Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The choice is between normal and crazy.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

When we show up, we win.

Be a traveling stable for those who can’t find room at the inn.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

This blog will pay for itself.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

The frogs are rarely mistaken.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

‘Museums aren’t America’s attic for its racist shit.’

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2016 / Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Tuesday Morning Open Thread

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Look at Trump’s face in that video. Get the feeling he’s still bitter about that evening?

He’s not getting much love from the “experts” with their “facts”…

But once the “Pumpkin-flavored arsenic marshmallow“ can get in touch with Bill Gates (why no “my very good friend Bill”? Has Melinda been refusing to take The Donald’s calls?) all us internet snarksters are gonna be laughing out of the other side of our mouths. Per the Verge:

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump just said the US should consider “closing up” the internet to curb radical extremism. Trump, a man that routinely claims everyone in charge of the US is stupid, believes that as president he could just call up Bill Gates to help him shut off the internet. Trump floated the idea at a campaign rally at the USS Yorktown in South Carolina tonight as a way to stop ISIS “jihadists” from recruiting Americans to commit acts of domestic terrorism. The idea is so dumb it almost has us, too, at a loss for words.

“We’re losing a lot of people because of the internet,” Trump said. “We have to see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what’s happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that internet up in some ways. Somebody will say, ‘Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.’ These are foolish people.”…

***********
Apart from mocking the monsters, what’s on the agenda for the day?

Reader Interactions

138Comments

  1. 1.

    mclaren

    All Bill Gates needs to do is press that big red button on his desk, and bingo! The internet is shut down.

    Sounds like a plan…

  4. 4.

    David Koch

    Bill Simmons: If you were campaigning against Trump, would you even bother? Would it be like [some scrub] talking trash to [Michael] Jordan?

    President Obama: I would’ve enjoyed campaigning against Trump. That would’ve been fun.

    Simmons: Obama—both the person and the president—carries himself like Roger Federer, a merciless competitor who keeps coming and coming, only there’s a serenity about him that disarms just about everyone. At one point during the hour I spent interviewing him at the White House this fall, he casually compared himself to Aaron Rodgers, and he wasn’t bragging. Obama identified with Rodgers’s ability to keep his focus downfield despite all the chaos happening in front of him. That’s Obama’s enduring quality, and (to borrow another sports term) this has been his “career year.”

  5. 5.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @mclaren: It’s not a big red button, it’s a Big Red Switch like they had on the old IBM PC’s.

    ETA: It’s what you had to do when DOS 1.1 became, eh, unresponsive.

  6. 6.

    Nemo_N

    I suppose that Josh Marshall reader will now suggest Obama must ban entry only to a few muslims, right?

    I will never understand non-conservatives who think they can out-crazy the crazies.

  10. 10.

    David Koch

    Clinton’s biggest lead is against current GOP frontrunner Donald Trump: She’s ahead of him by 11 points among all voters, 52 percent to 41 percent, and a whopping 42 points among Latino voters, 69 percent to 27 percent.

    There’s that number 27 again.

  11. 11.

    MattF

    @Nemo_N: Yes. There’s an internal dynamic in the Republican campaigns that is forcing all of them to the right, not just The Adolph. Rubio is the best example of this– he tried to be relatively moderate and look at him now. “No enemies to my right” is not a good motto for a Democrat, because you will always be outbid.

  12. 12.

    David Koch

    @Nemo_N: Ole Josh. He’s never exactly been a Profile in Courage

    “The truth is that Iraq is a very grave danger to the security of the United States” ~ 11/11/2002

    Good call, Josh.

    Next time, more courage and less profiles.

  14. 14.

    mclaren

    As far as barring Moslems from entering the United States being unconstitutional, though — why would that deter American courts or U.S. national security personnel?

    “Unconstitutional” has been America’s middle name ever since 9/11. America has passed any number of unconstitutional laws since 9/11 — the AUMF is grossly unconstitutional (violation of amendments 5,6,8), the USA Treason excuse me, Patriot Act is flagrantly unconstitutional (violations of amendments 4, 5, 6, 8, 14), JSOC’s global black ops death squads are unconstitutional on a level that makes Moslem exclusion looks like small beans (violations of amendments 1, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 and 14), and then there are the sordid degeneracies like Obama ordering drone murders of children and women — that’s so unconstitutional that practically the only part of the Bill of Rights it doesn’t violate is amendment three, which prohibits the quartering of soldiers in civilian houses in time of war.

