Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

Elections aren’t won by handwringing, cowering, and/or bashing your own candidates.

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

FFS people, this was a good thing. take the win.

Cancel the cowardly WaPo and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

I really should read my own blog.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

You cannot shame the shameless.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Foreign Policy / Saturday Morning Open Thread: Long Week!

Saturday Morning Open Thread: Long Week!

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(Yes, honey from rhododendron nectar is actually neurotoxic — but it’s considered a ‘health potion’ in Turkey… )


======
Elsewhere…

Sidebar on that weird line from the Mar-A-Largo warrant ‘Receipt for Property’ (1A: info re: President of France). Possibly it isn’t just a funny throwaway joke, but yet another crime(s):

Reader Interactions

178Comments

  1. 1.

    mrmoshpotato

    I think it’s important that everyone take a deep breath and remember that this is the tail end of day 2 after the breaking news of a new, major, trump crime scandal. we have at minimum an additional 12 more days of the story getting worse before it stabilizes

    Is this a crack about the orange shitstain having tremendous bigly plans always 2 weeks away? (Lying sack of shit)

  2. 2.

    Shalimar

    I assumed that line meant that Trump kept top secret blackmail material on Macron.  Isn’t that what most people assumed?

  4. 4.

    Baud

    The choice we face as Americans is whether to protect the already-powerful or find the courage to build a future where everybody has a shot.

    I’ll have to sleep on it.

  5. 5.

    Wanderer

    Thanks Dems and President Biden. It is heartening to see meaningful legislation passed. This is much different than just mean legislation used by some other party. It is good to see government at work again.

    ETA: edited to correct typing error

  7. 7.

    Geminid

    John Fetterman spoke for 10 minutes to a crowd of 1100 supporters in Erie, Pennsylvania last night. It was his first public campaign appearance since his stroke in May. A Politico article describes Fetterman telling the crowd that despite polls showing him leading his opponent, “we’re going to always run like we’re always down by 5 points.”

  9. 9.

    The Thin Black Duke

    I’m sorry, but if some people can’t tell the differences between the two parties by now, they never will.

    It’s not worth the manpower trying to pull these cretins from the abyss.

    Their Reality Check bounced.

  10. 10.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    Scott McFarlane via Anne Laurie @ Top:

    Rep Stefanik warns media not to jump to conclusions

    The nice about Republicans warning people not to jump to conclusions is it means that there are obvious conclusions to jump to. And they know it.

  12. 12.

    David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

     Even as a child, it was obvious to those around [him] that he had violent tendencies. He was caught thieving, destroying property, killing animals, and setting fires. As he grew older, [he] lamented his lack of social life and his inability to get a girlfriend. “Sex, I believe, is the answer – the way to happiness,” he said once. And he felt he was being unfairly denied this key to happiness.

    ***
    [His parents] eventually became exhausted with his son’s emotional problems and moved to Florida.

    Who is this describing: Dump or the Son of Sam killer?

  15. 15.

    David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

     Sidebar on that weird line from the Mar-A-Largo warrant ‘Receipt for Property’ (1A: info re: President of France). Possibly it isn’t just a funny throwaway joke, but yet another crime(s):

    They only removed items that were classified.

    I’m sure the information would reveal directly or indirectly sources and methods used to obtain it.

  17. 17.

    hueyplong

    We should set up a pool guessing the identity of the first GOPer who refers to this as a mere “process crime.”  We’re not there yet, but it would be a bad idea to wait around too long to set up the pool.

  18. 18.

    David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Opinion | Reality Winner deserves to spend her life in jail. But Trump's theft of classified documents is different.

    — New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) August 12, 2022

  20. 20.

    Baud

    @JPL:

    We all are nothing more than manifestations of Trump’s will. If he believed it to be classified, then it was classified.

  26. 26.

    David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @Kropacetic: ​
      it was a hoot when Tricky Dick said he had to keep the mass bombing of Cambodia secret so they wouldn’t find out

  29. 29.

    steppy

    WTF is this about “deemed to be declassified?” Were the documents classified again when they were returned to their secure filing cabinets? Did Tubby hop back and forth across the threshold with them? “DECLASSIFIED!!”  “CLASSIFIED!!”  “DECLASSIFIED!!”

  30. 30.

    schrodingers_cat

    As the NYT plumbs new depths in their quest to enable the Republican party and their Orange God, is it me that finds the NYT Pitchbot infuriating instead of ha-ha funny, through no fault of DougJ’s?  At this point Vichy TImes has become a parody of itself.

