Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

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

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

When I was faster i was always behind.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

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

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

So many bastards, so little time.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

You cannot love your country only when you win.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

In my day, never was longer.

This really is a full service blog.

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

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Friday Night Fright Show Open Thread

Friday Night Fright Show Open Thread

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This post is in: 


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I want a version of this cat video with a Trump presser soundtrack. Given the state of our internet, I suspect one may already be out there somewhere…


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And the shock!horror! announcement happened on the anniversary of this tweet…

Reader Interactions

91Comments

  1. 1.

    mad citizen

    Full credit: a few days ago Ozark Hillbilly linked to the cat video. It is great. Sounds like the climactic scene of Psycho.

  2. 2.

    efgoldman

    See Adam’s long post/explainer earlier today. As if we needed any proof that this maladministration is run by the seat of Ferret Head’s ample pants, without consulting anyone, ever. Experts? We don’t need no fuckin’ EXPERTS!

    ETA: And i still think he can’t find any countries other than the US, Canada, Russia and China on a map.

  3. 3.

    jeffreyw

    Steve Marmel
    ‏
    Verified account

    @Marmel
    7h7 hours ago
    More
    Judge: “Seven years.”
    Martin Shkreli: “(Sobs) Can I have a Kleenex?”
    Judge: “Sure. That’ll be one-hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars

  4. 4.

    Jeffro

    I think that
    – any progressives who were dumb enough to start stressing that Trumpov was going to pull this off and fool the rubes, bigly
    – any Trumpistas who thought this was evidence that their faith in The Great Dealmaker was TOTALLY JUSTIFIED, LIBTARDZ!, and
    – any media peeps who agonized over whether this was Trumpov’s “Nixon Goes To China” moment

    should all have to hold hands and run laps at the nearest high school track until they get it out of their system/do their penance, then pass out.

  11. 11.

    jeffreyw

    Laura Walker ? ?
    ‏

    @LauraWalkerKC
    Follow Follow @LauraWalkerKC
    More
    Michael Avenatti – Stormy Daniels’s attorney- says Michael Cohen does not appear to be licensed in Calif – where he filed the arbitration. Oh dear.

  14. 14.

    Emma

    *sigh* Another day of WTBLOODYF! I wonder if there’s a cheap plot of land on Marsco to build my hut.

  15. 15.

    FlyingToaster

    I have a brand new 45 foot high telephone pole in front of my house.

    I also have a broken pole leaning on my front porch propping up live wires about 3 feet above my front yard.

    The tree cutters never showed up to deal with the limbs next door (the ones that brought down the lines and broke the pole), so the wires cannot yet be restrung. So sometime tomorrow this will hopefully happen, and then I can start photographing the carcass of my front stairs. But now I have an insurance adjuster, so come Monday, we should be able to start working on getting new front steps.

    Of course, come Monday, is another nor’easter. Stay tuned.

  16. 16.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @efgoldman:
    I tried explaining this to my boss (banquet center) today. Trump won’t bring the needed experts because he doesn’t see the need for traditional diplomacy, as evidenced by his gutting of the State Department and unfilled ambassadorships, ensuring this “summit” is a disaster that will only serve to elevate the DPRK for no real reason with no concessions. He still thought I was wrong, without saying why I was. For the record, he brought it up.

  17. 17.

    efgoldman

    @FlyingToaster:

    I also have a broken pole leaning on my front porch propping up live wires about 3 feet above my front yard.

    National Grid (or whoever) didn’t come out to make it safe?

    I assume like most houses in the area you have a back door off the driveway (if you have one) or yard

  18. 18.

    mad citizen

    @FlyingToaster: Most of your story seems like it’s on electricity, so do you mean “electric pole”, not “telephone pole”? I am sorry for your outages.
    Some are trying to enhance “resilience” of the system, but at what cost? How should we prevent storm outages? Undergrounding is around four times more expensive. It’s mostly not going to happen where there are overhead lines. In many (all?) places it’s the electric company that builds and owns the poles. Telephone, cable, etc. companies pay to put their wires on the poles.

  19. 19.

