Damn, is Nancy Pelosi a 13-dimensional chess playing, time-traveling, ninja Jedi master or what? Talk about “self-impeaching”!
He ran out of room, but what Scammy McFraudface was trying to say is that you can’t impeach a president when the economy is good. My recollection of the Clinton impeachment is hazy because I had a new baby at home back then, but I’m pretty sure the economy was roaring along, and the Republicans impeached ol’ Bill for a consensual blow job anyway.
In other news, Ronna ROMNEY McDaniel viewed the Hunter Biden interview and is troubled by the specter of nepotism:
Let me get this straight…
Hunter Biden got $50K a month from a Ukrainian energy company, despite having ZERO experience in energy.
His justification?
That he was also on the board of Amtrak – more obvious nepotism.
If that’s not the swamp, I don’t know what is!
— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) October 15, 2019
The gargantuan gonads on these people! They’re going to try to just brazen it out. That’s all they’ve got:
?Fiona Hill describes this scene:
In a White House meeting, Sondland tells Ukrainians they will get a Trump meeting if they open the investigations Trump wants. Then, Sondland follows the Ukrainians out of the meeting to privately make clear he's talking about Hunter Biden.
— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) October 15, 2019
What will Sondland tell the committee under oath, I wonder? NBC News says he’ll tell them U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch was “great” and that he was unaware of any issues that led to her ouster. And this:
Sondland will also testify that after he attended Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s inauguration in May, he met with Trump, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and former U.S. special envoy Kurt Volker in the Oval Office. In that meeting, Sondland will say, Trump told them that any in-person meeting between Trump and Zelenskiy would have to be approved by Rudy Giuliani.
Sondland will testify that it was only later that he became aware that a public commitment by Ukraine’s new government to address corruption – including Burisma Holdings – was a prerequisite for a Trump-Zelenskiy meeting. Sondland will also say that at the time that he learned that, he did not know that Burisma was linked to former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter.
If that’s accurate, it sounds like maybe Sondland is ready to cut his losses? Anyhoo, we’ll find out on Thursday.
Open thread.
Major Major Major Major
We’re definitely seeing the careerists decide they aren’t going to prison for these idiots.
Jeffro
Ronna ROMNEY McDaniel complaining about ‘people getting paid just because of family connections’ can only be topped by both trumpov boys taking to social media and TV complaining about what a crook Hunter Biden is, profiting off of his dad’s name and all.
Sure even some nonzero percentage of trumpistas will hear or see that and go “YEAHYOUTELL’EMDONJR!…wait…whut?”
Meanwhile the rest of us are over here dying of irony poisoning…
Simple 3-part platform just waiting here, Dems:
– true blind trust by Inauguration Day or forfeit the office
– 10+ years of tax returns or you can’t run
– no family members employed in any governmental office or lobbyist position, period
(There’s a lot more that needs legislation, but these three are the simplest and best)
Frankensteinbeck
The texts show that Sondland is smart enough to know that getting caught doing this stuff is Bad. Sondland will evade as much as possible and go for minimizing lies that will be very hard to disprove. From the quoted article, I’m guessing the strategy is “Maybe some stuff happened, I don’t know, I was involved in odd but not illegally odd processes, maybe some of those guys know something, sorry I couldn’t help.”
Jeffro
Great tweet by Ian Milheiser: “This plot twist where John Bolton turns out to be good really strains the credibility of the entire season”
Not to worry, Ian, he’ll revert to form just as a soon as President Pelosi takes the Oath.
Just Chuck
Anyone have a screenshot of the original “Impeach the Pres.” tweet? I imagine it’s deleted now, but I don’t want to drag myself through the muck of Twitter to find out.
MisterForkbeard
I actually wish this hadn’t come out publicly yet, so that Sondland would have the opportunity to “omit” this from his upcoming testimony. But then, the Republicans on the various committees would have leaked it him anyway, so I suppose it doesn’t really matter.
Also too – Trump brags about more people working. How many of those people are over 65 and want to retire but can’t? And pointing out that median income is higher but is much smaller to the larger 10% incomes than it ever was before? Congratulations everyone, you got 10% less of a much larger pie! Sigh.
Betty Cracker
@Just Chuck: It’s still up.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Frankensteinbeck: A lot of “I think I don’t remember answers” from Sondland, I think.
It sounds like he and his wife are getting skittish about their business. I don’t think the Saudis are going to flood boutique hotels in Seattle and Portland with no-show booking to bail out the stop-and-shop ambassador to the EU
Kent
Definitely. I spent a decade working in a fairly non-political science agency (NOAA) working on fisheries issues. I don’t really know the pressures of what it is like to work in a much more high profile agency like the State Department. But I gotta think that there are a whole lot of career civil service employees who have just been keeping their heads down for the first 1/2 of the Trump Administration who are now looking at the calendar and realizing they only have to hold out about one more year. I would imagine a whole bunch of them are covering their butts with a whole lot of “memos to the file” and various other sorts of documents that can be pulled out when needed.
I expect that there are also a lot of loyal civil service employees who are looking around and taking mental notes on who the lackeys and traitors are for future reference. 15 months goes by fast and the next administration will need to be able to quickly and efficiently root out the rot and bring the government back up to full operating speed.
In all Federal agencies, the great majority of professional staff span many administrations and the total number of pure political appointees is quite small. The thing to watch out for is “burrowing” where political appointees get converted to regular civil service so they can stay on at high grade jobs after a new administration comes in. You can’t always undo these sorts of things but you can find these people and assign them to the bureaucratic equivalent of going to the basement to count paperclips so they stay out of trouble until they get bored and quit. I’m talking about people like climate change deniers worming into permanent science positions at NOAA. Or anti-regulation industry lackeys worming into permanent regulatory postions at EPA. Or anti-abortion extremists worming themselves into permanent family planning positions at HHS. That sort of thing.
Kelly
I had a lovely walk amongst fall colors at Silver Falls State Park yesterday.
https://imgur.com/a/pRloWfx
Just Chuck
@Betty Cracker: Again with the dragging through the muck part. Anyway I found it on Mashable so NBD. Made one of my semi-yearly facebook posts to share it.
MattF
See, the problem for Rs is that Trump et. al. are guilty. The evidence is all out there. We have a criminal, sociopathic asshole for president. Personally, I’d like to see some D ads that make this point using small words, repeated over and over again. Guilty, guilty, guilty.
dmsilev
@MisterForkbeard: Also, inflation is a thing, so “highest ever” in unadjusted dollar values is, well, valueless.
