Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about it’s history.”

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

It’s easier to kill a dangerous animal than a man who just happens to have different thoughts/values than one’s own.

I am pretty sure Katy Tur wasn’t always such a bootlicking sycophant.

The willow is too close to the house.

I was confident that someone would point it out and thought why not me.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

I desperately hope that, yet again, I am wrong.

This country desperately needs a functioning Fourth Estate.

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

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

You are here: Home / Tell me, over and over and over again, my friend

Tell me, over and over and over again, my friend

by | 130 Comments

This post is in: ,

There’s some other potential big news about the Russia probe that’s flow somewhat under the radar with all the other stuff that came out today: Rick Gates may be about to flip.

Some people say that talking about Trump firing Mueller is gloom pr0n. I don’t think it is, and I think we should be ready to act if and when it happens.

Get ready to protest. Looks like there should be marches all over the country.

Reader Interactions

130Comments

  2. 2.

    Omnes Omnibus

    When human respect is disintegrating
    This whole crazy world is just too frustrating

    Barry McGuire. Nice.

  3. 3.

    Baron Elmo

    A sweet rumor, ’tis true… but like most scuttlebutt, best taken with a football-sized grain of salt.

    In the meantime, what about Flynn? I recall more than a few sources claiming that he was on the verge of tossing Trump under the Greyhound to save his son’s neck.

  5. 5.

    joel hanes

    Our advantage is that women and people of color and non-English-speakers and immigrants are invisible to our foes, and our foes are committed to keeping it that way.

    There has been negligible and mostly condescending coverage of the womens’ marches.

    to know when the great wheel gives to a touch, to know and act.

  6. 6.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Part of me wonders if they do understand this, but are more afraid of their base than they are of the rest of the country. They have to see all the same polls that are available to the rest of us, and I’m sure they have more detailed polling available to them that isn’t available to the public.

    But on the other hand, these people are also extraordinarily wilfully ignorant and impenetrable to facts, and I suspect that’s the actual explanation for most of them.

  8. 8.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Leaving this here and on Anne’s thread too.

  9. 9.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @(((CassandraLeo))): It’s not letting me edit for some reason, so I want to clarify that my point about the polling is that it should make it readily understandable to them how pissed off everyone who’s not their base is. Which is why I favour the “wilfully ignorant” explanation over the “afraid of their base” one, because we have to outnumber their base in at least a substantial minority of Republicans’ districts.

    Also, while I generally don’t like deploying insults to intelligence (as I feel it’s generally assigned more importance than it deserves in proportion to other factors like willingness to learn), a lot of them are probably just really dumb.

    I suppose one other potential explanation is they’re complicit in treason and thus can’t detach themselves from the crime syndicate. And some others may be thinking they can just cash in as lobbyists or something if they lose re-election.

  12. 12.

    Calouste

    @Baron Elmo: Flynn did flip. He plead guilty to a single thing, lying to the FBI, for which he is going to get 0-6 months. You think Mueller couldn’t catch him on say accepting half a million from Turkey and hiding it from his security clearance? Of course he could, but Flynn must have given him something in exchange.

  13. 13.

    dmsilev

    @Cheryl Rofer: Well, since Mr. Trump has done nothing wrong (according to Mr. Trump), that shouldn’t be any problem at all and I’m sure it will all go perfectly smoothly.

  14. 14.

    eemom

    @Doug!:

    The good news is that once you get past this stage, you will enjoy a hitherto unimagined ecstasy in the simple experience of 6-8 hours of uninterrupted sleep.

  15. 15.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I heard somebody say today that actual lawyers who have deposed trump say that if you fluff his ego a bit at the beginning of the interview, he’ll give you his ATM code. Everything I’ve read about Meuller suggests he is constitutionally incapable of this, but I’m wondering if they’ll bring in an attorney can stragerize such flattery.

  17. 17.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Omnes Omnibus: there was a report a few weeks back that said, IIRC, he occasionally sits in on interviews, appearing briefly in the back of the room without saying anything> I can’t imagine he’s unaware that his whole Sam The Eagle appearance might well prove unnerving, especially to people trying to figure out how much they can hide.

  18. 18.

    Mnemosyne

    @joel hanes:

    There has been negligible and mostly condescending coverage of the womens’ marches.

    This. If there’s some kind of Mueller march, I’ll go because I’m pissed, not because I think it would change anything.

