Oregon has some great place names. I had a professor who grew up in Boring. You know the original settlers there were a merry lot.
Assuming we're not diverted into permanent banana republic status, Trump is going to be one of those things they have to note as an exception whenever they point out something is especially shitty. Sort of the mirror image of how they specify "since Reconstruction" when announcing Alabama moving toward fairer treatment of all races.
Ohio has all kind of great jokes about going from Dayton to Marion.
There's probably a horrible Sandusky joke or two.
Too bad Pennsylvania has no municipalities with ridiculous names that can be used for sexual innuendo.
I saw a headline yesterday that Trump's approval ratings are actually higher than Bill Clinton's were at this point in his Presidency.
Yes. This difference is the disapproval rating for Trump is much higher. Also, that Trump is a total shithead.
Most MA towns have a fancy sign that says "Entering ...." when you cross the border. Some radio host made a song about driving around the state and fantasizing about sex with a different woman every time he saw a sign "Entering Lynn" or "Entering Chelsea" or whatever. Then he freaked out when he entered a town with a male name. Very heteronormative.
Interesting, but not horrible: What's barely adequate with Kansas?
6,7: Yes. He took a brief steep dip around this time. Scroll down on this 538 page to see comparison to all past presidents. As Moby noted, his disapproval was not as high (he was less well-known in general, also not sure what polls included, Wiki page has Clinton never below 40, but there certainly was a low point in late May'early June.)
I thought it may have been related to something leading up to Don't Ask, Don't Tell, but it probably was "Haircut Gate."
A haircut Clinton received on May 13, 1993 by the stylist Cristophe aboard Air Force One at Los Angeles International Airport became the subject of controversy at the time. The national media initially reported that much air traffic was affected while two runways were shut down for an hour on account of the president's plane standing on the tarmac. The Washington Post mentioned "the most famous haircut since Samson's" in front page articles nine times over a six-week period, and all other newspapers also seized on the story of what was called "the most expensive haircut in history". Later investigations revealed that no commercial airliners had suffered delays, but that was much less reported.
They were just showing the newbie to respect the glove; Washington always wins.
The Trumps divert money from kids with cancer
And several NYT reporters jumped right onto Twiter to call it a cheap shot--Haberman and Lipton. Lipto one who went deep on the Clinton Foundation optics stuff. Haberman semi-walked it back today in light of WaPo's Farenthold pointing out that Trump Jr. lied about when Farenthold asked about it during the campaign. Jeez, doesn't Farenthold see he'll never get good access this way.
The past year has forced me to downgrade mainstream media from Negligent and Incompetent to Maliciously Destructive. Then I read something like 10 and suppose it was always thus.
8: Yup.
If you don't want the video, here are the lyrics.
So I checked my dad's twitter and he fucking retweeted that Trump all signs point to Qatar tweet. I'm fucking livid.
On the plus side, your father hasn't explicitly called for your death. Don't forget, father's day this Sunday. I'm hoping for new shoes, because I'm pathetic.
It turns out that while people love me, nobody loves me enough to pay for a keg refrigerator in the basement with a tap line running up to the living room.
10: I looked into this a few weeks ago and I came to the conclusion it was probably Travelgate. But there were a thousand and one bullshit Clinton scandals.
My father is apparently a bit less awful than yours; I checked his twitter and he retweeted Joel Embiid, a Sixers player, saying that he "DEADASS LOVE YALL." This is the entirety of my father's tweeting. But I know he only got on Twitter to follow Trump.
My father's high school yearbook made fun of him for backing Dewey, but he stopped voting Republican somewhere in the first term of the Bush 2 administration.
18 Half of my father's feed is fucking Katie Hopkins retweets!
She's a real person? I thought she was just a tabloid pseud, like Ed Anger.
17: Ah yes, you're right: The actual terminations were done on May 19, 1993. I thought Travelgate was later in the year than that. Haircut added travel-related BS. (And Travelgate probably aided media pile-on; media felt burnt since they paid for the office, and a lot of reporters had special understandings with the office.)
11- They've been so fucking ridiculous on this. Like, arguing that Well Eric still made a lot of money for the charity, so what's the problem? Trump Jr.'s defense, that the $100k from the Trump Foundation was just to pay off the Trump Organization's course fees so Eric's charity wouldn't have to, is a straightforward admission of guilt- you can't raise other people's money into your nonprofit just to spend it on your own for-profit business providing services at inflated rates. I know it's passé to say so, but imagine the Clinton foundation doing anything remotely that shady and what the response would be.
