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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Holy Shit, What Did I Miss?

Holy Shit, What Did I Miss?

by WaterGirl|  February 11, 202310:54 am| 262 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

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I turned off the computer early yesterday, and this morning I have been doing the usual Saturday morning errands.

What is this about?

Documents with classified markings.

On a thumb drive.

Traced back to his Save America PAC.

Which has a record of foreign contributions.

We are going to need more coffee today.

— Jack E. Smith ⚖️ (@7Veritas4) February 11, 2023

HUGE: Trump team copied classified documents — storing them on laptop and thumb drive.

This involves aide who worked for the Save America PAC.

Opens up possibility long feared — that Trump not only stole and hid Mar-a-Lago classified docs but copied and distributed them.

— Tristan Snell (@TristanSnell) February 11, 2023

Holy cow-ski, Batman!

Open thread.

Updated:

Trump Aide Unwittingly Copies Classified Pages to Laptop, Report Says

How can they assume unwittingly???

The previously undisclosed handovers – from December and January – suggest the protracted effort by the Justice Department to repossess records from Trump’s presidency may not be done.

I scared the cat laughing at the “may not be done” part.

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Previous Post: « Saturday Morning Open Thread: Foreign Affairs, Foreign Concepts
Next Post: Information As Power Open Thread: The Mar-A-Lago Laptop ‘Discovery’ — It’s *ALWAYS* Projection »

Reader Interactions

262Comments

  1. 1.

    zhena gogolia

    February 11, 2023 at 10:58 am

    But Biden’s garage!

  2. 2.

    Baud

    February 11, 2023 at 11:00 am

    @zhena gogolia:

    Hunter had access!

  3. 3.

    WaterGirl

    February 11, 2023 at 11:00 am

    Jamie Rasking bringing it!

    Jamie Raskin is an American hero. It’s worth everyone’s time to watch his entire statement. https://t.co/1xGW4RZzsM

    — Rep. Dan Goldman (@RepDanGoldman) February 9, 2023

  4. 4.

    WaterGirl

    February 11, 2023 at 11:02 am

    Per the conversation yesterday (?) about white trash, how about traitor trash for those who want an alternative?

    Holy Shit, What Did I Miss?

  5. 5.

    Omnes Omnibus

    February 11, 2023 at 11:09 am

    @WaterGirl: ​
      More than a bit insulting to baboons, don’t you think?

  6. 6.

    WaterGirl

    February 11, 2023 at 11:10 am

    @Omnes Omnibus: Yep!

    I do like traitor trash though.  A lot.

  7. 7.

    cmorenc

    February 11, 2023 at 11:10 am

    If this classified-document copying classified docs onto a thumb drive thing proves out,  right there is such an enormous, obvious distinction from the Biden and Pence instances (not that there aren’t plenty already to reasonable folks) – that even the loudest howler-monkeys and media lackeys of the GOP aren’t going to be able to deflect, distract, or obfuscate this cataclysmic distinction.

  8. 8.

    Tom Levenson

    February 11, 2023 at 11:11 am

    @Omnes Omnibus: You do not want to get on the wrong side of a troop of baboons, that’s for sure.

  9. 9.

    eclare

    February 11, 2023 at 11:11 am

    @WaterGirl:   Great clip.  And good to see new Rep Goldman making himself heard, although I never had much doubt.

  10. 10.

    zhena gogolia

    February 11, 2023 at 11:13 am

    @WaterGirl: That’s better!

  11. 11.

    Gin & Tonic

    February 11, 2023 at 11:14 am

    @cmorenc:

    even the loudest howler-monkeys and media lackeys of the GOP aren’t going to be able to deflect, distract, or obfuscate this cataclysmic distinction.

    Wanna bet?

  12. 12.

    Ohio Mom

    February 11, 2023 at 11:14 am

    I get that everything has to be methodically and thoroughly documented, every I dotted, every T crossed. I am glad those things are being accomplished, however slowly because that’s how long these things take and it is absolutely necessary that everything is laid out.

    But we all already knew Trump stole and sold our secrets. I’m happy and thrilled the process continues to move along but this finding isn’t exactly shocking to me.

  13. 13.

    eclare

    February 11, 2023 at 11:14 am

    @Tom Levenson:   Yes.  Baboons, like most primates, can be very aggressive and violent.  They were everywhere in Kenya, and we were repeatedly told not to feed them.

  14. 14.

    Geminid

    February 11, 2023 at 11:15 am

    @eclare: I think the Democratic minority has the stronger hand to play in these Oversight Committee hearings. They are making the most of it, too.

  15. 15.

    Barbara

    February 11, 2023 at 11:16 am

    @WaterGirl: ​No! Trailers are frequently the only affordable housing for lots of people, often but not always in rural areas. It drives a wedge between working class people that is based on factors usually out of their control.

  16. 16.

    RandomMonster

    February 11, 2023 at 11:16 am

    Yeah but Killary had classified recipes on her private server.

  17. 17.

    Dangerman

    February 11, 2023 at 11:17 am

    We’re gonna need a bigger prison.

  18. 18.

    narya

    February 11, 2023 at 11:18 am

    This feels like more of a smoking gun to me.

  19. 19.

    smith

    February 11, 2023 at 11:18 am

    1. What possible justification could there be for an employee of a supposedly private political entity like a PAC being in possession of classified documents?
    2. Foreign donors? Is that even legal?
    3. Could this be the glimmer of hard evidence of a quid pro quo, trading our secrets for foreign political donations?
  20. 20.

    eclare

    February 11, 2023 at 11:18 am

    @Barbara:   WaterGirl mentioned traitor trash, not trailer trash.

  21. 21.

    Yutsano

    February 11, 2023 at 11:19 am

    OT: Nancy Mace opened her mouth. Again. It’s too bad she’s a loyal soldier vote-wise, because oh man did she do some calling out!

  22. 22.

    Glidwrith

    February 11, 2023 at 11:19 am

    @Ohio Mom: Yep, pretty obvious from the start. Even if Shitgibbon didn’t, unattended documents were guaranteed to be copied and out in the wild.

  23. 23.

    Ohio Mom

    February 11, 2023 at 11:21 am

    @Barbara: Yes, I always hear “trailer trash” as meaning white people and the implication being, white people ought to behave than that, “that” meaning non-white, after all, what can you expect from non-whites. A very subtle racist dig as much as a put down of the trailer inhabitants.

  24. 24.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    February 11, 2023 at 11:21 am

    Let’s not get caught up in choosing the best mean name to call that asshole. Name calling is what Republicans do.

  25. 25.

    Barbara

    February 11, 2023 at 11:22 am

    @eclare: Sorry WG! Obviously have not had the requisite level of caffeine!​

    As strange as it may be, after reading the live tweets of the Proud Boys trial for seditious conspiracy, they wouldn’t know what the term “traitor trash” meant or would spin it in their favor.  They are utterly convinced of their “true” patriotism. Basically, a lost cause.

  26. 26.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    February 11, 2023 at 11:22 am

    @smith: These are excellent questions.

  27. 27.

    tobie

    February 11, 2023 at 11:22 am

    @Ohio Mom: Think of the finding as yet another brick in the mighty wall of evidence that is needed to go to trial and to secure a conviction.

  28. 28.

    narya

    February 11, 2023 at 11:23 am

    Raskin is so interesting. When his son died, the number of fks left to give dropped precipitously, and his current cancer treatment has eliminated any remaining fks. He sounds like someone who is not concerned about “normal” politics at this point in his life, but only in directing his energies and time to  truth, justice, and democracy.

  29. 29.

    cmorenc

    February 11, 2023 at 11:24 am

    So far, not so much as a peep in the MSM about this thumb drive/classified docs thing.  As of 11:30 am EST.

  30. 30.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    February 11, 2023 at 11:24 am

    @Geminid: I’m surprised that they let Kevin become speaker without making removal of all Democrats from these committees a stipulation first!

  31. 31.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    February 11, 2023 at 11:25 am

    @Yutsano: that’s interesting, especially this

    Mace had the crowd in stitches, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who occupied plenty of real estate in the speech.

    I wonder what other targets were in Mace’s audience. Also, I think she did that bit in the evening just a few hours after she used the twitter hearings to go into full-metal vax-denial.

  32. 32.

    eclare

    February 11, 2023 at 11:25 am

    @Barbara:   Easy remedy for that!  And I agree with you about the term “trailer trash.”

  33. 33.

    cain

    February 11, 2023 at 11:27 am

    @Tom Levenson: You don’t want to get on the wrong side of any bunch of monkeys. We got gangs of em out in Bangalore in certain neighborhoods.

  34. 34.

    eclare

    February 11, 2023 at 11:27 am

    @narya:   Agree 1000%.  I hope his treatment is successful, what a terrible past few years.

  35. 35.

    Miss Bianca

    February 11, 2023 at 11:27 am

    @cmorenc:

    even the loudest howler-monkeys and media lackeys of the GOP aren’t going to be able to deflect, distract, or obfuscate this cataclysmic distinction.

    Methinks you may be underestimating them. However, I do hope you’re right.

  36. 36.

    zhena gogolia

    February 11, 2023 at 11:28 am

    @Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: Oh, but “asshole” is a compliment?

  37. 37.

    Chief Oshkosh

    February 11, 2023 at 11:28 am

    @cmorenc: I’ve seen it reported, not sure where, possibly MSNBC. Haven’t seen it on ABC/NBC/CBS/Fux, or any of major birdcage liners.

  38. 38.

    zhena gogolia

    February 11, 2023 at 11:28 am

    @eclare: It wasn’t “trailer trash,” it was “traitor trash.”

  39. 39.

    Omnes Omnibus

    February 11, 2023 at 11:29 am

    @Miss Bianca: Oh, they will try.  Let them howl.

