Hillary Clinton wrote a guest essay for the New York Times that addresses the Trump team’s Signal chat buffoonery. The title: “This Is Just Dumb.” Here’s a gift link if you want to read the whole thing, which I definitely recommend.
Clinton, who is more entitled than anyone else on the planet to be heard on the issue of document security in the “paper of record,” briefly touches on the hypocrisy of Trump’s actions and danger he and his grossly unqualified sycophants pose to the nation. She discusses the squandering of hard and soft power, etc.
Here’s an excerpt:
All of this is both dumb and dangerous. And I haven’t even gotten to the damage Mr. Trump is doing by cozying up to dictators like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, blowing up our alliances — force multipliers that extend our reach and share our burdens — and trashing our moral influence by undermining the rule of law at home. Or how he’s tanking our economy and blowing up our national debt…
If there’s a grand strategy at work here, I don’t know what it is. Maybe Mr. Trump wants to return to 19th-century spheres of influence. Maybe he’s just driven by personal grudges and is in way over his head. As a businessman, he bankrupted his Atlantic City casinos. Now he’s gambling with the national security of the United States. If this continues, a group chat foul will be the least of our concerns, and all the fist and flag emojis in the world won’t save us.
Hillary Clinton: right again.
Here’s another woman who is 100% correct: Rep. Melanie Stansbury of NM 1st. In this TikTok (which I hope I can embed here), she provides an excellent summary of the scam Elon Musk is running to funnel billions of our tax dollars into his pockets.
@repstansbury Folks, this is a scam. The GOP is helping Elon Musk and his friends loot the federal government and give themselves billions in federal contracts—and then wants to give them permanent tax breaks on the back end by cutting critical programs. So, let’s call it what it is: a scam on the American people. We are fighting back! #melaniestansbury #repstansbury #congress #119thcongress #houseofrepresentatives #nm #nmtrue #doge #elonmusk #trump #donaldtrump #socialsecurity #medicare #medicaid #trumpadministration ♬ original sound – Rep. Melanie Stansbury
I plan to have this queued up on my phone at the Tesla Takedown protest this weekend in case we encounter any Musk defenders who are still laboring under the delusion that the grotesquely corrupt oligarch is “volunteering” to “reform” the federal government out of concern for the welfare of our republic. Not that they’d be willing to listen.
Open thread.
On The Road – ema – 2025 NYBG Orchid Show – Mexican Modernism
Doug
Alien is a movie in which nobody listens to the smart woman with experience, and they all die except the smart woman and her cat.
Baud
Smart ladies.
Chief Oshkosh
That’s great for Sec. Clinton. I’m glad she’s trying. Now maybe she can broker a deal to have Obama and Shrub standing at Bill’s bedside, all 3 of them speaking as one against Trump. She’d have to be the organizer — you know, women getting shit done! :)
sentient ai from the future
If starlink is the communications method used by FAA that gives anyone with the ability to jam that link an easy way to do a denial of service attack on the entire flight infrastructure.
And then who is to blame for the catastrophe that produces?
Betty Cracker
@Chief Oshkosh: Is Bill Clinton ill? Hadn’t heard any news about his health lately.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Doesn’t look like it.
Soprano2
@Doug: I’ve been saying these days that I feel like Cassandra, because when I say some of these things out loud people think it’s alarmist. Even when you describe what’s actually happening!
oldgold
Speaking of Musk, on Sunday night he is holding a rally in Wisconsin. To enter you are required to have voted in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election. At the rally, Musk will give 2 attendees each a check for $1 million.
Is this legal? Should it be? And, will it in the end be counterproductive?
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
Professor Bigfoot
@Soprano2: I feel like the one-eyed man in the land of the blind.
And with every headline, every revelation, I mutter, “stupid ofay motherfuckers,” because we wouldn’t be in this pit of shit if not for stupid ofay motherfuckers.
Jeffro
Impressed as heck as always by Clinton.
Stansbury’s great as well…fired up and focused on all the right things
French Onion Soup
While it has nothing to do with the email bullshit she should not have gotten involved. There’s a reason Kerry, Gore, and all went away. You can only do damage. She just dealt damage. I get it’s good for her and her crowd but those are now votes lost yet again. This was a fuck up. It can only get worse.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Baud
@French Onion Soup:
I’m with her.
Jeffro
@oldgold: it’s probably counterproductive – Musk appears to be a millstone around the GOP’s neck (and he certainly fires up our voters)
Regardless, his ability to drop 8-digit checks into statewide races across the country is obscene. No one should be able to fund races outside of their state of residence (except, of course, presidential campaigns)
Baud
@Jeffro:
It worked last year. Doesn’t mean it’ll still work, but I understand why they’re going to keep trying it.
Betty Cracker
@sentient ai from the future: Good question. Here’s another: what if Musk decides to pull the plug on a personal whim, like when he geofenced Ukraine’s usage of Starlink because, according to him, he was personally worried about the war getting out of hand?
All the more reason to nationalize Starlink if we’re able to dislodge the oligarchs from our government at some future date. In the name of national sovereignty.
French Onion Soup
@Baud:
And there go a thousand more votes. Keep it up buttercup. There’s a reason most Democrats bolt after losing. But not her. She’s not helping. If you want to win, you win. If you want to win your way you lose. You have just chosen to lose.
I don’t like it anymore than you do but it’s the world we live in.
Baud
@French Onion Soup:
Enjoy your fascism. We don’t abandon our allies to chase quislings.
alquitti
Let him be stupid. Let him be stupider every day, so by the midterms everybody hates him and his party. Thank god for stupidity.
zhena gogolia
@French Onion Soup: Oh, yes, I’m sure there are all sorts of people who were just dying to jump on board with us who now won’t because Hillary Clinton wrote an op-ed.
