Some media outlets say today’s SCOTUS decisions on Trump’s taxes are a win for the big orange baby, but he sure ain’t acting like it:
Live shot of Trump right now: pic.twitter.com/3OpowGtuaK
— Betty Cracker ? (@bettycrackerfl) July 9, 2020
Whaaaah!
And whaaaah some more:
What gives? Sounds like we probably won’t get to see his taxes before he’s driven from office, so that’s a bummer, but did anyone expect we would? What’s he so angry about? Does this complicate future money-laundering gigs, as some folks on Twitter are suggesting?
Open thread.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
Poor Donnie doesn’t want to go to jail.
Unfair! Obama didn’t have to go to jail!
different-church-lady
Daddy didn’t love him.
geg6
I would definitely say yes, it constrains his ability for future money laundering. He thought he’d skate on having to provide his financials forever and in any type of court. He figured that, with a loss in November, he could go back to Marred-A-Lago and continue raking in Russian and Saudi cash in even bigger amounts and everyone would continue to think he is some sort of financial genius.
Jeffro
Man, it is not even noon and already I am having one of the best days I’ve had in years. About four years, to be exact.
geg6
@different-church-lady:
And this, too, of course.
Constance Reader
He’s angry because they didn’t rule that POTUS is above the law, period.
Frankensteinbeck
I agree with the Disgruntled one. There’s something in those tax returns that the NY prosecutor will likely be able to use to jail Trump, or destroy him financially. And of course, he knows damn well they’ll be leaked.
EDIT-@Constance Reader:
I can’t deny, that’s a simple explanation that fits all available facts and everything we know about him.
Jeffro
I believe New York City is painting “Black Lives Matter” in front of Trump Tower starting today.
karma is one heck of a thing
Wag
The only reason the m*********er “won” is because he refuses to cooperate and turn over the rightly requested documents. Now that he’ll have do the right thing and turn over the documents, he knows he’ll be exposed as the crime boss that he is.
So of course he’s losing his shit.
geg6
@Jeffro:
Why yes! Yes they are. LOL!!
MisterForkbeard
So the Supreme Court punted on this in the most favorable way they could to Trump, and he’s really angry about it. Okay then.
Is it sad that I’m getting to the point where I can’t even read him? He’s such a whiny toddler. It’s like listening to your kid tell them that you’re wrong they didn’t want strawberries even though they said they wanted strawberries and this isn’t fair and <deep breath> why are you LYING about whether or not they wanted strawberries and also you’d better give them strawberries NOW or they’ll do something that will make you sorry and okay the fact that this is our President is very much depressing me.
Gin & Tonic
@Frankensteinbeck:
I have to say, I have been impressed with the IRS’s operational security. I wish something, anything, had leaked, but being in or peripheral to infosec for many years now, it’s impressive.
Jeffro
@Wag: wait until America sees how much money this clown has been taking from Russia, turkey, and Saudi Arabia.
trollhattan
BIRB! Typing large because a…falcon? just swooped into our little courtyard dogwood ten feet from where I sit doing the home office thing. Fled before I could grab a camera, as birbs do.
Baud
Vance is going to get the documents, although I doubt he’ll leak them intentionally. But that’s enough to get Trump upset, especially because he’ll be a private citizen again in 7 months.
oopzwtf
Does he have to be driven from office? Could he just be dragged? To the nearest Standard Oil station, perhaps?
Frankensteinbeck
@Gin & Tonic:
Yes, but they’re getting out of the IRS’s hands now, and into the court system. Still very tight, but they’re a gigantic target.
MJS
He’s caterwauling because 1) he’s stupid as fuck, and doesn’t see the temporary lifeline for what it is and 2) he has only one setting, as do his supporters – victim. Anything that doesn’t redound 100% in his favor is automatically deemed to be against him.
Miss Bianca
@MisterForkbeard: Kid still giving you a hassle about strawberries, eh? //
Uncle Cosmo
Sounds like a win for Needy Amin only in that he can probably drag this out long enough to avoid releasing his returns before the election. (My unscientific guess is there’s enough juicy stuff in them to send his polls into the Marianas Trench.)
Would anyone be surprised to discover (sometime in the future) that this was the quid for the quo of getting 3 of the Thuglican appointees to sign on?
And y’know, that might not be all that bad an outcome for a Biden Administration, if the details become public long about March 2021 & half of Twitler’s voters suddenly (finally!) realize he was a fraud all along.
Betty Cracker
Hahahaha!
patrick II
Not a lawyer, but if Vance indicts, won’t those parts of the tax documents directly linked to the indictment necessarily become part of public documentation?
geg6
@MisterForkbeard:
But it really wasn’t in his favor from his point of view. First, I believe he had lost these cases in the lower courts to begin with, so this means only that those courts will be making the decision, albeit with a more narrowly focused span of time and/or documents, again. And since DB has already said they will comply with the subpoena, in effect, he’s already lost in that court a second time. And second, they pretty much came down hard on the idea that the president gets special rights that no one else gets. He thinks he’s a king and he just found out that SCOTUS says no crown for you, Shitler!
MJS
@Frankensteinbeck: Fingers crossed. I’m hoping someone recognizes how slow the wheels of justice turn, provides the records to a reporter who will (hopefully) protect their source, and by the time it’s figured out who did the leaking, there will be new leadership at the DOJ that just never quite gets to making this particular prosecution a priority.
burnspbesq
If I had to guess, I’d say that the grand jury is highly likely to get the subpoena’ed documents, and possibly by the end of the year. On remand, Trump gets to assert any defenses to enforcement that were not foreclosed by today’s ruling–but that gives him no, or at best, very limited wiggle room.
What will happen on remand in the House subpoena case is anybody’s guess. I think it goes back to the same D.C. Circuit panel that had it initially–and that panel included, IIRC, Judge Rao. I have no doubt that she will interpret Robert’s four-part balancing test in a way that is both intellectually dishonest and favorable to Trump. Can she convince one other member of the panel? We’ll see.
Kristine
I’m wondering if this decision, or the warning that things didn’t look slam-dunky, was leaked to Barr around the time he tried to fire Berman?
Jeffro
@oopzwtf: make tarring and feathering a thing again!
Jay
@Gin & Tonic:
the IRS is too busy taking Covid checks away from prisoners in your For Profit Jails who desperately need the money for edible food and contact, to bother investigating the tax returns of the 10%.
Xenos
The timing issue is tricky… could this make it harder to arrange a pardon for himself if the disclosure is not due yet? I think this will need some review before deciding if it is good or bad.
Mike in NC
I like the avatar of Fat Bastard with the pig’s snout.
geg6
@Kristine:
It’s possible, but SDNY had nothing to do with any of this. So, if so, Barr isn’t the genius he’d like us to believe he is.
low-tech cyclist
This is the part I’ve never been able to figure out about Trump’s supporters: how they can read all these infantile tweets, see all that whining, and not hear his words as if they’re coming from a tantrum-throwing 6 year old.
How do all these supposedly salt-of-the-earth, traditionally-masculine WWC types that are his core voting bloc see or hear about all these tweets and not think, “what a pu**y!”
Especially when we’re talking about the most powerful man in the world here. If there’s anyone in this world, other than a few megabillionaires maybe, who shouldn’t be constantly whining about the unfairness of life, it’s the guy who holds the office of the President of the motherfucking United States of America.
I just don’t get it.
Jeffro
You have to wonder when, not if, he will call out Gorsuch and Kavanaugh by name today
” you were supposed to be MY guys!
bbleh
@geg6: @Constance Reader: @Frankensteinbeck: @Baud: @Uncle Cosmo: Broadly concur. It’s a win for Trump on PROCESS in that nothing will be revealed before the election, but in the long run — and especially in NY — it’s a big loss, because it means the Grand Jury proceedings can continue.