  40. 40.

    tobie

    February 11, 2023 at 11:29 am

    I divide my time between urban and rural America so I have a somewhat different take on the term “white trash” than others here. I don’t think of it as describing “poor white people.” If anything, I associate the term with independent contractors and small business folks, especially in the home trades. These folks tend to be wealthy and they’ve managed to make a good living with a hs diploma. Good on them. It’s their smug self-satisfaction, their conviction that they’ve never received a handout, their vanity in thinking they drive the economy, their disdain for black and brown people and eggheads that bother me. I have never met a group less capable of self-reflection. I can’t count the number of times I’ve thought to myself, “Hey, your business rises and falls with the economy. You do well when the  country does well and for that we need smart govt policy and innovation.”

    That said, I’m happy to adopt the term traitor trash as a replacement.

  41. 41.

    eclare

    February 11, 2023 at 11:30 am

    @zhena gogolia:   I know.  Someone else read it as “trailer trash,”  I corrected them.

  42. 42.

    Omnes Omnibus

    February 11, 2023 at 11:31 am

    @tobie: All trash matters!

  43. 43.

    WaterGirl

    February 11, 2023 at 11:31 am

    @Barbara: TRAITOR not trailer.

  44. 44.

    eclare

    February 11, 2023 at 11:31 am

    @Omnes Omnibus:   LOL!

  45. 45.

    tobie

    February 11, 2023 at 11:31 am

    @Omnes Omnibus: Hashtag that!

  46. 46.

    SiubhanDuinne

    February 11, 2023 at 11:31 am

    @cmorenc:

    CNN had it up last night. Mentions (but fails to highlight) the intern with the thumb drive.

  47. 47.

    Scout211

    February 11, 2023 at 11:33 am

    I read the CNN story yesterday that was referenced in the Rolling Stone article linked above.

    “Not realizing” that they were classified documents? Really?

     

    A Trump aide had previously copied those same pages onto a thumb drive and laptop, not realizing they were classified, sources said. The laptop, which belonged to an aide, who works for Save America PAC, and the thumb drive were also given to investigators in January.

  48. 48.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    February 11, 2023 at 11:34 am

    @zhena gogolia: That was a small attempt at humor there :|

  49. 49.

    zhena gogolia

    February 11, 2023 at 11:35 am

    @Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: Oh, okay, sorry, I missed it. I thought you were hall-monitoring us.

  50. 50.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    February 11, 2023 at 11:36 am

    We [heart] trailer trash, not #traitortrash!

  51. 51.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    February 11, 2023 at 11:37 am

    @zhena gogolia: I was trying to do both.

  52. 52.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    February 11, 2023 at 11:41 am

    I just want to hear more about the Save America PAC thumb drive.

  53. 53.

    bbleh

    February 11, 2023 at 11:42 am

    “Da, was totally unvittink!  Did nyet mean to get caught … I mean, to have documents found … I mean, to copy documents!”

    @cmorenc: hahaha yes they are just wait

  54. 54.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    February 11, 2023 at 11:43 am

    @Scout211: I swear, I didn’t realize that there was all that money in my duffel bag when I came out of the bank vault! No sir!

  55. 55.

    delphinium

    February 11, 2023 at 11:44 am

    @WaterGirl: Yes! Have been so impressed with Jamie Raskin and Dan Goldman during these hearings and for calling out Jim Jordan as the stupid, loud-mouthed, scumbucket he is.

    While I doubt Ohio voters will dispense with him next election, I think the more people who view these hearings and the Republican idiocy  (see also Marge Greene), they less they will like them. Such a contrast to our wonderful representatives!

  56. 56.

    Steeplejack

    February 11, 2023 at 11:45 am

    I think that this development is a big deal. I have thought from the start that the (seeming) focus on the “documents” as unique pieces of paper was naïve and almost criminally shortsighted. But maybe that’s just the way the FBI framed the issue for public consumption. I’m sure Trump liked the actual documents, so that he could fondle his love notes from Kim Jong-un, etc., but for any meaningful document the value is in the information it contains—which can be copied in any number of ways and which any number of people at Mar-a-Lago seem to have had access to. So how many classified “documents” are floating around in the ether?

    This also makes the excuse that “we only had a warrant to search Mar-a-Lago, not anywhere else” look quaint in retrospect.

  57. 57.

    eclare

    February 11, 2023 at 11:46 am

    @delphinium:   I agree (hopefully) that people will tire of Republicans the more attention they get.  To use an old saying, they will not wear well.

  58. 58.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    February 11, 2023 at 11:46 am

    @delphinium: a lot of Dems on that committee were doing good work. Here’s the villainous villainess Debbie Wasserman Schultz of the DNC handing smarmy blobfish Jonathan Turley his own arse.

  59. 59.

    oatler

    February 11, 2023 at 11:47 am

    I’d guess there is a well prepared arsenal of false flag antifa woke pedo-dem Koch journalism.

  60. 60.

    eclare

    February 11, 2023 at 11:52 am

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:   I think we’ll see good things from Maxwell Frost, too.  He got Chrissy Teigen’s obscene but totally accurate tweet read into the Congressional record.

    Not as dignified as the others, but maybe that will fire up some yoots.

  61. 61.

    Albatrossity

    February 11, 2023 at 11:52 am

    “Unwittingly” is the perfect description for everything Trump, or his minions, ever did.

  62. 62.

    zhena gogolia

    February 11, 2023 at 11:53 am

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I liked one of their “expert” witnesses telling Dan Goldman he had a smartphone in 1999.

  63. 63.

    Sure Lurkalot

    February 11, 2023 at 11:54 am

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Debbie Wasserman Schultz did a nice job there of pointing out the ridiculousness of Jonathan Turley, who cited reading the Twitter files, a sorry compendium of cherry picked “evidence” woven into a badly written narrative by has been Matt Taibbi, as evidence of his expertise.

  64. 64.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    February 11, 2023 at 11:55 am

    @zhena gogolia: the FBI agent who retired in 1999 and had many opinions about ‘the twitter files’ of 2020. That was quite a moment.

  65. 65.

    delphinium

    February 11, 2023 at 11:56 am

    @Steeplejack:

    So how many classified “documents” are floating around in the ether?

    All of them, Katie.

  66. 66.

    Scout211

    February 11, 2023 at 11:56 am

    @Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: I swear, I didn’t realize that there was all that money in my duffel bag when I came out of the bank vault! No sir!

    And I gave it back to the bank when they (and the FBI) asked for it! I just didn’t realize!

  67. 67.

    delphinium

    February 11, 2023 at 11:57 am

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah, saw a few clips from that-awesome!

  68. 68.

    Spirula

    February 11, 2023 at 11:58 am

    @Omnes Omnibus: Plus, baboons are more rational.

  69. 69.

    Sister Golden Bear

    February 11, 2023 at 11:58 am

    @WaterGirl: Goes well with the two traitor tots (Javanka).

  70. 70.

    CliosFanBoy

    February 11, 2023 at 11:58 am

    @zhena gogolia: Um, there were smartphones in the 90s. The first iPhone came out in 2007.

  71. 71.

    zhena gogolia

    February 11, 2023 at 12:00 pm

    @CliosFanBoy: I thought smartphone and iPhone were synonymous. Good thing I’m not testifying before Congress!

    ETA: My understanding was that Goldman was referring to widespread use, such as would be part of FBI investigations.

  72. 72.

    Steeplejack

    February 11, 2023 at 12:02 pm

    @CliosFanBoy:

    A smartphone is much more than a mobile phone.

    ETA: “State of the art” in 1999 was something like one of those Nokia brick phones. Not a smartphone.

  73. 73.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    February 11, 2023 at 12:03 pm

    @CliosFanBoy: huh, I had no idea, I have no recollection of the Simon, but I’ve always been a late adopter and a bit of a luddite. I think I broke down and got my first cell phone in 2000. Now, of course, I get jittery if I leave it in the next room

  74. 74.

    zhena gogolia

    February 11, 2023 at 12:03 pm

    @Steeplejack: There’s something they’re calling a smartphone that came out in 1994. But I don’t think those were in wide use. The point was that this guy had no experience investigating cases involving commonly used smartphones.

  75. 75.

    J R in WV

    February 11, 2023 at 12:04 pm

    I understood that classified documents all said “CLASSIFIED” up at the top of every page?

    How on earth could anyone not see that and know that the given piece of paper was not just a memo?

    Good luck on the stand being examined by a prepared prosecutor, dude!! That’s a conservative volunteer going away for a very long time, with no job prospects when he gets out in the distant future.

    “I dinnt know!!!” he whimpered… really?​
    ​
    ​ETA: I’ve tried several times to make “CLASSIFIED” bright red as when I first typed this comment, and it won’t stick. But in bright red, no way someone doesn’t see that!!

  76. 76.

    Alison Rose

    February 11, 2023 at 12:04 pm

    @zhena gogolia: The BlackBerry was one of the earliest smartphones, I believe, and I think that was first introduced in the late 90s. I seem to recall one of my teachers at JC having one and being very impressed with him.

  77. 77.

    Scout211

    February 11, 2023 at 12:07 pm

    @zhena gogolia: Google search finds this. 

    I’m not sure if this is accurate since it’s a random website I’ve never heard of.

     

    The first version of what we’d consider a smartphone was invented in 1992 by IBM. Called the Simon Personal Communicator (or just IBM Simon), it was made available for purchase in 1994 and sold by the tens of thousands.
    IBM Simon distinguished itself from previous generations of cell phones with features like the ability to send and receive emails, and a touch screen. It also came with built-in programs including:

    • Calendar
    • Address book
    • Appointment scheduler
    • Standard and predictive stylus input keyboards
    • Electronic note pad
    • Handwritten annotations

    The design, tools, and performance capabilities of smartphones have evolved massively over the years, however, many of the same features found in the IBM Simon and other early models are now standard in today’s smartphones. 

