Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

the 10% who apparently lack object permanence

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

A tremendous foreign policy asset… to all of our adversaries.

Books are my comfort food!

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Celebrate the fucking wins.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

You cannot shame the shameless.

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

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Late Night Open Thread: Denizens of the Night

Late Night Open Thread: Denizens of the Night

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Am I a terrible person if my first thought is “At least the porn star gets tested for STDs on a regular basis… “ ?


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Meanwhile, in South Carolina…

GREENVILLE, S.C. — Year 2 of the Trump presidency began here overnight much like Year 1 had ended: with his alleged ex-mistress smashing people’s faces into her bare chest at a strip club between an airport and a cemetery.

Adult film star Stormy Daniels, who once claimed to have slept with Donald Trump not long after he married Melania, performed at 11 p.m. Saturday — the anniversary of his inauguration — and 1 a.m. Sunday here on the outskirts of town…

A normal Saturday at the Trophy Club brings in 100 to 150 people — and for a while on Saturday it seemed at least double that. “Making America Horny Again,” said a big sign outside, a play on Trump’s campaign slogan. Inside there was patriotic bunting on the brass railings. Red, white and blue balloons floated above each sticky table…

Reporters from several major news outlets staked out the strip club for hours and hours this weekend, just in case a porn star said or did something newsworthy. As if she might vault onstage, rip off her corset and — instead of clutching a pole with her pelvis — launch a news conference.

“It’s demeaning,” said Suzanne Coe, who nevertheless brought a copy of Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury” for Daniels to sign as a trivia prize for her bar downtown. “And it’s demeaning we have a first lady who posed naked. I don’t think you can humiliate America anymore.”…

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, is 38. Yes, she is a porn star; she is also a mother, writer, director and advocate. In 2005, she lobbied the California legislature on behalf of the porn industry. In 2008, she talked about online safety for children at the National Press Club in Washington. In 2009, she was drafted to run for Senate in her native Louisiana against David Vitter, the conservative disgraced by his entanglement in a prostitution ring.

“Politics can’t be any dirtier of a job than the one I’m already in,” she told CNN then. Little did she know. Two years later she would detail her tryst with Trump to In Touch Weekly, which did not run it until a year into his presidency…

Reader Interactions

50Comments

  2. 2.

    Suzanne

    I think it’s interesting that nobody in Trump’s orbit seems to have even tried to deny it. LAWL.

    Trash. These people are fucking trash.

  5. 5.

    eclare

    The assholes in the photo obviously have enough money to dress well, and that’s what they chose? Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover.

  6. 6.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    plastic spoons.

    You can take the con-man out of Queens,
    but you can’t take the Queens out of the con-man.

    Many, many people are saying it’s the most luxurious, classiest plastic evah. Believe me!

  7. 7.

    opiejeanne

    @eclare: I know, right? My god, how tacky. They may have money but they have no taste. You’d think the women and men would be in evening dress for that money, that the women wouldn’t look like retired hookers and the men wouldn’t look so much like wannabe mobsters.

    Ok, not all of the women look like retired hookers. A couple look like teachers, a couple look worse.

  8. 8.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    This reminds me how Drumpf wears fake jewelry and brags about owning fake art treasures.

    “I was at a dinner with my ex-wife Brooke [Mueller] and her family, and about halfway through I noticed Donald staring at my watch,” Sheen said. “He says, ‘I want to give you an early wedding gift as a gesture from me and Melania’ — and she doesn’t say a word; she’s very sweet and very pretty but she just kind of sits there. Anyhow, so he says ‘These are platinum diamond Harry Winston’ and he pulls off his cufflinks and he gives them to me.”

    “Smashcut to about six months later, I had some jewelry getting appraised at the house,” Sheen continued. “She took the loop, spent about four seconds, and kind of recoiled from it — much like people do from Trump — and says ‘In their finest moment, this is cheap pewter and bad zirconias.’ And they’re stamped ‘Trump,’ and I just thought, ‘What does this really say about the man, that he said, ‘Here’s a great wedding gift,’ and it’s just a bag of dog shit?’”

