I missed most of the debate last night but saw a few clips this morning. The pundit consensus is that Rubio won, but they would say that. My favorite bit was when Trump insulted ghostly apparition Hugh Hewitt by noting that no one listens to his crappy radio show.
From what I saw, nothing happened that will change voters’ minds, so it looks like Trump is still poised to trounce his rivals in the upcoming primaries. I hope he kicks Rubio’s ass in Florida.
But Rubio did do something useful during the debate: He showed that Trump is extremely touchy about his business record, which we’ve all known for months doesn’t bear close scrutiny. Something for Hillary and Bernie to keep in mind.
Shifting gears: I can’t believe it’s Friday already. Got any big plans for the weekend? I may take another road trip to visit my old grandma.
Open thread!
jharp
“I hope he kicks Rubio’s ass in Florida.”
Me too.
Rubio is a smarmy weasel.
At least Trump and Cruz are blatant assholes and you know where you stand with them.
PaulW
This is the One-Year-Anniversary that Net Neutrality was officially confirmed.
This is the One-Year-Anniversary of the GREAT LLAMA ESCAPE.
This is the One-Year-Anniversary of THAT DRESS.
I say we celebrate by freeing all llamas and wearing black and blue outfits. Who’s with me?
dedc79
Peggy Noonan and Tom Friedman: a match made in hell:
PaulW
@jharp:
Trump is kicking Rubio’s ass in Florida.
Also, 40 percent of Floridians think Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer. I am not making this up.
Reminder: THIS IS LLAMA DAY.
BruceFromOhio
Ah, debates, I have missed them all, thankfully.
The weekend beckons with completing a gas tank cleanout project for a Honda CB350 four cylinder, swapping the hard drives on the house servers and installing a larger backup drive (iPhone videos eat up space like there’s no tomorrow) and drinking heavily to sterilize this dead air between the end of NFL season and the first round of NCAA b-ball playoffs. Maybe watching the last eps of The Expanse on Syfy again, they were that good.
ETA: Llama day? Shit, my robes are at the dry cleaner, and I haven’t said my prayers in weeks ….
Mustang Bobby
Weekend plans include a Quaker wedding Saturday afternoon and the All-British Car Show in Boca Raton on Sunday. I have a diverse life, I guess.
Bostonian
“Choke artist.” Is that Trump’s epithet for Rubio? Will it stick?
RedDirtGirl
I went for an early walk this morning in Brooklyn and came across a guy asleep at the wheel in his car, parked half in the middle of the street. It took about 5 minutes of pounding on the window and yelling to wake him up – spent a second wondering if I’d just come across my first dead body – and when he finally awoke, with spittle on his chin, it was clear he was completely wasted. I tried to get him to park on the side of the road, using my grown-up voice, but he drove off, so I got his license plate and called the cops. Hope he doesn’t hurt/kill anyone!
Mustang Bobby
@PaulW:
I believe it.
debbie
I’ve heard a few clips, or rather, I’ve heard absolute chaos. Reince Preibus must be about to proclaim his party’s excellence.
OzarkHillbilly
@PaulW: I look better in red with thigh highs and stiletto heels. Sssssssssmokin!!!
With temps hitting the mid 60s and plentiful sunshine, my only plan is to spend as much of the wkend out of doors as I can.
dr. bloor
Somewhere out there the Zodiac Killer is thinking, “Yeah, I sliced and diced a few innocents. But for that, I get compared to TED FUCKING CRUZ?!?”
Mai.naem.mobile
I read this interesting piece on TPM a couple of days ago -http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/revanche-and-the-first-black-president. I always thought Clinton being called the first black president was his affinity for blacks. I had no idea this was the origin of that.
bystander
@Bostonian:
It might stick if played in conjunction with video of Rubio’s “cramming it down our throats” rhetoric.
Have I mentioned that lately the words “Citizens United” brings a smile to my lips, knowing Scalia is dead?
Baud
@Mai.naem.mobile: Yeah, I get the feeling that a lot of people think Clinton called himself that.
Germy
How easy is to to have an Amazon bestseller?
http://observer.com/2016/02/behind-the-scam-what-does-it-takes-to-be-a-bestselling-author-3-and-5-minutes/
A man uploaded a “book” (title: “Putting My Foot Down”) consisting entirely of a photo of his foot, sold three copies (two purchased by himself) and achieved coveted Amazon bestseller status.
Every time I see some RW talking head called a “best selling author” I’m reminded of this.
bystander
@RedDirtGirl: Sounds like the opening of the of a Law & Order episode.
I watch too much teevee.
Baud
Rubio did ok playing off of what was clearly a stacked crowd in his favor.
Kay
@debbie:
It was weirder than the last one, but not as funny because it’s now clear one of these people will win :)
There was too much conservative code-talk in my opinion. The whole extended “religious liberty” section was very inside-the-movement. They need someone to set it up- “this whole section will be about how we think we’re persecuted as Christians and that’s what ‘religious liberty’ means”. THEN they can launch into Hobby Lobby.
Punchy
So I read an obviously fake news bit about some shooter going shooty in KS. Thats unpossible, because KS went “carry a gun everywhere period” so everyone would be safe. Since everyone Kansan is packing and the state is maximally safe, there’s no way a bad guy could kill so many in the face of so many good guys.
Clearly a bullshit story by a libtard plant.
OzarkHillbilly
@bystander: It’s not that the quantity is too much, it’s that the quality is a little lacking, and I say this as a Lennie Briscoe fan.
Baud
@Kay: I’m waiting for someone to sponsor the “Butcher, Baker, and Candlestick Maker Religious Protection Act.”
Snarkworth, short-fingered Bulgarian
@Bostonian: I’m not quite sure what it means. Does it mean he chokes creatively, with a certain esthetic flair?
Iowa Old Lady
@Kay: The idea of Christians being the persecuted group in the US ticks me off so badly I have to stop talking.
OzarkHillbilly
@Punchy: Well, the way I heard it he shot 20 or more people but only 3 died, so obviously he was just some libtard faggot who had never held a gun before he snapped and stole it from a Brave Conscientious Patriot’s ™ car where it had been left in the perfectly safe location of the front seat.
debbie
@Kay:
This meme was old before it began. Not quite as tired as white men bemoaning their lowered status, but just as absurd. As my Mamaw would have said, “You don’t know from persecution!”
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: And used a 22.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Snarkworth, short-fingered Bulgarian: Hehehe to your handle. :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Gin & Tonic
@dedc79: “A friend who repairs shoes”? I call bullshit. Any normal human being would refer to this person as “the guy who repairs my shoes.” Not going to get out of the boat to see if Tom or Peggy said that, but I’ll bet my house the only environment in which they ever converse with this “friend” is when they bring in their shoes for repair. It takes a particular kind of twit to think of people who perform services for you for money as “friends.”
OzarkHillbilly
@Iowa Old Lady: Now wait a minute, imagine being forced to do business with someone like me. Now do you understand?
Bostonian
@Snarkworth, short-fingered Bulgarian: I think it’s from the sporting professions. Somebody who reliably fails when under pressure. The art is in the eye of the beholder, whose enjoyment may be increased by anticipating the inevitable choke.
Yes, I think this one is going to sting. It ties in with all those loops of Rubio guzzling water.
Kay
I saw an ad for a primary in a local state rep race last night during the debate. R v R.
It’s terrifying that they’re raising that kind of money in a race like that. Our challenger to a state rep in 2011 raised and spent a total of 6400 dollars. The idea of buying a tv ad would have been ludicrous.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
PurpleGirl
Llama Day? I guess I should go to a fancy yarn shop and buy a skein of llama wool. (grin)
As if I need any more yarn…
Bostonian
@Gin & Tonic: Shades of Mike Barnicle. Sure, Peggy Noonan spends her afternoons hanging out with cute old Italian cobblers. I buy that.
“Although the facts are not all the same, the story is real.”
Iowa Old Lady
@OzarkHillbilly: Wanna buy my book? I’ll compromise and sell you stuff.
