. @realDonaldTrump on Romney: "his is a peanut compared to mine. … It’s very small. Not nearly as big." https://t.co/hSIcHPuMZh
— Ben White (@morningmoneyben) July 29, 2016
Things that are too grotesque to parody, for a bazillion…
… Trump has long refused to release his tax returns, saying that he is currently under audit. But asked Thursday night by Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren if he would release older tax returns that are not under audit, Trump said the beating Romney took in 2012 over his own tax returns should serve as a warning.
“I remember with Mitt Romney four years ago, everybody wanted his, and his is a peanut compared to mine. It’s like a peanut. It’s very small. Not nearly as big a document. I mean, mine, you saw the picture where it’s two or three feet high,” Trump said.
“Now, they finally got it in September. He decided to give it. And they found a couple of little minor things. Little things that didn’t mean anything,” Trump continued. “He did nothing wrong. By the way, Mitt Romney did nothing wrong. But when they gave them, they found a couple of little sentences. If you remember Harry Reid lied about it. He told a dirty lie. And Mitt gave that and after he gave it, they found a little sentence and they made such a big deal. He might have lost the election over that.”…
Maybe a Democratic prankster can start following Trump’s campaign around, carrying a sign saying HARRY REID WILL LAUGH WHEN HILLARY TAKES YOUR PEANUT. But only out of sympathy, for our oppressed billionaire class!
rikyrah
He is not going to release them
And our MSM will say nothing ??
MattF
He might not be lying about that. Strange but true.
Emily68
Big surprise. Trump’s got the story wrong. If I recall, Harry speculated about what was in Romney’s older tax returns, the ones that he never released. So we don’t know if Harry’s speculation was true or not.
Baud
Trump is scared.
Frankensteinbeck
This man’s denials are terrible. He just has to boast, which calls attention. Romney didn’t release them and avoided the topic, which minimized the issue.
dr. bloor
@Baud: That makes two of us.
The Other Chuck
@Frankensteinbeck: Romney did release summarized returns, which is how we found he pays a lower rate than his own secretary. Nothing that could have been scrutinized like in Drumpf’s story. Yet another lie, but his lips were moving so you already knew that.
Baud
@dr. bloor: Your not running for president. Take it from, a presidential candidate can’t come off as being frightened.
Jeffro
I’m still all worked up from the amazing, unified, positive show we saw this past week in Philadelphia, so I’m trying not to get carried away here…nevertheless, I do think there will be a shift in how the media treats Mr. Treason-Not-Tax-Returns from here on out. I’m not expecting miracles, as this is still the US media after all, but I think we’ll see it.
fastEddie
Mitt’s accountants released that “as of that date” he never paid less than 14% tax. But that was because he re-filed most of those years to cover that he had muliple tax-free years ( which was what Harry Reid was saying ). Mitt was only true retroactively. Trump is hiding the same things, probably. But while Mitt was willing to pay his taxes ( perhaps because he thought he was going to win ), Trump is not willing to pay. Maybe Mitt is a better American? Probably.
FlipYrWhig
Nicole Wallace on MSNBC is such a doofus. She rockets out of the gate reacting to the speech as being too harsh to Republicans and too partisan. Then when confronted about what she means, insofar as there were no examples of being harsh to Republicans, she changes her mind and starts talking about how there was too much “class warfare” and too much liberal policy. There’s too much liberal policy in this acceptance speech at a Democratic convention? There should be less? Did anyone fault Donald Trump for not doing enough to reach out to liberals and other Democrats? Nicole Wallace just doesn’t seem very smart.
Baud
@fastEddie: There was a Goolsbee video where they said Trump paid no taxes for several years in the 70s and 80s.
MattF
@Jeffro: The media needs a close race for revenue, and we’ve seen for many years what the media will do for revenue.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud:
Yes. There are two reasons he’s afraid to release his tax returns: they will show he’s not as wealthy has he claims(and possibly by a lot) and they will show he’s never paid taxes.
Hal
@FlipYrWhig: I’m tired of her and Steve Schmidt. I’m convinced their post 2008 careers are entirely based on what people who saw Game Change thought they were like.
Jeffro
@Baud:
So true. And think of all the ways the Dems have gotten in Trump’s head this week. Every time he starts to say “Believe me”, he’s either going to catch himself mid-phrase (and get angrier) or NOT catch himself and help reinforce the perception that he’s lying. Every time he tries to bang on this group or another, Dems from HRC on down simply have to respond with, “See? Divisive fear monger.” We get to wave around the flags and copies of the Constitution, and for all the right reasons.
As several have said on Twitter, Dems shifted the argument from Dems vs Reps, Clinton vs Trump, to essentially, America vs Trump/Trumpism.
I think the phrase is called ‘prepping the battlefield’?? This week, the Ds did that so well that I’m still having trouble processing it all.
MattF
@?BillinGlendaleCA: And, it’s quite likely that there’s some very specific very bad thing in them. I’m convinced we’ll never see his returns.
Jeffro
@FlipYrWhig:
Even for relatively moderate Republicans (all three of them), in the end, it is all about keeping their taxes as low as possible. lol
If they only knew just how much the 1% and .1% are raking in, they’d be reaching for pitchforks, too
dr. bloor
If I ever presented this as clinical material in a supervision group, I would understandably be accused of making shit up, and doing so in a completely unbelievable manner. The man’s a parody of a parody of male inadequacy.
Jeffro
@MattF:
Oh certainly. But they don’t have to put their thumb on the scales to try and keep this thing close. Some will of course. But others will have a hard time trying to find anything of virtue in Trump to promote, and nitpicking Clinton will just look silly and get old after a while.
Wait…this is the American media…never mind…
Aimai
@rikyrah: i do think that “release the peanut” will have legs as an ad campaign. He wont release them but perhaps enough people will start to get disgusted.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@MattF: Nope, they’ll never see the light of day.
Geeno
@Aimai: THAT was a mental image I didn’t need at this hour.
Cermet
The peanut for a brain tRump got that part of the issue correct; his brain is the size of a peanut. Tragically, for the US (or us, too) most all his supporters have similar or smaller brains. Far, far worse, this percentage of amerikans is close to 47% of the adult population.
SFAW
@shomi:
I refer to him as a thousandaire, but it doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue, as they say.
MattF
@Aimai: And it mocks him, so there’s a squeeze. I agree that he’ll never release his tax returns.
OzarkHillbilly
@shomi: Pretty much accepted fact that all of his assets add up to more than one billion $. His liquid assets on the other hand…
Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill
@FlipYrWhig:
Several nights ago, someone repeated an anecdote from Matt Taibbi having an interaction with David Gergen, who was intoning solemnly about doing something to placate the Republican base (Gergen thought he was Matt Bai). When Taibbi said “fuck the Republican base”, Gergen went all “Fred Sanford coming home to Elizabeth” in reaction.
Remember, it is culturally baked in that one must always coddle pasty, puffy, camo-clad drawlers from flyover country. This was what was at the core of the Benghazi outrage, having the audacity to call out that redneck prick preacher on the intended unrest caused by his Koran burning.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Just as reminder, President Nixon released his tax returns even while under audit.
ETA: Nixon ended up having to pay up for undeclared income.
Jeffro
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
The Post had an article up a day or two about six possible reasons why Trump won’t release his returns. In addition to your two, they noted that the returns might also show 3) Russian ties, 4) Mob ties, 5) he donates no/very little money to charity, and 6) he’s being audited (although the article notes that this is not really an excuse).
I think #1, #2, and #5 are almost a given; #3 is a strong possibility. Taken together, they’d most certainly be enough for most of the non-Trumpkin GOP voters to stay home, vote Clinton, or vote 3rd party.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: I really have my doubts that Trump’s NET WORTH is much greater than Mitt’s.
Ultraviolet Thunder
I actually felt bad for Kareem Abdul Jabar last night. I listened to part of the convention on the car radio driving back to Detroit from Chicago. Reverend William Barber the minister who preceded him at the mic absolutely set the place alight and whipped up a firestorm. Nobody should have to follow that. Especially a soft spoken guy.
MattF
@OzarkHillbilly: I’d bet his liquid assets are seriously under water.
ETA: No pun intended.
Bobbo
Openly admitting his tax returns could cost him the election.
Also, IIRC, Mitt’s tax returns didnt have much effect on the election. So then, much worse than Mitt’s.
japa21
I have convention hangiver, but it is a good feeling.
Watched Colbert each night this week, like I did last week. Last week he mainly did a lot of mocking what was happening at the GOP convention. This week he also did a lot of mocking, but most of it was of Trump. He really couldn’t find much to mock.
2 comments on Hillary’s speech. On the whole, I thought it was extremely good, probably one of her best. There were two things I wish she had done.
The first, I don’t think she mentioned unions. Working folks, yes, but I don’t remember her talking about the importance of unions.
Secondly, she missed a golden opportunity to talk about the need to vote down ballot.
Taylor
Does anyone else think this is a reaction to Bloomberg at the DNC essentially saying that he’s a real billionaire?
