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You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2016 / Open Thread: GOP Realizes Its Stalker Is Calling From Inside the House

Open Thread: GOP Realizes Its Stalker Is Calling From Inside the House

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Hard for us cynical sane people to credit, but it would seem like the Establishment GOP really didn’t understand, until after South Carolina, that the Trump-Monster emerging from fifty years of Repub propaganda about undeserving moochers, atheists, and subhumans was not going away because they ignored / mocked / threatened him. They had a lovely big-budget musical planned… Springtime for Patricians, featuring a third-generation celebrity, a tiny ethnic sidekick, a creepy rival to better highlight the lead, and a backup cast of goofy stereotypes for the audience to mock. Then this yammering BRUTE appeared out of nowhere, tearing up the pretty sets, pissing on the terrified prop crew, tearing some of the cast members limb from limb. Trump is their history made visible, a nightmare from which they are fruitlessly attempting to awaken…

From the Guardian liveblog, last night:

Who is doing best so far? Jeb Lund thinks Marco Rubio is putting on a good performance – but should stop laughing at his own jokes:

Marco Rubio is doing very well. He hit Trump smartly on apt points, and he even had a good punchline. Cruz isn’t doing as well as Rubio, which should probably be alarming for Cruz supporters, because he’s the one who should be tap-dancing around everyone on stage. Kasich seems pleased to talk when people remember him and just as pleased to watch when no one does. Ben Carson was let out by the roadside to run free through a meadow as mom and dad peeled off in the car…

.


The Guardian, again:

… Trump gestures respectively to Rubio and Cruz: “First of all, this guy’s a choke artist and this guy’s a liar.”

Carson gets a big cheer with the line: “Can someone attack me please?”

.

Reader Interactions

243Comments

  3. 3.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    Did a Juicer link yesterday to a webcomic called Robot-hugs.com and a cartoon about You never break a promise to a cat?

  4. 4.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I see people– tweeting journos– say Rubio was doing well today. I thought he looked like he was trying too hard, especially that “wet his pants” bit. Like a groomsman who grabs the mike from the best man: “You call that a toast?…”

  7. 7.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    Uh-oh.

    Looks like Sanders might win the nomination after all.

    Turns out Hillary is linked to isis (photo)

  8. 8.

    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 grey. He’s also put on weight and has aged poorly. (photo)

  9. 9.

    Baud

    An increasingly confused and unstable citizenry will soon turn to the the virtual world for leadership.

    Baud! America’s Best Bet!

  14. 14.

    jl

    @Baud: A confused and unstable virtuality for a onfused and unstable people! Baud! 2016!

    Yell some crazy for us, Baud! 2016!

  15. 15.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    Justice Baud! (?)

    I have two source high up in the Obama administration (Bo & Sunny) and they texted me that the President has Baud! on his short list of nominees but he is concerned Baud! won’t leave the campaign trail for the bench.

    This would be a big legacy accomplishment – the first virtual Justice.

  19. 19.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    America, here is your future:

    1) Every media outlet declares Rubio the runaway winner of this debate.

    2) Trump dominates the primaries.

    It’s kind of funny though that anyone actually thought that whoever “won” a debate according to “every media outlet” should automatically be reflected in the next polls or in the voting in the next caucus. It’s like they really think that media pundits make up their minds about who “won” that insane clownish shouting match, and in a sane world, that candidate would automatically be leading in the polling or votes in the next caucus.

    Dear news media: You’re often wrong. You didn’t think Trump was going to be this successful, and for years you dismissed the slide to anarchy and extremism by the Republican Party as something normal that exists “on both sides”.

    So whoever you’ve decided won or lost a debate is pretty much as meaningless as your declarations about Trump or how normal everything was as the Republicans lost their collective minds, which is to say, totally.

  20. 20.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    @SFAW: yes, yes, but as an environmentalist I like to recycle. plus, why deny the evening crew a good giggle.

  21. 21.

    Bnad

    @Howard Beale IV: In other words they effectively give all the delegates to Rubio (or Paul Ryan or whoever is the leadership’s choice at the brokered convention). This is how it happens. This story obfuscates the meaning of that move so well that I bet even the primary voters themselves won’t realize their vote for president now means nothing. If I’m right in what this means, we can expect the same in quite a few more states.

  22. 22.

    Baud

    @jl:

    Yell some crazy for us, Baud! 2016!

    NO MORE LINES BETWEEN THE STATES!!!!!
    .
    (I’m being told that’s taken.)

  24. 24.

    jl

    @Baud:

    ” NO MORE LINES BETWEEN THE STATES!!!!! ”

    Lawsuit from Trump might get the woeful Baud! 2016! campaign some free media.

    …

    Fun thing about the GOP debate last night was that the unintelligible yelling parts made the most sense.

  27. 27.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    Let’s dispel once and for all with this fiction that Marco Rubio doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing.

  28. 28.

    DCF

    Hard for us cynical sane people to credit, but it would seem like the Establishment GOP really didn’t understand

    I think it fair to say that the ‘Establishment DNC’ didn’t understand (or fully acknowledge) it’s progressive/liberal cohort either until Senator Sanders entered the campaign….

  31. 31.

    SFAW

    @Bnad:

    It warms my heart to see that the Rethuglican “braintrust” is more than happy to screw over voters who vote FOR them, not just people who might vote against them.

    I can envision a Rethug primary Voter ID card – you have to sign a blood oath of fealty to Rancid Priebus, or “No card for you!”

  35. 35.

    Mary G

    All the establishment pols racing to endorse Rubio will just push the angry voters farther into Trump’s corner. Christie doesn’t count because he is the angry guy already.

  46. 46.

    Renie

    Watching the debate last night had me laughing and laughing. I could definitely see how low-information republicans who have no concept of how gov’t really works would vote for trump. In the menage a trois of trump, rubio and cruz I found myself rooting for trump. If you are anti-establishment or anti-government you had to love him going after the two Washington guys. And even though the media thought otherwise, I thought he was able to fend off both of them. He is a showman with the sharp and constant nasty remarks. This is what Americans like; they love people going after each other. They boo and hiss at tv shows all the time where people compete against each other; watch any wrestling and they want someone all bloodied up. So Trump is giving them blood and the blood being spilled is from the gov’t guys who they feel is the root of their problems. I think the Trump train is unstoppable now.

  48. 48.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    If anyone has TVONE on their cable system: Obama is honoring Ray Charles with a PBS tribute concert in the East Room.

    Man, what a racially diverse guest list. THIS is what angers them so much.

  49. 49.

    Howard Beale IV

    @Adam L Silverman: Beats me what the hell is going on-but it looks like they’re trying to deny The Donald his eventual coronation by any means necessary-and this is one way to do it “By the Book”.

  51. 51.

    Miss Bianca

    @Howard Beale IV:

    What does this even mean? I realize that I have no idea. I saw in our local paper that the CO Repubs were supposed to be choosing delegates, rather than caucus directly for their candidates of choice.

  52. 52.

    Adam L Silverman

    @srv:Yes and this ties into @Howard Beale IV: and @Bnad: comments about the Colorado state GOP making everyone a super delegate and cutting the actual primary voters out of the equation. If the overwhelmingly reported plurality or majority of primary votes are for Donald Trump, but the delegates and/or superdelegates get to the convention and someone else is named the nominee, there will be hell to pay.

