CNN and C-SPAN and popcorn

@moondrake

I keep on forgetting that Patrick Stewart was knighted.

@PlacidPenguin should it even be recognized? Goddamn Brits still live in the feudal times. The queen does nothing but sit on her ass either

@legendornothing

I don’t see the harm in keeping honorary titles. After all, the titles aren’t physically harming me or putting me in any danger.

@legendornothing
At her age, she’s entitled to sit, perhaps more than she used to.

Re: Brits living in feudal times: really, only when hanging out with The Doctor during a feudal excursion. Otherwise, not too much feudal, except for festivals and such.

The titles are a substantial tourist draw. On the whole, Brits profit enormously from having them.

The aristos get taxed all to hell too. No reason for them to all go away at present.

/image animated Dr Who

@ThatsHeadly That’s a truly great start. What’s next? The yelling match tonight ought to result in at least one flounce exit.

@OldCatLady - I heard they blasted the TVs in the WH to cover the shouting.

@Shrdlu Nine years dead, but he sure has a lively social presence. https://georgecarlin.com/

@serpent - So “You evil, intolerant, little people” is tolerant and positive?
Hypocrite.

@f00l - There is one theory that the conspiracy goes so far down the line that Sen Orrin Hatch is currently receiving security briefings in anticipation of becoming president.

(Not gullible, just hopeful).
(Not saying I like Hatch).

@f00l Are you volunteering to start a pool? I’m in- next out is Manafort, then HellyAnne.

@KDemo Better the devil you know.

@f00l
Kanye West would come out as:
Kapital Westcott

@snapster would come out as:
Snapper

Pope Francis would come out as:
Popeye Franciska

Queen Elizabeth II would come out as:
Qua Elje Iago
I don’t really see much of Iago in the Queen, but hey. Maybe Spicey knows something I don’t.

@OldCatLady
Does Manafort still have an official role?

Re KellyAnne, I wouldn’t bet on her being next out the door, because she takes so well to being sent to the sidelines and then told to vanish from sight, and then, when Trump is under press duress, re-appearing when called to perform again.
Also she is said to be an endless well of flattery, so there’s a yuge upside to keeping her in place.

@KDemo
RE: Orrin Hatch:
Somehow I don’t think the perennials in DC are quite there yet.

@f00l Gen. Clapper (DNI/DIA) and Gen. Hayden (CIA/NSA) have been on every talk show except Ellen lately, putting things into perspective. I haven’t seen their take on today’s revelations. I’ve been trying to read worldwide media to gauge reaction, but there just aren’t enough hours. The CIA wall audience members who cheered and clapped were later revealed to have been imported for the occasion by 45’s staff. What a foul harbinger.

@OldCatLady

Yeah. Not enough hours in a day, forget the need to sleep.

I’m still catching up on weekend news talk shows so I can hear more than the sound clips, but all that’s been overrun by today’s crisis news already.

Many people now are speculating loudly about West Wing chaos, mental fitness, meds, sleep quality, mental deterioration, including several big name R senators.

MJ on MSBBC has been onto that for perhaps 2 months or more. They seem to have some very strong close-in sources.

I’m sure you’ve seen or heard these:

“Can we have a crisis-free day?” quipped Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican,

Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker said the wave of negative stories related to Trump and intelligence meant the White House is in a “downward spiral.”

@OldCatLady Pity there’s no one around to do a third party introduction. It seems vaguely possible that we’ve been in the same world, if not in the same places. Weird.

Still, I’m glad that I’m long retired (since Feb 2006), and out of it all. It’s hard enough to watch from here, without being in the middle of it all…

@Shrdlu, please meet @OldCatLady.

I believe you may have common history?

(pssst - try a pm at woot)

@OldCatLady
I can’t go that way (your post). I could if this were a movie … sigh …

As much as I might wish for an easy or quick solution: not that one; not for me, not even in a moment of fantasy escape.

For the same reason, perhaps, that I couldn’t really watch The West Wing during the worst years of “W” wars and economics. The government we had in Washington was just too horribly real. I found little comfort in a relatively desirable fictional “ideal alternative” on television.

And realistically, I think such an event - an accident or similar - would likely cause more problems than it might mitigate. Any accidental or “accidental” or deliberate harm to the President would set the nation and possibly the world into political chaos.

Russia, Syria, N Korea, Iran or others might try to make a move. Some bad events might initiate in the Middle-East or elsewhere. It might be time for a major infrastructure attack that’s been quietly on hold.

If Trump became unable to function under any sort of mysterious circumstances, the Republicans would be in power, with the perfect excuse to stoke all the “emergency” and “conspiracy” states of mind and legal trimmings they think they might possibly pull off or gain partisan profit from. And they would use that advantage as hard as they could. They would do anything to own the “recent events narrative” with middle America. And they might well succeed.

Johnny Carson always said he had to win in the Midwest and the wheat belt in order to own the airwaves, the format and time slot. And when Johnny Carson had clearly given up on Nixon in his show monologues, many people around Nixon noticed and felt the shift, and knew Nixon’s end was just a matter of time.

I think permanent DC has to do something similar to keep national cred: they have to touch things here in the Great Flyover Zone, to a degree. So I look for small cracks here.

In one county in Texas, in 2012 I think, something like 5 people voted for Obama. Just 5. Or less than 10 or something. Texas Monthly got curious and sent a reporter out for interviews. The reporter could find no person who admitted to voting for Obama, and no one who would talk seriously about the possibility. .

So if I were to set out a “Republican meter” or a “Trump meter”, I’d set it there, to collect the strands of thought and shreds of attitude, that make, slowly, over time, for a change or a breaking. I do believe it will come. Sooner rather than later, if Trump keeps pushing harder and harder in the manner of his first 100+ days.

These red-state people have their political and philosophical myths that serve as a kind of extreme “secular faith”. But they aren’t, for all that, dumber than a box of rocks. Not even close. And they also have their limits.

I want Trump to lose power in a manner that hands as little credibility, and as little “narrative ownership of events”, as possible to his current enablers.

And that means he must be discredited, and have almost zero Washingtonian currency left, or, possibly, have a health crises at a time when he has pretty much destroyed his credibility. Reporters and investigations and prosecutors can help the process, but the heart of it must be the Trump White House itself.

If one wants to be soft-hearted about it, the kindest thing for his reputation might be a health event that left him able to enjoy and participate in life, but not able to function as President. He could retreat to a Towering Gold-Leaf And Marble Bubble, and listen to people tell him things that make him happy, while the world goes on its way, and play with his grandkids, and think everything is “great”.

Not matter what, if he loses power, the hard-line right wing will try to seize it. In the person of Pence, with help from Ryan and McConnell, they will succeed, at least partially.

But Trump already partially broke the hold these Movement Conservatives and Tea Party fanatics and Freedom Caucus members once had on their base voters; he did that during the primaries. I am hoping he will further break their power, and he will destroy much of his own hypnotic emotional magic, the stuff he uses on his base, on his way down.

