Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

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

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

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

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

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

He really is that stupid.

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

You are here: Home / Pet Blogging / Cat Blogging / Monday Morning Open Thread: New Week, Same Crap

Monday Morning Open Thread: New Week, Same Crap

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Sometimes I feel like I should just post animal videos like this one for a while, because the “serious” news stories are too depressing.

Apart from steeling ourselves — and stockpiling whatever links make you smile — what’s on the agenda for the start of the week?

***********

(Nick Anderson via GoComics.com).

Reader Interactions

302Comments

  1. 1.

    barb 2

    That looks like my cat and dog — happens every day. Entertainment. Cat always wins, he jumps up on something and swats at the dog (Chihuahua) as he comes racing by.

    I need the cat videos — animal videos. Also, the craft how to videos — anything that is not shitgibbon. When do I wake up from this nightmare?

  2. 2.

    gene108

    Need to call Congress to stop the Medicare/Medicaid smash-and-grab tax plan in Congress.

    We need ACA-repeal level opposition.

  8. 8.

    different-church-lady

    Why are those things considered mistakes? Offending everyone who isn’t an outright asshole is what he was hired to do.

  9. 9.

    Schlemazel

    By now I assume you have all seen the Jets fan wearing an “I stand for the national anthem” T-shirt while sitting on a US flag. I am deeply disappointed he has not been doxed yet so that he could explain his actions and how they compare to his T-shirts slogan.

  10. 10.

    Elizabelle

    Good morning all.

    I think for the duration we should have a pet video/picture/story up there competing with any political content in the morning thread.

  12. 12.

    Ohio Mom

    @gene108: I’ll be on it. Though I am not too optimistic. Tax cuts mean too much to Republicans, and Medicare/Medicaid too little.

    Left my car at the shop last night. A few weeks ago, someone rear-ended me while I was at a red light. Took his foot off the brake and now I need a new bumper.

    I am happy enough to nest at home all day but at 2:40, Ohio Son needs to be picked up at his bus stop. It’s a 30 minute walk one way, very doable, but it will be pouring rain all day.

    So, yes a Monday.

  16. 16.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @debbie: I think it’s a full bladder. Or do you mean the one at top? He’s just so happy he can’t keep it all in.

  18. 18.

    debbie

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    My sister-in-law’s dog used to take off and run circuits at breakneck speed for no seeming reason. We figured we should let him go and get the exercise.

  23. 23.

    debbie

    I wonder if anyone in the WH will have the sense to sit Trump down in front of that chart and point out how his lies only make things worse.

  32. 32.

    Elizabelle

    @Baud: Hmmm. Seminole Heights neighborhood. (Named, once again, for people and creatures driven out of the area by development.)

    Tampa Bay Tribune: “Someone is terrorizing” Seminole Heights after third slaying in 11 days

    TAMPA — When asked Friday if Tampa police believe a serial killer is stalking the residents of Seminole Heights, interim Tampa Police Chief Brian Dugan paused for a moment.

    “We can call it what we want,” said a clearly frustrated Dugan, who called a news conference to talk about the discovery Thursday of yet another body, the third person to be shot and killed in the neighborhood in 11 days. “If that brings attention to it, that’s fine.”

    The latest killing took place about 8 p.m. Thursday, Dugan said. It was both frustrating and hauntingly tragic.

    …. Authorities are releasing little information about their investigation, which is being assisted by the FBI. The three victims, Naiboa, Benjamin Edward Mitchell, 22, and Monica Caridad Hoffa, 32, are all connected by proximity and time-frame, said Dugan, who declined to say whether there is any connection between the type of weapon or ammunition used in the killings.

    … Authorities have said repeatedly that the victims did nothing wrong and there is no connection between them.

    But there are similarities.

    All three victims were bus riders and all three were shot at or near bus stops. Mitchell and Naiboa both attended Middleton High School.

    … [Police chief] Dugan says residents should keep their porch lights on, stick together and pay attention to their surroundings. That means looking up from smart phones as they’re making their way around the neighborhood.

    Residents shouldn’t hide in their homes, though, the chief said.

    “Do cookouts, walk your dog,” he said. “We’re not going to be held hostage by whoever’s doing this.”

    3 victims shot, possibly randomly. Reminds me of the DC snipers, John Muhammed and Lee Boyd Malvo.

    “Serial killer” always sounds more like home invasions and murder rituals and trophy taking. This is more a “spree killing” kind of thing, perhaps. (I know. Too much Forensic Files.)

  33. 33.

    Matt McIrvin

    @debbie: I don’t think his lies have made things worse. They’ve worked out fine for him, haven’t they? All he wants is to hurt us. His opponents are upset and dismayed almost to the point of catatonia, and his supporters don’t care.

  35. 35.

    SFAW

    @Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):

    I loathe Trump in a way I never thought I could loathe even a politician. But I don’t fault him for doing what he could to get out of the Vietnam draft. I don’t fault anyone for that.

    The problem is not that he tried to get out; the problem is that he turned into a chickenhawk who makes the 101st Fighting Keyboarders look like anti-war protesters.

    Maybe he figured out that, had he made it to Vietnam, he would have been fragged, and decided that “draft dodging was the better part of valor.” [Of course, given his personality and “abilities,” he would not have been promoted due to performance. But I expect Fred The Racist would have shelled out enough to get Deadbeat Donnie Dipshit out of being a grunt.]

  37. 37.

    Elizabelle

    Tampa Bay Times: Experts have some theories on who’s carrying out Seminole Heights killings

    … Three people have died in shootings in the neighborhood during the past two weeks, all seemingly at random — two young black men and one white woman in her 30s. Investigators say the slayings are connected.

    “If we are talking about one killer, then we are talking about a serial killer in Tampa,” said criminologist Jack Levin. “However, he does differ from the typical serial killer in a very important way: He used a firearm.”

    The murderer is probably young, 20s maybe, experts say, perhaps a member of a racial or ethnic minority. The killings may arise from anger, not sexual desire.

    And whoever committed them likely lives close by, possibly even in Seminole Heights.

    … Enzo Yaksic, who runs the Serial Homicide Expertise and Information Sharing Collaborative, … is not a professional criminologist but an expert with a database of thousands of murderers that he uses to develop profiles of serial killers. He doesn’t try to get inside their minds; he tries to bring science to the art.

    He shared his profile of the Seminole Heights killer with the Tampa Bay Times.

    The murderer seems to ambush victims, coming on them suddenly with a gun. Most serial killers are men, so this one probably is, too.

    He may be traveling by foot or bicycle, moving quietly. The mode of transportation suggests a younger person, 21 to 35.

    The killer probably has a “deep and personal relationship with the area,” Yaksic wrote. He consulted with Bryanna Fox, a former FBI agent and professor at the University of South Florida, to better understand Seminole Heights before sharing the profile. Because the diverse neighborhood is rapidly gentrifying, he thinks class tensions could fit into the motive.

    “The disparity between the offender’s perceived lower status may be driving his motivations to victimize those from other statuses,” Yaksic wrote. Since at least two of the killings happened later in the day or at night, the “timing could indicate that the offender is employed during the daylight hours in some menial capacity based on his potential age range.”

    Though predicting race is difficult, Yaksic wrote that in such a diverse area, the killer is likely from a minority group. He doubts the murderer is mentally ill but probably enjoys outsmarting law enforcement officers.

    In an interview, Yaksic said the Seminole Heights killer seems to match a pattern he has seen in recent years — younger, spree-like serial murderers who are more motivated by anger than sexual desire. It’s possible the killings could even be gang activity or an initiation ritual.

    “The newer version of the offender is the run-and-guns,” Yaksic said. “They don’t take any kind of gratification from spending time with the body.”

    … Levin, co-director of Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict at Northeastern University, knows Yaksic and agreed with many key takeaways from the profile.

    “Those serial killers who do use guns tend to be younger, and they may be in their 20s,” he said.

    “When you see diversity — racial and ethnic diversity in the victims — the killer is almost always from a minority group.”

    Levin also concurred that the killer is quite possibly from Seminole Heights.

    Fox, of USF, said the murderer seems to target “victims of opportunity” without much planning, suggesting he lives nearby.

    “An organized offender is more likely to travel, a disorganized offender is more likely to commit crimes in an area that they’re familiar with,” she said.

  39. 39.

    Elizabelle

    @Matt McIrvin: Catatonia. Yup. I think it’s what they’re going for. A symptom of being terrorized; of your world being turned upside down, without your being able to effect it much.

  42. 42.

    satby

    @rikyrah: Good morning! It’s ☔ here today too.

    True to form, the Republican gutting of Medicare will take effect just as I become eligible, after paying into it for years. Pretty much everything that was a social benefit, like pensions, expanded unemployment during the recession, now Medicare, have all been ended or decimated by Republicans just as I qualified for them. And people wonder why I would never in a million years vote for an R.

  47. 47.

    Amir Khalid

    @Elizabelle:
    If Tampa PD reckons that the killer comes out to shoot one person at a time, then that does indeed sound like a serial killer rather than a spree killer. Spree killers like Anders Breivik and the DC snipers are basically going on a jag.

  48. 48.

    Elizabelle

    @satby: If the Rapture ever happens, I am so going to miss it. Don’t watch much TV, so if something big is happening, no clue whatsoever. Got a little alarmed that no one is here this morning. What’s up with that? Or maybe it’s just earlier usual …

  49. 49.

    eclare

    @Amir Khalid: I would think bus riders have fairly set routines, which makes them easy to target, but one of the victims was on the wrong bus. So does the killer lie in wait?

  50. 50.

    Elizabelle

    @Amir Khalid: Now see, I would call Breivik a mass murderer/mass shooter, as was the psychopath in Las Vegas. It was one action, with a tragically high body count. UTexas clock tower. With a bomb, Timothy McVeigh.

    Serial killer sounds more like stalker, and who is to say spree killers don’t stalk too …

    Anyway, I hope they catch the killer before his next victim.

  51. 51.

    Betty Cracker

    Good morning, everyone! I passed my motorcycle safety class yesterday! Didn’t drop the bike or embarrass myself significantly at any point. It was glorious riding around all weekend without a care in the world. (Except for the prospect of falling off a machine and getting mangled.) Puts things in perspective!

