Saturday, November 02, 2019
Poor Misunderstood Me
My regular whine, but a frustrating thing about being bombarded on the internet with lots of, um, "feedback," is that people regularly attribute views to me that I never had. And sure sometimes that's my fault in that someone genuinely misunderstood something I wrote, but often it's just people just making shit up.
UNITY
The significance of a speech can be hard to measure in the moment, but this @PeteButtigieg one may be remembered for a good while: "The purpose of the presidency is not the glorification of the president, but the unification of the American people."
— Jeff Zeleny (@jeffzeleny) November 2, 2019
I never understand this rhetoric at all. We aren't actually fighting a civil war. People disagree about stuff and that's... good?
From Bean To Cup
Funny, but of course. Walls don't stop people. Guard towers do.
Smuggling gangs in Mexico have repeatedly sawed through new sections of President Trump’s border wall in recent months by using commercially available power tools, opening gaps large enough for people and drug loads to pass through, according to U.S. agents and officials with knowledge of the damage.
The breaches have been made using a popular cordless household tool known as a reciprocating saw that retails at hardware stores for as little as $100. When fitted with specialized blades, the saws can slice through one of the barrier’s steel-and-concrete bollards in a matter of minutes, according to the agents, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the barrier-defeating techniques.
Friday, November 01, 2019
Florida Man
New York City isn't for everybody and I'm often amused by New Yorkers (especially older but not just) who would obviously be happier anywhere else. Good for My President for realizing this!
The Greatest Health Care System In The World
Just your regular reminder that we basically spend what other countries with some form of universal free at point of service system spend in *public money* already and then we spend that again in *private money* and still no one can manage to explain when and why and who I need to call and which magic words to say in order to be sure that the office thinks a test will be covered by insurance but haha they don't even know then either.
The Best Deals
I suppose the problem is that "trade deal" has the word "deal" in there and Trump makes the best deals. But while of course terms of trade deals matter, they're basically boring stuff about tariffs and quotas. A post-Brexit trade deal with the US will matter some to the UK, but it's unlikely to be "better" in any meaningful sense than the existing US-EU arrangement. Also they have to go through Congress so it doesn't really matter how much Donald likes Nigel.
Donald Trump said Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal will make it difficult for the British prime minister to strike a trade deal with the U.S. after the U.K. leaves the European Union."Much bigger numbers." What does that even mean? I get it's Trump so nothing he says means anything, but in this case it's really total gibberish.
In an interview with Brexit Party Leader Nigel Farage on LBC Radio, the president said the two countries could “do much bigger numbers” if Johnson made a cleaner break with the EU.
Thursday, October 31, 2019
Clap Clap Clap
A weird thing about Democrats is the desire to applaud...the minimum basic thing you expect from Democrats. We can argue all the time about what, say, President Obama could best achieve with Senate Majority Leader Mitch, but that's a practical question, not a "wow a Democrat supports ABORTION RIGHTS CLAP CLAP CLAP."
We don't have to applaud for the bare minimum.
We don't have to applaud for the bare minimum.
Assume Lindsey Dead
Whut
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) plans to hand the chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee back to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa.) in the next Congress.There's a story but... what is the real story.
Put On A Costume Knock On A Door Get Some Candy Hell Skip The Costume Who Cares
I'm not sure if this is just an internet thing but Halloween isn't really complicated?
Rotisserie Baseball
Baseball is the only sport I regularly half pay attention to, in part because with 8 thousand games per season you don't really have to pay all that much attention. But some people do! They pay a lot of attention! They don't just follow their own local sports franchise. They follow the entirety of baseball! This is amazing.
Amazing but it's something you can conceivably do now. People did it back in the dark ages before they could punch up stats on their phone instantly!
The Kids remember the good old days when the New York Times had a public editor because they remember Margaret Sullivan who was good. I met her once. She didn't like me, though I wasn't sure if she didn't like me or just the dumb bloggers I was representing at an event. But she was good.
Still most of them were bad! The first one was very bad! He was Daniel Okrent and he was dumb and bad and he invented Rotisserie baseball - which we now know as fantasy baseball - back when to invent such a thing you had to be incredibly rich and bored.
Amazing but it's something you can conceivably do now. People did it back in the dark ages before they could punch up stats on their phone instantly!
The Kids remember the good old days when the New York Times had a public editor because they remember Margaret Sullivan who was good. I met her once. She didn't like me, though I wasn't sure if she didn't like me or just the dumb bloggers I was representing at an event. But she was good.
