15 thoughts on “Thursday Open Thread”

1. Evangelicals are hinting that Trump’s abandonment of  the Kurds in Syria may mean that they (finally) support Trump less.   

   This is a danger zone for this administration when it comes to evangelicals. They see religious persecution, Iran gaining a foothold, Israel facing threats and the possibility of ISIS reemerging, and what Trump keeps talking about is the land, and the money, and the deal-making,” said the longtime Trump friend. “The moral compass is missing, and he’s off balance here with evangelicals.”

   Pat Robertson said that $rump may be “in danger of losing the Mandate of Heaven.” 
   I thought that Heaven only gave mandates to kings and emperors, not elected officials.

    

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   1. Hahahahahahahahahahaha
      snrk

      Seriously?

      A confessed fornicator – cheated on wife and mom #1, with #2 and others, 
      Cheated on # 2 with #3 and others, cheated on #3 with others
      Evangelicals: <crickets>
       

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   2. “Let he who hasn’t raw-dogged a porn star while third baby momma is nursing his fifth child cast the first stone”

       

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2. Several media stories included the detail of Rep. Lamborn delivering Chick-fil-A to those who invaded the SCIF.

   Wonder how all those military and retired military in Lamborn's district appreciate his apparent endorsement of Representatives who took their cell phones in and left the door open to people coming and going. 

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   1. I'm sure they don't give a rat's ass either way.

      And even if they did, they would run two or three primary challengers against Lamborn who would split the 60% who would prefer someone other than him (i.e., Bentley Rayburn, Lionel Rivera, Jeff Crank, Owen Hill or Daryl Glen) and let Lamborn be renominated with 40%.

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3. I found this fascinating – why the original terminals were 80×25.

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   1. Filled in a couple of gaps in my knowledge of that history… I'll add that it was convenient that the standard dot pitch for old CRTs was just dense enough to comfortably display the 80×24 (or 80×25 – the 25th line was usually used as a status line or left unused) character output.

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   2. Great read David!  As good or better than my favorite program, "Connections" by James Burke. 

      One footnote though — I was demo'ing Microsoft's Multiplan spreadsheet at a trade show back in the day (1982) with a VT100 compatible CRT from TeleVideo ($1,400!) that could, at the touch of a button, flip from 80 character mode to 132 character mode (so you could see what the printer output would look like).  It didn't take much to wow the rubes back then 🙂

       

       

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4. WOTD from Ezra Klein at Vox: "High Crimes and Misdemeanors."

   Definitions:

   In Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide, Cass Sunstein says that the impeachment power applies to the “egregious violation of the public trust while in office.” 

   In Impeachment: A Handbook, Charles Black Jr. says high crimes and misdemeanors describe offenses that “so seriously threaten the order of political society as to make pestilent and dangerous the continuance in power of their perpetrator.” 

   In To End a Presidency, Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz write, “impeachable offenses involve corruption, betrayal or an abuse of power that … risk grave injury to the nation.” 

   When I asked Gene Healy for his simplest definition, he said, “High crimes and misdemeanors are serious misconduct that demonstrates in officials unfitness to hold high office or to wield power.”

   …

   Donald Trump’s plan was explicitly to force a statement from the president of Ukraine saying that his political rival Joe Biden was under investigation for corruption. If the scheme had worked — and it nearly did — the election itself would have been compromised. When Black spoke of offenses that “so seriously threaten the order of political society as to make pestilent and dangerous the continuance in power of their perpetrator,” this is the kind of offense he described: an act that forces us to doubt the nature of elections so long as the perpetrator is a participant.

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   1. At this point I believe that impeachment over the named offense of Bribery should be back on the table (and should never have been off of it).

      Extortion – the extraction of something of value over a threat of something damaging – was considered Bribery at the time the Constitution was written.

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5. But his emails!
    

   Wilbur Ross, still Commerce Secretary in spite of many corruption scandals and the deaths of West Virginia miners In his mine, has kept four private email accounts, which he uses to conduct Commerce business, according to Politico. 

   This is essentially the same “crime” Hillary Clinton was accused of, and recently cleared of any wrongdoing. It’s far from clear that Ross has done no wrong. 
    

   Lock him up!

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   1. They’d have to wake him up to cuff him. 

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      1. I understand Wilbur's need for naps.
         I too have that need.
         One beer at lunch and it is snooze time.

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   2. +
      Kushner
      Ivanka
      most cabinet secretaries (look at the depositions for those deposed – they all include private email – whch isn't generally illegal) 
       

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6. She's overwhelmed by the vapors! Get Blanche to the fainting couch!

   https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/impeachment-inquiry-10-24-2019/index.html

   So if you are scoring this at home, we have the Senate being asked to vote on a resolution condemning the impeachment process because one of Trump's stools tools has been instructed to preemptively attack the impeachment process rather than wait for the managers to appear and present the articles of impeachment at which time said tool could simply vote to acquit.

   One nice thing about it:  Cory Gardner will get to vote on this.

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