Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Let’s finish the job.

Israel, don’t be dumb like we were in the US after 9/11!

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Republicans don’t trust women.

Chutkan laughs. Lauro sits back down.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

When we show up, we win.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

It’s a doggy dog world.

… looking like a winsome Bee Gee who has stumbled into teaching geography

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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Sunday Morning Open Thread: Trump’s State Visit to France, Illustrated

Sunday Morning Open Thread: Trump’s State Visit to France, Illustrated

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The little man who wasn’t there. As our opponents would say: This is the world Repubs want.


NEVER FORGET…


(That was Ronald Reagan honoring fallen Nazi soldiers, for those who don’t remember.)


(Dick Cheney at the solemn anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.)

Reader Interactions

241Comments

  1. 1.

    JDM

    Remember, there was no need for this trip at all. The president could have laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington, then spoken a few appropriate words.

    No, David Frum, Trump could not do that because he is utterly incapable of saying any appropriate words at all.

  2. 2.

    RandomMonster

    It’s no mystery at all why he flew all that way only to sit out the ceremony. He needs to meet with Putin.

  3. 3.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    From the twitters this morning he was at least two hours late for the dinner with world leaders last night (last tweet was he still hadn’t shown at 9:30pm the others were there at 7:30). This morning while all the other world leaders walked up the Champs Elysse to the Arch de Triumph Twitler arrived separately and joined them for the photo op. I guess they wouldn’t let the out of shape fuck use a golf cart.

  4. 4.

    PeakVT

    “It was not completely clear why the Trumps were unable to attend.”

    Yes, it is clear. They are profoundly and systematically horrible people.

  7. 7.

    Barbara

    If this was cover to meet with Putin then Trump is the world’s worst covert agent of all time. I never met my great uncle who served in Europe during WWI because he never regained his mental health and committed suicide in his early 50s.

  11. 11.

    RandomMonster

    If this was cover to meet with Putin then Trump is the world’s worst covert agent of all time.

    He sucks at everything else he does, why not that too?

  12. 12.

    JGabriel

    BBC:

    French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel unveil commemorative plaque at the spot where the Armistice ending World War One was signed 100 years ago

    Not too long ago, I remember Merkel said something like, “The US is no longer a reliable partner,” or “We can’t rely on the US any longer.” Something to that effect anyway.

    And now here we are. We can’t even rely on our so-called “president” to show up at memorial commemorating the loss of American lives for the 100th anniversary of the end WWI.

    This man is a fucking embarrassment to our country.

    If we can even call him a man, and not just a spoiled, whiny, self-pitying, sociopathic brat.

  13. 13.

    RandomMonster

    @rikyrah:

    I love that the Twitter has been mocking the rain excuse with tweets and pictures of previous Presidents in the rain.

    And pictures of Trump golfing in the rain.

  14. 14.

    Baud

    I’ve never been one to look for that thing that causes everything to fall apart for Trump, but damn if this doesn’t feel awfully close to that thing.

    @rikyrah: Good morning.

  15. 15.

    JPL

    @OzarkHillbilly: I have really bad news. Trump is suppose to give a speech at ten at another wreath laying ceremony. I’m not sure if other world leaders will be at that one.

  17. 17.

    Waldo

    I used to think these kinds of gaffes would catch up with him one day. And many times I thought, yeah, he’s really stepped in it now. But it turns out there’s nothing a slightly more outrageous tweet can’t fix.

  18. 18.

    NotMax

    Aw, the picture of Melania wearing her “I Don’t Care” coat at the cemetery would have been priceless. //

  19. 19.

    Lapassionara

    @Baud: This and the 5000 troops at the border being used for a photo op. Not to mention the attack on victims of a wildfire in California.

  20. 20.

    OzarkHillbilly

    from When I Spoke in Tongues: A Story of Faith and Its Loss by Jessica Wilbanks

    I stood up and slipped past the worshippers, slowly making my way to the ladies’ room, where I sat on the toilet fully clothed and held my face in my hands.

    It had been in a bathroom just like this that I had first felt the Spirit coming to me. When I received my prayer language, it felt like proof the Holy Spirit had X-rayed my life from up in heaven and called it good. It was my key to the kingdom, my guarantee that when the seventh trumpet sounded and Jesus returned in a cloud of glory, I’d be summoned up to meet the faithful.

    But now, four years later, I was ready to turn that key in. It had become too heavy. If I kept carrying it around, then I couldn’t pick up anything else. So I sat there in the bathroom at that church in Baltimore and whispered to God that I was bowing out. To soften the blow and make it less terrifying, I told God I was taking a sabbatical from believing. A break. I’d probably be back, but for now I needed to go off on my own.

    I dug a ballpoint pen out of my white patent leather purse and scribbled a note on a torn scrap of paper.

    November 5, 1995
    Jessica Wilbanks is no longer a Christian.

    For a long time I sat there staring at that slip of paper, horrified at my boldness, half expecting some earthquake or thunderbolt to rip me from my perch on the toilet.

    But all I heard was the dull hum of the heating system and a few stray voices coming in from the hall. The Holy Ghost had departed from me. No longer were there evil spirits lurking close by, to dive in at the slightest sign of trouble or joy, no angels watching from afar to offer protection. Now I was simply myself — a clump of cells directed by a series of synapses and neurons. I had a feeling that there would be no going back.

    It was much the same for me when I left the Catholic church.

    excerpt via the Guardian.

  23. 23.

    NotMax

    Open thread?

    If you’ve been on the fence about getting one, heads up that everybody and his brother is going to have Instant Pots on sale for Black Friday (at many places both prior to and after the day itself).

  24. 24.

    Betty Cracker

    Trump won’t go out in the rain except for golf. Why? Because when he’s golfing, he can wear a stupid MAGA hat to ensure his multi-dimensional comb-over doesn’t dissolve and expose his baldness. Even he knows he can’t get away with wearing a ball cap to a somber event like the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day, and there’s no way he’s gonna schlep out in the rain and allow his comb-over to sag into a pathetic wet mullet and fringe around his bald pate, especially not with young, handsome men like Macron and Trudeau around. So he hides out in his hotel instead, watching Fox News and tweeting offensive shit as usual.

  25. 25.

    JGabriel

    David Frum via Anne Laurie @ Top:

    It’s incredible that a president would travel to France for this significant anniversary – and then remain in his hotel room watching TV rather than pay in person his respects to the Americans who gave their lives in France for the victory gained 100 years ago tomorrow

    I find myself wondering if maybe Trump got some news about the Mueller investigation that simply left him completely dysfunctional – even more so than usual.

    I mean, even at his worst, Trump is all about the photo-op and must know how bad it looks to skip honoring American soldiers overseas.

    So, what would cause him to fuck up like that? Did he get word that Jr. is gonna be indicted on Monday? Did Whitaker send Donnie Dollhands a message telling him that Whitaker has been read in on the investigation and Donnie is royally screwed, nothing can be done? Or is it really just his usual narcissistic selfishness?

  30. 30.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud & @Waldo: During the campaign, I thought the Access Hollywood tape was the death knell. More recently, I figured when Trump rolled over and piddled on his own belly to signal submission to Putin for all the world to see would finally break the spell. Now, I figure he’ll limp along as a laughingstock to the world and an object of increasing contempt for all decent Americans while maintaining Golden Calf status to the third or so of the country that has enlisted in his cult.