  31. 31.

    Kropacetic

    @steppy: Trump, famously averse to work, is arguing he had a standing order to declassify any documents he removed from the White House.

    Even if true (dubious), that isn’t how things work.

  33. 33.

    p.a.

    @steppy: Maybe there’s a ‘proximity classification’.  Whenever the Orange FartCloud is within x feet of docs, said docs are classified.  There is an as-yet-to-be-determined-I-guess time element, a half-life as it were, to said classifications.

  34. 34.

    Kropacetic

    @schrodingers_cat: is it me that finds the NYT Pitchbot infuriating instead of ha-ha funny(?)

    Each option does not necessarily exclude the other. There’s plenty of room in my heart for rage against the FTFNYT and laughter at their expense.

  35. 35.

    David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @schrodingers_cat: ​
    I think Catch-22 and parts of MASH (Colonel Flagg) is an example of both, infuriating and funny​
     

    eta: as well as the works of Herb Block and Mike Luckovich

  37. 37.

    Sparkedcat

    There is only one name in the receipt of items taken from Mar-a- Lago. Roger Stone. Then listed are documents regarding the President of France. Macron is not named. I think this is the DOJ’s way of telling Trump and Stone that the DOJ knows what Stone did in 2017 in an attempt to influence the French presidential election in favor of Le Pen by hacking and leaking Macron’s emails. I think the Russians did the hacking and gave the emails to Stone. This was an unsuccessful replay of what was a success during the 2016 American Presidential election.

  38. 38.

    Starfish

    @schrodingers_cat: I think one of the commenters on his account said “I hate this account because some days it feels like the NYT takes it as a challenge and tries to do pieces that are even more absurd than the pitchbot tweets.”

  39. 39.

    Kropacetic

    @The Thin Black Duke: I’m sorry, but if some people can’t tell the differences between the two parties by now, they never will.

    Worse, how the “both sides” BS is portrayed as inherently sage wisdom; both sides have a point because both sides must have a point, no one acts out of pure malice.

    @Starfish: We will always have young people who are not engaged in the process who think this

    The typical person I hear this line of thinking from is approximately 60 and, despite seeing “both sides,” always manages to find their way to vote Republican.

  40. 40.

    David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

     Richard Nixon insinuated that a number of Democratic legislators were soft on communism. As Herblock recalled, “it occurred to me that he was figuratively criss-crossing the country by sewer.” He thus memorably condemns Nixon’s smear tactics by showing him emerging from the [sewer] with a five o’clock shadow. When later asked if he regretted drawing some cartoons, Herblock replied that he might have done some differently but not “the manhole cartoon.”

    (photo)

  41. 41.

    The Oracle of Solace

    I’ve been reading Karen Dawisha’s Putin’s Kleptocracy. It’s a bit dry, but it’s packed with details of outrageous crimes that feel very Trump-like. Familiar names, such as Oleg Deripaska, pop up frequently. While reading it, I often turn to the Barbarian and say, “I’m beginning to get the impression that Vladimir Putin’s not a very nice guy,” whereupon she will smack me with a cushion.

  43. 43.

    NotMax

    Not that the mainland will pay it the slightest attention, today is primary election day in Hawaii.

    Voting here now done almost exclusively by mail, so results will be a while coming.

  44. 44.

    Kropacetic

    @Starfish: False conventional wisdom gets spread because it’s an easy way for lazy thinkers to portray themselves as savvy when their arguments are actually basic and common as shit.

  45. 45.

    lowtechcyclist

    I can’t imagine even hard-core Trumpsters believing the line about how Trump was just taking work home from time to time.  When it comes to work of the ‘reading documents and making sense of them’ sort, nobody believes he ever made more than a few minutes’ pretense of reading a document, and even that would have been for the photo op.  He wouldn’t have even taken work to the residence in the White House, let alone to Disgraceland.

    And as an ordinary government grunt, I know the lengths we go to, to protect confidential information. I work on a demographic statistical survey, and I can’t even take home a list of the counties that we interview survey respondents in.  So I don’t believe the President of the United States can take top-secret information with him, willy-nilly, wherever he goes.  There would have to be strict controls.

  47. 47.

    oldgold

    Quite the cogent defense.

    The records Trump first claimed he did not have, he then claimed, when found, were planted by the FBI; then, forget that, I orally declassified them before I swiped them.

