to stockpile their shitpiles for days in advance, then deliver them in bags for the site. (The group is also planning to reconvene on Sunday to “clean up the mess and hug each other”.)

    It gets better:

    But for many San Franciscans, an unwelcome visit from members of the “alt-right” is an opportunity to fight back in the spirit of the city by the bay – with flower power, drag queens, a little creativity, and an assist from the animal kingdom.

    Shannon Bolt, a behavior scientist who works at Crissy Field, intends to confront Patriot Prayer in the spirit of the Summer of Love. “As white supremacists and neo-Nazis gather in our midst, we’ll tune into the love frequency again and meet their hatred with flowers for their hair,” she wrote in a Facebook event description.

    If security forces keep the protest and counter-protest separate, Bolt told the Guardian, “We will have to offer our Flowers Against Fascism to them symbolically.”

    There will also be contingents of clowns, kayakers, cars, and kids – all hoping to use their particular strengths (humor, seaworthiness, the ability to monopolize parking spaces, and cuteness, respectively) to thumb their noses at hate.

    “You have a significant number of people who would like to go and punch Nazis, and then you have people who think they should be entirely ignored,” said veteran labor and LGBTQ rights activist Cleve Jones. “In between you have all sorts of creative and crazy ideas. I kind of like that.”

  24. 24.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Lets not forget her perfidy in creating a foundation to take money from awful people to give to AIDS sufferers in impoverished nations.

    Or that she declined meetings with people who had money! Horrors!

    That was no different than Trump skimming charity money or paying Barron’s Cub Scout dues from a charity!

  30. 30.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop faces new false advertising claims

    Goop, the lifestyle and publishing company founded by Oscar-winning Hollywood actress Gwyneth Paltrow, is facing new criticisms from an advertising watchdog for making false claims promoting almost 50 products, including a Carnalian crystal claimed to treat infertility and the now-infamous jade vaginal egg promoted as preventing uterine prolapse.

    The new claims against Goop were lodged with two California district attorneys connected to the California Food, Drug and Medical Task Force by Truth in Advertising (Tina), a nonprofit group that says it conducted an investigation into Goop for using “unsubstantiated, and therefore deceptive, health and disease-treatment claims to market many of its products”.

    In addition, the group drew attention to claims that walking barefoot “cures insomnia” and that the company’s signature perfume “improves memory” and can “work as antibiotics”.
    …..
    The complaint also listed Goop’s essential oils claimed to “help tremendously with chronic issues from anxiety and depression to migraines”; Goop’s Black Rose Bar, “brilliant for treating acne, eczema and psoriasis”; Goop’s Eau De Parfum: Edition 02, said to contain ingredients that improve memory, treat colds and work as antibiotics; and Goop’s Aromatic Stress Treatment that “treats the nerves (it’s been shown to help alleviate panic attacks)”.

    How is it with stains?

  31. 31.

    Punchy

    Parts of TX expected to get 35″ of rain. Thats just effin’ absurd. Cant wait for all those rugged individualists to start crying out for federal gov’t help….

  32. 32.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @debbie:

    That just proves how stupid she is and/or had some nefarious plot in mind.

    That woman is capable of ANYTHING.

  35. 35.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Baud:

    Did anybody check Chelsea’s bags for White House silver or trinkets when she left in January 2001? I’m thinking that several House committees should get right on that.

  36. 36.

    TheMightyTrowel

    @OzarkHillbilly: (archaeologists and ancient historians with an interest in mathematics have known this for over 100 years. Lab scientists have discovered it and think they’ve invented the wheel)

  37. 37.

    Betty Cracker

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    In addition, the group drew attention to claims that walking barefoot “cures insomnia…”

    I can attest from personal experience that’s a big fat lie.

  39. 39.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    What did Chelsea know about the criticism of Pastor Terry Jones on Benghazi, and when did she know it? Several House committees really want answers.

  40. 40.

    David Evans

    @OzarkHillbilly: the Babylonian tablet is interesting, but it doesn’t do the same job as modern trigonometry. Sample problem: I am 1000 feet from the base of a tower and the line of sight to the top is an angle A above the horizontal. How high is the tower? The answer is 1000*tan(A), which my calculator will give me to about 30 decimal places whatever the value of A. Not perfect accuracy, because that would be an infinitely long decimal. The Babylonian tablet gives answers for a finite set of triangles and no answer at all for anything in between.

  46. 46.

    Betty Cracker

    Speaking of Chelsea Clinton, if you follow her on Twitter, you’ll soon realize she’s one of the most gracious human beings on the planet. She responds to the most vicious trolls with kindness, humility and empathy. Whatever their flaws, Bill and Hillary Clinton raised that girl right.

    The contrast with Uday and Qusay Trump couldn’t be more stark — they do nothing but whine and brag. Ivanka is merely vapid, useless and opportunistic, but in a way that’s even more maddening since she and her dilettante husband have official roles in our government — positions that rightly belong to qualified people who have earned a seat at the table.

    The one gigantic lie Hillary Clinton told during the campaign was when a debate moderator asked her to say something nice about Trump, and she said he’d raised fine, upstanding children. That’s demonstrably untrue, but I suspect Clinton was just trying to be nice. Must be where Chelsea gets it.

  47. 47.

    Lurking Canadian

    @OzarkHillbilly: I have no doubt that there is cool mathematical shit on some Babylonian tablets, but I must chuckle at the notion that trigonometry represented as ratios in a right angled triangle is “novel”.

    Sine = opposite/hypotenuse is how it was first taught to me in Grade twelve, long before I learned anything about solutions to classes of differential equations.

  49. 49.

    Iowa Old Lady

    I have a Skype meeting with my prospective publisher this morning. She had to move it earlier because a spider bit her and she now has a doctor appointment, so I will still be in my gym clothes.

  53. 53.

    Gin & Tonic

    Another followup with my orthopedic surgeon this morning. Hoping for better news than last time. Next week I see one of the country’s leading specialists, though.

  54. 54.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Betty Cracker: And yet he has a Jewish daughter and son-in-law and several Jewish Cabinet holders in his administration. When are they going to speak out about his wink wink attitude towards anti-Semites?

  55. 55.

    dww44

    @Punchy: As well as denying there is such a thing as climate change that might be underlying these extreme weather events.

  56. 56.

    Gin & Tonic

    Another followup with my orthopedic surgeon this morning. Hoping for better news than last time. Next week I see one of the country’s leading specialists, though.

