Multiple sources say Trump “completely lost his mind” after he found out Mueller’s filed charges & now he’s “having an epic meltdown” #AMJoy
— Scott Dworkin (@funder) October 28, 2017
I’m not proud, I love that all these cheezy bastids are having a very bad weekend. I hope it gets worse for them. In my more whimsical fantasies, Roger Stone is found beaten to death with a golf club monogrammed SH, and Bannon strokes out while breaking Kushner’s hyoid bone. As for their Dear (Figurehead) Leader — I want he should live a thousand years, and every day of his life be more miserable than the day before!
Note the absurd horror of there being SO MANY shady conspirators within Trump's camp that we can't predict with confidence who was charged
— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) October 28, 2017
Roger Stone is handling tonight’s news like the dapper gentleman he is pic.twitter.com/trojChlac2
— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) October 28, 2017
I think he’s been increasingly deranged for about 3-4 months
I also think he may be at the center of nearly every Trump campaign illegality https://t.co/Ifo8eeqmFF
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) October 28, 2017
Waiting until now to suspend this toxic set of hair plugs amounts to silencing a potential confession. pic.twitter.com/CnHg2QE4u0
— Zedward Tweeterhands (@ZeddRebel) October 28, 2017
Can we suspend @sebgorka next or would that be too much to ask? pic.twitter.com/4yNLttGiYY
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) October 28, 2017
Is there any doubt that, when it comes down to it for the cult, Hannity will be the guy mixing the Flavor-Aid?
— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) October 28, 2017
Tip for Paul Manafort: on your first day in prison, find the biggest dumbass in there and run his campaign.
— Stefan Heck (@boring_as_heck) October 28, 2017
Jared Kushner's only going to get into jail because he's a legacy
— Megan Amram (@meganamram) October 28, 2017
????????????????
gorka, stone, and hannity all freaking out and trump is just out there golfing again like nbd
???????????????? https://t.co/Z7UC3f7Mlq— darth:™ (@darth) October 28, 2017
MTmofo
Stone is now using his movie’s Twitter. He has another for one of his books.
https://twitter.com/STONEFLIK
mike in dc
Jared is the biggest possible fish here. Too soon for Sessions, Don Jr or Donald S. Pumpkins.
patrick II
My two favorites:
I laughed out loud at both.
(((CassandraLeo)))
This is a large part of the reason I’m suffering an existential crisis. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to believe I’m still perceiving reality correctly when so many aspects of it are flatly impossible to believe. I’ve yet to figure out an effective coping strategy to deal with this, but, as I’ve commented several times recently, I feel like a character in a Philip K. Dick novel at this point.
Brachiator
I can’t take any of this stuff seriously until there are actual indictments. And even then, I won’t pay much attention until there are actual convictions.
However, I get some joy from knowing that this upsets Trump and his minions.
M. Bouffant
@patrick II: My two faves too.
KlareCole
I understand that the unsealing of the indictment taking a few days is a conventional procedure. But it does seem to create maximum bullet sweating for the Trump team. Would seem unusual if Trump lasts out the weekend without some self incriminating, flagrantly stupid tweets. That will possibly be another nail in the very well sealed coffin.
RobertDSC-Mac Mini
On a lighter note, I read that President Obama will be going to jury duty.
It amuses me that the last time I did mine, I volunteered to be the foreperson since no one else wanted to do it. Reading this news about the President makes me laugh because it would be incredibly intimidating trying to run the discussion with a former President at the table.
Xenos
I get really uncomfortable waiting until Monday after indictments being issued and sealed on Friday. Seems like way too much time for 45 and team to get up to mischief.
Major Major Major Major
@patrick II: Me too, me too.
I just finished reading Seveneves, which, damn, what a ride. Still, Stephenson can’t write an ending to save his life though.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@RobertDSC-Mac Mini: Lawyers generally don’t get selected for juries.
Aleta
If the WH announces that in addition to peace in the MEast, technology in government, opiods, infrastructure, the DVA, relations with Mexico and China, and skiing Kushner has been tasked with overseeing the prison system, that could be a clue.
Fair Economist
@Major Major Major Major: I thought the ending of Seveneves was fine, if not up to the caliber of the first half or so of the book. I liked the ending of Anthem, too. The Baroque Cycle I agree had a very weak ending – with the fundamental flaw being that an (almost) lifelong story doesn’t logically end with “happily ever after”.
sm*t cl*de
@(((CassandraLeo))):
Possibly time to change the name of the blog to ‘Radio Free Albemuth’.
