Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

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

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

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

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Accountability, motherfuckers.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

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

You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2016 / Open Thread: Paul Ryan, Attempting to Spin Shit into Votes

Open Thread: Paul Ryan, Attempting to Spin Shit into Votes

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You and your puppetmasters painstakingly built this monster, Ryan — too late to claim you had no idea…

At least the Zombie-Eyed Granny Starver still has one defender among the Media Village Idiots. Chris “Mad Bitcher” Cillizza:

Reader Interactions

189Comments

  1. 1.

    Tim C.

    Jumpin Jesopaphat…. Paul Ryan doesn’t get to decide what the GOP looks like. They’ve been nursing the beast since LBJ signed the civil rights act. Maybe if they had been able to lose with honor this time around they might have been able to move the needle back away from “Batshit racist insane” but they didn’t, so they can’t.

  2. 2.

    Baud

    Chris Cillizza ✔ @TheFix
    Paul Ryan is already planning for what the Republican party will look like when Trump loses

    I’m going to guess white.

  4. 4.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    According to Maddow Trump just went on stage for a rally and tore apart his teleprompter. No idea what that is all about.

  5. 5.

    hovercraft

    Mr. Fix loves him some Paul Ryan, and will kiss his ass no matter what. Obama and Hillary must tie Donald Trumps orange hide around Ryan and the rest of his enablers.

  8. 8.

    Mary G

    Feeble, Paul Ryan and Phillip Elliot, whoever you are. This is just the same crap Republicans have been saying for years. Having a new name for the same plan isn’t even going to fool Trump fans.

  12. 12.

    Plantsmantx

    I guess Ryan saw the Trump campaign going full George Lincoln Rockwell and figured he may as well go full Ayn Rand. After all, what in the hell do they have to lose?

  13. 13.

    sigaba

    1. Donald Trump assaults Republican Party
    2. Republican Party pretends nothing happened for the sake of the family

  14. 14.

    Peale

    I’m at a loss here. What makes Ryan’s Randian policies better than Trump’s disaster populism?

  16. 16.

    Lizzy L

    I just had a great conversation with a 72 year old woman from PA calling from the Hillary Victory Fund. She called to ask for $$. I explained that I’m tapped out on donations right now, except for the bit I’m giving Doug Applegate, and we had a lovely talk about the election and how we wanted Hilz to win in a landslide, to totally destroy Trump’s orange ass, and how crazy making it was to watch TV. I turned her on to 538 and PEC. She thanked me for giving her a break.

    538 is showing Iowa, Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida as light blue — and also ARIZONA. (By a very little.) I know, three weeks, anything can happen, yadda-yadda, but all that blue really makes me smile.

  18. 18.

    Jeffro

    Ryan’s actually going to get the double-whammy: not only is he quite clearly on record as enabling Trump, endorsing Trump when he needed a boost, not un-endorsing him when Trump revealed layer after layer of depravity…but he is the #1 champion of policies that the New Trump GOP despises.

    He’s pro-billionaire and doesn’t give a shit about working people. He’d take away the safety net that quite a few “deplorables” are desperate to keep (for themselves, anyway). And to top it all off, he gives Trump (and by extension, Trump’s supporters) mild grief about bashing folks like the Khans, women, and African Americans.

    It won’t be hard for opponents to run ads showing his pro-Trump moves; it’s equally easy for them to connect the dots between the policies Ryan advocates and the Koch agenda that has had 99% of the economic gains going to the top for 30 years now.

    He can plan for Nov 9th all he wants: I don’t see a future for him in GOP-land.

  23. 23.

    Elie

    @redshirt:

    Trump is NOT going to stop. There is no mechanism in his brain to stop him..only to increase the scale and amplification when he is resisted. His minions follow that so we can expect them to act out as well, though its going to be more spotty. I have no idea how our country handles this… Its not just Trump but 30-40 million enraged followers who are given license by their very very unhinged leader. He does not have a community or group of people that he respects or pays any attention to for their power over him — except Putin?

  25. 25.

    Felonius Monk

    Paul Ryan and Chris Cillizza have a lot in common. They are both useless pieces of shit that just don’t have a clue.

  28. 28.

    Elie

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

    It works for them to have utter chaos. They can hide in that chaos. The more balanced and “normal” we can get the process to seem, the more it is likely to make them look bad. The more chaotic and crazy Trump looks and acts and his followers act, the more distracting it may be from looking at them in the near term anyway. I am starting to understand why so many political revolutions are followed by periods of retribution and execution of the insurgents.

  29. 29.

    SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch

    @Adam L Silverman:

    This man is crazeballs. I’m serious. How any significant portion of the population can even contemplate voting for him is utterly beyond me. He is nuckin futs.

    EDIT: No offense to those in the nuckin futs community. I mean no insult.

  31. 31.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Elie: The good news is that most of them are big talkers, whether anonymously in comment threads or using nyms on twitter or on facebook, but they’re not actually going to do anything. As I wrote last night, I expect an uptick in sporadic low intensity political violence between now and election day. I also expect low levels of sporadic violence on election day and after it. But large scale? No. We saw this with the Malheur occupation. Calls kept going out for people to show up and people talked tough on twitter and facebook and never showed.

  32. 32.

    sigaba

    @Jeffro: Ryan’s taking the bet that he’ll never face serious opposition in the general and no Republican candidate would dare come at him as too pro-Koch. Not a bad bet.

    His attitude toward Trump is quite incoherent but it’s perfect if he guesses after November 9 no Republican will dare ever utter his name again. Also not a bad bet.

  34. 34.

