Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Spilling the end game before they can coat it in frankl luntz-approved dogwhistles.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

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

If you’re looking for someone who’s young and athletic, go watch a fucking movie.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

It’s not hopeless, and we’re not helpless.

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

“Cheese and Kraken paired together for the appetizer trial.”

Trump makes a mockery of the legal system and cowardly judges just sit back and let him.

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

The lights are all blinking red.

Fuck that bum, let’s go Joe!

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

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

Second rate reporter says what?

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Sunday Evening Open Thread: BET’s SotU Rebuttal

Sunday Evening Open Thread: BET’s SotU Rebuttal

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No disrespect to my homeboy Joe Kennedy III, but some people seem to be gleeful that “Auntie Maxine” will give her own response to Trump on Tuesday. Per the Bustle:

While Rep. Joe Kennedy will be giving the official Democratic State of the Union response, frequent Trump critic Waters will be giving her own statement on BET immediately following Trump’s speech. She’ll be joining Angela Rye’s State of the Union, along with several other activists and public officials. BET has announced that the show will air quarterly and will discuss the most important issues facing black people in America.

“Queen Maxine is going to hit the facts quick, she’s going to do it as only she can, but we’re not going to linger over his nonsense,” Rye, a political commentator/analyst and CEO of IMPACT Strategies, told The Root in an interview. Rye said the Tuesday evening show will focus on what Trump’s first year has meant for black Americans…

This assumes, of course, that Lord Smallgloves can be coaxed or intimidated into showing up live, and that he doesn’t cap his “speech” by setting fire to the podium or his own hair.

No matter what you personally think of Rep. Waters’ skills, take heart: She will be less ridiculous than the Tea Party responses to President Obama’s SotU, because more ridiculous than those people one cannot be. And watching the ensuing attacks from both the right and the alt-left should be entertaining, because that lady will brush a dude aside with sufficient force to severely bruise his public status.

***********
Are we gonna live-blog Tuesday’s Big Event? On the one hand, rubbernecking the inevitable disaster; on the other, do we want to run up Donny Dollhand’s viewing stats, which he’ll pay more attention to than he does to even the most positive/negative reviews of his actual performance?

Reader Interactions

155Comments

  2. 2.

    Hobbes83

    Just a slight critique; I hate it when people refer to the crazy caucus as the “tea party’”. They are the logical outgrowth of the modern Republican Party. Full stop.

  3. 3.

    Anne Laurie

    Mnemosyne says:
    January 28, 2018 at 7:58 pm (Edit)

    Also, I entered a contest for unpublished romance authors today. I’ll either get to be one of the 6 finalists or I’ll get a score sheet back that will help explain why I’m not a finalist. Either way, I get a score sheet, so it’s win/win as far as I’m concerned.

  4. 4.

    NotMax

    Open thread?

    Eye of the beholder and all that.

    It is rather ironic that Saudi Arabia, which prefers that its women cover their faces and hide their feminine form, should sponsor a beauty context. But they do, only it is for camels and not ladies, at least not of the two-legged kind. This year’s King Abdulaziz Camel Festival provides a considerable monetary prize for the most beautiful camels, overall a total of 118 million riyals or close to 32 million dollars for the winners. Considering that some 30,000 camels are participants in the month-long festival, the competition makes any other beauty contest look rank amateur.…
    [snip]
    While there is no need for a bathing suit promenade, there are several ways in which the camels are presented in the raw. There are the group events for the best flock of 30 camels and 50 camels. Then come the individual categories. The winner of the most obedient camel will take home 50,000 Saudi riyals. But, of course, the highlight of the festival is finding the most beautiful camel.
    [snip]
    Given the prestige of having the most beautiful camel and a very large monetary prize, it should not be surprising that some owners cheat.… Source

  5. 5.

    Lisa

    Please liveblog so I can follow that instead of watching the SOTU. Definitely going to watch BET afterwards. Birmingham mayor Randall Woodfin is going to be on a panel – y’all should check it out.

  7. 7.

    Brachiator

    I had posted this in another thread, but I can’t resist repeating an easy joke.