    Curious, O’Brien asked Trump about the painting: was it an original Renoir? Trump replied in the affirmative. It was, he said. “No, it’s not Donald,” O’Brien responded. But, once again, Trump protested that it was.

    “Donald, it’s not,” O’Brien said adamantly. “I grew up in Chicago, that Renoir is called Two Sisters on the Terrace, and it’s hanging on a wall at the Art Institute of Chicago.” He concluded emphatically: “That’s not an original.”

    Trump, of course, did not agree, but O’Brien dropped the conversation topic and moved on with his interview. He thought that he had heard the last of the Renoir conversation. But the next day, when they boarded the plane to head back to New York City, Trump again pointed to the painting, and as if the conversation had never happened, he pointed to the fake and proclaimed, “You know, that’s an original Renoir.” O’Brien chose not to engage, and dropped the conversation.

  9. 9.

    ThresherK

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: I have for years had one high-class piece of knowledge about The Finer Things, and it is about bone or mother-of-pearl spoons for caviar.

    I had caviar once, at the ritziest wedding I’ll ever attend.

    This incident is hilarious and somehow reflects on both Trump and the complainant very badly.

  10. 10.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    and another journalist who put his face in Stormy’s cleavage.

    Chuck Todd isn’t a journalist.

  14. 14.

    John

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:

    “You know, that’s an original Renoir.”

    In all likelihood, whoever sold the painting to Trump probably convinced him it was an original. Given his general lack of actual skill in negotiation or dealmaking, he just assumed he’d know if someone was trying to take him and didn’t bother with an appraisal by an expert.

  15. 15.

    Mnemosyne

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:

    But the next day, when they boarded the plane to head back to New York City, Trump again pointed to the painting, and as if the conversation had never happened, he pointed to the fake and proclaimed, “You know, that’s an original Renoir.” O’Brien chose not to engage, and dropped the conversation. (emphasis mine)

    I know I’m a broken record on this, but this is how narcissists always end up getting what they want: they lie so persistently and so shamelessly that other people give up trying to correct them, because it’s like talking to a door.

  16. 16.

    Mnemosyne

    @John:

    I doubt it. I’d bet that he bought it as a reproduction and then convinced himself that it was real. At this point, he probably doesn’t even have any consciousness that it’s fake, because what’s inside his head is reality, so if he thinks it’s genuine, it is, until the day he decides it’s not, at which point he will insist that he never claimed it was genuine and you’re the one who’s crazy if you say he did.

  17. 17.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1

    The first active-duty, same-sex couple has married at West Point.

    Capt. Daniel Hall, 30, and Capt. Vincent Franchino, 26, were married in a ceremony at the military academy last weekend.

    256 replies 3,410 retweets 14,818 likes

    Thanks Obummer

  18. 18.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @John: Doubtful. A Renoir can go for 78 million. Even if you’re only paying 10% of that, no way a dead beat like Drumpf pays that. Moreover insurance companies require appraisals before covering large ticket intangible items.

  19. 19.

    Jay S

    At 100k a couple that’s a half million dollar line up there. They look like they might steal real serving utensils.

  20. 20.

    ZyklonBeaArthur

    Because I’m a masochist I checked the Stormy Daniels story on Fox.com—-one wee story 10 days ago with the Trump spokesperson’s denial of the tryst and nothing since then. Nothing about the payment details in the WSJ, nary a peep re: the Forbes magazine frottage.

    Furthermore, there’s not a single hit for “Stormy Daniels” on NationalEnquirer.com, home of eight straight years of Gay Muslim Obama.

    Should I dedicate my life to filling the comment sections of right-wing sites with actual facts? Someone’s gotta clue in Cletus Nation and the Fox News crew is clearly too busy covering the ongoing misdeeds of the Clinton administration.

  21. 21.

    Betty Cracker

    Are those photos purportedly taken at the Corruption Cotillion for real? Come on, man. That can’t be real.

  23. 23.