Major Major Major Major
@Fair Economist: IMO Anathem is his most writerly book so it’s not surprising that it has a halfway-decent ending. The Seveneves ending is… fine, it’s exactly fine. I don’t know what he could have done to make it great, but it’s not my job to, either.
It’s better than some of his endings. On par with Snow Crash. Better than Cryptonomicon.
ETA: His endings are just so glaringly less good than the rest of his books is the thing.
Ruckus
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Some states are closing some of the exemptions for jury service.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@sm*t cl*de: I haven’t read that one yet, but it’s on my list to pick up alongside Valis, The Divine Invasion, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, and probably two or three others I’ve forgotten. (For the record, the ones I’ve read are Androids, Man in the High Castle, Ubik, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, and A Scanner Darkly. Ubik probably comes closest to encapsulating my mental state right now.)
@Major Major Major Major: It’s been awhile since I read Stephenson, but the biggest problem with the Cryptonomicon ending is that he just sort of wrapped up the whole plot in like ten pages and it came more or less out of nowhere. I don’t think I’ve actually read any of his other books through to completion. (I used to work in a bookstore, and thus it was exceedingly rare for me to finish books even if they were good.) At least he’s better at endings than Stephen King, though. I love Stephen King, but most of his endings are terrible.
All that said, I don’t judge authors too harshly for failing to stick the landings – endings seem to be amongst the hardest aspects of fiction to write. This includes TV shows and the like as well. Battlestar Galactica remains one of my favourite TV shows even though the entire last season was a mess.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Ruckus: That’s not an exemption, plaintiff/prosecution and the defense really don’t want a lawyer on juries. They use challenges to keep them off. Judges probably aren’t to thrilled with them either(they may interject legal opinions in addition to the law the judge sets out in instructions).
Bruce K
@Ruckus: Heck with exemptions. The last time I got called for jury duty before leaving the States, as soon as it came out that I was a law-school graduate, I got challenged right out.
If I were arguing a case before a jury, I’d be hesitant to let a lawyer onto that jury.
Major Major Major Major
@(((CassandraLeo))): King has much worse endings, yes. Some (many?) of his are downright bad. Stephenson’s I mostly find disappointing, but yeah, Cryptonomicon’s was actually structurally flawed.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Major Major Major Major: It read to me as though he realised that if he kept writing, he’d actually approach the physical limitations of book binding, so rather than split it into two volumes or whittle down some of the earlier parts of the book, he just decided to wrap it up as quickly as possible. It’s truly bizarre. It doesn’t actually damage the plot, but it’s so aesthetically out of place that it sticks out. I have to wonder if there’s a deliberate reason for it that I simply haven’t picked up on, but no one else seems to have been able to figure it out either, so I have no idea what the explanation is.
The King ending that always sticks out to me the most is The Dark Tower. I don’t actually hate the epilogue almost everyone else seems to hate, because that had been heavily foreshadowed throughout; the overall ending to the book just felt like an anticlimax. It was so anticlimactic that, again, it read like it had to have been deliberate, but in this case it really bothered me because of how much the earlier books had built up the stakes.
m.j.
I’ll say it again. Scalia died almost a year away from Obama’s imposed retirement. We got stuck with the Republican shitheel Gorsuch.
I’m not getting my hopes up.
Fair Economist
@Major Major Major Major: I have to agree that his ending are generally weaker than the meat of the book. but see:
@(((CassandraLeo))): I think it’s difficult for a good novel to have a good ending. In real life complex multi-person stories don’t end, they just roll on with a gradually changing set of characters. The only exception would be disasters. So if a novel does a good job of pulling you into a world, almost any ending will be unsatisfying.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Fair Economist: Yep. A lot of my favourite TV show endings are pretty open-ended. The best examples I can think of off the top of my head are The West Wing, Mad Men, and Person of Interest; they all imply that these people’s stories aren’t actually over, but nonetheless they wrap up all the important plot threads. A few days ago I also wrote about how much I hated the La La Land ending. If they’d simply removed the epilogue, the ending would’ve been perfect.
