JUST IN: Nick Ayers, the leading candidate to replace John Kelly as President Trump's chief of staff, will not be taking the job, a White House official says https://t.co/CFRKQ9tUox pic.twitter.com/2ZWc4Jjxjq
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) December 9, 2018
Thank you @realDonaldTrump, @VP, and my great colleagues for the honor to serve our Nation at The White House. I will be departing at the end of the year but will work with the #MAGA team to advance the cause. ?? #Georgia
— Nick Ayers (@nick_ayers) December 9, 2018
“Here’s your rose”
“Oh, hell no”
Leaves Washington altogether.
Hildebrand
Smartest response ever.
Chief Oshkosh
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
HA!
Tick-tock, motherfuckers.
But too bad for Georgia, apparently.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Damn, The Beast isn’t gonna like that. And it’s pretty much a fuck you to Jared and Ivanka, if all the weekend gossip is right.
Gossip is also saying trump has been calling Reince Priebus and saying he misses the days when they had fun. THere’s a non-zero chance he’ll bring Reincey back. How’s the real estate market in Kenosha?
Yarrow
Rats, sinking ships….
Doug R
This coupled with
this
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Just think what John Kelly will be missing….
He won’t have Latino children to kidnap, anymore.
Luthe
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: He and J. Beauregard can commiserate.
cain
I’m thinking Chief of Staff Tucker Carlson is sounding good
PaulWartenberg
Proves he is smart enough for the job by NOT TAKING THE DAMN JOB! Good for you, Nick.
Right now, anybody with working brain cells has to realize the trump administration is sinking under the weight of scandal and Russian criminality.
OzarkHillbilly
@cain: I’m thinking Death Row Inmate Tucker Carlson sounds even better.
PaulWartenberg
@cain:
That is actually sounding downright horrifying.
And Carlson has to know he’ll be giving up a sweet-paying gig being a TV blowhard with little risk. All he has to do is rant to the wingnut base and keep his ratings up. He takes the CoS job and he’s toast inside of 2 weeks from all the inner circle backstabbing.
A Ghost To Most
When the skeevy, grasping party apparatchiks take a pass, they know the grift is up.
“The Company I Keep”
Yarrow
@cain: Meh. If you’re going with a Fox News personality, why not Chief of Staff Sean Hannity.
Gravenstone
So someone finally whispered in Trump’s ear that Ayers was probably “Anonymous”? Kewl.
Peale
Frankly, I’m hoping that it’ll be the return of Sean Spencer, since Kelly fired him. Mainly because I miss Melissa McCarthy playing him on SNL
Aleta
He has big ambitions for his future. Trump admin just *now* rated toxic? Start falling, you traitorous dominoes.
Also, he read John Cole last night and panicked.
Waiting this long tells how dominated he is by immorality and queasy calculations. (That’s Ayers silly.)
Elizabelle
LA Times item, and who do you think the anonymous source is? Ayers himself?
Next hilarity up: Trump says, OK, I’m good with through the spring and Ayers says, uh, let me get back to you on that.
ETA: Outside the administration. Way outside.
jacy
Anybody with two brain cells to rub together would put as much real estate between themselves and this administration as possible.
The fact that there are still any people in this administration shows how many on the right are working with less than two brain cells.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I gotta find a way into this racket.
Elizabelle
Also: nice touch: LA Times illustrated their item with a photo of Ayers and Neil Gorsuch. Goons in government.
Yarrow
@Elizabelle:
Since Pence is guilty as hell and Ayers is Pence’s COS, Ayers is smart enough to know he needs to spend more time with his kids while he can.
The Dangerman
Huh. Run for the hills, kinda like Scaramuchi (sp?), right? Or was Mooch fired before he was hired. I forget.
Mr. Kite
They start floating a name they have not cleared with the person self. POTUS is poaching staff from his subordinate. They announce the fucking COS to the FPOTFUS is leaving without having a successor lined up. They are playing “I won’t talk to you. Mommy, he started it!!” in the White House. In the White House.
This is fine. Right? Right??
