Well?

"You're a woman in your dreams!"

I bet many of you wish you had said that.

Via the Wall Street Journal, but link is to a site that is not paywalled

Should prove very useful for many DLers

Herschmann is obviously Jonathan Swan's main source here, but little reason to doubt him.

But the fact that scum like Mark Meadows and Rudy were among the voices of reason in the room and left not sure they'd convinced Trump to ignore Powell is scary AF.

This whole series is fascinating, Swan did an excellent job and I'd be shocked if he doesn't turn this into a book.

What city or town should the embassy be located in?

What sorts of events should the ambassador plan for the local nabobs to help improve relations with the Coastal States?

What sort of wardrobe would you recommend for the ambassador to fit in better with the locals?

[quote] One of the witnesses in Sidney Powell’s new Michigan lawsuit says in a declaration he thinks there’s something fishy about election returns in Edison County, MI. Thing is, there is no Edison County in Michigan.

You just can't make this shit up.

If media coverage has you screaming MARY!!! this week, remember that Trump has zero respect for the office of the presidency and to him, losing the election is like having the local zoning board tell him he can't build a hotel on the property he just bought.

Meaning he will go to any extreme necessary to get the zoning board to overturn their decision because it's just a zoning board and sometimes fear and intimidation can get Trump what he wants, ditto filing hundreds of lawsuits that they are in no position to defend.

Fortunately the Federal election system is not a local zoning board, but remember that Trump is too dumb to realize that or have any sort of Grand Scheme in place beyond using any means necessary to win, he has not thought through what would happen if he did win, he has not thought through the negative impact claiming "elections are rigged" has on voter turnout among his base during the Georgia runoffs and beyond, or on the election system in general.

At some point he will declare that disloyal Republican judges (possibly even disloyal Republican Supreme Court justices) and incompetent Republican politicians cost him the election that he really won, fly off to Mar A Lago and continue raising money for 2024, because he's figured out he can raise millions from the winged monkeys this way and never have to return a dime of it.

Happy Thanksgiving

A federal judge on Saturday dismissed a Trump campaign lawsuit that accused Pennsylvania officials of enabling voter fraud, opening the way for the state to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory and dealing a blow to the president’s narrowing legal options.

U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann said the Trump campaign had used the lawsuit to attempt to discard legally cast votes, rejecting arguments made by President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, that Pennsylvania’s mail-in ballot procedures presented the opportunity for widespread voter fraud.

In his ruling, Judge Brann concluded the lawsuit was marred by “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations…unsupported by evidence.”

“In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state,” wrote Judge Brann, an Obama appointee [bold]who has been a member of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group....

Trump has been railing on Fox all day, falsely (surprise!) claiming their ratings are down and urging his Trumpanzees to alternative universe right wing sites like OAN and Newsmax.

He tweeted that they "forgot who the Golden Goose" was and seemed to blame him for his loss

Axios is reporting that Trump is scheming to put together his own streaming news service because he is now obsessed with taking Fox down.

The writers on Succession really do have their work cut out for them next season topping all this.

It's got about 30 million views so far.

Apologies if it's been posted already--forgot to post yesterday but still quite awesome.

It's worth it, trust me.

This is so different from 2016.

People are crawling over broken glass to vote Trump out.

He still has his base but he hadn't added to it at all.

He's turned off huge groups of people who did not vote for Hillary but will vote for Biden: ElderStraights, Millennials and Zers, Women of all backgrounds.

Millions of people who did not vote in 2016 are voting this time just to vote against Trump

People who normally vote Republican (but are not part of the Trump cult) are so sick of him they are either staying home or voting for Biden.

All that said, it will still be, as the editor of Mother Jones said, "like waiting for the results of a biopsy" but the final result should make us all happy. (Trolls excepted)

Thank you Lincoln Project!!!

Jew hating Jeremy is still unrepentent

He said "I don't know why anyone in the great state of South Carolina would ever vote for Lindsey Graham"

Thoughts on what might be going on there?

When Netanyahu disses him, his whole face goes sour and he stops listening. The whole press corps was there.

(You also get to see that Trump unsurprisingly has zero grasp of foreign affairs)

I can't be the only one on DL who reads this religiously.

[It's sort of a print version of "House Hunters" -- the show you three places a couple looked at and you have to decide which one they picked.]