  78. 78.

    Steeplejack

    February 11, 2023 at 12:07 pm

    @zhena gogolia:

    Agreed. You can always find some nitpicky edge case to make your point, but we’re talking about a dunderhead layman who wouldn’t have known about, much less had access to, the exotic early stuff.

  79. 79.

    different-church-lady

    February 11, 2023 at 12:08 pm

    How can they assume unwittingly??

    Have you ever seen Trump’s people exhibit wits?

  80. 80.

    scav

    February 11, 2023 at 12:09 pm

    @Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: I always copy random files — stick-tons of them in fact! — with utterly zero clue as to what they are. Basically a roomba of data-management.

  81. 81.

    CliosFanBoy

    February 11, 2023 at 12:09 pm

    @Steeplejack: That’s 1980s phones.  There were devices such as SIMON that were considered smartphones in the 90s.    That retired-FBI witness was still clueless though.

  82. 82.

    Baud

    February 11, 2023 at 12:10 pm

    @J R in WV:

    I got you, man.

    I understood that classified documents all said “CLASSIFIED” up at the top of every page?

  83. 83.

    J R in WV

    February 11, 2023 at 12:11 pm

    Our first cell phone was the size of a paving brick, larger than a common construction brick, with an antenna that connected with a coax cable that you stuck on the roof of the car with its magnetic base, and a battery you could jump start the car with (OK, that’s a slight exaggeration!) and probably cost hundreds of dollars. All it did was make a phone call, if you were close to a tower. The AP bought it for Wife.

  84. 84.

    J R in WV

    February 11, 2023 at 12:12 pm

    @Baud:

    Thanx — dunno why it quit working for me !~!?

  85. 85.

    kalakal

    February 11, 2023 at 12:13 pm

    @Steeplejack: The IBM Simon came out in 1994. By around 2000 there were phones with web browsers. I did quite nicely financially programming web apps for Blackberries. That FBI chap was a dolt.

    ETA I see I’m late to the party with this. All you fast fingered people!

  86. 86.

    bbleh

    February 11, 2023 at 12:14 pm

    @J R in WV: in my experience, every page of every document was stamped top and bottom with a classification (Confidential, Secret or Top Secret), and every paragraph began with an indication of the classification of the information in that paragraph — (U), (C), (S), (TS) — AND there were other markings for other types of classification (restriction to US nationals, compartmentalization, etc.)  And systems with classified information on them did not have functioning ports for things like thumb drives.

    But I don’t know what kinds of systems they were using, or what indications there are/were on the filenames.  And of course if classified information were (improperly) copied from a document without then classifying the copy, markings would not be present.

    At best it demonstrates a whole new level of carelessness: not merely removing documents and not securing them properly, but COPYING them from system to system, including to easily portable memory, without proper safeguards.

    But Republicans won’t care.  Trump is above rules, and by extension so is anybody working for him.

  87. 87.

    tobie

    February 11, 2023 at 12:15 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Debbie Wasserman Schultz was raked over the coals by Bernie and his supporters and then by Donna Brazile. She had a promising career before her which was burned to the ground in 2016. Since she’s never shown any love, I thought I’d link to the video of her questioning Turley. Yes, she exposed him with an economy of words.

  88. 88.

    WaterGirl

    February 11, 2023 at 12:19 pm

    @Scout211: Um, I mean, the 5th or 10th time they asked for it.  I can’t remember the number for sure.

  89. 89.

    WaterGirl

    February 11, 2023 at 12:19 pm

    @Sister Golden Bear: That’s a great connection.

  90. 90.

    BR

    February 11, 2023 at 12:23 pm

    @tobie: ​
    Exactly right. I heard the term “one truck contractor” as the perfect embodiment of this attitude. A ten truck contractor actually has to run a legit business, understand how laws work, and all the rest. A carpenter feels loyalty to other carpenters and maybe to a union. But a one truck contractor thinks they are the greatest gift to the world and owe nothing to anyone else.

  91. 91.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    February 11, 2023 at 12:26 pm

    @J R in WV: I had a phone like that when I was commuting 90 miles in Iowa winter. I kept it under the passenger seat.

  92. 92.

    H.E.Wolf

    February 11, 2023 at 12:27 pm

    @Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:”Let’s not get caught up in choosing the best mean name to call that asshole. Name calling is what Republicans do.”​

     Amen.

  93. 93.

    tobie

    February 11, 2023 at 12:36 pm

    @BR: Word. I’ve seen this bumper sticker on pick-up trucks: “I’m a Republican because someone [in this country] needs to work.” That encapsulates the smarmy attitude, doesn’t it?

  94. 94.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    February 11, 2023 at 12:43 pm

    Liam Nissan™ @theliamnissan
    Donald Trump has been up since 3:00 AM frantically stress-Truthing about Jack Smith and I am MF 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 it

    I’m sure it’s a deep concern for his friend Mike Pence that has The Beast stomping around his bedchamber at Mar-A-Lardo in the middle of the night.

  95. 95.

    BR

    February 11, 2023 at 12:48 pm

    @tobie: ​
    And by “work” they mean go to the ballgame while they overwork their undocumented construction workers who are doing backbreaking work, who they will of course stiff on the next paycheck.

  96. 96.

    RSA

    February 11, 2023 at 12:50 pm

    @WaterGirl:  TRAITOR not trailer.

    By analogy, think of the expression “wigger,” which many people find offensive by the association with an offensive word.

  97. 97.

    eclare

    February 11, 2023 at 12:52 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:   Love that Twitter name!

  98. 98.

    eclare

    February 11, 2023 at 12:53 pm

    @RSA:   I find that word offensive.

  99. 99.

    skerry

    February 11, 2023 at 12:54 pm

    @bbleh: There are specific situations where a user would have access to functioning ports. I did for many years. I’m not surprised someone working with TFG documents had access. Especially given how TFG gave out clearances to un-clear-able people. I’m sure his staff just routinely had functional ports, etc.

    You are exactly right about paragraph markings. And any graphics are also individually marked. The markings at the top and bottom of pages denote the highest classification of paragraphs and graphics on that page.

  100. 100.

    lowtechcyclist

    February 11, 2023 at 12:54 pm

    @Scout211:

    “Not realizing” that they were classified documents? Really?

    Ditto. The person who made the first copy of each document and saved them electronically unquestionably knew they were classified.

    I’m sure the Special Prosecutor’s team will be interviewing people to find out just who that was, and will explain to that person what deep shit they’re in, but that the shit might be a little less deep if they turn state’s evidence.

    After that, of course, it gets trickier, because once it’s a PDF with a nondescript name, it can be easy to back up a laptop onto a thumb drive, and copy the classified docs without having any idea they’re there.

    But it all comes back to Trump, and who he allowed to have access to the documents in any form.  Can’t see how he’s not in deep shit.

  101. 101.

    mrmoshpotato

    February 11, 2023 at 12:57 pm

    Jesus Fucking Christ Himself!

    Another round of applause for the stupid, selfish brats who decided that Hillary Clinton could fuck herself with their votes.  Stupid, selfish brats!

  102. 102.

    James E Powell

    February 11, 2023 at 1:00 pm

    @cmorenc:

    even the loudest howler-monkeys and media lackeys of the GOP aren’t going to be able to deflect, distract, or obfuscate this cataclysmic distinction.

    I have to assume this is sarcasm.

  103. 103.

    Steve in the ATL

    February 11, 2023 at 1:03 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    @Tom Levenson:

    indeed.  Baboons are assholes.  Also dangerous.

  104. 104.

    James E Powell

    February 11, 2023 at 1:03 pm

    @Scout211:

    A Trump aide had previously copied those same pages onto a thumb drive and laptop, not realizing they were classified, sources said.

    The source is probably the person who did the copying.

  105. 105.

    James E Powell

    February 11, 2023 at 1:05 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Remember when she was the worst person in the whole universe?

  106. 106.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    February 11, 2023 at 1:09 pm

    CLEARLY, the entire entourage at Mar-a-Dumbo should be relocated to GITMO until we can figure this whole thing out.

  107. 107.

    UncleEbeneezer

    February 11, 2023 at 1:09 pm

    @Ohio Mom: The most obvious reason DOJ shouldn’t have rushed to indict two years ago: they wouldn’t have found/had shit like this.  Imagine if DOJ indicts fast, Trump somehow gets acquitted and then we find this stuff later but double-jeopardy protections means we can never use this against him.  Maybe, just maybe, Garland, Jack Smith and DOJ know what they’re doing…

  108. 108.

    James E Powell

    February 11, 2023 at 1:09 pm

    @J R in WV:

    I had one of those. Every lawyer got one so they could bill hours while driving.

  109. 109.

    mrmoshpotato

    February 11, 2023 at 1:15 pm

    @delphinium:

    Yes! Have been so impressed with Jamie Raskin and Dan Goldman during these hearings and for calling out Jim Jordan as the stupid, loud-mouthed, scumbucket he is. 

    Bonasera, Bonasera, what have actual buckets of scum ever done to make you treat them so disrespectfully?

    (Apologies to Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola)

  110. 110.

    Baud

    February 11, 2023 at 1:16 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Some day, Turley will be found presenting oral argument outside of Four Seasons Total Landscaping.

  111. 111.

    Doc Sardonic

    February 11, 2023 at 1:16 pm

    never mind

  112. 112.

    kalakal

    February 11, 2023 at 1:19 pm

    @tobie:

    I’m a Republican because I believe someone [in this country] needs to work for me for $6 an hour and be grateful for the privilege.   

