Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Everybody saw this coming.

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

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Infrastructure week. at last.

In my day, never was longer.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

T R E 4 5 O N

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

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

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Hail to the Hairpiece / Friday Morning Open Thread: Thank (Murphy the Trickster) God It’s Finally Friday

Friday Morning Open Thread: Thank (Murphy the Trickster) God It’s Finally Friday

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.

Happy nice news!

Apart from bracing ourselves for the inevitable Friday news dump, what’s on the agenda for the day?

***********

There’s been a lot of public tone-deafness this week, but Young Prince Jared will not be outdone. per Vanity Fair:

… 2017 has not been the year many of us hoped for. Yet the holiday season—a time for giving thanks, and sharing bounties, and passing around joy—is upon us all anyway, Kushners included, and some semblance of normalcy must be kept. For Kushner Cos., that means continuing an annual tradition of sending around company-branded swag to its usual group of real-estate developers, bankers, and business acquaintances. Three years ago, the company gift was a black, Kushner Cos.-branded hooded sweatshirt with white piping; two years ago, a similarly branded black vest; last year, a pair of headphones. This year, according to a person who has seen the gift, Kushner Cos. sent its friends a white bathrobe embossed with its logo on the right shoulder.

A full-length branded bathrobe would be, in any year, an unusually intimate corporate gift to send around. But in late 2017, as several recipients have noted, a bathrobe comes loaded with suggestive connotations. The bathrobe figures prominently in several women’s accounts of alleged sexual harassment by both Harvey Weinstein and Charlie Rose. Images of Trump in a robe of his own proliferated online earlier this year after Sean Spicer, responding to a New York Times story depicting the president wandering the East Wing in a bathrobe, denied that he even owned one. It has become a symbol, fairly or not, of something unseemly—hardly something that anyone wants to be reminded of as they unwrap presents around the menorah or tree.

“There are plenty of people who have gotten [the robes] who are shocked,” one person who saw the robes and spoke with others who received them told me. “Lots of rich white guys can’t believe it, given what’s going on in the world, with harassment and misuse of bathrobes. It’s the most tone-deaf holiday gift of all time.”

“Custom holiday gifts are ordered many months ahead of time—long before bathrobes were in the news,” Christine Taylor, a Kushner Cos. spokeswoman, said. “So not tone deaf at all, just a thoughtful holiday gift.“

“Sometimes a robe is just a robe,” she added…

Yeah, like you’ve never felt the urge to just slop around the house Oval Office, too exhausted even to dress properly. Poor lad is just depressed, is all. And can you blame him! [/snark]

Reader Interactions

157Comments

  2. 2.

    Aleta

    In Leiden (the Netherlands), there are poems put up on walls as outdoor art, and now they’ve put some equations up as art too.

    This initiative was started by physicists Sense Jan van der Molen and Ivo van Vulpen as a response to the 100+ wall poems that decorate the city. It’s their way of showing that equations, like poetry, have their own way of describing the world around us.
    There are currently six equations scattered throughout the city. … Unlike the wall poems that portray literary works from all over the world, the formulae focus only on scientists who worked in Leiden.

    (The six equations and their locations :)
    The Einstein-equation on Lange Sint Agnietenstraat
    The Lorentzforce equation on the intersection of the Groenesteeg and the Hooigracht
    Snell’s law on the intersection of the Sint Jorissteeg and the Hooigracht
    Lorentz’ law on length contraction on the Haagweg
    The Oort Constants on the Witte Singel
    Electronspin on the Gerecht 13. 

    Nice pictures.

  4. 4.

    JGabriel

    Vanity Fair via Anne Laurie @ Top:

    “There are plenty of people who have gotten [the robes] who are shocked,” one person who saw the robes and spoke with others who received them told me. “Lots of rich white guys can’t believe it, given what’s going on in the world, with harassment and misuse of bathrobes. …”

    I think Harassment and Misuse of Bathrobes should be a rotating tag line.

  5. 5.

    Calouste

    I wouldn’t worry too much in DC. Mar-a-Lago is a far softer target to attack. Probably don’t even need a nuke, just fire the full complement of cruise missiles from a sub 100 miles offshore.

  6. 6.

    Aleta

    Also I just found out that my plumber’s wife’s mother once saw Einstein walking across the Princeton campus. Which means I practically almost came close to shaking his hand.

  7. 7.