A lot of my favourite novel endings don’t actually wrap everything up, either. This would include almost anything by Pynchon or PKD (I guess Flow My Tears and A Scanner Darkly are exceptions). Hell, some of Pynchon’s novels don’t really have endings at all. Other endings that stick out to me as perfect include Miéville’s The City & the City, Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, and several of Vonnegut’s. Miéville and Le Guin definitely allow the reader to use their imagination about what happens next, though some of Vonnegut’s are a lot more final.
sm*t cl*de
@(((CassandraLeo))):
Don’t make RFA your first priority. It was an attempt to work through the experiences and obsessions that eventually became Valis, before Dick found the right form to fit the content.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@sm*t cl*de: Makes sense. Is it better to read it after Valis and TDI then?
Fair Economist
@?BillinGlendaleCA: On top of the issues with a lawyer on a jury, I don’t think anybody involved would want to deal with the circus that would result from Obama being on a jury. There would be international coverage for a (probably) minor case and a blizzard of other issues like security, political fights within the jury, and gossip reporting on Obama.
JerryRich
@Ruckus: At the time of my first jury duty (San Francisco 1984) the blanket exemption for lawyers was lifted. It was amusing to hear the hear the lawyers in the jury selection room discuss what they could say (without lying) during voir dire that would keep them off the jury.
Major Major Major Major
@Fair Economist: I disagree. If we’re going to look at it this way, Stephenson’s endings are unsatisfying because he ropes in too much shit, and no writer, no matter how talented, is going to be able to make that into a Frankenstein’s monster that doesn’t have a lot of bloody stumps. See The Diamond Age and to a lesser degree Snow Crash.
An ending doesn’t have to wrap everything up to be good or even satisfying, either. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, to randomly look at my shelf right now, has a very good ending, such as it is.
Aleta
@Xenos: I also didn’t get why Mueller would do this on a Friday. But I wonder if the two days is intended to put maximum pressure on possible informants? If the administration didn’t expect indictments until at least Christmas, the shock might make people who were waiting, weighing their odds, suddenly panic and jump. Gives them just enough time to call their lawyer, stay up drinking all night and then set up a meeting with the special prosecutor’s office. But not long enough for Trump and Co. to deliver offers and threats and monitor everyone out there who could turn. ?
NotMax
@sm*t cl*de
And do not bother with the movie. The film stock would have been put to better application chopped up and used as confetti.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Fair Economist: Yup, I agree.
Aleta
@(((CassandraLeo))): I’ve thought of him a lot recently, especially the paranoia.
Ruckus
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
@Bruce K:
Just saying that’s what I’ve been told. Not agreeing or disagreeing. I think it’s generally been lawyers and cops don’t serve on juries. I can certainly see some validity to that. On the other hand, they are citizens, it is our duty to serve on juries, but I can certainly see some conflicts of interest.
I’ve been called several times. In two different states. I’ve both gotten out of serving because of financial hardship and have served. Was once waiting for selection for a special capital case when the guy plead out. Was told that the case would probably have taken weeks. My job would have loved that. This was the job that I traveled over 6 months a year.
Major Major Major Major
@Fair Economist: @?BillinGlendaleCA: it’s still super cool that he wants to do it. It’s supposed to be one of the backbones of democracy and whatnot.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Aleta: I’m unaware of any other author who better explains the current era, though I think Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 may tie with him.
Fair Economist
@Major Major Major Major: IMO since Stephenson does such a good job of creating a complex interesting intricate world it exacerbates the difficulty of creating an ending. It’s not impossible to end a complex story but too abrupt an ending is unsatisfying and too complete becomes contrived. Stephenson’s ending are often both. Partly he’s not as good at ending a story as he could be, but partly he’s created such a complex world that even when he stops so many things it feels contrived so much should still be spinning on it feels abrupt.
Major Major Major Major
@(((CassandraLeo))): Catch-22 is brilliant, and yes of course I think so.
Millard Filmore
@Aleta: Since we are speculating, here is mine. It will be someone that Trump will want to pardon, and also be a person whose crimes can be picked up for state crimes. The first one will be bait to see what Trump’s reaction will be.
Fair Economist
@Major Major Major Major: Obama is certainly setting a good example by eagerly accepting jury duty. A cynic might point out that he knows as well as anybody that he’s almost certainly not going to have to serve.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Millard Filmore: It is, of course, irresponsible not to speculate.
@Fair Economist: Yep. I do wonder if this is part of why GRRM has been having so much trouble with the last several books in his series. Robert Jordan also seems to have had the same problem. We might call this “too many balls in the air” syndrome.
