We are all John Boltons now...

by Ugh

To quote Jon Lovitz as Michael Dukakis in a spoof of a 1988 Presidential debate, "I can't believe I'm losing to this guy." 

These days I kind of wander around in a general state of "WTF", trying to stay off the twitterati. 

63 million people voted for this guy in 2016.  It's a whole "nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people" kind of thing, I guess.  

Separately, General Aviation is dangerous and I don't recommend it unless the pilot is an immediate family member (and probably not even then, see, e.g., JFK Jr.).  

Open thread to talk about the latest and most recent unpleasantness.  Or the Superbowl.  

Comments

[hairshirthedonist]

Super Bowl. Two words. Get it straight, Ugh!

[hairshirthedonist]

Hillary Clinton, world's most diabolical serial-killer, strikes again.

https://www.politifact.com/facebook-fact-checks/statements/2020/jan/27/viral-image/no-kobe-bryant-didnt-tweet-about-having-dirt-hilla/

[Nigel]

Super Bowl. Two words. Get it straight, Ugh!
Or not...
https://www.theringer.com/nfl-playoffs/2018/1/24/16926822/super-bowl-2018-grammar-copy-superbowl-one-word

[hairshirthedonist]

Stay out of US affairs, lobster back (lobsterback?).

[Nigel]

Sure, if you stay out of ours. ;-)

[John D Thullen]

We are all John Boltons now ...

No, we are not.

Trump and company, Bolton, The American Conservative, the Republican Party, the Iranian mullahs and Soleimani, ISIS, Netanyahu, Putin, the Chinese leadership, the totalitarian leaders of the Philippines, Turkey, Hungary, Poland, Australia and North Korea and now Great Britain and all of their supporters and operatives are the conservative nationalist movement around the globe.

That they kill and murder and back stab one another in their internecine made-men wars is indicative of nothing except elemental reptilian brain stem ratfucker ruthlessness and certainly, in Bolton's case, bear no similarities to any of us.

John Bolton will face the same firing squads as Trump and Putin, but thank you, Bolton, for the heads-up.

Now die, you fuck.

WE might be Khashoggi. We might be Jo Cox. We might be immigrant children, we might be, and indeed we are intended to be the victims of the murderous worldwide conservative nationalist movements.

We are the enemies they have in their murderous sights. They want it all. They might come to agreement among themselves, via a balance of murderous violence how to split up the "all", but they don't intend to share any with us.

They might kill one another, like Mafia families visit honor and omicidio upon one another but only so the survivors among those reptiles may feed on us.

There's is only one to do on every continent, every country, and every neighborhood infested by the conservative movement vermin.

7.53 billion human beings on the globe.

Maybe 500 million of them.

They are not us.

[hairshirthedonist]

Sure, if you stay out of ours. ;-)

Or we could just start a new country, leaving our Trumpers and Brexiteers behind. (We'll call it "Canada.")

[Girl from the North Country]

So loath though I am to abandon a good conspiracy theory, my suspicion that Bolton had been bought off by Suleimani's killing looks thoroughly debunked. But as someone (Emptywheel I think) suggested, he's a slippery bastard who learnt skulduggery at the knee of a master (Cheney), so estimating what he's actually up to is pretty hard, even now. Except for wj's comment back then, to the effect that even if bought, he might not stay bought. But as for whether his intervention will have any serious effect in the short term, the jury (and I use the term loosely) is still out.

[Hartmut]

Interpreting this as an open thread, could anyone here with a sense of aesthetics give an opinion which version of this verse sounds best?

Vita non caret id quoi vis aeterna iacendi est

Vita non caret hoc quoi vis aeterna cubandi est

Vita non caret id quoi vis aeterna cubandi est

Vita non caret hoc quoi vis aeterna iacendi est

For those unversed in Latin: that's my translation of 'That is not dead which can eternal lie. (And with strange aeons even death may die)(Ast aevis alienis mors moriatur et ipsa)'

Hac in mole Rylehque moraritur - Iä - Cthulhu.
Mortuus est ast somniat usque ad sidera recta.