20: Christ. What a git. (Admittedly, my first response was going to be "Well I hear she's wonderful as Jackie Kennedy.")
22: I actually had to look it up--I had no memory of it at all. I don't think I started actually reading the news until '96ish.
Anyway, in a day or two Trump should pass through the other side of Clinton's trough and return to being the least popular president at this point in his term. He's just skirting below the ceiling of Ford's popularity, though. Note that he's safely below both in net approval.
And it might not stick--Gallup hasn't posted yet--but he's at a new all time low, 38.6%, on 538's aggregator. Previous low was 38.8% two weeks ago after the Comey firing; before that, it was 39.8% after the first attempt on the AHCA. (No, I'm not compulsively refreshing that page, why do you ask?)
If you get a choice of where to go when Ivanka orders city dwellers into the countryside, you could do worse than Central Oregon for all your reeducation needs.
Using the 538 tool to compare with net approval rather than approval alone, it looks like Clinton's all-time floor was -13.2 in May 1993, which Trump is now below and still falling; Clinton recovered, had another collapse down to -9.7 on day 599 (late 1994, so presumably health reform / losing Congress), then recovered and stayed positive from 1995 to 2001.
It's with moderate good cheer that I note today's local paper has another episode of Scaife's kids sue because their dad was spending their money (a family trust) to support the media used to attack Clinton.
I don't see how they can have a case. Clearly it was a good investment in the future of inherited wealth.
They're probably going to win something. Grandma was a sharp cookie. It was her trust that was violated.
You better believe I'm a sharp cookie!
Comey's prepared testimony for tomorrow.
Money quote: "The President said, 'I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.'" Almost immediately after "he said that lots of people wanted my job".
So, when the highest officials in U.S. intelligence say they can't answer in public whether or not the president has obstructed justice, I guess that means it would be irresponsible of me to form the really obvious conclusion.
Before seeing 33. This is the thread for this stuff.
33.2: Don't forget: He said he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with hookers in Russia, and had always assumed he was being recorded when in Russia.
Queue LBJ on opponent's alleged fucking of pigs.
He wasn't involved with hookers - they were very clear they had never done anything like this before.
If Comey says Trump has fucked pigs, I'll have no trouble believing it.
34: Yes. A thing I was thinking about; the President can declassify at will (like when with Russians), but is there something similar for "classifying" something. (Not what these guys claimed, a huge abuse of power, but I was trying to think like Trump and that was a gambit that occurred to me.) "This is now classified because it so clearly shows me to be a criminally-inclined nutjob that it would give aid and comfort to our enemies."
I may have drawn the wrong lesson from the quote.
Friday morning's Twitter: "I fucked that pig on purpose!"
Only after both the Justice and State Departments have issued very strongly-worded denials.
"He said he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with hookers in Russia, and had always assumed he was being recorded when in Russia."
I just wanted to re-quote this. Holy moly.
So easy to get inside the guy's head. I guess because there's lots of room in there.
8: The first question that comes to me about that song is to wonder if it got as far as "Entering Athol", or if it quit before that.
To the OP, I keep forgetting that "your printer is a tattletale" is news to most people, since the EFF has been reporting/complaining about it for over a decade, and it seems well-entrenched in nerd lore.
I think 36 is pretty much proof that there is a pee tape.
The fucking printer thing. I am coming to the realization that this is why printers always run out of yellow ink first. Given the cost of printer ink, this is a thing that represents a significant drain on the country's economy. I suspect the benefits are pretty dubious, in relation to the cost.
What legal authority is making printer manufacturers do this? Was this a public policy that was ever debated, or is it just a thing they started doing?
"Don't trust fake news from the MSM. Those girls WANTED to pee on Obama's bed. I never paid so it means they aren't hookers."
I mean, we have one at the office, but the only reason it exists is so they can point out we aren't allowed to use it.
Who can afford a color printer?
Almost anyone can afford a color printer, its the ink that will put you in the poor house.
True. And if you try to save money by never printing color, the ink eventually dries up and the printer won't even print black until you get a new color cartridge. So I threw away a color printer.
It's "voluntary", supposedly, so not actually a public policy, and only barely admitted to. Vaguely related to concerns about counterfeiting, so probably really about making (large) government purchasers happy.
