Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

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

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Bark louder, little dog.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

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

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Hail to the Hairpiece / Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Running in Even Bigger Circles, Faster

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Running in Even Bigger Circles, Faster

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There is definitely something wrong with this particular timeline…

Reader Interactions

131Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    That not an example of stamina or unreliability. That’s just crazy.

    And, no, he didn’t “leap” up and punch a whole in the ceiling.

  2. 2.

    Amir Khalid

    What Ajerica needs now is images on social media that have been Photoshopped to make Trump’s nose look longer.

  7. 7.

    SRW1

    Sloppy photoshop work. They forgot to bulge up the manhood corner of Trump’s pants while they were at it.

  8. 8.

    Kay

    And, no, he didn’t “leap” up and punch a whole in the ceiling.

    The whole thing sounds invented. “One of his executives”. Guffaw.

  32. 32.

    Immanentize

    Good Morning All! Tuesday that is Monday…. Literally in my case because there are so many Monday holidays in the spring semester, today is on a Monday class schedule….

    And it is warming up : 7 degrees now.

  33. 33.

    Ken

    @rikyrah:

    great-grandson of an immigrant is President

    Weren’t both his mother and his father’s mother also immigrants? As are his current wife and her parents.

  35. 35.

    debbie

    @rikyrah:

    I just listened to an interview on NPR with a Kentucky state representative who was an alum of Covington. He blamed everyone but the kids. He even blamed the cameras.

  38. 38.

    Barney

    This is an advert for corporal punishment. The subject is incapable of learning a simple fact about the building, and repeatedly returns to it and makes a fool of himself. Finally, he loses his temper so much that he punches a hole on a ceiling. The pain from this was obviously enough to make it finally stick in his mind, so that he remembered something. He knew not to go back and reveal himself as an idiot anymore.

    Moral of the story: to get Trump to learn something new, you need something to whack him with. A rolled-up copy of Forbes, say.

  39. 39.

    OzarkHillbilly

    The sun never sets on the British Empire: Hopefuls pay out thousands of rupees to chase Gurkha glory in Nepal

    Long before the sun rises above the towering Himalayan peaks that overlook Pokhara in central Nepal, scores of young men gather in the dark on the edge of the town to train for the race of a lifetime. At the starter’s signal, they charge off, first heaving a 25kg sack of sand into a “doko” wicker basket on their backs, and then starting a gruelling 5km race up the steep mountainside. Finish in less than 46 minutes and they have a chance to join the Gurkhas, the legendary brigade of the British army.

    The Gurkhas’ reputation as a fighting force is almost mythical: brave young men from the hills of Nepal who fight by the motto, “Better to die than to be a coward”. This month hundreds of Nepalese young men aged 18-21 are battling it out at the British Gurkha Camp in Pokhara for just 400 coveted places, in a series of demanding physical and mental tests, which include the feared “doko race”. To make it this far, they have already seen off more than 6,000 young hopefuls who signed up for the regional selection phase in late summer 2018.

    The prize is not just a job in the British army, but a lucrative salary and pension, and the right to settle in the UK. For young men from one of the poorest countries in Asia, it is like winning the lottery.

    The British army insists the recruitment process is, “free, fair and transparent”, but with so much riding on selection, Gurkha recruitment has become big business for private training academies across Nepal.

    It has also become the target of bribery and extortion from unscrupulous dalals, or agents. They approach families of some potential recruits claiming to be able to use contacts at the British camp to secure them a place with the Gurkhas in exchange for a payment of tens of thousands of pounds.

    Still mining their former colonies.

  40. 40.

    Sloane Ranger

    @OzarkHillbilly: Technically Nepal was never part of the British Empire.Would point out that all applicants are volunteers and pay and benefits for those who are successful are higher than they would expect to earn in Nepal. Plus opportunities for travel.

  42. 42.

    JDM

    @Kay:

    The whole thing sounds invented.

    The exploding at inanimate objects is classic Trump. One of the guys writing about him in the 90s, I think it was, told of seeing him go ballistic over a water fixture and physically attacking it. The guy has always been a loose cannon. Leaping, however, is not within his abilities. Clambering up on a chair, maybe.

  44. 44.

    O. Felix Culpa

    Good morning! or Blech! as you prefer.

