Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

This blog will pay for itself.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Everybody saw this coming.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

“But what about the lurkers?”

No one could have predicted…

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Bark louder, little dog.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2018 / Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Repub Mayday

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Repub Mayday

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(Tom Toles via GoComics.com)
.

Cry me an ocean, I’m sure. For some reason, FYWP won’t let me copy and paste from the article, but Eric Levitz’s “Trump’s Base Has Become Too Delusional for the GOP’s Own Good“ in NYMag is worth reading.
 

Reader Interactions

134Comments

  1. 1.

    OzarkHillbilly

    The Republican political consultant Rick Wilson has filled his new book with more unvarnished truths about Donald Trump than anyone else in the American political establishment has offered. Wilson never holds back. That is especially refreshing at a moment when so many mainstream journalists still feel compelled to be “fair” to our psychotic president – and so few Democratic officeholders have called for the impeachment that Trump so richly deserves.

    -A few examples of Wilson’s eviscerations: “Everything about Trump’s opening speech was moral poison to anyone who believed in any part of the American dream. Everything about his nationalist hucksterism smelled like … a knock on the door of authoritarian statism.”

    -The right is “merrily on board with a lunatic with delusions of godhood”.

    -“There’s an odds-on chance that our grandchildren will hear this tale while hunched over guttering fires in the ruins of a radioactive Mad Max-style hellscape.”

    -“Washington is the drug-resistant syphilis of political climates, largely impervious to treatment and highly contagious.”

    -The tax bill was a masterwork of “gigantic government giveaways, unfunded spending, massive debt and deficits, and a catalogue of crony capitalist freebies”.

    -Trump has surrounded himself with Wall Street alumni “who have behaved with weapons-grade venality … and Master of the Dick affects. They were there … only for the tax bill. Nothing else ever mattered to any of them.”

    -The Trump administration has been “a hotbed of remarkably obvious pay-to-play and corny capitalist game-playing. How obvious? Think 1970s Times Square hooker on the corner obvious … The degree to which this president has monetized the presidency for the direct benefit of himself, his soft-jawed offspring, and his far-flung empire of bullshit makes the Teapot Dome scandal look like a warm-up act in the Corruption Olympics.”

    -The presidency “hasn’t been an endless exercise in self-fellation, until now”.

    While people like the New York Times executive editor, Dean Baquet, wring their hands in public over using the word “lie” too often because they worry that it will lose its power, Wilson makes one brutally accurate judgment after another about the men and women who have enabled this embarrassing excuse for a sentient president.

    I may have to buy this one.

  2. 2.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    The “sort of desktop” version of the site that replaced the mobile version on my phone is wretchedly bad. Three autoplay ads plus the slide-out one.

    Someone please switch it back.

  4. 4.

    NotMax

    Yes, yes, yes, let Dems take over the House. But don’t then expect them to conjure up miracles. Even should a holding action be the legacy, holding back an apocalypse surpasses worthwhile.

    Shall repeat a link to the historical tendency of the president’s party losing seats in midterm elections. The tendency is undeniable, the scope is what is vital.

  5. 5.

    Schlemazel

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    Sounds interesting enough but in a generation there won’t be anyone left able to decipher the squiggly marks on the magic material
    -“There’s an odds-on chance that our grandchildren will hear this tale while hunched over guttering fires in the ruins of a radioactive Mad Max-style hellscape.”

  12. 12.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Schlemazel: The entertainment value alone is worth it.

    His judgments of Trump’s enablers are equally vicious. Ivanka is “the least slow-witted of his adult children”. Her husband Jared looks “more like a court eunuch than a crown prince”. Everything about Kushner is “bereft of ideas or edges. He looks as if he was grown in a laboratory to deliberately not give offense … [Ivanka and Jared’s] judgement about absolutely everything was comically terrible from the start.”

  16. 16.

    Schlemazel

    @Steeplejack:
    I don’t think I have heard that song in 50 years! But as soon as you mentioned it I was struck with
    “Your Terra Del Fuegos are always froze”

    I hate how my mind ‘works’

  19. 19.