  33. 33.

    JGabriel

    @Yashar Ali via rikyrah:

    Incredible. @weeklystandard reported that Steve King referred to immigrants as “dirt.” Rep. King and his camp denied he did and he went after Weekly Standard editor @RubensteinAdam.

    Well, it turns out that the Weekly Standard has audio of these remarks

    It’s a liberal plot, I tell you. A conspiracy!

    They made King say that!

    They told him: “Just be yourself.” It was a trap!

  36. 36.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Bex: He is sick, he’s always sick. He’s a sick sick sick man. But that’s not what you’re talking about is it? Well, I feel ill every time I see him. Does that count?

  42. 42.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    I’m relieved to learn that if we only followed proper forest management techniques in Thousand Oaks, I wouldn’t have been inhaling smoke all day; though somehow in my 20 years living there I missed knowing the location of the forest.

  43. 43.

    Procopius

    @Barbara: The amount of mental illness resulting from experiences in combat in both World Wars and Korea were successfully hidden by the Department of Defense. The costs for the worst World War II cases were enormous and lasted for decades. I know less about the World War I cases. What I expect was PTSD started to be noticed a little bit among Vietnam veterans.

  45. 45.

    NotMax

    Found these at Costco on Friday. Sort of like a flat, crunchy blueberry scone. Me likey. Good thing, as the box sold there is a hefty 30 oz. (and sold for less than the cost of the skinny package at the link).

  47. 47.

    Jeffro

    @Betty Cracker:

    Now, I figure [Trumpov] will limp along as a laughingstock to the world and an object of increasing contempt for all decent Americans while maintaining Golden Calf status to the third or so of the country that has enlisted in his cult.

    Who knows, he might fall past the fabled 27% mark by the time he leaves/is forced from/resigns/flees office.

    In other news, in my supposedly liberal WaPo this morning, I see that many variations on “double standards for Democrats” have shown up, right on cue
    – the usually sensible Steven Pearlstein thinks that Dems should set a great example by requiring the Speaker to have 60% support (instead of 50% + 1 like Republicans, and like every other Speaker in history)
    – 2nd-term GOP Governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, is fully expected to govern more conservatively (since he’s both term-limited and has national aspirations) and of course that is perfectly fine
    – Kathleen Parker is calling last Tuesday’s results a “purplish wave” and is urging Dems to resist impeaching not just Trumpov but also her buddy Kavanope. Fuck. That.
    – Tim Weiner has an article on the ever-lasting power of the FBI, noting that

    The FBI has faced down five commanders in chief who threaten to run the ship of state aground: in the Watergate scandal, in the Iran-contra imbroglio, in the Monica Lewinsky affair, in the matter of post-9/11 spring on Americans, and in its criminal investigation of the Trump team.”

    Excuse me Tim, but one of these things is most definitely NOT like the others. Call me if you would like a clue.
    – And “scholars” Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Huq suggest that…are you sitting down?…that Democrats prove they really “care about democracy and the rule of law” by sharing oversight power with the GOP minority(!) The one they just unseated. The one that has been running cover for the Trumpov crime family for the past two years.

    Oh and there’s also a VERY THRILLING ARTICLE in Outlook about how “Centrist Republicans Aren’t Dead. They Hide In Plain Sight.” Why, they’re practically EVERY-FUCKING-WHERE, right???

    In contrast to that Everest of bullshit is one. lonely. article. by Alex Pareene (who I think usually writes for Salon) about how Democrats need to use the power they just earned. Despite a GOP-controlled Senate and Trumpov, they need to send up bills that show what they (and we) stand for. This, I fully agree with. The Post’s unending flood of “purplish wave” and “centrist Republican” garbage, not so much.

  48. 48.

    Zinsky

    President Clown Hair is such an embarrassment to this country! The ignorant fatass would rather sit in his hotel room eating Big Macs and watching Fox so-called News than honoring thousands of Americans and our close allies who died so that Trump and his miscreant family can rape and steal to their hearts content!

  50. 50.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @JGabriel: He would have had to walk too far.

    I’m sure the combover had something to do with it, too, but he’s put on enough weight over the past year that I really believe he’s having even more trouble walking than he was two years ago.

  51. 51.

    Jeffro

    On a different note: it would be nice if the media could point out the obvious reason Trumpov is attending the WW I ceremonies at all…he’s there to get updated marching orders from his handler, Vlad.

  55. 55.

    NotMax

    Noted on Netflix, They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead.

    Includes a best guess version of what would have been Orson Welles’ final film, The Other Side of the Wind. For Welles fans, a boon, but in all honesty more a curio. Although watching John Huston acting as a deep in the closet film director in a free form, nearly psychedelic production confirms that he could read the tax code and make it riveting.

    Oh, and it should be noted that in case there are kiddies about, there is copious nudity.

    The real thing to watch it for is the documentary about the history behind the film, which immediately follows the closing credits.

  57. 57.

    RandomMonster

    @Ken:

    It would be the next logical step in ratcheting up the humiliation, after their last meeting.

    I’m not sure humiliation is the primary goal though. Putin has a list of action items for Trumpov.

  59. 59.

    Gvg

    @Jeffro: that isn’t the selection I get when I look at the WaPo. All media outlets track your “interests” and offer you things based on prior choices. You may be hate clicking and making them think you like those stories. Although all the outlets seem to draw stupid conclusions about me, especially about what I buy.

  60. 60.

    debbie

    @rikyrah:

    King is trying the Trump Strategy. Punch back harder and hope they back down. I hope the WS brought along its backbone and will stand up to him. I’m sick of this “the nastiest wins” thing going on in this country.

  61. 61.

    Kay

    This to me is why the Abrams/Gillum/Beto candidates should be the direction Democrats go in:

    The Georgia election may still have an uncertain end for its marquee matchup, but the results cemented the state’s status as a battleground for the 2020 race for president. And the metro Atlanta suburbs are poised to be the main battlefield.
    Democrats painted the dense suburbs ringing Atlanta a bright shade of blue, capturing a swath of territory that just four years ago overwhelmingly tilted to the GOP. Republicans lost about a dozen state legislative seats and one of the shiniest jewels of the ‘burbs — the U.S. House seat held by Karen Handel.
    Led by Stacey Abrams, Democrats carried a sweep of precincts that had transformed from unassailable to vulnerable since Donald Trump’s election as president. They helped boost her to nearly 49 percent of the electorate — and give her a slim chance at forcing a runoff with more votes still to be counted.
    The party’s blue streak carved through parts of Acworth and Kennesaw, dominated sections of Sandy Springs and Dunwoody and moved up the spine of Ga. 400 to Roswell and Alpharetta, then tore across most of Gwinnett County. And it extended west and south, putting Douglas and Henry counties firmly in the Democratic column.

    They bring everybody else up along with them. They’re really the opposite of “celebrity” candidates, if “celebrity” means a one-off and benefits going to only that candidate. What they are instead is new leaders. There’s no real “decision” to be made- the leaders have become apparent :)

  64. 64.

