"Executive Time" is trending.
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) February 3, 2019
.
It’s the Oval Office Occupancy version of “… The Aristocrats!”
Mega scoop from @alexi: 3 months of Trump's private schedules, showing most of his time is "Executice time": https://t.co/RzeLtIBmYe
— Betsy Woodruff (@woodruffbets) February 3, 2019
… Why it matters: This unusually voluminous leak gives us unprecedented visibility into how this president spends his days. The schedules, which cover nearly every working day since the midterms, show that Trump has spent around 60% of his scheduled time over the past 3 months in unstructured “Executive Time.”
– We’ve published every page of the leaked schedules in a piece that accompanies this item. To protect our source, we retyped the schedules in the same format that West Wing staff receives them….
"Executive Time," should be the new slang term for a certain activity that one does when you're alone.
— Eric Kleefeld (@EricKleefeld) February 3, 2019
Yeah, this is “news” only in the sense that the Very Serious Media Village Idiots have now decided it’s important to notice. I personally prefer Bess Levin’s take from back in October:
Report: Trump Clocks in About Three Hours of Work on a Good Day https://t.co/ZgC4z53xzR
— JonAndJoeInIndy ?????????? (@JonAndJoeInIndy) February 3, 2019
Back in January [2018], Axios obtained an inside look at Donald Trump’s schedule, revealing that the president of the United States was doing far less work than in the early days of his term, and demanding large blocks of “Executive Time,” a euphemism created by Chief of Staff John Kelly so that White House aides didn’t have to write dick around on Twitter and shout at the TV on official documents. Now, nine months later, Politico has revisited Trump’s schedule, and it turns out that the most powerful person in the world is somehow doing even less work every day than he was earlier this year. Moreover, when Trump does deign to do his job, it’s mostly in the form of signing ceremonies and shouting at aides to craft policy around something he saw on Fox & Friends…
Trump’s supporters like to claim that it’s unfair to slag on the guy for doing hardly any work at all because apparently sometimes, during his hours of playtime, he’ll hustle everyone into his office to discuss some inane thought that popped into his head. “He might read something in the paper and immediately you’d get an impromptu meeting on trade,” a person familiar with the president’s scheduling told Politico. “It’s just more impromptu than like a month in advance you have a policy time set that you’re going to work up to.” Mostly, though, it‘s devoted to media bashing from the comfort of his bed and complaining that bombs sent to prominent Democrats will hurt Republicans in the midterm elections…
A White House aide is weaponizing his schedules, which says a lot about how people in the White House feel about the man they work for https://t.co/76K7XCzwPD
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) February 3, 2019
You were so close to getting through this tweet without needing to lie. And then you got to the last sentence. So close!!! https://t.co/rKW5f0zcOY
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) February 3, 2019
I love the WH aides pushing back on trump’s released schedule by telling us how hard he works. HEY DUMBASSES, HE TAGS THE TV SHOWS HES WATCHING. WE CAN SEE HIM DOING NOTHING.
— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) February 3, 2019
He got into politics by constantly insisting Obama was a lazy liar. pic.twitter.com/aqb6f4KoUC
— Schooley (@Rschooley) February 3, 2019
History, of a kind, in the making…
According to a White House usher who'd served presidents for forty-two years, Coolidge worked fewer hours and assumed fewer tasks than anyone else. On even his busiest days, he worked less then four hours, and was still often found asleep with his feet propped up on his desk.
— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) February 3, 2019
As one observer noted, "Calvin Coolidge aspired to become the *least* President the country had ever had. He attained his desire."
Cal's held the title for nearly a century, but there might be a legit challenger now. Exciting!
— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) February 3, 2019
david
Maggie Haberman ( @maggieNYT )
A White House aide is weaponizing his schedules, which says a lot about how people in the White House feel about the man they work for
—–
“weaponizing his schedules”… oh, Margaret.
Jerzy Russian
@david: what the fuck is she talking about?
NotMax
Late stage Howard Hughes had a more productive work ethic.
Baud
dmsilev
Look, would we prefer he spent more time actually trying to do his job?
Patricia Kayden
Yet Trump has the nerve to claim that President Obama watched basketball all day. Projection.
Mike in NC
But the unfortunate person who has to arrange his “hair” needs four hours to do it every morning.
Baud
@dmsilev: Nope. Liberals are dumb.
dmsilev
@Jerzy Russian: She’s saying that someone, or several someones, on his staff has so little respect for him that they’d leak something like this that makes him look bad.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Dec 2017. Documents.
Documents.
Baud
@Patricia Kayden: There’s a whole genre online about Trump’s hypocritical tweets.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Patricia Kayden: I don’t watch a lot of basketball, but people on twitter pointed out there aren’t a whole lot of weekday NBA games
NotMax
@Jim, Foolish Literalist
Hey now, the takeout menu from KFC is technically a document.
Brickley Paiste
After reading this at Axios, I came across this: https://www.axios.com/trump-deutsche-bank-loan-house-democrats-investigations-8d90e63d-5a9c-4536-86c6-e220ec7f1bd3.html
WTF? Is this really a recent photo? Tiger plays golf with Trump???
Geoduck
The Shaitgibbon is also laying serious claim to “worst dressed” President, beating out even Coolidge who used to spend his vacations wearing a cartoonish movie-cowboy outfit.
scav
All hail the Great American Business Ethic!
Baud
@Geoduck:
I haven’t been close enough to notice, but I’d put money down on him being the smelliest president too.
Mnemosyne
Is this the actual non-football thread? Because this is me today.
Which is why I’m watching Katharine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole face off instead.
