The mister and I don’t really make New Year’s resolutions. We make and break resolutions all year long, such as “eat healthier” and “get more exercise” and “spend less money.”
But there are people who should make and keep a resolution to just fucking stop [insert bad behavior] in 2019. What follows is a partial list. First up, these motherfuckers:
Young Republican women are aggrieved, outnumbered, defiant. And they aren’t going to apologize for loving the guy in the White House. https://t.co/NkIoQAJRpC
— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) December 29, 2018
I don’t mean the subjects of this type of human (garbage) interest piece, who should obviously direct themselves to the nearest conflagration and leap into it forthwith; I mean the editors who green-light pitches for these trash stories.
I actively avoid this type of content but have seen at least 10 stories this year on how Trump supporters can’t get laid. I don’t give a shit. No one gives a shit. The obvious solution is for them to go fuck themselves. Stop telling us about them.
The vacationing Mr. Cole pointed out another species of this media phenomenon early this morning:
so tired of exit interviews of fucking nazis
Kelly, on His Way Out, Says Administration Long Ago Abandoned Idea of Concrete Wall https://t.co/E2Hd5hJZv8
— Cake or Death (@Johngcole) December 31, 2018
A-to-the-fucking-men. Kelly is an unrepentant liar who sold his shriveled husk of a soul for a seat adjacent to a traitorous sociopath, revealing himself to be the small, petty, mendacious worm he was all along in the process. That’s a dog-bites-man story in Trump’s DC. Media, please amplify the voices of their victims instead of participating in the attempted rehabilitation of these vile shit-stains.
Speaking of vile shit-stains, Louis CK is back:
Imagine thinking the best way to resurrect your career after admitting to sexual misconduct is to mock trans people and Parkland gun violence survivors. pic.twitter.com/SH7wDYe7kA
— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) December 31, 2018
To review, last year, after admitting he jerked off into potted plants in front of appalled female colleagues, CK said: “I have spent my long and lucky career talking and saying anything I want. I will now step back and take a long time to listen.”
As pretty much everyone on Twitter noted, CK apparently meant he’d be listening to unfunny Dennis Miller sets. Anyhoo, here’s hoping he finds himself jerking off in front of ever-smaller crowds in 2019, perhaps capping off his career with a CPAC sploodge-a-thon. Fuck off, already, Louis CK.
There are so many more people and things that need to fuck right the fuck off in 2019, but I’ve got holiday preparations to do, so I’ll leave it to you to enumerate them. Or discuss whatever — open thread!
And, in case I don’t get a chance to check in again before midnight, Happy New Year!
dmsilev
‘We didn’t mean an actual concrete wall’ is apparently this week’s talking point, so Kelly is going out in character: toeing the line for an administration whose ends he agreed with but was too undisciplined in achieving those ends. In short, Kelly wanted a competently-racist boss.
emmyelle
Wow-so I guess Vanity Fair found the last Trump supporters that were not profiled by the New York Times and decided to fill in the void.
I was worried there for a minute.
Yarrow
@emmyelle: Didn’t some news outlet look through all these Trump supporter pieces and find they’re recycling the same people being profiled? There just aren’t that many of them.
trollhattan
January 11, 2017
Yesterday professional hag Conway brushed off wall/fence as “semantics.” Keep this video cued up for each time an administration hack tries that lie.
donnah
Please go away: Trump, Lindsay Graham, Mitch McConnell. Also, I’m tired of the noise from FOX empty-headed Trump advisers like Hannity and also Rush Limbaugh and that harpy-who-will-not-die, Ann Coulter. They could all vanish in a puff of black sulphorus smoke as far as I’m concerned.
I would also issue a hearty “fuck off” to anyone left in Trump’s cabinet and anyone who wears a MAGA hat.
chris
How sad. Sadder still, Qanon cultists are being ostracised by their own families. Some had to spend Christmas alone, poor things.
My cup of schadenfreude runneth over.
Drunkenhausfrau
I love me some salty Betty Cracker!
Happy New Year’s Eve, jackals, or as herr drunken and I refer to it, amateur night!
germy
I thought it was Weinstein that used the potted plants in various hotel lobbies.
I thought Louis just did it all over his embarrassed onlookers, in dressing rooms.
dmsilev
@trollhattan: I have a feeling that sooner or later, most probably sooner, Trump will blow that up. ‘We want Wall, and Wall means Wall’.
Kay
I’m just happy Democrats won the House. I really could not fucking bear this same cast of characters for another 2 years.
I’m sick to death of all the low quality Trump hires. I want to hear something from someone else. Preferably something from people who don’t lie constantly.
You can have “the generals”. They were no fucking help at all.
Roger Moore
@Yarrow:
Yes. And many of those supposedly ordinary Trump supporters are local Republican officials, which they fail to mention. It seems pretty clear this isn’t just an attempt by reporters to look for Trump supporters; they’re getting help from the local Republican establishment and not disclosing that.
Yarrow
My local TV station did an online poll of what people were doing for New Year’s Eve. Going out, Staying Home and Hosting a Party were the choices. 85% of people who responded said they were staying home.
gene108
@chris:
If Trump staffers moved to where Trump is largely admired, like Alabama, Mississippi, Wyoming, etc., their chances of getting laid would be higher.
But they just have to live in DC or NYC, where their views are not popular.
Gin & Tonic
@germy: As a dude, I have literally no idea what would motivate a guy to rub one out, in public, with an uninterested audience. Other kinds of boorish and predatory behavior make at least some sort of sense, but this?
JCJ
@Drunkenhausfrau:
Normally I would agree, but after she wrote this
I am a bit queasy
Nicole
God(dess) bless the commenter here who offered up what shall now be my personal mantra: PELOSI 2019. I’m going to make buttons.
The Tweetfest over Louis CK was very entertaining last night. Someone commented it’s only a matter of time before insurance companies start offering “My costar did something horrible and now my residuals are f*cked” coverage.
Punchy
I cant wait to see the surprise on that blonde’s face in ~6 years, upon graduating summa cum laude, when she discovers that her party’s uber pro-corporate stance has left her making ~60% of the male high-school dropout sitting next to her. I’m also quite sure she’ll be giddy to know that her party’s stance on mercury contamination has left her newborn exposed and now disabled from consumption. Certainly she’ll be happy to pay astronomical prices for basic health insurance to help said child that will likely lead her to a lifetime of bankruptcy.
There’s a reason she’s “outnumbered”. Few among her peers are that fucking all-around stupid and ignorant of reality.
Kay
Let’s hear some political speech from Congress in the New Year, instead of the exclusive focus on the low quality Trump administration hacks.
Now that some of the TrumpBots (dead wood) in Congress have been cleared out maybe we can have a real debate, with true statements and facts and things. Like an antidote to all the lying. Finally.
gene108
@Gin & Tonic:
Maybe something along the lines of sending dick pics to others; an overwhelming belief that others really, really would be impressed by you, when they see your junk.
khead
@Yarrow:
You are thinking of Salena Zito. She was easy to catch too. All you had to do was run some of the names in her articles through google.
Frankensteinbeck
The essence of the Trump voter, pissed off that they might be called out on their bigotry.
I do. I think there is an undertext here that is incredibly important: Push back. Being a Republican is becoming a dirty word. Liberals have had enough of pretending this is a polite disagreement. That’s a sea change. Marriages ended after Trump’s election. People – LOTS of people – stopped talking to their relatives. It’s our best evidence that the 2018 wave may not be an isolated occurrence.
germy
@gene108:
Or an overwhelming belief (and desire) that others would be horrified and shocked.
Frankensteinbeck
@Gin & Tonic:
This kind of stuff confuses me, too, but I’m going to speculate it’s about cruelty as much as sex. He’s trying to be offensive, and literally gets off on it.
OzarkHillbilly
@Yarrow:
You aren’t in America? No way there are anywhere near that many intelligent people in America.
BC in Illinois
I haven’t read the Vanity Fair article, but according to Shannon Watts (of “Moms Demand Action”) . . .
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Kay:
Unless the MSM reports it as a bothsidesdoit thing. It doesn’t matter to me at this point, like you I’m just glad the Dems control the House and some more states. The adults have returned to mitigate at least some of this cluster
Shame about Ohio though.
