I remember clearly when Donald Trump’s birther crusade stopped being funny. There was never anything truly comical about it, of course; it was always an outrageous racist lie concocted to delegitimize the first black president. But living in a nation of 320M people, a not-negligible percentage of whom are raving idiots, we learn to laugh. Baratunde Thurston taught me to stop laughing and see the tragedy of it.
When President Obama produced his “long-form” birth certificate in 2011, I perceived it as a president hilariously smacking down an absurd, malignant, preening blowhard. Thurston saw it as an affirmation that the president — and by extension Thurston himself, and all other black people — were still less than full citizens. Even with a black man in the Oval Office.
Five years later, we’ve come full circle. That very same absurd, malignant, preening blowhard — whose birther antics should have banished him from the company of serious people forever — has instead been elevated to head one of our two major political parties. And this time, he’s telling Hillary Clinton, and by extension all women, that their aspirations are illegitimate and that they are less than full citizens.
Trump’s vile misogyny and painfully obvious lack of basic human decency — and more importantly, its echoes from tens of millions of our fellow Americans — have tarnished what should have been a joyous celebration of a historical milestone. We see them. We understand the implications.
Trump had help from nearly the entire GOP establishment, the Beltway media, his abhorrent family, his pack of ghastly political operatives, the Putin-reanimated remnants of the KGB and a self-important wanker with a grudge residing in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London as a fugitive from justice.
But that’s only the latest cast of characters. The hit has been out for Hillary Clinton ever since she emerged from Arkansas as a woman with a national profile and an agenda of her own.
During the recent debate, Clinton called Trump Putin’s puppet, and good for her. It’s about goddamned time someone said as much while the country was listening.
But Trump is not just Putin’s puppet. He’s America’s rage puppet, dancing in a fury because change is coming — no, it is here. And there are so many hands on the strings. That’s the tragedy of it.
piratedan
reposted from downthread…
we all know the disdain I hold the political pundritry in… something that really bothers me is this partial credit program that they have Trump on…
Hey, he was lucid and made good points for the first 20 minutes! My understanding of the Presidency, leader of the free world, is that I would like the office holder to do more than simply look partially competant for 20 minute stretches. The job itself is a taxing grind and as such, the attention to detail, surrounding yourself with competant people and being willing to do the work that is needed to bring about effective solutions is pretty much want I want in a legislative executive who has the power to incinerate the world with the weapons at hand.
That’s my biggest issue with the media, they’re scorekeepers who apparently have no idea (much less any concept) that we’re dealing with policy that could well effect the nature of people’s lives and they have little understanding of the passions that drive us all. To be fair, they haven’t even articulated the fears of the wingnuts well, so it sounds as if they are nothing more than an ignorant mob who have completely embraced their id. While true, it’s not to say that the rural way of life isn’t under seiege, and as such, it manifests itself in all of the worst ways, with bigotry, misogyny and sexism. Yes, you can’t keep everyone down n the farm when they’ve seen the big city, but that’s not a condemnation of small town living, what is a condemnation of small town living is that business, as a general movement, doesn’t want to be associated with small towns and they have moved to the big city and bigger cities, leaving those small towns to wither and die in their wake and somehow, they blame the liberals for that trend. I’ve never really grokked as to why.
RoonieRoo
The piece to all of this that is really making me crazy is that the GOP is in an incredible amount of denial over Trump. They seem to think that after he loses this election, he is going to just disappear or that his followers will go back to falling in line to vote for whatever “establishment” republican they put up next.
I really think they don’t get how much of their base is like Trump. I suspect they will be “shocked!” when they get another Trump next round.
Brachiator
Look on the bright side: Trump’s antics will soon be forgotten.
The effects may linger, and he has opened up a nasty can of worms, but Trump himself won’t be much of a footnote. How many people who ran for president and were defeated are anything more than an obscure trivial contest question?
Major Major Major Major
You’re the rage puppet!
randy khan
Really, the only redeeming thing about the entire birther saga was the grace and humor that President Obama demonstrated in his handling of it. And even that was a reminder that he was held to different and higher standards than other people because of his race.
And the only good news about the cesspit of misogyny we’ve seen in this election cycle is that women and many (most, I hope!) men are rejecting it outright. I’m hoping we can see the results on November 8 as a national referendum that the good folks win (one of many reasons I want to run up the score). But what we have to go through to get there is horrifying.
Roger Moore
@RoonieRoo:
They’ve been listening to their own bullshit for too long. They genuinely believe that most of the Republican base is motivated by a desire for smaller government, especially the destruction of safety net programs like Medicare and Social Security.
Brachiator
@srv:
Yawn. White evangelicals have always been the most hypocritical when it comes to this. A conservative politician will consort with hookers, snort c@caine, wear diapers and then pull out the Jesus card and presto! all his sins go away.
You should go away,too, if all you have is this weak sauce.
Candace King
When the President produced his long form birth certificate (after having already produced the short form) I got a very sick feeling in my stomach that he had had to do that. I was ashamed for country that he had been pushed into that. I wish he hadn’t done it.
dmsilev
@piratedan: That’s been a problem with their coverage of Trump from the very beginning. “Hey, he says wacky things and attracts ratings! Who cares if he has the emotional maturity of a toddler and less knowledge of the world than a third grader?”. If they graded him on the same sort of curve that Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama is being graded on, the paper would come back with a mark of just a giant NO in bright red ink.
randy khan
@piratedan:
I can’t entirely blame the media for this one, as Trump sort of reverse-lulls you into thinking such things aren’t possible, and so it’s noteworthy when he’s coherent.
The interesting thing is that in a normal debate, with normal candidates from both parties, I think the beginning, and the Supreme Court segment, in particular, would have been scored a win for Clinton. Clinton was very articulate on how she’d look at Supreme Court Justice nominations, on abortion rights, and on the Second Amendment, and sounded like she’d thought about those things. Trump was largely repeating talking points and didn’t really have much to say about the underlying question of what kinds of Justices you want to have.
