The truth: I don’t know why this giant bull is located in a used car lot. Open thread!
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.
Nothing worth doing is easy.
When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson
That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.
Fight them, without becoming them!
You cannot shame the shameless.
… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact
Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.
If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.
Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”
Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.
Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.
Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.
It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.
It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!
I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.
Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.
In after Baud. Damn.
Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?
Come on, man.
Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?
Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?
Bark louder, little dog.
… gradually, and then suddenly.
Gindy51
Possible talent for the thing’s inauguration?
Davis X. Machina
Wow. When they say they’ll take anything in trade, they mean it.
La Caterina (Mrs. Johannes)
FIL let slip last night that he voted for the orange thing to “cancel out” MIL’s vote for Clinton. I just cannot make it thru these holidays.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
in case the chicken that dances to Elvis Presley has a previous engagement? with Kid Rock as option 3
actually I’m kind of looking forward to the gif of Trump grimacing in a facsimile of enjoyment and clapping off key to Loretta Lynn and…. is Wayne Newton still with us?
Corner Stone
I woke up with a great idea for a novel, kind of like a Dan Brown style thriller.
Maybe license movie rights one day.
Stay Ahead
Secretary Clinton only has days left to find the secret that will flip the Electoral College. But with both the FBI and the KGB after her the path is tightening. To win the Presidency and save the world all she has to do is…Stay Ahead.
Brachiator
It gets good mileage, but expels a lot of gas.
Corner Stone
@La Caterina (Mrs. Johannes): Men. They are the fucking worst.
Major Major Major Major
Nice bull.
So I have a theory, which I haven’t tried to type out before so here goes. Basically, if you look at the map here, Trump outperformed Romney in the rust belt and Northeast by the border. We knew that, but it’s good to have it on a map. At the same time, he didn’t really beat Romney by much anywhere else. Consider, also, that the economy in the rust belt, while still kind of shitty, hasn’t declined in the last four years.
I posit that this area held the last untapped source of white resentment in the country. Not people too racist to vote for a black guy, since by all measures Obama is One Of The Good Ones. People on whom dog whistles didn’t work, because they’d never say something mean about a black person, not in public at least. Lynchings are uncouth. People who the Atwater strategy had failed to reach. But they were reachable–they had plenty of white resentment to go around. You just had to be really, really blatant that you were the candidate of white resentment.
Remember also that “For every one voter nationwide who reported having voted for Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016, at least five people voted for Trump after not having voted four years ago.” So we’re talking about not just Obama-to-Trump flip floppers but also non-voters coming out for Trump. Again, concentrated in the rust belt.
I hold that the Southern Strategy worked… in the South. In the rust belt, the racists couldn’t hear the dog whistles. Trump fixed that.
Corner Stone
What fresh hell is this now? I have never seen poutine at any place in Austin. I am convinced cookingchanneltv is now just fucking with me.
Amir Khalid
That ox looks familiar. Is it by any chance Paul Bunyan’s Babe in disguise?
lamh36
Heads up to anyone who follows POTUS, FLOTUS and any of the White House accounts on twitter, Instagram or other social media! On Jan 21st, those accounts will no longer belong to President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama. So don’t forget to unfollow or unfriend or whatever, unless you want to follow President Trump…???
La Caterina (Mrs. Johannes)
@Corner Stone: Except for my husband, who is devastated by this revelation.
burnspbesq
It’s no more illogical than Trump as President-elect.
Adam L Silverman
Bushnell, that’s why. Same reason that verdammt animatronic gorilla has been in front of the vacuum cleaner store on Kennedy and Henderson in Tampa as long as I can remember.
Major Major Major Major
@burnspbesq: Makes a lot more sense, actually.
La Caterina (Mrs. Johannes)
@lamh36: Thanks. Good to know.
Bess
Does the country need to throw a “Thank you, Michelle and Barack” party?
