Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Fucking consultants! (of the political variety)

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

These are not very smart people, and things got out of hand.

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

Humiliatingly small and eclipsed by the derision of millions.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

Stand up, dammit!

The only way through is to slog through the muck one step at at time.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

All hail the time of the bunny!

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Welcome to the Weekend Open Thread (Twitter Hacked Edition)

Welcome to the Weekend Open Thread (Twitter Hacked Edition)

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64Comments

  1. 1.

    J R in WV

    …on seven different kinds of mushrooms, nude, in a giant bamboo steampunk rocketship called the Love Temple…

    Wow, what a way to start a weekend!!!

    Double wow — first post!!!! ;-)

  3. 3.

    A Ghost To Most

    @Lee: Proof, or it didn’t happen. It is all too plausible that Jack let slip how he really feels.

  5. 5.

    StringOnAStick

    We did our Labor Day weekend travel early, joining some friends at a rented condo in the mountains starting Wednesday night and came home very late Thursday, the exodus out of Denver as we drove home was obvious, but this evening will be insane. We will now hunker down and enjoy a quiet long weekend in town, since everyone else will be out of town. Three day weekends in the Denver area mean murderous traffic into the mountains; we’d rather stay home and create our own 3 day weekends at other times because it is worth using a vacation day to avoid the insanity. The mountain counties have fire bans right now too, so no campfires due to very high fire danger; I’m laying good odds that there will be a human caused fire up there before the long weekend is over.

  6. 6.

    Chyron HR

    “After a horrifying 31 months of incoherent pseudo-words and actual Nazi propaganda being pushed from the President’s unhacked account…”

  7. 7.

    debbie

    Someone needs to hack into Trump’s account and erase every tweet he’s ever sent. He’d be apoplectic.

  12. 12.

    Quinerly

    Interesting fact. I had beers the other night with Jack Dorsey’s baby brother. He drinks at a bar/Blues club just blocks from my house; known him about 7 years. Their father also has a small business in my neighborhood. This brother was involved in a terrible car (might have been motorcycle) accident years ago. His skull is slightly misshapened from the reconstruction. Good kid. Slightly brain damaged, though. Only time I have ever heard him even mention who his brother is was when Jack met Obama a few years back.

  13. 13.

    dmsilev

    Donald Trump hacked Dorsey’s account? He must have learned something about the cyber from his son.

  14. 14.

    chopper

    hope everyone in the path of dorian is getting out of dodge.

    as i said in another thread, it’s delicious that dorian was headed straight to puerto rico, but when twitler tweeted out some spiteful shit about PR, the storm suddenly veered around the island and aimed right for mar-a-lago. poetic justice.

  15. 15.

    trollhattan

    @Mary G:
    Does one camp at Mammoth? It’s basically a ski resort town.

    Excellent gateway for backpacking, though.

    To your point, the crawl up 395 will be epic.

  16. 16.

    Bill Arnold

    @chopper:

    the storm suddenly veered around the island and aimed right for mar-a-lago. poetic justice.

    Got his attention, that did.

  19. 19.

    MomSense

    Playing the world’s tiniest ? for poor Jack.

    Week 2 done. I’ve been so tired from the new job lately. I have invites at two different camps this weekend but part of me just wants to sit on the couch for three days doing nothing. Sad!

  21. 21.

    Jay

    A student got a text while at school that his mom was taken by ICETeacher: "I pull him into my arms & do my best to comfort him while he just cries & cries & I try my best not to cry…What comfort can I give him? How can I tell him everything will be ok?" ??THIS IS NOT OK! pic.twitter.com/xPoYMcZGjY— StanceGrounded (@_SJPeace_) August 30, 2019

  23. 23.

    Mary G

    @trollhattan: Her sister’s husband’s family evidently goes every year, but I don’t know if it’s actually in Mammoth or not. She is an obsessively neat person, so I imagine it will be her first and last time camping. I’m tempted to set up a pool picking the day and time she decamps to a hotel.

  24. 24.

    NotMax

    @chopper

    And as responded on the other thread, it never was headed straight towards Puerto Rico. All the tracking from the time it first formed showed it would skirt nearby but not make landfall there.

  25. 25.

    Bill Arnold

    @chopper:

    never seen a hurricane go “you know what, fuck that guy!” before.