Though I always feel like Charlie Brown with the football, because they inevitably leave out some crucial piece of information ("the spacious loft, while well priced, was directly across the street from a hospital emergency room and the Smiths were concerned about the noise")

They also seem to feature an unusual number of white-Asian gay couples. like this week's subjects.

Seems some GOP group said that suburban women would be influenced to return to the GOP by Pence's sex appeal. (for real) and the hashtag started.

Most of the lines are about Pence being gay.

Talk about unlikely allies

Seems Rudy G and Bannon are trying to make a Hunter Biden story happen. NY Post is only place that will run it and most credible observers are like "ROTFLMAO. The Russians handed Rudy a bunch of obvious forgeries and he's too dumb to realize."

But still, MAGA-World went wild over it (this all went down this AM, Wed. 10-14)

And then, wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles, Facebook and Twitter decide "No. This is clearly bullshit and we're not going to help spread it."

Which is seriously key because FB and TW Ground Zero for MAGATness (versus IG which is Ground Zero for pro-Biden/Harrisness) and now the MAGAts can't spread it.

Don Junior and the usual suspects are having meltdowns on Twitter about Zuck and @Jack because there goes their last-ditch October surprise.(Especially about Z because they thought he was their boy.)

(Though even without FB, I suspect it would not have gotten much traction.)

Vote.

[consider this anti-troll therapy]

[bold] The health crisis was a chance for a political reset, some advisers believed, to show a new, more empathetic stance toward the coronavirus. But the candidate did not stick to the narrative.[/bold]

On Friday, even as President Trump had trouble getting enough oxygen and aides prepared to move him to the nation’s top military hospital, some of his campaign advisers saw a potential opportunity.

If Mr. Trump recovered quickly from his bout with the coronavirus and then appeared sympathetic to the public in how he talked about his own experience and that of millions of other Americans, he could have something of a political reset. The health crisis, one campaign official said, was a setback in a re-election campaign that polls have shown him losing for months, but also a chance to demonstrate a new stance toward the virus that might win over some voters.

And the president could use that to show from now until the second presidential debate, scheduled for Oct. 15, that the disease is serious but can be combated, and that he was ready to re-enter the campaign.

While that was the hope, it was severely undermined over the last few days by the president’s own behavior — no more so than Monday when he tweeted to the nation “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life!” without acknowledging that, as president, he gets far better care than the average citizen. His comments signaled a far likelier reality: that the erratic handling of his illness by Mr. Trump and his aides will remind voters of his administration’s failures and efforts to play down the deadly pandemic for six months. “There’s a high-risk strategy here and I hope that the president doesn’t rush back into the campaign mode — which he wants to do before he gets well — until they tell him he’s no longer a danger to everybody else,” said Ed Rollins, an adviser to a super PAC supporting Mr. Trump.

Itching to get out of the hospital, Mr. Trump got his wish on Monday evening. Doctors allowed him to leave for the White House, while acknowledging he hadn’t yet reached the critical seven- to 10-day window that doctors watch for with the coronavirus to see whether patients take a turn for the worse.

It is hardly the first time Mr. Trump has undermined the desires of his aides. He has contradicted them on issues ranging from China policy to preparation for the debate last week.

Over the weekend, Mr. Trump’s political advisers said they were cleareyed about who they were dealing with: Mr. Trump is widely seen as a figure incapable of empathy. But the hope was that discussing his own experience would help him manage the pandemic going forward, and could have political benefits.

Mr. Trump did little to adhere to the narrative aides were hoping would emerge, one that would benefit him politically. In videos filmed by aides of Mr. Trump behind the scenes, intended to show him working, the president did not mention the hardship the virus had caused to others or that anyone had suffered greatly from it. Nor did he mention the White House staff members who had fallen sick. [MORE]

Be afraid.

Be very afraid.

(Fortunately their numbers are small. But the fact that they seem to be functioning adult humans....)

But it will make your evening

They are throwing her softballs and she's whiffing

Example 1

It's not the only site that behaves this way but it's the most commonly posted.

Doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason to it-- video/no video, copying URL from browser versus getting "copy link" URL from Twitter?

I'm pretty tech savvy and I'm at a loss.

Anyone?

(And yes, I've considered it's just a way for Muriel to fuck with us.)

A counter to al the concern posting this week.