    The people that Donald Trump are firing up are angry and they support him because he’s got them believing he’s the person to finally even the score with all the people and groups that they’re angry about. And many of them are for more radical and reactionary than, I think, most give them credit for.

    I had lunch with a friend and colleague of that friend about a month ago. They were completely serious in telling me that Speaker Ryan is a socialist because he went through with the spending bill based on the budget agreement that Speaker Boehner had negotiated in December before retiring. Similarly in explaining that Chief Justice Roberts is a liberal plant on the Supreme Court because of the ACA and Obergefell rulings. And while both are well educated and informed, I got a twenty minute earful on how Federal regulation is destroying everything, with a hospital in New York that had to close because of New York municipal regulations/code enforcement, as the example. When I tried to explain that those are municipal regs and had nothing to do with the Federal government, they looked at me like I was speaking Ladino. Nobody was yelling or anything like that. And everyone’s tone was pleasant, but there is no reasoning with people who’s understanding of what is actually happening is almost 180 degrees from reality.

  55. 55.

    Anoniminous

    @Anoniminous:

    Yeah, they did. Back in August.

    State Republican Party Chairman Steve House said the party’s 24-member executive committee made the unanimous decision Friday — six members were absent — to skip the preference poll.

    The move, he said, would give Colorado delegates the freedom to support any candidate eligible at the Cleveland convention in July. Republican National Committee officials confirmed that the change complies with party rules.

  56. 56.

    p.a.

    RNC: by any means necessary muthafuckas!
    Other state GOPers: Wash, Reince, repeat.
    Trumptards: independent run!

  58. 58.

    Calouste

    @Bnad: Well, if that happens, Trump will run third party, even if he can’t run in all 50 states. The man is vindictive if nothing else. I can even see him limiting his run to red states on purpose.

  61. 61.

    amk

    Trump is building a “new Republican Party.” One without as many Republicans.

    wtf is ralston babbling about?

  63. 63.

    Miss Bianca

    Again thanks to my local paper, here is how they put it: “Here in CO only Democrats are choosing their presidential candidate; Republicans are choosing delegates, who will eventually declare themselves in convention”.

    So, is this the switch HB IV was referring to?

  66. 66.

    Steve in the ATL

    @p.a.:

    The Colorado GOP just made everyone Superdelegates-I Shit you not.

    They all get capes!

    OMFG. Did you learn NOTHING from The Incredibles?

    ETA: and of course someone beat me to it

  68. 68.

    Anoniminous

    @Miss Bianca:

    Tuesday 1 March 2016: Precinct Caucuses meet in each precinct at 7p MST to choose delegates to the County Assemblies and District Conventions. Caucuses last about 1.5 hours. There are 2,917 precincts.

    There is no formal system applied in the Precinct Caucus to relate the presidential preference of the participants to the choice of the precinct’s delegates to the Colorado County Assemblies and District Conventions; (NOTE: It is the District Conventions and the State Convention that will actually elect Republican National Convention delegates to presidential contenders).

    The rest of the rules can be found here.

  71. 71.

    Starfish

    @amk: Trump is anti-immigration and pro-bombing other people to show them we are tough, but he is the first Republican candidate in a while that is not telling us how much he loves Jesus.

  76. 76.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @Baud:

    That part of Trump’s policy was hilarious – what he was essentially describing was the exchanges under Obamacare. No one has mentioned that anywhere which is utterly depressing.

  80. 80.

    Anoniminous

    Patrick Buchanan (R, PaleoCon) has a banner post on his website (no link on purpose) saying everybody needs to support Trump since he can defeat Clinton. The article is entitled “Trump, Christie, and the Revival of GOP Moderates.”

    One quote to give the flavor:

    [Trump] is essentially a moderate Republican. Trump is relatively tough on the one issue that simply did not exist in the era of Rockefeller, Nixon, and Ford: mass immigration. Apart from that, he is politically of a piece with the latter three—supporter of substantial public works, not eager to take a knife to New Deal era entitlements, a law-and-order guy but certainly ready to accommodate both minority political aspiration and affirmative action.

    Whatever you say Pat.

  81. 81.

    Mnemosyne

    I’m assuming that when I arrive home from work and my graduate student husband announces, “I can’t fucking believe how much reading I need to do,” I need to just stay quiet and do my own thing tonight.

  84. 84.

    Anne Laurie

    @Adam L Silverman:

    If the overwhelmingly reported plurality or majority of primary votes are for Donald Trump, but the delegates and/or superdelegates get to the convention and someone else is named the nominee, there will be hell to pay.

    And the Sandernistas have been warning darkly against this scenario, but on our side, for months.

    Further proof that with the Repubs, it’s always projection. Well, projection and ratfvcking…

  86. 86.

    mclaren

    @Adam L Silverman:

    If the overwhelmingly reported plurality or majority of primary votes are for Donald Trump, but the delegates and/or superdelegates get to the convention and someone else is named the nominee, there will be hell to pay.

    Trump has repeatedly threatened to shift to a third-party candidacy if he feels the GOP has not treated him “fairly.”

    So if the Repubs don’t mess with the delegate count, Trump becomes the nominee and blows up the Republican party. if the Repubs do ratfvck Trump out of the nomination, he goes third-party and takes his voters with him, blowing up the Republican party.

    Good times.

    This is like a replay of 1968, but inverted. Now it’s the Repubs who are coming unglued and the Dems who are united.

    Anyone want to take any bets on whether we’ll have a police riot with tear gas and billy clubs at the 2016 Republican convention…?

  88. 88.

    ThresherK

    @PurpleGirl: Maybe I followed a link from somewhere else. I really like the message in that comic, and I’ll also give a big chance to any autobiographical webcomic involving “me and my cats”.

  90. 90.

    Anoniminous

    @Miss Bianca:

    That’s not an unusual procedure for caucus states. That’s how Iowa has worked since the 1840s. What is rare is not pledging delegates but it’s not unknown, Guam has been doing it that way since I can remember.

  94. 94.

    jl

    @Baud: An advantage of Baud! 2016! is that goof will be able to put ‘virtually’ in front of virtually any statement of purported fact, and therefore cannot ever be accused of lying.

    The GOP has had the advantage of saying anything they want and not being called on it for far too long. Bad! 2016! will close the truthiness gap.

  95. 95.

    Miss Bianca

    @Mnemosyne:

    I’m assuming that when I arrive home from work and my graduate student husband announces, “I can’t fucking believe how much reading I need to do,” I need to just stay quiet and do my own thing tonight.

    Yes. Altho’ I have discovered, if you *must* say something to a grad student spouse, “Here, have some wine” is often a good gambit.

  96. 96.

    Anoniminous

    @Anne Laurie:

    Super Delegates have been around since forever and why not? They are the elected officials and leaders in the state party. They should have a say. If people don’t like it then they need to get involved and change the Rules.

  97. 97.

    ThresherK

    @Miss Bianca: My GF and I moved in together so she could go to grad school. (Happy ending: She’s now my wife.)

    She needed a bit of “You can do this” from me when she was in grad school. But no wine; she already knew that she couldn’t drink and read meaningfully at the same time.

