Elon “ambiguous arm movement” Musk addressed a far-right rally Alternative for Germany Party via video yesterday, and who says photojournalism is dead? Here’s some wisdom the world’s most famous Ketamine user imparted there:
“I think you are the best hope for Germany,” Musk told the crowd as he appeared by video feed. “Something that I think is just very important is that people take pride in Germany and being German.” He added that multiculturalism “dilutes everything.”
“I think we want to have unique cultures in the world,” Musk said, praising Germanic people as an “ancient” culture going back ”thousands of years.”
“I think there’s like, frankly too much of a focus on past guilt, and we need to move beyond that,” Musk told his audience, who were waving German flags. “Children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, or even — let alone their parents — their great-grandparents, even.”
While we’re on the subject of ethnic purity, Trump blabbed to the press while he was flying around in Air Force 1 yesterday. There were a lot of gems, but this one is probably the worst:
Trump said he would like both Jordan and Egypt – which borders the battered enclave – to house people, and that he would speak to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi about the matter on Sunday.
“You’re talking about a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” Trump said, adding that there have been centuries-long conflicts in the region.
He continued: “I don’t know, something has to happen, but it’s literally a demolition site right now. Almost everything’s demolished and people are dying there, so I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing in a different location where I think they could maybe live in peace for a change.”
The president, a former property developer, said that the potential housing “could be temporary” or “could be long-term.”
Some of the major media headlines on this are in Pitchbot territory, but I’m waiting for “Trump Proposes Two-State Solution With a Twist: Jordan and Egypt are the Two States.”
Always-wrongers like Meghan McArdle and others minimized Elon’s salute, and during the campaign there was a lot of minimization of how Trump would deal with Israel by the same cast of characters, but betting against the max is just a dumb bet with Trump & Co. (The J6 pardons are another great example.) They’re really feeling their oats.
I’m going to put a Trump category on this post, so let’s stay on the topic of Trump and characters from the Trump universe. I think I’ll start doing that with the first couple posts of the day, but I’ll always be sure to post an open thread at some point, so there will be plenty of opportunity to talk about more pleasant things than these shitheads.
zhena gogolia
That is definitely worthy of the Pitchbot.
Baud
I guess that’s why they’re working so hard doing new things they should feel guilt for.
Villago Delenda Est
Michael Che argued last night on SNL that Leon can’t be a Nazi, because Nazis made good looking cars.
zhena gogolia
I was thinking in the middle of the night that with the classic salute, you have to also say, “Heil Hitler!” Are they going to start saying “Hail Trump!”?
I was also thinking, what has to happen to a human being that they’re willing to do that every day a hundred times a day? I guess we’re going to find out.
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud: As usual, Fuckface von Clownstick has no clue as to what he’s talking about.
Ocotillo
MAGAts removing the Tuskegee Airmen and WASPs from basic training.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/more-dei-fallout-air-force-scraps-course-that-used-videos-of-tuskegee-airmen-and-female-wwii-pilots/ar-AA1xRbFB?ocid=BingNewsVerp
Baud
@Villago Delenda Est:
Reddit
AndyG
Kudos to the photographer that captured that picture – an AFD flag is making Elmo look like he has a Hitler mustache….
zhena gogolia
@AndyG: Nice.
oldgold
One state solution: Greenland.
MattF
Just do away with guilt altogether. What’s it for, anyhow? Unless the Leader says you’re guilty.
ETA: Same with shame. What does ‘shameless’ even mean??
different-church-lady
ADL: “It was just an awkward… [checks notes] …actual speech in front of actual neo-Nazis. Let’s not get carried away here.”
Villago Delenda Est
As someone who once lived in “temporary housing” that was erected during WWII, which ended 12 years before I was born, I’m going to call shenanigans on this idiotic comment. What he wants to do is clear out the rubble for Javanka’s next seaside luxury resort.
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud: I still prefer wankpanzer for the cybertrucks, but that will do for all the rest!
different-church-lady
Meghan McArdle is like if wrong were created in a factory that cranks out millions of wrong ever hour.
different-church-lady
@Villago Delenda Est: “It could be very short term. It could be non-existent. It could be longer than the universe. I’m just saying words.”
@mistermix.bsky.social
@different-church-lady: I forgot about the ADL – another good example of minimizers, or, probably, they really do want the Palestinians ethnically cleansed.
different-church-lady
That’s the universe where there’s nothing but supervillains, right?
RepubAnon
Well, I guess the folks who stayed home to teach the Democrats a lesson about Israeli actions in Gaza using US-supplied weapons have achieved their goal:
(Oh, and as others noted above, Jared gets his waterfront hotels…)
different-church-lady
@@mistermix.bsky.social: Crazy pills… someone has slipped them in my coffee…
Mike S
All those Muslims in places like Dearborn who voted for Trump must be very happy that he gave Israel those 2,000 pound bombs.