    It seems that the “she’s for mass incarceration” ploy has lodged in the minds of some progressives I know. Can anyone ‘splain to me what the deal is with the prosecutorial charges (heh) against Kamala? Something tells me there’s some context being left out

  45. 45.

    rikyrah

    I don’t pay attention to Rudy’s performance art… But, TAPES?

    Is that new?

    Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) Tweeted:
    Giuliani tells NYer he’s “been through all the tapes” and that’s how he knew BuzzFeed misreported. Pressed on what he means by tapes, Giuliani: “I shouldn’t have said tapes.” Pressed again, says, “I have listened to tapes, but none of them concern this.”

    https://t.co/f1DRUltSRf https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1087563055226146816?s=17

  47. 47.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Immanentize:

    there are so many Monday holidays in the spring semester

    Yes. I had to collapse parts of my course schedule this semester because I teach Monday nights. My students will have to scramble, but most of the scheduling pain is in the first few weeks, which is mostly review of what they should already know. After that comes the regularly scheduled pain of learning new material.

  48. 48.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Sloane Ranger:

    While potential recruits do not have to pay anything to the British army, they are shelling out thousands of pounds to join training academies, which promise to prepare them for recruitment.

    The number of academies nationwide has increased fivefold in the past 10 years to more than a hundred. Many candidates sign up months before the British army’s first phase of recruitment, and if they make the cut, they stay on at the academies until final selection, meaning the schools are guaranteed a year-round income with no shortage of repeat clients.

    The standard admission fee is 35,000 rupees for each phase of recruitment, but a candidate who spends a whole year at an academy can easily pay £1,800 in admission and hostel fees. Nepal’s per capita income is less than £800 a year.

    “The academies are like a trap … There is a fiction that if you don’t go to an academy you can’t succeed. Nobody wants to take that risk, because [joining the Gurkhas] is a one in a million chance,” says Ashok Thapa.

    Rabi Sharma, 20, says he and all his friends have had to borrow money to pay the fees. “I didn’t join an academy in the past because I couldn’t afford it, but this is my last chance so I want to be prepared,” says Sharma, who will be too old to apply next year.

    Himal Limbu, vice-secretary of the Kathmandu branch of the Nepal Physical Training Association, the body that represents most of the training academies, says: “It’s up to a candidate to decide whether to prepare independently or go to the training centre. That’s a matter of individual choice. We have been charging a nominal fee. For most of the training centres, the fee is hardly enough to pay for renting space and staff.”

    The British Gurkhas say they have no connection to any training academies and do not engage with them. “We actively advertise that it is not necessary to attend a training academy in order to successfully pass recruitment selection,” said a spokesperson for the British Gurkhas.

    The Gurkhas say they discourage people from spending money to get selected. “All the information on our selection assessments … are available on the army website. However, we cannot force people not to go to training academies and ultimately it is their choice,” said the spokesperson.

    “It’s not our fault if people borrow thousands and thousands of rupees that they will never be able to repay if they don’t get selected, impoverishing their families for generations.”

    What they are doing is outsourcing the expense for the physical fitness training of an elite branch of their army to a poor country while reaping the benefits.

  49. 49.

    Emma

    @rikyrah: First thing I saw in my newsfeed today was a LOOONG article at The Atlantic telling us in excruciating detail not to trust viral videos. They are bending over backwards for the slimy little shits.

  50. 50.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @OzarkHillbilly: I don’t know if you follow me on Twitter – I see a lot of followers on Twitter who are pretty clearly Juicers but have different nyms there – but some of us in nuclear nonproliferation have a running discussion about The Great Negotiator’s approach to North Korea.

    (Started this paragraph three times because it’s hard to characterize what’s happening.) The administration’s demands of North Korea, as enunciated by Mike Pompeo, are that they unilaterally disarm of all nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them before the US will talk to them about anything. Kim has done a couple of token things – blown shut the openings to some tunnels at their test site and disassembled a missile test stand – and now would like to see some token things from the US, which are not forthcoming.

    Pompeo repeats the demands over and over again like an automaton. Trump wants another photo-op. Our Twitter discussion revolves around his state of mind in putting this set of actions (hard to call it a strategy) into play. The big question is how much volition or thought Trump has put into it. The differences in the discussion are coming down to how long this Potemkin negotiation can survive before it breaks down and John Bolton takes advantage of the breakdown to talk Trump into nuking North Korea. I’m arguing that it can go on for quite a while, as long as Kim provides the photo-ops. Others are more worried.

