Breaking from The New York Times:
WASHINGTON — President Donald J. Trump pressed top Justice Department officials late last year to declare that the election was corrupt even though they had found no instances of widespread fraud, so that he and his allies in Congress could use the assertion to try to overturn the results, according to new documents provided to lawmakers and obtained by The New York Times.
According to the article, Trump didn’t directly say “the following people will assist me in the coup” and list the so-called allies, but he did name-check Jim Jordan (R-OH), Scott Perry (R-PA) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) as “fighters,” and in the context of the conversation, that’s pretty damning — and a great excuse for hauling those specimens before a committee.
The article describes how Trump’s own DOJ officials told him they’d investigated the nutty conspiracy theories and found nothing, only to see their boss move the goal posts again and again.
The officials also told Mr. Trump that the Justice Department had no evidence to support a lawsuit regarding the election results. “We are not in a position based on the evidence. We can only act on the actual evidence developed,” they said.
Mr. Trump castigated the officials, saying that “thousands of people called” their local U.S. attorney’s offices to complain about the election and that “nobody trusts the F.B.I.” He said that “people are angry — blaming D.O.J. for inaction.”
“You guys may not be following the internet the way I do,” Mr. Trump said, according to the document.
I’m not a lawyer, but I suspect we’ll find out Trump’s outrageously corrupt and authoritarian actions weren’t even illegal. Maybe that’s because so few people get their hands on the presidency of the United States; there’s just not a big body of law developed around the office. It mostly runs on the honor system.
Thank dog that deranged idiot is out of the White House, but someone needs to figure out how to idiot-proof the Oval Office because a person who is just as bad or worse will probably take up residence again. Call it the Tyranny Reduction and Unitary-Executive-Corruption Mitigation Provisions (TRUMP) Act.
Open thread.
zhena gogolia
I hate him so much.
MattF
Having Hitler as his bedside reading was a sign.
David Hunt
The asshole could easily end up back in the Oval Office in 2025. Short of dying or falling into a coma, he’s virtually a lock for the 2024 nomination.
dmsilev
Reading Twitter while sitting on a gold-painted toilet at 3 AM is not standard DOJ protocol? Who knew?
Chief Oshkosh
Given how the “will never get vaccinated” crowd is running (white evangelical), I guess the best we can hope for wrt to Trump diehards is that the Omega variant will give them all a peaceful but swift death, so swift that there’s not even time for a 911 call. No need to waste resources on them. In fact, I begrudge the resources it will take to dispose of the bodies.
dr. bloor
Did the Times miss the release of I Alone Can Fix It?
JoyceH
@David Hunt:
I’m not so sure about that. His influence over the GOP has lasted longer than I expected it to, but I think we’re starting to see signs that it’s waning.
That Texas run-off proved that he can’t get his base to the polls, and then he came out against the bipartisan infrastructure bill, with the result that there were more Republicans voting for a Democratic bill than I think we’ve ever seen in this administration. And Mitch McConnell gave a floor speech praising it and the process!
dmsilev
BTW, the link to the NYT story is broken. Here’s the corrected version:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/30/us/politics/trump-justice-department-election.html
Betty Cracker
@dmsilev: Fixed — thank you!
Bex
Re Gym Jordan, Ron Johnson and Scott Perry, it’s obvious that it takes a brainless twit to know brainless twits when he sees them.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’ve thought for a long time that the wall between the DoJ and the White House should be strengthened, formalized in some way, but beyond the political sell– first and foremost getting any White House to give up some executive power– I don’t know what Constitutional issues that might raise.
Ivan X
TRUMP Act! Genius. +100.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
So I finally started watching Loki, and need an explainer.
If there’s only one timeline that is constantly being fixed, then where have all the physically different Lokis (including the Loki gator come from? Is there a single timeline in each alternative universe?
germy
So this is why Gym Jordan gets so nervous whenever he’s asked about it?
Old School
That may be, but I don’t believe any of the Justice Department officials were met on a tarmac.
MattF
@JoyceH: And the Trump cult is damaging to state R parties. It’s large enough to throw any remaining ‘moderates’ under the bus but not large enough to win. And Trump himself is driving the bus.
dr. bloor
@germy:
“Hey Gym, take a quick look at your phone. It will tell you exactly when you spoke to Trump on the 6th. Isn’t that a really neat feature?”
Old School
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I believe that’s the case. The issues arise when the alternate timelines mix.
I’m sure the future movies/series will go into more detail.
Baud
@Old School: Good call.
germy
@dr. bloor:
Gravenstone
@dr. bloor: And if you don’t want to trouble yourself, I’m sure your cell carrier has all the details if you need a refresher.
Just Chuck
I am aware of all Internet traditions!
Eunicecycle
@dr. bloor: I thought the same thing! I always look at my phone if I can’t remember when I called someone. It’s right there!
JoyceH
@dr. bloor:
Ha! I hadn’t even thought of that! But it’s true. Office phones will have call records and so will cells. “I don’t recall” is less useful than it used to be!
germy
Kay
It’s worse than that, really. When the Republican Party accepted Trump they accepted a decline in the quality of people that they hire – a lower bar. That becomes systemic, because bad people hire and promote other bad people – it selects for a further decline unless it’s stopped or halted with a reorganization, clearing out the crooks, etc.
Trump was the high water mark. The huge group of Trumpist Republicans who come after him will be worse, and there will be many more of them, because these sorts of people ALSO hire:
It’s systemic now. Without affirmative actions to change direction it will just get worse and worse. The next GOP attorney general won’t say “there’s no evidence”. He’ll execute the order. Political parties are organizations. They’re composed of individuals. If it becomes 80% bad people it’s a systemically bad organization and requires reform or, really, abolition and new entity.