    Ingvar Kamprad, founder if IKEA has died. I understand that he will be buried in a wooden casket. Some assembly required.

  8. 8.

    NotMax

    FPers might consider “Misstate of the Union” as a title for a dedicated thread.

    Or maybe “Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics Dolt 45’s SOTU.”

  9. 9.

    Patricia Kayden

    Live blog? Naw. I suppose one of us has to watch to highlight the absurdities but as many of us as possible should boycott the State of Trump’s Bigoted Union carefully scripted speech. Hopefully, it will be the least watched SOTU ever.

  10. 10.

    Patricia Kayden

    @NotMax: I suppose it’s similar to our dog contests. Funny that there are no similar contests for cats (to the best of my knowledge).

  14. 14.

    Raoul

    I think I’ll watch an episode of The Crown during SOTU. It’d be great if Netflix, and Bezos’ Amazon etc would all announce/leak their streaming counts for the hour SOTU happened.

  16. 16.

    Anne Laurie

    @Patricia Kayden:

    Funny that there are no similar contests for cats (to the best of my knowledge).

    Ha! There’s a cat show almost every weekend here in the US, and even more around the globe. The cats are not expected to prance around a ring, like confirmation show dogs; they *are* expected to let their handlers carry them from their crates to a judging table, and to let the judge(s) touch their bodies in the most intrusive & personal fashion (peering at their teeth, and checking to make sure that male cats have both testicles). Which means that people raising cats ‘to show’ start training the kittens almost from birth, to be handled by strangers without freaking out. Although, from the cat shows I’ve attended as a spectator, cat-show judges are *much* more understanding about a cat who suddenly decides they don’t want to participate any longer than dog-show judges are about a dog who decides to melt down in the ring…

    There are also, to my knowledge, rabbit shows, hedgehog shows, chinchilla shows, koi (fish) shows, shows for almost every variety of pet bird; not to mention the beauty shows for horses, cows, sheep, pigs, llamas, chickens, ducks…

    I actually had to memorize the beauty standards for dairy-cow showing, for a Dairy Science class I took 40 years ago. Out of 100 possible points, 25 were devoted to the shape / size / functionality of the udder (not really surprising, given the animals’ purpose in life)… and up to 10 points were to be awarded, or not, for “poise.” Yes, once you know what to look for, some competition cows have poise, while others do not. And I’ll bet there’s a similar quality that’s rewarded in those camel beauty competitions, too!

  17. 17.

    JPL

    @Raoul: Since I already watched the Crown, I’m going to watch Mudbound . I had planned on watching it today, but chores got in the way.

  18. 18.

    NotMax

    Amazon’s byzantine shipping algorithms strike again. Ordered four items a week ago today. All are supposed to arrive tomorrow (Monday), three via USPS and one via FedEx.

  22. 22.

    lamh36

    Evening BJ peeps. I made it to this Grand Market place …sitting on the stone bench thingie lookin across af the “Angels Flight” contraption thingie.

    Black chick, blue shirt small afro…

  23. 23.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    The bombshell accusation came Saturday night as former “Charles in Charge” cast member Nicole Eggert accused actor and fellow cast mate Scott Baio of sexually assaulting her while she was a minor.

    This is gonna make Baio unemployable.

  27. 27.

    Ohio Mom

    @Raoul: what else do you make up IKEA names for? You are quite good at this rather arcane skill.

    Sign me,
    Just in IKEA two days ago.

  28. 28.

    eclare

    @JPL: Tried to watch it a few days ago, I need to figure out how to lighten up my tv picture with the newish Comcast remote, the picture was too dark to figure out what was going on.

  29. 29.

    RandomMonster

    I can’t stomach watching more than a minute of the corpulent coprolite wafting his foul stench into the nostril of the body politic.

  31. 31.

    MomSense

    I just watched the most disturbing thing on the series Dirty Money. Volkswagen was “testing” their emissions by putting non human primates in sealed chambers connected to the tailpipes of vehicles. Watching the monkeys being gassed and looking agitated is one of the worst things I have ever seen.

  36. 36.

