Just can’t get over the shocked expression on this Italian interpreter’s face last week as she shot up from her notes as he incoherently and offensively jabbered on about “lots of sand” left for the Kurds “to play with” in the Middle East. Her look represents how every decent and reasonable person everywhere looks upon him.
“come si dice ‘crazy’?”
“pazzo presidente!!!”
sure hope our trail friend BlueinDallas is okay
wapo:
A tornado and several violent thunderstorms tore through the Dallas area Sunday night, destroying homes and businesses, lifting debris at least three miles in the air and leaving tens of thousands of people without power.
The severe storms, featuring 70 mph wind, heavy rain, lightning and half-dollar-sized hail, left 65,000 people without power Sunday night, according to Oncor, the state’s largest utility company.
[continues]
a very sobering Skye interview of john oliver acknowledging deportation possibility, care taken not to pass on disinformation and other insider stuff including some oldies but goodies from Last Week Tonight
https://youtu.be/qb7zwX30tJA
From the campaign trail of 2016 I noticed how people look at SFB. Some look at him like looking at someone very strange or ill, including insane people standing on a street corner yelling at invisible things. Some look at him with hate in their eyes. And then there are his cult members. There is the bobble head veep who has perfected the “adoration” stare, but it probably is more about his desire to be 46. Others, like his cabinet groupies, have the stare practiced for hours in the bathroom mirror to be something like looking at the ghost that does not exist but done to keep the child from crying. Then there are the ones who are looking for Jesus and see an orange blob and convincing themselves maybe Jesus was not a Middle Eastern Jew, but a failed storage vessel for fat.
And then there are the professionals who hang their heads in shame and look at their hands or the floor. As seen in Speaker Pelosi’s picture.
All is well here. One of the twisters started about 5 miles from me. I just got a bit of hail and wind. It seemed like I was driving on roads made entirely of acorns as I left my neighborhood this morning.
As it continued to travel east, it got a lot of the pricey homes in Preston Hollow. I believe that’s where W lives. The price tag will be enormous because of that neighborhood, alone. Waiting for daylight.
Good news – no fatalities or serious injuries reported so far.
I’m not sure what part of town tiptoe lives in, but hoping for a check-in here.
Sent Blue an email. If no response, I’ll try to call her later this morning.
BiD, glad to know you’re safe. hope the same goes for our friend tiptoe. thanks for checking in.
more creaking cracks
wash. examiner via msn:
[…]
In a Sunday interview with Axios HBO, Romney “made it clear that he’s open to voting to remove Trump.” The Utah Republican outlined the answers he’ll be looking for if the impeachment process reaches the Senate, including who was involved in Trump’s communications with Ukraine, the intentions behind the conversations, and if efforts were made to conceal the transcript of his July 25 phone call with the country.
Romney did say, however, that he’d have a high bar for voting to remove Trump from office, pointing to wrong or possibly illegal activities of other presidents that didn’t amount to being removed.
Graham, who has proven to be one of the president’s strongest allies in Congress, indicated on Axios HBO that he’s open to changing his mind on impeachment if a quid pro quo with Ukraine is confirmed.
“Sure. I mean … show me something that … is a crime,” he said. “If you could show me that, you know, Trump actually was engaging in a quid pro quo, outside the phone call, that would be very disturbing.”
[continues]
Travis….my semi-humorous jibes were not aimed at Audie Murphy, but rather at my folks and uncles, etc, who, upon any mention of Mr Murphy, would immediately volunteer “the most decorated soldier in WWII”. It was like a mantra. I had then, as I have now, a solemn respect for military valor and would never disrespect that facet of a man’s life. And I loved his movies.
In re-seeing all his movies, I must say they hold up well within the genre.
another day another poll
USA today:
It’s a new three-way race in Iowa.
Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who was initially seen as a long-shot presidential contender, has surged within striking distance of former vice president Joe Biden and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren in the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses, a Suffolk University/USA TODAY Poll finds.
Biden, long viewed as the Democratic frontrunner, is faltering in the wake of a debate performance last week that those surveyed saw as disappointing.
