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You are here: Home / Politics / GOP Death Cult / The Judgement of Troutmouth Bob

The Judgement of Troutmouth Bob

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Once again, Mr. Woodward waddles struts into the spotlight, pleased with the symmetry of his career arc: The Wise Chronicler of the Permanent Government has decreed That Man in the White House no longer suitable as the figurehead of American Government. He is immediately applauded by the usual suspects most Plugged-in and Important Thought Leader(s) of the modern media.

We, the mere voters, are now free to ignore that fellow’s increasingly desperate and unsightly attempts to stay in the position he no longer deserves!

(A judgement I shall reward in kind, as soon as I find the postal regulations for interstate shipment of a wet fart.)

But really, has anyone important suffered from the seven-month reporting delay? If the highest-profile victim was Herman Cain, does that impact the Beltway Media and its celebrants?…

Reader Interactions

178Comments

  1. 1.

    Suzanne

    Well, I am morbid, so I have been dropping in on psycho right sites like BrightFart to see how they’re managing the cognitive dissonance of sucking so bad.

  3. 3.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Shortly after his first book on the Trump presidency, Fear, was published, Woodward and Trump had a phone conversation (don’t know which of them initiated the call — probably Trump — not that it matters). Trump expressed dismay that he hadn’t had an opportunity to talk directly with Woodward, who responded that he had asked several times for an interview but had been turned down or told that the president was too busy or something. Trump asked which staffer Woodward had talked with. Kellyanne Conway. Trump didn’t underbus her but he did sort of chew her out with Woodward listening.

    You have to wonder now: did KA just blow off Woodward and accidentally fail to mention his request to Trump? Or did she bring him the request for an interview and he was the one who blew it off? Don’t suppose it makes a particle of difference now, but I’ve always wondered a little bit.

  4. 4.

    Calouste

    a group of grown adults in serious positions in government – and in one case the president – talking to Woodward.

    It’s by Maggie HawHawHaberman, so I assume that insult is unintended, but you never know.

  5. 5.

    Immanentize

    Whichever way it happened, KAC was absolutely right in keeping Trump and Woodward apart — from Trump’s perspective.  But KAC has no room for “told you so”s

  7. 7.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Suzanne: I’m guessing that they’re doing what the trump cultists on facebook are doing: “Stopping a panic while working heroically behind the scenes is what youd want a president to do, even if he knew it might make him look bad later. Thabk Gid Trump is our president”, etc.

    I might be willing to accept some of this if Trump hadn’t constantly tried to stoke panic as a political tool. And if he’d actually done anything to curb the virus, which he didn’t.

  10. 10.

    Anne Laurie

    @SiubhanDuinne: You have to wonder now: did KA just blow off Woodward and accidentally fail to mention his request to Trump? Or did she bring him the request for an interview and he was the one who blew it off? Don’t suppose it makes a particle of difference now, but I’ve always wondered a little bit.

    Not, as you say, that it matters, but… Conway is evil, but unlike most of the Trump minions, she’s not stupid.  I personally assume she knew better than to trust her boss around Troutmouth Bob, because even if Woodward said nice things about Trump (unlikely) his words would have a mildly negative effect, if any, on The Base (deplorables + donors).

    Once the first Woodward doorstopper came out, no way would Trump be able to resist demanding first-person, on-the-record interviews.  But KellyAnne, like a good minion, delayed her boss’ self-immolation another two years… by which time, it was just one more pebble in the landslide of doom.

    Frankly, I suspect it’s a positive on her unwritten CV when she seeks a new monster to prop up.

  13. 13.

    Jeffro

    per PopeHat, it’s a ZERO-MULTIPLIER game, as in, the more people that deal with the ZERO currently in the White House, the more bad things MULTIPLY

    Or as Rick Wilson puts it, #ETTD

  15. 15.

    Anne Laurie

    @NotMax: Making demeaning sport of anyone’s immutable facial structure is beneath you.

    I assure you:  It is not.  Especially whan that immutable facial structure so blatantly pleads for a hook!

  17. 17.

    Jeffro

    @SiubhanDuinne: the orange asshole still – STILL! – literally thinks he can just talk his way out of anything.

    Great job, MAGAts!  It’s almost like your standards for the office were not so much “standards” as they were “racist loudmouth litmus tests”.  And now you (and we) are getting what y’all voted for.

  18. 18.

    Adam L Silverman

    @SiubhanDuinne: I can’t stand her, but in this case she did her job, which was protect her boss who she knows would screw up one interview, let alone 18, with Woodward by making it impossible for Woodward to interview him. Same reason that Dowd and then Sekulow and Giuliani wouldn’t allow Mueller to interview the President.

  23. 23.

    Jeffro

    @Adam L Silverman: Right???!?  Like 10 minutes with the guy wouldn’t tell any relatively sane American adult that this is not someone we should trust with pandemic response, nuclear codes, or a social media account?