  48. 48.

    Kropacetic

    @lowtechcyclist: So I don’t believe the President of the United States can take top-secret information with him, willy-nilly, wherever he goes.

    Well, evidently he can because he did. There damn well better be consequences.

  52. 52.

    jlowe

    There are a few different toxins (“toxic substance of biological origin”) in rhododendrons. Grayanotoxins seem to be the active principle in mad-honey intoxication. Also used a recreational drug and sexual enhancer in that part of the world – lots of things you get a buzz off of are neurotoxic at higher doses. Wikipedia has a nice summary. PubChem has lots of granular information on all of the toxins in rhododendrons. PubChem is awesome!

  53. 53.

    eversor

    Wakes up with hangover, makes coffee, looks at TV “espionage act” and well that’s a thing.  Then hears someone on MSNBC talking about the “norms” of handling TS SCI material.   Ah yes, the “norms” about handling state secrets I pinky swear not to take them home.

    So can we all call this espionage now?  Also there aren’t “norms” about this there are rules and laws and you go to the slammer if you violate them.

  54. 54.

    Kropacetic

    @Ksmiami: because the NYT should reform itself or cease to exist.

    🎶 🎶Elimination station, when’s your termination? 🎶 🎶

  57. 57.

    PAM Dirac

    @jlowe:

     

    PubChem is awesome!

    Not something I expected to see on BJ, but did put a smile on my face. I did a lot of work helping get PubChem started. We were all hoping a lot of people would find it useful.

  58. 58.

    Barbara

    @schrodingers_cat: ​Well, this is the stage where the shoe leathers start competing like hell to outdo each other in getting the grimy details of the docs, and whatever else they can — CNN, WaPo, even WSJ. While Maggie Haberman waits for her phone to ring to write down Trump’s latest version of the truth. This is why NYT political reporting is ultimately so vacuous and it’s been this way since the 70s at least. You can’t leave it all to access journalism.​​

  60. 60.

    Kropacetic

    @Barbara: While Maggie Haberman waits for her phone to ring to write down Trump’s latest version of the truth.  warnings on how and how not to defend him.

    I didn’t know Habs’s appointment as Trump’s court stenographer was for life.

  64. 64.

    Kropacetic

    @kalakal: That first one was precisely the cartoon I was thinking of, though I had the scene wrong.

    @Barbara: There’s value in propagating Trump’s lies and thinly veiled threats? For whom?

  65. 65.

    JPL

    @Ksmiami: I was going to cancel but decided to wait.   Their political coverage is awful, but their coverage of Ukraine is excellent.

  71. 71.

    UncleEbeneezer

    More of that “feckless” Garland at work:

    “NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Southern Baptist Convention says it is under investigation by Department of Justice.”

    Remember when we were constantly being told that Garland wasn’t a fighter and only wanted to protect the powerful…

  72. 72.

    Betty Cracker

    As anyone who has donated to the Val Demings for Senate campaigns already knows from the barrage of emails/texts, a second recent poll found her tied with Marco Rubio. Via FL Politics:

    EMILY’s List — a national group supporting pro abortion rights candidates — released a poll showing Democratic U.S. Rep. Val Demings and Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio tied in Florida’s 2022 U.S. Senate contest.

    The poll, done by Change Research, a Democratic polling firm out of California, finds both candidates drew 46% in a survey of likely Florida voters, with 7% saying they are unsure and 2% saying they would not vote.

    The poll also found that Demings’ favorability numbers are higher than Rubio’s because even Republicans despise the gormless twit. Huh. I’m not a poll fairy believer, but this is encouraging.

  78. 78.

    Geminid

    @UncleEbeneezer: When I read about this I looked up The Wartburg* Watch to see what they had to say. That’s a newsletter put out by a couple evangelical ladies who are fed up with the authoritarianism, partriarchy and general abuse and grifting that’s plaguing their churches. They did not write about the Justice Department investigation but I think they will.

    *Wartburg was the castle in Thuringia where Martin Luthor holed up in the early 1520’s.

  79. 79.

    Starfish

    @delphinium: That’s probably intentional search engine optimization.

    If you are on Twitter, searching for Mitch McConnell. You probably like politics and probably hate Mitch McConnell.

  81. 81.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: ​
     

    Like Betty C, I’ve got a basic skepticism about the polls, and of course Florida has been the state of ‘almost, but not quite’ for us for so long now.

