Bixby is wondering why there hasn’t been an open thread in a while. Another nice day here. Expecting rain and/or snow tonight. I’m going out to garden (see here) to finish clean up.
What’s on your agenda today? Something fun I hope.
Open thread
by TaMara| 64 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Bixby is wondering why there hasn’t been an open thread in a while. Another nice day here. Expecting rain and/or snow tonight. I’m going out to garden (see here) to finish clean up.
What’s on your agenda today? Something fun I hope.
Open thread
This post is in: Hail to the Hairpiece, Open Threads, Post-racial America, Sports, Your Place Is In The Resistance
I have two libraries in my house thousands of books. I love to read because I know that for a long time ancestors weren't allowed to.
— Martellus Bennett (@MartysaurusRex) February 7, 2017
From NYMag, “‘I Don’t Feel Welcome in That House’: At Least 6 Patriots Plan to Skip Visit With Trump“:
Just five days out from the Super Bowl, the number of New England Patriots who have declared their intention to skip the team’s celebratory visit to the White House has jumped to six. So much for the Patriots being Trump’s team.
The first two players to say they’d sit out the White House reception did so shortly after the win. And both tight end Martellus Bennett and safety Devin McCourty made it clear that Trump was the reason why. Asked if he was concerned about the response from Trump-supporting Patriots owner Robert Kraft, Bennett said he wasn’t “worried at all.”
The four players who have since joined Bennett and McCourty have given a range of reasons…
Then there’s Chris Long, the only white Patriots player to publicly announce his plans to skip the White House. The defensive end, who publicly spoke out in favor of 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and his national-anthem protest earlier this year, wrote on Twitter that he’s “skipping” the visit…
At this rate, Tom Brady might have to go see his pal all alone.
I’d expect President-Asterisk Smallgloves to throw a tantrum and cancel the whole event, but I don’t think he can bear to skip a chance to be on the teevee hugging even a C-list celebrity Tom Brady. Maybe he’ll ask Tom to bring Mrs. Brady (who, since she seems to be the smarter one in that relationship, would no doubt find herself ‘busy with other commitments’).
***********
Apart from jeering the opposition, what’s on the agenda for the day?
Saturday Morning Open Thread: #NotAllPatsPlayersPost + Comments (192)
This post is in: Open Threads, Republican Stupidity, Republicans in Disarray!, Trump Crime Cartel, Assholes, Not Normal
"OK, you hang up."
"No, *you* hang up!"
"OK, OK. We'll both hang up at the same time!"https://t.co/TC3NsbGF9r pic.twitter.com/XI6exDlHAy— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) February 10, 2017
Olivia Nuzzi, who got her first big news break by attracting Anthony Weiner’s attention, provides an entertaining read for NYMag — “Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus Want You to Know They Are Friends“:
… Plenty of savvy media observers see obvious intent in the gush of leaks now coming out of the White House. “If you read between the lines in some of the anonymous quotes,” Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to President Obama, said, “it’s clear that Bannon, [Jared] Kushner, and Priebus are spending half their time blaming each other and the other half ensuring they don’t get the blame.”
But Bannon and Priebus said these impressions are wrong, and that rumors and reports that they are furiously leaking to gut each other and gain more sway with Trump are mostly media inventions. Any leaks come from lower down the totem pole. The truth, they said, is that they are rather chummy.
Bannon and Priebus spoke with me on a prearranged conference call, joined by Katie Walsh, Priebus’s deputy, and Lindsay Walters, deputy to press secretary Sean Spicer. For about 25 minutes, talking into Walsh’s cell phone on speaker mode, Bannon and Priebus performed a buddy comedy, finishing each other’s sentences and swearing up and down that they are good friends who work together well — and constantly.
“I’m quite aggressive, and Reince is a calming influence on hey — bang bang bang, here’s how we ought to think about doing that,” Bannon said, explaining how their personal styles complement each other.
“We talk a lot, pretty much all day long,” Priebus said. “And then we communicate at night —”
“Until we fall asleep,” Bannon interjected with a laugh.