    We have the NDAA, a law that allows the president to order the kidnapping of U.S. citizens and their detention in dungeons without access to a lawyer, and without being accusing of wrongdoing. Oh, and the NDAA mandates that the president can kidnap and hold U.S. citizens forever. As in “hold American citizens in a dungeon for fifty years until they die” if he feels like it. This is something we haven’t seen in Western democracies since the Star Chamber in Britain in the 16th century, and of course in jolly old Germany in the 1930s.

    So the notion that merely because some proposed law is grossly unconstitutional it should be unthinkable and would certainly never be supported by any reasonable person, wellllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll…that’s just not quite in tune with observed reality, is it?

    We have in fact had quite a number of enthusiastic and energetic little sock puppet commenters like Omnes Omnibus and Mnemosyne and Martin who have explained to us in great detail why and how the president ordering the murder of U.S. citizens without trial and without even accusing them of a crime is perfectly legitimate. These worthies have even accused me of mental illness for demurring from their finely honed legal judgment.

    So if the president can legitimately order U.S. citizens murdered without a trial, why can’t the president (or anyone else) order all Moslems excluded from the U.S.?

    You see, this is the problem with passing unconstitutional atrocities like the NDAA (which Obama signed, to his everlasting disgrace) or the AUMF, or the USA Treason excuse me, Patriot Act… Once you throw the rule of law out the window, it becomes very hard to say “But this new outrage we’re planning to legalize is quite beyond the pale, and it’s simply unthinkable that we could actually do this dastardly new thing.”

    Why?

    Once you’ve thrown out the rule of law, why does anything become “unthinkable”?

    In post-legal America, there are no more limits. Any insane piece of legislation is now not only thinkable, but practical, and really only a matter of figuring out how to implement. Legal experts who yelp that Donald Trump’s crazy proposal is “unconstitutional” are being extraordindarily naive. The United Snakes of Amnesia crossed the threshold of “unconstitutional” long ago, when it passed the USA Treason excuse me, Patriot Act and the NDAA and gave the president authority to order the warrantless wiretapping of everyone in America and order the murder of any U.S. citizen without a trial or criminal charges.

    Unconstitutional? “Oh, for the love of God”? I got news for you, “constitutional experts” — when Barack Obama ordered the first murder of a U.S. citizen without a trial, he crossed the line. He crossed the line and didn’t even blink. There’s no coming back from that.

    Donald Trump is just the latest evolution of post-legal America. Nixon started us down that road by bugging and burgling his political opponents with White House “plumber” squads — and congress acquiesced by refusing to indict and convict him for those crimes, but instead allowed him to be pardoned. Ronald Reagan pushed us farther down the road to post-legal America when he ran the Iran-Contra illegalities out of the West Wing basement, and never got impeached for his crimes. Then Bill Clinton took us a little farther down that post-legal road when he signed an executive order allowing “extraordinary rendition,” AKA “government-sponsored kidnapping and torture of Americans.” The Drunk-Driving C Student took us a lot farther down the post-legal road by lying us into an illegal war of aggression and torturing prisoners and using DHS goons to arrest protesters in the Minneapolis 2004 Republican Convention on terorrism charges merely because they planned to non-violently protest Dubya’s reign of error. And then Barack Obama took us even farther down the road to post-legal America when he asserted the authority to murder U.S. citizens without a trial, to prosecute American whistleblowers who informed the public about U.S. government crimes (like John Kiriakou, who told the American people about the CIA’s illegal torture program — none of the torturers spent a day in prison, but Kiriakou spent years in prison for tells us about their torture), signing the NDAA, signing off on warrantless panopticon wiretapping surveillance of every man, woman and child in America, and using double-tap drone strike to not only murder women and children in wedding parties, but then go back and murder the rescue workers and medical personnel who tried to help the survivors.

