Wingnuts have a new hero:
By one metric, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Alejandro Villanueva has emerged from the NFL’s current controversy as the most popular player in the league.
In the last 24 hours, Villanueva’s No. 78 is the best-selling jersey on Fanatics, the biggest retailer of sports merchandise, after the offensive tackle and ex-Army Ranger stood on the field for the national anthem while his teammates stayed out of sight.
And, as heroes go, he’s really not that bad a choice. But wait, it gets better:
Villanueva says he asked quarterback Ben Roethlisberger if he could be out in front with the captains during the national anthem and they agreed to it, but when he went to the front of the tunnel to see the flag, he went too far unintentionally.
“When we came out of the locker room into that tunnel, it was a very small area. There was a flag or something coming off the field so there were a bunch of Bears fans, coming off the field holding that going in front of us, so it kind of held us up,” Villanueva said.
The rest of the team remained in the tunnel.
“I made my teammates look bad, and that is my fault, and my fault only,” Villanueva said. “We as a team tried to figure it out, but obviously butchered it.”During his press conference, the former Army Ranger says he is absolutely okay if teammates kneel or sit during the national anthem.
“People that are taking a knee are not saying anything negative about the military, they’re not saying anything negative about the flag, they’re just trying to protest that there are some injustices in America,” Villanueva said.
He says some players who have been kneeling during anthems have even approached him before or after games and thanked him for his service including other players in the NFC North.
I wonder how many of those jerseys will now be cancelled.
On a side note, there is no fucking aspect of this country that Trump is not going to fucking poison.
?BillinGlendaleCA
For a second there, I thought Cole broke the blog.
ETA: It was just the police light thingie and the sidebar.
TenguPhule
@?BillinGlendaleCA: He did. It got better.
efgoldman
W and company fetishized Pat Tillman, without acknowledging that he was killed by friendly fire.
NotMax
Honestly didn’t think it was possible for me to care any less about football.
I was wrong.
Booger
Time to start revising the last 24 hours.
Davebo
Have a link to the second part?
chopper
QFT. the guy really is the antichrist.
Kay
I’m so glad the health care bill failed again. Let’s kill one piece of their legislation every 3 months for the next 3 years.
JPL
You know now he will be labeled as the one who saved the flag. The piece of cloth seems more important than the right to protest which is in the constitution. just sayin.
once again, I might add I hate the folks who support this narcissistic, racist, dotard pig.
debbie
I hope they choke on his words.
This morning, Glenn Beck said Kaepernick’s only motivation was wanting to be famous. An astute judge of character, that Glenn is.
chopper
@efgoldman:
you’d think that after about 2005 or so republicans would have figured out to shut the fuck up about pat tillman. if course, trump is special.
debbie
@Kay:
No! Every single one must die!
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
How long does a career as an Army Ranger last? I mean, with all that special forces training, I would have assumed they’d be in until past the age when the NFL is a viable career option.
lamh36
@Davebo: http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2017/09/25/alejandro-villanueva-speaks-about-national-anthem/amp/
chopper
@Kay:
let’s hope the koch bros stay true to their word about all that election money.
Major Major Major Major
@Kay: it’s not quite dead yet. Give them a few hours…
Davebo
@lamh36: Thanks but I found it.
The comments on the story I found were depressing.
lamh36
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Sad to say, I think you’re right about Trump. I think we’re going to make it through all in one piece–as a society; countless people are going to take it in the ass–but the mess these assholes are going to leave us to clean up is going to, and I hope I’m wrong here, make what we had to deal with in 2009 look like nothing.
Adam L Silverman
Here’s the other part of the Steelers’ story:
jl
mystery for the ages is whether it is better for Trump to be consumed with this nonsense, and spending his time digging himself into an ever deeper public opinion hole over it. Or he spend more time doing damage as an actual president.
Mitt Romney is tweeting about getting massive emergency aid out to PR asap, maybe someone in Congress will listen to him?
Quantumman
@Kay: it is not dead yet.
