Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

The willow is too close to the house.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2016 / Open Thread: A Sidebar on How Normal People Respond to “Vicious Attacks”

Open Thread: A Sidebar on How Normal People Respond to “Vicious Attacks”

by | 174 Comments

This post is in: , , , ,

The Angry Ambulatory Yam cannot stop complaining about how how he was “viciously attacked” by the Khans. He’s single-handedly turned the matter from a one-day convention story among many into a week-long kerfuffle.

“But what if it were Hillary who got attacked by a Gold Star parent?” Back last Sunday (seems longer than that, doesn’t it?) I bookmarked some tweets, even though I assumed they’d be too minor a campaign-trail detail to repost here…


It may not be easy to find exactly the right words, but it’s not hard to understand — you don’t attack grief-stricken family members. It’s just rude. And in a culture like ours that’s turned its military into a weird fetish — not a bunch of ‘volunteers’ doing hard and dangerous but essential jobs, but a gauzy ideal of PATRIOTIC AMERICANS FVCK YEAH — for someone who wants normally socialized citizens to choose him as their leader, it’s borderline suicidal.

Apparently Pat Smith, grieving Benghazi mother, is still mad at Hillary Clinton. She’s decided, if the video clip I can’t find now is to be trusted, that Hillary deliberately baited Trump by letting the Khans speak at the DNC, so that “people” would be talking about them instead of Pat Smith’s murdered son. But even in that (Fox News?) clip, the framing was “grieving mom remains angry out of proportion to immediate trigger”, not “heartless/insane candidate attacks Gold Star mother.”

Reader Interactions

174Comments

  1. 1.

    Trentrunner

    97 days is a long time in politics, but I have not a seen a number or a story in the past two weeks that makes me feel anything but confident that Hillary will beat the blathering tangerine scrotum.

  2. 2.

    redshirt

    All Trump had to say was “I’m sorry for the Khans loss and I respect and honor their son’s service to the country.”

    Bam. End of story.

    And yet, witness our Republican candidate. WITNESS!

  5. 5.

    BR

    @Trentrunner:

    The MSM’s attention span isn’t much better than Trump’s. They will find some new BS story to attack Clinton before the month is out.

  6. 6.

    dr. bloor

    He’s single-handedly turned the matter from a one-day convention story among many into a week-long kerfuffle.

    Inflict a narcissistic injury on an emotional hemophiliac, and this is what you get.

  7. 7.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Trentrunner: We’re only ONE WEEK into the general campaign, and already he’s managed to attack a gold star family, fire marshals, babies, and reopen attacks on women and the disabled.

  8. 8.

    Brachiator

    Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, President Obama continues to govern with decency and a sense of grace and forgiveness.

    President Obama on Wednesday cut short the sentences of 214 federal inmates, including 67 life sentences, in what the White House called the largest batch of commutations on a single day in more than a century.

    Almost all the prisoners were serving time for non-violent drug crimes, reflecting Obama’s long-stated view that the US needs to remedy the consequences of decades of sentencing requirements that put tens of thousands of Americans behind bars for far too long.

  9. 9.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    I got my B.A. in American history from a school with a fairly good history department, and American politics make up a pretty big chunk of American history. So I know a bit about American presidential campaigns. And I have never heard of any major party presidential nominee, ever, in American history who is as just flat out awful as Donald Trump. And I’m not talking about people who were awful people; I’m talking about awful candidates. Donald Trump is the kind of guy who gets nominated to run for some state house district somewhere and can’t go a day without doing some numbingly dumb shit. Maybe it might happen in a race for the U.S. House, even. Every ten or twenty years you might hear about somebody running for governor or for the Senate who’s this bad. But the presidency?

    This is beyond belief. I thought last year when he began to take off in the summer that he might end up as the nominee, but I never thought he could be as inept as this. He’s like a force of nature. He’s like the guy in the funnies in some moldy old strip that I never saw, but I’ve heard about, the guy who walks around with his own personal rain cloud hanging over him. he’s a force of nature.

  10. 10.