The poll, taken Wednesday through Friday, put Biden at 18%, Warren at 17% and Buttigieg at 13% among 500 likely Democratic caucusgoers.
Those standings reflect significant changes since the Suffolk/USA TODAY poll taken in Iowa at the end of June, when Biden led Warren by double digits and Buttigieg trailed at a distant 6%. California Sen. Kamala Harris, who was then in second place after a strong showing in the first Democratic debate, has plummeted 13 percentage points and is now in a three-way tie for sixth. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders earned 9% support, the same number as in the June poll.
[…]
The number of caucusgoers who say they are undecided has spiked 8 points since June to 29%. Among those who have a preferred candidate, nearly two-thirds (63%) say they might change their minds before the caucuses.
Among the second tier of candidates, activist Tom Steyer was at 3%. Three other candidates also reached 3% because of rounding: Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Harris and Klobuchar.
[continues]
the hill:
Fox’s Chris Wallace said a “well-connected” Washington Republican told him that there’s a 20 percent chance enough Republicans will vote to remove President Trump from office in an impeachment trial in the Senate.
Wallace mentioned his source’s comments during an interview with acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney on “Fox News Sunday.”
Wallace cited an overwhelming House vote criticizing the president’s policies in Syria and an op-ed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) slamming Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from that country.
He then said he had “talked to a very well-connected Republican in Washington, someone whose name you would know well, who says that if the House votes to impeach and it gets to a trial in the Senate, there’s now a 20 percent chance enough Republicans would vote with Democrats to impeach the president.”
The Fox anchor then asked Mulvaney if he was concerned about the president losing GOP support.
“That’s just absurd,” Mulvaney said. “The comment about the 20 percent is just a person who clearly doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”
[continues]
Sturge – I didn’t take your comments as disrespect at all. Just wanted to share the name of an outstanding sailor in comparison.
Cheers to all! Glad to hear the tornado that swept through Dallas wasn’t too nasty.
Trav…..gracias, amigo…
the sailor was a mensch.
patd, that USA Today poll and the USA Today analysis of it is odd. In the 2 prior polls Biden and Warren were virtually tied at 22-23% and Buttigieg was at about 15. In the USAT poll Lizzie dropped to 17, Joe to 18 and Pete to 13. Pete had a dip in his numbers there during the summer, but he’s about where he was back in March – May. The turning point for Joe was the end of June. since then he’s been back and forth with Lizzie – effectively tied. The news in the poll is that id confirms Bernies!’s continuing decline there – dropping from 2nd to Biden until about the end of June to 4th now, and fading fast.
He’s pretty inhospitable for a “hospitality man.”
Sometimes this site is really confusing. Travis & Sturgeone are having an Audie Murphy conversation, but I can’t find the sailor story either here or on the previous thread. When I typed about sending Blue an email, none of the info from her or other folks acting about her was here, but now all of that is above my original message. It probably has to do with time zones, but my brains scramble easily.
From Travis on Saturday
TravisCsays:
October 19, 2019 at 10:19 pm
Hey Sturge – Here’s a sailor for you. Maybe you’ve heard of him. He’s one of 32 Native Americans to win the MOH for actions in Vietnam and is the most decorated enlisted man in the history of the US Navy.Boatswain’s Mate 1st Class James Williams (13 Nov 1930 – 13 Oct 1999). He was awarded the Medal of Honor, a Navy Cross, 2 Silver Stars, a Legion of Merit with Combat V, 2 Navy and Marine Corps Medals, 3 Bronze Stars with Combat V, 2 Navy Commendation Medals with Combat V.He’s also got all the unit fruit salad plus ribbons for service in Korea and China. After his service he was appointed US Marshal in South Carolina. And yeah – Audie Murphy (20 June 1925 – 28 May 1971) was pretty damn decorated. He’s a personal hero of mine for his determination and grit. He was awarded the Medal of Honor, Distinguished Service Cross, 2 Silver Stars, Legion of Merit, 2 Bronze Stars with Combat V, 3 Purple Hearts, all of the unit fruit salad, campaign medals for service in Europe/Africa/Middle East, WWII victory medal, plus French and Belgium medals for valor.
and the USA today poll from June to now suggests Pete eating into Biden support, which went down 8 pts and Pete up 7. But a MASSIVE caveat is the big winner is undecided at 29%, which for some reason RealClearPolitics doesn’t include in their charts
Interesting tweet from Jeffrey Toobin of the “too little too late” type.