  57. 57.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @David Evans: Not being a mathematician and my own high school trigonometry being 40+ years in the rearview mirror, I will leave it to the mathematicians to argue the exact ins and outs of what this table they finally figured out does and doesn’t do, what it means and doesn’t mean. I do know this however, working in base 60? That’s some pretty cool shit, especially some 3625 years before computers. Also, “a novel kind of trigonometry based on ratios, not angles and circles.” is a very different way of looking at that math from the way we do.

    It’s edifying.

  69. 69.

    bemused

    @Betty Cracker:
    I rarely get enough sleep, haven’t for years but discovered that babysitting for 13 month old grandchild for a week put his grandparents into sleep coma every night.

  70. 70.

    Kay

    When the U.S. Supreme Court gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act four years ago, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote it was no longer necessary in part because the United States had made so much progress in eliminating voting discrimination.
    But a series of court decisions in Texas, a place that previously had to preclear voting changes, shows just how wrong Roberts was.
    In little more than a week, federal judges have ruled in three separate cases that Texas lawmakers intentionally discriminated when they drew congressional district maps, when they tried to implement a voter ID law and when they drew some state legislative districts. Since 2011, courts have ruled nine times that Texas intentionally discriminated against minority voters.
    Finding intentional discrimination is significant. Where a court finds new intentional discrimination, the jurisdiction can be required to seek federal approval of voting changes under a separate section of the Voting Rights Act. Texas now stands on the verge of being placed back under federal oversight. U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos, who ruled against the state’s voter ID law on Wednesday, will hear arguments in the coming months on the preclearance issue.

    It’s fun to watch them lose and lose and lose- it’s like courts have just had it with this shit. It got too blatant.

  72. 72.

    Gin & Tonic

    So “request deletion” on a comment in moderation doesn’t work. And the word specialist is still one that requires the fancy trick to avoid moderation.

  75. 75.

    Betty Cracker

    @Cheryl Rofer: He only follows 45 accounts, many of them his own golf properties, staffers and family members. He does follow Ann Coulter — maybe that’s where he gets the Nazi stuff.

  76. 76.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: There’s an op-ed in the Post today arguing that there should be penalties for public officials who are found guilty of disenfranchising voters. I heartily agree. There’s no incentive for them not to now, and every incentive in the world to cheat people out of their most sacred right as a citizen.

  77. 77.

    OzarkHillbilly

    A netflix/HBO mini-series coming soon:

    In an affidavit that reads like gothic fiction, investigators describe how a teen reunited with her birth mother last year on an isolated farm in Missouri — only to be tortured there, forced to crawl through hog pens and have salt rubbed in her wounds, and then finally murdered last month and burned in a fire pit.

    Rebecca Ruud, 39, was arrested Monday by Ozark County sheriff’s deputies and charged, among other crimes, with the first-degree murder of Savannah Leckie, whom she had given up for adoption at birth, 16 years before.

    The baby had been taken in by a husband and wife in Minnesota, according to sheriff’s documents, and raised there nearly all her life. But Savannah’s adoptive parents eventually divorced, and by late 2016 the teen was having trouble getting along with her adoptive mother’s new boyfriend.

    In November 2016, Ruud, who had been in casual contact with the girl for years, “agreed to take Savannah back and she was delivered to Ruud in Ozark County,” wrote a sheriff’s deputy, as he recounted all the things the girl would subsequently endure.

    ….

    The farm looked different that morning, an investigator wrote. Gates and doors that had been open on previous visits were now chained and locked. Some time after investigators arrived, an affidavit states, Ruud and Peat abruptly left their home. They drove for nearly 100 miles, to Summersville, Mo., and married each other there, on the same day police combed the farm.

    Investigators searched carefully — around the barn and the camper where Savannah had lived, and the vacant buildings and derelict vehicles that surrounded it. A few hundred yards from the residences, they found a pile of fresh leaves and branches. The brush pile was speckled with cigarette butts and surrounded by what a deputy described in the affidavit as “charred earth.” The searchers lifted the brush. A deposit of light ash lay beneath it.

    In the ash, they sifted out a button, imprinted with little ducks, and finger bones, vertebrae and teeth.

    The bones were human, a forensic investigator in Springfield, Mo., told the Ozark County sheriff. They’d been burned at a very high temperature, and had deteriorated so badly that she suspected some chemical was used.
    The sheriff mentioned the Hidden Holler Farm soap-making enterprise, according to an affidavit, and that his deputies had seen drums of chemicals on the property. He mentioned that soap was made with caustic lye.

    “That would do it,” the forensic investigator said. So the sheriff got a second search warrant.

    Deputies returned to the farm on Aug. 9. The goats and the couple’s guns had disappeared, they noted.

    They went back over the property, and the ash pile they’d searched before. According to documents published by the Ozark County Times, investigators left with a box of girl’s clothing; hair; a knife; a meat grinder; and more than two dozen bottles of lye.

    “We’re dealing with someone who’s tried to dispose of evidence,” Ozark County Sheriff Darrin Reed told OzarksFirst.com.

    That’s how it’s done in real America.

  78. 78.

    Tenar Arha

    @Patricia Kayden: It’s likely they never will say anything unless he attacks them or their families directly, though they’re probably beginning to realize they need an exit plan.

    Someone on one of the many podcasts I listen to had the best explanation. They quoted an alternate history novel of the US where Lindbergh wins in 1940 instead of FDR. There’s a Jewish character that explains why certain famous Jewish people campaigned and are working for Lindbergh, “he’s there to make Lindbergh kosher for the gentiles.” That’s who they all are, they’re the tokens meant to prove he’s not an anti-semite, that he’s “kosher” enough for Jewish people & therefore not the dangerous xenophobic, misogynistic, racist, kakistocrat that the majority of Jewish people see. It’s this way the supporters he does make a bit nervous can ignore everyone else’s warnings.

  79. 79.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    I agree. It’s an interesting idea- switching the focus from penalties on voters to penalties on lawmakers.

    The Texas decisions are doubly delightful because they’re a loss for Sessions/Trump. They switched sides when Trump got it- the United States joined the losing side.

    This is from February:

    For the last six years, the Justice Department has sided with the citizens and civil rights groups fighting Texas’ voter ID law, which a federal judge at one point found to be intentionally discriminatory against black and Latino voters. But its position changed Monday when the department decided to drop its claim that Republican state lawmakers enacted the law to make it harder for minorities to vote.
    “This signals to voters that they will not be protected under this administration,” said Danielle Lang, the deputy director of voting rights at the Campaign Legal Center, which is challenging Texas’ law in court.
    The reversal, on the eve of a key hearing in the case, is a clear sign of the DOJ’s direction under Attorney General Jeff Sessions—a longtime advocate of voter ID laws and other voting restrictions. The department signaled its intentions last week when it joined with the state of Texas to ask the court to hold off on judging the constitutionality of the law until Republican lawmakers can modify it. The court rejected this request.

