NEWS: Carter Page testifies he told Sessions about Russia trip; bound to prompt more Qs over Sessions' testimony. https://t.co/zk0k0yLhiR
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) November 2, 2017
Former Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page privately testified Thursday that he mentioned to Jeff Sessions he was traveling to Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign — as new questions emerge about the attorney general’s comments to Congress about Russia and the Trump campaign.
During more than six hours of closed-door testimony, Page said that he informed Sessions about his coming July 2016 trip to Russia, which Page told CNN was unconnected to his campaign role. Page described the conversation to CNN after he finished talking to the House intelligence committee.
Sessions’ discussion with Page will fuel further scrutiny about what the attorney general knew about connections between the Trump campaign and Russia — and communications about Russia that he did not disclose despite a persistent line of questioning in three separate hearings this year…
Page told CNN after the interview that he informed Sessions about the trip during a group dinner in Washington, and that he mentioned it in passing.
“Back in June 2016, I mentioned in passing that I happened to be planning to give a speech at a university in Moscow,” Page told CNN. “Completely unrelated to my limited volunteer role with the campaign and as I’ve done dozens of times throughout my life. Understandably, it was as irrelevant then as it is now. If it weren’t for the dodgy dossier and all the chaos that those complete lies had created, my passing comment’s complete lack of relevance should go without saying.”
Page said it was the only time he met Sessions….
Sometimes I think Carter Page is actually trying to take down the Trump administration https://t.co/byIJjo4TLA
— Craig Harrington (@Craigipedia) November 2, 2017
Somebody on Team Trump should’ve made it their business to explain to Young Carter that discretion is very much the better part of valor, when it comes to criminal conspiracy. But then, if any of these mopes had the sense God gave a weasel, why would they have sold their futures to the mercies of Donald Effing Trump?
Marcy Wheeler, earlier this week, on the original indictment:
… Sessions has repeatedly testified to the Senate that he knows nothing about any collusion with the Russians. (Though in his most recent appearance, he categorized that narrowly by saying he did not “conspire with Russia or an agent of the Russian government to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.”)
But the Papadopoulos plea shows that Sessions — then acting as Trump’s top foreign policy adviser — was in a March 31, 2016, meeting with Trump, at which Papadopoulos explained “he had connections that could help arrange a meeting between then-candidate Trump and President Putin.” It also shows that Papadopoulos kept a number of campaign officials in the loop on his efforts to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin, though they secretly determined that the meeting “should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal,” itself a sign the campaign was trying to hide its efforts to make nice with the Russians…
To be sure, Papadopoulos’s plea perhaps hurts Trump the most… But unlike Trump, Sessions’s claims about such meetings came in sworn testimony to the Senate. During his confirmation process, Sessions was asked a key question by Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn.: “If there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do?”
“Senator Franken, I’m not aware of any of those activities,” Sessions responded. “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I didn’t have — did not have communications with the Russians, and I’m unable to comment on it.” …
“Forgetting” one minion’s semi-illicit activities with a foreign government might be an accident; “not recollecting” a second minion’s reports might be coincidence; but when the third hopeful assistant chimes in… well…
Remember the hissyfit Sessions threw when Kamala Harris ‘impugned his honor’? What honor?
Ruckus
It’s the only future they have?
Fucking morons?
Racist assholes?
All of the above?
I’m going with selection D.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
To be honest, I thought THE MOOCH and Ben “Damon Wayans’ Louis Farrakhan and Oswald Bates” Carson were moles. Which means deep cover is possible, but Page could just as well be really, really stupid.
Adam L Silverman
As I wrote in the earlier post. Carter page is an idiot missing a village.
GregB
I actually think Carter Page is the same model of android as Ash in the film Alien.
In other news, buzz about more indictments on Friday.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Funny how so many of the Drumpf “volunteers” were connected to russia.
Why, it’s almost as if Putin was running Drumpf’s personal department.
I’m sure it was all just coincidence.
NotMax
Guesses on how many times the phrase “dodgy dossier” shows up in the transcript of Page’s appearance?
Let’s see – 6 hours – I’ll go with a nice round 6000.
