Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

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

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

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

He really is that stupid.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

I would gladly pay you tuesday for a hamburger today.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

This chaos was totally avoidable.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

That meeting sounds like a shotgun wedding between a shitshow and a clusterfuck.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Dolt 45 / Trump Crime Cartel Open Thread: “Security” Clearances for the Blatantly Insecure

Trump Crime Cartel Open Thread: “Security” Clearances for the Blatantly Insecure

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  1. 1.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    OT – Interesting read about Dem Pres candidate Andrew Yang, his success in going viral online, how that led to purported support from some dubious corners, and Yang’s attempts to push back.

    Presidential candidate Andrew Yang has a meme problem

    There’s no indication that the campaign has courted that support, and when reached by The Verge, Yang unequivocally rejected it. “I denounce and disavow hatred, bigotry, racism, white nationalism, anti-Semitism and the alt-right in all its many forms. Full stop,” Yang said in a statement. “For anyone with this agenda, we do not want your support. We do not want your votes. You are not welcome in this campaign.”

    “As one of the first Asian American candidates for President in our history and the son of immigrants, I see racism and white nationalism as a threat to the core ideals of what it means to be an American,” Yang continued. “I have two young children who will grow up in this country. I know what that means.”

    The campaign said they haven’t made any particular effort to target Trump voters, but had been drawn to unconventional outlets out of necessity. Without the clout of an establishment candidate, the campaign can’t rely on mainstream coverage, which makes fringe outlets like Joe Rogan or conservative outlets like Tucker Carlson difficult to turn down. A recent appearance at a Turning Point conference seems to have been motivated by a similar logic.

    That approach has also attracted some strange bedfellows. On Thursday, WikiLeaks tweeted that Trump was “losing the meme war” to Yang, a tacit endorsement from an organization that has rarely spoken favorably about Democratic candidates.

    Kind of a fascinating read. Internet culture is so bizarre!

  2. 2.

    Jeffro

    Why does this crime cartel’s top figures keep getting away with meeting their handlers/paymasters without a single staffer present, or record kept of what was said?

    Hey GOP – how is this possibly ok or normal?

  4. 4.

    piratedan

    you know, he’s simply doing out loud and incredibly observable about all of the shit they accused Hillary of, she’s a threat to national security, doesn’t understand how to properly do the job etc etc etc…

    i’d rather exile these fuckers to an island and drop rations from a plane than put them in prison. Let them figure out how to survive on their own.

  5. 5.

    Wag

    Unfortunately, you are right.

    But some of his supporters got an autographed Bible, so all is good

  6. 6.

    Jharp

    Yes it will take years to unravel the damage done by Trump.

    And here we are 15 years later still trying to fix the mess the last Republican President left us.

    Quite depressing.

    Can someone remind me the last good piece of legislation or foreign policy moves that Republicans gave us than did an ounce of good.

  7. 7.

    MattF

    I doubt that Chelsea would do any of that. She’s not a sociopath.

    When you’re thinking about the Trump family, you can forget sometimes that nornal people have some moral sense

  8. 8.

    WaterGirl

    @Jharp: Hell, we’re still dealing with what Reagan did. I remember thinking it was going to take us 20 years to recover from Reagan. Boy did I ever underestimate that.

  11. 11.

    Ruckus

    @WaterGirl:
    Reagan had followers and enablers. If it had just been him it would have been over long ago. Roger Stone is still out of jail and running both his mouth and about. He’s just one example. People like newt gained strength from the shit that republicans started long before Reagan. They have sold shit to an entire country and enough people bought the entire package, stench and all, to keep it going for a long time. The only real hope is that it beats its self to death. Which it seems to be attempting to do.

  12. 12.

    MagdaInBlack

    @piratedan:
    I was thinking we could put them all on alcatraz, with a years worth of supplies (no french vanilla creamer) no weapons, no technology.
    After a year (or 5 ) go back and check.

  13. 13.

    hitchhiker

    I’ve been listening to a pretty good Nina Burleigh book about women in the trump orbit, focused on his 3 wives plus Ivanka.

