Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

It could be worse. Vance could have said “post-menopausal sows.” Waiting for that audiotape to surface.

Let’s finish the job.

No Justins, No Peace

“Cheese and Kraken paired together for the appetizer trial.”

Washington Post’s Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

“woke” is the new caravan.

American History and Black History can not be separated.

“They not like us!” (that’s for sure!)

Another missed opportunity for Jamie Dimon to just shut the fuck up.

I desperately hope that, yet again, I am wrong.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. don’t touch it.”

Trump makes a mockery of the legal system and cowardly judges just sit back and let him.

Biden: Oh no. We’ve upset Big Pharma again.

The choice is between normal and crazy.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Ah, the different things are different argument.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

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

If you’re looking for someone who’s young and athletic, go watch a fucking movie.

President Biden is doing good where he can, and getting it done.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Oh Geez, We Live In the Land of Absurdity

Oh Geez, We Live In the Land of Absurdity

by | 91 Comments

This post is in: 

I wish the writers would go back on strike, because whoever wrote this timeline for Earth-1 is really starting to piss me off.  I hope things are going better on some of the other Earths.

I’m sure the Ohio group will be able to get the signatures they need, and more, but geez.

Also, this seems odd.  Or at least interesting.  Anybody have any theories?

Sorry about the link to the stenographer.

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

91Comments

  4. 4.

    Old School

    For those wondering, the typo was a number.

    The full text of the amendment sets the date for a citizens redistricting commission to adopt new legislative maps by Sept. 19, 2025. However, approved summary language inadvertently stated the deadline would be Sept. 15. The coalition sent a letter to the Attorney General this morning notifying him of the oversight and advising him of the steps they will take to address it. The letter reads:

    Although this difference is inconsequential and not one that would mislead potential signers to sign or not sign the petition, the standard adopted by the Ohio Supreme Court, the Committee has decided in the interest of total transparency with all Ohioans to recirculate and file with your office a new Summary petition that changes the “5” to a “9.” That will be the sole change to the Summary and there will be no changes to the Amendment text.

  10. 10.

    Ken

    Jack Smith withdraws another subpoena in the investigation into trump defrauding donors. It’s assumed that he’s not prosecuting.

    I’ll take the optimistic view, that he has all the evidence he needs from other sources.

  11. 11.

    Wag

    As far as the Jack Smith tweet is concerned, i’m feeling okay.  Mr Smith knows exactly what he’s doing, and it will all work out.  I have complete confidence in him.

  12. 12.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    As for Jack Smith, clearly TFG’s mean tweets have had an effect and Smith has been totally intimidated. He’ll probably be announcing any moment now that he’s withdrawing all the other prosecutions too.

    Serious answer? The commentators at Meidas Touch have a really good track record at reading the tea leaves on legal developments. I’ll wait to see if they have any comment on this one.

  14. 14.

    dr. bloor

    @Ken: Donald Trump is the ur-Target Rich Environment.  His hoovering up cash by advertising nonsense like matches and multipliers to his braindead cultists is small potatoes.

  16. 16.

    RepubAnon

    Elon’s bank will undoubtedly be based on a digital currency named “X”. Your account will be named “X-Wealth.”

    I’m guessing that it’ll be popular with far-right groups to hide their funding sources.

  17. 17.

    Cameron

    @twbrandt: I broke my glasses and misread many things. The first time I read your post I thought it said he wanted to turn Xitter into a banana.

  19. 19.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @twbrandt: It’s the same dream delusion Musk has had since 20+ years ago he was the CEO of one of the companies that later became PayPal. He also wanted to rename that company X.com — which research showed people thought was a porn site. Among other things company was issuing loans without doing credit checks, with predictable results.

    All that plus same shitty managerial authoritarian approach got Musk deposed as CEO after an internal coup.

    But this time he’ll show them by recreating the Chinese WeChat

    Its services include messaging, voice and video calling, social media, food delivery, mobile payments, games, news and even dating.

    It is like WhatsApp, Facebook, Apple Pay, Uber, Amazon, Tinder and a whole lot more rolled into one.

    It is so woven into the fabric of Chinese society that it is almost impossible to live there without it.

    The fact that WeChat is heavily surveilled and censored by the Chinese government — one reason the government helped it become dominant — is undoubted a feature not a bug to him.

  26. 26.

