Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

We still have time to mess this up!

Thanks for reminding me that Van Jones needs to be slapped.

T R E 4 5 O N

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

This blog will pay for itself.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Where Fun Goes to Die

Where Fun Goes to Die

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Amy Klobuchar is at the Minnesota State Fair and wants to take Pete Buttigieg to the butter carving room. If I were Mayor Pete, I’d avoid hanging out with Klobuchar in any room where the knives are out, though judging from the 2020 debates, she could probably murder him with words if she were so inclined. Obviously, the context of his trip is to have a little G-rated fun while doing some press-the-flesh retail politics. Pete’s dad joke response is a groaner, but he clearly understands his role:

WCCO, the CBS affiliate in Minnesota, covers Amy’s invite to Pete, and of course they dutifully reprint the Republican response:

“While Secretary Buttigieg comes to Minneapolis for photo-ops, Minnesotans are still struggling under the weight of Biden and the Democrats’ massive failures. Inflation is crippling our economy, crime is out of control, and the Democrats just passed yet another massive tax-and-spend spree that will only make these problems worse. Gov. Tim Walz’s allies in the Biden Administration can try to prop him up all they want but Minnesotans know they are less safe and prosperous thanks to the Democrats’ failed policies.”

This reads as if it were produced by the fascist version of some kind of machine: The Goebbels Message-o-Tron 5000tm. The Secretary of Transportation is going to fly to Minnesota, home of a very large air hub, to watch someone cut up butter. Even a half-clever person could have a tiny bit of fun with that. For example, “I hope Pete’s plane isn’t delayed like the hundreds that have been sitting around on the tarmac at MSP due to his department’s failure to act.” Or, “Pete and Amy like to watch butter being carved, but average Minnesotans know that Amy’s support of Biden’s inflation-boosting policies has helped to make butter the most expensive it’s been in history.” I mean, it’s bullshit, but at least it’s contextual bullshit, and it isn’t so god damned leaden.

The Republican believe that they will be able to steal elections rather than run in them, and that’s made them lazy, complacent and mean-spirited when they’re challenged. Look at the Oz campaign — that asshole was just getting over his crudité gaffe when he decided to go after Fetterman for having a stroke, blaming it on Fetterman’s lack of vegetable consumption. Nothing but the dumbest, lunkhead, ham-fisted messaging and campaigning will do for these clowns. I don’t even know if fun can make it into the Republican Party before it dies, but it sure as hell is dead as soon as it comes in contact with the grim haters who run the place.

Reader Interactions

192Comments

  1. 1.

    bbleh

    I don’t even know if fun can make it into the Republican Party before it dies, but it sure as hell is dead as soon as it comes in contact with the grim haters who run the place.

    This, in many different ways!

    The thought of hanging out at, say, a Republican fund-raiser, or some local Republican club meeting, sorta makes me cringe.  I honestly don’t know how long I could put up with what they consider humor.  And to think of working every day in a Republican political operation, eg the WH before Biden, where they’re not only humorless but sociopathic and rabidly ambitious on top of it, oh mah gah …

  3. 3.

    andy

    Meantime, in grownup world:

    Minnesota is breaking records with its unemployment rate.
    “This is the lowest unemployment rate ever reported by any state in the history of our country and currently in the history of that metric being measured by the BLS [Department of Bureau and Labor Statistics]. So we are remaining a nation-leading market for job accessibility,” said Steve Grove, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED).
    In July, Minnesota gained 19,000 jobs, up 0.7% from June. That follows the addition of 1,000 jobs in June.
    “It means that we have a timely market in our state and there are a lot of opportunities, but we have the second-tightest labor market in the entire country. You know, I’ll say that we have across the state a lot over the past few months,” Grove added.

    That’s 1.8%

  4. 4.

    bbleh

    @andy: And IIRC MN is one of the two pairs of states where there was a “natural experiment” of the employment effects of raising the minimum wage (I think it was MN-WI, and they compared economically and geographically similar towns, mostly near the border and so accessible to both), and employment improved MORE in the states (MN, and I think the other was NJ vs PA) that raised the minimum wage, suggesting that the beneficial effect on employment (via the broader economic effects) of doing so outweigh any “price effect.”

  7. 7.

    Another Scott

    @andy:

    Relatedly, …:

    In the week ending August 20, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 243,000, a decrease of 2,000 from the previous week’s revised level. The previous week’s level was revised down by 5,000 from 250,000 to 245,000. The 4-week moving average was 247,000, an increase of 1,500 from the previous week’s revised average. The previous week’s average was revised down by 1,250 from 246,750 to 245,500.

