Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

The revolution will be supervised.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Not all heroes wear capes.

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

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

I really should read my own blog.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

You cannot shame the shameless.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

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

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

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

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Squishable Open Thread

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Hard for me to think of much else this morning,

I have 2 pieces of chocolate cake left over from a birthday cake.  Save it to celebrate once there is news?  (could be a couple of days)

Or eat now in celebration of the events of there last 12 hours, and bake a new cake once we know something definitive?

Totally open thread.

Reader Interactions

284Comments

  2. 2.

    Hoodie

    So, same as it ever was.   I remember all the morons in my high school parroting whatever idiocy they learned from their moronic parents extolling the virtues of Nixon after he beat McGovern in a landslide in 1972.   Is it worse that the current GOP frontrunner is a sleazy con artist who paid off a porn star and absconded with sensitive documents when people overwhelmingly voted for a cretin like Nixon over a true war hero?  Hard to say.  We’ve had these assholes around as long as I can remember, and a lot of them are our neighbors.

  6. 6.

    Edmund dantes

    We are very conveniently leaving some pretty big things off W’s and Reagan’s ledger there in that tweet.

  7. 7.

    Tony Jay

     

    A LETTER FROM BREXITANNIA

    “Area Man Just Wont Fuck Off”

    Like an unflushable turd packed chocker-block with spoiled wheat and rancid sloth fat, you know fucking who has bobbed back to the surface of British public life, much to the squeeing delight of our shameless Political Media caste. I’m referring, of course, to that partly explainable but thoroughly unjustifiable stain on the conscience of 13,966,454 British voters (plus most of the Parliamentary Conservative Party, more than half of the Parliamentary Labour Party, the bulk of its bureaucratic staff and more or less every single professional journalist, pundit and boggle-eyed chat-twat in the country) that I like to call Clown Prick Flobalob of Spaffenburg or, when I’m feeling particularly venomous, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, for that is the name his Spawnbegetters branded him with upon hatching, and it’s the name I’ll imagine pissing on when he’s powerhosed into an unmarked grave.

    Without going too deeply into the weeds on this one, Flobalob is finally going to dragged in front of the House of Parliament’s Privileges Committee today to answer the charge that he lied to the House when he stood up in the Commons and denied that he or any of his Staff had broken any Covid-era laws during his debauched reign of error. I’m hardly spoiling anything by confirming that OF COURSE HE FUCKING DID, because everyone and their talking horse already knows he did. There are multiple official reports and first-hand accounts out there detailing the almost daily piss-ups Flobby hosted at Downing St at the height of Covid restrictions, with such a terminal mass of photographs showing empty champagne bottles scattered across briefing tables and red-cheeked minions raising full glasses to salute their porcine host’s boundless hospitality on the Public’s dime that simply getting them transported into Parliament for the Committee to examine required so many wheelbarrows the process looked like a late Weimar-era queue for half-priced bauembrot and a slice of bierwurst at the Berlin volksmarkt.

    He’s as guilty as a summer sin and even his defenders know it, which is part of the reason they’ve all been emitting such a cacophony of high-pitched yips over the preceding week, so desperate are they to give their flatulent Osiris at least the thinnest sliver of a chance of eventual resurrection. The Media are loving it, of course. Writing about Flobbity Knobjockey is their absolute favourite thing in the whole wide world. They bloody love him, always have. If he didn’t already exist then the collective ID of every barely literate legacy journo and lifelong Tory-fluffing pundit in the country would have come together in a preternatural metaconcert to create him entire out of aethereal quantum foam and the jellied smegma of their deepest, darkest needs. He’s just so very easy to write about, whether it’s to laud the profundity of his fictional accomplishments or tut-tut over his ever so laddishly forgivable flaws. He’s the early 21st century Wolverine of British political clickbait, in that he’s a self-obsessed arrogant psychodrama that could do with being booted into the sun and yet seems to be absolutely fucking everywhere for other discernible reason than how hard his legion of fanbois sasaeng the bones of him.

    His current moment in the sun comes courtesy of a ‘Bombshell’ dossier he has provided to the Committee proving (sorry, Trumpian capitals are called for here, I think) PROVING his COMPLETE AND UTTER INNOCENCE of all of the PARTISAN charges laid against him by a CORRUPT and CULTURALLY-MARXIST conspiracy of SOCIALIST Labour MPs, DISCREDITED civil-servants and BIASED tabloid muckrakers funded by shadowy FOREIGN INTERESTS! There’s been much drooling over what scandalous tit-bits he might include and who he could theoretically underbus in pursuit of his own temporary salvation, but in the event it turned out (utterly unsurprisingly) to be as much of a gassy shart as any other emission from a well-rogered piglet. The British public have been charged £250,000 in order to pay for Flobby’s defence (I shit you not, seriously) and the very best that these razor-sharp legal minds could come up with was, basically, 50 pages worth of –

    “Not my fault, that boy over there said I could do it, blame him!”

    “It’s not fair, sir! They’re just saying bad things about me because they’re jealous!”

    “Look, we’re all honourable people, if we’d done something wrong, we’d have told you!”

    And that’s it. Not his fault, it’s just a witch-hunt, how dare you impugn my integrity. The usual mantra of the English public-school bully caught in the act. The intent here is obviously to provide the Tory majority on the Committee with just enough wiggle-room to spare themselves a barrage of nasty e-mails courtesy of the hair-fryingly insane Party membership (or daily parcels containing severed fox heads and a blurry picture of their daughter’s Gymkhana practice; they’re a very Midsummer meets Midsommar bunch, the Tory Party faithful) by finding that Flobbity is only accidentally guilty of misleading the House and letting him off with a warning. Then he can declare victory over his accusers, unleash his drones across a welcoming media environment and bask in the heat of Sunak’s impotent fury as they all climb to the tops of the nearest mountain to release his spores into the atmosphere.

    That’s… not very likely though.

    The fact that he absolutely did mislead the House is uncontested, though the dosser’s dossier tries, in typically cowardly manner, to cloud the issue by insisting that, since not a single person in or around his Downing St ever thought that what they were doing could possibly be outside of the Covid laws they’d written (itself a mammoth lie), it is therefore technically impossible that any of them could be said to have deliberately lied when they said no laws were broken. It’s the Blairite defence from the whole Iraq debacle dug up and retrofitted for an equally shady character. “If I don’t actually confess to the crime it’s all just opinion, so you have to say I’m innocent” was bullshit then and it’s still bullshit now. Even the thoroughly loyalist Metropolitan Police Force issued 126 fines to Downing St occupants for breaking Covid laws, including one for Flobbity Fuckwit himself, and not a single one of them was challenged in law. They knew what they were doing, end of.

