Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

It’s easier to kill a dangerous animal than a man who just happens to have different thoughts/values than one’s own.

The lights are all blinking red.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

Let’s finish the job.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

Let me file that under fuck it.

Days Since JD Vance Insulted Women Across America: Zero

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

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

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

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

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

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / And Suddenly, Trump News Is The Enemy Of Team Trump

And Suddenly, Trump News Is The Enemy Of Team Trump

by | 161 Comments

This post is in: , ,

I stumbled upon this and OMG, the replies are everything.

It’s Paul Ryan’s fault. 

FOX News is the Deep State

The poll was skewed with Democrats!!

Trumpster tears are so sweet.

Meanwhile, we went from 84 degrees yesterday to 17 degrees today. I finally snagged the ducks and put them back in the coop after a morning of running around the yard. They were covered in snow and ice and too stubborn to go back to the coop themselves.

The rest of us are warm and dry and I’ve put another pot of coffee on and digging back into work. It’ll be in the 70s this weekend, so we’ll ride this out.

Open thread

 

Reader Interactions

161Comments

  1. 1.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Meanwhile, we went from 84 degrees yesterday to 17 degrees today.

    That is officially bananashit crapnuts crazy.

  2. 2.

    rikyrah

    Fox polling actually legitimate

    Rasmussen is the Fox of polling.

    Remember 2012?
    Rove and his meltdown.
    How he challenged them?
    And, then the polling guys were very calm when they chin-checked him with the reality about Ohio

  3. 3.

    NotMax

    Open thread? Golly, that tempus sure does fugit.

    Fifty years ago today the seminal LP In The Court of the Crimson King hit the record stores.

  4. 4.

    dmsilev

    @rikyrah:

    Fox polling actually legitimate

    Yep. And that poll is basically consistent with several others that have come out in the last week or so: A slim majority of the country favors an impeachment investigation, a slim minority goes beyond that and is already in favor of “remove him from office”.

  5. 5.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    Mostly irrelevant factoid: I see Giuliani’s two crime associates were arrested at the airport. My FBI friend says they like to arrest people at the airport after the security check because then they know they’re unarmed. Also, they were likely watching these guys for a while and only acted because they were trying to flee.

  9. 9.

    Soprano2

    @SiubhanDuinne: There’s a vicious cold front going through the Midwest. We’re supposed to go from 75 degrees today to a low of 33 degrees tomorrow night. Not as bad as TaMara, but probably related to that.

  11. 11.

    kindness

    I can just see you running around the yard with an oversized butterfly/fishing net trying to catch the ducks. Do you clip their wings? How do you keep them from flying if they feel the need?

  12. 12.

    Betty Cracker

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Just piecing together stuff from multiple outlets about those two clowns, it looks like they were basically cut-outs to funnel Russian money to a lot of Republican candidates, including Trump.

  15. 15.

    Marcopolo

    This is an interesting development—guess we’ll have to see where it goes: https://kmox.radio.com/articles/news/trump-loses-metro-east-ally-john-shimkus-over-syria-decision

    ‘As the battle between Democrats and Republicans over impeachment continues on like a heatwave in August, President Trump makes moves to remove U.S. troops from Syria.

    Just hours after the decision to leave Syrian Kurds to fend for themselves against Turkey, Illinois Congressman John Shimkus calls the President’s decision “terrible and despicable.”

    Shimkus goes on to tell KMOX’s Mark Reardon that he told staff “to take my name off the I support Donald Trump list” and that he is “saddened for the Kurdish people.”’

  16. 16.

    BC in Illinois

    @NotMax:

    In the Court of the Crimson King!

    Now there’s a blast from the past, and an earworm for today:

    Cat’s foot, iron claw
    Neuro-surgeons scream for more
    At paranoia’s poison door
    Twenty-first century schizoid man

    Blood rack, barbed wire
    Politician’s funeral pyre
    Innocents raped with napalm fire
    Twenty-first century schizoid man

    Death seed, blind man’s greed
    Poets starving, children bleed
    Nothing he’s got he really needs
    Twenty-first century schizoid man

    In 1979, the 21st century was still 21 years away.
    But 1979 was only 40 years ago.

