The floor routine that secured @Simone_Biles' 8th national all-around title, a feat that no American gymnast in history has done before. #XfinityChamps pic.twitter.com/yRhHxSEcY1
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) August 28, 2023
I know people knock his age but he's been in DC just long enough to have complete clarity that trickle down was a myth, austerity is a curse, Nixon's pardon was a society crippling mistake and if Hell exists Kissinger's got a corner penthouse waiting. https://t.co/hhaOITQkOw
— zeddy (@Zeddary) August 28, 2023
Did CNN really just ask if it’s inappropriate for Biden to to put up one wryly timed fundraising tweet when Trump is explicitly fundraising off his arrest? And not even mention Trump’s fundraising tactics throughout?
— Schooley (@Rschooley) August 27, 2023
The NY Post is using the word "scion" because "granddaughter" doesn't sound that dramatic. And the revolutionary in question, Chutkan's grandfather, was fighting for Jamaica's independence from Great Britain, something any American should sympathize with. https://t.co/6yx4oMT9R2
— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) August 27, 2023
Wow. Never seen it all put together like this. Definitely worth a watch. pic.twitter.com/yMJxdmbqin
— @mrrjnkns.bsky.social (@MrRJNKNS) August 20, 2023
On The Road – Albatrossity – On the road to Arizona
Baud
If she were a real Marxist, we wouldn’t need a trial.
SiubhanDuinne
The New York Post is garbage.
NorthLeft
I feel bad for Simone having to lead off for the group of evil and traitorous villains that follow; Kissinger, Gaetz, and Trump.
Baud
@NorthLeft:
I was pretty impressed with Kissinger’s floor routine, however.
bjacques
Way to go, Ms. Biles!
(No thanks to Xitter’s video FAIL)
Biden can say a few words at Kissinger’s funeral—I don’t care, as long as he keeps Henry out of the White House.
Speaking of…,it’s two weeks to the 50th anniversary of the *other* 9/11.
As I recall, Hillary didn’t pay ritual homage in her campaign either, not that it helped her in the end with Rose Twitter—as if anything would have.
RevRick
My wife and I watched the competition, and Ms. Biles was glorious, doing elements that were simply unreal. And she did it all in a sport when most athletes have gone out to pasture, because it’s ruled by teenagers.
prostratedragon
Ms. Biles is a phenom!
Tony Jay
Today In Politics:
“Gaetz eyes expectant member of The Invisible Hand and asks ‘Is it worth it?’”
“Kissinger says “Imagine all The profits” as he enters second week of Couch-In for War protest.”
“Successful President in ‘My opponents are all crooks, cucks or weirdos’ gaffe – Is the ‘Oh My Stars!’ Vote up for grabs?”
Matt McIrvin
The Commie-baiting of any politically significant figure who is Black or fights for the rights of Black people will never die.
marklar
I’ve long said that Simone Biles and Wayne Gretzky are the best athletes of all time, using the metric that rules were changed to stifle their dominance (in the 1980’s the NHL changed the rule for offsetting penalties, claiming that having fewer players on the ice gave Gretzky’s team an unfair advantage; scoring in gymnastics was changed as a way of discouraging competitors from trying Biles’ moves).
RevRick
@bjacques: I know we all wish Hillary had won (for all the obvious reasons). But we shouldn’t delude ourselves as to what she might have accomplished. After all, Trump entered the White House, despite losing by 3 million votes, with solid majorities in the House and Senate. And given history’s grim trends, the Democrats likely would have lost more seats in the midterms.
(Just a reminder that Trump has been rocket fuel for Democratic voter turnout.)
So, would McConnell have been so cynical as to leave two Supreme Court vacancies the whole time?
The only positive outcome might have been no Trumpian tax cuts. Other than that, nothing good.
oldster
Oh, so now we’re all supposed to give Simone Biles as pass as though we didn’t see with our own eyes that she was cheating?
If you watch that tape, you can see at a least ten gross violations of the law of gravity, as well as lesser offenses against other minor laws of physics.
MomSense
Well we survived last night. Mom was up this morning bright eyed and bushy tailed after her shenanigans last night. She did say she’s decided to go ahead and get a cortisone injection.
Apparently when she played in the pit orchestra at the playhouse years ago, all the musicians who played in the bars and clubs would get together to party starting at 200 so the bartenders and other staff could clean up and grab some bottles to bring. I shared her exploits in an open thread last night. She wants to go back Saturday night.
eclare
That floor routine by Ms. Biles is insane. I can’t believe I thought she was done with gymnastics, she got married a few months ago, and her IG has been full of relaxing, summer fun photos. Who knew she was planning a big return?
Lesson number infinity that the internet is not real life. Good for her!
JML
Simone Biles is one of the greatest athletes ever. (I say “one of” only because I think it gets weird trying to compare across sports) I’m not even interested in gymnastics, but Simone Biles is so good she can pull in people like me. Someone posted one of her finales slowed way down, which was cool because then you could really see the height and rotation and all of the amazing stuff she does…and I swear, somehow she managed to push off the AIR and go higher mid tumble. Unbelievable.