    Culture of Truth

    Just to be clear, Trump wasn’t viciously attacked. Khan merely observed that at Arlington you will find all religion and ethnicities (true) and asked if he had been there and read the Constitution. Trump keeps saying Khan said he’d never the Constitution, which is another lie.

  11. 11.

    Darkrose

    I can’t imagine how awful it would be to lose a child like either the Khans or Pat Smith. But…I honestly don’t understand the Benghazi thing and the obsession with the video. Why is the video such a huge deal, especially when no one’s actually denied that the people who carried out the attack were terrorists?

  12. 12.

    MomSense

    My kid told me that der Trump has diverted 20 of his limited staff to work for Ryan’s primary challenger. Really?

  13. 13.

    Robin G.

    What terrifies me is how consistently Trump acts against his own self-interest. How in God’s name do you reason with someone like that?

  14. 14.

    Peale

    @Robin G.: he’s really no different than working class whites who vote for tax breaks for the wealthy and right to work candidates. Of course he’s confused about his self interest. He’s a white republican.

  16. 16.

    dmsilev

    As I mentioned a few threads down, the Khans’ speech was in part a trap for Trump. And it couldn’t have been more obviously so if ‘Acme Trump Trap’ was projected onto the big screen and if the Khans were introduced by Admiral Akbar.

    And yet he still walked into it, and a week later shows no real signs of figuring out how to get how. Real strategic genius at work.

  17. 17.

    dmsilev

    @MomSense: I believe it. Remember that he is motivated largely by spite and pride; scorn him, and he will obsess over getting back at you. Also, remember the unifying principle of Trump’s Razor, that the stupidest possible explanation for a Trump action is the most likely explanation.

  18. 18.

    glory b

    Up next, the African American war widow (with the 11 year old son) who spent a large chunk of her husband’s insurance money on courses at Trump U.

  20. 20.

    jl

    Need to keep reminding people that we can thank the Republican Party for this mess.

    @BR: Good chance that a lot of Trump’s appearances will be ever longer rehashes of every damned thing, going back into primary squabbles. Maybe every time he gets upset with something a bigshot says about him. I don’t think any Trump gaffe will ever rest, and it will be thanks to Trump himself.

  24. 24.

    redshirt

    @Darkrose: The whole Benghazi thing just blows me away. That they could make such an issue off a minor terrorist attack for years now, it’s just preposterous. And yet here we are.

  25. 25.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @BR: Teh Donald will keep it alive. The Khans have not yet apologized to him for their “vicious attacks”, and he cannot let it go. Ever.

  27. 27.

    jl

    @dmsilev:

    ” Has he attacked puppies yet? If not, I assume that’s coming soon. ”

    Puppies? I don’t know about puppies. Full of germs, very very dangerous germs. Believe me. The best doctors have told me. Never touch them myself, but some are OK with it. We have to look into puppies. I have some top people looking into puppies.

  31. 31.

    MattF

    @dmsilev: I (mostly) agree. In fact, Dems didn’t highlight the Khans– Trump had to go out of his way to attack them. But being Muslim and being brown, they hit hard at Trump’s buttons.

  32. 32.

    MomSense

    @dmsilev:

    They are apparently staffers that Trump laid off. I can’t believe they were laying off staff the summer before the November election. The campaign should be staffing up not downsizing. Sad!

  33. 33.

    lgerard

    @redshirt:

    The whole Benghazi thing just blows me away. That they could make such an issue off a minor terrorist attack for years now, it’s just preposterous. And yet here we are.

    Not only keep the issue alive, but recast the villain as well

  34. 34.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Now that I think about it, in the fantastically unlikely event that the Khans even hint at an apology, Drumpf will not be able to stop talking about it. He’ll bring it back up again and again, because that’s just the way Donnie rolls.

  35. 35.

    hovercraft

    @redshirt:
    Lawrence O played a clip tonight of someone in his crowd tonight yelling out ” thank you for your sacrifice” he replies “thank you, you know we are all making sacrifices”. The FOX poll shows that he is losing that confrontation 77% to 19%.
    Please proceed Mr Trump.