The Republican Party under Trump was still operating with a critical mass of people who defended the rules and the country. Those people will age out or leave and their replacements will be Trump-level or worse. It’ll keep getting worse until someone takes some action to turn it around. No one is willing to take the actions necessary.
You all saw the Arizona audit. That was the low. But it won’t stay there. They’re still sinking, with the Pennsylvania audit. Slides don’t stop until they’re stopped or they reach the bottom. This one is still rolling downhill.
Eunicecycle
@germy: First of all, we don’t want a ruling class, healthy or not. Secondly, AOC and Pete B. are not running the country, the last I checked. J. D. Vance is an idiot.
Ten Bears
If we let them get away with it this time, they’ll get away with it next …
germy
@Ten Bears:
We shouldn’t have let them get away with Iran-Contra.
Wvng
Betty wrote: “I’m not a lawyer, but I suspect we’ll find out Trump’s outrageously corrupt and authoritarian actions weren’t even illegal. ” I’m not so sure. This seems like one more piece of a large criminal conspiracy to subvert an election.
Wvng
@Kay: Just as Peak Wingnut is a myth, the GOP has no behavioral bottom.
Kay
It’s too late, really. Trump is the benchmark and that’s a really low mark. The critical mass will be Trump-level or lower. They’ll have a couple of people hanging on above it but there won’t be enough of them to matter. It’s literally the reason people have standards, so they don’t end up with 90% below water.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Biden could memorialize it in an executive order. Obviously, the next GOP president could do away with it, but repealing an executive order is somewhat transparent.
Congress might be able to do some things like reporting requirements, but that requires ending the filibuster.
burnspbesq
@dr. bloor:
Of course. The authors work for that other paper.
JPL
So it’s just like the Nixon tapes without the racist shit. Of course, Rosen hasn’t testified yet, so the racist shit could be included at a later date.
Roger Moore
@JoyceH:
I think Trump’s personal influence over the party is probably waning, but he’s obviously completely changed the power dynamics within the party. It’s still Trump’s party in the sense that everyone is trying to emulate him, even if it isn’t his party in that it’s no longer so obviously in his pocket.
germy
@Kay:
Is it possible the Cheneys and Romneys will ride in on white horses to save what’s left of their party?
WereBear
For the record, cat ladies are much more compassionate and community minded than any Republican…
Uncle Cosmo
@Kay:
Because they take turns sticking their widduw heads up TFG’s arse and fighting for air.
Baud
@Roger Moore:
As the Dems found out in the 70s, racists hold a long and bitter grudge if you abandon them.
germy
@WereBear:
As are cat dads.
Baud
@WereBear:
Haha. How’s running the country going?
geg6
@Eunicecycle:
Standard white supremacist talk. He’s dog whistling the “replacement” theory.
What a piece of shit that guy is. I can’t believe how many people believed his bullshit about being some sort of Appalachian hillbilly who pulled himself up by the bootstraps. Your typical low quality Ivy League garbage of a venture capitalist.
I hope his whole campaign goes the way George P. Bush’s has.
prostratedragon
This old whist player thinks there has to be a way to make it the NO-TRUMP Act. In my playing days that viperish mug was just clearing the horizon, and the Brooklynites in the group were already convincing that it was an excellent policy, as the old man was enough to recommend it unto several generations.
JPL
@geg6: If he is the candidate, I have faith that Tim Ryan will make him eat those words..
germy
@Roger Moore:
They’re all trying to emulate his style. This, for example:
And the men wear the blue suit/red tie costume that Trump made popular. They’re like cosplayers at a fantasy convention.
Kay
@Wvng:
What they did was they blew up the scale. They vastly expanded “acceptable” to include “absolutely horrible”. They had to exclude the bottom 10% of applicants and they didn’t. The worse will now crowd out the better.
The attorney general of Texas is under indictment. That’s no longer unacceptable. So everyone under indictment now comes in to the potential pool of applicants. This is fucking crazy. No organization in their right mind would follow this path. It can only go in one direction- down.
burnspbesq
I think I need a new thesaurus. The one I have doesn’t flag “fighter” as a synonym for “unindicted ci-conspirator.”
Nora Lenderbee
“Thousands of lurkers support me in email.”
–Godless Socialist Child-Hating Cat Lady
germy
Speaking of Stefanik, I found this one amusing:
The Thin Black Duke
@Kay: Ultimately, this race to the bottom is damaging to the country as a whole. What Covid in 2020 illustrated was when a disaster happens, these incompetent assclowns have no damned idea what to do to fix it. If we keep on putting them behind the steering wheel, they will drive all of us off a cliff sooner or later.
Roger Moore
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It’s going to be very difficult to provide any political boundary between the President and any department as long as believers in the unitary executive control the courts. The upshot of the recent Supreme Court rulings is that the President has the power to fire anyone in the executive branch he has the power to appoint.
burnspbesq
@geg6:
As a Texas resident, I have to respectfully disagree with you on this one. Anyone, even George P. Bush, would be an improvement on Paxton.
germy
@The Thin Black Duke:
The Toonces effect.
geg6
@JPL:
Agreed. I’ve been donating to Ryan and Fetterman this cycle. I don’t care who the GQP put up against them, I want them to pound them into the ground.
different-church-lady
Nobody else could.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
OT: Seeing some of this bubble up around the internet. It’s not just left-twitter and commenters on top 10,000 blogs who are tired of her schtick
I haven’t heard much about her actual personality– Ted Cruz radiates punchable even in still photographs– but that picture of her with the fuck-you ring would seem to back up the idea.