    Amir Khalid

    I have had truly wretched luck with tech this past month. My phone died and I had to replace it. Then the headphones I used witrh my laptop went dead on the left. I bought a pair to replace it. The adjustment arm on the left broke spontaneously while I was weariung it. I bought a pair to replace that. A few minutes ago, the second replacement dropped to the floor from table height (normally harmless to a decent pair of headphones) and the pin attaching the left earpiece to the headband broke. Gah.

  67. 67.

    Honus

    It just occurred to me this morning that Merkel and Macron were at the cemetery, while Trump of course was conspicuously absent, but where was the British PM?

  71. 71.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay:

    They’re really the opposite of “celebrity” candidates, if “celebrity” means a one-off and benefits going to only that candidate.

    Now who does that sound like? The name is right on the tip of my tongue….

  72. 72.

    NotMax

    @Honus

    At a similar ceremony in Belgium.

    May not seem so to us, but it takes tremendous courage for Merkel to appear at the plaque laying at the site where the Treaty of Versailles was signed.

  77. 77.

    MomSense

    OMFG I’m mad all over again about Ronald Fucking Raygun honoring NAZIs at Bitburg. I remember my teacher crying about it then.

    Eisenhower was the last decent Republican.

  79. 79.

    Clarence Rutherford

    The armistice agreement was signed at 5:10AM (Paris time) 100 years ago today. Commander knew the war was over, the date & time had been known for some time. But Pershing allowed his commanders to continue fighting, Soldiers were sent “over the top” as late as 10:30 on 11/11. US forces suffered more casualties on 11/11/18 than they did on 6/6/1944.

  80. 80.

    Honus

    @NotMax: yes, I thought that too. The German and the French leaders laying a wreath together is incredibly symbolic. Too bad the fat goof had to foul it up.

  81. 81.

    Barbara

    @rikyrah: He knew he said it because almost as soon as he did he abruptly stated that they were just chatting informally before the event actually started, as if he realized for the first time that journalists were there and might have heard. Oops.

  82. 82.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:
    Lucy McBath won Newt Gingrich’s old seat.
    We also are close in another GOP held seat.

    Beto helped wipe out the GOP up in the judiciary in the largest county in Texas, turning it all Democrats, including 19 Black women who won..

    Prop 4 won in Florida, which immediately changes the topography of 2020.

  83. 83.

    Amir Khalid

    @Kay:
    It seems to me that people like Gillum, Abrams, and Beto are the real populists: their political agenda is about serving the people, not pandering to their prejudices.

  85. 85.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    But Beto lost. I have been told by my betters you can never blame the voters and there are no moral victories, so that means we must blame him for not being good enough.

  87. 87.

    rikyrah

    @Jeffro:
    Send everything up.
    Make the GOP critters vote on it.
    Make the GOP Senate not bring it up, thus making it an issue for 2020

    SHARE oversight with those muthaphuckas ?
    Get the ENTIRE Phuck Outta Here ?

  88. 88.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @debbie: If you haven’t, you should read “Goodbye to All That” by the poet Robert Graves The Wiki page starts with

    Good-Bye to All That is an autobiography by Robert Graves which first appeared in 1929, when the author was 34 years old. “It was my bitter leave-taking of England,” he wrote in a prologue to the revised second edition of 1957, “where I had recently broken a good many conventions”.[1] The title may also point to the passing of an old order following the cataclysm of the First World War; the supposed inadequacies of patriotism, the interest of some in atheism, feminism, socialism and pacifism, the changes to traditional married life, and not least the emergence of new styles of literary expression, are all treated in the work, bearing as they did directly on Graves’ life. The unsentimental and frequently comic treatment of the banalities and intensities of the life of a British army officer in the First World War gave Graves fame,[1] notoriety and financial security,[1] but the book’s subject is also his family history, childhood, schooling and, immediately following the war, early married life; all phases bearing witness to the “particular mode of living and thinking” that constitute a poetic sensibility.[1]

  91. 91.

    NotMax

    @Amir Khalid

    Perhaps not suitable (but maybe so), I have a pair of workhorse David Clark headphones still nicely chugging along after nearly 50 years.

    No ear buds for this geezer.

  92. 92.

    MomSense

    @NotMax:

    And my teacher’s sister died in a concentration camp. The worst part is that my teacher loved Eisenhower and became a devoted Republican because of him. She voted for Reagan. Her first vote as a US Citizen. Betrayal is an especially bitter pill to swallow.

  94. 94.

    cain

    @Betty Cracker:

    @Baud & @Waldo: During the campaign, I thought the Access Hollywood tape was the death knell. More recently, I figured when Trump rolled over and piddled on his own belly to signal submission to Putin for all the world to see would finally break the spell. Now, I figure he’ll limp along as a laughingstock to the world and an object of increasing contempt for all decent Americans while maintaining Golden Calf status to the third or so of the country that has enlisted in his cult.

    The question is.. what new standard will they apply to the Democratic president now that so many behavior patterns of what is appropriate have been broken by Trump.. What will the media and conservatives bitch about given the Trump years? I mean, they can’t continue to bitch that a president looks bad after all this crap that Trump has come.

    The thing is, they have no shame, they don’t have any new tricks. They’ll continue to try to do the same shit because they are lazy people whose onlyl motivation is grifting. They aer lucky that we took over, because if there was a true disaster, we would be sitting ducks. You can’t tax cut your way out of everything. A spirally downward economy will is not something you can fix that way.

  95. 95.

    Quinerly

    @rikyrah: Good morning from Poco and his tribe! I can’t stop clicking on them. Must be some sort of stress reliever. Can’t stop laughing. Still in bed. Poco thinks I have finally gone mad. (Plus, new Alexa Echo up here and he can’t understand who I am talking to… “Alexa, play Donald Fagan!”) Major goings on in House of Quinerly since 4AM…already exhausted. But still laughing over all the tweets about rain.

  101. 101.

    Platonailedit

    Lock her up, lock her up.

    Arizona's Secretary of State debunks conspiracy theories about vote counting.

    "Arizona takes elections seriously … and everybody is working diligently to tabulate all of the election results in a manner that Arizonans can be proud of."

    https://t.co/Dpb0FXZ4LX— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) November 11, 2018

  105. 105.

    germy

    We got rid of more than a few squirming maggots.

    via boingboing:

    Rohrabacher, a man who claims to venerate private property rights above all others, rented a house in Orange County, changed the locks to deny the owner entry, then trashed the place, filling it with garbage, destroying the fixtures, furniture and appliances; cutting the phone lines; and leaving behind squirming maggots under the stove. The damage cost $28,500 to fix.

    Then Rohrabacher sued his landlord for not refunding his security deposit.

    In August, a year after he, his wife and their triplets left the disaster and stiffed Polyniak out of a week of due rent, the congressman hired a lawyer, Devon R. Lucas, to file a lawsuit in Orange County Superior Court. According to the complaint, Rohrabacher, who skipped all military service when he was eligible to fight in Vietnam and nowadays hails himself “a patriot,” thinks he and his wife are the victims in the dispute. He wants Polyniak—a soft-spoken construction subcontractor who honorably served in the U.S. Marines—to pay him $20,000 for not refunding his security deposit in a timely manner.

    https://boingboing.net/2018/11/11/squirming-maggots.html

  106. 106.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    Listening to Alberto Gonzales on NPR basically say that Whitaker is an unqualified political hack. Wrap your mind around that.— Phil Klinkner (@pklinkne) November 11, 2018

    In the meantime, I’m reading Markus Zusak’s Bridge of Clay. You may have read his earlier book, The Book Thief. He’s blowing me away with the amount of emotion he can evoke with minimal words. I think it was Jane Smiley who said a writer’s taste always exceeds their own skill level but only by a little. I take comfort in that.