Kay
https://www.wsj.com/articles/republican-wish-list-trump-presidency-7c9812aa
GOP tax bill so far –
IN – accelerated depreciation for racehorses
OUT- no taxes on overtime
The new populism!
Villago Delenda Est
@Ocotillo: Yesterday I went to the Greenhill animal shelter to adopt a cat. Which I did. On the way, I noted as we drove away from my apartment, I mentioned some new construction across the street from my place, a grandstand for the football pitch for KidSports which lies a tad further to the east. The top of the grandstand has some restrooms. My sister went on a rant about how restrooms should not require you to go up stairs because women have difficulty controlling their bladders while climbing stairs, and how this was obviously designed by men who don’t worry about those sorts of things. I agreed with her, and said that this is one of the things DEI programs were trying to address. She THEN proceeded to go into a rant about transsexuals and DEI, missing the point entirely. She’s a MAGAt so pretty much what you’d expect.
Villago Delenda Est
@different-church-lady: They don’t even have the panache of Spock with a beard.
Kay
Disappeared.
Baud
@Kay:
Since people are now off topic, what’s the status of taxes on tips? That was supposed to be the big one.
trollhattan
Donny’s mouthhole sure is busy this time. Am already worn the fuck out.
Foreign press I follow covers this stuff closely, because it’s the United States and not Paraguay. Yay us.
Baud
@Villago Delenda Est:
Good for you.
Miss Bianca
@Mike S: Got no sympathy for them. If they couldn’t figure out for themselves that, however much they hated Biden-Harris policies, that Trump’s would end up being exponentially worse,.then frankly, they’re too dumb to be feeding themselves with a fork, much less voting.
Kay
Texas Republicans need a tax deduction for generators because the Texas power grid doesn’t work.
MAGA in a nutshell right there. Far Right, but also incompetent and corrupt.
Baud
@Miss Bianca:
Same with anyone who bought into Trump’s working class populism. Actually, even more so, since Biden was damn good for working people.
Villago Delenda Est
@oldgold: The Nazis had a plan to make Madagascar the haven for Jews exiled from Europe, but the logistics proved to be ridiculously difficult. More difficult than putting them all in cattle cars to be “resettled in the East”.
me
Is ethnic cleansing the final solution those Muslims in Michigan who voted for Trump are looking for? It shouldn’t be a surprise because Jared said as much during the campaign.
Kay
@Miss Bianca:
Biden “paused” the huge bombs in July. The US had already delivered thousands of them. There was never an interruption in access to 2000 lb bombs.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us-has-sent-israel-thousands-2000-pound-bombs-since-oct-7-2024-06-28/
matt
@different-church-lady: I’ve always seen her as if Jim Carrey Dumb and Dumber went to an Ivy.
WTFGhost
I would bet Trump is acknowledging the reality: so many Israelis have built so many settlements on occupied land, you probably need new land, since “ha ha, obviously, we can’t take these unlawful settlements, and tell them that *they* have to move!”
I can’t speak for the facts on the ground, but I’ve heard stories of Israeli citizens (not the government) doing land grabs when Palestinians were cleared out by military action, on the assumption that the government will never move them out.
I really would like to support Israel, but, *if* that is happening, I believe the term is “ethnic cleansing” when anyone but Israel does it. And, sure, the government might say that *they* aren’t engaging in this kind of behavior, just citizens who, gosh and golly, might be overzealous, but what can we do, enforce the law? Give me a break!
Anyway: he might be the child speaking the truth he’s not supposed to know, that there’s no way “land swaps” will create a two state solution. *IS* that the truth? I don’t know – but if he had been *told* there won’t be land swaps, his decision that more land is needed is exactly the sort of idea that would pop into his addled head.
MomSense
Part of the problem with Trump and a quality that a surprising number of authoritarians share is that they seem a little ridiculous. Trump looks and acts like a kook. I’ve heard a lot of young people who hate him say that he is entertaining, especially because he says nonsensical things. I remember back in 2015 and 2016 we used to point, mock and laugh at the absurd things he said and did. I mean his double jerk off dance to the village people’s YMCA is off the charts ridiculous.
Somehow his absurd nature, his weird hair and makeup, sort of fools people into not believing or taking seriously the racism and threats.
Pointing and mocking doesn’t work. I’m convinced it has to be multiple, daily, slightly mean reminders of how he can’t deliver on his promises.
Trump doesn’t care about you. When the weather got chilly he wussed out and took his inauguration inside so he could hang with his billionaire friends. He didn’t care that you paid good money to be there. He promised prices would go down but eggs cost twice as much. He said he’d stop the war in Ukraine on his first day but he’s so weak and full of shit that no world leaders listen to a word he says. You get the drift. He’s all hat and no fucking cattle.
We need to make stickers to plaster gas stations about Trump’s high gas prices.
Think he will say anything but he won’t come through for you in the clutch.