    With the quiet bits added

  113. 113.

    mrmoshpotato

    February 11, 2023 at 1:20 pm

    @Snarki, child of Loki:

    CLEARLY, the entire entourage at Mar-a-Dumbo should be relocated to GITMO until we can figure this whole thing out. 

    Yup!  And it’s still open compliments of Liz Cheney.

  114. 114.

    knally

    February 11, 2023 at 1:22 pm

    @Alison Rose:  Whenever I hear blackberry now, I think of this British Comedy Sketch

  115. 115.

    Steeplejack

    February 11, 2023 at 1:23 pm

    @Doc Sardonic:

    I thought your original comment was good.

  116. 116.

    WaterGirl

    February 11, 2023 at 1:25 pm

    @RSA: Are you suggesting that either traitor or trailer is in any way comparable to or associated with the n-word?  Seriously?  That’s laughable.

  117. 117.

    Baud

    February 11, 2023 at 1:29 pm

    @tobie:

     I’ve seen this bumper sticker on pick-up trucks: “I’m a Republican because someone [in this country] needs to work.”

     
    I’m a Democrat because someone needs to be loyal to this country.

  118. 118.

    Qrop Non Sequitur

    February 11, 2023 at 1:37 pm

    @cmorenc: even the loudest howler-monkeys and media lackeys of the GOP aren’t going to be able to deflect, distract, or obfuscate this cataclysmic distinction.

    The media just passed me their beer for safekeeping and left with some urgency. What’s that about?

  119. 119.

    jonas

    February 11, 2023 at 1:40 pm

    Classified documents on a thumb drive? Isn’t that sort of like, I dunno, a small “private server”? And isn’t storing classified documents on a private storage device like a capital offense to the googleplexeth power? I recall hearing something like that back in 2016…

  120. 120.

    narya

    February 11, 2023 at 1:41 pm

    @Baud: Oooooh, I like that one. Nominated for rotating tag!

  121. 121.

    tobie

    February 11, 2023 at 1:41 pm

    We’re past the 100 mark on this thread, so it may not be time to post a question but I’ll ask it anyway…

    Is there a good charity for sending funds to earthquake victims in Turkey & Syria?

    This may have come up in another thread and apologies in advance if I missed it.

  122. 122.

    UncleEbeneezer

    February 11, 2023 at 1:45 pm

    @Sister Golden Bear: OMG we have a winner! 😂

  123. 123.

    narya

    February 11, 2023 at 1:46 pm

    @tobie: World Central Kitchen is on the ground there now.

  124. 124.

    eclare

    February 11, 2023 at 1:47 pm

    @jonas:   It’s not like this person had a risotto recipe on the drive…/s

  125. 125.

    Qrop Non Sequitur

    February 11, 2023 at 1:47 pm

    @tobie: We’re past the 100 mark on this thread, so it may not be time to post a question

    Balloon Juice pros read from the bottom.  I don’t have an answer to your question, though.

  126. 126.

    Jackie

    February 11, 2023 at 1:51 pm

    @Geminid: The difference between the MAGA committee members and our minority committee members are very visual and verbal examples of quantity vs quality. I’m glad CNN and MSNBC are giving these exchanges a lot of airtime. I highly doubt faux news viewers have a clue.

  127. 127.

    Jackie

    February 11, 2023 at 1:55 pm

    @cmorenc: Ummm, it’s been covered extensively all morning (PT) on both CNN and MSNBC.

  128. 128.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    February 11, 2023 at 1:57 pm

    @tobie: I usually go with Doctors Without Borders in these situations

  129. 129.

    WaterGirl

    February 11, 2023 at 1:58 pm

    @tobie: I think World Central Kitchen is always a good choice.  They show up, they do good work, and they help people.  If you want to donate to them, you can click on the Balloon Juice for Ukraine thermometer and just select World Central Kitchen.

  130. 130.

    Tony G

    February 11, 2023 at 1:59 pm

    @Gin & Tonic: Unfortunately, I’m not so confident.  There could be a video of Trump strangling babies, and most of his “base” would continue to support him.

  131. 131.

    patrick II

    February 11, 2023 at 1:59 pm

    @Scout211:

    Where did the aide copy them from? And why did he have access?

    This may answer a question I have had — why (aside from Trump’s general disorganization) where classified documents sitting unsorted in boxes in a room? What use could they be? The answer may be that they had been scanned in and the copies that were accomplishing whatever they were trying to accomplish were all electronic.
    It is such a mess.

  132. 132.

    dww44

    February 11, 2023 at 2:00 pm

    @Jackie: ​  It’s not just Fox viewers who don’t have a clue;it’s even more about the other so called conservative news outlets. NewxMax cannot get over being ditched by Direct TV. They go on and on about the unfairness of itand that “over 80 Congresspersons are calling for investigations, that AT&T has lost billions/millions since dropping NewsMax, constant charts/graphs about Direct TV’s loss of viewership.
    If ever a conservative media arm demonstrated perfectly how conservatives views themselves as wronged and victimized, it’s definitely NewsMax. It is no wonder that the GOP politicians across the board are so warped. It’s the direct result of consuming their news only from conservative outlets. They’ve all lost the plot.​

  133. 133.

    WaterGirl

    February 11, 2023 at 2:00 pm

    @Jackie: @cmorenc:

    I couldn’t find a thing on the Washington post site when I put this post up, and I finally had to google trump classified thumb drive in order to find the Rolling Stone article.

    If I hadn’t gone looking for it or hadn’t seen someone’s tweet, I would never have known about the thumb drive.

  134. 134.

    Fleeting Expletive

    February 11, 2023 at 2:02 pm

    I just got around to reading E. Jean Caroll’s deposition vs. Trump. It’s harrowing and entirely relateable, of course, but how come his deposition, all 158 pages and every word, is blacked out?  When will it be unredacted? Why is it fucking redacted now?

  135. 135.

    Jackie

    February 11, 2023 at 2:03 pm

    @Steeplejack: I really, really want to know WHAT classified document(s) were copied onto that laptop and thumb drive. Anything that could compromise or endanger American assets or national security if shared or sold???

  136. 136.

    WaterGirl

    February 11, 2023 at 2:03 pm

    @patrick II: This is very clearly not a matter of someone boxing up a bunch of papers from a desktop in the rush of moving.

    I think this one is going to be a big problem for Trump, and a big piece of evidence in the Special Counsel case against Trump.  Maybe not a problem with his base, though.

  137. 137.

    RSA

    February 11, 2023 at 2:04 pm

    @eclare: As do I. It doesn’t make a difference if I say, “I used a W, not an N.” In the same way, it doesn’t make a difference if someone says, “I said TRAITOR, not TRAILER.”

  138. 138.

    delphinium

    February 11, 2023 at 2:04 pm

    @mrmoshpotato: Ha ha ha!

  139. 139.

    WaterGirl

    February 11, 2023 at 2:06 pm

    @Fleeting Expletive: There was a whole discussion of what Trump said in his deposition, and it sounded like he accidentally basically admitted that he did it, but it wasn’t rape.

  140. 140.

    geg6

    February 11, 2023 at 2:08 pm

    @tobie:

    My experience exactly.  Exactly.  Can’t say it enough.  It doesn’t mean rural or poor to me.  It means fairly wealthy small business owners, contractors, tradespeople and some professionals like dentists and lawyers.  They are just trash people and they are 99.9% white.  Thus, white trash.

  141. 141.

    artem1s

    February 11, 2023 at 2:09 pm

    The laptop, which belonged to an aide, who works for Save America PAC, and the thumb drive were also given to investigators in January.
    Good argument to overturn Citizen’s United IMO.

  142. 142.

    tobie

    February 11, 2023 at 2:09 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: @WaterGirl: excellent suggestions! Thank you.

  143. 143.

    tobie

    February 11, 2023 at 2:10 pm

    @narya: thanks so much

  144. 144.

    Cameron

    February 11, 2023 at 2:11 pm

    @WaterGirl: I thought maybe they were waiting until they could translate it from late Trumpean gibberish.

  145. 145.

    jonas

    February 11, 2023 at 2:14 pm

    @WaterGirl: ​
     

    he accidentally basically admitted that he did it, but it wasn’t rape.

    IIRC, he took Carrol’s remark (in her book?) about how she prefers not to call sexual assault “rape” because some people think the word is sexy or kinky completely out of context and claimed that she was essentially admitting that she secretly liked it. (Haven’t read the transcript, but I presume there’s a note about people in the interview room, except Trump, throwing up in their mouths at that point.)

    The other kicker was after calling her a liar and claiming she wasn’t “his type”, when shown a photo of Carrol standing near Trump in a photo, he mistook her for his ex-wife Marla Maples.

    The hammer cannot be brought down on this guy too fast or too soon…

  146. 146.

    tobie

    February 11, 2023 at 2:16 pm

    @geg6: BJ frontposter Anne Laurie had an excellent name for this–Poujadistes based on the movement Pierre Poujade spawned in France. This small town, small biz, anti-govt, proud provincialism, the conviction that they are the true nationals (“real America”), not folks in cities.

  147. 147.

    Jackie

    February 11, 2023 at 2:16 pm

    @WaterGirl: I LOLed when he mistook a picture of Carroll for Marla during that deposition! Oooops!

  148. 148.

    JoyceH

    February 11, 2023 at 2:16 pm

    @geg6: ​
     

    It doesn’t mean rural or poor to me. It means fairly wealthy small business owners, contractors, tradespeople and some professionals like dentists and lawyers. They are just trash people and they are 99.9% white. Thus, white trash.

