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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

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Dear elected officials: Trump is temporary, dishonor is forever.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

He really is that stupid.

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

Donald Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

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

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

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Consistently wrong since 2002

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Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

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

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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Saturday Morning Cartoons Open Thread

Saturday Morning Cartoons Open Thread

by Anne Laurie|  July 23, 20165:39 am| 431 Comments

This post is in: Excellent Links, Open Threads, Republicans in Disarray!, Schadenfreude

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dear god pic.twitter.com/rAWEV5EpqJ

— Simon Maloy (@SimonMaloy) July 22, 2016

If Leni Riefenstahl were alive, Trump would hire her to film this speech. Then not pay her.

— Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) July 22, 2016

Tom Toles wins the prize, for imagining this scene a full week before the RNC assembled in Cleveland:

Tom Toles Editorial Cartoon

(Tom Toles via GoComics.com)

Hillary Clinton's job is to paint a sane, sober, serious, and positive contrast next week. She couldn't have an easier job.

— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) July 22, 2016

Plenty of targets for all, though…

trump family rex luckovich

(Mike Luckovich via GoComics.com)

trump great trump family repubs sheneman

(Drew Sheneman via GoComics.com)

trump elephant protests davies

(Matt Davies via GoComics.com)

trump uni-ted handelsman

(Walt Handelsman via GoComics.com)

trump buffalo trumpfeld deering

(John Deering via GoComics.com)

trump make apocalypse great ohman

(Jack Ohman via GoComics.com)

trump rnc dis unity anderson

(Nick Anderson via GoComics.com)

trump electrocutes gop luckovich

(Mike Luckovich via GoComics.com)
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Reader Interactions

431Comments

  1. 1.

    Kropadope

    July 23, 2016 at 5:46 am

    Hillary Clinton’s job is to paint a sane, sober, serious, and positive contrast next week. She couldn’t have an easier job.

    Someone has failed to account for the media’s thumb anchor on the scale.

  2. 2.

    David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch

    July 23, 2016 at 5:54 am

    The ratings were down. A complete stiff like Mittens go more viewers.

  3. 3.

    MattF

    July 23, 2016 at 5:56 am

    The Luckovich cartoon is an instant classic. Note the popcorn.

  4. 4.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 5:57 am

    Who’s that sexy thing I see over there? That’s Trump!
    Standing on the stage.
    What’s that shiny thing all around the set? That’s gold!
    Show him some respect, oh oh

  5. 5.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 5:58 am

    @David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch:

    Yep. Trump’s one attribute is that he draws eyeballs, and he failed.

  6. 6.

    David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch

    July 23, 2016 at 5:59 am

    If this cluster fuck of a convention had happened to the Democrats the media would be raking it over hot coals for 50 years. Just as they did over Chicago 68.

    But since it’s happened to the republicans, well shit…. IOKIYAR

  7. 7.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    July 23, 2016 at 6:02 am

    Someone emailed me 6-8 cartoons just after Labor Day 2008 all with the wrong hot take about the GOP’s rising new star, who was often depicted as quashing any momentum Obama had.

    First, I want a hall of regrets about the cartoons that people wish they could take back because they were so non-prescient. I don’t mean from people like that back Ramirez, but from middle-of-roaders. What is the most “totally missed tic editorial cartoon anyone’s seen about this week in Cleveland?

    Second, none of the above toons are going to be in the career “oops” pile. This convention was so bad even these people aren’t trying to handwave it..

  8. 8.

    David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch

    July 23, 2016 at 6:02 am

    Ana Navarro ‏@ananavarro

    Hispanic Outreach: @HillaryClinton has Spanish-speaking do-gooder who was a missionary in Honduras; Trump has Joe Arpaio…and a taco bowl.

    2,662 retweets 3,715 likes

    Ay caramba

  9. 9.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 6:06 am

    @David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch: So you’re saying it’s a toss up.

  10. 10.

    OzarkHillbilly

    July 23, 2016 at 6:07 am

    We regret to inform Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Chief Wana Dubie of Salem that if he wins his long-shot bid to take down Republican Sen. Roy Blunt in November he will be unable to hold his victory party where it should be — the old Del Taco, nee, the old Naugles on McCausland Avenue in Dogtown.

    The Mexican-food drive-thrus, home to many 3 a.m. alcohol- and substance-inspired grease runs, have faded into that long good night. In their place will be a burger and sandwich joint, er … haven, to be run by the team that operates the Sugarfire Smoke House group. Smoke, joint, Blunt, Del Taco, Chief Wana Dubie … is the haze clearing?

    Eat yer hearts out you sorry, sad sack, burlap bag of political pokemons.

  11. 11.

    JGabriel

    July 23, 2016 at 6:07 am

    Norman Ornstein:

    If Leni Riefenstahl were alive, Trump would hire her to film this speech. Then not pay her.

    When did Norm Ornstein start writing like … me?

  12. 12.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 6:09 am

    Good Booman post about Kaine.

  13. 13.

    David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch

    July 23, 2016 at 6:10 am

    @Baud: it’s all about the yard signs.

    Mein Fuhrer, we most NOT permit a yard sign cap

  14. 14.

    JGabriel

    July 23, 2016 at 6:12 am

    @MattF:

    The Luckovich cartoon is an instant classic.

    Seconded.

  15. 15.

    Waspuppet

    July 23, 2016 at 6:16 am

    @David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch: it goes without saying that the day after Election Day, the topic for our “liberal” media will be “Is Hillary overreaching?” (something never asked of Republicans, by the way; their “boldness ” and “energy” are always to be admired). The hot topic after that will be the young, bold, energetic new crop of Republican candidates for the 2018 midterms, and their bold new ideas for cutting taxes on rich people.

    By the time the confetti is swept up this November, Donald Trump will never have existed, and no one will ever have supported him. Watch it happen.

  16. 16.

    rikyrah

    July 23, 2016 at 6:18 am

    Good Morning ?, Everyone ?
    Off to swim ?and run errands. ?

  17. 17.

    OzarkHillbilly

    July 23, 2016 at 6:29 am

    Brexit is dead:

    The leaders of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have discussed the possibility of each of the devolved parliaments being given the right to vote on the terms of Brexit. During a “frank and robust” extraordinary summit of the British-Irish Council, leaders and ministers from the UK’s celtic nations vowed they would not be “done over” by Westminster as part of Brexit. Each made it clear they wanted direct involvement with the negotiations over the UK’s exit from the European Union.

    The meeting was called by the first minister of Wales, Carwyn Jones, who said it was crucial that the devolved administrations worked together to make sure they got the best Brexit deals. Jones set the tone in a press briefing after the summit held at the Temple of Peace and Health in Cardiff. Asked if he was in a more difficult position because the majority of people of Wales voted in favour of leaving the EU – while Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain – he replied bluntly: “The people of Wales voted to leave, they didn’t vote to be done over in any subsequent negotiations.”

    Jones said that since the referendum last month, David Cameron and Theresa May had promised that the whole of the UK would be involved in the negotiations. “That [promise] has to be made real,” he said. “We can’t be consultees. We have to be very much part of that negotiation. My view is that any future deal should be ratified by all four parliaments within the UK.”

    OK, not really, but if they hold to this, I don’t see how it will ever happen.

  18. 18.

    Hillary Rettig

    July 23, 2016 at 6:33 am

    here’s a fresh take on this week’s happenings in Ohio

    money quote: ““I think it catapulted into the public eye because of the freak show aspect of it,” Mr. Shaltz said. “People like to watch train wrecks.””

  19. 19.

    Tokyokie

    July 23, 2016 at 6:39 am

    I’m heartened when I remember that back in 1991, David Duke couldn’t poll 40% in the general election. Sure, that was 25 years ago, but it was Louisiana, fer crissakes. The bumper stickers read, “VOTE FOR THE CROOK, IT’S IMPORTANT,” and although Hillary may not be everybody’s cup of tea, she’s not nearly as distasteful as Edwards, while Trump is just as racist as Duke and, if anything, more personally detestable.

  20. 20.

    Robert Sneddon

    July 23, 2016 at 6:40 am

    @OzarkHillbilly: Re: Brexit.

    It’s going to happen. Parliament is supreme in national affairs. PM May knows the Parliamentary knife-sharpener has been working overtime since Pigfucker Dave bailed and she’s got to try and keep the Conservative Party from disintegrating so she’ll give the Little Englanders what they want. Hard.

    as for the

    a press briefing after the summit held at the Temple of Peace and Health in Cardiff.

    I used to work in the building next door — The Temple was originally built as a League of Nations facility in Cathays Park which is full of rather esoteric architecture (and dragons, too).

  21. 21.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 6:45 am

    @Tokyokie: Louisiana also just elected a Democratic governor over Vitter. The state is a step above Kansas in that respect.

  22. 22.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    July 23, 2016 at 6:48 am

    Good morning. I’m home after doing the Trifecta of Bad Traffic this week: Boston, Atlanta and Chicago. I think I’ll just not do any driving this weekend.
    Been out of touch because of travel. So it’s Kaine? Remind me daily. He’s likely to slip my mind. Should probably write his name down as a reminder.

  23. 23.

    Tokyokie

    July 23, 2016 at 6:51 am

    @Baud: And that was after losing a substantial portion of its black population with the Katrina diaspora.

  24. 24.

    Barb2

    July 23, 2016 at 6:51 am

    @Waspuppet:
    Trump the end

    By the time the confetti is swept up this November, Donald Trump will never have existed, and no one will ever have supported him. Watch it happen

    .

    I’m printing that out and putting it where I can see it when I wake up.

    Plus I’m emailing that to friends all over. Many people listen to the corporate media shills, and they are so afraid.

    I keep finding positive articles about African Americans and people of color who will hold the line. And then 75% of women voters, plus GOP women who will never tell anyone how they voted, but voted for HER. Educated men are mostly also with HER. I email all the uplifting articles and sentences to my list. My GOTV effort.

    Every little thing helps. Right?

    The quiet ones, the shy ones who listen and think, they’re the ones who are turned off by the grifter.

  25. 25.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    July 23, 2016 at 6:53 am

    @Baud: Agreed, good post.

  26. 26.

    amk

    July 23, 2016 at 6:53 am

    If only the msm was as honest as the tonnists.

    Great collection, AL. You should make this regular feature.

  27. 27.

    OzarkHillbilly

    July 23, 2016 at 6:53 am

    @Hillary Rettig: Heh, I liked: “Juggalo sober is like, you only had 10 beers, smoked some weed and did a little molly,” he said.

  28. 28.

    OzarkHillbilly

    July 23, 2016 at 6:57 am

    @Robert Sneddon: So you’re saying it’s the end of the United Kingdom? ;-) Seriously, what little I know of UK politics tells me only that this is going to be an epic melt down, the only question being which way the wax rolls.

  29. 29.

    Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill

    July 23, 2016 at 6:58 am

    I have a message for progressive purists:

    Show me on the doll where the TPP touched you.

  30. 30.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    July 23, 2016 at 6:59 am

    The moon* here in LaLaLand this morning.

    *There’s a rather large brush fire about 20 miles north of here which accounts for the reddish hue.

  31. 31.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 7:00 am

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Blood red. Nice.

  32. 32.

    OzarkHillbilly

    July 23, 2016 at 7:02 am

    @Barb2:

    The quiet ones, the shy ones who listen and think, they’re the ones who are turned off by the grifter.

    That is just soooo un-American.

  33. 33.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 7:06 am

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Just saw your eta. Not so nice, then.

  34. 34.

    bystander

    July 23, 2016 at 7:17 am

    @MattF: Just when I thought the week couldn’t have made me happier, there’s that Luckovich cartoon.

    One cherry bomb down the crapper after another at the RNC, plagiarism, nepotism, incestuous overtones, public humiliation, norovirus, and naked fearmongering. Tim Kaine’s nomination and Luckovich’s cartoon are just icing on the cake.

  35. 35.

    ThresherK

    July 23, 2016 at 7:18 am

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: I know California’s a yuuuge, classssy place, but at what point does this drought/wildfire combo seem to take on a never-ending life of its own, like the tire fire in The Simpsons?

    (OTOH Lately I haven’t heard anything about massive flooding in Houston/East Texas, so I guess those folks are getting a much-needed break.)

  36. 36.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    July 23, 2016 at 7:19 am

    @Baud: I saw the smoke plume from my kitchen and thought it was clouds until I took the girls out. Then I thought the local hills were on fire but checked the intertubes and it’s about 20 miles away in Santa Clarita.

    The picture was taken with my NX500 attached via an adapter to a Celestron telescope.

  37. 37.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    July 23, 2016 at 7:23 am

    @ThresherK: We always have fires this time of year, some years more than others. I grew up in the LA area and they’ve gotten much better at prevention(brush clearance, etc) and fighting fires once they get started. They got to this one early but it just took off(over 100 degrees and teen humidity).

  38. 38.

    ThresherK

    July 23, 2016 at 7:33 am

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: As a Yankee I won’t pretend to know from heat.
    But I do know my history of old resorts up in the White Mountains, outpacing what passed for water service and firefighting long about the turn of the last century. Huge-ass water tanks on the roof for when (not if) a fire started, and praying it didn’t get out of control, especially in the winter when there was snow everywhere but it wouldn’t help.

    In LA-land is there a fire dept equivalent of “the other side of the levee” where homeowners are basically on their own? Just curious, because there’s nothing one can do about it right now in midsummer.

  39. 39.

    OzarkHillbilly

    July 23, 2016 at 7:40 am

    Canada judge critiques system in sexual assault case: ‘No one asks to be raped’

    He also took on what he called unrealistic expectations around how a survivor should act. “For much of our history the ‘good’ rape victim, the ‘credible’ rape victim has been a dead one,” he wrote. “There are many misguided conceptions of what constitutes a ‘real’ rape or how a ‘real’ victim of sexual violence should behave (ie scream, struggle to the utmost and report immediately). No matter how sophisticated the law is, any allegation that derogates from the stereotype is likely to be approached with a degree of suspicion.”

    He added: “No other crime is looked upon with the degree of blameworthiness, suspicion, and doubt as a rape victim. Victim blaming is unfortunately common and is one of the most significant barriers to justice and offender accountability,” he said.

    …..

    Gray said she was taken aback by the judgment. “I think it’s massive, these statements,” she told reporters. She was quick to add, “It’s really sad that the legal system is doing what it is supposed to and we are all shocked.”

    The verdict did little to blunt the trauma of the past year and a half, she said. “But, I mean, these statements don’t un-rape me, first of all, and nor does it erase the process that I’ve had to go through.” She pointed to her experience of reporting the incident to police, which left her feeling as though she was to blame for what happened. “This process has been so brutal to me that I just cannot at this moment feel any sort of happiness. I will give you that the judgment is beautiful, and I will appreciate it one day, but not quite yet. I’m still not over the trauma of the system.”

  40. 40.

    bemused

    July 23, 2016 at 7:40 am

    Erick Erickson wrote that the Republican party is now the party of Cheeto Jesus Trump. “Instead of happy warriors, they are now angry, bitter bigots”. I thought since when were they “happy” warriors but then realized Erick is talking about Republicans who never thought there’d come a time when they would totally lose control of the rabid base they incited for decades.

  41. 41.

    ThresherK

    July 23, 2016 at 7:47 am

    Here’s an editorial cartoon bingo card.

    Some of the tags are for bad cartoons in general and some are distinctly for bad conserva-toons.

    But it’s missing : “Fetuses with halos”, “hairy-legged women”, “cowering unarmed whites” and “Communist menace a quarter century after winning the Cold War”.

  42. 42.

    amk

    July 23, 2016 at 7:50 am

    @bemused: The intertubes pundtwits like erick and the msm pundtwits like kristol, david whasshisname, that bow tie moron et. al. hate the deadbeat donnie because they are all afraid that their decades old wingnutz circuit grifting without doing any honest day’s work while raking in the moolah, is coming to an end.

  43. 43.

    ThresherK

    July 23, 2016 at 7:53 am

    @bemused: Isn’t Erick Sonoferic simply afraid of losing? I would like to think this fellow will have a Road to Damascus trip and care about the outcome for policy and people and posterity, but if he could talk himself into this looking like a winning gameplan*, I think he wouldn’t be writing the way he is.

    (*Note that almost half the country talked themselves into Sarah Palin being a winning gameplan.)

    ETA: Yes, AMK trumped (ha!) me on that–Erick may be as concerned about losing his grift as he is the election. Big omission on my part.

  44. 44.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    July 23, 2016 at 7:54 am

    @ThresherK: Homeowners in the hills are required to clear brush away from their properties, but that’s in the basin. This fire started along one of the freeways and has moved into the Angeles National Forest, so there’s not alot of brush clearance that can be done. Homeowners, even in the forest, are not “on their own”. Structure protection is the first priority for the fire fighters(LA County, CalFire, and the Forest Service).

  45. 45.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    July 23, 2016 at 7:56 am

    @amk: They’re also terrified that he’ll win and they’ll have to spend 48 months pretending he’s a competent President.

  46. 46.

    Kay

    July 23, 2016 at 7:58 am

    I sometimes listen to Right wing religious radio in the car when I’m driving around for work. Our “local” FM station is very popular- it’s listener supported with donations- some kind of local franchise of a national company.

    Anyway, they were doing a wrap up of the convention and a lot of the religious Righties calling in hate Trump and say he’s taken over the GOP and made it godless. The callers were like 90% women- one after another. They don’t believe he’s anti-abortion and they hate, hate, hate that he has multiple ex-wives. Several said his grown children didn’t talk about their mothers at the convention. Obviously they probably can’t talk about their mothers at the Trump Show with Melania sitting there, but these women thought that was hugely disrespectful- that they didn’t mention their mothers. They love Cruz – Cruz defending his wife from Trump was this huge contrast to how they believe Trump doesn’t respect his wives and the mothers of his grown children. Just amazing how different the take is in that world from “mainstream” objections to Trump and convention pundit commentary.

    I was thinking about it because I’m familiar with Trump’s father- I know a little about him- but does anyone ever mention Trump’s mother?

  47. 47.

    Big R

    July 23, 2016 at 8:00 am

    Hello from Western Poland, where I get to sit and twiddle my thumbs for an hour because one hand didn’t talk to the other. The conference check in system doesn’t open until 3, but the conference website claims that I can check in at 1. Political scientists are so well organized!

  48. 48.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    July 23, 2016 at 8:00 am

    @ThresherK:
    I see opposition as conservative pundits’ natural stance. They thrive when there’s an enemy in power and they can rage against Democrats. Pitching an infantile, impotent fit daily is cheap and easy. But if Trump won they would have to take responsibility for his disasters.

  49. 49.

    Tokyokie

    July 23, 2016 at 8:00 am

    @Ultraviolet Thunder: They didn’t seem to have that problem with Shrub.

  50. 50.

    Shalimar

    July 23, 2016 at 8:02 am

    You don’t hire a clownish wrestling heel to run the country. He might decide nuking Georgia would be an entertaining storyline.

  51. 51.

    Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill

    July 23, 2016 at 8:04 am

    @Kay:

    She died in ignominious shame, having been known to have fucked Fred Trump at least a couple of times, and doubly shamed by birthing and raising a shitstain come to life.

  52. 52.

    ThresherK

    July 23, 2016 at 8:04 am

    @Ultraviolet Thunder: “Take responsibility” for their disasters? Have you seen them?

    Seriously, you’re right. Throwing sand in the gears is an easy goal to aspire to if one doesn’t care about outcomes, and while the wingnut welfare office is still open. Le sigh.

  53. 53.

    amk

    July 23, 2016 at 8:04 am

    @Kay: Excellent. Religious nutsos were never taken in by the fake, wrong bible quoting deadbeat (despite the msm drooling over him) and I predicted ted bundy would have tickled their bones with his open defiance of the punk. Wonder if the kenyan, when taking the texan with him in AF1 for the cops memorial, did his famed mind-trick with ted bundy.

  54. 54.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    July 23, 2016 at 8:04 am

    @Kay:

    does anyone ever mention Trump’s mother?

    The only thing I’ve heard about Trump’s mother is that she was a Scottish immigrant.

  55. 55.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    July 23, 2016 at 8:06 am

    They didn’t seem to have that problem with Shrub.

    @Tokyokie:
    I’m assuming that the Trump disasters will be immediately and embarrassingly apparent. Shrub’s screwups took a while to become obvious. And GWB at least had the appearance of mainstream Republicanism. From day 1 of a Trump presidency the apologists of the right would have a lot to apologize for.

  56. 56.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    July 23, 2016 at 8:06 am

    Smoke plume at sunset.

  57. 57.

    OzarkHillbilly

    July 23, 2016 at 8:07 am

    @Kay:

    I sometimes listen to Right wing religious radio in the car when I’m driving around for work.

    I have known some self loathing people in my life, but Kay…. Really? You need help. ;-)

  58. 58.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    July 23, 2016 at 8:08 am

    @Ultraviolet Thunder: Shrub also had a political record from be Governor of Texas, Trump is a political virgin.

  59. 59.

    MattF

    July 23, 2016 at 8:08 am

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Blonde, one would guess.

  60. 60.

    amk

    July 23, 2016 at 8:10 am

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    political virgin zero.

