I'm guessing "churlish" is Politico-speak for "like an even worse motherfucker, if that's possible." https://t.co/3REcg31B13
— The Rude Pundit (@rudepundit) July 2, 2016
In @POLITICO Playbook — Scenarios: What happens if Trump is losing and turns churlish? https://t.co/o02DlXI5aT pic.twitter.com/OsQ8UY66qm
— Mike Allen (@mikeallen) July 2, 2016
I thought us Dems were the professionals at chicken-littling, but Politico‘s Mike Allen just highlighted some quality Trump nightmare fanfic from the Wall Street Journal:
… Base-broadening campaigns require lots of paid TV to reach non-engaged voters and Trump skeptics, pummeling them with reassuring images suggesting that a Trump presidency would be OK.
Mr. Trump not only is unwilling or unable to finance such a campaign. He evidently is unwilling to do what’s necessary to entice GOP donors to finance it on his behalf. This means GOP officeholders seeking re-election can expect a constant headwind of inflammatory Trump statements designed to stimulate the free media coverage that his asset-lite campaign requires. Republican candidates up and down the ballot therefore become unwilling sharers of a high-risk Trump electoral wager, a gamble more likely to end in a Hillary landslide than a Trump White House…
Mr. Trump’s harsher Republican critics are kidding themselves to think Mr. Trump is crazy or unstable and will suffer a breakdown. More likely, he will simply and coldbloodedly toss the ball to the GOP, saying, in effect, “If you want to pay for some events or TV, I’m available. Otherwise I’m done.” The GOP would then have to shoulder the dual burden of propping up a minimally respectable Trump campaign while also distancing its down-ballot candidates from Mr. Trump so they might survive.
And that’s the optimistic scenario. Mr. Trump has learned the value of audacity. He might well decide to cover his retreat and preserve his amour propre with a flurry of lawsuits and conspiracy theories about a “rigged” election…. Republicans can also expect to be a target of his accusations. He doesn’t need to be plausible, just tell a story that justifies his own stance that he didn’t lose, the other side cheated, “Washington elites” conspired against him, etc…
Republicans need a strategy, and lots of money to fund it, to preserve their House and Senate majorities. Do they know it? The thing they should fear most: An autumn dynamic in which Mr. Trump believes the best outcome for him personally is one that does as much damage as possible to the long-run GOP cause.
If you feel the need to read the whole thing, try googling “Trump’s Would Be No Ordinary Defeat”.
? https://t.co/FPy1O4Hq5U pic.twitter.com/BGxwdlGvAx
— Clara Jeffery (@ClaraJeffery) July 3, 2016
If the polls continue like this, Trump will seek deferment from serving as nominee due to bone spurs on the foot that's in his mouth.
— Bob Schooley (@Rschooley) July 3, 2016
Baud
When you have a party that has spent 8 years grounded in hatred of Obama, it should come as no surprise that the biggest Obama hater won.
trollhattan
R.I.P. Michael Cimino. The 2016 edition grim reaper is setting a high bar, bastard.
Corner Stone
*Woot*…Hmmm…hmmm…I don’t smoke but can someone…?
Adam L Silverman
Its interesting that Mike “son of Glenn the Intellectual Center and Polemicist of the John Birch Society in the 1950s and 1960s” Allen is now plagiarizing analysis done several weeks ago by Josh Marshall, Charles Pierce, Digby, several people here, Morning Joe, and a number of others and putting it out as a hot take. Exactly what is this guy qualified to do other than be creepy?
http://wonkette.com/414967/nyt-magazine-is-mike-allen-weird-because-his-dad-was-a-bircher
Amir Khalid
It looks like Donald Trump is working hard to help keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office. For your country’s sake and the world’s, YOU MUST NOT LET HIM FAIL.
NotMax
Turned upside-down? Nope. More like thrown into stark relief.
smith
Booman has an interesting post up today about the implications of Trump’s narcissistic personality. Specifically, that a lot of his political decisions are aimed at meeting his narcissistic needs, including the likelihood that he will choose Christie as VP.
redshirt
Let us pray that the GOP is crushed at all levels, in every election.
Not that they’ll change at all, but further defeats mean their end draws closer.
Shell
Somebody wanna clue me into just what the hell that is? It sure aint whatevers good for the country.
Amir Khalid
Compared to the Donald’s many and varied failings as a person, a businessman and a politician, mere churlishness seems venial.
rikyrah
Someone, on this blog, about a month ago, nailed it to the wall.
Trump is running into a donor class – THAT KNOWS HIS BUSINESS PRACTICES DOWN COLD.
They KNOW HIM.
They are NOT the rubes showing up at his rallies.
They know that any money brought in is going to repay Trump’s $45 Million Dollar ‘loan’ to his campaign.
Which is why, even after HE SAID that he was forgiving the loans, there were no donations coming in.
BECAUSE, THE GOP CRIME BOSSES KNEW BETTER.
And, what do you know…you get the story last week….that the required PAPERWORK to make the forgiving of the loans official…
HAS NOT BEEN FILED.
He can con the rubes at the rallies..
But, the professional GOP Crime Bosses?
They know his game. They are hip to it. They will not fall for ‘ the banana in the tailpipe.’