    The dashed line on the graph is the current 4-week average. The four-week average of weekly unemployment claims increased to 247,000.

    The previous week was revised down.

    Weekly claims were below the consensus forecast.

    Take a look at the graph. Short of a once-in-100-years global pandemic, low and falling unemployment claims are not consistent with a recession being in-progress or near.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  8. 8.

    germy shoemangler

    BREAKING: White House issues new policy that will require, by 2026, all federally-funded research results to be freely available to public without delay, ending longstanding ability of journals to paywall results for up to 1 year. Coverage coming on @ScienceInsider. pic.twitter.com/HijntoZFDN

    — ScienceInsider (@ScienceInsider) August 25, 2022

    Some journal publishers had long fought this open access requirement, fearing it would harm their subscription business model… pic.twitter.com/fwCLVlu7qf

    — ScienceInsider (@ScienceInsider) August 25, 2022

  11. 11.

    Baud

    Low unemployment just means some white people get to vote based in their “other” issues.

  15. 15.

    bbleh

    @Omnes Omnibus: Yeah again IIRC these weren’t statewide figures, because those aren’t as directly comparable.  These were figures more directly comparable (eg for low-wage jobs) in areas drawing from the same labor pool (eg near the border), the idea being that if the major effect were “price of labor,” then there would be more employment in the lower-wage state because employers could afford to hire more people, but the reverse turned out to be true, possibly because the broader economic benefits of a higher minimum wage dominated any “price effect.”

    Overall, both states are pretty healthy economically IIRC.  This just happened to be a case where actual events produced a “real-world experiment” concerning minimum wage.

  16. 16.

    Ken

    @Baud: “First they came for the academic publishers, and I did not speak out — because frankly they’re complete parasites that suck up 90% of every university’s library budget with their useless bundled subscription model.”

  17. 17.

    sab

    @Baud: Always the cynic, aren’t you?

    Us girls care about our uteri.

    ETA Even us old girls, some of whom had pregnancy scares before Roe v Wade.

  18. 18.

    geg6

    Wasn’t a Buttigieg fan during the primary, but I think this job is exactly right for him. And then, a few years from now, he can run again and I’ll feel a lot better about voting for him.

  20. 20.

    VeniceRiley

    Reggie at 8 weeks and 2 days tops a stone.  14.2 pounds.  6.44 kilos.  I should send pics to Water Girl.

    I’m so puppy knackered I walked around with a full poo bag in  my shorts pocket this morning.

  21. 21.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @geg6: He needed a position on a bigger stage than mayor of a smallish city.  He is getting that now.  Also, his family move to Michigan may help him in electoral politics.

  22. 22.

    sab

    @VeniceRiley: I hope you can explain this post later when you are less tired. I have no idea what you said other than ” knackered”

    ETA Sorry. I reread it and it makes sense, even tho’ a bit Brit.

  24. 24.

    The Moar You Know

    Reagan, vicious amoral asshole that he was, understood the value of humor and used it often, even after having been shot, which frankly is pretty impressive.   Today’s Republicans have not one ounce of humor to be distributed among the lot of them.

    I would also add that Oz going after Fetterman for not eating his veggies is not going to win him one single vote in Pennsylvania, where the state food seems to be “fried anything”.   The only gaffe he’s got left to make is to come out against beer.  I’m betting that’s next week.

  26. 26.

    bbleh

    @Baud: Historically low unemployment is being taken for granted.

    This! It seems that, politically, jobs are like air: having one is “natural” and doesn’t come with any political benefit, but hoo boy if you don’t have one …

    I honestly don’t know whether it would benefit Dems to push this harder, and not just “X million jobs created under Biden, more than anybody else!” but rather “were you unemployed under Trump, and do you want to go back to that?”

  27. 27.

    trollhattan

    @geg6: The offspring was all in for Mayor Pete in the primary, went to his rally here, declared him dreamy (one cannot explain girl crushes). So he did connect with the yoots, at least hereabouts.

  28. 28.

    Doug R

    This is going to sound pat, but it sounds like Democrats are just trying to spread the good news but Republicans are having the meltdown.

  33. 33.

    TheOtherHank

    I used to live a mile or so from the Minnesota State Fair grounds. I have seen the butter heads many times (btw, no one says ‘butter carving’, it’s the butter heads). Busts of Princess Kay of the Milky Way and her court (I guess they couldn’t call her the Dairy Queen, since that’s already taken) are carved from 60 lb blocks of butter and displayed during the fair. In order to be in the running to become Princess Kay one has to live on a dairy farm. My mother attempted to become Princess Kay back in the ’50s but didn’t make the cut.