  61. 61.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    July 23, 2016 at 8:10 am

    @amk:

    when taking the texan with him in AF1 for the cops memorial

    Why would Obama need to give Bush a ride to Dallas. Bush lives in Dallas.

  62. 62.

    amk

    July 23, 2016 at 8:11 am

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: I was talking about texan tailgunner.

  63. 63.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    July 23, 2016 at 8:12 am

    @amk: Ah, I see; my mistake.

  64. 64.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 8:14 am

    @Kay:

    I sometimes listen to Right wing religious radio in the car when I’m driving around for work.

    I used to do that for about a year, and then it got repetitive.

    They don’t believe he’s anti-abortion and they hate, hate, hate that he has multiple ex-wives.

    If only there were a candidate in the race who stayed true to her marriage through thick and thin.

  65. 65.

    Mai.naem.mobile

    July 23, 2016 at 8:14 am

    If the Clinton campaign want to have a little fun they should be playing ,”You’re the One That I Want” from Grease in the background before Kaine comes out,as opposed to the Stones song Trump’s was playing.

  66. 66.

    Kay

    July 23, 2016 at 8:17 am

    @amk:

    It’s funny, because I completely get what they’re saying. I have grown children and any kind of public event where they speak- graduations, weddings, etc. “my parents” are a matched set- they simply do not “honor” my husband without mentioning me. It WOULD be a big omission and I would be hurt by it. My son’s wife’s parents are divorced but both of them were at their wedding and when my son’s wife did the “honor the parents” toast she spent more than half of it on how she admires her mother. I see what they’re saying. Obviously political conventions are a different thing but they’re putting it in a frame they’re familiar with.

  67. 67.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    July 23, 2016 at 8:18 am

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: TheGuardian:

    The one area where father and son never seem to have competed was over the sexual love of a woman, or more specifically over the love of Mary Trump, Fred’s wife and Donald’s mother. Mary Trump actually seems to have been at best a marginal figure in the Trump family altogether, rarely meriting much time in any of the articles about Trump over the years. Instead, business was father-and-son’s Jocasta.

    “Jocasta”?!?!

    Oedipus much, Ms. Dean?

    Sheesh.

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    (Ivanka, also too???)

  68. 68.

    debbie

    July 23, 2016 at 8:20 am

    @bemused:

    “Happy warrior” is a reference to Reagan.

    That top photograph is the first I’ve seen of the stage. If that visual doesn’t sum up Trump’s campaign, I don’t know what does.

  69. 69.

    The Thin Black Duke

    July 23, 2016 at 8:21 am

    Good morning, everybody. Here’s a pissed-off Jon Stewart taking Donald Trump to the woodshed.

  70. 70.

    Big R

    July 23, 2016 at 8:21 am

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Question: how do you transition from “sexual love of a woman” to “more specifically,” Trump’s mother? Is that a really sly way of trying to suggest the Trump hath done his mother, a la Aaron the Moor from Titus Andronicus?

  71. 71.

    Chyron HR

    July 23, 2016 at 8:22 am

    @Kay:

    does anyone ever mention Trump’s mother?

    My theory is that Trump was extruded directly from a Shuggoth.

  72. 72.

    amk

    July 23, 2016 at 8:24 am

    @Kay: Isn’t ‘Hi, Mom’ when you are on teevee as amurkan tradition as apple pie? I can understand why they are pissed off at the trumplets and pray that they stay mad.

  73. 73.

    MattF

    July 23, 2016 at 8:24 am

    @debbie: And Reagan stole it from Hubert Humphrey.

  74. 74.

    debbie

    July 23, 2016 at 8:25 am

    @The Thin Black Duke:

    Yep, he’s still got it.

  75. 75.

    Kay

    July 23, 2016 at 8:28 am

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:

    Mary Trump actually seems to have been at best a marginal figure in the Trump family altogether

    Jeez, that’s a sad sentence. You would hope the one place she wouldn’t be “marginal” is in the family she helped create. She obviously wasn’t producing enough revenue- didn’t come up with any branding opportunities?

  76. 76.

    amk

    July 23, 2016 at 8:28 am

    @The Thin Black Duke: It was more of a takedown of sean klannity. As usual, stewart missed the forest for trees.

  77. 77.

    ThresherK

    July 23, 2016 at 8:28 am

    @MattF: What about Al Smith?

  78. 78.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    July 23, 2016 at 8:30 am

    @Big R: It’s a very strange construction, if you ask me.

    It’s as if she’s trying to insinuate that Donnie’s a MFer, “but not actually, you know, an actual MFer”. Kinda like how Donnie said he’d be “dating” Ivanka if she weren’t actually his daughter. “What kind of monster to you think I am? I’m not an actual DFer, I just think that it’s obvious that I’d be ‘dating’ her if I weren’t her father.”

    The thought processes that Donnie seems to engender are a bit, er, disturbing.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  79. 79.

    Aimai

    July 23, 2016 at 8:31 am

    @debbie: the original happy warrior was hubert humphrey, i think.

  80. 80.

    Matt McIrvin

    July 23, 2016 at 8:32 am

    @Tokyokie: I remember thinking that when the Republicans controlled all three branches of government, they were still pretending they were an opposition party running against “government”.

  81. 81.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    July 23, 2016 at 8:32 am

    Trump has lost Barbara Bush. Note: autoplay video, but short.
    That’s pretty damning.

  82. 82.

    Kay

    July 23, 2016 at 8:34 am

    @Chyron HR:

    And we have a comparison. Two. Clinton and Obama. Their mothers were huge to them. Obama’s grandmother too, so it isn’t a female candidate thing. Mary Trump just …disappeared.

  83. 83.

    Matt McIrvin

    July 23, 2016 at 8:34 am

    @Big R: That would never happen. Donald Trump’s mother was older than him.

  84. 84.

    debbie

    July 23, 2016 at 8:39 am

    @MattF:
    @Aimai:

    I did not know this, but leave it to a GOOPER to filch even that.

  85. 85.

    Princess

    July 23, 2016 at 8:40 am

    This is a really good, long autobiographic interview with Tim Kaine:

    senator-tim-kaine-discusses-life-career

  86. 86.

    hueyplong

    July 23, 2016 at 8:44 am

    It could at least be argued that HHH stole “Happy Warrior” from Roosevelt’s description of Al Smith at a Dem convention in the 1920s. Assuming, of course, that we insist on taking chronological order seriously (unlike the GOP and their takes on Obama).

  87. 87.

    ThresherK

    July 23, 2016 at 8:46 am

    Hey, it’s not even 9am and I’m already thinking of making sangria! Gotta get my fruit somehow.

  88. 88.

    Betty Cracker

    July 23, 2016 at 8:47 am

    So glad I got to see Hillary Clinton speak last night — she connects really well in person, IMO, even at a rally with thousands of people. I attended the event with my newly registered to vote 18-year-old daughter plus another freshly minted adult, both of whom are also fired up about electing the first woman for president.

  89. 89.

    Kay

    July 23, 2016 at 8:48 am

    @Baud:

    I listen to it around elections partly because I feel they snuck up on me in 2004 in really an unfair way :)

    I didn’t know how much they loved Bush. They adored him. Some of them tried to say they had the same fervor for Palin but it wasn’t the same. The truth is religious Righties here wouldn’t respect Palin because her kids were out of control. They would say she wasn’t supervising them because she wasn’t home enough. The biggest compliment they give women is their children are “well raised”- they mean obedient.

  90. 90.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 8:48 am

    @Betty Cracker: I’ve heard that about Clinton. Doesn’t come off as well on TV but really good in person.

  91. 91.

    bemused

    July 23, 2016 at 8:49 am

    @ThresherK:

    It was all fine and dandy for the “happy” warriors when the rabble would still fight for them believing their promises that the grift and power would trickle down. Pretty good deal for the “happy” warriors, throw the rabble a few coins while they collected 98% of the spoils and let the rabble humiliate the enemies, break a few legs now and then. The rabble isn’t getting what they were led to expect, a much bigger share of the spoils and extreme punishment and annihilation of enemies. The “happy” warriors were too cocky and dumb not to see the rabble revolt coming.

  92. 92.

    Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill

    July 23, 2016 at 8:50 am

    Curious thing about that wikileaks hack on the DNC (and release of a single email from a low grade staffer on Sanders’ atheism) – has anybody ever noticed any wikihacks on Russian government or business interests?

    We now have a quadruple bankrupted businessman who is heavily leveraged on a personal level on Russian credit, a right hand man as his advisor being directly connected to Putin, another high level campaign operative deeply involved with Gazprom dealings inside Russia. The candidate has stated admiration for Putin, and has nakedly telegraphed a willingness to toss NATO obligations aside (regardless of whether bringing the Baltics in was a good idea initially, but now that they’re in, they’re in).

    And now this leak.

  93. 93.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 8:51 am

    @Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill:

    has anybody ever noticed any wikihacks on Russian government or business interests?

    Was Panama Papers wikileaks? That implicated the Russians.

  94. 94.

    MattF

    July 23, 2016 at 8:53 am

    @Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill: Six bankruptcies, actually. A ’66’-er (i.e., six times 11).

  95. 95.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 8:54 am

    @Kay: My guess is that they also have a bias to father figures.

  96. 96.

    amk

    July 23, 2016 at 8:57 am

    @Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill: wikileaks has worn out its shiny object factor long time back. just like everything else, only deadenders cling to it. wonder what happened to the much bellowed about guardian’s ‘collaboration’ with snowdensky.

  97. 97.

    SiubhanDuinne

    July 23, 2016 at 8:58 am

    @Aimai:

    Originally from an 1806 poem by William Wordsworth.

  98. 98.

    Barb2

    July 23, 2016 at 9:00 am

    The opposition is at it – Hillary’s VP choice.

    Is this anything that can impact negatively? Need we spend a moment worrying?

    Just asking. Each state has different rules about gifts. I’m sure super cautious Hillary factored this news into her vhoice.

    Geraldine Ferro (she was the VP candidate last century) was questioned about her husband’s business. Every single reporter asked the exact same question, so that they could show their audience whatever. I really lost respect for TV news reporters. The media can turn this into a circus.

  99. 99.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    July 23, 2016 at 9:02 am

    ObOpenThread. For the A-10 fans:

    As the Air Force prepares to start sunsetting the beloved A-10 in fiscal year 2018, the service is still deciding on a path ahead for CAS. During a July 20 meeting, U.S. Air Force officials briefed outside stakeholders on the most recent thinking, detailing the possibility of pursuing two separate light-attack aircraft, potentially in parallel, to meet immediate and long-term needs.

    The service officials detailed a possible “OA-X” for solely permissive environments, according to Mark Gunzinger, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. OA-X would be a low-end, low-cost, non-developmental aircraft meant to augment the Air Force’s existing light attack capabilities, he said.

    For OA-X, the officials said the Air Force would likely look to an existing airframe, such as the A-29 Super Tucano or the AT-6 trainer, for use in a low-threat battlespace, said Loren Thompson, an analyst with the Lexington Institute.

    The Air Force does not see OA-X as a replacement for the A-10, but rather as a supplemental capability, Gunzinger stressed.

    Simultaneously, the service is also looking into an “A-X2” as a long-term Warthog replacement, the analysts said. Ideally, A-X2 would be designed to operate in a moderate- to low-threat regime, meaning that it could fight in some contested conditions. The service officials left the door open as to whether A-X2 would be an existing airframe or an entirely new aircraft, but noted that affordability and speed to ramp would be critical.

    The A-10 has lots of fans among the grunts and bootonaground, but it’s old and vulnerable to small missiles. It’s good that they’re thinking about replacements, but note that it’s still going to need mostly “permissive environments” – i.e. the replacement will still be vulnerable to missiles.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  100. 100.

    Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill

    July 23, 2016 at 9:03 am

    @Barb2:

    Washington Post clickcrack has a self limiting factor – the absurdly low number of free articles before you hit the paywall. In other words, I can’t read most of their content, which is great for my cardiac health.

  101. 101.

    Tokyokie

    July 23, 2016 at 9:06 am

    @Ultraviolet Thunder: My fear is that they will deny reality rather than admit error, and the widespread tendency for these folks to ignore Trump’s obvious psychological pathologies (narcissistic personality disorder, pathological lying and other sociopathic tendencies) is not an encouraging sign.

  102. 102.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 9:07 am

    For all of the progressives pissing and moaning that they didn’t get their pink unicorn for VP, just two words – Trump/Scalia. Sit out the election in a snit and President Trump puts 4-5 Scalia mini-mes on the Supreme Court. The progressive movement will then have 30 years to write impassioned articles on Salon about how Hillary betrayed America.

  103. 103.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    July 23, 2016 at 9:10 am

    @Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill: “Private Browsing” gets one around most of the “N clicks per month” limits. (Doesn’t work at the FT and a few other places, though.) But not having a coronary is a good thing. ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  104. 104.

    Schlemazel Khan

    July 23, 2016 at 9:10 am

    @ThresherK:
    The Onion (America’s Finest News Source) runs political cartoons almost every week and you could just about fill that entire bingo card with any one of them.

  105. 105.

    gogol's wife

    July 23, 2016 at 9:11 am

    Mother of mercy, now I can see that gif of Christie. WTF?

  106. 106.

    gogol's wife

    July 23, 2016 at 9:12 am

    @Betty Cracker:

    It was a great speech.

  107. 107.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 9:12 am

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:

    OA-X would be a low-end, low-cost, non-developmental aircraft meant to augment the Air Force’s existing light attack capabilities, he said.

    Last time the pentagon did that was in 1910.

  108. 108.

    Immanentize

    July 23, 2016 at 9:12 am

    Hi all! Somehow I got trapped in last night’s late thread where I discovered it was PokeTroll Go! day at Baloon Juice. I guess I missed the email.warning.

    Why does Troll day always fall on my birthday?

    In any case, hot as hades again in Boston. I am.barely keeping my garden alive and I already let the grass go to grass heaven.

  109. 109.

    MattF

    July 23, 2016 at 9:13 am

    @D58826: Not to mention that Kaine is actually quite the liberal. And a liberal who managed to get elected repeatedly in a purple state. The only serious hit on him that I can see is that he was wrong about Iraq– which is why I’d like to see more emphasis on debunking of Trump’s claim to have been against the Iraq war.

  110. 110.

    Matt McIrvin

    July 23, 2016 at 9:15 am

    @Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill: Meanwhile, the Wikileakers are getting incensed over the infringement of Milo Yiannopoulos’s right to lead racist harassment campaigns on Twitter.

    As I said elsewhere, I’m beginning to see the form of the nexus where purity progressivism cycles around to Trumpism (this year’s version, at least). It’s a blinding white miasma populated by techno-anarchists and Gamergate trolls, maybe with Vladimir Putin lurking somewhere off in the distance.

    And it’s slightly unfamiliar because it’s the result of a piece of the 2006-08 progressive coalition breaking away. Because of the many crimes of George W. Bush, we got a bunch of guys whose inclinations were mostly libertarian or even Buchananite paleocon, but who were isolationist/antiwar. A bunch already broke away in 2012 over the NSA, drones, etc. Hillary Clinton is definitely a bridge too far for them–they hate everything about her with a volcanic passion, and can probably be easily convinced that Donald Trump is more of a peace candidate, especially if they believe everything they read in RT. Among them, there are also many truly awful people. Their absolute numbers are probably not very large and most don’t live in swing states. But they can be troublemakers.

    The other side of the coin is that I think a bunch of people with neocon inclinations are going to end up voting for Clinton. Among them, there are also many truly awful people, though in a different way. I welcome their votes though I reserve the right not to like the situation very much.

  111. 111.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 9:17 am

    @gogol’s wife: Imagine the reaction if Obama had done something like that. Or if Michelle had a past life as a semi-nude model. Or if The Obama’s had an adult daughter who palled around with Paris Hilton. Funny how flexible the family values/moral majority Gopers can be when they need to be.

  112. 112.

    Schlemazel Khan

    July 23, 2016 at 9:18 am

    @Ultraviolet Thunder:
    You mean like they take responsibility for Ws disasters? To quote the great philosopher Homer (Simpson) “There will be no coumeuppance! no . . . comeuppance!”

  113. 113.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 9:19 am

    @MattF: If every one who was wrong on Iraq was drummed out of public life you could fit the survivors in Trump’s helicopter

  114. 114.

    Tokyokie

    July 23, 2016 at 9:19 am

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: The United States has never had a president who previously did not serve as a vice president, senator, member of Congress, governor, Cabinet secretary, or military flag officer. Trump would be the first. His primary qualification is his perceived business savvy, but he refuses to release his tax returns so that issue can be more closely examined.

    And his supporters consider that to be a virtue rather than a fundamental disqualification.

  115. 115.

    OzarkHillbilly

    July 23, 2016 at 9:23 am

    @gogol’s wife: I needed 350 gals of brain bleach after that. I will get even with you Betty.

  116. 116.

    MattF

    July 23, 2016 at 9:25 am

    And, btw, looks like Munich gunman was RW terrorism. Story will now disappear.

  117. 117.

    aimai

    July 23, 2016 at 9:25 am

    @Matt McIrvin: This is a very, very, good analysis.

    I also came back to say that the kinds of people who don’t really understand or respect politics as a vocation–the task of governance, the duties of people running things to actually make them run and protect people–are the most upset that Hillary didn’t pick the VP candidate that, in their minds, makes up for her having won the primary over Bernie. Sometimes they pretend that they need to see “balance” on the ticket for the minorities who are supposedly left out when the ticket doesn’t look exactly like them, sometimes they pretend that those minorities need it or they won’t get out and vote, but either way they think that the sole task of the VP is to show people stuff for a few months. They really don’t get that Hillary (and Obama too) looked on it as a job, the understudy to the big job, and a job in which the person had to have a track record and be able to function.

    I was not for Warren because her appointment to VP produced many problems for the important work she was doing in the Senate. I also didn’t need anyone showing me progressive bona fides since I am happy with Hillary. I didn’t think Perez was a good choice–it was a disservice to him and to Hispanic voters. The right thing to do is to create a new eight year administration, Senate, Supreme Court and Congress that looks more like the country as a whole, in which we have a deeper minority bench from which to pick VP and P in eight years. The administration itself and posts like Labor Secretary can be springboards into politics for people like Perez and the hundreds of other women and POC who served under Obama. I assume that Hillary, with her focus on retaking the country from the ground up, would be promoting those people into politics at the local level so that when the next general election comes around we have even more people ready to step into these slots.

  118. 118.

    Cat48

    July 23, 2016 at 9:25 am

    @Barb2:

    Very original GOTV. I could do that. It’s hard for me to do cold calls. My favorite thing to do is voter registration & Election Day rides to polls. I would never make it in sales.

  119. 119.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 9:26 am

    @MattF: I thought the news said he was of Iranian descent. That doesn’t preclude him from being right wing, of course, but it’s unusual.

  120. 120.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    July 23, 2016 at 9:26 am

    @D58826: Strike “Penatagon” and replace it with “Air Force” and I’d co-sign. ;-)

    E.g. PT Boats.

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    (Who recognizes that was a long time ago.)

  121. 121.

    aimai

    July 23, 2016 at 9:29 am

    The other side of the coin is that I think a bunch of people with neocon inclinations are going to end up voting for Clinton. Among them, there are also many truly awful people, though in a different way. I welcome their votes though I reserve the right not to like the situation very much.

    I will take their votes in a heartbeat. I think it has many potentially good knock on effects–speaking as someone whose sister in law voted for Obama, finally, after Bush and I don’t think she went back to Romney and I’m damned sure she is not going back to Trump. Breaking the lock of Republicanism on the minds of women/national security/military types is enormously valuable long term. The threshold between “I never would vote for a Democrat” and “just this once” is scary but once its done you, and your children, are not the same yellow dog Republicans that you thought you were.

    At least those Republicans voting for Hillary aren’t going to demand that she cater to their every whim, unlike the Bernie Bros/Randians/MRAs. They are more likely to vote in secret and keep the secret.

  122. 122.

    Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill

    July 23, 2016 at 9:29 am

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I really wish we can drop the whole “neocon” tag. There will ALWAYS be a tug of war over military interventions, some of which will be necessary for the maintenance of a broader peace, regional security or civil rights for oppressed minorities.

    There were definite cases to be made for intervention in Afghanistan, Syria and Libya, the details being bedeviled by questions of degree and contributions by coalition members.

    And I daresay that given what was being presented about Iraq, it was easy to see why that clusterfuck had 77 yes votes in the Senate.

    Full disclosure – I never saw it as “Bush lied, people died”. I saw it as “poor intelligence with inadequate human sources, poorly analyzed”, combined with a dictator who acted like he did have weapons of mass destruction but was likely hoodwinked by his own corrupted military establishment which robbed the country blind in creating a phantom resource.

  123. 123.

    MattF

    July 23, 2016 at 9:31 am

    @Baud: Haven’t seen that… but note that ‘Iranian’ is emphatically not Arab, and no friend of Sunni radicalism.

  124. 124.

    Schlemazel Khan

    July 23, 2016 at 9:31 am

    @Baud:
    As a teen I read about written by the guy who built a physiological profile of Hitler for the US after the war in Europe started. He spent a lot of time examining how Hitler was ‘father-centered’ (my term ,not his) and his difficult emotions over his mother. Noted was that he called Germany the “Fatherland” and Austria, whom he hated, “Motherland”.