    Jeffro

    @Elie: @SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch:

    Not only does he have no self-control, he has no reason to stop, his supporters love him, he gets off on all of this, and there’s almost no way to get him to realize what he’s jeopardizing (even for himself). He’s 70, he has all the resources he needs, he has an inner circle that enables every crazy-ass thing he does/says, he’s been lying to and defrauding people his whole life, and he’s running for the highest office in the land…the one that, unfortunately, many folks have been gabbing about him running for since oh 1985?

    I’m sure – assuming he’s even being told the truth by his underlings – that he thinks the downturn in hotel bookings is a temporary setback, created by the “international globalist conspiracy”, or whatever. He’ll make it all right one people see just how strong, how very strong he is and elect him leader.

    Short of the Secret Service taking him in for a third death threat against Hillary, or him stroking out, I don’t see Trump slowing down for a minute. I try not to go overboard about these things, but you have to wonder what “solutions” he’ll be calling for late in the evening of Nov 8th.

  36. 36.

    Elie

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Thank you… I am thinking you are right…

    We had some friends from San Francisco come up and visit us and they were taken aback by the number of Trump signs a month ago. When I am not looking at those, I feel pretty ok. I have to drive past my cross the street neighbor’s sign every morning on my way to work. Times in the past, I would have had 50 Hillary signs up in my yard and on the porch. I am doing my work for her, but I am not doing the signs this time….

  37. 37.

    NotMax

    Attention people who will be flying in the near future: Please, if at all possible, try to choose a carrier other than Delta or its partners (and let them know why, if you can) until they properly publicly address this.

    Tamika Cross is an OBGYN who was on a Delta flight out of Detroit when a man on the plane became unresponsive.

    Being a medical doctor, she reacted to the commotion by rushing to the man’s aid to see if she could help him, you know, being an upstanding citizen and all that jazz.

    However, Cross probably forgot for a second that this is America and we’re still dealing with a bunch of racist idiots, because the flight crew ended up restraining her. Apparently, they couldn’t believe that a black woman could ever be a doctor. Source

  38. 38.

    hovercraft

    @SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch:
    So are they, someone on one of the shows tonight said that one of the women who they interviewed at a rally said when asked about the allegations that if 30 years ago a billionaire had touched her that way, she would have welcomed it. This morning I saw a man basically say the same thing, basically that if he could get away with it like Trump he would do it too.

  39. 39.

    Elie

    @Jeffro:

    I was thinking months ago that his physical status was so poor that he would be dropping like a fly at some point from either physical or mental seizure. But he is holding up – at least for now… He IS NOT a healthy man and sooner or later it will show, but probably not before the election. He is definitely going to face plant at some point…

  40. 40.

    Adam L Silverman

    @sigaba: Ryan’s opponent is an Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran. Here’s his page:
    http://www.solenforcongress.com/

    If he can pick up some monetary support and some advertising support from the top of the ballot and the DNC and DCCC, given that WI 1 is only R+3 and a lot of the Trump supporters are unhappy with Ryan, he might be able to pull off an upset.

  41. 41.

    Seanly

    Fuck you, Paul Ryan, There is no better freedom than autonomy over one’s own body. And his economic policies lead to a lack of freedom for everyone other than the 1%.

  44. 44.

    hovercraft

    @sigaba:
    Not incoherent at all, he has simply decided to join the condemdorse ranks. Trump is a new breed of candidate who elicits both condemnation and endorsements from the same people at the same time. Even if Ryan doesn’t have a tough opponent i his own district, when he runs for president which is what his ultimate goal, he will have to explain this.

  45. 45.

    Jeffro

    @sigaba:

    Ryan’s taking the bet that he’ll never face serious opposition in the general and no Republican candidate would dare come at him as too pro-Koch. Not a bad bet.

    His attitude toward Trump is quite incoherent but it’s perfect if he guesses after November 9 no Republican will dare ever utter his name again. Also not a bad bet.

    I dunno. I think both of your points are how R elected officials might see it, and how they see it currently. It’s reasonable to think Ryan will be catching flak from all sides of the GOP (officials, voters, donors) for how he “handled” Trump and/or enabled Trump’s rise. And I think it’s reasonable to think that about half of GOP voters will be perfectly fine uttering Trump’s name after Nov 8th, but will spit out Ryan’s.

    This doesn’t even include the media’s post-mortem of “what the hell just happened to the US?” after the election. Ryan’s not going to escape the blame for what he enabled there, and while the base will already be hating him, pols will see a convenient scapegoat. Exit Ryan.

    Finally…the whole direction of the country is shifting, about what has happened these past 30 years, where all the gains have gone, and who ought to be paying more of their fair share. Even a Ben Sasse is going to realize that while he can campaign on middle-class tax cuts, he probably can’t campaign on cutting taxes for the 1%, or on trimming entitlements. Obamacare’s going to be 10 years old in 2020…the evidence is overwhelming that it has saved the country billions while covering millions…and heck, its namesake, the black guy?, he won’t even be in office to be mad at or rally against anymore. We’ll be talking tweaks instead of “repeal and replace” or whatever joke excuses the GOP has been making for 6 years now.

  46. 46.

    jl

    Josh Marshall’s twitter feed said Ryan was a moral cipher. No, Ryan is not. He is an amoral and cynical liar and con man.

    And that last tweet, WTF is Ryan supposed to be planning? Ryan is not planning a damn thing, other than re-running this mess with better messaging and a better messenger. Same GOP, same garbage, just pitched a lot higher so only with those with ears to hear can get the real message, and swindle a bunch of others into trusting them.

