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You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Open Thread: Pro-HRC Argument from the Opposition

Open Thread: Pro-HRC Argument from the Opposition

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As the novelty value of President Comments-Section-Made-Flesh fades, the not-actually-brain-damaged Conservatives are beginning to see reason. Josh Barro, for instance:

In investing, risk requires compensation. Investors will expect a higher return from a risky bet, and — conversely — will pay for certainty. It’s why you pay double-digit rates on your credit cards, while the federal government can borrow for next to nothing.

Let’s apply this analysis to the election. A Hillary Clinton presidency is the safe bet. She offers, more or less, an extension of the Obama presidency. You might think that that’s a bad return, but at least you know almost exactly what it is.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, is a wild card. Who the hell knows what he would do if elected?…

Because the distribution of possible Trump-presidency outcomes is wide, you’d have to expect him to be a better president than Clinton on average in order for him to merely be equally as good a pick as Clinton. That is, if Trump were a stock, then you’d be demanding a risk premium to buy him.

In fact, Trump calls for a huge risk premium because, while he probably wouldn’t be a disastrous president, the low-probability disasters that he might cause would be immensely costly. Some of them involve nuclear weapons and global mass deaths. Pricing those risks in properly should push his share price comfortably below Clinton’s, even if you think she is very bad…

Maybe President Trump would default on the national debt. Maybe Chinese officials wouldn’t love Trump’s insult-comic shtick as much as New York Republican primary voters do, and he’d manage to blow up a minor diplomatic incident into a nuclear war. Maybe he’d dissolve the military alliances that have helped keep Europe out of war for 70 years. Or maybe he’d just go ahead and nuke Europe.

I don’t think that these outcomes are terribly likely. I think Trump is probably sensible enough not to fire a nuclear weapon at Europe. But if he won’t rule it out himself, then why should I?…

People are failing to price in the small risk that a Trump presidency could cause us to lose everything we value, and that scares the hell out of me.

So you can share this with your “But HILLARY… “ social media acquaintances: Don’t think of it as voting for That Woman; think of it as voting against Risky Investment Trump.

Reader Interactions

212Comments

  2. 2.

    cmorenc

    I say whatever works to bring enough normally GOP-leaning voters on-board with grudgingly voting for Hillary, or at least not-voting for Trump, to kill his chances. Let’s not be picky about whatever works to hold the White House the next eight years.

  3. 3.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    OpOpenThread. Jiminy Glick interviewing Larry David. I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed Martin Short.

    “You were on ‘Fridays’. Tell me about that.”
    “Well it was kinda like Saturday Night Live…”
    “Yes, but Saturday Night Live was funny.”

    http://www.nbc.com/maya-and-marty

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  4. 4.

    NotMax

    Simple question to ask of them:

    Who would you prefer, an adult or a whiny spoiled brat?

  5. 5.

    schrodinger's cat

    This is a ridiculous analogy. The probability distribution of Trump’s behavior as the President is unknown*, so you can’t really price the risk. I don’t need to know anything about probability or rational expectation to figure out Trump. The man talks, a lot and I take Trump at his word. He has said enough for me not to want him anywhere near the nuclear launch codes.

  6. 6.

    MikeBoyScout

    Somebody not too far away from where you are right now is not yet registered to vote in the November election. You have it within you to change this and, thus, maybe the nation.

    If we all do our little bit we can win the whole kit and caboodle.

    Yes.We.Can.

  7. 7.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @cmorenc:
    I’d be really happy if they just sat at home & moped on election day. That would equate to fewer Republican votes down ticket.

  11. 11.

    redshirt

    @gogol’s wife: I’ve seen zero Hillary signs; quite a few Sanders signs; and just the odd wackaloon Trump sign.

    I did see big old redneck truck the other day with an official Trump sticker and what looked like a non-official “Trump that Bitch” sticker. Winning the ladies!

  12. 12.

    Mike J

    But people hate her!

    Harry Enten ‏@ForecasterEnten 10 minutes ago
    Avg. prez poll result since beginning of year in FL: Clinton +3.5. Avg. senate poll result in Florida during same period: Democrat +3.2.

  13. 13.

    dmsilev

    President Comments-Section-Made-Flesh

    [Looks around] AAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

    I suppose it could be worse. Anne could have written President YouTube-Comments-Section-Made-Flesh…

  14. 14.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @gogol’s wife: I was napping and woke up when the “interview” was starting. What I’ve seen thus far has been very good. It’s still on for another 15 minutes here. It’s on NBC.

    Lots of ads though.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  15. 15.

    Frankensteinbeck

    This is a good point, sort of. This election will let us sort out the greedy rich from the insane rich. I’m betting that most of the traditional Republican rich donors will turn out to be motivated by racism, obsessive cruelty, fundamentalism, or paranoid hatred of government rather than self-interest.

    EDIT – Leaving ‘misogyny’ out of that list is the biggest brain derp of a derpy day.

  16. 16.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @cmorenc:

    I say whatever works to bring enough normally GOP-leaning voters on-board with grudgingly voting for Hillary, or at least not-voting for Trump, to kill his chances.

    Where are those voters? I’ll grant for sake of argument that such people exist, even as the institutional GOP accepts becoming a wholly-owned (but highly-leveraged) subsidiary of Trump Enterprises, but how many of them are already in blue or at least blueish-purple states? I want to see signs that the Bidness Republicans in places like Atlanta and Charlotte are unhitching themselves.

  17. 17.

    dmsilev

    @schrodinger’s cat: But that’s also true for a lot of investments, so I think the analogy is decent. Failing to understand the downside risks of their fancy and complex investments was one of the (many) factors that lead to the Wall Street implosion in 2008. We can’t usefully quantify the probability that Trump will nuke China because he found a chicken bone in his wonton soup, but we can at least recognize that probability is much higher than the chance of Hillary doing the same thing.

