Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

We still have time to mess this up!

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you do not.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Fight them, without becoming them!

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

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

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

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

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

You are here: Home / Politics / Activist Judges! / Russiagate Open Thread: The Knives Are (Still) Out for Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III

Russiagate Open Thread: The Knives Are (Still) Out for Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III

by | 177 Comments

This post is in: , , , , ,

And yet first-term Rep and aspiring Trump ballwasher Matt Gaetz was on Fox today, agreeing with “Judge Jeanine” that beta cuck Sessions should either appoint a more Repub-friendly special counsel or GTFO:

Rep. Matt Gaetz and a dozen other House Republicans are calling for the Justice Department to appoint a second special counsel to investigate surveillance abuses against the Trump campaign…


Gaetz said on “Outnumbered Overtime” that a second probe would provide “real accountability for these crimes that were committed against President Trump and his team.”

He said Republicans called for a second special counsel seven months ago, but Sessions took no action.

“If Jeff Sessions doesn’t want to do the job of attorney general, he should step aside and we should get somebody who wants to do that job.”…

This came after Chris Christie’s Sunday performance, saying that if the president really wants an Attorney General he can trust, maybe he should just man up and do something…

(Yeah, I don’t think even Donny Dollhands is dumb enough to fall for Christie’s bluff, but ya can’t fault the man for trying.)

Remember last week, per the Washington Post?

Perhaps Attorney General Jeff Sessions was desensitized by President Trump’s “DISGRACEFUL” tweet on Wednesday, but if he has any feelings left to hurt, then the former senator from Alabama might have been further wounded by Thursday’s daily news briefing.

Asked if Trump plans to fire Sessions, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders replied, “Not that I know of.”…

Sessions made a move Tuesday that could have pleased Trump, when he said the Justice Department’s inspector general would investigate possible abuses of surveillance powers. Trump has claimed that his presidential campaign was a victim of such abuses.

But Trump was not satisfied; on Wednesday, he tweeted his frustration that Sessions had tapped the inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, to conduct the probe. Horowitz was nominated to the U.S. Sentencing Commission by President George W. Bush but assumed his role during the Obama administration, a fact that apparently makes him suspect, in Trump’s eyes…

I’m not going as far as Gail Collins, but I’m certainly happy to root for injuries in this fight:

…Sessions has been in hot water pretty much since the moment he took over the job and then recused himself from any investigation into contacts between the Trump campaign and Russians. This was based on the fact that when he was working on the Trump campaign he had contact with a Russian.

But the president was outraged! “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” he demanded. It is possible that until then, Sessions didn’t realize that his boss’s ideal A.G. would be somebody whose career was highlighted by McCarthy witch hunts and concluded with a disbarment for unethical conduct.

Cohn was Trump’s own personal lawyer during his New York club-crawling days, and it is definitely true that if he was now in charge of the Justice Department, the special prosecutor would be fired, kidnapped or tossed in a river with a cement bootee.

So you can see why the president is dissatisfied. And of all the stupid-to-terrifying things going on in the White House, one of the most depressing may be that Jeff Sessions is becoming a sympathetic figure.

Not that he hasn’t kept trying to reingratiate himself. Remember that on-camera cabinet meeting in which Trump’s appointees competed to see who could gush the most compliments in the shortest period of time? Sessions came in very near the top, assuring the president that the forces of law and order were “so thrilled” to have him in command…

How long do you think he’ll last? Well, he’s made it clear he doesn’t intend to go on his own volition, and despite the massive churn in the administration, most of the departed have resigned under their own power. Trump, who we’re discovering is terrible at firing people, has actually canned only three — the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, the acting attorney general and the F.B.I. director.

Hmm, what do all those offices have in common?

Reader Interactions

177Comments

  3. 3.

    SiubhanDuinne

    And yet first-term Rep and aspiring Trump ballwasher Matt Gaetz was on Fox today, agreeing with “Judge Jeanine” that beta cuck Sessions should either appoint a more Repub-friendly special counsel or GTFO:

    Anne Laurie, have you been coaching with Betty Cracker? I’ve always admired your way with words, but somehow you seem so much … looser and DGAF recently. I like it.

  4. 4.

    clay

    aspiring Trump ballwasher Matt Gaetz

    AL, you’re giving Betty a real run for her money in the Creative But Profane Descriptions Of Trumpers Dept.

    EDIT: Huh.

  7. 7.

    Jay

    If the dumpster fire keeps being so giving for the rest of the week, I might not make it to Friday. It’s still Monday here.

  9. 9.

    Anne Laurie

    @SiubhanDuinne: Dealing with Trumplodytes is degrading everyone’s vocabulary!

    Srsly. Between my parochial-school training and the fear of making less freespoken commentors uncomfortable, I’d always tried to keep my posts on the safer side of NSFW. But these days, it’s almost impossible to discuss politics without using vulgarities, isn’t it?

  11. 11.

    WaterGirl

    In case anyone would like to see a photo of my little Henry, recuperating after surgery. It will be a week tomorrow.

    Henry

  12. 12.

    Jeffro

    On a more serious note it is funny seeing the RWNJs trying to page Jeff sessions as some sort of closet Liberal

    Heck even Rick Wilson was doing it at the end of last week pretending that Trumpov was a closet Democrat, and I saw it a couple of other places as well

  13. 13.

    scott (the other one)

    @Jeffro: I dunno. Our MSM isn’t learning and they’re so fucking wired for GOP dominance that I can see it taking hold anyplace even remotely to the right of MSNBC.