La Caterina (Mrs. Johannes)
@lamh36: Could you post a link to one of those photos of your adorable niece? I could use some cheering up.
debbie
@Corner Stone:
Perfect for a graphic novel.
Larkspur
@burnspbesq: Let’s fill the bull’s belly with liberals and take it to the inauguration. You know, a Trojan bull.
Corner Stone
@Bess: Why make it easy for the Stasi to start making book on all the traitors in their country?
TriassicSands
Subconsciously the owner is warning potential customers about the nature of the sales pitch they will receive if they shop there.
Corner Stone
@Larkspur: We’d have to first gilt it with gold or else it wouldn’t be accepted.
Hmmm…something vaguely familiar about a golden calf for some reason…
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
Good analysis, but your conclusion is tacked on.
Instead of asking why some voters switched their vote, and listening to them, or asking wny other voters felt so enthusiastic about Trump that they came out for the first time in years, it is easier, but wrong, to trot out the same old political usual suspects.
People who sat out earlier years were not buying what either the Democrats or the establishment Republicans were selling. And both Trump and Sanders, in very different ways, appealed to voters who rejected the status quo.
Maybe there is something here besides the typical basket of deplorables.
Shalimar
@La Caterina (Mrs. Johannes): “When the economy goes to hell and we’re all living together in a broken-down yugo, at least we can gather around the radiator and tell stories about that time you were the family moron.”
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: The conclusion isn’t tacked on, it’s in paragraph 2 as well.
ETA: That’s the only part of what you wrote that bothered me :)
Shell
Read that Trump went on another Twitter rant last night. No public appearances since the election, no press conferences and he becomes more sequestered in Trump Tower. Is he already turning into Howard Hughes?
The Dangerman
Could be worse; the Bull in the parking lot could be like Babe (of Paul Bunyan and Babe fame, at the Trees of Mystery tourist trap in the Redwoods) and be carrying a package (and I’m entirely unsure what the Dude in the picture is doing with said package, but I digress).
La Caterina (Mrs. Johannes)
@Shalimar: Ok, that generated a nice chuckle. Back to work for me.
mzinformation
This question may have been answered in a previous post, but, if so I missed it. Why is PO taking the stance he is on the Dakota Pipeline?
Adam L Silverman
@Shell: He did ask all the Thanksgiving dinner guests at Mar a Lago who he should pick for Secretary of State.
OldDave
In comment 80 of the previous thread (link) Schlemazel gave some interesting statistics:
I’d love to see a link to an “authoritative source” for that information – not that I doubt Schlemazel as the data rings true – but it would be nice to be able to show proof if called out by a RWNJ.
Jeffro
@Corner Stone:
You are so very, very close to what I’m working on for this week, seriously! Too funny (well, not ha-ha funny…but still)
Hal
Thanks Obama!
Major Major Major Major
@OldDave: i think knowing the patterns in California and New York alone would explain the majority of that, but yes having a nice source to point to would be cool!
Jeffro
@OldDave: Here you go.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
In rural and exurban areas, almost certainly not. So far, all indications are that those areas are where the out-and-proud white supremacists are, and they showed up to vote for their candidate. In suburban and urban areas, you might find a few non-deplorables, but here’s the thing: they’re “non-deplorables” who had no problem voting for an anti-Semitic, misogynist white supremacist. They didn’t find that to be a problem at all. So while they may like to think of themselves of not being as bad as the white supremacists, they don’t have any real problem with white supremacists.
Ruckus
@TriassicSands:
I was thinking the same.
Not a no bullshit location.
Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
As honest as car dealers get?
Davis X. Machina
@Brachiator:
If you think hard, you can find something they share that may have influenced votes, I bet.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: I think the rural/exurban rust belt people are the “I’m not racist but” crowd who mostly thinks Mexicans have taken their jobs, be it the mythical auto worker or the mythical rugged individualist farmer. They didn’t turn out previously because nobody had offered that kind of racism in ways they could hear. The southern strategy is pretty focused on anti-black dog whistles, which while they happen to hurt other minorities too are intended to hurt black people.