Meanwhile, the manufacturing sector is officially in recession (2 consecutive quarters of contraction) and is likely to get worse before it gets better thanks to President “Trade Wars Are Easy To Win”.
cynthia ackerman
Adam called Sondland’s arse-saving testimony last week in an email to me.
Also, too, when John Fucking Strapon is the sane one in the room …
Peale
I would gladly throw Hunter Biden under the bus if it meant we could also arrest that part of the “swamp” that is taking huge sums of money to fix the problems of its clients with the DoJ and other regulatory agencies. The “security consultants” like Flynn and Giuliani (Christ is there any part of the “security” industry that isn’t corrupt?), “global political consultants” like Manafort (Is there anyone in the international political campaign racket that isn’t in on the take), and any senators, congressmen, lawyers, and “Communication Firms” who launder money but pollute our political lives should just be driven out. Nothing would make me happier if these goons were forced to flee the country and live in exile at the mercy of their mob thug benefactors.
BTW, have we confirmed that any of this russian money that Guliani is spreading around actually went to politicians as “campaign contributions”? Like are there records of it actually going to campaigns? Or are the Congressmen and Senators putting it directly into their own pockets or in bags in their freezers.
@Jeffro:I think I’ll add that in addition to their tax returns, holding any office above State Rep means that your personal homes and the homes of any of your wives and mistresses get to be searched at random for bushels of cash.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@cynthia ackerman:
I suspect there may be a backstory to this sobriquet that I do not wish to explore…
Enhanced Voting Techniques
So Mittems sees himself as the replacement for Trump and Mr Mother when they forced to resign.
Mandalay
@Just Chuck:
It’s still there: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1184129825231069184
Zzyzx
CNN has a horrible article that I will not link to that throws out all sorts of personal gossip about Hunter Biden (eg alcohol and drug issues) under the cover of “Trump making up a scandal is obviously wrong, but will it work?”
Last I looked, Hunter is running for no office.
LuciaMia
Hey, genius, more people working because there simply ARE more people in the country. The population does keep growing. Aaaarrggghh.
Betty, love the crazy crap-house rat.
Kent
@MisterForkbeard: I’m starting to understand how smart Adam Schiff is with out he is going about these hearings. They are basically following the watergate model:
1. Closed hearings where they take days of testimony from each witness. Many of these folks are testifying for up to 9 hours a day behind closed doors. So a TREMENDOUS amount of information is getting on the record but is also being kept mostly confidential for now so upcoming witnesses don’t know EXACTLY what was said. Yes, GOP congressmen can leak out certain details. But they are not going to get nearly everything right as if the hearings were public. This means each new witness walks into the closed door hearings not knowing exactly what has already been said and documented. This makes lying under oath extremely risky. Do you REALLY want to do that to save Trump, much less folks like Rudy?
When all the information is collected behind closed doors and there are no more strings for Schiff to pull, they will turn around and
2. Being open public hearings to commence the actual impeachment proceedings. However every single witness will have already been on the record behind closed doors so Schiff and the Democrats will only be asking questions that they already know the answer to and every single witness will be in a major purjury trap if they deviate in the slightest to what they said behind closed doors. This will all be 100% under the control of Schiff because he will only need to call the exact witnesses he needs to make the case he wants and they will all be trapped as hell. They can have their previous testimony read back to them to refresh their memories. And if any witnesses try to worm out of testifying the second time around for some bullshit reason, Schiff can put their words up on the screen for all to see. And then call in other witnesses to confirm them.
The only way out of this trap for the GOP is to ditch Trump. At some point I expect they will decide to cut their losses if it looks like Trump is bringing down the entire GOP edifice around him. At which point Dems will have to decide whether or not to play along and just take down Trump or the rest of them as well.
cain
Out of curiosity, why isn’t the DNC not doing a full ad buy hammering senate republicans in every state? At least put some doubt into things.. I know it’s awhile before the election, but we’re trying to move the needle on impeachment and weaken Republicans. It just seems wierd that there is just silence.
kindness
I think we have found a new use for the facility at Guantanamo. Trump’s criminal misfits all can go there. And when the remaining Taliban all complain maybe, just maybe we’ll take pity on their souls and transfer the Talibanis to a SuperMax in Colorado. The we let the Cubans take the base back but leave the Trump folks there.
Ruckus
@MisterForkbeard:
Well I know one 70yr old who is still working. Me.
I’m still catching up from the last republican recession, just in time for the next one. I believe that is a great vote getter, that republicans seem to love recessions, otherwise why do they create so many of them?
germy
@Jeffro:
Maybe Ronna Romney can go on The View and complain to Meghan McCain and Abby Huntsman about it.
Just Chuck
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Green Balloons! Green Balloons!
mrmoshpotato
That tweet of Dump’s is a high crime against the English language. IMTFA!
Kent
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Pretty convenient that his niece is Ronna [Romney] McDaniel who is head of the RNC and author of the tweet on the top of this thread. The RNC would, of course be picking the new candidate if Trump falls and it is too late to go through the regular primary process.
MattF
I’ve got very mixed feelings about Rick Wilson, but here’s his script for a TV ad:
ISIS was defeated.
Until Donald Trump set them free.
He caved to foreign powers to protect his bottom line.
Left our allies to be slaughtered
Ordered American troops to cut and run.
Our soldiers call it an act of betrayal
Trump calls it winning.
And ISIS agrees.
lgerard
Sondland’s “I know nothing” trial balloon has already crashed. He needs to come up with a better (and more truthful) story.
Matt McIrvin
@Jeffro: “The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend” is a pretty well-known concept.
Ladyraxterinok
@Jeffro:
Doesn’t she herself basically have her (I presume) well-paying job because she’s related to ol’ Mitt?!!
Nerve to nth degree!!
Chyron HR
If only he had changed his name to Hunter McDaniel…
Also, is that their argument, now? Trump threatened to withhold military aid from Ukraine because of nepotism?
Kay
They all knew. That’s the part about the whistleblower that gets me. The whistleblower was just to tell us- the public were the only people in the dark.
Pelosi and Schiff knew too. All of Congress did. They were all looking for the assistance to Ukraine and most of them aren’t morons- Guiliani was trumpeting that they were looking to frame Biden. It couldn’t have been that hard to put together.
Kent
@Ladyraxterinok:
According to her Wikipedia page, her only qualifications are an undergrad English Degree from BYU. So yes, you can fucking presume nepotism was involved in her getting the GOP Chair job.