    I wrote a lot of it off to early 20th Century Freudian analysis but that ‘strong daddy – missing mommy’ theme seems to run strongly though a lot of authoritarian thinking. Maybe the GOP in general and Drumpf in particular exhibit that same problem.

  125. 125.

    Matt McIrvin

    July 23, 2016 at 9:32 am

    @aimai: Personally, I would have liked Clinton to pick a non-white or female or non-white female running mate, just to jam that particular knife in further. But, maybe because I follow Virginia politics a little because I’m from there, I think Kaine is a perfectly OK Democrat and the characterization of him as a Lieberman-esque traitor to the cause is weird.

  126. 126.

    OzarkHillbilly

    July 23, 2016 at 9:33 am

    @Baud: So said the Guardian.

  127. 127.

    MattF

    July 23, 2016 at 9:33 am

    @Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill: Agree very much with your last sentence. Now that I think of it, that was the starting point for my own conclusion that there were never any WMDs.

  128. 128.

    aimai

    July 23, 2016 at 9:34 am

    @MattF: Maybe its this guy?

  129. 129.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 9:34 am

    @aimai: I’ll say this. I don’t like that we collectively seem want the Democratic Party to be less hawkish, but then are deathly afraid that a terrorist attack will drive Americans into the hands of Republicans. National security will always be an important, and if we don’t have a vision to sell voters on that score, then it’s unreasonable to expect elected officials to not be cautious in rocking the national security boat.

  130. 130.

    The Gray Adder

    July 23, 2016 at 9:35 am

    @David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch: Why would anyone inflict an hour and a half of Trump’s rantings without having been tied down first? Like Lewis Black said, it took less time to find Dory.

  131. 131.

    Kay

    July 23, 2016 at 9:36 am

    The clown these people think should be President is talking. Again.

    Pocahontas wanted V.P. slot so badly but wasn’t chosen because she has done nothing in the Senate. Also, Crooked Hillary hates her!

    Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States. Can you imagine?

    One of my sisters has kind of a serious job in state government. She’s not that high up or anything, but it’s her career and she is probably good at it. She really, really resents media and Republicans making this out to be a joke. She says they CAN do that, because people like her go to work every day and handle shit. She’s plugging away which is why the government-services thing works quietly in the background. She feels they take it for granted that all these institutions operate and don’t credit that they are managed by competent people. It’s all fun and games until it isn’t there.

  132. 132.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 9:37 am

    from Huffinmhgton

    The selection of Kaine, a well-liked moderate in the Senate, is likely to be seen as a sign by many on the left that Clinton is less concerned about maintaining intensity among the army of liberals who backed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and more concerned about the electoral map when her opponent is Donald Trump

    Gee you think the electoral map might just be a bit more important than liberal intensity? If ‘old little hand’s’ can’t get liberals out to vote, with or without the intensity, then they don’t deserve to call them selves liberal/progressive.
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-tim-kaine-vice-president_us_577ec219e4b0c590f7e8a3e9

  133. 133.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 9:39 am

    @Kay: I feel the same way as your sister. The country is afflicted right now with a lot of people who want to free ride on the hard work of others. And contrary to the GOP’s view, it’s not the people on public assistance who are doing it.

  134. 134.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 9:41 am

    @D58826:

    Gee you think the electoral map might just be a bit more important than liberal intensity?

    Yeah, that was my first thought with Kaine. He’s probably a better choice in a bulk of the swing states than the alternatives.

  135. 135.

    Matt McIrvin

    July 23, 2016 at 9:41 am

    @Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill:

    And I daresay that given what was being presented about Iraq, it was easy to see why that clusterfuck had 77 yes votes in the Senate.

    Full disclosure – I never saw it as “Bush lied, people died”. I saw it as “poor intelligence with inadequate human sources, poorly analyzed”, combined with a dictator who acted like he did have weapons of mass destruction but was likely hoodwinked by his own corrupted military establishment which robbed the country blind in creating a phantom resource.

    And yet the people who are right about this all along can say “I’m no expert and I could see that that son of a bitch was obviously lying from square one. Why didn’t you?”

  136. 136.

    aimai

    July 23, 2016 at 9:41 am

    @Matt McIrvin: I don’t see why she needs to “jam the knife in a little further.” This kind of thinking gets us nowhere as a country. She is already, in the minds of many Republicans, the greatest monster who ever lived. She has already said she is planning on appointing more women to top positions than have ever–ever–been appointed before. She is campaigning with the mothers of the people killed by police violence, she is seen on stage with, and promoting the causes of, women, POC, LGBTQ people in every moment of the campaign. The idea that she needs to prove herself to anyone as a progressive, or that she needs to make up for some deficit as a candidate with the left/POC (who, by the way, have been supporting Democrats since the 1960’s without complaining as much as the Bernie Bros do about having to support them through the god damned primary) is just wrong. As wrong as demanding of Obama that he dot is and cross ts before he can be respected as the nominee and future President.

    She wants to win and win big. She can only do that by working hard with the base (which she is doing), doing GOTV, and depressing the level of fear and anxiety in the righ tside of the aisle. Dperessing their anxiety (also known as presenting a reassuring face to them) is as important to her campaign as turning out the base. If she does so successfully with Kaine then people like my republican sister in law either stay home (and therefore don’t vote down ticket) or come out and vote for Hillary. Either is a win for our side.

    But I don’t find it at all odd that some people are treating Kaine as though he were Lieberman. The amount of randomized, ambient, sheer rage that the progressive/stein/nader feel that Democrats ever lose midterms or against the DNC or the Clintons for the DLC is just abyssal. Its the marianas trench out there. People who don’t know anything about the guy feel free to spout the most outrageous, counterfactual, shit. they are all getting it from the same anti democratic sites/trolling sites but because they think their intentions are pure they don’t think that matters.

  137. 137.

    Immanentize

    July 23, 2016 at 9:42 am

    @D58826: Imagime if Obama had children from three separate relationships — even if all of them were from a marriage between a man and a woman.

  138. 138.

    aimai

    July 23, 2016 at 9:42 am

    @Matt McIrvin: I don’t see why she needs to “jam the knife in a little further.” This kind of thinking gets us nowhere as a country. She is already, in the minds of many Republicans, the greatest monster who ever lived. She has already said she is planning on appointing more women to top positions than have ever–ever–been appointed before. She is campaigning with the mothers of the people killed by police violence, she is seen on stage with, and promoting the causes of, women, POC, LGBTQ people in every moment of the campaign. The idea that she needs to prove herself to anyone as a progressive, or that she needs to make up for some deficit as a candidate with the left/POC (who, by the way, have been supporting Democrats since the 1960’s without complaining as much as the Bernie Bros do about having to support them through the god damned primary) is just wrong. As wrong as demanding of Obama that he dot is and cross ts before he can be respected as the nominee and future President.

    She wants to win and win big. She can only do that by working hard with the base (which she is doing), doing GOTV, and depressing the level of fear and anxiety in the righ tside of the aisle. Dperessing their anxiety (also known as presenting a reassuring face to them) is as important to her campaign as turning out the base. If she does so successfully with Kaine then people like my republican sister in law either stay home (and therefore don’t vote down ticket) or come out and vote for Hillary. Either is a win for our side.

    But I don’t find it at all odd that some people are treating Kaine as though he were Lieberman. The amount of randomized, sheer rage that the progressive/stein/nader feel that Democrats ever lose midterms or against the DNC or the Clintons for the DLC is just abyssal. Its the marianas trench out there. People who don’t know anything about the guy feel free to spout the most outrageous, counterfactual, shit. they are all getting it from the same anti democratic sites/trolling sites but because they think their intentions are pure they don’t think that matters.

    ReplyReply
    Click to EditRequest Deletion (4 minutes and 30 seconds)

  139. 139.

    Schlemazel Khan

    July 23, 2016 at 9:43 am

    @Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill:
    The evidence is not on your side. There is a great deal of evidence that Boy Blunder and his super friends ignored all the intel disproving their desired outcome, that they pressured CIA/DIA and others to provide trumped up threat warnings. There was ample evidence at the time, much of it published in reliable sources and publicly available that Iraq was not a threat of any kind. Bush very clearly lied and if you read the recent report out of the UK also got Blair to lie. The people who voted for that war either were intentionally stupid or spineless dicks who felt voting against it might cost them votes so who cared if a bunch of Iraqis died in our invasion, it will all be over in a few weeks anyway.

  140. 140.

    LanceThruster

    July 23, 2016 at 9:43 am

    The DNC and HRC go into their convention on the heels of the WikiLeaks revelations. Whether they ignore it or try to spin it, the damage is done. They are rotten to the core. They won’t be able to unite shit.

    “Strongarmed Forever”

  141. 141.

    OzarkHillbilly

    July 23, 2016 at 9:44 am

    @Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill:

    There were definite cases to be made for intervention in Afghanistan, Syria and Libya, the details being bedeviled by questions of degree and contributions by coalition members.

    But very little in the way of good cases, IMHO**.

    **While I actively opposed the Afghanistan invasion in addition to Iraq (the coming quagmires due to American skinflintedness were as obvious as Syria’s) I was neither pro or anti Libya intervention, I thought letting the Europeans take the lead would inoculate us from most of the costs and that they would take the follow up more seriously considering it was “on their doorstep”.

    Silly me. They weren’t going to spend a dime more than they absolutely had to either.

  142. 142.

    Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill

    July 23, 2016 at 9:45 am

    @MattF:

    Saddam: “General Soandsoallah, are the weapons operational? And will they work as promised? I need to be able to credibly deter the West from invading”.

    General Soandsoallah (riffling phat stacks of cash to mimic the sound of flipping through files): “Yes, Saddam, I am checking the files. We have thousands, and the bench tests indicate that they will succeed beyond all expectations.”

  143. 143.

    Barb2

    July 23, 2016 at 9:47 am

    @Cat48:

    it works – most of the news about Hillary is negative. There are positive articles, but it takes digging. When I hear individuals really worried about Trump – I will tell them about another article which told the other side. “If you give me your email address I can send some links.” I also make sure to send cat videos, etc.

    Or I give my email address and ask them to email me, and then I send links – like vox.Com etc. A few blogs by people who can explain the polling numbers. I send personaL emails or no more than two women who know each other. They forward links – so the other side of the story can spread. Blue Nation is another website that isn’t overwhelming.

  144. 144.

    aimai

    July 23, 2016 at 9:48 am

    @Matt McIrvin: I think that the dividing line between people who think they “knew” he didn’t have weapons of mass destruction and the people who took that vote is more about information overload than anything else. From outside the system it was very easy to see Bush’s game, and to see how the lies were building. But from inside the system you are being told (and you have reason to believe) that outside the system simply has no access to “real” information. You know that briefing papers and spy stuff is not widely shared and that the President and the Senate often have information that is not widely available.
    You also have a duty to act–which the random guy on the street doesn’t. Its easy to say “vote no” but its harder to vote no when you think that your yes vote may slow down the obvious rush to war and give time for cooler heads to prevail.**

    If you were in the Senate/House you had experience of lots of stupid ideas, and even many great ones, that never got off the ground because time and bureaucracy and international actors intervened. If I had been in the Senate I would (perhaps) have voted for the AUMF under the same understanding that Clinton did which is that time and other things might intervene and make it impossible for the war to go forward, and that she wanted to have leverage over the next stage which she did not believe voting a blank “no” would give her. She was wrong, but in some other situation she might have been right. No one gets it right 100 percent of the time and even if they did “get it right” on that vote that may have been no more than chance.

    **I was one of those people who did not believe that Saddam Hussein had WOMD or, if he did, that it was anything like a reason to go to war. I knew they were lying.

  145. 145.

    OzarkHillbilly

    July 23, 2016 at 9:48 am

    @Schlemazel Khan:

    that ‘strong daddy – missing mommy’ theme seems to run strongly though a lot of authoritarian thinking.

    The highly religious by and large minimize a woman’s roles in life, making her subservient to men in all things. Little surprise that the GOP reflects this prejudice.

  146. 146.

    SiubhanDuinne

    July 23, 2016 at 9:49 am

    @Immanentize:

    Happy birthday!

  147. 147.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 9:50 am

    @Barb2: I wish I could give you a medal.

  148. 148.

    FlipYrWhig

    July 23, 2016 at 9:50 am

    @aimai: There are pretty clearly a large number of people who see themselves as being on the left whose entire political analysis consists of determining precisely how they’ve been slighted today, because it makes them feel alive and a bit dangerous. The sheer number of people who got it in their heads that Kaine is some sort of creature of financial capitalism and rushed to the nearest social media platform to keen and pule and moan about it was really the last straw on an ever-diminishing pile of straws for me. And this attitude (not just about Kaine but about awaiting the next backstab) unites a lot of people who I know and like and respect in every other sphere of life and human interaction. But it’s metastasizing rapidly, and I blame Bernie Sanders and online Bernie Sanders fandom for their role in whipping it up.

  149. 149.

    MattF

    July 23, 2016 at 9:51 am

    @Barb2: Indeed.

  150. 150.

    Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill

    July 23, 2016 at 9:52 am

    @Matt McIrvin:

    A not-inconsequential number of people who were against it from the beginning are never in favor of any military action, regardless of what is occurring.

    I personally know people who were with the UN refugee camps in Rwanda in a supervisory role, who were begging for intervention as people in the camps were getting hacked up by machete wielding Rwandan forces.

    There are times when such international actions are necessary.

  151. 151.

    Mandalay

    July 23, 2016 at 9:52 am

    @Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill:

    Curious thing about that wikileaks hack on the DNC (and release of a single email from a low grade staffer on Sanders’ atheism)…

    The far more curious thing is that you have gone out of your way to claim that the email suggesting that the DNC go after the religious beliefs of Sanders came from “a low grade staffer”.

    The email was sent by “Chief Financial Officer Brad Marshall to Chief Executive Officer Amy Dacey”. Hardly a “low grade staffer”.

    So much for the DNC’s claim to be neutral. It’s a corrupt organization, rotten to the core.

  152. 152.

    Matt McIrvin

    July 23, 2016 at 9:53 am

    @Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill:

    I really wish we can drop the whole “neocon” tag. There will ALWAYS be a tug of war over military interventions,

    I’m not just talking about post-9/11 “liberal hawks” voting for Clinton, I’m talking about honest-to-God neoconservatives like Max Boot. Even John Frickin Bolton is expressing reservations about Trump now, though he’s not coming over.

  153. 153.

    Kay

    July 23, 2016 at 9:54 am

    @Baud:

    It’s one of what I consider “a silo” in Dem politics so isn’t mentioned often here but teachers unions are thrilled with the Kaine pick. His wife is the VA Sec of Education and a lot of public school teachers feel Obama has been less than supportive of public schools. They preferred Clinton in the ’08 primary and they would have been really upset if she had picked Booker, who they consider even worse on public ed than Obama. The NEA is the largest union in the US and it’s one of two. Teachers call and canvass too- they were crucial in the effort to overturn Kasich’s anti-union law.

    Stuff like this is very important to them- they feel beat up and blamed for all social and economic problems and they don’t think it’s fair. I agree with them. It’s not fair to dump all these issues on public schools.

    Anne and I are now empty-nesters. Combined, our three kids spent 40 school years in the Richmond Public Schools. While we both interact with the school system in our professional lives, we’ve learned even more from back-to-school nights, parent-teacher conferences, attending school events and pulling crumpled notes to parents out of our kids’ backpacks.

  154. 154.

    aimai

    July 23, 2016 at 9:55 am

    @Barb2: Thanks for doing this. I try to be very non judgmental and sympathetic with people, IRL, who are expressing fear about Hillary, whether from the right or the center. I have zero tolerance for the far left at this point. I have different conversations with pro trumpers than I do with the “anxious about hillary” people and basically always try to start by finding an analogy to their thinking from something homey and comfortable and familiar. You can’t attack anything head on and you definitely can’t attack the person for the way they are thinking. You have to give them something new to think about, and a new way to think about themselves in relation to the new information. I don’t ask people, for instance, “how would you feel if X had happened to you” I tell them “you know, my husband had the same concerns but here is how he’s thinking about it now…” (total lie, my husband is a yellow dog democrat and true progressive he’s never shared concerns with racists, bigots, or anyone else in his life.)

  155. 155.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 9:55 am

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Full disclosure – I never saw it as “Bush lied, people died”. I saw it as “poor intelligence with inadequate human sources, poorly analyzed”, combined with a dictator who acted like he did have weapons of mass destruction but was likely hoodwinked by his own corrupted military establishment which robbed the country blind in creating a phantom resource.

    As a citizen w/o access to the intelligence briefings available to Congress I would have with great reluctance and a good deal of doubt voted yes on the Iraq resolution. If I had the benefit of the intelligence briefings I think I would have voted no. The reason being the intelligence was much more conflicted about what was actually happening. There was a lot of push back on the purpose of those aluminum tubes for example. On the other hand the intelligence community missed how advanced Saddam’s nuclear program was in 1991.

    As to ‘Bush lied’, yes he did by omission as much as commission. He said in the state of the union that Iraq had tried to buy yellow cake when his own CIA had totally discredited that. He and Chaney chose the most frightening and ominous interpretations of every bit of intelligence that they could find. A more honest presentation would have been -‘yes the intelligence is conflicting, no we don’t have perfect information but in my judgement the risk is to great to ignore’. Instead it was presented as a Hitler/USSR like threat to world peace.
    The sad irony is that as a result of the invasion the middle east is in flames and while world peace is not threatened like a WWII situation millions of people are on edge as a result of the spread of terrorism

  156. 156.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    July 23, 2016 at 9:56 am

    @Schlemazel Khan: Yep, but that’s knowing parody, rather than the works someone has take the time to tumblrize here. We could play the Poe’s Law came with these items v.The Onion’s.

    Whoever runs that feed has a stronger stomach than I. And note their use of the Crying Lady Liberty n the masthead.

  157. 157.

    FlipYrWhig

    July 23, 2016 at 9:56 am

    @D58826: This is the type of thing I was just venting about. HuffPo and other outlets now openly do this thing where they write stories to say “if you see yourself as a liberal you should be very concerned that you’re being disrespected because other liberals definitely feel that way.” And then credulous people fall for it. It’s becoming the leftish version of War on Christmas stories.

  158. 158.

    amk

    July 23, 2016 at 9:56 am

    @Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill: But the rest of the world, where I come from, did see it as “Bush lied, people died” from day one and were stunned when the boneless congress critters went with it. It was a per-determined decision of neocons (still a valid term) and wmd’s were just a bs for an excuse.

  159. 159.

    OzarkHillbilly

    July 23, 2016 at 9:57 am

    @MattF: I was always doubtful of the WMD argument (at least as to whether any were operational) but became convinced that there were none (and the Bush admin knew how slim the evidence really was) when they invaded before the inspectors were even close to done. I actually applauded the Bushies for getting them back into Iraq, but when they said were coming in so you better get out, I became incensed.

  160. 160.

    aimai

    July 23, 2016 at 9:58 am

    @Mandalay: Oh jesus are we now to be treated to this phrase “rotten to the core” over and over again from the bots? I have just seen this going the rounds at dKos. Its like some kind of horribly cheap computer program that can only revert to a simple proposition–like some roomba of moronic political thought. No one cares what you think about anything. You have the mentality of an angry toddler in a fugue state of rage that all the ice cream and all the toys in the world aren’t yours. No one cares. You add nothing to the discussion and you never vote so fuck off and die. (This is my online persona speaking. IF I met you in real life I’d take your concerns seriously.)

  161. 161.

    Matt McIrvin

    July 23, 2016 at 9:59 am

    @LanceThruster: Exhibit A for what I was talking about further up.

  162. 162.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 9:59 am

    @aimai:

    “you know, my husband had the same concerns but here is how he’s thinking about it now…” (total lie, my husband is a yellow dog democrat and true progressive he’s never shared concerns with racists, bigots, or anyone else in his life.)

    LOL.

    “My husband has also been concern about the security of my IT infrastructure at our house . . . “

  163. 163.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 10:01 am

    @Immanentize: Thought it was kind of funny that as his family was extolling his virtues, two of the baby mammas were MIA.

  164. 164.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 10:02 am

    @Kay: Hillary definitely seems to be making a correction to Obama’s education policy, which from what I can tell is the biggest legitimate knock against Obama.

  165. 165.

    Peale

    July 23, 2016 at 10:02 am

    @Mandalay: that behaves like a large organization. I know it must feel good to be a lone warrior, fighting for truth and justice, superman, but surprisingly, humans work for organizations and until we replace them with machines to do out bidding, organizations will continue to suffer from these failings. Good news is, we’re working on replacing humans as quickly as possible. Bernie’s atheism, love child and communism just didn’t seem to bubble up like they could have. So the finance chief’s idea didn’t seem to go anywhere. Are you now against people having ideas?

  166. 166.

    Schlemazel Khan

    July 23, 2016 at 10:03 am

    @aimai:
    Again, the truth was very clearly printed in many newspapers. The truth about the Aluminum tubes came right from the UN nuclear people and was confirmed by the US DoE a decade and was supported by DIA. The yellow cake lie was exposed in the NYT. The only excuse for not knowing before the invasion was willful ignorance or blindly accepting that only half, the half supporting fear-mongering invasion with only whispered evidence, was correct while ignoring the whole raft of published work with evidence.

