Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

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

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

I desperately hope that, yet again, I am wrong.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Donald Jessica Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

Ah, the different things are different argument.

If West Virginia and San Francisco had a love child.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Let me file that under fuck it.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

“Joe Biden deserved better than he got from some folks in his own party.”

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

Biden: Oh no. We’ve upset Big Pharma again.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Chutkan laughs. Lauro sits back down.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Open Thread: Artistically Designed, Steel-Slatted Bullshit

Open Thread: Artistically Designed, Steel-Slatted Bullshit

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Well, metaphorically he is…

(Matt Davies via GoComics.com)
.


 
Since other funding sources are not exactly prospering:


Reader Interactions

147Comments

  1. 1.

    dmsilev

    we are building artistically designed steel slats, so that you can easily see through it….

    Star Trek only had transparent aluminum; under the Glorious Leadership of President Dealmaker, not only will the US steel industry be revived, but they will start making transparent steel! Truly, this is an age of wonders.

  5. 5.

    dmsilev

    Also, perhaps Trump should consider that even if the Democrats don’t want a concrete wall, they might perhaps be open to the idea of an abstract wall.

  10. 10.

    dmsilev

    @debbie: The Wall is a state of mind, see. You have to visualize The Wall. You have to make The Wall part of you. You have to _become_ The Wall.

  11. 11.

    Corner Stone

    @debbie:

    Let’s build a wall out of Crystalline Entity!

    The Cuban infiltration force would only employ their sonic weapon and resonate the Entity into smithereens.

  13. 13.

    chopper

    so…steel slats, so you can easily see through it. but people can’t pass drugs through it. nosiree, not at all.

  17. 17.

    JPL

    @Corner Stone: Do you mean the former president of Baylor who hid the sex abuse that was occurring under his leadership? That one? Who now is allowed to bloviate about the innocence of trump.

  18. 18.

    trollhattan

    Things I did not know: Read today that Stonewall Jackson, Walt Whitman and John Wilkes Booth all attended John Brown’s execution.

  21. 21.

    Corner Stone

    @JPL: He’s got a book to sell about Bill Clinton. That alone qualifies him as an expert and talk show catnip.

  22. 22.

    trollhattan

    @debbie:
    “Henceforth, all Border Patrol agents shall be trained as mimes and in unison, lean, palms-out in a southerly direction.”

  27. 27.

    Mike J

    If Trump were more clever I’d guess that the concrete/steel wall thing came from some child care book where you give the kid options, but only options that are acceptable to you. “Do you want brussels sprouts or lima beans?” Do the books tell you what to do if the kid laughs in your face and tells you to fuck off? And does Trump know you can’t spank the country?

  29. 29.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I realize it’s like stopping at the unfolded card table outside the Piggly-Wiggly to argue with a LaRouchie, but why would anyone want to look through The Wall?

  33. 33.

    NotMax

    Nothing like building something huge and both light and heat reflective in a sun-drenched desert. Howard Roark on the bad acid.

  34. 34.

    Adam L Silverman

    @JPL: He thinks he knows the price of everything, but he really knows the value of nothing. He also doesn’t actually know the price of anything either.

  36. 36.

    NotMax

    @NotMax

    Amended:

    Nothing like building something huge and both blindingly light and heat reflective in a sun-drenched desert. Howard Roark on the bad acid.

  37. 37.

    Aleta

    What do you want to bet the contractors will leave excavations or shortcut the fill in places, inviting spots suited to the start of a tunnel.

  41. 41.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Charles P. Pierce @ CharlesPPierce
    Normally, I wouldn’t want to see Ken Starr on my TV but Ari Melber is doing a good job with him.

    Pierce and his reply-era indicate Melber did a good job. Okay. I figure if the old crotch-sniffer was Destroyed, Eviscerated, Leveled, Pummeled or what have you, somebody will put the good parts on the tubes

  42. 42.

    FlipYrWhig

    I built a wooden wall
    but it wooden wall.

    So I built a steel wall,
    but it steel wooden wall.

    So I built a lead wall,
    but it steel wooden lead me wall.

    So I built a copper wall,
    but the copper steel wooden lead me wall.

    So I built a tin wall,
    now I tin wall.

  43. 43.

    Steeplejack

    @Corner Stone:

    I couldn’t take it. I was feeling too fragile today. Switched over to Property Brothers when Ken Starr was announced for the next block. I was praying that Ari would tear him a new one, but I guess that didn’t happen?