    Regarding the serial/spree killer in Tampa’s Seminole Heights neighborhood, until two weeks ago, my kid lived within a couple of blocks of where one of the bodies was found. We’re so relieved she changed residences. The killer appears to target people completely at random. The latest victim was a young man with autism who had got off at the wrong bus stop. :(

  52. 52.

    Baud

    @debbie: They haven’t told her what happened in Niger. And her baby is due in January. Everything else has already been reported.

  54. 54.

    satby

    @Elizabelle: and to this, since my long edit missed the window: I have heard SO many Republican voters tell me that the Rs wouldn’t really cut Medicare or SS, they just say stuff like that to win elections. I’m now at the point where I think those voters just have to live with the consequences of their votes, even though I and millions others will be hurt too. Nothing else will teach them.

  57. 57.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Amir Khalid: The DC snipers were more serial killers, though there were aspects of both. Early on, there was a day where they killed four people over the course of a few hours in the morning, and another that evening. But after that, they started spreading them out more and shooting one person every two or three days.

    The younger kid might have had spree-killer sorts of motivations–he seems to have been not all that smart and full of revenge-against-the-world fantasies. The older guy running the show may have been motivated by a desire to murder his ex-wife and cover his tracks by making it look like a random serial killing.

  58. 58.

    Amir Khalid

    @Betty Cracker:
    When you get the Harley, don’t forget to show us the pictures.

    Didn’t drop the bike or embarrassment myself significantly at any point.

    “… embarrassment myself”? You’ve got such a distinctive style of writing, even your mistakes are lovely.

  61. 61.

    satby

    @Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): my late mother said that, but she had the excuse of dementia. Lots of these idiots just think it’s code for screwing “those other” people. Well, since I always seem to land in the screwee bucket, I want company.

    No, seriously, they will never get it. They have no empathy, no imagination, no ability to believe that what they gleefully vote for will come back to bite them. And it needs to, because they’ll just keep on voting that way otherwise.

  64. 64.

    Baud

    @satby: I don’t think they’ll stop voting that way even if they are hurt by it. I haven’t seen many examples of it anyway.

  65. 65.

    satby

    @Baud: Republicans still had plausible deniability, but they control all three branches of the government now. And blame always lands on the guy at the top.

  67. 67.

    Betty Cracker

    @Amir Khalid: Dumb autocorrect! Fortunately for me, the edit window never closes! :)

    I’m content to borrow my husband’s motorcycle for now. I need a lot more practice. But if I ever get my own bike, it’ll probably be a Japanese cruiser of some sort, and I will share photos!

  69. 69.

    A Ghost To Most

    @Betty Cracker: Congrats on the motorcycle license. Your test was probably harder than mine. I got mine at a DMV out in the countryside outside Omaha. To pass, I had to drive my motorcycle around the block, and come back. The tester couldn’t see me for 90% of the road test. A friend of mine ran out of gas on the trip around the block, and had to switch to reserve. He still passed.

    Enjoy, and be careful. People don’t see motorcycles.

  71. 71.

    father pussbucket

    Thanks for the laugh, AL. When I was a kid, our schnauzer would reliably do this after getting a bath.

  72. 72.

    A Ghost To Most

    @Amir Khalid: The DC killers were actually targeting an ex-wife, and shot all those random people in an attempt to cover it up.

    Those were strange days; they caught the killers a couple of miles from our then house.

  73. 73.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Baud:

    I don’t think they’ll stop voting that way even if they are hurt by it.

    Nope. They’re the deserving people and Republicans will always stick up for the deserving people. Even when Republicans harm the deserving people like them, they’ll rationalize that it’s because they were trying to harm the undeserving people, just that they had bad aim.

    One thing that’s not quite right about that “leopards eating faces party” joke is that the person has a moment of insight as the leopards eat her face. Republicans do not. It’s more like “leopards eating my face feels better than I expected.”

  75. 75.

    Tenar Arha

    @satby: I know those feelings. Oh boy do I know those feelings. Then I sit here and remind myself that I really don’t want to hurt all our allies to get these a*holes, & we’re going to have to figure out a way to help them in spite of themselves, and then I *headdesk until my brain is bloody gif*

    But more seriously, many are long past the stage where even a salutary lesson would take effect with them; so many people have been propagandized to where any reductions in their benefits will be blamed on all the usual targets rather than on their choice of party or legislators. We are going to have to work around them. /sigh

    ETA I got few ideas except get out the vote, push the instigators out of power, and start working on some laws so that a minority of oligarchs can’t gain this kind of power again.

  76. 76.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @satby: I’m a bit less than four years from Medicare and, yes, I’m pissed too. I’ve been paying into freaking Medicare since I was 16.

    As for conversion, we both know it ain’t gonna happen for the majority. Even now they find ways to defend their Donny and the rest of his evil cabal. A (former) RWNJ friend* – who, as a Ph.D. in philosophy and long-time philosophy professor purportedly knows how to think – could only bring himself to say that the Dotard-in-Chief’s remarks in Puerto Rico were “inartful.” If inartful = appalling + callous + ignorant + racist, then I suppose ex-friend was right. But not even the intelligent and educated among them are learning. Makes me want to inartfully throttle someone.

    *To clarify, former friend, because still a RWNJ and increasingly so.

  81. 81.

    FlipYrWhig

    By the by, am I the only one who remembers that the Republican convention devoted a whole night to having a grieving mother excoriate Hillary Clinton?

  83. 83.

    Kay

    Chris Christie leaves office as the most unpopular governor in the state’s history.

    OMG, remember the absolute adoration media gave him? He was the future of politics! Could win nationally!

    They love assholes. There’s no other explanation. They admire terrible people.

  84. 84.

    Kay

    File this under “Trump Administration respect for the military”- Donald Trump is accusing a Gold Star widow of lying this morning.

    Who do you think that soldier would pick if it were Donald Trump vs the soldier’s wife? In the Trump Administration they choose Donald.

  85. 85.

    Tilda Swintons Bald Cap

    @FlipYrWhig: No, and I remember a father of one of the “Blackhawk down” guys getting all up in Bill’s face as well. Different rules for Democrats is all.

  86. 86.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Kay: They DO love assholes, because they think it combines toughness with genuine-ness. Big Media thinks that politicians are over-rehearsed, eager to please, and tell people what they want to hear. So their little hearts beat much faster when they come upon politicians who act like dicks because they’re playing the game on a harder setting. But it’s of course not just the media that falls in love with these characteristics, or the right. “The left” loves ’em too.

  87. 87.

    Betty Cracker

    @FlipYrWhig: You’re not alone. A friend and I were discussing Trump last week, and I realized how much I envy my friend her certainty of Trump’s comeuppance. I don’t have that kind of faith, not in a world where Dick Cheney still lives and GWB is partially rehabbed by Trump’s awfulness. But I do hope for it. Daily.

  88. 88.

    Elizabelle

    @Kay: They do. They admire terrible people. Because there is something deeply wrong with them.

    And: if Trump is flaming Mrs. Johnson, I don’t think that’s going to benefit him. Except with the basest of his base.

  89. 89.

    Immanentize

    @Betty Cracker: I know you will likely ignore this advice — but wear leathers, boots and a full coverage helmet. My friend the emergency room doctor has told me too many tales of ripped off jaws from motorcycle accidents without full coverage helmets….

    But my advice is only worth what you paid for it….

  91. 91.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay:

    Chris Christie leaves office as the most unpopular governor in the state’s history.

    That was predictable.

  92. 92.

    Spanky

    @FlipYrWhig: The more people he alienates, the higher the probability that someone is going to go full Second Amendment Remedy. And now that he’s antagonizing a group of people who have higher than average numbers of PTSD and other mental health issues, I’m thinking it could be sooner rather than later.

    We do NOT need a President Pence taking office under such a cloud. The pull to give him a mandate will be enormous, and the howler monkeys will be howling for just that.

  95. 95.

    Kay

    @Elizabelle:

    Shouldn’t there be some kind of correction issued? “Chris Christie is not, IN FACT, at all popular and seems to be loathed in his own state”

    He was a terrible governor. That state has underperformed in the economic recovery and he just moved money around to close budget holes- he’s terrible on character, he has a bad personality AND he’s a bad manager.

  96. 96.

    Patricia Kayden

    On GMA, Mrs. Johnson backed up Congresswoman Wilson’s account of what Trump said to her during the condolence call and verified that the phone was a on speaker so everyone in the car could hear Trump’s words.

  97. 97.

    Immanentize

    @Matt McIrvin: I have had the pleasure of knowing and talking extensively with Lee Boyd Malvo’s attorney, Craig Cooley. That trial was amazing…. But the level to which Lee had been ‘brainwashed’ by John Muhammed — particularly about the role of a sniper — was amazing and I think tipped the jury away from a death sentence.

  98. 98.

    glory b

    @Elizabelle: On Morning Joe (listening on the radio), one of their panelists sounded like she was nearly in tears as they read Trump’s tweet denying what she said.

    They also said the widow’s recounting sounded exactly like something Trump would say.

  99. 99.

    Kay

    @Patricia Kayden:

    We should have a full hearing on this because Trump will continue to lie unless he’s stopped with some enforceable rule.

    There has to be some accountability for this administration’s DAILY lying to the public. It’s not fair to the people they lie about to allow it to continue unchecked.

  101. 101.

    O. Felix Culpa

    “Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.”

    David Letterman quoting Twain at last night’s Mark Twain Prize for American Humor ceremony.

  103. 103.

    geg6

    @Tilda Swintons Bald Cap:

    Yup, by all means, let’s have Kelly come out and give the widow a lecture on respecting the military and its sacrifices. Ugh. I so hate these people. I’m exhausted from hating all day, 24/7.

  104. 104.

    A Ghost To Most

    In a stunning new ad campaign, CNN is lodging an attack at those claiming an apple is a banana.

    “This is an apple,” the ad begins with a red apple on a white screen. “Some people might try to tell you it’s a banana. They might scream, ‘Banana, banana, banana,’ over and over again. They might put banana in all caps. You might even start to believe this is a banana. But it’s not. This is an apple.”

