Trump Reportedly Blames Kushner For Mueller, Papa John's Blames NFL For Declining Sales, Giant Planet Found Orbiting Tiny Star: P.M. Links

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  • Mark Garlick/University of Warwick

    President Trump is blaming son-in-law and White House advisor Jared Kushner for precipitating the Robert Mueller investigation, according to a report in Vanity Fair.

  • New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio told residents police were "out in very strong numbers" after yesterday's truck attack.
  • NFL sponsor Papa John's is blaming national anthem protests for declining sales.
  • A Utah nurse detained for refusing to allow a police officer to illegally draw blood from a patient received a $500,000 settlement.
  • China has ended a dispute with South Korea over the deployment of U.S. anti-missile systems, which will remain there.
  • Six women have accused filmmaker Brett Ratner of sexual misconduct.
  • Astronomers have found a giant planet, designated NGTS-1b, orbiting a dwarf star.

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Ed Krayewski is a former associate editor at Reason.

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  1. President Trump is blaming son-in-law and White House advisor Jared Kushner for precipitating the Robert Mueller investigation…

    Alt Righter Blames Jew. Film at 11.

    1. Rufus The Monocled

      Hello.

      “NFL sponsor Papa John’s is blaming national anthem protests for declining sales.”

      When sponsors start talking….

      1. Tony

        Nothing says personal responsibility like blaming the blacks for your disgusting pizza.

        1. Rufus The Monocled

          Ah. Of course.

          1. I like how he managed to squeeze his racism and virtue signaling into the same post.

            Efficient.

          2. Rhywun

            Charming, as always.

        2. and yet their customers were happy with it until now…

          1. Tony

            If you don’t want your fortunes to depend on the stupid emotional whims of racists, don’t cater to stupid emotional racists?

            1. What do the DNC’s electoral failures have to do with this?

            2. MarkLastname

              If you don’t like millionaires who play a game for a living protesting the national anthem, you’re a stupid emotional racist?

              Do you realize that, between all the types of people you hate, you clearly despise the vast majority of the country? I mean, that might make sense for a libertarian who just wants everyone to leave him alone, but for someone like you who wants to bind us all closer together in the state, it’s pretty fucking creepy that you hate the vast majority of your fellow citizens.

              1. Tony

                I think if you value maximum freedom you should probably figure out how to get the big fucking patriotic stick out of your ass and the binky out of your mouth and learn to deal with grownups making their own choices. That’s what I think.

        3. All their customers are suffering from false consciousness, eh?

      2. jcw

        Finally, boycotting works

      3. Rhywun

        I thought it was because the Rangers can’t scrounge up three goals in a game any more.

      4. CE

        I would blame Peyton Manning.

        1. Tony

          Yeah they should have done an opt-in rather than an opt-out for the whole “Get your pizza teabagged!” promotion.

      5. KBeckman

        It’s a shitty excuse for not being able to make a decent pizza.

  2. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio told residents police were “out in very strong numbers” after yesterday’s truck attack.

    Inauguration numbers?

    1. DJF

      The police were out putting up rainbow lights on buildings, hashtagging and holding hands

  3. NFL sponsor Papa John’s is blaming national anthem protests for declining sales.

    Disrespecting the troops is bad for business.

    1. Adam330

      But good for getting votes apparently.

    2. CE

      It turns out when you don’t park yourself in front of the TV to watch a 4 hour game, you have time to go out and eat a real meal.

    3. Eric

      How are they disrespecting the troops. Do “the troops” own the national anthem. Or are you propagating politically correct trope that somehow The Troops = Flag = National Anthem?

      1. MarkLastname

        I dunno, that’s how people perceive it. If I spit at your feet, you might perceive it as an insult, but maybe in my culture it’s just a way of saying your shoes could use some polishing.

  4. A Utah nurse detained for refusing to allow a police officer to illegally draw blood from a patient received a $500,000 settlement.

    Lesson? Always get yourself on video.

    1. creech

      Many of us work a lifetime to salt away a half mil and she gets it for getting hassled by a stupid cop (no injuries that I’m aware of.) The incentive to clean up a government’s police force should be to fire the cops/supervisors involved and make them, not the taxpayers, liable for damages.

