It’s still hard for me to believe that #NeverTrump wasn’t able to make a dent in the Donald by hammering away at Trump University and Trump’s misogyny.
This ad about Trump University was pretty good:
As was this ad about Trump’s misogyny:
The media will try to recast Trump as a serious reformicon maverick between now and November. And we’ll certainly get a lot of this:
[T]he Clinton campaign and its surrogates will bring up Trump University and Trump’s bankruptcies and Trump’s mob ties and history of racial discrimination — but these stories will reported with the asterisk “On the other hand, the Clinton Foundation blah blah blah blah blah,” or “In the 1990s, Mrs. Clinton’s cattle-future trading was investigated….” Both Sides Do It, so the press will feel the need to yoke every Trump scandal to a Clinton scandal. This tendency is likely to be extended even to such matters as Trump’s racism: Yes, Trump calls Mexicans “rapists” and wants to ban Muslims, but Hillary Clinton said “off the reservation” that one time.
But I think that the reaction to the Trump University scam and “she’s a dog” etc. is visceral in a way that Both Sides Do It can never be. I think the only question is how voters react to MenaGate, TravelGate, MonicaGate, BenghaziGate, and so on. My guess is that most of it is too complicated for non-wingers to understand. I wonder if we’ll see some longer documentaries about the murder of Vince Foster on our teevee screens this fall.
kindness
I’m not sure how much testamonials from scammed victims of Trump U will help. I myself would mock these poor folks for being dumb enough to fall for it the first time.
Major Major Major Major
I want to quit you, Doug! (complaining about the media is bad for my… something, I’m sure), but I just can’t.
Doug!
@kindness:
Coastal elitist
goblue72
There will be a lot of muddying the waters pushed by the Trump campaign. With the end goal to convince that great muddle that barely pays attention to politics but shows up on Election Day during Presidential election years that Trump’s peccadillos and unseemly and downright scummy business deals aren’t all that different from Clinton’s (vis a vis her husband and the Clinton Foundation). And it will stick in part, because at end of the day, there is some fire where there is the smoke when it comes to the Clintons (in sharp contrast to Obama, who by all measures is one of the cleanest guys to occupy the Oval Office).
But it won’t matter. You can’t undo his rampant misogyny. The degree to which he gains some votes from men who like that stuff, he will lose 1.5 or more votes from women period, or from men who DON’T like that stuff. And he can’t undo the “Mexicans are rapists” and the build a wall stuff – and he will lose far more Latinos from that, than whites he gains.
The reason you gotta use a dog-whistle is to attract the racists and misogynists and homophobes without chasing off an equal number or greater of women, minorities and gays. You start TRUMP-eting that stuff, and you just screwed the pooch.
Its gonna be a long, exhausting election and it will wind up where all the polls say right now, because you can’t win an election as a Republican without a threshold % of Latinos and women, and Trump isn’t going to hit those numbers.
gene108
Why do you assume the Republicans in the #NeverTrump movement objected to the way Trump University did business?
I think many right-wingers would approve of scamming people for fun and profit, just as a matter of principle.
Bill
All of these attacks are going to be more effective when the electorate is broader than the GOP.
gene108
@goblue72:
Name one god damned thing Bill Clinton did that was an abuse of Executive Power, when he was President?
Bill was a pretty damn clean President too, despite the Republicans best efforts to destroy him.
And cheating on your wife is not an abuse of Executive power, it is a personal failing.
rikyrah
I can’t believe that The Establishment didn’t win.
I’m in shock.
Still stunned.
As I think they are.
goblue72
By the same token, as Trump tried to steer to the middle to be less toxic, it won’t help him, but it will ironically help the rest of the GOP. We are going to wake up the day after election day same place we are today – Democrat in the WH, GOP in control of the Senate and House.
Best thing Clinton can do is to goad Trump into staying in the outrageous zone so as to poison the whole GOP with it.
Emma
What is this, your third or fourth concern post about the effect of Clinton so-called scandals?
People, can we stop chicken-littling ourselves to death?
Doug R
@goblue72: So what are you referring with Clinton foundation shade? Or is it like the right wing cry of BENGHAAAAÀZI?
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Ah, the Very Important People will all clamber onto Trump’s bandwagon, and they’ll spill great loads of ink telling us how both sides do it, and that all the shit Trump has said about women really isn’t that far beyond how once Hillary Clinton got a speeding ticket or something. But ads like those will speak for themselves. In this case, I don’t think there’s any way to tart up the shitburger the Republicans are going to be selling. Even David Broder himself couldn’t clean Trump up enough to make him a winner.
Yutsano
“CLINTON LIED, FOUR MEN DIED!!!’
The wingers will be saying that from here until Election day.
This is also why I’m glad I can vote from my bed.
acallidryas
Why on earth would voters in the Republican primaries care at all that someone was disrespectful towards women?
Next you’ll say that if #NeverTrump had pointed out how racist Trump is maybe he would have lost votes.
Doug!
@Emma:
It’s not chicken-littling, it’s mocking. The Clinton scandal bullshit is Trump’s only chance, but I also think it can blow up in his face.
Davis X. Machina
@Emma:
Never underestimate how soul-corrodingly stupid the median voter is.
My neighbor, who voted for Gore in 2000, voted for Bush in 2004 because “If Gore had been President on 9/11 he would have surrendered, and the terrorists would have won, and it would be illegal to be Christian and we’d all have to wear burqas.”
This from a graduate of our state university’s flagship campus… God knows what she makes of Hillary…
Doug R
@goblue72: I dunno. Cook report has a few VERY likely scenarios where disgust with the Donald bumps enough seats for Democratic majorities.
Betty Cracker
@goblue72:
I think that’s exactly what will sink Trump. He’ll try to hide it, but it’s such a core part of his persona that he won’t be able to. The gender gap will be unprecedented in US politics.
Cacti
Barring a black swan event of some sort, Trump will lose badly. Women voters hate him.
Romney lost women by about 12 points, and lost the EV 332-206. Trump will likely lose them by 20.
As mentioned above, Trump will also get less than half of Romney’s share of the Hispanic vote, as current polling puts him at a pitiful 11%. I don’t see any plausible path to 270 for him.
Punchy
Trump has shown a penchant for just straight-up making up shit. Then, when the media decides it needs to address the blatant lie, succeeds in repeating it over and over, giving it airplay it never deserved. So I’m fully prepared for The Don to simply announce that Hillary is a one-time lesbian, who did coke off her date’s junk, and prove it wrong because shut up reasons. Perhaps he’ll have his National Enquirer buddy print that version of the story first, and then Donny just uses that rag as “proof”.
Since there’s ZERO fact-checking going on, he can make a up a new whopper every day. By October HRC will be denying that she killed Prince with abortion pills in a Planned Parenthood plot to divorce Bill and marry Harry Reid.
Mnemosyne
@Bill:
This. Republican voters aren’t going to care much about corruption or misogyny, especially when the alternative is Ted Cruz, FFS.
In the general, it’s going to matter a lot more. Republicans never realize what a tiny bubble they live in until they have to step out of it for a general election.
Emma
@Doug!: Sorry, but it’s just that reading the last few threads have been like swimming through the Sea of Despair. “they’ll suppress the vote,” “they’ll bring out the scandals,” they-this and they-that. They can TRY. But it’s up to the Democratic party to fight back. Oh yeah. That’s us.
Betty Cracker
@Emma:
Nope. It’s going to get a lot worse. There will be some point or perhaps many — a bad debate performance, an outlier poll, a post-convention bounce — that will launch an epidemic of the white-hot fantods. All we can do is laugh.
JPL
@Cacti: Trump’s message will resonate in the mid-west states, but that might not be enough to carry him.
Cacti
@Emma:
This is the one that really makes me chuckle.
Primary opponents need each other’s voters at some point, so none of Trump’s GOPer rivals really went hard after any of the really low hanging fruit. That’s not going to happen in the general election.
Luthe
Well, I be one of those damn kids! (born 1984), but I can tell you I doubt any of the 1990s Clinton scandals are going to make one iota of difference to most of the people who lived through them (and the ones who don’t remember them won’t give a fuck, either). Unless the scandals themselves can vote (and most of them are old enough), they don’t really matter. Benghazi won’t, either. Hillary’s 11-hour lack of fucks to give hearing proved that.
The only Hillary shit I’m worried about is anything that happened between her resigning from State and now. Everything else is too goddamn old.
Villago Delenda Est
Doug has explained, yet again, why I have my nym.
Wipe them out. All of them.
Cacti
@JPL:
Again, primarily with white working class males, a group the GOP already has locked up.
RandomMonster
@Betty Cracker:
I think you have it right. He can’t take that stuff back.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@RandomMonster: More than that, he won’t want to. Oh, maybe some of his staff can get it through his head that he should. He might even go so far as to make a half-hearted try. But it isn’t within him to mean it. And he can’t hide that.
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
Fix’d. IIRC, in 2012 the few people who had to be talked off the ledge after Obama’s slightly less than stellar first debate performance were almost all white dudes (like Sully). Everyone else was like, Eh, everyone has an off night. It’s fine. And it was.
I foresee several months of calming down white dude panic, because the MSM is truly geared to them and knows how to push all of their buttons.
goblue72
@gene108: He cheating on his wife with a blowjob in the fucking Oval Office and then lied about it, in COURT, under oath. And then wagged his fucking finger at the nation. And during a time period, at which point, that shit just did not – and does not – fly anymore. It wasn’t 1962 and JFK fucking Marilyn Monroe and everyone turning a wink-wink blind eye to it.
