California is burning, and the president is doing everything wrong. Was there a bigger story to emerge from this weekend? No? Didn’t think so.
Honestly, I can’t say “it can’t get any worse,” because obviously it can, but seriously, a president who can screw up one of the easiest parts of the job? Nothing is out of reach of that. I mean: You show up, you look solemn, you put your hand over your heart, you walk to this mark and that mark, you pose for photos. What you don’t do: Cancel for some transparently bullshit reason, then sit in your hotel room tweeting about California. AND NOT EVEN THE RIGHT THING ABOUT CALIFORNIA. Again, this is the easy stuff: Our thoughts and prayers are with all in harm’s way in California, for instant, or Stay safe, and federal resources will be available for you to rebuild. What the hell EVER.
I spent more time than I probably should checking the lines on the crazier Twitter and Facebook accounts I monitor, and no one was taking his side in this. It’s just…crickets.
Sigh. I ask you.
Not much to report from the weekend. We spent almost all day trying to get a bifold door back on its track, and no, I’m not kidding. In and around that — grocery, gym, laundry, dry cleaner and a Robert Mitchum movie on FilmStruck, which we just discovered and is now, we were dismayed to learn, is going dark at the end of the month. This is a streaming service that has all of the Criterion Collection stuff on it, as well as every classic Hollywood movie you can think of, but away it goes.
This just in: Robert Mitchum in his prime was supremely hittable, if you know what I mean.
And now I am tired and would like to read a book and forget about you-know-who for a while. An old Martin Cruz Smith title might be just the ticket. Happy Monday, all.
Linda said on November 11, 2018 at 8:38 pm
Trump eventually did tweet an appropriate item on California. I think Ana Navarro is right—when he tweets inappropriate and crazy, then appropriately with good spelling and grammar, it’s probably the result of someone taking his phone. Do you wonder if he was just so out of it that staffers were afraid to see him in public? I seriously wonder.
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Deborah said on November 11, 2018 at 8:43 pm
I agree, it was all wrong. It’s like he’s doing it on purpose to try to show how powerful he can be, he doesn’t have to follow any rules or conventions. Those are for little people. He and Pooty are the big men on campus and everyone else can suck it.
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LAMary said on November 11, 2018 at 9:25 pm
When I first arrived in LA my ex and I were standing next to Robert Mitchum waiting for our cars to be delivered by the valet parking guy. He was still pretty cool looking.
Did you see the photo of the prez standing with the Macrons and Melania? They were all looking solemn and Trump was grinning because Putin was approaching him. Huge shit eating grin. I read that he had planned to have lunch with Putin but was convinced it would be smarter to be with the whole group.
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alex said on November 11, 2018 at 9:29 pm
Here’s a first-person story about Whitaker that appalls but doesn’t surprise:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/11/11/matthew-whitaker-iowa-witch-hunt-222408
Rough weekend here. Drive belt on my tractor broke before I barely made a dent in my two acres of ass-deep leaves. No time to fuck with it until next weekend. Purply-blue thumbnail from the last time that freaking belt came off.
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FDChief said on November 11, 2018 at 9:42 pm
Crock O’Bile Dumm-ee may not have been arsed to think about the Great War other than as a nuisance that tried to spoil his combover, but I wrote something for our geopolitical blog:
https://milpubblog.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-guns-below.html
May you and yours have had a peaceful Armistice Day.
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Mark P said on November 11, 2018 at 11:23 pm
I think Trump is getting tired of the job. Maybe he’ll declare victory and depart the premises. Share a dacha with Putsie. I’ll bet ol’ Vlad would be happy to see that smiling face greet him when he comes home, kind of like a dog, you know?
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Dexter Friend said on November 12, 2018 at 1:53 am
My old high school coach’s daughter lives just north of San Diego and she is posting how millions of Cal residents are just sick of Trump, 100%. Trump blames poor forestry management when it’s burning-hot Santa Ana winds that are pushing fires up hillsides and into home neighborhoods. Her Facebook page posts were so good I wrote her to send them to the NY Times and WAPO as op-eds. ~~~ This community at nnall is pretty woke…here’s an interesting article about Michael C. Hall’s mostly heterosexual , but “fluid” sexuality . https://pagesix.com/2018/11/11/michael-c-hall-gets-candid-about-fluid-sexuality/?_ga=2.183044134.1401352110.1541924632-945819714.1541924632
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jerry said on November 12, 2018 at 2:55 am
Yesterday afternoon Myra and I went to see a performance of “Oh, What a Lovely War” – our sorta-daughter was one of the performers. I’d never seen the show before, only the film.