  107. 107.

    kindness

    I bet Trump has become too mentally unstable for John Kelly to allow him in public. Trump fears what happens next and he’s letting that get to him. Wild ride comin’. Hold on.

  109. 109.

    Quinerly

    @NotMax: Seriously, this Amazon Alexa Donald Fagan channel is some good stuff. I figured it would just play a couple of his solo albums like “Nightfly” and “Sinking Condos” but also playing some stripped down Steely Dan songs… This version of “Barry Town” is phenomenal. After asking Alexa to play it 5 times, Poco gave me the side eye. Turned his back.

  110. 110.

    Olivia

    @JGabriel: I’ve been wondering if this was Putin yanking his chain. Make an important overseas trip that the world is watching and then when he gets there, Putin orders him not to go to the memorial with a trivial excuse. He ends up looking petty and stupid to the world and feeling castrated as Putin shows him who’s the boss. The clip of Putin giving him a thumbs up and trump’s body language in response was interesting.

  111. 111.

    cain

    @germy:
    This is beyond the pale. No human being should treat someone else that way much less a American veteran. The fact that this asshole is so entitled to purposely trash up a place is just horrible. If you’re renting a place and it’s been trashed, you are the one that is responsible. To turn around and say that the landlord owes you money beyond teh security deposit is some fucking epic shit.

  112. 112.

    rikyrah

    @Haroldo:
    Phuck Him.
    Without Beto and his coattails, we would still have Pete Sessions.
    And, I will say it again…the thousands of people in the largest county in Texas who now have an all Democratic judiciary..Beto will NEVER know them, but he helped their lives and their families.

  114. 114.

    TS (the original)

    @NotMax: Thank you for saying that. She has done all in her power to stop the fascists rising in Germany – opposite to what trump is trying to do in the US.

  115. 115.

    rikyrah

    Any word if they are coming out with new Kindle Fire models for the holiday?
    I searched for news a couple of weeks ago, and nothing. Only suspicion..not confirmation.

  116. 116.

    MomSense

    @rikyrah:

    I have one that is a year + and it’s great. If the new ones come out and the previous generation go on sale, I recommend them. I bought the largest size one for my mom who has vision problems and the 8” size for myself.

  117. 117.

    debbie

    @cain:

    I still haven’t forgiven him for accusing Bill Clinton of dying his hair gray so people would take him more seriously. This was back in the late 1990s! Even Bill Mahar was speechless.

  119. 119.

    Haroldo

    @rikyrah:

    Phuck Him.
    Without Beto and his coattails, we would still have Pete Sessions.
    And, I will say it again…the thousands of people in the largest county in Texas who now have an all Democratic judiciary..Beto will NEVER know them, but he helped their lives and their families.

    No kidding. Lessig and his ilk are the ones with blinders.

    No sense of local conditions. No sense of national conditions. No sense of how the local and national fit together.

  121. 121.

    Patricia Kayden

    @RandomMonster: Truth. Trump needs to meet with his Puppet Master for further instructions. Anyone who believes he’s in France to honor the war dead needs their head examined.

  123. 123.

    Quinerly

    @NotMax: Poco gives that comment 4 paws up. (and promptly makes a fool of himself by falling over and blaming John Lennon, fearless rescue kitty, for pushing him)

  125. 125.

    Geoboy

    “Listening to Alberto Gonzales on NPR basically say that Whitaker is an unqualified political hack. Wrap your mind around that.— Phil Klinkner (@pklinkne) November 11, 2018”. You’ve got to admit, if anyone could speak to unqualified political hack from experience, that person would be Alberto Gonzales.

  127. 127.

    Matt McIrvin

    Remember when it was a burning scandal that Obama had a Marine hold an umbrella for him? Wouldn’t want to risk that…

  128. 128.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @cain:

    The question is.. what new standard will they apply to the Democratic president now that so many behavior patterns of what is appropriate have been broken by Trump.. What will the media and conservatives bitch about given the Trump years? I mean, they can’t continue to bitch that a president looks bad after all this crap that Trump has come.

    Look at what’s going on with Pilosi – the next Dem will have to be a saint or the press will be in a tizzy. The question is are the Dems learning that the press is nothing more than a Greek Choirs full of mean girls?

  131. 131.

    JPL

    It’s reported that trump appeared to be sour and testy meeting with world leaders. For us it’s just a day ending in y.

  132. 132.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @debbie: Looks good, bookmarked. During our Iron Co explorations yesterday, my eldest and I ended up (as we often do) discussing various books. One of our mutual favorites came up. If you are interested in mountain climbing at all, or are just fascinated by the wild places of this earth, I recommend Enduring Patagonia by Eric Crouch:

    Gregory Crouch is one such pilgrim. In seven expeditions to this windswept edge of the Southern Hemisphere, he has braved weather, gravity, fear, and doubt to try himself in the alpine crucible of Patagonia. Crouch has had several notable successes, including the first winter ascent of the legendary Cerro Torre’s West Face, to go along with his many spectacular failures. In language both stirring and lyrical, he evokes the perils of every handhold, perils that illustrate the crucial balance between physical danger and mental agility that allows for the most important part of any climb, which is not reaching the summit, but getting down alive.

    Crouch reveals the flip side of cutting-edge alpinism: the stunning variety of menial labor one must often perform to afford the next expedition. From building sewer systems during a bitter Colorado winter to washing the plastic balls in McDonalds’ playgrounds, Crouch’s dedication to the alpine craft has seen him through as many low moments as high summits. He recounts, too, the riotous celebrations of successful climbs, the numbing boredom of forced encampments, and the quiet pride that comes from knowing that one has performed well and bravely, even in failure. Included are more than two dozen color photographs that capture the many moods of this land, from the sublime beauty of the mountains at sunrise to the unrelenting fury of its storms.

  133. 133.

    Princess

    @Olivia: Olivia, you’re onto something. He tweeted that he had lots of productive phone calls yesterday. I bet he has been trying to talk to Putin and Putin said they only time he was free was during the ceremony, to force Trump to humiliate himself twice over, once for bowing to Putin’s “schedule” and the second time, by not supporting his own troops.

  134. 134.

    Matt McIrvin

    @cain: They bitched about Hillary Clinton’s minor infractions while Trump was obviously, blatantly doing things that were ten times worse simultaneously. Part of that was that they thought Clinton was going to win and Trump was a funny joke. But there is a real double standard. Women have to do better, non-whites have to do better, Democrats have to do better, and people with a reputation as amusing TV characters get a pass on a lot.

  135. 135.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @rikyrah:

    Send everything up.
    Make the GOP critters vote on it.
    Make the GOP Senate not bring it up, thus making it an issue for 2020

    Show people what we stand for. The media won’t want to report on it, but put it on record anyway. It’s worth it even if there’s a layer of misinformation in the way.
    And I’ll add one more: Do it because it’s morally right.