      1. Cobbling the settlement out of the various agencies’ pension funds would likely spur some of those rubbernecking law enforcement present to intervene instead.

      2. Careless

        Well they fired the cop and demoted his boss. Not bad compared to most of these stories

        1. Eidde

          Now it goes to arbitration, right?

  5. China has ended a dispute with South Korea over the deployment of U.S. anti-missile systems, which will remain there.

    Another win for Trump.

    1. DJF

      Another loss for the taxpayers

      When is the US going to get allies that pay their own way.

      1. You have to spend money to make money.

  6. Six women have accused filmmaker Brett Ratner of sexual misconduct.

    Are we still even on this?

    1. ace_m82

      How?

      Also, Why?

  7. Astronomers have found a giant planet, designated NGTS-1b, orbiting a dwarf star.

    Just like Ricardo Montalban.

    1. MP

      It’s a little person star, you sizist.

    2. This is Ceti Alpha V!

      1. Why no one lauds my superior comment-layering is beyond me.

        1. Professional comment-layering should’ve included a subtle reference to Montalban being in the Planet of the Apes series.

          1. This is Sol III!

        2. CE

          We are too in awe to speak sometimes.

          1. I accept your apology.

  8. Robespierre Josef Stalin Pot

    Ed, I have a working theory. If you respond to a. weilding b. by c. and then respond to d. weilding e. by f. You are a first rate douchebag. Thoughts?

    a. A mass shooting by a native born nut
    b. A high caliber automatic rifle
    c. Shrugging
    d. An ISIS nut from a shithole
    E. An automobile
    F. Jumping up and down hysterically

    1. Robespierre Josef Stalin Pot

      I ruined the whole theory by placing an e before an I. Sorry.

      1. EscherEnigma

        Hey now, the only people allowed to kill Americans en masse are Americans, damn it! Don’t you have any respect for tradition?

        1. MarkLastname

          Deflect, deflect, deflect…

    2. CE

      I think you mean “wielding”.

      1. Procyon Rotor

        Obviously he meant “welding”. Think about it, how do you wield an automobile? I mean… you do it by being The Incredible Hulk, but I shouldn’t answer my own rhetorical questions, should I? No, I should not.

    3. No, because some people genuinely believe that the first one can’t be stopped but the second one can be. Just as some people (like you, I’m guessing, judging by the fact that you seem to think that “high caliber automatic rifle” is an actual thing that people say) believe the second one can’t be stopped but the first one can be, and that doesn’t make them “first-rate douchbags” either (although you are a convenient example that it serves as no exemption from being one).

    4. Mock-star

      ok. But when exactly has a “high caliber automatic rifle” been used?

  9. TrickyVic (old school)

    “”?New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio told residents police were “out in very strong numbers” after yesterday’s truck attack.””

    It’s always after the attack when they are out in strong numbers, never before the attack.

    1. MP

      That’s what makes it such a fantastically stupid reaction.

    2. Rhywun

      The cops are always out in very strong numbers. What he meant, but didn’t say, was that they’re being more hassley than usual.

  10. Comey was the only person with the creativity and credibility to exonerate Trump (just like he would have done for Hitlary), and would have done exactly that if Kushner hadn’t panicked and demanded Trump fire him. It was a huge blunder, and it’s only surprising that Trump hasn’t taken out his anger on Kushner a long time ago. The Saudi sword dance was another humiliation and why Trump put up with it is beyond me.

  11. My darling Drumpfenc?cken – why are you hiding from me?

  12. Stormy Dragon

    NFL sponsor Papa John’s is blaming national anthem protests for declining sales.

    Papa John’s pizza is an insult to our brave first responders and veterans.

    1. This is a fair comment.

    2. I find their product extremely acceptable.

  13. Robespierre Josef Stalin Pot

    White House can’t explain how ‘compromise’ could have prevented the Civil War

    Of course! If only Lincoln had allowed the South to consider Black people 3/5ths of a slave none of the subsequent horrors would have occurred. For 24 hrs of the week you will engage in unpaid grueling and backbreaking labor, but the other 16 are for family and recreation time

    1. CE

      Or allow them to secede and start a new country.

    2. Eidde

      Believe it or not, this used to be something of a historical consensus – the “blundering generation” theory. Of course, historians have moved on to other ideas.

