This bleeding heart vine has taken over our backyard bar to the extent that we almost need a machete to come and go:
I hope everyone is having a pleasant evening, bleeding hearts notwithstanding. Open thread!
by Betty Cracker| 124 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Garden Chats, Open Threads
This bleeding heart vine has taken over our backyard bar to the extent that we almost need a machete to come and go:
I hope everyone is having a pleasant evening, bleeding hearts notwithstanding. Open thread!
by Betty Cracker| 178 Comments
This post is in: Election 2016, Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity, Assholes, General Stupidity
I can scarcely recall what I imagined the internet would bring when it bloomed a generation ago. But my speculation about an interconnected future did not include reading the real-time rage-tweets of a malevolent clown while he pinches off a loaf in the White House throne room, having been placed there by traitors, racists, misogynists and assorted goddamned nitwits.
Nope. I did not see that coming.
I often wonder what good it does to repackage the more outrageous tweet-turds for your consideration, look at what the media says about them or discuss them with family and friends. Some days I just don’t bother. Some days, I wonder if it’s harmful to give the shitgibbon’s childish rants any energy and attention at all. And some days, I feel compelled to bear witness, even in a small and insignificant way.
This morning’s rage-tweets fall into the latter category, so even though several hours have passed since they dropped into the Twitter toilet bowl, here’s a representative (stool) sample:
Everybody is asking why the Justice Department (and FBI) isn't looking into all of the dishonesty going on with Crooked Hillary & the Dems..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2017
…New Donna B book says she paid for and stole the Dem Primary. What about the deleted E-mails, Uranium, Podesta, the Server, plus, plus…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2017
….People are angry. At some point the Justice Department, and the FBI, must do what is right and proper. The American public deserves it!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2017
There are several more in the same vein, which include allusions to “Crazy Bernie” and “Pocahantas” and additional ranting about “Crooked Hillary.” But this line is the most alarming: “Lets [sic] go FBI & Justice Dept.”
These are the ravings of a tinpot authoritarian. These are the rantings of an unhinged, predatory demagogue who is salivating at the prospect of using the apparatus of the United States government to conduct show trials and persecute political opponents. Trump expanded on the same idea in a radio interview [via CNN]:
“The saddest thing is that because I’m the President of the United States, I am not supposed to be involved with the Justice Department, I am not supposed to be involved with the FBI. I look at what’s happening with the Justice Department. Well, why aren’t they going after Hillary Clinton with her emails and with her, the dossier? I’m very unhappy with it that the Justice Department isn’t going. I am not supposed to be doing the kind of things that I would love to be doing. And I am very frustrated by it.”
Should we be grateful that Trump seems to grasp that he’s “not supposed to” leverage the justice system to punish political enemies, however unfair he rates that restraint? Maybe. But given the fact that those agencies are headed up by his flunkies, the fact that he’s applying even more pressure on them to do his bidding is worrisome.
I think Cheryl’s post downstairs asks the following question in a different way: Will our institutions be sufficient to withstand the onslaught of this lunatic? I vacillate between optimism and pessimism, but this latest push has me worried.
As the Civil War began, Ulysses S. Grant said, “There are but two parties now: traitors and patriots.” There’s a good argument that the party that countenances rule by a manifestly unfit crackpot who was sleazed into office in part via the machinations of a hostile foreign power has already become a party of traitors. There can be no doubt about it if Trump succeeds in turning the DOJ and FBI into his own personal score-settling force and distraction circus.
Anyhoo, it seemed important, if futile, to note for the record that the president of the United States escalated his calls to turn this nation into a nuclear-armed banana republic today. The wonder — and perhaps the danger — is that it attracted comparatively little attention. We’re used to this shit now, and that’s not healthy.
Dishonorable discharge, no jail time:
Bowe Bergdahl received a dishonorable discharge from the US Army but will avoid prison time for desertion and misbehavior before the enemy after abandoning his outpost in Afghanistan in 2009, a military judge ruled Friday.
The judge also ruled that Bergdahl’s rank be reduced from sergeant to private. Additionally, he will be required to pay a $1,000 fine from his salary for the next 10 months.“Sgt. Bergdahl has looked forward to today for a long time,” Eugene Fidell, Bergdahl’s civilian attorney, said at a news conference after the sentence was announced.
“As everyone knows he was a captive of the Taliban for nearly five years, and three more years have elapsed while the legal process unfolded. He has lost nearly a decade of his life.”
The sentence is effective immediately, except for the dishonorable discharge, which Bergdahl is appealing, according to Fidell.
And, of course, Twitler played a role in the sentencing:
One of the mitigating factors in his sentencing were disparaging comments by President Trump as a candidate and while in office. Nance ruled Monday that while Bergdahl can get a fair trial despite the remarks, he would consider them in his sentencing.
As a candidate, Trump denounced Bergdahl and the Obama administration’s agreement to get him back from the Taliban. On Oct. 16, 2015, for example, Trump called him “a rotten traitor” and suggested he should be shot or dropped from an airplane.
“In the old days he’d get shot for treason,” the president told a crowd of supporters. “If I win, I might just have him floating right in the middle of that place and drop him, boom. Let ’em have him. … I mean, that’s cheaper than a bullet.”
More recently, Trump declined to comment on Bergdahl’s case, telling reporters, “I think people have heard my comments in the past.”