Their checkbooks are closed.
Rommie
@Shell: IGM,FU is the base coat.
debbie
@Baud:
I think it’s the almost 30 years of scornful fear crowned with 8 years of Obama hate that has produced a candidate like Trump. Don’t forget the angriest supporters consider themselves to be true Reaganites.
redshirt
@Shell: More money for the already rich, and sweet kickbacks for themselves? Also, suffering for poor people. Some wars too.
M. Bouffant
Here’s the entire WSJ thing so you needn’t Google it.
Amir Khalid
@M. Bouffant:
Before I click on that link, is it behind a paywall?
Pogonip
The 2015 Bulwer-Lytton Contest winners have been posted.
RaflW
@Shell: The GOP is, unfortunately, the political equal to many modern corporations: all focus on the next quarter, the next stock tick or profit forecast. Zero long-range planning.
And yet each, the GOP and many Fortune-500s, seem to think they are entitled to perpetual leadership and fawning attention. This latter I blame on our supine, whupped-dog press.
raven
@trollhattan: This would account for how ridiculous the Deer Hunter was:
RandomMonster
@rikyrah: This, in a nutshell. Totally makes sense of the situation. And Trump doesn’t have enough of an organization to raise money from the little guys.
MattF
@smith: I wonder, though, about a Trump/Noot ticket. Two guys with, um, ego issues. It’s a match.
Recall that Noot was the guy who shut down the government because he felt Bill Clinton disrespected him. And a smaller story– a woman I knew, who worked in the restaurant business in DC, was dining at a place where Noot happened to be ensconced. Being well-known in the business, she got special attention from the staff. Noot was extremely pissed off about it.
raven
@trollhattan: Cazale was good.
RaflW
WSJ via @M. Bouffant:
Any vendor who isn’t on cash-up-front terms deserves to get the shaft we all can so easily see coming.
gogol's wife
@raven:
Yes, and I thought Dzundza was good in a small role.
Patricia Kayden
@Baud: Hmmm. Not sure if Trump was the biggest Obama hater among the 17 who ran to be the Republican candidate. Rubio called President Obama classless, Rand Paul called him a king, Cruz claimed he was acting outside of the Constitution re Executive Orders, Christie called him a petulant child, etc., etc., etc. They all hated President Obama to the point where Rubio nearly had a nervous breakdown during one of the Republican debates when he kept repeating the same rehearsed anti-Obama point over and over again.
Trump was just the most audacious, loudmouthed, politically incorrect Obama hater of the bunch. His first campaign speech where he vilified Mexicans seemed to hip his supporters to the fact that he will say anything for attention — no matter how ugly or bigoted.
encephalopath
The idea that Trump will execute a retreat that is discretely distinct from mental deficiency is absurd. Calculated withdrawal and finger pointing is not mutually exclusive from mental defect.
Booman’s bit over at the Washington Monthly about Trump’s narcissism is interesting in that regard.
Shell
Reported: A small explosion in Central Park. Not sure if its fireworks or something else.
dmsilev
@RaflW: I have a hard time feeling too sorry for any GOP consultancy firm or media buyer or whatever that gets stiffed by Trump. It would be like a leech somehow acquired a tapeworm.
Patricia Kayden
I know that Maher can be annoying at times (especially with his apparent Islamophobia) but love that he takes apart the Republican claim that raising taxes is an economic disaster. Just another example of facts having a liberal bias.
http://www.forwardprogressives.com/bill-maher-crushes-republican-bs-proves-liberal-economic-policies-work-scoreboard-btches-video/
Patricia Kayden
In moderation. Thanks Betty.
raven
@gogol’s wife: The stuff stateside was ok except that any fool would know there is no way the deer hunting scene was in Pennsylvania. The stuff in the Nam was so fucking ridiculous was just stupid. As I said this morning, beating out “Coming Home” for anything was a crime.
MattF
@dmsilev: I imagine a Great Chain of Suck extending from the depths into the highest realms. It’s tapeworms all the way down.
? Martin
Yeah, this is the problem the so-called adults are worried about. There’s two general kinds of advertising – brand and direct sales. Brand advertising is what gets you lifelong customers – why you reliably drink Coke or Pepsi. Cola drinkers don’t make explicit choices about which to buy each time they buy one – somewhere they pick their brand and they default to that with no consideration to change. Further, some people will defend that brand to the end and steadfastly refuse to drink the other when that’s the only choice available. That’s our 27% (Keyes Constant).
You set your default brand early in life – which is why TV advertising (which is predominantly brand advertising) is aimed at 18-35 year-olds. The GOP’s brand advertising engine is broken. That means a lot of young people will be default Democratic voters, and it means that a lot of downtickets, where most voters don’t invest thought in their choice, will tilt toward Democrats. Direct sales is Trump vs Clinton, and Clinton’s main job is to get GOP brand buyers to pull her lever. But her secondary job is to advance the Democratic brand, and IMO she’s very good at that – her message has been very consistent ‘this is what Democrats support and I am a champion of that’. I *think* that’s where Sanders’ head still is – on shifting that Democratic brand in the direction of his followers, which is why he’s crowing about getting Dems to support abolishing the death penalty, which I think is actually a very good decision.
