This is where pointy birds come from:
In other news, this creature is still the presumptive Republican Party nominee:
It’s not like we haven’t had time to get used to it. It’s not like the Republican Party hasn’t been venal, corrupt and evil for decades. But it still seems surreal, at least to me.
Open thread!
Major Major Major Major
Crooked Hillary, eh? How droll.
I got another roll of film developed, here are some highlights. (Includes puppeh!)
opiejeanne
@Major Major Major Major: Nice. Are you in California?
Patricia Kayden
Shouldn’t Trump figure out that if his own party leaders are against him, he probably won’t win a general election? If Republicans are turned off by him, why does he think that normal people will find him appealing?
I’m still waiting for him to become more presidential in tone and demeanor.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/09/taco-bowls-and-crazy-tweets-why-donald-trump-will-never-be-presidential-commentary.html
singfoom
I obviously don’t want Trump to win, but given the logic that he will lose in the general and has torn the Republican party asunder, is it really selfish of those people who resisted him?
I mean, they would say they’re on the side of the Republican party, which is a large group of people (whose views I disagree with viscerally) while Trump is on his own side, using the party for his own purposes.
Who is being selfish again?
Crooked Hillary doesn’t have a good sound to it, he needs something more pithy.
dr. bloor
@Patricia Kayden:
HIs strategy appears to be based on the assumption that normal people now constitute a minority of the US population.
We’ll find out if he’s right.
Big Ole Hound
Double-talk Donald may have been hatched from a pointy egg. That would explain the malfunctioning brain that cannot tell facts from bullshit.
TaMara (HFG)
I know, I know, the answer to this is obvious. But how in the hell do these talking heads report Drumps attack on Hillary and Bill regarding BC affairs and not mention Drumps infidelity even ONCE? Don’t even hint at it. WTF. I hate everyone.
eric
“Bankruptcy Donald” or perhaps “Silver spoon Donald” or better yet: “Douche”
MikeBoyScout
Today would be a great day to plan to meet tomorrow with that person you know who isn’t registered to vote and then register her to vote so she can help decide who governs us.
If we all do our little bit we can win the whole kit and caboodle.
Yes.We.Can
WarMunchkin
I again note that this guy will forever occupy a place within our history books. People will actually have to know, for exams, one day, that Donald Trump existed and the major themes of his campaign and how he was successful at this time in our story. Unsightly.
JPL
@TaMara (HFG): He’d just say that Ivana was classy about it, unlike
crooked Hillary. It would be nice to hear the media doing its job.
delk
Did a pointy bird lay that egg?
O pointy birds, o pointy pointy,
Anoint my head, anointy-nointy.
Major Major Major Major
@opiejeanne: San Francisco, yeah.
@TaMara (HFG): IOKI… oh, right, you already know.
different-church-lady
@WarMunchkin: In the same sense that today we are vaguely aware of who Horace Greeley was?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
broken clock, blind squirrel, etc….
Shell
CNN did today. Even said that he, at the time, claimed it was unimportant.
Ooh, hoped tha pointy egg wasn’t too hard to lay.
Schlemazel Khan
I think SPY has taken care of the nickname problem 30 years ago, it is as true today as it was then and the best part is we KNOW it gets under the short-fingered vulgarians skin.
gf120581
@JPL: Given what a swine Trump is, he probably feels the proper response to a woman who finds out her husband is cheating on her is to shut up and let him have his fun. If you get angry about it, you’re a bad woman.
It’s another way this guy is comparable to a mob boss; he’s got his wife and he’s got his mistresses and the wife doesn’t have any right to complain or even question the later.
opiejeanne
Betty, are your chickens’ eggs always that pointy?
Anoniminous
I’m still waiting for the various Trump boosters and Infotainment Medium pundits to point to a 2012 Obama state Trump will flip.
Major Major Major Major
@gf120581: Have I got a thread from last night for you…
RandomMonster
@eric: You mean “Il Douche”…
Mandalay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
And even better, Donald Trump on Palin:
Oh dear….someone’s just got thrown under the bus.
SiubhanDuinne
@delk:
Elbows and knees, o jointy jointy.
debbie
@JPL:
Oddly, the most likely to call Trump on his own lack of fidelity would be Fox, but only because they dislike him so much.
scav
@Shell: I’d assume the pointy one might actually be easier to lay, although perhaps rather less comfortable for any expanding inhabitant — or maybe they just learn chicken yoga at an unusually early age. Run away to join the circus.
