Guys, I know I’ve been scarce around here, and for the life of me, I can’t quite say why. Alan was off last week, and we did lots of staycation-y things, and it just didn’t work out.
Also, I started reading a Nabokov novel – “Ada.” Seemed a wiser use of my time.
So I don’t have a lot of bloggage today, but who needs it on Indictment Day? That’s all anyone will want to talk about, so talk. I’ll be back with a fuller plate later on.
adrianne said on October 30, 2017 at 11:13 am
All I can say to the Trumpkins is. Boo. Fucking. Hoo.
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coozledad said on October 30, 2017 at 11:25 am
Van Veen is Nabokov, skating through the hallucination of his life. For him It must have been foretime and aftertime closing and opening like a book every decade or so.
Nabokov was weaned on vodka and according to some of his female students, one of those predatory fixtures they’ll never pry from academic life. The university system was devised in the middle ages as a procurement farm for boyfucking clergy, and its employees have been using it to boff children ever since. One of the integral scams of the western world, and another debt we owe to the Church.
Vladimir wasn’t much different from the white Russian whores who packed off to Shanghai, just incredibly gifted at self-promotion, and a hell of a lot luckier.
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coozledad said on October 30, 2017 at 11:32 am
Thread:
https://twitter.com/speechboy71/status/925011146444361728
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coozledad said on October 30, 2017 at 11:39 am
Just about over before it’s begun. Any response the administration makes is now being compared to the testimony of a flipped witness.
Goom-bye.
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Deborah said on October 30, 2017 at 11:48 am
Did Manafort bring the Russians to Trump? or did the Russians bring Manafort to Trump?
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LAMary said on October 30, 2017 at 11:49 am
I’m working. I’ve got a 3-6 month contract gig. They are letting me work from home today. I’m really ok with it.
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coozledad said on October 30, 2017 at 11:55 am
Manafort brought Pence. The Russians have owned Trump since 2015, and the entire Republican party from the end of the primaries. Trump is a bag of Russian debt.
The US got played by a third world dictatorship, and played hard.
The press failed utterly.
The far left got rolled up by a few payments to hacks like Greenwald.
Republican state legislatures stripped black suffrage.
And the American people still won’t accept there’s an incubus at the tit. We’ve got an oligarchy, and it helped the Russians fuck our election.
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Deborah said on October 30, 2017 at 11:56 am
Good for you LA Mary.
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brian stouder said on October 30, 2017 at 11:59 am
LAMary – congratulations! and indeed – it must be a very great relief to be back in the game.
This Trump news is going to spin and swirl like…Hurricane Melania
What did the Russians (via the Ukraine) get for all their cash? They (literally) got a seat at the table with the future President of the United States – and at once had that President personally invested in keeping that as quiet and deniable as possible.
Forget President Obama’s “Keep hope alive”; Trump’s governing mantra seems to be “No Disputin’ Putin”
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Peter said on October 30, 2017 at 12:10 pm
My guessing game is wondering if Manafort will flip or not.
I’ve read some stories that he’ll keep his lips sealed – it’s the cost of doing his kind of business, and there will be a nice check for him when he gets out if he keeps quiet.
But, he’s 68 – any prison time at that age is hard – ask any Illinois governor – and, these aren’t typical GOP’s we’re talking about here – we’re talking low tier grifters here – you just have to wonder.
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Deborah said on October 30, 2017 at 12:28 pm
I don’t think Manafort is going to do any time in prison. He’ll get a pardon before that happens. The lessers will probably have to do some time and are more likely to flip. IMHO of course.
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adrianne said on October 30, 2017 at 12:32 pm
See: Watergate for a playbook on what happens next.
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Heather said on October 30, 2017 at 1:20 pm
This very long thread lays everything out about the meaning of the indictments very clearly: https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/924988111880417280
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Peter said on October 30, 2017 at 1:35 pm
The best comment I’ve seen: “If Trump tweets out support and he spells George Papadopoulos’ name correctly, then you know for sure that Stephen Miller is writing the tweets!
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ROGirl said on October 30, 2017 at 1:43 pm
ftCongrats, la Mary.
Interesting how the indictment story came out on Friday with no further details until this morning’s big announcement.
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Julie Robinson said on October 30, 2017 at 2:10 pm
As far as I’m concerned, LAMary’s news trumps (pun intended) the rest. May your contract be renewed and renewed until you’re ready to stop working.
