The insurrectionists are back-pedaling frantically. Charlie Kirk is claim now that it was “stupid” and “unwise” to invade the capitol, but not criminal. They didn’t mean it! Another benefit of the collapse of Parler (and it’s sloppy coding) is that their plans in the runup have been exposed, and while I can agree that they are “stupid”, the intent is transparent. A sampling:
Is anyone surprised that Amazon and Apple removed all support for Parler?
What I find ominous, though, is that only a few in that sample mention the 6th of January — most were focused on the 20th, the day of the inauguration. Next week. Will the Washington DC police finally take these threats seriously? Will the bad guys try to sneak in by mingling with the inauguration crowds? Are some of the planning acts of terrorism against random people?
Maybe they just want to make sure that the inauguration is even smaller than Trump’s. Mission accomplished, I suspect: I wouldn’t recommend attending.
I sure won’t. That’s the day after my classes begin!
What do they have against teachers? They clearly never met one.
I found myself in a very weird place today, as I was teaching my A-Level class the first book of Tacitus’s Histories. This book is about the various coups and insurrections of the tumultuous 69AD (the Year of Four Emperors). We were looking mainly at the account of Otho’s usurpation of power from Galba on January 15th.
It was rather strange resuming this text after the Christmas break to find that an invasion of the Capitol by supporters of a paranoid wannabe tyrant had in fact happened in the interim, albeit a derivative Capitol and a far less impressive paranoid tyrant than Otho. There was even vacillation as to how those in charge should respond – either holing up and avoiding the mobs or sending troops out to quell them. It was eerie.
I haven’t investigated a source, but from what I’ve heard, they are bringing in 20K national guard, guns ready, to protect the inauguration. If an insurrection attempt occurs, it will not go as the insurrectionists expect…
And it’s almost a sure bet that Trump will pardon all of the insurrectionists on the way out. Bleh.
” Will the Washington DC police finally take these threats seriously?”
You don’t live in the area. That said going to work yesterday, one thing I did notice was the high degree of paranoia among the DC police. They were pretty paranoid last week leading up to the riot. The Federal Capitol Police on the other hand wasn’t. And then there was the Mango Mussolini’s minions deliberately delaying outside intervention from the National Guard and State Police. Both Maryland and Virginia had state police and National Guard forces ready to assist, but both the Whitehouse and Pentagon deliberately delayed approval.
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/533546-hogan-on-delayed-national-guard-deployment-to-capitol-i-cant-tell-you
So cut the DC cops a break they have to deal with tRump’s fallout.
@killyosaur
Although I hope they are not underestimated for what havoc they’re capable of, it does not seem these insurrectionists have the means of organizing as well as one expects from, say, a national guard. Assuming law enforcement this time doesn’t want to be caught with their pants down.
So I also imagine an angry mob with maybe some locally gathered militia here and there, ready, I guess, to run mouth-foaming into batons and bullets. Hopefully rubber ones.
From what I understand, it isn’t just DC. Trump’s Yahoos are planning on showing up to the statehouse of all 50 states.
@ahcuah
He can’t pardon insurrectionists that plan to hit the inauguration on the 20th, because he’ll no longer be president after that.
He might pardon the 6th of January insurrectionists, but I doubt he will. They’re fodder to him and he’ll be too busy trying to pardon family and friends, and himself.
There shouldn’t BE an inauguration crowd. In case Biden hadn’t noticed, there’s a deadly pandemic going on. He should have a small ceremony with an extremely limited slate of guests, all masked and distanced, He should take pride in having the LEAST attended inauguration in history, saving his guest from both the virus, and the plague of Nazis.
There was a massive failure in intelligence gathering and planning last week by DHS/FBI.
This was despite the fact that a high school kid could have written those threat assessment reports and issued the warnings.
All the planning was out in the open on the internet.
I’m sure it was a mixture of incompetence after Trump burned down the Federal government agencies and deliberate as well. How much of one versus the other should be up to the next congressional investigation to find out.