    Highway Rob

    @RepubAnon: X-Wealth is a fair prediction. Makes me think he’ll try to add non-governmental marriages, so users can jump straight to “x-wife” without all the (to him) annoying preliminaries that come with “wife.”

  28. 28.

    WereBear

    Is it me, or does the new Speaker have a strange name? Keep hearing people say it without the K. But then, I’m having a weird day already.

  29. 29.

    Ohio Mom

    I sympathize with the typo creator and discoverer. I am sure they are mortified. But I remain confident that all will work out in the end. They are a determined group and Ohio voters have already shown they want fair districts.

    On another note, I figured out who the new Pastor of the House reminds me of, Stephen Colbert back in the day he was playing a conservative talking head. The things Johnson says are so outlandish, they could pass for parody if you didn’t know anything about who he was.

    That’s all for now, I’m off to meet a new autism mom who wants advice.

  32. 32.

    JoyceH

    @RepubAnon: “Wealth”.  Sigh. Anyone else notice that in the past few years, what used to be called “investment advisors” are now “wealth managers”? Personally, I think it’s an insidious plot – idea is to make every little person with a few thousand in a mutual fund to identify with the billionaires, so they will support laws that really only benefit the ultra-rich.

  33. 33.

    John S.

    I wish the writers would go back on strike, because whoever wrote this timeline for Earth-1 is really starting to piss me off.

    It doesn’t feel like we’re on the prime timeline. We have to be variants.

  35. 35.

    WaterGirl

    @schrodingers_cat: I think Alison Gill is in the same category as Ben Wittes.  Neither one is an attorney, but both are very knowledgable about the law, and both seem to be respected in the legal community.

    If we are giving Ben Wittes status without being an attorney, I think Alison Gill also deserves the same.

  36. 36.

    Shalimar

    @twbrandt: I wouldn’t put my money in Elon’s bank if he paid me 200% interest.  Even before he became a nazi troll, he had a long history of marketing scams and outright lying.

  37. 37.

    WhatsMyNym

    @JoyceH:

    Anyone else notice that in the past few years, what used to be called “investment advisors” are now “wealth managers”?

    It’s not what they call themselves that matters, it’s whether they are credentialed.

    There are several types of credentialed financial advisors. Professional designations include:
    Registered Investment Advisor (RIA)
    Certified Financial Planner (CFP)
    Chartered Financial Consultant (ChFC)
    Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA)

  39. 39.

    Jeffro

    Speaking of absurdity, I had no idea Ron DeSantis had said this, but…it’s absurd.

    “trump’s crushing me because he has 100% name recognition and I don’t”

    well ok, Ron, you’re technically correct…you’re at 91% name recognition with GOP voters.  and guess what?  they STILL don’t want you when they can have the real (barf) deal

    DeSantis told Kaitlan Collins that, soon, Trump would not be able to get away with “not putting in the work.”

    “Well,” she responded, “right now, he is getting away with what you say is not putting in the work. I mean, he’s leading the polls.”

    “Yes,” DeSantis replied, “but that’s because he’s the most famous person running, a 100 percent name ID. He’s the person people know.” He claimed that in some early states, a lot of Trump’s support was soft — and then offered more anecdotes about individual voters.

    There are two problems with DeSantis’s argument here. The first is that, as Collins points out, there is no indication that Trump not “putting in the work” is actually hurting him. The second is that DeSantis’s argument about Trump’s name ID is wrong. That’s not why he’s leading the polls — just as it wasn’t why he was leading in the polls at this point in 2015.

    97 percent of Americans and fully 99 percent of Republicans have an opinion of Donald Trump — but 91 percent of Republicans also have an opinion of DeSantis.

    Only 9 percent say they don’t. McConnell, who has been the leader of the Senate Republican caucus for more than eight years, has nearly twice as many Republicans who don’t have a formulated opinion of him.

  43. 43.

    Alison Rose

    @WaterGirl: I think the difference is that Wittes has a professional background in law-adjacent fields. Gill’s PhD is in Health Administration, and her work in the federal government was as a health system specialist at the VA. Not saying that nothing she says is informed or worthwhile, but she seems to elide the fact that her background has nothing to do with the stuff she talks about. Again, not to say no one should listen to her, but she’s a layperson like any of us would be.

  46. 46.

    WaterGirl

    @schrodingers_cat: @Alison Rose:  I will also say this.