    Burleigh is a careful reporter, though I get annoyed with an unfortunate tendency to lean on “inherited” traits and behavioral patterns. Because I’m neither a New Yorker, a tabloid reader, a yacht owner, or a person who watches shows like “The Apprentice,” most of what’s in the book was news to me. I didn’t understand who trump is during the election … at all.

    So, the book is good for that context & background, but for me the most eye-opening part is all about Ivanka. Burleigh makes a case for the trump family plan to build out her public brand in such a way that she becomes the natural successor to her father. They think she’s going to be the 1st woman POTUS. They think she’s going to be bigger globally than Princess Diana. They’re going to absolutely go nuts on each and every attempt to tarnish her purity, especially if it happens in a court of law.

    It’s why she’s got all these high-profile trips around the world, meetings with heads of state, and initiatives for women. She’s structuring a brand — a stiletto-heels-wearing, perfectly groomed, plastic-surgery-enhanced, calm-faced, practical, hard-working woman.

    Watch.

  14. 14.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Adam L Silverman: Brings this to mind:

    Boon: Jesus Christ! What happened? You look grotesque!
    Otter: Some of the Omegas did a little dance on my face.
    Boon: Who was it?
    Otter: It was Greggie and Douggie…and some of the other Hitler youth.
    Boon: What did you do?
    Otter: I don’t know. They’re just animals, I guess.

  16. 16.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @hitchhiker: Burleigh makes a case for the trump family plan to build out her public brand in such a way that she becomes the natural successor to her father. They think she’s going to be the 1st woman POTUS.

    I’d laugh at this, but just this morning I had another one of those moments where I was just stunned all over again that her father is president. That motherfucker is President of The United States of America and is going to have a library and be in all the history books and his fucking stupid mug is going to be on all the posters of the presidents and he’s already in that Disney animatron thing and jesus christ….

    Clicking around twitter it sounds like Klobuchar had a good reception as SXSW, came out for a public option, which I think is very smart. I wonder why she hasn’t been making that case for that last month and then i remember for normal people the first primary is almost a year away.

  17. 17.

    Baud

    @Redshift:

    We could have recovered from Reagan in twenty years if we hadn’t had so many people trying to make it worse. take for granted the progress that Bill Clinton and Obama made.

    At some point, we need to learn to stick with Dems for more than one congressional term.

  18. 18.

    Duane

    @MattF: The POTUS is investing in Chinese massage parlors and escort services and it barely gets noticed. Why someone with his status, a supposed billionaire, (yukyuk) would involve themself in that business I just can’t understand.

  22. 22.

    Redshift

    @Baud: Voting propensity is correlated with wealth and income, especially in lower turnout elections. That’s a major part of our problem. Some of the parts of HR1 would help with that.

  23. 23.

    Aleta

    “Why do they keep getting away with meeting their handlers/paymasters without a single staffer present, or record kept”

    @Jeffro: Because if it got out that a genius negotiator was on his knees again begging MbS to get them out of this mess, it could affect the promising career of another well-dressed white boy.

  24. 24.

    Baud

    @Redshift: That’s a systemic problem. It doesn’t fully explain fluctuations that cause us to win some elections, often because Republicans overreach, and then lose interest two years later.

  25. 25.

    Brachiator

    @hitchhiker:

    So, the book is good for that context & background, but for me the most eye-opening part is all about Ivanka. Burleigh makes a case for the trump family plan to build out her public brand in such a way that she becomes the natural successor to her father. They think she’s going to be the 1st woman POTUS. They think she’s going to be bigger globally than Princess Diana.

    What a frightening prospect.

    I don’t think that Ivanka is going far. Then again, I never thought that her father would be elected president.

  26. 26.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    @piratedan:

    i’d rather exile these fuckers to an island and drop rations from a plane than put them in prison. Let them figure out how to survive on their own.

    This right here is what should happen to these assholes. Every last one of them. Dump them off, keep an eye on the place from afar to see that nobody tries to get them off the island, and otherwise forget about them.

  27. 27.

    Baud

    @Brachiator: Yeah, all bets are off now. That said, as much as I can’t stand to look at him, Trump does have the gift of TV presence. I don’t think Ivanka has that.

