Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Everybody saw this coming.

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

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

T R E 4 5 O N

A Senator Walker would also be an insult to reason, rationality, and decency.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

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

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Hail to the Hairpiece / Russiagate Open Thread: Comic Sidebar from An Old-School Traitor Trouper

Russiagate Open Thread: Comic Sidebar from An Old-School Traitor Trouper

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Yeah, Rohrabacher’s schtick was funnier before this Trump guy showed up and got his RUSSIAN PUPPET rep smeared on the existing GOP…

Reader Interactions

164Comments

  4. 4.

    JMG

    It’s a party of traitors. Spice up Thanksgiving. Tell your Trumpy relatives that’s what they are — supporters of treason.

  6. 6.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Remember when Paul Ryan “joked” about how Rohrbacher & Trump were on Putin’s payroll and everyone understood why the joke is funny?

    that was Kevin “The Professor” McCarthy. Ryan shushed him and told him to keep it in the family

  9. 9.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    Dammit, the OP made the Manchurian Candidate reference before I could even get to it. On the other hand I made a different one in the thread just upstairs, so I guess I can’t feel too bad.

  12. 12.

    Redshift

    I was somewhat amused by this WaPo story about the VA governor’s race yesterday, “Northam touts 212k weekend door knocks in Virginia — while DNC was fretting about race” This was the funny part:

    Northam’s Republican opponent Ed Gillespie counters that canvassers knocked on nearly a quarter million doors over the weekend and more than 2.5 million since its outreach effort began in earnest, according to spokesman David Abrams. He declined to say whether homes visited multiple time were included in that tally, which prevents a direct comparison to Northam.

    To anyone who has worked on campaigns in Virginia, this is a really obvious lie. Republicans often have more money than we do (though it’s not as universal as it used to be), but the never have anywhere near as many volunteers. So it’s obvious that Gillespie’s spokesman heard the number of door knocks Northam was claiming, and just made up a vague number that was bigger.

    It also made me wonder why. Pretending to have done more canvassing doesn’t get you more voter contact, and I doubt it fooled much of anyone on our side. It seems like the only reason is to try to BS their own side and pretend their campaign is going better than it is, which tells me they don’t think it’s going very well, regardless of the occasional outlier poll.

    Great job, spokesman David!

  14. 14.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Redshift: I’ve been reading troubling things about lack of GOTV to the African American community in VA on behalf of Northam and the other statewide candidates. Is this accurate?

  16. 16.

    Brachiator

    No wonder the Republicans can’t find any Russian operatives. Somebody removed all the mirrors.

  17. 17.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    So I guess we get hear Trump rage about how day Hilary do opposition research and the Steel File is the worst thing ever (and thus drawing everyone’s attention to it, like the idiot he is)

  22. 22.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Here’s an article that just dropped on the congressional investigations.

    There’s the work going on in the SCIF in the Capitol basement –– hour after hour of interviews with key players, as well as efforts to gather documents from social media companies and emails from key White House players.

    But simultaneously, the committee’s chairman, Devin Nunes, appears to be freelancing, helming his own investigation into three passion projects: discrediting the Fusion GPS “pee tape” dossier, criticizing Obama administration officials for looking at the names of U.S. citizens in intelligence intercepts–a process known as “unmasking”—and digging in on allegations that the Russians bribed Hillary Clinton to sell off America’s uranium stores. Sources say he subpoenaed Fusion GPS’ bank without telling the committee’s minority members, which may violate committee rules. Fusion GPS has taken the Intel Committee to court to try to quash that subpoena.

    All those projects have the effect of blocking and tackling for Trump, even after Nunes indicated in April that he would step back from the probe because of criticism that he was trying to run interference for the White House.

    That’s pretty much what I said a while back – that the partisanship on the committees will limit what can come out of them. It’s kind of interesting that Nunes is ramping up the interference now. Leads one to suspect that something else may be happening. The WSJ has more about another investigation into Manafort’s money laundering.