    By this point, the United Snakes of Amnesia has gone so far down that road to post-legal America that we can’t even see the rule of law anymore from where we are. So objections that some new proposed atrocity is “unconstitutional” are just laughable.

    America doesn’t do “law” anymore. We just kill or murder or torture whomever we feel like, whenever we feel like it, like a gangster in 1920s Chicago. We’re back in the jungle, baby. U.S. police kill bystanders on the streets for laughs and get away with it. There is no rule of law. American cops stole more assets through asset forfeiture last year than burglar stole by breaking into people’s houses and carrying off their TVs and computers. Law? Constitution? Gimme a break. Police are now muggers and burglars with badges, and the president is now Al Capone with a much fancier office. We left “constitutional” behind with the wreckage of the Twin Towers in New York City 14 years ago. Trump is the next logical step after the NDAA and the USA Patriot Act. After Trump come the race laws, the internment camps, the DHS expanding their reach to targeted killings of U.S. citizens who criticize the government in public.

    Once you throw out the rule of law, anything goes. Soon the American people will learn the terrible cost of their folly in acquiescing to atrocities like the USA Patriot Act and the NDAA. Too late, as always.

  15. 15.

    Nemo_N

    Talking dick head Jeffrey Lord at CNN declaring Trump is right because we are at war with muslims. Anchors meekly fighting back.

    Jeffrey Lord is one of CNN regular “contributors”.

  17. 17.

    Another Holocene Human

    @mclaren: Oh, hai.

    I just woke up and am busy ruining my coffee due to #tired. Is there are shorter of your post?

  20. 20.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @raven: Joe just said that 35-40% of Democrats think that 9-11 was and inside job. I actually watched Joe pull that out of his ass.

    ETA: You know, ‘Both Sides”.

  22. 22.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @raven: He was pretty good, though I spent most of the night getting my new phone to be my daily driver, so I was only paying sort of half attention.

  23. 23.

    narya

    My agenda mostly consists of worrying about my sick kitty (who’s technicallly not my kitty, so I don’t get to make the decisions).

  24. 24.

    oldster

    Obama making fun of Trump on “The Apprentice”:
    “And these are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night!”

    When he knew that at that very moment his presidency was on a knife-edge, with a Seal Team deep in Pakistan. Did he know he had already lost a helicopter? Did he know they had already killed Bin Laden?

    Every now and then the US has gotten ridiculously lucky. Like when we happened to elect Lincoln just before a civil war. And when we elected this guy.

  29. 29.

    Baud

    @David Koch:

    The 27 factor is amazing. But it’s interesting to see Hillary expanding her lead, since she isn’t even campaigning against Trump yet. That means it’s all people being turned off by Trump.

  36. 36.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @BillinGlendaleCA: When I first moved into the cave, I noticed on teh Google Maps a local business with an unusual name. I thought that sounds like a porn related company; sure enough, a porn video distribution company.

  42. 42.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @amk: Bob Dole said that Bob Dole might end up sleeping in on election day if Failgunner Ted is the Republican candidate.

  45. 45.

    Another Holocene Human

    Have there been any drill downs recently on Trump’s supporters? Age/sex/location?

    I was going to say race and then realized that was pointless.

  47. 47.

    Another Holocene Human

    @BillinGlendaleCA: In honor of Not Stereotyping People Day, mclaren’s a she.

    On the spectrum, apparently, though. I don’t recall now if we had a discussion about that at one time.

  48. 48.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Betty Cracker: Maybe we should be nudging her to post more gushing, Paglia-esque movie reviews. She always sounds way more stable on that topic than on MIC. Winter’s coming, that means SAD. Look out.

  55. 55.

    Sherparick

    @BillinGlendaleCA: As Driftglass says the “liberal” MSNBC, soon with a 4 hours of Republican Infomercial presided over by Squint every weekday morning, is in the process of a media suicide as it tries to join CNN as Fox-lite. I expect “Morning Joe” will say Trump’s remarks and the fact that a majority of Republicans agree with him is all Obama’s fault for failing to plunge us into another ground campaign in Syria and Iraq(we are already in an air/special ops war).