God, the level to which some Democrats will go to with blinders on about Bill Clinton, merely because he is “on our team” is just astounding.
And the smoke I am talking about is the stuff he been involved in since leaving office (as well as she), with the Clinton Foundation – which has a history of being a bit of a hot mess that too often gets muddied with her political ambitions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html?_r=0
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/14/us/politics/unease-at-clinton-foundation-over-finances-and-ambitions.html
Not all foundations (or public charities, like the Clinton Foundation) wind up like that. See, for example, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation or the Carter Center.
BruceFromOhio
In all the head-scratching, there will be some accounting for $375 million spent on grifting grifters that did fuck-all to make a dent in The Dumpster’s facade.
Kay
I’ll take this:
I’m hoping we find out GOP primary voters are a group of people with poor judgment but not by any means a majority.
Mike J
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): If he doesn’t mean it, he’s better off not trying to walk anything he said back. If Trump gives the appearance that he’s giving into what other people think his entire shtick disintegrates.
Cacti
@RandomMonster:
I think the most childish thing I’ve read yet about Trump is that he and current trophy wife have separate bathrooms.
Because it’s just too icky to think of sharing a toilet with his arm candy.
Brachiator
The media could either slobber all over Trump or demonize him and his supporters won’t care. The only people who care about the media, and who still give it power, are some bloggers and a few self-serving media pundits.
I guess. At some point, voters decided they didn’t much care about the details of Trump’s businesses, or assumed that they were OK and only a few losers had any complaints.
Trump says bad things about women. Has he ever been sued by women for job discrimination? This might be more important to some than his statements. You got the impression, which could be totally false, that he treated women fairly on his reality tv shows, and this includes the woman who worked for him and who was one of the judges. Before, at least, she got too popular with viewers.
Women callers to Los Angeles area talk radio shows discount Trump’s bad mouthing. They don’t see it directed at them, but often against people they don’t like either. They don’t see what he says as a zero tolerance sin that would disqualify him from running for president. And they see those who make a deal about this as PC babies who think the same as he does, but who just won’t say it out loud.
But I wonder whether some Republican women who nod or silently go along when Trump says crude stuff will keep their own counsel and vote for Clinton in November.
Iowa Old Lady
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): With a female opponent, he’ll broadcast his misogyny with every word and gesture whether he wants to or not.
singfoom
@goblue72:
That’s not abusing his office. They had NO business asking him about his sex life. It had shit to do with his governing. I would have lied too, because that’s none of their goddamn business.
And guess what, the entire fucking nation with the exception of the pervy Republicans who went after him for it thought the same damn thing at the time. Why does it even matter at this point?
Major Major Major Major
@singfoom:
Gonna go out on a limb and say that it doesn’t.
Tom Q
@Betty Cracker: Remember the moaning in ’08 when McCain picked Palin, how THAT was going to doom Obama? (That year it came from still-bitter Clinton folk; this year it may come from the other side.) Take it for granted: there will be dozens if not hundreds of one-day stories that will be proclaimed Game Changers for Trump; there will be polls from Gravis or Rasmussen (especially right after the GOP convention) that say the national margin is within striking distance — and we can count on that quadrennial Eagleton poll that says Pubs have a chance in NJ. It’s all eyewash. Fundamentals (presidential approval, job numbers) favor a Dem successor to Obama, and the odiousness of Trump extends the margin. However much the media wants to believe it so, elections are not jump balls decided by daily fluctuations. Be like our president: take the long view.
Or tear your hair out every day. Your Zen choice.
SenyorDave
@gene108:
Name one god damned thing Bill Clinton did that was an abuse of Executive Power, when he was President?
Not an abuse of power per se, but I have worked for five companies in my life, my brother for at least ten. We both agreed that at every publicly-traded company we worked at a married CEO would be fired having for carrying on an affair with any person in the company. You get in trouble for having a relationship with any person who reports up through you, and if you are the CEO, every person in the company reports up through you. This is a hard and fast rule, no exceptions. I thought Clinton was a pretty effective present, and voted for him twice. But the Lewinsky affair – inexcusable. And yes, the fact that she was an intern in the White House made it much worse.
Mnemosyne
@goblue72:
Even after 20 years, do you still not realize that every one of the “scandals” of the Clinton years was an invention of the New York Times? Whitewater, Travelgate, Rose Law Firm, Wen Ho Lee, Vince Foster — all of it. Benghazi, too.
And then you come in quoting the fucking New York Times as your source, like maybe the boy who cried wolf is finally telling the truth about the Clintons after 20 years of lies?
Do us all a favor and read The Hunting of the President before November, because you’re clearly naive about how much the New York Times hates both Clinton.
And, no, I did not think that lying about a blowjob was worth the second impeachment trial of a US president in the history of the United States. The first one was over Andrew Johnson’s reluctance to implement Reconstruction after the Civil War. And a FUCKING BLOWJOB is worthy of the second? WTF is wrong with you?
Alex
I really hope the trump university trial goes forward this summer. If it does, trump will be called to the stand to defend fraud.
Face
@goblue72: It’s going to go both ways. Just wait until The Don is forced to release his financial docs. Word on the street is that he’s inflated his actual wealth by 5-fold or so. For a guy as vainglorious and fake as himself, this revelation would be devastating for his image. Expect him to avoid this release of info, and the media to rightly call bullshit on it.
Peale
@singfoom: because we got “moveon.org” out of that, and 20 years later they are still spamming my inbox for donations, trying to tell me that they need money to fight something immediately. That’s the real scandal. A lot of my spam today can be traced directly to putting my name on the petition to tell Congress to knock it off about the Lewinsky matter.
The Lodger
@Yutsano: Seriously? I’m from Oregon. We have classrooms with a higher body count than Benghazi.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
I’m slightly worried about Ohio going to Trump. Should I be?
schrodinger's cat
Its funny how Bernielog have transformed themselves into the biggest concern trolls about Clinton’s chances.
ETA: OMG she is doomed. Clinton foundation, unfavorables, Bill Clinton’s shenanigans, speech transcripts, hedge funder son-in-law, big oil, hawk, Kissinger friend etc etc. Even if Hillz is the evilest witch to have ever witched, St Bernard is not going to get the nomination.
WarMunchkin
I, for one, expect a civil campaign based on the issues.
brb, feeding my flying pig
Eljai
I love the song reference. I can’t verify it, but I may have seen the songwriter, the late Judee Sill, in concert. When I was around 11, my older sister took me to see Three Dog Night. The opening act was a singer-songwriter who played piano. I liked her but the audience mostly did not. I read on the interwebs that Judee Sill toured as an opening act with bands she openly despised and Three Dog Night was one of them. But getting back to Trump, another song from the 70s that could also apply: Laura Nyro’s “Flim-Flam Man”.
Cacti
@Brachiator:
No less than Chris Christie’s wife visibly rolled her eyes on stage when Trump started in about “if Hillary was a man, she’d only be getting 5 percent of the vote”.
I think Trump’s boorish views on women are going to be a real problem.
Gian
Trump, for all his ego is not a stupid man. He’s not Einstein either, but he knows marketing as well as anyone else, and he knows how to spot weakness and exploit it.
For all the “talent” in the GOP primary which one of them really had a chance? Low Energy Jeb!? Thirsty Marco Rubio? Like Republicans are going to vote for Jindal for president? Christie (who wouldn’t win NJ in a presidential election)
iCarly – he nailed her with the disaster she was at HP
Scott Walker who has all the charisma of dirty socks, and Ted Cruz, who has all the charisma of wet dirty socks with holes in them? (and again, Trump branded him lyin Ted, just like he branded jeb! as low energy)
sure, he’s a carnival barker, a showman, a celebrity, but he knows his audience, and he knows how to sell, and he knows how to attack, and his pivot last night to being nice to lyin’ Ted shows you just how much in control of it he is.
underestimating him put the GOP in this mess.
Davebo
@Mnemosyne: Actually the Wen Ho Lee fiasco was pretty horrible and reached very high into the Executive Branch.
Mike J
@SenyorDave:
Really? I’ve been at more than one where the CEO dumped his wife and married the marketing chick.
Brachiator
@gene108:
Did you miss it when they rolled the MittBot 2000 out of the storage shed to rail that Trump wasn’t the right kind of blood sucking Republican plutocrat?
I’m not seeing that the Kock suckers or other conservative fat cats are all that pleased at Trump. The privileged elite are not quite a monolith.
Calouste
@goblue72: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has donated more than $25 million to the Clinton Foundation. Your argument might lack a certain coherence.
FlyingToaster
@goblue72: Again, and again, and again, nobody but talibangelicals, the right wing punditocracy and *you* care where Bill Clinton’s dick has been. In a sane system, that mess would never have made it into a courtroom.
Purity trolls aren’t pure, they’re just trolls. Back under your bridge, already!
VOR
@singfoom: And look at the crew of hypocrites who went after Clinton over infidelity. Newt Gingrich, then having an affair with a staffer (Callista). Bob Livingston, who resigned from Congress after his own infidelity came to light. The Wikipedia article on the impeachment notes “Many other prominent Republican members of Congress (including Dan Burton[15] of Indiana; Helen Chenoweth[15] of Idaho; and Henry Hyde[15] of Illinois, the chief House manager of Clinton’s trial in the Senate) had infidelities exposed around this time, all of whom voted for impeachment.” After Gingrich was forced out and Livingston resigned, the House picked Dennis Hastert, now known to be a child molester, as the Speaker.
schrodinger's cat
Its funny how Bernielog have transformed themselves into the biggest concern trolls about Clinton’s chances.