  100. 100.

    Anoniminous

    @Miss Bianca:

    I wasn’t around to be there but I’ve heard stories from family and friends it was even more fun in the old Machine Days when there was graft, honest graft, dishonest graft, don’t touch the schools, and it was a ham or turkey on the holidays.

  101. 101.

    Anne Laurie

    @Mnemosyne: That would be the wise choice, yes. If you’ve been looking for a good time to de-clutter your closet or shoe collection, do it now (just don’t ask for his opinion about any of it; if you’re really dubious about how it looks, set that item aside for later).

    Sliding a healthful eat-with-one-hand meal under his nose will get you bonus points. Takeout/delivery is perfectly acceptable — you’ve been married long enough to know his usual choices.

  109. 109.

    mclaren

    @Anoniminous:

    Super Delegates have been around since forever and why not?

    In reality

    After the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the Democratic Party made changes in its delegate selection process, based on the work of the McGovern-Fraser Commission. The purpose of the changes was to make the composition of the convention less subject to control by party leaders and more responsive to the votes cast during the campaign for the nomination.

    Once again, a lack of institutional memory. The current primary system has only existed since 1968. That’s a while ago, but not “forever.”

  112. 112.

    Mnemosyne

    @lamh36:

    It sounds like it’s doing pretty well overseas where, sadly, diverse casts are not always appreciated.

    Also, they need to stop trying to make Gerard Butler a star. It ain’t going to happen. Of course, these are the same Hollywood geniuses who apparently decided years ago that Colin Firth was not leading man material, which means they must not have consulted a single straight woman about it, ever.

  113. 113.

    Anne Laurie

    @Anoniminous:

    Super Delegates have been around since forever and why not?

    Well, since the 1980s, at least. When Democratic strategist Tad Devine helped design them, “to prevent another election like 1972’s when George McGovern won the Democratic nomination, but lost every state minus one.”

    And whose campaign is Tad Devine leading this year? Why, Bernie Sanders’, of course!

    Devine’s the one bitching loudest about how HRC better not dare to ‘steal’ the nomination, with her vast army of superdelegates, just because St. Bernie might be unelectable!

    (Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/super-delegates-center-democratic-nomination-fight-again-n516891)

  116. 116.

    lamh36

    Fats Domino lived in my old neighborhood in NOLA…I was raised in the upper and lower 9th ward!
    #FatsDominoPBS

  119. 119.

    Mnemosyne

    @ThresherK:

    Yep, we’re in the You can do this! phase right now, where the grad student is halfway through their first semester and wants to throw in the towel.

    I don’t know if you were around the other night when G was freaking out about a 500-word essay he needed to turn in and he was beating himself up because he was doing it at the last minute and was totally going to flop.

    Yeah, he got a 10/10.

  120. 120.

    ThresherK

    @Mnemosyne: I actually was something like the stenographer / copy editor for her longer papers; she would more or less dictate them to me and we’d go over her notes and I would write them good, real good.

    (Note that I type about 40 wpm more than she does, even when I’ve had wine.)

  125. 125.

    Kay

    It just gets worse and worse for Snyder:

    One of the most hotly debated questions about the Flint water crisis has been the one of who made the ill-fated decision to switch to the Flint River.
    Despite steady claims from the state that the decision was made by Flint officials, newly released emails show an aide to Gov. Rick Snyder disputed that notion just days before a damning op-ed by former Flint Emergency Manager Darnell Earley.
    “It is important to note that council did not take a vote to use Flint river (sic),” Harvey Hollins, Snyder’s director of urban initiatives, wrote in an Oct. 7, 2015 email to Dan Wyant, former director of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.

    He’s firing everyone in sight. He may actually have to resign.

  128. 128.

    Nate Dawg

    Hey Balloon Brats, it’s my birthday and I’m enjoying a luxurious hot bath (giant tub) while catching up on today’s insanity. Happy Birthday Everybody!

  131. 131.

    lamh36

    “This time I’m walkin’ to New Orleans
    I’m walkin’ to New Orleans
    I’m gonna need two pair-a shoes
    When I get through walkin’ these blues
    When I get back to New Orleans
    I’ve got my suitcase in my hand
    Now ain’t that-a shame?
    I’m leavin’ here today
    Yes, I’m goin’ back home to stay
    Yes, I’m walkin’ to New Orleans
    Ya used to be my honey
    ‘Till you spent all my money
    No use for you to cry
    I’ll see you by and by
    ‘Cause I’m walkin’ to New Orleans
    I’ve got no time for talkin’
    I’ve got to keep on walkin’
    New Orleans is my home
    That’s the reason why I’m goin’
    Yes, I’m walkin’ to New Orleans
    I’m walkin’ to New Orleans
    I’m walkin’ to New Orleans
    I’m walkin’ to New Orleans.”

  137. 137.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @Kay:

    He’s firing everyone in sight. He may actually have to resign.

    If I were the Dem minority leader in the Michigan House, I’d start making very clear to the GOP majority leader that I’d expect support for impeachment from the Republican side, with the alternative being an explicit ‘supports poisoning children’ campaign against every incumbent. And frankly, I’d send money to those campaigns.

  139. 139.

    Mnemosyne

    I’m debating how much driving around I want to do tomorrow in order to go get library cards from the city and county of LA. They’re separate library systems, so there’s only one spot where there are two branches reasonably close to each other.

    Hopefully I’ve been out of their system(s) long enough to forget that I am a library criminal. I really only want the cards so I can get eBooks, anyway.

  140. 140.

    Jeffro

    OT but not really: David Brooks’ latest is up at the NYT and you will be…not at all surprised at the false equivalence noted at least twenty times in this piece of trash.

    There may not be Peak Wingnut, but this column is surely Peak Both Sides Do It.

  141. 141.

    Jeffro

    @pseudonymous in nc: You have to wonder how soon the Kochs will weigh in, to get Snyder out of there quickly and keep the advantages of having the governorship in R hands…any R’s hands…for the upcoming election.

  143. 143.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    Dunno if this has been mentioned (it’s been a busy week)…

    David Cay Johnston:

    […]

    I expect Trump’s [federal income tax] returns to be extremely aggressive, but well within the boundaries set by Congress and without even a hint of criminal tax evasion. I also suspect his returns will show negative income. That’s right — negative. The last line on the front page of his Form 1040 likely shows a number less than zero, because of a special tax rule for very rich real estate professionals that I’ll explain below. In essence, that rule means not having to pay income taxes.

    Therein lies the biggest missed opportunity of all for American journalists. If only they would do the work needed to show how our federal tax system actually operates. The awful truth is that Congress burdens most of us with taxes, but for many of the super-rich, including Trump, the income tax system is a massive source of wealth.

    By law, billionaire business owners can live free of income taxes if they wish. Every major tax practitioner knows this, as I have explained repeatedly in articles and books going back two decades — and as I will show again now:

    […]

    Vote Trump!!11 Because Hillary is just a Republican tool of Wall Street and can’t be trusted!!111

    :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  147. 147.

    lamh36

    Darn local PBS station started playing a Charlie Rose episode, so I changed the channel and missed the first 15 min of In Performance..

