Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Cole, when it comes to calico cats, restraint is overrated.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Let me file that under fuck it.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

No one could have predicted…

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

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

Pelosi: “He either is stupid, or he thinks the rest of us are.” Why not both?

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

‘Museums aren’t America’s attic for its racist shit.’

Ah, the different things are different argument.

American History and Black History can not be separated.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Straight-Up Pathology Open Thread: “Other People’s Money”

Straight-Up Pathology Open Thread: “Other People’s Money”

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Give the man this much credit: Anybody dumb enough to vote for him after this deserves exactly what they’d get from a Trump presidency.

The rest of us, not so much.

Let’s hope there’s someone around to carve “There’s nothing like doing things with other people’s money” on Trump’s (tacky, gilt-flashed) mausoleum, because he’ll never have a better epitaph.

Reader Interactions

58Comments

  4. 4.

    piratedan

    well, after his creatively illegal accounting from the Trump Foundation, its even better when other people pay your bills because you get to keep more of your money, so we’ll make other countries pay us to use their land to ask us to administrate their efforts in housing refugees because of profit.

    these guys are one great big political e-surance ad… that’s not how this works, that’s not how any of this works.

  7. 7.

    Ohio Mom

    Refugee camps. What an original idea.

    Lately I’ve been looking back on GW’s time in office with a certain nostalgia. How young and innocent we were to think that was as low as things could get.

  8. 8.

    scav

    @Major Major Major Major: Best I can tell, use OPM to forcibly buy up land somewhere (presumably whether the locals are willing or not, given how the money was acquired) and then plopping down all the refugees in permanent camps, out of sight, out of mind, rather like that mythical land of “Away” where garbage goes. Maybe the OPM is going for the Trump Steaks they’ll be force-fed as a humanitarian gesture instead of being wasted on the land the US can can just grab.

  9. 9.

    Adam L Silverman

    We already use other people’s money. This is why we have a coalition. Here’s the list of coalition members:
    http://www.inherentresolve.mil/About/Coalition/
    http://www.state.gov/s/seci/

    And here’s a link to the strategy:
    http://www.state.gov/s/seci/

    And the fact sheets:
    http://www.state.gov/s/seci/c64446.htm

    Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates are already members of the coalition. They don’t provide a lot of military support, but they do supply a lot of money.

    Here’s the CRS Report on who is contributing what:
    https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R44135.pdf

    See table 1, pps 8-11 for the details.

  10. 10.

    ? Martin

    Loaded with money? Uh, no. Obama has been fucking bankrupting them. Between US massively increasing extraction and putting Irans oil back on the market, every nation that relies on oil is pretty much fucked right now. Venezuela can’t feed the public and they’re importing oil from us. Saudi Arabia is probably only 5-10 years away from running out of money. Russia only has about $30B in cash left.

    This is going to turn into an even greater disaster if it continues for much longer, but it means that nobody over there feels as though they have money to spend.

  11. 11.

    Peale

    @Major Major Major Major: it’s that “take a good chunk of it” that’s probably confusing you. You’re probably a bit confused about why the Saudis would be so stupid as to give money to protect refugees to someone who said that they were planning to skim off large parts of it, and wonder why they would trust that someone who has compared those refugees to poisonous snakes would actually spend that money on their welfare.

  12. 12.

    Keith G

    Well Trump has been using other people’s money to pay legal bills, ie, Trump used people’s charitable donations to settle lawsuits against him. That is a violation of laws governing how charities are run and handle money. This will be interesting how this is handled.

  13. 13.

    singfoom

    @Major Major Major Major: He’s saying we take the money from the gulf states and we make hire the best people to make the hugest most luxurious safe zones you’ve ever laid eyes on. Let me tell you, when these refugees come into these safe zones, they’ll never want to leave. We’ll put TRUMP – USA on all the entrances (in English of course) and all the refugees will flock there. The very sight of his name over the luxurious refugee camps entrances will make ISIS run away terrified.

    His name is a killing word.

  14. 14.

    lollipopguild

    I like how he always assumes OtherPeople will always do what he wants and they will supply him the money! This fantasy world of his is an amazing place. if we talked like this we would be evaluated for dementia.

  16. 16.

    debbie

    Oh boy. The United States of America turned into one big Ponzi scheme. If this doesn’t scare off a large segment of his supporters, nothing will.

  19. 19.

    lollipopguild

    @debbie: Groucho Marx selling real estate in Florida in the 1920’s-“You have your choice of siding-wood, brick, stucco. Customer-Can we get stucco? Of course you can get stucco! Oh boy can you get stucco!”

  20. 20.

    Patricia Kayden

    Did The Orange Bigot explain how exactly he plans to force the loaded Gulf States to pay for the “safe zones”? Or how he’s going to get Mexico to pay for “the wall”?

    It’s amazing how one Party has completely lost its collective mind and is being led by the nose by an idiot.

  22. 22.

    chopper

    as I said in the other thread, this is how he got rich. getting other people to pay to make his problems go away.

  23. 23.

    rikyrah

    This is who they are:

    Could WI’s Approach to Voter ID Get Even More Disgusting?

    One of the arguments that is often made in favor of mandatory voter id is the paternalistic one that forcing people to come up with the costs for the underlying documents etc. to get a state-issued voter id card will actually help these folks in other areas, such as opening a bank account.