You need to watch this, it's from earlier today (Tues Sept 1)

There are no words

And "Strokahontas" is trending on Twitter

NYT Science reporter Donald McNeil is a straight shooter, no MARY-ing or Trumpist denials or clickbait claims

He's been the best source of information on all this since the pandemic started.

Flag of Treason

CNN not sugarcoating anything anymore.

(Link is from MSN because Muriel and CNN)

Not that Twitter means much of anything, but someone monitors it closely, so for that alone I thought this would provide my DL friends with a few moments of schadenfreude and mirth.

(And #GirtherMovement is right behind it along with Pelosi's #MorbidlyObese)

Yup

(NYT article should be free because part of their Covid coverage)

From the Lincoln Project, a group of anti-Trump Republicans including George (husband of Kellyanne) Conway.

Really got under Orange Twitler's skin as he unleashed a series of unhinged tweets about it this AM.

Making the view count go into the millions will make him even angrier, so for that alone I am posting it.

Those of you with office jobs, how sick are you of Zoom and Zoom-type meetings?

Especially for meetings that used to be done over the phone pre-Covid.

In addition to having to be shaved and showered and wearing something other than a t-shirt (I have a polo-collared sweater I throw over my t-shirt for meetings) you can't really multitask during them (even in the office I could go on mute to get coffee or water during a phone call) and they invariably last much longer than they're supposed to as various people struggle to figure out how to use the software, especially if it's MS Teams or G Hangouts instead of Zoom.

Plus all those people who can't figure out you're supposed to sit with the lamp or window in front of you, not behind you

They were fun at first--you got to see where your clients and co-workers lived, see their SOs, kids and pets, but now, six weeks in, it's just getting played out.

Anyone else want to vent?

I won't give it away but it's not what you think it is.

Via The Atlantic's Phil Rosenthal.

As it became clear that the majority of Georgians and many corporations who donate to the GOP did not approve of Governor Kemp doing exactly what he thought Trump wanted, Trump threw him under the bus, telling reporters he "strongly disagreed" with re-opening the state.

Suckers like Kemp never learn

I have not really had any interaction with anyone other than the five other people in the house with me in about a month.

I had a brief conversation with a neighbor as I was walking the dog--she was in her front yard working on her flowers as we walked past and we sort of shouted pleasantries from 100 feet away. I've also waved and nodded to various joggers, cyclists and other dog walkers as we passed each other on opposite sides of the road.

But that's it--no store visits, no "social distancing visits" or dinners-- all interaction has been virtual.

Are you all out and about--it sounds like it.

Are people freaked out all the time? Are they more friendly, more wary or it depends?

After saying he was going to defund WHO he then said that the lack of testing was all "the governors" fault and threatens to leave his own press conference. (Video at link)

25th Amendment needed ASAP

This is epic!!!

[quote] Many shoppers are now following elaborate routines to disinfect their groceries, thanks to a viral video put out by a Michigan family doctor. But all of the experts we spoke with say that disinfecting and hand-washing every last item in your grocery haul is really not necessary. You might find it comforting to know that none of these experts are doing this themselves

Great column from Frank Bruni in the NYT today

(IIRC, the Times is making much of the paper subscription-free these days)

They were ignoring quarantine and shelter in place and no group orders, causing a high percentage of CV cases in Israel and Bibi and the rest of the government just said "you want to kill yourselves? Good, but you're not infecting the rest of us."

Talking to friends there, anti-Hasid feeling is running very high among the 90% of the Jewish population that are not ultra-Orthodox.

Lots in the media over the past few days about how NBA teams with asymptomatic players are managing to get everyone on the team tested while actual sick people can't.

One counterargument is that knowing celebrities are getting tested and are okay after testing positive makes it more likely "regular folks" will get tested but that mostly sounds like bullshit to me.

Pro athletes are by definition in peak physical condition. Why are we testing them and others who don't even have symptoms?

He's been doing a great job dealing with Covid-19 and with sounding like he's in charge and a leader, even though he has that fucking idiot Warren Wilhelm Junior to deal with.

He sounds real most of the time.

Too late now, but I'm glad he's the governor.