“Note the mostly buried news that State Dept closed Hillary Clinton email probe with this verdict: ‘no big deal’. As a journalist, I regret my role in blowing this story out of proportion.”
Comments on same to him, basically say thank you for the apology that should have come a lot sooner for an event that never should have happened at all. We hope you learn from it, and your fellow journalists will keep their thumbs off the scales for 2020.
Jamie, likewise I wish that they would apologize (and include the language from the indictment about Russia helping stein and Bernie) when they slammed and misquoted Hillary on tulsi.
Jamie, Ted Stephens could explain your earlier problem re: BiD and your comments crossing – it’s not time zones or a scrambled brain. Your message has a much longer journey through the internet tubes than BiD’s. Yours has to go through the Denver and Chicago distribution hubs before reaching the TM server in DC (although I can’t say for sure whether the WordPress server is in DC, New York, or New Delhi. The Denver and Chicago hubs are almost universally recognized as very slow due to the inordinate numbers of incoming messages, in Denver’s case from LA, SF & Seattle – and the Amazon traffic from Seattle is just a nightmare for Denver. Chicago is, well, Chicago. Great pizza but show tubes. Blue’s of course has to go through Atlanta (which everyone knows is a slow tube hub) but it’s only one tube hub and the distance between the Dallas hub where hers originates and Atlanta, as well as from Atlanta to DC, are much shorter than the tubes your messages have to transit. so there is the technical explanation. Hope it helps.
Travis/Sturgeone
Thank you. I think I heard mention of the sailor on CNN with W. Kamau Bell’s United Shades of America. His most recent one was about America’s indigenous tribes and the state of reservations. It was particularly damning about Bureau of Indian Affairs, lack of control over reservations lands, and loss of culture due to the Indian Schools that were still in existence until the 1960s. Also centered about the pipeline protests. All in all an excellent show that you might want to catch from their web page or on rerun.
The White Washing of Kamala Harris
Poobah, you are correct – and that omission tends to cloudy any comparisons. I think the best that can be taken from this is that it seems like from Sept. 1 or thereabouts Liz is taking from Bernie!’s support and Buttigieg is taking from Joe’s. But really, as far as undecideds go, USAT pol is an outlier- others are 15% or less in the undecided column.
and if Klobuchar can catch on in Iowa, create a 3-way battle for moderates, even better news for Liz
yep Pogo, has always irritated me I have to click to the full polls on RealClear to find the undecided, which is often the biggest number or in the top tier
Out of all the nice photos to see last week, that one of the Italian interpreter lady is the one which I really enjoyed.
I love that Italian lady!
Polls, polls, polls, polls… just think spam, spam, spam, spam…
and now for something completely different…
Wow Mayor Buddahgoogoo must be running a good campaign
I just don’t understand why Amy doesn’t catch on
Many are still without power, including a friend very near one touchdown site close to Love Field.
A few miles away, in a very expensive neighborhood, things are much worse.
Several schools were damaged and classes were cancelled.
I am blessed.
I don’t have tiptoe’s contact info anymore. Vegas was 13 years ago this month, I think.
I’d luv to know more about Italian lady, but haven’t found anything. Perhaps best to remain a mystery woman and face of the world.
Fried Spam for supper…..the 50’s ain’t all they’s cracked up to be.
Mayor Pete handled himself very well on the Sunday shows. If he’s the nominee, I’d gladly vote for him, but I would still prefer Warren.
Amy won’t gain traction because she sounds pessimistic. We can’t do that. An appendage of the do-nothing Congress because it benefits her.
Bernie needs to go home and relax. AOC means nothing to me. She may have actually helped Warren by endorsing Bernie.
