Uh…"new?" Because the old ones were "tired?"
Sure, Republicans, you're the party of national security and defense. https://t.co/JUyF7AxPBA— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) September 20, 2019
I just wish I could find the tweet where someone replied “Apparently Trump likes his ‘nuclear’ like he likes his wives.”
Friday Recipe Exchange: Fajita Bar
Jim, Foolish Literalist
“tippy top”– dumb white people all over the country look at this moron and see Arthur returned from the misty past of Avalon
or at least from the streets of Jamaica Estates, 1957
Mathguy
The evergreen line for the shitgibbon: “Christ, what an asshole.”
patrick II
I missed it. Did we rebuild our nuclear arsenal this year?
Baud
@patrick II:
No. Why would you ask that?
Gin & Tonic
Just wondering here – has Rudy Giuliani filed a FARA registration? If not, why not?
delk
Hmmmm
June 16, 2016
Washington Post
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@patrick II: we had it covered in travertine, with gold leaf accents, the best, the tippy top, as classy as anything you’ve ever seen
Mai naem mobile
He is a fucking moron. Total rotten brain demented old man who was stupid when he was younger and now he is stupid with dementia. I still cannot fucking believe this fucking moron has an approval rating in the lower forties. WT fuckity fuck. Makes my head hurt that people can’t aee this guy for the moron he is. They’re so blinded by wanting to own the libs and their hate/envy/fear of a successful black POTUS that they voted for this idiot on steroids.
Baud
@Mai naem mobile:
At some level, I respect their focus.
Amir Khalid
So I clicked on the Twitter link — and oh my God, he did indeed say that. A 10-year-old would make more sense than Trump talking about nukes.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: Dark, but funny, because it’s true.
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
Oh, ye of little faith.
dmsilev
Can someone do a welfare check on Cheryl? She’s probably experiencing palpitations or feeling a great disturbance in the Force or something.
jl
What did they do to make the ‘nuclear’ ‘tippy tip’ and untired? Pour Geritol over them? Or make them take some of Alex Jones’ man pills?
laura
@Mai naem mobile: I am interested in your theories and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Le Sigh…..
zhena gogolia
@Baud:
Right. Not like our side. “Too old!” “A prosecutor!” “Only a mayor!”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@zhena gogolia: You must propose policies that make me feel righteous, even if they are general election liabilities!
Don’t blackmail me with the Supreme Court!
We cannot return to the failed policies of the only Democrat to win two terms with a popular vote majority since FDR! (and the only president to do so since Reagan)
Steve in the ATL
@Mai naem mobile: perhaps after having had two unelected Presidents whose brains were addled by coke abuse in the 1980’s (that’s GW Bush and Dj trump if you’re confused), we would learn our lesson.
West of the Rockies
If, hypothetically, Harris or Warren were credibly revealed to be abusive, corrupt, bigoted, dishonest… I would change my opinions of them. I might well withdraw my support for them. I think that is reasonable, ethical and intelligent.
Conservatives, however, are unwilling to uninvest, be honest, or admit they were wrong.
They are beneath contempt.
Sister Golden Bear
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Never mind that the marble now makes it exceed launch-able weight, like the airplane bathrooms on Trump Airlines.
Steeplejack
@patrick II:
You must have slept through Military Infrastructure Week.
Yutsano
@West of the Rockies: He’s already doing what he needs to do to keep their support. He’s pwning the libz. They really honestly think that as long as he’s doing that he’s doing good things. Yes it’s really that petty.
Mike in DC
@West of the Rockies: They deny them only when they fail and are unpopular. Then, when some time is passed, they embrace any rehabilitation of their reputation(“Nixon wasn’t really that bad”, e.g.)
If Trump loses re-election, all but his hardcore supporters will disavow him within minutes of the news. But they are authoritarians and once they decide someone is their leader, they don’t go against them unless that leader somehow “betrays” them(like, say, by raising taxes).
Ruckus
@Mai naem mobile:
They see trump as one of them.