    It’s all just performative bollocks, but I wouldn’t expect any more from the shameless creep. Once the Teflon coating of Media-enforced reputational protection was removed back in 2021 (in a decision made way, way above a mere Prime Minister’s paygrade) all Flobalob had to fall back on were his own wits and the unbreakable loyalty of all the friends he’d made as a jobbing propagandist cum pretend politician off the telly, so basically nothing, nada, zippity fuckall. People with much more patience than me and their own grudges to settle are flensing his defences to pieces as we speak, but I’ll just say that it’s entirely in character for him that the meat of his ‘argument’ boils down to “If I’m guilty, everyone around me was even guiltier for letting me do it, so arrest them first or let me go free!” There’s not a single person on this planet that Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson wouldn’t chuck into a wheat thresher in pursuit of a modestly positive headline, that’s just the breed of wanker he is.

    One other reason the UK Establishment Media is so very happy to have their favourite shit-monkey back in the news again is because it distracts attention away from other deeply embarrassing headlines.

    For example, the Carey review just came out, and I’m not being at all hyperbolic when I say that it should lead directly to the break-up of the London Metropolitan Police and a decade-long public enquiry into the criminal incompetence and deliberate corruption of 90% of its senior officers. Carey comes out and clearly states that the MET is an institutionally racist monstrosity that has no God given right to exist when it has failed the people it is supposed to be serving and protecting (that would be about 9 million Londoners) so comprehensively on every single metric. It can’t even guarantee that it’s got any enforceable guidelines in place to ensure that it stops recruiting serial killers and spree rapists into its most ‘elite’ units, to say nothing of having the will or the intention to root out the serial killers and spree rapists who are already wearing its uniform. It’s the kind of bullet-to-the-head report that, in a functioning democracy, would put the Legion of Paramilitary Freemasons out of business, but this is modern Britain, so we’ll just have to see how much enthusiasm the culture of back-scratching and legal bribery the MET inhabits brings to its defence, or if the balls-deep involvement of the MET’s hierarchy in letting Flobalob off the hook back in 2022 renders them too mucky to save.

    Speaking of out-of-control organisations credibly accused of ignoring overwhelming evidence of racism, homophobia and misogyny at its highest levels while being protected from scrutiny by the Establishment’s wall of silence… nah, I’ll talk about the crepe-spined spite fountains mismanaging the Nu-Lab Corporate Franchise Opportunity FKA The Labour Party another time. Suffice to say, they’re still as creepy, deceitful and cowardly as ever, and I hope every single one of them chokes to death on a necrotic tongue.

    Happy Indictment Week!

  9. 9.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    “There are good Republicans!”

     

    Yeah, but they’re all DEAD.

    IOW, the only GOOD Republican is a DEAD Republican.

  14. 14.

    frosty

    Definitely Door #2, for all the reasons stated so far. And this: who wants stale cake for a celebration?

  18. 18.

    Anonymous At Work

    Take into account the DC Circuit Court of Appeals requiring a less-than-24-hour round of briefing/reply on the emergency appeal of breaking attorney-client over the Pool House Papers Caper.  That’s not normal, that’s closer to “unique” than it is to “rare.”  I don’t think Bush v. Gore happened that quickly.  That means some serious $h!t went down
    EDIT: AKA, have some cake, treat yourself!

  24. 24.

    Betty

    @Tony Jay: Exhausting just to read that. Can’t say enough about how depressing it is to see your country in such a state with no clear way forward. The descriptive language is top-notch as always however.

  28. 28.

    Urza

    @Edmund dantes: Also conveniently missing that Nixon helped ruin a peace treaty in Vietnam before he was elected
    Listening to American Psychosis right now and while I knew most of the more modern stuff it reminds you that all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again.

  29. 29.

    Baud

    There is only so much information you can put in a tweet.

    If you want to document all of the GOP’s misdeeds, write an encyclopedia.

  31. 31.

    gVOR08

    Also, every Republican president since WWII has presided over the beginning of a recession.

  35. 35.

    CaseyL

    I wish you hadn’t mentioned chocolate cake, because now I’m craving some.

    PS: Eat it now. Always, always, eat it now. You never know when the asteroid might hit.

  36. 36.

    KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))

    Or eat now in celebration of the events of there last 12 hours, and bake a new cake once we know something definitive?

    Eat it. A cake on the plate is worth 2 in the fridge.

  37. 37.

    Betty Cracker

    @Tony Jay: Sometimes I wonder if the fact that the very worst people constantly shriek about cultural Marxism threatens to revive it.

  38. 38.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Betsy: This is a good sentiment in general, but: Any indictments might come down at any time. This could take a while.

    There are lots of other things to celebrate, so pick one of those. And if we get indictments later this week, go get a nice bottle of your favorite wine and have a great dinner delivered to your house.

  45. 45.

    Betty Cracker

    @Bostondreams: Oh, Randy Fine. He’s a vindictive jackass with a moral compass that befits his former occupation as a gambling enterprise executive. The morons in his district kept reelecting him, so there was no incentive to behave otherwise. I’m glad to read that he set his sights on state senate seat and might lose. That’s the only way we’ll be rid of the sumbitch.

  47. 47.

    Ohio Mom

    @Bostondreams: Similar thing happening here in Ohio. The (gerrymandered) Republican majority in the Statehouse is thwarting Democratically-led Cincinnati’s (Mayor is a Democrat as is the overwhelming majority of City Council) plan to sell the railroad it owns.

    Don’t ask me why Cincinnsto owns a railroad but selling it would give the city a lot of money that could be used for all sorts of good things. And Republicans can’t have Democrats doing good things.

  51. 51.

    Barbara

    @Anonymous At Work: I am guessing that the speed is related to not wanting to interfere with the grand jury process.  Plus, all of the issues that are being appealed were already briefed in the court below.  This is the kind of issue that gets ruled on de novo so the court’s opinion doesn’t really need to be analyzed with new arguments. Yes, it is still extraordinary, but that’s at least partly because people testifying in front of a grand jury aren’t usually seeking appellate rulings on issues associated with their testimony.

  56. 56.

    cmorenc

    Consider that in the line of post-Eisenhower Republican presidencies, Nixon was the least toxic of the bunch (save possibly for Ford), even given that he’s the one who injected race-baiting into mainstream Republican campaign tactics.  Much of our current key environmental legislation was adopted with Nixon’s support during his presidency.  Not that Nixon was ever preferable to any of the Democrats who then or since have run for president (successful or not) – but if given a stipulation that a Republican was going to be President over any time period 1980 forward, Nixon would be a preferable, less toxic choice than any of his successors.

  57. 57.

    Tony Jay

    @Betty:

    Oh, there’s a clear way forward, the problem is that the people in Britain who decide what the electorate gets told have shown themselves to be only too willing to destroy anyone who tries to lead the country along that path, fearing that their wealth and influence would wane in a happier, better educated and fairer society.

    So I guess it’s the guillotine again. They never learn.

     

    @Betty Cracker:

    All the shrieking about Socialism has made it more popular with the kiddies than its been in decades, so you might be right. OTOH, since ISTR that ‘Cultural Marxism’ is just an Old Skool righty rebranding of the pre-War standard “Jewish Bolshevism”, it might be funnier if it does.

  60. 60.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    After eating your 2 pieces of chocolate cake, visit your nearest supermarket to stock up on cake mix because there are so many legal shoes left to drop with Trump.