  47. 47.

    lamh36

    So I saw Spider-man:Into the Spiderverse! My goodness, it was SOOOOO good. The animation was awesome the story was cool and the animated action sequences were better than some live action set pieces. And the soundtrack was DOPE was WOW!

    I cannot recommend it enough!

    Go check it out, you won’t be disappointed.

  49. 49.

    lamh36

    @jaketapper
    2h2 hours ago
    More
    Breaking — Buzzfeed wins defamation suit brought over publishing of the Steele dossier

  51. 51.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Has anybody seen the new Mary, Queen of Scots movie? I’m thinking of treating myself tomorrow afternoon, but would love to hear ahead of time from any jackals who have seen it.

  54. 54.

    The Dangerman

    @dmsilev:

    …artistically designed steel slats…

    Will we make people buy the acetylene torch equipment or will we have rentals along the border?

  55. 55.

    Mary G

    @SiubhanDuinne: Tom and Lorenzo, who I trust above all others about movies, were disappointed except for the costumes. They just mentioned that they had problems with it, but no formal post yet. They loved, loved, loved “The Favourite,” so I plan to see that instead.

  56. 56.

    lamh36

    @Mary G: I was just gonna post the same sentiment about T-Lo. I haven’t seen it, but I do trust their review judgements, and they were not a fan.

  59. 59.

    mainsailset

    Apparently Trump hasn’t paid attention to what HIS economy & tariffs have done to the steel market! “Steel increased 19 Yuan/MT or 0.51% to 3,740 on Friday December 14 from 3,721 in the previous trading session. Historically, Steel reached an all time high of 4780 in September of 2018 and a record low of 1750 in February of 2016.”

  61. 61.

    lamh36

    @SiubhanDuinne: I kinda want everyone to see Into the Spiderverse, it’s a “comic book” movie, but the animation style is so good that you don’t even think about it being animation, it’s done so beautifully

    I don’t know if you like heist films, but my sisters loved Widows

  63. 63.

    lamh36

    Listen, much as I wanted an 3rd Hellboy film, I’m not really into a Hellboy film without Guillermo del Toro! I mean…the main reason I saw Shape of Water in theatres was because of how much I love del Toro’s aesthehic. Sorry…not sorry.

    @THR
    Following Following @THR
    More
    #Hellboy in the shadow of Guillermo del Toro http://thr.cm/2ud9jL

  66. 66.

    Mary G

    @lamh36: Speaking as someone who spent months in hospitals as a child, it is a good, good, thing that Twitler and Melania don’t visit. Barack and Michelle are the best medicine.

  68. 68.

    Rylan Futch

    Dems could cut a serious deal here. Reinstate EVERY part of Obamacare that has been dismantled in exchange for a wall. It would be a huge win for them because we already have parts of a wall……..who the hell cares if we build some more?

  70. 70.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @NotMax:

    Once a big molicepan
    Saw a bittle lum,
    Sitting on a sturb-cone,
    Chewing gubber rum.

    Said the big molicepan,
    “Won’t you simme gum?”
    “Tinny on your ninpype!”
    Said the bittle lum.

  75. 75.

    Mary G

    I just hate the people who voted for the president, and things like this:

    A 5-month-old girl, detained by Border Patrol & held in freezing cells, has been hospitalized with pneumonia. Mother: "I said I needed a hospital because her breathing was getting worse. The agents told me I wasn't in a position to be asking for anything." https://t.co/fhIJJZQ9rl— The Appeal (@theappeal) December 19, 2018

    They throw away all the refugees’ possessions, including blankets and spare warm clothing, and keep them in detention centers with air conditioning that is turned way down, with only those foil emergency “blankets” for warmth. The refugees think of it as being put in a refrigerator, something else they have no experience with.

    For people who are accustomed to more southern latitudes and have never even been in an air-conditioned building, it is torture. Literal torture. We can’t let the fire hose of other news take our eyes off this disgrace.

  79. 79.

    Sam

    We have lots of illegal immigrants because it suits the people who employ them. It is painfully obvious that a solution is to start putting said employers in jail. It won’t cost billions. I don’t advocate for this, mind you. Quite happy to have folks come. But the painful stupidity of a wall is really, really special, and not in a good way.

  80. 80.

    Roger Moore

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    I realize it’s like stopping at the unfolded card table outside the Piggly-Wiggly to argue with a LaRouchie, but why would anyone want to look through The Wall?