Sturg…. you go ahead and try to tell that to anyone who lives in Hawaii…
And Swanson’s TV dinners……if I could meet Swanson I’d goad him into drawing first and then gun him down. Just like he did my mam and pap.
Far be it from me to stand in the way of those who believe in The Spam…..I’m just a simple non-believer who can’t be swayed.
Another rider on my “The Media Is The Message” hobby horse: Mayor Pete is getting a lot of attention and support from Facebook. Then the digging starts.
Pete was the 287th user of Facebook. It is doubtful that this is the last we will be hearing about his relationship with Zuckerberg who has now advised the mayor of who to hire for his campaign and set up a whole lot of funding for it.
Unless that happened to be the last item in the old cobwebbed cupboard…… Then I’m making Spam Parmesan and Spam gravy, and getting out the good china.
KGC
The two candidates closest to Hillary Clinton in brains, talent, experience and positions are Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar. My “conspiracy R me” file does not think that their virtual erasure in media mentions is an accident.
Interesting take on the Iowa caucus that I honestly hadn’t considered:
Caucuses also make it impossible for people in abusive relationships to vote differently than their partners
Jamie, must disagree that media is ignoring Harris and Klobuchar. Watched a lot of cable and broadcast news over the weekend, saw many live interviews, mentions of both. And I subscribe to Des Moines Register, which provides ample coverage of their events.
You have to goad them into drawing first. It’s the Code of the West.
I am convinced that Buttigieg and Gabbard are getting money and poll support from repubs, media support from wnd, breitbart, zero hedge, and gateway pundit, and social media support from Russia.
I don’t know that all that help can affect IA’s precinct caucuses. However, I’m positive that it can skew New Hampshire’s. All sorts of crap happens when folks think they’re anonymous.
Craig
They do interview, but there is next to no coverage of events. They both shine when moving through crowds and in small groups. It is exactly the same problem Hillary had. These two women work well in small groups, one on one meetings and interactions. They aren’t there harranguing crowds with virtually every talking point simplistic line featured in every newscast. It is honestly not their style. Just because either would be a much better President than any of the “white savior & elderly crowd” seems to be totally beside the point mainly because of the IA Caucus and NH primary being first in the nation.
Craig
Here is an example from a tweet regarding the important info you never hear in general media: ““Go into any white newsroom—which is to say, any newsroom—and offer $100 to the first person who can tell you what “AKA” stands for. Offer another $100 if they can name one famous member. Hell—give them $10 just to say what it is.””
My response was “It would help if most people didn’t think of AKA as “also known as” instead of the magnificent Alpha Kappa Alpha” https://aka1908.com/
Social media spends more space on AOC than on Klobuchar and Harris combined.
Renee
Monty Python en español gotta love it!
btw, chop up a little spam an onions break a couple of eggs over them………..
Jack
I find the Clinton / gabbard dustup funny. Clinton never mentioned who the Russians were grooming but everybody in the know shouted out Gabbards name , including Gabbard. She is an idiot and it is time to remove her from from any serious debate platform. imo
Jack
remember this little episode? reported by the hill nov 21 2016:
Donald Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon contacted Tulsi Gabbard to arrange Monday’s meeting with the president-elect, according to a source close to Bannon.
“He reached out to her, not vice versa,” the source told The Hill on Monday.
Many in the media raised their eyebrows when the news broke that Trump was meeting at Trump Tower Monday morning with Hawaii’s Democratic congresswoman.
But for those who know Bannon best, there was no surprise at all.
Bannon, who hates the entrenched two-party system, has long admired Gabbard. She’s an Iraq War veteran with an independent streak. Bannon, a navy veteran, was drawn to her when she began publicly excoriating the Obama administration over its plan to defeat ISIS.
“He loves Tulsi Gabbard. Loves her,” a second source familiar with Bannon’s thinking told The Hill. “Wants to work with her on everything.”
[…]
In the statement she released following her meeting with Trump, Gabbard said she “felt it important to take the opportunity to meet with the President-elect now before the drumbeats of war that neocons have been beating drag us into an escalation of the war to overthrow the Syrian government.”