It would fit in with Trump’s current plan to burn down as much of the Federal government as he can and own the libs.
It wouldn’t take more than a minute or two.
A blanket pardon in a sentence or two.
Probably written by one of his aides so it reads like it was written by an English speaker.
January 20 is the first day of spring semester instruction for me. I teach calculus during the final hour of the Trump administration and precalculus during the first hour of the Biden administration. After my class sessions are over, I’ll check the news media for the latest body count, because I expect acts of violence to be met with lethal force on that day. Members of Congress should keep their heads down. Way down.
Probably because the less stupid of them have caught up upon the fact that there is indeed a chance that they#ll be beaten to death with a thin blue line flag by an off-duty colleague.
Warnings about rightwing extremism were raised a decade ago, and those who raised them were threatened into silence, their careers destroyed for daring to tell the truth. The US could end up with a guerilla war for the next 20 years because it failed to weed out white supremacy when it had the chance.
Those who silenced the warnings liked the racism in government and policing, just not the violence. They should be held accountable because they made current events possible. But likely never will.
https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2020/07/21/right-wing-terrorism-warning-signs
Duckbilled Platypus (#1) –
Look up what the khmer rouge did to anyone they deemed “intellectual”, even those who simply wore glasses. For decades, the Coup Klux Klan have been spewing the same anti-science, anti-education rhetoric as the KR. The only difference between them is christianity instead of marxism.
There won’t be any crowd and you couldn’t attend if you wanted to. The National Mall is closed and will stay closed for the foreseeable future.
anthonybarcellos
“…calculus…” [and then] “…precalculus…” isn’t that the wrong way round?
I really wish Joe & Kamala would hold the inauguration at a secure, undisclosed location, recorded for re-broadcast later.
@9 @17: The inauguration and its celebrations are being organized as essentially virtual events. This FAQ from AP and WTOP, a D.C. outlet, has a lot of details:
https://wtop.com/inauguration/2021/01/faq-what-are-the-current-plans-for-the-2021-inauguration/
The outgoing idiot is supposedly planning an attempt to upstage it.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/report-trump-aides-putting-together-goodbye-crowd-for-outgoing-potus-on-inauguration-day
Hopefully when Trump exits he’ll be so harassed by lawsuits and failing support that he’ll start to shut down. But for some reason, I keep thinking of Rasputin who according to legend was nearly impossible to put down.
Looks like Trump has tapped into a crazy vein that’s nowhere near tapped out. Keeping up with modern day Rambos.
https://www.wired.com/story/america-civilian-tactical-training-industry/
I read somewhere: “Coup Klutz Klan”.
I understand that’s been denied – closed for Inauguration Day, but not otherwise. But perhaps a Washingtonian (DC-ite?) can tell us definitely.
My concern would be with Nazis in the Secret Service or National Guard – those guarding political leaders are always in the best position to assassinate them (e.g. Indira Gandhi).
Re: voidhawk @ #7…
GAvin Newsom (Gov. of Calif.) is activating 1000 state national guard to be in Sacramento this weekend.
The threat the state capitols is for 17 Jan….this Sunday.
raven@11 I am trying to imagine Trump issuing a pre-emptive pardon for all who commit federal crimes at the inauguration and a self-pardon for inciting the rebellion that will result from offering impunity. It seems like you shouldn’t be able to use pardons that way, but I would expect the usual suspects (at least 80% of the GOP congress) to defend it as totally normal and acceptable behavior for a president (as long as Democrats don’t try that shit).
In practice, I think he may be too distracted to come up with something like that. I am sure he has no interest in pardoning anyone from last week, not unless there’s a way for them to be useful to him. He views those who fail as embarrassment, Michael Cohen for instance.