    Schlemazel

    @NotMax:
    A Canticle for Liebowitz was good, have not read the other one but may look it up.

    There is a first contact novel “The Mote in God’s Eye” where the individual aliens HAVE to breed or they die but they are prolific so they soon outstrip their planets ability to support them and there is a huge collapse. After several cycles of this they begin to build repositories of knowledge so that the rebuilding does not have to start from scratch. I think we are at that stage but am not convinced the environment we leave behind is going to support much life successfully

  21. 21.

    Steeplejack

    @Schlemazel:

    I heard it on SiriusXM in the car yesterday, and it has been my earworm since. Always one of my favorites, but I hadn’t heard it in a year or two.

  23. 23.

    montanareddog

    @Schlemazel:

    I think we are at that stage but am not convinced the environment we leave behind is going to support much life successfully

    Species are fragile; life is extraordinarily resilient and will easily survive our depredations.

  24. 24.

    Schlemazel

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    Yeah, I know. My to be read pile keeps growing & every time I pull a book out there is an avalanche that uncovers forgotten items & covers others yet to be forgotten.

    @NotMax:
    BTW – there is a sequel to Canntical, something like “Saint Leibowitz”. Have you read it? Anybody?

  26. 26.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @montanareddog: I think it’s pretty safe to say he’s not a Republican anymore. He’s a conservative, which doesn’t make him evil just mostly wrong.

  27. 27.

    different-church-lady

    Next goddamned motherfucker who tells me there’s an X percent chance of any election thing gonna die for giving me flashbacks.

  28. 28.

    Schlemazel

    @montanareddog:
    I am leaning towards Carlin’s theory. Earth wanted plastic so it allowed dinos to rise up. It then killed them off & let them become oil. It then left humans rise up to use the poi to create the plastic. Now it has that & doesn’t need us any more!

  30. 30.

    Aleta

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    Wow, no kidding.

    “… we (political consultants) fed the monster and trained it …. Then Trump came along … The monster is out of its cage, and its new trainers (both here and in Russia) encourage only its dumbest, darkest, most capricious, cruel and violent behaviors.”

    His book is intended as “one of a number of poison darts in the neck of the monster”.

    “All the things evangelicals had said for generations that made a candidate anathema were suddenly just fine … Being a goddamned degenerate pussy-grabber with a lifetime of adultery, venality, and dishonesty is not, to my knowledge, one of the core tenets of the Christian faith … Trump has opened entirely new theological avenues … There is literally not one aspect of Trump’s behavior as a citizen, a husband, and as a man that shows the slightest scintilla of repentance for anything, ever.”

    Ivanka is “the least slow-witted of his adult children.” Her husband Jared looks “more like a court eunuch than a crown prince”. Everything about Kushner is “bereft of ideas or edges. He looks as if he was grown in a laboratory to deliberately not give offense … [Ivanka and Jared’s] judgement about absolutely everything was comically terrible from the start.”

  31. 31.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Schlemazel: Same here, when my time comes I’m going to say, “Wait a minute, I’m right in the middle of 3 books I’ve been wanting to read for 30 years.”

    @satby: There is no bottom for the disgust he feels for the GOP these days.

    Under this president, the GOP has abandoned “any pretense” that it cares about the national debt. The Democrats could “move votes and donations” by advertising what they have really been for several decades already: the “real party of fiscal sanity, probity and responsibility”.

    After all, Bill Clinton was the only modern president to end his second term with an actual federal budget surplus – something destroyed by George W Bush’s tax cuts and then made permanently unimaginable by Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan and Donald Trump.

  33. 33.

    satby

    @Steeplejack: Alain said last night that the morning sluggishness is because the hosting company runs FULL backups every night, not incrementals with a full on the weekend like every other data center in the universe.

  36. 36.

    satby

    @OzarkHillbilly: the enemy of my enemy, and all that. Still, he has principles and unlike most remaining in that party, he’s sticking to them.
    That plus he’s smart enough to see that they’re going to fall eventually, and he wants to be one of the ones to rebuild the party when it’s time.

