Proud to marry Brian and Joe at my house. Couldn't be happier, two longtime White House staffers, two great guys. pic.twitter.com/0om1PT7bKh
— Vice President Biden (@VP) August 1, 2016
Ladies & Gentlemen, Vice-President Joe “Rhymes with Bucket” Biden!
.
George Takei, Living National Treasure. Per the AP:
In an English-subtitled video that’s drawn more than 12 million views in less than two weeks online, the “Star Trek” actor compares Trump’s proposed deportation of undocumented Latino immigrants to the World War II internment of more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans, including Takei and his family.
“I’m addressing this to my Spanish-speaking fans and their friends,” he says in the four-minute video. “I want to give some personal, historical context on how Donald Trump’s words and plans can have very real and terrible consequences.”…
“It was my parents who heard the sounds we are hearing today from Donald Trump, the sweeping statements he makes characterizing and stereotyping a whole group of people,” Takei said in an interview. “My father lost his business and we lost our home and our freedom. With no charges, to be locked up, imprisoned.”…
Takei said he learned Spanish growing up with Mexican-American neighbors in East Los Angeles, a connection that he said makes Trump’s comments all the more difficult.
“It’s very personal to me,” said Takei, who in the video urges viewers to register to vote and to help defeat Trump in November.
And on a whole different plane, I am insanely jealous of the toys kids can get these days: 
Thingmaker™ 3D Printer is an easy-to-use, 3D printing system for the creative home! With the Thingmaker™ 3D Printer, you can easily make your designs come to life. It’s specifically engineered with ease-of-use and family-friendly features in mind…
Create your designs on your mobile device using the Thingmaker Design™ app (available for free in the Apple App store and Google Play, data rates may apply, smart device not included), or select files to download on the Thingmaker Central™ app or on Thingmaker.com. You can even use your own 3D software. Then, easily export your designs to the Thingmaker™ 3D Printer and see them come to life…
Includes 1 3D Printer, 2 0.25kg PLA Filament Reels, 1 USB Thumb Drive with the Instruction Manual, 1 Quick Start Guide, 1 USB Cord, 1 External Power Supply, and 1 Print Removal Tool. Additional filament packs are also sold separately and available in 12 different colors: Red, Blue, Orange, Green, Pink, Yellow, Teal, Purple, Black, White, Gray, and Gold. Two filament reels (0.5kg) can create approximately 10 basic figures!
Back in the mid-1960s (ask your grandma), state-of-the-art technology toys were Easy-Bake Ovens and — for boys — “machines” where you squeezed packets of colored sugar and chemicals into molds to be extruded in the shapes of insects and race cars. Every society encourages its offspring to play-pretend their adult roles, and our adult roles were expected to be gender-coded into housekeeping (from name-brand packages, for modernity) or working the assembly line to extrude those name-brand products in factories (or, for the white-collar guys, in cubicles). It’s really very cheering that today’s kids — both genders, although I’m sure there will be pink & purple ‘princess’ versions available for the holiday shopping season — are being taught that as adults, they’ll be expected to use their brains and produce what’s in their imaginations. Even if this iteration happens to be an overpriced corporate branding exercise…
Apart from dreaming & working for a brighter future, what’s on the agenda for the day?
Mike E
John Dingell: Twitter treasure
MattF
I was at a not-antiques-but-maybe-will-be-someday store a few years ago and was just horrified by the ‘play’ ovens on display. The little ‘ovens’ plugged directly into 120 V power lines; no transformers, no nothing. The old days were not so great for a number of reasons.
NotMax
Mid-1960s?
Shrinky Dinks were cutting edge.
raven
Coonskin Caps and The Alamo!
OzarkHillbilly
The toys kids have now… When I was a kid, we played with dirt. DIRT! Kids got it too good these days.
Cat48
I just want that “rigged election” that Trump started talking about yesterday–if Hillary wins, he will consider it rigged. I’m wishing for a liberal court that won’t take entitlements away.
rikyrah
Good Morning ?, Everyone ?
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: My Grandmother, Ingeborg, used to say “kids have to eat a pound a dirt before they died”!
rikyrah
@Mike E:
When I grow up, I want John Dingell’s twitter game ?
Cat48
Good morning, Rickyray ?
Schlemazel
Thingmaker? HA! In my day I saved all my birthday and Christmas money plus pop bottle money for 2 months & bought myself a Vac-U-Form (BY MATTEL!) it was the thingmaker of the day!
Another Holocene Human
Mood is low this morning. Have had a low grade migraine for days. Just want to quit taking my psychiatric drug because I’m tired of the side effects. I guess if I’m going to feel shitty anyway why feel shittier. I know this is stupid but maybe I need to be reminded why.
Can’t figure out what triggered the ‘graine but it could have been eating philly shaved steak because something something less that completely fresh beef is a migraine trigger.
Cat48
Sorry, I misspelled your name, rikyrah ?
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
satby
Good morning!
Well NPR led off with Warren Buffett’s challenge to Drumpf to show his tax returns, so for once I didn’t get furious before 6am. Nice, but it takes something as catastrophic as Drumpf to get them back to less slanted reporting? Probably only last one day anyway.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@MattF: Yet somehow, most of us seemed to survive.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Charles Schultz modeled Pigpen after me.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: You’ll like this. We ordered a rain barrel and it came yesterday. It has two pre-drilled and “threaded” 1/2 ” holes for spigots. I went to home depot and fiddled around for 30 minutes trying to figure out how I was going to fasten the spigot from the inside. I finally bought a pvc fitting with the proper threads and then, on the way home, wondered if I was going to be able to reach the bottom hole! Sure enough because the barrel has a screw on top that narrows the opening making access really difficult. The best thing I figured out was to sit on the floor, pick the barrel up and put it over my head with my right arm extended over my head. I could just barely reach the hole with the fitting and my head lamp at least allowed me to see it. It took me an hour to screw the goddamn thing in the hole so it was flush with the side of the barrel and there were enough threads protruding for me to attach the spigot. I finally got it and then had to hoist it back over my head to apply siiicon!