Not one of those high and mighty educated twits always telling them to grow up, buy a Prius rather than a pickemuptruck, get a real job that takes even a modicum of intelligence, and drink beer that doesn’t look like piss, and along comes this guy who lies about everything, like how much money he has, how many women, how big his….., and they see themselves in him. trump is a bullshitter’s bullshitter. He’s racist as can be, he never apologizes, he isn’t well spoken, he can’t read, he’s a bully and he got himself elected president. He’s a white boy’s white boy. He’s not just one of them, he’s their leader.
sukabi
@Amir Khalid: a 10 yo opining on any subject would make more sense and have a deeper understanding than drumpf.
Jay
@patrick II:
Renovated, not rebuild.
New Cabinets, fresh paint, new fixtures, countertops.
Soon to be listed for sale on the market, as the renovations only add value for a short period of time.
The NORK’s will be soon placing a offer, but it’s going to be a low ball,
Then the Iranians as long as Orangemandius cosigns the mortgage, and they make escrow.
Ruckus
@sukabi:
Well that does make sense seeing as how trump has the maturity of a 5 yr old. A very immature 5 yr old.
jl
@Jay: Why not timeshare them?
Ladyraxterinok
@Mai naem mobile: White Evangelicals and white Catholics put him in office. They’re getting what they chose him for—federal courts filled with judges who will rule against abortion and homosexuality. Evangelicals got further bonus when he moved US embassy to Jerusalem.
The blatant racism is–as they knew it would be–a given. Letting it ooze over everything doesn’t require even the minimal amount of work like getting lists of the right kind of judges does.
Villago Delenda Est
The Jedi believed that no one was beyond redemption.
The Jedi never met Donald J. Trump.
Jay
@jl:
Hard to do money laundering with a time share.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ladyraxterinok: White Protestant evangelicals have their roots in the slave holding society of the South.
it is no coincidence that they support a white supremacist.
Jeffro
Nickel bet that one of Fred Trumpov’s cute little turns of speech was saying “tippy-top shape” to describe something in, um, good shape.
Also willing to bet that having a president* describe – based on no actually information, of course – that our nation’s nuclear arsenal is in “tippy-top shape” is not actually reason for national pride, personal relief, etc.
Jay
Steeplejack
@Jay:
I love that account.
Chetan Murthy
@Villago Delenda Est: Thank you for this reminder. You’re exactly right: the forced-birther stance was adopted in order to bring the Catholics onboard with white supremacy. The pro-ultra-Zionist stance, ditto. It’s all and always been about the white supremacy with these fackers. Everything else is a means to that end.
sukabi
@Ruckus: yes, if that 5 yo was repeatedly dropped on their head and fed a pound of lead paint chips per month.
Amir Khalid
@Ruckus:
I remember Anderson Cooper telling Trump that to his face during the 2016 campaign. Alas, it did not sink in.
Ruckus
@sukabi:
Maybe that’s his entire diet, lead pain chips. He just washes them down with garbage “burgers.” It would explain a lot. But “dropped” on his head? Seems more like hit repeatedly with a baseball bat.
Cheryl Rofer
@dmsilev: 7000 nukes ready to fly when he gives the word.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
Anything that lands inside that melon is immediately turned into mush and it sank alright – right to the bottom. All the information that is created around him every day sinks right to the bottom. And he sits on the golden throne and craps it right back out.
MisterForkbeard
@Cheryl Rofer: Yeah. That seems bad.
Jay
Jay Noble
” . . . as we would say, tippy-top shape. Tippy top.” Why did I have a flashback to McHale’s Navy?
Jay
Ruckus
@sukabi:
Also that’s a pretty specific diagnosis.
Are you sure he not just a fucking moron with a massively narcissistic psychosis?
Just asking for a friend as either seems to be a valid description of the situation. Also ¿por que los dos?
Jay
mrmoshpotato
Ugh. Just a bonus for Putin that his bitch is such a moron.