    Not the strongest argument in the world for a mandatory plan that still puts burdens on some voters, but I get it.

    But now Patrick Marley reports:

    Gov. Scott Walker’s administration wants to stamp “voting purposes only” on the free IDs the state makes available, making it harder for people to use them to open bank accounts or prove their identity when they pick up their children from day care.

    But wait: it gets worse. The whole point of requiring these strict voter id cards is to stop (virtually non-existent) impersonation voter fraud. Marley again:

    The Division of Motor Vehicles also is proposing having the state produce cheaper, lower-quality IDs that have fewer fraud protections.

    And for the icing on the cake:

    Julie Lund, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Health Services, said she did not know whether the state would prevent people from using the voter IDs to access food stamps or health care programs for low-income people.

    Disgusting.

  26. 26.

    jl

    @Adam L Silverman: Oh Adam, you make a funny! How much money is enough? None, no amount is ever enough, always aim to skim off a little more off the marks.

    I’ve seen enough videos of Trump’s foreign policy wisdom to see one absolutely reliable constant through the decades. Trump can try out as a center-conservative Democrat, or try again as a wingnut. Trump can be talking about NATO in Central Europe or the Baltic, or Asia or the Middle East. He can be talking about the most diligent and dutiful loyal allies who pay their way or problematic partners, or A-hole frenemies, or total messes. Can be Iraq Invasion, Libyan intervention or current Syrian policy, which he supported then, but bald face lies about opposing now.

    It is like a reflex: Why aren’t we squeezing more dough out the deal? Why aren’t we caging more of their money? What is the angle for more $$$$$$$$$$$$ for us out of this right now? They have some stuff, right, why can’t we take it? How much? Well, how much can we get, right now?

    This guy is just a much a natural grifter and extortionist as he is a bone-deep bigot. It is very funny, very sad, and, with presidency in play, also very scary. He just cannot think any other way. It’s like he’s brain damaged or something.

  28. 28.

    rikyrah

    Senate Democrats ✔ @SenateDems
    .@CoryBooker asked Republicans to confirm these 2 district court nominees who’ve been waiting the longest – 485 and 568 days. They said no.

  29. 29.

    Keith G

    In my comment above on Trump’s likely violations of tax code regulations on self-dealing, I neglected to leave a link to David Fahrenthold’s latest story on this.

  31. 31.

    Ajabu

    The Gulf States? I wasn’t aware that Alabama, Mississippi & Louisiana
    had that level of cash flow.
    Must be those casinos in Biloxi…

  33. 33.

    rikyrah

    Michael McAuliff ‏@mmcauliff 3h3 hours ago

    Reid says one of the things holding up the govt funding bill is McConnell’s desire to stop the SEC from requiring campaign $$ disclosure.

  35. 35.

    WaterGirl

    @rikyrah: That is disgusting.

    Seriously, what kind of people stay up at night trying to figure out more and more ways they can screw other people out of their rights?

  36. 36.

    WaterGirl

    @rikyrah: At this point, every fucking player in the NFL now needs to take a knee just like Colin Kaepernick. It might just save his life.

  38. 38.

    Mnemosyne

    @rikyrah:

    I saw a guy standing outside the gate of ABC wearing fatigues and waving a big American flag. I couldn’t quite figure out what his beef was because his sign was printed in small letters, but he seemed to think that ABC, the Seahawks, and the NFL were all … something.

  45. 45.

    Truegster

    Camps? No my friends, believe me when I tell you, these will be luxury towers. From what I’ve read there are a potential 7 million tenet…errr refugees that would love for Trump developed high rises all across the middle east. He’s going for the big long con people, for America.

  48. 48.

    Adam L Silverman

    @jl: He has no idea who he’d actually be dealing with. These are not the people he’s been knuckling over the final payment for painting a hotel or providing the carpeting for the ballroom.

  51. 51.

    J R in WV

    @rikyrah:

    Talking Points Memo
    Verified account
    ‏@TPM
    Hannity stars in Trump campaign video, apparently didn’t give Fox a heads up

    A real journalistic organization would have fired him 20 minutes after the first airing of a commercial for a current candidate. Most fake journalist orgs would have fired him within 45 minutes.

    For serious cause, no severance, no notice.

  54. 54.

    jonas

    @J R in WV:

    Most fake journalist orgs would have fired him within 45 minutes.

    Yeah, but Faux isn’t even a fake journalism outfit. They’re an entertainment network for geriatric Republicans (“Boo! Shillary sucks! Yay hot chick with the gams!”). Plus, every single one of Hannity’s shows over the past year have been non-stop Trump-fluffing, so how could they tell the difference?

  56. 56.

    daves09

    And meanwhile over on CNN some joker on the opinion page feels that this election is the worst ever, the candidates the worst ever. He details Trump’s more egregious misdeeds but then declares Clinton is equally bad because of. . . . wait for it, Whitefuckingwater and Benghazi.
    He also says that neither candidate is speaking about serious issues. Jesus H., how many policy speeches a week does Clinton have to give before these cretins listen.
    I would swear vilely, but I’ll just say-Tourette Syndrome, Tourette Syndrome.

  58. 58.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    But…Don’t the Wingnuts hate the Gubmint because it does things with (wait for it) other people’s money? So by the transitive other people’s money property they should have Trump. I guess it’s OK if you’re ripping people off but not if you’re taxing them based on levels agreed to via the democratic process.

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