@Major Major Major Major: I realised as I was typing the title of the novel that you would almost certainly say something along those lines. :p
Major Major Major Major
@Fair Economist: then again, Anathem did have a pretty good ending. Like I said, it’s his most writerly book. It’s all fine anyway since he doesn’t have any pretensions of being some mindblowing wordsmith.
I’m always amused by his dedication to/tic-like insertion of his own tropes. It’s funny in Seveneves how he manages to fit his trope of a semi-accidental, sneaky land journey through the wilderness into a book where the moon explodes and earth is reduced to molten rubble.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Ruckus: They’ll get called in for Jury Duty(and they shouldn’t be exempted), but it’s pretty unlikely they’ll be selected for a panel.
@Major Major Major Major: The only time I’ve really had a problem with jury duty is when I got selected for the county’s experiment with night court. That meant that I had to work a full day and then haul my ass into court for 4 hours in the evening for about 2 weeks. That sucked.
NotMax
@(((CassandraLeo)))
Kafka?
Ruckus
@Aleta:
Well you could look at it several ways.
1. Someone has flipped and they want everyone else to sweat who it might be if anyone. Which also might just create enough pressure to get others to flip.
2. They are going to arrest several people at the same time and want to watch who might try and run. I believe that once they have indictments they can arrest at any time, putting extra pressure on seems to be the concept. This is my choice.
3. Really ramps up the pressure on those they didn’t get indictments for. Anyone left has to be sweating, are these guys flipping or even just talking, trying to get a better deal.
Notice that putting on pressure is a prime game here. If the cases are shaky then you can’t use a lot of pressure, people won’t be as worried. If they cases are airtight, which I bet they are, pressure is a tactic that works a good percentage of the time.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@NotMax: Good call; he certainly belongs on that list. Orwell is probably always going to be relevant, too, and Pynchon probably deserves a mention because he, too, explores paranoia in great depth.
sm*t cl*de
@(((CassandraLeo))):
I think so. Mind you, when RFA was finally and posthumously published, it felt like a part of its time that had not aged well… all this dystopian paranoia about life in a police-state US under a dictatorial thought-controlling President-for-Life. “Get over yourself, PKD!” I remember thinking at the time. “Nixon’s dead, his rightwing authoritarian vision died with him.” The book might be more timely now.
Ruckus
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
That’s sort of why I don’t give a damn if they get called or not. If the court knows that the likelihood of being called approaches zero, why bother? On the other hand, a jury that I served on in OH I was never asked my occupation. My name, citizenship, that’s about it. I seem to remember being asked if we worked in the medical field. Turned out it was a doc on trial. Selection took maybe 15 minutes to impanel.
I’d think it would be fine to have President Obama on a jury. He’s certainly smart enough to listen to and get the facts as presented and render a fair judgement.
Aleta
@(((CassandraLeo))): yeah. And the Pynchon bell has rung for me a few times too. It’s a strange sensation for me, of feeling inside the work of those three.
RobNYNY
@Ruckus:
When New York abolished the exemption for lawyers, the first jury I was on had four lawyers out of twelve deliberating jurors and two alternates.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@RobNYNY: I’ve never seen an attorney on any juries I’ve served.
@Ruckus: Your occupation is one of the basic questions that they ask here in CA. They have a list of 6(I think) questions posted in the courtroom that every perspective juror must answer(under oath).
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
I read Cryptonomicon and have never gone back for a second dose of Stephenson. It isn’t that the ending was bad, though it was; it was that the whole book was both boring and ridiculous. I make a point of asking all my friends whether they’ve read and liked it. If the answers are yes and yes, I never let them decide what movie we’re going to go see.
Ruckus
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Have never been called into the court to be selected. In norcal I owned a one man business and the court excused me, and about 25 others for cause. In Pasadena I had to wait in the jury room for 2-3 hrs and they let those not called into court go home. Wondering if I’ll get served again this December. It was a week before xmas and the court docket seemed light. Getting to the court is a trek, the walk takes 10 minutes.
patrick II
My favorite mystery writer, Elmore Leonard, was also famous for not having good endings. This is evidently because he had little or no plan when he started writing a book. He would put some interesting characters in the same room and see what happened. It would be a surprise even to Elmore. A lot of the characters in the Trump drama seem like Leonard characters but with more money and power. I hope the ending doesn’t surprise us too much.
