Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

He imagines himself as The Big Bad, Who Is Universally Feared… instead of The Big Jagoff, Who Is Universally Mocked.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

T R E 4 5 O N

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

Second rate reporter says what?

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

with the Kraken taking a plea, the Cheese stands alone.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

FFS people, this was a good thing. take the win.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

You are here: Home / Pet Blogging / Cat Blogging / Monday Morning Open Thread: Like A Boss

Monday Morning Open Thread: Like A Boss

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joe g koho

From commentor Joe G:

This is Koho

Koho will eat your crunchy granola bar

and feel no shame

Like a Boss

Speaking of which…

Apart from watching the RNC convention (possibly through parted fingers), what’s on the agenda as we start another week?

Reader Interactions

167Comments

  1. 1.

    Schlemazel Khan

    But I have it on great authority, I read it right here on BJ, that Drumpf is pulling even despite not spending any money on ads.

    I expect the convention to be an anti-climax. No violence and, at least on the TeeVee, it will appear to be a giant kumbya. This is what Republicans do, they fall in line. I’d love some good solid chair-bashing knock-down drag-outs on the floor but I bet there will be peace. I’m more worried about these loons after the Drumpster fire loses badly. You know he will egg them on that he was cheated & the election was stolen.

  3. 3.

    Billcoop4

    One is torn, during weeks like this one, between a sense of having better things to do, such as examining navel lint, and an obligation to witness the train wreck, especially when one teaches public speaking and communication.

    I am glad for handles of gin and two-liter bottles of tonic.

    WMC

  6. 6.

    Anya

    Media (heard it on CNN): “Clinton & Trump running neck-and-neck in key swing states, despite Clinton outspending her opponent $57M to $4M which proves the strength of Trump’s message.”

    Me: I approve of this message. Let Trump continue to be Trump

  7. 7.

    Mustang Bobby

    I heard that Morning Edition will be featuring Cokie Roberts and Tucker Carlson offering their collective wisdom on the radio machine. I will be switching over to the local public radio station that offers BBC news on the hour and serious jazz the rest of the time for the duration.

  10. 10.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    I’m going to see the Shuttle this afternoon(I did see it on top of the 747 on the way to LAX).

  14. 14.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @Anya:
    The problem is that while they are enjoying the traffic this horse race bullshit generates for their corporate masters they are unwittingly feeding the fantasy that Drumpf lost because the Dems cheated. We saw that in each of the last 2 Presidential elections when the party was more sane than it is now & the armed white mad men were not turned up to 11. I’m sure they feel no personal responsibility if things go badly after 11/8 and will actually experience an upsurge in ad revenue as they cover the fallout of the crisis they are helping to build.

  15. 15.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Sigh… Been playing the “no news is good news” game, but I guess I better call my son in Baton Rouge this time.

  16. 16.

    Anya

    @rikyrah: Yup. Let him continue on his vulgarian ways. No need to change or open field offices or spend money to register voters.

    @Schlemazel Khan: I think the 27% will always feel victimized and Trump is going to feed on their victimhood. Can you just imagine his concession speech?

  17. 17.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @Anya:
    I’m sure it will be a salute to victimhood and a cry to right the great wrong done to the country by “crooked Hillary and the Democrat Party”.

  18. 18.

    Patricia Kayden

    Clinton leads by 5 nationally. By 8 in swing states.

    Hmmmm. That’s not what the sour-faced Broadcaster on my local Fox News station said this morning. She reported solemnly that Secretary Clinton was only up by 1 in swing states. Some folks are really hoping for a horse race, aren’t they? And they just cannot hide it.

  19. 19.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym

    @Schlemazel Khan:

    We saw that in each of the last 2 Presidential elections . . .

    Actually, we’ve seen it in the last four. Plenty of people around here will tell you that the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen, with some justification in the first case and next to none in the second. Both sides have decided that the only way they lose elections is through theft, though on the Democratic side that extends far less into the population of elected officials as it does on the Republican side.

    It’s not a good omen for democracy. The only way it can function is if everyone agrees to lose elections gracefully.

  20. 20.

    Patricia Kayden

    @OzarkHillbilly: Wow. That’s a scary place to live right now. Hope he is safe. Also hoping that those who decide to protest in Cleveland are safe given all the open carry jerks who will be out there in full force. I feel very sorry for Cleveland police officers this week.

  22. 22.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
    Well in 2000 the second place finisher did in fact get the job and there is plenty of evidence that voting rolls had to be manipulated to make that happen. 04 not so much

  25. 25.

    Luthe

    It’s nice to see someone else has a cat with unusual eating habits. Last night one of ours was literally sitting next to the table begging for pieces of prime rib, of which he had quite a lot (for a cat). He’s also been known to eat peaches, strawberries, tomato soup, ice cream, whipped cream, clam chowder, pork chops, and small amounts of bread. He insists on eating these bits of human food either off a spoon or a napkin. He’s a special cat.