    The words “facts first,” then flash on the screen before the CNN logo.

    The move comes after The New York Times launched an ad campaign of their own calling out false allegations of “fake news” by President Donald Trump and his team of pundits.

    Their campaign features a white screen with black type and a series of sound bites beginning with the words “the truth is.”

    “The truth is hard. The truth is hard to find. The Truth is hard to know. The truth is more important now than ever,” it says at the end, before the logo flashes on the screen.

    rawstory

  105. 105.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Kay: In this particular instance, his lying is causing real pain to a pregnant widow (and the rest of the deceased’s family and friends). There are no words to describe what we have in the White House.

  108. 108.

    O. Felix Culpa

    This is worrying:

    Donald Trump celebrated Sunday that his campaign to delegitimize the free press is working.

    The president touted a Politico-Morning Consult poll published last week that found 46 percent of registered voters believe major news organizations fabricate stories about him. Just 37 percent of Americans think the mainstream media does not invent stories, while the rest are undecided. More than 3 in 4 Republicans believe reporters make up stories about Trump.

    “It is finally sinking through,” the president tweeted.

    The first rule of propaganda is that if you repeat something enough times people will start to believe it, no matter how false. Trump uses the bully pulpit of the presidency to dismiss any journalism he doesn’t like as “fake news.” This daily drumbeat has clearly taken a toll on the Fourth Estate.

  109. 109.

    Spanky

    @geg6:

    I’m exhausted from hating all day, 24/7.

    Ha! Not enough Irish in you. That’s what’s keeping me going these days.

    (This does not mean this is a lifestyle I would choose or endorse, BTW.)

  110. 110.

    Tilda Swintons Bald Cap

    @geg6: You know Trump’s mentor was Roy Cohn right? The M.O. is never backdown and never admit a mistake. They’ll just keep at it. Yeah, I’m exhausted as well.

  113. 113.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Kay: Kelly doesn’t even respect the military. If he did, he wouldn’t be using his dead son as a shield to support a lying bigot. It galls me that Kelly never acknowledged that President Obama held a breakfast ceremony for Gold Star families, including his own, after his son’s death.

  115. 115.

    Immanentize

    @Spanky:

    Ha! Not enough Irish in you. That’s what’s keeping me going these days.

    That and the Irish sporting pages (aka obituaries?)

  116. 116.

    Patricia Kayden

    @O. Felix Culpa: I live in a relatively blue part of a blue state (Southern Maryland) and see car bumper stickers bearing the nonsensical “I don’t believe the liberal media” at least once per week. Those stickers have been around way before Trump’s ascendancy. Makes me snicker because the car owners don’t believe the “liberal media” but do believe the actual fake media which includes Fox News.

  119. 119.

    O. Felix Culpa

    This is worrying too (from WaPo):

    The U.S. Air Force is reportedly preparing to put nuclear bombers on 24-hour notice, a position not taken since the Cold War. Defense One’s Marcus Weisgerber reports: “That means the long-dormant concrete pads at the ends of [Barksdale Air Force Base’s] 11,000-foot runway … could once again find several B-52s parked on them, laden with nuclear weapons and set to take off at a moment’s notice. … [Gen. David Goldfein, Air Force chief of staff,] and other senior defense officials stressed that the alert order had not been given, but that preparations were under way in anticipation that it might come. That decision would be made by Gen. John Hyten, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, or Gen. Lori Robinson, the head of U.S. Northern Command. … Goldfein … is asking his force to think about new ways that nuclear weapons could be used for deterrence, or even combat.”

  120. 120.

    Elizabelle

    @Patricia Kayden: Yeah. We need to have a stock of

    … but I believe the fake media.
    smaller print below: Fox News, Rush, Breitbart. I’m all in.

    stickers we can slap on those suckers’ cars.

  121. 121.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Patricia Kayden: I used to snicker at silly right-wing bumper stickers like that, until they had (stole) real power. Now I find them more dangerous than funny.

  122. 122.

    rikyrah

    Myeshia Johnson, widow of Sgt. La David Johnson: “I don’t know how he got killed, where he got killed or anything.” pic.twitter.com/mdF2feLcUd

    — Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 23, 2017

    Myeshia Johnson, widow of Sgt. La David Johnson: “Whatever Ms. Wilson said was not fabricated. What she said was 100% correct.” pic.twitter.com/sS5zmkDwAF

    — Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 23, 2017

    Q: You were upset when you got off the phone?

    Myeshia Johnson: “Oh very. Very upset and hurt. Very It made me cry even worse.” pic.twitter.com/4LkNyulGgk

    — Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 23, 2017

    Sgt. La David Johnson’s widow: “[Trump] couldn’t remember my husband’s name… That’s what hurt me the most.” pic.twitter.com/ta7QRDNRr7

    — Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 23, 2017

  125. 125.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @OzarkHillbilly: I hope the poll you saw is more accurate. My confidence in the citizenry supporting the Bill of Rights beyond the Holy 2nd Amendment is waning. But I’m feeling down today. This maladministration is exhausting and I am angry and depressed about feeling exhausted because of their gross cruelty and crimes.

  126. 126.

    rikyrah

    @Patricia Kayden:

    @Kay: In this particular instance, his lying is causing real pain to a pregnant widow (and the rest of the deceased’s family and friends). There are no words to describe what we have in the White House.

    Tell it.

  128. 128.

    FlipYrWhig

    @O. Felix Culpa:

    46 percent of registered voters believe major news organizations fabricate stories about him

    In other words, Republicans. Republicans are willing and sometimes gleeful suckers.

  129. 129.

    different-church-lady

    @O. Felix Culpa:

    “It is finally sinking through,” the president tweeted.

    Twitter will never accept responsibility for what they’ve done to this country.

  131. 131.

    Elizabelle

    @rikyrah: Thank you for that info. I am in. Got to have some reason to get reconnected.

    I would like to see us push for nonpartisan citizens’ commissions for redistricting, as were organized in California. Make it clear, it’s NOT to redistrict to benefit the Democrats, necessarily. It’s to benefit the citizens, so they have real choices and they get to choose their representatives, not the other way around, as now.

    Stop the Fox News perverting counterclaims before they get started. They see “Eric Holder” and “Democrats” and they’re going to be urinating themselves over Democrats trying to steal the elections.

    When the truth is 180 degrees from that.

  133. 133.

    rikyrah

    Donald Trump’s ‘blind spot on Russia’ isn’t going away
    10/23/17 08:41 AM
    By Steve Benen
    After Congress approved new economic sanctions against Russia, Donald Trump grudgingly signed the bill into law, but not before blaming lawmakers – including members of his own party – for undermining the U.S. relationship with the Putin government.

    But the story took a strange turn recently when the public learned that the sanctions still haven’t been implemented, despite the deadline included in the law. On “Meet the Press” yesterday, NBC’s Chuck Todd sought an explanation from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a proponent of the sanctions.

    TODD: [Y[ou’ve come on this show numerous times and said, “Russia needs to be punished.” You passed a tough sanctions bill. You passed it in July. The president signed it in early August. There was a deadline of October 1st. It is not October 1st. It is October 20th and the sanctions have not been implemented. Why?

    GRAHAM: I think that the Trump administration is slow when it comes to Russia. They have a blind spot on Russia I still can’t figure out.

    Really? You still can’t figure it out? It’s just a total mystery as to why this president might have a “blind spot” when it comes to the foreign adversary that launched an espionage operation that help put Donald Trump in power?

    Is it really that difficult to wager a guess?

  136. 136.

    rikyrah

    Bernie’s Bots: How Fake Twitter Accounts Manipulate Public Perception

    31%.

    The percentage above represents a wide range of interpretations, depending on the context. If one were to receive a 31% on his or her exam, the reaction to this number would be an obvious disappointment. If one were to receive a 31% tip as a server, then he or she would most likely be elated. That same percentage also elicits a wide range of emotions in the sporting world as well. A professional basketball player who shoots 31% is most likely not happy with his performance while a professional baseball player who gets a hit 31% of the time is most like quite proud of the work he is doing. The point of these comparisons is that a certain numerical percentage can tell us a lot about a person based on how he or she performs, but, more importantly, how he or she chooses to respond to that percentage moving forward.

    Senator Bernie Sanders is currently at 31%.

    He is at 31% in terms of the number of actual human beings that follow his Twiter account of the more than 8 million who claim to do so, this according to a routine Twitter audit of the senator’s verified account. That means that 69%, or roughly 4.9 million of Sanders’ followers are not living, breathing human beings. In fact, you can tell that they are bots simply by going to Sanders’ Twitter profile where the overwhelming majority of his recent followers have not Tweeted a single time since joining this month. In addition, several are following anywhere from 40 to 180 people but do not have any followers themselves, a key characteristic of being a Twitter bot. Of the people these bots follow, there tends to be a pattern in that they will follow a handful of politicians, a handful of news organizations, and a handful of celebrities. Hardly ever do they follow an Average Joe because they want to be able to maximize their retweets to the largest audiences possible.

  138. 138.

    Ohio Mom

    @Baud: My husband’s office is full of wing-nuts and at this point, he is an expert at their thought processes. They’ll just blame it on Obama for any cuts to SS or Medicare, or any tax hikes, they are immune to argument and fact.

    One of them dismissed our local paper’s claim last year that their endorsement of Hillary was the first time they’d endorsed a Democrat for president in over a hundred years. Even after my husband goggled the paper’s endorsements of McCain and Romney, this fellow refused to concede.

  139. 139.

    catclub

    @debbie:

    point out how his lies only make things worse.

    But his standard is simply: “Is the media talking and or obsessing over it?”
    And by that standard it is all a win for him. Being right isn’t necessary because he already knows he is right.

  141. 141.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @different-church-lady: Words to describe what we have in the White House. I would use different words that would be just as accurate. I’ll bet Patricia could come up with some too, with a little effort. ;-)

  143. 143.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @OzarkHillbilly: I wish it were all noise, but this maladministration’s actions and inactions are having real impact on real people. I’m doing what I can to fight and I know others are too, but the wanton cruelty gets to me sometimes.