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Always loved Pigpen.
I been ballin’ a shiny black steel jack-hammer
Been chippin’ up rocks for the great highway
Live five years if I take my time
Ballin’ that jack and a drinkin’ my wine.
rikyrah
@Another Holocene Human:
Sorry that you are feeling down. Hope you get better .
Schlemazel
I also has an easy-bake oven but it felt stupid since I was baking in a real oven by the time I was 8 or 9.
I never remember eating dirt until I had to work for a living, some management just loves to make employees eat dirt every day
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
NY Daily News:
MAKE AMERICA DESECRATE: Trump takes nation to pathetic new low
(photo)
?BillinGlendaleCA
In my travels yesterday, I ran across a picture of George Takei(National Treasure).
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Schlemazel: Eating dirt, at least you got sunlight! We were treated like mushrooms(kept in the dark and fed shit).
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
Pivot
raven
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Southerners do eat dirt. We always have. And we still do.
Great article.
Mike E
@rikyrah: He’s my favorite Rep! I participated in a conservation ‘event’ (*cough*lobby*cough*) in Congress and afterwards went to a soirée at the Botanical Gardens which was set up for us by Rep Dingell…tres cool dude
Schlemazel
@Another Holocene Human:
Here is wishing you well. I have been fighting the black dog & losing badly the last few weeks. At least I don’t have to deal with migrains, that would suck worse.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: HA! Serves you right, may no good deed go unpunished.
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
Most Read Articles: Washington Post
1. Broad array of military luminaries condemn Trump over attacks on Khan family
2. Donald Trump’s convention looks like it was a failure
3. Khan confrontation keys in on human decency — and that could haunt Trump
4. Donald Trump’s ABC interview may be his best/worst yet
5. What we know about Donald Trump and his taxes so far
Another Holocene Human
@rikyrah: Thanks :)
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Great. Now I’m on a Grateful Dead jag.
Schlemazel
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
That would be the MO of my current manager, it effectivly is the same thing.
Someone needs to ask the Drumpster fire if he WANTS to create home-grown terrorists, because isolating and dienfranchising minority groups is the best way to create them. It is a little tin-foil hatty (but only a little) to imagine Trump WANTS a domestic terror atteck before the election as a way to gain votes.
OzarkHillbilly
@?BillinGlendaleCA: “Oh you lucky bastid! What I wouldn’t give to be hung rightside up!”
JPL
@Schlemazel: Winning is everything!
?BillinGlendaleCA
While at UCLA yesterday, I visited the restaurant that I worked at while a student. I purchased a Diet Coke and mentioned to the cashier that I used to do the same thing she was doing at exactly the same place(I think I trained at that register). She said, “I’m sure the place(the restaurant) has changed alot”. I said, no, it looks almost exactly the same as it did when I completed my final shift.
Tinare
@Schlemazel: I wanted an Easy Bake oven as a kid, and my mom said, “no way. I’ll show you how to operate the real thing.”
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
Roll tide, roll
OzarkHillbilly
@Schlemazel: Only thing is, most of our domestic terrorists are not made up from minorities.
JPL
Trump’s pivot.. link
Baud
@JPL: Arlington Cemetery is prime real estate. So much undeveloped land.
Amir Khalid
Going back some thirty years, i can’t remember any candidate for POTUS who was a ghastlier person than Trump is right now. Can anyone here think of such a person?
Baud
@David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch: I wonder if anyone has told Trump yet that he doesn’t have the power to fire Mike Pence.
Baud
@Amir Khalid: Only 30 years? He is the worst candidate in American history.
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
I’ve only been following American politics for about that long.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Trump’s Arlington.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Yep. The only thing missing is the casin0.
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
Quinerly
@Baud:
Probably not. But I do want polling done on replacing Trump done…perhaps in the area of putting Pence at the top of the ticket and then the press asking Pence about that. I think we are to the human sacrifice (literal) part of Trump’s campaign. Might as well be Pence.
Baud
@Amir Khalid: Every other ghoulish candidate I can think of had at least some claim to being qualified for the job.
Schlemazel
@OzarkHillbilly: all the ones you hear about on the news are . . .
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Ummmm, may I present Andrew Jackson? Or how about Millard Fillmore of the “Know-Nothing,” Party in 1856 (which ignored slavery and instead emphasized anti-immigration and anti-Catholic policies)? etc etc etc ad infinitum. ‘Worst in history’ is a pretty big nut to crack.
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
OzarkHillbilly
@Schlemazel: I recall reading about one in Dallas recently.
debbie
@MattF:
I shocked myself unplugging my toy iron when I was about 5 years old. My mom was not pleased with me because there was soot all over the wall.
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: See my # 50. There are worse candidates by modern standards of morality and decency, for sure.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
How’s your back?
debbie
@David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch:
CNN has it at 9 points, and I believe I heard a poll last night at 10 points, but I can’t remember whose it was
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
BlueDWarrior
There was a great moment of TV just now, at least as you are into schadenfreude, where JoeScar was looking into the camera after the control room played the clip of Trump calling Clinton a metaphorical (and possibly literal) Devil, and he just had this blank smile on his face that said “It is taking all of my willpower as a grown man to not scream into this camera and walk off the set”
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: still fvcked up. I fractured my 3rd and 4th lumbar (the spurs coming off the sides) in HS and they never grew back together. The pain is in that area, but it’s been 15 yrs since last they bothered me so my memory of the pain is a little vague. Hence, I am not sure if this is related to that or if it’s just muscle pain. I just have to grin and bear it, hoping it doesn’t take too long.
Kay
FOX and Trump are starting this ass-covering early, I must say. Usually FOX waits until after Labor Day to make completely unsubstantiated accusations that millions of AA and Latinos commit a felony every 4 years. If only they had shown the same tough investigative reporting skills on the sexual harassment that was happening right in front of them, sometimes TO them!