I missed the debate so I was just skimming through last night’s threads, and it looked like the Juice commentariate was bored by the same old, same old, so I wasn’t sorry I missed it. Then I read that Trump apparently said he was audited because he was a strong Christian? Did that really happen? Republican reality is often so close to BJ sarcasm that I can’t tell.
JMG
@Kay: Complete waste of money by whoever did it. Be thankful it’s an R who now has less money to spend on effective state rep level campaigning.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: I did the sign of the cross just on the thought of that, and I’m not even Catholic.
Kay
@debbie:
The moderator used this phrase, “bend the knee” ( it means bowing down to the state) that was like code within code. That’s the problem with a zealous base. It gets so no one outside the circle knows what you’re talking about. Words and phrases become proxy for whole theories and there’s the assumption everyone accepts the basic premise.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Snarkworth, short-fingered Bulgarian
@Bostonian: Thanks!
And regarding Rubio’s fluid levels, I loved when, after the previous debate, John tweeted something like, “He was sweating in places most people don’t have places.”
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Oh yeah, one just like old Granddad had.
Kay
@JMG:
It was really professionally produced. I don’t know who he is and I forgot to write his name down.
Mustang Bobby
I’ve seen a couple of ads for Hillary Clinton and one anti-Rubio ad by NARAL. So far that’s the only reminder that we have a primary coming up here in Florida.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Reports seem to say it was a “assault” rifle. Guess we’ll have to wait.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Bostonian: it’s probably the hallucinations from her gin bottle
Just One More Canuck
@Mustang Bobby: Who’s to say he’s not. It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
OzarkHillbilly
@Iowa Old Lady: Are you that eager to go to Hell?
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
ya know, there is a striking resemblance btwn Cruz and the Zodiac killer (photo)
Baud
@Kay: Could the candidate be independently wealthy?
JPL
@Iowa Old Lady: I haven’t watched the video, but mediate has the exchange. link
Was Kasich the only one to say commerce shouldn’t be allowed to discriminate?
Baud
@JPL: Yes. That was one of his moments of sanity, but he made up for it later.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
raven
@JPL: He just said commerce.
JPL
@Baud: So all the others think discrimination in the work place is okay?
We live in crazy times.
Another Holocene Human
@Punchy: I understand this un-news has been disappeared by the major networks, so gun Tr00th is safe. Amen.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Yeah, a .22 just like the one old Granddad had… in Vietnam.
Baud
@JPL: With respect to the gay, I think so.
dedc79
@Gin & Tonic: I can just picture Peggy’s weekly Best Friends Brunch, with her cobbler, her hair stylist, her oxy dealer, her bartender, and the guy who installed her cable and internet.
BillinGlendaleCA
I’ve seen my first tRump bumper sticker, one of my neighbors(not a big surprise since his big loud ass truck was sporting a Romney/Ryan sticker 4 years ago).
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Uh-oh.
Looks like Sanders might win the nomination after all.
Turns out Hillary is linked to isis (photo)
Kay
@Baud:
i guess he could but he’s young and the address of the treasurer is a city of 25,000 where there aren’t many wealthy people. If they are wealthy it’s assets- land- not income.
The incumbent resulted from a far Right v moderate primary for an open seat. The moderate won. Republican lawyers here (who are mostly moderates) backed him heavily. The incumbent is a moron- he was a practicing lawyer for about 15 minutes before he ran and won so I know him slightly. He is not in any way qualified for that job. His only prior job was as the head of “economic development” which is basically a patronage position, and he wasn’t qualified for that job either. His mother is a judge and I know her quite well. She’s a Democrat.
Betty Cracker
@Iowa Old Lady: That amazed me too. One of Trump’s chief advantages is his phony authenticity. If he tries to assume traditional Republican pieties by telling whoppers like that, he’ll hurt The Brand.
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Game over, man. Game over.
Baud
@Kay: I feel like I should have run for some state office sometimes. But I suppose if I had, I wouldn’t now be able to claim outsider status.
Baud
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: I half expect that claim to be made at the next GOP debate.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
If they did this 9 months, and more importantly 5 years ago when he went birther, they could have stopped him. But they thought they could keep positive control of their monster.
Play with fire…..
Iowa Old Lady
@OzarkHillbilly: I hear the company is better.
Eric S.
@BruceFromOhio: I’m about 4 episodes into The Expanse. I’m quite enjoying it so far. I’m happy to hear it holds up all the way through.
Baud
I’m surprised no one here has answered the most important question of all: What does Morning Joe think?
JPL
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: They let Trump rant and rave about the current President for years, but now that he’s eating their own, they are upset. What integrity they show.
Elizabelle
@dedc79: Sadly for me, Peggy Noonan’s WSJ column is behind a paywall.
But the first two sentences are pretty amusing.
Tweren’t brilliance that got the Republicans into their “funny moment.”
And what an interesting construction: “those who do politics for a living.” As opposed to “those in public service” or “politicians” or “political actors and observers.”
Guess Ms. Noonan is establishing “those’s” credentials, as in, valid because they get paid? [ETA: or even, clueless, because they get paid?]
And the “regular people.” Because the political types are hothouse flowers, by now?
Kay
@Baud:
The races are hard. They don’t have any money so they travel for a year- going to fairs, going to any event where there are 5 people. They have to give up every weekend for a year. Inevitably their family gets mad at them and if they’re a regular employee (not self employed) their job starts to suffer. The one I helped with our candidate was early forties, married with kids, and in the middle of the race his union went on strike and he was an elected rep within the local. He basically had a nervous breakdown. It’s just too much for people.
He came to one event in flip flops and with wet hair. Dress shirt, dress pants, flip flops, wet hair. He only had time to get dressed halfway :)
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Why not? Hasn’t stopped Bernie.
Tripod
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Q has Florida +25 for Clinton as well.
Recent state polls aren’t presenting hard slog to the convention numbers.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: I’m outside even the outsiders. I can’t even see the Establishment from my house!
Betty Cracker
It occurs to me that all Hillary would really have to do to rattle Trump at a debate would be to laugh. Just laugh at his outrageous claims and stupid bluster. He’s obviously an insecure person; every bully with a raging case of narcissism is. He’s also a sexist pig, which is a sure sign that he hates and fears women. I think Trump would have a giant meltdown on live TV if Hillary laughed at him.
OzarkHillbilly
@Iowa Old Lady: So you’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints? Welcome aboard!!
JPL
@Baud: What does Morning Joe think?
Another Holocene Human
@Kay: Big, dirty business has a lot to gain by buying a legislature.
Baud
@JPL: Don’t know. I never watch that crap.
Chyron HR
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Little children in suits? The party’s Corrupt Establishment can’t expect the base (i.e., people who don’t identify as or vote for Democrats) to stand for this elitist shit.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I haven’t read the thread, so I don’t know if anybody brought this up, but I was thinking last night that what Cruz and Rubio need to do is hire some competent joke writers. Trump can handle people attacking him. It doesn’t faze him at all; he thrives on it. What he can’t stand, what drives him utterly around the bend, is when people make fun of him. If, instead of just punching at him, they mocked him, he would lose it. Recall a few years ago, when President Obama and Seth Myers made fun of him at some gathering? I think it might have been the same thing that Stephen Colbert went after Bush at, but I forget what it is. Anyway, Obama and Myers made fun of Trump at this thing, and Trump was there, and he sat there, seething. You could see it. If somebody did that at a debate, where he could do more than just sit in the audience and take whatever they threw at him, they could needle him into a meltdown, a real meltdown, maybe a catastrophic meltdown. I don’t know why nobody has done this to him. He can handle people punching him, but if they don’t take him seriously… Well, that’s something else altogether.
PJ
@Mai.naem.mobile: Referring to Bill Clinton as the “first black president” happened long before the Lewinsky scandal, it was used during his first term to reference his appeal to blacks.
JMG
Trump voters by and large think all politicians are con artists. So Rubio’s attack is liable to generate a pot-kettle response.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Mel Gibson and Danny Glover announce they’re making a new “Lethal Weapon” sequel.
Gibson looks terrible. The one time “Sexist Man Alive” has gone bald and what little he has left is grey. He’s also put on weight and has aged poorly. (photo)
Elizabelle
@raven: I heard AK47 in last night’s early reports. Have not followed this morning.