Describing her conversation with Trump as “frank and positive,” Gabbard said she shared with him her “grave concerns that escalating the war in Syria by implementing a so-called no fly/safe zone would be disastrous for the Syrian people, our country, and the world.”
“It would lead,” she added, “to more death and suffering, exacerbate the refugee crisis, strengthen ISIS and al-Qaeda, and bring us into a direct conflict with Russia which could result in a nuclear war.”
A Trump transition source told The Hill on Monday that Gabbard could potentially fill “a number of positions” inside the incoming administration. CNN and the New York Times have reported that she’s under consideration for United Nations ambassador. CNN also reported that she’s under consideration for State and Defense.
“Let me be clear,” Gabbard said in her statement, “I will never allow partisanship to undermine our national security when the lives of countless people lay in the balance.”
mother jones:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) released a “fact sheet” Monday detailing President Donald Trump’s “shakedown” of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, as well as a “pressure campaign” to get Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and a subsequent “cover up,” the Washington Post reports.
“President Trump has betrayed his oath of office, betrayed our national security and betrayed the integrity of our elections for his own personal political gain,” Pelosi’s document states.
The document, titled “Truth Exposed,” includes text messages from Ambassadors Gordon Sondland, Kurt Volker, and Bill Taylor.
Read the full document here:
[click on mother jones link to see document]
““Go into any white newsroom—which is to say, any newsroom—and offer $100 to the first person who can tell you what “AKA” stands for. Offer another $100 if they can name one famous member. Hell—give them $10 just to say what it is.””
I gotta know what greek organization people pledged, now? Jesus Christ.
birthday present for Bibi
wapo:
JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday gave up his struggle to form a governing majority after September’s dead-heat national election, opening the way for his chief rival to try his hand at cobbling together a coalition.
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin immediately said he would give former army chief of staff Benny Gantz a chance, making him the first person other than Netanyahu to try forming a government in more than a decade. Gantz will have 28 days to do what Netanyahu could not — entice at least 61 members of the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, to support his bid.
Gantz’s path to power is far from certain. Israel’s complex political system all but ensures that the final outcome is not likely to be clear for weeks and that a third election in less than a year may be required. But the turn of events on Monday were remarkable nonetheless.
[continues]
Jamie, I’ve been irritated mainstream media doesn’t cover any of the candidate events sufficiently including the front runners. However local media and C-SPAN do a good a job of covering them all. I still maintain the low poll numbers for Harris and Klobuchar cannot be blamed on the media. In fact I think the single digit candidates get more attention than they might deserve.
I’ll corroborate that internet news-media coverage of Klobuchar and Harris is sparse, in comparison to the front-runners, but i can’t assert there’s anything sinister about it. Neither are very charismatic, nor do they perform well in the debates no one watches.
That said, I’d support Klobuchar for POTUS on qualifications for the job.
I was too old for fraternities, so I escaped that particular form of agony. It struck me as kinda like joining a Moose Lodge or something. I’d played a lot of Moose clubs by that time. I hadn’t played The Big Moose yet, but that was to come.
Media is doing best job they can with so many Democratic candidates and only so much air time and text space. If the candidates can’t move the needle in early states it’s on them.
I am starting to consider the Bernie HA as focusing attention on Biden’s age too. I expect at some point the physical weakness of Bernie will force him to the sidelines. You just don’t jump back into a scrum after a HA. Remember he tried to keep in the game after it started. Recovery will take time, probably more time than he has.
As I stated yesterday – here is the dog story, but with a different ending.
Nestor was a wet one.
Too bad every American hasn’t time to watch our lunatic president in real time. His approval would sink to single digits of those who think Earth is flat.. https://t.co/VdVkFTyYwe
Craig – that is the issue with the current media. They, the collective of reporters and editors, try to meet a limit of seconds or a minute or two of coverage of the low intelligent narcissist. They have to cut minutes, even blocks of fifteen or more minutes, during which the moron is spewing out a word salad just to get to something to use. He puts out a forty-five minute spew of garbage on his way somewhere (often with a helicopter roaring) which is his “press conference”. The media has it recorded. But, there is no way all of it can be used, mostly because it is incoherent. But, something has to be printed in the newspaper, stated in fifteen seconds on the radio, or analyzed on a ten minute segment on a talking head show.