Still most of them were bad! The first one was very bad! He was Daniel Okrent and he was dumb and bad and he invented Rotisserie baseball - which we now know as fantasy baseball - back when to invent such a thing you had to be incredibly rich and bored.
Wednesday, October 30, 2019
The Fall Is Coming Down
An amusing thing this year in the urban hellhole is that the little old Cambodian ladies discovered the weekly Mennonite farm stand and a massive number of them show up at once. Gotta fight for my Hakurei turnips.
If The President Does It
That's all they're going to be left with. Well, it's really "If A [Republican] President Does It." The belief that Republicans can do what they want and Democratic power only exists if Republicans benevolently let it happen is wired deeply not just within conservatives but within much of the media establishment and it has been that way since Gingrich.
It doesn't matter how many Lindsey Graham "RUUYYYUUUL OF LLAAAAWWWYAAAAW" quotes you pull up from the 90s. They don't care.
It doesn't matter how many Lindsey Graham "RUUYYYUUUL OF LLAAAAWWWYAAAAW" quotes you pull up from the 90s. They don't care.
Tuesday, October 29, 2019
Writing About Trump
The thing is I think most people know this now.
There was a time when maybe it wasn't completely nuts to imagine there was some grand strategy, or that every Trump Tweet was meant as a distraction from The Last Tweet, or that maybe, just maybe, the man had a tiny glimmer of understanding of the job he had. February 2017 was that time. It was a long time ago. He's just a stupid narcissistic old man with brain worms.
This isn’t analysis because there is nothing to Trump, or to his politics—no room for subtext, no broader strategy beyond whatever seat-of-the-pants pandering is most immediately apparent, nothing but the wheedling and undignified and insatiable vanity that is always right there to see. This presents a problem for people whose job it is to write or talk about politics. That job, as the elite media has come to understand and pursue it, is to decode and translate The Great Game’s secret significances, contextualize the triumphs and tribulations of its heroes, and parse its finer points of strategy. Given that Trump is always doing exactly what he appears to be doing, and for precisely the reasons you’d expect, the people in these powerful jobs have naturally found themselves glossing and restating what is already quite obvious, or straining to situate things that are obvious and stupid and embarrassing within a context—a system of essential norms and traditions, governed by civility and reasoned discourse—that plainly no longer exists. They respect the office of the presidency so much that they insist on treating it with a reverence that Donald Trump, as its occupant, plainly cannot merit.Which is my way of saying everyone who pretends not to know this is just writing presidential fantasy fan fiction, if not about the man himself then The Office Of The Presidency or The White House or the whoever the latest hire is who is supposed to save him from himself, and the Republic from them all. Less politely, they are all completely full of shit.
There was a time when maybe it wasn't completely nuts to imagine there was some grand strategy, or that every Trump Tweet was meant as a distraction from The Last Tweet, or that maybe, just maybe, the man had a tiny glimmer of understanding of the job he had. February 2017 was that time. It was a long time ago. He's just a stupid narcissistic old man with brain worms.
Mr. President I IS DISAPPOINT SIRRAH
I think it's dumb, but I at least get the purpose of the faux-naive rhetorical device of feigning disappointment in Trump or Republicans. But I swear lots of people who are paid lots of money to cover politics and explain it to the rest of us really mean it. They're not hiding who they are!
THIS IS A NEW LOW FOR PRESIDENT TRUMP. No, really, did you not read the twitter just yesterday?
THIS IS A NEW LOW FOR PRESIDENT TRUMP. No, really, did you not read the twitter just yesterday?
Hard Work
Ambition is a weird thing. Donald Trump didn't really expect to win, but Boris Johnson definitely wanted to. He's lazy. Probably he imagines that a lot of the stuff he did, such as appearing on the teevee or showing up to fancy lunches with important people, and occasionally even having to vote, was "work," but it really isn't. With the right personality all that stuff is just fun, really. He was the Mayor of London, which is largely a figurehead job without too many direct powers, and he delegated most of that (which is fine!). But Prime Minister actually has to... work. No amount of shirking and delegating can really get around that. Having been around government all his life, he has to actually know that. Why would he want the job?
It's weird.
It's weird.
No Way They Could Smear A Troop!!!!
Republicans have been using The Troops as props and metaphorical human shields for their careers for decades, and every day pundits wake up pretending to forget.