    Trump/Sessions got in right in time to lose :)

  82. 82.

    The Dangerman

    He does know what happens immediately after the totality, right?

    I’m betting on “No”.

  84. 84.

    satby

    I woke up to a gloriously cool morning, it’s sunny and going to be pleasantly mild. I’m going to play hooky from the market today and get some yard work done. And try to stick to my new resolution to exercise more.

    One of the tomato varieties I planted was an Orange Whopper from Gurney, and those babies are producing more tomatoes than all the other varieties combined. I recommend them to tomato lovers next year, they won’t disappoint.

  86. 86.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Next week I see one of the country’s leading specialists, though.

    That can’t be good. Sorry to hear the problems continue.

  89. 89.

    Betty Cracker

    @rikyrah: I don’t envy Clinton and the debate prep people who had to come up with something nice to say about that disgusting pustule. I’m completely stumped. The only good thing I can think of to say about Trump is that he’s old, fat, sedentary and hateful, so he is unlikely to encumber the planet with his noxious presence for too much longer, in actuarial terms. I guess that wouldn’t count as a positive response!

  93. 93.

    satby

    @OzarkHillbilly: Roberts did give them a wink and a nudge, but as is usual with them, they overreached. When one of those cases makes it back to SCOTUS, they’re going to force Roberts to rule against them; he was counting on them to be subtle and they were blatant in their suppression.

  94. 94.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Cheryl Rofer: It’s hilarious that he’s going after members of his own Party in public. You’d think he’d be sensible enough to call Republicans on the phone and talk to them privately about disagreements instead of subjecting them to public scolding via twitter. I don’t remember President Obama ever engaging in similar conduct.

  98. 98.

    Another Scott

    @Patricia Kayden: It’s all part of Bill Clinton’s plan, remember? Trump is a Democrat and he’s trying to destroy the Republican Party.

    So far, so good!!11

    (groucho-roll-eyes.gif)

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    (“Who does kinda wonder occasionally, given how far into Bizzarro Land we are these days…”)

  100. 100.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Patricia Kayden: Or Lyndon Johnson, who was a famous legislative bully. Who got things done.

    Trump has no idea of how government works and has managed to preserve that ignorance despite being in the middle of it. It’s hard to imagine the conversations he must be having with legislators.

    L: We’d very much appreciate your help in passing the AHCA. Here’s a list of wavering Reps/Senators.
    T: Did you see my electoral results? Or this latest tweet of praise from a guy with a frog avatar?
    L:

    The way horse-trading is carried out is by suggestions of actions on each side. Trump thinks his pronouncements are actions, and he is totally resistant, as he proves with his continuing campaign rallies, to any suggestion by others that he do anything.

  104. 104.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Cheryl Rofer: @Cheryl Rofer:

    Trump is tweeting again – just shot one at Bob Corker. Also demanding that the Senate end the filibuster and other oldies but goodies.

    When will the Republicans figure out they can’t control the monster they created? Rooting for injuries. To them. May all the saints, gods, goddesses, demi-gods, and tylwyth teg protect the rest of us.

  105. 105.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    The “health care” bill was under reconciliation so it couldn’t be filibustered.

    Oh you and your liberal *facts.* Since when did they get in the way of a lunatic Trump tweet?

  116. 116.

    Kay

    WSJ editorial: “Trump Divorces the GOP Congress. Republicans need to think of Trump as a political independent.”

    Yeah, they’d like that. Forget it. He’s yours. You nominated him and your entire Party voted for him. This BS about “real Republicans” has to stop. That are what you see. There is no alternate, better, wholly imaginary Republican Party. The President reflects the base who put him in office.

  117. 117.

    A Ghost To Most

    Televangelist and pastor Paula White has known Donald Trump since the early 2000s, and she is thought to be the president’s closest spiritual adviser. She prayed at his inauguration, appeared with him when he signed his executive order easing restrictions on pastors engaging in politics, and told evangelical TV host Jim Bakker she is in the White House at least weekly these days. This week, as Trump faced sustained criticism over his response to the violent white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, she proved her loyalty once more, appearing on the Jim Bakker Show to defend Trump’s presidency and his spiritual bona fides in apocalyptic terms. While White has condemned white supremacy as evil and has a racially mixed fan base, she didn’t mention Trump’s equivocations that have roiled the nation.

    Instead, she made an extended comparison of the president to the biblical figure Esther on Bakker’s show Monday, in an interview that at times sounded more like an impassioned sermon. Like Esther, White said, Trump is a come-from-nowhere figure elevated to leadership against all odds in order to do God’s will. She described Trump as a generous, humble man of “character and integrity” and vouched repeatedly for the state of his soul. “He surrounds himself with Christians, and he is a Christian,” she told Bakker, about a man who’s been widely reported as being irreligious for most of his life, prompting applause from the studio audience. “He loves prayer.”

    And people wonder why I have no use for religion and the religious

  118. 118.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Kay:

    Forget it. He’s yours. You nominated him and your entire Party voted for him. This BS about “real Republicans” has to stop. That are what you see. There is no alternate, better, wholly imaginary Republican Party. The President reflects the base who put him in office.

    To quote the esteemed rikyrah, Preach it Kay!

  120. 120.

    Kay

    @O. Felix Culpa:

    Sometimes I like to ponder how none of these people has ever applied for a job. That’s really extraordinary. How many adults are there like that, do you think? It can’t be more than single digit thousands.

    Nothing. Nada. Not an application at the Dairy Queen when they were 16. What an odd and privileged existence. Never once have they been objectively evaluated for employment.

  122. 122.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @OzarkHillbilly: And right on cue:

    NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Still cleaning up after President Donald Trump’s comments about a deadly protest in Virginia, the Republican National Committee is headed toward adoption of a resolution condemning white supremacists. And while the rebuke of groups Trump waffled on is expected to pass overwhelmingly Friday, some attending the summer meeting of the party’s most faithful are rolling their eyes at the move.

    “It’s amazing that we have been lured into this argument that we’re not racists. It’s absurd,” said Colorado Republican Chairman Jeff Hays. “Why would we feel compelled to do that?”

    The grumbling reflects a difference between some veteran Republicans concerned about the party’s image in light of Trump’s latest rhetorical thicket and newer, more ardently pro-Trump state Republican leaders. “There’s no debate. We’re affirming we’re the party of Lincoln,” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel said, dismissing complaints about the resolution. “We are showing the moral high ground by disavowing hate and violence.”

