Strangely @jeffsessions appeared unannounced at @LibertyU the night before the 2016 election on a bus tour. I told students but could get almost none of them to come hear him. Could it be our students were the first to see he was a phony pretending to be pro- @realDonaldTrump ?
— Jerry Falwell (@JerryFalwellJr) August 2, 2018
Their Great Leader is bellowing like a wounded walrus, the Flock is haring after sigils and conspiracy theories, the Vile Elitists are uncowed, even their own children are turning away from the True Repub Faith… nothing about this tainted “presidency” is going as the GOP Hardcore expected. This means, of course, that they are searching for a scapegoat to sacrifice, and despite his sterling credentials ol’ Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III might be the next victim.
Ed Kilgore, in NYMag, “Trumpists Seem Ready to Erase Jeff Sessions From Movement History”:
It’s obviously no secret that Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s relationship with his former friend the president of the United States has deteriorated to the point where it is generally assumed Trump would fire the Alabamian if he didn’t fear the political and legal fallout…
But Sessions’s journey to the outer darkness of Trumpworld may get even worse, as reflected by this strange tweet from Trump enabler Jerry Falwell Jr…
Attacking Sessions for not doing exactly what Trump wants right now is one thing, though his original sin, his recusal from the investigation that is now associated with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, can’t just be revoked. But what Falwell is trying to do is to retroactively disgrace Sessions as having never loved MAGA from the get-go.
This is a pretty remarkable piece of historical revisionism. Sessions was the first senator, and the highest-ranking official generally, to endorse Trump’s run for the GOP presidential nomination, not long after Falwell’s own endorsement of the mogul. He was almost universally acknowledged as a pioneer, along with Representative Steve King, of the harsh immigration stance that was Trump’s signature. He was close to Trump’s impresario Steve Bannon, and to Breitbart News. And even before endorsing Trump he gave the campaign his valued aide Stephen Miller, who continues to shape the administration’s policies and messaging…
To this day, Sessions is loyally promoting the same Trump policies over which the two men bonded during the 2016 campaign. There is no sense in which he can be said to be “pretending” to be pro-Trump. But he has run afoul of the Boss’s determination to avoid any accounting for his campaign’s possible interaction with Russian agents and operatives, and so he’s not only being exiled from the inner circle and threatened with firing, but is being treated as having been a budding traitor all along….
Bad luck, Mr. Sessions! You knew he was a snake when you endorsed him, did you not?
His father wasn’t really known for his humility, empathy and decency either so…
— Carin Apter (@CAptNYC1) August 2, 2018
“…when you elect a president who does not adhere to the highest personal standards of character, we can expect this kind of trouble…if we are going to wind up with nothing but an attack on the duly appointed investigator, we’ve got a lot more trouble than I expected.” pic.twitter.com/IbAIhIOIW2
— Rogue Melania???? (@RogueFirstLady) August 2, 2018
Note the datestamp at the top of the screen: This is Jeff Sessions shaking his little leprechaun head over the moral perfidity of that terrible man, President Bill Clinton… because hypocrisy is one of the foundational Repub values!
Raoul
Jerry Jr is retweeting Dinesh D’criminal. What a bucket of crap they all are.
Cermet
The rubes were sold a pile of shit under ray-gun the stupid and have been eating shit sandwiches ever since and enjoying it; religion combined with racism has that affect upon many minds.
SRW1
The revolution is eating its leprechauns.
CliosFanBoy
@Cermet: have been eating shit sandwiches ever since
Feces Fondue
Baud
The best part of the Sessions saga is still the fact that a Demo took his seat.
Baud
@Baud: Demo=Dem.
debbie
Gollum Beauregard needs to make himself scarce. The UN Human Rights Commission is very likely coming for him.
JGabriel
Jerry Falwell, Jr. via Anne Laurie @ Top:
And when Jerry Falwell, Jr., says you’re strange …
Well, let’s just say Jerry Falwell, Jr., knows strange.