I think he may do just that, and, it now looks, possibly, perhaps, sooner than I could have imagined. But it will be hell to live through and endure, or to stand against, assuming we do live through it.

I just hope that somehow he doesn’t take everything else down with him. I do not feel at all secure about that.

This whole thing is beyond sad. One imagines the future words of the historians … if we have such, where we’re going.

I take lightweight samples of the mood here periodically. Those who voted for him because he’s not HRC are in a state of disgusted shock, I would guess, from overhearing small remarks. That’s what they hint. So far, his true supporters have not really wavered. But some of them are getting closer.

Some kind of deep breaking of something in peoples’ outlooks feels perhaps not quite so distant in a future count of days or months now.

Perhaps I am delusional. Who knows. I read the leaves as well as I can, and I’m very bad at that art.

I personally tend toward the notion that we are not, by any Deity or set of natural laws, pre-ordained down to a finally set future: that for me, to a degree, “the wheel is always,and forever, in spin”, to stretch a metaphor. I could be full-of-shit on that, of course; but if so, I can always happily claim to be “a victim of pre-ordained full-of-shitness”.
"I’m not bad. I’m just pre-ordained that way" - to paraphrase Jessica Rabbit, (whom I have never even slightly resembled.)

Our nation and this dangerous and violent world have come through terrible terrible things, and our human portions of history have slowly gotten better for many of us, in many, but not all, ways. (Infrastructure fragility, disease risks, mass manipulation, the environment, weaponry, terribly poverty, theft on previously unimaginable scales … sigh).

I would like to think there yet remain many many paths toward more of human decency and progress, and human moral and intellectual honor, for more and more humans.

Trump may, practically speaking, destroy many of those paths, in his impulsive foolishness. Or, events and people may stop him. Or he may stop himself. Or all that and more.

@f00l

Looked it up. It was 5 votes for Obama, in 2012.

The county pop is very small of course.

The county is near the SE corner of the Panhandle.

Here is the article:
http://www.texasmonthly.com/politics/visiting-the-reddest-county-in-the-country/

It’s the very dark red one, just below the Panhandle proper.

@f00l It’s interesting that the parts of the state that touch Mexico are the blue areas. I’m not sure how to interpret that.

@moondrake
Heavy Hispanic populations along the border. Heavily diverse populations in the cities.

@f00l I don’t insist on a detailed splat ending to the golf cart in flight. I’m perfectly content to leave him there, suspended in midair, for all eternity. It’s a great view, and he’d have all those Greek nymphs to look at. Galatea, Persephone, Arethusa… I just want to fast forward past all the messy details and get the next set of clowns into the ring.

@OldCatLady
I figured.

@f00l Also these are the parts of the state most interdependent with Mexico, so Trump’s alienation of that nation stands to hurt us the most. The border adjustment tax, which would tax U.S. companies’ sales and imports at 20 percent will crush us, and we are the ones who will be emminent domained out of our properties and homes and be under constant surveillance if he shoves that damned wall through us. It makes sense, really. I guess I’m just surprised to see it laid out so neatly on the map. It makes me happy to see that my fellow border residents “get it”, but sad to see so clearly that Texans not on the border mostly don’t.

@f00l I like you.

@moondrake
Yeah. You would know more than I by far.

I have read that the residents within the Texas 23rd Congressional District, a single district who contains more than 40% of the US border w Mexico (more than 800 miles out of a total of 1989 miles of total border) overwhelmingly don’t want the wall. Neither R’s nor D’s. Except on heavily populated areas.

Is that your experience?

@f00l

Somebody tell me if this pix is upside down. Uploaded it from iOS.

@mossygreen

Thanks!

/image animated awesome

@f00l I don’t know anyone around here, dem or rep, that thinks a giant concrete wall is a good idea.

@moondrake @f00l

I don’t like BI, but…

http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-border-wall-proposal-plexiglass-2017-5

@PlacidPenguin Much more attractive, but I am skeptical. Plastics don’t do well in the relentless sun of the Chihuhaun Desert. They rapidly become yellowed and brittle. Also, it seems likely that our frequent sandstorms would soon abrade the surface into opacity. These guys are in the plastics business, so maybe they’ve accounted for that. Lexan seems to do okay, but it’s a lot more expensive than plexi. Or maybe they figure once they’ve got $20 billion in their pocket it won’t be their problem any more. Even if it’s workable it doesn’t solve my main concerns: 1. Environmental impact, particularly in regards to denying animals on the US side their only reliable access to water and limiting genetic diversity among scarce and endangered species. 2. Eminent domaining people’s property and homes from them. Eminent domain is a terrible power in anyone hands and use of it on this scale is apalling. 3. Trapping citizens on the other side. In some cases where terrain dictates the wall be moved inland from the border, US citizens will be left on the wrong side of the wall. They’ll effectively be shut off from the US in a practical sense. This has already happened to some people with the border fence. 4. Loss of access to the rio for livestock and possibly irrigation, which will put ranchers and farmers out of business. 5. For people living near the wall, the constant noise and loss of privacy to surveillance. People living near the existing fence are already complaining about this.

Plus there’s the intangible but very real loss to people who paid a premium for views of our beautiful Rio Grande Valley. Doesn’t sound important, but imagine if they were planning to protect our border by building a 40 foot concrete wall along the coastline. Imagine what the folks in all those ocean view homes would have to say about it.

I just learned something, (from Fox News) there’s a treaty with Mexico that prevents us from building the wall on the rio’s flood plain (which makes sense, it would force flood waters into Mexico). This means we’ll be isolating a lot more farm and grazing land than I’d imagined.

@moondrake

You lost me at Chihuhaun Desert.

I started laughing.

@PlacidPenguin This is a great article.

Why laughing? My terrible spelling? (Chihuahuan)

@moondrake

@PlacidPenguin To people around here, Chihuahua is the neighboring Mexican state, no stranger than New Mexico or Louisiana. Probably 20% of license plates you see when driving are Chihuahua plates. Although the dog breed is plenty popular here, too. This is what they chose for the name of the local baseball team, for which City Council colluded in secret to spend millions of dollars, tore down our City Hall, distributed city services across five different sites and made much of downtown a ghost town:

@PlacidPenguin

The Chihuahuan desert is the third largest desert in the Western Hemisphere.

To me, it’s gorgeous- a tough but very beautiful place to survive. The Mexican side contains little-explored canyons than are said to be pretty comparable to the Grand Canyon.

The breed of dog is named after the State of Chihuahua in Mexico, much of which is dominated by the the Chihuahuan desert.

@OldCatLady
I am a few hours behind this news. Still playing catch-up.

@KDemo
Anderson Cooper’s 360 show is downloadable as a podcast. I haven’t listened yet, but you can get it. And you can play it as fast as you want, or FFWD it.

Just search you podcast player’s “find podcasts” utility for CNN.

@f00l Or tune in now. AC 360 is on replay after midnight EST. He ran considerably over, something about breaking news, but she was on the last 15 minutes.