    I don’t know about looking through the wall, but it would be less ecologically disruptive if small animals could easily pass through.

  83. 83.

    mapaghimagsik

    I saw build the wall out of Drumpf supporters.

    Another day done at the corporate murderhole, of which we learned is arterially bleeding cash and unable to borrow. At least I understand the guard outside better. This is when Upper Management gets all doe eyed and discussed “hard decisions” and they pick who they want to get rid of from those that survived the last mass casualty accident my company caused. I’m sure the lessons will stick this time that perhaps falsifying records (allegedly!) is not the brightest of ideas.

  84. 84.

    Platonailedit

    Disenfranchise fucking wwc folks stat. That’s the only fucking way to stop the spreading stupidity.

  85. 85.

    MomSense

    I’m sitting in a warehouse craft beer bar watching my kid’s band play. It’s a patchouli and flannel kind of crowd. Not many eading glasses.

  87. 87.

    PJ

    @Sam: But that would mean putting white people who benefit from illegal immigration in jail! That’s against the rules!

  92. 92.

    lamh36

    Ugh…from the top to bottom (Moonves, Charlie Rose, Weatherly, etc) CBS had been a cesspool! As someone who liked NCIS and liked Weatherly on the show, this is just ugh.

    @GlobeOpinion
    Follow Follow @GlobeOpinion
    More
    .@elizadushku responds to what happened at CBS: “I took a job and because I did not want to be harassed, I was fired.” https://trib.al/I53xPaj

    “What is hardest to share is the way he made me feel for 10 to 12 hours per day for weeks. This was classic workplace harassment that became workplace bullying. I was made to feel dread nearly all the time I was in his presence.“

    “Weatherly sexually harassed and bullied me day-in and day-out and would have gotten away with it had he not been caught on tape, and had the CBS lawyers not inadvertently shared the tapes with my counsel, Barbara Robb.”

    Haven’t watched NCIS a number of seasons ago and I never did get into “Bull”, which after reading this, I’m glad I didnt’…

  93. 93.

    billcinsd

    @trollhattan: Brown was convicted of treason against the State of Virginia

    had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of any of their friends, either father, mother, brother, sister, wife, or children, or any of that class, and suffered and sacrificed what I have in this interference, it would have been all right; and every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment.

  94. 94.

    Platonailedit

    Fiiinally.

    Washington DC’s top prosecutor is suing Facebook in the first significant US move to punish the firm for its role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

    District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine filed the lawsuit on Wednesday, said the Washington Post.

    It accused Facebook of allowing the wholesale scraping of personal data on tens of millions of users.

    The action adds to a number of regulatory investigations, following a year of privacy and security missteps.

    A Facebook spokesperson told the BBC: “We’re reviewing the complaint and look forward to continuing our discussions with attorneys general in DC and elsewhere.”

    Top rated bbc comment in that piece.

    And people are stupid enough to think that the EU is the enemy!

    Look at all the tax-evading, data manipulating, business destroying companies out there and the common factor is?………they’re American!

  95. 95.

    lamh36

    Um…WOW!

    @SarahLerner
    3h3 hours ago
    More
    “The fact is that Caron wrote me off the show within 48 hours of my complaints about Weatherly…Caron defended Weatherly, explaining he had simply exhibited ‘frat’ behavior and added, ‘What does [Eliza] expect, she was in Maxim.’”

    “On the subject of my legal rights, Caron said to my manager, ‘If Eliza wants to be out of the business by suing CBS, she can be out of the business.’”

    @SarahLerner
    3h3 hours ago
    More
    Dushku: “The boys’ club remains in full force at CBS. The bullying continued. In the settlement process, CBS used as defense a photo of me in a bathing suit, pulled from my own Instagram, as if this suggested I deserved or was not offended by the sexual harassment I experienced.”

  96. 96.

    Amir Khalid

    In the end the Wall will be a series of giant billboards along the border, saying, Imagínate, aquí hay una pared.

  97. 97.

    Roger Moore

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Is that Bloody Mary?

    No. Bloody Mary was Mary I of England, who was called that because she had a bunch of protestants executed while trying to reinstate Catholicism as the English state religion. Mary, Queen of Scots was Bloody Mary’s first cousin once removed; her maternal grandmother, Margaret Tudor, was Bloody Mary’s aunt.