Of course, all of that got blown away by the refusal to commit to accepting the results of the election, and probably from the perspective of news judgment that was right. The real story of all of the debates is that it’s impossible for Trump to stay focused, on message, civil, or coherent for 90 minutes, which proves his unfitness for the job.
Villago Delenda Est
Drumpf is what you get if you hook yourself up to a Krell super-computer with an unlimited power source; the monster of the GOP id, hell, the monster of the id of the United States. All the terrible things of our past AND present…genocide, slavery, unchecked self-destructive capitalism…made manifest.
This is partially who we are. The angels of our better natures have been working overtime to keep that monster id in check.
Villago Delenda Est
@srv: I blame your mother for not being clairvoyant enough to abort you in the first trimester.
gene108
@RoonieRoo:
I think, whether or not Trump sticks around, the Republican establishment got a rude awaking to the fact that most of their base hates their agenda, with regards to tax cuts, free trade, and cutting Social Security and Medicare.
I’m not sure how their billionaire backers are going to get the
rabblevoters in line again, when therabblevoters clearly do not share their overwhelming desire to slash taxes, open borders for trade, etc. and any Republican politician promising to end free trade will get support.hovercraft
@piratedan:
The punditocracy covers politics as a form of entertainment. They all talk about how they love politics the mechanics of it the who’s up who’s down drama of it.The policy details not so much. So their coverage tends to focus on the personalities with a decided bias towards who will give them the most access and amuse/entertain them the most. McCain was the guy who let them ride along on the bus with him, he had barbecues for them, he told old war stories. Trump is a novelty act who’s also an improv act, so he’s fun to cover because you never know what he’ll do next. Obama was a novelty act too, but once you got past his race and his ability to give great speech, he was just a regular run of the mill politician, who had no interest in socializing with them. Hillary is a boring politician, who yes is a woman, novel, but they’ve already mined the depths of her life, even the e-mail that they’ve been flogging for a year and a half, is proving to be boring. They don’t want to have to cover her for the next four years because she’s going to bore them out of their minds. The run up to 2020 will be awful, they will do everything in their power to ensure they get a new person to cover, after the disappointment of the Obama years (so cool, but would not let them into all of his cool parties, he even took away the celebrities phones), they will demand someone who will grant them access.
Frankensteinbeck
@piratedan:
Yes, it is a condemnation of small town living, or should be. The kids haven’t been fleeing for generations because of a lack of jobs. They’ve been fleeing because they heard there are places where you won’t get beaten to death for being gay when you actually just like the wrong music.
@Roger Moore:
A lot of that is that they care more than their base about not being outed as racists.
Karen S.
If I stop to think about it, I wonder sometimes how I manage to just keep going, getting up every day and going about my business. I’m black, a woman and a lesbian. I count each one of those things as a plus. I’ve never wished to be anything other than what I am. I’ve always wished that people weren’t so bigoted. You know, the first time I felt truly American was when I was in grad school and lived in a dorm with international students who came from the UK, India, Japan, Germany, Iceland, etc. I was an American to them, full stop, no caveats. Many of them enjoyed listening to me talk because, according to them, when I spoke they could understand me. Apparently, other Americans spoke English in a way they found impenetrable. I speak standard, Middle American English, as far as I know. I liked it when they looked at me, they saw a full citizen of the U.S. who spoke beautiful English. I liked that very much.
hovercraft
@Brachiator:
Not just the politicians the support, how many of the preachers themselves were caught with their pants down so to speak? They hated that liberals were free to do what they were creeping around doing on the down low.
RoonieRoo
@gene108: I don’t think they will get the mob back in line but I really think that most of them are still in denial about how truly “conservative” the mob is. Ryan is a perfect example of how they intend to keep marching forward under the same small gov’t, slash taxes, kill the safety next plan and just pretend the whole Trump nightmare never happened.
karen marie
@srv: I was in Twitter earlier but now it won’t load (I use browser because the app sucks), and I’m in AZ. Anyone else having problems?
scav
@srv: Darlin, we’re so sorry, but if the campaign hasn’t called back by now about that position for Bagdad Bob, they’re not going to. You can stop auditioning. Sit down, have a tea, wait for the next pick-up truck to roll by.
Frankensteinbeck
@gene108:
I don’t think this will be a problem for more than a tiny fraction of Randian True Believers who love their dogma more than anything else. What Trump has shown isn’t that the base are against plutocrat policies. He’s shown they don’t give a flying fuck about policy at all, except as a vehicle to get the hardest racism fix they can find. Free trade? Sure! Massive tariffs? Sure! Just tell them Mexicans are rapists and thugs.
RoonieRoo
@Roger Moore: Yes, I agree with this. Just crazy making.
schrodinger's cat
Media complicity in the rise of Trump is what scares and enrages me the most. By media, I mean respectable outlets such as NYT and PBS not gutter news like Brietbart and the like.
Betty Cracker
@karen marie: Yep.
Gin & Tonic
@karen marie: Twitter, and a lot of other sites, are experiencing problems today due to a DDoS attack on a major DNS provider.
Russ
@Roger Moore: Because it’s the, “those people getting………”, divider that many white people believe is happening when many of “those people getting…….” are white people who either work full time for an employer who pays an unlivable minimum wage, retired, disabled, children, etc. They accept for fact that those getting are undeserving of these benefits by way of Republicans using there lack of knowledge to light the flame of hate.
hovercraft
@gene108:
This morning the Joke was actually almost, but not quite making sense about this very point. He pointed out that 90 % of the American public supports background checks and some reasonable checks on who buys guns. He said that Ryan’s agenda has been shown to not be what the base wants or cares about, tax cuts for the rich and corporations are not the most important things, and trade is not at all popular. he warned Ryan not to think that he can just make a deal with Hillary and pass TPP. He was still pushing the standard GOP wish list items, like saying that even of cutting Social Security is not popular, it is the job of leaders to lead their constituents to the correct position. So still more wrong than right, but at least beginning to understand that their positions are becoming untenable.