  167. 167.

    Immanentize

    July 23, 2016 at 10:05 am

    @D58826: I too noted that. But the press didnt.

  168. 168.

    aimai

    July 23, 2016 at 10:05 am

    @FlipYrWhig:

    Leftish version of the War on Christmas stories?

    My god, how right you are! This explains so much. The same people are the angriest, the thinnest skinned, the most concerned about appearances and “respect.” They are the angry, old, white, authoritarians (and sometimes their wives, doddering mothers, and angry children) who watch O’Reilly’s show. I’ve said before that they have the mentality that Fred Clark describes as the “persecuted hegemon” and you are exactly right. The Persecuted Hegemon believes he/she is a silent majority of righty right rightness who is persecuted for his/her beliefs, made fu of, and reprssed by an evil/elitist/minority. Red meat is needed to feed this permanent sense of wounded self love so story after story has to be manufactured to keep the outrage level ginned up as high as it can go. Everything that the enemy does is a provocation. For O’Reilly’s viewers its “happy holidays” and for the far left bernie/steiners its “Hillary asks for your vote.”

  169. 169.

    Barb2

    July 23, 2016 at 10:05 am

    @MattF:
    5 straight negative articles? I have my work cut out for me today. This deliberate yellow journalism makes me ill. Misogynistic crap. Trump is back twittering.

  170. 170.

    Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill

    July 23, 2016 at 10:05 am

    @Mandalay:

    Dude, in DC, staffers with titles are a dime a dozen. Neither has been an elected official, and they’ll certainly have favorites and *gasp* discuss them.

  171. 171.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    July 23, 2016 at 10:06 am

    @aimai: For me, the WMD stuff was rife with contradictions.

    1) Saddam was under UN requirements to get rid of his WMDs in a verifiable way. He had indeed gotten rid of them (e.g. dumped chemical weapons stocks in trenches in the desert), but didn’t do it in a transparent way. He played up the “Unfair sanctions – I’m complying!” angle (killing Iraqi children, etc.) while simultaneously winking and nodding that he would wipe out Iran and any internal opposition with any and every means available and continuing to target US fighters enforcing the no-fly zones.

    Saddam tried to play both sides of the court and lost.

    2) Scott Ritter and the other inspectors said there was no WMD stuff there, but he was attacked relentlessly by the W administration and the press as being some sort of peacenik appeaser. Too few had his and the other inspectors backs. The US press was too much of a cheerleader and did too little to inform the public as to what was actually going on.

    3) It was hard for many people to believe that the President and the Senate and the US intelligence community would all not know what they were talking about or would actively be tilting the story to go to war. Yeah, W’s people hated the UN and hated the fact that they weren’t getting what they wanted out of Saddam via all the bluster and the MOAB demonstrations and the like, but were they really so craven as to take the country to war without strong evidence? It was a leap too far for lots and lots of people.

    Yeah, lots of people made the correct call, but it was most often a gut reaction rather than somehow “knowing the truth” of the situation – because there was contradictory information. Kudos to them, and it’s an illustration that contrary views always need to be considered when it comes to questions about military action.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  172. 172.

    Schlemazel Khan

    July 23, 2016 at 10:06 am

    @ThresherK (GPad):
    I assume the person that does the Onion’s uses those as his examples.

  173. 173.

    Dadadadadadada

    July 23, 2016 at 10:07 am

    @MattF: There are Sunnis in Iran, and many of them would have felt it wise to flee to Germany at some point, given the Iranian regime. There are also Arabs in Iran; IIRC, Iran is only about 50% Persian, with various significant minority groups (Kurdish, Jewish, multiple others).

  174. 174.

    MattF

    July 23, 2016 at 10:08 am

    @Dadadadadadada: Certainly true, and I have no idea about the gunman’s ethnic background.

  175. 175.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 10:08 am

    @Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill: Not just DC. I work for a major bank. The number of non-officers at the bank would fill a small wadding pool.

  176. 176.

    Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill

    July 23, 2016 at 10:09 am

    @Schlemazel Khan:

    Perhaps that which is being ascribed to either stupidity or opportunism on the part of 77 yes votes (!) is omitting a third possibility – an unwritten assumption of comity and trust in the Executive and the ostensibly anodyne workings of our own intelligence apparati? Maybe there’s an inherent tendency to grant them the benefit of the doubt.

  177. 177.

    Schlemazel Khan

    July 23, 2016 at 10:09 am

    @aimai: “roomba of moronic political thought”

    That should be carved in stone! It perfectly labels the comments of our finest trolls. Thanks for that

  178. 178.

    hueyplong

    July 23, 2016 at 10:09 am

    Whenever someone compares a Democrat to Lieberman, it not only unfairly slanders the person in question, it also needlessly and wrongfully puts a misty, water-colored soft focus on that weaselly rat Holy Joe. He should never be compared to an actual, office-holding Democrat who has committed no serious crime. The practice should be terminated immediately.

    It’s astounding to look back on 2000 and recall that four of the five people under discussion were Shrub, Cheney, Lieberman and Nader.

  179. 179.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    July 23, 2016 at 10:09 am

    @D58826: I can’t imagine the sitcom-style shenanigans required were they all there on the same night (that’s how organized it was). It’s a TV Cliche to have 2 concurrent dates one has to keep separated. But three?

  180. 180.

    Kay

    July 23, 2016 at 10:10 am

    @Baud:

    I think it’s an area she genuinely understands and has her own well-developed ideas about and they pick that up. Obama really did do a kind of bait and switch on them with Duncan in ’09. The belief was he would pick someone else, a woman they consider an expert, I’ll take their word on “expert” and then Duncan was slotted in last-minute. It WAS shitty. Frankly, Duncan had a horrible tone and approach. He used almost exclusively sports and business analogies with a profession that is something like 75% women. He quite literally didn’t speak their language.

  181. 181.

    amk

    July 23, 2016 at 10:11 am

    And let’s not forget that saddam, ‘the monster’ was created and fed by us of a in the first place.

  182. 182.

    aimai

    July 23, 2016 at 10:12 am

    @Schlemazel Khan: Look–I’ve said I didn’t believe it and I know many people who didn’t believe it. But I just see no reason to consign Hillary Clinton (and not Kerry or Biden) to the outer circle of hell for making a political decision in a time of politics. I think there were very good reasons for someone to cast that vote hoping that sending in the inspectors would tank the rush to war. If you think that nothing was going to stop the rush to war, not time and not the inspectors and not public opinion, then voting “No” wouldn’t have, either. It just would have given the person bragging rights in some imaginary game. But this wasn’t an imaginary game. People had the duty to try to figure out a way out of the approaching quagmire . Voting no was only one strategy–voting yes on the AUMF was, in fact, a different strategy.

    I’m just so sick and tired of everyone in the world paying the price for Bush and Cheney. I”m sick of progressives relitigating Iraq as though we have nothing better to do with our time. We are fighting a war right the fuck now to prevent something worse than Bush and Cheney to get into the White House. I don’t care if my candidate is covered with shit, I don’t care if she pissed on your grandmother, I don’t care about any of that–she’s the candidate of the democratic side, the progressive side, and she is the only one fighting this battle to prevent Trump from getting in. Nothing else matters. **

    I actually like Hillary very much as a candidate and as a person.

  183. 183.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 10:13 am

    @hueyplong: Agree. The Lieberman comparison is completely obnoxious. It’s really the type of thing you get from right-wing media.

  184. 184.

    Matt McIrvin

    July 23, 2016 at 10:13 am

    @Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill: Post-Bush, I have to admit that being against every military action at least as a default position, pending overwhelming evidence, sounds all right to me.

    I got radicalized a little. I was on the wrong side over Iraq until the summer of 2003, which was too late, and I paid attention to the fact that most mainstream liberals went along with Bush when radical leftists, Marxists, old hippies, etc. were telling the truth. So I decided to listen to those people some more than I’d been doing. Unfortunately they often say other things that are just completely crazy, and it’s hard to force myself to listen to them forever. But you never know, they might hit it again.

    Anyway, as I was saying above, the Iraq disaster temporarily brought a lot of people who were not actually particularly liberal into the “progressive” camp, and I think Hillary Clinton as the D candidate is the final nail in the coffin for them staying there. But we might make up the deficit with a few mainstream centrist or even conservative folk who are just scared of Donald Trump as a chaos-summoning horror, and are somewhat comforted by Clinton’s hawkish reputation… sort of the opposite pole of the electorate from these folks.

    I don’t know if Sanders could have kept the first lot in either–a bunch were already most of the way out over Obama, and they tend to be preoccupied with foreign policy, and Sanders wasn’t really a foreign-policy candidate; he seemed to just be coasting on not having supported the Iraq invasion without offering much more of an alternative vision there. (I know a bunch of people in the Sanders camp who ended up really disappointed about this.)

  185. 185.

    aimai

    July 23, 2016 at 10:13 am

    @Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill: I hear he also likes mayo on his pastrami. And never cleans the office refrigerator!

  186. 186.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 10:14 am

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:

    eah, lots of people made the correct call, but it was most often a gut reaction rather than somehow “knowing the truth” of the situation – because there was contradictory information.

    I sometimes wonder how many of the folks opposed to the war in 2003 were suffering from Bush derangement syndrome. A certain number of folks on the left hated Bush with the same intensity that the right hates Obama. That they were correct in their analysis of Bush/Chaney is easier to see in hindsight, esp. post Katrina.

  187. 187.

    Mandalay

    July 23, 2016 at 10:15 am

    @aimai:

    Oh jesus are we now to be treated to this phrase “rotten to the core” over and over again

    The CFO of the DNC wrote to the CEO of the DNC that they should go after Sanders on his religious beliefs. The DNC is supposed to be neutral, but it’s rotten to the core.

    Willfully blind sheep like you, who see nothing wrong with that situation and throw a tantrum and piss your diaper when its pointed out, are liability to the Democratic Party.

  188. 188.

    Emma

    July 23, 2016 at 10:16 am

    @The Thin Black Duke: Whoa Nellie. That was one righteous smackdown.

  189. 189.

    OzarkHillbilly

    July 23, 2016 at 10:16 am

    @Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill:

    A not-inconsequential number of people who were against it from the beginning are never in favor of any military action, regardless of what is occurring.

    I’m not against ALL military actions, just stupid ones. Add in the half assed ones (where we don’t go anywhere near a sufficient …. brain fart- ‘investment’) and yes, you have eliminated just about every military intervention this country is willing to undertake.

    Take what happened to Shinseki after he testified about what it would take to hold Iraq after the invasion. That right there says how serious this country takes war, and as such we have no business engaging in it.

  190. 190.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    July 23, 2016 at 10:17 am

    @hueyplong: Lifelong Nutmegger here. Holy Joe wore thin for me about 1 day after he started scold Bill in the 90s.

    Plus he invented the Midnight Cab Ride idea for rape victims, even if unconscious, should they be brought to a Catholic semi-service hospital instead of a real hospital. So fck him.

  191. 191.

    Schlemazel Khan

    July 23, 2016 at 10:18 am

    @Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill:
    Our own intel was clearly against the invasion. The administration chose to make only the parts they wanted public public. Several Dems on the Senate committee admitted as much at the time but were restricted by their clearances from being more open. “I was only following orders” is not a defense. and 77(!) of every 100 isn’t either. Once the President had shown himself to be a liar on this topic there is no excuse for giving the benefit of the doubt.

  192. 192.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 10:18 am

    @Matt McIrvin: Somewhat ironic, since Hillary, despite her rhetoric toward Iran, would preserve the nuclear deal, while Trump would blow it up.

  193. 193.

    amk

    July 23, 2016 at 10:20 am

    @Mandalay: bs was a carpetbagger ‘dem’, who trashed his ‘own party’ 24×7 and got what he deserved.

    You can get to the acceptance stage or the fuck you all deadender stage.

  194. 194.

    MattF

    July 23, 2016 at 10:20 am

    @aimai:

    I hear he also likes mayo on his pastrami.

    Ew.

  195. 195.

    BruceFromOhio

    July 23, 2016 at 10:20 am

    @FlipYrWhig: HuffPo used to be a go-to site on a regular basis. It’s crap like that what ran me off. Ugh.

  196. 196.

    aimai

    July 23, 2016 at 10:20 am

    @ThresherK (GPad): Yes, its very important to remember that. Its interesting that only a few people do remember it, in the tally of Lieberman’s crimes. Its almost like what matters to women just didn’t matter much to the anti lieberman scold crowd.

  197. 197.

    Miss Bianca

    July 23, 2016 at 10:20 am

    @Betty Cracker: Yay, Betty C! I am so hoping that HRC makes a campaign stop in CO soon!

  198. 198.

    MattF

    July 23, 2016 at 10:24 am

    Cat in a bad mood.

  199. 199.

    Schlemazel Khan

    July 23, 2016 at 10:25 am

    @aimai:
    That is a different argument. I never said I opposed Hillary or anything like that. Politicians make shitty choices for expedience sake. Would I be happier if they didn’t? Yeah but I don’t expect them to always do the right thing. I want them to do the right thing more than the easy wrong thing, I want them to get the best done that they can given the reality of the world we live in. I believe Hillary is well ahead of any other choice available currently in those areas. But I would also like all politicians to suffer sleepless nights when they give up their principals for their office. The needless deaths of hundreds of thousands should weigh particularly heavy to help avoid those sorts of conclusions in the future.

  200. 200.

    Mandalay

    July 23, 2016 at 10:27 am

    @amk:

    bs was a carpetbagger ‘dem’, who trashed his ‘own party’ 24×7 and got what he deserved.

    Maybe so, but now you are arguing that the end justifies the means: there is nothing wrong with the DNC going after Sanders behind the scenes because he “deserved” it.

    A similar justification was used for the Bush Administration going after Saddam Hussein, but that doesn’t make it right.

  201. 201.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 10:28 am

    @MattF: That photo should come with a hazardous to your health warning.

  202. 202.

    Fair Economist

    July 23, 2016 at 10:28 am

    @Mandalay:

    The CFO of the DNC wrote to the CEO of the DNC that they should go after Sanders on his religious beliefs. The DNC is supposed to be neutral, but it’s rotten to the core.

    And they didn’t do it. The DNC did, indeed, act neutrally.

    Also, aren’t you glad Sanders didn’t get the nomination? We’d be in a pickle if he had, because unlike the DNC, the GOP would spread that far and wide.

  203. 203.

    Cat48

    July 23, 2016 at 10:28 am

    @Baud:

    He was born in Iran, but grew up in Munich. Sorta like Valerie Jarrett, born in Iran but raised in US.

  204. 204.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 10:28 am

    The real scandal from the DNC email leak (via Vox)

    Probably the funniest scoop is news that the White House vetoed having Ariana Grande perform at a presidential gala because a video “caught her licking other peoples’ donuts while saying she hates America.” The White House was worried that allowing Grande perform for the president would invite criticism from Republicans.

  205. 205.

    Matt McIrvin

    July 23, 2016 at 10:29 am

    @Baud: Was it some commenter here who I saw insisting that a President Clinton would never have permitted the Iran nuclear deal to go through because it would be contrary to her “neoliberal principles”? (As if Kerry’s term at State had been some kind of massive ideological departure from Hillary Clinton’s, rather than a continuation.)

  206. 206.

    aimai

    July 23, 2016 at 10:30 am

    I want to come back to the pass that both Kerry and Biden got for their AUMF vote. It reminds me of the great article I read recently, that someone here linked to, on how little we trust and respect women. I can’t find it right now but basically both Kerry and Biden are forgiven for their vote–hell, Biden is now America’s best loved goofy uncle a heartbeat away from the Presidency and no one ever, ever, complains that he did the wrong thing with his AUMF vote, that he probably did it because he was political, that he was stupid to trust Bush, that he had venal reasons, or that he is responsible for Iraq. Meanwhile no matter how much she apologizes or explains the logic behind her vote Hillary is damned for probably lying about it–(what? she’s not sorry?) or probably having bowed to pressure from her constituents, or having had political aspirations (unlike Kerry who actually ran for President right after, or Biden who was urged to run by white male progressives because Hillary was considered too evil?).

    Its just incredibly obvious to women that the incredible base level misogyny of this culture predisposes people (men and women) to divide women into madonnas and whores–Hillary gets treated like a lying, conniving, bitch who is fully to blame for her AUMF vote because evil. While Kerry and Biden get a pass because “its complicated” or they meant well or it was a long time ago or something. And please, no one, tell me again how progressives would vote for Warren so they aren’t misogynists. Its right there in the trope–some women are always going to be represented as Madonnas while others are relegated to whoredom. And, of course, once a woman falls from the pedestal and betrays the man then all bets are off. Just got back from Northampton Ma, by the way, where “JUDAS WARREN” was tagged all over because the bernie girls were so incensed when she endorsed Clinton.

  207. 207.

    Iowa Old Lady

    July 23, 2016 at 10:30 am

    @Schlemazel Khan: I think that, like Obama, Clinton usually sees reality and tries to act within it for the good of the country, not just for herself or the Ds. You can read the Kaine pick that way. Of course, I assume she thinks the good of the Ds and the good of the country overlap.

  208. 208.

    amk

    July 23, 2016 at 10:30 am

    @Mandalay: local primary (silly) politics = international (criminal) war situations? really?

  209. 209.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 10:31 am

    @Mandalay:

    The Vox article I quoted above found no evidence that the organization actually went after Sanders, FWIW. One solitary internal email is pretty weak evidence. YMMV.

  210. 210.

    Kay

    July 23, 2016 at 10:31 am

    @Mandalay:

    Mandalay, not to be a cynic but the DNC is an organization and organizations are collections of people. You really thought they were some kind of quasi-government with neutral process and no strong opinions or preferences? I feel like Sanders supporters keep making a kind of category error. They did the same thing with the primary. Political Parties run primaries. They make the rules.

    Bernie Sanders spent a year calling Clinton corrupt. I don’t have any problem with that but making him out to be a saint and her out to be this scheming back-roomer is just bullshit. She is allowed to compete and relationships are one of the coins of the realm in politics. She made relationships over 40 years. She’s allowed to use that advantage. Obama didn’t have the kind of elaborate web of people he knew in Dem politics that she had and has and he beat her anyway. That’s what Sanders had to do. That’s what insurgent candidates do- they use some other advantage.

  211. 211.

    aimai

    July 23, 2016 at 10:32 am

    Sorry, tried to edit to end those horrible run ons but the system won’t let me.

  212. 212.

    Matt McIrvin

    July 23, 2016 at 10:32 am

    @Fair Economist: I’m an atheist myself, but I was actually a bit worried about that–you know Sanders’ apparent lack of religiosity would have been a massive deal in a general-election campaign, as stupid as that is.

  213. 213.

    Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill

    July 23, 2016 at 10:33 am

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Shinseki was treated like trash, and even though I was pro-invasion, I disagreed with that.

    One of the things that turned me against was when I learned that the occupation planning was amateur hour, and borrowed nothing from MacArthur’s success in Japan (fundamentally reordering that society, investing them in peace and individual rights.).

  214. 214.

    Chris

    July 23, 2016 at 10:33 am

    @Baud:

    I sometimes listen to Right wing religious radio in the car when I’m driving around for work.
    …
    I used to do that for about a year, and then it got repetitive.

    This. I used to check on right wing blogs on a regular basis just on the general principle of “know what the other guys are saying.” After doing it for long enough, it’s just so… boring.

  215. 215.

    Mandalay

    July 23, 2016 at 10:33 am

    @Fair Economist:

    Also, aren’t you glad Sanders didn’t get the nomination?

    Yes, even as a former Sanders supporter who came to see his deficiencies and limitations, I am. But the failings of Sanders and the conduct of the DNC are separate matters….or should be at least.

    And the religious beliefs of Sanders should have nothing to do with anything. They are certainly not something that the DNC should be raising.

  216. 216.

    Cacti

    July 23, 2016 at 10:33 am

    @Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill:

    has anybody ever noticed any wikihacks on Russian government or business interests?

    About as many as I’ve seen Glenn Greenwald articles on how many journalists die of unnatural causes there.

  217. 217.

    Dmbeaster

    July 23, 2016 at 10:33 am

    @ThresherK: Yes, for homes located in indefensible terrain, or from which a safe retreat is unlikely, the fire department wont defend the house. I lived in Topanga in the large 1993 Old Canyon fire that torched Malibu, and at the bottom of Topanga canyon was an old community known as the rodeo grounds that was threatened by the fire. The fire department decided not to defend the area, so locals set their own successful backfire. Ballsy.

    To get a sense of just how intense and involved wildfire firefighting can be, check out the official incident report for that fire

  218. 218.

    aimai

    July 23, 2016 at 10:34 am

    @Kay: Don’t waste your breath. The Mandalays and the Bernie people are eternal victims of circumstance. Its part of their mind set. They would happilly have taken over the DNC and used it to support their candidate if they could. They are only dissapointed and lashing out because their candidate won. If it weren’t this complaint it would be some other. Their entire world view is predicated on being simultaneously triumphant and losers, majority and minority, vanguard and totality. And their world view requires a demon around which their hatred can coalesce. Its not going to be Trump, too old hat. Its always going to be the progressive center party that is trying to actually win and govern. Because its easier to hate mommy and daddy than that scary serial killer down the street.

