The bounty story may be what has finally pushed me over the edge. I’m too disgusted to turn on the news, to tweet, to do anything involving politics. I’m trying to watch the Rise of Skywalker and I have had to pause it twice because Carrie Fisher is dead and that fat evil motherfucker is in the White House quarters eating McDonald’s and watching Fox and it is just bullshit.
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No One You Know
I can’t even.
Cutting down my consumption of news. I can’t afford the amount of weed it would take to feel OK.
Raoul
How the fuck can Lindsey Graham even get out of bed in the mornings? He’s got to be drinking himself silly every night. His brand was Russia hawk. Now he’s a disgusting, florid, orange-nosed shit-pile of a man.
The only people I loathe more are McConnell and Trump himself. I’d loathe Pence, but he’s too stupid for me to waste even the energy of disdain on.
pacem appellant
Today has been hard for John’s reasons above and others. I’m breaking the seal on my xanax since exercise and pipe-playing didn’t take me down enough notches to sleep. Hang in there folks. Only 126 days until the nightmare can start to end.
SectionH
Steve. Rosie. Thurston. Lily, Lily, Lily. Be extra nice to all of them, Because. And also because they’ll worry less about you then.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
The worst part is he fucking knew since early last year, didn’t tell public, and hasn’t done a damn thing in response. American and allied troops have fucking died as a result of these “bounties”. He has knowingly let citizens of our allies die. And hasn’t done a thing. I can’t begin to imagine the amount of damage this will cause with our relations to our allies.
We have to clean house. This can’t be “look forward, not back” this time. Trump and everybody else that has played a role in this needs to be held accountable. Hell, let Iran have him; they’ve issued an arrest warrant for him
sukabi
Hang in there John, give your dogs a hug and Steve a scritch.
James E Powell
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I’m inclined to think that the worst part is that every one of these a holes who work for him has known all about this for months and not only did none of them do anything about it, but the entire organization of the Republican Party is still going to work feverishly to re-elect him.
Cacti
The mouse house trilogy was the Donald Trump presidency of Star Wars trilogies.
SectionH
Polls say ~60% of Juicers stay for the Pets…
John S.
@Cacti: Uh, no. That honor belongs to the second trilogy and Jar-Jar Binks.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Cacti:
Did Ruin Johnson murder your childhood?
Cacti
@John S.: Negative. Those at least had the point of telling Anakin’s story.
Mouse house Star Wars was wholly pointless.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@James E Powell:
I mean yeah. It’s pretty bad there were no whistleblower complaints during all of that time
Cacti
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Nope. They were all garbage.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Cacti:
So you think that Johnson, JJ Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy have RUINED Star Wars FOREVER?
It’s fine to not like them, but saying the Prequel Trilogy is better than the Sequel Trilogy is….certainly an interesting take.
literally just “sequel bad”. give me karma damn it.
What didn’t you like specifically about the ST?
Cacti
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): No, they just made a pointless, shitty, 3 film coda that added nothing worthwhile to the previous 6.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
Why is this night different from all other nights?
Oh wait, IT ISN’T. It’s still the same shitty combo of treason and a completely unreasonable number of firecrackers going off for hours outside my bedroom window. Just like all the other nights this week, and last week, and next week …
Where are people getting these almost-commercial-grade explosives in such massive quantities? How can they afford them? How can congressional Republicans look at themselves in a mirror and not just fucking implode from shame?
Inquiring minds no longer give a fuck, they just want some peace and quiet now and show trials very soon.
Kent
I amuse myself by concern-trolling my right-wing relatives and acquaintances, some of whom seem to think that I share their opinions because I’m a middle aged white guy. Like some of the dads on my daughter’s soccer team.
Conversationally I might drop something like….
“Yeah, I was kind of ambivalent about voting for Trump again after seeing how he botched the Coronavirus response. But fuck. Letting the Russians put out bounties on our troops? Fuck-it. I’m done with him. I have a nephew in the service and I’m not going to stand for that sort of disloyalty to our troops. At least Biden had a son in the service. He knows what that means.”