Priebus cut in, “Until somebody falls asleep … You fell asleep last night.”
“I did,” Bannon said.
“I think, like, a quarter to 11,” Priebus added.
“I did,” Bannon said.
“He became unresponsive,” Priebus laughed.
Claims to the contrary, Priebus said, are upsetting to both of them. “It bothers us because it’s not true, and we actually like and care about each other a lot. So it’s sort of like, if we were just sort of colleagues that kind of tolerate each other every day, maybe it wouldn’t bother us. But because it’s the total opposite — and we’re sitting here, and we’re friends and we’ve kind of been to hell and back ten times together and we like each other — so then we see these things, yeah, it bothers us because it sort of hurts our friendship, and it’s not truthful.”…
But there’s a bipartisan perspective that what’s happening isn’t normal. Steve Schmidt, who served in the George W. Bush White House, told me that the tactics employed by Trump officials — like leaking as a means of harming the competition within — would have been “unthinkable” in the Bush or Obama administrations. “What you’re seeing here is a total lack of discipline and an utterly chaotic process,” he said, comparing it to Game of Thrones. Jon Favreau, the former director of speechwriting for President Obama, had a different reference. “Every White House has its share of leaks and infighting,” he said. “But this is like Hunger Games shit.”…
True or not, paranoia has certainly set in among vulnerable members of the administration and those within its orbit, the most worried of whom have focused their frustrations and concerns on Priebus. They’ve nicknamed him “Rancid,” the creature of the swamp they thought they were going to drain…
Remember, Priebus represents the lowest-common-denominator Permanent Republican Party, the people who will do anything as long as it helps them hang onto power. Bannon represents the “alt-right” white nationalists and nihilists, who will do anything for lulz. Consensus conclusion: Rooting for injuries!
Open Thread: Worst <em>Odd Couple</em> Remake YetPost + Comments (50)
This post is in: Foreign Affairs
Abe's facial expression is ?? pic.twitter.com/etYaiNH6vp
— Brenna Williams (@brennawilliams) February 10, 2017
NPR:
At a joint news conference Friday, President Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sought to shed any perceptions of mistrust between two countries that have been longtime allies. In no uncertain terms, both leaders upheld their friendly relations — both diplomatic and personal — as an alliance with a bright future…
Nobody show him that gif, ‘kay?
I’m actually curious to see how this plays out, because Prime Minister Abe has a bit of a reputation himself as a rightwing dick not the most diplomatic individual.
Elsewhere, in the ‘small but significant victories’ category, via NYMag, “Trump Nixes Plan to Appoint a War Criminal to the State Department“:
Until Friday, Elliott Abrams was expected to be named the Trump administration’s deputy secretary of State — a powerful position, particularly in a department headed by a former oil executive with no diplomatic experience.
Abrams’s apparent selection was not treated as a scandal. But in a less degenerate republic, it would have been: The last time Abrams worked at the State Department, he helped the Reagan White House covertly sell weapons to Iran — in defiance of an embargo — so as to fund reactionary rebels in Nicaragua, in defiance of a federal law that Congress had passed 411 to 0…
Rex Tillerson and Jared Kushner both lobbied the president on Abrams’s behalf. And, after a meeting with the war criminal, Trump was prepared to make the neoconservative his number-two diplomat.
And then, Trump came upon a column Abrams had written in May 2016, titled “When You Can’t Stand Your Candidate.”…
Now, Trump has personally vetoed Abrams appointment, according to sources who spoke with CNN…
Late Night Open Thread: Well, <em>That</em> Wasn’t Pleasant…Post + Comments (142)
by John Cole| 95 Comments
This post is in: Hail to the Hairpiece
Been a banner week for Dolt 45, as he has been basically rolled on all fronts. He has:
1.) Dropped his bellicose BS with China over Taiwan, and has agree to adhere to the One China policy. That’s playing well in China:
The phrase bandied around after Trump’s Thursday night phone call with Chinese Communist Party Secretary Xi Jinping is “paper tiger.” James Zimmerman, the former head of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, told Reuters that Trump’s threatening to repudiate the One China Policy and then backing down “confirmed to the world that he is a paper tiger … someone that seems threatening but is wholly ineffectual and unable to stomach a challenge.” The international affairs expert Shi Yanhong told the New York Times, “Trump lost his first fight with Xi and will be looked at as a paper tiger,” while The Guardian headlined a piece about the call, “China U-turn is latest sign Trump may turn out to be a paper tiger.” (Mainland Chinese media has, generally speaking, taken a gracious — one might even say victorious — attitude towards the phone call.)
