Donald Trump has yet to meet with the prime minister of the United Kingdom — arguably the closest ally of the United States. He has found time to meet with representatives of Britain’s Lets-Play-Footsie-With-Fascists UKIP party including its well-dressed proto-fascist leader, Nigel Farange.
In that meeting Hair Führer focused on what really matters in the trans-Atlantic alliance.
Offshore wind farms in Scotland [h/t TPM]:
[Andy] Wigmore, who coordinated the communications effort for the push for Britain to leave the European Union, told The Express and the New York Times that Trump asked them to oppose new wind farms….Wigmore told The Express that Trump “is dismayed that his beloved Scotland has become over-run with ugly wind farms which he believes are a blight on the stunning landscape.”
Rich guy doesn’t like looking at windmills. Rich guy manages to grasp real power. Rich guy starts f**king with other nations’ energy policy, land use decisions and the rest because…he can.
Welcome to the post policy presidency. Trump has no idea what energy mix makes sense and he doesn’t care. Just doesn’t like looking at turbines. So lose the buggers, amirite!
Apparently, Trump’s intervention appears to have worked, sort of:
Wigmore said that Trump “did suggest that we should campaign on it” and that the conversation “spurred us in and we will be going for it,” according to the New York Times.
Going for it, in this case, meaning that a party and a leadership roundly loathed in Scotland will argle bargle pwfft or something. But gotta stroke the ferret-heedit shitgibbon, and talk is cheap.
The lagniappe, utterly unsurprisingly, is that the default position of the Trump crowd to any challenge is to lie:
Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks denied to the New York Times that Trump discussed wind farms during his meeting with Farage. When the Times told Hicks that Wigmore gave an account of the wind farm discussion, Hicks did not respond with further comment, according to the Times.
With every passing day it becomes yet more clear that there is no way that Donald Trump can handle the presidency. With each passing day his presidency draws closer.
WASF.
Image: Paul Gauguin, The Queen’s Mill, Østervold Park, 1885.
boatboy_srq
Behold the imminent pResidency of Donald “I never said/did/promised/threatened that” tRump.
Everyone who wanted to overturn the entire apple cart because BSDI and there’s no difference between the parties is getting what s/he wanted.
If there is an upside, it’s that for as long as tRump is pResident the conventional GOTea is nearly as likely to get thwarted as the Dems.
Elizabelle
WASF?
What a sick fuck?
ETA: We are so fucked?
Denali
The title of this piece covers it. How can a country function with this approach? We will become pariahs like North Korea.
Elizabelle
Trump and his people lie and lie and lie, constantly. And they’re third string, and many of them are crooks.
The American people will see that. Some Americans will even admit it.
JMG
@efgoldman: I was 14. Remember every second of that weekend. Always will.
mai naem mobile
So we are now depending on either a GOPr or several GOPrs investigating Shitgibbon and finding stuff and seeing it through or a respected foreign leader reporting and following through on a Shitgibbon scandal to get rid of Shitgibbon.
Amaranthine RBG
Shhhhhh……. quiet everybody …,,,,
Bobbo
I believe his problem with the wind farms is that they interfere with the view from his golf course. So it’s not just about his obnoxious politics – it’s about his personal gain
FlipYrWhig
Does this logic apply to mountaintop removal and the ravaging of Appalachian landscapes by coal interests? HAHAHA OF COURSE NOT
Yoda Dog
Even just coping with this madness is itself a form of normalization. I feel like I need to be amped up at 11 every morning of every single day now just so I dont feel numb to the infinite parade of outrages.
Its too exhausting. I realized I havent heard shitgibbon’s voice since before the election. Im on strict media blackout still and Im not sure Im ever going back. If we’re full metal fascism come Jan 20th, what the fuck is the point of even knowing anything anymore?
Quinerly
Suggested reading: 3 page exclusive interview with Kushner in Forbes, just out…especially the first page, the rest of it we mostly knew. No paywall. I’m on phone and can’t link direct to it.
SiubhanDuinne
Let’s just go ahead and make this a new category, okay? It will be well-used.
Edit: If I were wealthy enough to buy us a nice lefty radio station, you’d better believe WASF would be the call letters.
mai naem mobile
I must be the only person who likes the looks of wind turbines. When we drive to California from AZ there’s an area,I think east of Indio,that’s full of wind turbines and I think it looka cool. I worry about birds getting killed in the turbines but I doubt Shitgibbon gives a cap about birds.
Jeffro
Good morning everyone!
1) Yes, he cannot handle the presidency.
2) Yes, he and his people lie and lie constantly and will never stop…they will double down, distract, and double down some more.
For #1, the only thing we can do is hope that there are enough examples of his corruption and stupidity and intention to turn the U.S. into his own private piggy bank for his family and cronies that he is stopped when the Electors vote on Dec 19th. After that, since we know the GOP will almost surely never impeach him – better to just keep him dancing on a string to do their bidding and sign their horrendous bills – our only hope will be to keep pointing out who’s really pulling those strings. (Besides Putin, I mean). For such an independent, such a businessman, such a shaker-upper, Donald’s agenda sure looks a lot like the Kochs’ and Mercers’ wet dreams.
For #2, it’s really important that we not waste too much time gabbing about Donald’s latest Twitter feud or press-bashing or whatever. Catherine Rampell had a great point in her column today: just responding to his nonsense keeps us from getting out our message (and helps reinforce his standing with his base).
As Rampell put it:
It also keeps expectations of him extremely low – he’s still a reality-TV star, not a real president. Let’s make our case time and again, as proactively as possible, and let people draw their own conclusions about what’s needed here.
Push on your Senators and Reps to demand no changes to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare. Join the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, the SPLC, and the Sierra Club. Write your local paper or the WaPo expressing outrage that 70 years after WW II, Nazis are chanting “Heil Trump” in the heart of Washington, DC. And if you really wanna, write those HAMILTON folks a quick hand-written thank-you note and be done with it.
In short…don’t throw away your real shot(s) here…
Kristine
@efgoldman: I was 5, playing in the front yard of the house my folks had rented on Long Island (don’t recall the town). A lady came by, walking her dog. Dad came out and told her what had happened, then took me inside.
Poopyman
Well at least the Dow opened above 19000 for the first time ever, so we’ve got that going for us – and by “we” I mean if you’re the 1% and you’re insulated from the coming financial apocalypse. I.e. nobody I know.
Jeffro
PS I forgot one more thing: if you don’t already have a copy, you might want to snag MoveOn’s “50 Ways to Love Your Country”. It has tons of tips (specifics and style points often included) on how to be an effective activist. Find 4-5 activities that your schedule can handle and engage on a frequent basis. 1 thing per day Mon-Fri is HUGE and often takes 15 min or less – that’s not even 2 hours per week!
cmorenc
If Trump seems to initially have positive (>50%) public approval, remember that much of the American Public will presumptively give a new President some benefit of the doubt, because our national character is that we are inclined to want to be optimistic about things, even when we harbor grave doubts. But it starts eroding, sometimes fairly quickly, as events and revelations abrade the shiny surface and difficult problems and events dent and crumple the body of the new Administration’s plans, and remind folks why they should feel disappointed, afraid or angry (or maybe all three). Especially when what goes wrong that affects them personally.
schrodinger's cat
My suggestions
1. Don’t underestimate him
2. Don’t descend to his level
3. Quit calling him stupid names that just trivializes the threat he represents.
Of course YMMV.
Barbara
But, but, but CLINTON FOUNDATION CONFLICTS OF INTEREST PAY FOR PLAY OMG!!!!!!
The only, and I mean only, saving grace here is that the idiocy and hypocrisy are so naked that it will be increasingly difficult to persuade those who don’t have an actual ulterior motive (Koch Brothers, for instance) that Donald Trump has integrity or is actually looking out for anyone’s interest other than his own. I would like to take bets on how long it will take Angela Merkel to decide that all flights out of Ramstein Air Force Base should be subject to prior approval from Germany. On the theory that Germany would like to avoid being the take off point for bombing somewhere that will have too much political blowback for Germans to bear. We also fly out of Italy, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. Turkey will be first in clipping our wings. Sure, Romney might soften the blow, but he won’t be able to block the most primitive urges of Flynn and company.
Poopyman
@SiubhanDuinne:
Irony.
JPL
According to the Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-foundation-apparently-admits-to-violating-ban-on-self-dealing-new-filing-to-irs-shows/2016/11/22/893f6508-b0a9-11e6-8616-52b15787add0_story.html?tid=sm_tw
but the Clinton Foundation
Major Major Major Major
@efgoldman:
I and almost everybody I know is already there.
Elizabelle
@efgoldman: Those corgis don’t walk themselves, you know.
The Moar You Know
First campaign promise broken: Conway announces the Great Orange Shitbag will not be prosecuting Hillary Clinton.
albertZ
Why should it surprise anyone that Trump would be dismissive of any sort of alternative energy? dismissive of anything “Alt” except the right.
gene108
@boatboy_srq:
BSDI?
So the conflicts of interest between Trump, Inc. and President-Elect Trump begins. I wonder, if anyone in the MSM will beat this to death like they did with Whitewater, Benghazi, EMAILS, and so on?
Who am I kidding, we’re lucky to even know it happened. Thank goodness other countries have a free press.
Darkrose
@efgoldman: It’s going to be Evita’s Rainbow Tour, I’m telling you.
Barbara
@schrodinger’s cat: Thank you for saying this. I find name calling to reduce the effectiveness of any analysis of anyone. It presupposes a point of view and is less persuasive as a result. As to BJ front pagers, there are a few I no longer read because they haven’t gotten over the reflexive insult and name calling stage. It’s painful but it has to be done. IMHO.
Betty Cracker
I read somewhere (TPM, I think) that the only reason the Argentine influence peddling story came to light is because a U.S. reporter who happened to speak the language saw an account of the conversation between Trump and Macri (Argentina’s prez) in the Argentine press. If the media were serious about covering the epic looting to come, they’d hire bilingual folks to monitor the press and do first-hand reporting in every country in which the Trump parasites do business. Those folks would be very busy.