    Edit: briefly, the GOP Ryan has planned will be the same damn thing, just smoother and shinier if you don’t look too close.

    Which means Ryan’s true profession is BS make-up artist.

  47. 47.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Elie: Yard signs don’t vote. Unless something very bizarre, that no one that actually understand American elections, presidential campaigns, polling, strategic communications, etc happens, which is possible, but not really probable, he’s got almost no way to win.

  51. 51.

    Elie

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I agree. The yard signs were a statement of defiance rather than any indicator of a winning candidate. We had very few yard signs with Obama both times and just kicked ass up and down WA state, so I agree, it doesn’t matter.

  53. 53.

    Elie

    @EBT:

    It could at any time… any time that 70 year old ticker could seize up.

    Boy, pumping on that big fat chest would not be fun…..

  55. 55.

    scav

    @jl:

    Josh Marshall’s twitter feed said Ryan was a moral cipher. No, Ryan is not. He is an amoral and cynical liar and con man.

    Take comfort from the full range of definitions for cipher.
    “zero”
    “one that has no weight, worth, or influence”

  56. 56.

    sigaba

    @Jeffro: A lot depends on what The Donald decides to do afterwards but I’m dubious about any serious postmortem. It’s a lot easier for everybody, Republican electeds, the press, and his voters to just call the whole thing a black swan anomaly. If he’s still around and can make himself kingmaker or a media heavy that will make his effect on the politics hard to ignore but his actual campaign will be written off as a sport, a freak, “too ahead of its time.”

    They might hate Ryan but no one else wants that job. They’ll forgive him. Adenauer forgave a LOT of Nazis.

  57. 57.

    SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch

    @NotMax:

    I never fly if I am traveling in North America. But Delta doesn’t have to know that. Delta is Atlanta-based, so I feel an urge to let them know that their horrible, insulting response to a qualified medical doctor was entirely unwarranted, offensive, and worthy of consumer boycott. What a gut-wrenching story.

  59. 59.

    Chris T.

    @Elie: He sure doesn’t look healthy, but he does come from a line of long-lived folks, so he probably has another natural decade-plus left. If anything does him in quickly it will be the use of, er, “pharmaceuticals”.

  62. 62.

    Prescott Cactus

    @NotMax:

    until they properly publicly address this.

    Flight crew skydiving without parachute day.

    I used to get ticked off if an airline lost my suitcase for a day. Geez.

  65. 65.

    Elie

    @Chris T.:

    Yeah… could be. I tell you if he is going anywhere near anything like coke or amphetamines, it is just a matter of time no matter what his genes say. From the tales I hear of his diet — and if any of this drug stuff is for real, he is a major “set-up”. Other sign is all that fat in his belly and around his eyes. Again, he may be very lucky. We will see.
    Of course he doesn’t have to die. He can have a major “event” which fries what is left of that brain of his without killing him outright. We can then watch as his children and many creditors pick over his financial bones while he drools on himself and shits the bed…

  66. 66.

    dogwood

    Speaking of yard signs. Is Peggy Noonan even writing a column anymore? She usually gets ridiculed every 6 weeks or so around the liberal sites, but I haven’t seen or heard her or anything about her in a long time.

  67. 67.

    sukabi

    @Adam L Silverman: if drumpf is actually destroying things on stage doesn’t this actually encourage an escalation in violence from his band of deplorables? He’s been steadily encouraging it in his explicit approval of and refusal to denounce it.

  68. 68.

    Prescott Cactus

    @Elie:

    It could at any time… any time that 70 year old ticker could seize up.

    Can you imagine the smell just after they hit him with the paddles ? Rancid bacon and octopus assholes.

  70. 70.

    Lizzy L

    @p.a.: How is that different for what he would like the Party to look like if Trump were to win? I get the reference, of course. But when Trump loses, Ryan is pretty screwed. None of the non-Trumps (Carson, Christie, Cruz, Fiorina, Jeb!, Rubio, etc) are worth shit, they’re hopeless. The party has no center, no one to call the shots, no one to rally them — except Trump. He’s going to have to either capitulate to Trump or oppose him. I don’t see a middle ground. Do you?

  71. 71.

    jl

    @scav: Ah! Thanks. Cipher can mean those things, yes. I missed some dry snark from Marshall. Ryan is a moral zero, then. It fits.

  73. 73.

    redshirt

    @schrodinger’s cat: Good question. Lepage is a big answer. Before that, there’s nothing local that radicalized us. I think they (Maine Republicans) followed national trends, which of course was growing ever more wingnuttery. Heck, in 1998 I worked with Senator Collins on a bill and found her and her staff excellent.

    Maybe it was 9/11. Mohammad Atta withdrew money 50 feet from a place I used to work at the day of the attacks. They flew out of Portland Jetport, to Boston, then to NYC. They chose Portland ME of all places as their point of initial attack.

    I handled it fine, but maybe other’s didn’t. Just guessing here. I honestly don’t understand how Maine has become so radicalized in such a short period of time.

  77. 77.

    Villago Delenda Est

    The vile Zombie-Eyed Granny Starver needs to go down with Pussy Grabber. They’re both unalterable scum.

  79. 79.

    redshirt

    @shomi:

    None of those yard sign people are going to stay in a Trump hotel or go to a Trump golf course.

    Wow. shomi speaks something actually wise! Noted for the record.

  80. 80.

    Steve in the ATL

    @NotMax:

    (Mind you he hasn’t shown anything to her. Just showed up and fit the “description of a doctor”)

    So…egomaniacal asshole?