    Fairly wealthy? Huh. I grew up in small town Midwest, and the term ‘white trash’ to me always meant a sort of behavior, nothing to do with money or the lack of it, though they were often poor. White Trash were the girls who got into hair pulling fights in the ladies room. Had a lot of fights, caused a lot of scenes, just a general lack of control, often in trouble with the police. “Low count, no account”. Lauren Boebert definitely qualifies, and so does Empty Gee, despite her privileged background. She just behaves… trashy.

  149. 149.

    delphinium

    February 11, 2023 at 2:21 pm

    @WaterGirl:

    There was a whole discussion of what Trump said in his deposition, and it sounded like he accidentally basically admitted that he did it, but it wasn’t rape.

    Yeah, he must have just ‘unwittingly’ pushed his dick in.

  150. 150.

    eclare

    February 11, 2023 at 2:23 pm

    @RSA:   I don’t find those words remotely comparable.  YMMV.

  151. 151.

    patrick II

    February 11, 2023 at 2:26 pm

    @WaterGirl:

    I agree that it is not just a case of boxing up, but having them remain sitting in boxes in an unorganized manner seemed of little use to me. It wasn’t clear, except for the psychological (I am president and these are mine!!!) purposes how he was making use of them.  If there was significant scanning and organizing into useful (saleable) parts, that makes a difference.

    Post edit.

    And also — he wouldn’t/couldn’t do that by himself.

  152. 152.

    WaterGirl

    February 11, 2023 at 2:27 pm

    @Jackie:   Yes, that was great!  I really hope this case does not go his way.

  153. 153.

    WaterGirl

    February 11, 2023 at 2:28 pm

    @delphinium: Ha!

  154. 154.

    zhena gogolia

    February 11, 2023 at 2:29 pm

    @tobie:
    My Turkish-American friend recommended this one:
    https://donate.tpfund.org/campaign/tpf-turkiye-earthquake/c465112

  155. 155.

    jonas

    February 11, 2023 at 2:29 pm

    @tobie: ​  “Poor white trash” has always referred to poor, rural whites who despite their poverty and lack of education could still hold their racial privilege over their Black neighbors and coworkers.
    What you’re describing is the so-called “petit bourgeoisie” — not wealthy, asset-owning capitalists, but the middle and lower-middle class of tradespeople, shopkeepers, and other small business owners (like MTG, who ran a Crossfit gym, iirc) who have always formed a bulwark of reactionary conservatism against social reform or government regulation. In Marxian analysis, they’re useful idiots for the capitalist class, defending the privilege of the wealthy because they desire and admire it, while also resenting what they see as the laziness of the working poor (and imagining themselves as virtuous bootstrappers who never asked for any “handouts” or benefited from government largess).​

    ETA: and what security they did feel in their lives usually came from a sense of cultural/racial/religious privilege which they now see as under threat from the progressive left, “Hollywood elites,” “globalists”, etc.

  156. 156.

    WaterGirl

    February 11, 2023 at 2:30 pm

    @patrick II:

    If there was significant scanning and organizing into useful (saleable) parts, that makes a difference.

    When you say that makes a difference, I can’t tell which direction you mean.  Does that make it more acceptable, or less?

    In either base, no one gets to scan classified documents, even for convenience, so I hope this helps put him in a vise.

  157. 157.

    ian

    February 11, 2023 at 2:30 pm

    @Baud: I still get Jonathan Turley and Jeffery Toobin confused when I see their names.  So this image you have conjured up has an extra element to it in my head.

  158. 158.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    February 11, 2023 at 2:31 pm

    @ian: THEY’RE BOTH WANKERS!

    did I get there first?

  159. 159.

    artem1s

    February 11, 2023 at 2:33 pm

    a Trump aide (who works for Save America PAC) had previously copied those same pages onto a laptop and thumb drive

    Here’s my question, how in the holy hell can a WH aide also work for a political action committee?

  160. 160.

    WaterGirl

    February 11, 2023 at 2:35 pm

    @jonas: I have never heard the phrase “poor white trash.”

    White trash is what was used around Chicago, and it had nothing to do with where you lived or what kind of money you had.

    But I am not taking a side on whether that phrase should be used.  I was just suggesting that people who didn’t like “white trash” for racial reasons my be happier with the phrase “traitor trash”.  Especially since it’s currently being to describe some of these republicans who really are traitors to their country.

    Traitor is a descriptive modifier to go with the value judgment of being considered trash.

  161. 161.

    WaterGirl

    February 11, 2023 at 2:36 pm

    @artem1s:

    How in the holy hell can a WH aide also work for a political action committee?

    Now that is a most excellent question!

  162. 162.

    gene108

    February 11, 2023 at 2:36 pm

    @tobie:

    Is there a good charity for sending funds to earthquake victims in Turkey & Syria?

    Doctors Without Borders

  163. 163.

    Scout211

    February 11, 2023 at 2:44 pm

    @WaterGirl: @artem1s: Here’s my question, how in the holy hell can a WH aide also work for a political action committee?

    We may learn more in the next few weeks, but the original story on CNN called the person a “Trump aide,” not a “White House aide.”

    The person could be a former White House aide, but I don’t think that would be a conflict at this point if they now work for one of Trump’s PACs.  But again, more information may come out later

    ETA: corrections

  164. 164.

    patrick II

    February 11, 2023 at 2:46 pm

    @WaterGirl:

    Absolutely less acceptable.  If he has electronic copies that have been organized (of more use to potential buyers) and are easily transferrable and we don’t know where they all are, he should be arrested yesterday.

  165. 165.

    Cameron

    February 11, 2023 at 2:46 pm

    @ian: Toobin’s the one with the reality show Tubin’ With Toobin.

  166. 166.

    Dangerman

    February 11, 2023 at 2:47 pm

    @jonas:

    The hammer cannot be brought down on this guy too fast or too soon…

    Random target for the hammer or are there options?

  167. 167.

    NotMax

    February 11, 2023 at 2:48 pm

    @tobie

    Another fine organization to consider is Operation USA.

    USA based but not exclusively USA oriented. Aid flowing to Turkiye and also Ukraine.

  168. 168.

    Cameron

    February 11, 2023 at 2:51 pm

    I don’t know if this has already been beaten to death here,but I just saw that the President wasn’t going to do the Fox interview. I think that’s an excellent decision. I can’t imagine that he’d be asked anything honest,intelligent,or relevant.

  169. 169.

    NotMax

    February 11, 2023 at 2:54 pm

    @WaterGirl

    I have never heard the phrase “poor white trash.”

    Difficult to conceive you’ve never come across that. Common parlance which has been around forever.

  170. 170.

    Suzanne

    February 11, 2023 at 3:00 pm

    @JoyceH:

    I grew up in small town Midwest, and the term ‘white trash’ to me always meant a sort of behavior, nothing to do with money or the lack of it, though they were often poor. White Trash were the girls who got into hair pulling fights in the ladies room. Had a lot of fights, caused a lot of scenes, just a general lack of control, often in trouble with the police. “Low count, no account”. Lauren Boebert definitely qualifies, and so does Empty Gee, despite her privileged background. She just behaves… trashy. 

    Yes this.
    And the things I associate with WT behavior in dudes are opiates, “hold my beer” kind of stunts, playing speakers at obnoxious volume, speeding and generally driving (and parking) like a douchebag, wearing visible logos.

  171. 171.

    WereBear

    February 11, 2023 at 3:01 pm

    @NotMax: I know it as a distinctly southern thing.

  172. 172.

    artem1s

    February 11, 2023 at 3:02 pm

    @Scout211:  

    “Trump aide,” not a “White House aide.”

    I think the question is still a valid one either way. It could fall under FEC regs about coordinated communications between PACs and campaigns and what TFG was skimming off the top for his own personal use. But there is also the national security question about gross lack seeking clearance for the whole swamp bucket of deplorables who had free rein to run around the WH and apparently had access to who knows what.

  173. 173.

    NotMax

    February 11, 2023 at 3:04 pm

    @Cameron

    Fox Soul, not Fox News*. On again, off again. Currently a no go but as far as anyone can tell status remains in flux.

    *I know, I know. Insert appropriate air quotes.

  174. 174.

    JoyceH

    February 11, 2023 at 3:09 pm

    amusing new story at the Post:

    Former president Trump’s 2020 campaign commissioned an outside research firm in a bid to prove electoral fraud claims but never released the findings because the firm disputed many of his theories and could not offer any proof that he was the rightful winner of the election, according to four people familiar with the matter.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/02/11/trump-campaign-report-electoral-fraud/

  175. 175.

    tobie

    February 11, 2023 at 3:09 pm

    @NotMax: Thank you. I’ll spread out my donations. Glad to have names of good organizations.

  176. 176.

    Leslie

    February 11, 2023 at 3:11 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Points for “smarmy blobfish.”

  177. 177.

    Scout211

    February 11, 2023 at 3:12 pm

    @artem1s: I agree.

    I’m sure the FEC will get right on that.  They’ve been especially tough on Trump in the past few years.  🙄 

    Speaking of paying himself out one of his PACs:

    Trump has already funneled nearly $1 million in donor cash to himself since leaving office

    Former President Donald Trump did not spend most of the donor money he received in the past two years to help his own presidential bid — or the GOP as a whole — while putting nearly $1 million into his own properties.

    Since leaving office through the end of last year, Trump’s various political action committees (PACs) spent $905,570 at his properties, according to an analysis of new Federal Election Commission filings by HuffPost.

    The analysis showed that the former president’s Save America leadership PAC spent $94,462 on a Trump hotel on Central Park West in Manhattan on Dec. 10, 2021, and $1,122 on his West Palm Beach golf course on Dec. 12, 2022. His campaign also paid $48 tabs at his Mar-a-Lago social club on Nov. 18, 2022.