Cheryl Rofer
I’ve been intrigued by Page since he first showed up. I’ve collected most of what is on the internet about him in these three posts:
9/24/2016
2/16/2017
5/28/2017
Earlier this evening, a number of people suggested that his success is due to “white man syndrome,” in which any idiot in a suit can do well. But I think there’s more than that to it. Someone as dumb/naive as Page, with that high opinion of himself, is a perfect target for Russian operatives. And he wrote some paens to Russia’s wonderfulness, although we don’t know whether that was before or after he was turned. Or if it is possible to tell.
The hard part to figure out is what the Russians expected from him. There’s some value in recruiting dumb people (it’s easy), but there’s a limit to what you can task them with. And, as we see, our boy Carter is only too happy to talk to people who want to talk to him.
Is he doing a great cover? Again, there are some big downsides, if that’s what he’s doing. It’s hard to maintain a cover this crazy.
The whole bunch is quite a collection. Hopefully there will eventually be more answers than we have now.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: Isn’t that supposed to be dirty dossier?
Feathers
Via Making Light
I have learned how to cut and paste on my iPad. Look out world.
Cheryl Rofer
OT, but this is just too good.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Adam L Silverman: the pissy portfolio?
Mezz
Many, many fevered imaginations wonder… Mine, at least, in a Cassandric way:
I tell myself that the above would require a phenomenal amount of careful planning, coordination, deliberation and reason, which are qualities and characteristics apparent in absolutely NONE of them. That Mueller is way smarter than any of us probably realize. That the coming Constitutional crisis will be ok.
But I’m not that optimistic by nature.
I won’t feel good until his fake-Orangey-ass is out of the WH. Praise the Lord, Pass the ammo.
Raoul
@Adam L Silverman:
How the hell did he graduate in the top 10% from the United States Naval Academy? Did he sustain a significant head injury some time after that? And I don’t say that as snark. I worked with a woman who was living with the aftermath of a TBI, and she had a similar glazed look, detached bearing, and seemed dumber than a person of her education might have been.
sharl
Whenever there is news on Carter Page performing his unique do-it-yourself lawyerin’, I reflexively click over to lawyer Ken White/Popehat’s twitter feed to enjoy the response:
Adam L Silverman
@Raoul: I have no idea, but this does not reflect well on Annapolis.
dmsilev
@Cheryl Rofer: Trump’s Twitter account was offline for 18 and a half minutes?
Lyrebird
@Mezz:
IANAL. I don’t think firing Mueller could make those sealed indictments go away, though.
HumboldtBlue
What do the Whippoorwills say?
dmsilev
@Mezz: The problem with that theory is that a replacement AG would have to be confirmed by the Senate. That’s …not going to happen quickly.
Bill Arnold
@dmsilev:
What Trump Tweets were we deprived of in that time interval?
(yes yes, I heard it was only 10 minutes.)
Cheryl Rofer
@dmsilev: Eleven minutes. I am now seeing reports that an employee planning to leave did it on their last day.
mike in dc
@Cheryl Rofer:
They won’t have to buy their own drinks for a little while at least.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Dear fucking god
Omnes Omnibus
@Raoul: I put it entirely on the Navy.
Raoul
This CNN profile from March 4 this year has a great quote:
I can just hear the disdain coming off Aleksashenko. Yeah, he worked for us. He was a pencil-pusher. Your aunt Suzie who went to Downstate Commuter U can make VP at Merrill. Dime a dozen. Next!
Mezz
@sharl: PopeHat pops up in my feed through people I follow. That’s good enough to just make me subscribe myself.
satby
@Cheryl Rofer: an employee of Twitter or the Drumpf administration?
Omnes Omnibus
@Raoul: Whom?
Mezz
@Lyrebird: See, that’s the type of thing where the whole yo Mueller is REALLY smart and savvy really should be calming. And everything everything everything suggests he and his team are utter professionals, in genuine recognition of the gravity of their work.
That’s the stuff that keeps me from going crazy. But in the end, ALL of it still requires the GOP. And I just can’t…
Cheryl Rofer
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’ve suspected that. Trump has a good brain. He is a great negotiator. He has told us that. Why would he need State Department backup?
@satby: An employee of Twitter.
Adam L Silverman
And now a message from the Home Office:
Viva BrisVegas
@HumboldtBlue:
Even more importantly what does Connie Converse’s brother Philip tell us about Trump’s deplorables?
