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Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

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You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Dolt 45 / Friday Morning Open Thread: Trump & the Neverending (JFK) Story

Friday Morning Open Thread: Trump & the Neverending (JFK) Story

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“Failed to inform”. The release has been mandated for twenty-five years, this batch of Repub fvckups have been squatting in the Oval Office for eleven months, and Liddle Lord Flapjaw himself has been ruminating about the “So interesting!” files all week. If that was actually intended as a diversion, once again, Trump’s proved that he’s really bad at the job he took on…

Per the Washington Post:

… The president allowed the immediate release of 2,800 records by the National Archives, following a last-minute scramble to meet a 25-year legal deadline. After lobbying by national security officials, the remaining documents will be reviewed during a 180-day period.

In a memo released by the White House, Trump said: “I am ordering today that the veil finally be lifted. At the same time, executive departments and agencies have proposed to me that certain information should continue to be redacted because of national security, law enforcement, and foreign affairs concerns. I have no choice — today — but to accept those redactions rather than allow potentially irreversible harm to our nation’s security.”

The records were put online at 7:30 p.m. The thousands of field reports, cables and interview summaries from dozens of FBI, CIA and congressional investigators reveal the minutiae of a chase for information that spanned decades and covered continents. Usually typed, stamped “Secret” and often annotated by hand, the files are a paper trail of detective grunt work, leads exhausted, dead-ends encountered, sources checked and rechecked.

Many of the files highlight the desperate search for Lee Harvey Oswald’s possible connections to communists, Cubans, or both in the months before he shot Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963…

Some of the material that assassination experts had been most eager to review was not included in the documents released Thursday. The missing records include a 338-page file on J. Walton Moore, the head of the CIA office in Dallas at the time of the killing, and an 18-page dossier on Gordon McClendon, a Dallas businessman who conferred with Ruby just before he shot Oswald. Several files on notorious anti-Castro Cuban exiles were apparently withheld, including those focusing on Luis Posada and Orlando Bosch, who had been accused of a 1976 airline bombing that killed 73 people…

None of those documents appeared to be in the batch released Thursday. Nor were there revelations on Watergate burglars E. Howard Hunt and James McCord, both of whom were longtime CIA operatives of interest to assassination theorists…

Trump had been lobbied to withhold some of the files by CIA Director Mike Pompeo, according to Trump confidant Roger Stone.

Stone, a political consultant who wrote a book alleging that Lyndon B. Johnson had Kennedy murdered, pushed Trump to release everything and hailed the president’s decision as a victory on Twitter.

But in an interview Wednesday, Stone said he worried that the intelligence community might still persuade his friend not to release all the papers, or that the files might be heavily redacted…

So I guess the theories that Stone might’ve gone radio silent temporarily because Mueller leaned on him are no longer operative. (Or else the old pervert just can’t resist flashing the cameras one last time.)

From the Boston Globe:

… Some of the documents contain intimate, high-level conversations. For instance, in one 1966 memorandum, marked “top secret,” that appeared to have been unreleased in full prior to Thursday night, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover summarized the reaction of Soviet officials to news of Kennedy’s death for the White House.

“They seemed convinced that the assassination was not the deed of one man, but that it arose out of a carefully planned campaign in which several people played a part,” the memo reads. “They felt that those elements interested in utilizing the assassination and playing on anticommunist sentiments in the United States would then utilize this act to stop negotiations with the Soviet Union, attack Cuba and thereafter spread the war.”

A 1964 cablegram found that the FBI had closely monitored Oswald during the period he visited Mexico City in the weeks before the assassination, considered a key period by historians looking into his background. Oswald was watched so closely that the details include where he sat on a bus, and who sat near him…

Heck, *I* could’ve blocked out that ‘Soviet officials’ response pretty closely, and in 1963, I’d just turned eight. Nothing I’ve seen dissuades my standing theory: The various alphabet agencies all had Oswald on their radar screens — possibly one or more of them even on their ‘occasional informant’ payroll — and their first priority after the assassination, truth and history be damned, was making sure that none of those other spy-boys could pin any blame on them. Trying to prise out Oswald’s motives makes as much sense as dissecting Stephen Paddock’s brain; the findings, if any, will be of interest only to future historians desperate for reseach topics. (Also, J. Edgar Hoover may be the most underrated monster of the 20th century, going back to his days running the Palmer Raids.)

Reader Interactions

226Comments

  5. 5.

    p.a.

    looking like an idiot…

    Trump can’t catch a break: his one skill, and he gets knocked for it!

    National Security! 54 years later! Hell, it only took until the W administration for the security apparatus to admit the Tonkin incident was a fraud.

  6. 6.

    satby

    I also was 8 years old then. And aside from curiosity for professional historians, not all that interested now. Once conspiracy theories are out there, they don’t ever die, as the 2016 election showed.

  10. 10.

    NotMax

    Slanted, yes. But that doesn’t make it incorrect.

    …Will Mr. Abadi and others in Baghdad feel sufficiently appeased by the surrender of the disputed territories, or will they decide to try and forcefully assert Baghdad’s authority in pre-2003 Kurdistan as well?”

    With numerous attacks now being reported on territory that the Iraqi constitution recognizes as indisputably part of the autonomous Kurdistan region, it seems that Baghdad and Iran chose the latter course of action. Iraq’s constitution forbids the entry of Iraqi military forces into Kurdistan without the approval of Kurdistani regional authorities, yet those forces now claim to be engaged in an offensive “to impose the law” in Kurdistan and “to reclaim Fishabur.”

    Fishabur and Ibrahim Khalil are the border crossings to Syria and Turkey, respectively, in a small strip of land where the borders of Iraq, Syria, and Turkey meet. The problem for Baghdad is that this small strip of land happens to be squarely within the recognized territory of the Kurdistan Autonomous Region of Iraq, preventing Baghdad from accessing the Turkish border without going through Iraqi Kurdistan. Baghdad wants to export oil to Turkey without going through Kurdistan. Baghdad would also like to prevent Iraqi Kurdistan from enjoying access to Syria – or more accurately, Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava) on the other side.

    To send military forces and artillery to attack the Kurds and attempt to conquer their recognized autonomous areas flies in the face of Iraq’s constitution and every law currently on the books there, yet in Orwellian newspeak the Shiites describe this as “imposing the law.” Source

  11. 11.

    OzarkHillbilly

    A new twist on the old “the dog ate my homework”:

    St. Louis company Amazing Pet Expos was scheduled to host the ninth annual St. Louis Pet Expo Saturday and Sunday at the St. Charles Convention Center. The company organizes pet expos nationwide, events where people can buy pet products from vendors, adopt animals, participate in animal costume contests and watch pets run obstacle courses. But about a week before the St. Louis show, the convention center put the kibosh on the event, claiming the company did not meet contractual obligations.

    Some 170 vendors paid to show at the event, which, according to convention center estimates, drew up to 4,000 people per day in past years. The vendors wanted answers. What they got was bizarre.

    Amazing Pet Expo posted a statement on its website this week blaming the cancellation on a rogue accountant. “She had come to believe she was a prophet tasked with writing a new book of the Bible, was Moses reincarnated, and that the COO of our company was the anti-Christ,” the statement read. The company claimed the accountant was timing its chief operating officers’ actions, which she believed took place in increments of six seconds, six minutes and six hours, “thereby confirming he was indeed Satan,” the statement read. The statement alleges the employee destroyed large quantities of financial records. The company provided a copy of a protective order out against the employee and said staff went to police and filed insurance claims. But the statement said the financial damage to the business was significant. “The reality was that we are only about a dozen people, and this was like an atomic bomb,” the statement read.
    …….
    This is just the latest canceled expo for the company. Amazing Pet Expos has also canceled shows in Memphis, Nashville, Portland and Chicago this year. In December 2014, the company pulled a show in Sacramento at the last minute, claiming the Ferguson protests made it unable to organize the event.

    Complaints from vendors have also been widespread over the years, including 20 separate complaints filed with the Better Business Bureau in which vendors describe different shows that were canceled or rescheduled with little warning. Many claimed they never received refunds.

    I’ll give them a B+ for originality.

  13. 13.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    She had come to believe she was a prophet tasked with writing a new book of the Bible, was Moses reincarnated, and that the COO of our company was the anti-Christ,”

    Only one of these things were true.

  14. 14.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    Looks like the files are going back and to the left… back and to the left

  15. 15.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I’d have gone with “we had a horrible stomach bug go around the office – once you got it, you had 48 hours of it running out both ends. Really wiped us out for a while”.

    Nobody asks a second question on that excuse.

  16. 16.

    Shalimar

    My assumption is that there is no reason to delay release, other than Trump said the records would be released yesterday and he wants to preserve his perfect record of lying about absolutely everything.

  17. 17.

    hellslittlestangel

    Why won’t The Orange Better One release all the files?