Adrianne, I was just thinking about my government teacher who, in the fall of 1973, said she hadn’t thought there’d be many current events to follow, with no election to track. We’ve seen it before, haven’t we?
Aside from all that, I’m back from Orlando, missing its weather, and giving myself a one-day break before resuming my new full-time job of wrapping up my sister’s estate.
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Sherri said on October 30, 2017 at 2:34 pm
Never forget how much Paul Ryan and Senator Fucking Piece of Shit knew about all this.
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coozledad said on October 30, 2017 at 2:48 pm
Gates ain’t got no money for a real lawyer because the feds done froze ALL OF THE MONIES.
They was Russian monies anyway.
Manafort is considered a flight risk.
Jared Kushner has deleted his tweets (too late)
This is going to become a holiday classic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEG41O5Y9-k
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Deborah said on October 30, 2017 at 2:51 pm
I have now bookmarked Seth Abramson’s Twitter account (thank you Heather for that link). He seems to have the best analysis I’ve seen yet, also if you go to his feed, he has another thread up about all of the lies Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in today’s press briefing. How can that woman sleep at night?
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Judybusy said on October 30, 2017 at 2:53 pm
Congrats, LAMary–I hope the contract gets extended!
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coozledad said on October 30, 2017 at 2:53 pm
Sessions, also too.
https://twitter.com/joshrogin/status/925037505220661253
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Suzanne said on October 30, 2017 at 2:58 pm
I checked Facebook early this afternoon and saw that the WaPo had a Facebook live stream of Sanders’ press briefing and I thought, “Why watch? She’ll just lie.”
Which it appears she did.
This is a sad day, though, that it’s come to this. That so many people would willingly vote for a guy to run the country that is knee deep in foreign money. That so many so-called religious leaders would support it. That so many people like Sarah H Sanders (& of course VP My Pants) can so easily and effortlessly lie.
I am pretty sure that the true pro-Trumpers I know will absolutely no believe a word of this. Not. One. Word.
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mlberry said on October 30, 2017 at 3:07 pm
Glad to see Nancy is reading Nabokov, but I hope ADA isn’t her introduction to the author. I found it impenetrable. Better to start with PNIN, or LOLITA, or even PALE FIRE.
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Heather said on October 30, 2017 at 3:11 pm
Suzanne, I’m afraid that you’re right. Fox is just telling straight-up lies, and a reporter on Twitter said she had three calls in one day last week from Trump supporters insisting that the pussy tape was made up, because they’d **never heard of it.**
Now to see if the GOP continues with this disgusting gaslighting.
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Deborah said on October 30, 2017 at 3:32 pm
Josh Marshall of TPM is asking the same question I am. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/why-did-paul-manafort-go-to-work-for-trump
Someone on the BBC said it was because no one else would work for Trump and Manafort was desperately looking for connections to power that he had lost over many previous years. But I don’t know, seems like something more sinister is underlying.
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4dbirds said on October 30, 2017 at 4:03 pm
Congrats LAMary.
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Sherri said on October 30, 2017 at 4:09 pm
Sessions is at the top of my list of people in this I most hope to see rot in jail. Preferably a jail with a lot of non-white people.
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Andrea said on October 30, 2017 at 4:49 pm
Sherri, why would you want to inflict Sessions on the other guys in the pokey, who may be there because they could not afford bail or some other technicality that violated their parole, etc.? Let’s give him good old solitary confinement, as he seems like the kind of guy who would endorse a policy like that.
Congrats, LA Mary. Hope it leads to bigger and better things for you.
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brian stouder said on October 30, 2017 at 5:07 pm
I’m looking forward to Ms Maddow’s show tonight.
Imagine……imagine if Sec. Clinton had been elected President of the United States, and the first thing she does is make a foreign agent our National Security Advisor, even as President Obama specifically warns her against that guy (Flynn)?
You cannot throw a dead cat in the Trump White House without hitting a damned foreign agent – some of whom almost literally had foreign cash stuffed in their pockets and/or buried in their backyards!
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Sherri said on October 30, 2017 at 5:10 pm
Good point, Andrea. Maybe a CIA black site is more appropriate.
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alex said on October 30, 2017 at 5:18 pm
Preferably a jail with a lot of non-white people.
Or with big dicks anyway.