Cacti
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Did you not catch it from my previous posts.
They added nothing of value to the existing story.
Noskilz
These are uniquely exasperating times. Taking a break every now and then is probably wise – but since it seems that more and more is unraveling and the administration seems to be less and less able to cope, I’m not having much luck with that approach. Just as little too keen to see their pasts catch up with them and perhaps just naive enough to imagine they might.
Dan B
POV had a great two hour doc on women of color running for high office motivated by the pain they’ve experienced both personally and the pain that systems have caused their communities. It was exhilarating to feel their energy and their response to rough spots.
SectionH
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice: Maybe because Cole’s an army vet (Gulf 1) and shit like a fucking BOUNTY on individual US soldiers hits home, and the fucking Republicans could have had him out of office but they ignored all the rest of his crimes, and and and… Sorry, I know you know that. Maybe some of the bots didn’t.
I guess it’s the egregious treason that’s getting a lotta ppl srsly angry. I mean after all the rest of it, he can’t even be bothered to say Back Off? Ok now I’m gonna get into what kind of noose can we hang him with…
I’m really sorry about the fucking fireworks. I’ve been there. It’s a good thing I hate guns, because there were nights…
Dan B
@Kent: Good story. The other I read was a guy asked a guy behind him to keep six feet away because he wasn’t wearing a mask. The guy grabbed his mask and found himself knocked out by the guy with the mask. It’s better to punch with words.
Martin
@Cacti: Actually they were both pretty pointless. Star Wars was about how entitlement and fear of loss turns good people into fascists. And it was directed at children.
Did the other trilogies add anything meaningful to that message or expand upon it in any way?
joel hanes
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
And hasn’t done a thing.
Trump has traded allowing Putin’s hirelings to hunt American troops in return for help in the 2016 and 2020 elections.
Anne Laurie
How’s the garden, Cole?
Did you know — Satby let us in on this — Schreiners is having a great sale on irises? Irises are easy, even *I* can keep them alive & flourishing!
Also, I’m thinking you should be seeing green tomatoes by now, right?
Ceci n est pas mon nym
You gotta pace yourself. There are 133 days till the election, so that’s 133 more opportunities for them to exceed our worst expectations on how evil and incompetent they are, “worst” meaning the headlines from the previous day.
senyordave
I find myself awake at 2:30 AM because I’m worried that Trump will resign and the media and more than half of America will say “whew, I’m glad this over, now we have a normal president”. This “normal president” was actively complicit in all of Trump’s failures, especially the covid-19 response, his “response” to the racial issues, and Bountygate I do not for a millisecond believe that Trump and Pense did not know what was going on with the Russians.
Kent
Yeah. I’ve found it’s no fun being the shrill liberal. They tune you out right away. But if you do a little MAGA bonding first the express your doubts about why you can’t stomach Trump anymore it actually gets them to think and agree.
It’s all in the approach. Conservatives are much better at concern trolling than liberals. It takes a subtle touch and you have to know what buttons to push. They don’t give a shit about things like racism or environmental protection. But fuck with the troops or the economy, or do callow unmanly shit? That’s a bridge too far.
Mary G
@senyordave: I used to worry about that, but Pence is tied to Twitler by massive asskissing done on tape that will make great commercials against him.
Morzer
John Bolton scurrying forward to confirm that he briefed Trump about the Russian bounty program – and then said and did nothing about it, as Trump serviced Putin for 15 months – is one of the most despicable things I have ever seen in public life.
Ruckus
John
You aren’t alone. I’d bet most of us have gone way past anything/everything we find acceptable.