[wj]

Or we could just start a new country, leaving our Trumpers and Brexiteers behind. (We'll call it "Canada.")

Better yet, we give Trump his wish to buy Greenland, and move them there. Why should we give them the good real estate?

[wj]

Hartmut, it's comments like this that remind me just how uneducated I am (multiple degrees notwithstanding). Which is probably good for my character or something. ;-)

[Snarki, child of Loki]

Jam all the Trumpistas and Brexiteers into Gitmo, and let them torture each other to expose the traitors in their midst.

Then, after things settle down for a while, whisper to Cuba "not ours any more, have fun".

NASA is too slow to finish the "B Ark", so we have to look to other solutions.

[Ugh]

We are all John Boltons now ...

No, we are not.

Of course not.

[Hartmut]

wj, you don't know how long it took me to get the verses metrically correct. At this speed it will take several years to get a full ecloge.
Surprisingly 'penguin-devouring (shoggoths)' fits into a Latin verse ('aptenodytivorantes'). ;-)

[wj]

Curiosity question: how long before Trump tweets that he barely knows Bolton, and rarely if ever talked to him? Or maybe that he doesn't know the guy at all?

Just because it's self-evidently untrue isn't an issue, because Trump says stuff like that all the time. And it does seem to be him go-to reaction to anyone who appears to have evidence against him.

[CharlesWT]

Why should we give them the good real estate?

Greenland is going to be worth a lot when all the ice melts.

[Michael Cain]

Greenland is going to be worth a lot when all the ice melts.

I don't know. Isn't most of it going to be naked rock scraped clean by the ice sheet?

[CharlesWT]

Need good, solid rocks as foundations for all those rigs... :)

"Greenland is believed by some geologists to have some of the world’s largest remaining oil resources. Prospecting is taking place under the auspices of NUNAOIL, a partnership between the Greenland Home Rule Government and the Danish state. U.S. Geological Survey found in 2001 that the waters off north-eastern Greenland, in the Greenland Sea north and south of the Arctic Circle, could contain up to 110 billion barrels."
Petroleum exploration in the Arctic: Greenland

[Girl for the North Country]

Hartmut: FWIW, I prefer the first or fourth, i.e. iacendi not cubandi. But my Latin is to all intents and purposes non-existent these days, it just sounds better to me. And, to make further confession, I am absolutely unfamiliar with the whole Lovecraft thing and the rest of the quotation/story etc.

[Nigel]

could anyone here with a sense of aesthetics

You almost put me off opining with that stipulation...

However, “caret id” sounds unfelicitous to me, FWIW, so the fourth one by preference.

[Girl from the North Country]

Ha, on rereading I agree with Nigel. Result!

[Girl from the North Country]

Further thoughts on Bolton's motivation, from Jonathan Stevenson in today's NYT. I know some of you eschew the Times, and I can't post links, so for anyone who hasn't read it and is interested:

But there may be a method to the madness — four of them, in fact.

The first is patriotism. Although Mr. Bolton does hold extreme views about the use of American power, there is little doubt about his basic fealty to the United States constitutional system and to established American institutions. Having come of political age during the Cold War, he is a strong supporter of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and an opponent of Russia’s revanchism under President Vladimir Putin.

When Mr. Trump mused about withdrawing the United States from the NATO alliance in 2018, Mr. Bolton was reportedly distressed and rallied to keep it from happening. And, in questioning fellow Republican Jon Huntsman’s decision to serve as ambassador to China in President Barack Obama’s administration in 2011, Mr. Bolton said, “There is no patriotic obligation to help advance the career of a politician who is otherwise pursuing interests that are fundamentally antithetical to your values.” In other words, Mr. Trump’s frequent demeaning of the Atlantic alliance, his obtuse bromance with Putin, and his apparent acquiescence in Russian interference with the American electoral process may have persuaded Mr. Bolton to desert the president on principle.