@OldCatLady
Thanks - there is a slight temptation to turn it on. But no, not this evening.

For me, podcasts are far pref to TV, unless I want it live, or want the visual. And I can choose my speed.

But I became an audiobook fanatic in I think the late 1980’s or early 1990’s when they were all on cassette, and hideously expensive, and it was almost impossible to find unabridged ones. So 25-30 years experience of loving consuming media this way, while also getting to do something else at the same time.

Really, audible pricing, plus portable media players (I still love my Ipod Classic, which still has about 200? truly fav books on it I think), and then later smartphones, and then later 1st class streaming in many areas, made it all more and more easy to use.
And make it a media consumption form I love.

I guess I’ve gotten good at “listening with as much attention as I wish to give at the moment” with practice.

@f00l I found a security guard who listened to audiobook cassettes and later CDs at his job and sold them at the flea market for about 25% of cover. He liked the same kind of books as me, so we would just meet every month or so and I’d buy his latest crop. He also preferred unabridged ones, so I used to have a big library of 30 hour audiobooks.

@moondrake
I had that habit too. When audible used to make it harder to buy extra credits. Or didn’t have a title.

I would buy them used from Ebay, Half, Amazon, AbeBooks, Alibris, HPB, etc. Bought a bunch from the U.K. And a few from Europe (in English).

Then audible got sensible and started to let people buy all the credits they wanted. My credits now cost me about $10-$11 each depending on exactly how I purchase them. I can get any book for a credit.

Audible doesn’t have a few books I want because the US Digital audiobook rights are tied up or something. (The digital audiobook is often for sale in the U.K. And European sites). So once in a while I still head to EBay or elsewhere. And then I have to rip it, which annoys me. How dare the universe hand me a 1st world problem!!!

I had to get one of the Crombie series that way, some publishing co rights contract is standing in the way for 1 or 2 of her books.

Always makes me a little mad. Irrationally and stupidly so for a few min. But I recover quickly.

My audible library is so large that I won’t admit how large. It’s too embarrassing.

@f00l Comparing Crombie’s audiobooks vs. hardbacks, I definitely prefer the hardbacks, because of those maps. I’m a tremendous London junkie.

@OldCatLady
Check out both the HB and the digital audiobook. : ). The you can listen and have the maps.

I read the first few of her books in HB or PPB. I think the last one I actually read, as opposed your listened to, may have been Dreaming of the Bones, which is excellent.

Since then it’s been audiobooks for me. I’m prob a book or two out of date.

Re her maps: haven’t seen them in a long time. If I need to look, I use google maps, I suppose.

@f00l I have a mild case of cartophilia, and Crombie’s illustrated maps are a joy. They’re done by Laura Hartman Maestro, and help flesh out the stories.

@OldCatLady

Yeah re Cartophia.
(Didn’t know that was a word. Cool!)

And I didn’t know about those wonderful maps - (haven’t actually spoken f2f to Deb in nearly a decade, unfortunately. Know her because we have several people in common that we’re tight with.)

Now I have to go looking for used copies of the hardbacks.

I like digital books a lot, cause you don’t have to build shelves for them or choose which to let go of once a decade or so. And they’re always with you, along with their annotations.

But, atlases are another matter. Once in a while when I’m feeling stupidly flush, I drive over to the flagship Half Price Books in Dallas (it’s across the freeway from NorthPark Mall). That store is kinda the size of a Walmart SuperCenter, and I have to restrict myself from going there too often.

But once in a while I go look at what they’ve got in atlases. Or even buy some monster or other.

I love this one, but I don’t think I own a copy? (I’m very bad. Very evil. I have books in a friend’s storage in another loc, for a decade, I’m so bad bad bad.)

Anyway, I love this one:
https://www.amazon.com/Mission-Earth-Landsat-Views-SP-360/dp/B0000EGZJL


A Landsat image
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3c/Island_of_Hawai'i_-Landsat_mosaic.jpg/250px-Island_of_Hawai%27i-_Landsat_mosaic.jpg

And this one (I think the latest edition is the 14th? It’s monstrously expensive)

http://www.utikalauz-terkep.hu/i/?i=CO0073_3.jpg
http://www.utikalauz-terkep.hu/i/?i=CO0073_4.jpg
https://www.amazon.com/Times-Comprehensive-Atlas-World-Atlases/dp/0007551401

I could spend all day staring at maps.

Speaking of all this, someone did a map somewhere of “Smiley’s London” (John Le Carrie).

And, JLC is working on a new George Smiley book!!! The first since The Secret Pilgrim, in which Smiley barely appears.

I’m not sure if this is the Smiley Map, but I am ordering this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Smileys-Circus-Guide-Secret-World/dp/0312730144

Smiley’s Circus: A Guide to the Secret World of John Le Carre

Here’s a London tour of the world of George Smiley
http://stantrybulski.com/2012/04/george-smileys-london-an-offbeat-itinerary/

Here is a NewYorker article
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/best-le-carre-novel/amp
"WHICH IS THE BEST JOHN LE CARRÉ NOVEL?"

But I entirely disagree with the conclusion. His greatest ever work will always be the “Karla trilogy”. That’s the work he put his heart and his entire worldview into.
(his career was destroyed by Kim Philby outing him and everyone else to the Soviets)

Here’s another take on Smiley’s London, which will always, in our era, be spook central, in terms of human agents.
http://londonist.com/2016/02/spook-central-john-le-carre-s-london

"Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, … Tourist"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/magazine/1992/10/11/tinker-tailor-soldier-tourist/328617f0-4b73-4c6e-9377-1fbd48c5db2e/?utm_term=.33ae5cf2785d

And here’s a bio of one of the men who was a model for the “Smiley” character:
https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Was-George-Smiley/dp/1849545138
The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham

Another New Yorker article
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/12/12/i-spy-anthony-lane/amp
"I SPY - John le Carré and the rise of George Smiley."

And John Le Carre himself, from The New Yorker
THE MADNESS OF SPIES
A Secret Service secret.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/09/29/the-madness-of-spies

"IN RONNIE’S COURT
A son’s criminal pursuit."
By John le Carré
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/02/18/in-ronnies-court

John Le Carre (David Cornwall), in Hamburg, in the early 1960’s

But back to maps

Remember the role the great family Atlas played, in Sense and Sensibility?

Damn. Now I might have to watch that film again. I shouldn’t have let myself watch a clip from it. ; )

Maps make for a happy Saturday.

@f00l

Some of my images didn’t “take”. <pout>

Ok, here’s a Landsat image

Kolkata

And here’s an image from the Times Atlas

@f00l
And I misspelled “cartophilia” and “cartophia” or something.

I blame iOS. Couldn’t be that I was so busy doing links that I never bothered to proofread or something.

Naw. iOS, your fault.

@f00l I use Google Earth, and several genealogy-specific sites for maps and zooming. For maps, though, I love http://bigthink.com/articles?blog=strange-maps and https://www.nypl.org/blog/2014/03/28/open-access-maps and of course http://judgmentalmaps.com/

@OldCatLady

But a great bound atlas … in your hands …

Is there anything like holding an incredible atlas and slowly turning the pages?