  19. 19.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @MattF:

    Rumor has it that they were headed for exotic, extradition-free locations.

    Reading new comments from the bottom, I wasn’t sure whether you were referring to Rudy’s Russian friends or TaMara’s ducks.

  26. 26.

    Roger Moore

    @JPL:

    Who suggested to them that the indictment was imminent and that it might be time to flee.

    It’s possible they were fleeing to avoid Congressional subpoena, not to avoid arrest.

  28. 28.

    NotMax

    @West of the Rockies

    Had forgotten that the autonomous track is divided into two subsections, the last of which is “The Dance of the Puppets.”

    Kind of an apt title in light of what’s going down now, eh wot?

  29. 29.

    BC in Illinois

    @NotMax:
    You’re right. My mis-reading.

    I loved that album, bought the next two — In the Wake of Poseidon and Poseidon — on that basis, and probably played them twice.

    (And for some reason, thinking about King Crimson makes me want to go rummaging through old boxes to find my record of Balaklava by Pearls Before Swine. I’ve found the Wikipedia* article, but who knows where the record is.)

    *From which all knowledge flows . . .

  31. 31.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Roger Moore: Here’s another interesting fact in this case that I just learned. Pete Sessions, named as a recipient of big $, is the son of William Sessions, who followed on his FBI career by becoming counsel for Semion Mogilevich.

  32. 32.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Roger Moore:

    It’s possible they were fleeing to avoid Congressional subpoena

    I hear the Sergeant-at-Arms of the House has a rather extensive jail beneath the Capitol to which he can and will render the many arrestees who made the mistake of flouting Speaker Pelosi’s subpoenas. //s

  33. 33.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @TaMara (HFG):

    When I was a kid in Chicago, there was one late-summer day one year (around 1955 or so?) when the temperature plummeted from 75° to 40° within the brief period of an hour. Was the first time I consciously experienced the phenomenon of “a cold front moving through.” But that’s still nothing like your 67-degree plunge. Yikes.

  36. 36.

    NotMax

    @BC in Illinois

    No harm, no foul. Can pinpoint it fairly well as after it came out it was often on the turntable in the employee’s lounge windowless cinder block roomette in the basement of the movie theater I worked at, and left that job in 1970.

  40. 40.

    JGabriel

    Me @ TPM, 7 Days Ago:

    Looking forward to when wingnuts start declaring Fox News far-left propaganda. When they do, I suggest people ask them, “How far to the right do you have to be to think that even Fox News has a liberal bias?”

    Really didn’t think it would happen this quickly. I figured a month, maybe. But one week? Damn.

  42. 42.

    Jeffro

    @West of the Rockies: That’s one way to put it.

    Those of you following the never-ending saga of Jeffro’s RWNJ dad and his “interesting” takes on the day’s news as filtered through the wingnut-o-sphere may be intrigued to hear that when I pinged RWNJD about Rudy’s associates being arrested, his first reaction was “another day, another scandal…it never ends”

    Progress, right? Well, when I responded with a simple “I have to admit, I did not have ‘Rudy Guiliani’ on my ‘things that will take down trumpov’ bingo card”, he said…get this…

    “Rudy was a mayor and a USA for SDNY – he probably knows how to walk on rice paper without leaving foot prints”

    I haven’t gotten back to RWNJD yet but seriously?? Has he SEEN Rudy’s recent Fox appearances??? (Narrator: This is a rhetorical question…Jeffro knows full well his dad never turns off Fox)

    Oh yes…”he was a mayor”. The one dumb enough to put the emergency response center in the basement of the WTC.
    Sigh.

    Just think, folks: it’s only October 10th. We could well be done with the Mango Menace by Thanksgiving(!). Picture THAT dinner table conversation! (I can’t picture the conversation…I can only picture myself doing victory laps around the dining room table while everyone else is trying to eat. =)

  43. 43.

    Chyron HR

    Republican acres of land were underrepresented in the poll! Let me whip out my map again…

  44. 44.

