Trump is like a YouTube comment thread that achieved sentience
— Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) July 9, 2015
The week Republicans learned there's a downside to owing your power to pandering to the worst in people.
— Bob Schooley (@Rschooley) July 9, 2015
Josh Voorhees, at Slate, reports “Megadonors Want the GOP to Stop Its Infighting. Too Bad There’s Some Things Money Can’t Buy“:
With the crowded field of Republican hopefuls showing signs of turning the primary into a ballroom brawl, several of the party’s best-known megadonors are trying to keep the peace. Conservative billionaire investor Foster Friess is leading the effort to stanch the infighting, according to the Associated Press, along with two fellow GOP powerbrokers, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and Chicago Cubs co-owner Todd Ricketts.
“Our candidates will benefit if they all submit to Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment, ‘Thou shall not speak ill of a fellow Republican,’” Friess wrote to Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus in a letter obtained by the AP. “Would you join the effort to inspire a more civil way of making their points? If they drift off the ‘civility reservation,’ let’s all immediately communicate that to them.”…
The only way the GOP megadonors will get the relative civility they say they want would be if Fox News were to quit the round-the-clock promotion of Trump and join the can’t-we-all-just-be-friends chorus. But that, of course, isn’t going to happen. Not when conflict and chaos is good for ratings and when Trump is offering a worldview shared by a small but not insignificant sliver of the GOP base. In June alone, the cable network hosted Trump ten separate times for a total of 108 minutes—more than any other candidate running for president. The conservative donor class can implore its party’s White House hopefuls to play nice all they want, but no one’s going to hear them over the sound of The Donald, especially when Fox News keeps handing him the mic.
Yeah, that’s Sheldon “Unleash the Newt” Adelson and Foster “Spreading Santorum” Friess, calling for the RNC to reign rein in The Donald. Irony!
Especially since, as Mr. Pierce points out:
… The problem you have, people, is not that Donald Trump is out there waving his freak flag at every opportunity… The problem you have is that out there in your party there is a substantial audience for what he’s saying. That audience was built deliberately, memo by memo, since the days when Harry Dent was advising Richard Nixon until a big chunk of your party is composed of pure Id. Now, an actual party structure could obviate the worst consequences of this strategy but, thanks to the Supreme Court, in the new era of Citizens United and McCutcheon, there is no institutional Republican party. There is only independently financed conservatism without any apparent frontiers. Having Priebus tell Trump to cool it is like sending a toddler with a squirt gun to northern Alberta to put out the wildfires. It is, however, the funniest damn thing I’ve heard in months.
Hearing from multiple sources that several days before Trump announced he was running he had a "2-3 hour" private lunch with Ailes
— Gabriel Sherman (@gabrielsherman) July 8, 2015
Since then, Fox's coverage has been boosting Trump's anti-immigration positions
— Gabriel Sherman (@gabrielsherman) July 8, 2015
Dana Millbank, Media Village chronicler, has his own diagnosis:
… Trump has merely held up a mirror to the GOP. The man, long experience has shown, believes in nothing other than himself. He has, conveniently, selected the precise basket of issues that Republicans want to hear about — or at least a significant proportion of Republican primary voters. He may be saying things more colorfully than others when he talks about Mexico sending rapists across the border, but his views show that, far from being an outlier, he is hitting all the erogenous zones of the GOP electorate…
Does anybody suppose Trump really cares about illegal immigration (which helps his construction interests, by suppressing wages) or about defending traditional marriage (he’s had three)?…
The previously tolerant Trump may be a phony, but he’s no dope: He recognized that, in the fragmented Republican field, his name recognition would take him far if he merely voiced, in his bombastic style, the positions GOP voters craved. The mogul’s broader basket of issues is also in tune with those of a slate of candidates who have compared homosexuality to alcoholism (Perry), likened union protesters to the Islamic State (Walker) and proposed elections for Supreme Court justices (Cruz), and who virtually all oppose same-sex marriage and action on climate change…
Elspeth Reeve’s TNR article is actually quite informative, if you can stand to read it…
.@Olivianuzzi? RT @tnr: Who on earth is a sincere Donald Trump supporter? This 22-year-old is. http://t.co/qjpiODC9FR
— Peter Sterne (@petersterne) July 9, 2015
…The Van Anglen family has been heavily involved in New Hampshire Republican politics since he was born. “I did my first campaign when I was about 10 years old, when John E. Sununu was running.” The Sununus are family friends. Van Anglen humbly admitted that at 10, you can’t contribute too much to a campaign, but “I was a very helpful volunteer at that point.” At 16, he testified before the state legislature, advocating for a bill that would make home invasion murderers subject to the death penalty… Van Anglen’s success even drew some envy. “You think he’s adorable?” gasped a blond young Republican, who was as sinisterly handsome as any teen movie bad guy…
Van Anglen is the guy on the far right in the Twitter pic — perfect avatar for what Mark Ames calls the Spite Voter.