It was very moving and I must confess to some nose blowing and cheek wiping. We went to bed early feeling quite exhausted.
Interestingly Gabriel who is 14, told me he knew what was going on as The First World War had been covered in history classes. But the show gave him a very different view than that presented by school.
And thanks to FDChief, I’d not heard of the Zone Rouge – very interesting.
Next year I will wear a white poppy.
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ROGirl said on November 12, 2018 at 5:19 am
Supremely creepy Robert Mitchum movie is “Night of the Hunter.” It scared the bejeezus out of me when I was little. And it was directed by Charles Laughton. It’s the one where he plays a “preacher” with l-o-v-e and h-a-t-e tattooed on his knuckles.
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alex said on November 12, 2018 at 6:05 am
Fascinating stuff, FDChief. It brought me a momentary sense of terror recalling a Chicago Reader story from maybe 25-30 years ago that warned about the massive scale of displacement that would happen in Chicago and surrounding environs if any one of several nuclear plants were to go the way of Three Mile Island or Chernobyl. So far so good, knock wood.
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Deborah said on November 12, 2018 at 8:31 am
About 20 years ago we went to visit this Britsh memorial for the WW1 soldiers who died in France https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiepval_Memorial. It. Was designed by Sir Edwin Luytens, my architect husband wanted to see it for architectural reasons but it turned out to be one of the most moving experiences of my lifetime. The BBC happened to be there filming the oldest living British WW1 veteran, a very old gentleman in a wheelchair with a blanket over his legs. The interviewer was having a dickens of a time getting him to talk. During a break my husband, a Vietnam vet walked over to say a few words to the guy and suddenly he started to spill his guts to him about what it was like to have been there fighting. We were all in tears, including the interviewers and film crew.
This weekend we heard Verdi’s Requiem at the symphony with a chorus of about 150 people and 4 soloist. It was stunning.
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susan said on November 12, 2018 at 10:25 am
This is the photo mentioned by LAMary @3, of Creamsicle™©®’s loving glance at his puppeteer, Pootie. Everyone else gives Pootie a proper glare. What a gd embarrassing, decaying turd he is.
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Deborah said on November 12, 2018 at 11:46 am
Wish I’d known about this yesterday, I would have tried to get a wristband to get in to the Michelle Obama book signing tomorrow in Hyde Park. On Sunday they were giving 500 of them out starting at 11am and by 3:30 pm they were all gone. Damn. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-michelle-obama-book-signing-seminary-20181111-story.html?fbclid=IwAR2JbfghjIFe4k0fmNcgN_0HNxMOH9lLSOGofnfuC-zU6HYztDUZGlYfjvw
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FDChief said on November 12, 2018 at 11:48 am
The part about Orange Foolius’ luuuuurve for tinpot dictators that baffles me is what HE gets out of it. Putin, I get – Trump is dirty with Russian money-laundering and he’s grateful his pal Pootie hasn’t dimed him.
But shitty little autocrats like Kim and Dutuerte (sp?) in the Philippines, and Bolsonario in Brazil? Why bother with the love? What does it get Trump? Their shithole countries have no real cash to give Trump, and if it doesn’t pay him he isn’t interested.
Just can’t figure the upside.
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Icarus said on November 12, 2018 at 12:24 pm
Robert Mitchum married to the same lady for 57 years. That shouldn’t be a mentionable feat and yet…Hollywood.
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Bitter Scribe said on November 12, 2018 at 12:58 pm
Who else, I ask you, but this guy would declare that the cause of a forest fire is too many trees.
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Deborah said on November 12, 2018 at 1:07 pm
It makes me so happy that this woman is an Illinois senator, https://mobile.twitter.com/SenDuckworth/status/1061997400473124866
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Julie Robinson said on November 12, 2018 at 1:44 pm
And in other news, Bitter, rain is wet. My favorite picture of the weekend was one that had photoshopped a plastic rain bonnet over 45’s hair. Kinda said it all.