I don’t know what criminal penalties he’s subject to — maybe money laundering if it’s recent — but for the most part I think the worry for him is civil penalties, especially on taxes; IIRC there’s no statute of limitations on civil forfeiture.
And yeah, he’s upset because “his guys” didn’t say he’s above the law. (Personally, I think one of the main reasons the Court DIDN’T actually settle either case is that Roberts wanted very much NOT to have a 5-4 decision, so they settled for “clarifying” the law and remanding the cases.)
Hoodie
He’s mad because he didn’t get a get of of jail free card. He wanted total submission. Now, some DA in NY can get up in his stuff, and he knows that stuff is pretty nasty. People in NY used to tolerate him as mildly amusing, now they hate his guts.
Suzanne
I just love that Friend of Squi and Gorsuch joined the liberals on this. LMAO.
Betty Cracker
@trollhattan: Raptor visits justify an all-caps notice. :)
burnspbesq
ETA: New York doesn’t have a statutory accountant-client privilege, but that won’t stop Trump from asserting bullshit claims of attorney-client privilege wrt the subpoena to Mazars. Deutsche is a whole other kettle of fish. He’s pretty much screwed wrt the subpoena to Deutsche.
MJS
@low-tech cyclist: He can do anything he wants, and be any way he wants, as long as he hates the same people his supporters do.
Frankensteinbeck
@low-tech cyclist:
Because they are whiny shits themselves, and he was specifically elected to validate their whiny toddler anger that they’re not getting everything they want just because they’re white.
MattF
Bear in mind that Barr failed to subvert SDNY, and that people (other than Trump) are starting to look ahead to a post-Trump era. Doesn’t look good for the toddler.
raven
@low-tech cyclist: You want to know what they think? This just got posted on the FB of a friend
randy khan
I am a little surprised he realized that these decisions weren’t wins for him, or that anyone told him that they weren’t. If I were one of his handlers (please, FSM, never punish me that much), I would have told him that the Supreme Court ruled that he didn’t have to turn over his tax returns, at least for now, so that he wouldn’t explode like this.
patroclus
On substance, these are 2 gigantic 7-2 W’s for the rule of law. No President is above the law. Major precedential value. On process, the Mazars case is a tactical W for Trump – much more wrangling between him and Congress is to be expected, then probably more court arguments. On Vance, it is also a tactical W for Trump in that he gets to argue that enforcement will interfere in his official duties (he was arguing absolute immunity) and that will last a while as well. So, we’re not likely to see these records prior to the election, but we’ll probably get to see them later.
Jay
@low-tech cyclist:
Fixed it for you.
PaulWartenberg
His anger is stemming from various points:
these rulings underscore how trump is under investigation – criminal investigation re: the Manhattan case – and he can’t present himself as clean while going after Biden (and Obama) as the “corrupt ones.”
trump was looking for absolute criminal immunity: he wasn’t making these court cases about the ideology around Unitary Executive powers, he was looking for his own personal Get Out of Jail Free Forever card. If SCOTUS had ruled in his absolute favor, he not only would have used it to get even more corrupt now but argue later if he ever gets tossed out of the Presidency that his legal protections still applied. Clearly, he did not get that ruling.
most burning of all, for an asshole who demands personal loyalty (and then disrespects the suckers who do), when it came time for HIS judges Gorsuch and Kavanaugh to step up and save his ass… they refused. An always-angry always-obsessive narcissist like trump will ALWAYS take that as a personal betrayal.
Kristine
@geg6: Darn.
I wonder if that could change? Hope springs eternal in this wild heart. But then, I honestly didn’t believe Trump would last through 2017, so that hope is likely misplaced.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
It’s Trump, it’s good chance the returns will show Trump can’t finance his debt and the banks will start repoing his stuff like Mar A Lago.
scav
@low-tech cyclist: could just be that strong masculine salt-of-the-earth types are exactly what’s being presented on the screen now, while the silent dignified capable stuff was only in movies. It’s sort of their coming out reveal.
Luciamia
“Totally corrupt New York” ? That’s your hometown, Baby. Bet you wish you could bring back the ’80’s!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Xenos: I’d bet a kidney that trump has asked– regularly asks, in off-hour cell phone conversations made from the WH residence and Bedminster and Mar-A-Loco and AF1– Barr to draft a general pardon that trump can grant himself and put in a drawer till the polls close in… let’s say WI– nope, forgot about AZ. I do wonder if Barr, in spite of his professed disinterest in the judgment of history, has complied.
Gin & Tonic
@raven: “Logically deduced.” Alrighty, then.
geg6
@Betty Cracker:
I’d constantly be typing in all caps if that’s the rule.
Eagles and hawks had made a comeback around here in the past decade or two and we’d see them intermittently, but since COVID, we see them in our trees and circling around our yard all the time. All the birds around here have increased their presence since COVID. We’re seeing birds we’ve never seen before. I guess we’re going to have to buy a bird book (though I am NOT a bird fan, my John is).
Philbert
Vance will save us! Oh wait
Aleta
@MisterForkbeard: Except the kid is honest.
Patricia Kayden
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@scav: Tony Soprano, whining about his mother and asking why men can’t act more like Gary Cooper these days.
rp
SDNY in Vance means the federal district court where the case originated, NOT the U.S. Attorneys office for that area.
bemused
He can’t tolerate the word “no” directed at him.
Barbara
@MJS: There are two cases. He comprehensively lost on one of them, and the court punted on the other. Although the Mazars case was ostensibly 7-2, the dissent was, basically, that the majority decision should have been even stronger, attacking the basis for the government’s case. It wasn’t really a dissent from the result, in other words.
I don’t agree with the result in the other. Congress is, by design, the MAIN check on the executive branch and if it wants someone’s tax returns to figure out of the executive is corrupt it should get them.
The real problem for Trump in the Mazars decision is that Mazars won’t drag its feet and keep trying to prevent disclosure. They will turn them over.
Brachiator
No. Grifting is forever.
Quaker in a Basement
He forgot to add, “And everybody hates me. I’m going to eat worms!”
Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA)
@raven: Quite the profound treatise there.
I swear, they’re like toddlers imitating speech. They’ve got the inflections, the facial expressions, the body language, and hours of incomprehensible babble. It’s adorable.
Roger Moore
@Frankensteinbeck:
Also, too, because it’s a state case, he can’t get a federal pardon for it.
raven
@Gin & Tonic: amazaballs!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
interesting if somewhat painful to watch this, especially which part gets a physical reaction out of The Beast
West of the Rockies
@low-tech cyclist:
There was a compelling essay about a month ago on this very subject (the odd ability of Trump supporters to accept behavior from him that they would loathe in a coworker, neighbor, friend, or relative). I don’t recall who penned it or where it was published.
frosty
@raven: ??? tl;dr. That FB poster needs to learn about carriage returns*.
* Mentioned those to a 30-something at work and she just looked at me funny until I said something like “paragraph breaks.”
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Frankensteinbeck:
Ooh, ohh, ooh, Mr Kotter – Can I have both jail AND ruined financially?
narya
@raven: That is breathtaking in its ahistorical, unhinged, factually barren, whining. On the right day, I would love to take that person on IRL. Let’s see: so you believe that it is appropriate to have statues that honor people who committed treason?
frosty
I just crossed that line. Going out on a limb here, but as a newby I recommend Petersen’s North American Birds. It’s a tossup whether to get the whole continent or split it with east and west. I went the latter route.
Roger Moore
@low-tech cyclist:
Because their inner tantrum-throwing 6-year-olds agree with him. Look at how many Karens and Kens there are out there pitching fits over piddly little stuff. For every one who winds up a new YouTube star, there are dozens who don’t get filmed and thousands who are lucky enough not to have gone off in public yet. All those people look at Trump’s public tantrums and see the person they’d like to be.
ETA: or what @Frankensteinbeck said.