Digital mapping can do so so much more. But we’re not at the point of ultra HD tablets that are truly atlas -sized and affordable yet. I wish we were.

When I was young, I would spend hours on this one:

@OldCatLady
I think this is the other atlas that fascinated me as a child.

@f00l
Surreal start to the morning;

Russia claims to have transcript of Trump meeting with Lavrov

By: CNN
Updated 7:43 AM EDT, Wed May 17, 2017
(CNN) Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia is ready to provide US Congress with a transcript of the talks between President Donald Trump and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Speaking at a press conference, Putin said the transcript could be provided “if the US administration finds it appropriate.”

@f00l Coffeesnort.
/giphy coffee snort

@f00l They’d be interesting to read but I don’t know why we’d believe them.

@moondrake
Yes. There were other people present who could testify to accuracy under oath, but that does not help with omissions the persons has does not recall, or will small but meaningful unnoticed textual alterations.

I meant “surreal” in terms of the growing insane circus of madness this Presidency has become.

Sure, let’s get the Russian transcript. And perhaps a few versions from psychics too. Why not?

Although … if the Russians wanted to be truly cruel to Trump, and also have a laugh, and up the anarchy levels, they could simply release an accurate transcript …

@OldCatLady
I haven’t checked the headlines for 2 hours, so my knowledge is already cold cold cold.

What have I missed?

@f00l Apparently 45 is going to speak live about the ‘current crisis’ on all major stations Real Soon Now (it’s 11:15 EST), conveniently timed to preempt most of The View, whose guest today is Seth Meyers. The gif is because I just liked the horse.

@OldCatLady
Yes. The horse could be a Warmblood or a Percheron I think?
Gorgeous.

@f00l - Haha! Funny you should ask!

Ryan and other R’s knew 45 was receiving bribes from Putin.
Special counsel has been appointed.
“Former FBI Director Mueller Appointed Special Counsel To Oversee Russia Probe”

So, President Hatch a step closer to reality?

@KDemo

Normally when I hear that there’s breaking news from the White House I get nervous, but this news has put me in a good mood.

@OldCatLady hey when does the Hillary Clinton special prosecutor qualify for federal retirement?

@cranky1950 ?? Not sure what you’re referring to.

@OldCatLady just being silly thet’re still chasing email.

@cranky1950 I need more silly. The Marlins are playing so badly I can’t even. Keep going.

@OldCatLady Geez Repbulican house is a bunch of Frat rats.

@OldCatLady
@Kdemo brought this up also

(House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy alleging Trump got $ from Putin/Russia last June, and and Ryan hushing it up)

and I saw or heard a blurb about it sometime this am or midday today.

Trump financial weirdness is something I’ve been talking with my lawyer brother off and on. .

The conversations started last summer, after the conventions. One day I called bro (who deals professionally with hedge funds, insurance cos, and insanely wealthy persons who invest heavily in commercial development).

I called bro to ask: where is the biz-master and wheeler-dealer who could run that sort of empire all those years? Where is Mr Competent or Mr Srategist? I do see the guy who is a master of media, hot-phrasing, presentation, sales, and promotion. I don’t see the guy who can think through and execute long term strategies. I believe he was capable of this sort of self-control in the 1980’s. But lately - last 15 or 20 years or so - he seems completely given over to bombast, noise, glory fixation, sales, and impulse.

Yeah, I know about the bankruptcies and failures. Those were the talk of NYC. But the main portions of his assets and operations, and the biz capacity to expand stayed afloat. He must have created a pretty clever corporate structure for economic insulation. Well, that’s why people pay MBAs and lawyers. I’m sure his companies have plenty of both.

And that means Trump’s companies have a buncha faceless, very smart, money and deals and execution people who are no doubt paid very well to be competent, smart, and invisible, because Trump and his children need to be the only faces the company has, due to his ego and media obsessions.

Ok. So smart, self-controlled, well-paid faceless people do the real work and Trump does the all the PR and promo. No doubt he used to go where his entertainment talents could be useful, back when his main biz was development. And once he got on site and on camera, he knew what to do.

All the radio and TV stations and the news cable stations have been giving him call-in airtime since the 1980’s, whenever he felt like calling in. He was basically the only “entertaining private citizen” allowed to call in instead of having to show up, and the only one who could always just call, butt in, and get on the air within a few min on just about any talk show, no advance notice needed. Because he kept the audience from turning away.

And he’s had, and made the most of, the Trump name and the Trump gilded-luxury-to-make-you-gag signature style.

But where did the real profit come from?

I have no doubt plenty of his properties did and do quite nicely, and since the bankruptcies, most of the ones that failed just licensed his name, they weren’t actually his own investments.

And it was already quite obvious long before he went political that he was perfectly willing to do biz anywhere, in all the places where the govt and local economies are entirely corrupt.

Ok. Still. It’s not easy to stay as afloat as he did, even with all those unsung brains on the floor below actually making the empire into a cash cow.

Anyone hear of anyone else doing it, using a American company for a development empire that appears to have no coherent, rational, sober, disciplined business strategy? My bro confirmed that every corp, find, or rich person he knows of who invests heavily in or develops commercial properties does not, or does not appear to, operate that way. They act like the sober, rational, careful adults they must be to survive, not people who always operate off the cuff.

So … the businessman with the discipline isn’t very visible. The strategy to get a biz thru economic shocks and hard times isn’t visible. Even with a bunch of smart people one floor down, how is this operation ongoing and expanding in such a big and brash way?

My bro was also puzzled. He couldn’t explain it either, but it didn’t worry him. He said every large real estate operation is unique, and the high level $ stuff is often based on personal relationships, as much as with contracts and permits.

I never discussed the next part with bro, he hates conspiracy theories, and it seemed too crazy and speculative. I thought of it as just one more wild theory with no backing. I don’t much like conspiracy theories either. Mostly because unless i have investigators and subpoena powers, i will never know, so why waste time on them? It’s so easy to convince oneself of stuff you want to believe for emotional reasons, or just get more and more tangled in speculation. I avoid.

But I kept this seed of speculation in my head. And then I heard about Manafort’s pro-Russian contracts. And about a few deals around the former Soviet Republics where Trump’s biz managed to get major impossible permits. And he did a lot of buying something way too cheaply, and selling it a year or so later with way way too much profit, and sometimes a Russian was involved.

And too many people (rich and powerful, possibly cut-outs) have been in the same place right next to each other at the same time for no apparent reason. And what about those strange post-election meetings set up in weird remote places with someone from Trump biz, or a bud of his, and someone from Russia?

And there were his enormous loans. Deutsche Bank and the Bank of Cyprus, and other ??? banks, supposedly all famous as enormous conduits for Russian money laundering and other laundering, and other oddities? What about Wilbur Ross? What’s he been up to?