Major Major Major Major
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: that’s pretty random and harsh, man.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@patrick II: I get the impression that Chandler also didn’t always write from an outline since he’s quoted as saying something along the lines of, “If you get stuck, have someone burst through the door with a gun.”
E: there’s even a TV Tropes page for it because of course there is. Warning: TV Tropes will ruin your life.
Major Major Major Major
@(((CassandraLeo))): that wasn’t really serious advice, though he did say it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Ruckus: I usually got summoned every 2 years, though I’ve not been summoned since 2012. I usually got called into the courtroom for voir dire(that’s where they ask you questions) and I’ve been on 3 juries(two criminal, one civil) and was a foreman once.
PST
I was seated on a Cook County jury despite being a lawyer. The orientation was provided by an old video featuring a young Lester Holt, made in the 80s when he was a local anchor, sporting a mustache. I wonder if they still use it.
Bromine
Why can’t someone get one of these meltdowns on camera? Is that too much to ask?
TenguPhule
@Bromine:
Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark already showed what happened.
It wasn’t pretty.
Snarki, child of Loki
If you want a PKD novel that encapsulates the current state of the USA, try Clans of the Alphane Moon.
sm*t cl*de
@NotMax:
Until now, I had no idea that someone had tried to adapt Radio Free Albemuth for cinema.
rikyrah
@(((CassandraLeo))):
The ultimate truth here is:
The curve for unqualified White Men is REAL ??
Imagine 44 having just ONE of these people working for him….
Yeah, I know….
I know…
rikyrah
@PST:
As of a couple of years ago…yep… good old Lester ?
p.a.
Can’t wait to hear the GOP & Sessions ‘Justice’ Dept start advocating for prison reform…
JPL
@p.a.: Hopefully it will be because they are behind bars.
JPL
Trump has been quiet this morning according to https://twitter.com/RealPressSecBot Maybe he’s been drugged.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Major Major Major Major: Most of the people I talk books with started reading Seveneves reluctantly because it was on the Hugo ballot. Many bailed on or before the point where the thinly-veiled HRC stand-in appeared. A few hung on until she made a complete disaster of the effort to save humanity. Very few finished it. Those who made it through the first half agreed that it was clear why it was a favorite among the WND faction of SF fandom.
I think I managed to force myself through the first three chapters. It only reinforced that this is not an author I should attempt to read again.
JR
@(((CassandraLeo))): The Graduate
The Thing
Lost in Translation
La Dolce Vita
Sideways
Patricia Kayden
@JPL: Or maybe he’s figured out that the jig is up and that there are real consequences for colluding with a foreign country to steal an election.
Frankensteinbeck
@(((CassandraLeo))):
ARRRG, YOU SAID THE WORDS.
Jordan drives me nuts. Infuriates me. He creates a fascinating world, and has a great sentence-to-sentence, page-to-page flow. Really sucks you in, and then betrays you. The books promise something supremely cool will happen right around the corner, and then it never does. He just keeps building plot threads. This is on top of his repetitive, unlikable characters, and his bizarre concept of social structure and personal interaction where everyone is a bully. Even the good guys will go out of their way to dominate with cruelty when they could just ask for cooperation, and Jordan thinks you can stare anybody down, which is insane. Try that, and three fourths of humanity will just get pissed.
That’s not even touching his misogyny. Holy shit, his misogyny. Women are nagging shrews in his world, all of them. Some manage to not be so bad about it they’re unlikable, but it is omnipresent, far beyond what is required for the already suspect ‘war of the sexes’ theme. And then, just as this was really getting tiresome and creeping me out, Jordan divorced his wife between books. Start the next one, and every single villainess, and some of the more bitchy heroines, is reduced to some guy’s sex slave, literal or effective. That wasn’t even enough for him, and he started getting into torture porn of conditioning women into magic-using slaves. The man had so. Many. Issues.
The constant implication that something awesome was about to happen dragged me on and on anyway, and he actually died before any of those super cool climactic events ever occurred. One of the books is just retelling a single friggin’ day in the previous book, where something super cool gets SO CLOSE to happening. I have never felt so betrayed by literature.
JPL
@Patricia Kayden: Let’s hope that is the case.
Just One More Canuck
@(((CassandraLeo))): that would add a real twist to a bodice-ripper
Patricia Kayden
@Bromine: On August 8th when he defended Neo Nazis and White Supremacists as good people, he looked to me like he was having a meltdown. His face was red, he was shouting at reporters and he was stammering and furious as he defended the violent racists.