Betty Cracker
@raven: I’m going to go out on a limb here and conclude that guy is a dick.
Brachiator
@low-tech cyclist:
They intensely identify with Trump. They see themselves in his shows. They believe that librul media and the deep state is preventing them from getting what they want and Trump is their only hope. They will be loyal to him to the end.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@West of the Rockies: Tom Nichols?
Cameron
@Gin & Tonic: The wingnut version of Sherlock Holmes.
raven
@Betty Cracker: I just always a good idea to know what these people are up to.
Betty Cracker
@low-tech cyclist: I’m in a super-Trumpy area, so the local paper receives and publishes lots of letters to the editor from his supporters. Some of them sound like raven’s friend’s FB correspondent at #42 — just a hot ball of incoherent rage. Others are as whiny as Trump. And others pretend not to like Trump’s obnoxious manner (always characterized as abrasive rather than whiny) but falsely claim he gets results.
Brachiator
@frosty:
Do typewriters even exist anymore?
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Can New York at least do us a favor in the future and not prop up or worship the biggest asshole in the room as a “larger than life”, untouchable celebrity personality?
ThIs is, in big part, on them.
Betty Cracker
@raven: For sure.
catclub
Hopes for facts not in evidence. Democrats will overlook Republican crimes – see Eric Holder and CIA torture. But not by others.
But when it comes to financial crimes, and the only one in a crime who does time is …. the whistleblower. That will happen again.
catclub
always reply: “results: 130 thousand dead in the USA,… and counting.”
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Betty Cracker:
Your “hot ball of incoherent rage” triggered a memory.
The Onion was prescient.
JCJ
@Betty Cracker:
You mean like The Onion reported in 2012?
https://politics.theonion.com/after-obama-victory-shrieking-white-hot-sphere-of-pure-181959533
ETA: Shakes fist at Le Comte
MattF
@raven: Notable that ‘fascist’ is now in fashion on the Right. Could, maybe, backfire.
Roger Moore
@geg6:
Might I suggest as an alternative that you get a birding app instead? I find the information in my Sibley Birds app to be superior to the same information in book form. The added search capability- you can easily filter by a variety of useful characteristics when you’re trying to identify something, for instance- and having actual recordings of the birds’ calls instead of those sound graphs from the bound version make it much nicer. Also, too, having it on your phone is way more convenient for those occasions when you see an interesting bird when you’re out and about.
Tim C.
@raven: Thinking is a strong word for whatever that was.
On other thoughts.
Trump is right though, this is a huge loss for him. Yeah, sure we don’t get to know what’s in those returns before the election, but frankly, I think Trump is as low as he goes at this point; I doubt any Trump voter at this point would change their mind about anything in those returns. Even if it included proof he’s been committing treason/tax fraud/whatever. The GOP will pretend it’s all fake news, top to bottom.
2) The reason it’s bad is that this will be a STATE tax fraud case. cityandstateny.com/articles/policy/criminal-justice/why-hasnt-new-york-charged-donald-trump-with-tax… They already have him down for multiple counts, they wanted to get the Federal returns too to see what other charges they can bring.
3) The president has no power to pardon for state crimes. Even if the ding-dong theory he can pardon himself for Federal crimes is true (It’s not) he still cant get out of a State level offense.
4) 90% certain there will be an indictment unveiled on Jan 20th around 1:00 PM Eastern Time next year.
Kropacetic
Sounds like a result to me.
Kristine
@geg6: Does John have the Merlin Bird ID app on his phone (assuming he uses a smartphone–not everyone does)? I use it almost every time I walk. There are region-specific ‘bird packs’ for download that are updated pretty regularly, and a Facebook group for questions and info. Or if FB is a hated thing, the Cornell Lab has a mailing list. They’ll ask for money every so often, though.
Brachiator
@Frankensteinbeck:
Unlikely. Trump is super secretive and doesn’t want all his net operating losses to be shown, or indicators that his net worth is paltry.
He will probably destroy himself financially because of one of his typically inept deals. Also, as a former president, conservative plutocrats will do what they can to prop him up. It will be his reward for services rendered.
And he will get a nice stipend from Putin.
Betty Cracker
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Ha! I missed that somehow. Spot. On.
Kropacetic
As always, some form of projection or rubber/glue argumentation.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@JCJ:
Hahaha!
Ella in New Mexico
I told my husband last night that yesterday’s huge “THE KIDS WILL GO BACK TO SCHOOL COVID OR NOT OR WE’LL TAKE ALL YOUR STATE MONEY AWAY” distraction event told me one thing:
the Supreme Court was ruling against him on this tax issue, and likely in a big way.
Sucks to be right so much.
scav
@raven: !! so the hard-line free-market über alles-ists are now railing against mindless consumers. And defending the confederacy and its fanbois by condemning plantation thinking.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
They do exist, though I think they’re primarily made for self-consciously retro people.
eric
Why is he so angry? because someone explained that his pardon power wont work.
Fraud Guy
@Jeffro:
They were always McConnell’s guys.
artem1s
interesting that so much of his twit-rage is directed to the Senate and not the courts. Veiled threat to Moscow Mitch? Remember, McConnell knew why the FBI requested the surveillance on the Russian server in Dump’s hotel. He participated in keeping the info out of the public’s hands before the election. He may or may not have taken money from the Russians to help out with stealing the election. But Donnie sure as shit knows that McConnell is hiding something he doesn’t want the public to get their hands on. Or maybe the veiled threat is to Nunes, Cotton and/or Jordan. I hope we all get to live to read the next chapter in the US Game of Thrones.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: I’m not optimistic enough to believe Trump will land in the GrayBar Hotel, but I’m not so sure conservative plutocrats will be eager to prop him up, not unless he has dirt on them or something. Conservative plutocrats don’t strike me as super-charitable, and Trump is such a dick that he alienates practically everyone. My guess is he’ll start a BlazeTV-scale media thing and milk the rubes. ETA: Or wait for Limbaugh to croak and take over his radio show. That’s pretty lucrative.
Jay
Betty Cracker
Good shade from Biden:
AWOL
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Trump was loathed in NYC and lost decisively. His idiot-box show made him enticing to the rubes across the nation.
It was however, a tragedy, that Wayne Barrett, one of the few independent journalists who wasn’t seduced by Trump’s bluster, died during the 2016 campaign. He had a lot of low-down on the Trump Mafia.
You are correct that politicians, major media, and prosecutors did not do their jobs in investigating his questionable activites in NYC. NYS, NJ, and FL failed too. There is probably some payola involved.
Kelly
Bringing up from below.
I’m thinking a “why is Trump hiding his taxes” ad to the song “Skip a Rope”. Might strike a chord with those of us old enough to have heard it on the radio.
Anya
That tweet where he says: “no deference to ME” reminds me of Dick from 3rd Rock from the Sun. I am picturing Trump saying it the same way alien Dick used to say it.
Cheryl Rofer
And, to add insult to injury,
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
Do typewriters even exist anymore?
I don’t think my college age niece and nephew have ever seen a typewriter.
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
This. Conservative plutocrats aren’t spending money on politics purely out of interest in abstract ideals; they expect a return on investment. Wingnut welfare for people in Congress and some state legislatures is a relatively cheap way of encouraging them to stick to their guns when they might otherwise compromise in the hopes of improving their reelection chances. But Trump would not accept normal wingnut welfare levels of support. He would want to be maintained at the level to which he was accustomed, and that’s not happening. If he’s actually in debt to the level many of us believe, there’s no way in hell they’re going to bail him out just for old time’s sake. And that’s assuming they want to be associated with him; if he loses, he’s going to become an unperson in very short order.