  18. 18.

    hovercraft

    @gogol’s wife:
    That is what I think it was Rebecca Traister said of her Brooklyn neighborhood prior to the NY primary, but when she checked her precinct on the NY Times handy how did my neighborhood vote tool Hillary won it going away. As I said in another thread just because they are load and in your face about their preference doesn’t mean there are more of them.

  19. 19.

    dr. bloor

    while he probably wouldn’t be a disastrous president

    I’ll take his vote, although this is actually an example of brain-dead-conservative-arriving-at-the-best-solution-because-the-broken-clock-is-right-twice-a-day, and not an example of “the not-actually-brain-damaged Conservatives.”

  20. 20.

    Jim, Foolish LIteralist

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I totally forgot about that show. I hope the Glick/David interview turns up on line– isn’t NBC particularly stingy with their clips? And to paraphrase what Tina Fey said about Jan Hooks, Maya Rudolph should have a much bigger career than fucking Rob Schneider

    @redshirt: Hmm, how can I make money off this?

    Short David French. Can you short penny stocks?

  21. 21.

    dmsilev

    @hovercraft: I think it was the Obama campaign that had an internal motto of “yard signs don’t vote” and didn’t give them out for free the way a lot of campaigns do (you could buy them at the campaign’s online store if you really wanted one). Also, Peggy Noonan famously made a fool out of herself by predicting a Romney victory on the basis of the number of yard signs that she saw in some neighborhood or another…

  22. 22.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Yeah, Short’s too polite to say, but SCTV was better than both.

    The freedom of not having an audience to play to (live or to tape) allowed incredible flights of fancy. And it primed this viewer for the single-camera laughtrackless comedy.

  23. 23.

    SFAW

    @dmsilev:

    Peggy Noonan famously made a fool out of herself by predicting a Romney victory on the basis of the number of yard signs that she saw in some neighborhood or another… opening her yap to do something other than gulp down some more chardonnay.

    Ain’t saying yours was wrong, but it might have been unnecessarily specific

  24. 24.

    dmsilev

    @Jim, Foolish LIteralist:

    Short David French. Can you short penny stocks?

    You can certainly do a pump-and-dump scheme; when spammers tout “can’t-miss” stocks, that’s usually what’s going on. That could work here. Maybe we’ll see a whole string of “never-heard-of-him” candidates promoted as the next not-Trump, all for a brief flash in the pan publicity, a tiny spike of sales on the online “stock markets”, and a bit of money for the promoter who bought his shares at $0.001 each. Wait a week, and repeat.

  25. 25.

    Ruckus

    @dr. bloor:
    No, that’s wishful praying on his part. He knows drumpf will be a disaster. Just the fact that he’s analyzed his choices at all and is willing to go for the opposition tells you that. And while he can’t admit that drumpf will be a disaster, he knows it. That’s the reason he’s willing to say Clinton at all. It’s a non apology, apology.

  26. 26.

    NotMax

    @Jim, Foolish LIteralist

    Hell, Pia Zadora or Skippy the Wonder Snail should have a much bigger career than Rob Schneider.

    Vaguely remember liking Fridays, if correctly recalling that was the show whose ensemble cast included the guy who later went on to play Cosmo Kramer.

  27. 27.

    dmsilev

    @SFAW: Isn’t she more a hard-liquor type, or was that just various people mocking her? Hallucinogens goes without saying.

  29. 29.

    benw

    @ThresherK (GPad): SCTV and – of course – Python were better. At least to my younger self who found them hilarious while finding the current run of SNL at the time painfully unfunny.

  30. 30.

    seaboogie

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    The man talks, a lot and I take Trump at his word.

    I think when he’s bragging on himself he is covering up a lie, and also believe that the press had their first taste of that bitter orange Trump blood and they are going to go after him. Unleash the Warren, also too! She is amazing at getting under that thin orange skin and staying there. She’s going to have a lot to say about Trump U, I suspect.

    Finally – I find it hard to imagine Trump making it to the general in November without having a stroke or a heart attack. That’ll be his “graceful” exit, and the GOP left in a shambles.

  32. 32.

    SFAW

    @dmsilev:

    You’re probably right. The chardonnay thing was sort of a riff on Ann Coulter’s attempted put-down of 15 or so years ago — I think it was chardonnay that liberals were supposed to be sipping — plus I was just too lazy to try to figure out her rotgut-of-choice. I “know” (as in, my too-often-faulty memory tells me) that Althouse was the big wine imbiber: box wine may have been invented just for her. So Nooners is probably spirits.

    Agree re: hallucinogens.

  34. 34.

    NotMax

    @redshirt

    Vaguely rings a bell, but have no memory of anything about it.

    A Yankovich cousin used to own and run a very good barber shop on Maui.

  37. 37.

    Davebo

    @SFAW:

    Hey now! I’ve had some really good wine from milk carton like containers. But only in France. And with no pictures of missing children.

    Boxes? Not so much. But it will get you tossed!

  40. 40.

    redshirt

    @NotMax: An intentional B movie. A bunch of parodies. It’s Weird Al’s movie. You know what you want.

    Also, Barber Al in Maui is just cool in concept.

  41. 41.

    NotMax

    Hoping those of you where it is already dark out are taking a minute or two to pop outdoors and gape at Mars. It’s spectacular.

  44. 44.

    SFAW

    @efgoldman:

    Mika makes Kelly look like Einstein.

    The wonders of modern makeup and prosthetics.

    Oh, wait … did you mean that literally, i.e., non-colloquially?