The Dangerman
@Raoul:
The wheels are coming off the bus and DD, post pardoning, is comparing Trump to Lincoln; this shit couldn’t be imagined on peyote (/hunter thompson).
JGabriel
@Raoul:
Bucket? I think you might be confusing a receptacle for the source.
Falwell, Jr., and D’Souza are shit geysers.
hells littlest angel
I think what Falwell is trying to say is: reporting bb dayorder doubleplusungood refs unpersons rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling.
smintheus
So the Trump campaign was disorganized … or was it more like an Underground Railroad thing, with persecuted conservatives fleeing to the friendly shelter of Liberty U?
gene108
@debbie:
I wish. But I doubt we’ll get into trouble with the U.N. We have a way of throwing our weight around and not getting condemned for things other countries would be ostracized for, like invading a non-belligerent nation, torturing prisoners, and now orphaning children as official state policy.
One day, other countries are going to catch up with us and have enough weight to counterbalance us. And when that day comes, the America First crowd is really going to go crazy, because they have no clue that what they are doing is what is pulling us down and will never accept it.
And they will never have to because of right-wing media.
JGabriel
@The Dangerman:
For D’Souza, that’s actually somewhat coherent – from D’Souza’s point of view, Trump set him free, like Lincoln did for the slaves.
Of course, to call D’Souza’s point of view skewed would be an understatement on par with calling Goebbels a little biased.
gene108
@The Dangerman:
Just waiting for them to start saying Trump is the second coming of Jesus, and the Rapture is upon us.
The Dangerman
@gene108:
I wonder what would happen if cable stopped selling channels as packages and went full a la carte. I sure as hell wouldn’t pony up for Fox News; I bet a whole pile of Fox News watchers wouldn’t pony up for Fox News, either. Fox (TV, I mean) might wither away.
A la carte would be a great test in cable cord cutting (well, partial cutting).
L85NJGT
Fire Eaters? Circular firing squad? It is amazing the number of actors that didn’t realize Trump was a suckers bet.
@Baud:
Both are correct.
JGabriel
Ed Kilgore, NYMag via Anne Laurie @ Top: :
Possible?
Ed, there’s no doubt now that the Trump campaign interacted with Russian agents and operatives – it’s dead certain. There may be some question as to whether it’s provable that the Trump campaign conspired with Russian operatives to manipulate the election and defraud the US, but there’s no question that they interacted.
Ruckus
@hells littlest angel:
That looks strangely jerry jr.
It does sound better than him though.
debbie
@The Dangerman:
I don’t know anything about the successfulness of the program, but Spectrum is offering a reduced-channel package.
Kay
@Baud:
You know, that’s true and there hasn’t been nearly enough attention paid to the better person who replaced Sessions.
From his Senate page:
L85NJGT
@The Dangerman:
It will be interesting to see how FOX News fares as a stand alone post Disney. Probably not well.
hueyplong
Color me unimpressed until they start death threatening one another.
Mai Naem mobile
Tick tock motherfukers! Couldn’t be happening to a better group of people!
Kay
Adam H. Johnson
Verified account
I try not to dislike major media so much because there’s not a thing I can do about it, but come on. Why are they so vulnerable to being bullied by conservatives? They misled the public with this. They couldn’t have checked themselves? Looked at dismissals to see if there was any truth in the Republican claim? They just GO WITH this crap?
What’s the value they’re adding? If they’re just going to repeat Republican claims I can go to the source – the Republican making the claim- and I don’t need the NYTimes at all.
Cheryl Rofer
Seeing this FAR too many times in my Twitter feed. But a good point.
Ruckus
@debbie:
Charter is as evil as any other service provider. If they are separating channels that means they will end up charging you even more. Their only issue is how much money can they get out of you each month. Service is OK but no more. The way they do this is to make offers way below their normal price, get you hooked and then jack you up for more. If you are like me and only have one provider available, they will tell you it’s a competitive price, even though there is no competition. The two words I’m thinking of are Fucking Assholes. But then that’s fairly normal modern day corporate thinking.