    A. Wants to brag to other leaders about the secret stuff he knows.
    B. Might make Russia look bad.
    C. Protecting Ted Cruz’s father.

  19. 19.

    Kay

    Ken Klippenstein‏Verified account
    @kenklippenstein
    Whitefish contract states, “In no event shall [government bodies] have the right to audit or review the cost and profit elements.” Wow.

    The hourly labor rates were what Whitefish was charging for labor, not what Whitefish was paying for labor. What a contractor charges the client and what a contractor pays the linemen are not the same thing.

  21. 21.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    The White House declined to say on Thursday whether or not some of the soon-to-be-released John F. Kennedy assassination documents could shed light on a conspiracy theory involving the father of Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.

    ‘We’re not going to comment on the content of the files,’ a White House official told CNN reporter Jim Acosta, who asked during a conference call for journalists whether Rafael Cruz would figure in the long-awaited release.

    (link)

    There you have it – the government offically says Cruz’s involvement in the assassination is an open question.

  22. 22.

    OzarkHillbilly

    More details on the Scott Brown affair:

    The Guardian understands that two complaints that were subject to investigation by the state department originally came from two female peace corps volunteers who were at the event, and who served food and drink to the guests as a way to flip the cultural norm of Samoans serving westerners.

    But in addition to these complaints guests at the party have alleged to the Guardian that the ambassador’s behaviour was “shocking”, “culturally insensitive”, “rude” and “undiplomatic”. The Guardian contacted more than a dozen people who attended the party and spoke to a number who said he had made them feel uncomfortable.

    After contacting the state department with these new allegations, a spokesman said: “The state department takes allegations of misconduct seriously and we investigate them thoroughly. “We hold all employees to the highest standard. The office of inspector general has conducted an independent review of the allegations and reported its findings to the department. “Senior leadership at the state department has been in contact with Ambassador Brown and he has been counselled on standards of conduct for government employees, which also includes ambassadors.”

    Translation: “Yes, you’re an Ambassador, but that doesn’t make you famous enough to go around grabbing them by the pu$$y.”

  23. 23.

    Mustang Bobby

    Next up: have they released all the files from the McKinley assassination? Did Czolgosz act alone? And what was in that toast they fed the injured president? Alex Jones should get right on that.

  24. 24.

    eclare

    @Kay: Now, now, move along, nothing to see… Seems like a provision like that would go against some government regulations and not be enforceable, but this is not my area of expertise.

  25. 25.

    Kay

    According to numerous sources at NBC, MSNBC, ABC, and Bloomberg—who previously spoke to The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity in order to speak freely—the private allegations of Halperin’s sexual misconduct were an open secret, particularly in New York City and D.C. political media, for many years.
    People just didn’t feel emboldened to talk or speak out, in part due to Halperin’s position of power in the industry.
    “Everybody knew [about Mark],” one prominent cable-news host told The Daily Beast. “I’d been warning young women reporters about Mark for a long time.”

    So many of them knew this as they were sitting next to Halperin lecturing Clinton about Weinstein last week?

  27. 27.

    rikyrah

    @NotMax:
    I thought finding out that FEMA refused to release the payment that they had on file for Puerto Rico was newsworthy.

    Also that one of Grassley’s staffers on the Judiciary Committee was trying to get ahold of Hillary’s emails during the campaign was also noteworthy.

  28. 28.

    Kay

    @eclare:

    Someone leaked the contract. Trump lies constantly but he can’t deny an invoice or a contract. They had to get rid of Price because there was no way to deny it. This is just ONE Puerto Rico contract. There are hundreds. There are tens of thousands of federal contracts. The lying isn’t a one-off. It’s not like “lying constantly” is their one character and ethics issue – you can bet it’s a package- lying, cheating, stealing. We already know this about Trump, from his business career. He suddenly developed ethical standards at 70 years when he was granted almost unlimited power and a GIANT budget? Fat chance. He’s WORSE in the new job. The person you hire matters. It matters MORE when they’re operating under conservative deregulatory ideology. Without regulations they have to be better people because there are fewer checks on unethical behavior.

  29. 29.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:
    I will repeat it:

    They are trying to kill American Citizens.

    The REFUSAL of FEMA to release their pre-Maria hurricane plans.

    His phucking LIE about the power grid in Puerto Rico being broken BEFORE the hurricane.

    All make sense.

    You’re going to give grifting contract to an Unqualified company. If you say that the infrastructure was broken BEFORE, then they can’t complain about the incompetence.

    THEY ARE TRYING TO KILL THESE AMERICAN CITIZENS!!!

  31. 31.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    Reprise for the day shift:

    APNewsBreak: Georgia Election Server Wiped After Suit Filed

    A computer server crucial to a lawsuit against Georgia election officials was quietly wiped clean by its custodians just after the suit was filed, the Associated Press has learned.

    The server’s data was destroyed July 7 by technicians at the Center for Elections Systems at Kennesaw State University, which runs the state’s election system. The data wipe was revealed in an email sent last week from an assistant state attorney general to plaintiffs in the case that was later obtained by the AP. More emails obtained in a public records request confirmed the wipe.

    The lawsuit, filed July 3 by a diverse group of election reform advocates, aims to force Georgia to retire its antiquated and heavily criticized election technology. The server in question, which served as a statewide staging location for key election-related data, made national headlines in June after a security expert disclosed a gaping security hole that wasn’t fixed six months after he reported it to election authorities.

    It’s not clear who ordered the server’s data irretrievably erased.

    The Kennesaw elections center answers to Georgia’s secretary of state, Brian Kemp, a Republican running for governor in 2018 and the suit’s main defendant. His spokeswoman issued a statement Thursday saying his office had neither involvement nor advanced warning of the decision. It blamed “the undeniable ineptitude” at the Kennesaw State elections center.

    After declining comment for more than 24 hours, Kennesaw State’s media office issued a statement late Thursday attributing the server wiping to “standard operating procedure.” It did not respond to the AP’s question on who ordered the action.

    At the bottom the story says the FBI may have a copy of the erased data.

  32. 32.

    eclare

    @Kay: @Kay: If the contract leaked, put some forensic accountants on it, give them plenty of coffee and Red Bull, and tell them to follow the money.

  33. 33.

    Kay

    I felt like I was dealing with Donald Trump yesterday. The question from the judge to the defendant was “do you have a driver’s license?” – so defendant says yes, digs in his pocket, hands it to me. I look at it and it’s an ID card- Ohio ID cards say “NON-DRIVER” in block print. So I have to say “this is an ID card” and everyone looks at me like I spoiled this story that was going along so well. Hand it to me so I have to be part of it. Idiot.

  38. 38.

    Kay

    We had the Democratic dinner here last night. I didn’t go because I had to take my son to the dentist – it takes months to get an evening dentist appt here and I don’t like him to miss class. Anyway, my husband said it was very well-attended so that seems good.

  39. 39.

    Lurking Canadian

    @Kay: Sweet Jesus. Translated from the lawyerese, that says “We can steal as much as we like, neener neener no backsies!”

  41. 41.

    bystander

    The part that makes me think conspiracy is not the one-gunman issue. For me, the real questions are how did Jack Ruby know the exact moment when Oswald would be vulnerable and how did he have access.

    Thank the FSM for Phineas and Ferb this early in the morning. Great alternative to Moanin’ Joe with guest Chris Crusty.

  44. 44.

    Kay

    @eclare:

    I sort of love accountants. I find it comforting. I have one redoing our system right now – he’s young- went to high school with my daughter. I remember him when he was an itty bitty soccer player with those great long socks they wear. He looks EXACTLY the same- one of those people who have the same face from birth to old age.

  46. 46.

    Kay

    One of my younger sisters is a JFK conspiracy theorist. She lives in California. I’m not tying those two things together :)

    I haven’t listened to her theories in years- she’s great but the theories are too long and they make me worry about her so I just wait until I can change the subject.

  47. 47.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Pope Francis is making all the right enemies:

    Pope Francis is one of the most hated men in the world today. Those who hate him most are not atheists, or protestants, or Muslims, but some of his own followers. Outside the church he is hugely popular as a figure of almost ostentatious modesty and humility. From the moment that Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio became pope in 2013, his gestures caught the world’s imagination: the new pope drove a Fiat, carried his own bags and settled his own bills in hotels; he asked, of gay people, “Who am I to judge?” and washed the feet of Muslim women refugees.

    But within the church, Francis has provoked a ferocious backlash from conservatives who fear that this spirit will divide the church, and could even shatter it. This summer, one prominent English priest said to me: “We can’t wait for him to die. It’s unprintable what we say in private. Whenever two priests meet, they talk about how awful Bergoglio is … he’s like Caligula: if he had a horse, he’d make him cardinal.” Of course, after 10 minutes of fluent complaint, he added: “You mustn’t print any of this, or I’ll be sacked.”