  15. 15.

    satby

    @WaterGirl: I think his haircut looks very handsome, and at least he looks comfortable in the picture. How’s he doing? How are YOU doing keeping him quiet?

  16. 16.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    Holy cow. I guess I picked the wrong day to decide to be disciplined and stay away from any news media because I wanted to finish a project. Or maybe I picked exactly the right day.

    Looks like there was a half-submerged nunberg in the path of the RMS Trump.

  19. 19.

    Adam L Silverman

    Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life:

  21. 21.

    El Caganer

    “We know a lot about facts.” WTF? You don’t know dick about facts, you fucking moron. “Fucking facts. How do they work?”

  23. 23.

    WaterGirl

    @satby: Not to be a whiner, but it’s been a very stressful week. I asked the vet today if we cold ditch the liquid medicine because the epic fights are beyond “not fun” and he fights me so much that I’m afraid we will hurt his leg. So now we have another pill, which is fine because he loves his peanut butter pill pockets. That’s a huge relief.

    I’ll spare you the rest of the details of why it’s been so damn hard and stressful, but it hasn’t been because he wants to be too active. That will come later this week, I expect, or surely next week when Tucker comes home.

    I got him a huge crate over the weekend – I figure if he has to be stuck there for 6-10 weeks, at least it can be big enough for him to move around and settle in at different places.

    Henry is such a sweet boy that even after the epic struggle with the liquid meds, he would turn around and lick me. What a good boy.

  26. 26.

    Mnemosyne

    @Major Major Major Major:

    True story: G had a library patron start screaming at him about how the Western literary canon was being destroyed because there were no O. Henry books in the “O” section.

    Explaining that “O” was the author’s first name and she should look under “H” did not work. Nothing could convince her that the author’s name was not O’Henry, including physically leading her to the correct shelf.

  29. 29.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Adam L Silverman: Are there any honorable Republicans left? Every single one of them appears to be sleazy. I fear for this country if Congress remains in their hands post-November because Republicans aren’t going to do a dang thing to reign Trump in.

  32. 32.

    joel hanes

    I so look forward to Gaetz losing his run for re-election.
    In a House caucus of awful, awful people he manages to stand out for awfulness.

  35. 35.

    satby

    @WaterGirl: gosh, I wondered how you would keep Henry quiet with Tucker around. It was smart to have Tucker take a vacation too. One week down, five to go (hoping for the low end of the recovery estimate)!

  39. 39.

    rikyrah

    The KKKeebler Elf WILL NEVER QUIT.

    He is living out his White Supremacist fantasies.

    You will pry away his ability to hurt non-White people from his cold, dead hands.

  40. 40.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Patricia Kayden: When that tax bill came along, up to that point Trump had presided over virtually zero large or sweeping accomplishments, and the donor class was making serious noise about okay this is it, no tax cut bill and we’re done, no more bankrolling. If they had failed to get enough votes on that, I don’t think most people realize how much there was a real possibility, or at least it was the only chance, that Republicans in Congress might have stopped protecting Trump and cut their losses.

    And of course all of the “moderates” dutifully stood up and voted for it, ensuring that the bankrolling would continue and McConnell and Ryan et al would now never consider abandoning Trump.

    So no, none of them have any integrity, and the ones who pretend to, the least of all.

  41. 41.

    WaterGirl

    Henry is blushing at all the nice comments and compliments on his good looks. Or at least he would be, but he is asleep by my side, so I will read him your comments when he wakes up.

    Henry is SO happy when he gets to come out of the crate 3 times a day to lie next to me on the couch or on the mattress I moved to the floor. When he’s out, he doesn’t have to wear the blow-up neck thing, which is a million times better than the cone of shame but he is still thrilled when it comes off for awhile.

  43. 43.

    hellslittlestangel

    The presidential announcement that Chris Christie dreams of hearing:

    “Today, I have ordered my Attorney General to IMMEDIATELY proceed to McDonald’s to pick up my order. Is he here? Is Christie here? Oh, there he is. Listen, don’t get anything for yourself. You’re too fat already. Look at him. Look at him. He’s fat. He’s so fat. Isn’t he fat?”

  44. 44.

    WaterGirl

    @satby: Tucker is staying with my friends Rich and Diane for 2 weeks. We simply couldn’t have gotten through the first 2 weeks with Tucker around. I miss him, but he and Henry normally play constantly. I’m trying not to think about what will happen when Tucker gets home. I miss Tucker, though.

  45. 45.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?: Yes, that was intentional. If you want to bring this thing across multiple threads and keep fucking that chicken… Stalin didn’t give two shits about friendly relations with the West. The fact that you think it even crossed his mind…. Go read some history.

  46. 46.

    Lizzy L

    If Trump fires Sessions, his next choice will be Giuliani. I wonder how the Senate will react to that?

  47. 47.

    WaterGirl

    @Lizzy L: Anyone who gets on board the Trump train at this point is even stupider than the people who are already involved with this administration, and I wouldn’t have thought that was even possible.

    I mean, even if you have no integrity, can you not say “legal bills”?

  48. 48.

    Jay

    @WaterGirl:

    Casey and Digger used to chase eachother around the basement, rearrange the livingroom furniture, chew on each others necks when tired,

    But when Casey came home from the surgury, Digger was a perfect gentleman, until she healed.

  49. 49.