  219. 219.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 10:35 am

    @Cat48: I did not know that about VJ.

  220. 220.

    Matt McIrvin

    July 23, 2016 at 10:35 am

    @aimai: Yeah, more generally, it’s really strange that people who bash Hillary Clinton for being a treacherous DINO will sometimes wish in the same breath that Joe Biden was the candidate, because pretty much everything you can knock Clinton for applies to him too, often more strongly.

  221. 221.

    Applejinx

    July 23, 2016 at 10:35 am

    @D58826: I’m of the opinion that the progressive movement gets a deeply indebted Dem administration in the white house and Warren + Sanders empowered and active in the Senate, demonstrably in command of a left wing that has never been so electorally effective.

    I am quite looking forward to this. Since #DNCLeaks, everybody knows what Sanders knew all along, that he was up against the Dem machine. It’s actually good that the Dem machine was strong enough to beat him because it hadn’t picked him (it now has to beat Trump by a huge margin, so I don’t want it to be made out of feckless unrealistic hippies) but because the hidden strings are now revealed (thanks to Russian hackers trying to boost Trump for obvious reasons) it is literally impossible to discount the Sanders wing.

    We would’ve won if Hillary hadn’t pulled out nearly all the stops (and then we’d be in fucking trouble: bullet dodged, y’all)

    This might be close to an IDEAL situation. All we have to do is hold it together and rely on politics to be politics, and we’ll have the optimal governing, bridge-building people-listening Prez in office, striking a balance between a demoralized pack of Republicans some of which might be sick of teabagger bullshit, and a fierce and demanding left wing who happen to be demanding RIGHT THINGS, like an end to neoliberalist economics and a relentless focus on racial/gender justice. No more murdering police targeting black faces. No more stupid trickle-down bank bailing. Revolution—but done steadily and nondestructively, like Clinton would do it.

    We could avoid or disable a US version of ‘Brexit’ (catastrophe playing on economic/healthcare issues but really delivering a racist nationalist payload). It’s really not that hard. All we have to do is govern a LITTLE towards the populace, towards Main Street, and not be faking.

    There is SO MUCH ROOM to do that and get good results. As Bill C. demonstrated you can do it and the rich fuckers don’t even lose all that much, because they make it up through GDP increases.

    All this could turn out very very well for everybody—and Clinton could end up with a (footnote-laden*) legacy to exceed FDR’s.

    * “boy, she and Bill kept on making dumb little scandals, but on the whole they totally kept their promises and history remembers them as best followers of the zeitgeist and of Americans’ best natures, ever. Hillary had the courage to run on a platform of love and caring for all citizens, didn’t back down, and then used the political pressure of irate Senate progressives to enact a series of reforms that civilized the increasingly savage and desperate nation. Taking credit for this, she won re-election and retired the most popular President in the history of America”

  222. 222.

    aimai

    July 23, 2016 at 10:37 am

    @Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill: While its true that they didn’t prepare for the invasion or its aftermath no amount of planning could have turned Iraq, with its interethnic/interreligious strife into Japan, with its long tradition of submission to the Emperor. I read several books about the Japanese case because, famously, the US used Anthropologists to try to figure out what to do. There was simply no way in hell to settle Iraq down after blowing it up, anthropologically or realistically speaking. Perhaps not blowing it up at the behest of the Iranians would have been a good start. But it was all downhill from there.

  223. 223.

    Shell

    July 23, 2016 at 10:38 am

    Has there been any updates on Steve? Doesn’t seem t o be any new posts.

  224. 224.

    jeffreyw

    July 23, 2016 at 10:39 am

    I hear he also likes mayo on his pastrami. And never cleans the office refrigerator!

    Noooo!!!!!!!!!! Worse than Hitler on a bad hemorrhoid day!

  225. 225.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 10:39 am

    @Shell: He returned last night. There is another post.

  226. 226.

    Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill

    July 23, 2016 at 10:40 am

    Well, crap. I saw a stupid statement on coal by a shit-flinging wingnut on a liberal acquaintance’s Facebook feed (the offending line involved scorn over saving organisms that nobody knows about or could name) and replied by asking him if he had any idea about how the food chain works before calling him a (and I quote) “fucking dolt”.

    Turned out to be the acquaintance’s father in law. Now I feel kind of bad.

  227. 227.

    Chris

    July 23, 2016 at 10:40 am

    @Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill:

    Full disclosure – I never saw it as “Bush lied, people died”. I saw it as “poor intelligence with inadequate human sources, poorly analyzed”

    For God’s sake, really?

  228. 228.

    amk

    July 23, 2016 at 10:41 am

    @aimai:

    Because its easier to hate mommy and daddy than that scary serial killer down the street.

    This. No wonder they aren’t ‘courted’ as they would like to be.

  229. 229.

    Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill

    July 23, 2016 at 10:42 am

    @Chris:

    I don’t do bumper stickers. Also never saw “war for Iraq’s oil”.

    The Texas oil boys benefit from price instability, not theft of the commodity.

  230. 230.

    Miss Bianca

    July 23, 2016 at 10:42 am

    @D58826: Bush Derangement Syndrome? Is it Bush Derangement Syndrome to note that he was an intellectually lazy, slipshod, lying-by-omission-if-not-comission fuck-up of a person and a President? That the rush to war in Iraq stank so badly that even out in the hinterlands some folks could smell it and cry BS? Or is it actual truth? Or does it simply mean that I am capable of looking at a spade and calling it a bloody shovel?

    I can think of only one good thing to say about the GWB presidency, and that is that he genuinely tried to address issues of immigration and anti-immigrant prejudice. He got ripped by his own party for it, and did not get enough credit from anyone else. But that’s pretty much it. He and his gang did their level best to privatize government, with disastrous results that we’re still suffering from today.

    Does this opinion mean that I’m suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome?

  231. 231.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 10:42 am

    @aimai: I think there is another thread in all of this that gets overlooked. In 1990 most of the democrats voted against Bush 41’s war. They were afraid that it would turn into another Vietnam. Well the war was a smashing ‘success’. Patriot missiles, stormin’ Norman, Cole’s Doha dash, and ticker tape parades on Wall Street. The democrats looked pretty stupid. If the economy hadn’t tanked Bush 41 would have been re-elected in a landslide. That the Gulf war lit a slow burning fuse that culminated in 9/11 and the 2nd Gulf war certainly was not evident at the time. So I suspect that some of that factored into the vote. The democrats, already accused of being weak on defense, didn’t want to be saddled with another vote against a second successful GOP lead war (see landing on aircraft carrier); esp post 9/11. It may not have been a moment of ‘profiles in courage’ but in the real world they don’t happen very often.

  232. 232.

    Technocrat

    July 23, 2016 at 10:44 am

    @LanceThruster:

    The DNC and HRC go into their convention on the heels of the WikiLeaks revelations

    Fuck wikileaks. I could stomach their purported stance as defenders of transparency if they at least spread the pain equally. But they sat quietly by while the scabrous cavalcade of burbling shitgoblins that is the RNC proceeded to it’s inevitable, terrifying Nuremburg-esque conclusion.

    Instead, they ambush the DNC, which is at this point is arguably America’s only bulwark against Trump’s barely-figurative Fourth Reich bullshit. I’m no genius, but even I can see that if you attack the surgeon, you’re trying to kill the patient too.

    Fuck wikileaks. At this point I will forever consider their missives “hot takes from Putin”.

  233. 233.

    Peale

    July 23, 2016 at 10:46 am

    @Shell: he came back. Covered in burrs.

  234. 234.

    Applejinx

    July 23, 2016 at 10:46 am

    @aimai:

    I also came back to say that the kinds of people who don’t really understand or respect politics as a vocation–the task of governance, the duties of people running things to actually make them run and protect people–are the most upset that Hillary didn’t pick the VP candidate that, in their minds, makes up for her having won the primary over Bernie.

    As much as I fight with Aimai, I totally agree with this. I’m more and more actively delighted with Kaine as a choice. The more I see of the guy the more I like him, and it seems like he’ll help Clinton do her thing in the White House. His bona fides seem fine to me, but also he leaves the progressive firebrands IN the Senate where they can, you know, DO things.

    Kaine seems like a very nice guy, with his head on straight, extremely likeable, and manages to have some of the qualities that’d soothe betrayed Republicans without in any sense being one. He’s more bridge-building, and we discount that at our peril. I didn’t even know he existed, but now that I know more about him I prefer him to any of the others, and turns out Hillary knew him and picked him.

    This probably means I need to donate to Hils-beast, because I promised I’d do that if she picked Warren, and then she turns around and finds somebody even better for the job and picks him instead. I am very impressed. Starting to love how Hillary does things.

  235. 235.

    Shell

    July 23, 2016 at 10:47 am

    @Baud: Thanks. Guess if Id bothered to scroll down more than three posts….

    So glad he’s back. Funny, cats do have a way of finding their way back home. Dogs however, once they get loose, seem to get so disoriented.

  236. 236.

    Schlemazel Khan

    July 23, 2016 at 10:48 am

    @Shell:
    He showed up yesterday afternoon – JC posted his return.

  237. 237.

    scav

    July 23, 2016 at 10:49 am

    @Matt McIrvin: Whatever that last valiant phrase the bewoaded ThrusterofLances erupted in was instantly converted to Brinks Trucks. The wonders of Google Translate.

  238. 238.

    Kay

    July 23, 2016 at 10:49 am

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Yeah, more generally, it’s really strange that people who bash Hillary Clinton for being a treacherous DINO will sometimes wish in the same breath that Joe Biden was the candidate, because pretty much everything you can knock Clinton for applies to him too, often more strongly.

    It’s the mystery of the ages. I like Biden but he was never a populist. Howard Dean too. Howard Dean is a lobbyist now and he was not that liberal a governor. He has become some kind of mythical figure to a certain segment of the online community.

    HowardDean50statestrategy. It’s like a term of art- it means much more than the phrase to a certain group. However. It has nothing whatever to do with reality, not then and not now.

  239. 239.

    Emma

    July 23, 2016 at 10:49 am

    @LanceThruster: Do you know what people will remember about Wikileaks? That people’s identities were put at risk because someone wanted to put a knife through Hillary Clinton. People’s social security numbers were released. Identity theft much? All Hillary’s people have to do is hammer on that over and over again.
    Wikileaks has well and truly shot itself in the gonads on this one.

  240. 240.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 10:49 am

    @Miss Bianca: In 2001-2003 post 9/11 Bush was running 90% approval ratings. And notice I said ‘some folks’ and all the failings were much easier to see post Katrina. Personally I agree with pretty much all that you said about W but there are some on the left who actually claim he was behind 9/11 or refuse to acknowledge that at least in the immediate aftermath of the attack he behaved reasonably well (see visit to mosque). And no I don;t think BDS on the left is anywhere comparable to the ODS and CDS on the right. I just think that there are some who were opposed to the war would, like the goopers today, would have drunk bleach if Bush warned against it.

  241. 241.

    Iowa Old Lady

    July 23, 2016 at 10:50 am

    @Technocrat: I am trying to guess what percentage of the general voting population knows or cares about that Wikileaks leak. That’s not only inside baseball. It’s irrelevant inside baseball because it’s about a grudge match over the primaries which are done.

  242. 242.

    Miss Bianca

    July 23, 2016 at 10:50 am

    @aimai: What you said. Mnemosyne linked to an article about it a couple days ago.

    Embedded in that article was a link to another article, which was basically about how our culture(s) teach us that “all women lie” – particularly about rape – and that that’s just a reflexive, unthinking attitude for most of us. Depressing but enlightening read.

  243. 243.

    aimai

    July 23, 2016 at 10:52 am

    @Miss Bianca: Thank you! I knew someone here had pointed me to it. Its the second article that i really liked, although the first link takes you to an essay that really makes you understand how vital and dangerous this trend is right now in our politics. Both are good to read.

  244. 244.

    Barb2

    July 23, 2016 at 10:52 am

    @Technocrat:

    Putin’s Puppet.

    Could it be that PP Trump had a heads up on this – thanks to his direct line to the Russian bankers?

  245. 245.

    Cat48

    July 23, 2016 at 10:54 am

    @Barb2:

    That sounds great, especially the kitty videos :). Here it is– [email protected]
    I look forward to receiving them.

  246. 246.

    aimai

    July 23, 2016 at 10:55 am

    @Kay: OK, I think I see your problem here. You are too nice. You just don’t realize how stupid most people are, or how stupidly they think about politics. At least the noisest among them online. People just project onto the candidates the best or worst attributes they can think of and run with it.

  247. 247.

    Matt McIrvin

    July 23, 2016 at 10:58 am

    @Mandalay:

    Maybe so, but now you are arguing that the end justifies the means: there is nothing wrong with the DNC going after Sanders behind the scenes because he “deserved” it.

    A similar justification was used for the Bush Administration going after Saddam Hussein, but that doesn’t make it right.

    Kind of like the people now crowing about the righteousness of Wikileaks’ DNC dump though they didn’t even bother to scrub it of credit-card numbers and identity-theft hooks? (In this thread, that’d be more LanceThruster than you.)

  248. 248.

    Technocrat

    July 23, 2016 at 11:01 am

    @Emma:

    That people’s identities were put at risk because someone wanted to put a knife through Hillary Clinton. People’s social security numbers were released. Identity theft much?

    Another good point. Let’s be clear, no one who is savvy enough to hack a server is ignorant of the implications of naked SSNs. SSNs and credit card numbers are trivial to obfuscate, because both of them match well-defined patterns. “s/[0-9]{3}-*[0-9]{2}-*[0-9]{4}/HAHA_NO_SSN_4U/g” is probably all the programming you need to clean the entire set, assuming it’s text.

    They could have cleaned it up, and they didn’t. I suspect that information theft on a massive scale was part of the plan.

  249. 249.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    July 23, 2016 at 11:01 am

    @Kay: Howard Dean is a lobbyist now and he was not that liberal a governor.

    When Newton Leroy had a moment as Trump’s Veep, Lawrence O’Donnell interviewed Dean, who chuckled that he had been chatting with Newt about this earlier in the day, at an MEK meeting in Paris. His fellow MEK supporters/employees include Giuliani, James Woolsey and John Bolton.

    I’d also like to know how many who reflexively bleat about the need for a fiftystatestrategy joined the chorus of wailing about the prospect of Evan Bayh going back to the Senate. I despise Evan Bayh, but not as much as I do…. pretty much any current Republican Senator.

    ETA: Speaking of Giuliani, I was in the car last week and caught bits of a long a interview (plowing through the 57 Sirius channels of nothing on) on MSNBC, spewing unbelievable venom about Hillary and then Black Lives Matter. I barely recognized his voice, he sounded terrible. I confess I had unchristian thoughts about the state of his health.

  250. 250.

    Matt McIrvin

    July 23, 2016 at 11:01 am

    @aimai: I suspect Kay’s bafflement, like mine, is rhetorical; no need for the Scooby Gang to solve that particular mystery.

  251. 251.

    aimai

    July 23, 2016 at 11:01 am

    @Matt McIrvin: Yes, Mandalay et al have rather lost the “ends/means” high ground at this point.

    The DNC thing is nothing more than the obvious fact that, as Kay said upthread, the DNC is composed of people who work together to try to accomplish a joint cause: taking back the presidency. Of course they are going to talk/argue/discuss the various candidates and perhaps have some feelings about a candidate who raises money for the party vs one who doesn’t, or one who proposes to work with them vs one who sues them, or one who allows personal attacks and death threats on party functionaries and one who doesn’t. But to argue that those feelings interfered with Bernie’s viability is absurd. He lost all on his ownsome.

  252. 252.

    aimai

    July 23, 2016 at 11:02 am

    @Matt McIrvin: No, honestly, Kay is REALLY nice. Its her superpower but its also her kryptonite!

  253. 253.

    Schlemazel Khan

    July 23, 2016 at 11:04 am

    @aimai:
    I just had a bit of a set to with a work friend this week. He is educated & smart but he just knows that Clintons killed VInce Foster and a bunch of people on Arkansas. The reason they were not caught was that the state troopers with the evidence all were ‘disappeared’. Yeah, the majority of American voters are stupid. Stupid to a scary degree.

  254. 254.

    Technocrat

    July 23, 2016 at 11:06 am

    Ugh, stuck in moderation. Halp!

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    You’re right of course. But this episode has been an object lesson in the actual nature of wikileaks.

  255. 255.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    July 23, 2016 at 11:07 am

    @Mandalay: A similar justification was used for the Bush Administration going after Saddam Hussein, but that doesn’t make it right.

    Yes, the fact that some staffers contemplated playing political hardball against the oh-so-positive Bernie! campaign is just like launching a war under false pretenses that killed hundreds of thousands of people and lethally destabilized a huge part of the world.

    Isn’t it amazing that more people don’t take Bernistas seriously?

  256. 256.

    Chris

    July 23, 2016 at 11:07 am

    @Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill:

    Yeah, I’m sorry: over a decade after the Iraq War, there’s absolutely no excuse for still promoting the idea that it was just some kind of intelligence failure, as opposed to the White House having its thumb firmly on the scale.

  257. 257.

    Matt McIrvin

    July 23, 2016 at 11:08 am

    @shomi: A lot of people initially assumed that RNC set photo was a parody, possibly by The Onion. Trump’s aesthetic is to be a parody of Trump and then somehow blast straight past that into some amazing hypobaric realm beyond parody. Which is the totalitarian aesthetic in general.

  258. 258.

    MomSense

    July 23, 2016 at 11:10 am

    @aimai:

    I’m really tired of this victim crap. The reality is that the DNC process for choosing a nominee creates ample opportunity for insurgent candidates to win. Obama 2007-2008 is the perfect example. The difference is that the emphasis of his campaign was organizing. As volunteers we were given an advanced degree in organizing. We went to camp Obama and then we were deployed expertly. We knew the rules of the competition and we worked them to our advantage. We were asked to go to states well ahead of the primary or caucus day to register voters based on the registration deadlines in each state. The strategy was mapped out well in advance. The Sanders campaign spent a ton of money on a top down, overpaid consultant heavy campaign and failed to adequately train organizers and volunteers. You do not win the championship series if you don’t even teach your players the basic rules of the game.
    The DNC primary process was not rigged. The Sanders campaign lost because of incompetence.
    The biggest failure was to reject the Obama coalition. WTF. You are not building a progressive movement if it is almost entirely white. It’s not only a losing strategy, but it is morally indefensible.

  259. 259.

    Kay

    July 23, 2016 at 11:10 am

    @Schlemazel Khan:

    I can’t help it- I cannot take those people seriously. Really? All roads lead to the Clintons murdering people?

    I always hope they dodge jury duty. I feel sorry for any defendant who gets them. A to B to….Z! Jesus. Get a grip.

  260. 260.

    Applejinx

    July 23, 2016 at 11:11 am

    @aimai: Meh, it helped. Without the DNC thing, Bernie might possibly have won, and then we’d be in a very awkward position like the Republicans are. We’re better off.

    Also, I’ve never seen any signs they went after him for his likely atheism, and that’s a big deal. Funneling money to Hils is more just ‘politics’.

    The question for Wikileaks people is: when do we get to see the RNC leaks? Showing them doing exactly the same things against Trump, and failing because their party is balkanized into psycho billionaires? When do we get to see the Trump leaks and the mountain of fraud and bullshit that huckster stands on, or is that just too inconvenient for Russian KGB hackers to unveil?

    If there was ever a ‘both sides do it’, here it is. Let’s see what Wikileaks dig up on Trump. Equal fucking time, please. Some of us (berniacs) have been saying the WHOLE system is corrupt and fucked all this time. DNCleaks contains nothing surprising or even horrifying: of COURSE they were working for Hillary all along, what else would they be doing? I’m super unimpressed by attempts to stir up drama over it. Hell, it doesn’t even in any sense mean Hillary is disqualified. If anything, it proves she’s prepared to go against the Republicans, whom I know do all that stuff except they don’t hold back on religious-beliefs slurs when they got ’em.

    Let’s see Wikileaks show us stuff about Cruz, or Trump, or the Bushes. I bet there’s hilarious, horrifying stuff out there. Russian hackers for Putin only want to show us half of the picture, which is unfair.

  261. 261.

    Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill

    July 23, 2016 at 11:13 am

    @Barb2:

    Wouldn’t surprise me. He’s got kind of a Johhny Iselin quality.

    The good deal for Trump is that if he wins, Putin thugs can take care of muckraking journos, media critics and opposing politicians via a combo of FSV operatives, wikileaks, and mafiya goons acting with the connivance of Brighton Beach shitheads.

    I never thought I’d live in a post Cold War Allen Drury novel.

  262. 262.

    Felonius Monk

    July 23, 2016 at 11:15 am

    The Trump campaign IS literally in the shitter as evidenced by this and then this.

  263. 263.

    Dadadadadadada

    July 23, 2016 at 11:16 am

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    it’s about a grudge match over the primaries which are done.

    Tell that to Donald Trump re: Ted Cruz.

  264. 264.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    July 23, 2016 at 11:16 am

    @aimai: It was Mnemosyne a couple of days ago.