Quinerly
Since I battle tumbleweeds on my 3 acres….really bad starting in March, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Trump in CA:
“We shouldn’t be in a position where you have tumbleweed that’s dry as a bone. Even tumbleweed can be nice & green & rich & it’s not gonna burn. You don’t even have to remove it. It’s not gonna burn. But it’s just dry. So I hope you can all get together & say I’m so happy with the water that’s gonna be flowing down.”
Starfish (she/her)
If your coalition is not big enough to win if a few people in Dearborn staying home, I would think that you would be working to win over some Muslims. But I am sure it feels good to be smug about some people in Dearborn who didn’t vote for your candidate, and you can do without those votes in the future as well.
Miss Bianca
@Kay: Yeah, so? “Both sides, not a dime’s worth of difference”? Maybe. All I know is that this Israel-Palestine shit has been going on now for over 100 years at least,.with no end in sight because of all the bad faith dealing from the entire world, basically, US included.
I don’t see any way forward except for a one-state solution in Israel that granted all Palestinian resident there full citizenship and equal rights with Jewish citizens. But how I would hate to be sitting on a red-hot stove till *that* happens…
Chief Oshkosh
@Ocotillo: The Air Force brass always had more than its fair share of Jesus freaks, and boy are they letting their freak fly. The quote from the AF spokesperson (see what I did there?) suggests to me that they are frothing at the mouth to erase all service history of non-white males.
Pathetic.
Lobo
I mentioned in another post how voting is sometimes about minimizing the harm. Our system gives you two choices. It is a zero sum game. Not voting or voting for a 3rd party helps the other party. That’s the system.
Sure I wish it was a proportional voting system. I also wish I was a billionaire.
It can also be an 80/20 rule. I agree with the person 80% and disagree 20%. Gaza is a good example. I both disagreed with the Biden policy and knew Trump would be worse. I also agreed with about 80-90% percent of his administration. With Gaza, progressives have little to no leverage now. Life is messy.
New Deal democrat
As awful (but predictable) as T—-p’s comments on Gaza were, I think his comments about Greenland in particular were far more dangerous. He appears dead set on invading there, or Panama, or both.
I’ll put down a marker right now: within 6 months the US is more likely than not to have committed a serious act of international aggression.
How the rest of NATO, Latin America, our trading partners, and our adversaries (and even portions of our own military) react to that are likely to be orders of magnitude greater than any disapprobrium the US has faced in many decades. People need to think about how we confront such an event internally.
I read a note this morning indicating only 9% of people agreed with T—-p on Greenland. I predict his cult will come up with all kinds of excuses and evasions to fall in line.
Kay
@Baud:
I don’t think the GOP Congress is “pleasant” so I feel I’m on topic.
No tax on tips isn’t in there but its still in the speeches so they’re looking at it.
The OT broken promise will be big. I heard it over and over again from people and media absolutely promoted it in their work for the Trump campaign.
The WSJ snuck in that it’s disappeared in the next to last paragraph :)
Sister Golden Bear
@different-church-lady: I blame the weasel that short-circuited the Large Hadron Collider and caused us to jump universes to Earth-1488.
Me
@Starfish (she/her): They would rather their family be driven out of their homes than vote for a woman.
different-church-lady
@Kay: “What happened to all the vapor I was promised?”
Miss Bianca
@WTFGhost: yes, that happens. And it’s been happening since before Israel was Israel. Do some reading on the subject – you will perhaps be shocked by some of the thuggish tactics that the Zionist settlers used…it’s like reading about US history, it’s unsettling.
Sister Golden Bear
@Baud:
Republicans: Fuck tipping anyone for anything anymore. Problem solved!
BlueGuitarist
Following up on my comment downstairs,
some blog I know nothing about also sees the xitter x as a swastika
https://www.flyingpenguin.com/?p=64982
And connects Musx “blaze your glory” slogan (of which I’d been unaware) to Klan use of X
https://www.flyingpenguin.com/?p=49582
Hoping for posts on Wisconsin Supreme Court election soon.
Citizen Dave
@different-church-lady: This. I recognize this Orange Man BS. I often say, he holds every position on any and every issue. He is his own room of 1000 monkeys typing. Total bullshit 100% of the time.
other points from the top post:
Germany 1000s of years old: Uh, no, part of it was Prussia. Germany not even 200 years old, subject to check.
Kay
@Miss Bianca:
One of the reasons Arab Americans who followed this closely were offended was because people attacking them for opposing it didn’t understand how bad it was. That’s fine – one can’t follow all news closely. But if you’re going to demand they vote for Biden although Biden signed off on US weapons being used to kill 55k civilians you should know that Biden sent thousands of huge bombs knowing they would be dropped on dense!y populated urban areas. And they were. The “pause” was meaningless. We had already delivered enough to get them to the next shipment.
WTFGhost
@Sister Golden Bear: I’m sure that somehow, it will allow a tip of up to 25% of the total price of a contract, tax free, with no limit on the size of the contract, so, a $15 breakfast or a $15million dollar construction contract, you can give a 25% tip.