Then there are his professional principles. Mr. Bolton, unlike Mr. Trump and some of the fiercest members of his inner circle, is a seasoned government professional with an informed respect for the institutional architecture and ethos of American foreign policy. Before becoming Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, Mr. Bolton served as acting ambassador to the United Nations, undersecretary of state, assistant secretary of state and assistant attorney general.

Mr. Bolton reportedly characterized Mr. Trump’s meddling with aid to Ukraine as a “drug deal” — a crude metaphor for actions that violate his sense of foreign policy professionalism. He also disdained the president’s circumvention of normal diplomatic channels by informally enlisting Rudolph Giuliani, his personal lawyer, whom Mr. Bolton called a “hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up.” Separate from his sense of patriotic duty, Mr. Bolton may have felt that Mr. Trump had so demeaned the integrity of the foreign policy structure that something radical had to be done.

Well, maybe. Another explanation is personal indignation and greed. Mr. Bolton spent much of his career dreaming of the national security adviser job, and reportedly lobbied the president for it for years. And, of course, his book is due to come out March 17, and these revelations are sure to make it an instant best seller (a fact not lost on the president: Mr. Trump’s backers have predictably cast him as a “disgruntled” former employee, and Mr. Trump himself has accused him of merely trying to sell books).

Let’s not judge John Bolton too harshly, though. He lasted almost a year and a half in a job under a famously mercurial president, and toward the end was reportedly unhappy in it. And his book, for which he received a reported $2 million advance, didn’t need this revelation to make it a hot item or line his pockets. So while I’m sure Mr. Bolton doesn’t mind a taste of revenge and higher book sales, in all likelihood the two more honorable factors feature more heavily in Mr. Bolton’s decision-making.

But there’s one more motive: personal ambition. This is not a man known for his humility. Don’t forget that Mr. Bolton harbors presidential dreams; he came close to a run in 2015, and he maintains a political action committee, through which he doles out money to Republican politicians. And even if Mr. Bolton has let that particular dream die, it’s unlikely that he has hung up his government spurs — instead, he may judge that the Trump ship is sinking and figure that Mr. Bolton might as well accelerate the process and try to position himself for a post in the next administration.

That short-term calculation of Mr. Trump’s political fortunes may not be sound, and Mr. Bolton may be a ruthless pragmatist. But if he does end up further exposing Mr. Trump’s duplicity, in the fullness of time Mr. Bolton will end up, however fortuitously, on the right side of history. That’s a better legacy than he might have secured merely as the third of Mr. Trump’s four (and counting) embattled national security advisers. If nothing else, this week’s revelations show Mr. Bolton, even after being unceremoniously fired by his president, is still one of the cagiest political fighters in town.

[hairshirthedonist]

From cleek on the other thread:

it's not a defense, it's a campaign ad.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/480322-biden-calls-out-iowa-gop-senators-impeachment-comments-she-spilled-the

“She just came out and flat said it. You know, the whole impeachment trial for Trump is just a political hit job to try to smear me, because he is scared to death to run against me, and he has good reason to be concerned," Biden added.

(...)

Ernst said Monday she was "really interested" to see how Trump's legal team's presentation on the Bidens would inform caucusgoers.

"Will they be supporting Vice President Biden at this point? Not sure about that," she said.

[wj]

Well, the presentation might well "inform" Iowa caucus goers. But probably motivate them in the opposite direction to what Ernst is expecting.

[Nigel]

Republicans have worked out a line... it would just be too inconvenient to admit Bolton as a witness, and anyhow, Dershowitz ...
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/28/senate-republicans-calm-down-bolton-panic-107997

Lions of the Senate.

[cleek]

the Republican mythmakers are hard at work fabricating GOP reality just as fast as they can.