  45. 45.

    seaboogie

    @redshirt: Well, it’ll all be on Reince and the RNC – which it pretty much is, anyway. Trump has the KKK and his Nuremburg rallies to feed his ego, but that is the extent of his ground operation, and no such thing as GOTV.

  46. 46.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @efgoldman: Mika was unclear of the concept of ‘Rolling Thunder’ this weekend in DC and was arguing with Eugene Robinson about him saying that the Yam with the opossum on his head didn’t have a large turnout at his rally in DC.

  47. 47.

    hovercraft

    @efgoldman:
    I checked the internets and I can’t seem to find any trace of Presidents’ Jesse Jackson, George Wallace, and George McGovern.

  48. 48.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @seaboogie: Trump doesn’t believe in polling or targeting, remember he thinks he can win in New York and California.

  50. 50.

    Feathers

    @NotMax: I met Pia Zadora!!! I was in a record store in DC with some friends back when her first record came out. She was coming to sign in half an hour and there was only some creepy dude waiting. We decided to stay out of curiosity. She was very tiny and very nice. We each got a t-shirt, a copy of her record and a poster, all signed. The t-shirt may actually still be around in a box somewhere.

    Oh, well. My Pia Zadora story.

  52. 52.

    SFAW

    @efgoldman:
    @SFAW:

    Mika makes Kelly look like Einstein.

    Of course, had I been smarter/quicker in my first reply, I would have asked “Do you mean Super Dave? Or his kid brother Albert?”

  54. 54.

    hovercraft

    @BillinGlendaleCA:
    Well he didn’t event organizers said the attendance was 5,000. But Trump was expecting 600,000, and they were actually there but were prevented from entering the mall. He expected a crowd like Kings crowd for the “I have a dream” speech. I guess Obama kept them off the mall and mysteriously no one complained about it.

  55. 55.

    Davebo

    @efgoldman: If they are serving boxed wine you’re in the wrong Tavern.

    Does anyone besides Franzia sell boxed wine in the US? That’s right. I’ve bought boxed wine and I’m not ashamed to say so!

  56. 56.

    Luthe

    Tossed as inn drunk or tossed as in ejected from the tavern?

    From your comment, there doesn’t seem to be much of a difference.

  62. 62.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @hovercraft: Eugene said that was bunk, and he lives in DC.

    ETA: He said the Rolling Thunder folk were all over the mall, they just didn’t go to the part where Trump was.

  67. 67.

    SFAW

    @efgoldman:

    I wanted to be a classical version of Dr Demento, but I couldn’t figure out how.

    Do you consider Peter Schickele to be in that mold?

  69. 69.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @Davebo:

    Does anyone besides Franzia sell boxed wine in the US? That’s right. I’ve bought boxed wine and I’m not ashamed to say so!

    Trader Joe’s has a few different wine-in-a-box options, and there are a few brands with TetraPak containers. Nothing wrong with it.

    In Australia, the 5L wine “cask” is the traditional cheap way for young people to get pissed.

  70. 70.

    Redshift

    @dmsilev: The point of “yard signs don’t vote” isn’t just that they’re meaningless as an indicator, it’s that (according to political strategists) they’re worse than useless, because if a person wants to do something to help a campaign, and they put up a yard sign, that’s something, so some people won’t do anything more. All major campaigns would rather not give out yard signs, the Obama campaign was just the first with a fervent enough following that they could say no and make it stick.

    I still wonder how much social media works the same way. I have no way of knowing, but I strongly suspect that a lot of Sanders supporters felt that being active on Twitter and Facebook was effective campaign activity, when it was actually preaching to the converted, leading to a “movement” that felt powerful but couldn’t deliver votes.

  71. 71.

    Davebo

    @SFAW:

    Hell I became an expert and removing the bladder to get those last few drops out of it. And honestly, it wasn’t horrible wine.

  73. 73.

    FlyingToaster

    FWIW the RNC rules on deaths of candidates is that they convene the RNC state reps and vote for a new nominee. Which nominee only gets on the ballot if they get a majority of the RNC votes. Invest in popcorn futures!

  74. 74.

    seaboogie

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    Trump doesn’t believe in polling

    Trump loves the polls that tell him he’s great, but no – not strategically.

    And when we get our panties in a bunch worrying about the awful spectre of aTrumpocalypse, we would do well to keep in mind that Obama will be campaigning for Hillary like a motherfather, and so will Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown – and Feingold is back in the game too. Bernie can go pout in a corner, and I don’t think it will matter as much as we worry about that.

  75. 75.

    Davebo

    @NotMax:

    Obviously I’m quite the wine snob. When I serve a merlot at dinner and the guests ask if it’s a good year I always say “I dunno, it ain’t over yet”.

  77. 77.

    burnspbesq

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    Now you’re dragging me back to my law school days: Weird Al on KROQ on Sunday night, followed by Dr. Drew. Back to the days when there were four rock stations in the LA market, one of which specialized in metal.

  78. 78.

    Carolinus

    http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/presidential/20160601_Sanders_supporters_planning_to_rally_at_convention.html

    Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign is seeking a demonstration permit for the day before the Democratic National Convention kicks off in Philadelphia. The Sanders campaign wants to hold a “traditional Bernie campaign rally” July 24 at FDR Park in South Philadelphia, campaign spokesman Michael Briggs said.

    The date and location already had been scooped up from the city by Sanders supporter Bill Taylor, of Northeast Philadelphia. Now, the Sanders campaign is coordinating with Taylor to use the permit to get a prime spot for the rally. Briggs did not elaborate on the rally plans except to say that Sanders would deliver a “victory statement.”

    …? Ignoring figuring out what’s exactly meant by this pre-convention “victory statement”, having an official campaign rally seems destined to draw even more potential protesters to Philly. Thanks Bernie…

  79. 79.