What a fucking shit show. It’s fractal shit (big shit, little shit, all the same shit) at any level in this administration.
Elizabelle
@Yarrow: I like your take on that.
I want them all to go down hard. Kelly too, even once he’s outside the administration. Nail them all to the wall. McConnell, Ryan, everyone who brought us to this pass.
Suzanne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: How is it that these terrible people are rolling in dough and I still owe over $100K on my student loans? Fuck.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
a thread on Jared, on topic since Ayers is said to be a Kushner ally, in as much as any of these scorpions are allies of each other
I’m not placing any bets on how this thing shakes out, but I think Kushner throwing the old man under the bus is not just a fantasy
MomSense
@cain:
Or Tomi Lahren.
PsiFighter37
Mark Meadows, wingnut congressperson and head of the Freedumb Caucus in the House, is being floated as a top contender for CoS. Really scraping the bottom of the barrel now…
Raven
@Suzanne: I want the last check I write to bounce! (Kinky Friedman)
Yarrow
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: They’ll all do whatever it takes to save themselves. Trump will turn on all his kids and certainly Jared. At some level the kids all know that and will turn on him and each other in an attempt to save themselves. Won’t work.
Amir Khalid
Nick Ayers wouldn’t have lasted long as Trump’s chief of staff anyway. Ayers’ real hair looks like what Trump is faking. Trump would have fired him at some point for that.
cmorenc
@Yarrow:
The congressional GOP rats haven’t abandoned the S.S.Trump yet, but everone but the most hard-core dead-eders are looking around hard for which life rafts are available to them should the water begin to overwhelm the bilge pumps keeping it afloat – and some are beginning to show lack of confidence that the bilge pumps can keep up with the in-flooding water for very much longer.
Steve in the ATL
@Suzanne: you should have gone to Kennesaw State—it’s the Harvard of, uh, Kennesaw, Georgia.
gene108
@Yarrow:
Oh please, if you want a Fox News personality why not Ainsley Earhardt?
Trump really, really likes her on his favorite TV show. And Fox can always get another blond to fill in or maybe they go bold and get a redhead.
A Ghost To Most
@cmorenc: Those rats with serious legal exposure have no choice but to stay with the conspiracy. The rest will flee.
Sidhra
No alarms and no surprises please.
Amir Khalid
@Suzanne:
You won’t ever want to do what they did to be rolling in dough. You have moral standards.
Tony Jay
@Suzanne:
If you were willing to seek out opportunities where you could prove yourself heartless, cruel and slavishly obedient to vile people you too could be making a sweet living destroying lives just like these industrialized fuckers.
But you’re not, so you dont, so you aren’t.
Better person. Sleep at night. Fuckem. Etc.
Yarrow
@cmorenc: January isn’t here yet. The calculus changes then for every GOP rep.
Mr Stagger Lee
Mad props to Congresswoman Ilahn Omar, for telling Bigot Preacher E.W. Jackson to go f*ck himself over her decision to wear an headscarf on the floor of Congress. Welcome to America Pastor.
Yarrow
@Tony Jay: OT, but related, how the whole Brexit vote going? Isn’t it supposed to be Tuesday?
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Drumpf is torn – he can’t decide whether to appoint Meatloaf or Gary Busey as chief of staff.
oatler.
I wish someone would paint a Bosch parody where Trump is the hollow-bodied damned soul with the tree limbs piercing its own
fat carcass.
danielx
Smarter than I thought…
Raven
@Steve in the ATL: It’s not a bad school.
Mai Naem mobile
I just want that Scooby Doo/Roadrunner whatever morning cartoon sound effect to Nick Ayers scooting off.
Fair Economist
@Yarrow: Whip counts indicate May’s plan is likely to be defeated resoundingly.
danielx
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
Nah – either one is a potential upstager.
Frankensteinbeck
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Little Jared was trained by his father to believe that it is the duty of the rest of the world to throw themselves under the bus for him. I believe he sincerely likes Old Man Trump. They are intellectual equals. But Jared would even throw Ivanka to the wolves if he thought it was a choice. Mind you, unlike Trump I think he can help himself by helping others.