[GftNC]

Goddamit, I've now tried to see if I can post links from my new computer, and using a different email address, and neither works. So I still can't. Neither of those tests needs freeing from the spam trap, but this is extremely frustrating. All I can try is using a new handle.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/impeachment-trial-live-01-28?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

[cleek]

in OMG-i-was-wrong news, McConnell says he doesn't have the votes to block witnesses:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/impeachment-trial-live-updates/2020/01/28/8fadd30e-41bd-11ea-aa6a-083d01b3ed18_story.html

remains to be seen if this is just a way to extend the Trump re-election infomercial about the Bidens or if a handful of GOP Senators actually want to make a show of looking like they care.

[Girl from the North Country]

Aha! So maybe my old handle suddenly was too long! I'll be using this new one from now on when I post links.

[John D Thullen]

His Navy Seal brethren know the only solution against this rabid trump piece of dog shit is savage violence against him.

https://digbysblog.net/2020/01/and-the-war-criminal-runs-wild/

[ral]

Hartmut, I confess that I had to look up "ecloge," and I find it described as "pastoral." This brings to mind an image of a meadow covered in ... well, you get the idea.

[wj]

Lest we overlook it, also happening now is the attempted distraction of Trump's Peace Plan for Israel and the Palestinians. Which truth in lavbeling would call Sanctioned Israeli Land Grab. It's teling that no Palestinians were consulted in its creation. And that, unlike with normal peace agreements, only one side turned up for its unveiling.

Well that was always the question: Would these incompetents fail to come up with anything? Or would they come up with something actively damaging to the prospects for peace? Looks like we got Door #2.

[ral]

wj, you are so unfair. Jared has been working hard on this.

</snark>

[wj]

"Working hard"? Or "hardly working"?

Given that it reads like a Netanyahu campaign flyer, I'm guessing the latter. (Although I suppose it's possible that, in the best Trump Family tradition, he's convinced himself that he actually did something more than agree to have his name on it as author,)

[Hartmut]

GntNC, Nigel, thank you for your opinions.
Id/iacere seems most apt for the cultists who shout *Iä* all the time while hoc/cubare is better suited for the gargling Deep Ones.
Hoc is more fluid while id has more sinister vibes.

ral, well it would be an underwater pastoral with a Deep One herding fish on meadows of sea grass.

[GftNC]

I'm so sorry everybody, I'm going to try not to go crazy posting links, but it has been really surprisingly frustrating not to be able to do so, it felt like I had one hand tied behind my back. So to celebrate, and then I really am going to try to revert to previous good behaviour, this is a link to a short hilzoy twitter thread which (as usual with hilzoy) neatly destroys the GOP's absurd arguments about how whatever Trump has done it isn't impeachable:

https://twitter.com/hilzoy/status/1222259238766026756

[cleek]

neatly destroys the GOP's absurd arguments

if only that was sufficient.

[Girl from the North Country]

Destroying their arguments is easy, getting that through properly to the American public so the GOP senators start being scared is the hard bit.

[cleek]

the cult is all-powerful.

Two Senate Republican aides said Wednesday that the push for witnesses deflated after Tuesday’s closed GOP meeting, with little sign of moderate senators ramping up their efforts.

The aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak frankly, said Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) are now seen as only soft supporters for witnesses and are not ready to make any firm commitments.

The only GOP senator, the aides added, who is possibly a firm vote for witnesses is Mitt Romney (Utah). But they said he does not carry significant capital with his colleagues, who see him as a political outlier in the Trump-friendly caucus.

[John D Thullen]

How did Bibi "arrange" for Trump to allow Israel to conquer more territory without firing s shot?

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-talented-mr-epstein/

Collins and Murkowski:

As the malignantly corrupt conservative movement Republican Party is executed publicly by firing squad (one by one would take too long, the numbers of the subhuman vermin being what they are), the two of them will be made to witness the carnage and then awarded their fates.

The country is in grave fucking peril.