NotMax
OT:
Hanging Chad.
jl
@NotMax: Chad is stonewalling on suspicious connections with bad elements on Nambia? Executive can see things that we cannot, you know.
Patricia Kayden
@debbie: Thankfully not many people appear to care about Beck. His 15 minutes must be up.
Davebo
@Adam L Silverman:
He addresses it here.
Baud
@NotMax: Trump liked the name.
Gin & Tonic
@NotMax:
Because our President is a fucking moron, that’s why.
Raven
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Special Forces and Rangers are not the same.
jl
@Patricia Kayden: Hard to keep track of which theme Beck is currently following in his continuing fugue state.
Raven
Second half of 68 up next. Watch it and tell me shit is worse now.
Gin & Tonic
But, you know, my son-in-law is named Chad. Maybe I better tell him to make sure he has a valid current US passport?
lamh36
@Adam L Silverman: I saw that too…talking bout he regrets it…ain’t that some shit…wonder if Rapey Ben regrets sexually assaulting those women…
lamh36
Just speaking on football a bit…I admit, I’m not a watcher, but I do have diehard friends and fam…I saw a tweet saying that Jerry Jones has told his players that they could not participate in the protest or get fired or disciplined.
I just don’t believe that if the Cowboys BIG time player were to protest and take a knee, that Jerry Jones would FIRE him…chew ’em out, cuss em good, but FIRE them…naw…I don’t buy it one bit
So I asked them as Cowboys fans…who on the team would Jerry NEVER fire cause it would FUQ up the team? I know a number of BJ folks are football fans, so I’d like to pose the same question to ya’ll
Origuy
@NotMax: Chad was probably the name of one of the kids that picked on young Donny at that military school he went to.
Wapiti
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: He was a West Pointer (played ball there), did a tour in Afghanistan with the 10th Mountain, then got assigned to the Ranger Regiment and did some more time in Afghanistan. He’s 29.
For enlisted soldiers, I’d imagine a lot of guys do one enlistment, maybe 4 or 6 years, with the regiment. Some stay, but many return home, or go elsewhere in the Army. It’s a hard, demanding life.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
As close a description of Hell on Earth as any.
Baud
@TenguPhule: Hell on Earth would be failing to kill their legislation.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: I was just about to say that.
TenguPhule
@Baud:
I’m not sure being in perpetual freefall trying to stop them is much better.
We’re all burning out trying to put out all the fires that the fucking pyros are igniting without a care.
Kay Eye
Why don’t they just quit playing the National Anthem before games?
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule: um, it’s much, much better by essentially every metric.
Baud
Leave Chad alone.
Mnemosyne
@JPL:
This morning on Facebook, some moron friend-of-a-friend was whining about how taking a knee is disrespectful to Our Troops Who Gave Their Lives, and I said, I’m so old that I remember when the National Anthem was for the whole country.
Baud
@TenguPhule: Then take a break if you’re burned out. They win, and people die.
JaneSays
@efgoldman: Or that he (Tillman) was a left-leaning atheist who was opposed to the Iraq War and was highly critical of the Bush administration.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay Eye: Was it even a thing before 9/11?
ETA: I don’t remember it at College games in the late 90s.
lamh36
@Kay Eye:
Baud
@lamh36: I blame Obama.
Kay
@TenguPhule:
Embrace the horror! That’s key :)
M. Bouffant
@Kay Eye: Exactly. Only at pro sporting events, but not at the symphony, or the cinema, or pop music events, or the opera, or the theater, not even at Little League games? Why?
Corner Stone
Chris Hayes is a smart person but a subpar interviewer.
eclare
@M. Bouffant: Recruiting young people from huge fan bases. Those wars don’t fight themselves.
Baud
@Corner Stone: Is it the Hillary interview? I might watch it tomorrow unless I hear it sucks.
TenguPhule
The Trump administration guide to Peaceful Protest.
Go read the whole thing. One bright side to the day.