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Icarus said on October 30, 2017 at 5:21 pm
Would Sessions be Pence prison plaything or the other way around? asking for a friend.
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Deborah said on October 30, 2017 at 5:33 pm
I hope they all spend the rest of their days in orange, and I don’t mean bad makeup, I mean jumpsuits.
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Dexter said on October 30, 2017 at 5:36 pm
Now that you folks have covered Manafort-Gates, here’s one that is about as shocking as the sun coming up again: Kevin Spacey’s 1986 actions against a 14 year old boy have possibly condemned “House of Cards” to the dustbin. Netflix honchos say it was already dead, but …whatever.
Anybody who has a TV , computer, or is just aware of the world knows that Spacey is gay, meaning he has always been gay…so that’s not shocking. But oh boy…I guess the fact that Spacey has frequently been seen in rich restaurants and clubs with glamorous young men on his arm for years and years never raised suspicion that maybe he is a pedophile with a penchant for very young boys. Now the can of worms is open, and who knows how many more former teen-victims will come forth with more allegations. It’s tell all now, and let it rip, silenced victims! It’s a crescendo now and it will soon be a cascade. Or will it just suddenly stop soon when the public just loses interest? Stay tuned.
R.I.P. Francis Underwood
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Sherri said on October 30, 2017 at 7:54 pm
And now for something completely different – Microsoft’s treehouse spaces: https://www.nelsontreehouse.com/blog/2017/10/20/techie-treehouses-microsoft
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 30, 2017 at 7:59 pm
Pale Fire is my vote. Congrats, LAMary. May it be extended to your wishes!
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 30, 2017 at 8:00 pm
Sherri (from previous thread) — the Halperin story is giving me reason to do just that. I certainly have yet to regret having done so!
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FDChief said on October 30, 2017 at 8:45 pm
Call me naive, but how the hell can an adult American that knows the slightest thing about 1) casinos and 2) New York City real estate and construction doubt for a moment that Trump and all his people are mobbed up? How big a jump is it from dealing with Gotti’s wiseguys over some concrete for Trump Tower to dealing with some ex-Soviet wiseguy over loans to a Trump hotel in Tashkent? And from there to hooking up with some Russian wiseguy who has a “deal” that involves a little dirt on Clinton in return for a little backscratching now and again?
I mean…this is the “business model” these guys came up in. They swim in corruption like fish in the sea; they don’t even recognize it because it’s all around them.
Mind you, the problem is that the only people who can “do anything” about this are a bunch of even worse human beings – the Congressional GOP. The ones that aren’t Jim-Jones-grade-batshit-crazy are too busy looking nervously at their plutocratic masters for the signal to turn on the cash tap that funnels All The Money up to the penthouse. They have less than zero interest in whether the Trumpkins turn the U.S. into a kleptocratic Third World shithole only with rednecks instead of wa-Benzi.
We’re pretty much fucked at this point.
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alex said on October 30, 2017 at 9:45 pm
fdchief, as dirty as Trump obviously is, I can’t imagine he seriously thought he would win this election. It was all just a game for him just like it was for his head of HUD who was still raking in cash from rubes long after his sell-by date. Trump’s victory was his worst nightmare come true. He’s going to end up convicted of financial crimes that would otherwise have gone ignored. His assets will be confiscated and his real net worth will be revealed for added humiliation. I’m savoring the schadenfreude already.
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ROGirl said on October 31, 2017 at 7:26 am
Another book by Nabokov I liked is Speak, Memory, his memoir of his childhood in Russia, the revolution and exile.
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coozledad said on October 31, 2017 at 7:59 am
John Kelly just called Robert E. Lee an “honorable man”. I’d like to hear him say that after he was horsewhipped and doused in brine.