    But even if my hopes aren’t that high for some of these races, I want to make sure our candidates have a fighting chance, and want to force the GQP to play defense. I’ll be chipping in to Demings’ campaign.

  82. 82.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Kropacetic: ​
     

    Like the restaurant got your peanut butter sandwich tire rims and anthrax wrong and apologized with filet mignon on the house.

    Fixed. After all, there’s nothing wrong with a peanut butter sandwich (I’m quite fond of them actually), it’s just not the sort of thing you’d order at a restaurant when you can make one in a minute or two at home. But there’s plenty wrong with Micro Rubio.

  84. 84.

    Geminid

    @lowtechcyclist: I think it’s bad news for an incumbent when he’s tied with a challenger 85 days or so before the election. Rubio’s a known quantity, while Demings has only begun to get her name out statewide

    I wonder if Demings is doing another of her motorcycle rides this weekend. That seems to be a good way to generate attention.

  85. 85.

    Starfish

    This was more optimistic than I expected it to be. Basically, the person who linked to this is a nerd, and the nerd does not care if his obsession hurts your feelings when it comes to polling. Anyway, this is the first thing that I have seen that has been hopeful about Democrats winning the House.

    I thought it was interesting that in his modeling, he gives extra points to younger candidates, and he was speculating why younger candidates over-perform. Is it more energy for campaigning or a better digital campaign?

  90. 90.

    Baud

    Nancy had a couple of votes to give to dissenters.  I’m very proud no one took advantage of that, like has happened in the past.  That may be the best little but important thing to happen this week.

  94. 94.

    SFAW

    @lowtechcyclist: ​
     

    I can’t imagine even hard-core Trumpsters believing the line about how Trump was just taking work home from time to time.

    Damn. And here I was, thinking you had been paying attention for the last seven years.
    Given all the things they’ve told us — whether explicitly or implicitly — they believe about Russian Agent Orange, you think that is the “red line” for them? There is no act (or lie) too outrageous or extreme for them to turn on him or question his account of things

  95. 95.

    bbleh

    @lowtechcyclist: He can, but there are, and once Biden was inaugurated, Trump was no longer president.

    And in reality-world, I don’t think anyone is fooling themselves that things were done correctly in that WH with classified documents any more than with anything else.  It almost surely was sloppy, whimsical, and with little or no respect for law.

  98. 98.

    frosty

    @Barbara: I think the FTFNYT took the wrong lesson from the Post beating them on Watergate. They forgot all the shoe leather and calls that Bernstein and Woodward were making (from the Metro Desk!) and concentrated on the secret meetings with the unnamed source in the parking garage.

    It seemed to me that all of “investigative journalism” took the same turn. Not investigations so much as buddying up with someone you could call.

  100. 100.

    SFAW

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Curiously my jetlag is worse now than it was midweek.

    That’s not atypical (at least in my experience). I used to travel to Taiwan multiple times per year, and the worst jet lag hit was not-infrequently the second or third day.

    The fun times were when I’d go over there for only a few days (instead of a week, let’s say), and then fly back here. Basically, a week of jet lag.

    ETA: Just noticed your digestion comment. I never went through that, thankfully. I hope yours eases ASAP.

  102. 102.

    Layer8Problem

    @The Thin Black Duke:  The Department of Justice to the 27%:  “I’m about to write you a reality check. Or would you prefer the cold, hard cash of truth?”

    Not my line; I wish it was.

  104. 104.

    bbleh

    @SFAW: Lol yeah I always tried to cram as much as I could into the day I got there and the early part of the next day, and then it would all catch up to me and I’d be useless for a while.

    A guy I worked with had to travel to India fairly regularly, and he said he worked to keep as much on US time as he could: meals, some sleep, etc.  Breakfast in the evening, dinner in the morning, work most of the night, get some sleep during the day.

  107. 107.

    SFAW

    @bbleh: ​
     

    it would all catch up to me and I’d be useless for a while.

    Shit! So you’re telling me I have a 20-year case of jet lag? Well, I guess that would explain a few things.

  109. 109.

    Salty Sam

    @schrodingers_cat:   As long as you don’t cough up a hairball , you’ll be OK.

    I kid- been there, done that, and debilitating jet-lag is no fun.  Here’s hoping you recover soon enough to enjoy your trip.

  113. 113.