Suzanne
@Steve in the ATL: I went to Arizona State. The jokes write themselves.
JMG
Jared hired the best white collar/government crime lawyer in DC, Abbe Lowell, very early on in this affair. That’s not the move of a man looking to go down with the ship.
Suzanne
@Amir Khalid:
Do I? DO I?!?!
Fuck.
All that’s ever gotten me is a stack of fucking debt.
I really think the Democratic Party needs to go all in on free college, free trade school, and student loan forgiveness. Not just because I have a personal interest, either. It is staggering how absolutely unaffordable yet absolutely necessary it is to gain the skills needed to do even marginally okay in this economy.
Chetan Murthy
@Suzanne:
I’d give a different reason: I’m 54, and in 11-13 years I want the youngs to be able to pay my Social Security and Medicare. I’m not stupid enough to think that I “save money” with my taxes, that then pays for it later. We need to invest in the youngs and their productive capacity, so that via the magic of taxation, they can support me in my dotage. It’s. An. Investment. Just like highways. Just like public sewerage.
Dammit.
banditqueen
Individual-1 can explain it all away:
The Creature from the orange lagoon is just mad libbing from his limited repertoire of talking points. Maybe Nugie or some Evangelical Preacher-Jr will take on the CoS position.
Raven
@Suzanne: I have a friend who teaches at the School of Social Transformation there!
SFAW
@cmorenc:
But RINO Rubio was making noises today about how Shitgibbon better not pardon Manafort. And, according to all the information currently available, Rubio has at least as much backbone as Bob Corker, Jeff Flake, and Susan Collins — combined! And I have it on good authority — the BEST authority — that RINO Rubio has recently been getting intensive training in brow-furrowing. So there’s that.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Fair Economist:
Does that mean that the UK government is going to finally do the right thing and just forget this whole Brexit shitshow? The EU has even given them an easy out
Aleta
Immanentize
@Yarrow: Count the retirements or resignations. Especially in States with GOP Governors…. It is one of the biggest tells. I will be watching for which GOP Senators will announce they will not be running in 2020.
Suzanne
@Raven: ASU has some very good programs. I did my grad program there, and I was a TA for the undergrads for three years. Damn, that architecture program is competitive as hell. ASU plays that game where it’s easy to get into the university, but difficult to get into some of the programs. I felt really bad for them. Only about 7% of the wannabe architects got in. I don’t know much about the School of Social Transformation, because they were just starting it when I was there, but I have heard good things. It’s a great concept.
SFAW
@Suzanne:
But we jackals like, admire, and respect you, so that’s something. I mean, how cool is it to have the admiration and respect of the denizens (so to speak) of an almost-top-10,000 blog? Right? Right?
Raven
@Suzanne: When LBJ (fuck him) signed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (GI Bill) he noted that the WW2 Bill was the “greatest economic flywheel in history”. I have long argued that free college and trade school would be the same. What we get in Georgia is the “Hope Scholarship” that is grades bases and heavily tilted to the middle class (white people). The fascist Bortz called the lottery a “tax on the stupid to pay for nice cars for white suburban kids parents.
Suzanne
@Chetan Murthy:
Oh, don’t worry. I pay taxes on my salary. Student loan repayment is not a deduction, just the interest. And now that the standard deduction has been doubled, I likely won’t itemize this year.
The olds have figured out how to get all their money.
Raven
@Suzanne: She’s a stone commie! My moron brother went there and was on the cross-country team. I would think most architecture programs would be highly selective. When I worked at Georgia Tech we were part of that school and the students were exhausted!
Suzanne
@SFAW:
It is indeed pretty cool.
Raven
@Suzanne: I’m 69 and still owe about 8k from my doc program.
Immanentize
@Aleta:
They eat what they catch which happens now to be their own
Yarrow
@Immanentize: Me too. I expect several resignations.
@Fair Economist: That’s what I’ve heard. Was wondering if there was any local info.