    But there will be leaks, and some may feel it is to their advantage to talk before they are indicted. I wish it could go faster, but there is a lot to this story.

  26. 26.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Cheryl Rofer: Leads one to suspect that something else may be happening. The WSJ has more about another investigation into Manafort’s money laundering.

    I was thinking about those US Atty nominees trump met with, Manhattan (trump tower), Brooklyn (The Kushners, per Lawrence O’Donnell) and Miami (Mar-A-Lago). The Repbulicans might not get curious– something we can add to the list of things McCain, Flake, Corker and Collins can do if they’re serious about opposing trump, and no I don’t think they are– but didn’t trump pretty much guarantee those three nominees are going to be subpoena’d by Meuller so he can compare those interviews to the one-on-one meetings trump had with Comey?

  27. 27.

    EricNNY

    The list of Republican Russian sympathizers grows longer every day. This is like a season of The Americans on steroids and meth being fattened on a feedlot with more steroids and meth.

  28. 28.

    Mike in NC

    Trump used to brag about his many penetrations (video is available for a fee) while Pence denies ever having done it.

  29. 29.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Cheryl Rofer: Trump started tweeting this last week. It then got broadcast by Breitbart and Hannity and then Pirro and Tucker. Huckabee Sanders waded in. This is coordinated disinformation. The Uraniam One and the Clinton Foundation stories came out of Bannon directed, Mercer financed Clinton Cash. It was then laundered through WaPo and NY Times and Fox. The Clinton Foundation story was even investigated and then closed because it was bogus by the FBI’s NY Field Office. The Uranium One story was quickly debunked as well. In OCT 2016 David Corn, who broke the Steele Dossier story, reported that Fusion GPS was being funded originally by GOP donors during the primaries and then when they dropped the project a Democratic funder took over. All we learned tonight is that it was Elias.

  31. 31.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    I talk with people who voted for Tяump sometimes, and they tell me, I swear, that we really have no right to complain about what Russia did to us (most of the time after swearing up and down that Russia didn’t do anything to us) because we’ve done the same thing in other countries.

    My answer is that it was liberals who were up in arms over the shit we did in other countries when we did it. We’re consistent: We don’t think the U.S. should be messing around in the internal affairs and elections of other countries, and we don’t think they should be messing around in ours. This seems lost on Republicans.

  33. 33.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Omnes Omnibus: There is SO MUCH to this one. The Steele dossier. Manafort’s money laundering, which now looks like it may have connections to John Podesta’s company. Trump’s business interests and shady associates like Felix Sater. All those Russians who developed severe and deadly complications like beating themselves to death. I am sure that Mueller’s people must have a giant diagram on the wall like one I recall from when we were trying to put together everything we knew about the Soviet nuclear complex. Probably even more complicated than that.

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Trump seems to have no sense of separation of the judiciary branch of government. He may have developed that when dealing with New York figures like that prosecutor Vance, who seems to have been running a wholesale business.

  34. 34.

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

    Is the Supreme Court decision to dismiss the Travel Ban appeal good, considering it also vacated the Ninth District’s decision as well?

  36. 36.

    sharl

    @Adam L Silverman: Do you ever cross paths with your counterparts who teach civilian students in training for jobs in “national security” and related areas? I am specifically wondering if such students are usually exposed to the most recent/updated information on things that were once improperly or dishonestly presented to the public. More specifically, I am curious about how the story of the pre-Iraq invasion National Intelligence Estimate is taught these days (if at all)? I assume that mostly civilian students would be the recipients of stuff like this, but if you know that military officers would also see this sort of thing in a classroom setting, I’d be curious about that as well.