Whatever norms of justice are still barely intact will not suffice to wipe this alien monster off the face of the Earth.

[John D Thullen]

Brexit and its spawn:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/after-brexit-new-identity-crises-await-uk/605692/

[John D Thullen]

These are the "types" who the trump conservative movement vermin will call upon to cleanse America of its tens of millions of enemies.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/navy-seal-tony-dedolph-was-promoted-after-choking-green-beret-logan-melgar-to-death?via=newsletter&source=DDMorning

The four murderers will be pardoned like murderous conservative vermin Gallagher.

[John D Thullen]

The GOP Trump defense team will merge with Gwyneth Paltrow's GOOP Lab to demonstrate the perfect nuclear fusion of all future American dog shit.

[John D Thullen]

Veterans targeted by republican, conservative offshore anti-American, pro-trump propaganda.

The VA and Defense Department, led by subhuman conservative republican traitorous vermin, do nothing:

https://www.balloon-juice.com/2020/01/29/targeting-veterans-with-disinformation/

https://vva.org/trollreport/

The United States of American is in grave, mortal danger.

[John D Thullen]

Poland is only a step ahead of trump's vermin conservative America in destroying its Justice system and instituting full conservative totalitarian crypto-religious fascism, with all of murderous goals of destroying their enemies:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/disturbing-campaign-against-polish-judges/605623/

[John D Thullen]

Ambassador Yovanovitch should be personally carrying deadly force, as should her bodyguards, and she should shoot to kill in self defense anyone who appears suspiciously Russian or American conservative or republican who gets too close.

All of them look a lot alike.

https://digbysblog.net/2020/01/it-makes-you-wonder-why-bolton-called-it-drug-deal/

[cleek]

" ‘I want to be elected. I think I’m a great president. I think I’m the greatest president there ever was. And if I’m not elected, the national interest will suffer greatly.’ That cannot be an impeachable offense."

- Alan Dershowitz

[russell]

The evidence is more than strong that the POTUS withheld military aid from the Ukraine, and withheld an invitation for Zelensky to meet with him at the White House, in order to pressure Zelensky to announce an investigation of his rival, Joe Biden.

When these actions became known, he resisted attempts by Congress to investigate them by refusing to provide relevant documents and by refusing to allow people in his chain of command to testify. This was done not by invoking executive privilege, but by executive fiat.

He either did those things, or he did not.

If he did them, they either are grounds for impeachment, or they are not.

The rest is noise.

I listened to some of the Q&A on my drive time home this afternoon. I actually found it to be pretty interesting, in an American-history-and-civics-class kind of way. Some interesting and relevant questions were raised.

None of that amounts to a damned thing beyond general interest. The (R)'s in the Senate will not, in a million years, vote to remove Trump from office. Never.

The thing I find most worrisome about all of this is the effect it will have on Trump. He will assume - perhaps correctly - that he is beyond being called to account. For more or less anything.

I can, maybe, imagine the existence of rare individuals capable of handling that combination of power and freedom with responsibility and circumspection.

Trump is not among them.

[cleek]

of course "conservatives" are happy about the President who can't be charged with crimes and can't even commit crimes if he pretends after he gets caught that he could be seen to be acting in the national interest.

you know they're OK with it because they never complained about any of Obama's or Clinton's policies!

[John D Thullen]

Every time "German" and "Nazi" is uttered in this clip, replace it with vermin, subhuman Republican:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOcimzsviFA

[John D Thullen]

A long read.

Read it.

https://harpers.org/archive/2020/02/trumpism-after-trump/

All of "the big names" were in the same location.

But nothing happened.

Maybe next time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5s3Oj2cPgc

[JanieM]

Human beings are not vermin. Metaphor or not, I wouldn't even call Nazis vermin. It's a Nazi trick to dehumanize people that way, and acting more like Nazis is not my idea of a promising way to get out of the mess we're in.

