stares directly into the camera

Sooooo he's not available to address why he won't hold a vote to reopen the government but y'all are gonna let him publish this?

Alright

@TimStone not like they need too *looks at the falling economy because Trump keeps government shut down for months*

It is not lost on me that this is on Bloomberg TV but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i mean the solution is to pass a clean CR and override a presidential veto

@GodEmperorDune chuckles Workplace violence

@GodEmperorDune i think also override McConnell too

@TimStone Bloomberg surveillance

@Memor-X i don't think there is a way to override mcconnell

its up to him to schedule votes

@Unionhawk It's extra funny because it's a UK segment

But Anand has some good stuff despite some of the arguably silly questions

Like the bit about life expectancy where one of the hosts challenges him about people living longer therefore clearly we're having a better life and it's like 🤔???

@TimStone and it's a bloomberg network saying it lol

although I'm sure his line is probably along "the hyper-rich, not just the regular rich, destroyed the world" lines

lol rekt

Ah, now we know who it was

@TimStone that feel when the guy you picked to replace the the guy you picked and ended up disliking.....ends up being the same kind of guy as the one he's replacing

Of course, why not

Oh right Kim Yong Chol should be here soon, what a way to end the week

@TimStone is it just me or are we now 1 step away from Trump pulling a Clinton

Like Bill Clinton, or?

@TimStone yeh

like the lying to congress thing

I think we might have technically already crossed that path, but yeah. It would be nice if anything mattered, but alas

@TimStone Chris Hansen has now been evicted

Incidentally also a crime

@TimStone the big thing is that this claim doesn't rely on Cohen, but on an entire cache of documents according to the article.

> The special counsel’s office learned about Trump’s directive for Cohen to lie to Congress through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents. Cohen then acknowledged those instructions during his interviews with that office.

China's moon plants dead within days of sprouting

@MadScientist Rudy: lies, all LIES! none of it the truth! you people can't handle the Truth!

@BunsGlazing but it's progress right? they sprouted so it's a matter of keeping them warm

Oh no Trump found that stupid Washington Examiner article about the "prayer rugs" at the border 🙄

@Memor-X yeah!

Has someone considered just kicking McConnell straight in the shins?

There seems to be an expectation that voters should act angrier which absolutely because this is appalling but also fun way to get arrested 🤷‍♂️

Journalist and expert on authoritarian states Sarah Kendzior (who has been on top of the Russia situation since FAR before the election), says this about the shutdown:

Breaking government is the goal.

@TimStone Whoa. "This morning, we learned that the Administration had leaked the commercial travel plans as well.

Indeed. Presumably in addition to being petty someone is afraid of the optics of Pelosi visiting Afghanistan when Trump himself hasn't

@BradC love too commit treason out of pure spite

I don't know what Pelosi's personal goal was in visiting but Congressfolk hearing from people who largely would very much like to not die isn't bad either way

Chinese envoy warns Canada of 'repercussions' if we ban Huawei from 5g networks

@BradC This is false, there is leverage in poll numbers and with bases. It's just that the poll numbers are still too high.

projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/…

Momentum against Nixon finally hit the crescendo needed to force resignation at 34%

Trump is way above that.

He can do whatever he wants with 90% Republican approval.

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Directly into my veins

Hmm: Did Russian developers give Trump a $1 million payment on the Moscow Trump Tower contract?

It's two years later and he was just sitting around going "Hmm I'm bored better dunk on some Kushners"

/cc @GodEmperorDune on that too just to make sure he sees it later

@puzzlepiece87 Interesting that you would pull that line out of that tweet. I don't disagree with you, ultimately; until Republicans abandon Trump in larger numbers, it is hard to imagine things changing significantly (although clearly the trend line is there throughout the shutdown)

@TimStone my veins are appreciative

But Sarah's overall point is different; she believes that Trump isn't using the shutdown to bolster the support of his base, or to build the wall, or to stand up to the Dems. She believes that Trump is using the shutdown to break the government and sell it for parts.

That this is the Reichstag fire; the autocratic power grab in action. And that this shut down might not (ever) end, it will just transition into something (far) worse

Kendzior literally has a doctorate in how autocrats gain power in authoritarian states; and this is perfectly following that pattern

i mean demonstrating that govt is broken and dramatically cutting it has always been a conservative goal

and while it is a mess, i don't think you can build an autocracy on not paying people, it's not stable

Reps want to destroy big Govt, and shutting it down entirely for so long it withers and dies seems a pretty effective strategy.

Sure, but in this analogy, the shutdown is the fire, and it is followed up by the emergency declaration and the claiming of emergency powers. Which have already been widely discussed, including by some who say "an emergency declaration is the only way this can end".