And who put Trump into heavy contact with Bannen and Flynn and Manafort and Page and the alt-right, esp the people friendly to Russia?

I don’t think (just my opinion, could be way way wrong about all this) that Trump himself can actually be bought. He’s too combustible, impulsive, transactional, always has to be top dog, and he never follows orders. But what if several people on his biz org chart were bought? What if Trump was “groomed” to be pro-Russia, what if people the Russians wanted Trump to be cool with were placed in his path? What if super sweet deals just magically came his way? What is he had all the money and opportunities and profits he could ever need, and he didn’t don’t quite understand how he made so much money, he just credited himself? What if all this has been going on for, say, 20-30 years?

What if he’s not bought, and he’s not an agent, but he is an unwitting very friendly asset who can be manipulated to a degree? Russia has been tops at the spying and maneuvering game since the Renaissance. The Brits were their main foes for hundred of years, in and around Eastern Europe and Asia Minor and northern Pakistan and India. The Great Game. What if the agents of the old KGB, who inherited the Tsar’s spying traditional assets and savvy, saw in Trump a loudmouth that they could not, strictly speaking, purchase (he won’t stay bought and he won’t control himself), but that they could purchase friendship and influence an “entree” with? What if they have been “buying” slices of him as a loudmouth agitator and disrupter for decades; and after starting the investment, getting their moles and money deeper into Trump’s biz, getting the folk they like to be his buddies? And what if, as a side bennie, they could launder $ thru his business? And he got friendlier and friendlier?

And since Jan, this crazy unsupportable fantasy of mine seemed to become more and more, at least, slightly plausible. I don’t “believe” it. Way too speculative. But I have become curious to see where the evidence would lead. Hey, thanks to whomever taped that Republican meeting last June, and whoever leaked the tape. Maybe a bad joke will start people looking a little harder at things.

What is the deal with all those special permits he’s gotten in difficult countries? With those incredible opportunities and deals no other developer gets? With staying afloat and solvent easily, when it should be harder than that? (It’s a tough biz). What is the deal with his enormous loans from banks connected to Russian illegalities? Where are his companies actually getting all that profit from? How did Trump know so many of these questionable bankers so well?

Who introduced him to Manafort and Carter Page and the rest of the we-love-Russia crowd? (This is exactly how parts of the Soviet, and later Russian, strategy works. They have a friendly face that’s nice. They do favors. They ask for small favors. After a while, one just is able to “see things their way”.)

Deep Throat (ironically, given recent news), FBI Associate Director Mark Felt never actually said “Follow the money” (a movie phrase); but always did advise tracking the cash. If one did, it would eventually lead to everything else.

I don’t know, of course, that there’s anything wrong w Trump’s money. Or possibly the Russkies tried to buy his friendship and got next to nowhere. Without subpoenas and forensic accountants and investigators, no way to do anything beyond crazy speculation. So I don’t “believe”, just wonder. Where, exactly, is the rational, whip-smart guy who built an empire? How long ago did that guy who had self-control exit stage left?

I suspect that now, if the Russkies have golden shower videos and all sorts of proof of cash flow-through, Trump would stare them down, and deny all, it would all be a “fake”, and he’d stand a chance of selling that publicly. He’d surely deny, bluff, and fight. If they challenge him, he he throws a punch. So what they wanna do is offer praise and contacts and friendship and profit. He likes those.

And he’s halfway, or appears halfway, to being a child. Surely he’d done them a ton of little favors just to keep the mood happy. Like a little intelligence he doesn’t get the risk or the value of. Sure. Do a friend or a country a favor. It’s just business.

Oh well. I be nuts. No evidence. Pay no attention. It was just a really really bad joke, I’m sure.

Hey, Maddow, don’t let the Russia angle go, ok?

/image map Russia

/youtube stones just my imagination

@f00l Instead of someone(s) guiding his transactions within his circle, does your theory work if there is an entire puppet theater at work, creating all the magical opportunities and deals and meetings while staying mostly unseen? Kuroko, in effect. All the spy novels I’ve read agree that a long-term investment in currying and grooming assets is normal, so every bit of your theory is good.

@OldCatLady Since his last brush with failure, he has been using other peoples money, and each project is an LLC, he’s also laundering money for the russian mafia (send dollars to the russian central bank, lend the dollars to donald and others). The reason his personal taxes may be clean is the llcs actually have borrowed the money. You can’t be a developer in NY NJ and S.Fla and not deal with some form of organized crime. The way everybody rolled over during the campaign tells me the republican party is owned by organized crime. Hell the way bill and hill shoved NAFTA down the throats of the democrats tells me a good portion of the democratic party is owned as well. Anyway shut off from mafia money donald went with the up and coming. Now he’s acting like a jersey guy is gonna act when caught red handed,

@OldCatLady

If something like this happened - i.e. he’s been groomed and assisted as a friendly developing asset and disruptive force for many years - any # of scenarios would work, potentially.

The Russkes are nothing if not sophisticated at this.

Esp since on our side, we’re idealistic about relationships, and would rather be friends if we could.

@cranky1950 What a jaded point of view. I agree totally. I do pity the idealists right now.

@cranky1950
You appear to be right, in that most of the R party is owned by Big $, and simply uses and manipulates the conservative base as a launching point - and has, at least, since the 1990’s

The way everybody rolled over during the campaign

They didn’t want to roll over. They wanted one of their own in power - a Bush, a Rubio. Even Kasich is way way to independent a person, by the standards of the silent $ and power people. But Trump pwned them all. They tried to stop him. They couldn’t. Then they had a choice of what to do next - to stand on principles, or to go where the power would lead them.

Principles vs power. Hmmmm. Guess which direction the R party chose.

Why did a consortium purchase the Texas Rangers, and give the team to W to run?

Because W has the right name, the right pedigree, and knows and respects the right people, and because W is from Texas, probably the wealthiest and most politically powerful among the dark red states. What an opportunity! W had prospects.

They bought W a baseball team in order to make him a public figure. They ran the team in a manner that appeared calm and confident - if it failed to win, no one blamed that on W, who isn’t a prof sports guy.

Ann Richards was in office, and she really irritated the people who didn’t like a female, esp a liberal female, esp a liberal female with a quick wit and sharp mind, having so much power. And she was inevitably politically vulnerable in an increasingly dark red state where political campaigns frequently run on cheap sloganeering about who is most conservative.

They bought the Rangers for W, so that they could run him for Governor. They ran him for Governor because, after some time in office, as long as he wasn’t a disaster (they kept an eye on things), they could run him for President.

Is it any wonder, that when Dick Cheney was put in charge of finding the right candidate for Veep, he found himself?

W was, increasingly, no one’s puppet. But he was never deep or rebellious. They couldn’t control him, but they could present perspectives and POVs that he was willing to live within, and present a united front among the advisers, the most powerful of whom were from older generations.

(W is a very likeable person in private.)

@f00l The new owners of the Marlins are Jeb! and Jeter. I’m not sure where it is in the process, but the sale was announced a few weeks ago. Possibly it’s a political move. Can we take another Bush? Consider the alternative.