ETA: OMG she is doomed. Clinton foundation, unfavorables, Bill Clinton’s shenanigans, speech transcripts, hedge funder son-in-law, big oil, hawk, Kissinger friend etc etc. Even if Hillz is the evilest witch to have ever witched, St Bernard is not going to get the nomination.
ETA 2: Edit function does not work, it lands you into moderation. Upgrade fail.
Roger Moore
@goblue72:
It’s not just the misogyny; it’s the general assholishness. There are plenty of men who will be turned off Trump because he reminds them of the boss they hate or the bully they resent.
feebog
@Emma:
This. Times 10 million. And it is us. Fight back by donating money. If you can’t afford to donate money, donate your time. I phonebank because most people hate it and I could give a shit if some asshole cusses at me. The good contacts more than make up for it. My wife is already talking about driving to Nevada or Arizona the weekend before the election and GOTV. Fight back on social media, ridicule the morons and try to win over the few reasonable ones.
FlyingToaster
@SenyorDave: Never heard of Larry Ellison, have you?
Yeesh. CEOs and Boards of Directors have never given a fuck about your so-called rules.
Mnemosyne
@Tom Q:
I know people think I’m more than a little nutty about this, but I will repeat myself: the culture is against Trump this year. Exhibit A: Hamilton, a play about the Founding Fathers told in rap and hip-hop by an all-minority cast. Exhibit B: Zootopia, an animated cartoon about racism and intersectionality, is still in the top 10 and has made $324 million in the US alone (it’s doing even better overseas).
The tide is against Trump, and he’s not the kind of guy who’s going to be able to turn it. All we need to do is give him a firm push with voter registration (including voter ID where necessary) and voter turnout, and we can shove him out to sea.
RandomMonster
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Entirely good points! Especially true given that Trump’s personality is to not accept advice from anyone.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: Trump has 70% unfavorable rating with women. Not Democratic women. Women. My guess is the women who call in to radio talk shows probably fall into the 23% who don’t think he’s an abusive pig, but they’re hardly representative. I also think the revulsion the overwhelming majority of women feel toward Trump is partially explained by Trump radiating subtle dog whistle-type misogyny that women pick up on and men often miss, similar to how even well-meaning white folks missed some of the more subtle racist shit directed at Obama. Carly Fiorina wasn’t right about much, ever, but she spoke the truth when she said women heard Trump loud and clear.
Cacti
@goblue72:
It was actually in a civil deposition, but it was under oath, so it had the same practical effect. The GOPers tried to gin that into public support to remove him from office and failed spectacularly. Nobody but the bluenoses cared that he had an affair.
Emma
@Gian: Actually, what put the GOP in this mess was that their “deep bench” were the sideshow exhibits in a traveling circus.
gogol's wife
@Cacti:
Rich people always have separate bathrooms.
jsrtheta
@Face: He’ll never release them, because they will show he has nowhere near the money he claims. This guy has been a short money real estate scammer his whole life, and his tax returns would provide fodder for endless hilarity.
Of course, the media would actually have to do their job, and they have shown no inclination to do that yet. But the DNC and Hillary’s campaign already have enough material to fill up every minute from until election day.
Trump claims he gave all this money to charity, but it’s actually free rounds of golf that he gave writes off, no cash whatsoever? And why won’t he really release his taxes? What’s he got to hide? Why has he done so much business with the mob? Why does he buy his concrete from the Gambino and Genovese families, and Nicky Scarfo’s outfit in Philly? How did he manage to drive four companies into bankruptcy? If he’s such a business genius, what did Trump Wine, Trump Steaks, Trump Mortgage all go belly-up? Why did he scam so many people with “Trump University”? Why did the government have to tell this genius you can’t call yourself a “University” if you aren’t one? What about all these people you ripped off?
This is a drop in the bucket. This is what the Republicans were too inept to use.
You think Carville and Begala are that dumb? The long knives are about to come out, and it won’t be pretty.
Doug R
@Mnemosyne: My response to the first 2012 debate was of course the good guy ALWAYS loses the first match in 2 out of 3 title match.
Emma
@Mike J: Yeah, I passed on commenting on that one because my earliest recollection of “nasty office gossip” was about a dean who had divorced his wife, married his graduate student, and supposedly got a third woman pregnant and he walked on water as far as the administration was concerned.
Cacti
And for the Bernfeelers who are scandalized at Bill Clinton’s sex life, what do you make of Bernie siring a bastard kid, and then being a bit of a deadbeat in regards to consistent employment prior to middle age?
Do you think Republicans will just be good sports and leave that alone?
Calouste
@Face:
Last change applies to the original as well.
Kay
@Gian:
At this point in 2012 Mittens was running even w/Obama.
Mittens was a successful businessman who knew marketing.
Kay
@Cacti:
Oh, God, really? That word shouldn’t be in front of “kid”.
FlyingToaster
@Kay: Marketing only gets you so far; then the social media reviews come in and sink you.
kindness
@Davebo: And Google will save your argument except even with Google most of us A) don’t remember the Wen Ho Le ‘scandal’ and B) don’t give a shit.
There were no scandals during Bill Clinton’s presidency other than Republicans impeaching him. There were no scandals during Hillary’s NY Senate term nor Hillary’s Sec of State term.
That is what most (non Republican) people think.
Mike J
@Emma: And even if we did accept the stupid premise that Bill Clinton is uniquely evil and having an affair with an adult woman who chased him was absolutely unprecedented in American culture, what does any of it have to do with Hillary?
Mnemosyne
@Davebo:
Right, but that wasn’t the focus of the New York Times coverage. They led the witchhunt with torches blazing. If not for them leading the pack of baying hounds screaming “CHINESE SPY!!!” the FBI probably would have dropped the case.
I’m not trying to excuse the actions of the executive branch, and I’ve disliked Bill Richardson ever since, but that case was driven by the New York Fucking Times.
Cacti
@Kay:
I’ll put you in the expects the GOP to be good sports about it camp, then?
Major Major Major Major
@FlyingToaster:
That would explain why Bernie is winning the primary.
Doug!
@Eljai:
Yup, that’s right, it’s from Jesus Was A Crossmaker
Brachiator
@Cacti:
Yes! I saw that.
And what Trump said was jaw droppingly vile. I mean, he is the male equivalent of Sarah Palin, an ignoramus with a big mouth, and yet he thinks he is suddenly presidential, and that HRC is an untried political neophyte.
singfoom
OT, but the DOJ just swung the banhammer at North Carolina:
US Justice Department: HB2 violates federal Civil Rights Act
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article75601912.html
You go DOJ, you go. Force the knuckledragging godbotherers into court and make them defend their bigotry. Watch all the “but but but the children” cries evaporate for what that shit really was.
Kay
@Cacti:
Don’t use that. No one uses it anymore and that’s a good thing.
Mnemosyne
@Doug R:
I should probably be very clear at the start of what’s going to be a mud-filled election season: white men are not the same as “white dudes.” There are a lot of very sensible white men who are not susceptible to MSM bullshit (I’m married to one, in fact). But when a White Dude like Sullivan gets the bit between his teeth, watch out.
White dudes is a subgroup of white men, not shorthand for the whole group,
dedc79
Molly BallVerified account
@mollyesque
Just ran into @gov_gilmore. “What a nightmare, what a nightmare,” he muttered.
“Are you going to vote for him?”
“Sure.”
Kay
@FlyingToaster:
You’ll miss Mittens if that dumb loudmouth wins :)
You’ll be begging for Mittens brand of…odd disconnect.
Cacti
@Kay:
Of course, Kay. No Republican would dare mention deadbeat dad Bernie and his bastard kid. Especially not in those terms.
That would just be over the line.
What color is the sky in your world?
Emma
@Mike J: One of the interesting ways my female relatives looked at this — I have a slew of fairly conservative working class relatives — was that Hillary was stupid/wicked/a doormat for tolerating Bill’s infidelities. “If it happened to me, he’d be out of the house at the point of my shoe!” The not-so-funny part of this was that the one who said that repeatedly was one whose husband had the same mistress, including a separate household, for more than twenty years, and she bloody well knew it.
The whole thing was kabuki.
singfoom
@Mnemosyne: Really? White Dude is now a bad thing? As a white dude, I take umbrage. I’m also a white man, but your formulation offends not only me but The Dude.
While The Dude abides, I don’t think I can abide by this.
MD Rackham
@gogol’s wife:
Somehow I don’t think the problem with Donald is that he never puts the seat down, it’s that he never lifts it and instead just pees all over the seat. Anyone who can afford it would get their own bathroom.
FlyingToaster
@Major Major Major Major:
‘Cept he ain’t. Hillary has more votes, and more delegates, before you figure in any superdelegates. He might win Guam, but she’ll win California.
#ImWithHer, but if Bernie would quit shouting at me, I’d be fine with him, too.
Cacti
@Brachiator:
I think what Republican women tell their hubbies and beaus, and what they do in the voting booth, aren’t necessarily going to line up closely in this election.
Bobby Thomson
@goblue72: Republican faux purity troll says what?
Mnemosyne
@Cacti:
Bernie’s through. No one cares anymore.
Cacti
@Bobby Thomson:
His comments here + his blowing kisses at Reagan in another thread has me wondering.