Steve in the ATL
@Ruckus: ha!
SiubhanDuinne
@Jeffro:
I’m sure it’s a relic from his childhood. And it’s not the first time he’s used it (as president). Excerpt from his remarks at the 2018 Easter Egg Roll:
Jay
TS (the original)
The Australian PM should be ashamed of himself going to the White House for a dinner & if Greg Norman was still paying golf he would have lost many fans today.
My anger will be 10 fold if the PM dares to tell trump he will support him in a military event.
delk
@SiubhanDuinne: see my comment at #6. He used pretty much the same wording in 2016.
mrmoshpotato
@Mai naem mobile: Here’s an uplifting thought: This moron got more Republican primary votes than anyone in history!
Oh, on second thought, that’s not uplifting at all. Sorry.
Cheryl Rofer
@SiubhanDuinne: I saw a Trump tweet from 2016 talking about how Russia’s nuclear arsenal was in “tippy-top shape” while ours was insufficient and failing.
If you look at what actually has been done and what remains to be done in the nuclear modernization program, the big difference between 2016 and now is that back then a black guy was in charge.
HumboldtBlue
Spent the past few days trimming with some late-20s-early-30s folks and they turned me on to the California Honeydrops.
When Trump begins the homeless invasion we’ll be ready.
SiubhanDuinne
@delk:
Came to the thread late and was working my way up from the bottom, as is my wont.
He doesn’t seem to use “tippy-top” excessively, the way he does with some of his pet superlatives, but it’s clearly been a go-to term for quite a while.
SiubhanDuinne
@Cheryl Rofer:
He got that intelligence straight from his MIT uncle, didn’t he?
mrmoshpotato
@SiubhanDuinne: Wasn’t Dump’s uncle tremendous bigly at the nuclear?
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
@Jay:
I was going to make a crack about ‘Floriduh Law’ because it’s against the law to pawn handguns in my state.
I say was because Indiana law was changed in 2017 to allow pawning of handguns.
Unfortunately Jim Tomes, the state Senator who authored the bill allowing handguns to be pawned, is my district’s state Senator.
prostratedragon
@jl: Gave them superbeets, of course.
debbie
Jesus, Putin must be laughing his ass off.
laura
Is it just me, or is “some one ought to look into Biden bigly” simply birtherism for the current election cycle?
SiubhanDuinne
@mrmoshpotato:
He was indeed. Almost as bigly tremendous as Barron is at the cyber. And Barron’s cyber is, well, we really have no name for it.
debbie
@Jeffro:
My nickel is on this is how he still talks to Barron.
Cheryl Rofer
@SiubhanDuinne: Presumably
James E Powell
@zhena gogolia:
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Their side: He’s corrupt and incompetent, but he drives the libs crazy so we’re voting for him.
Our side: We can’t nominate anyone who will make the people who will never vote for us angry.
West of the Rockies
@HumboldtBlue:
Kicky little band!
I last trimmed a few years ago. The right group, the right radio, maybe a glass of red, and it’s not a bad way to make a little extra cash.
SiubhanDuinne
@debbie:
That can’t be right. Trump assured us in 2016 that we had been the laughingstock of the world for at least eight years, but all that would change once he was in office.
laura
@debbie: I’d bet you double nickels he hasn’t spoken to barron in person in a year.
Cheryl Rofer
@mrmoshpotato: Trump’s uncle, John G. Trump, was a professor of electrical engineering at MIT and received some fairly high-level awards. He did some developmental work in radiation therapy, but it seems to have been with x-ray generators. To someone who has no comprehension of any of that, it probably sounded like “the nuclear”.
hilts
Trump has cash in his back pocket and, as always, he has shit for brains. If this knuckle dragging neanderthal gets re-elected it will be a fucking crime against humanity.
Leto
@SiubhanDuinne: I’m fairly certain that Barron was discussing “teh cyburz” with Andrew Yang, and staff, today. Truth to power, indeed.