SFAW
@Aimai:
I was going to disagree, because it didn’t work with Romney. But Romney’s wealth was not the sole reason he was in the race, it merely highlighted how out of touch with most of America he was.
Going after Deadbeat Donnie’s alleged “wealth” means going after his sole — or at least primary — reason for existence in this campaign.
No billions? Not the successful businessman he claims? Eventually, the only ones left adhering to him would be the RW equivalents of the BernieOrBusters.
If Mike Bloomberg weren’t such a putz, I’d have him keep going after Deadbeat Donnie. Mark Cuban has shown a willingness, but he’s not exactly the personality type I’d like to see. Must be someone out there who’d be willing and able to go after Deadbeat Donnie.
ETA: “Someone” defined as “a real billionaire,” in this case.
Poopyman
@dr. bloor:
Part of me still thinks that at his concession speech he’ll rip off the mask and we’ll find out it’s been Andy Kaufmann all along.
FlipYrWhig
@japa21:
I’m pretty sure she did. I think they were in the catalog of rights she’d protect.
ETA: “We will defend all our rights – civil rights, human rights and voting rights… women’s rights and workers’ rights… LGBT rights and the rights of people with disabilities! “
OzarkHillbilly
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I really wouldn’t even know how to go about figuring it out, but those who do know how have it pegged in the $4 billion neighborhood. Which some say is about the return he would have gotten on his inheritance by just investing it in a market fund.
Mr. Mack
Crazy busy yesterday, got bits and pieces of the news..did I hear that Trump asked his base not to watch the last night of the convention? How soon before we get numbers on last nights’ audience?
Face
Huh? Link? Assets of a billion, minus the many hundreds of millions of debt used to purchase them, does not a billionaire make.
Kay
Here are all the times Trump promised to release his tax returns. The lies begin in 2011 when he launched his political career as the leader of the racist “birther movement” and continue thru 2016:
He’s scared to show us his tax returns. The lies and excuses get more ridiculous with each telling.
dr. bloor
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Tell Barber to drag Walton and Lanier up and down the court for 48 minutes.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: As Mark Cuban said, real billionaires don’t do the kind of scams that Trump does(Trump University, Trump Steaks…).
japa21
@FlipYrWhig: I heard that. I just think she could have used the actual work. As I mentioned not a biggie.
scav
@SFAW: It’s also beginning to reenforce the general impression of Donnie. The Yuuge, the all tell, no show “trust me” bloviating vaporware trail. From all hat no cattle to a guy going on and on and on in any and all venues about the reported size of his hat, and how it alone will solve everything.
PhoenixRising
@SFAW: you’re looking for an actual made-it billionaire who also isn’t a hothead or a putz? Hmm. That’s going to be a heavy lift. How about we send Mike Bloomberg to Scottsdale and Provo, and Weet Palm Beach? Republicans in those gardens of privilege don’t think he’s a putz, they think he’s a role model.
If you’re counting after last night that’s FL, AZ & UT that are in play.
Poopyman
@Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill:
Leave OzarkHillbilly alooooooone!
FlipYrWhig
@scav: “Be-LIEVE me.”
Peale
@FlipYrWhig: yep. Democrats are not allowed to be partisan and should always be embarrassed by their peanut sized party. Good grief.
MattF
@scav: “Once ISIS sees the size of my hat, they’ll turn into losers.”
Betty Cracker
@SFAW: It seems Bloomberg’s criticism got under Trump’s skin bigly:
I’m assuming the “very little guy” was Bloomberg and that the call was from Pence begging Trump to please, for the love of God, not take to Twitter and retweet anti-Semitic memes about Bloomberg.
rikyrah
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I believe that both are true.
mike in dc
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Maybe they could get Bloomberg, Cuban and others to cut an ad calling on Trump to release his tax returns and mocking his excuses. That would drive him (further) around the bend.
FlipYrWhig
@Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill: But that’s just it: the speech quite directly reached out to people furious about their feelings of economic precariousness. So Nicole Wallace didn’t mean, couldn’t have meant, that it didn’t give anything to Republicans. All the Republicans we hear about this year are the angry white working class, no? And Clinton aimed squarely at them and their concerns, as well as at the Bernie Sanders/Thomas Frank populists. Thus what Wallace was reacting to turned out to be that it called for taxing the wealthy, which offends her, because that’s what she means by “Republicans”: rich people. But complaining that the Democratic nominee wasn’t nice enough to rich people is… not a persuasive critique.
rikyrah
@shomi:
Should call him the alleged billionaire
FlipYrWhig
@Betty Cracker: If only Mike Pence were highly respected.
Shalimar
@Baud: The only Trump tax returns we know about were filed with the New Jersey gaming commission to get his initial casino license, and part of discovery for lawsuits in the 1990s. Iirc, Trump used several questionable tax strategies to basically claim no income at all.
MattF
@Betty Cracker: If Trump actually tried to deck someone, it would be a sight to behold. And he no longer has Lewandowski to do that particular kind of physical work.
dr. bloor
@Betty Cracker: Yahtzee. Bloomberg’s very existence serves to remind Donny that he’ll never be anything more than a contractor from Queens.
Aimai
@japa21: always a critic. Thanks for explaining it all to us.
amk
@Betty Cracker: love it how bloomberg got under the twerp’s skin. dems to need hit him every day so that he becomes completely deranged. but the boneless dems won’t.
rikyrah
@Taylor:
Mark Cuban says it all the time when talking about Trump.
jonas
@OzarkHillbilly: This was pretty much Mark Cuban’s assessment of Trump’s finances in his exchange with Josh Marshall over at TPM. Yes, if you added up the value of Trump’s real estate holdings, he’s probably worth a couple billion dollars. His problem is cash flow, for which he probably depends heavily on various lines of credit, loans from who knows what sources, and accounting shenanigans that would come to light if he released his tax returns.
Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill
@Betty Cracker:
I was guessing Voldemort, terrified of the downballot consequences of losing that diminishing percentage of GOP leaning Jewish voters, together with their donations.
mike in dc
@amk:
You must not be paying attention. They are hitting him every day, on everything imaginable.
kirbster
Net worth and yearly income have little to do with one another. I’m pretty sure that his tax returns would mostly show that his cash flow isn’t great, he takes a lot of questionable deductions and credits, and that he’s a real cheapskate when it comes to charitable giving.
I thought it was the 47% “takers” remarks and the ad with the worker who had to build the stage from which he and his colleagues were fired that hurt Mitt the most., not the tax returns.
Emma
@Aimai: The nitpickers will always be with us.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: Hillary should release her birth certificate.
Ryan
Maybe if he incorporated his business and paid himself a salary and retained shares he wouldn’t have to worry about all of this.
rikyrah
@kirbster:
I thought that the return he did give showed the offshore account, which was part of that devastating ad with Mitt singing.
jonas
@Betty Cracker: Lulz. People call Trump a thin-skinned bully. He responds by threatening to punch them out. There’s lack of self-awareness and then there’s….well, whatever Trump is.
MattF
@Matt McIrvin: Everyone knows that Chicago was once a Kenyan province.
Hal
Doesn’t Trump always claim he should be higher on the Forbes richest list also? He’s definitely not worth as much as he claims and for a guy like Trump, exposing that fact nationally would be humiliating. Trump is all smoke and mirrors, and used to spouting BS and getting his way. His ego can’t take being seen as only a baby billionaire.
Kay
@MattF:
But he never actually hits anyone. He brags about wanting to hit people and he tells people in the audience to hit people, but Donald Trump doesn’t get physical. He’s the definition of a blowhard. He thinks bragging is the same as doing.
That contractor he stiffed in Florida? That guy sued and won. The judge ordered Trump to pay extra legal fees to the contractor’s lawyers:
He’s such a brilliant negotiator he will now pay 334,000 instead of the 34,000 he owed the contractor and that doesn’t include what he pays his own lawyers- they’re in-house, but still. Hundreds of hours.
Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill
@Matt McIrvin:
Hillary should employ John Goodman to do a “SHUT the fuck UP, Donnie” commercial every time he tweets.
Shalimar
@Betty Cracker: I’m not sure Trump would even take a call from Pence. Who is he to get to talk to Trump? I assume Christie, who has been ass-kissing long enough to get his phone calls answered.
Keith G
The tax issue is an interesting secondary issue. As Hillary and Tim Kaine prepare to take their initial tour through Pennsylvania and Ohio they are going to have to address plans for responding to sluggish economic growth. I think that is where the important ground needs to be gained.
There seems to be a good deal of frustration in the state of my birth, and that frustration appears to be centered around concerns of economic security. Logically staying with my world view and loyalties, I’m for keepin the Democrats in charge of the executive branch as the best way to deal with these economic issues.
However, there are others who just are so frustrated they think that a change Is a good thing. More important than the tax return issue, Hillary’s needs to reach those voters and give them some answers.
Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill
@jonas:
I’d have more respect if he actually tried to punch somebody out, but I’m guessing he’s got a glass jaw.