Adam L Silverman
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Some do the minimum. Some make it a career. You have to understand that each of our Special Operating Forces is different. The Rangers are basically a specialized light infantry unit that specializes in pathbreaking and blocking, holding, and clearing types of operations. They tend to place a premium on physical fitness and the physical application of force in tactical situations. So provided one doesn’t have any serious service related injuries from serving as a Ranger, serving as a Ranger would make one one of the most physically fit people on a football team roster on reporting day.
The Navy SEALS are similar in placing a premium on fitness, but their traditional role is in hostage rescue and hunting adversaries to capture or kill.
MARSOC, Marine Special Operations is a strange beast all its own. The Corps actually is its own specialized operating force and within it you have Recon Marines, which are similar to the Rangers except they’re amphibious forces. So MARSOC exists, but its sort of a why, isn’t this just the Marines kind of thing?
The US Air Force has the Air Commandos, which are their own strange beast as there is no qualifying (Q) course. They also have forward observer controllers who go in ahead of air strikes to paint targets. And they have pararescue, which I can never tell if they are or are not considered part of Air Force SOF.
In addition to the US Army Ranger Regiment, the Army has Civil Affairs* and PSYOPS within Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF). The former do civilian reconstruction, as well as military support to governance, civil information management, medical and veterinarian operations, and humanitarian assistance. The latter, PSYOPS, conduct psychological operations.
Then you have two specialized special operations units: SEAL Team 6 and 1st Special Operations Detachment Delta/Delta Force. The former pull their personnel out of existing SEAL Teams, the latter recruits and certifies differently. There is some overlap in their mission sets – a lot of hunt, capture, kill, but there are also differences.
Finally, you have Army Special Forces or just plain old Special Forces. These are the Green Berets. Their mission is unconventional warfare. Working by, with, and through host country forces to conduct foreign internal defense to protect a government the US is backing or with host country nationals to overthrow a hostile foreign government.
After 9-11, because there weren’t enough of each type of SOF to go around they were all forced to basically learn how to do what the others did. This was largely the result of not having the unit you wanted/needed available because it was already deployed doing something else. What this did was actually force jointness (a military term of operational art) on the SOF community in a way that SOCOM never had. That said each SOF element has a specific, traditional set of responsibilities and capabilities and that’s what they’re best at.
* Full disclosure: I served, under temporary assigned control (TACON), as the Cultural Advisor to the Branch Chief of Civil Affairs from OCT 2012 through DEC 2013. I have also been assigned, TACON, to Joint Civil Information Management Test Development at SOCOM from NOV 2010 through JUN 2011, to SOCOM’s Civil Affairs Capabilities Based Assessment in Fall 2010, and served as a resident Senior Special Operations Fellow at the Center for Special Operations Studies and Research at SOCOM from May through AUG 2015.
Corner Stone
@Baud: HRC is doing great but he keeps asking her to explain to him what he should understand.
Kay
Of course they did because as we all know it happens a lot.
It should be fun to watch though- they HAVE to make a big deal out of this just to defend the legitimacy of their insane, bonkers obsession with Clinton’s emails.
The NYTimes will be trapped in an endless loop of email coverage, forever. They’ll be the national experts on government emails- a specialty, niche publication devoted almost exclusively to email infractions.
Baud
@Corner Stone: I would like to see her pat him on the head like a child.
different-church-lady
I find it delightfully ironic that Trump tricked a bunch of football fans into choosing between him and football, and they chose him.
Hamish
@Major Major Major Major: You were insisting just last week that there was no chance in hell that McCain would vote against it, and you were dead wrong.
I agree that until the clock strikes 12:00am on October 1st that we need to keep calling and calling and calling and that we should continue to push Murkowski to be a solid “no”, but seriously, stop being so pessimistic. Nobody wants to fight a losing battle, and if everybody keeps declaring this a losing battle, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. We’re gonna win this thing (or at least this round), and we need to keep telling ourselves that.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
That’s actually the worst part of it.
After two years of shitty coverage, the FYNYT knows even less about how electronic communications work in the government then when they first started.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: It is completely nonsensical.