  99. 99.

    jimmiraybob

    @dmsilev:

    Are you calling for a wall of 40′-high, elbow to elbow, shirtless and oiled up Donald Trump statues (all facing south) along the Mexico border?

  100. 100.

    MomSense

    @raven:

    Yup but really cute. I think our music scene up heah is starting to rival yours.

    If you want to come up north to go fishing this summer I’ll hook you up with some good music. I know some good fishing spots, too.

  102. 102.

    Platonailedit

    Mueller has asked the House Intelligence Committee for an official transcript of Roger Stone's testimony, people familiar with the request tell WaPo, a sign that prosecutors could be moving to charge him with a crime.https://t.co/4TUWdpGtzF— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) December 19, 2018

  104. 104.

    Mandalay

    @JPL:

    Why would Melber give him the time of day is beyond me. Starr has always been a right wing hack.

    Not only that, but Melber didn’t lay a glove on Starr in the entire interview. Starr is on a book tour, and he was answering the usual “gotcha!” questions that he has surely been asked a dozen times before. He was smiling, grinning and smirking at Melber, and to make matters worse Melber gave Starr a tongue bath at the end.

    YMMV of course, but I can’t understand why anyone would think Melber did a good job: https://www.msnbc.com/the-beat-with-ari-melber/watch/ken-starr-trump-can-be-indicted-1402538051962

  105. 105.

    Peale

    @SiubhanDuinne: if you’ve only got time to see one speculative movie about a queen of England this holiday season, you’d be better off watching the Favorite than Mary Queen of Scots. Both are fine, but I thought Queen Anne needs some love and a movie. Unfortunately the Favorite shows Anne in decline, near the end of her reign. She was a more effective monarch than the movie gives her credit for. MSQ, though, just seemed kind of dull. Odds stacked against her, Elizabeth did out queen her in the end. Elizabeth I thought stole the film, just like in real life, she was able to keep her crown even though others had a much better claim on it.

  106. 106.

    trollhattan

    @Mandalay:
    Every fvcking body who interviews Starr has to begin by asking him why he protected the rape culture at Baylor. Every fvcking body.

    Do not book Ken Starr unless it’s to mock him.

  108. 108.

    Villago Delenda Est

    The sooner Donald is behind a steel slatted fence, forever, the better.

    That goes for his vile criminal Ivana spawn as well.

  111. 111.

    WaterGirl

    @lamh36: Can you imagine even a single child who would want to hug Trump or Melanie?

    I like to call her by the name Trump used in his tweet.

  115. 115.

    Roger Moore

    @Peale:
    I’ve been thinking about watching The Favourite. I recently read Winston’s Churchill’s biography of Marlborough, which covers the story behind the movie in some detail, so it would be interesting to see a completely different take on it.

  117. 117.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Adam L Silverman: not for the first time

    Ken Starr asked me several times if I was “doing O.K.” A stranger might have surmised from his tone that he had actually worried about me over the years. His demeanor, almost pastoral, was somewhere between avuncular and creepy. He kept touching my arm and elbow, which made me uncomfortable. […]
    Understandably, I was a bit thrown. (It was also confusing for me to see “Ken Starr” as a human being. He was there, after all, with what appeared to be his family.) I finally gathered my wits about me—after an internal command of Get it together. “Though I wish I had made different choices back then,” I stammered, “I wish that you and your office had made different choices, too.” In hindsight, I later realized, I was paving the way for him to apologize. But he didn’t. He merely said, with the same inscrutable smile, “I know. It was unfortunate.”

  118. 118.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Adam L Silverman: Ken Starr is on @cnn saying @Comey and McCabe exhibited “poor form” in how they did not follow “protocol” in dealing with Flynn.

    and more one point, from the same piece

    I turned and introduced him to my family. Bizarre as it may sound, I felt determined, then and there, to remind him that, 20 years before, he and his team of prosecutors hadn’t hounded and terrorized just me but also my family—threatening to prosecute my mom (if she didn’t disclose the private confidences I had shared with her), hinting that they would investigate my dad’s medical practice, and even deposing my aunt, with whom I was eating dinner that night. And all because the Man in the Hat, standing in front of me, had decided that a frightened young woman could be useful in his larger case against the president of the United States.

  119. 119.

    Adam L Silverman

    @lamh36: My understanding is that Mignola was far more involved in this than he was with del Toro on his pair of Hellboy movies. And that they’ve adapted an actual arc from Mignola’s comic for the movie plot and script.

  120. 120.