This isn’t a casino that went bankrupt through stupidity. It is of course an entire fucking country. And stupidity is just a part of it. A lot of us have been on this rock for a long while. We’ve seen ignorance, petty bullshit, racism, a level of partisan politics that rivals dictatorships but absolute idiotic, vapid malfeasance is a new unmeasurably low level of politics and humanity that none of us are coping with well. And he has supporters, people as ignorant, petty, racist, and vapid as he is. If there were just one of him, that could be explained, could be dealt with. But he has supporters, after all the shit he’s broken, he still has supporters. I doubt seriously that they can be salvaged politically, because how will they see anything except their hate and think it’s right? How do we come back from this? I wrote on twitter that I’d like to live 3 more decades, to pass 100 so that I could see what that’s like. I’m not sure that if I do, we will be recovered by then. Our world standing has been destroyed and I’m not sure it was all that great before, especially after GWB’s inglorious tenure. We keep going through this republican destruction phase and democratic recovery, but they keep getting worse and worse and we just don’t have the time to do half of the necessary work, when they strike again, worse than the last time. They don’t want to live in a democracy, in a country of responsibility. And they keep trying the old “fixes” that aren’t and don’t do anything positive but do plenty of negative. They’ve gone too far, even some of them know it. But have they seen the daylight or just that 10 watt night light and will go back to being the same worsening problem over and over?
senyordave
@Morzer: I’m thinking that John Bolton is actually a performance artist. His “art” was to acquire expertise in a field and then act in a manner as to show a complete and obvious lack of any values, and see how long it would take people to see that he was a contemptible piece of excrement. No actual person would really be this awful in real life.
lgerard
The NYT says the information was in the PDB on February 27th.
It would make sense that trump never bothered to read it as he had a Let’s pretend I’m Making America Great rally the following day in South Carolina and would be totally focused on that.
priorities
sanjeevs
@Kent: Now that’s quality trolling.
senyordave
@Ruckus: You have stated the problem very eloquently. I felt for a while it was one step back, one step forward, and then it became steps back, two steps forward. With Trump it has been a couple dozen steps back. With Biden as president, can we recover a couple dozen steps?
joel hanes
@lgerard:
Trump had a Let’s pretend I’m Making America Great rally the following day in South Carolina
Diamond and Silk had an audience with the Tangerine One on 27 February.
Morzer
@senyordave: As far as I can see, Bolton is an expert at peddling murderous nonsense to gullible audiences, but knows nothing whatever about his supposed areas of expertise. As a human being, he is as empty, arrogant and contemptible as the rest of his party.
Cacti
@Martin: Talking about the story itself, not the message.
OT told the story of Darth Vader’s redemption by his son. PT told the story of his fall and how he became Darth Vader.
In those 6 movies, the story had been told, and its arc completed.
Ruckus
@senyordave:
Joe Biden is not the issue. As several have stated before, he’s pretty good at listening and working with others. The issue is the 27-40% of the country that is insane. They won’t wear a mask because it infringes upon their right to be fucking assholes to everyone else. Hell they will die for that right to be ignorant fucking assholes. How do you appeal to that? How do you inform them, get them to change their tiny, ignorant minds?
eddie blake
oh good lord, the disney live action star wars stuff is just awful.
on SO many levels.
it’s not even funny. clone wars and rebels were pretty decent star wars stuff, but the best live action they’re doing by far, is the mandalorian. those new films suck.
Morzer
@joel hanes: Can you imagine the utter inane stupidity of the conversation between those three mentally ill half-wits?
Morzer
@Ruckus: You can’t change their minds. You can only wait for them to kill themselves off by the slow operation of reality.
Villago Delenda Est
John, I can’t blame you. I feel the rage too. The vile toddler is an outright traitor. Every Senator who voted to acquit him is an accomplice to treason.
eddie blake
@Villago Delenda Est:
“wipe them out. all of them.”
joel hanes
@Morzer:
I imagine that the conversations were much the same as any conversation The Donald grants to his tools: mandatory gross flattery, fulsome praise of his greatness and strength, head-nodding and exclamations of agreement when he reaches a pause. His Orangeness does not long tolerate the company of those who do not adhere to this formula. Birx can, and so is allowed a short leash; Pence is good at it, and has a longer leash. Messonier could not do it, and was exiled in short order.
akryan
I’ve sort of had the opposite reaction. I sort of followed things online but I had basically become numb to the daily outrage, which I know is exactly what gaslighting is meant to do: normalizing the unacceptable. This scandal broke through though. I’m back to really paying attention. The “attack the messenger,” reaction that we’re starting to see out of Republicans is disgusting.