And, golly, last night’s workplace carnage in Kansas does not rise to “mass shooting” level. Unless one of the wounded does not survive.
Shooter only killed three; he was the fourth dead, killed by police.
Nothing to see here. CNN barely covered it.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Chyron HR:
Hillary would have looked fabulous if she wore a suit & tie like Idgie Threadgoode (photo)
Baud
@Elizabelle: I imagine that every national news department has an employee whose job it is to find out the race or nationality of a shooter ASAP.
Elizabelle
Betty: that’s a wonderful illustration. Whatever it is.
MattF
My weekend plan is to (finally) see The Big Short. I read the book, so it’s a relatively low priority. Also, (sigh) I need to dig into and sort the books piled up in my bedroom. A chore.
And as for Rubio, Cruz, Trump– I’m feeling that there’s nothing more to say. Even when Cruz reveals a new layer of evil in his personality, it’s old news.
OzarkHillbilly
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
The White House Correspondents Dinner. The Youtube is hilarious.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Elizabelle: I think it’s Trump’s toupee sitting on his nightstand.
Baud
@Elizabelle: It’s a dumpster fire.
MomSense
@Baud:
I think you mean a Trumpster fire.
Baud
@MomSense: Yes. Yes I did.
Culture of Truth
Rubio finally went after Trump’s total phoniness on business, immigration, abortion, etc., but it’s probably too late.
Ohio Mom
@Mai.naem.mobile: that TPM post on why Clinton was called the first Black president was very enlightening. Thanks for pointing it out.
Elizabelle
Catherine Rampell of WaPost, with a column stating the obvious.
Points to her for clear illustrations of why she’s saying what is no surprise to any of us, who have been following the race.
Surprise — Trump, Cruz and Rubio aren’t all that different
On immigration, they all want a wall; Trump and Cruz want to deport 11 million (although Trump has promised, frequently, he will do it “humanely”).
Tax cuts, check.
FWIW, NY Times reader commenters are really pushing back at reporters and editors seeking to portray Rubio as the “moderate”.
Jeffro
@Elizabelle: Rampell’s great…she’s been on quite a tear lately.
I do hope these three GOP clowns all get called out on their ridiculous tax plans…they are like W’s giveaways to the rich, squared. I don’t think that will fly in the general.
Nate Dawg
Hillary laughing at Trump would be a sure bet except the media will claim the mean old witch was rude to the newcomer by cackling in his face, and we should all respect he office of running as the GOP nominee.
beltane
@Elizabelle: Rubio is more malleable in the hands of donors and “experts”, but he is far from moderate. Of the big three remaining contenders, Trump is actually the most moderate, a George Pataki with a big mouth and an oversized ego. Both Trump and Cruz are less obedient than Rubio, but obedience and political moderation are not the same thing.
MattF
@Elizabelle: Rubio smiles more than Cruz and glowers less than Trump. But that’s also true of 99.99999% of the human race– so… therefore, Rubio is, arguably, human. But we shall see.
rikyrah
Rubio, Cruz throw kitchen sink at Trump, but he’s still standing
02/26/16 08:00 AM—UPDATED 02/26/16 08:25 AM
By Steve Benen
………………………………….
This, of course, was the consensus analysis after the previous debate, held the week before the South Carolina primary, which Trump ended up winning by double digits. The commentary was similar in response to last night’s gathering in Houston – the 10th Republican debate of the cycle – though if recent history is any guide, many of Trump’s GOP supporters don’t seem overly concerned with their candidate’s debating skills.
Last night was, however, a very different kind of event. With the window of opportunity closing for candidates like Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, the first-term senators not only launched tag-team attacks on Trump, they appeared eager to throw every possible criticism they could think of at the candidate standing atop the polls.
After months of restraint, Rubio and Cruz apparently decided it was time for a kitchen-sink gambit, which included, but was not limited to, attacks on Trump’s inheritance, his “university,” his tax returns, the vagueness of his health care plan, his record on immigration, his general-election polls, and his support for official U.S. neutrality towards Israelis and Palestinians.
It led MSNBC’s Benjy Sarlin to raise an important point.
By dropping so many attacks at once, Rubio and Cruz also make it difficult to focus on any one issue in four days, giving Trump an opportunity to regain control of the conversation. We’ll never know what might have happened if they had doled out bits of opposition research over months and months instead and litigated each topic one at a time.
Elizabelle
@Baud: And to find terms other than “mass murder” or “attempted mass murder.”
WaPost is calling the event a “rampage.”
LIke, you know, elephants or something.
PS: Jeff Flake and several senators did get charged by elephants on a taxpayer-paid trip to Africa last week. Investigating poaching. That was kinda interesting. http://www.abc15.com/news/national/jeff-flakes-convoy-charged-by-elephants-during-trip-about-poaching
Kay
@Another Holocene Human:
It’s hard to find candidates because it’s really thankless. I was the treasurer for the guy we ran and I will never do it again. The GOP member of the Bd of Elections filed a complaint that I hadn’t registered as treasurer in her office (the local bd of elections). I had read the rules and I don’t have to file paper with her- I file electronically w/the S of St. Her complaint forced me to spend half a day getting a letter from the lawyers at the Sec of State restating what is in the rules. Her office is across the street from mine. All she had to do was call me and ask me. She was so nervous and shame-faced about this stupid complaint she filed that I felt like the local GOP put her up to it. She’s not an aggressive person and we get along fine. It was weird and I couldn’t hide my contempt for her for getting railroaded like that.
Two years after the race the campaign account was audited. I had retained the records and they were dead-on but I had to complete 20 pages of questions, put together a packet with all the records, and send that in. That took a full work day. It’s too much to ask “regular” (non wealthy) people to do.
Calouste
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Cruz and Rubio would also need a humor implant to pull that off. They would botch the delivery and Trump would get in a zinger in reply, because he is far better at that kind of thing.
beltane
@Calouste: The only one who could pull that off successfully is Chris Christie and he’s not around anymore.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Gin & Tonic: remember Peggy’s “friend” Cesar, who works the deli counter and was anti-immigration, or pro-Trump, or whatever hook La Nooners needed. I would have loved for someone on the Morning Joe set to ask Peg her friend’s last name.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Massachusetts Poll — WBUR — February 21 thur 23
Favorability
Barack Obama…….81%
Pope Francis……….77%
Bernie Sanders……74%
Elizabeth Warren…73%
Hillary Clinton……..67%
Charlie Baker……….56%
Ed Markey…………..49%
Ecks
@Baud: You mean to find out if the cops killed them?
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Calouste: Yeah, maybe. You’d think that with all their money, though, they could find somebody to coach them well enough to pull it off. And, really, it doesn’t even need to be all that funny. A few weeks ago, I saw on Josh Marshall’s site that some Republican senator really threw Trump off his stride just by poking a little fun on Twitter about Trump’s tiny baby hands. You’d think even Cruz or Rubio could pull something like that off…
MomSense
@Kay:
And it’s hard to find people who have time to go to really long meetings.
Miss Bianca
Going hunting this weekend. Thought about watching the debates, but crapped out and finished Season 2 of “Justified” instead. I found myself struck by how much Ma Bennett (played with such proletarian majesty by Margo Martindale) reminded me of Barbara Bush. Without the pearls.
ETA: Oh, and I’m going by the local newspaper office to find out just WHERE I’m supposed to caucus this Tuesday, because do you think the CO Democratic Party has come thru’ with that information? No sir, it has not. (Cue Will Rogers quote about “organized political party” here).
Germy
http://splitsider.com/2016/02/funny-or-die-hires-former-obama-speechwriter-david-litt/
hueyplong
Re: earlier Betty Cracker point, Hillary could probably in fact melt down Trump merely by laughing at him during a debate (we can call it a Benghazi!!! Committee Strategy). It needs to be what the RWNJs consider a “cackle” (easily accomplished) and it’s best if The Donald isn’t even sure what she’s laughing at, other than himself. That way he can’t be distracted by the context of some substantive point and can’t fall back on some learned-by-rote talking point, but has to concentrate all his anger and humiliation on the fact that some bitch has shown him up in front of the entire world. His response will be so purely personal and unconnected to a political point that The Moment will become the campaign itself and be impossible for a both-sides media to ignore. A RWNJ perception of Donald as having had his balls placed in a mason jar on national TV isn’t too consistent with WINNING.