    ? Martin

    BTW, Sam Nunberg was the guy tasked explaining the Constitution to Trump. So, y’all can imagine how well that went.

  53. 53.

    efgoldman

    @Mnemosyne:

    Nothing could convince her that the author’s name was not O’Henry

    He could have beat her with the Britannica W-Z. Nobody uses them now, anyway.
    (My milk of human kindness has been leaking away)

  54. 54.

    Ruckus

    @Anne Laurie:

    But these days, it’s almost impossible to discuss politics without using vulgarities, isn’t it?

    No, it’s totally off the fucking scale impossible.

  55. 55.

    WaterGirl

    @? Martin: On one of his podcasts, Preet was laughing with one of his guests about the fact that Trump got bored by the time Nunberg got to the 4th amendment. Lots of yucks about the fact that Donald doesn’t seem to even know that the right to not incriminate himself even exists.

    edit: If only he could have lasted through one more amendment!

  56. 56.

    WaterGirl

    @Achrachno: I always had to think twice about whether Jimmy Buffet and James Taylor would be filed under J or under the last name.

  58. 58.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @efgoldman: My parents had the 1911 edition. Bought used at a book sale. Half one week, half the next. As a kid. I used to just pull volumes at random and read shit. Look how I turned out.

  62. 62.

    WaterGirl

    @Omnes Omnibus: 1911 was the year my dad was born. We had encyclopedias, too, and would do the same thing. Just pull it off the shelf and read. No hyperlinks back then.

  63. 63.

    Ruckus

    @Patricia Kayden:
    I keep saying that Ike was the last honorable republican. Nothing I’ve seen in the last 50 yrs has dissuaded me of that. And the last 26 yrs have made me quit looking.

  64. 64.

    efgoldman

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    My parents had the 1911 edition.

    We had the Funk & Wagnall’s, bought a volume at a time at the Acme Supermarket in Aberdeen, MD, I think every two weeks in the mid-late 1950s.
    I’m sure they’d have liked to have a Britannica, or Americana, or even Collier’s, but that stuff cost real money.

  66. 66.

    efgoldman

    @WaterGirl:

    We had encyclopedias, too, and would do the same thing. Just pull it off the shelf and read. No hyperlinks back then.

    Our granddaughter is coming up to five; she loves books and the library has been her favorite place since she was about 18 months. We’re going to have to explain to her, someday, that we used to do research by physically going to the library and looking stuff up in books.

  67. 67.

    Lizzy L

    @Omnes Omnibus: Same here. I inherited it from them. I loved to just hang out and read it. A friend of mine bought it from me (it was a pretty desperate time, I really needed the money) and still has it.

  70. 70.

    Ruckus

    @? Martin:
    OK maybe one honorable republican, Bob M.
    He pulls this off like we hope he’d be able to run for office as a dem. Even as a dem with an R after his name. Cause the republicans won’t have him.

  71. 71.

    Jeffro

    FYI Fox News dot com has completely dropped any mention of Nunberg in its reporting … for 20% of our country, it’s as if today didn’t happen

    (Nothing about Tillerson not spending a penny of that $120M to counter Russia either btw)

  72. 72.

    WaterGirl

    @efgoldman: @Omnes Omnibus: We had World Book encyclopedia set. I have no idea how that stacks up against the other brands.

    Talk about random things… At my 8th grade pajama party – don’t ask me why – but we used the encyclopedia and memorized some Jewish prayer so we could play a prank on one of the girls (sleeping at the time) and convince her that one of us was Jewish and that the rest of us had already known that, how could she not have known?

    This was right before we drew stuff on her face with marker.

  73. 73.

    B.B.A.

    @Lizzy L: It’s still a Republican Senate. They’ll grill him over his past support for gun control and continuing his predecessors’ “sanctuary city” policy in NYC, then reluctantly confirm him because something something 9/11 BENGHAZI.

  74. 74.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @efgoldman: The Brit was expensive when it came out. In the early 1970s, it wasn’t expensive. It is probably valuable again. It, along with their art, is what I will want from my parents’ estate 40 years from now. My brother will, of course, be more practical.

  75. 75.

    Aleta

    Meanwhile, at yahoo news:

    A third confidant of Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed to turn state witness and testify against the prime minister, who faces a wave of corruption allegations, Israeli media reported Monday.

    Various outlets say longtime Netanyahu family spokesman Nir Hefetz agreed to testify in return for a more lenient punishment. He joins Shlomo Filber, another long-time aide, enmeshed in scandal. Both are under arrest on suspicion of promoting regulation worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Israel’s Bezeq telecom company in return for favorable coverage of Netanyahu and his family by the firm’s popular news website.

    Israeli police have recommended indicting Netanyahu for bribery, fraud and breach of trust in two separate cases. Longtime aide Ari Harow is a state witness in one of those.

  78. 78.

    Ruckus

    @efgoldman:
    We had the World Book. It seems that someone mom knew sold them. I think. I remember asking why we bought them, seeing as how a lot of things would change every year, couldn’t we just go to the library? I also remember getting the stink eye for that question.

  80. 80.

    WaterGirl

    @efgoldman: Oh my god, hours at the copy machines in the library, photocopying page after page after page when writing a research paper.