It has frequently been represented by the friends and admirers of Robert E. Lee, late an officer in the rebel army, that, although a slaveholder, his treatment of his chattels was invariably kind and humane. The subjoined statement, taken from the lips of one of his former slaves, indicates the real character of the man:
My name is Wesley Norris; I was born a slave on the plantation of George Parke Custis; after the death of Mr. Custis, Gen. Lee, who had been made executor of the estate, assumed control of the slaves, in number about seventy; it was the general impression among the slaves of Mr. Custis that on his death they should be forever free; in fact this statement had been made to them by Mr. C. years before; at his death we were informed by Gen. Lee that by the conditions of the will we must remain slaves for five years; I remained with Gen. Lee for about seventeen months, when my sister Mary, a cousin of ours, and I determined to run away, which we did in the year 1859; we had already reached Westminster, in Maryland, on our way to the North, when we were apprehended and thrown into prison, and Gen. Lee notified of our arrest; we remained in prison fifteen days, when we were sent back to Arlington; we were immediately taken before Gen. Lee, who demanded the reason why we ran away; we frankly told him that we considered ourselves free; he then told us he would teach us a lesson we never would forget; he then ordered us to the barn, where, in his presence, we were tied firmly to posts by a Mr. Gwin, our overseer, who was ordered by Gen. Lee to strip us to the waist and give us fifty lashes each, excepting my sister, who received but twenty; we were accordingly stripped to the skin by the overseer, who, however, had sufficient humanity to decline whipping us; accordingly Dick Williams, a county constable, was called in, who gave us the number of lashes ordered; Gen. Lee, in the meantime, stood by, and frequently enjoined Williams to lay it on well, an injunction which he did not fail to heed; not satisfied with simply lacerating our naked flesh, Gen. Lee then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with brine, which was done. After this my cousin and myself were sent to Hanover Court-House jail, my sister being sent to Richmond to an agent to be hired; we remained in jail about a week, when we were sent to Nelson county, where we were hired out by Gen. Lee’s agent to work on the Orange and Alexander railroad; we remained thus employed for about seven months, and were then sent to Alabama, and put to work on what is known as the Northeastern railroad; in January, 1863, we were sent to Richmond, from which place I finally made my escape through the rebel lines to freedom; I have nothing further to say; what I have stated is true in every particular, and I can at any time bring at least a dozen witnesses, both white and black, to substantiate my statements: I am at present employed by the Government; and am at work in the National Cemetary on Arlington Heights, where I can be found by those who desire further particulars; my sister referred to is at present employed by the French Minister at Washington, and will confirm my statement.
It’s funny how many little yankee bitches like to imagine themselves as a slow talking southern aristocrat by mortgage. They come down here, join the hunt club, and right away they think their ass is Andy Griffith. Fact is, they’re punks for doing it, and they’ll always be the third wheel among the gomers who mostly just want to jack each other off in the deer blind and piss on people with a high school equivalency.
Southie is as far south as Kelly will ever get. He’d shit his britches before he ever got up the nerve to walk into a back country shitkicker with that accent. They’d skin his ass and leave him rotting with the old ag machinery at the woodline behind the bar. You can even be FROM the south and be disinvited to the local hallucination. Stop kissing these people’s asses. They’re morbidly fucked up.
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coozledad said on October 31, 2017 at 8:10 am
Oh, and it’s the first anniversary of this assault:
https://rurritable.wordpress.com/2016/11/01/open-letter-to-a-trash-queen/
I still regret I didn’t fill their faces with wasp spray. But that’s why they bring the kiddies along, innit?
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brian stouder said on October 31, 2017 at 8:33 am
Well – I admire Jeff TMMO and Cooz – as they both act upon their (well stated) beliefs, and live their lives with much less compromise than (for example) I live mine.
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Suzanne said on October 31, 2017 at 9:04 am
What is this deep nostalgia for the South? My husband & I traveled to Southern Indiana several weeks ago and saw quite a few Confederate flags along the way. Uh, duh. The Confederacy is not part of Hoosier Heritage. I know it’s code for white supremacy but seriously, are people really that ignorant? There is no Hazzard County Georgia in Indiana.
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coozledad said on October 31, 2017 at 9:22 am
Bunch of southern shitfucks settled in Indiana after the war because they’d either been burned off the edge of the plantation where they begged for a living or did piecework, or the Confederates burned them out of the woods hunting, impressing, or killing deserters and draft dodgers.
As the war of attrition took shape against the south, and especially after Gettysburg, the South became embroiled in its own Civil War against the Unionists and the poor whites who’d had to bear the brunt of the fighting.
https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/10406941
In 1865, Lee pulled a thousand or so troops off his already emaciated line at Petersburg to go hunt deserters and resisters down in Central and Western North Carolina. They needed more cannon fodder to delay the inevitable while Davis and his cabinet got up in women’s clothes and prepared to flee. They hunted people down like animals.