She’s great. Congrats to her, what a legend.
SFAW
@Baud:
It would be interesting to see TFG’s (and Turtle’s and MqQarthy’s … and the rest of them, frankly) do a floor routine — one where they face-plant onto a concrete floor. Multiple times. Until the “Team Doctor” — Dr. Leonard McCoy — declares “they’re dead, Jim.”
eclare
@MomSense:
Wow! Party on, mom!
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@oldster: Laws of nature are self-enforcing. If the universe saw fit to let Ms. Biles’ actions pass without punishment, it is not for us to second-guess the Universe.
Ken
@oldster: Maybe it’s CGI. Check for pixelation, and measure the kerning.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
Chutkan was approved by the Senate by a 95–0 vote on June 4, 2014
Soprano2
Yes. This has been another episode of SATSQ.
SFAW
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
It just shows how Deep the Deep State conspiracy goes.
RevRick
@Soprano2: okay, you got me with the acronym SATSQ, which even Google can’t help me understand.
Ken
@RevRick: Simple answers to simple questions.
OverTwistWillie
Last we saw Hank in the public sphere, he refused to give up a client list and had to beg off of the Chairmanship of the 9/11 Commission.
That was twenty years ago. He was SoS forty-six years ago. Both Hillary Clinton and John Kerry have far more relevant FP chops.
Can you get me into the White House, Joe?
For old times sake?
Can’t do it, Henry…..
MomSense
@eclare:
She said something about not being the best mom followed by a wicked laugh.
Raven
Judge Steve Jones will be deciding the Meadows/Trump appeal to move the case to the Federal court. Judge Jones is from Athens and a no-nonsense guy. I sat on a jury on a case he presided over and he was all business.
Baud
@Raven:
It’s not frivolous. Could go either way.
Geminid
@SFAW: I’ve been reading some about the original Deep State- the one in Turkiye that seems to at its most powerful in the last decades of the 20th century. I think I need to read a lot more though.
The Turkish Republic is coming up on its 100th anniversary this coming October. All I can say is that Turkiye sure has had a complex political history since 1923.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
Soprano2
@RevRick: Simple Answers to Simple Questions. I’m surprised Google couldn’t tell you that. LOL Of course McConnell would have come up with some excuse to leave three Supreme Court seats open, in the hopes that a Republican would be elected in 2020. Do you think they ever would have let Hillary put even one person on the court if they could prevent it? For that matter, if there had been a Republican Senate I doubt she could have gotten a Cabinet confirmed, let alone any judges. Everything would have ground to an absolute halt. ETA – yeah, it was simple questions, not stupid ones.
Soprano2
@Raven: It’s hard for me to believe that a judge could decide that attempts to keep TFG in power were part of Meadows’ official government duties. I guess we’ll see.
eclare
@Soprano2:
We owe so much to GA voters.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Soprano2
@eclare: Yes, we do. Many, many good things were made possible by that election.
Geminid
@eclare: The two Democratic Senators Georgia voters elected in the January 5, 2021 runoffs made a huge difference. McConnell and company planned on choking Joe Biden’s presidency with austerity, like he did Obama’s.
Instead, Democrats passed the American Recovery Act, Infrastructure and CHIPS+ bills, and finished up the last Congress with the IRA. That 3 trillion+ dollars of spending and investment has made this economy the best of my lifetime, and laid a good foundation for economic growth through the end of this decade.
lee
@RevRick:
My wife and I discuss this periodically. We are pretty sure those spots would have remained vacant during her Presidency.
Geminid
@Geminid:
@eclare: Ironically, had Trump carried Georgia that state’s Republican party might have been united enough to elect Perdue and Loeffler instead of Ossoff and Warnock. When Georgia Democrats voted November, 2020 they won Joe Biden 16 electoral votes, and in the end they also won him 2 vitally important Senators.
eversor
@RevRick:
In an odd way Trump worked for us. Clinton would have been another Obama or another Clinton. Not that’s bad, just wouldn’t have fixed shit. But the backlash to Trump has pretty much put every liberal and progressive goal on the table. Resulting in an FDR style presidency. I never thought I’d see all this stuff. Fuck Trump managed to bring out the youth vote against him.
Trump also ham fistedly got us out of Afghanistan and I’d hate to see what the GOP would have done if a Democrat was in office during covid.
It’s all yet to play out and who knows and Clinton was better than Trump on all levels. But we may have taken a shot in the gut that missed everything critical and gotten our act together after. We weren’t just going to keep coasting along as things were. The amount of shit that’s been fixed, gotten done, is staggering. Joe Biden is going to go down as a good one.
moonbat
I never watch a Biles routine when I’m not exclaiming “Holy Shit!” every 15 seconds.
Pure power and grace in a tiny package.
hueyplong
@moonbat: On more than one occasion I have asserted to the tv screen that “humans can’t do that.”