    Mnemosyne

    I find out tomorrow if I’m one of the finalists in the writing contest I entered, or if I’m just a giant loser who gets three pages of feedback on what I did wrong. So, really, win-win either way.

  21. 21.

    Amir Khalid

    Any idea where the video came from? This Wan Afiq guy is saying that he found it on the intertubes.

  22. 22.

    efgoldman

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

    Trump won’t bring the needed experts because he doesn’t see the need for traditional diplomacy

    Overthinking it. It’s all ignorant ego, nothing more or less. He’s the smartest guy, he knows everything, a stable genius. Just ask him. He doesn’t know ir care that the diplomatic service exists.

  25. 25.

    Mnemosyne

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

    The prize is getting to fly to Chicago on my own dime for a chance to win $100 if I get first place. Everyone else gets nothing except bragging rights (and, presumably, some sort of certificate).

    Really, the prize is getting the feedback, good or bad. Basically, I paid $25 to have 3 beta readers for my first two chapters, which is a pretty good deal.

  28. 28.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @Corner Stone:
    I normally don’t (anymore) at work. I certainly don’t at my second job. I did feel I had to push back against the stupid assertion that Trump is some kind of diplomatic wunderkind. And it was kind of fun because I knew I was right.

  32. 32.

    FlyingToaster

    @mad citizen: Watertown, Massachusetts, thoroughly ancient infrastructure.

    4-5 wire bands on the pole, top two are electricity, 3rd is telephone, 4th & 5th are cable. The poles are either owned and maintained by (N)Eversource (electric supplier), or jointly with Verizon (telephone supplier). This is further complicated by the fact that this is a corner pole and had a LED light on it (city-owned), which was laying in my front yard and was retrieved by one of the (N)Eversource techs today. Also missing is the street sign.

    Power is on, wires are live; there’s no outage, just a city block taped off until the tree limbs are removed and the wires can be restrung.

  33. 33.

    randy khan

    Michael Cohen is now saying he paid the $130K for Stormy Daniels from his home equity line. If that’s true, what a sucker. If it’s not, it’s not a very clever lie. It’s easily proven either way, though.

  35. 35.

    mad citizen

    @FlyingToaster: Wow! I would say “be safe!” but you already know that. Stay frosty? I’m a state regulator guy. I do think about whether we’ll get to the point where people can leave the grid with their own solar, wind, and batteries. But in old cities with tree cover, that’s probably the last place for that. We’re hooked to the grid. It might make sense to bury some lines if it’s possible, at least until the oceans rise. I’m in Indiana, I believe my state’s official policy is “climate change isn’t real”.

  36. 36.

    Bemused senior

    Well my mom always said to dress warmly or “you’ll get double pneumonia”. I can tell you that there are other ways to get it. I seem to be one of the 25% of flu victims this season who got pneumonia as a complication. Moral is see your doctor if the flu hangs on.

  38. 38.

    Corner Stone

    @randy khan:

    Michael Cohen is now saying he paid the $130K for Stormy Daniels from his home equity line. If that’s true, what a sucker. If it’s not, it’s not a very clever lie.

    There are only two positions to take. Cohen paid it himself with no reimbursement. Or Some other entity paid it and he transferred the money. There’s no way out of this one if they can defy the arbitration clause.

  40. 40.

    FlyingToaster

    @efgoldman: The crew waited 3 hours after they pulled the broken base out and put in a new taller pole (I’m sure it will get cut shorter tomorrow). But they can’t move the broken pole or the wires until the tree limbs are removed, and that requires the specialist “cutting tree limbs in contact with live wires” crew, who was probably still on tree 763 from the past two weeks of nor’easters. I’m sure this will happen while we’re at music school tomorrow, then HerrDoktor and I will install the temporary post mailbox (it’s plastic and likely to last about a month), put up caution tape to keep morons off of the remains of the front steps, and I’ll have Staples print and laminate “deliveries to side door” signs for me.

    The side door is on the through route, as is my driveway. My front door is on a two-block-long street, the first block of which is shut due to live wires dangling over two of the four front yards on our side. Also, no streetlight there means black as pitch.