    Despite the resolution, there doesn’t appear to be a softening of support for the president within the party’s national organization.

    Asked and answered. There is no saving these people.

  123. 123.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Kay: From F. Scott Fitzgerald’s story, “The Rich Boy”:

    Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.

    I went to college with some people of wealth and privilege. I was agog at the fact that they truly inhabit a world that is different than ours and have no idea (and no interest in) what our world is like.

  124. 124.

    Betty Cracker

    @A Ghost To Most: I’ve certainly got no use for shitheads like Paula White, who can’t go leap into the nearest conflagration fast enough to suit me. But lumping all Christians in with the likes of her isn’t any more fair than Trump barring refugees from entering the U.S. because of “radical Islamic terrorism.”

  126. 126.

    clay

    @Kay:

    Yeah, they’d like that. Forget it. He’s yours. You nominated him and your entire Party voted for him.

    Twice in the past two days, on two different shows and by two different people, I saw someone on MSNBC trot out the BS about ‘Trump isn’t a REAL Republican; he used to be a Democrat.’ (And, of course, no push back by the host.) This shit drives me crazy. From The Smoking Gun:

    * JULY 1987: Trump registers for the first time from his Fifth Avenue penthouse. The real estate developer, 41 at the time, reports having previously been registered from his boyhood home in Queens (though his prior party affiliation is unclear). Trump enrolls as a REPUBLICAN.

    * OCTOBER 1999: Trump dumps the GOP and enrolls as a member of the INDEPENDENCE PARTY.

    * AUGUST 2001: Trump enrolls as a DEMOCRAT.

    * SEPTEMBER 2009: After eight years as a Democrat, Trump returns to the REPUBLICAN PARTY.

    * DECEMBER 2011: Trump lasts two years before he again abandons the party of Ronald Reagan. He eschews the GOP in favor of siding with no party. On his registration form, “The Apprentice” star checks off the box marked “I DO NOT WISH TO ENROLL IN A PARTY.”

    * APRIL 2012: Trump registers as a REPUBLICAN.

    See? Trump was a Democrat for 8 years. He was ‘independent’ for 3 years. But he was/is a Republican for 19 years and counting, 50% more than the others put together. He shares approximately ZERO of the core beliefs of the Democratic Party, so don’t give me any more of this bullshit about ‘oh, he hijacked the party, he’s not a true Republican’.

    THEN WHY DID ALL OF THOSE REPUBLICANS VOTE FOR AND ENDORSE HIM ASSHOLES?

  128. 128.

    Jeffro

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    Trump is tweeting again – just shot one at Bob Corker. Also demanding that the Senate end the filibuster and other oldies but goodies.

    I saw that. Apparently he was watching Huckabee-Sanders up at the podium not answering questions yesterday, and she was asked about Corker’s comments. Would have loved to see Trumpov leap in to action trying to discover “what, what Was THIS that was said about me, Marvelous ME?!?!?” LOL We really are going to be able to tie this jackass up just by jerking his chain at regular intervals.

    Speaking of jerking Trumpov’s chain…his eventual response to this should be quite interesting: Gary Cohn, who leads the White House’s National Economic Council, finally spoke out publicly about President Donald Trump’s failure to fully condemn white nationalists in the wake of the Charlottesville attack, urging the Trump administration Thursday to do more to denounce hate groups

    Trump’s comments pandering to white nationalists had sparked speculation that Cohn, who is Jewish, could resign from his post over the matter. However, despite Cohn’s friends’ comments to the media that he was deeply upset by Trump’s response to the violence in Charlottesville, Cohn has not quit and is just now publicly criticizing the President.

    “Citizens standing up for equality and freedom can never be equated with white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the KKK. I believe this administration can and must do better in consistently and unequivocally condemning these groups and do everything we can to heal the deep divisions that exist in our communities,” Cohn told the Financial Times on Thursday.

    “As a Jewish American, I will not allow neo-Nazis ranting ‘Jews will not replace us’ to cause this Jew to leave his job,” he added. “I feel deep empathy for all who have been targeted by these hate groups. We must all unite together against them.”

    Ooooh-kay, Gary, whatever you say…Trumpov doesn’t give a shit what you think and he’s certainly not abandoning his base of “many fine people”. You figure it out.

  129. 129.

    MomSense

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Vicious jackals really are the best jackals. Good in all of you for helping Jacy. She’s had much too much on her plate.

    BTW, how is that wrist if yours? Hope it is healing.

  130. 130.

    Kay

    Amusing and true:

    It was in the course of falsely arguing that in his denigration of women as creatures best suited to the barnyard and kennel he was only referring to Rosie O’Donnell that then-candidate Donald Trump explained the central cultural plank of his campaign. “I’ve been challenged by so many people, and I don’t frankly have time for total political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn’t have time either.”
    No doubt the President does not always mean what he says or even understand what he says. But his loyalists, who share in his mistrust and hatred of the US press corps, have got a point when they argue that a too easily mortified and euphemistic class of pundit failed to appreciate just how well the language of the bar stool and the barracks went down with the American electorate in 2016.
    Trumpian PC
    A curious thing has happened, however, in the course of making America great again, or possibly as a result of it. Total political correctness has returned as a priority, only now the hanky-clutching arbiters of what is kosher to pronounce in public inhabit the right and earnestly turn up whenever they believe someone has gone too far in criticizing or belittling their anti-PC president. A populist movement born of tolerating no controversial subject — from illegal immigration to Islamist terror to Hillary Clinton’s medical history — has suddenly discovered its safe space: protecting a fragile and easily offended commander in chief.
    This is no more apparent than in discussion of the urgent matter of Trump’s mental and emotional well-being, currently an anxious pastime of many Americans, according to a new Quinnipiac poll, which found that nearly 70% of those canvassed do not find Trump “levelheaded.” (Antonyms of that evocative term include “excitable” and “unstable” — “nuts,” you might say.)
    Surely then his mental health is a newsworthy subject?
    No, say Trump loyalists, who have transformed themselves into Berkeley college speech police when it comes to any mention of the topic, or even a discussion that it is indeed a topic.

    Nepotism hire Huckabee Sanders is the queen of this. She defends the rudest, nastiest, most mean-spirited President of my adult life by clutching her pearls every time anyone says anything about him. Trump can say anything about anyone, but mention his obvious unfitness and they all cry foul.

    We can questions whether the President is losing his mind. That’s allowable. Especially because both political media and Trump speculated endlessly on Clinton’s physical health. The big baby will just have to bear up because it’s a valid question.

  131. 131.