    I mean that seriously: even the white supremacists deserve better representation and leadership than this.  Ok they don’t, but hopefully folks get my point: look at him up close, even for a few minutes, and you wouldn’t let this guy work at your neighborhood grocery store as a bag boy.

  27. 27.

    Another Scott

    @SiubhanDuinne: Donnie’s always loved being the center of attention, even when he is called a monster, etc.  There’s a story that Donnie was overjoyed at his first big story in the press in NYC when they basically called him, and documented that he was, a cheating slumlord.  Donnie thought it was great because he was the talk of the town, etc., etc.

    Of course he wanted to talk to Woodward.  He’ll probably want to talk to him again after this book is out.  It’s who he is.

    KAC is evil, but not an idiot.  She saw the danger that BW presented.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  28. 28.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    So:

    Trump knew.
    Trump lied.
    And, Trump insisted the Democrats were wrong.
    And the GOP knew Trump knew; and they knew he lied; and they knew people would die if they disparaged sound, scientific information, and did it anyway.

    Um. It’s near the end of an election, and I think I can use this hilariously, yet without a bit of irony.

    “And this is *GOOD NEWS*… for John McCain.”

  33. 33.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jeffro: It’s also that she knows he can’t keep his mouth shut. That he can’t stop talking and that he can’t regulate what his says, how he says it, or his behavior while saying it. While I agree with Cheryl that we need a great deal of skepticism about the President’ supposedly revealing a new, clandestine nuclear weapons program to Woodward, that he told Woodward something about a program – new, real and ongoing, or just proposed – that was highly compartmented because he could is exactly why Conway was right to keep him away from Woodward.

  34. 34.

    WaterGirl

    @Immanentize: I sent it to the email you use in BJ.  do you not check that one?  or is it not real?

    edit: search is not working in my email, or I would search on your first name and get the email you have written to me from before.  maybe send me a message and I’ll reply?

  35. 35.

    Adam L Silverman

    @tom: We have to give Immanentize the benefit of the doubt that somehow he hasn’t seen the greatest Christmas movie ever made.

  36. 36.

    HumboldtBlue

    This ain’t about Woodward just the terrible fucking day it’s been and it isn’t gonna be better tomorrow.

    I posted this three threads down but it’s been a long day and I’m not scrambling to flee from fire.

    I hate to sound like a big whinging tit but sweet mother of asthma the smoke layer is fucking absurd.

  37. 37.

    cmorenc

    If Woodward’s Trump interview revelations prove to be the nail that sealed Trump’s defeat by a comfortable margin in November, I can suspend my disgust and cynicism until after the election that Woodward was a self-important asshole who withheld this info until his book was ready for publication and profit.  Ditto Michael Cohen and Maryanne Trump being motivated by revenge as much or more than public service.

    The ONLY things that matter right now is:

    • Biden defeating Trump, preferably by a substantial margin
    • Ds retaking the Senate.
  40. 40.

    Adam L Silverman

    @zhena gogolia: I’m going to wind up getting an email about this from the Anti-Trout Defamation Organization of America because they’re going to just choose me out of the “email a front pager” tool when they decide to complain.

  45. 45.

    Mai Naem mobile

    I just have to wonder if highly paid celebrity reporters like Woodward are affected financially by having Orange D-Bag in for another term. He might get a tax cut but a tax cut isn’t going to do you any good if retail businesses around you are going down the tubes. If Woodward.has money invested in commercial real estate he may not like the consequences of COVID19. If Woodward is teaching at Georgetown or Harvard he may not like the effects of COVID19. His kids might be negatively affected financially by COVID19 etc.etc. I’ve seen a few financial journos who are normally old fashioned Republicans who seem disturbed by Orange Dbag and COVID19. Hell, I am concerned of the long term financial consequences of COVID19. The state budgets are going to be shot for years. Same for the federal budget. I don’t want to even think about health care expenses. Medicare and Medicaid is going to be ugly. Somebody is going to pay for all that expensive COVID care and it isn’t going to be the insurance companies.

  47. 47.

    Adam L Silverman

    @HumboldtBlue: It’s okay. We get it. I’ve emailed our regular reader/commenter who is a fire chief in Oregon to see if he’s okay and haven’t heard back. This is bad. And it couldn’t have happened at a worse time. So if you need to vent, do so.

  50. 50.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Yutsano: Now, now, there could be a perfectly good reason for him not seeing it. He was in a coma for 40 years. He’s not allowed to see R rated movies with violence and sexual themes. He’s always deployed on the front lines of the war on Christmas every year from July to January and can’t get someone to switch out duty shifts so he can watch it when it replays on basic cable.

    Before we convene a Balloon Juice drumhead court-martial and summarily execute him and then feed him to Steve, we have to give him a chance to provide a seemingly legitimate and acceptable excuse.