Kay
@Chyron HR:
They were all planning on framing Hunter Biden and beating Joe Biden that way, so they’re just pursuing that like they didn’t get caught. It must have been all they had.
jl
From what I’ve read and heard in straight news reporting (as opposed to hack analyst and pundit babble), Sondland seems to be wavering between coming clean or trying to thread a legal liability needle in cooperating with WH in throwing Giuliani under the bus, while hedging enough to seem to cooperating with Congressional investigation. Relying on the WH for anything should be universally recognized as insane by now, and for sake of country, I hope Sondland chooses the former option. We’ll see.
patrick II
That happens in most non-recessionary years. It’s called inflation. When I was young the median income was about $3,000, but an apartment cost about $80 a month. I remember in the Bush years some republican was telling me that the stock market was at its highest point ever!. Inflation does that, stop drooling.
Jeffro
@Peale: I’m good with adding that clause into the legislation.
Jeffro
@Zzyzx: Yup – running for no office, and it has absolutely no bearing on the situation at hand.
They really can’t help themselves, our national snooze media. ‘Balance’ at all costs, even when balance makes no effing sense at all.
RSA
Trump brags about median household income and other good numbers.
Republicans always do this. It’s infuriating. (The first time I noticed was when GW Bush touted numbers that were on the way down but still allowed the claim “higher than at the same point in the Clinton administration.”)
If we look at the data over time for household income, what do we see? A trough after the 2008 recession followed by a steep upward curve starting in 2014, and then slower growth from 2016 onward.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N
Jeffro
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: @Just Chuck: so much inside baseball here…
That’s good, I guess. Keeps away the riffraff ;)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Damn, is Nancy Pelosi a 13-dimensional chess playing, time-traveling, ninja Jedi master or what? Talk about “self-impeaching”!
Betty’s trying to bait smintheus into one of his five hundred word “Pelosi should have impeached with 87 votes then we’d be winning but she’s a big dumb loser and you’re all cultists!” rants
Kay
Good question. What did they get out of it, the Trump people? We know they got something. It’s worse than the Hunter Biden scheme and they did it AFTER they got caught red handed in the Hunter Biden scheme. It must have been vital to their interests.
Mandalay
@Jeffro: The measures you propose are a fine start, but would not have prevented Hunter Biden from serving on the boards of companies in Ukraine and China…
Joe Biden insists that there was nothing illegal about what Hunter Biden did, but that’s precisely the problem. And the public isn’t buying that explanation; the reason the story won’t die is because what Hunter Biden was doing doesn’t pass the smell test, even if it was legal.
JPL
@Zzyzx: It’s doubtful that he ever runs for office. How come Mattis wasn’t questioned about his involvement with Theranos?
mrmoshpotato
@Kelly: Looks so peaceful.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@germy: along those lines, this is quite a collection of screenshots.
Just Chuck
@Jeffro: Oh I haven’t even gotten to the wetsuits yet.
schrodingers_cat
OT Abijit Banerjee* is being hauled over coals on Indian Twitter, he is getting it from both the right and the left.
*The Nobel Prize winner in Econ.
Betty Cracker
@jl: Once again I am confused about the “Giuliani under the bus” scenario. In the Zelensky call summary released by Trump himself and described by Trump as “perfect” at least half a dozen times, Trump states clearly that Giuliani is his agent in Ukraine. Then there’s Trump approvingly retweeting Fox News interviews with Giuliani in which Giuliani describes running down the crackpot conspiracy theory about the DNC/Soros/Ukraine framing Trump/Putin/Russia in 2016.
Do the people in the White House who want to make Rudy the fall guy expect Giuliani to confess — despite reams of public records to the contrary — that he was freelancing without Trump’s knowledge or permission? I just don’t understand how this “blame it on Rudy to exonerate Trump” strategy is supposed to work…
Zzyzx
@Jeffro: it’s sheer gossip. If you start a paragraph, “ And his relationships have been tabloid fodder, fairly or not,” for the son of a candidate, you’ve lost the thread.
trollhattan
@Kent:
I can only imagine how much pressure NOAA Fisheries are getting here in CA over the Shasta Dam raising project and shoving the X2 boundary further out towards the Bay so that Westlands (I nearly typed it Westnads, which seems quite on point) can get ALL the water. Luckily, CA’s various hippy lawsuits are slowing both processes down.
Jeffro
@patrick II: Catherine Rampell has a tweet up pointing out that basically “duh, more people are alive now is why you have the ‘most people working’, trumpov”
It’s just amazing, all the things trumpov has brought about in our formerly Afflicted, Scarred, and Writhing-In-Pain Land: the cleanest crystal clear water, an end to all wars and foreign engagements, stock market higher than ever, economy growing like never in our history, coal, manufacturing, all of it, just incredible and splendid from the moment he took office. Beautiful tariffs! The Chinese and Iranians prostrate before our feet!! Amazing.
Jeffro
@Just Chuck: Um no rush on that.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
is this not a blown whistle because he’s not trying to be anonymous?
Kent
@JPL: Hillary Clinton was on the board of Wal-Mart, Lafarge (giant French Conglomerate) and TCBY while Bill Clinton was governor of Arkanas. This stuff isn’t in any way new.
jl
@patrick II: @RSA: Always a question whether Trump knows what is going on, or is just making things up. I can’t find any ‘just out’ news on median income from agencies that produce the data, it usually comes in press release from Census Bureau from its income measurement program. Here is the summary blurb from latest data release with estimates for 2018 on Sep 26:
” Median household income for the nation has been increasing every year since 2013, but the year-to-year increase from 2017 is smaller than the prior three years. ”
from
New Data Show Income Increased in 14 States and 10 of the Largest Metros
GLORIA GUZMAN, SEPTEMBER 26, 2019
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/09/us-median-household-income-up-in-2018-from-2017.html
Growth rate in both nominal and real median household income has slowed in Trump administration. Largest increases in 2015 and 2016, but to be fair, growth at start of recovery stunk.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kent: the Bush family, especially the Dubya/Jeb generation, traded off the family name openly and for years, and it was just kind of accepted as the way business is done
The Moar You Know
@Jeffro: Bolton was promised a war with Iran fought on his terms. Literally, his life goal. Right there in his sweaty little grasp. Finally.
Then mean ol’ Donnie Trump took that away from him.
I think Bolton is going to have some shit to say about that, and anything else he can think of. He’s been robbed of everything he ever wanted and he will never get it now. Never.
Kent
@trollhattan: Yeah. I worked my whole career on Alaska fisheries issues so I’m not really familiar with what they are doing in CA. NOAA wouldn’t be the lead agency on a dam project so mostly just in a review role along with perhaps a half dozen other agencies. But still, you are right.