Burpees

Multiple varieties of ab exercies-- sit-ups, v-ups, leg raises, side crunches, bicycles

Mountain climbers

Air squats/jump squats

Lunges

Push Ups

Decline or Incline Push-Ups off a chair, couch or bed

Handstand push-ups against a wall

Tricep dips off a chair, couch or bed

Jumping jacks

High knees jog in place

Jogging

Walking

Stair climbing (find stairs at home or outside and go up and down multiple times)

Yoga

CHEAP EQUIPMENT YOU CAN BUY ONLINE:

A pair of dumbbells--pick a weight you can use comfortably. If it gets too light, you can just do more reps

A kettlebell

An exercise band--in addition to stretching and ab work, you can do deadlift-type exercises by looping it over your shoulders and under your feet

A medicine ball

A Swiss ball

A jump rope

A pull-up/chin up bar.

Feel free to ad. Seems a lot of DLers are lost without the gym, but there's so much you can do at home.

Darwin was right.

• Is honest with Israelis about the severity of the situation

• Closes all schools and universities, and tells people no large gatherings, stay 1-2 meters away from each other.

• Tells parents to have older kids watch younger ones, not grandparents as old people are most at risk

• Invites chief rival to form temporary "emergency government" so that the whole country is pulling in the same direction to fight corona virus. (Not 100% as altruistic as it seems but bottom line is it will be good for Israelis to have government speaking with one voice.)

As awful as Bibi is, he seems like a great valiant leader next to our liar-in-chief, a man who seems dragged from the set of "The Producers" but is actually our fucking president.

I know this is all hard for you, @realdonaldtrump , so let me spell it out:

- Free testing

- Fee waivers

- Emergency sick leave

- Quarantines

- Cancellations

[bold] - Giving a damn [/bold]

• How many minutes before he makes it all about himself?

• How many minutes before he blames Biden, Pelosi and the Democrats?

• How many times will he says "MAGA"?

• How many lies will he spout during his speech

• How long till he says the his response has been "perfect"

• Will he try and con people into investing the stock market again tomorrow?

• How much worse will everyone feel once his speech is over?

IIRC, many of you are big fans of Dresher and her TV series

Enjoy

This is where we are at now.

Sad thing is that if things do get worse, a whole lot of Deplorables will ignore warnings because they believe Rush.

Which means fewer Deplorables but they will infect non-Deplorables and caring for their broke asses will cost us millions.

BF was trying to get to High Fidelity and they offered it as a suggestion-- S1 E1

I had never seen it.

Ed Asner was probably 39 when it was filmed, he looked 60. Mary was only about 7 years younger than him IRL

Plot would never have cut it now in the time of #MeToo -- Mr. Grant showing up at her apartment drunk, telling her she has a "great caboose" -- can you even show drunk characters now without a follow up of them admitting they have an alcoholism problem?

Cloris Leachman's character was funny AF

And what are Christmas Seals? I've heard of them and could probably google, but was it a big thing.

Anyway, given your affection for old sitcoms, I thought you might appreciate it.

BTW, High Fidelity remake was actually very good. Loved the book when I was in high school and the Cusack movie too. Not sure if many of you will like it -- it does reference Fleetwood Mac though and Fran from Girls is in it.

Laterz

It's one of those phrases that seems preserved in amber from the 1990s, used, than as now, only by churlish misfits who actively dislike most other people.

It (unsurprisingly) surfaces on DL fairly often.

What is the origin?

Was it a way to ass "asshole" without using a vulgarism that would get picked up by some sort of censor protocol on old school email or text? Was it random? Or did it have its origins with a movie or TV show that was before my time?

Thanks.

Are they thrilled and think he has been fully acquitted and did nothing wrong?

Do they think it was Jewish conspiracy organized by George Soros, organizer of all Jewish conspiracies?

Do they think the Trump and McTurtle "played you libtahrds agin?"

Or are they in too much of an opiod-induced haze to care?

Thanks!

TL;DR: In order to restore democracy and make the GOP relevant again, the post-Trump center-right will need to abandon its identity politics, centered as they are around a rapidly shrinking and dying demographic, and welcome in newcomers who may share those center-right ideas. Looks at both US history around the time of slavery and how failure to do that led to the Civil War and also at Europe and what happened in Germany when the center-right did not hold. Yoni Appelnbaum is an excellent writer and this is a great read. (It's been out for a while, not sure it's been linked on DL)

$21M Oahu waterfront

Paradise or hell?

$21M Oahu waterfront.

Video at link should not require subscription

What do you make of couples like this?

Do you think it's more or less common with gay men than with lesbians?

Most gay couples I know are more like best friends than in traditional male/female roles--is that what most of you find as well?