    There’s even a song:https://youtu.be/9HFdQ9O8drA (the song starts around 1:40)

  34. 34.

    different-church-lady

    The Republican believe that they will be able to steal elections rather than run in them, and that’s made them lazy, complacent and mean-spirited when they’re challenged.

    Well, let’s not forget that they’re mighty stupid too. (And the reason for that is they believe stupid is a virtue.)

  35. 35.

    Major Major Major Major

    This reads as if it were produced by the fascist version of some kind of machine: The Goebbels Message-o-Tron 5000tm

    oh man now I gotta see if I have enough credits to ask GPT-3 to generate some responses. Yours are way better!

  37. 37.

    dmsilev

    @germy shoemangler: That’s great news. Elsevier and company have been leeching off public research funds for a long time.
    For those who are unaware, academic publishers usually charge ‘page fees’ to the authors of manuscripts (often thousands of dollars) and then turn around and charge libraries massive subscription fees for the content. It’s a real racket.

  38. 38.

    Ken

    @TheOtherHank: Now all we need is the twist, and you’ve got a pitch for an episode of “American Horror Story”. Let’s see, it’s too obvious that the body of the “Princess Kay” winner is inside the butter sculpture….

  40. 40.

    Eunicecycle

    @Ken: plus, it’s government funded research. Why should the journals business models rely on restricting access? Or maybe I just became Captain Obvious.

  42. 42.

    TheOtherHank

    @sab: The really strange part is that each princess gets to take her butter head home at the close of the fair. Then decisions must be made about what to do with the 40-ish pound hunk of butter. The best use I heard was having a sweet corn feed and letting everyone butter their cobs on it. I realize that Rule 34 applies here, but it’s Minnesota, what can you do?

  44. 44.

    Ken

    @dmsilev: For those who are unaware, academic publishers usually charge ‘page fees’ to the authors of manuscripts (often thousands of dollars) and then turn around and charge libraries massive subscription fees for the content. It’s a real racket.

    And, they follow the same model for journals that are only published online.  Which is part of the reason for the growth of ArXiv and similar services.

  45. 45.

    PAM Dirac

    @germy shoemangler:

     

    Some journal publishers had long fought this open access requirement, fearing it would harm their subscription business model

    The publishers will whine about this big time, but the people who will call up NIH POs and spew vile invective are the academics. There is a small but significant fraction of academics that are greedy, petty tyrants and react horribly to the idea that they have any responsibilities to the taxpayers who fund their grants. Even the current rules which gives them a year to make the papers publicly accessible was fought over. It was originally voluntary, but not enough people bothered. Then then made it a rule that grant payments would be suspended if papers were too late in being released. Colleagues of mine at NIH that were POs had to handle dozens and dozens of irate “do you know who I am” phone calls just because these “geniuses” didn’t think the rules could possibly apply to them. I’m glad they changed this rule, but I’m also glad I retired.

  50. 50.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I was recently watching a popular television program about crime and one of the storylines involved an underground tunnel connecting two seemingly normal suburban houses and I thought, “That’s great. Also, no fucking way”. Somehow this does not (YET) appear connected to File-A-Lago

    Olga Lautman  @OlgaNYC1211
    Giuliani used a tunnel under Mar-a-Lago to go back and forth from Trump’s home[in 2008, -ed]
    Stolen classified docs and a tunnel under Mar-a-Lago. What could go wrong

    Rudy Giuliani at one time secretly stayed at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, where he used an underground tunnel to go back and forth from the resort while he was depressed and drinking a lot after falling short in the 2008 Republican presidential primaries, a forthcoming book says. […]

    During the difficult time, Trump allowed the Giulianis to stay in a bungalow across the street from Mar-a-Lago that was accessed via an underground tunnel beneath South Ocean Boulevard so they could avoid the media glare.

    “We moved into Mar-a-Lago and Donald kept our secret,” Judith Giuliani says in Kirtzman’s book.

  51. 51.

    PAM Dirac

    @Eunicecycle:

     

    plus, it’s government funded research. Why should the journals business models rely on restricting access?

    There’s a lot to rant about concerning the practices of journals (and frankly the academics that rely on them), but I just want to clear up one very common misconception. Most people assume that any IP (copyrights, patents, etc) that come out of US government research is owned by the government. That isn’t the case due to the Bayh-Dole Act. In this case the copyrights on the papers produced are owned by the researcher’s institution and they sign them away to journals that then want to maximize whatever money they can get for them.

  52. 52.

    The Lodger

    No one has used the phrase “butter judge” yet. Where are the jackals and what have you done with them?