Trump presents three problems:
1) He’s not selling the GOP brand at all. His attempts at gun rights and abortion rights and all that are all unbearably awkward and clumsy full of unforced errors. He’s obviously better at selling him.
2) He’s not supporting the infrastructure for the GOP to do that branding, which is the comment about fundraising and not putting ads up. That hurts not just everyone downticket as a reminder of what the GOP stands for, but it hurts their ability to get new voters (either young voters or all of those newly registered voters) for at least the next 4 years since there is no better time to brand the party than during a presidential race.
3) He’s substituting his ability to get personal press coverage, which probably is more effective at selling himself (provided he doesn’t fuck it up, which he routinely does) but does nothing at all for selling the GOP brand. Worse, it takes the media off of the GOP branding efforts by folks like Ryan making the sunday morning jerkoff efforts less effective.
For the RNC this is a calamity. They would have been VASTLY better off with Cruz, who would have done all of those things and perhaps lost the race worse than Trump, but would have at least preserved and advanced the GOP brand.
lollipopguild
@rikyrah: Very nice “Beverly Hills Cop” reference.
Mnemosyne
*Sniffsniff*
What’s that I smell in the wind? Could it be … a wave election? A throw the bums out since they were stupid enough to nominate someone this unqualified election?
Let’s make it so, shall we?
redshirt
@? Martin: Your words to FSM’s ears. Let the GOP be destroyed.
Chip Daniels
Trump is running the campaign like his casinos and other businesses- suck as much wealth out as possible, then walk away leaving the investors and other rubes to clean up the wreckage and take the loss.
smith
@MattF: Not sure the choice will be the one who’s a good match for Trump but more who feeds his narcissism best. Newt’s ego is certainly as massive as Trump’s (and I would guess Christie’s is similarly huge), but Christie has already demonstrated that he is willing to subvert his own ego to serve Trump’s. Not sure Gingrich would be willing to undergo a comparable ego-seppuku.
RaflW
@? Martin: To the extent that conventions are really just giant, three-day free media branding exercises, Cleveland should be awesome! Awesomely bad, that is. 10X Eastwood and his empty chair performance art fail.
I’ll probably actually watch some of it this year, in a NASCAR, when will they crash sort of way.
redshirt
@smith: So will Newt’s billions via Adelson be enough to top Trump’s dislike of his rival’s ego.
Maybe Ben Carson is the guy.
RaflW
@smith: Christie’s famous hollow eyes at Trump’s podium are frankly unpossible for Newt. It’ll be Christie for sacrificial Veep. I’d bet 10 cents on it!
Technocrat
@? Martin:
The alt-right is very much a young man’s movement. Those bros aren’t voting Democratic any time soon. I agree that the “Grand Old Party” is broken, but for decades now the GOP has simply been the sheet covering the head.
redshirt
@Technocrat: While no doubt plenty of young people will choose to be Conservative for some god forsaken reason, but I bet it’s less than the previous generation, and less then the generation before that.
Couple that with changing demographics, and I like the trends for the future.
Mary G
I’m wondering if Trump isn’t kinda sorta broke, saw the Apprentice gig going downhill, looked around for another source of dough, saw the Clinton foundation, said OK, I’m running for president.
? Martin
@Technocrat: The alt-right movement doesn’t help the GOP. It may help Trump, but there is zero chance that the GOP can further that cause in future elections, so allowing them to brand alt-right may keep them from becoming Dem voters but it won’t help make them future GOP voters.
The GOP strategy of denying Dem votes will implode at some point. You cannot rely on anti-democracy as a strategy for long.
Mike in NC
Some people have speculated that Trump is waiting for the GOP establishment to “buy him out” with a yooouge and classy monetary offer during the convention, then nominate Ted Cruz or John Kasich in his place. Not likely, as his devoted followers would riot and burn the Quicken Loans Arena to the ground (gotta love how appropriate that name is to a Trump scam operation).
AnotherBruce
@raven: That was funny to me when I saw the movie. I thought, “what’s Mt. Baker (An 11,000 foot volcano in Washington State) doing in Pennsylvania?”
Technocrat
@redshirt: @? Martin:
Agree that demographics are on our side, and that the GOP is in existential crisis. I’m just saying the hate that fueled the Southern Strategy isn’t limited to old people. Milo Yiannopoulos, Gavin McInnes, Steven Crowder…these guys have long, blighted careers ahead of them.
burnspbesq
No matter how well Dems do in 2016, it can be squandered if we don’t use it to build a foundation for 2018, and even more so for 2020.
redshirt
@Technocrat: When Texas goes blue due to those demographic shifts, the Republicans are done at the national level. And this will happen soon enough.
Formerly disgruntled Clinton supporter
@redshirt: This
raven
@AnotherBruce: Yea, it was funny when De Niro, goatee and collar up on his class A’s, just waltzed down the the airport and flew back to Saigon. Please.
MattF
@Mike in NC: My guess is that Trump views this as a brand-building exercise. He really doesn’t care what happens to the GOP. He wants to corner the neo-Nazi market. And, in fact, he will probably succeed– it’ll be all his.
John Revolta
@? Martin: re: branding
I still know guys who “would rather push a Chevy than drive a Ford”.