Leto
@Cheryl Rofer: This reminds me of the scene in Chernobyl where the top Politiburo official is asked by Gorbachev if he understands nuclear reactors. He responds no and is told to take the scientist with him. On the way there, the official gets the scientist to explain the nuclear process, and then states: “Good, I don’t need you anymore.”
Except Trumpov never got the explanation. ?
debbie
My guess is that this “statement” was during his appearance with the Australian minister? I wonder if there’s a wider shot of this; I’d love to see the other faces when Trump makes this “statement.”
misterpuff
@Villago Delenda Est: Yes they did and his name was Jar-Jar.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
what could possibly go wrong?
mrmoshpotato
@Cheryl Rofer:
Or to a moron like his nephew.
FlipYrWhig
Isn’t “tippy-top” about the wussiest possible way to refer to the quality of something?
Jay
Jay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Nothing of course. ISIL kills a bunch of troops with Sawdi help and bip, bap, pap, the US declares war on Neruda.
mrmoshpotato
@FlipYrWhig:
I was thinking more along the lines of a way used by a dumbass conman.
Leto
@misterpuff: That’s Darth Jar-Jar!
HumboldtBlue
@FlipYrWhig:
Yes, it’s the 12-year-old boy response when Mary Poppins quizzes him while singing and dancing around the room.
HumboldtBlue
@West of the Rockies:
Here they are with Bonnie Raitt.
It’s pay-the-rent money for my thrice-downsized-in-the-past-16-years-broke-no-job-having-ass
MomSense
“We all should pray we never have to use it”. Oh god, something about that feels like a threat coming from him.
Steeplejack
@debbie:
As if he talks to Barron.
Mel
@Ruckus: It’s this, exactly. Terrifyingly, he is what they aspire to be, and his visible stupidity, bigotry, and hate reassure them that not only is it okay that they live and think in that manner, but it’s time to double down on it.
Bill Arnold
@misterpuff:
For those who haven’t seen it, “Darth Jar Jar”:
This Fan Theory About Jar Jar Binks Will Blow Your Mind (November 3, 2015)
(reddit thread here)
M. Bouffant
Anyone have any pseudo-psycho-linguistic ideas on Lumpy’s use of adjectives w/o the usually attendant nouns?
SFAW
Libtards! EVERYone knows the ne plus ultra of nukyular readiness is “tippity tippy tip-top shape,” so your preznit was actually being modest. Either that, or our nukyular arsenal needs a new coat of paint or something.
Or, if the nation needs new fission materials, we can always count on Raven to help, now that he’s retired.
SFAW
@Mel:
I always found it amusing (in a sick sort of way) that the RWMFs used to look down their noses at “those liberal elites what look down they noses at us” for two reasons:
1) First of all, those fucking morons mean “elitists,” not “elites”
2) They never figured out that they were doing exactly what they claimed the liberals were doing to them (i.e., looking down their noses)
I am so grateful that the Rethugs destroyed the public education system in this country.
Ruckus
@Mel:
And seeing as how we are all human – OK there is some doubt about a few million of us, they will always be with us. But we are at a confluence of history. Climate is reacting to what we’ve done to the world, even if it’s just us being 7 1/2 billion people and all doing it right – which we don’t, it’s the wealthy – trying to be significant in the face of being absorbed into the masses as a huge part of the problem, it’s the conservative media owners who don’t sell information, they sell clicks and eyeballs, it’s the conservatives who want the world to be like it never was but they are too fucking stupid to realize that, and it’s the 7 1/2 billion of us, trying to breath, wash, eat, listen, watch, not go crazy listening and watching, it’s history – distorted of course, it’s the world changing and not having enough work for everyone or enough anything for everyone, it’s people in large enough groups being told they aren’t acceptable – when it’s the people doing the telling that are the fucking assholes. It’s morons who think that war is always the only answer because that’s always worked so well in all the centuries we’ve been doing it. It’s bigotry – in a world that isn’t big enough any more to just move some place else.