Suzanne
@Raven:
At ASU, the Architecture building was the only building on the campus that literally had to be heated and cooled 24/7/365 because students were ALWAYS working. They actually caught a few students living there. It has some metal shading devices on the windows that bear an unfortunate resemblance to jail bars, so it was renamed “Architraz”.
Aleta
@Yarrow: Agree he’ll turn on anyone. But if he tries to blame Ivanka and Jared, they probably have counter-evidence to put him away.
Suzanne
@Raven: Goddamn. That will be me.
On the days I like my job, the student loans just feel like a necessary evil. On the days that I hate my job, I consider fleeing the country, never to return, because I dream about not paying them back and living in, say, Finland north of the Arctic Circle for the rest of my life.
Chetan Murthy
@Suzanne: Well, I meant something a little different. When the young don’t invest in their skills, they don’t produce as much over their lifetimes. And this has a direct effect on the wealth of our society. Sewerage, roads, hospitals, all these things have a direct impact on the productivity of the population. And so does adequate education. The right way to pay for education is via general taxation, not via tuition.
B/c that way, people will choose their careers not merely based on how much money they can extract to pay off their loans. It pisses me off insanely that teachers are so poorly-paid. That they have to pay for their educations is just a shit-cream-puff on top (for example).
ETA: What I mean is, it is not necessary to think about this in terms of justice, or hardship, or some such. Already, thinking of it in terms of intergenerational accounts, of the productivity of the -entire- population, leads one to “health care, education, and a few other things” need to be public goods.
CliosFanBoy
@Steve in the ATL: isn’t that Gingrich’s “doctorate” ??
Gelfling 545
Maybe he’s holding out to be Pence’s CoS.
CliosFanBoy
@Mr Stagger Lee: keep in mind EWWWWWW Jackson was the repub nominee for Lt. Governor in Virginia not long ago..
Aleta
@Immanentize: Le Page is moving out of state.
Tony Jay
@Yarrow:
It’s into endgame of the intro territory. May is officially and perhaps actually dedicated to her shit-sandwich of a deal, which sums up her Prime Ministership – barely competent and pleasing to no-one. It won’t pass, and from the slitherings amongst her Cabinet it looks like various Tory wannabes are setting their stalls out to replace her once she crashes and burns worse than any PM in recent history. You can smell the rot hollowing out the inside of this Government. She’s left herself no room to manouvere. If the EU doesn’t step up to save her (and why would they) she looks done.
After that, well, there won’t be a General Election, there’s no better deal on offer for Brexit, so at some point Parliament is going to have to vote for a delay in the Leave date and a new referendum. They have to. No Deal is a No Deal, there’s no ‘good’ deal that’s better than staying in the EU. Reality is knocking on the door and the winds outside the Westminster Bubble are as cold as ice for politicians who don’t make the right decision.
As to who wins the referendum…. I’d like to say that no one could be that stupid twice, but I won’t. I’ve met Quitters, some of them really are that stupid.
Amir Khalid
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
No. May says The People have decided they want Brexit, and The People shall get Brexit, regardless of the consequences.
SFAW
@Suzanne:
OK, now I’m starting to question your sanity. Which in no way diminishes my admiration and respect for you, of course.
Amir Khalid
@Tony Jay:
You have a higher opinion of her leadership than I.
SFAW
@Aleta:
Yeah, but LePage was termed out.
Now, if he had moved to FLA nine years ago, that would have meant something.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Chetan Murthy:
Not according to my parents, who are even Dems. They think teachers are paid too much. In my school district, the average teacher salary is around $55, 000. I don’t think they understand that a lot of these teachers have huge student loan debts. You only start making 70 grand when you’ve been teaching for 20-30 years.
The school district has put up 10 year emergency tax levies for the past decade. I don’t think the Ohio state government is adequately funding local governments.
frosty
@Suzanne: @Raven:
You two are making me feel better about never achieving my dream of being an architect. I finally gave in to reality and got my PE when I was almost 40 since every job I managed to get was some kind of engineering. A few years after that I got into stormwater and watershed planning and I’ve been doing it ever since. If I’d had a fluid mechanics and open channel flow class as an undergrad I might not have spun around in circles for 15 years. *
* It also helps to not graduate into a recession (Fuck Nixon) and have to take any job you can get. Career planning! Ptui!