Cermet
@Cheryl Rofer: These thugs are so stupid that when they are trolling their own party they don’t even realize it.
Doug R
@debbie:
Here in Canuckistan, the CRTC finally forced cable companies to carry a skinny basic package-it took another year to crack down on cable companies quietly underselling it. The CRTC also allowed some a la carte, unfortunately it works out if you get more than 3, it’s cheaper to get a package.
A few great things they did in the past few years re cell phones: no contracts allowed over 2 years, phone numbers are now completely portable and cell companies must unlock phones on request with a “reasonable” fee.
Frankensteinbeck
@Kay:
Because they’re Republicans. They agree with most conservative rhetoric, or at least think the nut jobs are being uncivil about important topics like whether brown immigrants are terrorists. In their mind, those uncivil people being treated badly instead of encouraged to politely debate how violent black protestors are is a sin, possibly a crime. Crazy people who think Republicans might be racist, or support increasing entitlements, or think wealth needs more legal controls – it’s obviously wise to usher people like that out of positions where they might influence the youth. Besides, everybody knows that colleges are liberal and it doesn’t make sense to think anti-liberal bias would be a problem.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@Cheryl Rofer: Did anyone besides me read “The Man Without a Country” in school?
Ruckus
@Kay:
They aren’t vulnerable at all. They are just conservatives themselves.
Each coast had their reds. Look at CA. Nunes, Rohrabacher, Issa, and a few more slime in congress. Someone voted for these assholes. It’s the same in NY.
Cheryl Rofer
@a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio): Oh, that’s a good one. I had mostly forgotten it. I suspect all of us of a certain age had to read it in school at one time or another.
Or we could ask Edward Snowden. If he were allowed to talk to us freely.
Mel
@The Dangerman: That’s exactly why I finally cancelled cable service. I just got sick of knowing that I was being forced to pay for crazy wingnut religious channels, shopping channels, and other crap that I wouldn’t touch with a 10 foot pole.
Hulu and our local library system’s dvd selections and streaming selections have been a suprisingly satisfactory substitute for the past three years. It helps if you have access to a library that has a great selection of new movies, documentaries, etc.
NeenerNeener
@a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio): I remember it was required reading in 7th grade.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: NYT is an R mouthpiece for totebagger Rs with some education.
tobie
I came across one interesting tidbit of news. Maria Butina tweeted to congratulate Trump on his victory at 11: 35 p.m on election night. The timing is curious since Pennsylvania wasn’t called for Trump until two hours later. Did she know something we didn’t or was this just a shrewd guess? The Hill has the story. I can’t link because I’m on my phone.
JPL
@Mel: I have an antenna and I can get all those channels for free!
Mnemosyne
@Cheryl Rofer:
IMO, it’s mostly a third-grade level taunt: You think our buddy is friends with the Russians? Well, I’d rather be a Russian than be your friend anyway!
I’m guessing that they think the whole Russia thing is BS so they’re safe to wear those shirts. I do wonder at what point in the investigation those get quietly put into the attic and never spoken of again.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
(Of Topic) So I make mistake on click and drag in Windows 10 File Explore. Look for the undo button, there is no undone. Finally the google tells there is one, but you have to manually turn it on as an options because of reasons, MS assume the customers will never make a stupid mistake? One wonders what the heck is wrong with Microsoft that they think that way.
oatler.
I wish Terry Gilliam (and the Pythons) were young and well enough to take on our situation. Wait till Biggus Dickus hears of this!
Patricia Kayden
@hueyplong: Or until they lose Congress. Trump is still appointing Federal Judges to life term positions and passing Executive Orders to harm the environment and strip civil rights from minorities. This infighting is entertaining but meaningless.
debbie
@Cheryl Rofer:
Pathetically, they think they’re being funny.
OldDave
@tobie:
What is the title of the article? I’m not seeing anything obvious on their web site.