Betty Cracker
@French Onion Soup: So you’re saying Clinton publishing an essay in the Times will drive away persuadable voters? I think that’s bullshit.
ETA:
@French Onion Soup:
Oh, and now BAUD has cost another thousand votes? Thanks for confirming my original conclusion, which is that it’s bullshit.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I don’t know. I really hate the NYT. This could make me rethink the value of democracy.
Jackie
@oldgold:
Does it stipulate who one voted for? And, if so, how would Muskrat know?
Yes, it’s probably illegal.
Sanjeevs
https://www.ft.com/content/bc59392e-ac59-47cf-9685-dbb79da55c6b
Milton was the guy who faked a video of his electric truck, which didn’t work, by rolling it down a hill.
His company was worth 30 billion at one point .
eclare
Melanie is good. Impressive.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I see Trump is “warning” US automakers not to raise their prices because of the tariffs. Sure, Trumpy. They’re just going to suck that 25% up.
Professor Bigfoot
Deleted, because I’m already on thin ice here, talking about white people like that.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: That one is an example of what I constantly bitch about here– how white people will shake hands over the bodies of those of us who are not straight white and Christian, and move on.
Folks don’t want to acknowledge this, but it’s been true at least since 1877.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
To be fair, that … isn’t an unreasonable take, judging by my presidential runs.
French Onion Soup
HRC is toxic and unlike Kerry or Gore refused to go away. She’s now taking her toxic self to the toxic NYT. YOU DON’T GET THE FUCKING ISSUE WITH THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You can’t object to the NYT for it’s issues and yet cheer on HRC. You don’t get to do that. Even non voters see through that. It’s such bullshit. So yeah, bring on Vance 2028 you all can’t stop your fucking selves from this white middle class circle jerk.
Deputinize America
@oldgold:
In the afterglow of the coming revolution, as Musk is in the first wave of retributive justice, as he steps up on the gibbet, I hope someone says “we’ve decided to reprieve you since you’re so visionary” just to coax a last smile out of him, and then wipes it off by saying “nah, we were just fucking with you – here’s the rope, no hood because everybody wants to see your expression at the snap”.
God, I hate his fucking smile and would love to see it smashed by a baseball bat.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
It’s the type of abuser logic that’s Trump glorifies, that’s says that we’re responsible for the bad acts of other people.
Professor Bigfoot
@French Onion Soup: Everyone who isn’t a straight white Christian man is “electorally toxic” to straight white Christian men.
You identify yourself.
Soprano2
@Sanjeevs: He only pardons the worst people.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: “They’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”
French Onion Soup
@Professor Bigfoot:
I ain’t a white christian you jackass. Nor am I straight. Though I did marry a woman.
Kerry, and Gore were white Christian men who had the good sense not to make shit worse. But HRC, oh she gets a pass on constantly making things worse. That says EVERYTHING about here.
Professor Bigfoot
@French Onion Soup: SO you’re just a fucking asshole who THINKS like a white man.
Whatever.
You throw other folks rights under the bus, eventually yours will join them, asshole.
Soprano2
@French Onion Soup: Hillary also won a lot of things, too. Perhaps to you Hillary Clinton is toxic (what, does she remind you of your mother-in-law?), but the people who hate her already don’t vote for Democrats and never have. To the young people she’s ancient history, they aren’t going to change their votes because she still expresses opinions publicly. You’re projecting your dislike onto the whole electorate, and imagining that they all feel the way you do.
Baud
@French Onion Soup:
Yep, it speaks to our moral rectitude. I’m proud of us.
Soprano2
@Professor Bigfoot: That’s what it’s hard to get people to understand, even though they know the Niemoller quote they never think it will apply to them. Do they think this deportation because you said something the FFOTUS administration didn’t like is going to stop with foreign students? It will not.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: People who don’t get Pastor Niemöller’s poem are everywhere.
lowtechcyclist
@Professor Bigfoot:
Could you explain exactly what the example is? (Is what Hillary said the example, or is French Onion Soup the example? I’m confused even on that.)
And I don’t see how either one is an example of white people shaking hands over the bodies of people who aren’t straight white Christians. I just don’t get it. I’m not agreeing or disagreeing, I just don’t understand well enough to do either.
ETA: Nevermind, the dialogue between you and Soup while I was writing my comment clarified things sufficiently.
Professor Bigfoot
@Soprano2: Honestly, I believe it’s why Jews and Black folks have been friends and allies in this country for the last century: we understand way down deep in our bones that ain’t nobody free until everybody is free.
Professor Bigfoot
@lowtechcyclist: 1877. Reconstruction which was intended to integrate the freed formerly Enslaved into American society was fought with fire and terror by the former Confederates (who formed the KKK and the White Citizens Councils, among others).
In 1877 the Feds gave up trying to stop those Confederates, and the result was Jim Crow– and white people were just perfectly fine with that.
I see this repeating– in the small ways so far, but eventually we will get to that point if they are allowed to.
Betty Cracker
You’d think the overnight threads would be those most likely to go off the rails, populated as they’d tend to be by insomniacs and the tipsy or hungover. But for some reason, on this blog, it’s the morning threads.
Of course, that could be just my East Coast USA chauvinism talking. But it’s definitely a pattern that seems independent of time zones. Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways.
schrodingers_cat
@Professor Bigfoot: This recent immigrant gets it too.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Nominated.
lowtechcyclist
@Professor Bigfoot:
Even while it’s happening again right here and now, out in the open.