True. And “many people are saying” that the next American fascist leader will be smarter and more organised than Trump. But I have my doubts about whether he’s easily replaceable. Trump is lazy, and in many ways not very bright, but he reminds me of this assessment of Adolf Hitler:
Strasser was an early member of the Nazi Party, who knew Hitler personally, but took the “socialist” part of the name seriously, was expelled by Hitler in 1930, and fled the country when the latter came to power.
PaulBC@22,
Yes, it’s now in Trump’s interest to pretend that the Capitol invaders were nothing to do with him – indeed, he’s apparently been repeating the “Antifa” lie. And if he did pardon them, they would be unable to invoke the Fifth Amendment if called to testify against him.
The Trump mob also reveals confusion to the point of category error. From NYT:
How am I supposed to respond? I “think” The American revolution was a revolutionary war. The name is kind of a giveaway. If you’re declaring war on the US, you don’t get to chair a local party like it’s government as usual. That’s the choice here. As the Declaration of Independence states “Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.”
Nobody ever said that people cannot rebel against their own government, nor that they shouldn’t ever do so. But a statement like the above is seditious. Trump Republicans seem to want it both ways. That somehow they are “in charge” of the government of the US, and believe Trump “won” the election, but they’ve declared the government as illegitimate as George III’s control over the American colonies.
I don’t want a war, but they’re the ones declaring war. I think they should be treated as any other enemy.
@#14, Intransitive
Try “in the 1990s under Clinton”. “Right-wing militias” were in the news all the way back then. The truly astonishing thing is that neither Clinton nor Obama seem to have considered them to be worth really prosecuting.
(Or maybe not so astonishing… given Obama’s more recent, post-White-House statements about things, he was apparently so terrified that the Republicans would call him names that he let them dictate policy in all kinds of ways. He has now admitted that he knew — just as everybody who was paying attention did — that the drone bombing he kept ordering was mostly killing innocent civilians, but he felt he had to keep killing them because otherwise the Republicans might say he was “soft on terror”. What a great guy! Gosh, I remember back in 2008, when I voted for him thinking he was a Democrat.)
KG@23 The US isn’t prewar Germany either. There are plenty of people who feel wounded by imagined slights, but they don’t seem to have the discipline to put together an effective national organization. I think the US is going to look like 90s Yugoslavia before it ever looks like Nazi Germany. I admit I don’t know enough about either to make that statement with any confidence. I don’t expect the outcome to be good either way, but Trumpists don’t have their Albert Speer or Wernher von Braun as far as I can tell. They dismiss nearly anything that would require social cohesion and commitment to goals other than fomenting chaos.
Note: I am not glorifying Nazi Germany, and I apologize if I give that impression. I just think the US is a different case entirely.
If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably isn’t.
We can hope though, and in this case, there are some good reasons for it.
Trump’s little temper tantrum when he lost the election is costing him a lot.
.1. His bank, Deutsche Bank, is abandoning him any way they can.
Of course, the US banks long ago decided he wasn’t a good credit risk.
.2. A lot of his business counterparties are also abandoning him.
New York city is canceling their contracts with the Trump organization.
.3. I doubt if the Trump brand is worth all that much either.
.4. Even parts of the GOP, a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump are starting to abandon him.
.5. There are also a lot people who are going after him after he loses the quasi-immunity of being president for taxes etc..
.6. His mind also seems to be going downhill, probably due to some age related condition.
Power and money are interchangeable and Trump is definitely losing power.
Ironically, none of this had to be this way.
Trump could have easily been the hero of the Covid-19 pandemic by doing nothing. Just stand aside, be the front person, and let the scientists and medical people do what they know how to do, which is deal with pandemics.
Not very bright, a GOP core value.
The better analogy would be the US Civil War.
“What the crap do you think the US Civil War was?”
A five year conflict that killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.
And oh yeah, your side lost!!!
You lost again too. Deal with it loser.
Do people really think the Feds will be caught with their pants down this time around? Expect a massive contingency of armed guard troops, along with the assets they bring along for show, if nothing else. Drones? APCs? Snipers? Tanks? Attack helicopters?
