
I hope everyone who had yesterday off have a nice long weekend. To those that had to work, at least know you’re not alone.
Let’s see what’s going on for a Tuesday…
Big yikes!
Los Angeles lifts air-quality limits for cremations as Covid doubles death rate
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/18/los-angeles-covid-coronavirus-deaths-cremation-pandemic
Talk about bad luck. One more week and he would have been fine.
Trump administration to deport man to Haiti who has never been there
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/18/trump-administration-to-deport-man-to-haiti-who-has-never-been-there
“Don’t let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya”
MAGAs are Big Mad about this and I kinda love it. There are a lot of progressive country singers these days. They stay under the radar, lest they get “Dixie Chicked” (or should we just say “chicked” now since they changed their name?)
Ok, Sassy
How? Why?
A Californian man who was “scared to go home because of Covid” lived undetected in Chicago’s O’Hare Airport for three months, according to multiple reports.
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/aditya-singh-chicago-ohare-lived-three-months/index.html
Clever Canadian!
A missing teen snowmobiler built a snow cave to survive until rescuers arrived
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/18/us/snowmobile-missing-south-cariboo-trnd/index.html
We don’t deserve dogs. (The thread is great, if you click through it’s totally worth it.)
Have a great day Deadsplinters!
Ah, but it is the last full day of the Trump Presidency. So close that I did not have to consult the countdown clock to do the math (just under 30 hours).
Apparently we can look forward to the issuance of ~100 pardons from deep within the Bunker. The list of scoundrels and knaves should prove enlightening. My bet is that he won’t pardon Javanka because 1. He believes they have done nothing wrong, and 2. Though there is a high probability that they have engaged in massive tax fraud for years someone got through to him that it will not shield them from state prosecution, and a pardon would be “bad optics.” Half-Scoop already got off once (for that ill-advised Russia meeting) literally on the grounds that he would be too stupid to know any better, so he’s probably good to go. Eric seems to have steered clear of federal-level offenses but as head of the Trump Organization I’m sure the State of New York is writing up the subpoena for documents as I type this. A lot of this will go nowhere, of course, but among that trio, to say nothing of Trump himself, there is just so much of it that something is bound to stick, and in any event they will spend a good portion of their lives fending off lawsuits and paying for various lawyers’ kids college expenses, if they’re smart enough to demand payment upfront.
…I heard a (fairly persuasive) rumor that what really soured him on the self-(&/or family-)pardon angle was the loss of the fifth amendment option afterwards
…when damn near everything you say incriminates you that must be a big thing to sacrifice…& the queue of folks looking to depose him & his spawn is seemingly growing by the day?
I’ve seen a couple of articles saying Trump wouldn’t pardon himself or his family on the advice of his attorneys. Can’t find the specific one right now, but here’s one:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/trump-not-planning-to-pardon-himself-or-his-family-members-report/
It’s pulled from Reuters.
That said, Trump is batshit crazy and could change his mind right up until Biden is sworn in. I’m betting staff has the appropriate documentation at the ready.
Oh I don’t know
Pretty sure he’d do a pardon for precious Ivanka but be more than happy to throw the other man in her life under the bus
…I’d say that someone needs to explain to cindy that “sass” is not synonymous with people reacting with derision to pretty much everything that comes out of your mouth…but judging by the replies to that tweet…she’s more by way of the “doth protest too much” school of non-thought & that ship sailed long ago
…if you feel the need to see first hand how incredibly fucking stupid a person comes off as when they’re in the bag for Dolt45, though…then her account is pretty much a textbook example…hard to believe people can consistently maintain that level of dumbass-ery…but solipsism is a powerful thing, I guess?
…I’m honestly starting to wonder if that’s what draws a lot of these idiots to their mendaciously mendicant idol…do they look at a man who only gives a fuck about himself & think “hey – I only think about myself…that’s my kind of guy…he really represents me” without a trace of irony?
Solipsism, fun word of the day and later defined within the comment! Language nerd nirvana, my friend.
The Garth Brooks story is pretty funny considering what happened when he wore a “Sanders” jersey in Detroit.
Oh, man, I had forgotten about that little angle. The MAGAts were probably just as outraged when they realized he was wearing a black athlete’s jersey….
So…. on the Garth thing….
These dumbass motherfuckers are like the R-siders dancing to Rage, aren’t they?