    SectionH

    @Anne Laurie: I know they judge lotsa animals at 4H shows, for instance, but as a former horse girl, I’ve gotta say, most horse shows are all about the performance of the horse, whether it’s cutting horses, calf roping, dressage, jumping, or “just” horses going through their 3 or 5 gaits. Plus the team that the horse and rider make, of course. There is a thing called a confirmation class. No, not the church thing, but a beauty contest where yeah, it’s mostly how close the horses come to the ideal of the breed -but they’re hardly a feature. At the shows which even have them, there might be one.

  38. 38.

    eemom

    I find it hilarious that people are calling for a boycott on Dump’s SOTU. Like calling for a boycott on the Bang Your Head On the Wall To Self-Induced Concussion Olympics.

  39. 39.

    J R in WV

    I vote for the live blog, that way dozens of people (well maybe more than that) will be watching the State of the Union (sad) here rather than somewhere that Trump can claim us as watchers. For dammed sure we don’t want that!

    I would hope that Congresswoman Waters gives Trump a real talking to. It should be later in the evening, so Trump would have time to get home to the punk’s white house and watch her tear him a new butt-hole. Live, don’t you know!!

  44. 44.

    Brachiator

    @schrodingers_cat: Don’t know if you saw how well Padmaavat did in its opening weekend.

    And rounding out the top ten is a stellar performance from Viva’s Padmaavat, which kicked off its weekend in 295 IMAX locations on Thursday with $507k and added another 29 locations over the weekend to finish with an estimated $4.2 million for a chart-topping average of $13,188 per theater. The film’s performance breaks the all-time record for the largest Bollywood opening in North America previously held by P.K.s $3.56 million from 2014.

  45. 45.

    Ken

    he doesn’t cap his “speech” by setting fire to the podium or his own hair.

    Or disassemble the teleprompter, as he did at one campaign event.

  47. 47.

    debbie

    The only way I would watch is if I knew someone would yell, “Fake news!” after he said that the state of the Union was the best ever.

  51. 51.

    NotMax

    Will Dolt 45 unveil a first by showing a (so-called) highlight reel on video displays at the SOTU?

    Don’t discount the idea, it’s right up his twisted, fetid alley.

  55. 55.

    rikyrah

    NO SHOCK

    Phone-addicted teens aren’t as happy as those who play sports and hang out IRL, new study suggests

    Posted Jan 23, 2018 by Sarah Buhr

    So says a new study from San
    Diego State University, which pulled data from over one million 8th-,
    10th-, and 12th-graders in the U.S. showing teens who spent more time on social media, gaming, texting and video-chatting on their phones were not as happy as those who played sports, went outside and interacted with real human beings.

    But is it the screen time bringing them down or are sadder teens more likely to insulate themselves in a virtual world? Lead author of the study and professor of psychology Jean M. Twenge believes it’s the phone that contributes to making them unhappy, not the other way around.

    “Although this study can’t show causation, several other studies have shown that more social media use leads to unhappiness, but unhappiness does not lead to more social media use,” Twenge said.

    Though abstinence doesn’t seem to fix the problem, either, as noted
    in the study, there’s something to Twenge’s theory. Another recent study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and also lead by Twenge, found a spike in depression and suicide among teen girls increased the more time they spent on their phones.

    That’s alarming, especially considering the age in which kids get
    smartphones has continued to climb lower — dropping from 12 in 2012 to 10.3 years in 2016.

  59. 59.

    tobie

    I do hope that the Progressive Goddess, all praise to her, finds a way arrange Kennedy’s and Waters’ rebuttals to the SOTU, so I can hear both. I’ll skip the Orange Turd’s speech but do want to catch Kennedy, who’s chosen to speak at a vocational school, and Waters who can torch Trump like no one else’s business. Please, FPer, live blog so I can know when it’s safe to turn on the TV!

  60. 60.

    Brachiator

    @rikyrah:

    So says a new study from San
    Diego State University, which pulled data from over one million 8th-,
    10th-, and 12th-graders in the U.S. showing teens who spent more time on social media, gaming, texting and video-chatting on their phones were not as happy as those who played sports, went outside and interacted with real human beings.