Gozer
@Gin & Tonic: For some the transgression is the appeal. Rule breaking for its own sake.
Yarrow
@khead: That’s right. Thanks for the correction. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of the other rightwing people in stories are being recycled but maybe no one has looked.
bemused
Oooh, rubbing my hands with glee reading about Dems staffing up big for investigations. People with very impressive resumes are flocking to Dems, willing to take cuts in pay, etc. Sweet January.
Ken
@bemused: Oh dear, how can they both investigate Trump’s crime and pass laws? The Republican House never managed to do both. Heck, they barely managed one.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
the only question I want to hear put to Kelly is “WTF was up with your demented tirade about Frederica Wilson and the Kahn family?”
Thoughtful David
@Punchy: Those “people” will never be graduating summa cum laude from anywhere. Else they wouldn’t be trumpanzees in the first place.
Otherwise, I second your sentiments.
randy khan
I find it amusing that Trump supporters are upset that they’re not, ah, popular. As usual, the people accusing others of being snowflakes are snowflakes themselves.
Or maybe it’s that they, personally, don’t find other Trump supporters attractive and so are looking elsewhere, which I guess would make them like the rest of us in at least one way.
PaulWartenberg
Used to go to New Years parties hosted by friends, but the last couple of years with their kids grown up and moved out they’ve stopped hosting and now all of a sudden I have nothing else to do except stay at home. :/
On the bright side, I’ll be using that time to establish a new Author’s domain and prep a story for submission to a publication taking submissions right on January 1st.
Yarrow
@OzarkHillbilly: My guess is it’s older people who watch the local morning news and choose to answer their poll questions.
Frankensteinbeck
@bemused:
The story about Trump getting Republicans to add $129 million to the budget for staffing because he thought it was going to be Republicans investigating Democrats momentarily boggled me. Then I remembered that he truly believes whatever it is he says at any particular moment, and says whatever he likes to hear at any particular moment, and afterwards it’s all flushed down the memory hole to make way for the next delusion. This truly is Exhibit A that he drinks his own Kool-Aide.
@Ken:
…which one?
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Frankensteinbeck:
That’s an interesting point, although I still don’t think we’re quite at a tipping point yet, ala California. But getting closer for sure. It’s incredible how much the country and society has changed in 10 years. Not as many people would have batted an eye to the jokes Louis CK is making in the video above.
I think Trump, the modern GOP, and the “alt”-right is a reaction to this change and is not sustainable.
randy khan
@Ken:
And that’s being generous.
chris
@Frankensteinbeck: Remember 10-15 years ago when Republicans (Newt!) had managed to make “liberal” a dirty word? Can the same be done to them? I’d enjoy reading stories about their desperate rebranding struggles.
emmyelle
@Yarrow: Oh, even better! It’s novel!
schrodingers_cat
@Frankensteinbeck: They want a fucking cookie for being horrible. Sorry but no.
Frankensteinbeck
@chris:
You’re reading them right now. The news just doesn’t want to admit that’s what they’re describing, the same way they don’t want to admit they’re describing elected Republicans as liars and Republican policies as white supremacy. Like it or not, Mr. Old White Pundit, this is now a country where you can be spit on for saying you’re a Republican.
catclub
@Yarrow: Yes, and the ‘random new Trump voter’ turns out to be the local head of the Republican party.
West of the Rockies
@Yarrow:
Not that many? The Loser-in-Chief still has a 39% approval rating.
My SO and I were expressing our dismay and astonishment as to how many terrible people there are in this country.
Amir Khalid
Hello to Balloon Juice from 2019!
Yarrow
@Frankensteinbeck:
I agree with you. I find the stories boring and have zero sympathy for the people in them but the larger cultural issue that they signify is important.
Frankensteinbeck
@West of the Rockies:
They have always been with us. Those of us who lived among them knew. What’s changed is that everyone else is getting seriously, seriously pissed.
HinTN
@Thoughtful David:
Sadly, I know some very smart people who have allowed idiocy to eclipse their common sense.
chris
@Frankensteinbeck: Yes, indeed!
West of the Rockies
@chris:
Surely a good lookin’ lad like Stephen Miller (a veritable fountain of male virility!) has no such problem… Why he’s probably beating off with a stick.
Roger Moore
@Thoughtful David:
Sadly, you’re very likely wrong. You’ve forgotten about all the “Christian” colleges and universities that have actively recruited mouthbreathers like this. When your whole class is a bunch of troglodytes, some troglodyte is going to graduate at the top of the class.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@West of the Rockies:
The economy is still good and not everything is crashing and burning. Yet. That’s partly why it’s so high. But yes, a lot of terrible people blindly support this guy.
chris
@West of the Rockies: Ouch!
ETA: One does not wish to contemplate Mr. Miller’s, um… proclivities for even one second. Damn you!
HinTN
@Amir Khalid: Hello 2019. Notice anything different?
Yarrow
@Amir Khalid: Happy New Year! Google translate tells me in Malay that’s “Selamat tahun Baru!” Is that correct?
Frankensteinbeck
@HinTN:
The thing is, common sense is a gut feeling of what is and isn’t correct. It’s truthiness. It’s often useful, but we’re having a huge societal problem with people who would rather listen to common sense than facts or logic.
jeffreyw
@Yarrow:
@OzarkHillbilly:
Well hell, man. Couldn’t everyone go out or there would be nowhere to put them all.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Frankensteinbeck:
How’s that saying go? “Common sense” is often just common nonsense?
Thoughtful David
@Roger Moore:
This is pretty common. Back in, I think it was, 2014, I turned NPR off permanently. It was just after Obamacare was fully implemented. First Yuki Noguchi I think it was had a story talking to a “small businessman” who was telling about the horrifying effects Obamacare was having on his business–he was just going to have to close down any minute because the costs of Obamacare were killing him. Then NPR’s online commenters and mail pointed out that the guy wasn’t a “small business owner,” but rather the national spokesman for some wingnut business association, but he had not been identified as such in Noguchi’s report. NPR even read one of the letters on the air pointing out that this guy was not what he purported to be and had not been properly identified.
Then about two weeks later Guy Raz HAD THE SAME FUCKING GUY on a report he was doing about how Obamacare was killing small businesses. Same set up: “small businessman going to have to close his business because Obamacare was driving him out of business.” Same lack of identifying the guy as being actually the national spokesman for wingnut haters.
It was like NPR couldn’t fucking help themselves. They were either too lazy or too stupid or didn’t give a fucking shit about their stories, so they just kept using the same wingnuts as their sources.
I had quit giving NPR money several years earlier, but that was it. The guy I used to carpool with knew to turn NPR off whenever I got into his car.
cain
I’m pretty sure the orange short hands is also willing to love you back especially if you look like his daughter.
Are we sure it is the writers? There must be getting some encouragement. Ultimately, it seems this kind of shit is what pays the bills. Liberals are meant to be mocked from afar, while Trumpers must be coddled.
Ken
@Frankensteinbeck:
I was giving partial credit for the tax law. Also there were a few parts of the government that they managed to keep running most of the year.
satby
@Amir Khalid: I hope the future is better! Happy New Year , Amir!
Edit: whoa, that was weird! Bounced me back to this thread before any comments posted.
Xavier Onassis
“They say we’re white supremacists.” No, we just happen to hate the same people white supremacists hate. That doesn’t make us white supremacists.
FlyingToaster
For my personal Fuck-Off List:
The entire Trump administration
Charile Baker (R-MA-Gov)
Willard “Mitt” Romney (former R-MA-Gov)
the whole fake Christian movement, who are exclusively white, pro-forced-birth but don’t care when already-born children get killed, watch FoxNoise, and believe that the 2nd Amendment overrides the 1st
Fox Noise, and all of their employees/news personalties except Shep Smith
MGTOW snowflakes
Assholes who drive trucks on Storrow/Memorial Drives
“For Profit” Colleges
Brexit
Facebook
OzarkHillbilly
@Yarrow: Yeah, us old fucks don’t like being out late at night.
Miss Bianca
@randy khan:
I have found this to be oh so true in oh so many contexts. In fact, use of the term “snowflake” in anything but ironical quotes is usually a sign that at the least amount of pushback these folks will crumple like a pair of cardboard shoes left out in the rain, and flounce off in a GBCW huff.
trollhattan
@Amir Khalid:
Is it any shinier? Eighteen hours to go, here.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Amir Khalid:
Happy New Year! Is 2019 any better?