    TaMara (HFG)

    @kindness: Domestic ducks, like chickens and turkeys, cannot fly. They are also incredibly smart and know what I mean when I say “bedtime”, so they squawk, but let me corral them as needed without too much excitement.

  45. 45.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    Democrats were overrepresented and independents were underrepresented in the @FoxNews poll.

    I admit, I’m not the most knowledgeable about polling, but does anybody know why there were more Dems polled and only 12% of independents were as well? Was it landline based? Were the results weighted like they should be and that “Team Trump” account is being intentionally misleading?

    Probably the latter to be honest

  46. 46.

    Cheryl Rofer

    I’m enjoying watching this story develop on Twitter.

    Parnas and Fruman had one-way international tickets. Nobody’s said where to yet.

  48. 48.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @Jeffro:

    Oh yes…”he was a mayor”. The one dumb enough to put the emergency response center in the basement of the WTC.
    Sigh.

    As dumb as Ghoulini is, I’ve heard he placed the emergency response center under the WTC so he could use it to meet up with his mistress at the time

  49. 49.

    JGabriel

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    Parnas and Fruman had one-way international tickets. Nobody’s said where to yet.

    We finally have the Dumb Nixon edition of the Watergate Burglars.

  50. 50.

    Leto

    @Cheryl Rofer: And you have Republicans, and Republican enablers like the FTFNYT, saying, “Oh, they couldn’t bring him down on the Russia thing so they had to move on…” MOTHERFUCKERS! We never gave up on “the Russia thing”; we always knew what was there and now we have the goods. /smfh

    These assholes, the NRA, the republican operative out of Montana who was shacked up with Marina Butina, Nunes… all of them. We’re coming for all of them.

  51. 51.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @NotMax: Another relevant lyric:

    The wall on which the prophets wrote
    Is cracking at the seams
    Upon the instruments of death
    The sunlight brightly gleams
    When every man is torn apart
    With nightmares and with dreams,
    Will no one lay the laurel wreath
    As silence drowns the screams

    Between the iron gates of fate,
    The seeds of time were sown,
    And watered by the deeds of those
    Who know and who are known;
    Knowledge is a deadly friend
    When no one sets the rules
    The fate of all mankind I see
    Is in the hands of fools

    Confusion will be my epitaph
    As I crawl a cracked and broken path
    If we make it we can all sit back and laugh,
    But I fear tomorrow I’ll be crying,
    Yes I fear tomorrow I’ll be crying

    I see no parallels to the modern world whatsoever. //

    (The record label Epitaph Records was named after this song, BTW.)

    Those familiar with my comments on LGM (and Wonkette, although I am at best a sporadic presence there) will know that I use this album cover as my avatar on Disqus. (Also on last.fm.) It is a reasonable approximation of how I have felt since November 8, 2016, which was when I switched it. Unfortunately, it is the only album cover its creator, computer programmer Barry Godber, ever painted; he died (of a heart attack, IIRC) shortly after painting it.

    I’ll have to put this classic on after work. It’s really been too long. One of the most important and influential albums of the past 50 years – disparate creators such as Kanye West, Nirvana, too many metal bands to count, and the entire progressive rock genre bear unmistakable influence from King Crimson, and it all started 50 years ago with their first album.

    Ceterum censeo factionem Republicanam esse delendam.

  53. 53.

    Leto

    @TaMara (HFG): I hope that Avalune doesn’t read this because the number of animals we’ll have, eventually, will be too numerous… ;)

    “How did you guys come to own a zoo?”
    “Avalune wouldn’t stop reading Balloon Juice comments…”

  54. 54.

    hotshoe

    @Jeffro:
    Since I hate T-day with my family (altho none of them are right-wing nuts, they are all nuts anyway) I invite myself to come to yours and hold your seat while you’re up :)
    Or we can be dance partners in joy if it’s true he’s gone by then.

  55. 55.

    Calouste

    @Cheryl Rofer: Amateurs. If you want to flee the country you buy a return ticket so you don’t tip people off. Not sure whether it would have made a difference in this case, but buying a one way ticket is asking for extra scrutiny.

  57. 57.