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beb said on November 12, 2018 at 3:24 pm
Deborah@2 really nails it, I think. Trump is freaking out because he lost heavily in the mid-terms and Mueller keeps getting closer and closer.
FDChief wonders about Trumps love for little tin-pot dictators like Kim and Durerte and the guy in Brazil. As I see it Trump is basically a coward. He wants to be a bully but doesn’t have the nerve for it. So he praises people he would like to be like.
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Suzanne said on November 12, 2018 at 3:49 pm
Look! Our Man Mitch is back in action with some lovely “I was never mean” words:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/as-a-politician-i-vowed-not-to-attack-my-opponents-wheres-that-ethos-now/2018/11/09/fde28168-e399-11e8-8f5f-a55347f48762_story.html
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Jakash said on November 12, 2018 at 4:56 pm
Apropos of nothing. Gene Weingarten (WaPo humor columnist):
“…the smartest thing my dad ever said to me. I asked him what it would be like after I was dead. And he said, ‘what was it like for you in 1918?'”
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basset said on November 12, 2018 at 6:15 pm
Fiddle tune, “The Battle of the Somme”… not usually played this slowly but I think it’s stronger this way:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXXWFbPjgmc
I have my grandfather’s WW1 enlistment record open in another window right now… he joined the British navy on his 18th birthday in July of 1918. Big man for the time, six feet one-half inch tall, 40-inch chest, hair “Fair Curly,” eyes “Grey,” complexion “Fresh.”
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alex said on November 12, 2018 at 6:23 pm
Our man Mitch, congratulating himself on being a master of the lost art of dog-whistling. Too big a wuss to call out the megalomaniac blowhard who made that style of politics obsolete but just as full of himself, and probably angling for an opportunity to run in 2020 if the winds start to shift away from the Trump dumpster fire.
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susan said on November 12, 2018 at 8:01 pm
A bitter-sweet story of a rose
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basset said on November 12, 2018 at 8:09 pm
I don’t know that I necessarily believe this, would be interesting if it is what it claims to be, though:
https://metro.co.uk/2018/11/07/eerie-recording-reveals-moment-the-guns-fell-silent-at-the-end-of-ww1-8114109/?fbclid=IwAR0kD6WTQAl5Mve1AuScfNuqg4yFvY_XVOBuC-o6-tiKkBVZ0afTjvwifq0
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Dave said on November 12, 2018 at 11:10 pm
Meanwhile, after Amazon dangled a carrot in front of every city in the nation, they’ve picked New York City and suburban DC.
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Suzanne said on November 13, 2018 at 6:35 am
Watching cities in flyover country try to lure Jeff Bezos and friends to their neck of the woods was kind of painful. Wasn’t going to happen, I figured from the start.
I do have friends in New York who aren’t happy about Amazon coming to Queens, knowing that it will drive housing prices ever higher.
I suspect Bezos is relishing the idea of increased visibility in Trump’s backyards.
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alex said on November 13, 2018 at 7:10 am
Those who scoffed at Richard Florida can eat crow. Amazon ultimately chose its two new locations for their deep labor pools of educated people and cultural amenities that will induce young college grads to move there. In looking at Indianapolis, it probably wasn’t lost on Bezos that this was a place that elected Governor My Pants as its Ayatollah and Luddite-in-Chief. Naptown’s creative class can keep doing what it does best: Finding ways to justify overcharging for pharmaceuticals.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 13, 2018 at 7:24 am
On the brighter side in Ohio, Wilmington is getting a sort of third place prize, the shipping hub for Amazon Prime Air.
https://www.wnewsj.com/news/89146/breaking-amazon-announces-flights-sorting-facility-headed-for-wilmington
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JodiP said on November 13, 2018 at 9:27 am
Good news: Kyrsten Sinema won a Senate seat for AZ!
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beb said on November 13, 2018 at 9:41 am
For what it’s worth. Jeff Bezos owns three houses, one in Seattle, one in DC and one in New York. The two new headquarters for Amazon are each less than 10 miles from these homes.
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Sherri said on November 13, 2018 at 10:01 am
Alex, exactly. Amazon wasn’t going anywhere where there weren’t deep hiring pools. Their problem in Seattle is that they’re running out of space and the competition for the labor pool is pretty intense, with Microsoft right there and expanding, and Google, Facebook, and Oracle all increasing their presence up here.