    I could read from the bible at 5 – I was my parent’s little parlor trick for the cocktail parties. Always loved books and reading. Trixie Belden, Nancy Drew and anything I could get my hands on. We were all readers, my sisters and me. I can never understand why/how parents say “Bobby doesn’t like to read”. When my -ex had a son who didn’t like to read, we made sure to find really fun books like Sideways or Captain Underpants or Hank the Cow Dog. I bought him The Phantom Tollbooth and every night at bedtime his dad would from that book read to Cody and then the next night Cody would read some to his dad. By the end of that summer, Cody liked to read.

    Reading is fundamental.

  81. 81.

    Jay

    @WaterGirl:

    Dog’s don’t often get the credit they deserve.

    When I blew my back out working on our current house, I took three weeks off in the rental in town, to get my back, back into shape. A week in, I got bored, and decided to build a drift boat in the basement.

    Long story short, blew my back out again, and managed to crawl to the bottom of the basement stairs. Both Casey and Digger came down and laid down beside me to keep me warm on the cold concrete. After an hour, Casey went upstairs, and came back down with the fluffy fleece blanket and fuzzy bone pillow I had bought her when she had her first surgury.

    The wife came home at 7pm, and managed to get me back upstairs.

    Meanwhile, the cat’s were real assholes.

  82. 82.

    randy khan

    Christie is too much of a wimp for this, but in the back of my mind I have this picture of him maneuvering Sessions out and himself in, and then turning to Trump and saying “You though you had your revenge on me by kicking me out of the transition? I’ll show you revenge. Just ask Jared’s dad.”

  86. 86.

    No Drought No More

    If Roger Stone cracks under the pressure too, I hope he spends the rest of his life in a straight jacket at a loony bin, spinning in circles while screaming at his Nixon tattoo in a frenzied attempt to bite and chew it off his back.

  87. 87.

    H.E.Wolf

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    My parents had the 1911 edition. Bought used at a book sale. Half one week, half the next. As a kid. I used to just pull volumes at random and read

    Congrats on having the 1911 edition!

    I was the happy recipient of a free set of the 1937 Britannica, from a work colleague who’d inherited it from parents or grandparents and didn’t want it. (How could anyone not want an encyclopaedia whose first volume was “A to Annoy”?)

    When co-workers interrupted me and I needed a minute to wrap up whatever I was in the middle of, I’d suggest they look up “penicillin” while they waited. It would have worked equally well with the 1911 edition. :)

  88. 88.

    NotMax

    @WaterGirl

    Have an ancient reel-to-reel tape made at a cocktail party the parents held. They set the machine to record and let it run for the bulk of the evening. In one part, I am ushered in to read aloud. Was probably no more than 4 at the time.

  90. 90.

    Mart

    @WaterGirl: I used to visit the Encyclopædia Britannica’s printing plant. They also printed Rand McNally maps, other books, and such. When the encyclopedias and maps started coming out digitized at much lower cost, knew it was the beginning of the end of an era. Those plants are long shuttered. I received an “F” and a helpful plagiarism lecture in seventh grade for copying a couple paragraphs out of EB and forgetting to change the British spelling to ‘murican…

  92. 92.

    WaterGirl

    @efgoldman: We weren’t mean girls, it was just a goofy thing to do, we were all best friends. I think we were all snorting and laughing halfway through the prayer.

    I was really sweet as a child. I would even pick up the grasshoppers and put them in my bicycle basket and take them for a ride because I thought they must get tired jumping all the time. And now every day I say “what the fuck is wrong with these people” and “when are they gonna throw these bastards in jail?” Oh well.

  94. 94.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Stalin didn’t give two shits about friendly relations with the West. The fact that you think it even crossed his mind

    I never did think that. I thought it was stupid of him that he did not. All I asked was what I said that was so stupid. I legitimately didn’t know.

    I’ll let it go. I don’t want to become another littleboots, heaven forbid.

  95. 95.

    efgoldman

    @WaterGirl:

    hours at the copy machines in the library, photocopying page after page after page when writing a research paper.

    For a set of Beethoven symphonies I produced, I took the trolley to Copley Square to the main Boston Public library. This was 1973-ish.
    I got books out of the stacks, but the librarian wouldn’t let me photocopy anything that was under copyright. Notes in pencil on a yellow legal pad, retyped later on an IBM Selectric.

  96. 96.

    WaterGirl

    @Ruckus: It was a big stinkin’ deal that we didn’t have to go to the library to do our homework assignments.

    But speaking of libraries, I can still remember what my first library smelled like. It was upstairs in kind of a walk-up apartment. It was right around the corner and it smelled like books. Then they moved the library to a new building a few blocks away and it was all modern and everything. Big disappointment.

  97. 97.

    WaterGirl

    @Jay: That’s such a sweet story. A blankie and a pillow, amazing. Good dogs.

    Glad you were okay. I bet that was a long several hours.

  98. 98.

    efgoldman

    @Mart:

    I used to visit the Encyclopædia Britannica’s printing plant.

    Was that the one on the Cambridge side of the Charles River, near or beside where the Boston Edison plant was?

  99. 99.

    Jay

    @WaterGirl:

    Went to the libraries, ( school, town, University) so much as a kid, ( and later), back in the day where they still had “adult” sections and guidlines, so much that the librarian’s passed on “restricting” my reading.

  100. 100.

    Matt McIrvin

    @efgoldman: My parents got me the Grolier New Book of Knowledge, which was OK for a kid’s encyclopedia… but the one I liked more was a somewhat different animal: the Random House Encyclopedia, this strange 2900-page single-volume doorstop that attempted to cover every facet of human knowledge, history and achievement in a two-page spread with large color illustrations. I’m not sure it was any good as a reference work, but it was good for browsing.