ProfDamatu
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: They also, it appears, think that customers will magically intuit how OneDrive now works in Windows 10. I finally found where my files went (completely non-intuitive location), but I had an anxious hour or two thinking that five years’ worth of files had been deleted somehow, rather than moved to the cloud and thence to my new computer. :-P
Least efficient, most stressful file transfer ever, all because I didn’t feel like driving to my office on a Saturday to retrieve my external hard drive. On the bright side, now I’ll finally have to deal with the massive amount of e-detritus that’s accumulated in my cloud space…
Patricia Kayden
@tobie: Sounds suspicious. Hopefully, Mueller has made this part of his investigation.
Catherine D.
@debbie: Spectrum is on the brink of being kicked out of NYS for misleading advertising about rural broadband. I doubt they will be, but a girl can hpe.
Calouste
@Cheryl Rofer: I don’t think those guys have to work really hard on being Russians. Just compare them to Boris Yeltsin.
efgoldman
@Ruckus:
We have competition (Cox and Verizon/FIOS) and the pricing still sucks.
Thoughtful David
Ha! They’re starting to admit it out in the open.
Shell
Various posts saying Trump is worried that Junior is being targeted by the Mueller investigation. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy.
(Tho Trumps latest tweet looks like he might be hanging sonny-boy out to dry.)
efgoldman
OK, where the fuck did the “save nym” checkbox go?
Citizen Alan
@gene108:
I’ve been telling Jesus Nazis on Facebook since 2016 that they have all taken the mark of the beast.
Yarrow
@a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio): @Cheryl Rofer: There’s a movie of it. I think we had to watch that. We might have read it and watched it.
MattF
It’s impossible to take Sessions seriously. All the obvious reasons + leprechaun. He’d make it to ‘worm’ in his next incarnation if he had any dignity.
Calouste
@tobie: I’m fairly sure I knew things were fucked at that time, and probably well before. (Virginia taking a long time to be called was an indicator.) Could have been that Florida was called at that time, which pretty much sealed it.
Yarrow
@Mnemosyne:
Too bad for them the internet will remember forever.
WaterGirl
@efgoldman: I know, it’s so frustrating.
Alain posted this in the previous thread about site updates: “And I see the check box is gone from mobile site. I know WordPress fixed a bug, thought it wouldn’t remove the damned box. Grr. I’ll get to it as soon as I can.”
Hopefully by now he realized that it’s not just the mobile site.
WaterGirl
@efgoldman: I wrote you a message explaining, but FYWP is back to swallowing comments whole, so it never showed up. So frustrating. Back to copying the entire comment before posting, in case it gets eaten.
edit: Alain is making changes to the site, and one of those changes made the checkbox disappear on both the mobile and regular sites. Alain is aware of the issue on the mobile site, but hopefully by now he knows it’s a global problem.
tobie
@OldDave: “Maria Butina declared Trump victory on Facebook before he actually won.”
@Calouste: you could be right. Good point. That a whole night is a blur for me.
WaterGirl
@tobie: I only wish that night was a blur for me. It is indelibly seared into my memory. Thinking this can’t be happening, over and over and over until I could no longer deny it. So awful, I have tears in my eyes even writing a single sentence about it.
Cheryl Rofer
@Mnemosyne: Or used for washing windows.
A Ghost To Most
The christian fascists are turning on each other. Excellent!
Gelfling 545
I think Trump is stuck with Sessions at least until he (Trump) gets a little more demented. The Republican senators will back Sessions over Trump. I also don’t believe Falwell unless he’s got some reliable witnesses I doubt the incident ever happened. If by spme chance he’s not lying, I seem to recall that a fair number of Liberty students objected to Trump on moral grounds I don’t believe it thpugh. Do presidential canditates’ spokespersons just drop in places unannounced? No, they want pageantry and fanfare; cameras and microphones.