  28. 28.

    Keith P.

    @Duane: Same reason football players and rappers sometimes get busted with pounds of weed – they like to hook up their friends.

  29. 29.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I remember when pundits were speculating about Senator Ivanka and Mayor Fredo of NYC, and The Beast said dismissively Don’s not gonna run for mayor, in a tone that indicated he thought his son had ‘poor judgment’, as Michael Cohen put it. I hope it landed harder than that slap when he was in college. I can’t wait to see Fredo’s public testimony

  30. 30.

    JGabriel

    @Jeffro:

    Why does this crime cartel’s top figures keep getting away with meeting their handlers/paymasters without a single staffer present, or record kept of what was said?

    Because Liberals/Social Dems/Progressives don’t have a major cable news network dedicated to promoting their views and interests.

  33. 33.

    Brachiator

    @Baud:

    Yeah, all bets are off now. That said, as much as I can’t stand to look at him, Trump does have the gift of TV presence. I don’t think Ivanka has that.

    Yep. I remember that he tried to make her a big part of later “Apprentice” seasons, but I don’t know if she really stood out. Strangely enough, for a while she seemed more likely to be his successor than either of Trump’s bratty sons.

  34. 34.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @WaterGirl: South By Southwest. Kind of like the Aspen Ideas festival, or whatever they call that, for hipsters, with more music and comedy. It’s blown up in the last few years. Klobuchar, Warren, Wilmer and Buttigieg are there, maybe others. Also Schultz and Kasich, From what I understand this tweet pretty much sums up Schultz’s appearance

    Dave Weigel @ daveweigel
    5h5 hours ago
    oward Schultz now onstage at #SXSW, reliving the first weeks of his exploratory bid. “I said I was considering running as a centrist independent outside the two-party system.” No one applauds. Let’s see how this goes.

    also

    Schultz criticizing Green New Deal for the provision about making every building energy efficient. “That’s a well-intentioned idea, but it’s never gonna happen.” Crowd is dead silent.

    and I can’t resist

    -Big laughs when DylanByers tells Schultz: “‘That’s never gonna happen’ is not a great campaign slogan.”
    -Good Byers Q: “Do you have people in your life who tell you: Howard, don’t do this, you’re embarrassing yourself?”
    Schultz’s non-answer: “When you do something that is against the grain, certainly you will have a group of people who say this is not the thing to do.”

  36. 36.

    Citizen Alan

    @piratedan:

    i’d rather exile these fuckers to an island and drop rations from a plane than put them in prison.

    In lieu of rations, I’d drop a hydrogen bomb. And then a second just to be sure.

  37. 37.

    Pogonip

    @Redshift: I agree. It took decades for the full disaster of Reaganomics to become so apparent even the press had a hard time ignoring it, though they managed.

    I get cranky about Reaganomics/free trade because 35 years ago I was loudly complaining it would destroy the U.S. Most people dismissed me as a liberal. Most of those people, in turn, have been told to learn to code.

    I take no pleasure in being right about this. I have to live here, too.

  40. 40.

    Mnemosyne

    @hitchhiker:

    The funny thing about brands that any MBA can tell you is that you can’t force people to buy anything. You could have what is objectively the greatest branding campaign in the history of the universe, and people still don’t buy because they don’t find the actual product appealing.

    They can package Ivanka all they like, but people still know she’s New Coke. Or, worse, Crystal Pepsi.

  41. 41.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Citizen Alan: In lieu of rations, I’d drop a hydrogen bomb. And then a second just to be sure.

    too quick, fire ants and biting spiders

  43. 43.

    Duane

    @Keith P.: Former NFL player Doriel Beckham-Green, a local sports legend, has been busted for pot several times. His recent run-in got him 90 days in the county jail. That crap needs to stop.

  48. 48.

    piratedan

    well, folks have asked why drop rations, pilots gotta train, hell, put cameras on it and drop it all around the island, let them swim out to get them…. sell TV rights to pay off the national debt. I wouldn’t watch it, but there’s plenty of sick fuckers in this country that would. you could broadcast it on CNN as a cautionary tale maybe you could embed Maggie Haberman in with them. Call it Survivor, who cares….