But the real political pressure is on all the climate science. NOAA is the agency that operates the weather satellites that collect a LOT of the raw data documenting climate change. Gots to be LOTS of horrible political stuff happening there.
schrodingers_cat
Banerjee is like a walking Slate pitch and has written many contrarian and idiotic takes on everything under the sun. Its quite funny actually. He is DougJ without the irony.
Kelly
@trollhattan: Dams and fish have been a very political issue in the PNW for much of my life.
Kent
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Of course, they all do it on both sides of the aisle. George P Bush is only the latest Bush. He’s currently land commissioner in TX which is a deceptfully powerful position, although elected not appointed. But it’s a ready made stepping stone for higher office that was laid out in front of him.
Chelsea Clinton landed high priced consulting job with McKensey and private equity/hedge fund job with Avenue Capital Group, and serves on a bunch of boards. That would not have happened if she was the child of a schoolteacher.
And so it goes.
Gin & Tonic
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Rudy built this campaign on “information” from Lutsenko, proving he’s one dumb-ass motherfucker. Lutsenko may have been 5% less corrupt than Shokin, but it’s hard to overstate how reviled he was in Ukraine. You hitch your sleigh to him, you’re going to get a mighty uncomfortable ride.
jl
@jl: Though, Trumpsters haven’t made any significant changes in economic policy other than rich person’s tax cut and tariff war, and the growth in nominal and real median household looks just like should for late stage of expansion, in year or two before recession. So good chance it has nothing to with Trump at all, for good or for bad.
Martin
@Major Major Major Major: Sondland isn’t even a careerist. He’s a hotel dude that wanted to cosplay as a ninja and then discovered that he was up against actual ninjas. He’s going to quickly retreat to the safe world of running shitty hotels.
trollhattan
@Kent:
You’re right, the dam project is lead by Reclamation. I can’t keep track of all the players but think the B.O. has to be signed off by Fisheries, Interior and EPA, in part because of the potential for reduced water flows to the Sacramento River and Delta, plus periodic river inundation above the dam (including blue ribbon trout streams). X2 is the regulatory isohaline boundary, which has a geographic target that varies by season. Irrigation districts (and Southern California) want it eased so less freshwater is used maintaining salinity targets for those pesky Delta smelt and salmon and sturgeon and such.
Stupid fish, we demand more almonds!
schrodingers_cat
SiubhanDuinne
@Just Chuck:
I have one for you, can email it to you if you want to send your contact to SiubhanDuinne at gmail dot com.
Or go to http://www.trumptwitterarchive.com/archive and scroll down to the tweet (10:32:05 am), and click “link.”
Duane
@Peale: The corruption of the R’s has gotten so bad I figure they’re all crooked. Investigate the RNC finances. Broidy, Cohen and Wynn were the finance chairs. Guaranteed they were up to no good.
jl
Probably all the Trump tweets that start with an announcement of some great world historic Trump accomplishment come of the good news file he demands every morning. Staff has to fill them up with something or other.
Gin & Tonic
@schrodingers_cat: The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences is not awarded for one’s moral values.
rikyrah
@MattF:
truth truth truth
trollhattan
@Kelly:
Grew up in Seattle and recall the Boldt decision distinctly (just one of a gazillion issues revolving around dams v. fish). Restoring the Elwah River is one of the greatest environmental achievements of this century. I hope the Klamath dam removals go ahead, because they should have similar impacts. We’ll never seen anything similar on the Snake or Columbia, which is a shame. One can only ponder what the runs must have been like.
PPCLI
Sorry if I’m getting tiresome on this subject, but the conjuring trick is being played right here: Journalists are so distracted with the “who is blaming who” angle that they aren’t noticing that “getting the military aid that had been appropriated by Congress and that was being withheld with no explanation” is being palmed and replaced with “Zelinski getting a meeting with Trump”.
It is very clear in even the bowdlerized conversation notes (i.e. the pseudo-“transcript”) that military assistance was part of the trade for smearing Hunter Biden and advancing the lunatic “Crowdstrike” conspiracy. Trading smearing Biden and holding out a meeting is still disgraceful, but much less so.
rikyrah
@Kent:
interesting point
jl
@Gin & Tonic: Not only is it not an original Nobel prize, many of the awards are odd, made to make an ideological or political point, many have not worn well at all with time.
Self-respecting fields that don’t have a Nobel make their own damned prizes. Math and stats are two examples.
But, I didn’t just type that, because I R economiker person.
Edit: some years, it has more in common with the peace prize than science, to emphasize a sub field for aspirational purposes. All IMHO, of course.
schrodingers_cat
@Gin & Tonic: No but he is a development economist and he rejects the one tool ( a right enshrined in the Indian Constitution, BTW) that has given lower caste people and Dailts opportunities to break centuries of oppression. That has a direct bearing on his work. He is also against macroeconomic measures to alleviate poverty from what I understand.
Kent
@trollhattan: Sounds right. I’ve been involved in some of these highly political BOs. In my case it was the BO for endangered Steller sea lions and commercial trawling in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska.
What’s likely to happen is that the NOAA reviewer will raise a list of issues/objections in the analytical documents. Reclamation will incorporate those issues/objections into its final documents and record of decision. And they move forward. Most of this sort of environmental law is simply process. If they folllow all the process properly they can do pretty much whatever they damn well please. But all that interagency back and forth and comment/review periods just takes a really long time and they are in a hurry before the next admistration comes into power and so are likely to cut corners and subject themselves to lawsuits and getting the plug pulled by the next admin.
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
Why?
germy
He had help.
Martin
@cain:
Because the GOP needs more rope right now, not ads. The GOP don’t know where they stand, so they don’t know what to say. Realistically, the biggest threat to most republican senators is their primary challenger, not the democrat, so the ad buys should be saved to force the hand of the incumbents on impeachment to favor the primary challenger. It’s too early to run ads for the general – there’s way too many unpopular decisions still to be made before then. Consider how much different the Kentucky race looks if McConnell can’t even make it to the general (I’m thinking he will retire rather than run again).
Aleta
@Jeffro:
Media needs to respond by asking Ronna ROMNEY McDaniel and the T-boys to describe what boundaries *should* apply to children of politicians for appointments and jobs.
Although these statements, like other hypocrisies mentioned in the earlier thread, are written to drop straight in front of the RW self-reaping harvester + broadcast machine. It’s so efficient that way.
R cries for due process, transparency, electoral integrity — who cares if they hold up to scrutiny when your ‘deliverable’ is pre-approved. Who needs actual reporters and fact-checkers?
jl
@Betty Cracker: Everything is confusing when Trump makes outrageously contradictory self-statements every day. I based my opinion on news items I saw that said Sondland was going to testify that he was in the dark because Giuliani was the real brains running a shadow State Dept. and everyone outside that boiler room operation was in the dark. But news on what Sondland will say is also confused and contradictory.