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    The question is are the Dems learning

    I think a whole lot of elected Dems figured out long ago that the press is against us and this is an unwinnable war. It’s just that in an unwinnable war, no tactic they try is going to be satisfying, so unless they try exactly the one the observer likes, it looks like they don’t know what’s going on.

  136. 136.

    Haroldo

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    The mean girls are coming out of the woodwork in spades. Fer instance:

    Heading into the midterm elections, many Democrats were hoping their flashy new stars — especially O’Rourke, Gillum and Abrams — would win decisive victories, proving definitively that unabashedly liberal, young and dynamic candidates were the future not only of the party but of a rapidly diversifying country.

    [….]

    But none of the three won Tuesday — O’Rourke was defeated, and Gillum’s and Abrams’s races remain up in the air. Some suggest that underscores the limits of the passion candidates, who tend to rile up both sides. Democrats running as more pragmatic messengers to working-class voters in states Trump won could at least claim success.

    It is incredible what is being built. But even The Liberal Washington Post TM can’t (or won’t) see it.

  137. 137.

    JPL

    @Princess: When Putin arrived at the ceremony today, he walked over and shook Trump’s hand, gave him a thumbs up and patted him on the back. It’s the first time that I saw Trump smile since the trip began. Trump finally received his father’s approval.

    @Olivia: yup

  138. 138.

    JPL

    Trump is reading his speech at the Suresnes American Cemetery now. So far he is staying on script. After this ceremony he plans on returning home rather than attend the Paris peace forum.

  139. 139.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Haroldo:
    Same as it ever was. I always flash back to Obama winning reelection and when the information was handed to the CNN commentator, he declared he couldn’t believe it because America was a center-right nation. Then I flipped to FOX and caught the hilarious Rove meltdown.

    @JPL:

    Trump finally received his father’s approval.

    I think there’s a lot of truth to this. Forget kompromat. Trump reveres murderous dictators. Putin is the cool kid Trump wishes he could be. “You and me is friends, aren’t we, George?”

    (By extension, I again suggest Trump sees Hitler as a great man and considers himself a Nazi.)

  140. 140.

    MattF

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: Speaking of mean girls– Maureen Dowd has an interesting column, comparing Cheney/Powell/W to the current crew. I realize that Ms. Dowd is not liked around here, but she was against W’s Iraq venture, and said so, repeatedly. Back in the days when opponents of that war were few and far between, she kept pointing out that Cheney and Powell were lying, and obviously.

    Anyhow, she compares the old liars with the new liars and concludes that the old liars were worse.

  147. 147.

    Yarrow

    I didn’t realize this:

    If Democrats win the still undecided race in Maine 02 it means Democrats will have every congressional seat in New England – all 21— Michael Cohen (@speechboy71) November 11, 2018

    The whole thread is good.

  148. 148.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    But Beto lost. I have been told by my betters you can never blame the voters and there are no moral victories, so that means we must blame him for not being good enough.

    I don’t think even they believe that. The results (also, IMO) point away from someone like Sherrod Brown being the 2020 candidate. Turns out he’s the exception that proves the rule. He should absolutely stay in the Senate because any “not Sherrod Brown” Democrat will lose.

    It’s exciting, in a way. A different direction. Different states. Because you can look at it as “Republicans turned their back on suburban voters” as if it’s wholly dependent on the politicians and voters are just this unchanging mass OR you can look at it as suburbs changed. The composition changed. I’m more inclined to accept the “organic”, bottom-up version- voters elected Democrats rather than Republicans followed Trump and therefore rejected voters.

  149. 149.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    David Nakamura @ DavidNakamura
    World leaders are walking shoulder to shoulder along the Champs Elysses but Trump arrived separately and isn’t participating in this.

    I wonder if he tried to talk the others into a ceremonial golf cart motorcade up to the Arc de Triomphe

  150. 150.

    Haroldo

    @MattF:

    Anyhow, she compares the old liars with the new liars and concludes that the old liars were worse.

    There is an overarching theme put forth by a lot of the opinion mongers (TFNYT, The Guardian – especially, The Washington Post) this Sunday morning: the domestic (Democratic) political world has to be X or it has to be Y. There is very little thoughtful analysis. I know, no surprise, it’s what they do, but it seems especially rampant today.

  152. 152.

    Aziz, light!

    Why does Trump sit on every chair like he is on the toilet struggling to squeeze out a really big dookie?

  153. 153.

    JPL

    @rikyrah: Betty Price hasn’t conceded her state house loss yet. I assume it’s because the race was close and there will be a recount. She’s not my favorite person, but still deserves a fair election. I’m sure she will stand up for Stacey’s right to basic fairness also.
    hahaha Of course, I jest.

  154. 154.

    MomSense

    I’m sorry but I can’t help being petty for a moment. WTF has Melania done to her face? Her eyes have been pulled into slits that are about an inch higher at the outside than the inside? She looks like an eagle.

  157. 157.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @MattF: Speaking of mean girls– Maureen Dowd has an interesting column, comparing Cheney/Powell/W to the current crew. I realize that Ms. Dowd is not liked around here, but she was against W’s Iraq venture, and said so, repeatedly.

    She was very good on Bubba and Dumbya and the whole Iraq fiasco, but she was a leader in the Village’s pathological fixation on Hillary Clinton that was beyond “mean girl”, also Al Gore and John Kerry, and in one very revealing hate-filled screed, Teresa Heinz Kerry. I think like a lot of “liberal” humorists (including St Stewart), Obama drove her crazy because she couldn’t, as the libertarian writer on SNL said, get a comedy hook into No-Drama Obama, so she kept banging away on “Barry” and golfing. She was pretty much unreadable for the last decade.

  158. 158.

    Kay

    I listen to local Right wing Christian radio when I’m piloting my LeSabre from one run-down rural courthouse to the next in my weekly “loop” of 4 counties. It’s pretty wild. They spend their entire time defending Donald Trump when it was my understanding they were supposed to be converting people to their religion. Anyway, they take calls on Friday and this young woman called- she can’t support Trump because he’s not Christ-like- she was very articulate and specific, listing the problems- the lack of humility, the belligerence, the nastiness, the dishonesty. He doesn’t meet the stated “leadership” qualities she has been told her whole life. The host had no defense. Instead he pivoted neatly to trashing Hillary Clinton. I just thought it was interesting that they don’t even TRY for a substantive defense of Trump as a person.

  160. 160.

    germy

    @MomSense:

    Her eyes have been pulled into slits that are about an inch higher at the outside than the inside? She looks like an eagle.

    She’s an ugly man’s idea of what a beautiful woman should look like.

  161. 161.

    Matt

    @Ken: My guess: he’s starting to realize that Putin put a *wrecker* in the office, not a *partner*. At some point, “POTUS under impeachment” serves the strategy better than “pet POTUS”.

  163. 163.

    Kay

    @MomSense:

    I saw a photo of Melania and DeVos “with” schoolchildren that made me laugh out loud. They’re at a movie, in the White House I guess, and DeVos and Trump are sitting stiffly in the front row with the kids all behind them. It was like “these two ladies went to a movie and there were also a bunch of kids there” – WTF? They don’t sit among them? Why even go? Just give them a pass to the movie.

    I thought about Michelle Obama dancing with them.

