If you’re looking for an uplifting post, keep scrolling. This one is just a reminder that not only has the Republican president-elect undermined faith in American democracy with an outrageous lie about millions committing voter fraud to award his opponent a record-breaking popular vote victory, but as of this weekend, the four most powerful Republicans beneath Trump on the org chart are on record abetting that lie.
House Majority Leader Paul Ryan says it doesn’t matter to him if Trump is lying or not. Senatortoise Mitch McConnell says the claim is “irrelevant.” Reince Priebus says hey, maybe 2.6 million and counting really DID vote illegally. VP-elect Pence says lies about big, important things are just self-expression, so chill.
A clear pattern is emerging:
1. Trump says or does something outrageous through wounded vanity or rank ignorance.
2. Republican leaders rush to normalize the action or statement, regardless of the danger to the nation.
3. Trump’s business associates and/or the Republican Party capitalize on the fallout.
It’s an astounding combination of political cowardice and opportunism — without precedent in my lifetime, I think.
I suspect the Taiwan call fallout had similar origins, and it is being handled in similar fashion. Just as needy adulation junkie Trump is constitutionally (i.e., personal, not national constitution) unable to admit defeat on any level, he is also compelled to take a congratulatory call from an important person, so he took the call from Taiwan.
At first, official DC was shocked, and their disapproval caused Trump to double-down with anti-China tweets. Then Republican stooges like Tom Cotton and everyone’s favorite No Labels poster boy John Huntsman stepped forward to proclaim it a bold new direction in Chinese-American relations. [MiniTruth link]
Trump critics have noted ties to Taiwanese commercial interests in Trump’s inner circle, intimating that there might be a sharp (if treasonous) business strategy behind the seemingly ham-handed diplomatic imbroglio. Maybe. The evidence that Team Trump is approaching his impending presidency as a world-historical grift opportunity is unmistakable.
But I think even these less flattering interpretations give Trump too much credit. Trump is a conman, but only his inherited wealth and connections plus a flair for tacky showmanship allowed him to grift at the highest levels. If not for the machinations of Fred Trump, Donald would likely be pitching shady timeshare deals to senior citizens in a third-rate Orlando hotel’s Mickey Mouse Room.
I see nothing in his business background that suggests Trump is a genius and much to suggest the opposite, so until confronted with evidence to the contrary, I’ll assume he’ll continue to make blunders that are wholly motivated by rage and/or insecurity, in response to stimuli that arise by chance or are concocted by associates who hope to benefit from Trump’s utterly predictable responses.
And the amoral shell of a party that was the object of Trump’s hostile takeover will continue to put its political objectives over the nation’s interests, as long as Trump is useful to them. It’s not surprising that the GOP would hitch its wagon to Trump; they’ve been putting party over country as long as I can remember.
But I confess to being a little surprised at the speed and scale of the corruption. The mainstream media has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that it isn’t up to the task of exposing Trump. The Republican Party at the highest levels has traded the appearance of patriotism for a spot at the trough. If this country is to be saved before it collapses and is sold off piece by piece, it’s really is up to us now.
cervantes
Approbation means approval. Just sayin’.
gratuitous
“Character Matters” is so pre-Gingrich.
JPL
Trump could be correct that he won, because of the fact that many voted illegally for him. It could be true.
jacy
It’s all just….exhausting. My outrage meter breaks daily. I was listening to NPR driving the kids into school this morning (because got to do something on the two-hour Monday morning drive) and the only person making any sense was Jonah Goldberg. Jonah Fucking Goldberg. Up is down, down is up, cats and dogs living together. I just can’t even.
schrodinger's cat
So what can we do now?
Betty Cracker
@cervantes: Right you are. I changed it to “disapproval,” which isn’t the exact word I meant to use and mixed up with “approbation,” but neither is “reprobation.” It’ll come to me eventually.
rikyrah
The Evil One Speaks:
Dick Cheney Celebrates a World Where Facts Don’t Matter
by David Atkins
December 4, 2016 5:47 PM
Dick Cheney is thrilled with the election of Donald Trump. Trump’s tweets have made his dream of a world free from the accountability of the press and basic realities come true:
Conservatives have long complained about a “media filter” that supposedly doesn’t let them get their messages across. If the media were somehow distorting the words of conservatives that would be one thing. But there’s a reason a media filter exists: to provide some sort of reality-based check on whether a politician is being truthful or not. Without some sort of filter, communications from politicians are nothing more than propaganda.
So when Cheney celebrates the notion that Trump can bypass the media, he’s not championing the notion of truth over bias. He’s lauding a world in which a politician can falsely claim that, say, there were millions of fraudulent votes cast when nothing of the sort ever happened, and millions of his followers will blindly believe it without verification.
But then, that sort of fact-free environment isn’t a new creation of Donald Trump. It was the modus operandi of the George W. Bush Administration as well:
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat: Resist, resist, resist.
GregB
@schrodinger’s cat:
Hoping to not get wished into the cornfield doesn’t seem like much of a plan.
tobie
@schrodinger’s cat: Isn’t that the question? In big ways and little ways we have to organize from joining the local Democratic club to pushing for local issues (mine is municipal broadband) to being visible in public. I actually think it’s critical that the opponents of this regime show up in record numbers to the Women’s March on Jan 21. A million people would be covered and would amplify the narrative that he has no mandate. I can’t emphasize enough how important a unified display of popular opposition is on occasion. Demonstrations are not the only form of opposition but on the heals of the inauguration they literally demonstrate something important.
Major Major Major Major
The Taiwan call was planned far in advance. Trump is playing at naïveté for many of these. It’s in his best interest to normalize outrageous lies. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-taiwan-phone-call-was-weeks-in-the-planning-say-people-who-were-involved/2016/12/04/f8be4b0c-ba4e-11e6-94ac-3d324840106c_story.html?utm_term=.89e35c913098
Это курам на смех
Outstanding post Ms. C.
I think the fuck-up frequency will be so high that we will retake the WH in 2020. Then we will fix the damage but still get blamed for it. Rinse, repeat.
indycat32
Republicans can’t admit Trump is lying about millions of illegal voters. They’ve been screaming voter fraud for years. They can’t suddenly say, oh yeah, about the voter fraud stuff, just kidding.
Betty Cracker
@Major Major Major Major: I saw that, but I’m not convinced. I hate to sully the reputation of cats by comparing them to Trump, but they do have one behavioral trait in common that I’ve observed: When they do something stupid (slide off a counter in the case of a cat / upend 40 years of foreign policy in the case of Trump), they pretend they meant to do that all along.
It’s possible some of the folks in Trump’s circle who would benefit commercially even set him up to take that call — who knows? But I’m not sold on the idea that Trump was playing a long game vis-a-vis the Taiwan call. My own version of “Trump’s Razor” is that the most narcissistic explanation is probably correct.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
I love (not) that it is somehow accepted that all those millions of fraudulent votes were only for Clinton, yet somehow the plan that produced such massive fraud didn’t include enough fraudulent votes in the states that would have tipped the election to her. How anyone thinks this makes any sense on any level just goes to show how fucked we are.