MattF
@Betty Cracker: My gob gets smacked any time Trump attacks Biden as corrupt.
jonas
If you stuck with Trump through the pu**y-grabbing, caging kids, Mueller report, impeachment, Covid, gassing protesters, and ignoring Russian bounties on our soldiers, I seriously doubt there’s anything in a tax return that’s going to suddenly make you go “oh, well *that’s* a bridge too far! Good day, sir!”
His base isn’t a political movement, it’s a cult.
hitchhiker
Really looking forward to the ads showing Candidate trump saying he’ll be happy to make those returns public as soon as they’re out of “audit,” juxtaposed with today’s tantrum, four full years later.
And laughter in the background.
Laughter seems to be the response that gets to him the hardest. It’s the ultimate disrespect.
Hang on, America. We’re going to have a functioning federal government again.
Lacuna Synechdoche
Benedict Donald via Betty Cracker @ Top:
Courts give broad deference (broader than they should, IMO) for executive authority. NOT for personal aggrandizement and criminal cover-ups. See United States v. Nixon (1974) you contemptible, criminal, nauseating, traitorous jackass.
Bill Arnold
@raven:
Did you reply (or whatever one does on FB)?
That rant was almost entirely counterfactual projections and other counterfactuals.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Just occurred to me, Trump is in his late 70s and still hasn’t rebelled against his father whose been dead thirty years now. That’s why Trump has a such a crush on Putin, father figure.
Kropacetic
It may stiffen the resolve of an otherwise wishy-washy defector, though. Or motivate someone who never liked Trump yet was content to sit on the sidelines.
Danielx
@raven:
Gibberish, but the writer knew how to use spell checker although I can’t say much for the grammar.
Barbara
@Lacuna Synechdoche: “L’etat c’est moi!”
Kropacetic
It also lacks logic and a clear, coherent thought process.
Geoduck
@Brachiator: Why would Putin give the Shiatgibbon dime one when he is no longer of any use?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: also goes a long way toward explaining North Korea: He sees the fat, goofy-haired man-baby who passively accepted the fruits of three generations of corruption and cruelty as a remarkably successful self-made man.
ETA and OT: Colin Powell just said on MSNBC that he ‘knows for a fact’ that Mark Esper signed off on Alexander Vindman’s promotion last Thursday.
jonas
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: NYC never regarded Trump as anything other than a big-mouthed clown from Queens with a penchant for gaudy decorating, hare-brained business schemes, and eastern European women. It was The Apprentice that catapulted him to national prominence and lent him an aura of being some kind of serious business tycoon. This is all on Mark Burnett.
Steeplejack
I’ve been trying to make sense of the torrent of hot takes that have been coming out since the rulings. And I’ve read only about 20 of the comments here.
That said, my impression so far is that, while the rulings are a loss for Trump, he still wins, in a sense, because he can run out the clock until after the election. Justice delayed, justice denied. @HoarseWisperer has a couple of good threads up about that.
Someone else (@Popehat?) said the rulings will affect future presidents much more than they will Trump, and one ominous possibility is that they can be weaponized in nuisance suits against Democratic presidents by outfits like Judicial Watch, etc.
catclub
“The Authoritarians”
catclub
almost all. and also the stupid US voters who actually bought that.
Fair Economist
This is a Roberts special. It *sounds* like a fair judgement, but there are no political consequences for Republicans because any effects get delayed beyond November.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
Trump is whining like a baby about possibly losing in November, but if he does, he will soon settle into the sweet life and future grifting opportunities as an esteemed former president.
Trump will be lavishly paid for speeches and appearances. He might get a gig as a Fox pundit. And his fellow oligarchs will find ways to subsidize him.
Reagan and other retired leaders were always well provided for by wealthy Republicans. It is a time-honored tradition. And the massive tax cuts that Trump got for the plutocrat class demands a reward.
And this is not just an American thing.
Theresa May recently was paid £160,000 for a speech she didn’t even give because of the CoronaVirus lockdown and has earned £1,000,000 so far on the speaking circuit.
ETA. Limbaugh has lost a lot of his appeal. His show was dropped from the lucrative drive time slot by the number one English language radio station in Los Angeles.
But Trump knows how to milk social media. Unfortunately, unless he gets sent to the slammer, we will be hearing more from him in the future.
Brachiator
@Geoduck:
Reward for past service. And ex-presidents also have their uses.
debbie
Great news!
Danielx
@Kropacetic:
S’okay, I wasn’t expecting logical consistency.
James E Powell
I consider this a loss because we will not get to see anything before the election. The delay is probably the only way they got the right wingers to sign on to the opinion. There is no eff in weigh that they would have done this for any Democrat. And because nothing is going to happen anytime soon, the press/media will now consider his refusal to release his tax returns & financials a dead story and it will disappear, like all the stories about his & the Republicans’ corrupt practices.
Maybe it just doesn’t matter. We know he is corrupt and his supporters don’t care.
So, I will take some measure of joy in his apparent distress.
MagdaInBlack
@Betty Cracker:
Did you follow that tweet thread? Whats that crap about Bidens Caribbean island, connecting him to Epstein? Ive not seen that before.
Captain C
@Geoduck: “Yes, Donald, you come to live here in Moscow. You are safe here, I will never send you back. No one needs to know your secrets. You will have nice apartment in big building with your name on it. Here, have this nice Russian Big Mac and Diet Coke that Yuri brought you…”
Matt McIrvin
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Trump beat up his own son in full view of his college dorm-mates and that son is still steadfastly loyal. It runs in the family.
HumboldtBlue
@West of the Rockies: An Analysis of Trump Supporters Has Identified 5 Key Traits
yellowdog
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Doesn’t help him with state charges.
MattF
@jonas: Well, NYC residents stopped him in his quest for greatness on the West Side. My sister never forgave him for the ugly stuff that got built there. Public housing for plutocrats.
low-tech cyclist
@raven:
I know it’s been said already in this thread, but haven’t those people heard of paragraph breaks? Nothing like a wall-o’-text to make me conclude it’s not worth the bother.
@Brachiator:
I don’t think I’ve seen a typewriter in this millennium.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Trump sees Kim as a soul mate; both born to privilege to crazy authoritarian fathers obsessed with over sized hotels? Trump certainly doesn’t form any emotional attachment to women.
Matt McIrvin
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Trump can only pardon federal crimes. If the state of New York goes after him, that won’t work.
Noskilz
I think he’s upset because his finances and business practices cannot survive any serious scrutiny ever. He’s been engaging in tax evasion and a variety of other corrupt practices his entire career, to say nothing of the lying. Having to produce that information is going to be a bad time for him – whether that happens today, tomorrow, or six months from now.
Oddly, that these sketchy practices have been a fundamental part of his MO for decades also reassures me that even if some crazy chain of events gave him blanket immunity for his past crimes, he’ll be in trouble with the law again soon enough, as he is a habitual liar and a habitual criminal that is lacks both the ability and inclination to clean up his act. It seems unlikely that the Trump organization that enabled the tax evasion, money laundering and fraud is going to be able to quickly or gracefully reform itself.
One of the reasons I can’t imagine him dropping out of the race – never mind his ego, Presidential immunity is what is keeping him out of jail. Once that ends, his life is going to get much more unpleasant as he is on too many radars to go back to his days as an absurd reality show personality.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@geg6:
@trollhattan: There’s a hawk who hunts at least sometimes in our neighborhood. I’ve seen him on the wing once or twice, one time came face to face with him in our backyard just after he’d caught something. He flew off with it before I could see what it was.
A friend of ours lost a cat to a predator. She thinks it was the hawk but I’m not sure they’d go after a cat.
James E Powell
@Steeplejack:
That is not a possibility. It is a certainty. And the courts will not take two years to order Democratic presidents to do whatever the Republicans want them to do.
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
Neither does anyone else.