David Anderson
@tobie: I started to get morose by 10:00 when it was evident that Florida and North Carolina rural counties were landsliding red
JPL
@Patricia Kayden: That scares me the most, because we are going to have decades, where our children and grandchildren suffer.
tobie
@WaterGirl: I hear you. The trauma of that night is still with all of us, even if we responded differently at the time. I’ve gotten involved in my local Democratic Club since that’s the only way I can think of turning my pain into something positive.
JPL
@David Anderson: I knew when trump rallied in Bama with the freedom girls. That night I jumped out of bed with the worse nightmare of my life.
Jay
@Gelfling 545:
The Insane Clown POS is stuck with the KKKebler Elf forever. The KKKebler Elf was part of the Campaign and Transition Team and knows where all the sexxy colusion no colusion bodies are buried.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I’m home. Given that I’m on a blood thinner and I had needles stuck all up and down my arms, I look like a junkie, but I’m home. Thanks for all the good wishes, jackals. We now return to our horrified look at the American body politic.
Omnes Omnibus
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Good to hear.
WaterGirl
I believe that Sessions or someone else very high up is working with Mueller, and I think we will all be surprised when we find out who it is. It’s a win-win for them – they get to play out their hateful fantasies against poor people and brown people, children, etc in the Trump government, and still stay out of jail.
The Midnight Lurker
I live with these people. You can make light of them if you like. They scare me. They are legion. For they are many.
Gelfling 545
@Cheryl Rofer: I’d rather they were Russian, too. Somebody send them the address of the embassy quick.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Midnight Lurker:
There are more of us.
The Midnight Lurker
@Omnes Omnibus: Some days… this is my only hope.
Gelfling545
@a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio): Seventh grade with Sister Lucille. I remember it well.
Adam L Silverman
@JGabriel: It’s provable. But that is contingent on how much the Special Counsel is willing to reveal of sources and methods if he can’t make the case without doing so.
JPL
@Adam L Silverman: If the report is not buried by Rosenstein, it will be buried by Ryan.
Adam L Silverman
@JPL: Rosenstein isn’t going to bury the report. And Ryan won’t be able to.
Yarrow
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Yay! Was wondering how you were doing today. Glad you’re well enough to go home. Will they let you have real coffee now?
Jay
@JPL:
A Sunday, the start of a new fresh week of abandoning all hope,…….
Yarrow
@Adam L Silverman: Thank you. I can’t with such nonsense today. Honestly.
Bex
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Glad you’re home. Take care.
zhena gogolia
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
All best wishes!
Jay
@JPL:
Ahhhhh, Sunday, the fist day of a fresh new week of abandoning all hope,……
Doug R
@tobie:
I just poked around on The Hill website, can’t find it.
Felony Govt
@Dorothy A. Winsor: So glad you’re home! Hope you’re good as new very soon.
Mr Stagger Lee
I am wondering about OH-12, can it be taken? I feel like Edwin Stanton on the night before the Union forces tries take on Fortress Wilmington in the Civil War. (Reference to the movie Lincoln)
OldDave
@tobie:
Ah, hillreporter.com (here’s the link if anyone needs it). I was looking at “thehill.com”. Silly me.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Dorothy A. Winsor:Good to hear you’re home.
Adam L Silverman
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Excellent news. Keeping god thoughts.
J R in WV
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Oh, Hurray!! So glad you’re home. ‘?
I used to work with an old time EPA guy out of the Philly Region III office. We were connections between EPA IT and my state DEP IT shop. So I asked “Joe, how ya doin’?” on a phone call one day and he had had a major heart attack, multiple stents, week off, back to work, said he felt better than he had been in years, since his heart was now getting nearly 100% of the blood it needed to work right
I hope you’re feeling better than you have been for years in short order. So glad you’re home!!
Platonailedit
A Ghost To Most
Gimlet, son of Groin, got some action yesterday in PDX.