    But it’s clear that there’s something special going on regarding the public’s perception of Hillary’s honesty.

    HTH.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  265. 265.

    Matt McIrvin

    July 23, 2016 at 11:16 am

    @D58826:

    or refuse to acknowledge that at least in the immediate aftermath of the attack he behaved reasonably well (see visit to mosque).

    I think this is actually a large part of what suckered me and many others into giving Bush more slack than he deserved. What I expected from a Republican in the aftermath of a terrorist attack of a magnitude to beggar the imagination was what, say, Donald Trump would have done. And there was no shortage of people in the peanut gallery behaving that way. But in the immediate aftermath Bush actually showed some restraint, refused to demonize Muslims or Arabs, and said nice words about wanting to make an intelligent, targeted response. His actual strategy was disastrous bullshit, but it was covered well enough for the first few weeks to give him a positive aura that lasted for years.

    It was the soft bigotry of low expectations, I suppose.

  266. 266.

    aimai

    July 23, 2016 at 11:16 am

    @Applejinx: No–there is zero evidence in the real world that the DNC did anything that changed the basic math of the election. The DNC did not decide that Bernie would not contest the South or go for AA votes. The DNC did not decide that Bernie would attack a noted First Lady, two term Senator, colleague and Secretary of State as a corporate whore and sellout. The DNC did not decide that Bernie should waste his money trying to take New York from a very popular former Senator. The DNC did not decide that Bernie should overpay his consultants and refuse to release his taxes or come unpepared to his interview with the NYDN. Bernie was not a toddler, stop making excuses for his poor performance while also bragging about his great performance. He ran a good campaign, in some ways a historic campaign, and it just wasn’t good enough/historic enough. That’s all on him, the honor and the failure.

  267. 267.

    Miss Bianca

    July 23, 2016 at 11:17 am

    @D58826: Well, I am one of those people who had a visceral reaction to just hearing GWB’s voice on the radio – a literal gag reflex. So maybe I did suffer from what you call BDS.

    That being said, however, I never understood why people rushed to give him the benefit of the doubt over Iraq after 9/11. To me, it was simply a reflection of the fact that in times of national crisis, we *want* to trust our leaders – we want that rush to comfort. But just because we want it so badly doesn’t make it the Real Thing – baby monkeys, when they’re frightened, will rush to cuddle a terry-cloth mama figure, after all. Can that figure actually perform any of the real functions of a real mama monkey? No, but it doesn’t matter in the moment. It’s close enough, and that’s all that seems to count.

  268. 268.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 11:19 am

    @Kay: from huffington

    He was among many Trump supporters asked by The Huffington Post in Cleveland how they would feel if Clinton wins, and the country becomes Hillary’s America. Many of them expressed fear, and not just your garden variety fear of political disappointment, but more your arm-yourself-to-the-teeth kind of fear.
    “Well, I would run to the store as fast as I could and get as much ammo as I could and buckle down,” said Pamela Nicolay, a central Californian who last voted for a president when it was Ronald Reagan.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-republicans-afraid_us_57926972e4b01180b52ee802?section=

  269. 269.

    aimai

    July 23, 2016 at 11:19 am

    @Schlemazel Khan: If he’s educated and smart give him a copy of The Hunting of the President. Slip it to him and tell him that very few people have read it and that Bush tried to have it taken off the shelves of bookstores. Its very readable and it gives you a really detailed understanding of the early scandals and just how fake they all were. And people who think they are “educated and smart” love to think they have been acknowledged for it and given extra, insider, information.

  270. 270.

    Chris

    July 23, 2016 at 11:22 am

    @Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill:

    He’s got kind of a Johhny Iselin quality.

    A fun fact that should be brought up every time the Red Scare era comes up: one of the congressmen responsible for setting up HUAC, Samuel Dickstein, was later found to have been in the pay of the NKVD. Yep: The Manchurian Candidate was actually real.

    Considering Putin’s known buddy-buddy relations with the far right parties in Europe, it certainly isn’t inconceivable that he’d try to help Trump get elected.

  271. 271.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    July 23, 2016 at 11:23 am

    @aimai: you forgot, ‘treated down-ticket races with bewildering dismissiveness that suggested a complete lack of understanding how American politics actually work”.

    But I confess, I haven’t paid much attention to Bernie! in the last few weeks. Has he found a second Senate candidate he deems Pure and Holy enough to be worthy of a fund-raising email? I believe he did expand the Revolutionary House map from 1% of races to 1.4%. The Movement truly is something to behold.

  272. 272.

    Matt McIrvin

    July 23, 2016 at 11:23 am

    @D58826: Yes, well, running out and stockpiling ammo is already their reaction to everything from Obama winning the election to the Weekend Explosion of Deals at Boch Toyota, so it shouldn’t be a surprise.

  273. 273.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 11:25 am

    @Miss Bianca: Don’t get me wrong I disagreed with just about everything Bush stands for. That doesn’t qualify as BDS and neither does

    am one of those people who had a visceral reaction to just hearing GWB’s voice on the radio – a literal gag reflex So maybe I did suffer from what you call BDS.

    .
    You recognize that he did try to do the right thing on immigration. Someone suffering from BDS would not.
    On the other hand there were folks speculating that he was back on the bottle after skinning his nose when he fell while riding his bike. That is the same kind of silliness as the Obama fist bump brooha

  274. 274.

    MomSense

    July 23, 2016 at 11:26 am

    @Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill:

    We keep attributing the invasion aftermath to lack of planning or poor planning but I think the problem was actually more like the prequel to Brownback’s destruction of Kansas.

    They had a plan. They used shock and awe to wipe out the institutions in Iraq so they could replace them with a Milton Friedman economic wonderland taking Iraqi owned industries and privatizing them to US and UK entities. The planning started well before the invasion with actual job fairs to get US contractors set up take the spoils. You can trace the insurgency to factory workers killing successive western managers sent in to take over Iraqi companies.

    I think Naomi Klein wrote about it in 2004 or 05 in Vanity Fair or Harper’s. Iraq was just old fashioned pillage.

  275. 275.

    Technocrat

    July 23, 2016 at 11:27 am

    @Applejinx:

    When do we get to see the Trump leaks and the mountain of fraud and bullshit that huckster stands on, or is that just too inconvenient for Russian KGB hackers to unveil?

    Right on. But I don’t think we will see it, because they’re not paid to produce it. Moreover, if I were an unaffiliated Russian hacker, the last server I want to attack is anything with Paul Manafort’s info on it. Don’t tell me that dude can’t make some phone calls.

  276. 276.

    danielx

    July 23, 2016 at 11:27 am

    Hillary Clinton’s job is to paint a sane, sober, serious, and positive contrast next week. She couldn’t have an easier job.

    True dat. It won’t require a lot of heavy lifting, particularly since Lord Short Fingers is now officially off the leash and free to give his id rein.

    OT: thanks for the expressions of sympathy on behalf of our boy Eric (mighty jungle beast!), who indeed survived a pit bull attack two years ago and recovered for the most part – it really is true that the best revenge is living well. A project for the daughter unit and me today is finding a perfect rock to place on his grave.

  277. 277.

    Iowa Old Lady

    July 23, 2016 at 11:28 am

    @D58826: A rabid Trump supporter told me that I’d better have my money in a safe place because if Clinton was elected, the government would take it all. I have no idea what that’s about.

  278. 278.

    Dadadadadadada

    July 23, 2016 at 11:28 am

    @D58826: Given his appearance at the Dallas funeral, I think speculation about exactly when GWB went back to drinking is totally fair game. My guess is 2006.

  279. 279.

    Kropadope

    July 23, 2016 at 11:28 am

    @aimai:

    I can’t find it right now but basically both Kerry and Biden are forgiven for their vote–hell, Biden is now America’s best loved goofy uncle a heartbeat away from the Presidency and no one ever, ever, complains that he did the wrong thing with his AUMF vote, that he probably did it because he was political, that he was stupid to trust Bush, that he had venal reasons, or that he is responsible for Iraq. Meanwhile no matter how much she apologizes or explains the logic behind her vote Hillary is damned for probably lying about it–(what? she’s not sorry?) or probably having bowed to pressure from her constituents, or having had political aspirations (unlike Kerry who actually ran for President right after, or Biden who was urged to run by white male progressives because Hillary was considered too evil?).

    You’re right, it’s totally the misogyny. It’s not the reliable support for interventions since Iraq that’s the problem. And Kerry totally gets a pass. NO ONE was mad at him for trying to sell the American public on a new war in Syria. Right.

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    A rabid Trump supporter told me that I’d better have my money in a safe place because if Clinton was elected, the government would take it all. I have no idea what that’s about.

    The Democrats are always coming for your guns and money. Don’t you listen to AM radio?

  280. 280.

    aimai

    July 23, 2016 at 11:29 am

    @MomSense: Yes, they had plans. They were just horribly bad plans and involved stupid and untrained people. Interns from the Heritage Foundation, or example. Because they really thought they could pop in Chalabi at the top and he would just make everything happen all the way down, and they could treat the entire country like an experiment in flat taxes/corruption/free market etc..etc…etc…

  281. 281.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 11:30 am

    @Dadadadadadada: Can’t argue with the funeral part but I think we need a bit more evidence about his drinking while in the WH than a skinned nose.

  282. 282.

    gene108

    July 23, 2016 at 11:33 am

    @D58826:

    if Michelle had a past life as a semi-nude model.

    Or if Michelle’s father was a card carrying member of the Yugoslavian Communist Party.

  283. 283.

    Chris

    July 23, 2016 at 11:33 am

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I think this is actually a large part of what suckered me and many others into giving Bush more slack than he deserved.

    Yeah, I’d buy that.

    But in the immediate aftermath Bush actually showed some restraint, refused to demonize Muslims or Arabs, and said nice words about wanting to make an intelligent, targeted response.

    I always gave him credit for that. Or, at least, recognized and appreciated it for the good thing it was. At the time, I don’t know if “credit” was the right word: the fact that forty years after the civil rights act, the sitting president recognized that overt bigotry was a bad thing seemed less like something to “credit” and more of a “what do you want, a cookie?” moment. But of course, the teabaggers demonstrated (and a lot of GOPers were demonstrating at the time) that most of the right wing was absolutely down with overt bigotry. So yeah, credit to him.

  284. 284.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    July 23, 2016 at 11:33 am

    @danielx: Belated condolences for your loss. They leave such big paw prints on our hearts.

  285. 285.

    aimai

    July 23, 2016 at 11:34 am

    @D58826: You don’t remember his holding the US flag upside down at a sporting event, or slapping the butt of one of the female athletes? I think he held it together as a dry drunk for quite a while in the White House but I just think the pressure on him was enormous. I thought he was drinking by the middle of his second term and I would not be at all surprised if he accelerated after he left. I don’t even say tha tto be mean. Its a crushing job, and he has to know how badly he performed.

  286. 286.

    Howard Beale IV

    July 23, 2016 at 11:35 am

    @Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill: Right click on the WaPo linky and select ‘Open in Incognito/Private Window’.

  287. 287.

    Matt McIrvin

    July 23, 2016 at 11:37 am

    @Iowa Old Lady: I thought Obama was going to take it all! How can any be left?

  288. 288.

    aimai

    July 23, 2016 at 11:38 am

    @Iowa Old Lady: Just tell her that you aren’t worried because the word has gone out that Clinton will only take Trump’s and his supporter’s money, and that your name is on the list to get it.

  289. 289.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 11:38 am

    @MomSense:

    In some ways, Bush’s political mistake was being too thoughtful in rebuilding Iraq. If he had withdrawn immediately after getting Saddam like his father did in the first Iraq war, he would have been a hero in America. Iraq would have been like Syria is today, but no one in the US would have cared.

  290. 290.

    SiubhanDuinne

    July 23, 2016 at 11:38 am

    @Shell:

    He came back last night, per John’s post.

  291. 291.

    Mandalay

    July 23, 2016 at 11:39 am

    @Kay:

    Political Parties run primaries. They make the rules.

    Sure, but that has nothing to do with two DNC officials discussing going after Sanders for his religious beliefs. You are defending the indefensible.

    Are you honestly incapable accepting that attacking a politician for their religious beliefs (or lack thereof) is just plain wrong, no matter who is doing it?

  292. 292.

    Technocrat

    July 23, 2016 at 11:39 am

    @Chris:

    GWB was a lot of things, but a xenophobe was not one of them:

    During his time in office the former president championed a program entitled the “President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief” or PEPFAR, a lesser known part of Bush’s legacy in the White House. In 2003, the program began by providing $15 billion over five years to combat AIDS around the globe through testing, counseling and medical treatment. The amount initially spent was over three times what the nation had spent on this cause before.

    Bush spoke about his hope that programs like PEPFAR and Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon would empower African countries to tackle cancer and AIDS with the help of global resources as well as local leadership

    Stuff like that is why I can’t hate him quite as much as the aftermath of his administration would warrant.

  293. 293.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 11:40 am

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    I’ve said before that if I cared only about my economic well being, I’d still be a rabid Democrat. Any increase is taxes has always been offset by income generated by better economic conditions.

  294. 294.

    Miss Bianca

    July 23, 2016 at 11:40 am

    @danielx: aw, did your kitty die recently? Let me add my condolences as well.

  295. 295.

    low-tech cyclist

    July 23, 2016 at 11:41 am

    In the wake of Hate Week, I picked up 1984, and found the perfect quote to describe Trump’s speech: “an attack so exaggerated and perverse that a child should have been able to see through it, and yet just plausible enough to fill one with an alarmed feeling that other people, less level-headed than oneself, might be taken in by it.”

  296. 296.

    Chris

    July 23, 2016 at 11:42 am

    @MomSense:

    They had a plan. They used shock and awe to wipe out the institutions in Iraq so they could replace them with a Milton Friedman economic wonderland taking Iraqi owned industries and privatizing them to US and UK entities.

    Yes, the bolded part is key and it’s what doesn’t get nearly enough attention when discussing the war. They disbanded the Iraqi military, de facto disbanded the civil service with de-Ba’athification, and turned Iraq into a Fair Tax playground. That wasn’t simply corruption or stupidity – it’s textbook “drown the government in the bathtub” Grover Norquist. They did it because they honestly believed that that’s how happy working stable middle-class democracies come into existence. Abolish the government and utopia will just will itself into existence by invisible hand, somehow.

    The Iraq disaster is often brought up as proof of how awful the GOP’s foreign policy was. What’s not usually added is that it works equally well as proof of how awful their domestic policy ideals are.

  297. 297.

    Miss Bianca

    July 23, 2016 at 11:43 am

    @Kropadope: Yup. Classic. Point out misogyny in a response to HRC’s decisions and you – among others – rush to say, “it’s not misogyny, it’s REASONS that have nothing to do with systemic misogyny, no sir! No ma’am!”

    @Chris: Word. I’m not always an uncritical fan of Naomi Klein, but I have to say I thought “Shock Doctrine” laid out a devastating case against this ideology and its role in the Iraq disaster.

  298. 298.

    Matt McIrvin

    July 23, 2016 at 11:43 am

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: He endorsed Hillary Clinton. That’s not nothing. It didn’t seem to have any immediate effect, since a bunch of horrifying killings were dominating the news and Clinton’s numbers kept sliding in the aftermath of the Comey presser. The Bernie-or-Busters just came up with reasons to believe he didn’t really mean it, or denounced him as a sellout, and kept soldiering on promoting Bust.

    But I’m not willing to count out Bernie Sanders as an asset to the Clinton campaign. I noticed they started putting him in their web ads right after that. His tweets during the RNC suggest that he’s getting his eyes on the goal.

  299. 299.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 11:43 am

    @aimai:

    his holding the US flag upside down at a sporting event, or slapping the butt of one of the female athletes?

    Didn’t remember the first but did remember the second. There was also that strange groping of Angela Merkel. And he may well have been a dry drunk who fell off the wagon in mid-term, I just think a higher level of proof is needed than a couple of odd incidents. And the funny thing is. if he did fall off the wagon in the 2nd term that is when he kicked Chaney largely to the curb and stated listening to Condi. So I’m reminded of Lincoln’s line about Gen. Grant’s alleged drinking – that he was going to get that brand of booze for all his generals

  300. 300.

    Technocrat

    July 23, 2016 at 11:44 am

    @Mandalay:

    Are you honestly incapable accepting that attacking a politician for their religious beliefs (or lack thereof) is just plain wrong, no matter who is doing it?

    You must be joking. It’s a staple of American politics.

    Ben Carson argued evolution was ‘encouraged by’ Satan

    That’s Steve Benen (who I love, BTW) going after Ben Carson.

    You were sayin?

  301. 301.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 11:44 am

    @Matt McIrvin: He’ll also be speaking at the convention.

  302. 302.

    Kwame

    July 23, 2016 at 11:45 am

    Will Tim Kaine say the words “Black Lives Matter” today?

  303. 303.

    Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill

    July 23, 2016 at 11:46 am

    @Chris:

    I had previously seen numbers indicating Putin’s personal net worth at $40 billion. Some say that it is as high as $200 billion.

    This is a guy who never worked outside government service. He’s a REAL billionaire (unlike the dolt), and has an agenda and confederates willing to kill either at his orders or for pay. He’s thoroughly infiltrated the campaign of the US “stand tall with patriotic fervor while sneering at minorities” security party, and is dangerously close to being a hyperpower of 1 person.

    This is why Griftwald never talks about Russia, and why there’s been a curious drumbeat smacking the fuck out of genuine American unity. It’s why the NSA even mandating the storage of metadata is the most evil of evil things.

    Do you think that the FSV doesn’t have every piece of your data? And no, like the NSA, they don’t give a fuck about your porn habits, naked selfie collection or love of my little pony cartoons. They do, however (and unlike the NSA), have every intention of using those against you should they feel the need arise.

  304. 304.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 11:46 am

    @Technocrat:

    Steve Benen is the unheralded MVP of the liberal internet.

  305. 305.

    Emma

    July 23, 2016 at 11:46 am

    @Mandalay:

    Sure, but that has nothing to do with two DNC officials discussing going after Sanders for his religious beliefs. You are defending the indefensible.

    I’ve identified the problem. You really believe discussing something and not doing it is the same as doing it Under this belief, yelling out in frustration so help me, I’m going to kill the bastard and then going home and starting dinner is exactly the same as sticking a knife in his stomach.

  306. 306.

    Kropadope

    July 23, 2016 at 11:47 am

    @Miss Bianca: So, the very real existence of misogyny (and Republican alt-world fantasy) invalidates any criticism not derived from either?

  307. 307.

    Matt McIrvin

    July 23, 2016 at 11:48 am

    @D58826: Similarly, I sometimes wonder if Ronald Reagan’s encroaching Alzheimer’s disease saved the world from nuclear Armageddon. Would the Ronald Reagan of 1980, or of 1968, have been receptive when Gorbachev made an offer?

  308. 308.

    amk

    July 23, 2016 at 11:50 am

    @Mandalay: you are whining about something that may or may not have been discussed (who the fuck knows?) and yet was not seen being actually used in reality? you need to get out of the stupid bubble.

    eta: I see that Emma beat me to it.

  309. 309.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 11:50 am

    @Technocrat: Yep. People are complicated in surprising ways sometimes. It has often been said that the Clinton’s and the Obama’s can’t be as evil as their opponents make them out to be because they raised pretty good kids. I think you can say the Bush twins grew into pretty good adults also so you have to give George and Laura credit for that. And as First Lady she did absolutely nothing to diminish the office. She was a strong supporter of literacy programs if I remember correctly. .

  310. 310.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 11:50 am

    Another good post from Booman regarding Kaine.

  311. 311.

    Technocrat

    July 23, 2016 at 11:51 am

    @Baud:

    He really is.

  312. 312.

    Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill

    July 23, 2016 at 11:51 am

    @Chris:

    Killing off Ba’athism in the eastern Mediterranean and the ME has always been the dumbest aspect of our slavish devotion to right wing Israeli expansionists and our cold warriors. The movement was secular, goddammit, and we collaborated in killing it in Egypt, Syria and Iraq.

  313. 313.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    July 23, 2016 at 11:52 am

    @Mandalay: are honestly incapable of noticing that this didn’t happen, and that you compared this thing that didn’t happen to the Iraq War, and are therefore one breathtakingly stupid motherfucker? maybe more than a little unhinged?

    @Matt McIrvin: that’s all well and good, and I hope Bernie! figures out how to be an asset to not just the Clinton campaign, but to some political agenda beyond his own campaign, but Elizabeth Warren, Al Franken, Sherrod Brown, Pat Leahy, Claire McCaskill and Jeanne Shaheen (just to go by my inbox over the last few days) have all managed to endorse HRC and fund-raise (and even actively campaign) for other Senate candidates.

  314. 314.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 11:54 am

    @Matt McIrvin: Yep. Maybe Nancy and her astrologer had a bigger impact than we know. As I say people are complicated in surprising ways. I didn’t like anything about the general Reagan agenda but credit where credit is due, he did cut a deal to save Soc. Sec., raise taxes when he saw the deficit exploding, immigration reform and the opening to Gorby. None of which is part of the current GOP biography of the man and today would get him drummed out of the party as a RHINO.