    Some kind of national sick-out might get more attention. Maybe.

  21. 21.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @(((CassandraLeo))):
    I think Republican politicians are their base. There’s some variation, but most of them are stupid, hateful, convinced that only white men have anything to say, wedded to dogma that really amounts to ‘fuck you’, and refuse to believe facts contrary to their white grievance mythology.

  22. 22.

    joel hanes

    @Mnemosyne:

    I’ll go because I’m pissed, not because I think it would change anything.

    But the womens’ marches _are_ what’s changing the ground under the Rs feet.

    A thing is about to happen which has not happened since the Elder Days: the Ents are going to wake up and find that they are strong.’ ‘What will they do?’ asked Legolas in astonishment. ‘I do not know,’ said Gandalf. ‘I do not think they know themselves.’

  24. 24.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Calouste: Mueller can probably hold off the Army from a court-martial which would probably strip him of rank, pension, and VA benefits.

  30. 30.

    Gretchen

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: One of the Obamabros said it was intimidating to just sit in your FBI interview for your security clearance, aware that they knew everything about you and were cross-checking everything. Kushner probably isn’t smart enough to realize that. The Obama folks had a team of China experts and note-takers when they interviewed Chinese diplomats, while Kushner feels qualified to handle it on his own. So it was interesting to read about FBI agents and prosecutors, lots of them, cycling in and out of the room, each asking questions on their own area of expertise about Kushner, while Mueller sits silently, ominously, against the wall. Kushner is probably too arrogant to realize what’s coming. The Obamabros felt more foreboding just answering routine questions than he has the brains to feel when he’s in the crosshairs.

  31. 31.

    Mary G

    Scalzi has a nice tribute to Ursula LeGuin in the LA Times.

    She was a supporting column of the genre, on equal footing and bearing equal weight to Verne or Wells or Heinlein or Bradbury. Losing her is like losing one of the great sequoias. As the unceasing flow of testimonials gives witness, nearly every lover and creator of science fiction and fantasy can give you a story of how Le Guin, through her words or presence, has illuminated their lives.

  33. 33.

    T S

    @joel hanes: also, the extreme far left social progressives hated the womens’ march as a bunch of transphobic cis white women screeching about their ovaries. Im not fing kidding. It was significant. Yeah, I know thats a bit daft and part of the Left’s circular firing squad tendency. Dont have to tell me.

  34. 34.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @Gretchen:

    Kushner is probably too arrogant to realize what’s coming.

    The judges would also have accepted “dumb” and “wilfully ignorant” as correct answers.

    @Mary G: Thanks for this; it’s wonderful. I suspect there are going to be a lot of great tributes to her in the next couple of days (if you missed it, I posted my own a few threads down), because Scalzi is completely correct about her importance to the genre.

  36. 36.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @Mnemosyne: I have Steering the Craft; I didn’t realise she’d written others. Which ones would you recommend? (Expecting “AOT,K” as an answer, and TBH I probably will end up picking them all up at some point.)

  38. 38.

    frosty

    @joel hanes:

    Our advantage is that women and people of color and non-English-speakers and immigrants are invisible to our foes, and our foes are committed to keeping it that way.

    I haven’t seen it this way, but it sounds right. Seems like something Sun Tzu would have remarked on.

  39. 39.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @(((CassandraLeo))): The Dispossessed and, most assuredly, The Left Hand of Darkness.

    Oh! You guys were just discussing her books on writing!

    Never mind. But do read those two novels!

  41. 41.

    Mnemosyne

    @T S:

    There is a whole lot of butthurt from the “progressives” that they’re not nearly as numerous or important as they claim to be, and they’re getting screechier by the day.

  43. 43.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @T S:
    Particularly ridiculous, given that all the transwomen I know (and by some bizarre twist of chance, I know a lot of them) love the Women’s Marches and feel empowered by them. I have noticed a strong trend in The Left claiming they are the ones who truly represent Insert Minority. So, you know, quit with the identity politics and let’s focus on the class struggle.

  44. 44.

    joel hanes

    I think that LeGuin’s less-read later novel The Telling is a good introduction to her work, especially for people who don’t read much or any SF-genre fiction.

  45. 45.

    frosty

    @T S: Old here. What the fuck is “cis”?

    Probably unrelated but there were a bunch of what I’d call New Left at the Science March last year trying to highjack it for their same old agenda.

    Fuckem

  46. 46.