  37. 37.

    scav

    @jl: Now I’m not going to say it, but I hear people talking about puppies, foreign puppies, black foreign puppies being infiltrated into the very heart of the White House at all hours. Foreign germ-laden puppies, Some people say this. Voluntarily brought in. Bragged about even! Shown up in those, Politically Correct “Holiday” Cards that I’m like, totally going to do away with. Make Christmas Great Again. None of this free well-wishing best wishes bullshit. Merry Christmas or I’ll light your ass. No puppies, never. Bark all the time. I like Lapdogs. They know how to lick.

  39. 39.

    Anne Laurie

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):

    He’s like the guy in the funnies in some moldy old strip that I never saw, but I’ve heard about, the guy who walks around with his own personal rain cloud hanging over him.

    Joe Btfsplk (last name pronounced, per Al Capp, like a Bronx cheer). The Repubs probably feel like Don’s their Joe Btfsplk, but the schemaizel in Li’l Abner was a well-meaning, innocent jinx… which does not describe Hair Fuehrer!

  40. 40.

    hovercraft

    @Villago Delenda Est:
    He’s fixed his Gold Star family problem tonight, he met with 6 of them before his rally tonight and they were the greatest people, and one of them gave him a check that was much bigger than they could afford. So you see he loves Gold Star families. Now everyone move on, focus on the vicious attacks he’s enduring from that one muslim couple.

  41. 41.

    jl

    @scav: Gotta ban puppies until we figure out WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THEM. Sure, I don’t LIKE It. But we will lose this country if we don’t get a handle on this puppy problem. Germs. Slobber, Dirt on their paws. POOP!!! IN THE RUG!! ON THE FLOOR!! Some puppies, I assume, are OK. The great puppy wall will solve this puppy problem. And a great infrastructure project. Every neighborhood will have it. Bring back the jobs.

    Edit: but the puppies love me. no problem with the puppy vote. Many puppies tell me I’m doing the right thing. I can tell by the way they purr. Some of my best friends are puppies. The good ones. The good puppies, not the bad ones.

  42. 42.

    Adam L Silverman

    What’s the most interesting thing to my mind is does anyone remember Cindy Sheehan?
    http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/11/04/what-happened-to-cindy-sheehan/3439083/

    She was treated like a crank, a nut, someone so overwhelmed by her grief that it had driven her to a vendetta against President Bush (43). And this treatment wasn’t just at the hands of partisans or partisan pundits, but by the media as well that covered her ongoing, traveling protest like it was a circus.

  45. 45.

    JordanRules

    @jl: Your fluency in Trumpian is impressive. Did you learn it when you were younger or cram with Rosetta Stone?

  47. 47.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Darkrose: Originally it was to deny President Obama the ability to appoint an African American woman to be Secretary of State. When Ambassador Rice went on one of the Sunday news talk shows and provided the Interagency vetted and Intel community approved talking points, and did so with the caveat that they were still trying to sort out what had happened and this was preliminary, and the official story did change a few days later this became part of Romney campaign’s attack on the President and once reelected GOP preemptive attack when Ambassador Rice’s name was floated for Secretary of State.

    It was resurrected once Secretary Clinton announced she was running for President as a way to dirty her up, to use the phrase that House Majority Leader McCarthy did when asked about it and provided an actual, truthful answer.

  48. 48.

    hovercraft

    @BR:
    Yes the damage is done, but a normal candidate would turn the page and leave it alone, but he just can’t help himself, he has to keep ripping open old wounds, so far today he has revived the story of the disabled Times reporter, by trying to defend himself from the Hillary commercial with the kids. Why would you bring attention to your opponents attack ad. Just like thank a woman who thanks you for your sacrifice. A sane person would ignore a comment yelled out from the audience. He won’t let it fade away so he’ll keep it alive.

  49. 49.

    MattF

    Once again, George Fucking Will has posted a column that I agree with. Leaving the Republican party has turned out to be an altogether positive thing for him.

  50. 50.

    trnc

    @Robin G.: @Robin G.:

    What terrifies me is how consistently Trump acts against his own self-interest. How in God’s name do you reason with someone like that?