  41. 41.

    FlyingToaster

    @mad citizen: I did my time 8 years in Bloomington. I’m all too familiar with the mindset in Indian-no-place. IU campus had buried wires; town, not so much.

    I moved to worse weather, but far fewer microquakes. And, well, liberals :)

  43. 43.

    Brachiator

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

    I tried explaining this to my boss (banquet center) today. Trump won’t bring the needed experts because he doesn’t see the need for traditional diplomacy, as evidenced by his gutting of the State Department and unfilled ambassadorships, ensuring this “summit” is a disaster

    Friends (for example, Israel) and foes (North Korea) understand that a meeting with Trump is good because they are likely to get what they want and that Trump is too arrogantly stupid to realize when he has been bested. He will strut around puffed up by a staff that can never tell him the truth without fear of losing their job.

    And he hates, distrusts or disrespects every foreign service employee with any knowledge or expertise. And so he has created a perfect bubble of ignorance. It is amazing and appalling to watch this hot mess.

  44. 44.

    SiubhanDuinne

    And the shock!horror! announcement happened on the three year ten month and one day anniversary of this tweet…

  48. 48.

    hellslittlestangel

    It’s going to be Trump and Kim alone watching porns, betting on whose ejaculate can shoot the furthest.

    The smart money is on the younger guy.

  50. 50.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I want a version of this cat video with a Trump presser soundtrack. Given the state of our internet, I suspect one may already be out there somewhere…

    It would be perfect if the soundtrack consisted of excerpts from Trump’s dystopian “weird shit” inaugural address. Wish I had the Mad Skillz to put it together.

  51. 51.

    Ohio Mom

    @? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: Ever since I found out how young you are, I can’t help but feel a little protective of you. So here goes:

    Next time anyone at work says something about anything remotely political, even if you agree with it, just say, “That’s interesting,” and drop it. No good will come out of any such discussion on the job.

  52. 52.

    jl

    ” Senior admin official on why Trump agreed to the meeting with Kim Jong Un ”
    I don’t think there was ever anything spicific from NK to agree with in the first place, Trump just got a wild hair up his ass when South Korean diplomat reported that NK was open to high level talks.

    “Time and place to be determined”
    Trump sounds like he thinks that he’s doing a teaser for a new reality show. What an incompetent nutcase.

  53. 53.

    Mnemosyne

    @Brachiator:

    Thank you! The other intangible benefit here if I’m a finalist is that the contest is in the Chicago suburbs, so I would be able to have a quick visit with both my mom and my mom-in-law. But we’ll see how it goes.

  56. 56.

    satby

    @mad citizen: And I think rikyrah posted it before Ozark, but I could watch that all day. Watch the pupils of the cat’s eyes change, he’s so engrossed in what he’s watching.

  57. 57.

    randy khan

    @Corner Stone:

    Whether or not Daniels is subject to the arbitration clause, I’d think a criminal investigation could get at the underlying information on how the money was paid and whether (and by whom) he was reimbursed.

  58. 58.

    Corner Stone

    @randy khan: We’re not yet sure if he engaged local counsel. I don’t know the answer either way. Just seems like a small thread to hold on to right now.

  60. 60.

    jl

    @satby: efgoldman means bullshit shithole countries?

    Edit: Nambia qualifies as a bullshit country since it appears to have never existed and refers to nothing, but that doesn’t mean it’s a shithole country.

  61. 61.

    Mnemosyne

    @satby:

    I suspect that the cynics are right and kitty is actually playing with a laser toy while the movie just happens to be on in the background.

    It still makes me laugh, though.

  62. 62.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Mnemosyne:

    So, really, win-win either way.

    Will be hoping for a win, in that case ?

    Seriously, all good luck. I’d say “break a leg,” but given your history….

  64. 64.

    randy khan

    @Corner Stone:

    If I had to bet, I’d bet on him doing it in the stupidest way possible (which would be to have filed as Trump’s lawyer, not as the owner of the LLC or with a local California lawyer), but it’s true that we don’t know. On the other hand, Daniels’ lawyer, who presumably has seen the papers from the arbitration filing, probably does know.