@BradC I don't have any additional reaction to the tweet's main point simply because it's already been constantly made over the past two years. The State Dept especially, and that article we had in here in the past month about the financial commissioner who is writing legal opinions to no one that will never be acted on. Her main point is completely true but also sold news.

@BradC And then the state of national emergency never ends...

@fredley precisely

Can't find that article about the commissioner, if someone has a link please let me know. I'm still looking.

@fredley It depends on if you think the goal for people like McConnell is actually to reach the goal or to keep the goal as a goal in perpetuity as a mechanism for retaining power

Which is hard to know

FEC also not getting the replacement appointments from Obama and Trump

EEOC struggling to get new commissioners

Gosh, where is that story we had posted in here

Trying to find it

@puzzlepiece87 I don't think I heard that story; what was the gist?

@BradC I know, that's why I'm trying to dig it up for you.

> The State Dept especially, and that article we had in here in the past month about the financial commissioner who is writing legal opinions to no one that will never be acted on. Her main point is completely true but also sold news.

That should have been old news.

This one, or another?

Yes perfect thank you @TimStone

I was even searching for "no one will ever read" but it was "no one reads"

@BradC But yes, this main point has been going on for years now, that's why I didn't have any reaction to that part.

The State Dept is the most prominent agency that is in tatters.

Nice article. "memos into the void" <-- I feel that way sometimes, too.

oh gosh. His term is up March 1st, then the department will be entirely empty...

Trump White House reportedly sought to put Pelosi ‘in her place’

Yup, it was very well written and memorable to me, good article for sure. Thanks for the original share, @TimStone.

> White House officials – including Mick Mulvaney, the acting chief of staff – had been irked by Ms. Pelosi’s invocation of security concerns as her premise for urging Mr. Trump to move his speech, and sought to put her in her place after she had emphasized that she represented a coequal branch in governing, according to aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.

"It’s as if a group of far-right online trolls took control of the executive branch of a global superpower."

"as if"??

> Depriving Ms. Pelosi of an aircraft was the easiest way to remind her, they said. So Mr. Trump made a play for dominance and one-upmanship…. White House aides were tickled by the move

> put her in her place

hoo boy

Tfw you are so in control you have to leak details of commercial flights to create a security risk

Anyway trump is going to have some more fun today

Will we get a fawning reaction because dictator or an explosion/walkout because the NK rep is an abrasive jerk? We’ll find out shortly!

I'm betting on the former but we're going to find out later that KYC told Pompeo to go f himself five minutes prior

This is especially lulzy for me because KYC is an entirely unrelated acronym in my field

Ah ha, lol

@GodEmperorDune Kentucky Yfried Chicken?

@GodEmperorDune Photoshop KYC onto a Cool Guys Don't Look At Explosions meme

@GodEmperorDune Or will we never know what happens in the meeting, because Trump doesn't even tell his own advisors? (except perhaps via what US intelligence agencies can gather from the other side)

Or is that just for meetings with <s>his handler</s> Putin

oops, how do you do strikethrough in chat?

I think I found it, you put three dashes on either side of the text.

yep, found it in the FAQ. That's a different strikethrough syntax than some of the main sites. Programming Puzzles and Code Golf, for example, <s>uses the HTML style</s>

Chat has a restricted variant of markdown, and I think all of those should work on the main sites too

And strikethroughs are an exception

@murgatroid99 yeah, I don't think the triple-dash strikethrough syntax works on any main site. None that I can find, anyway

@Yuuki know your customer, basically collect information about people before giving them access to financial services to cut down on fraud and terrorism and stuff. I don’t remember if it was part of the patriot act or a diff law

apparently in the US it was the patriot act

@TimStone gawker.com/…

history just repeats

weekly

@Unionhawk Shockingly the author of the newest piece is purportedly a member of an anti-immigration group that is not the one suing the SPLC for labeling it a hate group but is also labeled by the SPLC as a hate group

jfc, that's scary

It's evidently just "routine training" but come on

They've probably got more clearance than the perspective allows but I don't get how that's acceptable optics

@TimStone lol

are they going to make another buy my time share video?

@GodEmperorDune Nice/Finally

@GodEmperorDune clears throat

LOL

@TimStone LOL

"on the private jet of"

i think my favorite thing about LOL is that it is almost immediately out of date

> The content found in LOL is sometimes weeks old, so meme-obsessed teens may have seen it before.

i've noticed that twitter seems to get memes much earlier than facebook

apparently noted short man ben shapiro did a live podcast read at march for life complete with live ad reads?

just put the ads into the feed in post jesus christ

@Unionhawk How else would he needlessly segue into saving Baby Hitler unprovoked?

ah yes, noted magazine directed at children, parents

looks left

looks right

mmm I don't think so 🤔

@TimStone very good faith on many sides, many sides

@GodEmperorDune that's the long game here

@Unionhawk it's a week out

lol

the things we do for the gram

> Fellow divers and marine biologists have disputed Ramsey’s claim that she swam with Deep Blue, telling The Washington Post that it was more likely she had encountered another female great white named Haole Girl.