The Simp in the Suit
@M. Bouffant: 1984. Adds to the atmosphere of perpetual war.
Mnemosyne
@lamh36:
I wonder what Jerry would do if all of the white players took a knee and all of the players of color stood behind them with a hand on their shoulder in solidarity?
I mean, other than stroke out on the spot.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Why are TV liberals so wishy washy? David Brooks always eats Jowly Sheilds’ lunch at the Snooze Hour discussions.
TenguPhule
@different-church-lady:
I want to quibble about your definition of delightful.
Gobsmacking on the other hand.
NotMax
@Corner Stone
UP was his pinnacle. He’s a square peg in a round whole in the shorter segment strip show format. Too many times he does appear to be listening but is not cognizant of what has been said, having a set agenda of fitting X, Y and Z within the time allotted.
(Also requires more coaching on controlling shifting to his whiny newly-pubescent voice.)
Adam L Silverman
@Davebo: Apparently he flunked 5th grade civics.
Corner Stone
@Baud: She wants to knock him off his chair and piss on him.
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
Nonsensical, or orders from Putin?
Though I don’t know why the Russians would have anything against Chad. Maybe it was a bet in Moscow to see who could get Trump to make the most pointless gesture.
trollhattan
@NotMax: @jl:
Trump has hated Chad ever since prep school, because of all the wedgies and swirlies received.
“Take that, Chad! Rrrrrrwl.”
Schlemazel
@jl:
JAY-ZEUS! How bad is it when even the WIllardbot 2000 has more humanity than the entire GOP?
Baud
@Corner Stone: I’d tune in for that too.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Kay:
One might think that, but I don’t know. Cognitive dissonance is apparently too complex for these folks to experience.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
Nah. They’ll ignore it, and ignore people who point out their hypocrisy. Because the problem was that the issue involved Hillary, not that there was an actual issue.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: Uppity liberals don’t get promoted.
debbie
Jeez, the irony of Nixon’s 1968 acceptance speech. Everything he slammed LBJ for came back at him doubled!
ETA: Cronkite: “the Democratic Convention begins in a police state.”
eclare
@TenguPhule: That was good, read it earlier. Sharp writer.
trollhattan
@debbie:
Fewer than a hundred QBs have started the Superbowl and one of them is Kaepernick. He seeks fame you say, Glenn? ctr+alt+del start over, dude.
Kathleen
@jl: Wasn’t Chad responsible for the Bowling Green Massacre?
JPL
@NotMax:
This..
F
The Chick-fileting of the NFL.
Tripod
@Gin & Tonic:
Fuck Chad. He knows what he did.
Shalimar
@NotMax: Pandering to the incel part of his base. There are already way too many Chads in this country as far as they’re concerned.
different-church-lady
@TenguPhule: No, I’m serious, delightful: they hit all the comment boards talking about how they love football and they’ve been fans for years but this is the last straw. And I think, “You know, if Trump had just kept his mouth shut you could still be enjoying the thing you claim gives you so much pleasure, but instead you’ve got your head so far up his ass that you’ll let him take it away from you without realizing what he’s done.”
How can you not smile at that?
lamh36
Well I’ll be damned!!
Like I said…I CANNOT imagine if confronted by a BIG NAME player saying he was gonna kneel, that Jerry Jones would fire ANY DAMN body, and if enough of the players plan to do it…then what could ole Jerry really do about it?
Welp…
Tripod
@Mnemosyne:
The President is off his rocker.
different-church-lady
@debbie:
Sounds… familiar.
jl
@Schlemazel: Mitt’s quiet back rooms respect efficiency. Mittbot is a cuck, and low energy loser by today’s GOP standards.
different-church-lady
@lamh36: Finally, an entire team with enough guts to go for it.
Ruviana
@Kathleen: No, it was the illegal market in covfefe.
NotMax
@JPL
Yup, apparently a congenital inability to edit on the fly.