Also, Bill Clinton is campaigning in Utah this month. I almost hope it’s just to drive Republicans crazy. Clinton has so many surrogates she can send them all over- they should do a North and South Dakota weekend. If asked, they can deadpan ” we think it’s important we reach out to our voters”.
Baud
@Kay:
Haha. Love it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kay: Utah may be getable, Mormons HATE Trump.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@BlueDWarrior: So is Mika still in “the South of France”?
mike in dc
The media is still straining to make this a horse race. Seems to me like the real ratings bonanza is covering the Trump traveling shit show/impending implosion.
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
BlueDWarrior
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Seems like,haven’t seen hide nor hair of her the half an hour total I’ve been listening/looking in.
Keith G
To me this is a very informative photo of the vibe between Hillary and Tim Kaine.
Edit …Always have trouble with linking pages with this tablet. Here is the actual link
https://goo.gl/images/NZgB1D
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Grin and bear, and take it easy for a while, amirite?
debbie
@BlueDWarrior:
I didn’t sleep very well last night and at one point was listening to the BBC on the radio. They ran tape of Trump’s devil remarks and were in disbelief.
Baud
@BlueDWarrior: Close your eyes and think of emails, Joe. You’ll feel better.
Joel
It could be worse, you could have grown up in the period when playgrounds went from fun, cool, and dangerous to boring, crappy, suck. Now, most playgrounds *still* suck; swings are short, with rubber seats that prevent you from building any real momentum, and the legacy playgrounds from my childhood are still around to ruin the fun for everyone. But there are a few modern playgrounds that are really cool. Like Maggie Daley park in Chicago.
eric
@Keith G: I can just hear joe biden….look, she does it too!
Mr. Mack
Good morning. Another hot as hell day here, I have to work in shifts of about 90 minutes, then hydrate and stay inside. Sucks. One thing I do not miss is Joe & Mika, it just keeps getting worse. I have Sling TV, so all I get is CNN…but it sucks way less.
eric
@Joel: they really nailed it with Maggie Daley park…plus the great climbing wall!
Baud
@Keith G: Whew. It’s an ice cream shop. For a second, I thought she went back to Chipotle.
Baud
@Mr. Mack: CNN may be better than MSNBC this year. Sad!
Poopyman
@OzarkHillbilly:
You forgot to mention that it was awesome, and we LOVED it.
I’m told my first word was “truck”, although maybe they willfully misheard “fuck!”.
Iowa Old Lady
@Quinerly: If they’re going to replace Trump, they need to get on it. Early voting starts here in just over two months.
rikyrah
@David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch:
That is what you call twitter truth
scav
Trump needs to get the stolen lie out fast, especially if he’s going to use poll results (in August!) as proof of theft in November. Apparently he does possibly have a baseline recognition the bounces didn’t work in his favor.
Gin & Tonic
@BlueDWarrior: You’re wrong. That blank smile was him looking at his viewers and saying “Hey, I’m laughing all the way to the bank, you morons.”
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@debbie: Sam Wang at Princeton has a summary of a few of the latest – post-conventions – polls.
Even the USC/Dornsife Daybreak Poll is finally breaking for Hillary. (Notice how she’s on a tear with women there.)
Cheers,
Scott.
(More of this, please.)
Baud
@Iowa Old Lady: How can they replace Trump unless he voluntarily drops out?
Kay
When the conservatives on the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act smart people who actually follow election law said the real damage would be at the local level– below the level of high-profile lawsuits in swing states. That’s coming true.
There has to be a rich liberal who would fund hiring thousands of voter protection people to challenge these local officials and do door to door voter education to mitigate the impact of what are scare tactics to make people afraid to vote. it’s just such a worthwhile cause and it’s not even “partisan” – national Democratic operatives don’t focus on these states. There has to be a wealthy person or a group of wealthy people who care about the individual right to vote, apart from winning elections. These people must exist. Organizers are cheap to pay. They make +/- 30k + health insurance. One could hire thousands for what one swing state tv ad campaign costs.
Also, every time a pundit says Trump is a one-off and doesn’t represent conservatives, remember what Justice Roberts did to these people in Georgia. He helped unleash this on them. Not only do they not get legal protections against this kind of harassment and intimidation, the state is going after them. The Best and The Brightest in the conservative “movement” did this.
TS
@satby:
Morning Mad seems to have given the election to Hillary. Young frowning Willie tried so hard to blame ISIS on Hillary and President Obama with ZERO support from anyone. First time since 2012 the GOP is not the love child of the show.
MomSense
@Another Holocene Human:
Migraines are no fun. Hope you feel better.
Baud
@Kay: As a wise woman once said, tell that truth, Kay.
Tokyokie
Not only does George Takei speak Spanish, to my untrained ear, it sounds like he speaks it beautifully. (My same untrained ears could tell that Shrub, who supposedly spoke Spanish, only knew enough to nastily order the servants around.) I heartily recommend that folks watch the animated short film The Missing Scarf, for which Takei-sama provided the narration. It’s a wonderfully funny little film, but Takei-sama’s voice work is what makes it unforgettable.
The Missing Scarf
rikyrah
@Kay:
They should send surrogates everywhere.
LOL at your shade towards Fox Noise ?☺
Iowa Old Lady
@Baud: I have no idea how they’d do it at all, let alone against his will. However, I’m picturing scenes of them declaring that he’s “too sick” to continue, which would have the merit of being true.
rikyrah
@Kay:
I wish you would front page it, Kay, and break it down.
Joel
@Amir Khalid: Sinclair Lewis wrote about one, but that was fictional.
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: When one’s back goes out, ‘taking it easy’ is not a take it or leave it option.