    Got that right. Here’s what I want to know. Let’s assume for a minute that Reince and his Lucky Charms crew manage to actually stage some kind of intervention and get Self-Destruct Donald to pipe down for a few minutes and try not to piss off at least one constituency. How long does that last? A few days? A couple of weeks? No way he actually remains reasonable for 4.5 years. At some point, Reince will be screaming into a coconut on a string, “We had to destroy the party to save it.”

  53. 53.

    trnc

    @jl:

    but the puppies love me. no problem with the puppy vote. Many puppies tell me I’m doing the right thing. I can tell by the way they purr. Some of my best friends are puppies. The good ones. The good puppies, not the bad ones.

    1 minute later: “Someone get that puppy out of here. What, you think I liked that yappy thing? :smirk:”

  54. 54.

    Tim C.

    @Darkrose: I think Benghazi is a great example of how the closed conserva-media bubble has gone from being a useful political tool and become a liability. When the attack happened on September 11th, 2012, The GOP thought they had it, the magic bullet to prove Obama and the democrats were weak on terror.. blah blah blah… But here’s what happened. Instead of sticking to the actual facts of the case (Underdefended Embassy, chaos in Lybia partially due to US involvement) They couldn’t help themselves and made it about Bullstuff that was outright false (All the stand-down nonsense) or stuff that doesn’t make any sense at all to anyone who hasn’t been a fox news watcher for years (The video confusion and the magical power of saying “radical Islam”) So what could have been a resonably good talking point for them became another BS conspiracy theory that only motivated people who were going to vote for them anyway.

  55. 55.

    Quinerly

    @trnc:
    Everything is self inflicted. As I keep saying, I’m sure HRC is sitting on tons of oppo research. Might not ever have to use it.

  56. 56.

    JordanRules

    @MattF: Turning away from the dark side can do that to ya. Do your thing GWill, but pardon us for these weird half head-nods and eye rolls. It’s strange to agree with your like especially when you created the situation you now have to rebel against.

  60. 60.

    hovercraft

    @Villago Delenda Est:
    David Kay Johnston told the story of how Trump and his 3 surviving siblings had the health insurance for his sick baby nephew cut off after the death of Fred Trump Sr. because Fred Jr.’s widow sued the estate because Fred Jr’s family was cut out of seniors will. When asked how he could cut off the health insurance of a sick baby, he said they sued us what else do expect me to do? Revenge is his motto.

  62. 62.

    MattF

    Direct from DJT (dated May 7, 2014):

    The global warming we should be worried about is the global warming caused by NUCLEAR WEAPONS in the hands of crazy or incompetent leaders!

    Which is his own area of true expertise, after all.

  63. 63.

    seaboogie

    Trump responded/interrupted before BillO got to whine about response to his comments about how well the slaves were treated while building the White House. Bill was all ready to bro’ down on “Inorite?”, and got highjacked by Trump.

  64. 64.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @MattF: @Emma: this just proves where he falls on the stupid/evil axis. He can see when he chooses to. I need far more before I see him as stepping out of the darkness and into the light.

  65. 65.

    Quinerly

    @Adam L Silverman:
    Certainly not a W fan…I loathe him..but there was a snippet of an old clip today on CNN or MSNBC…very respectful response on his part when Cindy S was camped out outside of his Crawford Ranch.

  67. 67.

    hellslittlestangel

    Trump was indeed viciously attacked. And yet some people say he doesn’t deserve that Purple Heart. Go figure.

  75. 75.

    smintheus

    @Gin & Tonic: Seriously. Some enterprising reporter should ask Dent to explain to voters how to cast a write in vote on touch-screen machines; a lot of Trump supporters may want to cast a vote for someone other than Dent, and he might manage to hand the Congressional election to the Democrat.

  76. 76.

    Fair Economist

    @smintheus:

    Another Republican Congressman in a safe seat, Charlie Dent (PA-15), announced today he’s not voting for Trump.

    Oh no, he’s in a very unsafe seat. R+2, and Sam Wang is estimating a +4 advantage for Democrats right now.