    Mnemosyne

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    I want to find the person who started the urban legend that the pussyhat is a ciswomen-only thing that everyone else should shun and slap that person upside the head. The pussyhat is for everyone, male and female, cis and trans. That’s the whole goddamned point. And I’m pretty sure that the people trying to be divisive and claiming it’s a “vagina hat” know that full well, which is why they’re desperate to put it down.

  49. 49.

    joel hanes

    @Origuy:

    Divert the Potomac through the White House?

    Nah, that’s The People’s House.
    (Remove the tawdry superflous gilt ornamentation, to be sure.)

    Think of Trump Tower as Orthanc, full of mobbed-up Russian orcs. Putin as Sauron.

  50. 50.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @frosty:
    ‘Cis’ is a term that comes up when dealing with LGBT issues. It means someone who was biologically born their gender. Since transwomen and ciswomen are both women, for example, it’s occasionally necessary to make the distinction, usually for the purposes of political debate.

  51. 51.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @Villago Delenda Est: If you haven’t read it, I posted appreciations of those two novels and “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” a few threads down. (I already mentioned that comment in this thread, but I was too lazy to find the link.)

    @NotMax: Oh, nice, thanks for the link to this. I will definitely watch it sometime over the next few days.

    @Mnemosyne: As usual, I suspect quite a few of these people are either Russian bots or on the Kremlin’s payroll. Not all of them, to be clear, but whenever someone is deliberately trying to cause infighting, as these people clearly are, that’s where my mind immediately goes. Judging from the Hamilton 68 tracker, my suspicions are probably correct at least half the time.

    @Mary G: Cool. I still haven’t gotten caught up with that one. This place moves fast.

  53. 53.

    BubaDave

    @frosty: Cis is the opposite of trans. I’m a cis man, which means that my gender identity matches my birth sex.

    edit: I swear when I started posting this the question had not been answered 87 times already….

  54. 54.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Cheryl Rofer: As I wrote just now down below: commence full pucker mode tweeting in 3, 2, 1…

    And I’ll add here that these geniuses are going to respond exactly as we expect them to. Which likely means that Mueller will have to get a subpoena from the grand jury.

  58. 58.

    Mnemosyne

    @frosty:

    Not surprisingly, it’s usually straight white “progressive” dudebros who are pouty because they’re not the center of attention at something called the “Women’s March.”

    Obviously, present company that happens to match the orientation/skintone/gender of the jerks mentioned above is excepted.

  59. 59.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Mnemosyne:
    I’m not sure. We’ve certainly got a taste of how The Left is thickly larded with misogynists, thanks to the 2016 primary. They might just get angry at seeing women do anything for themselves. That’s the kind of insult they would use. As the only true progressives, The Left is obsessed with finding reasons to portray mainstream liberals as hypocrites.

    On the other hand, despite my natural tendency to shy away from conspiracy theories of all kinds, it’s confirmed fact that there is an entire god damn industry deliberately aimed at ratfucking Democrats.

  61. 61.

    Adam L Silverman

    @(((CassandraLeo))): It is a combination of lying to yourself and everyone else about why you’re doing what you’re doing and how positively it is received and almost never venturing out from within groups of people (media, house of worship, colleagues, neighbors) who agree with you completely.

  64. 64.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @Mary G: Also, FWIW, I think FYWP only counts links to other threads for moderation. One of my earlier comments (at #51) had six links, but four were just to other comments in this thread, and judging from incognito mode, I’m almost certain it wasn’t incarcerated. (Though I also fucked up the link to the Hamilton 58 tracker, so it might not have counted that one, but that still leaves five links total.)

    @(((CassandraLeo))): …speaking of which, this is the Hamilton 58 tracker.

  65. 65.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @frosty: comes from chemistry notation. Trans for transgender (biology) and also for specific arrangement of atoms in a molecule (chemistry). Cis is chemical notation for different arrangements of atoms in the same molecule/isomer. So then cis was backwards adopted to indicate not-transgender.

  66. 66.

    frosty

    @Mnemosyne: Pout! Why can’t we have an Old Bald Fat White Guy march, huh????

    Oh, that would be the Senate. Never mind. /Emily Litella/

    And with that, off to get a couple hours of sleep before all the shit that hit the fan today has to be dealt with tomorrow.