    The Ancient Randonneur

    @Betty Cracker: Look at the dress on the woman on the far left in that photo. Then look at where the Current Occupant’s tiny digit is pointing. No way that picture is real.

  26. 26.

    Betty Cracker

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: The plastic spoons I believe. (At least they knew better than to use metal spoons.) But the group photo — nah. Someone ‘shopped in people from a retirement party at the Pembroke Pines Hooter’s.

  27. 27.

    JR

    @Jay S: they honestly look like FLA retirees who just spent a chunk of retirement savings to brush up next to the man himself. Just another con like Trump Steaks, etc.

  28. 28.

    NotMax

    @Betty Cracker

    Did read (in passing) somewhere that the salad course was strawberries, raspberries, goat cheese and blueberries atop –

    wait for it

    wait for it

    – iceberg lettuce.

  29. 29.

    ThresherK

    @Betty Cracker: My eyes are just blurry enough to think you wrote

    The Pembroke Pines Hooker’s

    To which I thought, Boy, that’s one successful entrepreneur to sew up a whole town like that.

  30. 30.

    NotMax

    From November last:

    There were some warnings that this winter season could be disrupted by the presidency. Earlier this year, seven charities decided to move their events, some blaming the security delays that came with a party in the president’s house.

    But there were still 25 big events on the schedule.
    [snip]
    Mar-a-Lago’s 25 previously identified bookings fell to six, according to a Post survey of town-issued permits, public ­social calendars and interviews with charities. One of the groups that stuck with Trump was the Republican Party of Palm Beach County, which has held its Lincoln Day dinner at Mar-a-Lago since 2013. Before this year, it appeared to be the club’s only overtly partisan gala.

    Among those that left: the Red Cross, which canceled its Palm Beach gala outright, ending a 60-year tradition. Source

  31. 31.

    SRW1

    If you’d have given this bunch real spoons they’d have disappeared them in their pockets or handbags and taken them home. Trump knows his customers.

    BTW: How much did Trump charge the RNC for holding the event at Mar-a-Lago?

  33. 33.

    Waspuppet

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: I always thought that was in many ways the quintessential Trump anecdote: He basically assumed he was right, demanded to be treated like the boss who you have to agree with, wore the interviewer down until they couldn’t respond anymore, and in Trump’s mind that counts as winning the argument.

    Am I a terrible person if my first thought is “At least the porn star gets tested for STDs on a regular basis… “ ?

    My first thought is, “At least it’s an actual job, one that available evidence would indicate she shows up and does well, which is more than we can say for him.” Same goes for Melania’s modeling career, for that matter.

  35. 35.

    Ramalama

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: I was at the Art Institute in Chicago a couple months ago and specifically went to look at Renoir’s Two Sisters painting because I was with my sister, and had just learned that it had been her favorite for years. I wonder why Trump has a fake one of that painting specifically. The elder sister is really not foxy. And he has no other way of gauging value in things other than comic book boobs and hair.

  36. 36.

    Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)

    @Magda in Black:

    Indeed.

    They will either scream “fake news”, “Communist CNN”, or resort to their old standby of calling anyone who disagrees with them a moron or worse.

    Which is ironic considering fake news is exactly what they believe.

    The problem with Trumpistas isn’t what they know, it’s what they know that just ain’t so.

  38. 38.

    randy khan

    The tweet about how the shutdown was intended to distract from the first anniversary of his inauguration is so perfectly Trump – naturally, it’s all about him.

  39. 39.

    Jager

    Mrs J and I went to a charity event at Mar-a-Lago back in the late 90’s, we were stunned at the painting of trump in tennis clothes, from the neck down he’s built like the winner of a body building contest. I can remember driving by Mar-a-Lago and noticed the beach house (it’s across Ocean Blvd from the club) had broken roof tiles and poorly patched stucco. It’s a pretty good bet that Marjorie Merriweather Post. never served caviar with plastic spoons.

  42. 42.

    Leto

    @Magda in Black: I tried for a long while and finally gave up. It’s exhausting to constantly be around people that stupid. They revel in their ignorance and wear it as a badge of honor. Nothing you say is going to change their mind. You can have the evidence in hand, right in font of their eyes, and they’ll still deny it all.