Yarrow
@Tony Jay: Thanks. That’s the sense I’ve gotten from friends in the UK. How long can they delay the Leave? I guess technically they could just say, “Sorry! All that mess for two years? Oops! Our bad. We’re staying!” but I’m not sure how well that would go down. I don’t think a No Deal Brexit will be popular either.
@Amir Khalid: That’s what she says. It’s the kind of thing a politician says right before the announce they’re going to do what they said they wouldn’t do.
Steve in the ATL
@Suzanne: fair point. Though to be fully fair, my sister’s second ex-husband got all his degrees from there and is a successful architect in Phoenix. So don’t give up yet!
sukabi
@Aleta: sounds like Ayers is leaving to spend some quality time with his lawyers…lol
Raven
@CliosFanBoy: No, Tulane
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Yarrow:
According to the EU, legally, they could just say that. I want them to, because this is monumentally stupid and is only going to weaken the EU, which will help Russia. I think that’s why the EU has decided Brexit can be backed out of.
Immanentize
@Aleta: Going to Florida to torture B. Cracker….
Tony Jay
@Amir Khalid:
I really am that polite.
For example, Jose Mourinho is a handsome man whose reign at Old Trafford has built upon the foundations laid by his immediate predecessors to transform the ethos of the club and make me very happy.
True and true.
Raven
@frosty: Don’t look back, they might be gainin on you! I am a high school dropout with a GED and Bs and M Ed in recreation and parks admin with a doc in Adult Ed. I’ve been lucky as hell but I’ve also stuck with it. Both of the old friends I fished with this week like it that I have a defined pension and they wished they’d have done something that would have gotten them.
Mary G
@Chetan Murthy: This is also the argument for letting young immigrants in, who will work hard and pay into Social Security for people like me, who’s been on disability since about age 48.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Raven:
But I was winning!
Damned at Random
Jesus Christ, Boswell. I think I’m gonna cry
Amir Khalid
@Yarrow:
A politician has to realise they’re boxed in with no other option before they do that. May doesn’t strike me as being entirely aware of the gravity of Britain’s situation.
Raven
@Amir Khalid: Atlanta won the MLS Cup last night with 72000 plus in the Benz. I was reading today that there best players are all but gone and their coach too. The saving grace is that they say that’s just the way it is in soccer.
Teacher Ryan
I grew up near Nick and we have a lot of friends in common. Quoting one friend who worked for Newt and W and the rest of the loathesome GOP – “I know Nick – we’re not close, but I’ve worked with him on some stuff – and he is the perfect CoS for Trump in that he’s shady and slimy and a general dickhead”. He also says that he is 100 percent convinced that Nick was the author of the NYT Op Ed.
Also, growing up I had a buddy who was a sort of genial doofus. Kind of charming, but absolutely stupid. He went to college with Nick at the Harvard of Kennesaw, GA – Kennesaw State University.
Mike in NC
White House CoS vacancy should be advertised on Craigslist.
Suzanne
@Steve in the ATL: Oh, I am actually fairly successful in this community. But even successful architects are not wealthy. Therein lies the issue. Architecture is a middle-class life at best…..but it takes comparable education and licensure to medicine or law. My first architecture job in 2011 paid me $43K with a MArch, as I have a talent of graduating into recessions. I, unlike many of my colleagues, have been willing to make jumps to other companies in order to raise that fairly quickly. Though I did turn down a six-figure salary offer from a company about a year ago because I felt they were doing something unethical to the office I was with at the time.
And Mr. Suzanne is a public educator (bilingual SLP). He went on strike earlier this year. Apparently, we’re both compensated in “passion”, or some shit.
@frosty: Some of the PEs that I hire make more than I do. Don’t feel bad.
CliosFanBoy
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: people who think teachers are overpaid are almost never ever those who could actually do the job.