Thoughtful David
@Roger Moore: Good point. But not summa cum laude from anywhere but Liberty or ORU.
FlyingToaster
@Thoughtful David: You forgot Bob Jones U.
There are several other crazy-ass Xtianist colleges, too.
cain
@PaulWartenberg:
Video games and whiskey my friend. Best New Years ever.
Amir Khalid
@Yarrow:
It is.
Amir Khalid
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
We’ll all find out soon enough.
Frankensteinbeck
@Ken:
I was thinking that it was like a third credit for passing a few CRs and the tax clusterfuck, and a third credit for doing lots of investigating of Trump’s corruption, just doing it backwards trying to cover up for him.
@cain:
I’m sure it’s the writers, and the writers are hired by people who see the world this way and hire writers who also see the world this way, and they’re influenced by more senior writers who see the world this way, and so on and so on. Really, I hold Emails up as the ultimate example. Most boring fucking story ever, and they rode that pony into the ground while ignoring the gold mine of Trump’s messy history right next to it.
cain
@Amir Khalid:
Happy New Year, Amir. :-) Best wishes to you and family. :-) #BeBest
debbie
The Ohio Legislature can fuck right the fuck off for voting themselves a 75% pay raise. Soon-to-be-failed-redux presidential candidate John Kasich can fuck right the fuck off for not vetoing it.
debbie
@Amir Khalid:
Happy New Year! May the new year be filled with many excellent guitars!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Frankensteinbeck: I made it this far in the VF piece
and what kind of dressing would you like with your thought salad, Miss?
Barry
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: “the only question I want to hear put to Kelly is “WTF was up with your demented tirade about Frederica Wilson and the Kahn family?””
I would like to hear it put with red-hot irons. I’d also add question about his punish-the-children campaign.
Major Major Major Major
My fuck-off list is far too large to think about in toto at any one time.
I’m headed to some gay party in Garrison tonight after a stopover in Beacon to see the cat, hopefully that’s fun.
JCJ
@Amir Khalid:
Greetings to our Emissary from the Future! Please tell me, Oh Wise One, does Liverpool maintain their standing atop the Premier League?
Frankensteinbeck
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The whitest ranch dressing on the menu.
cmorenc
@Yarrow:
I disagree-in-part. There’s a lot of true-believer Trump supporters out there, but most of them are garden-variety “your crazy uncle / aunt / nephew / niece types who are neither unique nor interesting – and worthwhile only as pathological studies of how people come to harbor such fucked-up, wilfully ill-informed personalities in the first place. But we’ve been there, done that enough already that there is redundant sameness about the kind of asshats drawn to Trump.
SiubhanDuinne
@BC in Illinois:
I didn’t read the VF article either, but according to the comments to that tweet, every single woman interviewed is a white college student from North Carolina.
Has VF always been so dense and clueless, or is this some new post-November 2016 phenomenon?
Ken
@trollhattan:
There’s this wall of light that races toward you at speeds up to a thousand miles an hour. Is that shiny enough?
The flipside is the wall of darkness that inevitably follows it.
JMG
Next to last night in Bordeaux. Alice, my daughter and myself are having a party for three in our ludicrously nice Air BnD. There is a food store chain here called Picard — nothing but high end frozen foods. Perfect for cocktail party snacks. Also we have smoked salmon, cheese, bread, and cake. Plus champagne. Why go out? I’m very interested to see who’s the French equivalent of Ryan Seacrest on their Rockin’ (Roquien?) New Year’s Eve TV special (French TV is horrible, BTW).
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Frankensteinbeck:
There’s been speculation that none of them investigated it, especially NYC-based media, because they’re either somehow involved/compromised or thought “everybody” already knew since they lived in the same town and traveled in the same circles. I could see a combination of that and your theory as being why we got “EMAILS!”
debbie
@Kay:
Okay, but the new year has to start with a photograph of the half-empty Cabinet meeting. (Aren’t there like four or five empty spots?)
debbie
@Gin & Tonic:
I think Charlie Rose provided the most believable explanation when he was caught out (so to speak): “I thought the attraction was mutual.”
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@debbie:
Fuck’em to borrow a phrase from efgoldman.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
okay, one more
This is something that comes up a lot with WW MAGAts. Ivanka is what they aspire to be. Which is so sad.
MSNBC played a clip from that silly trump TV show, of Ivanka and Fredo pretending to interview for their TV jobs. Ivanka said she wanted to work for the company because trump projects were “sexy”, and she made a little moue at her father when she said it. I get that it’s so gross nobody wants to talk about it, but how do people not see how sick their relationship is?
debbie
@germy:
Harvey kept it private, which is why the abuse lasted as long as it did.
cain
@Frankensteinbeck:
Yes, I agree. I was trying to allude to the point that it isn’t solely the writers. But the entire apparatus is filled with people with a world view from the 90s.
Ken
@Ken: Oooh, today’s xkcd is also relevant. Interesting title text, never really thought about the implications of China having only one time zone.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Russian.
Yarrow
\@Amir Khalid: Well, Selamat tahun Baru! What is the traditional way to celebrate New Years in Malaysia?
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Amir Khalid:
Looking forward to it. Got the champagne all ready along with the cheese tray and shrimp cocktail.
cmorenc
@Thoughtful David:
Alas, there are far too many examples of right-wing asshats who graduated summa cum laude from our most purportedly elite universities. Ted Cruz from Princeton, Antonin Scalia from Georgetown, for example.
Gex
“They say we’re white supremacists but really we just voted for the guy who supports making America a white ethnostate and has been hired and been advised by people who advocate ethnic cleansing. It’s so unfair!!!”
West of the Rockies
@Amir Khalid: @Amir Khalid:
Has Mueller taken down Trump yet? (Oh, please!)
Amir Khalid
@Yarrow:
Which new year? There’s more than one around these parts, and the celebration varies.
SiubhanDuinne
@Frankensteinbeck:
Totally agree about the fucking boring repetitive nothingness of the email coverage, but I do sometimes wonder if reporters wanting to cover “Trump’s messy history” asked him or people in Trumpworld for an interview, were threatened with lawsuits, and figured it was easier to spike the whole project. A cowardly and craven reaction, but it wouldn’t surprise me to learn of a few such instances.
Yarrow
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That’s the same thing rightwing women liked about Sarah Palin. You could probably go back and look at quotes from these women and find something like that almost word for word.
Amir Khalid
I picked up my newly arrived Yamaha this evening, and found myself playing Guantanamera extemporaneously. I think she and I are simpatico. I’m open to name suggestions.
Yarrow
@Amir Khalid: I meant the one happening today but of course you would have celebrations for both. Are the celebrations for the one coming up in February similar to celebrations for it elsewhere?
Ella in New Mexico
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The LA Times article appears to have kindly given him the out that because he lost his own son in the war, he was acting a grieving father rather than an official serving in the White House.
And yeah, didn’t pass the smell test for me, either.
rikyrah
What I want for 2019 besides the usual suspects…
May it rain nothing but ‘ I’s ‘:
INVESTIGATIONS & INDICTMENTS???
Shana
@West of the Rockies: If I knew how to link I would, but McSweeney’s online has The Incel Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock which is all kinds of delightful.
Roger Moore
@cain:
She did specify it was the editors who needed to FOADIAF rather than the writers. But I think it’s important to consider that this may be a systemic problem. There’s a tendency to think of this as the writer/editor/publisher/owner/whoever pandering to Trump supporters for commercial reasons, or maybe of the rich publisher/owner wanting to use their publication to support Trump because they want tax cuts.
But I think it’s important to remember that Trump’s regressive worldview is common enough that he was able to steal the election. It’s entirely possible there are plenty of writers and editors out there who want to publish pro-Trump articles because they like Trump’s policies. It isn’t just a bunch of mouth breathers who support him and his racist policies. There are racists in all strata of society, including the news media, and “think of the poor Trump supporters” is a great hook for them to spout pro-Trump positions without pushback.
O. Felix Culpa
@Amir Khalid: HNY back to you!
