Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

This fight is for everything.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Consistently wrong since 2002

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

“Let’s not pretend [Trump] wants to engage in high-minded discourse.”

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

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

Please don’t feed the bears.

In after Baud. Damn.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

In my day, never was longer.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Because of wow. / Thursday Morning Open Thread: Because of Wow / Because of Uh-Oh…

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Because of Wow / Because of Uh-Oh…

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What’s on the agenda for the new (hopefully less news-intensive) day?

***********
Hate to bring this up first thing in the morning, but the Balloon Juice demographic (including me) often depends on the miracles of modern medicine. Personal miracles which may, unfortunately, be impacted by the disaster in Puerto Rico:

Federal officials and major drugmakers are scrambling to prevent national shortages of critical drugs for treating cancer, diabetes and heart disease, as well as medical devices and supplies, that are manufactured at 80 plants in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico.

Pharmaceuticals and medical devices are the island’s leading exports, and Puerto Rico has become one of the world’s biggest centers for pharmaceutical manufacturing. Its factories make 13 of the world’s top-selling brand-name drugs, from Humira, the rheumatoid arthritis treatment, to Xarelto, a blood thinner used to prevent stroke, according to a report released last year.

With business of nearly $15 billion a year at stake in Puerto Rico, drug companies and device makers are confronting a range of obstacles on the island: locating enough diesel fuel for generators to run their factories; helping their employees get to work from areas where roads are damaged and blocked, electricity is down and phones don’t work. Companies have taken out radio ads pleading with workers to check in. The pharmaceutical and device industries contribute to the employment of nearly 100,000 people on the island, according to trade groups.

“Some of these products are critical to Americans,” Scott Gottlieb, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, told a congressional panel this week. “A loss of access could have significant public health consequences.”

Dr. Gottlieb, who visited F.D.A. staff in Puerto Rico last week, told the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s subcommittee on Health: “We have a list of about 40 drugs that we’re very concerned about. It reflects maybe about 10 firms.”

Thirteen of the drugs, Dr. Gottlieb said, are “sole-source,” meaning the product is made only by one company. Those include H.I.V. medications, injectable drugs and sophisticated medical devices, although he did not name the products. The biggest problem, he said, was not damage to the factories, but the instability of the electric supply. Manufacturers are worried that a long-term lack of connection to a major power grid could jeopardize their products, and are also wary of relying on the more limited electrical grids that the territory is likely to activate as a first step to restoring power…

As someone who takes several old-fat-person medications every day, I’ve been trying to keep an eye on this, but the Trickster-God-blessed megacorps who profit from such drugs are making it very very difficult. There’s one DailyKos poster who’s put up a partial list, which also includes such “everyday” (heavily advertised, often prescribed) brand names as Crestor, Invokana, Eliquis, Lyrica… and Viagra. (Maybe more Repubs should be quietly informed about a potential shortage of that one.)

The DKos poster suggests that anyone taking any of these drugs would be well advised to consult their doctor(s) now, and that seems like a wise precaution to me.

Reader Interactions

235Comments

  2. 2.

    OzarkHillbilly

    For the record, those are elk (wapiti) in the video and they are the main prey species for the wolves (tho they certainly take deer too)(and I’m sure the occasional moose) The wolves have certainly transformed Yellowstone. This is all well studied and documented by researchers.

    But they’re still killing our elk.

  4. 4.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Xarelto, a blood thinner

    Great. It costs me $65 a month now. What do you want to bet the insurance isn’t going to pick up any of the price increases?

  5. 5.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Pshaw-what about the rights of heroic ranchers to free range thousands of head of cattle without fear of predation?

  9. 9.

    Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho

    @rikyrah: Good morning an hour later! To everyone, of course.

    AL, thanks so much for the video. Happy Thursday, Juicers.

  10. 10.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: It began in Misery on Sept 15, gets escalated on Nov 11, the peace process will begin on Nov 22, and all parties will declare “Peace with Honor” on Jan 15.

  19. 19.

    Kay

    Toward the end of the Supreme Court’s argument in Gill v. Whitford, about the future of partisan gerrymandering, there was a revealing moment about the place of the newest Justice in the esteem of at least one of his peers. In less than a year, Neil Gorsuch has dominated oral arguments, lectured his colleagues, and given dubiously appropriate public speeches. Questioning Paul Smith, the lawyer challenging Wisconsin’s contorted district lines, Gorsuch made another pedantic gesture.
    The argument had gone on for nearly an hour when Gorsuch began a question as follows: “Maybe we can just for a second talk about the arcane matter of the Constitution.” There was a rich subtext to this query. Originalists and textualists such as Gorsuch, and his predecessor on the Court, Antonin Scalia, often criticize their colleagues for inventing rights that are not found in the nation’s founding document. Gorsuch’s statement that the Court should spare “a second” for the “arcane” subject of the document was thus a slap at his ideological adversaries; of course, they, too, believe that they are interpreting the Constitution, but, in Gorsuch’s view, only he cares about the document itself. Gorsuch went on to give his colleagues a civics lecture about the text of the Constitution.

    Insufferable.

    Also, in Comedy at the Court, Roberts is (now) worried about the justices over-reaching on election law, because of course gutting the Voting Rights Act was very restrained.

  25. 25.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Kay:

    Antonin Scalia, often criticize their colleagues for inventing rights that are not found in the nation’s founding document.

    Like, let us say, an individual right to bear weapons? That’s certainly not found in the nation’s founding documents but Scalia was cool with it.

  26. 26.

    rikyrah

    Did I hear right on the radio this morning?
    The Las Vegas police aren’t sure if the Domestic Terrorist was a ‘ Lone Wolf’?
    He may have had help?

  27. 27.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    Voters in 11 swing states in last year’s presidential race, including Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, received more fake, junk and hyper-partisan information over Twitter than reliable, professionally produced news in the 10 days before the election, according to a British study of the social media platform’s potential impact.

    The analysis by researchers at Oxford University of about 781,000 tweets provides fresh evidence that entities seeking to spread misinformation used social media platforms as a powerful tool not only to distribute phony or misleading information, but also to direct it to voters in key jurisdictions in attempts to coax some groups to cast ballots and dissuade others from doing so.

    http://www.governing.com/topics/politics/tns-russia-election-twitter-swing-states.html

  30. 30.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I can see why Justice Roberts is worried about the court losing credibility:

    Trump thanked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “for all that he did” to make Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. McConnell’s efforts included announcing, within hours of the death of Justice Antonin Scalia more than a year ago, that he would block any effort by then-President Obama to fill Scalia’s seat.
    Last week, McConnell pulled out the nuclear option, changing Senate rules so that Gorsuch did not need the 60 votes to end Dems’ filibuster of his appointment, enabling Gorsuch to be confirmed on Friday by a slim 54-45 vote.
    In his ceremony remarks, Gorsuch also thanked McConnell for his efforts to get him confirmed to the lifetime appointment.
    CNN reported that, during the ceremony, Trump could be heard leaning in to Gorsuch and saying “Go get ‘em!”

  32. 32.

    Lapassionara

    Ruh roh. I have an appointment for an infusion this morning, to treat my RA, and the drug I get is on the list. I have been virtually symptom free because of this medication, and I don’t think I can just be given some other drug without some negative consequences. With this, and the news that the latest budget proposal cuts Medicare by a lot, I am planning on a stop by my congresswoman’s office this am. Grrrrrrrr.

  33. 33.

    BubbaDave

    Jokes about Viagra aside, it’s also used to control certain types of hypertension. (While we were trying to get my cat’s blood pressure down the vet told me that depending on the results of certain tests I might end up giving her teeny little Viagra pills every day. Fortunately we got it under control with Amlodipine and Enalapril, saving me awkward conversations with the pharmacist.)

  38. 38.

    NotMax

    @Baud

    Just think, though, how fetching the robes will be after their makeover by Ivanka once she’s on the court.

  40. 40.

    Baud

    WaPo brings some truth to violence.