  52. 52.

    piratedan

    @Searcher: really, with all of the shit that dropped outta the sky today you want to focus on THAT, its a full service blog but cripes, if we want to talk about “small stuff” how about the specific identifications of which counties in Florida may have had their vote tallies tampered with?

  60. 60.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Adam L Silverman: I have two separate extended family members that got woken up late last night and were told to GTFO of their homes in Oregon.

    Looks like their houses are okay for now, but they both have neighbors whose houses have burned. People within a few minutes drive.

    Honestly I almost prefer focusing on the presidential race. The fires are too depressing.

  62. 62.

    Barbara

    @cmorenc:  It strikes me as mostly reasonable when Woodward says that he didn’t necessarily know whether to believe Trump at the time he said that the virus was worse than the flu.  The question is why he didn’t surface this information sooner once it became obvious that these statements were true.  And, would it have made a difference?  I don’t know that it would have.  Trump did morph for a while into a stance of taking it more seriously, and they still didn’t mount anything like an effective response. Didn’t coordinate the distribution of PPE or allocate a massive amount of resources to testing. Basically set the states against each other in a game of thrones and distributed items based on political favoritism. He knew and saw what was happening in NY, how bad it was.  Didn’t prompt him to do anything different, even with people like Cuomo publicly and repeatedly vilifying his response.

    Morally, I think Woodward should still have tried to get the information out there, but, unlike Trump acting earlier on his own knowledge, I doubt that earlier revelations by Woodward would have made a difference.   This tempers my impulse to direct outrage at Woodward.  I am actually pretty numb at this point.

  64. 64.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Immanentize: Bah. With a Vengeance is the other really good Die Hard movie. Though it’s not a xmas movie, so maybe you get the benefit of the doubt here.

    Note: All of the other Die Hard movies are… questionable.

  66. 66.

    JaySinWA

    @HumboldtBlue: I posted this three or four posts down,

    This may be a dead thread but even without A/C if you have central heating you can usually run the fan independent of heat and use high filtration filters to clean and move the air.

    There is also the high filtration filter duct taped to a box fan to clean small areas of smoke particles.

    Here’s a plan for a fancy version, but tape works fine. https://pscleanair.gov/525/DIY-Air-Filter

  67. 67.

    Kim Walker

    My sister has likely lost her home in the Otis fire. A neighbor woke them up early Tuesday and told them evacuate. She and her husband and their 5 dogs were parked at the casino until they heard that Lincoln City was being evacuated this morning. I feel so horrible for them and furious that I’m in Canada and can do nothing to help. Their place was absolute heaven.

  68. 68.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Adam L Silverman: @MomSense:

    There are a whole lot of people far worse off than me particularly to the north in Del Norte County and further north around Medford.

    SoHum is in immediate danger and fire season has a few months to go.

  69. 69.

    Jeffro

    @Mai Naem mobile:I just have to wonder if highly paid celebrity reporters like Woodward are affected financially by having Orange D-Bag in for another term. He might get a tax cut but a tax cut isn’t going to do you any good if retail businesses around you are going down the tubes, etc.

    All true, but perhaps more close to home: Woodward and all the other Villagers can’t go out to eat safely, can’t even relax on a domestic airplane flight, and aren’t allowed to travel to all the *nice* foreign countries.  Their kids are in college and hoo those kids are f-ed; can’t even go to a movie or a concert.  And on and on it goes.

    It’s almost like competent government + a couple $B in pandemic prevention would be worth paying attention to, and voting for.

  74. 74.

    Jeffro

    @Adam L Silverman: it is a Christmas tradition around here…I don’t know how even non-DH-observant households avoid watching one of the best-plotted movies of all time.

    So. Many. Great. Lines.

  78. 78.

    sherparick

    @Kim Walker: I am so sorry for your sister’s family and the anguish you feel for them.  All over the West fires are burning as never before & just like they burned in Australia as never before.  It’s terrible.

  79. 79.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Adam L Silverman: My aunt evacuated last night. She’s just been told that the town she evacuated TO is now also under evac orders and she’s leaving again. Ye gods.

    I’m hopeful next year theres more federal support for firefighting but it’s not even halfway through September and we’ve already eclipsed last years damage and then some. No idea how we keep it from getting worse in the future.

  83. 83.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Jeffro: Great job, MAGAts! It’s almost like your standards for the office were not so much “standards” as they were “racist loudmouth litmus tests”. And now you (and we) are getting what y’all voted for.

    Don’t forget everyone who had to feel “pure” about their vote, or for whatever other reason decided “Eww!  Hillary!”

  85. 85.

    Jeffro

    @JaySinWA: My next door neighbor is currently hosting his brother-in-law from Colorado, who couldn’t take the smoke from all the fires.  Just sort of taking him in as a ‘fire refugee’ or more appropriately a ‘climate change refugee’.