    Mustang Bobby

    A bit of shameless self-promotion: my play “Can’t Live Without You” took third place in the annual Playgroup LLC playwriting contest for 2017. The prize is $50 and a possibility of a full-stage production at the Willow Theatre in Boca Raton.

    Last year I took first place with “All Together Now.” It opens at the Willow on March 2, 2018 for a two-week run.

  15. 15.

    Uncle Cosmo

    Speaking of “tone-deaf,” here’s a singalong for you jackals. (tap tap) All together now:

    Good morning! Good morning!
    Howdja like to bite my ass?
    Good morning, good morning to you!

    :p

    (Cornell Glee Club wakeup call c. 1969. [No, I was never a member, and yes, I am in a foul mood this AM – watsittuya?])

  25. 25.

    Just one more canuck

    @OzarkHillbilly: I’m booking a flight to St. Louis as I type
    There are all kinds of weird museums – a friend of mine took a picture of the KGB Museum in Prague (his wife wouldn’t let him go in to get a souvenir). I was at the Canadian potato museum this summer – the Hall of Fame is actually in a corridor

    And congratulations to Mustang Bobby

  33. 33.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Just one more canuck: If you are into chess, I hear the World Chess Hall of Fame is worth a visit, tho for just plain fun with a touch of weirdness I would recommend the City Museum. An acid trip of art on steroids, never the same place twice. STL used to have the Bowling Hall of Fame but I guess it just wasn’t upscale enough and they took off for the bright lights of Arlington TX. The Dog Museum is still in STL but you better hurry if you want to see it. I read somewhere that they are moving on as well.

  38. 38.

    Lapassionara

    @OzarkHillbilly: The City Museum is terrific. Someone told me that it is one of the top ten visitor attractions in the world.

    And way to go, Mustang Bobby.

    And good morning. I called my R. Senator yesterday. Here’s hoping the pressure will have some effect.

  39. 39.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Baud: I am sitting and wearing a bathrobe as I type this. It’s cool in the house in the morning, and I’d be chilly if I were naked, so a bathrobe is ideal.

  41. 41.

    Amir Khalid

    @satby:
    Kaepernick, one of the best players around in his position, remains unjustly shunned by his sport. He deserves to be on an NFL team. Will this award, highlighting as it does the reason he was shunned, persuade any billionaire team owner to hire him?

  42. 42.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Lapassionara: Their website has them as “Voted #1 Family Attraction in the World by Trip dot com Awards”. It is a special kind of place. I am way overdue for a return visit.

  43. 43.

    satby

    So I mentioned yesterday that I was suddenly offered a lease at the market on a booth, no more 6 am lottery for me on Saturdays! I can just waltz in at 7 and set up in my space. Good news, but it left me with a dilemma, because I have holiday bazaars booked the next two weeks too, so I’m trying to line up a former co-worker to man one or the other booths for me. I’ll probably only break even paying her, but having the presence in two places at once will be great. And it helps her out at the holidays too, so that’s a plus. Now she just has to let me know she can do it, and it’s making me nervous.

  46. 46.

    Baud

    @Amir Khalid:

    He probably should be playing but this

    one of the best players around in his position

    Is hyperbole. He’s better than some people who are playing, but he’s not one of the best.

  52. 52.

    Amir Khalid

    @Baud:
    I’ve seen stories calling him that. I was relying on that assessment since I don’t know much about the American code.

  53. 53.

    zzyzx

    Sure, it’s partially because I’m a Seahawks’ fan. but I’ve never understood the Kaepernick insanity from the left. He played his way out of a starting job before the protests, came up with the most “Look at me!!!” protest concept ever, was a strong proponent of the they’re both horrible candidates argument and literally said that Clinton deserved to be arrested on multiple occasions, and couldn’t even be bothered to vote.

    While doing something is better than nothing, his protest was so far removed from what he was supposed to be fighting that the right was easily able to hijack it into hating the flag, and he said he’d jettison it immediately in order to get a job. I don’t see the appeal.

  54. 54.

    satby

    @Baud: me too! I’m thinking of seeing if she can help me a couple hours per week just because. I make doofus mistakes when I have a rush of orders at once, and having a second pair of eyes at busy times would help.

    Edited to add: she just texted me she can do it! Relief!!

  55. 55.

    Baud

    @Amir Khalid: I couldn’t rattle his stats our for you, but I don’t believe he could be considered one of the best QBs. That reporting is puffery IMHO.