  165. 165.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Gen Michael Hayden Retweeted Noga Tarnopolsky
    Brush pass with his handler????

    Noga Tarnopolsky @ NTarnopolsky
    Donald Trump is the only head of state not at Élysée Palace. He’s apparently going separately to Arc de Triomphe. He’s skipping the Forum for Peace headed by Angela Merkel later today. Yesterday the rain kept him from war memorial. What the hell is he doing in Paris?

  166. 166.

    biff murphy

    Good post… This morning I’ve written to the DAV, Am Vets, and the American Legion expressing my disgust for tRump. Maybe if they get enough email…

  167. 167.

    Yarrow

    @Kay: The women are going to be where the real cracks in the Republican party/evangelical Christian nexus are going to happen. The NYT had an article about evangelical women voting for Beto because the whole kids in cages thing and their leaders’ responses to that really woke them up.

    Another evangelical woman who is not happy with the way the evangelical men are leading is Beth Moore, a women’s bible study leader who has millions of followers. She was unhappy with their responses when the Access Hollywood tape came out and made it clear. Again with kids in cages. She’s someone that most people here have never heard of but her reach is wide and she’s highly influential in evangelical circles, especially with women.

    A break won’t happen overnight, but it will start with the women. We probably aren’t seeing these cracks because we don’t know where to look. That does not mean they’re not happening. They are. At some point there will be bigger cracks and then some breaks will happen. When, I don’t know. I do know we’re seeing the start of it now. The evangelical leaders (men) are supporting Trump and making excuses for him and he’s not Christ-like. She’s absolutely right.

    Oh, and then there’s the evangelical organizations–NRA–GOP–Russia money links. That’s going to be a problem for them too.

  170. 170.

    Matt

    @Kay:

    They spend their entire time defending Donald Trump when it was my understanding they were supposed to be converting people to their religion.

    He *is* their religion. They’ve spent decades remodeling their flavor of Christianity into a twisted knot of misogyny, racial resentment and political grievance and he’s the perfect avatar for that.

  171. 171.

    Kay

    @Haroldo:

    The mean girls are coming out of the woodwork in spades. Fer instance:

    I bake in some skepticism of “advice” like this, because it’s so often self-interested. There’s a campaign industrial complex. People make a lot of money in it. They want it to stay the same. Texas? They don’t know how to do that. They need “outreach to Trump voters in diners in Erie County Pennsylvania” because that’s what they’;ve been selling for 20 years. Many of them could lose their jobs :)

  174. 174.

    MomSense

    And while I’m at it, either wear a fucking cape or put your arms in the coat sleeves. Can someone explain this drape the coat precariously on your shoulders thing?

    /meow

  175. 175.

    debbie

    @MomSense:

    I remember all the old ladies doing that with their mink coats during High Holy Day services. We figured they were just showing off.

  176. 176.

    Ruckus

    @JGabriel:

    Or is it really just his usual narcissistic selfishness?

    It’s always his narcissistic self. Always. Being a massive narcissist demands that. His world is not the same as our world, his world revolves completely and solely around him. It’s quite possible, likely even, that he has no understanding of what any of the optics of this means to everyone else, primarily because in his world, he is the center of everything. And because he’s at the center of everything, everything is perfect.

  177. 177.

    Kay

    @Yarrow:

    That’s interesting. I “know” a lot of them. Am acquainted with them. I do school volunteer work and things and they make up a good part of the volunteers here. I get along fine with them on that level, but I must say it’s weird how they sort of lose interest in you when it becomes clear you’re not going to be a convert. It’s odd, much more like sales than religion. I’m always a little hurt, like :”is that it? There won’t be any more friendly overtures now that it’s clear I’m not going to your church?” :)

    On the upside I stopped receiving coffee cups and decorative plaques with Bible verses on them- the whole merchandising sector of evangelicals is just amazing. It must be BILLIONS of dollars.

  179. 179.

    Amir Khalid

    @debbie:
    At some point Melania is going to resemble a horror-movie monster. I’ve seen photos of the aftermath of cosmetic-surgery addiction that look frightening.

  181. 181.

    MomSense

    @debbie:

    My grandma had a mink stole she found at a rummage sale but it didn’t have sleeves. Hmmm, I may have to look into this trend.

  182. 182.

    cain

    @debbie:

    I still haven’t forgiven him for accusing Bill Clinton of dying his hair gray so people would take him more seriously. This was back in the late 1990s! Even Bill Mahar was speechless.

    Wow, that’s pretty stupid comment. I think I’ll have a shot of whiskey to celebrate him leaving.

  183. 183.

    Kay

    @MomSense:

    I don’t like her either. She’s mean.

    The truth is no other First Lady could get away with giving an interview about bullying and then identifying herself as the most bullied. Unfucking believable the entitlement and obsession with SELF. She can’t even stick to the bullying topic for 5 minutes without making it about her.

    Melania gets a pass- it’s fine! She doesn’t matter. But she does get a pass.

  185. 185.

    cain

    @Patricia Kayden:

    @RandomMonster: Truth. Trump needs to meet with his Puppet Master for further instructions. Anyone who believes he’s in France to honor the war dead needs their head examined.

    Surely there is some Qanonymous conspiracy theory for this right? Maybe we need to hit 4chan and bring it up. Of course the problem is you have no idea what crazies will do with that information. It’ll probably culminate into a something about Russia doing a strike into blue cities in defense of the Donald.

  187. 187.

    Kay

    @MomSense:

    I actually thought she would personalize bullying by maybe making it about her son- which I wouldn’t be crazy about – I hate when they trot their kids out. But. She didn’t even do that. No, SHE is bullied, as it turns out. The anti-bullying initiative? It’s a program designed to protect the First Lady of the United States from…everyone.

    She and Trump are a good match. No wonder they don’t spend any time together. There isn’t room for two of them in any one space.

  188. 188.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay:

    I get along fine with them on that level, but I must say it’s weird how they sort of lose interest in you when it becomes clear you’re not going to be a convert. It’s odd, much more like sales than religion.

    It’s my secret in getting people out here to leave me alone: “I’m an atheist.”

  189. 189.

    cain

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    Look at what’s going on with Pilosi – the next Dem will have to be a saint or the press will be in a tizzy. The question is are the Dems learning that the press is nothing more than a Greek Choirs full of mean girls?

    I think they’ve tried the ignore the press and speak directly to the people. I think the only way to call the press to heel is if the people (eg us) start voting with our wallets and just find other honest sources. They don’t have to be democratic leaning, just give us the facts and let us decide. I feel like we’re funding a vast apparatus of pundits from both sides.

    This midterm is supposed to be one of the most expensive in history. Where does all this billions of dollars go exactly? You pay these media companies and internet companies for ads, and it goes down the road. I would imagine that an election year is pretty $$$ for these companies even more than in the old days. So what do they do with the profits? I’ve always wondered about that.

  190. 190.

    smintheus

    Pelosi still wants to “look” for the smoking gun rather than to find it.

    Pelosi argued that Bill Clinton’s impeachment was “so bad, it was so wrong, and they had no right to do it, and it disrupted the public confidence in what we do,” and often likes to point out that she had evidence George W. Bush lied in the run-up to the Iraq War that she chose not to impeach him on.