    They used to say similar stuff about kids who watched too much television. Or who read too many books.

    Also, happiness is overrated, especially when it comes to teens.

  62. 62.

    FlyingToaster

    I’d suggest that whoever sacrifices their evening to liveblog the trainwreck watch it on CSPAN. I can’t, as I have a 10-year-old to wrangle into bed every evening.

  64. 64.

    Brachiator

    The Koch Brothers are working on a comprehensive middle term strategy. From a recent CNN story.

    This year, the network plans to redouble its policy efforts on criminal justice reform, and already it has been in discussions with the White House in recent weeks on a path forward. Mark Holden, senior vice president and general counsel for Koch Industries, said “there is an appetite to at least advance prison reform, and I think that’s a great place to start.”
    The network also hopes to influence the immigration debate, pushing for a path to citizenship for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and countering White House efforts to curb legal immigration, as with proposed changes to the visa lottery system. Daniel Garza, president of the network’s LIBRE Initiative, said Saturday that the network “cannot support arbitrary cuts to future legal immigration levels.”

    And Koch groups are poised to invest more money in this election cycle than in any previous midterm, they said — likely close to $400 million to fuel the network’s political and policy priorities. That spending target is essentially unchanged from what the network announced during the same seminar last year, when President Trump was newly sworn in. But the political outlook for Republicans has not improved since then, with party strategists forecasting a bruising election next fall.

    It would be nice if the Democrats had a counter-strategy, starting with the SOTU responses.

    I think that the Democrats have an advantage with respect to citizen dissatisfaction with Trump. They just need to build on it, and understand that the GOP is going to be fighting dirty to protect its position.

  65. 65.

    jl

    I hope both of them do well. I don’t know much about this particular Kennedy, but I don’t have time to keep track of them.

    I hope neither Dem tries to make it a big deal, some kind of national debutante coming out speech. I think that is a mistake many of the speakers make. If it were any other GOP president, I’d say also a mistake to try to exaggerate and condemn everything. Another mistake of all the GOPers who have disappeared into the black hole of the SOTU response. Just be matter of fact, kick ass where you need to kick ass, agree where appropriate to agree, and propose constructive compromises. Hell, even with GW, you could talk about immigration reform to take a break from damning and kicking ass.

    But, then, this is Trump, so… don’t even know how many minutes whatever toxic nonsense he spews will remain operative after the speech is over, or even if anyone will be able to tell whether Trump remembers anything he said. I won’t watch the SOTU for fear of BP spike, but will watch both responses.

  67. 67.

    JR

    @Brachiator: The internet is different in that 1) it involves other people 2) it liberates people’s basest instincts. For kids that can be a real trap.

  68. 68.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Brachiator: The whole controversy was over nothing. The movie is a valentine to the Rajputs and quite regressive in its glorification of Jauhar (ritual self immolation), which is something many have found problematic.

    ETA: Padmini’s story comes with a lot of baggage in India, she is the idealized epitome of a Rajput woman.

  70. 70.

    Libraryguy

    Hi folks,

    I got a DM from someone asking about our store (Tis the Season Dec. 11 2017) so I thought I’d do a quick update. I posted before but I wasn’t in the right thread. :)

    First, let me thank everybody who sent us support, emotional and otherwise; it felt great to have so many people reach out! We received almost 50 orders by the end of the year, which was a huge help for our family. If you didn’t see it when John posted my thank you before, let me just say it again – thanks, everyone!

    We eventually had to close our brick and mortar store on December 31; the landlord was inflexible and nothing had opened up in town, and still hasn’t. :( We are continuing the online store though, and have new consignment products all the time. If you liked what you ordered before or want to get something for Valentine’s Day, we’d love it if you’d think of us.

    Lastly, we lost our Rosie just after the first of the year. She got a viral respiratory infection that was too much for her. She was one of the sweetest, funniest pups I’ve ever met.

    Again, thanks for the help, and for listening.

  71. 71.

    Brachiator

    @JR:

    The internet is different in that 1) it involves other people 2) it liberates people’s basest instincts. For kids that can be a real trap.

    Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Internet ain’t going away. Hell, there are probably adults who use it too much and who set a bad example for kids.