Dear God, LISTEN TO THOSE LYRICS!!!!
READ the words. PEOPLE!!!
Garth Co-Wtote that song…co-wrote The Thunder Rolls, Ireland, Belleau Wood….
Like Willie, and MANY, many others–it’s been known for YEARS that Garth is on the side with The Chicks… he ain’t no stinkin’ Toby, Charlie Daniels, or John Rich.🙄😒
I saw Garth a few years ago in Baltimore and it was great fun! We were on the floor. And I don’t know if he still does this, but for that tour all tickets were priced the same at a fairly reasonable $65 ish dollars. He also had it so your ‘ticket’ was actually your scanned credit card that you used to buy the tickets, effectively eliminating ticket reselling.
In college I worked at the local civic center on the crew that would change the venue over from hockey to concerts, etc. Sometimes they would let us in about halfway through a show, so I got to see some acts I wouldn’t have bought tickets for. He was one of them. I thought he was pretty good.
It’s easy to forget what a massive star he was in the 90s and then he just decided to be a dad and sleep on his huge piles of money.
As of 2020, according to the RIAA, he is the best-selling solo albums artist in the United States with 156 million domestic units sold, ahead of Elvis Presley, and is second only to The Beatles in total album sales overall.
Not that I ever got into his Chris Gaines material, but I’m guessing someone who did that offshoot falls far from the likes of Toby Keith and his wing of country music.
I’m wondering if we’re able to have the same amount of “security” around drumph once he leaves office that was present at the Capitol.
“Oh, gee, did we let him get kidnapped? Gosh, I guess we dropped the ball on that one..”
…much as I don’t want to jinx it…I believe that one of the things that a number of people are hoping for in the event that this time the senate votes to convict is the loss of various post-presidential privileges…like the $200,000 annual pension…& the secret service detail…so hopefully he’d have to source his own protection…& given his tendency towards non-payment of contractors you gotta think there’s a non-zero chance the sort he’d be able to employ might be willing to throw in with the kidnappers for a shot at an actual payday?
…personally I’m inclined to believe that he also ought to lose the right to the honorific…to the extent that he was ever a president he was a shit one…& that was before he tried to have the capitol stormed in a flagrantly anti-democratic finale…after today I don’t see any reason he ought to expect to be referred to as president outside of a history book
The only real problem with a scenario where Trump loses Secret Service protection is that should he be abducted, he’s got plenty of classified shit he can spill. There’s nothing stopping him from selling that info now, but for damned sure he would sing like a canary if a bunch of foreign agents kidnapped his fat ass. He didn’t pay attention to a lot of things that he should have, but you know he probably collected a lot of personal intel on people he wanted to keep an eye on.
…it’s a fair point…but he also thinks the “good lawyer” is the one that doesn’t take notes & anyone who actually hears him speak is going to find that a fair bit of that “intelligence” is unintelligible
…I don’t doubt he’d give it up but could you really stake much on whether you’d understood what he said…let alone whether or not it was credible…given that he absolutely will say any old shit if he thinks there’s something in it for him?
It is a good point, but I would hope Biden’s team realizes that Trump is a bloated orange gasbag of treachery and will spill literally anything he knows to literally anyone. So hopefully the new administration is rapidly changing anything sensitive that Trump could reveal. The good thing is this administration is not comprised of absolute fucking idiots.
The best outcome would be Biden saying “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” and leaving Trump to his fate.
No, that would be too easy. Fifteen minutes of listening to him whine about stolen elections and Dominion machines and the terrorists would drop him off at the nearest McDonalds’s. We’re going to have to wait for him to keel over from natural causes. Which McDonald’s will help with. When it happens, we need to award Ronald the Medal of Freedom.
The right: The most important thing is free speech. That’s why what they did to Parler was terrible.
Everyone: But that was a corporation, which by your side’s own legal reasoning had every right to do —
The right: Cancel culture is terrible! The worst thing ever!
Garth Brooks: I’m playing Biden’s inauguration
The right: End his career! END IT!!!!!!!!
As St. Carlin said, “it’s the good, ol’ American Double Standard…This country was based on a very basic double standard. This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free.”
The right got mad that a news corporation printed the 1619 Project pointing out slavery’s roots in the founding of the US, so Trump created a *government* propaganda response called rhe 1776 Report.