Corner Stone
@Shell:
You know, I kindof shrugged it off for a while because I always thought it was BS the the press literally counted the days for HRC as they relentlessly hounded her. But it’s getting to the point where it’s starting to bother me.
I mean, we all know the man knows nothing about essentially anything and all his answers will be vague wordcloudsalads. But come the fuck on.
Jonathan Capeheart made an interesting point today on AMJoy. In the transcripts for the NYT meeting, the only thing Trump was definite about was the law regarding his business interests. He had someone explain that to him and made a strong pushback on it. Every other topic or answer was just garbled puffery that no one can make anything of.
Davis X. Machina
@Bess: New Orleans funeral… and a second line in the tens of millions.
Adam L Silverman
@OldDave: Its accurate. I’m not digging the graphic and source out right now.
Citizen_X
@Corner Stone:
So when is Democracy Moses going to come down the hill and throw the Constitution at us for losing faith and electing Trump?
Major Major Major Major
@Citizen_X: not December 19, alas.
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne:
That’s because these people benefit from white patriarchy and thus have no vested interest in dismantling it.
The only problem they have with white supremacists is that they’re open and impolite about it.
Kay
@Shell:
Wasn’t our crack team of public servants at the FBI supposedly investigating the Trump Foundation along with their political activities promoting Donald Trump?
Yeah, they’re real credible on Trump corruption. They’ll do a great job. I can’t believe the hacks who worked to elect this guy are supposed to investigate him. Is Comey waiting until his pension vests, or what? Why does he bother going to work?
Major Major Major Major
@Suzanne:
And even then it’s really more of a mild displeasure at than a problem with.
aimai
@Major Major Major Major: Very good analysis. I also think that this was not so much a “change election” as a revenge election and it was a revenge for the real and imagined slights of having a black guy in the white house and liberals in the ascendance. People who didn’t vote before because they were pissed off by bush’s war, but not pissed off enough to vote for a democrat, came out to vote for what appeared to be a republican revolt against both Bush and Obama. A revolt against “elites.” So all trump’s vulgarity and disgusting uprofessionalism, especially aligned with the on again/off again republican pushback against him, combined to legitimizeTrump for republicans as an authentically independent candidate. This was something Romney never had going for him–not because he was too polite to dogwhistle (but that was true) but because there were four more years of resentment against Obama built up and four more years of resentment against the republican party for being unable to deliver any actual goodies while they were fucking over Obama and the dems.
aimai
@Brachiator: No, there really isn’t.
Kay
So here are the institutions the public is supposedly relying on to rein in Donald Trump- media, led by cable channels and the NYTtimes, the GOP Congress, and the FBI.
Oh, this will be very tough for him! These bulldogs will tear him to pieces!
We are on our own. The part that bothers me the most is we have such a low quality dictator.
The United States of America was brought down by a game show host and his sleazy family. Two bit crooks.
Corner Stone
@Kay: Arne Duncan and James Comey. I guess only time will tell which Obama appointment will end up being responsible for doing the most damage to more Americans.
At this point it looks like James Fucking Comey is going to be the rogue scientist that let the virus out of the research facility.
Hungry Joe
Why is the CIA getting no credit for taking out Castro? I mean, come on — credit where credit’s due. Good work, guys! Slow and steady wins the race!
Mnemosyne
There’s a Kindle book on Amazon for $1.99 called The Birth of Modern Politics (about the election of 1828 between Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams) that sounds eerily similar to what just happened:
And, of course, it was a contest between an abolitionist and a slaveholder, which I assume is addressed pretty thoroughly.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
In the long Remnick/Obama piece in the New Yorker, Obama says (think I got this right) that Trump won FL in the central counties around Orlando– I don’t know the state, but from what I’ve read over the last couple weeks, it’s pretty much white American ex-urbia writ large, not quite the South, not quite the Rust Belt. Trump out-performed Romney and McCain there, with voters who largely stayed home in 2012. I think there are a lot of reasons why GOP-leaners would stay home for Romney: he’s a cartoonish plutocrat, not just the 47%, they probably loved that, but the flip-flopping, “I’m running for office, for Pete’s sake”, the car elevator, “one would have assumed he took part in sport, he was so tall!”, and of course, Mormonism.