CliosFanBoy
@Raven: ah, OK. sorry
Ruckus
@Raven:
My sister was 66 when she passed and owed about $12,000.
A decent education that allows one to be a tax paying citizen (IOW, have a not unreasonable life, support your kids should you have them, and retire without major debt) should not cost an amount that a lot of people will never earn enough to pay back, using that education. And at least if it does, it should at least be dischargeable in bankruptcy.
Raven
@Suzanne: My wife retired at 60 from a health department job in breast feeding and teen pregnancy ed. She has a masters and was making $45 after 20 years.
GxB
@Mai Naem mobile: How about this?
danielx
@Suzanne:
If you just wait a little while, it will likely have the climate of Tennessee.
Suzanne
@Raven: Un-fucking-real. How TF does this happen?!
Raven
@CliosFanBoy: Not at all, the scumbag motherfucker slinks all over Georgia.
frosty
@Raven: My wife and I both have partial pensions from County and state work. I tell people it’s a great thing to have – it means I’ll be buying the premium cat food in my dotage.
Raven
@Suzanne: She cared about what she did so she stuck with it until she couldn’t take the director anymore. College towns are notorious for shitty salaries, I’m very lucky to make what I do and it’s nothing spectacular.
divf
@Mike in NC: I thought that Craigslist had eliminated their “Personals” section.
Amir Khalid
@Tony Jay:
This one bit isn’t quite true:
That sneering, thin-skinned, blame-everyone-else thing he has going every time he opens his mouth in public isn’t remotely attractive.
Raven
@frosty: Yea, we’re going to give it our best shot.
James E Powell
@Suzanne:
Or we could go back to government funded college education available to anyone who graduates high school.
frosty
@Suzanne:
LOL, that’s me too! Nixon for the BS and Reagan for the MS in Urban Planning. He also took time out to tank the profession. And I ended up with an engineering job with both degrees after 6+ months of searching.
Somehow I always managed to take a 10% cut when changing jobs. One reason why I’ve stayed at this one for almost 20 years.
Tony Jay
@Yarrow:
Brexit was sold and bought as a complete fiction, based on Tabloid hate-porridge and deliberately misdirected anger. It’s taken until now, when what it’s supporters have been posturing about for two years actually has to be signed off on, for cold, hard reality to make a much delayed entrance.
Vote for May’s crap deal, wreck the economy, campaign on that in three years? That’s awful.
Let a No Deal happen? Be dragged from your cardboard fort by hungry Quitters who need something to eat after the last tins of catfood have been licked clean? That’s worse!
Vote for a new referendum to ‘provide guidance’, hope like hell senses are come to, whine endlessly about how it would all have been fine if you’d been PM? That’s a career!
I could be wrong, but it looks like momentum is with option C.
Robert Sneddon
@Tony Jay: Theresa May is in charge but she’s not in control. She’s about to discover the hard way that Parliament is sovereign, not the Government. She’s already been found in contempt of Parliament, the first PM to suffer that fate in three hundred years, for not publishing the complete legal brief about withdrawal from the EU as demanded by all sides in the House.
Absent a real turnaround she’s going to lose the Withdrawal Agreement vote at the end of the debates and amendments process (I think they’ve got 5 days pencilled in for it starting on Tuesday, an indication of their desperation and hope that the horse will sing). After that there’s a sheaf of possible outcomes but resignation by the PM is almost certain, she will have lost the confidence of her own Party’s MPs as well as suffering a likely crushing defeat. She is personally unlikable, a pre-requisite for her earlier position as Home Secretary and she has fewer friends than she did before this debacle kicked off.
After that, well… the Second Referendum crowd are a bit like USian Randites demanding “Audit the Fed!”. It would take months to set up a new referendum, nobody has agreed what question would be asked and frankly Parliament is sick of bloody referendums (referenda?) and more ready to do their job as representatives of a democratically-elected legislature than they have been over the past few years.