But that’s not the whole story of places like Indiana or Jersey or Ohio flying trash flags. That’s just racist Yankee shitheads waving their little dicks.
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Deborah said on October 31, 2017 at 10:01 am
Kelly is really proving himself to be just another “shitfuck” http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ta-nehisi-coates-john-kelly-civil-war
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adrianne said on October 31, 2017 at 10:23 am
John Kelly is a proud product of South Boston. They’re racist as fuck there.
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Sherri said on October 31, 2017 at 11:19 am
If you think gendered coverage of a topic stops anywhere, think again…
https://www.tastecooking.com/women-arent-ruining-food/
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Sherri said on October 31, 2017 at 12:06 pm
I see John Kelly less as a faux nostalgic Confederate, and not even so much as a racist fuck, though that’s probably true, as yet another symbol of Angry White Male. Angry because ‘we’ve given all you people (blacks, women, gays) so much, and you still insist on more!’ Angry because they want to keep doing things they way they always have, and they don’t want to feel bad about it. The way it’s supposed to work is, they throw a few scraps your way, you are grateful and tell them how great they are and shut up, and they get to keep doing the same things and feel good about themselves.
To the privileged, equality feels like oppression. There had been compromise after compromise to accommodate slavery in this country, and the effects of those compromises still reverberate. There were no compromises that could remove the stench of slavery from the souls of the supporters of the peculiar institution, though, nothing that could really make them feel righteous about what they were doing. So they had to shift the blame on meddlesome Yankees. Accepting responsibility requires taking action to change, and change is very much what they don’t want.
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nancy said on October 31, 2017 at 12:22 pm
I’ve often described “Gone With the Wind” as the best bad novel I’ve ever read, and on several rereading I try to look at it through different eyes, as a story about race, about feminism, about class. There’s a family in the novel that barely appears in the film – the Slatterys, the O’Haras’ white-trash neighbors. That’s how they’re described throughout. Ellen O’Hara, Scarlett’s mother, is late for dinner the first night of the book’s action because she was delivering Emmie Slattery’s illegitimate child (sired by the O’Hara plantation’s overseer), who dies shortly after birth. (A mercy, all agree.) Ellen contracts the typhoid fever that kills her nursing the Slattery family, who had the same affliction and survived. And Emmie is the flashy-dressed woman who, years later, and now the wife of the overseer, tries with her husband to buy Tara out of tax foreclosure. (Her only appearance in the movie; Scarlett throws dirt in the overseer’s face.)
When Coozledad goes on one of his white-trash tirades, I think of the Slatterys, who probably eventually pulled up stakes and moved to southern Indiana.
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Bitter Scribe said on October 31, 2017 at 1:30 pm
I’m with MLBerry @23. “Lolita” and “Pale Fire” are great works IMO, but I found “Ada” impenetrable. Apparently at that point in his career, Nabokov was convinced that he was the greatest literary genius ever, his every word and thought was an act of genius, and therefore he never needed any kind of editing.
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alex said on October 31, 2017 at 1:58 pm
I read Lolita after quite accidentally catching the movie. It was one night many years ago when I was flipping channels and landed on an old black and white film that immediately caught my attention because the sexual tension between the child and adult was just not something I expected to see in a film of that vintage. And it wasn’t anything in-your-face overt. It was the artistry of the film, the directing, the acting. I couldn’t help but be drawn in.
As for the book, I was equally gobsmacked to learn that its magnificent prose came from a non-native English speaker.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 31, 2017 at 2:02 pm
Nancy, the Slatterys made it to Indianapolis.
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Suzanne said on October 31, 2017 at 2:16 pm
The Slatterys made it to Indy and then, years later, Hollywood gave us the Dukes of Hazzard and Smokey & the Bandit which led to the Slatterys, in all their ignorance and dysfunction, becoming cool. Now, we have Confederate flags flying proudly in Union states and people wearing their ignorance proudly.
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Deborah said on October 31, 2017 at 2:31 pm
I too read Lolita after seeing the movie. The book was way better but way more depressing. The movie was pretty darn good too.
Slattery is the perfect name for that family.
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brian stouder said on October 31, 2017 at 3:02 pm
I can claim to have read about 1/3 of Mary Chestnut’s diary/autobiography – before I just couldn’t take her anymore.
Ken Burns uses her as a non-fiction Gone With the Wind touchstone – but (imo) she’s simply intolerable, at a certain point.