  53. 53.

    topclimber

    @The Moar You Know: It might have given Oz a chance to show a killer instinct if he had tried a version at the time the story first broke. “Call them crudites or a veggie platter or whatever you want, but these foods can help your cardio vascular system. High food prices make it hard for people to make healthy eating habits. You can appreciate that, right, Mr. Fetterman?”

    Making  the response near two weeks later just sounds peevish. Leaving it up to your campaign manager to launch the belated attack just looks wimpish.

  55. 55.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @The Moar You Know:

    I would also add that Oz going after Fetterman for not eating his veggies is not going to win him one single vote in Pennsylvania, where the state food seems to be “fried anything”.

    I was gonna attempt a list of states where this is not the case, but I’ll just say there probably aren’t more than six

  56. 56.

    JWR

    Local CBS news, which has been turning itself into a wingnut outlet, just ran a segment on the student loan stuff. They included a Republican response which came from none other than the King of Florida, Ronaldus DeSanticus, sneering to a small crowd, “what if you took out a loan and paid it back? Well, don’t you feel like a sucker now?!” Screw these selfish, bitter A$$holes. And screw CBS for choosing that guy. (Though, TBH, the Repugs all sneer the same these days.)

  58. 58.

    bbleh

    @HumboldtBlue: And there are an awful lot of MAGAts who very much want to do the same sort of thing in public, who frequently do it among like-minded friends, and who admire Trump precisely because he does stuff like this and gets away with it.

  64. 64.

    Jeffro

    @Baud: Is no one safe from Dark Brandon?

    Apparently not: a couple of nimrods from Project Veritas just pled guilty to planning to sell Ashley Biden’s stolen diary

    Two Florida residents pleaded guilty in a case connected to a stolen diary that reportedly belonged to Ashley Biden, the president’s daughter, and that ended up in the hands of conservative group Project Veritas, which published portions of it in the weeks before the end of the 2020 presidential campaign.

    The Justice Department announced Thursday that Aimee Harris, 40, and Robert Kurlander, 58, pleaded guilty in a federal court in Manhattan to conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property involving the theft of “personal belongings of an immediate family member of a then-former government official who was a candidate for national political office.”

    The RWNJs are going to go ab-so-lute-ly APEshit over this one.

    Good.  Stroke out, MAGAts!  Dark Brandon was going to throw you all in the dungeon (or worse) anyway.

  65. 65.

    sab

    When we wanted Mayor Pete to comment on this blog and his media mavens said no, I think they chose wisely.

  66. 66.

    Baud

    @JWR:

    Ronaldus DeSanticus, sneering to a small crowd, “what if you took out a loan and paid it back? Well, don’t you feel like a sucker now?!”

     
    To be fair, a crowd at a DeSantis rally would be almost entirely suckers.

  70. 70.

    lee

    I have issue with Minnesota claiming to have the largest State Fair. Texas’ State Fair is larger in land and visitors.

  72. 72.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @HumboldtBlue:

    Holy shit. Just unbelievable. I really hope this woman has been (or will soon be) identified, arrested, and charged with assault and whatever else she can be charged with. Once again, I’m just stunned that human beings are even capable of such ugliness.

  74. 74.

    Cacti

    The upper class toads of the WaPo editorial board are outraged at student loan forgiveness.

    Predictable as ever.

  76. 76.

    Jay

    To clear up my use of TFW a few threads ago,

    as was kindly pointed out by others, it stands for Temporary Foreign Worker, and is a “special” employment category in Canada.

    To address shortages of Seasonal Workers in Agriculture in Canada, in the 80’s, ( caused mostly by a fall in Immigration and Students not interested in travelling, camping in farmers fields with no services, for at best, 15% of what the minimum wage was), a program was created to import labour from 3rd world Countries, willing to work for pennies.

    The TFW Visa is “held” by the Employer, so if the employee quits for any reason, or is fired, they are deported back home. TFW Visa’s are good for up to 6 months. Over the years, the TFW program has been expanded across the board and oversight is horrible. To get a TFW, all an Employer has to do is claim that they can’t find “qualified” Canadian workers to fill the jobs. There is a case currently grinding through the Courts where the Employer is importing TFW’s from China, to work a mine project, because they couldn’t find enough Cantonese or Mandarin speaking Mining Engineers and Skilled Mining Trades in Canada. The Corp is HQ’d in China and is paying “Chinese”, not Union or Trade Wages.

    Many TFW’s pay employment brokers up to $60k for a job. They are told they will earn it back in no time, ( they won’t), it will allow them to qualify for Canadian citizenship, ( it won’t and actually negatively effects their chances, while they get a Canadian employment record and credit history, they have to wait 5 years from their last employment, to apply for any kind of visa or for immigration status).