Trying to figure out what is really going in Trump WH makes old school Kremlinology look like tic-tac-toe
Martin
@Gin & Tonic: Also worth noting, it’s not a Nobel Prize in that it was created by the Swedish central bank, and is not part of Nobel’s will like the other prizes, and isn’t selected like the other prizes.
tl;dr: It’s a JD Power award.
Kent
@rikyrah: Yes, much better for the Dems to compile a MOUNTAIN of evidence behind closed doors and then take the time to really sort it all out, organize it, and present it to the country in the clearest and best possible way through future public hearings. If they were doing this all in public today the GOP spin machine would be going at light speed 24/7 and the Dems would be unable to keep up. With it all behind closed doors they can only flail away until Schiff and Pelosi are good and ready to make their case.
If it takes until next summer and we are laying out the public case for impeachment during the GOP convention because of GOP obstruction, so much the better. Heh.
Soprano2
Speaking of “both sides” and the press trying to smear our candidates, I heard Mara Liasson today on Morning Edition talking about Elizabeth Warren’s snarky answer to the question about gay marriage. She said it was almost like Warren said people who were against gay marriage were deplorable! She was actively trying to attach the word “deplorable” to Warren. Good Lord, it was a joke – I thought conservatives liked un-PC jokes! (Of course, they only like the ones about liberals, but they never tell you that when they’re complaining about PC). It’s like they’re actively trying to help Trump and the Republicans.
Betty Cracker
@germy: Yep, and the irony is that DeSantis and GOP PAC-funded ads smeared the Democratic opponent relentlessly over an FBI corruption investigation.
germy
NotMax
@jl
Yeah, using human beings as guinea pigs is generally frowned upon. Economics being a giant exception.
;)
rikyrah
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
MARCH?
germy
@Soprano2:
She’s usually stealthier with her right wing talking points.
I used to hear her on NPR during the Obama administration, and she never had anything positive to say about anything he was doing, but she was always real polite about it.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: His many op-eds reek of clueless entitlement. He was a Modi fan. Thinks Me Too goes too far, and so on. He is against reservations (Indian version of affirmative action) for Dalits and lower castes. And on the right because he criticized some of Modi’s economically disastrous policies like banning currency notes and
instituting a flat sales tax.
trollhattan
@Kent:
“Acting” Interior Secretary David Bernhardt has been doing his damndest to turbocharge the process and Westlands was paying for the environmental review, which they suspended late September, because hippies. David Bernhardt happens to be Westlands’ lead lobbyist. I’m not actually sure what tense to write that in.
Jamie
@Martin:
To steal a line from Charlie Pierce, Jesus doesn’t love me enough to make that happen.
trollhattan
@Aleta:
Barron installed as student mafia chief at his prep school. Was there untoward influence? I’m only asking questions.
germy
[jerk off gesture]
NotMax
@trollhattan
Extremely tense?
;)
jl
@Soprano2: “Good Lord, it was a joke” refers to the first part of Warren’s answer? I think it was the correct answer in a society with separation of church and state, though made in a snarky way. I personally wasn’t happy with Warren’s follow-up ‘If you can find one’, because it could be interpreted as punching down on a questioner, without knowing much about where he stood on the issue personally. But I think silly to make a big deal out of it. I’m not even sure Warren meant to refer the questioner personally. So, a micro-gaffe?
Pundits and media commenters trying to shape the narrative for various purposes rather than do analysis is common, Whether it is bad faith, or laziness combined with needing to fill up time, I don’t know.
trollhattan
@NotMax:
Extreme tents, ’cause it’s gonna rain!
germy
I’m one of the few here looking forward to watching the debate tonight.
Betty Cracker
@jl: Administration officials might be able to play dumb about what Giuliani was up to, but I don’t see how Trump can use that excuse, not with what he’s already said on the record.
@Martin: That’s a great point.
chopper
@Gin & Tonic:
true. shockley was a racist and eugenicist but he deserved the physics prize. still an asshole tho.
Ohio Mom
@schrodingers_cat: I skimmed an article on the new Nobel Prize winners. Yes, it’s all good that they discovered parents are more likely to get their children vaccinated if they get a door prize of a bag of lentils. (Is that Nobel Prize worthy? I used to get $20 grocery store gift cards for attending state-sponsored meetings on how to help your disabled kid through public school. Then I’d turn around and give the cards to the food bank).
But as valuable as vaccinations are, I am always suspicious of poverty programs aimed at making poor people “shape up.” Every single child could get vaccinated, or whatever else these economists were trying to get to happen, but as long as the very tippy-top is hogging all the money and resources, there will be awful, desparate poverty.
I’m all for improving quality of life through projects like making sure people have clean drinking water, medical care, schooling, etc., but don’t kid yourself that’s the magic that will make poverty disappear.
gvg
@cain: Because that isn’t what they do. Every time there is some big issue the party should be hammering ther Republicans on, someone ask’s that question, so I know from past answers that basically the DNC runs the convention and not much else. For some reason the name makes people think it’s supposed to run the party, but it doesn’t. Wiki:The committee coordinates strategy to support Democratic Party candidates throughout the country for local, state, and national office. It organizes the Democratic National Convention held every four years to nominate and confirm a candidate for president, and to formulate the party platform.
The party apparatus we envision that attacks the republicans and defends democratic candidates doesn’t seem to exist. Maybe we need to invent it, but it doesn’t already exist.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@germy: I never bothered to find out who the hell this guy was cause I thought he’d be long gone by now. These fucking clown-car debates are yet another gift from Sanders ’16
ETA: and the other side of that coin: To the Mediocre White Guys whining about these standards: If you can’t get over a hurdle easily cleared by Andrew Fucking Yang, maybe that’s something to think about.
Mandalay
Heh…..WaPo has video of Russia rolling in to a U.S. base in Syria that Americans troops left just a couple of days ago:
Most Americans don’t give a flying fuck about Turkey being badass, or the fate of the Kurds, but I suspect this might rankle Joe Sixpack.
If Democrats can’t use this to paint Trump as a cheese eating surrender monkey who cuts and runs, and puts Putin’s interests above our own, then they need to look for alternative employment.
trollhattan
@Soprano2:
So we discover Liz is quick as a flash on her feet and carries a dagger. And has timing. How horrid.
jl
@Betty Cracker: Best for Sondland to wise up and come clean is the bottom line. Anyone not devoted to Trumpster thug life, or facing very severe legal sanctions regardless of what they do, should come clean for their own welfare. Unless they are really stupid.
germy
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I thought they were a gift from trump. They looked at him and thought “If this idiot can get elected, then why shouldn’t I?”