Starfish
@satby: The Twitter employee spitefully deleted Trump’s Twitter account on his/her last day. Many jokes have been made. Someone said that the former Twitter employee needs to lawyer up in case there are some CFAA charges.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Mezz: I’m still thinking it’s going to lead to charges of capital crimes (probably espionage or treason) against several prominent GOP congressional officials – Ryan and McConnell at least. The potential of execution may have a particularly clarifying effect on their thought. And while I’m broadly against the death penalty, I’m not entirely sure I’m against it in this specific case.
As for Page, my only real question is when he was turned, and if he’s since been turned a second time. At this point the hypothesis that he’s a mole working against the Shitgibbon Administration seems fairly plausible.
Steve in the ATL
@Cheryl Rofer:
Things to do tomorrow: buy suit….
Steve in the ATL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: L’etat, c’est moi!–when has that ever ended badly?
Mike in DC
@(((CassandraLeo))):
Indictments against the entire GOP leadership would trigger more than a constitutional crisis. It’d trigger civil unrest if the GOP defied the rule of law.
NotMax
Oddly gratifying that Netflix offered up a category labeled “Cynical International Comedies” while I was looking for things to possibly add to the queue.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
Granted I was not high up, not in any way shape or form, in the navy. But I saw and met a few officers. Some were pretty sharp. Most were in the average range. But there were a noticeable number who were, there are no other words for it, fucking morons. How they got through training or education, what ever the level or location, was a complete mystery. It is possible that they graduated by the principle of “Get him the hell out of here, he’s about as smart as a box of rocks but he is subservient, so we can use him to boost our numbers and he won’t do much harm.” I knew an Ensign like that, he made LCR before no one had to salute him any longer. Look at Kelly, he made 4 stars, and he’s proven that even someone who rises to high levels can be far worse than useless.
Adam L Silverman
@Ruckus: I really have no idea. I’ve never had any actual interactions with the midshipmen at Annapolis. I have done several lectures at West Point over the years. And the cadets I interacted with seemed very sharp, but that’s still a snapshot of the overall Corps of Cadets at any one time. Officers, regardless of which Service they’re in, are just like any other professional groups. There are some really excellent ones and some really horrible ones. There is a larger group of decent ones matched by a larger group of bad ones. And then there is the great batch of just average ones. There are some that argue that officers that come through ROTC, VMI, OCS, and other forms of ascension are better than those from the Service academies.
Raoul
Since this is an open thread, I’m gonna leave this here, because it made my evening:
(Emphasis added. Full tweet thread here)
eta: Good night, BJ land.
sharl
If your preferred type of humor is dark, edgy and weird, enjoy this twitter thread which almost certainly is describing the efforts of someone who is winding up the MAGA chuds and InfoWar loons. (Cheryl will be happy to know this particular effort includes dark warnings of an EMP event on 11/4)
As funny as I find stuff like this, I should note that JJ MacNab finds this brand of comedy a bit worrisome; not so much because of the online right-wing keyboard “activist” types who seem so riled up by it, but by the potential for far greater trouble from the more serious separatist and sovereign citizen types who are probably looking on silently. They are armed to the teeth, and some of them are on the edge of sanity in a way that could be tragic.
I think she makes a valid point – especially since she’s made a career of studying that strange world – but I don’t see how it is practically actionable by government institutions that co-exist with a strong First Amendment.
Know your neighbors and be careful, one and all!
(edited MacNab’s tweet – removed extra ‘the’ – for clarity)
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus:
No, at DHS he was good at his job. What he was tasked to do was horrible, but he was good at it.. At the White House, he is utterly out of his depth. He may be good at Pentagon political play, but he knows fuck all about elective politics.
Wag
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
I’m sure that you’re right.
Cheryl Rofer
@sharl: I am wondering where the term “chud” comes from. In Russian, “chud” refers to the Estonians and related ethnic groups, as in Chudskoye Ozero, the name of the big lake between Russia and Estonia. I’ve seen it elsewhere but didn’t have anyone to ask.
There seems to be a great expectation for the Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and all sorts of others to stage a gigantic uprising on November 4 among the folks MacNab follows. I did not realize they expected an EMP blast too. Wonder what will happen when none of that takes place. I guess they’ll just go on to another date for their version of the Apocalypse.
ETA: That’s a pretty bizarre thread.