    While some TFW’s have a great experience in Canada, many don’t. Living six to a room with usury rent, abusive work situations and non-existent Government support. All to keep wages low in Canada.

    My last Employer found a “great for them” loophole. The Corp used to hire former Trades and Students entering the Trades. In 2008 they majorly cut staff and hours, went to a “Retail Model”, which left customers helpless in the aisles, now they staff with Foreign Students, (zero knowledge or experience, 20 hours max a month, require them to on 3 weeks notice to manage their schedules ( for class) and hours, on their own time) all for minimum wage.

  78. 78.

    Ken

    @Baud: But Buttigieg might have become a front-pager on this nearly top-10000 blog!  Ah well, his loss. Though it does remind me of this “WKRP in Cincinnati” exchange:

    Les: Whenever possible I always try to lead with the hog futures, particularly in the morning.

    Bailey: Yeah, but what if a really big story is breaking?

    Les: Well, that’s when you have to use your news judgment. There will always be exceptions. For instance, when President Richard Milhous Nixon resigned, I led the news with that story. Looking back, I think I made the right decision.

  83. 83.

    waspuppet

    @JWR:“what if you took out a loan and paid it back? Well, don’t you feel like a sucker now?!”

    Honestly, I thought nothing could be a more depressing indication of how Republicans have destroyed the entire notion of society than our “response” to the pandemic. But this has done it. I really just don’t even know what to say.

    Except that (speaking of the pandemic) DeSantis said of Fauci yesterday “Someone needs to grab that little elf and chuck him across the Potomac” and I haven’t seen a single national media mention. Evidently it was no big deal and everything is totally fine.

  89. 89.

    Ivan X

    I read a paper copy of the NY Post for the first time in years today, and even that’s not fun, or funny, anymore. It now just seems to be Fox adapted for a local market, as opposed to an actual local paper with local attitude with right wing flavor on its editorial pages.

    It’s like the whole thing is now predictable outrage editorial, with ongoing features like “Biden Train Wreck” under which things like the student loan news can be covered in typical wingnut fashion.

    Gone seem to be the headlines like “It’s My Party And I’ll Die If I Want To” about an 101 year old expiring at her birthday party.

  90. 90.

    Lyrebird

    @Jay: You are good people.

    I hope the Ukranian customer or coworker’s friend you were helping back when is doing okay.

    OTOH, I am really not convinced yr last employer was good people.

  91. 91.

    Ken

    @Gin & Tonic: How can you dig a tunnel in South Florida and not have it fill up with water?

    Hence explaining Popehat’s decision to illustrate the story with the cover of Lovecraft’s “The Shadow over Innsmouth”.

  92. 92.

    JWR

    Teri Kanefield has a new post up on the case of the stolen docs.

    Timeline: Trump’s Stolen Documents Case (the Espionage Act and Obstruction)

    One commenter asks, in part, “So, any speculation on *why* Trump would do all this? What good does having these docs do him?”

    Her response, in part: “To take our cue from the court filings: Two of the statutes listed on the search warrant were obstruction of justice statutes, suggesting that he took them to obstruct official investigations.”

  93. 93.

    eclare

    @HumboldtBlue:   I am absolutely disgusted.  Good friend of mine is from India, she would have attacked him too if she heard him speak.

    How can people be that pissed off at some random stranger?

  94. 94.

    Ivan X

    @lee: Perhaps, but having been to both as a dilettante interloper tourist, I can say that the Minnesota one is qualitatively better.

  96. 96.

    Redshift

    @Baud:

    Historically low unemployment is being taken for granted.

    It may not be a boost exactly, but it should make their mindlessly repeated “Joe Biden destroyed the economy” talking points have less traction.

  97. 97.

    Redshift

    @Gin & Tonic:

    How can you dig a tunnel in South Florida and not have it fill up with water?

    I had similar thoughts when the first reports came out about the documents being stored in a “basement room” there. A basement? In Florida? Really?

  98. 98.

    JWR

    @waspuppet:

    Evidently it was no big deal and everything is totally fine.

    Haven’t you heard? It’s the new norm these days. Hence the rightward lean from CBS. (Oh God, I so hope I’m wrong about that!)

  99. 99.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney 7m

    BREAKING: Reinhart has ordered the release *tomorrow* of a redacted version of the Mar-a-Lago affidavit, DOJ now has to decide whether to appeal.

    don’t know if I trust this judge, not that anyone’s asking

  103. 103.

    StringOnAStick

    @Gin & Tonic: Apparently Mar A Lardo is located on a outcrop of limestone that is 15′ above sea level.  That’s how it has a basement storage area, and now, a tunnel we didn’t know about but I’m sure plenty of malign actors did.