    NotMax

    @Davebo

    Exchange at a fancy schmancy dinner party in an old movie, with Butterfly McQueen milking her ditzy maid shtick.

    Guest (noticing the label on the bottle being poured): Oh my, that’s a ’27.

    McQueen (apologetically): Yes. We couldn’t get anything newer.

  80. 80.

    Davebo

    @efgoldman:

    I have a family friend who at 78 still works as a wholesaler of wine hosting tastings and wine dinners. I’ve called him from restaurants reading off the wine list asking for suggestions.

    Last week he actually told me to go to Walmart for a good deal on a Syrah but there are some things I just won’t do.

  81. 81.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    The man talks, a lot and I take Trump at his word.

    So do I, which means Trump is utterly divorced from reality, even casually obvious facts like what he had for breakfast, and his policies and beliefs will change day by day or even minute by minute, with only his own greatness and bigoted nastiness as consistencies.

  84. 84.

    burnspbesq

    @efgoldman:

    I was scared away by Mogen David

    Rational behavior. However, I will say that compared to Boone’s Farm or T-Bird, Manischewitz Cream White Concord wasn’t all that bad.

    Why, yes, I started drinking in the early 1970s. Why do you ask?

  85. 85.

    Mike J

    @Carolinus:

    Briggs did not elaborate on the rally plans except to say that Sanders would deliver a “victory statement.”

    Sanders will close the rally by grasping a feather in his trunk and giving a demonstration of aerobatics before flying off into the sunset.

  89. 89.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @SFAW: I pick up a box or two of Franzia or (some other brand I can’t remember) “white zinfandel” occasionally – J likes the convenience. It used to be quite cheap (~$12-$15) for 5 liters. Now it’s getting up to $20-25 – approaching or exceeding “2 Buck Chuck” (which is $3.29 a bottle here) territory. I don’t understand the reason why the price has gone up so much. Must be the Boomers’ fault. :-/

    ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  90. 90.

    Dave Beauvais

    Whenever these discussions of Democratic surrogates comes up, Joe Biden is usually left out. Anyone who can come up with “a noun, a verb and 911” is in the top tier.

  93. 93.

    seaboogie

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Trump is utterly divorced from reality, even casually obvious facts like what he had for breakfast

    Or the fact that he looks at that sad orange puss and wacky hairdo in the mirror everyday, and thinks “this is a good idea…”

  96. 96.

    NotMax

    @efgoldman

    Fun fact bonus:

    There are in the archives of the campus radio station at Swarthmore College recordings of Schickele when he was a student there in the 50s. He also scored music and wrote some lyrics for classic silents and original short films shown by astronomy department head honcho Peter van de Kamp, including a truncated musical version of at least one Shakespeare play.

  97. 97.

    hovercraft

    @Carolinus:
    Enough is enough. Can someone anyone stop this madness ? I can only hope that once the voting is over and all the superdelegates endorse Hillary, he will come to his senses. It’s over. It’s one thing for his supporters to do this, but the campaign, oy vei.

  98. 98.

    Mai.naem.mobile

    @benw: Fran Drescher is not a RWNJ. I know I’ve either seen or read blurbs about her on either O-Care or Pro-Choice stuff. I’m surprised some right wing.media outlet hasn’t given James Woods a spot. There’s such a personal bent to his anti Hillary stuff I am wondering if she rejected personal overtures from him.

  100. 100.

    Mike J

    @hovercraft:

    he will come to his senses. It’s over. It’s one thing for his supporters to do this, but the campaign, oy vei.

    My hope is that it will be a unity rally. His campaign loves say, “not me, us.” It would be the perfect time for Bernie to demonstrate that spirit. I wonder if he has the huevos to do it?

  101. 101.

    Adam L Silverman

    @seaboogie: He’s setting the conditions to go full Dolchstoßlegende. He’s been setting them in bits and pieces since last fall. According to reports he set a big piece into place last week when he had Manafort brief the Senatorial GOP Chiefs of Staff that the campaign was broke. And the professional GOP folks know it:
    http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-camp-concedes-its-low-on-money/article/2592501

    “He’s going to blame it on the RNC if he doesn’t win in November,” the first source said. “They’re laying that groundwork now.

    And he’s doing it in a way and for an audience that has been a steady diet of political, economic, social, cultural, religions, and sexual betrayal for decades if not longer. Should he lose, even if its by a large margin, there is going to be no concession. There is, instead, going to be an offensive – an attack based on how he, and by extension his supporters, were not treated well. Not by the GOP, not by the news media, not by the state parties, not by the electoral college. And this will be a significant challenge to the Constitutional order. This isn’t going to be the Florida recount. This isn’t going to be a “Brooks Brothers” type faux riot ginned up by Roger Stone and staffed by Congressional GOP personnel. The man who is now the chief advisor and strategist, Manafort, and Manafort’s staff have all been working for Eastern European dictators. Manafort worked for Yanukovych as a fixer when Yanukovych was, essentially, working the Ukrainian system to produce a soft coup to put himself back into power. As a result this is going to be something far, far more dangerous.

  102. 102.

    burnspbesq

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    I started in August of 1979, and I was never a KMET guy (KMET was supposedly the sister station to WNEW-FM, but it wasn’t even a pale imitation). I started with K-WEST and then moved to KROQ. I could be misremembering, but I don’t think so. I remember the KROQ Sunday night lineup as Rodney, Weird Al, and Dr. Drew.

    There were actually five rock stations in the LA market at that time–I forgot about KLOS.

  107. 107.

    divF

    @BillinGlendaleCA: Dr. Demento (Pico and Sepulveda !), Firesign Theater, 3 AM giant burritos from Rod’s at Pico and Lincoln (later shut down by the health department) – even though I was mainly in Berkeley, I still have fond memories of LA in the early 1970’s.