“It’s *populist*! It helps wait staff and baristas and…”.
Or, you could be right, it might just be forgotten about. So many options….
jimmiraybob
@MomSense: “Part of the problem with Trump and a quality that a surprising number of authoritarians share is that they seem a little ridiculous.”
A lot of Germans in the 19302 thought Hitler to be a clown that could be controlled. But, he was just the spearhead of a much larger hate movement that included lawyers as well as guns and money.
West of the Rockies
I loathe McArdle and her off-putting face. How did she get such a big pulpit for such a knucklehead? Of course, same goes for a lot of them.
And Musk needs to be reduced to begging on the street. What a heinous creature.
Jeffro
It’s very weird having a James Bond villain in my timeline, running amok all over the world. Do not want.
M31
I used this formulation:
“in every way that Biden is good, Trump is bad
in every way that Biden is bad, Trump is worse”
now I just say “and so it came to pass” :-(
Kay
@New Deal democrat:
The too-clever media treatment of Trump threatening Denmark will go down as akin to their bungling and lying about the Iraq invasion.
Why do these psychos think threatening people is funny? They encouraged him. The NYTimes ran a Dealbook hypothetical on it. Fucking psychopaths. They’re itching for a war.
gene108
Jordan took in millions of Palestinian refugees since 1948. Because Israel has denied Palestinians forced out if Palestine a right to return, there are millions of Palestinians denied a way to go back home. Expelling Palestinians means they will permanently be exiled from their homeland.
https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-trump-gaza-egypt-jordan-c6bedbd6ca0702c22b80f1bf07cd4326
Lobo
@M31:
A shorter and better way to say what I said in an earlier post on this thread.
Jeffro
@Villago Delenda Est: they’re gonna build KushnerWorld Condos in Gaza on the bones of dead Palestinians.
Which frankly, to me, sounds like longer-term housing.
Professor Bigfoot
@Kay: I, as a Black American, was mortally offended that the protesters were telling Black people that we should vote against our own recognized best interests on behalf of people on the other side of the planet.
Well, they got what they wanted. And they’re really gonna GET it, good and hard.
Jeffro
@Kay: that’s some serious efficiency right there, eh? make every homeowner pony up for a generator instead of just fixing the grid
Texas: too big to saw off and let it drift away, yet too backwards to let it remain part of the U.S.
Maybe we should sell it to Denmark?
jimmiraybob
Ah yes, late Medieval Feudalism mixed with European Inquisition energy and witch hunts and only a few years before Luther tacked up his theses. When America was great.
My senator, Hawley, might object a bit though since he is still fighting 12th century heresies.
Skippy-san
There is no way Egypt will buy off on this. For one thing, it gives Israel a pass on what they did to the Palestinians and secondly, Cairo doesn’t want the seeds of an insurrection on their territory. It’s a sign of how stupid Trump is that he thinks this will work. The same is true for King Abdullah and Jordan.
But it lays the ground work for what he really wants and is sending whack job Mike Huckabee to accomplish, namely annexation of the West Bank.
Professor Bigfoot
@Kay: Will anything get them clicks and eyeballs more or faster than a “quick, decisive war” with noble, iron-jawed all American soldiers demonstrating their obvious superiority on the battlefield?
At least, it’s obvious that’s what they’re thinking.
trollhattan
@Kay: Yeah, Texas energy use is so vast beyond their size and they remain disconnected from the US because Freedom.
Winning.
jimmiraybob
Or, as the Trump/Kushner outfit calls it, prime real estate.
pajaro
I think Trump’s comments about Gaza reflect his sincere and ignorant view of the matter–in other words, I don”t think he’s recommending this course of action because he wants to see Israel settling in Gaza, or because he wants it for Jared’s next development project, although that might be the outcome, of course. What he doesn’t understand quite yet is that his suggestion won’t work, for two small reasons–Gazans won’t leave, and neither Jordan nor Egypt are going to cooperate in the ethnic cleansing of the place.
Kay
@Professor Bigfoot:
The complaint wasn’t about the protestors. It was about “Muslims” in MI.
Telling them over and over “Trump will be worse” means the person saying it does not understand the extent of the catostrophe. There is no “worse” than ethnic ckeansing, war crimes and blocking aid to a million trapped civilians. They’ll look at you like you’re a monster – rightfully so. We’re past “better and worse” on this issue. Treating it like political horse trading means you haven’t grasped the scope.
Another Scott
@Baud: @Kay:
I caught an in-progress NPR top of the news report yesterday where they mentioned the tip taxes and played a clip of Donnie talking about it in his sing-song voice which is a tell (one of many of his). The reporter made the point that (roughly) “of course the President does not set tax rates so it will have to make its way through Congress…” which I thought was good and helpful for the normies.
FWIW.