    While mass shootings in the style of what we saw Sunday seem to be part of the American experience, much of the history of killing large groups of people with guns is connected to another experience common in, but not unique to, America: white supremacy.

    Significant time will be spent trying to uncover the motives of Stephen Paddock, a man whose actions seemed to surprise his own brother. The motives of many of the massacres throughout American history are not in question.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/the-fix/wp/2017/10/05/was-las-vegas-actually-the-worst-mass-shooting-in-u-s-history/

  42. 42.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    My youngest falls for fake news. It’s good- it’s given me a kind of window into how it happens, he lacks the context, the background information that would trigger questions about what he’s reading. I was looking at Twitter when there were some Trump voters saying Obama handled Katrina and that was genuine- they believed that. I bet they never paid attention prior to Trump. You run into the same thing with “sporadic” Dem voters- there were a whole group in ’08- people who had never paid attention prior to Obama. I feel as if Trump will run into the same problem Obama did- the “newer” partisans are TRUMP people- they’re not necessarily Republicans. If he doesn’t deliver they’ll be despondent. Obama had to take those people and make them Democratic voters and that’s a difficult transfer- you’re asking them to pay attention to stuff they really aren’t interested in. Trump will be even worse than Obama because Trump said it would be “easy”- it was the key to his appeal. It’s not easy. That’s a lie.

  43. 43.

    NotMax

    Hey, hive mind, what’s up with YouTube? Of late, the audio for anything is default set to Way Too Effin’ Loud.

  45. 45.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I’m far from a regular fan of Dana Milbank, but recently he’s been insightful, clever, and occasionally — as today — purely brilliant. (WaPo link.)

    EDIT: “A Narcissist’s Guide to Helping Others Understand It’s All About You.”

  48. 48.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @rikyrah: I have seen some scattered tweets suggesting that one man couldn’t have done the massacre by himself. I don’t see why not, so I haven’t followed them up. I haven’t seen any evidence that anyone else was involved.

    @Baud: I’ve been getting very annoyed at the “We must find a motive for this shooter.” He was a white guy of a certain age, the description for many people who feel that their emotional garbage can be dumped on everyone else. He had far too many guns. Add the two to some grievance, imagined or real, and you have the makings of a massacre. I don’t know why we need anything more to prevent future massacres.

  49. 49.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I know everyone disagrees with me but I think Ginsburg should have retired. Kagan and Sotomayor are fine and her replacement would have been fine too- different person, obviously, but well-qualified and liberal. Ultimately it’s not about her. I keep going back to that. We have age restrictions in Ohio state courts and the judges backed a referendum to roll it back and went down in flames. People think it’s reasonable that they have to retire past 70. It is reasonable. It’s not a personal insult- it’s not personal at all and looking at it as personal is wrong.

  50. 50.

    Baud

    @Kay: I would like tenure limits for the court. Justices sitting for 35+ years is simply too long. A new justice every two years means a new court every 18 years.

  51. 51.

    MomSense

    The Republicans don’t want us to talk about climate change in the aftermath of three catastrophic hurricanes hitting the US in one month. They don’t want us talking about gun violence prevention after the latest mass killing. They prefer to manufacture crises like voter fraud and actually devote resources for their fake problems.

  52. 52.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    I wanted Obama to have another appointment. I get it- it’s a lifetime appointment but “by the rules” doesn’t mean “right thing to do”. The fact is the other liberals on that court can protect Ginsburg’s legacy and can protect it longer.

  53. 53.

    MomSense

    @Kay:

    It would have made sense for her to retire but that’s no guarantee the Republicans wouldn’t have stolen her seat as well.

  55. 55.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Right. Look at this one:

    ) Each bankruptcy judge to be appointed for a judicial district, as provided in paragraph (2), shall be appointed by the court of appeals of the United States for the circuit in which such district is located. Such appointments shall be made after considering the recommendations of the Judicial Conference submitted pursuant to subsection (b). Each bankruptcy judge shall be appointed for a term of fourteen years, subject to the provisions of subsection (e). However, upon the expiration of the term, a bankruptcy judge may, with the approval of the judicial council of the circuit, continue to perform the duties of the office until the earlier of the date which is 180 days after the expiration of the term or the date of the appointment of a successor. Bankruptcy judges shall serve as judicial officers of the United States district court established under Article III of the Constitution.

  56. 56.

    NotMax

    Op-ed in NY’s Daily News takes a small step approach to gun violence.

    Have issues with it’s temerity, certainly, but then again small steps may be all we can hope for in the current political climate.

    @Cheryl Rofer

    Yes and yes again. The too oft repeated search for The One True Answer has always been simplistic – grating.

  57. 57.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    To be honest, it’s pretty obvious now that not enough of our voters really care about the Supreme Court.

  61. 61.

    Princess

    I am starting to worry about the Virginia governors race. Gillespie is bringing a gun to a knife fight and walking all over Northam. I am worrying we’re going to lose that governorship and no one seems to be paying attention to it.

  62. 62.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Baud: I’m curious, too, but all too often The Media pronounces that as The Cause, and we know that you can’t deter people for random personal quirks that result in their shooting a few hundred people. So I’ve been on the warpath about this.

  63. 63.

    Baud

    @Kay: Lifetime appointments don’t make sense in the modern age. And I find the inevitable but understandable death watch creepy.

  64. 64.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Baud: There’s speculation that the shooter actually wanted to attack attendees of a concert held the previous week featuring Lourde and Chance the Rapper. That would have been a much more racially diverse crowd than the one he attacked. I’m assuming the shooter snapped and simply shot up a crowd versus having any motive that could possibly make any sense.

  67. 67.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Kay: What would have stopped McConnell from doing what he did when Scalia died if RBG had retired from SCOTUS? Nothing that I can think of.

  70. 70.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Oh, God, tell me about it. My son’s the same way. I don’t directly refute his fake news bulletin, I just raise questions. I’ll be like “EXCEPT Teddy Kennedy was dead by then” and I can see his eyes glaze over and he goes back to you tube videos :)

    He’s not really interested in this- he follows music online.

    When my eldest was in high school his “honors” history teachers gave parents a quiz on back to school night. It was simple questions- who is the Secretary of State, like that. It was Condi Rice at that time. Like 90% of 10 parents in the room got the questions wrong and that is the parents who go to back to school night and have kids in an honors class. I thought it was good because a lot of parents are insufferable about their own supposed superior education and it’s bullshit.

  76. 76.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    We had a 3rd generation common pleas judge have to retire last year. He’s much younger than some of the SCOTUS judges but he was falling asleep on the bench! I think we can say that. I think we can say “no falling asleep”.

    He’s lost though. I knew he would be. He had no life outside that job. I saw him in street clothes going in for a “VJ” (visiting judge) and he looked so sad. He’s way to the Right of me but he was always decent and fair but he had to go!

  78. 78.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Kay:

    Here’s my thing – the current system is designed so that presidents will be motivated to pluck Supreme Court justices too early in their career for the sake of ideology. At the federal appellate level, it is soft work, anyway. Rarely do they have longstanding records as *nuts and bolts* trial court judges, nor have they ANY appreciable experience in general practice. My personal opinion is that their experience – particularly at SCOTUS – of real life, real people issues is lacking.

    This is why shitheels like Neil Gorsuch can spew the kind of judicial philosophy that they do.

  80. 80.

    NotMax

    @Baud

    Yet you know, deep down, that no matter how dispassionately clinical it may be, it will be used to bolster a “Okay, then this was just a one-off then. Nothing more to see here, move on.” reaction.

  81. 81.

    SiubhanDuinne

    That scummy forced-birth Congressman who wanted his mistress to get an abortion has announced he will retire at the end of his current term. Not soon enough — if he had a scintilla of shame or integrity he would leave now — but good riddance anyhow to yet another Republican hypocrite.

  83. 83.

    Ohio Mom

    @Lapassionara: I was diagnosed with RA earlier this year (actually, I diagnosed myself and spent a couple of months convincing doctors).

    My case is very, very mild, treated easily by daily pills, and I am not complaining. But one thing I did not know before all my Goggling is that RA can potentially kill you.