Cameron
If Trump’s unable to answer the call, I predict the 2024 ticket will be Pres. DeSantis and VP Vance. They’ll capture 27% of the vote, but win the electoral college in a landslide thanks to voter suppression/voter intimidation/override of election officials. Now I’m off for a refreshing hydroxychloroquine and tequila cocktail. Covfefe, MFers!
Kay
@germy:
Is that going to work though? Have you seen the current crop of younger Republicans? Even if they get a relatively normal one they become bad with exposure to the rest. There is now an entire generation of young Republicans who revere Donald Trump. Tens of millions of them.
It’s easy to lower standards. It’s hard as nails to raise them.
geg6
@burnspbesq:
I really have no idea whether he would or would not be better than Paxton. But selling coozies throwing his entire family, including both his father and mother, under the bus to suck up to Trump for his endorsement doesn’t say that to me.
different-church-lady
@germy: JD Vance appears to be perfecting his Conservative duck-speak.
JPL
@Kay: Since I live in Fulton County Ga, I fear the lowlifes will win. We’ve always depended on the vote counters to do their job. That may no longer be the case.
different-church-lady
@Cameron:
Been reading LGM, I see.
WereBear
@Baud: I get so little cooperation. But we and the cats have all our shots.
WereBear
@germy: I love cat dads! Just reffing Vance
Roger Moore
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
The showrunner tried to explain it. He said that it’s not as if there’s just one timeline. It’s more like there’s a cluster of related timelines, and the job of the TVA is to keep them from diverging too far. Variants are dangerous because they threaten to cause the timelines to diverge past the point of repair. Reading between the lines a bit, Loki is particularly dangerous to the timeline because he is in an important position, so he has the power to throw the timeline off, and because he’s especially prone to producing extreme variants.
mrmoshpotato
@JoyceH:
Hahaha! Well played.
Kay
@The Thin Black Duke:
I know what they were thinking. “This is an aberation. We’ll accept it and play it out and then we’ll return to the higher standards”. But that isn’t how it works. The thing becomes self-selecting to the lower standard. They had to expell the bottom 10 and they wouldn’t. In fact, they promoted them! But the title didn’t change what they were- they’re still the bottom 10, just with a fancy title.
Cameron
@different-church-lady: Bad habits die hard…..
Citizen_X
@germy: Hmm. Well, if we’re trying to breed a healthier ruling class, we should think about culling the one we have. You know, get rid of the troublemakers in the flock. Hey, it’s Vance’s idea!
Is there some device we could do that with, humanely? Perhaps something with a big, sharp blade that falls quickly.
JaneE
@germy: Anyone who loves cats, dogs, or any animal can’t be 100% bad. Considering that Hitler loved dogs, that puts Trump and his no-pet household in perspective.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@different-church-lady:
They’re a little doom-y, but there’s a solid point to be made on legislative overrides.
“We did it according to law, so it’s OK” will be the shout from GOP officials along with the NYT and WSJ opinion pages. Then they’ll decry the post-coup violence as unseemly, talking about non-violence as a positive thing and acting like they’d respect drum circles and some giant puppets.
Me, I’d like to see some gibbets occupied with pasty, puffy denizens of GOP lobby shops, GOP think tanks and louder conservative pundits, as a lesson.
JPL
trump and the very bad day. Congress should have his taxes soon, and I assume that means we will also. sad
Ruckus
I believe we need to have more limitations on the president. Given the modern world we need the president to be able to act fast in some situations and use their best judgement, hopefully which will be better than a dumb shit loser. But over my lifetime I can see that some just do not have reasonable, good judgement about what the country needs and seemingly put themselves first in almost every case. And we have to stop the concept that war is the answer to world problems, how often has that actually been the correct answer? On the personal side, some presidents have taken great liberties with puffing up their own egos and likely bank accounts. (This is not limited to the president, what about the representative covered here who withheld all but a dollar of his pay to avoid paying fines for being a non masking ass?) We pay our legislators far more than many people make and they decide that the minimum wage cant’ be raised to even an unreasonable minimum?
I don’t have any concrete answers off the top of my noggin but our financial/political system is actually quite broken because it relies on trust and honesty, two things which modern conservatives seem to be totally lacking. I have in the past mentioned reasonable term limits here and I see that concept is not all that popular but we have to find a way to make political office less of an entrenched power grab (Mitch McConnell comes to mind off the top of my head) Some have countered that elections are term limits, but how many of us vote in KY? I also recognize that any job takes time to learn well and that structural knowledge is required to run anything, but especially something like a national legislature.
I think we should have discussions about our politics/concepts/realism of politics/what we actually need and want from government and how do we go about getting there/racism – misogynism – hate/money it’s power.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Roger Moore:
Then there’s this – gator Loki presumably comes from a reptilian Asgardian society and clearly has no thumbs while sporting a horned helmet.
How could thumbless Asgardian reptiles manufacture helmets or even put them on? As the series demonstrates, his thing is to bite people with powerful jaws….
James E Powell
@David Hunt:
His party is almost a lock to control the house in 2023 and has a better than even chance to control the senate, so I wouldn’t rule out a Trump comeback.
We have to keep in mind that every network & cable executive, every newspaper editor, and every reporter in America wants it to happen.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Eunicecycle: I mean, Lindsey Graham doesn’t have any kids and isn’t married, and if anyone resembles a cat lady in American politics today it’s, um, him.