Betty
At least Brian Stelter at CNN gets the way to deal with the lies – by the way you frame them and not just repeat them. Too bad he is a lonely voice in the wilderness. Pay attention, media people- especially you, Anderson Cooper and you, Chuck Todd.
rikyrah
Uh huh
Uh huh
Job Retraining Won’t Work. We’ll Need Government Jobs, Then a Universal Basic Income
by David Atkins
December 4, 2016 8:00 AM
There is a growing consensus among futurists and visionaries of various backgrounds that the challenges of an automated economy will require implementing a universal basic income. These thinkers range from former SEIU president Andy Stern to Robert Reich to a wide range of entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. Martin Luther King, Jr., advocated for it, as did conservative Milton Friedman.
For all the hoopla over china, trade and immigration, 85% of the manufacturing losses in the United States were due to automation, not trade. And it’s not just manufacturing. Automation imperils huge swaths of employment, from the medical profession to the finance industry. Drivers of all kinds, from truckers to cabbies to worksite drivers, are all on the chopping block. Big data threatens to slash middle level managers and analysts of all kinds. Something will have to be done.
But most people aren’t ready for a universal basic income. Wherever the public has had a chance to vote on it, it has failed–and usually dramatically. People aren’t comfortable with the idea yet–they worry about creating a class of layabouts, and about removing the dignity that comes with a job, and about losing the leverage workers have had against capital since the dawn of the labor movement. Most of these are cultural fears that will dissipate over time, but they are very real.
Because of that, reducing structural underemployment and unemployment due to automation is going to require a large push for government sector employment first. There is a great deal of work to be done in repairing and creating new infrastructure, in retrofitting existing equipment to implement renewable energy, water saving and carbon-controlling measures, and in forward-thinking work like space travel. A great deal of this work will be manual and skilled trade labor of the sort that can be done by Americans hardest hit by the global economy.
But to get even that far will require an acknowledgment that retraining for the “jobs of the future” is not a satisfactory answer. Former factory workers in places like Muncie, IN, either cannot or will not learn to code and develop apps. Job retraining programs have not been very successful in part because of cultural challenges, and in part because there isn’t actually a skills gap between American workers and unfilled jobs. The “jobs of the future” are rapidly changing as well. Ten to fifteen years ago the “cool” job was web design, and everyone was supposed to learn HTML. Now those skills are nearly useless, as automated tools make it easy to create a website without any coding knowledge whatsoever. Today’s hot job is making apps, but that labor market is already saturated and globalized, with ever more democratized tools. Tomorrow’s hot job will be in 3-D printers with their own language and requirements, but then that too will be rapidly simplified on the front end. The back ends of all these technologies will require fewer and fewer back end creators, even as machine learning for back end applications improves.
artem1s
Taking the call isn’t the thing that should outrage anyone. Boasting about it on twitter is what the security community and state department is probably worrying about. Any asshole can take a call from Taiwan. That the pussy grabbing idjit doesn’t understand that basic fact is the real problem here. I’m pretty sure a lot of innocent people are going to get hurt and/or killed because of this idjits vanity. It probably won’t matter to team idjit and the Freedum Caucus.
To powerful people, who play on the international stage, this will matter. Think big oil companies that lost assets when the Ayatollah took over in Iraq. Those are the people that destroyed Carter and replace him with Poppy Bush’s hand puppet Raygun. If Exxon or some other multinational giant gets their assets seized because of this shite, that’s going to have some impact. W was disavowed largely because he first broke commerce by dropping the ball on 9/11 and then with outrageous fuel prices and then double down by braking banking a second time (third if you count Neal’s Silverado adventure in the 80s). The power brokers didn’t care about some WWC $40K job in Kansas. They cared that shipping cost went thru the roof and stagnated the economy and then lending dried up after the bank collapse. There is nothing coming from team idjit that makes me believe they are going to behave in a more economically sound fashion than W. I think it’s realistic to believe they will go thru Ws best hits in about 1/4 the time. Hopefully just before the midterms the shit will hit the fan.
Major Major Major Major
@Betty Cracker: why not? He’s thoroughly in bed with
EDIT: Ahem. He’s thoroughly in bed with the paleocons at this point and has been for a long time. They hate china. Trump has hated china for decades.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@rikyrah:
I think Lil’ Dicky Cheney is confused… the role of journalists is not to convey crap Republicans say and think unfiltered to readers. It is to hold their fat, stinky feet to the fire when politicians say and do criminal, immoral things.
Major Major Major Major
@rikyrah:
This is not spectacularly true!
jacy
@rikyrah:
It amazes me how many people don’t understand that society works best as a….society. That ensuring everybody is okay means that everybody is okay. It’s so fucking simple.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Это курам на смех: You’re assuming fair, or for that matter, any elections in 2018 and 2020. Does it really look to you like that’s going to happen? Authoritarian playbook 101: real or staged terror attack, followed by emergency decree suspending constitution. Who in our present government will stand against that?
Another Scott
@Major Major Major Major:
FIFY.
Linky:
Never, ever, believe anything Trump and his minions say.
As Mark Felt said, “Follow the money”.
Cheers,
Scott.
randy khan
@Betty Cracker:
Or they pretend they had nothing to do with whatever just happened: “Oh, look at that broken vase on the floor. How did *that* happen?”
Eural Joiner
@jacy:
Love that quote. I’m stealing it, thanks! :)
piratedan
well, if we “game” this out, how long after he takes office do we see them decide that elections are no longer needed? six months? three?
Major Major Major Major
@Another Scott: these are not mutually exclusive or even particularly contradictory. Business is business. He’s been talking about having a trade war with the chicoms for ages.
ETA: he hates NATO too. He married a NATO state export.
Adam was talking about this in a couple threads yesterday.
jake the antisoshul soshulist
That the lies are unchallenged is one thing. That the lies are believed is another. What is truly concerning is the number of people who want the lies to be true.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
I’m not ready to board the bus on that point… sounds too much like RWNJ talk about how Obama was going to declare himself dictator.
I get the worry, nay, the certainty that Das Trumpling will piss all over tons of laws and civilities and such. But I’m not ready to hide in a bunker just yet.
Melville
@Betty Cracker: opprobrium perhaps?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: opprobrium?
The Moar You Know
This is totally normal behavior during the death of an empire.
Blueskies
@Major Major Major Major: Why would you believe this? It may be true, but because it makes Trump look better, I assume it’s false. What is it about the press reports on this that make you think it’s true? No snark – I’m genuinely trying to figure it out.
Brachiator
I have no idea why people insist that there is some magical media that could evoke in the American viewer some equally magical “Eureka!” moment in which they would realize that Trump is a fraud.
His base simply does not care, and they believe lies that they get from second tier media, social media, Fox News and like minded outlets.
In my ideal world, about the only thing that I would like to see is for the Sunday pundit shows simply to refuse to book Trump surrogates. I’d tell them that “since you will only come on the show to lie, there is no news value in your participation.”
I’d probably outlaw the “White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” but that is more because I find the whoring personally annoying than because of any significant desecration of journalism.
Major Major Major Major
@Blueskies: because I recently switched to believing malice until incompetence is proven when we’re dealing with this administration. Happy to be wrong.
ETA: also it’s fully consistent with both his longstanding beliefs and the playbook for this sort of thing. See, again, Adam last night.
Humdog
When there is no truth, we cannot communicate. Then they take away the right to vote, and we cannot fix anything.
Trying to reconcile myself to no social security or Medicare for me and my husband, then I suppose it won’t matter that lack of food and water safety will kill us before the seas rise. Maybe I won’t need as much for retirement as I feared.
Radiumgirl
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Brilliant.