    Obviously, both the host and guest have the means to make this happen.  What happens, world, when millions don’t?

  88. 88.

    JaySinWA

    @Jeffro:

    Obviously, both the host and guest have the means to make this happen.  What happens, world, when millions don’t?

    Bad things will happen, I am pretty sure. It may be possible there will be some pockets of good outcomes, but I am pessimistic.

  89. 89.

    RaflW

    To that Abby Philip embedded tweet:

    You know who I don’t think was unaware of the impending Woodward firestorm?

    Kelly Anne Conjob. She left just in the nick of time. What a coinkydink

    eta: Requisite “I feel bad for the kid”. Also, George is as much of a con man as she is, just working a different angle.

  91. 91.

    jonas

    Holy Crap! Bob “I Am In a Continual State of Priapic Arousal Over Strong Republican Male Leaders Being All Decisive And Shit While Giving Me Access To Their Inner Circle” Woodward is having doubts about Trump?

    Well, no shit, Sherlock.

  92. 92.

    RaflW

    @Another Scott: Part of the hideous ‘benefit’ of endless Trump scandals, twitter eruptions, and other rank incompetence, is that the sorts of news cycles that made Katrina really rough for Bush are just gone.

    Louisiana may as well not exist, in much of the news budget. Iowa? We got a couple stories in Minnesota, and then moved on. Our neighboring state!

    The west coast fires are massive, and at least on social media are very visible now, but there won’t be any sustained federal response, and that won’t even break through, mostly.

    We have to elect Biden/Harris. And then we have to get very serious about climate change. It’s too late to stop a lot of the impending damage, but (one hopes) not too late to do what we must.

  93. 93.

    jonas

    @mrmoshpotato: Don’t forget everyone who had to feel “pure” about their vote, or for whatever other reason decided “Eww!  Hillary!”

    Took all the restraint I could muster today not to punch through my car radio and strangle the little snot-nosed privileged POS “Gen-Z” girl featured on NPR ATC this afternoon who was telling the host that she simply couldn’t vote for Biden after Bernie had been so cruelly denied his birthright by the “establishment” in the Democratic primary and that she was sitting out this election to focus on “grass roots” organizing and whatnot.

    To be fair, they also interviewed some kids whose heads were slightly less jammed up their own asses, but JFC.

  94. 94.

    Keith P.

    How does the timeline look with “Jared convinces DJT that leaving the problem to the states will only hurt blue state governors” on it?

  95. 95.

    Another Scott

    You need another reason to vote early? https://www.govexec.com/management/2020/09/deadline-could-hand-trump-election/168331/

    Many Americans know that counting all of the votes in this November’s presidential election is going to take extra time. Few people realize there’s a specific deadline by which states must finish.

    The 1887 Electoral Count Act seems like an obscure piece of political trivia. But ahead of what could be one of the most contested presidential elections in modern history, some experts worry that this 133-year-old relic of the U.S. Code could endanger the whole republic. The law itself is a relic of the last time the partisan divide got so intense that it nearly ripped apart the country. But no one ever clarified the bits of it that are ambiguous, and no one ever came back to revise or update it. The law is a “morass of ambiguity, which is the exact opposite of what is required in this situation,” a group of legal scholars convened by UC Irvine wrote in an April report of possible election problems. But it’s still the law.

    The measure originated in the aftermath of the 1876 presidential election, between Rutherford Hayes and Samuel Tilden, which decided the fate of Reconstruction in the American South. The law requires electors to be chosen for the Electoral College, the constitutionally established body that elects the president, no more than 41 days after Election Day. This year, that date is December 14, 41 days after the November 3 vote. But the expected massive delays in vote counting—because of late-arriving absentee ballots, because of disputes over which of those ballots are valid, because of overwhelmed state election systems, because of recounts, or because of X factors such as direct election interference by foreign or domestic attackers—could mean the country blows past that date without clear results in every state.

    […]

    Vote early!!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  97. 97.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    @Searcher: He’s a wetworks scientist; he’s allowed. (Sure, we math-heavy types can laugh behind his back, but we respect him too much to do more than that.)

  102. 102.

    prostratedragon

    there is actually a huge difference between “trump is in denial about the severity of this crisis and refuses to do anything about it” and “Trump is intimately aware of and understands the severity of this crisis and refuses to do anything about it”

    I’m sure others have emphasized this before late-arriving me, but a look around suggests that the point bears repeating till it breaks: it’s not that he was informed and did nothing, through denial or something. He was informed and understood the bottom line well enough to discuss it with someone and then not just passively did nothing, but deliberately misinformed; refused to take actions such as acquiring and distributing more equipment and interfered with attempts by hospitals and State governments to do this on their own (or at least failed to see promptly that federal agencies did not interfere); and sought to cut off other avenues of communication and of international co-operation that normally would be available.

    This evil man should be impeached again, and his party made to carry him into the election if they insist.