  38. 38.

    evodevo

    @montanareddog: Yes it is. One-celled life (and tardigrades and cockroaches) can survive and thrive in some pretty hostile surroundings. It’s just sentient life that can only survive in a narrow range of temps and environments. We’ll be gone and everyone else will get along just fine.

  39. 39.

    A Ghost To Most

    A crowd toppled a Confederate statue at the University of North Carolina Monday night, with cheers and smoke bombs filling the air.

    The monument had long been a target of students and others, a symbol of a once-honored past that many wanted to demolish. This spring, a graduate student splashed a mixture of ink and her own blood on the statue. On the night before classes began this year, a crowd gathered to demonstrate at the statue and, using ropes, pulled it down.

    More, please.

  40. 40.

    Steeplejack

    @satby:

    The “sort of desktop” site on my phone has never not been glacially slow, regardless of the time of day. “Balloon Juice is being backed up” slowdowns were shorter with the mobile version.

    For me, obviously (Android, Chrome).

  42. 42.

    satby

    Critters fed, Dervish Casper Tunch I ‘s fascination with electric cords has hopefully been thwarted by me getting them as out of reach as possible, and I have to get to the market. Doesn’t look like I will miss more than a couple comments before I can reconnect there. ?
    Have a good day all!

  44. 44.

    Steeplejack

    Well, the site solved the “slow loading” problem for me by dying completely. “Error establishing a database connection.” Let’s see if we’re back in action now.

  45. 45.

    Leto

    Brett Kavanaugh’s disturbing abortion history: He ruled against women who were forced to abort

    The case is a complex one, but the basic story involved three women who received care from the District of Columbia Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Administration. All three women had intellectual disabilities and had been determined legally incompetent. One woman had an elective eye surgery and two had abortions, all chosen for them without any consideration of their wishes. The women argued that they had a right to have their wishes considered, but Kavanaugh ruled against them.

    “It’s startling to see a judge say that the expressed wishes of people with disabilities are wholly irrelevant,” Jennifer Mathis, the deputy legal director the Bazelon Center of Mental Health Law, explained.

    Legal standards regarding who is competent to make medical decisions for themselves are complicated and vary quite a bit from state to state. But Mathis said that even in states that have the fewest autonomy rights for people with certain disabilities, “most courts consider the person’s wishes,” even if they may ultimately rule against them. Kavanaugh, however, “just rejected the notion that there was any reason at all” to ask the women in that case what they wanted.

    …..

    In his decision, Kavanaugh wrote that the right to be involved in their own medical decisions was not “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” and that “neither liberty nor justice” were imperiled by denying the women the right.

    Again, The Handmaid’s Tale was a warning, not an instruction manual. Call your reps.

  46. 46.

    clay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    The Democrats… have really been for several decades already: the “real party of fiscal sanity, probity and responsibility”.

    This is good. It means he recognizes — or is starting to — that Republican corruption and hypocrisy didn’t start with Trump, that the party he belonged to has been ruining America for decades now, and that the ‘opposition’ has been the only option for true thoughtful patriots.

  47. 47.

    Steeplejack

    @Steeplejack:

    Okay, “back in action” might be a relative term. It took that comment 4:50 to post.

    And I note that it seems odd that there have been only three comments in the last half hour. Usually the morning is a hotbed of commenter activity.

    Okay, I’m going to quit harshing the mellow and don the cloak of lurking. Maybe even the overcoat of “other things to do.”

  49. 49.

    trnc

    @NotMax:

    Yes, yes, yes, let Dems take over the House. But don’t then expect them to conjure up miracles.

    Not only that, but don’t be surprised when the economy starts to tank from the long term effects of tax cuts and tariffs, and all the media point fingers at the newly elected dems and pretend their new majority makes them responsible. This will be despite getting exactly zero dem priorities signed into law.

  50. 50.

    OzarkHillbilly

    David Hogg,

    After Parkland Furious and unflinching, an NRA enemy, an accused “crisis actor,” and a high-school grad trying to figure out what’s next.