    Bill Arnold

    @schrodingers_cat:

    through no fault of DougJ’s

    Definitely his fault. :-) DougJ once wrote these words (some meta-joking involved), here/2013.:

    I believe that trolling is the highest form of human expression. Art, music, and literature are too often about fantasies, the notion that the world is beautiful, that human beings have some decency, things that no adult could possibly believe. Trolling, by contrast (when done properly), illustrates the most profound eternal truth, that people are mostly ignorant, delusional sociopaths. I believe that the Socratic method is just a sophisticated form of trolling since its goal is to get people to say things so stupid that they’re temporarily shocked into trying to think.

  114. 114.

    delphinium

    @Starfish: Thanks for that, very interesting. Would guess the age thing is also related to the visual impact of younger vs older (and our own thoughts about aging in general).

  115. 115.

    Captain C

    @Sparkedcat:

    I think this is the DOJ’s way of telling Trump and Stone that the DOJ knows what Stone did in 2017 in an attempt to influence the French presidential election in favor of Le Pen by hacking and leaking Macron’s emails.

    Who’s going to explain to Trump that his pardoning power counts for nothing in France?  I’m guessing this may be some sort of crime in France, which means that at minimum Stone can cross Paris and San Tropez off his vacation places list.

  116. 116.

    Captain C

    @Kropacetic:

    I didn’t know Habs’s appointment as Trump’s court stenographer was for life.

    It’s not like she has other marketable skills to fall back on.

  119. 119.

    Ken

    @Spanky: No, it’s about more details coming out which makes it all that much worse.

    That’s how I read it too. And it also makes the excuses worse, both from TTG* and from supporters. Like, in 10 days we may be expected to accept that it’s normal practice for a ex-president’s son-in-law to sell copies of nuclear documents to Saudi Arabia and give his father-in-law a cut of the payment. Or they might not try for that, but just be claiming that it’s only a technical law that was violated, and one which no one could really be expected to know about.

    * “The Traitor Guy”.  Does it work? I’ll go back to the Biden-inspired TFG if not.

  120. 120.

    Ken

    @Kropacetic: There’s value in propagating Trump’s lies and thinly veiled threats?

    There’s certainly money in it, and most corporations (like the NYT) don’t distinguish the two.

  121. 121.

    Mo MacArbie

    I have an anecdote about classified nuclear documents. Should I put an anecdote about classified nuclear documents on the tubes?

    So, yeah, born classified. I’ve been given to understand by one who worked on reactors that, amid a larger classified document with every page marked with the appropriate classification, was a table of the boiling point of water at different pressures. If you’re boiling water on a sub, this is a good thing to know. And, yep, just as classified as the rest. Boiling water.

  122. 122.

    Layer8Problem

    @Ken:  I have a relative who’s a journalist.  If things go bad and the kids aren’t out of college the fallback is P.R. flack.  There’s always work out there for a Baghdad Bob, or a Baghdad Barbara.

  123. 123.

    VOR

    @Kropacetic: Does anyone REALLY believe TFG was doing extra reading at night? I mean, he could be watching TV instead where Hannity and the rest of the Fox team were talking about HIM!

  124. 124.

    SFAW

    @Ken: ​
     

    “The Traitor Guy”. Does it work? I’ll go back to the Biden-inspired TFG if not.

    “The Traitor Guy” is good. Maybe add “The Treason Guy” as a variant of that? [I expect some lawyerly killjoys will nitpick about “Treason,” but so what?]

  126. 126.

    SFAW

    @VOR:

    Does anyone REALLY believe TFG was doing extra reading at night?

    Sure. There are probably people who believe that his body looks just like the McNaughton (I think) painting of TTG (thanks, Ken!) as Rocky Balboa. The  capacity of Trumpistas to believe ridiculous shit regarding their idol is amazing.

  127. 127.

    Ken

    @Mo MacArbie: I have an anecdote about classified nuclear documents.

    I hope this doesn’t mean that in a week, people will be asking “Where’s Mo MacArbie? They haven’t posted for a while….”

  129. 129.

    Ken

    @Immanentize: Playing with fire there. You will note that when I used “TTG”, I was careful to define the acronym, lest the wrath of WaterGirl fall upon me.

    EDIT: Besides, SFAW has already adopted it. Do I get royalties?

  130. 130.

    Mike in NC

    “Supper club for foreign spies and car dealers” is as good a description of how sleazy south Florida is. Reminder that thirsty Micro Rubio is bankrolled by rich owners of used car dealerships. Lots of strip malls with tattoo parlors, liquor stores, and nail salons that are fronts for prostitution rings.