    Aleta

    Interview with Ben Taub on NPR, about his piece in the NYer called Iraq’s Post-ISIS Campaign of Revenge. Mostly about Mosul, Iraqui trials against accused associates of ISIS. [There were around 8,000 ISIS fighters in Mosul. But more than 100,000 people are on wanted lists because of false accusations or cases where same name.]

    Trigger: mentions people who were tortured, but not description

    DAVIES: So what were the trials like that you saw?
    TAUB: There was a very standard procedure. These trials would last between five and 10 minutes, and it would begin with the judge accusing the suspect, who’s standing in a cage before him, of some affiliation with ISIS. And then the suspect would deny the affiliation. The judge would say, but I have your signed and thumb-printed confession before me. And the suspect would say some variation of, it was induced by torture or I was blindfolded when they took my thumbprints or they made me thumbprint a blank piece of paper, and I have no idea what the confession that they’ve written on it says.
    Then the judge would name various supposed jihadi associates of the suspect, to which the suspect would deny any knowledge of having met any of them. And then the prosecutor would step in, between two and five minutes in, and say, enough evidence – I ask for a guilty verdict. It was always the exact same phrase. And then the judges would turn it over to the defense lawyer, if there was one.

    Many ISIS suspects don’t have a defense lawyer because lawyers are afraid of representing them if they are an ambiguous case. Lawyers are often detained or harassed or threatened by the security services, and so those private lawyers typically take on only clients who they’re convinced are innocent, like cases of mistaken identity.

    So if there’s a defense lawyer, he or she will stand up and start to speak. …
    But during this time, the judges are talking among themselves, cracking jokes with each other, signing documents and passing folders to their assistants and not even pretending to pay attention to what’s being said.

    DAVIES: And what were the verdicts that you saw?
    TAUB: So 98 percent of terrorism trials in Iraq end with guilty verdicts. And they’re typically sentenced on the same day to death or life in prison. Most are sentenced to death.

    DAVIES: So these defendants, do we have a sense of who they were, how likely it was that they had actually committed terrorist offenses?
    TAUB: It’s very hard to know because no one’s really charged with specific crimes. Instead, they’re tortured into confessing to affiliation, and that’s the sole crime. The Iraqi terrorism law is so broad that it conflates or, rather, makes no distinction between those who supposedly assisted a terrorist group in some way and those who carried out violent crimes on its behalf.

    And so all they have to prove to get a death sentence is that you confessed to being a part of ISIS or helping it in some way. And so a lot of these people are coming in with their bodies broken, saying, I was tortured; I didn’t do this. But of course I confessed because they were torturing me. And in fact, if they didn’t confess, then they would have just been returned to a cell and then tortured again.

    DAVIES: Were a lot of them captured on ISIS battlefields? Or were some of them arrested after tips from informants who may have had a grudge?
    TAUB: Many of them were picked up after the battle had ended. These were – I think a lot of ISIS fighters were actually just executed in the streets. There were – as men and women and children escaped from ISIS areas on foot, the men and boys were separated. And a lot of those separations happened on the basis of informants. So you’d have these masked informants at checkpoints just pointing to people and telling the security forces, that guy was in ISIS, that guy supported ISIS – something like that.

    And some of these informants were children. But that wouldn’t matter in court because the suspect would never know who had denounced them or what was said. So these denunciations have also been – you know, as I’ve said, there were around 8,000 ISIS fighters in Mosul. But there are now more than 100,000 people on these wanted lists because there have been so many false accusations or cases where the name is very common, and so every single person with that name is considered a suspect.

    And you have cases of people threatening denunciation in workplace disputes, denouncing their enemies and getting them put on the list. You have personal disputes, family disputes, tribal disputes – all resulting in false accusations of terrorism, which are then referred to the security services and very, very often ending up with innocent people in court.

    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/24/iraqs-post-isis-campaign-of-revenge

  121. 121.

    The Midnight Lurker

    Wall coin? Is he talking about those ‘challenge coins’ or whatever that the Trump administration has had minted by the thousands? Friends of mine in Washington keep sending theirs to me. I have quite the collection. Perhaps I will build the wall.

    Can I have my five billion now?

  122. 122.

    dmsilev

    @The Midnight Lurker: It’s even dumber than that. Think about how stupid bitcoin is for anything useful, and then imagine a variant of bitcoin designed explicitly to fund The Wall.