One thing I’d do, if I were president and commander-in-chief (as apparently any one of us could well be, if we could first become a self-aggrandizing teevee star), is order the renaming of ever United States military base/ship/installation named for traitors against the United States.
PS – all I know about “that book by Nabakov” is that he gets a reference in the Police hit (from 40 years ago!) Don’t Stand so Close to Me
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Bitter Scribe said on October 31, 2017 at 3:05 pm
I notice that in the first, black-and-white movie (and maybe the remake too—not sure), they made Lolita 14 years old when she meets Humbert, while she was 12 in the novel. Guess they thought 14 would be less pervy, or something.
And Alex is certainly right about Nabokov’s achievement in mastering English prose. I think it’s remarkable when anyone can write any fiction in a second language, much less in prose as lush as Nabokov’s. (At the end of the book he apologizes for his “second-rate brand of English,” which sounds almost like false modesty.)
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mlberry said on October 31, 2017 at 3:18 pm
” I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, I speak like a child.” — Nabokov on his bilingualism.
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brian stouder said on October 31, 2017 at 3:46 pm
Cooze alert!! Cooze alert!!
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/10/31/virginia-gov-race-ad-sparks-outrage-shows-racist-gop-supporter-trying-to-mow-down-kids.html
“Independent groups are denouncing Ed Gillespie because he has run the most divisive, fear-mongering campaign in modern history,” Northam campaign spokeswoman Ofirah Yheskel said in a statement to Fox News. “It is not shocking that communities of color are scared of what his Trump-like policy positions mean for them.”
But Gillespie said the ad was “an attack on” his “supporters,” whom
he calls “good decent hardworking Virginians who love their neighbors.”
(cough-cough-bullshit!-cough)
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Scout said on October 31, 2017 at 3:50 pm
“Trump’s victory was his worst nightmare come true. He’s going to end up convicted of financial crimes that would otherwise have gone ignored. His assets will be confiscated and his real net worth will be revealed for added humiliation. I’m savoring the schadenfreude already.”
Thanks, Alex – that just gave me the warm fuzzies all over.
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Scout said on October 31, 2017 at 3:52 pm
I know who I trust when it comes to Civil War history.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ta-nehisi-coates-john-kelly-civil-war
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Jolene said on October 31, 2017 at 3:53 pm
I second the expressions of awe re Nabokov’s English prose. For an additional treat, listen to Jeremy Irons read Lolita on Audiobooks. Exquisite.
And yes, the Virginia governor’s race is becoming increasingly stupid. Even worse, the gap is closing. Will be so depressed if Gillespie, the Republican, wins.
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Bitter Scribe said on October 31, 2017 at 3:54 pm
If Gillespie can try to tie Northam to a murderous Salvadoran gang, Northam can tie Gillespie to murderous neo-Nazis. Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it.
(And yes, it was a third-party PAC that did the ad, but good for Northam for not wimping out and disavowing it.)
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Charlotte said on October 31, 2017 at 4:43 pm
Lolita – the most beautiful novel about a monster … If you’ve spent any time around academics, Pnin can be great fun as well.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 31, 2017 at 4:44 pm
Ohio U. plays Miami tonight, in Athens. I don’t know who thought this would be a good idea . . . on ESPN2 if you’re interested, watch for the band! Marching 110 50th anniversary this year, and they’ll be in the Macy’s parade on Thanksgiving. We’ll be on the sidewalks as proud parents, unless today’s events makes my wife change her mind.
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alex said on October 31, 2017 at 4:50 pm
Manafort’s daughters think he’s the scum of the earth and a psycho, but love living off his ill-gotten wealth and basking in his limelight just the same, as revealed by some leaked texts to friends written last year:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/paul-manafort-daughter-trump-texts_us_59f748b6e4b03cd20b832fe0?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009
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susan said on October 31, 2017 at 5:27 pm
Wow, Alex, amazing people obtain texts like that. What a shitshow of traitors.
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Sherri said on October 31, 2017 at 6:44 pm
I think this is the perfect year to start a new Christmas tradition: http://www.npr.org/2012/12/25/167537939/literary-iceland-revels-in-its-annual-christmas-book-flood
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Deborah said on October 31, 2017 at 6:56 pm
Books are a big part of our Christmas Eve tradition. We ask for books and we receive books from each other. The only problem we have now is where to put them. Our shelves in Chicago are double stacked with books behind other books on the shelves which makes it really hard to find what you’re looking for.