    The fund allocation shows a pattern where donor money is converted into revenue at the former president’s businesses, with the final profits lining Trump’s pockets. Trump’s campaign did not respond to questions regarding the matter from HuffPost, however, this is not the first time he has used large amounts of money from PACs to benefit himself.

  178. 178.

    NotMax

    February 11, 2023 at 3:14 pm

    @WereBear

    “‘Yes, but not in the South,’ with slight adjustments, will do for any argument about any place, if not about any person.”
    – Richard Usborne
    (Phraseology suggested for debates quipped by its coiner as “a formula that lets me off the boredom of finding out facts and retaining knowledge.”)

  179. 179.

    Omnes Omnibus

    February 11, 2023 at 3:17 pm

    @Steve in the ATL: ​
      You had Phi Delts on your campus too?

  180. 180.

    dmsilev

    February 11, 2023 at 3:20 pm

    @JoyceH: One wonders whether that research firm had their invoices paid.

    Edit: Seems from the story that the researchers were honest and reported back the truth that we all know.

  181. 181.

    WaterGirl

    February 11, 2023 at 3:23 pm

    @NotMax: Not with “poor” in front of it.

    Poor whites yes, white trash, yes. ” Poor white trash”, nope!

  182. 182.

    eclare

    February 11, 2023 at 3:29 pm

    @WaterGirl:   Heard it all the time, I grew up in the south.

  183. 183.

    cckids

    February 11, 2023 at 3:33 pm

    @WaterGirl: I think World Central Kitchen is always a good choice.  They show up, they do good work, and they help people.

    Something I didn’t realize until I read Andres’ book is that they also look for local suppliers , farms, restaurants, etc, so the $$ rebuilds and grows the local economy. So smart!

  184. 184.

    Kent

    February 11, 2023 at 3:34 pm

    @artem1s:Here’s my question, how in the holy hell can a WH aide also work for a political action committee?

    They absolutely cannot.  Under US Law (The Hatch Act) you can only have one master.  You either work for the American people as a White House employee, or you work for a political campaign.  You cannot do both.

    All previous administrations understood and obeyed this bright line.  I saw it with both the Clinton and Bush Administrations when I was in government.  And I’m sure Obama followed it strictly as well.  It is yet one more rule that Trump and his sycophants willfully and carelessly discarded when they moved into the White House.  And as it turns out, when you fire everyone in a position of authority at the DOJ and Office of Special Counsel and OMB who’s job it is to monitor and enforce such laws, and appoint your own lackeys if you even bother.  Then it turns out that no one is really watching the henhouse.

  185. 185.

    WaterGirl

    February 11, 2023 at 3:39 pm

    @cckids: I read an article about him / them several months ago that talked about all of that, and more.  Just excellent.

  186. 186.

    Baud

    February 11, 2023 at 3:41 pm

    @Kent:

    Under US Law (The Hatch Act) you can only have one master.

     

    Also true in BDSM.

  187. 187.

    Kent

    February 11, 2023 at 3:41 pm

    @jonas:@tobie: ​  “Poor white trash” has always referred to poor, rural whites who despite their poverty and lack of education could still hold their racial privilege over their Black neighbors and coworkers.

    It is also an attitude.  Out here in the Pacific Northwest we had two initial waves of settlers.  We had the industrious New Englanders and Scandinavians who settled in the cities like Portland and Seattle (who came by ship) and who made those cities tidy and prosperous.  And who quickly gobbled up the best farmland.

    But we also had waves of Scotts-Irish type poor white southerners who fled from Appalachia and the south in the wake of the civil war and who set up as miners and loggers and stump farmers out in the rural fringes.  And that is why much of rural OR  looks more like rural Arkansas than rural New England.  And why you can still see Confederate flags (and all their other MAGA variants) flying from double-wide trailers scattered about the broken down logging and mill towns of rural Oregon.  They haven’t lived next door to a black person in 125 years, but they kept the mindset and passed it on down, nonetheless.

  188. 188.

    Zelma

    February 11, 2023 at 3:47 pm

    @tobie:

    I’m late to respond about a charity, but Lutheran Disaster Relief is already on the ground in northern Syria and 100% of donations go to relief.  The church covers the overhead.

  189. 189.

    Martin

    February 11, 2023 at 3:56 pm

    @JoyceH: I think there are two broad concept for white trash. One is ‘overt racist’. Which is a common movie trope – or at least was.

    The other is ‘cultural outlier’. Basically people who are unable or unwilling to engage in the kind of decision making process that culture says they should engage in. So they could be profoundly uneducated, they could just be rebels – moonshiners or whatever. Deliverance leans into this trope.

    White trash only exists as it does because black people were not expected to conform to the same cultural decision making (for racist reasons – they got an exemption because they were inherently too dumb, or savage or whatever) and also not welcome to. Every black person who didn’t conform to those cultural standards could be pointed to as evidence that black people deserve to be discriminated against.

    But white trash was white people not holding up their end of the deal. That was a betrayal where a poor black person was an expectation.

    Poverty among white people was in and of itself enough to label them as white trash because poverty is culturally a failure to make good decisions. But you could be rich white trash (Ricky Bobby from Talledega Nights) who made different kinds of bad decisions.

    These two things work hand in hand. White trash are labeled as such to allow middle class whites to be casually racist by taking the behavior they use to justify their racism (poverty, law breaking, etc.) and labelling and removing those members from the club of whiteness. They are defects and not counted toward what proper culture should be. Then, by casting them out, media can attach the most overt racism to this group so that any accusation of ‘white people are racist’ can be countered by all of the middle class immediately pointing to that group of outcasts and blaming them, absolving themselves of responsibility.

    It’s very effective. White trash are Nazis, middle class whites are just conservatives. The latter does *vastly* more harm than the former because Nazis can at most harm minorities one at a time, but conservatives can harm them all in one policy action, but conservatives don’t have to take the blame for any of it because there’s this white trash population they can always point to. “Look at what that Nazi did. That’s terrible. We should do something.”

  190. 190.

    StringOnAStick

    February 11, 2023 at 3:58 pm

    @WaterGirl: I heard “poor white trash” all the time as a kid, and I grew up in Boebert’s district.

    I think Martin has it down cold.  The way I perceived it when it was used around me as a kid was these are white people who drag down the norms of whiteness, and this are a cultural violation.

  191. 191.

    WereBear

    February 11, 2023 at 4:08 pm

    @NotMax: That seems ridiculously useful. Thank you.

  192. 192.

    Kent

    February 11, 2023 at 4:09 pm

    @Martin: Fabulous description Martin.  Is this your own analysis or based on some larger reference work?  Because I’m going to file this away and use your framing in the future.

  193. 193.

    lowtechcyclist

    February 11, 2023 at 4:10 pm

    @Jackie:

    I really, really want to know WHAT classified document(s) were copied onto that laptop and thumb drive. Anything that could compromise or endanger American assets or national security if shared or sold???

    I would hope it’s legally a BFD that any of them were copied onto an electronic medium.

    As long as they’re just on paper, they can only be in one place.  Once they’re copied, the copies can be everywhere in the blink of an eye.

    I would assume anyone with custody of classified documents would have an affirmative responsibility to protect them from being copied.

    So (with pronouns appropriately changed) I recall a phrase that was popular with TFG and his supporters:

    LOCK HIM UP!! LOCK HIM UP!!

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    The most obvious reason DOJ shouldn’t have rushed to indict two years ago: they wouldn’t have found/had shit like this.  Imagine if DOJ indicts fast, Trump somehow gets acquitted and then we find this stuff later but double-jeopardy protections means we can never use this against him.

    I think you’re confused here.  Double jeopardy protections only apply to charges for which you’ve been tried and acquitted.

    I agree that they shouldn’t have rushed to indict him two years ago. But if they had, they wouldn’t have charged him for anything related to the documents: at that point, NARA was still (at most) at the point of sending him a gentle letter reminding him that he might have taken a few things with him that he needed to return.  There was no evidence yet of intent on his part to hang onto them illegally.

  194. 194.

    Barbara

    February 11, 2023 at 4:11 pm

    @StringOnAStick: ​It’s a way of othering the least appealing (at least on the surface) specimens of your own group.

  195. 195.

    Jay

    February 11, 2023 at 4:11 pm

    @Baud:

    not true in BDSM. Subs can have many Masters, Masters can have many Subs, and then there are Switches, whom, dependent on a variety of factors, alternate between the Master and Sub roles.

  196. 196.

    Baud

    February 11, 2023 at 4:13 pm

    @Jay:

    I knew someone would correct my joke. 😝

  197. 197.

    Barbara

    February 11, 2023 at 4:13 pm

    @lowtechcyclist: Jackie’s point stands. Failure to convict would be held up as evidence that new charges were a witch hunt. DOJ, at least, cannot assume it will get more than one shot at Trump.

  198. 198.

    WereBear

    February 11, 2023 at 4:15 pm

    @Martin: Yes, exactly. Why I try to go nowhere near the phrase.

  199. 199.

    Kent

    February 11, 2023 at 4:15 pm

    @lowtechcyclist:

    I would hope it’s legally a BFD that any of them were copied onto an electronic medium.

    As long as they’re just on paper, they can only be in one place.  Once they’re copied, the copies can be everywhere in the blink of an eye.

    I would assume anyone with custody of classified documents would have an affirmative responsibility to protect them from being copied.

    Exactly.  Scanning classified documents and saving them into .pdf format is no doubt a crime in and of itself.

    That is different from say what Hillary Clinton was accused of where in a few instances she or her aids touched on classified subjects in emails but were not taking existing classified documents and digitizing them.

  200. 200.

    WereBear

    February 11, 2023 at 4:18 pm

    This in the same week we got that incredible speech!

    Not even my birthday.

  201. 201.