Best wishes,
Scott.
trollhattan
@Jeffro:
While Gaza remains the shiny bug under the current spotlight, the West Bank may be where the real action is because the settlers there are emboldened now, beyond their fondest dreams. They’re thrilled by Donny’s latest nonsense.
Kay
@trollhattan:
Ideological rigidity, right? Fixing the fucking grid doesn’t even occur to them. Instead they use the only tool they’re permitted to use – tax cuts.
Professor Bigfoot
@Kay: Regardless, I’m not sacrificing my children’s rights for them.
So we are going to suffer, and they voted for us to suffer.
Now THAT’S the way to endear yourself to Black folks in this country.
MrRoivas
@Kay: That number you just cited includes Hama’s fighters. If you consider that sort of a person a civilian, no one can stop you. I decline to join in with that assessment.
trollhattan
@Kay: Will suggest you’re not using your imagination sufficiently. Worse, actual worse, is on the way.
Sister Golden Bear
@BlueGuitarist: Musk’s X obsession (and penchant for weird names for his kids), seems to stem in part from his grandfather’s involvement in an
incipientfascist techno cult.Chris Johnson
@Quinerly: I see Elon has introduced him to the joys of ketamine. This can only end well.
Jackie
@Ocotillo:
That simultaneously pissed me off and broke my heart.
My WWII Army Air Corps dad had nothing but complete admiration for both. But, he was also a bleeding heart life long Democrat.
Kay
@MrRoivas:
It’ll double once foreign media and humanitarian orgs get in. At minimum.
We’re really past the point of “should it be 45k or 55k” now.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Quinerly:
Grew up in a town where we had tumbleweeds all the time. They were so bad one year that my dad flocked one and made it the Xmas tree as sort of an acknowledgment of what a big problem they were that year.
I think you could water one every day and it would still dry up and roll around, but I’ve never tried it. Leave it to the genius of Trump to come up with that one.
LAC
@RepubAnon: Gee, maybe they can have a march and make demands…oh wait…
I cannot with the failure to grasp FAFO.
Geminid
@Miss Bianca: Most of the regional actors like Turkiye, the Gulf States, Jordan and Egypt still advocate for a Palestinian state alongside Israel. That’s still the official position of the EU and its member nations also.
I think thse governments are serious, and the regional actors know the problem fairly well. So I don’t rule it out.
The US, Egypt and Qatar seem to intend the Phase Three of the Gaza ceasefire thst they mediated to be a start down a path towards a Palestinian state. That’s not explicit in the agreement though, probably because neither of the two belligerents, Hamas and Israel, accept the a Two-State resolution to their conflict. Phase Three is described in vaguer terms, as a Sustainable Calm and the beginning of Reconstruction.
Right now, the three mediators are just trying to the parties through the 42-day Phase One and into Phase Two. That’s when arrangements for for security and governance in Gaza going forward into Phase Three are supposed to negotiated.
Trump’s remarks about Gaza would throw a monkey wrench into the whole process if they are taken seriously as an action plan. I don’t think they will be, but I guess we’ll find that out fairly soon.
Starfish (she/her)
@Me: You don’t know any of them so you don’t know their motivation.
MrRoivas
@Kay: Based on what? Vibes?
You had no problems sticking with that exact number when you were claiming them all as civilians. When I pointed out how that’s problematic, now you abandon it?
Curious.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Kay:
When I hear a talking point, I always run a little thought experiment of how I would use that talking point on the doorstep of a voter who I was canvassing. There’s no way I would have the guts to use the “pause” on a doorstep. I think I’d revert to acknowledging that I, too, was disappointed in the Biden Administration but Trump would probably do worse, though I think that’s just a dispiriting message that would probably get me kicked off the doorstep of anyone who had skin in the game.
Kay
@trollhattan:
All I’m saying is before you say “worse” find out what happened. See if you’re still willing to lecture them on “worse”
If I kill your whole family but don’t burn down your house and then someone else burns down your house you’re not grateful to me for leaving your house standing. You’re past making deals or weighing pros and cons. You hate me AND the next guy.
Sister Golden Bear
@@mistermix.bsky.social: Tumbleweeds are an annual plant, consequently it doesn’t matter how much you water them. Dying and then tumbling is how they spread their seeds:
Quinerly
@Chris Johnson:
Laughing emoji.
Sister Golden Bear
@Chris Johnson: Only a matter of time before Musk introduces Trump to all the other many and varied designer drugs he takes.
Adderall abuse, pish… there’s some many more interesting stimulants to abuse.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Sister Golden Bear: Thanks, makes sense.
Trump’s only real experience with horticulture is golf course maintenance so no wonder he’d come up with “just water more”.
Baud
Via Reddit. No one respects Trump.
Starfish (she/her)
@MrRoivas: How many Hamas fighters are there out there? Israel declares every 14 yo who throws a rock at them to be a Hamas fighter.
LAC
@Professor Bigfoot: i know… we are too busy watching our American history be erased to catch strays for people who continue to learn all the wrong lessons from our civil rights movement.