Baud
This is what happens when people take GOP ComicCon too seriously.
dexwood
Trump is like a YouTube comment thread that achieved sentience
Partial sentience at best.
Chris
“Held up a mirror to the GOP” is the best summary of the Trump campaign I’ve read yet.
Gin & Tonic
$100 says that kid has never gotten laid.
lamh36
Ladies and Gentlemen…meet the new Ghostbusters
https://twitter.com/eonline/status/619331272024977409
jl
@dexwood: I think the meaning is supposed to be that if a typical youtube comment thread sprung to life and walked and talked, and yelled (can’t forget the yelling), it would resemble things that the human being Trump says.
Corner Stone
They wanted unchecked money in politics because they thought they could drown out small D donors and decimated union groups.
Guess what?
Chris
Sounds like Adelson is just pissed that another candidate is winning. His own candidate is really not any less ridiculous, nor are any of the others.
Corner Stone
The RNC telling any candidate anything these days is laughable. Who gives a shit what the national party says?
jl
And, reading this post and the interesting links, would be sad if a nice place like the Dells of Wisconsin become known mainly as the home base of the walking anagram and impotent GOP front man.
Keith P.
@Gin & Tonic: With a woman, or a human, or just a vertebrate?
Corner Stone
@Chris:
He could probably buy Trump off, in the end. But Trump isn’t going easy into that goodnight, and that is what has pissed off the real deal billionaires.
lamh36
Oh…so now Webb tune has changed…huh…too late dude…too late.
Webb changes tone on Confederate flag
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/247358-jim-webb-confederate-flag-long-been-due-to-come-down …
JGabriel
Josh Vorhees @ Slate:
In a recent YouGov poll, Trump is leading the GOP field with 27% (there’s that damn number again) of Republicans saying Trump is their first or second choice:
That’s a hell of a lot more than small or a sliver. It’s more than a quarter of the party.
beltane
@Chris: If you think about it, Donald Trump is what you’d get if you crossed Newt Gingrich with Sheldon Adelson. He’s the big donor and the big mouth all rolled into one convenient package.
jl
@lamh36:
Thanks, but Webb is still confused. The link reports Webb saying
the Confederate battle flag “assumed a lot of unfortunate, racist and divisionist overtones during the civil rights era.”
but it’s much more accurate to say that
“a lot of unfortunate, racist and divisionist elements foisted the Confederate battle on the country during the civil rights era.”
That is a big difference. I think it is a difference that most people understand, or beginning to understand.
lefthanded compliment
@dexwood: A sentience fragment, in fact.
Germy Shoemangler
As the uncle of a developmentally-disabled young man, I didn’t particularly care for Mark’s choice of photos. Fuck Mark Ames.
Peale
Meh. Its summer and I’d expect Fox would be drumming up immigrant fear anyway. The children didn’t show up in droves at the border this year, and we don’t have a disease from Africa coming to kill us yet. That leaves ISIS and Mexicans. Maybe MERS will jump from Korea and we can hide from the workers at Bon Chon and Uniqlo. Not that Uniqlo is Korean, but you never can be too careful. Until then…what else is going to make people stay inside because they’re afraid to go outside?
Mike E
@Baud: Don’t you mean cosplay? Who’s the furry on the left?
JGabriel
One might say the Republicans are reaping the whirlwind of their own actions, but I think we need a stronger metaphor to express the total gob-smacking fuckwittery of the GOP primary so far. I’m thinking reaping the shit vortex might be more apropos?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I only hope some of Hillary’s people are figuring out how to connect Trump to Boehner turning immigration over to Steve King.
jl
We all need to write Trump and remind him to file his official candidacy forms.
Hell, I’ll volunteer to do it for him. Then, he can fire me. It’ll be a grand old time.
