The Rose Garden and White House happenings: Listening to voters’ concerns

In case you were wondering, with respect to current events in Baghdad:

The Anti-Benghazi!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2019

ml1 said:

GL2 said:

The year has totally harshed my snark. Like, "This shows what an awful racist, sexist, etc. you are!" and the response is "Yeah, I know. What's your point?"

Disarms the siht out of me.

 the nihilism is upsetting. It's tough to come to the realization that an awful lot of people don't give a damn about making our country better. Their chief goal is liberal tears at any cost. 

 It's not like we're setting the Integrity Meter back to zero. Stuff like this Navy SEAL Gallagher as Trump hero reverses it.

nohero said:

In case you were wondering, with respect to current events in Baghdad:

 

 This one's tough to predict. Do hawks like Graham and that Norman Bates-lookin' senator whose name escapes me prod Trump into war?

Tom Cotton.

Happy 2020 ...

For anyone who recognizes the name Marlette: Andy is Doug’s nephew.

Interesting analysis of the Bret Stephens kerfuffle over a recent column. Do columnists dry up?  How come the NYT did such a hasty, sloppy post-publication edit?  Has copy editing gone the way of spell checking?

https://politi.co/2ZBFZnS

mtierney said:

Interesting analysis of the Bret Stephens kerfuffle over a recent column. Do columnists dry up?  How come the NYT did such a hasty, sloppy post-publication edit?  Has copy editing gone the way of spell checking?

https://politi.co/2ZBFZnS

 Not sure what this has to do with the Rosegarden.  You are aware that there is a thread just about the Times?

mtierney said:

Has copy editing gone the way of spell checking?

No.

Which way has spell-checking gone?

Regardless, the Times's copy-editing could use some work.

mtierney said:

Interesting analysis of the Bret Stephens kerfuffle over a recent column. Do columnists dry up?  How come the NYT did such a hasty, sloppy post-publication edit?  Has copy editing gone the way of spell checking?

https://politi.co/2ZBFZnS

 this is what happens when you bring on a white conservative male as a quota hire. 

ml1 said:

 this is what happens when you bring on a white conservative male as a quota hire. 

 of course, he's a lot worse than that. He's got a skin as thin as a bedbug's wing and he's just generally incompetent.

Any good copy editor (my wife, for one) would point out that bed bugs are wingless.

DaveSchmidt said:

Any good copy editor (my wife, for one) would point out that bed bugs are wingless.

Any good copy editor (my wife, for one) would point out the meaning of “vestigial” and roll his or eyes at a writer who dug in his heels to defend “thin as a bedbug’s wing.”

(Unless the simile was intended to be humorously ironic, in which case it has other issues.)

First - since the wing actually exists, functional or not, the sentence is correct.

And since bedbug was picked deliberately and has a secondary meaning, I think I would win the fight with the copy editor.

.

“skin as thin as a bed bug’s alibi.”

*mic drop*

hmmm. an alibi seems far less disconnected to a bed bug than some vestigial wings.

Anyway, less is more - the best edit would be to simply leave the wings out, since bed bugs are pretty thin all by themselves.

switching gears....

I came across this twitter thread whose subject is Benghazi, more or less. The main tweet is by a cousin of Ambassador Stephens. It's worth a read.

Especially by mt. And I mean that will all sincerity.

https://twitter.com/Lollardfish/status/1212125141817331713

Nothing about why the administration lied about Benghazi over and over again.

Oh, I remember,  Benghazi took place just weeks before the election.

Oh,  I did adopt a shelter cat recently.

mtierney said:

Nothing about why the administration lied about Benghazi over and over again.

Oh, I remember,  Benghazi took place just weeks before the election.

Oh,  I did adopt a shelter cat recently.

 There's a thread here on MOL where the "administration lied about Benghazi" claim is thoroughly debunked.

It's kind of long (about 698 pages now), but most of the debunking is in the earlier pages.

drummerboy said:

hmmm. an alibi seems far less disconnected to a bed bug than some vestigial wings.

Anyway, less is more - the best edit would be to simply leave the wings out, since bed bugs are pretty thin all by themselves.

 I don't know why anyone would edit out the wings reference.  What could be thinner than something that doesn't exist?

*eye roll*

DaveSchmidt said:

*eye roll*

nohero said:

 There's a thread here on MOL where the "administration lied about Benghazi" claim is thoroughly debunked.

It's kind of long (about 698 pages now), but most of the debunking is in the earlier pages.

 One person’s debunking is another person’s coverup.

mtierney said:

nohero said:

 There's a thread here on MOL where the "administration lied about Benghazi" claim is thoroughly debunked.

It's kind of long (about 698 pages now), but most of the debunking is in the earlier pages.

 One person’s debunking is another person’s coverup.

No, they're opposites.  A coverup subtracts facts.  I was referring to the debunking, which added facts. 

I have it on the highest authority that Trump is showing us how much of a weak man he is.

“Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate...So the only way he figures he’s going to get reelected, and as sure as you’re sitting there, is to start a war with Iran.” pic.twitter.com/CCKsY7SKoV

— Tim O'Brien (@TimOBrien) January 3, 2020

The General had worked his military schemes for decades  and had big ideas for the future. A Hitler in the making — with medals?

From the earlier Times link:

The United States and Iran have long been involved in a shadow war in battlegrounds across the Middle East — including in Iraq, Yemen and Syria. The tactics have generally involved using proxies to carry out the fighting, providing a buffer from a direct confrontation between Washington and Tehran that could draw America into yet other ground conflict with no discernible endgame.

The potential for a regional conflagration was a basis of the Obama administration’s push for a 2015 agreement that froze Iran’s nuclear program in return for sanctions relief.

Mr. Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018, saying that Mr. Obama’s agreement had emboldened Iran, giving it economic breathing room to plow hundreds of millions of dollars into a campaign of violence around the region. Mr. Trump responded with a campaign of “maximum pressure” that began with punishing new economic sanctions, which began a new era of brinkmanship and uncertainty, with neither side knowing just how far the other was willing to escalate violence and risk a wider war. In recent days, it has spilled into the military arena.

General Suleimani once described himself to a senior Iraqi intelligence official as the “sole authority for Iranian actions in Iraq,” the official later told American officials in Baghdad.

In a speech denouncing Mr. Trump, General Suleimani was even less discreet — and openly mocking.

“We are near you, where you can’t even imagine,” he said. “We are ready. We are the man of this arena.”