Mike J
@Cheryl Rofer: cannibalistic humanoid underground dweller
Adam L Silverman
@sharl: @Cheryl Rofer: The concern she’s voicing is that the bogus, troll created “antifa is planning to attack patriots, militia, Trump supporters, true conservatives, and/or Christians, etc on 4 NOV” crap was swallowed hook, line, and sinker by people in those various, and sometime overlapping communities. That these folks are paranoid, angry, often poorly informed because of where they get their information, not because of the amount, prone to violence, and equipped to engage in it. Therefore winding them up further puts anyone they think looks like antifa at risk on 4 November.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: Cannibilistic Humanoid Underground Dweller (CHUD):
Lyrebird
@Mezz: I hear ya re: searching for some convincing reasons not to freak out… I’m staying up too late reading here searching for reasons to laugh or something.
FWIW, I’d say getting out of this mess is largely but not exclusively in the hands of elected GOP folks. I’d wager that there are numerous FBI and other intel folks, probably many of them Republican voters but not effing idiots, who care more about their work than about their tax cuts. DJT sliming them was… probably not a great choice on his part, but maybe in the end a good thing.
Gotta hold on to hope and also shame or thank the congresscritters with any conscience!
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
I’m not sure that any of the officers that I interacted with were Annapolis grads. It’s possible but I’d bet most were not.
My point, and yours is that in any large group there will be some outstanding, most in the middle and the rest at the bottom. But even in the service academies, someone has to be the bottom of the class and still graduate.
Schlemazel
@Adam L Silverman:
One of the worrying things I have read in the last few years is that the religious wingnuts are trying to flood the academies with like “minded” morons. One of the outcomes has been a surge of anti semitic bullshit. If the ring knockers start promoting their own we may lose control of the civilian run military entirety.
Matt McIrvin
@Cheryl Rofer: The November 4 thing seems to have been inspired by some planned demonstration by Bob Avakian’s outfit. They, of course, are known for grandiose revolutionary bluster out of all proportion to anything they’re capable of doing (mostly, handing out pamphlets on college campuses).
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
Are you saying he was good at following orders and that his job was to bring the SS mentality to the DHS?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steve in the ATL: I thought you got one of those when you got your JD.
Adam L Silverman
@Schlemazel: The biggest problem has been at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. There is a dedicated attempt to evangelize the officer cohort to a very specific Christian Reconstructionist (7 Mountains Dominionist) belief system. While these folks have made some inroads, they are almost always their own worst enemies. They get their hooks in a bit and then act like they’ve got complete control so do something that is so over the top and done in full public view that it gets them smacked. And there’s a lot of internal pushback. Especially from among service members who are Christian, but aren’t Reconstructionists and don’t want to have to capitulate to it. Are things perfect? No. But there’s a lot of watchdogs in place and they push back hard and fast.
Adam L Silverman
@Matt McIrvin: The paper cuts of the Proletariat!
Schlemazel
@Adam L Silverman:
Thanks, that is reassuring
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Ruckus:
Back when the kid was in the Air Force, she said the officers from the Academy were the worst, fortunately she didn’t have to work with them much since she was working in the medical field.
Yup, there’s John McCain.
ETA: Yes, I know the Sen. McCain was second to the last in his class.
Adam L Silverman
@sharl: @Cheryl Rofer: This is what McNabb is worried about:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/propublica/exclusive-white-supremacists-share-bomb-making-materials-in-online-chats/10155928653959445/
Much more at the link.
Mike J
@?BillinGlendaleCA: When I got my JD it just meant the cops didn’t have to bother calling my parents before carting me back to school.
dogwood
@Cheryl Rofer:
Winding up ignorant, armed, racists for the shits and giggles isn’t funny. I watched the Senate hearings with the tech people and it was the most depressing thing I’ve seen in a long time. They came, they took shit from the Senators, dodged and weaved and left. At this time they have no intention of doing anything.
Adam L Silverman
@Schlemazel: It is a problem. I don’t think they’re taking over the armed forces any time soon though. They’d like to, but I don’t think they can make it happen.
Adam L Silverman
Always nice when I click on a link and see that I’ve had my staff work from 8 years ago plagiarized by someone I’ve not spoken to in almost that long.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: Oh that sounds delightful!
sharl
@Matt McIrvin: Avakian’s cultists are pretty much as you describe them, at least from what I have read. But they can increase tensions in certain situations, such as when their pasty-white asses showed up in Ferguson MO a few years ago during the protests after the police killing of Michael Brown.