Old EFF FOIA documents with a fair bit of juicy detail from back in the day. Xerox has publicly admitted to it.
48: The solution, then, it to develop a 3D printer schemata for a 2D printer. It'd be so amazing if someone in the United States was arrested for illicit production of a press.
(also, as I understand it, it used to be only color laser printers, which at least don't have quite the same issues where ink just stops working. Possibly color ink printers got good enough that they do this too now; I haven't heard. But color lasers are sub-$400 now.)
imminent war in the MIddle-East
I missed this. What's that, now?
But color lasers are sub-$400 now.
Sub $200, even.
if it got as far as "Entering Athol", or if it quit before that.
Per the links in 13, yes but its relatively understated.
Then I backtracked and re-entered Lawrence
And Quincy and Norton as well
By midnight I'd pulled into Athol
And I slept in a flea-bag motel
Imminent war in the middle east
Israel's spying on the jihadis
Everybody's mad at the Qataris
And the President gets dumber with every tweet
Someday we'll learn if Russian girls peed
For our Don boy
Send the Don (doy!)
Athol? Was known as radio-free Athol back in the day. (I'm from around there.) Good times ....
I have a scanner with printing capabilities. Though the inks are probably dry again.
54: Related surprise: Copiers don't just copy, they also introduce errors
My butt always comes out perfectly.
64: How do you know? I think, "Oh, so that's what it looks like."
57: Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies are making threatening moves toward Qatar and Trump is cheering them on.
Was Forster a radio host as well? I always thought of him as a wannabe Tom Lehrer, and Wikipedia's first occupation listed is "cabaret musician".
Sure, I obstructed justice! Big deal! Justice is totally overrated!
On aspect of the Comey testimony where I think Clapper et al did Comey no favors was in the initial meeting in early January:
The Director of National Intelligence asked that I personally do this portion of the briefing because I was staying in my position and because the material implicated the FBI's counter-intelligence responsibilities.
I recall that from the time, and (maybe only clear in retrospect) probably better for one of the folks leaving to have that glad meeting.
69: Fuck Justice, how many divisions does it have?
All animals are equal, but one animal is tremendously more equal than others.
My God but do I hate the Republican enablers on this (pols, staff and media). It's locker room talk/NYC construction talk/neophyte who doesn't understand how government works talk. President "completely vindicated."
Fuckers every last one of them.
The spineless complicity of basically every Republican lawmaker is really something to behold.
Goofus demand loyalty. Gallant earns loyalty.
No. It looks like it was new text added to one of the examples on Wikipedia. Although that original text is pretty relevant as well.
Goofus bosses his friends. Gallant asks, "What do you want to do next?"
Trump is under investigation for things he obviously did, the price of epipens is so high that ordinary Americans can't afford them, and now the vice president's residence is being filled with bees. Maybe Pence is getting ready to make a move.
Translating into today's terms
Crowd: executive branch
Sheriff and deputies: judicial branch
Governor: legislative branch
Spencer Tracy: Comey
http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/308027/Fury-Movie-Clip-Don-t-Make-Me-Use-Force-.html
12: "enormous, mendacious, disembodied anus..."
I am sure that 81 is referencing an old Kokomo joke, but if not, I want to make the joke.
83 By way of a legendary post on the late lamented Poor Man blog.
83 Apologies if you knew that and I was mansplaining . I've drinks.
81: "freakish, dilated, wrinkled like a cactus"?
I saw the best anuses of my generation disembodied by madness....
86: I truly couldn't remember. Then I saw that Alameida was joking to me in 12 and I started to suspect.
The link in 63 is so amazing and presposterous I'm having trouble believing it. It seems credible, but if it were credible, wouldn't it be more widely reported?
So Trump stole hundred of thousands of dollars from a children's cancer charity and used the money to pay Russian hookers to pee on him? Despicable.
92: the problem with that explanation is that this is precisely the sort of news that would "generate clicks", as they say. Media organizations are generally pretty good at covering that.
53. Small Canon printer/scanner bought a year ago for £60 ($80?) comes with colour-b/w switch and separate cartridges for all colours.
That's what makes the media so infuriating. The millionth story about Clinton's dumb email server couldn't possibly have been profitable in any way, either.
The story in 63 sounds like the setup for a massive lawsuit.