@OldCatLady What the hell the worst the can happen is the green slime will move up the east coast!

@OldCatLady

Jeb is far more independent and his own man than W was in the 90’s. And Jeb already has a very decent R political resume, as a national launching pad.

And the world and the red state voters have grown suspicious of the Cheney and Rumsfeld types.

If Jeb makes another go, he doesn’t need a baseball team to have a good shot. He just needs either no-Trump (bridge joke) or a thoroughly discredited joke-Trump to run against.

I imagine he just needs something to do that will kinda keep him in public view, and he likes baseball.

Just a guess. I’m no guru or wonk.

/image bridge notrump

@OldCatLady
I thought of Kipling. But better yet, to my mind, Tinker Tailor Soldier, Spy, or better yet, the entire Quest For Karla trilogy.

Fucking masterpiece.

The entire scenario hit me because I didn’t see how anyone as OOC as he is, how hungry for applause, had the self-control to run that $ empire.
And for someone who runs a billion dollar empire, he has so much free time. Where’d he get all that free time?

@f00l I may be the only person who hasn’t read TTSS. I will remedy that ASAP.

@OldCatLady
If you can grab the audiobook, the narrator is superb.

The three books make a trilogy.

TTSS is the first one.

The books are way way beyond the film or the miniseries, tho both are v good. But not even in the same league as the book.

Pay big attn to the conversations. If you read carefully, he tells you so much in them.

@sanspoint

Ryan is on tape saying Putin likely pays Trump.

Not Ryan. House Maj Leader McCarthy.

From what I’ve heard about the R Congrssional tape, it was clearly and obviously a bad joke. People besidesTrump were mentioned, it was a quip, everyone laughed. You can hear the laughter on the tape.

The reason Ryan husked it up is because you don’t joke that way about the putative nominee.

Ryan and McCarthy still have careers.
Ryan will never be Pres tho, I think. He will never be able to wash off the Trump that’s on him.

If Pence really didn’t know about Flynn lying and Flynn as foreign agent, and didn’t do anything else bad, he prob still has a career.

Obstruction ration of justice requires intent. Trump is no lawyer and people could easily argue he didn’t understand the ramifications.

Politically, there’s a long way to go before he’s impeachable.

@sanspoint Yup, that’s the situation as of 11:26 PM EST. Late-night TV shows ought to be having kittens; they tape around 6 PM at the latest. They can insert bits, and I’m going to watch Colbert.

@OldCatLady
I’m going to listen to the Rachel podcast. I managed to run out of gas in Dallas because the low fuel light didn’t come on and I wasn’t paying attention. Sigh.

But I’ll live.

On my way home now. With a headache and an attitude.

@f00l no way I jus put 50cent worth in 3 days ago.

@OldCatLady
Trump wanted the job of President, in part, because he wanted to play the role. He still wants to. This is a guy with zero self-doubt, and what appears to be declining personal judgment.

He will glory in going abroad and being Pres. He will glory in the attention and the kowtowing. To the degree that everyone sees him as being seriously impaired and seriously out-of-his-depth, and caters to him because they respect the office and they respect and value the US, and they wish to hold the world together, he will misunderstand his treatment, and he will believe he has personally earned their attention and their respect (as tho they have a choice). He will believe he has recovered from recent problems thru his own personal strengths. He will credit himself for all that he is given.

I expect him to enjoy almost every minute of this trip. I also expect that, once he realizes how the President of the US is treated abroad, he will want to take a lot of trips. After all, it’s Congress’s fault if his agenda doesn’t get passed, and it’s the lying and corrupt media’s fault that the whole world doesn’t view him as the ultimate “winner”.

@f00l As he measures things, he is the ultimate winner. And we, ultimately, are losers. The damage to the environment, the people who will suffer and die without healthcare, the not-whitestraightmen that will be pushed back down, the loss of respect among fellow nations, the defacement of our border…these are things we’ll be a long time recovering from.

@moondrake

Yeah. Trump could trash the environment (looks likely), the economy, the US geopolitical position (I credit the strength of the US as having at least some virtue), the culture of decency, journalistic and thinking standards, our constitutional and political systems, the economies and political strengths of our allies, and much else.

He could hand the world to Russia, China, and rogue or terrorist states. (I would imaging the right-wing Israelis are re-thinking how much good he will do for them and lowering the estimate sharply.)

Beyond loss of the ice caps, he could set in motion the poisoning of everything.

He most certaining will directly harm many people with his policies and attitude, and indirectly harm many more.

He might or will try to destroy our ability to have honorable political, social, and scientific discourse, and any creditable conversations about what is happening. He might succeed.

Oh yeah, that small biz of nuclear war and nuclear winter. Forgot about that one for a sec.

If I were religious, I might think about Revelations and the order of events and beings therein, a bit.

And so here we are.

From Wikipedia:
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius,[1][2] commonly called Boethius[3] (English: /boʊˈiːθiəs/; also Boetius /boʊˈiːʃəs/; c. 480–524 AD), was a Roman senator, consul, magister officiorum, and philosopher of the early 6th century.
He was born four years after Odoacer deposed the last Roman Emperor and declared himself King of Italy, and entered public service under Ostrogothic King Theodoric the Great, who later imprisoned and executed him in 524 on charges of conspiracy to overthrow him.[4]
While jailed, Boethius composed his Consolation of Philosophy, a philosophical treatise on fortune, death, and other issues, which became one of the most popular and influential works of the Middle Ages.

‘When the stars are hidden by black clouds, no light can they afford. When the boisterous south wind rolls along the sea and stirs the surge, the water, but now as clear as glass, bright as the fair sun’s light, is dark, impenetrable to sight, with stirred and scattered sand. The stream, that wanders down the mountain’s side, must often find a stumbling-block, a stone within its path torn from the hill’s own rock. So too shalt thou: if thou wouldst see the truth in undimmed light, choose the straight road, the beaten path; away with passing joys! away with fear! put vain hopes to flight! and grant no place to grief! Where these distractions reign, the mind is clouded o’er, the soul is bound in chains.’

I won’t live up to the above. Not even a little bit.
I have less than zero personal history of being a hero.
I do hope I don’t ever ever entirely forget it tho.
I don’t interpret that passage as any sort of argument for fatalism or dispair.

Historically, when were things ever easy?

From the film “Bullitt”, a short set of dialogue that has been one of my personal favs since I first saw the film in the 1960’s:

Cathy (Jacqueline Bisset):
What will happen to us in time?

Bullitt (Steve McQueen):
Time starts now.

@f00l - I was wondering why Rosenstein did that flip-flop thing. He still has a lot to answer for over the Comey firing.

@KDemo
I am wondering what led up to that memo criticizing Comey’s handling of the HRC matter being written. Am wondering if Rosenstein was possibly not fully informed as to how it would be used.