If so, well played goblue72. Good sock-puppeting performance.
Mnemosyne
@singfoom:
Hmm, now that’s a tough question. Where does The Dude fall on this scale? I would actually say he’s on a separate plane above this scale, as suits his ability to abide.
Now, Walter — he’s the kind of guy I have in mind when I say “white dudes.”
Mike J
@FlyingToaster:
Not a chance. People in Guam are livid about Michele Bachmann donor Tim Robbins saying South Carolina is irrelevant, like Guam.
Bobby Thomson
@Cacti: he has a very very long trolling history going back to the semi-early days of the GOS.
FlyingToaster
@Kay: I still don’t miss Willard, though I do thank him for Romneycare :) Schoolkids throughout Massachusetts do too; I haven’t seen a weird-looking kid in about a decade (because those things are getting diagnosed and dealt with, dammit!).
I worked for several different companies who had ex-BCG* boys at their helms. All of them were like Mitt. A true Matt Broderick lack-of-affect thing was their common denominator.
* Boston Consulting Group. Mitt and Bibi are two famous alumni. Mitt’s house was about 3 miles from here; Tagg lives there now.
Cacti
@SenyorDave:
Carly Fiorina’s management career took flight after she became involved romantically with AT&T executive Frank Fiorina, while the latter was still married.
So, I’m going to have to call bullshit on the iron clad rule of no infidelity with subordinates in the business world. Now, if a middle manager was caught doing the same, they’d probably get canned.
FlyingToaster
@Mike J:
Oops. I was ignoring the moonbat element, and wham, they took Guam away from Bernie, just like that.
aimai
@SenyorDave: No exceptions? My we are innocent, aren’t we. Do you seriously think that there is no sexual harrassment and sexual liasons that go on in the top corporate boards without being punished? I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
Mnemosyne
@kindness:
I get what Davebo is saying, though — the investigation of Wen Ho Lee was not the Clinton administration’s finest hour, to say the least. But I think a huge part of their panic was driven by the media coverage, which was bullshit.
The MSM tried to push scandals on Obama like Benghazi and Fast and Furious, but they never got traction. Whatever strategy his team used, I hope they teach it to Hillary’s team.
Cacti
@FlyingToaster:
Yeah, I was going to say, celebrity 1-percenter BernieBro, Tim Robbins, has already declared that Guam doesn’t matter, when he was explaining why South Carolina doesn’t matter.
Brachiator
@gogol’s wife:
Hell, yes. And sometimes separate bedrooms. And even separate houses.
dollared
@Cacti: It really is different now. Very hard for a mainstream CEO to survive and affair with a subordinate.
And as for Clinton, what he did was stupid and terrible. I agree that it was not malfeasance in office, but clearly it gave us George Bush. And millions died and trillions were lost from that one little dalliance.
geg6
@Emma:
Yes, this. So sick of it all, especially the vile shit coming out of the Bernie camp. I don’t believe for a second that anything Trump can come up with to say or do will hurt Hillary. But when he’s spouting Bernie’s words, then it’s not Trump I’ll be pissed at, that’s for sure.
Schlemazel Khan
@Villago Delenda Est:
I guess I assumed the nym was a reference to the Viet Nam conflict (. . . in order to save it) so I had to google after reading your comment. I guess I now have another book to toss on my must read stack!
Cacti
@Emma:
Reminds me of my sister in law who insists I’m a bad person because I don’t go to church. But stays married to a good, God-fearin’ hubby who slaps her around and chases tail on the side.
gogol's wife
@MD Rackham:
Melania probably has separate gold-plated everything. It was part of the deal, I’m sure.
Cacti
@dollared:
You’ll pardon me if I’m not apt to take your word for it, “legal money laundering” guy.
dollared
@aimai: Depends. The tech industry has been very aggressive about eliminating this problem, partly because of their horrible record recruiting women.
And public companies have lots of reasons to be more strict these days. But non-public companies? I’m sure there are still no rules and no consequences…..
JPL
@Brachiator: It works for the McCains..
Schlemazel Khan
@goblue72:
No, he did not lie about it under oath or in court.
Starr thought he would be very clever and induce perjury so when Clinton asked him to define ‘sex’ Kenny clearly said penis in vagina so Bill truthfully said no. Kenny was too clever by half (so twice as clever as you for falling for GOP bullshit).
It was not a proud moment for the nation or for Bill but it was not perjury either.
Emma
@dollared: Bill Clinton left office with one of the highest approval ratings ever. What gave us Bush was a combination of (1) Gore running away from Clinton and into Lieberman’s arms (ugh; bad image); (2) ballot chicanery; (3) Nader.
rikyrah
The Conservative Movement Died Tonight
by BooMan
Wed May 4th, 2016 at 01:32:57 AM EST
This has been the most hard to predict campaign in memory, but some things have gone pretty much the way I thought they would. I knew Hillary Clinton was a colossus who was too strong to beat from the left despite the obvious widespread hunger for exactly that. And I knew that the Republicans had only one real presidential candidate (Jeb Bush) and that he would be the toughest of sells to the Republican base.
The Democratic side frankly bored me when it didn’t simply irritate me. So much Sturm und Drang about a nomination that was sealed in stone more than a year before it even began. I did my mourning over this race in 2014 and got over it, but I don’t fault people for believing and working their tails off. It just felt like watching your child put everything into winning a contest that you knew was beyond their capabilities of winning. When it was a protest candidacy, it was nice and somewhat exciting, but when people began to take their chances seriously, that’s when it took a dark turn.
………………………………………………………………………..
Trump will run “opposing free trade, promising to protect entitlements from cuts, questioning the value of America’s commitment to military alliances, and shrugging at social changes like the growing acceptance of transgender people.” As Barro notes, “All three of the supposed “legs” of the Republican coalition stool — libertarian economics, social conservatism, and militarism — are at risk from Trump and the populist-imitator candidates he will spawn.”
There’s a sense in which few Republicans truly care about all three legs of the stool, but simply tolerate one or two of them to get the other(s) that really motivate(s) them. But virtually all Republicans care passionately about either fiscal or social conservatism, or about international affairs and conservative principles in foreign policy.
You might think that Trump is enough of a chameleon to get away with using an Etch-a-Sketch to erase his performance in the primaries, and he probably is. But he isn’t going to erase his plan to build a wall, and he isn’t going to start trumpeting neoconservative principles in foreign policy, and he’s not abandoning his attacks on free trade. On social issues, he’ll probably tack back to the middle, which is sensible and sound electoral strategy, but will still leave social conservatives feeling like they’ve had their party stolen out from under their feet.
Think about what I’ve written about Sarah Palin over the years. The real damage she did was in getting Republicans to lower their standards for what a vice-president or a president ought to be. She broke a very meaningful and valuable norm simply by being so blatantly unprepared for the job.
Without Palin, I doubt you get the kind of candidates who flamed out for the Tea Party, and I doubt you get Donald Trump.
Trump will force loyal Republicans to support or tolerate or grudgingly accept many of the things they’ve spent their whole lives warning us would lead to armageddon. When that happens, many of them will change their core beliefs and their standards for what a Republican should be and what they should represent. When it’s over, assuming he loses, the party will never be the same. They will never go back to those three legs of the stool. And, if he wins, the party will definitely be transformed into something unrecognizable.
Major Major Major Major
@FlyingToaster: And this is why we need a sarcasm font/mark.
dollared
@Cacti: Heh. You keep advertising your naiveté.
D58826
@singfoom: 1. it was a grand jury not a trial court.
2. any other citizen would have told the prosecutor pound sand I plead the 5th therefore no lie
3. Two very republican lawyers were challenged to find another example of where a prosecutor built an entire case on a perjury change without an underlying crime. They went all the way back to 1911 to find 2. One of which still had an element of the defendant trying to extort money. Good old Geraldo was willing to say they won the bet and give the wager to charity.
Schlemazel Khan
@singfoom:
and purity pony assholes who believe if
BushDrunpf wins it will teach us all a good lesson & insure a really pure hearted liberal will rule for all timesCacti
@Emma:
I wonder if Tad Devine was the person who advised Gore to run away from Clinton. He’s held high level positions in every losing Dem campaign since 1980.
Which raises another question. Why are the man’s services still sought?
Cacti
@dollared:
Your political acumen is matched only by your knowledge of money laundering. ;-)
catclub
@Villago Delenda Est: I think Doug! needs a new relevant nym.
Is there a giant combover emoji?
D58826
@Yutsano: funny how St Ronulus was Unready and 250 men died in Beirut. I guess it doesn’t rhyme
FlyingToaster
@Major Major Major Major: True dat. Sorry I missed the snark.
singfoom
@Schlemazel Khan:
Yeah, have some people I know like that I’ve been trying to convince to not be bernieorbusters…. Somehow letting Drumpf win will bring about the destruction of the two party system. Somehow. They can never explain it to me properly.
D58826
@VOR: If I remember correctly the Europeans had a real laugh at crazy Americans and sex. Right about that time a former French prime minister died. His mistress was front and center at the funeral. His wife was neither seen or heard from.
chopper
@Kay:
i use the word ‘bastard’ about 50 times a day.
dollared
@Emma: Why did Al Gore run away from Bill Clinton and add Joseph Lieberman, noted conservative religionist? It was the blowjob.
In a race that close, there were a number of “but for” causes. Nader, voter caging, and the blowjob were all independently the cause.