Professor Bigfoot
@Betty Cracker: But are we quite off the rails yet? I mean, we’ve entered the curve, the wheels on the inside of the curve are chattering… but we’re still going!! <snicker>
I KEED I KEED (except I agree with you entirely about AL, blessings upon her- and you too!)
cmorenc
@Dorothy A. Winsor: The soon-forthcoming big price increase of new cars due to tariffs will be a blaring foghorn to the electorate that Trump is making prominently important components of their lives substantially more expensive. This will extend to purportedly domestic US brands because so many critical components are made in Canada, and subjected to tariffs on Canadian goods. For the same reason, even routine repairs and maintenance will get more expensive,
The cumulative weight of the swaggering, blundering, malicious stupidity of this Administration is beginning to impact ordinary Americans in ways only the hard-core MAGA can rationalize, gaslight, and deny away – voters’ wallets are one thing Trump win’t be able to gaslight.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
We’re old and need our sleep.
Cheryl from Maryland
I and a friend subscribed to this year’s Kennedy Center ballet series. Went last night to see a piece choreographed by Twyla Tharp. My friend told me ticket prices had been slashed. The place was half empty as opposed to previous visits, quiet, no energy, and sad.
Professor Bigfoot
@schrodingers_cat: Absolutely. Our nazis are using immigrants as their stalking horse– they’re the FIRST, but they will not be the last if we cannot stop them.
brendancalling
I’ m surprised the FTNYT published that column, given that she put dildoes on the Christmas tree, is a closet lesbian, killed Vince Foster, she’s a hawk while T34FG is a dove, and of course the butter-emails.
I know, because the FTNYT told me so.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Baud: I keep saying, you’ll never get anywhere until you’ve got the endorsement of the Meadow Party. They’ve actually run pants-less candidates.
Soprano2
@lowtechcyclist: Right now those people are telling themselves it will only be those troublemaking foreign students who are deported, the people they know who are good immigrants won’t be touched. No matter how many times it’s demonstrated that these things always expand if you let them, people are in denial about it ever affecting them.
UncleEbeneezer
@Professor Bigfoot: Yup. Trump made it crystal fucking clear that he was gonna do this shit if he got back in office. Much of it was literally written down in Project 2025. There were two people in the world who could prevent it (Biden and Kamala) and we all had agency in helping make that happen. Some of us tried to raise the alarm that evil shit like deportation of protestors was absolutely gonna happen if we didn’t get a Dem in the Oval Office. But too many people didn’t take it seriously when it really mattered and are now outraged to find out that yes, those Leopards will eat the faces they promised to eat and no, BothSides are not the same. The biggest tragedy of all is that so much of this could’ve been avoided if we could’ve just gotten Harris (and Hillary) over the finish line like they both deserved.
lowtechcyclist
@French Onion Soup:
Look, the RW media machine has a tremendous ability to make someone toxic, and of course they’ve done that with our Presidential candidates of either sex.
So we should just accept the results of their mudslinging, and try to keep them out of public life forever?
Yeah, let’s find one more way to roll over and play dead. I don’t think so.
Because they’re not going to stop trying to make our people toxic. Whoever becomes an effective Dem spokesperson is going to be on the receiving end. AOC. Jasmine Crockett. Etc.
This isn’t even taking a knife to a gunfight, you’re telling us to take a white flag to a gunfight. Fuck that.
Stevarino
she went the “dummy” route on purpose. He absolutely hates being called stupid.
Betty Cracker
@Soprano2: Saw a clip of Marco Rubio talking to the press yesterday, and he basically said if people here legally with a visa or green card or whatever say something the Trump regime doesn’t like, they can be accosted on the street, bundled off to some hellhole detention center in Louisiana and then deported.
I don’t think the implications of this have sunk in for a lot of people. The student from Turkey who was kidnapped in Massachusetts was guilty only of writing an essay in the school paper. I read the essay. I guess it could be considered shrill? But it wasn’t anything egregious.
The enfeebled orange shitbag is always ranting about taking over Greenland and Canada these days, so I guess a Canadian tourist at Disney World (if that’s even a thing anymore — another issue!) could be scooped up and deported for saying they didn’t want to be the 51st state?
They’ll get around to citizens too, eventually. There’s a whole-ass FBI task force now to investigate speech about Tesla.
Ohio Mom
If you read the comment threads on the NYT articles and columns (when they include a chance to comment), the readers are generally ahead of the writers. They kept running columns asking “Are we nearing a Constitutional crisis?” and their readers answer, “We are already there!”
I haven’t read Hillary’s piece yet, if it allows comments I expect them to be in complete agreement, along with a few “I am proud to have voted for you.”
sentient ai from the future
@French Onion Soup: don’t you have some reddit subs to troll?
So for the sake of argument, lets say that you, and you alone, finally cause the scales to fall from our eyes and convince us of the malignance of HRC.
What then? What actions steps follow from that? What groups does that allow us to make common cause with that wouldn’t have been possible before?
Humor me.
kalakal
@Betty Cracker:
I blame Big Legwear
Ohio Mom
@Betty Cracker: I always thought our right to free speech was a given. Most of the time, our speech seems to have little impact. For instance, did the Occupy movement materially change anything?
In my more cynical moments I assumed such efforts were allowed as a way to allow us plebes a way to let off steam. We could protest late stage capitalism all we wanted, it wasn’t going to be derailed.
But now? I don’t think that is going to be true going forward. Then we have to ask, where goes all that unreleased steam go?
Jim Appleton
@French Onion Soup: mmm. Pie.
Professor Bigfoot
Pastor Niemöller had something to say about this… too bad so many conservative voters are utterly ignorant of history.
Professor Bigfoot
@kalakal: BOYCOTT!!