    Hogg has always been earnest, Lauren says, but in recent months he has grown even more so. “He’s very critical of everything and he’s super-serious, and that has become his whole life,” she says. At an age when all decisions feel consequential and all outcomes dramatic, Hogg’s reality corroborates that perception. He is hyperaware of the terribleness of his circumstance, that his own future has opened up through the unimaginable murder of 17 people and is built, in some ways, on the inevitable deaths of others. On his right wrist he wears a collection of brightly colored bands stamped with the names of the Stoneman Douglas dead, and he tries to keep them constantly in mind. “A kid is going to die today on the South Side of Chicago,” he told me a few minutes before it was time to speak. “And I hate to accept that reality.”

    We finished talking, and he left to take the stage, where I watched him heed the advice he regularly gives to teenage fans who ask what they can do if they’re not old enough to vote. “The most important thing about being young is your face,” he tells them. “Get in people’s faces.”

    Worth the time.

  52. 52.

    Gin & Tonic

    50 years ago today, Soviet tanks entered Prague and crushed the democratic reform movement that had started a few months earlier (the “Prague Spring.”)

  53. 53.

    p.a.

    @trnc: My wingnut relatives have the magic time machine: anything good that happens in a Dem government is because of something the Republic’s did previously. Anything bad is because of the immediate actions of the Dems. Reverse during Repub government. The press uses the same time machine.

    Weird effect of using the desktop (of being forced to use the desktop, actually): keyboard response is very slow, both on Android phone using 4GLTE and iPad on wifi.

  55. 55.

    MomSense

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Does he apologize for his treatment of Max Cleland or the myriad ways he facilitated the devolution of the Republican party to the racist, ignorant scum it is today?

    It’s going to take more than clever put downs for me to contribute one nickel to that menace.

  58. 58.

    JPL

    @Gin & Tonic: I remember watching TV that day with my father feeling horrified that we as the greatest nation in the world stood by.
    My feelings of angst are the same today, but for different reasons.

  59. 59.

    kindness

    Taking the House would be nice. For me though, I want the Senate. Stop putting crazy jusdges on the bench.

  60. 60.

    Chyron HR

    @MomSense:

    Does he apologize for his treatment of Max Cleland or the myriad ways he facilitated the devolution of the Republican party to the racist, ignorant scum it is today

    No, but now that his pit bull got loose and ripped out a kindergartner’s throat, he’s very, very mad at it.

  61. 61.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    Are we back? I see Trump considered stripping Obama of his security clearance but was stopped by McMaster. Cripes.

    I hadn’t read Trump’s tweets for a while because they were repetitious and predictable. This morning I read some while waiting for BJ to revive. Holy cow. He sounds demented. I mean written-on-the-wall-in-feces demented. Maybe that’s because I took a break and lost my numbness.

  62. 62.

    rikyrah

    As deficit grows, GOP leaders eye cuts to Medicare, Social Security
    08/21/18 08:40 AM
    By Steve Benen

    ……………….

    Note the pivot: massive tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations has turned a modest budget shortfall into an enormous budget shortfall. Stivers sees that as a problem in need of attention, not by reversing course on regressive tax policies, but by looking at spending.

    And that, naturally, led to a conversation between Stivers and Harwood on social-insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare – what are frequently referred to as “entitlements” – which Republicans want to cut in order to clean up the budget mess they created with tax cuts.

    If this sounds familiar, there’s a good reason for that. It was just a few months ago that House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said the “name of the game on debt and deficits” is cutting “entitlements.”

    At face value, it’s difficult to take the rhetoric seriously. If Republican policymakers were genuinely concerned about the budget deficit, they wouldn’t have passed unnecessary tax breaks for people who don’t need them, without even trying to find a way to pay for the cuts. No one should accept the premise that GOP leaders are sincere about fiscal responsibility.

    But even more important is the bigger picture: GOP officials like Stivers and Ryan are helping prove Democrats right about one of the most serious threats posed by the Republican tax plan.

    As we discussed in March, the debate over the GOP plan may have been fairly brief – Republicans pushed their scheme through quickly to get ahead of public opposition – it featured plenty of Democrats arguing vociferously that its proponents would pass tax cuts for the wealthy, blow up the deficit, and then target Social Security and Medicare, crying about the importance for “fiscal responsibility.”