  146. 146.

    different-church-lady

    a) A great number of people are getting their “news” mainly from social media nowadays.
    b) Social media deliberately leverages weaknesses in human nature for profit, with very little return of true significance.
    c) It is becoming increasingly apparent that social media is very easily gamed.
    d) The vast majority of social media is noise
    e) What isn’t noise is being corrupted and falsified

    Social media ENCOURAGES people to be their worst selves. The fact that some people manage to use it without becoming awful does not obviate that.

  147. 147.

    Jeffro

    @rikyrah: Truly, it is a mystery!

    I was reading through this timeline of the obstruction of justice case against Trumpov this morning, and it’s shocking all over again that this country didn’t grind to a halt this summer. Just like Trumpov asking Russia to hack Hillary’s email, the evidence is right there in front of everyone: Trumpov wanted the Russia investigation to go away and obstructed justice multiple times. He fired Comey for it. End of story. Oh wait, the GOP Enablers in Congress are perfectly fine with it, never mind.

  148. 148.

    rikyrah

    Trump keeps rejecting plans to pay for his proposed tax cuts
    10/23/17 09:21 AM
    By Steve Benen
    Republicans remain eager to pass a massive tax plan, which still doesn’t actually exist. That said, GOP lawmakers continue to consider some provocative ideas to help offset the costs of the package they have in mind.

    The New York Times reported the other day, for example, that Republicans are “considering a plan to sharply reduce the amount of income American workers can save in tax-deferred retirement accounts.” According to the lobbyists who are working with GOP lawmakers – Democrats have been excluded from the process – Republicans have weighed capping “the annual amount workers can set aside to as low as $2,400 for 401(k) accounts,” far less than the $18,000 a year most Americans can put in their 401k without paying taxes upfront.

    This would only cover about a tenth of the cost of the GOP tax plan, but it’s a start. Or, it might have been a start if Donald Trump hadn’t just rejected the idea in his latest morning tweet. The Washington Post reported:

    President Trump vowed on Monday that his tax cuts plan would not include any changes to tax-deferred retirement accounts such as 401(k)s, following reports last week that House Republicans were weighing a sharp reduction in the amount of income American workers could save through such programs.

    Trump tweeted Monday morning: “There will be NO change to your 401(k). This has always been a great and popular middle class tax break that works, and it stays!”

  155. 155.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Patricia Kayden: Kelly’s remarks show him to be racist and a misogynist who could belong in the Victorian era.
    White man’s burden: Check
    Putting women on a pedestal and denying them agency: Check.

    ETA: If his views are representative of the military in general then that is an even larger problem. I have no idea whether that’s the case but he was referred to as a canary in the coal mine in a FP post here last week.

  158. 158.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Wapiti: Black one’s? I don’t. Not in this country at least.

    P.S. I know you’re being facetious but Kelly needs to be called out on the inherent sexism in that statement.

  160. 160.

    Kay

    The President. who has been lying all morning assures us that he won’t cap 401k contributions.

    Why in the world would anyone believe a word he says? He’s a liar. He’s been lying for 50 years with no accountability at all.

    Why is this lie different?

  161. 161.

    rikyrah

    THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 10/20/17
    Expert sees risk of corruption in Trump foreign government deals
    Sarah Chayes, author of “Thieves of State,” talks with Rachel Maddow about the structure of corruption in some developing nations and why she sees a risk of that kind of corruption spreading to the United States under Donald Trump

    THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 10/21/17
    Trump flouting norms risks venal turn in US
    Sarah Chayes, author of “Thieves of State,” talks with Rachel Maddow about why Donald Trump’s business with corrupt foreign governments risks spreading corruption to the United States

  163. 163.

    rikyrah

    THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 10/21/17
    Trump interviews with U.S. attorney candidates raise eyebrows
    Rachel Maddow reports on Donald Trump meeting with candidates for U.S. attorney positions in the districts that would have jurisdiction over Trump’s affairs, which isn’t illegal but is unusually enough to draw concerned attention.

    THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 10/21/17
    Trump screening of U.S. attorney candidates unheard-of
    Barbara McQuade, former U.S. attorney, talks with Rachel Maddow about the rarity of presidents meeting with candidates for U.S. attorney positions and why Donald Trump doing so is of particular concern.

  164. 164.

    Kay

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Isn’t it sort of Politics 101 to remember peoples’ names? The moron planned this call. He couldn’t find out the guy’s name?

    Is that in The Art of the Deal? Not finding out someone’s NAME before you call their family? They’re so bad at their jobs.

  166. 166.

    rikyrah

    Why it matters if Trump pays his aides’ legal bills
    10/23/17 10:12 AM
    By Steve Benen

    ………………………………………………………

    President Trump plans to spend at least $430,000 of his personal funds to help cover the mounting legal costs incurred by White House staff and campaign aides related to the ongoing investigations of Russian meddling in last year’s election, a White House official said. […]

    The arrangement drew immediate criticism from Walter Shaub, the former director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, who suggested on Twitter that it is rife with potential conflicts.

    “A potential witness or target of an investigation (and boss of investigators) paying for legal fees of other potential witnesses or targets?” Shaub wrote.

    Axios’ original report on this used the words “pledge” and “promise” to describe the president’s intention to defray the costs of his aides’ legal representation.

    I’m highlighting the specific verbs because Trump’s credibility in this area is something of a joke. This is, after all, a president who’s been caught lying about contributions to veterans’ charities. Sure, he may say he’s prepared to use his own money to help cover the legal costs of his team, but what Trump says and what Trump does often have little to do with one another.

    But just for the sake of conversation, let’s say the “plan” is legitimate. Let’s assume that Trump will follow through on this vow, grab his checkbook, and start writing checks to his staffers’ law firms. That brings us back to Walter Shaub’s concerns.

    Given the circumstances, this need not be seen as a story about magnanimity. In the Russia scandal, the sitting president is in legal jeopardy – there’s every reason to believe he’s under investigation for obstruction of justice, for example – and those around him are, at a minimum, potential witnesses who may be able to shed light on Trump’s alleged wrongdoing.

    And that’s where the trouble kicks in. What happens if officials in the West Wing have information to share that may be damaging to the president, who also happens to be paying for these officials’ legal counsel?

    In other words, we don’t know if Trump is prepared to start writing personal checks to help his team because he wants to help them or if he wants to help himself. It’s not hard to imagine the president thinking that he can perhaps buy his aides’ silence by opening his wallet and discouraging them from “flipping.”

  169. 169.

    Kay

    She’s pregnant, so in addition to losing her husband and having to engage in a defense against the President she has that to worry about. It’s amazing she’s standing upright let alone kicking Trump’s and Kelly’s ass.

  170. 170.

    different-church-lady

    @Kay: If there’s no money in it for Trump, then Trump don’t give a shit. There’s no deal, so why bring the art?

  174. 174.

    Kay

    The President of the United States is attacking a pregnant war widow. Okay even I didn’t see such a rapid descent coming.

    What next? It has to be “orphans”.

  175. 175.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    Isn’t it sort of Politics 101 to remember peoples’ names? The moron planned this call. He couldn’t find out the guy’s name?

    Is that in The Art of the Deal? Not finding out someone’s NAME before you call their family? They’re so bad at their jobs.

    He’s a little person. And a BLACK little person at that, Kay.

    So, WHY should Dolt45 have to remember his name?

  176. 176.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    The President of the United States is attacking a pregnant war widow. Okay even I didn’t see such a rapid descent coming.

    What next? It has to be “orphans”.

    Well, Mrs. Johnson has children, so isn’t he attacking them too?

  179. 179.

    OzarkHillbilly

    A Grown Man Mooned the President’s Motorcade Today Because We All Have a Role to Play

    Sometimes, after a long day’s work, you’ve just had enough. So when you hear the president’s motorcade whining its way up Connecticut Avenue toward your apartment in Washington, you instinctively lift your head off the sofa and think: What can I do, in this moment, to be the change I want to see in the world? Across the room, a “Not My President” placard sits behind your softball bat. But there’s no time. So you run to the window and you, you know, resist.

  180. 180.

    NotMax

    FYI (emphasis added).

    Serious flaw in WPA2 protocol lets attackers intercept passwords and much more

    The proof-of-concept exploit is called KRACK, short for Key Reinstallation Attacks. The research has been a closely guarded secret for weeks ahead of a coordinated disclosure that was scheduled for 8am Monday, East Coast time. A website disclosing the vulnerability said it affects the core WPA2 protocol itself and is effective against devices running Android, Linux, and OpenBSD, and to a lesser extent macOS and Windows, as well as MediaTek Linksys, and other types of devices. The site warned that attackers can exploit the flaw to decrypt a wealth of sensitive data that’s normally encrypted by the nearly ubiquitous Wi-Fi encryption protocol.
    [snip]
    “Although websites or apps may use HTTPS as an additional layer of protection, we warn that this extra protection can (still) be bypassed in a worrying number of situations,” the researchers explained. “For example, HTTPS was previously bypassed in non-browser software, in Apple’s iOS and OS X, in Android apps, in Android apps again, in banking apps, and even in VPN apps.”

    The researcher went on to say that the weakness allows attackers to target both vulnerable access points as well as vulnerable computers, smartphones and other types of connecting clients, albeit with differing levels of difficulty and effectiveness. Neither Windows nor iOS are believed to be vulnerable to the most severe attacks. Linux and Android appear to be more susceptible, because attackers can force network decryption on clients in seconds with little effort.

    Vanhoef said clients can be patched to prevent attacks even when connected to vulnerable access points. Linux patches have been developed, but it’s not immediately clear when they will become available for various distributions and for Android users. Patches are also available for some but not all Wi-Fi access points. Source

  182. 182.

    rikyrah

    Kay,

    One of them is yours…

    …………………….

    Meet the Trumpkins
    A crop of Republicans are betting that a Trump-style mix of crassness and white grievance will bring them victory in 2018.

    by Saahil Desai

    As of late September, Donald Trump had the lowest approval rating of any president that far into his first term. Yet there has been remarkably little atrophy among Trump’s base. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll from the same month found that 98 percent of Trump primary voters approve of the president’s job performance. Among Americans who support Trump, 61 percent don’t envision anything that would change their favorable opinion of him. A majority of Republican voters consider themselves primarily loyal to the president rather than to the Republican Party.