Kay
@Mnemosyne:
Disagree. They have to. They’re dug so far in on the emails they’ll never move off it.
They’d do literally anything rather than admit they went overboard on the email coverage. Anything.
jl
@Ruviana: I’m coming around to other commenters’ guesses, Chad was some loser low energy dude in college who really steamed Trump, big time.
BlueDWarrior
@Kay Eye: Because a certain segment of the viewing audience needs their patriotism externally validated, and not broadcasting the National Anthem (even though they don’t do it for nearly every broadcast in other sports) would mean giving into the terrorists and leftists who are destroying all that is right and pure in America.
Corner Stone
@Tripod: He knows what he did.
Omnes Omnibus
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: He was commissioned out of West Point and then did the Infantry Officer Basic Course (18ish weeks), Airborne School (3 weeks), and Ranger School (basically 8 weeks). When he was transferring to the Rangers, he did some refresher training.
Shalimar
@different-church-lady: It is hilarious to me, but, make no mistake, they chose Trump over the players they already don’t like, not over actually watching the games. Sure, they are claiming now that they are boycotting football, but very few of them will still be tuning out next week.
Major Major Major Major
@Hamish: …are you sure this is directed at the right person?
Schlemazel
@jl:
I get the love of efficiency but he still is a heartless, soulless, lump incapable of sympathy yet manages to be better than the entire GOP
Corner Stone
@Kay: You’re kidding yourself. Skimming Mags Habermann’s twit feed it is about 99 to 1 blasting her to see her 5000 “scoops” or columns about Kushner’s emails. She ain’t gonna do shit.
Kay
@debbie:
I’m watching with my youngest. We’re only on Part Two. I think it’s depressing him though- I might let him off the hook. He sort of wanders off sadly to bed after watching. It’s a lot to take in.
lamh36
@different-church-lady: Before the anthem, not during…but still…Ole Jerry looked uncomfortable azz hell which I LOVED!
https://twitter.com/SInow/status/912473528351559680
Roger Moore
@Kay:
Lets kill all their bad legislation for the next year or so. If we keep it up, maybe we’ll be able to take back the House, at which point we can spend more energy on proposing our own good legislation instead.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: Nonsensical.
BlueDWarrior
@Shalimar: I doubt the protest on their part lasts much longer than a couple of weeks. Way more people are tuning out the NFL’s official broadcasts due to cord-cutting and illicit viewing than the actions of the more politically woke of the playerbase.
Kay
@Corner Stone:
They’re horribly defensive on the emails. You guys are missing the nuance, the subtext. THEY KNOW they went crazy.
Shalimar
@lamh36: Jerry Jones doesn’t cut players for rape or attempted murder. There was never any chance he was going to fire someone for kneeling.
hueyplong
Might have picked Chad because he can both read it and pronounce it, in response to the “Nambia” FUBAR.
It’s like that scene when his direct predecessor, Johnny Iselin (in the Manchurian Candidate) asks Angela Lansbury if they can agree on a number of Communists he can remember, while he’s pounding on a ketchup bottle. Quick cut to Iselin on the floor of the Senate, intoning that “there are exactly 57 card-carrying members of the Communist Party in the State Department.”
Corner Stone
@different-church-lady: Nope. They pose loudly and righteously against these black guys. But they are not going to stop watching NFL or other sports.
BlueDWarrior
@Adam L Silverman: Trump doing something for no discernable reason is a perfectly valid assumption and/or observation, IMO.
jl
@Schlemazel: It’s politics and governance. You can do it because your heart is in the right place, or you can do it because you’ve read the job description, and well, that is what you do. Either way, it gets done, and that is what counts for a lot of things.
But, if you point is that we don’t even have that anymore, I agree and it is horrible. Maybe I should contact Haley and ask her why she has not introduced UN sanctions on the US for human rights crimes already?
Edit: Romney would probably have stunk in addressing Charlottesville, much worse than Big Dawg, even Dub, and Obama. But stunk in a very different way than Trump, and not as badly.