Cacti
@D58826:
The French go too far in the other direction though, taking a “boys will boys” attitude at their famous/powerful men getting a little rape-y.
Schlemazel Khan
@rikyrah:
I think boo is wrong abut the conservatives death, in fact Drumpf gives the conservatives breathing room. For once they can claim “He is not a true conservative” BEFORE the asshole faces election. When he loses they will simply say he was not their fault & try to pick up the pieces. If he wins it won’t matter because the world will come to an end but conservatism will linger like the bad odor from boiled cabbage.
Cacti
@dollared:
Stupidity, as seen in the final numbers.
The public wasn’t angry at Clinton in the least. He left office with sky high approval, and remains the most popular living ex-POTUS.
dollared
@Cacti: Do you have anything to add to the conversation? http://www.wisdc.org/legallaundrywebpage.php
Kay
@chopper:
Do you call children “bastard kids” when they’re born to people who aren’t married? We no longer rank and label children according to their parents marital status. Not for years, decades.
Elie
I think that our country has gone a little nuts and it will be our job during this campaign season not only to work for and vote in a sane President, but also to get way more involved in politics at all levels. Trump and to a lesser extent, Bernie, were both a result of deep dysfunction that we need to address or this stuff will just be the beginning. Right now, I think that the world has at least a question as to whether we are in the big decline predicted for so long. I think we definitely have one foot on a banana peel.
Schlemazel Khan
@singfoom:
Dig up the Nader quote from 2000 where he claimed that would happen. point out 8 years of Boy Blunder and all we got was the “corporatist sell out Obama” as a reward. Hopefully they are not so stupid as to not see the comparison.
D58826
@rikyrah: ouch. his crystal ball on the GOPs future has gotta leave a mark. Poor Ranced P.
DesertFriar
@Emma:
Elian Gonzalez
rikyrah
@BruceFromOhio:
375 MILLION?
damn.
I want in on that grift.
dollared
@Cacti: It cost him a measurable percentage of votes. His party lost when it had the most robust economy in 40 years. It is a complete outlier of an election from an outcome-versus-the-economy POV.
Iowa Old Lady
@chopper: Presumably because the bastard earned the name. I believe Kay’s point is that a child doesn’t.
Cacti
@dollared:
Cite, please.
dollared
@Cacti: and no argument on Gore’s stupidity. I think he really was shamed by the blowjob thing, and got terrible advice. And remember what a prude Tipper is…
Cacti
@dollared:
18 USC 1956, little shithouse lawyer.
Captain C
@VOR: I suspect that for most of them, the real crime was that they weren’t President, sitting in the Oval Office getting their knob polished by an intern.
Schlemazel Khan
@Kay:
Kay, I thought he was doing it for affect; as in the way the GOP would present it so I think you are getting riled about something that was not really there.
OTOH, as a kid I often wished I were a bastard. Would have allowed me to disclaim my father & I would have been able to wear ties with stripes that went the other way! I’d wear the tie & the moniker proudly. At my last WHCD I’d want Larry Wilmore to say, “Yo, Barry, you did it ya bastard!”
I get your point & don’t disagree but I believe he was speaking as a Republican in that part
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
Yep. I don’t take this group as statistically significant. Southern Cal has been an early beachhead for Trump, and a good portion of his supporters are women, for whatever reason. The radio station I mention is number 1 in the English language market. They have hosted GOP debate watching events. Again a self-selecting crowd, but the attendees have been overwhelmingly Trump supporters. Similarly, a good portion of the people who came to see him in Costa Mesa were women, and some brought their daughters.
I don’t think that Trump has ever been subtle. I have despised him from way back, when he got into the pointless war with Rosie O’Donnell, and which he immediately escalated with sexist and homophobic insults.
But this does not mean that some women might not hold their nose and vote for him if they think that he will bring jobs and security. They may see zero tolerance purity as a foolish luxury that they cannot afford, especially if they think that Democrats are the party of empty promises. I don’t know. The main thing is that I don’t need to impose my interpretation if there are women who support Trump who have anything to say about this.
ETA: I don’t think that some “well-meaning white folks” missed racist shit directed at Obama. I think that some people practice the art of denial. This holds true for some sexism as well.
Calouste
@D58826: Former President, Mitterand to be exact. Although I think his wife attended the funeral, the invitation to one of his mistresses and one of his extra-marital children was indeed a surprise.
I also heard a story that a French journalist once requested an audience with Mitterand while he was President, and broke the news to him that he had prove that Mitterand had an extra-marital child. Mitterand leaned back in his chair, looked at the journalist, and said “So?”.
Trentrunner
@feebog: Donation recommendations, anybody?
Here are my priorities:
1) Electing Hillary
2) Retaking the Senate
3) Retaking the House
4) Overcoming voter suppression laws/rules
So: Where should I donate? Any suggestions w/explanations welcomed. :)
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
This implies the wingers actually understand those “scandals” but I see no evidence of understanding…they just slap a shorthand name on “someone somewhere said something suspicious might have gone on” so they can get their rage fix.
dollared
@Cacti: From Wikipedia, poll results showing Clinton’s decline in moral reputation cost millions of votes.
So, in the end, did Gore lose because he ran away from Clinton’s success because of the blowjob, or did the Democrats get fewer votes because of the blowjob? Either way, it is a cause of the loss.
Cacti
@Schlemazel Khan:
Pretty much.
And at the time Bernie’s kid was born, it most certainly would have been applied to him.
Calouste
@rikyrah: Too late, the Sanders campaign has already laid off a lot of staff. But if you start contacting Tad Devine now, I’m sure he can hook you up with whatever purity candidate is going to
fleece the marks for $100 millionchallenge Clinton in 2020.Major Major Major Major
@Trentrunner: Tammy Duckworth
MCA1
@JPL: I’d replace “might not” with “will not.” I mean, even if he miraculously turned out enough disaffected middle class whites hurt by the econopocalypse and “free trade” and such to flip Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, he’d still be 18 EV’s short based on the 2012 map, meaning even getting Virginia wouldn’t get him over the hump. He’s also going to be spending more time defending North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Missouri than any Republican since Reagan, while Clinton courts growing minority populations in those states, which will lessen the time he can focus on his nativist populism message in rural Ohio.
I understand all the punditry (not that you or anyone else in this thread has espoused it) about this election cycle being the most unpredictable evah and all of that, but the fundamentals and the landscape change dramatically once it becomes a mano-a-mano general election based on an Electoral Vote map. And also when the one person Trump’s running against happens to be female, and has the backing and resources of an entire party from Day 1.
jl
Good ads. Wrong audience, if aimed at GOP primary voter base. No chance they would work. For general election, I think they will work, and timid Democrats will have to brave charges that any response to sexist BS from Trump being called ‘playing the women card’. Stand tall and brave, timid Democratic concern trolls!
I think the real poisons of the Trump campaign are disinterest in social conservatism, fact that Trump understands business and finance well enough to speak some sense on deficit and debt and interest rates, and his promise to defend current forms of Social Security and Medicare. It blows up one of the main tools the GOP con game.
I guess they could try to parlay Trump’s many hangups with women as social conservatism. But that won’t work. They can’t substitute Trump’s prissy horror of women pissing pooping and farting into the real deal. Trump doesn’t give a shit if the ladies want some sexy time fun, says he won’t sacrifice women and children’s health care for anti-abortion measures, doesn’t give a rat’s ass whether women are kept barefoot in the kitchen all day. As long as they keep their digestive processes hidden and he can get the smoking hot babes he wants, he doesn’t give a damn how women decide to spend their time, I think Trump is noxious sexist, but not the kind that fits easily into the Xtianist mode.
That Trump can talk some sense about the economy, and says he will stand by our current social insurance system is what outrages the GOP money bags. I take no comfort in it at all, because I don’t think what Trump says is worth a splot of dried spit on the sidewalk.
But a whole presidential campaign season with a GOP candidate talking that way is intolerable to the GOP money bags. That in itself is a disaster. Losing is OK, if you lose it the right way. Trump will run the campaign the wrong way, and that is damaging to them, win or lose.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Trentrunner: Through ActBlue you can give to any Dem candidate anywhere if you have funds to donate, that is. So, you could focus on funding Hillary’s campaign, and then look to support Senate candidates that look like they have a shot at defeating a vulnerable GOP incumbent. Other than that I’m sure the DNC would take your money but whether they’d do anything worthwhile with it who knows? The DCCC might be a better bet as far as official Democratic Party organizations go. Then, get out and canvass or make phone calls for Hillary – the more people her organization gets out to vote, the longer her coat tails will be. If you live in a State, or near a State, with a vulnerable incumbent GOP Senator they’d I’m sure their opponent would also welcome any volunteer work you can do if you contact the campaign. Obama in 2012 had a great ground game organization – I canvassed for him in VA. I haven’t seen Hillary folks on the ground much yet but it’s early.
Cacti
@dollared:
How you figure? If 41% of the electorate cared about Clinton’s scandals, that means 59% didn’t.
Gore ran from Clinton to chase 41% of the voters.
Stupidity.
And he almost won in spite of himself.
dollared
@Cacti: Very professional. Apparently you are citing some sort of banking regulation. Are you suggesting that that is the only thing in the world that can be labelled “Money Laundering?”
I have a project for you. There is a French language institute that has strict control over whether any word can be added to the formal French dictionary. I suggest you 1) get such an institute created for English; 2) gain control of it; 3) and make sure it prohibits colloquial use of the phrase “money laundering” in any other context than a provable case of a transaction prohibited under the single federal statute you have cited.