    It’s no wonder, then, that 2018 GOP primaries are devolving into fights about which candidate in the race is most closely aligned with the Trump agenda. Take the Arizona Senate race: Jeff Flake, the incumbent, who refused to endorse Trump and wrote a book earlier this year excoriating the president, is facing a tough primary challenger in Kelli Ward, who has positioned herself as an unwavering partner to the president. Steve Bannon, back at Breitbart after being ousted from the White House, is scheming to cultivate Trump allies to challenge establishment Republican incumbents with help from the billionaire Robert Mercer, who has already pumped $300,000 into a Super PAC affiliated with Ward’s campaign.

    In the murky sea of 2018 GOP candidates, the most fascinating creatures are the ones trying to capture the secret sauce that propelled Trump from laughingstock to president. Trump’s crudeness didn’t deter as many voters as pundits anticipated and Democrats hoped; nor did his embrace of the politics of white racial resentment. Down-ballot candidates have taken notice. Elements of Trump’s brand of populism are surfacing in various configurations among two types of opportunists: longtime vulgarians emboldened to run for higher office by the president’s success, and establishment politicians eager to rebrand themselves to ride Trump’s appeal among the GOP base.

    …………………………….

    Joshua Mandel (OH—Senate)
    Trumpyness score: 6
    Electability score: 7
    Notable tweet:

    Sad to see @ADL_National become a partisan witchhunt group targeting people for political beliefs. I stand with @Cernovich & @JackPosobiec https://t.co/N3nC78t4CS

    — Josh Mandel (@JoshMandelOhio) July 20, 2017

    ……………………….

    In his current Senate campaign, Mandel has flirted with xenophobia and Islamophobia. In May, not long after he announced his campaign by noting his commitment to protecting “Judeo-Christian values,” he traveled to the southern border to meet with border patrol agents and write tweets assailing the “liberals & squishy repubs” who oppose Trump’s border wall. Since signaling his intention to challenge Brown again, Mandel has established himself as one of the Ohio public officials most fervently opposed to sanctuary cities, supporting an ill-fated bill in the state legislature that would have banned sanctuary cities and held local officials who violated the law liable for the crimes of undocumented immigrants.

    ……………………

    In May, he tweeted out a local news story with the caption “Ohio Mosque chains kids to wall & beats them for not reading Quran. We must protect women & kids from these people.” He failed to mention that the article he shared was from 2013, and that the story had been widely debunked, including by the news channel that originally published it.

    Mandel poses a serious threat to Brown: a prolific fund-raiser, he has already raised more than $4 million in a state that’s trending more reliably red than purple. With an endorsement from Ohio GOP heavyweight Senator Rob Portman, he lacks any competitive primary opponents.

    Joe Cicero, a registered independent and the former mayor of Lyndhurst, takes a dim view of Mandel’s latest branding as Donald Trump 2.0: “He fooled everyone in the city. He was opportunistic from the start, one of the worst things that ever happened to Lyndhurst. Josh Mandel is inadequate as a human being.”

  183. 183.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @rikyrah: I had a thought last week: What does a Dem call a rich sexual deviant? A pervert. What does a Republican call a rich sexual deviant? Mr President.

  185. 185.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    There were only 4 of them. None of his tens of lackeys could write down their names and hand the sheet to the moron?

    Why should they? They pride themselves on their incompetence.

    Once again, I ask…

    WHAT IF 44 HAD DONE THIS??!??

    The Curve for Unqualified White Men is REAL!

  187. 187.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    I think I’m bailing out of twitter for every purpose save for simply tweeting out blog entries from my business blog. It is a cesspool of bogus accounts, nasty people, racism and misogyny. The good that people are doing (or think that they are doing) by engaging the bots, trolls and nasties is sapping emotional strength and time, and while those rhetorical battles do counter the notion that the horrible sentiments are widespread (blunting breathless media stories about “economic anxiety” and the WWC), they feel like farting in the wind.

    Yesterday was bad (I decided to say what I really thought about Kelly on a relatively widely read “rah rah” troops twitter page). I engaged a few, some of which may even be located here in the US, and my mentions look like what you’d expect. This morning, however, was truly depressing. Between Twitler’s frenetic pace and the usual suspects spreading the shit on Ms Johnson, I’m too disgusted for words. If it weren’t for Google algorithms elevating sites based on appearances and clicks from popular sites and backlinks, I’d delete the account altogether and deprive @jack of that content as well.

  189. 189.

    Jeffro

    @Kay: This is a guy who insults the Pope…I guess attacking a pregnant war widow was the next lowest step. Maybe he can attack the Johnsons’ unborn child next?

  190. 190.

    NotMax

    Death on the Nile.

    At least 54 policemen, including 20 officers and 34 conscripts, were killed when a raid on a militant hideout southwest of Cairo was ambushed, officials said Saturday. The ensuing firefight was one of the deadliest for Egyptian security forces in recent years.
    [snip]
    Those killed included two police brigadier-generals, a colonel and 10 lieutenant colonels.
    [snip]
    The heavy loss of life will likely lead to the restructuring and streamlining of the country’s counterterrorism effort, the officials said, with better co-ordination between the police, military and security agencies high on the list of objectives.

    It’s also likely to be cited by government critics as a vindication of their long-held argument that suppressing freedoms, jailing opponents and cracking down on civil society does not, as the pro-government media insists, help in the war against terror. Source

  191. 191.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Well that was weird,

    I just watched a debate about ancient Rome verses ancient Athens between Boris-Bretexit-Boris and Mary Beard, a classical scholar. Apparently Boris is such a fruit loop he sees somekind of equivalency in Bretexit and the Athenians – I think it was Greece was a great place because it was all these little city states, while Beard was arguing that our concepts of democracy mostly come from Rome. I think.

    My take on the Conservative code talking was Boris, being a rich dude, wants Athens because the rich can do what they want (before and after the Democracy Athens was pretty much run by a few rich families), women and minorities know their place. So the Classics, Rome, on the other hand, the rich had to put being treated by the emperor like the rich treated everyone else. So another front in the Culture war.

  192. 192.

    Amir Khalid

    @Kay:
    I found it remarkable is that Trump couldn’t remember (or couldn’t be bothered to remember) a name as common in America as Johnson.

  193. 193.

    bystander

    @OzarkHillbilly: I think Macron says that’s how the dog is making the palace “chez chien”.

    Now I wish I could resolve my thoughts on Macron. I thought he was bringing what the French need. Maybe the unpopularity signals that he is?

  194. 194.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @schrodingers_cat:

    As an aside, after Kelly’s tenure at DHS, air travel has gotten worse. The Countess and our oldest daughter just came back from Italy last night. As per the course at CLT, TSA searched all of their carryon bags on going to the connection to Louisville despite their precheck status. That also happened when we returned from CUN at the beginning of the month. Global Entry seems fine for the moment (unless your name is Bill Browder).

    It is almost like they have no desire to honor precheck anymore.

  195. 195.

    A Ghost To Most

    Citing emergency powers, President Donald Trump signed an executive order late in the day on Friday that would allow retired military pilots to be recalled to active duty.
    But the broad wording of the executive order seemed to imply that the executive branch would have the power to call up retired military officers and force them back into service for any reason, as the “emergency” Trump used to justify the executive order was extremely vague: “the continuing and immediate threat of further attacks on the United States.”

    This executive order is officially an amendment to Executive Order 13223, signed by George W. Bush in September 2001 in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Trump’s executive order claimed to be “in furtherance of the objectives of Proclamation 7463… which declared a national emergency by reason of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.”

    salon

  196. 196.

    rikyrah

    Are we entering the end times for the NFL?
    Professional basketball offers the NFL a blueprint for success: embrace the black culture of the majority of your players
    BY DAVID DENNIS, JR.

    The National Football League, the American sport that comes closest to resembling a religion, has its end times in sight: the year 2021. “The likelihood,” NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith said in August, “of either a strike, or a lockout is in ’21 a virtual certainty.”

    Doomsdays. Humanity has always been obsessed with them.

    Every religious text has mention of the end times. In just the past 30 years, we’ve survived Halley’s comet, Y2K, the end of the Mayan calendar and the rapture that was supposed to happen in September. But nothing lasts forever. The NFL has survived lockouts and strikes before and has seemed like Teflon for the past decade with sky-high broadcast ratings, massive revenues and an annual American holiday called Super Bowl Sunday. But the league has serious competition for American pastime status from the National Basketball Association.

    This may seem far-fetched now, while the NFL’s television ratings lead the NBA’s by a wide margin (although numbers were down last season, and some wonder whether television ratings, in a streaming world, matter as much as they used to). And the NBA doesn’t have anything close to dominating a whole day in America like the Super Bowl. But the NBA, which is as popular as ever in this social media era, continues to embrace an important fact about American culture: Black culture and black people determine cool. Cool resists linear structures. If the NFL wants to maintain its dominance, it needs to embrace black culture or get left behind. Just like baseball.

    Let’s be clear: The 2017 NBA Finals between the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers was the league’s most watched Finals since Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls played the Utah Jazz in 1998. But the average 20.4 million viewers who tuned into each game is equal to the average viewership for a single Sunday Night Football game in 2016. And the NFL is still an unmitigated cash cow, with a net worth of more than $13 billion, dwarfing the NBA’s $6 billion figure. The average NFL franchise is worth $2.5 billion. Worth of the average NBA franchise: $1.36 billion, a 3.5-fold increase over the past five years. Over at Major League Baseball, the average team is worth $1.54 billion, but 50 percent of viewers are 55 or older, up from 41 percent in 2010. And in its defense, the MLB can still captivate the country when it has historic World Series matchups like last year’s battle between Cinderellas in the Chicago Cubs and Cleveland Indians. And they almost doubled back with a monster championship series between the Yankees and Dodgers if the former hadn’t lost to the Houston Astros. ESPN data shows the average age of baseball viewers at 53. The average age is 47 for the NFL, and it’s rising. The average age is 37 for the NBA, and it seems to be staying there. Baseball’s television ratings continue to trend downward.