    This mixture of hatred and fear is common among the pope’s adversaries. Francis, the first non-European pope in modern times, and the first ever Jesuit pope, was elected as an outsider to the Vatican establishment, and expected to make enemies. But no one foresaw just how many he would make. From his swift renunciation of the pomp of the Vatican, which served notice to the church’s 3,000-strong civil service that he meant to be its master, to his support for migrants, his attacks on global capitalism and, most of all, his moves to re-examine the church’s teachings about sex, he has scandalised reactionaries and conservatives. To judge by the voting figures at the last worldwide meeting of bishops, almost a quarter of the college of Cardinals – the most senior clergy in the church – believe that the pope is flirting with heresy.

    ….

    To accuse a sitting pope of heresy is the nuclear option in Catholic arguments. Doctrine holds that the pope cannot be wrong when he speaks on the central questions of the faith; so if he is wrong, he can’t be pope. On the other hand, if this pope is right, all his predecessors must have been wrong.

    …

    But Francis’s cautious reforms seem to his opponents to threaten the belief that the church teaches timeless truths. And if the Catholic church does not teach eternal truths, conservatives ask, what is the point of it?

    The pope’s views on divorce and homosexuality, according to an Archbishop from Kazakhstan, had allowed “the smoke of Satan” to enter the church.

    It’s a long and delicious read, with an endless series of quotable quotes piled one atop the other. This ex-Catholic is enjoying it immensely.

  50. 50.

    Kay

    So everyone knows there’s no money for Trump’s opiate war so it’s all bullshit, right?

    They plan to fan out and scold addicts. Why didn’t we think of that? Tell them to stop being addicts. It’s genius. Here I was telling them to take as many prescription pain killers as they felt they needed, and if those are unavailable to go get heroin.

  52. 52.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    If that was actually intended as a diversion, once again, Trump’s proved that he’s really bad at the job he took on…

    Other way around with Trump, the actual files will draw attention from Trump, and that’s bad in Trump’s eyes so of course he messed it up.

  53. 53.

    MJS

    @Kay: Not sure why they’re stopping at scolding. I seem to remember another drug scourge that resulted in thousands upon thousands of users going to jail. I wonder if there’s something different about these opioid users? Hmm….

  56. 56.

    eclare

    @Kay: And Sessions has already claimed that pot is a gateway drug to heroin, so I expect him to go after states that have legalized it. Even though those states have generally seen a drop in opioid deaths.

  57. 57.

    Kay

    @MJS:

    I understand what you’re saying- about disparities- but plenty of them are going to jail. Prison. Thousands. Tens of thousands. Republicans (state level) were moving away from imprisoning people for drug offenses because it’s dumb and expensive and then Trump was elected and he brought Sessions who is a drug warrior so all that will stop.

    Donald Trump believes the 1980’s were kind of the high point for “America”. It makes sense- that’s when he was at his peak as a celebrity and a man- as in “younger”. It’s awful to have to relive these things again and again and hear them presented as “new”.

  58. 58.

    NotMax

    @NotMax

    And another, just for sh*ts and grins.

    “You fiend! Never have I encountered such corruption and foul minded perversity. Have you ever considered a career in the church?”

  59. 59.

    Matt McIrvin

    @NotMax: A fascinating story. I was going to correct it by saying the Secret Service didn’t have the official job of protecting the President until after the McKinley assassination (so they couldn’t have been particularly embarrassed); but McKinley’s personal bodyguard at the expo was in fact a Secret Service agent (they were basically the only federal police at the time). It was just the one guy, though, nothing like the security detail the President would have later.

  60. 60.

    Amir Khalid

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    This is a bizarre story. What Brown said was unbelievably stupid. A regular person would never have said that. The offence he caused is too serious to be dealt with by counseling. He needs to be recalled at once and dismissed. Der Scheißgibbon needs to make a formal apology to Samoa.

  61. 61.

    NotMax

    @Kay

    Wait until he digs out the buried stores of Ford’s WIN buttons and repurposes them as “Whip Iran Now.”

  63. 63.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: The next Pope could be one Raymond Burke:

    When the commission reported in July 2013, Francis’s reaction shocked conservatives rigid. He stopped the Friars using the Latin Mass in public, and closed down their seminary. They were still allowed to educate new priests, but not segregated from the rest of the church. What’s more, he did so directly, without going through the Vatican’s internal court system, then run by Cardinal Burke. The next year, Francis sacked Burke from his powerful job in the Vatican’s internal court system. By doing so, he made an implacable enemy.

    Burke, a bulky American given to lace-embroidered robes and (on formal occasions) a ceremonial scarlet cape so long it needs pageboys to carry its trailing end, was one of the most conspicuous reactionaries in the Vatican. In manner and in doctrine, he represents a long tradition of heavyweight American power brokers of white ethnic Catholicism. The hieratic, patriarchal and embattled church of the Latin Mass is his ideal, to which it seemed that the church under John Paul II and Benedict was slowly returning – until Francis started work.

    Cardinal Burke’s combination of anti-communism, ethnic pride and hatred of feminism has nurtured a succession of prominent rightwing lay figures in the US, from Pat Buchanan through Bill O’Reilly and Steve Bannon, alongside lesser-known Catholic intellectuals such as Michael Novak, who have shilled untiringly for US wars in the Middle East and the Republican understanding of free markets.

    It was Cardinal Burke who invited Bannon, then already the animating spirit of Breitbart News, to address a conference in the Vatican, via video link from California, in 2014. Bannon’s speech was apocalyptic, incoherent and historically eccentric. But there was no mistaking the urgency of his summons to a holy war: the second world war, he said, had really been “the Judeo-Christian west versus atheists”, and now civilisation was “at the beginning stages of a global war against Islamic fascism … a very brutal and bloody conflict … that will completely eradicate everything that we’ve been bequeathed over the last 2,000, 2,500 years … if the people in this room, the people in the church, do not … fight for our beliefs against this new barbarity that’s starting.”

    Burke was once the Arch-Bishop of the St Louis archdiocese so I had a front row seat to his racist homophobic 14th century ideology. However bad you might think he is, he’s worse. He’s trump with brains.

  64. 64.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: I think a significant amount of Trump’s support from people about my age and a little older is actually Eighties nostalgia. They see him as bringing back the Reagan era.

  73. 73.

    Baud

    (CNN) Two women who had been adrift in the Pacific Ocean for nearly five months after their sailboat got damaged have been rescued, according to the US Navy.

  74. 74.

    debbie

    @Baud:

    Bummer. What I was trying to say:

    It’s not clear who ordered the server’s data irretrievably erased.

    Oh, Comrade, please.

  79. 79.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: Why not? They had one from Poland. Actually, I half expect one from Africa. Perhaps the Ghanaian cardinal Robert Sarah:

    “We need to be inclusive and welcoming to all that is human,” Sarah said at a Vatican gathering last year, in a denunciation of Francis’s proposals, “but what comes from the Enemy cannot and must not be assimilated. You can not join Christ and Belial! What Nazi-Fascism and Communism were in the 20th century, Western homosexual and abortion Ideologies and Islamic Fanaticism are today.”

    Yes, just the Pope the church needs to set it back on it’s righteous and vengeful path.

    ETA blockquote fail

  80. 80.

    Matt McIrvin

    …Incidentally, concerning the ’80s, I was just looking at historical economic statistics and was struck by how, though we remember the Reagan era as a booming time of prosperity, even when he was reelected in ’84 with the “Morning in America” slogan, the U3 unemployment rate was still up above 7%. Today it’d be regarded as a raging long recession, but people were happy because it was better than it’d been in 1982 and the 1970s inflation had finally been whipped. Unemployment never got below 5% the whole time he was in office.

    Labor force participation rate was higher than today, but not by that much because the entry of women into the workforce hadn’t peaked yet.

  81. 81.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly: I may be wrong, but I think the Church believes that an American pope would not go over well in other parts of the world. There has been talk of an African pope, which I think is more likely than an American one.

  82. 82.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    On The Late Show Colbert was ripping on a Fox News interview were Lew Dobbs basically orally serviced Trump, that’s really the only way to describe it. Pretty much the whole interview was Dobbs praising Trump. I am not even sure the North Koreans would do that with Kim Il Sum. Beyond there shear weirdness of it all, what I found interesting was Dobs kept on repeating Trumps done so much, Trump is so loved and the nation owes Trump so much over and over again but never cited anything to back it up. Also in the commets the conservatives trying to push back kept on going on about Hillary.

    So my conclusion is even the Wingnuts know that Trump is piss useless and want to drown that thought out in their heads.

  83. 83.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin: Again proving that Obama doesn’t get his due.

    We really don’t talk enough about the Reagan years. Our side is actually more likely to whine about Clinton and the 90s.