Kay
@rikyrah:
I’m taking a ton of vacation this summer so when I’m at work I have to get caught up. Two of my grown kids got married in the last two years and we’ve been spending time with them and their spouses which involves Chicago and Pittsburgh trips :)
I do voter protection here as a volunteer but honestly this county is 92% white and the only reason it’s organized in Ohio is it’s a swing state that’s important to national Democrats. The best voter protection people are local people- they could actually hire people in these towns – but they would need the protection of a national org- they need that kind of heft and the support of powerful people or the organizers would be targeted. There needs to be a new org, a ground-based one, not elite lawyers (although they’re great for big lawsuits and I’m grateful to them) but work- a- day local lawyers who know the courthouse and the players and organizers who live in these communities.
Baud
@Iowa Old Lady: I figure they’ll disappear him, put someone in his place, and pretend that the replacement has been the nominee all along. Good chance the media goes along with it, and attacks the Democrats who claim that “Donald Trump” was ever their nominee. I mean, that’s crazy, right?
Baud
Article up on Vox saying Brexit was really about healthcare. This paragraph was interesting.
hovercraft
Morning everyone.
Morning Joe is saying that republicans are calling him to ask if his friend of 10 years has ever displayed this type of behavior yesterday, he is unhinged, and the sad thing is this schtick worked in a primary in my party. He’s waiting for republicans of stature to un-endorse, say this is a bridge too far, that this guy cannot be the face of our party. They think they need to stand by him to win, but guess what he’s not gonna win and at this point they need to focus on saving the senate. Halpern chimes in the wives and daughters are pressuring them to step back from Trump and to disassociate from him.
Joe wants to save Ryan and McCains souls.
Sad.
aimai
@Baud: Well, this was kind of obvious from the beginning–and certainly from the days before the vote when the Brexit advocating crew was using the totally false slogan that they would take the money going TO the EU and spend it on the NHS. They campaigned in front of signs saying just that. Then the day after Brexit they all admitted, from their hidey holes, that this wasn’t going to happen.
raven
@hovercraft: They also said he wants to lose and then bitch for the rest of his life that it was RIGGED!!
scav
@Baud: So the spike in racial / ethnic violence and abuse must be an effort to drive foreigners through physical / emotional injury into the arms of the NHS to experience the wonders thereof. (not to dispute they love the NHS as much as they moan about it.)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@hovercraft:
They have souls? Now that’s news.
Anya
I hate how the press focuses on silly Trump controversies while ignoring the important ones, for example, his taxes, his ties to organized crime. But most of all, his disgusting comment about how a woman should just quit her job if she were sexually harassed by her boss. This is appalling and deserves more scrutiny. I hate the media and their tenancy to focus on a shiny object rather then examining Trump’s record.
satby
@Kay: I linked to that on FB yesterday with a comment about every American should be ashamed to see this starting again. My personal goal is to rub the faces of the wingers I know in what racist practices and goals their “party for grownups” has. Because they hate to be called racists, and the more racist they are the worse they hate it. So I take every opportunity to highlight that racism is about more than screaming the n word at people.
Emma
@hovercraft: *emoji of little devil dancing in glee*
MomSense
@Kay:
We definitely need more lawyers to work on voting rights. I wonder if some of the local bar associations could ask their members to look at this. It is so infuriating.
aimai
@Iowa Old Lady: I don’t think they would care about screwing up/losing early voting. If they try to replace Trump at this stage, or slightly later, its just so that he isn’t the forward face of the losing party. Whoever they got to step in would be a sacrificial lamb.
But I don’t think they can do it. I don’t think they can find anyone who wants to go out in public and who still thinks he can have a political career. Pence was supposed to take that role and I think he is looking more like a cautionary tale than anything else.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Anya:
Most of the media are children, that’s what children do.
Quinerly
@hovercraft:
Something has changed with this Khan story. It hit a nerve with decent Repugs that are still out there. Don’t know if it was a final straw with them but I am beginning to think the RNC will pull their support and try to replace him. Stu Stevens was advocating it last night, it’s all over Twitter. Something is up. When I brought this up last night a commentator pulled up and posted the rule. It would be complicated but as Stevens said last night, “there’s a mechanism in place” to replace him. He was suggesting Pence. You can better believe it’s being talked about.
aimai
@MomSense: I know people here, in MA, who do voter protection regularly at elections–specifically they go to NH and other swing states to do voter protection around college campuses. I really don’t think any “local bar associations” don’t know how important voter protection is. But its actually quite hard, in a red state, for someone with a local business to stick their neck out politically and socially against the powers that be. My take on this is that the Democratic Party knows this quite, quite, well and where possible they bring in outside ringers because the number of people who can do this pro bono, and get in trouble with the local white/RNC/GOP hierarchy, is quite small.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@aimai: They’d also need Trump’s cooperation. If he’s not on board, his howler monkeys won’t follow along. It’d probably cause a Republican party schism.
MomSense
@scav:
People wouldn’t have thought the NHS needed saving if Cameron and the rest of the Austerians hadn’t been massively cutting the NHS budget the last four years. It’s one of my worries about Medicare for all here. That we have private insurers in the middle offers some protection from the zombie eyed granny starvers.
Uncle Cosmo
@raven:
From memory, from one of those old blooper records (yeh, vinyl) that I heard >40 years ago…
raven
@Uncle Cosmo: Yes!
raven
@efgoldman: of course it was
Patricia Kayden
Pigs must be flying and hell must be freezing over because I am watching and actually enjoying Morning Joe this morning. Given Trump’s plummeting ratings, I wanted to see what Scarborough et al had to say about the Trumpster. Scarborough doesn’t feel he can win and that Republicans need to work to save the Senate and House.
Mr. Mack
Not prone to wearing my old tin foil hat anymore…but I am wondering. Did the big money boys think that Trump would be their useful idiot, and not realize what a loose cannon he is? I mean, the Primary wasn’t much of a fight. It seemed like they all quit due to lack of money, and, to a lesser degree, the inevitability of a Trump candidacy. Have they focused instead on the Senate races?