Harrison Wesley
I thought the Church frowned on ambiguous arm movement. What am I missing?
Harrison Wesley
@@mistermix.bsky.social: No, he also believes in composting. Doesn’t he have an ex prepping one of his golf courses?
Starfish (she/her)
@@mistermix.bsky.social: This is a great idea. LA should shut off the water to Trump National Golf Course and save it to fight fires. They really shouldn’t be squandering water on things like golf.
WTFGhost
@@mistermix.bsky.social: the dead tumbleweed will dry up for the same reason callous dries up – there’s no longer a living circulatory system bringing in new water. I imagine they might not spread very far in a wet, rainy environment – just a random guess, but it might soften their structure too much to allow them to roll, or, it might make them too dense to roll. (Note: I *imagined* that! I could be wrong.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumbleweed says that they break off *after* they dry out, so I assume as part of the lifecycle, the plant shuts the door on the little seedling, and tells it to go out and sow some wild oats, but, since it doesn’t *have* any oats….
(Yes, I confess, I went to Wikipedia to see if it could confirm my imagination. Alas, it still says some total effing moron is President, but, hopefully, has caused so much damage by throwing *so* much sand in *so* many gears, people will finally realize they have to *admit* he’s an effing moron. Also, it didn’t say anything about whether tumbleweeds have trouble with wet/damp.)
oldgold
@Sister Golden Bear: Facts! We don’t need no stinkin’ facts!
Quinerly
@@mistermix.bsky.social:
I have 5 exterior doors to my home. I am just one person and obviously don’t use all doors every day, especially the front door on the front porch and 2 other doors. My first Spring here, I took pictures of tumbleweeds that had rolled in a found a home on the front porch next to the door and jammed in at the 2 other doors over the course of 3-4 days. It looked like an invasion of the zombie tumbleweeds….all piled on top of one another knocking on my doors.
Nasty stuff and not fun to wrangle and break down to get them off my property….Trump doesn’t have a clue what tumbleweeds are. He also doesn’t understand that places like Northern NM have been in a drought for 20 plus years. There is no water. People’s wells have dried up and those people have water delivered. (I refused to consider any property on a private well when house hunting in the Fall of 2021. Thankfully, I am on community water. It’s expensive in the Summer if you use over certain amts)
Jackie
@Quinerly:
I live amongst the tumbleweeds, too.. every time I think the FFOTUS has reached maximum stupidity… he pushes the goalposts further away. There is no limits…
Quinerly
@Sister Golden Bear:
Thanks! I was coming back with some links about tumbleweeds. Now I don’t have to.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
And Egypt and Jordon made clear long ago they won’t because xenophobia isn’t just for Americans.
Quinerly
@Starfish (she/her):
I cringe when I drive around AZ and see golf courses. Same here….except the neighborhood with the big golf course here in Santa Fe is in a gated community. Never actually scene it except on line.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Or he is terrified someone might kill him after Butler. After all, the word is Trump eats at McDonald’s because it is harder to poison his food.
Starfish (she/her)
@Quinerly: I don’t know what water rights look like in California, but I always get annoyed when the local university has all this lush green grass in the summer because they have superior water rights to everyone else. It seems like such a waste.
Lily
turns out there are exciting ways to receive millions with no regulatory paperwork required
Quinerly
@Jackie:
They are tough to break down and haul off. Previous owners did nothing beyond the stucco walls here. No maintenance, no cutting/trimming. When I moved in in April, 2022, big wildfires not far from me in Pecos, NM. As a newbie, I became obsessed with removing everything dead on my property.
I will start up this Spring on removing dead vegetation plus tumbleweeds. There’s always something dead to remove and haul away.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Now I know what the blacks mean when they talk about the “Democrat plantation”, another Woke moment in my life….
Quinerly
@Quinerly:
“seen”….geez….back to my book.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Quinerly: Fun factiod, Tumbler Weeds are an invasive species
https://naturecollective.org/plant-guide/details/tumbleweed-non-indigenous/
Baud
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
That’s going to trigger Trump.
WTFGhost
@Kay: What you’re saying makes me wonder if Bibi let the attack happen, to return Trump to power, and let me lay out my reasoning.
First, the political reality is, as long as Israel could claim to be “defending itself” against any legitimate act of aggression, no US politician seeking high office can criticize Israel.
Now, I say “high office” so that I can emphasize that the share of the Muslim and Palestinian-compassionate, will not be enough to overcome the flood of “obsessively/knee jerk pro-Israel.” I don’t like that this is true, but, again, that’s why I could believe in “enemy action” over chance coincidence.
Second: we know Trump laid traps for Biden. If I could write (e.g., journalism), I would have saved the reference where he *said* he did so, but I remember reading it. And we know he kneecapped Afghanistan, leaving too few forces (per expert assessment) for force protection. We know he *would* have given his bestest bud Putin the go-ahead to hit Ukraine.