The Thin Black Duke
@Cameron: I’m actually somewhat optimistic because even the laziest, non-engaged voter wants shit to work. Obama was elected president because Dubya fucked up so bad. “Sleepy Joe” Biden got elected because of TFG’s disastrous response to the pandemic. Once kids back in schools start dying because of Republicans refusing to enforce sensible safety precautions, people will vote for Democrats to fix this shit. Again.
rikyrah
@zhena gogolia:
Come sit by me
Kay
Exact same play as Ukraine. Just say there’s an investigation into Biden and we’ll do the rest. It didn’t work with Ukraine so the sleazebags thought they’d run this scam in their own country. Unbelievable.
That’s the decline in quality. Once you accept that, you’re stuck with it and the GOP has not only accepted it, they’ve embraced it. Only down from here on out until it rests at the bottom.
AliceBlue
@germy: Oh dear god. Who’s going to tell her?
James E Powell
@Kay:
See, e.g., Elise Stefanik & George P Bush.
The Thin Black Duke
@Kay: Problem is, as James Baldwin so astutely pointed out, “what if the bottom doesn’t exist?”
Cameron
@The Thin Black Duke: I much prefer your view to mine, and I hope you’re right.
CaseyL
The entire GOP needs to be hung, drawn, quartered, and then burned to ashes.
And I do mean that literally.
Kay
@James E Powell:
She got worse to fit in better. That’s how it happens.
Roger Moore
@germy:
The same Cheney who has been thrown out of her leadership position for daring to speak the truth? I don’t think so. I think the party leadership has rotted too far for a new group of leaders to take control that way. It will take a bottom up effort to throw the corrupt and incompetent people out.
Kay
@The Thin Black Duke:
Oh, there is one. They’ll inevitably reach it because they are making absolutely no attempt to stop rolling down hill. Gravity is going to win.
Ruckus
@germy:
That will make it better or reasonable?
sukabi
Honestly don’t know why folks are surprised about this, it’s not like drumpf knows how to be stealthy….he was literally holding rallies and threatening folks for months before the election, during the election, after it and continues to do the same still.
He’s desperate to stay out of jail, I suspect there will be actual blackmail and attempted blackmail that will be exposed before this ends…
gwangung
@Roger Moore:
Yeah, the tell was with Classic Loki. What he did was essentially the same as with the mainline Loki up until he tried to end his exile and re-connect with his brother.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@germy:
I don’t think there’s enough of a non-GQP GOP left for them to save. Cheney’s bet might be that she’ll survive long enough to lead the Republicans back out of the wilderness after the Trumpists are finally defeated. (Far too late for Romney to make that work.) But like I said, it may already be too late for her to pull it off.
Earl
@Roger Moore:
It’s not just you can’t do any boundary; there’s essentially no laws you can place on the behavior of the president or congress that anybody is going to be willing to enforce in any way.
The only thing you can do to force behavior is elect people who want to behave in a certain way and will self police.
Baud
Some good OT news. Right wing nut Larry Klayman got dinged for $2.3 million in damages by Trump appointed judge Rao.
Earl
@Roger Moore: Pretty skeptical Cheney is going to be in congress in 2023.
James E Powell
@Kay:
George P Bush surprised me. He could be a “reasonable” Republican like Liz Cheney, build for the future where he’d be one of the top dogs. Now he’s just another Trumpster a hole.
Betty
@Bex: The Scott Perry story was reported around the time it happened. He hooked up with someone at DOJ in an effort to extort the Georgia legislature to overturn the results. My Congressman and a hopeless case.
Ruckus
@The Thin Black Duke:
When the bottom is artificial it can drop out at any time.
Earl
@The Thin Black Duke: I think there’s a substantial fraction of the country that just wants minorities (anyone who isn’t white, male, who owns land) to be shit on. And they’re perfectly willing to make their own lives shitty as long as they can watch the police beat the shit out of some black dude on tv.
There was a quote on this site — something something 40% of American will volunteer to live under a bridge and cook sparrows on a curtain rod as long as someone guarantees the black person next to him has it worse.
Baud
A lot of these fake Trumpers would change their attitude on a dime if the tenor of the party changes. They just don’t want to get a reputation as traitors.
The question is, what can change the party besides consistently losing elections.
Matt McIrvin
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: There are lots of timelines, but the TVA keeps destroying the ones that threaten to deviate too much from their Sacred Timeline. The different Lokis are remnants of those pruned timelines. And… I don’t know whether you’ve seen the last couple of episodes but to explain further would be a massive spoiler for them.
billcinsd
@germy: does JD not realize that Josh Mandel has more kids than him and Jane Timken the same number?
LightCastle
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
The answer is “they didn’t think to hard about it and someone later might fix it if they need to but they probably won’t because the only purpose of the show is to set up the next set of films”.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@billcinsd: Vance is probably too deep into the confident-ignorance end of the Dunning-Kruger curve.
geg6
@JPL:
Yes, just saw that. Good.
@different-church-lady:
This entire thread is pretty much a carbon copy of the LGM Eeyores. Except those talking about something called Loki. Which sounds like something I wouldn’t watch or listen to if you paid me. I’m more like the Thin Black Duke dude. Or the Chicks. Like them, I’m not ready to back down.
Ruckus
@Baud:
Even in this country, with it’s two party system, parties have come and gone. Lincoln was a republican.
What holds the republican party together today is money – big money. And people who couldn’t make even make medium money on their own, supporting that big money for a tiny slice of the pie.
