My record as a prognosticator is pretty bad.
Anyway, I'm going to feel pretty silly protesting for the firing of Jeff Sessions, but it seems as likely as anything that I'll be doing just that soon enough.
"for" s/b "because of" not "in favor of".
Pretty soon it's just going to be him alone with one of his failsons.
Crom laughs at our prognostications. Laughs from his mountain!
I'm all about trying to keep Crom smiling.
With Jared losing his security clearance, we've lost our last hope for peace in the Middle East.
I was surprised by Charley's remark, and wanted him to elaborate. The question "Is the Trump administration unraveling?" is kind of like the question "Is Trump going senile?"
How would we know? How does an unraveling administration or Trump senility look different from what we've seen since Day 1?
It's certainly possible to have someone worse than Mr. Magoo as AG. And seems quite likely.
I wasn't consciously thinking about it when I wrote the comment, but I think my walk through the Nazi museum in Nurnberg is still coloring my outlook.
Decades ago, my wife was with a delegation of minor German politicians touring the future Holocaust museum; one moron asked why there was no mention of the happy ending. Excuse me, what, sputtered the hosts. He'd been referring to the lessons learned (at the time it seemed permanently) by Germans.
8 I don't know, it just feels a little different. Kushner and Hicks are central players in ways that Priebus, Spicer, Gorka, McFarland, and the Mooch aren't.
I'm still dejected. At this point the most optimistic reasonable scenario still gives us President Pence until the 2020 election. Basically the same agenda, with a little less Biff Tannen and a little more Handmaid's Tale in the mix, but implemented competently.
As for Pence's innocence, sure, I can imagine a scenario where he's implicated in the Russia stuff, and if information about that comes out, great. There's obviously a lot we still don't know. But as far as I can tell it's not out there yet. As for whether it's likely, let's put it this way: he seems less implicated than at least a dozen Republicans who are currently in Congress, and they definitely aren't going to impeach each other.
We're moving closer to Mueller being fired, but I don't think we're that much closer to everything unraveling. I thought the Republicans were capable of a minimum of patriotic feeling, but they are like the French conservatives after the Battle of France who decided throw their lot in with Hitler. Now the only constraint is public opinion, and the weight of that may not be felt until November.
7 The good news on that front is that nothing about actually resolving the thing is much of a secret. Either you end up with two real states with sensible borders, or with one real state with universal full citizenship and suffrage. The one real state could have regional/communal cultural autonomy -- maybe like Sicily or SudTirol -- with something like a bill of rights and enforceable federal civil rights laws, so even the autonomous communes can't be too oppressive or deny equal protection.
Trump in or out is still going to be bad, but it would be nice to know the person with his finger on the button wasn't actually stroking his penis while threatening North Korea and it would be very reassuring to me to see open, obvious corruption rejected by the body politic.
11 I think 25th amendment is always the more likely scenario than impeachment, because it removes the unstable would be dictator from power before the trial, rather than leaving him in power while it's on. Still way less likely than re-election at this point, but the guy is very clearly not up to the job, and even the Republicans know it. But they're afraid of the flesh-eating zombies they've unleashed, and are right to be.
When effective action is launched against Trump, that's when the real danger begins.
I read a detailed story on the subject of Trump's impending discussions with Mueller, and how negotiations are ongoing into how that interview will be structured. The story soft-pedaled the obvious outcome: Of course Trump would lie in any such interview, so of course no such interview will take place. When Trump is subpoenaed, he will ignore the subpoena or take the Fifth.
If the House goes Democratic, the result will be the same. Any inquiry that requires Trump's cooperation will be stonewalled. I wonder what the IRS does when the House seeks his tax returns?
The story soft-pedaled the obvious outcome: Of course Trump would lie in any such interview, so of course no such interview will take place.
Why does it follow that the interview wouldn't take place? I mean, I agree that Trump's lawyers would be strenuously fighting it. But if Trump somehow felt like he was demonstrating defeat by not showing up?
16 I can't imagine Trump voluntarily sitting down with Mueller; he'll fire the entire senior leadership at DOJ before he does that.
And he needs to fire them anyway, because bad as Sessions is, he doesn't seem likely to support the kind of overt suppression -- not just of voters but of opposition candidates -- that may begin the seem necessary to prevent a change in either House.
As for the IRS, I don't see Trumpism as deeply enough embedded in the Administrative state to create the kind of resistance he needs. IRS isn't, imo, ICE.