    Less than a week previously there was a leak about how DJT had been proposing out loud to use thermonuclear devices for hurricane control.
    No finesse.

  26. 26.

    Brachiator

    @chopper:

    hope everyone in the path of dorian is getting out of dodge

    Yep.

    Fortunately, I don’t have close friends and family that I am worried about. And of course I hope that Balloon Juice people will be okay. But I have to admit that it has been a little nerve wracking reading about the storm gathering strength and slowly moving towards the US. It’s got what, the entire holiday weekend to do it’s thing.

    I hope that it weakens before it hits land. And I am happy that it seems to have bypassed most of the island communities in the region.

  28. 28.

    Bill Arnold

    @NotMax:
    There was a prediction track for a half day or more where it hit PR dead-center. I was watching. (Specifically on cyclocane)

  29. 29.

    chopper

    @NotMax:

    totes wrong. at the time trump started tweeting, the NHC advisory in effect at the time had the storm going right through PR.

    in fact, until the storm wobbled around it, PR was in the path or the cone in pretty much every NHC advisory.

  30. 30.

    trollhattan

    A sort of junior Hope Hicks gets her WH walking papers.

    US President Donald Trump’s personal assistant has been forced to resign from the White House after leaking private information about his family.

    Madeleine Westerhout, 29, was abruptly removed on Thursday after the president learned she had been talking to reporters at a dinner this month. She was drinking and bragging about her access to Mr Trump during his holiday in New Jersey, CBS News reports. Ms Westerhout had worked with him since the first day of his presidency.

    The White House has declined to comment on her departure.

    The New York Times, which first reported her firing, cited a White House source who said she is now considered a “separated employee” and would be barred from returning to the executive mansion on Friday. Described in US media as Mr Trump’s gatekeeper, she had an office directly in front of the Oval Office in the West Wing. Her comments were made in an off-the-record dinner chat with reporters at a hotel in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, during Mr Trump’s holiday at his club in Bedminster, New Jersey, earlier in August.

    Sources told CBS News she was drinking and disclosed details about the president’s family. She also reportedly gossiped about broadcasters seeking access to the president.

    It is unclear how Mr Trump learned of the conversation.

    Remember reading about the Mar-a-Lago phones being connected to Trump’s personal suite? Executive time.

  32. 32.

    TenguPhule

    In his upcoming memoir, Lonnie G. Bunch III describes the private tour he gave President Trump, recalling that Trump’s reaction to the Dutch role in the global slave trade was, “You know, they love me in the Netherlands.”

    Ladies and Gentlebeings, I give you the dumbest man on Earth.

  37. 37.

    TenguPhule

    Kaitlan Collins
    ✔
    @kaitlancollins
    Trump says he is not worried that he doesn’t have a permanent FEMA administrator or confirmed DHS Secretary during hurricane season. He repeats what he’s said before — that he likes the word “acting” before some of his staff’s titles.

    83
    12:12 PM – Aug 30, 2019

    FEMA Is so fucked.

  38. 38.

    Elizabelle

    @Mnemosyne: Some of the lesser souls were getting access, and Maggie wanted her place under the table protected?

    Also interesting: the aide was drinking at the dinner that did her in. Will not have gone over well with Trump, known teetotaler.

    FWIW, I find it interesting the current press secretary has had 2 DUIs, one while in Trump’s employ. (Plus the usual plagiarism and padded expense reports, but the expense reports — that we know about — were earlier.) I remember this woman being the overwhelming choice for the job (no one wants …)

  42. 42.

    Elizabelle

    More from trollhattan’s BBC item about the aide’s firing:

    When veteran journalist Bob Woodward complained to Mr Trump in an interview that his request to speak with him had not been passed along by more prominent aides such as Kellyanne Conway, Mr Trump said he should have contacted Ms Westerhout.
    “Madeleine is the key. She’s the secret,” Mr Trump said.

    According to CBS, Mr Trump has also often referred to her as “my beauty”.

    ETA: Westerhout was making $145K for her job sitting outside Trump’s office, controlling access.

    Part of what makes me livid. All those cretins, making buck at the public trough. I still think Trump is an illegitimate president, and they are illegitimate staff.

  45. 45.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Elizabelle:

    Also interesting: the aide was drinking at the dinner that did her in. Will not have gone over well with Trump, known teetotaler.