Geminid
@Geminid: And a sideyed tip of the hat to Georgia Libertarian Senate candidate Shane Hazel!
Hazel’s 115,000 votes in 2020 were just enough to hold David Perdue below 50% and force the runoff that Jon Ossoff won.
RevRick
@Ken: thanks
moonbat
@Geminid: After those bills passed, McConnell even gave the game away — again — when he said in essence, “A whole lot of good things are about to happen, but you cannot credit the Biden administration with any of them!”
It is to laugh.
RevRick
@Soprano2: Thanks. And, I, too, think it would have been a disaster.
RevRick
@Soprano2: Thanks. And, I, too, think it would have been a disaster.
@lee: As do I.
RevRick
@eversor: I completely agree. And I shudder to think what a GOP Congress would have done during COVID if Hillary was President. We would have seen Great Depression 2.0 for sure. The modern GOP is a mixture of nihilism and fascism.
Geminid
@moonbat: I think the Georgia Senate runoffs took McConnell and other Senate Republicans by surprise. They also transformed Hapless Charlie Schumer into Clever Chuck.
jonas
Who made up the rule that you *have* to invite Kissinger to the WH? Who gives a shit? And all his baggage aside, the main reason previous presidents may have wanted a sit-down with him is because they sought his insight on certain geopolitical issues. W and Obama didn’t have a great deal of foreign policy experience when they came into office and Trump, well, Trump probably couldn’t locate the US on a world map. Biden’s easily the most experienced president in at least a generation when it comes to foreign policy. Why would he need the advice of a centenarian war criminal?
hueyplong
Seeing McConnell’s name in print is a pleasant reminder that we haven’t heard much from him since his HAL9000 “Daisy” routine at a podium.
His silence is most likely a product of his endless cowardice in the face of trumpism, but it’s welcome all the same.
moonbat
@Geminid:
I also like to think that over the last decade Nancy Smash decided it was high time someone gave Chuck Shumer some lessons in how to play political hardball. He’s been doing better!
Ken
Maybe it’s a clause in Kissinger’s bargain for eternal life, and if a term ever passes without a WH visit, Satan will drag him down to Hell.
jonas
The other day, McCarthy was up in my district stumping for the incumbent Trump-fluffer Brandon Williams by doing a photo op at a local tech company that’s been expanding recently and adding jobs and Williams was really proud that amazing companies like this were being successful and stuff. Of course, left unmentioned was that the company has benefited enormously from the IRA — which, notably, both Williams and McCarthy voted against. Fortunately, Biden’s sm people were all over it and the local media as well did a good job covering the irony.
RevRick
@Geminid: We really owe Trump a debt of gratitude for revitalizing Democratic initiatives. His post-election efforts depressed GOP votes in Georgia, handing us the Senate, as he previously gave us the House.
The threat he poses to democracy is ongoing, but in a weird way, that’s why I’m optimistic about next year’s election. He concentrates the minds of Democrats and swing voters wonderfully. Of course, the ultimate outcome depends upon voters in three states: Montana, Ohio, and West Virginia. (I know folks here love to hate Manchin, but he was our crucial 50th vote on so much of our agenda, and beautifully hoodwinked McConnell on the IRA).
RevRick
@jonas: The same ones who made up the rules that you had to invite Billy Graham and pick Republicans to head the FBI.
eversor
@RevRick:
They would have sandbagged the vaccines even worse, millions more would have died, and it would have been catastrophic. And yep also global economic destruction. And they would have banged that drum to power for decades.
Miss Bianca
@RevRick: I can’t believe how beautiful Simone Biles is – and how graceful, fierce, joyous etc…I mean, words fail me. She is IT.
OverTwistWillie
@jonas:
Those liberal naifs don’t know nothin’ about post-Vietnam FP consensus. Like Joe wasn’t a caucus member with Scoop Jackson.
The old git was selling access, or at least the perception of it, and shed his relevancy a long, long time ago.
CaseyL
@Miss Bianca:
Possibly the strongest – in every sense – athlete I’ve ever seen.
How she manages to have such control over every muscle, and smile while doing so, just blows my mind.
cain
I was out in Jefferson County in Oregon – couldn’t find a single pro-trump flag or sign – the MAGA people haven’t been flying their colors. I think it’s hitting them that they’ve been conned.
TS
@Ken:
And maybe he lost that when he became a director of Theranos – together with James Mattis and a few other so called very important people. None of them paid for that debacle.
Realworldrj
Ignoring Kissinger? How much more can I love Joe Biden?
Doug R
trump is the SCION of a draft dodging whoremonger.
Donald Trump’s grandfather ran Canadian brothel during gold rush, author says
Yarrow
Simone Biles is just amazing. I stumbled upon the gymnastics competition last night and saw her floor routine. A guy (her coach?) put an additional mat on the floor for one of her runs, probably because she was up so high and needed extra padding for when she landed with so much force. She looked so happy to be out there. Good to see.