Frankensteinbeck
@smith:
My admittedly hearsay understanding is that Newt is on the list at all because he’s been sucking up to Trump with astonishing skill and commitment.
Emma
@Mary G: I would be surprised, but let me add one sentence. “How hard can it be? That uppity n* did it twice.”
Schlemazel Khan
@raven:
I never saw either movie, or any about that war. I never trusted Hollywood to relate a story of the time that I would agree with.
Small correction- I did see Forest Gump, an ugly little fantasy so ignoring the historical and emotional inaccuracies was easy.
MattF
@Frankensteinbeck: Practice, practice, practice.
Roger Moore
@? Martin:
That’s not quite true. He main job is to convince Democratic voters to get out to the polls. Lower priority tasks are convincing fence sitters to vote Democratic, trying to flip persuadable Republicans, and brand building; the exact order of those lower priorities is unclear.
burnspbesq
Holy moly: my niece was named honorable mention HS All-American.
smith
@Frankensteinbeck: OK, I guess the fact that he’s under serious consideration does pretty much make that point.
hamletta
@? Martin: Veteran GOP campaign guy Rick Wilson agrees with you:
Schlemazel Khan
@RaflW:
I think the current rumor mill is grinding away at misdirection. Drumpf views himself as a master of PR and media excitement. He will float these names to generate buzz and then WHAM!hit us all with his clever surprise choice.
raven
@Schlemazel Khan: 84 Charlie Mopic is petty good as is Platoon.
Schlemazel Khan
@burnspbesq: very cool! What sport?
MattF
@Schlemazel Khan: That’s plausible… But who?
Patricia Kayden
Comment is still in moderation. Thanks Anne
? Martin
@Technocrat: Agreed.
JPL
@MattF: Michelle Bachmann. I can’t wait to see Tweety’s expression, when Trump makes the announcement.
JPL
@burnspbesq: That’s quite a honor.
Schlemazel Khan
@raven:
I have never heard of the first one. I had the sound track for Platoon on cassette.
I have a lot of conflicting emotions about the 60s and the war and I don’t think Hollywood can represent that. I don’t think they could present the world I knew I can’t I can’t imagine them doing it for a combat veteran at all
rikyrah
@Patricia Kayden:
He was the Birther-in-Chief.
How much more of an Obama hater would he have to be?
The Thin Black Duke
@hamletta: Of course Mr. Wilson ignores the ugly reality that Donald Trump wouldn’t exit without the Gipper planting his toxic seeds beforehand.
rikyrah
@MattF:
Little Leroy comes with Sheldon Adelson’s checkbook. THAT is what makes him so attractive.
Villago Delenda Est
@NotMax: DING DING DING DING DING
The monster is loose. Its creators cannot control it. The first thing the monster does is destroy the lab.
Schlemazel Khan
@MattF:
Snowbilly Snookie.
One of the Hollywood bozos
A loonietoon governor like Kansas’ Bareback.
He likes outrageous so maybe someone who is over the top like he is. If it were a woman or person of color he would like that as he could then play the “some of my best friends are” card
Frankensteinbeck
@hamletta:
This is true. The Republican Party has at least thirty years of roots selling their racism as polite and responsible economics. Every time Trump does something undeniably racist, they are filled with horror that the party’s and their own mask will finally come off.
Villago Delenda Est
@hamletta: Fuck. The current GOP is very much the “Party of Reagan.” Also the Party of Jefferson Davis. And Coolidge was a worthless POS who slept through every warning sign that the Great Depression was on its way.
M. Bouffant
@Amir Khalid: Nope. I got behind the wall once & realized I’d better
stealstrike while the iron was hot.I’m just like Robin Hood.
rikyrah
@burnspbesq:
Yeah…congratulations to her!
Villago Delenda Est
@MattF: So, he’s brilliantly and deliberately sacrificing a much larger and more upscale market for a decidedly smaller and very downscale market.
So yooge, so classy, so terrific!
hamletta
Guys, I’m not talking about the rectitude and rightness of the GOP; why would I do that? I’m sure I disagree with Wilson about, well, everything.
But he’s talking about the branding issues Martin was addressing upthread. That’s all.
Shell
Nah, I question how much Obama-hate he has. Te whole Birther thing was just another scam for him.
hovercraft
@Shell:
Power for themselves and their financial overlords. To extract every last penny is extracted from the lower orders into the coffers of the wealthy. And to extract every last iota of fossil fuels to enrich themselves. To get all this while lulling the rubes to accept this without revolting. Brexit has put a slight scare into them but not enough to make them change, they just need to push the blame for the economic woes harder onto those ‘others’.
raven
@Schlemazel Khan: 84 Charlie Mopic
RaflW
@Schlemazel Khan:
Caitlyn Jenner!!
Villago Delenda Est
@hamletta: Point taken, just trying to point out that Wilson is delusional about a great many things.
Roger Moore
@? Martin:
It worked for close to a century in the Deep South, so I wouldn’t be too sure about how long they can keep it up. This is a big reason I think a new VRA should be priority #1 if/when the Democrats ever get back control of both houses of Congress.
debbie
@smith:
I’d bet Newt sees himself as Trump’s Cheney.