WaterGirl
@Baud: Added!
narya
So I watched Maddow’s interview with the guy who flipped that BigR PA Senate seat, and what he said was chilling: the folks who voted for him are fine with what the Rs are doing, they just don’t like the methods. That fucking wastefraudabuse bullshit is the latest incantation that becomes “truth,” even when it is absolutely NOT true. Sorry; kind of glum today, because even if we manage to stave off some catastrophe and win the midterms, there’s going to be the expectation that now the Ds will automagically fix everything so those bozos can go back to voting for Rs–after all, the Rs are the RESPONSIBLE party (if by “responsible” you mean “responsible for hurting the people I don’t like”). As Professor B reminds us, it’s white supremacy all the way down.
prostratedragon
From Columbia Spectator, more squandering of soft power:
“The Fight for Funding: How Federal Cuts Are Reshaping Research at Columbia”
tam1MI
Calm down, Frenchy. Nobody reads the New York Times.
Hildebrand
@French Onion Soup: John Kerry didn’t really go away did he? I mean, I seem to remember him as Secretary of State during Obama II, and as the climate head under Biden.
Was that not him? Did I miss something? Was that a pod person? Perhaps a replicant?
Jeez, I guess I really wasn’t paying attention.
Paul W.
Good for Hillary! I’m proud of her as one of the few former Dem presidential candidates (and actual presidents) speaking up in the face of all of the Trump shit.
I think its time for Obama and Kamala to also start voicing in on things, I saw via NBC that the Smithsonian is now going to start attacking the National Museum of African American History and Culture which is just…. I can’t explain how angry it makes me if this goes unnoticed by our media overlords. This shit is as racist, as Nazi as you can get to erase any people’s participation in our nation’s history – especially given that theirs is already one of incredible tragedy and erasure.
My wife and I are taking out 2 year old to her first protest for April 5th, I can’t wait!
Soprano2
That’s where I think they want to take it if the courts will let them. They’re finding all these odd loopholes to try to make things legal that have never been recognized as legal before.
Ruviana
@kalakal: Upvote for Big Legwear!
Paul W.
@French Onion Soup: what is this? Are you on the right blog?
You seem to think this kind of attitude has any place here, and I think you’re wrong. I hope you get banned if this is the attitude you plan to bring here every day.
Stevarino
@Betty Cracker: the impact is setting in big time up here in Boston.
Belafon
@Professor Bigfoot: Unless you were using my name explicitly, I would probably agree with what you say about white people, especiallywhite men. If you use my name explicity, I will probably agree with what you say as well.
pluky
@Cheryl from Maryland: And this was for Twyla (f-ing) Tharp, as good as it gets to modern dance royalty!! The FO vibe is strong here.
oldgold
@Betty Cracker:”They’ll get around to citizens too, eventually.”
Has anyone edited and/or withdrawn a comment here out of concern that it could be used at some future time against them?
RaflW
He IS just driven by personal grudges and is in way over his head.
He also has the worst possible advisors, his brain is swiss cheese and rotting fast, and even when he wasn’t so cognitively disabled, he had no attention to detail.
Temperamentally, morally and mentally, he is absolutely unfit. But baring a direct, major hit inside the US (which we probably won’t see coming if such a nightmare were to come to pass) I don’t see impeachment and conviction happening.
So we have to capitalize as best we can on his many weaknesses, and make a lot of hay over his overreaches. I think the economy is going to crater, which I will not enjoy at all but may be the one thing that can really dent him.
As was discussed yesterday, Florida might take one of the biggest hits, given that Canadians and Europeans are probably all giving Disney and the FL beaches a hard pass this year, and next winter’s Canadian snowbirds might be looking at selling their places this year (the 30 day registration rule didn’t likely have much fallout for the season just ending).
Belafon
@Soprano2: Especially since the administration has already talked about sending dangerous US citizens (hmmm, who gets to decide what is dangerous?) to El Slavador.
Baud
@oldgold:
You mean other than nasty comments about Cole?
Mr. Bemused Senior
Happy Friday.
Nor have I. I will look for it elsewhere than the FTFNYT. I expect I’ll have the same reaction.
sentient ai from the future
@prostratedragon: I’m so old I remember how science didn’t really recover for a while from “the sequester”
RaflW
@Chief Oshkosh: GW Bush is a p.o.s., has always been a p.o.s., and will never do a god dammed thing to try to curb Trump or offer any correctives to the GOP.
He’s utterly without merit or redemption. And if the 1% chance that I’m proven wrong happens, I’ll just be a pundit and ignore my own error.
Elizabelle
The top rated NY Times reader comments on Secretary Clinton’s op ed:
Professor Bigfoot
@Soprano2: The mechanisms developed to “deal with” one hated minority will be used on other hated minorities… and ultimately will be used against the ones who developed them in the first place.
Maximilien Robespierre comes directly to mind.
Baud
Omnes Omnibus
@oldgold: I once said something nice about Steve in the WTF and then emailed WaterGirl to see if I could get it deleted. Does that count?
Professor Bigfoot
@Belafon: “We are only rational to assume white supremacist motivations on the part of straight white Christian men, until demonstrated otherwise.”
Which, I believe, you’ve done.
Elizabelle
In Hillary’s op ed, the word “dumb” appears 8 times. Stupid, twice. Dangerous, three times.
That must be some kind of record. Of course, she is aiming her words at a historically dumb “president” and a spineless Republican congress.
FWIW, the words “coward” and “courage” never appear.
“Intelligence” appears once, as a descriptive for agencies.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Omnes Omnibus: I once thought I had made a mistake, but I was mistaken.
UncleEbeneezer
@narya: The whole “govt waste” bullshit has always been just a less obvious way to push for keeping those people in their place. And it really gained popularity in the brief time when Americans decided they weren’t cool with overt racism. It became the default right-wing justification during the massive resistance to Civil Rights, Brown vs BOE etc. And it’s definitely dogma among Independents/Libertarians and sadly even among some on our side.
karen gail
@Professor Bigfoot: I disagree, it has been true since the first European set foot on this land and declared it “Mine!” probably somewhere around 1500’s or earlier.