Baud
@Mnemosyne: Broken link.
FelonyGovt
Newsweek was on to him back in August 2017. No big surprise here.
Chetan Murthy
@Baud:
Interestingly, per Adam Tooze in _Wages of Destruction_, this was *absolutely* not true. By the end of the war, the accumulation of layers-and-layers-and-layers of bureaucracy was crippling the economy. If it weren’t so tragic, it’d be a funny read, those last few chapters …..
Catherine D.
@Mnemosyne: “Give up? Give out? Give in?” One of my favorite movies.
Baud
@Chetan Murthy:
I’ll need more evidence if I’m going to dispute Star Trek on such matters.
GregMulka
Sue the T-Rex is watching Grand Designs on Netflix. I didn’t copy the Twitter link.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Catherine D.: So, Eleanor, are you still like a democratic drawbridge? Laying yourself down for every passing traveller?
These days there’s not much traffic.
Plato
Executive time. Process crimes.
Thanks to the third rate fourth estate, these blatant lies are now normalized.
geg6
@Mnemosyne:
I love that movie. Just love it.
Jerzy Russian
@dmsilev: Thanks. One way to avoid that problem is to have full schedules. Another way would be to not be such an asshole. I don’t see much progress on either of those.
Martin
@Chetan Murthy: ‘Efficient’ can mean a lot of different things.
Steve in the ATL
Speaking of cats with well-deserved reputations for being assholes, my cat has figured out how to turn the page on my Kindle and does so whenever he gets bored. Or maybe he’s just a faster reader than I am.
NotMax
@geg6
Hepburn and O’Toole finely hone to a surgical edge the playfulness in each other’s technique.
Kdaug
@Baud: TBF, John Gill was on some serious drugs
Ben Cisco
No football for me. Watching “The Girl In The Spider’s Web.” Damn this is some brutal stuff.
Martin
Man, the Oxycontin scandal should be part of ever Dems message going forward – from Medicare for All to the 70% marginal rate.
People inside the company urged management to tell insurers which doctors were probably overprescribing and they refused.
Kdaug
@Steve in the ATL: Perhaps you should choose reading material more Interesting to cats?
mad citizen
I’m also glad he doesn’t work more. The less the better!
I’m hoping some arrests are made Monday or Tuesday ahead of the State of the Union.
zhena gogolia
Colin Firth IS Mr. Darcy.
dmsilev
@Ben Cisco: I’ve been going through Kingdom on Netflix. Period (17th-ish century, I think) Korean royal succession fight, plus zombies. Lots of zombies.
NotMax
@mad citizen
Tuesday’s also the day Michael Cohen won’t show up.
ChuckInAustin
This is why I preferred Trump over Cruz. They would do the same crap, but Cruz would not fk around. Cruz is vile, but he’s not stupid.
Sebastian
@Baud:
You know, the quip about the Nazis at least making the trains go on time is quite incorrect.
It was the Italian fascists who kind of made the trains go on time. Before that it was a complete disaster, after the fascists took over it was merely standard Italian bad.
The Nazis in Germany took German bureaucracy to fucking eleven. Combine it with mega grift for their corporate financers and you had an economy that was careening out of control pretty fast. They fucked that place up pretty good pretty fast.
hilts
@NotMax:
Bartleby the Scrivener had a better work ethic than Donald Shit for Brains Trump.
debbie
@Mnemosyne:
Ah, a favorite! “What family doesn’t have its ups and downs?”
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Baud:
I’m not sure that was strictly true. I vaguely remember reading that Hitler often had his underlings fight among each other and that Germany’s economy probably would have collapsed sometime after 1939, if not for WW2; all the looting and pillaging they did prolonged the inevitable.
ETA: Sebastian beat me to it.
Ken
@dmsilev: Trust Haberman’s keen journalistic senses to detect that Trump’s staff may not have the greatest loyalty or respect for him – about two years after it became obvious to the rest of us. IIRC Drezner up there has a running series of “staff talking about him like a toddler” reports. There was also that anonymous editorial with the basic message “Don’t worry, we’re secretly derailing the really stupid and horrible things Trump comes up with.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Steve in the ATL
@Kdaug: he’s adamant about no Dean Koontz: “I already have to share this house with a golden retriever; I don’t want to read about them too!”
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Win!
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Chetan Murthy:
It’s an interesting question that had Germany won WW2, if they wouldn’t have immediately collapsed afterwards. That would depend on a number of factors, including the length of the war, casualties sustained, number of manufacturing facilities destroyed, how much/many territory/people the Third Reich controlled, and many other factors too numerous to list here.
sm*t cl*de
@Chetan Murthy:
Everyone was on the take. Much of the in-fighting between Himmler and Speer was about who controlled the parts of the war effort that gave most chance for corruption.
Hitler believed that a spoils system, encouraging economic rivalry between members of his staff, ensured that the war economy ran efficiently. Turned out that he was wrong.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Steve in the ATL: If he’s bored get him an early Elvis Cole book. Crais writes really well and Elvis has a truly bad ass cat, who of course adores Elvis’s bad ass partner in crime investigation. Great cat books.
sukabi
Executive time is a euphemism for fucking off and or working on his personal grifts and coordinating with his boss Vlad.
mad citizen
@NotMax: I think was supposed to be on Feb. 7, but he’s now doing it in private on the 8th: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/michael-cohen-offer-closed-door-congressional-testimony-feb-8-n963731
ThresherK
We’re watching Victoria and wondering what year this episode is. I said something about 1851 and The Ghost Map, and then someone on the show mentioned cholera. But now Jenny Lind shows up, and the wiki suggests that it was in 1847.