Geminid
@moonbat: Ms. Pelosi is a formidable politician, but I think Schumer is doing what he’s always been capable of doing and always wanted to do. But the two leaders must have had a close and cooperative relationship to have gotten so much done with such narrow majorities in their respective caucuses.
Geminid
@RevRick: I don’t hate Manchin but I think he’s a goner. Polls show him way behind Governor Justice, and I don’t see how he can turn that around. Justice strikes me as a very capable politician.
rikyrah
Biles will be in the sports history books
She is amazing 👏🏾
lee
@cain:
I’m curious how it is looking in Idaho. The last time I was there (18 months ago or so) there were still Trump flags and signs all around.
opiejeanne
@bjacques: What is the *other* 9/11/1973?
Frankensteinbeck
@Doug R:
That story sounds entirely honorable, even praiseworthy, but of course it leaves out the crucial moral question – how he treated the prostitutes working in his hotel. Even the draft dodging seems to have been a coincidence. His bloodline degenerated fast, into absolute garbage.
SiubhanDuinne
@hueyplong:
I had never heard of this young comedians and impressionist, Matt Friend, until yesterday, but his Trump is really good and his McConnell is one of the best I’ve ever seen. He’s only 25 — I think he has a bright future in showbiz, as long as Republicans remain mockworthy.
lee
@Geminid: My very small/narrow bit of information about Justice makes me think he is more of a ‘get shit done’ politician.
rikyrah
@RevRick:
Manchin is always the best option for us in WV.
RevRick
@Geminid: Oh, I think he’s a goner, too. I think Allred’s chances against Cruz are better, and he’s a long shot. Which makes keeping Brown and Tester all the more important.
SiubhanDuinne
@Doug R:
Didn’t Justin Trudeau present TFG with a photo of his (TFG’s) granddaddy’s establishment during a NATO or G7 summit in Canada?
CaseyL
Brandi Buchman and Kyle Cheney (both on Twitter/Nitter) are reporting from DC on the various hearings happening today regarding the cluster of Trump trials.
Currently Judge Chutkan is setting a date for one of them, damned if I can remember which one (J6 I think…?) where the Govt proposed January 2024 and Trump proposed April 2026 (!).
Judge is citing precedent that a defendant’s professional schedule and other case trials are not relevant factors in determining a date for trial in any one of those cases (“professional athletes don’t get a pass for their important games” ). So much for Trump’s excuse that he’ll be busy running for President…
Josie
@Geminid:
What are you reading?
CaseyL
\@eversor: I’ve often thought that if Clinton had been President during Covid, she would have been impeached by the House either over the first wave of lockdowns or when the death count hit 5,000.
(And, needless to say, the MSM would have been in full cry supporting the GOP.)
SFAW
@Ken:
“Don Enrico! A cenar teco m’invitasti”
although, technically, that wasn’t Satan.
rikyrah
This poster nails Vivek and Nimrata 👏🏾👏🏾
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8Y6459t/
OverTwistWillie
Positively 4th Street:
“Cornel West blasts Bernie Sanders for endorsing Biden.”
cain
@lee: Idaho is becoming the land of the nazis and white supremacists – they’ll let their freak flag fly because they are amongst friends. They aren’t embarrassed like they are here in Oregon I reckon.
cain
@OverTwistWillie: lol – has Putin communicated his displeasure to Cornel?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’ve never been a huge Schumer fan, but as I recall the evolution of BBB from dead in the water to the IRA, that was Schumer quietly working behind the scenes with Manchin, and also Manchin getting mad at Republicans for blocking, or trying to block, I forget which bill
Yarrow
@rikyrah: What is going on with that video? He’s jumping all over the place like a strobe light? The audio sounds fine but the video…ugh. I couldn’t look at it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I never thought the ankle-biting-weasels would bite my ankles!
Remember in ’16 when Bernie blackmailed Dems into putting West on the DNC platform committee and a week after the convention, he endorsed Jill Stein? I do
I wonder if Cornel will be so upset he resigns his fellowship with the Sanders Institute. I don’t know what that pays, but I do Cornel has some cash flow issues.
Geminid
@Josie: I’ve been reading Wikipedia articles and other historical accounts about Turkiye, including their War of Independence (1920-23), the Kurdish conflict, the military coups of 1960 and 1980 and the bloody civil strife between 1976 and 1980. Turkiye’s military also effected changes of government twice through a “Military Memorandum,” the last time in 1997. A Turkish admiral called that one “a post-modern coup.”
I’ve also been hanging out some on Turkish Twitter, which is giving me information on current attitudes among at least some Turkish people. I seem to have fallen upon a group of anti-Erdogan Kemalists. With the 100th anniversary of Turkish Republic coming up, they are paying a lot of attention to their history both recent and older.
Josie
@Geminid:
Thanks. I’ll look at some of those. I’ve been interested in the past in the Kurdish problem and would like to know more.
john b
@marklar: Kareem
Add Kareem Abdul-Jabar to that list for the NCAA dunk ban in the 60s/70s.