  81. 81.

    sukabi

    @hovercraft: about time some perv grabbed his daughter that way, it would be a different story…

    Especially if it was:
    1) some guy on the subway
    2) some homeless guy
    3) an Hispanic guy
    4) blah guy
    5) creepy uncle

    Unless he’s prone to the same impulses toward his daughter as drumpf is…

  84. 84.

    Punchy

    @Lizzy L: Offshore numbers are cray-cray. Iowa to the Dems is -180, despite Trump leading there since almost forever. Zona (!) is -140 to the Dems, Ohio is -230. But HRC herself is -600, which I cannot believe isnt -3000 or some shit like that.

    Dems to take Senate is -210, which looks good, but it was -270 in August, so its dropping. +310 for Dems to get WH, Senate, and HoR.

  87. 87.

    Lyrebird

    @sukabi: I only watch TV when it’s been put on a site like this, but I’m so glad I watched Van Jones put it plainly, asking how the Republican nominee might respond if Mr. Jones himself (a blah guy, and a very handsome and successful one at that!) grabbed him (the wanna-be dictator) by his private parts, would he consider it assault?

    I haven’t retold this very smoothly & I can’t find the RawStory link right now, but Mr. Jones was a wonder to behold.

    Praying for the election to be *over* successfully and the sowbugs to crawl back under their rocks.

  88. 88.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Prescott Cactus:

    Stayed in a Holiday Inn last night?

    Ha! You’d think I would be in a better mood; last night was the only one this week I didn’t spend in New Jersey.

  90. 90.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Adam L Silverman: Yup, yard signs don’t vote. In our June primary election we had a local measure on the ballot, about 80% of the yard signs were “Yes”. Measure lost 75% to 25%.

  91. 91.

    NotMax

    Trying to wrap the head around the one lady who says Trump made unwanted assaults upon her person in his hotel room, pushed him off and then stayed to have a private dinner with him.

  92. 92.

    Jeffro

    @p.a.:

    Boot. Face. Forever.

    Oh, to dream! (and ironically enough, one of the Fro Jr.s is reading 1984 and realizing – as I did just a couple years ago, since I couldn’t be bothered to read the whole thing back in high school – just how often that excellent book gets referred to)

  93. 93.

    redshirt

    @Steve in the ATL: Are you in hotels all the time?

    I’ve spent just about every Monday night this year in a hotel room. It’s been fantastic. But I just learned that the glasses in hotel rooms are totally disgusting and you should never drink out of them.

  94. 94.

    Adam L Silverman

    @sigaba: Its not an anomaly, nor will his supporters go away. While I’m not clear on what he’ll do – slink off, try to leverage his support for financial gain, claim he’s actually president and try to show up to be sworn in on inauguration day – he’s now allowed the base of the GOP to both show itself fully and to be seen in all its splendor. And they have made it clear that they are not going back to the GOP the way it was. What this means for the Republican Party I’m not sure. It may be that like a bad marriage the two sides remain in the same house for an extended period while just staring daggers at each other before the final, ugly split. Or the break up may come right away. Regardless, the institutional Republican Party has now been shown to be an empty shell. There is no longer a single GOP center of gravity – you’ve got the wealthy financiers like the Kochs and Popes and Devosses and Mercers and Adelsons who can each, essentially, fund their own version of the GOP at all levels from Federal to local. With only a few exceptions, the social/religious conservative leadership has shown itself to be both unable to actually shepherd their flock and completely lacking in principle. The financial/business conservative leadership we now know has no pull within the party and the wealthiest, as I indicated above, are basically doing their own variant party operations as they see fit.

    Should Ryan be reelected and should the GOP maintain what would likely be a reduced and slimmer majority in the House it may be impossible for him to remain Speaker. If his majority is reduced, but the Freedom Caucus numbers remain the same or increase, then he won’t be able to do anything without relying on the Democratic Caucus. I highly doubt Ryan would be willing to do that. And should his overall number of GOP members go down, with the Freedom Caucus numbers staying the same or increasing, then he may not have the votes for another term as Speaker. He’ll be fine – he’ll wind up at Heritage or Cato and just take his Objectivist Man Does Hamlet One Man Stage Show to a new venue.

  95. 95.

    Lyrebird

    @sukabi: Agreed. Howler monkeys might be even more apt, even though they don’t live under rocks, but this campaign season has already put out more than enough lousy pseudoscientific references to other primates (like “alpha” vs “beta” crap)…

  96. 96.

    NotMax

    @Jeffro

    One of a handful of such books which Republcans do not recognize as allegory, rather they believe it is an instruction manual.

  97. 97.

    Jeffro

    @sigaba:

    It’s a lot easier for everybody, Republican electeds, the press, and his voters to just call the whole thing a black swan anomaly.

    They can try, but the rupture between what those folks want and what the Trumpkin half of the GOP wants is real, and it won’t go away.

    If he’s still around and can make himself kingmaker or a media heavy that will make his effect on the politics hard to ignore but his actual campaign will be written off as a sport, a freak, “too ahead of its time.”

    Ok. Assuming he becomes the “new Breitbart”, banging most often on the current GOP, that means banging on Ryan most especially and most often. Ryan’s half of the GOP doesn’t have that fervor.

    They might hate Ryan but no one else wants that job. They’ll forgive him. Adenauer forgave a LOT of Nazis.

    I think quite a few folks in the “Freedom Caucus” want Ryan’s job, but we’ll see.

  100. 100.

    Jeffro

    @redshirt:

    I can believe it. The moderate Republican used to be real.