    I probably should do a post about this, but I’m currently working on getting a bill through the State Legislature, which is taking quite a bit of time.

  51. 51.

    Baud

    @Emma:

    From what I can tell, the argument seems to be that there were other assholes there, so it’s unfair to pick on the MAGA hats.

  53. 53.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @O. Felix Culpa:

    Can anyone ‘splain to me what the deal is with the prosecutorial charges (heh) against Kamala?

    She was once a part of our criminal justice system, therefor she is as guilty of it’s worst offenses as any cop who shot an unarmed black man in the back because she did not personally intervene and stop the bullets with her palms of steel.

  54. 54.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    The big question is how much volition or thought Trump has put into it.

    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Gasp! Choke! Wheeze! Oh Cheryl, you made a funny. :)

    Seriously though, thank you for your always illuminating comments and posts about nuclear issues and for your work at the Roundhouse. Fingers crossed the bill passes in good form!

  55. 55.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Interesting health news. Apparently England’s NHS has officially removed the 7 day gap from birth control pills. They said it was never any medical reason for it, but they’d kept secret that they adopted it for political reasons. If women still had periods, they figured the pope would freak out less and they’d face less backlash. There is quite a dichotomy going on between women who knew the 7 day gap was bullshit and women furious they’re just finding out they’ve been enduring unnecessary periods. Some doctors are also saying they’ve personally recommended full month use of the pill for a long time, but actually get pushback from patients who refuse to believe it.

  56. 56.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Immanentize: Because I had to live away from home during the week, my department always gave me a Tuesday/Thursday teaching schedule, so those Monday holidays never mattered. But the people teaching lab classes hated them.

  59. 59.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @O. Felix Culpa: We made a senator very happy yesterday! There is paid lobbying going on against the bill (Senate 54), and he was delighted to see our support. He gave us a lot of good ideas for what we do next, but it’s gonna be work.

  60. 60.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Cheryl Rofer: No, I’m not on twitter. I know my self and it would be a blackhole sucking all the life out of my existence. I do read your stuff here and at the Diner and very much appreciate your informed POV.

  61. 61.

    Chyron HR

    @Baud:

    And, no, he didn’t “leap” up and punch a hole in the ceiling.

    Oh yeah? Then how DID he get to the warp zone in world 1-2, smart guy?

  64. 64.

    Baud

    @Emma: Take a break and recharge. They win by wearing us down and distracting us. We have to learn how to pace ourselves.

  66. 66.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Emma:

    Lately I am getting more and more depressed, more and more angry,

    It is hard to stay on an even keel during this terrible time in our history and it’s interesting – in a painful sort of way – to see what is the tipping point for different people. One (that is, I) so very much wanted to slap the smug mug of that smirking red-hatted CovCath punk and his peers. And yet, I am energized and hopeful, because of Nancy Pelosi and Ayanna Pressley and Ted Lieu and Deb Haaland and Adam Schiff and, yes, AOC and all the people who worked in the trenches to get them elected. The list of those on the side of democracy is long and Nancy is wielding power effectively and wisely. The revanchists still thrash and cause harm, but they will…can….MUST be defeated. Rest for a while as needed, then back into the fray. We’re in this together. :)

    ETA: Or what Baud the Succinct said in #64.

  67. 67.

    Frankensteinbeck

    I guess not. I know in the US, at first doctors, who were men, were sure a period HAD to have some health benefit and removing it scared them. So for a long while the gap was recommended purely for that reason. By the time the science became clear, a huge inertia had set in (this happens in way more than just women’s health issues). Official best practice in the US has been no gap for a while, but only some doctors are following or even aware of that change.

  68. 68.

    rikyrah

    @O. Felix Culpa:
    Somehow, there are certain folks that want to Black Lives Matter , Senator Harris.

    That, somehow, her being a prosecutor, then AG , is supposed to be offensive to me as a Black Person, because, when I say, Black Lives Matter, it’s because I hate Law Enforcement.

    It couldn’t possibly mean that, as a Black person, I just want Equal Justice Under the Law.
    No…it couldn’t possibly mean that.

    It couldn’t mean that I want to be seen as a human being when I interact with Law Enforcement.

    No, couldn’t possibly mean that.

    It couldn’t mean that I would be thrilled by all the new progressive prosecutors , Black and White, that have recently been elected..in Philadelphia,Cook County, Missouri…Georgia….