  79. 79.

    catclub

    @Tim C.: The initial impetus to keep going after bogus Benghazi stories was to defend Romney! Romney had gone off half-cocked and the followers could not abandon that tack in the fall of 2012, so instead they continued ( to this day) to pick at that scab.

  81. 81.

    Quinerly

    @redshirt:
    Honey, I’m not complaining. I believe in holding your powder. Have no doubt the Clinton campaign will know when to strike. That convention was full of landmines for Trump. Personally, I thought he would attack the Black woman who spent her military benefits from her husband’s death on Trump University. Fingers crossed. We are still a few days out from the convention.?

  85. 85.

    catclub

    @hellslittlestangel: Time to bring up that the war he won during the vietnam years was avoiding getting VD.

    I heard the quote that ‘I knew a good doctor who got me deferred for heel spurs.’
    My guess is it was his father who knew a doctor. He was how old then?

  87. 87.

    Miss Bianca

    @MattF: SQUEEAL! And they’re going to be published in a magazine called “The Strand”, for all love!

    The God of Noir is very good to us! : )

  88. 88.

    hitchhiker

    Remember how they used to say that George HW Bush was famous for hand-writing thank you notes to people who had done him a kindness? Donald J T is the inverse of that — a person who is famous for never, ever forgetting an instance of being slighted, no matter how small of insignificant. I keep reading these stories from people who get actual mail from him years after they trespassed against his greatness, in which he taunts them for not seeing how awesome he was and always has been and always will be, forever and ever amen.

    The little dig at Paul Ryan (I’m not quite there yet!) is a real time example. We all saw Ryan use that phrase when asked during the primary about supporting Donald. Now here’s Donald rubbing it in. This is the behavior of a fool.

  91. 91.

    Tim C.

    @catclub: Yeah, but once they locked in on the BS, they couldn’t ease off and move on when it was no longer effective, even if it ever had been…. wait… that particular pattern seems strangely familar…..

  94. 94.

    Quinerly

    @Adam L Silverman:
    As I said…the good old days. So…is Kissinger the guy who Joe Scar was talking about today? Trump did meet with him in May. Kissinger now a little shaky after realizing how unstable Trump truly is? As I like to say…I’m very responsible so I must speculate.?

  95. 95.

    hovercraft

    @Fair Economist:
    Most of them who have distanced themselves are in marginal seats or states. Mark Kirk, and Ron Johnson are two that come to mind. Then there are a few like McCain who would like to say fuck off but can’t because he’s popular in their state or district.

  96. 96.

    smintheus

    @Fair Economist: I think the Republican imbalance is greater than R+2. It’s a ridiculously gerrymandered seat (Harrisburg split the Lehigh Valley in two, and attached a remote Republican stronghold to the rump of Dent’s district). Anyway, Dent is facing token opposition once again because he’s nearly impregnable.

  97. 97.

    patroclus

    @Quinerly: Yeah, Dubya himself was always very respectful of Cindy Sheehan – he was smart enough to leave all the smearing to Rovian underlings. Trump seems to feel that he has to do all the smearing himself – as Josh Marshall says, it’s the need to assert dominance part of his personality. That’s why Trump denigrated the disabled journalist, that’s why he went after Megyn Kelly, that’s why he used Lil Marco, and Lyin Ted and Crooked Hillary – if he merely had a Rove who could ask “Who is Joe Wilson,” he’d be a far more successful politician. But doing it himself will almost always backfire on him directly. It’s just another reason why he is incompetent.

  99. 99.

    Miss Bianca

    @Adam L Silverman: Can you call thinking of Cindy Sheehan “funny ha-ha”? Asking for a friend…

    Altho’, why is she running for office with the Socialists? What’s wrong with the Democrats? And what offices has Margot Kidder run for? I’m told that in my monumental ignorance I’ve somehow overlooked the fact that she has done so…

  102. 102.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Quinerly: I have no idea. My guess is it’ll leak out, for lack of a better term, fairly quickly. The media will quickly run through asking everyone who might have done the briefing. Gen. (ret) Hayden was asked this morning and he said none of his peers. Which I’m taking to mean retired general officers/flag officers.