  62. 62.

    Madeleine

    Ah, a cakey version of the marshmallow test in virtual form (except, of course, for WaterGirl).

  64. 64.

    Scout211

    Continuing the discussion of who was the worst US President in history, next Tuesday on PBS American Experience,  The Movement and the Madman.

    My DVR is set. I remember that year well.   When massive protests changed history . . .

    The Movement and the “Madman” shows how two antiwar protests in the fall of 1969 — the largest the country had ever seen — pressured President Nixon to cancel what he called his “madman” plans for a massive escalation of the U.S. war in Vietnam, including a threat to use nuclear weapons. At the time, protestors had no idea how influential they could be and how many lives they may have saved.

    Told through remarkable archival footage and firsthand accounts from movement leaders, Nixon administration officials, historians, and others, the film explores how the leaders of the antiwar movement mobilized disparate groups from coast to coast to create two massive protests that changed history.

  69. 69.

    JPL

    Unless trump informs us, we won’t know about the indictment until he’s arraigned.    One could eat a a lot of cake between now and then.   It may take trump a week to plan his surrender.

  71. 71.

    WaterGirl

    @Wyatt Salamanca: What is cake mix?  :-)

    I am a bake from scratch kind of a girl.  But I do have all the ingredients to bake it again once we have something clear to celebrate.

    *oh, wait, not true!  I just realized I do not have the buttermilk.  I will need to remedy that tomorrow.

  72. 72.

    Butch

    @Barbara: Is it possible that the speed is because the judge is sick of the foot dragging on the part of at least one and maybe both parties?  The “wait for the indictment” game we’re all playing is getting tiresome.

  73. 73.

    Ken

    @Tony Jay: to say nothing of having the will or the intention to root out the serial killers and spree rapists who are already wearing its uniform.

    Hmm, I’m going to have to re-read the last couple of Charles Stross’s “Laundry Files” novels. I thought his description of the British police was because in the books, the UK is run by Nyarlathotep, who likes human suffering and death. I hadn’t realized it was an accurate depiction of the state of things

    Oh dear, could this be social commentary?

  74. 74.

    WaterGirl

    @Madeleine: Yes, but… two pieces of stale cake compared to one piece of still fresh cake?  No contest.

    A fresh piece of chocolate cake in the hand is definitely worth more than an entire STALE chocolate cake.

  76. 76.

    Ken

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I’d hedge my bets and eat one piece of cake today and save the other for tomorrow.

    Even better, tomorrow eat only half the piece of cake, and save the rest for the day after, repeating as necessary.  Since you’re always eating only half a piece, it has no calories; this is a well-known principle.

  77. 77.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @WaterGirl: the discussion should be the cocktail you’ll have with the cake. A screwdriver perhaps? Orange and Russian Vodka seems appropriate. Are you allowed to drink if you’re running the blog for what might be a long day?

  79. 79.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    @cmorenc:

    Much of our current key environmental legislation was adopted with Nixon’s support during his presidency.

    According to several historians I’ve heard interviewed over the years, Nixon’s passion was with foreign policy and he truly didn’t give a damn about domestic policy. He basically made a deal that he’d back environmental legislation favored by Democrats if they’d let him do as he pleased with respect to foreign policy.

  80. 80.

    WaterGirl

    @Mai Naem mobile: The best adult beverage to pair with really dark chocolate cake is beer.

    No beer in the house, though. because I don’t drink beer often.  I might have to remedy that, too.

    Or maybe a sour cherry mojito!  I bet that would go great with dark chocolate cake.

  84. 84.

    Ken

    @tam1MI: A spring break ban would cater to DeSantis’s base, which is largely old people complaining about young people being different.

  86. 86.

    Madeleine

    @WaterGirl: if you can find it (very difficult), try Skaldi’s with your cake (whether full, or half, or half-of-half piece). It ‘s definitely a dessert beer (in my opinion).

    Edit: Skaldi’s is a Belgian beer.

  87. 87.

    Anonymous At Work

    @Barbara: The speed suggests the content of the notes is of importance, rather than just “keeping out of the way” of an ongoing grand jury investigation.  Which implies either that the contents of notes are alarming in themselves or that the contents present slam-dunk evidence.  The only other possibility for the highly-unusual speed is that Jack Smith notified the judges that this is the very last thing before indictments.
    I would also add that resolving whether Corcoran is eligible to serve as Trump’s attorney in this matter would be a possible fourth reason but he’s already been called as a witness before the grand jury and therefore has a conflict of interest against his own client, and should be disqualified for that reason.

  88. 88.

    Mike in NC

    @gVOR08: I thought I read somewhere that every Republican administration since 1900 had a recession, and I’m not counting the three back-to-back ones that gifted us with the Great Depression. But apparently white people suffer less, so it’s OK.

  89. 89.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: Thanks! I did not see the comment but did read the story yesterday in The Tampa Bay Times and enjoyed it immensely! So many FL Repubs are scammy scuzzbuckets, but comeuppance is rare. You have to be particularly dumb, which this dude is. Not sure whether former Rep. Don’t Say Gay will do time for the crime — he will be sentenced by a fellow Republican — but I hope so.

  91. 91.

    Baud

    @WaterGirl:

    You should be able to dismiss the solicitation and read the article in full.

    The Walt Disney Company will host a major conference promoting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights in the workplace in Central Florida this September, gathering executives and professionals from the world’s largest companies in a defiant display of the limits of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign against diversity training.

    Disney’s decision to host the conference this fall comes amid a yearlong dispute between the company and the Republican governor, who signed a law that ended decades of autonomy at the Disney resort. It was seen as punishment over the company’s opposition to Florida’s Parental Rights in Education legislation, known widely as the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which prohibits any discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in classrooms before fourth grade.

  94. 94.

    MattF

    @Ken: Precisely. I have half a piece of chocolate cake in my refrigerator right now and it contains zero calories.

  95. 95.

    Butch

    @WaterGirl: I normally drink white wine myself but one of the local wineries produces “Cheesehead Red” (it’s from Wisconsin, obviously) that I do like.

  97. 97.

    Shalimar

    You left out George H. W. Bush: helped make the S&L crisis significantly worse under Reagan by ignoring it until after his election.  That lost year cost the nation hundreds of billions.

  98. 98.

    Betty Cracker

    @tam1MI: I was not a strict parent when my kiddo was a minor, but I did forbid spring break in Miami once. It’s always a goddamn zoo. What a shame Republicans can’t control crime in their cities.

  99. 99.

    Brachiator

    @Tony Jay:

    The intent here is obviously to provide the Tory majority on the Committee with just enough wiggle-room to spare themselves a barrage of nasty e-mails courtesy of the hair-fryingly insane Party membership (or daily parcels containing severed fox heads…)

    Wasn’t a law recently passed finally banning fox hunting, or the use of dogs to run foxes down?

    An interesting week in the UK, to be sure. Didn’t Johnson want his father to be given a knighthood? Can this be denied or taken back?

    Also, summing up, if Johnson does not wiggle out of this, he could be removed as an MP, right? This would pretty much send him back to maybe being a hack journalist for fun and profit.