Third: Israeli aggression would be a complete no-win situation for Democrats. They couldn’t out-cheerlead the Republicans, and they couldn’t risk taking an opposing view, due to my first point above.
Now: I could be completely and 100% wrong, obviously. I’m engaging in baseless speculation that Bibi had some foreknowledge, and some reason to believe the scope was sufficiently small, and, that Bibi wanted Trump back in power enough to let Israelis die.
That said: if you agreed with me, that it’s *just* the thing Netanyahu and Trump would do, then please keep in mind that it really *hurts* to have been in that no-win situation, to feel like nothing I said could matter, and the best that I could do was help Trump – and I didn’t even know what “the best that I could do” would have been!!!
Sometimes, you don’t seem (to me) to be acknowledging that difficulty, that “but we need to win in November!” and… most importantly, November has come and gone, so now, both of us, be we right or wrong, are in a worse, if not the worst, situation.
If there’d been a way for Biden or Harris or the entire Democratic Party to have threaded that needle, we didn’t find it, and that hurts. Sometimes, reading you rubs a bit of salt into that wound. Now, that’s a very specific metaphor, so please understand it.
“Rubbing salt into a wound” was intended to heal, but the patient could be excused for not believing it, especially if the person applying it has never been “under the salt” so to speak.
I’m asking you to understand the salt hurts, and the wounds *are* pretty deep, and maybe there’s a way towards healing with modern wound care. I’m not asking you to quiet down on *anything*, I’m saying there might be a better way. And I might be wrong, there might be no better way. Meh. It happens.
ETA: made a minor change for clarity.
Mike S
@Starfish (she/her): people who don’t understand voting is a binary choice where you sometimes HAVE to vote for the lesser of 2 evils they saddle the people they claim to care about with the greater of 2 evils. We found that out with Bush the lesser and TrumpV1.
Purity has fucked us way too many times for people who are politically aware enough to follow this blog to not understand that.
JoyceH
An unaddressed issue is that Trump is now entirely demented and his staff is either unwilling or unable to control him. He actually signed an executive order directing that mythical valve in No Cal to be turned on to release the water to So Cal. Now, he didn’t type that up and get it in a folder on his own. What are they DOING over there?
Geminid
@Skippy-san: I saw reporting about ten into the war about phone calls Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu made a vouple days in to Joe Biden, French President Macron and British PM Sunak. The story was that Netanyahu asked them to pressure Egyptian President al Sissi into allowing large numbers of Gaza residents to take refuge into Sinai. The three awestern leaders reportedly told the Israeli PM: No way, al Sissi won’t stand for that and neither will we.
None of the four governments confirmed this publically, but little of the diplomacy over this conflict is made public so the story may be true. That sounds like the response the Western leaders would have made; they probably would talked to each other about it because this was a very critical issue at a very critical time.
I don’t know if Trump thought his latest remarks through. I’d be surprised if he did because Trump’s an ignoramus and he’s too lazy and incurious to learn about this conflict.
I wonder what special envoy Steve Witkoff will have to say to his Qatari and Egyptian counterparts about this. The Qataris want to commence negotiations on issues to be decided during Phase Two as soon as possible. They were supposed to start on Day 16 of this phase, but the Qataris are getting antsy about the process and they good reason to be.
Sister Golden Bear
@Baud: He’ll just sign an executive order mandating that tumbleweed have to be straight.
MrRoivas
@Starfish (she/her): More than zero, which would be the necessary amount for the cited 55k civilians figure to be true.
A little less sardonically, consistent reports are around 40k “martial” members of Hamas, with a greater number I don’t have on hand for those like the leaders hanging out in Qatar.
Geminid
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Egypt and Jordan have good reasons to reject this proposal besides xenophobia. Displacing Palestinians into their countries perpetuates a problem that began with a displacement. They want it solved, not perpuated.
Egypt and Jordan are willing to have peaceful relations with the State of Israel in its internationally recognized borders, but they believe the Palestinians living in the West and Gaza have a right to those lands and they won’t go along with pushing the Palestinians out.
Starfish (she/her)
@Mike S: Hey, people need a positive motivation to show up and vote. “Lesser of two evils” is not very motivating. If people do not feel a system doing something for them and if people feel a system is corrupt, why engage with it at all?
Starfish (she/her)
@MrRoivas: Which of the fake doctors was the good guy with a gun here?
Gloria DryGarden
@Quinerly: it makes quite a scene, these golf courses in arid lands. So nice to golf where it’s sunny and doesn’t rain much.
too bad grass grows in places with 30-50” rain..
NutmegAgain
Regarding AfD (Alternativ für Deutschland), I’ll just chip in that my daughter, who has lived in Germany for more than a decade, said that her work colleagues–all pretty much progressives in US terms– think they are working on a strategy of building wedges & inroads into the general voting pop. They don’t expect AfD to be part of the next ruling coalition necessarily, but the one after? Oh hell yes. So that’s pretty very completely appalling.