Poopyman
@The Moar You Know:
FTFY
Barbara
@Elizabelle: Queen gave up her corgis. As a corgi owner, I follow these things.
Quinerly
@mai naem mobile:
The only thing remotely pleasing about the drive through Oklahoma and Texas from St.Louis to Santa Fe that I do a couple of times a year are the wind turbines. My apologies to any Balloon Juicers in those states but it’s an unpleasant drive for me.
JPL
@The Moar You Know: It’s not up to him. I wish the Clinton’s would release a statement calling him on his bullshi.t
When is Congress going to investigate the Trump Foundation, since they admitted wrong doing. .
Tom Levenson
@efgoldman: I was five. I remember the funeral, not the assassination itself (though I have a vague and probably false memory of getting out of kindergarten early that day. As I say, I think that’s reconstructed, not an actual recollection.) I only remember the funeral as my parents watched TV in daytime, unheard of in our house, and were visibly upset. Didn’t have much connection to the event itself.
Major Major Major Major
When I was trying to fall asleep last night I told myself, well, if he doesn’t condemn the Nazi shit today, then we’ll know for sure that this is the real deal and I’ll know I can stop holding onto any hope of a normal-shaped future, at least in the near term. And so far, today, he’s picked a weird fight with the Times about who’s lying about not having a meeting.
Peale
@The Moar You Know: it’s probably a lie, too. They’ll just wait for mid terms to use it to drive out their base.
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat & @Barbara: Y’all can cross me off your reading list, if you haven’t already. I’ll never stop calling the shit-gibbon names, such as “the shit-gibbon.” I’m not an analyst, and I make no pretensions to bipartisanship.
Tom Levenson
@mai naem mobile: Nah — I like ’em. I remember driving in Greece and seeing whole ridges lined with them and thinking they looked magnificent.
Tom Levenson
@schrodinger’s cat: Agree with the don’t underestimate. Not giving up the disrespectful names. Sue me.
boatboy_srq
@Bobbo: Clear case of NIMGCBYism (Not In My Golf Course’s Back Yard).
Yoda Dog
@Betty Cracker: Never change, Betty. Shitgibbon has never shown respect for anyone or anything and needs be afforded none in return.
Major Major Major Major
@Tom Levenson:
Il Douche just might.
tarragon
@mai naem mobile:
You’re not.
Even my wingnut uncle does. At one point he gave us alternate directions though a windfarm just because of how cool it looked.
Kay
Does anyone in the Republican Party know how the US government works? The President can’t “investigate” anyone.
WTF is wrong with these people? Can they take a 7th grade civics course before spouting lies on cable tv?
Now half the country will believe Trump declined to investigate Clinton. No part of that is true.
Barbara
@Betty Cracker: Not looking for bipartisanship, which is not the opposite of name calling.
ETA: I don’t mind name calling per se, it’s just when the gist of a piece is basically just an amplification of name calling with not a lot else to say, it becomes repetitive and numbing. I am trying not to be numb to further action and possibilities.
boatboy_srq
@Betty Cracker: It’s adorable how you suggest the US MSM is interested in, you know, actual reporting. Fox News may be on its way out with the Teahad, but twenty years of Newscorp skewing has done its work. Idustry consolidation deiving advertising dollars to fewer entities, and no Fairness Doctrine to hinder the narrative, have also quashed the investigative inclination.
Emma
So they want Scotland to move for separation sooner? I’m with.
Neil W
Opposition to wind farms is a recurring feature of UKIP and other anti-EU people in the UK. Quite why they are opposed to clean energy and energy independence, with the North Sea oil fields are in decline and British coal mining all but dead, continues to puzzle me.
Most opposition seems to be either of the “Well, yes build them if you must but Not In My Back Yard” (NIMBY) variety, or the “why are we subsidizing them” type, but during the general election last year several UKIP candidates suggested chopping turbines down, a level of unhappiness with them that seemed completely dispropotionate. Or to put it another way, I think that Trump was preaching to the choir.
Kay
Fake news alert:
Cable news is spreading the Trump lie that Trump decides whether to investigate people or not.
Not true. It’s fake news.
boatboy_srq
@Kay: No, they don’t. In no small part because they’ve spent the last three decades convincing themselves it DOESNT work.
Chris
@boatboy_srq:
I don’t buy it.
gene108
Didn’t Ted Kennedy lobby to keep a windfarm from being built off the MA coast, because it spoiled the view of the ocean?
So both sides are equally as guilty.
So shut up about Trump’s conflicts of interest.
This is how I see the story playing out.
dww44
@JMG: I was a sophomore in college and I not only remember everything from that weekend and the following week I also have undimmed mental videos that frequently show up for a replaying.
Also, this past weekend the National Geographic channel played film footage from various TV and media outlets in Texas that had never been shown before. A lot of it centered on what happened that morning in Ft. Worth and Dallas and how thrilled most Texans were with the President’s visit. It was truly a step back in time. Truly innocent times in many respects. Things did change forever that day.
Peale
@Neil W: wind turbines are for poofs. Manly men solve energy problems by leveling countries.
Kay
Another lie:
Donald Trump doesn’t “pursue charges” or NOT “pursue charges” because the President doesn’t have that power in the United States of America.
Do they need a cheat sheet on the basic governmental functions? They have now spread this lie far and wide.
kindness
I try really hard not to hate. Loathing is fine. Utter contempt is cool. But this Hope Hicks person is pushing all of my buttons. How many times does she get to lie in our faces? How many times will she issue unveiled threats of ‘They better be careful what they say or else….’?
I’ll give good ole Hope a fine reminder: if Trump thinks running things like a Godfather is the way it’s supposed to go down, he should be very careful or he may get what he’s asking for.
boatboy_srq
@Major Major Major Major: Trump seems as likely to bomb Germany over some Der Spiegel article (or Britain because Melania winds up on Page Three somewhere) as some actual hostile locale for some actual national threat. Stability and restraint are so overrated
Betty Cracker
@Barbara: You said name-calling “presupposes a point of view.” Yep, it sure does, one for which I make no apologies.
Barbara
@Neil W: It’s ironic, of course, because it was a prolonged and politically costly project of the Conservative Party to kill coal in Britain. On the other hand, their love affair with Putin might be causing them to try to prop up Russia via prolonging dependence on Russian natural gas. Especially if, as is reported in some places, Russia is funding people or parties taking that position. That would explain a lot.
Kay
We deserve to be a banana republic. We’re too dumb to survive. Some other country will rise when we sink and that other country will have earned the spot.
Barbara
@Betty Cracker: I am not telling you how or what to write. Just what I am more likely to read and find effective. You take it for whatever it’s worth to you.
ETA: And if it’s worth nothing, you don’t need to respond to me.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: People (including me) are pointing that out on Twitter, not that it’ll do any good. What’s that expression? A lie travels half way around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes?
D58826
der Fuhrer is so great his lips don’t have to be moving to still be lying.
Seems he also pitched Nigel Farange for ambassador to US. 10 Downing’s response was short and sweet – ‘There is no vacancy’
Elizabelle
@Barbara: No royal corgis? First Brexit, then Tr ___, and then this.
boatboy_srq
@Chris: There’s no predictability . Hea already redefining The Wall, he’s just said he won’t prosecute HRC (and no small percentage of his voters wanted tried [and publicly hanged, but that’s another story]), and he’s all over the policy map on just about every item.
I’m not suggesting that he’ll deliberately obstruct them,but I do think his self-interest and his complete ignorance of how the office works will hinder the partisans significantly.
germy
We’re always saying here how the MSM goes easy on him; ignores his scandals. But they’re also pretty full of themselves, and don’t like being treated disrespectfully.
I mean, if you mistreat a dog often enough, isn’t there a good chance he’ll eventually turn and bite?
germy
@D58826: The Señor Wences of lying.
BigHank53
“Conservatives” hate wind farms because hippies like them. The end. It’s just Cleek’s Law.
I’m using scare quotes there because I can’t for the life of me figure out what they want to conserve: it’s not energy, or money, or people’s lives.
cosima
@Bobbo: Exactly. Windfarms in Scotland are exactly the sort of thing that he could get behind because a) they are hideous eyesores and most people hate them here, and b) they are being built everywhere due to gov corruption & cronyism, even though the subsidies are no longer in place. However, this particular windfarm was within sight of his loathed golf course, so he threw a tantrum and it became something that was supported by some only because he was so against it.
He is even more loathed in Scotland than Farage, and that is really saying something.
It is my only solace at this point, the fact that I at least do not have to cull my social circle or be subjected to Trump supporters. Because honestly, I’m feeling worse by the day (since the election) rather than better, and I am finding myself becoming sort of left-wing-tinfoil-hattish in that I having actually been thinking that the voting was altered to allow this win, and that the left will have a difficult time ever winning another election if we let that go and don’t investigate. I’m going all in on the crazy & despair.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: I enjoy reading you BC, you are among the most entertaining of FPers. i do think that calling the President in waiting trivializes the threat he represents, its not about bipartisanship. It was suggestion, ignore it if you wish.
SiubhanDuinne
Trump had a meeting scheduled today with the NYT.
Early this morning, he tweeted that he had cancelled the meeting (naturally throwing a few epithets in the Times’s general direction).
Just now, his spokesperson announced that the meeting was back on.
He spins so fast he makes Linda Blair look like one of Medusa’s victims.
(Obligatory.)
David Evans
@mai naem mobile: I drive up to Inverness quite often. I find the wind turbines add interest and sometimes beauty to what is, to be honest, quite a bleak landscape in places. The Scots are not idiots, they are not going to spoil the iconic views that attract the tourists.
Ruckus
@Elizabelle:
Way, way too much credit. These are the guys who went out for the team and the coach fell down laughing at them during qual week. Third string? These guys never were even considered for the team. And that’s the entirety of them, from the top to the bottom. These are the losers who schemed about getting even. And it looks like they are.