2.) Got the military kicked out of Yemen (which might be a good thing so we can no longer wage Saudi Arabia’s war):
Angry at the civilian casualties incurred last month in the first commando raid authorized by President Trump, Yemen has withdrawn permission for the United States to run Special Operations ground missions against suspected terror groups in the country, according to American officials.
Grisly photographs of children apparently killed in the crossfire of a 50-minute firefight during the raid caused outrage in Yemen. A member of the Navy’s SEAL Team 6, Chief Petty Officer William Owens, was also killed in the operation.
3.) Got beat up by the 9th circuit for being a fucking bigmouthed idiot, said he would take them to court, and now is backing down:
The White House sent conflicting signals on Friday evening, with chief of staff Reince Priebus saying the administration was still considering an appeal to the Supreme Court after a lower court soundly rejected its request to reinstate the order.
Priebus’s statement came roughly an hour after a White House official said it was not planning to challenge the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling upholding a temporary restraining order (TRO) blocking the ban.
And Trump himself has said a new order on security could come next week.
Speaking of threatening to go to court and then not following through, when is he going to sue all the women he sexually assaulted?
4.) Got screwed in the ass and had his VP made to look like the fool by the wingnut he has advising him:
National security adviser Michael Flynn spoke privately with Vice President Pence on Friday in an apparent attempt to contain the fallout from the disclosure that Flynn had discussed U.S. sanctions on Russia with that country’s ambassador and then allowed Pence and other White House officials to publicly deny that he had done so, an administration official said.
The conversation took place as senior Democrats in Congress called for existing investigations of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election to expand in scope to scrutinize Flynn’s contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak weeks before the Trump administration took office.
5.) Had his other advisor almost banned from CNN and then beat down for promoting Ivanka’s clothing line.
In other news, intelligence agencies are corroborating the Russian dossier and Trump hates his job and his staff and Republicans everywhere are getting screamed at by angry constituents.
This would be funny if it weren’t so damned tragic.
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Open Threads
That spells “moon.” Here’s tonight’s moon:
The mister grilled steaks, and I made baked potatoes for dinner. So I had the easy part.
What’s up with you this evening? Open thread!
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Open Threads, Riveted By The Sociological Significance Of It All
The mountain states need a new safe word pic.twitter.com/NB9OznjuRv
— Gabriel Rossman (@GabrielRossman) February 9, 2017
Also, people from New Jersey need to stop punching Pennsylvanians in the chest. https://t.co/IwOyIw3LmO pic.twitter.com/toLoOa97hx
— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) February 10, 2017
Given the vast computing power available, there is nothing people can’t chart. Amino.com is a database doctor-picking service, so this probably qualifies as ‘earned media’; the methodology behind that chart is explained here.
If you click over, they actually make guesses at some of these outcomes — ‘suffocation’ is the catchall term they used for various hypoxia-related medical codes, and states with higher elevations might be expected to have more people testing short of breath. Also, as I guessed before reading the post, Massachusetts has a strong medical system that’s been pushing for more head-injury testing in our youth sports leagues, which explains why concussions get diagnosed more. (My second guess, based on the one not-concussion head injury I’ve sustained as an adult, was that our environment encourages slipping & landing head-first on a hard surface.)
However, given that one of Michigan’s nicknames is ‘the Mitten’, I’m a wee bit suspicious of that ‘hand injury‘ coding…
What’s on the agenda as we get ready for the weekend?
Friday Evening Open Thread: Fun with ChartsPost + Comments (194)