  131. 131.

    Elizabelle

    I’d be good with TFT.

    That fucking traitor.  Aka that fucking Trump.

    As long as we never call him president.  He never deserved that.  Never.

  132. 132.

    cmorenc

    Unsurprisingly, Fox is giving a wildly misleading representation of why the warrant was sought / what was found / Trump’s alleged extent of cooperation / what was actually found.  DOUBLE STANDARD! butter emails?

    Also, re: the new IRS funding, they are presenting it as funding gestapo against the middle-class – not a whisper of Yellin’s directsive that the funding not be used for audits of anyone with < 400k of income, or how inadequate IRS staff has crippled their ability to investigate high-income tax cheats.

  134. 134.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    @SFAW:

    The  capacity of Trumpistas to believe ridiculous shit regarding their idol is amazing.

    While this is true I think it misses the point of the lies told to explain the documents in this case.

    Most of the outrageous lies Trump himself tells are a way of projecting power. His supporters know he’s lying, it’s to show that he can just say anything and get away with it.

    But in this case, when the lies don’t even pass the laugh test (Trump took documents home to work on them), and the story changes from minute to minute, it’s no longer effective. It just shows weakness.

  135. 135.

    SFAW

    @Ken:

    You will note that when I used “TTG”, I was careful to define the acronym, lest the wrath of WaterGirl fall upon me.

    If she’s OK with it, I’ll stand in for her on a different issue:It’s not an acronym, it’s an abbreviation. An acronym is a subset of abbreviations, where said abbreviation is also a recognizable English word (or damn close to one). For an example from my youthitude: SCORE was the acronym for the organization “Service Corps of Retired Executives.” There’s also DARE (Drug Awareness Resistance Edumacation.”) And so forth.Don’t do it again.​​
     
    ETA: I imagine there are acronyms in French, German, etc., but here in ‘Murica, we use English, dammit!

  137. 137.

    sdhays

    @VOR: I’d been given to believe the Fox folks were talking about him a lot less recently, and he’s pretty upset about it.

    But no. I’m not someone who believes Dump reads much of anything, no matter how sensitive or important. His bag people act out summaries in short skits to Andrew Lloyd Webber show tunes. And then he squirts them with ketchup.

  138. 138.

    SFAW

    @Mr. Bemused Senior: ​
     
    Your point is mostly correct. However, I maintain there are Trumpistas who actually believe his bullshit and lies. Not saying all 65 million TFG/TTG* voters believe it, but I bet a sizeable chunk does/do.
    * No, Ken, I’m not giving you any bleedin’ royalties.

  140. 140.

    Mo MacArbie

    @SFAW: I thought it didn’t have to be an actual English word but was just pronounced as a word to count as an acronym, like NATO, for instance.

  142. 142.

    Ken

    @SFAW: No, Ken, I’m not giving you any bleedin’ royalties.

    That’s all right, you’ve done the most important thing by being an early adopter. Oh, and giving me an electronic paper trail so that my name will always be associated with TTG….

    oh god i didn’t think through it ugh can everyone just forget about this forever and pretend it never happened ugh

  147. 147.

    James E Powell

    @frosty:

    They forgot all the shoe leather and calls that Bernstein and Woodward were making (from the Metro Desk!)

    Does anybody do that anymore? It seems to me that – apart from visiting diners in the midwest – all they do is write down what some big shot says.

  148. 148.

    ian

    @SFAW:

    And the agent came to me with tears in his eyes, *Sir, sir, I beg you.  For the sake of the country, for Ivanka and Barron and all MAGA nation, please put down your takehome work and extra reading.  The country needs you to forgo your pleasure in studying and learning about the issues so that you can focus on leading us

  149. 149.

    different-church-lady

    @James E Powell: Write down? Oh you silly 20th century person, you! Why go through even that much trouble? To succeed in today’s journalism all anyone needs to know is how to re-tweet.

  150. 150.

    scav

    @Ken: Well, here, we can semi-hide it in a plethora of new options.  For an acronym, how about Traitor in Chief?  TiC has quite a number of appropriate associations.

  151. 151.