    Marcopolo

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Typically when a polling company does a survey they start with a totally randomized call list of registered voters. As they make calls they are asking a lot of questions including party ID. Currently more people do ID as registered D than R (though registered R voters turn out at s higher rate than D’s). This gap has actually increased under Trump w/ former R voters who dislike Trump now IDing as I instead of R. The party ID crosstab information did not strike me as particularly biased towards D respondents based on that.

  58. 58.

    Millard Filmore

    @Jeffro:

    I can only picture myself doing victory laps around the dining room table while everyone else is trying to eat.

    You are much more forgiving than I am. My brother was a supporter of Trump from back in the early primaries. With the baby snatching at the border, the child trafficking, terrorizing toddlers, this will all have to go VERY far down the memory hole before I want him back in my life.

  60. 60.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @NotMax: I still don’t know what the lyrics mean – there are entire websites devoted to figuring out Peter Sinfeld’s symbolism – but the final stanza of the title track does seem appropriate for our times, too.

    On soft grey mornings widows cry
    The wise men share a joke
    I run to grasp divining signs
    To satisfy the hoax
    The yellow jester does not play
    But gently pulls the strings
    And smiles as the puppets dance
    In the court of the crimson king

    Given the long association of the colour red with Russia, I think it’s easy to assign an identity there (although IIRC, Satan was the actual intended “crimson king”)… but who’s the yellow jester?

    (The villain in Stephen King’s Dark Tower novels was given his nickname after this song, too, although his actual name – Los’, IIRC – came from the cosmology of William Blake.)

    @waysel: Thanks! And I suspect a lot of us have. Or as Dr Bruce Banner puts it: “That’s my secret, Captain: I’m always angry.”

    Ceterum censeo factionem Republicanam esse delendam.

  61. 61.

    TaMara (HFG)

    @Leto: Then we won’t mention how Penelope loves to “hug” and demands scritches. I think the other ducks are catching on.

    I just found out that Emus like to swim around in ponds and suddenly a farm/zoo sounds like a must for me, too. I mean, if I had enough land with a pond for the ducks, what’s a couple of emus, amirite?

  62. 62.

    BlueGirlFromWyo

    Last I checked, the most representative body in our government (the House) skews Democratic too. Perhaps that has something to do with the distribution.

  63. 63.

    WaterGirl

    @JPL:

    hmmm Who suggested to them that the indictment was imminent and that it might be time to flee. Let’s see who knew.. Barr and who else.

    I am hearing chants of Rudy! Rudy! Rudy! Rudy! Rudy! in my head.

  64. 64.

    Avalune

    @Leto: You should be more worried about those Anne of All Trade Fluffy Butt Thursday things you post all the time. ALPACA! Smooshy little sweater faces.

    Luckily for you, animals are also a lot of work, so I have to be realistic about my herd.

  65. 65.

    Kraux Pas

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:

    I admit, I’m not the most knowledgeable about polling, but does anybody know why there were more Dems polled and only 12% of independents were as well?

    My understanding is that when they conduct polling, the respondents rarely reflect the demographics of the population at large. So they look at groups of people and then weight them to more accurately reflect the broader population.

    So just because 48 percent of those polled were Democrats, that doesn’t mean they calculated their final result as though 48 percent of everyone are Ds. They just had more information about how Dems felt than independents.

  67. 67.

    Kay

    erica orden
    @eorden
    ·42m
    Federal prosecutors were not intending to unseal the indictment against the Giuliani associates and two others Thursday, according to three US officials. Their hand was forced by an attempt by Fruman and Parnas to leave the country.

    It is wild to live this, though. The country is currently run …by criminals.

  69. 69.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    and DOJ says US v Nixon wrongly decided

    Wow, I missed that news.

    Douglas Letter, a lawyer for the committee, told Howell that the House of Representatives is entitled to “absolute deference” in impeachment inquiries, according to NBC News.

    But Elizabeth Shapiro, an attorney in the DOJ’s civil division, argued to Howell that in order to properly seek the grand jury material the House should first vote on a resolution authorizing a formal impeachment inquiry, and then seek the material through a judicial proceeding.

    Letter disputed that idea.

    “We are in an impeachment inquiry, an impeachment investigation, a formal impeachment investigation, because the House says it is,” Letter said.