    Jeffro

    @Kay:

    This BS about “real Republicans” has to stop. That are what you see. There is no alternate, better, wholly imaginary Republican Party. The President reflects the base who put him in office.

    Amen, Kay.

    Hey, if he’s not a Republican, then kick him out, right GOP? Let’s hear you deny him three times before morning. Let’s hear you tell us where y’all differ on policies. Go for it!

  132. 132.

    Schlemazel

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    There is a video making the rounds on FB of some enflamed GOP hemorrhoid denying that the stars & bars is a racist symbol and he is not a racist himself. He then uses the name “Martin Luther Coon” as snickers about it. I just don’t understand why people will not believe they are not racist, I mean what more could the guy, he already explained to you he is not racist!

  133. 133.

    Jeffro

    Btw folks, if you’re at all inclined to drop a couple hundred pounds of “I Told You So” on your Trumpov-loving friends and family, here’s a pretty good way to do it – send them this eye-opener from Ben Wittes at Lawfare Blog.

    Trump As National Security Threat, Revisited. He reviews his predictions about Trump from March 2016, just as the GOP primary field was narrowing (these echo what much of the BJ commentariat have been saying since/before that time, of course, which is what makes it fun to send to RWNJ relatives)

    Concern No. 6:

    [T]hen there is the small matter of Trump’s—there’s no polite way to say this—evident clinical symptoms. I’m not a psychologist qualified to make a diagnosis, but it simply has to be significant that it’s hard to have a serious conversation about Trump without using words like egomania, grandiosity, or narcissism. I have never heard a politician spend a fifth as much time congratulating himself for being ahead in polls, for winning debates (whether or not he actually won them), for making great deals, or for being popular. His self-regard routinely crosses over into what I can only call the delusional. He promises to win voting groups that can be expected to vote against him by wide margins—as when he promises to build a giant wall to keep out Mexicans (who, please remember, are all rapists) yet simultaneously appears to think he will garner significant Latino support. This point is clearly related to the prior two points: His need for constant validation of his self-regard appears to fuel his inability to think ill of anyone—from a foreign dictator to a domestic white supremacist—who obliges him with praise. It is not in the national security interests of the United States to have such a man negotiating with people who can be expected to know at least as I do how much a little flattery will buy.

    I understated this one considerably. Trump’s clinical portait turns out to be the defining national security threat he poses—indeed, the defining feature of his presidency. He is unable to restrain himself from tweeting. He is impulsive with sensitive, even classified, information. He focuses obsessively on enemies to the point of gravely warping his judgment. While I’m still not a clinician, I’m entirely comfortable saying that this is not a psychologically normal person. And the national security consequences of Trump’s psychology have been immense and pervasive

    Guess what? Wittes was mostly on the money and Trumpov is a real danger to the country…with the main saving grace being that Trumpov’s such a completely unfocused, vindictive little moron.

  136. 136.

    Captain C

    @bystander: I wish Clinton had taken a different approach, to wit: “Taxes are equivalent to taxes. I’ve released 3 decades worth, you need to release yours or explain why transparency applies to everyone but you. Dog-ate-my-homework excuses don’t cut it.” This would apply to the primary and the general. In the primary, we can add: “I’ll release the speech transcripts if you post on your website the sex writings you did in the ’70s. You know the ones I’m talking about.”

  137. 137.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @O. Felix Culpa: Danforth once epitomized the “respected conservative” but over the years he has shown more and more that it was all just a show. It makes me wonder if it is dementia that makes it too difficult for him to maintain the pretense.

  138. 138.

    Kay

    @Jeffro:

    I feel as if it’s an absolute given that Trump will release national security information. He constantly uses private conversations against people. He’s doing it this morning. Why people tell this person anything is beyond me.

    Completely and utterly untrustworthy. He has no friends and it’s easy to see why. Tick tock! Just a matter of time.

  140. 140.

    Kay

    I also like to imagine what a sick work environment that White House is. The paranoia must be off the scale. Nightmare.

    If Trump isn’t collecting information to use against you, Jared and Ivanka are. No wonder they get nothing done. Everyone is jockeying to knife someone else.

  141. 141.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Danforth once epitomized the “respected conservative”

    Yes, I once had great respect for him, thinking he was a principled conservative. His opinion piece reveals him as either delusional or slipping into dementia, which sometimes lays bare the truth behind the facade.

  142. 142.

    Schlemazel

    @clay:
    Yeah and W was not a real Republican either. Apparently Republicans are so stupid they keep nominating non-Republicans. Maybe they should just stop nominating people

  144. 144.

    bemused

    @Betty Cracker:

    True, should be evangelical/rightwing Christians, those Christians who are twice as likely to blame people at or in poverty level for lack of character than circumstances beyond their control.

  147. 147.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Kay:

    Why people tell this person anything is beyond me. Completely and utterly untrustworthy.

    I grew up with a narcissistic parent and then married a narcissist (go figure). It’s hard for “normal” people to grasp fully just how much narcissists don’t play by the “normal” rules. Plus, many narcissists can be charming and highly manipulative. So “normal” people fall for their schtick. Over and over again.

    And then there are the folks who still think they can use Trump for their own ends. Cynical and corrupt fools.

  148. 148.

    rikyrah

    @Patricia Kayden:

    @Betty Cracker: And yet he has a Jewish daughter and son-in-law and several Jewish Cabinet holders in his administration. When are they going to speak out about his wink wink attitude towards anti-Semites?

    I will say this, and this is how I feel. How I’ve felt for awhile..

    Kushner is a slave catcher.

    Period.

    Beginning.Middle.End of the story.

    And, we know what slave catchers do.

    Maybe Jewish folks see something different….but, from my Black female eyes…

    He’s a slave catcher…which should tell you how much you should trust him.

  149. 149.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Kay: Yup. Sadly, there are either too few true conservatives, or too few of them chose your friend’s route.

  150. 150.

    Kay

    Donald J. Trump‏Verified account
    @realDonaldTrump
    Strange statement by Bob Corker considering that he is constantly asking me whether or not he should run again in ’18. Tennessee not happy!

    You don’t have to over-think it: he’s an asshole. You can’t tell him anything in confidence because he’s just waiting to use it against you. That’s how he keeps people in line and that’s how he sold himself as a great businessman for 50 years although he’s incompetent. People couldn’t tell the truth about him or he’d open his big mouth and embarrass them.

    The only part that baffles me is why anyone would tell him anything.

    Trusting him is insane. This is what he is. I bet if you asked his 7th grade classmates they saw it then.

  152. 152.