I will note that the GOP has no trouble bucking popular opinion on things like gun control, because the corporate lobbyists want that, but they are willing to fight public opinion on entitlement reform which is unpopular. Funny that.
karen marie
@Betty Cracker: Reports that it’s fixed but it’s not. I sent email to William Turton @ Gizmodo, because he’s requesting continued outage reports.
LAO
I’m no great fan of Mark Cuban — but his trolling of Trump has been masterful.
cervantes
@schrodinger’s cat: The NYT finally stopped running interference for him, but not until around the first of this month. I think it took them that long to realize that this whole thing was for real. National Pubic Radio has yet to get off the Trump Train.
karen marie
I might have to actually do some work.
theturtlemoves
@Villago Delenda Est: I want to congratulate you on this comment primarily because if I turn to my left as I type this response I see a tin Forbidden Planet poster on my wall. Monsters! Monsters from the id!
Miss Bianca
So, Ive been reading that new biography of Hitler that came out this year, and I’ve just managed to get past the beer hall putsch and we’re into the period of Hitler’s internment, when he wrote Mein Kampf. .
It’s chilling to read this book in the context of this election. Not because I am in doubt of this election’s outcome, or because I think Trump seriously comes close to Hitler’s damnable gifts as a politician, but because of two other parallels I noted. First, how completely open Hitler was about his anti-Semitism from the beginning, and how much approval he had from “good Germans” because of it; and two, how easily he could have been thwarted as a political power after the putsch if he had only been sentenced to the full five years his coup attempt could have netted him. Instead, he was fluffed by the authoritarians in power at the time, and treated to glowing hagiographies in the press. To be sure, not all of the press was taken in – but enough of them were swept up in Hitler’s “glamor”, and influenced by an anti-leftist, anti-worker bias, that a lot of the press were his collaborators in spreading the appeal of Nazism.
schrodinger's cat
There are people that are actually hateful like Trump and there are others who are fearful of change and people like Trump exploit their paranoia to their own selfish ends, aided and abetted by the media.
slag
@Karen S.:
Obama has done a good job highlighting the contrast between liberals who see value in these types of differences and conservatives who see nothing but cost in these types of differences.
Gin & Tonic
@karen marie: It is still ongoing.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
I blame Mark Burnett for creating the reality show template for Trump’s scampaign, which was able to flourish with the networks and cable blurry news/entertainment lines. Media has simply not been up to the task of covering this entertainment figure seriously. Even now after all the disqualifying things he’s said and done, too many are still caping for him – mostly the white/male media figures, of course. The best thing I read on twitter yesterday was the meltdown of the progressive left upon realizing that they’re not needed any more – women and minorities are picking the winners, and will continue to do so going forward – and the media/news divisions need to become WAY more diverse so that they can accurately reflect what America looks like now, from top to bottom.
Josie
@srv: Unless the institute specifically defined what is and is not moral behavior and/or ethical behavior, their question and the answers aren’t worth shit.
Booger
@Villago Delenda Est: Nice reference!
WereBear
When the limits of what you can do have been modeled your whole life by your own parents, you don’t even have to be that different.
Shell
One of the most pointless segments CNN can do now (and thats saying something) is to have the interview with “some undecided voters.” If at this point in this insane campaign you’re still “uhhhh, I really don’t know what Im gonna do….” you need to search for that second brain cell.
Frankensteinbeck
@hovercraft:
Do not be fooled about gun control and popular opinion. Gun control is a huge political issue for the voters themselves, and it’s conservatives who want it discussed more than liberals. In theory, even the majority of Republicans want more gun control. In practice, those same voters are fiercely motivated to reject any politician who supports gun control. Cleek’s Law is MUCH more important to them than mere policy.
Immanentize
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Women and minorities are excluded by race and/or gender from being part of the progressive left? I’m confused.
different-church-lady
The irony here being that were Trump capable of basic human decency, we might not have that milestone to celebrate.
gogol's wife
Beautiful post.
Anoniminous
Ran across I Went Undercover Into the Trump Campaign… and thought it pretty much verified the complete clusterf**k of a campaign Trump is running.
Teaser:
[Please delete if this has already been covered]
TS
@schrodinger’s cat:
They didn’t object to the racism. Coverage only changed with the access hollywood video. He probably could have shot someone on that NY street and still carried the media – as long as it was a non white person. The video, however was an attack on white married females – known to the NYT as ladies. It appears that was unacceptable.
Mumbles
I remember that day, too.
Not so much that I was taught. As a black guy, I knew we’d catch this lesson. And I heard from quite a few people who were saying “you can be president” to their kids, seeing it and saying “I don’t want you to.”
But Obama handled it well. And as much as I hate to see Clinton share a stage with a fool like Trump, she handled it well, too.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Immanentize:
The Berniebros/Bernie or Busters progressive purity ponies/Hillary is a warmonger types, as opposed to liberals. I follow several on twitter and they’re stamping their feet, demanding that “she” better pay attention to them.
hovercraft
Trump braying about a sneak/surprise attack on Mosul. Macaurther and Patton would not be able to take it in todays Army, because they were too politically incorrect. He says they would have lied about never attacking Mosul, then the next day. But he would never do that because he doesn’t like to lie.
Now onto the Obama’s they spend all their time campaigning. Why isn’t the media talking about all the vicious things Michelle said about Hillary, things he wouldn’t say because they are too vicious but Michelle said them. Someone is tiptoeing up to criticizing Michelle. Go on Donald, go on , you know you want to, it will feel so good.
different-church-lady
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: that’s not making any sense to me. The progressive left doesn’t pick winners. They pick mythical figures who they can hold up as examples of how all the other voters in the country are screwed up when they lose. Nothing pisses off today’s progressive left more than a liberal candidate who can actually win. It completely screws up their hipster kitty cred.
Anoniminous
@Shell:
It is the dying trace of HORSE! RACE!
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@different-church-lady:
I think that’s what I said?