  315. 315.

    amk

    July 23, 2016 at 11:55 am

    @Baud: yup. one of the few on the left who actually looks into facts, not stupid memes. his job of chronicling and rebutting mittbot lies in 2012 was actual journalism.

  316. 316.

    Technocrat

    July 23, 2016 at 11:56 am

    @D58826:

    It has often been said that the Clinton’s and the Obama’s can’t be as evil as their opponents make them out to be because they raised pretty good kids

    And then there’s Dick Cheney.

  317. 317.

    Miss Bianca

    July 23, 2016 at 11:56 am

    @Kropadope: No, it’s just that a rush to dismiss misogyny as a factor in the criticism of a powerful woman – or any woman, really – particularly when the point in question is, “she’s being criticized for something that her male colleagues are getting a pass on” – is one of the signs and symptoms of systemic misogyny. Doesn’t mean that there aren’t other factors in play, just means that “yes, and it’s this” rather than “No, instead it’s this” might be the more…shall we say…tonally sensitive response.

  318. 318.

    Technocrat

    July 23, 2016 at 11:58 am

    @Miss Bianca:

    The strawman is usually the tell:

    “So you’re saying EVERY criticism of Obama is due to racism!?”

  319. 319.

    Brachiator

    July 23, 2016 at 11:59 am

    @Baud:

    In some ways, Bush’s political mistake was being too thoughtful in rebuilding Iraq. If he had withdrawn immediately after getting Saddam like his father did in the first Iraq war, he would have been a hero in America. Iraq would have been like Syria is today, but no one in the US would have cared.

    I don’t think this works. Are you being serious?

    Saddam was not toppled or killed after the first Iraq War. And ultimately Dubya had no defensible reason for invading Iraq. A chaotic outcome with negative blowback was probably inevitable.

  320. 320.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 11:59 am

    @Technocrat: Exception that proves the rule. But one daughter is an outspoken advocate for gay rights. She is lesbian and the Chaney’s accept her and her partner. Again people are complicated in strange ways (and yes I know Hitler loved his dog).

  321. 321.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    July 23, 2016 at 11:59 am

    Josh Barro ‏@ jbarro 1h1 hour ago
    Kasich says, in public interview, that Trump probably can’t win Ohio because he’s too much of a “divider.”

    The Republican primary of 2020 is going to be a very interesting aspect of the 2016 election.

  322. 322.

    Technocrat

    July 23, 2016 at 12:01 pm

    @D58826:

    You’re right, of course. I actually felt bad for Mary while I was typing my comment ;=)

    She’s basically Lily from The Munsters.

    ETA: Dated myself there

  323. 323.

    Chris

    July 23, 2016 at 12:02 pm

    @Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill:

    To be fair, Arab Nationalism (i.e. Nassierism and Ba’athism) was in dire straits for reasons that go well beyond anything we did. (We didn’t start the fire in either Egypt or Syria, even if we did in Iraq). Those regimes had been dysfunctional and losing the faith of their people before the 2003 mess already. They weren’t going to hang on forever.

  324. 324.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 12:02 pm

    @Brachiator:

    No, I just meant leaving early. I wasn’t clear.

  325. 325.

    Chyron HR

    July 23, 2016 at 12:03 pm

    In summary, the fact that somebody at the DNC said “Should we criticize Bernie for being an atheist?” (and was demonstrably told “no”) proves that Clinton is the source of all evil in the universe.

    Whereas the people standing on stage at Bernie’s rallies exhorting his followers to vote for Trump do not in any way represent the views of Sanders and were, in fact, transported there by wizards or aliens or possibly wizard aliens.

  326. 326.

    gene108

    July 23, 2016 at 12:04 pm

    @Schlemazel Khan:

    The people who voted for that war either were intentionally stupid or spineless dicks who felt voting against it might cost them votes so who cared if a bunch of Iraqis died in our invasion, it will all be over in a few weeks anyway.

    IIRC, Bush, Jt advocated for the AUMF, in order to have a big stick to threaten Saddam to let the weapons inspectors back in, who were kicked out in 1998. I believe Bush, Jr issued an ultimatum to Saddam: let the inspectors back in or I’ll use this shiny new AUMF I have to put boots on the ground. Saddam blinked. He let inspectors back in.

    Getting the inspectors back in was generally considered to be a goal worth pursuing. Bush & Co had just won a major policy point for their style of diplomacy.

    I can somewhat forgive Congress for thinking a sitting President, who said either Saddam lets inspectors back in or we go to war, would not go to war once inspectors were on the ground and the USA had won the stand off.

    Sort of like Obama being cordial to Republicans, when the blogosphere wanted him to tell them to pound sand. When you are theoretically supposed to be working with different people in your organization and you do not have the power to fire any of them, you need to find a way to make a relationship work, no matter how crazy they may seem to people on the outside.

  327. 327.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    July 23, 2016 at 12:04 pm

    @D58826: I can almost feel sorry for a Mary Cheney, but before her parents and sister decided to she was inconvenient to the greater family project of Liz’s ambition and Daddy’s vindication (potayto, potahto) she was as nasty and dishonest as anyone else in that sick, wretched clan.

  328. 328.

    MomSense

    July 23, 2016 at 12:06 pm

    @Mandalay:

    I don’t know that I trust anything wikileaks releases. Why did they release personal information like credit card numbers, etc that expose ordinary people to fraud and identity theft? Russian hackers got the information and wikileaks did not vet it thoroughly. It is common practice for intelligence services to include misinformation with legitimate leaks.
    I find it very tough to believe that the DNC would go after religion and I’m damned sure that the RNC absolutely would because they always do. They fear monger about religion all the time.

  329. 329.

    Kropadope

    July 23, 2016 at 12:08 pm

    @Technocrat: @Miss Bianca: And so, when I point out that there are relevant events after that; some of which demonstrate a pattern of turning too quickly to military intervention, another being an instance of one of her male colleagues most definitely not getting a pass; and you just ignore those arguments in favor of arguing as though I had just asserted that misogyny doesn’t exist. You re sure I’m the one building the strawman?

  330. 330.

    Technocrat

    July 23, 2016 at 12:09 pm

    @Kropadope:

    You re sure I’m the one building the strawman?

    Positive

    SATSQ

    ETA: You actually deserve better than that, so here’s just one example:

    “So, the very real existence of misogyny (and Republican alt-world fantasy) invalidates any criticism not derived from either?”

    Voila.

  331. 331.

    Fair Economist

    July 23, 2016 at 12:09 pm

    @Mandalay:

    And the religious beliefs of Sanders should have nothing to do with anything. They are certainly not something that the DNC should be raising.

    I agree. And, they didn’t raise them. They were raised by the Russian spies who got these emails and by Wikileaks that chose to publicize them and not redact that.

  332. 332.

    burnspbesq

    July 23, 2016 at 12:09 pm

    @ThresherK:

    I know California’s a yuuuge, classssy place, but at what point does this drought/wildfire combo seem to take on a never-ending life of its own, like the tire fire in The Simpsons?

    It’s part of the deal. Someplace burns every Summer and early Fall. Some years, a lot of someplaces. The drought has made it worse.

  333. 333.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 12:10 pm

    @Chris:

    They weren’t going to hang on forever.

    True. The middle east was a powder keg waiting for a match to set it off. The goal of American policy, no matter how ham handed it might have been, was to keep the match away from the powder. The invasion of Iraq simply lit the match and then threw high test gas into the mix just for good measure.

  334. 334.

    Matt McIrvin

    July 23, 2016 at 12:10 pm

    @Technocrat:

    You’re right of course. But this episode has been an object lesson in the actual nature of wikileaks.

    More than anything else, the dump is a threat aimed at potential Democratic donors. Get your personal information on their websites and risk getting it violated by us.

    Of course, this is also a major IT security failure on the part of the DNC, and they need to address that–they should not have this info lying around anywhere in plaintext. But any sympathy I might have once had for what Wikileaks is doing is now gone. They’re functionally the cyber-criminal arm of the Donald Trump campaign.

  335. 335.

    Cat48

    July 23, 2016 at 12:11 pm

    @Barb2:

    Yes, Valerie’s dad, was a doctor and black. Highly educated blacks often couldn’t find employment they wanted in the US, so they went to a foreign country for a better deal. The US had a good relationship with Iran at the time. It would seem impossible now!

  336. 336.

    Chris

    July 23, 2016 at 12:11 pm

    @gene108:

    If Bush had left it at the 2002 success in getting the inspectors back in, it would’ve been a huge victory. And most liberals would’ve been happy to say so.

  337. 337.

    burnspbesq

    July 23, 2016 at 12:11 pm

    So I get a text from the kid this morning:

    “That mall in Munich? I was there last week.”

    Being a parent in the Age of TMI really sucks sometimes.

  338. 338.

    Tee

    July 23, 2016 at 12:11 pm

    @Kay: RE: Trump’s Mother. I read a profile of him (Atlantic or New Yorker) that said his mother was a domestic in his grandparents house when she and Fred got married. It also said that Fred had named his company after his mother. The one Donald got his backing from in the beginning. It also said Fred had multiple affairs.

    RE: Religious woman not liking Donald Trump. Many of my evangelical and catholic friends will be voting for Hillary. Kaine will be a big help to her in that respect. One aspect of GOTV that I am doing is offering to babysit for my friends with non-supportive husbands so they can go vote without worrying about the children spilling the beans. I tell them to do errands and vote and I will keep the kids. So far the there are going to be 15 at my house in November. No yard signs, no phone polls, no exit polling. But we are with Her. Because our children’s future is what we are concerned about.

  339. 339.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 12:12 pm

    @Fair Economist: I agree too, but I’ll add this nuance. If Sanders had won the nom, it would be have been an issue that the GOP would have raised in the GE, so it is something that Sanders should have had to dealt with in the primary as part of the vetting process. His loss, obviously, renders that concern moot.

  340. 340.

    Chris

    July 23, 2016 at 12:12 pm

    @D58826:

    Pretty much.

  341. 341.

    Technocrat

    July 23, 2016 at 12:14 pm

    @Matt McIrvin:

    But any sympathy I might have once had for what Wikileaks is doing is now gone. They’re functionally the cyber-criminal arm of the Donald Trump campaign

    This is exactly my feeling, and quite honestly it was something of a shock. I had bought into the “heros of the information age” bullshit.

    One change: I’d substitute Putin (or even Manafort), for Trump.

  342. 342.

    Brachiator

    July 23, 2016 at 12:14 pm

    @Kay:

    I can’t help it- I cannot take those people seriously. Really? All roads lead to the Clintons murdering people?

    And running a cocaine ring. It’s amazing that Clinton had any spare time to act as governor down in Arkansas. To the most rabid idiot haters, the Clintons were an Arkansas Bonnie and Clyde.

    It would be funny if it weren’t so stupid.

  343. 343.

    amk

    July 23, 2016 at 12:15 pm

    bs bots (as few as they are) not gonna like this.

  344. 344.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 12:16 pm

    @Chris: Should have added that the failures of the various regimes might have been easier to deal with if they had happened over an extended period of time and w/o the element of jihadi terrorism in the mix.

  345. 345.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 12:16 pm

    @Technocrat: There is a cohort of people on Reddit who are anxiously awaiting for the document dump that will sink Clinton, to the point where they are getting pissed off at wikileaks for playing games.

  346. 346.

    SiubhanDuinne

    July 23, 2016 at 12:18 pm

    @Matt McIrvin:

    A lot of people initially assumed that RNC set photo was a parody, possibly by The Onion.

    I was one of them. Was absolutely convinced for a good 12-14 hours that it was a clever, but so over-the-top, Photoshopping job.

    Even if you take away his authoritarianism, giant narcissistic ego, horrible policies, history of near if not outright criminality, routine lying and cheating and ripping people off, encouragement of violence, unwarranted braggadocio, racism, sexism, xenophobia, ignorance, and basic stupidity — take away all those things, I would still despise him because he is just plain vulgar.

  347. 347.

    Kropadope

    July 23, 2016 at 12:18 pm

    @Technocrat: Let me walk you through this slowly because you apparently need it. I pointed out that Hillary has supported a lot of interventions since Iraq and the fact that John Kerry has certainly not gotten a pass. This is what I get back:

    Point out misogyny in a response to HRC’s decisions and you – among others – rush to say, “it’s not misogyny, it’s REASONS that have nothing to do with systemic misogyny, no sir! No ma’am!”

    Now, from my perspective, that looks an awful lot like an attempt to use the existence of misogyny to invalidate other criticism, beefed up with plenty of straw. Your mileage may vary, of course, but it appears you aren’t even working with a functioning engine.

    ETA: While I’m at it, didn’t John Kerry have to deal with his own insurgent campaign and potential depress turnout because of his Iraq vote?

  348. 348.

    Dadadadadadada

    July 23, 2016 at 12:19 pm

    @Brachiator: I’m open to the argument that, had US troops completely withdrawn by the end of 2003 (as predicted, nay, promised, by the sitting Secretary of Defense), Iraq would have exploded, and Americans wouldn’t have cared. Lots of our countrymen would have been fine with letting the Iraqis kill each other, just as long as they weren’t killing our beloved troops.

  349. 349.

    Brachiator

    July 23, 2016 at 12:19 pm

    @Kropadope:

    And so, when I point out that there are relevant events after that; some of which demonstrate a pattern of turning too quickly to military intervention,

    I keep hearing people say this, but I never see the proof of it.

  350. 350.

    Miss Bianca

    July 23, 2016 at 12:19 pm

    @Kropadope: Look, K-rope, one of the things I’ve learned from being around this joint is that shit involved with running a country – and being sure, absolutely sure, before you act that what you are doing is the right thing, and the enormous consequences for being wrong – is WAY more complex than I – or anyone else, really – could possibly imagine.

    That is why I say: if you’re so certain that what either Sec. Clinton OR Sec. Kerry did was “wrong” with regard to Syria, Libya, or anywhere else – Show your work. Show that what they did was actually, objectively “wrong”. And what you would do – whose word you would rely on as an advisor – that would be different. And then, on top of that, to acknowledge that yes, sexism and misogyny DO play a role in the way that Sec. Clinton gets criticized and held to a higher moral/ethical standard than her male colleagues. That’s all.

    And I want my pony delivered, please.

  351. 351.

    aimai

    July 23, 2016 at 12:20 pm

    @Tee: Beautiful! Absolutely beautiful!

  352. 352.

    Mandalay

    July 23, 2016 at 12:20 pm

    @amk:

    you are whining about something that may or may not have been discussed

    It’s in an email so it was discussed.

  353. 353.

    Fair Economist

    July 23, 2016 at 12:20 pm

    @Applejinx:

    The question for Wikileaks people is: when do we get to see the RNC leaks? Showing them doing exactly the same things against Trump, and failing because their party is balkanized into psycho billionaires?

    Never, because Wikileaks doesn’t get the data, they just publish it. The Russians will never give them data implicating their bought-and-owned flunky Trump or the party he took over.

  354. 354.

    burnspbesq

    July 23, 2016 at 12:21 pm

    @amk:

    bs bots (as few as they are) not gonna like this.

    They don’t like anything. They are Mikey from the Life cereal commercial.

  355. 355.

    bemused

    July 23, 2016 at 12:22 pm

    @Tee:

    Wow, I just can’t fathom that in 2016 there is still many, too many, young women who vote differently from their husbands and hide it. Makes me wonder what else they keep quiet about that would upset the poor dears.

  356. 356.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 12:23 pm

    @Mandalay: Was there a response to the email? A discussion requires at least two people. I’ve received emails from people promising me hot grls, but I’ve never engaged in a discussion about the offer.

  357. 357.

    amk

    July 23, 2016 at 12:23 pm

    @Miss Bianca: krope is all about dope. lotsa extrapolations with no actual backing up. despite his protestations to the contrary, he ain’t gonna vote hillz.

  358. 358.

    Matt McIrvin

    July 23, 2016 at 12:24 pm

    @Technocrat: That may be a distinction without a difference.

    It makes me feel like a crazy McCarthyite, saying that the Republican presidential candidate is a catspaw for the sinister, tyrannical President of Russia. But, God, the connections to that asshole are hard to ignore. And Putin has both the authoritarian right and a small but noisy chunk of the anti-US-imperialist left playing into his hands.

  359. 359.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 12:24 pm

    @Dadadadadadada: While there were no US troops involved, we were quite happy to walk away from Afghanistan after the Soviets pulled out. The resulting civil war helped give rise to the Taliban. We have a bad habit of walking away from things. And at the individual level we have largely abandoned the Iraqi and Afghans who put their lives on the line by working for us. I guess they will continue to be excluded from immigrating to the US by ‘old little hands’. There is an old cliche that the only thing worse than being America’s enemy is being its friend.

  360. 360.

    burnspbesq

    July 23, 2016 at 12:25 pm

    @Kropadope:

    Let me walk you through this slowly because you apparently need it.

    As a rhetorical tool, condescension is easily overused and overdone.

  361. 361.

    Miss Bianca

    July 23, 2016 at 12:25 pm

    @Tee:

    One aspect of GOTV that I am doing is offering to babysit for my friends with non-supportive husbands so they can go vote without worrying about the children spilling the beans. I tell them to do errands and vote and I will keep the kids. So far the there are going to be 15 at my house in November. No yard signs, no phone polls, no exit polling. But we are with Her. Because our children’s future is what we are concerned about.

    Bless you for this, what a wonderful idea. I think I’m going to steal this for consideration at our next Democratic Central Committee meeting.

  362. 362.

    Brachiator

    July 23, 2016 at 12:27 pm

    @Dadadadadadada:

    I’m open to the argument that, had US troops completely withdrawn by the end of 2003 (as predicted, nay, promised, by the sitting Secretary of Defense), Iraq would have exploded, and Americans wouldn’t have cared.

    Would this have been simply a punitive expedition and quick withdrawal?

    Americans might not have care initially, but ISIL might have risen even faster than it did, and there would be more terrorist attacks against the West.

  363. 363.

    aimai

    July 23, 2016 at 12:27 pm

    @Kropadope: You know what? Its probably not even worth saying it but accusing a whole lot of women of “using” misogyny to avoid addressing your personal concerns or arguments is, itself, a textbook example of sexism. We are not obligated to bow to your authority, or accept your definition of what is at issue. We are not “using” misogyny to score points–its a real factor in our real lives. We are not “using” misogyny to “win” any kind of argument with you. Fuck–I’m not even actually having a discussion about you or what you may have thought or think you thought at any point in time. I was talking about generalized misogyny, as I see it, in many, many, many comments online from white male progressives who simultaneously supported Kerry or Biden in their run for the presidency while making Hillary’s AUMF vote the centerpiece of their argument against her. Nothing to do with you or what you think you think. If you want to imagine that you are the only pure and honest broker in the country, the only one not soaking in a sea of racism and sexism, go right ahead. Its probably not true, you are as much a product of American culture and white male progressive sexism as anyone. But you can think what you like about yourself. Its not convincing. Its not dispositive. Its not meaningful. But it is really, really, really, funny in an absurd kind of way. Please, please, please do go on lecturing women about how they don’t understand politics or the kind of perfect, above it all politics of Kropadope.

  364. 364.

    amk

    July 23, 2016 at 12:27 pm

    @Mandalay: well, giving you or wiki the benefit of the doubt, you and your ilk should be happy that this was another instance of “all talk and no action”, which stupid meme you and your ilk always throw at the kenyan. so, why whine now?

  365. 365.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 12:27 pm

    @Miss Bianca: second that. To much of the criticism is Monday morning quarterback w/o any what I would do differently. Most of the GOP criticism of Obama’s Syrian policy is that we aren’t bombing enough w/o any explanation as to why more bombs will produce a better outcome.

  366. 366.

    Dadadadadadada

    July 23, 2016 at 12:27 pm

    @Fair Economist: I just hoped that whoever leaked Trump’s speech has access to a lot more. And if that person doesn’t someone must. And Trump is an egotistical gasbag who is well-known for top-down disloyalty, so I would expect to see a lot of his campaign workers (up to and including his running mate) getting fed up and providing us with all kinds of juicy dishes.

  367. 367.

    Miss Bianca

    July 23, 2016 at 12:28 pm

    @amk:

    despite his protestations to the contrary, he ain’t gonna vote hillz.

    No, now there I think that you malign him.

  368. 368.

    amk

    July 23, 2016 at 12:29 pm

    @Baud:

    but I’ve never engaged in a discussion about the offer.

    coward

  369. 369.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 12:30 pm

    Only slight OT since the GOP likes to make a big thing about Government corruption.

    Three Florida residents have been charged in the “largest single criminal health-care fraud case ever brought against individuals” by the U.S. Justice Department — an alleged Medicare fraud and money laundering scheme that netted participants a whopping $1 billion since 2009, prosecutors revealed Friday.
    The owner of more than 30 Miami-area skilled nursing and assisted living facilities, as well as a hospital administrator and a physician’s assistant were charged in an indictment with conspiracy, money laundering and health-care fraud, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Miami said.

    Again private citizens ripping off the taxpayer not the other way around.

    http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/healthcare/dollar1-billion-medicare-bust-in-florida-is-biggest-criminal-health-care-fraud-case-ever/ar-BBuFgdT?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=iehp

  370. 370.