    The DOJ lawyer was asked by the judge if Mueller Grand Jury materials were shared with foreign government officials. The lawyer replied they “didn’t know” and that the DOJ would update the judge on that by this Friday. Absolutely insane that something like that even needs to be asked or that DOJ would question settled precedent like Nixon v US

  72. 72.

    MattF

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Bear in mind that response rates are well under 10 percent these days, so small biases in responders will be greatly amplified if you don’t rescale the raw data properly. It’s surprising that good pollsters still manage to get accurate estimates. And it’s not surprising that bad pollsters get bad estimates.

  73. 73.

    Noncarborundum

    @SiubhanDuinne: I experienced a similar drop when I was a college student in northern Ohio in the early 80’s. The temperature was around 70 when I walked into a classroom building for a music lesson, and 40 when I walked out one hour later.

  74. 74.

    cain

    That’s was one of the whacked things about Denver when I lived there, the sudden appearance and disappearance of snow. Sheesh. My girlfriend was telling me about her commute to work this morning in the snow.

    Out of curiosity, why the FUCK is the Republican political symbol an elephant? Elephants are brave, loyal, and do not abandon their family with predators about and they will fucking kick your ass if they are angry. They don’t deserve the noble elephant as a political symbol. We should question why they have it as an attack.

  75. 75.

    moonbat

    @cain: I completely agree with this. Free the elephant from GOP association. That noble beast does not deserve to be so demeaned.

  78. 78.

    Gin & Tonic

    @rikyrah: News reports indicating they were on their way to Vienna. Austria, not Virginia.

    That’s where Dmytro Firtash lives.

  80. 80.

    Noncarborundum

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Not “under the WTC”, on the 23rd floor.

    The [1998 Police Department] memorandum, which has not been previously disclosed, cited a number of “significant points of vilnerability.” Those included: the building’s public access, the center’s location on the 23rd floor, a 1,200-gallon diesel fuel supply for its generator, a large garage and delivery bays, the building’s history as a terrorist target, and its placement above and adjacent to a Consolidated Edison substation that provided much of the power for Lower Manhattan.

    (From the NYT, 1/26/08)

  81. 81.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Noncarborundum: [not exonerating at all] But it wasn’t in the twin towers, rather in another building of the complex — “7 World Trade Center”. Still imbecilic to put it there.

  82. 82.

    germy

    @cain: Their political symbol should be the powderpost beetle. Difficult to get rid of, and determined to do as much damage to a house as possible.

  83. 83.

    Geoboy

    @cain: Why not trade the Republican elephant in for a sea lamprey – blind, blood-sucking, thrives on stealing the fruits of others labors?

  84. 84.

    Noncarborundum

    @Chetan Murthy: 7 WTC was part of the WTC, though. The fact that it wasn’t one of the two buildings targeted by the terrorists in 2001 doesn’t change that.

  85. 85.

    Gravenstone

    @Jeffro:

    he probably knows how to walk on rice paper without leaving foot prints

    He might have in his prime. But then he got old, greedy and stupid. Which brings us to the Rudy of today.

  86. 86.

    LuciaMia

    I see Giuliani’s two crime associates were arrested at the airport.

    Saw this as ‘Breaking News’ on CNN.When someone asked if they were trying to flee the country you could hear people laughing in the background.
    *******************

    Tamara, are you expecting that crazy ass snow this weekend

  88. 88.

    Miss Bianca

    @rikyrah: drip, drip, drip…whether Trump realizes it or not, he’s suddenly given “principled” GrOPers a reason to bail on him. Whether that leads His Erratic Majesty to suddenly reverse his position on the Kurds, I dunno.

  89. 89.

    Barbara

    @Marcopolo: In addition, party affiliation is very fluid at the margins. Polling party identification is itself a sign of which way the wind is blowing.

  92. 92.

    Amir Khalid

    @cain:
    Well, humans arbitrarily associate certain animals with positive, electable traits. And certain other animals with not-so-positive traits. So which animal would you pick for the Republican party?