Villago Delenda Est
@hovercraft: Which is why I fear the only way to really get their attention in what my NCOs called “a major emotional episode” is for them to see some of their fellows’ heads rolling around in a wicker basket.
Adam L Silverman
@raven: Given that the Green Berets have their own dedicated “shooting medics” with their own MOS designator of 18D, anybody that knew even a little bit about the military should have known this was going to be a problem right from jump.
Villago Delenda Est
@burnspbesq: Woohoo! Please convey my congratulations to her, and best wishes for even more huzzahs in the future!
NotMax
@raven
Also, <em The Odd Angry Shotand would also mention Casualties of War.
Plus Go Tell the Spartans for early 60s perspective.
Villago Delenda Est
@Adam L Silverman: And this is part of the problem. In the wake of WWII, we had a lot more people who knew what an MOS was and what that meant. Those guys are leaving this mortal coil as part of the natural order of things. Nowadays, it’s up to a diminishing pool of veterans and subject matter experts such as yourself to fire up the bullshit detectors and shed some light.
gogol's wife
@raven:
It definitely wasn’t as good as “Coming Home.”
NotMax
Italics fail. Corrected:
Also, The Odd Angry Shot and would also mention Casualties of War.
Plus Go Tell the Spartans for early 60s perspective.
gogol's wife
@gogol’s wife:
Just having Bruce Dern in it already makes it better!
Villago Delenda Est
@NotMax: It bothers me greatly that WP refuses to recognize standard HTML markup and insists on its own markup.
Ruckus
@Shell:
I don’t think so. He’s been on this path for a number of years. Plus he doesn’t seem to be able to do nuance at all. Everything is brash, in your face and how much better/rich he is. It’s all bullshit of course but it’s all real to drumpf. Stand back and look at his life for the last 30 yrs. He lives in his own world, a world of huge classy bling and bullshit and has for decades. He doesn’t do scam. They are scams to us of course because it’s easy to see through him but these are not scams to him. His perspective is that he is perfect, that he does perfect and everything/everyone else is beneath him.
gogol's wife
@RaflW:
That’s the first one that sounds likely to me!
hovercraft
@Patricia Kayden:
I think that Drump is the only one who hates him on a personal level, for having the audacity to humiliate him in public, for a black man at that to do that to him I’m sure eats away at him. For the others there is dislike and disdain but I doubt the loathing that Drump feels, they were simply playing to the hate radio/fox narrative and therefore the bases feelings. Republicans hate him but Drump loathes him with the heat of a thousand suns. Obama has something that he wants and probably will never have, and yet he is not as smart as Drump.
low-tech cyclist
@raven:
I dunno, my recollection of “Coming Home” is of a movie where good and bad were drawn in crayon. And it closes with the problem character conveniently committing suicide, which is about as bullshit a plot resolution as there is.
Neither movie should have been up for an award, but we were finally ‘coming to terms’ with Vietnam, so I guess one of them had to.
gogol's wife
@hovercraft:
Right.
Schlemazel Khan
@RaflW:
PERFECT!!
gogol's wife
@low-tech cyclist:
It had a lot of excellent acting in it. And Jon Voight’s character was pretty strong stuff for the time.
NotMax
@gogol’s wife
George Dzundza was excellent and the only thing worth tuning in for in an otherwise eminently forgettable short-lived TV sitcom called Open All Night.
@gogol’s wife
Bruce Dern. An actor whose career was skyrocketing and then just… stalled.
Still don’t know, but guessed at the time he must have done something that royally pissed off the Hollywood powers that be.
gogol's wife
@NotMax:
Alfred Hitchcock was very fond of him. He was a pretty good judge of actors.
Mary G
I think Trump will choose some colorless creature like Mike Pence. He won’t want to share the spotlight.
NotMax
@Villago Delenda Est
Preach it, brother. Yet another casualty of the last redesign.
raven
@low-tech cyclist: Yea well I’m not as smart as you are.
Ruckus
@low-tech cyclist:
Except that suicide among vets is a huge issue. It may not have been a good public service message but it sure is realistic.
geg6
@raven:
Plus, he absolutely nailed the culture of Western PA steelworkers. I lived it and will say everything in that film that reflects that culture is absolutely 100% accurate. Can’t speak to any of the rest of it but he knew those people as well as I do.
Shell
Plus it was the old running-into-the-ocean method. No muss, no fuss!
raven
@geg6: What did I say?
Adam L Silverman
@raven: I’m partial to, the partially based on Bernard Fall’s Death in a Very Small Place, Dien Bien Phu:
https://www.amazon.com/Dien-Bien-Phu-french-only/dp/B00023B0PY
And I highly recommend Fall’s book.
NotMax
@gogol’s wife
(I know, I know, but it’s irresistible to not avoid referencing Hitch’s nearly always taken out of context quote.)
Adam L Silverman
@Villago Delenda Est: It is what it is.
Schlemazel Khan
@raven:
Started to watch it then made the mistake of reading the comments. I’ll probably finish it later. Not sure how accurately it represent the experience but I like the ‘handheld’ nature of the videography.
hovercraft
@MattF:
If it’s a branding exercise, it’s not going very well.
From politico
Campaign is damaging his brand.