Brachiator
@Ella in New Mexico:
Yep. Agree totally.
realbtl
@Amir Khalid: now all you need is an electric arch top.
Shana
@cain: I’m making lamb shanks, salad, potato roses (a Joy of Kosher recipe in case anyone’s interested) and plum torte for dessert. A friend gave hubby some really good caviar which he’ll have as a nibble before dinner along with what I hope is a really nice champagne.
With any luck we’ll binge a few episodes of The Good Place and then head to bed before midnight.
jeffreyw
@Amir Khalid:
“La Senorita Bonita”
Bonnie for short.
Gex
@Gozer: Beyond that it is being able to exert power over women. To demean or degrade or to just force us to be part of their sexual gratification.
SRW1
Maybe they should approach this the same way as their dream boy. Or don’t they have $150k around when the need arises?
Brachiator
@Yarrow:
Pfft. You could say the same thing about Michelle Obama.
A lot of this stuff is empty tribalism. And an idiotic need to make up differences rather than to see obvious similarities.
Mandalay
Some media nominations for the fuck ’em roundup:
– Articles that blather on about Trump’s “false claims”, “untruths”, “misleading statements” and “misinformation”. Cut the crap and call him a liar, and drop the “we can’t really know what is in his heart” bullshit.
– Articles with the headline “Trump says X!”, and then buried away in the seventh paragraph it’s pointed out that X is not true.
– Articles about a visit to a coffee shop in Bumfuck, Idaho to research what real Americans really think, as though the views of old, white retired people in a small town in rural America somehow have extra merit.
rikyrah
I forgot to ask this..did anyone else see this?
I was switching channels and happened to come upon Hayes interviewing Michael Moore??
Stayed on the channel long enough to hear Hayes say that he wants the Democratic House investigations and the Mueller report because there are still questions that he has that he wants answers to….and doesn’t Moore want to know too?
MOORE SAID NO!
NO??
REALLY?
SERIOUSLY?
ISN’T THAT INTERESTING….
He is not interested in finding out about the treason against this country….
Hmmmmmmmm????
Tarragon
@Amir Khalid: Dood! No spoilers!
rikyrah
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Can’t wait for Lucretia to get outfitted for an orange jumpsuit??
Roger Moore
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Let me see if I have this right: Trump isn’t really a racist. He’s just saying racist things because he thinks it will attract voters like her. But she’s totally not a racist.
Punchy
Wait….what? Pretty sure that’s exactly how liberal women act/think/live. Traditional values are those where the woman doesn’t work or speak out, and has to constantly apologize for fucking up the chicken pot pies she spent all afternoon making for her husband because she spent 5 hours protesting abortion clinics that morning.
The cognitive emptiness is glaring, deep, and incredibly profound.
jeffreyw
@Shana: Making a soup/stew out of leftovers. We’ll have it over biscuits.
Thinking hard about dumping Dish now that we have credible download speeds. (10+Mb/sec) My TV shows blu-ray quality at that speed. Hulu looks good and my TVs have the Hulu app, I may spring for one of the upgrade bundles.
Brachiator
@SiubhanDuinne:
Responding to the threat would be up to the editor and publisher, not the reporter.
And although I don’t know how this figures in to things, it’s just a plain fact that the dying newspaper industry has less money to do everything, including pay legal staff.
Citizen Alan
@cmorenc:
Yeah, it is quite possible to be academically gifted and also a racist moron, as my own time at Ole Miss can attest.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@rikyrah: I don’t know who Hayes and O’Donnell think they’re appealing to when they haul that emo buffoon on to their sets
Citizen Alan
@Yarrow:
Based on Sarah Palin and her imitators, I’m pretty sure “traditional feminine values” means dressing to appear sexy to conservative males and never, ever saying anything to suggest you were better than the lowest man.
West of the Rockies
@Shana:
I just found it. It is fabulous! Thank you, Shana. I was laughing loudly enough to disturb my flatmate. As an English Lit major, I was chortling profusely.
sukabi
@Yarrow: yes, there was an article ..there are apparently 3 or 4 nazis that are on speed dial for these “journalistic adjacent” outfits.
Funny how they never manage to find even 1 person to do a human interest story on that isn’t a nazi.
West of the Rockies
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I’m sick of Moore interviews. Would it absolutely kill the guy to brush his hair and put on something he didn’t just dig out of the hamper?
debbie
@rikyrah:
Will her cinch belt be jeweled or feathered?
Mandalay
@debbie:
He did veto it, but his veto was overturned.
But your larger point stands: Kasich can fuck off.
Gelfling 545
@emmyelle: There’s still a story to be told about the ones who actually believe they are Jesus Christ and divinely appointed Trump. Possibly a statistically significant number of his “base”.
SiubhanDuinne
@Shana:
Well worth the search. Thanks for the pointer!
Roger Moore
@rikyrah:
Orange is the new Red.
patrick II
@gene108:
Not true in the South at least. It is filled with Evangelicals who stay virgins and don’t have sex before they are married. So Trumpers would be SOL there too.
jeffreyw
Speaking of Hulu – they have the follow-up to Deutschland 83, the new series is set in 1986. Deutschland 86
Jim, Foolish Literalist
MSNBC anchor just introduced a story about “Senator Elizabeth Warren, often derided by President Trump for her claims of Native American heritage…”
bemused
@Ken:
I just came upon an old Kevin Drum post, Nov 2014, about National Review editorial “The Governing Trap”. As Drum said, “No that’s not the Onion. That’s for real. NR is earnestly begging Republicans not to try to actually govern the country”: ‘The desire to prove Republicans can govern also makes them hostage to their opponents in the Democratic party’.
Same GOP as it has been for decades.
Brachiator
@SiubhanDuinne:
VF is an odd duck. They often have insightful stories. But keep in mind that its appeal is to a Tony readership base that is the Establishment.
And the fact is that there is a certain part of the Establishment that is united by their class interests, not their political ideology.
So, some readers of the magazine know these white college girls from North Carolina, and their parents, and party with them.
It’s always informative to check out the section of VF that has snapshots of balls and parties and notice who is mingling with who.
scav
@sukabi:
Maybe they get double journalist bonus points for human interest subjects that miss both being interesting and human.
Is there in fact a specialist sub-catagory of bots that respond to email interviews?
SiubhanDuinne
@Brachiator:
Right you are, and that’s actually what I had in mind; I just did a shit job of saying it.
sukabi
@randy khan: I take comfort in the fact that, despite polling and the plethora of stories about drumpf supporters, there aren’t as many of them as has been reported, otherwise there wouldn’t be these pitiful ‘can’t get laid’ stories, especially from the female contingent.
Roger Moore
@patrick II:
I’d like to see some evidence that Evangelicals are actually saving themselves for marriage. The rate of out-of-wedlock births suggests otherwise.
SiubhanDuinne
@debbie:
¿Por qué no los dos?
Brachiator
@patrick II:
Teen birth rate, and STD rate, always higher in the South than elsewhere. And as far as adults go, there’s a reason country music songs are always about cheating couples and unhappiness.
Snarki, child of Loki
“so tired of exit interviews of fucking nazis”
If they want to make a last statement from the scaffold, I’m okay with that.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Political media don’t like her. I’m telling you- it’ll be Al Gore all over again. That’s the genre- Al Gore hatred, not Hillary Clinton hatred. Two categories.
She’s a smartypants. They don’t like that.
I felt bad a coupla weeks ago because I like Warren and I read that she has made herself more accessible to media- I was thinking “forget it! Don’t try. They hate you”.
satby
@Roger Moore:
Yes, I caught that too. What’s the purpose of “building a brand” that intrigues racists other than to attract racist voters? But they aren’t racist, not at all.
Gravenstone
@rikyrah: More likely that Moore would prefer going off half-cocked and starting impeachment without having the results of the Mueller investigation. Which would of course be a waste of time and political energy. Because a thorough and deeply damning report will be our only chance to shame enough Republicans in the Senate to vote for conviction. Otherwise they’ll continue their lockstep obstruction for as long as they find Trump useful.
Gravenstone
@jeffreyw: Hulu plus Netflix will cover an awful lot of entertainment options for you, at a reasonable price. Just be sure your broadband is generally stable.