Ditto for metaphors about executing people or eliminating a significant percentage of the world's population.

I'm tired of it.

Hasta la vista.

[wj]

It's easy to get so outraged at an opponent that one descends into the gutter with them. The problem is, in doing so one acquires the same kind of problematic characteristics.

The high road is far harder. But in the long run, the low road leads only to defeat.

[bobbyp]

A guide to those suffering from impeachment fatigue

[Pro Bono]

I'm deeply uncomfortable with JDT's rhetoric.

Fascist Republicans are the problem. Let's be entirely unlike them.

[Nigel]

Human beings are not vermin. Metaphor or not, I wouldn't even call Nazis vermin. It's a Nazi trick to dehumanize people that way, and acting more like Nazis is not my idea of a promising way to get out of the mess we're in....

This.

[novakant]

I confess I had to look up unfelicitous :)

But more importantly, the US is now one step away from being a dictatorship - good times:

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/29/politics/dershowitz-quid-pro-quo/index.html

Such crazy arguments are the culmination of the continuous expansion of presidential powers in the US - and unfortunately it seems unlikely that Congress will ever restrain them again, at least not in the medium term.

[novakant]

https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/alan-dershowitz-for-the-defense-letat-cest-trump

[russell]

Yep, Dershowitz has basically taken a match to his own credibilty and reputation and burnt it to ashes.

Funny how that keeps happening to people in Trump's orbit.

[Girl from the North Country]

Human beings are not vermin. Metaphor or not, I wouldn't even call Nazis vermin. It's a Nazi trick to dehumanize people that way, and acting more like Nazis is not my idea of a promising way to get out of the mess we're in.
...

Fascist Republicans are the problem. Let's be entirely unlike them.

Seconded on both counts, with the sole caveat (you'd expect it from me, and in any case it's probably what Pro Bono meant) that not all Republicans are fascists.

[Nigel]

Hmmmm.

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/01/29/trumps-geofencing-could-be-a-potent-political-issue/
If you attend an evangelical or a Catholic Church, a women’s rights march or a political rally of any kind, especially in a seriously contested state, the odds are that your cellphone ID number, home address, partisan affiliation and the identifying information of the people around you will be provided by geofencing marketers to campaigns, lobbyists and other interest groups…

Reportedly (see the NYT link), the Trump campaign has a significant advantage with this (which is basically the purpose od his big rallies).

Could make a difference in the marginal states.

And why is this even legal ?

[russell]

And why is this even legal ?

Because we have bollocks, if that, for data privacy laws.

Just another one of our special ways of being free.

[Nigel]

Yes, but even the most heavy handed of laws (GDPR, qv) doesn't really prevent this happening when every digital interaction requires pre-consenting to it.

Here's the germ of an idea to go at it form the other end.
Thoughts ?
http://customercommons.org/home/tools/terms/

[Nigel]

From.

[GftNC]

In the wake of a recent fairly brutal obituary of a minor politician (Lord Chalfont), people have been posting past masterpieces of the genre. I don't think I ever read this by Hunter Thompson on the death of Nixon, but I'm glad I have now. And interestingly, it has relevance to our current discussion about what kind of language is appropriate when describing out and out villains:

Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism -- which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.

But it's very well worth reading the rest of it.

[GftNC]

In the wake of a recent fairly brutal obituary of a minor politician (Lord Chalfont), people have been posting past masterpieces of the genre. I don't think I ever read this by Hunter Thompson on the death of Nixon, but I'm glad I have now. And interestingly, it has relevance to our current discussion about what kind of language is appropriate when describing out and out villains:

Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism -- which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.

But it's very well worth reading the rest of it.

[nous]

Hunter S. Thompson was a master of the sardonic memorial, even for those who he liked. My favorite example being the opening line of his piece for William S. Burroughs:

"William had a fine taste for handguns, and later in life he became very good with them."

Zing!

[Pro Bono]

Fascist Republicans are the problem...