Adam L Silverman
@lamh36: Including Jones.
TenguPhule
@different-church-lady:
When you can convince people to believe absurdities, you can convince them to commit atrocities.
Kathleen
@Kay: They don’t have enough integrity to be defensive for the right reason. They’re defensive because they’re being criticized. In their minds they did nothing wrong.
ETA Someone on the Haberman thread CS referred to said that Maggie’s mother works for Kushner’s family in a PR capacity. I’m too lazy to google it right now.
Son of ETA: Did you see that Sherrod Brown is having Facebook Live discussion regarding Cassidy-Graham (which sounds like a funeral parlor, doesn’t it?)
Corner Stone
@Kay: Now who’s being naive, Kay?
chopper
@NotMax:
probably has to do with them not giving trump a sweet deal on a hotel. I’m literally not kidding.
trollhattan
@Kay:
Mine (15) is interested enough to watch chunks and I’m able to relate being in “N” grade when X is happening. My overarching theme is Vietnam was something that began appearing on television when I was too young to understand what war is, other than we “always” win ours like dad did, and yet it kept going so long it killed friends of friends and threatened to vacuum me up too.
She doesn’t know a nation not at war, having been born right after the Afghanistan invasion. I find I can only watch the show for so long before the emotional stew becomes too great, and Nixon-Kissinger haven’t even appeared on the radar.
Shalimar
@jl: Chad Thundercock is the name used on the reddit incel forum for all the manly assholes who get constant sex from girls who turn their noses up at supposedly nice guys like them. I think Trump is doing them a favor by banning all the Thundercocks from coming here from Chad.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
“Here you go sir, this one rhymes with bad.”
“Hot damn! Add ’em to the list.”
hueyplong
Trump driving a wedge between RWNJ football fans and their own precious is making it crystal clear that the Trump Anti-Midas Touch is very real. It’s not that everything he gets mad at gets screwed. It’s anything he touches in any way, maliciously or temporarily fondly (diverted for a moment from his obsessive love of self).
debbie
@Kay:
It is a lot for anyone to take in.
Mnemosyne
@lamh36:
That’s what I’m talking about! ??
Corner Stone
@Shalimar: Thank God I post as Chuck Thundercock there.
Jager
@Wapiti:
I know a young man, enlisted shortly after 9-11 for 4. Jump school, Ranger school. Served in Afghanistan and Iraq. Reenlisted for another 4 was wounded in Afghanistan, ended up with a 50% disability pension. In his 6 and half years in the Army, he spent 38 months in combat and 7 months in the hospital. I’m damn proud of him, he just graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with a BS in Math. He’s going to teach high school math.
He wanted to make the Army a career, he was headed to Special Forces Training when he was hit in a fire fight with the Taliban.
Duane
I haven’t heard one single Republican say that Trump shouldn’t call people sons of bitches.Talk about a morally bankrupt bunch.
Imagine the butthurt if Obama said such a thing.
jl
@Shalimar: OK, Trump did at least one thing right. Screw that effer Chad Thundercock. Now someone needs to explain to Trump that the cad Chad is not the same as the country.
Roger Moore
@Kathleen:
If Chad hadn’t left us all hanging in 2000, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
They never admitted anything on their Iraq coverage. Or their Whitewater coverage. Or their Wen Ho Lee coverage. It was all, Mistakes were made, ho-hum.
Corner Stone
HAHAHAHAHA!!
Kathleen
@Roger Moore: Yes. He hung us out to dry.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
I’m gonna go with Cornerstone and Mnemosyne on this one. They’re gonna sweep this under the rug and gaslight about the problem.
Just like how Trump’s fucking tax returns disappeared down their memory hole.
TenguPhule
@Roger Moore:
Well played.
Jay Noble
@lamh36: I heard Jones was right there with them.
Remember, Dallas is “America’s Team” luvit luvit luvit
LongHairedWeirdo
Nitpick: Trump was only the fictus-patriiotitis-Donald for this — like a typhoid Mary, but Donald, instead of Mary, and fictus-patriotitis, Latin for “inflammation of the fake patriot.”