    Howard Bryant, ESPN senior writer and author of Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston, summarizes the NFL’s stance in relation to the NBA and MLB: “Post-ABA merger,” he says, “basketball has done by far the best job of adapting to the people who play the sport, baseball the worst. The NFL has been in between, leaning towards a bad job.”

  198. 198.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Kay:

    None of his tens of lackeys could write down their names and hand the sheet to the moron?

    He doesn’t see well and when he reads it takes him a long time to go from seeing to understanding. You’ve probably seen the montages Chris Hayes has done of Trump screwing up while reading and then acting like it was intentional by inserting the word “frankly.”

    It may be the _height_ of vanity not to wear your reading glasses when making a condolence call to a war widow.

  199. 199.

    NotMax

    Not so much an underdog as a netherdog.

    ‘We’ve got everything’: Tiny ‘underdog’ Sault Ste. Marie tries to win over Amazon in race for HQ2

    This small Ontario city (population 73,000) and its even tinier American twin have joined competing bids from dozens of other medium, large and extremely large cities
    [snip]
    Cities across North America have been lusting after Amazon’s HQ2 for weeks now, submitting proposals to the company’s present day headquarters in Seattle, Wash. The e-commerce giant is promising to inject $5 billion and 50,000 well-paying jobs into whatever city ultimately gets chosen. The deadline for bids was Thursday; the winner will be announced in 2018. Halifax, Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Edmonton, Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta and dozens of other medium, large and extremely large cities have joined the fray, a stew of competing bids that now includes a joint proposal from the comparatively tiny Canadian Sault Ste. Marie (population 73,000) — and its even tinier American twin (population 13,000). Source

  201. 201.

    Ohio Mom

    @rikyrah: Josh Mandel, the living embodiment of A shanda fur di goyim — that is Yiddish for “an embarrassment to the Jewish people,” like washing your dirty linen in public.

    My one ray of hope is that Sherrod has beaten him before.

  202. 202.

    Barbara

    @satby: Satby, I take a deep breath regarding people who benefit from programs but blissfully vote against those programs thinking that no one would ever want to hurt them. I certainly don’t want to hurt them, but I have decided to aim most of my fire to protect those programs that protect people who are more likely to vote like me. I am no longer willing to fight Medicare cuts to the death to save elderly people who worship racists candidates. I know not everyone who benefits from Medicare is like that, but as compared to Medicaid, they are far more like that. Let them fight for their own programs by contacting the representatives they voted for to see if they actually have their constituents’ backs. And if they don’t and they keep voting for them, then indeed, they are voting against their own interests. I can’t worry about them any more. My 82 year old mother told me to stop worrying about old people the last time I visited her. I am starting to understand where she is coming from.

  203. 203.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @schrodingers_cat:

    The Countess’ travel record undoubtedly lights off DHS computers – she frequently reports problems on reentry that don’t seem to catch me. The current delays appear to be more systemic than personal, and involve long-assed lines, especially at precheck. There have been more than a few occasions when I’ve told her that we may have a better, faster chance of entry with the non-precheck line, as nobody is arguing over the “random” checks.

    Assholes are determined to kill interesting travel and tourism so that we can once again drive to Florida and “See Rock City-Visit Ruby Falls” on the way.

  207. 207.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Ohio Mom:

    After January, mine will be full and I’ll have to get a new one for any international travel. The Countess got extra pages a few years ago when you still could, and she’ll be full, too.

    I never thought I’d have a full passport, particularly 3 years prior to expiration.

  208. 208.

    Jeffro

    @NotMax: They should just give it up, all of them. Amazon’s 2nd HQ is going to be in the DC area, mostly likely in NoVA. Nickel bet!

  211. 211.

    NotMax

    @Barbara

    I am no longer willing to fight Medicare cuts to the death

    Unless you’ve discovered a way to halt the march of time, that seems rather short-sighted.

    Give them an inch and they’ll take the entire ruler.

  212. 212.

    Brachiator

    @rikyrah:

    ESPN data shows the average age of baseball viewers at 53. The average age is 47 for the NFL, and it’s rising. The average age is 37 for the NBA, and it seems to be staying there. Baseball’s television ratings continue to trend downward.

    This got me curious.

    Digging further, it seems that sports viewership is trending towards older viewers and cable and TV viewership is down big time. One obvious solution here is to get more deals to stream events on PCs, laptops and mobile devices. This is going to involve making new agreements. Currently, stupidly, I can view some football games on my desktop tv but not on my Android tablet. Fortunately, I’m not a big sports fan.

    But is the NBA the only way back to the future? Nope. From a Marketwatch article on sports viewership:

    The biggest growth potential, however, comes from soccer. Major League Soccer’s average audience of 308,000 last year is small by just about any standard, but up nearly 20% from a decade earlier. Fox Sports 1’s MLS average of 188,000 is similarly tiny, but more than double what the former Fox Soccer drew during its last year of MLS broadcasts in 2011. Most tellingly, the 696,000 that the MLS drew to five Fox network-television broadcasts last year was the league’s highest viewership ever — on any channel.

    MLS viewers are an average of just 40 years old, and 15% are younger than 18. The only other leagues with that kind of following among kids are also soccer related: The English Premier League (43 on average, 10% under 18), international soccer like Fox and ESPN’s UEFA Champions League coverage (39 on average, 13% under 18) and Mexico’s Liga MX (39 on average, 17% under 18).

    Of course, video game E-sports may swoop in and rule all sports viewership.

  213. 213.

    A Ghost To Most

    @Jeffro: Denver seems to think they are in the running. There is a shiton of open space here; not so much in the DC area. 50,000 additional people would make the Beltway more of a parking lot than it already is.

  214. 214.

    Ohio Mom

    @Amir Khalid: Literally, yes, you are correct.

    But I think the emphasis is that they are reflecting badly on the rest of us, and thereby doing the community real harm.

  215. 215.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Brachiator:

    For me, one of the current problems is the length of your average sports telecast for sports I like (while basketball is shorter, I prefer watching that live, as I tent to have issues watching and following fast action on a screen – I stop paying attention). Committing at least 3 hours to a game because of the delays due to advertising needs and breaking sports news really kills my desire to watch.

  216. 216.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @O. Felix Culpa: meh, these are the very same people who think that science makes up stuff like evolution, global warming, supply side economics and the earth round. That and the watch Fox News.

  217. 217.

    NotMax

    @Brachiator

    Roughly every 20 years come stories that soccer is this close to breaking out and burgeoning in audience in the U.S., about to roll like a behemoth over other popular sport.

    Murcans, for better or worse, carry no torch for games where 0-0 can be a final score.

  218. 218.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Jeffro:

    My guess is that the great unspoken criteria is “major air hub” and not a place at the end of a spoke.

  219. 219.

    A Ghost To Most

    I know some of you have a problem with this

    Left-wing activists are taking up arms in response to increasingly bold actions by white supremacists and other right-wing extremists.

    Membership in left-leaning gun groups has jumped under President Donald Trump, just as militia membership dramatically rose during his predecessor’s presidency, reported the New York Daily News.

    The National African-American Gun Association added 500 new members within two days after a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville left a counter-protester dead, and the group went from four chapters to 45 in the past year.

    The national Liberal Gun Club has roughly doubled its paid membership since the election, to about 5,500, and the LGBTQ-oriented Pink Pistols groups also added members.

    “It’s a way to assert our strength,” said Jake Allen, 27, who helped form the Pink Pistols. “Often, queer people are thought of as being weak, as being defenseless, and I think in many ways this pushes back against that, and I want white supremacists and neo-Nazis to know that queer people are taking steps necessary to protect themselves.”

  220. 220.

    Jeffro

    This certainly takes some brass balls (not the class-warfare argument itself, but the more refined, “why do we do this divisive thing to our country?” BS): It’s Class Warfare to Keep the Top [higher/progressive] Rate For Million-Dollar Earners

    Rep. Steve Russell (R-OK) said Monday that maintaining the top marginal tax rate for Americans earning $1,000,000 or more yearly would be “class warfare.”

    In an interview, CNN “New Day” co-host John Berman asked Russell about a report from Axios, which did not cite its sources, that Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee were considering cutting the top marginal rate for individuals earning between $418,000 and $999,999, but keeping the existing rate for those earning more than that.

    “I don’t think we ought to continue to divide our country into class warfare,” Russell said of the proposal. “One of the sad things since leaving the military and coming to Congress is to see how we have divided our nation on almost every level: socioeconomic, gender, race, and now we’re going to divide on class and divide on wealth? When is it that we unite on things that we actually could agree on?”

    Um Rep Russell, I hate to break it to ya, but a large majority of this country is actually quite united on wanting the rich to pay more. So yeah, let’s ‘unite on things that we actually could agree on’…and soon, ’cause folks are sharpening some pitchfork tines as we speak…

  221. 221.

    Jeffro

    @A Ghost To Most: Denver’s not far enough east, and Bezos just bought DC’s biggest/most expensive house out here last year. Put it near Dulles (which is way underutilized) or in Crystal City (which has a lot of vacancy and has National nearby)

  223. 223.

    gene108

    @Barbara:

    I am no longer willing to fight Medicare cuts to the death to save elderly people who worship racists candidates. I know not everyone who benefits from Medicare is like that, but as compared to Medicaid, they are far more like that. Let them fight for their own programs by contacting the representatives they voted for to see if they actually have their constituents’ backs.

    Most plans floated to cut Medicare usually apply to those currently 55 and younger. The people on Medicare can keep voting Republican, without feeling any pain.

  226. 226.

    Tenar Arha

    @Ohio Mom: I dunno, Stephen Miller, Jared Kushner, and Benjamin Netanyahu are beating him in the shonda sweepstakes so far (but that’s probably the media coverage in my media market).

  227. 227.

    Corner Stone

    @NotMax: Both Austin and Houston have been mentioned as in the mix. I hope it’s not Austin as that would kill off what’s left of the stuff that makes Austin so attractive to visit/live in.
    Houston could absorb it fairly easily but I’m ambivalent about it.

  228. 228.

    The Moar You Know

    If Trump takes it into his head to recall all those pilots, will USAF actually have planes for them to fly?