The Moar You Know
@germy: Depends on the dog. The sad answer is, usually not. You’d have a lot fewer people mistreating dogs if they did.
Another one of the sad things you find out training dogs.
GxB
@efgoldman: (In OTT proper Brit accent): Well Helllloooo Donald! So kind of you to call. What’s that? You’ll be in town next week? Oh, so dreadfully sorry, but I shall be washing my hair… Yes the entire week, each follicle must be carefully cleansed and manicured individually… Pity that….
schrodinger's cat
@Tom Levenson: Why should I sue you, you are within your rights to call anyone whatever you want. I just think its an ineffective strategy against the one who shall not be named.
Gin & Tonic
@SiubhanDuinne: According to the NYT, it was initially agreed to be on the record, then Il Donaldo asked that it be off the record, and the NYT said “no, thanks.” Props to them if that’s true.
It’s all about pissing contests with him.
HRA
Windmills are at the shore of Lake Erie where once stood the steel mill. With the progress made in waterfront in the adjoining city of Buffalo, there comes a push to take down the windmills ever so often and plans shown ever so often. It’s a lost cause. The owner of the land is not local or even a US citizen. The ground is tainted to the extent of very high danger.
I bought into the windmills when it was offered a few years ago. The utilities payments are lower. Once year in December the payment is zero or $16 for the electric bill in an all electric house.
The route in PA on the way to MD was awesome in seeing the hills full of windmills. Although, yes it is also sad to realize what it has done to the former furry occupants.
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
I was 21. My then-fiancé and I were in a downtown Atlanta jewelry store getting our rings fitted and deciding on the engravings when somebody ran in from Peachtree Street shouting the news. Naturally, was glued to the tiny portable b/w TV pretty solidly for the next four days.
(We were Republicans then, and actually had planned to attend some kind of local YR meeting scheduled for the evening of the 22nd. To their credit, they cancelled the event out of respect. I wonder whether today’s RWNJ GOP would do the same.)
Quinerly
@germy:
Thanks for posting this. News now that the NY Times meeting is back on. A true presidency cannot sustain at this whiplash, erratic, petty pace (although I didn’t think a campaign could, so I don’t really know for sure?) Deep in my heart, I think he is cracking….has been cracking. Not so sure he will make it until inauguration. The press is going to want stories (no interest in Clinton now!)…pressure like he has never experienced is on. Just got a feeling about this.
schrodinger's cat
@SiubhanDuinne: Dance on the grave.
Gindy51
@JMG: I was 5, still remember the whole damned day.
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat: We’ll have to agree to disagree, then. I don’t believe calling the shit-gibbon names trivializes the threat he represents. Humor, and yes, even name-calling, are time-honored ways to puncture the aura of power playground bullies cultivate to intimidate others, and the same is true even when a playground bully grows up to be POTUS.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodinger’s cat: if we’re going with the Berlusconi theory that Trump’s strength lies in how insane his opponents sound to those who don’t understand history, then you’re right.
geg6
@Betty Cracker:
If it means anything at all to you, your great outraged but humorous posts are some of my absolute favorites. And the very idea that in order to take the danger of Trump seriously we have to stop making fun of him makes me think these people are completely unaware of the role of the jester in midieval courts. It was a dangerous but absolutely necessary role. You and others like you fill that role on the interwebs. And I, for one thank you for it and want you to continue in that vital role.
Kay
@Quinerly:
I think they can. They’re erratic and petty. This is how they are – it’s WHAT they are.
I think the people who can reject this and make them stop are the public. The public may get tired of having their country run like a game show, especially after Obama’s Zen-like calm and focus :)
SiubhanDuinne
@Jeffro:
Thanks. Just downloaded the Kindle version to my iPad.
Yoda Dog
@Quinerly: I hear this alot and as much as I would love to believe that, I think its just horribly underestimating the threat level here. He’s not fucking cracking, IMO. Quite the opposite, I see a sociopath that cant wait to get in the pilot’s seat and start the real skull-fuckery.
Obviously, I’m praying that your take is the correct one.
Neil W
@Barbara: Well quite. North Sea oil/gas is Scottish, coal miners are all communists. Also we don’t build turbines in this country so they’re built by foreigners. (UKIP in South East England are mostly disenchanted small government tories so the idea of maybe supporting our own engineering sector to build it up in the long term, especially now we’re going to be outside the EU (probably, eventually), doesn’t come up for some reason). Nuclear is sometimes okay with them until someone points out that they would be built by the Chinese or the French, we don’t produce Uranium in this country, and would you rather have a wind turbine or a nuclear reactor in the next town?
UKIP are all for independence until you start pointing out some policies that might actually be needed and then it’s all “stop complaining Brexit is happening” or “the EU is worse”. Great. Let’s actually do something to make it work then.
(And now to calm down)
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: I agree about playground bullies, I am not averse to name calling myself. I don’t think its an effective strategy when the person in question thrives on attention, even negative attention. Do not feed the troll is a good strategy here.
SiubhanDuinne
@Poopyman:
Heh.
Emma
@Betty Cracker: You know, there’s a project for us. I would volunteer to work on that.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: I agree about playground bullies, I am not averse to name calling myself. I don’t think its an effective strategy when the person in question thrives on attention, even negative attention. Do not feed the troll is a good strategy here.
Reposting my comment since the first one is in moderation.
hovercraft
@mai naem mobile:
According to US Fish and Wildlife these are the leading causes of death for birds.
Cats 2.4 billion
Glass-buildings 303 million
Vehicles 200 million
Electrical Lines 25 million
Communication Towers 6.5 million
Wind Turbines 174 thousand
Electrocutions 5.4 million
Whenever it bitches about the wind turbines, it raises the issue of bird deaths, but unless we are also giving up living in structures with windows, and giving up our cars, phones and electricity, it’s full of shit.
Poopyman
@schrodinger’s cat: Troll? He’s the FUCKING PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES!
Anything that I can do to add to an atmosphere of disrespect for/to this fascist and his fascistic administration that keeps at least a foot in the door for democracy, I’ll do. And that includes name calling. In fact, that’s the LEAST, literally, I can do.
Barbara
@Neil W: Once upon a time, in 1991, I was able to attend the “Question the Prime Minister” session of Parliament that, by complete serendipity was held 15 hours after the initiation of the first invasion of Iraq. I will never forget the gentleman (blowhard) who stood up and began ticking off all the nationalities that had been part of the invasion, “but of course, no FRENCH men took part!” Whereupon John Majors stood up and said something like, “I can report that within the last three hours the blah blah blah regiment of the French Brigades began moving into wherever in Iraq.” I asked my hosts about this and they just rolled their eyes. I guess it was a small mercy that he said “French” instead of “Frogs.” And it’s not like France has ever invaded England, whereas, English “godons” spent nearly 100 years in what is now French territory . . .
Calouste
@Barbara: Western Europe is moving away from fossil fuels as fast as it can, and one of the reasons is the dependency on Russia. Norway is on course to ban the sale of non-electric cars by 2025, with other countries expected to follow in the 5-10 years after that. I read a story just this week that Amsterdam plans to have completely stopped the use of natural gas by households by 2050.
geg6
@schrodinger’s cat:
I think you underestimate the value of such things in dealing with the Hair Fuhrer. I’m fairly certain that he has no sense of humor about himself. At all. In any way. In the case of such a person, creative name calling is subversive brilliance. I plan to never use his actual name while he’s in office. Nor will I ever call him president. Normalizing him is the big mistake, IMHO. My contempt for him will always be front and center. And making fun of him is just another form of contempt.
SiubhanDuinne
@Barbara:
Kind of, but not quite. One of her four dogs died a few months ago; she still has one corgi and a couple of dorgis, but will not replace them as they age and pass. As a Queen watcher, I follow these things ;-)
schrodinger's cat
@Poopyman: Call him the nastiest epithet you can think of, yes that will teach him a lesson.
Calouste
@Barbara:
Depends on what nationality you want to assign to William the Conqueror.
Quinerly
@Yoda Dog:
Oh, I see a sociopath without a doubt. I guess what I’m trying to say that being a president for him is going to be so much different than the adoring rally crowds that fed him, pushed him. People move on, other things to do so if he goes through with these regular rallies one of his advisors touted a few days ago, it’s just not going to be the same. That coupled with the press….that now seems to be trying to do its job (no Corrupt Clinton narratives to push)…press needs a story. I just don’t see him sustaining the pressure..the job, the bickering people he is surrounding himself with, and the press now really hounding him/leaking. We aren’t a total of 14 days in….this is unattainable if this keeps up while in office.
Woodrowfan
@Elizabelle: We Are So Frelled.
schrodinger's cat
@geg6: I am not normalizing him at all. He is not normal. I am too stunned and mad to be snarky or even enjoy snark right now.
cmorenc
@albertZ:
Attempts by the Trump Administration to open the regulatory floodgates on exploiting oil & gas & coal resources is that this effort will run into very strong current market-force headwinds. There is already a domestic abundance of known oilfields that aren’t economic to exploit at anywhere near current market prices, and this is true of most federal lands or offshore resources the Administration might have ambitions to open access to. Likewise, domestic demand for coal is suffering because of disadvantageous market-force competition from natural gas, particularly for electric generation from power plants – any increased production would mainly be for overseas markets. The scale-cost of producing solar panels (especially from China) has fallen to a level where solar installations are becoming increasingly competitive with fossil fuel. The fact that “green” energy sources are nearing or at the market-place tipping point for displacing fossil-fuel sources is a world-wide phenomena that the Trump Administration won’t be able to successfully suppress in the US, though they might succeed in slowing the rate of its progressive expansion of share within the US domestically.