  85. 85.

    debbie

    @Baud:

    I never saw anything that would indicate Reagan wouldn’t be appalled by Trump’s crudity or behavior. He’d probably like Pence, but Trump’s ego and narcissism would have repelled him. Or so I think.

  87. 87.

    germy

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    But in addition to these complaints guests at the party have alleged to the Guardian that the ambassador’s behaviour was “shocking”, “culturally insensitive”, “rude” and “undiplomatic”.

    Well, this IS the guy whose supporters on the campaign trail yelled “Indian” war whoops to mock his opponent.

  88. 88.

    Baud

    @debbie: I can accept the possibility that that Trump would be too crude for Reagan. I’m not so sure about his ego and narcissism being a problem.

  89. 89.

    debbie

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I don’t know statistics, but I still have my memory, and it was a dreadful time. Reagan’s only saving grace (and that’s one out of a trillion nonsaving graces) is that he recognized he’d gone overboard on tax cuts and restored a few of them. Can you even imagine that happening with today’s GOP?

  90. 90.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: You are reading the same things I am. I just like taking shots at Burke. My contempt for the church is matched only by my contempt for Burke.

  91. 91.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: Economically, the late Clinton era was damn good–probably better than at any time since the late 1960s; arguably better because now most women could get jobs too. Not good enough to reverse the increases in class inequality that had happened during the Reagan era, but all economic classes were actually benefiting from the boom.

  92. 92.

    germy

    Pierce on JFK:

    We Deserve the Truth. We Need the Truth.

    If Oswald was trying to become famous, why did he deny his involvement every time he got in front of the cameras? (In circumstances that are unimaginable today, Oswald gave several statements to the press before being iced himself in Dallas.) If he were a political fanatic, where was his declaration of purpose and principles? After killing William McKinley, Leon Csolgosz proudly declared himself to be an anarchist. By comparison, “I’m just a patsy” isn’t exactly a rallying cry. If we’re lucky, the answer’s in these files. Or someone’s answer to the question may be.

  93. 93.

    Matt McIrvin

    @debbie: Reagan was as fond as Trump of gross and brutal overseas strongmen, as long as they said they were anti-Communist. Trump would probably have been able to snow him the same way.

  94. 94.

    OzarkHillbilly

    More from the Pope:

    As well as tackling the old-school practitioners of Latin Mass, Francis started a wide-ranging offensive against the old guard inside the Vatican. Five days after his election in 2013, he summoned the Honduran cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, and told him that he was to be the co-ordinator of a group of nine cardinals from around the world whose mission was to clean the place up. All had been chosen for their energy, and for the fact that they had in the past been at loggerheads with the Vatican. It was a popular move everywhere outside Rome.

    John Paul II had spent the last decade of his life increasingly crippled by Parkinson’s disease, and such energies as he had left were not spent on bureaucratic struggles. The curia, as the Vatican bureaucracy is known, grew more powerful, stagnant and corrupt. Very little action was taken against bishops who sheltered child-abusing priests. The Vatican bank was infamous for the services it offered to money-launderers. The process of making saints – something John Paul II had done at an unprecedented rate – had become an enormously expensive racket. (The Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi estimated the going rate for a canonisation at €500,000 per halo.) The finances of the Vatican itself were a horrendous mess. Francis himself referred to “a stream of corruption” in the curia.

    The putrid state of the curia was widely known, but never talked about in public. Within nine months of taking office, Francis told a group of nuns that “in the curia, there are also holy people, really, there are holy people” – the revelation being that he assumed his audience of nuns would be shocked to discover this.

    The curia, he said “sees and looks after the interests of the Vatican, which are still, for the most part, temporal interests. This Vatican-centric view neglects the world around us. I do not share this view, and I’ll do everything I can to change it.” He said to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica: “Heads of the church have often been narcissists, flattered and thrilled by their courtiers. The court is the leprosy of the papacy.”

    That’s why the RWNJs in the church hate him so. He knows exactly who and what they are, and is a direct threat to their ascendant positions.

  96. 96.

    rikyrah

    ICYMI

    FP: Tillerson has eliminated a key office that oversees sanctions policy. t.co/parfWBIsqV

    — Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 27, 2017

    He’s not called the Secretary of Exxon for nothing.
    Putin CHOSE him for this position, and he has a job to do for Dear Vlad.

    Uh huh
    Uh huh

  97. 97.

    Tenar Arha

    @Kay: Yep. My cousin really called it. “Teapot Dome corruption levels or more,” they said. The Democratic Party was talking about an anti-monopoly campaign, but they’re going to need a much bigger scope. ;)

  99. 99.

    debbie

    @Matt McIrvin:

    No. Reagan would not have liked Trump’s constant talking about himself and the pu$$ygrabbing would have been an immediate admiration killer.

  102. 102.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I think a significant amount of Trump’s support from people about my age and a little older is actually Eighties nostalgia. They see him as bringing back the Reagan era.

    I do too. It’s the whole freewheeling “greed is good” thing. Obama with all his grim truth-telling made them feel bad. I was having flashbacks to Nancy Reagan. She would tell some addicts story and then brag about how all you have to do is say “no”. Easy-peasy!

    Don’t fucking USE their stories if you’re not offering them any practical help- they’re dead- they can’t defend themselves. Just leave them out of your political event. Where’s the money, asshole? Drug treatment isn’t free.

  104. 104.

    Amir Khalid

    @TS:
    I’m not expecting that either, of course. It’s just that I’m pretty sure that’s what Obama would have done with an ambassador who did what Brown did.

  105. 105.

    Tenar Arha

    @Amir Khalid: That would be the logical, reasonable, diplomatic thing to do…so that’s probably not going to happen. (I’m still of the opinion that the grabby dunce was selected as an Ambassador because he looked the part).

    ETA ? crossing similar replies

  106. 106.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    Yep.

    Maddow explained last night. His description of it. Not calling it a ‘National Emergency’ meant that it wasn’t getting any money.
    Complete and utter bullshyt.

  107. 107.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    This is a conservative area and when my daughter was in high school she was subjected to “abstinence” speakers. She’s in healthcare, a practical science-based person, and she once described it to me as “sprinkling us with magic, invisible abstinence powder”- like a religious ritual.

  108. 108.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Immanentize: Naw, I left the church in 1970-72 (as usual with these things, it is a process that takes time) from the ages of 12-14. Burke didn’t arrive in STL until 2003.

  109. 109.

    debbie

    @rikyrah:

    Did you hear him announcing it? At the end of the announcement, his voice loudened and he sounded like he was announcing a new season of Apprentice. “Welcome to … The Apprentice!”

  111. 111.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    It’s wildly expensive because they go into treatment and fail, again and again and again. It can take 5 tries, if they live that long, and that’s with high quality treatment that includes a replacement drug and a lot of it isn’t high quality. It’s not simple at all.

    As Obama used to say, if it was simple it would be solved.

  114. 114.

    rikyrah

    @MJS:

    I seem to remember another drug scourge that resulted in thousands upon thousands of users going to jail. I wonder if there’s something different about these opioid users?

    Yeah…funny how the language has changed around drug addiction with opiod abusers, isn’t it?

  115. 115.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Amir Khalid: Obama would never have appointed someone like Brown to an Ambassadorship. If there is one thing we can be sure of after witnessing the consistent high quality of Obama’s appointees, that is it.

  117. 117.

    J R in WV

    @eclare:

    The fact that cannabis helps people use less painkiller to manage their illness, helps them stop using pharmaceutical drugs, this is all bad, very bad, terrible, awful, factual information. Because it means that money will be diverted from giant wall street pharma corporations to people growing pot.

    Stop -> Go -> Directly -> To -> Jail &DoNotCollect$2.00

  119. 119.

    NotMax

    @Kay

    Abstinence, DARE, etc., etc.

    Money down a rat hole.

    Court mandated DUI classes here used to include a speaker who spent his time braying that “coming to Jesus” was the only option. Thankfully that ceased, in part due to a campaign instigated by (modesty forbids).

  122. 122.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @danielx:

    You have to admit that the bit about the COO being the anti-Christ sounds plausible.

    Nope – that role is claimed by Cheney/Rumsfeld/Bannon/Miller/TRUMP. A many-headed GOP beast.

    ETA: On second thought, put Miller down as an evil assistant. He’s too much of a putz to be Diabolus himself.

  123. 123.

    geg6

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I’m from Western PA. No one here thinks of the 1980s as a booming economy. The region was flirting with 25% unemployment rates and steel companies were looting pension funds. No morning in America here.

  124. 124.

    Amir Khalid

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    That’s right. And if an Obama-appointed ambassador had done that, there would have been a major scandal over how Obama picked his appointees..

  126. 126.

    Gin & Tonic

    @rikyrah: I posted the other day about a number that really shocked me – a friend of my son’s graduated about 10 years ago from a high school in Bucks County, PA. Graduating class was close to 900 students. Since graduation nearly 100 of them have died from drug issues. So I looked it up – the HS is 81% white, around 6% black, around 4% Hispanic, the rest Asian, mixed or “other.”