Also John Yoo, highly respected Berkeley Law Professor, of the highly respected UC-Berkeley Law School, was on Laura Ingraham accusing him of espionage. I have never heard that name before, and thus I am shocked that an elite law professor could be bad!
Great job CNN, good hire here. https://t.co/YieqZ9V3ID
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) October 29, 2019
Also John Yoo, highly respected Berkeley Law Professor, of the highly respected UC-Berkeley Law School, was on Laura Ingraham accusing him of espionage. I have never heard that name before, and thus I am shocked that an elite law professor could be bad!
Morning Thread
The Halifax Examiner has one of own recounting her experiences as An American Flying Air Canada. Whatever could go wrong, did. Head over and have a chuckle. We've all been there and now that we're comfortably at home, we can laugh about it.
Monday, October 28, 2019
Ragin'
This argument really makes me mad! https://t.co/QokICl6rCj
— jess mcintosh (@jess_mc) October 28, 2019
Carville was born 1945 and went to LSU. I am a lazy blogger and didn't have time to go back and find tuition from 1965ish, but I did find this.
(nominal figures, I'm pretty sure)
Don't think it's going out on a limb to guess that it was a tiny bit cheaper than even that in back in 1965.
Many olds really just have no clue how much certain things, like university costs, have changed.
That's Our Guy
I've done too many versions of this post, but every time I spend much time actually watching Trump, I just can't fathom that anyone actually sees him as some sort of appealing Alpha Male action movie hero. I get Owning The Libs. I get loving all the racism. I get he's a rich guy. I get he's an old guy with a hot young wife (not interested in arguing Melania's attractiveness, let's just say she symbolizes a type of it at the very least). I knew guys in college who idolized Rush Limbaugh at the time and I even sorta got that, but largely because Rush Limbaugh is like 10 X the "man's man" Donald Trump is and trust me that isn't because I think highly of Rush Limbaugh in this regard, either.
Brexit Mania
Not final yet, but looking like a December election in the UK. Can the great and glorious socialist empire of Jeremy Corbyn begin? Or will we have a Tory/LibDem coalition in which the LibDems, after spending years blasting Corbyn for not being sufficiently anti-Brexit, vote for Brexit while arguing they obtained some bullshit concession that made Brexit Actually Good Now. Or some other possibility!
The Swamp
Occasionally it gets noticed, but generally it's quite amazing how ex-members of Congress who spent years doing the "Washington is disgusting coastal elitist hellhole and that's why I (pretend to) sleep in my office and can't wait to move back to Fritters" schitck end up moving there promptly after leaving office. Sometimes they continue going on teevee. "Yes, Chuck Todd, we all agree the DC area is the worst of America, which is why I've moved my family here."
Sure we all gotta eat, but plenty of these people aren't exactly poor and can go back to selling cars at Daddy's Chevy dealer, or whatever.
Sure we all gotta eat, but plenty of these people aren't exactly poor and can go back to selling cars at Daddy's Chevy dealer, or whatever.
That Could Be Me
Whenever the Morning Joes of the world start tut-tutting the uncivil masses, I'm reminded of a scene in the movie The Queen, about the aftermath of the death of Diana. This is from memory, but basically after Diana dies, the country goes completely insane, and briefly direct their rage at the Queen and the rest of the Royals and are about ready to burn down Buckingham Palace. The Tony Blair character (this is fiction, of course) is initially somewhat indifferent to their declining reputation, but then turns around and steps in to try to support them. There's a scene where Elizabeth is chatting with Tony and says something like, "You didn't do this for me. You did this because you saw those angry crowds and realized you could be next."
What A Game
What a town!
"We are Americans and we do not do that. We do not want the world hearing us chant 'Lock him up' to this president or to any president." -- @JoeNBC pic.twitter.com/9IgMCETBdn
— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) October 28, 2019
And On And On
Never gonna end.
European leaders have agreed to the UK's request for a three-month Brexit extension, the EU Council President Donald Tusk has tweeted.
Sunday, October 27, 2019
Spider Hole
Sometimes random memories from that incredible time bubble up.
Howard Dean has climbed into his own spider hole of denial if he believes that the capture of Saddam Hussein has not made America safer.
-Joe Lieberman
That's Trump
Back in the Bush years there was some value in explaining that, no, actually, he's dumb and bad and evil, because especially in the post-9/11 era there was a pretty successful effort to make it seem otherwise. But ultimately... what can you say about Trump? It's all rather obvious.
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