    That of course is one of the problems. The U.S. has been making war against insurgents who identify as Muslims and live among Muslims, principally in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, but also in Somalia, Libya, Mali, the Philippines, Yemen, and probably a dozen other countries around the world. The military has become whiter during that time, and drawn from a narrower class range of white people, the white southern working class and white southern middle class. This class has also chosen to listen, and get marinated in right wing media (Fox News, Fox Radio, and all the other right-wing talkers and websites) that have increasingly made Muslim hating and dehumanizing Muslims a major feature, but sadly a feature that the audience wants to hear as the long war continues. It makes everything so simple, it makes the killing done in our country’s name righteous even when we kill children and blow up wedding parties. Meanwhile, the right wing mania in this country keeps steadily drifting toward another Ft. Sumter. http://www.salon.com/2015/12/07/people_are_armed_to_the_hilt_inside_the_paranoid_right_wing_reality_where_terrorists_are_literally_everywhere/

  56. 56.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    Wow, I’ve made it almost a hour and a half though Morning Joe. Could be a new record.

  60. 60.

    MomSense

    I’m currently suffering from low snark. This whole spectacle makes me really grateful I have a kid who needs help with homework in the evening and woods to walk right outside my door. The poor writers of The Onion must be in panic mode.

  62. 62.

    Princess

    You know what is even creepier and more evil than Trump? His followers. I made the mistake of going over to Breitbart to read the comments on the Dick Cheney piece. To them, Cheney is just a liberal Rino and all Trump is doing is proposing a “very moderate solution.” to the Muslim problem. Has Breitbart always been the kinder, gentler face of Stormfront, or is this new? I’ve never looked at it before. Anyway, Trump will have no problems finding recruits for his troop of blackshirts.

  64. 64.

    Hal

    Idk, maybe Trump is afraid he’s going to have to see this whole running for president thing through to the end and he’s trying to throw the race.

  65. 65.

    JPL

    @BillinGlendaleCA: Being a curious sort, I streamed the interview.
    Joe cut him off and went to break.

    Now he is back. Trump has to follow the rules and let Joe and Mika ask questions.

  66. 66.

    bystander

    Had to try and watch Moanin’ Joe. Of course he had Trump on, and Trumps is frenetic. Scarborough just cut him off because he wouldn’t stop prattling. Hilarious!

  69. 69.

    MomSense

    @Baud:

    Disaster. My dog turns out to prefer exclusivity. We brought in a trainer and tried everything but nope. If we could live outside only and never come in the house and never take off the leashes-maybe. But if youngest kid tried to pet sweet new dog even outside- Korra became Cujo. She is much happier now.

  71. 71.

    debbie

    What’s really scary is that Trump is making Cruz look reasonable, despite Cruz’s call for a three-year moratorium on Muslim immigration.

  74. 74.

    The Golux

    Someone should ask Trump if he thinks the moon landings were real. Preferably within arm’s reach of Buzz Aldrin.

  75. 75.

    magurakurin

    @raven: the funny thing about McLaren’s posts, I usually just skip them but sometimes I miss the name and start reading, then I hit the third wordy paragraph and I realize, “shit, is this a Mclaren post?” Then I check the name. Always is. But most times I catch myself at the name, so, no worries.

  81. 81.

    magurakurin

    @Baud: yeah, well, great minds. Does that mean I can be your V.P.? Or maybe I could be in charge of the FEMA camps. You will have them, right?

  82. 82.

    Betty Cracker

    Trump is spending a surprising amount of time on the Squint Show defending his Muslimfrei policy proposal.

  85. 85.

    Sherparick

    @Nemo_N: Laura Ingraham is regular contributor to ABC. Hugh Hewitt is now BFF with Chuck Todd at Meet the Press. Etc. Yet Bernie Sanders is a wild man beyond polite company because he wants to give Social Security recipients an extra $800.00 a year.

  88. 88.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @MomSense: when ever my granddaughter comes for a visit, our Lab gets very jealous, constantly maneuvering himself between her and me. (never snapping or such) I’d like to get a terrier to cut down on the critter population around here but I just don’t think the Woofmiester would handle it very well.