Dadadadadadada
@Frankensteinbeck: I recall this issue absolutely dogging Romney throughout the cycle, but maybe that was just in my own head and/or the left-wing bubble I live in. But Trump’s justification here is laughable: “I won’t release my taxes because there’s something in them that can be construed as unflattering.” He’s admitting that there’s something there he doesn’t want seen. I hope Hillary and friends bring this up every day for the next 101 days. (How can there be 101 days left in this nightmare?) I hope (without much optimism) that at least one debate moderator will have the fortitude to bring it up, and not drop it immediately after.
jonas
@amk:
Um, I wouldn’t bet on this. I think as we speak Donald is looking out his window and noticing that a large battleship named the “You’re Dead Meat” has just pulled up alongside his campaign and is levelling the guns.
MattF
@Shalimar: He’s just lying. Taking ‘advice’ from a pal sounds more authoritative than ‘I’m threatening Bloomberg, but I don’t have the guts to actually do anything.’
Jeffro
@MattF:
True. I think Trump often uses “hit” when he means “verbally slam”, though.
Central Planning
I can’t imagine how Republicans can argue against Hillary’s speech. They have ceded all ability to do that. Sure, you could debate how to do the things she mentioned, but that’s about it
Major Major Major Major
@Matt McIrvin: Why bother? You know that that corrupt corporocrat would just release the summarized birth certificate since the long-form shows that her real parents were Mr. Goldman and Ms. Sachs.
Fester Addams
@Betty Cracker:
Oh, that’s a relief. I was afraid he was talking about Ryan Moore, the guy with a rare form of dwarfism.
Major Major Major Major
@Betty Cracker: To be fair, Bloomberg does fulfill all the sufficient criteria to be a twerp.
jonas
@Dadadadadadada: Trump’s base doesn’t give a crap about the tax returns, and he assumes he can just continue to brush off questions about it.General election voters might not be so sanguine about that. I think a more important question to put to Trump will be whether he has any intention of stepping away from his businesses if he’s elected. He’s given the impression that he pretty much intends to run both the country and the Trump Company at the same time, which is of course a completely untenable conflict of interest. I don’t think any reporters or Clinton people to date have really dug into this. It’s a huge issue.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
That’s why I have no sympathy for the Nicole Wallace wing of the GOP. They knew Trump’s birther leadership was landing with their base. That’s why they encouraged it. As long as they were winning racism was embraced. It looked good for them going into 2016- they had a bunch of governors running, parties don’t generally win 3rd terms, all the fundamentals were in place. Mitt Romney himself embraced Trump. They did the same thing with gay people in 2004. George W Bush won Ohio on demonizing gay people. That was the margin. Local Republicans were thrilled- they thought it was brilliant. They were crowing about Karl Rove’s genius.
sdhays
@kirbster: Mitt still never released his tax returns. “Summaries” prepared by your lackeys don’t count. As usual, the very premise of what Trump is saying is a lie.
Scout211
@jonas:
That is something I have often thought. Have we ever heard any talk of “blind trusts” from him or his children?
hovercraft
So Trump is not having a good day, he’s being hounded for his taxes for now, he wanted to punch a couple of DNC speakers, particularly one little guy (Bloomberg), and on top of all that he’s had to disown his own convention. Due to the superior ratings and quality of the DNC he now says he had nothing to do with organizing it, he just showed up to give the speech and that was it.
Sad.
Dadadadadadada
@SFAW: Isn’t Elon Musk in the tank for Hillary? He’s an immigrant, made his billions from scientific pursuits, knows climate change is a thing, etc. Should be a perfect fit.
Cacti
@Taylor:
I’m guessing the Donald’s head probably exploded when Bloomberg said: “I’ve built a business, and I didn’t start it with a million-dollar check from my father.”
If he’d just thrown in a barb about short fingers, Drumpf might have stroked out.
jonas
@Kay: IANAL, but how does this guy actually get Trump to pay up? Can he do anything more than just have a lien put on the golf club or something?
Dadadadadadada
@OzarkHillbilly: I heard that the market-fund return is more than his net worth. Like, he would have done much, much better by just investing the inheritance and being a garbageman or something. His business career has actually cost him many millions of dollars.
amk
@hovercraft: did the deadbeat disown his own convention now?
brendancalling
@Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill: I wish he had REALLY gone home to Elizabeth. Then Lester Lightbulb could get his good name back.
MattF
@hovercraft: They made him walk through that fog machine. It was so cheesey, but not his fault.
Dadadadadadada
@PhoenixRising: Provo and Scottsdale are in the West. That means guns. Gun people think Bloomberg is the worst human being who ever lived or will live.
catclub
@shomi:
and liabilities!
Doug R
@Dadadadadadada: An ad with Cuban, Bloomberg, Musk, Gates and Buffett would be excellent.
Dadadadadadada
@Betty Cracker: Telling for Trump the bully: the guy he most wanted to hit was “the little guy.”
Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill
@hovercraft:
Didn’t he promise a star studded extravaganza?
Jeffro
Actual Trump tweet this morning:
Allen should wear that like a badge of honor. Keep it up, Trump – I wanna see you at that fabled 27% in a couple months
Cermet
@OzarkHillbilly: Who says he is worth $4 billion? No one I’ve read that has any real knowledge of wealth think that high. Most peg his worth under half a billion. While we don’t know since he refuses to show his tax returns it is a near certainty that he is worth even less then half a billion and why he is terrified to reveal this fact. Its his ONLY claim to fame and his peanut brained supporters WOULD find that an issue. What a joke – $4 billion.
jonas
@Cacti: For years, Donald’s “projects” were really just Fred Trump’s — it was all dad’s money going into these deals, but Fred Trump was a political hot potato in NYC in the 60’s and 70’s after he got sued for discriminatory housing policies by the feds and pols and other businesses didn’t want deal with him, so he found his brash young son was a good front man for the business. Trump risked nothing, but got all the hookers and blow he wanted along the way.
Talk about being born on third and claiming you hit a triple.
Kay
@Keith G:
It’s narrower than it is made out to be, though. Democrats need the Obama share of white working class voters in certain states. They don’t need “white working voters” nationally and they don’t need all or even a majority. You can even take it down further than that. Obama made progress with white working class women.
She just has to hold, not gain. That’s doable. It’s 3 or 4 states- they can target like crazy.
MomSense
@FlipYrWhig:
She just hates Hillary after years of believing her party’s bullshit. She can’t admit her bias so she pretends there was something offensive or harsh to Republicans. Why is everybody always picking on poor, little Republicans? They really are whiny.
catclub
@Kay:
IN 2012. Not recently.
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: Especially because in 2008 it was exactly those Democrats who were for Clinton rather than Obama, no? It’s kind of hard to believe that any substantial number of people who preferred Clinton to Obama in the Democratic primaries 8 years ago would prefer Trump to Clinton now.
Major Major Major Major
@Dadadadadadada: Garbagemen actually get paid fairly well, so it would have been a doubleplus good investment.
Betty Cracker
@amk: Boneless Dems? I thought they took the wood to Trump but good all week!
Dadadadadadada
@Kay: “Jorge Cueto?” Sounds suspiciously Mexican. I’m sure this verdict can’t be trusted. I’m sure Trump will appeal, run up another $300,000 in attorneys’ fees, lose the appeal, and end up having to pay $700,000 or more. And then he’ll appeal that, to the Supreme Court if necessary, and when they decline to hear the case he’ll fulminate about “Obama-appointed judges ruining, just absolutely ruining” this country. And then he won’t pay.
Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill
@Jeffro:
That’ll go over well among those who serve.
At least the Austrian corporal had actually served before getting to a point of criticizing his military commanders.
jonas
@Cermet: See my comment above. I don’t think anyone seriously doubts all his real estate holdings could be worth as much as a couple of billion dollars. Manhattan real estate is pretty damn valuable. But it doesn’t provide a lot of cash flow, at least not for the lifestyle to which Donnie, Melania, and the kids have become accustomed, and he’s pretty deep in debt. So he runs around desperately trying to make these “branding” deals and sundry other small-time scams (Trump University) that can bring in enough cash to keep ahead of his (Saudi, Russian, probably Chinese) creditors and maintain his lifestyle.
SFAW
@jonas:
Especially after Deadbeat Donnie declares bankruptcy for that property. (Assuming he set up an LLC [or whatever] for that property alone.)
Trentrunner
@Fester Addams: Not to be nakedly exploitive, but the Clinton campaign should SAY that who Trump was referring to, complete with video. It fits Trump’s pattern.
Betty Cracker
@MattF: Yep. It was the old “hold me back” gambit.
Kay
@jonas:
He can put a lien on the golf club and he can do more than that. He can sell it. This judge did more than that. He set the golf club for auction. That process started. Trump had to put 34k in escrow or the auction was going forward.
Judges hate to seize property here- they’re conservatives- but will they do it? Sure. Liens allow small contractors to function- it’s a backstop that allows them to take some risk. They wouldn’t be able to compete with big guys unless they had state process to get paid because they couldn’t handle the risk.
amk
@Betty Cracker: Question is will they continue to do so? Remember how they are were gonna make the thugs pay for garland (non) nomination? Yeah, me neither. 24×7 messaging has never been dems strong suit.