  148. 148.

    PurpleGirl

    @Mnemosyne: I also owed the New York Library some old fines. When I reapplied I found that they had wiped their system of old fines. I don’t remember how long it was that I hadn’t tried to use my card. Anyway, I wish you luck.

    ETA: NYC has three systems: New York Public Library (Manhattan, Staten Island and the Bronx), Queens and Brooklyn each have their own systems. I currently have cards for New York and Queens.

  150. 150.

    Jeffro

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I think I saw DCJ’s piece via a Twitter link (of all things) and I have forwarded it far & wide since then

    It’s like Chris Rock said (possibly paraphrasing here): “If poor people really knew how rich rich people are, there would be riots”. If the poor, working class, middle class, and upper middle class really knew how much the rich were getting away with, we’d have us some reality TV all right…

  152. 152.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    @PurpleGirl: I could easily be the ” lowlife with a rap sheet but who.isn’t the real killer” if there ever was a “Law and Order: Bibliotheque Intent” spin-off.

  156. 156.

    magurakurin

    @Anne Laurie:

    And the Sandernistas have been warning darkly against this scenario, but on our side, for months.

    Yeah, well, maybe the Sandernistas jumped the gun a little bit on those dark warnings. Bernie Sanders is about to get the shellacking of his life on Super Tuesday. The chances of Sanders having a majority of the pledged delegates coming into the convention are less than 1% at this point. Not that that will stop some of them claiming that they were robbed. But it won’t be the superdelegates that deny Sanders the nomination. It will the rank and file voters of the Democratic party.

    In Trump’s case…yeah, he might get robbed.

  157. 157.

    Kropadope

    @Steve in the ATL:

    The Colorado GOP just made everyone Superdelegates-I Shit you not.
    They all get capes!

    OMFG. Did you learn NOTHING from The Incredibles?

    Well, you know Republicans. They’ll choose style over function every time, even if it threatens their well-being.

  159. 159.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @Jeffro: taxes are for the peons.

    The thing about El Trumpador is that a) he’s not as rich as he pretends to be; b) he’s living off borrowed money; c) he’s paying fuck-all in taxes, and probably thanks to some accounting wizardry that involves several Caribbean islands and Delaware and probably Luxembourg as well.

  161. 161.

    mclaren

    Folks, don’t read too much into Trump’s “victory” in Nevada.

    Did Trump win Hispanics in Nevada? You can be sure that Trump will tell us he did! There was a lot of nerd-fighting over who won the Hispanic vote in the Democratic caucuses in Nevada, and we suspect there will be some over the Republican caucuses as well. Indeed, the entrance poll had Trump beating Rubio 45 percent to 28 percent among Hispanics. But keep in mind that the sample size on that result is somewhere between 100 and 200 people. That means the margin of sampling error for the Hispanic subgroup is near +/- 10 percentage points (or even higher). Perhaps more importantly, just 8 percent of Republican voters were Hispanic (or 1 percent of the Nevadan Hispanic population), and they are not politically representative of the larger Hispanic community.

    Source: the ever-vigilant Nate Silver on the Nevada GOP caucus at fivethirtyeight.com.

  163. 163.

    mclaren

    @magurakurin:

    Bernie Sanders is about to get the shellacking of his life on Super Tuesday. The chances of Sanders having a majority of the pledged delegates coming into the convention are less than 1% at this point.

    Yet even if that happens, Sanders has so much money from all those small donations that he can stay in the primaries, pushing Hillary to the left, all the way up to the Democratic convention.

    Good times.

  166. 166.

    mclaren

    Trump facing 8-figure wave of attack ads.

    Trump “hasn’t faced a sustained assault across the full spectrum of his vulnerabilities: his left-wing views on policy, his unsavory business practices, and his scandalous personal life,” said an operative involved in the big-money attacks on Trump. “Maybe none of that will move the needle, but we will get a chance to find out before the Democrats do.”

    http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/donald-trump-big-money-attacks-219887#ixzz41LGzULkM

    Wunderbar. It’s delightful to watch the Repubs doing Democrats’ work for us. All we have to do is sit back and watch them destroy one another.

    Will heavily-funded attack ads be any more successful against Trump than they were against Cruz or any of the others?

    Who knows?

    Who cares?

    Get a bucket of popcorn, sit back, and enjoy.

  167. 167.

    Nate Dawg

    @mclaren: Really, though, the same is true for *any* of the remaining candidates.

    It just struck me that Rubio is so ill-defined in the general population right now, a major attack ad assault could make him out to be….damn near anything!

    Lots of wheeling-and-dealing in his recent past, and it would all make for good television.

    In contrast, voters are already over Benghaziii!!!!!! and probably tune out the word “email server” at the moment.

    I

  168. 168.

    goblue72

    @magurakurin: Never has so much bile been spilled attacking and denigrating a candidate who dares to actually push hard for progressive social policies and call out corporate Democrats as the Emperor with no clothes that they are. You can tell the criticisms are striking home when so many corporatists centrists (and their forelock tugging supporters) squeal so loudly over “Berniebro” boogiemen and celebrate so excitedly about the prospect of a progressive get “trashed” on election day.

    You people really are pathetic.

  169. 169.

    mclaren

    Jeff Greenfield has a hilariously detailed explanation of the “nuclear option” that would be necessary for Republicans to crush Trump at this point:

    There’s a good chance the race will be over unless the Republican Party establishment and its conservative core do something that neither party has ever done: gather the forces, pool their money, and train all their collective firepower against their own front-runner.
    Think of it as the nuclear option: deploying the most powerful and dangerous weapon available, the one you use when conventional warfare has failed. Just as with real nuclear weapons, that option carries clear risks, starting with losing the presidency in November, and ultimately threatening the party itself. But If a critical mass of Republicans and their conservative allies believe—as many have argued publicly, and more have privately whispered—that Trump could irrevocably undermine what the party says it stands for, and would pose a clear and present danger to the country if he ever attained the White House, it may now be their only chance.
    What would the nuclear option look like? (..)
    The first crucial issue is temperament. Anyone who has served or studied presidents in times of crises knows that the most serious danger in a president is an unjustified certainty in his or her own assumptions. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, for example, could well have ended with nuclear war, but for President John F. Kennedy’s repeated insistence on taking the most cautious of steps, always leaving him and his Soviet counterpart room to maneuver. The absolute refusal of Trump to admit error—ever; his insistence that something is true because he says it’s true; his dismissal of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary—is a recipe for disaster in the White House.
    But to work on the Republican electorate, it is a case that has to be made well outside the op-ed pages of the New York Times. It would require men and women who’ve served Republicans in the Oval Office—especially those who were foot soldiers and generals in Ronald Reagan’s presidency—to argue that Trump is not the bearer of the Reagan legacy, but its betrayer. (Reagan’s last convention speech, in 1992, was a celebration of the immigrant experience). It would require retired military leaders to explain that Trump’s ignorance about the world and the military would lead to disastrous decisions that would endanger the lives of countless men and women in uniform, and that his ludicrous proposal to ban Muslims threatens America’s strategic interests around the world. Their message must be: He says he will make America great; in fact, he will make America weaker. Then let him call the men and women who have spent their lives protecting America “dumb” and “losers.” (..)
    What this amounts to is the kind of total repudiation that is virtually nonexistent in American politics. The closest example is the decision of the Republican Party, at every level, to spurn the candidacy of former Klansman and Nazi David Duke when he made the 1991 runoff as a declared Republican. Obviously, Trump is no Nazi or Klansman—though Duke did tell his listeners voting against Trump “is really treason to your heritage”—but if there’s a broad enough belief that he would be a clear and present danger as president, that kind of rejection is the only response that would have a chance of changing the conversation.
    A second line of attack is rooted in an observation of Karl Rove: You don’t attack an opponent’s weaknesses, you attack what he sees as his strength. (As in the Bush campaign’s 2004 sometimes spurious assault on John Kerry’s military and defense views, and his wartime service.) In the case of Trump, this means taking him on as the champion of the little guy who is at war with the political and financial elites. Putting on ads that “prove” he’s not a conservative is pointless; his core backers aren’t conservatives either, not in any meaningful sense of the word. Instead, a campaign should become instantly, and relentlessly, personal to Trump’s own brand.
    Famed ad man Jerry Della Femina, who created the Joe Isuzu “he’s lying” campaign, offered a couple of tips: “You would need a two-front war: First, establish a ‘Truth Squad” to follow Trump everywhere and take him on directly. He says he’ll bring back jobs? Then why does he have his clothing line made in China? He’s going to stop immigrants from taking jobs from Americans? Then why did he bring in foreign workers to work on his Florida club? When you do TV ads, put on the workers who lost their jobs when Trump’s Atlantic City resorts filed for bankruptcy protection. Call it the ‘Trump Screwed Me’ campaign.”
    You do not want Chamber of Commerce or K Street types in these ads; you want for example, some of the people now suing ‘Trump University’ for allegedly bilking them out of and ended up losing thousands of dollars for a bogus ‘how to get rich in real estate” course. These are small business people, would-be entrepreneurs—the very people most inspired by Trump’s story of success and “winning.”
    This is not exactly uncharted ground. It’s almost exactly what the Obama campaign and its surrogates did to Mitt Romney four years ago. Indeed, it’s one of the mysteries of this campaign that Trump’s opponents haven’t turned to that tactic. But it remains the one argument that might change minds.

    Source: “Stopping Trump: the nuclear option,” Politico, February 2016.

    Hey, that sounds great. Let the Republicans duel it out with flame throwers, burning down the entire party in the process. More popcorn, please!

  170. 170.

    sigaba

    @mclaren: Prior to 1968, ALL delegates were basically super. And those that weren’t had minimal control over the outcome- RFK was winning the popular primary vote by something like 20 points and there was totally honest discussion over wether or not his claim to the nomination would be legitimate, because reporters and everyone else simply took for granted that Mayor Daley, the San Francisco machine and the AFL-CIO had the final say, and winning the popular vote seemed almost a little shady.

  171. 171.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Mnemosyne: La Crescenta(County) and Tijunga(LA City) aren’t too far from each other(I know where the library is in La Crescenta(Foothill & La Crescenta), not sure about Tijunga.

  172. 172.

    Nate Dawg

    Also, Rubio couldn’t land a punch last night without grinning from ear-to-ear like an elementary schoolyard tattle-tale.

    He has so little gravitas, I’m surprised he doesn’t float right out of those high heels. (Perhaps this explains the water. H20 is rather heavy.)

    More seriously, I talked to the in-laws in the Old South….white boomer Republicans, upperclass. Everyone they know is voting for Trump. Everyone. This is a wave election similar to Obama’s. We got excited about a black dude offering repudiation of the past and a new way forward. They get excited about an asshole being a true and honest dick to all the groups they hate. It’s their raison d’etre.

  173. 173.

    mclaren

    @goblue72:

    Oh, come on, the Hillbots can’t help it. Their corporate overlord has fed them talking points and they must repeat ’em verbatim.

    You’re dealing with the followers of Landru here. Remember that Star Trek episode? When Capt. Kirk confuses the omnipotent computer by asking it to justify what is has done to do justice to the full potential of every citizen, the computer fries and starts smoking, and its followers run in yellow “Landru, help us! Guide us!”

    This guy is just yelling “Landru, help us!” He’s not so bad. When Bernie wins the nomination, he’ll get his talking points from the Sanders people instead of the corporate hillbots. So no big problem.

  175. 175.

    cmorenc

    @dr. bloor:

    We can put Colorado in the “Blue” column for November.

    That is, IF the democratic base in Colorado isn’t too stoned to turn out on Nov 2016. We need to remind them that a Republican administration, with a Republican AG (e.g. Christie) is likely to vigorously go after growers and vendors in states like Colorado that have legalized marijuana, and quickly destroy it.

  176. 176.

    PurpleGirl

    @efgoldman:

    Wow! I’d have thought a 21st century state like California would have at least combine the circulation systems decades ago. The People’s Republic did it some time in the 80s.

    Well, NYC hasn’t consolidated its three systems.

  177. 177.

    mclaren

    @sigaba:

    Actually, my understanding is that prior to 1968, the state primaries were “beauty contests” without any binding impact. The delegates were controlled by party bosses, and smoke-filled backroom sessions determined how the delegates got allotted, not primary results.

    But I may be wrong. That’s my understanding, however, and the reading of history I’ve seen strongly tends to support my claim. It was the chaos of the 1968 Democratic convention, with the party bosses choosing a pro-war candidate hated by the bulk of the younger Democratic activists and organizers, that made so many Dems sit out the 1968 election and hand a huge win to Nixon. My understanding is that the revised primary system was intended to avoid such an outcome by insuring that any candidate for whom the majority of delegates voted at a national convention must necessarily also have won a plurality of primary votes, and thus was guaranteed to represent the Democratic party.

  179. 179.

    Nate Dawg

    @BillinGlendaleCA: Bernie has been treated with kids’ gloves. Maybe not even plural. A child’s mitten.

    To hear his followers, Clinton has waged the nastiest, dirtiest, smeariest campaign in the history of the U.S!!!

    Where were you guys in 2008? Masturbating to Victoria’s Secret mailers in between rounds of Bejeweled 2 is my guess.

  183. 183.

    mclaren

    @efgoldman:

    Consolidating large computer databases is amazingly hard. California tried to integrate its DMV system and after 3 years of failure and 20 million bucks down the drain, it gave up.

    These kind of large computerization projects tend to fail alarmingly often. At a 50% rate, in fact.

    You can read more about all this wonderfulness in the classic book “The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition,” by Frederick P. Brooks Jr.

  184. 184.

    mclaren

    @Nate Dawg:

    Where were you guys in 2008? Masturbating to Victoria’s Secret mailers in between rounds of Bejeweled 2 is my guess.

    You, sir, have just won the internet for this evening.

  186. 186.

    mclaren

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    All that could have worked 6 months ago, it’s too late now. Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee.

    I’m inclined to agree. But by all means, let the Republican party unleash neutron bombs and VX nerve gas against Trump. I’ll refill my popcorn bucket.