  104. 104.

    redshirt

    @Quinerly: Heh. At book club tonight we all talked Trump way too much (he’s in Portland Maine tomorrow for some reason – everyone’s going to protest) and a friend said “I hate Trump for making me retroactively appreciate W. W!”

  107. 107.

    Quinerly

    @Adam L Silverman:
    I like the Kissinger theory. Joe Scar knows Kissinger. He did say he heard the story a few months ago. Hayden doesn’t know. No one in his circles have briefed Trump. That was my takeaway. Can’t imagine it was Mika’s dad…Trump made a big deal out of meeting with Henry K. It would be a fun little game to try to figure out but, of course, we are talking about NUKES. And an insane person….

  111. 111.

    catclub

    @patroclus:

    But doing it himself will almost always backfire on him directly. It’s just another reason why he is incompetent.

    But those worked fine to win the GOP nom, so why would he change?

  113. 113.

    Emma

    @MattF: I have damaged the ears of all the local birds with my squealing. I have a special love of Hammett. The first paragraph of Red Harvest is still probably my favorite in all literature:

    I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte. He also called his shirt a shoit. I didn’t think anything of what he had done to the city’s name. Later I heard men who could manage their r’s give it the same pronunciation. I still didn’t see anything in it but the meaningless sort of humor that used to make richardsnary the thieves’ word for dictionary. A few years later I went to Personville and learned better.

  114. 114.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Quinerly:

    Can’t imagine it was Mika’s dad…

    I can’t imagine Zbig giving Trump the time of day for oh so many reasons.

  115. 115.

    catclub

    @Quinerly:

    Any mention of Cheney?

    It would be very interesting to find out Cheney’s views on Trump. Has anyone asked him lately?

  119. 119.

    hovercraft

    @Mnemosyne:
    When RMoney said Obama had not called it a terrorist attack, and then Candy Crowley backed him up and branded herself satans whore for life.
    EDT for spelling

  121. 121.

    Miss Bianca

    @Omnes Omnibus: Alack, alack the day…

    I think that’s the thing that’s been frosting my melon – that anyone could speak slightingly, or lightly, of the kind of loss these parents have withstood, whatever you thought of the wars their children died in. Even W. knew better than that.

  122. 122.

    Quinerly

    @redshirt:
    A very good thing. I would worry about the state of book clubs if there had been any nostalgia for The One With No Heart.

  126. 126.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Adam L Silverman: Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and his novel One Night in Winter. A twofer from one person. I’ve started The Romanovs and I am enjoying it. It is bringing back things from my History of Russia course during Fall Term of my freshman year. False Dmitris and such.

  130. 130.

    Quinerly

    @catclub:
    Read awhile back that Cheney was endorsing Trump. He gave an interview. Holy shit, it seems like months since the RNC convention hate fest. I’ve lost all sense of time. Cheney did endorse awhile ago…well before the convention.

  133. 133.

    cckids

    @hovercraft:

    Revenge is his motto.

    Yep. Chris Hayes said tonight that Trump’s stump speech STILL spends as much time bashing his primary opponents as he does against Hillary. W-T-everloving-F??

    The Yam cannot ever let a slight (real or imagined) go.

  134. 134.

    Petorado

    “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.”
    – Hillary Clinton on Donald Trump

    Ezra’s story in Vox points to what Hillary said in her quote about Trump and Twitter — that if Trump had let Twitter blow itself out over the Khan family’s comments the whole issue would have eventually withered away. But Trump’s thin skin won’t allow him to let perceived slights slide and his ego demands satisfaction. In light of Joe Scarborough’s recent comment about Trump and nukes, Hillary’s quote is even that much more prescient.

  135. 135.

    patroclus

    @catclub: Trump has yet to realize that winning the nomination battle is different from winning the Head of State, Head of Government and Commander-in-Chief battle. All the good Republican Presidential candidates (and their aides) knew that – Nixon, Reagan, the Bushes etc… But Trump has no Jim Baker, no Karl Rove, no Deaver, no Meese other than his family that know that. He is so narcissistic and inexperienced that he doesn’t even seem capable of pivoting. As Hillary said, we all wondered whether there was a different Donald Trump and sadly, this is it.