We have to change from being Neanderthals like trump and his ilk. Or we will destroy each other.
sukabi
@Ruckus: definitely dos.
MomSense
@M. Bouffant:
Dementia? Tertiary syphilis? Just plain old stupid?
Mel
@Ruckus: We really are at the tipping point, in every aspect of life and social structure.
Off topic, but how are you doing, healthwise? Hoping that you have gotten some answers / relief!
HumboldtBlue
I forgot the joke of the day.
JWR
Bing bong, bing bing bang bong. (Thank you, late night shows.)
hervevillechaizelounge
@West of the Rockies:
I vehemently disagree. I would still vote for Harris or Warren if they were abusive—at this point I would vote for them if they were serial killers.
In fact, I would vote for Harris or Warren if they were revealed to be sadistic puppy torturers. At least their stance on global warming would save the planet; I can’t worry about my personal distaste when the stakes are this high.
Chetan Murthy
@hervevillechaizelounge:
(1) In the general, of course
(2) ETTD, even his enemies’ (our) consciences
sigh.
Mary G
I’m looking at pictures of all the young ones at climate strikes today, and thinking Republicans must be going to never get their votes, then I realized they’re trying to make it so votes don’t count anymore.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@MomSense: “Why can’t we have all three?”
?BillinGlendaleCA
If you’re a SoCal local, check out the “1919” exhibit that just opened at The Huntington. Madame and I went to the opening tonight(free food!) and it was pretty good, though crowded and we didn’t bring our reading glasses. We’ll definitely schedule a return visit.
Mel
@SFAW: I’ve always felt an immense frustration with that mindset. I grew up in rural Appalachia, and even though I left for a while, got several degrees, and worked in education and counseling, I used to be able to reason with at least a decent percentage of old acquaintances and neighbors when they started spewing nonsense. It was a sort of, “She’s one of us, AND one of ‘them’, so maybe ‘they’ aren’t all bad.” People would start off fuming and blathering, but when you asked them, for example, why benefits programs were supposedly so “bad” and “evil” if the VA had treated their Uncle’s cancer, and unemployment had helped keep food on the table for 30 families when a factory closed, and disability benefits and medicare had kept several of our friends from dying when they became so ill that they couldn’t work, they’d grudgingly walk back the rhetoric and sometimes even start to have a real discussion.
That no longer is the case. It’s flat out warfare in the minds of the people around whom I grew up, and their racism and sexism are at the core of it. The “economic instability” line doesn’t explain the depth of venom they live and breathe every day, or the mindless ferocity of their addiction to Trumpism. I can’t decide if Trump really is just the tool that the GOP used to unleash this enormous wave of horror, and it was simply lurking there all along in more people than I ever would have thought, even in the minds of people who appeared able to be lucid and rational when pushed outside their narrow comfort zone and confronted with facts, or if he is evidence that some awful and primal backwards shift has occurred that didn’t just unleash the nutters who were previously restrained to some extent by the rule of law and by (way too gradually) evolving social expectations, but also caused a startling number of people who seemed passably humane to fall back to a horrifying state of thought and action.
I’m not in any way a naive person, and sexism, classism and racism have kicked my family in the ass countless times over the decades, but this…this feels different to me. The kind of raw, constant, looming fear I feel, for all of us, for the whole country, the while world, from the time I wake up in the morning until I close my eyes at night, feels different in a way I’m not sure I can quantify / explain.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mel: I was leading a group though a historic portion of LA near downtown last Sunday. The route we took has several churches, I mentioned that if they were having service to not take pics or if there were folk praying, to stay away from them if you were shooting. One guy said, ‘so don’t be an asshole”, I said, “pretty much”. Trump had given folk a permission slip to “be an asshole”, the tendency was always there, they can just let it all hang out now.
Chetan Murthy
@Mel:
Oh yeah, it was lurking there all along. Maybe not in Appalachia. but in Texas, oh yeah. Oh. Yeah.