They never believed in the marketplace of ideas because they know their ideas are worthless, so they ran to the government to prop them up. Bunch of whiny babies.
The infamous headline “The cruelty is the point” is true, but in the end, the hypocrisy is truly the point.
My home office is going to be virtual inauguration central tomorrow. Dogs will have all the pillows, treats, toys, etc. TV will be on most of the day. And I’ll still get enough work done to call it good by 2 or so. Looking forward to it.
I’m going to take a vacation day. The last 4 years have been exhausting, sad, humiliating, shocking, depressing. Every time you think it can’t get any shittier, it gets shittier and we’ll be uncovering land mines for months? weeks? years?
But tomorrow we celebrate!
@MemeWeaver, happy inauguration day to you and your fine dogos!
First we’ll play this on a loop.
Or we could hire Stewie to follow him around?
OK, how do we crowd-fund this?
We are so fortunate that the Capitol insurrectionists were, by and large, complete idiots.
Police arrest woman FBI alleges stole Pelosi laptop to sell to Russia
Yeah, I saw a clip of demented viking walking into the chamber as if he was walking into a party. They are shocked, shocked I tell you, that their leader would tell them to do some illegal shit. And they are all asking him for pardons. Would he even give them pardons? More importantly, will it bring them back down to earth if he doesn’t?
Trump won’t pardon them. And some of them, a very small number, will realize they’ve been played. But we’ve seen it over and over — most will just blame it on the “left” and keep doing their insane shit.
I’m still itching to hear why Trump/Trump’s people sprinted into the bunker when BLM protests were nearby, but nobody even thought for a second that he’d be in danger with “unaffiliated yahoos” storming the Capitol? I know it’s not next door to the White House, but … how is the Secret Service not protecting asset No. 1 during a potential attack on asset No. 2 exactly?
If I was Biden, I’d reassign every single Secret Service person that served under Trump. Put them all on Treasury duty or paid furlough or whatever. Then start deep background checks. Sorry, we honor your service but as of right now you are considered compromised until such time as you prove without a doubt that you are not. I hate thinking like that, but that’s what I’d do. And even if they were brought back, they would only serve with non-Trump affiliated agents.
Somebody on the Biden team thinks like me, though. I read that the National Guard details assigned to DC were being vetted which I recommended here a while back. Big project, but absolutely necessary.
And off we go:
https://www.rawstory.com/dc-national-guard-inauguration/
Two National Guard already removed for ties to white supremacist groups.
He won’t pardon them unless they pay him$1,000,000 each!
You are absolutely right. I think most people don’t realize how close we came to complete disaster, and now that the Republican disinformation machine has kicked in, a lot is going to get swept under the rug. As bits and pieces emerge, I keep realizing this was fucking close:
1. Collusion from Capitol police leadership and officers on site
2. Interference from Trump appointees
3. Financial support from Trump sycophants
4. Trained military among the MAGAts
5. Traitors and quislings among Congress
I think, in a lot of ways, the things that saved us are that the radicalized MAGAts had no central command structure, the moron MAGAts kept getting in their way, and some officers did their jobs and fought back. They’d have never gotten to Pence, but they could have hurt and killed a lot of Congresspeople. And that would have been enough for Trump to declare martial law.
Also, and this isn’t a small thing: Trump’s deep and wide unpopularity with a clear majority of the voting population. If he really tried that shit, those riots would have made the summer of BLM look like a street fair.
Related to my second sentence:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/01/republicans-are-already-rewriting-trump-years/617715/
Just because they want to forget doesn’t mean we have to let them. Everyone who ever replied to my cheeto criticism with ‘what about itis’ should prepare themselves, because the list is long, the misdeeds were many and what we have learned is talk loud and long until the other side shuts up. It sucks, I like a civil debate as much as anyone but sometimes it just isn’t possible, and I’m tired of biting my lip and walking away.
The metro DC police showing up en masse to provide back-up is what I think ended up being crucial. They were the ones who worked to clear the building. They were the ones helping stall rioters while the Capitol police inside were getting folks out.
Directly across the mighty Susquehanna for our little county…the right wing idiocy runs strong between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Pennsylvania is much like the US, in that Philly = the East coast and the ‘Burgh=the West coast, with sparsely populated flyovers in much of the middle.
Ummm that was a reply to the stolen laptop comment, and it should have read Susquehanna from, not for. Le sigh.