    Martin

    February 11, 2023 at 4:18 pm

    @jonas: rural whites who despite their poverty and lack of education could still hold their racial privilege over their Black neighbors and coworkers.

    There’s a change in the term at some point such that your definition doesn’t really apply. I think there was a shift in the use of the term where during and just post reconstruction it just applied to any poor white person, but as coalition building got underway, the South started rebuilding their offensive against black people and getting poor white people on board involved convincing them of your definition. That held until Jim Crow ended. Post Jim Crow I think that same message continued to be sold to poor whites, but with each year it was true less and less. Maybe a poor white feels of higher privilege than a poor black person, but certainly not a middle class black person. Before they got social capital to make up for their lack of actual capital, but no longer.

    So while they might have been sold that idea, I don’t think anyone has actually seen it that way in quite a long time. I don’t think that definition has applied since the 70s or so.

  202. 202.

    lowtechcyclist

    February 11, 2023 at 4:20 pm

    @RSA:

    It doesn’t make a difference if I say, “I used a W, not an N.” In the same way, it doesn’t make a difference if someone says, “I said TRAITOR, not TRAILER.

    WTF???

    Calling people trash because they’re betraying their country is completely different from calling people trash because they live in a trailer.

  203. 203.

    narya

    February 11, 2023 at 4:24 pm

    @WaterGirl: @cckids: That was one of the things that drew me to his organization early on–after Hurricane Maria, maybe? I love that they use local resources to feed local people, and take advantage of/utilize the existing talents. It probably helps bring back infrastructure destroyed by whatever disaster is occurring, and it probably is more sustainable, because they’re not bringing in a ton of outside folks.

  204. 204.

    jonas

    February 11, 2023 at 4:24 pm

    @Martin: ​
      Fair point. The overt racial angle possibly isn’t quite there in the same way. I think these days, most people use “redneck” and “white trash” sort of interchangeably. It’s a Venn diagram that certainly overlaps, but not completely.

  205. 205.

    piratedan

    February 11, 2023 at 4:25 pm

    for me:

    1. how did a non-governmental staffer get a hold of classified docs
    2. how in the hell did they think making copies would be legal
    3. how many times has this media been shared and with whom
    4. where the hell is the FBI, because afaik, this is a felony, is it not?
  206. 206.

    Ruckus

    February 11, 2023 at 4:28 pm

    @narya:

    Cancer and cancer treatment has a way of removing all of your fucks to give. And depending upon where and what cancer it can result in removing all of your current fucks. My sister died of cancer. My cancer didn’t kill me – of course, but I’ve had cancer and it was a complete life changing event, being told, being treated, living with the after. So I basically have zero fucks left to give. I give Raskin an A+ for not going all asshole, after being told he had to remove the cover for his cancer treatment location by some lunatic who had to kiss every ass in DC to be elected as house leader.

  207. 207.

    Martin

    February 11, 2023 at 4:29 pm

    @Kent: There might be a little bit of it that’s mine, but it’s mostly bringing other works into focus. I’ve been hawking a variety of other people’s work and it’s really just an aggregate of them.

    One that touches on a lot of it is the Alt Right Playbook series on Youtube. Some comes from various media critics. I think my efforts to consciously consume more non-white, non-male originating content has helped to find some of these ideas and stitch them together.

  208. 208.

    Omnes Omnibus

    February 11, 2023 at 4:29 pm

    Some of you have put an awful lot of thought into the definitions of white trash, redneck, etc.

  209. 209.

    MagdaInBlack

    February 11, 2023 at 4:31 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: Was just thinking the same. Trash is trash, comes in all sizes, shapes, colors and economic classes.

  210. 210.

    bbleh

    February 11, 2023 at 4:33 pm

    @WaterGirl: “Oh that money.  Well, I can’t really say whether I’m responsible for putting it in my duffel bag at all.  And there’s so much stuff in my duffel bag that I can’t be expected to know everything that’s in it.  And really, what’s a little money?  I mean, everyone carries money, especially everyone who’s just been to a bank, and I was just coming out of a bank.  So.”

  211. 211.

    lowtechcyclist

    February 11, 2023 at 4:33 pm

    @Barbara:

    Uncle Ebeneezer’s point, actually. But like treason, double jeopardy is in the Constitution and has a particular meaning as a result: you can’t be tried twice for the same offense.

    It’s actually one of my axes to grind that words used in courtrooms don’t have to mean the exact same thing in colloquial speech, and when lawyers insist they must, they need to STFU.  But I’ve honestly never heard ‘double jeopardy’ used in any other way in popular speech besides what the Fifth Amendment says it means.

  212. 212.

    WaterGirl

    February 11, 2023 at 4:40 pm

    @bbleh: I’m sure his excuse will be totally lame, and way less fun than yours.

  213. 213.

    WaterGirl

    February 11, 2023 at 4:43 pm

    @lowtechcyclist: Right.  Let’s say i am on trial because I robbed a bank.  Double jeopardy does not mean that you can’t put me on trial if I rob another bank.

    As I understand it from the movie, though… if you put me on trial because I killed my husband, and it turns out that he wasn’t really dead, you cannot put me on trial for killing my husband if I actually do kill him after I find out he’s not dead and he left me in prison for all those years.

  214. 214.

    jonas

    February 11, 2023 at 4:46 pm

    @Kent: ​
     

    That is different from say what Hillary Clinton was accused of where in a few instances she or her aids touched on classified subjects in emails but were not taking existing classified documents and digitizing them.

    Thank you for highlighting this. I think the vast majority of the public, with a big lift from piss-poor reporting by the shitheads at the FTFNYT and of course the Wingnut Wurlitzer/Fox ecosystem more generally, is under the impression that she had literally scanned thousands of highly classified documents and attached them to emails stored on her private server or something. That’s not what happened, of course.

  215. 215.

    Martin

    February 11, 2023 at 4:46 pm

    @MagdaInBlack: But we don’t treat them the same. And there are important dynamics behind why that is. It doesn’t benefit us to wave away the mechanisms that white supremacy uses to sustain itself.

    At also doesn’t benefit us to *help* in that process by treating poor people as ‘defects’ and not people deserving of help. You waved away the ‘white’ part but not the ‘trash’ part. You are still othering them as defective.

  216. 216.

    David 🎈🕵️The Establishment 📸🛩 Koch

    February 11, 2023 at 4:48 pm

    Shit, I don’t think I have enough popcorn

  217. 217.

    Scout211

    February 11, 2023 at 4:50 pm

    NORAD detects another high altitude object.

    The North American Aerospace Defense Command said Saturday it is monitoring “a high altitude airborne object” over northern Canada, and military aircraft are currently operating in the area from Alaska and Canada, according to a news release from the agency.

    Now China is just trolling . . .

  218. 218.

    WaterGirl

    February 11, 2023 at 4:53 pm

    One thing I think is intersting about this, is that they turned the laptop and the flash drive over to the DOJ.

    I can’t keep all of Trump’s lawyers straight.  Seems like that guy’s name may have started with a K?  So maybe Trusty is one of the lame attorneys who was still smart enough to get the $3 million retainer up front?  Or is Trusty just smart enough to know that once he knew there were classified documents still in Trump’s hands, he was totally screwed if he didn’t notify someone?

  219. 219.

    Martin

    February 11, 2023 at 4:59 pm

    @WaterGirl: Well, it was the aides laptop. Presumably some of the people around Trump have retained some degree of agency in their lives.

  220. 220.

    brantl

    February 11, 2023 at 5:00 pm

    Watergirl : ” I scared the cat laughing at the “may not be done” part.”

    My laugh would have scared elephants.

  221. 221.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    February 11, 2023 at 5:00 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    It was delightful to see the pompous, holier than thou Jonathan Turley get his clock cleaned.

  222. 222.

    Cameron

    February 11, 2023 at 5:01 pm

    @Scout211: I still think it’s aliens. And we better not get them too pissed off.

  223. 223.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    February 11, 2023 at 5:07 pm

    @WaterGirl:

    I can’t keep all of Trump’s lawyers straight.

    Neither can Trump.  Given his track record of ignoring legal advice and unwillingness to pay his bills, any lawyer who accepts him as a client is a fucking moron.

  224. 224.

    Mallard Filmore

    February 11, 2023 at 5:07 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: 

    You had Phi Delts on your campus too?

    They were SAE where I went to college.

  225. 225.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    February 11, 2023 at 5:09 pm

    Justin Trudeau @JustinTrudeau 13m

    Officiel du gouvernement – Canada
    I ordered the take down of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace.
    @NORADCommand shot down the object over the Yukon. Canadian and U.S. aircraft were scrambled, and a U.S. F-22 successfully fired at the object.

  226. 226.

    Martin

    February 11, 2023 at 5:11 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: F-22s finally have something to do. We sure LockMart isn’t the one sending the balloons over?

  227. 227.

    davecb

    February 11, 2023 at 5:16 pm

    “Trailer Trash” and “White Trash” are still popular descriptions of people who are either poor, dumb, annoying or combination of the three. Mike Clattenburg did a multi-year series on the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) called “Trailer Park Boys” that was absolutely hilarious, by having individual characters epitomizing each combination of those three factors. I’m a little surprised it hasn’t been mentioned here before. See https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0290988/ (No traitors, though)

  228. 228.

    zhena gogolia

    February 11, 2023 at 5:17 pm

    @Baud: The pedantry is breathtaking!

  229. 229.

    Qrop Non Sequitur

    February 11, 2023 at 5:19 pm

    @Baud: Eh. People often find it’s hard to follow two BDSM masters. Contradicting orders can become a problem.

  230. 230.