  110. 110.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @burnspbesq: I started at UCLA in Sept. 78; but the Weird Al ‘My Balogna’ didn’t come out until 1979 at the earliest(the first time I heard ‘My Sharona’ was on a bus in the UK, that was July 79). But Dr. D did have Al on with his accordion. Like Unabogie, I’m positive it was KMET.

  119. 119.

    hovercraft

    @Mike J:
    I hope that once the voting is over and Jane and him get a moment to sit down and breath, they will both come to their senses. If wishes were horses…

  120. 120.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @redshirt: They weren’t all that good, but they(Capitol) did try to market them Beatles like(the album cover was a bit like ‘Meet the Beatles’ including the title).

    ETA: The lead singer’s(since passed) brother was Dr. Jack’s lawyer.

  121. 121.

    Adam L Silverman

    @redshirt: I think its a possibility. I look at these things as a professional analyst. If I was seeing this pattern of behavior, including who is being brought in as staff – both formal and informal, in a candidate in the UK or Canada or France or Germany or pick a functioning liberal democracy, I would be writing strategic analyses laying out the possibilities. As such, I think this is a possibility. The Least Dangerous Course of Action is that he just whines, complains, blames everyone else, and threatens to sue. The Most Dangerous Course of Action is what I delineated in that comment. I’m not sure yet what the Most Likely Course of Action is, it just may be actually suing. His remarks today that he wasn’t going to change, meaning he wasn’t going to be more presidential, are worrying. Especially coupled with the remarks of the two power players, for lack of a better term, within his campaign – Manafort and Lewandowski, who have both stated repeatedly that the strategy is to “let Trump be Trump.” I will need to see what happens at the GOP Convention and the beginning of the real general election campaign post both party conventions to have a better handle on potential events for analysis purposes.

  122. 122.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    Shocker: Emily Blunt to play British singing nanny in Disney’s remake of “Mary Poppins”.

    Lin-Manuel Miranda to co-star.

    I think Blunt is beautiful, but she just doesn’t strike me as the charismatic Mary Poppins.

  125. 125.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @NotMax: I’m not a judge of alcoholic beverages. I don’t like most beers (the US version of “Newcastle Brown Ale” is probably my “favorite”, but I’m sure people in Newcastle would think it was watery paint), and most wine is sorta “meh” to me. The way most things like that taste to me depends on so many factors that I don’t see the benefit of spending more than the minimum to get something that doesn’t make me want to retch.

    There are the things like Robin Goldstein exposed, also too. I just can’t get into the whole wine ethic-thing.

    But I had a prof in grad school who was very much into wines (e.g. he said (IIRC) that if someone had a chance to drink a 200 year old wine, one would have to gulp it quickly as it would oxidize so rapidly), and a former colleague who was looking for a place to retire where he could raise his own grapes. So I understand the appeal for some people. :-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  126. 126.

    burnspbesq

    @redshirt:

    What happened?

    You were lied to. There were at least ten bands in LA at the time that were better than the Knack, but they had a distinctive sound (the YUUUUGE drums!) and an influential manager.

  129. 129.

    hovercraft

    @Adam L Silverman:
    Trump is a narcissist and I think a sociopath, no failure is his fault. He cannot fail, only be failed. That’s why he lies so effortlessly, he is constantly rationalizing anything that did not work to make it someone else’s fault. His followers will believe that the establishment and the media, as well as the all powerful Obama/Clinton machine stole it from them. They will come out of a defeat more paranoid and vicious than ever. I shudder to think what it will be like for President Clinton.

  130. 130.

    Brachiator

    @David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:

    I think Blunt is beautiful, but she just doesn’t strike me as the charismatic Mary Poppins.

    I don’t know. Even Julie Andrews came across as more stern than charismatic to me. But I first saw the film as a college student, not a kid, so there wasn’t a lot of “magic” anyway..

  131. 131.

    Adam L Silverman

    @FlipYrWhig: He did, but he had a much smaller piece of work and a much smaller and more peripheral role. That doesn’t excuse who he worked for and what he did, but Manafort’s whole career outside of the US has been in propping up and lobbying for dictators and tyrants. He and most of the people he brought with him have all worked within one degree of separation of Putin and Russian control. It is important to remember that none of these people would, because of who they’ve worked for, is actually eligible for even a secret clearance. Only if Trump were to be elected president and insist that they have clearances would they get them. This is why the customary briefings that each nominee gets will be controlled very tightly on the Trump side. There is too great a risk of 1) Trump just blurting something out because the rules don’t apply to him and/or 2) Manafort and/or one of his staffers decide to pass something along to one of their other paying clients. Once they do that we might as well have just emailed it to the Russians.

  133. 133.

    Brachiator

    @hovercraft:

    His followers will believe that the establishment and the media, as well as the all powerful Obama/Clinton machine stole it from them. They will come out of a defeat more paranoid and vicious than ever.

    If Trump loses, and I hope he does, I won’t care what his supporters think about the election.

    The main thing that will matter will be the battles between the Congress and the president.

  134. 134.

    Turgidson

    Remember when Freddie DeBoer posted here? He’s one of the most sanctimonious, insufferable Berniebro, leftier than thou dipshits on the Twitter machine these days. Holy fucking shit has he lost the plot. Holy.fucking.shit.

    Say, I wonder what ED Kain is up to. Probably wetting himself over the Johnson/Weld glibertarian dream ticket.

  136. 136.

    Turgidson

    @Turgidson: For a sense of proportion, he went on numerous rants about how Barney f’ing Frank is a conservative Democrat. Barney.Frank.

    Does he have head trauma?