We had a start on breaking up the really big money a few decades ago, and that’s been chipped away till big money is back. And big money is about conserving – big money. But that word conserving is in there and is not all that unusual of a human trait. It’s just that humanity is different today than it was 60 yrs ago. It’s grown a lot, while our ability to create food, shelter and jobs has not kept up. It could but that would mean going back to limiting – big money.
Citizen Alan
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
One would assume Gator Loki was simply a human Loki that was turned into a gator. Sort of like Frog Thor.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I keep trying to get out, and they keep pulling me back in! (They being MSNBC and political twitter)
No further details that I can see….
The Thin Black Duke
@Earl: Oh sure, I’m aware of the suicide bombers who consistently vote against their own interests. Thankfully, we do outnumber them. The problem as I see it are the idiots obstensibly on “our” side who are too heavily invested in chasing unicorns and either vote for useless candidates like Jill Stein or Bernie Sanders. You know, the mythical figureheads of progressive politics who belong in an episode of The West Wing, not Washington, DC for god’s sake. “All or Nothing” is bad math because what usually happens is we wind up with nothing in the end, except for a sound bite on TV that’s forgotten five minutes later.
Old School
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Loki is a god/sorcerer. The reptile could just create the hat without having to do the work.
JPL
@geg6: This is turning out to be a pretty good Friday..
Biden just appointed Khizr Khan, father of slain Army Captain Humayun Khan, to lead the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. Khan, who is Muslim, gave an unforgettable speech at the 2016 DNC criticizing Trump
Christina Wilkie on Twitter: “e said. https://t.co/iBbykfMbDF” / Twitter
haha He’s going to replace Sam Brownback
Roger Moore
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Do you know that for sure, though? Shapeshifting is one of Loki’s things, so it’s possible it’s something like him turning into a gator and getting stuck that way.
Matt McIrvin
I am getting extremely annoyed at media coverage of the leaked CDC slides–many mainstream media outlets seem to be either implying or outright stating that they mean the vaccines do nothing to prevent transmission of Delta COVID, and this is incorrect.
What the CDC slides claim (and I’ve seen scientists disputing even this, so it’s a controversial statement) is that people with breakthrough infections of Delta are as infectious as unvaccinated infected people. But the vaccine still reduces the probability of getting those breakthrough infections. By a factor that is unclear, but it’s probably somewhere between 5 and 10.
Mike in NC
Just read an article on the late Jesse Helms (R-NC) who flourished in this state’s politics for 30+ years. The bottom line in American politics is that there is no downside to being a white supremacist demagogue, then or now.
LightCastle
@Citizen Alan: I thought that was the point of showing frog Thor.
Matt McIrvin
@Roger Moore: I did find it kind of odd that Loki’s shapeshifting ability never once comes up directly in the series, though it’s alluded to. All those different physical forms of Loki could be just down to some passing whim the different Lokis had. A matter of personal preference.
OGLiberal
My wife was near wingnut acquaintances recently and apparently the new outrage is that there is some COVID relief act program around debt relief for farmers. Relatively speaking, not a lot of cash. Anybody can apply but the rules are that the applications of veterans, women an historically disadvantaged – culturally and economically – will be processed first during a 21-day period after which the rest be handled. OUTRAGE!!! Poor white farmer dudes need to wait in line a few weeks before getting their free cash! I didn’t even know about the program in the first place, never mind the outrage. But in a quick Google search I found that the Epoch Times are all over it – which explains the interest of this wingnut acquaintance since that’s their bible. How dare we help hard working farmers!
And, yes, they have Trump flags and their teenaged son has a poster with Trump standing on a flag-laden tank with “YOU’RE FIRED” emblazoned on the barrel. And they say making kids wear masks is child abuse…
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Nice.
@JPL: Double nice.
@Matt McIrvin: NBC News in particular has been horrible on vaccine and mask issues lately.
Baud
@OGLiberal: I think a judge struck that down anyway.
MattF
@Matt McIrvin: Also, that weekend in Provincetown was apparently a gigantic superspreader event. I can believe that vaccines won’t prevent that.
Dan B
@Eunicecycle: In addition to AOC being young and not against being a mother, Pete B. and Chasten have been trying to adopt for a year. J.D. Vance is making an incel dog whistle. AOC and Pete are violating hetero male rights according to Vance.
There is a shortage of logic here. Bigly!
germy
All I know is, the actor who plays Loki… every time I see him I’m reminded of Hank Williams, because he played him in a biopic.
It’s like the actor who played John Lennon in the movie “Nowhere Boy” … a few years later he was in a godzilla picture, and I kept thinking “John Lennon vs. Godzilla.”
Roger Moore
@Earl:
I’ve been making more or less this point for a long time. The whole point is that the Constitution is ultimately just a bunch of words; it depends on people to give it any force. If the people we choose to enforce it refuse to do their job, there’s no amount of extra words that can protect it.
Earl
@The Thin Black Duke: Honestly, I vacillate between loathing for the morons who vote for “eh, this shit doesn’t affect me anyway so fuck it” candidates like Jill (and Bernie) and loathing for the legislators who don’t deliver concrete improvements to our voters’ lives…
Gin & Tonic
DOJ says IRS has to turn over TFG’s tax returns to Congress
ETA: I should read the comments.
trollhattan
Hi, Donny!
JWR
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
More details on TFG’s tax returns just popped up on Politico. Not much in the way of details, such as when they’ll get them, but it’s something.
E.