  107. 107.

    Another Scott

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Independent.co.uk (from May 2019):

    A student gained access to Donald Trump’s Florida residence while the president was staying at the property after sneaking through a tunnel leading from a nearby beach.

    Mark Lindblom, who was 18 at the time, spent 20 minutes wandering around the communal areas of Mr Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort before he was arrested.

    Secret Service agents approached the teenager after becoming suspicious that he was not a member of the golf club.

    Sharp guys, those Secret Service agents…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  109. 109.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Another Scott:

    Secret Service agents approached the teenager after becoming suspicious that he was not a member of the golf club.

    He couldn’t project the proper sense of entitlement?

  110. 110.

    different-church-lady

    Speaking as a sane person, it is difficult for me to understand how “We published someone’s stolen diary” is supposed to play well with the average citizen.

  111. 111.

    StringOnAStick

    @Another Scott: There’s also a tunnel leading to the beach?  Wow, I bet we can come up with some very interesting scenarios for those classified documents.  Maybe they wanted to walk along the beach in the moonlight, feel the sand between their papery pages.

    This is getting beyond insane.

  112. 112.

    Jay

    @Lyrebird:

    Slava’s doing okay. They have better built defences, casualties are down as a result, RU artillery is not as dense, time at the front is up though, ( fewer rotations), and he’s been promoted to Captain.

  113. 113.

    Another Scott

    @PAM Dirac: That’s overly broad.

    There’s a whole bunch of federal government-funded research that is patented and trademarked – e.g. work done at internal government labs:

    The [Department of Energy] National Labs receive approximately $12 billion per year in funding, approximately $5.4 billion of which is dedicated to non-weapons research. With those funds they produce 1,500 inventions per year, and around 700 patents per year.

    Also, if every author on a paper is a federal government employee, then the work is not protected by US Copyright (anyone can copy it – with some important caveats).

    Biden’s pushing for more and faster transparency on government-funded basic research is a good thing.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  114. 114.

    Scout211

    The redacted version of the search warrant affidavit will be released tomorrow.

    In his order, Reinhart said the Justice Department convinced him that portions of the affidavit should remain sealed because “disclosure would reveal (1) the identities of witnesses, law enforcement agents, and uncharged parties, (2) the investigation’s strategy, direction, scope, sources, and methods, and (3) grand jury information.”

    He concluded that DOJ had met “its burden of showing that its proposed redactions are narrowly tailored to serve the Government’s legitimate interest in the integrity of the ongoing investigation and are the least onerous alternative to sealing the entire Affidavit.”

  115. 115.

    Martin

    The failed state of California has an unemployment rate of 3.9% which is now lower than the miracle state of Texas at 4.3%.

  116. 116.

    Ken

    @StringOnAStick: I’m thinking Russian sub off the coast to pick up the agent with the photographs of the documents. Bit of a hackneyed trope, but as we’ve all noted for a few years now, reality’s writers have been going for the obvious.

  120. 120.

    different-church-lady

    @geg6:

    Harris’ lawyer, Sam Talkin, said she “has accepted responsibility for her conduct and looks forward to moving on with her life.”

    She plans to spend more time with other people’s stolen property.

  121. 121.

    Low Key Swagger

    I know many of y’all here are lawyers or you play one on TV…but help a layman understand what could possibly be learned from a heavily redacted affadavit?  The date?

  123. 123.

    Ken

    @Scout211: @Frankensteinbeck: @Low Key Swagger: I’m hoping the released warrant will be another colossal own goal by TFG’s side, with the only parts that are still readable being descriptions of how he was showing the papers to dozens of visitors. Bonus points if their links to foreign governments are listed.

  125. 125.

    Scout211

    @Low Key Swagger: IANAL but this is in the article I linked to above:

    The affidavit lays out why investigators believe there was probable cause that crimes had been committed. The warrant authorized the FBI to search former President Donald Trump’s home and private club earlier this month.

  130. 130.

    Jeffro

    @geg6: Yes – this is what I was talking about at #64, sorry if that was unclear.

    I also see JFL’s comment at #104 and I cannot imagine that the Flying Spaghetti Monster or whatever could be so good as to deliver both James O’Keefe’s AND Don Jr’s heads on the same platter.  I mean, new national holiday here we come!

  133. 133.

    Another Scott

    @Baud: That’s the way I read it too.

    My impression is that thus far the US DoJ and courts are letting the normal process work – as they should.  If Lionel Hutz, Esq. on TFG’s team files some motion, the DoJ and the courts will address it the usual way.