  49. 49.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Ksmiami: You can’t remove them, it would be practically impossible. What can be done, should be done, is that the Federal courts all need to have their number of judgeships increased and those filled. That can be done by a Democratic majority Congress and Democratic president. No constitutional tweaking needed.

    And as bad as the people that McConnell and Leonard Leo have been jamming through are, we need to maintain a little perspective here, because it could be worse. Right now all McConnell has done over the past five or six years is keep open judicial vacancies that had been held by Reagan or Bush 41 appointees and is now filling them rather than let Obama do so. While The Federalist Society approved nominees that McConnell is pushing through to fill these vacancies are much more ideologically extreme, in some cases it isn’t even ideology it is just naked theology, and often much, much less qualified and experienced than the Reagan and Bush 41 judges they’re replacing, what McConnell hasn’t been able to do is replace Federal judges appointed by Democrats with Federalist Society nuts. He’s about out of vacancies to fill and there’s no inkling that the Clinton appointed judges, let alone the Obama ones, are retiring any time soon. The few remaining Carter appointees may go, but not much can be done about that. However, this reality does limit the damage that McConnell can do. I’m not trying to minimize or mitigate or wave away what he’s done and how bad it is, both in terms of political norms and the negative effects it will have on jurisprudence, but it could be much, much worse. That is why it is paramount that the President be limited to one term and that the Democrats retake the Senate.

  50. 50.

    Adam L Silverman

    @debbie: Ellis ultimately set aside Jefferson’s sentence.
    spokesman.com/stories/2017/oct/05/judge-orders-release-of-congressman-sentenced-for-/

    By Matthew Barakat
    Associated Press
    In this Jan. 19, 2006 photo, Rep. Bill Jefferson, D-La., talks with the media following a helicopter tour of New Orleans. (ERIC GAY / Associated Press)
    In this Jan. 19, 2006 photo, Rep. Bill Jefferson, D-La., talks with the media following a helicopter tour of New Orleans. (ERIC GAY / Associated Press)
    McLEAN, Va. – A federal judge has ordered that a former Louisiana congressman sentenced to 13 years in prison for taking bribes be released from jail pending a new sentencing hearing.

    The ruling was based on a recent Supreme Court decision handed down when it overturned the corruption conviction of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. The Supreme Court ruling made it more difficult to convict public officials on bribery-related offenses.

    Democrat William Jefferson, who represented parts of New Orleans, has been serving his sentence since 2012. He was convicted of accepting more than $400,000 in bribes and seeking millions more in exchange for brokering business deals in Africa.

    The case became famous in 2005 when agents searched his Washington home and found $90,000 cash hidden in his freezer.

    In a ruling made public Thursday, Judge T.S. Ellis III said a new sentencing hearing is necessary because the Supreme Court has subsequently changed what constitutes “an official act” for which a public official can be convicted of taking bribery.

    In his ruling, Ellis vacated seven of the 10 counts on which Jefferson was convicted. On two of the remaining counts, Jefferson received a five-year sentence, and on the third, he received a 13-year sentence. But Ellis said there is no guarantee that Jefferson would again receive a 13-year sentence on that count, so he ordered a new sentencing hearing for Dec. 1.

    Before then, though, the government was given until Oct. 16 to decide if it wants to retry Jefferson on the seven counts that were tossed out.

    Joshua Stueve, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Virginia, which prosecuted the case, said prosecutors are weighing whether to seek a retrial.

    In his 41-page ruling, Ellis wrote, “No one reading this opinion should conclude that Jefferson was innocent of crime; he was not innocent of crime.”

    Even under the stricter bribery rules spelled out by the Supreme Court in the McDonnell case, Ellis said Jefferson’s behavior went well beyond anything that occurred in the McDonnell case.

    Jefferson’s attorney, Robert Trout, said in an emailed statement, “We are continuing to review the opinion, but we are obviously very pleased that Judge Ellis has ordered Mr. Jefferson’s immediate release.” He declined further comment.