@The Thin Black Duke: Oh there is a bottom, believe me. The problem is, the bottom is Easter Island. The bottom is abandoned temples in the Yucatan that remain undiscovered to this day. The bottom is a gigantic pyramid surrounded by blowing sand. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.
piratedan
@Baud: convictions
Roger Moore
@James E Powell:
I think this is a tell. Everyone who does this is admitting they don’t think the reasonable future is ever coming, and they don’t have the morals to stick to what’s right without the promise of some personal reward. The latter point is the thing that’s most disappointing to me; almost the entire party has abandoned any pretense of morals.
JPL
@Gin & Tonic: It’s pretty exciting news and needs to be repeated. so that’s good
Matt McIrvin
@geg6: LGM is interesting right now: for several months, their general darkness was offset by a sort of aggressive front-pager optimism on the specific subject of COVID vaccines, which I thought sometimes exceeded what reality could justify, especially over the past few weeks.
But now the CDC slide thing has them freaking out, even though it didn’t actually say much we didn’t already know.
Baud
@piratedan: I seriously doubt it. I doubt we can find evidence to implicate every member of the GOP, so there’s no reason those who aren’t convicted to change.
MattF
@JWR: Note the headline says ‘Democrats’ rather than ‘Congress’. And I think it’s deliberate rather than an oopsie.
Omnes Omnibus
@James E Powell: Why do you think the GOP has a lock on the House?
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: I have yet to hear anything new in that CDC scoop. It just seems like a ginned up story based solely on the fact that the information was presented in a “secret” (i.e., non-public) document.
Roger Moore
@Earl:
I think what a lot of these people want is hierarchy. They’re OK with people higher on the ladder shitting on them as long as there’s someone lower on the ladder for them to shit on.
Cmorenc
@MattF:
hence the gop’s post-election moves to selectively shrink the electorate to a size and composition where they can still win
Gin & Tonic
@Roger Moore: The LBJ line.
germy
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: The one new thing is the claim that viral load is as high in Delta breakthrough infections as in unvaccinated infections. Which they kind of implied in their public statement to begin with, but it’s being interpreted in all kinds of weird ways now. And that doesn’t even necessarily imply that breakthroughs will infect as many people (there’s length of time to consider, for instance).
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus:
Because that’s the cool thing to say. Rather than trying to do anything to make sure it doesn’t happen.
Chief Oshkosh
@germy: She’s relying on her constituents to be so fucked-in-the-head stoopid that they don’t know that Medicare/Medicaid are socialistic programs. It’s a low-risk assumption on her part.
Gin & Tonic
germy
@Chief Oshkosh:
Roger Moore
@Chief Oshkosh:
She’s using the wingnut definition of Socialism: programs that give free stuff to Those People.
Danielx
@germy:
Yes indeed. What the fuck does Stefanik think Medicaid and Medicare are, if not socialized medicine?
JPL
@Gin & Tonic: If I were at treasury, I’d have that packet over soon, with an extra copy to the NYTimes..
geg6
@Matt McIrvin:
I can barely read the site these days. I still check it every day out of habit, but they have a very dark way of looking at things that is not very helpful, IMHO. And I never wade into the comments any more. Just not worth getting myself depressed.
Jackie
@burnspbesq: I’m hoping TFG’s endorsement will again backfire and Bush wins that primary.
Danielx
@The Thin Black Duke:
I knew – knew beyond the shadow of a doubt – that sooner or later Trump was going to do something, or fail to do something, that would get a lot of people killed. I knew it within a week of his inauguration. Where my imagination failed was in seeing how badly he could fuck up something so simple.
zhena gogolia
@Danielx: I knew it too. That’s why I was shaking all night long the night of the election.
piratedan
@Baud: I could give a fuck about that, but the ones who CAN be convicted can at least be in jail and if they don’t serve as a “cautionary example”, then so be it. IIRC being a convicted federal felon prevents you from holding a federal office.
Dan B
@Baud: This may not be “new” but the Delta variant seems to be as contagious as the common cold, Eola, and Chickenpox so “breakthrough” cases in the vaccinated who may have few or no symptoms make Delta more stealthy and able to spread quickly even where 70% are vaccinated.
JAMA has an article on a small study showing that vaccinated people who get sick are more likely to get long haul.
It sounds like we’re going to double masking and distancing for months and then winter arrives.
Baud
@Dan B:
More likely than what?
Dan B
@Chief Oshkosh: Keep the Gubmint off my Social Security!
Said every wingnut.
smith
@Earl: Just for the record, this is the quote,
“The salient fact of American politics is that there are fifty to seventy million voters each of whom will volunteer to live, with his family, in a cardboard box under an overpass, and cook sparrows on an old curtain rod, if someone would only guarantee that the black, gay, Hispanic, liberal, whatever, in the next box over doesn’t even have a curtain rod, or a sparrow to put on it.”
It was penned years ago by a commenter by the nym of Davis X. Machina, who has a long commenting history on liberal blogs, and who these days is often found over at LGM.
Internet commentary by now has built up a really useful canon of political insights — Cleek’s Law, Murc’s Law, Poe’s Law, and Wilhoit’s Law among them. This one is not usually called Machina’s Law, but I think it should also be recognized for how shrewdly it distills the mindset of our opponents.
JPL
@Dan B: A few weeks ago, a five year old died in Marjorie Taylor-Greene’s district, and she could care less. I doubt the family was vaccinated, but it shows that children are at risk. I started wearing a mask again, since I don’t want to be a carrier to my grandson.
JPL
@Baud: Local newscaster has had a breakthrough case, and hasn’t been able to work for weeks. He’s a healthy forty something person who works out all the time.
Dan B
@zhena gogolia: Lurking in the recesses of my id was nuclear war after gay couple’s kids were given to good Christians plus Jim Crow 2.0.