You have to invest in universities, and you can’t do STEM at those Christian diploma mills.
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Deborah said on November 13, 2018 at 12:23 pm
I’m such a dork. First I get excited about a vacuum cleaner and now I’m excited about getting our storage unit on a lower floor finally organized so I can easily find things when I need them. Instead of rooting through opaque cardboard boxes, I ordered 24 clearish plastic bins and 2 wire shelf units to stack them on. The bins arrived today so I can start emptying the box contents into them. It’s kind of a dungeon down there, even though it’s surrounded by curtained floor to ceiling windows. The curtains let in light from the outside but at night the dim overhead lighting is creepy. All the storage units are separated by chicken wire. Most everyone’s units are jumbled messes, you can see right into them. I was inspired when I went down there a week or so ago, by a guy who had been working for days on organizing his unit into a coherent, manageable organization of stackable drawers etc. Since our place is so small we have to keep a lot in our storage unit and we need to go down there periodically to retrieve and return stuff. Yoo hoo, I’m psyched.
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Sherri said on November 13, 2018 at 2:01 pm
I continue to be impressed by the person Monica Lewinsky has become: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/11/the-clinton-affair-documentary-monica-lewinsky/amp
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Deborah said on November 13, 2018 at 2:16 pm
I love Neal Katyal, have seen him many times on MSNBC as a commentator, he is one smart cookie, and super eloquent https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/outlook/2018/11/12/rules-are-clear-whitaker-cant-supervise-muellers-investigation/?noredirect=on&__twitter_impression=true
I got stopped in my tracks on organizing the storage unit, as my husband walked out the door with the one and only set of unit keys this morning, in his jacket pocket. He has back to back meetings all day so I guess I’m out of luck until tomorrow. Crap.
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Sherri said on November 13, 2018 at 2:31 pm
Trump and a lot of the people in his thrall are, it seems safe to say, gone. They will continue to walk among us—Trump will be in a golf cart—but they will never come back. They are somewhere else. There is nothing they are not prepared to believe if the right people say it; they will choose the right lie over any truth not just without regret but with pride.
https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/this-is-all-donald-trump-has-left-1830329753?rev=1542079517338
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Beobachter said on November 13, 2018 at 3:59 pm
Here’s the entrance to our storage units.
https://imgur.com/AngJUfg.jpg
(It’s a multipurpose area.)
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Deborah said on November 13, 2018 at 4:29 pm
Sherri, excellent Deadspin link.
I’m sure everyone has noticed how the hissy fits have been cranked up to ridiculousness. I know it’s been going on for a long time, but to me it seemed to have escalated starting while Kavanaugh’s shrieked his diatribe responding to Dr. Blakey Ford’s testimony. Then the Republicans on the Judiciary committee followed suit, Lindsey Graham etc, red faced caterwauling and bellowing. It’s been going fairly nonstop since then, and got even more cranked up after the midterms. Trump’s outrage at reporters, calling them stupid to their faces has increased, his tweets have always been mean and vindictive so nothing really new there. Then Scott in Florida looking like he’s about to stroke out at the podium, with the veins in his neck popping out, howling about the vote counting. It’s as though they think this tactic works, and actually for Kavanaugh it did, unfortunately. It’s going to get worse no doubt.
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Charlotte said on November 13, 2018 at 4:33 pm
Filmstruck is a huge loss — but if you have a library card, Kanopy is pretty great.
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Sherri said on November 13, 2018 at 5:53 pm
When can we start talking about how Republicans want to establish an apartheid state?
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/13/opinion/florida-georgia-election-recount-republicans.html
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David C. said on November 13, 2018 at 6:52 pm
More like when should we have started talking about how Republicans wanted to establish an apartheid state. The Southern Strategy, Reagan starting his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, when Roberts and Co. gutted the voting rights act…
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beb said on November 13, 2018 at 11:54 pm
Since I always considered Lewinsky to be the instigator of the Clinton Scandal I’ve never had any use for her and don’t know why she keeps coming back.
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Connie said on November 14, 2018 at 8:05 am
I just bought Kanopy for my library, so glad to see your positive comment Charlotte.
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