It's certainly possible to have someone worse than Mr. Magoo as AG. And seems quite likely.
This is true. As a HHS employee, sort of, I certainly made fun of Tom Price's cartoonish corruption but I certainly didn't want him fired and replaced by the head lobbyist for Dow Chemical or whoever is in charge now. Likewise the VA secretary's corruption should absolutely be ignored since he is the most competent and moderate cabinet secretary by far. If he goes the next VA secretary will be Joe Arpaio, unless he gets the AG job first.
So, I guess I am an optimist: we're not in Nurnberg yet.
17: He'd be demonstrating strength, as he did when he fired Comey. As he did when he declined to release his taxes, etc.
For all his stupidity, Trump has a certain criminal cunning. As with his taxes, refusing to testify is probably the smart move for him, and he's canny enough to know it.
(As Walt points out, firing Mueller is always on the table, too.)
When the bastard is backed into a corner, as he inevitably will be, that's when the real danger begins. Hard to know what he might try.
If the economy is good enough, Trump will be re-elected in 2020. There is no way a Republican Congress will impeach him beforehand.
The democrats lack of substantive policy goals might bite them in the ass in 2018 as well
It might also help them not to be overly specific. What's the substantive policy goal beyond Not Destroying America that will get people to the polls for Democrats in enough states to win the House?
I'm assuming John Kelly is right about this.
Full communism is popular everywhere and a winning strategy, or so it has been often asserted on Twitter.
Also, "full communism" means Denmark, and is to the right of Attlee-era Labour Party policy.
It's to the right of Blair-era Labour Party policy if you think about health care. But still, to win you need to get a lot of huge assholes to vote for you or twice as many to stay home.
24: When God has ordained that a creature should die in a certain place, he causeth that creature's wants to direct him to that place.
The link in 22 is dumb. Of course what's most salient in people's mind is being anti-Trump, because he's so fucking horrendously awful that everyone is in shellshock. The Democrats have tons of clear policy positions. But I want to go to lunch now.
29: You need a clear policy statement on what you're eating for lunch. It's not enough to just be anti-hunger.
And are you going single-payer or Dutch or what?
Ben Carson will have to sit at a table costing less than $5,000, just like people who work at Walmart and eat Poprocks on white-bread toast.
22, 29 -- This trope drives me nuts. Everyone who repeats it should be confronted. Because with even the slightest pushback, they have to admit that yes, each Democratic candidate has positions, and collectively there are Dem positions on most issues, but it's more fun to pretend that the media is some sort of objective conveyor of priorities. Yes, the Clinton campaign really was about emails.
32: Everybody pays for their own health care on dates?
In defense of the link in 22, it's fair to note that "burn it down, burn it down, BURN IT DOWWWWN" is a clear, easily-explained, and widely-accepted policy position. Amongst mouth-breathers everywhere. Whereas, "actually make the government work for the majority of Americans, and, y'know, keep us all alive and safe" ....well, that's a hard, hard, hard sell. B/c, y'know, "mouth-breathers are everywhere".
CC is 200% right -- Dems have detailed proposals for what they would do, if they ever fricken' got the levers of power. Like ... *Obamacare*, where they didn't shoot for Real-Existing-Communism (aka UK's NHS) but instead for a market-based system that bought off all the monied special-interests. B/c, y'know, governing is hard when everybody gets to wet their beak, and if you actually care about governing, you can't go on a vendetta of assassinating all those beak-wetters -- you actually have to work with 'em to get stuff *done*.
OK, I'm done ranting. Nothing I wrote, is a contradiction of what CC said -- I'm just pissed-off that teh Mommy Party gets no goddamn credit for actually having -brought- the bag of sliced carrots and Wheaties, for the kid to chomp on when he gets low sugar, while Dad brought along HIS Nintendo and is playing a FPS game while the SUV goes off the road and into a ditch.
The Mommy Party should probably come up with a ditch-avoidance and extraction plan too though.
One thing that has surprised me ithat the insurance companies have had so little sway the past year and a half. When Obamacare was being crafted, they were the all-powerful gods of the economy and must be included and cosseted. This past year, the Republicans were all 'death spirals for insurance companies!?! Who cares!!! I'll take two!!'. And somehow the massive companies who supposedly run everything never brought them to heel. Either they never exerted all their lobbying power or it wasn't as much power as we all thought during the crafting of Obamacare.
And Pruitt will have to fly coach, like me. I recommend taking Southwest as often as possible. They have more room between seats than the other airlines I've flown.