Hotel reservations down 60%
raven
@Adam L Silverman: I’ve read many of Fall’s work. See if you can find La 317e section and, of course, Schoendoerffer did “The Anderson Platoon” both quite good. I actually sent 317e section to Lang’s buddy who is at VMI. He and I had some nice conversations before. . . well you know.
raven
@Schlemazel Khan: It’s a film abut making a “lesson’s learned” film about a recon mission. They managed to cram EVERY cliche and acronym that were used in Vietnam in that film. It’s obviously filmed in the states but it’s interesting.
Go Tell the Spartans is good too. Lancaster is hilarious as the crusty old major. “This war is a sucker’s game”.
Adam L Silverman
@raven: I know the VMI buddy. Nice guy. And tracking on the rest.
And I figured you’d read Fall’s stuff.
hovercraft
@Schlemazel Khan:
He could go with Mary Fallon a more respectable version, who is a rightwinger, but one who is able to speak in complete sentences. She shares virtually all of Palins positions but does not embody crazy the same way.
raven
@Adam L Silverman: It also was a shame the Michael Herr died. Now that was a book and two great screenplays.
low-tech cyclist
@Ruckus: Maybe so, but I dunno, the whole thing to me just reeks. Fonda’s and Voigt’s characters are getting friendly, and when Dern’s character comes back, he’s just over-the-top psychotic. Yeah, we know: war is hell, and Vietnam was worse than most. But it didn’t turn most Vietnam vets into that sort of caricature. It just seemed to me like his character was that awful in order to blow away any guilt or moral dilemma we might see Fonda’s character facing. And then the convenient suicide as the cherry on top.
Adam L Silverman
@raven: Yes indeed!
Schlemazel Khan
@hovercraft:
But I would think he would favor crazy over just about any other characteristic. Unless he really does want oatmeal paste so he looks lively in comparison. But I would expect him to pick a showman sort of like himself.
Adam L Silverman
@low-tech cyclist: This reflected a belief, that was also beginning to crystalize within the psychiatric and psychological communities in the early 70s, that the victims of the Vietnam War were the veterans. Not that they were political victims – as in they were often thrown under the bus by the veterans of earlier wars such as WW II because the Vietnam guys didn’t win or that they became a symbol of the turbulent politics of the time. Rather, they were victims in that the experiences of the war had left them all psychologically damaged. While I think the last quarter of the book isn’t as tight as the first 3/4s at it starts to deal with the popular depiction in film of this dynamic, I highly recommend Professor of Sociology and US
Marine CorpsArmy veteran Jerry Lembcke’s book The Spitting Image.https://www.amazon.com/Spitting-Image-Memory-Legacy-Vietnam/dp/0814751474/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1467578909&sr=1-1&keywords=jerry+lembcke
His other books are also quite good:
https://www.amazon.com/CNNs-Tailwind-Tale-Inside-Vietnams/dp/0742523284/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1467578909&sr=1-3&keywords=jerry+lembcke
https://www.amazon.com/PTSD-Diagnosis-Identity-Post-empire-America/dp/0739186248/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1467578909&sr=1-4&keywords=jerry+lembcke
https://www.amazon.com/Hanoi-Jane-Fantasies-Betrayal-Politics/dp/155849815X/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1467578909&sr=1-6&keywords=jerry+lembcke
Felonius Monk
@geg6: Speaking of western PA culture, have you ever seen the film The Florentine ? I thought it captured that culture pretty well. It may have been Chris Penn’s last film and has a pretty good cast. One of my favorite films.
raven
@Adam L Silverman: Jerry was in the Army, a chaplains assistant.
Villago Delenda Est
@raven: I’ll bet in that job he got to see more disturbed soldiers than just about anyone but the chaplain himself.
Felonius Monk
@Adam L Silverman: @raven: What is your collective opinion on Neil Sheehan’s “A Bright Shining Lie”?
burnspbesq
@Schlemazel Khan:
Water polo.
Adam L Silverman
@raven: I will sit corrected and make the change. I was sure I read a bio of his that indicated he was a Marine Corps veteran, but just checked his academic CV and it indicates US Army, Vietnam, 1969. Thanks for catching that. Don’t know why I got it in my head that he was a Marine.
burnspbesq
@Villago Delenda Est:
Thanks.
Adam L Silverman
@Felonius Monk: Haven’t read it.
Tom Q
@low-tech cyclist: Not to mention the insultingly shallow “conservatives aren’t only wrong on the war, they stink as lovers — a paraplegic does better by Fonda”. Coming Home comes from people whose views on the Vietnam War match my own, but I want more from art than to have my ideological preferences greased.
The Deer Hunter has many flaws (the West Coast mountains in PA the most obvious), but it dealt with something that outlasted the war years — the estrangement of small-town America from their government — and at least aimed at a grandeur that Coming Home can’t even imagine. Given a choice between the two, I think Deer Hunter was easily the more ambitious and interesting choice.
Felonius Monk
@Adam L Silverman:
I resisted reading it for along time, but when I finally did, I couldn’t put it down. John Paul Vann was a very interesting character and I thought Sheehan did a pretty fair job on the history of the war as well. But that’s just my 2cents.