Brachiator
@hovercraft:
There have always been sleazy preachers, including liberal preachers, who do creepy stuff. Liberals blame psychology; conservatives blame the Devil.
Nom de Plume
@Shell:
I have never believed for a second that such a thing exists. Push an “undecided” voter just a little bit, and they’ll give up the goods. It’s a pose.
Felonius Monk
@srv: I blame you and all your fellow shit-4-brains,wrong headed degenerates.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@gene108:
The Establishment has always known. They’ve simply been able to con that section of the base for years with shiny objects like a typical cultural war issue (forced birth, guns, immigration, etc). That part of Frank’s “What’s the Matter With Kansas” still resonates today despite the fact Frank has never gotten past his fixation on uneducated, white male voters and how the Dems should be gutting core Dem principles in order to appeal to them.
hovercraft
Apparently they gave out pink “Women for Trump” signs to show that he is really leading with women. He says that the real polls the most accurate ones have him leading, LA Times, IBD, and Rassmussen. And apparently really great things are happening in TN.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@cervantes:
There ya go. Fcking NPR, they’ll never change.
Mike J
Very cool. When I went to google this morning it told me that early voting starts in Washington today. Nice of them to tell people, even if they had it wrong.
We don’t have early voting, all voting is done by mail. You can return your ballot as soon as you receive it. I got mine yesterday, so if I had been more on the ball, I could have already voted. If our voter’s guide wasn’t 160 pages I would have.
hovercraft
Khan To Trump In New Clinton Ad: Would My Son Have A Place In Your America? (VIDEO)
Anoniminous
@srv:
Liberals destroyed the morality of Evangelical Christians?
Nice example of functional paranoid psychosis. Thank you.
Nom de Plume
@hovercraft:
Speaking of Rasmussen, any bets on when they’ll come around this time? I think they waited until the last week in 2012 to fall into line with the other polls, but they might do it a bit sooner this time, because they’ve got more ground to make up. Someone remind me of why they are taken seriously.
Frankensteinbeck
@Immanentize:
The very short version is ‘yes,’ although a fair number of women are involved because the prejudices involved are so much less obvious. The ‘progressive left’ is being used here as a (self-appointed) name for a subset of liberals whose overwhelming priority is anti-wealth anger. They are strongly dismissive of any other issue, tell minorities that racism is only a subset of economic inequality, and harbor an ugly streak of misogyny that comes out when women politicians get in their way. They tend to be pacifist to the point of conspiracy theories, as well. They’re not all that numerous, but are loud online and have been here on BJ quoting GG and telling us Obama is corporatist at least since 2008.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@scav:
I think somebody needs a hug.
Mnemosyne
@Mike J:
Pfft. Pikers. The California voter guide is 220 pages, plus we have a separate local supplement for LA County.
Stupid ballot initiatives. They really need to raise the signature requirements for those.
Anoniminous
@Nom de Plume:
Rasmussen feeds the HORSE! RACE! narrative needed by the Infotainment Medium companies to sell advertising.
Elizabelle
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yes. We need accountability after the fact. And it will have to be former practitioners who are journalism professors/critics and us (online blogs); can’t imagine mainstream media’s peers are going to take it on.
If they weren’t effing careerists, we wouldn’t be as far up the TrumpWorld hole.
Cacti
@Nom de Plume:
He never fell in line in 2012.
His final pre-election poll was Romney 49, Obama 48.
Mnemosyne
@Frankensteinbeck:
Personally, I would call them “isolationists” rather than “pacifists.” Pacifists are usually okay with peaceful engagement of other countries through diplomacy, financial aid, etc. “Progressives” usually hate that, too, and don’t want us to try to influence other countries at all, which to me makes them isolationists.
WaterGirl
@LAO: I thought that was creepy and only made it halfway through before i bailed.
Elizabelle
@srv: Pope Francis knows what a dick in a skirt Chaput is.
Chaput’s career is kaput, while Francis is at the helm.
Chaput helms the dead Scalia wing of Catholicism, in all its medieval glory.
different-church-lady
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: I guess I’ll take your word for it. I thought you were saying progressives were pissed they don’t get to pick the winners anymore (When they never did in the first place). You’re really saying they’re pissesd becuse they just now realized how irrelevent their posturing is?
Elizabelle
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: Um, there’s a typo in NPR’s name.
They’d be SO embarrassed.
Although someone does seem to have them by the short and curlies.
scav
@srv: Pish, those are just more unbelievers that failed in their test of True Catholicism when they failed to join the Holy leaving over Vatican II. If they’ve eaten the little crackers in the vernacular, they are damned for all eternity.
Monala
@Anoniminous: Yup. It’s like the woman who leads NOM, who blames liberalism for her having had a child out of wedlock while in college*. In a profile about her, the journalist who wrote it mused that maybe she’s so adamant about “children need a mother and father” due to some bizarre guilt about having been a single mom whose now adult son is gay, IIRC. He wrote, “I think she’s really saying, ‘my son needed a mother and father.'”
*Oh yeah, and irony of ironies, the deadbeat dad was head of some young conservatives group on campus.
Nom de Plume
@Cacti: Interesting, my memory was that he had Romney ahead by several points up until a few days before the election and then showed a tie or Obama by one or two points. Thanks for the refresher.
It’s also apparent that Scott Rasmussen didn’t learn anything from the experience.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@different-church-lady:
yes, the latter.
Pest Bog Mummy, Frakensteinbeck
@Mnemosyne:
You are probably right. Certainly they give a politician zero points for a peaceful resolution of any issue, and often use twisted logic to describe that resolution as proof of hawkishness. But then, they’re not all that progressive, either. Sorry, wanting to jail bankers does not make you ‘progressive.’ Civil rights are a huge part of liberalism.
Mnemosyne
@Monala:
The woman from NOM also appears to be convinced that her boyfriend would have been forced to marry her and stay with her forever in the Good Ol’ Days, when anyone who’s actually read any history knows that’s just a fantasy on her part. Legal divorce may have been uncommon, but that’s only because it was complicated and expensive. Abandonment was VERY common.