  102. 102.

    WaterGirl

    @Jay: Me, too! The librarian at the “new” library tried to tell me what I could and couldn’t read, and then my mom went and had a chat with her.

  103. 103.

    efgoldman

    @WaterGirl:

    I couldn’t have made it through grad school without being able to photocopy half the library.

    Maybe they cut more slack in University libraries. Or maybe you came along that much later, when they bowed to the inevitable.

  104. 104.

    Jay

    @WaterGirl:
    My back’s been toast since I was 18. I’ve spent a lot of my life lying down in strange places, waiting. Dogs, bone pillow, fleece blankie, could have been worse.

    I could have done without the cats showing me close up their “fresh one eye” after using the litterbox in the laundry room.

  106. 106.

    WaterGirl

    @efgoldman: I started grad school in 1983, so yeah, about a decade later. Probably old hat by then. Plus I still think your librarian was a nazi. (small n)

  107. 107.

    NotMax

    Do recall a full set of Funk & Wagnall’s as well as a boxed set “Encyclopedia of Science.” Three volumes of teeny tiny print, IIRC; would probably fill multiples of that today.

    @WaterGirl

    Mom worked during the week, but played Pavlov with mini-me on the weekend. Once a week, a trip to the library. On the walk home, both of us with books in hand, she’d detour to stop at the ice cream parlor.

  108. 108.

    Ruckus

    @WaterGirl:
    Town I grew up in had a pretty large library for the size of the town. By the time I was about 12 I’d read all the books in the kids section other than see spot run level books but was not allowed to check out books out of the adult section, which was not like the adult section at a video rental. Mom took me down and told the librarian to give me an adult card. She declined. Mom said you have a kid that wants to learn and you are saying no, fuck that and give him an adult card. She did. Only time I heard my mom use that word. Sort of opened my eyes to it’s use. Look at me now.

  110. 110.

    Gin & Tonic

    @? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?: You are attempting to judge a mid-20th Century Soviet dictator by your (sorry, limited) 21st Century American perspective. You have so far shown no understanding of the complex forces that led to the rise of Communism and the formation of the Soviet Union, and you impute some sort of “goodwill” to their successful fight against Nazism. That was pure survival for them: kill or be killed. They were not in it for good will, or to get points with the US or Great Britain.

    Really, people are (at least somewhat) trying to help. There are many good biographies of Stalin and many good histories of the Soviet Union and WWII. Read a couple, ask some questions and people may not be so dismissive.

  111. 111.

    WaterGirl

    Okay, I got sucked into reading one more post from LGM:

    The news wasn’t unexpected — Cochran’s worsening health began stirring up rumors of resignation as early as last year — but it still throws a wrench into the 2018 midterm elections, and in particular, the U.S. Senate map.

    That’s because Cochran’s seat wasn’t scheduled to be up for election until 2020, so we’re looking at another special Senate election in the Deep South. As you might recall, Democrats have had some success with those recently. Like Alabama, a Mississippi special election will be a steep uphill climb for Democrats, but like Alabama, the seat could fall into their hands under the right circumstances. Several things would need to go right for Democrats to snag Cochran’s seat — perhaps a bad Republican candidate and a bad Republican political environment — but the 2018 Senate map offers the party such slim pickings that even a reach like Mississippi opening up counts as a meaningful shift.

    Here’s how everything will play out. Under Mississippi law, Republican Gov. Phil Bryant will appoint a new senator to take over for Cochran until a special election is held this November (concurrently with the regularly scheduled midterm elections). There is a catch, though: Special elections in Mississippi are nonpartisan; that is, party affiliations aren’t printed on the ballot, and — instead of party-specific primaries — all candidates will run in one free-for-all of a race. If no one gets a majority of the vote in the first round, the top two finishers will face off in a runoff election.

    bolding mine.

  113. 113.

    efgoldman

    @WaterGirl:

    Plus I still think your librarian was a nazi.

    Copiers were really pretty new in general use (The company where I worked in ’68-’69 had a brand new shiny one). I don’t know how long she’d been there, but it was genuinely new tech to her.
    Plus she had charge of the music research desk, including published books and music from the 1650s or so on, as well as a collection of antique manuscripts, which they kept close.

  115. 115.

    WaterGirl

    @Ruckus: I love your mom. My mom used to say that “fuck” was the most vulgar word in the human language. She would have said “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the kid wants to learn, give her the card” if she had to, but my mom was very prominent in the community so got her way without having to invoke Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

  116. 116.

    WaterGirl

    @efgoldman:

    Plus she had charge of the music research desk, including published books and music from the 1650s or so on, as well as a collection of antique manuscripts, which they kept close.

    That, I completely get!

  121. 121.

    Mnemosyne

    Speaking of libraries, I grew up in the mid-70s to mid-80s and do not recall there being any kind of restriction on checking out “adult” books vs kids books. They did stock Playboy since it still had good articles and I was not allowed to get that, but I was allowed to check out any book I wanted.

    One thing I remember about my town’s library is that they decorated the ceiling above the circulation desk with melted vinyl records dangling from fishing wire to remind patrons not to leave the library’s records in their cars. ?

  122. 122.

    efgoldman

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Really, people are (at least somewhat) trying to help.