Brantl
@Dan B: Not always.
piratedan
almost makes me wonder if the Dems do indeed gain control of both the WH and the Senate, if it would help our standing in the world, for the US to turn Trump over to The Hague for any international crimes that he and his administration may have committed (or aided and abetted, Kashoggi’s murder comes to mind) to indicate that we as Americans understand and respect the rule of law.
I want all of the illegal and heinous shit prosecuted. I want the stacking of the courts, undone and this is including the SCOTUS. I see no reason to allow any fruits from the treason committed to be allowed to stand.
Aleta
I remember people who voted for Trump so the price of their health insurance would go down, they were told, vs skyrocket if Clinton were elected. What a bad joke.
Gvg
I hope to be entertained in the future by multiple long complicated trials of all the crooks. If Biden will just let prosecutors lose to enforce all kinds of laws. I think following the money will lead…everywhere. The IRS investigations division needs to be fully funded and able to scare a reasonable behavior into all, all the fucking manipulators. Foreign money is illegal so I’d start there. Domestic money has lobbied to many loopholes so it’s harder to prosecute.
Biden should sit back and say, he is not interfering, just allowing equitable enforcement of the laws and the rich have to obey the same as everyone else. I think that will resonate with a lot of people.
Then he should concentrate of various helpful programs like healthcare, education and infrastructure. Oh lord is the diplomacy going to be work.
as to why nobody did anything….who had the power? People did report other things before and nothing happened because of Congressional republicans sticking together. It’s been proven traditional whistleblowing didn’t work on Trump, until election time hopefully. Leaks to get the public mad are doing something. Not carrying through non official tweet orders or stalling till twitler forgets are actually doing something for now. So many scandals that would have finished past politicians didn’t kill Trump, so why demand that people “say something”? It’s just not going to be that easy. We have found out. It’s in the news, leading to the election time, so someone, multiple someone’s, did do something. Now what are we going to do? Vote.
i’d like To see more leaks aimed at specific republicans up for election because it’s not just Trump. I want McConnel to lose.
Arclite
Putin put hits out on US soldiers, and Trump fellated him for it. That’s our presidency in a nutshell.
Cermet
When the russians were in Afghanistan we supplied massive weapons (giving ray-gun true happniness) and money to the rebels to kill russians; is it odd that the GRU and putin wants to return the favor, to a far lesser extent? I still hate the orange fart cloud and that piece of shit putin but these current events are just blow back from our right wing culture. Lets also recall that we killed a few hundred thousand Iraqi’s because our right wing wanted a war in part to help protect Israel for our religious loons, and a daddy complex by bush. That nation was destroyed. Its almost as if covid is Karma (not that there is any such stupid thing.) Our right wing and extreme religous nutcases makes our culture rather evil – not putin or other sick fuck levels but certainly we are evil thanks to our home grown sick fucks.
Dan B
@Brantl: The knockout punch response to the mask grabbing did give me a thrill. Perhaps the best way to view it is to keep in mind it doesn’t need to happen often before the “freedom” snowflakes get cautious.
I’m not sure how we deal with the AK 47 nuts.Maybe leave that to suburban moms who will demand that sheriffs do their job and make life unpleasant.
Sloane Ranger
@Cermet:
Nations using clients and surrogates to fight wars on their behalf has been normal behaviour for centuries. Not particularly noble but generally accepted in international circles.
That’s not the issue here. The issue is that Trump was told that the Russians were paying bounties to their surrogates to kill individual US and allied soldiers and he did nothing about it. Not even get the Secretary of State to call the Russian Ambassador in for an interview without coffee and biscuits.