SFAW
@jonas:
It’s not that the real estate itself is/isn’t worth a billion, it’s how much he actually owns. He could have $10 Billion in assets, but if he owes $9.5 Billion on those assets, his net worth is not $10B.
People have been talking about net worth, but he’s only been talking about one side of the balance sheet.
Mnemosyne
@amk:
You may want to watch (or re-watch) Kaine’s speech if you really think that. He was directly and specifically mocking Trump and the way he talks. “Be-LIEVE me! Be-LIEVE me!”
And Hillary got some darn good zingers in, too.
Jeffro
Here is some seriously huge BS from Brooksie today:
Our ‘deep problems’???
Sanders people have 90% of the passion and 95% of the ideas???
FlipYrWhig
@MomSense: Oh, I know, but she stands out for her amoeba-like way of re-forming herself when challenged. “It was too critical of Republicans” became, after being told that it WASN’T critical of Republicans, “It had too much ‘class warfare’ that will turn Republicans off.” Clinton could have said that Democrats have done a lot, no thanks to Republican obstruction. She could have called out George W. Bush for creating the conditions for failed states and terrorist activity. She didn’t do anything like that. If the problem with the speech is that it’s too liberal, just say that. Don’t make up nonsense about how it’s too in-your-face against Republicans, because there’s not a speck of that in there.
Doug R
@jonas: Does he actually own the properties? It’s his name on them, but it’s mostly a franchise/licensing deal. Does the percentage he owns even cover his massive debt load?
His properties are probably mostly owned by Russian gangsters at this point.
Kay
@Dadadadadadada:
He is a deadbeat and he can discharge the debt in another bankruptcy but he’s vulnerable in the sense that there’s established state process for people to attach liens to real estate. There’s some real tangible value there.
Jeffro
Meanwhile, as usual, K-Thug sticks the landing:
danielx
@jonas:
Pretty much. I haven’t noticed “Buffett Steaks” or “Megacasino Gates” being advertised in any of the in-flight magazines. An additional bright side to the current election season is that if HRC stomps the apricot hued fucktrumpet into a grease spot (electorally speaking) in November, his name as a branding tool will be useless to someone starting a shitpicking business in Gas City*.
*Yes, there is such a place and it has figured in any number of Indiana jokes. “Every Indiana girl’s dream, a double wide in Gas City.”
Betty Cracker
@Scout211: I think Trump said in one of the GOP debates that he’d turn his business holdings over to Uday, Qusay and Ivanka to run if he wins.
Jeffro
@Mnemosyne:
I just want some good video of the first few times Trump goes to say “Be-LIEVE me” and either stops in mid-phrase, or reporters openly laugh, or both.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Jeffro: They were scared shitless by the convention. As Booman says the Democrats are confident with being more liberal and the Republicans know this is really bad for them if Hillary wins.
Dork
@Jeffro: There was a time, not too long ago, where smearing a ranked military officer was considered political suicide.
Im sure the GOP is so proud to be the anti-military party now. Dems should HAMMER this.
danielx
Moderation? WTF?
Kay
@Jeffro:
I was fascinated by the constant invocation of state names. It’s true in every convention “Hello California!” but every single speaker tied every anecdote to a state. That was deliberate.
amk
btw, whatev happened to the much touted fart-in by bs bots and the ‘citizen’s arrest’ by wingnutz? All gas?
CONGRATULATIONS!
@MattF: He’ll never lay a finger on anybody, that would entail the risk he might get hit back.
And I’ll tell you this, I’d be terrified to hit him back, because the shape he’s in, it would kill him. He looks like his blood pressure is about 400/250 and he’s about to start spraying blood from his whatever. And that breathing sure sounds like my grandma’s right before she succumbed to heart failure. Donald Trump is, in addition to many other things, in very poor health.
Kay
@Doug R:
The Russian thing is so funny because Trump himself used “oligarchs” in interviews. He bragged about being in the room with “most of” the Russian oligarchs. Don Jr was using it in real estate industry outlet interviews. They’re in with the oligarchs. All of the documented stuff comes from their mouths.
aimai
@Jeffro: Well, he’s right about Sanders’ preening core of tin pot authoritarians. But he is wrong about their importance to the work that Hillary Clinton is proposing to do. He is puffing off his imaginary 90 and 95 percent figures because it enables him to side step the fact that it was Hillary Clinton’s god damned convention last night.
Jeffro
@Dork:
Would that it were so, but purple heart band-aids, John McCain as a loser, and silence in the face of a call for Russia to hack US computers tells me it will have about zero impact, unfortunately.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@FlipYrWhig:
I noticed long ago that someone who only appeals to his own credibility for authority is appealing to nothing. It’s all he has and it’s worthless.
Jeffro
@Kay:
Interesting – I didn’t catch that at first. I did see the ‘Scranton’ signs with the PA outline when Biden spoke, and some serious VA love when Kaine spoke. Also noted: Sherrod Brown’s time slot. Good point Kay.
FlipYrWhig
@aimai: Last night a Hillarian friend of mine was proleptically irked by the prospect of reading so many pieces today rushing to credit Bernie Sanders and Sanders-ism for Hillary Clinton’s vocally liberal message. I haven’t seen as much of that as I expected — yet? — but Brooks seems like a logical site for that sort of thing.
Jeffro
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap:
and thank goodness! Finally woke up and realized the country is on their side, doesn’t want GOP-lite
You know, it’s funny you should mention this…in addition to the fact that almost any way it goes down, the GOP’s going to crack because of Trump and Trumpism…there is the “specter” of a vengeful HRC just waiting to take office and begin paybacks for 30 years’ worth of smears and lies. There is a part of me that almost wishes she was that kind of person, because they frankly have it coming.
Nevertheless, I don’t think that’s how the Clinton administration is going to roll. They’re not going to be rolled by Republican nitwits, however.
Mnemosyne
@amk:
As I said last night, if the “citizens arrest” was even attempted it sounded kind of like, “What’s the Secret Ser–AIGH!!!”
Jeffro
@FlipYrWhig: Brooks is just trying to keep the Sanders folks stirred up and deny Clinton & her team any credit. As if she had been some sort of conservative Dem or liberal Rep all these decades.
D58826
I think we have REALLY REALLY jumped the shark in this election. I just saw on twitter that sully said good things about Hillary’s speech and for his first presidential vote as a citizen will vote for Hillz.
hovercraft
@amk: @MattF:
Yes we all know how he’s so not in charge of anything, and he takes direction so well. They went and rounded up his son’s vineyard manager and forced him to speak. Poor Trump so docile, it was so lame even Morning shmo was chuckling as he reported it.
Jeffro
@Mnemosyne: When she came to NoVA a few months ago, security was off. the. hook. She must be getting threats at a rate even higher than Obama did/does.
dr. bloor
@FlipYrWhig: He was harping on it all week on the radio. Apparently a bunch of Berners disrupted his efforts to get a chicken sandwich, which is enough to trigger PTSD in Bubble Boy.
gogol's wife
@Fester Addams:
I wouldn’t be so sure you aren’t right.
aimai
@FlipYrWhig: I was talking about this to Mr. Aimai this morning. This is the first convention which I have watched, almost gavel to gavel, through the miracle of the DNC’s own live stream. SUCH a pleasure to watch the convention the way they wanted it seen, and to see the speakers in their entirety, uninterrupted and unexplained (unbossed and unbowed) by the talking heads. It made a tremendous difference in the way I saw the entire thing, and understood it too. I hadn’t realized how much hearing from the bitter enders, hearing from the right wing attack dogs, was affecting my mood and my understanding of this general election.
I’m brimming with confidence in my candidate and her team. I’m fired up and ready to go. And like my candidate I’m resolved to shrug my shoulders at the nay sayers and the weepers and whiners. Those that mind don’t matter, and those that matter don’t mind.
Dadadadadadada
@Jeffro: And Clinton’s list of Trump manufacturing sites: “China, not Colorado, India, not Wisconsin, Mexico, not Michigan,” or some such. Obviously not random states pulled from a hat.
gogol's wife
@Trentrunner:
lol
gogol's wife
@Trentrunner:
The video of his mocking Serge Kovaleski was used repeatedly to great effect during the convention.
manyakitty
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Honestly, this is why I’m looking forward to the debates. I think they might just be enough to make him blow, spraying Cheeto powder and peanut butter everywhere. (Building on the super funny peanut imagery)
Dadadadadadada
@D58826: Sully openly (though tepidly) endorsed Kerry in 04, and Obama (much less tepidly) 2x. I didn’t start paying attention to him until 2008, so my first impression of him (before I discovered his Thatcher love, his strenuous Iraq boosterism, etc.) was as a moderate liberal.
Kay
@manyakitty:
Also-whatever Clinton lacks as a speechifier she makes up as a debater. She’s very good at that :)
SFAW
@D58826:
It could be a lot worse than that: if Bill Kristol writes/tweets/spews that Hillary is going win in a landslide, then we are totally and royally fucked.