Frankensteinbeck
@Patricia Kayden:
He’s a Nazi himself. More and more, I’m becoming convinced of it. Trump, who lies easily about everything else, chokes on attempts to condemn them. He has a truly ugly history of racism in word and deed, and talks about genetic superiority regularly. One of his personal treasures is a book of Hitler’s speeches. I’ve stopped thinking that he keeps it because he admires the bombast, and started thinking he just likes Hitler and thinks Hitler was right about race issues. Note that Trump absolutely loves brutal dictators, and praises them regularly.
Kay
I’m excited about it and so are a lot of other people I know judging by the number of emails I’m getting.
I hope it scuttles the huge tax cut- if they succeed in rewriting the tax code to (further) advantage the 1% you won’t recognize this country in a decade. Maybe you have to live in one of the states that got a GOP lock after 2010 to realize the damage they do- they have cut Ohio to the bone, the state is stagnating, and we now have a BILLION dollar budget hole- that’s with the cuts. Ohio was maintaining with Republicans mixed with Democrats- one Party GOP rule is a fucking disaster.
I know indictments alone won’t stop them but they’re struggling under the weight of their own incompetence and arrogance and this adds to that- every little bit helps.
They can’t rewrite the tax code. It will be impossible to recover from that- it’s a downward spiral that accelerates every year.
Kay
I’m convinced the way to stop Trumpism isn’t to attempt to shame them on the bigotry and mean-spiritedness- instead you have to withdraw the reward for this behavior and for Trump’s monied backers the reward is those tax cuts.
They’ll abandon him if they aren’t paid off. This is about the money. Withhold the pay-off and they’ll all magically rediscover their patriotism and ethical standards. He didn’t convince GOP donors to back Trumpism- he bought them.
JPL
@Kay: It’s so true, because it’s easy to convince folks they need a tax cut, and harder to raise taxes. Since I now have medicare, I saving for the large increases that are going to take place. I can’t imagine what it’s like to have a child and not be able to take the child to the doctors.
I have a sense of foreboding.
JPL
@Kay: Bannon recently distanced himself from Milo, and I’m convinced that was because he is trying to recruit Bernie Marcus and his money.
Lurking Canadian
@Major Major Major Major: my problem with Seveneves wasn’t the ending. It was the middle.
I’ll try to post with as few spoilers as possible. He goes into a great deal of Stephenson-typical technoprose to explain every thing the protagonists do to get to their destination, then we get the time skip.
Which is bullshit. Human beings are made of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen and they’re on a planetoid made of iron. Where do they get the raw materials for the next generation? They are absolutely dependent on solar power, but they have a finite amount of PV cells and the entire silicon industry just melted, as Stephenson himself points out. Where do they get the PV cells to expand their economy?
These questions may have answers, but Stephenson sure doesn’t provide any. Then, of course, there’s the bullshit racist pseudoscience of the meeting of the seveneves, which turns out to be not just true, but trivial to implement in a space hab with no natural resources.
He should have stopped when they landed.
Patricia Kayden
@Frankensteinbeck:
Fascinating how the worst specimen of the White race is preoccupied with racial superiority. No one in their right mind could look at Trump and think “Yeah, he’s superior to President Obama”. Not racially, mentally, physically or in any other way.
Recently, Trump sent out a tweet to support the Republican running for Governor in Virginia. Part of his tweet was that Gillespie would save “our great statues/heritage”. In other words, f you to all those who are protesting Confederate statues on public property including those who were victimized by violent White Supremacists in Charlottesville.
Kay
@JPL:
They don’t have to focus on individual policy fights on things like healthcare. If they limit revenue all the policy positions they like come about automatically. They don’t need to limit what goes out– they can just limit what goes in. Revenue limiting gets them every policy position they want by default.
They know revenue won’t go up with tax cuts. They knew Kansas and Ohio wouldn’t have revenue to cover costs. That is the plan. How do you cut subsidies to health, education and general welfare when those subsidies are wildly popular? You blow up the funding for them. That way you don’t have to have any fights about policy and you don’t have to take any unpopular positions.
Kay
@JPL:
So in other words they’re raising revenue for popular programs – they’re just doing it quietly and on an individual level. This is cost-shifting. It isn’t cost-cutting. People will stay pay. They’ll just pay less in taxes and more in individual costs.