  26. 26.

    Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill

    @Billcoop4:

    Watching the RNC is going to feel shameful, like getting pleasure from watching hate bukakke should…

  27. 27.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    I’m at the airport heading to ATL. Gonna be on the road this week so news availability will be limited. That’s probably a good thing for my blood pressure.
    Was in Boston last week and spent a lot of time in the car. WBUR is a great station all day.

  30. 30.

    Hal

    Bradd Jaffy ✔ @BraddJaffy
    Clinton leads by 5 nationally. By 8 in swing states. What happens when you outspend your opponent $57M to $4M on ads

    Rachel Maddow’s take on this, at least in the opener before interviewing a Clinton campaign spokesperson, was that 57 million doesn’t get you much if you’re “only” up 5 to guy who spent 4 million on ads. Not that Trump needs to spend money on ads with the media doing the equivalent for free.

  31. 31.

    Lalophobia

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym: You said there was some justification. I’d disagree there was merely some, it wasn’t outright stolen, and that both sides are equal in they’re thinking their elections were unfairly won. Also, I wasn’t the only one to point that out.

  32. 32.

    Shalimar

    @Billcoop4: Unfortunately, the train wreck this time is intended to have casualties (outside the arena), as a pretext to keep minorities from riding future trains.

    I can’t watch. Kasich and all the rest are evil little opportunistic shits.

  33. 33.

    Shalimar

    @Luthe: My cat had a mini-croissant for dinner. She went to so much effort to steal it off my plate, and I had more anyway, so I let her pick it apart and take more than an hour to eat most of it.

  34. 34.

    Baud

    @Hal: It’s not a linear progression. Each side is guaranteed 40 percent of the vote simply because of party affiliation.

  35. 35.

    sm*t cl*de

    @Luthe:

    He’s also been known to eat peaches, strawberries, tomato soup, ice cream, whipped cream, clam chowder, pork chops, and small amounts of bread

    Mrs Spat has decided that fried mushroom is the Best Thing Ever. I am training her to forage her own porcinis.

  37. 37.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Baud: True. I have to admit though that I was a little panicky when I heard that Trump and Clinton were even in the polls. November cannot come fast enough.

  38. 38.

    rikyrah

    @Hal:
    Yep. They continue to give him all this free media. Hillary’s teams is doing what needs to be done. The money is being spent on ads to define Ferret Head, which is a good thing.
    I am really looking forward to seeing the true breakdown of that financial report.

  42. 42.

    Kay

    @Hal:

    That’s silly though. “up 5” is huge in a presidential election. “if the election were held today” that’s a big win.

    Trump is depressing to me not just because of his political candidacy, but because of his business career. This NYTimes piece is devastating. His entire business model is fraud. Decades of this:

    “It’s hard to find a project Trump touched that didn’t produce allegations of broken promises,blatant lies or fraud”

    Forget “Donald Trump as President”. Why was Donald Trump ever considered successful in anything? Why should anyone behave ethically or work hard or care about their reputation ? THIS is what’s rewarded? Christ. Why work hard at anything? It’s just a matter of fleecing the suckers and promoting your “brand”.

  45. 45.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    @Kay:
    What scares me is the GOP tried to stop him and couldn’t. Whatever cooler heads that party leadership retains have lost their grip on the process. That means the next demagogue could be worse.

  46. 46.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    Why was Donald Trump ever considered successful in anything?

    Appearances. That’s all that’s ever mattered to most people in this country.

  47. 47.

    Kay

    @Patricia Kayden:

    To me, Ohio looks weakest of what I consider the true “swing states” but she doesn’t actually need Ohio. If the rest of her leads hold up she could easily win without it.

  49. 49.

    satby

    @rikyrah: @Anya: Good morning everyone!

    Officially house hunting today because repairs to this one will require gutting at least the front half of it and the roof. I kind of hate the idea of moving over the border to red state Indiana, but houses are really cheap in South Bend and it’s at least a college town. So I can be legitimately too busy to contemplate the train wreck in Cleveland. Thank FSM.

  50. 50.

    Mary G

    @Luthe: My first cat loved cantaloupe. She’d eat as much as you’d give her and knock over the trash can to dig out and gnaw on the rinds. My second cat was a carb freak. We couldn’t leave a loaf of bread out because she’d rip it open and eat two or three slices, leaving a mess of crumbs. She would also rip open bags of dry pasta and crunch it up.

  51. 51.

    satby

    Joe G, Koho is a beauty. I have a soft spot for black cats. Never met one that didn’t have a great, cuddly personality.

  55. 55.

