November 26, 2022
The Company He Keeps: A Dinner at Mar-a-Lardo. Jonathan Swan & Zachary Basu of Axios: "Former President Trump dined and conversed with white nationalist Nick Fuentes and rapper Ye at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Tuesday night, according to two sources familiar with the matter.... Trump's direct engagement with a man labeled a 'white supremacist' by the Justice Department, one week after declaring his 2024 candidacy, is likely to draw renewed outrage over the former president's embrace of extremists. Fuentes, who frequently promotes racist and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, had been spotted with Ye at Mar-a-Lago, but reports erroneously suggested he did not have dinner with the former president." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) The New York Times story is here. ~~~
~~~ "Uneventful" Dinner Conversation Was Hilarious. Marc Caputo of NBC News: "... Donald Trump distanced himself Friday from a pre-Thanksgiving dinner at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida with Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, and white supremacist Nick Fuentes, claiming he didn't know the identity of the far-right activist who was unexpectedly brought along with the rapper.... But despite Trump suggesting that the event was 'uneventful,' the fallout over his dinner with Fuentes appears to have thrown Trump's campaign into damage control mode.... 'This is a f[uck]ing nightmare,' said one longtime Trump adviser.... [A] source familiar with the dinner conversation said the dinner grew heated after Ye -- who announced another run for president in 2024 on Thursday -- asked Trump to be his running mate. Trump then began insulting Ye's ex-wife, Kim Kardashian...." ~~~
~~~ Marie: This is the only time I ever wished I was sitting at a table next to Trump & his party. Of course I probably would have choked on my high-priced entree from laughing so hard at Donald & guest for getting into a virtual food fight over who would be the next president*.
Sharon Kann & Angelo Carusone of Media Matters: "In recent weeks, 50 of the top 100 advertisers have either announced or seemingly stopped advertising on Twitter. These advertisers have accounted for nearly $2 billion in spending on the platform since 2020, and over $750 million in advertising in 2022 alone. In addition to advertisers that have seemingly stopped all advertising on Twitter as of November 21, there are an additional seven advertisers which appear to be slowing the rate of their advertising on the platform to almost nothing. Since 2020, these seven advertisers have accounted for over $255 million in spending on Twitter, and nearly $118 million in advertising in 2022. Emphases removed.
2024 Presidential Election. Megalomaniac prefers Florida Fascist Over Florida Fascist. Guardian: "Elon Musk has said he would support Donald Trump's arch rival, Ron DeSantis, in 2024 if the Florida governor were to run for president.... 'My preference for the 2024 presidency is someone sensible and centrist. I had hoped that would the case for the Biden administration, but have been disappointed so far,' Musk tweeted."
Beyond the Beltway
Arizona Gubernatorial Race. Jonathan Cooper of the AP: "Kari Lake, the defeated Republican candidate for Arizona governor, has filed a public records lawsuit demanding Maricopa County hand over a variety of documents related to the election. Lake has refused to acknowledge that she lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs and has for weeks drawn attention to voters who said they experienced long lines and other difficulties while voting on Election Day in Arizona's largest county."
Virginia. David Goodman of the New Your Times: "The Walmart supervisor who shot and killed six of his co-workers at a store in Chesapeake, Va., late on Tuesday purchased a pistol only hours before the massacre and left a note on his phone, in which he described how he planned to target some colleagues and spare others, according to new details released by the Chesapeake police on Friday.... The new details released Friday indicated the ease with which the gunman had purchased the pistol used in the killing, a 9-millimeter handgun. 'The gun was legally purchased from a local store on the morning of Tuesday,' the city said in a statement. 'He had no criminal history.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Way Beyond
Ukraine, et al. The Guardian's live updates of developments Saturday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here. The Guardian's summary report is here. ~~~
~~~ The Washington Post's live briefings for Saturday are here: "Patients were evacuated from several hospitals in Kherson, after Russian strikes on the southern city recently liberated by Ukraine, authorities said. Across the city, at least 10 people were killed and dozens injured, the regional governor said on Telegram. Many Ukrainians continued to lack assured access to power and water, with 6 million customers suffering from blackouts, President Volodymyr Zelensky said, as the country entered what NATO's chief called an 'already horrific' winter.... Strong winds, rain and freezing temperatures are hampering repair work on infrastructure hit in the recent strikes, power grid operator Ukrenergo said Friday.... Pope Francis praised the 'noble and martyred people' of Ukraine in a letter addressed to Ukrainians nine months after the start of the war. The pope condemned 'the absurd madness of war' and compared Ukrainians' suffering to that of Jesus on the cross."
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Reader Comments (11)
Marie,
Love the dead bird graphic. Such a genius. I guess he forget that Twitter is supposed to tweet not croak.
Musk, concerned that his newly shit-stained toy might get booted off Apple and Google app stores, vows to invent his own smartphone if it comes to that.