I’m not being unrealistically rosy-eyed here; the Trump Administration’s ass-backwards energy policy will definitely harmfully retard our country’s progress, especially compared to countries with more enlightened energy policies. We’re going to lose four years on policies needed to begin addressing climate change. All I’m saying is that neither will the Trump Administration be nearly as successful as they hoped in their perverse determination to push the country backward on energy policy.
hovercraft
@Major Major Major Major:
Major, it’s time to reach acceptance, of the what these assholes have done to our country. They are so mad at us and hate us so much that they are willing to risk the total destruction of everything the nation has always claimed to be. The Shitgibbon is as bad as we think it is, if anything it may actually be worse. Because as bad as it’s been for the last year and a half, it seems to be actually worse now that it’s won. So as much as I’m usually an optimist, this is no time for that, reality is just so bad and it gets worse every day, prepare yourself and yours for a calamitus four years. As members of hated minorities we don’t have the luxury of optimism, we must prepare for the worst.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Poopyman: I also think that a lot of those “college-educated whites” and more affluent types who in the end voted for tax cuts are soft Trump support. They told themselves that he would grow in office, Mike Pence would rein him in, kind of like people told themselves Uncle Colin and Uncle Dick would help Junior mature in office. I think anything that softens that soft support is good.
That said, I don’t know how much that embarrassment and buyer’s remorse is going to transfer to the GOP congress, who are at this point the only check on actual policy
ETA: also, this is just a blog, Call him the Shitgibbon, call him a fascist, we’re just talking to each other.
Bitter Scribe
Isn’t it true that the Scots overwhelmingly voted against Brexit and can’t stand Trump? IMO, they’re not going to let him tell them what to do.
schrodinger's cat
@SiubhanDuinne: Ahh yes the dear sweet old lady who is the inheritor of ill gotten fortune.
tobie
@Gin & Tonic:
I gather the meeting with the NYT is back on. The first half with be off the record with the publisher, the second on the record with reporters. I don’t feel good about this. The whole thing should be on the record. Period.
Quinerly
@Kay:
Actually, that’s what I was getting at. You gotta figure in the scheme of things his % of true believers is small..27%?. The rest of the public won’t put up with this day in and day out. They might not have been fond of Obama but there couldn’t be a greater contrast. I don’t know. It’s all so surreal to me. Still can’t process it. Certainty not trying to be dismissive or to normalize it.
SiubhanDuinne
@Kay:
I’m listening to BBC’s Newshour, as I do most mornings, and they just made this very point. Nice irony when the Brits are put in the position of pointing out to a US president-elect what he can and cannot do in office.
hovercraft
@Betty Cracker:
THIS
I will only refer to it as Shitgibbon, as is my right in this country. The fact that is I do not respect it, and it doesn’t respect me. This is what is helping me cope with everything that’s happened, calling it names does not negate how dangerous it is, I still see the need for lawful resistance. When someone starts paying me to comment about politics, I’ll start to refer to it in more respectful terms, out of respect for the office, not the occupant.
Elizabelle
@geg6: Yup. Agree with your take and strategy.
I hope the “president-elect [of suckerzzz!] finds himself isolated in the White House enduring all manner of slaps, over and over. Which will sting. (No actual talent appearing at White House festivities, having to hang out with the fourth- and fifth string retreads he surrounds himself with.) Maybe even a kid under indictment!
geg6
@schrodinger’s cat:
You do realize that he’s not the target here, right? It’s the people who intereact with who need to be aware of our utter contempt for him. A serious criticism from a substantive standpoint convinces almost no one, which is a truth this election just reinforced. Make him a ridiculous figure, inept and clumsy and stupid. His hardcore minions will be frothingly angry over it but most people don’t want to be associated with the guy who doesn’t get that he’s a joke and an embarrassment. Make sure that is how he is framed and that’s how he’ll be viewed. Have we learned nothing from what they did to Hillary, Kerry and Gore? Don’t allow him to be taken seriously by the general public. Point to his gaping flaws and laugh. Make fun of the pretensions of his Nazi counsellors and followers. It doesn’t mean they aren’t dangerous, but it undercuts the possibility that he will be able to escape that initial framing and will make it more difficult to take his more radical policies to the public without them asking themselves whether they really want to throw out the Constitution for and Orange Shitgibbon.
Shalimar
It will be an interesting 4 years in graft. No one so far is embarrassed to say all the things they talk about with Trump. He’s the president. It apparently is not illegal to bribe him. Why be embarrassed by your side of the quid pro quo?
Quinerly
@schrodinger’s cat:
I’m with you at #107. I probably need to stop trying to articulate my thoughts here…still in shock, plus trying to type on the smarty pants phone makes it hard for the thoughts to flow. I just don’t see how the over 27% of the sane public and the press will put up with this whiplash back and forth shit, the corruption that is coming out everyday, the petty tweets, all of it…For the first day, since the election, I’m hopeful that he might not be inaugurated. I’m not naive…maybe I’m just losing it myself.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
This is the problem about orginazing and systematic oppisition to Trump – the guy is such an utter idiot it’s impossible to logically anticpate his actions because he does not do things logically. This is really a “the Emperor has not clothes” situation.
FlipYrWhig
@cmorenc: I don’t think Trump knows anything EVEN ABOUT BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS. For instance: what investor WANTS to start firing up old industrial plants in the Rust Belt? It has to be profitable, doesn’t it? Where is that coming from? Where is the capital for this act of… capitalism? You know, pitch it Shark Tank-style and see who thinks it’s a great idea to use old buildings and untrained people to do last century’s work. He thinks he can command people to do things, because he’s a feudalist at heart. Why do you think he has such a fondness for the name “Bar(r)on”?
J R in WV
@Barbara:
Turkey already took control of the Air Force base they let us use. This happened right after the “coup” was quelled, which took, what, about 36 hours?
That’s so we can’t support the Kurds, who are our only real allies in the middle east, when the Turks attempt to wipe them out in a totally genocidal ragegasm.
It would at this point only be common sense for the Germans to take control of all military resources in Europe, so that Trump cannot launch his own genocidal attacks from their territory. They know who he would blame for the sudden lack of [fill in Trumps hatred of the day here] in the world.
I don’t know if there are any special ordinance devices in Italy, and I doubt that there are any in Saudi Arabia. So that doesn’t matter as much.
Major Major Major Major
@hovercraft:
Hey, I’m the one here going around linking that autocracy survival guide left and right. I’ve volunteered to do a guest post on encryption and TOR. I just decided this would be my own personal decision point.
Yoda Dog
@Quinerly: But as a sociopath/moral cypher/etc.., is he feeling this “pressure” you keep referring to? I’m skeptical. I’m also skeptical his adoring crowds have or will move on. I think these rally’s will be just as big and boisterous as they ever were in the campaign. These people are even more incorrigible now that he’s won. It’s going to be fucking nuremberg all year long for Trump and he’s going to eat up every second.
Obama keeps referring to a “reality check” too, also, which rings similarly to your take here for me. But I just don’t buy it. Trump isnt playing by Obama’s rules. He’s going to play by Rove’s. Reality isnt going to stop him, that ship sailed on November 8th. They’ll just make up whatever they want as they go along now. That’s the new reality. We’re post-truth.
germy
@The Moar You Know: Look at his last statement:
You’re right; he’ll whip them like dogs and they’ll forgive him every time.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I always thought it was kind of a social status/business penis envy with the Hiltons
Elizabelle
@germy: But we see them as dogs.
And not the courageous four-footed type. The masks have fallen off everyone.
Poopyman
@Shalimar:
Not for another 60 days, fortunately.
It still is, and I hope there are prosecutors taking note.
Please proceed, shitgibbon.
hovercraft
@germy:
It’s voters have already priced that in, the Shitgibbon spent it’s entire campaign crying about an unfair biased media that lied about it all the time. So now all scandals and the resulting negative press, which will be near constant, will be discounted as merely more of the “lying liberal media”, trying to bring down the Shitgibbon just as they did during the campaign. The MSM got played by the right, for years they’ve fought to prove to them that they were not “liberal” by leaning over backwards to give them the benefit of the doubt on everything, while at the same time holding democrats to a higher standard, the right lurched to the far right and the media just kept spouting bullshit about both sides. They’ve painted themselves into a corner where they are now reviled by both sides, they may take comfort in believing that means they are doing their jobs, but only one side was giving them an audience. Let’s see how that works out for their viability long term.
D58826
TPP has been a major topic on this blog as well as in the election. Now I don’t presume to understand most of it and don’t dispute the critics ofthe plan but there was a lot more at stake than just electoral politics
Sounds like pulling out of TPP rather than trying to fix some ofthe problems is a big win for China and Russia
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/22/trump-just-announced-hed-abandon-the-tpp-on-day-one-this-is-what-happens-next/
opiejeanne
@efgoldman: I was 13, in the 8th grade, and it was announced over the new intercom system at my newly-built school. I was ostracized by my classmates because I didn’t immediately burst into tears, but that was also the day Dad was bringing Mom home from the hospital after the biopsy of a lump in her left breast and all week had been fraught with worry that she was going to die of cancer; we’d only found out the evening before that it was just a lump, just a benign lump. That weekend was miserable, whipsawing between disbelief at the horror and relief for my personal worry.
My Republican parents had us write letters to Jackie and her children expressing our mutual sorrow. I did cry over the weekend but too late and not conspicuous for my fellow 8th graders to judge my sincerity.
Neil W
@Barbara: And it’s not like France has ever invaded England
We have long memories in these parts. The mayor of a local town was killed when a French fleet sacked the town, and his successors to this day wear black robes on official occasions in rememberance. This was 28 August 1457.
As might be expected the town is now twinned with the French port the fleet sailed from.
Elizabelle
@hovercraft: Yeah. A news blackout means the usual suspects are not paying for news.
I’ve always thought the flying monkeys who show up in the reader comments sections aren’t subscribers, because they so rarely convince one they actually read the story they’re wailing on.
But the fucking MSM can sure turn off their traditional subscribers and readers. I think they may have done so.
Who has the appetite to watch the Trump administration? I do not.