  100. 100.

    BC in Illinois

    @Tony Jay:

    I would be interested in your observations about the goings-on in the northern part of your island, namely the race within the Scottish National Party for the next First Minister of Scotland, and how that will affect the continuing campaign for a Scexit.

  101. 101.

    Eolirin

    @cmorenc: This is also true for all of his successors, except maybe Bush I. Republicans seem stuck ratcheting up their horribleness and there’s no end in sight.

  102. 102.

    cain

    @Betty Cracker: That just shows that his voters are batshit insane as he is. I guess with a name like ‘fine’. You can go places?

    Perhaps most people in those district are wealthy and well off and don’t pay attention to anything.

  103. 103.

    Another Scott

    @cmorenc: Nixon was a canny politician.

    Remember that he was running against Wallace.  Wallace grabbed a lot of support – a lot.

    Also remember the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate when Nixon was in office.  Nixon tried to shape the legislation coming to him, but wasn’t going to veto stuff that was going to be easily over-ridden.

    National Environmental Policy Act:

    The public outrage in reaction to the Santa Barbara oil spill in early 1969 occurred just as the NEPA legislation was being drafted in Congress. A fire on the Cuyahoga River was publicized in a Time magazine article shortly after the unanimous vote in the Senate.

    I believe one can still pick up bits of tar walking on the beach at Santa Barbara…

    Politicians are generally products of their time.  TFG is the outlier because he was and is an insane racist walking NPD.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  109. 109.

    tam1MI

    @Ken: A spring break ban would cater to DeSantis’s base

    But it would crater Florida’s economy, which is almost completely dominated by tourism. Is DeSantis really that stupid?

  112. 112.

    cain

    @Tony Jay:

    All the shrieking about Socialism has made it more popular with the kiddies than its been in decades, so you might be right. OTOH, since ISTR that ‘Cultural Marxism’ is just an Old Skool righty rebranding of the pre-War standard “Jewish Bolshevism”, it might be funnier if it does.

    I expect more laws to be made outlawing Marxism/Socialism in that case. Since they’ve shown via how they treat our trans/lbgtq/women allies and what they are willing to do. I don’t expect any less.

    The question is – eventually they’ll have to come around to gun rights because it would be a threat to their power eventually.

  114. 114.

    laura

    @Tony Jay: While this sounds seriously dire, lucky thing there’s a New Monarch in Town to set things right what with his moderate temperment, history of sound decision making, close warm family relations and steady hand on the wheel and all. No doubt whatsoever he’ll have the Union Jack flying, rallying his people to the common cause and shared goal of making and keeping the Empire right as rain – and acting as a beacon of leadership for other nations and states to follow. It will be a marvel and a wonder to watch from this far shore and the pride, my god, the pride! I’m giddy at the very thought. You lucky Briton you.     \\

  117. 117.

    cain

    @Baud: Seems like a strange place to have that discussion – given the laws – how are people supposed to feel safe there? Is this some kind of fuck you to DeSantis?

  118. 118.

    Eolirin

    @cain: If that’s the case they better figure out how to deal with that shit quickly or it’s going to get even worse.

  119. 119.

    SFAW

    @WaterGirl:

    When I was dating the now-Mrs. SFAW, for her birthday, she asked me to bake a cake, rather than buy one from a store.

    In those days, I was a decent cook, but not much of a baker. So, I got out my Joy of Cooking and followed one of the recipes. I didn’t have a mixer of any kind, so I used a wire whisk to “whip until stiff” (calm down, Baud) the egg whites (and maybe the cream).

    That evening, after dinner and the cake, when I told her how less-than-fun certain parts had been, she decided to inform me the she meant I should go get a Betty Crocker or Duncan Hines mix from the store, not make it from scratch.

    Oh.

  120. 120.

    M31

    @WaterGirl:

    And here I thought that the heat during baking causes chemical changes that reduce the fat and calories to zero.

    Is that not true???

    it’s true, but only if you put frosting on it, to lock in the lack of calories, otherwise they grow back

  121. 121.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: I have mixed feelings about that. On one hand, it’s a well-earned “fuck you” to DeSantis, and it’s good to see WDW rise from its defensive crouch and demonstrate the limits of Rage Munchkin’s power.

    On the other hand, it will bring thousands of people and representatives from huge, influential organizations here to spend money. I’d prefer to see them boycotting the state to protest the current government’s authoritarianism and bigotry.

    But obviously WDW isn’t the organization to lead that charge… 

  125. 125.

    WaterGirl

    @cain: I thought the bomb threats were yesterday, and they didn’t delay the ruling on that case.  But who knows

    edit: I can’t imagine that Trump is doing himself any favors by calling for people to rise up in response to an indictment.  Almost looks like he is proving that he called for the same thing on Jan 6.

  126. 126.

    SFAW

    @M31: ​
     

    it’s true, but only if you put frosting on it, to lock in the lack of calories, otherwise they grow back

    I don’t know if that should be a rotating tag, but it’s certainly an adage for all time.

  128. 128.

    gvg

    @Butch: I would think many many judges have been sick of the foot dragging of millions of accused in millions of cases but haven’t given deadlines like this…..so I don’t think that is it.

  133. 133.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker:

    I would think a boycott would have to be pretty broad based to be effective.  I’m not sure the Don’t Say Gay law is severe enough to produce that much consensus.  But boycott politics are hard.

  134. 134.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: Suppose a family with a trans or nonbinary kid or LGBT parents comes in by car (or rents one), gets stopped by the cops for some reason (“I smell pot” is still probable cause there), bigot cops decide that the situation looks like child abuse to them.

    I’m thinking of the recent case in, I think, Tennessee where a family from outside the state, stopped for driving while black, ended up having their children snatched by the state on the basis of an unreliable roadside drug test. There may not be anything specific on the books in Florida, but a law like the Texas one, identifying all parents of trans children as abusers, could become a problem.

  137. 137.

    CaseyL

    @M31: You made me laugh like a loon

    @Betty Cracker: One locale I haven’t heard anything about or from is Key West, famously a Gay Mecca, with a strong sense of community and a lot of gay-centric festivals.

    Or at least I remember Key West being a gay mecca: has all the Really Big Money driven out everyone but the Filthy Rich, who don’t care about laws anyway?

  138. 138.

    Kay

    so true:

    @adamjohnsonNYC

    DeSantis has exactly one (1) move and it’s to hold a humorless press conference where he introduces gimmicky, cruel legislation to take away the rights of anyone who doesn’t look like they belong on the 18th hole at Calusa Pines and he’ll just keep doing this until Super Tuesday

    He goes on to say that all Republicans are now or will mimic this, which is also true.

  140. 140.

    patrick II

    Eisenhower came from the WWII military.  He was the last Republican president that did not come from whatever big money and confederate toxic swamp current Republicans wallow in and emerge from to become their party’s candidate.