I hope the writers did their homework.
Omnes Omnibus
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Is there anything you won’t turn into a counterfactual?
sukabi
@Patricia Kayden: not really, as drumpf probably spends his days watching porn and fox.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That was good for a literal LOL.
Emma
@Steve in the ATL: My dearly loved departed kitty would lay down across my ribs (I tend to read in bed laying on my left side), head hanging right by the Kindle screen and if I didn’t change pages fast enough, a very fast paw would cross in front of my face and swipe.
I miss that danged annoyance every day.
Mnemosyne
@Baud:
Crap!
https://youtu.be/ESVjzf4FzyU
Redshift
@Jerzy Russian:
Maggie apparently sees reporting accurate information on Trump that makes him look bad as an “attack”, which I guess is why she avoids doing it.
Steve in the ATL
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: good idea. We read the latest one a couple of weeks ago and he didn’t turn any pages, so you may be onto something.
You may also be on something, but that’s none of my business….
Bill Arnold
This rDT tweet several hours ago made me laugh; bold mine because it’s the most amusing parsing:
Rule of Trump Projection suggests that he is confessing that the DJT administration has been infiltrated by extradimensional criminals. A turf war! (Would explain a lot. :-) (Reportedly he misspelled dimensions in a earlier version.)
Steve in the ATL
@Emma: so it’s standard behavior. Did WereBear cover this in her cat guide?
sukabi
@Bill Arnold: criminals of all dimensions….he does have his weigh-in in the next week or so. Perhaps Admiral Ronny won’t sign off on 239 this time.
satby
@Steve in the ATL: in the chapter on Subarus.
ThresherK
@ThresherK: Okay, Dr. Snow is on the scene. So 1851 it is.
My wife also got a kick out the “both teams playing like the winner goes to the WH” line.
dmsilev
@sukabi:
There’s a difference between those two?
satby
@Omnes Omnibus: Nope
Steve in the ATL
@satby: lol. I fixed the typo, so now you look nuts!
Jaguars or Cougars would have worked better than Subarus, but this is Balloon Juice.
Omnes Omnibus
@satby: @Steve in the ATL: What did Diane do now?
Bill Arnold
@sukabi:
Perhaps DJT will score lower than previously on his Montreal Cognitive Assessment test this time.
satby
@Steve in the ATL: not to the attentive readers ?.
Besides, I suspect I often look nuts. It’s a good look for me.
I never even remember there’s cars like Jaguars.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m an alt-history buff what do you want? At least it wasn’t alien space bats-type counterfactual this time. It was just conversation.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: she left Edelman open on a cross route. Again.
Sebastian
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’d usually agree with you but that is actually the consensus. Nazi Germany’s economy was utter shyte.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@satby:
Is there something wrong when I do that?
Steeplejack
@Brickley Paiste:
Trump played golf with Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus yesterday morning—and then plugged his facility in a presidential tweet.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Steve in the ATL: I thought discretion was part of your charm; apparently I was mistaken. Now everybody knows.
satby
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: I think this timeline is horrific enough for most of us, but that’s just my own opinion.
Bill Arnold
@Steeplejack:
I’m old school; this is straightforward “honest” corruption. It’s the blatant lying that really bothers me. And the gaslighting.
satby
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: Good stuff? Come sit by me.
Brickley Paiste
Steeplejack:
Christ fucking Jesus.
I was kind of glad that Tiger seemed like he was getting his shit together after his drugs/mental collapse/adultery/etc.
I mean, how in the world could stand within a 1 iron of that malevolent orange fucker without braining him?
Omnes Omnibus
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho:
You aren’t a paying client, are you?
Bill Arnold
@Brickley Paiste:
He bragged about it again today:
guachi
I get the feeling this is what Trump thought being President would be like every day – palling around with celebrities.
Steve in the ATL
And that’s the ball game. Michel over Gurley.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@satby:
I can’t blame you for feeling that way. Things are pretty bleak. My interest in these dark timelines mostly disappeared after Trump’s election. Don’t take my interest in such scenarios as some kind of desire for them to have come to pass. I often wonder about more positive scenarios too, as in Stephen Baxter’s Voyage, where NASA astronauts go to Mars in 1986 and the Apollo Applications Program is expanded into a full space station program in preparation of the Mars mission during the 70s.
I have a natural curiosity for alternate history and it’s in human nature to wonder what would have happened if this one thing changed.
Jay
@Baud:
Nope, you just need to read the book.
As an example, German tanks were overdesigned, expensive and used far more precious steel and petroleum products that they needed to. As they went down the production line, constant changes and upgrades were added to the point that in order to replace a damaged transmission with one from a dead or scrapped tank, you needed a full machine shop and a team of skilled engineers.
The Soviet Union had a steel industry 1/5th the size of Germany’s and yet they massively out produced Germany and with better quality steel, through out the entire war.
Germany was on track to pass France economically in 1939, ( mostly because of arms production, seizure of Austria, large segments of Czechoslovakia),
And yet, by 1945, Germany as it was, ceased to exist, bankrupted, bombed out and starving.
That’s not efficient.
Bill Arnold
@Brickley Paiste:
FWIW: Tiger Woods got grilled about his relationship with Trump
(Aug. 27, 2018)
edit: he’s played with BObama as well:
Life is good for President Obama, who teed it up with two GOATs over the holiday weekend
hitchhiker
I don’t think I’ll ever get over Maggie effing Haberman’s bizarre behavior during this horrible era.