Not the Vikings since what has been found in settlements was they didn’t fight with existing people already here. Nor whom ever it was that managed to trade with Natives so that items only found in Americas ended up in ruins of Egypt.
RaflW
@Jackie: Didn’t he hand pick the previous winners of big checks? And was there a shred of evidence that the checks were real and cleared for the funds?
I think it is 100% bullshit. Gameshow scandal on steroids. I get that this is happening last minute and WI A.G. Josh Kaul getting this stopped asap would be both-sidesed to death, but I’d love it if he’d try to press charges after April 1st.
Stevarino
@Betty Cracker: it is a huge loophole for students on Visas where there is a complete lack of due process. If there is ever a chance there needs to be legislation cleaning this up, otherwise it is the potential end of our Unis.
Geminid
@Baud: I saw a Reuters report that Rubio said upwards of 300 student visas have been cancelled, so this likely is just the beginning. There are a couple of outfits that have been identifying Gaza protesters from foreign countries for over a year now, and evidently the State Department is working from their lists.
Elizabelle
Another excerpt from Hillary’s op ed:
lowtechcyclist
I’m tempted to go into DC and hand out free bananas in front of the White House, to ‘celebrate’ our new national identity as a banana republic.
Lyrebird
@Stevarino: Good! I will be traveling to Boston soon, maybe I can join a protest there!
iirc the Boston-area mosque (beg pardon if I have the wrong term for the congregation) that has been a leader in interfaith work for decades is largely Turkish-American.
I mean, people should be BIG MAD anyhow, bc rebuilding a Gestapo if fking NOT OKAY, but I am just saying I hope that everyone turns out for Ms. Ozturk, and there should be lots of motivated people with organizing chops around there…
Betty Cracker
@oldgold: Not that I know of, but I’m so paranoid I have thought through the implications of that scenario. I suspect the reason Musk and his kinderchuds are hoovering up our personal, financial and medical data from the government is so they can merge it with social data to build a micro-targeting apparatus they can use to persecute enemies.
Like all authoritarians, they want people to keep their heads down, focus on their personal sphere and be afraid to speak up in public. It’s like Stasi, only supercharged with digital surveillance powers that authoritarian regime could only dream of.
Well, fuck that noise, I say. I’m not shutting up voluntarily — they’ll have to make me. I’m getting old, and I’m already sick, so I’ll be goddamned if I’ll obey these fascist pricks in advance. Like the gun nuts say, come and take it! Come and take my fucking phone or laptop. I’ll pelt anyone who tries with live alligators. ;-)
JB
Trump is doing a “bust out” on Ukraine – just like Tony Soprano
jonas
@Elizabelle: I think it was carefully calculated to sting the right, very narcissistic insecure, people, in the right place the right way. Kind of like how the Lincoln Project would run scathing ads on the local NJ Fox affiliate when they knew a certain VIP would be staying at Bedminster.
But her point stands. These aren’t very bright people and things are getting out of hand.
lowtechcyclist
@UncleEbeneezer:
As Lee Atwater (in)famously said:
RaflW
@Professor Bigfoot: Too bad so many conservative voters are utterly ignorant that the constitution does not distinguish between citizens and non citizens for 1A rights.
Deporting someone who is here without proper status is one thing (though abducting them and flying them to El Salvador is, even in the case of being undocumented, likely a violation of due process), but residents here on valid visas are not exempt from basic Bill of Rights protections.
This is a test to see if the public will fight on the basis of 1A. If we don’t, then there will be ratchet-steps. I’d not put it past Rubio + Trump to next seek to revoke the naturalization of certain ‘undesireables’. Will the public rise up then? And so on.
(I don’t think it is too late. But the time is now to fight this!)
Professor Bigfoot
@lowtechcyclist: The circle of “those people” has grown wider, though, hasn’t it?
Ain’t nobody free ‘til everybody is free.
(PS- anyone else vaguely remember a time when someone left the italics tag open and it blew up the blog? I’ve always been careful to make sure to close mine since then)
Raoul Paste
@Betty Cracker: Trained alligators?
Now it’s sounding like a Bond movie
rebelsdad
@French Onion Soup: Nobody under the age of 60 gives a high-flying fuck about the bs surrounding the Clintons. We cut our teeth in the 1990s and we left all that trauma in the 20th century. We don’t have a hate-on for them like the Boomers do. As much I personally as detest Bill Clinton for policy reasons, I am certainly not going to tell him or HRC or anyone else to go STFU. This is an all-hands-on-deck situation.
brendancalling
@Baud: Is this French Onion soup person a regular here? I comment daily and I do not recognize that nym.
Concern trolling? Because that whole “yOuR gOnNa LOsE aLl YoUr’E vOtErS” shit doesn’t impress me
Professor Bigfoot
@RaflW: I’m not sure even public pressure means anything to them. They are firmly in control of the “power ministries”— DOJ, FBI, ICE, and DOD, the “men with guns”— and are already telling judges to pound sand.
But then, what else do we have?
Edited because my own grammar mistakes were hurting my eyes.
Omnes Omnibus
Can we get some ‘nym policing here? It is extremely problematic that commenters are ruining the name of a very good lunch food. I SHALL EMAIL COLE!!!!!
brendancalling
@Professor Bigfoot: DON’T FEED THE TROLL.
Mods, I think we need a cleanup in aisle 3…0
scav
@Professor Bigfoot: If I remember correctly, many unclosed tags could break the blog that one fine season. Comments could end up being about one letter wide and going on
f
o
r
e
v
e
r
as well as inevitably being in italics.