    In the tweet above, she is reporting something that is being reported elsewhere.  She is reporting a fact.

    She didn’t pretend to know WHY Mueller is withdrawing that subpoena.

    She states that “it’s assumed that he’s not prosecuting”, not that Jack Smith is not prosecuting.  So she’s not stating a conclusion as fact.

    She also correctly states that we will learn about it in the final report that a special counsel is required to write.  That, too is just a fact.

  49. 49.

    WaterGirl

    @Alison Rose: Since you didn’t mention Ben Wittes background other than to state that he has a professional background in law-adjacent fields, I looked him up.

    Early life and education

    Wittes was born in 1969 in Boston, Massachusetts. He attended a Jewish day school in New York City,[6] and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Oberlin College in 1990.[7]

    Career

    After a stint covering the United States Department of Justice and federal regulatory agencies for Legal Times,[1] he worked as an editorial writer for The Washington Post, concentrating on legal affairs from 1997 to 2006.

    edit: I will again state that I think there is an unconscious gender component here.

  50. 50.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: Speaking of the legal team at Meidas Touch, this was an interesting interview on that channel posted yesterday. Ex-prosecutor Karen Friedman-Agnifilo interviewing Michael Cohen’s lawyer Danya Perry about what happened in Cohen’s testimony in the fraud case that caused TFG to stomp out in a tantrum.

    These guys being lawyers are interested in every tiny motion of every case and have hours to say about every one. They’ve gotten me way down in the weeds on the legal stuff, spending way too much time listening to this stuff.

  52. 52.

    hells littlest angel

    @twbrandt: So he’s spent the last year assembling his marks. I imagine he’ll offer something like no-fee savings accounts for blue-check holders.

  53. 53.

    Marmot

    I don’t want to be a fly in the ointment, so please know I don’t intend to disparage anybody with this:

    Is it useful to track legal developments, then second-guess “what does it mean?” Seriously.

  54. 54.

    Marmot

    @Marmot: By and large, the answer is always “oh, it doesn’t look good,” followed by “what do you think?”

    Not just here at BJ, but anywhere on the left. Especially with the O Bros.

  55. 55.

    Alison Rose

    @WaterGirl: Well, I will only say that for me, there is no gender component. I will usually default to preferring a woman’s take, LOL. I don’t read/listen to either person, except when they are quoted here or on FB or something. But there is more to Wittes’ career. Research director in public law at Brookings, co-director at the Harvard Law School project with Brookings on law and security, member of a task force at another think tank on national security and law. Again, he is also not a lawyer, and I wouldn’t automatically take anything he says as gospel, but his background is closer to these subjects than Gill’s is.

    But again, to be clear: I’m not trying to criticize you or anyone else for following her or citing her or anything. I’m not calling her a dumb girl who doesn’t know anything. As I said, a friend of mine who is a lawyer has had some issues with some of her takes and the way she presents things sometimes. You say that she makes it clear on the podcast that she isn’t a lawyer, which is good and I’m glad to know that. I do think it’s something she should add as a disclaimer to her Twitter bio (I will not call it X), since I wouldn’t be surprised if some of her followers there assume she is one. That’s not her fault if they make an assumption without looking it up, but she’s likely aware of it.

    I didn’t mean this as a critique of anyone here. Just as added context.

  56. 56.

    Nettoyeur

    @twbrandt:  Elon has gone nuts, reminiscent of Henry Ford who published a pro Nazi, anti Semitic newspaper in the late 1930s.@Anoniminous:  My impression from reading about this was that Musk was ousted in a palace coup when he was on travel, and then paid off aftwrwards. Apparently his co-owners saw his presence in Paypal as a lead brick.

  58. 58.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Notes about Twitter’s status:

    It is bleeding money.  Musk is having to cover its debt payments personally, which is why it still exists, and make promises that it will be profitable when the advertisers come back.

    The algorithm is a cesspool of literal Nazis.  They’re the people willing to buy check marks.

    The advertisers are not coming back.  Nobody wants to have the first listed reply to their ad a swastika, which is the kind of thing happening.  If you are not good at curating your feed, the Nazi problem is outrageous.

    @hells littlest angel:

    It takes one Hell of a lot more marks than he’s got to make financial services profitable.

  59. 59.