So things turned out much better! Right!? Right?!
2022 is still feeling shaky but that awareness should help focus the minds of millions.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
You can’t buy morals.
Ok you can but they aren’t worth a crap.
germy
@Dan B:
I read (I think it was in one of the covid threads here) that people who were suffering from long haul symptoms had them disappear after being vaccinated.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
This.
And I always ask, wouldn’t it just be easier to not shit on each other?
Often answered by blank stares.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@germy: I had that same fact (I hope) in my head.
Matt McIrvin
@MattF: Yeah, I’ve been following the Provincetown thing for weeks so it wasn’t surprising to me at all, but I guess it hasn’t been huge national news.
Ruckus
@Danielx:
Is it socialized medicine or a way to pay for not socialized medicine?
There is a difference.
I use the VA. You walk in the door you get the same treatment as anyone else. Does someone on Medicare/Medicaid get the same care? Almost all the time the answer is no, they do not. The VA is an example of socialized medicine Medicare/Medicaid is a socialized way to pay for non socialized medicine. And yes there is a huge difference.
Dan B
@Baud: The article I saw had no numbers. It’s a small study so it’s discouraging but not definitive. I regard it as one more reason to shut down hugging and going maskless. If we don’t get seriously ill because of the vaccine but have a chance of long haul I’m not going to celebrate the end of Covid, not yet. It feels like the elation we felt when Obama was elected. Racism was not over. Keep vigilant while you celebrate a bit of progress.
Earl
@smith: thank you!
Ruckus
@Danielx:
He fucks up the simple.
There is a reason for this.
He doesn’t even attempt anything even slightly more difficult than simple. He’s not capable of thinking in any way more than absolutely simple. That’s the reason he doesn’t even try anything more than simple.
Omnes Omnibus
@Dan B: Who honestly thought that racism was over because we elected Obama?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Omnes Omnibus: Chris Cillizza ?
Earl
@Ruckus: I assumed that he would do a good job with covid, because it could be entirely delegated to the cdc et al and, had he done a good job, not only would he have coasted to reelection but it probably would have been with something close to Bush-Dukakis electoral margins.
Dan B
@germy: I’ve read that so it was odd that people who were “already vaccinated” might be more likely to get long haul. Is it Delta or something else or is the study flawed? Take notice but don’t get excited.
It’s like the news that protection from Pfizer drops to 84% after six months. The immune response doesn’t really change. Good.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I specifically said “honestly thought.”
Kay
@James E Powell:
What would the future look like, though? Bush and Cheney had a kind of brand. They were warmongers who cut taxes and kowtowed to wealthy people, with a mild Christian topping.
What are these people? They’re ridiculous. They’re the people who are Tweeting about the anniversary of Medicaid and Medicare while decrying socialized health insurance. Trumpism isn’t anything- it’s a bunch of incoherent yelling.
Dan B
@Omnes Omnibus: I had friends. There were plenty of pundits as well. Shortly the first volleys of pushback began. Some friends were still optimistic. I was between cautious optimism and cynicism. Realism?
Old School
@germy: My recollection is that getting the immunizations did alleviate the symptoms for some (but not all) of long-COVID sufferers.
I am not sure if science has determined how to make it better for those it didn’t help.
James E Powell
@Omnes Omnibus:
Gerrymandering. Off-year low D turnout made worse by voter suppression. Estimated impact of racist fear-mongering. Inchoate rage over failure to eradicate COVID coalescing into an anti-White House vote.
But mostly the gerrymandering.
OGLiberal
@Roger Moore: Yup. “My grandma gets those things…they can’t be bad! But those food stamp things and free pre-school….COMMUNIST SOCIALIST NAZISM BLACK POWER CRT!!!!!”
Omnes Omnibus
@Dan B: No offense to your friends, but that was shockingly naive. Of course Obama’s election was a sign of improvement, the idea that it meant racism was beaten is gobsmacking. And, as far as pundits go, my comment about “honestly thought” applies.
Omnes Omnibus
@James E Powell: I would suggest that all of those can be and are being countered.
Geminid
@James E Powell: Democrats will be gerrymandering also. Between reapportionment and redistricting, Republicans probably could achieve a net advantage. But I think it gain will be in the single digits. Democrats are motivated for these midterms, at least as much as Republicans, maybe more. Democrats will just have to pick up seats they did not in the last midterms, like my VA 5th. Democrats have reached parity with Republicans in midterm turnout, maybe better. I like our chances to hold the House.
Spinoza Is My Co-pilot
@geg6: I’m basically the opposite. I’ve been reading (and doing a little commenting on) left/liberal blogs going back to Media Whores Online and such 20 years ago, and for my money LGM is the GOAT. It’s my primary place for keeping up, and I spend time there pretty much every day.
BJ is fine — this place is the only other blog besides LGM that I frequent anymore, but typically I’m only over here a few times each week, and I seldom comment even when I do visit. Used to be this was my main online “community”, going back to when our esteemed blogfather had his epiphany in ’05, but for me LGM overall has better posts and a stronger commentariat these days (plus Disqus is a significantly better platform for conducting conversations).
I understand your viewpoint, it’s just different for me. It’s ok, we’re still on the same side opposing the damn fascists.
Omnes Omnibus
@Spinoza Is My Co-pilot: Threaded comments are anathema.
Earl
@Roger Moore: If you haven’t read the book Strangers in Their Own Land by Hochschild, I can’t recommend it enough. re: the sociology of trump supporters. Josh Marshall agrees: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-must-read–4 .
A quote
Just Chuck
@Danielx:
No. SATSQ.