  94. 94.

    cain

    @Geoboy:
    I was thinking a scarab beetles but @germy had a good one too. I hesitate to use any animals since they are all more noble than any politician in the Republican party. Perhaps afterwards they should be forced to use a pic of Trump as their party icon.

  101. 101.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @Gin & Tonic:
    Austria is another place where far-right nationalism has taken root. It’s going to come out, if hasn’t already, that all of the far-right nationalist parties of the world (GOP included) are connected to Putin in some fashion

  104. 104.

    Chetan Murthy

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:

    It should’ve at least been a few blocks away

    Actually, I must demur. If they believed that the location should be chosen for ease of dealing with an attack at the WTC, it would have been imperative to site it a good distance, like, a mile, away, just so that the management and coordination didn’t get SNAFUed by the logistics of the actual response. And besides that, there are so many other valuable targets in NYC — so the wise choice would have been to put it in a nondescript neighborhood with NO OTHER TARGETS and make sure there were dedicated cables to every significant comms hub in the city. I mean, it’s not like being close to the WTC would afford them some better ability to communicate in all that confusion on the ground: either way, they would have rely on telecommunications, I’d think.

  105. 105.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: I suggest we take those numbers with a large chunk of iodized NaCl. I imagine the Faux Noise polling operation is smart & unprincipled enough to report the breakdown by party in their survey sample without noting that the reported percentages were adjusted by party affiliation percentages in the universe of voters – IOW, to lie in what Heinlein called the second best way, by telling the truth but not all of it.

  106. 106.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Marcopolo: And most pollsters don’t re-weight their samples by some model of party ID, if I recall correctly, because they’re too concerned about the fluidity of party ID. There’s one that does……… it’s Rasmussen.

  107. 107.

    Amir Khalid

    @cain:
    Yes you would be, unfortunately. The scarab beetle basically cleans up other animals’ waste, and the powderpost beetle digests and recycles dead trees into the ecosystem. But to properly represent the Republican party, you need an animal that does no good whatsoever. So I like the idea of making Trump the Republican spirit animal.

  110. 110.

    Jeffro

    @cain: He thinks it was an “amateur move made by a novice”. No really.

    My response was, “if only we had had the opportunity in 2016 to elect someone with vast amounts of governmental, policy, and diplomatic experience…who could have foreseen that this would happen…oh wait…”.

  111. 111.

    PPCLI

    There is no doubt that Barr knew this was in the pipeline, so I have to wonder what the angle is. Possibility: Trump has been working hard to make it clear to people that if he goes down he will bring the whole corrupt crew down with him. He states openly that Pence was involved with Ukraine. Pulls in Rick Perry. Etc. Now there is this arrest of these guys who appear to have donated illegal $ to Kevin McCarthy, and allegedly a massive donation to a PAC headed by Linda McMahon…

  112. 112.

    If a Tree Falls

    @cain

    From what I remember from my high school American history class, the Republican party in the 19th century made extensive use of a campaigning tactic called “waving the bloody shirt”, where a Republican seeking political office would make emotional appeals to voters by reminding them of the sacrifices made by Union soldiers during the Civil War. This tendency was satirized by cartoonists by symbolizing Republicans with an elephant — a beast that had the reputation of never forgetting anything.

  113. 113.

    Matt McIrvin

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Back when I was on Google+, one of the first people I ended up unfollowing because of politics was this seemingly nice Austrian lady who started saying all this far-right nationalist crap about immigrants. She favored France’s public hijab bans, proudly stated that she didn’t care about drowning Syrian children and didn’t see why she should, etc.

  114. 114.

    Jeffro

    @hotshoe: I’m good for that! “Grab a turkey leg and let’s go people! Clockwise this time!”

    LOLOL

    Enjoy it my fellow libs – it will be bittersweet, knowing we we’ve been 110% right these past four years and that none of this had to happen, but after the bitter, it will be sweet.

  115. 115.

    Haydnseek

    @NotMax: I bought my copy a day after it was released. Still own and treasure it. I play it from time to time, and it still sounds excellent, not a pop or tick. Yeah, I’m anal about my vinyl. All part of the life when you’re a vinyl junkie.

  119. 119.