39: That's because they have much more leverage if you care about the health care system for regular working people not collapsing.
At a certain point, which has probably been reached, things are going to get worse because the staff will get worse. With the amount of turnover, it's got to be hard to get qualified staff, even when you use a definition of "qualified" that includes The Mooch.
Speaking personally, I found that the week of the Mooch was the only period since November 2016 when the constant of ever-deepening horror was leavened by farce. I hope the Mooch returns.
Right. What we don't know, though, is whether Hicks and Raffel have been forces for restraint, or enablers.
Kushner is irreplaceable -- well, McMaster inherits all the policy stuff, but the crown prince role goes to Jr and Eric, which might not actually be a downgrade. Sure, they seem greedy, but maybe not as desperate. My guess on the palace intrigue here is that someone has convinced DT that Kushner is subverting DT's interest to help the Kushner family. He'd have to cut them loose to get back into good graces.
I think it would probably be easier to give a bag of cocaine and a suit to whoever they've already got around the office.
Apparently tragedy and farce just take turns.
I assume Kushner is going to go bankrupt some time soon.
I'm guessing some kind-hearted oligarch will float him a loan.
Worst comes to worst I'm sure he could go on Dancing with the Stars.
The steel tariffs thing is the kind of madness that could get our US oligarchs to think they have to pull the plug on this nutball.
There's also the hope that he'll demoralize and alienate the gun fetishists if gun control stays in the news.
Wait the justification for the tariffs is a threat to national security?
48, 49: Hang on, this already happened. The Dancing with the Stars is still a joke, right?
I know he's already gotten loans, but I have my doubts that things will remain stable if his only access to new loans depends on only financial considerations.
The steel tariffs thing is the kind of madness that could get our US oligarchs to think they have to pull the plug on this nutball.
How is this steel tariffs thing different from George W. Bush's steel tariffs thing?
I don't recall exactly, but I'm guessing that Bush told his chief of staff and Republican leaders in Congress before announcing it publicly.
I don't know if the policy itself is especially alarming to people who don't manufacture cars or something.
The ones that the WTO concluded were illegal, and that Bush withdrew to avoid counter-tariffs from Europe?
59 to 56.
Well, if its alarming to Boeing, then it has to be alarming to a bunch of other people in Seattle, etc.
I doubt it's alarming to anyone. Tariffs are exactly the sort of thing that could make people think Trump is shaking up the system and trying new things for once and defending us against the Chinese, like he promised in his ceaseless lies during the campaign.
56 One would expect policy-makers to have taken account, this time around, of the Impacts of the Bush tariffs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_United_States_steel_tariff
I don't think the impacts were politically negative and there's a Congressional election down the road in 12 days.
The thing about the idea that Dems need a positive agenda in '18 (just like the out party needed a positive agenda in '06, '10, and '14) is that it imagines that there are salient issues* in a country with a healthy economy and no flag-draped coffins coming home.
But for Trump, there would be more or less zero chance of Dems taking a house of Congress come November. But the Galaxy Brains out there all insist that running on a leftier version of the 2016 platform would really change things.
It's possible that, come 2020, Dems will need a simple, extravagant policy platform, but it's impossible to know what the territory will be then. We know the current territory, and it's anti-Trump.
*sure, things like DACA, #MeToo, and gun control are a big deal, but in almost every election, it's war, the economy, or racist backlash driving things, not the "issues of the day".
Anyway, to the OP, I still think that way too many commentators are flummoxed by the pace of things. One example is "Bush was just as bad as Trump," a claim that relies on A. basically pretending personal corruption doesn't count, and B. comparing 8 years of W against 13 months of Trump.
But another is the "Trump is so bad, why hasn't he been impeached yet?" Well, things take time. I know it seems like this kind of shitshow should have swift consequences, but that's just not how the system works. Once Congressional Republicans decided they were on board, swiftness was simply off the table. But every single sign points to a reckoning: three different measures of generic Congressional ballot say Dems will win comfortably, which will mean nonstop hearings on all this shit, and mass resignations. If we take the Senate, Trump will basically never fill another vacancy. And Mueller's probe is only making those things more likely, even if it won't result in Trump or Pence getting perp-walked.