    Kay

    @Ultraviolet Thunder:

    I agree that they didn’t stop him. I disagree that they “tried” to stop him. Mitt Romney stood next to him in 2012 and happily accepted his support. They’ve rewritten this narrative to narrow the window they had to “stop him”. They didn’t have 90 days at the end of the primary season- they had 4 years. They made him for 4 years and then they “tried to stop him” for 2 months. Ted Cruz was singing his praises. Chris Christie still is.

  59. 59.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    I’ve seen (but not read) two or three “what abut the children” pieces on Trump- that he’s a bad role model for children.

    What does a 40 year business career based on fraud and lies tell children? “Merit doesn’t matter- what matters is marketing”. That to me seems equally damaging.

  60. 60.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Kay: I wonder the same thing. How is Trump a “successful businessman” when basically all he did was luck out in having a wealthy father from whom he inherited a fortune? If I had parents who left me millions of dollars, I probably would be as “successful” as Trump is. I would look at folks who weren’t born on third base with silver spoons in their mouths as more successful than Trump, i.e., our current President and President Clinton.

    What gets me is when people who I thought were sensible argue that Trump’s “success” as a businessman qualify him to be President. Unfortunately, I know a few people who think like this. It’s frustrating. You would think that the fact that Trump ripped off folks and is in litigation over Trump University would waken people up to the fact that he’s a straight up fraud.

  62. 62.

    Kay

    @Princess:

    I’m sick of that too, though. The apology. Forget “politics”. Why did media let him get away with claiming he’s a successful businessman for years?

  64. 64.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    Clinton would do well to point out loudly and often that it’s Trump’s braggart and fraudulent ways that led the country into the financial crisis. I’d also like to see someone Photoshop a jacket with question marks all over it onto Trump, like that other fraud whose name I can’t remember.

  65. 65.

    Kay

    @Patricia Kayden:

    Those people make me sad because it’s considered smart and savvy to rip people off. They admire that. They adopt this kind of uber-sophisticated “well, people BOUGHT IT” as if that excuses any and all behavior.

    It’s “success” removed from any context- it’s not even “money accrued” anymore, because he lies about that too. Even that measure is no longer tethered to reality.

  67. 67.

    satby

    @Kay: The kids today already got that message watching their parents work hard but get laid off anyway. Trump just makes fraud look glitzy.

  70. 70.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Patricia Kayden:

    What gets me is when people who I thought were sensible argue that Trump’s “success” as a businessman qualify him to be President.

    Running the govt is nothing at all like running a business. Why people would think business success would qualify someone baffles me to no end.

    Because he/she “got things done”? Not so hard to do when one has absolute power, just ask any dictator in the history of man.

  74. 74.

    Patricia Kayden

    @OzarkHillbilly: Agreed. Wonder when the media is going to push back on claims that Trump’s business acumen and “success” somehow qualify him to hold the most important job in the world. Trump should be laughed out of the presidential race when he says stupid things like running Miss Universe means that he has knowledge on how to deal with Russia.
    http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/05/06/donald-trump-russia-miss-universe/84024666/

  76. 76.

    satby

    @Baud: and I just heard on NPR that the pivot to “Make America safe again” is the new Drumpf theme in Cleveland.
    If I didn’t have all the rescues I would just get on a plane.

  77. 77.

    Baud

    I received an email from Hillary about getting a text about her Veep pick, and promising that the name will not be leaked beforehand. Oy, i hope they can keep that promise. It’s hard to prevent leaks. We’ll probably have 8 more congressional committee hearings if the media finds out before the text goes out.

  78. 78.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Patricia Kayden: That article Princess linked to on “The Art of the Deal” notes that in it, Trump (and Schwartz) created a lie that Fred Trump had little directly to do with his son’s success, and even cast scorn on “the Lucky Sperm Club.” There’s been an effort going on for decades to falsely portray Trump as somehow self-made.

  79. 79.

    Baud

    @satby: News was lying again this morning about Trump’s support for the Iraq war. “Trump says he opposed it.”

  80. 80.

    Kay

    @satby:

    I was in the back seat of car with my middle son and his friend in the front this weekend- I questioned whether they would get to Toledo in the unrealistic amount of time they had allotted for this stupid trip I had somehow become an essential party to- they took this as a challenge and the driver said (to the car?) “run shadowfax, show us the meaning of haste!” – that means “drive really fast”. They are 7th graders masquerading as adults.

  82. 82.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    I’m boarded and have to go airplane mode.
    Have a great Monday everyone.

  84. 84.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    It’s a good campaign, though. They don’t get credit because you don’t get credit for a LACK of chaos and poor management, but her campaign has been really disciplined and focused. I’m pleased they are running voter reg. In 2004 Democrats outsourced it to a bunch of “orgs” and it was a mess. It’s rule-bound, voting process. Specific. Nit-picky. Boring. You can’t have a group of frantic people tripping over each other.