HRA
Trump was not and is in it to win. He was in it to suck up the oxygen as in capturing the media and create havoc among the R candidates. Most of all to get rid of them from becoming the nominee. The question now is has he decided to really become president or is he still in place to keep any other candidate get the nomination by whatever rule would allow it to happen.
I have quit paying attention to whoever is running now. This is the first time I am dang tired of it all.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Watching the Hayes show, I think HRC’s response to Trump is great, are we still all losing our shit about “Dangerous Donald”?
Roger Moore
@singfoom:
I think the counter-argument is twofold:
1) There is obviously a very large constituency within the Republican party that does want him as the nominee. They may or may not be an absolute majority of the party, but they’re the strongest single group within the party. Like it or not, he’s the logical choice as nominee, and the rest of the party needs to accept that any play by the rules they set.
2) The rest of the party can’t reasonably undermine him as nominee and then turn around and complain about losing the election.
Shorter: the problem with division is something Trump exploited to earn the nomination, not something he created.
Prescott Cactus
@different-church-lady: Had to look him up. He died before the electoral college vote. Sure would have sucked if he had won. Timing.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@different-church-lady: Wendell Wilkie, Alf Landon, Adlai Stevenson.
And let’s be honest, Michael Dukakis.
eta: I wince every time I hear someone refer to Glenn Kessler’s “Pinnochios”
JustRuss
Has there ever been a whinier candidate than Trump? For any office? Anywhere?
Felonius Monk
@singfoom:
How about Madam President?
NotMax
Demands new lyrics from the opening of Nilsson’s “The Point.”
This is the egg
And these are the chickens
That’s the way they wanted it
That’s the way they’re going to lay
Mandalay
@HRA:
Without having any hard evidence, I think Trump’s original motivation was to smear and fuck up Jebra really badly, and destroy his reputation.
He’s already accomplished that. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind becoming president, but I bet it was never as important to him as destroying Bush.
lollipopguild
@eric: “Flaming Lying racist Jackass”
mb
That pointy egg looks…French. Consume mass quantities!
Prescott Cactus
(haiku)
oh pointy lil egg
very tasty in egg roll
or scrambled with ham
(/haiku till next April)
eric
@RandomMonster: *golf clap*
Betty Cracker
@opiejeanne: No. We get a pointy egg occasionally, but it’s fairly rare — maybe one in 200 or so. In my career as a chicken wrangler, one thing that has surprised me is just how much variation there is in the eggs. We get tiny, humongous, smooth, bumpy, nearly white, fairly dark brown, etc. Their feed is consistent, but they do free range daily. Maybe that accounts for it. I don’t know.
Citizen_X
@Patricia Kayden:
Or, if most of the party’s rank-and-file voted against him? *cough* Bernie *cough*
NotMax
@Prescott Cactus
Strictly as an aside, on Maui there is a town named Haiku. ZIP code 96708.
Main phone exchange for Haiku really, truly is 575.
Roger Moore
@Shell:
I would think the pointy one, being a bit skinnier, might be easier to lay.
Major Major Major Major
@Citizen_X: Doesn’t count. They were black.
ThresherK
Woo. Five minutes in, Dallas scored twice in about thirty seconds. It’s a game seven and in St. Louis.
schrodinger's cat
It seems surreal to me too.
Roger Moore
@Anoniminous:
All of them, Katie.
ETA: More seriously, Mark Halperin actually claimed that Trump would put California in play. Your liberal media at work.
Iowa Old Lady
Is it possible that name calling makes Trump sound anything other than repulsive? Does that actually win votes?
TS
That a nominee for President calls other nominees by bully names is completely beyond my understanding of a political campaign. Palin rousing up the RWNJ hate is nothing compared to what Trump is doing – demonizing every person who dares to run against him. That the media does not call this out, continuously, as juvenile and pathetic says more about the media than about the GOP.
Citizen_X
@srv: Gawd. If VDH is against Clinton, that counts as a plus. Alarum, alarum! The Persian Apocalypse is upon us!
Linnaeus
@ThresherK:
It’s a Game 6, actually. St. Louis is up 3 games to 2.
Jeffro
@TS: it does and we need to keep pointing it out. No excusing Trump, no false equivalence, no way no how.
They’re either gonna go down with the
Trumptanic or they can drown on their own, these rats
JPL
@Roger Moore: He certainly could win. After all, the media is giving him 24/7 free advertising.