  187. 187.

    goblue72

    @Omnes Omnibus: Wrong again dumbass. Middle aged, married family man with a retirement plan, grad degree from a fancy school, and an income that puts me in a bracket that benefitted from the Bush tax cuts. Used to have a mortgage (bought when everyone else was running for the hills) but cashed out recently to pocket the gains at the peak. Liquid and ready to roll for the next recession. I should be voting Republican. I’d get more out of it personally. But instead I’m leftist.

    But please, keep assuming shit.

  188. 188.

    danielx

    The absolute refusal of Trump to admit error—ever; his insistence that something is true because he says it’s true; his dismissal of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary—is a recipe for disaster in the White House.

    I have to admit I’ve seen that movie recently and I’ve no doubt a sequel would be worse than the original, which was hideous.

    Ecrasez l’infame!

  189. 189.

    Daulnay

    @efgoldman:
    You’re making the common mistake of extrapolating trends and taking that as fact. Right now, it looks as though Bernie may lose. But it’s not over ’till the fat lady sings.

  190. 190.

    goblue72

    @efgoldman: Its one thing to point out the math isn’t working. That ain’t what I was referring to. There’s a fair number of folks on this blog for recovering Republicans who are as fast to hippie punch as the Republicans.

  192. 192.

    sigaba

    @mclaren: That’s correct, but you seemed to characterize the super delegates and their anti-democratic tendency as something new that was invented in 1968. It was not.

  193. 193.

    mclaren

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    IOW, the only people who mattered were those now known as superdelagates.

    Not according to the historians:

    Prior to the rise of party conventions, the presidential candidates of national parties were chosen by members of Congress. The first national party convention was held by the small party of Anti-Masons in 1831. Democrats and Whigs quickly followed suit. Conventions have provided some of the most high-stakes political drama in American politics because of the frequent struggle by party members to decide on a nominee.

    The 1860 Democratic Convention opened in Charleston, S.C., but adjourned after 57 votes failed to produce a winner, and the delegates of nine southern states walked out over the issue of slavery. When the convention reconvened in Baltimore six weeks later, it nominated Stephen Douglass, who had led throughout but been unable to win a two-thirds majority. The 1912 Republican Convention nominated incumbent President William Howard Taft over ex-President Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt had won in the primaries, but Taft had secured more delegates, many of whom Roosevelt contested unsuccessfully. He then left the Republican Party to run a third party, “Bull Moose,” candidacy.

    The longest convention in American history was the 1924 Democratic convention, when delegates took seventeen days and 103 ballots to nominate John W. Davis. Convention roles often contributed to such deadlock. Until 1936, Democrats required a two-thirds majority to nominate a candidate, and resultantly, held seven conventions requiring more than ten ballots between 1832 and 1932. The last multi-ballot conventions were the 1948 Republican convention and the 1952 Democratic convention.(3)

    Conventions have also served the function of building enthusiasm for the party’s candidates, and even before the advent of television, sometimes this enthusiasm was not entirely spontaneous. At the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1940, a message from President Franklin Roosevelt was read indicating that the president had no desire to be nominated for an unprecedented third term. The delegates were stunned, but soon a “We want Roosevelt” chant began that lasted for forty-five minutes, leaving Roosevelt no choice but to accept the nomination. This demonstration did not begin on its own. Chicago’s superintendent of sewers had rigged a microphone into the arena’s public address system and started the chant immediately after Roosevelt’s statement was read. This went down in history as the “voice from the sewer.”

    In the early part of the twentieth century, supporters of the Progressive movement championed primaries as a means to expand popular participation in the nominating process. This first push for primaries can be viewed as a largely unsuccessful effort by activists to wrest control over the nominating process from party leaders. The first presidential primaries were held in 1912, and their use continued in succeeding elections; but, by the 1930s, many states had repealed primary laws because costs were high, participation was low, and leading candidates often ignored them altogether. Some states continued to hold primaries, and occasionally, primaries did have an impact on the nomination.(4) However, primaries were never the sole determinant of the nominee, and some candidates–for example, Adlai Stevenson in 1952–won nomination without running in any primaries at all. Entering primaries was often interpreted as a sign of candidate weakness, and even those candidates who did enter primaries still had to court party leaders to have any chance at winning the nomination.(5) All of this changed after the 1968 convention of Democrats in Chicago.

    http://www.uvm.edu/~dguber/POLS125/articles/piroth.htm” rel=”nofollow”>”Selecting presidential nominees

    Scott Piroth, Social Education, September 2000, volume 64, issue 5, page 278.

  194. 194.

    Nate Dawg

    @goblue72: What exactly are we supposed to say/do? Sack-cloth and ashes for Bernie’s demise? Some of us here are pro-Sanders, but not keen on his electability. Since he’s demonstrating that he isn’t able to even win the nomination, that doesn’t seem so outrageously offensive.

    Berniebros is weak sauce. You should see the actual bile being spewed elsewhere, mostly at Clinton, and often by Bernie supporters (not a majority of course!! or anywhere near it!)

    But I haven’t seen anyone here call him nasty jewish slurs, or make too much hay out of his lack of a job until age 40, or Communist ties or any of the other attacks that would come in the fall were he to win the nom. Compare that to the Bernie people repeating right-wing attacks on clinton 24/7, sprinkled with c@nt and b/w-itch, and you see a rather different picture.

  195. 195.

    mclaren

    @efgoldman:

    The fact that he’s not going to have the votes is arithmetic, not bile.

    Actually, Bernie not having the votes is neither a “fact” nor “arithmetic” nor “bile.” Right now, it’s unsubstantiated speculation.

    Time will tell.

  196. 196.

    Adam L Silverman

    @pseudonymous in nc: Full time real estate developers, if they’re very wealthy, have a Congress created tax loophole that allows them to live tax free. Basically they defer their tax payments and seek tax deductible loans against their income and net worth. The result is that the tax deferred is, as they say, a tax never paid, and because they can deduct the interest, they come out ahead on net.

  197. 197.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @mclaren: (who managed make his source link merge with the reply button): That is what I was saying. The party bigwigs who are now labeled as superdelegates were previously the only voice in the selection of the candidate. Read what people actually write not what you presume they are saying based on your preconceptions

  198. 198.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Nate Dawg: Don’t know if you, or anyone noticed it, but the Stump for Trump women pushed the Senator Rubio was a male, gay prostitute innuendo on CNN this morning. I was expecting Donald Trump himself to trot it out last night, but they used it this AM.

  199. 199.

    Mnemosyne

    @PurpleGirl:
    @ThresherK (GPad):

    In high school, they held a library amnesty and told me that they did it for me. They had to extend it out to the entire school to be fair, but I was the primary reason for it, because they just wanted their books back, goddamnit.

    G still tells tales of having to go with me to return armloads of books to multiple libraries under cover of darkness when we moved in together. I’m pretty much a hopeless case with print books, but eBooks they’ll just yank back from my device when they come due.

  200. 200.

    mclaren

    @Nate Dawg:

    Oh, come on, now, very very few people on this forum have called Hillary the b-word or the c-word. She may be a right-leaning DINO corporate tool, but her heart seems like it’s in the right place, and with Bernie and company to force her to the left, who knows? Hillary may well wind up doing a decent job in the Oval Office.