    It went extinct sometime around 2008.

    TECHNICALLY TRUE, as far as extinction goes…however, it was on the endangered list by 1992, 1994 at the latest.

  101. 101.

    redshirt

    @Jeffro: It’s a fantastic book. I’ve never felt a sense of claustrophobia in my life until I re-read 1984 ten years ago. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I’ve never had such a reaction to a book.

  102. 102.

    Lyrebird

    @Adam L Silverman:

    He’ll be fine – he’ll wind up at Heritage or Cato and just take his Objectivist Man Does Hamlet One Man Stage Show to a new venue.

    Yeah. Someone in an earlier thread was talking about updating the BJ Lexicon.

    Can totally see comfy Ryan on his Wingnut Welfare, congratulating himself just like that doggie in a bucket under “Going Galt” in the lexicon.

  103. 103.

    p.a.

    @Lizzy L: Assuming Dems have presidency and Senate (barely) and R’s the House, they don’t need a true ‘leader’. Whoever is speaker will, well, speak, and there will still be a Repub party- it’s a soiled brand, but a 170 year old one (ish). It may be like a feudal state or warlordism; various power centers with shifting alliances at federal and regional levels until it’s time to puke up another nominee in ’19-’20. More like a political al Qaeda than Soviet Union.

  106. 106.

    Jeffro

    @NotMax: True…or somehow manage to see Democrats as leading the country towards Big Brother, which to me is kind of unbelievable.

  107. 107.

    bupalos

    So Ryan thinks the problem with the Democratic party is that they aren’t “feeling you?” Did I get that right? I was kind of hoping this whole groping thing only went as far as Der Trumpenfuhrer.

  108. 108.

    Lizzy L

    @redshirt: Agreed. I read it in high school, and of course it blew me away. I read it again about seven years ago, and it blew me away again, but more so.

  109. 109.

    Jeffro

    @efgoldman: Kasich is fine…with about half of the current GOP. Sasse has stayed out of most of all this and avoided Trump blowback. Ernst too. Cotton – a little tougher needle to thread, but he’s still relatively ‘clean’ as far as most of the GOP is concerned. Haley is probably out. Sandoval would be a natural fit with the Kasich wing.

    It will be nice to see Chris Christie watching all of this go by…ideally, from a cell…

  110. 110.

    redshirt

    @Jeffro:

    TECHNICALLY TRUE, as far as extinction goes…however, it was on the endangered list by 1992, 1994 at the latest.

    Yes, this is correct. And I’d add the Moderate Republican first came under threat during the Reagan Administration, which drained their native breeding grounds.

  114. 114.

    catclub

    @Elie: Me too. I am also surprised he has been very actively campaigning and shows no sign of slowing down.
    The ‘must be home every night to sleep in his own bed’ stuff has not really affected campaigning.

  115. 115.

    Adam L Silverman

    @shomi: it already is. Apparently there are now reports that his own organization is now moving to develop properties without branding them/explicitly tying them to the Trump Brand.

  116. 116.

    catclub

    @Adam L Silverman: Technically your loins are near your kidneys on your back, correct? That is certainly where loin cuts come from
    in beef and pork.

    She looks more like she is girding her thighs.

  117. 117.

    redshirt

    @Lizzy L: It’s terrifying. One particularly cruel part, I thought, was that the Party knew Winston had his secret journal in the corner. They let him have it until it made him bold enough to seek out another, and thereby exposing a whole network of spies/double agents. Winston’s brief flights of freedom via writing were really condemnations for a bunch of other people. As well as for himself of course.

  119. 119.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @efgoldman: Kasich is still a wacko konservative and still as exciting as paint drying.

    I think Kasich has two problems: 1) Republicans dislike him as much as the media loves him (to borrow a phrase from IIRC Charlie Rangel, you don’t have a conversation with him, you listen to a lecture); 2) unlike his fellow anti-New Dealer Paul Ryan, he’s so much a true believer he won’t hide the ball.

    My money’s on Sassè, but if I ever bet anything but internet quatloos, I’d be broke. I thought McCain and Romney were toast, by comparison my prediction last February of “who knows what the fuck is gonna happen” makes me look like Nostradamus.

  120. 120.

    Redshift

    @Adam L Silverman:

    It froze on him. So he declared that he liked it better without the teleprompter and then decided to pull them apart.

    And declared he wasn’t going to pay the company that supplied the teleprompter. I wish I was making this up.

  121. 121.

    Adam L Silverman

    @sukabi: According to mimetic theories of violence? Yes. Do we have any real empirical measures for mimetic violence? Not that I’m aware of. Largely because the attempt to translate the concepts from literary analysis into the study of religious terrorism were horrible. The researcher who did so didn’t really understand what he was reading or what it meant and as a result his journal articles and books on the topic are horrible and terrible because he misunderstands the theoretical concepts he’s trying to work with. Writing wise though, they’re easy to read, especially if you’ve never met the foundational literature its based on.

    Rene Girard’s The Scapegoat is the seminal work. Unfortunately almost everyone, instead, reads Jurgensmeyer’s attempt to explain and apply Girard. Jurgensmeyer got his stuff published, but that’s about the nicest thing I can say about his work on mimetic violence. Did seem to be a nice guy the one time I met him. So if you want to read on this go to the source material read Girard:
    https://www.amazon.com/Scapegoat-Ren%C3%A9-Girard/dp/0801839173/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1476502614&sr=8-4&keywords=rene+girard

  122. 122.

    catclub

    @Jeffro:

    Not only does he have no self-control, he has no reason to stop, his supporters love him, he gets off on all of this, and there’s almost no way to get him to realize what he’s jeopardizing (even for himself).