The Moar You Know
@germy: This is pretty much my dog’s reaction when he’s told that he can’t get on the couch. Unlike this reporter, my dog manages to maintain his dignity – in large part because, unlike Trump, I do not discipline animals with humiliation. It doesn’t work. In fact, it almost always makes things worse.
hovercraft
@Major Major Major Major:
Fine hold onto that sliver of hope, so long as you are prepared for the apocalypse.
Some things it wants to do, it can’t, but there are enough terrible things it can do, that it will take years to correct them.
Maybe it’s time to become a “prepper”, my family are Seventh Day Adventists, there is a huge prepper element to the church, it might be time for me to look into rejoining the fold, if only for that aspect of it.
opiejeanne
@mai naem mobile: I like those wind turbines as well as the ones near Altamont Pass, where the 580 peels off of the I-5 and heads West toward San Francisco. You used to be able to see where the free Stones concert was held in 1969, at a ratty little two-bit racetrack just south of the 580.
Barbara
@Calouste: I think the point is that Putin is fighting a rearguard action wherever he can to disrupt these plans. To think of the raw talent that must exist among Russian scientists and to think how Putin has utterly and totally squandered it in favor of a declining asset in the ground is sad. To think we are following his lead by electing a small minded bully like Trump is even sadder. For Trump supporters, it will never be morning in America, it will always be mourning over what used to be in America.
Major Major Major Major
@hovercraft: it’s not like he’s going to have a Sista Souljah moment in the next few hours. The news day is half over. I am preparing, don’t worry. I know there’s plenty he can do just on his own.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
me too, I used to see them driving along I-80 in western Iowa
Peale
@D58826: yep. The way the TPP was politicized was unfortunate. However trade treaties are unpopular with people whose votes we’re going to need. So that’s that. On the plus side, Donald is about to go to trade war with Mexico, which is outlets second largest trade partner. So even on the Western Hemisphere I think we’ll find the Anit-US stance will be a political winner. We have a national security team headed by men who are convinced allies are enemies whose paranoid fantasies of an axis of enemies surround us. Imagine what they’ll be thinking when the world does just dump us?
Uncharismatic megafauna
@Bobbo:
This. His view of his balance sheet is the only view he gives a shit about. It really worries me that people take this as some kind of policy statement about wind energy or evidence of his sensitive aesthetic nature.
Kay
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
True, but we all know what the GOP Congress want to do and beating them is beating Trump.
Medicare phase-out and giant tax cuts. There’s 2 parts to Trumpism – the chaos is just the stuff swirling around while the looting moves forward in Congress.
WereBear
@hovercraft: And those figures are giving cats the blame for pesticides and habitat destruction.
Notice those aren’t even on the list.
Major Major Major Major
@Kay: 3 parts. You forgot law and order. I have little doubt that the FBI will be making full use of the PATRIOT Act, and we’ll probably see a “papers please” system within two years.
D58826
@Peale: As a good citizen and a Christian (well sorta) I guess I should feel sorry for the Americans who lose their jobs as a result of this idiocy but if they are trump voters – you reap what you sow.
FlipYrWhig
@Peale: I still say that “trade” was almost entirely a euphemism in this election, standing in on the right for “Mexicans took our jobs and China took over our store shelves” and on the left for “something something corporations.” How many people holding signs with “TPP” in a Ghostbusters-style slashed circle knew anything about the actual provisions of the TPP? I don’t think it was many. I think it became more of a badge of cool, like, “I’m opposed to shit you’ve never even HEARD OF, sheeple.”
Larkspur
@SiubhanDuinne: I just felt an unexpected little rush of affection for the Queen, because I am assuming that although she has plenty of staff to care for her dogs even though she may not physically be able to provide that care herself, it seems like she loves her corgis so much that she would rather have them fade away as she nears the end of her life, rather than leave behind a whole young pack, without her there. This is what I am making up in my head, anyway.
Poopyman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Sentence structure fail? Or not?
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I liked them too but as there get to be more and more of them they so dominate the landscape it’s an odd feeling.
They are so much bigger than anything else in some places and where it’s flat, flat, flat they can seem overwhelming.
It’s miles and miles driving alongside them. It’s disorienting.
Major Major Major Major
@FlipYrWhig: the set of people I know who support TPP intersects almost completely with the set of people i know who understand it.
Emma
@Larkspur: It’s my understanding that is what is happening (I have an acquaintance with a corgi fetish, so I get news like these).
hovercraft
@D58826:
This is what President Failing Progressives Everyday has been telling us for the last two years, Unfortunately between Bernie and the Shitgibbon running around telling the rubes that NAFTA was responsible for all of their woes, even though the rust belt has been on the decline since the seventies, people bought it hook line and sinker. Simplicity sells, complexity not so much.
That doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker, but it’s the reality we are all facing, globalization, automation and AI are all going to continue, putting your head in the sand and promising to bring back the good old days will not stop it.
FlipYrWhig
@Major Major Major Major: I tend to dismiss arguments about any political agreement that take the form, “But it could have been better.” That’s not a praiseworthy observation, it’s trivially true of all agreements. There are certainly smart people who argue against its provisions. I am not an expert; I know little about international trade. I am not substituting my judgment for theirs. I just fundamentally mistrust the _kind_ of argument I tend to hear about it.
hovercraft
@WereBear:
Major Major Major Major
@FlipYrWhig: yeah, it’s not a good type of argument. But “trade!!!” in this election didn’t mean “how much authority should Vietnam hold over environmental regulations in the TPP”
jenn
@hovercraft: Part of the issue with wind turbines, though, is not the numbers of birds per se, but what kinds. Wind farms sited along flyways can disproportionately kill raptors. There have also been plans to put wind farms off the Gulf Coast, which could be catastrophic for migrating birds. I like using wind energy, but it’s definitely something that requires a lot of thought in terms of where the farms are located, and flexibility in terms of usage (e.g., you can have wind farms off the Gulf Coast, as long as you shut them down when birds are migrating in spring).
Major Major Major Major
@jenn: don’t they kill bats too?
Larkspur
@efgoldman: Yeah, I remember it too. I was in grade school, and it was recess so we were inside. I don’t remember if there was an announcement on the PA system, but probably. We were all shocked but we kind of didn’t know what to do. Some of the boys acted out with shooting gestures and the girls scolded them, but the boys weren’t being malicious. None of us knew how to experience the news.
We were sent home early. My parents were shocked. They were staunch Republicans and couldn’t stand that “That Man” was in the White House. (My father was sure Kennedy had a direct phone line to the Vatican to get instructions.) So there was no crying, but there was no taunting or actual celebrating either. I think it was a solemn and exciting event for them.
My aunt and uncle and cousins drove down from Port Huron to spend the weekend – they hadn’t planned to, but it was a big deal. I was entertaining my young cousins in the basement when I heard the grown-ups roar upstairs – that was when Oswald was shot. The main thing I remember is that my mother had wanted a rocking chair, and my father kept saying “Not while That Man is in the White House!” because rocking chairs were the fashion then. Apparently JFK liked them because they eased his back pain. So that weekend my father announced that he would buy my mother a rocking chair. I’m looking at that chair right now. It migrated to California to be with me and it has blue seat cushions.
sukabi
@Tom Levenson: Ha, I was also 5, was coming home from kindergarten in the back seat of friends car, announcement on the radio….horrible month as my grandpa had just suddenly died shortly before…I do remember it. Ugh.
Citizen Alan
@schrodinger’s cat:
To be fair, nearly all fortunes are ill-gotten. Except for a tiny handful of JK Rowling types, i believe its impossible to become a billionaire through ethical means.
Kay
Ugh. He’s so gross. This is at the meeting where he whined and complained and talked about himself the whole time:
Latching onto Obama in a desperate bid to borrow some credibility.
It’s not just “unfit” to President. He’s horrible just as an average person. He doesn’t even meet the lowest bar possible.
sukabi
@kindness: the supposition that once they grab the reigns of power anything they say is true / law comes from deep within their psychy…it’s the fundamental principle of the rw mouth breather…
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Liveblog of NC State Board of Elections hearing
D58826
@Emma: and they have their meetings in a phone booth? if they can find one?
CaseyL
@efgoldman: I was 7, and remember that we all went to my grandparents’ house to watch the funeral. I also clearly remember wondering, since everyone was so upset the President was dead, why didn’t he stop being dead?
I have another Kennedy memory, from a couple years before the assassination: Being too sick to go to school, and the doctor making a house call. The doctor looked a little like JFK, which resemblance my feverish state emphasized, and I remember thinking it was the President who’d come to see me.
SiubhanDuinne
@Larkspur:
I’m sure that was part of her decision. The other concern was the real likelihood that she, now in her 90s, might trip on one (or several!) of them and break something.*
*ETA: By “something” I mean an arm or hip, not a priceless Meissen vase.
D58826
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: What is truly amazing is not that they are trying to steal the election (that’s been done before) but they are so blatantly brazenly open about what they are doing. McCory/GOP aren’t angry about voter fraud, they are angry that after all of the voter fraud they built into the system they STILL lost.
Geeno
@germy: Win!
Barbara
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: @Kay: And yet, we have all gotten used to — you know — thousands of miles of highway, not to mention, miles and miles of wire and telephone polls and a variety of other ugly man made things. In Maine, a group of residents sued because they said that the whine interfered with the enjoyment of their pristine environment, which is why they chose to live where they did. I have stopped trying to apply logic — moving yourself into a house with electricity all by itself makes your natural environment not pristine.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@D58826: I understand how you feel about Trump voters, but honestly, no one deserves what’s coming.
hovercraft
@Kay:
I feel for the President, having to bite his tongue, fortunately unlike this rest of the bootlickers he doesn’t have to take anything he said about it back. We all know how he feels and what he thinks about the Shitgibbon, but as he said the American people have made their choice, it’s a minorities choice, but still they chose. So now for the sake of the country he will give remedial lessons to a creature that is too stupid to know how stupid it is.