Mel
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I wanted to thank you again for all the gorgeous photos you sent in over the past few years. Seeing those remarkable images provided a much- needed reminder of how much beauty there is in the world.
Mel
@Chetan Murthy: I hear you. My mother has Alzheimer’s, but she still remembers and talks about the pain of burning herself by pouring bottle after bottle of peroxide on herself and scrubbing it into her skin as a teenager in an attempt to “lighten” and “hide” her beautiful skin. It breaks my heart that that is one of the memories that seem destined to be with her until the end.
Steeplejack
@Mel, @Chetan Murthy:
It was there all along—Appalachia, Texas, everywhere. Trump made it okay to be out and proud about it and has focused it on a succession of targets: “the swamp,” libs, socialists, fake news, immigrants, Hillary Clinton, etc., etc.
hervevillechaizelounge
@Mel:
I have no empirical evidence but I believe we’re seeing the end result of decades of Faux new conditioning.
RWNJs honestly believe they’re in a fight for their lives. They think Trump is doing a good job because Faux tells them he’s doing a good job.
They’ve been conditioned to believe every other network is lying to them so if/when we begin impeachment hearings they will see it as a partisan attempt to overturn the election. Thus the next time a Democrat is in power they will move to impeach him or her as payback.
Faux needs to keep their viewers agitated. My racist grandmother was convinced Obama was going to refuse to step down after eight years—she’s not online so she must’ve gotten the idea from Faux.
If Trump decides to declare himself King for life she will support him because she truly believes Obama was planning to do the same thing. (And also ’cause she’s racist; did I mention that?)
Ruckus
@Mel:
As you are asking….
I have an aneurysm, which is not all that great. It has been stable for at least 2 1/2 years because that was my last brain MRI and it hasn’t changed since. Of course no one told me till 3 weeks ago, don’t know if they hadn’t been looking, didn’t see it, or didn’t think it was important. It’s small, it’s in what sounds like a relatively non surgical location so, it looks like it’s wait to see if it grows/ruptures/leaves me comatose/kills me. It is what it is. It also isn’t causing the balance, sight, nausea and hearing issues that caused the ER visits and actually has a name. It’s a somewhat rare problem, sometimes it can be helped, and it appears not to be chronic, which would be bad.
So, a bad week was not as bad as it could have been, I’ve gotten 2 weeks older, and had a bit of a look at what life can look like as an old. And here I thought I knew. It’s on to having MRI brain scans every so often, regular neuro visits and wondering what tomorrow brings. Every day is a new experience. Not every experience is a good one. One foot forward and all that.
And thanks for asking.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mel: Or out of this world…Thanks.
Mel
@hervevillechaizelounge: You just crystallized for me part of it that I was fishing for and couldn’t quite put my finger on. It’s the extreme, profound paranoia that accompanies the vitriol. Hearing my parents talk about McCarthyism is the closest comparison which I can conjure, but I don’t think that there has been this level of widespread, wide-ranging, manic paranoia that I can recall in my lifetime. Maybe it is down to the changing, invasive nature of media, or down to the centralized, corporate control of most media formats that are readily accessible to older voters and rural voters (newspapers and Faux news). That constant barrage of lies and hatred, backed up and reinforced by all of the people in a social group or community viewing and then parroting the same messages creates a closed feedback loop.
But that doesn’t explain the enormous number of people who can access a wider range of info sources and have no excuse for not accepting facts instead of lies, but still refuse to do so. So, yeah – I’m beginning to think that it isn’t a case of 1/4 of the population backsliding to meet those already living in a state of hatred, but more like tearing up carpet only to find that rotten urine-stained, bug-eaten plywood has bern lurking there all along, instead of something sturdy and solid that can be brought out into the light.
I think it was Betty Cracker who talked about setting her elderly relative’s television so that the parental controls prevented her from being able to view Fox.