    @zzyzx: I share your feelings somewhat. But his cause is just, and he is likely being blackballed because of it. If he were still going on in a Bro way, I might feel differently.

  57. 57.

    JGabriel

    The Daily Beast:

    Blackwater Brass Rips ‘Spineless, Worthless’ Jeff Sessions
    On the eve of Erik Prince’s testimony before the House’s Russia investigators, his former guns-for-hire are going after the attorney general—who’s caught in the Russia probe, too.

    The best part of the article is this simple, beautiful, sentence:

    “Jeff Sessions is a big, giant wussy and never has there been a more spineless, worthless guy holding that chair than him,” said one former Blackwater official, who spoke anonymously because he said he feared retaliation.

    A manly Blackwater official who fears retaliation from the person he’s calling a spineless wussy? That’s comedy gold.

  60. 60.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: @Amir Khalid: It all depends how one defines “one of the best players around in his position”. The NFL says that out of all the football players in the world, “only the best players get to play in the NFL.” and by that definition he is one of the best QBs, certainly better than some who are currently playing in the NFL. Is he as good as Tom Brady? No. Ben Rothlisberger? No. Matt Ryan? No. Eli Manning?

  62. 62.

    MJS

    @zzyzx: You may need to read up a little more on him. Yes, he has said some stupid things, as young people sometimes do. He also puts his (what I would assume to be dwindling) money where his mouth is. And don’t kid yourself that he wouldn’t have been pilloried and blackballed regardless of how he decided to protest.

  64. 64.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Ben Cisco:

    LOVE it that Kaep won that award, but I hope that doesn’t end the conversation that he intended to start.

    NFL players are still protesting by kneeling during the National Anthem so as long as that continues, the conversation he started will never end.

  65. 65.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly: Sure, you can define it to be meaningless. But in reality he’s probably an average player who’s not getting signed as opposed to a top player who’s not getting signed. I agree he probably would be signed if the decision was based on skill alone.

  66. 66.

    Just one more canuck

    @Ben Cisco: when Carr went own, I was thinking the Raiders might give him a sniff. If Al was still with us, he would have, just as an ‘up yours’ to the league

  68. 68.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @JGabriel:

    “Jeff Sessions is a big, giant wussy and never has there been a more spineless, worthless guy holding that chair than him,” said one former Blackwater official, who spoke anonymously because he said he feared retaliation.

    Heh. Talk about spineless, maybe if he could hold his gun while being interviewed he’d grow some balls and speak on the record.

  70. 70.

    zzyzx

    @MJS: Yeah he does donate and that I do respect.

    “And don’t kid yourself that he wouldn’t have been pilloried and blackballed regardless of how he decided to protest.”

    Well yeah but he made it easy. The sign of a good protest is how well it’s linked to the cause. Unless you read up on it, it’s easy to have no clue why he was taking a knee. There’s no easy connection that goes from BLM to sitting for the anthem.

  73. 73.

    rikyrah

    @JGabriel:
    Attorney General White Citizens Council doesn’t give a shyt about what you say about him.
    He’s getting to live out his White Supremacist fantasies, so the rest of you can kick rocks.

  74. 74.

    Kay

    Imagine the absolute shitstorm if Obama had contacted members of congress and told them to stop investigating his administration.

    We have much lower ethical standards now. Anyone who denies that at this point is kidding themselves. This is the new norm.

    If there were an obstruction investigation they would have to interview the members of congress Trump called because there are only two people who know what he said in each call and one of them is a pathological liar and the subject of the investigation. What we don’t know is what Trump said (or promised, or threatened) but a member of congress who was contacted and who is not a pathological liar could reveal that.

    For a long time I’ve wondered if one of the ways Trump controls people is threatening to reveal something about them- we’ve seen him do this. He issued a threat to the Morning Joe hosts and then made good on it- he revealed things they didn’t want revealed. He knows a lot about these people he interacts with. He’s probably been doing this for decades, which is part of how he evaded accountability his whole life.

  76. 76.

    zzyzx

    @Baud: We also don’t know what he’s asking for salary wise. The way his Seahawks’ tryout played out (with Pete saying, “He deserves to be a starting QB and that’s why we’re not signing him as a backup”) made me think that he’s asking for starting QB salary/playing time which he’s just not going to get.

    Do I think he’s a better backup than what many teams have? Yes. However, deadspin commentators are making him out to be the player that would save the season for many teams and he hasn’t been that since the zone read was partially figured out.