Jeffro
@Iowa Old Lady:
They can’t and won’t replace him. What they’d do is get on-message with, “GOP voters, we can’t support this man anymore, but your party needs you – a GOP Senate and/or House are all that stand between History’s Greatest Monster 2.0 and her absolute power” And then each Senate/House candidate would make its own calculation as to whether to run against Trump, Hillz, or both.
Anya
Qusay had even worse response to the workplace sexual harassment question than his father: “Ivanka is a strong, powerful woman. She wouldn’t allow herself to be subjected to it.” I can’t take this fucking election anymore. It’s so unbelievable that half of America will vote to put this awful family in the white house.
rikyrah
@Kay:
you are on point, about this.
Jeffro
@Mr. Mack:
Short answer: yes they did, and no they didn’t (willfully blind here). Trump’s voters are such a significant force in the GOP that all of these pols knew, to get in front of that train would be to get run over…and/or crack the party in two. That’s going to happen anyway, but they have still hoped against hope for what, five months now? They’re just trying to avoid the pain of rebuilding the party, somehow, without the Trumpistas.
carame
I wish that people in the media and elsewhere would stop floating Mike Pence around as some kind of moderating influence on Trump. Sure, he’s less likely to dump the US to go shack up with Putin than Trump is, but seriously? Pence is a hate-filled piece of rancid elephant dung who would be an honest-to-god tragedy for civil rights in this country. His “Jim Crow for gays” bill got national attention, but HB 1337 has made it legally dangerous to have a miscarriage in Indiana, among other things, and no one wants to talk about it.
scav
@MomSense: There was also the seemingly long-standing tradition of believing whoppers about straight banana etc regulations of the EU, and all those foreigners (Polish plumbers!) coming over here and stealing outpr jobs. Scarey Refugees! (granted, much closer ones.) Media script seems remarkably familiar.
Patricia Kayden
@David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch: Morning Joe mocked Trump’s statement by showing a clip from the Zoolander movie where the dizzy protagonist made a similar comment.
But according to The Donald, he has the best words.
MomSense
@aimai:
What I noticed when I did voter protection recruitment in 2007 and 08 was that there were lawyers in these places who were not competing for the chamber of commerce clients. Their practices were serving the very same people who are targeted by these voting restriction laws.
Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill
Well, I think we have proof of at least one of the following two things:
1) The improbability of Trump prevailing in any contest in any parallel universe or timeline is proved by the absence of time travelers or universe jumpers come to warn us or derail/attack Trump; or
2) The absence of such people proves that time travel or universe jumping is impossible.
Maybe Scalzi or John Birmingham can jump on this aspect…
Patricia Kayden
@Anya: I heard that and guffawed that he’d think that was an appropriate comment. So he’s basically blaming women for being sexually harassed. Wow. Just wow.
MomSense
@Anya:
What about the women who are not powerful and have mouths to feed?
Jeffro
Btw folks, SLATE actually has something up worth reading: “If Sean Penn were the Democrats’ candidate, we’d totally be supporting him”. Unfortunately it’s more true than not.
The writer was trying to figure out what the reverse of the 2016 race would be and came up with basically “Cruz or Santorum vs. Sean Penn”. I don’t think that’s quite accurate…you need a more typical, game-manager of a Republican as Cruz & Santorum are pretty radically religious right. Plus you’d need someone on the Left who’s racially divisive. I’ve been picturing it as Kaisch vs. Farrakhan (and mentioning it to my right-leaning relatives that way, in the hopes that they’d see the enormity of who they’re really supporting this cycle).
Anyway, I’m sure the impulse to get in there and defend Sean Penn would be there…but I also just don’t see Dems rallying to someone who doesn’t know anything. We seem to be more invested in policy, facts, actual experience than that. Which…is exactly what the writer says I’d be saying…;)
OzarkHillbilly
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Facts not in evidence.
rikyrah
They are police officers, which means that they both make, at least $60k/year. I’m being on the low side. I know that DC is expensive, but still. They couldn’t put their kids in the schools where they live?
This isn’t like the other cases of poor parents lying to get their kids in a better system.
D.C. Cops Must Pay $539K for Illegally Enrolling Their Children in D.C. Schools
By Corey Mitchell on July 29, 2016 4:08 PM
Tweet
A pair of District of Columbia police officers are on the hook for a $539,000 judgment for fraudulently enrolling their children in the city’s public schools for a decade.
The married couple lived in various locations across Maryland and Virginia while their children attended D.C. schools between 2003 and 2013, according to a press release from the District of Columbia Office of the Attorney General.
During that time, the husband used the address of a rental property he owned in Washington to enroll the couple’s children in some of the city’s most coveted public schools. Under D.C. law, nonresidents who attend city schools must pay tuition ranging from $7,000 to $10,000 annually for each child.
“D.C. taxpayers should not be subsidizing the education of children from other states,” District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine said in a statement announcing the judgment. “We will continue to investigate and prosecute those who falsely claim District residency in order to obtain government benefits to which they are not entitled.”
Jeffro
@Patricia Kayden:
That is actually a running joke in my family…anytime someone does something boneheaded, their defense is to make a screwball face and go “duh…but…but I has the best words!” My kids love it. Even THEY get it, that someone with half a brain wouldn’t say something like that.
rikyrah
Donald Trump is a Coward Afraid of Facing Mainstream Voters
by David Atkins
July 30, 2016 4:08 PM
……………………………..
Trump’s outrageous insult to Khizr Khan, the father of a deceased veteran, falls into the same category. A normal person would be sympathetic to the Khans’ loss and appreciative of their service to the country, even if they disagreed with them politically. A humbler politician would have thanked the Khans and their son for their service to the country, then explained why his own policies would in theory benefit the country their son died to protect. A less narcissistic person would have had the moral courage to admit that he had not made personal sacrifices on the level of the Khans, but that he had spent his life trying to make the world a better place and would continue to do so as President.
But not Donald Trump. Donald Trump doesn’t have the courage to be humble, nor does he have the life resume to even make a humble response possible. Because whatever Donald Trump has done with his life, it isn’t to make the world a better place. Even Karl Rove and Frank Luntz could reasonably claim to have spent their lives in the service of philosophical ideals and a vision of the world they believe in. But not Donald Trump. He lives only for himself.