Alderman Antonio French of nearby St. Louis was pretty damn upset about their antics:
Based on what I’ve read from black folks protesting police abuse and killings, the worry is that white folks from outside the community will get the police all riled up, then saunter back home and leave the protesting black locals at the mercy of the police who are already a threat to them. It is entirely plausible that a group of white folks – Avakian’s followers, drunks doing some bar-hopping, etc. – can join a protest, shout “KILL THE PIGS” a few times, laugh and move on, while leaving the original protesters in an even dicier situation, especially given the often already poor relations and lack of understanding so many police forces have with the less affluent and more melanin-rich citizens in their jurisdictions.
TL;DR – fuck Avakian and his cult followers.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: I think I’ve actually made the same argument here – at least in comments. Don’t think it was a front page post. And I know I’ve done at least one post on it at the previous place. And a variant at Foreign Policy. The ideas presented aren’t rocket science. And I honestly can’t prove he actually saw the papers I did on this to follow up on the stuff I was presenting in the working groups, but there’s a lot of stuff that reads awfully familiar. Had he used my philosopher’s stone analogy I would be emailing the brigadier general at the place that published the piece. She’s a long time friend and colleague and making a polite, but forceful stink. Without that specific bit I can just get peeved. So…
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: I don’t think I know what this is in reference to, FYI.
Anne Laurie
@Adam L Silverman: Also possibly related to the ‘neovulgarism’ choad. I vaguely remember wondering, when C.H.U.D. the movie first came out, whether it was slyly referencing that then-not-so-widely-used term.
piratedan
@Mike in DC: the thing is… I have that incredibly crappy feeling that the vast majority of the the GOP actually are who we claim them to be… narcissistic, theocratic, treasonous bastards (and bastardettes) who were willing to let their racist freak flags overrule any kind of superego that they may have developed because they serve themselves and see themselves as America personified. Hence, fucking over the laws of the land (as well as the will of the people) was all justifiable so that they could set the country right by eliminating the legacy of a black man and serve their favorite cause, themselves. So middling shit like campaign finance laws, RICO, Perjury and Treason are nothing more than a means to an end, namely putting themselves into power and supposedly keeping themselves there.
A hundred and fifty years ago we would have hung people for this shit and while I’m not in favor of the death penalty, I sure wouldn’t have an issue if everyone who knowingly greased the skids and lined their pockets did some time in an ICE detention facility and had their citizenship revoked and were kicked out of the country, because I don’t care to feed these fuckers one more day than we have to.
Mike J
@Adam L Silverman: On that topic, nobody seems to be talking about the Wal Mart shooting last night. White guy calmly walks into Wal Mart, opens fire, and at “random” murders three people with Hispanic last names. Then he walks out. Cops are puzzled and can’t come up with a a motive.
Matt McIrvin
@sharl: I remember that–they were the epitome of Not Helping.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: Context sent to you offline so I don’t clutter up the comments section.
Adam L Silverman
@Mike J: Especially because I’m not sure if you can tell if someone has a Hispanic surname by just looking at them. In my defense I had a wacky day yesterday and that carried through this evening. So I’m a bit behind on getting to things. I’m still trying to get a Rohingya massacre post in somewhere. And one on the wave of al Shabbab attacks in Somalia. Cole needs to get me an intern!
Adam L Silverman
@Matt McIrvin: The epitome of not helping is on their coat of arms.
Anne Laurie
@Mike J: Yeah, about that shooting…
Calouste
@Raoul: In the finance sector, Vice President is the lowest level manager. It really is pencil pusher level.
Major Major Major Major
@Anne Laurie: My friends in Denver have shared some things on FB about that shooting that says that a bunch of civilians drew their own guns when the shooting started and it really confused the police, so, yay second amendment I guess.
trollhattan
@Anne Laurie:
Holy crap [does ‘rithmetic in head] 75 WalMart shootings/year? That’s as dangerous as taking Uber!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Anne Laurie: Yet, another reason to avoid Walmart.
Adam L Silverman
@trollhattan: What’s even worse is they have basically made the corporate decision to skimp on in store security and just socialize the cost onto local cities and counties, specifically their law enforcement departments.