    Nope

    Couldn’t mean that I was overjoyed to see the increase in Black judges such as Fulton county (Georgia), Harris county (Texas), Hinds County (Mississippi).

    No, I am Black, and thus, Kamala Harris’ entire professional life in the public sector should immediately disqualify her.??

    Get the ENTIRE Phuck Outta Here ? ?

  70. 70.

    bemused

    @rikyrah:

    Not surprising. I’ve been waiting to see videos of those brats harrassing other people because idiot, yoyo testosterone fueled teenage boys in a group egging each other on don’t stop at one incident. My husband and I talking about it this morning said at the same time, Lord of the Flies.
    I’d like to know how many chaperones there were to herd how many Covington teens and where were they? Any photos or videos of the chaperones? We raised three boys and they knew they would have been in big trouble with us if they had taken part in harrassing people or cheering it on. We would have been equally upset at sending our boys to DC from far home and then learn the chaperones couldn’t or wouldn’t supervise them properly.

  71. 71.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @rikyrah:
    You don’t need Russians. Conservatives are obsessed with token minorities who agree with them. Carson’s ‘black culture is lazy’ TV career being a fine example. Conservatives are so obsessed, their inherent asshole nature makes pretending to be those tokens online a favorite tactic. They get a huge kick out of it.

  72. 72.

    Kay

    @JDM:

    One of the guys writing about him in the 90s

    Trump loves people writing about him and they love him. Trump is a team effort.

    Here’s the Trump book I want to read: a bound volume of his tax returns. A compilation of his bankruptcy filings with attachments and comments from the trustee. An indictment with affidavits. You know, facts.

  73. 73.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @bemused:
    There were a lot of chaperones, and they have publicly and personally stated they are proud of the students’ nonviolent behavior. No, I’m not joking.

  75. 75.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @OzarkHillbilly: @rikyrah: You articulate what I suspected: mainly white “progressives” are arrogating to themselves what black folk should think about other black folk. Especially those of the female persuasion.

    Is there anything specific or factual in Kamala’s record that’s driving their probably bot-fueled narrative? I have one progressive friend who actually will take in new information and revise judgement accordingly. Yes, Google is my friend, but I guess I’m seeking guidance particularly from our legal beagles on legal context for the “charges” against her.

  77. 77.

    MattF

    @bemused: I agree that you have to look at the adults. Given that a significant fraction must be priests, it’s a particularly ugly situation.

  79. 79.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Cheryl Rofer: Great news! I find that many of the legislators are very open and helpful. Had a good session with one recently. Not sure if he would be in committee on your bill, but I’m happy to give you his name off-line and do whatever else I can to support.

  80. 80.

    bemused

    @Frankensteinbeck:
    Oh FFS! That says a lot about the school and the parents who send their kids there. Glad our sons didn’t attend a school like that. Our kids were in high school in the early 90’s but if an incident like this happened on a chaperoned trip, there would have been a lot of parents pissed off at their kids, the chaperones and the school.

  81. 81.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @O. Felix Culpa: Here are a few articles with some specifics from Harris’s record. I haven’t been keeping up with this, but I have some friends in California who are concerned.

    Kamala Harris: ‘I Take Full Responsibility’ For Decisions I Made As A Prosecutor

    Kamala Harris has been criticized for her criminal justice record. She’s just begun to offer a response.

    Kamala Harris Was Not a ‘Progressive Prosecutor’

    The last one seems to be the strongest criticism out there.

  84. 84.

    hueyplong

    Has “chaperone” always meant “run interference for entitled shits’ bad behavior?”

  86. 86.

    Sloane Ranger

    @Kirk Spencer: Yes, I first heard that one at school. They were sent to Iraq and Afghanistan (as were US soldiers including Dreamers and other non US citizens.)

    Ghurkas are based in UK, where they haven’t killed anyone, also are deployed on peacekeeping and humanitarian duties.

  89. 89.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Cheryl Rofer: And here’s the response to Laura Bazelon’s NYT article, also published in the NYT, written by a civil rights and juvenile justice advocate: Kamala Harris, Progressive Prosecutor.

    For decades, Kamala Harris has fought to make our system more just. I give her credit and hope that others will look at the totality of her record of reform before jumping to conclusions.

  90. 90.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    So Trump’s memory has been a mess since the get go? The man is just a retard, like his base?