That ethic can pass muster and win the day among the small sliver of Republican voters steeped in a venomous stew of prosperity gospel theology, objectivist philosophy and eliminationist politics. But it cannot work in a general election where voters expect more than raw greed and bigoted anger. To expand beyond his comfort zone would take a courage and openness to personal growth that Donald Trump lacks.
That is why, for all his bravado, Trump is already complaining about his debate schedule with Hillary Clinton–a move that, as we saw in the Republican primary, is a Trump first step to potentially dodging debates altogether. Trump knows that he won’t be able to hold his own against Clinton in front of a national audience, and he’s already laying the groundwork to duck out of one or more of them.
Patricia Kayden
@Quinerly: Rence Preibus is still all in for Trump though. I cannot imagine how they would justify replacing Trump after he legitimately won the nomination. Doesn’t sound fair to me and I cannot stand Trump.
aimai
@MomSense: Yes, of course. There are always going to be some Lawyers who are not worried about their local clientele or local connections. But the ACLU probably already has them on speed dial, don’t you think?
?BillinGlendaleCA
My Day, yesterday. Candle in the Wind.
D58826
@Jeffro: I would have a hard time with Santorum or Cruz. Bush/Christie probably not so much. Now if Penn ran at the state or local level and pick up governing experience, like St Ronulus the Unready, then it might be a more difficult choice.
Patricia Kayden
@hovercraft: Sadly hilarious! Love how doom and gloom Joe and Halpern are right now. Yet they were big Trump supporters earlier this year.
D58826
@raven: Tinkertoys, and erector sets
MomSense
@aimai:
I’m sure there is a lot of overlap with the ACLU.
Gelfling 545
@raven: One small but useful thing my city has done is to provide and install rainbarrels free of charge upon request. It’s got a nifty little bypass that fits right into the downspout which feeds directly into the rainbarrel or can be switched off if the barrel is full ( not going to happen this year). This is part of their effort to take the pressure off the aged storm drains. The really great thing was that 2 guys from the water authority showed up and installed it with no time and trouble from me.
Ceci n'est pas mon nym
@Tokyokie: I’m not fluent but I can usually pick up when a speaker is an American (or norteamericano as they say in Latin America). Kaine does have a noticeable US accent. I think Takei’s accent is a lot less, to the point where I wouldn’t swear he’s American.
satby
@Jeffro: You know, I wouldn’t vote for the guy for President, but Sean Penn accomplished great things in Haiti after the earthquake.
We used to see him working when we were in Port au Prince.
Jeffro
Also, which is worse: Trump Sr. telling the media that if harassed, he would hope Ivanka would leave her job (or even career!), or Trump Jr. telling the media that Ivanka’s such a ‘strong, powerful’ woman that she wouldn’t be harassed in the first place.
The implications of each of those statements…truly quite unbelievable…
D58826
@rikyrah: well worth the read, esp. since it is mostly from the perspective of his soldiers in spite of the lede. .
Jeffro
@satby: Right – at least SP would have that service to stand on, right? More than Trump could say. That’s why I don’t think the comparison’s completely accurate. It’s hard because Trump is so far beyond the pale. I do think a Kaisch or Jeb? is an accurate stand-in as a reverse-Clinton.
Betty Cracker
@Jeffro: Interesting thought exercise. I agree with you that Sean Penn, who can certainly be a moron, isn’t comparable to Trump. Farrakhan is a better comparison as you observe, and if the Democrats nominated Farrakhan, I would not support him, even if the alternative were someone awful like Cruz. But like you said, Cruz is an extremist, unlike Hillary Clinton, so that comparison doesn’t fly either. And the Democrats wouldn’t nominate Farrakhan or even Sean Penn. If the party ever sinks to such depths, I hope I would have had the sense to bail on it before that nadir.
Eric U.
I still have my vac-u-form. I think people still sell the plastic sheets you need to make things with it. I’m sure people got disfiguring burns from those things though. “hey mikey….”
OzarkHillbilly
@Jeffro: If it was “Cruz or Santorum vs. Sean Penn” damn right I’d support Penn, but the fact is I can’t see him winning the nom, not in this reality anyway.
gogol's wife
@Keith G:
Nice.
FlipYrWhig
@aimai: I have to think that if the Republican Party pulled the plug on Trump he’d still run as a write-in, whip their replacement and brag/whine about it all the while. I don’t think they want to risk revealing how few conventional Republicans still exist. They need to make it look like Republicans are half the electorate and are always viable if they conduct themselves properly. A schism with Trump calls that all into question and reinforces the “rigging” story he’s already telling his foot soldiers. I think they’d rather lose with Trump than blow open that whole dynamic.
D58826
Profile in courage? No he is retiring so has nothing to lose (sacrifice).
SFAW
@Amir Khalid:
You’re forgetting the Gacy/Dahmer GOP ticket. But outside of them, I can’t either.
Note: Pol Pot and Iosif Vissarionovich, not being citizens, do not qualify.
NorthLeft12
My wife gets GT’s Facebook feed and he recently had a “Both Sides” post from the start of the DNC equating the poor behavior of the BoBers/DNC Leadership to the RNC shitshow.
I commented about more false equivalency BS and wondered which party that Takei would stand with. I’m pretty sure I know who he is going to support.
rikyrah
@OzarkHillbilly:
BWA HA HA HA HA HA
But, there is a lot of truth in that.
I hate to sound old, but damn, these kids just don’t know how to play with simple stuff.
Not talking about babies…babies always know how to have fun with the base minimum.
but, kids..just, 8, 9, 10 year olds these days?
they really do think that something is supposed to entertain them, instead of finding ways to entertain themselves.
gogol's wife
@Anya:
Oh right, she’s stronger than Megyn Kelly or Gretchen Carlson. Give me a break.
rikyrah
@hovercraft:
The only thing sad about this is Joe believing they have souls to save.
raven
@Betty Cracker: Why everyones be dissin Sean???