I'm not talking about what they might do in the bedroom but rather how they present themselves, who works what sort of job and all that.

Thoughts?

TL;DR: The Chinese government keep recruiting scientists and sending scientists over to the US in an attempt to steal our intellectual property and research.

And yet for some unknown reason we keep allowing them to come over here to work -- seems the easy solution would be to not give them visas, you know, treat them like Hondurans.

Via Mike Pompeo's favorite news source, NPR

Video explains it all--but don't trust Chinese apps.

#HotGirlsForBernie is trending on Twitter this AM and I was afraid that the combination might lead to spontaneous combustion.

Or at least very vociferous hissing.

Just checking in.

Video of him quite blatantly blowing off Pence at Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony in Israel

(3-2-1 before DL's Markle freaks make this about her, but good for Charles.)

So BF and I watched both docu-pics (Rocketman and Bohemian Rhapsody) over the weekend.

Question for DLEGs: Both sets of parents--they are in their mid-60s--claim that while Elton John was fairly well respected in his day that Queen was regarded as more of a novelty act, sort of in the same boat with Kiss, and that anyone who took music seriously did not take Queen seriously. "Dumb boys from Queens listened to Queens" was my mom's dismissive comment on them. (Both dads added, independently, that EJ was "more for girls" but that having his albums in your collection did not brand you a musical loser the way having a Queen album did.

Reactions?

When I first found DL a few years back, a wise DLer offered up the opinion that the numerous Stan threads on here were largely the work of what he called "dissident fan gurls"--Stans, who, for whatever reason, had become slightly disenchanted or angry with the object of their stan-dom and found that DL was the only forum where they could express their displeasure--and the strongly held belief that their lust object was either gay or bisexual--due to the anonymous nature of the site.

Back then the Stans were all about Gale Harold (QAF), Jon Kortajena and and a bunch of other less-than-famous actors I'm forgetting.

It's proven to be a very accurate description even as the actors in question have changed--what made me think of it is a thread that keeps popping up about T. Chalamet entitled (can't make this up) "Does anyone else hate Timothée Chalamet's stupid French name?"

The existence of "dissident fan gurls" is one of the more bizarre and interesting things I've learned from DL.

And Rex Tillerson, of all people, actually stood up to him.

Reminds me of how the Junkers thought they could control Hitler.

It's only surprising in that it confirms what many of us have long suspected/known about Trump

I'll let you draw your own conclusions about which team he is playing for and what's going on with him and TC

I will admit to living in a bubble on that.

I assumed there were Deps who hated him because he was black and that the Tea Party losers made getting anything done impossible, but I did not realize how many Deps considered him some sort of radical Socialist who was hell-bent on destroying the American economy.

In my bubble people felt he was a (Bill) Clintonian centrist who didn't push Wall Street or big business all that hard, but who'd steered us out of the Great Recession and was generally well regarded by most.

Was sort of a shock to see how deep the anger and hatred towards him went, as I'd assumed that while there were plenty of bigots, most people were happy with the economy and Obamacare didn't affect anyone with employer-based health insurance, e.g., most people.

First Bill Barr is looking to get Apple to unlock the shooters iPhone because terrorist

And now this from NPR.

Barr is asking Apple to unlock the phone of the Saudi pilot who shot people up in Pensacola because they think he might have been a terrorist and NPR is claiming that a bunch of them had both jihadi crap and child porn on their phones.

Did we not learn from 9/11 and Khashoggi not to trust those fuckers?

Was more a matter of "when" than "if" at this point.

So many threads where some DLEG is crushing hard on a random thirst trap, attributing positive personality traits ("he seems smart and kind"), dissing haters, all while posting dozens of photos with the sort of cutesy captions favored by fifth grade girls.

Why?

Do they think that because these guys are not famous they have more of a chance with them or that the I-H may actually notice them?

Or is there a PR firm that's realized DL is fertile ground for promoting wannabe influencers?

While these threads have always been a part of DL, there seems to be a lot more of them as of late.

Interesting piece in the Atlantic suggests that by embracing her conversion from free market Reaganite to where she is now, she can win over moderate suburban voters who can relate to her journey and will see her as less of a wild-eyed radical, much in the way Reagan's early years as a Democrat helped suburban voters feel more comfortable with him.

What do DLer's think?