    This business with creepy Tom Cotton and his ilk being taken seriously gets me all riled up these days, which in turn reminded me about the NIE. I went back and found the March 2015 article on the FOIA-provoked declassification of the original 2002 NIE – The CIA Just Declassified the Document That Supposedly Justified the Iraq Invasion – but I didn’t see that get a lot of coverage by major media in that March-April 2015 period. That may not be such a surprise – by then it was already well known just how politicized the intelligence process had become in the Bush-Cheney Administration, so maybe editors looked and said, “meh, nothing new here” – but I hate the idea of us getting into a déjà-vu-all-over-again situation. Younger generations of intelligence analysts and their managers, armed with accurate information about the story of the Iraq NIE, maybe/hopefully would put up more resistance to the likes of Cotton and other saber-rattlers trying to fix the intelligence and facts around their desired policy outcome.

  37. 37.

    Mnemosyne

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):

    I talk with people who voted for Tяump sometimes, and they tell me, I swear, that we really have no right to complain about what Russia did to us (most of the time after swearing up and down that Russia didn’t do anything to us) because we’ve done the same thing in other countries.

    I have had ostensible liberals tell me that as well. Almost like they’re all getting fed propaganda by the same source … ?

  38. 38.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Cheryl Rofer: It’s not John Podesta’s company. It’s his brother Tony’s. John Podesta ended his involvement years ago and, if I’m recalling correctly, wasn’t involved when his brother was repping for the Russians in Ukraine.

  43. 43.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    Trump seems to have no sense of separation of the judiciary branch of government. He may have developed that when dealing with New York figures like that prosecutor Vance, who seems to have been running a wholesale business.

    He developed it from working with Giuliani:
    http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/wayne-barrett-donald-trump-rudy-giuliani-peas-pod-article-1.2776357

    Rudy and Donald first got together in the late 1980s shortly before Donald became a co-chair of Giuliani’s first fundraiser for his 1989 mayoral campaign, sitting on the Waldorf dais and steering $41,000 to the campaign. A year earlier, Tony Lombardi, the federal agent closest to then-U.S. Attorney Giuliani, opened a probe of Trump’s role in the suspect sale of two Trump Tower apartments to Robert Hopkins, the mob-connected head of the city’s largest gambling ring.

    Trump attended the closing himself and Hopkins arrived with a briefcase loaded with up to $200,000 in cash, a deposit the soon-to-felon counted at the table. Despite Hopkins’ wholesale lack of verifiable income or assets, he got a loan from a Jersey bank that did business with Trump’s casino. A Trump limo delivered the cash to the bank.

    The government subsequently nailed Hopkins’ mortgage broker, Frank LaMagra, on an unrelated charge and he offered to give up Donald, claiming Trump “participated” in the money-laundering — and volunteering to wear a wire on him.

    Instead, Lombardi, who discussed the case with Giuliani personally (and with me for a 1993 Village Voice piece called “The Case of the Missing Case”), went straight to Donald for two hour-long interviews with him. Within weeks of the interviews, Donald announced he’d raise $2 million in a half hour if Rudy ran for mayor. Lamagra got no deal and was convicted, as was his mob associate, Louis (Louie HaHa) Attanasio, who was later also nailed for seven underworld murders. Hopkins was convicted of running his gambling operation partly out of the Trump Tower apartment, where he was arrested.

    Lombardi — who expected a top appointment in a Giuliani mayoralty, conducted several other probes directly tied to Giuliani political opponents, and testified later that “every day I came to work I went to Mr. Giuliani to seek out what duties I needed to perform” — closed the Trump investigation without even giving it a case number. That meant that New Jersey gaming authorities would never know it existed.

    Much more at the link.

  44. 44.

    MomSense

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    Doesn’t Numes seem a bit desperate? That whole sneak out at night, switch vehicle to avoid being followed, and pick up intelligence at the White House so he could then stage a fake delivery of the same intelligence the next day at the White House didn’t seem like soneththibg a non-compromised chair of the house intelligence committee would do.

  47. 47.

    Another Scott

    @Adam L Silverman: The Virginia races are weird, but I find it really hard to believe that the Teabaggers are going to win. Every race this year has swung very strongly away from them, and VA is trending blue.