  141. 141.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: The consequences of that law are absolutely severe enough to warrant widespread boycotts, and of course the persecution of people who are LGBTQ in Florida goes far beyond the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Organizations that publicize their support for diversity when it scores PR points and ostentatiously post Pride flags, etc., should put their money where their mouth is and lead the charge. But I agree boycott politics are hard.

  143. 143.

    WaterGirl

    @Manyakitty: In case you’re interested.  I made this recipe up on the fly in Oct 2021

    Ingredients

    4 ounces fresh-squeezed lime
    4 ounces white rum  (I use Mount Gay)
    3/4 cup of sour cherries  (frozen works fine, fresh would be even better)
    1/4 cup superfine sugar (aka baker’s sugar)

    I use my stick blender to mix the first 4 ingredients

    Chill in the refrigerator or freezer.

    Fill glass with ice cubes (crushed ice is even better if you have it)
    Fresh mint leaves for muddling with ice in each glass
    Add a baby spoonful of baker’s sugar on the ice
    Pour in the lime-rum-cherry-sugar mixture
    Add club soda to taste in each glass when serving

  145. 145.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: But people bring them to Disney World (and to the other theme parks, and on Disney cruises), which was more my point, apologies if it was off the thread.

    As a theme-park fan I’m fascinated by how the Florida situation is going to impact its tourism industry. DeSantis clearly feels it’s a hit he can safely take. He may be right–the impetus to go there seems powerful.

    But the general rule with Disney is that they’re (a) not your friend, but (b) cognizant of the writing on the wall that they can be pushed one way or another.

    One reason their response to DeSantis’s demagoguery has seemed so muted is that it’s happening at a time when the company has been going through a largely unrelated series of leadership and fiscal crises–Disney’s CEO when it all went down was the hapless bean-counter Bob Chapek, who is out now, replaced by his predecessor Bob Iger as the company’s fixer. Iger created some of the problems they’re currently dealing with (specifically, the debt from the Fox acquisition that made a lot of cost-cutting necessary) but was a bit better at walking these tightropes. I see their more conservative fans demanding that Disney “stay out of politics” but when DeSantis has a target painted on them, there’s basically no way to do that. Eliminating “Woke Disney” to the satisfaction of right-wingers would mean reverting to the company’s cultural practices of 60 years ago, which it cannot do and remain viable.

  146. 146.

    patrick II

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I worry about people, from other states or not, just wearing non-gender-appropriate clothing.  Women may have it easier wearing jeans, work boots and a t-shirt, but I have been waited on at a fast food place by a guy in light make-up and a dress.  I took me a moment to notice the broad shoulders and big hands.  Anyhow, I wonder if people in that situation will be able to just go about their daily lives.

  147. 147.

    JML

    The post WWII Republican Presidents are a fascinating collection.

    • Eisenhower, who was a racist shitbag, but a competent administrator
    • Nixon, who was intelligent and talented, but devastatingly paranoid and corrupt, doing more damage to the presidency than anyone in history to that point
    • Ford, a mediocre caretaker
    • Reagan, a buffoon whose media talents obscured his incompetence and the grifting of his subordinates
    • GHWB, who handled the dissolution of the USSR well, but was clueless and uninterested in the US economy, and needed to win so badly he sold off domestic policy to whatever extremist he needed to get the nomination
    • GWB, a dry drunk who rode family connections into office and then let them run wild, with ruinous consequences in basically every area of American life
    • DJT, a racist narcissist who used the presidency to enrich himself and his chosen family members, arguably committing treason in the process.

    The GOP sure sent its best, huh?

  148. 148.

    Alison Rose

    @patrick II: I think back to my goth club days — plenty of dudes in that scene wear makeup as a daily thing, a lot of them wear long skirts or corsets or other things that would be considered “women’s clothing”.

  149. 149.

    Betty Cracker

    @CaseyL: I don’t know either. The Keys get less quirky and more expensive by the year, which is distressing, but AFAIK, they still have Fantasy Fest, etc.

  150. 150.

    WaterGirl

    It’s good that I ate the chocolate cake.  I think this is going to be a long day.  Even the usual subjects on twitter are not offering any hot takes on what is going on.

  151. 151.

    JML

    @patrick II: Ike grew up during the segregated military, though, and was pretty damn racist (just managed not to talk about it as much). And like many generals, had some authoritarian views. But he was also a competent administrator and not a grifting bastard, so…

  155. 155.

    Kay

    Kevin Drum:

    The big difference is not between big and small cities, or between cities and suburbs. They’re all about the same. The difference is between urban and rural. This is all just a scattering of data, not any kind of rigorous study. Still, the conclusion is pretty obvious and also pretty reasonable: the real productivity booster is education. Cities aren’t more productive because they’re denser, they’re more productive because it’s where college-educated folks live. Increasing the size of big cities is unlikely to increase productivity at all unless you make sure to attract an outsized number of people with college degrees. This, of course, would make our rural areas even worse off. The more obvious solution, if you really care about productivity and economic growth, is to try to increase the educational level of towns and rural areas. 

  156. 156.

    Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride

    @Tony Jay: I have no doubt that your account of Boris’s defense is as accurate as it is objective.  Just a couple of questions:

    Did he name any specific people in Whitehall or his cabinet who supposedly told him what he was doing was OK?

    What is the Carey review?  Who is Carey, and who authorized him to do the review?

  157. 157.

    M31

    @JML: Eisenhower authorized the Iran coup to happen (Truman wouldn’t go ahead with it), reinstalling the Shah over the democratically-elected gov’t, and that really worked out great for everyone

  159. 159.

    WaterGirl

    @WaterGirl: According to ABC and NYT

    The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office told the grand jury that they should not come in today. There may be one more witness.

    AND they were told that they should be on standby for tomorrow.  (Two sources familiar with the matter said.)

  160. 160.

    WaterGirl

    @Another Scott: Interesting.  I had just found an announcement that they were told not to come in today but to be on standby for tomorrow.

    Things are fluid, I guess.

    edit:  I wonder if this means that they witness they might have today is a no go?

  162. 162.

    New Deal democrat

    I am currently reading Alexander Bickel’s “The Least Dangerous Branch,” his thorough dissertation on various schools and techniques of Constitutional interpretation, first published in 1962 (cliff note: he did not find the Court dangerous).

    It’s amazing how many of the issues he discusses have, 60 years later, come right back around again.

    Just in the last three days, I have read his discussions of:

    (1) approval of cases in which the Court refused to uphold convictions for Contempt of Congress where the Justices felt the relevant Congressional committee (HUAC) was overstepping investigative authority (shades of Jordan’s demand for NY prosecutor Alvin Bragg to testify about a presumably pending criminal case);

    (2) apparent approval of the notion that military commanders cannot kick civilians they deem a security risk off military bases with notice and a hearing first (remember a Federal judge ordering Biden not to remove a Naval Captain who had refused to be vaccinated from his command?); and

    (3) absolute approval for the Courts to refuse to enforce Congressional delegations of authority they find troublesome without taking a “second look” first (can you say “Major Questions Doctrine”?) (unsurprisingly, although the Congress did take up the issue again, the Senate held up remedial action).