TopClimber
@hovercraft: Actually, he just licensed his name to the Convention, like with those town homes that military retirees bought. Not his fault things didn’t work out. ETC., ad Trumpiam.
bemused
I really enjoyed reading a list of tweets at TPM article, conservatives agree DNC convention is a disaster for the GOP. All the tweets are great but loved Amanda Carpenter saying she heard a lot more about faith and God from DNC than RNC.
manyakitty
@Kay: Truth. She’s a smart cookie, has encyclopedic knowledge of her subject matter, and is NOT afraid to back him into a corner.
amk
matt aukamp @mattaukamp
One day, Donald Trump is going to look a reporter straight in the eyes on national TV and say “I never ran for President.”
2:46 AM – 20 Jul 2016
Mnemosyne
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap:
I do trust that Hillary primarily picked Kaine so he can be her partner like Biden was for Obama, but I also love that Kaine is basically a rebuttal to everything Republicans tell white men about themselves. He’s a devoutly Catholic, hetero married grandfather with a son serving in the military overseas who also speaks Spanish fluently and is completely comfortable with African-Americans. He’s a walking, talking reminder to white men that there’s room for them in the Democratic Party if they’re willing to play nice with everyone else.
tobie
@aimai: Ignore this kind of preening and self-congratulatory rhetoric. It’s all these devotees have left at the moment. Within a few months Sanders will be history. Bernie Who? Just irrelevant. It sounds like the guy/gal JeffFro quoted was acknowledging that she would cast her vote for Clinton, so I’d just ignore all the self-praise (e.g., 95% of the Democrats’ ideas are Sanders) and move on with the important stuff of registering voters, getting out the vote, etc. This is actually what I learned from HRC and the whole Democratic team this convention: KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE PRIZE.
Kay
@bemused:
It’s always been there, though. Always. African American Democrats have been referencing religious tenets in political speeches for my whole life. Republicans didn’t hear it because they don’t hear certain religious people.
I’m glad that Rev Barber got a national stage but I heard him speak at a Daily Kos convention. The heathens invited him :)
amk
snowdenski and wikileaks in cage fight.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: The perfect word for Tim Kaine is “impish.”
Kay
@manyakitty:
I think she enjoys debating and that comes thru. Obama was a quick study but the first series of debates he did with Clinton, she won. I was an Obama supporter and I knew it. She’s just good at it.
rikyrah
July 28, 2016, 10:07 pm
Trump: Republicans ‘have no choice’ but to vote for me
By Jesse Byrnes
Donald Trump said Thursday that Republicans wary of his campaign have little choice but to vote for him anyway.
“If you really like Donald Trump, that’s great, but if you don’t, you have to vote for me anyway. You know why? Supreme Court judges, Supreme Court judges,” Trump said at a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
He does have kind of a Tim Conway quality about him, doesn’t he?
SFAW
@rikyrah:
Outstanding.
WaterGirl
@Kay: Plus he had to pay his own attorney’s fees. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer person.
Jeffro
@tobie:
The guy I was quoting was David Brooks, NYT columnist, who used the 90/95 phrase in his latest misleading missive. You’re absolutely right about ignore the noise and move on with registering voters and so on, though.
Or as the President put it, “Don’t boo. Vote.” =)
rikyrah
@Kay:
I know people say Ferret Head will not show up for the debate, but I can’t see that happening. I just can’t. How you gonna skip out on a PRESIDENTIAL debate?
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill: My summer reading project was to read both Mein Kampf and Decline and Fall of the Third Reich. It was…educational, most of it. Gotta quibble, minor, with your assertion. Hitler took agonizing pains, even when being prodded by all the members of the party, to not say anything about the military or their leadership until he actually was appointed dictator and had the army very firmly under his control. They were the only institution (and he knew this and wrote of it frequently) that could have stopped him. They never did when he was small enough to be stopped, as he was “on their side”, and then, of course, he gambled, won it all, and then frankly they were all scared shitless of him.
His “stab in the back” horseshit was aimed at the civilian leadership. Like any good myth, it had just enough truth to it to be unkillable.
And yeah, unlike The Orange One, he not only served but apparently was a damn good soldier.
Jeffro
@rikyrah:
That’s beyond awesome that he’s reduced to saying that…what a rallying cry! Such inspiration! LOL
It’ll be even better when he loses it and repeats it, like, 20 times in a row with that angry orange face of his.
manyakitty
@Kay: Agreed. She’s spent a lot of time notching hard-fought big wins for smart girls, and now’s her time to shine. I’m actually eager to see how she handles the rest of her campaign.
Soylent Green
My hunch is that there won’t be any. Drumpf will refuse to participate.
rikyrah
The Father of an American Muslim War Hero Indicts Donald Trump’s Patriotism
By Eric Levitz
After the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, Donald Trump revived his proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the United States. Among his justifications for a policy of overt religious discrimination was that, even if the government could properly vet all Muslim immigrants, it still wouldn’t be able to prevent “the radicalization of their children.” Even a Muslim citizen born in this country, Trump suggested, was an inherent risk to the safety and well-being of other Americans.
In 2004, captain Humayun Khan lost his life in Iraq while protecting the safety and well-being of his fellow American soldiers. On Thursday night at the Democratic National Convention, his father, an American Muslim immigrant, delivered another powerful indictment of Donald Trump’s patriotism in a convention that’s been full of them.
“Donald Trump consistently smears the character of Muslims,” Khizr Khan said in Philadelphia. “He vows to build walls and ban us from this country. Donald Trump: You’re asking Americans to trust us with their future. Let me ask you, have you even read the United States Constitution? I will gladly lend you my copy!”
As Khan pulled out his pocket version of the U.S. Constitution, the convention hall exploded.
“In this document, look for the words ‘liberty’ and ‘equal protection of law,’ Khan instructed. “Have you ever been to Arlington Cemetery? Go look at the graves of brave patriots who died defending the United States of America. You’ll see all faiths, genders, and ethnicities.”
“You have sacrificed nothing!” Khan shouted. “And no one!”
SFAW
@rikyrah:
“Crooked Hillary and her friends in the Liberal Press have rigged the system! She’s corrupt, and the so-called ‘debate’ set-up is corrupt!” and so forth
Ceci n'est pas mon nym
@Jeffro: Good. That’s been on my mind. Not just phone or twitter threats, I’ve been suspecting that our (Philadelphia’s) streets had a fair number of armed loons this week hoping to figure out how to get into the Wells Fargo Center. This is without evidence or any reporting, I just know the open-carry loons are breeding in the walls and sooner or later we’re going to see them come out.
For me personally, I’ve been avoiding downtown (and I never go near the area around the WF Center anyway), so I have no first hand reports one way or the other.
If they haven’t been at the Convention, you know the ammosexuals will be on the campaign trail.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
I could see him backing out, but it’s a lose/lose proposition. If he does back out, I bet you dollars to donuts that Hillary shows up anyway and either turns it into a townhall where the audience gets to ask questions or lets the moderators bombard her with their prepared questions.
And, of course, if he does show up, she’s going to wipe the floor with him. Does The Donald really think he’ll be the first guy to try and show Hillary his dick to intimidate her? Please.
bemused
@Kay:
Too true.
WaterGirl
@D58826: Sully was all-in for Obama in 2008, but I guess he couldn’t vote back then.
D58826
@Dadadadadadada: Even with his Obama romance he still hated the Clintons so this is quite a turnaround.
Kay
I knew it would drive him crazy :)
Michael Bloomberg is both bored and disgusted by this… person.
D58826
@WaterGirl: Right. He said this would be his first presidential cycle as a citizen
MattF
@SFAW: Another reason Trump will try to evade any debates is his sheer laziness. Preparing for a debate with Hilz would be work. Hard work.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: Yes, very much Tim Conway!
tobie
@Jeffro: Oops…should have looked twice to see it was David Brooks. And I’ll remember to cite POTUS’s line, “Don’t boo, vote,” when registering voters in PA. So wish I could vote early AND often.
Kay
The funniest part is Trump’s low info voters will wonder who Michael Bloomberg is. They will have no idea.
Jeffro
Besides Krugman’s awesome smack-down of GOP patriotic pretenders, I have to recommend Alexandra Petri’s hilarious “What Hillary Really Meant To Say On Her Historic Night”…omg…a tongue-in-cheek tribute to all that the good Secretary has had to endure all these years (including “…running against a human poop emoji, so you know, there’s that.”)
I’m dyin’ here…
SFAW
@rikyrah:
Liar. OF COURSE, Trump has sacrificed.
He’s sacrificed the businesses and livelihoods of contractors he’s stiffed, and he’s held Truth’s head under water until it drowned in the bathtub until it expired.
Oh, did Mr. Khan mean PERSONAL sacrifice?
Never mind.
Ceci n'est pas mon nym
@MattF: Nah. He’ll just do a Bill O’Reilly “I’ll do it live”. And whatever answer his handlers try to prep him with, he’ll go off script and do it live anyway. And the next morning we’ll all be laughing and srv and the Putin paid sock-puppets will be declaring Trump the debate winner. So we all win.