    Pelosi and the rest of us also had evidence that Bush ordered the CIA and the military to torture prisoners, and ordered the NSA to spy illegally on Americans. But none of that proved to be the elusive “smoking gun” either. Presumably as long as Mueller’s report doesn’t document anything much worse than all of Bush’s crimes, and as long as the GOP doesn’t tell her in advance that they want Democrats to impeach Trump, then there’s zero chance Pelosi will even consider impeachment hearings. Because Ken Starr made them not do impeachment ever again.

    Is there anybody to the left of Newt Gingrich who doesn’t think that Trump’s crimes are worse than Nixon’s?

  191. 191.

    cain

    @Matt McIrvin:

    @cain: They bitched about Hillary Clinton’s minor infractions while Trump was obviously, blatantly doing things that were ten times worse simultaneously. Part of that was that they thought Clinton was going to win and Trump was a funny joke. But there is a real double standard. Women have to do better, non-whites have to do better, Democrats have to do better, and people with a reputation as amusing TV characters get a pass on a lot.

    So infuriating. Again, I don’t know how to fix it without taking away their stream of income and forcing them to do better. It seems we cannot implement the fairness doctrine anymore. Now that we seem to finally be able to fund politicians through small donations maybe they can be less beholden to anyone but us.

  192. 192.

    cain

    @JPL:

    @Princess: When Putin arrived at the ceremony today, he walked over and shook Trump’s hand, gave him a thumbs up and patted him on the back. It’s the first time that I saw Trump smile since the trip began. Trump finally received his father’s approval.

    Donny boy finally got what he came for.

  193. 193.

    debbie

    @Amir Khalid:

    It’s a trap, really. Doctors never tell prospective patients it will only last 5 to 10 years before becoming noticeable. Once they’re in, they can’t stop or they’ll look worse than they did before getting any surgery.

  194. 194.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    @MomSense: Not only that but her boobs somehow magically grew after her surgery. Does anyone else find it creepy that while she is managing to hold on to her brunette hair for now it appears that she is slowly going blonde from the tips up.

  195. 195.

    cain

    @rikyrah:

    Stacey Abrams is facing intense pressure to concede. Here’s why she won’t. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/stacey-abrams-georgia-pressure-to-concede_us_5be5d012e4b0dbe871aaa125 via @HuffPostPol

    Apparently an entire fucking county has no votes in but instead sent the votes back as return to sender because the address doesn’t exist. Kemp needs to be sued out of this universe, never to return. Someone should be putting intense pressure on those who are trying to pressure her. I seriously want to slap around some people. Fuckers.

  196. 196.

    cain

    @Haroldo:

    There is an overarching theme put forth by a lot of the opinion mongers (TFNYT, The Guardian – especially, The Washington Post) this Sunday morning: the domestic (Democratic) political world has to be X or it has to be Y. There is very little thoughtful analysis. I know, no surprise, it’s what they do, but it seems especially rampant today.

    Because they want to use that messaging to get their readers/viewers attention. We are dumbing down our public and thanks to the internet their attention spans are not very big as there are cat videos to watch and that is the competition. That’s why everything is like a big ass sports event. There is not much difference in visuals between ESPEN and CNN. Shit like “Dems in disarray” is great. Notice though there is no “Republicans in Trouble!” cuz they never are.

  197. 197.

    cain

    @Yarrow:
    It isn’t a big leap in intuition that evangelical men have moved from the worship of Christ/God to Mammon. They are christians in name only.

  198. 198.

    cain

    @Kay:

    That’s interesting. I “know” a lot of them. Am acquainted with them. I do school volunteer work and things and they make up a good part of the volunteers here. I get along fine with them on that level, but I must say it’s weird how they sort of lose interest in you when it becomes clear you’re not going to be a convert. It’s odd, much more like sales than religion. I’m always a little hurt, like :”is that it? There won’t be any more friendly overtures now that it’s clear I’m not going to your church?” :)

    It is very much a sales technique. I had a similar experience albeit not religion. It was for those rental properties at vacation spots where you get points. They get you in with some free tickets or something and then they put all this attention and when it is clear that you aren’t going to fold they turn cold and walk away. It is a bit disconcerting. But then again, the whole thing was a sham. It must take a special kind of sociopath to do that to someone else.

  199. 199.

    joel hanes

    @debbie:

    Still bitching about the fires in California.

    The residents of Paradise, CA voted very heavily for Trump.
    I’m sure they’re grateful to learn from Trump that the fire was all their own damned fault for not properly managing the forest in which their town was situated.

  200. 200.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @germy: How they got her number is simple. Services like BeenVerified and PeopleFinders collect all that together. The Equifax hack. Any of number of other hacks.

  201. 201.

    cain

    @smintheus:

    Pelosi and the rest of us also had evidence that Bush ordered the CIA and the military to torture prisoners, and ordered the NSA to spy illegally on Americans. But none of that proved to be the elusive “smoking gun” either. Presumably as long as Mueller’s report doesn’t document anything much worse than all of Bush’s crimes, and as long as the GOP doesn’t tell her in advance that they want Democrats to impeach Trump, then there’s zero chance Pelosi will even consider impeachment hearings. Because Ken Starr made them not do impeachment ever again.

    What good did that do? It just got them more embolden. Now your republic is filled with racists, nazis, right wing nutjobs, conspriacy theorists all who have political power and they are worming their way into the federal govt and courts. So I’m not so sure that she made the right call. The country is even more divided than it was earlier. One side though (democratic) has grown larger while the other continues to go down a dark path and getting smaller and more intense.

  202. 202.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @joel hanes: NPR interviewed the high school principal from one of the local towns, and when asked to tell us about his community said, “well, we love god…” WTF? a bit later he said he’s a Mormon and there’s a large Mormon community in that area. Remember when trump was gonna lose Utah to McMullin?

  203. 203.

    J R in WV

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    It’s my secret in getting people out here to leave me alone: “I’m an atheist.”

    If pressed I’ll tell them I worship the Mountain Forest and its Trees, which is why I live in the middle of the forest surrounded by trees and rocks.

  205. 205.

    MomSense

    @Kay:

    They don’t care about anyone else. Her anti bullying issue is only for herself. We are not her audience. They don’t care what we think or how what they say and do comes across to us. Their audience is only their supporters but when they are literally dying in the fire in Paradise you won’t find any sympathy or concern from the trumps.

  207. 207.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @smintheus: No prosecutor is going to file charges if they have no chance of conviction.

    I really don’t get this obsession with impeachment. Congress didn’t try to bring articles of impeachment against Nixon, either, until they knew they could convict.

    That’s what the hearings were, and are, for: convincing the Senate, aka the jury, of the need to convict.

  209. 209.

    Another Scott

    @smintheus: The point of impeachment is to remove a President (or Supreme Court justice, or Cabinet officer) from office. It’s not to be pure and righteous and let your opponents get ginned up so that your caucus loses seats and powers if you don’t have the votes.

    Pelosi knows how to count votes and knows how politics works. Let’s let her and her colleagues do their jobs before throwing stones, eh?

    (grumble, grumble)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  210. 210.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @cain: Tell me how she was going to get two-thirds of the Senate to convict the Shrub. It’s not a judgment of how bad the crimes are, it’s a judgment of how venal the jury members are.