RSA
@jl:
True. Also, Webb still doesn’t seem to realize that “unfortunate, racist and divisionist overtones” are inseparable from a flag associated with an unfortunate, racist and divisionist historical movement.
catclub
Slate thinks the GOP may force all the candidates to have their papers in order, before allowing them on the debate stage, and thinks that filing financial disclosure will stop Trump.
I think he will make up numbers showing he has more money, and hope it gets released.
dexwood
@lefthanded compliment:
Made me smile.
Chris
@JGabriel:
Well, I don’t expect it’ll last, but I can see why. He’s not, in fact, meaningfully different from any other candidate. Why shouldn’t GOP voters listen to him when they listen to Romney, Gingrich, Palin…?
Steeplejack
Fix’d, with gritted teeth.
Elizabelle
Hey y’all. Back from my evening with Bernie, and I will type up more about it tomorrow.
Settling in with a cocktail and “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” It was standing still about 3 miles from where Bernie appeared tonight. The Washington Monument was a backdrop.
And: the earthlings fire first.
Plus: some radio guy broadcasting with a hat.
jl
@RSA: I don’t think a white person being unsettled by removing Confederate battle flag from display on public grounds is an automatic and sure sign that they are a racist. The battle flag was promoted as a ‘Southern Heritage’ thing along with a very sanitized version of the South and the Civil War in the context of a falsified history of slavery and the Civil War.
I feel I cannot complain about both at the same time. I am outraged in general by reactionaries’ falsification of US history, and its attempts to co-opt it for their own purposes, which leaves a lot of ignorant people running around the country, and at the same time conclude that anyone who is troubled by changes that upset a history that they do not know, or upset symbols that they do not understand are reactionary themselves.
I think there is a group of very cynical political manipulators who probably think racism is stupid, but they are perfectly willing to use it for vile partisan political manipulation. And a cadre of true believer dead ender white racists. But also a group of whites who are ignorant and confused.
I was in my Central Valley hometown over the fourth and the battle flag controversy came up a few times, and everyone I met was of the opinion ‘good riddance’, which surprised me a bit, since the area is pretty conservative. But if I met someone on the other side, I would inquire about their knowledge and reasons before I accused them of being racist.
Edit: I agree with you that the battle flag is inseparable from racism, but that is because I know its history.
Elizabelle
And now the alien is vaporizing guns, but not the gunholders.
That could be useful.
They’re sending the smaller alien to Walter Reed Hospital. Alien Klaatu.
jl
@Steeplejack: The Donald will only reign, never bee reined. That is axiomatic.
rikyrah
People kill me when they poo poo Rat-on-top-of-head Man, by saying ‘ he only has 15%’.
Well, when some of those unfunded grifters drop out..
Trump is whispering sweet nothings to the GOP base. He’s VALIDATING THEM DIRECTLY.
Not with dogwhistles…but, telling them… YOU AND ME…I SEE YOU. I HEAR YOU.
He is throwing filet mignon at them……
Why settle for less?
Donald Trump speaks for them..
AND IT IS NOT A SLIVER of the GOP.
Not by a long shot. And, it’s certainly not a sliver of GOP Primary Voters…….
Stop that bullshyt of it’s only a sliver.
Nope.
Donald Trump is showing the TRUTH OF GOP VOTERS
without the Frank Lunz-approved nice language and dogwhistles.
THAT is the problem they have with Trump…..
Steeplejack
@jl:
He seems to be raining on the GOP’s parade.
Belafon
@jl: I hear the “heritage” stuff from my parents, the “we didn’t associate it with being racist” line. Then, we’d have a fight over the McKinney swimming pool incident and they would make statements about how there could have been shivs lying on the street for the kids to pick up and why were they their and when their school was desegregated in the 60s a black girl stood up on the table at lunch a said they weren’t going to take anything.
Those who tell you it wasn’t racist mean that they don’t consider themselves racist but things were fine when everyone knew their place. And that means they’re racist.
Elizabelle
The Walter Reed doctors are sitting around smoking.
Alien: on another topic: I am impatient with stupidity. My people have learned to live without it.
Director is Robert Wise. The Sound of Music Robert Wise.