Or maybe find something else to do with your time.
dollared
@Cacti: As I said above, I agree that Gore was stupid.
Major Major Major Major
@dollared: Well, he did send you the definition of the term as decided by a governing body that has strict control over the english language. Just because you don’t like it…
Mnemosyne
@Trentrunner:
VoteRiders.org. Working to get voter ID for people in the states that require it.
Kay
@Schlemazel Khan:
i;m not “riled up” :)
I hate that. They don’t know what it means but they know it’s bad. All the adults came to a mutual and simultaneous decision many years ago to drop it and there was nearly universal voluntary compliance.
I don’t even agree that Republicans would use it. It’s pretty much banished. These things evolve in good ways. It’s a recognition that children aren’t their parents – they’re not property.
LAO
@dollared: 18 USC 1956 is a federal criminal money laundering statue. Not a banking regulation.
Emma
@dollared: Look, I consider you one of the most rational and reasonable of the Bernie supporters. But “money laundering” has a specific legal meaning in United States law and it isn’t applied to anything but that. When you say “money laundering” everyone else hears “criminal act.”
dollared
@Major Major Major Major: The Federal Government has strict control over the English language? Holy crap! Glenn Beck was right!!
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
Speaking as a white woman, there is a fairly large number of that demographic that is tolerant of racism but not of sexism, and it crosses party lines to a certain extent. I think Trump is going to discover that to his cost.
D58826
@Cacti: Ok read the link.
1. seems like a report generated by a group with an agenda. No crime but not exactly impartial.
2. after reading it I discovered that our political system is awash in money, mostly contributed by fat cat donors, who at the very least want access. I also found out that the sun comes up in the east. Duh
3. Since the article did not cite any specific laws concerning ‘legal money laundering’ it seems like the people writing the report picked an emotion laden word to grab peoples attention. Again not a crime or all that unusual.
4. If politician A uses the term money laundering, given its commonly understood meaning, in reference to politician B’s fund raising, then I think politician B has a legitimate gripe. Politician A is trying to say by indirection that politician B is a crook while maintaining deniability. Again not illegal nor unheard of in a political campaign but perfectly understandable when politician B’s supporters push back.
Schlemazel Khan
@Kay:
sort of like they would never use certain words when describing our melanin enhanced CiC? You know they would, particularly if it were Drumpf or if they thought it was only them in the room.
Mike J
@dollared:
Because Tad Devine is a moron?
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Guys! Guys!
Take a look at tedcruz.com!
Ryan
Might just be my impression, but the other candidates seemed to spend a lot more time talking about how Trump wasn’t a True Conservative than they ever spent on Trump U. I see no reason to repeat that mistake in the general election race.
Mike J
LAO
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: WTF! That’s awesome!
Cacti
@dollared:
USC = United States Code (i.e. black letter federal statutory law). Title 18 is the part covering crimes and criminal procedure.
Banking and Finance is governed by Federal statute, under multiple express Constitutional powers of the Federal government.
The laundering of money or financial instruments is explicitly named a crime under the laws of the United States. There is no legal money laundering because such a thing does not exist. Shall I get a first year law student to explain the concept to you in easier to understand terms?
“Legal money laundering” = nonsense term. There is no legal money laundering under the laws of this country, any more than there is legal terrorism, legal counterfeiting, or legal treason.
dollared
@Emma: It does have an unsavory reputation. I agree. Criminal? If we were talking about drug money, yes. However in a campaign finance context where even clearly prohibited money laundering is almost never the subject of criminal sanction, “criminal” is a bit strong. Within the industry, it’s simply a common term.
I’m really not trying to argue some arcane, outlying point: Here’s a public policy discussion FROM THE FEDERAL ELECTIONS COMMISSION about whether “laundering campaign contributions” should be made illegal. . They talk about “laundering contributions.” They know it’s unsavory but mostly legal. They are asking if it should be illegal. I think it should be illegal. But it’s not.
https://www.makeyourlaws.org/fec/laundering
shomi
But what do the folks at Applebees think DougJ? What about the 15 year old Clinton zombie lies that we must fear?
gwangung
@Emma: Ergo, he’s being intellectually dishonest and TRYING to do a smear.
Very Republican behavior, I might add.
FYWP
The anti-Trump ads almost write themselves.
Iowa Old Lady
@Mike J: Good lord. Also LOL.
dollared
@Cacti: see 179. It does make me happy to see you so wrong, when you feel so right.
Maybe you should spend a little less time on self-righteous hatred of others. It would do you good.
Lizzy L
@Cacti: Evidently Obama is not the only person with no more fcks to give. Laura Bush has made it pretty clear that if it comes down to Hillary vs Trump, she’s voting for Hillary.
Schlemazel Khan
@FYWP:
Drumpf writes them himself!
dollared
@gwangung: See post 179. I remember when Democrats believed that campaign funding was corrupt and needed to be cleaned up. I guess that now makes me a Republican. Weird.
dollared
@Mike J: Just like when Cheney headed GWB’s search committee…
gwangung
@dollared: Given that they’re still discussing whether it should be made legal, it means at this point the behavior is still allowed and legal.
What you are doing is STILL intellectually dishonest.
D58826
@Emma: I spent all of yesterday arguing just that point. . Obviously to no effect. And that even if there was a legal definition on the books for ‘legal money laundering’ for the average voter money laundering = criminal behavior.
gwangung
@dollared: Still being dishonest, I see.
And you’re advocating unilateral disarmament, too, I see. Now you’re being stupid.
aimai
@schrodinger’s cat: Heh Heh: Bernielog. Bet you wanted to say bandarlog.
Heliopause
I think I mentioned yesterday that there is no need for them to bother with this stuff, except maybe to mention it in passing. They just need to harp on the ongoing FBI investigation of the e-mail server. It has the advantage of (1) being something that is really happening right now, (2) shrouded in enough secrecy that you can let your imagination run wild, and (3) easy (at this stage) to comprehend.
aimai
@Lizzy L: Link?
Cacti
@dollared:
What is or is not money laundering is there in black and white for you to read and comprehend.
I’ve even directed you to the Title and Section where it can be found.
Ignorance can be remedied with knowledge. Willful stupidity can’t.
raven
Michael Moore wants Obama to remove the governor of Michigan.
Jeffro
@goblue72:
Agree entirely here. It’ll be ugly but HRC can easily endure a long hard mud fight with this clown. If it’s a matter of who can talk about the other’s negatives the longest, that’s a wash (actually, I think HRC can hang in there longer)…and Trump’s already way behind. He’ll get desperate, do and say dumb things, continue to prove himself unfit for higher office, and so on. Game, set, match Clinton no matter (per Heliopause @ #193 above and others) what nonsense the GOP tries about the emails.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Kay: Um, what? We clearly run in different circles.
/charter member of Bastard Nation
//My dog has papers. Why don’t I?
dollared
@gwangung: @gwangung: Hunh? I’m telling the truth so I’m intellectually dishonest? Look, I’m not in favor of unilateral disarmament. You introduced that concept. I didn’t even say that I supported the Sanders’ campaign’s positioning. But I have proven via the FEC that it was not a lie. Just as I originally said, and which is the only point in this dispute.. And if Secretary Clinton wants to use those techniques, she may, but people may truthfully call it names.
The Thin Black Duke
Long story short, Al Gore was stupid. Distancing himself from Bill Clinton was stupid, choosing Joe Lieberman as his VP was stupid, not telling Tipper to shut up about the dirty lyrics in Prince songs was stupid. Never mind Ralph Nader and the blowjob, what really sank Al Gore’s presidential campaign was Al Gore.
Jeffro
What I said in #197 above: “Clinton: I know how to counter-punch this clown”
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/clinton-ready-to-counterpunch-bullying-trump
Also, DougJ’s wrong here – the media might normally like a horse race, and there will be a lot of breathless reporting (mostly on CNN I’m sure) but they know this is different. Look at most newspapers’ editorials these days…look at how the fact checking is going…nobody’s going to try and paint Trump as some great reformer or maverick – he’s simply too offensive and too stupid to paper over.
Major Major Major Major
@dollared: oh you know I meant legal language. I thought that would be obvious by context but I guess we’re using strict prescriptive interpretations today for comments today? Even though you seemed to be using money laundering in a more descriptivist sense. Weird
dollared
@Cacti: As I told you, your cited statute is not the only time or place where the words “money laundering” can be applied. Now I have shown you that the FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION refers to various legal actions as “money laundering.” The point is now completely proven.
Go rage at some other person. My work is done here.
Cacti
@dollared:
The link you provided was not from the FEC.
It was a PAC submitting a petition to the FEC.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Makes sense. You might be right. We shall see.
I note that Trump often seems to exude a kind of self-satisfied glee when he attacks women, especially over how they look or other attributes. I can’t see him getting away with this. But, damn, I never thought he would get this far, either.
dollared
@Mike J: wholehearted agreement on that point…
Cacti
@dollared:
You’ve provided links to pair of political action committees.
Again, willful stupidity.
D58826
@Cacti: If we were beating a dead cat rather than a dead horse we would have run through all nine lives and the cat would still be dead.
dollared
@Cacti: And……..? But you told me that nobody uses Money Laundering except under that one Federal Statute!!! So now PACs use it too? To refer to campaign financing, not banking? And it’s not criminal? And they don’t have your permission? Sue them?