Small excerpt on what caused that conversion;

[quote] Bankruptcies were increasing in the ’80s, and Warren, Westbrook, and the sociologist Teresa Sullivan set out to study their causes. In her 2014 memoir, A Fighting Chance, Warren acknowledged that she brought certain preconceptions to the research. “I might not have said so at the time, but I think I was on the lookout for cheaters and deadbeats as a way to explain who was filing for bankruptcy,” she wrote.

[quote] What they found shook the future lawmaker: After reviewing thousands of cases of family bankruptcies, going to bankruptcy courts, and consuming heart-rending questionnaires in which people described in detail the reasons for their financial ruin, “we learned that nearly 90 percent were declaring bankruptcy for one of three reasons: a job loss, a medical problem, or a family breakup,” Warren wrote.

[quote] “She went through what I think is the most powerful transformation, which is actually doing research and discovering that what you believed was wrong,” Getman told me. As Warren told an interviewer in 2007, “I did the research, and the data just took me to a totally different place.”

Reading about what these people do to Harry and other royals and celebrities, I'm thinking someone needs to be seriously fucked up in order to take a job like that, where you're hiding in the bushes waiting to take photos of otherwise violating people's privacy and/or inventing stories about them.

I get that the Macedonian and Russian trolls do it for the money but what do the people who work for the tabloids get out of it? Seems like they'd need to find a pack of true psychopaths to do that sort of work. Or do people just hate the royal family that much?

Except on Datalounge, where it will always be 1993.

One of the more charming aspects of this place.

He is going to be a spoiler in this race because of his hardcore supporters, much as the media tries to ignore him as WaPo does in linked article.

Unclear why too--he has no real shot and it is important to understand what it is about his message that is resonating.

One of the trend newsletters I get for work claims that Pickleball revenues (equipment, courts, sponsorships, etc.) is due to skyrocket this year as the sport's popularity with seniors continues to explode.

So do you play? Do your friends? Is it fun?

Swisher is a somewhat controversial journalist to begin with--many see her as a cheerleader for Silicon Valley, others as a top tech journo. She's given some cringey interviews lately about just how great she thinks she is. She played herself in an episode of Silicon Valley and may not have gotten that the joke was on her.

And she's a lesbian.

NYT hired her as an op-ed columnist but her ideas ("I predict we will all give up cars in five years!") make her the object of scorn from Times readers.

It's an interesting dynamic.

Today's column is too long and too uninteresting to cut and paste, but I'll give you one of the most liked comments, which sums up the article and the audience reaction:

[quote] This column seems to be all about hope over experience.

[quote] This is just more fanboy ( fangirl/fanwoman) belief in more Tech as the way forward.

[quote] Looking for a magical "Tech" solution to climate change that will remove the need for hard choices.

[quote] Companies acting responsibly round the gig economy. Google, Facebook and the rest are built on "independant contractors" and outsourcing and are actively fighting any unionization.

[quote] More utopian Automation for Good. Yeah, continuing that trend has worked out great so far. But this time will be different. Yeah.

[quote] Utopian ideas against polarization when their whole business model is about polarization.

[quote] People who know they have been addicted for years are now going to decide to ditch their phones.

[quote] Woulda', coulda', should've. But won't without real political change. Corporate Democrats and Republicans will unite to protect the money machine.

[quote] There is no sign that phone addicts are quitting or seeking treatments.

[quote] Just another Tech entrepreneur telling us how more tech is the answer.

[quote] This is just whistling and thinking happy thoughts as we walk past the graveyard or our humanity.

An article today in the NYT about Trump-loving radicals mentioned this group of Trump-loving gays.

They are based in Charlotte.

Granted it is his full time job to look like that, but if I can even look 50% of that in twenty years, I will be very content.

And for those of you who were around at that time, how big a deal were the Manson killings? Was it national news or just an LA thing?

A holiday present for DL

Tulsi Gabbard has been slowly edging toward leaving the Democratic Party and, it now seems more likely than not, launching a spoiler candidacy to peel disaffected left-wing votes away from the Democrats. Her “present” vote on impeachment, followed by a disavowal of what she called the “zero-sum mind-set the two political parties have trapped America in,” sets the stage for Gabbard to play the role of 2020’s Jill Stein.