Gindy51
@randy khan: And dogs, well they look guilty even if they didn’t do a damned thing wrong.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I gotta say, as much as I despise this man, I never would have predicted this level of courtier-ship. I think we can expect a “Joe and Mike LIVE! from the WHITE HOUSE!” by the end of February.
Radiumgirl
@piratedan: I don’t see that happening. If gerrymandering works for the Republicans, they have no need to throw everyone into a panic by pulling a stunt like that. There are other ways to game it without being blithering obvious and inciting a civil war.
Kay
@schrodinger’s cat:
There’s real despair out there among local Democrats. They (rightly) are asking why they should invest time or money in political activity if there are all of these outside factors that could come into play, factors over which they have no control; the FBI, a media obsession like the emails, Wkileaks, Russian interference, etc.
I don’t have a good answer for that. It would be one thing if there was increased risk for BOTH Parties but that’s not true. All of these outside factors work against Democrats and will probably work against Democrats again in the next election. What do you tell people? Invest 5 or 10 or a hundred hours in political activism and hope no one at the FBI hates your candidate? Everything that happened in 2016 will occur again – no one was held accountable for any of it.
Aleta
1.
(1st line of a WSJ article I can’t read.) That would be big donor Carl Icahn.
2. Former VP Gore is meeting with
someone knowledgeableIvanka about climate change because she has decided that will be hertheme for the decorative jewelry for one of the inaugural ballsproject in the administration..Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yes! Thank you!
kindness
Why does the rule of right wing nut jobs keep reminding me of the Warsaw Ghetto? Trump/Fox/Alex Jones rile people up so they are furious and want to lash out. That is the plan, not a bug of the plan. The reason Democracies haven’t routinely gone fascist as Trump is now doing is that you can’t control fascists once they’ve run amuck. And they are already starting that run. This is going to get really ugly. This is going to change America and I only pray not in the way they want.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@West of the Rockies (been a while): Obama was objectively not an authoritarian. Trump and his closest advisors demonstrably are. Context matters.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
They’re appalling. How shameful for cable news that they’re the official Trump propaganda delivery platform.
I know they make multimillions, these people, but Jesus. Some shred of self respect.
Kay
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
The increased acceptance of the constant lying is frightening. Ben Carson is a liar too, by the way. He’s told some really big lies. It got less attention because Trump was bigger and also lying constantly, but Carson is borderline delusional. They’re elaborate lies that serve no purpose other than making him out to be almost superhuman. It’s bizarre.
Brachiator
@rikyrah:
Of course, governments who decide to implement a UBI might also determine that a large population needs to be culled to make sure that any plan has fiscal stability. Strict population controls could be applied, including a refusal to use heroic efforts to save critically ill newborns or senior citizens. Active euthanasia could be encouraged beginning with citizens age 50 and over, if their jobs are not deemed important, or they have not added significantly to society. Those who chose to … continue … would find their UBI reduced or eliminated.
So, maybe UBI for a United States with a maximum population of, say, 50 million? 25 million?
Major Major Major Major
@Kay: it’s hard to be humble when you literally have god’s hands.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: No one is talking about the MAGA-hat moron base, which is impervious to facts, decency, etc. I’m talking about the wholesale failure of the MSM in vetting Trump, its willingness to act as his (and Putin’s via WikiLeaks) content distributor, etc., combined with the completely unjustified 24/7/365 focus on Clinton’s email.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Radiumgirl: “thousands killed in vicious radical islamic terrorist attack! Trump asks for temporary special powers to ensure the safety of American lives and property.!”
Can’t happen here? Look at the history of the rise of authoritarian regimes, and come back and say that. The PATRIOT Act was just a test case.
Major Major Major Major
@Betty Cracker: 366. The year isn’t over yet.
Immanentize
@Major Major Major Major:
Please say more.
I went to a really fascinating mini-conference sponsored by the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard Law last Friday which was on the general topic of law and algorithms. It had a decided Brazilian bent (because all the non-US speakers were from Brazil) but it was so interesting none the less. One presenter was Meng Weng Wong, one of the co-founders of Legalese(a contract generating software company). I came away with a whole different world view of algorithmic isolation in law and society. Of course, all this stuff is moral-neutral — Utopia or Distopia. You decide.
Betty Cracker
@Radiumgirl: Agreed. Gerrymandering, using the FBI / fake news outlets, etc., to smear opponents can do the trick in most cases.
jacy
@Brachiator:
That’s what I’m waiting for –the day when “news” programs stop letting batshit crazy people sit there and talk. I don’t know if it’s every going to happen, but the media is not going to be worth anything until people who just lie aren’t given a platform. And they ought to start with Kelllyanne Fucking Conway. She needs to be persona non grata everywhere on the fucking planet.
Immanentize
@Humdog: “Nothing is True, Everything is permitted.” Jim Carrol Band
Kay
@Major Major Major Major:
I hate to break it to people but he’s another crazy liar. It’s unsettling, right?
I love the “but they will never interfere with elections!’ They interfered all over the place in 2016 and not only is no one “in authority” doing anything, no one even seems particularly interested.
Comey still has a job running the federal police force. If that’s not a red flashing light I don’t know what is.
Aleta
I think if we must expect a large majority of rollover and show me your belly types to dominate the press and every level of government, if we are looking as a guide at prewar Japan and Germany and parts of wartime France, etc.. What happened there doesn’t mean that those countries lacked for socialists, intellectuals, anti-war people, scientists or ethically minded, caring citizens. Rapid acceleration and other forces can overcome human nature.
Immanentize
@Kay: I am almost blind with all the damn red flashing lights. Maybe it’s just a light malfunction?? (Thinking about Three Mile Island).
NR
@Aleta: So Ivanka is going to spend four years working to solve a Chinese hoax?
SiubhanDuinne
Glimmer of good news: McCrory just (finally!) conceded to Cooper in the NC Governor’s race.
Thank the gods.
Brachiator
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
Although I’m sure there are conservative jackals ready to shout “See, Obama did it, too,” I am not aware of Obama sending out surrogates to lie about policy or to attempt to subvert elections. I am not aware of too many times when Obama deliberately flouted past precedent or otherwise behaved in a manner in which his grasp of the office of president was questioned by a fair observer.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
not the fight I would pick, but something of a surprise. As I type, this is probably a pretty low-risk pose of resistance for Collins
jacy
@Kay:
Honestly, I think the Republican party is becoming the party of crazy people. People who are actually delusional. People who truly believe crazy shit and can’t function in a rational world. And now they’ve got the reins.
Kay
@Immanentize:
It’s just like “okay, go tell people to knock doors and do grassroots organizing!” Against…what? The entire law enforcement and regulatory scheme?
I mean, come on. It gets worse every day! It’s like we’re waiting for an official announcement from the emergency broadcast system. It’s not coming.
Aleta
@Aleta: ETA: Not saying that what happened there will happen here. Just that the tendency to speak out and fight against a group that has taken over the government may be rarer than we hope.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
He may be a great surgeon but he’s also a crazy liar. The only reason it isn’t better know is because they’re mostly crazy liars now. Maybe she’s encountered a glimmer of conscience.
Jeffro
@schrodinger’s cat:
1) Call your senators and congressperson weekly (minimum) and tell them, “NO CHANGES, NO COMPROMISES!” to Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, and Social Security.
2) Write op-eds and letters to the editor in support of the Electoral College electors not voting for Trump.