  78. 78.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:
    Kay,
    They are greasing the skids to rid themselves of Dolt45. Someone had to tell the papers about the phone calls. They are adding to his obstruction charges. Don’t think that it’s a coincidence that this is revealed during the time of their GOP TAX SCAM. I think not.

  80. 80.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: I am just defining it as “There are thousands of quarterbacks in HS, college, CFL, Arena League (is that still around?) NFL Europe, NFL, and semi pro leagues. Colin Kapernick is among the top 64. Not the top ten, probably not the top 32, but definitely the top 64.” for whatever that is worth.

    I do wonder if what happened to him was the reverse of what has happened to Jared Goff, who after one of the worst rookie seasons in all of history under one of the most mediocre coaches in all of history, has suddenly been transformed into the boy genius quarterback at the helm of the NFL’s highest scoring offense under the youngest head coach in all of history. Of course, the Rams are probably just another flash in the pan and next year will lose 14 in a row.

  81. 81.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:
    Chris Hayes had a good segment on last night, talking about the GOP Tax Scam.
    They would sell their mothers to Lucifer for those tax cuts.
    Listening to Hayes rattle off what they have excused, made my blood boil ?

  83. 83.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly:

     I am just defining it as “There are thousands of quarterbacks in HS, college, CFL, Arena League (is that still around?) NFL Europe, NFL, and semi pro leagues. Colin Kapernick is among the top 64. Not the top ten, probably not the top 32, but definitely the top 64.” for whatever that is worth.

    Sure. But that definition isn’t really helpful to the Should-he-be-signed debate.

  85. 85.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    Good point. Now that they have the tax robbery completed they can get rid of him?

    I’ve been thinking about what happens within organizations or entities in an ethics-free environment, how they go along and go along and then there’s a dramatic implosion because people really operate within a system – the people with some personal ethics code either leave or get co-opted because they can’t stand the tension between what they do and what they believe so the entity always gets worse, by a kind of natural selection. You can see it in action with the Trump obstruction because while Trump has no personal or organizational ethical sense, the people he is contacting DO- if nothing else they know the president calling them and pressuring them to stop an investigation is wrong. So what happens to THEM? They either live with that tension or they do something about it. If they live with it they’re now co-opted and primed for the next ethical lapse. He brings them all in.

  86. 86.

    MJS

    @zzyzx: Again, young people don’t always consider all possible consequences of their actions. And he has more courage than virtually anyone I know because virtually everyone I know, if forced to decide between employment and protest would choose employment, especially if they have a very limited time in which to be employed in their field. Virtually everyone I know would have folded immediately upon getting the backlash he received.

    Lastly, worrying about how easy it is to hijack a protest sounds an awful lot like appeasement. It’s like saying Muhammad Ali should have allowed himself to be inducted into the Army, or that John Carlos and Tommie Smith should have never raised their fists at the Olympics. Pissing people off is kind of the point of protesting.

  87. 87.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: It isn’t???? There are 32 NFL teams. They each have a starting quarterback (32) a backup quarterback (+32=64) and more than a few have a backup for their backup either on the roster or the practice squad (+ app 16=80). If Kapernick is among the top 64 simple math says he should be signed somewhere in some capacity.

  88. 88.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    It’s just this amazing and horrible thing and you see it over and over and over. So many people knew Moore was a child predator but none of them actually stopped him. Instead they limited the damage in their small arena- a high school football game, a mall, and then they watched as he rose higher and higher in government.

    In the Boston child sex abuse cases at Catholic schools there were lay teachers who knew something was really wrong when the kids were called out of class because they knew the kids and they saw the reaction so they would try to keep the flow of rot out of their classroom by making excuses for why the child couldn’t leave. That’s the way they could live with it- by telling themselves “I’m not going along with this, directly, me”- that’s how they resolved the tension between what they knew was right and what they were allowing. That’s how systemic corruption works.

  89. 89.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Just one more canuck: Is there a KGB Museum in Prague? I’ve never run across it. But there’s the Museum of Communism a block or so from the foot of Wenceslas Square. (“Right above McDonalds, down the street from Benneton’s, Viva La Capitalisma!”) (Also on the other side of the staircase from a ca-see-no…) I’ve been through it as the guest of a German crystallographer; it’s well done but not sure it’s quite worth the 290 Kc ($14) entry. However the entry & gift shop are free & worth a look (the front desk is done up in the shape of a red star & some of the merchandise is a hoot). /tmi

  90. 90.