They really are incompetent though. They suck at their jobs– all of them, not just Trump but the GOP congressional leadership- so we could still dodge this bullet. Indictments will help. Everything one can pile on helps.
Kay
@JPL:
I wish I had somewhere else to put savings other than in the stock market. I’ve felt like this since the crash- I can’t afford this much risk. Wall Streeters can afford it but I can’t. I don’t want any more real estate and I don’t have time or savvy or education to do anything exotic or creative with it- I don’t trust any of these people as far as I can fucking throw them and I feel as if I’m yoked to their bad and reckless decisions. I want out.
JPL
@Kay: It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
JPL
IMO, the indictment tomorrow won’t be directed to the Trump campaign. Trump and the republicans will then rid us of Mueller because it was a witch hunt all along.
Ohio Mom
@Kay: One result I’ve seen here in southwest Ohio is that (predictably) local services go down and local taxes go up.
Then people are mad at the school district or city or whatever other unit of local government. They think, “Why can’t they manage their budget better? They stink!”
It’s another win for the right-wing because it makes people suspicious of, and antagonistic to, another level of government. You gotta give it to them, they have all their pieces in place.
Kay
@Ohio Mom:
I felt like we did a good job with our school levy- explaining we were raising local taxes because the state share went down- but boy it’s a lot of work and we have an advantage- we only have about 3k voters to reach for the district, that’s w/50% turnout.
We have a local factory where the CEO backed the levy and he lent us his CFO who is a wonderful salesperson. They created graphs, projections, it was really slick. HUGE help. He talked about how when he hires managers from other places he has to sell the town as much as the workplace. They won’t move here if the schools aren’t solid and they want community perks- parks and services – a “nice” place to raise their kids. They can’t draw talented people without those things.
Kay
@JPL:
It is but I plan to enjoy it while it lasts- these people richly deserve anything they get. Will it be disappointing? I don’t know- but there’s no harm in enjoying it in the meantime and it’s good for Democratic voter morale :)
It doesn’t have to be a dramatic unraveling. It can be piecemeal. I want them limping and struggling to go forward.
Mai.naem.mobile
@JPL: thats what I am thinking. Mueller was the head of the FBI so he’s dealt with way smarter people than Dolt45 and his entourage. I figure Mueller is setting everything up methodically so that they come down like dominoes. Than I come to BJ and am reminded of Fitzmas so who knows. There is something there because Fox is going completely cray cray over this and they aren’t mentioning the indictment, just Hillary and Mueller and Uranium One.
Kay
@JPL:
I have to say I’m shocked at how easily they played media last week. OMFG so obviously a plan to distract and redirect. THAT is discouraging but also worthwhile because we have to stop hoping they’ll save us. They won’t. The Woodward and Bernstein type rescue isn’t coming. Give up on that. Look elsewhere.
d58826
the Resistance – https://twitter.com/W7VOA/status/924430902733824000
Ohio Mom
@Kay: I went to a school board Candidate’s Night last week and it was obvious the two incumbents running for reelection are petrified about dealing with the budget gap that is coming when that business tax is totally phased out. Our district will be hit especially hard.
At least one of these two is a big deal in the local Republican Party and it was somewhat entertaining imagining what she is going through when she gingerly suggests what Columbus is about to do to us is going to be huge.
The newbies running for the board seemed to be oblivious to this looming disaster. This tells me we are going to have a big challenge when the next levy comes around.
On one hand, my kid will already have his diploma. On the other hand, my property values! My tax bill!
d58826
New detail on Niger attack : NEW DETAILS: Sgt. La David Johnson died going BACK into the kill zone to save comrades who were in a separate car.
Zinsky
We can only hope that the entire Trump/Kushner clan spends the rest of their pathetic, privileged lives at Fort Leavenworth federal penitentiary.
Feathers
@Kay: I’m becoming more convinced that Dems need to pledge that these damaging tax cuts will not only be rolled back at a later date, but will be raised on the wealthiest to make up for the revenue that was lost during the period the cuts were in place. Government that can and does do the things government needs to do must become the goal.
Wilson Heath
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/29/hail-to-the-chief-cyclist-gives-trump-the-middle-finger
She may not be the hero we deserve, but she’s the hero we need.
mai naem mobile
@Zinsky: fuck that. It needs to be Supermax because that’s the gravity of their crimes. 1 hr out of the cell daily is all the freedom they get. Trumpkins can come and protest. Local business will appreciate the extra business.