    By weirdness, I mean things like this:

    Lowell –

    Will you join me, rocking the red for the Old Dominion on Sunday, October 29th in Virginia Beach with Bikers for Trump?

    Sunday, October 20th at 2pm Rock Church 640 Kempsville Road Virginia Beach, VA 23464

    Virginians will head to the polls in less than 3 weeks and we must not let the radical, violent left win.
    Our statewide candidates are counting on the support of conservatives across our Commonwealth to stand up to liberals like Ralph Northam, Justin Fairfax, and Mark Harring [sic] on November 7th. Let’s take back Virginia.

    The event is free, but we’d like to know if you’re able to attend. Please RSVP through this secure link so we can tell Bikers for Trump how many to expect.

    Additionally, if you’d like to support my campaign, you can do so by donating after entering your RSVP or by following this secure link if you cannot attend on Sunday.

    Don’t forget to RSVP today!

    For America,

    Corey Stewart
    Republican for U.S. Senate (VA)

    Note that Gillespie won’t be there. Stewart is the guy who almost beat Gillespie in the primary, by running as a (only slightly neo-) confederate.

    The election is in less than 2 weeks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  49. 49.

    Redshift

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I’ve been reading troubling things about lack of GOTV to the African American community in VA on behalf of Northam and the other statewide candidates. Is this accurate?

    Not that I’ve heard about, but I don’t have any special knowledge. I would find it hard to believe any of the campaigns would be that stupid. Campaigns here tend to be pretty data-driven, especially statewide ones.

    There have been a couple of news stories lately that are pretty clearly opposition-research plants to try to suppress enthusiasm, so I take everything with a grain of salt.

  50. 50.

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

    @Cheryl Rofer:
    Again, I thought Nunes was supposed to have recused himself. I guess he did from the main investigation, but has decided to fuck with it by starting his bullshit ones. Just another Russian symp traitor who deserves to die in agony.

  54. 54.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Another Scott: This is really a new thing in my memory, just casually characterizing perfectly ordinary Democrats as “the radical, violent left” like that. I don’t recall that happening in campaign literature by people above the Lyndon LaRouche stratum.

  55. 55.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Adam L Silverman: Thanks. I actually gave that some thought before I came up with the wrong name. I knew it was the brother, not the DNC guy. Getting toward my bedtime. Also, the depth of lying and general confusion on Twitter tonight is much worse than usual.

    Those are all the excuses I can think of right now.

  56. 56.

    Mnemosyne

    @Redshift:
    @Adam L Silverman:

    These things combined are making me nervous that the Repugs are trying to make the race seem close enough to steal. Spreading rumors that the Democrats didn’t do enough outreach to Black voters would give some very good cover to voter suppression efforts.

  58. 58.

    Redshift

    @Another Scott:

    Note that Gillespie won’t be there. Stewart is the guy who almost beat Gillespie in the primary, by running as a (only slightly neo-) confederate.

    The election is in less than 2 weeks.

    And unless I missed it, he doesn’t even mention Gillespie, just warns against those evil libruls. And he’s fundraising for next year. Yeah, no bad blood there!

    This is also not long after a Trumpist wackadoodle quit the Gillespie campaign after not being allowed to be a speaker at a rally.

  60. 60.

    sharl

    @Adam L Silverman: OK, thanks anyway.
    Got into an argument a year or so ago with someone who was clearly working within the DC natsec “blob”, who was citing the old NIE as a legitimate reason for our invasion. When I brought up the 2015 declassified stuff, he doubled down, then lost interest. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  62. 62.

    MomSense

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    I’d like to find out what Nunes knows about documents being stolen from transition team classified briefings as he was a trump transition team member.