When responses to these redneck threats are met with adjectives like, “chilling” and “terrifying” and “frightening”, y’all queda has already won. They eat this stuff up. Terrorists being terrorists.
DC shit stirrers WILL be met with overwhelming force. Thousands of well-armed National Guard troops are already there, sleeping on the floors of the Capitol, a reflex action to last week’s attack. I’m more worried about damage done to historical sites and buildings caused by military-grade return fire, than any loss of innocent life. Will state governments be similarly prepared? One hopes.
Just an update on my previous post. The Washington Post had a pretty article about the account of two of the DC cops on the front page. It’s pretty brutal what they went through. Here’s how one DC police described it:
“They were overthrowing the Capitol, the seat of democracy, and I f—ing went,” Fanone said.
The officers at the West Terrace eventually pushed people away from the doors. It was only then that Fanone saw the immense, volatile crowd stretched out in front of him and realized what police were up against.
“We weren’t battling 50 or 60 rioters in this tunnel,” he said in the first public account from D.C. police officers who fought to protect the Capitol during last week’s siege. “We were battling 15,000 people. It looked like a medieval battle scene.”
Someone in the crowd grabbed Fanone’s helmet, pulled him to the ground and dragged him on his stomach down a set of steps. At around the same time, police said, the crowd pulled a second officer down the stairs. Police said that chaotic and violent scene was captured in a video that would later spread widely on the Internet.
Rioters swarmed, battering the officers with metal pipes peeled from scaffolding and a pole with an American flag attached, police said. Both were struck with stun guns. Fanone suffered a mild heart attack and drifted in and out of consciousness.
All the while, the mob was chanting “U.S.A.” over and over and over again.
“We got one! We got one!” Fanone said he heard rioters shout. “Kill him with his own gun!”
I know that the DC police have their problems, but in this case they honestly tried. I’m still impressed with how they tried to defend our democracy, with no fucking help from the Mango Mussolini or his crowd of minions known as the GOP
Would help if I gave the url to the article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/01/14/dc-police-capitol-riot/?arc404=true
@23 Yeah, Otto and his brother Gregor ,they put the Socialist into National Socialism .Gregor wasn’t as lucky as his brother who fled Germany when adolf got the keys to the Reichstag ,he was murdered during the Night Of The Long Knives ,in 1934 .
@28 And his bestie rudi is no longer friends with him ,something about him wanting $20,000 a day to stay being his lawyer ,and donald saying on your bike .
Never mind steve bannon is riding to the rescue .
davidc1 @33
This is standard operating procedure for Trump (and always has been) — get someone to provide services, and then stiff them.
Allison@34 The one case where I actually believe Scott Adams is when he says Trump is a master hypnotist. At least, it would explain a lot. All of these people thinking “Yeah, but he won’t stiff me. I have been so loyal to him.”
Cheeto is a standard issue abusive narcissist. He cannot deal with rejection in any form. As in any abusive relationship, the abusers become even more dangerous when their victims end the relationship.
America is breaking up with her tyrant.
When the insurrectionists see Trump distancing himself from them some will be very angry, and other feelings. How many ways can things be justified towards or away from seeing Trump’s deception and lies?
And is stiffing Giuliani finally going to be enough to prevent deflections from Trumps cheating nature?
Apparently Trump’s lies and deceptions are considered a feature and not a bug by his acolytes. He’s a role model for other psychopaths and psychopath wannabes. Other true believers think he’s being canny and that his real messages are coming to them through morse code or whatever.
Sure, some sleepy heads are waking up to what’s going on, but it tend to think that they’re not necessarily supporters so much as your garden variety It-Can’t-Happen-Here types. One scenario I see going forward is not Trump or a charismatic replacement, though that’s possible, but the Trump movement, which might be forced underground but not extinguished. After all, this cold civil war is just a morphed extension of a war that supposedly ended over 150 years ago. Plus some very bad, pernicious precedents have been set especially in the last four years, not to mention sabotage of the system and mine fields set for the next administration.