NotMax
@jl
You’ve amply described half* the media universe.
*’Tis early in the day yet here so am feeling charitable.
Kent
@Soprano2: I heard that too and about shot my radio. These people have no fucking shame and NPR is as bad or worse than the NYT.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@germy: true, the low entry requirements were, I think, because of all the “the system is rigged! more debates! Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the DNC!” ranting from what would become rose twitter, and their Holy Idol
Immanentize
@Martin:
The whole career thing versus political appointee is pretty interesting these days. I know lots of career lawyers in the federal government — friends and not-friends. So many of them are serious, hard working careful professionals. But some, like in any huge corporation, are slackers without imagination or wits. But all of them have one necessary quality — they can survive serious change in directions. Take my close friend who started in the Reagan administration and has worked since then (1983) in the Civil Rights division. She started under Edwin Meese for goodness sake! Has been through major ups and downs in whether her area was lionized or vilified. She even was an Acting for a bit in her Section. Currently, her work is vilified as it was during the Bush II regime. I really don’t know how she does it….
I realized that Yovanovitch was one of the true career professionals when it ended up that she had been cut out of all the really dodgy goings on by Trump Co. My hope is that she knew enough to fill out the witness list for the Committee(s). Hall was solid — and in the room when a lot of the crap happened. And Sondland knows that Hall went first and talked for 10! hours which means he is right now calculating how many times he can say, “I had nothing to do with that drug deal….” If I were on his defense team, I would practice, “You, know, I really don’t have a clear memory of that….”
I am finally feeling that Yarrow may prove prescient: Tick Tock Motherfuckers
Kent
@germy:
Never forget she also works for Fox News.
Aleta
@Kelly: beautiful.
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
OHHHH…
No wonder they are lighting his azz up….
uh huh
UH HUH
prostratedragon
A couple of tracking references for this stage of the Ukraine story, both from Buzzfeed:
A who’s who of the investigation in the form of a list, sketching the background and relevance of each
Another who’s who, in the form of a diagram, with links between the actors showing who did what, making it a kind of chronology
Kelly
I’m not surprised Trump follows his gut on most decisions. It’s simply physics. Most of his mass is his gut so it’s inertia drags him along.
rikyrah
@germy:
He is not a Democrat.
He’s a phucking libertarian.
germy
@rikyrah: You’re right. And his fans are libertarians.
germy
Gravenstone
@The Moar You Know: May he die a bitter and disappointed man. After he’s done shivving Trump and all those in his circle.
Cacti
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Wasn’t candidate Warren also a member of the Wilmer was robbed mob?
mrmoshpotato
@Kent: Did someone say MOUNTAIN?
lgerard
@PPCLI:
Also not being discussed:
trunp encouraging Z to “negotiate” with Putin, thus ceding Crimea to Russia, a pretty abrupt change from the previous position of opposing it and sanctioning Russia for their incursion.
germy
jl
@germy: I do hope it doesn’t take away from the ‘how will you pay for it’ questions. I think one good thing, maybe the only good thing, about Sanders’ ‘always be tape looping’ approach to this campaign is that he dismisses those questions with a short phrase and launches into a minute or so of his standard stump speech. Which gives those questions the respect that they deserve.
Gin & Tonic
@Immanentize: Hill not Hall.
And wrt Yovanovich, a close friend is a US FSO who’s both worked with Yovanovitch and served in Ukraine (at different times) and was extremely complimentary when Yovanovitch was picked to replace Geoff Pyatt (the previous Ambassador.)
Ksmiami
@MisterForkbeard: when you have most people at frozen wage levels around 55k and a bunch of billionaires and overpaid CEOs, yeah median wages can appear higher…
Vhh
@schrodingers_cat: why?
germy
@jl: They never demand “How will you pay for it??” about military incursions or shiny new bombers.
Kent
@Cacti: Are the entry requirements really lower than in past primary election cycles? Or are there just more candidates to weed out this time around? I tend to think it is the latter. I looked up the 2008 primary cycle which was really the last time there was a wide open Democratic field and all the fringe candidates were participating (Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich) until they started to get weeded out by debate #11: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Democratic_Party_presidential_debates_and_forums but I couldn’t find documentation of the actual standards used back then.
Gravenstone
@Aleta:
You can be dead certain that’s Romney McDaniels’ defense, that she’s not Mitt’s child, just his niece. Clearly a distinction of negligible difference.
PPCLI
@lgerard: Yes. And not just Crimea, but the Donbass region as well.
Sigh.
Kent
@Ksmiami:
No, mean wages would increase but not median wages.
If Jeff Bezos walks into a room with a bunch of teachers making $50,000 a year, the median wage of the room will still be $50,000, but the mean (average) wage of the group will jump to $1 billion a year (or whatever).
What Trump is actually talking about is inflation. Yes median wages are increasing but that’s merely due to inflation. In real dollars median wages have not increased.
germy
Cacti
@Gravenstone:
Maybe we can get Hunter Biden to agree to go by Hunter Romney McDaniel as a compromise position.
PPCLI
@Gravenstone: Though she is also George Romney’s grand-daughter. It can be a real leg up for someone who came up through the Michigan GOP organization to be thus related to the former governor, I imagine.
mrmoshpotato
@Kent:
How much you wanna bet the 2020 RNC is just Russian after Russian giving yelled speeches about how unfair the Democrats are to the greatest President ever? Maybe Putin will actually be at that one!
Martin
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: No. A whistleblower brings an illegal act to authorities that presumably the authorities didn’t know about. Kent wouldn’t be talking to Congress if they didn’t ask him to come. He knew about the illegal act for 8 months and appears to have done nothing, or done very little.
Working within your organization to solve a problem is one thing, but you also have to recognize when your organization is either unable or unwilling to solve it, and then you need to recognize that you need to take it outside. The whistleblower is the one who takes it outside. Kent isn’t doing that of his own initiative.
rikyrah
Looking for an Unconventional Way to Give Back to Your Alma Mater? Take The Homecoming Challenge
Panama Jackson
Friday 3:00PM
germy
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Kent:
There’s a reason she’s called Mara Liarsson.
She, and a slew of other NPR “reporters” are one reason why I stopped giving money to public radio a dozen years ago and stopped listening cold turkey 4 years ago. News should inform, not enrage. She is a piece of work but sadly, not much different from many, many others. When the Bushies looked to dismantle and reassemble public broadcasting with it’s own people and money flow, it was simply the end game. They’d been just as mediocre during 2000 campaign as the rest of the feckless, corporate media.