Of the athletes in my liftetime (I’m an elder Millenial), I’d say the best athletes of my time have to be Serena Williams, Michael Jordan, Usain Bolt, and Michael Phelps. These are just in sports I follow closely (Messi is probably up there, too — but it’s hard when he’s still active to judge)
There go two miscreants
@opiejeanne: The coup in Chile that overthrew Allende and installed Pinochet.
RevRick
@rikyrah: Definitely! In the last election, the Sanders-endorsed candidate won a whopping 28% of the vote against Caputo.
MisterDancer
The sad part continues to be that West was a leading light in Black scholarship, at one point. But, yeah, like a lot of Conservatives the Obama era just broke him, completely, and allowed him to be suborned into the asshole he is, today.
Baud
@OverTwistWillie:
Did Bernie actually endorse Joe? I’m not too surprised, except that he did it this early.
patrick II
Simone always brings a sunile to my face. A good person closing incredibly well.
RevRick
@Miss Bianca: Not only has she elevated women’s gymnastics to an unreal level, but I remarked to my wife how much less white the top level competitors are.
Meanwhile, Major League Baseball is becoming increasingly white.
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: Why, did he face-plant?
pluky
@Soprano2: Language in the Hatch Act explicitly forbids the President’s CoS from the election interference with which Meadows is charged.
cain
@MisterDancer:
That confounds me – any thoughts on why Cornell objected to Obama?
Geminid
@Josie: There is a lot of contemporary reporting from Kurdish news sites. Rudaw English is one that is based in Erbil, capital of the Kurdish Regional Government. Since the first Gulf War, the 3 Iraqi provinces the KRG controls have been the closest thing to an independent state Kurdish people have had in a long time.
There are also English-language news sites run by Kurdish exiles from Turkiye and/or Iran, and good articles about Turkiye’s Kurdish conflict by Western observers.
oatler
@Baud:
Roomer are strong in this regard.
RevRick
@Geminid: The last throes of the Ottoman Empire featured genocidal campaigns against the Armenians and the Pontic Greeks.
In many respects, the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East can be traced to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. (The Balkans seem to have finally settled down).
cain
@There go two miscreants:
A coup that we knew about and did not discourage – we apparently actively supported the military junta. Since we were talking about that fucker Henry Kissinger – from Wikipedia:
“After a review of recordings of telephone conversations between Nixon and Henry Kissinger, Robert Dallek concluded that both of them used the CIA to actively destabilize the Allende government. In one particular conversation about the news of Allende’s overthrow, Kissinger complained about the lack of recognition of the American role in the overthrow of a “communist” government, upon which Nixon remarked, “Well, we didn’t – as you know – our hand doesn’t show on this one.”[57] “
Gin & Tonic
Weird possible scam I’m trying to figure out: once in a while I get a text from a new, previously unknown number, seemingly personal (but not to me,) so I send some odd response and never hear from them again. I guess they could legitimately be “wrong number” texts (my cell number is known to only about 20 people) but if they’re fishing for something, there’s no followup. Yesterday it was “Hello, Isidro, are you still in London?” Now I’m not Isidro and I haven’t been in London in 6-7 years, so I responded that I moved to Madrid a few months ago. No followup, no “sorry, I fat-fingered the number,” nothing. What’s the point?
cain
@Gin & Tonic: next time just start doing random quotes from movies.
“I am vengeance, I am the night! I am batman!”
Old School
@cain:
He didn’t think Obama was liberal enough. West also was annoyed he didn’t get inauguration tickets.
Here is a TNR article that goes into more detail.
the pollyanna from hell
@cain:
Across the whole state on US 26 I saw one “go brandon” sign and nothing else.
Miss Bianca
@MisterDancer: The degeneration of Cornel West from the guy who wrote Race Matters into…whatever he is now…is as baffling and painful to me as watching certain of my relatives sink into Trumpism. That the election of Obama broke something in *their* brains I can kind of understand…if deplore. But Obama’s election broke a hell of a lot of other brains in ways that I just *don’t* understand and didn’t expect, and apparently West’s is one of them. Le sigh.
Geminid
@Geminid:
@Josie: The Crisis Group (crisisgroup.org) provides what seems to objective reporting on the armed conflict between the Turkish government and the PKK which broke out again in 2015. This is only one aspect of the Kurdish question but it’s a politically important one thay’s gotten more attention lately because it was an issue in Turkiye’s approval of Finland’s and Sweden’s NATO memberships. Turkiye’s National Assembly still has not ratified Sweden’s accession but it is expected to by October.
Anyway
@Geminid:
Does Armenia ever come up on Turkish twitter?
Anyway
@Old School:
But I see few if any policy discussions from West. He just hates establishment Ds…
Other MJS
Beauty and the Butthead.
WereBear
@RevRick: Apparently someone was doing it wrong.
BethanyAnne
@john b: My vote for best athlete in my lifetime goes to Esther Vergeer, though she isn’t as famous as the ones in this thread.