    Perhaps there is a need to help devise defense and coping strategies for kids. However I would kick out all the “experts” who hate technology.

    Btw there are quite a few tech evangelist women who are parents as well as tech adepts who have already contributed much to helping kids navigate the Web safely. Georgia Dow, who is a therapist as well as a Mac evangelist, comes to mind.

  73. 73.

    efgoldman

    @Brachiator:

    I understand that he will be buried in a wooden casket. Some assembly required.

    My kid says she personally saw well over 100 posts in that vein before 1000 this morning. My variation was “when they assembled the casket, they had to call the help desk a dozen times.”

  75. 75.

    Brachiator

    @schrodingers_cat:

    The whole controversy was over nothing. The movie is a valentine to the Rajputs and quite regressive in its glorification of Jauhar (ritual self immolation), which is something many have found problematic.

    Some historical dramas cannot help but be problematic and will invariably upset someone. I have read that some of this film was toned down. Some viewers seem to take all this in better than critics.

    There is a sniffy, somewhat dismissive review of the movie in your favorite newspaper The New York Times. At one point the reviewer was upset that the Muslims were treated as one-dimensional villains. I could not finish the review. It just seemed a waste of time.

  76. 76.

    efgoldman

    @Patricia Kayden:

    as many of us as possible should boycott the State of Trump’s Bigoted Union carefully scripted speech.

    I have, and will boycott every appearance of Ferret Head of which I am warned in advance (in advance means more than a nanosecond ahead.)
    I may drop in here for shits and giggles.

  77. 77.

    Cheryl Rofer

    I will probably watch, partly out of morbid fascination and partly because I like to see how a person, even Trump, carries himself and puts expression on the words. A lot of that is fairly predictable: He will swing back and forth to face the teleprompter screens instead of the audience because he can’t keep enough words in his mind to speak smoothly, and his emPHAsis on the words and sentences will be off because he doesn’t practice the speech – maybe doesn’t even read it beforehand.

    If Adam doesn’t post it here, I’ll try to. And I’ll comment here and on Twitter.

  78. 78.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @efgoldman:

    I have, and will boycott every appearance of Ferret Head of which I am warned in advance (in advance means more than a nanosecond ahead.)

    Fuckem.

  79. 79.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Brachiator: That reviewer doesn’t know what she is taking about. I have noticed factual errors in her reviews more than once. Most Indian reviewers thought that Khilji’s character was the most fleshed out and interesting one. BTW the poet of the saga this movie is based on was a Muslim too.

  80. 80.

    Brachiator

    BTW

    Btw there are quite a few tech evangelist women who are parents as well as tech adepts who have already contributed much to helping kids navigate the Web safely. Georgia Dow, who is a therapist as well as a Mac evangelist, comes to mind.

    This is not just a “mommy” issue, but some of the most thoughtful commentary on kids and the Net has come from women I’ve heard talk about it.

    Some of them also fold in their own experiences and solutions in dealing with online harassment.

    The best commenters come from a practical, pragmatic perspective, and one that does not fear the Internet, or treat it as some mysterious threat.

  84. 84.

    sdhays

    @NotMax: Wow. So the Saudi’s have dog shows for camels, and they can get nasty. Shocking!

    But instead of relating to how virtually every other kind of livestock or animal raised by humans has some kind of show contest related to the market for the beasts (and how the people involved care deeply about the results), the author thinks that judging women on their subjective beauty is the appropriate metaphor. I wonder if he spent more time rewatching Miss America when researching this piece than on anything actually related to camels or Saudi Arabia.

    And no editor raised a red flag here?

  86. 86.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Duane: I’m certain I cannot. Not even sure I want details for at least a couple of days on how embarrassing/ insane / narcissistic he was. So no live blogs either.

    Auntie Maxine maybe I’ll watch.

  91. 91.

    Jay S

    @Cheryl Rofer: Perhaps you and Adam could tag team. I imagine you would have somewhat different perspectives on the speech. Thanks for being willing to take one for the team.

  92. 92.