Hey! I got it! How about a phone that’s connected to the wall with a wire? Then maybe a dial on the top, you know, and it can spin or rotate when you make a call. That’d be fun, right? And it could make little clicking noises. The kids have never seen anything like it. They’ll love it.
Okay kids, Thanksgiving is in the rear view. So we all know what that means, right?
Time for…
The WAR ON CHRISTMAS!
Happy holidays everyone. Everybody got their “holiday tree” ready to go up, with “holiday” ornaments, and “saturnalia” stockings to hang by the chimney with care?
I suppose we could say Merry Mas. Now that’s really taking Christ out of Christmas.
How would that work in the songs?
I’ll have a blue Mas without you?
It’s beginning to look a lot like Mas?
White Mas?
We wish you a merry Mas?
O Mas Tree?
Okay, a little weird. But why not? Anything to own the traitors.
Look for the usual suspects to fire up this tired old bullshit any minute now. So predictable. No mas.
That smartphone that Musk invents, like his Tesla, wtf would it do,
steer itself into other phones? Spontaneously combust? Randomly
throw itself at small children?
A friend bought one of those overpriced Teslas and stopped in a few
months back to show it off. It's controlled by your smart phone.
That alone leaves me out. I suppose if you forget to charge your
phone you can't open the doors or start the car.
P. S. I have a box full of those old rotary phones in the basement.
You just never know when something will be back in style.
@Forrest Morris: You have done an excellent job of capturing the features of the new MuskFone, which I hear will come in a range of colors from Supremacist White to Apartheid White to Aryan White.
@Marie: And trump orange.
AK: From yesterday: I thought at first reading "Nimitz" was a foul word connected to Admiral Nimitz for some reason––-did he throw loud mouths overboard? Did he violate protocol? Did he have his way with a lassie in the steam room? Evidently Auto said "nuts" to that!
As for Affect and Effect, that can be tricky for many, Here's a good way to remember----and again Auto evidently is clueless or it was just giving you a bad time–––it does that from time to time.
HOW TO REMEMBER THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AFFECT AND EFFECT
There is one trick to help you use the right word in almost every case: the word RAVEN:
R = Remember
A = Affect is a
V = Verb
E = Effect is a
N = Noun
@P.D. Pepe: As you say, that mnemonic trick works in most cases, but not all. For instance "effect" is a verb if you're talking about causing something to happen, like "Trump effected (verb) an effective (adjective) overhaul of the courts." And "affect" is a noun when you're talking about how someone responds: "You could see in his facial contortions that Trump's affect (noun) changed with every remark Hillary Clinton made." And the root of "affect" is commonly used as an adjective: "Trump's manner is so affected (adj.), I can't imagine how anyone puts trust in him."
English is a tough language, and I doubt that more than one percent of English speakers can say they've effectively mastered it. For the most part, it is only affected snobs who look down on the rest of us for our grammatical mistakes.
The rule of thumb I early learned to distinguish between "affect" and "effect" (which as Marie points out would not always work) is that the "a" in affect hints at action. Hence, it is (usually) the verb.
Another instance of how too much knowledge only leads to complications, a state of nature anathema to Republicans.
Elections over? Kill those Democrat Crime Wave Stories
For months prior to the midterms,GQP TV, aka Faux, aired non-stop breathless tales of crime sprees caused by Democrats. Never mind that crime was much worse in red states.
But the second the midterms were over, Faux cut those crime wave stories by 50%. Since those cherry picked statistics and out and out lies didn’t have the desired effect (got it right that time), Murdoch’s Mendacious Myrmidons went back to the old standbys, attacking LGBTQ communities, reporting on election fraud, and blaming Democrats and Biden for the sun setting every day.
Not unlike how Fatty jettisoned his lies about invading caravans of murderers the minute after a previous election, Faux neatly dumps their latest media machinations down the memory hole.
All in a day’s work. Fair and balanced, right?
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/foxs-coverage-violent-crime-has-dropped-after-midterms
“Don’t know the guy, don’t know anything about him, never met him before!”
This is Fatty trying, once again, to lie his way out of an embarrassing situation of his own making.
It’s beyond belief that Trump, a right-wing media whore and junkie has no idea who Fuentes is or what he stands for. Complete lie.
But let’s say he really doesn’t know the guy or anything about him. Can just any Joe Shit the Ragman show up at Marred-a-Lardo and hang with the Fat Fascist at dinner? What does this say about security? Does a visit to the Shrine also include a peek at stolen top secret documents placed next to the toilets in the bathrooms to impress guests while they pay homage to the Dear Leader?
No wonder officials are concerned about the shoddy security down there. This is especially troubling when you consider that virtually the only people who visit Trump’s gaudy mausoleum are con men, losers, grifters, and the occasional foreign spies.
Still, it’s clear that the Orange Monster recognizes that when it’s CYA time, after one of his myriad fuckups, it’s also lying time again.
Or maybe it’s “Let’s let the white supremacist dude check out my stash of stolen documents” time.