    Ryan wasted no time confirming Democrats’ fears. The Speaker started talking up Medicare cuts in December, and Social Security cuts soon after. Now the chair of the NRCC is signaling similar intentions.

    It’s quite a message Republicans are taking into the midterm elections, isn’t it? Donald Trump’s party pushed through unpopular tax breaks, which led to unpopular deficits, which GOP leaders hope to address though unpopular cuts to celebrated pillars of modern American society such as Social Security and Medicare.

  64. 64.

    MomSense

    @evodevo:

    In our little kayak group we are all in mourning because of the harbor seal die off. Apparently their immune systems are so weakened by all the PCBs and other toxins in the ocean that they cannot fight off viruses and other illnesses. It hasn’t hit our area yet but I’m sure it will soon enough. We definitely haven’t seen as many seals this year.

    seal die off

  65. 65.

    MattF

    @OzarkHillbilly: I like Wilson, but he’s got some… flawed views. He was a Giuliani fan, back in the ‘9/11 9/11 9/11’ days. He’s gotten over that. Also, Trump’s blatant racism doesn’t seem to really make an impression– Wilson sees it as an aspect of Trump’s nationalism, which is just an error.

    But Wilson is clear and correct about a lot of things.

  67. 67.

    WaterGirl

    @kindness: Don’t forget that the House gets us investigations into real abuses and the end of the Benghazi-style investigations into things that aren’t problems.

    @OzarkHillbilly: Thanks for that!

    @OzarkHillbilly: And for the David Hogg article at New York Magazine.

    *since it takes a very long time for BJ to process comments now, I guess I’ll have to learn to start replying to 3 people in a single comment.

  70. 70.

    Ian G.

    I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m very happy to have Rick Wilson on our side. I’ll know the country is back on stable ground when I can go back to disagreeing with him about things like marginal tax rates.

  71. 71.

    Gex

    @Baud: yep. Which is why they always invite the racists, the homophobes, and the whackaloons in. It’s either be principled or win. And Rick may have abandoned the party but the thing about the “good” conservatives is they are the ones who made the choices that brought us here.

  72. 72.

    Chyron HR

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Are we back? I see Trump considered stripping Obama of his security clearance.

    Of course! Cheatin’ Obama colluded with Crooked Hillary (and 67 Million Angry Democrats) to try and steal the election from Trump.

  74. 74.

    catclub

    @Schlemazel:

    I think we are at that stage but am not convinced the environment we leave behind is going to support much life successfully

    you may be interested in reading a newsletter by GMO called “The race of our lives, revisited”

    Carbon may be beaten by rapidly improving green technology, but erosion is killing any increases in crop productivity.
    (Erosion increases when there are more flooding rains – thanks global warming!)

    He puts a lot of pieces together in one place.

  75. 75.

    Aleta

    @MomSense: It’s so horrible. My vet told me hyperthyroid disease is now common in seals and cats though it used be rare in both. (My cat seems to have it too.) Because of the seals, they wonder about a connection to eating fish that contain pcbs. (Fire retardants and the chemicals used to line cans are possibilities too.)

  76. 76.

    joel hanes

    @Schlemazel:

    I have read the sequel to Canticle.
    It does not depict humanity as really capable of redemption.
    The final scene is … bitter.

    Earth Abides has a much less embittered take.

  77. 77.

    catclub

    @MomSense:

    haven’t seen as many seals this year.

    seal die off

    also orcas – salmon and fish stocks go away and they starve. The future ocean is jelly fish and mucus.

  78. 78.

    Ruckus

    @Steeplejack:
    Hint for you.
    Use a private tab to open BJ.
    The desktop site with that is great. It’s not the site that is the issue. It’s the site with the ads that’s the issue.

  79. 79.

    LAO

    @MomSense: I’m with you — I follow Wilson on Twitter and have enjoyed watching him savage fellow Republicans but I can’t put a penny in his pocket.