JPL
trump gonna be pissed
J6 courtdate is March 4, 2024
sdhays
DC J6 trial set for March 4! (2024)
UncleEbeneezer
Propublica has an (ahem) long expo on the Penile Implant industry. A lot of sketchy characters and scammers, exploiting desperate men and resulting in some downright horrific results. And yet strangely, no bills have been passed to ban this type of Gender-Affirming-Care, nobody is screaming about people mutilating their bodies or there being some sort of Social Contagion!!1! and doctors tricking/pressuring men into these procedures…
CaseyL
Judge Chutkan has set a date for Trump’s J6 trial: March 4, 2024.
Expect an avalanche of motions from defense counsel to delay or dismiss outright.
john b
@BethanyAnne: wow. hard to argue with those career records!
OverTwistWillie
@Baud:
Four months ago.
Someone should mention to Mr. West Festivus is 12/23, but that would get them on the list.
Is he going to debate RFK Jr.? That would be… something.
SiubhanDuinne
Well, this is nice to read:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/08/28/trump-jan-6-trial-date/
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@pluky: I find it especially sweet for somebody to be prosecuted for Hatch Act violations.
The Hatch Act was one of those norms of conduct I was trained in as a federal employee that I tried to follow scrupulously just because it was the right thing to do. And that therefore infuriated me when somebody asked Kellyanne Conway about it and she laughed and said “let me know when somebody goes to jail for that.”
Hey Kellyanne? You watching?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@CaseyL: I was sort of half following some tweets about that hearing, wondering if it would come up that one of his TeeVee lawyers was on TeeVee over the weekend bragging that trump is so smart he doesn’t need time to prepare for a case, if the judge would/could take that seriously, or at least mention it as a mocking/warning to his real lawyers
Geminid
@Anyway: Oh man! There’s always Armenians and Greeks jumping in on Turkish Twitter to complain about Turkiye and Turks. The beleaguered Armenian Artsakh enclave in Azerbaijan and Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus are especially salient issues for them.
Right now Turkiye’s relations with the nations of Armenia and Greece are actually pretty good, but I wouldn’t try tellong that to members of the Greek or Armenian diasporas. Many of them will always have it in for Turks and Turkiye.
The Turks I follow don’t seem to have much animus towards Armenians and Greeks, but there was a lot a lot of resentment towards ANCA (the Armenian National Congress of America) for it’s successful lobbying campaign to keep Disney+ from streaming its movie Ataturk. The movie will still be out in theaters in October.
Percysowner
From Talking Points Memo
I guess somebody thinks he can talk his way out of this.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Percysowner: damn. I may have to tune in to MSNBC
I try to keep my hopes and speculation in check but I can’t help but think he wants to throw somebody in front of a bus….
UncleEbeneezer
@JPL: Thank you Merrick Garland, Jack Smith and Thomas Windom (and of course, Judge Chuktan).
It will be so ironic if, after all the shit-talk about him, Garland brings Trump to trial before anyone else!
Bragg’s trial is set for “March 2024” but seeing as this is March 4th, I imagine Bragg’s will have to be just after that. Bragg has also indicated some willingness to postpone his trial if needed to allow the Federal case to proceed quickly.
Tarragon
@CaseyL:
Happy Birthday to me.
eversor
@CaseyL:
I don’t think it matters which Democrat would have been in office when COVID hit. The Republicans were always going to sabotage the effort, there would have been no vaccines, a global economic crash and it would all have been blamed on the Democrats leading to Republican landslides for generations.
I think this is part of their entire “the election was stolen” mantra. Because if they would have screwed shit up than surely we did the same thing! Which is all fucking insane on many levels but on the biggest one if Trump had just touted operation Warp Speed as Trump shots to Keep America Great he would have won in a land slide.
The entire electing Trump, slamming into a pandemic after racking up the debt, then not taking credit for your own contributes to the fix for the pandemic, is a massive own goal.
Alison Rose
JFC Simone Biles is almost unbelievable. I’m so glad she was able to find her way back to this, because she looks like she’s having fun and she’s kicking ass as much as she ever did.
UncleEbeneezer
Judge Tanya Chutkan on the federal election interference case: “Setting a trial date does not depend and should not depend on a defendant’s personal and professional obligations.” “Mr. Trump, like any defendant will have to make the trial date work, regardless of his schedule.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Ken
Does Trump have the same lawyers for both trials? If not, the only issue might be his presence in both courtrooms, and I’m sure there’s some wise, just, Solomonic way to handle that.
Mr. Bemused Senior
Mr. Lauro objects.
E.
@CaseyL: Remember the Ebola scare during Obama’s presidency? They were screaming at him for not shutting the borders completely, including to U.S. citizens. Some weirdo was wandering around airports in a bio hazard suit with a sandwich board covered in his conspiracy theories. These are not serious people.
Ken
@Mr. Bemused Senior:
“Also, your client was golfing last week, and you were on two talk shows, so it certainly looks like neither of you are worried about time.”