  91. 91.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @O. Felix Culpa: I have seen nothing* other than, “She was a prosecutor!” but to be honest I’m not paying much attention to it at all. It just sounds like a bunch of purity pony bashing or conservatives trolling or Russian bots and I just don’t have the time or energy to wade thru that shit now.

    * the one concrete “accusation” I have read of was that she was against seeking the death penalty for a cop accused of killing a black man, which as a person who is against the death penalty I agree with. It really sounded like something a conservative might say to get BLM activists upset.

  92. 92.

    Sloane Ranger

    @OzarkHillbilly: Or, alternatively, a bunch of money hungry businesspeople are exploiting these young men for profit!

    As the extract you posted shows, the Army does not encourage applicants to use these academies in any way, shape or form.plus, don’t the applicants and their families have any agency in this matter?

  94. 94.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Cheryl Rofer: I think I remember the Vatican say the same thing about the Spanish Inquisition. ‘Nothing the chaperones could have done differently’

  95. 95.

    Jeffro

    Good morning everyone!

    I have to admit:
    – I don’t care that much about dumb loser MAGA kids
    – I don’t care about refuting the GOP’s dumb criticisms of Kamala Harris
    – I don’t care a whole lot about Rudy’s “tapes” slip (although it is SO Rudy!)

    I do care about this because soon we will be talking about whether or not the GOP gets to keep the spoils of a stolen election: If Trumpov Is Impeachable, So Is Pence

    In the WaPo op-ed section today, no less!

    Assume, hypothetically, that the upcoming report by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, together with other evidence, were to establish conclusively that candidate Donald Trump engaged in electoral fraud or corruption by unlawfully coordinating his activities with the Russian government. Assume also that Trump derived a decisive electoral benefit from that coordination. And assume that no probative evidence exists that Vice President Pence was aware of the coordination. Trump would be impeachable. But what about Pence, who himself would have committed no impeachable offense?

    The question can be argued either way, but the better view is that Pence, too, would be impeachable. The reason is that, had Trump not engaged in electoral fraud and corruption, Pence, like Trump, would not have been elected. That Pence would still be first in the line of succession to replace Trump is the result of an unintended consequence of the 12th Amendment, which was ratified in 1804. The fate of the Republic ought not turn on a constitutional oversight.

    Before the amendment’s ratification, the original Constitution permitted removal of a president for electoral fraud. It didn’t matter whether that misconduct occurred before or after a president took office. The framers clearly intended that theft of an election through fraud and corruption constitute an impeachable offense. James Madison was not concerned only about post-election perfidy when he worried, at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, that a president might “betray his trust to foreign powers.” George Mason seemingly spoke for many the same day when he asked, “Shall the man who has practiced corruption and by that means procured his appointment in the first instance, be suffered to escape punishment” by allowing him to stay in office?

    Um, no. But please continue!

    Removing a president who had procured office through corruption would not, under the original Constitution, have resulted in a friendly takeover by a vice president of the same political party. When the impeachment clause was written in 1787, political parties did not exist. Madison and Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican party began to take shape only after the Constitution was drafted, with their famous 1791 “botany expedition” to New York. The initial system was designed to select as president and vice president the two individuals most qualified to lead the nation, whatever their political philosophy. It did this by permitting members of the electoral college to cast two votes for the office of president. The individual who received the most votes would be president, and the runner-up, vice president.

    The system didn’t work as expected. With the emergence of political parties, the election of 1796 left Federalist President John Adams with a Democratic-Republican vice president, his archrival Thomas Jefferson. The election of 1800 created further problems, sticking Jefferson with the conniving Aaron Burr as vice president (whom Jefferson later ordered to be arrested for treason) — and only after a tie between the two in the electoral college led to a wrenching struggle in the House of Representatives that ultimately chose Jefferson.

    Yeah, yeah, yeah…how about if we just impeach him ’cause he’s a lying asshole and he’s been helping cover up treason from the beginning?
    Sorry, that just slipped out. Please take a minute to finish…

    The 12th Amendment was intended to remedy these ills. It did this by requiring electors to cast separate ballots for president and vice president. This enabled candidates for president and vice president to run together on a party ticket without competing with each other. Yet the change had critically important — and unnoticed — implications for impeachment. The election of a two-person ticket, rather than an individual, had the potential effect of permitting a vice president and his political party to benefit from electoral fraud by the presidential candidate so long as the vice president himself avoided committing an impeachable offense. A party’s ill-gotten gains — the presidency and all its appointments and prerogatives — would then remain in its hands even though its leader, the president, had been impeached and removed from office. Electoral corruption would still be rewarded.