3) Write op-eds and letters to the editor in support of undoing restrictive voting laws and gerrymandering
4) Join/donate to: ACLU, Planned Parenthood, Sierra Club, and the SPLC
5) Get active in your local party, especially to a) make sure there is a Dem running for every office in the next election, and b) iincrease voter registration in your area
Immanentize
@Kay: My specific pet peeve is the appointment of Mattis for Defense Secretary — HE IS NOT ELIGIBLE! But the press has just been pitching the law that prevents his appointment as something that can just be “waived.” It cannot just be “waived” — there is no waiver provision. To allow him to serve, they must have a specific new law written and passed to allow him to be Secretary. Both houses must pass it and the President must sign.
Truly we are in the times of the rule of men (and I do mean MEN) not law.
ETA I should have said, “My specific pet peeve today.”
Jeffro
@indycat32:
Maybe – as with all things Republican – it’s just projection. Maybe they’re the ones with millions of illegal votes?? It would make sense since they’re fighting to stop legal recounts.
Kay
It really and truly doesn’t matter in post-truth society but here’s one of Ben Carson’s tall tales. There are others.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Kay: Well, we might soon get a different sort of announcement from the EBS.
Jeffro
@NR:
Why not? It’d take her dad four years to figure his way out of a Chinese finger-trap ;)
debbie
This only predicts the speed of the failure. They’ve already lost Sara Palin and the inauguration is still 7 weeks away.
LongHairedWeirdo
@Betty Cracker: And focus hard on the Republican brand. Emphasize the lies.
“They say they want smaller government; what they really mean is they want to cut programs and rules that benefit you, the workers. They don’t want their billionaire cronies to pay fines just because their workplace causes workers to get injured or killed; they don’t want to make it harder to poison the air, poison the water, or ruin every nice place you might want to go with your family.
“They defend their smaller government crap by claiming they have to lower taxes. What kind of idiot always wants to lower taxes? No one likes taxes, but everyone knows the government needs tax revenue to do its job, to build bridges and roads and protect people from criminals, whether they carry a gun or a knife, or whether they dress in a three piece suit and rob you with a stroke of the pen.
“They say if they starve the government, it’ll create jobs, because people will have more money in their pockets. It’ll create jobs, all right – their billionaire buddies will use the tax cuts and lack of oversight to offshore jobs, to lay you off and hire you back as a contractor with no benefits, and possibly watch you get hurt or killed at work, because they don’t fear a toothless government’s ability to fine them if they ignore safety violations.”
liberal
@Kay: Remind me again: who was the genius who appointed that douchebag?
Aleta
@NR: As good a theme for an international speaking tour as any. And easy tie-ins to a new line of stylish outerware for the low-lying-city dweller.
Immanentize
I’m gonna go find a Taco Truck and get some lunch.
Kay
@Immanentize:
I laugh out loud at this point. I heard a Democratic Senator on the radio arguing that Trump was subject to criminal statutes. Passionate argument. Like there’s doubt.
This is up for debate. It’s fucking insane and it gets worse every day. Remember how he made that joke about how he could shoot someone and nothing would happen? That might be true.
MJS
@SiubhanDuinne: Cue the appointment to a position in the Trump administration in 3, 2, …He’ll be the administration’s poster boy for voter fraud.
liberal
@SiubhanDuinne: Thank god. That’s one of the few pieces of good news I’ve seen many weeks now.
Jeffro
@jacy:
As Richard Mayhew put it earlier today, they’re the “Breitbart Comment Section All-Stars” (BCSAS for short). That’s so accurate it’s a level above accurate.
Btw I saw a blurb today that Apple has deleted the Breitbart news app from its App Store – turned out to be false, unfortunately. Fake news about a fake news site. Getting kind of meta around here…
liberal
@jacy: Huh? They’ve been batshit insane at least as far back as 1994.
Aleta
@debbie: Aw she’ll be back as soon as her ruffled feathers get smoothed by a barrel of oil or two.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Immanentize: I’m really sad that the Taco Truck thing isn’t going to happen now.
Jeffro
Btw apologies if this has been linked to elsewhere, but Evan McMullin has an EXCELLENT op-ed in the NYT today.
I can haz Evan and Harry Reid deliver a prime-time speech to the nation this week, please? Before the Electors vote?
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Brachiator:
Comrade Scrutinizer opined that we may not even have elections by 2018 or 2020.
I don’t think that level of freak-out is warranted yet. Just offering an opinion. YMMV.
tobie
@Kay: I think the scariest thing about dictatorships is that they use existing institutions to undermine those very same institutions. Following the end of reconstruction in 1877 Jim Crow laws were legally passed; rolling the 1933 election and declaration of the state of emergency, the National Socialists passed hundreds of laws aimed at stripping away the rights of Jews. Vigilance and resistance are the only two options, exhausting and demoralizing as it is. Trump will fuck up epically at some point. The country cannot run on autopilot indefinitely. And when that happens some party is going to have to be there to pick up the pieces. Maybe I’m naive but I think showing strength in numbers in petitions, protests, etc. is about the only thing that we have to keep up morale in these dark times. Standing Rock became a cause célèbre. This is about the one powerful option we’re left with.
liberal
@LongHairedWeirdo: One important ingredient is to somehow emphasis that it’s not “Congress” that’s doing it, but rather “Republicans in Congress.”
Betty Cracker
@LongHairedWeirdo: Great points.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: that goes against everything I’ve ever heard/read about Bharara. Some pretty wild, and surprising, speculation on Yglesias’ part
Comrade Scrutinizer
@West of the Rockies (been a while): Problem is, you’re using a false parallel in an attempt to comfort yourself. But whatever gets you through the day.
Это курам на смех
@Jeffro: For which environmental group to support, I think the Natural Resources Defense Council will give you a bigger bang for your buck than the Sierra Club.
Mnemosyne
I’m still wondering if people on the left will ever figure out they got rolled by Wikileaks and Ed Snowden. I’m guessing not, because propaganda is that powerful.
Kay
@tobie:
Right, but that’s sort of cold comfort for ordinary people, isn’t it? That’s the definition of “powerless”. We’re already assuming any controls, any checks, will have to come from intervening or outside events. That’s an admission “institutions” are failing, will continue to fail.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Mnemosyne:
I was one of the suckers. I wised up later, but the attraction for the “brave whistleblower” fits a lot of liberal memes.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
When has it been the responsibility of the msm to vett political candidates?
What did you want, more fiery editorials denouncing him?
Many in the msm, like many posters here, simply assumed that Trump was a joke and a flash-in-the pan, and ignored him or just mocked him. But even here, there were plenty of archival material and new stories about his life, his business practices, his deceptions.
Wikileaks was news? Would you have had it censored just because you didn’t like the source? And the bulk of the material was trivial.
Later on, conservative newspapers that endorsed Clinton or no one, and begged readers not to vote for Trump were either reviled or ignored.
I agree that the email crap was overdone.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I still don’t know why they settled the Trump University case. I have yet to see Donald Trump held accountable for anything. When I see it, I will happily credit whoever does hold him accountable. Until then it hasn’t happened so I’m not relying on it.
Matt McIrvin
@tobie:
There could be no country and no pieces.
tobie
@Kay: I agree and am frightened for the most vulnerable among us who will lose their healthcare, their right to vote, their freedom to be who they are, their housing assistance, access to public education, etc. I think we’re all trying to figure out what, if anything, we can do in the face of failing institutions. There’s no silver lining to this cloud. Didn’t mean to imply that.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
What information was provided that was not true?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Listening to an NPR story about a man who threatened to slit the throat of an off-duty NYPD officer.