PaulBC@23,
I agree that the USA isn’t Weimar Germany, and Fascism 2.0 isn’t identical to the original, but if Trump had won, he’d have had another four years to destroy what there is of American democracy – and after the last two months, no-one can be in any honest doubt that that’s what he and the Republican Party would like to do. And let’s remember the combined margin for Biden in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin was 42918 votes. If Trump had got just over that many more in the right places, or Biden the same amount fewer, or just over half had gone from Biden to Trump, Trump would have had 269 electoral college votes, the decision would have gone to the House, and they would have chosen Trump. So the USA has had an extremely narrow escape from fascist dictatorship – and it is likely to be only a brief reprieve, without political action at all levels to defeat fascism.
KG@40
Well, yeah. I agree with this, as I have commented elsewhere. Trump is bad enough having been resoundingly rejected at the polls. If he’d actually won (even by Bush v. Gore margins), he would have taken it as a mandate for autocratic power. This was my main fear ahead of the election. Things could still be very bad, but there’s a lot more cognitive dissonance for his supporters to deal with.
@39
For a couple of years, I’ve been saying that there needs to be a resolution that no exercise of presidential power under Trump can be taken as a precedent. (Sadly, my words don’t carry as much weight as former AG Fred Flintstone’s claims of presidential power.) If the US makes it through this crisis, there needs to be a massive postmortem to identity every alleged “loophole” in the constitution and make sure this doesn’t happen again. Unfortunately, anything like that would be hijacked by the people it’s supposed to defend against, so if there’s a good solution I don’t see it.
@ Duckbilled Platypus, #1
I suspect it comes down to:
1.) A large majority of teachers in the US, particularly at elementary school levels, are women…
2.) …who told them what to do…
3.) …and that’s it. Nothing pisses off Nazis/fascists more than a woman telling them what to do. Even decades later, they’re still stewing about it.
Well, duh. No kidding.
The FBI is looking for 200 people so far and has already arrested 100.
They are all hoping and expecting that Trump will pardon them.
It’s the only way they are going to escape justice since they extensively documented their crimes online.
Shaman guy Chansley was making both verbal and written threats against congresspeople and VP Pence.
He was also openly carrying a deadly weapon. His “flagpole” was also a spear with a large shiny steel spear point at the end of it. It was easily capable of killing anyone on the sharp end of it.
Now of course, his mom is busy explaining how he is a delicate little snowflake of a child. (I can’t roll my eyes enough at that.)
The excerpt from Otto Strasser quoted at 23 bears multiple readings. Cult followings come into existence around charismatic leaders because they are highly skilled at manipulating people. It’s what they do best. I agree that we came very close to having members of congress assassinated by magas while live streaming themselves.
Now I can only hope that our criminal branches manage to use the full force of law on every person who participated, and there are real consequences and meaningful reform.
Imagine being the head of the FBI right now. How can they do their job properly if the cause of the insurrection can fire the agency head?
How do you proceed when members of congress and police agencies are among those attempting insurrection?
It’s been reported that some GOP members are voting no because they are in fear of their base! I’ve no sympathy for their justified fears, only anger that they are too cowardly to do their damn job, and act to immediately remove him.
Thankfully we have people who cannot be fired stepping up to insure that he will go. Hopefully cutting off the head will kill the magamonster.
It will go far to deprogram the cult. Sadly there is no way to erase fascism completely.
I saw the same capitol building full of Guard that everyone else saw.
But, as a retired soldier and former National Guard member, I saw the correct number of carbines, but nary a hint of ammunition for those carbines. The NG doesn’t keep ammunition at their armories, that stays on the base ammunition supply point. Once someone forms an ammo detail and picks up the ammunition, it’d have to loaded into magazines for issue and use.