  52. 52.

    Suzanne

    @Mnemosyne:

    You could have what is objectively the greatest branding campaign in the history of the universe, and people still don’t buy because they don’t find the actual product appealing.

    They are committing one of the bigger intellectual sins, which is assuming that other people think and feel the same way they do. They find Ivanka hot and “smart” and attractive, and they don’t get that many of us find her really, really gross, fake, trashy, and dumb.

    This is a common logical fallacy in sales, but nevertheless, it goes on, from people who should know better right now.

  53. 53.

    Ruckus

    @MagdaInBlack:
    We’ll need a bigger island than Alcatraz. Of course we could just squeeze them all on, or drop them from helicopters and let them fend for themselves. Which of course I’m guessing was your point.

  55. 55.

    debbie

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Some small justice, I guess. But Jefferson made peanuts compared to Manafort. That $90,000 in his freezer wouldn’t have bought more than a hip pocket of an ostrich suit.

  56. 56.

    Adam L Silverman

    @debbie: I’m not saying that Ellis isn’t a crank. Or that he hasn’t become a bigger one as he’s gotten older. But he’s a predictable crank. As soon as the Special Counsel’s Office drew him as the trial judge they knew they were going to have a problem. And given that they got all 12 jurors to convict on 8 counts and 11 to vote to convict on the other 11, they did as well as they could. Manafort’s problems aren’t over. Judge Jackson isn’t going to be as lenient as Judge Ellis. And the Special Counsel can either charge him with the the long list of things they haven’t yet charged him with. And NY state and the City of New York are still in play for potential prosecutions.

  57. 57.

    debbie

    @hitchhiker:

    Whenever Ivanka opens her mouth, nothing but inanities flow forth. She’s a blond Sarah Palin. I think people will tire of her vey quickly.

  59. 59.

    debbie

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Oh, I know it’s far from over for Manafort. But this sentence put me in mind of the judge who went so easy on that Stanford swimmer. Both are infuriating.

  60. 60.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I did not know that Jared Kushner and Jackie Kennedy went to the same finishing school. You really can learn things here at Balloon Juice despite what people say!

  61. 61.

    Adam L Silverman

    @debbie: Eventually that guy will put his hands on the wrong woman and either she’ll resolve him permanently or one of the men who actually cares about her will.

  63. 63.

    hitchhiker

    @Mnemosyne:

    After donald trump as POTUS, I have no confidence in what “most people” will or won’t do.

    I mean, I think that the evangelicals and white uneducated men should not be enough to win an election. I think that women who aren’t evangelicals will be repulsed by a breathy-voiced, unqualified Barbie doll, and will work hard to make sure she never takes an oath of office.

    But I also see how — for example — she uses instagram to make herself look like she’s checked al the boxes. Loving mother. Dutiful wife. Global ambassador. Businesswoman. Media presence. Congressional liaison. Policy driver. Author. White House Adviser.

    Is it impossible that the Republicans might choose to back her, if they thought she’d bring along some women? Who the fuck knows with them. She herself clearly thinks she’s got the chops.

  64. 64.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Suzanne: and they don’t get that many of us find her really, really gross, fake, trashy, and dumb.

    Not to cast asparagus on any voters, but have you seen Florida’s current Senators? (The most likely of her various home states for her to run in if she escapes indictment and bankruptcy)

    @debbie: She’s a blond Sarah Palin.

    Risking replies of “Go back to Murmansk, Fyodor Vladmirovich!”, but I think she’s smarter than Palin, at least as capable of putting together a FoxNews Word Salad as Li’l Marco

  65. 65.

    Ruckus

    @Suzanne:
    They did the same for her father. To his fans he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. To us he’s pure asshole. Not the same thing at all. People buy pink cars, I have no idea why. And maybe I don’t even want to know.

  66. 66.

    Immanentize

    @debbie: Ellis is already in senior status (judicial semi-retirement) He is not getting impeached, he is going to retire or die

  68. 68.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: It’s a rich woman finishing school voice. Jackie Kennedy had it too.