    Marcopolo

    So here is Sen Gardner (CO-R) being asked by reporters if he is okay with a president asking a foreign gov’t to investigate a political rival. https://twitter.com/JoeStGeorge/status/1182355369001013248

    Two things: 1) Of course he refuses to answer the direct question; 2) however, and much more delightfully, when he turns to the next reporter she asks him to please directly respond to the same question! Respect to these reporters. Gardner is toast.

  121. 121.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Jeffro:

    Isn’t it exciting to be ‘living history’? I think so.

    I’d rather less exciting ‘living history’.

  123. 123.

    Gelfling 545

    @Jeffro: A couple of the thankfully few rwnjs I know are muttering darkly about the Syria situation.. One was even noticed to mutter the word treason. I had fully expected that guy to blame Obama or anybody but Trump. I await developments.

  124. 124.

    germy

    @Haydnseek: I remember the NewYorker cartoon. Two guys looking at a shelf full of record albums. The record owner is saying “The two things that really drew me to vinyl were the expense and the inconvenience.”

  125. 125.

    NotMax

    @Haydnseek

    Trust me, I well understand vinyl love. (No, not that kind, gutter dwellers. :) )

    Chat about King Crimson led me to pull out the much less remembered McDonald and Giles album from not long after, which always has provided a soothing vibe when one is sought.

  126. 126.

    Marcopolo

    @Jeffro: A novice? Really? He’s been in office for close to three years. He’s not a novice anymore. Not to mention in his position he has the ability to consult with the best, most knowledgeable experts on this topic at any time. If this were an episode of “The Apprentice” Donny’d Have been out on his orange ass a long time ago.

    Btw, how does your dad feel about “a novice” having his finger on the nuclear codes?

  127. 127.

    Haydnseek

    @germy: I thought that cartoon was hilarious. I’m an old now, but I’ve been, well, not exactly collecting but accumulating since the sixties. I never saw any reason to give ’em up. Part of it is the ritual, part of it is the sound. Part of it is also the memories attached to so many of them.

  130. 130.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @MattF: Actually, a borderline unethical pollster that publicly reports election projections, & wants to support a narrative that the Rethugs are doing great, doesn’t need “bad data” to slant the results – s/he simply adjusts the results with a “turnout model” that assumes GOP voters will turn out at much higher rates than Democrats. To preserve a figleaf of competence (in order to signal to potential customers that in fact they know how to take accurate surveys) such a pollster will gradually “refine the model” by adjusting it to reflect reality rather than wishful thinking as the election approaches. Even a notorious pushyoubypollingyou operative like Rasmussen will be pretty close to the eventual result by Election Day.

  133. 133.

    Fair Economist

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:

    I admit, I’m not the most knowledgeable about polling, but does anybody know why there were more Dems polled and only 12% of independents were as well?

    Fox must have included leaners in the Republican and Democratic categories. Democrats outnumbered Republicans because a) they do and b) “independents” are leaning Democratic. An 8% margin for Democrats, after including leaners, is pretty close to the Presidential polling and the 2018 result.

  134. 134.

    Haydnseek

    @NotMax: This is a real surprise. These guys must have been in the band before all the hype surrounding their first LP. Damn, the things you learn from like-minded jackals………

  135. 135.

    hedgehog the occasional commenter

    @Marcopolo: Thanks for that — I hadn’t seen it. Cory is a fucking weasel (with apologies to weasels).
    On the weather front, snow in Denver has stopped but it’s gray and cold. Blech.

  137. 137.

    Yutsano

    @NotMax: I would eat that. I would eat the shit out of that. Bonus: emu is kosher.

    Side note: J-Rub has judged Joni Ernst and found her wanting. So much so that she tears her in other columns she has today. She found herself a new chew toy. And maybe Ernst is more vulnerable than we think.

  139. 139.

    jl

    Because I am incurable nerd I was curious about Team Trump’s criticism of the sample.
    As other commenters have pointed out, Fox News polls have reputation of being high quality and accurate, based on their history.
    Team Trump is wrong (kind of expected). If any voting bloc is under represented in the sample, it is independents not Republicans, at least relative to the percentage of Democrats.