    Something something exceedingly fine.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  136. 136.

    Another Scott

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: “golf club”.

    :-/

    Google has pictures of people playing croquet (a comment says “the balls are made of elephant ivory!”), no golf though.  Not even putt-putt, apparently.

    I think about 87.342% of tabloid “news” stories are machine-generated and no actual human reads them before they click “publish”.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  138. 138.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @HumboldtBlue:

    Thanks. I must not have read far enough down in the comments to see her name. As for disappearing from social media, couldn’t she just quietly disappear from the face of the earth?

  139. 139.

    Another Scott

    @StringOnAStick: It might be the same tunnel for all we know.  No idea.

    Like others, I was surprised by the idea of a tunnel being there at all, but enough money makes all kinds of things possible, and MMP certainly had enough money.

    She along with her second husband, E.F. Hutton, …

    I did not know that. Do you suppose that she listened to him??

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  141. 141.

    HumboldtBlue

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    couldn’t she just quietly disappear from the face of the earth?

    Esmeralda Armendarez Upton is gonna wish she had. Oh, and don’t be shocked, she’s a realtor.

    @Jackie:

    The good news keeps on coming.

  142. 142.

    Anonymous At Work

    What is it with Midwestern politicians needing to prove that that they are less spicy than “butter” and “mayonnaise” and “boiled cabbage”?

  143. 143.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Another Scott: given the time (1924-27) and place of construction, I wonder if any rum was discreetly run through that tunnel for Mrs Hutton’s soirées.

    (more late-gilded age trivia: EF Hutton was a first cousin of Barbara Hutton, Wall St and Walgreen’s heiress, and the original Million Dollar Baby, briefly Mrs Cary Grant

    ETA: and her first husband was, by a later wife, grandfather of Glenn Close. And MMP’s daughter was late-studio-era actress Dina Merrill, so there’s some six degrees of Kevin Bacon to be played there. Now I’m trying to think if Kevin Bacon and Glenn Close were ever in a movie together

  144. 144.

    Scout211

    If you have a few moments, this is an interesting article about Trump’s “legal team” and who has been advising him regarding the stolen documents from the beginning.  It’s like a clown car full of crazies who give him competing and conflicting advice. Some of them are real lawyers and some only play lawyers on TV. They back stab each other and leak to the press about each other and seemingly operate at cross-purposes the whole time. Interesting and entertaining

  145. 145.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Oh, interesting speculation about using the tunnel for rum-running during Prohibition.

    I knew Barbara Hutton was the Woolworth heiress. Is that what you meant to type, or did she also come from Walgreen’s money? I try to keep track of all these Gilded Age fortunes and families and complicated intermarriages and inheritances, but it’s an overwhelming task.

  146. 146.

    different-church-lady

    @Scout211: ​

    They back stab each other and leak to the press about each other and seemingly operate at cross-purpose the whole time.

    “Is you takin’ notes giving press conferences on a criminal fuckin’ conspiracy?”​

  147. 147.

    The Lodger

    @Another Scott: We’ve all seen aerial shots of the mansion and its surroundings, but I don’t see anything nearby that looks like a golf course. Maybe someone is confusing Doral and Mar-a-Lago.

  149. 149.

    Ken

    @Scout211: I can see the conversation now:

    TFG: “I want to motivate my legal team! I know, I’ll have them compete with one another, like Lampert did at Sears!!”

    MINION: “But Sears went bankr–”

    TFG: “This is stable genius!! The kind of perfect management only I could come up with!!!”

  150. 150.

    Old School

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    The website only mentions one tunnel:

    Across the southeast lawn, a Chattahoochee stone path leads to a tunnel under South Ocean Boulevard which opens onto the Beach Club.

    If a teenager accessed it, it can’t be too well hidden.

  154. 154.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Old School: I’m gonna continue to believe that old Marge Hutton had some rum run up to the big house, maybe off of one of Joe Kennedy’s boats, so that Gloria Swanson could get blotto with, let’s say Babe Ruth. Or Calvin Coolidge.

  158. 158.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    Shall I part my hair behind?
    Do I dare to eat a peach?
    Through the tunnel Donald’s basement
    I will reach

    I have heard there are some secrets there
    [sorry, ran out of rhymes]

  161. 161.

    frosty

    @The Moar You Know: Oz has another potential gaffe. If his Comms team puts out a video of him deer hunting* we’ll know they’re really working for the Fetterman campaign.

    *PA, the state where schools have a holiday the first day of deer season.

  163. 163.

    Another Scott

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Warning – Time Sink Alert – But did she publish a paper with Paul Erdős??