Betty Cracker
@hovercraft:
Ha, I was thinking the same thing. I truly am surprised that Trump has had the self-control to refrain from attacking FLOTUS, especially after her incredibly effective speech the other day. Even he knows it would be a dumb move because Michelle Obama is popular far beyond the Democratic base. But still. She tore his ass to the ground. It must’ve taken super-Trumpian strength to not respond. How long can he hang in there with that?
Srv
I can still type right-wing talking points while my head is stuck up my ass!
Pest Bog Mummy, Frakensteinbeck
@Betty Cracker:
He may be afraid of her. He’s certainly afraid of Hillary, now. Being beaten by a woman, completely dominated, his ass handed to him no matter what he tries, must be shaking him to the core. Although I think he may be entering a ‘despair’ phase. We’ll see.
Betty Cracker
@hovercraft: Whoa. Incredibly moving ad.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Also, even though we don’t get a lot of national Trump or Clinton ads, I heard recently that over $400 million has been spent on ads related to the California propositions. It’s a windfall for TV and radio stations.
germy
@Srv: Trump says he is “a victim of one of the great political smear campaigns in the history of our country,” and quite frankly, I believe him. You should all be ashamed of yourselves for taking this good man down.
? Martin
@piratedan:
Omnes Omnibus
@Pest Bog Mummy, Frakensteinbeck: To me, the divide is between liberals and leftists. They have some goals in common, but ultimately liberals want a better version of our current society – civil rights for everyone, less inequality, decent healthcare for every one, etc. – while leftists have more or less decided that our institutions are fundamentally corrupt and not worth saving – that to get civil rights, greater equality, etc., we need to be willing to burn things down and start anew.
scav
@Mnemosyne: Easy to track in the census, all the people jumping between widowed and single where I can still find their spouses playing a similar game. Brief upswing of divorced being reported as such in the 1920 census.
I’m still not clear how she thinks a constant exposure to a reluctant husband and father is going to convince anyone that vanilla xian heterosexuality is the way to go (leaving aside how reality actually works.)
Cacti
Billionaire nice-guy Richard Branson recalls a lunch with Donald Trump, and the man’s vindictive streak.
germy
@? Martin: Universal Basic Income.
sigaba
@Mnemosyne: I never vote for any initiatives, ever. Except Metro Rail expansions :)
2liberal
OT: note to cole: Steelers are brady’s bitches
Including the playoffs, quarterback Tom Brady has an 8-2 record against the Steelers, with 24 touchdowns and three interceptions. In his past five starts against Pittsburgh, he has 17 touchdowns and no interceptions.
LINK
Betty Cracker
@Frankensteinbeck: I wish we could come up with another name to describe that subset. The words “progressive” and “left” don’t deserve to be boiled down to such an insignificant residue. Any ideas?
dedc79
A sneak peek at Bundy: The Next Generation
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Betty Cracker:
brocialists?
Mnemosyne
@scav:
There was even a slang term for it: a “grass widow” was a woman whose husband had abandoned her.
Villago Delenda Est
@TS: It was Donald’s “Where are the white wimmenz at?” moment.
trollhattan
@karen marie: I can’t get on to The Guardian today via anything from two PCs or my phone.
Mnemosyne
@sigaba:
I’m voting for Measure M, and also to get rid of the death penalty. I’m tempted to vote in favor of Prop 56 just because I’m pissed off at the tobacco companies for lying about it. Other than that, I haven’t made up my mind, but I lean towards the Kevin Drum plan of voting “no” on everything unless there’s a very, very good reason not to.
slag
@Cacti: Branson’s Trump experience seems pretty typical and once again shines the light on white male privilege in this world. If Hillary or Obama had those types of interactions with people, they would be nowhere near the Oval Office. Obama would probably be in jail, and Hillary would probably be hocking jewelry on QVC.
trollhattan
@Mnemosyne:
Needed sig count is set based on the previous election vote count and our off-year turnout was embarrassingly low which, in turn, made it possible for nearly everybody to bankroll sig collection for their pet proposition. 2018 will be vastly tougher.
Learned recently that it takes a higher number of sigs for a proposition to become a constitutional amendment, so a good many of the current ones are only potential statutes. #nevertookgovernment
Villago Delenda Est
@? Martin:
They are little better than MBAs. Beancounters who know the price of everything, but the value of nothing.
different-church-lady
@Nom de Plume: I’ve been thinking: now that poll aggregation has become the gold standard, there’s a whole lot of polls coming out with the sole purpose of throwing the aggregation numbers off. It could be that’s Rass’s true intent, rather than accuraccy.
hovercraft
@Betty Cracker:
The Clinton campaign has done some really good Ads this cycle, the one with the kids “Measured”, the one with the girls/young women, they posted this one earlier today. For some reason there are onions in my monitor causing my eyes to leak.
Villago Delenda Est
@Betty Cracker:
Or a very good hiding of the smart phone by his underlings.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Betty Cracker: Keith Olberman just tweeted that Trump was now going after FLOTUS, right before Twitter went down so I couldn’t follow up.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Nice! Is that original?
Ruckus
@piratedan:
Those companies moved to find a bigger workforce. You need a thousand employees and you are in a county of 30,000 people, it’s going to be difficult to find enough qualified applicants. And that was before human resources was changed from a hiring department to a disqualification department. And a lot of qualified people didn’t want to live in the sticks. Many of the people left in the rural areas don’t understand why others don’t want to live there and would put up with traffic and other people. Lots of other people. And they have somewhat of a point, heavy traffic and lots of people is a pain. But there is always something to do and people to meet and talk to, the stores are open late, etc…… Neither is better for everyone, but trying to impose what you like on everyone else isn’t the answer. No one is trying to take away the rural life, people are just deciding to not live it. We aren’t trying to impose that their conservative lives change but that’s what they have made the last 30-50 yrs into, that and trying to impose their retrograde ideas on liberals.