      But let’s not pretend the blundering-generation theory was never a view people actually held.

      1. Eidde

        Historical fashions aren’t quite as arbitrary as clothing fashions, but they happen, and the interpretation of the past is influenced by the present.

        The Civil War, reinforced by WWI and the early Cold War, made historians think of war as a calamity which true statespersons try to avoid (WWII didn’t necessarily fit into that).

        Then the Civil Rights movement got people to thinking more about the humanity and agency of the slaves and free black persons, instead of in terms of two groups of whites failing to compromise.

        Another trend is to look at the horrors of the war, but this time not for the purpose of saying there should have been a compromise, but for the purpose of…well, I guess studying the letters of the common soldiers jives with a greater focus on people lower in the social scale, white or black.

        Stay tuned for the next twist of historical fashion…

        1. Eidde

          Pragmatically, which emphasis would you like the generals and Trump to be focusing on? The crusade idea of war, or the peacemaking idea and the assumption that war represents a failure of negotiation?

          1. I would frequently support the latter, though I’m willing to admit that’s not always the case. Certainly I think that, on average, the Crusade idea of warring to somehow save another group leads to cynical breaches of morality much more than the latter.

    3. 68W58

      North Carolina and Tennessee did not secede until after Fort Sumter and Lincoln wanted very much to keep them in the Union (as he kept Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri in the Union). He was perfectly willing to offer alternative policies to make this happen, such as emancipation of slaves by the states with compensation from the Federal government (he actually had political allies try this in the Delaware State Legislature). So, it is perfectly true to say that there were compromises proposed that might have prevented the Civil War. The deep south states refused to compromise and forced the war on the nation, but that isn’t to say that compromise couldn’t have stopped the war.

      1. Procyon Rotor

        The deep south states refused to compromise and forced the war on the nation…

        This view of responsibility for the war truly baffles me. The war was always elective for the Union. It was a war of conquest and domination of a polity who were choosing independence. For the Confederacy, it was a war of necessity in defense of their home. If the compromises suggested were unacceptable to the southern states, didn’t they have the right to reject them and choose secession? In what way was the Union forced to make war to prevent secession?

        1. MarkLastname

          Uh no. The confederacy did not form out of necessity; it formed because it feared the Lincoln admin would abolish slavery, and it started the war by attacking a union fort. Even by the most charitable interpretation, no sane man’s interpretation of self defense allows you to spontaneously start attacking someone you let into your house without even first informing them you’d like them to believe. The confederacy was founded to protect an odious institution and it started a war of aggression to maintain it. Sorry, but no amount of mental gymnastics makes the confederacy the ‘good guys.’

          1. 68W58

            I agree with that with the caveat that some Confederate states are more to blame than the others. Like I said above, North Carolina and Tennessee (that I know of, but also perhaps Virginia and Arkansas) were reluctant to leave the Union and only went when war was inevitable. These states were closest to the Union and for them the prospect of war was not some far off hypothetical (like it was for the states further south that seceded first). Those states suffered disproportionately to the deep south states during the war-especially North Carolina and Virginia-and the war, and its origins, are viewed differently because of that (I write this as a North Carolinian).

          2. Procyon Rotor

            I made no reference to the reasons behind secession or the forming of the Confederacy. I only mentioned the reason for the war, and the Fort Sumter incident is hardly what you claim it is. It was not a surprise attack. There were a series of negotiations and troop movements spanning several months that began with a demand by the governor of South Carolina that the United States surrender the forts on Charleston’s harbor. It is certainly arguable that the refusal to remove Union troops from a seceded state constituted an act of war. But even if you don’t grant that, by what right did the United States invade the Confederacy with the explicit purpose of conquering them and forcing them to rejoin the Union? That’s not a proportional response to the taking of a single fort. The war was very obviously a defensive war for the Confederacy, and a war of aggression by the Union.

            You’re absolutely right that the Confederacy were not good guys. It was a government that supported the evil institution of slavery. But the majority of southerners were not slave owners, and responsibility for the Civil War lies entirely with the Union, and mostly with Lincoln himself. In my view, that’s one of the greatest evils in our country’s history. Lincoln put the lie to the words of the Declaration of Independence. The Civil War was fought to maintain government against the consent of the governed.