    Have to say though that the Fox News should do better in reporting its methodology. For this poll, they didn’t weight their responses by reliable measures of population prevalence of different groups, from brief methods reported at the top of the poll. Doing that, at least to give a sensitivity analysis reported in addition to the raw results, is important if the sample you get is a lot different from the one expected beforehand. If that is standard practice for them, then they must rely on large samples rather that post-sample weighting for accuracy. I can find the sample characteristics in the poll report itself, only in the Fox News blurbs. Should be in the polling report, but maybe I missed it.

    Sorry for nerdout. But one perhaps unsurprising conclustion. Team Trump: WRONG.

  142. 142.

    jl

    @Calouste: hey, some wasp slander there. Wasps play an important role in controlling pests (at least, pests from the human perspective). It is true, that they tend to kill pests in ways that range from unpleasant to horrifying. So, something in common with GOP, some difference.
    OTOH, any wasps that are pure pests? Those that kill non-pests in horrifying ways. Find one, and you have a point.

    Could pick from the most scariest of the Lovecraft pantheon. They aren’t real (we hope), but better than slandering earthly creatures.

    The 10 scariest monsters from Lovecraft’s Cthulu Mythos
    https://www.denofgeek.com/books-comics/lovecraft/27427/the-10-scariest-monsters-from-lovecrafts-cthulu-mythos

    Might be a good subject for front pager. Since BJ is an animal lovers blog, what fictional or mythical horror is best symbol for contemporary GOP?

    @chris: Yeah, maybe ticks. Bedbugs, another.

  144. 144.

    Aziz, light!

    @Miss Bianca:

    whether Trump realizes it or not, he’s suddenly given “principled” GrOPers a reason to bail on him.

    People who want to end a relationship but lack the courage to initiate the breakup can (in their minds) remain blameless by mistreating their partners and give them no choice but to leave. Maybe he thinks by betraying his party he can put the blame entirely on them when they ultimately cut him loose.

  145. 145.

    cain

    @Jeffro:

    @cain: He thinks it was an “amateur move made by a novice”. No really.

    So apparently, he knows better than Trump. Trump must be a total dork if even your dad can see that was a bad move. What does that say about Trump?! :D

  150. 150.

    Miss Bianca

    @Marcopolo: Bwah hah hah! As a government meetings reporter, I salute this trend. Or, as I asked on FB where I posted this exchange, “is our reporters learning?”

  152. 152.

    Jeffro

    @mrmoshpotato: Oh, TOTALLY. Pollsters should ask the country’s voters whether they would rather go back to living under boring old Obama. I’m surprised Liz Warren hasn’t put that into her campaign speeches (maybe she has?): “Wouldn’t you rather wake up each day and just…go about your business? Not get a ‘breaking news’ alert every couple of hours based on some White House shenanigan or crime or something?”. Sigh.

  153. 153.

    Jeffro

    @Marcopolo: Yeah, really. That is the latest coping mechanism/phrase, anyway. “Novice”.

    I don’t know what he thinks of the nuclear codes thing, but based on everything else I’m sure he’s mostly NOT thinking about it. Like the rest of us in that respect, perhaps.

  155. 155.

    randy khan

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: For the record, U.S. v. Nixon was unanimous (8-0, not 9-0 because Rehnquist didn’t hear the case given his recent association with the Administration and some of the people under investigation). Claiming it was wrongly decided qualifies as chutzpah.

  156. 156.

    Jeffro

    @schrodingers_cat: I should have been taking better notes all along. But it doesn’t really make for a good book or story. because there’s no suspense, no plot. Just me telling these two “you’re going to end up further down the trumpov/GOP spiral than you could ever have imagined”, and being right on a constant basis for four years.

    Ah well. Here we, and they, are. Being on the right side of history feels GOOOOD. And as long as everyone involved goes to prison – none of this “looking forward, not back” BS, it’ll stay a good feeling. Probably though Thanksgiving 2030, I’m guessing… ;)

  158. 158.

    CapnMubbers

    @NotMax: No no no, that can’t be right, that would make me…ummm, never mind.
    One of the most regretted albums lost to the slings and arrows.

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