    That was not the amendment’s intent. Its object was to preclude the possibility of electing a president and vice president from different parties and to lessen the likelihood of an electoral college deadlock. It was not aimed at scaling back the availability of impeachment as a means of redressing electoral fraud. Nothing in the amendment’s ratification history indicates any intent to give a political party a continuing grip on the presidency should a president gain office, and be removed, because of electoral corruption. There is, to the contrary, every reason to believe that after the amendment’s adoption, the Constitution has in this respect continued to mean what it did in 1787: that the presidency ought not be occupied by someone who attains it as the result of a stolen election.

    If Trump were impeachable for electoral fraud, therefore, Pence would be impeachable as well.

    Say it with me, mainstream media: NO person or party should benefit from treason and corruption. Winning illegitimately is called “losing”, “forfeiting”, or just plain old “being stripped of your title/medal/office”. So strip we shall!

    Wait…that didn’t come out right…

  98. 98.

    Jeffro

    Ok I actually do care about the MAGA loser teens but only because Brooksie is rushing to their defense this morning. So, “care” in the sense that if Brooksie is defending them, I hate both him and them today.

    Just had to put that out there.

    Ok now back to work…

  99. 99.

    MattF

    I guess a bigger CERN accelerator would be faster than the current one… in the sense that 99.9999 percent of the speed of light is faster than 99.999 percent…

  100. 100.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Jeffro: I read that article too and, while I wish the author’s viewpoint would hold sway, I think it’s not going to happen.

    And, I DO care very much about the preemptive slagging of women and POC candidates. We’ve seen it do real harm not that long ago.

  102. 102.

    Jeffro

    @eric: Were they at the MAGA loser teen thing? I’m not tracking…oh, you mean re: the fruits of a stolen “win”. True. But they’re playing the Patriots in 13 days and I don’t want to distract them from the all-important task of “ABP!”

    Back to work, Rams! Rudy…keep talking! And now let’s get back to talking about “package deal impeachment”! =)

  104. 104.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Jeffro: My feelings exactly. I haven’t seen any of the videos. Their hat wearing visages are enough to get no benefit of the doubt from me.
    Meanwhile no one is paying much attention to the fact that the DACA and TPS “compromise” is anything but. It screws over DACA and TPS recipients, guts the current asylum/refugee process and violates many of the international treaties the United States is a part of.

  105. 105.

    Jeffro

    @O. Felix Culpa: They’re going to pre-emotively slag ANY Democratic candidate, and we’re going to punch back hard every time, every candidate. Well except for Gabbard and Wilmer of course (but then again I did say ‘Democratic’ candidates)

  106. 106.

    bemused

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    Pretty obtuse chaperones, imo. If they were waiting for buses and couldn’t move along, I think the chaperones should have made the kids keep their mouths shut, ignore whatever any other group was saying. When you are out of your element in a venue with diverse people/groups and responsible for so many teenagers, one would think chaperones would be on guard to protect the students from their own behavior.

  108. 108.

    MattF

    @rikyrah: Well, but the kids were bussed in to attend an anti-abortion rally. One assumes that anyone with insufficient enthusiasm would have been weeded out before getting on the bus.

  109. 109.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Sloane Ranger:

    Or, alternatively, a bunch of money hungry businesspeople are exploiting these young men for profit!

    As the extract you posted shows, the Army does not encourage applicants to use these academies in any way, shape or form.plus, don’t the applicants and their families have any agency in this matter?

    Translation: “While the Army states they are against these practices, they continue to perpetuate a system that is ripe for the abuse and exploitation of these desperate families.” Does not the Army have any responsibility to put a stop to it?

    That’s like the GAP saying they aren’t responsible for the working conditions at their sweat shops in Bangladesh.

  111. 111.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Jeffro: The Gabbard thing is _truly_ baseless and bizarre. There’s nothing remotely progressive about her record and the bros would never give anyone else in her place the benefit of the doubt. But she touched the hem of Sanders’s garment so she’s been sanctified. It’s sick.

  112. 112.

    germy

    The MAGA kids (families/school) hired a public relations firm and they’re spinning like crazy.