Ksmiami
@Deputinize America: yep. First against the wall.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Omnes Omnibus: [in the voice of Neddie Seagoon] I shall write to the Times about this!
Betty Cracker
@brendancalling: They’ve commented here before. IIRC, they shared some interesting ideas in the recent past. I think this is a simple case of their being wrong on the internet today, and who among us, etc.? I know I have no standing to cast stones on that score. ;-)
Elizabelle
@jonas: Things are getting out of hand.
The doofuses and thieves are doing incalculable damage. Rapidly.
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker: Yeah. I think so too.
In the meantime, thinking about onion quiche. Yum.
Professor Bigfoot
@brendancalling: It truly bugs the living shit out of me when people who are ostensibly part of one of the marginalized communities targeted by straight white male supremacy, refuse to truly make common cause against our common enemy.
But then, the phenomenon of “digital blackface” is a real thing; and I don’t doubt there’s a “digital gayface” and a “digital Jewishface” “digital womanface,” too. <sigh>
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@narya:
Exactly. He’s not saying anything new either. Bloggers like Driftglass have been pounding this for years. Trump isn’t the reason, he’s the culmination.
Sometime during his first campaign, we discussed how he differed from Kasich in OH. And the only thing that differed then were methods and tone.
It’s why I fall back on the Gilliard Doctrine, we’re not here to debate them, we’re here to stop them. And if we co-opt their vote from time to time like this time around, bonus. But nobody should expect the attitudes expressed in the Maddow interview to change.
WTFGhost
@Betty Cracker: Well, you have to understand, to the RPUSA, America is not an *idea*. It’s like… well, it’s all controlled by the President, see? And he gets to cut it up as he likes, so long as it’s overwhelmingly to white men and Good, Non-Uppity, minorities.
If he doesn’t think we need to worry our pretty little heads about people being disappeared, or even murdered, by the state, why should we? Don’t we realize how lucky we were, not to have been murdered by the state, or had our social security checks stopped, or had a massive IRS audit that makes no sense because you filed 1040EZ for the past ten years, and and and?
After all, he has this massive mandate (like with the “weave,” his team insists “madate” is “Mandrake” and showed him a Mandrake root with a growth that resembled a large penis. “Why don’t you make like the ‘weave’, and get out of here!” he says, smugly, knowing he sounds like Biff, who got rich through cheating, in Back To The Future).
And he has judges that could be impeached, removed, and replaced; they should realize that!
I think this is one of those times where the NYT will say “wow, we really messed up in helping the US fall into a fascist regime consumed with conquest! We won’t trust the Republican Party ever again, we’ll only trust the Grand Old Confederates party, which is new, wanting to Make America Great Again.”
rebelsdad
@Betty Cracker: Did you ever know that you’re my heeeeeeroooo?
dc
Yet another treasure the Dems have in the house, yay, Melanie Stansbury, we need more like her all over and everywhere.
dc
@French Onion Soup:
You are wrong.
Josie
I just read that Dear Leader has filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court that asks them for ability to use the Alien Enemies Act to deport people. He wants them to overturn Judge Boasberg’s order.
Deputinize America
@Soprano2:
I fully expect him to try to deport Obama, as well as ordinary white folks who protest. The giggling sycophants that surround Trump are capable of convincing him that people without passports or Real IDs in possession at all times can be presumed foreign and quickly deported. Also, if they’re “lost” when seized from people arrested on tissue-thin excuses, well, mistakes happen. A little extra money from government coffers to that monster in El Salvador will overcome his scruples.
As for Obama, Trump has never believed his birth certificate.
RaflW
@Elizabelle: HRC “As one former senior spy put it, ‘We’re shooting ourselves in the head, not the foot.’ Not smart.”
We haven’t officially been thrown out of Five Eyes so far, but I would not be at all surprised if we some day learn that Canada, Australia and/or New Zealand may already be editing or eliding certain content that was previously shared. (I skip over the UK for now because I’m less confident that they’re quite as bought in on the special relationship being truly over. Just my cheap opinion, that.)
Why risk sources & methods with as unreliable a ‘partner’ as the US now?
As The Independent says about the Admin’s cavalier unsecure attitude (and risk to Five Eyes):
“Using a commercial messaging system rather than a government-encrypted communications system is dumb enough. Doing so using personal telephones is unforgivable. Doing both in Moscow, as it would appear Witkoff did, is downright incompetent.”
Deputinize America
@Elizabelle:
Practice time at the range will serve those who are blue dots in flashing red pustules well, I think.
cope
@Mr. Bemused Senior: It took me a couple of seconds to get get/remember your reference but thank you for re-illuminating some fond and funny memories. Beware the dreaded batter pudding hurler!
Mr. Bemused Senior
@cope: got a match? You see the light in my oven has gone out. [Thanks for helping me remember!]
Elizabelle
@RaflW: I truly hope Five Eyes are not sharing as freely as in the past. That would be dumb. Have to assume anything shared is passed along to other unreliable parties
Other countries, and people one by one, should assume the US is malevolent, and act accordingly.
I hope the level of tourism drops so severely that it is impossible to lie its absence away.
Deputinize America
On a humorous note, I fed a set of parameters into DeepSeek, and it did a perfect job of figuring out my view of the world and the decisional capability of “Our Betters”. Giggle away:
French Onion Soup
@Hildebrand:
Is he still shooting his mouth? No. Only HRC is. Because the only person who can still shoot their mouth is a woman and only because she is a woman because she is protected by being WHITE WOMAN THE MOST PROTECTED CLASS OUT THERE.
People see that. We are NOT the black party. We are NOT the gay party. We are NOT the Jewish party. We sure as shit aren’t the trans party we screwed them over. We are the EDUCATED WHITE UPPER CLASS WOMENS party and that’s the damn issue.