Zip, zero, nada, none, including hisself. He keeps trying, but even he knows he’s shit.
scav
If the orange boy does go to the hoosegow, his faithful will still put up a black velvet painting of his physiognomy with candles and incense beneath. Martyrdom gets them into overdrive. The sneaking suspicion that he’s making them look ridiculous, that might prompt a teeny bit of amnesia among the rabid.
Cheryl Rofer
@MagdaInBlack: Looks like pedophilia is the next on the Repubs’ list of talking points.
Roger Moore
@low-tech cyclist:
I’ve definitely seen a typewriter this millennium. It wasn’t purchased in this millennium- it probably wasn’t purchased in the last decade of the previous one, either- but it was kept around just in case somebody needed to type on a multi-part form.
Danielx
@Brachiator:
We may be surprised. If he drags the Republican Party into the same electoral abyss as he seems to be heading for, it will put paid to a decades-long Republican scam, which made a relatively few people exceedingly comfortable at the expense of the rest of us, not to mention wasting all the effort they put into cultural warfare. I don’t see them being too grateful to the guy who ran the gravy train off the rails, especially a guy who is supposedly already wallowing in money and who shits on other Republicans/plutocrats on a regular basis.
Ruckus
@Uncle Cosmo:
That’s cute. Thinking that any of his supporters left would wake up and turn on him.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@low-tech cyclist: There’s an American Writers Museum in Chicago that has a display of typewriters. Some of them belonged to famous writers. Those are locked behind glass. But there are also typewriters that museum goers can play with. A friend took had high school aged grandchildren and they were fascinated. They couldn’t figure out how to put the paper in, and had to be shown how to use the carriage return.
It’s revenge for them making us feel slow with our phones.
Just One More Canuck
@Brachiator: Tom Hanks keeps the industry alive by himself
MagdaInBlack
@Cheryl Rofer:
Ya ? I just saw that too.
Great. Here we go.
catclub
The key part of the weaponized is the right wing judges that have refused to consider expediting Delay of what should be an open and shut ruling is winning for Trump, and they were ok with that.. But who will when it is a Democrat.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@yellowdog: @Matt McIrvin: IANAL but Hoodie made what was to me a persuasive argument in a lower thread:
I don’t know how far NYS would pursue him, but I suspect trump could get the rubes to cough up enough money to drag out the process long enough for even the Keef Richards of Cheezberders to die in his own gilt-painted bed.
Kropacetic
Seoul mate, perhaps? (Yes, I know that’s the other Korea)
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Tim C.: Skimmed the article. On most of the tax fraud issues, the statute of limitations has run out.
That in itself might provide fuel for some ads that pretend to be pro-Trump. “There’s plenty of evidence that Trump and his family committed billions of dollars of tax fraud. Vote Trump, he’s been criming so long, the statute of limitations has run out on most of it! Ha-ha, suck it, prosecutors!”
Ruckus
@low-tech cyclist:
Well, how many of his supporters really are clones of his dumb ass, just possibly not to the same degree? I’d bet the number doesn’t come all that close to zero.
low-tech cyclist
@Roger Moore:
OK, but most of us give ourselves a pass when we’re being whiny-ass crybabies because we don’t see that we’re being whiny-ass crybabies, but we generally recognize (and have contempt for!) the same behavior in others.
How’d that last part get short-circuited? That’s what flummoxes me.
And those Karens and Kens who record themselves throwing tantrums and post them on Twitter or YouTube – again, they’re seeing themselves as righteous, but the ones I’ve seen always make them look ridiculous. Do any of these people become YouTube stars, even for a passing moment?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Cheryl Rofer:
How can anyone hear or read that and not think it’s lunatic?
japa21
@Dorothy A. Winsor: My son has a few really old typewriters which he bought to show his HS students. They were fascinated and amazed that people actually had to use them. And then, of course, they all wanted to give it a try.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I am confused. Some of what I read sounds like Vance gets the documents, other stuff says they don’t. Was any decision actually made, other than kicking the can down the road?
MisterForkbeard
@raven: I’m going to assume that CAME in “giant wall o text” format.
Sounds about right. Assertions that their mangling of history is the REAL history, a denial of the facts regarding BLM, taxes, and calling liberals ideologues.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Dorothy A. Winsor: We ran into a street poet using a typewriter just a couple years ago (in Portland outside Powell’s World of Books). Give her a donation and a subject, and she’d compose a poem on the spot, typed on her manual typewriter, the kind with the black and red ribbons. Remember those?
I learned to type on those old manual typewriters. Going to an electric one took some getting used to, the touch was so light. And for awhile when computer keyboards offered the option of giving you a little “click” sound, I always turned that on.
The Moar You Know
@Brachiator: Trump will get nothing from Putin if he loses this next election save for maybe a nice cup of polonium tea or a VX facewash; Vlad doesn’t leave loose ends, and Trump is already in that category.
I think Trump has no idea of how much danger he put himself in by getting involved with these people in the first place.
MagdaInBlack
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
These would be some of the same folks who think trump is anointed by god, so….there you have it.
Makes my brain hurt.
Baud
@WaterGirl: He’ll almost certainly get them at some point. Trump will continue to throw crap at the process, but I don’t know how long he can delay the inevitable.
Leto
@geg6: @trollhattan: @Ceci n est pas mon nym: we have a pair of red-tailed hawks that live in our little park, right behind us, that hunt along our part of the Schuylkill River and surrounding area. You can hear them talking to each other which is always a treat. Occasionally they get down to tree top level where you can really see their colors/markings.
I wanted to photo them and send it in to the On the Road series, but as soon as I had the idea, and got the camera battery charged, they stopped coming around. Assholes!
Emma from FL
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Nope. Speaking up for New Yorkers. They have always violently despised Trump. And they tried to tell the country why.
Emma from FL
@Roger Moore: And people that do not want electronic records anywhere.
Frankensteinbeck
@Brachiator:
Not Trump. Trump’s going to suddenly have no friends whatsoever. The reasons ex-presidents do well don’t apply to him.
Nope. His fellow oligarchs do not actually like him. He can’t give speeches and do appearances. He’s too big an incoherent fuck-up. You can’t put him on Fox, because you have no idea what he’ll say and he refuses to talk about anything but himself. And frankly, he’s not witty. At all. Having him repeat “very nasty” twelve times in one paragraph is not good television.
Reagan and other retired leaders were part of the system, who worked with and provided back to the Republican Party. Trump is an asshole who the party leaders (like McConnell) hate personally. McConnell gets the credit for the tax cuts. And plutocrats consider Trump the most gauche of the gauche. He has always been unpopular with the ultra-rich whose approval he has desperately desired.
And that’s the kicker. When Trump loses the election, the base that follows him fanatically now will totally abandon him. They don’t like Trump. He’s the champion of WATB white supremacy, and they will die for that, as long as they don’t have to get out of their lounge chairs to do it. The moment he’s out, he has no power to deliver white supremacy. If he loses the election, it’s even worse than that. He will have failed white supremacy. Trump has no future as a demagogue if he loses this election.
mad citizen
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Watching the clip of the 2016 debate with Hillary is painful. I still don’t know why she didn’t tell Donny to shut the fuck up when he interrupted her.
catclub
Those people would CLAIM that God is omnipotent, so in charge of everything, but they never mentioned that Obama, also,
was anointed by God to be president. funny that.
patrick II
The Yojimbo president. He is working to kill both those who support him and those who don’t.
Roger Moore
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
There’s a fun “Kids React” video for typewriters.
joel hanes
@geg6:
I guess we’re going to have to buy a bird book
audubon.org/news/what-bird-guide-best-you
IMHO, get either the Sibley or the Peterson Field Guide —
no book that uses photographs is as good for identification, because no one or even several photographs of actual birds can represent the species markings that can vary from place to place vs. those that are truly diagnostic of the species.
(as an old, I have a sentimental attachment to the Peterson guides)
Here’s a poem:
poets.org/poem/letters-father
Another Scott
@Barbara: +1
Thanks.