    I had thought it was merely aches and pains, and maybe decreased ability to use one’s limbs. I have a newfound appreciation of how serious a disease it is, and how essential regular treatment is.

    There ought to be a law that essential medications are made in at least two different continents. IIRC, there are some things that are only made in China at this point, including abscorbic acid (Vitamin C and used in food preservation). I think this is a matter of national security.

  86. 86.

    germy

    @Ohio Mom:

    I diagnosed myself and spent a couple of months convincing doctors

    That’s what bugs me the most about doctors.

    We’ve all been spoiled by the fine doctors on TV who are medical Sherlock Holmes and can diagnose and treat.

    Every doctor I’ve ever seen is great at treating, but horrible at diagnosing.

    It can sometimes be a minor problem, and it can sometimes be a matter of life and death.

  87. 87.

    A Ghost To Most

    Fuck Gorsuch, and fuck Michael Bennet for enabling him. Bennet is dead to me, and I intend on supporting any Democrat who primaries him.

  91. 91.

    NorthLeft12

    @OzarkHillbilly: I guess the wolves are an example of good refugees. Although calling them refugees is not correct as they were captured and transported from Canada [I believe] to Yellowstone.

  92. 92.

    Betty Cracker

    @SiubhanDuinne: Like you, I am no fan of Milbank, but that was a funny column. The ONE silver lining to the Orange Fart Cloud is that these times allow old-school, shoe-leather journos like Fahrenthold to shine and render formerly insufferable pundits like Milbank and Rubin readable and even enjoyable.

  93. 93.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @NotMax: I think you are misunderstanding me a little. People, on a very personal basis, want to know why so that they can make sense of the senseless. It is never dispassionate or clinical, it is very messily human. It is a search for reassurance in the idea that, “Well in that case it can’t happen to me.” then they will feel safe and secure again, and yes as you said, “Nothing more to see here, move on.” because that’s what they want to do, get on with their lives.

  94. 94.

    Kay

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    My personal opinion is that their experience – particularly at SCOTUS – of real life, real people issues is lacking.

    Me too but no one protects SCOTUS judges like lawyers. My husband and I make fun of Roberts because the hosannas were so over the top “smartest lawyer EVER in the history of the world!” They had nothing left when they got to Alito! They had crowned Roberts King of the Lawyers and there’s nothing smarter than that!

    Just take it down a notch. The court won’t crumble if we treat them like human beings instead of demi-gods. They get old. They get sick. They have egos and opinions and biases. They’re human.

    Kagan and (I think) Sotomayor addressed what you’re talking about at some sort of forum- they are asking whether justices should all come from the same “pipeline”- one set of colleges, one set of experiences. They’re questioning whether there’s enough diversity of experience among them, which I think is brave and overdue.

  95. 95.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    My personal opinion is that their experience—particularly at SCOTUS—of real life, real people issues is lacking.

    At least once a term I do a spit-take when one of the justices reveals complete ignorance of something most people would think of as ordinary, coping-with-everyday-life knowledge. They are so cosseted.

  96. 96.

    Elizabelle

    @Kay:

    This is a depressing thread. Totally agree that the Notorious RBG should have retired. Would bet she thinks so too, privately.

    Agree, also, with baud’s suggestion on an 18-year term for Justices. Limits the damage a winger can do.

    For lighter fare: I put this up on OTR thread too:

    Here’s audio from the last interview Tom Petty did with the Randy Lewis for Los Angeles Times. It’s just over an hour long. Maybe 4 days before he passed.

    Tom Petty: The final interview

    This is not the Tom Petty story that I intended to write.

    Though I was more than thrilled to catch up with Petty, whom I had interviewed before, I had no clue that this would turn out to be the last, for me and for him — that he would die just a few days later after suffering a massive heart attack at age 66.

    This is not the way things were supposed to happen.

    When I sat down with Petty in the outer room of the cozy but fully equipped recording studio at his home above Malibu beach, the idea was for him to reflect on the wildly successful 40th anniversary tour he and the Heartbreakers had wrapped less than 48 hours earlier at the end of three sold-out nights at the Hollywood Bowl.

    …. He was looking forward to continuing his involvement with the Tom Petty radio channel for the SiriusXM satellite radio service, including the show he organizes and hosts personally, “Tom Petty’s Buried Treasure,” in which he picks songs that he loves.

    “I love doing my ‘Buried Treasure’ show,” he said, ever the rock star in his military-style jacket, loose fitting pants and aviator shades, even while espousing fan-boy sentiments. “It keeps me listening like I used to do. I always listen. I could come home and I would spend the rest of the night just lying on the floor or the sofa listening to albums. It was like a movie to me. I still do really, and doing the radio show ensures that I’ll be sitting there listening.”

    After six rewarding but also physical demanding months on (mostly) and off (hardly) the road, Petty was supposed to get a moment to take a deep breath, relax and enjoy the return to domestic life with Dana, his wife of 16 years, and the rest of their family, including his two adult daughters, Adria and Annakim Violette, from his first marriage; Dana’s son, Dylan, from her previous marriage; and their 4-year-old granddaughter, Everly Petty.

    I wish Sirius would make those radio shows available, even to non-Sirius subscribers. Gold mine there, apparently, and a lot of interest in and love for Mr. Petty. Keep me posted if you all hear anything.

  99. 99.

    Kay

    @Steeplejack (phone):

    Kennedy is the worst on that. I turn into a raving populist reading him- “listen old man that is NOT how this works”

    OMFG his voting opinions! As it everyone lives at the same address for 100 years and has a wallet full of ID at the ready.

    He needs a week in a municipal court. Field trip! He needs a parade of confused and unprepared citizens wandering in and out trying to figure out their “paperwork”.

  100. 100.

    Shalimar

    @rikyrah: The Las Vegas sheriff said last night that he may have had help. I don’t really get it. He bought the weapons, attached the bump stocks, maybe practise shooting them, bought the surveillance cameras, checked into the room and transported everything up, set up the cameras and guns, knocked out the windows, then started firing. Am I missing any steps in the plan?

    There are lots of steps in there where he could have gotten help, but I don’t see any where it would be necessary to tell the helper what he was planning to do.

  101. 101.

    germy

    18-year term for Justices. Limits the damage a winger can do.

    But what worries me is a liberal justice being retired during an administration like the one we’re currently… enduring.

  103. 103.

    Elizabelle

    @OzarkHillbilly: I think when we should change that phrase to “the politicization and purchasing of everything.”

    Hugely monied interests bought the think tanks, bought the lawyers, bought the media outlets.

    Americans do not realize how much they have fallen for propaganda emanating from same. Who benefits from all this polarization?

  106. 106.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Steeplejack (phone):

    Particularly among conservative appellate jurists, there’s an absence of empathy regarding the consequences of their decisionmaking. This thinking also infects some aspects in the center as well (read Lemieux at LGM when he talks about the court – the pretense that there is anything hard and fast is infuriating).

  107. 107.

    NotMax

    @OzarkHillbilly

    Personally adhere to the school of “Yes, it’s senseless and ipso facto does not, can not and will not neatly fit into a nattily wrapped box” and also be capable of moving on with my life.

    Others, of course, may differ.

  108. 108.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Shalimar: The sheriff was I think, referring to the explosives paddock had in his possession, that they were too sophisticated for someone with out any training to concoct. Obviously I don’t know if that is true or not but I think that is the sheriff’s opinion.

  111. 111.

    kindness

    I would laugh so hard if the price of V (the little blue pill) went through the roof because facilities in Puerto Rico are damaged. The demographic it would affect is exactly Trump & his blowhards (blowsofts?).

  113. 113.

    Humboldtblue

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    Some of them are getting smarter as well. Here’s a story from Siskiyou county where one rancher has learned to train his cattle to react to the threat from a predator.

    In a report available on the website, Coats indicates that the approach is driven by the theory that teaching cattle to calmly herd together at the first signs of danger is better than promoting behaviors that see them scatter – which pack predators rely on to cull old, young, or sick members of the herd. On the other end of the spectrum, Coats notes that more aggressive cows can also present a problem – separating themselves from the herd to chase down wolves can open them up to attack as well.