Mike J
1961: Friendship 9 arrested for sitting @ segregated lunch counter. Their convictions were overturned in JANUARY 2015
https://twitter.com/BreeNewsome/status/619251987763306497
Chris
@Belafon:
I wonder what Orwell, with his interest in language control and reality denial, would have to say in the present world where it’s tacitly agreed by all that 1) being a “racist” is bad and 2) it’s basically impossible to be considered racist in polite company no matter what you do.
wasabi gasp
Any attempt to squelch Trump would likely just make him stronger. Add in that over the past few weeks Trump became unintentionally heavily invested in himself as a candidate, which may bolster his determination. It’s like we’re heading into the perfect shitstorm.
Elizabelle
Aunt Bea’s in this movie. So is Patricia Neal.
The alien looks human and is hiding in plain sight.
Mr. Trump could not pull off the same feat.
Germy Shoemangler
@Elizabelle: Robert Wise also directed the first Star Trek feature film
randalms
This is really funny – amazing how much crazy stuff Trump has said.
http://fusion.net/story/162656/we-made-a-chrome-extension-to-add-real-ridiculous-donald-trump-quotes-to-every-mention-of-his-name/?utm_source=tumblr&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=tumblr
Elizabelle
@Germy Shoemangler: Did not know that.
Never realized this movie was set in DC.
divF
@Elizabelle:
Robert Wise had an extremely varied career. Started out as a film editor (Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons), then as a director of extraordinary range – horror (the film version of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House), noir, westerns, war movies, musicals (won an Oscar for directing West Side Story as well as for Sound of Music) and science fiction (he directed the first Star Trek movie in 1979, 28 years after he directed The Day the Earth Stood Still).
boatboy_srq
@rikyrah: WORD.
Face
Whats the penalty if Trump embellishes his wealth docs? And who could prove their inaccuracies? Wouldnt Trump just deny everything?
Mike J
@Elizabelle: Michale Rennie was ill the day the earth stood still.
Fair Economist
@JGabriel:
15+12 = 27!
It’s a law of nature!
MomSense
@rikyrah:
Exactly.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: Do farm animals count?
divF
@efgoldman:
It didn’t make the cut. The 1979 movie was just a Star Trek TOS episode with a pituitary problem. There were much worse ones in that thread.
ETA: According to The Wikipedia, The Star Trek movie “was a difficult shoot for Wise”. I’ll bet.
lamh36
@Belafon:
Posted this in an earlier thread…
My final 2 cents on the whole “Southern Heritage” defense of the Confed flag. (well, final words today…lol)
I was born and raised in the South. My mother was born and raised in the South. My mother’s mother was born and raised in the South. My mother’s mother’s mother was born and raised in the South (after being brought here from Africa, like alot of Black folk, I am 2 generations removed from sharecroppers and slavery). The same can be said for my father, his father, his father’s father…..you see where I’m going with this.
I love my city NOLA. I love the Southern heritage of NOLA and I’ve NEVER been embarassed to be from the South.
Being a native Southerner is my HERITAGE, and I and I’d bet a majority of the Black folk in the South, DO NOT consider the Confed flag as representin’ our heritage.
I’ve lived in the South and my family has lived in the South as long as a majority of the White Southerners who like to defend the flag as part of their “Southern Heritage”.
Now what makes their “heritage” more important than mine. What is it about “my Southern heritage” that makes it less symbolic of “Southern heritage” than theirs?
I have idea, and I’m sure you guys do to!
http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g246/sey115/tumblr_m9us828Y9K1rsw1yf_zps8309e200.gif
Omnes Omnibus
@rikyrah: I have always been curious about this. Why do you misspell curse words? No one here cares. But I do wonder why?
opiejeanne
@Belafon: Ugh. My parents and in-laws have gone to their reward or we’d be having this argument, although Dad hated that battle flag.
GregB
When it comes to Trump the Republican’s shall inherit the windbag.
RaflW
“If they drift off the ‘civility reservation,’ let’s all immediately communicate that to them.”
Hahahaha. That’s so cute. How exactly did these imbecile donors become rich?
Cervantes
@Chris:
Orwell was a man of his time. He lived and died in a different era. Even if we don’t accept subsequent critiques that suggest he was a racist, it’s still difficult to see how, if you were to bring him back to life today in the present world, he could participate meaningfully in — or even fully comprehend — today’s discussions.
Anne Laurie
@Steeplejack: You’re right, I’m sorry.
Cervantes
@Omnes Omnibus:
I guessed it was seen as a way around the site’s “moderation” features.