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Deborah said on October 31, 2017 at 7:02 pm
Horrific situation in NYC, people on a bike path got mowed down by a lunatic in a pickup truck. But Trump is probably happy that it takes the attention away from his political problems. Wish I wasn’t so cynical.
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Sherri said on October 31, 2017 at 7:37 pm
The political ads on Facebook are just a tiny part of the problem. The entire business model is structured to create a much bigger problem, and it’s not clear what to do.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/collusion-who-needs-it-when-facebook-was-allowing-russians-to-help-trump/2017/10/31/38e196e6-be43-11e7-97d9-bdab5a0ab381_story.html
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Deborah said on October 31, 2017 at 8:18 pm
If Trump fires Mueller, I will be out on the street ranting and raving. Is it even possible that he would do that?
We’re about to watch the director’s cut of the original Blade Runner for about the 500th time. After seeing the new Blade Runner a couple of weeks ago, it seems appropriate.
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beb said on October 31, 2017 at 8:59 pm
For all the Librarians here:
http://themindcircle.com/vintage-photographs-librarians-horseback/
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alex said on October 31, 2017 at 10:09 pm
Deborah, your bookshelves are one of the great stylistic features of your place, and if they were overcrowded I didn’t notice. And I love how the scale of the furnishings works so perfectly. We try so hard with our own place and still can’t get it right. This house is such an odd duck that even an Eames compact isn’t compact enough.
We just came back from a nice dinner out with my parents. My mom’s now a big fan of Rachel Maddow, and I’d love to share her enthusiasm except that we cut the cord and hardly watch any TV and don’t see anything on cable. (My partner couldn’t help but notice that when we arrived back at their place my mom turned on Rachel, and no sooner did she turn around but my dad flipped it to sports.)
So this has been the fifth day of rich food and drink in honor of my 56th and at this rate I won’t see my 57th if I don’t start some disciplined dieting. My triglycerides are in the stratosphere again, liver function in the toilet. Chicago was a fabulous binge weekend, though, I must say. We did ribs at the Twin Anchors on Friday. Anyone who knows about that place knows that people wait for hours for a table and get schnockered on empty stomachs for the privilege, the ribs are that effing good. A friend who had offered to pay handed over his credit card and asked anyone who was sober enough to take care of the bill while he dazed off. We managed to walk home six blocks instead of calling Lyft or Uber or grabbing a cab, and I’m told I was one of the people who was carried most of the way.
Saturday we met Deborah and her husband and Heather and I was in a fair state of alcohol poisoning but hopefully managed to be coherent. My partner and I then did some shopping in Andersonville and hung out with more friends and did dinner at a Mexican place on Montrose called El Maya that was superb. I had a skirt steak dinner served in a hot stone cauldron with melted/charred cheese in the bottom that was simply out of this world. The dish was called a molcajete.
On Sunday we brunched at the Greek Islands. Had wanted to go to the Parthenon, another fave old haunt, but were bummed to learn it had gone out of business after 48 years just recently. They had a braised octopus dish like I’ve never had anywhere else and I had been jonesing for it. Maybe I can learn how to make it. The sauce was tomato-based. I remember getting that dish back in about 1985 when I was dog-sitting for a friend in East Lakeview whose sneaky boxer knew how to nuzzle open the refrigerator door. The dog’s name was Ambrose. Ambrose got my octopus leftovers out of the fridge and devoured them. Later he began projectile-spewing doggy diarrhea. I chased him around the apartment trying to grab him and take him outside, and in the process he drenched the entire place. Finally in desperation I opened the back door and he shot out and spewed all over the stairs and the rooftop deck. The stuff was wedged between the 2×4 decking. It was the grossest cleanup job ever and no way was I ever compensated fully for that gig. And despite the unappetizingness of it all, it did not destroy my fondness for that braised octopus dish.
My parents are still in fab shape, I’m happy to report. My dad’s just a few days shy of 90 and they’re going out of town to wine and dine and visit grandchildren. I can only hope to still be as agile as they are at that age if I make it there but really I’m ready to detoxify on some very unadorned food right now, the plainer the better. Our fave waitress brought us a rich ice cream cake the size of a pumpkin and my share of it probably just put my A1C over 7 for the next two years.
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