NorthLeft12
@D58826: You know, that still takes some guts. There are not many Repubs who are repudiating der Trump and this will probably make him persona non grata in the GOP for quite awhile. For people who have spent most of their adult life in that bubble, I am sure it is not an easy thing to do. Lost friends and potential conservascam opportunities I am sure.
SFAW
@Keith G:
Won’t Terry McAuliffe get jealous when he sees his girl making time with another guy?
Jeffro
@Betty Cracker: @OzarkHillbilly:
I hear you both on Cruz being an extremist, Penn not being a moron…I think most are comfortable with the “Kaisch vs Farrakhan” comparison. And yes, I think the Ds would never nominate a Penn (much less a Farrakhan). But…a Mark Cuban, maybe? A Matt Damon? Who knows? I know we’re the party of policy, inclusion, and hopefully a little thoughtfulness…even our demagogues are better than their demagogues ;)…but still.
The whole exercise makes me wonder what additional checks are needed so that we don’t end up with 1) a “deep bench” that muddies the message/divides the party, 2) some self-funding, whim-driven billionaire, or 3) some brainless celeb with huge name recognition and a few vaguely liberal positions. Overturning CU and getting some serious campaign finance reform would help w/ #1 and #2, I suppose?
Jeffro
@raven: Because he’s a great actor & director, but we’re looking for a little more in our presidential candidates on this side of the aisle? =)
FlipYrWhig
@Betty Cracker: Sean Penn isn’t a good parallel to Trump. It needs to be a higher-profile and self-promoting celebrity. Maybe Oprah. Or Keith Olbermann.
randy khan
@rikyrah: That is an exceedingly strange story. There’s almost nobody in the area who would have chosen D.C. schools over suburban Maryland schools during that time period, so falsely claiming D.C. residence for that purpose seems irrational.
Peale
@Kay:
What an evil man. I bet he is a Christian of impeccable standing.
So the African Americans get a visit from the sheriff and probably feel the need to hire an attorney to appear before the Board to prove who they are, while the white voters don’t have to do that. Is that going to be the new standard of the voting process? Whites can just register to vote an their civic participation is showing up at the polls two or three times per year while blacks have this extra step of responding to summonses?
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
We were LUCKY (said in a Yorkshire accent) to even think about getting some dirt! Tire rims and anthrax for us — and that’s only if we were on our best behavior.
philadelphialawyer
@Mr. Mack: I actually think not. The big money boys did not back Trump in the primary. They backed Jeb and Rubio and some of the others. And they only cut off the cash to them when it became clear that Trump was going to win. The big money folks, like the Kock bros, don’t seem to want Trump. As far as I know, right now, Hillary winning, “Obama’s Third Term,” as they call it, is baked into the Wall Street cake. And Wall Street is doing pretty well. The big money boys don’t want Trump coming in, making noise about repudiating the national debt, creating instability by undermining NATO and other US treaty obligations, fucking up relations with our trading partners, and just generally either not knowing what the fuck he is doing, or focusing on looting the place nine ways to Sunday for his own purely personal gain. They would have loved a Jeb or Rubio win, along with a GOP Congress, to cut their taxes even more, rip up the regulations, and so on, but they don’t want Trump. Trump’s support is more about the lumpenproletariat, middle managers, small business owners, along with racists, misogynists, xenophobes, bigots in general, the tin foil hat crowd, and other assorted idiots. The big money boys are now focusing on keeping Congress Republican, which would be maintaining the current status quo (Dem pres/GOP Congress). Not a full loaf, but better the half loaf than whatever Trump would lead to. Also, they don’t think Trump can win, and they don’t like to waste their money.
The Other Chuck
@carame:
To say nothing about his judgment in being Trump’s running mate in the first place. My guess is if the RNC dumps Trump, however unlikely that is, they’ll run a whole new ticket.
SFAW
@Kay:
God, I hate those racist motherfuckers, and all their soulmates in other towns.
If something like that happened to them, they’d be crying for their Mommies in two seconds flat. Fucking un-American assholes.
philadelphialawyer
@Jeffro: Counter factual bullshit. Question begging, at best. Doesn’t seem worth the time of day, to me.
The Other Chuck
@SFAW: In my view, voter suppression demands a second amendment response.
Uncle Cosmo
@Patricia Kayden: The only hope the GOP has of remaining a national party come next year is to preserve its Congressional majorities, obstruct Clinton45 at every turn & blame her for the inaction in 2020. Push Trump out & his supporters will punish them up & down the ticket, either by voting for Democrats out of spite or by staying home.
And if the Democrats take both houses of Congress, the Republican Party is off to the Elephants’ Graveyard. Remember, Hillary always gets much higher marks for doing her job than running for the job…& she isn’t going to dither; she’ll push through so much positive stuff so fast that in 2018 the Democrats will Party like it’s 1934.
TL;DR version: They’re stuck with the shitgibbon & his Warren-Harding-clone ticketmate.
Jeffro
@philadelphialawyer:
And yet…this was?
I’m just killing time before the Cheeto begins his daily offensive offensive, myself
philadelphialawyer
@FlipYrWhig: Even there, though, neither Oprah nor Keith has the same kind of willfully ignorant and proud of it mentality that Trump has. Any celebrity, non politician is at least somewhat like Trump, but Trump has these added “qualities” that are hard to match. I think both Oprah and Keith actually knew, for example, that Putin already invaded the Ukraine in 2014. But, if they didn’t know it in 2015, when they began their hypothetical presidential run, they would at least know it by now, a year later and as a major party nominee. They would start out knowing more than Trump, and, more importantly, they would LEARN, they would LISTEN, whereas Trump thinks he already knows it all, when he doesn’t know shit.
philadelphialawyer
@Jeffro: You said it was “worth reading.” I don’t think it is. No biggie.
ruemara
@Kay: I’m glad some front pager noticed this, I just wish you could turn it into a post. Maybe we need to appeal to a divine authority for help. Oprah.