    This seems like a prescription for billionaires to run every time. You get tremendous attention and ego stroking. At least up through late september.

  125. 125.

    Adam L Silverman

    @NotMax: Traumatized people do strange things. Especially when confronted by someone who seemingly has the power to make or break them.

  126. 126.

    Jeffro

    @NotMax:

    Color me astonished if DT gets 200 or more electoral votes.

    Let’s see, what’s 27% of 535? 142 (roughly).

    That’s one way to do it. I go to 270 to Win and plunk in whatever looks like a good estimate on a given day. Looks like Hillz is well into 300+ EV territory at this point and could easily get to 350, leaving He Who Shall Not Be Named around 180 or so. YUGE loss.

  127. 127.

    Adam L Silverman

    @sigaba: One other item – and this is not directed at you: there is really no such thing as a black swan. In almost every crisis or calamity, when you dig into what happens, there was someone who anticipated it. Maybe not its entire breadth or depth or its exact timing or, if a physical phenomenon its geographic location, but that something was coming. Unfortunately and all too often these people were ignored, written off as cranks or overly pessimistic or misinterpreting the data. And, unfortunately, history usually vindicates them.

  128. 128.

    hovercraft

    So Anne Coulter is all in with the conspiracy, the media is panicking about the election that’s why they are trotting out these fake allegations, to ensure that Hillary wins. She says that if a tape had come out with Obama saying the same things, she would not believe he actually meant it if it came three weeks before the election. She doesn’t care that Trump is a lout because she already knew it, she’s supporting the wall, trade policy and the muslim ban. Maher needs to stop bringing on his ex girlfriends on, he sucks at interviewing them.

  129. 129.

    WarMunchkin

    All Ryan-Trump tarring aside (because I for one think that we’re all going to forgive the Republicans and hand them Tabula Rasa on November 9, 2016 12:01 am), have any of you looked at his speech? It’s genuinely terrible.

    What vision do Hillary Clinton and her party offer the people? They want … an America that doesn’t stand out. They want an America that is ordinary. There’s kind of a gloom and grayness to things.

    This charge is so easily rebutted that I’m surprised he’s even attempting it. We’re the party of the moonshot, the bridges built to tomorrow, racial equality, gender equality, labor and human potential. Our achievements as a party, without any rhetorical excess, undermine this charge that we somehow want something “ordinary”.

  130. 130.

    Jeffro

    @catclub:

    This seems like a prescription for billionaires to run every time. You get tremendous attention and ego stroking. At least up through late september.

    In this post-Citizens United world, yes…it would make sense for any & every billionaire with a little free time to at least dip a toe in the water. This is why it’s important for Dems to continue to hammer home their principles and non-negotiables…I think I can still mostly say with a straight face that as politically malleable as Trump is, he would have been unacceptable in the D party, just because Ds largely expect their pols to not just talk the talk but walk the walk (and tend to vote for the candidate who has done the best job of that).

    This all makes it even more important to do whatever’s necessary to overturn CU of course.

  131. 131.

    Adam L Silverman

    @catclub: Check out the first literary definition.

    loin

    noun
    plural noun: loins
    the part of the body on both sides of the spine between the lowest (false) ribs and the hipbones.
    literary
    the region of the sexual organs, especially when regarded as the source of erotic or procreative power.
    “he felt a stirring in his loins at the thought”
    a large cut of meat that includes the vertebrae of the loins.
    “loin of pork with potatoes”

  132. 132.

    Jeffro

    @hovercraft: That’s so nice of her, supporting Obama hypothetically, retroactively, and completely in fantasy-land like that. Hey Ann, whatever it takes for you to sleep at night, right?

  134. 134.

    Jeffro

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Traumatized people do strange things. Especially when confronted by someone who seemingly has the power to make or break them.

    it’s not a stretch to look at that example and compare it to how Ryan has reacted to Trump…which was probably your point…

  135. 135.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @hovercraft: Being from the southwest US, the whole idea of “the wall” sends me into fits of laughter. We’re not talking about 2000 miles of flat, US Government owned land.

  138. 138.

    Lizzy L

    Thanks to Adam, I am now envisioning scenarios where Trump refuses to accept defeat, proclaims that the entire election is rigged, and does — what? Names himself the true President? Invites his followers to march on Washington to halt the inauguration, with or w/o their guns? Any situation I can imagine can only happen with the cooperation of Fox, CNN, and the networks. I don’t really fear an armed insurrection; as has been pointedly noted, alt-right rhetoric aside, these folks wouldn’t know how to attack an outhouse if you gave them a battle tank. At some point, Trump will do something dangerous and be stopped, or he will degenerate into being only a media spectacle, kind of like the Super Bowl, and people will get bored and stop watching.

  139. 139.

    dogwood

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:
    One of the main problems with the media is their laziness. They glommed onto Ryan years ago as the young-gun, fresh- faced intellectual of the party. They’ll never drop that narrative. Sasse and Flake are the ones that never never put a foot on the Trump train. But they would have a problem with the base. I’m old enough to remember the old 6.0 figure skating system where you got a mark for technical merit and one for artistic impression. Flake and Sasse should get 6.0s for technical merit as far as right-wing ideology is concerned. But after years of listening to the conservative entertainment hate-mongers, they just can’t get a decent second mark. The majority of republican voters simply don’t give a shit about policy.

  142. 142.

    GregB

    Maybe Ryan is right. Living off of the government dole all of his life seems to have clearly limited him.