Platonailedit
Adam L Silverman
@Mr Stagger Lee: If the polling that is being reported is anywhere close to accurate, then yes. Right now it is within one point, which is effectively tied. It will al depend on turnout on Tuesday.
low-tech cyclist
Could it be that even your students will finally see you’re a phony pretending to serve the Lord, but far more accurately resembling one of those Old Testament court prophets who prophesied whatever pleased the king?
Because this one’s gonna be a challenge for even your most devoted followers to swallow. Some of them will manage it, but for others, this will be the WTF?! moment that finally pries their minds loose.
rikyrah
Demons ?
Southern Poverty Law Center (@splcenter) Tweeted:
Our client, Gonzalo Chavez, was swept up in an ICE raid in Morristown, TN. When ICE agents didn’t believe he had diabetes, he went a week without medicine, leaving him blind in one eye. “I lost everything. I can’t see. I can’t drive.” t.co/4LsP52NzT3 twitter.com/splcenter/status/1026196213211848705?s=17
A Ghost To Most
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Leave the TV and online news alone. Get better.
low-tech cyclist
@A Ghost To Most:
They probably hit him over the head with a Legolam. :-)
p.a.
I was in the Y late morning/early afternoon election day and a CNN chart (no audio in the gym) showed a general exit poll with 55+% saying “we” needed a change. I was… oh shit. Well we fuckers sure got a change all right.
Millard Filmore
@Adam L Silverman:
I wonder how many times Mueller has looked at a Trump tweet and said … “Phew, now I don’t have to reveal how I know THAT”
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: Fucking monsters.
Mary
@The Dangerman: You’d probably end up paying just as much as you do now, because each channel would cost several dollars a piece. High value channels would cost even more. An a la carte HBO subscription is already like $15 bucks a month. ESPN could reasonably cost around $20.
But a la carte will almost certainly never happen, because programming conglomerates will never let cable operators sell individual channels. For example, Disney won’t sell a cable operator ESPN without demanding that Freeform and/or A+E also be carried on the basic tier. Cable operators (except maybe Comcast, because they do the same thing with their NBC networks) hate this kind of bundling, but they have no way around it.
A Ghost To Most
@Millard Filmore:
Or “STFU, Donnie, you’re out of your element”.
WaterGirl
This is when Recent Comments would be nice because it appears that everyone else has vacated BJ – maybe having to type your nym and email this time is a hurdle that most people don’t want to have to jump over?
That’s how I feel when I am on the train with my iPad; I have to really want to say something before it’s worth the trouble.
JPL
@Yarrow: lol That is my favorite comment of the day, because it gives me hope.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Yarrow: Theoretically no. But they are not in my kitchen.
feebog
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
So good to hear. Healing at home is always better than the hospital.
Adam L Silverman
@Millard Filmore: I saw this morning’s tweet and this was my thought process:
WaterGirl
@JPL: Oh, good. I was afraid you would take the comment personally and would feel bad.
low-tech cyclist
@rikyrah:
I’d really like to see every last one of those monsters thrown into prison for life. And I’d be rooting for their lives to be very, very long.
JPL
@WaterGirl: Even I need to sometimes be kicked in the butt. lol
WaterGirl
@JPL: Very healthy attitude!
Steeplejack (phone)
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Glad to hear it. Take it easy and remember to caffeinate!
Citizen Scientist
@a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio): *Slowly raises hand.*
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@gene108:
That will only work when the America Firsters aren’t actively suffering real, obvious consequences of their choices. That day will eventually come and all the Breitbarts, Foxes, and Sinclairs in the world won’t be able to shield them from reality.
Ken
@Millard Filmore:
It would still be useful to have evidence besides Trump’s broadcast confession, in case Trump’s ruled mentally incompetent.
Ohio Dad
@Adam L Silverman: I’ve been getting emails from O’Connor’s OH-12 campaign about every hour for the past week. (Not in the district, but gave him $20 once.) He says they’re out of money, and I suppose may have to curtail the GOTV. He also said that the Trump rally helped Balderson with the independent vote (I don’t get that one )