Even those comments were seen by Nance as “unlawful command influence,” writing in his ruling, “The plain meaning of the president’s words to any reasonable hearer could be that in spite of knowing that he should not comment on the pending sentencing in this case, he wanted to make sure that everyone remembered what he really thinks should happen to the accused.”
The most pressing issue for me regarding this is who in command is going to pay the price for allowing a guy who washed out of the Coast Guard into an Airborne unit with a waiver to enter the Army and then deployed him despite knowing that he should not be deployed. Because that’s a big damned problem, and also exposes a key flaw in the all volunteer Army- when you need to ramp up the number of soldiers quickly, quality control gets thrown out the damned window.
by DougJ| 79 Comments
This post is in: David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute
I’ve mostly lost interest in David Brooks. He’s bad, but day in day out, he can’t quite match the awfulness of Frank Bruni or David Von Drehle. He’s self-involved, but not as self-involved as Bruni. He’s dumb, but not as dumb as Von Drehle. I just don’t think he matches up well against either of them.
What makes Brooks special when he’s at his best/worst, is his ability to get fixated on a random word. It could be a word he heard at a TED talk, it could be something he saw on a menu at a deli. Or it could be something he made up. Today he decides to describe guys who are just trying to get laid as “prospectors”. I think this is a real gem because it combines glib both sides stupidity with an awkward phrase that no one in history has ever uttered before:
In the political world, for example, partisans of left and right rationalize their support for Bill Clinton or Donald Trump because they could tell themselves in effect, “Oh, he’s just a horny prospector.”
Who do you think is the worst columnist working at a major outlet right now? Tom L think it’s still Bobo, but I think Bruni has far surpassed him, this shining example notwithstanding.
by Betty Cracker| 103 Comments
This post is in: Dog Blogging, Open Threads
Here’s a photo of Patsy Marie from 2009:
As a mother I am ashamed to admit this, but it’s very possible I have more puppy photos of my dogs than I do baby photos of my kid.
Open thread!
This post is in: Domestic Politics, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome, Our Failed Political Establishment
With Monday’s revelations, we know more about Donald Trump’s Russian connections, but there is obviously more to come. As I urged in August, we need to think about options for the country’s response as this plays out.
David Roberts (@drvox) posted a tweetstream Sunday night on whether the country can come together, given the division sown by the Republicans and their implications of “Second Amendment solutions” and, potentially, civil war. Daniel Nexon (@dhnexon), a professor of political science, posted a similar, but shorter tweetstream. Roberts has now written a post that is still longer and goes in a different direction than I take here. I’ll work from the tweetstreams.
Here is Nexon’s tweetstream, in narrative form.
I disagree in a couple of places, but only slightly. I think it’s fine to celebrate that Robert Mueller’s investigation has resulted in indictments and conviction for wrongdoers, but I agree that we can’t lose sight of the bigger problem. I am dubious about using the phrase “constitutional crisis,” because it is being used for too many things and thus is losing meaning in today’s context. Better to specify the particular conflict, of which we are likely to see several.
Breaking down Nexon’s concerns further,
Roberts’s tweets focus on whether the country can come together to find a way to resolve the problems the Trump presidency presents. I dipped into some of these problems in August. I don’t have answers but intend to keep thinking and writing about this.
In a world not dominated by Republican need for tax cuts for the wealthy, we would probably already have articles of impeachment introduced in the House. That will not happen until after the tax cut bill is defeated. Wealthy donors say they will defect if the bill is not passed, and the prospect of not being elected may loom in the calculations of Republican members of Congress.
Or the ever-increasing news of Russian manipulation of social media might cause Republicans to wonder if the Russians might turn against them. Or they might realize that having an adversarial nation help them might be seen by the voters as undesirable. The willingness of Republicans in Congress to accept Russian help in the election and to cover it up was striking. I’ll do another post on that.
Roberts uses Watergate as an example. It took time to build public and Congressional opinion toward impeachment. There was a hard-line residue, like today’s Trump approvers, who thought Nixon was acting appropriately. Who ignored the blatant 18-minute hiatus in the tapes of Nixon’s meetings in the White House. But members of Congress recognized their duty to the nation and urged Nixon to resign.
The process then was gradual, and it will be gradual today, although perhaps accelerated in the way everything is now. The hard-line residue will not back impeachment. But we live in a democracy, and, if those opposing Trump make a strong showing, as in next week’s Virginia elections, members of Congress will take notice.
As more members of Congress speak out and then move against Trump, more of the public will follow. We need to press those members to move. So more phonecalls, please.
by TaMara| 68 Comments
This post is in: Dog Blogging
Raven says:We who choose to surround ourselves
with lives even more temporary than our
own, live within a fragile circle;
easily and often breached.
Unable to accept its awful gaps,
we would still live no other way.
We cherish memory as the only
certain immortality, never fully
understanding the necessary plan.
— Irving Townsend
And while I’m grateful for all the thoughts, and I am still so broken about this sudden, unexpected loss, I know each and everyone of us has something going on that makes some days harder than others. And this place is where we can come for support, comfort and even some testy exchanges that keep us going. I will be always be in wonder and awe of everyone here and thankful John created such a place as Balloon-Juice.
Again, thank you for taking the time to leave me a note, it means more than you could ever know. I’ll give Bixby an extra hug from all of you, he’s having a difficult time, but he’ll bounce back. – TaMara