  89. 89.

    Baud

    @magurakurin: Given the last few weeks, I’m thinking of going with a Muslim VP, so now I’m back to Amir. But we’ll need lots of FEMA camps for my political opponents…er… potential security threats.

  91. 91.

    MomSense

    @Baud: @OzarkHillbilly:

    Some dogs are just not that into sharing. She has a good thing and she knows it. She cuddles on her dog bed with my son in front of the fireplace sharing carrots with him. They also share a fondness for cheddar cheese. At night she sleeps on the foot of his bed. She figures he is her charge and she doesn’t need any help in that regard. When his friends are over she is perfectly willing to follow them around sharing snacks, too.

  93. 93.

    Germy

    Last night I was reading a NewYorker profile of Rubio. This is something that jumped out at me; the reason he said he got into politics:

    Bob List, the former governor of Nevada, told me about watching Rubio work a roomful of prosperous Las Vegas businessmen. At one point, Rubio was asked where his inspiration for politics originated. “He said, ‘I remember one day my father took me in the car, and we drove over to the neighborhood where Liberace’s house was.’ ” List noted, “And everybody knew where Liberace’s house was.” He went on, “He said, ‘We would drive around that neighborhood, and he’d show me where all the rich people lived, and he’d say, “Son, if you want to live like these people, you can do it.” ’ ” List shook his head and said, “He’s good-good.”

    So… he got into politics to get rich?? Well, at least he’s honest about it…

  94. 94.

    debbie

    @Baud:

    I’m thinking of going with a Muslim VP, so now I’m back to Amir.

    OMG, the GOP’s head would explode! Do it!

  95. 95.

    magurakurin

    @Iowa Old Lady: quite a few I suspect. Omnes and Raven for sure. Baud as well, just to name a few. Of course the various trolls are easily identified by the persistent stupidity of their posts. Okay, most of all of our posts contain persistent stupidity, but in a good way. Our faithful trolls, stupidity without any laughs or giggles.

  96. 96.

    Sherparick

    @bystander: Morning Joe and Dick Cheney are now RINOS!!! As Driftglass says, this is “art.” http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2015/12/dick-cheney-conscience-of-gop.html

    Well, I expect both Dick and Rupert Murdoch got calls from Saudi Arabia last night from various princes and royal family members saying “what the blank” have you guys created over there!!! All we wanted was a good panic about the Iranians and the bomb to get Kenyan Usurper replaced by someone we could manipulate into bombing Iran. Instead, we seem to be getting lined up in Ted Cruz’s and Donald Trumps bomb sites as well.l

  100. 100.

    MattF

    @Germy: A lot of ‘Hmmm’ in that one. I’ll note, btw, that the New Yorker profile of Ted Cruz was deeply misleading– it completely left out the evangelical side of Cruz’s politics and presented him as a debater and Harvard lawyer.

  101. 101.

    JPL

    How long before Trump’s businesses start suffering because of the bigotry he is spouting. It’s doubtful that many of his supporters can afford to stay in one of his hotels.

  102. 102.

    Germy

    @MattF:

    …the New Yorker profile of Ted Cruz was deeply misleading

    I noticed that. And Rubio’s faults are gently hinted at.

    I thought his being driven through a wealthy neighborhood as a kid was a weird answer to the question “What got you into politics?”

    But the NewYorker writers don’t want to editorialize in these profiles. At least not too much. The Ted Cruz piece was notable for the stuff that DIDN’T get mentioned.

  103. 103.

    Germy

    This part of the NewYorker piece reminded me of a balloon-juice thread from yesterday:

    In Las Vegas, Rubio was staying at the Bellagio. We met in a suite appointed in the Vegas Italianate style—leather, chrome, photos of fountains. When I stopped by one morning, the windows were shrouded by heavy burgundy drapes, and Rubio was worried about his voice. “I’ve been coming down with something,” he said, crossing the conference room to retrieve a bottle of water. “My throat is always feeling dry.” Doctors had told him it was an allergic reaction. “I said, ‘How come I’ve never had allergies before, and now, suddenly, the last four years I’ve developed allergies? And the answer the doctor gave me was: ‘Well, because you’re travelling to places that you never used to travel to before.’ ”

  105. 105.