This is an excellent article on it from the Tampa Bay Times:
http://project.tampabay.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/2016/public-safety/walmart-police/
trollhattan
Another one bites the dust. Lamar Smith R(TX) bows out. From what little I know of him, good riddance. Being Texas, we’ll probably find a Gomert clone in his chair 2019.
trollhattan
@Adam L Silverman:
Yeesh, So the subsidies don’t end with tax increment financing, free infrastructure, Medicaid and SNAP for their employees, etc….
Adam L Silverman
@trollhattan: They do not.
Dmbeaster
What is fun, for us oldsters, is to compare the skill and professionalism of Mueller to the dumpster fire investigation by Starr. Of course, Starr had zero experience as a prosecutor, and no skills at the politics of his probe except for non-stop leaks to the media.
Earl
Is Page necessarily really all that stupid?
So far, we have indictments for (1) lying to the FBI, and (2) money laundering / not paying taxes / not registering as a foreign agent.
As long as Page is telling the truth, that immunizes him from (1).
And I have to wonder if the rest of the strategy is making sure he’s front and fucking center on the pardon list, ’cause he ain’t going down all on his lonesome. Trump has spent his whole life fucking over the hired help, and Page must be aware of that.
Origuy
Police in Thornton, CO say that shoppers in Walmart during Wednesday’s shooting pulled out guns of their own, making identification of the suspect difficult.
Denver Post
Amir Khalid
I’ve been looking at Tamara’s pictures and videos of Bailey on the Whats4dinner site. She looks happy and beautiful, and it’s somehow heartbreaking to think a dog I never knew is gone.
Amir Khalid
@Dmbeaster:
By all accounts, Mueller puts professional principles first in his profession, to the exclusion of partisan loyalty. You wish there were more like him.
Amir Khalid
A multimeter has arrived in the mail, and I’m now watching a YouTube video on how to use one. I think it’s really neat that the Internet, in particular YouTube and Wikipedia, is such a great informal resource for knowledge and skills. Ach, das Leben im 21. Jahrhundert ist ganz wundervoll!
Anne Laurie
@Major Major Major Major:
Yeah, they said the same thing on the national ABC evening news — ‘police had some difficulty identifying the suspect from store survelliance video’ because ‘several’ shoppers pulled their weapons once the first shot was fired. Shooter, IIRC, had come & gone before the police showed up, which I guess is why there were no ‘collateral’ deaths…
I suppose there’s a certain slice of America, How We Live Now where the local Walmart *is* the agora, the center of public life. So if you’re going to demonstrate your anger/despair by shooting up “the most public place”, well: Walmart!
(And that’s one of the saddest ten thoughts from a long sad week.)
Amir Khalid
@Major Major Major Major:
Them gun-toters are now telling themselves (and anyone else who’ll listen) that pulling out their guns was what kept the shooter from killing even more people.
dogwood
@Anne Laurie:
Brace yourself, Anne Laurie, we have many long sad weeks ahead of us.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: I had an Electrical Engineer(aka Dad) teach me how to use one. First I had to build it(Heathkit).
opiejeanne
@Mike J: It certainly couldn’t have anything to do with their Hispanicness. //
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Anne Laurie: I’ve not been to a Walmart in at least 15 years; then again, I’m a hermit who lives in a cave.
opiejeanne
@Adam L Silverman: They weren’t brownish? In some areas, brownish people are more likely to be Hispanic than anything else.
opiejeanne
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I built a Heathkit 6 meter ham radio with my dad. I was the older girl, I was supposed to be a boy. I spent a lot of Saturdays in Dad’s workshop tinkering with his tools, listening to Vin Scully and Jerry Doggett call the games.
dogwood
@opiejeanne:
Adam is certainly correct. There are millions of people with Hispanic surnames that would never fit the stereotype of what many people assume Hispanics look like. That said, it’s hard to believe that if the victims of this assault had Hispanic names, it was merely coincidence.
WereBear
@Amir Khalid: i am so saddened to hear.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@opiejeanne: Your dad was a ham?
WereBear
I know people who seem obssesed with the place.
It is like a consumer arena for them. They wrestle prices to the ground there. And yet, what they get there is constantly breaking or falling apart and so they have to do it again and again…
They will wander the aisles with a cart, not wanting to leave. They aren’t there to get things so much as they are just there.
opiejeanne
@dogwood: Yes, I lived in SoCal most of my life in neighborhoods with many Hispanics and I know that not all Hispanics fit the stereotype, but in many areas of SoCal for instance, like say Anaheim, there are enough people that live there with NA features and skin pigmentation that fit the stereotype that you could easily spot 3 of those stereotypical ones in a Walmart on any day of the week.