I’m sure the Blue Wall will form in outrage against incidents like this.
Did I mention the officer in question is a Muslim-American?
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Kay:
This. One of the disheartening aspects of this shitshow is the lack of any institutional pushback against Our Future Overlord. Civil disobedience and demonstrations are nice and all, but if we allow Trump to gather to himself the police and military power of the State, it will be damned hard to dislodge him and his cronies. The power imbalance is huge at that point.
Chris
@Kay:
The only thing I can say is that while the barriers are about to get much higher for Democrats to win office, that doesn’t mean they’re impassable. It’s not like we didn’t have the field slanted against us already before this – we always have a higher bar to clear. Doesn’t mean winning’s impossible… but unfortunately, it does seem to require a late 1990s/mid-2000s level of disaster for the Republicans.
Sorry I can’t be more inspirational. This is not an inspiring year.
Slappy Kincaid
The corruption of these people does not need to be exposed, really, because they make no effort to hide it. It is on full display. The media seems to largely not give a shit.
The Chinese government also came out and said that they would ignore what Trump was saying until he took office. If he makes the same kind of statements after taking office as he has been doing the last couple days, they will close their embassy and sever diplomatic relations.
I expect nothing but bad things to begin in earnest after January 20. Until then it is just a very ominous circus.
Jeffro
@Kay:
So that Trump wouldn’t have to testify under oath (and therefore, almost certainly, perjure himself multiple times per hour).
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Brachiator: lies of omission. Snowden was working for Trump while Berniebots wailed about a rigged primary.
XTPD
@liberal: As if you’re literally the only person who knew at the time appointing Comey was a terrible idea.
The Moar You Know
@Kay: Key, it’s not that nobody’s listening, it’s that we’re all scared shitless of admitting it.
No help is on the way and there is nothing we can do. It was always that fragile, just took one guy and a Twitter account to bring it all down, but it felt like it was strong for a long time, didn’t it?
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@LongHairedWeirdo: Ha ha, do you have a few hundred radio stations, multiple cable channels, and a broadcast channel for your message?
KdeZ
@Betty Cracker: Maybe you wanted ” disapprobation?” That would work.
debbie
@Kay:
Anyone who’s observed Donald Trump over the years knows he wouldn’t part with $25 million if he was innocent. I don’t care how attorneys and surrogates try to frame it, paying anything out is clear acknowledgement that Trump was guilty.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
“This election is a choice between Trump or Goldman Sachs.”
And, unlike you, Wikileaks knew it was about the narrative, not the content. It didn’t matter that the content was trivial. The only thing that mattered was that the media continued a continuous drumbeat of “Hillary Clinton” and “emails.”
I’ll ask you a counter-question: what did you find to be newsworthy in those emails?
The Moar You Know
@Mnemosyne: Given the continued crybaby demands that Obama pardon Snowden on the way out the door, I gotta say the answer is “no”. Ain’t the conservatives asking for him to be pardoned.
debbie
@Jeffro:
He’s on NPR’s On Point today. He’s making some strong allegations. If he doesn’t cave, good on him, but I still wouldn’t trust an intelligence officer in the Oval Office.
gogol's wife
I just called the House Oversight Committee. The person on the phone said they’ve been getting a LOT of calls demanding that they investigate the conflicts of interest of the PEOTUS. He said they’re waiting for the “press conference” Trump’s going to have about his conflicts of interest on Dec. 15. I hadn’t heard about that, but then I feel that looking at any newspaper is like staring into the face of Medusa.
Brachiator
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
I am astounded by the level of incompetence so far shown by Trump.
I am astounded that the lumpen man child who watches tv shows and then goes on Twitter rants about them is still doing idiotic stuff like this.
I am astounded that Trump is actively pursuing personal business interests with the foreign leaders he is beginning to deal with.
I am astounded that so many of his advisers and cabinet choices reflect his perpetual personal grievance mindset.
I am astounded that the Republican leadership believe that they will be able to use Trump for their own purposes, without damaging the country.
But most of all, I am astounded that this turns his supporters on, that they are absolutely loving what Trump is doing.
Months ago, before the general election, I came up with a little ditty about Trump, but never posted it. Looking back at it, it might have been too mild. But the bottom line is that I am curious to see what Trump will do in the first months after January 20. We might never make it to 2018 or 2020.
Ballad of Donald J Trump
Oh give us a strong white man
We know he’ll do the best that he can
He’s wise and he’s just
He’s (you know) one of us,
Oh give us a strong white man
Oh give us a strong white man
He’ll lead us like no woman can
He’s hard and he’s brave
He’s just what we crave
Oh give us a strong white man
Oh give us the strong white man
Second rate races are not part of the plan
He’s passed every test
He’s the best of the best
Oh give us the strong white man
Oh give us our strong white man
What is it you don’t understand?
We’re defined by our fear
And we only can hear
The call for our strong white man.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: If your position is that the MSM handled Trump’s candidacy competently, I lack the inclination and the pixels to attempt a rebuttal, for the same reason I eschew conversation with flat-earthers and climate change deniers.
Mnemosyne
@The Moar You Know:
Don’t worry, President Trump will pardon him. He’ll probably even get a ticker tape parade for his services. And idiots on the left still won’t get it.
Kay
@Jeffro:
Why settle? If there was ever a time the public needs to know what sleazes the Trump Family are, it’s now.
By settling they got in the way of what would have been worthwhile, really VITAL information- “the public interest”.
The 25 million is just peanuts compared to the value of a trial. He bought his way out of disclosure and transparency. He successfully evaded that during the campaign. To let him off when they had him seems insane or corrupt-one or the other.
I don’t know- how much are we willing to pay to maintain an appearance that everything is under control and will be FINE? A lot, it seems. We’re giving up all ethics and transparency to maintain this illusion.
It’s like a fucked up, sick family, right? How everyone in the family goes along with it rather than be “found out”? Like families with child abuse or domestic violence. They will do just about anything to deny it. They ALL become liars.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@Slappy Kincaid: Can you provide a link to the statement you’re making on behalf of the Chinese govt?
Major Major Major Major
@Immanentize:
Sure. Before we go back to the original quote, let’s talk about the law. Remember years back when “teaching a computer to play chess” was a big deal; and, more recently, teaching a computer to play go was a big deal? These are actually less impressive than they sound because games have artificially imposed sets of rules. Of course a computer would be good at chess–it’s just a series of utility functions that are fairly trivial to write out. The issue was more storage capacity and speed, so hardware, not software. It’s the same basic idea with go, though much more complex.
I happen to think that brains are computers too, by the way, so this isn’t me trying to put down these accomplishments, but they’re extremely limited in scope. Note that nobody’s talking about trying to make a computer that’s “good at games.” We’re addressing very narrow-domain problems.
It’s the same with law. Natural language processing is very difficult, but legal language is almost computational in nature. Because consistency at scale is so fundamental to law, a lot of the heavy lifting and pre-processing has already been done for you by millions of people over hundreds of years.
Is there lots of boilerplate language? Of course, but even that needs customization and advisement. And if you want law that actually “does anything”, rather than boilerplate applications of existing things like incorporation or pre-nups, you need a lot of human input. Which is to say…
Is kind of like saying that LegalZoom will get rid of lawyers.