LAO
I’m late to the thread, so forgive me if this has already been discussed. I think Trump’s people have calculated that the release of his tax returns doesn’t matter to his supporters and are counting on the assumption that only Clinton supporters care since aren’t going to win her voters over. However, that the release of those returns would hurt them with some Trump supports. Therefore, there is no net benefit to release his tax returns.
D58826
@rikyrah: I’m not a crying but when he spoke I felt tears coming on. I wonder if the Clinton campaign will be able to use that last part of his speech in political ads, esp. in more conservative areas that have little exposure to Muslims but are strongly pro military.
ruemara
@Mnemosyne: I’m glad he’s there to show it’s possible.
LAO
@FlipYrWhig: Seconded!
TopClimber
@Jeffro: You are being unfair. Brooks is absolutely white about where all the passion and ideas are in the Democratic Party.
SFAW
@Mnemosyne:
Besides, even if she were wearing her glasses, she’d probably need to be pretty close to see it.
WaterGirl
@Mnemosyne: If Trump backs out of the debates, I agree that Hillary should show up. But she should debate a big screen that shows Donald Trump in his own words, on issue after issue after issue.
manyakitty
@Ceci n’est pas mon nym: Plus, a debate presents a great opportunity for Andy Kaufman to finally jump out of that costume!
WaterGirl
@D58826:
You are so right about that. I hadn’t considered it from that perspective.
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: Isn’t Bloomberg a devil on the right because of things like soda cups? ISTR Sarah Palin slurping from a Big Gulp at a podium at some conservative event and being cheered wildly.
Redshift
@Betty Cracker:
Somehow I suspect he’d loudly declare that he’d done it, but never provide documentation any documentation.
amk
@Kay: Please tell me he did tweet that.
MattF
@Ceci n’est pas mon nym: @LAO: I agree that not preparing for a debate with Hilz and not releasing his returns would both be consistent with past behavior– My question is whether he’s realized that the game has changed. I’m guessing -no-, his repertoire and temperament are what they are and change isn’t really an option. But we shall see.
Rand Careaga
@dr. bloor:
Worse. He’s a parody of a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham parody.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@rikyrah: And Trump finally figures out the only legit reason anyone would have to vote for him. I’m not sure he can carry an election on just that, though.
amk
@LAO: It’s not about his deadbeat supporters. It’s about trump curious and the friggin indies.
Jeffro
@TopClimber: Well done, well done there.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Mnemosyne: Yes, it’s like they moved left and right at the same time ! Pretty cool trick, and BTW, most of it thanks to Obama, the greatest POTUS I have witnessed in my 60+ years.
Redshift
@LAO: Oh, I’m sure they’ve calculated that there’s a lot in his tax returns that could hurt him. At minimum, I’m betting they would show he isn’t nearly as rich as he claims, he’s given nothing to charity, he pays no taxes, and possibly that he has income from suspicious sources in Russia (though those may just go to his businesses, so they might not show up.)
I really hope they’re making the calculation you describe, because it would indicate (and we’ve had other indications of this) that they don’t understand that to win they need to appeal to a lot of people who aren’t yet supporting either candidate. I’m pretty sure Trump doesn’t understand this, and thinks of the race as a pure two-sided cage match, but I would be surprised if his professional staff don’t understand it.
But in any case, I think hiding the tax returns will provide plenty of fodder for surrogate attacks and independent attack ads, which will hurt him with the general electorate. I think they’re still probably correct that the actual contents would hurt more, but remember how much mileage Harry Reid got out of what “somebody told him” about what was in Romney’s returns.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
Ron’s boy Rand popped his raccoon-bedecked head out of his hole long enough to get quoted by some of our commie Louisville TV reporters on the success of the Republican convention and how Trump will carry Kentucky. Ron’s boy kept his remarks to a laserlike focus on job-killing big government and job-killing big government regulations.
Even among wingnuts, that set of phrases isn’t doing so well, and if those phrases were a hunting dog, a good bird hunter would lovingly walk out into a field with it and would come back alone.
sigaba
@Hal: @CONGRATULATIONS!: “And yeah, unlike The Orange One, he not only served but apparently was a damn good soldier”
The way I remember this was that Hitler was considered a competent dispatch runner who was decorated mostly because, as a runner in the rear, he was constantly getting face time with generals. Actual soldiers in his unit had varying opinions of him and several mysteriously disappeared in the 1930s. His comrades generally didn’t discount his physical courage but he had a rep for being flaky and irresponsible and nobosy dared promote him past corporal.
Emma
@Dadadadadadada: I think the judge might be willing to sell the resort out from under him to pay creditors. That company isn’t the only one.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Kay: Oh they know. I saw a tweet that showed Bloomberg in an oven with Trump dressed in an SS uniform standing outside of it.
Punchy
@CONGRATULATIONS!: It’s how he’s got all the Evangellys. They’re one issue voters — rigging SCOTUS.
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
It’s not “the Right” though- if I got up right now and went and asked Michelle and Melissa what they think about what Bloomberg said about Trump they would ask me “who is Bloomberg?” One votes for Republicans and one votes for Democrats. Trump isn’t relying on The Right to win- he has to fill in gaps he’ll lose in the base and ADD a bunch of less-attached voters.
This isn’t a slam on these women. They’re busy and they’re not particularly interested in politics. They have other, completely valid interests. I don’t know as much about 4-H as Michelle does. THAT’S her thing. She goes to 4-H conventions.
trollhattan
re. The debates, we should have a BJ predictorating poll. My bet:
I, Trump! will agree to at least one and will bring a yuuuuge truckload of demands that will boil down to “Must be hosted by Fox News and held in front of a cage-fighting audience.” No League of Women Voters crap.
He will definitely come. Because cameras. Whatever rules there are are just adorable suggestions, which will be treated using the Book of Sarah ™ i.e., completely ignored. The entire thing will be a shitshow of him preening, bellowing, accusing. Moderators Greta and Bill will nod, approvingly.
It’ll be great.
MattF
@sigaba: Oddly enough, I’ve just looked this up and found some recent evidence about Hitler’s WWI experience.
wenchacha
Really, David Brooks? I mean, you’re being true to your pessimism about any “liberal”, ever.
It’s as if being an historian in this country is defined as someone who can report last week’s news.
Brooks is also perpetually optimistic about the goodness of all Republicans who ever lived, and is certain that if we just all went back to church and doing our homework and cleaning up after ourselves then everything could be great.
Emma
@Mnemosyne: I saw a tweet from a cop who said they were approached to help with the arrest and they “passed hard.”
MattF
@trollhattan: Also, given the financial disparity between the Trump and Clinton campaigns, Trump will find free publicity hard to turn down.
Redshift
@amk: He’s on video saying he wanted to hit some of the DNC speakers, not naming names, but “I was gonna hit one guy in particular, a very little guy.” I guess Bloomberg really got under his skin.
There’s also this hilarious bit:
“You know what I wanted to. I wanted to hit a couple of those speakers so hard,” Trump said. “I would have hit them. No, no. I was going to hit them, I was all set and then I got a call from a highly respected governor.”
Villago Delenda Est
I think General Allen was speaking for a bunch of flag officers still on active duty who cannot speak on partisan matters. I think the Pentagon overwhelmingly loathes Drumpf.
rikyrah
uh huh
TPM LIVEWIRE
Trump Dismisses Clinton’s DNC Speech As ‘A Very Average Scream
By ALLEGRA KIRKLAND
Published JULY 29, 2016, 10:29 AM EDT
Donald Trump followed up his late-night criticism of Hillary Clinton’s appearance at the Democratic National Convention with tweets dismissing the speech as a “very average scream.”
“Crooked Hillary Clinton made up facts about me, and ‘forgot’ to mention the many problems of our country, in her very average scream!” Trump wrote on Friday morning, twice calling the address “average.”
Trump wasn’t the only one to go after Clinton’s tone. Several male Fox pundits and New York Times columnist David Brooks commented on the Democratic presidential nominee’s “annoying vocal inflection” and “combative manner.”
In Trump’s view, Clinton failed to accurately express the looming dangers America faces and voters’ desire for a “LAW AND ORDER” president. He pointed to “Radical Islam” and police shootings as the kind of problems the former secretary of state ignored, though the final night of the DNC featured several military officials making the case for Clinton’s national security expertise and remarks from the families of police officers killed on duty.
He also knocked the length of her “very long” 57-minute speech. Trump’s own acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention clocked in at around 75 minutes.
Emma
@Dadadadadadada: Oh no. He’s a conservative intellectual. But he is shocked, shocked, by the vulgarity of the Republican display this year. But his mommy issues were in display yesterday when he sort of panned Hillary’s speech as not resonating with him. He was honest enough, more power to him, to highlight some of the criticism he got from women.