Also she said that Merz, the candidate for Chancellor from CDU is horrible. CDU=Christian Democratic Union, is a right of center party, maybe comparable to an entire Dem party of Manchins.
MrRoivas
@Starfish (she/her): Your response has no relation to mine. You asked a question, I answered. One I assumed was asked in good faith.
Won’t make that mistake again.
Geminid
@Quinerly: I don’t know if you read Louis L’Amour westerns. Quite a few are set in the Soutwest and in particular Territorial New Mexico, where various Sackett brothers came to live.
Anyway, Conager features a woman who attaches poems to tumbleweeds. She’s living alone in an isolated cabin with two young children. Their father– her husband– left to buy cattle and unbeknownst to her was killed in a riding accident. So she starts writing Emily Dickenson-type poems and distributes them via tumbleweeds.
Professor Bigfoot
Would you care to clarify your comments, sir?
kindness
I read that tumbleweeds are native to the Steppes of Russia. I have to wonder what Einstein brought them over here?
Gretchen
@Jackie: I read that the Tuskegee Airmen weren’t actually mentioned in the order. Those in charge just assumed they were included as DEI and cut it themselves. Another example of obeying in advance.
strange visitor (from another planet)
@Starfish (she/her): i mean, go try that with NYPD. go throw rocks at the goddamned cops. see what happens.
…i’ll wait.
Miss Bianca
@Kay: US policy towards the IP conflict appears to have been fucked from the get-go. The only way to unfuck it would be to act as if Palestinian concerns actually mattered, I agree.
I’m just surprised when I start reading the history of the situation that basically the *whole world* turned a blind eye to the ethnic cleansing Israel was conducting. It wasn’t just us. Until fairly recently, nobody except the Palestinians themselves gave enough of a shit about what was happening to them to do anything about it. Tragic. Stomach-turning.
Gretchen
@WTFGhost: That’s an interesting hypotheses, and you may be right. I remember that at the time of the attack border guards were sounding the alarm that they were seeing unusual activity, and complained that they were ignored (possibly because they were mostly women). Which raised the possibility that authorities knew about the possibility of attack and chose to ignore it.
And it was obvious that Bibi wanted Trump back in office, that Trump promised to let Bibi do whatever he wanted, and that Bibi delayed ceasefire to help Trump.
We can agree that what happened in Gaza was horrible, that we wish Biden had done more and sooner to stop or mitigate it, and that Trump is exponentially worse. And while I have sympathy for people who didn’t support Biden because of what happened there, they weren’t thinking clearly about THEIR OWN INTERESTS, because the Trump/Netanyahu alliance cares nothing for the Palestinians beyond getting them out of the way. They want the whole Gaza Strip for settlers, and this whole thing was in aid of that.
Miss Bianca
@Baud: Maybe it’s foreign countries that are going to teach us how to fight back.
New Deal democrat
@kindness:
in the late 1800s, the Tsar broke a long-standing agreement with Germans who were enticed into settling the Volga region, that they could not be drafted into military service. Many responded by emigrating to the US. In the Volga region, they had farmed cold hardy wheat. They brought seeds of that wheat over with them when they settled the Great Plains – and accidentally mixed in were seeds of Russian thistle.
Citizen Alan
@Jeffro: it’s not even a James Bond villain. More like a particularly unfunny Austin Powers villain.
Geminid
@Gretchen: This version of the border observer story is not exactly factual. It’s true they had been warning of unusual activities for some weeks before the attacks, but were not taken as seriously as they should have been
But their reports when the attack began at 6:30 a.m. October 7 were not ignored. They couldn’t be ignored. Hamas had mounted simultaneous attacks by 2500 fighters at every border crossing and in between, and within minutes launched a barrage of 200 rockets and then kept firing. There was no doubt that Southern Israel was under attack.
Geminid
@New Deal democrat: Accordianist and band leader Lawrence Welk came from a Volga Deutsch family. So did Senator Tom Daschle and singer Bob Denver.
Princess
@Sister Golden Bear: At least someone in here knows how tumbleweeds work.
ToocanAnj
@New Deal democrat: my father’s people, maternal and paternal, were Volga Germans. I knew about bringing wheat seed I didn’t know about the thistle that contaminated it.
Mike S
@Starfish (she/her): aand here we are with a guy who will happily fuck us over while shitting on that purity.
brantl
@different-church-lady:
That’s the universe where there’s nothing but supervillains, right?
Incompetent supervillains, yes.
brantl
@Jeffro: The Danes aren’t nearly that stupid.
Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog
@Geminid: As a kid I read a few L’Amour westerns. By teenagerhood, I’d decided that was already a few too many for an ideal arrangement of the Dog mental universe. But casting poetry to the winds? distributing it randomly on the thorny wings of tumbleweeds? I may have been too hasty. Hell, teenagerhood — of course I was hasty. Maybe I should revisit him, from Way Out Here in northwest Decrepitude.