Soylent Green
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Oregonians are voting now (mail-in ballots) and this is one of a few states that allow write-in names without the person being written in needing to register as a candidate. Bernie handily won the primary here, and I wonder if enough of his fans will write him in to hand the state to Trump. Right now with victory near we feel united as a party, but might be forgetting that most purity progs rejected the Democratic establishment this year and might do so again the next time around.
Villago Delenda Est
@Litlebritdifrnt: That explains the meltdown of the ‘Tubes: Donald crossed a line that HAL 9000 won’t allow to be crossed.
different-church-lady
@trollhattan: count your blessings.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
QFT
trollhattan
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Of an infinite # of fights li’l Donny might pick, Michelle Obama is # the last. His “hair” will end up seven blocks from his moldy pate when she’s done.
slag
@TS: You don’t have to dismiss the problem of sexism in order to be critical of the problem of racism. Trump’s sexism has been pretty apparent all throughout this campaign as well, let’s not forget.
The tape had more to do with sexual assault, which is still a crime in this country, whether Republicans want it to be or not. That’s really how far over the line Trump had to go to lose the media—sexual assault.
So, put that in your pipe and smoke it.
germy
@Roger Moore:
“Oh, and while you’re at it can you please lower my boss’s taxes and reduce regulations? Because excessive regulations really bug me for some reason I don’t know why.”
WaterGirl
@hovercraft: It’s really interesting to see here on BJ that ads seen as awesome by one person/s are seen as meh by others. I clicked on the ad you linked to and it was soooooo slow and I was over a minute in and I still had no idea what that had to do with Hillary. Then I saw that the ad was over 7 minutes long and I bailed. I don’t know who they were trying to reach in that ad, but it surely was not me.
From the mixed reviews various ads have gotten here on BJ, I would say they are doing a good job at creating ads that speak to different people.
Hal
@Cacti: If he needs their help in the first, he can’t be that much of a threat.
WaterGirl
@Litlebritdifrnt: I wonder if Trump has the russian hackers going after progressive sites.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
But are they tiny little baby hands? That’s what I want to know.
hovercraft
Why Hillary Wins By Paul Krugman
You can click on the link to read his piece, this is one of the comments.
Ruckus
@Karen S.:
That is what living is supposed to be about. Not fall into line bullshit. You are supposed to be a person, with all of the good and the not so much. As long as you aren’t hurting anyone else, no one should care. But of course they do. You have to be cool, no it’s kewl, no it’s something else. People with little self identity, unlike that which you enjoy, need that group approval. tRump may be one of the worse examples of this.
SFGary
I’ve been an election-year lurker for years…. Ballon-juice is great and the comment section is intelligent and interesting. Usually. But I have to say, you guys are terrible at handling trolls. I didn’t take long to learn to skip over comments from srv, NR and shomi, and to keep right on skipping past replies to them. Easy peasy.
Aside from that… Thank you for an oasis of reason in an age of chaos.
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Read an interesting article that suggested Putin’s overriding goal is not to get Trump elected (although I’m sure he wouldn’t mind), but to delegitimize the US democratic process….essentially delegitimizing the US Gov’t. Makes a lot of sense.
I can almost guarantee you that the US will be responding in a similar way. I can imagine a lot of different things they could do to embarass Putin and the Russian gov’t.
Basically the start of another cold war…in cyberspace.
catclub
@hovercraft:
45 – good number for a woman.
hovercraft
@WaterGirl:
They do run the gamut, that ad in particular is the story of a premature baby born at 3 pounds 10 oz, who the doctors said had no hearing at all, but the parents persevered and kept trying experimental options, which was bankrupting them, but was the only way she would ever be able to speak, then came the SCHIP program, and today she can speak and appears to be a lovely young woman. Lots of old home movie footage. It’s uplifting, the type of thing that answers what she’s been doing the last 30 years.
catclub
@Soylent Green:
no
Villago Delenda Est
@WaterGirl: When 4Chan is a “progressive site” that’s when I dismiss Putin as Prime Minister because I’ve just been crowned Tsar of all the Russias.
They’re going after a DNS provider. This is a very general attack, not playing favorites on ideological bent.
Gin & Tonic
@WaterGirl: This is a relatively large-scale outage affecting a number of well-known web services. No need to look for conspiracies.
WaterGirl
@hovercraft: Thanks for that. They need the cliff notes version, too, where they don’t bury the lede. :-)
hovercraft
@Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious:
Analysts say that yes that’s the goal, just look at what the breakup of the Soviet Union did to Eastern Europe. So if he can destabilize enough Western democracies, with us being number one and there are uprisings some of them may realign with him and cause the break up of NATO which is the ultimate goal. Extending his sphere of influence is a good thing, but NATO is the brass ring. If he gets that we are weakened and less likely to be interfering in his affairs.
WaterGirl
@Villago Delenda Est: @Gin & Tonic: What’s the fun in that? Okay, I will be more responsible, no conspiracies for me today.
MisterForkbeard
@Soylent Green: Didn’t Bernie win the caucuses in Oregon, but Hillary won the non-binding primary handily? Or was that Washington?
Elizabelle
@hovercraft: Love that. Thanks for highlighting it.
Will read it. And savor.
Soylent Green
@MisterForkbeard: Washington. Oregon doesn’t have a caucus. Sanders won here 56 to 44.
Patricia Kayden
@Villago Delenda Est: Ouch!! Perhaps just skip over srv like I do and save yourself the trouble.
@hovercraft: I love how tough the Khans have been. They lost their son. They spoke out against Trump’s bigotry. They weathered the nastiness from the Rightwing press and Trump supporters. And now, they’re in an ad stumping for the only qualified Presidential candidate.
Love them and love the example they’ve set for other Americans to follow: speak out and don’t let demagogues shut you down.
MisterForkbeard
@Soylent Green: Thanks! Couldn’t be arsed to go look it up, so I’m thankful you know what you’re talking about. :)
Monala
@MisterForkbeard: Yes, it was Washington. 3x as many people voted in the non-binding primary, and Clinton won handily.