FlipYrWhig
@philadelphialawyer: Trump’s tax plan still showers money on rich people, though. But I think you’re right that it’s all about having a shot at winning, and they don’t think he has one.
Librarian
@OzarkHillbilly: Andrew Jackson was a racist asshole, but he was far from the worst presidential candidate.
Miss Bianca
@Jeffro: Uh…I believe super delegates are actually part of that system of checks and balances. You know, the part that the Bernie Bros wanted to do away with, because they’re so “undemocratic”. Or something.
(I had my BoB friend going on the other day about what a wuss Bernie Sanders was for not taking his “10 million voters” and decamping to the Green Party. Where Jill Stein had evidently promised him the nomination. No concerns about “democratic” niceties there, I noticed).
Ian
@Amir Khalid:
Pat Buchanan and Lyndon Larouche come to mind, but I would agree the shitweasal has them beat.
Ian
@Ian:
And how could I possibly miss Ted Cruz on that list?
Dadadadadadada
@OzarkHillbilly: The country is 60% white, 49% male, and 27% crazy. .60x.49x.27=minority. Small, small minority, from which almost all domestic terrorists spring.
Dadadadadadada
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Mormons who are old enough to remember hate Bill Clinton way more than they hate Trump. And Mormons are all about tradition and remembering history (their version of history, anyway), so winning many over-30 votes in Utah is gonna be a heavy lift.
But Mormons are also all about having lots of kids, so there are plenty of under-30 voters in Utah, so…
philadelphialawyer
@Dadadadadadada: Mormons are also a religious minority. One with a well remembered history of being persecuted. So, as with Jews, they don’t like hearing a candidate say, “We can just ban folks with religion X from the country,” because if “X” can be banned, why not them? Mormons also serve overseas in their missions, many of them in Mexico, and so they don’t like Trump’s anti Latino, general xenophobia either. And Mormons are also, rightly or wrongly, proud of Mitt Romney, whom Trump has crapped on. And Mormons tend to walk the walk, as well as talk the talk, when it comes to “family values.” For all the bullshit about her, it is undeniable that Hillary has been married to one man her whole life. Bill cheated on her, not the other way around, and she stuck with him. She is a mom and a grandmom, and, apparently, good at it. Trump has five children with three different wives, and his current spouse is, perhaps as they see it, an inappropriate trophy wife for an elderly man. And Trump has bragged about his sexual escapades, including his own infidelities and his affairs with married women. And Trump is just generally sleazy in a personal way that Hillary, again, for all the emailghazy, travelgate, docugate, whitewater, etc, etc bullshit, is not really even accused of.
Maybe enough of them will switch, or sit it out, or vote third party, and that, along with the non Mormon vote, could, conceivably, push Hillary over the top in Utah. Maybe.
J R in WV
@Amir Khalid:
Amir,
Dick Nixon was pretty bad, as bad as Trump, but he was semi-aware of standards for acting like a human being, and so concealed his, um, less-human attributes pretty well. So wouldn’t have done the Terry Schiavo thing, nor the Khan thing. But would have wanted to do it, talked about it on the tapes from the Oval Office, then said, “No, it would be the right thing to do, but the imagery would be all wrong!”
Deep inside, I think McCain was evil, but not on the same scale as Trump. He did call his (rich funder of his campaigns) wife Cindy a c**t in front of reporters once, which didn’t get the play it should have, but he lost to BHO so no big deal.
I’ll never know how that prick is still married to her. I guess it isn’t that hard when he’s in DC and Cindy isn’t, evah!
Dadadadadadada
@philadelphialawyer: I lived in Utah for a time, and I think Utah Mormons don’t think of themselves as a religious minority, because they are a supermajority in Utah and don’t bother much with the outside world. (Newcomers frequently take to calling the most heavily Mormon parts of Utah “The Bubble,” and it’s very fitting.) It’ll be very interesting to see how Trump’s infidelities and sleaziness weigh against Hillary Clinton’s…being Hillary Clinton.
But the fact that this is even a topic means doom for Trump. Utah’s gone to every Republican since 1968, often quite handily. (Reagan twice, Bush 2 once, and Romney all broke 70%, and Bill Clinton came in 3rd behind Bush 1 and Perot.) If Trump can’t write off Utah as a decisive win, he’s toast.
hedgehog the occasional commenter
Love me some Joe.
Thinking seriously about signing up to be an election judge for November 8. Colorado allows vote by mail (mr. h and I are both permanent mail-in voters), but there are still polling places/vote centers. Am thinking I’ll need something useful to do instead of frantically refreshing news sites all day. Or sign up to drive people to the polls. What say you all?
Miss Bianca
@hedgehog the occasional commenter: Any or of all them, Katie. : )
J R in WV
@hedgehog the occasional commenter:
I think it will be more helpful to Hillary to sign up to drive voters to the polls, and maybe even more productive to work on voter’s registration before the election, if there’s any way to swing that much time.
hedgehog the occasional commenter
@Miss Bianca: @J R in WV: Thanks! Also thinking of doing voter reg. I’m contributing coin but feel like I need to be doing more.
Brachiator
@mike in dc:
An election is a horse race, even if one horse is heavily favored.
Would you prefer news stories that read, “Hillary has got this. You might as well stay home on election day?”
And there are plenty of stories on Hillary’s polling advantage. These stories are not being hidden away.
Brachiator
@Jeffro:
Nope. Doesn’t sound like it’s worth reading. And I don’t have anything against Sean Penn. I’m mildly curious to know if Penn supports Hillary or ever supported Sanders
cain
The two men getting married, they look so similar. Same impish grin. heh.
Priest
I thought of this when I saw the ThingMaker, couldn’t remember what it was called but it didn’t take long to track it down: http://boingboing.net/2015/07/20/why-the-strange-change-machine.html