  115. 115.

    Shalimar

    @OzarkHillbilly: That makes sense. Though Paddock had no job or anything else he had to do so that is plenty of free time to learn a new skill. But the sheriff is most likely an expert or employs experts, and I am not.

  116. 116.

    Betty Cracker

    @Elizabelle: Earlier this week when I was driving, I heard part of an NPR program that was running an interview with Tom Petty from about 10 years ago. Such a thoughtful, down-to-earth guy. The interviewer asked about his childhood in Gainesville and how he got started. The question was something like, “You grew up in Gainesville, FL, where a branch of the University of Florida is located, is that correct?” And Petty said, “No ma’am — it’s not just a branch — the whole thing is there!” Made me laugh.

    When I was at UF in the late 80s, I went to a party at a house that was allegedly the one where Petty grew up, and everyone at the party was marveling about that. Petty would have been amused, no doubt. Near campus, there’s a retaining wall by a street that the city ceded to graffiti artists decades ago. Someone painted a tribute to Petty there earlier this week. I bet he would have got a kick out of that too.

  117. 117.

    Laura

    @rikyrah: And she used so few choice words to do so -one man one vote!
    May she live for years. RBG, she’s a towering intellect and has no f’s left to give.

  119. 119.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Shalimar: Well for the record, the FBI kind of disagreed with him. Outside of my Anarchists Cookbook, I know nothing of explosives and the only thing I learned from the AC is “Don’t do this at home.”

  120. 120.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Humboldtblue:

    So essentially, they’re training out some levels of domesticity. I guess if you consider how Cape Buffalo destroy predators, it makes sense.

  123. 123.

    John

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    I don’t know why we need anything more to prevent future massacres.

    Because it can’t be the guns. It can never be the guns. We must find some other defect afflicting Paddock so we can then pretend to address that scourge, because it can never, ever be the guns. I would think this was obvious after Adam Lanza murdered a classroom full of children with an AR-style rifle, and our nation bravely turned to face the dangers of… mental illness.

  124. 124.

    rikyrah

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    @Shalimar: The sheriff was I think, referring to the explosives paddock had in his possession, that they were too sophisticated for someone with out any training to concoct.

    You can buy someone with training, right?

    But, doesn’t the internet have everything you need to know?

  125. 125.

    Steeplejack

    @OzarkHillbilly, @Shalimar:

    On MSNBC they just said that Paddock had “cannisters of tannerite” (I think) in his car. Supposedly that is a very low-grade explosive used to make exploding targets (so you can see if you hit them from hundreds of yards away).

    There is some slippery language here. “Explosives” could mean the raw “active ingredient,” like tannerite or C4, or it could mean the cliché TV cop show image of a completely wired-up bomb with complicated wires and a timer attached. The sheriff, at least as his message is filtering out, sounds like he’s on a slippery slope. Hopefully there will be clarification at some point.

    So far I haven’t seen anything that would indicate Paddock had help. He had several days to hump all that equipment up to his room. Just take a suitcase or two at a time and make multiple trips. One question I do have is if a maid noticed anything, or did he just have the “Do not disturb” sign hung out the whole time?

  126. 126.

    rikyrah

    @John:

    I would think this was obvious after Adam Lanza murdered a classroom full of children with an AR-style rifle, and our nation bravely turned to face the dangers of… mental illness.

    And, Dolt45 signed a bill making it EASIER for the mentally ill to get guns.

    Uh huh
    Uh huh

  127. 127.

    bystander

    I can’t remember where I heard it, but supposedly the Las Vegas shooter had an elaborate escape plan that the reporter said could not be executed without another person helping. Never heard more about it.

    Bob Torricelli is on Stephanie Ruhle. Smart guy but sorry, Bob, it will always be too soon.

  128. 128.

    Betty Cracker

    It’s so pleasant and mild outside that I briefly considered moving my worldwide headquarters to the backyard for the day, for the first time since May. But then I had a look at the radar; we’re about to get whacked with a whole lot of rain. Oh well.

  129. 129.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    I’m going to guess this about Paddock – my suspicion is that he’d had a string of really bad losses and perceived that his resources were dwindling badly. He may have had an insane number of comp points, and wanted to lash out at the industry (and place) that ruined him using the main resource he had left, his gun collection.

    As a roller with comp points, he’d have zero difficulty getting bellstand assistance to bring the three or four heavy duffels up to the room (“I’m presenting at the XYZ conference coming up, and these are display items”). That $100,000 shipped off to the Philippines may represent everything he had available to get – it was the last of it.

    Sheriff Vegas is going to have to torture this for a while before he comes up with explanations – too many Venn diagrams of interest intersect. We have white gun culture, lax gun laws, enticement of whales and perpetuating gambling addiction, the comp point system, treatment of addiction.

    It’s sloppy, and very much tied into the compulsive gambling.

  130. 130.

    Bob'sDaniel

    @OzarkHillbilly: Nothing “sophisticated” about Tannerite. It’s freely available to anyone who can legally purchase a firearm. It’s a two part explosive that will detonate from the impact of a high velocity rifle bullet. Long-range shooters use it for instant verification that they’ve hit their target. It’s also very popular with people who like to play with things that go “boom!”.

  131. 131.

    Kay

    Recently installed U.S. Attorney Justin Herdman said he has dismantled the office’s civil rights unit and has established a new division that will focus on prosecuting violent crime.
    The civil rights unit served as the crown jewel of the office under former top prosecutors Steve Dettelbach and Carole Rendon and handled some of the most high-profile criminal prosecutions under those administrations. Herdman said such cases will still be prosecuted, though by different units in the office. Herdman’s violent crime unit will use the power of the federal government to build bigger conspiracy cases and target gangs.

    The mythical “libertarian wing” of the Republican Party has disappeared again.

    Since Trump hires won’t be protecting civil rights, we should get some Democrats elected state level.

  132. 132.

    chopper

    @rikyrah:

    no wonder trump loves gorsuch, they’re two peas in a pod. militantly ignorant and pompous AF about it, fake it til you make it” types.

  133. 133.

    rikyrah

    Oh, look who’s whining…
    It’s so hard to get rid of the 20th Century and bring me my tax cuts….

    ……………….

    Angry GOP donors close their wallets
    ‘I’m sick and tired of nothing happening,’ one contributor says of the party’s legislative failures.
    By ALEX ISENSTADT and GABRIEL DEBENEDETTI
    10/05/2017 05:02 AM EDT

    Republicans are confronting a growing revolt from their top donors, who are cutting off the party in protest over its inability to get anything done.

    Tensions reached a boiling point at a recent dinner at the home of Los Angeles billionaire Robert Day. In full view of around two dozen guests, Thomas Wachtell, a retired oil and gas investor and party contributor, delivered an urgent message to the night’s headliner, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: Just do something.

    Wachtell, who has given tens of thousands of dollars over the years to Senate Republicans, recalled that McConnell responded defensively. Passing legislation takes time, the Republican leader responded, and President Donald Trump didn’t seem to understand how long it required.

    “Anybody who was there knew that I was not happy. And I don’t think anybody was happy. How could you be?” said Wachtell, who has previously given over $2,000 to McConnell but recently stopped donating to Senate GOP causes. “You’re never going to get a more sympathetic Republican than I am. But I’m sick and tired of nothing happening.”

    With the GOP’s agenda at a virtual standstill on Capitol Hill, the party is contending with a hard reality. Some of the party’s most elite and influential donors, who spent the past eight years plowing cash into the party’s coffers in hopes of accomplishing a sweeping conservative agenda and undoing Barack Obama’s legislative accomplishments, are closing their wallets.

  134. 134.

    Lapassionara

    @Ohio Mom: lt is a wicked disease, but the treatments available now are amazingly effective. My grandmother had it in the late 60’s, early 70’s, when there was very few treatments, other than lots of aspirin. I hope your case remains mild.