    Kay

    @O. Felix Culpa:

    Well, poor him, because he thinks I’m politically savvy and he kept asking me if Trump would win (horrified)- I know him and I bet he wanted to move his money into coffee cans or something if a win was a realistic possibility :)

    I kept reassuring him “no”. So. Wrong about that. Sorry.

  154. 154.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @O. Felix Culpa: His shepherding of Clarence Thomas thru the Senate was the first clue that he was not all he appeared to be, but I put it down to “loyalty returned” to a former acolyte, and to possibly Danforth’s acceptance of the “he said, she said” argument**.

    ** I should add that at the time my own less enlightened self felt a certain sympathy for that argument as well, until Anita Hill was so attacked by the usual deviants I had to conclude that there was definitely a “there there”. I also began to review my own blinders of ignorance on the subject of sexual harassment.

  158. 158.

    tobie

    Would voters who were wrongly disenfranchised in the past election have standing to sue their state? With 1 in 4 African-Americans beings disenfranchised in FL, 2 million voters stricken from the rolls in OH, tossed ballots galore in KS, etc. it shouldn’t be hard to find individuals stripped of their right to vote. Usual disclaimer–I am not a lawyer–but it seems like this is one of the many causes for the ACLU to take up.

  159. 159.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    His shepherding of Clarence Thomas thru the Senate

    I had forgotten about Danforth’s role in that debacle. So the delusion/cynicism (take your pick) is not new.

    ETA: And good on you for questioning your assumptions when faced by disconfirming facts. It seems to be a rare gift – shared by you, Cole, and a few highly treasured others.

  160. 160.

    Citizen Alan

    @Schlemazel:

    I think Chris Rock explained it best. A racist is someone who murders Medgar Evers. The word doesn’t apply to anything less.

  161. 161.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @O. Felix Culpa:

    then married a narcissist

    I was guilty of that too. I am quite often told by some that I should forgive and forget. Nope. Her sons can forgive her if they like but I pray they never forget because she’s never changing. My oldest is getting married next month and I had to tell him I want nothing to do with her. He already knew that, but the reminder was necessary anyway.

  162. 162.

    A Ghost To Most

    @Betty Cracker: Too much experience with them, and I’m done being nice to those people. Religion is the cause of many of the worlds’ ills. Their good works does not offset the damage they have done. Christians put the orange skidmark in the WH.

    When I see a movement by christians to denounce all this shit, maybe then I will be more generous. Until then, they remain, in my eyes, Talibangelicals. I’m sick to fucking death of hearing “a true christian wouldn’t do that”.
    Who keeps the list, and what are the rules? I judge christians by what I see them do, not who they think they are.

  164. 164.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Her sons can forgive her if they like but I pray they never forget because she’s never changing.

    Yup. The worst thing you can do with a narcissist is forget their innate character. They will ALWAYS betray you. They can do no other.

  166. 166.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @A Ghost To Most:

    I judge christians by what I see them do, not who they think they are.

    Well then, remember that there are Christians among the regular BJ-commentariat and working in the Resistance. The Talibangelicals are evil, but they are not the whole thing.

  167. 167.

    Peale

    @Kay: Yeah, but I fear enough people will buy it that we’re doomed again in 2018. “Help stop Trump! Elect more Republicans to stop him” sounds stupid to us, but then we’re not Republican mid-term voters..

  168. 168.

    WaterGirl

    @Kay: Hopefully “being on the verge” doesn’t mean that they get more chances to discriminate before they have to get pre-approval.

    edit: I should have read the last line more carefully:

    U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos, who ruled against the state’s voter ID law on Wednesday, will hear arguments in the coming months on the preclearance issue.

  171. 171.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @A Ghost To Most:

    Religion is the cause of many of the worlds’ ills.

    No, the worlds ills are caused by humans. Humans, the “beleivers” use religion to justify what they do in it’s name. But religion, a wholly human construction, is not the cause of that, the humans are.

    Religion, of and by itself is neither good or bad. It is used for both good and bad by humans. The difference is the human who is wielding it.

    For the record, I am an atheist.

  172. 172.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @O. Felix Culpa: When I took my sons in after her marriage blow up (those words are very kind) I found myself sucked right back into her world. Ended up in counseling just to try and keep in touch with reality. My counselor once asked me “How’d you allow her to suck you back in?” I just looked at her, wanted to scream “THESE ARE MY SONS!!!”

    When she finally went to prison and I could finally just do what needed to be done for the boys with out her… interference, life began to return to some semblance of sanity.

  175. 175.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Had a thought on my commute:

    American conservatism is so desperate to obtain, clench and expand its power that the Nixon crowd went ahead with a third rate burglary in order to enhance an election tally that they knew they were going to win by a landslide. Nixon was so far ahead that these were his stats:

    1) McGovern only got the electoral votes of D.C. and Massachusetts, and netted less than 40% of the popular vote.

    2) He failed to carry a single county in 18 states, and only carried 118 counties nationwide, few of which were leading cities – New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, San Francisco, New Orleans and other now liberal bastions all went to Nixon. McGovern only got Philadelphia, Detroit and (maybe) Oakland.

    3) The congressional district map was even uglier. Looks like McGovern carried fewer than 20 districts.

    4) Nixon even managed to take 18% of the African American vote.

    That indicates a huge structural advantage going in, yet the assholes from CREEP wanted to run up the score, showing just how craven they were – and some of those assholes are still around now. Funny thing is, that result would have been reached even without the tricks, as it exposed what the public opinion of white voters was at the time – jingoistic, absent empathy and reckless.

    I know we like to bitch about The Pardon, but I’m not certain that Ford wasn’t considering the magnitude of that genuinely “bigly yuge” Electoral College win, and the fact that in the eyes of any observer at the time (and even in my eyes now), it was truly a mandate election.

  176. 176.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    life began to return to some semblance of sanity

    It’s amazing how crazy-making dealing with narcissists can be. I’m so glad you were able to get the help and distance you needed. I’m many years removed myself, also with the help of good counseling, but all my nerve-endings went on alert with the T candidacy and then (weeps) presidency.

  177. 177.

    WaterGirl

    @Kay: If it’s all a game to you, and you think you’re the better player, then yes, you would tell him things that would benefit your goals in the long run.

  179. 179.

    trollhattan

    @Betty Cracker:
    The next time Trump does something that can be considered a “Christian act” will simultaneously be the first. Have noted previously that his campaign was utterly void of personal anecdotes from “regular folk” for whom Trump performed a selfless deed with no expectation of repayment, or someone he befriended from outside his circle. I can’t name another candidate without a shred of compassion for others.