    Mathematicians have extrapolated this phenomenon and given it a name: “Bacon Number”, which sounds like one of those impossibly high numbers with dangerous implications for the future of the Universe but is in fact incredibly low. Researchers have demonstrated (true story!) that almost everyone has a Bacon Number less than 10, due to Kevin Bacon appearing in, mathematically speaking, almost every film on the planet. For instance, Kevin Bacon, himself, has a Bacon Number of 0. Chew on that, Mr. T! (The Oracle of Bacon claims that three persons on the IMDb have Bacon Numbers of 9, the highest listed, but does not say who they are.)

    Curiously, the most connected person in acting is not Kevin Bacon. Research by people who found it important enough to do so discovered that the centre of the Hollywood universe shifts over time. The sheer amount of acting credits amassed by Christopher Lee seem to have entrenched him as the center of the Hollywood universe for a while, even after his 2015 death. He still holds the title as of May 2021, but Harvey Keitel is nipping at his heels, and, among living actors, Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland and Martin Sheen are close behind too. Bacon himself isn’t even all that high on the list, typically ranking somewhere in the 500s out of the top 1,000 centers of the Hollywood universe.

    Scientists also have a similar ranking called the Erdős Number, based on co-authorship of mathematical articles with deceased mathematician Paul Erdős. Inevitably there’s a combination, the Erdős-Bacon number, based on adding the two together. Thanks to the documentaries, and occasional extra work on math-related films, some mathematicians have EB numbers as low as 3. More surprising are actors who attack the problem from the other side. Danica McKellar (Winnie from The Wonder Years and bona-fide mathematician) and Natalie Portman (wrote a psychology paper at Harvard with an Erdős link) each have Erdős-Bacon numbers of 6. (This ties them with Richard Feynman.)

    It’s a small planet.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  164. 164.

    eclare

    Wow I sent my Indian friend in Plano that video….he goes to the Kroger in that shopping center where the Indian woman was assaulted.  Ugh.

  165. 165.

    Spanky

    New topic. Pennsylvania Man!

    A Harrisburg man said he started firing a gun inside a busy Dauphin County Walmart on Sunday evening because his pride was hurt, court documents said.

    Walmart. Because of course.

  166. 166.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    As he asked Vance for a game plan to combat the supposed evildoers, Murphy complained that President Joe Biden had declared in early 2021 that terrorism waged by white supremacists was the “most lethal terrorist threat to our homeland.”

    Vance replied that how to smash the power structure “is maybe the question that confronts us.” And he had a plan for doing this: “One model is what happened to Germany after the Nazis lost or what happened to the Iraqis after Saddam Hussein, after we threw Saddam Hussein out. De-Nazification, de-Baathification. There was this massive recognition that you couldn’t just put, replace the bad people, replace the bad Nazis with the good Germans. There was this entire effort to de-institutionalize that ideology.”

    The Murphy in question is a podcaster and “masculinity champion”. More on him at the link if you have a strong stomach.

  177. 177.

    JWR

    @Scout211:

    If you have a few moments, this is an interesting article

    Wow! So they’re really going with the “dazzle them with bull$hit” route. Against the DOJ. Sounds good to me! ; )

  180. 180.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Another Scott:

    The sheer amount of acting credits amassed by Christopher Lee seem to have entrenched him as the center of the Hollywood universe for a while, even after his 2015 death.

    My mind is blown and I am about to fall into a Christopher Lee- Dina Merill- Cary Grant- Glenn Close- Kevin Bacon- Michael Caine- Natalie Portman internet wormy rabbit hole. Step one is Operation Petticoat, also starring Tony Curtis, which will take us to Some Like It Hot, so we’re back in Palm Batch

  187. 187.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    You guys are just milking these puns for all they are worth. They are the cream of the crop. Some of them are just dairy good! Really! They couldn’t be any cheddar.

  188. 188.

    Brachiator

    @Another Scott:

    Curiously, the most connected person in acting is not Kevin Bacon. Research by people who found it important enough to do so discovered that the centre of the Hollywood universe shifts over time. The sheer amount of acting credits amassed by Christopher Lee seem to have entrenched him as the center of the Hollywood universe for a while, even after his 2015 death.

    Weird. I was reading about something similar a few weeks ago. Anyway, according to the Wiki, Christopher Lee appeared in 118 films. Pretty good.

    Actor Walter Brennan had about 230 film and television roles in a fifty year career.

  191. 191.

    Rokka

    @The Lodger: ​ Mar-a-Lago is not a golf club. Too many people including Emptywheel make this mistake. Trump International Golf Club, West Palm Beach is about five miles to the west.​
    ​
    ​
    ​
    ​
    ​
    ​

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