  68. 68.

    celticdragonchick

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas stunned me when I read it as a child. It stayed with me for decades until I found a copy of the anthology* in which I had first read it in and picked up a copy on Amazon. Also notable, that anthology has The Deathbird by Harlan Ellison, which is just as moving and unsettling.

    *The Best Science Fiction in the World No.3, Ed. Terry Carr, 1974
    https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345240634/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

  69. 69.

    Adam L Silverman

    @joel hanes: @Mnemosyne: And as I wrote in a comment in an earlier thread:
    https://balloon-juice.com/2018/01/23/expanding-the-electorate/#comment-6726860

    You’d get a dozen old white idiots on hover rounds and homemade Revolutionary War cosplay, almost all of them guys, and the news media were tripping over themselves to declare a revolutionary wave remaking America was loose upon the land.

    5 million plus women show up to march a year after 3 million plus did, as well as having women organize and register people to vote and run for office up and down ballots all across the country and it’s “look at the women showing up to demonstrate”. I may be wrong, but my professional assessment of this as a non violent revolutionary movement is that it is going to take a lot of people by surprise come November. There are a lot of headwinds, some of them are woven into the system at all levels, but we’re watching something we’ve not seen before. Not even in the fights for suffrage or temperance (Ladies: you all did great work on the former, not sure what you were really thinking on the latter) were like this.

  70. 70.

    joel hanes

    @frosty:

    What the fuck is “cis”

    The term comes originally, I think, from organic chemistry.
    It’s above my pay grade, but I find this:

    cis, trans : descriptors which show the relationship between two ligands attached to separate atoms that are connected by a double bond, or are contained in a ring.

    I think that DNA strands have a cis end and and a trans end, and that some ring molecules come in both cis and trans versions.

  71. 71.

    marcopolo

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Well, apparently they are aware they lost the damned election:

    The Alabama House of Representatives Tuesday evening approved a bill that would end special elections for the state’s two U.S. Senate seats when vacancies occur.

    The bill, sponsored by Rep. Steve Clouse, R-Ozark and coming after last year’s special election for U.S. Senate, would allow a governor’s appointee for a Senate vacancy to serve until the next general election in the state, rather than have the governor call a special election. The appointee would go through regularly scheduled primaries for that contest.

    It passed 67 to 31 on a largely party-line vote after a two-hour filibuster from Democrats who said it would diminish voters’ voices in the process.

    It appears, alas, that they did not learn the proper lesson.

  73. 73.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Villago Delenda Est: Exactly. He knows he’s in deep. What he wants is two things:
    1) Keep his son off the hook
    2) Ensure his rank isn’t reduced and his pension/retirement are intact so that regardless of what happens to him, his wife is taken care of.

    He’s toxic now. There will be no senior positions at the big defense or intel companies. No appointments to corporate boards. No appointments at schools of foreign service or think tanks. The best he can hope for is his wife isn’t driven into penury because his retirement package goes poof. And his idiot kid stays out of prison on this. That schmo is so stupid he’ll eventually get nicked for something else.

  76. 76.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Mnemosyne: That’s really what it’s all about. The cause is not nearly as important as the egos of dudebros, who can’t imagine a world where white men do not call the shots. They are every bit as racist and sexist as the Trumpanzees in their own class struggle way. Sort of like the asswipes of the Weather Underground.

  77. 77.

    T S

    @frosty: I think it means you are and identify as the sex you were born with. I keep up with some of the commentary from some of the more vocal and strident activists and I don’t want to particularly disparage individuals for a variety of reasons, but I think a big problem is they are in a bubble creating new definitions of old words and getting really invested in them, and being mad at other people for being ‘awful’ because people aren’t as invested in using all the new definitions of old words precisely the way they do in their bubble. I’m more than happy to use whatever pronoun you want, y’all…just didn’t know you were going to be so mad that most of the time I use the word “woman” as shorthand for “people with vaginas,” even though there are exceptions to that.

  78. 78.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Villago Delenda Est: @Omnes Omnibus: A small group are paying attention. Mostly women. I’ve seen Joy Ann Reid and Rebecca Traister and Michelle Goldberg cover it. Even Yglesias and Silver were tweeting/writing about it. But women leading a revolution, let alone women of color, is so far outside the narrative that American political, news media, and corporate leadership have been socialized to that they won’t clue in until too late.