  180. 180.

    schrodingers_cat

    @OzarkHillbilly: Agreed. I am an agnostic. Religion is also the muse for truly inspiring art, from architecture to music. Be it churches, temples, mosques or the Buddhist cave temples. Also music. Right now I am listening to Sufi music from Coke Studio, India, invoking Bismillah. Composed by Salim, Sulaiman and sung by Munawar Masoom and Kailash Kher.

    ETA: Look through the credits, Indians of every religion and region are represented. Kailash Kher himself, is a Kashmiri Pundit.

  181. 181.

    Betty Cracker

    @A Ghost To Most: True of a subset of Christians but not all. Barack Obama is a Christian. Hillary Clinton is a Christian. Martin Luther King was a Christian.

    I’m an atheist myself — I have plenty of wingnut jackhole Christian relatives that give a bad name to the whole enterprise, so I get the bitterness. But I also have liberal Christian friends who are fighting alongside all of us to make the world a better place. They don’t deserve getting tossed in the same dung heap as Paula White and Jerry Falwell Jr.

  182. 182.

    TriassicSands

    WaPo headline:

    Fed chair Yellen rejects Trump’s approach to Wall Street regulation

    I guess that means Yellen has zero chance of reappointment as the Fed chair.

    In other news, Trump goes after GOP Senator Corker.

    Question: Is one four-year term enough for Trump to publicly criticize by name every Republican in Congress?

  184. 184.

    Betty Cracker

    @trollhattan:

    Have noted previously that his campaign was utterly void of personal anecdotes from “regular folk” for whom Trump performed a selfless deed with no expectation of repayment, or someone he befriended from outside his circle.

    Great point. I don’t think I’ve heard an anecdote like that about any of Trump’s family members either. Ivanka tried to pass off an anecdote about shaking down the servants for lemonade stand money when she was a child as plucky and precociously entrepreneurial. They seem to be uniformly awful people.

  185. 185.

    japa21

    It is really interesting how much a certain subset of Christians have supported Trump. Trump has said his favorite biblical quote is the “eye for an eye” quote from the OT.

    Here is what Christ said about that quote:

    You have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you not to resist evil: but if one strike thee on thy right cheek, turn to him also the other

    So, in actuality, Trump said he was the antithesis of a Christian.

  187. 187.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Betty Cracker: It doesn’t seem like any of the grown kids escaped the family sociopathy. Tiffany perhaps, but haven’t seen enough of her to know for sure. I feel sorry for Barron. He doesn’t seem like a happy kid.

  188. 188.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Another Scott:

    Trump is a Democrat and he’s trying to destroy the Republican Party.

    You must admit Donald Trump is the prefect Republican president from a liberate point of view; vile, corrupt, inept, racist, venial, ignorant, vicious, loathsome, lazy and treasonous. The problem Trump is so bad he’s doing damage to the country.

  189. 189.

    catclub

    From Paul Waldman:

    And there’s no more disastrous outcome for the Trump presidency than a house of Congress in Democratic hands — giving them the ability to kill any and all legislation the administration wants, not to mention subpoena power.

    But he can’t help himself. President Trump thrives on conflict and takes everything personally, so if the Republican Congress doesn’t give him what he wants the first time around, he’ll strike out at them. And they’ll both wind up paying the price.

    I think the second paragraph negates the first. Given that Trump loves conflict, he would rather be fighting ( and blaming) a Democratic Congress.
    He will love having his lawyers saying things more absurd than Cheney’s did about unitary executives and a fourth branch separate from both the legislative and executive branch. Also, refusing to obey subpoenas and court orders [until repeatedly sanctioned] is a hobby of Trump and his lawyers.

    Having to compromise with a GOP Congress is what is completely foreign to him.

  191. 191.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @WaterGirl: Boldly? ;-)

    I don’t really know. I was a voracious reader and surmise that literature helped save my life. There were a few adults/teachers I adopted along the way as surrogate parents, who showed me how kind and decent people operate. I fled as soon as I could and ultimately moved thousands of miles away in my young adulthood. I still got sucked back into that system periodically. It’s very hard to escape. A breakdown in my mid-thirties and subsequent counseling helped me to see and understand what one can’t fully grasp when that craziness has been your defining reality from infancy on. Even then, I still returned to help when summoned. Guilt is a powerful weapon. With the support of other family and friends, I ultimately made a final break and no longer came back to the rescue of the narcissist-abuser. It was astonishingly hard to do, but I held fast. That parent’s death a few years ago was a relief to all of us siblings. Sad but true.

    ETA: Not all that sad, really, except as a commentary on a lost childhood. None of us siblings continued as child abusers and actually turned out to be pretty good parents, of which I’m inordinately proud. Our young adult children are good, kind, compassionate people and I’m inordinately proud of them too.

  192. 192.

    The Moar You Know

    The thing about T is that I just don’t get his appeal.

    @schrodingers_cat: You’re not an asshole. Assholes fucking love the guy. My mother, for example: world class asshole. Always was, always would be. And I knew who she’d be voting for the day that orange motherfucker made his speech about Mexicans being diseased rapists. She’d always wanted to say exactly that in public (she’d been saying it to her kids since I was in high school) but was too chickenshit to let her freak flag fly – plus she’d have lost her job. So someone was saying it for her.

    I get Trump’s appeal. He appeals to appalling, bad people who are boiling with rage inside. And there’s a lot more of them in this nation than anyone thinks.

  193. 193.

    Gin & Tonic

    @WaterGirl: Thanks. News was kind of “meh”. He needs to run a CT scan, because he can’t properly see what’s “under” the plate on x-ray. He suspects that the main shaft of the radius is doing pretty well, based on a complete absence of pain or tenderness, but needs more pictures. The collection of bits and pieces floating around in there with no visible attachment to the radius don’t seem in any particular hurry to reattach. I asked whether it’s a concern if they don’t, like ever, and he didn’t seem to think so. I wouldn’t mind if I were back in one piece again, frankly. But I was cleared to start on light strengthening. Still nothing aggressive, which means no bicycle (which really sucks) but maybe some variety in my exercises.

    I’m still seeing the guy in NYC next week. I want an old guy who’s seen a lot of cases. Nothing against my surgical team here, they’re all super-qualified, but these younger guys love to operate – they’re rock stars of cutting and drilling, but six months of gradual followup is just not in their wheelhouse. I want a guy who’s seen multiple thousands of these, not a hundred.

    And apologies for all the male pronouns, but you don’t run into a lot of female orthopedic surgeons. Like they say, for this you need to be strong like an ox and twice as smart.