Aleta
T and his announcements continue to overpower stories about Obama and the ongoing reporting on the family’s lawbreaking. Where there’s smoke, the fire is always somewhere else.
Cheney and Ashcroft did it too: whenever a negative story broke about that administration, a major terrorist threat or bust was quickly announced, or the colored threat-level thermometer would ding. Might be good to remind people early that these announcements may not be real.
Once T’s supporters have had their treats, I expect Tr will start holding friendly WH parties for both Dems and Repubs. The grift will become nonpartisan for anyone who plays, which was another tactic of Roy Cohen’s.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
When my brother-in-law first went into therapy, the therapist listened to his explanation of the whole dysfunctional family dynamic and then said, “So who’s the alcoholic?”
Trump is the alcoholic, and the Republicans and MSM are desperately trying to cover for him and act like everything is normal.
(The answer to the therapist’s question, BTW, is his sister, aka my sister in law. I’m 99 percent she has Borderline Personality Disorder, but good luck getting a person with a cluster B disorder to commit to year-long group therapy.)
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Prove it.
I will also give Snowden this. A journalism professor sent him a Twitter message asking how the FBI could possibly get through all the hundreds of thousands of extra emails they discovered. His response nailed the culling technique that they used and declared that this was really no big deal to investigate in the short window before the election.
Doesn’t take the FBI off the hook for their interference, but Snowden’s judgement was counter to the hysteria that you were getting from both liberals and conservatives.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Brachiator:
I’m on board with all those points, and I dig The Ballad of Don and Yokels.
Kay
@Aleta:
They’ve just given up on it. Ivanka is meeting with Al Gore now. So we’ve given up on the conflict of interest with the business and the problem with no one electing Ivanka Trump to anything.
They just lower the bar every day, so the Trump’s can step over it. There doesn’t seem to be a bottom.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Brachiator: I momentarily confused Snowden and Assange
Poopyman
On the subject of “what to do”, Digby had an excellent post on Saturday. Read it. And read the links.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
I asked a simple question. When has it been the msm’s responsibility to vett political candidates? Surely you can provide an example from a past presidential campaign.
And note that I never said that the msm handled Trump’s candidacy competently and said so in my posts here. But then again, I have never believed in the idea of a monolith msm. People want to cherry pick failures to come up with grand unified theory of the failed msm. This is as false as climate change denial.
Chris
@Brachiator:
Uhhhh….
SiubhanDuinne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
A Muslim-American woman, who wears a hijab under her uniform cap. So misogynistic as well as racist/Islamophobic.
Major Major Major Major
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Easy enough to do.
sapient
I don’t know if this will work because I don’t copy links to twitter that often, but this is supposed to be a link to the names and numbers of state attorney generals. You can call them to ask them to sue for equal protection under the theory that Larry Lessig is proposing. Okay, it’s a long shot, but we aren’t going to win the lottery unless we play.
https://twitter.com/HRCFanGal/status/805818396138938368
germy
I don’t think it’s possible to talk sense into the Cheeto Benito, but I admire them for trying.
Obama was polite and informative during his meeting with Cheeto; he wants to have some influence. So does Gore.
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I agree that Assange was, is, and always will be a piece of shit.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
So much for that rumored dignity and self-respect
Mike in NC
@SiubhanDuinne: Yes, just might be the only decent news we see until this awful year is behind us.
Major Major Major Major
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Didn’t she also say something else Trumpy recently? Oh well.
Aleta
@Major Major Major Major: Speaking of language, this study using AI for lip reading is amazing.
The best part is the first comment:
Major Major Major Major
@Aleta: DeepMind is a very promising project. A good friend of mine is a computational linguist there.
bendal
The Trumpf Administration is going to make Grant’s Presidency look like a reasoned, thoughtful, honest bunch of people by the time he’s done. IMO much more savvy people (perhaps on both ends of that phone call) are taking advantage of Trumpf’s total ignorance and inexperience on foreign policy and geopolitical situations to advance their agenda and capitalize on it. His children as well are suspect; if they are really running his companies then they have no business meeting with foreign diplomats or convincing Daddy to give one country or another a deal.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
I’m still waiting for you to explain what was newsworthy about the stolen Wikileaks emails.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
I agree with you about the emails, but it was easy and lazy, and even the idiot FBI director found a way to revive it.
Also, I think that Clinton was in a no-win situation. Had it not been the server issue, it would have been something else. But we also know (also in part from the Wikileaks) that she had been warned about this early on, that it would, if you will, contribute to a narrative that she was arrogant, did what she wanted in defiance of established policy, and that she set up the private server so that she could deliberately delete damaging information.
The thing is, even if the mainstream press had dropped coverage about this after a while, conservatives would still have used it against her.
You’re shifting the ground of the argument, because I asked you what was false.
Newsworthy is a very different issue. But, for example, some of the Wikileaks info that I found interesting was details about how her campaign operation was organized. You usually see this stuff in after-the-fact analyses of the campaign. But there was never a bombshell.
Obviously, newsworthiness is a matter of taste, not journalistic ethics.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: My mistake — I assumed you were aware of the founders’ rationale for establishing the First Amendment and the importance of an informed citizenry in a democracy.
NR
@Aleta: Well, I mean, out of everyone in the Trump family, Ivanka’s the one I most want to see having an influence on policy. She’s the least bad member of that family. Certainly better than her father or her brothers (not that that is a particularly high bar to cross, but still).
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
Again: what in those emails was newsworthy?
You’re from a journalism background. You know — or should know — the difference between “interesting” and “newsworthy.”
Aleta
@germy: Plus they probably didn’t offer him a meeting with anyone else.
mr_gravity
@rikyrah: Watching a bit of MTP yesterday morning (I should know better) and I was struck by an ad by Koch Industries that depicted all the many ways in which the Kochs are improving our lives. I couldn’t help but notice there were many shots of pristine manufacturing environments that were mostly devoid of people. One guy overseeing vast automated processes. Surely they know what message that sends. Could it be more obvious?
ETA “You need us more than we need you.”
low-tech cyclist
@Kay:
If Obama fired him, Trump would choose his successor, who would undoubtedly be even worse.
germy
@Aleta: I think she’s closer to Cheeto Benito than anyone. If she says “Dad! I think this climate thing is real! Gore was real smart, and I got a DVD from DiCaprio!” he might stroke his chin and consider.
I’m grasping at anything here, like a drowning man.
bemused
@jacy:
Which is another way of saying “everybody does better when everybody does better”, a phrase I have always liked. Both would make good bumper stickers.
germy
@NR: Have you seen this review of her book?
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/ivanka-trumps-terrible-book-helps-explain-the-trump-family-ethos
Betty Cracker
@NR: How did you arrive at that determination?
Elie
Folks we are rapidly moving off the grid of the expected and formally recognized as normal due process. Once those electors vote you can kiss ol USA as previously known goodbye. The only hope would be a very unexpected intervention by the republican electors (which we know ain’t gonna happen). Anything else would be some sort of subversive action by operatives opposing and would be treated as a coup. We have a very brief time to oppose using levers of the existing government.
While the MSM has not been as strident as some would like, the print media has actually been pretty clear in its descriptions without screaming that we are all gonna die. They don’t have a solution for the mess we are in. None of us do unfortunately. The very worst has happened and we have to accept that reality in order to begin to come up with options on how to counter. A whole lot of people are in denial
Betty Cracker
@low-tech cyclist: I’d rather have the devil I don’t know than the devil who, either through incompetence or willful misconduct, has already tampered with a US presidential election. Seriously — Comey’s actions were so egregious and consequential that he should not be allowed to get away with it. Looks like he will, though.