Spinoza Is My Co-pilot
@smith: I was going to respond to Earl regarding Davis X Machina’s shrewdly perceptive observation (it’s been a favorite of mine since he first posted it here in BJ comments over a decade ago) but you beat me to it!
I agree with you that it belongs in the pantheon of political “laws” like Cleek’s and Murc’s and Wilhoit’s. It’s a bit longer than those others, and the original quote as you included here gets the full meaning across better than any “distilled” version I’ve seen, but for many of us who are familiar with it just “curtain rods and sparrows” is all the synecdoche needed.
Just Chuck
@Spinoza Is My Co-pilot: Kind of like “anthrax and tire rims”.
planetjanet
@Spinoza Is My Co-pilot:
Oh, how I miss Media Whores Online!
Spinoza Is My Co-pilot
@Omnes Omnibus: “Threaded comments are anathema”
I understand that viewpoint, too, I just happen to prefer it over the numbered and “non-nested” WordPress platform here for holding conversations in comments.
Spinoza Is My Co-pilot
@Just Chuck: IIRC that was JC himself (and another favorite of mine, too).
Jay
@germy:
some of them. I’m not as tired, got some breathing back, brain fog is much less, but I still light up like the night sky with microclots on the MRI.
Spinoza Is My Co-pilot
@planetjanet: Yeah, I miss The Horse. Of all the others that have also left us (which would be most of those that helped keep me sane during the W nightmare) I most miss The Poorman/the Editors. Very glad that this place and LGM are still kicking because Twitter just sucks so bad.
James E Powell
@Omnes Omnibus:
@Geminid:
Hope you guys are right.
I’m still furious about the three southern California districts narrowly lost in 2020. I haven’t yet heard of the candidates who will try to take them back.
NotMax
@Spinoza Is My Co-pilot
On days not containing a “y.” Threaded comments give me the gallumphing heebie-jeebies.
YMMV.
;)
J R in WV
I visit LG&M most every day, comment some, not as much as here. I also visit Whatever by John Scalzy and his daughter for the SciFi they cover. And EmptyWheel, which covers TFG and his crimes pretty tightly. She moved to Ireland some months back, probably to escape TFG/SFB wrath.
But I call B-J home.
I just got a new tail whee tire for the bushog… $170, plus I get to install it, whoot! Also a long drive to pick it up…
Gvg
@germy: Specific regular posters here reported that had happened to specific people they knew, but not all long Covid acquaintances. So it is anecdotal, not statistical from a study. There were a few news stories that were similar, but so far no real studies.
Ruckus
@Earl:
Possibly your first mistake, attributing anything in anyway positive about SFB.
I have the displeasure of having been seeing stories about SFB for nearly 50 yrs because we got the WSJ and Forbes at work, and I read them, at least back then. His father was a shit, he was raised a shit and has remained one his entire life. He has never had an actual positive thought in his life, every thing with him is how to make money. And his number one trait was to lie first and screw over everyone else was his second. He didn’t improve one iota in 5 decades, once a shit, always a shit. Some say he’s worth about 2 1/2 billion. I call maximum bullshit. He’s sold pretty much everything that he owns enough of to get any cash, he’s borrowed what I’d consider extremely large sums from some rather disreputable people, basically taken a knee to Vlad, he is racist to a a degree that can only be described as KKK without the hood and he is an inarticulate, ignorant, total asshole of the highest order and has been his entire adult life.
He was never going to do even the minimum that normal humans should consider the job of the president because he’s totally incapable. And as, in his mind, he is the worlds smartest human being, no one can do anything as good as him. And the proof is that he was wealthy. Except he lied about his wealth, by several magnitudes. He wanted to be worth something he just claimed he was. The tell is that if he had taken the 400 million that he took from his father and siblings and invested it in a Vanguard fund and left it alone, he would be worth what he falsely claimed. That’s how ignorant he is.
Spinoza Is My Co-pilot
@J R in WV: I enjoy John Scalzi’s blog, too, and have been a consumer of sci fi (mostly short stories, my favorite format for that genre) for almost 60 years now.
J R in WV
@Spinoza Is My Co-pilot:
I like really long novels, like Neal Stephenson’s epics. Short stories don’t last long enough… I want to be kept busy for at least a couple of weeks. Amazon Kindle series with 10 novels, for example.
But whatever.
Anything to keep my mind off of reality more recently! Charlie Stross… I’m waiting for the next novel in his merchants walking across multiple dimensions series right now.
ETA> My mom turned me on to Andre Norton a V. long time ago. Took me years to figure out that Norton was a she…
NotMax
@J R in WV
Gene Wolfe. Book of the New Sun tertralogy. ’nuff said.
NotMax
@NotMax
Aw, crap on a Uneeda. Spelling error escaped detection.
tetralogy
RAM
As Nixon famously put it to David Frost: When the President does it, it’s not against the law.
Earl
@Ruckus:
You are, no doubt, right. I just guess I’d hoped there was some trace of venality there — either him personally, or someone working for him — rather than pure nothingness on the inside. People elsewhere have written about how TFG defies the theory of mind.
Also… SFB?
O. Felix Culpa
@Earl: Shit-fer-Brains.
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@germy: so, does that make nick fuentes or jorge esprescott bush the el vez of maga?
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@germy: also prominently involving victoria jackson.
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: nah. hambiscuits hates pussy.
trnc
Pretty much impossible. Future presidents shouldn’t be significantly handicapped so that they don’t have the authority to do things they need to do. The only thing we can do is idiot proof the voters. Not an easy task, I know.