I intended "Fascist" to be read as a restrictive modifier.

[bc]

wj, you are so unfair. Jared has been working hard on this.

Yeah, wj, and there is a TUNNEL! What's not to like?

[Girl from the North Country]

"William had a fine taste for handguns, and later in life he became very good with them."

You see, nous's comment is a perfect illustration of one of my favourite things about ObWi. Tracking down this quotation led me down a rabbit hole to Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone: The Essential Writing of Hunter S Thompson, and a lot of extremely pleasurable short pieces I hadn't read before. I once shared a house with this book, or a collection of his writings very like it, and found that I couldn't go on reading it for too long at a time, it became too much of a good thing after a while. And then I left that place, and forgot all about it. After which, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and a couple of long reads in Rolling Stone like Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail (the former of which I consider to be something of a masterpiece) became pretty much all of his that I remembered. How excellent to (re)discover more...

[Nigel]

This is cool.
A photovoltaic cell which works at night:
https://techxplore.com/news/2020-01-anti-solar-cells-photovoltaic-cell-night.html

[Nigel]

Rand Paul is an utter wanker. That is all.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/480712-roberts-refuses-to-read-question-from-paul-on-whistleblower

[Priest]

The Great Shark Hunt is a large collection of HST material, including pre-Gonzo stuff he wrote for the National Observer in the early 60s and carrying on from there.

[bobbyp]

Zing!

Sometimes the irony just reaches out and grabs you, or so I've heard. HT liked and used guns as well.

Here's another, uh, rather strident obituary of a sort of famous personage.

[Girl from the North Country]

Strident is right, bobbyp. Lots of interesting and no doubt true and important stuff, but hardly written with any zing or elegance of style, so not a fine example of the genre IMO (No H - I'm not particularly humble).

[wj]

nous's comment is a perfect illustration of one of my favourite things about ObWi.

Eclectic, that's definitely us.

[bret cook]

Rand Paul is an utter wanker. That is all.

Well, if there was any question about the identity of the whistleblower, I think Roberts just put that to rest.

[Girl from the North Country]

Come to think of it, The Great Shark Hunt, or maybe The Rum Diaries, could have been the HST book I briefly lived with. I have ordered the Rolling Stone collection from abebooks, my current pusher (and lifesaver). Thanks, nous.

[wj]

"The presiding officer declines to read the question as submitted,” Roberts said.

Good on Roberts. There was some question just how the Chief Justice would do as presiding officer. I then to count this a promising sign.

[bobbyp]

GFTNC-there is no topping Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas in the HST oeuvre.

He also, very early in his career, penned a short monograph about the Hell's Angles.

[Girl from the North Country]

bobbyp, yes, I remember reading the Hell's Angels piece long ago. But as for your first para, I'm certain you're right.

[wj]

Not only the best people, but the best construction:

Newly installed panels from the US border wall fell over in high winds Wednesday, landing on trees on the Mexican side of the border.

Note that those "high winds" involved gusts "as high as 37 mph". Bit shy of hurricane force....

[russell]

Newly installed panels from the US border wall fell over in high winds Wednesday

Who had the contract to build it?

What did they contribute to Trump 2020?

[russell]

Also - if you click through you will see that the wall was built next to - maybe 1 or 2 feet from - a line of trees. Which are taller than the wall.

Trees. Taller than the wall.

People climb trees.

[Michael Cain]

The concrete where the wall sections were blown over was freshly poured and hadn't cured yet. Pretty much all you can blame the contractors for is being stupid enough to set new fence sections when the winds were forecast to be up.

More interesting are some of the recent pictures showing modifications to the design to include floodgates wherever the wall crosses a river bed or arroyo in the desert sections. The floodgates will have to be left open during the summer monsoon season. Possibly left open year round in some cases due to the terms of treaties with Mexico over interfering with water flows that cross the border. Friends in New Mexico tell me there are a few places where the wall may have to be built as much as 20 miles from the border in order to find terrain where it won't wash out in the first few years.