    Even historians and history majors, unless they’ve really been immersed in it, can’t understand the scale and savagery of the Eastern Front war. I did immerse myself in the history for a while, and I only have a vague idea. An estimated 20 million (from all causes) in the USSR alone.
    I was in Germany with my dad, in the mid-late 1950s. Even then there were still ruins, and shell-marked buildings, and a bomb or artillery crater on the walk between our apartment and school.

  123. 123.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?

    @Gin & Tonic:

    That was pure survival for them: kill or be killed. They were not in it for good will, or to get points with the US or Great Britain.

    …I was aware of this. Maybe I didn’t give that impression? I suppose I should have said from the beginning that in hindsight the SU’s leaders should have tried for better relations? To avoid the whole arms race thing? Then again the capitalist nations treated them poorly prior to WW2. But, they couldn’t have forseen that (the Cold War and the potential horrors that would result), obviously, and they had little reason to trust the capitalist nations, despite being allies of convenience. Is that better?

  124. 124.

    joel hanes

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    the 1911 [Brittanica]

    Work of art. Wonderful authors, captures the end-Victorian world at its peak of self-assurance.
    Always wanted a set.

  125. 125.

    efgoldman

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    May I ask what your major was? STEM?

    Ooh. Buurrrn!
    Hell, I was a music major and barely made it thru school. (Drinking only to excess will do that for you.)

  127. 127.

    Doug R

    @Ruckus:

    We had the World Book. It seems that someone mom knew sold them. I think. I remember asking why we bought them, seeing as how a lot of things would change every year, couldn’t we just go to the library? I also remember getting the stink eye for that question.

    Exact opposite reaction from my dad. There’s World Books at school AND the public library, why spend the money?

  128. 128.

    Mnemosyne

    @? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?:

    People who are not motivated by having power over others find it hard to understand those who are. Stalin was far more interested in having power and control over the Soviet Union than he was in having a functioning country.

    It seems illogical to you because you are not someone who is motivated by power.

  129. 129.

    joel hanes

    We had the Encyclopedia Americana, the Book of Knowledge set for kids, and Lands and Peoples.
    I have them in boxes in storage, awaiting the day that I own a house with enough room for enough bookcases
    (there is no such thing as enough room for enough bookcases)

    Lands and Peoples is an amazing time capsule now: a lot of pre-WW II “ethnography”, akin to the old National Geographic. The human world of 1935 – 1950 was very very different from the world of today, and the cultures of the world had not yet blended as they now have.

  131. 131.

    Aleta

    @WaterGirl: Hey I came here to ask you about Henry, and here he is!

    Fwiw, and may well be worth nothing, with some of my cats and a dog the pain meds seemed to make them more agitated, and even seem a little like they were hallucinating. So I finally asked two vets about it after two different surgeries. Those vets (in different practices) said that, in their opinion, after the first several days, the pain meds were prescribed more for the owners peace of mind than for the animals. (Both had prescribed a full course before I asked though!)

    This was not ACL repair though! So, grain of salt, natch.

  132. 132.

    efgoldman

    @Doug R:

    There’s World Books at school AND the public library, why spend the money?

    I bet he told you he walked to school uphill both ways in a blizzard, too.
    My daughter has been incredibly funny since before she could talk. She was around eight, and i was telling her something or other, and she said “Dad, is this another when i was your age story, or is it important??”
    Zzzazp!

  134. 134.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?

    @Mnemosyne:
    That might have also been a piece I didn’t consider. I’m willing to admit I haven’t immersed myself in the history of this topic but I do know the basics: like the Soviet Union was fighting a war of surivial in ww2.

  139. 139.

    Doug R

    @efgoldman:

    I bet he told you he walked to school uphill both ways in a blizzard, too.
    My daughter has been incredibly funny since before she could talk. She was around eight, and i was telling her something or other, and she said “Dad, is this another when i was your age story, or is it important??”
    Zzzazp!

    He went to a one room school rural Saskatchewan, of course it was a couple of miles away.

  141. 141.

    Steve in the ATL

    We had Compton’s encyclopedia. All my knowledge came str8 outta Compton’s.

    Yo.

  143. 143.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?

    @Aleta:
    I think the main problem was that I wasn’t clear enough about what I was getting at. The lust for power that people like Stalin exhibited was ultimately so short-sighted and wasteful; he caused a lot of human misery.

  144. 144.

    Jay

    @? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?:

    Everybody was.

    In the case of the Soviet Union, the Stakva came up with the dual concepts of Deep Penetration and Deep Defense, to counter German WWI Sturmtroopen Tactics, lessons of the Civil War and modern mechanization.

    [* Schifflen failed in WWI because Reservists can’t march 480 km in two weeks and still be capable of combat.]

    When Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, Soviet Deep Battle was dead, because everybody who knew of it, was dead in Stalin’s Purges.

    Grabbing chunks of Finland, Poland and the Baltic’s, was counterproductive, because those who could have defended those spaces as a Deep Battle buffer, were dead, again in Stalin’s paranoid purges.

    While the Death of Stalin is a farce, it has an element of truth. Stalin died in part, because he had so terrorized his “guards” that they wern’t willing to enter the room when he was having his heart attack, and it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because all the qualified Doctor’s, who could have saved him, had either been executed or shipped to Siberia in the “Doctor’s Plot”.

  145. 145.

    FlyingToaster

    @Mnemosyne: O FFS. This is so unfair to G.