The normalization of SFB has occurred. Reporters talk about him as if he is making considered decisions. Decisions which connect with other previous decisions, for which there is not connection.
What has shown up is the low intelligence narcissist has a singular drive to the one thing he was taught by the NYC mob attorney. It is do everything for yourself. Do not stop doing everything to destroy any and all who are not making you the king. Attack everyone who does not make you king. Be the king, be the saviour.
And that is what the media has normalized.
CNN just did a long and positive package on Klobuchar
I got this crazy idea that AKA would be the sister org of DBA. No such luck.
Blue Bronc, could not disagree more. Are you watching? Media is calling Trump a liar, delusional and purveyor of crackpot theories across the dial (except Fox of course). While doing their best to showcase his GOP primary foes and Democratic candidates. If anything I think mainstream media is risking its credibility for balance in opposing Trumpism.
Show me examples of this notion that media downplaying Dem also-rans and normalizing Trump.
We should take the cue from betrayed Kurds and hurl rotten vegetables at the White Hiuss
Craig – It is showing to the world how off the fool is. The media makes the claims of lies or not making sense. The public does not hear the full story and think the story is not as bad as it is. The problem is few watch how off he is. Unless someone is listening to the whole yack fest they do not know how f*0#ked up he is. The condensed version shown to the world cuts out the idiocy and spewing word salad. I can hear how he lied. Or how he “made a decision” to do something. He does not make decisions. He spews whatever is floating around in that skull. That is why he is pulling troops out of protecting the Kurds to allow the slaughter of the Kurds. Giving a full on the television show of his press conference would allow all to see that the guy is off his rocker.
Rasmussen has trump approval at 45%, disapproval at 53% = – 8%
Why would we care about membership in a Greek organization? AKA was the only sorority for black students at ‘Bama when I was there. The were definitely not a bunch of radicals. I’m guessing this came up because of Kamala Harris and the (accurate) perception that the media know little about her?
But otherwise, I looked at the fact sheet from Pelosi. Like it. And the Schiff censure will go exactly nowhere, as it should. And btw, calling Mulvaney dumb as a box of hammers is an insult to hammers everywhere.
I got BGS and PKP while at USF. VA and DoD paid for school.
XR, that’s about a 3 point slide for SFB in Rasmussen polls. I’ve seen them as high as 51% when Gallup was around 43. His average is now 1 1/2 points below where it was on day 2 of his administration.
Blue Bronc, both CNN and MSNBC carried his entire insane rant in Cabinet mtg presser today and thoroughly trashed, fact-checked after. What more do you want them to do?
Rasmussen polls are notoriously weighted in favor of Trump, distinct from the Fox poll, which is highly regarded. Nate Silver has concluded that Rasmussen’s polls were the least accurate of the major pollsters. CNN won’t cite Rasmussen polls due to its suspect methods.
Bink
You don’t need to know every Greek org candidates pledge, but it might be an addition to your knowledge base to know that 108 year old Alpha Kappa Alpha is the foremost charity based sorority for black women. Their alumni and honorary members are just about ever black woman of note in the past century plus an honorary for Eleanor Roosevelt. Not knowing who they are for this demographic is little like saying you’ve never heard of Yale.
Why is Sean Spicer still dancing? Is this the work of Trump’s base voting for Spicer?
Jamie, I heard Bink did his undergraduate work at Harvard, then went to Oxford for a PhD then to Rutgers for his JD. I’m unsure whether or not he is pursuing a DD
DD ? Doctor of Dentistry ?
One of my parents wanted me to be a dentist. The other wanted me to be a dermatologist.
Instead, I worked in college at a hospital. Then, I took a temp job shooting morphine sulphate into real soldiers.
bink stock in free-fall 😭
New Thread
yeah i’ll stay out of that thread but support the sentiment. BBC coverage of the Turkish invasion of Syria is heartbreaking.