    Libraryguy

    @raven: That’s my wife’s curse, every cold has an insomnia aftershock. She’s in the middle of a cold now, which means no sleep come Tuesday.

  93. 93.

    raven

    @Libraryguy: I can’t remember having slept this much except maybe after my hernia surgery a couple of years ago. I moved out to the couch and will give it another try.

  94. 94.

    Libraryguy

    @raven: Good luck! If your couch is like our old one, it’s easier to fall asleep on it than the bed sometimes. It just “feels” like you can fall asleep on it.

  97. 97.

    opiejeanne

    @raven: My sympathies. Sleeping at the wrong time of the day and not being able to later, at bedtime was one of the most annoying things about the cold I had.

    The other was not being able to breathe. I spent nearly two weeks sleeping sitting up on the couch because lying down felt like drowning. Nasty, miserable, I can’t afford to be that sick ever again. I’m only 67 but I feel extremely frail now.

  99. 99.

    raven

    @opiejeanne: I’m 68 and have been ill since the Rose Bowl! I thought I had it whipped last week so I swam a couple of days but I’m not sure that was too swift.

  102. 102.

    smike

    “The state of the union is so fantastic!11! I’ll tell you how fantas… – I’ve had people tell me it’s never been this fantastic. Never! Can you believe it? Can you believe how fantastic it is? It’s never been this fantastic. Believe me.”

    There, I saved you the trouble of watching. You’re welcome.

  106. 106.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @smike: Yeah, cheeto-face will be gushing about how great the economy is doing, never mind it’s all Obama’s fault, two-scoops had nothing to do with its current state. The coming depression? All Donnie’s.

  107. 107.

    BruceFromOhio

    “My Abusive Boyfriend Really Has Changed This Time, I Swear”

    Gaia, I cannot believe we have come this far to have to live with this shit. Listening to the cowlicks breathe heavily about how this is his chance to be presidential. News flash, Le Fart Cloud de Tangerine has been president for a fucking circuit of this planet around the sun. That time, it is past.

  108. 108.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Some clues (or rumors) as to what is in Devin Nunes’s memo.

    So it looks like the sources and methods that might be disclosed are those that provided information about Carter Page, according to Glenn Simpson, a source in the Trump camp, although there may be others, like the Dutch intelligence hack I wrote about. Some speculated that the Dutch article was a warning to the US not to leak more about their sources and methods.

    Anyhoo, that’s how it looks to my tired brain. And it makes sense, in the Devin Nunes universe, that this would be the subject of his memo. But it seems to be easily rebutted by the arguments I’ve seen that there is not enough in the Steele memo to justify a FISA warrant and would need additional information. Looks like Nunes is arguing that the Steele information is totally contaminated by association with the Clinton campaign. Which, again, is rebutted by the fact that it was a Republican newsrag that first funded his work.

  109. 109.

    eemom

    tbh, I’ve never gotten into SOTUs at all, even during the Obama years. Much as I adored him, there is something about the scripted pageantry of standing ovations and poster child guests that maxes out my bullshitometer.

    Also, after 2010 you had to look at Boehner, then Ryan.

    Now, of course, it’ll be a threefacer of evil. #nothanks

  113. 113.

    Yutsano

    @Major Major Major Major:

    I learned in the last couple weeks that people have started saying the fire emoji out loud.

    #waitwhut?

    Also: you could not pay to make me watch. Not even to look at the horror of his make-up job.

  114. 114.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Major Major Major Major: yeah that’s a crazy situation. I’ll need the help of the LA crew once the screenplay is finished.

    A lesson for all you kids out there: don’t do things that will land you in a Brazilian prison, including but not limited to laundering money for an international drug and arms cartel. Especially if you used to be my CPA!

  118. 118.

    matt

    Maxine Waters watches so you don’t have to! I’ll definitely look for the highlights the next day.

  119. 119.

    frosty

    @eemom:

    I’ve never gotten into SOTUs at all

    I can’t recall having watched a single one of them by any President. There was paint drying that needed attending to. Or something.

  123. 123.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Major Major Major Major: @MisterForkbeard: I didn’t have a dawg in that fight until law school, where we were taught unequivocally that “judgment” is correct and “judgement” is for poseurs, Goths, and Brown alumni. Non-lawyers may not care either way, but you will be judgd by lawyers.