    Anonymous At Work

    On the withdrawn subpoena, the worst case is that Jack Smith can’t overcome First Amendment claims without Trump being convicted of fraud but can’t convict Trump of fraud in the fundraising without the subpoenaed information from the PACs.

    Middle ground, what I consider more likely, is that a conviction in the Jan 6th case is required before the subpoenas to the PACs would be meaningful, so he’s withdrawing them until such time as he can refile them.

  60. 60.

    WaterGirl

    @Marmot: I find it useful.  A lot of times, someone here will know something I don’t, or a BJ attorney will chime in with some useful information that helps to process the thing that’s being wondered about.

    YMMV

    edit: see comment #59 as a case in point.

  63. 63.

    smith

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: They’ve gotten me way down in the weeds on the legal stuff, spending way too much time listening to this stuff.

    This bug has bitten me as well. I never had much patience for the little ins and outs of legal procedures, but I find I’m now following every detail, largely via Meidas Touch. I also think it’s a reason I’m sleeping so poorly (as apparently others here are) and decided a few days back to cut off even looking at this stuff after lunch. I was spending too much middle-of-the-night time rerunning and trying to critique the legal arguments in my head.

  64. 64.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @twbrandt: Yeah, he’s got a leeeeeetle bit of a credibility problem. Which can become a bit of a big problem when his biggest asset is his reputation, which has significantly diminished before he assumed the title of Chief Twit.

    Like I said in an earlier thread, I wouldn’t trust him with my lunch money, never mind all my money.

  65. 65.

    Marmot

    @WaterGirl: Sigh. I know you find it useful, and I don’t mean to make you feel bad about it.

    Still, tell me I’m wrong about this: the tea leaves are ambiguous, and even if they weren’t, there’s nothing any of us can do about the outcomes.

    So, I guess the fans of incremental legal developments are preparing themselves for the eventual outcome? I don’t get it.

  66. 66.

    schrodingers_cat

    @WaterGirl: There is no gender component for me. My go to online law expert is Teri Kanefield. From what little I know of Wittes he seems like hack.

    MSW has been caught lying about her background more than once. I don’t trust her. YMMV.

  67. 67.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Scout211:

    I’m pretty sure Ivanka is smart enough to want to not implicate herself in perjury.  She and Jared distanced themselves big time from Trump the moment legal trouble loomed on the horizon.  I too am curious what she’ll do.

  69. 69.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Alison Rose: Nah.  She constantly reminds people she isn’t a lawyer. And while she isn’t a lawyer, she regularly works with Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok and Ryan Goodman who all are attorneys and former FBI.  And they are always responding to her statements with phrases like “That’s exactly right, let me explain…”, so I think she has about as good of a non-lawyer understanding of Federal investigations (not so much on the State investigations/trials) as anyone.  And frankly, a better grasp than some pretty prominent tv attorneys (cough, cough…Elie Mystal).

  70. 70.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @Jay: To be fair, every fight I ever got into as a child, I lost. I was a scrawny shrimpy wimp. Now it’d be a different matter, because I don’t carry much cash with me habitually, and I am, to put it charitably, no longer scrawny. So while 20th-century Elmo may have gotten my lunch money, 21st-century Elmo isn’t getting one red Euro-cent out of me. (Oh, and there’s also the slight issue that the EU as a collective institution already doesn’t seem to be very fond of Elmo.)

  71. 71.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Marmot: Wouldn’t Occam’s razor answer be: this stuff is fascinating?  People spend their time tediously following complicated things for which they can’t effect the outcome, all the time.

  73. 73.

    Jackie

    @Ohio Mom:

    I figured out who the new Pastor of the House reminds me of, Stephen Colbert back in the day he was playing a conservative talking head.

    YES! I thought that this morning! Colbert was so good at acting the conservative, the RWNJs actually believed he was one of them!😂

  74. 74.

    Shalimar

    @Alison Rose: I won’t call it X either, but I am fond of X-Twitter, which to me is a subtle way of calling Elon a dumbass without making it obvious enough that his troll brigade will get it.

  75. 75.

    twbrandt

    I guess I’m in the minority here, but I stopped watching Meidas Touch. Their video titles are mostly liberal clickbait. One of today’s, for example: “COWARDLY Ivanka IS TOAST, Judge CLOBBERS Her in Ruling”. Like, tone it down, guys.

    And they can go on and on and on about one point or issue. They can use a good editor.

  77. 77.