ThresherK
@Linnaeus: Really? Oops. I have no rooting interest, but I think the NBCSN coverage detailing StL’s inability to get to the Western Finals lately have me looking ahead like it was a Game 7.
Linnaeus
@ThresherK:
Well, it has been a problem for St. Louis, to be sure.
Roger Moore
@scav:
There are plenty of species of birds that lay very pointy eggs, and it doesn’t seem to be a problem. There’s a relationship between the shape of eggs and the style of nest in which they’re laid. The greater the risk of the egg rolling out of the nest, the pointier it tends to be on one end, because that means it rolls in a circle instead of a straight line.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Does anyone know where there’s a good write up of Medicare buy in and how it would work? Seems to me a bunch of younger people buying into Medicare would be a huge boost
different-church-lady
@ThresherK: Poor St. Louis: losers of 12 straight Stanley Cup Finals games; the only first-wave expansion team (of the five still extant) to not win a cup.
Shana
@NotMax: I do so hope that the main exchange in Maui was deliberate.
Linnaeus
“Crooked Hillary”? This from a career con man who thinks he can manage the US economy like one of his leveraged deals that go bust and leave others holding the bag.
Germy
– Robert Benchley, “My Ten Years In A Quandary (And How They Grew)”
dexwood
@Betty Cracker:
It was true for my hens, too, The Sisters of Perpetual Poultry. The shapes and shades were interesting. Down to three chicken nuns from the original eight. It’s become a retirement convent these days with only three eggs or so per week. Mostly, they spend their days in quiet contemplation.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Roger Moore: So it’s easy, like with round heels? Isn’t that the old (before my time) expression?
oklahomo
@dr. bloor: If he’s right, we are simply living out the prequel to Idiocracy.
Shana
@Germy: As if we needed another reason to love Robert Benchley’s humor. So deadpan yet so hilarious.
Betty Cracker
Wow. Just saw AG Lynch’s remarks about the NC bathroom law (clip on the Hayes show). An excerpt:
Brava.
Germy
@dexwood: I remember the old 1930s animated cartoons where the hens would knit little scarves and sweaters while sitting on their nests.
Shana
@oklahomo: I think he thinks that people watch his shows because they all want to be him. My millennial daughter watches Teen Mom because, in her view, it’s funny how these stupid women keep making stupid choices in their lives.
ETA: Germy – I watched those cartoons too. Ah, childhood.
Germy
@Shana: I recently heard a recording of a radio performance of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” with Benchley in the starring role.
dexwood
@Germy:
Look for their etsy page soon!
Anoniminous
@Roger Moore:
I definitely want to meet his purveyor of Adult Recreational Hallucinogenics. That person has access to the Good Stuff.
Iowa Old Lady
@Betty Cracker: I am in awe of Lynch’s willingness not only to defend the law but to speak out about how the administration believes in protecting equal rights. It seems like that should be routine, but it feels courageous. I don’t know whether to be happy she’s doing it or appalled at how shredded our ideal have become.
JCJ
@NotMax:
I saw your message earlier about Asus motherboards getting bricked by a Windows 7 update. My daughter has an Asus PC so we looked into this. Thanks. Her computer apparently survived the Windows attack. Asus does have a work around found at this link
http://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1016356/
ThresherK
@different-church-lady: Well, it’s 3-0 Stars now, and there’s a goalie swap. With a history like that I’m surprised I didn’t gravitate towards them in my formative years.
scav
@Roger Moore: Ah ha! Not as much fun as imagining a yoga-ready circus predisposition, but rolly eggs in nests should stick in that part of the gray matter not completely dedicated to silliness.
AkaDad
The reason so many people already hate Trump is because he gets all the media coverage. If every “journalist” was saying “Trump is awesome”, then that would be a major problem.
Germy
@Betty Cracker: This is why I get irritated when I see progressives call the president “Obummer” and do the whole “not a dime’s worth of difference” routine.
Because would this ever happen in a Romney or a McCain administration?
SiubhanDuinne
@dexwood:
The Lodger
@lollipopguild: It’s time to revive the Balloon Juice classic, “Enormous, mendacious, disembodied anus.”
You’re all welcome.
raven
@SiubhanDuinne: did you get my email addy?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Germy: speaking of which jackasses, Hayes is giving airtime to Michael Moore for some reason
Germy
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Because of his new documentary?
ThresherK
@ThresherK: (ETA By “them”‘ I mean StL.)