  128. 128.

    Kay

    @NotMax:

    She was sitting next to girls who she knew were having sex and they’d have their hands up the air, swaying. They’re kids- they’re magical thinkers. It’s delightful but it has to end. Adults are supposed to ground them, not key into the stories they’re telling themselves.

    She’s a science-based health scold. She threatens to write “exercise!” as a prescription all the time. Underlined for serious cases. I told her “oh, you’ll be VERY popular” – people love that :)

  130. 130.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    It’s wildly expensive because they go into treatment and fail, again and again and again. It can take 5 tries, if they live that long, and that’s with high quality treatment that includes a replacement drug and a lot of it isn’t high quality. It’s not simple at all.

    Kay,

    I’m a Black woman who lives in an Urban area. I understand the scourge of addiction. Have seen it up close and personal in my own family. When I, and others, are sarcastic about opiod abusers, it’s not because we wish addiction on them, or have no sympathy.

    It’s because we saw the response to OUR community, when it was undergoing it’s own drug plague, and the responses are completely different. And, we know WHY.

    But, saying ‘ Black Lives Matter’ is so offensive, when the history of this country repeatedly has told and shown us, that they don’t.

    The emphasis on ‘ treatment’.
    That we can’t just ‘ lock them up’
    That addiction is seen as something to be conquered, instead of proof of failing moral character.
    The “services” for grandparents taking care of grandchildren, when our children were just dumped with Big Mama, and it kept on moving.

  134. 134.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    I just think that right now that’s not an accurate portrayal of the Trump Administration. It IS true for state level Republicans- they suddenly discovered treatment, but Sessions is a drug warrior. Saying “Trump wants treatment” is not yet accurate.

    There was real movement away from incarceration prior to Trump. It took years and black people were a big part of it- they made progress. Kasich, for example, reduced sentences for a whole range of crimes by executive order. That was a RESULT of years of activisim. Trump and Sessions want a Reagan-style drug war. This argument misses the threat.

  136. 136.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    The only difference is that you can truly pinpoint the drug pusher in this case (while pretend that they don’t know who brings in the drugs in Urban areas)
    Pharmaceutical companies.

    I still remember the story that you posted about the company that was proven to dump MILLIONS of those pills into West Virginia. And, you have pointed out several stories like this. Direct flooding of areas with way disproportionate amount of pills to the population.
    They WANTED to create addicts.

  137. 137.

    Immanentize

    @rikyrah: I’ll.add to what you said and raise it — I was a Public Defender in Miami in the 80’s and drug addiction — even simple use! — wasn’t just considered a personal moral failure, it was THE evidence of the depravity of black families and the breakdown of community righteousness. It wasn’t just the users who were blamed and shamed, it was everyone in the whole black community that was deemed degenerate. I still burn with rage when I remember it.

    And don’t get me started on AIDS vilification. And the two intersected…..

  138. 138.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    The other news this week was private prison companies popping champagne corks at Trump hotels. TRUMP is an authoritarian and the criminal justice system is now profitable.

  139. 139.

    rikyrah

    @rikyrah:
    I have told you that there are close to 50 GOP Reps in these high tax states. They are in the heart of IGMFY country. And, they are not interested in committing career suicide.

  142. 142.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    They downplay the role of the drug companies. I argue with my conservative state rep about this at mandatory lawyer classes. The man hates me because I’ve gotten practiced at it- he speaks and I add “and drug companies pushed it because they were making a lot of money”.

  143. 143.

    Immanentize

    @rikyrah: I actually believe eliminating the State and Local Tax deduction may be unconstitutional. That exemption has existed since the first federal tax levies so as not to double tax individuals and to prevent the federal government from ruining state tax sources.

    But. IANA(TAX)L

  144. 144.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    I hate to say it but some of this is “patient rights” – the same thing happened with antibiotics. PARENTS were insisting kids needed them because they think they have RIGHTS to direct their medical care. They’re akin to anti-vaccers. We can’t let patients run their own medical care- they don’t know what they’re doing. I mean Jesus Christ- I can pick which number of “pain” to choose if I want the drug. Pick number ten. It’s great if they’re communicating with medical people but they aren’t “partners”- the whole point is you’re going to an expert.

  146. 146.

    Jeffro

    @rikyrah:

    ICYMI

    FP: Tillerson has eliminated a key office that oversees sanctions policy. t.co/parfWBIsqV

    — Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 27, 2017

    He’s not called the Secretary of Exxon for nothing.
    Putin CHOSE him for this position, and he has a job to do for Dear Vlad.

    Uh huh
    Uh huh

    it’d be nice to see a high-profile Dem step up and speak out on national TV. Buy a half-hour of airtime and lay it all out: not just the Russian connections/agenda, but the whole dismantling of our government and the rule of law under this bunch. Everything they do is designed to break out government and benefit Russia (but I repeat myself)

  147. 147.

    rikyrah

    How Will Voters in Virginia Respond to Division and Racism?
    by Nancy LeTourneau
    October 27, 2017

    The Virginia Governor’s election is less than two weeks away, and here is Republican Ed Gillespie’s latest ad:

    youtu.be/RMpKbQULZZ0

    Take a moment to imagine a Virginian who would be motivated by that ad to vote for Gillespie. The “clear choice” he is presenting is between someone who has talked about removing monuments to the Confederacy and one who would keep them. In what way does any of that affect the daily lives of the people of Virginia? It doesn’t. That ad is nothing more than an attempt to foster division and fan the flames of racism. Of course, this is nothing new for Gillespie. We’ve already seen how several of his ads make the whole Willie Horton episode look like child’s play.

  149. 149.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Baud: Chinchillas are way too cute to be associated with that annoying twat. He’s so dense that Cillizza may truly not have known about Halperin’s misconduct. Weinstein’s exposure seems to have opened the floodgates on sexual harassment.

  150. 150.

    Immanentize

    @germy: That’s when I knew her. I moved to Austin in 1989 and along with some of my colleagues at the Texas Resource Center, we were regular regulars at the Chili Parlor. Rachel was very pretty, but, understandably a bit dark.

  151. 151.

    Kay

    Jonathan M. Katz‏Verified account @KatzOnEarth 1h1 hour ago
    More Jonathan M. Katz Retweeted southpaw
    According to FEMA, yes: “Any language in any contract between PREPA and Whitefish that states FEMA approved that contract is inaccurate.”

    The plot thickens! The Trumpsters said FEMA didn’t approve contract but contract says they did.

    I’m telling you, the ONLY way to nail these people is to get the document. Interview them all you want but you’re just spinning your wheels. Paper. Photographs. Admittedly, sometimes even that doesn’t work- there was video showing Kelly to be a liar- but it’s your only chance!

  154. 154.

    J R in WV

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Ozark does give a link to The Guardian in his first post regarding Pope Frank. It is also trivially easy to copy a sentence from quoted material and Google it, which will almost always get you to the source of a quote.

  155. 155.

    Immanentize

    @Kay:
    But as you have pointed out — just lying is not the same as corruption. Kelly’s blatant lies are just folded into the “every politician lie” narrative. But proof (even s good suggestion) of cash corruption sticks.

  157. 157.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay:

    We can’t let patients run their own medical care

    Sadly, we can’t let doctors run our medical care either. My neighbor has had shortness of breath for 4 months. When I first heard of his difficulties my first thoughts were of my mother who eventually died of congestive heart failure, (first symptom? shortness of breath) and my oldest sister who died from a clogged pulmonary artery (first symptom? shortness of breath). I didn’t say anything because I did not want alarm them and I thought “The doctors know what they are doing.”

    A couple days ago I learned that after having been to see countless doctors,.he has had zero heart/lung testing, not even an EKG. So I told them of my mother and my sister and said, “You need to DEMAND to see a cardiologist.”

  158. 158.

    a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)

    @Baud: Francis is also able to replace cardinals as they age out–at age 75 they are required to submit a resignation latter, which the pope may or may not accept. So the longer he lives the more of his own choices will be in the College of Cardinals. Which is of course another one of the things that terrifies them. The current College was molded by John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and so is pretty much what you’d expect.

    I do enjoy watching them squirm. They should count their blessings; he hasn’t had the Swiss Guard stick Bernard Law on a plane to Boston. Yet.

  159. 159.

    Kay

    @Immanentize:

    I guess I disagree. Lying is just a different kind of corruption. These things are connected. If they lack ethical standards on telling the truth they lack ethical standards.

    Kelly could have given that speech without the smear. He did it deliberately to mislead the public and protect Trump. That’s corrupt. The constant lying tells you something- it tells you to check everything.

  160. 160.