  137. 137.

    hovercraft

    @Brachiator:
    I don’t care about their fee fees, it’s that they will become more reactionary than ever and continue to send more and more insane people to congress. As long as the media keeps up the both sides are to blame nonsense, we won’t have a functioning government. When was the last time Garland was in the news? The only reason they were all critical of Trump today is because he was mean to them. Otherwise they treat him like a normal person.

  139. 139.

    seaboogie

    @Adam L Silverman: Adam, I agree with you. It is going to get so ugly. Even as the GOP realizes that they are reaping what they have sowed these many years and decades, they will not have the ability to do anything about it – they are already marginalized by the monster of their creation.

  141. 141.

    Brachiator

    @redshirt:

    There should be no shame for wine in a box.

    Wasn’t that a Saturday Night LIve skit? No, wait.

    But yeah, some box wine is totally drinkable.

  148. 148.

    hovercraft

    I suspect Frum will be a reluctant HRC voter.

    It Traister has penned the article-of-the-day on Clinton, David Frum has done the same with regards to what Donald Trump means for the Republican Party.

    The television networks that promoted Trump; the primary voters who elevated him; the politicians who eventually surrendered to him; the intellectuals who argued for him, and the donors who, however grudgingly, wrote checks to him—all of them knew, by the time they made their decisions, that Trump lied all the time, about everything. They knew that Trump was ignorant, and coarse, and boastful, and cruel. They knew he habitually sympathized with dictators and kleptocrats—and that his instinct when confronted with criticism of himself was to attack, vilify, and suppress. They knew his disrespect for women, the disabled, and ethnic and religious minorities. They knew that he wished to unravel NATO and other U.S.-led alliances, and that he speculated aloud about partial default on American financial obligations. None of that dissuaded or deterred them.

  150. 150.

    Brachiator

    @hovercraft:

    I don’t care about their fee fees, it’s that they will become more reactionary than ever and continue to send more and more insane people to congress.

    I agree with you here, but there is nothing to be done about it. The Republican Party could have tried to moderate this madness; instead they fed it, and now it may consume them.

    As long as the media keeps up the both sides are to blame nonsense, we won’t have a functioning government.

    The media as a whole is not responsible for this. Since Clinton, maybe a little before, the GOP has acted as though they are the only legitimate party in the country. And the citizens who buy into this increasingly wall themselves off into the idiocy of Rush, Fox News and “conservative” web sites that reinforce what they desperately want to believe. You could have whatever you think is perfectly responsible media tomorrow and it would not change anything.

    When was the last time Garland was in the news?

    Why would it matter? The GOP will not give him a hearing. How many other Obama appointments are still languishing? What do you expect the media to to? Spank the GOP?

    The only reason they were all critical of Trump today is because he was mean to them. Otherwise they treat him like a normal person.

    Trump supporters don’t give two shits about the media. They have no power to stop or to contain Trump. That’s up to the voters.

  154. 154.

    Brachiator

    @Turgidson:

    Remember when Freddie DeBoer posted here? He’s one of the most sanctimonious, insufferable Berniebro, leftier than thou dipshits on the Twitter machine these days. Holy fucking shit has he lost the plot. Holy.fucking.shit.

    I remember Little Freddie and his time here.

    I still predict that one day he will inherit the David Brooks slot at the Times and other papers. He is all the things you say, and more. But he is just the type of weasel that some editors think is a “reasonable liberal.”

  158. 158.

    danielx

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    …I take Trump at his word. He has said enough for me not to want him anywhere near the nuclear launch codes.

    And me also. I mildly disliked Trump before this campaign, simply because I thought he was an asshole. That was before, mind you, I became truly aware of just how twisted a personality Donald Trump is. On the other hand, the truly appalling concept I’m grappling with is the number of Americans supporting a candidate who lies, constantly and consistently, and appears to have the attention span of an Irish setter (on meth). He’s the embodiment of many characteristics that I mistrust at best and find detestable at worst.

  159. 159.

    hovercraft

    @Brachiator:
    All good points, ever since the southern strategy the play was to paint the democrats as illegitimate, because they were giving the country to those people. Remember Reagan kicked off his campaign in Philadelphia MS, a very loud dog whistle to whites about whose side he was on.
    As to the media, the fact that it’s not going to change the behavior of the Republicans or their voters is no excuse not to do their jobs. We here are political junkies so we know all this shit that goes on everyday, but most people don’t and the media needs to beat the drum everyday so the general non fox/Rush consumers can hear it and punish them for their behavior.

  160. 160.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
    …what? How can that be? Travers HATED the first movie, with a vitriolic passion. Disney involved her heavily in its creation, then when she thought it was done and left, Walt added all the silly stuff she had been adamant against. Mary Poppins is a much colder and more serious character in the books, despite the magic that happens around her. ‘Practically Perfect In Every Way’ was not meant to have a twinkle in its eye. She’s that arrogant.

    I looked it up, and somehow they got the estate’s approval. Once Pixar took over Disney Feature Animation, movie quality skyrocketed. Maybe they convinced Travers’ heirs that this time it’ll be true to the author’s intent.

    EDIT – Disney producing an adaptation true to the author’s intent would probably be a first. Usually they directly reverse it. Not kidding.

  161. 161.

    Adam L Silverman

    @BillinGlendaleCA: I would think so to. I actually saw a conservative foreign policy type, not sure if it was Nichols or someone else, actually post that on twitter about three weeks ago. So I’m not the only one to think it, but its a concern.

  162. 162.

    guachi

    Adam, nice point about Trump’s advisors and clearances. I’ve seen and currently know people who have had TS//SCI clearances denied or delayed for far less.

    Heck, my clearance was delayed for two years because of bad (bad as in no longer correct) information on my credit report.