  103. 103.

    ballerat

    @Adam L Silverman: Confession: I’ve never seen it either.

    To be honest I first thought it was an ad from something like grindr.

    And I didn’t know it was Bruce Willis. I had to follow the link from Yutsano, then look up Die Hard to see who was in it. Someone mentioned Bruce. Oh! That Bruce.

    In my defense, I will say I knew it definitely wasn’t Bruce Springsteen.

    I have no last words except…Viva la résistance!

  104. 104.

    Ms. Deranged in AZ

    While all of you are arguing about whether characterizing someone’s facial structure is okay or not, and arguing about whether KAC was right to keep Drumpof from Woodward, we here in friggin Arizona had an apocalyptic weather day yesterday with a cool day of 98 degrees, hazy clouds, gray weirdness due to the fires in CA, WA, etc.  Today the pool water was 80 degrees today according to the kids.  I spent half the day in bed because why not?  The rest of the world is completely screwed.  So by all means keep debating this bullshit.

  105. 105.

    prostratedragon

    This looked bad enough yesterday, but now that suspicions have been confirmed …

    A Trump administration appointee at the Department of Health and Human Services is trying to prevent Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, from speaking about the risks that coronavirus poses to children.

    Emails obtained by POLITICO show Paul Alexander — a senior adviser to Michael Caputo, HHS’s assistant secretary for public affairs — instructing press officers and others at the National Institutes of Health about what Fauci should say during media interviews. The Trump adviser weighed in on Fauci’s planned responses to outlets including Bloomberg News, BuzzFeed, Huffington Post and the science journal Cell. [Emphasis supplied — pd]

    Alexander’s lengthy messages, some sent as recently as this week, are couched as scientific arguments. But they often contradict mainstream science while promoting political positions taken by the Trump administration on hot-button issues ranging from the use of convalescent plasma to school reopening.

    The emails add to evidence that the White House, and Trump appointees within HHS, are pushing health agencies to promote a political message instead of a scientific one.

  107. 107.

    TS (the original)

    So I just read this comment on the previous thread

    https://balloon-juice.com/2020/09/09/the-woodward-revelations/#comment-7852404

    She again asked if it was really his and the GOP’s position that if you can’t afford health care, you shouldn’t get to have it.

    “Yeah,” the staffer said, according to the recording, “just like, if I want to go to the store and buy a new dress shirt, if I can’t afford that dress shirt, I don’t get to get it.”

    So as has been said for as long as I can remember, the GOP Health Care plan

    Get sick and die.

  109. 109.

    TS (the original)

    @Calouste:  This indicates – as usual

    1. The problem is not the content, the problem is the person who didn’t stop the president* talking
    2. maggie is seriously upset that she wasn’t the one doing the interviews
  110. 110.

    Ian

    Mrs Haberman should note there is a lot of fingering pointing going on outside the white house about news organizations that collect VITAL public information and then sit on it for 6 months so they can make a book.

  111. 111.

    Jay

    @HumboldtBlue:

    if you have a fan, and a towel or cotton t-shirt, you can make a convection cooler, also known as an Australian bush cooler. It’s one of the heatwave tips we teach the unhoused.

    if you have tuck tape, aluminum foil and a furnace filter, you can turn a fan into an ionizing air purifier, another forest fire tip we teach the unhoused.

  112. 112.

    Jay

    @Ian:

    there was a building inspection report back in 2000 showing how deep the rot was in all 4 pillars of the structure.

    y’all slapped a new coat of paint on it in 2008,

  113. 113.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Jay:

    if you have tuck tape, aluminum foil and a furnace filter, you can turn a fan into an ionizing air purifier, another forest fire tip we teach the unhoused.

    I’m gonna follow up on that and I’ll use duct tape. But that’s a great science project.

  114. 114.

    TS (the original)

    @HumboldtBlue:

    That trump does nothing to help those with fires, floods, hurricanes descending on them should be more than enough to remove him from the job/lose him an election – but I guess that rule only applies to democratic party presidents.

    Sending best thoughts for weather change & fires dying.

  115. 115.

    rikyrah

    @Immanentize:

    It’s from Die Hard.

    He just dropped a terrorist’s body onto a cop car, so that the L.A. Police would finally understand that some bad shyt was happening at the building they had taken over.

  116. 116.

    Jay

    @HumboldtBlue:

    duct tape won’t last and doesn’t work. Tuck tape will. Tuck tape is cheaper. The key is to get enough tape along the foil that the movement of air along both sides of the strip, one side plastic, the other foil, releases a static charge into the outgoing airflow.

    making a coat hanger grid to anchor the foil strips to works best.

  118. 118.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    I with John Cole, the biggest mystery to me of the Trump admin is how is Trump is able to brush his teeth and not drown with Trump’s compulsion to contentiously boast about himself at all times. Do you think the reason why Melina won’t sleep in the same bed at Trump is because Trump brags to himself in his sleep?