Ladyraxterinok
@Cermet:
The rebels Reagan funded became the Taliban.
Just contemplate that
prostratedragon
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Or just under 10.958 million seconds. Yes, I’m a bit preoccupied.
SectionH
@Villago Delenda Est:
Y’know, one of the things I’ve read from a century or so ago, given the place, but going way back, like millenia, was soldiers worried about leaving their wounded to “the women.” We’re fucking supposedly civilized now, but we’ll see how many people lose loved ones before it’s over. My comment somewhere here today about which nooses do what wasn’t a joke. Traitors should be hanged.
Ryan Brenizer
Rise of the Skywalker? Please, John, you’ve suffered enough.
Amir Khalid
@Ladyraxterinok:
They were already calling themselves Taliban (scholars) when Reagan was giving them money and toys. When Russia gave up and went home, they turned their hate on the last and biggest Western imperialist standing: America. And when that fool George Walker Bush invaded, they had their chance to inflict misery on yet another meddling foreign power.
Bruce K
Big problem with the Disney trilogy: it looked an awful lot like they didn’t know what story they wanted to tell. Rise of Skywalker struck me as a bunch of vignettes that looked awesome in isolation, but didn’t come together into a coherent whole, and it backtracked across most of The Last Jedi in the process. As for TLJ, Rian Johnson had a lot of innovative and subversive things to say, but the middle movie of a trilogy isn’t really the best place to jump the train off the rails, not if you and the rest of the team don’t have a plan for where to go for the ending.
Rogue One, now that was a pretty damned good film if you ask me.
As for the here-and-now, President of the United States is a full-time, 24/7 job, one of the hardest in the world, and Trump is on so far over his head it would be funny if the results weren’t so horrific. Yeah, there was a lot of institutional rot that predated him, but in three and a half years, he’s turned America from a respected nation into a pariah (with help from McConnell and the rest of the damned 21st-century GOP).
There absolutely has to be a reckoning. Nuremberg Tribunal style, down to the gallows.
AxelFoley
@piratedan:
1000% agreement. I want the bastard tried and convicted for EVERY crime he committed and thrown in prison for the rest of his miserable life, and EVERYTHING he’s put into place undone.
prostratedragon
Orchestra arrangement by Johnny Mandel, vocal by Shirley Horn:
Suzy
@Gvg: Problem is that people in the Intel community are more on the conservative side of politics. They don’t necessarily want the GOP to lose their grip on power. They must still believe (they’re fools) that the GOP is better on National Security.
They just want Trump out.
J R in WV
@Cacti:
Do you not understand the purpose and motivation of film-makers working on these films? TO MAKE MONEY, STUPID!!!
And the films do that for their owners. Story value? Nope, they don’t really care about that, they’re in an industry focused on the almighty $$$$$$$$$$.cc
Except for small independent film makers, no cares about the cinematic glory, just the money!!
J R in WV
Cole:
Sorry your suffering from Trump-induced fury. Me too. Thank dog for Balloon Juice, which is helping to keep me sane. I’m gonna fire up the tractor to clean out a culvert blocked by leaves and silt from earlier flood events, and repair the road over that culvert.
Getting that big job done this morning will lift my spirits to no end.
Also some good news, I had a folder full of all the paperwork related to the tree fall onto the house. Invoices, estimates from the insurance adjuster, checks, bills, etc. It went missing over the weekend when I wanted to prep for a trip to one of the related banks. Found it a couple of hours ago.
Cole, just keep fooling with your garden, keeping house, helping your folks and friends, be centered on life and things you can accomplish, don’t be distracted by shit going on far away that you can’t influence. Do work for Dem candidates, that helps me quite a bit. I get regular phone calls from candidates we have helped, and it cheers me up to no end, we actually support each other in those calls, and it helps all of us, esp. the candidates, whom I always thank for their service and hard work.