  211. 211.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @cain: I don’t know that Iraq emboldened the Rs. The Iraq War in no small part got Obama elected, hurt Hillary Clinton in ’08 and ’16, and trump’s lies about his support helped him. The Dem leadership in ’06-’07– and yes that includes Obama– blew it by not establishing some kind of high profile investigation into the run up to the war, and Pelosi never should have said impeachment was “off the table”, but it was never going to happen.

    On impeaching trump, I’m of two minds. The Constitutional purist in me says “Of course they have to, of course he obstructed justice, he’s massively corrupt, Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, Qatar…..” But it’s never going to get two–thirds in the Senate, and Joe Manchin and Doug Jones and who knows who else would be concern trolling the effort all along. In any case, the first step in impeachment is public, televised hearings into all the gross corruption in this White House.

  214. 214.

    Kent

    @Procopius:

    @Barbara: The amount of mental illness resulting from experiences in combat in both World Wars and Korea were successfully hidden by the Department of Defense. The costs for the worst World War II cases were enormous and lasted for decades. I know less about the World War I cases. What I expect was PTSD started to be noticed a little bit among Vietnam veterans.

    During WWI they called it “Shell Shock” and it was the defining injury of the war. A tremendous amount was written about shell shock including in popular novels of the time in Europe and the US

    During WWII they called it “Combat Fatigue” or “Combat Stress Reaction” and sometimes popularly the “Thousand Yard Stare” and it was a major factor affecting troop readiness and combat operations.

    During or after Vietnam it became PTSD.

  215. 215.

    joel hanes

    Is there anybody to the left of Newt Gingrich who doesn’t think that Trump’s crimes are worse than Nixon’s?

    Um, that would be me.
    Undermining the Paris Peace Talks for political gain, and thus prolonging the Viet Nam War for years so that he and Kissinger could bomb the holy shit out of SE Asia was treasonous, barbarous, evil, and cost the US many soldiers lives.

    But Trump has a couple years left in which to actually kill hundreds of thousands, and may well accomplish it if he’s not stopped.

  216. 216.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Chuck Schumer @ SenSchumer
    What DonaldTrump’s afraid of:
    1. Putin
    2. Mueller
    3. Rain
    The President cancelled his visit to an American cemetery in France to mark 100 years since WWI. Even if the helicopters couldn’t fly, he could’ve driven. He must just be afraid of a little rain.

    Charles P. Pierce Retweeted Chuck Schumer
    Is it unkind to point out that “Chuck Schumer” is not on that list?

  218. 218.

    Jcricket

    Does anyone have a combined link that shows all the recounts we can still contribute money or time to? Abrams, Nelson, Gillum, who else? Has to be someone who has a single list??

  220. 220.

    Bill Arnold

    @NotMax:

    Wait until Poco figures out how to come close enough to saying, “Alexa, treats.”

    “My” young 1/2 coon cat is now regularly opening doors with lever handles. (Jumps at levers and pulls them down.) Yesterday, he let himself in by opening an unlocked front door. Forgot to close it though. He’s a fiend with the mac laptop pad – finds gestures I have to look up.

  222. 222.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Lamar White, Jr. @ LamarWhiteJr
    “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row”- Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith says in Tupelo, MS after Colin Hutchinson, cattle rancher, praises her.

    Hyde-Smith is in a runoff on Nov 27th against Mike Espy.

    Who thinks like this? Who has “public hangings” as a thing rattling around in their brain?

    Rick Wilson Retweeted Lamar White, Jr.
    Luckily, talk of public hangings in Mississippi isn’t fraught with any kind of, you know, racial meaning, historical resonance, or echoes of a certain late-night, white-hooded social club.

  223. 223.

    PJ

    @Haroldo: Lessig is a libertarian grifter who clerked for Posner and Scalia. He believes the market will take care of everything, no need for government regulation. You may remember his brief Presidential campaign in 2016, where he running on the same platform of “reform,” pledging that he would resign as President once his “reforms” were enacted as law.

  224. 224.

    MomSense

    @Bill Arnold:

    My coon cat and my lab used to team up and open the refrigerator somehow. I don’t know which one opened it (I’m guessing it was the coon cat) but they were always together when I found the refrigerator opened. The dog would get up in his hind legs and pull things out and the two would chow together.

    The dog felt guilty when I caught him and gave me the shame face but the cat’s cupboard of fucks was bare. He looked at me like “yeah I did it and if you took proper care of me I wouldn’t have had to”

  228. 228.

    SFAW

    @Baud:

    Fuck Pierce. How about not distracting from a good message.

    Lighten up, Francis. If Schumer were more a little effective at his job, nobody on the left-side would be slagging him.

  229. 229.

    Ruckus

    @Aziz, light!:
    The easy answer is that he is full of shit.
    All that weight he’s been putting on, you know storing up for the winter, that’s shit.
    He’s so full of shit, every time he opens his mouth, out comes shit. He’s full, he’s stuffed, he’s so full of it that he couldn’t get rid of it if he tries and listen to him, he’s really trying. Still he gets bigger and bigger.
    Of course he’s going to look like he’s sitting on the can, he’s just full of it.

  231. 231.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @NotMax: Um…no. Unless I miss my guess very badly (I haven’t followed the coverage), the Macron/Merkel plaque unveiling took place in the forest of Compiegne where the Armistice was signed – causing the guns on the Western Front to go silent at 11 AM on 11 November 1918. The Treaty of Versailles was signed in the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles (imagine that!) on 28 June 1919 – 5 years to the day of the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, the trigger for the vast, bloody mistake known as the Great War – until an even greater one broke out 20 years later.

  232. 232.

    Baud

    @SFAW:

    If Schumer were more a little effective at his job, nobody on the left-side would be slagging him.

    I’m sure President Obama and Speaker Pelosi concur.

  234. 234.

    SFAW

    @Baud:

    I’m sure President Obama and Speaker Pelosi concur.

    I expect that’s intended to be snark, or a put-down (of me, heaven forfend anything untoward gets said about Chuck, especially when he tries his own version of snark), or some such, but I can’t really tell what your attempted point is.

    ETA: I realize that in some parts of this joint, Charlie Pierce is nigh unto Satan, because reasons and all that. Still …
    ETA2: Upon re-reading your comment, I’m guessing your point is that President Obama and Speaker Pelosi got slagged, even though they were very effective, thus pwning my “no one on the left-side” comment. As you kids say: whatever.

  235. 235.

    sphouch

    Is it possible that Trump wasn’t allowed to attend a ceremony commemorating the end of WW1 because technically, Russia lost WW1?

  237. 237.

    SFAW

    @debbie:

    It will be interesting to see if he backs off that after some staff member reminds him the town supported him.

    Interesting? More like shocking. His usual — although not only — response mode has been to attack and insult, even those who supported him before then.

  238. 238.

    central texas

    @Baud:
    From a post-election headline in our local newspaper:

    “Travis County (TX) GOP had big plans. Beto voters crushed them.”

    Those democratic candidates elected by the “Beto voters” are not imaginary or tainted by Beto’s loss. Your sarcasm is beside the point.

  240. 240.

    smintheus

    @cain: Not impeaching Bush turned out to be a disaster, but Pelosi is actually proud of failing to hold hearings…still. She’s hopelessly out to sea on the need to hold Republican crooks accountable.

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