    Which is probably the person she started copying it from, or whoever she’s imitating was imitating.

    I don’t know any women who went to a finishing school, do they still talk like that? It’s like Peggy Noonan’s vocal affectation, she always sounds to me like she’s aping the snooty woman whose fiance falls in love with the plucky heroine in a rom com from the 50s

  69. 69.

    Immanentize

    @Adam L Silverman: I agree with this analysis. Plus, many more Reagan and Bush I appointees left the bench early because they didn’t like the hard work or the low pay. I have a feeling this new crop will go like that as well.

  71. 71.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Immanentize: My big worry is what I wrote about back in my McConnell post: that they’re working on getting Thomas to retire so they can leverage that vacancy, they way they leveraged the Scalia one, during the 2020 election.

  72. 72.

    Mnemosyne

    @hitchhiker:

    Most people didn’t fall for Trump, though. He lost by 3 million votes. The only reason he’s squatting in the Oval Office right now is that the Russians and Republicans conspired to gerrymander the country using fewer than 80K votes.

    And I’m still pretty convinced that Hillary votes were actively switched to Jill Stein in Michigan and that’s why Stein went there after the 2016 election for a “recount.” She had instructions from her Russian handlers.

  73. 73.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Adam L Silverman: I’ll be surprised if this doesn’t happen, Thomas is rumored to hate the job, and knowing that it would piss off the people who hate him would give him sour satisfaction for the rest of his life

  74. 74.

    Immanentize

    @Adam L Silverman:
    It’s a different type of leverage now — they are in charge, before they had actually lost that edge. I think there is less fear in losing the edge. More power in fighting for the chance to prevail (the underdog idea). Or maybe Democrats don’t care about the Supreme Court the way Republicans do. Or both

  75. 75.

    Suzanne

    @Adam L Silverman: I’m doing better today, thanks. I am not doing much. Made some awesome omelettes for brunch, gonna do some pasta with burst tomatoes for dinner. MMMMM.

  76. 76.

    mapaghimagsik

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Schultz’s non-answer: “When you do something that is against the grain, certainly you will have a group of people who say this is not the thing to do.”

    Or they say, “That’s never going to happen”
    What a twit.

  78. 78.

    Suzanne

    @Ruckus:

    People buy pink cars, I have no idea why. And maybe I don’t even want to know.

    Consumers select products with visually identifiable markers in order to take on qualities associated with that product or brand onto themselves, in a kind of semiotic bat signal. It’s a way or transmitting to others who speak the same semiotic language that they do that they are XXXXX kind of person, with XXXXX personal qualities, and you can tell, because they selected XXXXX kind of product.

    It goes the other way, too. Abercrombie and Fitch was extremely straightforward about not wanting people over a size 10 to wear their clothes, because people over a size 10 (in their view) are not attractive and their clothes and logo should only be worn by those they consider attractive, else it sully the brand. Luxury brands often resist any move to bring their stuff to mass-market because then “poor” people can visually associate with their brand. And Nike did the Kaepernick ad to drive away MAGA people because they believe MAGA people make their brand uncool.

  79. 79.

    randy khan

    My response to

    Thought experiment . . . . What are the headlines?

    “Clinton Impeachment Trial Set to Begin on Tuesday;
    Prospects for Acquittal Cloudy”

  81. 81.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Adam L Silverman: I do wonder, post-Kavanagh, if that’s a smart play for their side, but I’ve been waiting for the left to notice the USSC, to say nothing of the rest of the judiciary, for going on 25 years now. It occurs to me that I haven’t heard much about it from our 957 presidential candidates.

  83. 83.

    Ruckus

    @Suzanne:
    I do understand this a bit. We all do it or actively do the opposite. The other day, it was here, read about hipsters and how they end up looking the same. One guy sued a publisher for posting his picture, and it wasn’t him at all, just a guy dressed like him, with 3 or 4 days of beard.
    Around where I live there are a lot of guys driving jacked up 4×4 pickups with big wheels/tires, thousands of dollars in suspensions, and a really good chance that the trucks never see off pavement driving. It’s the same as the pink car, a need to belong to the in group. Also explains trump a bit, the in racist group. Some of them are actually seeing the downside to this. Not many, but some.