  135. 135.

    rikyrah

    UH HUH
    UH HUH

    Lips pursed

    …………………………………….

    White House walks back Trump’s Puerto Rico comments as Wall Street reels
    Trump had suggested the U.S. would help wipe out the U.S. territory’s debt
    By BEN WHITE and COLIN WILHELM
    10/04/2017 02:57 PM EDT

    NEW YORK — On Tuesday night, President Donald Trump casually told Geraldo Rivera on Fox News that the United States would have to wipe out $75 billion in debt owed by Puerto Rico to bondholders around the world.

    Wall Street promptly freaked out, sending Puerto Rican bonds into a tailspin and leading the White House to move swiftly to clean up Trump’s seemingly offhand remarks.

    On Wednesday, the Trump administration indicated it has no current plans to take the unprecedented, politically dangerous and probably illegal step of wiping out the owners of Puerto Rico’s bonds in the wake of Hurricane Maria’s devastation. Trump’s own budget chief quickly walked the president’s comments back.

    “I wouldn’t take it word for word with that,” OMB Director Mick Mulvaney said on CNN. “We are not going to deal right now with those fundamental difficulties that Puerto Rico had before the storm.”

    Added Mulvaney: “Puerto Rico’s going to have to figure out how to fix the errors that it’s made for the last generation on its own finances.”

    Numerous senior administration officials and a White House spokesman did not respond to requests on Wednesday morning for further comment on Trump’s remarks.

    Mulvaney was cleaning up after a remarkable Trump interview that sent Wall Street bond traders and holders of Puerto Rico’s debt scrambling overnight Tuesday. The island’s general obligation bonds dropped from 56 cents on the dollar to just 36 cents early on Wednesday as investors tried to figure out exactly what the White House might actually do.

  136. 136.

    Betty Cracker

    @rikyrah: The gun-splanation is that overturning that Obama-era restriction is reasonable because some indeterminate number of people who are deemed not competent to handle their financial affairs actually are competent to handle firearms. We must always err on the side of allowing folks to amass arsenals, because freedom.

  137. 137.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Cheryl from Maryland: Yeah, while I see that Northam is running a bit of a quiet and nice-guy sort of campaign, which is easy to find underwhelming, I think that’s what the dr. ordered for Democrats in Virginia.

  138. 138.

    Steeplejack

    @Kay:

    I used to cover various local courts as a newspaper reporter about a hundred years ago. It amazes me that high-level jurists seem not only to have no experience of such venues but to not even have heard that such things exist. What do these people do before they get appointed to the bench?

    Like you said, a one-week field trip would be eye-opening for them.

  141. 141.

    rikyrah

    Stop Giving Bernie Sanders a Pass on Gun Control
    ………………………………………………………………………

    In the mean time, Bernie Sanders has been releasing statements and tweets that can make someone lacking historical perspective believe that Bernie’s position on guns and gun violence is nearly identical to your garden variety progressive Democrat.

    That is why historical perspective is important. The truth about Bernie’s history is that the one thing that the NRA was pivotal to the launch of Bernie’s Congressional career. The truth about Bernie’s history is that for the longest time Bernie Sanders has opposed mandatory waiting periods, background checks if they happen to inconvenience a potential mass shooter, and supported the NRA’s pet project of special corporate immunity for gun manufacturers and dealers. The truth of Bernie Sanders is that he voted against the Brady bill five times, and had no serious interest in progressive gun legislation until he became a serious candidate for president.

    Of course, the Feinstein bill is limited in its scope and narrow in its target. It does not enact broad gun control policies, choosing instead to merely outlaw equipment that turns a legal weapon into an illegal one. It is designed to attract the Republican support it will need to be passed. One might even say it’s one of those dreaded political things: pragmatic.

    So ask yourself, why is Bernie Sanders, who screamed at the top of his lungs during the 2016 campaign that pragmatic, incremental progress was too insignificant, who berated his Democratic primary opponent for not being bold enough to propose things that had no chance of passing, be suddenly interested in the most incremental piece of gun legislation?

    The answer would seem to be obvious. This bill is a chance to support something that looks like gun legislation but doesn’t really affect the bottomlines of the gun lobby, while at the same time providing the convenience of limelight. This is a golden opportunity for Bernie to showcase his faux-gun control credentials while not having to worry about offending his white, rural, gun-loving NRA constituents in Vermont.

  143. 143.

    rikyrah

    SO tired of these articles.

    ………………..

    Ivanka Trump rebrands — again
    By
    Kate Bennett and Betsy Klein, CNN

    For the curious observer, one of the best ways to learn more about Ivanka Trump, senior adviser to the President of the United States, was to become one of her some 3.9 million followers on Instagram. There, in color, sometimes with witty captions, were myriad photographs providing a peek behind the curtain of one of Washington’s most compelling new residents.

    Her three children, Arabella, 6, Joseph, 3, and Theodore, 1, were the true stars of the feed. Theodore taking his first — documented — crawl in the White House State Dining Room in January. Joseph pressing his face against the window glass in the Oval Office in February. Arabella catapulting herself down the White House steps outside the West Wing in April. An at-home-after-a-long-day impromptu dance party in May, Arabella in arabesque pose inside the White House China Room, with a caption from Ivanka about being ready for the weekend in June.

    It was an unprecedented visual diary of a first family in modern times.

    And then it stopped.

    With few exceptions, Trump’s family-centric social media habits have been curbed. Amid a barrage of negative press in recent weeks, Trump has shifted her strategy, instead portraying herself through the lens of her White House position. That role has changed in recent months with the installation of Ret. Gen. John Kelly as chief of staff, a move that has helped refine the first daughter’s West Wing responsibilities.

    The abrupt switchover from documenting all aspects of her lifestyle to almost all White House-centric posts is a curious move for Trump, for years a savvy entrepreneur and businesswoman who knows about the importance of marketing a brand.

    Her streamlined image rehab signals Trump has buttoned down the private side, closing the window on observers and critics, essentially curating a new focus.

  146. 146.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    The mythical “libertarian wing” of the Republican Party has disappeared again.

    They were always crackpot liars, Kay.
    Who only discovered civil liberties once a Black man became President.

  147. 147.

    d58826

    So the Trump team filmed a highlight reel about yesterday’s visit to LV? The one I saw had him visiting injured folks in the hospital with lots of smiles and joking. One room even had the hastag @MAGA on the wall mounted status board. There were a number of images of the first responders/medical people/etc grouped together like a high school reunion photo. And sure enough front and center in each one was Der Fuhrer.

    I’m old enough to remember when the rabid right counted the number of times Obama used the word ‘I’ in a statement and went ballistic if that number exceeded 0. And I don’t remember ever seeing Obama pose with people in the way Der Fuhrer did yesterday. IIRC victims and families were seen privately, not on camera as part of a future campaign ad.

  148. 148.

    bemused

    Fascinating impact wolves have had on Yellowstone. Wolf haters won’t believe any of it.

    I just heard some bald eagle stories. A couple often watch bald eagles with binoculars across from their summer cabin on Lake Vermilion, MN. They were amazed to see a bald eagle drown a blue heron in the lake and eat it. Pretty rare thing to see even up in the north woods.

    A woman living on another lake heard an unusual racket sounding like ducks. When she went to see what was up with the ducks, she saw a bald eagle casually swooping up the ducklings one by one and swallowing them all. Mama ducks couldn’t do a thing about it.

  149. 149.

    MomSense

    @d58826:

    Did you see the 9/11 video the white house released? No pictures of first responders or anyone they were supposedly honoring on that day. It was all about hair furor.

  151. 151.

    rikyrah

    It’s Steve Bannon’s Party Now
    by Nancy LeTourneau
    October 5, 2017

    The outcome of the Republican Senate run-off in Alabama didn’t surprise anyone. But the narrative coming out of the race is beginning the shape the dynamics of the GOP heading into the 2018 midterms. As I have been saying, it is shaping up to be a battle between the establishment and the insurgents, fueled by the oligarchs who want to control the GOP.