One of Obama’s numbers guy, I think Mitch Stewart, said a while ago that MI should be a red, or at least reddish purple state, but Obama in 2012 still had some credibility from the auto bailout, and Romney’s “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” stance was not forgotten, and also, see above. I think that was probably true to some degree in Ohio, too. And Trump, even though his money is “older” than Romney’s, even though he loves to brag about his education, comes across as a regular guy who made good. It all makes the dog-whistle, “telling it like it is” stuff easier to sell. They see him as one of their own in a way they never would Romney.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
Basically, the Republican Party spent 30 years hollowing out all of our institutions so that when the dictator they wanted finally showed up, there would be no one left to resist him. I didn’t realize until now that it would take such a small push to knock everything over, but there we have it.
FlipYrWhig
@aimai: I think it’s even simpler than that. I think they just wanted someone who would make other people mad and kick some ass once in a while. I don’t think they have any real expectation that a Trump presidency will be good for them. They’ve given up on government and just want the vicarious pleasure of someone who says Fuck You, You Can’t Tell Me What To Do, like they’ve been wanting to do their whole lives. I think it’s going to be a very short honeymoon.
Mnemosyne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
This is, I think, an important point that a lot of commentators have been missing. “White Working Class” is a social identity group, not an economic group. There are plenty of millionaires out there driving giant pickup trucks and insisting that they’re “working class.” And Donald Trump, “billionaire” son of a New York millionaire, is one of them, because he has all the same beliefs they do about how black/brown/poor people are inferior to everyone else and having money just proves that you’re better than anyone else.
They are ragingly insecure, not about economics, but about their social status, and they just slapped the rest of us in the face and insisted that they’re still better than everyone else.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: they also set up all those ID laws in the last 8-10 years to deliver this one to a republican. Then this one ended up with the nomination. As ye have sown.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
Yep. To display my slightly raggedy older hobbyhorse, the voter ID laws were set up to benefit Generic Republican 2016. It was a boobytrap, and Trump just happened to be the lucky beneficiary.
I would like to think that Rove has had a moment or two of indigestion thinking about what he has wrought, but that would require him to have a vestige of a conscience. It’s more likely that he’s bombarding Trump with copies of his resume to try and land a job in the new administration.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: It’s not only gaining those new people, but retaining a large share of “respectable Republicans.” That’s what was not supposed to happen in our post-racial age.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
only they wouldn’t use that term (don’t like it myself, it sounds like Lionel Barrymore in Wonderful Life). They would say, “I may not have gone to college…” in a sarcastic tone that implies they were too smart to fall for that scam (unlike their know-it-all siblings or in-laws who think they’re so superior and barely clear 50K a year teaching in a public school, and I wish I only worked nine months a year haw haw haw), and they got (almost) rich in whatever business because they’re smarter than their loser friends and family who didn’t
John Weiss
@The Dangerman: Trees of Mystery has a pretty good collection of Amerindian art and it’s free! One is only ‘trapped’ if one desires it.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: It kind of reminds me of how when the music business switched to that new sales tracking system, it suddenly became clear that people were buying tons of country music, which had been written off as a relic of the past for a long, long time. There was a mass audience consuming products about which the tastemakers and trendsetters had no idea.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: party before country.
Kay
The President-elect is still threatening his political rival with prosecution.
I know CNN is staggering along, hopelessly corrupt and compromised but since these cable anchors are still collecting million dollar paychecks, perhaps one of them could push back against the Regime of Clowns who are running the country?