    Don’t lose your cool. We’re all in this together, and if Hillary is the nominee all us Sandernistas will vote for us, just as we know that when Sanders becomes the nominee, all you Hillbots will vote for him.

    Let’s leave the post-plane-crash-descent-into-cannibalism to the Republicans, shall we?

  204. 204.

    Nate Dawg

    @mclaren: This site != The Internet

    Also, I said

    You should see the actual bile being spewed elsewhere

    Notice the word “elsewhere”. Please take the CIA spooks advice and read what people say, not what you wish they had said.

  205. 205.

    mclaren

    @Nate Dawg:

    I know exactly what “unsubstantiated” means. You can’t predict a highly nonlinear process like a presidential election from a handful of very early primary results, especially when a few big primary wins could subsequently tip the voting massively.

    Does the phrase “path dependent” ring a bell? How about ‘first mover advantage’? “Increasing returns,” mayhap? Or “deterministic chaotic dynamical system”?

  206. 206.

    Mnemosyne

    @efgoldman:

    I’m guessing that the City of LA library system alone has more patrons than your entire state’s library system, especially since you don’t have to be a resident of LA to get a card, just a resident of CA.

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    That’s looking like the plan. There are several LA city libraries near me since North Hollywood and Eagle Rock aren’t real cities, so the LA County branch is the tough one to find. I could renew my Pasadena/Glendale card, too, if I pay them the $47 I owe them from when I was on jury duty in Pasadena and wasn’t allowed to bring either knitting or a Kindle.

  207. 207.

    Origuy

    @Mnemosyne: They’ve probably wiped it, as PurpleGirl said. Out of idle curiosity, I went to the LAPL website. They don’t say anything about old fines, but they do say you can get an account online that is only good for downloading stuff.

    I have a card from San Jose City Library, where I live. It’s also good for SJSU library, which is in the same building as the main city library. I also have a card from Palo Alto, where I work, and Mountain View, Sunnyvale, and Santa Clara city libraries. I used to have a card from Santa Clara County Library system, but they started charging $80 to people outside the library district. (Basically anywhere that had a city library.) Just checked and it looks like they changed that. Maybe I’ll go back.

  208. 208.

    mclaren

    @Nate Dawg:

    This site != The Internet

    Perhaps, but your awesomeness produces a thousand radiations of such puissance that the entire intertubes are affected.

  209. 209.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @mclaren: Dishonest to the end. Well played. Cook/Cooke. It was seen. there was an honest route. You chose the other way. You know what you did.

  210. 210.

    Adam L Silverman

    @mclaren: I fixed your source link so it wasn’t getting merged/absorbed into the reply button. That’s why it now looks different.

  211. 211.

    mclaren

    @Adam L Silverman:

    …the Stump for Trump women pushed the Senator Rubio was a male, gay prostitute innuendo on CNN this morning.

    I am loving this election more and more every day!

  213. 213.

    Nate Dawg

    @mclaren: So let me get this straight.

    Speculating on election outcomes based on polling is “unsubstantiated speculation” and shouldn’t be done.

    Accusing OO of being a lizard person, CIA spook writing from a Pentagon basement with astroturf flooring is TOTES OBVIOUS LOGICAL!!!

    You are just too much. You sure you aren’t the troll/astroturfer?

  216. 216.

    Mnemosyne

    @mclaren:

    Yeah, you won’t be surprised to hear what was really behind that failure:

    The contract was awarded in 2007 to the Texas-based Electronic Data Systems. The company was later bought by Hewlett-Packard and renamed HP Enterprise Services. Hewlett-Packard is now run by Meg Whitman, who during her failed campaign for governor in 2010 promised to save California money with better computer technology.

    The project has been dogged by delays and faulty computer coding, according to a December state report. The contractor has been unable to complete some tasks and left critical positions vacant, the report said.

    A spokeswoman for HP Enterprise Services, Ericka Floyd, declined to comment.

  218. 218.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @mclaren: Nope, no one here would give a shit about that. The fact that you completely reworked a comment after it was pointed out that you were wrong is a different thing. And you know that you did it and so do I. No need to involve others. You know how honest you are, and so do I.

  220. 220.

    Mnemosyne

    @Origuy:

    I’ve probably been wiped from LAPL since it’s been a while (I still have my old card around here somewhere), but I guess I’ll find out when I try to pick up my card tomorrow. Pasadena knows I still owe them money, so I would have to pony that up to renew my account with them. It’s worth having multiple accounts with different systems for eBooks and other electronic media because different libraries have different books.

    Also, G is technically an SJSU student right now, though since the iSchool is all online, we didn’t have to move up there.

  221. 221.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Nate Dawg: I hope they’re billing him through the nose. In one way you have to think: “these are actresses and they’re being paid to play these roles, including the stereotypical bits”. I can’t find any reporting indicating that. All of it just repeats what they state about themselves:
    http://www.diamondandsilkinc.com/about-us/

    So until someone says otherwise, they appear to be genuine.

  222. 222.

    Nate Dawg

    @Adam L Silverman: They seem to be like SNL actors who can’t hardly keep from cracking up, especially toward the end. I really doubt they are for real, but damn, if I could hire Rochelle to follow me around and chime in with “that’s right” and “uh-huh” while I talked, I would be the happiest lizard person alive.

  223. 223.

    Gravenstone

    @Nate Dawg: mclaren must’ve recently changed meds because he’s {almost} concise tonight (if typically nonsensical). You should stick around for his 27 paragraph cut and paste diatribes once those meds wear off. It’s truly a treat.

  226. 226.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @danielx:

    “And we’re gonna have special police to keep an eye on things and keep people safe, and they’ll have the classiest black uniforms you ever saw!”

    With lightning bolts?

  227. 227.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Nate Dawg: @Gravenstone: I have a two part theory on mclaren. First, he is an autodidact who has issues with people with traditional advanced education. He thinks his reading equals graduate study. Second, at some point, he loses it and accuses people of being astroturfers paid for by the Pentagon. I am not qualified to speculate as to the reasons for that. I am a mere lawyer.

  228. 228.

    Adam L Silverman

    @danielx: Gen. (ret) Haden has already come out and stated emphatically that uniformed personnel would simply ignore a President Trump’s orders to kill terrorist’s families. He’s going to either quickly learn the hard way that being President of the US is not the same as running Trump, Inc or he’s going to be very frustrated and most likely self destruct very quickly. Not a single ally will assist us with anything. And what’s he going to do? Its not like he can fire the PM of Britain or the Chancellor of Germany when they tell him no. Despite the Supreme Allied Commander-Europe being an American, the head of NATO is a civilian and is not American.

    I was talking to a good friend and former teammate this afternoon – a retired Marine colonel. He’s mortified. I remarked to him that if we were watching an electoral process in another nuclear weapon state going this route we’d be preparing in conjunction with our allies plans and sequels to step in and prevent the potential problem individual/party from actually taking control of a country with nuclear weapons. I’m not saying we’d actually do anything, but somewhere a small group of planners would be working on the contingency – just in case. I would be very surprised if our allies, let alone our competitors, are not working on plans of their own.

  229. 229.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Gen. (ret) Haden has already come out and stated emphatically that uniformed personnel would simply ignore a President Trump’s orders to kill terrorist’s families.

    Something like that would be a war crime.