  65. 65.

    Mnemosyne

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    If I get to go, I’ll be in lovely Oakbrook! ?

    Oh, and since I never got to tell you the full John Mahoney story, I’ll just say that he used to hang out in the bar at the Carleton in your hometown. Not Poor Phil’s, the nice one on the other side.

  66. 66.

    jl

    @randy khan: I wonder how much of this unethical and incompetent goofiness has been going on for years with Trump’s legal thugs, but not noticed since the victims are hunkered down trying to put the mess and financial jeopardy behind them.

  67. 67.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Corner Stone:

    He’s not my boss any longer.

    You sprinkled a layer of lime over the corpse, right? It speeds up decomposition and makes it harder to find for the cadaver dogs.

    What am I doing? Of course you know this already!

  70. 70.

    Steve in the ATL

    @randy khan: I don’t know the details of this but I’m not licensed in California and I arbitrate cases there all the time. As well as many other states where I’m not a member of the bar.

  72. 72.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Ruckus:

    There is no Michael Dean Cohen listed on the CA Bar website.

    Michael Dean Cohen had better watch out, or people might be tempted to start making lawyer jokes.

  74. 74.

    efgoldman

    @FlyingToaster:

    The side door is on the through route, as is my driveway. My front door is on a two-block-long street

    House sideways on the lot? There are a few of those around the neighborhood, including at least one on our old street. Robert Parker described Watertown well in, I think Looking for Rachel Wallace. .

    And, well, liberals :)

    And we’re pleased to have you.

  78. 78.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @efgoldman:

    Our mutual friend lives in Watertown. I stay with them when I visit. Will have to reread the early Spenser novels — loved them back in the day, but “the day” was long before I had any sense of the place. I’m sure I’d appreciate that aspect much more now that I’m passingly familiar with landmarks and a few local references.

  84. 84.

    Mnemosyne

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    My (sadly late) father in law booked his wake at the funeral home across the street so people could go get a drink during or afterwards.

    (He had an inoperable brain tumor that took 2 years to kill him, so he had time to make his own arrangements.)

  85. 85.

    mad citizen

    @FlyingToaster: I “did” 4 years in Bloomington. It’s our liberal bastion of the state. There seems to be a well-financed woman with Washington experience on track to flip that Congressional district from red back to blue. Indiana is way gerrymandered, like so many states.

  86. 86.

    efgoldman

    @Mnemosyne:

    he had time to make his own arrangements

    Which reminds me. Nothing, I hope, is imminent, but my grandfather mailed a letter of instruction to my dad and the rest of his sons a few years before the inevitable, my dad did the same with my mom, my brother and me. It’s time now for me to do the same to my daughter.
    Before you react – It’s not a will, it has no legal standing, but it saved lots of trouble and confusion. It’s definitely not maudlin. Just recognizing the inevitable, even if it’s several years from now.

  87. 87.

    Mnemosyne

    @efgoldman:

    My dad started prepping me for that when I was about 18 with occasional updates and didn’t die for another 20+ years, so I think it’s a totally normal thing to do. It really is better to have all of that stuff settled long before it becomes necessary, because your survivors will not be in any shape to make major decisions.

  88. 88.

    evodevo

    @Mnemosyne: Yes. It saves a LOT of family infighting after the funeral. PLUS, and most people don’t understand this, DON’T make personal property bequests in your will….put them in a separate document labeled “To Be Opened On the Event of My Death”. Then you can change it through the years without having to do all the legal mess of will-changing …

  90. 90.

    Dmbeaster

    Thought bubble above cat: “No Joansie, don’t go back for that silly human Ripley!”

  91. 91.

    Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)

    @FlyingToaster:

    I’m all too familiar with the mindset in Indian-no-place.

    Heh..I live in Evansville and it’s still that way here in Hoosier Land.
    It could be worse though.
    Back in the 70’s, Steve Martin once called Terre Haute the most nowhere place in America.

    He was correct. Terre Haute makes Evansville look like New York City by way of comparison.

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