My best friend is Hispanic. She was born in Guatemala, had a Spanish origin last name, has blue eyes and used to have blond hair before we all got so old. She certainly doesn’t fit the stereotype because most of her ancestry is Spanish.
opiejeanne
@?BillinGlendaleCA: He certainly was.
CQ CQ, this is WA6GRX calling CQ.
Amir Khalid
@opiejeanne:
I have been to Mexico — well, for an afternoon in Tijuana — and there is no way to tell, at a glance, a brown South-East Asian like me from a brown Latin American.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@opiejeanne: My dad was WA6JBE. He had Collins receivers and transmitters with tubes until the mid 70’s when it got too hard to find replacement tubes.
opiejeanne
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Hey! Was any decision reached about getting together with the snarling pack of jackals. We are jackals, right? And not hyenas?
The 12th is the absolute last day we could do something, and it can be behind the Orange Curtain if that helps. I’d really like to include Mnemosyne but I know she’s busy this weekend. A brunch or lunch get-together is fine with us, actually easier for us because going up the mountain in the dark and in somewhat nasty weather (very thick fog this afternoon, now it’s raining like Billy-o) is not as much fun but I can do that if evenings are the only way to work this.
Anne Laurie
@dogwood:
I’m a devout Cynic. When it’s not a long sad week, I’m pleasantly surprised!
opiejeanne
@Amir Khalid: Yes, I know, and the music from some parts of Asia are nearly indistinguishable from the music produced in the isolated areas of Mexico, and the photos of the people in these two places were indistinguishable.
but in some neighborhoods the brownish people are not going to be Southeast Asians because they have not settled there, nor are they likely to be Filipino. I’m talking the odds based on people moving to an area to be near people like themselves when they first come here; we have neighborhoods that are heavily Russian, or Chinese, or Somalian because it gives them comfort to be near people from “home”.
The shooter managed to magically shoot 3 people with Hispanic names because was in an area where most of the people he wanted to hurt fit the stereotype.
My house in Anaheim was on a short street with 15 houses, and half of the neighbors were not just Hispanic but specifically Mexican; the family right next door on one side moved there from Mexico, the next house the husband was from Mexico. About half of those were not particularly brownish but you would not mistake them for any other ethnic group.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@opiejeanne: We need to bring it up in the daytime when the rest of the jackals aren’t in their dens asleep. I’m certainly game for any date at this point. I could drive to the OC, the Prius has done that before. I generally have the possibility of photoshoots in the evenings on Sundays(there’s one this Sunday, but I’ve been to the location before).
opiejeanne
@WereBear: I don’t get that. I’ve only shopped in a Walmart a few times and only because there was no other choice for something I wanted. After I’d been in one for about 10 minutes, wandering around trying to find the right aisle, I just wanted to get out of there. None of them were well-maintained, the clerks were overworked, and I really dislike greeters. I think the last time was at Christmas and I was stunned by the huge volume of decorations and lights; I was dazed by it, almost needed help to break the spell. I think we were there to buy a cheap set of dishes.
Anne Laurie
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I’m not sure I’ve ever been in one — I chose to settle in a coastal-elite area where better shopping options would be easily available. (There’s a Walmart 20 minutes from here now, but it only opened a few years ago.) And they hadn’t reached Michigan when I was living out there; too much competition from Meijers.
dogwood
@opiejeanne:
My grandkids are Ecuadorian. They look like gringos, speak English without any Spanish accent, and Spanish without any English accent. My granddaughter spent last year in Verona on a foreign exchange where she learned plenty about racism. After a week or two in her school, some girls approached her and said she surprised them because they expected an Ecuadorian exchange student would have dark skin and smell bad.
dogwood
@opiejeanne:
For some reason I thought you lived in the Seattle area.
different-church-lady
Who on the Trump team understands this in the first place?
WereBear
@opiejeanne: Likewise, the place repels me.
jmw
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
My late father had one good thing to say about Walmart: if you ever have children you can take them there and hit them.
Problematic as people would say but it still makes me laugh. Also indiscretions were met with disappointment or mocking not violence in our house.