    Everything old is new again.

  165. 165.

    Dangerman

    Definitely eat now. Make Tiramisu when the blessed event arrives. Tiramisu for “we won’t miss you” but, really, Tiramisu is made from Lady Fingers, and is there anything more appropriate to say goodbye to Trump than Lady Fingers, if you get my drift and I think you do

  166. 166.

    Ken

    @WaterGirl: Even the usual subjects on twitter are not offering any hot takes on what is going on.

    Are they playing patriotic music? That’s generally agreed to be an ominous sign.

  169. 169.

    oatler

    Another day, another chance for Geatz or De Santis to pull a caper. But also another chance for the DA to relax, keep eye focused and trigger finger serene…

  170. 170.

    WaterGirl

    @Another Scott: If I parse more carefully, I think the reporting was “they were told not to come in this morning”, not “they were told not to come in TODAY.”

    Apparently they have been meeting on Wednesday AFTERNOONS.

    And on Thursdays, so we may yet have something happen tomorrow, if not today.

  172. 172.

    Burnspbesq

    @Barbara:

    This is the kind of issue that gets ruled on de novo

    You sure about that? I would have guessed that the standard of review here is abuse of discretion, which would make it easier for the appellate court to go to warp nine.

  176. 176.

    chrisanthemama

    @lowtechcyclist: “…Bush would go on to win a single term in the White House, years that were dogged by Walsh, the independent prosecutor, trying to get to the bottom of how much the 41st president had known about the arms-for-hostages-for-arms scandal — and how much he had held back evidence of what he had known and when he knew it…”  Yeah, GHWB was in it up to his pencil-neck.

    https://www.npr.org/2018/12/06/674079779/george-h-w-bushs-mixed-legacy-in-a-reagan-era-scandal

  178. 178.

    Barbara

    @Burnspbesq: Good point.  I suspect, however, that the court’s main focus will be to ensure that the lower court applied the correct standard of review.  I just don’t see why it would be that complex (relatively) to let them more or less refile the arguments that they made below.

  181. 181.

    RaflW

    @JML: Ford, a mediocre caretaker, who by pardoning Nixon set in motion 45 years and counting of Republicans skating off with few or no consequences.

    I mean, ok, resigning the presidency was a consequence, but the pardon after the fact was far less about national ‘healing’ than it was about making the rule of law optional for GOPers.

  182. 182.

    Burnspbesq

    @Barbara:

    I’ve always loved the way my Admin Law prof described the abuse of discretion standard: “the agency (here, the lower court) has the right to be wrong, as long as it looked at the right stuff before blowing the call.”

  183. 183.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Matt McIrvin: Years ago, we were in Russia, and tour guide talked about some aborted coup. She’d been coming out of the Kremlin leading a tour group when she saw tanks rolling down the street. Everyone went hastily home, and she said for the next three days, the only thing on TV was Swan Lake. I tried to picture the American public. People would riot

  184. 184.

    narya

    @Tom Fitz: @WaterGirl:  I’m gonna suggest either a really good barrel-aged imperial stout, or, say, Central Waters Bourbon Barrel Cherry Stout. Or the Rye Barrel Chocolate Porter. Or a New Glarus Serendipity, if you can get to Wisconsin.

  185. 185.

    trollhattan

    @Tony Jay: Noice rant, and perfectly timed.

    Heard that fucker on my radio this morning, stating in a  mere handful of seconds he: 1. did not break any rules nor lie about any rules broken; 2. any rules broken were done so in sheer innocence on account of being unaware, making any lies not lies; 3. rules are for morons and did you know I went to Eaton?

    Also, with the actual first name Alexander, how did he settle on Boris and also, too, de Pfeffel? Really?

    I assume he’ll slither out of this one, as well. Still packed and ready to move back into Number 10, I’m sure. He’s needed.

    (or daily parcels containing severed fox heads

    Can we make this “Fox heads?”

  186. 186.

    RaflW

    @WaterGirl: Yeah, timing is unknown.

    @chrisgeidner
    At this point, the briefing is complete. So, we could, in theory, get an order at any time. The justices’ next private conference is Friday, so they could wait to consider this until then. (Or later. No rules on how quickly they need to rule.)

  187. 187.

    Betty Cracker

    Could it be that Trump wants to give those of us who hate his rotten guts exactly what we want (as the opening scene), e.g., a perp walk in handcuffs? According to The Guardian, yep:

    Donald Trump has told advisers that he wants to be handcuffed when he makes an appearance in court, if he is indicted by a Manhattan grand jury for his role in paying hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels, multiple sources close to the former president have said.

    The former president has reasoned that since he would need to go to the courthouse and surrender himself to authorities for fingerprinting and a mug shot anyway, the sources said, he might as well turn everything into a “spectacle”.

    Trump’s increasing insistence that he wants to be handcuffed behind his back for a perp walk appears to come from various motivations, including that he wants to project defiance in the face of what he sees as an unfair prosecution and that it would galvanize his base for his 2024 presidential campaign.

    This might also explain the delay in Manhattan: officials are scouring the city for a pair of cuffs that can restrain an individual with such teeny tiny hands!

  190. 190.

    trollhattan

    @Baud: I’ll never know why McCain didn’t personally nut Karl Rove for the nasty push-polling about his adopted child. Bush Jr made McCain look like a Boy Scout by comparison.

  191. 191.

    patrick II

    @Alison Rose:

    Do you think that lifestyle will still be available in Idaho or Florida?  Probably in Miami, but in the rest of the state a crossdresser might not be either safe or above the law.  I don’t know how these laws will shake out.  If it is illegal for children to see a crossdresser at a show, what about serving them a happy meal at McDonald’s?

  194. 194.

    Geminid

    @patrick II: Eisenhower was wooed by both parties and could likely have been the Democratic nominee if he’d wanted. He chose to run as a Republican instead. Ike’s primary opponent, Robert Taft, had strong support from the isolationist, nativist and anti-union wing of the party.  Truman’s Secretary of State, Dean Acheson had a fitting label for this group: “the Primitives.”

    Thanks to Ike’s popularity, he and the more internationalist wing won out in the in 1952 nomination fight, but the Primitives remained a powerful sector of the party among both electeds and rank and file. Then the Southern party realignment that followed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts brought the Primitives powerful new allies, and their alliance is now dominant.

    Some say that Eisenhower would not recognize today’s Republican Party, but I think he would. He knew the isolationist Primitives from his 1952 campaign, and the party’s racist Southern cohort is descended from people like those he opposed with 101st Airborne troops in order to integrate Little Rock High School. Ike lived long enough that he may even have seen today’s party coming.

  198. 198.

    Alison Rose

    @patrick II: Well, I don’t know how much of a thriving goth scene there is in Idaho, but like…my point is they aren’t “cross-dressing” and thus it would be absurd to loop people like that in with laws like this. And yet it might happen simply because these reactionary assholes have decided that clothes = genitals.

    What would happen if a Scot walked down the street in a kilt, I wonder

    ETA that obviously I think these stupid laws are absurd no matter who they get applied to.