As for possible actions by troublemakers, there’s tons of chatter about state capitol antics, likely to be noisemakers. I’m more concerned with a few “true believers” engaging, willing to trade their own lives for their target.
I’m not especially concerned about the Guard, as soldiers are trained to follow orders and anyone presenting a threat, even one of their own would be swiftly neutralized.
it is clear that agent orange is heading for legal trouble at least in the state of New York. he will also have to answer to the Impeachment starting some time next week or so. With his finally publicly stating that he is not going to pay Giuliani, I never thought that he would get payed. Add his famous debt problem to the list as well, what lawyer would be willing to work for him for free with his now diminished reputation and prospects. He needs good ones not dime store bozos if he wants to get off. He knows what he has done I think it adds to his desperation, he is going down in flames and will loose in court like he usually does.
There are still some petty crap he can pull “he still has one tooth”
@48, “his [hair furor] finally publicly stating that he is not going to pay Giuliani”…
Eh? Can you please provide a citation for the emboldened part of that claim?
There are numerous reports stiffing Giuliani is his claimed intent, but none (that I can find) he has publicly said so…
Some of the Trumpy action is supposed to be on Sunday. A better thing on Sunday is:
Major Biden’s Indoguration Party
Sunday, January 17 at 3pm EST
It’s a Humane Association fund raiser on Zoom. Can you imagine Trump having a pet?
Rudy Giuliani.
I think it’s more like Trump’s fattened Rudy up for dinner.
captainjack@52 I’ll pass. He hasn’t exactly aged like a fine wine.
PaulBC @ # 42: If the US makes it through this crisis, there needs to be a massive postmortem to identity every alleged “loophole” in the constitution and make sure this doesn’t happen again.
That will happen right after the official National Soul Searching About Vietnam that we will get around to once we’ve finished with various distractions.
@49
would you like to loan him money on the future payments he will get from that man?
one of the benefits of that man being band from tweeting and other media is not hearing very much from him save a public appearances
uncle frogy
@55, In this case, it’s perhaps a quibble, but I detest specific claims which cannot be supported. In this particular example, the claim seems unambiguous: Hair furor publicly stated he’s stiffing his pet. Main problem seems to be no such claim about publicly saying so is known (to me, at least). Hence the request for a citation (and, as I reminder, I searched before asking).
It’s a simple request: Provide a citation for the claim he publicly stated he would not pay Giuliani.
And YES, I concur hair furor is very probably trying to weasel out of paying hair furor. It seems to very very well fit with hair furor’s MO. What I am asking for is a citation to support the claim “his [hair furor] finally publicly stating that he is not going to pay Giuliani”.
@56, fairly obvious correction (sorry!): I concur hair furor is very probably trying to weasel out of paying hair furor → I concur hair furor is very probably trying to weasel out of paying Giuliani.
(Albeit the original typo would also perhaps fit hair furor’s MO ?)
It turns out some of the US Capitol building attackers can count. To at least 5.
That is how many days they have left to be pardoned by Trump.
Expect a lot of whining, pleading, begging, and appeals to quid pro quo’s between now and January 20th. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are also a few bribes thrown in there somewhere.
@56
like a guy from Oklahoma used to say I only know what I read in the papers.
It has been reported from insiders that he is not going to pay “his lawyer” as far as I know he has hardly said much of anything publicly compared to what has been the norm until now. Was my comment an over statement maybe but from “the papers” not too far from reality such as it is.
uncle frogy
@59, Waffle waffle waffle. Again, citation(s?) for “publicly stating that he is not going to pay Giuliani”. And if you have ever “read in the papers” that, you must be able to provide a citation.
Ok here is a simple search showing some of the places I heard about it. If your knowledge is better or sources deeper let me know so I do not have to make such errors in the future.
uncle frogy
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=trump+not+paying+guliani
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-isolated-impeachment/2021/01/13/0595675a-55b6-11eb-a931-5b162d0d033d_story.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/us/politics/trump-video-capitol-riot.html
[blf, mate! unclefrogy is not best at precision, but IMO quite cluey and honest.