He’s the best President of my life, and a much better person than I am, I would be inclined to say, you broke it you own it, to it’s fans, and walk away. But hey maybe this is his final 11th dimensional chess move, he helps it as much as he can, and then when it crashes and burns he can say he did his best to prepare it, but it was too stupid to listen and learn.
Larkspur
@SiubhanDuinne: That’s a good point. I worry about some of my elderly acquaintances/clients in similar situations. They also tend to have lots of non-dog tchotchkes and throw rugs around. I do what I can, but old peoples is stubborn. And most of us hate to acknowledge our impending decrepitude. Like I hate that my night vision is starting to suck.
Kay
@Barbara:
I think it’s the scale of the turbines that’s different. They’re enormous, particularly against a flat landscape. They dwarf everything around them. As I said, we have had an experimental turbine station that is visible from my house for a decade. I thought those were oddly attractive. But when you get hundreds it’s a whole other thing.
Kay
@hovercraft:
It’s pathetic that the President-elect is a name-dropper. He thinks saying Obama called him twice elevates his status. He goes on to name-drop Romney. There is no “there, there” with Donald Trump. He’s not a functioning adult. He’s the President! He doesn’t need to bootstrap off Obama and Romney! It’s disturbing.
This is just an impossible situation. He’s a bad hire. He won’t get better. He simply doesn’t meet the requirements for this job. Even putting aside his bigotry and ignorance of even basic government functions he has a bad personality.
germy
@Kay: I don’t have a link, but I remember reading about offshore wind turbines. More wind over the ocean. The turbines float on platforms.
Jeffro
@D58826:
How can you be The Man if you can’t keep people down in the end?
McCory must have protested a whole lot of failed ‘saving throws’ back in the old days, must have swept quite a few RISK boards clean…
Ian
@Gin & Tonic:
No props to them. The day little douche has them lined up against a wall and shot I will say “I’m sorry, I am to busy looking for EMAILS!”.
Jeffro
@Kay:
Spot-on. It’s not that he is low or under-performing in a category or three, it’s that he’s bad on every metric, across the board. But the biggest flaw really is his sheer stupidity, it’s what drives everything else: the rage against smarter people, the inability to change, or to control himself. He’s just a fucking moron.
ANYway…there’s still time, folks…EC doesn’t vote until Dec 19th…that’s almost an eternity away. Ah the wonders that will reveal themselves to America in the next four weeks, when just the past two have been so insightful…
schrodinger's cat
@Citizen Alan: Its blood money, obtained by sucking India and other countries dry and by killing people in the millions. 60 million plus Indians dead due to famine alone in the 90 years under the British Crown.
hovercraft
@D58826:
The Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act and the congress refused to fix it, and there was barely a peep from the media, something that people bled and died for, and the media basically accepted John Roberts assertion that racism is a thing of the past now, move along everyone nothing to see here. States rushed into the breach to put up as many barriers as possible to the ballot, and many GOP legislators said out loud that they were trying to suppress democratic voters, but still the media barley batted an eye. So what would stop them from taking the next step? The Shitgibbons antics are keeping the media entertained so McCory and his friends are going to keep at it, no one looking so why not. What’s the worst they can do, hold a few demonstrations, sue? Wisconsin’s Gerry mandering has just been declared unconstitutional, counties in NC suppressed the early vote, and many other interventions around the country helped the GOP in this election, but those stories are just too boring when they have a freak show to keep them entertained.
So yes they will try to steal this in broad day light, whose going to stop them?
opiejeanne
@Neil W: Are you somewhere in East Sussex? Ypres Tower/Rye Castle was built in 1249 because of the constant raids along that coast.
Jeffro
Btw speaking of this thread’s title…and the recurring theme of how badly the GOP wants us to focus on stupid stuff: Rush Limbaugh’s on a tear comparing the HAMILTON cast to…wait for it…John Wilkes Booth. Yes, they verbally assassinated Mike Pence, did you know that? LOL Oh Rush, you talent-on-loan-from-God, you.
We can’t beat the Manufactured Outrage Factory, so probably best not to join in the first place. How’s that saying go again? “Sometimes the only way to win…”
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Saw that Remnick piece and had a similar thought. Obama was just trying to be polite, and if you read between the lines AT ALL from his post-meeting news conference, it’s clear Obama is handling the Trump issue the way someone might use tongs to gingerly remove a turd from a punch bowl that he knows others must drink from.
Before the election, someone here observed that Trump doesn’t seem to grasp object permanence. There’s probably something to that — a consequence of narcissistic personality disorder. He likely mistook Obama’s graciousness (something Trump can’t possibly comprehend since he is utterly devoid of it himself) as an an indication that he, Trump, had achieved the stature he thought Obama previously denied him.
The one thing I look forward to when Obama becomes a private citizen again is the prospect that he will disabuse Trump of that notion.
schrodinger's cat
@Kay: You are spot on. You should run for office, you are way more qualified than the person just elected to the highest office in the land.
Kay
@Jeffro:
He’s not a “complete” personality- not a grown up. He’s mad that Obama gets more respect than he does but at the same time feels he has to say Obama likes him. It’s just pathetic.
I haven’t hired that many people because we just have two employees and one has been here for years and years, but I made a disastrous hire once and you really know in a week. Less than that. 3 days :)
Cut your losses, America. However disruptive firing will be it will be nothing compared to the cost of keeping him on.
hovercraft
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
I strongly disagree, some of us could lose our lives, not to mention our homes and livelihoods, these morons chose to ignore every warning and elected the Shitgibbon anyway. They deserve any and everything coming to them. As a black woman with kids, I have ZERO patience or sympathy for any of them.
Elizabelle
I wish we could dump him in the EC and give the presidency to the candidate with the most votes. Over a million, and counting. I don’t know if I can stand to live through 4 years of a Trump or Pence administration. They are UNFIT. They should not serve.
I agree. Cut our losses. Before inauguration.
And how stupid for the million sane people march to be scheduled after inauguration. Do it now.
schrodinger's cat
@hovercraft: Amen sister.
Ian
@Barbara:
Norman invasion calling on line one… Something about forgetting a lunch date…
Patricia Kayden
@Amaranthine RBG: LOL!! I don’t know why I find your comment so hilarious but I can’t stop laughing at it. Perhaps we’re going to have to be quiet while Trump messes up and then burst out screaming when it tips the scales into impeachable offenses. He’s starting down that pathway already.
Cain
@schrodinger’s cat:
This. Especially 3. It makes him a toy, and we need to refer to him as President Trump with the idea that all of us speak it as an epithet. We know how to do that, yes?
In any case, I’m going to India tomorrow for a month. So I will watch from a safe distance for a little bit. This year has been absolute shit for me. I’m hoping that I get a job next month before the economy collapses. :P
EBT
@Barbara: Cool tone argument bro.
Mnemosyne
Some of the arguments here are starting to remind me of one of my favorite scenes written by one of my favorite authors, where characters who are dealing with a major crisis start criticizing each other’s coping techniques:
(Google Books has this from Miles Errant, which is one of the many multi-editions that Tor has been creating of Bujold’s books, but my edition is the single book called Mirror Dance.)
PaulWartenberg2016
If the Brits have any sense of honor and self-worth, they’d arrest the UKIP and send the most socialist hippie they can afford to send as ambassador.
schrodinger's cat
@Cain: Good luck to you on your job search. Have a great trip. Where in India, if you don’t mind sharing?
Patricia Kayden
@schrodinger’s cat: Yes to all three although I’m not sure any of us could descend to his level. He’s gone down deep into the mud quite a ways. It was fun to call him silly names during the election season but now that he’s actually about to be President, all that joking is no longer funny. He’s about to muck it up for this country and it’s going to take a lot to dig us out even if he loses in 2020. Huge sigh.
schrodinger's cat
@Cain: I suggest being factual, the winner of the Electoral College, is what I am going with.
Patricia Kayden
@hovercraft:
And why should you? Trump supporters have shown exactly how they feel about Black people and other people of color. There have been hundreds of racist incidents since Trump’s election and I expect that they will get worse after his inauguration. These are not people who deserve any sympathy — especially when they reap what they sow.
Chris
@Woodrowfan:
+1 for Farscape reference.
Kay
@germy:
Well, those are controversial too because they want to put them in the Great Lakes. Erie is the main target because it’s the shallowest of the Great Lakes but they talked about Lake Michigan too. It would be the western Michigan coast of Lake Michigan. That’s rural combined with summer houses of people (mostly) from Chicago. It’s valuable property and they don’t want giant turbines in the Lake.
They have a lot of turbines (on land) in western Michigan already. They’re close to the Lake- within 5 miles. Acre after acre of them. They grow cherries and asparagus there- I don’t know if they plant under the turbines but it’s mostly farmland.
Chris
@FlipYrWhig:
I’ve thought for a long time that we seriously overestimate how much the average businessman understands business, or even cares about business (given the business models out there where you can make money even if your company goes under). Trump is surely the ultimate example of that.
O. Felix Culpa
And the “games” begin: House GOP Defeats Gay Rights Measure
Patricia Kayden
@Jeffro: So did Rightwingers verbally assassinate President Obama when they claimed that he was not eligible to hold that office because he wasn’t born in this country? Or when they have called Mrs. Obama an ape in heels? Or when they met on the day of his first inauguration and promised to never work with President Obama? Or when one of them shouted “Liar” at him during his first SOTU?
Limbaugh can go sit down somewhere with his foolishness. Secretary Clinton had to tolerate Trump calling her a “nasty woman” to her face. Trump and Pence better get used to boos and scolding. They deserve no less.
Major Major Major Major
@Chris: And the average businessman doesn’t even have an MBA, and we’re quite familiar with how little people with those know.
ETA: @O. Felix Culpa: That happened in May.
Stan
@Denali: We are already pariahs like North Korean in a lot of places.
geg6
@hovercraft:
This childless white woman agrees with you completely.