    And the funny thing is that the literature on religion, from The True Believer to more recent works on the Irish Troubles to the Palestinian intifadehs all make clear the important role that women play in revolutions, rebellions, and insurgencies. While a lot of this is teaching the revolutionary history and ethos to their children and grandchildren, some does include actually leading and/or fighting.

    Ignorance is bliss. There are a lot of mistakenly blissful men in America.

  79. 79.

    celticdragonchick

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Women showing up to march or protest has a looong history of being ignored or violently suppressed. Fair pay marches in New York City a century ago were broken up by police who sometimes used metal pipes to cause maximum injury. Judges refused to intervene and instead castigated the women for not being at home or at work where they belonged. It was bad enough that wives of millionaires finally got involved and started marching incognito with the striking women, which forced police to back off.

  81. 81.

    Mary G

    @Adam L Silverman: I dunno, Oliver North is still alive and kicking on the wingnut welfare circuit, and I am sure there will be audiences champing at the bit to hear Flynn lead cheers of “Lock Her Up” like he did at the convention.

  83. 83.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @Adam L Silverman: I think people in general are just completely oblivious to the amount they allow the narratives that they’ve constructed in their own heads to control how they perceive the world. I’m too tired and, frankly, bewildered to provide a coherent explanation of this in full, but on the whole, people construct narratives from faulty memories of imperfect perceptions they’ve made of the world and then allow those narratives to convince them that they have complete understanding of how the world works.

    Ugh. That’s a really awkward sentence and if I were in a better frame of mind I’d revise it to be more elegant, but hopefully it’s at least comprehensible. A shorter version: people convince themselves that their perceptions and memories are reality. They’re not. Human perception is imperfect and human memory is even more so.

    But in some cases, this may actually work to humanity’s advantage. Misogynists and racists are completely oblivious to how pissed off women and POC are – which is by all appearances going to come back to bite them in the ass in November. Good. And as Sun Tzu put it, all warfare is based on deception, and they’ve certainly been deceived to a flabbergasting extent. It’s pretty ironic that most of the deception is self-inflicted, though.

  84. 84.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Gretchen: As someone who’s been through the process a couple of times, the worry is that in the hundreds of questions on the forms you honestly misanswered or forgot something and that you’ll wrong foot yourself in the face to face interview. Or that the legitimate answers will be viewed as illegitimate by the interviewer. Or, as was the case the last time I went through, you get an interviewer who starts by asking if I knew the woman her ex had an affair with when he was assigned to the same place I was. That was a bit surreal. I reported that immediately to my boss and my facility security officer. Of course, had my clearance been held up, that would have provided a hell of a reason to reverse the decision.

    Turns out she was still pissed (and rightly so) and there were some unresolved issues still pending in the divorce and she was hoping I’d provide something juicy she could use. But it was both a very way to start off and very unprofessional.

  85. 85.

    joel hanes

    @Adam L Silverman:

    (Ladies: … not sure what you were really thinking on the [Temperance movement])

    That’s an easy one.
    They were thinking that they were sick and tired of their husband coming home dead drunk, or drinking himself into violence or a stupor at home.

    Today the average American consumes 2.32 gallons of ethanol per year, and 20% of the population consumes 80% of that.
    In 1830, average consumption peaked at 7.1 gallons a year.
    http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31741615
    Not quite as bad as the London gin craze, but pretty awful.
    See Twain’s depiction of Pap Finn.

  86. 86.

    No Drought No More

    If true, I wonder when Gates realized his cause was not served by trying to brazen out the Mueller investigation any longer? My guess has it he was simply treading water the whole while, praying for a presidential pardon that never materialized. It would figure. After all, Gates knows better than anyone else that he’s guilty as sin (I assume). My other guess is that Gates, being a crook and a fixer himself, bet the Muller investigation could and would be aborted by republican party fiat. Which, of course, might well still happen. The GOP is making it’s move to kill our democracy, and it’s happening in real time. Strangely enough, congressional democrats (in particular) feel constrained to point out that out publicly, pending the results of Mueller’s investigation. That reticence is a mistake, albeit one all too typical of that party’s shot callers.

    That Susan Collins was once applauded in an airport makes her a no less sinister republican party operative than Mitch McConnell, or Paul Ryan, or the president of the NRA. That’s a cold stone fact that senator Schumer refuses to acknowledge. Tonight Schumer praised and invoked her name on the Rachel Maddow show as a democratic party ally in the Dreamer fight. He almost looked as if he suddenly realized how preposterous he sounded.