    MattF

    @Germy: And there’s a pretty specific problem– Cruz’s strategy is the classic long con– convince enough rich people that the evangelicals are the dupes and that if you ‘invest’ in Cruz’s campaign, you’ll be in on the deal. See, e.g., Newman, P., and Redford R., ‘The Sting‘. So, leaving out Cruz’s evangelical appeal misses the whole trick.

  106. 106.

    bemused

    I was creeped out watching the Donald show in SC that msnbc was airing. Trump has noticeably changed to telling security to be nice and don’t hurt that person when escorting protesters out. Even he must realize what kind of supporters he has in his audiences. The intensity and roar of those people yelling when anyone protested Trump raised the hair on the back of my neck. Trump better watch very carefully what he says about the protesters because it wouldn’t take much for that mouth foaming mob to imagine they should beat them to a pulp. They really, really want to do it.

  107. 107.

    joes527

    I especially like Trump choosing Bill Gates as the go-to name for technology issues. What next? Is he going to impress the kids by doing the Macarena?

    I give you: Donald (Rip Van Winkle) Trump

  108. 108.

    leeleeFL

    @oldster: If I thought this any more often than I do, I would have no more room in my head. We so made the right choice and the haters can thank us later.

  109. 109.

    Gimlet

    http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/262360-cbo-projects-2-million-fewer-jobs-under-obamacare

    ObamaCare is expected to cost the U.S. workforce a total of 2 million jobs over the next decade, Congress’s nonpartisan scorekeeper said Monday.

    The total workforce will shrink by just under 1 percent as a result of the new coverage expansions, mandates and changes in tax rates, according to a 22-page report released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

    “When the President’s health law hurts the labor force at the same time it increases healthcare premiums and taxes, it’s clear the law is not working for the American people,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah.).

    “The CBO’s latest report confirms yet another broken promise and negative consequence stemming from Obamacare.”

  110. 110.

    Docg

    Trump’s specifics on enforcing his ban on Muslims entering the United States: The border agents will ask if they are Muslim. If they say yes, they will be turned away.

    Because a terrorist would NEVER lie to get into the country. No wonder he avoids policy details like the plague. Grandpa always said, “It is better to be silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”

  112. 112.

    rikyrah

    The latest poll of Iowa Republicans from Monmouth, which points to a brand new leader in the GOP field.

    1. Ted Cruz: 24% (up from 10% in a Monmouth poll in October)
    2. Donald Trump: 19% (up from 18%)
    3. Marco Rubio: 17% (up from 10%)
    4. Ben Carson: 13% (down from 32%)
    5. Jeb Bush: 6% (down from 8%)

  113. 113.

    MattF

    @Gimlet: What’s true is that the incentives in employment have shifted a bit– there’s now a little less incentive for someone to go out and get a job with a health care benefit. What happens to employment over the next ten years, though, is mostly unknown. It’s hard to make accurate predictions, particularly about the future.

  114. 114.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @mclaren: Well to be fair Lincoln started it during the Cival War, but the Red Scare of the ’20s were Communists were being round up and deported.

  118. 118.

    rikyrah

    Sean McElwee
    ‏@SeanMcElwee
    the gop establishment is mad because trump uses the racial resentment of white america to benefit his brand rather than elect republicans

  119. 119.

    rikyrah

    But, this is who they are. This is who they’ve always been.

    …………..

    Collective view of GOP candidates promises scary future

    Ron Eachus 4:45 p.m. PST

    December 7, 2015

    .

    It’s a very different world that leading Republican presidential candidates envision once they’re in the White House with support from a GOP-controlled Congress.

    Forget about global warming. They’re all deniers. No need to even negotiate CO2 reduction plans in Paris when you don’t acknowledge climate change even exists, or that humans have anything to do with it. Full speed ahead with fossil fuels — more drilling, more pipelines, more exports, more pollution. No talk of limits.