JPL
Trump is having a little bit of a meltdown on twitter and that to me is good news. Uranium/Dossier/Guilt Do Something!
what the heck is do something suppose to mean. I sure hope that he’s not trying to form a citizens posse to arrest Hillary.
https://twitter.com/RealPressSecBot
J R in WV
@Kay:
We did a driving vacation swing through Ohio, and when we realized the state had sold all their state parks to counties with no budget whatsoever to maintain them… it was just so sad. WV is really a poor state, but our parks are well kept, beautiful, and popular, worth visiting almost any time of year.
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
One year, while working for the state, and thus paid for Jury Duty as for vacation or illness, I was on two consecutive murder juries, and foreman on the first one. We found both defendants to be not guilty of the sole count of first degree murder. One verdict was on October 31st, and the other was nearing midnight of my birthday. There was nothing funny about it, it was hard work, and everyone on both juries worked hard to pay attention. We had warehouse forklift guys, a guy who worked summers on an asphalt paving crew, nurses, social workers, and we all worked as hard as we could.
It established my faith in the jury system, despite the O.J. verdict, which damaged it for many people. Some of the hardest work I’ve ever done. I could write a book, but won’t. I think most simple cases are plead out without a trial. Both of these cases were worthy of Dorothy Sayers or Agatha Cristie… nothing simple about either of them.
J R in WV
@Frankensteinbeck:
Trump cold well be a Nazi… they view themselves as the Master Race, the supreme examples of a perfected humanity, when in most cases they are lower than street trash. I know illiterate meth heads that are superior to Trump. Really! Hard working farm hands in harvest season. Just that one character flaw, love their meth.
The biggest reveal of how flawed fascist political theory is – the sheer fail of those who preach it as gospel. Stupid, physically unable to do work, failures at everything but politics. Or preaching prosperity gospel.
JR
@Kay: TIPS – treasuries that are inflation protected. Not sexy but safe. If those go down we are truly fucked as a country anyways.
mai naem mobile
@JPL: John Kelly must have been stinking and stepped away for a shower. Javanka are too busy trying to not end up.in the klink themselves and don’t care about daddy anymote.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@(((CassandraLeo))): “The King ending that always sticks out to me the most is The Dark Tower. I don’t actually hate the epilogue almost everyone else seems to hate, because that had been heavily foreshadowed throughout; the overall ending to the book just felt like an anticlimax. It was so anticlimactic that, again, it read like it had to have been deliberate, but in this case it really bothered me because of how much the earlier books had built up the stakes.”
I actually liked that ending. I can see why it would piss off tons of people, but to me it seemed a fitting ending even if it felt anti-climatic. And it was still a billion times better than the silly ending of Needful Things (and to a lesser extent IT.)
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@JR:
No one is going to read this, but Lost in Translation? I despised that ending. The director/author lazily has one character deliver secret words to another… a big smile… and it’s over.
Cop-out extraordinaire.
She didn’t know how to end it, but manages to trick some viewers.
But I’d love to hear your views. You obviously dug the movie and it’s ending. Why?
opiejeanne
@West of the Rockies (been a while): I am reading your words at 9am PDT and I agree about that movie. There were other things that annoyed me at the time but I don’t remember them now, but the ending just pissed me off.
cain
@Frankensteinbeck:
That said, I think Sanderson did a pretty good job on the last 3 books. The first 4 were really good, after that it got kind of nutty. I didnt know he had divorced his wife? Did he get another one afterwards?
If you’re going to go there, you really need to read Tad Williams Memory, Sorrow and Thorn in terms of epic. Only three books and a lot more awesome. I’m also reading Red Rising trilogy by Pierce Brown. OMG, that book is just as amazing.. I can’t stop reading.. hours and hours lost.
Shana
@PST: I got called for jury duty once in Cook County about 2 months after our older daughter was born. I had no one to leave her with so I took her along. Drove from Northbrook (northern part of Cook County) to the courthouse on the south side of the city, as I recall it took well over an hour. I checked in, they took one look at us and asked “Don’t you have anyone to watch the baby?” I told them no and they sent me home. Can’t say I was too disappointed, but mighty irritated to have to turn around and drive home.
Bill Arnold
@(((CassandraLeo))):
Too late to this thread, but wanted to concur wholeheartedly. Rabbit hole…
(There are some contemporary sci-fi authors who cover similar political territory.)