  136. 136.

    patroclus

    @redshirt: One of the greatest novels of all time! I recently re-read it and it was even better than when I read it in college.

  139. 139.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @redshirt: I’ve a number of great Russian novels to get to first. To be honest, War and Peace and Doctor Zhivago sort of put me off great Russian novels.

  140. 140.

    cokane

    @redshirt: this. the irony is Trump could have also used the Khans to try and bolster his phony anti-war posture. instead he makes the story about himself instead of an actual issue he could have gained ground on

  141. 141.

    redshirt

    @Omnes Omnibus: TMAM is so different than the other great Russian novels. It’s a fun, quick read. Pick it up at least and put it on the pile. It’s fantastic and I enjoyed it like 1000% more than Tolstoy.

  142. 142.

    Quinerly

    @patroclus:
    But he does have Roger Stone! And Dick Morris tells me several times every night that he knows all of Hillary’s deep dark secrets and only he knows how to beat her.

  143. 143.

    patroclus

    @Omnes Omnibus: War and peace, Dr. Zhivago, The Brothers Karamasov, Crime and Punishment and the non-fictional Gulag Archipelago are all good but they are long and tendentious and you really need to know a lot of Russian history to be able to appreciate them. The Master and Margarita is short, pithy, funny and downright ribald and it is one of the greatest novels of all time in any language about any subject. It simply cannot be over-praised!! Read it!

  145. 145.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @redshirt: I’ll get to the Russians after read Stendhal’s The Red and the Black which I’ve managed to not read for years even though I liked The Charterhouse of Parma.

  146. 146.

    Mnemosyne

    @Emma:

    As you probably already know, Akira Kurosawa adapted “Red Harvest” into “Yojimbo,” which Sergio Leone turned into “A Fistful of Dollars.”

  148. 148.

    Chip Daniels

    @Robin G.:

    What terrifies me is how consistently Trump acts against his own self-interest.

    Its only mystifying if you misunderstand what his “interest” is.

    His “interest” like a lot of entitled white people, is sticking it to certain groups of people- hippies, blahs, browns, furriners, etc.

    If that results in his suffering, poverty, or bankruptcy, well, thats the price to be paid to rectify the injustice.

  149. 149.

    Quinerly

    @redshirt:
    Well, that’s good news. Sounds like you and your book club are all on the same page.? Tonight, I learned that my dog groomer is “Trump Curious.” Hates Hillary because….. So it looks like Poco will be going to a new groomer. I believe in spending my money like I vote…Gotta always try…..

  150. 150.

    Shalimar

    @Adam L Silverman: Cindy Sheehan was a nut, which became obvious in 2008 when she chose, out of 535 members of Congress, to mount a primary challenge against Nancy Pelosi. Sheehan hated Bush so much that she ran against Pelosi for not impeaching him.

    Edit: I know a lot of people were in favor of impeaching Bush in 2007-2008, but aside from all of the other potential problems with impeaching someone who isn’t going to be convicted, you also have the very obvious problem that success would have led to President Cheney. This would be a very bad thing from an anti-war point of view; Bush had been ignoring Cheney’s war-mongering advice since mid-2005.

  151. 151.

    redshirt

    @Quinerly: Any business that expresses their political views is a bad business. It’s common sense you shouldn’t do it, so if you do it, you’re lacking in common sense. I mean this for liberals too, though somehow you rarely see it.
    There’s an automechanic in Paris who’s yard is covered in Bernie signs. Good for him, but that’s got to be bad for business.

  152. 152.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Shalimar: Why is she a nut? Her son? I feel bad for her. I disagree with where she went politically. I’ll let her be. She has lost enough already.

  153. 153.

    Miss Bianca

    @Omnes Omnibus: i’m in the same boat – loved “Charterhouse of Parma”, which I listened to as an audiobook last summer – have tried and failed over the years to read “The Red and The Black”, that may have to wait for audiobook as well!