“Was my comment an over statement maybe” is enough of a concession, even for me]
@61. Waffle waffle waffle. Again, citation(s?) for “publicly stating that he [hair furor] is not going to pay Giuliani”. And if you have ever “read in the papers” that, you must be able to provide a citation.
To-date, all that has been supplied is vague search results(@61), but nothing to specifically support the unambiguous claim “publicly stating that he is not going to pay Giuliani”.
STOP. There is simply evidence of supporting such a claim.
Initially, I presumed it was a simple mistake: A confusion between reports-of and an actual public statement. However, I am NOW finding it very difficult to sustain that presumption.
Just STOP, or else provide a clear citation.
@63,
I AM NOT YER “MATE” BY ANY DEFINITION OF THAT TERM OR SLANG I KNOW OF.
Your ignorance is noted, blf. It’s an Aussie expression, and a very versatile one at that.
(Have I distracted you from your pernickety picking? Leave that to the experts, mate)
PS Here are some of the modes of usage: https://www.buzzfeed.com/stephanieanderson/maaaaaate
(Because I do like to educate)
John Morale accuses another of pernickety picking.
heh heh snerk snicker
Thankfully, we in the States made it through the Aussie scare of the 80s mostly unscathed. I did have a friend in college who loved quoting Crocodile Dundee “That’s not a knife… THAT’s a knife.” at nearly every opportunity. For all I know, he is still doing it now.
Then there was the Foster’s “Australian for beer” ad campaign. There are still businesses like Outback Steakhouse, but I think it mostly settled down by the mid-90s. I sometimes wonder what happened.
chigau @68: I think that’s ‘persnickety’. Yes, I’m being persnickety. And I think John was implying he’s the expert.
But he’s right about ‘mate’. Even Brits use it casually. I often say ‘thanks mate’ to delivery men.
I’ve watched so many news reports in the last week, each reporting some new detail that seemed preposterous yet is true. The various news channels are blending together a bit at this point.
waves to Chigau
@71
Blending, huh, what’s next? Some kind of shared understanding of reality? (Not likely.)
@Paul
More that they all have similar sets (CBS, ABC, CNN) and are reporting the same breaking events.
I have noted that YouTube has removed some of the objectionable content that kept coming up in my suggested video list for the last few months.
@Rob Grigjanis #70:
‘Even’?! Who do you think Australians inherited it from?
@69 Wrote ” Aussie scare of the 80s” LOL.
Arr, avast matey!
Rich Woods @74: Right. Like New Zealand inherited rugby union from the Brits. Or Brazil inherited association football from them.
@76 Talk like a Pirate day was in Sept ,me hearty .
I wonder why we don’t say “mate” in the US, except in compounds like roommate, classmate, playmate, or first mate on a ship. Maybe it caught on after the split.
My favorite British-American distinction is probably use of the word “reckon.” In the US, it is Southern (still used I think) and makes you sound like a hick. I don’t think it carries anything like that in British English.
Rob Grigjanis @70
I don’t think it is, and the OED concise agrees that “pernickety” is the correct word to use in the way it is being used here, doesn’t list “persnickety” at all. ;-)
Jazzlet @80: Yeah, it appears the ‘s’ was a 19th century American addition. I tand corrected!
A persnicious lapse in orthography.
Paul @79
There is also the verb checkmate, which according to Merriam-Webster has an entirely different etymology than the west germanic to Middle English noun.
sigh, why autocorrect? Why must you capitalize so randomly!?
I suspect the modern usage might have something to do with the revolutionary war. Americans still drink more coffee than tea.
I don’t know if modern French people use the equivalent ‘Mon frére’ but it amuses me to translate that phrase into modern English idiom.
My bro’!