Gex
@patrick II: That’s what Saddlebacking is for.
Gravenstone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: He answers when the talent booker calls. First priority.
West of the Rockies
@Kay:
She’s shrill, also, too.//
Kay
@Roger Moore:
They really don’t. They just don’t use birth control. I’m convinced they have somehow conflated “birth control” with “abortion” because there is no other rational reason why NONE of the teenagers use it.
Like the birth control is what makes it bad and sinful. Like even preventing a baby is not sufficiently pro-life, but not in any thought out way- not like a religious tenet- more like woo-woo superstition.
It’s tragic. So much chaos could be avoided if they’d even use something simple like condoms. They prefer to pretend they’re not actually having sex.
satby
@Kay: and it’s up to all of us to push back on the media when they do that. It works when we’re on it, but won’t if we do the circular firing squad bit. Warren is as creditable as anyone else who wants to declare a run, and has good policy proposals.
We need to let the media know they better treat our candidates with at least the same level of respect Republicans or the third party fakers get.
Yarrow
@rikyrah: I do not trust Chris Hayes.
Gravenstone
@Kay: Lots of anti-abortion zealots intentionally mischaracterize hormonal birth control as an abortifacient. So yeah, it’s not surprising that youths trapped in that sort of environment act from that disinformation.
Elizabelle
@Brachiator: Looked through the most recent Vanity Fair, with Lin Manuel Miranda on the cover. Jebus, has that magazine suffered for no longer having Graydon Carter edit it. I suspect (hope! hope!) the online content may be superior to the paper pages.
Because it was AWFUL. Pretty much merchandising, vacuous celebrity infotainment about uninteresting people (LMM excepted) with one good article (by James Wolcott) about how The Sopranos types were the original Trump voter types. Wingeing about a lost past.
He spends some time explicating how half-assed and shabby they are at their cover “jobs.”
Kay
@West of the Rockies:
Some of them said she doesn’t give interviews in the hallway.
I vacillate between two poles- figure out WTF it is they want and just give them that, OR just tell them to fuck off completely.
It would be easier to just figure out what they want, what they need for their careers or whatever. They need content, right? Food for the big, hungry machine.
When John had that drawing of Tunch with FEED on it? That’s how I see them. As requiring fodder.
Ken
@Shana: I type the markup for the link into the comment. It looks like this:
The <a href="http://whatever.com/blahblah">link text</a> is between the "a" markups(Here’s hoping I got the HTML entities right, because for me the edit button is like the Questing Beast – often spoke of, sometimes sighted, but never around when you’re looking for it.)
SenyorDave
I’m not racist but I’m perfectly happy with a president who may have pretended to be racist to build his brand. They probably would be perfectly happy with Trump if they found out he raped a 12 year old as long as it helped build his brand. Open message to the women profiled in the Vanity Fair piece: Do society a favor and don’t have children. The world will be better off without that particular contribution from you. Spend your time working to get Silent Sam back up because “he” got such a raw deal.
Ken
Hooray, got the entities right at 162! BTW you use the “code” markup for the typewriter font. Around here it’s used as the sarcasm font – modesty forbids my naming the person who came up with that meme.
Tim C.
@Kay: It’s even worse than that. I teach at a High School with a large fundamentalist population, here’s the internal ‘logic’ that gets used. (by both genders)
1) Only bad kids have sex
2) Well, I’m a good kid.
3) Okay, well, it’s not just bad kids who have sex, sometimes teenagers get ‘swept away in the moment’ and you lose control.
4) So if you get “swept away in the moment” you aren’t a bad person.
5) So if I plan in advance and get a condom, or I go on birth control of some kind, that means I didn’t get swept away in the moment, I planned in advance so I’m a bad person if I do
either of those things.
6) But if I get “swept away in the moment” I can have sex and not be a bad person.
I wish I was making this up, but some version of this logic has been behind about 5 pregnancies in the last three years.
PJ
Prior to being called out for, um, red-handed behavior, Louis CK’s comedy had a self-righteous streak a mile wide: all you hypocritical idiots are doing (saying, thinking) it wrong, whereas I, clever guy Louis CK, am here to set you right. Now that he knows he’s the real victim, he’s turned that attitude on people who are trying to make the world a little better or easier to live in, because he knows that he is one of those things that is making the lives of others worse. And it will probably pay off for him – the Hollywood gravy train may be over, but the wing nut gravy train is just getting up steam.
Elizabelle
@Tim C.: Sounds like the 1950s and before. How sad.
Ken
@satby: @SenyorDave: Since McSweeney’s was mentioned, I think they have the definitive take on the “oh, he’s not really like that” claim by
somemost Trump supporters. And it’s a series!(“Some” changed to “most” because of the recent poll showing that 98% of Trump voters never thought Trump was serious about the wall.)
Roger Moore
@Kay:
I don’t think that’s it. Their basic problem is seeing sex from the viewpoint of sin rather than practical consequences. Giving kids access to contraceptives might protect them from pregnancy, but it’s tantamount to giving them permission to sin. If you see the sin as the bigger problem, that’s not a good idea.
Kay
@satby:
What was McCain’s big secret? Telling them things. None of which they told us, so this is about them. It’s even worse now because they all have to deny the shitty Clinton coverage to their graves, so we’re going in dysfunctional and defensive. It’s all too much for me – I can’t figure this out :)
Every time anyone says “they hated Hillary Clinton” I think “and Al Gore”. They destroyed him. It’s a bigger problem than Clinton.
Mandalay
Headlines about Elizabeth Warren on Google News from the past two hours:
– Did Elizabeth Warren miss her chance?
– Warren battles the ghosts of Hillary
– CNN’s Harry Enten: Elizabeth Warren is a below-par candidate
Y’all better get used to this drivel because there’s plenty more where that came from.
KSinMA
@Elizabelle: VF has started showing up among the supermarket checkout-line magazines in my area. So I take it they have a new marketing strategy: The Upscale Enquirer!
Fair Economist
@Elizabelle: so they are saying mobsters and wannabe mobsters are Trump’s true constituency? That sounds about right…
Mai Naem mobile
@chris: I am glad Trumpkins CDC can’t get laid. Those kind of genes should not be allowed to pass on. I fully endorse those kind of eugenics
jeffreyw
@Gravenstone: I’m probably going to go that way, along with Youtube premium and Amazon Prime.
The broadband is up 99+% of the time. I can share hotspot on the phone when it fails for web browsing. I have a ton of movies ripped to my media servers, Netflix snail mail lets me turn around 2 movies a week.
MisterForkbeard
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I missed the chance to respond to this in a timely manner, but if someone says “This guy is making racist comments, but he’s not racist! Those comments are a mix of what he believes and showmanship!” then what he thinks HAS to be racist, doesn’t it?
Also, despite the headline that particular explanation sounds like she’s apologizing for her beliefs. As she should be.
@Mandalay: Yeah. The long knives are out.
That said, none of those articles are necessarily wrong, either. Warren probably would have had a better chance in 2016 (or as Veep) than now, she really IS dealing with the “Hillary Problem”, in that she’s getting flack from both sides of the Left (Bros for accepting that Wilmer lost the primary, Hillary supporters for making the brain dead assertion that the primary was “rigged”) and that the media really wants to jump on her, and that Warren hasn’t ever been a fantastic candidate. She’s a great Senator but as a candidate she’s not particularly inspiring or good at speechifying.
And that’s sort of the problem. These “Well, they’re kind of true but not that important” articles are going to become the main story on Warren just like they did on Hillary and drive her down into the muck.
cain
@Roger Moore:
The problem with this mentality is that you give tax cuts to the 1%, the 1% is not a sustainable audience for your magazine/newspaper. You want more disposable income to the middle class and poor who will buy your publications. What’s the point of paying less taxes if your overall income goes down? It just irritates me that nobody can’t see that this is not a sound economic principle at all.
I love social programs, I love tax cuts for the middle class, free healthcare and education while higher corporate tax rates to pay for them. In return, a smarter workforce that works more efficiently. Meh. I’m speaking to the choir here. But it’s just frustrating dealing with this mindset. This is why I fucking hate Reagan.
cain
@Shana:
Lovely. I normally make a nice meal for myself and then stay up watching movies, read a book or play some video games. The past 5 years or so, I’ve really stopped acknowledging the holidays. This year, I’ve been working straight through them like they don’t exist. I don’t know, it’s like I have no fucks to give. This year, I’m staying with my 70/80 year old parents and they’ll go to bed early, my nephews are staying with me so we might do something before they go to bed.