    Leading the insurgents is Steve Bannon, with the backing of his own personal oligarch, Robert Mercer. Coming out of the Alabama run-off, that is the side with all of the juice right now. Take a look at what conservative David Drucker wrote about that yesterday:

    Steve Bannon has begun meeting with Republican donors at their request, as party financiers in the wake of the Alabama special election attempt to learn what President Trump’s former chief strategist has planned for 2018.

    Some GOP bundlers, in Washington this week for a Republican National Committee fundraiser, sought meetings with Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News, to forge relationships and better understand his plans to target Republican incumbents in 2018 primaries…

    “It seems like McConnell’s star is fading and Bannon’s is rising. I wanted to break bread with the guy and figure out his thinking,” said Dan Eberhart, a Republican donor from Phoenix who was scheduled to meet with Bannon on Wednesday.

    Drucker goes to say that many of these donors are angry that Republicans failed to repeal Obamacare and are worried that they will also fail to pass tax cuts. So they’re ready to bolt. Bannon could be their Pied Piper.

  155. 155.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Baud: Probably true but in that case it seems likely that any D-R race without a headlining gaffe or some other extrinsic development will turn out pretty much the same way as the last one — which bodes well for Northam. And Gillespie is SUCH a sniveling chinless pus-bag I have a hard time seeing him catching fire.

  156. 156.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Betty Cracker:

    Here’s the thing – it is an insanely high bar to stripping people of their ability to manage money. By the time they can’t (and I’d argue the bar shouldn’t be as high as it is- there are some weeks where I shouldn’t be allowed so much as a $20, because I’ll burn it on something stupid), they’re too far gone to even cover well. I’ve had those investigative conversations with the elderly, and they all go the same way.

  157. 157.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Kay:

    hey are asking whether justices should all come from the same “pipeline”- one set of colleges, one set of experiences.

    Cooley grads are shamefully underrepresented on SCOTUS!

  159. 159.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Steeplejack (phone):

    At least once a term I do a spit-take when one of the justices reveals complete ignorance of something most people would think of as ordinary, coping-with-everyday-life knowledge. They are so cosseted.

    Such as every corruption case they hear. Have they ever upheld a conviction?

  161. 161.

    Kay

    @Steeplejack:

    New judges have to go to judge school in Ohio. It’s a week of learn’in. I call it judge school- not the official name. Anyway, one of them told me the state supreme court asked citizens what they hate most about court and it’s the “clubby” feel- they feel clueless and excluded. Trial judges are different than appeals courts, but still. A little time in the trenches wouldn’t hurt.

  163. 163.

    Kay

    @Steve in the ATL:

    Cooley grads are shamefully underrepresented on SCOTUS!

    Well, no but the flip side of that is should it be two law schools? Can they diversify A SMIDGE?

    It wasn’t always like this. They used to come from a broader cross section. Kagan just wants it discussed. I agree. It shouldn’t be verboten like they’re unquestioned, like THIS resume and no other.

  164. 164.

    Betty Cracker

    @magurakurin: Whoa if true. Last night, I placed a $20 wager with the mister that Trump would not complete his first term. If that rumor bears out, I’ll see if I can up it to $100.

  165. 165.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    Ivanka is moving into education because of course she is. It’s the place for people who think they know something because they went to school. Everyone is an expert!

    She wants 5 year olds coding because that’s the fashionable thing to promote. I am so sick of these people.

  166. 166.

    germy

    Conservative columnist calls for repeal of 2nd Amendment — and destroys gun nuts’ favorite arguments

    Conservative New York Times columnist Bret Stephens said in an explosive op-ed piece on Thursday that the Second Amendment should be repealed. “I have never understood the conservative fetish for the Second Amendment,” Stephens wrote.

    Then he doesn’t understand racism. Because every shooter’s pro-gun blog I’ve ever seen, the “inner city menace” and “dangerous thugs” are never far from their minds. It ain’t about hunting deer.

  167. 167.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Steve in the ATL:

    My personal favorite was an opinion (I think Scalia drafted it) that upended every probate claims statute in the country.

    It was actually pretty simple – if someone died, creditors had a fixed period of time after an estate was filed to put forward a proof of claim. It made sense, and left with the creditor a duty to follow through on keeping up with debtors.

    Some outfit somewhere in the flatlands (Misery or Oklahoma, as I remember) mounted a challenge a couple of years after an estate had opened, paid out and closed. Said it was a due process violation as they had no notice. The new standard from SCOTUS requires estate fiduciaries to comb drawers, shoeboxes, cigar boxes and books for any potential claim and requires that notice is sent before the triggering of the statutory notice time.

    It completely ignored how recordkeeping falls apart in the final few years of life, how bills are thrown away and how bills get factored off, rendering appropriate notice impossible.

  170. 170.

    Shalimar

    @rikyrah: “A savvy entrepreneur and businesswoman who knows the importance of marketing a brand” looks exactly the same as a narcissist who hires people to create the image of herself that she sees, at least to me.

  171. 171.

    Kay

    @Steve in the ATL:

    Here’s the justices:

    “We’re not as diverse as some would like in many important characteristics — educational institutions, religion, places where we come from,” Justice Sotomayor said on Thursday at a judicial conference here.

    At the judicial conference here on Friday, Justice Kagan suggested that prior judicial experience or other deep engagement with the law was desirable given the broad social issues the Supreme Court sometimes decides. In those cases, she said, “law has a kind of values feel to it.”
    “Even in those cases, you have to understand that it’s still about law,” Justice Kagan said. “You don’t want a court of free-floating philosophers. You want a court of people who really care about law and are good at doing it and are experienced at doing it and who bring that worldview even to cases that involve matters of broad principle.”
    Both justices said that more diversity on the court would bolster public confidence in its work.

  173. 173.

    FlipYrWhig

    @germy: Yup. It’s “I can’t have the government coming for my guns because I’m gonna need them when society breaks down into anarchy and Those People try to take my shit.” Like Charles Bronson meets The Purge.

  174. 174.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Kay:

    Hell, Is settle for somebody who has tried at least two of each of the following cases, whether as judge or lawyer:

    – an urban strongarm robbery
    – a no asset divorce involving squabbles over children
    – a soft tissue injury
    – a child support case
    – a contractual dispute between two small businesses
    – a DUI
    – a domestic violence case
    – a small business regulatory appeal

    Instead, we get people who have ZERO understanding of where people really are, and we dole these jobs out to the nomenklatura at an early age.

  175. 175.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Kay: I agree with you; I was being facetious. The prevailing attitude seems to be that we should have only the best of the best on SCOTUS and Harvard and Yale are shorthand for that.

    If the NFL operated like that, you’d have a handful of football factory schools represented and incredibly talented players like Jerry Rice would never get a chance.

    ETA: and Princeton Law School has never had an alum on the court!

  177. 177.

    Kay

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    That’s why I thought Kagan and Sotomayor were brave to raise it, because that’s taboo, right? You’re not allowed to ask why all these people have the same resume. It’s the best resume, that’s why!

    I don’t know if you remember this but O’Connor used to go on and on about her time in a state legislature because she knew it set her apart.

  178. 178.

    MomSense

    On the subject of Yellowstone wolves, the coolest wolf evah was #302, the black wolf known as Casanova. He used his cunning and charm to romance females and become alpha male in a totally new way. There is an incredible documentary about him that I highly recommend especially if you want a real escape from the bullshit of life with the trump admin.

  181. 181.

    MomSense

    @germy:

    It’s about keeping uppity blahs and wimins in our place. There is a reason so many of these mass murderers have a history of domestic violence.

  182. 182.

    rikyrah

    Widespread corruption allegations add to Trump World’s troubles
    10/05/17 08:00 AM
    By Steve Benen

    The Washington Post reported late yesterday that Joel Clement, a scientist and policy expert at the Interior Department, was “removed from his job by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke shortly after” he disclosed how climate change affects Alaska Native communities. Clement was reassigned “to an accounting position for which he has no experience,” prompting him to resign.

