I totally agree with you on everything except McMaster’s role here; my sense about him is that he jumped into security advisor role after Flynn in order to limit the damage that someone else might do. The security and defense policy of the Obama era at least appears to be continuing on, regardless of how Russia may…

This is a really valuable discussion, and applies to all sorts of workplace situations.

Of all the amazing things in this article, the one that strikes me for some reason is the thing about Jean-Luc Ponty. Hard to imagine a more 70s figure than a fusion jazz violinist....may be a little obscure now, but people certainly knew who he was, back in the day.

Right, I just think we are a very long way from the imposition of out-and-out martial law. Trump is, politically and otherwise, quite weak, and I think even he realizes that at some level.

Believe me, it’s weird to find myself writing that. As obviously shady as Nixon was, he got away with way more than people knew at the time.

The latter won’t happen, I’m pretty sure. I don’t mean to jinx it, but the concept of doing that in such a large and diffuse country like this one...doesn’t seem likely, and there are number of safeguards in place to prevent it. Trump’s supporters are a quiet bunch, by and large, and would much rather sit on their…

I’m feeling optimistic for some reason, though. It’s at least the second Saturday Night Massacre to occur, in a very public way, not four months into Trump’s term here. Sure Watergate was farther along at that point, but hey, in the Trump era, everything’s moving at warp speed with less than half the brains and…

I can understand that; just for me, that post came off as going farther than I wanted it to. But everything that you’re saying about his lack of advocacy for the disabled is true. It would truly be something if he addressed, even a little, the issues he’s faced in his life as a paraplegic. But he hasn’t really. It…

Oh, no. Yeow, I didn’t see that myself, and as angry as I am about this and other things he’s done, I think that sort of joke is over the line for me and I sincerely did not intend that. I’m sorry for not being more careful.

Fuck this spineless piece of shit. If you’re so far to the right that Rick Perry disagrees with you about shit like Jade Helm, there is no hope for you.

Cool article. As a child of the 70s, I chowed down a lot of tater-tot casserole. My mom did rather standard Southern fare (every meal was a version of meat-and-three, she did fried chicken quite well and the inevitable Sunday joint for lunch after church) and though she was pretty into cooking, practically every…

He was great at it! Rare that a VP could make one proud to be American, but personally, I was feeling it with him. Very much knew his role and was very effective, I thought.

“Too sharp” — that is what I thought about “No is Sessions’ second favorite N-word,” and people audibly gasped at that one. But reflecting a little further, I thought why not. Considering the current political climate, there is no way to make polite jokes about people, especially those who don’t have a sense of humor…

But that would be far too sensible and considerate. Both, of course, are a sign of weakness.

This is an awful thought to have, but I’m just thinking that some form of calamity has to occur to sweep all this away. Even at that, I certainly hate for the virtue-cratic philosophy people—high-handed, hypocritical assholes such as William Bennett—to be proven correct by the culture every single day. Ultimately,…

Nice username, btw. Massive XTC fan here also.

I’m sorry to hear about this. I thought the book was fantastic—my whole family read it, and I plowed through the entire thing in one very long holiday-break day.

Perhaps they don’t want stains to show up as much...? Still though, I remember going back and forth between being really scared of Randy Powell’s Francis from the Logan’s Run TV show, to dressing up like him for Halloween one year — I suppose I was 8. So I guess I came out OK. Power in the dark side, y’all.

Yes. As someone who’s been in higher education for almost 30 years, I have never heard a single positive thing about Stanford administration or the academic culture, except that they’re fuckin’ awesome and everyone should respect that. The things that they do best — engineering, business and the sciences — don’t…

Yes. This is one of these internet rabbit-hole things, but I saw last year that Lisa Cant had signed with them, and thought, basically, “fuckin’ hell, what kind of operation is this?” — especially for someone with a fairly high profile, not all that long before.