    I’m sure 2019 will, somehow, gift us an idea that’s even dumber yet, but it’s a high bar to clear.

  124. 124.

    Steeplejack

    @Mary G:

    My brother, a noted Anglophile, did not like The Favourite. Too “jokey” in a non-period, modern way (paraphrasing).

  125. 125.

    cain

    Will the get their steel from China? You know the country you started a tariff war with and will be paying a shit ton more money for it?

  130. 130.

    Steeplejack

    @lamh36:

    This is a bummer. I thought the premise for Bull sounded really stupid, but it turned out to be a good show. And Eliza Dushku was good on it. I wondered why her promising story arc seemed to die out unexpectedly.

  132. 132.

    I'll be Frank

    Could it be, the debt ceiling could actually be brought back into meaning. It was created by Congress to keep a Pres. from funding programs without Congressional approval. FDR and his bonds.

  133. 133.

    jonas

    The Democrats, are saying loud and clear that they do not want to build a Concrete Wall – but we are not building a Concrete Wall, we are building artistically designed steel slats, so that you can easily see through it….

    A grown-ass man pretending to be President tweeted this. WTF?

  134. 134.

    Platonailedit

    The biased media should stop claiming that so many Trump associates are being sent to jail. They’re just moving to rooms with artistically designed steel slats that you can see through.
    — Matthew Miller (@matthewamiller) December 19, 2018

  136. 136.

    Ruckus

    @jonas:
    He’s not a grown ass man. He’s a petulant 4 yr old in a 72 yr old body that has seen a lot of self abuse. A lot of self abuse. In ways that none of us want to think about. But in most every way that one could imagine.
    Anyone want to discuss his Alzheimers?

  137. 137.

    dnfree

    I remember a science fiction story based on the idea that tearing off a sheet of toilet paper frequently results in tearing through the sheet, not the perforation. The premise of the story was that the perforated area was actually stronger than the sheet itself, since the perforation was harder to rip. It seems that the conclusion was making an indestructible material composed entirely of perforation. Or something like that. Maybe that’s the idea behind the wall.

    Apparently it was Theodore Sturgeon, ““It Was Nothing, Really”

  139. 139.

    Platonailedit

    That poor fish.

    A blind amphibian which burrows underground has been named after Donald Trump in reference to his comments over climate change.

    The newly discovered worm-like creature will be called Dermophis donaldtrumpi, after a sustainable building company paid £19,700 in an auction by the Rainforest Trust UK for the honour of naming it.

    The creature is a type of caecilian, with caecus meaning “blind” in Latin, and is only able to detect light or dark.

    Mr Bell said it is appropriate because Mr Trump can only see the world in black and white and has claimed in the past that climate change is a hoax by the Chinese.

    The Dermophis grows an extra layer of skin which their young peel off and eat – known as dermatrophy – which Mr Bell has likened to Mr Trump handing some of his children White House positions.

    Because the amphibians live almost entirely underground, Mr Bell said the creature was like Mr Trump who has avoided scientific consensus on climate change and handed energy lobbyists jobs with the US environment agency.

  141. 141.

    Kay

    I want a low, stone wall with climbing roses tumbling over it. It’ll be low enough to sit on so it should have a broad top, so people can sit for photographs or just to rest. Ivanka should pay for it.

  142. 142.

    Ken

    @Yarrow:

    WallCoin? WTF? How would that even work?

    (1) Set up the blockchain software for trading the coins, (2) keep 1000 in reserve, (3) wait for the price to hit one million per coin, (4) cash in and you’ve got your billion for the wall.

    There might be a hitch at step 3, so here’s an alternate plan. (1) Set up etc., (2) keep 1000 in reserve, (3) wait another two months at which time – assuming the trend line holds – Trump will be asking for $19.99 for the wall, (4) visit an ATM.

  143. 143.

    James E Powell

    Democrats have to say no deals on any wall. No deals on anything. Democrats have to say that there will be no talk of any deals until they’re done with the investigations which are due to start next month.

  144. 144.

    jl

    @Kay: If we can make it picturesque, it can be a tourist attraction. No need to wait 5 or 6 hundred years like they did in China. This Wall will pay for itself!

  147. 147.

    Barry

    @trollhattan: “Things I did not know: Read today that Stonewall Jackson, Walt Whitman and John Wilkes Booth all attended John Brown’s execution.”

    Interesting – John Brown was put to death for treason; Jackson died in the act of treason, Booth dies fleeing from an act of murder.

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