The story is that he was outraged afterwards, at the way the story had been played by Pence and the WH Press Office. But he seems to be the kind of person who does not go public with grievances. And between then and now, the info has gone out that Trump asked Comey for a loyalty oath, and intimated that Comey should drop the investigation.

That gives Rosenstein cover and full justification for appointing the special counselor. And it looks very much like a “yuge” personal FU to Sessions and to the WH. Rosenstein drafted the paperwork appointing the special council in private, and then got his appointee’s consent, worked out the details of whom Mueller could bring with him, and finalized the appointment.

30 min after the appointment was final and active, Rosenstein informed the WH and informed Sessions. They were blindsided. I’m sure that was completely intentional.

Mueller is the guy who ran the 9-11 investigation. It’s going to be tough for anyone normal to criticize him without a lot of backing facts.

That won’t stop Trump …

@f00l - Yeah, if I remember correctly, that letter to fire Comey used his treatment of Hillary as an excuse. I’m wondering if Rosenstein really even wrote it, doesn’t seem to make sense (not that anything does in this tragic cartoon).
Whatever the WH did to him, he certainly won this round.

Now, how do we speed up this special investigation process?

@KDemo
Rosenstein testified today in private session in the Senate. He did not deny writing the memo that was the original justification used publicly for firing Comey. I presume he wrote it.
He knew the day before he wrote the memo that Comey was to be fired - he, Sessions, and Trump met at the WH.
He may have thought that the memo was just a supporting document detailing problems with Comey’s conduct in a certain area. I don’t know if he thought Comey should be fired, I have heard that Rosenstein’s objections to Comey’s public fumbles over the HRC investigation were very strong; but he almost certainly did not think Comey should be fired at that moment, or that his memo would be given out as the public reason. Furthermore, Trump had already decided to fire Comey.

A few of interesting facts/rumors:
Trump prob desired to fire Comey before Jan 20, but was wary.
And then Comey declined to promise loyalty.
And then, after it was suggested the the Flynn investigation be concluded, Comey did not take the hint, and was ramping it up.

But according to WH leaks, the real reason Trump acted at that moment was a specific portion of Comey’s public testimony in the Senate: the part where Comey mentioned feeling a little nauseous that anything he, Comey, might have done, or anything the FBI might have done, might have possibly have affected the outcome of the election, as well as Comey’s testimony leaving open the notion that the Russian efforts might have had an effect.

Trump apparently interpreted this as indicating the Comey was trying to undercut or discredit his “enormous” and “well-earned” electoral victory, and took it as a personal insult. He stewed about it all that weekend, and made up his mind then - in spite of all the political threat Comey represented, according to these rumors, Trump acted out of fury and insulted vanity.

Trump fires people who “betray” him. Comey had “betrayed” him by insinuating that Comey’s statements had anything to do with Trump’s win. And Trump blindly believed the Dems would be thrilled.

I don’t think Trump is capable of feeling that he’s ever done anything unethical. Therefore, when Trump fires someone, esp quickly and without preparation, it’s likely to be over anger, or lack of performance, or lack of complete loyalty, or a sense that either Trump or Trump’s achievements had been either insulted or devalued.

I don’t think Mueller’s project will move quickly. He will probably wish to go over all the existing research himself, subpoena everything he knows of, re-interview all the witnesses, convene a Grand Jury, and go over the details with with a magnifier. He is said to be this sort of investigator and prosecutor.

At this point, I personally kinda wish they would consider giving Flynn immunity. He sounds ready to spill, and how can he be the big major target? Flynn didn’t mastermind all the weird Russia-connected stuff.

Manafort may have brainstormed quite a bit of it, and acted in the moment when he found opportunities. He certainly seems smart enough. But I suspect there are quite a few more persons involved. I don’t think Manafort initiated or ran whatever operations went on, or he did not do so in full.

I still want to know how Trump met all these people.
I have heard some rumors regarding Flynn’s Turkish money for acting as a foreign agent: that some of the money may have come from Russia before it was laundered. No idea if true.

If the goal is to quickly get rid of Trump or to have him possess so little cred and so much chaos that he can’t do anything, and no further extreme scandal or smoking gun shows up fairly soon, I think we have to count on Trump himself to deliver that (as opposed to Mueller). Some of Trump’s early probs were staff-driven, like the exec orders on immigration. But it’s been clear for months that the problem is Trump, far more than Bannen or Miller or the like. Trump seems more than capable of delivering destruction to his own Presidency.

The idea of what Russia, Iran, N Korea, etc might do while Trump is busy tweeting and throwing tantrums sometimes wakes me up at night, even tho I can’t do anything about it.

@f00l - True, I’ve heard estimates that the investigation could take two years or more.

Can’t we just get 45 the penis enlargement surgery he so obviously needs?
The man will be incapable of self-control or logic until we do.

@f00l

@KDemo

I heard a bit more about Rosenstein.

Supposedly Comey was ok, but not thrilled, with the nomination to the DOJ. When asked why, Comey said something to the effect of:

Look at his career. He’s a survivor in political waters. Someone like that almost certainly made compromises they should probably have refused.

(That’s a total paraphrase, of someone loosely quoting the someone who quoted someone who spoke to Comey about Rosenstein when he was nominated.)

@f00l I’ve heard several people say that Comey is an honorable man. You don’t hear that much these days. If it’s true we’ve suffered a great loss in his firing.

@moondrake

Comey appears to be a very honorable man, or he appears to make a strong attempt to be one.

If he has a publicly visible set of flaws: perhaps they include a bit too much self-righteousness (to a small degree); and more obviously, an instinct to see things as dramatic, and to throw himself into spotlighted dramatic situations, where he might have have been better served by just staying far more composed, in the background.

It’s hard to say from here. And being an honorable and honest person in a high-profile government appointment job, and staying apolitical and independent, and possessing honor, and keeping distance and the appearance of distance, from the partisans and operators, is a tough road to walk.

I credit him with some serious errors (over HRC), but I believe they were honest ones. He did not, to my best understanding, seek to manipulate or spin. He seems to have believed that Pres Clinton’s meeting on the tarmac with the Attny General so poisoned perceptions about things in the DOJ that he had no choice.

@f00l Lol. Sounds like he and I would get along. Even in a low governmental position, honor is a costly and labor intensive commodity.

@moondrake
I suspect those honorable public servant types (including you) can kinda “smell” or “suss” each other.

Can know who is, without speaking of it, if necessary. Is that true?

@f00l Mostly. But when you get fooled, man does that sting.

@moondrake

I can imagine.
Did you ever get seriously clipped by “an accomplished liar and friend/enemy”?