Left-wing anti-anti-Trumpism played an important role in the bizarre 2016 outcome. Die-hard Bernie activists, fired up with anger at the release of DNC emails stolen by Russians that purportedly showed the party had rigged the primary, demonstrated against the party outside its convention hall and tried to drown out the speakers inside with boos. Stein attacked Hillary Clinton from the left, then audaciously staged a grift-y fundraising scheme supposedly to hold recounts in the states she had labored to flip to Trump. Trump’s election appeared to deliver the same shock of reality that had vaporized Ralph Nader’s 2000 support.

But Gabbard’s emergence is another indication that the disaffection that drove these events has not disappeared. Anti-anti-Trumpism has maintained a small but durable intellectual infrastructure. The sentiments that first registered as dissent from the Russia investigation transferred to impeachment, and a chorus of left-wing voices is attacking the effort to remove Trump from office as at best a misguided diversion and at worst a deep-state coup.

The anti-anti-Trump left is not a monolithic bloc. It has differing levels of enthusiasm for splintering the progressive vote in general elections, for Trump himself, and for the ethics of explicit alliances with the right. (Some anti-anti-Trump leftists eagerly appear on Fox news and other right-wing media, while others shun it.) What they share, in addition to enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders, is a deep skepticism of the Democratic Party’s mobilization against the president. The left’s struggle against the center-left is the axis around which their politics revolves. From that perspective, the Russia scandal and impeachment are unnecessary and even reactionary.

While incomprehensible to liberals, centrists, and even many leftists who work within two-party politics, left-wing anti-anti-Trumpism has a coherent logic. It takes as its starting point a familiar critique that Trump won because liberalism failed. Trump, while bad, is merely a meta-phenomenon of the larger failure of the Democratic Party and the political and economic Establishment. And so, to the extent that investigating Trump’s scandalous behavior allows Democrats to discredit Trump without undergoing revolutionary internal changes, it is counterproductive. “The Ukraine affair,” writes left-wing historian Samuel Moyn, “shows that the biggest risk to the American people is that centrists link impeachment to a reinstatement of one set of failed prescriptions, while the right repulses the attempt to oust the president and rules under equally dead-end policies.” [cont'd at R1]

All five of us, but still.... here's a little gif(t) for the first night.

DLEGs-- can you explain how or why Joe Biden's receding hairline has not changed much from where it was in the photo below, which was taken 32 years ago.

Does that happen--the hair starts to thin but never really falls out and you get maybe 1% more bald each year?

Or is he taking some sort of drug to stop it? Clearly not a rug of any sort today as it's still thinning a lot in the same places. (Or is that a special kind of rug?)

Thanks!

If anyone will know this...

Every winter my hands and feet get very dry and chapped, sometimes the skin on my heels and thumbs even cracks.

I started using Working Hands (see link) at a friend's recommendation and it works okay, but wondering, given DLers encyclopedic knowledge of lotions and potions, there was anything else worth trying.

Thanks!

He was waiting for after the vote to take the stage, according the avowed heterosexual Vice President Pence, but it seems Impeachy couldn't control himself and went on stage while Schiff was still speaking

It will be sad when Yang drops out

He provides much needed levity and entertainment value.

Just don't respond to them.

The fact that the troll knows that every "Mayo Pete Is A Fraud" post will get 100 responses is why they keep coming back.

Ignore and they will go away.

Easier said than done, but we should try.

She was a porn star who had a show on cable TV back in the 80s and was sort of legendary.

My friends and I used to watch her when I was in middle school and high school. She had gay strippers who showed cock and ads for phone services that also had hot naked guys.

And the 97Peee, where the Extra E was for Extra P (still remember that 20 years later lol)

The attached SNL clip with Cheri Oteri and Tim Meadows seems like a spot on imitation

Some of you must have met her or at least watched her show back in the day and have some good insights or gossip!

I'd buy Datalounge and give you all free memberships.

This guy at the Atlantic was up early this AM to get this one out.

The crux of his argument seems to be about foreign policy and that Bernie is Jewish and so can't be an antisemite

I have a Black friend from school who is very anti-Kwanzaa, TL;DR he thinks it's an attempt to downplay the fact that African-Americans have a strong Christian heritage wherein they celebrate Christmas in December, and that it's an attempt to "other" them by making is seem like white people do Christmas, Jews do Hanukkah, and black people do Kwanzaa. His other complaint is that it's a fake holiday (I believe his current term for it is "Black Festivus") that mostly allows corporations to take more money from less affluent black families who feel they need to spend on both Christmas and Kwanzaa.