Kent
@mrmoshpotato: I think it’s more likely that the’ll need to subtitle it from the original German:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_of_the_Will
Millard Filmore
@jl:
Empty Wheel has an article up that goes into the latest testimony about who knew what, and when.
“Sondland has already test driven two drafts of his intended testimony, much as Michael Cohen did two years ago before he gave false testimony to Congress. Even the most recent of those drafts appears to be rendered inoperative by Hill’s testimony.”
https://www.emptywheel.net/2019/10/15/the-significance-of-fiona-hills-testimony-whatever-drug-deal-sondland-and-mulvaney-are-cooking-up/
sdhays
@germy: I saw canvassers trying to get Andrew Yang on the ballot here during the fall festival. That was pretty much my reaction, but I was carrying a sleeping baby and didn’t want to create a scene.
sdhays
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Me too. I loved much of their other reporting, but NPR’s political reporting is just too awful to support. Listening to it was enraging. I stopped listening and stopped giving them money too. Now I just give money to the classical music station.
Fair Economist
@Jeffro:Bolton apparently taking the side of justice and democracy reflects one of the strengths of the good side: the bad guys all know that having one of the *other* bad guys win is even worse for them than having the good guys win. From the rumors of really flagrant corruption inside the Trump admin, I suspect Bolton got a front and center view of what it would be like for him if the MAGAts win.
Martin
“You can’t impeach me! We have the lowest unemployment rate in history!”
“How did you accomplish that?”
“I murdered all of the unemployed! It was a simple idea that my predecessors were too stupid to implement!”
Just Chuck
@SiubhanDuinne: Naw, got it already. Thanks though :)
Another Scott
@Jeffro: On no family members employed in any governmental office or lobbyist position, period, I don’t think we should go overboard in saying nobody in the President-elect’s family can hold any government job. How would it be corrupting if the House wanted to hire Warren-Harris, Jr.? Or if they got a job doing field work for the Smithsonian? Or flying fire tankers for the National Park Service? Etc.?
US Code 3310:
Those restrictions seem fine to me. You can’t appoint your family to serve in places where you are they’re boss or otherwise (kinda-sorta directly) control the position.
The issue now is enforcement. Something needs to be done when the Executive decides that the US Code doesn’t apply to him… Grr…
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Just Chuck
@jl: The Nobel Peace Prize was created by Alfred Nobel.
lgerard
Sondland’s defense of
yeah I was driving the car, but I didn’t realize my associates were going to rob the bank
will implode as soon as a few witnesses testify that they overheard him planning the job.
JoeyJoeJoe
I saw them at the Clarendon street festival. I was curious as to whether Yang had any history with the party, and after being asked several times, a volunteer admitted that he hasn’t helped Democrats in the past
StringOnAStick
I met an interesting guy yesterday, mid-70’s now and had spent the first 20 years of his working life in the Foreign Service. As we talked he started to excoriate tRump for what they’ve done to the State Department. We talked about where he’d been stationed, which included South Africa in the 1970’s, so during Apartheid. He told/reminded me that the R-appointed ambassador (read: political donor, not career Foreign Service) had taken an official golf date on the same island where Mandela was being held in prison, something a real ambassador would most definitely not have done. Then he told me how a good SA friend of his had been beaten to death by the police there, and I asked him if he meant Biko; tears started rolling down his cheeks as he asked me how I knew who Biko was (I’m 61, so he figured I was too young to know). All these years later and it is still a gut punch to this guy how we basically abandoned Biko too, just like the Kurds.
Martin
@rikyrah: That’s a little bit how my alma mater does things. They have hundreds (probably thousands) of small dollar scholarships named after alums. Anyone can create a scholarship (I think the minimum is $200) which they’ll hand out so long as you keep it funded. They’re all need based and there are more of them than there are students, so many students get multiple scholarships. The students write to the donors and quite often it turns into a mentoring arrangement.
Martin
@StringOnAStick: I think Peter Gabriel taught a lot of us who Biko was.
Juju
@Kent: When Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas, the annual salary was $10,000 a year. The state legislature made the salary so low so that only certain types of people could afford to be the governor. Hillary was the primary breadwinner in the family. She did that as well as work at the most prestigious law firm in Little Rock, for what it’s worth.
mrmoshpotato
@Kent: So speeches about subservience to the state. I see.
Gin & Tonic
@Martin:
I saw a picture of him heading in to Congress this morning, and not just is he wearing a bow tie, he appears to be sporting a pocket square *of the same material.* Clearly not to be trusted.
Soprano2
@jl: No, I was talking about the second half where she said “if you can find one”. That’s the kind of thing conservatives say about liberals all the time, and it’s rarely remarked upon, but when Warren said it they all started clutching their pearls. I thought it was obvious that it was a snarky joke.
patrick II
@jl:
“or just doesn’t know what’s going on”
That is one of the tweets I believe staff wrote for him in the hybrid right-wing-functionary writing in the style of Donald Trump manner. It was coherent but unfactual. Donald is incoherent and doesn’t know enough facts about any particular subject to quote unfactual ones.
catclub
@trollhattan:
The Founding Fish, by John McPhee. On Shad, east coast.
….
teach a man to fish and he will fish out the entire resource.
catclub
@Millard Filmore:
What a wonderful phrase
Just Chuck
@patrick II: Disgruntled staffer might explain “Impeach the Pres.”
Another Scott
@jl: Donnie may have early numbers. He’s released some economic numbers early on Twitter in the past, even though it’s all kinds of wrong.
Of course, since he lies about everything, he could also just be making stuff up. Hard to tell…
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I thought it was brilliant!
Bolt-on / Strap-on
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Frankensteinbeck:
Reading that makes me want to punch something. Full disclosure, I have never punched anything in my life.
Kent
@Juju:
Are you saying that Arkansas-based Wal-Mart would have put a relatively unknown young female attorney on its corporate board if she were NOT married to the Governor of Arkansas? Did Wal-Mart get any preferential treatment from the State of Arkansas as a result? Who knows. The counterfactual is impossible to judge because pretty much every single politician in Arkansas is going to suck up to Wal-Mart. That’s all they have.
I’m not claiming Clinton did anything unethical. Just that both sides have been doing this game for a long long time. The Clintons, the Bidens, The McConnells, the Bushes and now the Trumps, and many hundreds of other politically connected families.
But obviously the Trumps are something new. For them the corruption and influence peddling isn’t a side hustle. It’s the whole hustle.
Matt McIrvin
@Juju: Kind of reminds me of the way New Hampshire state representatives only get a tiny, nominal stipend. So they’re mostly bored retirees or local businessmen doing it as sort of a hobby. The result is a steady stream of “NH state rep does something wacky or awful” stories.