Elie
@Elie:
I never thought that I would ever think or write what I just wrote. What a nightmare!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Except Taiwan is pretty heavily mixed up in China with them outsorucing their outsourcing to China and investments. This sounds more like Trump’s Deplorables simpleton view of the world in action.
max
@gratuitous: “Character Matters” is so pre-Gingrich.
Danielle Allen over at the WaPo wrote a column in August describing Trump as a tyrannical soul and comparing him to Gilgamesh. Right in the middle of this column she pops out with ‘character matters’.
I had this massive flashback to all the GOP congressional bullshit, all the lies for this war or that war from WaPo Oped types, and so on and so forth, and in about 5 seconds…. I just completely fucking cracked up.
max
[‘Character matters? In fucking DC? In the GOP? Are you shitting me lady?!?!?’]
Major Major Major Major
@Betty Cracker:
Mill, who did come later, argues that it was because having any particular group able to be the arbiter of ‘right speech’ was bad. I always liked that one.
Keith G
@Это курам на смех: Highly likely.
Aleta
@germy: I have hope too. (Somewhere there is an instagram set up by artists she admires or is friends with, posting pleas to her to influence her father. )
Also I believe (I joked about it above, but still) once there’s a hook identified to making money and brand off it, they will engage. And she needs to salvage her rep with her peers, again for her brand.
I just hope they try for real progress. But whether she can muster any influence against that of the energy companies? Good luck to her if she tries.
NR
@germy: Yeah, pretty much what I expected. Still, her father is everything she is and much much worse.
germy
@Aleta:
Maybe she won’t, but blood is thicker than water (as they say) and if Cheeto Benito takes her side over the energy companies, we can enjoy the battle. I’d like to see them in disarray. Cheeto vs. Ryan/Turtle. Energy companies vs. Daughter/Cheeto.
Elie
@Это курам на смех:
You are assuming this current structure will still be in place. Hope you are right after we pass the Jan 20 event horizon. I would weep with joy if that is the case no matter how messy. They are already ignoring standing customs of policy and institutions. You think they will allow opposition?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Aleta: I can’t remember who on twitter was predicting we will see a Carrier-like photo op of trump re-opening a coal mine
I’m not a fan of Nicolas Sarkozy (and me not being a French voters, I imagine he doesn’t much care), but IIRC before he lost his own primary he was proposing a carbon tax on American imports. I’m hoping that Trump finds withdrawing from the Paris accords more complicated than he’s expecting.
NR
@Betty Cracker: She hasn’t done anything as bad as her brother’s Skittles tweet. I’m not praising her by any means, but compared to the rest of her family, I’d rather have her be the one with influence.
Elie
@NR:
You are very naive. Very
germy
@Elie:
Oh God, I’ve never seen it expressed in those terms. The event horizon. After 1/20/17 we slide into a massive black hole.
Elie
@NR:
You mean that you have evidence of anyway.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
I carry a copy of the Constitution with me. I don’t see the part that says that it is the responsibility of the press to vett political candidates.
The press covers campaigns and depends upon the voters to make up their own minds.
I have already stated that a lot of the early coverage simply failed to take Trump seriously. But the far bigger story is that after a certain point, Trump’s supporters simply stopped paying attention to negative press coverage.
Very few newspapers and magazines endorsed Trump during the primaries. Practically every newspaper and magazine denounced Trump in the general election. His lies and failures were reported in places that were easily found by anyone interested.
There is nothing in the First Amendment that forces citizenry to be informed.
But I also have noted that the quality of the press has declined because the industry is dying. You have fewer newspapers, fewer veteran reporters, fewer reporters that get alternative views, and fewer alternative journalistic outlets. It is not simply that you have a poor mainstream media, you have a lesser mainstream media, along with a public that increasingly loves to enclose itself in a bubble that reinforces their own narrow and often false views.
NR
@Elie: Okay, who in Trump’s inner circle do you want to see making policy? It’s going to be someone.
liberal
@Brachiator:
AFAICT it helped her with anyone with a brain, since everything they posted was boring, not scandalous.
Major Major Major Major
Man, somebody likes pie!
liberal
@XTPD: Aren’t you the neocon piece of shit who posts on LGM?
As I said there…go fuck yourself.
ETA: Not only are you a neocon POS, you’re a stupid piece of shit. I was merely pointing out the obvious truth to the Obama fellators around here, not claiming any particular insight.
Elie
Who I wanna see? There is no one. We are not in a regular administration. Get that through your head. This is a regime. Policy is what they will do to control us and they won’t seek permission. “Policy” will be the rules they want us to observe and punishment will follow for those who do not obey.
Get real.
Keith G
@Elie: You can dial down no worries just a little bit. Come what may, the republic is going to remain and most of us will stay right here alive and kicking. When you get right down to it, not a lot can change or does change from year to year, from administration to administration, from decade to decade,
Yeah, there’s going to be those things that truly, exponentially, suck, but I doubt I’ll be seeing the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse making an appearance over the horizon.
prob50
@rikyrah:
Besides, the GOP has been making their own Reality Presidentially since the Shrub & Dick show magically created Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction from thin air and then just as magically made them disappear before any of those wimpy Credible Source people could get around to verifying those claims, It’s not Dick or Dubya’s fault that those silly U.N. weapons inspectors didn’t find any. They were probably just looking at the wrong Reality, you know,that old-fashioned one that recognized the difference between things that are/were from things that were aren’t/were not.
NR
@Elie:
You know that that’s how it works now, right?
liberal
@Brachiator:
Bullshit. Hillary was the best candidate ever, as was the process which led to her being the establishments pick in 2016 and (initial) pick in 2008.
liberal
@Betty Cracker: The media always sucked.
People (even people of my ilk, presumably further left than you) go on and on about the halcyon days when the media worked.
Bullshit. AFAICT smaller-town newspapers were almost to a single one all extremely reactionary. And have you ever read newspapers and magazines from the 1960s on our involvement in Indochina? Fucking pathetic. Yeah, sure, you can find OK stuff from the late 1960s, but our involvement there predated Dien Bien Phu, for fuck’s sake.
XTPD
Oh get the fuck over yourself.
Your candidate lost in the primary. Not just lost, but got his ass kicked so hard that it was a zombie candidacy four months before he conceded. And quite honestly, this game of “neoliberal Democrats can only be failed, checkmate NEOLIBERALS” you’ve been playing for the last month is fucking disgusting.
Now keep in mind, I actually like Sanders. I was skeptical that he’d actually win the nomination, but I was a fan of his candidacy because I suspected (correctly!) that it would succeed in pushing the Clinton candidacy to the left. And even after it became clear that he had no chance of winning the nomination, I still don’t hold any animosity towards him, both because the campaign season was far better than in 2008 and because he’d been an unreserved backer of Mrs. Clinton.
I still voted for Clinton in the primary.
I didn’t vote for her because her policies are closest to mine – going from my political compass readings, I should have voted for Jill Stein. I didn’t vote for because (as you seem to think I am) I’m a bloodthirsty neocon who wants to turn West Asia into a glass parking lot – I’m fucking 21, the only military action I was even cautiously optimistic about was Libya, and aside from diplomacy I don’t even pretend to have a. And I certainly didn’t fucking vote for her because the Democratic Party sold “identity politics” like cheap crack to get libtards hooked while Bill Clinton and Joe Biden personally sold the Midwest to India and China.