She knew exactly what trump was, having covered him in NYC for years as 3rd rate celebrity grifter who liked to see his own name in the papers. She knew he wasn’t fit for office. She knew he was a liar and a creep.
And yet she has behaved right from the jump as if he were just any other Republican. She didn’t say publicly that he couldn’t be trusted or that he’s a lazy asshole, or that he doesn’t understand what shame is, or that he’s happily pig ignorant about how the government works.
She just went right on typing her stories, like a reporter in a burning building filing news about the shape of the windows on the 2nd floor. There’s a youtube clip of her talking about being invited to a meeting before the campaign that included trump & people like Corey Lewandowski and Ivanka and Bannon, where they talked about him as a candidate.
At that moment, she should have said, “You. are. all. insane.” and left the building. Then she could have spent the campaign publishing stories about the burning building that is trump, and, sadly, now also our government.
Instead here she is, squeaking stupidly about how someone in his administration leaked his schedule and that means they disrespect him.
What a dumb joke. What a disgrace.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Bill Arnold:
Oh christ. What weak tea! Trump isn’t the office, he’s just the occupant, Tiger. They’re two different things.
Gelfling 545
@Mnemosyne: One of my all time favorites.
sgrAstar
@Kdaug: The Cat in the Hat. Feline classic.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@hitchhiker:
That’s what happens when you put your job ahead of your sense of responsibility.
Brickley Paiste
@Bill Arnold:
What a shame. Thought he was smarter than that.
Sister Golden Bear
So basically Trump is your racist, “semi-retired” uncle who watches Fox all day — except that he knows how to tweet, and can unleash nuclear armageddon.
Gelfling 545
@Kdaug: Maybe it’s really interesting and the cat can’t wait to find out how it turns out?
Omnes Omnibus
@Sister Golden Bear: Not my uncle.
Jay
@hitchhiker:
“And yet she has behaved right from the jump as if he were just any other Republican. She didn’t say publicly that he couldn’t be trusted or that he’s a lazy asshole, or that he doesn’t understand what shame is, or that he’s happily pig ignorant about how the government works.”
Which is these days, almost every existing ReThug.
Bill Arnold
@Brickley Paiste:
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
I linked the business insider piece because it mentioned the weak tea (“non-compliment”) and Trump’s response, which should be a lesson:
The lesson is that weak tea doesn’t work with DJT.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
well…. I watched the whole thing
and Brady says no way he retires. He’ll quit when he breaks a hip
Sebastian
@Jay:
Correct. It helps to see Nazi Germany as a gigantic corporate raid. Central to the rise of Hitler were the corporate financiers of the regime, most notably the cartel IG Farben.
A series of “acquisitions” kept the coffers filled and supplied enough cash for the grift. More or less in order:
Sudetendeutschland
Austria
Poland
Belgium
Netherlands
France
Norway
Ukraine
Ukraine is where it all stopped. Stalingrad was the end of that run. St Petersburg was besieged and not conquered, Moscow was a dud, too.
Plan B, capturing Iraq, ended in El Alamein.
Stalingrad, the Battle of Kursk, and the loss of Paulus’ 6th Army was what brought the whole fucking shitshow down. Never forget that whole fucking regime was propped up by the theft of wealth. Confiscation of Jewish property, pillaging of treasuries, stealing everything that wasn’t nailed down, and in many cases even that. These fuckers stole the gold teeth out of people’s mouths, resold their glasses and coats, even hair they cut of women.
Pieces of shit, all of them.
TS (the original)
And the Gov of Virginia is front page news for days and days and days – while anything to do with this failed administration lasts less than 24 hours
West of the Rockies
Does Bellichek ever smile? He is a miserable looking guy for someone who has achieved success and fortune.
zhena gogolia
@ThresherK:
They never do their homework! I’ve learned not to consult Wikipedia after any episode of Victoria. It leads to deep confusion and disappointment.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Omnes Omnibus: That negotiation is currently underway. At this moment, I am not.
TS (the original)
@Baud: Another reason to vote Baud 2020
Steve in the ATL
@Sebastian:
And let’s not forget Senator Prescott Bush (R-CT), who financed the nazi war machine WHILE WE WERE AT WAR WITH THEM.
The trump grift family is amateur hour compared to the Bush crime family.
Omnes Omnibus
@zhena gogolia: I don’t really think they are striving for historical accuracy.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Bill Arnold:
The Insider piece suggested to me that Trump is very needy and will seize on any non-insult as a compliment.
Steve in the ATL
@West of the Rockies: no. He’s the NFL version of Nick Saban.
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus:
Apparently Lord Melbourne wasn’t as hot as Rufus Sewell. Who needs to know that?
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Omnes Omnibus:
Don’t mention that to Schrodinger’s cat; she’d flip. Understandably, given Victoria’s tenure.
Steve in the ATL
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: I’m worried about being set up, à la “Fletch”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@zhena gogolia: I enjoyed the hell out of HBO’s Rome. I knew I wasn’t watching a documentary, but I was still mildly disappointed when I learned Atia of the Julii was a boringly respectable Roman matron.
Jay
@Sebastian:
Adam Toonze (sp) notes that the Nazi’s Finance Ministry manipulated the value of the Reichsmark based on what they wanted that month, imports, exports or wage and price controls to the point that by 1936, almost all German trade was based on forms of a Barter system.
The Nazi’s destroyed the Reichsmark as a currency outside of Germany.
Pogonip
@Steve in the ATL: Get him his own Kindle and stock it with “That Darn Cat” books. ??
SiubhanDuinne
@Sebastian:
My nym!