@f00l I had a few try. The City Manager told my boss to fire me when I included her comments verbatim in an internal report. They were unpleasant comments, she shouldn’t have said them in public, she thought because there was no recording device she could say anything. She knew I was typing on my laptop but she thought I was just taking notes. Unlike people I worked with routinely, she didn’t realize that I typed fast enough (using my own version of shorthand*) to fully transcribe the entire meeting. It was my habit to include a full transcript of any meeting on any of my projects as an attachment to the project report to my department head. My boss knew exactly what happened and just kept us out of one another’s path till, like many political appointees, she got canned after the next election. I had a few run ins with the heads of other departments and a few agency directors, not to mention people who were supposed to be team mates. I even told the boss “no” a few times, mostly when they wanted me to lie to my contractors. I built a solid foundation of trust over 30 years of never lying to my contractors and I wasn’t going to throw it away for momentary expediency. In all cases my boss took into account that I was a solid worker, her go-to person for fast data analysis, trusted by my fellow employees and contractors, a favorite of our HUD auditors (my files spotless), had independently developed national award winning methodology and drawn down millions in grants, and was totally stubborn and although willing to undertake any task would only do it my own way. In each case I came out on top of the dispute.

*I typed around 90wpm, left out most vowels, used initials, acronymns and short stand in words for phrases common in our business. Then I’d “rehydrate” the document right after the meeting.

@moondrake
As a public servant, you must have been something else to see in action up close.

And to think that our culture celebrates rich expensive loudmouth fools.

I imagine, after a short time around you, most people knew better than to mess with you.

I bet most folks in EP had no effing idea there were people like you working in the local govt.

Damn, what a constitutional lawyer or public policy maven you could have made yourself into, had you had the opportunity boost into the right circles and right paths.

You sound like you know as much or more, compared to 2/3 of the talking heads I have respect for, who work the cable news circuits.

@f00l I’ve often thought I’d have made a good attorney or efficiency expert, I’m good at data analysis and cutting through the dross to streamline methods and ideas. I’m also a pretty good community builder, quite a lot of what I did was sit in meetings listening to very accomplished people argue, gathering the common threads of their ideas and issues and then assembling them into a single idea or solution and vocalizing them in such a way that everyone would see their own contribution to the whole and consequently behave as a stakeholder in implementing it.

IME, quite a lot of people in government are very dedicated, hard working people. It was easier for our department, we got to spend our days helping people. But overall I’ve known quite a lot of bureaucrats and most believed in what they were doing and were proud of their work.

@KDemo
It was pretty clear he was going to resign this summer, starting about a month ago, if I remember. The reasoning seemed odd then also, but he does have the cover story, I think, that he intends to run for governor, locally.

Of course, the cover story could be just that - a cover story - or it could be that he intended to resign early, in order to give the appointee a head start, or something like that. Who knows. He’s not my kind of guy.

@f00l He changes with the wind, so he could be a totally different person tomorrow. The name will be the same, but everything else will be a new persona.

@KDemo

I love the improved “promotional placement” for her book.

I hear a customer assisted with ideas.

http://nymag.com/thecut/2017/05/ivanka-trump-book-display-women-who-work-rearranged-at-barnes-and-noble.html

@PlacidPenguin

I think that will be the basic posture and assignment of his staff, his allies, and our foreign allies from now forward.

Our allies would prefer to see him replaced with a competent adult. But, in the meantime, they must try to preserve stability.

The White House as nursery and praise-bubble for the care of Trump’s state of mind.

@f00l It’s about 5:30 PM EST, and the last two hours have pretty much popped that bubble. Media in Riyadh, already on the ground, have been discussing the latest headlines. Air Force One has the best communications in the world, so there must be a mighty effort on board to keep his cell phone away from him. I do hope they don’t slip up.

@OldCatLady He’ll probably get off the plane ask about buying belly dancers.

@cranky1950 Nope, he started by giving a double thumbs up, which is the Arabic equivalent of a middle finger.

@OldCatLady Then he asked about buying belly dancers?

@cranky1950 That’s probably his ‘joke’ for the speech he’s due to deliver. He’ll wait for applause.

@OldCatLady - He ordered a bacon burger in a Sharia state?

@KDemo Please tell me that’s a joke. He already curtsied to the king.
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/whos-a-pretty-princess-now-btches-internet-ridicules-trump-for-curtsy-before-saudi-king/

@OldCatLady - Depends on how much we want to believe that the Rogue feeds are factual.

I can’t figure out what would be the benefit of faking them, except whatever satisfaction trolls get from their disruptive pursuits?

@KDemo Probably fake. There’s no ice cream, and we know he gets two scoops on his chocolate cream pie. http://time.com/donald-trump-after-hours/

@KDemo The fact that peeled is spelled wrong is a red flag to me, although grammatic and spelling errors are so common nowadays, who knows? It’s also odd to have detailed instructions for the presentation of some of the foods, while others are raw, indicating there will be staff to prepare them. Why wouldn’t the staff prepare the snacks for consumption in the desired format? The amount of bacon is way out of proportion to the other foods. Lastly the fact that the sweets and snacks are first followed by raw materials at the end seems odd. This list wouldn’t have been written by Trump, but one of his staff, and I’d expect it to be more logically ordered. To me this looks like a fake.

@OldCatLady - lol
Note - it does say “con’t” at the bottom.

@moondrake - No doubt it stretches the bounds of reality as we know it, and I’m definitely not here to defend it, but I have to ask what hasn’t stretched credibility regarding the WH this year?

Still, I agree it is insane on many levels. More prudent to stay skeptical.

@KDemo
Dunno whether those Rogue WH feeds are fake or not, but I find the diet to be quite a possibly authentic preferred one for him.

Only it’s missing all his carrot and kale smoothies; where are the ultra healthy smoothies? Is this the lying Fake Media yet again?

As for the various Rogue WH" feeds, it could just be a troll having a bit of fun. With this admin, why not?

I think we need some “Fake Jeff Sessions” and “Fake Betsy DeVoss” feeds, for starters

@f00l

@OldCatLady He must have really pissed off his protocol officer to get taught to curtsy. This probably gonna go down as one of the biggest gotchas of the century.

@f00l Books. Dang, I haven’t been to my local bookstore, Chamblin’s Bookmine, in at least two weeks. They take trade-ins, and I try really hard to not pay cash. I think you did really well. BTW, all the maps from Crombie’s books are on her web site.

@OldCatLady

I demand Maps!

Maps, I tell you!

“A world remade must be a world remapped”. - Lord Northcliffe, publisher of The Times of London 1908-1922.

I first found out about this atlas from the recommendations in the various editions of The Whole Eath Catalog.
I believe this book was usually one of the first recommendations in the catalog.

1st edition, 1895

The cover and first few pages of the WEC, Spring 1969 are here:
https://designmobs.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/whole_rth_ctlg_19691.pdf
The Atlas is recommended on page 5.

http://www.wholeearth.com/index.php

From Wikipedia:

Steve Jobs compared The Whole Earth Catalog to Internet search engine Google in his June 2005 Stanford University commencement speech. “When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation… It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along. It was idealistic and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.” During the commencement speech, Jobs also quoted the farewell message placed on the back cover of the 1974 edition of the Catalog: “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”

I guess I have a facility for staying f00lish, at least.

@OldCatLady, still your fault.

And the Times Atlas is still, I believe, the premier printed and bound atlas sold to the public.