  86. 86.

    satby

    @Kay: And in my experience they stay that way until about 29 or 30 or so.
    Of course, some never grow out of it.

    Edited to add: you’re a much braver woman than me, if I am in the car with my sons, I drive. They complain I drive “like a grandma” and I point out that I AM a grandma, so it’s all good.

  87. 87.

    gvg

    A certain amount of ads are beneficial and necessary. Beyond that it’s a waste of money. I am pretty sure Romney outspend Obama and I think Clinton did initially until he got the momentum. some of the Congressional seats with a lot of CU money spent were clearly wasted. Sometimes voters can tell whose a better candidate in spite of lots of money. Because of that I am cautious about simply pointing out the difference in spending as if it means everything will be alright. Its also true having no money is a losing position. So quite a few ads are good, good ads that are effective, and they should have a reasonable cost. Ad agencies should make a good profit but not a ripoff.
    Its the other spending that Trump isn’t doing that I think will doom him to a larger that polled loss. Not doing get out the vote, collecting names, doing targeted stuff. He doesn’t have proxies. I don’t think he has the numbers of lawyers to watch the voting. He hasn’t built any relationships within the party to get anything done. He doesn’t know how to delegate effectively. He doesn’t even know he needs to know this stuff. In fact he does not have a very good brain.
    Someone else could be a lot more dangerous than him. we are sort of protected in that the nutty base actively hates anyone who shows those kind of relationship talent. they currently hate institutions including their own. Kind of weird really. I wonder how long their control will last.

  88. 88.

    jg

    @satby: Koho is the first “not Maine Coon” feline I’ve had and he is a dream. Just a sweetheart. Like all cats, he is bossy, busy, and nosey.

    And will eat, or at least “try” anything. A few days ago he thought playing with a grape was fun till it busted open. Then he ate it…he even tried (aka: licked) horseradish I had spread on a roastbeef sandwich. He didn’t go for seconds but he didn’t tear off to the water bowl either. His favorite sport appears to be licking spiders to death.

    They’ll be no stopping him now that Laurie has given him a front page picture. “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr DeVille”.

    I’m hoping Cleveland turns into Wrestlemania but wont hold my breath. Nor will I watch it.

    Peace to all.

  90. 90.

    EBT

    Trump lacks both the dignified brow and the adorable overbite to ever be accused of being ferret faced.

  91. 91.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Kay:

    It’s a good campaign, though.

    Agreed. In my experience thus far (as an HRC Fellow in training), the campaign is impressively organized. I sometimes gripe about the last-minute events that require major scrambling to pull off, but we have a great volunteer corps and clear goals that are communicated weekly. Both voter registration and phone banking efforts are already underway and will ramp up considerably after the convention. And this is in tiny (as in population and # of electoral votes) New Mexico. I imagine the HRC campaign is devoting a lot more resources to the major states.

    We must – and will – win this election.

  92. 92.

    Denali

    @Satby,

    Good luck with the house hunting. In solidarity, we had a large oak fall in the bacy yard – luckily in the woods rather than on the house. Now I am looking up warily at all the other large oaks. The day was calm, sunny, No wind, no rain. But the trunk was rotten.

  93. 93.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    I agree that they didn’t stop him. I disagree that they “tried” to stop him. Mitt Romney stood next to him in 2012 and happily accepted his support. They’ve rewritten this narrative to narrow the window they had to “stop him”. They didn’t have 90 days at the end of the primary season- they had 4 years. They made him for 4 years and then they “tried to stop him” for 2 months. Ted Cruz was singing his praises. Chris Christie still is.

    I agree with Kay, but here’s the thing…

    HOW were they going to try and stop him?

    By saying that Donald Trump didn’t represent what the Republican Party stands for?

    Really?

    Seriously?

    They never had a POLICY disagreement with him.

    And, they were too concerned with NOT alienating his voters, which were NEVER a SLIVER of the GOP.

    They pretend that Trump isn’t right in the center of what the GOP is…and that’s false.

    THEIR voters voted for him, because he spoke their language.

    Period.

    Even if all the Non-Trump’s added up to 60%.
    That means that 40% of your party has no problem with him. …which is their problem.

    and, the other 60% don’t have a problem with Ferret Head’s POLICY positions…

    ONLY THE WAY HE EXPRESSES THEM.

    I’ve said it from the beginning, that that was their problem with him – his refusal to communicate in Frank Luntz-approved dogwhistles.

  94. 94.

    rikyrah

    @Patricia Kayden:

    I wonder the same thing. How is Trump a “successful businessman” when basically all he did was luck out in having a wealthy father from whom he inherited a fortune? If I had parents who left me millions of dollars, I probably would be as “successful” as Trump is. I would look at folks who weren’t born on third base with silver spoons in their mouths as more successful than Trump, i.e., our current President and President Clinton.