  63. 63.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Major Major Major Major: Yep, part of the three pronged, run it through the House Intel, Judiciary, and Oversight Committees disinformation campaign. The President had a very bad week last week. He’s got GOP senators, even as they still vote with him, speaking openly about his unfitness for office and the danger he presents to the Republic and the world. Mueller, you’ll notice, is just running silent and deep. Which, I’m sure, is freaking a whole lot of folks out around the President and within the GOP congressional leadership. So what do they do? They go back to the playbook that works. Scream Clinton, then launder that scream through the rightwing web, TV, and radio so that it is clean enough for the NY Times and WaPo and Politico and Axios etc to pick up providing mainstream media top cover for Nunes and Goodlatte and Gowdy to run their investigations. Notice that Haberman has already started using the word “lying”, which she only does when something involves one person: Hillary Clinton. Which allows the White House to claim the high ground and play the wrongfully injured party.

  64. 64.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Redshift: That’s why I asked for local knowledge. Someone brought it up on MSNBC during one of their daytime shows yesterday. I had it on in the background.

  67. 67.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Cheryl Rofer: I’m not jumping on you, knocking you. Trying to keep all of the people and groups and events involved in this straight would drive a conspiracist with an eidetic memory nuts

  68. 68.

    Lyrebird

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I have almost no interactions with anyone in civilian academia.

    Except of course when they offer comments either too tendentious or too discouraged to be left without a response, right? (meaning: there’s at least half a dozen academic jackals who openly admit the fact.)

    I do wish @sharl‘s concern were being better addressed for the general public, no matter what work they are preparing to do.

  71. 71.

    Redshift

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

    Again, I thought Nunes was supposed to have recused himself.

    Nope. Maddow keeps getting this wrong, too. He “stepped back” from the Russia investigation after the debacle of the midnight White House visit, but he never recused himself; it was just an informal thing. Nunes is still the chair of the committee, and no one but Paul Ryan has the power to stop him from meddling and issuing subpoenas, so Ryan is really the one who should be getting shit about his antics.

  72. 72.

    Adam L Silverman

    @sharl: We tried to not rehash Iraq and Afghanistan at USAWC in the seminar room because so many of us – faculty and students – had deployed or been involved in other ways with OIF and OEF and we didn’t want everything to devolve into war stories, so to speak. However, we did cover the NIEs and how the intel cycle was deliberately warped, etc. I really don’t know much about what civilian programs are covering these days.

  79. 79.

    Lizzy L

    @Adam L Silverman: The Village is ecstatic that they can once more focus all their attention on Hillary Clinton. Lies! Scandal! Lock her up! They are no different from Fox in that.

  80. 80.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mnemosyne: The bot may not be wrong. Vogel has tweeted that he asked Elias something. Elias said no. So Elias lied. Unfortunately Vogel hasn’t clarified exactly what it was he asked Elias. If he asked Elias if the Clinton campaign was paying for this and it was the DNC, Elias’s other client, then he didn’t lie. Same if it was the other way around. And if Elias paid for it out of his own pocket or got an outside Democratic funder to pay for it so that neither the DNC or the Clinton campaign did, then he didn’t lie. So we just don’t know because we don’t know what Vogel actually asked Elias. And we don’t know who’s money Elias was using.

  81. 81.

    burnspbesq

    @MomSense:

    I just want to fast forward this mess to the sentencing part.

    Please, no! I wanna see perp-walks! I wanna see elevator doors open to reveal scum in handcuffs with an FBI agent on each elbow.

  92. 92.

    Aleta

    @Adam L Silverman:

    He developed it from working with Giuliani

    And Roy Cohn before that. Bribing to win cases and get permits, witness tampering, refusing to pay bills, breaking creditors in court, taking people’s money but never delivering what he promises, manipulating publicity, owning reporters (or in Trump’s case network heads), lying constantly, bluffing and intimidating–all learned from Cohn it’s said.

  93. 93.

    Redshift

    @Mnemosyne:

    These things combined are making me nervous that the Repugs are trying to make the race seem close enough to steal. Spreading rumors that the Democrats didn’t do enough outreach to Black voters would give some very good cover to voter suppression efforts.