Elizabelle
@Fair Economist:
Shysters and whingers of all stripes. Come on down!
Mike J
@Kay:
Remember “chunky Reese Witherspoon?” The point of that story was that he was turned off by her use of birth control because it meant that she had obviously thought about sex before. That meant it wasn’t a beautiful, natural, “it just happened because we lurve each other” moment. Having a thought about sex before she met him made her a slut.
Gelfling 545
@Mandalay: Who cares what’s in his heart? Nobody knows what’s in anybody’s heart. We have to go by what people do and what Trump does is despicable.
Ruckus
@West of the Rockies:
Yes his approval is a whatever, it’s not zero.
But look how many people voted for him. (Not as much as the far, far, far…. better candidate) but a far higher number than his current approval. Now consider the impact and spread of faux lies and propaganda and that half the country/world is stupider than the median and that his support is dropping and many people are not squishy when it comes to their political views – they have them, good or absolutely horrible. Most people don’t have an idea about how things work – outside of a likely small area and politics is one of the least workable systems of any operational system – as the man said democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the rest. We are seeing the bad, the downside of democracy right now and that is that the politics can actually not be representative and that it can be run by a minority. Right now that minority is the racists who are turned up to maximum. Part of that is that they didn’t really get totally defeated last time this issue hit maximum stupidity and the country tried to heal rather than cleanse.
Ruviana
@Yarrow: Might be the article about Selina Zito who kept recycling the same people and who were also often gop party or activist types. Amazing coincidences!
ETA: Beaten by khead! Is a different link tho…
patrick II
@Roger Moore:
@Brachiator:
Is there some sort of sarcasm font I am supposed to use?
@Gex:
Correct. And oral sex, so they’re still virgins.
cain
@sukabi:
Rural Kentucky/Tennessee would like to have a word. There might not be a lot of them but they have disproportional representation thanks to a number of factors including the electoral college.
sukabi
@Tim C.: only thing missing from that list is the huge helping of guilt / shame that is served up with every Sunday sermon and taken home and binds the family.
Mandalay
@Mandalay: Harry Dumbfuck Enten on Elizabeth Warren:
Enten’s phrase “suggests that perhaps…” is a doozy. Pundits can use it about absolutely anything and never be wrong, because they’re not really saying anything at all.
cain
@Kay:
Smarty pants is only okay if you are an awesome orator and if you’re male.
Ruckus
@HinTN:
Please remember that if common sense were so common, more people would have some of it.
I just updated my mac to Mojave and now the spell checker is saying words like by and were are misspelled. It is to boggle the mind that it knows much bigger, less often used words and often used words it chokes on. I think apple is doing this to fuck with their customers, why else has it all of a sudden become stupidly broken?
Ken
@cain:
As long as you’re male you don’t need the other two, because the press will dub you an awesome orator and policy wonk despite all evidence to the contrary (*cough* Paul Ryan *cough*).
sukabi
@Mike J: doughboy was likely lying about that. Chances are that “Chunky Reese Witherspoon” was like “Oh, gross. You want to do what? Ha! Like that’s ever going to happen!” and flounced off laughing.
Brachiator
@Mandalay:
Both 24 and 27 seem impressive to me.
I’m not enthused by any of the potential candidates so far, but am interested in seeing how they do as they try for the nomination.
Ruviana
@BC in Illinois: To be scrupulously fair it was an article about college students. Conservative college women in the south. The whiteness is sort of to be expected given who was interviewed though an African-American college woman who loved trump could be interesting. I myself was glad to read about all the push-back the women got from their peers. The University in question was UNC-Chapel Hill if I remember correctly.
JMG
Warren was the first big Democrat to declare, so she catches the Village heat today. Don’t worry, to those men and women ALL 20 to 137 Democratic candidates will be “below par.” The more they stand for economic justice, the more “below par” they’ll be. It’d improve political journalism no end if each reporter’s or commentator’s annual salary was presented underneath their byline or ID chyron.
Miss Bianca
@Tim C.: Yes, “good girls don’t”, so if you’re a good girl you can’t plan ahead. I saw this phenomenon at play a lot when I worked at Planned Parenthood. That is, I saw the girls who were getting abortions because even though they were “pro-life”, they still didn’t want a baby. “Pro-life” apparently meant that it was ok to force those *other* women – aka, sluts – to have babies.
I was professionally bound to compassion when I was counseling these girls, but I do confess that I just wanted to smack them upside the head sometimes.
Brachiator
@patrick II:
Sarcasm and irony are harder to convey than people think.
Been there myself a number of times.
sukabi
@Mandalay: 3 point difference suggests a margin of error difference, which isn’t that much at all… Only winning her seat by 24%, what a close race. She barely squeaked that one out. ?
Someone needs a new job, and it ain’t Warren.
rikyrah
Thread
Terrell J. Starr (@Russian_Starr) Tweeted:
I am supposed to be sleep. It is 7.a.m. over here in Kyiv, but I want to address why we do not need any more coverage of why white folks support Trump. At this point, it doesn’t matter the publication, writer or anything. Just hear me out for a second.
https://twitter.com/Russian_Starr/status/1079602404700684288?s=17
Ruckus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
She wants bullshit salad dressing please. She wants to put bullshit salad dressing on all her food and all her thoughts. And manages to do just that.
Mike J
@sukabi: perhaps, but even his versions of events makes him look like a horrible person.
rikyrah
@Yarrow:
He is going to get his feelings hurt when we lay waste to Bernie??
Brachiator
@KSinMA:
News stands and book stores are dying. Supermarket checkout lines are what’s left.
catclub
@Brachiator:
What about “Drop Kick Me, Jesus, Through the Goalposts of Life”?
tobie
I just chanced upon this absurd, if not obscene, tweet from Maggie Haberman and it reminded me that I hope Haberman takes up a labor intensive hobby in 2019 and takes leave from FTFNYT. Anyone who writes a tweet like this one absolving John Kelly for his work in the administration and praising the extraordinary honor of generals doesn’t deserve a megaphone:
sukabi
@Mike J: self awareness, how does it work?
Dumbass was all wrapped up in his insulting slut shaming holier than thou bullshit that he never thought to think how HE was looking in all that. Had his feelings hurt and was lashing out, that was his primary focus. He called her a repulsive fat slut in a national newspaper and that’s likely all that mattered to him.
Gelfling 545
@Mandalay: WTF is a “below par candidate” in the age of Trump?
snoey
@sukabi:
Anybody who tries to make anything of Warren’s last race needs a new job. It was a walkover vs a Republican so bad our R Governor wouldn’t say his name.
In the last comparable competitive races she ran about 7 points behind Obama.
Ruckus
@Mandalay:
They are lies. Not pinocchios, not untruths…… They are fucking lies. They are blatant fucking lies and he’s a blatant fucking liar. If individual 1 ever speaks anything true it’s because he misspoke. And his supporters are the same.
cain
@Ken:
I feel like drinking and listening to Rage Against The Machine.
debbie
@tobie:
I finally got around to Googling what McChrystal said. Gut punch? He’s just so damn vicious.
dnfree
@HinTN: My father used to say “If it’s common, it’s not sensible, and if it’s sensible it’s not common.”
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
Logic does not seem to be racists strong suit.
LaNonna
Happy New Year and “Auguri” to all you jackals from Italy, where we are doing our best to hold the center against 5Star and Lega Nord, while staying informed on things US. To all a happy, healthy, prosperous 2019, let’s have a year of posit ive change.
emmyelle
@Gelfling 545: Awesome-now I have some fine journalism to look forward to. I’m sure that the NYTimes will cover this with all manner of civility and respect, admonishing the liberal elite for our collective arrogance, warning us that we belittle these fine people at our peril.
debbie
@debbie:
The original version is far better.
HeleninEire
BHLIAIN NUA SASTA
Happy New Year from Dublin. It’s 5ish hours for me 10ish for you but I will be sound asleep when it actually happens.