  165. 165.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Frankensteinbeck: In the most recent League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic series she’s the avatar of God fighting against Harry Potter who’s become the anti-Christ. I’ve not read it, but it sounds just crazy enough to work.

  167. 167.

    Miss Bianca

    @SFAW: that’s funny, because white wine, from what I understand, is Ann Coulter’s preferred tipple.

  169. 169.

    Turgidson

    @hovercraft:

    all of them knew, by the time they made their decisions, that Trump lied all the time, about everything.

    So did Romney. They don’t give a flying bag of fucks about whether politicians lie. Trump’s just not part of the club and doesn’t know to use his “inside voice” when saying bigoted things. So they are like “OMG what a freak!” when he’s really just the same as any other Republican, only not housebroken.

  170. 170.

    Miss Bianca

    @Adam L Silverman: are you kidding? This is a joke, right? An awesome joke, but this plot summary has got to be a joke.

    @Frankensteinbeck: And yet somehow, magical things do happen in her presence, even if she makes a show of denying their existence.

  173. 173.

    hovercraft

    @Turgidson:
    Agreed, especially as this is from David Frum a speechwriter of the most dishonest administration since Nixon. Then again given that it contained retreads from that era, it;s not surprising.

  174. 174.

    Miss Bianca

    @Adam L Silverman: Adam, why do you have to scare the piss out of me right before I’m trying to go to sleep? I mean, Trumpian Brownshirts *and* Alan Moore?

  175. 175.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Miss Bianca: All part of the service. Please keep your receipt in case you wish to make a return. There will be a required restocking fee to stick me back on my shelf.

    And now I’m to bed!

  176. 176.

    Suzanne

    Hey, y’all want to see something cool? Sure you do.
    One of these buildings is my design. I don’t want to say which one on public internet, but if you’re on Book of Faces, you can see it.

  177. 177.

    Miss Bianca

    @efgoldman: Sounds like you, Davebo and SFAW would have appreciated the “Fine Wine Club” some of my Detroit friends formed. They were all a little older than I was, thank God, and thank God I was a bit of a straight arrow in high school, because these guys would really go all out with the Mad Dog, Thunderbird EHQ, Wild Rose…I can’t even imagine drinking stuff that terrible, even ironically.

  181. 181.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Miss Bianca: Wrong? No. Of course not. It does take some of the fun out of life. But you could probably say the same about your clown shit stuff. Creepy fuckers.

  183. 183.

    Miss Bianca

    @Omnes Omnibus: My WHAT? Are you talking about my performance life? That was 60s drag, mostly. That was done somewhat ironically, altho’ the music we took seriously…and tho’ hippie rather hipster, of course – maybe at this date that makes me a square…altho’ catsuits never go out of fashion.

  184. 184.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Miss Bianca: I am sorry? Did someone say catsuits?

    OTOH. weren’t you talking about a clown project you worked with earlier this evening? Artsy clowns and mimes still scare me. I’ve climbed mountains and jumped out of perfectly good airplanes, but clowns…

  186. 186.

    Miss Bianca

    @Omnes Omnibus: Oh, Salida Circus! They’re not scary clowns – altho’ they are sort of deliberately cheesy. I never perform in *that* kind of clown make-up anyway.

    Yeah, catsuits. There is actual photographic evidence to the effect that I rock a mean catsuit, if I say it myself. Altho’ I’ve sold the clown-vomit (sorry) Strat I used in performance with it.

  187. 187.

    Miss Bianca

    @efgoldman: And see, that combo would make me hurl. As it was, I had to water a potted plant with a Jaeger and Redbull shot some kid bought me in a bar one night. Just could not deal.

  188. 188.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Miss Bianca: All clowns are scary. That’s all I was saying.

    As far as the rest, I will take your word about the catsuits and won’t say, “Pics or it didn’t happen.”

    Strat or Strad? It matters.

  189. 189.

    Fred

    Just to throw my two cents on the pile:
    Let’s recall the damage Bush the Lesser did to the world, the economy, American prestige and oh I could go on until my fingers bleed.
    Trump on the other hand (a short fingered hand) has worse motives than “W”, is crazier, layzier and pretty must stoopider. Trump is a worse investment prospect that that fabled bridge in Brooklyn. And can you imagine sitting down and having a beer with Trump?

  190. 190.

    Miss Bianca

    @Omnes Omnibus: If I’d countenanced having a Strad with the kind of paint-job that that Strat had, I think any violinophile in the world would be perfectly justified in having me shot on sight.

    Do you remember those splatter-art thingies? That would send a piece of paper spinning at a furious rate while you drizzled paint on ’em? That’s what the finish looked like on this Strat. It was a good-sounding axe – my ex had tweaked it for his use, and he knew his shit – but looked like a bad acid trip.

  191. 191.

    Anne Laurie

    @Brachiator:

    I remember Little Freddie and his time here.

    I still predict that one day he will inherit the David Brooks slot at the Times and other papers. He is all the things you say, and more. But he is just the type of weasel that some editors think is a “reasonable liberal.”

    I actually sympathized with some of Freddy’s rants here — although I always said he needed an editor! — but he’s gone too far into his personal spiral of resentment to be hired by a “mainstream” publication. Even were he offered a slot at the NYTimes, for instance, I suspect he’d blow the interview by ranting about SJWs or something similarly toxic.

    Erik Kain, on the other hand, was a stone careerist; he took the slot here because Imani had used the BJ ‘platform’ to move up to a bigger one, and he hoped to follow her example but into the Wingnut Wurlitzer. Only problem was, he didn’t realize ABL actually had a gift for making people want to read her stuff, and he… had the opposite. But I’m sure he’s still scuffing around the D-level RWNJ media, unless he’s found a sugar daddy with very little taste and an insatiable appetite for flattery.