    We’ll walk away from the Iran deal and our allies who helped forge it, too. First day in office, some say. Reinstate sanctions on our own and threaten to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities regardless of what international inspectors say.

    Forget about the deficits they used to warn would ruin us. They’ve all got plans that cut taxes, mostly for the wealthy, but blow holes in the budget ranging from $3.6 trillion to $12 trillion over a decade.

    That doesn’t include the increased military spending, they promise. Sen. Marco Rubio has a plan to increase the defense budget by $1 trillion over 10 years but no plan to pay for it.

    The Republicans have longed for more military threat and intervention in Iran, in the Ukraine, in Libya, in Syria, in the South China Sea and again in Iraq. The terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino have fueled the fire, encouraging bombast and chest-beating about how strong we’d be if they were in office.

    In their world, the bombing we’re already doing, along with Russia, Turkey and now France and Great Britain, isn’t enough. Donald Trump said he’d “bomb the hell out of ISIS.” Sen. Ted Cruz says he’d “carpet bomb them to oblivion.”

    Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham proposed sending 10,000 troops to Iraq, even though Iraq says it doesn’t want them, and 10,000 more in Syria.

    And while we’re bombing them and taking sides in Syria’s civil war, we’ll turn our backs on the war’s refugees because they’re Muslims.

    http://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/opinion/columnists/ron-eachus/2015/12/08/collective-view-gop-candidates-promises-scary-future/76944850/

  120. 120.

    elmo

    @Princess:

    Has Breitbart always been the kinder, gentler face of Stormfront, or is this new?

    Not even kinder and gentler. Their focus is different – much less obsessive Jew-hatred, but the same or more terror of any shade of skin that doesn’t blend in with hospital sheets. But every bit as obsessed with the Other and longing to be the first over the wall when the race war starts. Even FreeToBeCrazyAndRacistRepublic isn’t nearly as bad as Breitbart.

  122. 122.

    danielx

    Like Il Douche gives two toots on a flute what Dick Cheney – a charter member of the Village, let us not forget – says about anything whatsoever, at least at the moment. I could see a place for Cheney in a Trump administration, say as National Security Advisor or maybe Secretary of Homeland Security.

    A role Cheney could really sink his fangs into with pleasure.

  123. 123.

    catclub

    @joes527:

    I especially like Trump choosing Bill Gates as the go-to name for technology issues

    Would be weird if he said Marc Andreeson.

  124. 124.

    catclub

    @rikyrah: Did you read the WaMonthly on how much of a total fraud the Iowa caucuses are? Ron Paul got 22 of the 28 actual Iowa GOP delegates, because the caucuses do not even determine who gets the actual delegates. The party does – later.

    Santorum actually won the caucus ( except for the precincts who lost their results)
    Romney was reported as winning on the day after.
    Ron Paul got most of the actual delegates.

  125. 125.

    Matt

    Trump: “We must remove the websites of fundamentalist extremists that preach violence and hate America!”

    Internet: “SURE BOSS. *every website that fawns over Trump disappears*”

  126. 126.

    patrick II

    Seth Meyers followed President Obama with an even more acerbic mocking of Donald Trump starting at the 12:00 minute mark here.
    Sample:

    Donald Trump said recently that he had a great relationship with “The Blacks,” although unless the Blacks are a family of white people I bet he’s mistaken.

  127. 127.

    Kalimama

    @Gimlet: The report actually said: Some people would choose to work fewer hours; others would leave the labor force entirely or remain unemployed for longer than they otherwise would,” the agency said in its latest analysis of the now five-year-old law.

    The CBO is not predicting that employers will fire millions of workers or reduce hours because of the law, but that the law changes incentives over the years for the workers themselves both in part-time and full-time positions.

  128. 128.

    J R in WV

    @mclaren:

    I’m glad you have given up and are going away. Moving to Belize or Cuba, or maybe Dominican Republic? Wherever, doesn’t matter. Because I don’t want a negative discouraged liar on the same side I’m on, at all. We don’t need your depression, your lack of optimism, your inability to see the good in people.

    Just go away.

    Thanks for all you haven’t done for anyone, you can go now.

  129. 129.