  124. 124.

    Mnemosyne

    I have to say, although I always laugh at “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” I wonder in every episode why they never get arrested for anything they do.

  125. 125.

    Brachiator

    I guess Bruno Mars won everything at the Grammys. But this skit must have been fun.

    In an unexpected prerecorded segment at Sunday night’s Grammy awards, Hillary Clinton read a few lines from Michael Wolff’s bombshell Trump White House exposé Fire and Fury. The former secretary of state was the last of several famous folks to appear in the video, in which Grammys host James Corden pretends to be auditioning narrators for the Fire and Fury audiobook.

    In the run-up to the video, Corden joked that by next year’s awards the Trump presidency will have inspired a spoken word album and potential Grammy nominee. Spoofing the concept, John Legend appeared reading from the book, which contains allegations that caused a media firestorm upon its release earlier this month.

    Expect the usual suspects to moan about politics being mixed with their music.

    ETA. I see that David Koch noted the comedy skit also and provided a link.

  126. 126.

    Steve in the ATL

    @MisterForkbeard:

    I’m just not sure how “judgment” makes sense – phonetically

    Silent e. Makes perfect sense phonetically. Unlike the lack of forks in your beard, which was highly disappointing!

  127. 127.

    Amir Khalid

    I look forward to seeing the reviews of SOTU: The Trumpening. I’m confident they will be hilariously unkind.

    I was in a guitar shop today. A very pleasant visit with a knowledgeable and friendly salesman. Unfortunately, as he was reaching for a Strat to show me, his jacket zipper got caught on the high-E string of a Thinline Tele. With no wire cutter at hand to free himself, he had to carry the Tele around the shop for the duration of my visit..

  129. 129.

    Amir Khalid

    @Steve in the ATL:
    “judgment” is usually preferred in printed media to save space, but as far as I know in formal English both it and “judgement” are acceptable everywhere.

  131. 131.

    Ruckus

    @Mike in NC:
    I think I may be a bit cruder than some, but I’d call what drumpf does is actually masturbation. Yes he’s looking for pats on the back but it means more to him than that. Because he’d only be getting pats on the back at most and that’s not satisfying enough for him. And as no one else will give him the satisfaction he requires, he gives it to himself.

  135. 135.

    marcopolo

    I’m up late finishing the last of the last of the GOTV postcards for MO special elections on Feb 6th. We had a huge turnout at the coffee house today completing well over 1K cards. The best part was a visit from a candidate we wrote cards for 2 weeks ago. He said that as he has been out door knocking over the past ten days he will occasionally run into people who race back into their houses to grab and show him the great handwritten postcard they got to tell them to get out to vote. He said the postcards were the single biggest positive mover he has seen with his voters. So there’s that.

    For anyone who wants to write some here is the website. We worked out a special deal to do specifically MO special elections as we are in St Louis but Postcards to Voters is doing elections all over the country.

    Also too, I just saw reporting that Beto O’Rourke handily outraised Ted Cruz last quarter in the Texas Senate race.

    U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-El Paso, easily outraised U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz over the last three months in his campaign to unseat the Texas Republican, raking in over $2.4 million to Cruz’s $1.9 million.

    Okay off to bed now.

  137. 137.

    Ruckus

    @Lizzy L:

    I’d rather watch paint dry.

    It would be:
    1. More entertaining
    2. More truthful
    3. Far less stressful
    4. Safer for your TV or computer.
    5. Far more fun

  139. 139.

    eemom

    @Steve in the ATL:

    omg, yes. I remember being inducted into the sacred spelling, a thousand years ago, as a first year associate.

    That superfluous e is an abomination unto all that is holy.

  140. 140.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @eemom: That “e” does supply a certain amount of consistency. As in casement and basement, rather than casment and basment.

  141. 141.

    patrick II

    Looks like Nunes is arguing that the Steele information is totally contaminated by association with the Clinton campaign.

    Nunes may actually believe that. Anytime republicans investigate something (emails) the motive is not fact finding but entirely political. It may be hard for him to imagine anything else.