    Even with all of that, he’s still only ‘ successful’, because he knows how to play the bankruptcy game.

  95. 95.

    Bryan

    Late, OT? Don’t know if it’s true that kasich has the legal right to suspend a law — I heard that Fox News’ position is that he has the right and obligation to — but I don’t guess there’s anything special about the convention (unless maybe having the convention in town constitutes a crowd in the theatre you can’t yell fire in?) — the clown holding court with the media on Public Square yesterday with his AR-15 slung across his chest can strut around like that every other day of the year, and that’s just fine. It’s legal, it’s in the bill of rights, just exercising his 2nd amendment right, dontcha know. The right of the rest of us not to be intimidated in public places where we can be terrorized by jerks like that isn’t actually enshrined in law, so too bad, so sad.

    I get that the police have increased concerns over open carry this week, but it’s just a question of probable scale, isn’t it? This (open carry) is in the constitution, it’s law our elected representatives are content to let stand,it’s what we’ve got, now we see what we’ve done for/to ourselves. I am praying for peace, but if things go south, I’ll have a hard time dredging up a lot of sorry if the “just making a statement by exercising my constitutional right” gun toters are first to catch a round.

  96. 96.

    O. Felix Culpa

    Not sure if anyone has linked to this article before, but I thought it presents a good analysis of the difference in media treatment between Hillary and Trump.

    With Hillary, it’s all about her supposed “dishonesty,” “lies,” and “untrustworthiness.” For Donald, it’s “creativity with the truth.”

  97. 97.

    TheMightyTrowel

    @satby: i know the mayor of south Bend – mayor pete and i go way back. Age 22 he briefly and disastrously dated my housemate. That mess made much more sense when he came out a few years ago.

    If you do move there have confidence that the mayor is an east coast elite gay liberal Democrat (with terrible taste in girlfriends/beards).

  98. 98.

    satby

    @Denali: Yeah, that’s what took out the garage in Chicago at my son’s house. But that tree showed clear signs of being mostly dead, and the neighbors had been asked to cut it. It fell over on a clear, quiet, breezeless morning.

    My sugar maple looked healthy and lush and though there was significant rot, it was surrounded by healthy wood. Absent a microburst, it could have potentially lasted years.

    Glad yours did no harm. I really miss mine, the house gets lots hotter now. Thanks for the good wishes!

  101. 101.

    Chris

    @Patricia Kayden:

    As with almost everything else Trump related, though, my response is “they never cared before, why should they care now?” Nobody cared that George W. Bush had fucked up everything he touched before running for President. Nobody cared what kind of business Mitt Romney was running or what sort of impact it had on the community. Nobody cared that both of them had their careers handed to them on a silver platter by their birth, and that without their fathers we’d never have heard of them. (Nobody but Democrats, that is).

    Once again, one of the biggest obstacles for the NeverTrump crowd (whatever’s left of them) is that it’s made up of people who’ve spent decades singing the praises of people exactly like Donald Trump.

  102. 102.

    satby

    @Bryan: Open carry is not in the Constitution, that’s just an interpretation brought to us by the dead Scalia. An interpretation that overturned about 100 years of precedent, and that ALEC and the NRA ran with in pushing their agenda forward.
    Because public intimidation is what it’s all about, and always has been.

  105. 105.

    Brachiator

    I guess I should watch the convention coverage to see if Trump can come off as presidential, but I just don’t care. I look forward to a break from political news.

  106. 106.

    Kay

    @Bryan:

    I’ve come around to thinking culture has to change about guns, and I think it will. Some of this is fad-following: guns as a part of an image- like people who don’t just ride a motorcycle but wear full biker regalia. There were always “gun nuts” but they weren’t always this visible and celebrated. When wearing one as an accessory is no longer an expression of anything other than idiocy the mania will evaporate. Fads flip. They don’t last. Guns need to become uncool, like jokes about beating your wife became unfunny.

  107. 107.

    Dork

    @rikyrah: You’re assuming those Latinos will be allowed to vote. An assumption that is quite questionable, at least in most of the Southern states.

  108. 108.

    Bryan

    @satby:
    I should have been clearer; I believe open carry is in the Ohio constitution. I may be wrong; it’s hard to keep track. What it isn’t, in any case, is going away.

  109. 109.

    Kay

    @satby:

    Actually, Ohio (and a lot of states) have something called “home rule”. That’s also in many state constitutions. It’s a way for cities and towns to pass local measures that are tailor-made for a situation or set of circumstances. Cleveland could pass a restriction as an emergency measure and it would then be challenged in court and by that time the convention would be over.