    But these young ladies saw how the MAGA kids were acting before the incident:

    They harrassed my friends and I as we walked by even before this incident happened ✌️ no one provoked them, no one was chaperoning them. They just screamed at anyone who walked by ??‍♀️ pic.twitter.com/rpvjHLhdwA— linds (@roflinds) January 21, 2019

    Also for those asking the full details, the interaction wasnt very complicated. We walked by, they started yelling, we asked them how old they were, they replied "old enough", kept yelling, and we rolled our eyes and kept walking. ??‍♀️— linds (@roflinds) January 22, 2019

  113. 113.

    khead

    @Emma:

    I was gonna link to that Atlantic article last night night but figured someone else would do it. It really pissed me off.

    This is good pushback. I’ve yet to see any video that actually helps those folks. Adam posted some videos showing they were being assholes long before the video that made them famous.

  114. 114.

    schrodingers_cat

    @rikyrah: I have seen this nonsense on second generation Indian American/ South Asian Twitter leftier-than-thou accounts too.
    Why is it so important in this country, the need to box everyone? I was born in India, but I have lived in the United States longer than I have lived in India. I don’t really identify with or feel a part of any group in particular. I dislike this American caste system as much as I loathe the Indian one. I also find this unhealthy obsession of the binary labeling of everyone by the color of their skin gross.
    /end rant.

  116. 116.

    Kirk Spencer

    @Sloane Ranger: I’ve a few years of military service behind me, I’ve heard it both with and without the one in cheek. But at root they are being chosen as agents of war. It is the UKs blessing that they aren’t needed for that much stuff of the time

  118. 118.

    randal m sexton

    @MattF: ‘speed’ isn’t the way to think about the collider, energy is, and % of C isn’t very useful, as the 1/(1 – V^2/C^2) . The current cern maxes out at 13 TEV, and the proposal is for 100 TEV.

  123. 123.

    Matt McIrvin

    Speaking as a guy who wanted to be a particle physicist… I am sorry to say it, but I can’t really see a good case for this big collider. LHC found about the most boring possible version of the Higgs particle that it could, and the case for there being a lot of interesting new physics just beyond LHC’s horizon is kind of weak. Particle physics has been a victim of its own success. Might be better to spend the money on lots of smaller science projects.

  125. 125.

    MattF

    @Matt McIrvin: The SSC fiasco showed that particle physics is not politically hot.

    I discussed this once with an old friend who was a rather high-ranking Congressional staffer, making the argument that large, research-oriented projects were great for educating people in what we now call STEM, regardless of where the people ended up using their skills– there are, after all, lots of ex-particle physicists around. Apparently, the particle physicists never used that argument, assuming that their inherent intellectual greatness was all that was needed. Which, as an E&M guy, left me feeling… not good.

  126. 126.

    Matt McIrvin

    It’s frustrating because there are still so many open questions– the nature of dark matter/dark energy, quantum gravity, the theoretical concerns that motivate GUTs and supersymmetry theories. But I just don’t see this accelerator shining a lot of light on them, given that LHC didn’t.

  127. 127.

    Matt McIrvin

    @MattF: It’s not a great argument, anyway– if what you want is a bunch of people like me swarming the tech sector, surely there are more efficient ways to accomplish that. (And less afflicted by the gender/race representation issues in particle physics.)

  128. 128.

    Sloane Ranger

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Does not the Army have any responsibility to put a stop to it?

    Can you suggest how?

    In Nepal, the Army only has the authority the Nepalese government allows it and that certainly doesn’t extend to the type of businesses people can set up or limiting the type of legal activities Nepalese citizens can undertake.

  129. 129.

    Miss Bianca

    @rikyrah: Yeah, there have already been articles in the “nowadays Brocialist-fluffing” Guardian about how Harris, Gillibrand, and Booker are *not* True!Progressives! because they take money from Big Pharma and the like. All being faithfully touted by my True!Progressive! associates on FB. Let’s not focus on their voting records, let’s not focus on their legislative histories, let’s make the measure how much money they get from corporations! That’s a swell rubric, since St. Bernard, the Sage of Vermont, managed to buy his dacha on Lake Champlain with $27 donations! Yeah!

    Jesus, I am beginning to be sorry I ever opened a FB account. Need some radical (heh) trimming to my friend list there.

  130. 130.

    Searcher

    @Matt McIrvin: There’s a theory supported by one data point that bigger super colliders aren’t useful. What sort of experentalist is going to stop there?

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