Elie
@hovercraft:
What I don’t understand is that I “thought” that the kids had taken over the old man’s campaign and that they would be helping to prevent the continued damage to the brand. However, I am not seeing many signs of said kids influence, including that horrid anti-semetic ad Trump rolled out — esp in light of the fact that Ivanka’s husband is Jewish. If they are “running things”, they are not very good at it. I see the old man taking their fate and fortune right down the black hole with him at this rate. Its also obvious, that besides being unable to shift the trajectory of the campaign to a more positive plane, they are also unable to find old man any more money.
low-tech cyclist
@Adam L Silverman:
I think there was the potential of an interesting and complex movie in that. (And I remember, from back then, the swings in public attitudes about the war, about veterans, about antiwar protesters, the whole bit.) But there’s a huge difference between coming back psychologically damaged or with PTSD, and coming back a monster, as Dern’s character did.
Elie
It remains abundantly clear in politics that its one thing to have a shtick you play for the rubes (while keeping reality very clearly in your grasp and generating your real plans), from falling for your own shtick. Besides Trump, we see a recent example of the falling for your own bs in the UK where Boris Johnson and his pack of poopoo heads told the rubes a series of lies that they apparently also fell in enough love with themselves that they forgot that they were lies. Now, unfortunately, they have to live with those consequences as the fate of the UK goes into the economic hopper. The GOP has been eating its own shit and believing it for decades now but there were just enough of the non crazies to keep it more or less on the road. This last group of candidates were the most unmoored and incompetent ever — There was no there there even if Trump had not emerged. The GOP needs to be destroyed because it is completely incompetent at doing what it is supposed to be doing — bringing forward leaders to help govern this large country. They are not about governing. I don’t know WHAT exactly there are about, but governing is not what they want or believe in so what they have now is just corrupted incompetence.
Adam L Silverman
@Felonius Monk: Haven’t resisted it, but just haven’t had a chance. I’ll put it on the ever expanding list.
hovercraft
@Schlemazel Khan:
You could be right, although he may not want anyone who will overshadow him at all, which would rule out Palin, Christi, and Noot.
raven
@Felonius Monk: Great as is his follow-up “After the War Was Over” that starts in the untended ARVN cemetery.
raven
@Tom Q: Tell me anything in the Deer Hunter touched this.
hovercraft
@Elie:
The kids have no more control over him than anybody else, they are at his mercy as they are mere employees, they can be fired just like anyone else. If they had any real control or influence, Corey would have been gone a long time ago, Jared is an orthodox jew and would have stopped the anti semitic crap. He may hear them out more than others, but he does not seem to listen to any one. The only reason there have been changes recently is that his poll numbers were slipping that is all.
Tom Q
@raven: It’s a good speech, and Voight’s performance was the only thing I really liked about the movie (it still amazes me he’s morphed into a right-wing jerk, given his lefty beginnings). I just find the movie banal in the extreme. The God Bless America finale of The Deer Hunter moves me on an entirely different level.
Ruckus
@low-tech cyclist:
It is after all a movie. It isn’t real and we all take movies differently due to our experiences. But vet suicide is a real thing, not just Vietnam vets but vets from the gulf wars as well. Don’t recall the numbers but it is pretty startling and larger than the same age demographic of civilians. And the VA is being very aggressive about trying to fix that.
raven
@Tom Q: And all the completely ridiculous shit about Vietnam and the military didn’t bother you? I guess that’s my problem, I dismissed it out of hand because the mistakes were so obvious. There is no way the De Niro character could have made the rank he was, he’s wearing a Green Beret yet has a 101st patch on his right sleeve, he has a goatee and wears his collar up like a frat boy and then he just gets on a fucking plane and sails back to Vietnam to find his pal.
catclub
@? Martin:
If Trumps’ fundraising is so bad, can the campaign claim the federal campaign matching funds and forgo further spending above some level they will never reach?
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
Quite possibly but medics and patients in military hospitals saw a large number as well. I’ve often wondered how many that I saw during my stay who were massively broken and would remain that way for a very, very long and painful time, and if rehab was maybe not even possible for some.
hovercraft
@Elie:
Over the last 36 years the republican party has had basically two ideas, taxes are too high and government is bad, that’s it. They’ve used race and other ruses to get their supporters to sell these two items, your taxes are too high because the government wants to give your money to those people. All the while using this as a cover for massive wealth transfers to the top. Even the militarism is a cover for massive defense spending primarily on equipment we will never use. While there are believers in military adventurism, the fact that so much of the money goes to unnecessary weaponry, not equipment focused on the new threats we face tells the story. We have a small military and yet in spite of the massive amount of money we spend, can’t take care of our personnel both active and inactive. For all the claims of our loving, respecting, and honoring those who have served we don’t. The fact that we have to have fundraises and scammers on tv claiming to be supporting the vets is a disgrace. The va is flawed but the push to privatize it and allow people to profit off of veterans service is a disgrace. They served us now it’s time for us to serve them. We should not have homeless vets.