I haven’t read the opinions, but I’m still flabbergasted that a law that says “the IRS shall furnish” the President’s tax returns on request of the relevant committees of Congress is in any way controversial. It clearly does not impact Separation of Powers or anything else.
Cheers,
Scott.
Fleeting Expletive
If kids go back to school this fall, will grandparents ever be able to see them indoors or without masks or without fear of contagion? This won’t turn out well.
Sloegin
A win is a win, and I’m hopeful, but I’m not holding my breath for any substantial legal pain thrown at Trump once he’s out of office. You’ll be able to set an egg timer on the start of the “Let’s look forward, not back” movements after he loses.
The US and California both dropped tax evasion charges on Dick Nixon after he resigned.
Tony Jay
@raven: Jeebus Key-Heist, but that’s one painfully long way of admitting that it really was they who ate all that cat-shit after all.
What a wally.
joel hanes
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
prop up or worship the biggest asshole in the room
IMHO, blame should fall more on David Pecker of supermarket tabloid fame and on Robin Leach than on New Yorkers as a group.
Mallard Filmore
@MattF:
“Fascism” … thats when I get out-voted, right?
HumboldtBlue
.@realDonaldTrump, you want to talk about corruption? I’ve released 21 years of my tax returns — release yours or shut up.
trollhattan
@Cheryl Rofer:
“Hogan Gidley”?!?
Worst Turing Test robot, ever.
The Moar You Know
“carriage returns”
The last manual typewriter factory in the world (India) closed their doors for good in 2011. I think there are still electric typewriters out there. At work, I threw our old office one out in 2010 at the behest of the owner, I still think we should have kept it.
It’s accessories that will kill it off; IBM Selectrics will run forever, but both the ball and ribbons wear out, and I doubt those are being made any longer (analogous to the situation with magnetic tape, which is just getting pulled out of old stock as the last batch of fresh was made back in the 00s.)
Roger Moore
@low-tech cyclist:
We don’t see ourselves as crybabies because we believe our cause is just. Trump’s supporters see his cause- owning the libs, making life hell for minorities, etc.- as just, so they’re willing to cut him slack when he pitches a fit for not getting his way.
geg6
@Roger Moore:
As mentioned in my post, I won’t be looking any birds up because I do not like them. I find them disgusting. Seen a few too many close up and the insect infestations alone make me hate them.
And my John is useless with apps. He didn’t realize you need to close windows/apps on his phone until his phone became un-useable yesterday. He is technologically challenged enough that he looks up to me as an expert. LOL!
trollhattan
@raven:
Stream of…something that’s not consciousness. They do have the Random capiTalization and ALL caps thing down cold, as well as the run-on paragraph from hell. It’s called the “Enter” key. Befriend it and learn its many uses.
Thank you,
–tHe radical LEFT
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Cheryl Rofer: I don’t know when Kellyanne tried to get this ball rolling on “creepy”, but I think this was a pretty quick response from an outside group
Geoduck
@Frankensteinbeck: There will be a lot of people saying they never supported him, but I don’t think the cult will totally abandon him. If he’s not legally and/or medically incapacitated, he’ll probably be able to still go around giving rallies and picking the rubes’ pockets.
Betty Cracker
@MagdaInBlack: That Twitter thread sounds like Q-anon brand horseshit to me. I don’t think Trump will be able to make corruption smears stick to Biden. AFAIK, the worst thing in that category he’s done is allow his brothers and son to trade on the family connection, which is icky (IMO) but not illegal and not (unfortunately) uncommon.
As gross as the White House’s “Biden is a creepy dementia patient” campaign is, I think they’re doing Biden a favor, if anything. He’s not the most articulate guy in the world, but unlike Trump, he can speak in complete sentences and has a grasp on policy details. Gidley, Kellyanne and the rest of those ghouls keep ratcheting expectations down, and I think they’ll rue the day.
MagdaInBlack
@catclub:
Weird how that works, aint it ?
hueyplong
Today’s opinions seem like a win for Trump if he wins the election, and a loss if he doesn’t.
Read that way, we should take a lot of satisfaction in Trump’s twitter spews. They make it seem like he thinks he’s going to lose. Which makes him Future Defendant Donald Trump.
But it might not come down to that. It’s getting easier and easier to buy what TomJoseph is selling in his tweets on Trump’s alleged frontotemporal dementia. Trump may not be feeding himself a year from now.
I want him to understand what’s happening to him every step of the way down, but I may end up not getting my wish.
trollhattan
@The Moar You Know:
I have a very slick Panasonic daisy wheel typewriter in a closet. It works perfectly but the ribbons and correction ribbons simply don’t exist.
Pity
Mostly used to fill out preprinted forms.
Sab
@Brachiator:
@Roger Moore: We use them once a year to type bank confirmation forms that have carbon copies for the client. I kid you not.
patrick II
@The Moar You Know:
My brother collects old manual typewriters. Every once in a while I receive a nicely typed snailmail from him. He doesn’t like email.
trollhattan
@mad citizen:
When he literally stalked her on stage I thought I was going to stroke out then and there.
Anybody who claims they didn’t know they were voting for a monster is a damn liar.
Brachiator
@Frankensteinbeck:
he will soon settle into the sweet life and future grifting opportunities as an esteemed former president.
Shit, the entire Republican Party is tied to Trump and willing to go down in flames for him. Has a single GOP leader said a goddam thing about Trump being responsible for the needless deaths of 130,000 Americans?
They will be tied to him forever. They need to make sure he is always comfortable.
Folks here righteously hate Trump. But I am surprised at the number of plutocrat friends he has, and how eager right wing people are to work for him. It is an evil alternate universe, but it is populated by a lot of people who love Trump.
And again, Trump didn’t just give plutocrats a massive tax cut. He didn’t do the actual work but still gets credit for an overhaul of the tax code that gives the uber-wealthy every possible break imaginable in every area of individual, corporate and estate tax.
This alone has earned him a lifetime sinecure from the right wing upper class.
MagdaInBlack
@Betty Cracker:
Yes, I thought it crackpot nonsense too. I see those sort of things bubbling up on the edges, and kind of watch to see how long before, or if, it shows up mainstream. That one caught my eye. No documentation was provided, of course
sdhays
Looking at the state of the FTFNYT, I’m not optimistic.
Betty Cracker
@geg6: My husband also thinks I’m tech support, which is a sad commentary on his own skills because I know NOTHING. Our daughter and I had to team up to make him stop using a clam shell phone several years back. His idea of “texting” was to write something on paper, take a picture of the note and send it to us.
The Moar You Know
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Huge hole in that argument:
He doesn’t have shit. He’s fucking broke. Lawyers rarely work for free, especially for the likes of Donald Trump.
Yutsano
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
I’m not so sure about that. I have seen examination open audits in years that should be way beyond statute. I noted when I was working on one case that exam had opened up a case in 2004. It started in 2019. So yeah if my agency gets proper funding in the next budget cycle (if Allah wills it PBUH) I could maybe see someone getting creative with both his personal taxes and the Trump* Foundation taxes. So there could still be some charges coming in the future. Not to mention there was a whistleblower complaint in Treasury saying someone political was interfering with his audits while he is President. It wouldn’t shock me if Mnuchin had directly interfered here. Or the mob lawyer Rettig.
Uncle Cosmo
IOW, somewhat more literate than our resident Knucklehead Of The Frozen North.
Sab
@Brachiator:
@Roger Moore: We use them once a year to type bank confirmation forms that have carbon copies for the client. I kid you not.
@patrick II: Typeface has changed a lot. I have a couple of manual typewriters that I would love to use for work filling out those bank forms, but the typeface looks archaic. The bell always startles me.
hitchhiker
@low-tech cyclist:
In the moment, yeah. But it generally takes me about half an hour to realize I was being an idiot — no matter the righteousness of my complaints. Then I apologize.