[russell]

The wall is theater, for Trump's xenophobic base.

I understand that sh*t happens on job sites. Although some bracing might have been a good idea.

But the whole wall business is a toxic farce.

[CharlesWT]

Walls do work. Take the Great Wall of China. You don't see many Mexicans in China...

[John D Thullen]

Investors climb over the Wall of Worry all the time.

[russell]

Lamar Alexander weighs in:

Yes, he did it. No, it doesn't merit removal from office.

Also - refusal to respond to or co-operate with investigation into any of this, not a thing. Claims otherwise are frivolous.

If this shallow, hurried and wholly partisan impeachment were to succeed, it would rip the country apart, pouring gasoline on the fire of cultural divisions that already exist.

OK then. Let the healing begin.

[Girl from the North Country]

OK then. Let the healing begin.

LOL

[russell]

Also pushing my buttons this week is this from Mayor Pete:

In the face of unprecedented challenges, we need a president whose vision was shaped by the American Heartland rather than the ineffective Washington politics we’ve come to know and expect.

Actually, in the face of unprecedented challenges, we need leaders who will stop trotting out this divisive "heartland vs coastal elites who hate you" bullshit.

Enough of this crap already. Stop it.

And FWIW, with all due respect to Mayor Pete, running the United States is not remotely like running South Bend IN. "Ineffective Washington politics" is to no small degree a function of the complexity and scale of national governance, in a nation that spans a continent, four time zones, and 330 million people with vastly different histories, experiences, and values.

If Mayor Pete ever gets the chance to try it on, he will likely spend his first 100 days in office crapping his pants in terror at the scope of the responsibility that has fallen on his shoulders. Anybody with half a brain would do likewise.

Enough of this vilification of government. Enough of this bullshit about "the heartland" and "real Americans". Enough pandering to resentment.

Want to lead? Articulate a positive, constructive path. Crap about "real America" and "the heartland" is not a positive, constructive path.

[bobbyp]

sigh. wrs.

too bad he left out all the expletives...there are times when they are warranted.

[russell]

FARGING BASTAGES!! SONAMABATCH!! CORKSACKING ICEHOLE!!

[wj]

The concrete where the wall sections were blown over was freshly poured and hadn't cured yet. Pretty much all you can blame the contractors for is being stupid enough to set new fence sections when the winds were forecast to be up.

A competent would leave the forms up until the concrete had cured. So I can blame them for that, too.

[wj]

Walls do work. Take the Great Wall of China. You don't see many Mexicans in China...

I know you weren't serious. But can't resist pointing out that the Great Wall of China was intended to keep out Mongols. A response, in part, to the Yuan dynasty established by Ghengis Kahn.) Who, after the Wall was in place, successfully invaded again, in 1636, killing some 25 million people. The Qing (aka Manchu) lasted for over 250 years.

Then of course, there's the Maginot Line. That didn't work so well either.

Walls look impressive, but don't work.

[hairshirthedonist]

“I'm very good at this, it's called construction,” he said.

[wj]

I await the first implementation of the Dershowitz Doctrine: a Democratic President decides the national interest requires locking up all Republican Senators. No trials, not even any charges. Just lock them up. After all, they voted that it wasn't impeachable.

Actually no. The first implementation should be locking up Dershowitz. Since he argued that it was OK.

[Michael Cain]

A competent would leave the forms up until the concrete had cured. So I can blame them for that, too.

In the construction pictures I've seen, there doesn't appear to be any forms. Just a trench with some rebar, and they fill the trench with concrete. In some places they're clearly building so close to the physical border that they can only work from one side of the trench.

[CharlesWT]

In some places they're clearly building so close to the physical border that they can only work from one side of the trench.

Would it be more correct to say, "policial border?"

[wj]

Some cogent thoughts on the election
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/31/2020-choice-ex-republicans/