    I work Mondays in WarriorGirl’s school library. I’m the library tech all week long, but I’m physically present on Mondays (when there’s no Librarian or library classes). I’ve been working in libraries since first grade, so I’m pretty clear on “how to teach grade schoolers to use a library”. If the software is up, I spend the day entering books into the digital catalog (we’re in our 2nd year, and close to halfway). Today they had to run an upgrade so I was working on Spring Bookfair procurement instead, and helping various 2nd through 5th graders find stuff.

    We spend a lot of time teaching our students how to use a library — and how to use Wikipedia (see those links at the bottom? The “external references”? Those are important!) and online sources. I spent about 10 minutes with one kid who refused to read nonfiction before this year; he’s finally getting the idea of metaphor and allegory and why poetry or fairytales or fiction might be really really important for him to read. Cultural awareness is a thing, and making sure that kids have been exposed to Sandburg, Stevenson, L’Engle, Seuss, Willems, Tolkein is something we try really hard to make happen. (Note: We don’t have anything by Rand, thank goodness.)

    It’s sad that the basic lessons of “use a card catalog or a digital catalog and follow the directions to the shelf” don’t work, because it seems that people haven’t actually been taught these skills in early grade school. I’ve been doing this for 51 years, and it’s not even my profession (that being programming educational software and simulations). It’s just so frustrating.

  146. 146.

    Aleta

    Propublica:

    In recent weeks, the Trump Organization has ordered the manufacture of new tee markers for golf courses that are emblazoned with the seal of the president of the United States. Under federal law, the seal’s use is permitted only for official government business. Misuse can be a crime.

    Past administrations have policed usage vigilantly. In 2005 the Bush administration ordered the satirical news website The Onion to remove a replica of the seal. Grant M. Dixton, associate White House counsel, wrote in a letter to The Onion that the seal “is not to be used in connection with commercial ventures or products in any way that suggests presidential support or endorsement.”

    After listening to the new ProPublica/WNYC podcast “Trump, Inc.,” a listener brought the signs to our attention.

    Eagle Sign and Design, a metalworking and sign company with offices in New Albany, Indiana, and Louisville, Kentucky, said it had received an order to manufacture dozens of round, 12-inch replicas of the presidential seal to be placed next to the tee boxes at Trump golf course holes. …

    “We made the design, and the client confirmed the design,” said Joseph E. Bates, who owns Eagle Sign, declining to say who the client was.

    (Propublica has a photo of a table of presidential seal tee markers at Eagle Sign, provided by a source.)

    An order form for the tee markers reviewed by ProPublica and WNYC says the customer was “Trump International.” The Facebook page for Eagle Sign and Design shows a photo of the markers in an album with the caption “Trump International Golf Course.”

    It is unclear how many Trump International golf courses will feature the markers. The Trump Organization owns four courses with the “International” name in the U.S. and abroad, with a fifth course in Bali, Indonesia, in the works.

  147. 147.

    Jay

    @FlyingToaster:

    I used to just wander the shelves, read titles and skim.

    I knew how to look up authors/titles/ subjects,

    But I really, really wanted to be surprised.

  148. 148.

    Mnemosyne

    @? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?:

    The lust for power that people like Stalin exhibited was ultimately so short-sighted and wasteful.

    Not as far as he was concerned. As long as he had that unlimited power while he was alive, why would he care what happened after he was dead?

    To me, Khrushchev is a much more interesting figure, because he was Stalin’s willing murderer while Stalin was alive, but he took steps to try and reverse some of the damage once Stalin was safely dead. He even tried to liberalize the Soviet Union a bit, and was forcibly retired for his pains.

  150. 150.

    Anne Laurie

    @efgoldman:

    Maybe they cut more slack in University libraries.

    My second work-study college job, starting around 1974, involved hunting through the stacks to find the articles professors requested, and then photocopying the articles… but we were given special instructions about handling the bound volumes, washing our hands, not cracking the spines, etc. The librarians told us they figured, in case of damages, it would be easier to track one of us down & dock our pay than to train every professor’s grad students to do things properly!

  151. 151.

    MoxieM

    @Omnes Omnibus: My mother swore it (EB 1911) was the Best Encyclopedia Ever. EVAR. and we should prefer that to our up to date World Book with, you know, space flight and shit. Good God.

  152. 152.

    Aleta

    We’ll get rid of him as president, but we will never ever ever be rid of the merchandise.

  154. 154.

    FlyingToaster

    @Jay: That’s what one kid was doing; after 15 minutes I asked him if he needed help, but he was all “No, I’m totally okay.” He found a book and checked it out, no sweat; but I swear he hit 3/4 of the library shelves in the process.

    The nonfiction kid is in his last year here; back to his native Canada next year and hopefully we’ve made a start on introducing him to something besides travelogues and dinosaurs.

  156. 156.

    Mnemosyne

    @FlyingToaster:

    It’s usually not from a lack of trying to teach those skills. A lot of people just aren’t interested in learning them, unfortunately.

    BTW, I saw a preview of the new A Wrinkle in Time movie. I’m not a huge fan of the book (I preferred A Swiftly Tilting Planet), but I thought it was a really good version. They had to condense it a bit, but it worked for me.

    And you will want to have Chris Pine’s babies after seeing him in the movie. He plays the perfect dad.

  157. 157.

    Anne Laurie

    @WaterGirl: I *swear* I wrote the next post before reading your comment here. In fact, I’m only reading these comments now because I was busy writing up that post!

  158. 158.