    But is that because some people have to get drunk to do stupid shit?

  46. 46.

    Another Scott

    @trollhattan: Was this at the infamous SHS going-away dinner party, I wonder? Would be just desserts for that “party” to take down one of his own…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  48. 48.

    Elizabelle

    @Mary G: She lived a long time with terminal cancer.

    Glad we have her television work to remember her by. Valerie Harper was wonderful at it.

  50. 50.

    Elizabelle

    Politico (natch) has more reporting on the Westerhout firing. Take that, Tiffany!

    Madeleine Westerhout, who left her White House job suddenly on Thursday as President Trump’s personal assistant, was fired after bragging to reporters that she had a better relationship with Trump than his own daughters, Ivanka and Tiffany Trump, and that the president did not like being in pictures with Tiffany because he perceived her as overweight.

    Another person who says the quiet parts out loud.

    The critical comments happened at an off-the-record dinner, according to two people familiar with the matter, that Westerhout and deputy White House press secretary Hogan Gidley held earlier this month with reporters who were covering Trump’s vacation at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

    Westerhout also jokingly told the journalists that Trump couldn’t pick Tiffany out of a crowd, said one of the people. “She had a couple drinks and in an uncharacteristically unguarded moment, she opened up to the reporters,” the person said.

    At some point, Gidley left the restaurant for a television interview on Fox News. During that time — around 45 minutes to an hour — Westerhout made the comments to the reporters.

    After the Aug. 17 dinner, which took place at the restaurant inside the nearby Embassy Suites hotel and included the Washington Post’s Phil Rucker, Bloomberg’s Jennifer Jacobs, Reuters’ Steve Holland and the Wall Street Journal’s Andrew Restuccia, Westerhout rode back to a different hotel, the Marriott, with Rucker and Holland.

    White House staffers having off-the-record dinners or drinks with reporters has long been a commonplace practice when a president is traveling.

    And she’s a douche.

    Westerhout, 28, was a key gatekeeper for the president, screening his official calls and controlling the access of outside advisers. In February, she blasted an unknown person who leaked three months of his calendars to the press.

    “What these don’t show are the hundreds of calls and meetings @realDonaldTrump takes everyday,” Westerhout tweeted at the time. “This POTUS is working harder for the American people than anyone in recent history.”

    Recent history. Bitch.

  52. 52.

    Gin & Tonic

    Open thread? Here’s a couple of musical things I’ve been saving up, definitely opposite ends of the spectrum. 1- A nice Atlas Obscura video piece about something called “The Polyphony Project” – a Hungarian guy collecting old folk music in Ukraine (I know some people who have worked with him and/or are doing similar work.) 2- A piece from the UK’s The Independent about a female rapper calling herself Alyona Alyona – she’s a former kindergarten teacher who probably doesn’t fit the rapper stereotype, but she’s hot, hot, hot in Ukraine right now.

  53. 53.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Elizabelle: At this point, that shit is booo-ring. I want ritual disemboweling, preferably in the Rose Garden, otherwise I don’t give a shit.

  55. 55.

    Brachiator

    @Elizabelle:

    White House staffers having off-the-record dinners or drinks with reporters has long been a commonplace practice when a president is traveling.

    As an aside, you cannot expect to get honest reporting when journalists are buddy buddy with the people they are supposed to be covering.

  57. 57.

    Calouste

    @Major Major Major Major: The Guardian mentioned today that the Tories need about 8% over Labour to win a majority, but who knows what is going to happen with tactical voting. Only thing I’m willing to predict is that Labour and the Tories will end up with 2 seats between them in Scotland and the rest will go to the SNP and a few seats to the Lib Dems.

  58. 58.

    Calouste

    @Calouste: There was a by-election for the Scottish Parliament yesterday. LibDems won as more or less expected, and Labour came in 6th with a little over 1% of the vote.

  60. 60.

    Steeplejack

    @NotMax:

    A petard is a primitive type of grenade.

    Yes, and “to be hoist on one’s own petard” is a venerable saying. Trollhattan’s wordplay—on hoist—is within bounds, Nothing there to suggest not knowing a petard is a grenade. We will allow it.

    Or should we all start pedantvetting your wretched puns?

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