    I always assume they’re trying to do that, but at least with a Democratic governor, we have a Dem majority on all the local electoral boards, so they have to resort to stuff like disinformation instead of prohibiting multilingual sample ballots (a Hans von Spakovsky special!) or narrowly interpreting voter ID requirements.

  94. 94.

    Another Scott

    @Mnemosyne: They insist on packing 20 pound bags of bird seed (“hot meat” shelled sunflower seeds) in big cardboard boxes to me. Along with a few strips of brown packing paper. As soon as someone picks up the box, it slides down to one end, leaving about 75% of the volume empty. :-(

    I actually replied to their “packaging feedback” address once, suggesting that they use some sort of Tyvek-like material as a bag, stick a handle on it, and call it a day. The delivery people would be much happier, I’m sure. But, Amazon just loves its brown cardboard boxes…

    Maybe the packer read the wrong box type in your case? Dunno.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  96. 96.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mnemosyne:
    http://www.theroot.com/fla-couple-orders-containers-from-amazon-gets-65-poun-1819769411

    They say don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, but one Florida couple may be forgiven for doing so because this pungent present wasn’t really for them anyway.

    Last month, an unidentified Amazon.com customer and her fiance ordered four plastic storage bins but were shocked to find 65 pounds of Mary Jane inside the containers (marijuana, that is).

    The Orlando, Fla., pair said that they immediately smelled something amiss—you know that package had to be loud.

    “[The bins] were extremely heavy, heavier than you would think from ordering four empty bins. … When the first officer got here, she was in disbelief,” the customer said.

    She also said that they were so afraid that someone would come and retrieve the weed, they didn’t sleep at their home for a few days.

    Orlando police seized the drugs, but Amazon had nothing for the customer and her fiance.

  99. 99.

    Mnemosyne

    @Redshift:

    As everyone knows by now, I’m a little paranoid about Russian interference, so I would be asking questions about the voter rolls and if there have been any sudden changes in the past year.

  102. 102.

    LanceThruster

    @Mnemosyne:

    Yeah…I can see how expressing a desire to get to the truth would make one a troll. I’m sure if I wander into a thread where I don’t belong, you’ll graciously point that out.

  104. 104.

    Major Major Major Major

    Had an argument with a friend of mine on Facebook in the spring(?) in which I called Haberman a republican-tongue-bathing hack and he said she’s smart and insightful. He literally just messaged me to say holy shit, I started to pay attention to bylines after that argument, and she is fucking awful, is the whole Times like this?

  105. 105.

    GregB

    So Steele dossier oppo research paid for by a campaign is the crime of the century and oppo research stolen by Russian hackers and laundered through that pallid fingers of Dickipedia is great because it’s important to find out dirt no matter how it gets aired?

  110. 110.

    Wapiti

    @Mnemosyne: My wild guess is that Amazon has some guidelines on packaging and some workerbee amused themself (or stuck it to the Man) by sending you a package that met the guideline, but was otherwise unsuited.

  111. 111.

    Adam L Silverman

    There appears to be a coordinated, full court press on. Someone may have gotten wind that something is about to drop. Or they just think something is about to drop. The person who this twitter account belongs to is retired from the FBI. He’s replying to the WSJ promo tweet:

  121. 121.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @Adam L Silverman: That’s always been the case, though. Still, good to hear he hasn’t completely ruined the newsroom.

    @Major Major Major Major: Yeah, that’s the impression I’d gotten, but that he still hasn’t ruined it as much as he’s ruined the New York Post and other papers.

    @EricNNY: Part of me wishes that for the humiliation factor. The other part definitely has no desire to see any of these people naked. TBF I guess I wouldn’t have to look but even knowing the footage was out there might make it difficult ever to have an orgasm again.

  125. 125.