They were already whining that someone sat during the national anthem; when kaepernick decided to kneel, instead, that would have been the end of it, in any healthy nation. I mean, how the hell can going to one knee be showing “disrespect”? (I know, I know, the same way that using an e-mail server honorably and well can make someone a criminal… because it’s a useful narrative for propaganda).
Trump just caused an outbreak, is all. Be careful: symptoms among non-Trumpistas include rectal fissures, hemorrhoids that may become prolapsed, pilonidal cysts, and other pains in the ass.
jl
@BlueDWarrior: I think, like the Mexico Wall, Trump knows it was PR BS to help in the election. They had their stupid Muslim ban, which as totally dishonest and senseless by Trump’s own stated goals of it. I haven’t heard anything about them doing squat to ‘figure out what the hell is going on’ with the Muslims.
The latest incarnation of this nonsense is probably just a dumb way to wind down the whole idea. They don’t need a rationale for symbolic BS red meat to throw to their ignorant base.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: Ya think?
Kay
I went to an eastern county today for a mediation at the courthouse. There was a table set up on the sidewalk with 2 old men wearing shorts and placards saying “defend Trump” and “Donald Can’t do it by himself”. I stared for a while but it was beastly hot and I had to work so I went in to the mediation. When I came out several hours later they were still there, but there were counterprotesters, all women, with anti-Trump signs.
Just the craziest thing I have ever seen. The defend Trump placards had big photos of Trump as a MUCH younger man, like 1970’s Trump, judging by the suit lapels and tie. Bizarre.
Duane
@schrodingers_cat: The National Anthem is so important to pro sports it’s virtually never shown on TV. Commercials are shown instead.
Priorities and all.
Major Major Major Major
@Corner Stone: oh for fuck’s sake.
chopper
@Corner Stone:
LOL, if only there was a chief executive who could do something about it.
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
That’s why I’m picturing it as a bunch of FSB guys drinking vodka and making a prank call. I may try to write a playlet, unless someone here beats me to it.
debbie
Yeah, fuck LBJ, but triple fuck Nixon.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman – @Corner Stone
“More and more people are discovering water is wet every day.”
Hamish
@Major Major Major Major: Whoops! I meant it for TenguPhule.
jl
@Kay: The old geezers were trying to help defend Trump against himself?
Darkrose
@Kay: They’re singing “Blame Hilary!” as loud as they can:
From here:
Mnemosyne
@Duane:
I laughed when I saw that Colin Kaepernick’s mother was like, That’s right, assholes, I’m a bitch!
NotMax
@Mnemosyne
“Too absurd.”
Eugene Ionesco
;)
Major Major Major Major
@Hamish: that was my guess :) now don’t do it again!!
Mnemosyne
@Darkrose:
But she DIDN’T exclusively use a private email account, so that’s a lie right there.
Roger Moore
@Darkrose:
That’s some grade-A bullshit. I honestly think using the private emails sporadically is a worse sign than using one all the time. Hillary can plausibly claim she was using a private server because the government IT department couldn’t do what she wanted, and all her work email was treated the same. But using a private server for some things but not others is damn suspicious. If the regular server is good enough for most of your work, what’s wrong with it the rest of the time? The only plausible explanation is that there’s some stuff they’re worried about other people seeing, i.e. they’re doing something illicit.
sdhays
@Kay: Heck, Tillerson probably still uses his Exxon email address.
Major Major Major Major
@sdhays: yeah but he isn’t even pretending to be Secretary of State :P
Baud
@Darkrose:
IIRC, that’s not true. Her server was for nonclassified emails. In the end, someone sent one email that had classified information on it.
Baud
@Roger Moore: Agreed.
chopper
@Darkrose:
no she didn’t
no she didn’t.
FTFNYT.