    I’ll continue to repeat this until it’s no longer valid (yes, I’ll never stop repeating it):

    There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
    – Isaac Asimov

  43. 43.

    Tinare

    I’m horrible because I looked at that picture and thought, you pay how much for dinner, but you dress like you bought your clothes at K-Mart?

  44. 44.

    Mandarama

    @Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): The more I look at it…it couldn’t possibly be a costume party making fun of the Stormy Daniels bit, could it? It just seems like all the women have these crazy bleached blonde wigs, and the one on the far right looks to be wearing a fake policeman’s outfit.

    I grew up in an old trailer in Mississippi and I still find all of this disturbing.

  45. 45.

    Brachiator

    @Leto:

    There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been.

    Ignorance is strength in Trump land.

  47. 47.

    Ruckus

    I don’t get people. Of course these are the real people. Of course they dress like that. They LIKE donald trump. let that sink in, here I’ll repeat it. They LIKE donald trump. Their taste, like their heads are up their asses. Of course they used plastic forks, because not one of the guests would think anything of it. drumpf is, if you stretch it, tacky at best. drumpf is a poor white man’s idea of class. He is also well off white trash’s idea of class. Realize that they have no more class than he does. Of course they are going to dress like the occupants of a horror movie hotel, in a shit hole town, that is next to a coal mine, that’s who they are.

  48. 48.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Leto:

    the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge”–

    Why is it false? It’s certainly true in the voting booth, as we saw to our sorrow.

    I get so sick of this sort of complaint. What the “intelligent”sia don’t get is that, since roughly the time of the Michelson-Morley experiment, what we’ve been able to determine about the detectable universe has become increasingly at odds with what John Q. Public perceives with his own senses, & what mechanisms we’ve been able to derive from our observations have been increasingly at odds with what JQP would have thought. (Quantum electrodynamics being the prize example – a mathematical construct that reproduces reality down to ‘leventy-seven decimal places but makes no [common] sense, as every physicist from Bohr on has freely admitted. Its logic is arcane but its impact on everyday life, from MRI scans to atom bombs, is profound – & is inaccessible to the average human’s brain.)

    Some of the problem is the way those with expertise talk to those without it. Most of us have had teachers (authority figures in our lives who aren’t parents) whose attitude boiled down to Learn this, you’ll be tested on it, & don’t waste my time with stupid questions! & the implication was I know stuff that you don’t & that makes me better than you! Conversely, many of us have had teachers whose message was, I understand stuff you don’t yet, but I’m going to help you understand it, & I’ll bet you’ll find out understanding is a pretty neat thing! They strive to lift their students up to their level instead of shoving them down to remain forever inferior.

    When the undereducated (note: not “stupid”) listen to “experts” (in climate change, nuclear weapons, automation, etc.) what they often hear is someone talking down to them. And yet there is a fragment of that group, so well represented in the WWC, that responds to knowledge – when presented respectfully, modestly, and cleverly.

    For example: A solid case can be made that “global warming” can have paradoxical effects, e.g., an increase in the number &/or strength of storms. Can we make that case to someone who dropped out of high school? I think so. I think we can use everyday experience (like water boiling in a kettle) to explain it & turn it into a “no shit!” moment.

    It’s not going to be all that easy – hell, try talking about non-linear systems to someone who looks at the Mandelbrot set & sees a weird-looking beetle with bumps (& how many non-mathematicians have any clue as to what the Mandelbrot set really is & what it signifies?). But IMHO as many as 10% of the seemingly-incorrigible Trumpistas could be moved by this sort of outreach. We can & should turn firmly away from the WBC – the White Bigot Class – without turning our backs on that, what 3% of the electorate. That 3% added to the people already with us – getting them registered & to the polls – could make for one real rip-roaring wave.

  50. 50.

    Betsy

    So, on the left, in the background, there is a woman and a guy in a hat leaning over maybe a chafing dish fill of wieners or something. What kind of classy joint is this where men wear hats indoors?

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