  230. 230.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Omnes Omnibus: That’s what he said. Flat out: it would violate all the laws of war.

    Same thing with torture, as you know both as a former lanyard puller and an attorney.

  231. 231.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Adam L Silverman: For an officer, pulling a lanyard is a privilege. The gun chief gives up some of his control to some posh idiot. There needs to be trust, Timely firing matters.

  235. 235.

    danielx

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Pretty much; I’ve been saying/thinking for months that Trump would quickly find that there are a lot of people in the world who could care less that he’s Donald Trump. Moreover, that they are people at whom he can’t simply scream “you’re fired!”, as you noted. Then you think about the idea that Trump has seldom been subjected to slow-rolling by true experts, which would drive him up the wall – he is too thin-skinned to be president, period.

    But he does scare me. So far he’s advocated/threatened torture, strategic bombing, deporting a goodly portion of the country’s inhabitants, which would require ramping up DHS personnel beyond all reasonable bounds, building a wall…I really, really don’t want this guy in the Oval Office.

  236. 236.

    Anne Laurie

    @Nate Dawg:

    Anyone as pretty as Ruboitoy would eventually get that treatment, I’m guessing.

    Remember the Washington Post story about a teenage Rubio getting arrested after dark in a public park?

    … Despite the high-priced real estate nearby, the park had become a notorious locale in the late 1980s and early ’90s, a haven for drug dealers, prostitutes and gang members.

    A local homeowners association’s newsletter documented the complaints of neighbors: “Gang warfare, gunfire, prostitution (straight and gay), drug dealing and muggings.” Police were attuned to the complaints because of a pattern of problems at the park, said Delrish Moss, a Miami police public information officer and a 32-year veteran of the department…

    Rubio’s brother-in-law was being tried, at the time, as a major cocaine distributor. But I guess the RNC Oppo Research team decided “selling his youthful favors to rich chickenhawks” sounded worse for Rubio than “dealing coke to the neighborhood bigwigs”.

  237. 237.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Adam L Silverman: Military would probably ignore such an order. How about intelligence agencies? Private security contractors/mercenaries? Gangsters or local warlords? Being President gets you a lot of connections if you don’t have them already.

  239. 239.

    CarolDuhart2

    One thing seems sure: The Republicans in the General are going to go in several different directions, working at cross-purposes either to try to defeat Trump or elect him, while the Democrats are going to be united around somebody and with one purpose. For any organization, that means defeat-especially hard.

    For both McCain and Romney, that meant ground game, where it wasn’t fully astroturfed (check out Nate Silver in 2008 as to McCain having to hire temps as a ground game), or the disorganized efforts of Romney. And that was the result with a less-than enthusiastic base. With various factions trying to sell Trump to the undecideds? And another group trying to bring him down as well that’s not Democratic, that’s a recipe for chaos or going it alone, hoping that the local support is sufficient to get them over the top with less help from the National party.

    Rubio has a fatal flaw: he hasn’t answered enough questions about that past to reassure voters. His brother was a big time drug dealer: depending upon his age, did he participate in some of that stuff?

    Obama, and Kennedy and TR were young: but they had filled out enough of the political card and enough of the life experience card to get sufficient ability and gravitas. Obama had his international days, years of community organizing, 2 4 year terms in the State Senate, and was already accumulating achievements as a Senator. Kennedy had PT 109, years of reading and study, and working to elect Democrats and his own achievements on the Foreign Relations Committee. Teddy R was governor of New York, and his own adventures. Rubio has nothing he can point to and apparently lacks the work effort to try to build something substantial, which is another reason Trump can bully him so. The previous 3 guys had been toughened by life experience and real world political battles, and showman like Trump would be, and was by Obama, be summarily dismissed.

    And this is the Republicans only hope-Cruz is too creepy and narrow to appeal to a wide and more growing secular electorate. He’d win Texas and deep red states, and that’s it.

  240. 240.

    CarolDuhart2

    People are missing the point: it’s not necessarily mercenaries or intelligence people to worry about. Those folks are not going to risk supermax, lawsuits, or an outraged jury. Pros know Trump is unreliable and would drop them as soon as it makes him uncomfortable. It’s Trump’s ability to stir up mobs to do his dirty work for him-that means he can wash his hands afterward. After all, its not his fault or responsibility they took his words too seriously.

    Meanwhile, for the mclarens and similar types, your corporatist strawwoman is full of merde. Your straw woman is running for President at an age and at a place where she could have simply cashed in. And thank God she is. You are worried about a few paid speeches and “status quo”. Meanwhile the rest of us are seeing the Republicans about to nominate a close-to-fascist, a “theocon” or an easily manipulated empty suit. Those of us who live on the edge salute your blind hatred of Hillary. Those of us who will lose under a President Trump applaud you while we lose our jobs, health care, and watch our younger citizens march off to Iran or even Russia. Hillary a “warmonger”? Yes, the intervention turned out to be a cluster, but Ghadaffi was no prize, and the revolt was on, and Europe was deathly afraid of a mass exodus from LIbya. And remember Hillary put together the foreign policy that lead to the accord with Iran. I have no doubt she will continue the Obama foreign policy. Hillary the corporatist will insist that they hire more women, and give them equal pay-even at Goldman Sachs and the banks. She will continue to get funding to Planned Parenthood and won’t pander to those who want to shut it down. “Superpredator” will continue to work to continue to reforms that Obama started, and will appoint an Attorney General that will not war against reformers and activists.

    I think it’s no accident that this line of “corporatist” gets hurled against any Democrats who has a realistic chance of winning the Presidency. Clinton, Gore, Obama. Sometimes I think there’s a secret alliance of embittered 60’s radicals who feel that anyone on the left who wants to exercise real power is inauthentic. The revolution will only happen if everybody stays home and away from the polls and refuses the real compromises that will make lives better. If things are better, then who would revolt and let them in charge?

  241. 241.

    Kay

    @CarolDuhart2:

    I’ll happily support Clinton but the truth is her economic message is dated. Focusing on women in the upper tiers of income for equal pay and opportunity and then poor people and ignoring the vast lower to middle swathe is from the 1990’s to 2009 period. The country changed when the economy collapsed.

    “Ladders of opportunity” won’t cut it anymore, and it should scare the hell out of the Democratic Party that Clinton is literally saying “ladders of opportunity” and so is Marco Rubio. That’s true. Clinton used the phrase in her last town hall and Rubio used it the last GOP debate.

    I don’t know why they love this “opportunity” theme, anyway. They tried it in every midterm during Obama and they got slaughtered with it every time they rolled it out. There is some group of strategists or advisers in or around Democrats who seem to believe this is a winner, all evidence to the contrary.

    Marco Rubio and Hillary Clinton repeating the same broad economic theme- word for word, “ladders of opportunity”- that can’t happen.

  243. 243.

    boatboy_srq

    @Kay:

    I don’t know why they love this “opportunity” theme, anyway.

    They love it because to the libprogs it means “more jobs and training, and better jobs soon” and to the wingnuts it means “no cushy giveaways to Those People”; so it presumably sells on both sides of the house. That “opportunity” involves either coaxing industry to create and maintain jobs within the US or massive public programs isn’t readily obvious.

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