IMO the "Trump is likely to get reelected" claim is going to age incredibly poorly. First of all, there will 100% be a recession between now and 2020, and it's incredibly unlikely that Trump's government will be able to get the economy roaring in time. Second of all, "Presidents tend to get reelected" is awfully irrelevant when you're talking about a President who is so much more unpopular than any of his predecessors that we can't even really talk about it meaningfully. It's like saying that, since baseball teams (almost) always win a third of their games, it's probable that college players in Mets uniforms would also win 60. The guy isn't like other presidents, so why point to generalizations about them as evidence?
Again, if he had Clinton's timing on the economy, he might have a puncher's chance. But the odds of a booming economy in the summer of 2020 are IMO incredibly slim.
56: The rationale. GWB was acting, allegedly, to forestall damage to the US steel industry. Trump is acting, also allegedly, to forestall harm to national security.
The Democrats have tons of clear policy positions.
In fact, I would say that the Democratic Party is *way* more ideologically coherent than it has been at any time in my life, and I'll turn 50 this year.
65: I think "bad" is a counting stat, not a rate stat. If Trump dies tomorrow, he won't be as bad as Bush II (unless we only elect reality show stars as President from now on; then he gets credit for the precedent).
23AndMe.com wouldn't lie to me, Moby.
My cousin wants everybody to do 23 and me.
Cassidy asked for one of those kits for Christmas, but then she was kinda disappointed to discover she's Whitey McWhiterson (52% Britain, 38% Ireland/Scotland/Wales, 6% Europe West).
I'm vaguely curious because I have Italian ancestors with red hair. That doesn't seem common.
74
Vivaldi was a read headed Italian
A friend of mine of 40 years did ancestry.com and was recently contacted by a half-brother who is, at age 68, 10 years older than him.
The story is that the father (who is still alive) knew the girl was pregnant, but she didn't know if the father was this guy or someone else. She married a third guy, who the half-brother thought was his genetic father for something like 45 years.
My friend is delighted by this, and so am I.
Heavens to Betsy! What is up with this blizzard in Ireland? My permaculture journalist correspondent there reports a meter of snow and 100km/hr winds?!?! That would be massively worse than anything we've seen in the Twin Cities in my lifetime. (This fellow used to live here, so he knows what blizzards are like.)
I wonder how much longer staff can keep Trump from demanding we execute drug dealers as easily as they do in the Philippines now?
71: seriously, bush was worse? when trump kills maybe a million people and oversees the destruction of much of a major american city, with fleeing victims getting straight shot on the roads...I don't know. my health care is in grave danger and I guess I'd need to see how many additional deaths arise from everyone being unable to afford care, but until trump starts a war he's still ahead. wars are even worse than bad immigration policy. yet I go back and forth on this; trump is really an astoundingly awful president--yet---who would you rather have running things behind the scenes: stephen miller or dick cheney? and then again when he does start a war it will involve nukes and biological weapons, the latter of which will trickle down here before too long. in sort, we're doomed and the past was worse without its being the case that the present is better, in contravention of logic and reason.
80 the articles about it in the NYT are too long for him too read, so we just have to hope he doesn't see duterte for a while.
Maybe Fox is mentioning it? He all but called for it today.
There are also his calls for violence against journalists. Not worse than Bush to date, but laying the groundwork to be much worse, is where I've found myself when making the comparison.
And Puerto Rico remains an ongoing disaster that I don't think Bush matched in the category of failing to handle natural disasters.
Heavens to Betsy! What is up with this blizzard in Ireland? My permaculture journalist correspondent there reports a meter of snow and 100km/hr winds?!?! That would be massively worse than anything we've seen in the Twin Cities in my lifetime. (This fellow used to live here, so he knows what blizzards are like.)
Yeah! We expected this to happen when the Gulf Stream stops working in the 2030s, not when the polar vortex trapping cold air at the North Pole breaks down in the 2010s.
I guess we're supposed to get bad weather. I can tell because Pokemon Go keeps asking me if I'm safe.
Vivaldi was a read headed Italian
Vivaldi's sobriquet was the Red Priest.
Moby, do have a little priest in your ancestry? For that matter, any relations in meat pies or barbering?
I have priests in the family, but not ancestrally.
so far as they'd be willing to admit.
yeah, puerto rico; pretty impressively awful.
"22, 29 -- This trope drives me nuts. Everyone who repeats it should be confronted. Because with even the slightest pushback, they have to admit that yes, each Democratic candidate has positions, and collectively there are Dem positions on most issues, but it's more fun to pretend that the media is some sort of objective conveyor of priorities. Yes, the Clinton campaign really was about emails."