Patricia Kayden
@Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious:
Putin has done a great job on his own of embarrassing himself and the Russian government. I stopped watching Russia Today because it felt like I was watching pro-Putin propaganda. Trump’s defeat will send a clear message to Putin that Americans aren’t going to tolerate his attempt to interfere with our politics.
Putin’s attempt to embarrass the U.S. government by asking to monitor our polls was just shut down.
rikyrah
@piratedan:
But, he’s a Mediocre White Man…and, that’s all that matters.
Omnes Omnibus
@rikyrah: He doesn’t rise to mediocre.
Mnemosyne
@Patricia Kayden:
It’s probably because I’m kind of a jerk, but I love the idea of the State Dept saying, Sure, come on by, maybe you guys can learn something.
Bex
@srv: Which is why he was passed over for Cardinal this time and will continue to be at least as long as Pope Frank is around.
Edit: Elizabelle beat me to it.
father pussbucket
@Villago Delenda Est:
Arrgh! I’ve been touting this metaphor for months; I’m happy someone’s finally getting some traction with it.
Here’s one with artwork!
Brachiator
@Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious:
Only thing is, it can’t really happen. Putin is wasting his time.
I suppose that the US could cause some mischief, but things really depend more on the oligarchs and political elite.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Trump qualifies under the weird Secular Calvinism some Americans believe in: because Donald was born rich, that proves that he’s automatically better than those of us who were less lucky.
(Note that I’m calling this Secular Calvinism to differentiate it from actual Calvinism, which is a little more complicated on the subject.)
MisterForkbeard
@Brachiator: Well, it can work as a long-term project. Constant misinformation for the brogressives and conspiracy theorists and conservatives can add to a growing sense that everything is broken. It won’t cause the U.S. to fall or break apart, but it DOES encourage people opting out of the system or pushing for Trumplike candidates: “Sure, he eats babies and may start WWIII over an insult, but he’s not part of the system!”
Over time, this has really bad effects on a democracy. Even in the short term, it makes inaction and bad policy much more likely, and much more open to future propaganda efforts by Russia or other foreign sources.
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne: Thank you for making that distinction. I’m not a Calvinist and am in fact an atheist, so I have no dog in this hunt. But it’s always bugged me that the common understanding of Calvinism is so reductive.
Death Panel Truck
@dedc79: Sweet Babby Jeebus, what a fucking nutjob. Sweetie, the Articles of Confederation were superseded by the Constitution 229 years ago. Do try to keep current.
JustRuss
America was built on slavery and genocide. A lot of Americans can’t feel too bad about that because their great-great-grand-daddies profited from that, and through inheritance, so have they. That hardly explains all the horribleness, but it does form a solid, ahem, base.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: I’ve been known to get shouty at her if she is reductive on that point.
Bex
@hovercraft: I loved it too. It was a story that drew me in and made me want to know the outcome. What was going to happen? Was the baby going to live? What kind of problems would she have? The whole thing (and I think it’s worth seven minutes) beautifully illustrates the point Hillary made in her acceptance speech about how it’s not a (policy) detail when it’s your kid.
Miss Bianca
@Death Panel Truck: My favorite part of the comments was when someone wondered whether there might be drugs in the bag: ‘THOSE ARE SOVEREIGN CHEMICALS!”
Barry
@Mnemosyne:
“The woman from NOM also appears to be convinced that her boyfriend would have been forced to marry her and stay with her forever in the Good Ol’ Days, when anyone who’s actually read any history knows that’s just a fantasy on her part. Legal divorce may have been uncommon, but that’s only because it was complicated and expensive. Abandonment was VERY common.”
She was a scholarship student at Yale, from a poor family. In the Good Old Days, she would have been a starry-eyed waitress.
Then she would have been a pregnant sl*t, condemned to a miserable life of disgrace, hardship and exploitation.
Betty Cracker
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m sorry to have missed that fascinating conversation!
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: No, you aren’t. Late night discussions of theology by half-read amateurs who may or may not have had a drink or two are seldom edifying.
Paul in KY
@Karen S.: I’m very sorry for the discrimination you have suffered, Karen. Hoping things will get better & better for you.
Paul in KY
@Miss Bianca: I think Hitler was a little more on-the-ball than Trump. Can you imagine what he might have done, if he’d been given millions of marks by his father?!
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: I think we (liberals) have more differences with the talibevangicals than with the Leftists, IMO.
The Leftists can be quite infuriating, though.
Omnes Omnibus
@Paul in KY:
Of course, but that wasn’t what we were talking about.
slag
@hovercraft: Wow that video is a perfect response to Donald Tiny Hands’ argument that Hillary has nothing to show for her work. How many women and minorities, in particular, have had their work denigrated or ignored by pompous, inadequate white guys who have brought little value to this world while bringing fortune and notoriety to themselves?
Miss Bianca
@Paul in KY: He might not have done anything but draw, and been a patron of the (non-degenerate) arts ! Unlike Trump, he actually had some talent and appreciation for art!
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: I wuz fooled. Guess I need to read back up thru the thread.
Paul in KY
@Miss Bianca: Good point. Still think he was much more betterer at politics than Trump. Trump is like a Idiotcracy type, ersatz, wanna-be Hitler.
Chris
@gene108:
That National Review edition from last March was a nice insight into this realization, and into the fact that the other half of the GOP is every bit as nasty in its own way. It was the temper tantrum of snobs who just couldn’t believe that the fucking peons had the audacity not to vote the way they were told, and were reacting by saying that they were all worthless.
Chris
@Karen S.:
There’s a real disconnect between the view and narratives about America in the rest of the world, and those that are accepted in the U.S. (and especially in “mainstream” U.S. discourse, i.e. the media punditocracy).