    MoxieM

    @FlyingToaster: Makes me wanna cry when large or community card catalogs are discarded (no pun intended.) They contain a wealth of fascinating information about who read what, when they read it, often comments about the book. Tons of stuff. I know a few places are able to salvage their card catalogs for archives, but certainly not everywhere.

    Printed Union catalogs and similar reference works however can burn in a pyre like Savonarola!

  159. 159.

    FlyingToaster

    @Corner Stone:

    Anyone explained to him the The Cave?

    No. He’s only in 4th grade. We’re more at the Pilkey’s “Captain Underpants” and Tui Sutherlands “Wings of Fire” and Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” stage. Maybe Palacio’s “Wonder” or “Augie and Me”.

    The middle schoolers run their own library annex. It’s very, very Sturm und Drang down there. Once I told them that I was their tech, not their boss, they decided to ignore me.

  162. 162.

    jl

    I think Sessions is smart enough, and focused enough, to not give a rat’s ass what Trump says about him, as long as he can do what he wants to get done as AG. And there is little good in what he wants to get done.

  164. 164.

    Peale

    @Jeffro: Tired of being defeated by honest Republicans, Obama enlisted his old friend and admirer Donald Trump to devise a plan to entrap otherwise upstanding GOP stalwarts in a web of filth and crimes.

  167. 167.

    Anne Laurie

    @joel hanes:

    (there is no such thing as enough room for enough bookcases)

    The Spousal Unit has his own law: Books expand to fill the shelves available, plus ten percent.

    That’s why the more shelves you have, the more boxes you need. Between us, we’ve got more than a century of practical experience in the field, so you can trust me on this!

  168. 168.

    Anne Laurie

    @Aleta:

    Those vets (in different practices) said that, in their opinion, after the first several days, the pain meds were prescribed more for the owners peace of mind than for the animals. (Both had prescribed a full course before I asked though!)

    There’s painkillers, and there’s anti-inflammatories — which may be the same drug. Painkillers can be discontinued early, but not if they’re needed to reduce tissue swelling. Although switching medications, or using a lower dose, can certainly be discussed with one’s (animal) medical professional.

  169. 169.

    Anne Laurie

    @Jay:

    But I really, really wanted to be surprised.

    That’s one reason I miss card catalogs (as well as shelf-browsing). Sometimes the perfect book isn’t the one you’re looking for, it’s the next one — or two or three — over!

  171. 171.

    Sab

    @Steve in the ATL: We had Comptons also. My mother went out to CA to help my sister when the first grandchild was born. Dad was morose about being abandoned, so hired a scavenger to clean out the attic.

    Out went the Comptons.Out went my David Hume history of England. Out went my great great grandmothers doll bed.Stayed was said favorite sister’s hideously ugly oil painting of some random nude from a painting class in CO.

    That went down in family lore as ” the purge” and nobody ever forgave him. My mother died still kind of resentful. I am stuffing him in a nursing home this summer using the 35 yo purge as my justification for dumping him.

  172. 172.

    Sloane Ranger

    @Mnemosyne: Don’t know if this thread is still live but we had an unpleasant incident yesterday at my local library where I volunteer as a shelver.

    One of the library assistants was almost in tears. She is Rumanian here as an EU citizen and she had to explain to a customerthat we didn’t stock a particular book but we could order it from another library in the County and there would be a small charge for the service.

    The customer went ballistic. Told her that we would be able to buy more English books if we didn’t have to waste money buying foreign language books for people like her and that once we left the EU this would happen as foreigners like her would be gone. Arseholes are everywhere.

    On the EB front I have a set of Children’s Britannia from the mid 1960’s given to me by our neighbours when we lived in Northern Ireland. They were moderate Catholics and emigrated to Canada to escape the Troubles.

  173. 173.

    cosima

    @Sloane Ranger: I’m sorry to hear that. I hope that things like that are rare. Speaking for our little corner of the UK, I’ll say that we don’t get much of that around here, and those who lean that way are given a wide berth. There’s a guy who owns the local pet shop, and given the enormous number of pets here (seriously, I’d say that 2 out of 3 households have a dog or two, and most have additional pets!), that shop should be busy 24/7 — however, he’s a complete nut job, so we all avoid it unless absolutely necessary. After the election he gave me a pro-Trump speech once, and I did a bit of setting him straight. When he did it again, later, I ripped him up one side & down the other, and there were others in the shop to witness it. Silence is enabling that. I wish that someone had stood up to the horrible person in your library, or phoned the police, or one of the employees telling him he’d better apologise or face being banned. Why do the horrible people get to be the only ones who are shouty? Not around me, but then I suppose to them it’s me who is the horrible one.

  174. 174.

    WaterGirl

    @Aleta: Good morning. Thanks for thinking of Henry!

    The vet reminded me yesterday that TPLO surgery for an ACL tear is a big surgery and there’s a lot of pain. I haven’t counted the pills, but the bottle is getting lighter and lighter so I wold guess we’ll be done by the end of the week. Next week he starts with the water treadmill therapy!

  176. 176.

    Denali

    @Sab,

    Dumping Dad in a nursing home seems rather harsh. We olds are constantly challenged to downsize. Your Dad probably thought he was saving you a lot of hassle.

  177. 177.

    ixnay

    @WaterGirl: It’s really good that both you and Henry are getting through this. As your vet told you, TPLO is painful. Water treadmill sounds ideal. Whoever is running it will have thoughts about getting Henry in, if he is less than thrilled by water.

Comments are closed.