    Gin & Tonic

    @J R in WV:

    It is also trivially easy to copy a sentence from quoted material and Google it, which will almost always get you to the source of a quote.

    Wow, thanks. I didn’t know that trick before.

  161. 161.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Jeffro:

    Buy a half-hour of airtime and lay it all out:

    60 minutes is on it.
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHA… gasp… wheeze… Sometimes I just crack me up.

  164. 164.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Kay: But Kelly is going to protect us from the deployment of the nuclear football, so it is all good. What does it matter that he insulted a couple of black folks, was responsible for a few dead people in immigration detention when he was the head of the DHS. Chopped liver, I say. Good soldier is good.

    ETA: This is not snark but serious arguments put forth by serious BJ commenters.

  165. 165.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Oh, absolutely they make mistakes, but there’s no “right” to an antibiotic for an ear ache. It isn’t based on your feelings- obviously they love their kids and don’t want them to be uncomfortable but antibiotics aren’t about their feelings. It was a disaster.

  168. 168.

    Kay

    @schrodingers_cat:

    They walked back the Kelly is good narrative they created. Now they say he is more ideological and mercurial than they were told.

    Because Trumpsters lie all the time. That’s why they were told that.

    This lying isn’t a minor problem. It’s a disaster. You can’t believe a word these people say. That will do both DAILY damage and PERMANENT lasting damage. The lying permeates everything- it’s poison. You can’t partition off the lying from the rest of the package- it infects every interaction.

  169. 169.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: Agreed. Most politicians are guilty of stretching the truth, Some lie when their backs are against the wall (“I did not have sexual relations with that woman”) and more than a few lie more than a little (“tax cuts raise revenue”) (dynamic scoring) (“I am not a crook”) but the trumpsters lie with every breath.

    Too bad most of the voting public can’t tell the difference.

  170. 170.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I got my bachelor’s in ’84. The only “boom” I remember is for guys who worked S&L junk bonds in Manhattan, as real estate went into the stratosphere based on borrowed money – production didn’t seem to be generating much of anything but stagnancy, particularly away from coasts, and the banker assholes ruled all. I ended up having to go to law school.

    Then there was that ugly black swan event of ’87, which I’m convinced reflected the weakness that the S&L problem injected into markets, which then got swept under the rug.

    I graduated into the shitty economy of the Reagan-Bush bridge year, when my law school did a GREAT job of placing the top 3% of my classmates into paying jobs.

    Didn’t get onto my economic feet until 1998, was going gangbusters when Bush II happened. By 2004, I was limping from 3 years of financial gangrene, as my clientele was not well-heeled. Scraped by till Obama ’08.

    Now, I’m seeing the same kind of retrenchment that I saw from prior conservative misgovernance. A lot of “would love to get this done, but I have no money, no lines of credit, and no family members or friends with the resources to help me.” Working class people are brittle from forced austerity, and Obama, their last lifeline, is gone. It’s all going to be about real estate bubbles and financial chicanery now.

  171. 171.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    There was a scandal at a Japanese steel company. As you know they have quality metrics. Industry-wide. Everyone relies on them. They falsified numbers. That steel goes into machines and those machines will fail. This idea that lying is somehow apart from reality- QUALITY- that there is a “real” that is somehow “better” is just nonsense. It’s the whole problem and it will ripple in every direction. We have not BEGUN to pay for the Trump lies. We will pay and pay and pay.

  172. 172.

    Gin & Tonic

    @schrodingers_cat: It depends on where the Kazakh-speakers were located, and what you mean by “historically.” Most of the Turkic languages will trace back to the Old Turkic alpahabet, like the Cyrillic languages (and writing system) will trace back to Old Church Slavonic. In more modern, yet pre-Soviet times, it was written in Latin, Cyrillic or Arabic scripts depending on area.

    This has longer-term implications, if it serves to unite the various Turkic-speaking peoples of central Asia.

  173. 173.

    Immanentize

    @Kay: I agree with your disagreement. I was writing more to the difference in responses by the public. I think many have just factored in/accepted Team Trump’s lies. What was different about Kelly lying wasn’t so much the belief that Trump Inc. will say anything, rather Kelly was supposed to be the honorable exception.

    Thatsaid, give a voter a 100 dollar toilet seat –. That they understand.

  174. 174.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: They are human. Now if only more of them would admit it. Which reminds me of an old joke:

    A man dies & goes to Heaven.
    Upon arriving at the Pearly Gates he is told “Welcome to Heaven, everyone is equal here.”
    The man is then given a tour of Heaven and finds that it is indeed true.
    The man decides he’s just got to try the food & goes & stands in the cafeteria line.
    While waiting ,a man in green scrubs goes rushing to the front of the line & gets his food ahead of all the others.
    “Hey, I thought everyone is equal here. Why did he cut line?”
    “Oh, him?” says St Peter, “That’s God, he thinks he’s a surgeon.”

  175. 175.

    rikyrah

    Dem dismisses Trump’s opioid declaration as ‘a dog-and-pony show’
    10/26/17 04:41 PM—UPDATED 10/26/17 04:43 PM
    By Steve Benen
    ……………………………………………………….

    “This epidemic is a national health emergency,” Trump said during an address at the White House. “Nobody has seen anything like what is going on now. As Americans, we cannot allow this to continue. It is time to liberate our communities from this scourge of drug addiction.” […]

    Trump said he directed federal agencies to use all their resources to fight the drug crisis, including focusing on providing improved treatment for addicts. […] The declaration alone provides no additional money to combat the problem but allows existing grants to be redirected to better deal with the crisis.

    That’s not meaningless, but today’s announcement falls short of what Trump seemed to declare 11 weeks ago.

    I can appreciate that may not seem to be much of a difference between a national emergency and a public-health emergency, but the Washington Post explained that today’s announcement isn’t quite in line with what the president described in August.

    With Trump’s declaration, the federal government will waive some regulations, give states more flexibility in how they use federal funds and expand the use of telemedicine treatment, according to senior administration officials who briefed reporters on Thursday morning.

    But the president stopped short of declaring a more sweeping national state of emergency that would have given states access to funding from the federal Disaster Relief Fund, just as they would have following a tornado or hurricane. Officials who briefed reporters said that such an emergency declaration would not be a good fit for a longtime crisis and would not offer authorities that the government doesn’t already have.

    Trump’s announcement drew sharp criticism from Democratic lawmakers and some public health advocates, who questioned his commitment to the crisis, given that Trump made no immediate request to Congress for emergency funding.

    Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), for example, described today’s announcement as “nothing more than a dog-and-pony show in an attempt to demonstrate the Trump administration is not ignoring this crisis.”

  176. 176.

    Lurking Canadian

    @rikyrah: I’m not sure if you know this and were alluding to it, but many people believe the fate of the pope in Godfather III reflects the actual fate of John Paul (no II), a loveable reform-minded Italian who died before the white smoke cleared.

  177. 177.

    rikyrah

    On judicial picks, Nevada’s Heller competes for a Chutzpah Award
    10/27/17 10:13 AM
    By Steve Benen
    ……………………………….

    But Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), arguably the most vulnerable Republican seeking re-election next year, argued yesterday that his party should move even faster to confirm Trump’s nominees, working “day and night” to approve judges “every day, for as long as we need.”

    “Now many of you here know that the first piece of legislation I’ve introduced for the past two Congresses is my No Budget No Pay Act. The concept is simple, if Congress can’t pass a budget and all of its spending bills on time then it shouldn’t be paid.

    “Well, Mr. President, the Senate should apply the same concept, in my opinion, to confirming judges.”

    ………………………..

    Nearly all of the vacancies on the federal bench also existed at the end of Barack Obama’s presidency, and if memory serves, Heller and his Republican brethren refused to hold confirmation votes on hardly any of them last year. Indeed, the Democratic president nominated Merrick Garland for the U.S. Supreme Court – a compromise choice who’d earned GOP praise – and Republican senators wouldn’t even give him a fair hearing.

    I’ve looked for Dean Heller’s speech from last year in which he suggested senators go without pay for failing to do their jobs, but I can’t seem to find it.

    Indeed, twisting the knife, the Nevadan boasted yesterday, “One of the eight judges confirmed was Neil Gorsuch, who I am thankful now serves on the Supreme Court. Justice Gorsuch is an example of the type of judge we have the chance to put in place. Like with Justice Gorsuch’s confirmation, we need to do all that is necessary to fill these vacancies with great judges like him.”

    The chutzpah is almost impressive. Heller delivered a speech on the importance of senators voting on judicial nominees, then bragged about Neil Gorsuch, who’s only on the bench because senators refused to vote on a judicial nominee.

    Nevertheless, Heller and his fellow partisans are likely to get what they want. Politico reported late yesterday, “Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is launching a circuit court confirmation blitz. The top Senate Republican on Thursday teed up votes to install four nominees to the powerful appellate courts, which give the final word on the vast majority of cases that don’t reach the Supreme Court.”