The new PM, whoever they are, can opt to A) go through with the no-deal exit, B) beg the EU for an extension to Article 50 to get something, anything better than no-deal before we leave the EU or C) be brave, statesmanlike and courageous and withdraw Article 50 completely before announcing a General Election in which a resurgent UKIP will get several million votes and maybe two MPs and they will be roundly ignored thereafter.
“The brave, statemanlike and courageous” bit by the way is basically Brit pol-speak for “career suicide”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ik8JT2S-kBE
HinTN
@PaulWartenberg: Is he actually smart enough to let that knowledge temper his ambition?
Raven
@James E Powell: Why would we limited it to anyone who graduates? My work concluded that quitting school is a really good idea for some people.
Tony Jay
@Amir Khalid:
Yeah, but unless you’re a Portugese team doctor (and what the dickens was really going on there?) he can be a genuine sweetheart. It’s just modern football he has no respect or love for.
I hope he stays in charge for years to come. Competing with one side of Manchester is enough right now.
HinTN
@Elizabelle:
Oh hell yeah!!!
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Robert Sneddon:
May might as well take option c. She’s probably toast anyway.
HinTN
@Mr. Kite: For your benefit, this is NOT fine.
Ken
@Yarrow:
1) Cohen had only one client besided Trump, Sean Hannity;
2) The filings in the Cohen sentencing say that “Individual 1” committed felonies
3) The filings totally clear Trump
Therefore Sean Hannity is “Individual 1” and has committed felonies. It’s just logic.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Amir Khalid:
So she’s stupid, then? Burke is revolving in his grave at the current state of British Toryism.
Tony Jay
@Robert Sneddon:
A new referendum is the only option that can be spun as ‘honouring’ the 2016 vote and giving the country a chance to escape Cameron’s Folly, but May has to be gone for it to work. Options a) and b) are both dead-ends for any politician with long term plans, and no Tory is going to plump for option c) even if they hope they can blame Jeremy for everything, Tory voters would go ballistic.
The road has run out, the cliff edge is right there. These are not brave people, they’ll grab at the only chance for survival they have – eventually.
Yarrow
@Tony Jay: Brexit wasn’t all that popular until they starting ramping up the anti-immigrant sentiment. That really got people stirred up. So the Leave voters want to shit on immigrants but they don’t like the rest of the consequences. Funny how that works.
I get the impression momentum is with option C as well, but who knows what’s going to happen.
@Robert Sneddon:
This is true, but in this crazy situation an actual talented politician could make it work and be hailed as a hero. I don’t see anyone like that in the crop of potential leaders in the UK, unfortunately.
Tony Jay
@Yarrow:
Kind of like America in 2016, the politicians who had been exploiting the nativist sweatbath of tabloid-style ‘news’ found that decades of it had really seeped into the national mindset and poisoned opinion.
Sucks to be them, right? s/
Yarrow
@Tony Jay: It sure does seem awfully familiar. With a big fat assist from Vlad.
Tim Illingworth
@Robert Sneddon: The UK can do a General Election in 3 weeks from a standing start; it should be able to do a referendum in a month.
Also: Jay or NoJay?
Tim
Amir Khalid
@Tony Jay:
I think Jose was ticked off that she obeyed the referee’s instruction to come on the pitch. He didn’t seem to care that refusing to attend to an injured player would have put her medical licence at risk.
Gelfling 545
@Raven: I paid off my master’s when I was 65. If I hadn’t done 2 years with VISTA after I retired and got the education service benefit I’d still be paying. And the amount of the benefit was fully taxable.
PPCLI
@Steve in the ATL: Actually Gingrich’s education wasn’t at bad places. BA at Emory and PhD at Tulane. The PhD seems not to have been a rather humdrum product, though, since the Post-PhD job he took (presumably his best option) was at the Geography department at West Georgia University. Where he was denied tenure.
Robert (Nojay) Sneddon
@Tim Illingworth: We’re not sharing a room at Helicon… (sorry folks, inside joke here. Tim and I have, ahem, met).