    Dadadadadadada

    July 23, 2016 at 12:31 pm

    @D58826: Exactly. Did anyone in America care about the bloodbath we left behind in Afghanistan? Southeast Asia? Etc.? Once US troops were out of harm’s way, it’s like those places didn’t even exist. Iraq part 2 could’ve played out a lot like that.

  371. 371.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 12:31 pm

    @D58826: I wonder which of the three will end up as governor of that state.

  372. 372.

    Miss Bianca

    July 23, 2016 at 12:31 pm

    @Brachiator: “Arkansas Bonnie and Clyde!” Now, that *is* funny – stupid too, and potentially very dangerous, but Lord! What a SNL series of skits that could be!

  373. 373.

    amk

    July 23, 2016 at 12:33 pm

    @Baud: lol. bc is gonna pissed off at your innuendo.

  374. 374.

    Dadadadadadada

    July 23, 2016 at 12:33 pm

    @Brachiator: The actual blowback in 2016 might well have been worse. But Bush might have saved his reputation (which is all he really cared about), and 4000 Americans would still be alive.
    I’m not saying that the quick withdrawal would have been better, but I’m fair sure it would have looked better in, say, 2007 than the disaster we got.

  375. 375.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 12:34 pm

    @amk: Nah, she’ll be nodding her head in agreement.

  376. 376.

    amk

    July 23, 2016 at 12:35 pm

    @Miss Bianca: a troll can be maligned?

  377. 377.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 12:37 pm

    @Baud: My first thought but no political affiliations listed in the article for the perps.

  378. 378.

    Baud

    July 23, 2016 at 12:37 pm

    @amk: I don’t consider him a troll. He engages, and doesn’t seem to be here simply to get a rise out of people (even if that’s the effect his comments have on some).

  379. 379.

    Feathers

    July 23, 2016 at 12:37 pm

    @amk: Watching that clip I really wondered if Trump would have gotten the nomination if Stewart (and to a lesser extent Colbert) had still been around. Not because of the influence on the electorate, but because the media people watch him and didn’t like having their friends laugh at them. The Daily Show did manage to kill some of the more egregiously stupid media tropes while Stewart was in charge.

  380. 380.

    Miss Bianca

    July 23, 2016 at 12:38 pm

    @amk: I don’t think he’s all troll. I think he’s under some kind of tragic enchantment where he’s only a troll half the time. Well, OK, 3/4 time.

  381. 381.

    SiubhanDuinne

    July 23, 2016 at 12:39 pm

    @danielx:

    I must have missed the sad news about Eric (handsome boy!) Condolences to you and your daughter. The perfect stone is out there, waiting to be found and installed in a place of honor.

  382. 382.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 12:40 pm

    @Brachiator: Heck any two people who are so powerful and smart that they can break that many laws for that length of time and get away with it belong in the WH. Putin doesn’t stand a chance.

  383. 383.

    amk

    July 23, 2016 at 12:41 pm

    @Baud: @Miss Bianca:

    bleeding heart libruls.

  384. 384.

    Mr. Mack

    July 23, 2016 at 12:41 pm

    @Kay:

    Bernie Sanders spent a year calling Clinton corrupt. I don’t have any problem with that but making him out to be a saint and her out to be this scheming back-roomer is just bullshit. She is allowed to compete and relationships are one of the coins of the realm in politics. She made relationships over 40 years. She’s allowed to use that advantage. Obama didn’t have the kind of elaborate web of people he knew in Dem politics that she had and has and he beat her anyway. That’s what Sanders had to do. That’s what insurgent candidates do- they use some other advantage.

    Yep.

  385. 385.

    Quinerly

    July 23, 2016 at 12:43 pm

    @Chyron HR:
    Great post at #326. Thank you.

  386. 386.

    Technocrat

    July 23, 2016 at 12:43 pm

    @Kropadope:

    Jesus, Krope. You know I can read your comments, right? This is how you say your argument was presented:

    I pointed out that Hillary has supported a lot of interventions since Iraq and the fact that John Kerry has certainly not gotten a pass

    This is how it was actually presented:

    You’re right, it’s totally the misogyny. It’s not the reliable support for interventions since Iraq that’s the problem. And Kerry totally gets a pass. NO ONE was mad at him for trying to sell the American public on a new war in Syria. Right

    It’s the first in a series of rather obvious and egregious strawmen you present. It’s not unfair to assume you’re attacking the underlying claim of misogyny, inasmuch as any counter-argument can ever be gleaned from such debate tactics.

  387. 387.

    Brachiator

    July 23, 2016 at 12:45 pm

    @Dadadadadadada:

    The actual blowback in 2016 might well have been worse. But Bush might have saved his reputation (which is all he really cared about), and 4000 Americans would still be alive.

    More American civilians would probably be dead.

    Also, while Cheney cares about his reputation and ferociously defends every mistake their administration made, I don’t think that Dubya gives a fvck.

  388. 388.

    jc

    July 23, 2016 at 12:45 pm

    I don’t think they had enough American flags up on the stage at the RNC convention.

  389. 389.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    July 23, 2016 at 12:46 pm

    @Dadadadadadada: OTOH, Afghanistan and SE Asia didn’t have any oil.

    CSMonitor:

    Was Iraq a war for oil?

    Prediction: It was common for anti-war critics on the far left in the US and Europe before and during the war, and among all sorts of folks in the Middle East, to say that the Iraq war was about stealing Iraq’s oil. Former UK MP George Galloway led a protest shouting “no war for oil” in London in late 2002, and it was a common refrain from around the world.

    What happened? The Iraq war was completely about oil. And it wasn’t about oil at all. It was completely about oil in the sense that Iraq’s vast reserves are what make Iraq important, both as a supplier to global oil markets and as a potential regional military and economic powerhouse. Had Saddam Hussein been a nasty dictator in some resource-starved land, the odds of the US taking much interest in invasion would have been close to zero. To top it off, southern Iraq lies in reach of the Straits of Hormuz, a major artery for international energy and thus Hussein could pose a threat to the health and economy of the US (as well as much of the rest of the world). But it wasn’t about oil, at all, in the sense that US was somehow going to get its hands on the stuff like an extractive 19th century colonial empire. While the war was incredibly profitable for military suppliers like Halliburton and private armies like the since renamed Blackwater, US oil majors haven’t punched above their weight in post-Saddam Iraq. Exxon has a major contract in the south, and US oil services companies are making a lot of money there. But so are Chinese and Russian oil companies. As one wag on twitter put it “this was the least successful war for oil in history.”

    Remember W built the largest US Embassy in the world in Baghdad. Even if the troops were somehow out in months, we (W’s USA) weren’t going anywhere.

    FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  390. 390.

    Technocrat

    July 23, 2016 at 12:47 pm

    @Matt McIrvin:

    It makes me feel like a crazy McCarthyite, saying that the Republican presidential candidate is a catspaw for the sinister, tyrannical President of Russia. But, God, the connections to that asshole are hard to ignore

    Dude, add me to the “embarassed to believe what I now suspect” club. I hate CTs. But, it’s hard to ignore all the threads.

  391. 391.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 12:52 pm

    Poor Muslim haters, seems the guy who shot up the mall yesterday was influenced by the nut job from Norway and not the nut jobs from ISIS. To quote one of the twitter responses ‘ German police have a vested interest in not finding a jihad/migrant connect to terrorism’.

  392. 392.

    SiubhanDuinne

    July 23, 2016 at 12:53 pm

    @D58826:

    I know, of course, that all the Bushes were among the many Republicans who stayed away from Cleveland last week, but wonder whether there were any Cheney sightings? (Dick, Lynne, or Liz — I don’t think Mary is very political.)

  393. 393.

    gene108

    July 23, 2016 at 12:56 pm

    @Chris:

    If Bush had left it at the 2002 success in getting the inspectors back in, it would’ve been a huge victory. And most liberals would’ve been happy to say so.

    I disliked Bush, a lot. From not being able to talk coherently most of the time, to the way he stole Florida, but I had to temporarily admit I was wrong about authorizing AUMF because the inspectors were back in.

  394. 394.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 1:01 pm

    @Technocrat: Well according to Sen. Cotton once ‘old little hands’ starts getting his intelligence briefings he will see the light and his relationship with Putin will cool. The obvious question why it takes a top secret intelligence briefing to clue Trump in on the fact that Putin is a thug and a danger to US and western interests?.

  395. 395.

    Brachiator

    July 23, 2016 at 1:04 pm

    @D58826:

    Only slight OT since the GOP likes to make a big thing about Government corruption….Again private citizens ripping off the taxpayer not the other way around.

    Actually, the conservative view would be that big government programs are inherently subject to waste, fraud and abuse. And you gotta wonder. Over a billion in fraud, and they could not catch this sooner?

    But conservatives are inconsistent and hypocritical. They happily excuse waste and fraud in programs they like, such as defense spending.

    And Republicans often deliberately block funding for better regulation and enforcement of government programs.

  396. 396.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 1:04 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne: My own conspiracy theory is that the Bushes actually hope for a Trump victory in November. That way in 100 years when historians rate US presidents from first to worst there will always be at least one name below Dubya’s.

  397. 397.

    Chris

    July 23, 2016 at 1:06 pm

    @Technocrat:

    The problem with conspiracy theories is that every now and then, something pops up that’s just as crazy and improbable as any of them, which is taken as a vindication of all of the others.

    A lot of people in the eighties hated Reagan and a lot of them probably suspected that he was doing under the table stuff to support his terrorist friends in Nicaragua… but how many of them thought he’d sell arms to Khomeini in order to raise the money for that? That’s just fucking nuts. (Especially since there were so many regimes friendlier than Iran hungry for American weapons and it probably wouldn’t have been nearly as shocking if he’d been caught selling arms under the table to, I don’t know, Thailand). And yet it happened.

  398. 398.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 1:07 pm

    @Brachiator:

    And Republicans often deliberately block funding for better regulation and enforcement of government programs.

    Which answers your question about why it wasn’t caught sooner. They are doing the same with the IRS so that the 1% can defraud the government with less risk of audits. The Goopers made a big deal out of that green company Soyladana (sic) while ignoring the billions that disappeared in Iraq and Afghanistan.

  399. 399.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 1:09 pm

    @Chris:

    Especially since there were so many regimes friendlier than Iran hungry for American weapons and it probably wouldn’t have been nearly as shocking if he’d been caught selling arms under the table to, I don’t know, Thailand).

    I think the ransoming of hostages in Lebanon is what started the Iranian connection and the transfer to the Contras was just a late add-on

  400. 400.

    japa21

    July 23, 2016 at 1:12 pm

    @Applejinx:

    Without the DNC thing, Bernie might possibly have won, and then we’d be in a very awkward position like the Republicans are. We’re better off.

    The rest of your comment makes a lot of sense in regards to the whole wikileaks thing being obviously against the Dems, etc. But this comment is really strange.

    As you said there is no sign that the suggestion of one person was ever taken seriously and it was definitely not used. So I don’t know what you mean by the DNC thing.

    There is no evidence whatsoever that the DNC rigged anything for Hillary. Additionally, despite all that has been written, Bernie was never even close to winning. It is my opinion (yes only an opinion) that if Bernie hadn’t run and only O’Malley had against Clinton that O’Malley would probably have come close to Sanders’ numbers. The anti-Clinton folks made an early decision to side with Sanders rather than O’Malley because Sanders was ripping into Clinton so much.

    I grant you my conjecture in that last respect may not even be close to reality and O’Malley may have only gotten 40% instead of Sanders’ 45%.

    Someone else (or it may have been you) stated that Clinton pulled out all the stops and barely won. Again, she didn’t barely win and she treated Sanders’ with kid gloves. She pulled out maybe 1% of the stops.

  401. 401.

    D58826

    July 23, 2016 at 1:18 pm

    @japa21: The RNC would have started with Burlington collage and worked their way down on Bernie. I don’t think Hillary ever mentioned it.
    I don’t think the DNC ‘rigged’ anything but of course Hillary was the in-house favorite. She had a long career with the party and Bernie was just a carpetbagger using the DNC to his advantage.

  402. 402.

    amk

    July 23, 2016 at 1:32 pm

    @japa21:

    She pulled out maybe 1% of the stops.

    hence, their false gripes about dnc and smearing her by association. gee, where have we seen that before?

  403. 403.

    OGLiberal

    July 23, 2016 at 1:38 pm

    @Barb2: This was public at least two weeks ago so have to think it’s a nonthingburger.

  404. 404.

    sigaba

    July 23, 2016 at 1:50 pm

    Presently taking the Amtrak to San Diego.

    Thing I learned today: Amish people take trains!

    Other thing I learned that makes sense but never considered: Amish people don’t use deodorant and they were standing on a 100 degree platform for half an hour.

  405. 405.

    Mandalay

    July 23, 2016 at 1:55 pm

    Heh. The DNC big shot is playing his “do not recall” card after his email plan to smear Sanders for his religious beliefs got leaked:

    Biddle reported that at 1:03 EDT, Marshall emailed Biddle to respond to publication of this letter. Marshall wrote, “I do not recall this. I can say it would not have been Sanders. It would probably be about a surrogate.” Biddle then says that, as of publication time, he was still waiting for Marshall’s response as to who the surrogate could “possibly be.”

    Squirm you vile fucker.

  406. 406.

    Tee

    July 23, 2016 at 1:55 pm

    @Miss Bianca: I think the RNC is going to be surprised at how much fail is going to happen in downticket races because the women who do the organizing, the calling and the support have said no. During the primaries we did what we could do but “family” (which means no legitimate come back) takes priority to outside interests. We also are doing more with sports leagues, homeschool activity planning etc. I am trying to talk up the fact that for the past 8 years the Republicans have not “done” anything constructive in congress. No infrastructure repair, no investment in future planning. Just “repeal” Obamacare. Which makes no sense because we are still paying for health care for people who use emergency rooms as primary care. With the ACA we are paying less. Sigh…subtle, slow and steady, examples not tirades are changing some viewpoints but the stakes are too high not to do so.

  407. 407.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    July 23, 2016 at 1:57 pm

    @Mandalay: You’re awfully upset about something that didn’t happen. Have you tried finding a hobby? Or a therapist?

  408. 408.

    karen marie

    July 23, 2016 at 2:19 pm

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Don’t forget his “compassionate conservative” schtick. The equivalent of lipstick on a pig but it gave cover to abhorrent policy positions.

  409. 409.

    Mandalay

    July 23, 2016 at 2:23 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    You’re awfully upset about something that didn’t happen.

    You think the emails are faked? Give it up.

    And far from being upset, I’m thrilled that the shower of shitheads who have been running the DNC are getting justifiably skewered.

  410. 410.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    July 23, 2016 at 2:28 pm

    @Mandalay: no, you bitter, dumbass clown. I think the E-VIL scheme to talk about St Bernie’s atheism was never carried out, and you only know about it because Vladimir Putin wants you to. The Clinton campaign played patty cake with Bernie! because of screechy little nitwits like you, who would have flung themselves to the floor to throw shrieking, media-amplified tantrums. He wasn’t cheated. He wasn’t screwed out of the nomination. Fighting opponents taking it easy on him, he lost. Thank god.

    Now shut the fuck up, you pathetic, addle-pated crank.

  411. 411.

    burnspbesq

    July 23, 2016 at 2:33 pm

    @D58826:

    Trump will, one suspects, argue that if there is no Medicare program, there can be no Medicare fraud, so abolish Medicare.

  412. 412.

    Technocrat

    July 23, 2016 at 2:34 pm

    @Chris:

    Great points.

  413. 413.

    karen marie

    July 23, 2016 at 2:38 pm

    @Ultraviolet Thunder: No, she’s upset because Trump has no manners. Interesting that JEB, effectively, defends Trump, putting the blame on the fact that “our culture is different now.” In other words, liberals, minorities and women are fighting back.

  414. 414.

    aimai

    July 23, 2016 at 2:41 pm

    @Brachiator: For god’s sake the Governor of the State was one of the biggest medicare/medicaid frauds of all time and they still elected him. A billion is pocket change in the couch of the corruption of the Florida state government.

  415. 415.

    aimai

    July 23, 2016 at 2:42 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: He’s got a hobby horse.

  416. 416.

    Mandalay

    July 23, 2016 at 2:47 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    shut the fuck up, you pathetic, addle-pated crank.

    You are the crank. All I have posted about is the dump of DNC emails, and you build strawmen all over the place. The DNC is run by an incompetent pile of scum, and I was pointing that out here long before anyone ran for president.

    you only know about it because Vladimir Putin wants you to

    Yep, fabricate a messenger to attack if you don’t like the messages being leaked. The Nation has interesting piece on gullible saps like you: The Media’s Incessant Barrage of Evidence-Free Accusations Against Russia

    And to paraphrase Hillary Clinton, at this stage what does it matter who leaked the messages? AFAIK nobody from the DNC is claiming that they aren’t genuine.

  417. 417.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    July 23, 2016 at 2:51 pm

    @Mandalay: A similar justification was used for the Bush Administration going after Saddam Hussein, but that doesn’t make it right.

    Breathtakingly stupid? Emotionally unstable? Both?

  418. 418.

    Emma

    July 23, 2016 at 2:52 pm

    @Mandalay: Point me to one occasion where Hillary or any of her surrogates attacked Bernie’s religion or lack thereof.

  419. 419.

    karen marie

    July 23, 2016 at 2:57 pm

    @Mandalay: It’s taken this dump to demonstrate that to you? The whole point of the DNC is to get Dems elected, not pussyfoot around. I am not defending any particular tactic, or suggest the guy shouldn’t be fired, but how can you be shocked there’s gambling going on in a casino? The DNC picks winners and losers. I am going to shrug at this leak.

  420. 420.

    mohagan

    July 23, 2016 at 2:58 pm

    @Aimai: Further back, FDR famously called Al Smith “a happy warrior”. According to Google, it goes back to a Wordsworth poem from 1806.

  421. 421.

    karen marie

    July 23, 2016 at 2:59 pm

    Last comment is in moderation, probably for “another-word-for-cat-footing.”

  422. 422.

    Mandalay

    July 23, 2016 at 3:00 pm

    @Emma:

    Point me to one occasion where Hillary or any of her surrogates attacked Bernie’s religion or lack thereof.

    And there you go building strawmen as well. How about you show me where I said anything about that? All I have posted about is the leak of DNC emails.

    Those running the DNC need to be gone, and if this email dump is a catalyst for that it will be a wonderful thing.

  423. 423.

    Emma

    July 23, 2016 at 3:03 pm

    @Mandalay: Mandalay: This is you, right?
    That was what the original argument was about. A DNC staffer suggesting they go after Bernie for his religion.

  424. 424.

    Mandalay

    July 23, 2016 at 3:13 pm

    @Emma:

    A DNC staffer suggesting they go after Bernie for his religion.

    Correct, and that is what I posted about: an email written by the CFO of the DNC.

    You are the one who invented strawmen about Clinton and her surrogates, not me.

    And now the botched cover up is underway. The slime bag who wrote the email does “not recall” it, but says it wasn’t about Sanders, but won’t say who it was about.

    Sweet.

  425. 425.

    Aleta

    July 23, 2016 at 3:17 pm

    @Ultraviolet Thunder: This from the woman who robocalled Maine for LePage.

    ETA
    (She does these things when told it’s needed by her side.)

  426. 426.

    FlipYrWhig

    July 23, 2016 at 3:18 pm

    @Mandalay: The Nation is only slightly less of an apologist for Russia than Bob in Pdx used to be.

  427. 427.

    scav

    July 23, 2016 at 3:18 pm

    You see, so long as anyone, anywhere, even says, types or thinks something unkind about the idol of choice, even if nothing in the real world is the result, it is nevertheless conclusive proof! of the essential unfairness of life and ample evidence that everything they want should be handed to the devotee of the idol, immediately, now and forevermore, Amen.

  428. 428.

    Emma

    July 23, 2016 at 3:30 pm

    @Mandalay: You are not really sane about this, are you? It’s not just moving the goalposts when it suits you, or simply doing the rottweiler routine on anyone that disagrees with you. You really think the DNC somehow tipped the scales to Hillary by sending emails to each other. You disregard every comment trying to discuss the shortcomings of Sanders’ campaign, and cling to conspiracy theories without proof.

    You ‘re not a person upset about their candidate losing. You’re a priest wailing about the loss of your god.

  429. 429.

    Mandalay

    July 23, 2016 at 3:32 pm

    @FlipYrWhig:

    The Nation is only slightly less of an apologist for Russia than Bob in Pdx used to be.

    You may have something of a point there in general, but nonetheless their claim that Putin is being automatically blamed for a ton of shit by the media without a shred of evidence has merit.

    And the notion that the DNC emails were leaked by a Russian who has nothing to do with Putin is unpossible if your blinkers are functioning perfectly. You can see it in this thread.

  430. 430.

    catclub

    July 23, 2016 at 3:36 pm

    @D58826:

    transfer to the Contras was just a late add-on

    I don’t think so. The transfer of funds to the contras was key, because the Congress had passed very specific laws that the Reagan admin could NOT send them money.
    So Ollie North wanted to find a source of money to send them.
    (Not really North, more like Casey or that bald Admiral(?).

  431. 431.

    hugely

    July 25, 2016 at 12:00 am

    @karen marie: now now i think thats another word for vulva-footing

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