Yoda Dog
@Jeffro: Im not sure what he did to the mouthbreathers, but he lost only cuz they we’re going in voting Trump, Burr, Cooper… How that makes any sense is beyond me. I fucking hated McCrory, so the mouthbreathers should have loved him. Its simple Cleek’s law here in NC as far as I can ever tell but I must’ve missed something… McCrory must’ve fucked up and done something good for someone at some point. That’s the only explanation that makes any sense.
And now our legislature is just gonna say “fuck it” and give it to him anyway? Well nothing surprises me after Nov 8th. President Trump Jr will be appointing our governors for us in 10 years anyways if you ask me, so fuck it all.
Kay
@Chris:
Right, but let’s not even put Trump into the “bad business person” category because he’s worse than that. He just settled for 25 million in a fraud case. Fraud isn’t “business”. It’s stealing.
This is what I mean. He’s not even up to the normal “incompetent” level. He’s worse.
SiubhanDuinne
@Kay:
@Betty Cracker:
Not long before the election, the NYT published a list of all the Twitter insults Trump had lobbed at various people and institutions since the start of his campaign. Not even from his speeches or rallies or debates — just Twitter. So here are some of the things he called the President he now “loves” so much and gets along so “great” with:
Stan
It just occurred to me how we can stop global warming in its tracks: Mandate that every wind turbine have the word “TRUMP” painted on it in gigantic gold letters. They are towers, after all.
He’ll want them EVERYWHERE.
Plan B: Let him brand the sun as a Trump property….
hovercraft
@Kay:
he fantasy of the normalization of Donald Trump—the idea that a demagogic candidate would somehow be transformed into a statesman of poise and deliberation after his Election Day victory—should now be a distant memory, an illusion shattered.
First came the obsessive Twitter rants directed at “Hamilton” and “Saturday Night Live.” Then came Monday’s astonishing aria of invective and resentment aimed at the media, delivered in a conference room on the twenty-fifth floor of Trump Tower. In the presence of television executives and anchors, Trump whined about everything from NBC News reporter Katy Tur’s coverage of him to a photograph the news network has used that shows him with a double chin. Why didn’t they use “nicer” pictures?
For more than twenty minutes, Trump railed about “outrageous” and “dishonest” coverage. When he was asked about the sort of “fake news” that now clogs social media, Trump replied that it was the networks that were guilty of spreading fake news. The “worst,” he said, were CNN (“liars!”) and NBC.
This is where we are. The President-elect does not care who knows how unforgiving or vain or distracted he is. This is who he is, and this is who will be running the executive branch of the United States government for four years.
The over-all impression of the meeting from the attendees I spoke with was that Trump showed no signs of having been sobered or changed by his elevation to the country’s highest office. Rather, said one, “He is the same kind of blustering, bluffing blowhard as he was during the campaign.”
The Trump people did say that they would allow the new President to be followed, as tradition has had it, by a team of pool reporters.
Participants said that Trump did not raise his voice, but that he went on steadily at the start of the meeting about how he had been treated poorly. “It was all so Trump,” one said. “He is like this all the time. He’ll freeze you out and then be nice and humble and sort of want you to like him.”
“But he truly doesn’t seem to understand the First Amendment,” the source continued. “He doesn’t. He thinks we are supposed to say what he says and that’s it.”
Kay
Hah! She links to a story about the son in law. Kiss that job goodbye, Katrina.
Major Major Major Major
A friend of mine just shared an image of Indiana Jones punching a Nazi with the caption “Local College Professor in Altercation with Alt-Right Serviceman”. Hah!
J R in WV
@Tom Levenson:
I was in Jr High, probably 7th grade science class. The teacher was an old white guy bigot who was visibly pleased about the death. He also told us terrible falsehoods about African-Americans, as revealed truth. No wonder so many people of our generation are so messed up about race and politics.
I recently read a political history book about politics in Dallas TX from 1959-1963. The Secret Service was (in my opinion) complicit in the assassination, there were open calls for Kennedy’s death in Dallas, where he was hated as if he were Obama, back then, almost. Once you have publicly called for someone’s immediate death, how much more can you hate them?
The major newspapers were pretty open about their hatred of Kennedy and the Democratic party, and of course we know that Trump is the first Republican candidate they didn’t endorse. I have no personal knowledge about Dallas today, but I would be shocked if their news coverage wasn’t totally in the bag for Trump.
My recollections of the days around Kennedy’s murder are pretty clear. I was in the other room at the instant when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald, my Mom, a staunch Republican, screamed in horror to see it, and I ran to see what was wrong. Both parents were real Republicans, both were horrified at the murders.
hovercraft
@Kay:
But she’s such a practiced liar, she looks straight into the camera with those crazy eyes so well. Maybe they’ll give her one last chance.
Sloane Ranger
IMHO the Shitgibbon is about dominence. He has to be the acknowledged alpha in every relationship. This is what his behaviour at the media meeting was about. If they now act in a submissive way he will be nice to them (although he will require them to demonstrate their submission at irregular but frequent intervals) If they continue to irritate him, however, expect the attacks to escalate and possibly some Federal action against the ones who have failed to bow down to him.
In the same way be very worried when he attends summits. Other leaders are very unlikely to give him the degree of respect he thinks his Alpha status deserves. Relations with key allies will suffer badly. I wait with interest to see what response His Orange Ness will give to the GB Govt now they’ve basically told him there’s no way Farage will get an ambassasorship.
Lastly, just an observation but I think that Rumpty Rumpty sees everything in dollar and cent terms. I don’t think he’s capable of considering the geo-political implications in any negotiations.
O. Felix Culpa
@Major Major Major Major: Oopsie. I’ll be more mindful of dates going forward. Thanks.
Cain
@D58826: and a huge loss to the american blue collar. But hey, let’s get over it, Trump won!
SFAW
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
No one who VOTED AGAINST Trump — whether it was FOR Hillary or AGAINST Trump — deserves what’s coming.
As for the people who whined “… but there’s just SOMETHING ABOUT Hillary that I don’t trust” — or some approximation of that statement — they deserve whatever they get, good and hard. If I thought they’d learn something from it, I might be more compassionate. But those assholes have proved, time and again, that “Party Before Country” is how they view things. When they decide to grow up, maybe they’ll deserve a less harsh view.
GrandJury
I don’t think anyone needs to fight for renewables over coal and fossil fuels anymore. Market forces are already doing that job for us.
It is now about the same cost in many places to use renewables. A lot of old coal plants are being shut down rather than upgraded. I don’t think anyone is building new coal plants.
So let the wingnuts waste their energy trying to fight this. Let them promise more coal mining when the market as the demand is getting smaller.
Emma
@Mnemosyne: I keep thinking we could learn a lot from Miles and Cordelia in this situation. Even from Gregor.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Mnemosyne: Baen.
Bujold has never written for Tor that I am aware of.
All: McCrory’s attorney has pointed out in the SBoE meeting that the Board can call a new election. They’re throwing everything at the wall to see what might stick.
Neil W
@opiejeanne: It’s Sandwich in Kent. Not entirely coincidentally part of the constituency Nigel Farage ran for during the last general election AND one that has the world’s third largest offshore wind farm off the coast.
I’ll say this; we had the most organised and least stupid UKIP campaign in the country here. Which admittedly got a bit stupid at times.
Cain
@hovercraft:
I think we made a major mistake in not consolidating our power when we had all 3 branches of government. In our arrogance, we didn’t fix things like voter fraud laws by federalizing and what not. We should have made sure that we would win future elections. Instead, we went on and on about our faith in the American people. While Republicans, once in power worked to consolidate it. Now we are fucked. I really hate the Democratic party at times, they bring yarn to a knife fight every time.
We need more aggressive leaders who can make the case about our platform, but not be above doing things like bait and switch.. e.g. tell Sunday morning show about possibility supporting trump on something and then completely change it.. say what it takes to get on the show and then keep repeating the same shit over and over again. We need to keep some global messaging with people who go on TV and keep repeating the same thing over and over again.
Major Major Major Major
@GrandJury: a trade war with China would go a long way towards making renewables expensive again.
Glidwrith
@O. Felix Culpa: That was from May of this year……
J R in WV
@schrodinger’s cat:
@Barbara:
What do you guys want to call him? Mr. President? President Trump? With respect?
‘Cause I’m having a hard time respecting him, personally.
I’m not much for using a pet slur repeatedly, although I’m not opposed to others doing so. Betty Cracker is one of my favorite B-J posters, so I won’t be skipping over her posts, at all. Actually, for me, just calling him Trump is a very real slur, as it is a brand on the level of … well history fails me, I can’t think of a national brand at the fraudulent level of Trump University, et al.
What major brand has become known for selling dreck at the price of real class? And failed totally in the marketplace as a result of their infamy? Help me out here, perhaps a medical company selling radium wraps to cure arthritis?
And I note that Trump’s favorite beach resort, Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, is going to be under water much sooner than most of Florida, which is all going to have big trouble soon. Did anyone else see the wonderful photo of the parking garage with the octopus trying to float in a couple of inches of water? In Miami Beach, which is about the same elevation of Mar-a-Lago… the garage’s security guy scooped him (the octopus) into a bucket and poured him back into the ocean, which was a nice thing to do.
But when high tides put octopi into buildings in town, it is time to stop investing in real estate in that town! And stop doing things that raise the sea level, everywhere on every coast.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Emma: Let’s see what happens?
hovercraft
@Jeffro:
One has to have a character in order to have it assassinated, a person who stands and allows people to be infected with HIV does not have any to begin with.
GrandJury
@Major Major Major Major: I don’t see how. They can make windmills and solar panels in the US for about the same cost. Mostly due to automation.
Not that it would ever come to that. I don’t see anyone wanting to target renewables in a trade war. Either export or import.