  199. 199.

    Ken

    @Betty Cracker: he might as well turn everything into a “spectacle”.

    So we’re going to get Nora Desmond in Sunset Boulevard.

    Unless — no, we couldn’t be lucky enough to get Cody Jarrett in White Heat….

  200. 200.

    rikyrah

    @Ohio Mom:

    Don’t ask me why Cincinnsto owns a railroad but selling it would give the city a lot of money that could be used for all sorts of good things. And Republicans can’t have Democrats doing good things

     

    I am curious. What does the city do with the railroad now?

  202. 202.

    Barbara

    @Burnspbesq: For better or worse, decisions to revoke privilege probably get more searching review even if the court pays lip service to the correct standard.

  205. 205.

    Jeffro

    @Geminid: OT but looks like we got ourselves a new Superintendent of Public Instruction as of today…

    …she’s coming to us from Tennessee, but oddly enough was a finalist for Nebraska Secretary of Ed as recently as last week!

  208. 208.

    hotshoe

    Today’s google-doodle is Marcel Marceau.

    Okay, I don’t think it’s a great doodle — but it’s lighthearted, and that counts for a lot nowadays.

  211. 211.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Sounds like the ’91 coup attempt that led to the dissolution of the USSR several months later.

    I was in Paris when it happened–I remember finding about it from the newspaper headlines when I was waiting for my friend at the TGV platforms at the Gare de Lyon. I later met some people who were in Moscow and spent the time hightailing it out of there while the tanks rolled through the streets.

  216. 216.

    CaseyL

    @RaflW: I think it’s mostly forgotten that Ford also pardoned all (I think it was all) the Vietnam era draft dodgers at about the same time.

    I remember that, at the time, the pardons were presented as a package deal: On the one hand, Nixon got pardoned; but OTOH, so did the Vietnam draft dodgers.

    I don’t know which one was intended to sweeten the deal.  That is, I don’t know if the thinking was that pardoning the draft dodgers would stem some public anger over pardoning Nixon, or if pardoning Nixon was the price the GOP exacted in order to pardon the draft dodgers.

  218. 218.

    WaterGirl

    @CaseyL: I find myself wondering at times if Biden could pardon everyone who is in the US illegally.  I think he could only do it if it was apparent that we were going to lose the White House no matter what.

  220. 220.

    Another Scott

    BREAKING. MUST CREDIT ANOTHER SCOTT.

    BREAKING: the Manhattan DA is leaving the door open for one witness to come back and testify. That might be the reason for the delay. https://t.co/Q1ux1PivL5

    — Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) March 22, 2023

    (It’s an embedded CNN clip.)

    (via @7Veritas4 )

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  222. 222.

    Betty Cracker

    @WaterGirl: Who knows what’s rattling around in that deranged orange noggin, but according to The Guardian’s sources, Trump thinks quietly surrendering and get booked, fingerprinted, mugshot, etc., like a regular white collar criminal would make him look like a loser. Which of course he is! And which a cuffed perp walk would also confirm. There’s no logic there.

  223. 223.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Manyakitty: Yep. We’re good on everything but the mint.

    I showed this recipe to my wife and she got unreasonably excited by it. I would guess that we’re going to try it out tonight.

  228. 228.

    The Moar You Know

    Donald Trump has told advisers that he wants to be handcuffed when he makes an appearance in court, if he is indicted by a Manhattan grand jury

    @Betty Cracker: This fuckin guy.  That is not going to happen.  Non-violent “white collar” criminals don’t get perp-walked in jumpsuits and don’t get handcuffed.  They didn’t even handcuff Epstein, and you could make a case that he absolutely should have been.  But again, that is not how it works.  Fuckin Trump.

  230. 230.

    Origuy

    @Alison Rose: What would happen if a Scot walked down the street in a kilt, I wonder

    Wondering that myself, since I go to dance classes, balls, and Celtic events all the time in a kilt. There are several Highland festivals in Tennessee. Will the cops come and arrest all the men? At the Pleasanton Games in California, some of the local police dress in kilts. There are even police bagpipe groups.

    ETA: I didn’t catch that you were talking about Idaho. There’s a police pipe band in Boise. Probably not the only one.

  231. 231.

    Geminid

    @Jeffro: I think Youngkin’s last Education Secretary came from Wyoming. It seems he has to look out of state to find a Republican.

    Do you follow the Blue Virginia site? They had two good articles last week by “Lowkell.” One reports on Senate district ratings, and the other covers House of Delegates ratings. The ratings are based on the non-partisan VPAP analysis of past voting in the redrawn districts.

    And  Charlottesville has a primary contest for the state Senate nomination: up-and-comer Delegate Sally Hudson versus old-warhorse Senator Creigh Deeds.

  234. 234.

    Old School

    @Lapassionara:

    @CaseyL: Jimmy Carter pardoned the draft dodgers, not Ford.

    They both did.

    Per Wikipedia:

    Those who went abroad faced imprisonment or forced military service if they returned home. In September 1974, President Gerald R. Ford offered an amnesty program for draft dodgers that required them to work in alternative service occupations for periods of six to 24 months.[138] In 1977, one day after his inauguration, President Jimmy Carter fulfilled a campaign promise by offering pardons to anyone who had evaded the draft and requested one. It antagonized critics on both sides, with the right complaining that those pardoned paid no penalty and the left complaining that requesting a pardon required the admission of a crime.

  237. 237.

    WaterGirl

    @MisterForkbeard: @Manyakitty: If you try the sour cherry mojito recipe, you guys should let me know how it goes.

    You can control the sweetness by how much sugar you add to the glass itself, after everything else is in place.

    When I say “baby spoonful”, i am talking about the small spoon that’s in the picture below with a regular teaspoon.

    Squishable Open Thread

  238. 238.

    Ken B

    @WaterGirl: Could they even cuff his hands behind his back?

    The chains on cuffs aren’t very long, and I don’t think his arms are long enough, his shoulders limber enough, and his girth small enough to get his hands close enough behind his back to cuff him.

  239. 239.

    Matt McIrvin

    It seems like the situation RE Trump’s arrest is playing out exactly how people here predicted: Trump’s assertion that his arrest was imminent got people all excited, now they’re retreating to cynical jibes at the Justice Department being a bunch of losers because nothing’s happened yet. I think he made it up completely and actual indictments may not come down for months.

  243. 243.

    JML

    @M31: presidents effing up the Middle East is a long tradition in the US. Carter & Clinton probably did the best. Ike dorked it up, but the context was at least a little different. (please don’t misunderstand, I’m not a fan)

  245. 245.

    Jeffro

    @Geminid: I see Blue Virginia’s stuff on Twitter – they’re pretty good there – but will make a note to check the website every couple of days as well.  I saw (via BV on Twitter) that Anne Holton, Atif Quarni, and others are forming a progressive group (“We the People for Education”) to support VA school boards and fight extremism – GOOD!

    And your comment prompted me to go subscribe to VPAP – thanks!