  119. 119.

    Calouste

    @TS (the original): I was trying (and apparently failed) to highlight the contrast in the quote between “grown adults” on one side, and “the President” on the other.

    It gave the impression that the writer might  think there is no overlap between those two.

  123. 123.

    Ms. Deranged in AZ

    @HumboldtBlue: Agreed, instead we are worrying about whether the recent revelations of Woodward’s book, which isn’t new or a revelation, will matter…should matter.  Let’s boil it down.  It should matter to everyone.  It will probably only matter to to 5-10% who are persuadable.  Who are all aholes IMHO because who didn’t know that he was a sh*thole the moment he rode that escalator down and called Mexican immigrants rapists.  But my opinion is too edgy apparently.  I take no comfort in jokes about KACs plastic surgery or anything else these days.  Nobody liked Cassandra either but she was effin right….

  124. 124.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Ms. Deranged in AZ: I’ve been reading B-J for a long time.  And the commenters here are pretty passionate, and pretty involved.  They’re pretty well-informed, too.  There’s only so long you can chew over all the horrors of the day/week/month.  So they move onto more …. frivolous things.  Like their pets.  It’s a form of self-care, if you like.  It doesn’t mean that they aren’t all exercised about the atrocities.  But (again) only so long you can be outraged, when there’s not much you can do except work for a date two months from now, and even after that, it’s two more months before anything can even start to change.

    Give ’em a break, eh?

  127. 127.

    TS (the original)

    @Calouste:

     I’m trying to think of any other country that can’t get its election results in less than a week,

    Because of its voting method for the Senate (proportional representation) Australia often takes more than a week to determine the final numbers after a senate election. Also, mail votes have to be post stamped by election day to be accepted, so they may not arrive for many days after that.

    Like some of the US states, Australia does not start counting mail in votes/early voting votes until after the close of the polls on election day.

  128. 128.

    Jay

    Hahahahahahahahahaha,……?

    Sadly, one of our officers had a bad experience @AceHardware store in Allston today. While in the store, an employee stated, “I smell bacon.” When the officer asked for an apology, he was told there’d be none. In response, items purchased were returned and a customer lost. pic.twitter.com/ULodBWpiJy— Boston Police Patrolmen's Association (BPPA) (@BostonPatrolmen) September 9, 2020

    Fukin pussie crying babies,……..

  129. 129.

    TS (the original)

    @Calouste:  No, sorry – I caught your meaning – was just adding my thoughts on maggie’s tweet – certainly not arguing against what you said,

  137. 137.

    Jay

    @JaySinWA:

    we have our own issues up here, mostly, the whole Covid Get Back to Work and schools reopening. Plus BIPOC Lives Matter.

    luckily, smartly, SWIMBO’s Institution has said, NFW.

    and they are taking BIPOC Lives Matter far beyond “performative”.

    I’ve been a radical all my life. Covid and all the other shit shows has radicalized my apolitical wife.

    Eventually, living under a sewage outfall pipe, makes you realize how rotten the entire edifice is.

  138. 138.

    Jay

    @Ms. Deranged in AZ:

    yurp, wake up sad, angry, tired,

    go to work, deal with the aware, and the Covidiots,

    get odd days off, spend the early am helping the unhoused,

    Wake up the next day, sad, angry and tired,

    but I get to meet some nice people.

  139. 139.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Ms. Deranged in AZ:

    I don’t get how 1/3 of voters could think he is a viable candidate.  I will never get over that hump.  Never.  Sorry.

    Well, now that you bring *that* up …. (1) dont’ be sorry.  Lots of us don’t get it either.  (2) and the ones of us that do, well, lots of us think those “people” are beneath contempt, and some of us have ceased to have any regard for their welfare whatsoever.  The hatred that they feel for us, I return to them, many times over.  I grew up in Weatherford, TX.  That town went for Shitlord by a giant margin in 2016.  Yeah, I know why and how, too.  Fuckin’ racist misogynist homophobic pigs.

    Like say, “Never”.  I’ll never forgive them.  Never.  I’ll never forget, and will always ask if the person I’m talking is a GrOPer, a covidiot, a Trumpist, a traitor, a cager and torturer of small children.  Or maybe he just likes to *watch*.  As efgoldman used to say (rest in peace, old friend) “fuckem”.

  142. 142.

    Leto

    @Morzer: Looks promising, although I’m already questioning clothing choices. Like why the fuck does Gaius have a veil? There was another woman who had a veil and I questioned that. Timothee (?) is at least close to the characters age in the book, so that’s a plus. I’m sure Zendaya will knock it out of the park. It’s supposed to be a 2 part movie, so I’m hoping the first part is good. If they try to make more, I wonder how they’ll handle the next two books.

  143. 143.