    Schumer certainly looked tired and stressed tonight- as he damn well should. Lest We Forget: the republican party successfully plotted and unleashed the 2003 War in Iraq. 13 years before Russia’s attack on this country in 2016, the United States was betrayed by those people in a matter of war or peace. I’ll never understand, I suppose. What the hell else does Schumer need to know about the republican party beyond that treason in order to gauge the depth of their depravity?

  88. 88.

    Elizabelle

    I want to hear that Mueller is deposing members of Mitch McConnell’s and Paul Ryan’s staffs. Then I will feel much happier. Take those traitors out too.

  89. 89.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @No Drought No More: What Schumer says in public about his colleagues may not always be what he believes. There are certainly incentives he might have to be diplomatic about them even if he thinks their actions are despicable. To put it another way – he’s probably going to have to work with a lot of these people for years or even decades to come. That doesn’t necessarily mean that he actually likes them, but it’s probably more advantageous to pretend that he does because it may lead to getting things done that would be impossible if he just went about publicly trashing every Republican in the Senate.

  90. 90.

    celticdragonchick

    @joel hanes:

    Cool, thanks for the tip :)

    Also check out The Women Men Don’t see by James Tiptree Jr…who as actually this person:

    Alice Bradley Sheldon (August 24, 1915 – May 19, 1987) was an American science fiction author better known as James Tiptree Jr., a pen name she used from 1967 to her death. She was most notable for breaking down the barriers between writing perceived as inherently “male” or “female”—it was not publicly known until 1977 that James Tiptree Jr. was a woman. From 1974 to 1977 she also used the pen name Raccoona Sheldon.

    Tiptree was inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2012.[2]

    She was a respected academic and a major in the USAF in addition to her science fiction writing career, which has become legendary.

    I am also betting you know every bit of this, but it is for the benefit of some other interested reader who might see this!

  91. 91.

    Adam L Silverman

    @(((CassandraLeo))): They’re basically smoking their own stash. Which several of the defense attorney types hereabouts will be happy to confirm is a good way to go from being a successful dealer to incarcerated.

  92. 92.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @Elizabelle: I am certainly looking forward to the day McTurtle and ZEGS are frog-marched out in handcuffs. I have no doubt whatsoever that they’re every bit as guilty as Dolt 45.

    @Adam L Silverman: I like that metaphor more than filter bubble. I may end up stealing it. (Well, I’ll probably provide attribution if I remember.)

  98. 98.

    celticdragonchick

    Senator Tammy Duckworth is having a baby!! Woot!! :D

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/us/politics/tammy-duckworth-pregnant-senate.html?module=WatchingPortal&region=c-column-middle-span-region&pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=thumb_square&state=standard&contentPlacement=3&version=internal&contentCollection=www.nytimes.com&contentId=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2018%2F01%2F23%2Fus%2Fpolitics%2Ftammy-duckworth-pregnant-senate.html&eventName=Watching-article-click

  100. 100.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mary G: North was following orders to bypass the Boland Amendment. He wasn’t selling out the US to foreign powers for money. Flynn may be able to do some talks, but no company that does business with the DOD or IC can hire him.

  101. 101.

    celticdragonchick

    @Adam L Silverman:

    For some reason, that does not deter police brutality. Maybe it’s because they keep getting away with doing horrible things to people and not paying any price for it….

  106. 106.

    joel hanes

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I’m an engineer. We tend to give serious answers to rhetorical or facetious questions.
    It’s no end of fun at parties.

    Well, to be truthful, it tends to be the end of fun at parties.
    But it’s an observable trait.

  110. 110.

    celticdragonchick

    @joel hanes: My spouse and I both have hard science degrees, and we are both most likely non diagnosed Aspergers. We are guilty of it, believe me….

  113. 113.

    Mnemosyne

    @celticdragonchick:

    IMO, it will only start deterring police brutality when cops start being convicted by juries and sent to jail for killing people. Right now, we have a situation where a cop can shoot a fleeing suspect in the back on camera, claim he was “in fear for his life,” and be acquitted by a jury. What’s the incentive to stop killing people when there’s no chance of paying any kind of legal penalty when you do, even when there’s filmed evidence of you doing it?

  114. 114.

    Manxome Bromide

    @frosty: as I understand it, both word roots go all the way back to Latin – “trans” means “across/crossing” and cis means the opposite: “on the same side of”. I first encountered it not through chemistry but through space stuff – “cislunar orbit” stays on our side of the moon.