    EricNNY

    @Wapiti: I bought 12 fake kitty poos for my Halloween costume (my neighbor is a minor cat hoarder and we pick on each other). When I opened the packaging, the receipt said “interesting choice sir”. I had to laugh.

  129. 129.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Snobbery thread one down. Golf has been dissed.

    What?! That is outrageous. I suppose squash is next on the chopping block for the philistines at this almost top 10,000 website.

  130. 130.

    Darkrose

    @Mnemosyne: Telesilla ordered a skein of embroidery floss from Amazon as an add-on to a larger order. They delivered the rest of the order one day, and as usual, left it by the door since we didn’t get down there fast enough. Two days later they emailed saying they couldn’t find a safe place to leave it. The other order was around $60; the floss was $2.50. The next day I raced downstairs when I heard the bell. The single skein of floss was in an A1 shipping box.

  134. 134.

    LanceThruster

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Not a problem. I did not stoop to the level of vulgarity and personal attacks of other commenters, but I got banned for a time (no explanation). Saying ‘things’ is kinda the whole purpose of comments, even when choosing not to go in lockstep with everyone else.

  137. 137.

    Mnemosyne

    @Darkrose:

    I had to look up what an A1 box was, and then I laughed.

    G is convinced they just had a bunch of weird-sized boxes sitting around that they needed to use up. He used to be a warehouse manager, so I believe him.

  139. 139.

    Sebastian

    Something is happening. Carter Page is quiet. Rudy Guliani is quiet. And Roger Fucking Stone is quiet.

    Something big is happening.

  140. 140.

    jl

    @Aleta: ” news on investigation of Manafort for money laundering. ”
    Which investigation on which Manafort money laundering case?

  146. 146.

    jl

    @Sebastian: ” And Roger Fucking Stone is quiet. ”

    I thought Stone made the inside baseball political news by blabbing how he got Trump hooked on the wall. Not sure how quiet he’s been.

    Stone and some other genius decided that a border wall would be a kind mnemonic that Trump could focus on that would remind him to demagogue on Immigration. Stone said at first Trump was indifferent and (for Trump) he had the deep insight that it was a dumb idea and waste of money. But they persuaded Trump to try it out at a rally and it was a wild hit, brought rousing enthusiastic cheers and lasting high energy. So The Wall was born. Trump loved it and made it a centerpiece of his campaign.

    Trump is a complete fraud. I wonder if the truth about the birth of The Great Trump Wall Policy will persuade any besieged Trumpsters than they have been sad dupes all along.

    Edit: I don’t remember where I saw that story. I’ll go look. Anyway, it fits with leaked Trump convo with Pres of Mexico in which Trump said the wall was the least important policy issue between the two countries.

  147. 147.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @jl: The cynical part of me says no, but 538 has justifiably pointed out that overall his “strong approve” ratings have plummeted and his “strong disapprove” ratings have increased substantially, so it does seem like at least some portion of his voters might be reachable. (This doesn’t mean we have to forgive them, mind you.) It also seems as though the number of self-identified Rs keeps dropping, though I’ve seen conflicting reports regarding that. Regardless, this hasn’t resulted in concrete action yet, and until his approval ratings among Rs drops to much lower than it currently is, it probably won’t.

  148. 148.

    jl

    @(((CassandraLeo))): Every couple of points drop in Trump approval ratings help. That was what I was thinking about. I agree the fact that the Wall was a fraud alone won’t make a big difference.

    This is not the story I remember, and its source is other guy Nunberg. Stone was talking in the story I saw, so it had more colorful, and probably less reliable, details. But the basic story is the same.

    Trump Aide Fired for Using N-Word Says Border Wall Was His Idea
    https://www.thewrap.com/trump-wall-origin-sam-nunberg-aide-fired-n-word/

  149. 149.

    jl

    Some of the Trumpsters are old school Dr Evils. but some, like Rohrabacher and Stone seem more than a little impaired and goofy in the head.