It will also be very helpful if, by that point, Trump is cast in stone as a con artist by revelations (transcript testimony?) from the Trump U fraudulently fake university case. The prevailing sentiment should be that only marks and “LOSERS” get taken in by/listen to/vote for Trump.
The GOP only has a week or so in which to stop Trump. The Dems have 6 months. Just keep pushing him and he’ll blow, eventually.
Sherparick
I have a dream panel of interrogators for both the Republican and Democratic Debates
1. Daniel Larison – American Conservative
2. Driftglass – Driftglass Blog
3. Anna Marie Cox – (formerly of Wonkette and now NYT Magazine Contributor) or Digby (of Digby’s Hullabaloo)
Germy
@Sherparick:
John Cole and Doug J
SFAW
This weekend gives us the CRASH-Bs on Sunday..
Regarding the 341st debate: I half expect CNN, instead of their usual “Who won last night’s debate?” bullshit, to start in with “Who won the first 10 minutes? The second?” usw. Eventually they’ll get to “Trump’s use of the word ‘weak’ makes him the clear Winnah of the part of the debate from time-mark 32:07 to 32:15. How can Crubio counter THAT?”
Immanentize
@Mustang Bobby: MB, I have a serious-ish question about cars — What country car is a P-1800? Italian for the designer, Swedish for the manufacturer (volvo) or British for the goldarn Lucas electrical system?
Immanentize
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: That’s good. I must admit every time people talk about Isis, all I can hear is Bob Dylan, on the fifth day of May
Gin & Tonic
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That’s right, I was thinking later that she’d pulled this stupid trick before.
I wonder if she actually has real friends.
MomSense
@Miss Bianca:
Martindale is tremendous in every role she plays. I love her in The Americans, The Good Wife, and in August Osage County.
Snarkworth, short-fingered Bulgarian
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): That meme was started by Graydon Carter at the old Spy Magazine. Those of us with tiny baby hands are quite sensitive, I’ll have you know.
PaulW
@Germy:
I only sold two copies of my ebook Body Armor Blues… and only got ranked 54th out of 5000 for superhero stories… for about ten minutes. :( :( :( That’s not a best-seller. :( :( :(
Gin & Tonic
@Immanentize: Well, since some dude has driven one over 3 million miles, it certainly can’t be British.
Gin & Tonic
@Snarkworth, short-fingered Bulgarian: Because of the well-known relationship between size of hands/feet and size of, uhm…?
bemused
I was truly shocked to read this morning via Kevin Drum and Huffpo that Republican candidates’ teams have not done serious anti-Trump research and are scrambling now. I didn’t imagine that even this clown club would be this inept.
Miss Bianca
@MomSense:
Thanks for the tip, I will have to check out some of these other series – I love to follow certain actors/actresses from show to show, and I think she’s one of them now…
ThresherK (GPad)
@Kay: I remember reading about that phrase but it used to mean “Will Kennedy be a Catholic first and an American second?”
These R’s are messed up.
Immanentize
@Gin & Tonic: Those engines never quit. I had a ’71 E Such a fine car. Except the British part… The 3 million mile car must be like the axe an old guy sold that supposedly belonged to Abe Lincoln, “except the handle was replace three times and the head twice.”
Snarkworth, short-fingered Bulgarian
@Gin & Tonic: I’d rather not discuss it.
SFAW
@Immanentize:
Hippy.
Us kulcherd folk hear Zauberfloete.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MomSense: @Miss Bianca: she’s also great in her part of Paris, je t’aime, written and directed by Alexander Payne, even if she/they got one of the less interesting arrondissements (14th), or maybe they just didn’t use it well… or maybe as I type that was a deliberate choice on Payne’s part…. It’s on youtube
SFAW
@Immanentize:
I bought me one o’ them.
Thanks for the big laugh.
Uncle Cosmo
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Bangalore!
An illustrative tale from my undergraduate days at Johns Hopkins ca. 1970:[1]
In “German Literature from 1914 to the Present”[2] the lecturer related this illustrative tale while in the process of explaining why there was no German literature worth the name between 1933 & 1945 (during a minor political altercation called the Third Reich):
Dr. William McClain (RIP)[5] then noted that whereas it took most of the rest of the developed world 6 years to defeat the Nazis on the battlefield, the German people managed it in a couple of weeks–by laughing at them. Because the one thing authoritarian leadership cannot abide is to be ridiculed.
———
Notes:
[1] I’ve told it before–if you’ve seen it already, bear with me for the sake of those who haven’t, OK?
[2] In English translation, dank sei Gott. Although some of us, toward semester’s end, had the pleasure of stumbling through Durrenmatt’s Der besuch der alten Dame in 2nd year German auf deutsch whilst reading The Visit in English in this course.
[3] Only decades later did I discover there was precedent: When the Ausgleich of 1867 gave the Hungarians dominion over their hunk of the Habsburg lands, they immediately set about purging their agglutinative Finno-Ugric monstrosity of a tongue of non-magyar words, with fair success.
[4] After the war they learned from their English-speaking occupiers to steal from wherever they could instead. Up (or down) to & including the common farewell Tschuss!–a corruption of the British Cheers!
[5] Some years after retiring, the dear man was mugged on the front steps of his town house, a 5 minute walk from the JHU Homewood campus–as his assailant was forcibly relieving him of his briefcase he was shoved backwards, hit his head on the steps, & died.
Immanentize
@SFAW:
ruemara
@bemused: what’s there to research? He’s been embarrassing himself in the tabloids for about 30 years. He & his father were bigoted landlords. It’s all out in the open!
Morning, sunshines. Today’s agenda is tidy the apartment, finish press kit, do my Friday weightlifting thing, then workout, possibly go to a Latin dance party, start packing for Vegas. I’m also ridiculously hungry, but this bed thing is awesome. Bed sounds great compared to all that work.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Snarkworth, short-fingered Bulgarian: somebody the other day, maybe here, posted a link to Trump’s obsessive responses to Carter:
I swear somebody posted the gold-sharpie’d magazine photo, but I can’t find one now.
OGLiberal
Media is all over the Rubes with the NY Times putting out some ridiculous nonsense about how Boy Wonder can win even if he loses every state on Super Tuesday. (which seems to ignore the fact that most voters, even primary voters, are so uninformed that they will simply vote for the guy (and the rare lady) who is in the lead. Josh Marshall says Trump dominated the debate and even though Cruz and Rubio score a few hits, it won’t change anything. I didn’t watch the debate but I’m guessing that Marshall’s analysis is a lot closer to reality than the media’s – who after months of pimping the circus clown for ratings are now pushing the anybody but Trump line.
SFAW
@Uncle Cosmo:
See, now you’re just showing off.
Gin & Tonic
@SFAW: You mean five footnotes in one blog comment isn’t normal?
bemused
@ruemara:
That’s just it. They hadn’t bothered to compile that readily available dirt into an attack plan. Last night was the first actual effort to use that dirt and Rubio just threw a bunch of it out all at once getting drowned out by Trump.
Bostonian
@JMG: the problem is they’re not wrong. Rubio can’t call Trump a con artist because it’s a distinction without a difference.
WarMunchkin
@Kay: What level race was this? Statewide?
Paul in KY
@RedDirtGirl: Good job!
Chris
@Kay:
I’ve said before that conservatives increasingly remind me of me and my fellow Star Wars Expanded Universe fans, in that we can have hours-long conversations about things that make total sense to us, but for the other 99.999% of the population that hasn’t been through a gajillion novels, comic books, video games, and Guides To The Star Wars Galaxy, it’s just total gibberish.