  194. 194.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Betty Cracker: There’s some story about Trump sending a plane to get some returning soldiers home from being stuck in an airport. I’ve seen it linked a few times on FB by faithful Trumplings.

  196. 196.

    Mnemosyne

    @SFAW:

    Nah. I want them both to have to live in an 8×8 room under close guard for the next 60 years until they die in prison.

  197. 197.

    Chris

    @Betty Cracker:

    The one gigantic lie Hillary Clinton told during the campaign was when a debate moderator asked her to say something nice about Trump, and she said he’d raised fine, upstanding children. That’s demonstrably untrue, but I suspect Clinton was just trying to be nice. Must be where Chelsea gets it.

    As soon as I heard that question, I thought of this moment in a Paul Krugman column:

    Some months ago an academic colleague — a man with strong Democratic connections — urged me to write a couple of columns praising the Bush administration. ”What should I praise?” I asked.

    There was a long pause — funny, isn’t it, how ”balance” becomes a goal in itself?

  198. 198.

    Mnemosyne

    @Kay:

    Meanwhile, Sasha Obama had a summer food service job on Martha’s Vineyard. Because she has normal parents who want her to know what real life is like.

  199. 199.

    Chris

    @Tenar Arha:

    Yes! “The Plot Against America,” Philip Roth. “Koshering Lindbergh for the goyim.” That quote comes to my mind every time I see a prominent Republican who’s not white, not Christian, not straight, or even a woman.

  200. 200.

    WaterGirl

    @O. Felix Culpa: Thanks so much for your reply. Yours is a story of hope for other people who may feel trapped in that same situation. Thanks for sharing. Happy for you that you found another way to live. OzarkHillbilly, too. Kudos to both of you.

    Only slightly related, I spent 10 days with family earlier in August. Both my parents were alcoholic and at some point I did the alcoholic family tree thing, and holy shit alcoholism went back multiple generations on both sides of the family. That’s enough to give a person pause. It turns out that even my cousins are still having issues with alcohol. But the amazing thing is that my two sisters and I don’t have any issues with alcohol at all, and the same is true for their children. Yeah, I did a stupid amount of drinking in college, as a lot of people do, but it’s almost unheard of for me to even finish a second drink. It’s not like I police myself, something just turns off and I end up having only one drink or not finishing the second. Unless it’s an amazingly good home-made margarita with a ton of muddled strawberries. :-)

    I have been wondering how all 3 of us (my sisters and I) dodged that bullet and managed to end generations of alcoholism. We grew up living in the apartment above the tavern my parents owned, so it’s not like we weren’t exposed to alcohol. Whatever the reason, I’m grateful for it.

  201. 201.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @WaterGirl:

    Whatever the reason, I’m grateful for it.

    Our respective survival is a miracle and wonder, and I’m deeply grateful too.

  202. 202.

    WaterGirl

    @Gin & Tonic: Sounds like the news wasn’t “hey, you’re healed, get back to your regular life!” but it seems to me that it’s much better news than last time. So at least there’s that!

    I totally get your second paragraph – the young pups were raised on the latest technology but the old guys have seen it all. I remember a story about our old family practitioner growing up. Some fellow was having knee issues and had a million tests and no one could figure them out. He found his way to Dr. Nebrensky (sp?) who spent some time talking with him and really listening. Turns out the guy had problems with constipation and he would strain when he went to the bathroom, hence the knee problems.

    I hope you get great results from the specialist visit that’s coming up soon.

  203. 203.

    WaterGirl

    @Gin & Tonic: My reply to you seems to be in moderation. If it doesn’t show up soon, I will try again.

    Is there a front pager who can rescue my comment from moderation?

  205. 205.

    Heywood J.

    @Kay: If Corker ever asked Clownstick about whether he should run next year (hundred bucks says he never did), it would have been a passive-aggressive way of seeing if Corker was being considered for any sort of Cabinet post. Supposedly Corker was passed over for SoS because he’s too short and wasn’t deferential enough. That “constantly asking me” bit is hilarious, like any career pol seriously thinks that fool has any predictive skill.

  208. 208.

    Gin & Tonic

    @WaterGirl: I don’t know what you said, but “specialist” is a FYWP dirty word because of the embedded trade name – unless you know the trick for writing those sorts of words.

  212. 212.

    StringOnAStick

    @WaterGirl: My childhood had a lot of similarities to yours; alcoholic but functional parents. We never wanted for anything, except well, being accepted and wanted. There wasn’t much of that available. I’m thankful for a close aunt and later a close, slightly older friend who were supports for me when I really needed it.

    I recall discussing with my PCP that my folks were alcoholics but that none of us 4 kids drink at all. He expressed surprise, saying that 25% of kids of alcoholics end up in the same boat. When I started my first professional job at a consulting engineering firm, Friday drinks were a requirement it seemed if I wanted to join the GOB’s club (as a female geologist, not being male or an engineer were a negative). One day it just hit me that I was headed down the same path as my parents went so I stopped. My therapist says that young people who had a supportive older person in their lives at critical points do a lot better with surviving alcoholic/mentally abusive parents, it sounds like you were lucky enough to have that.

  213. 213.

    Chris T.

    @OzarkHillbilly: This thread is probably quite dead, but I’ll just say:

    Don’t tell me, tell the PHD in Mathematics who is being quoted.

    That would be “misquoted”. :-)

    Seriously, using base 60 means you can write certain fractions as non-repeating decimals, because 60 = 2 x 2 x 3 x 5 (vs 10 = 2 x 5). One-third in base 10 is 0.33333… with an infinite number of 3s, but in base 60, it’s 0.(symbol-for-20). That is, it’s 20/60ths, and no 3600ths (60*60 = 3600), and no 21600ths (60 * 60 * 60), and so on, because the 20/60ths took care of everything.

    Base 210 is even better (it’s 2*3*5*7, the first four primes) but memorizing 210 symbols for the numbers between 0 and 219 is kind of painful. Even the 60 symbols needed to count from 0 to 59 with one “digit” are problematic, though if you use 26 uppercase letters and then 24 lowercase letters, that suffices (10 digits + 26 uppercase + 24 lowercase = 60 symbols).

    Base 30, or 2*3*5, is easier: 10 symbols plus 20 out of 26 letters gets you there, and now 1/3 is 0.A (no ones, ten 1/30ths).

    All these can be written down (or etched into clay) with full precision, unlike 0.3333… which one must represent symbolically as 1/3.

  215. 215.

    No One You Know

    @Gin & Tonic: Is that good news,as in “the best help possible,” or bad news, as in “the situations that bad?”

    Fingers crossed for you, anyway!

Comments are closed.