  181. 181.

    Lurking Canadian

    @rikyrah: It’s actually not hypocrisy. Heller doesn’t think his job is to fill judicial openings with appointees.

    He thinks his job is to fill judicial openings with REPUBLICAN appointees. Thus, he was carrying out his duty with the same devotion during the final year of Obama as during the first year of Trump.

  182. 182.

    rikyrah

    Say it with me, boys and girls:

    He would sell his mother to Lucifer for those tax cuts.

    Ryan finds new ways to downplay concerns about Trump’s fitness
    10/27/17 09:22 AM—UPDATED 10/27/17 09:34 AM
    By Steve Benen
    Earlier this month, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) made the case that Donald Trump’s stability is in doubt and may set the nation “on the path to World War III.” The president responded by saying he believes Corker is short and cowardly.

    Asked for his reaction, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) suggested the two men should “sit down and just talk through their issues.” That would be quite a conversation.

    Yesterday, as the Associated Press reported, the Republican leader offered a slightly different response.

    Remember the extraordinary public clash this week between two Republican senators and President Donald Trump? House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday that people aren’t interested.

    Ryan waded into – and quickly out of – that dispute on Thursday, when a reporter asked whether he shares Sen. Jeff Flake’s criticisms of Trump. “I don’t think the American people care about that,” the Wisconsin Republican responded.

    Just so we’re clear, this week, two prominent U.S. senators from the president’s own party have publicly suggested that Donald Trump isn’t fit to serve, leaving the nation to confront, to use Flake’s phrasing, an “alarming and dangerous state of affairs.”

    Presented with this information, the Speaker of the House didn’t dismiss the concerns about Trump’s ability to be president, so much as he suggested that the public dismisses the concerns.

    …………………………

    Similarly, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) reportedly appeared on NPR this morning and said Republican senators who are worried about Trump’s fitness should keep their fears “private,” and discuss their concerns “within the family.”

    In other words, if the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has reason to believe the president is dangerously unfit, the important thing is that the public not find out.

  183. 183.

    Spanky

    @rikyrah:

    Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), for example, described today’s announcement as “nothing more than a dog-and-pony show in an attempt to demonstrate the Trump administration is not ignoring this crisis.”

    “…whie ignoring this crisis”, the article did not add.

  184. 184.

    MomSense

    @schrodingers_cat:

    I have commented here that it is has been reported that Kelly and Mattis are coordinating their coverage of Dolt45 to prevent him from launching a nuclear attack. I have not, however said that “it is all good”. I can’t stand Kelly and thought he revealed himself as a total fucking monster when he was at homeland. I’ve never thought he would bring discipline or any of the other nonsense hopes that have been projected onto him.

    I do think it is possible for him to both not want his boss to start a nuclear war while being a RWNJ racist asshole. I do hope that the reporting about he and Mattis coordinating to prevent trump launching a nuclear first strike is accurate.

  185. 185.

    Chris

    Heck, *I* could’ve blocked out that ‘Soviet officials’ response pretty closely, and in 1963, I’d just turned eight. Nothing I’ve seen dissuades my standing theory: The various alphabet agencies all had Oswald on their radar screens — possibly one or more of them even on their ‘occasional informant’ payroll — and their first priority after the assassination, truth and history be damned, was making sure that none of those other spy-boys could pin any blame on them.

    Unlike a lot of what I hear about JFK assassination theories, this I find totally plausible.

    Also, I find the Soviet response interesting in the context of what was going on in the USSR during that time. Khrushchev’s reputation never totally recovered from the blow it took in the Cuban missile crisis, a lot of the hard-liners had never been all that comfortable with his reforms and denunciation of Stalin, and senior Party members were talking about his removal for some time until they finally forced him to give them their “voluntary” resignations. Apparently, they thought the Kennedy assassination was just a more direct American version of what they were doing to Khrushchev.

    (Also, J. Edgar Hoover may be the most underrated monster of the 20th century, going back to his days running the Palmer Raids.)

    Good God, yes. The patron saint of the lawless, unaccountable, politicized security agencies. And the FBI still runs on his rules, as Comey richly demonstrated last fall.

  186. 186.

    d58826

    So Spain may be coming apart at the seems. Britain is blowing up the EU. Our allies in Iraq – Kurds and Iraqi’s are at each others throats, the Saudi’s are committing genocide in Yemen with american supplied weapons, a refugee crisis in Myanmar, PR still has no power (but Whitefish has 300 million dollars that cannot be audited), and Der Fuhrer will skip a major Asian trade summit because he may be cranky.
    But we can arrest a 10 year old child with cerebral palsey in order to deport her.

    Are we tired of winning yet?

  187. 187.

    Chris

    @satby:

    I also was 8 years old then. And aside from curiosity for professional historians, not all that interested now. Once conspiracy theories are out there, they don’t ever die, as the 2016 election showed.

    JFK assassination conspiracy theories are mostly valuable as ink-blot tests. I’ve heard it blamed on the Southern Democrats, the military-industrial complex, the Soviets, the Cuban communists, the Cuban anti-communists, and the Mafia. The theory tells you more about the politics of the person who believes it than it does about the assassination itself.

    Although, the absolute best conspiracy theory I’ve ever heard comes from no less an authority than François Duvalier, then-dictator of Haiti, who claimed that the reason JFK died was because he’d put a vodou curse on him after some kind of political clash or other. To which I can only say: headcanon accepted!

  188. 188.

    Lurking Canadian

    @Chris: I’m partial to the Murder on the Orient Express solution. There were actually twelve plots to murder JFK, but by a freakish coincidence, they all hired the same guy!

  189. 189.

    Chris

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    This mixture of hatred and fear is common among the pope’s adversaries. Francis, the first non-European pope in modern times, and the first ever Jesuit pope, was elected as an outsider to the Vatican establishment, and expected to make enemies. But no one foresaw just how many he would make. From his swift renunciation of the pomp of the Vatican, which served notice to the church’s 3,000-strong civil service that he meant to be its master, to his support for migrants, his attacks on global capitalism and, most of all, his moves to re-examine the church’s teachings about sex, he has scandalised reactionaries and conservatives. To judge by the voting figures at the last worldwide meeting of bishops, almost a quarter of the college of Cardinals – the most senior clergy in the church – believe that the pope is flirting with heresy.

    What’s remarkable is how little he’s actually done to earn this. He hasn’t suddenly allowed women into the clergy. He hasn’t even reversed Church policy on allowing gays in the clergy. He certainly isn’t cooking up another Vatican II type overhaul. The only thing he’s done is preach stuff consistent with preexisting Catholic doctrine.

    Like reactionaries everywhere, it says a lot about them how very little it takes for them to feel existentially threatened and develop an unhinged loathing for the person they blame for it.

  190. 190.

    Chris

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    … I stand corrected, I guess. (Although that does coincide with what I said above. Doctrinally, he hasn’t done anything radical. He’s just going after the corruption in the Church, and naturally those whose perks and privileges are threatened are hopping mad. “Caligula,” LOLOLOL).

  191. 191.

    bemused

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Ha, so the State Dept had to fly to New Zealand to give him a stern talking to. I’d guess there’s more than the terminology “culturally insensitive” and “undiplomatic” is revealing.

  192. 192.

    Chris

    @Kay:

    I think this is increasingly the whole party. Which is part of the reason I don’t even bother to argue with their voters anymore.

  193. 193.

    WaterGirl

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    But within the church, Francis has provoked a ferocious backlash from conservatives who fear that this spirit will divide the church, and could even shatter it.

    These priests have lost the plot. I added a few additional words in bold below for clarity.

    “But within the church, Francis has provoked a ferocious backlash from conservatives who fear that this spirit, which embody the teachings of Jesus Christ and embody the life of Christ himself, will divide the church, and could even shatter it.”

    edited

  195. 195.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Chris: The 2 things that have the conservative panties bunched the most are homosexuality (“Who am I to judge?”) and divorce (communion should be offered to the divorced and remarried) with a subset or revulsion for the “unmarried with children”.

  196. 196.

    Immanentize

    @Lurking Canadian: I’m always going with Was Not Was:

    JFK told Kruschev I’ll leave Castro alone
    If you take away those missles
    They’re too damn close to home
    The CIA, the Cubans and the underworld bosses
    Decided that was it, they had to cut their losses

    At eleven miles an hour
    Such a deadly speed
    Eleven miles an hour
    At the time and place agreed
    They pulled their limousine
    Down Elm Street slow and clean
    Lead fell like a shower
    At eleven miles an hour

  197. 197.

    germy

    WASHINGTON (AP) –

    Newly released files say a British newspaper received an anonymous call about “big news” in the United States minutes before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

    A batch of 2,800 declassified documents includes a memo to the director of the FBI, dated November 26, 1963, about a call received by the Cambridge News on November 22.