Mike J
@Germy: Why haven’t we dropped nukes on North Carolina yet? This is not the time for half measures. This neoliberal hand wringing is why we need a REVOLUTION!
laura
@Major Major Major Major: glorious San Francisco! Parks and people and pugs – well done sir, well done.
Wallis Lane
To paraphrase future Republican Regina George in “Mean Girls”:
“Donald, stop trying to make “Crooked Hillary” happen! It’s not going to happen!”
Germy
@Mike J: Their new state song: “You’re Not The Boss Of Me” by They Might Be Giants
dexwood
@SiubhanDuinne:
Thanks for the laugh. My girls have it easy and deserve the retirement. I can not tell you how many eggs they’ve given me over the last eight years. I make all well for them in thanks.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
an on-topic headline
@Germy: I’ve got it muted, but the point seems to be to concern troll Hillary
different-church-lady
Because I have better things to do:
* St. Louis Blues: went to finals in 68, 69, and 70, got swept in all three series.
* Minnesota North Stars: won a cup after the move to Dallas
* LA Kings: finally broke through in 2012
* Philadelphia Flyers: first expansion team to win a cup, in 74
* Pittsburgh Penguins: broke through in 91
* California Seals: moved to Cleveland in 76, merged with the North Stars in 78 (so in a way you could say they were part of cup history.)
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
No. Thought I had yours in the archives but I guess not. Mine is SiubhanDuinne at gmail dot com
raven
@SiubhanDuinne: in the mail
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
Ta
Prescott Cactus
@Shana: I do so hope it wasn’t. . . I think.
NotMax ?
A Ghost To Most
@oklahomo:
I thought we had already accepted that as a given.
Zinsky
Nice pecker – I mean for the bird that might come out of that pointy egg. Not on Donald Trump. Yes, Betty, it is surreal that we actually have a fascist wanna-be this close to the levers of power in America.
Li'l Innocent
@dexwood: I understand Emily Dickinson once spoke of her household’s “invalid hens who have never done anything so vulgar as lay an egg”. (Remembered close to verbatim from “The Belle of Amherst”, I believe.)
Frankensteinbeck
I am honestly astonished. Nothing else has caught me off guard in this election, but I really thought Trump was not dumb enough to go with the ‘crooked’ attack. Christ, the guy is one giant target zone for ‘crooked’ attacks. He’s going to look like a pile of bloody meat after the comebacks he’ll reap if he goes ahead with this. He quite likely won’t, because his attention span is miniscule.
Important tip, Donald: You can only pull off the ‘crooked’ attack if you have a history as a purity pony and a long-running narrative as The Only Honest Person In The Room. Your long running narrative is as a lying, bigoted, not too bright blowhard.
Schlemazel Khan
@NotMax:
The folks at the phone company have a sense of humor, the area code for Cocoa Beach (home of Kennedy Space Center) is 321.
Mike J
@Frankensteinbeck:
Republican campaigning 101: Attack your opponent with your weakest point.
A Ghost To Most
Do constipated chickens lay pointy eggs?
Can chickens even get constipated?
It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
SiubhanDuinne
@A Ghost To Most:
Dunno about that, but I can tell you a very stupid riddle that my Mississippi relatives used to tell:
Q: What did the constipated fly say?
A: I specks not.
(The only reason I remember this stupidity is that one of the older, somewhat non compos family members used to screw it up every time by phrasing it:
Q: What’d the fly say?
A: I don’t speck so.
Not sure it translates in writing. Maybe you have to have Southern relatives.)
Mandalay
@Frankensteinbeck:
Have you heard the one about the draft dodger going after the war hero? President Kerry really nipped that one in the bud.
Zinsky
Southern relatives? Hmmph!!
SiubhanDuinne
@Zinsky:
Yeah, well, they’re on the other side of the family!
MD Rackham
@Mike J:
We’ve already tried to nuke North Carolina once, but things (barely) failed to go “boom.”
Goldsboro B-52 Crash
Monala
I lived in a primary state in 2008, and missed the chance to caucus this year in Washington state due to work. Hubby and I just received primary ballots in the mail. I assumed they were for state and local offices, but no, they were for president. How does this work, having a primary vote after already having a caucus?
LAO
I posted this link above, if anyone is interested in Ammon Bundy’s motion to dismiss, which was filed earlier today. It’s incredibly delusional.
Omnes Omnibus
@LAO: Adverse possession? The fuck?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Major Major Major Major: Happy Birthday!