    On his way out, however, the scientist noted that there are laws in place to prevent this kind of mistreatment – laws that Donald Trump’s cabinet secretary appears to have ignored. The department’s inspector general has launched an investigation into this and related reassignments.

    And while that obviously seems like a worthwhile probe, let’s not forget an important detail: Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, less than a year at his post, is also facing an investigation into his controversial travel habits, which isn’t to be confused with an unrelated probe into his alleged intimidation tactics against Republican senators during the health care fight.

    That’s quite a few probes for one cabinet secretary in one year, but as Slate’s Jamelle Bouie noted last night, the problem extends well beyond the Interior Department.

    Amid the chaos and dysfunction that marks Washington in the age of Trump, it can be easy to miss that this White House is corrupt. Remarkably, unbelievably, corrupt. […]

    Democracy needs trust to survive, and corruption erodes that trust. The longer it continues, the more it becomes just the background noise of our politics, the harder it is to plot a correction and restore the democratic faith necessary to tackle collective problems. If, like many in the Republican Party, one does not believe in collective action for public good, then this is not a problem. For those of us who do, however, it is a crisis.

  184. 184.

    Elizabelle

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: FWIW: your surmise re the LVegas shooter’s motives sound as good as any I’ve heard.

    Mostly, I don’t think the issue is the motive. It’s the fact a man was able to stockpile extremely lethal firearms, legally, and without anyone having a clue. Isn’t it the case that fuck the fucking NRA will not allow a registry? Further, these weapons should not be in the hands of citizens. Period. What’s legal and what works to protect our modern society are two different things.

    ===
    David Leonhardt and his team at the NY Times put up a fascinating chart of who the NRA supports in Congress. CLUE: all the big money goes to Republicans. All of it.

    Thoughts and Prayers and NRA Funding

    After the nice graphic:

    All of these representatives are Republican. The highest ranked Democrat in the House is Sanford Bishop, who ranks 41st in career donations from the N.R.A. Among the top 100 House recipients, 95 are Republican. In the Senate, the top two Democrats are Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who rank 52nd and 53rd — behind every Republican but Dan Sullivan of Alaska.

    The dirty ten are, in order, John McCain, Richard Burr, Roy Blunt, Thom Tillis, Corey Gardner, Marco Rubio, Joni Ernst, Rob Portman, Todd Young (Indiana), and Bill Cassidy (the genial doctor who lied to Jimmy Kimmel).

    John McCain is the top recipient, but that’s because of contributions to his 2008 presidential campaign. The outlier is Richard Burr of North Carolina, who is not far behind McCain and has never been a presidential candidate.

  185. 185.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Here’s the probate chunk of shit that I remembered. Wasn’t a Scalia draft (but he concurred), it was O’Connor:

    Clueless SCOTUS

    I actually agree with Rehnquist on this.

  186. 186.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    Here’s her new project:

    President Donald Trump directed the Education Department to invest a minimum of $200 million in grant funding each year to expand STEM and computer science education in schools, signing a presidential memorandum Monday. On Tuesday, the private sector announced an accompanying pledge of over $300 million for computer science programs.
    The effort was spearheaded by Ivanka Trump, a senior adviser to the President.

    I think we should spearhead an effort to tell school children the truth– that “studying” something for 20 minutes doesn’t make you an expert- they’ll have to work harder than that to get and dole out 300 million dollars, because they’re not Ivanka Trump.

    We’re sending them the wrong message. It ISN’T easy. It’s hard to get good at something- anything. They’ll have to stick with things longer than a news cycle. These shallow, coddled adults are NOT people to follow. Find someone better.

  187. 187.

    rikyrah

    Trump wants a Senate Intel Committee probe of US media outlets
    10/05/17 08:40 AM
    By Steve Benen

    The top two members of the Senate Intelligence Committee held an informal briefing for the press yesterday, updating the public on the state of their investigation into the Russia scandal. And while there weren’t any blockbuster revelations, Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) agreed with U.S. intelligence agencies about Vladimir Putin’s government having intervened in the American election on Donald Trump’s behalf.
    The president, meanwhile, would like the Senate panel to ignore the foreign adversary’s attack on our democracy, and instead turn its attention to a different matter entirely.

    “Why Isn’t the Senate Intel Committee looking into the Fake News Networks in OUR country to see why so much of our news is just made up-FAKE!”

    Yes, I know, we’ve all grown quite inured to routine Trump nonsense, but let’s not brush past the fact that the sitting president of the United States wants an investigation into American news organizations that publish reports he disapproves of.

    Trump’s authoritarian instincts do not serve him well in our system of government.

  188. 188.

    rikyrah

    White House urges public to disregard Trump rhetoric (again)
    10/05/17 10:41 AM
    By Steve Benen
    Last week, in one of his first public comments about Puerto Rico after it was devastated by Hurricane Maria, Donald Trump reminded Americans on the island that Puerto Rico is “billions of dollars in debt to Wall Street and the banks which, sadly, must be dealt with.” Even at the time, it was a bizarre thing to say given the scope and scale of the personal crises.

    This week, however, was nearly as odd. Trump told Fox News, in reference to Puerto Rico’s debt, “You know, they owe a lot of money to your friends on Wall Street, and we’re going to have to wipe that out. You can say goodbye to that. I don’t know if it’s Goldman Sachs, but whoever it is, you can wave goodbye to that.”

    No one knew quite what that meant, or whether the White House even has the authority to simply “wipe out” billions of dollars in debt, but the president’s rhetoric rattled bond markets and sparked some “chaos” in the finance industry.

  189. 189.

    gene108

    I am moving towards repealing the second amendment.

    It gets bent out of shape to allow guns to escape the sort of regulations we place on other consumer products.

    Someone mentioned on here recently, we track the amount of fertilizer people buy because of the OKC bombing and the amount of cold medicine people buy because of our meth problem, but the 2nd amendment prevents us from tracking guns.

    Also, we repealed Prohibition, but their are cities and counties across this country, which are dry, but life there goes on.

    The only way to regulate guns, with any reasonable measure is to repeal the 2nd amendment.

  191. 191.

    Kay

    @gene108:

    Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock booked rooms in a Chicago hotel facing the Lollapalooza music festival in August, a law enforcement official told USA TODAY on Thursday.
    Paddock, 64, booked one room at the Blackstone Hotel starting Aug. 1, two days before the festival opened. He booked a second room Aug. 3.
    Both rooms had a checkout date of Aug. 6, corresponding with the final day of the music festival that drew tens of thousands of concertgoers to Grant Park alongside Lake Michigan. It was unclear if Paddock ever used the room or was in Chicago during the festival, according to the law enforcement official, who was not authorized to discuss the case publicly.

    WTF with this guy?

  195. 195.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    President Donald Trump directed the Education Department to invest a minimum of $200 million in grant funding each year to expand STEM and computer science education in schools, signing a presidential memorandum Monday. On Tuesday, the private sector announced an accompanying pledge of over $300 million for computer science programs.
    The effort was spearheaded by Ivanka Trump, a senior adviser to the President.

    There’s a SCAM in here, somewhere.
    There’s ALWAYS a scam.
    WHO is deciding upon the grants – there, I just found your scam.
    Where’s the PUBLIC money coming from?

  197. 197.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    WTF with this guy?

    What’s up with the festivals?

    If this is about the gambling, then hurt the casino.

    This is very curious. Two festivals?
    We don’t have casinos in Chicago – no gambling connection.

  199. 199.

    bemused

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Hannity is right there at the top of the stupid asshole heap. No concert goer with any sense particularly veterans, etc would pull out a weapon in situation like that. They would be the most likely to get shot by police who wouldn’t know if they were the shooters or not.

  200. 200.

    magurakurin

    @gene108: people have to abandon the idea that it is a human right to own a gun. because it isn’t. it really isn’t. And it isn’t as if there are no examples of happy and prosperous societies without gun rights. Japan and Australia quickly come to mind.

  202. 202.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @rikyrah:

    The effort was spearheaded by Ivanka Trump, a senior adviser to the President.