Omnes Omnibus
@French Onion Soup: No, we are the party of all of those groups and everyone else who thinks that those groups shouldn’t be underbussed.
Elizabelle
@French Onion Soup: You are being a right fool today, aren’t you?
Maybe time to step away from the internets for a spell.
You may not be a troll, but you are sure acting like one.
Betty Cracker
This just sprang to mind. No particular reason.
The Audacity of Krope
@Omnes Omnibus: Man, our trolls is getting lazy.
UncleEbeneezer
@Omnes Omnibus: I take back all the times I argued that soup (pho) is great for breakfast.
Deputinize America
@Paul W.:
As I said below, they’re going to trim the fuck out of it. There will be a large space where Song of the South is played on loop, another large space where Gone With The Wind is played on loop, and in the smaller rooms, there will be plaintive, haunting renditions of old black spirituals. Along the corridors, there will be paintings of confederate officers kneeling in prayer next to horses, and other rooms depicting the horrid behavior of carpetbaggers.
Basically, its going to confirm my shitty Texas-approved and textbooks that everybody across the country got from when I was in the 5th and 6th grades.
The Audacity of Krope
@UncleEbeneezer: I read while enjoying my late breakfast ramen…
Betty
@oldgold: It will be so wonderful if the current numbers hold up and the Musk candidate is squashed good. Maybe some of the cowards will start to fight back when they see limits to the power of his money.
Deputinize America
@UncleEbeneezer:
Bite your tongue. Its the finest breakfast I know.
WTFGhost
@French Onion Soup: People started talking about how much they hated Hillary Clinton in 1992, and I’ve often wondered: why?
You have very strong opinions for how she is “toxic” – I’m very curious as to what deleterious effects she automatically has on the body politic, that have nothing to do with other people screaming hatred, like they just discovered your “really good friend” is Black, or something.
I’m sure you can explain, in short, simple, sentences, what horrible things she does. Actually: I don’t. I think you’d be mockworthy if you did. I’m really just calling out your lack of value to the discussion, by pointing out how a mature adult would respond, if they wanted to discuss the issue more.
*obBeteljuice” These are not my rules, see… in fact, I don’t have any rules. But they are the standards for mature discussions – you come with real information, and we listen, and maybe give you a measure of crap, because we disagree, so you hit us back, harder, either with feelings – you feel this is really important, and want to find out how to bridge us to understanding you better – or, you have facts, and information, and (key part here) you really can research, and find your gold nugget of truth, that opens our eyes.
Lots of shit I’ve seen flung at Hillary is just pure misogyny – when I see her in action, I usually see a brilliant, caring, government worker. So complaining about a single spot on an opinion page is kinda silly, to my eyes.
H.E.Wolf
This soi-disant French potage appears to be a dedicated derailleur.
The rest of us could quit getting geared up, and just bicycle right on past their dragged lures, n’est-ce pas?
WTFGhost
@Sanjeevs: See, this is when actual businessmen should be pulling the levers they were told would drop a 16 ton weight on Trump’s head. “You don’t pardon people who cost investors money through fraud,” they’d scream, as if not realizing who they’re talking to.
@French Onion Soup: Oh, wow. Like, later in the thread, I discussed how mature adults discuss things. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.
Ksmiami
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: stop them, destroy them, bury them. All of the above.
jonas
@Elizabelle: That’s the plan: fuck everything up so badly that if ever another Democratic administration comes in and tries to fix it, it will never work right again and just pave the way for angry, frustrated voters to re-elect more MAGA smashers. Wash, rinse, repeat. If there are elections, that is.
H.E.Wolf
I concur! And I wrote 105 GOTV postcards to help elect the *good* judge.
I suspect my contribution was a mere drop in the GOTV bucket. Folks are fired up!
tam1MI
Gonna come as a helluva surprise to Hakeem Jeffries, Pete Buttigieg, Chuck Schumer, and Sarah McBride.
WTFGhost
@Deputinize America: I think it’s kind of morbid to emphasize the deceased nature of one’s meal. “We’re having beef,” not “a chunk of late bovine!”
@French Onion Soup: Is that *you* JD? Is HRC one cat away from being the enemy of all humanity? Or did Socks doom her already?
@Elizabelle: They were making plenty of compromises when Trump came in, blabbed some Israeli intel, which was bad, because it could only have been Israeli, then, bragged, yes, *bragged*, that “I never said it was Israeli!” I fear that they’re making permanent, not temporary, fixes now. They won’t need American tech, not while we keep driving our big brains away to schools where they can fund their careers!
@Betty Cracker: Friend, you have a nasty, suspicious brain like me, and I’m glad.
WTFGhost
@jonas: That is the plan. Remember: these guys are the kinds of incompetents that could screw up a rock fight. The creepy clown would scare them, and take away all their rocks, which wasn’t supposed to happen, and here comes the other kids, rock laden….
I don’t mean, “think they’ll fall apart all on their own,” I mean, they don’t even think engineering is a “thing” so they’ll have weak spots everywhere – including the courts, which can slow walk in the name of justice, as well as injustice… sometimes. Okay, rarely, but still, sometimes
ETA: HRC was accused of “gross negligence” in the handling of classified information. It was always baseless – “gross negligence” is like leaving your computer unlocked, e-mail on the screen.
Gross negligence would be shit like, inviting a journalist to a Signal chat where you were discussing an off the books military activity. Something so boneheaded no one would ever think it was okay.
VFX Lurker
I’ve lurked here since 2005. I don’t recognize the nym, either. I normally pie trolls on sight, but this one started off weak and somehow got sadder and more pathetic with each post.
I will pie this one, too, but we used to get better trolls around here.