  86. 86.

    J R in WV

    @WaterGirl:

    “SXSW?”

    That stands for South by SouthWest, a huge music festival in Austin TX. I would love to attend, as I love live music, but… I have less tolerance for big crowds as I age.

    Good that I did Mardi Gras as a single sailor of 19 and 20 so many, many years ago. Can’t do that again today, even though we could afford to go high end with seats in the bleachers. Too many people, most of them too drunk… not that I don’t drink, but I hate puke in the street, amateur drinkers who don’t know how to pace themselves.

  87. 87.

    Uncle Omar

    @WaterGirl: Hell, we’ve pretty much given up on trying to undo the stupidity of the Eisenhower Administration, for example Iran hates us for the whole Mossadegh thing and probably will until there is a public apology from the sitting President, whoever it might be at the time, perhaps including sending the corpse of Allen Dulles to Tehran for whatever formalities they might wish to act upon it. The whole Viet Nam cock-up sprang from someone in the Ike Administration thinking the US could do a better job of stymying Ho Chi Minh than the French did and so the called off the potential reunification election in 1956, because we were going to lose. It also helped Nixon win in ’68 due to his campaign’s treason of blocking the deal that LBJ had worked out. Then, of course, Ike had to side with the Mafia when Castro kicked them out of Cuba. Castro could have been bought just as easily as Batista was if only Ike and A. Dulles had wanted to, but apparently somebody had a lot of money invested in Batista so Castro had to be a bad guy.

  90. 90.

    J R in WV

    @LivinginExile:

    You can’t “fire” federal judges… Bush’s administration fired US attorney’s — at least one for refusing to indict and prosecute successfully elected Democratic office holders on dubious criminal charges. G W Bush is, was, and will be a despicable bastard.

    We have stormy weather building up outside, the wind coming over the ridge above us is roaring, the trees are whipping around, the sounds are really cool and spooky.

  91. 91.

    Ruckus

    @stinger:
    It was a bit of a retro joke, but there are a few around. They seem as strange as paying a lot extra for a flat black/dark gray finish for your new BMW or whatever, that won’t last a long time and looks like you took it out of the body shop about a week early.
    I must be getting old, I don’t care what anyone else thinks of my car or how I dress myself or….. It is possible that I haven’t fit in for a such a long time or even tried that I just don’t give a shit about how others see me?

  92. 92.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @hitchhiker: just listening to Burleigh being interviewed by Ana Marie Cox on her podcast, it sounds really interesting.

  93. 93.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @Suzanne: Just like so many GOPers found Palin hot. Some even thought she was smart.

    Strict Evangelicals even claimed the ‘God mandated ‘ rule that wome are subordinate to men didn’t apply to govt, only to the home and to the church.

    Oddly enough they withdrew this interpretation in 2016.

  94. 94.

    Miss Bianca

    @hitchhiker:

    She herself clearly thinks she’s got the chops.

    Well, let’s be fair – compared to her father, she does. Of course, compared to her father, your average potted plant does, too.

  96. 96.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @Uncle Omar: I believe Castro spoke at the UN in the fall of 1960. He asked for help in getting Cuba on its feet after gang influences. He also begged for US help. When he didn’t get it he turned to the only country ready and willing to help–the Soviet Union.

    He stayed briefly in Houston on his way back to Cuba. 2 of my college friends went to his hotel and got their picture taken with him. They missed curfew at the girls dorm that night.

    One of them was from north eastern TX. In HS she decided the most shocking thing she could do in her super conservative town was to claim she was communist. She got a lot of mileage out of that claim.

  97. 97.

    afanasia

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: my mother had it, too. My family thinks I’m loud. Literally. Not mouthy. But people can hear me all around a dinner table. They told me this constantly.

  99. 99.

    karen marie

    @NotMax: And that’s now broken. I have gotten more solicitations in the last several months than I remember getting before registering many, many years ago. It’s infuriating. I don’t think anyone is working their actual day job in the shitwhistle administration.

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