I don't think the democrats have advanced a substantive position beyond "Trump is bad". Trump rolls back protection for "dreamers", "trump is bad" we need protection for dreamers. but dems are not promoting a general amnesty. Trump tries to roll back ACA, "trump is bad" we need to protect ACA, but dems are not promoting single payer.
I don't think the democrats have advanced a substantive position beyond"Trump is bad""Undo Trump's countless atrocities".
FTFY. B/c seriously, you left out a bunch of 'em: CFPB, national monuments, drilling, the one-percenter tax cut, EPA regulation, decapitation the state department, {whatever-the-hell Devos is doing}, Carson's endless grift at HUD, the travesty of Puerto Rico aid, and it goes on and on and on. Oh, and gun control and climate change, eh. To characterize "the scientifically-based regulatory state is a good thing, it keeps us and our kids and great-great-grandkids alive and healthy; Trump wants to gut it like a fish" as "no substantive position" is pretty unfair.
Not to mention that at this point, the number of well-known Dems who are on record as supporting a big improvement on the ACA is pretty remarkable.
Oh, wiat, I see now. Your complaint would be that the Dems are insufficiently radical, yes? Y'know, at some level I agree with you. And at another level, this was the same complaint made about the ACA. And yet, the ACA .... had to pass Joe Lieberman and that Nebraskan Nelson, and a bunch of other Blue Dogs. It wasn't going to be an NHS. It was *never* going to be an NHS. And anybody who thought it was going to be an NHS (or any other single-payer system) was just fooling themselves. This is America, and ever poor person is a temporarily-embarrassed millionaire. And they vote like it, manifestly.
I think it's quite telling that things have moved left on health care, -after- the ACA. And I chalk it up to the success of the ACA, finally emboldening people to ask for more, and making the recalcitrant see that there's value in public provision of health care (or at least, insurance). I think that successful incremental programs open up room to move further left.
And besides, Joe Lieberman ain't gonna let us have what we want anyway. And next time, there'll be some other jackass like him. If somehow we get the trifecta, and our Congressional delegations are *all* strong progressives, sure sure sure, we'll get better stuff. But that's wishin' in the wind.
84 et al.: Katrina vs. Puerto Rico. How do you measure which was worse? I'm not informed enough to know. My impression was that Katrina was worse, but that's largely colored by the pictures of the SuperDome. Is Puerto Rico worse because it's gone on for so long?
85. The slightly freaky cold front from the east has been hit smack on by a named storm coming from the Atlantic, which has made it very freaky. One day there was an inconvenient but not unusual four inches of snow over all the Isles, next day there's dangerous weather warnings in Ireland, Wales and SW England.
"Nebraska expects that every blue dog will do his duty."
OT: A belated happy Purim where applicable. I know this because somebody in my neighborhood is on the internet complaining that they couldn't get any sleep last night because of all the drunk Jews.
I have news for Cassidy: "Britain" includes Scotland, Wales and at least parts of Ireland -- the Protestant parts, stop hitting me, JPJ -- the word they're looking for is "English". Poor child.
If Britain includes parts of Ireland why is it the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Norther Ireland"?
See, even British people mess up the Venn diagram.
Last week I saw someone on Twitter claiming that the use of "British Isles" is very hurtful to Irish people. And then when asked what to say instead, he said Irish people usually say "these islands". Need a better replacement than that.
If Scotland seceded, they could call it the "Tri-State Area".
101: They left out the Hebrides as well. They're biased in favor of tax evasion, and against productive industries such as fish and talking trains.
Greater Dalriada.
General Sir John Hackett predicted a loose confederation of Britain and both bits of Ireland, under the acronym IONA for Islands Of the North Atlantic.
Unfortunately he reckoned that would happen after a nuclear strike on Birmingham.
107: I am shocked to find out I'm not the only person in history to have read that book.
Well, no. But I was under the impression that nuclear targeting was traditionally focused on hitting high value targets.
110: "Birmingham -- a Slough for the 21st Century!"
Which book is this? And how does Birmingham feature in the causal mechanism, exactly?
"The Third World War". IIRC, the Soviets nuke Birmingham because it won't provoke a general nuclear exchange.
That makes sense, unless British mothers love their children too.
To get back on the original topic, I'm guessing that Trump's "Trade wars are easy to win" quote isn't helping reassure business interests.
New theory: blathering about tariffs was just a way for Trump to do Carl Icahn a favor. Probably the simplest explanation.
It's also unusually demented even by his standards. Like, I have no idea what demented source he's relying on.