And pet the critters. One of our younger dogs sneaked into bed last night, and laid between us. It was a little wakeful, but also soothing, she is so affectionate. All our critters are affectionate, even the nearly-feral kitty, when she deigns to come indoors, is affectionate.
Take Care, ya’ll
Skepticat
JC, I empathize. It’s so bad that it’s simply incomprehensible, and I’m unable to understand why so many people are unable to see it—or even seem to think things are fine. The entire country simply has fallen down the rabbit hole into an alternate, badly warped dimension. I’ve never felt so helpless, useless, and hopeless in my long life. November is so far away, and I fear what atrocities we’re yet to see. However, I’m grateful for my cats; being in a safe, COVID-free country, though it’s hot as Hades; being able to work online; and Balloon Juice. Hang in there, y’all.
cmorenc
@Morzer:
Analogous to how some people can perversely serve as “useful idiots” for the opposite side from the one the are nominally on, Bolton is perversely a “useful psychopath” at the moment detonating truth bombs on Team Trump’s foreign policy perfidy and incompetence. Doesn’t change that Bolton is a shit-weasel motivated to destroy Trump for his own vengeful reasons while still trying to cash in on his time in the Admin, but let’s not get in his way of wreaking havoc on Trump.
kindness
I’m wondering about what all your veteran friends are thinking about the ‘bounty’ story John. I think it will affect the election.
Ksmiami
@Ruckus: People thought I was going too far when I said show trials and hangings- but now I’m not sure that’s even enough…
drunkenhausfrau
I am a rage ball surrounded by a Möbius strip of anxiety.
mawado
Here’s hoping the storm passes. Something to do while the storm rages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHSiK5ix2t8
Ruckus
@Ksmiami:
This is going to sound a bit different.
I’m not for capital punishment. Even for this. It’s not a deterrent, people still do the wrong things all the time. To me it’s the wrong response, just like jailing people for being black. I think that it makes us no better than the people we catch. It doesn’t make the crimes not happen, we’ve been doing it our entire history and we still have murders and rapists and traitors. It’s too simple an answer to a not simple question and it’s ineffective. I think it makes people see only, well I’m going there, black and white. We often give fifty dollar fines for five cent crimes. Our police act like everyone is trying to kill everyone else and the fix is to kill everyone. Other countries do better, it’s time we looked at why and how. Overwhelming force is not the answer to every problem. It exacerbates the original issue and creates an illogical response. We have to start with the police, who practice overwhelming response to every issue, for walking down the street with a sign, you get beaten, often to death. Or choked to death for being black. Most of our police today practice overwhelming force for every issue, they have a system of that’s “OK, we want overwhelming force, but only when we want it.” They’ve just taken that to it’s logical conclusion, how do we know when, so it’s always. The death penalty is the same logic. It’s not working and we all know it, how about we look for a better answer. It’s time we grew up and stopped beating the children.
laura
@prostratedragon: Oh how I love Shirley Horn! 1995’s Main Ingredient is delicious – recorded in her home and balanced the tight with the casual. Thank you for a reminder of a gifted artist.
eddie blake
@Ladyraxterinok:
carter. the rebels CARTER funded became the taliban.
eddie blake
@Bruce K:
rogue one was a two hundred million dollar prequel where the makers of the film couldn’t bother with the $2.99 rental of ANH.
– the fanservice at the end of that flick BREAKS the sequel it’s SUPPOSED to lead into.
breaks it COMPLETELY.
“whatta piece of junk.”
SWMBO
@AxelFoley:
Criminal forfeiture. Take every fucking penny from each of them and put them in prison for the rest of their lives. Losing their money will hurt them more than anything. Take it all.
Gravie
My hub and I have retreated to 1950s cinema the last couple of nights. “Damn Yankees” last night; “The Marrying Kind” with Judy Holliday the night before; and the perennial favorite “North by Northwest” the night before that. We keep up with all the latest, horrific developments throughout the day, but once evening rolls around I can’t take any more.