    And yes, Hudson vs Deeds…we have an excess of talent, don’t we?  I like them both but lean Hudson: she is smart as a whip and is not afraid to stand up, loudly, to this Gov and his nonsense.

  247. 247.

    Betty Cracker

    @Matt McIrvin: IMO, Trump isn’t that strategic. I haven’t followed this story all that closely because I’m in the “expect nothing and you won’t be disappointed” camp, but IIRC, the DA gave signals that an indictment was imminent too.

  248. 248.

    artem1s

    @Shalimar: ​
     

    You left out George H. W. Bush: helped make the S&L crisis significantly worse under Reagan by ignoring it until after his election. That lost year cost the nation hundreds of billions.

    Not Neal. He cleaned up and made millions. There’s some evidence he helped cause the crisis to begin with. So GOP preznits historically also have terrible families.

  251. 251.

    Kathleen

    @WaterGirl: Happy Birthday to you, Water Girl? Also too Nixon undermining Paris Peace talks and sabotaging LBJ during his 1968 campaign. And Rethuglicans burglarizing DNC at Watergate in 1972

    ETA Happiest of birthdays and eat the cake!

  252. 252.

    M31

    @JML: yeah, Ike dorking it up wasn’t nearly the worst dorking up in the Middle East that US presidents got up to, and from my limited understanding the Iran coup was more part of the traditional British Empire dorking up in the Middle East, which was always impressive, ugh

  253. 253.

    Geminid

    @Jeffro: VPAP, the outfit doing the district ratings reported by Blue Virginia, is the Virginia Public Access Project.

    And in other Virginia news, the Army will rename Fort Pickett, “Fort Barfoot.” Colonel Van T. Barfoot was a WWII Medal of Honor winner who grew up in nearby Amelia County.

    The Washington Post asked residents of Blackstone, the town right outside the fort, for their reactions to the news. A typical response was, “I don’t care what they call it, as long as they keep it open.”

     

    @Geminid:

  254. 254.

    scav

    I’ve now got a vision of Little Trumpty on his knees before an arresting officer, holding up pleading hands,  shouting “Lock Me Up!  Lock Me Up!”

  255. 255.

    WaterGirl

    @Manyakitty: That’s what’s great about the bit of sugar in the glass.  You take a sip before adding any sugar to your glass.  Maybe you don’t like drinks very sweet, and you’re good, or maybe you want it a little sweeter, so you add some.

    I always add a bit more sugar to the glass than my friend does.

    You also need to get the proportion of the puree (cherry-lime-rum-sugar) to club soda right. Until you know what you like, leave room in the glass to add either more puree or more club soda, in case you don’t get that right the first time.  :-)

  258. 258.

    Tom Q.

    @Old School: Exactly right.  Ford did a sort of mealy-mouthed kinda-pardon with conditions; Carter just lanced the boil as soon as he was inaugurated, by which time no one gave much of a damn about the issue anymore (except, of course, the guys who got to come home).

    To answer the question above, it was the Vietnam “pardons” that came first, leading most cynics to think (correctly) that a pardon for Nixon would soon follow…meaning the first was the cover for the second, not vice versa.

  259. 259.

    Wapiti

    @Geminid: When I was in German, in the late 90s, the US Army was considering closing some (all?) of the range complex out at Grafenwoehr. The German locals really pushed for it to remain open, because the US Army ranges was one of the biggest employers in an otherwise rural area.

  261. 261.

    gvg

    @JML: I wasn’t alive then but I sort of think that right after world war II there was more of an attitude of we should have been more proactive so we didn’t have as big of a war and also isolationism and hands off is bad.  I know that when I was a kid in school (late 60’s through the 70’s) they really blamed both Western Europe and the US for not doing more to stop both Hitler and Stalin earlier. So in that time for my first few decades there was an assumption we HAD to always stop communism and somehow that seemed to mean control everything, react to every “crisis”. The pendulum swung too far the other way I guess. But I can sort of see how the war generation-especially people like Ike who saw 2 world wars, might be overly interventionist. It didn’t work obviously, but neither did isolationism.

  262. 262.

    Jackie

    @Betty Cracker: I hope he is denied, denied, denied! NYSD needs to sneak him in, do the booking paperwork, then wisk him back to MAR before the media has a clue.

    No Bannon or Stone media circus allowed!

  263. 263.

    Bill Arnold

    @cain:

    multiple death threats, bomb threats

    Such threats for political reasons are arguably terrorism. I hope that any related phone calls in particular are investigated, hard.

  264. 264.

    Roberto el oso

    @Matt McIrvin: maybe it’s similar to Oral Roberts and his vision of a 666-foot Jesus threatening to ‘call him home’ if Roberts’ suckers didn’t pony up a ton of cash … IOW, just another grift.

  268. 268.

    JML

    @gvg: i think that’s part of why context matters for foreign policy. Between the experiences of WWII and not stopping Hitler earlier and having nukes on the stages changed a lot of thinking and they were flailing around trying to figure it out.

    It’s sort of amazing that no one has lobbed a nuke in to “settle” a conflict post WWII, especially considering some of the people who have controlled them. It’s still the scariest thing about Russia invading Ukraine.

  269. 269.

    Geminid

    @Paul in KY: It turns out that Van Thomas Barfoot grew up in Mississippi but retired near Fort Pickett. Wikipedia and other sources say he was Choctaw, although his parents did not enroll him in the Choctaw Tribe.

    Barfoot won his Medal of Honor for actions in Italy while a sergeant in the 45th Army Division. He received a battlefield commission that day and retired 25 years later a colonel.

    Barfoot made the news again at age 90, when his Home Owners Association fought him over the 19 foot flagpole he used to fly the American flag on Memorial Day. They lost.

  271. 271.

    hotshoe

    @The Moar You Know: “Natural seepage.”

    Yep, too true.

    There is an offshoot of the geocaching game called EarthCache — which take the form of geology “lessons” at open-to-public GPS-located natural features.

    Okay, here’s the one for Carpinteria (Santa Barbara) tar/oil seeps:

    Tar Pits Park

    Pretty sure ya need a (free) account to see the details/questions — they’re good folks and they don’t spam ya — I recommend it if ya have even a faint interest in caching/Earthcaching.

    I’ve been to that stretch of beach many times because my folks used to live up the street. One day I finally did the “lesson” and submitted my answers online.

     

    No, ya don’t earn any credit besides a smiley face for answering the questions, but I’ll tell ya, I do remember what I read and saw there.

    So it’s all good :)

  280. 280.

    Tony Jay

    Very late back. Apologies to all those fine people who asked me things. Been driving the boy all over Liverpool and back again.

  282. 282.

    J R in WV

    @WaterGirl:

    … Or maybe a sour cherry mojito! I bet that would go great with dark chocolate cake.

    My favorite dessert is Black Forest Cake, a multi-layer very rich chocolate cake with sour cherry layers in between the chocolate layers. With some whipped cream in there somewhere. I forget the details, but OMG some good stuff. Famous at the Greenbrier Resort back when  lived near there. Head chef was Swiss back then.

    Look it up!!  [ I have made it, but was a V long time ago… ]

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