The next time you’re wondering how countries collapse, turn on CNN. This is how.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: yes. It’s status anxiety. Same reason Trump covers everything in gold.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Major Major Major Major: and tax cuts uber alles— put that into French or Swedish and you could sell it on tote-bags
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne:
Yes. As I pointed out, my in-laws are real white working-class people. They live in a rural area, they don’t have college degrees, they go to church, they worked low-skill jobs until they inherited a small family cattle farm, they struggle with finances, and yet they vote Dem every time. They know the score.
The people we are calling “white working class” are like them in some respects, but most of them have more money due to family inheritance or just being more prosperous. The difference: my in-laws spent many years living in Silicon Valley before it was Silicon Valley (when it was affordable suburbs), and they are not stupid or mean.
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
IIRC, that was also when rap/hip-hop sales were revealed to be a much bigger chunk of the market than had been believed, so the two countervailing forces were already in place.
Baud
@Suzanne: We don’t seem to have enough people like your in-laws acting as leaders in those communities, unfortunately.
People who go against type to do the right thing are heroes. It can’t be easy.
Suzanne
@FlipYrWhig: This. The resentment is deep. Culturally, rural and southern life used to be portrayed aspirationally. But it’s been depicted as anachronistic and backward and icky and weird for so long now that it’s created a huge divide.
There was a piece in the WSJ about a week ago about how ad agencies are crapping their pants right now, because all their market research led them to depict urban life as aspirational, and with this election, they are realizing that they have not been talking to a whole lot of people, those who do not want to or cannot live in cities.
Baud
@Suzanne: I’m surprised about the ad agencies. It seems like every other ad is about the ruggedness of pickup trucks hauling things in the middle of nowhere.
debbie
@Suzanne:
Happening where I work. They have a campaign up with the tagline something like “you are who you are.” Apparently, they’re getting all kinds of backlash because the customers in the ads look “eccentric” and not like the WWC.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: yeah, beer, pick up trucks, jeans, soup, Hillshire Farms smoked sausage… whole lot of ad campaigns structured around the idea of perfectly maintained white clapboard houses and youngish white people smiling warmly at each other.
Suzanne
@Baud: It’s not easy. But they’re also not going to be leaders in their community. They have a farm to run, and my FIL still works in a grocery store doing physically demanding work (despite being over 60 and having a cow’s heart valve and having started having seizures). And my brothers-in-law are not really self-sufficient, either. I doubt that either of them will ever marry or have families or finish enough education to make enough money to live in a city where they would have more opportunities or positive stimulation. They are surviving, not thriving. It is not a good place to live, in my view.
And yet, every time we see her, my MIL begs us to move there. I used to be polite about declining, but I am losing my patience regarding the issue. But at some point. I might end up saying that the shithole town in which she grew up is horrible, and that the only one of her children who is able to live his own life is the one who doesn’t live there, and that is not a coincidence,
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
The basic info about prior Obama voters and first time voters could mean many things. But there is a tendency here to use an overly simplified notion to the Southern Strategy to explain almost any unpleasant electoral outcome. This is as wrongheaded and pointless as all those polls that showed Clinton in the lead.
@Mnemosyne:
Yes! And this absolutely offends the sensibilities of a lot of people. But life is difficult. Trump is very likely a racist, and he gives aid an comfort to white supremacists. But the people who voted for him don’t care, This includes, for example, Orthodox Jews who hate blacks but who ignore the antisemitism of some high level Trump supporters. I have no idea what basket you could place these people into.
But the bottom line is that it is not as easy to paint Trump supporters with a broad brush as people here insist. They don’t care that he is a thief. They don’t care that he has not revealed his tax returns. They don’t care that he is ignorant of government and policy. They somehow see this as a potentially stable cleansing innocence. People confuse the blind stupid anger of these people with a coherent set of beliefs. Or they want to lump them altogether into a group that can be easily labeled and dismissed.