    @Amir Khalid: They’ll use commercial jets. Troops transport, refueling, massive cargo, that sort of thing. There are agreements in place for that.

    My father got called up last time (in 2003/4, he was the last active pilot in the US commercial fleet with actual wartime medevac experience). Think he’s far too old this time, but you never know. I expect he’ll refuse this one; he is a serious NeverTrumper and I just don’t see him obeying the call like last time. I could be wrong.

  229. 229.

    Corner Stone

    @Jeffro: I’m wondering when someone doesn’t embrace the “class warfare” mantle and say, “Fuck yeah it is. We’re coming for their kesh. Their bundles and bundles of kesh.”

  230. 230.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Jeffro: Wow, that is impressively stupid. Especially because the entire Republican Party is dedicated to the idea that the Good People (white people who work hard) are getting screwed and the Bad People (guilty white people with cushy thinky jobs and the shiftless black and sneaky brown people they love so much) are doing the screwing.

  231. 231.

    Betty Cracker

    @A Ghost To Most: I definitely have a problem with it, though I can understand the motivation. Bottom line is, more of the folks who buy those guns are going to end up at the wrong end of them than successfully defend themselves against someone else.

  232. 232.

    Amir Khalid

    @NotMax:
    As I recall, one of MLS’ predecessor leagues made a rule that matches that were tied at ninety minutes had to be settled with a penalty shootout.

  235. 235.

    Matt McIrvin

    @FlipYrWhig: Sarah Huckabee Sanders is at least doing the old dance of talking about the “average family” when she means the mean household rather than the median. (And, apparently, using some imagined wage benefit of business-tax cuts as her measure of what everyone will get.) That’s the kind of lying we’re accustomed to.

  238. 238.

    Jeffro

    @FlipYrWhig: It’s just part of the mentality that says taxing the wealthy and powerful is a crime/unjust/unnatural/”class warfare”. The poor ought to be paying the taxes to the king, just like in the good ol’ days…

  240. 240.

    Jeffro

    @NotMax:

    Wherever [Amazon HQ2] ends up, the real estate market there is going to climb so fast it may reach escape velocity.

    I’m ok with that – if it could peak in about 5 1/2 years, when Mrs. Jeffro and I are planning on cashing out and heading west, that’d be super!

  241. 241.

    A Ghost To Most

    The Hill reported Sunday that one Russian agent posed as an American accountant and was able to get a job working for a major Democratic donor before FBI agents arrested and deported her.

    Former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzi supervised the post-arrest declassification and release of records on the 10-year federal investigation that ended with the unmasking of a Russian spy ring including spy-turned-model Anna Chapman.

    New Jersey accountant Cynthia Murphy was a lesser-known arrest from that same spy ring, a “sleeper” agent on a 10-year mission. For most of her time in the U.S., Murphy spent “a great deal of time collecting information and passing it on.”

    She contacted the Kremlin in 2009 saying that she’d gained access to a major Democratic donor, a “personal friend” of Secretary Clinton whose name was redacted in the FBI report, but who has been identified as Alan Patricof.

    In early summer 2010, agents monitoring the Russians grew concerned that Chapman would leave the country and that Murphy was getting too close to Clinton.

    “In regards to the woman known as Cynthia Murphy, she was getting close to Alan, and the lobbying job. And we thought this was too close to Hillary Clinton. So when you have the totality of the circumstance, and we were confident we had the whole cell identified, we decided it was time to shut down their operations,” said Figliuzzi.

    The FBI official told The Hill that Russia’s efforts against the U.S. have made a massive leap thanks to social media.

    “We watched a sleeper cell of ten people for ten years that didn’t come close to the impact of a few thousand ads and posts on FB, Twitter, Google and Instagram,” Figliuzzi said.

    rawstory

  243. 243.

    Doug R

    @SFAW: What skillz has donny shown? He never learned to drive, so Air National Guard was out. Maybe a supply clerk, but he’s a liar and probably a thief. Minor unproveable medical 4F I guess they thought was their best way out. I know dodging STDs was his personal Vietnam, but if he had got someone pregnant, he might have got the same loophole Cheney did.

  244. 244.

    Ruckus

    @Kay:

    They love assholes.
    There’s no other explanation.
    They admire terrible people.

    They are assholes.
    They are terrible people.
    They do have mirrors. Love the one you’re with and all that.
    There is no other explanation needed.

  245. 245.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Barbara: The thing about Medicare is, everyone ends up being in the group that needs it eventually, unless they die first (or are stupid rich).

    The plans I’ve seen thus far to cut Medicare usually save it for the Fox News geezers who are eligible now, and get rid of it for me, even though I’ve been paying in all my adult life.

  246. 246.

    Amir Khalid

    @germy:
    FIFA would definitely not go for that. Or more precisely, the International Football Association Board, consisting of representatives from the four British national bodies (because the British invented football, that’s why) would not. Another only-in-America rule drew “offside lines” 15 yards either side of the centre line: a forward could only be ruled offside if they were between this line and the defending team’s goal line. This rule was also quashed by IFAB.

  248. 248.

    Brachiator

    @NotMax:

    Roughly every 20 years come stories that soccer is this close to breaking out and burgeoning in audience in the U.S., about to roll like a behemoth over other popular sport.

    Murcans, for better or worse, carry no torch for games where 0-0 can be a final score.

    Very true.

    However, the average age of football viewers is 50 plus. When the viewership age gets in the 60s, as is the case with horse racing, it is a signal that the interest in the sport is dying.

    This does not mean that soccer is the future. It may be that (gasp) almost all sports will become a niche viewership kind of thing. However, that the average age of soccer viewers is younger, and also that it has appeal to 18 year olds, means that there is money to be made, even if the viewership does not expand.

    BTW, a side problem is that there is a boatload of corruption in international soccer. This is not helpful.

  250. 250.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Matt McIrvin: That is one of their most undead zombie lies. I haven’t heard them talking yet about the size of the tax cut in dollars, like they usually do, while obscuring where those dollars _go_, but I’m sure that’s coming.

  251. 251.

    The Moar You Know

    McCain no look so good.

    @Corner Stone: I don’t think he’s got two months left in him. He’s still ticking on rage and there doesn’t seem to be much of that left. Wouldn’t wish that death on anyone.

  252. 252.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Brachiator: If Americans cared about corruption in sports they’d never watch NCAA basketball or football, and yet they not only have an insatiable appetite for it, they care about _high school_ sports because they feed the corrupt college kind.

  254. 254.

    Brachiator

    @A Ghost To Most: I know some of you don’t have a problem with this

    Left-wing activists are taking up arms in response to increasingly bold actions by white supremacists and other right-wing extremists.

    Membership in left-leaning gun groups has jumped under President Donald Trump, just as militia membership dramatically rose during his predecessor’s presidency, reported the New York Daily News.

  257. 257.

    Ruckus

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    Call on me, call on me, I know the answer.
    Anyone who would spend an entire career/life in the marines, rise to the top and then take a job being drumpf’s office boy.

  258. 258.

    Corner Stone

    @The Moar You Know: I don’t know if it’s the illness, the treatment or both that is getting to him, but McCain is noticeably more frail and haggard.
    It’s a sad day when we’re reduced to counting on a rage-ful vengeance machine R Senator from AZ to save our collective ass.

  259. 259.

    FlipYrWhig

    @A Ghost To Most: The obstacle to me when it comes to enjoying soccer is that it seems like I’d have to get all excited about a _chance_ at scoring. That’s when the live crowds start to cheer, not when the guy is about to take a shot but when he has the ball and might do something that leads to something that might _lead_ to a shot on goal. Then a shot is, like, mind-blowing. I feel like it’s too hard to cheer that way. It’d be like getting all excited as soon as LeBron rebounds the ball under the opposite goal, because he’s LeBron and something interesting hasn’t happened yet but might soon.

  260. 260.

    Amir Khalid

    @The Moar You Know:
    I understand why there are such agreements. But Trump couldn’t simply call up civilian planes on a whim, could he, given the potential for disruption to the economy and daily life? I imagine there must be some kind of event trigger to activate the US government’s authority to do that.

  261. 261.

    Ruckus

    @rikyrah:

    Is it really that difficult to wager a guess?

    For a conservative politician to call out the head of his party, yes.
    It’s party before country every time. Look at their agenda. They know they will be killing their voters, but they don’t care. They know that only the very wealthy will gain from their agenda, and not only do they not care, they are getting paid to not care. Party before country my ass, it’s wallet before country every time.

  262. 262.

    A Ghost To Most

    @FlipYrWhig: To be fair, when I was working in Oz, an Aussie coworker made me watch an entire day of cricket. That was the definition of tedious sport; thankfully, the drink was flowing.

  263. 263.

    The Moar You Know

    But Trump couldn’t simply call up civilian planes on a whim, could he, given the potential for disruption to the economy and daily life?

    @Amir Khalid: Yeah, pretty certain he can. Hell, last time my dad got the notice and ended up with a two-step jump in rank just for saying “yes”.

    I imagine there must be some kind of event trigger to activate the US government’s authority to do that.

    No. Bear in mind this only applies to US flagged carriers.

  264. 264.

    Amir Khalid

    @FlipYrWhig:
    The Laws of The Game do say that a goal is a goal is a goal, but the most memorable goals come from sweet attacking play, and that’s what fans most want to see.

  265. 265.

    Aleta

    A story at Marie Claire about the way that reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey worked on the Weinstein story. It also mentions the importance of the editors who supported their investigation.

    (Editor) Rebecca Corbett ( ) encouraged them to pursue untold stories as part of the newspaper’s commitment to do more aggressive sexual harassment reporting this year.

    Two months after their colleague Emily Steel released the bombshell Bill O’Reilly investigation that led to his termination in April, Kantor, who helped uncover the bruising work conditions at Amazon, began looking into Weinstein. She recruited Twohey, known for her work uncovering Trump’s questionable treatment of women in 2016, the very same week she returned from her maternity leave.

    In order to take on Weinstein—who at one point threatened legal action against the Times—they needed backing from top brass. Executive editor Dean Baquet (NYT) supported them from the start…. “The institution was willing to stand up to somebody powerful, willing to lose advertising to do this story,” says Kantor. “So if we didn’t stand up for what is right and give this all we got, what were we doing with our careers? Why are we here?”