Baud
@Baud:
Also, the NYT is garbage.
sdhays
@Roger Moore: Yep. And what about the 25 million emails (if memory serves) that the W White House “disappeared” using RNC email accounts? Why didn’t the New York Times demand Karl Rove be sent to prison over that? No classified information? HOW WOULD WE FUCKING KNOW???
TenguPhule
@Baud:
Garbage demands an apology for that libel.
efgoldman
@lamh36:
Occam says it happened because the Department of Defense started paying the NFL commercial rates to broadcast the ceremonies.
LongHairedWeirdo
@Kay: I guess I don’t understand why you feel they have to do something.
The e-mail issue was brought up after benghazipalooza had everyone sick – they couldn’t even find any horse DNA left, they beat that dead horse so long! – and it was always a nothingburger, hold the bun.
The FBI investigated – when possibly classified information ends up anywhere it isn’t supposed to be, the FBI investigates. Comey quite correctly realized that Hillary had never deliberately tried to share classified information, and knew there wasn’t going to be an indictment. The Republicans deliberately lied about this, even having prosecutors in their ranks claim that *of course* there were criminal charges to be brought!
The media, and much of we-the-people accepted this blatant misuse of government power for partisan purposes.
Hypocrisy is a non-starter. No one in power thought the Hillary investigation was legitimate in the first place.
Adam L Silverman
@Darkrose: She did not store classified information on a private server. Rather she received three emails that had paragraphs that were incorrectly marked as State Department confidential without header or footer classification markings. Every other email that was deemed to contain classified information are emails that were up classified as a result of the pre-release review for the FOIA requests. And the up classifications were based on assessments that the material had become classified in the time that had passed between the emails being sent and the pre-release review.
Baud
@Adam L Silverman: If the NYT Times had spent some time reporting on this issue, they would understand that.
mainmata
Well, he (Trump) may be accidentally mobilizing a really major counterrevolution. I don’t know if that will ever happen, though I would love to hope so. But I am very discouraged about the unthinking behavior of so many Americans.
But her emails!!!
@Darkrose:
That statement is highly misleading, if not completely inaccurate. Makes it sound like Hillary was routinely sending currently classified information via eamil. 1. With the exception of a handful of emails (all of which were improperly marked), the emails were not classified at the time they were sent, but rather classified later. 2. Hillary carried out confidential correspondence using the proper channels so by definition all of her business could not have been handled using he personal server. 3. As a bonus I’m going to have to add that the FYNYT still has this unnatural fixation on this being the Clinton’s server as opposed to an AOL server which is somehow better.
Omnes Omnibus
@TenguPhule: Shirley Manson will personally kick his ass for that.
noncarborundum
@Origuy: It was a tag team. Chad and some guy named Vinnie Zuela.
different-church-lady
@Omnes Omnibus: Manson is in prison, and don’t call me Shirley.
catclub
@chopper:
I amused myself last year by saying how unlikely it would be for the Cubs to Win and Trump to get elected.
Also, RWNJ’s always thought Obama was the antiChrist and have it turn out Trump is.
Ironic.
jonas
I’m sure armed forces veterans everywhere are happy to know that their service and sacrifice meant that citizens would be forced to salute the flag whenever their employers deemed it appropriate.
God, our president is an asshole.
Vhh
@BlueDWarrior: See thr Great Loyalty Oath Crusade in Catch 22.
PIGL
@M. Bouffant: because fans of pro sport events tend to be Republican fuck wit’s ? Just a wild ass guess, y’all.
PIGL
@different-church-lady: i I took great pleasure in watching the pathetic fuckwits Burning their season tickets on Facebook pages.
No thought has ever given me a greater joy. Except for the simultaneous consumption of every single Republican functionary from County-level vote suppresser up to the president in a searing blast of wyldfyre.
PIGL
@Baud: and the election was lost over this trivial matter. The conclusion to be drawn is that the owners of the New York Times wanted this outcome and set about to arrange it. They should all be strangled and their own intestines.
Uncle Cosmo
@Gin & Tonic: Reminds me of that venerable 60s singing duo, Chad & Jerrymander…