    It says the caller said that “the Cambridge News reporter should call the American Embassy in London for some big news, and then hung up.”

    The memo says Britain’s MI5 intelligence service calculated that the call came 25 minutes before Kennedy was shot in Dallas.

    Anna Savva, a current Cambridge News reporter, says the paper has no record of who took the call. She said Friday that learning of the call was “completely jaw-dropping.”

  198. 198.

    schrodingers_cat

    @MomSense: I understand the moral calculus behind this position but it makes me nervous. Right now they are rounding up undocumented immigrants but their list of undesirables is a mile long. I am wondering who else is fair game and expendable, an okay sacrifice so long as we are protected from the risk of a nuclear holocaust.

  199. 199.

    Immanentize

    @schrodingers_cat: I agree that they are not deporting people so much right now as warehousing them at taxpayer expense in private prisons. That is what they want to do. Deportation is really a secondary concern.

  203. 203.

    Chris

    @Lurking Canadian:

    And now I want to see a movie about the whole thing from that hitman’s point of view. Traveling all over the world from Moscow to Birmingham to northern Virginia to Miami to Havana to New York City accepting or suggesting contracts with various people, then carrying out the hit, and then separately billing each of them since they’re all convinced that he was just working for them.

  204. 204.

    MomSense

    @schrodingers_cat:

    I don’t think that is how this works. Unfortunately we have very little say in who dolt45 hires. He will not make a single decent hire. I’m not saying I want Kelly to stay as CoS because I don’t. Slandering a member of Congress should be a firing offense. I am just saying that it is possible he is a horrible, racist monster who also wants to prevent his boss from launching a first strike. If Kelly does resign or is fired, we will definitely have to worry about whether his replacement would try to prevent a nuclear war and that person will also likely be just as horrible about immigration, detention, and deportation. It’s all monsters all the way down.

    BTW I don’t think Paul Ryan is any better on immigration. The Republican Party is an un-American nightmare. They are anti Democratic, anti science, anti-reason, anti -decency…all the worst possible characteristics in politics.

  205. 205.

    stinger

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    You can not join Christ and Belial! What Nazi-Fascism and Communism were in the 20th century, Western homosexual and abortion Ideologies and Islamic Fanaticism are today.

    You can see the spittle flying from here.

  206. 206.

    schrodingers_cat

    @MomSense: He never should have ascended to the WH. Its a hostile takeover. They are making America Weak by attacking all our strengths. (Our diversity, our welcoming of new immigrants, our openness, leadership in international affairs since WWII, scientific prowess and lastly our economy)

    ETA: He has remade us into his image internationally. A nasty bully who cowers at threats real and imagined.

  209. 209.

    Schlemazel

    @Chris:
    My favorite:
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortal_Error

    The guy was a ballistic expert & was allowed to examine evidence. His book is well written & detailed
    Oswald, first shot hit the street – copper jacket on the outside of Kennedy’s head, Kennedy is heard to say “I’ve been hit!”
    Second shot severes Kennedy’s spine, he “postures”, arms stiff fists at chest level, he is dead. That bullet goes through Connelly – the wound is a perfect outline of the slug and ends in his wrist.
    Then it gets difficult. The Secret Service in the chase car has an AR-15 and a round is in the chamber (though they first denied they had an AR 15 then denied it was loaded records show both were true & they were lying). The agent grabs the gun & stands up to defend the President with the first shot. The cars hit the gas, he is thrown backwards and the gun goes off. The famous shot does not act like a bullet from the gun Oswald had but exactly like the .227 from an AR15. It does not matter as JFK was dead already but rather than expose the agent to shame and ridicule that accident is buried.

    I like it because it contains the stupid accident fits my belief that nothing works the way it is supposed to & there is always a screw up.

  210. 210.

    The Moar You Know

    This will fascinate, I suspect, zero commenters on this blog besides me, but Kazakhstan will be switching from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet for the Kazakh language.

    @Gin & Tonic: Home of the apple. Always wanted to visit. That would make things a bit easier.

    So, yeah, one guy fascinated.

  211. 211.

    d58826

    @Matt McIrvin: My first job out of college was at a defense contractor. The way the game is played is DOD asks for a bid on say a new fighter jet and lists some specs, usually that it outperform the starship Enterprise. Contractors bids and says sure we can do that and it costs 1 million per. Contract is signed and the blueprints are drawn up and delivered to the AF. First thing they notice is there are no wings. Contractor with a I’m shocked shocked look on his face say ‘OH you want it with wings?’ No problem but that will add a bit to the price tag to the tune of 10 million dollars. Next they notice that the landing gear doesn’t retract. Easy fix only another 15 million (and a year added to deliver). Finally 10 years late and the price up to 300million per copy the first plane is positioned in front of the hanger for the press to see. What they didn’t see is the plane was put there using a crane. They still haven’t gotten all of the bugs out with the wheels. It’s now 15 years later and 500 million per plane and it is ready to be delivered. The contractor turns the keys over to the AF and every one has his photo taken with this lean mean fighting machine. They also hand the general a small envelope with a list of all the buttons and switches on the plane that are not connected yet. They will be connection in V2.0 due for deliver in 5 more years and at the bargain price of only 700 million. Everyone is happen. The contractor CEO gets a big bonus, the stock price flies higher than the plane and the general retires to a cushy job at the contractor overseeing the deliver of V2.0 from the other side of the desk.

    Seriously I remember reading a book in the 70’s about the escalating cost of weapons systems (back in the day when 700.00 coffeepots and 300.00 screwdrivers seemed outrageous). The guy writing the book said that at some point the AF will only be able to buy one plane due to the cost. BUT IT WILL BE THE BIGGEST BESTEST plane ever built. Given today’s world it might even be called the F-Trump.

  212. 212.

    catclub

    @Kay:

    The contract says there are no financial sanctions if they miss deadlines.

    this is what happens when only one side of a contract has a lawyer.

  215. 215.

    stinger

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Kazakhstan will be switching from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet

    That seems like a good sign — moving away from Russian influence toward Western influence. So yes, I find it interesting! (Not that I could read Kazakh either way.)

  217. 217.

    Chris

    @d58826:

    We really are completely fucked if we ever have to fight a “real” war, aren’t we? The more I read and think about both the military and the economic sector attached to it, the more I’m coming to think that. It probably doesn’t help my mood that I just read that Paul Yingling article from ten years ago for the first time, but oy.

  219. 219.

    Matt McIrvin

    @d58826: I’ve managed to avoid that world myself (barely–I accepted a temp-to-hire job at such a place out of grad school, then got a more interesting offer before my first day on the job).

    My dad’s career in NoVa eventually got deep into it, though, and I remember that part of the DC burbs as deep Republican territory because defense and security contractors were largely my neighbors. It isn’t any more, partly because it ethnically diversified.

  221. 221.

    No Drought No More

    If Trump had a sense of humor, he could have ordered Pompeo to doctor documents to set-up the father of Ted Cruz as spider at the center of the web. That what I would have done.

  223. 223.

    Bill Arnold

    @MomSense:

    I do think it is possible for him to both not want his boss to start a nuclear war while being a RWNJ racist asshole.

    This is essentially my position as well, and I’m a bit mystified by the persistent misrepresentation. I cannot lightly forgive Kelly for stuff he has publicly done/advocated for. Mattis and McMaster have their own flaws, and strengths. The main thing about H.R. McMaster of interest to me is that he might (almost certainly does) consume and integrate information and arguments from outside the right wing epistemological bubble.
    They’re all military, yes. Don’t see that as disqualifying, often see much worse in e.g. the corporate and political worlds from people without a military background. (A lack of at least occasional humility is disqualifying IMO.)

  224. 224.

    Bill Arnold

    @Chris:
    OMG. Had never seen that one.
    Papa Doc Duvalier: The Voodoo President who killed Kennedy
    (fixed link)

    It was rumoured that on the morning of the assassination, the Haitian president had stabbed his JFK “Voodoo doll” 2,222 times (22 being Duvalier’s lucky number). Although Voodoo dolls are connected to the Louisiana Voodoo centred around New Orleans and not Haitian Vodou, Duvalier did claim to have put a curse on the president in retaliation for US aid drying up in the wake of Papa Doc’s tyranny.

    That’s a lot of work for a curse… And what if he was off by one?

  225. 225.

    Bill Arnold

    @schrodingers_cat:

    I understand the moral calculus behind this position but it makes me nervous. Right now they are rounding up undocumented immigrants but their list of undesirables is a mile long. I am wondering who else is fair game and expendable, an okay sacrifice so long as we are protected from the risk of a nuclear holocaust.

    We’re in agreement then. (Without elaborating.)

  226. 226.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Immanentize: But, of course, ruining state tax sources is exactly the point here–they want to punish states that haven’t starved their own governments like the good Republican ones have.

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