    Princess

    Call your senators. Today is crucial.

    I know. I too remember a day when I didn’t need to call DC every day to beg the government not to kill me. But we aren’t in that timeline any more.

  91. 91.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @MJS:

    Pissing people off is kind of the point of protesting.

    If you aren’t pissing people off, you’re doing it wrong.

  92. 92.

    JMG

    @Kay: They all let their names go on the record, which for Washington is like shooting at somebody. This indicates to me that they are signaling both to Trump and Mueller that “we will have no part of obstruction of justice so to protect ourselves we’ll repeat everything the President says to us one-on-one. No indictments, please!”

  94. 94.

    gene108

    @Baud:

    One succinct explanation I heard is that he isn’t talented enough to be worth the distraction he would cause.

    If he was as good as Ray Lewis, at his position, he maybe could have murdered a guy and still be on the team.

    Based on his ability he should be on a team as a back up. Based on his ability and distraction level, owners don’t want the hassle.

  95. 95.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly: I think it’s misleading in a Greenwaldan way to make the case that he should be playing because he is a “top” QB. It’s perfectly fine to say he should be signed because he is one of the “top 64” QBs available to play. It depends how it’s being presented.

  96. 96.

    Kay

    @JMG:

    They all let their names go on the record,

    Well, “all” right? The people he contacted who used their names went on the record, that’s true. We have no idea if that’s “all” the people he contacted. Those are the people who told.

  97. 97.

    Kay

    @Princess:

    I called Portman yesterday and I’ll call again today. I overheard my husband calling (I think) Latta. Hysterical. He used like 15 words, one of which is our zip code. He has this down to 20 seconds.

    I need whole paragraphs. My daughter once left a message and then called back because she wasn’t finished. “Hi, this is X again….” she actually said that. When she was little and we would punish her in a way she thought was unfair she would essentially write out an indictment- Count One- Did Not Listen To My Side. I saved one. I’m giving it to her kid if she ever has one.

  99. 99.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud:

    Sure. But that definition isn’t really helpful to the Should-he-be-signed debate.

    @Baud:

    It’s perfectly fine to say he should be signed because he is one of the “top 64” QBs available to play.

    I’m glad you now agree with me.

    @gene108: Point taken. Owners as a rule are pretty gutless. But that is an indictment of them on it’s own. “Don’t get out of line or we’ll blackball you.” Of course that has always been the unspoken rule of playing in the NoFunLeague.

  100. 100.

    zzyzx

    @MJS: If people were saying, “Well he’s doing stupid things but in a good cause,” I wouldn’t have a problem. It’s the whole “He has the political intelligence of Ali with the talent of Joe Montana!” that I see a lot that drives me crazy. Ultimately he doesn’t have a job because there’s like 3 teams where he’d be a fit for and one of them is in Miami and Kaep publicly praised Castro so that pissed them off and right before the Ravens considered signing him, his girlfriend tweeted out an image comparing their owner to a slave owner. I think he might actually like the role of being blackballed for his politics more than that of a backup QB who would get forgotten about and have to take hits to make up for it.

  103. 103.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    They’re usually right about unfairness, kids. They’re the fair police. I would read it and think “she’s got a point there on Count Four”.

  106. 106.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Aleta: We used to see John Nash wandering around campus, wearing colored Converse sneakers (before they became a thing), and filling the blackboards with massive mysterious equations.

    ETA: Congrats to Mustang Bobby and Mnem on their literary accomplishments! And good morning to all.

  107. 107.

    Kay

    @zzyzx:

    My son said he and his co-workers are calling on net neutrality. I don’t understand it that well and I have to fight my immediate impulse to stop listening when tech people get into the weeds but I’m glad he’s doing something because he was a genuine Clinton supporter and he’s been more negative than usual, and he’s a natural pessimist.

  108. 108.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @satby:

    she just texted me she can do it! Relief!!

    Yay! Another item in the Good News Department! I was beginning to think I should fly out to Indiana to help – and now I don’t have to. Good news for me too. :-P

    Would love to see you, but Indiana this time of year…not a big draw.