Was in my PJs at 4:30. Decided to go for a drink since it’s NYrs. One of the things I will miss about Dublin is the fact that I am outside (albeit under a heat lamp) on NYrs eve.
BHLIAIN NUA SASTA.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
In both cases, they had a lot of help from the purity left. I remember Arianna Huffington– about six months after her ideological split with Newt Gingrich– staging a “shadow convention” outside the LA venue where the Dems were. Tom Morello (RATM) led the crowd in a chant of “fuck Gore”. The fact that his mother owned stock in Occidental Petro. was proof that he was just a big phony on the environment
Ruckus
@West of the Rockies:
You think M Moore has a hamper? Wanna bet he just picked something up off the floor that didn’t smell as bad as the rest of the stuff on the floor? Cause he looks like the kind of guy who even if he has a washing machine, has no idea how it works.
dnfree
@SiubhanDuinne: It says right in the article that the author is interviewing women involved with the Republican party at North Carolina University at Chapel Hill. So yes, it’s a very small subset of conservative college women, but it says so right up front.
Monala
@Kay: I’ve also heard that using birth control is about planning to have sex outside of marriage (ignore for now that many married couples use BC). Whereas if you have sex without BC, you didn’t plan it, you just got caught up in the moment. The latter is forgivable, the former is not.
ETA: I see that TimC made the point before I did.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Ruckus: I think Moore puts a lot of effort into looking like he doesn’t think about his appearance. Cornell West may be a whackadoo egomaniac but at least his sartorial affectation is interesting.
Ruckus
@sukabi:
Don’t forget that for a lot of his rallies people have to be bussed in and paid. And the attendance is still pathetic. The people aren’t pathetic, just the turnouts. For the people to be just pathetic they would have to move up the humanity scale about a 1000%. Minimum.
Ken
@Gelfling 545:
Trump always makes par, sometimes even a few strokes below par. Ask any of the people he golfs with – but ignore the liars who say he cheats blatantly, they’re just upset they’re outclassed.
Mandalay
@sukabi:
Right. The odious part of all this is that Enten actually has some understanding of statistics: he used to crunch numbers for Nate Silver at 538.
But he is a 30 year old pundit who is desperate to make a name for himself, so he knowingly compares apples and oranges and spews statistical bullshit. Most pundits spout nonsense because they they have blind allegiances, or they truly don’t know any better, but that is not the case with Enten; he’ll say whatever it takes to enhance his career.
Jinchi
I actually don’t have a problem with it. Nothing will kill the party faster than convincing the public that Republicans can’t get laid.
Now if we can just get Fox to start reporting on it. Ideally with Tucker Carlson covering the story.
Gvg
@Yarrow: there is also the look at the freak aspect of selling newspapers. I always found the tabloids headlines about “freak” humans…batboy, etc to be incredibly offensive in a 19th century barbaric way, but they kept doing it and I have met people who always read that shit. People look at horrible traffic accidents and read about sensationalist murders too. So story’s about dumb Trump supporters are actually likely to stay around longer than Trump still has real support. The more they are suffering and the stupider they are, the more likely a story about them will get published.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
also… unless college populations have changed dramatically, I imagine you can’t swing a dead rat in the frat houses of her college without hitting at least one MAGAt cap
I remember being in Boulder CO in 2004 and walking past a frat house with three giant SUVs with Bush/Cheney bumper stickers parked in front of it. In my fantasy, I went and picked up an Army recruiter and brought him back to sign the boys up
Brachiator
@Monala:
Movies, tv shows and novels still sell the fantasy of couples being caught up in the moment, tearing off each other’s clothes and giving in to passion.
Sometimes a chivalrous dude has a condom with him in a movie comedy.
OTOH, I recall the recent comedy *Blockers being good about the issue of birth control.
Orange is the New Red
@Roger Moore: You rang? Been using that line for quite awhile now, it continues to have meaning into 2019. Sadly.
Elizabelle
Waving at EF Goldman, originator of the BJ Fuck ‘Em vibe.
Now: for what Stanley McChrystal said about Trump, an Atlantic article.
And, the ABC interview with Martha Raddatz. Article as well as video.
Miss Bianca
@Gelfling 545:
E-FUCKING-ZACTLY.
Domestic short hair tabby (fka vheidi)
@Thoughtful David: me too. Started listening to sports radio
Aleta
@Ruckus: After update to Mohave, retraining the spell checker may be required. Select Sleep mode and then knock your machine to the floor. Unplug beforehand to show you don’t blame your power supply.
cope
In the Delta Positive column, SYFY is running a Twilight Zone marathon now and New Horizons will zip past Ultimate Thule (the Kuiper Belt Object, not the Greenland air base) about half an hour into the new year, EST. Pics and other good stuff won’t come down until the coming days but I’m tempted to break my habit of pre-midnight bedtime just to see if the flyby is safe and successful.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Good for McChrystal. This did not get nearly enough attention. A rightwing demagogue demagoguing to the military should scare everybody, especially the one about the pay increase, and saying “a lot of people tried to talk me out of it, but I stuck up for you”
Ruckus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It’s possible, but I rather doubt it. I’ve know of people who are careful to dress well and still slobs and I’ve known people who are slobs who dress like it. And people who aren’t slobs who have no idea about what is anything more than just comfortable. And don’t care. And people who aren’t slobs who have no idea of any style other than what they think everyone else is wearing is stylish.
I live in Old Town. I see a lot of the last group walking around here. They fit in well. You can tell they are visiting though, their BMI isn’t that of a WWII prisoner of war. And of course there is always the individual 1 style, no class, no style, and always looks like he cares but dresses with his eyes welded shut and only knows one store to buy from, for which he is the only customer and the store owner is a blind tailor who used to be a sail maker.
Brachiator
@tobie:
Haberman still has a deep conflict of interest, a publishing deal to write a book about the Trump administration. Her financial future depends upon having access to Trump.
StringOnAStick
I was just about to leave a “Hell no!” at St. B’s since I heard that he’s asking supporters to tell him if he should run in 2020 or not. I’d even composed a significant screed while on a hike, but no, you have to give them your email address and cell number, and who knows if I’d still get the “should I run?” email so I could respond with my missive.
There is a story that he was tossed out of an Israeli kibbutz as a young man for not doing his fair share of work, and I think that is reflective of both who he is and what his life has been ever since. There sure seems to be a concerted effort at his website to show his followers as extremely diverse in terms of ethnicity, so I suspect the criticism of him in that regard found it’s mark.
My next door neighbor is from VT and was a strong supporter, mostly because it reminds her of her childhood home I guess. She spends 99% of her political efforts on local school issues, so I know she has no idea that St. B votes against gun control or immigration reform. At some point this is going to come up and we are good friends, but I’ll be very clear why I will never again support this guy and will do all I can to make sure he does not attach himself like a constipated remora to the D party again.
Ruviana
@Tim C.: I did abortion rights stuff back in the mid-70s and that logic was widespread then too. BC of any kind implied that you might be planning to have sex and that was really really bad.
Shana
@Kay: It’s not even that. My understanding is that they think they’re supposed to abstain until marriage, but if they end up being “carried away” and have sex and end up pregnant that’s a lesser sin than having planned to have sex and procured any form of birth control ahead of time.
Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
tobie
@Elizabelle: thanks for the link. I didn’t know where to find the interview.
Shana
@cain: Sounds nice! Enjoy.
Domestic short hair tabby (fka vheidi)
@Ella in New Mexico: the reporter used to work for him
Miss Bianca
@StringOnAStick: mad props for use of the phrase “constipated remora”. *Snerk*
Ruckus
@Kay:
I think this is a good point.
The media is like a school of fish, looking for food. They all look in the same place and eat whatever comes to them first.
If you are standing there ready to give them a story, even one they know is bullshit they will listen because they have a deadline. I worked in a company that had a glossy 80 page monthly magazine for it’s supporters. Every month deadline day was hectic because the magazine had to go to the printers, otherwise they lost their slot in the printing rotation. Can not imagine that any printed source is any different. Deadline day or hour drives a lot of journalism.