I’ve long found it interesting that my French mother, not precisely a left-wing ideologue, found Obama’s “yes we can” slogan to be a personification of America’s “can-do spirit” (her words) – the mentality she associates with the nation that put a man on the moon, pulled off the Marshall Plan, etc. Conservatives look at Obama and see a Muslim, a commie, a black nationalist, a filthy interloper who doesn’t “get” “America.” To the rest of the world, he pretty much personifies the place.
(And, as much as they hate to admit it, to more than half of Americans too. Obama’s voters understand the basic American idealism – work hard, dream big, don’t ever let anybody tell you you can’t – perfectly. It’s part of why they voted for him. Conservatives’ inability to recognize American spirit in Obama say more about them than they ever did about him).
Capri
@Villago Delenda Est: I don’t think they are bean counters, Rather, the media have all become theater critics. How something is said is everything, what is being said it hardly mentioned. If substance doesn’t matter, then why not have a con man – or a brain surgeon or a failed CEO – as your candidate. It’s lot like they or their base or the media put any value on actually being qualified for the job.
If the MSM had concentrated on Trump’s policies rather than his over-the-top performances they would have noticed that his policies, such as they are, are completely in line with every other GOP primary candidate. They could be the first to point out that he wasn’t some huge departure from the party.
Miss Bianca
@Paul in KY: No question Hitler was a much more effective politician than Trump.
Chris
@Miss Bianca:
The uncanny resemblance for me is the sheer number of people in the political system who refuse to grok that this new guy is a really big fucking problem that transcends the normal political arguments. On the one hand, craven center right elites who think that hey, he’ll fight the left (“left” basically defined as “anyone who thinks workers should have anything more than the right to vote and probably not even that much”), and what’s wrong with that? On the other hand, a delusional far left fringe that thinks that hey, he’s just another capitalist scumbag just like the rest of them, but he’s more likely to shake up the system and pave the way for socialist nirvana. Everybody’s still obsessed with their longstanding political feuds, does not recognize just how terrifying the new player really is, and if anything is perfectly willing to turn him loose under the theory that the damage he’ll do is damage you want.
Thankfully, it’s not actually “everyone,” and in our case there are still enough Democrats and the occasional centrists that – knock on wood – the fascist probably will not pass this November. Then again, we’re not doing nearly as badly as Germany was in the early 1930s, a fact for which I may unironically say “thanks, Obama.”
Captain C
@Villago Delenda Est: Trump as the Monster from the Id? I’m so going to “borrow” that!
Chris
@Anoniminous:
Don’t you just love it? It’s standard fare to blame the world’s problems on your enemies whether or not it’s true, but conservatives elevate it to an art form by blaming all their own problems on us. Bush left us in the biggest mess since the 1930s? Bush was a liberal! Trump beat out sixteen “real” conservatives for the candidacy in the GOP? It’s because Obama was divisive and mean to Real Americans! Catholic priests caught abusing children and Catholic hierarchy hiding them? It’s because the church has been so naively tolerant of homosexuality in its ranks! Evangelicals change their morals at the drop of a hat so they can support candidates from their tribe? … it’s because of liberalism! Somehow!
Now might be a good time to recall the conservative idealization of Personal Responsibility.
Spider-Dan
@Candace King: I think it was a case of Obama taking a punch for the team. Yes, it was disgraceful for the media to allow an ignorant bigot to make him prove that he’s an American, but the silver lining is that all of that was duly recorded, and it was one more arrow in the quiver that came in handy when that very same ignorant bigot thought he deserved to be promoted to President.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
It wasn’t a drink, it was cough syrup. Geez, get it right!
NoraLenderbee
@Paul in KY: He’d have bought a couple of loaves of bread during the hyperinflation of the 1920s?
Spider-Dan
@trollhattan: The good news is that the large/small turnout cycles make it harder for the deplorables to get anything too destructive on the ballot during midterms, as they need to meet signature requirements that are based on much larger Presidential turnout.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: I may have been speaking of myself.
Chris
@Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious:
Might be. My impression is that he’s rooting for Trump because Trump is an unstable nationalist/isolationist loony with an inexplicable grudge against America’s allies, so electing him could lead to a break-up or, at least, a severe weakening, of NATO. Same with supporting far right parties in Europe: it means breaking up Europe as a unified political entity.
The state of domestic politics in Western nations almost doesn’t matter once you’ve reduced the West to a group of isolated nations squabbling with each other: it becomes much easier to deal with them one at a time.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Basically, Betty, it was this.
Brachiator
@MisterForkbeard:
Still Disagree. I think that America has more to fear from domestic idiots than from foreign despots.
Paul in KY
@NoraLenderbee: Good one, Nora!!!! Had forgotten about that. OK, trillions, then.
Brachiator
@Spider-Dan:
This was still problematic.
Obama wisely tried to avoid this not just because of the assault on his own dignity, but because it sets a bad precedent that future presidents might have to deal with. When George Washington became president, he was acutely aware of the fact that everything he did would be watched and scrutinized and become the example of how a president was expected to behave.
Obama, much more than any of his enemies and opponents, realized that he not only had to carry himself like past presidents, but also that his behavior and reactions might have an impact on how future presidents who were not standard issue white males could be perceived.
Similarly, I don’t know whether Hillary Clinton did anything bad in withholding transcripts of her speeches to Wall Street. I believe in transparency, but I don’t know that every utterance of a public figure should be in the public domain.
Trump, on the other hand, has set a negative example so far in one very critical situation. Unlike almost all presidential candidates, he still has not released his tax returns. This gives wiggle room to future scoundrels.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
There’s a reason Lin-Manuel Miranda drew explicit parallels between Washington and Obama in his play.
Exit 135
When President Barack Hussein Obama, a black man, passes the gavel to President Hillary Diana Rodham Clinton – white woman, the moment will be remembered for the lifetime of our Republic.
Miss Bianca
@Chris:
Yeah, pretty much just this. When you add all the above to the toxicity of “othering” Jews and “foreigners”, and then blaming them for all the political/social woes that the middle class is undergoing, you have the set-up for fascism right there.
E
@Karen S.: Damn. Rich, straight white guy here, very moved by that story.