  82. 82.

    schrodingers_cat

    @MomSense: I don’t find him or Nichols all that illuminating. Our AL and BC are just as caustic and funny without having been R enablers like these two. I don’t know about Wilson, but Nichols never misses an opportunity to bash Ds in general and HRC in particular. He is quite the misogynist too.

  85. 85.

    Marcopolo

    Good morning folks. Not a lot of time to comment but…I have Wilson’s book and have read a third or so of it. It is a human thing but Wilson’s biggest flaw is underplaying the role he & folks like himself played in creating the frothing Republican base over the last twenty (thirty/forty/I guess back to Reagan) years. Also too, aside from his disgust with Trump & Trumpism I don’t sense Wilson is particularly concerned with the Republicans using vehicles like the tax bill to further comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted. So I guess I am glad he is on “our” side when it comes to the current administration but once Trump is gone I am pretty sure he’ll be back to pushing for crappy policies and programs. But if you want a good nicely adjective filled vindictive takedown of Trump he will do for now.

    As for what happens in November. I think Nate Silver said it best a week or two ago. Something along the lines of: the odds of the Ds taking back the House are about the exactly the same as the odds of Hillary winning in 2016 at this point in time before the election–and we know how that turned out. So don’t sit back and spend all your time reading election projections or fretting about possible outcomes, jump into helping some, any, campaign out there by throwing them some bucks, making some calls, writing some postcards, knocking some doors, registering people to vote and then following up and reminding them to vote just prior to the election, baking some cookies for the volunteers–every last little bit does actually help.

    Hope everyone has a nice day!

  87. 87.

    MoxieM

    @Leto: A closet Eugenicist, you say? How … delightful. Another American Nazi, brought to you by Donald J. Trump. No wonder they are keeping his papers under strict lock and key.

  88. 88.

    Mr. Mack

    Going to try this again…just need a little advice from all of you BJ cat lovers: My daughter brought home two kittens, roughly eight weeks old, maybe less. They are crated for now as we have two large dogs and I felt that it was the best way for all of them to get to know each other. It is working…mostly, but our three yr old lab mix just shakes uncontrollably while sitting or laying just outside the crate. No signs of aggression, her hair is relaxed, ears down and once in awhile she will wag her tail once or twice…but the shaking makes me nervous. Anyone else seen this before?

  91. 91.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @ruemara: I posted this, and then deleted it, but yeah, the boy needs to learn some basics about demographics and voting patterns, and has a bit of growing up to do

    “The reason Republicans are successful right now is because they’re empowering young people,” he told me, pointing out that Paul Ryan was 45 when he became Speaker of the House. “Older Democrats just won’t move the fuck off the plate and let us take control. Nancy Pelosi is old.”

    Shelly Adelson didn’t just drop $25 million in Mitch McConnell’s tip jar because of their shared love of avocados and [old man thinks about twitter and tries to remember the name of a musical performer who seems to be popular] Cardi B.

    Nancy Pelosi is the enemy of gun safety like Barack Obama is the obstacle to universal health care

  92. 92.

    Calouste

    @Gex: Agree.
    But every Democratic politician should repeat that “Kavanaugh approved forced abortions”. No one likes that, the left doesn’t like the forced bit, the right doesn’t like the abortion bit.

  100. 100.

    Platonailedit

    From a beat reporter

    The jury asked in a note: "If we cannot come to a consensus for a single count, how can we fill in the verdict sheet?"

    The jury note also said they needed a new verdict sheet, and they asked what not coming to a conclusion would mean for the "final verdict."— Shimon Prokupecz (@ShimonPro) August 21, 2018

  101. 101.

    rikyrah

    @LAO:

    The people poised with subpoena power on the Democratic side in the House are far less likely to be as milquetoast as their brethren in the Senate. I don’t need any muthaphucka that’s a Democrat to give some mealy mouthed reason why they won’t use their subpoena power to the fullest extent.

    They see that The Turtle was willing to shatter and obliterate every Senate Norm…and, I STILL don’t get the feeling that the totality of the Democratic Senate caucus – GETS THAT.

  105. 105.

    Platonailedit

    Be still heart.