    I know Rohrabacher has longed loved cosplay and pretend derring-do, and made sure pix of his stunts got in the paper.
    What are this nut case’s chances in the next election? He’s a California GOPer clown, from my own dear native state, and comes from someplace near Orange County IIRC.

    Edit: checked. Represents coast of Orange County. another search revealed Dana R won by about 17 points in 2016.

  151. 151.

    J R in WV

    @burnspbesq:

    This, Perp-wallks for every member of the tRump campaign, most members of the cabinet, the West Wing presidential staff, Jarvanka, until tRump is left in the oval office with no one to help him answer the White House phone.

    Hands cuffed behind their backs, FBI agents holding their elbows, gently guiding them into the big black SUVs with tinted bullet-proof glass windows. I’m pretty sure this fantasy will help me get back to sleep in a few minutes.

  152. 152.

    opiejeanne

    @Mary G: OH God, Steve Garvey sucks!

    I can’t say that about him in front of one of my best baseball friends because the friend’s wife died of ALS and Garvey has been very involved in ALS charities and events. He has posted photos of Garvey with his wife and I just grind my teeth.

  153. 153.

    J R in WV

    @LanceThruster:

    In theory, there is no difference between theory and pie. But, in practice, there is.

    Keep up the good theoretical physics!

  154. 154.

    J R in WV

    @Major Major Major Major:

    The NYT political report is ALL like that, a Republican tongue-bath.

    The news report unrelated to politics is pretty good. Arts, sports, the NYC report, all OK most of the time.

    Like the WSJ, there you DON’T want to read the editorial section, the op-eds, guest columns by Karl Rove. But the rest of the paper was OK, the hard news parts, the social reporting, until lately under Murdoch, when it all started to slide downhill.

    ETA, more explicit

  155. 155.

    opiejeanne

    @jl: We had Rohrabacher for our very own Congressman when we lived in Huntington Beach from 2001-2003. He’s a total nutjob, really screwy. In 1988 he was helping the Taliban fight the Russians, a time when it was not legal for him to be traveling to Afghanistan at all.
    Orange County has a lot of really crazy Republicans. My previous house was in Anaheim, a couple of blocks from Carl Karcher’s house, and he gave us John G. Schmitz who was so horrible that he was voted out of office in favor of a Democrat, and this was in the reddest heart of the OC. Behind the Orange Curtain.

  156. 156.

    Amir Khalid

    @Mnemosyne:
    Funny you should mention that. A couple of days ago I received a package from an online market. It contained a few sponges for wiping the tip of a soldering iron after use, a stack 1.5 x 1 x 1 inches in size. It came in an A3 size envelope, which is about the same as tabloid size.

  157. 157.

    Matt McIrvin

    @(((CassandraLeo))): The number of self-identified Rs is dropping, but last I checked, the number of self-identified Ds is dropping faster (probably just because there are more of them in the first place). Republican and Democratic party ID often move up and down together, as people say they’re “independent” or go back to the parties. We’re in one of those eras again when everyone decides they’re an “independent”. Often this happens after a crucial presidential election.

  159. 159.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Mueller, you’ll notice, is just running silent and deep. Which, I’m sure, is freaking a whole lot of folks out around the President and within the GOP congressional leadership.

    Honestly, it’s freaking me out. Is this just Fitzmas again?

  160. 160.

    NorthLeft12

    Being Canadian, I am struggling to understand how Rohrbacher can get elected while being so openly pro-Putin. I understand the Orange County area is fairly conservative, but are they rabidly anti-American too?

  161. 161.

    Matt McIrvin

    @NorthLeft12: A lot of American conservatives are openly pro-Putin; that started before Trump’s latest presidential run. To be blunt, they think of Putin as the world’s champion of the white race against browns and Muslims, and they admire his macho posturing and homophobia. During the Obama years they often talked about how we needed a leader more like Putin, who truly “loved his country” unlike Obama.

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