UncleEbeneezer
@Alison Rose: Yes. So glad she seems to have overcome the spins problem she was suffering from a while ago. She’s an absolute GOAT of her sport.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I had to stop and think which case is now being set for March. Georgia is the fake electors case, right? So this one is Jack Smith’s with just Trump as a named conspirator.
I think.
Steeplejack
Gonna hate-watch Andrea Mitchell to catch up on the legal developments.
CaseyL
The hearing for Mark Meadow’s motion to move his case to Federal Court is happening now, but I can’t find any live coverage, because phones aren’t permitted in the courtroom. There’s supposed to be an audio feed, but it’s on a first-come basis, and in any case I can’t find a link to it.
Goodness, this is a busy, busy day in various courtrooms.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@CaseyL: That’s the Georgia case, right?
So much criming, it’s hard to keep straight who’s going down for what.
Steeplejack
@Ken:
Cut Trump in half? I’m okay with that.
coin operated
@cain:
Just took a motorcycle trip from The Dalles – Astoria – Florence – EUG – and back. The Dalles and Monroe (just outside Eugene) still had a number of Trump flags / signs / etc. Very Trumpy country once you get outside the I-5 corridor.
UncleEbeneezer
CaseyL
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Yes, that one. Honestly, at this point we need some kind of cheat sheet.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@UncleEbeneezer: I fervently hope Smith wins this one because, win or lose, it will set the tone for the other cases.
Kathleen
@Baud: Yes but it doesn’t stop him from criticizing Democrats for “ignoring working class” (subtext “white”) and telling Democrats how to win elections.
Alison Rose
@UncleEbeneezer: LOVE IT. Chutkan is not here to play.
Karen H
@Tarragon: Me too!
Alison Rose
@UncleEbeneezer: I love watching her in slo-mo, to really see the wild shit she’s able to do mid-air. I think back to when I did gymnastics as a kid and I was SO PROUD when I first landed a cartwheel on the beam, hahaha.
Uncle Jeffy
@Ken: Yep – Solomon had a solution that would enable TIFG to be in both courtrooms simultaneously. May I hold your sword while you prepare to administer it?
Geminid
@RevRick: The Armenian Genocide took place in 1915, the first full year of WWI. There were also massacres of Pontic Greeks then, but the worst took place during the Turkish War of Independence, in particular the year 2022. That war saw terrible atrocities from different sides, and ended with major population transfers under the auspices of the League of Nations.
There were at least two major wars fought after the First World War that I only learned about recently. One was between Poland and the Soviet Union that ended in a Polish victory.
The other was the Turkish War of Independence fought to reverse the Treaty of Sievres. Under that treaty, large parts of what is now Turkiye were alloted to Georgia, Greece and Italy, while Constantinople and the Turkish Straits were to be an international enclave under British and French control. The Turkish National Assembly in Ankara and its armies were able to push the Georgians out quickly, but a 100,000 man Greek Army got within 50 miles of Ankara before it was driven back and out of Anatolia.
Army commander Mustapha Kemal then negotiated Britain’s* and France’s peaceful evacuations from Istanbul and the Straits, and the Greeks had to evacuate Turkish Thrace.
That was a very complete victory for the Turkish nation, but many Turks still suspect that other nations would carve Turkiye up if they could. That’s one reason they strongly oppose autonomy for Turkish Kurdestan.
Some also argue against the proposed canal north of and parallel to the Bosporus because it would allow an aggressor nation to control Istanbul more easily. Plus, they think the canal is just another Erdogan boondoggle to benefit his allies in the construction and real estate industries.
* The British Prime Minister at the time was David Lloyd George. His advocacy for military action to maintain control of the Straits resulted in his ouster. It also led to a big political fight in Canada over that nation’s independence from the UK in matters of foreign policy..
john b
Surely you mean 1922
Geminid
@john b: Yes, I meant 1922
slakko
@john b: The one before probably both of our times is Don Bradman. Still 50% better batting average than anyone else; they Bodyline tactic was invented to defeat him, but the rules were changed to block Bodyline because it made the game too dangerous and too hard for everyone else.
wjca
@RevRick:
Less black, perhaps. But more Hispanics. Not to mention that the number of East Asians (by birth or by ancestry) has exploded. Otani would have been unthinkable 30 years ago.
Geminid
@Geminid: All Turkiye did in 2022 was fly its F-16s over the Greek Dodecanese Islands’ airspace hundreds of times. The two countries seem to be patching things up now, and the Greek Foreign Minister will visit Turkiye Sept. 5 for a “working visit.” This may have come out of a good meeting the Turkish President and Greek Prime Minister had last month at the Vilnius NATO summit.
Presidents Erdogan and Biden also seemed to have had a good meeting at Vilnius. Last week the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford performed joint manouvers with Turkiye’s new helicopter and drone carrier Andalou, and then the Ford made a port call in Antalya.* I don’t think this would have happened last year. The US 6th fleet’s flagship, the Mount Whitney, also made a port call at Istanbul earlier this month.