    So Kantor and Twohey kept digging, deeper and deeper, even when they became targets for intimidation by Weinstein and his legal team themselves. “It was extremely intense,” Twohey admits. “They attacked our reporting and attacked us as individuals.”

    They also mention their parents.

    Twohey: “I learned from them that a reporter could take you into a world where you give a voice to the people who need one,” she says.

    Kantor: “I grew up around people with numbers on their arms—my grandparents are Holocaust survivors,” she says. “It led me to think about the big questions we often ask in investigative journalism: ‘How could something like this have gone on? What allowed this to happen?’”

  266. 266.

    Ruckus

    @rikyrah:
    drumpf is not good with money.
    He could easily be worth far more than he is if he had simply done what the average person does with their found money.
    drumpf is not good with the truth.
    Because he has no grasp of the concept. Not one iota. He can not even keep up with his own lies. The concept of a truth, any truth, doesn’t matter to him. drumpf’s truth is whatever comes out of his mouth at any time. Doesn’t matter if he changes the output in the next second, whatever is current is his truth. He doesn’t lie, he changes the truth, because whatever falls out of his mouth is what he believes to be real, even if he can’t remember what that was. One would think that he could be right once in a while, just out of the law of averages, he’d have to stumble across it occasionally.
    I become more convinced every day that he has Alzheimer’s.
    Because of the above and the anger at people for not believing him to be perfect and truthful, both of which he is anything/everything but. He turns on people who support him. To stay on his good side requires knee pads and a total lack of humanity and self respect.

  269. 269.

    Barbara

    @Matt McIrvin: You get to my second rule, which is that anything that is forward looking can be undone. When I told this to one of the lobbyist types in my office he sneered. But it’s the truth. I have been working in this area for a long time. Unpopular actions can be undone, especially if they take things away from people.

  270. 270.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Aleta:

    Interesting query – why was Baquet willing to call all in on Weinstein while facilitating the happy ending on the 35 year velvet glove job they’d given Trump?

  272. 272.

    Ruckus

    @Amir Khalid:
    Why do you think he has all the reminders of his own name all over the place?
    At least that way he can remember who he is. You don’t think he has a drivers license in his pocket to look at do you?

  273. 273.

    a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)

    @Amir Khalid: I believe that’s something shared between your football and ice hockey (I’ve never watched enough field hockey to comment on that sport)–there is a certain beautiful inevitability about some goals, and seeing that develop in real time is amazing. It’s not just “Did it go in?”; it’s “How do they manage to deal with both the actions of the opposing team and the physics of the game itself?” There’s something dreadful about seeing that process shut down (even as a Nashville fan, I can see why Chicago’s playoff loss last spring was horrific) and something uplifting in seeing it completed successfully (which is why fans manage to tolerate Sidney Crosby and his inability to engage comfortably with humanity outside the boundaries of the rink).

  275. 275.

    Brachiator

    @FlipYrWhig:

    If Americans cared about corruption in sports they’d never watch NCAA basketball or football, and yet they not only have an insatiable appetite for it, they care about _high school_ sports because they feed the corrupt college kind.

    When I say corruption, I mean match fixing and related activities. I don’t know the relative levels of this in basketball, football and soccer.

  276. 276.

    Miss Bianca

    @A Ghost To Most: I have a problem with anybody thinking gun ownership is some sort of – forgive the reference – magic-bullet solution for social problems they may be facing. That being said, I have to admit I’d be curious to see what the NRA’s and the gun manufacturers’ marketing plans for lefty gun nuts would look like.

  277. 277.

    A Ghost To Most

    @Miss Bianca: And normally, I would fully agree with you.

    These are not normal times, and foreshadow worse times ahead. YMMV.

    The NRA has one audience, and it is not us.

  278. 278.

    Jeffro

    @Corner Stone: I hope he considers giving a punchier version of that ‘farewell address’ he gave last week. Name names, right wrongs. Make some history, John – be the guy who caused the Mango Menace to stroke out.

  279. 279.

    Ruckus

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
    It isn’t interesting travel that they want.
    They want your travel dollars and you are taking them offshore, a place where there is more competition for your dollars. And besides, conservatives are at their core, stanch isolationists. You go overseas you might have a good time and want the same whatever as the place that you visit. Like real people, not the town of Stepford, with it’s cookie cutter people and dominated women.

  282. 282.

    Ruckus

    @Amir Khalid:
    If they have planes will the pilots be certified to fly them? Or have to be completely retrained and certified? Someone asked yesterday, isn’t flying one big plane like flying any other? No, no it is not. Have the pilots aged out, are they still even flying?
    I also saw yesterday that the AF was not in favor of this. These guys retired. They did that for some reason. Do you really want them back after making that decision?

  283. 283.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    Why in the world would anyone believe a word he says? He’s a liar. He’s been lying for 50 years with no accountability at all.

    Why is this lie different?

    I don’t believe him. Not at all.

  284. 284.

    Betty Cracker

    Speaking of the NRA, have y’all seen that completely unhinged video by spokesnut Dana Loesch?

  285. 285.

    Matt McIrvin

    @OzarkHillbilly: I’ve been hearing a lot of chortling about Weinstein from wingers who say things like “this is the difference between Democrats and Republicans: we just TALK about grabbing pussy, they really do it.” Setting aside whether Trump is innocent of really doing it, it’s as if Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly never happened. I remember what happened when Ailes was forced out: he instantly joined the Trump campaign.

  288. 288.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Miss Bianca: Forget the 80s already? Homophobies don’t think gay bashing is so fun when the gays fight back. Almost all of these idiots from Trump on down are terrified and trying to hide by cruelty to the helpless. So best to make it very, very one isn’t helpless.

  289. 289.

    Brachiator

    @Ruckus:

    drumpf is not good with money.
    He could easily be worth far more than he is if he had simply done what the average person does with their found money.

    Spend it?

    I agree that Trump is mainly a fraud, although I don’t know if he is ill, as you suggest. But who knows what we might find out about him as his administration rolls along.

  290. 290.

    Ruckus

    @Jeffro:
    Exactly.
    Even if he had taken half of the found money and invested it reasonably and blown the rest he have 5 billion, a not insignificant amount and over twice what the best estimates are that he’s worth. And I think a lot of that is smoke and mirrors. It’s not that he’s broke, he’s not. But I’d also bet that his cash on hand is pathetic for his supposed wealth. I’d also bet he’s leveraged to or past the hilt. And I’d bet to whom.
    Of course he saves on his suits and ties, purchased at the 99 cent store. Everything 99 cents, all day every day, alterations not included (nor purchased). He bought a third hand, 25 yr old converted airliner. Those are normally used for air tankers, or third world airlines. And they didn’t want this one.

  291. 291.

    Ruckus

    @Brachiator:
    We know he is ill, as in not normal. That’s a given.
    But what I’m talking about is developing. It may be early, but I think it’s happening. And I don’t wish this on my worst enemy. Which he’s for sure in the running.

  293. 293.

    Brachiator

    @Ruckus:

    We know he is ill, as in not normal.

    I think he is evil, and sadly, this is fairly common.

    But what I’m talking about is developing. It may be early, but I think it’s happening.

    I don’t go in much for remote diagnoses of supposed maladies. But I will indulge in this much speculation: would Trump try as hard as possible to hide any signs of serious illness? Wouldn’t he demand secrecy from his staff and cabinet? And if any illness were to seriously hamper his ability to function, would the GOP do everything they could to preserve the lie?

    It’s not that he’s broke, he’s not. But I’d also bet that his cash on hand is pathetic for his supposed wealth. I’d also bet he’s leveraged to or past the hilt. And I’d bet to whom.

    Didn’t we find out everything we needed to know when we looked at all those years of his tax returns? Oh, wait…

  294. 294.

    Ruckus

    @A Ghost To Most:
    You think?
    He saw, likely got read a report of a shortage of AF pilots. As he has no real world skills he has no idea what it takes to accomplish anything. So just call them back, easy peasy. It took me longer to type that original comment out than come up with any of that. And I’m not a pilot.

  295. 295.

    Miss Bianca

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: Fighting back is one thing. Fantasies of depending on guns to protect you in the case of an attack is another. Maybe it’s just the Imp of the Perverse which prompts me to point out that Adam, among others, has noted that unless you are highly trained in the use of arms, you are more likely to be killed by your own firearm than to kill an attacker.To say nothing of the fact that “standing your ground” under those circumstance if you do manage to kill or wound your attacker is likely to be treated much, much more harshly if you are a minority (POC, LBGT) attacking or killing a member of the dominant culture than the other way round. It’s a dead end for lefties.

    But hey, at least we’re likely to see a rush to push for gun regulation if more of “the wrong sort” fall for the idea that Second Amendment solutions go both ways, so I guess there’s that. : /

  296. 296.

    Amir Khalid

    @Ruckus:
    Planes also need hangars, aircrews to maintain them, a supply chain for spare parts, etc. Triump is probably unaware of all this.

  297. 297.

    A Ghost To Most

    @Miss Bianca: All true, if these were normal times. They aren’t, and signs point to it getting worse. I’d rather be prepared for something that doesn’t happen, than get caught up short if something does happen.

    As for the “wrong sort”, that depends on your point of view. They are all “good guys with a gun”, until they aren’t.

  300. 300.

    Ruckus

    @Amir Khalid:
    Probably? That word does a lot of work when discussing the shitgibbon.
    But as I said it took less time to come up with the list than it did to type it. A non pilot coming up with that many faults in less time than it took to type those 79 words doesn’t amaze me any more than anything else the shitgibbon does.

  301. 301.

    RobNYNY

    @Amir Khalid:

    I think it is “before,” but a lot of versions of Yiddish don’t make a clear distinction between what would be “für” and “vor” in German. Sometimes “für” is pronounced “fir” in Yiddish.

    (Not a real Yiddish speaker, but a German speaker with Yiddish-speaking friends.)

  302. 302.

    A Ghost To Most

    @Miss Bianca: I took an oath of loyalty to the Constitution a long time ago. I don’t think it is a fantasy to uphold that oath, but an obligation. Different strokes.

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