Major Major Major Major
I do love it when threads turn into two bald men fighting over a comb.
Wait, no I don’t.
Mnemosyne
@dollared:
That’s not FROM the FEC. It’s a petition TO the FEC. Anybody can use whatever language they want in writing a petition.
dollared
@D58826: Amen.
Cacti
@dollared:
And PACs don’t decide what the United States Code means.
Did you complete high school? Your 9th grade US civics class should have explained this to you.
jl
” You’ve provided links to pair of political action committees. ”
I am so glad that the average voter will see ‘money laundering’ and say to themselves ‘tsk tsk, that is an incorrect use of a legal term with a technical meaning. Nay, I will never be swayed by such sloppy usage. Nay, never.”
Gelfling545
@Davis X. Machina: surrendered to whom precisely?
LAO
@Cacti: (Not that you need my help) And it was evident from that petition that “money laundering” was used in a pejorative, “criminal sense” because it subverts “the purpose” of campaign laws.
From the petition:
Money laundering has a very specific meaning — it is always defined (federally and by individual states) as criminal conduct. To suggest otherwise — is disingenuous because use of that phrase implies criminal conduct.
jl
@Major Major Major Major:
” I do love it when threads turn into two bald men fighting over a comb.”
Depends on the degree if eccentric hilarity of the comb overs.
Cacti
@jl:
Thanks for making my point.
“Legal money laundering” is demagogue language without a meaning in law.
Sanders and his BernieBros seem particularly fond of it.
Lizzy L
@aimai: Google it, aimai. There were a whole bunch of news stories (here’s one link: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/laura-bush-hints-vote-clinton-trump-article-1.2596063) in early April based on some comments she made. She did not come flatly out and say it, however.
shortribs
I’m confident in Hillary. Despite the tongue job Trump will get from the media (they can’t help themselves, they *love* him), she and her team seem to have learned from Obama that being the adult in the room and staying on your game is how to get things done.
Soylent Green
@goblue72: Clearly when you were doing your oppo research on behalf of your boy Bernie, you snatched up every Republican lie, smear, and witchhunt ever launched against the Clintons as potential ammunition.
You say you are 43 but sound as naive about politics as someone half that age.
Maybe if all us baby boomers would just drop dead, you would get a better reception here.
Cacti
@shortribs:
She’ll also have the Big O himself in her corner.
A Ghost To Most
@Cacti:
The derp is deep in this one.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
Seated in First Class on my way to Rome.
Tell Applejinx – he’ll be incandescent with class envy…
dollared
@Mnemosyne: Yup, and they do. And the other link provided also was from a Googoo organization referring to “Legaly laundered campaign contributions.”. So you go to the FEC site, and it turns about people are discussing money laundering – legal money laundering – in a discussion of campaign contributions. Just like the Sanders campaign does. And so the entire point of the discussion is that using the words “money laundering” is not a specific accusation of a crime. And that some forms of laundering funds are NOT ILLEGAL.
That’s it. I never asserted any other thing.
Google the specific phrase “legally laundered campaign contributions” and you get 224,000 hits. It’s a Thing. That’s all I ever said. I wish I’d wasted the time on the research last time around, but I thought it was so obvious.
D58826
@dollared: Sorry but I was suggesting that every one else give it up. Which I intend to do after this one last comment.
I can see your point that using the term in an FEC filing or PAC report might serve as a useful shorthand for a complex set of financial transactions. That is your point isn’t it? And that’s fine for the folks that follow that kind of stuff. They know what your talking about and that it is a term of art and not a legal standard. But in a political campaign when you accuse your opponent of money laundering it is a back handed way of saying they are a crook. And most non-political junkie voters will understand exactly what you are accusing your opponent of.
Lizzy L
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: It’s not Ted Cruz’s official site; that’s tedcruz.org. Someone’s having fun…
Davis X. Machina
@Mnemosyne: Does anyone besides me remember Notra Trulock? (Pre-TPM Josh Marshall…)
les
@Emma:
Man, you just buried the bar; I wouldn’t slander Bernie supporters that far. Little d has consistently been some combination of wildly dishonest, neutron star dense and willfully ignorant throughout. S/he doesn’t even pretend to give facts in support of assertion–one misstatement, misrepresentation and innuendo after another.
dollared
@LAO: Sigh. I never said it wasn’t pejorative. It is not, however, an accusation of criminal conduct. Sorry. That point is completely proven by the FEC discussion, and by the 224,000 other links available under the Google search of “legally laundered campaign contributions”
jl
@Cacti: Money laundering is used so often in so many contexts, I just don’t see how it implied criminal behavior at all. Sanders is is making a charge that people, depending on their viewpoints, will see as serious or just campaign BS, some may regard it as very serious without assuming int means HRC violated criminal law.
You two are wasting your time fighting over campaign piffle.
My evidence for how people use and interpret ‘money laundering’ is anecdotal, of course. And I can’t even relate any of them. I can’t remember that last time I heard someone use the word ‘treason’ and I ran to read the constitution only to end up confused about what the person was talking about.
D58826
@Lizzy L: I didn’t look at the extension. I just figured some one hacked the site or maybe God was sending Ted a message about taking His name in vain
D58826
@jl: I’m going to go and do something useful. It’s rush hour so I think I’ll go play in traffic on I-85
terry chay
@Davebo: Not the President. Then President Clinton eventually went on record of not approving the branch’s participation and apologizing for it (basically it is assumed someone from his branch leaked Wen Ho Lee’s name to the press). It’s still not known who did that. Compare that to how high Valerie Plame leak went (directly traceable to the Vice President of the United States). IOKIYAR.
Given what I remember from that era is my guess is the most likely cause of the leak was someone from the executive branch (maybe an aide) leaked it accidentally to a post-election “friend” who in-turn leaked it to the press. Basically all the scandals occurred because the Clinton’s were bad at running a tight ship and expecting their subordinates to do the same. By the time of the Wen Ho Lee thing, it was like seven years of various leaks caused by DC-insider hangers-on saying whatever sh*t they heard that they thought any reporter might write about.
That lesson was learned by Obama from watching the Clintons. It was never a lesson to be learned because DC was run by Democrats which respected the offices of government (if not the President himself: c.f. Jimmy Carter). The Reagan years changed that makeup to IOKIYAR. Hillary has learned from it too which is why the only scandal was Bengazhi which eventually became Email-gate. A quick glance at the history of every Secretary of State before Hillary shows what a nothing-ball THAT is. Press just runs with it because they have maybe 5-10 people who watch FOX news who forgot to cancel their New York Times subscription. Pathetic.
Mnemosyne
@dollared:
You didn’t link us to the FEC’s site. You linked us to a PAC that made a lot of hysterical claims about the “legal money laundering” that’s going on to try and gain the reader’s support for the changes to FEC regulations that the PAC wants them to make.
That ain’t “The FEC says,” which is what your claim was. The FEC responded politely, which is all they’re required to do, but they didn’t seem like they were rushing to adopt any regulations to make “legal money laundering” an offense.
hamletta
@dollared: Launder this, pally.
Everybody else: Lester Holt is anchoring NBC Nightly News live from Trump Tower. A whimper, not a bang.
Brachiator
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
First Class? Very nice.
Have a nice trip.
dollared
@D58826: Thanks for considering my POV. My only offered amendment to your statement is that I think every journalist knows this as well, so it would not ever be reported as a criminal accusation, as Cacti was suggesting.
D58826
@terry chay:
I suspect that part of her motive for setting up the e-mail server was just to avoid that kind of leaky ship. Didn’t work out very well but I don’t think it was in any way an effort to destroy the country.
Major Major Major Major
@dollared: “skull fuck a kitten” gets some results too, so?
dollared
0
Cacti
@jl:
You mean political blogs exist for some other purpose?
shomi
DougJ trying to fearmonger as usual. Make sure to click on the cat pix ad or whatever. DougJ needs to money for his regular visits to Applebees.
LAO
@dollared: You can sigh at me all you want. I don’t care what a “google search” shows you. As a criminal defense attorney words, I believe legal terms have meaning and “money laundering” is a legal term. I’m sorry you remain unconvinced that “money laundering” has a specific criminal meaning, still doesn’t make you right.
Aimai
@dollared: it shouldnt be teported at all excrpt with scare quotes around the phrase. Because without the scare wuotes it tiptoes right up to a baseless accusation of criminal wrongdoing.
dollared
@Major Major Major Major: And if you told me that no one ever uses the phrase “skull fuck a kitten” unless they were specifically making a literal, actionable accusation of a specific, criminally prohibited sex act, then I would use The Google to refute that.
D58826
@dollared: You may be right about the journalists but that just furthers the problem. By not making the distinction in their articles they just leave the average voter with the ‘man in the street’ understanding of the term. While I admit that I have learned a little something about how the term is being used in the context of campaign reform, I still think when used in a political campaign context it gives a misleading impression. Political campaigns want to use phrases that fit on a bumper sticker but cause voter to mentally expand that into a multi-page article.
dollared
@LAO: So does the word “kill.” But Jon Stewart walks free, even though he “killed” hundreds of times on the Daily Show.
bupalos
I know it seems like a bad look to be all “we had this thing won two months ago,” but we did. This wasn’t going to be close and won’t be close and only the blackest and swaniest of black swans could possibly change that. I think the final margin starts at about 12% and 6 states and the bidding goes up from there. I think the biggest threat from the POTUS contest is that Trump will lose so badly and in such an ugly way (railing about who the country belongs to and what a deep pit of hell it’s headed towards) that domestic terrorism will become our biggest security threat. I think everyone on our side should be constantly deescalating and trying to emotionally validate these burnt children.