There are times when I watch myself go right over the top, become a madwoman, and then it takes a day or two to get enough distance to figure out what happened. It’s always about something else, some bullshit ancient rage/fear that I can’t/won’t resolve.
The trump situation is that he is consumed by stuff like that, every hour of every day, and he doesn’t know it. So are his cult fans.
geg6
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
SDNY just tossed Michael Cohen back in jail. Apparently for going to a fancy restaurant and having his picture there published in one of the NY papers. Mikey was supposed to stay home and out of the press. Hilarious.
Barbara
@The Moar You Know: It drives me crazy when I need a typewriter and don’t have one. I do a lot of form filling and sometimes it really is easier to use a typewriter. Not often, but when I need one I find myself really vexed at having to come up with an alternative. The latest was printing out what I wanted to insert and then taping it onto the document and printing it out again. The form looked like a ransom demand. Being at home and doing this is even harder.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker:
that is hilarious– I wish I had thought of it before I lost the ability to make letters with a pen or pencil
Gravenstone
@trollhattan: We appear to had a bald eagle (or two) take a liking to my place of work. Someone took pictures of it a couple weeks ago, and it was out again this morning. I walked about 30′ from it (sitting atop a light standard for our parking lot) before others around me pointed it out. Apparently it was squawking at folks earlier.
Barbara
@geg6: These guys really don’t understand the criminal justice system. When Paul Manafort whined to Judge Ellis that he had a hard time preparing his defense from a jail a few hours away, apparently they never considered that the judge would just move him to the much less accommodating jail in the DC area. A “common” criminal would have gamed all this out ahead of time. Judges know how hard prison is. If you get a favor you better be really thankful and adhere to the letter of your conditions. Dumb ass.
Ken
@Roger Moore: I remember having exactly that sort of reaction to a “music box” dating from the late 1800s. It was set up like the little boxes, except instead of a little pluck-harp it had the guts of a piano, a couple of violins, and some drum heads, all connected by levers and cams to a rotating disc covered with bumps and notches that played the music.
Until now, I hadn’t really realized that a mechanical typewriter is just as fascinatingly complex and obsolete.
scav
Another great loss linked with typewriters is that fewer of us know the proper way to eat an ear of corn. ding!
geg6
@Betty Cracker:
He and John should get together for a beer. They sound like they could be twins.
sdhays
@Brachiator: I don’t think so. He’s so toxic, corporations can’t pay him to talk at corporate retreats. He’s suffering from some neurological disorder, so who knows how long he can even keep up the pretense of being functional?
The big difference between Dump and any of the other pieces of trash he defeated in the 2016 Republican Primary is that those people were cultivated by the Republican wealth system – they were owned. Dump is owned by Vladimir Putin; he just likes to flatter himself that he’s the equal of these other actually super rich men. He’s not their guy, he defeated their guys. He was good for them (at least they think so), but they don’t owe him anything, especially if he brings down their Party for the next decade or 3 (and with 2020 a year with major redistricting implications, that’s definitely a possibility).
Geoduck
@geg6: (Shakes head) He goes out to eat in a restaurant while under house arrest and in the middle of a pandemic.
trollhattan
@Gravenstone:
Wowsers, alpha birb! I’d love to have a resident neighborhood eagle, although the neighborhood critters might not appreciate it.
Gin & Tonic
My daughter, 30-something, who writes as a large part of her job, likes typewriters and has a couple. Doesn’t use them for work, just likes them as objects.
Gin & Tonic
@Geoduck: Nobody ever accused him of being smart.
WaterGirl
@geg6: oops!
Spanky
Had to look. Amazon has manual typewriters and ribbons.
Re:bird ID, get yourself the BirdNET app for your phone. It records, well, everything, but it can ID bird calls even if they’re pretty faint. And since it runs the audio spectrum in real time you can train yourself to ID a bird by the spectral signature as well. Works great for me ’cause I can’t find birds in a tree canopy for shit.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Roger Moore:
That is really cute!
catclub
I disagree. I think there are enough guys like Sheldon Adelson that will provide for him.
jonas
@MattF: Thanks for the link to that article. It’s interesting how it focuses on the one unique personality trait that Trump seems to have completely discarded as president: a willingness to do a complete 180 to get what he wants. The sort of chameleon-like, compass-less qualities that allowed him to repeatedly fail upwards in the NY real estate market has become a straitjacket of bitter, resentful stubbornness now. Maybe its the fact that he’s trapped inside with this base, rather than the other way around, or maybe, as many have suggested, his mental faculties are just waning. Who knows?
catclub
I have taken to watching manual transmission rebuilds on youtube.
Talk about impressive technology – metallurgy and precision machining. Also complex. Not yet obsolete.
dmsilev
@Betty Cracker:
That’s just wrong. He’s supposed to embed the photo into a Word document and then send that.
Keith P.
@geg6: Cue the clip of a closeup of Michael Cohen staring sadly into the camera as bars slide across the screen
hueyplong
@jonas: When you recall that their biggest thing is projection, it’s pretty easy to go ahead and believe your eyes and ears about Trump’s cognitive decline. He’s tried running ads against Biden on the topic.
He put impeachable pressure on Ukraine to allow him to argue that Biden is corrupt.
And now we’re seeing previews to a possible campaign strategy of calling Biden a pedophile just as Ms Maxwell goes into custody.
These guys are not 11th dimension chess masters. They’re some kind of extra transparent.
Trump being in cognitive decline is as sure as the sun setting in the west this evening.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
The thing is that among Republican elites, at least, it’s purely transactional. They’ve tied themselves to him because he is able to give them what they want. As long as he’s president, he’s the only person who can give them what they want*. But the moment he’s defeated, he will no longer be able to give them anything. They will be desperately trying to cut themselves free from him so he doesn’t drag them down. They’re likely to fail, just as they were likely to fail in their attempts to prop him up, but at the time each of those decisions looks like the least bad option.
*Yes, in theory they could have ditched him for Pence when given the chance, but at the time they believed, with good reason, that turning on him would do more damage than continuing to support him.
Steeplejack
@Roger Moore:
For the (national) elected ones, at least, there’s probably some element of krompromat in there too.
Betty Cracker
@dmsilev: Word doc? Hahaha! The mister uses a Chromebook solely to look up gardening shit and track storms. His auntie and mom live not too far away, and to make my life even more hellish, one got an iPad and the other a Chromebook, and now I’m tech support for ALL of them, supporting six devices for those Luddites, inclusive of their smartphones. Y’all may not think I’m a saint, but I am!
Steeplejack
Interesting thread:
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Kent
There are two vintage typewriter stores in Portland that are quite cool. One is just typewriters, the other is film cameras and typewriters. My 17 year old “writer” daughter wanted one so she could be more like Hemmingway or something. I think she just wanted it on her desk.
pacifictypewriter-or.com/sales/
bluemooncamera.com/
They are also all over ebay. Honestly if I was looking for a typewriter, I’d put a “typewriter wanted” note on your local NextDoor bulletin board. My daughter was looking for a film camera and did that. Got about 5 responses from people who had them in their closets gathering dust. She got a very nice Canon SLR for about $50 with a good lens from a lady who hadn’t touched it in 10 years.
retr2327
@bbleh: From a political standpoing, I would have loved to have Trump’s financials come out about 6 months or more ago, so that they could lead to other impeachment charges, possible move a few voters in the middle, etc. But that ship has sailed: it’s too late for any further action in Congress prior to the election, and I find it hard to believe that any Trump voter who has stayed loyal through the sh*tstorm of the last 6 months is suddenly going to be moved by any evidence of Trump’s financial misdeeds now. So to all those bemoaning the likelihood that the finances won’t come out before the election, I’d ask: why do you believe it would matter either way? And maybe add: can you name a single Republican senator would would do anything different as a result?