Back to the party of no ideas, when the push to lower taxes began the tax rates were too high, but we’ve been cutting them for 30 years now and the result has been huge reductions in investments into infrastructure and services. They have been remarkably successful in selling this plan but now that the nation is falling apart what is the new idea? We followed their prescription for 30 years and we do not like the results, so what’s you’re new idea. They have none. We also have the conservative utopias of Kansas and Louisiana to behold.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@hovercraft:
They have privatization. First you starve something until it fails, then you blame government, then you hand it over to private enterprise. Which botches it up while making a profit. Detroit schools are a prime example.
geg6
@raven:
That Cazale was great. And he was, in everything he ever appeared in.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Roger Moore:
Bingo.
Voting and the machinery that goes with it – redistricting, registration, machines per voter, hours, early voting, the whole 9 yards – is vital. As long as the GOP can pick its voters and exclude everyone else, then they have control over the machinery of government.
“Government by the people” has to be more than just a slogan if we want to dig ourselves out of the hole we’ve been in since ~ 1980 (and especially since the Great Recession).
Cheers,
Scott.
hovercraft
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
Yes that is one of their specialties, look at anything they run, congress has become completely useless now that it’s populated by people who do not believe in government, and then they turn around and say government does not work. Putting people in positions they are not qualified for doesn’t matter since the functions they will be performing will be botch anyway. As you say break it and then lament it’s inefficiency the republican way.
Tom Q
@raven: I don’t have any military background, so none of those things jumped out at me. I do remember Pauline Kael noting it seemed way convenient for DeNiro to be able to sail back into Vietnam in the midst of such chaos, but I accepted it as story device.
Context does no doubt play a part in my memory of the film: it came along at the end of a year, 1978, that was exceedingly disappointing for film. After a decade of groundbreaking classics — The Last PIcture Show, The Godfathers, Cabaret, American Graffiti, Chinatown, Nashville, All the President’s Men — pickings were suddenly slim: the retrenchment that restructured Hollywood (obvious during the moribund 80s, and glaringly clear today with franchise glut) had reduced the number of artistically ambitious efforts to practically none, The Deer Hunter was definitely messy and unwieldy (I liked the title of Kael’s review, The God Bless America Symphony — suggesting the film was conceived as a major work but the content didn’t always measure up to the ambition), but it was the only movie I saw that year that seemed to suggest film as significant art form was still alive, so I forgave it its shortcomings.
Schlemazel Khan
@burnspbesq:
WOW! That is not an easy game. Double congratulations.
Elie
@hovercraft:
Well they can count on the old man taking down his black hole at the end.
@hovercraft:
The corruption and incompetence plan. That is how they end up with suck stupid and venal candidates… Their party downright discourages responsibility and integrity for grifting and opportunism… And they have won that hands down…
rikyrah
Sarah Kendzior @sarahkendzior 6h6 hours ago
It is not one graphic. It is not one bigoted remark. It is mainstreaming of extremism, coupled with collapsing institutions, hate, despair.
===
You have to be willfully blind to divorce this incident from pattern, devoid of empathy to not worry what this shift in culture will bring.
===
Be concerned about Trump. But also consider what’s coming whether he wins or loses, as extremism becomes mainstreamed.
rikyrah
Kansas’ Experiment in Right-Wing Economics Is Still Failing Miserably
by David Atkins
July 3, 2016 2:57 PM
Every few weeks I feel it’s important to return to the ongoing disaster in Sam Brownback’s Kansas. It doesn’t get nearly as much play as it should in the media, which is unfortunate because Kansas’ experience is definitive proof of the failure of supply-side, Laffer-curve-based economic theory.
Under the leadership of Brownback and one of the most conservative legislatures in America, Kansas dramatically slashed the tax rates of Kansas’ wealthy and its corporations. According to ideology, the cuts should have jumpstarted Kansas’ economy and led to rapid growth that created jobs and helped the tax cuts pay for themselves. Of course, nothing of the sort happened.
The effect was disastrous, a slow-rolling series of budget shortfalls followed by cuts to essential services like education and roads, which only slowed the economy further. A series of punitive and regressive sin taxes on tobacco and other goods were instituted to make up for the cuts to the tax rates of the wealthy, which of course only further undermined consumer spending.
Officials in Kansas have tried to blame the problems on a slow national economy, but that is hogwash. Say what you will about the unequal distribution in gains from national economic growth, there is no doubt that the national economy is performing well by traditional metrics. It is not doing so in Kansas. Moreover, Kansas’ neighboring states are doing far better than it is.
Kathleen
@rikyrah: Sad to say that I think extremism has already been mainstreamed, thanks to the “Mainslime Media”.
cleek
christ, would people just stop it with the “Trump’s gonna drop out” nonsense ?
fuckwit
@Rommie: That’s it! Troll is IGMYFU personified, with an opossum on top! And we are seeing the self-destruction caused by taking that attitude to its logical extreme.
Jado
@rikyrah:
“The checkbook a are closed. They were built up by the 1%, and the 1% keep them. The checkbooks…are CLOSED”
Ghost King of the Men of Dunharrow
No One You Know
@RaflW: I did a double-take when I saw a sign I read as “Lord President Trump.”
No One You Know
Alas, in moderation! Even though I used the link button. Sigh…
Vor
@rikyrah: look at Minnesota and Wisconsin too. Minnesota is trying to figure out what to do with a surplus while Wisconsin is trying to paper over deficits.
Donalbain
@Shell: Trump was an opportunistic Birfer, but then at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner it became deeply personal.