  194. 194.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Miss Bianca: Okay. I thought as much. OTOH, I am kind of a Gibson Les Paul guy. And, yeah, i remember the spatter art thing. I just wouldn’t do that to an instrument. I also don’t put bumper-stickers on my car. I try not to deface things.

  195. 195.

    NorthLeft12

    Really? This is one of the dopier analyses of justifying a vote for Trump that I have seen. Let me simplify it for you Josh, exactly how do you see Trump making anything better for you, or for the US in general, in any way? Economy? Foreign relations? Environment? Education? Go on, name a topic and tell me how Trump is going to fix that or manage it in a way that benefits the US in the short or long term?
    Unless you are a member of the 1% or a white supremacist, I don’t think you can come up with anything.

  196. 196.

    Matt McIrvin

    @ThresherK (GPad): During the period that “Fridays” was on, “SNL” was not exactly covering itself in glory; that was the Jean Doumanian and early Ebersol period. During Doumanian’s year I think you could safely say that “Fridays” was the funnier show of the two, and that is a low, low bar. The sole shining exception was that that was the year Eddie Murphy emerged from obscurity.

    They brought on Martin Short for Ebersol’s last season, when he decided to just hire a bunch of established talent instead of the usual rising unknowns. The show was pretty good that year, but in a very safe way, very prime-time. Then Lorne Michaels came back, the show took risks and mostly sucked the first year, but eventually found its footing again.

  197. 197.

    SFAW

    @Fred:

    And can you imagine sitting down and having a beer with Trump?

    Well, sure, because it would not only be The Best beer ever, tremendously great, but also because it would be Huuuuuuuge.

    And I would need a whole lot of beer to be able to tolerate a conversation with that lying, narcissistic asshole.

  198. 198.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Frankensteinbeck: Disney and Cameron Mackintosh got approval from Travers herself to make the stage musical adaptation of “Mary Poppins”, just before she died.

    The play is an odd beast–it’s not the Julie Andrews Poppins, but it’s not quite Travers’ version either. They still set it in 1910, used most of the Sherman brothers’ songs, and kept a modified version of the Mr. Banks character arc, but they also brought in more episodes and characters from the books, made Mary Poppins about 50% more straitlaced, and removed some of the stuff about “England” that a West End audience would find manifestly ridiculous. The experience might have convinced the Travers estate that they could do a remake that wouldn’t be a crime, especially if it’s basically an adaptation of the stage version.

  199. 199.

    Matt McIrvin

    …And the funny thing is that structurally, the stuff they added to the stage play was basically the same material emphasized in the 1980s Soviet TV adaptation (beloved of Russians of a certain age), but that is another story.

  200. 200.

    Reggie Mantle

    Funny how the Clinton people go on and on about how important it is to defeat Trump, but ti’s apparently not important enough for them not to be dicks to the 10 million plus voters they’ll need to defeat him.

  201. 201.

    gogol's wife

    @jacy:

    Well, then, my dear, you need to check out “Reckless” (1997). You will get eye candy like you’ll never forget.

  202. 202.

    Chyron HR

    @Reggie Mantle:

    You’re the ones who told us that you’re never going to vote for the “bitch” who stole the nomination from Sanders. Why are you so mad at us for believing you?

  206. 206.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Redshift:

    The point of “yard signs don’t vote” isn’t just that they’re meaningless as an indicator, it’s that (according to political strategists) they’re worse than useless, because if a person wants to do something to help a campaign, and they put up a yard sign, that’s something, so some people won’t do anything more.

    I take issue with this for downticket races, out of personal experience.

    Lawn signs (& other apparently trivial things like workers at a polling place) are significant for a serious but poorly known candidate downticket. The signs serve early on as an efficient way to crank up name recognition (since most everyone who passes by them sees them even if they don’t pay attention) & establish the candidate as a serious one. Later in the election cycle, a fairly small threshold number of lawn signs (& bumper stickers, billboards, etc.) reinforce the less-known candidate as a valid option for voters leaning her/his way: Without some minimal visual presence for Candidate X, those leaning toward X might conclude that they’d be throwing their vote away on a fringe contender. (Likewise, having someone at each polling place handing out Candidate X’s literature is crucial; not to win converts at the last minute but to keep those already inclined to vote for X from flinching at the last minute.)

    Many years ago I managed the very-low-budget campaign for an unknown young man running for the MD House of Delegates, & this is exactly how we played the visual aspect in the geographically small district: Enough presence to establish credibility, not enough to break the bank. (We spent most of the funds on simple brochures & knocked on a lot of doors.) It worked. And it worked again 4 years later when he moved up to the MD State Senate,

    All major campaigns would rather not give out yard signs,

    In the above context, Bernie is (or at least started out as) the obscure insurgent. For his campaign, forests of lawn signs & bumper stickers made sense in establishing validity & viability. Hilary had established her bona fides over the last quarter-century & thus had no corresponding need. JMO of course…

  208. 208.

    J R in WV

    @Suzanne:

    Congratulations. I know how hard it is to make it into designing anything but bathrooms and lobbies. So if they had you do a whole project, you are doing very well indeed.

    Hang in there, and enjoy creating new places for people to be.

  210. 210.

    Miss Bianca

    @Adam L Silverman: Interesting…classically speaking, of course, the Antichrist was supposed to be a dupe of the Devil – not actively colluding in evil, but deluded into thinking himself the Second Coming. That makes him almost a tragic figure.

  211. 211.

    Reggie Mantle

    @Chyron HR:

    Never said any such thing. In fact I said I still might vote for Hillary, but that her fanboys and girls made it difficult.

    Why do you feel the need to lie?

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