Kay
It keeps me interested because with all the planning and all the huge wads of money and the campaign professionals there’s still room for a regular person to have an impact- out of nowhere. Who knew Mr.Khan would be the person to make Republicans feel ashamed?
rikyrah
Holder: Trump May Lack ‘Intellectual Heft’ Needed To Be President
By CAITLIN MACNEAL
Published JULY 29, 2016, 8:48 AM EDT
Former Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday night suggested that Donald Trump may not be “very smart” because he “sees everything in black and white terms.”
CBS News’ Charlie Rose asked Holder about his Wednesday comment questioning whether Trump has “the gray matter” necessary to be president.
“You mean he’s not smart enough to be president? Rose asked.
“Yeah, I wonder,” Holder responded. “I sometimes think that he hides behind a certain bravado to hide a lack of substance that he has.”
“A person this far along in the process, I think we would know a little more about what his plans are. We’d know more about who his mentors might have been, who his intellectual guides might be. And I don’t have any sense that there is any of that to him,” he continued. “He seems to me to be a very shallow man.”
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
For just a minute, can we savor the fact that Mr. Khan brought out the same Pocket Constitution that the wingnuts have been waving in our face for the past 8 years as they claimed Obama was breaking the law because something something Constitution?
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Punchy: Can’t blame ’em, it’s my one issue as well. Hammering the coffin lid down on their stupid social bullshit and tossing it into a dark, dark ocean.
BR
I missed the Goolsbee vids — anyone have a link?
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
It is possible! I married one! (Though he doesn’t speak Spanish.)
It’s just that this place is currently being flooded by a small number of whiners who don’t know when to STFU and listen for once in their goddamned lives.
(Edited in case it sounded like I was saying our regular contingent of white dudes were the offenders, which they are not. It’s, like, three or four idiots, but they just can’t. stop. posting. stupid. shit.)
Punchy
Assumes emotions that are not, and never had been, in evidence.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@trollhattan: My bet. Serious. No debates. He’ll chicken out, claiming they’re rigged.
D58826
More on Mr Khan from the WAPO and it doesn’t get any easier reading it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/khizr-khans-loss-a-grieving-father-of-a-soldier-struggles-to-understand/2016/07/28/18e8139a-552d-11e6-bbf5-957ad17b4385_story.html?tid=a_inl
Villago Delenda Est
@rikyrah: “He spoke for 70-odd minutes…and I do mean ‘odd'”!
Mnemosyne
@Punchy:
I have a theory based on many years of therapy as a patient (not a doctor) that a lot of the Republican voters are capable of feeling shame. In fact, their parents abused and shamed them so much when they were kids that now their knee-jerk reaction to shame is rage, because it reminds them of their parents’ abuse.
That’s why you can never get one of them to apologize or admit they did something wrong — by doing that, you just set off a whole lot of triggers that they’ve buried and don’t have the tools to deal with.
Huh. I guess I really am a Betan at heart since I think everyone just needs more and better therapy. ;-)
Applejinx
@japa21:
I like that, actually. We’ve got to move forward. As unions are to ‘working folks’, so ‘working folks’ are to the precariat. We are miles away from being able to invoke unions in any productive way.
We can start by not electing Trump and not getting all federal unions disbanded and outsourced to foreign countries. And go from there.
Clinton not invoking the power of unions tells me she has a damn brain and is operating in 2016. Yes it would be nice but it would also be incredibly clueless and an own goal to go on about unions in her big speech. Glad she didn’t.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
It’s official. The Democrats are trying to make Trump stroke out.
Bobby Thomson
@?BillinGlendaleCA: are you kidding? It’s nowhere near Romney’s.
Villago Delenda Est
@D58826: What jumped out at me is that his soldiers didn’t call him “Captain Khan”. They called him “our captain.”
Everything an Army officer should be. There is no question that none of his soldiers ever considered putting him in a wall locker and tossing it down a set of stairs. I wonder if Tom Cotton can claim the same.
Kay
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
I think so too, just because there’s never any consequences for Donald Trump. The inequality in this race is already bothering me, and there’s not a thing I can do about it. Hillary Clinton is held to account for everything she does and Trump breaks every rule and it’s treated as delightfully innovative. THAT’S privilege. That’s what it is. Pundits talk about her with this stern, scolding quality that has already begun to bug the shit out of me because that’s what it’s like for women at work. That’s WHY men take more risk professionally. They get more latitude.
japa21
@Applejinx: Thank you. That makes sense to me.
Mike E
@Ultraviolet Thunder: The Rev Dr Barber is a tough act for anyone to follow, so good on Kareem for standing up and being a mensch :-)
Mnemosyne
Last thing before I head off to work — I’ve really gotta make you guys some clips from Head Office. Here’s an exchange between the Eddie Albert character (who reminds me of Trump) and his yes-man, played by Michael O’Donoghue:
Redshift
@Punchy: No, really! John Podhoretz, of all people, responded to Coulter’s tweet mocking Mr. Khan with “I am ashamed to have ever known you.”
I have a theory about conservative “intellectuals,” based on how shocked they were when Trump supporters didn’t give a rat’s ass about conservative principles (which surprised me; I had assumed they were in on the game.) I think that for years, the’ve been denying/justifying to themselves the appeals to bigotry and white grievance because they actually believed that these were just the things getting recruits in the door, and they stayed because they were dazzled by the glory of conservative philosophy. Now that that illusion has been shattered (and in addition, they’re likely to lose a lot of influence even if Trump were to win), those who still have a shred of humanity are forced to confront what they’ve done.
But I’ve always been an optimist. I’ll accept any Darth Vader who wants to repent at the end. (I won’t trust them with anything important, but I’ll accept them.)
Kay
@Applejinx:
Actually the end goal of Fight for Fifteen is a collective bargaining agreement with three of the biggest fast food employers. That is their real goal. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams with just the wage but it was always “15 and a union”.
The problem with “alternatives” to unions is not that no one sat down and tried to invent one. It’s the unions are a pretty basic idea and the components of any “alt union” include the outline. They can fiddle- “thin contracts”, worker reps on boards, but without collective bargaining there’s nothing there. That’s the lever.
Applejinx
@aimai: He did also say “corrupted by moral preening, an uncompromising absolutism and a paranoid unwillingness to play by the rules of civic life.”
I think that’s a damn shame but has much to do with why Hillary won and is the better candidate. Maybe 95% of the ultimate bullet points, and the actual details are left as an exercise for, well, Hillary Clinton? And that’s just how it’s worked out, too. Justice of a sort.
Trentrunner
@Applejinx: Hillary mentioned unions twice in her speech last night:
Aleta
@Mnemosyne:
I would love that. Eddie Albert !
peach flavored shampoo
@Redshift: Whoa….Coulter mocked the parents of a fallen solider? And people think Cruz has a punchable face.
/CNN just now finds this out, books Coulter immediately
D58826
6 former and current Michigan employees have been charged in the flint water scandal. 18 felony charges total. Flint is what a real scandal looks like as opposed to the phony faux news scandals.
Bobby Thomson
@jonas: there’s a court order. If he doesn’t obey the order it exposes him to contempt sanctions, possibly including packing a toothbrush.
Uncle Cosmo
@dr. bloor: +1.0E10 for Airplane! shoutout. One of the great metamoments of film, right alongside the last few minutes of Blazing Saddles…
Applejinx
@Kay: Fair, but we have the precariat. There’s miles to go before we even get back to ‘working folks’ much less unions. I’m not convinced the traditional union is the best line of defense against things like Uber, both in practical terms and in charting a political course through all this.
We need more a sort of Magna Carta: underlying even the mechanic of collective labor action must be more basic concepts that are now called into question. When I say ‘precariat’ I’m talking this new kind of employment, which is sort of kicking the ass of traditional employment because it gets to treat human labor with a liquidity way beyond traditional employment. It’s sort of ‘Home Depot undocumented wetback labor writ large’, a condition where it’s a personal race to the bottom pitting worker against worker advertising themselves to the employer just to get temp work.
State lotteries are a tax on people bad at math? This is like a tax on people who are bad at entrepreneurship. If you’re the employer, you look for whatever poor sap is giving way too much to compete for your favor. Use ’em up, wring ’em out, discard, look for a fresh sucker.
These are by definition natural scab labor, so it needs to be addressed before we get into reinstating union labor power. Otherwise, business will simply turn to the precariat as strikebreakers, undermining the system. It’s a class of automatic, built-in scabs and strikebreakers, already indoctrinated to undermine any form of organized labor.
Face
@D58826: But are crimes against black people really crimes? #Incompetent&crookedwatermanagementofficialslivesmatter!
Enhanced Voting Techinques
I have to say I am amazed how Trump is making GW Bush and Dick”I have no heart” Cheny look like sober elder statesmen.
ruemara
@Mnemosyne: I’m sure we’re the racists & misogynists for saying that.
amk
Bruce Bartlett
@BruceBartlett
wenchacha
@Mnemosyne: I married such a person. Forty years on in the process of understanding it.
Therapy only helps if one is willing to suspend disbelief in that sort of hocus-pocus. I am pretty sure we are not evolved enough, most of us, to cope with modern life on a daily basis. Some people manage much better than others, for a wide variety of reasons.