EDIT — OMG the troll managed to write even dumber stuff downthread. I need to stop looking at this wreck of a poster and pie so I can get on with my day.
Citizen Alan
@French Onion Soup: Go to hell. Go to hell and burn there.
Geminid
@Citizen Alan: I guess I’ll put you down as “Undecided.”
Elizabelle
@WTFGhost: Hillary Clinton Derangement Syndrome.
Which no amount of tasty melted cheese can hide.
TEL
@Betty Cracker: I’m worried about Anne Laurie – I hope her health is getting better. I’m also glad you’ve been stepping up on the morning threads!
Restricted Pencil
Hillary 2028 – Doesn’t She Deserve It?
WTFGhost
@Betty Cracker: Don’t forget the weirdos, who, if awake at 3am, are desperately trying to use Perfectly Legal Plant Extracts to resolve the problem.
But somedays, the cranky people sleep through the night, so….
Ramalama
@JB: and Trump is a self-hating immigrant lover.
Ramalama
@Betty Cracker: I needed visine from blinking way too hard at Shut Fck Mountain. Wonder how I can translate that to French.
Miss Bianca
@Deputinize America: I have dreams of guillotines…FACE UP, for that asshole.
Miss Bianca
@French Onion Soup: Oh, ffs, shut up. If you’re this tiresome in meat space, it’s no wonder you have to come here to stir shit up – no one who knows you IRL would likely stand still for it.
Ruckus
Bill Clinton is 78 yrs old. In the general scheme of things that is not all that old. Now of course we all age differently but 78, for a man with reasonable health care and so on is not all that old. Sure it’s not teenage old but many people his age, (and I’m rather close to that age) are sure senior citizens but with reasonable healthcare can live 20 or even more years old. I know one lady, lives in my complex who is 98 years old and while not having been 48 in a few decades, still is amazing. A lot depends on the individual and how they take care of themselves.
WaterGirl
@Restricted Pencil: Welcome!
WaterGirl
@Josie: A hundredd people have probably said this already, but I feel compelled to write it. The Supreme Court should NOT take up this case.
WTFGhost
@Omnes Omnibus: if you read the nym as a suggestion, its cruelty becomes apparent. One does not “French” freshly made onion soup – it would lead to severe burns of the tongue and lips!
Unless it’s a more childish, “eat me!” meme, for which, SlimJim(tm) already provided the proper nym.
It’s also possible that it’s a cry for attention – “please love me, and show me understanding, just as you had to the first time you stuck your spoon into a bowl of too-stretchy cheese with too many mushy croutons, before you could finally find beauty in another vessel, more carefully made!”
In which case, I would suggest the poster improve the recipe, though I’d hardly look to *me* for content creation. When I’m not confused by pain, I might be sucking on the demon weed, or drinking some of the old demon rum – sometimes literal rum!
(Also: someone mentioned Jamaican rums to me. I bless your name *globally*, but locally – have you ever been suffering from sensory overload already, while pouring a fine shot of Jamaican rum into your mouth, expecting plain old Bacardi?
I nearly committed the worst form of alcohol abuse, spitting out good liquor that I wanted to drink! Still: ahem. Without that warning, which, how the heck would you know it was needed, it was a grand suggestion, that I’m investigating more carefully.)
Um. I think if I keep going here, the only rum will be in the mincemeat pie, so, I’ll stop here.
Ruckus
Ok, just got back from a retirement party for the head of maintenance at the complex where I live. So I’ll be catching up on what looks like – hell if I know, other than all fucked up.
@lowtechcyclist: #59
THIS. All of this. Including your last 2 words.
This country has been through bullshit before and with shitforbrains back in office – we are again. I’m not sure if he has any concept of humanity left, or if he is just completely overtaken with UOFS. Unbelievable Old Fart Stupidity. He is supposed to be the leader of this country and he can’t figure out Jack and/or Shit. As someone who has lived over 3/4 of a century and still has at least a tad of humanity left (OK it’s a large tad…) I’m pretty sure I’ll never understand his, whatever the hell it is that rolls around in that crappy excuse for a brain. Nor the people that seem far worse than he is. I served in the USN, one enlistment, during a war, and never heard of anyone this insane in our or any other government. Sure we will never be 100% in agreement with the far right but then they aren’t in any way agreeable with the rest of humanity. They seem to want a dictatorship without any difference between any number of human beings. Hell I’m not sure they aren’t from outer space and are here to take over the planet. They sure seem to want to not to have any humanity whatsoever because they sure seem to think that in a free country they get to take away everyone else’s breathing, humanity, freedom and that everyone must be below them, most likely 6 feet below. I’m pretty sure this concept is not in any way rational, reasonable, proper, constitutional, legal or fucking normal. (Choose your choice, I’m going with all six)
Ruckus
By the way, I’m an old and paid into SS for approximately 60 yrs. I earned my benefits by paying into it. Even when I was a federal worker – in the military. Now I see that shitforbrains and his friends want to strip/destroy/steal all that away from me and everyone else that has or will pay into it – by law. That money is OUR MONEY. Not their’s – our’s! Our country has used this for decades and done reasonably well with it. We get to retire on the money, we get to live into old age without starving or having to live in a back alley somewhere. And they want to fuck it and us for what, power, money (our money!) BULLSHIT!
Sally
@Hildebrand: This is exactly what I was thinking. He DID NOT GO AWAY. But I guess he is a man, so didn’t have to go off into the woods and take up knitting. And Gore is still in the news from time to time, 25 years later. He also did not go away. Bill Clinton also did not go away. Carter did not go away. Hmmm … what could they all have in common … This French guy is dumb as a bag of hammers.
Jacel
@Elizabelle: I hope Four Eyes has been established without them telling the US that this happened. Or that our replacement in Five Eyes is Denmark.