Lizzy L
Trump is meeting with the NYT. The Times people are live-blogging it on Twitter.
http://www.nytimes.com/live/trump-at-the-new-york-times-the-tweets/?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur
Cain
@schrodinger’s cat:
Thank you! I’m going to Mumbai and Bangalore. (I refuse to call by its current name, fuck those guys) I usually tool around the south since we’re Palaghat Iyers. Going for a wedding and then just hanging out for awhile. This year has been particularly wierd in the sheer number of changes, my wife had an affair, so we are getting divorced, and then I lost my job, I’m living with my wife while she maintains her relationship with the other guy (I have to save money), the divorce is amicable, and of course this election has been the last straw and I’m seriously having issues with anxiety waking up every day. I’m not a person who gets that way.. but ugh.
Major Major Major Major
@GrandJury: can they? I thought they were killing us in the solar. That could be old though.
gene108
@Cain:
Right with you there!!!
mai naem mobile
@Cain: you forgot the Senate barely had enough to prevent a filibuster and you had assholes like Ben Nelson and the Arkansas twins and you had Robert Byrd and Ted Kennedy who were sick. You also had unprecedented obstruction from the GOP. And you didn’t have a USSC who was going to go along with you. Not saying that the Demo didn’t make mistakes but hindsight is 20/20 .
Elizabelle
@J R in WV: President-Elect of the Republicans. Works fine for me.
Cain
@Sloane Ranger:
This is where his relationship with traditional republicans are going to go south. Foreign policy is very important to them. Loss of military bases and other things are going to be devastating to them. Not sure if the press will remark on that or not. Those fools are going to shoved more in the background and the crazy base is going to be more in front. Even the republican party leaders will have no control.
schrodinger's cat
@Cain: That sounds rough. Husband kitteh’s family are Palghat Iyers too. I have been to Bangalore when I was a teen. My folks are from Mumbai, have been for at least 5 generations.
Cain
@SFAW:
I plan on using the same things they’ve been telling all of us “Get over it! Your guy won the election!” Keep hammering them.. it will piss them off, and they need to get pissed off.. as things start spiraling out of control, they need to be kept reminded that they won.
GregB
@GrandJury:
We should get those who want to travel back in time going by reminding them thst the collapse in the whaling industry devastated many good ‘Murican jobs.
Whale Oil Now!
Peale
@Cain: I think he thinks he can make all the foreign leaders into Business Partners. But he’s so blatant about it that even those countries where corruption is rife and widely accepted will have to distance themselves from it. You’re not supposed to brag about corruption and how wealthy the office of president makes you.
schrodinger's cat
Halp! I is being moderated.
Cain
@gene108:
I was there when tehy started changing the names of everything.. it was all pandering. Now everyone is doing it, hell they are making more states.. just idiotic. India is a country of weird issues. If they fixed their justice system, they would rise as an incredible power that will rival China and others. Until they can get rid of their base corruption, it will continue to take 3 steps backwards, and one step forward.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Was it George Washington or Lincoln who said, “when the president does it, it’s not illegal”?
hovercraft
@Yoda Dog:
He cost them money and their precious football and basketball games. They agreed with him on the bathroom bill, but instead of backing down and becoming a martyr like Pence, he tried to brazen it out and lost.
Cain
@mai naem mobile:
Voting rights stuff would not have met with much resistance I would think. They could have passed those quickly as long as we didn’t mention race stuff, which I think would have galvanized the opposition because you know their racists.
Liberal
@D58826: the problems can’t be fixed.
The US is the consumer of last resort. What are these countries going to do, not trade with us? LOL.
Elizabelle
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: If it wasn’t for the damned celibacy, maybe Trump could throw his hat into the Papal ring next. Papal infallibility.
Fucking New York Times. If they couldn’t get another Pulitzer off Hillary’s EMAILS! Shadows! Clouds! Clinton Foundation, I guess they figure they’ll get one for their expose during the Trump Admin.
Uh, no. FTFNYT.
Cain
@Peale:
and he’ll probably do that, and in front of the american public. It would be interesting to see how far he will go before his WWC base start feeling uncomfortable. Once they start whining about how things are not going that great, it will be harder to keep defending Trump.
Liberal
@mai naem mobile: could have gotten rid of the filibuster. Stop assuming Dem politicians have no agency.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
JFC, I believe is the accepted acronym
I confess to a soap-opera-y interest in the fact that he has to be reminded that Uday and Qusay exist– and a kind of sympathetic relief for her that he seems to forget about Tiffany, I get a very sad vibe from Tiffany
Major Major Major Major
@GregB: Whale oil tomorrow, whale oil forever!
GrandJury
@Lizzy L: That NYT liveblog is interesting. I hope that they don’t end up writing a fluffer piece once the spineless editors get a hold of the story.
O. Felix Culpa
@Glidwrith: Yes. I stand corrected.
Barbara
@Ian: “Norman” invasion means Norse men who first invaded northern France before France was actually France and kept going and who are, basically, the forebears of the current English royal family along with most of its aristocracy since the Conqueror first began spawning — with a little inclusion of some non-royal genes in or about 1490 when Elizabeth of York (the white rose) married the man who became the king, whose genealogical link to William’s heirs was a little exaggerated. So, I don’t think you can call what William the Conqueror did the equivalent of the 100 years war. That war was, essentially, England trying to hold on to the Conqueror’s lands as well as those England inherited through Eleanor of Aquitaine’s marriage to Henry II. But they were never really English. Whereas, William’s heirs became decidedly English.
Major Major Major Major
@Lizzy L: @GrandJury: IT’S SO WEIRD. He must be just like randomly spouting the things that the last five people to talk to him said.
hovercraft
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
If someone tell it that this is the case, will it go away. I’m pretty sure it can take anything, but not that.
Mnemosyne
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
D’oh! Sorry, I get my sci-fi houses mixed up.
Timurid
@gene108:
I’m obviously missing some inside baseball here, but why is Bangalore > Bengaluru sketchier than Bombay > Mumbai (especially considering that the freaking Shiv Sena was instrumental in the latter)?
hovercraft
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It had already tweeted yesterday that the voters new of it’s worldwide business ventures before the election, so any conflicts were just the dishonest media being mean.
Patricia Kayden
@SiubhanDuinne: Trump could have saved his energy and just tweeted out “Black” vis-a-vis President Obama. That’s pretty much what he held against POTUS.
schrodinger's cat
@Timurid: Bombay was Mumbai before it was Bombay. Why should we keep calling it by its British name, Shiv Sena is vile but even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Timurid
I’m already clenching in anticipation of the obligatory Friedman column about how ‘the cab driver on the way to the Trump meeting told me to give him a chance. And I will!’
Patricia Kayden
@Elizabelle: Or just call him Trump or Donald. That’s his name.
Mnemosyne
@hovercraft:
In a weird way, I almost don’t blame the Orange One for being pissed off at the media. They gave him a free pass. They let him get away with shit that no other candidate in history has been allowed to get away with. And now they’re going to try and claim to be the defenders of democracy?
Since he has the emotional maturity of a toddler, he’s the toddler whose mother let him run wild as long as he was breaking other people’s stuff but scolded him when he overturned her purse. He really doesn’t get why they’re trying to hold him to account now that the election is over and I kind of have to agree with him on some level. They fucked up — they trusted him. Too late to whine about it now, assholes.
sukabi
@J R in WV: I’m personally sticking with his real sur name, in lower case….drumpf, it fits him much better and has historical accuracy.
sukabi
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: yep, and then was promptly impeached.
Barbara
@J R in WV: No, I am just suggesting that there are limits to the utility and rhetorical value of outrage that manifests itself mainly through name calling.
Chris
@D58826:
I think we vastly underestimate the extent to which the other party has soured on even the pretense of democracy.
I’m not just talking about politicians and elites, I’m talking about ordinary voters throughout the party. Hang out on a wingnut blog for any extended period of time, and you’ll quickly hear the opinion that universal suffrage was a grievous mistake, that this or that or the other demographic should never have been allowed to vote (what they all have in common: they vote liberal), and that they’ll destroy the republic if we let them. The “voter fraud” shit is just a smokescreen. Scratch just a little beneath it, and the real belief you’ll find is that only the right people should be allowed to vote, and/or the system should check the votes of the wrong persons.
So yeah, they’re brazen: the party as an institution and as a voter bloc are basically agreed that they need to move quickly to suppress representative government in favor of a Potemkin democracy in which the “right” politics prevail regardless of such crude and vulgar things as the popular vote. The media and the “centrists,” meanwhile, will continue to cling to their slogan of “This Is Fine,” which will at least seriously slow the spreading realization among low information voters (i.e. most of the population). The only people ringing the alarm will be liberals, who are easily dismissed because they’re clearly just sore losers.
Chris
@Kay:
Well. I tend to think that a significant part of what goes by the name “business” is really licensed thievery even in the best of times, and this is nowhere near the best of times. In that respect, Trump is just more crude and in-your-face about it than most. But then I’m a cynic that way.
Sloane Ranger
@Barbara: The concept of nation states was in the early stages of development during much of this period. The lands in what is now France were inherited in accordance with medieval law and custom by individuals who later became Kings of England and passed down to their descendents again in accordance with the laws, customs and practices of the time. Those kings used their subjects in one part of their inheritance to maintain their sovereignty over other parts of their inheritance. Happened throughout Europe really until the late 18th century.
Barbara
@Sloane Ranger: Of course. Joan of Arc didn’t become fused with French identity by accident.
Greenergood
Have only skimmed through the many comments – so excuse if repeating but Trump’s Aberdeen golf course was a fantasy to begin with – the projected successful golf course, and time-shares and hundreds of houses and hundreds of jobs are a joke. The dispute about the wind turbines has nothing to do with his belief or non-belief in sustainable energy: it’s a way for him to slink away from a money-losing proposition, just like all the other money-losing projects he’s abandoned along the way. He built a golf course on shifting sand-dunes, that surprise, surprise keep shifting, and dumping inches of sand on his tee-offs and putting greens; reservations are way down and keep doing down. To us in Scotland, it’s a big fail – to him, it’s just one of many fails – all over the world.