    Judge T.S. Ellis is preparing to give the jury a direction to continue deliberations to see if they can reach a unanimous conclusion, he said in court. The court is on a five minute recess as both sets of attorneys review the instruction language.— Shimon Prokupecz (@ShimonPro) August 21, 2018

  106. 106.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Platonailedit: IANAL but wouldn’t full acquittal require twelve votes, too? I can imagine one or two MAGAts or crackpot libertarians got onto the jury >> hung jury, I can’t imagine twelve votes for acquittal on eighteen counts in the face of all that evidence

  107. 107.

    LAO

    My money’s on a partial verdict — and if the jury is deadlocked on one or more counts, that does not bode well for the defense. (Just a guess based upon my experiences)

  108. 108.

    JPL

    @LAO: MSNBC is saying that Cohen is in talks for a plea deal. If your hunch is correct on a partial verdict, the trump will explode at his rally tonight. Of course trump exploding is just my guess.

  109. 109.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    MSNBC reporting “No Cohen deal yet, could be as early as today”

    What a day for the blog to be borked

    WHY DON”T TRUPM AND PUTIN WANT US TO BE ABLE TO SNARK ON THESE CASES?

  110. 110.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @trnc:
    Trump would presumably still be president when this occurs so he’s the one who should be blamed.

  111. 111.

    Platonailedit

    The jury was brought in at 1150a. The judge will read the note again in court with the jury present and then will give them instruction Judge Ellis said.— Shimon Prokupecz (@ShimonPro) August 21, 2018

    I am just following only this reporter.

  112. 112.

    Gin & Tonic

    @LAO: If that motherfucker is acquitted, I give up. I’ll just have to sell everything (including computers and phones) go off-grid, move to Idaho and grow beets or something.

  113. 113.

    Platonailedit

    Judge sends jury back to deliberate at 1158a, says he won't issue new verdict form.

    The judge said he will not ask the jury for a partial verdict at this time. They must continue their work, he told the court.— Shimon Prokupecz (@ShimonPro) August 21, 2018

  114. 114.

    randy khan

    @LAO:

    It sounds like it’s just one count, which is consistent with last night’s request to deliberate a bit longer – they hoped they were close enough to finish their deliberations, but didn’t quite make it.

    So I guess they’re getting the famous “you have a duty to reach a verdict on every count” speech. I’ve always wondered how often that works.

  115. 115.

    Platonailedit

    Manafort’s attorney said he wished jurors would be given a third option on the form — a hung jury option for each count he said. The jury verdict form gives jurors only the options of not guilty or guilty for each of the 18 charges against Manafort.— Shimon Prokupecz (@ShimonPro) August 21, 2018

    Didn’t these fuckers give up cross examination?

  116. 116.

    LAO

    @randy khan: The truth, under federal law, a jury can reach a partial verdict — the thing is, Juries are told that, UNLESS they ask. So, I expect the judge may deliver an Allen Charge but I expect we will have a verdict sooner rather than later.

  118. 118.

    Brachiator

    @Gin & Tonic:

    If that motherfucker is acquitted, I give up. I’ll just have to sell everything (including computers and phones) go off-grid, move to Idaho and grow beets or something.

    But, but, I don’t even like beets.

    I hear you and am with you 1000%.

  120. 120.

    randy khan

    @LAO:

    Now that I think of it, the jury didn’t say it couldn’t reach a verdict, so I guess the Allen Charge speech probably wasn’t warranted. I still wonder how often that works, although I suppose if it were even 10% of the time it would be worth it.

  122. 122.

    J R in WV

    @Schlemazel:

    I eagerly devoured the sequel to A Canticle for Leibowitz, it’s OK, maybe an 8, but the original Canticle was like a 9.5 at the time I first read it.

    It (the original Canticle) has weathered well, I wouldn’t give it as high a score today as I did back in the day, speculative fiction has really improved across the board over the past 50 years.

  127. 127.

    Aleta

    @Mr. Mack: Good luck. The kittens must be fun to watch.