I know he is not the only one who feels this way, but curious how black DLers feel? (All four of you, I know, but still...)

Was curious after reading the thread on "Jewels of the Midwest"

Seems there are pricey properties in the suburb of Ladue including this one

Just hope you don't forget which room you left your car keys in.

Our boy is not dumb.

He knows that Bill Clinton stopped 90s "political correctness" dead in its tracks by calling out Sister Souljah, winning over scores of moderate voters.

Pete is going to have to do the same with some WokeLeftyTwitter type. And it will likely have an even bigger payoff than it did for Clinton, because people are just so sick of them and they are so public about their nonsense.

I suspect it will happen sometimes after the South Carolina primary, when the Bernie/Warren folks are getting out of control because he seems to be running away with it.

Discuss

In an odd Timesian twist, they ran an Editorial calling on Pete to talk about what he did at McKinsey, while at the same time running an article that basically confirmed "not a whole lot" since he was a junior employee. The article (vs the editorial) also talked about how there is a strict NDA in place since many of McK's clients don't want anyone (e.g., investors and clients) to know they are using consultants.

Commenters are pretty furious, claiming (correctly, I might add, since I am very familiar with that world) that as a right out of college junior employee, all Pete likely did was make spreadsheets and PowerPoints which then got passed on to higher ups who decided policy and what to do with them, and that calling him into account for his three years at McKinsey was similar to calling someone into account for an after school job at Walmart in high school.

Also a lot accusing the Times, which seems to run a lot of negative pieces about Pete, of doing a "Hillary" on him.

[NB: It seems that McKinsey made some stupid calls around immigration, a full decade after Pete worked there, and that Team Woke is very upset about that. But there's a strong NDA in place that Pete has asked to get out of, but I'd be shocked if there was anything to what he did there other than crunch numbers and issue reports that said "X is trending upwards for Q1 and Q2 this year which correlates with Y trending downwards those same quarters."

I'm sure some DLers remember her. She used to write columns about her sex life in the New York Press when I was in high school and even then, while I read them for their salacious value, I used to wonder who would ever want to date her, given that the intimate details of their sex life, right down to cock size, would soon appear in print.

Fast forward to 2019, and she's divorced, with a 14 year old da

Interview with Sean Shaw, who is leading Pete's outreach to black voters. (And yes, the interviewer, Baker Machado is gay)

Have any DLers ever been?

Seems like a fascinating place to visit.

Only downside is that it takes about 24-36 hours to get there from the East Coast, flying into Johannesburg and connecting.

Did you all bicker over your corn pudding recipes?

Were any of the Native American guys hot?

Did they know you were Two Spirit?

How could you tell the gay Puritans?

Thanks!

1. Fire pits

2. Freestanding bathtubs

3. Wood burning fireplaces

4. Pot-filler faucets

What else?

(Happy Thanksgiving)

He's one of those guys who looks like he's 24 from a distance, but then when you get up close you realize he's closer to 40 and just rocking the 20something look.

Hot or not?

Many gay men hold up the "straight jock" ideal as the ultimate definition of "hotness" and will lust after guys who look like Abercrombie and Fitch models or NFL players/truck drivers, take your pick. And that's reflected in their choice of photos for dating apps like Grindr, where backwards baseball caps and cut off workout shirts are the norm.

So given that, why do so many gay men purposely affect a look that is anything but that-- tweezed eyebrows, obvious bronzer, dyed hair, overly fussy and trendy clothing, heavy duty cologne... clearly it's not all gay guys, but certainly a sizable percentage of them.

I read so many threads on here where people are tearing apart some good looking athlete, porn star, actor or InstaHo for not conforming to that Abercrombie ideal (or for perceived flaws like "uneven nipple placement") and then I look at so many gay men and I am puzzled by the massive disconnect.

Thoughts?

At least once a week there's are threads on here about having sex with married men, asking for stories about sex in high school, that trans are replacing female athletes in the Olympics, that prep is doomed to fail, etc., etc.

And despite the fact that it quickly becomes clear they are nothing but troll bait or an OP looking for stories to jerk off to, the bait is taken and people vociferously argue with the OP, who is clearly having a blast egging them on.

Why?

Damn, they could have lifted that from Datalounge.

We're like mainstream now.

(Props where due: Styles did do a solid American accent.)