Brickley Paiste
@Steve in the ATL:
Just say you’re Frieda’s boss.
SiubhanDuinne
@Steve in the ATL:
Check your email.
Amir Khalid
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Could the Third Reich have won WWII? I very much doubt it. They were at a disadvantage in natural resources, and manufacturing capacity once the US joined the Allies; and they didn’t have enough warm bodies to keep the war effort going against enemies who outnumbered them. Of their Axis partners, Japan was concentrating on Asia and Italy was just not up to it.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Steve in the ATL: The Orange Grift family is amateur hour compared to everyone and everything, but it’s a shonda that you never read about the Bush Crime Family and Sen. Prescott Bush. Our Father Who (until recently) Art in Houston didn’t get his talent for financing war machines from the milkman.
@Steve in the ATL: You are such a worrier. I would never.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I do enjoy seeing Bill-O get flame-broiled on twitter dot com
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@zhena gogolia:
Cameron’s Titanic has similar problems. He liked to go with the myths of the sinking rather than some first hand accounts. A big glaring example of this was the ship’s band playing “Nearer My God to Thee” while the ship was sinking. A passenger who survived later said that probably never happened, as he would have remembered such a morbid and inappropriate song being played. But James Cameron thought it would make for a better story I guess.
If I could have written, produced, and directed Titanic, I wouldn’t have focused on a sappy romance story. I would have shown the stories of the various members of the crew, from the Bridge officers to the brave engineers that kept Titanic’s lights on for as long as possible, to potentially a third class family. Ismay and other VIPs would make an appearance as well.
J R in WV
@hitchhiker:
What don’t you understand about being paid to do something?
M. Haberman’s wealthy upbringing in NYC was paid for by a PR firm that paid her family to make Trump look better to the world at large — this was a challenge because Trump has been an asshole since he was sent away to military school.
But she grew up in an environment where making an ass like Trump look good was how you afforded private school for little Maggie, as well as the private college, the trips abroad, being wealthy in Manhattan.
Now you expect her to attack the source of her family’s wealth? Her mother’s career? Not gonna happen, never going to happen. The real problem is that the NYT assigned her to cover her family’s income stream — as if they expected Ms Haberman to be objective, penetrating to the core of Trump as he exists. As IF!!
She is paid to do exactly what she is doing. The NY Times wants her to masturbate Trump on their front page at least once a week, more often if she can manage to type two day a week. And they pay her handsomely for her public masturbation of Trump — what’s the word for that, again? I misremember… oh! Yeah, prostitute, that’s the word I’m looking for. That’s what MS Haberman is doing.
zhena gogolia
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
That appears in previous Titanic films as well. It must have been in some survivor’s memoir — I believe it’s in both the Barbara Stanwyck Titanic and A Night To Remember.
Off to bed now!
Steve in the ATL
@SiubhanDuinne: ha!
Sebastian
@Steve in the ATL:
Damn right. And that was AFTER IG Farben almost destroyed the US chemical industry by proce dumping Aspirin. Alka Seltzer, anyone?
When Marx said capitalists would sell you the rope with which they will be hung, that’s the kind of people he was referring to. Other notable idiots: Rolls Royce who sold Germany engines even though it was clear the Nazis would reverse engineer them and build engines for their bombers. Which were then used to bomb England to rubble.
Geniuses, all of them.
ThresherK
@zhena gogolia: Actually, I messed up. The Ghost Map outbreak was in 1854, not (as I said) 1851. The writers have a better percentage right than I do.
And this episode had a cameo by Florence Nightingale, who actually was in a nearby hospital treating patients of this outbreak. (This was before she became “Florence Nightingale” famous during the Crimean War.).)
Jay
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Some of the best history, in history is occuring now, by a whole new generation of historians.
As an example:
Claiming the Land
Rhondale Press.
“This trailblazing history of early British Columbia focuses on a single year, 1858, the year of the Fraser River gold rush — the third great mass migration of gold seekers after the Californian and Australian rushes in search of a new El Dorado. Marshall’s history becomes an adventure, prospecting the rich pay streaks of British Columbia’s “founding” event and the gold fever that gripped populations all along the Pacific Slope. Marshall unsettles many of our most taken-for-granted assumptions: he shows how foreign miner-militias crossed the 49th parallel, taking the law into their own hands, and conducting extermination campaigns against Indigenous peoples while forcibly claiming the land. Drawing on new evidence, Marshall explores the three principal cultures of the goldfields — those of the fur trade (both Native and the Hudson’s Bay Company), Californian, and British world views. The year 1858 was a year of chaos unlike any other in British Columbia and American Pacific Northwest history. It produced not only violence but the formal inauguration of colonialism, Native reserves and, ultimately, the expansion of Canada to the Pacific Slope. Among the haunting legacies of this rush are the cryptic place names that remain — such as American Creek, Texas Bar, Boston Bar, and New York Bar — while the unresolved question of Indigenous sovereignty continues to claim the land.”
That ain’t the history that anybody was taught.
There’s a crap load of historians out there who are flipping history by removing all the whitewashing and the “Winners” pov.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
To add to my last paragraph: yes, Cameron did this to a degree, but not enough in my opinion.
Sebastian
@Amir Khalid:
Stalingrad is where the war was lost. Stalin refused to have the city named after him fall, Russian soldiers who retreated were shot on the spot and so they fought until the bitter end. There is no saying what would have happened had the 6th Army broken through in time and captured the oil fields.
For starters, Rommel wouldn’t have dicked around in North Africa that long and the Germans would have still had their 6th Army with close to 1.5m soldiers.