Alternate theory: Carl Icahn sold the shares because he had been telling Trump to do tariffs and knows that Trump can be counted on to agree with whoever spoke to him last.
Huh. Hackett's geopolitics were kind of impressively random.
118: He's like other stupid old men -- he has long-held beliefs that no one can explain to him are wrong. Like his idea that foreign countries choose their worst citizens and make them apply for citizenship to the U.S.
Suddenly bringing up the menace of violent video games is another case of 121. Next he'll start slipping up and saying "crack babies" when asked about the opioid epidemic. And what's the deal with this graffiti on the subway cars? Have you seen this? Ed Koch is hopeless.
: I am shocked to find out I'm not the only person in history to have read that book.
You surely can't be shocked to find out that I'm the other one.
Huh. Hackett's geopolitics were kind of impressively random.
I think he was intent on producing a happy ending all round. If I remember rightly there was a combination of the end of the third world war and a triumphant Irish victory in the Five Nations, and everyone was just so happy about it that they agreed to compromise and live peacefully.
Whereas a more realistic outcome would be along the lines of "As the deluge subsides and the waters fall short, we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerging once again. The integrity of their quarrel is one of the few institutions that have been unaltered in the cataclysm which has swept the world..."
C'mon man, 'we need a statute to protect dreamers' is unquestionably a substantive position beyond 'Trump is bad.' 'We should expand the ACA'* is a substantive position.
These might not be the positions you want, in which case the intellectually honest criticism is 'Dems' substantive positions don't go far enough,' while 'Dems don't have positions other than opposing Trump' is both dishonest and affirmatively harmful.
I suppose people think they can lie the left into power, since it worked on the right. The downside risk is that you end up lying the right into power, viz. the Obama/Trump voters who told pollsters that Clinton was just out for the rich while Trump was going to help the middle class.
* Medicaid expansion is the true heart of the ACA, and both ensures its survival and acts as the stepping stone to single payer. We were never going to get the NHS is a single step, but getting millions of people into the system was a necessary first step and even with Roberts' meddling, it's still working.
125: Hold on wait. The Troubles are resolved by a rugby tournament?
It's a gentlemanly game, Mossy.
In keeping with our commitment to producing theology you can use, Ume and I have ascertained that today is the feast day of St Katherine Drexel, the patron saint of philanthropy and racial justice. Such a totally unfogged saint clearly allows drinking during Lent. Also, we're making amends for missing George Herbert.
Cheers!
Which makes it all the more poignant that David Ogden Stiers died today.
My favorite saint! Her canonization was big news around the time of jury selection for the securities fraud trials of several former officers of the Drexel Burnham investment company, most famously Michael Milken. They must have been happy to see headlines juxtaposing "Drexel" and "saint." Also the articles about how she was the daughter of the founder of the Drexel Burnham investment company, but took a vow of poverty and gave much of the fortune her father had accumulated to impoverished Catholics (she also financed and led missions to introduce Catholicism to the "wild Indians" of the nineteenth century American West, and personally saved many souls).
I suspected that the canonization was influenced by a lobbying campaign and large donations from the Defendants, most of whom were Jewish.
Lots of your bigger-name saints started out Jewish.
she also financed and led missions to introduce Catholicism to the "wild Indians" of the nineteenth century American West
The missions she founded continue to be a big deal in the Southwest, and she's a very important figure for Navajo Catholics in particular.
In one of history's many ironies, she had to leave Philadelphia to find heathens.
114. That's three of us, then. I hope he got to retire on the royalties.
Yeah, "British Isles" tends to be irritating to Irish people, though it's in the ha'penny place compared to all the tone deaf comments lately from the more gung-ho Brexiteers.
Jo Walton and her family (originally Welsh and Irish, now living in Canada) apparently use "Hyperborean" to refer back to UK-&-Ireland.
And yes, we had very deep snow in a few places, nothing like it seen since 1982. We don't have much in the way of snowploughs or anything like that so the general advice was for people to stay at home. It's thawing rapidly now (that's another big difference which makes it unjustifiable to spend much money on such equipment). Some great community spirit seen but things also marred by a bizarre looting/vandalism episode by a criminal gang in SW Dublin.
May all your future looting/vandalism be more ordinary.
Looting in a storm? Not that uncommon, unfortunately. Tearing down a supermarket with a digger is truly novel.
There really needs to be a better replacement for "British Isles." All I've seen are either awkward or incorrect. And that distinction between "British Isles" and "British Islands" is ultra pedantic.