Ruckus
@Mel:
Those bigots are scared. They see the life they think they want being taken away. Because it is. But it’s not liberals taking it, it’s everything I listed and for sure a bunch I didn’t. Their world used to make some sort of sense, and they want that back. They have been told time and time again that liberals are the ones that stole that life, by the people that have been stealing it. In people of my generation, the world got a tiny bit better for all. And hard as it is to believe it has gotten, up until the last couple of years better even for minorities. Not nearly good enough but it has gotten better in the last 50 yrs. And it’s gotten worse for the conservative/fungelical/middle class/red staters. Because there is nothing there to invest in, nothing really there to make big buck on, and everything costs more and pay hasn’t kept up, so while some are doing OK, many are not. Add in the opioid crisis, climate change, a republican recession, and lots of people of all colors are not doing all that great. I lost everything in the recession and I’m just getting back up to almost where I was but will never get there because I’m refusing to work till I drop. And if you don’t know why all of this is not in pretty much any way having any attempt to be made better except by lying by republicans saying they will make it better, when of course they won’t in any way. They are racists, they aren’t going to believe that any person of color even is capable of making things better. We are at a crossroad here. We can do better, we have to do better, we have to look past any petty differences and make this better. It can be done, but it will take all of us to pitch in and just fucking do better. The racists will always be with us, but hopefully we can cut the numbers down to a manageable percentage, get rid of the fucking guns, get better healthcare for everyone, get the evangelicals out of everyone else’s vaginas and move on.
Pablo
Didn’t know Larry David was writing his stuff.
Jinchi
Every time I hear Trump speak and continue to be shocked by his poor grasp of the English language I wonder if anyone has actually estimated how many words he actually knows. And then I realize, of course they have.
Honestly, that seemed a bit high to me.
Mel
@Ruckus: Wow. I’m glad it’s stable. Scary that nobody mentioned it before! It seems like the sort of thing that, well, might be important for a person to know!
I know what you mean – I still haven’t figured out if it’s worse to have something of a serious nature going on, health-wise, but at least know what it is and what to expect in terms of management/treatment, or to deal with an as yet unnamed illness that’s causing distress but might or might not be something serious.
I’m glad that you got at least some answers. Hoping that they very quickly pin down what’s causing the balance and sight issues. I know it’s exhausting; the whole thing is draining: the cycle of tests, doctors, specialists, and the damnable uncertainty on top of the symptoms, but please keep pushing until they get the answer for you. You’re a good person, and you deserve to get an answer and to feel better.
Viva BrisVegas
@hervevillechaizelounge:
Now that someone, somewhere on the internet has typed those words, the fact that Harris and Warren are puppy torturers will appear in:
4 hrs as a headline on Breitbart
6 hrs as a chyron on Fox News
8 hrs in a Fox and Friends chat with Trump
8.5 hrs in a Trump tweet
8.6 hrs on every mainstream news service
TS (the original)
@debbie:
My nickel would be he never talks to Barron
TriassicSands
Trump’s stupidity and ignorance never fail to astound.
If breathing required conscious thought, Trump would suffocate in a matter of seconds.
sukabi
@Jinchi: it seems high because that analysis was done a year or 2 ago and his brain keeps shrinking.
prostratedragon
From several years ago, some young people wish to have a word with us:
Amir Khalid
@mrmoshpotato:
Uncle John worked on high-voltage elctrical devices. He turned down many invitations from Uncle Sam to work on weapons technology.
WereBear
Brilliant! They love him FOR his faults…
JPL
@Jinchi: My goodness that does seem off. After all our nuclear is in tippy top shape.
Zinsky
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: For those people who believed George W. Bush’s nonsensical explanation of why al-Qaeda attacked us on 9-11 (they hated our freedom) it might come as a surprise that Usama bin Laden cited the stationing of American troops in Saudi Arabia after Gulf War I as one of the primary reasons for planning the attack. Trump stationing more troops there now is just going to inspire the next UBL to do something dastardly.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Zinsky: See, like a typical libtard, you fail to understand the genius of George W. Bush; bin Laden hated our freedoms, especially our freedom to place our infidel troops in the country with his religion’s holy sites. //
Kathleen
@Ruckus: Holding you in the light, Ruckus. You are a brave, eloquent, wise person and I want to let you now how much I appreciate your calming presence and your insights.