  155. 155.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Miss Bianca: I do think I will like it. I just have other things that interfere. I’ve never been able to do audiobooks. Podcasts and talk radio don’t work for me either. Listening is for music, I guess.

  159. 159.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @redshirt: As a life-long, multi-generational fan, I am pretty sure I am aware of my world. I don’t really need your advice.

  160. 160.

    Miss Bianca

    @redshirt: I can’t, really – it’s not that kind of book. You have to be spellbound by the fact that it *starts* with Waterloo, and goes on to the minutiae of Italian court and courtly family politics and vicissitudes from there. I loved it, but definitely NOT for everyone, I’m thinking!

    @Omnes Omnibus: Long hours in the car during my regular routine has made me a fan of audiobooks.

  162. 162.

    Quinerly

    Thread be dead, I’m sure. But if anyone is interested…El Rushbo went full bore on Meg Whitman today for her endorsement and planned fundraiser for HRC. Spittle was a flying. Gotta love it.

  163. 163.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Miss Bianca: I just can’t do them. It’s a thing. Cars have music. I am not arguing with people who can do it. I am just saying that talk radio and podcasts just don’t work for me.

  166. 166.

    Quinerly

    @redshirt:
    Agree 100%. The Book of Faces has changed so much stuff for so many people. In defense of my soon to be ex groomer, I’ve known her a number of years..not really friends, but more than acquaintances. I think she floated the whole “I’ll never vote for Hillary and what’s so wrong with Trump” to get a reaction. She did. Not a lot of $ but 50 bucks once a month from one customer leaving you is what it is.

  167. 167.

    redshirt

    @Quinerly: I don’t do Face Book, I’m talking about actual signs or bumper stickers or comments in person. If an electrician shows up in a van covered in Republican stickers, I’m sending him away. How could I trust his work given that display?

  169. 169.

    NorthLeft12

    A lot late, but this here;

    And in a culture like ours that’s turned its military into a weird fetish

    is something as an outsider that I have wanted to ask Americans for years. Anne’s comment is one of the few times I have ever seen it recognized by an American in the US.

    I am hoping you guys get over this some day, although I doubt it will be in my lifetime.

  170. 170.

    Shalimar

    @Omnes Omnibus: I feel bad for her too, Does not mean she hasn’t been nuts for a long time. She was 2nd banana on a presidential ticket with Roseanne Barr, for god’s sake.

  171. 171.

    satby

    @NorthLeft12: It’s the way the right wingers assuage their guilt, not that there is much of it, for letting the military personnel take the brunt of the warmongering without the right wing providing the taxes to properly protect or care for them after their service.

  172. 172.

    NorthLeft12

    @satby: See, it is so prevalent pretty much all of you don’t see it. I watched enough of the DNC, other media over the years, and read enough comments on here and other “left wing” blogs that this fetish is pretty much across the board by political affiliation, creed, geographical area, income/wealth group, and pretty much race [although it seems strongest among Caucasians.

    Honestly, I am more worried about this part of the American culture than I am regarding ignorance and bigotry that are running rampant.

  173. 173.

    Shana

    @smintheus: Just looked it up on the MD site. If you touch “write in” on the screen a keyboard pops up allowing you to write in a name. I’d never done it myself back when VA had touch screen voting, but there you go.

    @hitchhiker: Yeah, the guy who founded Spy magazine, who came up with “short-fingered vulgarian” still gets pictures from magazines with Trump’s hands circled and notes in gold sharpie saying “see, not so short.”

  174. 174.

    nutella

    @Shalimar:

    Cindy Sheehan was a nut, which became obvious in 2008 when she chose, out of 535 members of Congress, to mount a primary challenge against Nancy Pelosi. Sheehan hated Bush so much that she ran against Pelosi for not impeaching him.

    She did have reasons to dislike both parties, though. Ignore the clickbait title of this article and read why she felt the Democrats let her down.

    What she didn’t have was an aniti-war group to work with so she did some nutsy independent stuff. Although there were plenty of people who opposed the invasion of Iraq, I don’t remember any well-organized anti-war pressure group.

Comments are closed.