    Queen of Lurkers

    @schrodingers_cat: Hi, I don’t know how old you are, but I will say that as I have moved into my fifties, the India/US jetlag has become particular difficult to overcome. I cannot sleep on planes anymore (sitting up) and cannot afford to travel business class. Being awake for 36 hours throws everything out of whack. So I now assume that it will take me about two weeks to get back to anything resembling normalcy in sleep and other metabolic processes. I have been to India twice in the last six months to visit an ancient parent and the pattern held. So I predict it will get better soon for you.

  153. 153.

    cain

    @schrodingers_cat: When adjust to India time zone I try to stay as late as I can..  and then sleep around 11pm or so. As a kid though I hated jet lag because I would be up at like 3-4am wide awake. I would be bored waiting for someone to wake up. lol.

  155. 155.

    James E Powell

    I don’t watch the Sunday shows, but for those who do so the rest of us don’t have to, what is your prediction on the ratio of “Democrats talking about this week’s legislation” to “Republicans outraged by Biden’s jack-booted thugs attacking American’s greatest president.”

    Bonus question: How many times will Hunter Biden be mentioned?

  156. 156.

    kalakal

    @SFAW: From the MOD (Ministry Of Defense) in the UK (United Kingdom) I bring you MADGIT (Ministerial ADvisor General Infantry Training)

  157. 157.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @lowtechcyclist:  You do have to admit it’s a bit surreal that what’s bringing Trump down is a document, considering all the accounts of him being functionally illiterate to the point they had to have some good looking blonde read to him.   The only thing I can think of is Trump locked on the words “top secret” and “nuclear” on the cover and made up a bunch of bullshit about what the documents are about.

  159. 159.

    Geminid

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: That’s why I want to know who helped trump select the documents to take away. Was it someone knowledgeable about the documents? What was their and/or trump’s agenda?

    I believe there is a grand jury involved, and maybe they will get to the bottom of this. Hopefully there will be indictments and trials so we all can hear the story.

    Another part of the story is who had access to these files while they were at Mar-a-Loco.

  160. 160.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    The only thing I can think of is Trump locked on the words “top secret” and “nuclear” on the cover and made up a bunch of bullshit about what the documents are about.

    Highest odds I can think of are that he already (sorta) knew what’s in them.  As in:

    “Get me the papers on how cool that nuclear blaster is.  I liked that.  When Salman sees what I made, he’ll tell me I’m the strongest president ever.”

    “It’s not a bla- yes, Mister President.  Here is the specifications document.”

  162. 162.

    Scout211

    @Geminid: I have a suspicion that he and his closest advisors in and out of the White House were slowly compiling boxes full of the juiciest documents over the four years of his presidency. They kept them there for easy access to use in all kinds of various ways to benefit Trump.  However, none of them expected Biden to win so the removal of all those boxes became a disorganized mess. They probably had no idea where to store them knowing they were classified since they had planned to keep them in the White House for the next four years. So why not pack them along with the personal possessions bound for MAL? No one would ever suspect a thing!

    But the question that remains is who else knew?

  163. 163.

    StringOnAStick

    This is my market that Jared’s fingerprints are all over these docs.  I remember reading that he aggressively used the clearances tRump forced to happen since he couldn’t get one on his own, and that people were concerned about how much he got to see that was far beyond his remit.  The MBS close connection is obvious.

  164. 164.

    WaterGirl

    @Ken: I didn’t actually know there was a side-eye emoji!

    Ah, I googled and I see that there isn’t one.  I have to confess that I find nearly all of the smiley/not-smiley emojis creepy.  I call them serial killer emojis, and I never use them.

    Oh my god, the “happy” emoji with the hearts for eyes?  Serial killer!  :: shudder ::

    *I realize that I am probably alone in that but I truly dislike nearly all of the face emojis.  When I am benevolent dictator of the world, the thumbs up emoji will be outlawed.  I realize I am likely alone in that, too.

  166. 166.

    SFAW

    @Abnormal Hiker: ​
     
    Not to my “mind.” Just being able to pronounce it (so to speak) does not make it an acronym. Which I guess means that — to me, at least — NATO is not, either.
    A mildly interesting case in point: the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations is abbreviated “JCAHO,” but everyone pronounces it “JAY-CO.” So people can pronounce it (so to speak), but it ain’t an acronym.

    Of course, given that Americans now use “bemused” when they mean “amused” …

  170. 170.

    Ken

    @WaterGirl: I have no objection in principle to emojis, other than that they require every device I own to fill up storage with an entire Unicode plane so that people can clumsily signal their emotional state with smiley faces and/or vomiting doves.

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