Kathleen
@Mel: I agree with everything you’ve said. It’s been there all along, but denied and or repressed. And this dynamic is not relegated only to the right.
low-tech cyclist
The Democratic Party is the party of defense and national security. The Republicans aren’t. This has been true for a generation now.
The Gulf War of 1990-91 was the high point of the Republicans’ dominance of these areas. But since then, they’ve been terrible, while the Dems have been at least competent. The Clinton Administration handled the crisis in the Balkans reasonably well, kept Saddam contained, negotiated the Agreed Framework to keep North Korea from having nukes, and stayed on top of the emerging threat from al-Qaeda.
Then Bush came in with his supposedly all-star national security team – Cheney, Rumsfeld, Colin Powell – and what did they do? They withdrew us from the Agreed Framework, resulting in North Korea having nukes. They withdrew us from the ABM Treaty with Russia for no apparent reason. They went “la-la-la-la-la, we can’t hear you” when the outgoing Clinton team tried to warn them about al-Qaeda, and after the Clinton team was out of the picture, they continued to ignore increasingly hair-on-fire warnings from the intelligence community that al-Qaeda was going to attack us.
And attack, they did.
And the Bush team, from the get-go, was all about using 9/11 as an excuse to go after…Iraq. The Brits had to twist their arm into going into Afghanistan and getting bin Laden first. They at least disrupted al-Qaeda, but of course bin Laden escaped, and they remained so Iraq-focused that they left Afghanistan in such a mess that we’re still trying to figure out how to get out of it.
And of course there was the Iraq War, a geopolitical disaster which destroyed Iraq as a nation, ended Iraq’s role in the region as really the only major counterweight to Iran, destabilized the region through a flood of millions of refugees that escaped to surrounding countries, and left a power vacuum that enabled the rise of ISIS.
Then Obama came in. He resurrected the hunt for bin Laden that Bush had abandoned, and now bin Laden sleeps with the fishes. His team worked to contain Russia and North Korea, all but destroyed ISIS, and negotiated the JCPOA with Iran to keep Iran nuke-free.
Trump, of course, has been an all-around disaster on national security, withdrawing us from the INF with Russia and the JCPOA with Iran, meeting with Kim Jong Un on equal terms and basically blessing whatever Kim has felt like doing with respect to weaponry, and of course being Putin’s pawn.
Like most liberals, I’m far more focused on domestic policy than foreign policy, but I was able to write this up off the top of my head, other than Googling to verify that it was the ABM treaty that Bush withdrew us from, and it was the INF that Trump withdrew us from. People like Adam and Cheryl who actually know their shit could surely expand this summary extensively. But this is enough to get the point across: for the past generation, the Democratic Party, while certainly not flawless, has been basically able and effective with respect to national security, and the Republicans have been a disaster.
The Democrats need to make this point periodically, because the media still seem to unconsciously buy into the notion that other than Trump, the GOP is still the party of national security. That notion needs to be destroyed. The Republicans have no areas where they’re more competent than the Democrats, not one, and the Dems need to shout this from the mountaintops.
SFAW
@Jinchi:
Maybe it’s “fourth grade” in dog years?
SFAW
@Ruckus:
Damn! That’s pretty scary. I hope it remains stable, for a long, long time. {Normally, I’d say “I hope it fixes itself,” but it sounds like that’s not currently an option.]
SFAW
@Mel:
Better persons than I have already said it, but: it’s always been there, or has been for a very long time. A large part of it is Fox, plus the Rethugs became the Party of Racist Morons, etc.
Kraux Pas
@Mike in DC: You mean like how he lowered taxes on the richest among us and unilaterally raised taxes on everyone for his trade war?