I think a big part of it comes from the fact that post-Nixon and especially post-Reagan conservatives have grown up in a world where conservatism was the dominant ideology in the United States, so it was simply assumed that everybody was on the same page as them. But in the meantime new generations have grown up that don’t see things the same way, new events have changed the way even some of the old people see things. Equally important, I don’t think they realize that their own ever-increasing drift rightward and purity tests have made it increasingly hard to connect with people.
Mike R
Rubio was on with Charlie Rose and used the con artist line until Charlie mentioned to Rubio that he had said that several times already. Rubio isn’t even ready for PTA president let alone leader of the USA.
Paul in KY
@Gin & Tonic: If he was talking about who would win the Repub primary, then I too think it will be der Trumpenfuhrer.
SFAW
@Gin & Tonic:
It is if you’re Christy Brown. (May he rest in peace.) The rest of us, not so much.
But I was mainly referring to Uncle Cosmo’s blase use of the “glutenfree Fhindu-Urduk-Hai encabulation of the veeblefetzer-laden madeyalook” thing.
beltane
@Mike R: Too bad for Rubiobot that his handlers couldn’t do an upgrade in the middle of the interview.
Redshift
@debbie:
RNC PR BS on Twitter:
Leading to the reply, “there was another debate on a different channel?”
benw
@bemused: @hueyplong: I wonder about the efficacy about making rational plans to take out Trump: e.g. release oppo research, make fun of him/laugh in his face at the debate. So far no bad thing said about him or BY him have dented his support. Suppose he blows his stack and calls Hillary a “stupid b***h” in a debate, or you reveal that most of his “businesses” are really pyramid schemes? He’s a truth-telling go-getter to the post-rational right-wing! So far his support has always gone up!
I think the thing that kills Trump in the general is the same problem that all the Republicans have: the demographics are shifting towards Democratic voters. IMO the way to win 2016 is a ruthless effort to GOTV on the Democratic side. Lean hard into Democratic values, stay on message, don’t fuck up (remember, Dems are graded on a curve) or fight on their turf, and G.O.T.V. Any of the Republicans will look really sick compared to a solid, consistent message and efficient campaign, especially a wanna-be shouty-fascist like Trump. You can do this, Bernillary!
This has been your daily dose of benw shooting his mouth off about stuff.
SFAW
@beltane:
They learned their lesson — last time they tried that, he started on a “Norman – coordinate” loop until he shut down.
Redshift
@Bostonian:
Trump kept having to explain it, so I’m guessing no. Luckily for him, he doesn’t need it to.
Paul in KY
@hueyplong: She should chuckle & shake her head at whatever bloviation he spews forth.
Mike J
@Paul in KY:
The way Gore did in the debates against Bush?
Paul in KY
@Mike J: He ‘sighed’. Much, much different.
Also, Dubya was the ‘establishment’ guy, so he had some deference he was entitled to (says the courtiers). Trump, not so much.
dedc79
@Elizabelle: And I can assure you it only gets worse from there. Strangely, I could view the whole thing earlier, and now it’s behind a pay wall for me too. She describes
America as being made up of the “protected” and the “unprotected.” That alone isn’t so objectionable. But implicit in the piece is the suggestion that she bridges the gap (Hey, some of her best friends are cobblers!) Also, her supposed prime example of the protected ignoring the unprotected is the liberal elites who fight charter schools, do nothing to help public schools (by refusing to take on the evil teachers union) and send their own kids to private schools.
Mike in NC
While I’m not yet convinced that Ted Cruz is a serial killer or child molester, or possibly both, he does rank just slightly below Reinhard Heydrich on the empathy scale.
JMG
@OGLiberal: I just read the Times article, because I thought you had to be kidding. You weren’t. An article entitled “How This Reporter Can End the Day Rich Enough to Retire Without Leaving the House” would’ve been less of a stretch.
beltane
@dedc79: This type of language, “protected vs. unprotected”, is a departure from the usual right-wing messaging. It’s almost as though Noonan is hoping to co-opt the language of OWS and use it to further the interests of the very rich. In the hands of a skilled demagogue, which the Republicans don’t have right now, this kind of thing could be dangerous.
magurakurin
@Tripod: She is putting up some big numbers today. If these turn into actual election results, this thing is over on the Ides of March.
JCT
@Mike R: Hilarious. Rubio needs a software update stat. He is just a remarkably unprepared lightweight.
dedc79
@beltane: I agree. Hell even in the hands of an unskilled demagogue, it’s having some success. There’s not a more “protected” person than Trump, but he’s positioning himself as the savior of the unprotected.
hueyplong
@benw:
I guess my point is that attacks on Trump haven’t been successful so far because they haven’t made him lose his cool. But these “attacks” have not only come late in the GOP game, but they’ve all come from men. I think any perceived “attack” (and Trump’s tweets expose him as a guy who considers anything other than fulsome praise to be an attack) from a female, with Hillary as the “worst kind” of female, will in fact get under his skin instantly, just as Barack Obama’s surgical takedown at the correspondents’ dinner (coming from a melanin-enhanced man) just about caused him to have a red-faced stroke. The pout from that dinner — standing alone — would be golden in the general.
And we’re not talking about whether his numbers shoot up among the true believers, which is what you’re talking about. We’re talking about the general.
Of course, your demographics and turnout talk are more important, but I can’t imagine why a guy whose weaknesses are misogyny and racism can’t or shouldn’t be baited and hammered on one or both of those topics until he blows his stack on live tv in a manner that can’t be unseen or unheard.
And in the sweetest part of this, a FoxNews anchor (Megyn Kelly) showed the way.
Aleta
@Germy: a revolving door between government service and the comedy industry… seems reasonable this morning
Germy
Liz Mair @LizMair
“Guys, FWIW, we have a ton of opposition research info on Trump’s business record. Have tried to shop it, many reporters too scared to use.”
MomSense
@ruemara:
I hope the workout and Latin dancing mean you got good news from your tests. Have fun.
bemused
@benw:
Trumpettes wouldn’t have paid any attention to opposition attacks if his opponents had started months ago and they won’t now. They are enjoying the Trump show, insulting everyone, too much and don’t want it to end. There are so many people who only hear the news sound bites and have no clue about Trump’s business history such as the Trump University scam. The other candidates haven’t gone there and the media has barely mentioned any of it. This is a ridiculous lapse in a presidential campaign, imo. I don’t know how that information would influence voters but it should have been out there long ago.
Mike J
@Germy: That’s the rocket surgeon that tweeted about how awful Iowa is while on the payroll of a presidential candidate.
beltane
@Germy: As someone who grew up in NYC during the 1970s and 80s, I always assumed all the oppo research on Trump anyone ever needed could be found on the front pages of the tabloids. It’s all so out in the open that the guy is possibly liable-proof.
Shell
I think of that nice dogs butt in the opening seconds of Downton Abbey.
OzarkHillbilly
@Uncle Cosmo: The things I learn here. Thanx! :-)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Germy: if only there were some way Liz Mair, (of atLizMair, and whom I see on my TeeVee quite often) could catapult the filter and distribute that information.
Miss Bianca
@Uncle Cosmo:
I love this. Danke schoen for the lit/history lesson!
Germy
@Shell: When Trump told Hugh that nobody listens to his radio show, Hugh’s expression reminded me of the face Thomas makes whenever Carson asks him if he’s found a new job yet.
Chyron HR
@magurakurin:
Considering that the 2008 Democratic primary fight kept going well after Obama’s inauguration, I doubt Hillary vs. Bernie will be ended by a mere overwhelming advantage in so-called “delegates”.
Germy
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: She’s on the payroll of something called Make America Awesome.
I wonder what her salary is
Germy
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: She is not the sharpest spork in the drawer?
Miss Bianca
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I have not heard of this series – marvellous! I will have to check it out!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Germy: maybe, but I don’t think she scares easy (she’s got a dead-eyed cyborg vibe) and she’s much beloved by the youthful political twitterati. That’s a really odd complaint, that the media won’t run dirt on Trump. I know he’s got his ex-wives tied up in contractual silence, but MSM outlets have run some pretty ugly shit on him. Maybe she’s just priming the pump before they release it
SFAW
Listening to “On Point” (NPR) this AM. Some caller from upstate NY, saying he’s a lifelong Democrat — sounded like he’s in his 60s or 70s — said he would vote for Trump before he’d vote for Hillary.