Inventor
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: What they did get right was the
art direction and the sense of the times. The colorful brick buildings, (Rome wasn’t marble until Augustus) the religion(s), the role of slavery in society, and other things made the series good even without a strictly factual script.
Mnemosyne
@Sebastian:
This. One of the reasons I’m constantly recommending The Nazis: A Warning from History is that Browning and his co-author emphasize that the Nazi regime was built on slavery and theft, and that’s what kept it running. When they had exhausted those stolen resources, they didn’t have anything left to fight with.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Inventor: I loved the news reader. I can’t remember the title, but I loved the gesturing, and the ads “real Roman bread, made by real Romans”
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Mnemosyne:
That sounds disturbingly familiar. Apparently, Germans were also were inspired by America’s Manifest Destiny. That’s where Lebanstraum came from.
Mnemosyne
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Here’s some alternative history for you: if George IV’s daughter Charlotte had not died in childbirth in 1816, or if her child had lived, Victoria never would have been born at all.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Jay:
Wow. That sounds really good! I’ll have to look into my local library and borrow it. Thanks for the rec!
Geoduck
@Amir Khalid: It might depend on your definition of “win”. If Hitler had concentrated all his efforts on defeating and occupying England instead of charging into Russia, they might have conquered all of Western Europe. The whole world? No.
Jay
@Sebastian:
Actually, the Nazi’s lost the war when they invaded Poland.
Because Nazi Germany was built on slavery and looting, rather than building, their earlier aquisitions became a drag on the economy, once they had been looted, rather than assets.
Vulture Capitalism.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That reminds me of the Clemson Tigers going to the WH last month and the fast food junk he served. It will never cease to amaze me the depths people will go to defend Trump. One would think it uncontroversial to criticize Trump over his choice of food for the banquet. But no!
He was clearly being cheap. He has a hotel a few miles away that has catering. If you wanted to have burgers and fries fine! Restaurant fries and burgers are miles ahead of McDonald’s and the like. The shutdown had been going on nearly a month at that point, I believe. Trump had ample time to arrange this, such as the security vetting any of his DC Hotel staff might have to go through to work in the WH kitchens.
Mnemosyne
@Jay:
The majority of the native population of California was murdered not by Spanish missionaries in the 1500s, but by miners in the 1840s Gold Rush.
And yet the missions get most of the blame in popular history.
Sebastian
@Jay:
Yes, interesting way of seeing it.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Mnemosyne:
Huh. Didn’t know that. History becomes harder to game out due to all the butterflies that start flapping their wings, the further along the TL you go from the point of divergence. The British Empire would have probably still been terrible anyway, human rights wise.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: The Spanish did their share in what is now Latin American.
Jeffro
Ok, we’re past Christmas and New Year’s, we’re past the (barf) Super Bowl…can we have Muellermas now, plz?
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@zhena gogolia:
I think it was tbh. Accounts often conflicted among survivors. Some had said that the ship had gone down in one piece, while others claimed it snapped in two. It wasn’t until 1985 when Robert Ballard rediscovered Titanic that the latter were proven correct.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Jeffro:
Mueller Claus doesn’t love us that much. But perhaps with time it will come. Keep the faith.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jeffro: I think we have to get past Presidents’ Day and maybe St. Patrick’s Day.
Jay
@Mnemosyne:
Polular History is written to ease the consience and hide the guilt of the winners and cast them blameless.
It’s about as accurate as any Harlequin Romance is a how to book.
Villago Delenda Est
No wonder the vermin of the Village give Donald a pass on just about everything; he’s as lazy as they are.
My nym, over and over again.
Wipe them out. All of them.
Jeffro
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: By Friday latest! Between the Eagles winning the SB last year and the blue tsunami in November, I thought we had a good thing going here, America.
SWMBO
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Mueller Claus is more like Easter, which doesn’t have a fixed date.
hervevillechaizelounge
@J R in WV:
Trump’s election was important for her career—-Haberman didn’t have a decades-long relationship with Cruz or Rubio. She wouldn’t have had the same access in their administrations, she may not have gotten the sweet book deal.
Nothing Trump does is going to negatively impact wealthy white women. There was no downside for her in his election. She had a serious financial incentive to normalize him; Hillary was never going to call her up for girl talk.
chromeagnomen
@Villago Delenda Est: i’ve read this from you maybe 500 times over the years, and you know, i’ve never found cause to disagree a single time. with extreme prejudice, i might add
smintheus
@Inventor: Rome wasn’t a city of brick (faced concrete) at the time of Augustus. The structural cores of buildings ca. 100-30 BC were generally made of opus reticulatum and then faced in various ways, typically in something stucco like. Brick-faced concrete (also covered up with stucco or thin stone veneers) didn’t even begin to be used commonly until Augustus was already in power. It only becomes normal around the time of Nero. The earliest generation of brick-faced concrete (Vitruvius’ day) seems to have used unfired mud brick.
Just in case it matters.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Sebastian:
Yup. The Nazi Reichsbank used the fictional name “Max Heiliger” to:
It was apparently a sick, cynical joke, as “Heiliger” translates to “holy” as well as “saint”.
Doug R
@Ben Cisco:
The Swedish movies are so well made, it feels pointless to make the English ones. Not that I usually mind anything Daniel Craig is in, but it didn’t add anything.
Did they make a version of “Spider’s Web” in Swedish already?
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Doug R:
Norway’s are pretty good too. I saw a Norwegian disaster movie, The Quake about Oslo getting destroyed in an earthquake. It’s a sequel to the movie, The Wave.