  143. 143.

    hovercraft

    @Jeffro:
    Maher briefly tried to challenge her, but she whined that she was there to talk about policy. Bullshit.
    @efgoldman:
    The GOP’s entire platform and their actions are built on lies. They name every bill the opposite of what it will actually do, to con people into supporting them.
    @BillinGlendaleCA:
    That’s why the further you get away from the border the more popular the idea of wall becomes. Same goes for immigration, except for Arizona for some reason, maybe it has something to do with it being a state old northerners retire to, so they bring their ignorance of the issue down with them.

  148. 148.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @hovercraft:

    That’s why the further you get away from the border the more popular the idea of wall becomes.

    Hmmm…this is interesting.

    When I was stationed in Germany in the early 80’s, American troops had their best relationships with the locals the closer they were to the IDG…the boundary between East and West Germany.

  151. 151.

    hovercraft

    Sully can’t help being an asshole, He acknowledged that it is essential to elect Hillary, even though he hates her and her husband. Now he’s saying that the reason Hillary is not winning 50 states is because the democratic party is because they won’t acknowledge the need for a real controllable border, and the distinction between legal and illegal immigration. The DNC was a lovefest for illegal immigration and that’s why Trump is winning.

  152. 152.

    Lizzy L

    @efgoldman: Yes, but technically he’s a candidate for President. What happens when he stops being that? Does he go back to selling his brand? Gonna be tough, as has been previously discussed. But what he’s been doing is going to be tough, too, especially as the crowds get smaller and smaller because he’ll have nothing to offer except spectacle. The guy who runs CNN — Zucker? — is already saying he’s sorry he gave Trump so much airtime in the beginning. He’s not going to get hired as an analyst, it’s not something he could do or would want to do. (Paul Ryan could do that, though. Hmm…)

    Maybe it won’t matter. Maybe he’ll just — go away.

  154. 154.

    hovercraft

    @BillinGlendaleCA:
    I have no idea where they are, I was talking about it as a state, states in the northeast and midwest tend to be the most hostile, whereas the border states understand that immigration is necessary, and that the wall is impractical, except Arizona.

  155. 155.

    dogwood

    On Nov. 9th the media will be talking about how Hillary only won because Trump was incompetent, emails, the Clinton Foundation, Benghazi, Wikileaks, and impeachment. I don’t know what Trump will do, but expect they’ll bring him on periodically for shits and giggles to advance some conspiracy theory and boost ratings.

    ETA: They’ll be talking about Bill’s dick too. Can’t forget the oldies but goodies.

  156. 156.

    Adam L Silverman

    @NotMax: And for which she is woefully unqualified. No senior executive/managerial experience. No law enforcement, intelligence, disaster management, and/or emergency response experience either.

    She is in favor of the new repeal the 19th Amendment movement stuff. She got in on the ground floor of that one.

  157. 157.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Lizzy L:

    The guy who runs CNN — Zucker? — is already saying he’s sorry he gave Trump so much airtime in the beginning.

    Could also be due to the women Trump was meeting and was gulping the tic-tacs for in the Billy Bush tape was the then Mrs. Zucker.

  164. 164.

    NotMax

    @redshirt

    Orly Taitz as White House counsel!

    And (with deepest apologies to Mister Roberts) David Duke as head of laundry and morale. “He has a lot of experience with sheets, after all.”

  167. 167.

    Gex

    @redshirt: I’m way late, but I wonder what you think of this. Maine was interesting in that they were the first legislature to pass marriage equality. Which brought in a lot of conservative Christian money and politicking resulting in that being overturned. So there was at least one period of concerted effort to wash the state in these kind of ugly politics. That’s one thing I can think of that happened there in the last decade.

  172. 172.

    RadioOne

    I turned 40 today, and just wanted to say I’m way more optimistic about America now than I ever was in my 20s or 30s.

  176. 176.

    piratedan

    @hovercraft: @redshirt: speaking as the resident Juicer in Tucson, I can provide some background (generally) …and my apologies if this ends up as a tl;dr

    Arizona is conflicted… a lot of folks have a lot of different takes on the border and the issues that come with it. Geography matters, also, money has been dumped here to beef up the border patrol and while immigration is a key, so is crime. In some cases they go hand in hand.

    In the Bush days (and even in the Clinton days) the immigration issue was all about cheap labor and Arizona was an “easier” conduit than Texas and California. East access via the interstate system to move bodies, up from Interstate 19 out of Nogales, or across small town border crossings like Douglas, or Naco or even Yuma. Then into Phoenix and Tucson and from there, damn near anywhere. Cheap labor, for construction and agriculture and domestics.

    They came because of the drug wars in Mexico, the Mexican persecution of mestizos, plus what was going on in Honduras, Guatamala and Nicaragua and Panama (to a lesser degree El Salvador). Figured that working their way up through the bottom of US society was less dangerous than death squads and civil war. So people came and plenty of folks took advantage of them…

    Also mixed in there was the US drug habit and some savvy less than ethical people decided that they could get a twofer… trafficking in human lives and moving product. So the Coyotes became less concerned with moving people to destinations than they were in moving “product”. This meant that more people were abandoned and some of the coyotes did more petty (and some not so petty) crimes while moving their product and people. This resulted in cut fences, killed livestock, trash dumpage and eventually one murder in Cochise county (which caused the state to collectively lose their shit) which is where you start drawing the line from that to Jan Brewer’s headless bodies in the desert statement. It caused a conflict between the humanitarians who were leaving remote stations of water out in the desert to try and keep people from dying and those folks that would have just as soon have them die. As such SE Az doesn’t see the traffic it used to so most folks that still cross, come over on the tribal reservations because there are less folks and if the Tohono O’Odham are complaining, its unheard because they can’t shout down or grab the attention of folks that make the rules or are driving the narratives.