* A lot of Russian oligarchs have found a safe port for their yachts in Antalya. I wonder what their crews thought when the 100,000 ton aircraft carrier pulled in.
RevRick
@Geminid: One could say that the Treaty of Lausanne, which finally ended WW1, gave its blessing to ethnic cleansing.
Paul in KY
@SiubhanDuinne: He’s pretty funny! Thanks for the link.
Paul in KY
@cain: I think Mr. West was jealous of Se. & then Pres. Obama.
Uncle Cosmo
Mustafa Kemal arranged an appointment to an inspector post in Samsun, sailed there & then went south to organize Turkish resistance to the Greeks, who’d been given the Aegean coast of Anatolia by the Treaty of Sèvres but wanted a whole fuckofalot more. By the time the Greek army made it within 50 miles of Ankara it had wildly outrun its supply lines, and the resurrected Turkish forces (resupplied with arms from Soviet Russia, and commanded by Kemal’s buddy Ismet, who later took the surname Inönü in honor of the main battle) fell on them & drove them completely out of Anatolia. So much for Venizelos’ Megalo Idea, in a classic instance of “fucking around and finding out.”
The Greeks still complain that the Allies didn’t land troops to help them hold the coast (though anyone who could make it out to the Allied warships keeping station offshore was ferried back to Greece).** Afterwards the postwar settlement was renegotiated and signed as the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, establishing a Turkish Republic restricted to Anatolia.***
** Hell, the Greeks are still pissed off (with more justification) about the Fourth Crusade hanging a left on the way to the Holy Land to sack Constantinople (on the Venetians’ insistence – they wanted to be paid for their ferry service) and put a Latin emperor on the throne for >50 year. That was in 1204. Maybe Greek Alzheimer’s is cousin to the Irish variety, where you forget everything but your grudges…
*** For which achievement the Republic’s legislature awarded him (by acclamation) the surname Atatürk, “Father of the Turks.” FWIW his one great mistake (IMHO) was dismissing the Kurds in southeast Anatolia as “mountain Turks,” even though they had almost nothing in common with Turks proper, which has led to no end of trouble.
UncleEbeneezer
@Alison Rose: My sister and I both did gymnastics. She was on a team, but there was no boys team in my school at the time. I got to the point where I could do back-tucks on floor and front-handspring vaults, but that’s about it. Didn’t really have the upper-body strength yet to do anything on rings, parallel bars etc. I would’ve been absolutely petrified if I ever had to try doing anything on balance beam. Hell, I get incredibly nervous just watching it!
Biles’ incredible performances are also an example of bullshit of the TERF assumption that AMAB bodies have a built-in, unfair advantage in all sports. So many of the things Biles does would be so much harder (or even impossible) with a taller, bigger body and higher center of gravity, strength and T-levels be damned.
Geminid
@Uncle Cosmo: The Kurds and Turks have a common religion, but their languages are from entirely different families, the Kurds Indo-European and the Turks Turkic. But Mr. Ataturk was a Turkish nationalist, and he wanted every resident of Anatolia to be a Turkish nationalist whether they wanted to or not.
Interestingly, Erdogan’s government includes a Kurdish Vice President and a couple of Kurdish Ministers including Minister of Finance Selim Selcik. Selcik is playing the role Paul Volker played for Jimmy Carter, wringing inflation out of the economy with steep interest hikes.
And Hakan Fidan, Erdogan’s powerful Foreign Minister, is said to have a Kurkish father. Fidan is someone worth watching. He played a big role in Erdogan’s foreign relations in hus 13 years heading the Turkish intelligency agency M.I.T. Erdogan has a lot of confidence in Fidan, and calls him “my keeper of secrets.” Last week Fidan was in Baghdad two days, Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan one, and finished up in Kyiv on Friday. He reportedly will visit Russia soon.
After high school, Hakan Fidan spent 15 years as a noncom in the Turkish Army. He was posted to NATO’s Rapid Reaction Force long enough to earn a degree from the University of Maryland’s World Campus. Fidan is considered to be a scholar, and he is also physically imposing with the build of an NFL tight end
Speaking of NFL tight ends, I was really, really sorry to see the Commanders end the Raven’s long pre-season winning streak. But I was glad Lamar Jackson got the contract he wanted and deserved.
2liberal
From Mad Magazine: Snappy answers to stupid questions
thalarctosMaritimus
@Gin & Tonic: I wondered about that same thing, and this is what I was told. I don’t know for sure whether or not this is true, but it sounds plausible to me.
Apparently, it’s a scheme to get to talking to a real person to try to sell them a scam, often crypto. They know you’re not Isidro, but they’re counting on your being conscientious enough to let them know they reached a wrong number. Then, once they apologize, they get chatty and try to pull you in.
At least, that’s what I’ve been told. As a woman on the Internet, I’ve had a “one strike/you’re out” policy about texts from unknown randos for so long that I’ve never tested it myself.
Gemina13
@oldster:
**dies laughing**
Reposted to Spoutible.