J R in WV
Raining again here in the foothills of the Dragoon Mountains.
While we were building here, that first winter, we had fierce mixtures of snow, sleet and freezing rain, and temps down to zero even down in the valley 1500 feet lower. We worked for 3 months, January-March. After that first year it was never that bad again (so far!).
It’s interesting to hear the rain on the roof, and for the lights in the distance to vanish. Being up here all alone is also pretty interesting, and the rain enhances that feeling. Going to build a little fire now, glad I brought some firewood in before this evening rain picked up.
By the time I got home (here on the hill) the afternoon rain had pretty much evaporated. Now it’s occasional showers moving over the mountain range in the dark… pretty cool, new to me.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Absolutely. And I’m not saying that the missions didn’t have a bad effect on California’s native populations — estimates are usually that about 1/3rd of the population died because of the Spanish.
But it was the Gold Rush genocide that came close to wiping them out, not the Spanish missions.
SFAW
@Villago Delenda Est:
After reading some MAGAt responses to a tweet about Traitor-in-Chief’s latest lies and smear about Speaker Pelosi, I’m thinking the definition of “Villago” needs to be expanded to include all the fucking morons who still idolize that Fuckhead. I read their willful insanity, and I want them to suffer the same fate as the Husnock.
Scuffletuffle
@zhena gogolia: Amen!!
jl
Time that is officially labeled ‘executive time’ accounts for 60 percent. But then there are lunch and events.
Lets assume that between zero and one half of Trump’s lunches are working lunches. Trump’s event time is ceremonial, so he is not studying or discussing issues with his staff.
So, actually, Trump only spends between 10 and 12 hours actually working on how to solve the country’s problems.
Whether that is a good or a bad or irrelevant issue is above my pay grade.
And apologies if another commenter made this point, but I don’t have time to go over a hundred comments in detail right now.
Edit: my real best guess is that Trump only works when his staff forces him to during meetings, so that makes about 6 hours 15 minutes per week. Plus an hour or so he spends talking with his country club cronies on the phone, if you want to call that work.
Mnemosyne
@J R in WV:
You’re probably getting the same rainstorm we’ve been getting in CA. They tend to slide east after they’re done with us.
James E Powell
@hitchhiker:
I completely despise Haberman and every other courtier who slagged Hillary Clinton while promoting and protecting Trump. But the real hatred has to be reserved for the NYT and the institutions that hired these people and told them to do what they did. That’s where the evil is. That’s the wrong we need to right.
Sebastian
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Want something more disturbing? The Nazi’s idea of racial superiority was inspired by the American treatment of African Americans and “scientific” justification of their racial inferiority.
Want to know something really fucked up? The books the Nazis burned were not Jewish books. They were studies about gender and sexes, about transgender studies, etc. Those fuckers destroyed the entire body of science and threw us back at least 50-70 years.
Achrachno
@sm*t cl*de: “Hitler believed that a spoils system, encouraging economic rivalry between members of his staff, ensured that the war economy ran efficiently. Turned out that he was wrong.”
Sounds like the way Eddie Lampert ran Sears and Kmart the past several years. Luckily he has no airforce.
SFAW
@James E Powell:
But-but-but Pinche Sulzberger “interviewed” the Traitor-in-Chief last week, and held his feet to the fire, so it’s all good. And it more than makes up for any “sub-optimal reportage” — that only the LIE-berals are upset about — ftrom 2016.
Ohio Mom
@SWMBO: Easter is sorta fixed: the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox. A lot of moving parts that need to be all lined up. So yes, like Mueller Claus.
SFAW
@Achrachno:
Fast Eddie probably read “The Soul of a New Machine,” and figured “Hey, I can make the company as successful as Data General!”
Actually, I doubt he ever cared about making it successful, only about how to enrich himself.
catclub
@Martin: The real crime is that pretty much everything they did was legal.
And once they made big donations to museums, even more so.
Brickley Paiste
@Mnemosyne:
“The majority of the native population of California was murdered not by Spanish missionaries in the 1500s, but by miners in the 1840s Gold Rush.
And yet the missions get most of the blame in popular history.”
For fuck’s sake: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_of_Native_California
SFAW
@Ohio Mom:
And then if the Easter Bunny sees his shadow, we have six more weeks of Winter? If that how it goes?
catclub
@jl:
per week, per month, or per year?
Steve in the ATL
@SFAW: six more weeks of omelettes
SFAW
@Steve in the ATL:
Eggs-cellent idea. Around Easter, I make omelettes using Cadbury free-range eggs.
ETA: The creme makes them extra-fluffy. Or something.
debbie
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
If you like that, read Phillip Roth’s “The Plot Against America.” It’s a what-if Charles Lindbergh had become president and taken America out of WWII.
Jay
@SFAW:
https://www.thespruceeats.com/deep-fried-easter-creme-eggs-520733
rikyrah
Laziest muthaphucka ? EVER
rikyrah
@Mnemosyne:
Had forgotten that both Timothy Dalton and Anthony Hopkins were in this movie with them??
jl
@catclub: per week.
smike
@catclub:
No way pp boy spends that amount of time working every day, period.
SFAW
@Jay:
Oy. That’s kinda messed up.
Thanks? I think?
NotMax
@rikyrah
Anthony Hopkins before his career became playing Anthony Hopkins.
TriassicSands
Uh, oh. This proves that a properly motivated (i.e., lazy POS) president can ruin the country working part-time. Does that mean government is unnecessary? Fox News wants to know.
jl
@Mnemosyne: Missions didn’t come to California until the mid 18th century, so you are probably thinking of New Mexico for early missions. And the CA Gold Rush started in 1848, and went through the 1850s.