I don’t have a ton of love for Hillary, but that’s depressing. I just hope it’s anomalous.
Mike J
@SFAW: Gee, she only got 67% of the vote in New York state in her last senate run.
Did the guy say, “as a lifelong member of the Democrat party….”?
OzarkHillbilly
@benw:
I think the thing that kills Trump in the general is the fact that “the post-rational right-wing” only makes up about 27% of the electorate. (don’t have a clue what the actual percentage is, but am pretty dogdamn sure it is quite a bit less than the usual GOP grab of 47%) Your point about the changing demographics is dead on and Trump’s concerted efforts to out the racist factions of the GOP only damage them more. It is only in theory that one can win the Presidency of this country on the strength of the white vote alone.
Paul in KY
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I know, if only there was some way…
Aleta
@Germy: a revolving door between government service and the comed industry… seems reasonablethis morning
Calouste
@Germy: Sounds like Liz Mair is still stuck in the early 2000s style of campaigning, where a candidate wouldn’t want to have his fingerprints on the release of oppo research. Trump will just bring it out in the open himself, right at one of his rallies or in an interview, if he thinks it’s the right time. He didn’t get the media to run the story about Cruz’s Canadian birth, he brought it himself and started threatening lawsuits about it. IMO the only reason that Trump hasn’t unloaded yet on Cruz and Rubio is that he’ll cruise to victory in the current three-way race, so there hasn’t been a need for it yet.
bemused
@SFAW:
He’s one of those old sexist farts who never evolved from the 40’s/50’s/ 60’s culture of women should stay home and not dis men by having opinions. It doesn’t matter if he’s always been a Democrat and voted for Democrats. They would never vote for an uppity female for any office. I’ve known a few of these guys but they died awhile ago.
OzarkHillbilly
@SFAW: I think it’s safe to say he’s not a Democrat but he plays one on the radio.
Matt McIrvin
@SFAW: “Lifelong Democrats” have been announcing in sadder-but-wiser tones that they can no longer support Democratic candidates ever since Reagan. Back then, this was an actual trend, but since then it’s become more of a trope.
PurpleGirl
@Uncle Cosmo: I don’t remember what the word is and doubt I could find but I remember that in my German class in college we learned about a word with 26 of those shorter sections. And also that the word the Germans made up for “insurance company” was another of those long words with many pieces.
And don’t forget that the French have the Academie which works to keep the language pure and free of foreign borrowings.
ellie
@Immanentize: But I could not hold on to her very long. One of my favorite Bob Dylan songs.
Betty Cracker
@OzarkHillbilly: And yet Goldie Taylor over at the Beastly Day speculates that a sliver of the black vote may put Trump over the top in the general. Kinda doubt that personally…
Amir Khalid
@Elizabelle:
Everything I hear about Peggy Noonan makes me think of the English lady in this famous comedy sketch, which is apparently must-see New Year’s Eve TV in Germany.
SFAW
@Mike J:
No. If he had, it would have been obvious he was trolling.
Chris
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Damn.
I actually loved those movies, but I can’t imagine a fifth going well.
SFAW
@bemused:
@OzarkHillbilly:
@Matt McIrvin:
The guy said he is a big Bernie supporter, so I don’t think he fits into the Reagan-Dem category.
The guy did not sound like the standard sadder-but-wiser king, nor did he sound especially sexist. He said he felt Hillary is untrustworthy.
Of course, my comments/responses assume he was being honest. Maybe I got fooled, yet again. Maybe not.
The Golux
@Gin & Tonic:
Though I’m sure he’s put a hell of a lot of miles on the car, I’m somewhat doubtful about that total. For his third million (driven in 11 years), he would have had to average 250 miles a day. Every. Single. Day. Since odometers rolled over at 100,000 miles in those days, who’s to say he “accidentally” incremented the count a few times?
Full disclosure: my father had a 1965 P1800; unfortunately, it got sandwiched between two other cars in a chain collision, so I never got to drive it.
SFAW
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Well, that was certainly better than getting Rick-rolled.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@SFAW: there was a story, so FWIW, about a Kerry canvasser in PA who knocked on the door of an old lady who said she had cast her first vote for Roosevelt and Social Security and Medicare had saved her life and my goodness, wasn’t that Iraq War a terrible thing. So the volunteer thought s/he could mark a safe vote for Kerry. “Oh my no. His wife told that reporter to shove it. We can’t have a first lady who would use that kind of language!”.
Or the short version, that guy doesn’t want to have a beer with Hillary.
Felonius Monk
CNN seems to be in full attack mode on Trump this morning. Must be part of an all-out MSM campaign to bring down The Donald. Pretty lightweight and laughable.
germy
Why did Poppy and Bar sit in the audience? Were they trying to put a shame hex on the debaters?
http://liartownusa.tumblr.com/post/139804764075/as-you-have-forsaken-jeb-so-you-have-forsaken-me
Matt McIrvin
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I find it particularly hard to believe that the New York Daily News is too scared to run dirt on Trump.
germy
@SFAW: i tend not to believe the personal details callers to radio shows share. Lots of ratfuckers call in. “I’m a lifelong democrat, but I like Trump” … right, bullshit.
Matt McIrvin
@SFAW: I think there are probably real Sanders-or-Trump voters. Many are kids who just want to smash the system in some way. The older ones are likely to really be Trump people who are Sanders-curious. Some could be nominally supporting Sanders with the understanding that he won’t be the nominee.
Matt McIrvin
…but I also know some hardcore Bernie supporters on the left who still insist he’s going to get the nomination, and, by this point, are so full of raw hate toward Hillary Clinton that I have a hard time believing they’ll ever vote for her under any circumstances. Best bet is they’ll go to Jill Stein.
Applejinx
@SFAW: But nearly everybody in politics at this point is untrustworthy. You can quite reasonably say that if Bernie’s promises are impractical, then Bernie too is untrustworthy, never mind everybody else.
I agree with that guy, I think Hillary is untrustworthy. The point being, the pressures of wanting to conduct a successful Presidency could lead to her being untrustworthy IN OUR FAVOR, by raising a bunch of Establishment/Wall Street money and then screwing with them for their own good. They will squeal no matter what happens but given the reformer/apostate slant of her brain trust, there’s a real possibility that the fawning things she’ll have said in the paid speeches will turn out to be lies (or at least, no indication of her support)
That’s untrustworthy too. From Bernie, we sort of need reality to be different. From Hils, we need her to be untrustworthy in our favor.
These things can happen (Nixon going to China, etc) and may be more effective when it’s a well-connected Judas betraying a failing system (rather than some marginalized outsider like either Bernie or Trump would be). But it does count as being untrustworthy.
Who benefits? Hillary. Once you’re President and then re-elected by the populace, there’s nothing for you but your legacy and you have to take more of a long view. It really doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that she needs to betray the ‘special interests’, but at the same time thanks to Bernie she does actually need them right now. The money has to come from somewhere and it won’t be from mister grass-roots ‘Hillary is untrustworthy’, or me for that matter. She has to execute a maneuver where she signals the populist things she means to do, without committing so hard as to cut herself off from her pre-election support.
Uncle Cosmo
@SFAW: Jealous. :D
You want showing off? This is showing off: Beselek egy kicsit magyarul. Nem értem nincs.
Many years ago I came across a book titled The Intelligent American’s Guide to Europe. The author (who grew up in the pre-Great War Austrian nobility–his first language was French) chose to attend law school in Budapest & had to learn Hungarian to do so.
He wrote (I paraphrase) that learning Hungarian was no worse than learning any other language–were one from Mars. For Earthlings[1, 2], it was harder, because before one could start it was necessary to unlearn everything one thought one knew about how a language works.
And in fact when I studied a bit of the language I found that constructing a Hungarian word (let alone sentence) is a lot like assembling a freight train:
engine/boxcar/boxcar/…/boxcar/caboose
—–
Notes:
[1] I knew yinz would be désolés were there no footnotes–ecco!