    Jay

    Holy crap. This is from the new DHS whistleblower complaint. He says he was ordered to "modify" a threat assessment, particularly "the section on White Supremacy" to make "the threat appear less severe," and "include information on the prominence of violent 'left-wing' groups." pic.twitter.com/PM4vrHyP1W— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) September 9, 2020

  145. 145.

    Morzer

    @smike: The Bene Gesserit certainly look and sound much more convincing in Villeneuve’s version than they did in the TV mini-series back in the day.

  148. 148.

    Leto

    @Morzer:  They were, roughly, 10k years on from that? I mean, I’m a stickler for book details. Shit wasn’t in the book so it’s a stylistic choice meant to convey a shadowy motive.

    The SciFi mini-series was a step in the right direction v the Lynch version. I mean, I’ll forever hold Lynch’s version in my heart because that was my first exposure to that universe and what led me to picking up the book. I think the follow-on to the mini-series, Children of Dune, was cool. The technology is there for them to make book 4, which would be a true mind trip.

  150. 150.

    smike

    @Morzer: I was thinking of 1984 movie when I commented on the whispered dialog. I found all the whispering highly irritating. Irritates me to this day.

  151. 151.

    Chetan Murthy

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: I understand it.  Thing is, the 40% who voted for Shitlord …. voted to deny me my rights as an American.  And as an American, I take my rights very, very seriously.  I was taught how important they were, back in Weatherford, TX.

  153. 153.

    Morzer

    @Leto: I think it makes sense as a way of conveying the historical background without a lengthy verbal narration. I am normally a… textual originalist, shall we say.. when it comes to books being made into movies, but I am open to some interpretative moves.

  154. 154.

    Leto

    @smike: The book was noted for including the inner dialogue of the characters. Trying to translate inner dialogue on screen will always be a problem.

    @Morzer: agreed. Also no Weirding Modules… uuugghhhh

  156. 156.

    Leto

    @Morzer: Yeah, it just depends on how they set it up. I’m trying not to be too book originalist. I know plenty of people who were pissed at the Lord of the Ring series for things like, no Tom Bombodil, moving Aaragon receiving the sword to the third movie, to the Hobbit prequels for having “sexy” dwarves and their beards not being down to their knees. So far I’m still excited for the movie and that’s a good thing :)

  157. 157.

    Jay

    We seem to be farther down the road than I thought<bIf this report is accurate, Reinoehl's death is premeditated, extrajudicial murder. Local and federal officers firing without warning on a man they wanted dead
    This is an account of a police execution on behalf of the far right— Laura Jedeed (Misanthrophile) (@1misanthrophile) September 9, 2020

  158. 158.

    Leto

    @Chetan Murthy: That movie comes on the BBC channel about once a year, and for that brief 3 1/2 hours, it’s a guilty pleasure “omgthisissobad” viewing. The soundtrack is just the cherry on top. I honestly miss the 80s soundtrack tie in.

  160. 160.

    Jay

    Being wanted on traffic violations should not be a death sentence in a just society https://t.co/HQ0BIyB5DY— Northeast Alabama SRA (@NEAlabamaSra) September 9, 2020

    August 25th Greenville County Sheriff's Office released bodycam footage of deputies rushing out of an unmarked van & murdering Michael Culbertson with a barrage of bullets in the back as he tried to run away.#JusticeForMichaelCulbertson pic.twitter.com/5BGej7vHLz— Leftist Cat (@Leftist_Cat) September 7, 2020

  162. 162.

    Tehanu

    We, the mere voters, are now free to ignore that fellow’s increasingly desperate and unsightly attempts to stay in the position he no longer deserves!

    (A judgement I shall reward in kind, as soon as I find the postal regulations for interstate shipment of a wet fart.)

    You do have a way with words!

  163. 163.

    Sloane Ranger

    Thread is probably dead but going to post anyway. I agree with Barbara, it wouldn’t have made any difference if Woodward had dropped his tapes earlier. Had he done so when the case and death count were lower the story would have dominated 1 news cycle with talking heads speculating on whether the President’s strategy was right or not and then entered the background understanding of events. Nothing would have changed.

    In fact I’d go further, in terms of Dems winning, this was the best time to release the tapes. More people are paying attention to politics and they know what has happened since Trump spoke. Many will have been personally affected by COVID-19. A story like this is more likely to factor into genuinely apolitical people’s voting decisions.

    In fact, with The Atlantic story surfacing when it did followed by this one when the military one began to flag made me wonder…

    Maybe I’m just seeing conspiracies where they don’t exist.

  164. 164.

    Jay

    America: where a black man can't take a knee on a football field for thirty seconds, but a white cop can take a knee on his neck for eight minutes.— God (@TheTweetOfGod) May 29, 2020

  165. 165.

    J R in WV

    @Chetan Murthy:

    This happens at LGMblog too, everyone is all serious about shit, and then a few pages further down,  someone posts some snark, and the next 200 comments are all really funny!