  109. 109.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    he was a genuine Clinton supporter

    Glad to hear that. Net neutrality is a big thing on Reddit, but it’s frustrating because about 70% of the commenters there blame the “government” or “corruption” rather than recognizing there is an actual ideological difference between the parties on this issue. God bless the 30% though, which is higher than it used to be.

  111. 111.

    germy

    Seth Abramson tweets –

    A “newcomer unfamiliar with appropriate conduct” is how GOP leaders describe Trump’s attempts to obstruct justice last summer. Do you know how many black/brown men, and how many poor people, have not been afforded that excuse for similar conduct?

  112. 112.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    When my niece was a preteen, she would create a PowerPoint supporting whatever it was she wanted (like a phone). They were well-designed and well-reasoned presentations, and her parents could never come up with an argument disputing her logic.

  113. 113.

    Immanentize

    @Kay: when I teach first year students I try to explain the difference between feeling injustice and understanding justice. I tell them that the arc of my son’s language acquisition was:
    1) “Truck,”
    2) “Turtle,”
    3) “That’s not fair!”
    The sense of injustice is innate

  114. 114.

    Humboldtblue

    @Kay:

    Net Neutrality is easy. You pay for access to the internet through your local ISP. After that, the entire universe of the internet is accessible. The Telecoms want to limit what you can access once you have already paid for internet service and limit where you can go and what sites you can visit. They want to force you to pay for visiting websites like this one. It’s a fucking disaster of a plan and yet another GOP giveaway to corporate coffers.

  115. 115.

    Just One More Canuck

    @Uncle Cosmo: I’ve never been to Prague (on my bucket list) but google tells me it’s on Vlasska – my friend posted a few shots on his facebook page

  119. 119.

    Ben Cisco

    @OzarkHillbilly: Considering the QB play around the league this season, he’s easily better than a number of current starters and backups.

    As for his protest getting sidetracked, the reason it was easy is because no one wanted to face what he was addressing in the first place (and has been CONSISTENT about addressing since) – DEAD BLACK PEOPLE AT THE HANDS OF POLICE. The fact that the league, the media, the GOP and squishy “allies” turned it into an assault on baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, Chevrolets, the military (even though the kneel was coordinated WITH a military member) and Aunt Bea’s sorry ass pickles should have surprised NO ONE EVER. And yet, the banana in the tailpipe trick worked AGAIN.

  123. 123.

    Ben Cisco

    @OzarkHillbilly: Better than Gabbert? YES. Tyrod Taylor? YES. Andy Dalton? YES. DeShone Kizer? YES. Paxton Lynch? YES. Brett Hundley? YES. Tom Savage? YES. Jacoby Brissett? YES. Blake Bortles? YES. Josh McCown? YES. CJ Beathard? YES.

    That’s nearly half the starters in the league. And he could beat the brakes off ALL of them.

    @Patricia Kayden: Indeed. Thank you.

  126. 126.

    Kay

    @Immanentize:

    The sense of injustice is innate

    It is. A lot of their complaints track the Geneva Conventions. No collective punishment, proportionate force. The way they determine proportionate force among themselves is fascinating. Why is 2 against 1 fair? Because it’s 2 smaller vs 1 bigger.

    One of my son’s friends was accused of “making fun of cancer patients” on social media. They’re 14, 15, and 16. This trial basically went on for hours, thru text messages. They eventually cleared him, under a “no intent” theory, really. He made a cancer joke, true, but he did not know that girl had a family member with cancer.

    They got to the same place everyone gets- don’t make cancer jokes. They do a pretty good job adjudicating their own controversies.

  127. 127.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Just One More Canuck: I hate to sound like a hipster caricature (I was into them before it was cool) but IMO, Prague is a disaster now. Cheap flights bringing hordes of drunk British tourists. Old Town is impassable a lot of the time. I’d go to Krakow, or Ljubljana, or, if you’re more adventurous, L’viv.

  129. 129.

    satby

    @O. Felix Culpa:

    Would love to see you, but Indiana this time of year…not a big draw.

    it’s been mild, but mild to me is freezing to you. I still plan on a road trip westward, timing is iffy but it will happen in 2018.

  130. 130.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Ben Cisco: Yep.

    @Ben Cisco: Better than all the starters you name? Can not say as I have only had the torturefest of Dallas v San Diego afflicted on my eyes (after which Phillip Rivers was lauded for having the BEST GAME OF HIS CAREER) (which made me wonder if they were watching the same game I saw during most of which neither team could do anything at all)(pretty sure CK couldn’t have played any worse)

  132. 132.