Uncle Cosmo
@Soprano2: It’s from Mar-a-LiarsPawn**, WTF did you expect?
That one needs a low tumbrel number. Mabye give her the one we’d set aside for Cokie’s now that she’s Croak-ie.
** Or Mar-a-LiarSpawn – you pays your $$$ you takes your choice.
germy
@Matt McIrvin:
Or local businessmen doing it to protect their industries like real estate or dealerships.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
OK, I’m officially completely sick and tired of earthquakes, even little ones. Plus there are two huge construction sites within a block of my office, so every big thump or shimmy from those makes me freak out for a second while I figure out if it’s the Big One or not.
I’m up for sacrificing the entire Republican congressional delegation to Poseidon, though.
Martin
This is a test.
Nancy, Rudy has raised and is clearly bluffing. Now is not the time to call, now is the time to raise. Send the Sgt of Arms after him.
Martin
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice: I don’t think it’ll work, but there’s no way to be sure until we try.
Another Scott
@Soprano2: I heard that too.
(roughly) “… [unnamed!] moderate Democrats were concerned by Warren’s answer…”
Grrr!!!
I hope most of their listeners are paying attention to the way she slants coverage.
Cheers,
Scott.
Aleta
I used to listen to stories of a fisherman, probably born in the 1910s. His father and grandfather and great grandfather had fished the same grounds as he was.
His gfather and gr- grandfather were known as builders of quite fast fishing schooners. (His family documented as being in the area since the late 1600s. Today his son and grandson and great grandson each have their own fishing boats, leaving from the same harbor he did ….).
Anyway he would talk about the size and kinds of fish plentiful in the harbor alone when he was growing up. How quickly he could catch one by standing on shore as a kid. How he would fill his rowboat just by going out into the middle of the harbor. (In those days there was a still canning factory on a shore near his little town.) He claimed you could even catch lobster from up the rocks then — (I’ve read in the 1800s that was still true, but I don’t know about after.)
Some fish have come back since he died, for ex. migratory stripers, both in his harbor and in the river near where I live. A few salmon, supposedly a lot more alewives in the rivers and pogies in the estuaries. (From what friends tell me, not 1st hand knowledge.) Even since I’ve been aware, the rivers have gotten much much cleaner.
Unfortunately at the same time newer tech is destroying ocean bottom and overfishing.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kent: You say that you are not claiming that Clinton did anything wrong. A couple of sentences later you refer to it as corruption and influence peddling. Slightly contradictory?
sukabi
Apparently NOBODY believes in basic fact checking and vetting…which is how you can get away with making up somebody to quote to reinforce your own idiotic, self-serving theories of economics.
Meet Ron Vara aka Peter Navarro, drumpfs economic advisor.
SFAW
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice:
Screw that — gotta be Ba’al Zebub, or perhaps some deity that demands they be dropped into an active volcano.
SFAW
@Another Scott:
Up next from Mar-a-LiarSpawn:
“These big, strong, moderate Democrats came up to me, tears in their eyes, and said ‘
SirMa’am, I’m concerned about what Senator Professor Warren will do to our country, and that she’ll make it so I have to gay-marry, or get thrown in prison.’ “Another Scott
@Aleta: I recall reading that a (something like) 15′ long sturgeon was caught in the Potomac River back in olden times, not all that long ago (maybe 200 years, not 100M years).
Related link:
The Earth has been amazingly bountiful. It’s a crime what we and our predecessors have done to her. :-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Uncle Cosmo
@jl:
I thought much the same, see below.
She didn’t – the guy asking the question was (allegedly) quoting someone he’d spoken with. She “assumed it was a man” who said it, then implied that any man who thought like that would have a hard time finding a woman to marry. When TBH it wouldn’t disqualify him with the large number of fundy women who believe similarly.
It was funny in the moment but if Warren is nominated, the Thugs will be playing that clip in all their ads to motivate all those 1M+1W people to crawl over broken glass to vote against her, & it won’t matter how many plans she has or how good they are.
sukabi
@Martin: thing is, congress doesn’t really need Rudy to proceed with the impeachment, he just needs to be referred to the NY prosecutor’s office to be charged.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@SFAW:
I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that although I am an observant yet agnostic Jew, I do believe in Pele. I spent large parts of my childhood in Hawai’i. Nobody there makes light of her.
Uncle Cosmo
@SFAW: Offer them an all-expenses-paid vacation on a riverboat down the Amazon, toss in enough chum to attract every piranha in the river, & push ’em in.
Martin
@sukabi: I thought everyone in the field knew that.
Navarro is considered a nut inside academia.
Martin
@sukabi: True, but Congress’ oversight role should be to reveal any wrongdoing. Yes, a practical path to impeachment should be pursued, but a complete accounting of wrongdoing should also be pursued. Rudes falls into the latter category – what other crimes have been done here.
Uncle Cosmo
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice: The only Hawaiian goddess I’ve heard of is the one dedicated to incels – Lakanooki. But I’ve never been closer to the former Sandwich Islands than SanFran…
J R in WV
Teddy Roosevelt and FDR were fifth cousins… I’m sure I have some around, but I’ve never met any to know them. I think that’s not a dynasty in any real meaning of the word.
Juju
@Kent: I was fortunate to meet First Lady Hillary Rodham when I was a teen and lived in Arkansas for a year. It was her husband’s first term. She was a really nice and very impressive person. I wanted to be like her, but I learned that I was not as focused as she was. I suspect she took those board positions for the dual purposes of making money and as a liaison for her husband for getting and keeping businesses in Arkansas. Yes, I actually do think once the corporate board people met her, she probably did get the offers on her own merit as well as her connection to the governor. I don’t know if other First Ladies of Arkansas held board positions before Hillary became First Lady. I’m not focused enough to look it up.
Juju
@Uncle Cosmo: And if it wasn’t that incident, it would be something else.
NotMax
@J R in WV
Franklin and Eleanor were distant cousins as well.
laura
@mrmoshpotato: way to RickRoll mrmosh, I salute you!
https://youtu.be/8fPf6L0XNvM
Yutsano
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice: I am right there with you.
I’m Baha’i.
I was born in Hawai’i.
You do NOT fuck with Pele.
Another Scott
@Juju: FTFNYT, from 2007:
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Uncle Cosmo
@Juju: We all know they’ll use whatever they can against the eventual nominee (ETA: Whoever that may be; I’m strongly for Undecided right now) down to & including out-of-context statements, misquotes & flat-out lies – but why hand them something like that for the sake of a quick laugh? YMMV.