    Conservatives in Ohio no longer believe in the legal concept because they want to preclude cities and townships from passing liberal policy- minimum wage, protections for gay people, raising taxes. They liked it when it was used for conservative ends, like keeping certain people out of certain places. It’s like their bullshit on “states rights”- purely political.

  110. 110.

    Chris

    @rikyrah:

    A lot of people have talked about how much Trump’s nomination means for the GOP.

    Me, I think what’s almost as revealing is that, while none of the other candidates were anywhere near in his ballpark, the one who did best against him wasn’t one of the “establishment” “moderates” (Bush, Rubio, Kasich), but rather Ted Cruz, i.e. the other far right candidate.

    There really is no such thing as a Republican faction that’s not far right anymore.

  111. 111.

    Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill

    @gvg:

    My theory is that streaming services like Netflix, Hulu and Prime are rapidly making ad buys less and less effective.

    Spending a bunch of money on ads that a larger and larger demographic isn’t even going to view could spell the death knell for Citizens United.

  112. 112.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Patricia Kayden:

    It’s frustrating. You would think that the fact that Trump ripped off folks and is in litigation over Trump University would waken people up to the fact that he’s a straight up fraud.

    The government wouldn’t feel compelled to have so many anti-fraud laws if so many people weren’t suspetable to it.

  113. 113.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill:

    Spending a bunch of money on ads that a larger and larger demographic isn’t even going to view could spell the death knell for Citizens United.

    Seems like that has come to pass. Citizens United has pretty much has specific demographics under it’s control. Though Trump has show there are other and cheaper ways to get to those people.

  114. 114.

    Kay

    @satby:

    If something bad happens in Cleveland there will be a concerted effort by conservatives to portray it as inevitable “that’s what the law says”. It’s bullshit. The law also says that states (and cities, depending on the state constitution) have BROAD police powers in certain circumstances. They have the power to respond to a set of circumstances and cable pundits don’t declare a prospective law invalid- courts do. They are choosing to do nothing because part of the GOP “brand” is people strutting around with AR-15s.

  115. 115.

    Emma

    @satby: I won’t say “enjoy!” because moving is such a PITA but I will say South Bend is not terrible. And as you say, a college town. Many cultural opportunities, IIRC, good symphony orchestra.

  116. 116.

    satby

    @Emma: For me, the best part will be a walkable area again. Right now I either have to go 22 times around my acre lot to make a single mile (BORING) or drive to a town or the beach. Just like going to a gym, which you tend not to do because inertia. So taking a walk will be huge, I need to exercise much more.

  119. 119.

    jonas

    @Princess: That article is epic. Here’s the best part: Trump stages a huge rollout party for The Art of the Deal emceed by Don King and featuring a bunch of other b-list celebrities. The next day…

    Trump informed Schwartz that, as his ghostwriter, he owed him for half the event’s cost, which was in the six figures. Schwartz was dumbfounded. “He wanted me to split the cost of entertaining his list of nine hundred second-rate celebrities?” Schwartz had, in fact, learned a few things from watching Trump. He drastically negotiated down the amount that he agreed to pay, to a few thousand dollars, and then wrote Trump a letter promising to write a check not to Trump but to a charity of Schwartz’s choosing. It was a page out of Trump’s playbook.

    Lol.

  120. 120.

    Glidwrith

    @Patricia Kayden: Success in business is always equated as qualifying for political office in Rethug circles and very often for Dems. Privatizing government functions is always better, since the free market will make things better, cheaper and faster.

    The constant refrain is that government should be run like a business.

  122. 122.

    negative 1

    @TheMightyTrowel: They like Democratic candidates, you know, in theory… at least until they run. How much you want to bet that if he were actually, you know, winning an election we’d get something like this to read. My personal favorite is how if you read closely there isn’t one single fact in those whole article to back up any of these assertions. That won’t stop the right-wing machine from quoting Even The Liberal NY Times!

    They like a horse race.

  123. 123.

    D58826

    @Kay:Couldn’t the Gov., if he wanted to, declare a limited state of emergency in Cleveland that would give the police the power to order guns off the street? Maybe 2-3 weeks ago that would have been unnecessary but after the past couple of weeks everyone is on edge. Better safe than sorry (unless somebody thinks violence will help the GOP at the polls).

  124. 124.

    ruemara

    @Kay: This is what NYC natives have been wondering about the rest of America since The Apprentice turned out to be a hit.

  125. 125.

    Kay

    @ruemara:

    This is unfair and doesn’t apply to you personally but NYC let us all down :)

    He should be a joke! They could have taken him apart 20 years ago. Saved a lot of time.

  126. 126.

    D58826

    @negative 1: The number of important people/institutions/etc that haven’t been hacked would probably fit in a small phone booth’. But since it’s Hillary facts aren’t important.

  129. 129.

    negative 1

    this is the best news I have heard in forever.