StringOnAStick
@Shana: Not just evangelicals. I have friends who adopted a boy about 10 seconds after he was delivered. The mom was a graduate student from the Middle East, with parents in DC who were diplomats from the home country. This was the second time she’d gotten pregnant, had the baby and had already arranged to have it be adopted; the rule was she didn’t want to know the sex, hear it’s first cry, nothing, just make it go away. Somehow she had hidden both pregnancies from her religiously conservative parents by being here in CO and being masterful at making excuses. Our friends got lucky because this was an open adoption, but she signed away all rights so there will be no contact in the future. Their son gets to have play dates with his biological half brother, and that’s been a great thing.
Ladyraxterinok
@Roger Moore: Maybe both have to be ‘saving themselves for marriage’.
StringOnAStick
@Miss Bianca: St. B always, always looks like someone ran off with his bottle of Metamucil, and things are getting grimmer by the moment.
Ladyraxterinok
@Kay: Media Hate, HATE people smarter than they are!!
Nicole
@rikyrah: That was a great thread; thanks for posting the link. Apropos of nothing, except that tweet made me think of it, I went to see Creed 2 over the holidays and noticed that A) they spelled Kyiv correctly and B) although the film is all about the events of Rocky IV, they kept saying “Russia” and not “The Soviet Union,” when referring to the Rocky-Drago fight in the 1980s and it really bothered me. Because that’s the kind of nerd I am.
I saw Rocky IV several times in the theater. I’m not proud of that, but it was the 1980s and options were limited in suburban Pennsylvania.
Ladyraxterinok
@Kay: Use of birth control means you at least thought about having sex. Sex out of wedlock ONLY marginally ok if spontaneous, ie UNPLANNED , NOT thought about before
Mnemosyne
@Gin & Tonic:
Very late in the thread, but CK’s behavior was basically the same as the dudes who expose themselves in public or masturbate in public places. It’s a form of sexual assault, and WAY creepier when it’s targeted to known people as he seemed to be doing rather than inflicting it on random strangers on the subway.
Ruckus
@Elizabelle:
They really do want to go back to the 50s.
What century is always a question but they do want to go back to a “simpler” time or one they at least think was simpler. It wasn’t, it never is or was. It may have been different, although having irresponsible sex has never been a good idea, that has never really stopped anyone who had the opportunity. What was simpler was that there were no condoms in the grocery store, there was no sex education to understand what the process of conception was for people who didn’t want to know. Sex felt good, as it does, hormones are powerful, as they always are, and ignorance enhances the ability to make excuses and opportunity is the only missing piece. Add in opportunity and you get illegitimate/unwanted births. Tell me that unwanted births and teen marriage didn’t happen in the 50s and for ever before that.
Mnemosyne
@SiubhanDuinne:
Also, the emails story was dead easy to cover, because the House investigation had already done all of the work (by design, but I digress). All a reporter had to do was skim through the House report, regurgitate a few quotes, and be done in time for Happy Hour after work. No muss, no fuss.
Actually digging into Trump’s stuff was going to be hard work, and it would take more than an afternoon. Who wants to deal with that?
Luciamia
Be tty, were your Christmas visitors finally able to get back home?
Also, did Cole make good on his threat to get on a bike?
Ladyraxterinok
@Tim C.: From that culture in OK and TX–you’ve precisely expressed the ‘thinking’.
cwmoss
@Shana: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-incel-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock.
thalarctosMaritimus
@Amir Khalid: Happy New Year, Amir!
What’s the future like?
chopper
i’m at the point where every day is a “fuck you friday”.
pat
Hey, Ozark, what is happening with that injured woman in the cave?
Mnemosyne
@sukabi:
Right? It’s like, 62 percent of white men voted for Trump, but conservative white women still can’t get a date? It’s almost like conservative white men aren’t interested in dating women who have actual political thoughts and ideas, even when those women’s politics match their own. ?
Ruckus
@Aleta:
ROFLMAO
Miss Bianca
@StringOnAStick: You’re killing me over here!
And “over here” is getting quite the snow dump, btw. You?
Mandalay
@Ruckus:
And yet even when McChrystal is head-stomping Trump he still does not dare to use the “L” word:
Credit to Raddatz for dangling “liar” in front of McChrystal, but it was still a bridge too far for him. Why?
Luciamia
Has anyone added Guiliani to the fuck-off list?
Ruckus
@StringOnAStick:
Also
ROFLMAO
ETA It’s a perfect way to explain how full of shit he is.
Miss Bianca
@Mnemosyne:
Yeah, I call BS on this one. What do you want to bet that this means,”the hotties I think are really dreamy turn out to be liberals who are turned off by my politics, and the only guys interested in fucking me are piggy-grunt CPAC incels, oh noes!”?
Ruckus
@Mandalay:
He should have just used the word but I’ll give him a little break here. He’s spent his entire adult life being a military officer, which has a very strict code and a very strict unwritten code in that one can not, will not speak publicly about a senior officer negatively. It upsets the entire chain of command. In private, behind his back, to fellow officers of the same or lower rank, not a problem. What is mostly done is that everyone that knows so and so is a useless fuck finds the useless, or worse fuck, a job that is unimportant to the over all mission but is so shitty that the person retires asap. The last ship I was on for a few weeks had a new captain that this concept fit to a T. He was never going to be advanced because he was such an asshole, so they found him a duty station/ship that wasn’t going into battle anytime soon, that was in the yard and likely to be there a while and installed him. Unluckily for everyone else he didn’t retire immediately.
ETA To show how much of an asshole he was, it was publicly announced that being late to the ship was considered being AWOL and got you 3 days bread and water in the brig, guarded 24 hrs a day by everyone in your work crew, so they got punished as well. The gangplank was raised off the pier every day at what’s known as colors, the time you are supposed to be on the ship so no one could sneak aboard.
Ruckus
@Luciamia:
Hasn’t everyone?
He’s been on mine for a very long time.
Ruckus
@Miss Bianca:
Some days it’s tough finding out who your friends (or fuck buddies) really are.
Anotherlurker
@realbtl: DeAngelico! Beautiful, Art Deco style guitars. One of their achtops should be Amir’s next ax.
cliosfanboy
@FlyingToaster: Patrick Henry for home schooled young reactionaries
BlueGirlFromWyo
@Punchy: It doesn’t seem to occur to these future underpaid business geniuses, who claim that Trump’s white supremacy is mere “branding,” that to have a brand, you need a buyer. Gee, maybe associating oneself with these buyers might make you not-so-popular. Hoocoodanode?
Aleta
CK: “I have long enjoyed forcing women to pay attention to my transgressing penis. I will now step forward to satisfy my anger with forbidden jokes. Then yell “Fuck you” out the window.
Miss Bianca
@Anotherlurker: Right, cuz who here among us doesn’t have $40,000 (or its equivalent in ringgits) to blow on a guitar, amirite?
Aleta
Louis CK: “I have long enjoyed forcing women to pay attention to my transgressing pen+s. I will now step back in front of an audience and satisfy myself with forbidden jokes. Then yell “Fu-k you” out the window at the street, real loud.
Anotherlurker
@Miss Bianca: Hi Miss B. DeAngelicos are very reasonably priced. Sure you can pay stupid $$ for their top of the line models, but you can also buy one, starting at $500.00. A Double cut-away semi-hollow body can be had for less than $800.00.
J R in WV
@Amir Khalid:
Already?
Wow, you’re a long way +Zulu, Amir!!!!
Miss Bianca
@Anotherlurker: I must be thinking of some other high-end arch-top maker, then. My knowledge of these things has definitely gotten fuzzier since I am no longer living with my ex-husband (a luthier by trade).
Anotherlurker
@Miss Bianca: You are not totally wrong about very high pricing. I did see a DeAngelico listed for $22K +.
J R in WV
@HeleninEire:
It was 70 degrees on my car’s thermometer while I went to Kroger’s this afternoon. And stopped raining for a couple of hours!
vertaio
@Amir Khalid: I prefer Lulu.
StringOnAStick
@Miss Bianca: Sorry, stepped out to shovel/broom a bunch of snow! I think this is the coldest day so far this winter.
Steeplejack
@Shana, @Ken:
You can always say, “Here’s a link to x,” and just drop in a naked URL. Nothing simpler.
Drunkenhausfrau
@JCJ: dead
Matt
@Ken: They were too busy *doing* crimes to even pretend to investigate effectively.