LAO
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s total ridiculous.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@LAO: Incredibly delusional is being kind. As is totally ridiculous.
@Omnes Omnibus:
They (counsel as well as clients) seem to actually – perhaps literally – believe that the Yeehawd crowd was effectuating* adverse possession. By openly occupying the refuge and “notoriously chang[ing] the name* of the property.
*Swear on the ashes of DFW those words are from the actual memorandum in support. LAO will vouch for this.
Omnes Omnibus
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I know. I read as much of it as I could.
NotMax
@Prescott Cactus
Honestly don’t know one way or the other.
May be lucky coincidence, as 572, 573 and 574 are assigned to areas in and radiating out from the county seat and it’s just geographic synchronicity.
Do know it was the last exchange in the state to be changed from the old mechanical switches to digital ones, not all that long ago. In fact, one of the members of our little Saturday night gathering worked on that switchover.
LAO
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I especially enjoyed, the assertion in bold type that Ammon is not an anti-government, militia type but, instead, a federalist in the mold of Scalia and Roberts. Good grief this trial is going to be a shit-show.
Curiously missing — any post-civil war jurisprudence on the power of the federal government versus the state.
I’m almost looking forward to the government’s response.
Prescott Cactus
@NotMax:
Not sure if thats where you hang your hat. It’s a nice place to visit, but I’d really love to live there.
Keith P.
Three guesses which hen the roosters go for, first two don’t count.
NotMax
@Prescott Cactus
Not in Haiku, but on Maui since 1983.
opiejeanne
@Betty Cracker: Interesting. I don’t remember seeing pointy eggs from our chickens when I was a kid. The white hens laid white eggs, the brown hens laid brown eggs, and size was the variation. They were Cornish cross and Leghorns. The leghorns laid white eggs that were almost all the same size. They were the “workhorse” of the egg ranching business back then. The Cornish crosses laid eggs of all sizes and sometimes double yolked eggs. One year a friend gave us a 55 gallon drum with red Canadian wheat and their eggyolks were almost pink. Went back to the usual corn and the color returned to bright yellow.
There was a tiny egg one day, about the size of a robin’s egg, and we joked that the rooster had laid it. Looking back on it that might have been a joke by my grandfather that went unnoticed. He lived next door and the first year my parents planted a garden he went out after dark and by the light of his flashlight planted 4″ bean plants where Mom had planted beans the day before. I guess her reaction was hilarious, but I was so small I have no memory of it.
Lyn
@Germy: I love Robert Benchley! I’m not sure how much he is read anymore — my father introduced me to his work, and I reread it all every few years.
scav
@NotMax: Could be both. They could have been lucky in having that sort of number assigned to them in the block of numbers for the area and they just leapt on it and said, that one goes there to that central office and making all the central office assignments work around it. Minor giggle in an otherwise dull task. I’m not even sure central offices have to make too much geographic sense within an area code — probably were originally assigned more or less in block, but growth in demand probably messed them up long before it started nibbling away at area codes. (Plus the whole change in underlying technology).
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@LAO: Also:With this motion, the hyperbole stops now. Except the added emphasis was an underscore. Post-civil war jurisprudence is for sissy non-originalists.
I can’t wait for the government’s response; no almost about it.
NotMax
@Lyn
In that case, ever read any Stephen Potter?
If not, hie thee to a library.
Omnes Omnibus
@Lyn: My freshman year in college, I set up in a library carrel that was right by the humorists section. Benchley let me do a lot of procrastinating.
Lyn
@NotMax: No, I haven’t! Be right back!
opiejeanne
@Shana: Benchley used to be part of the curriculum in California HS English. I remember one particular short story of a man telling about his long-dead friends (or was it relatives?), walking together in the evening, coming back from fishing. Of course they weren’t dead and had just gone fishing earlier that day, so a while later when the two did appear the guy he was telling the story to became very agitated and ran away.
I’m sure I’ve told that story all wrong because I get it tangled with a comment my somewhat demented grandmother made about my long dead grandpa and their son who would be coming along shortly after going fishing because the sun was going down.
J R in WV
@Betty Cracker:
We used to get eggs from the next door neighbors, who had been picking up “exotic” chickens for decades, in every color of the rainbow, nearly. Pastels, but pink, green, blue, and tans and almost yellows. I forget the names of the different breeds that would lay colored eggs, but they were reliable about the colors.
And they almost never got white eggs. Just didn’t like how they looked…
Miss Bianca
@opiejeanne: I thought that was a Sake story.