Unfortunately for all of us, Trump relies on his manufactured persona as some kind of business genius, savvy dealmaker and his complete disregard for the feelings of anyone beside himself. All our “think of the children” about bullying probably reveals some of our deepest fears and anxieties: how DO we defend against injustice? Bullying works, at least in the short term. Trump knows it.
Woodrowfan
Interesting analogy. I like it. What others ones would there be?
Risan: Everybody just needs to get laid.
Vulcan: Everybody just needs to be more logical (that one was easy)
Klingon: Everybody just needs to have their butt kicked!
Romulian: Everybody just needs to be strong.
Cardassian: Everybody just needs to follow the rules.
Bajorian: Everybody just needs to feel their earlobes
Tellarites: Everybody just needs to argue more!
Ferengi: Everybody just needs to make more money!
Ioation: Everybody just needs to share in the action! or else!
(ok, I was having way to much fun with this.)
rikyrah
From TOD:
Cacti
TMZ is reporting that Justin Bieber turned down a $5 million offer to play at the RNC.
The Republicans have done the impossible. In the past 2 weeks, they’ve made me feel respect for Justin Bieber and Ted Cruz.
trollhattan
@Woodrowfan:
Dylanian: Everybody must get stoned!
slag
@Jeffro:
As in 2008, I see this perspective as being primarily the result of serious diversity enabling the white guys in the party to be more liberal. Just like John Edwards got to push the party (including Barack Obama) left in 2008. I don’t think it would have seemed possible for him had there not been a woman and a black man in real contention for the nomination. Overton Window.
Change is scary and comes easiest wrapped in a comfortably familiar package. So, I say let Brooks and the rest attribute the party’s liberal platform to the white man. It’s the story of our lives. The rest of us know it actually takes a village, and soon enough, we won’t be able to remember a time when anyone could have possibly thought otherwise.
Uncle Cosmo
@Doug R: Elon Musk on camera:
Or somesuch.
Ruckus
@Cermet:
Also remember that he claimed very loudly that he was worth 10 billion, not 4. It was I believe Forbes that said they could not find anything that put him above 4 billion. If you consider all the aspects of his not so vast fortune, like his plane is decades old and that a lot of his assets are his name on the side of buildings, it really does look like he isn’t close to being worth anything like 4 billion. His “resorts” are not all that and a bag of chips, he values his name a lot higher than people who pay money for this type of thing and his campaign has done nothing positive to help pay for his ostentatious bullshit.
negative 1
@Applejinx: Not to butt into your conversation, but fighting for unions tends to be the most effective way to get power for working class folks. If nothing else, the threat of unionization usually spurs employers to get off of their rumps and address the main complaints of their employees.
The excellent Erik Loomis at LGM (who writes WAY better than I on this topic) once wrote about the reason European countries have more powerful labor — basically in the modified capitalism we and they have, labor-business-government all have to moderate each other. In this country we put way more emphasis on business than the other two. Hence strengthening labor (as a whole, not just unionized but all workers) will require some government action for enforcement (e.g. ending right-to-work, enhanced action from Awesome Tom Perez’s DOL (though they’re already doing great)).
gvg
@rikyrah:
Should call him the selfalleged billionaire.
Dadadadadadada
@jonas: Really? FFS, even Lex freaking Luthor stepped down from LexCorp when he ran for president!
Gavin
@rikyrah:
“you have to vote for me anyway”
Nice little democracy you’ve got there. Shame if anything happened to it.
different-church-lady
@Cacti:
The true North strong and free!
Applejinx
@negative 1: But we don’t HAVE working class. Precariat is sub-working class, that’s really the point I’m making.
As far as government action, I am all for it, bring it on. You’re not wrong there. I’m just identifying a loophole: sort of “fine, have your union. checkmate! we are now a ‘people check an app to see if there’s work for them’ shop and have no employees at all anymore”.
I’m not suggesting it’s a good thing but it’s a thing. Look into Uber and their market capitalization. This is definitely an exploit.
Steeplejack (phone)
@danielx:
Megacasino is still casino. FYWP no likey.
alan
@ Christie told reporters that along with a civil service purge of all Obama appointees, they want to allow businessmen to serve in government while still in private business.
Miss Bianca
@Mnemosyne: Tim Kaineway!
Miss Bianca
@rikyrah: OK, I loved his speech. But I think I kinda fell in LOVE with Rev. Barber. Is it wrong?
SFAW
@gvg:
Close:
“Donald Trump, who claims to be a billionaire, …” (perhaps accompanied by an eyeroll or smirk when the word “claims” is said, or perhaps air-quotes for “billionaire.” It would drive Deadbeat Donnie around the bend. Yuuuugely.)
SFAW
@Miss Bianca:
“If loving him is wrong,
You don’t want to be right …”
RepubAnon
@shomi: He probably isn’t a billionaire – but has anyone coined the phrase “bullsh*taire” for The Donald?
NoraLenderbee
@amk: He really did.
(not sure I can post link)
Monala
@Mnemosyne: Propane Jane had some very good tweets in response to Sander’s supporters claiming Kaine is too moderate. She pointed out that unlike Bernie, he stayed actively involved in civil rights for the long haul, and instead of pandering to the NRA, he took them on in their own backyard.
Mnemosyne
@Monala:
As I think most of us have figured out by now, the measure of “liberal” for certain privileged people on the left is measured by banks and TPP and not much else. And I say this as a white person.
Phoebes
@jonas:Comment of the week
misterpuff
@Mnemosyne: I’m spitting nails right now. Demand Progress is fundraising off of McAuliffe’s TPP gaffe
less than 24 hours after Hillary gets the nom. I ashamed to be a progressive.
Dear Misterpuff,
Terry McAuliffe, a top ally of Hillary Clinton’s, just let slip that he expects her to change her position and support the TPP if she wins the election.1
McAuliffe tried to walk back the comment after it sparked a backlash from Bernie Sanders supporters—but this week the Clinton campaign has also refused to assert that it would fight a vote on TPP during the “lame duck” session after the November election.
The TPP is an awful trade deal that threatens Net Neutrality, ends protections against Wall Street recklessness, and allows corporations to sue the U.S. government in secret tribunals to overturn laws passed by Congress.
We can’t afford to have politicians playing games, saying they’re for it one day and against it the next. That’s why we’re redoubling our efforts to stop any TPP vote during the lame duck. Will you chip in $5?
Yes, I’ll chip in $5 to help stop the TPP.
Terry McAuliffe is one of Bill and Hillary’s closest and oldest friends. If anyone knows what she’s really thinking, it’s him.
And this isn’t the first time we’ve seen party insiders signal that Clinton might still support the TPP. Efforts to add clear opposition to the TPP to the Democratic party platform were blocked—mainly by delegates supporting Clinton.
That’s why, no matter what the politicians tell you before the election, the TPP is still a very real threat and could be passed during the lame-duck session of Congress after the election.
To make sure that doesn’t happen, we’ve helped launch the “Rock Against the TPP” concert series alongside Fight for the Future and Tom Morello from the band Rage Against the Machine to raise public awareness about this terrible deal. The first concert was last weekend, and it was a huge hit.
And this week in Philadelphia, we’re continuing to push party leaders to stand against the TPP, bringing the power of our huge grassroots movement right into the convention hall.
We know TPP supporters in Congress want to use the lame-duck session to push the TPP through—after the election, when it’s too late to hold politicians who vote for it accountable.
But we’ve come too far to let this awful deal get signed now. Will you chip in $5?
Yes, I’ll chip in $5 to help stop the TPP.
Thanks for standing with us,
Kurt Walters and the Demand Progress Team
F you Kurt. Defeat Trump Don’t divide us at this moment.
PurpleGirl
@OzarkHillbilly</a Trump DOES NOT OWN most of the buildings he builds or built at one time. He turns them in condominiums and operates the management companies that run them.
I've despised him with a red-hot rage ever since he manipulated the take-over of the Commadore Hotel and "transforming" it into a Hyatt. He is one of the most insiders there can be. You don't have to be D.C. to be an insider. NY Science Fiction held a lot of conventions in that hotel. They were renovating it and it was starting to turn a profit. We lost some lovely lobby furniture — like the brass elevator controller (which we pretended was the bridge of the "Enterprise") and it was affordable.
PurpleGirl
@Taylor: YES. and Mike Bloomberg is a real businessman. Bloomberg started a media company with an idea. He rents the Bloomberg computers. He, himself is not a computer guy. He hired a computer guy to design the desktops (and made that man quite wealthy). Bloomberg worked with the media aspects.
PurpleGirl
@FlipYrWhig: Have you seen Hillary’s ad that’s been shown in NYC (at least that’s where I’ve seen it).
It’s the clip where combover caligula makes the comment about shooting someone in the middle Fifth Avenue and people would still vote for him, he says f**k yourself, the infamous blood from wherever, and a few other things. At the end, Hillary’s statement is written across the screen “Is the President you want your children to watch?” (paraphrase).
So why haven’t the Rethuglicans called him out with that great line Think of children that they kept taunting the Clintons with.