I think there is plenty of blame for the genocide of California Natives to go around. Disease and social disruption during the mission period did a lot of damage in the 1800s to 1830s as contact with whites rapidly increased. The anglo whites during the California Republic and early statehood had to treat the Hispanic Californios well because anglo whites needed their cooperation for the statehood project to work, but the anglos came down hard on Native Americans. Slavery, bounty hunting of humans, kidnapping children, policies like that were sanctioned by the state government. It was horrendous, and lasted until the 1870s, not just miners, but ranchers, farmers, and professional bounty hunter mass murderers and kidnappers did horrendous damage, in addition to disease and social disruption.
That is why I think it is very fair to call my home state of California one of the slave states, we just enslaved and murdered a different group.
After the CA Natives were almost exterminated, the anglo whites when after the Hispanics in the second state constitution of 1878.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@debbie:
I actually got to read that. Checked it out after Trump’s “election”. It was pretty good until the end, where history magically went back to the original timeline after (probably) no lend-lease to the Allies for like a year and a half, with WW2 ending more or less normally.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Sebastian:
Fuck the Nazis. I did not know any of that.
Jay
@SFAW:
At least it’s not Cadbury Creme Egg Drop Soup.
Mnemosyne
@Brickley Paiste:
So did they teach you the unit on the Gold Rush genocide before or after you built the cute little styrofoam mission for class?
Jay
@Brickley Paiste:
Memosyne amended it to:
“But it was the Gold Rush genocide that came close to wiping them out, not the Spanish missions.”
Which your wiki link supports.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Mnemosyne:
I built a Roman aqueduct out of clay for Spanish class once in HS. It was modeled after the Aqueduct of Segovia, I think.
Brickley Paiste
@Mnemosyne:
“The majority of the native population of California was murdered not by Spanish missionaries in the 1500s, but by miners in the 1840s Gold Rush.
And yet the missions get most of the blame in popular history.”
For fuck’s sake: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_of_Native_California
Jay
@Brickley Paiste:
Memosyne amended it to:
“But it was the Gold Rush genocide that came close to wiping them out, not the Spanish missions.”
Which your wiki link supports.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Brickley Paiste: @Jay:
I’m seeing double! //
Jay
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Yup.
Mary G
@hervevillechaizelounge: Maggie always gets a mite pissy when some other outlet comes up with a scoop like these schedules showing 60% executive time. She probably already had them, was saving them for her book, then whoever gave them to her got pissed off that she was sitting on them and took another copy to Axios.
Sebastian
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
I missed a “not”. Should say not only Jewish books.
Here is a good article about this particularly sordid episode.
https://www.oif.ala.org/oif/?p=13366
H.E.Wolf
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
I have some SF alternate-history classics to recommend to you! I read them all in my teens, which was approximately the same era in which “The Lion In Winter” is set, and some of the novels hold up better than others – but these are all authors who have a place in American science fiction.
The Female Man, by Joanna Russ (2 alternate timelines intersecting with 1970s USA)
Native Tongue, by Suzette Haden Elgin (alternate future US history)
The Dragon Waiting, by John M. Ford (alternate European history, late 1400s, Richard III makes an appearance; there’s a concordance online which is very helpful)
The Phoenix and the Mirror, by Avram Davidson (alternate ancient Roman history, with alchemy)
If This Goes On, by Robert Heinlein (alt. US history; religious dictatorship, with a Sekrit Society organizing the resistance)
Those 5 authors run the gamut in terms of writing style, and if I had to pick one to start with, I’d pick Joanna Russ. She has a mordant sense of humor.
Jay
@Sebastian:
Thank you for the link.
LosGatosCA
Likely redundant –
When you’ve outsourced the foreign policy to Putin and domestic policy to Faux News – how much work is there left?
Picking which Trump property to golf at this week? Making sure Steven Miller mistypes the right words on Twitter?
rikyrah
@zhena gogolia:
Love me some Colin Firth???
rikyrah
@satby:
Me too, satby.
Me too???
Luthe
@SFAW: I read that as “six more weeks of Wilmer” and momentarily had a blech.
West of the Rockies
I was hoping for a fresh thread to ask all resident nerds… Does anyone find that Star Trek Discovery is maybe trying to weave too many stories together at once?
In the episode I watched tonight, there are references to possibly mentally ill Spock, a return of the multi-tribe Klingon empire (complete with seeming decapitation by a female of “her man” and their infant son), a return of the parallel universe Empress Georgiou, an interdimensional ghost spore (captured or destroyed by an interdimensional ghost spore eradicator the ship just happened to have on hand), and anothe4 appearance by the weird winged angel thing.
It is crazy complex to me. I WANT to love it. I do not.
Luthe
@H.E.Wolf: The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson (the Black Plague wipes out 90% of Europe and Asia conquers the world)
SFAW
@Luthe:
I say this with love (figuratively speaking): you need help.
Jay
@West of the Rockies:
It was fine, up until they jumped to an alternate universe,
Completely lost me there. Weak tea jump when there was still tons of meat on the bone.
NotMax
@West of the Rockies
Wouldn’t know. As a fan of Trek since the beginning, watched the free first episode which I found dismally designed, sloppily executed and so far removed from the ethos and innate optimism of what once was ST that gave up on it right then and there. It might or might not since have turned out to be a halfway decent science fiction show under some other name, but it sure isn’t Star Trek.
Booger
@Achrachno: I would pay good money to watch an Eddie Lampert Air Force…from a safe distance, natch.