    They say shaking (yawning, panting) are how a dog releases stress from their body. It continues as long as the stress continues. A note I copied from someplace (because my dog had all these signs at certain times):
    “Contrary to the windshield-wiper like fast wagging tail of a happy dog, a slow tail wag is an indicator of lack of confidence and wariness.” … “trembling is a sign of extreme stress or fear. One of my dog trembles like a leaf if she’s been in the car more than about 30 minutes.”

    If your dog is trying to control the impulse to bark or lunge at the kittens, that would build up stress Or if it’s some other trigger that happened before you got him?

    There are good steps on the internet (ASPCA site is one) for introducing cats and dogs. Also how to watch your dog for prey drive while they’re still separated, and about reactivity in dogs. Reading a lot and following those ideas has worked well for us. We took a lot of time and gradual steps, allowing periods of relaxation before moving on to the next. (I can describe the steps we used if you’d like to know.)

    Putting them close together at first can stress the kittens. A fearful interaction on either side, even accidental, can set back adjustment and make it harder and much longer.

    Others who have multiple dogs have much more experience than me. Apparently the more dogs, the more risk of impulsive pack behavior. Ours was adult, large, untrained at first, had never had access to cats, but is gentle and eager. They are friends now and sleep on the same bed, but for more than a year, maybe two, we never left them alone. We also worked with him, keeping him by our side or in a portable pen, while they were free to walk by. For their health, the cats always have places he can’t access. They get time alone with us, getting full attention, and chances to sleep with one of us, which is a bonding time for cats.

  128. 128.

    J R in WV

    @Ruckus:

    @Steeplejack:
    Hint for you.
    Use a private tab to open BJ.
    The desktop site with that is great. It’s not the site that is the issue. It’s the site with the ads that’s the issue.

    Also, ad-blocker keeps the site running smoothly; I am using two of them now, Ad-Block didn’t affect the worst video ad. I kick in to the fund at the link on the front page every few months, to make up the difference.

  129. 129.

    MCA1

    @randy khan: That’s what my money would be on here. Likely the very first count of Conspiracy Against The United States is the one that’s holding them up – it’s the most political of them and the most complex to prove since there’s a harm to the country element to prove, whereas falsifying documents or failing to report bank accounts sort of are what they are, and there were boxes full of documentary evidence of those actions.

    It’s a bit awkwardly worded, but I’d say there’s no more than a 10% chance that what the jury meant by “a single” count was “We can’t come to agreement on even a single count.” It appears the judge has also interpreted their note to mean they’ve reached a verdict on 17 counts but are stalled on one.

    Given all of the evidence presented at trial and the lack of any mounted defense other than going after Gates’ credibility and trying to pin everything on him to show lack of knowledge/motivation on Manafort’s part, I also find it highly unlikely that they’ve voted to acquit on 17 counts and are hung up on the last one. There was a possibility of there being one person impervious to the evidence, motivated by cult membership, or whatever who was willing to hang the jury on every count to frustrate justice, but that doesn’t seem to have happened. And it seems almost inconceivable to think that all 12 people here have found reasonable doubt on 17 counts but are still quibbling over the last one. There are likely to be some not guilty verdicts, but not on every count. Fingers crossed. Then again, there’s still the DC trial, and it’s worth recalling that none of these particular charges have anything to do with the Russian conspiracy, either. So it’s not like Manafort’s off the hook or something if he’s acquitted entirely today.

  130. 130.

    LAO

    @MCA1: That’s not what the first count means — it’s not political at all — 18 USC 371 is the general conspiracy count .

  131. 131.

    Citizen Alan

    @Leto:

    And not just the handmaid’s tale. For all he probably bleats about being pro-life, based on this opinion, I wonder where he stands on the subject of euthanasia for the developmentally disabled.

  133. 133.

    Dan B

    @catclub: Excellent piece! Seattle is in a second wave of toxic smoke from fires in BC and eastern WA. it looks like the apocalypse. A few people are talking about global warming. I’m calling it a preview. As Jeremy Grantham points out it may be a food crisis that proves fatal to democracy.

  134. 134.

    Miss Bianca

    @satby: I’m glad to see that “Tunch” snuck in there as one of his monikers – I thought, surely I’m not the only one who looked at his coloring and thought of it!

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