I think this about sums it up…
Randy Rainbow is one of the few alerts I’ve set on YouTube. He’s been a bright spot during the last four years. My family would gather around and we watch them all together when they get released. I couldn’t wait that long for this one, though.
This is really an excellent series from Jonathan Swan at Axios. It’s highly informative, disturbing, and reveals a lot of stuff about Trump (he knows he lost — I wasn’t always sure if it was a grift or dementia). It’s both a podcast and a series of articles, so you can listen or read:
https://www.axios.com/off-the-rails-episodes-cf6da824-83ac-45a6-a33c-ed8b00094e39.html
…my belief has always been that he knows he lost…that he’s always known he’s none of the things he claims to be, in fact…& perhaps I don’t have all that much to back up my certainty in that regard…but it’s kind of an ockham’s razor thing for me?
…everything about the man screams that one of the reasons he has so little respect for the people who support/enable him is that doing so shows him you’re dumb enough to fall for something he’s sure he wouldn’t if the situation were reversed…which tallies pretty well with how he reacts to people (particularly women) who make it clear they won’t…ad hominem & straw man attacks aplenty…but never an attempt to argue on the merits or get into specifics…because he knows better than anyone he’s a hollow little man entirely full of shit
Trump basically owns up to losing in one of the later installments. Like I said, I wasn’t really sure if he was just completely insane or running a con. Technically, I think it’s both, but mostly he’s running another con.
Problem is, I don’t think Trump actually understands that many of these MAGAts believe him with a religious fervor, and the ones that don’t see him as a useful stairstep to white supremacy. Both groups are fanatical, and Trump doesn’t grasp that. In his head this is like Trump University, just another scheme. But his mob took it literally.
…I know it’s a cliché to say “follow the money” but that’s basically his overriding instinct at all times so I’ve never really doubted that he was focused on the grift
…but I’m with you on the doubting his sanity thing…to have said & done the shit he has these last few years you’d have to be insane…at least that was my first thought…& often my second…but at some.point it occured to me he doesn’t actually seem to remember the shit he says & does any more than he believes it & his whole life has been an exercise in not facing the consequences of his actions…he basically seems to think that’s the superpower that makes him better than other people
…so I think he considers all the foaming-at-the-mouth supporters of his budding insurrection the same way he did when their rabid fervor was the online artillery he could aim & fire with a tweet…they’re his big stick to threaten people with
…a smarter man would have understood the risk they represent but he’s really not that smart & he definitely only considers the risk to him personally…which he thinks is zero because as far as he’s concerned he owns them & they love him
…it might be closer to the truth that they loved the license he gave them not to hide their hateful bullshit superiority complex but I think it may shock him when he inevitably finds out how very wrong he is about that risk assessment?
Do we know who the 100 pardons are for? I’d love to be a fly on the wall of the Dallas realtor or buffalo hat dude when they realize they aren’t one of them.
Did the turtle come out of his shell? If he sees his shadow do we have a longer impeachment? I forget how all this works…
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/534804-mcconnell-trump-provoked-crowd-that-stormed-capitol
At this point it’s absolutely essential for the future of the Republican Party that they repudiate Trump. I’m not sure they’ll do it, but if they want any sort of future they need to cut out the infection and cauterize the wound. They should be taking bold steps to slap down seditious Congress members and absolutely shut this Trumpism bullshit DOWN. McConnell has walked the tightrope, and it’s starting to sag now.
Problem is you have stupid people like Cruz, Hawley, Scott, et al., who truly think they can “harness” this “movement” and become President. They can’t. Trump had a unique combination of circumstances from being a fucked-up “celebrity” that none of them can ever duplicate to reach the low-level MAGAs (aka deplorables).
But rich people have had enough of this bullshit. Favorable taxes do not substitute for nearly losing the country to Kim Jong Orange. Rich people (not Trump bullshit rich, but actual billionaires) desire stability above ALL things, and Trump fucked with that. That’s why you’re seeing the big donors crack the whip on these Republican assholes. They’re done with that, and woe be unto the dumbass Republicans who haven’t yet figured it out. The smarter ones like Rubio and Cotton are lying low and letting the others fall on their faces.
Now we know what he has been doing…
https://www.thebeaverton.com/2021/01/trump-spends-final-days-just-rubbing-his-dick-on-everything-in-white-house/