FlipYrWhig
@Suzanne: @Baud: There were a bunch of ads in the past few months aimed at selling alcohol to Spanish-speaking and/or Mexican-descended people. I bet all the trendspotters in capitalism and politics had pegged this election as the coming of age of Latino America as a force to be reckoned with. And I bet the Clinton data people and the ad gurus were sipping from the same erroneous data stream.
Suzanne
@Baud: Look at ads for wine, gyms, any clothes that aren’t low-end denim, sports cars, Nike and Adidas, electronics…..
Baud
@FlipYrWhig:
@Suzanne:
I’ll try to keep an eye out. Sadly, I guess we’re the ones who are about to be culturally isolated.
FlipYrWhig
@Brachiator: The coherent set of beliefs is cleek’s law. They like him because the people they don’t like–the news, feminists, wusses, protesters, etc.–don’t like him, so he must be doing something right dammit!
Steeplejack (tablet)
The Cleveland Browns are very . . . orange today.
In other news, I’m jonesin’ for a pizza, but it feels somehow wrong so soon after Thanksgiving. On the other hand, I did eat the last of my T-day leftovers last night. What to do, what to do.
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Distrust of too much education runs deep in Anglo-American life, as does the country/city divide. There is a remarkable series of Victorian photos wirtten about in the Daily Mail.
One traveller interviewed by the photographer noted:
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator:
I appreciate your good-faith effort to assume I know what I’m talking about.
Corner Stone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I just keep seeing that god damn hipster Santa Claus with the two smokin’ hot elves at the car dealership.
“You better not be jingling my bells.”
“Oh, Santa. I would never do that!”…pulls out sawed off double barrel 12 ga shotgun…
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack (tablet): Go for the pizza. I am making schnitzel tonight and using some of what’s left of my gumbo to make an onion-mushroom gravy to pour over it all.
OldDave
@Jeffro: Thank you!
Corner Stone
@Brachiator:
They do have a coherent set of beliefs. They can not be dismissed but they are easily labeled.
Corner Stone
@Jeffro: I’m…ummm…intrigued?
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Corner Stone:
Ordered and awaiting!
Also tied into my complete lack of interest in getting dressed and going out to get groceries today. I’m finishing this weekend on the glide path.
Brachiator
@FlipYrWhig:
I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.
This seems totally wrong, but is another good example of lazy “conservatives just want to piss liberals off” nonsense.
Not total nonsense, though. I hope that people are pissed enough to fight back. But this time try to understand what you are up against.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack (tablet): Yes, but you have your new tablet.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Part of the plan! Plopped in the cushy chair, multitasking and not moving for much of anything.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: you have an animatronic gorilla in front of a vacuum cleaner store? That sounds more entertaining than one of those mechanical horsies or scary windsock creatures.
Miss Bianca
@Brachiator: I’ll never forget the time at a parent-teacher conference, when I was doing long-term substitute teaching on the Western Slope, when a guy from one of the old-timer families looked at me and said, “Education is respected in Delta County, but it’s not very well-liked.”
J R in WV
@Kay:
Yeah, that’s the most scary thing Trump has talked about so far… Put HER in jail !!!
Very un-American, like most of Trump’s political viewpoints. It’s like he grew up somewhere else, or something. Or just never looked at what was going on in America his whole life, perhaps.
J R in WV
Betty,
Sorry about your Gators last night. I’m not a big fan of either, a little more of the Seminoles, maybe, since Bobby was their coach for so long, and he came out of WVU.
But it was a good game to watch just from the perspective of being amazing, and I think their purple and gold uniforms are really cool. And that runner, # 4, he was an amazing talent to watch.
They played really hard, both sides. Probably the best MSM TV broadcast of this week.
I would have liked to see the WVU game, they really ran up the score 49-19 on Iowa State. That kind of thing is fun for the school running up the score. But it wasn’t broadcast, only available on cable/sat systems, so I listened to the radio feed, which is the way we got WVU games when I was a little kid, before TV was feasible in WV.