    It isn’t because the people don’t know shit is in the fan, or that people are suffering in horrible circumstances!

    But sometimes mental health requires a break in discussions of the abyss in front of you,  usually via snark, which varies from person to person…

  166. 166.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Sloane Ranger:

    Yes. I have been following this s’ show all year. I am convinced that these revelations are not coincidental. I have a feeling that at last, at long last, the political and media elite have decided he’s too risky for the long game. Pity about the dead, sick and the imprisoned children. It has been truly terrible watching and reading about it all. I am so so sorry for everyone and the losses this year has brought. Truly shameful.

  168. 168.

    trnc

    @cmorenc: If Woodward’s Trump interview revelations prove to be the nail that sealed Trump’s defeat by a comfortable margin in November, I can suspend my disgust and cynicism until after the election that Woodward was a self-important asshole who withheld this info until his book was ready for publication and profit.

    Agreed, and if this moves the needle toward Biden, maybe it actually saves lives vs 4 more years of DT. On the other hand, in what other profession can someone sit on information this important, then personally profit and be celebrated by his primary employer rather than immediately fired and possibly prosecuted?

  169. 169.

    Mel

    @Anne Laurie: I think so, too.

    And I’m wondering, now that the tapes and transcripts are spilling out, if this might not be beginning of the end of KA’s run as Trump Minion Queen.

    It would be Trumpian “logic“, wouldn’t it? Kellyanne tried to prevent the interview; Trump insisted on doing it anyway. Woodward now spills the interview beans far and wide. Trump might respond by blaming Kellyanne for not stopping him from talking to Woodward, despite the fact that he reportedly demanded that she let him talk to Woodward.

    Twisted, irrational, full of projection and scapegoating and throwing under  the bus – it would be a classic Trump move.

    He loves some sycophantic Kellyanne ego stroking, but in his mind, who else is he going to be able to scapegoat for this one, but Kellyanne?

    I suspect that she will at least get a hostile temporary shunning while Lord Petulance flounders around for a way out of this revelation (and “no Kellyanne allowed in the big boys’ clubhouse” might prove to be very helpful with just a little under two months to go).

    We can hope, right?

  170. 170.

    lowtechcyclist

    Bouie:

    there is actually a huge difference between “trump is in denial about the severity of this crisis and refuses to do anything about it” and “Trump is intimately aware of and understands the severity of this crisis and refuses to do anything about it”

    There may be a big moral difference between the two from the perspective of Trump himself, but so fucking what? What difference did it make to the danger to the rest of us?  Did it change the body count in the least?

    It doesn’t change the reality that he should have been removed from office as early in this crisis as possible by whatever Constitutional means possible, to save many thousands of American lives.

    Now as far as Woodward’s concerned, he could have corroborated what Trump was telling him about the coronavirus with epidemiologists in the space of a few days, and broken this story on February 10 or 11, say.  This might’ve gotten a lot of people – mayors and governors, even – taking the coronavirus seriously a few weeks earlier than they did.  And that might well have saved thousands, even tens of thousands, of lives.

  173. 173.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @mrmoshpotato:

     

    Don’t forget everyone who had to feel “pure” about their vote, or for whatever other reason decided “Eww! Hillary!”

    Liberals often point to the 2.4% of their teammates who may have caused a small problem, when is it 100% of the other side that created, grew, and maintain a disaster. It’s not helpful to winning. At this stage, the most helpful thing is to get people who lean our way, or who simply don’t engage, to join our team.

  174. 174.

    Tenar Arha

    The problem for me re that courtier Woodward is I think there’s plenty of people in MA, NY, & NJ, as well as the west coast states, who lost their grandparents, family, & friends who would have appreciated the minimum two-three weeks warning that tape & some minimal reporting could have gotten them. Remember this study that each week of social distancing sooner would have saved lives?

    I know that orange lying tool is a moral vacuum, but Woodward should burn in whatever hell he believes in for not releasing that February tape. That chronicler sack of excrement killed people with his inaction.

  175. 175.

    bluefoot

    @Chetan Murthy: I am 100% with you there.  These people don’t think I deserve rights or deserve to be treated as a human being.  I always knew there were a percentage of people like that.  I underestimated how many, and how proud they were of their essential inhumanity to others.

  176. 176.

    Ramalama

    @Kim Walker:

    I feel so horrible for them and furious that I’m in Canada and can do nothing to help.

    Are you a US citizen living in Canada? If yes, have you signed up to vote absentee? Your last US address is considered to be your legal voting address. https://www.fvap.gov/citizen-voter/voting-residence

    If no, do you know anyone in your area in Canada who’s American? Maybe you can pass along the link to them? I’ve convinced 3 Americans living in Montreal to sign up and vote this way

    EDIT: How you can help your family is to remove the stain currently oozing all over America, voting out #45 and his god-awful minions.

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