[2] In fact he meant “from a place where an Indo-European language is spoken,” but give the Von a break, he must have been pushing 100 when he wrote this…
NobodySpecial
After Super Tuesday, when Clinton steamrolls out of it with a big lead in delegates, let’s do the world a favor and stop throwing darts at each other and instead start loading up the GOP floating in the water with the biggest fucking anvils we can find.
Amir Khalid
@Applejinx:
The “Hillary is untrustworthy” meme is something I remember as a Republican talking point from the 1990s. Along with the “Hillary is a lesbian” and “Hillary had Vince Foster murdered” memes. I consider it every bit as truthful as those other talking points.
Gin & Tonic
@Uncle Cosmo: That’s funny, because there has long been a theory that Hungarians are actually from Mars. Turns out that the theory was the work of the brilliant and delightful Philip Morrison.
Applejinx
@NobodySpecial: Um… nah.
Clinton has to be directed. If that happens, it will be entirely because her PACcy special interests came through for her and carried the day. That’s fine for them, but if that was okay for the country there wouldn’t even BE a primary, and things would be much simpler.
The condition of ‘she regained the coronation thanks entirely to her friends in high places no thanks to the commie pinkos trying to spoil it all’ cannot be followed by ‘until they all gave up and went home/voted for Trump’. That’s a worst-case scenario.
Do you want her to incorporate that massive voting bloc or not? She has to be steered, now more than ever. The GOP has enough anvils.
The biggest one is probably this: the GOP doesn’t actually want Trump, and since he intends to run to the left of Clinton and sweep the country (his one big advantage there is accusing her of being a sell-out to special interests, and Bernie has made it financially impossible for her to stop being that) then what Trump’s going to do is give big sloppy rhetorical kisses to loser Bernie. Which he is already doing in small ways.
Bernie loses, you get Trump praising his honesty and grassroots authenticity to the skies while accusing the Dems of being a corrupt gang of cronies who murdered poor Bernie’s hopes. There’s enough truth to this to make it frighteningly damaging, but look one step deeper…
The same angle that serves as a brutal attack on the Dem establishment… will also be Trump openly praising an old Jewish socialist and repeatedly invoking him as a symbol of all that Trump is running against.
Say fucking goodbye to any hope of the Republican establishment even pretending to line up behind Trump obediently. They’ll be slanting the Diebold machines against him. They will throw the election to Hillary just as a big fuck-you, more or less justifying all of Trump’s accusations. At least Clinton can be fought in normal ways. What Trump is likely to do to attack Clinton, while it’s an unbeatable tactic in messaging terms, will basically eviscerate the whole political system and become a mockery of everything ‘conservatism’ has pretended to hold dear.
I’m calling it: Hils most likely gets the nomination, Trump gets the R nomination, at which point Bernie becomes Trump’s symbol of everything wrong with the establishment. And sure as shit, Trump loses the cooperation of the party he leads, because you can’t go praising the fallen Socialist.
It’s just more evidence that Trump isn’t really a ‘conservative’, which he’s not. He’s Trump (Trump), and does not give a shit what the Republicans care about.
Applejinx
@Amir Khalid: Fine. Justify all the positions she’s taken over the years, including the stuff we want her to abandon (like bringing superpredators to heel, like favoring globalization, all that stuff). Hillary only makes political sense as a moving target responsive to the needs of the electorate (which can be really short-sighted and misguided).
We WANT her to be untrustworthy to certain dated bullshit. You could also call that ‘learning’. Don’t insult our intelligence by claiming that she’s some beacon of faithfulness when she’s supported terrible things and terrible people because that seemed right for the times. Often it was, but change is needed.
SFAW
@germy:
I think it was more of “but I dislike Trump less than Hillary,” but in the end, the real reason may not matter.
LAC
@Bostonian: well, Peggy could have nodded off at the shoe stand after her lunch of scotch and air. That is possible. And after her third drinkiepoo, everybody is a friend. I buy that. ?
Germy
@SFAW: I didn’t hear the show; maybe I was too quick to judge. I’m used to people calling in to radio shows with all sorts of dubious claims.
Germy
@LAC: “Waiter, bring me a scotch and air. And what are your thoughts on this election cycle?”
SFAW
@Applejinx:
Well, for someone as wordy as you, you don’t seem to pay attention to some things. Even if they had some super-secret backdoor into the voting machines, do you REALLY think they’d throw the election to Hillary over Trump, because you think she’s a (closet) Republican? That’s borderline-delusional.
SFAW
@Germy:
Understood. And in the grand scheme of thinks, it’s pretty unimportant. I was just unpleasantly roused from my drug-induced haze by that guy’s comment.
LAC
@Germy: ???
Applejinx
@SFAW: No, I think they would throw the election to Hillary because Trump is NOT A REPUBLICAN.
Which he’s not. He’s dismembered them, to our horrified delight. His policy has nothing to do with what the Republicans are trying to achieve. (Tariffs? srsly?) He truly is the Frankenstein’s monster, out of control and wrecking the Village.
This is probably Hillary’s best angle against him. He’s going to try to co-opt populist positions and control the Teahadi plus Bernista blocs by insisting on how un-establishment he is, which is true. If she gave him some rope and then said he was being a good Democrat but she proposed to be a better one, stick a fork in him because he would be completely fucked.
He can only run to the left of her if she behaves like that’s bad. It requires a reverse-course but the funny thing is, rather than running left and then moving to the center for the general, this is an opportunity to hold on to party machinery by running Establishment in the primary, establishing her bona fides as the ONLY establishment politician left in the race on either side of the aisle, and then moving left in the general to outflank Trump’s attempts to make her look ‘centrist establishment’.
It’d be an amazing opportunity. You’ll see if it’s real if you see Trump praising Bernie in efforts to position Hillary as another Establishment pol, like those on the R side he’s flattened. He will believe he can continue that line of attack, especially against Clinton.
RedDirtGirl
@Elizabelle: dumpster fire
Amir Khalid
@Applejinx:
Is it really your theory that once nominated, Hillary plans to run as a sort of Republican, while Trump runs as a sort of Democrat? Because that’s the only sense I can make of what you’re saying here. If so, people will want some of whatever it is you’re smoking.
Applejinx
What is it we say around here about, never let the electorate pick between a real Republican and a fake Republican? What’s shaping up is a general election between a real (old school, party machinery) Democrat vs. a fake Democrat, what with the tariffs and being quote ‘pro-choice’ unquote in his own damn book. He is absolutely a fake Republican and may have even started out as a Trojan horse before he got drunk on public acclaim and adulation. He’s now a real demagogue but he’s still a fake Republican.
Applejinx
@Amir Khalid: No, I’m suggesting Hillary move to the left once the primary is won (assuming she does). Centrist is the kiss of death and she’s the last establishment politican left on either side, which means there are a LOT of people who want to see her win so that the whole system isn’t fucked and thrown into chaos.
Trump IS Chaos but he’s also got no respect for the Republican principles and that’s a major weakness (and if you don’t think they have principles because they’re just aimless psychopaths we can stop talking now: they have a distinct agenda which Trump does not honor.)
And Hillary can run in several ways but she needs to be ready to make, and justify, that deadly charge: “you’re acting like you want to be a good Democrat on these issues, but I’m a better one”. I’m nearly certain he will try to turn her campaign financing against her and use Bernie against her. But it’s a third rail: he needs to find ways to praise Bernie to paint her as a ruiner of justice, but doing so further erodes his already pitifully weak connection to the Republican establishment.
Uncle Cosmo
@OzarkHillbilly, @Miss Bianca: Kein problem.
Re footnote [3] supra, it gets weirder: I had some tutoring in Hungarian back in the early 90s (invited to join the sessions of some friends who were planning to move there[1]) & discovered in our text (Teach Yourself Hungarian–yeah, right…) that the then-current slang valediction in magyarul was Szia!, pronounced See-ya!. Well, OK, cultural penetration of Americanisms & all that…except that (according to the text) it was also used as a greeting.