    One thing that will go a LONG way to improving police/community relations in this country is when municipalities stop using their police as defacto shakedown artists for the poor because their mayors/town execs are too chicken sh!t to raise taxes. Justice in this country was originally intended to only be needed when a citizen complained, not to create the complaints to enforce.

  130. 130.

    Kay

    @D58826:

    Sure. Cities can do all kinds of things. States can do even more than cities. That’s how they evacuate people prior to floods, deal preemptively to limit disease outbreak, impose curfews, etc. Conservatives don’t want to do anything to avoid disaster. They probably think “unrest” is good for Trump’s political prospects.

  131. 131.

    Glidwrith

    @Glidwrith:

    The constant refrain is that government should be run like a business.

    And to expand that thought, I find it terrifying. A business does not guarantee any rights: no due process, no freedom of speech, certainly no voting rights or privacy.

    And the reverse: government must be accessible to all, not just those that have money. If you are sick, injured, too old or too young, you potentially have no money to purchase government services because you are not working.

    A business defines itself by exclusion: you have no money or you are not a customer because you don’t buy their product. By definition, a business is not government, simply because it services only a small portion of the population.

    And in essence, this is what the Rethugs actually do: exclude everyone who does not have money and serve only the 1%.

  134. 134.

    Glidwrith

    @Kay:@ruemara: Ruemara! Hey, you called for a BJ meet-up in San Diego while visit. Any chase we can catch the attention of a front-pager and get it posted?

  136. 136.

    bemused

    @jonas:

    That was about the only event in the article that made me smile.

    Trump only cares about Trump and stomping on everyone else. Josh Marshall writes that Trump is all about dominance and humiliation. Then there is the story that Chris Christie is livid he wasn’t picked vp candidate and kept hanging till the last second. It’s already obvious that Pence is going to have to stand behind Trump and take Trump humiliating him up to the election. The closed-door meeting GOP Senate Republicans had with Trump was called filled with “friction”. Trump called Sen Kirk not in attendance a “loser”. Asked recently if maintaining a Senate majority meant anything anything to him he basically said that would be fine but he likes being a “free agent”.

    Whatever some in GOP cautiously say in public about Trump, there have to have to be a lot of them peeing their pants.

  137. 137.

    Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill

    @D58826:

    I can’t figure out why DOD, DOE and State are not using two separate systems – an intranet for classified stuff and physical separation of the systems.

  138. 138.

    Dmbeaster

    There is no doubt Trump is a straight up fraud, and proof of the adage that if you are going to kie successfully, lie big. Don the con.

    He has found a natural fit in politics because it is the one business in which fraud is legal.

  139. 139.

    EZSmirkzz

    Libtards may demand that all trucks in the US should be registered and operators should be compelled to be licensed and insured, but I’m here to tell you that you can have my truck when you pry the steering wheel from my cold dead fingers.

  140. 140.

    Shell

    I will be switching over to the local public radio station that offers BBC news on the hour

    Better yet, the all Beatles station.

    Tucker Carlson? Seriously, NPR?

  141. 141.

    bystander

    @Kay:

    Forget “Donald Trump as President”. Why was Donald Trump ever considered successful in anything? Why should anyone behave ethically or work hard or care about their reputation ? THIS is what’s rewarded? Christ. Why work hard at anything? It’s just a matter of fleecing the suckers and promoting your “brand”.

    As accurate, if depressing, an indictment of our media as anything I’ve read lately. The only thing I wonder is why “ethically” but not “publically”? I’d rather think about orthography than Trump.

    This morning Moanin’ Joe marveled at how damaging the “federal indictment” has been on Clinton’s campaign. Isn’t it still a lie even if it’s metaphoric?

  144. 144.

    Shell

    Yep. They continue to give him all this free media.

    Of course they do. Covering Hillary is dull, like being made to eat their vegetables. But when its Trump time, you can see those pundits all perk up, simley-smiley. Like kids dipping into the naughty candy, having fun and getting all hyper.

  148. 148.

    scav

    @Glidwrith: Don’t forget, businesses also sell off sub-units that are money losers or net drains on the budget Wonder what the market price for Mississippi or South Carolina would be?

  151. 151.

    Aleta

    I remember reading someone’s idea about how a psychopath operates in an organization. (To me these psych ideas are more like classification systems and developing models for putting a frame on part of the real thing one is trying to describe. But anyway.). It came to mind with Trump, Christie, why Pence, the whole trump menagerie. Trump identified Christie as a type he could manipulate to do certain things useful to his rise, and he’ll discard him if no longer useful. He’ needs Pence differently, as a shield he can use to protect himself against attacks. On his morality, marriages (so he can keep attacking Clinton on this ), on his unchristian behavior, and to ward off the continued distrust of some Christian leaders. He brings Ivanka out as a shield for his lack of humanity and ugliness, brings pretend Eric’s pretend competance out as diversion to ward off attention to his business practices or his charity.