Cervantes
@jl:
Kudos — but are you sure you’re in the right club-house?
Omnes Omnibus
@Cervantes: No, fuck and shit flow through with no issues.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Anne Laurie:
No apology necessary.
Cervantes
@lamh36:
Eloquent.
Cervantes
@Omnes Omnibus:
That’s comforting.
But I didn’t say the effort was needed; just that I guessed it was seen as needed.
But speaking of needs: I have some, too, and must retire. Good night!
Cervantes
@Steeplejack (phone):
Speaking for yourself, I hope!
joel hanes
@lefthanded compliment:
A sentience fragment
[golf clap]
Ruckus
@Keith P.:
Or even himself.
feebog
I hope Trump keeps rising in the polls until the RNC Poobahs and the mega doners all shit in their pants. Endless corporate cash you say? Drown in it.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Anne Laurie:
No hair shirt necessary either. Just make the edit and expunge the offending word.
rikyrah
@Omnes Omnibus:
So I don’t get put in moderation
Tenar Darell
Peachy…the modern party of Abraham Lincoln everybody. Did anyone see Sarah Vowell on John Stewart last week? There’s a good bit right at the beginning about the first time a southern strategy was used. Thanks McKinley!
NotMax
Drink deeply enough for long enough of the tainted Kool-Aid and you wake up with the DTs.
In this case, D is for Donald and T for Trump.
Villago Delenda Est
@Germy Shoemangler: Aka “Star Trek: The Motionless Picture”. A serious snoozeathon.
22over7
Every time I hear “culture and heritage”, I think of the gubernatorial candidate in O Brother Where Art Thou at the Klan meeting. “is that YOUR cultuh and hehtige? That ain’t MAH cultuh and hehtige!”
DaddyJ
@Elizabelle:
Just watched TDTESS a couple of nights ago. Love that Bernard Herrman soundtrack. Was also struck by the “radio guy with a hat” and Googled him; turns out he was a real radio guy, an early media-superstar muckraker named Drew Pearson. The guy who broke the story about Patton slapping the soldier, among other things.
AxelFoley
@Belafon:
Thank you, that’s the bottom line.
mclaren
Reince Preibus is an anagram for Pubic Sneer Ire. I humbly vote that we call the guy this from now on.
Ruckus
Got a question.
How do you get past political/bullshit overload?
I think I’ve reached mine and really just want to shut out the world for a few days/weeks. Nothing seems to be worth watching/listening to/participating in anymore as the returns are always the same. Yes we had a good week but that has just increased the level of bullshit and I wasn’t sure that was possible. Just unfriended, someone I’ve known for decades on FB.
NotMax
@Elizabelle
Yup, Pearson played himself in that movie.
One of the other films in the line-up had a passing mention of Gabriel Heatter, another real news commentator on radio. The opening catchphrase of his broadcasts was “There’s good news tonight!”
NotMax
@NotMax
Correction.
Heatter was mentioned and heard in the same flick as was Pearson. As were two other real life radio news voices who had cameos, H. V. Kaltenborn and Elmer Davis.
GxB
@JGabriel: Drowning in the puke funnel?
Amir Khalid
Two stories I saw:
Tom Selleck, water thief.
Marisa Tomei simply isn’t old enough to play even a 15-year-old Spiderman’s Aunt May.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
One of the oddest Aunt May stories ever. Was an actually published issue, not a put-on.
Suzanne
I’m going to see/heckle Trump on Saturday. Trying to decide on my sign. Leaning toward “YOUR MOTHER WAS A HAMSTER AND YOUR FATHER SMELT OF ELDERBERRIES.”
Chet
Don’t know whether this has been mentioned already: James Bonard Fowler, the Alabama State Trooper whose killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson led to the Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965, has died at 81 of pancreatic cancer .
Amir Khalid
James Bond: The Musical? I say what the hell, why not?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: The Trojan Water Thief was stealing water from the neighborhood that I grew up in. Never liked the dude anyways.
Morzer
@lamh36:
I’d have said that it assumed those “overtones” during the civil war era, but what do I know?
raven
The South’s Heritage Is So Much More Than a Flag from Patterson Hood of the Drive By Truckers
NotMax
@Suzanne
Hey, now. Trump’s father did a lot of good stuff, including building many, many affordable apartments for folks on a limited income.