That said, when fortune smiles on you like this, you should make the most of it. I’m not going to spend 20 minutes on the presidential contest but I’m going to make damn sure I spend at least as much time as I did on Obama 1 trying to send some more D’s from Ohio. For the first time in a long time we’ll be fighting to win ground and not just scrambling not to lose it. That’s a much better chance to move things further in the right (left) direction than worrying about DLC Hillary vs. Firebrand Bernie.
Davis X. Machina
@Gelfling545: “The Terrorists”, of course. I mean, they must have a president or someone in charge…
Villago Delenda Est
@Davis X. Machina: I do indeed remember the Freeper fucktard. Vile creature.
Villago Delenda Est
@bupalos:
We got a preview of this in Harney County, OR, earlier this year. The ammosexual sovcivs get their rage on whenever a Dem is in the White House, and quiet down significantly when there’s a Rethug. At least that’s been the pattern for the last quarter century.
LAO
@dollared: OMG! you have convinced me! Thank you. I will, from now on know, that when Clinton or her campaign is accused of “laundering campaign contributions/funds” — no one is accusing her of wrongdoing and hoping to imply illegal conduct. It’s just maybe, you know, not the right thing to do. I feel better now.
dollared
@LAO: I assume a criminal defense attorney is being intentional when s/he conmingles “wrongdoing” with “illegal conduct.” .
Major Major Major Major
@dollared: that isn’t a word
LAO
@dollared: Yes, I was.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@dedc79: Gilmore’s still running, isn’t he? Maybe he can Stop Trump!!11
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
les
@Cacti:
You’re makin’ me nervous here.
LAO
@Major Major Major Major: I’m assuming dollared meant “conflate”
Major Major Major Major
@LAO: yes, but the irony, ending an argument about words with a nonexistent one
D58826
@LAO: In a different context, several years ago the World Health Organization declared a pandemic for the swine flu outbreak that started in Mexico. The medical definition of pandemic and the WHO subdefinition is :
The death toll is still somewhat in dispute:
Certainly a lot less than the 1918 outbreak .
For the man in the street the image of a pandemic is the 1918 flu, or the black death in Europe in the middle ages with bodies collecting in the streets.
Commonly used words often have specific technical meanings to experts in the field and very different meanings to the man in the street. In this case the legal definition and the man in the street definition are much more closely aligned. Money laundering is a crime and people who do it are crooks. If the word is used in some other contexts that’s fine but you can’t ignore the most common understanding and what it means in a political campaign
Villago Delenda Est
“Conmingles”? Doesn’t seem cromulent to me!
Villago Delenda Est
@D58826: See “Magazine” vs. “Clip”, for one utterly absurd example. Also, too, see “gun” vs. “weapon” in a military context.
LAO
@D58826: well said.
sm*t cl*de
From the authoritarian boot-licker perspective, these are positives. “If he lies to me so blatantly and rips me off so badly, imagine how strong he’ll be against America’s Enemies (c)?”
piratedan
it wasn’t JUST the blowjob…. it’s never THAT easy (unless you want to say that Monica L was, but I think she simply got off on the power of being able to seduce the most powerful man in the world)..
did America approve of the BJ, no… did it speak to Bill’s failings, yes… but…
Al Gore was also busy stepping in it in his own curious fashion, to wit…
his spouse’s own peculiar issues with Rock and Roll lyrics and her image
“inventing the Internet”
Running away from Bill, not only the person but ALSO his record
reaching out to the middle with Lieberman (who while not as bad as Palin, sure as hell didn’t do him any favors)
The guy had his own baggage and came across as the Dem version of Mitt Romney as a stiff. It’s not as if he was going to claim that Tipper gave him a hummer as an indication of moral support and solidarity.
dollared
And thus endeth another edition of “Bernie said Mean Things About Me (Even if they are true),” Starring Hillary Clinton, allegedly the toughest woman on planet Earth.
D58826
@Major Major Major Major: Give it some time Sarah Palin will get it added to our Websters
D58826
@Villago Delenda Est: Wasn’t in the military but I remember a passage in Leon Uris’s Battle Cry making the distinction. My Mom thought I was to young to read it, but I did any way. So with his small hands does that make Trump’s gun a derringer?
Villago Delenda Est
@piratedan: Can’t fault you on Tipper, or that sanctimonious prick Lieberman, but the “inventing the internet” thing was the scum of the Village djinning up something out of nothing. Al Gore DID play a very important role in transitioning the military/academic internet to access for the public at large. You can ask Vint Cerf about that.
Villago Delenda Est
@D58826: Snub nosed something. It sure ain’t no gun, that’s fer darn sure.
D58826
@dollared: Greg Sargent has a Plumline write up about what top democrats, some on the record, think Bernie should do next. And no its not go into a dark closet and drink hemlock.
They have no problem with him staying in the primary race till the end. They do hope that he tones down the personal attacks on Clinton. If he continues to talk about his issues in a positive way within the context of the overall democratic platform then that is a positive. One strategist remembers in 1980 how Reagan used Teddy Kennedy anti-Carter attack ads in his campaign. She doesn’t want to see Bernie give Trump any more ammunition. Discussion of policy differences is fine but trying to take down the front runner at this point is not. With Trump being the nominee the stakes are just to high. He can cement his legacy by helping to elect Clinton and building a more influential progressive wing in the party. Or he can be Ralph Nader 2016.
terry chay
@Emma:
So not true and really unfair to a lot of Bernie supporters. I know a lot of Bernie supporters who are for more rational and reasonable. In fact, I think most people whose support I know (in San Francisco) are Bernie supporters (there are probably more Clinton supporters than Bernie ones, but they tend to keep their opinions close to the vest and don’t voice it).
(His defense of “legal money laundering” is a real “dig deeper!” moment in humor. I mean how hard is it to say, “I mispoke” like when a commenter said the US code is the arbiter of “english language” instead of “legal language.” But I suppose if dollared did that, I wouldn’t get such a hilariously long and pathetic thread.
D58826
A few more tidbits from the article. Sanders has his own agenda and has been a bit of a loaner but he responds to a sense of mission. While he will push the envelope on his ideas he has a pragmatic streak that tells him when it’s time to cut a deal. He pushed hard to get Obamacare shaped more to his liking but when the votes were not there he backed the package and supported the bill.
dollared
@terry chay: Because there is legal “money laundering.” I’ve done it. I know candidates who do it. Personally. Really, I don’t have to accept your definition of words when you’re wrong. This isn’t high school. In fact, the reason why I’ve been so stubborn is that people here are acting like bullies. And whiny to boot – “Wah, Bernie said something truthful about my candidate!” He shouldna outta do that!”.
Hillary Clinton will get my vote, my money and my time. Just not yet.
dollared
@D58826: I agree with this POV. As long as people understand that competing on policy differences, including campaign finance policy, is part of staying in the race.
What really matters is what Bernie does after California. He should throw every ounce of effort behind Clinton. Of course, Clinton should cut her deal with Bernie right then and there, so he has no motivation to maintain suspense until the party plank discussions. I hope they are both smart enough to get that done.
chopper
@Mnemosyne:
Right. I could write a petition claiming bernie sanders is a “first degree murderer” because he ate a chicken. doesn’t change what “first degree murder” actually fucking means.
Amir Khalid
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
The actual campaign site is at tedcruz.org, which now looks rather pitiful.
chopper
@dollared:
google the term “orange butt job” and you get 1.5 million hits. in all honesty, you’re an idiot.
Amir Khalid
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
I think you mean, Gilmore still imagines he’s running. Which he might, I suppose, if no one has woken him up n the past few months.
dollared
@chopper: Do you know how to do Boolean searches?
Just in case you missed the point, if you search for those exact three words in sequence, you get zero results.
But if you search for the exact four words in the exact order of ,”Legally laundered campaign contributions,” you get that exact sequence of words 224,000 times.
Honestly, I don’t know if you’re an idiot. But honestly, you didn’t know what you were doing there, and you should probably hold back on calling other people “idiots.”
chopper
@Kay:
quite often actually.
chopper
@dollared:
LOL, do you have any idea what a fucking dork you sound like? Jesus titty-fucking Christ, son, when you’re arguing “a coupla hundred thousand hits on teh google” you just need to walk away and soak your head.
“Do you know how to do Boolean searches?” you honestly just fucking said that. I can’t even.
dollared
@chopper: What does that mean? You don’t? Because you just messed one up and then called someone an idiot because of your mistake.
Uncle Cosmo
@Cacti:
And they kept trying & trying & trying. Surely, they thought, this latest revelation will cause the American people to demand his removal from office! Over & over & over. One sordid bit after another. And the people shrugged when they weren’t yawning. And they have never figured out why.
Villago Delenda Est
@Uncle Cosmo: Mainly because Bill Clinton had the sense to make enemies that are loathsome, so he’d always look relatively good next to them.
chopper
hey if you google “Clinton, book ‘er, Dan-O” you get 50,000 hits! obviously this is a big deal! i am not a crackpot!
chopper
if you google “dollared from balloon-juice has sex with sheep” you get 10,000 hits. obvs a big deal! this is serious stuff!
daryljfontaine
@dollared: Because I’m a pedant about these things:
Your own fucking search returns zero results for “the exact four words in the exact order of” your pet phrase.
D