    Because of the drug use in the US, the drug traffickers got more bold and found more ways to move their products (hence the underground tunnels in Douglas and Nogales, circumventing customs and immigration) and Arizona demanded more money and personnel. What is rarely mentioned is that a LOT of the heavy lifting for that was done by Gabby Giffords and in return, she also requested that we start policing the border OUTBOUNDS, and they started to stop the distribution back across to Mexico of money and guns.

    Economically, illegal Immigration became less viable because when our economy went into the tank, so did the need to cheap labor, we suddenly were flush. So immigration numbers started to drop, but our dependence on cheap weed and drugs hasn’t abated, so there’s still an ongoing battle in stamping that out.

    So most Dems find the idea of a wall idiotic, because if they can dig across the border from residence to residence, a wall isn’t going to do a helluva lot of good, plus, who monitors it and with the Arizona heat, that equipment is going to suffer from some attrition. Who is going to build it? There’s a couple of hundred miles between Nogales and Yuma, and damn few roads. Plus, some of that is Indian reservation land and some of it is the Yuma Proving grounds, so now you have to have contractors with clearance. It’s a fucking pipe dream and completely unreasonable project that serves nothing more than a sap for a few grouchy panicky folks in Sun City who’ve been told by Rush Limbaugh that their deaths are imminent. There are some very grouchy ranchers in SE AZ that want to make sure that no one fucks with them, tyvm and they want the government to handle it, but don’t raise their taxes federally, state or local because reasons….

    As always, we’re penalizing the poor folks that still want to come and doing fuckall about the people who abuse them. No one wants to pony up the cash to set up or establish checkpoints on each of arteries that they would use upon getting across because, again, they must not set foot upon our sovereign soil or some such…

    As always, if we stop supporting petty tyrants and look at trading with Mexico and latin america fairly, economics improve there and not as much incentive to leave, but no one seems to think about that. Prop 205 legalizes pot in AZ, so we’ll see where that goes but there is a buttload of anti ads being run indicating that Colorado hates their law because their schools got shafted. I see it as a way to dump folks out of the prison system, so will probably vote yes anyway.

    my apologies for being long winded.

  178. 178.

    Gex

    @redshirt:
    From Wiki

    On May 6, 2009, a bill to allow same-sex marriage in Maine[4] was signed into law, by Governor John Baldacci following legislative approval. Opponents of the bill successfully petitioned for a referendum before the law went into effect;[5][6] voters rejected the law on November 3, 2009 in a “people’s veto.”

    Having demonized the judiciary for pushing this on people, they had to go hard after the first legislative victory for marriage equality. I bet lots of resources got focused on Maine right quick.

  179. 179.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Ryan made the case that Clinton’s version of liberalism has failed the country before and will fail it again, largely because it assumes the ideal condition is a nanny government that is always trusted to know better and solve all problems.

    Considering Ryan has been on the public dime his adult life you have to love the baldfaced hypocracy of the man.

  182. 182.

    Frankensteinbeck

    When Trunp loses, his followers will abandon him. It’s not just that he’ll have loser stink. They don’t give a rats ass about him. He is their vehicle to get white supremacy into the White House. When he can no longer offer that, he’ll become a nonentity to them.

    As for Ryan, if he keeps his House seat, and Republicans keep the House (overwhelmingly likely, but not certain), he will stay Speaker. Why? Because they can’t replace him. There is no one who can get the necessary majority of votes. It doesn’t matter if every other Rep hates him. He’s got the job by default.

  183. 183.

    JGabriel

    Chris Cillizza:
    Paul Ryan is already planning for what the Republican party will look like when Trump loses

    I think the word Ryan is planning for is shambles.

  184. 184.

    Spider-Dan

    @shomi: While Trump voters won’t go to a Trump golf course or stay in a Trump hotel, they will buy Trump Gold, Trump Survival Kits, and Trump Coral Calcium from the infomercials they see on Trump TV.

    He will simply replace one brand with another. If Ailes and Bannon haven’t already gotten started on it, they will soon.

  185. 185.

    SiubhanDuinne, liberal mob enforcer bitch

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    Arianne Zucker, the soap actress, has never been married to Jeff Zucker and is no relation — at least, going by both of their Wikipedia entries.

  186. 186.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    Ryan’s Republican party will be a bunch of Ayn Rand Fanboys. The Koch brothers will be at the top and they’ll be about as big, vote wise, as the current Libertarian Party, just richer and less friendly to pot smoking. Either that or he’ll have to embrace white supremacy to pull the Trump voters back into the fold, because that’s obviously about the only thing they care about.

    @shomi: I cannot figure out how Trump working with the Russians isn’t the biggest and most damning story of the election cycle. I mean, they’re obviously feeding him material. It’s skating awfully close to treason. If it’s the groping that destroys him, fine, so long as he gets destroyed, but someone really needs to look into this stuff.

  187. 187.

    JR in WV

    @jl:

    Pretty accurate placement of Cryin’ Ryan if you ask me. Worthless piece of scum would be my less erudite take.

  188. 188.

    nutella

    @piratedan:

    Gabby Giffords and in return, she also requested that we start policing the border OUTBOUNDS, and they started to stop the distribution back across to Mexico of money and guns.

    That’s really interesting. Did Giffords succeed in reducing the flow of guns and money from the US to Mexico?

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