We have a well-tested process to do a GE from a standing start at short notice, each referendum is made up as we go along. Just deciding the wording of the question to be asked will take months of debate. Two options or more? Who gets to vote, do we do the right thing and allow British citizens working and living in the EU and abroad a vote this time or do we allow only British citizens in the UK to vote like we did last time? What about 16 and 17-year-olds? How about EU citizens living in the UK who are on the Electoral Register, can they vote too? etc., etc. Even doing all this in a rush and accepting the resulting screw-ups and mistakes will take several months. It will take until January for the debris cloud from next week’s Parliamentary train-wreck to settle plus the holiday period. At that point we’ve got three months before Article 50 goes boink! and we’re out of the EU and the new PM will need to get their feet under the table and start running the country again even before any referendum details can be agreed.
A year ago a new referendum was possible. This close to the cliff-edge it’s not going to happen absent some finagling with the Article 50 declaration. An outside chance is that the incoming PM withdraws Article 50 in conjunction with announcing a new referendum to be held in, say, August or thereabouts under similar rules as before to make it easier to implement. I’m not in charge though.
Ken
@Robert Sneddon:
Oooh, that means they probably haven’t overhauled the punishment since then. Is it one of those traditional things like having the House shout “shame, shame” while pelting her with rotten turnips?
Ksmiami
@Elizabelle: can we plz haz tar and feathers again?
frosty fred
Shall just leave this here.
batguano
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Tell me about it. My monthly property taxes are higher than my entire mortgage payment and the sale tax is over 8%, but i wouldn’t want to live anywhere else in Ohio; good schools, competent local government, and a socially responsive police force. Plus we have a reputation as the most gay friendly city in the State.
Do we even get money from the state? Certainly not even remotely close to what we pay out in state income taxes.
Steve in the ATL
@Suzanne: @Raven: Jeez. I can’t complain now, but when I was a 24-year old baby lawyer I deposed a longshoreman and learned that he made more than I did. I was furious and called my parents that night: “Why did you make me finish 8th grade? I could have been making bank as a longshoreman! Whatever that is.”
Aleta
@Steve in the ATL: You’d get to be in a union. But you’d never have learned all about airports.
Ohio Mom
@batguano: You can thank Kasich and the rest of the Republicans in the Statehouse for that. They’ve been keeping the money that used to go back to local governments and school systems since the Great Recession.
They started out by saying they had to replenish the rainy day fund that had been spent down during the worst of the Recession; I don’t know what their excuse is now.
J R in WV
@Suzanne:
You live in Phoenix, AZ, and you dream about living north of the Arctic Circle in Finland?
That’s truly nuts!!! I highly respect your career, by the way!!
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
Live in an oven, want to escape to a freezer?
What’s not to understand.
BTW I’ve been above the Arctic Circle in the winter. It’s not that bad! Better if you can actually dress for it sure, but not bad. One of my favorite pics is one I took in late Nov 72 at the northern tip of Norway. One woman standing on the pier at sunrise, there is no one else in sight.
J R in WV
I want to see a glorious display of the northern lights, and/or southern lights, waving across the sky after that last sunset of fall.
But move there? nope!
I don’t want to live in Phoenix, either, tho, way too low and hot, even in the winter!
MCA1
@Aleta: That may be the greatest possible endgame of this whole thing, too. Battle royale where all these vicious, amoral fuckers turn on one another and we get to learn everything. And all but a few “winners” go to prison, and those who don’t have no family left, no prospects, and get to be metaphorically tarred and feathered every day for the rest of their miserable lives as both crooks and disloyal rats.
Ruckus
@MCA1:
Naw, most of them will turn on each other to save their own asses. A decent grifter knows when to walk away. Or at least take the best offer the prosecutor is giving. Individual 1 isn’t decent at the grift. Neither is his family. Manafort thought he could just talk/grift his way out. Not working so good for him. Individual 1 thinks he can bluff his way out, except he doesn’t think he’s bluffing. Because he doesn’t think very well. He’s going for the twofer. Not good at the game he plays and has no idea how to get out when he’s trapped. Of course he might just act like the wounded animal he is, which will not work either but has the potential to get a lot of people killed.