    Anne Laurie

    February 11, 2023 at 5:19 pm

    New post, more links to the Mar-A-Largo doc dump, up top…

  231. 231.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    February 11, 2023 at 5:19 pm

    @davecb: Dolly Parton has a stock story for interviews about being a little girl at the store with her mother and seeing a lady with big blonde hair, lots of make-up and short, tight, red dress. Little Dolly was staring at what she thought must be the most beautiful woman in the world and her mother said, Dolly, you stop staring at her, she’s nothing but trash! And little Dolly thought, well when I grow up, I’m gonna be trash!

  232. 232.

    karen marie

    February 11, 2023 at 5:20 pm

    @Tom Levenson:  I did 7th and 8th grades at the International School of Ibadan, Nigeria.  For some reason the school had a large freestanding cage with about a dozen baboons.  They would occasionally let themselves out and tear around the campus, attacking anyone they could catch.

    Between them and the occasional mob of army ants taking a route through the campus, school could be very exciting.

    You definitely do not want to mess with baboons or army ants.

  233. 233.

    NotMax

    February 11, 2023 at 5:20 pm

    @Martin

    LockMart

    Low prices Cost overruns every day!
    //

  234. 234.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    February 11, 2023 at 5:20 pm

    @zhena gogolia: and nobody jumped on that misuse of “whom”!

    A little disappointed in Team Pedant, I must say.

  235. 235.

    zhena gogolia

    February 11, 2023 at 5:21 pm

    @Ruckus:

    after being told he had to remove the cover for his cancer treatment location by some lunatic who had to kiss every ass in DC to be elected as house leader.

    Apparently this isn’t true — it came from a joke Raskin made behind closed doors. He has debunked the rumor.

  236. 236.

    Amir Khalid

    February 11, 2023 at 5:22 pm

    @Martin:

    I have a lingering suspicion that if the F-22 and its fifth-generation peer the Russian Su-57 ever go to war, we might find out they really ain’t all that.

  237. 237.

    lowtechcyclist

    February 11, 2023 at 5:24 pm

    @WaterGirl:

    Right.  Let’s say i am on trial because I robbed a bank.  Double jeopardy does not mean that you can’t put me on trial if I rob another bank.

    That’s right, two different crimes, no double jeopardy.

    As I understand it from the movie, though… if you put me on trial because I killed my husband, and it turns out that he wasn’t really dead, you cannot put me on trial for killing my husband if I actually do kill him after I find out he’s not dead and he left me in prison for all those years.

    I’ll let the legal eagles here wrestle with this one.  Same crime? Two different crimes?  Can be convicted the second time, but sentenced to time served? ;-)

    Hell if I know.  This one’s waaaay beyond my modest legal knowledge!

  238. 238.

    zhena gogolia

    February 11, 2023 at 5:24 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I have to say I didn’t read the whole comment. But yeah, “whom” as a straight-up subject of a clause is pretty horrifying.

  239. 239.

    Aussie Sheila

    February 11, 2023 at 5:25 pm

    @jonas: This exactly. Squeezed from above by Banks and financial institutions, while feeling threatened from below by people who demand to be treated with respect. This layer has always been the bulwark of reactionary politics and they need to be corralled by a large and well organised working class.
    They are politically unstable, dangerous and a rigid, unfair  electoral system gives them an outside influence in politics, especially where that system favours rural and ex urban areas.

  240. 240.

    MagdaInBlack

    February 11, 2023 at 5:26 pm

    @Martin: Who exactly am I “othering.” Trash is a behavior that cuts across all lines. I “waved” away white because of that.

  241. 241.

    Baud

    February 11, 2023 at 5:27 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    @zhena gogolia:

    I assumed it was a Canadian thing.

  242. 242.

    Anne Laurie

    February 11, 2023 at 5:29 pm

    @tobie: I associate the term with independent contractors and small business folks, especially in the home trades. These folks tend to be wealthy and they’ve managed to make a good living with a hs diploma. Good on them. It’s their smug self-satisfaction, their conviction that they’ve never received a handout, their vanity in thinking they drive the economy, their disdain for black and brown people and eggheads that bother me. I have never met a group less capable of self-reflection.

    We need an American term equivalent to poujadist — ‘common man populism’ , as exemplified by the petit bourgeois small tradesmen.

  243. 243.

    NotMax

    February 11, 2023 at 5:38 pm

    @Anne Laurie

    Obligatory?
    ;)

  244. 244.

    phdesmond

    February 11, 2023 at 5:42 pm

    @Scout211:

    NORAD usually only detects Santa Claus.

  245. 245.

    Robin Goodfellow

    February 11, 2023 at 5:42 pm

    @CliosFanBoy: Doesn’t anyone remember Blackberrys?

  246. 246.

    David 🎈🕵️The Establishment 📸🛩 Koch

    February 11, 2023 at 5:59 pm

    @Robin Goodfellow: No, but I remember Frankenberries

  247. 247.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    February 11, 2023 at 6:05 pm

    @David 🎈🕵️The Establishment 📸🛩 Koch: apparently there’s a podcast that did an episode of the Great Frankenberry Panic of 197something. They advertise heavily with that bait. Doesn’t pique my interest, but they seem to think it’s gonna draw subscribers

  248. 248.

    Kent

    February 11, 2023 at 6:22 pm

    @Anne Laurie:We need an American term equivalent to poujadist — ‘common man populism’ , as exemplified by the petit bourgeois small tradesmen.

    Blue collar?

  249. 249.

    Eyeroller

    February 11, 2023 at 6:27 pm

    I’m sure this thread is dead, but I grew up in the South (not the genteel northern South where I now live–my relatives considered my current location the “North”) and there’s absolutely no ambiguity about the meaning of “white trash.” The “poor” is usually understood.  They are whites with low education, sporadic or low-paying employment, usually drug and/or alcohol abuse, unstable relationships, cohabiting rather than marrying (this was very much frowned on in the South), and so forth.  Since many such people lived in mobile homes, “trailer trash” was a subset.

  250. 250.

    Omnes Omnibus

    February 11, 2023 at 6:44 pm

    @Kent: No.  That completely misses the point.  If it helps, Le Pen père et fille got their beginnings out of that movement.  Actually, the closest term we have to it is MAGA.

  251. 251.

    Citizen Alan

    February 11, 2023 at 6:45 pm

    @JoyceH: My current Congressman is a wealthy attorney on the side, and if I didn’t think it would mean the end of any chance of me getting a government job, I would call him white trash to his face.

  252. 252.

    Uncle Cosmo

    February 11, 2023 at 7:12 pm

    @Martin: ​We sure BlockheadMoron isn’t the one sending the balloons over?

    FTFY. Get your names right FFS!

  253. 253.

    Ken

    February 11, 2023 at 7:15 pm

    @WaterGirl: I saw an analysis of that once, that concluded you most certainly could be tried for the second killing, because they would be two different crimes. At the very least, there’s the date:  “Did murder Mr. WaterGirl on June 1, 2015” versus “Did murder Mr. WaterGirl on August 15, 2022”.  There would also be different allegations about the location, method, motive, and so forth.

  254. 254.

    Martin

    February 11, 2023 at 7:23 pm

    @Amir Khalid: Pretty confident the 157 F-22s can take the 11 Su-57s.

    More notably, modern air doctrine is that the planes should never even get in visible range of each other. Given that the radar cross section of the Su-57 is 1000 times larger than the F-35, which itself is 10x larger than the F-22 and given comparable missile tech, both should be able to standoff against the Su at greater range.

  255. 255.

    Martin

    February 11, 2023 at 7:25 pm

    @MagdaInBlack: A lot of that ‘trash’ are just people who got fucked over hard by an economy that makes sure anyone who is poor stay poor. Their only offense is they were born poor.

  256. 256.

    WaterGirl

    February 11, 2023 at 7:37 pm

    @Ken: Still a good movie!  :-)

  257. 257.

    Gvg

    February 11, 2023 at 7:55 pm

    @artem1s: first thing I thought of. Those pacs are nothing but bribery and allow foreign money to slip in. It was obvious from the get go, and the cout was already corrupt to rule that way.

    I didnt bother to think about Trump treason because I dont consider that news just more confirmation I expected.

  258. 258.

    WaterGirl

    February 11, 2023 at 8:03 pm

    Just mentioning this here…

    We had planned for tomorrow’s Medium Cool to be the discussion of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, but since tomorrow is the Super Bowl, we will talk about the book the following week instead.

    h/t to Steeplejack for alerting me to the conflict with the superbowl.

  259. 259.

    sab

    February 11, 2023 at 10:33 pm

    @WaterGirl: Lol. I almost missed that huge cultural event myself.

  260. 260.

    eddie blake

    February 11, 2023 at 10:41 pm

    @Martin: if there’s one thing the ukraine war is teaching us it’s that scale is the thing. when they’re going through WWI numbers of shells in a day, there’s NO way that the sparse count of f-22’s is gonna cut it no matter HOW advanced they are. we need thousands, not less than two hundred.

  261. 261.

    ExpatchadPutin has become Stalin, the destroyer of worlds

    February 11, 2023 at 10:47 pm

    @Tom Levenson: or TROUPE in MTG’S case

  262. 262.

    Gvg

    February 11, 2023 at 11:29 pm

    @Martin: no. Trash is behavior. I know poor people from trash families who for some fluke reason aren’t trash. There are poor trailer park people who aren’t trash, who don’t treat each other like trash who probably aren’t going to stay there with just a bit of luck. Trump is trash by the way. Treats people like shit, thinks everyone is just as crooked as he is and that is fine, cheats on wives and everyone else, admires other cheats and bully’s. Really not smart or wise. Wasteful of opportunities. Greedy and often unsuccessful because of their greed, it makes them easy to con over and over, while they are trying to be the con man.

    Subset, most of them are tacky too. It is not as important, but sometimes more obvious.

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