From a criminal standpoint, on the other hand, this is important. Now, Trump can dread not only the humiliation of getting his butt kicked in the fall (fingers crossed), but also getting indicted and prosecuted thereafter.
So it’s a pretty clear win in my book.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Watching Trump debate Biden would provide a lot of entertainment possibility, and the contrast would be hard for even his most die-hard supporters to ignore.
Unfortunately, I think a debate over Zoom would mostly consist of painfully listening to Trump unable to use the mute button.
Gravenstone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: A thought occurs, re. Kim. If his sister does indeed succeed him/overthrow him (not sure what the current rumors are), how will Trump handle that?
trollhattan
@Keith P.:
It needs to look like this.
Roger Moore
@Steeplejack:
For some of them, yes. But I don’t think the Russians have kompromat on every Republican senator and representative except Mitt Romney. It’s clear that the Republican party as a whole has made a calculation that it’s better to go along with Trump and get what they can for 4 years than to risk party unity by fighting him.
Lindsey Graham said something along those lines when it became obvious Trump was going to win the nomination. His argument at the time was that the party needed to unite behind Trump because they could more easily survive losing an election than they could the kind of infighting it would take to get rid of Trump in favor of a better candidate. I think that same basic argument has continued to apply after he won. Even if he does a ton of damage to the party, it may actually be less than they’d suffer by turning on themselves.
trollhattan
@Gravenstone:
Very early on Trump would make a point of declaring, “She’s not my type.”
James E Powell
@Emma from FL:
Not Staten Island. And although I’m certain there were people at the NYT who knew names, dates, and places on the Trump, they kept their mouths shut.
jonas
That’s true to an extent, but if you take a look at Tim Miller’s article in Rolling Stone the other day where he talks to a bunch of Republican consultants and political operatives about why they and their clients just can’t quit Trump, they all have one basic answer: his base. If you want to still be a Republican, you cannot have any daylight between yourself and the president and so they’re trapped. Now that’s basically admitting that “yeah, we’re a bunch of cowards and care more about our political asses than the country,” but I think it also gets to the heart of the matter. When you’ve spent the past 30 years using Fox and talk radio to turn your party into a political insane asylum, don’t be surprised that things don’t go well when the inmates take over.
LongHairedWeirdo
It should be obvious what Trump’s angry about. The cases weren’t dismissed with prejudice. Aren’t there supposed to be 5 Ray Cohns on the court?
I mean, we know Gorsuch and Kavanaugh came from the Federalist Society’s list – one where they’re on record as saying you could just throw a dart at the list, and that’s a good justice. Ever notice how that suggests the judges are bought and paid for? I mean, seriously, if you have a list with 100 names on it, it’s *impossible* that they’re all sub-par intellectually, and only useful insofar as they won’t issue “surprise” rulings. There must be at least a couple-three that are actually pretty bright, and can rule rings around the others.
I certainly wouldn’t want to accuse the Federalist Society of “grooming” judges; heaven’s no! But IIRC, the reason it formed was that they didn’t like judges issuing rulings that were surprises to Republicans. So right there, on its face, it looks like a corrupt organization. A judge who can’t surprise you would most likely be one who’s already pre-judged. And they say things like that: here’s a list of names, and EVERY SINGLE LAWYER is exactly the same, none is a bit sharper, none a bit duller. It would make a person wonder. Of course, I’m sure I know that someone is angry and offended that I would ever suggest such a thing, and I must be a horrible person, and hate NASCAR, and think dropping to one knee, as a show of respect, should be taken as a show of respect.
Senator Whitehouse also pointed out that they’re dark money funded. And, again, there’s nothing illegal about that, but it’s the sort of thing that would make you go “hm”. Well, unless you’re a Republican, because then, again, “you America hating, dijon-on-a-burger, Antifa terrorist who would PEACEFULLY PROTEST and say that BLACK LIVES MATTER! What we need to learn about is Joe and Hunter Biden because there’s NO EVIDENCE OF WRONGDOING, and how will we find trumped-up evidence that we can swear must mean there’s wrongdoing, without an investigation?”
Roger Moore
@jonas:
Even if the Republicans have tied themselves to Trump because they’re afraid of his base, it’s still transactional. It’s just transactional because of what they fear rather than because of what they hope to gain. The key point is that their support for Trump is purely contingent on what Trump can or can’t do for them, not on liking him or every aspect of his platform. There may be some die-hard true believers who will continue to support Trump even if he gets wiped out in the election, but I bet a lot of the people who support him will quickly move to the next thing. A key part of his image is the winning, and losing to Sleepy Joe Biden is going to cost him a lot of support.
RandomMonster
Being old enough to have learned typing on a manual typewriter, and to have written all my college term papers with an electric typewriter, I can safely say I don’t get any romance from the thought of using either. I hated writing until computers came along.
jonas
@hueyplong: Yep, every accusation has always been a confession with these people. Plus, all you have to do is listen to the guy talk. To call most of his ramblings “word salad” these days is too generous by half.
Roger Moore
@jonas:
Word smoothie.
Steeplejack
Succinct:
Yutsano
@Roger Moore: I would say word dog’s breakfast but that doesn’t roll off the tongue as well.
James E Powell
@mad citizen:
Because women who object to men interrupting them are usually regarded as whiny b’s. Hillary would have been slammed for it. Guaranteed.
Steeplejack
Piling on:
Ruckus
@mad citizen:
Because she is a far, far better person than he’s ever dreamed he is, let alone the shit heal he actually is.
RandomMonster
@Roger Moore:
Verbal diarrhea.
Ruckus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I used to write with decent penmanship, meaning readable, but now it takes twice as long and I often have to interpret the results. Not sure if it’s just getting farther along the geezer path or something more.
Ruckus
@catclub:
I don’t get any of the concept of shitforbrains being revered. His value is what he can do, now. He’s not in any way likable, he’s going to be a loser, and he will never be a powerful person without the title. He can not speak coherently and he says the quiet parts out loud. He will have no power to do anything for anyone, including himself.
Askew
@frosty: Check out the Kaufman Field Guide to Birds of North America. I find that the easiest to use for identifications, in part because the single-paged “short” index allows you to get to the wrens, or jays, or whatevers quickly, while the bird still is in front of you. Audubon also offers an excellent, free phone app; it’s great for its numerous photos and especially for audio files of calls and songs.
Juju
@Geoduck: Cohen has never been the sharpest knife in the marquee.
Another Scott
@dmsilev: rofl.
Lately I’ve received a couple of Word documents that had PDF documents embedded in them.
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: I know, I laughed at that one, too, because it happened so many times.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Danielx:
The culture war isn’t going anywhere. The white supremacists and the conservative religious folks are both getting really nervous about the way the culture is changing. They see a future where they will have to be underground in their views or be fired from their jobs and publically shamed. They aren’t wrong. Its happening now, and they are freaking out. Rod Dreher has been running around screaming with his hair on fire for years about this. What drives me the most nuts about that is that when gay people had to be in the closet to work, to rent apartments, to not be beaten up; it is just communities being able to define for themselves what is acceptable and moral behavior (aka culture). When it is religious people stating that they don’t want to participate in work sponsored Pride events because they think homosexuality is an abomination and having that negatively affect their career opportunities, then according to Dreher, that is ‘soft totalitarianism’ and ‘thought crimes’, not shifting community standards. Its infuriating.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Brachiator:
There is also all the regulation shredding his administration has been doing.
Robert Sneddon
@Ken: The composer Wintergatan is building a modern “music box” driven by marbles, the Marble Machine X. You can follow his progress (or lack of it) on Youtube.
debbie
Dead thread, but fuck it: Greatest post title ever!!!
No One You Know
@low-tech cyclist: Someone remarked that it’s because his base see in him the same behaviors they see in their kids. Specifically, their teenage sons.