    There’s a SCAM in here, somewhere.
    There’s ALWAYS a scam.
    WHO is deciding upon the grants – there, I just found your scam.
    Where’s the PUBLIC money coming from?

    Yup. One way or another, Ivanka’s going to make money from this, with probably a coin or two tossed in Betsy DeVos’ general direction.

  203. 203.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    I feel like by putting the unqualified person in charge of “women and children” they are SAYING those are less important issues- like any random person off the street can handle that!

    That has been happening for a LONG time in the US. It’s like issues are tiered in importance- “foreign policy” and “taxes” are serious and these “kitchen table” issues can just be put up for grabs.

    I’m sick of it. People spend their whole lives learning about these areas. Ivanka can’t just dash in with her half-ass portfolio and start policy-making. I refuse to treat her like she knows something. She didn’t earn that.

  206. 206.

    Elizabelle

    @gene108: I’m there. I’m for repealing the Second Amendment.

    Hit its supporters hard; we are good with any ground we gain. They’re actually on the slippery slope.

  207. 207.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    I think it goes back to the conservative idea of “bloodlines”- like she’s of course qualified because of who she is. Their weird fucking obsession with Obama’s father like he’s a racehorse or something.

    This is a fucked up idea! It’s anti-merit! It’s also a lie, because it doesn’t apply to the VAST majority of people who DO have to earn their jobs.

  209. 209.

    Barbara

    @Baud: I am totally speculating on Paddock’s motive because he apparently planned this in great detail, in advance (sending the GF abroad more or less seals that) but it wouldn’t surprise me if his motive might not simply be the fact that he could do it at all. Not my fantasy, but lots of people do things just because they can, like climbing Mt. Everest “because it was there.” Jared Loughner and James Holmes were pretty clearly undergoing psychotic or at least psychological break downs of the kind that are rare for people over the age of 40.

  210. 210.

    Baud

    @Elizabelle: That’s fine. But there’s also the single payer problem. It’s hard to do a flash cut (although here implementation is relatively straightforward).

  212. 212.

    Barbara

    @magurakurin: If Kelly resigns it will be because of Puerto Rico. For all we know he was trying hard to change the direction behind the scenes, and given his prior responsibilities in the region he must realize that the initial response was so inadequate that it looks like malicious intent. Just for an example, refusing to waive the Jones Act or the restrictions on food stamp use for Puerto Rico when they were immediately waived for Texas and Florida — until the refusal became public and subject to widespread outrage. How obvious does this have to be?

  214. 214.

    StringOnAStick

    I knew a couple that had wolves: they had spent a fortune fencing a 4 acre area and only had them as a way of taking them out of circulation from an idiot who was breeding wolf-dog hybrids. They’d had them all sterilized and were adamantly against them being kept as pets or bred like that, they preached against it constantly but they also knew these wolves would have been euthanized if they didn’t have them. They were by fat the exception as far as people who kept wolves go and in the late 1980’s and early 90’s there were more than a few people breeding these hybrids here so macho assholes could buy the ultimate badass dog.

    The main female was fairly well socialized to humans, all the rest stayed well hidden in the trees and rocks if any humans other than this couple were around. I was able to go inside the pen with the couple, sit down and the friendly female licked my face. She was a gorgeous Mexican wolf. I count it as one of the interesting experiences in my life.

  215. 215.

    MomSense

    @Miss Bianca:

    Bob Landis did one called The Rise of the Black Wolf and Rick McIntyre wrote a book about the wolves of Yellowstone and covers Casanova extensively.

    National Geographic’s Wild and PBS have a lot of videos about him.

    Ooh, just found some videos on youtube. Here’s one.

    The Rise of Black Wolf

    I love this wolf so much.

  216. 216.

    Steeplejack

    @germy:

    You’ve been doing an excellent job with your sourcing, but there’s a bit of a problem here. You bold “New York Times” as if that’s the source of your snippet, but it’s not. The snippet is about a Times piece, but it’s salted with opinions like “destroys gun nuts’ favorite arguments” and “explosive op-ed piece.” Maybe accurate, maybe not, but it would be nice to know who is expressing those opinions. To determine, for example, whether they are nutpicking or taking things out of context.

    And, yeah, maybe this is a minor example, but discipline in “minor” details is how you avoid major problems. Murky “provenance” is a big problem with crowd-sourced news on the Internet. And it will become more so with, for example, Russian bots polluting the information space.

  217. 217.

    Shalimar

    @magurakurin: That would be the MO if he was fired. Not sure about if he resigned, and I haven’t seen any rumor that Kelly was in any danger of being fired. And there are constant rumors fron the White House that everyone other than Jared, Ivanka, Hicks and Kelly are in imminent danger of being fired.

  218. 218.

    Elizabelle

    @Barbara: Could be Puerto Rico, could also be he’s gotten wind of some of what Mueller is investigating, that is just impossible to get out in front of, that he does not want to be associated with.

    But Puerto Rico (non-) response speaks for itself. Shameful episode. Republicans own this one.

  219. 219.

    Shalimar

    @Steeplejack: You must not be familiar with Rawstory’s brand of clickbait bombastic misleading headlines. They pretty much give away where the link led.

  220. 220.

    Elizabelle

    @Steeplejack: What’s germy’s source for that excerpt?

    And yeah, it sounded like Democrat-appealing clickbait that some of my FB friends put up. I avoid it like the plague. Prefer reputable sources, even if they’re slow on the uptake sometimes.

  221. 221.

    Princess

    @FlipYrWhig: Also true is that while Northam is being criticized for saying he’d work for Trump if it was good for Virginia (otherwise known as “when pigs fly”), he’s the one who feels confident enough to reach beyond his base to try to pick off moderate GOP votes, while the GOP Gillespie is still rallying his knuckle-dragging base with confederate statues and sanctuary cities. So that’s good. I just kinda wish there was more outside attention. But that could be counter-productive.

  223. 223.

    Barbara

    @Kay: Again just speculating, but he might have used this as a kind of mock field exercise, to determine the feasibility of what he was planning. Scary stuff.

  225. 225.

    Barbara

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Along the same lines, I have half seriously floated the idea that people should get significantly increased chances for admission to medical school if they have trained and worked a few years as nurses or EMTs. It would give experience to the blueblood children of doctors who see medical school as a kind of family entitlement, and it would improve the chances of many underrepresented groups by making experience a more important credential than it currently is.

  226. 226.

    khead

    If this is about the gambling, then hurt the casino.

    I definitely think this is about gambling. Been saying it to Mrs. Khead ever since I heard how much he gambled.

    And he DID hurt the casinos. All of them. “Vegas” was the target.

  230. 230.

    burnspbesq

    @Steve in the ATL:

    Princeton Law School has never had an alum on the court!

    Neither have Dartmouth Law or Brown Law.

    Universities without law schools are notoriously under-represented in the judiciary.

  231. 231.

    burnspbesq

    RBG’s takedown of Gorsuch was a thing of beauty, but (a) it went in one ear and out the other, and (b) it won’t change his vote.

  232. 232.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Shalimar:

    I don’t mind if someone puts up an item with a RawStory link. At least then I know what I’m dealing with. I don’t like items being put up with no link or even a mention of the source.

    And, yes, with recourse to the Google you can usually hunt down the source, but why should every potentially interested (or skeptical) reader have to do that when the original poster could just say where it came from?

    @Elizabelle:

    I don’t know where germy got that. It’s not important to me (this time) to know. I was just noting (again, tediously) the phenomenon. And I will repeat that germy has been doing a great job lately of sourcing his (her?) items.

  233. 233.

    The Lodger

    @Elizabelle: The number and type of weapons at home may be the one piece of private information we have that no one else can discover online. How’s that for scary?

  235. 235.

    ruckus

    @Kay:
    I agree with you judges retiring at 70. I’m 68 BTW and my perspective is that there is just a time when younger people should move in and be in charge. The old geezers have had their day, they didn’t just get the job last week.
    I also think that SC judges should have a term. It could be 25 yrs, but there should be limit.

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