My initial response was brought to you by the letters N, F & W. Then in summer 1992, I was in a shop in Sopron (pron. Shop-run) in western Hungary, & the phone rang, & the proprietor scooped it up & said Szia! into the receiver….
I later remarked to some Hungarian about lifting the expression from us & he blithely replied that we had stolen it from them…I think he was joking but with them you can never be sure–they are the most charmingly arrogant[2] folk I’ve met in 3-dozen-plus trips to Europe. Among other things, they consider themselves the only Europeans intelligent enough to learn to speak Hungarian.[3]
Notes:
[1] Folkdance aficionados of modest means who proposed to research the Hungarian repertoire on the ground–they made the move but later (so I was told) decamped to Romania, where the living was cheaper & the Romance language less daunting.
[2] “Charmingly” mostly because the Treaty of Trianon (1920) shrunk their polity to one where only ethnic Hungarians live. As partners in Austria-Hungary, the Magyar nobility gleefully oppressed whatever Romanians, Croats, Slovaks & Poles (not to mention Jews) fell within their grasp.
[3] In The Making of the Atomic Bomb, author Richard Rhodes notes that many top scientists at Los Alamos (von Neumann, Wigner, Teller, etc.) were Hungarian Jews, & recounts the rumor that these guys were so brilliant they weren’t human at all–they were Martians who’d learned to imitate human beings perfectly. When they occasionally slipped up by speaking Martian amongst themselves where they could be overheard, they’d claim it was Hungarian… (Which, considering my post #210 supra, closes the elliptical orbit right nicely, nicht wahr?)
SFAW
@Amir Khalid:
That was your first mistake, i.e., trying to do so.
Uncle Cosmo
@Gin & Tonic: Great minds run in the same channels–cf. post #228 supra. Morrison was at Los Alamos from mid-1994, thus either the initiator of the rumor or an earnest propagator of the chain reaction. ;^D
SFAW
@Uncle Cosmo:
1944, maybe?
Paul in KY
@Applejinx: You must be one badass typer to type all that stuff up in your usually loooong posts. Are you doing a lot of cut & paste?
Asking for a friend…
Paul in KY
@Uncle Cosmo: Didn’t one of them end up being a Russian spy?
Edit: Thinking it was Dr. Szilard.
More edit: Wiki says it was not him.
Miss Bianca
@Uncle Cosmo:
That’s it, that’s it – first The Good Master, now all this. I gotta get to Hungary. it sounds like bad craziness. In a good way. Oy, I hope a critical mass speaks English. Or at least Romanian…
Uncle Cosmo
@SFAW: Fingerfehler, sorry, 1944 is kee-wreck.
@Paul in KY: Was Szilard ever at Los Alamos? Apparently not–he worked for the Manhattan Project Metallurgical Lab in Chicago.
Klaus Fuchs was the big name in atomic spydom & he was German. Rhodes does a pretty decent job of covering the espionage (along with the USSR’s atom-bomb project & the development of the H-bomb) in Dark Sun, a sort of sequel to The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which is not quite on the latter’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning level but still an excellent read. (I’ve read TMOTAB 3x, at >800 pp., & will probably do so again before I check out of this universe.)
Applejinx
@Paul in KY: Eh? I’m a writer. Plus, I feel it’s more worthwhile in the blogosphere to express coherent ideas with correct spelling rather than mindless Twitter-like bashing. We have a platform here, of sorts, and a community where people talk about ideas and form new syntheses.
‘ur stupid’ would almost always be quicker to type, and I realize it and reactions like it are popular among many posters, but (a) it’s boring and (b) it doesn’t change anybody’s mind.
Of course I’m typing everything out as I post. I can’t imagine what else one might do.
Paul in KY
@Applejinx: I think you have a fine voice here. Just wish you were a little more concise in your posts. Those of us who may be at work don’t have a lot of time generally to digest 5 paragraph posts (IMO).
Uncle Cosmo
@Miss Bianca: Plenty of English spoken in the cities. Since no one but Hungarians are intelligent enough to learn Hungarian, they are regretfully forced to learn whatever their visitors can understand–which these days usually means English, & occasionally German.
Hungary is the only place I’ve been in Europe where saying “Good day” in the local tongue upon entering a shop gets a tourist a scowl instead of a smile. Yeah, I know I don’t pronouce Jo napot szivanok perfectly, but even so… After the half-dozenth time that happened I had the following conversation with one shop owner:
UC: Beszel on angolul?
SO: Of course I speak English!
UC: Why is everyone so angry when I say something in magyarul?
SO: Listen–(sticks right index finger in my chest)–you don’t learn our language, we learn yours!
I gather that Hungarian is like Japanese in that the better a foreigner learns it, the less native speakers want to talk to you. As if they’re afraid for foreigners to know what they’re really saying amongst themselves…
Hungarian cooking is one of the great cuisines of the planet–if your heart can stand it. They claim that the Austrians stole rétes from them & renamed it strudel & I half believe them. Csirke paprikas (paprika chicken), meggyesleves (sour-cherry soup), töltött paprikas (stuffed peppers), fagylalt (ice cream)…mmmm.
If you visit Budapest you should go to Prague as well for contrast. The historic center of the latter has hardly had its baroque mussed since the 30 Years War, whereas between WW2 and the Uprising both Buda & Pest had the shit blown out of them–the Red Army came barreling across the Pannonian plain all the way to the Duna (Danube) whereupon it encountered the Wehrmacht dug in deep on Varhégy (Castle Hill) on the other bank–& the two armies volleyed serious ordnance back & forth at point blank range for several weeks. You can still see bullet holes in the architecture (though some of them are from 1956).
There is a joke from the Good Old Bad Old Days of the Warsaw Pact: A tour bus full of Soviet citizens is making the rounds of Budapest with a Hungarian guide pointing out sights in fluent Russian. One building she notes is the former Navy Ministry (from Hapsburg days). “Wait a minute”, one Russian says, “how can you have a Navy Ministry? You don’t even have a coastline!”
“Why should that bother you?” the guide replied. “Doesn’t the USSR have a Ministry of Culture??”
(rimshot)
Applejinx
@Paul in KY: Sorry about that. I’ll make an effort. It’s like the Blaise Pascal quote: ‘sorry for my long letter, I didn’t have time to make it shorter’.
Uncle Cosmo
BTW, that’s Jo napot kivanok (“I wish you good day”). Can’t even blame that one on the fingers. I think I was thinking of szivesen (“you’re welcome”).
FWIW Dr Szilard’s last name means “strong”…probably magyarized in the deepdark past from the Yiddish shtark…
boatboy_srq
Late here, but @BC – did you catch this little tidbit about Okeechobee? Typical State Where no Sunshine Law May Show Its Face…
boatboy_srq
@Miss Bianca: LOTS of English speakers in Hungary – at least in Budapest. I found it very friendly and never needed my German once. Budapest can be a very fun city: well worth the visit. UC is right about the food, too.
Similar, I find, for Romanian cities: enough people speak enough English that getting around isn’t difficult, and every Romanian I know at once apologizes for how little English s/he thinks s/he has – and proceeds to prefer “practicing” their English over helping me with my Romanian. Even in Bran and Sinaia I did pretty well.
benw
@hueyplong: I think we agree, so let’s compromise. Democrats can aggressively GOTV *and* bait Trump into playing the fool! :)
Miss Bianca
@Uncle Cosmo:
ba-DUMP! “In Soviet Union you not make joke – joke makes YOU!”
@boatboy_srq:
Yes, I can see that Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Romania are all going onto the short list for the next trip,,,ah, hell, better chuck Vienna and Berlin back into the mix as well…
boatboy_srq
@Miss Bianca: May I suggest Vienna/Prague/Bratislava/Budapest/Bucharest? That’s manageable, and (except for Bucharest) manageable by train (Budapest-to-Bucharest is either a sleeper run, with Hungarian and Romanian border control waking you at what-the-BLEEP-time-is-it, or all day on the train through Timisoara: interesting and sometimes pretty either way, but not especially comfortable even in the 1st class that a rail pass will get you). Trains between the first four cities are nice, and cheap on a Eurail Select, and flights aren’t difficult for the last one.