    Marmot

    @UncleEbeneezer: Do you get more out of it than ambiguity? If so, then I concede it can be fascinating.

    Are you a sports fan? There’s a lot of sports-fan in all this — looks to me, anyway — and I don’t get that either.

  78. 78.

    smith

    @twbrandt: I agree that their headlines are clickbaity, the ads are irritating, and they sometimes belabor a point beyond all reason, but their updates are frequent and timely, and once you get sucked into following this closely, it’s hard to resist looking to find out the latest developments.

    ETA: I think that this addiction to following legal developments stems largely from the fact that so many of those developments are negative for TFG. It’s very emotionally satisfying.

  79. 79.

    Marmot

    @smith:

    ETA: I think that this addiction to following legal developments stems largely from the fact that so many of those developments are negative for TFG. It’s very emotionally satisfying.

    Yeah, for sure. “Well, these developments certainly don’t look good for the defendant. But what do you think it means?”

    I’ll say that if it keeps a bunch of people engaged in politics and shit, then it serves a worthy purpose.

  81. 81.

    Geminid

    @twbrandt: My Atlanta friend still watches Meidas Touch, but like you he criticizes them for their click bait, also for the way they tease stories.

  82. 82.

    WaterGirl

    @Marmot: I don’t feel at all bad about it.  You have your opinion, I have mine!

    But to me it’s interesting.  Some people are interested in baseball stats, some people spend their time drinking to excess, some people spend their time belittling other people for fun.  (not talking about you.)

    There are worse things than trying to suss out the meaning of something that on first blush might indicate one thing, but with a little more knowledge might mean another.

    Feel free to skip over my comments or my posts if you find it tedious.

  84. 84.

    WaterGirl

    @Geminid: I used to watch Meidas Touch, but now they just feel like Rush Limbaugh to me.

    And they state things as facts that are just their interpretation.  Don’t get me wrong, I am perfectly interested in hearing interpretations from various legal pages.  But I want the difference between facts and opinion to be clear.

    That’s what I like about Andy McCabe on the Jack podcast.  Alison Gill annoys me sometimes, but McCabe is always super clear when he is speculating and when he is relaying factual information, and to me that’s everything.

    He also, fairly often, says something like “this is how it worked when I was there, but it may have changed in the 2 years I have been away.”  I think sometimes people like Andrew Weissman forget they no longer have all the fucking facts.

  86. 86.

    Honus

     

    @WaterGirl:

    I also like DeSantis talking about “putting in the work” He’s an entitled jerk from a privileged background who thinks he’s really working hard and deserves a reward.  He’s never worked because he had to to just get by.

  87. 87.

    Geminid

    @twbrandt: Sure, they want to build their brand and keep it strong, and just providing good information might not do the trick. I really have no problem with that as long as they don’t decide to take sides in Democratic intraparty fights. I saw outfits that started out opposing Bush and Trump decide that their job was shaping Democratic politics and I have not liked it.

    But anyway, I don’t listen to any podcasts because my phone and I are not on speaking terms. That’s probably my fault, but it is what it is.

  88. 88.

    Jeffro

    @WaterGirl: LOL

    My two problems were (summarizing the article and addressing them directly to the FL GOV)

    1. GOP voters don’t care if trump shows up once a month or even campaigns from jail, Ron.  That’s why we call it a ‘cult’
    2. It’s amazing to be that disliked, Ron.  And by Republicans!!  Seriously!
  89. 89.

    Misterpuff

    @Honus: And when you have a worldview cast in stone, you really don’t have  to “put in the work”. The mindset or The Leader tells you how to think.

    So easy.

    Easy like Sunday morning and Wednesday evening.

  90. 90.

    Chris Johnson

    @twbrandt: This is true and is also toxic as hell. I’m a youtube creator, and damn if I can work out a good way to deal with it. The place runs on clickbait and garbage, whether it’s cloaking legit information or just more garbage.

  91. 91.

    karen marie

    @Bruce K in ATH-GR: Today while in the car I listened to Science Friday. The host, Ira Flatow, “informed” his audience that Musk is an engineer and inventor. Walter Isaacson was the guest. He did nothing to correct the misstatements. Instead Flatow kindly diverted Isaacson to talk about all the fascinating Great Men he’d written books about and who would he write about next. Isaacson wouldn’t admit he was working on his next work of fiction.

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