    BobS

    @J R in WV: There, there now…take a deep breath. You need to understand that it’s not just anyone who can smile and serve their lies seasoned with ‘hope and change’.

  130. 130.

    Scapegoat

    @mclaren: Post-legal America, indeed. Many excellent points here. Thanks.

    Obama has been great in many ways, but a few important erosions of law are all too often conveniently overlooked. In particular, his strident whistleblower prosecutions are an inspiration to authoritarians the world over.

    The silencing of dissent is increasingly viewed as a necessary action to increase operational efficiency.

  132. 132.

    BobS

    @Scapegoat: That “silencing of dissent” would seem to be not a bug but a feature for many of the many administration acolytes and apologists who frequently comment here. Out of one side of their mouth they decry police violence while the other can’t get enough of the surveillance state. Even the more restrained cheerleaders defend the excesses with “But, but…Republicans!”

  133. 133.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Gimlet:

    ObamaCare will force a reduction in American work hours — the equivalent of 2 million jobs over the next decade

    vs

    The CBO is not predicting that employers will fire millions of workers or reduce hours because of the law, but that the law changes incentives over the years for the workers themselves both in part-time and full-time positions.

    That could mean that older Americans who wish to retire but have remained in the workforce solely for employer health benefits could opt to leave their jobs.

    o/` One of these things is not like other thing… o/`

  134. 134.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @rikyrah:
    I think the GOP establishment is mad because they’ve spent an entire generation exploiting the illusion that they’re not motivated by racism. Trump is making it hard even for cable news anchors to pretend it’s ‘anti-establishment sentiment.’

    @Mnemosyne (tablet):
    And there’s those two federal judges who ruled it was legal, the second specifically, building on the first who ruled that Awlaki gave up his right to fair trial.

  135. 135.

    Enhanced Voting Techinques

    @Baud:

    Given the last few weeks, I’m thinking of going with a Muslim VP,

    Want to bet Trump does that if gets the GOP nomimation – it’s only way to walk his retoric back and still shock everyone .

  136. 136.

    goblue72

    @Mnemosyne (tablet): mclaren may be a bit “off” as they say, but quoting Benjamin Wittes isn’t dispositive either.

    First off, Wittes is not – by and large – a legal scholar, contrary to his bio. He’s a journalist with an undergrad degree from Oberlin. He is not a lawyer, nor does he have any other advanced degree that might have some connection to legal studies, jurisprudence or otherwise. He’s a guy who has been confused as to why SCOTUS goes around overturning precedent or why it acts in part as a political/policy making actor within our system of tripartite government. He is, in short, neither a practitioner of the law in his respective area of “expertise” (i.e. national security and international law) nor is he a formal academic in those fields. Instead, he works at two think tanks – namely the right-wing Hoover Institution and the centrist Brookings Institute. And it shows in his work product.

    Second, Wittes is a well known cheerleader for the national security state. There isn’t a national security agency or national security justification he fails to trumpet. While he was not “all-in” on the Bush Administration’s excesses – which isn’t that exceptional – its not like he’s been a strident critic of the national security state. He is the “reasonable sounding” voice that through sleight of hand makes extra-judicial executions sound less extra-judicial. He also has a long history of being far far too credulous at the “evidence” the government provides to justify extra-judicial actions (again, under the rubric, that those extra-judicial actions are actually evidence of the rule of law being in effect)

    Wittes is the guy that has argued – again, in “reasonable” sounding language – that because the government might “lose” at trial if we bring ALLEGED terrorists to trial, we should probably just keep them locked up in Gitmo without trial instead. Not because its right. Oh no – we aren’t going to say that. But who coulda knowed what might happen at trial, so let’s not go there, m’kay? And besides, we KNOW they’re terrorists.

    So yeah, interesting choice of “expert” to refer to. One might call it a tell.

  138. 138.

    BobS

    @Scapegoat: As you can see from a couple of the subsequent comments, authoritarian impulses are somewhat reflexive in more than a few who opine here. Notwithstanding some of the superficial cosmetics, they’re every bit as ready to defend the state’s right to surveille, imprison, and execute their fellow citizens as the marks at a Trump rally.

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