    I haven’t really seen “cishuman” used as an antonym for “transhuman” but it’s a better word than “baseline human” if you ask me.

  115. 115.

    AnneWith

    @Mnemosyne:
    There are also those who are saying that WOC feel that pussyhats are only for white women, because ::sigh:: the pink supposedly represents our genital tissue.

    For the 100th time, people (not you Mnemosyne, I know you know), it’s a pussy-as-in-kittycat-hat. It’s a visual pun calling back to the Vulgarian-In-Chief’s statement to “Grab ’em by the pussy!” The pink is because it has been assigned as a women’s color, so we’re claiming it.

    Adam, Jennifer Rubin’s another who’s been paying attention to the Women’s Marches.

  117. 117.

    Patricia Kayden

    @marcopolo: Wow. It’s always about naked political power for Republicans. It’s never about allowing folks to exercise their right to vote. Had they picked a better candidate (a non-pedophile), they’d have won that seat.

  118. 118.

    Amir Khalid

    @Adam L Silverman:
    It has occurred to me that President Trump might regard his interview as a bossman-to-bossman interaction and insist on seeing the Special Counsel himself — both as a matter of due respect to his bigly Presidentiousness, and with the intent (misguided, naturally) of cutting some under-the-table deal with Mueller that preserves both Trump’s freedom and his Presidency.

  119. 119.

    NotMax

    @Amir Khalid

    More likely is an arrangement to have Ivanka ‘spontaneously’ pop in.

    “Since she’s here anyway, you wouldn’t mind if she stays, right? Come sit by Daddy, honeybunch, you can take notes.”

  120. 120.

    Citizen Alan

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    I saw a clip of The Young Ones on YouTube the other day and suddenly realized why I found the far left so ridiculous. As a rule, they all remind me of the Rik Myall character being hysterically convinced that not only would his communist poetry be what brought about the revolution, but that it was the only thing that should be allowed to.

  124. 124.

    schrodingers_cat

    I don’t see any planning about what to do in these repetitious posts, just an endless rehash of the navel gazing game theorizing, where all outcomes point to an R victory.

  126. 126.

    Mnemosyne

    @AnneWith:

    Yes, that’s another reason it pisses me off — it was specifically created to be an all-inclusive symbol, and assholes decided to try and use it to divide people by claiming that it’s secretly a symbol for only one group.

    I mean, the goddamned idea was invented by an Asian-American woman, who I’m pretty sure did not conceive of it as “whites only.” FFS.

    @schrodingers_cat:

    FWIW, we wandered off the topic almost immediately.

  127. 127.

    a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)

    @Mnemosyne: It is from the Latin, where cis- meant (originally, anyway) “On this side” and trans- meant “on the other side”. Probably the best know ancient use was Cisalpine Gaul–the Gauls living on the Italian side of the Alps–and Transalpine Gaul–the Gauls living on the other side of the Alps. Plus, I suppose, Alpine Gaul, but they didn’t have any prefixes and so are not useful for definitional examples.

    It’s used in chemistry as well, which may be where it’s derived for gender descriptions.

    This episode of language geekery for jackals has been brought to you by the letters Aleph and Digamma, and the number 3.1415926535897932384626433…

  128. 128.

    Annie

    Somebody on this blog was sure Robert Mueller would be fired in August. Guess their crystal ball was broken.

    I know I’ve posted this before, but it looks like I need to do it again:

    1. I am not unaware of the possibility of Robert Mueller being fired and have memorized the location and time of protests in case that happens.
    2. This isn’t The Apprentice. Dolt45 himself cannot fire Mueller. Rod Rosenstein would have to do it, Sessions being recused. If he refused someone else in the Justice Department would have to be found to do it.
    3. PLEASE read the following links — the Mueller appointment document, and 28 CFR 600.7(d) re what Mueller can be fired for.

    https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/967231/download

    https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/28/600.7
    See subsection d.

    Rosenstein has stated publicly that he sees no grounds to fire Mueller.

    So a certain degree of alertness is necessary. Perpetual hysteria is not.

  129. 129.

    J R in WV

    @celticdragonchick:

    Sorry to hear you’re in pain. After two joint replacements, I know that territory a little bit.

    Do stay in touch here when you can…

    Take care, best of luck!!

Comments are closed.