  14. Tony

    Obviously Kushner was giving bad advice, but who thought it would be a swell idea to make him an adviser?

    Of course there could be more going on. He is a Jew who stole the love of Trump’s life away.

    1. Eidde

      A Jew stole Trump’s hair?

    2. Re: Tony,

      Obviously Kushner was giving bad advice, but who thought it would be a swell idea to make him an adviser?

      “Daddy, can Jared and I be in my room?”
      “Yes but not until I date you”

    3. MarkLastname

      The Christopher Moltisanti of national politics?

  15. workerant

    New “How any libertarian can support Trump” litmus test- http://blog.norml.org/2017/11/…..oid-abuse/
    Christie was on Morning Joe a few days ago and Scarborough allowed Christie to emphasize his new NIH lie. Veterans in pain who have successfully used cannabis will now be regarded as psychiatric cases. Purple Heart winners nothing more than mentals. Not hyperbole- I’m a disabled vet myself. Contact Morning Joe and ask why Christie was given a free pass to start the new BIG PROPAGANDA LIE against disabled veterans from the new Presidential Commission- a surrepticious opioid addiction group out to destroy libertarian capitalism and cannabis alternative medicine.

  16. Ken Shultz

    “President Trump is blaming son-in-law and White House advisor Jared Kushner for precipitating the Robert Mueller investigation, according to a report in Vanity Fair.”

    Both Kushner and Ivanka seem to have been ‘moted in the wake of Bannon leaving and after Kelly took over as Chief of Staff. I believe both were widely thought to be behind strategic leaks during internal struggles for influence, when things weren’t going their way.

    Wasn’t it Augustus who had his own daughter exiled? There’s an opera waiting to be written, Ivanka playing the role of Julia, and Trump the role of Augustus–set in modern times, of course. Ivanka could be exiled to somewhere awful, like Seattle or Portland.

    1. Eidde

      Exiled to Seattle? That sounds more like Caligula than Augustus.

  17. A Utah nurse detained for refusing to allow a police officer to illegally draw blood from a patient received a $500,000 settlement.

    I need to become a nurse.

  18. Isn’t About Sex. It’s About Capitalism

    But more than just humanizing the sex trade, The Deuce offers a sharp critique of the inequalities and exploitations of late capitalism by examining sex work as labor?highly lucrative labor?that comes saddled with a stigma that makes it easy to abuse. “What I stumbled into seemed to be a ready-made critique of market capitalism and what happens when labor has no collective voice,” Simon told The Guardian. “That seemed to be apt for this moment because I think a lot of the lessons of the 20th century are going to have to be learned all over again thanks to Reagan and Thatcher and all the neoliberal and libertarian argument that has come after.”

    1. Eidde

      Oh, the writer should just yield to his/her fetish and pay a hooker to dress like Margaret Thatcher, and whip him while screaming “austerity!”

      1. Eidde

        she.

        As far as I can tell.

        She should pay a gigolo to dress like Ronald Reagan, lasso her, and spank her while she shouts “ride ’em, cowboy!”

    2. Because if the 20th century gave us one lesson, it’s that giving labor a collective voice is a REALLY good idea.

  19. Nancy, Leave Hawkins!

    So, to commemorate our love of Nancy, let’s contemplate what Nancy loves, or doesn’t love, or is not sure if she loves, or would maybe consider loving: the starry-eyed and generally Nancy-obsessed teenage boys of Hawkins. And then let’s offer some advice to Nancy: Dump these bozos now, every last one of them, and get the hell out of Dodge.

    Leave flyover country and join the coastal elite!

    1. Eidde

      So…some fans of a TV show are getting a bit stalkerish toward one of the stars? The rest I simply don’t understand.

      1. Procyon Rotor

        Oh, if only it were that rational. Nancy is a fictional character, and Hawkins is a fictional town. The author of that article is lamenting that none of the fictional boys on the show are good enough for dear, sweet Nancy. I had to click the link and read the article to learn that. Pour one out for the brain cells I sacrificed.

  20. Tom Bombadil

    ” a giant planet, designated NGTS-1b, orbiting a dwarf star.”

    Harvey Weinstein/Peter Dinklage. C’mon people, it’s been 5 hours.

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