One set of grandparents of mine (already having retired by then) could barely contain their eagerness to move into Trump Village in Brooklyn the day their building opened for residency.
Applejinx
Trump vs. Sanders! Because why not set the future of each party against each other?
One thing about it, neither of them are sugarcoating a damn thing about their message. That is refreshing and probably good for everybody.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
Gotta have a conga line singing and dancing to a catchy upbeat number entitled “Shaken, Not Stirred.”
Botsplainer
@NotMax:
Aunt May has a nice rack.
qwerty42
@JGabriel: One might say the Republicans are reaping the whirlwind of their own actions, but I think we need a stronger metaphor to express the total gob-smacking fuckwittery of the GOP primary so far. I’m thinking reaping the shit vortex might be more apropos?
Something like Sharknado?
HeartlandLiberal
@Gin & Tonic: Actually, reading the article, the kid sounds like the type with a father who would buy him a hooker for his 18th birthday.
Shakezula
Civility reservation? Christ, what an asshole.
But it is nice to see the monster the GOP created just keeps mutating into a bigger and fuglier nightmare. Not too long ago all the GOP had to deal with was its Red Meat Voter, but at least that thing is on the outside and can be appeased with a few cheap cracks about Obama. Now they’ve got The Power Crazed Thing in the next room and that much closer to putting a square knot in its creator’s neck.
brantl
Trump never achieved sentience, never has, never will.
Shakezula
@qwerty42: Shitnado.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Elizabelle:
My wife introduced him at a gathering in our town last week.
Another Holocene Human
@jl: Maybe if they’re 16 and sheltered. Grown people know this stuff.
The Klan luuuuurved them some Confederate flag in the 1990s. It got popular in East Germany because Nazi flags were banned. And Black legislators have been speaking out against this flag for decades. If you’re still pretending it’s “heritage not hate” it means you weren’t listening and didn’t care about how the flag was being perceived and used.
@Belafon: ding ding ding
Another Holocene Human
@Elizabelle: Star Trek the Motion Picture, also The Day The Earth Stood Still.
The former kind of was a train wreck due to the involvement of Roddenberry who sucked at anything other than talk. Paramount pushed him out of the rest of the films.
Another Holocene Human
@Suzanne: Put COME BACK SO I CAN TAUNT YOU SOME MORE on the back for when he tries to hustle out of there
Capri
Folks have compared Trump to Perot, but he strikes me as closer to Jessie Ventura. Ventura also was loved for bluntly “telling it like it is” then hated because to actually succeed in politics you must have some political skills.
rikyrah
@Belafon:
thank you
bjacques
@qwerty42: It’s hurricane season, so “Category 5 Shitstorm.”
Can NO ONE deactivate the DONALD DEVICE!!??
(from an unpublished issue of OMAC. To be declaimed in a stentorian voice, with your best Jack Kirby face on)
J R in WV
@DaddyJ: He visited my hometown to give a talk and napped on my bed after arriving in town, before going to make his talk. He was a columnist in the local newspaper and pretty popular IIRC. Quaker, didn’t drink etc.
Conservative in the quaint old fashioned way of demanding honesty in public servants – imagine that!!
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@JGabriel: Yeah I’m tired of every publication and pundit holding onto the fig leaf that these retrograde nativists are some relatively insignificant portion of the republican voting block. It’s a denial of reality.
White Trash Liberal
Derpnado
Gex
@Germy Shoemangler: agreed! I love the piece but hate the photo selection. It has prevented me from sharing that link.
Procopius
@RaflW: That’s a question I often ask. You know, we used to hear/use the phrase, “If you’re so smart why ain’t you rich?” We took for granted that you had be be smart to get rich so if you were rich you must be smart (I forget the technical name for this fallacy). Then there was the story of the two Texans sitting in the country club bar commenting on an oil millionaire (this was in the old days when a million bucks was real money), “Yeah, he’s a real self-made man. His parents left him a few million and he’s built it up into a real fortune.” I have some idea how Sheldon Adelson got so rich, and it’s a myth that organized crime is dominated by either Italians or Sicilians, but you would think there are people working for him who are smart enough to take a whole lot of that away from him. Same with Trump. I cannot imagine how he manages to inspire enough loyalty in his subordinates that they don’t just take it all.
Paul in KY
@jl: The Dells is very pretty, but the part I saw was also very commercialized and cheesy (in the hokey definition of cheesy).