    Gin & Tonic

    From Twitter: “BREAKING FROM SPECIAL COUNSEL: The court has scheduled a plea hearing for Lieutenant General Michael T. Flynn (Ret.), 58, of Alexandria, Va., at 10:30 a.m.”

  134. 134.

    satby

    @debbie: gotta love the effort, but my house was a dictatorship. And if any of my offspring came at me with a PowerPoint, I would have probably grounded them.
    PowerPoint is of the devil.

  138. 138.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Oh boy. And I’ve gotta do some errands.

  140. 140.

    rikyrah

    @JMG:

    @Kay: They all let their names go on the record, which for Washington is like shooting at somebody. This indicates to me that they are signaling both to Trump and Mueller that “we will have no part of obstruction of justice so to protect ourselves we’ll repeat everything the President says to us one-on-one. No indictments, please!”

    I’ve said it for awhile…
    He was too phucking stupid to realize just how much the GOP Congress WAS covering for him.
    And, when they decided to STOP covering for him, things would get ugly AND FAST.

  142. 142.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @satby: Mine just has a little dribble in the bottom. It won’t overflow until the entire criminal enterprise that is today’s GOP is safely ensconced at Club Fed.

  145. 145.

    rikyrah

    @germy:

    A “newcomer unfamiliar with appropriate conduct” is how GOP leaders describe Trump’s attempts to obstruct justice last summer. Do you know how many black/brown men, and how many poor people, have not been afforded that excuse for similar conduct?

    That will be the excuse, UNTIL IT’S NOT THE EXCUSE..

    Understand?

    Yeah, they’re greasing the skids to rid themselves of him.

  149. 149.

    bystander

    @OzarkHillbilly: You can still join in the toast…just be careful not to spill any.

    ETA Lying to FBI is a felony with max prison of 5 years. I’m betting neither he nor his son will go to prison, but Flynn is now a convicted felon. We can all enjoy and take heart knowing that one criminal is now branded for life.

  155. 155.

    Tenar Arha

    @zzyzx: This bothered me enough to write a response, but then I unfortunately got distracted. Going to post it anyway though because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    Well yeah but he made it easy. The sign of a good protest is how well it’s linked to the cause. Unless you read up on it, it’s easy to have no clue why he was taking a knee. There’s no easy connection that goes from BLM to sitting for the anthem.

    In the history of every protest, there’s always a way that people will argue that “There’s no easy connection that goes from…” No one can stop people from taking their public actions and twisting them to fit others preconceived notions. It was done with lunch counters, it was done with marches, it was done with speeches, & was even done periodically as people have protested during the Star Spangled Banner over the years it’s been the National Anthem. Because Francis Scott Key was simultaneously a white-supremacist who spent his legal and political career attacking and suppressing abolitionists, even while also being active in the American Colonization Society. And whose verses included this one:

    And where is that band who so vauntingly swore,
    That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
    A home and a Country should leave us no more?
    Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s pollution.
    No refuge could save the hireling and slave
    From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
    And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
    O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

    It was pretty clear what Key meant when he said “no refuge..” and this was even commented on in 2014 in Politico. Plus anything adopted as a tradition by President Wilson, who actively enabled the re-birth of the KKK, deserves getting side-eyes forever. It’s also clear from the link above that many African-Americans have found the Star Spangled Banner a valid target for protests for a very long time. And just because we don’t know our own history, isn’t a very good excuse for people deciding to be offended instead of asking “why?”

    And for a bunch of billionaires these men in charge of the NFL are stupid. Kaepernick has been successful because they went from ignoring him to blackballing him. The whole point of non-violent protests is to bring about a hysterical overreaction to an action. There are white people now who didn’t know the history who now do, and understand why maybe we should be examining the racist origins of a lot of our traditions. He’s done something very similar to what Ali did, and he’s getting the blowback from the same people who decided that Ali was not a patriot at that time. Ironically, that we’re spending any time arguing whether he’s a good enough player is actually part and parcel of the reaction to the issue that Kaepernick intended to highlight, much like IIRC people reacted to Ali.

  156. 156.

    debbie

    @satby:

    I know you’re long gone, but I’m laughing. My sister-in-law (daughter of a Marine) is very dictatorial, and my brother supports her, but they both agreed the niece’s inescapable logic was impressive and shouldn’t be suppressed. The kid probably knew that going in.

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