  142. 142.

    Sab

    @schrodingers_cat: I do not understand why the NYT is considered the gold standard in everything, because they are almost invariably wrong in everything they cover, not just politics. They can’t even get art history right, and nobody cares about that.

  143. 143.

    Sab

    @Amir Khalid: When I took the bar exam in Michigan in 1980, our bar review course said if we spelled judgment with the extra e we would automatically fail all our essays.

    Brits use the e ( judgement) which makes sense phonetically, Americans don’t, because we are Americans and we don’t do what Brits do.

  144. 144.

    ? Martin

    @raven: Yeah, I don’t get that. My preference would be for the feds to regulate a single 5G standard and then have coverage for different parts of the country bid on (roughly zip code level). Carriers (or anyone else) could then bid to cover that area, collecting a share of the traffic. Obviously high-traffic areas will bid higher. Feds can use the revenue to subsidize rural areas to get full national coverage. This would also allow new players to get into the market. I could see co-ops in rural areas paying for their own infrastructure and collecting revenue on traffic to pay it off.

    By eliminating the network as a variable in the business model, the carriers would have to compete more on customer service.

  146. 146.

    Elizabelle

    Good evening.

    With schrodinger’s cat and others: you could not PAY me to watch the SOTU. It was bad enough to read the fawning Davos reviews. (“He’s all about the Benjamins, so he is OK with us.”)

    Fire and Fury, in English, is all over the place here (I’m visiting Germany). I’m told it’s selling well for being in English. I still can’t bear to buy or read it, but enjoy every time I see it displayed.

  147. 147.

    NotMax

    @Martin

    Manhattan island alone has nearly 100 ZIP codes (97, IIRC). At first blush, the thought of dozens – or even scores – of carriers of varied quality, capability and dedication jostling with one another within the same fishbowl is amusing but doesn’t seem very practical.

    Bidding by area code rather than ZIP code might perhaps be more sensible? In states with a single area code, a method could be devised to carve out discrete areas rather than award the state as one lump.

  148. 148.

    NotMax

    @NotMax

    Let me amend that slightly.

    At first blush, the thought of dozens – or even scores – of carriers of varied quality, capability and dedication jostling with one another within the same fishbowl to provide and maintain a vital and necessary service is amusing but doesn’t seem very practical.

  149. 149.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Elizabelle:

    Fire and Fury, in English, is all over the place here (I’m visiting Germany). I’m told it’s selling well for being in English. I still can’t bear to buy or read it, but enjoy every time I see it displayed.

    It’s a good read.

  150. 150.

    Elizabelle

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Hmmm. Maybe will buy a copy, and read it on my flights home. I am all for Michael Wolff exposing what the FTF Vichy NYTimes prefers to pretend away.

    Should read Wolff’s book on Murdoch too.

  151. 151.

    Ben Cisco

    Not watching the SOTU (fucked up and bullshit) – recently cut the cord; my watching was limited and in the last eighteen months became more so. I’m fully confident that Ms. Waters will do a more than appropriate job of dragging Cantaloupe Caligula; both her response and Kennedy’s will prompt the requisite clutching of pearls by the right, the press, and the far “left,” and unlike the PBO years where there were official (and officially covered) GOP and “Tea Party” responses, only Fat Bastard’s speech will count among our courtier press.

    I’m ready for the tumbrels already.

  152. 152.

    Barry

    @Libraryguy:

    “That’s my wife’s curse, every cold has an insomnia aftershock. She’s in the middle of a cold now, ”

    Melatonin. 5 mg 1 hour before bed.

  153. 153.

    J R in WV

    @Brachiator:

    Really?

    [A]review of the movie in your favorite newspaper The New York Times. At one point the reviewer was upset that the Muslims were treated as one-dimensional villains. I could not finish the review. It just seemed a waste of time.

    The New York Times, one-dimensional villian itself with regard to the Clintons, hating on one-dimensional Muslim villians. Shockingly amusing~!!!!

  155. 155.

    LanceThruster

    She’s been my hero long before she tried to intervene in the election theft of 2000.

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