Ohhh right this is about that video and not McAfee

@TimStone yes, different grabbing and riding than mcafee

> Ramsey, Domeier said, was in “as safe a situation as you’re going to have with a white shark” because it had just been feeding and was “not really hungry.” He added that when sharks gorge themselves, they can sometimes eat so much that they slip into a comatose state.

big mood tbh

Oh right Lindsey's in Turkey for some reason

@TimStone is graham really capable of pressuring anyone?

Victims of sexual assault maybe if his Kavanaugh performance was anything to go by

@TimStone oh right i forgot about that

tremendous jerk to all the wrong people

@TimStone Trying to make a Kurds/curds pun but the NCAA conference format is hampering my efforts.

DAMMIT, WHY HASN'T CLEMSON PLAYED AGAINST A WISCONSIN TEAM?

@TimStone I'm afraid that your relationship with corn isn't so much a rivalry as it is total defeat

@TimStone is now lost in the maize of modern food production.

@Yuuki bad pun is... good?

@MBraedley Oh good, I was worried that someone might grain on my parade.

@Yuuki now that's just plain bad

I'll go sit in the corn-er as punishment then.

@puzzlepiece87 IT IS THE ULTIMATE EVIL

The "down with big corp" side of me is fighting a major battle with the "lol wtf" side of me.

I am currently taking bets.

> Tarik, my pseudonymous friend and former podcast partner, had a legal-realist rule about litigation: The judge decides who the asshole is and works backward from there. So who was the asshole here? It was either Supermac’s: a local Irish fast-food chain ... founded by an Irishman whose name, naturally, starts with “Mc.” Or it’s McDonald’s: a multibillion-dollar American bully that presented a defense the examiners decided could be reduced to "Duh. We’re McDonald’s"

@Yuuki Well played

@TimStone People have really short-term memory when it comes to messing with everyone's access to porn, huh....

@TimStone eh, wha? Even if building the wall were a good idea (its not) or that was a good idea for funding it (its really not), how the heck are you going to enforce that? Make everyone log in through ArizonaOfficialPorn dot com?

They should at least have a clever domain name like Erozona.

lol

F--k it, I'm all for this law if that means erozona.com exists.

whoa. They're suggesting requiring electronic manufacturers, under penalty of a crime, to pre-install filtering software.

@TimStone u wut m8

that is only removable via a fee

Yeah, that's not going to fly (technically or first-amendment-ally)

looooool

(lol. searches for obscure stock photos... on my work PC. CANCEL)

There's some really bizarre stock photos out there.

@Yuuki the old man smiling through the pain as he does everything

the kid crying aiming the gun

The plate of spaghetti with accompanying pistol.

pretty much any stock art with a pistol

Yes, by "accompanying", I mean the pistol is in the spaghetti.

@Yuuki uhhhhhhhh

spaghetti and lead balls

i dunno this is just weird

There's one of a cross-dressing Hitler peeling potatoes.

There's one of a teen snorting cocaine that spells out "LENIN".

Reddit has a /r/WTFStockPhotos sub with lots of weird ones

thought there was also a "women laughing at salads" sub, for that weirdly common trope, but I can't find it.

@BradC right here, in front of my salad?

@TimStone yeah because that's going to stop people from noticing

Found it, it was no a blog, not Reddit. Here it is, the origin of the meme: Women Laughing Alone With Salad

apparently someone wrote a play based on it???

Chicago Tribune Review: In 'Women Laughing Alone with Salad,' a playwright hilariously slices and dices questions of sex, advertising and body image

so thats how he could afford the island

"What, you're just going to find all the crimes the President did? Come on now"

@TimStone wheeee a guiliani take if i've seen one

@TimStone wow

@TimStone Well, the most important thing to being a hired gun is cardio.

all that fleeing the scene

Plus, you can't kill your target if they can stay out of reach with a light jog.

@Yuuki then you have to use the briefcase

Oh goody

Are the networks gonna hand wrong about carrying it again?

It's a non-zero chance he's gonna attempt the national emergency route so probably

iirc there are marches tomorrow, is he trying to steal the spotlight?

He's probably trying to reopen the government so everyone can go to Davos

But it could also just be him throwing a fit!

Nobody knows, fun times

"North Korea has promised me they will fund the wall"

lol

lmao

"So i have sold North Korea the land underneath the wall"

"for the low low price of the wall itself"

"if you build it, they won't come anymore"

(thread has the link to the full story)

Oh boy