  153. 153.

    Chris

    @Glidwrith:

    A business defines itself by exclusion

    This. Especially in the most basic sense that whenever letting someone go is seen as being in the best interest of the company, that person will be fired. Then he’s somebody else’s problem. A government can’t just “fire” its citizens: it’s responsible for all of them.

    Businesses run on models where the people who make it up are there to serve the business. Governments are, at least in theory, supposed to be the other way around. Calling for government to be run “like a business” is calling for a dictatorship.

  154. 154.

    Wapiti

    I think that in 2020, the two parties might not even consider open-carry states for the conventions.

  155. 155.

    scav

    @Chris: But, they’re really essentially happy with calls for dictatorship, especially if that means they can exclude “citizens” that they think are incompatible with the “brand” of the country: namely, blacks, muslims, uppity women, atheists . . . . At best, such types shouldn’t be able to freely have cupcakes for happy events, at worst, booted entirely from the borders, native-born or not. See also cops seemingly insisting on being able to decide which portions of the population they exist to serve, and certainly serve with anything resembling politeness or consideration, whereas other portions are more targets to be fined or only served grudgingly if they conform to the cops ideas of due deference (“No shirt, no shoes, no immediate obedience, no service, no cupcakes and no expectation of non-violence.”)

    ETA: Remember: It’s Their country.

  156. 156.

    Cat48

    Mrs. Greenspan said Hillary was going to campaign thru this week & probably pick her VP on Friday in Florida to step on Trump’s convention message, like McCain did to Obama.

  157. 157.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @Chris: When I taught at GMI, I used to remind my students that GM wasn’t in business to make cars. They were in business to make money. If they’d make more from not making cars, they’d do that.

    That is not the way to think about running a country.

  158. 158.

    Origuy

    @sm*t cl*de:

    I am training her to forage her own porcinis.

    If you can train her to hunt for truffles, you’ll have a gold mine on your hands.

  159. 159.

    dww44

    @Kay: I’m actually going to a start-up meeting for our Dem party in this red red state and I hope it’s gonna be a GOTV campaign. Registering likely Dem voters is the path forward to regaining some electoral viability at the local and state levels, in addition to helping insure that Hillary is elected in November.

    With the GOP, all their likely voters are already registered since their prime motivation is anger and they have that to spare.

  160. 160.

    hovercraft

    @Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill:
    State does have two systems, one for classified and one for regular. Part of her reason for saying she neither sent or received classified e-mails on her private server, was because someone would have had to willfully take an e-mail from the classified side and transmit it on the regular side, which would have obviously been intentional. The ‘classified’ information in e-mails was people discussing things like drones, not specific operations, but discussing the drones, whose existence at the time was classified even though the press was publishing articles about them, and there was stuff that was later determined to be classified, and mistakenly marked classified buried in the body of e-mails.
    Since it’s the Clintons’ the media and the gop have made it their mission to make the story as damaging as possible.

  161. 161.

    J R in WV

    @Luthe:

    We would set a place at the table for Rufus, a big white/red spots cat, who had better manners than many people. He would sit quietly and when one of us put a bit of something interesting on his “plate”, a small saucer, he would snarf it, and nibble it below table level on his chair.

    We visited folks once who set a place for their dog, and they would let him pick which cereal he wanted for Breakfast. Then he got regular DF kibble for lunch and dinner. Also very well mannered, small bites, no noise or drool.

  162. 162.

    J R in WV

    @satby:

    Lots of old car stuff in South Bend, I think Cord, Duesenberg and Studebaker were all built there.

    So museums and antique car shows abound.

  163. 163.

    Original Lee

    @Kay: I’m not entirely sure wife-beating jokes ever stopped being funny with a big chunk of the ammosexual crowd.

  164. 164.

    Aleta

    @Luthe: Had a dog who would go into the field, pull back her lips and eat one blueberry at a time off the (low) bush.

  165. 165.

    MomSense

    @Aleta:

    I walked my dog on a trail that had some wild blueberries and she was working so diligently to try to eat the little berries one at a time. I started picking them and feeding them to her. She was so excited that she was wagging her tail while sitting.

  166. 166.

    ruemara

    @Kay: He was! He’s been a joke, a buffoon and a punchline since I was a kid! We didn’t get why The Real ‘Murricans™ liked him.

  167. 167.

    Monala

    @Schlemazel Khan: Here’s what I don’t get: at least during the prior elections, they could play the ‘both sides” nonsense, with the knowledge that if anything bad happened, it probably wouldn’t affect them.

    They can’t do it now. Trump has already promised to put restrictions on journalists and made threats against them. Don’t they at least have enough self-interest to stand up to this man?!

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