I voted for her because, as a minority, I felt I couldn’t afford to take any chances on fielding a weak candidate for the election. Oh sure, you can go on about how Saint Bernard of Brooklyn wasn’t a Damned Neoliberal, and how that fact alone would’ve generated an anti-chickenfucking force field – he still didn’t face a serious negative campaign against him at any point in the election cycle. The press would’ve had a fucking field day with every bullshit scandal in the Repug oppo file (RAPE FANTASIES! CHRONIC MOOCHER! SANDINISTAS! ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM! THINK OF THE CHILDREN! ASIATIC!) and given his performances on the campaign trail, I feel confident that this would’ve sunk him in the general. You certainly wouldn’t be complaining about how “Bernie wasn’t a strong candidate” or how the media didn’t really matter in throwing the election.
Not to mention, a Bernie defeat would’ve helped mainstream “soak the untermenschen” as a valid strategy to electoral victory, even faster than it already has. But it’s OK, because Democrats won’t actually go anywhere so long as the only thing they have to offer is “identity politics.”
Yes, “identity politics,” the tool the Democratic Machine has kept at its right side to brainwash those wogs and queermos into giving them – and by extension, BIG NEOLIBERALISM – the chains of commanding, in perpetuity.
Yes, because if there’s one thing that’s keeping socialism from being the law of the land forever and ever and ever, it’s “identity politics.” You may know this by its other name, “actively supporting minorities.” Tammany Hall did that in the 1800s, dontcha know.
“But it’s OK,” you say to yourself. “I can totally get away with saying this shit, because I voted for Hillary.”
No, it’s not fucking OK.
It’s not fucking OK, because you’ve consistently refused to show any restraint in taking obnoxious potshots at anybody you consider neoliberal Democrats. Keep in mind, this is even after some of Hillary’s strongest critics during the campaign cycle – TJ & Dilan Esper in particular – have for the most part managed to cool it with the anti-Hillary rhetoric after the election.
It’s not fucking OK, because by actively advertising utter contempt for the viewpoints anyone who doesn’t agree with 99% of your policy positions, you’ve clearly indicated you’re only visiting LGM to start a fight – and then when anyone actually takes you up on it, you’ve tended to either skulk back into the darkness or squeal like a whiny-ass titty baby.
It’s not fucking OK, because, quarter-assed remarks on media unfairness aside, it show’s you’re really not that upset about this turn of events. Sure, there are good odds Trump’s presidency will be an extinction-level event – at least for us wogs in the US – but hey, this you actually get a chance to burn it down and start from scratch! And it took out a
bloodthirsty neoliberal $hillbotin the process!It’s not fucking OK, because it plainly shows that even with the election of a legitimate fascist to the presidency, even with a unified government determined to turn the safety net into Swiss cheese, even with a white electorate that increasingly wants to paint the country with bleach…clearly it is more important to you, as a white man, to let the world know that you despise Hillary Clinton.
It’s not fucking OK, in short, because this shtick, along with your past conduct, shows you to be an utterly immature, narcissistic waste of carbon far more concerned with leftier-than-thou posturing than about actually advancing liberal goals.
So either shut the fuck up about the LGM hivemind, and actually act like, you know, a fucking adult, or get the fuck off this site and go sniffing your friends’ farts at the Jackoffbin and Counterpunch comment sections.
BTW, how’d the “vote for the warmongering neoliberal shill who is literally THE SECOND WORST” argument work out for you?
XTPD
@liberal: Oh get the fuck over yourself.
Your candidate lost in the primary. Not just lost, but got his ass kicked so hard that it was a zombie candidacy four months before he conceded. And quite honestly, this game of “neoliberal Democrats can only be failed, checkmate NEOLIBERALS” you’ve been playing for the last month is fucking disgusting.
Now keep in mind, I actually like Sanders. I was skeptical that he’d actually win the nomination, but I was a fan of his candidacy because I suspected (correctly!) that it would succeed in pushing the Clinton candidacy to the left. And even after it became clear that he had no chance of winning the nomination, I still don’t hold any animosity towards him, both because the campaign season was far better than in 2008 and because he’d been an unreserved backer of Mrs. Clinton.
I still voted for Clinton in the primary.
I didn’t vote for her because her policies are closest to mine – going from my political compass readings, I should have voted for Jill Stein. I didn’t vote for because (as you seem to think I am) I’m a bloodthirsty neocon who wants to turn West Asia into a glass parking lot – I’m fucking 21, the only military action I was even cautiously optimistic about was Libya, and aside from diplomacy I don’t even pretend to have a. And I certainly didn’t fucking vote for her because the Democratic Party sold “identity politics” like cheap crack to get libtards hooked while Bill Clinton and Joe Biden personally sold the Midwest to India and China.
I voted for her because, as a minority, I felt I couldn’t afford to take any chances on fielding a weak candidate for the election. Oh sure, you can go on about how Saint Bernard of Brooklyn wasn’t a Damned Neoliberal, and how that fact alone would’ve generated an anti-chickenfucking force field – he still didn’t face a serious negative campaign against him at any point in the election cycle. The press would’ve had a fucking field day with every bullshit scandal in the Repug oppo file (RAPE FANTASIES! CHRONIC MOOCHER! SANDINISTAS! ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM! THINK OF THE CHILDREN! ASIATIC!) and given his performances on the campaign trail, I feel confident that this would’ve sunk him in the general. You certainly wouldn’t be complaining about how “Bernie wasn’t a strong candidate” or how the media didn’t really matter in throwing the election.
Not to mention, a Bernie defeat would’ve helped mainstream “soak the untermenschen” as a valid strategy to electoral victory, even faster than it already has. But it’s OK, because Democrats won’t actually go anywhere so long as the only thing they have to offer is “identity politics.”
Yes, “identity politics,” the tool the Democratic Machine has kept at its right side to brainwash those wogs and queermos into giving them – and by extension, BIG NEOLIBERALISM – the chains of commanding, in perpetuity.
Yes, because if there’s one thing that’s keeping socialism from being the law of the land forever and ever and ever, it’s “identity politics.” You may know this by its other name, “actively supporting minorities.” Tammany Hall did that in the 1800s, dontcha know.
“But it’s OK,” you say to yourself. “I can totally get away with saying this shit, because I voted for Hillary.”
No, it’s not fucking OK.
It’s not fucking OK, because you’ve consistently refused to show any restraint in taking obnoxious potshots at anybody you consider neoliberal Democrats. Keep in mind, this is even after some of Hillary’s strongest critics during the campaign cycle – TJ & Dilan Esper in particular – have for the most part managed to cool it with the anti-Hillary rhetoric after the election.
It’s not fucking OK, because by actively advertising utter contempt for the viewpoints of anyone who doesn’t agree with 99% of your policy positions, you’ve clearly indicated you’re only interested in starting a fight – and then when anyone actually takes you up on it, you’ve tended to either skulk back into the darkness or squeal like a whiny-ass titty baby.
It’s not fucking OK, because, quarter-assed remarks on media unfairness aside, it show’s you’re really not that upset about this turn of events. Sure, there are good odds Trump’s presidency will be an extinction-level event – at least for us wogs in the US – but hey, this you actually get a chance to burn it down and start from scratch! And it took out a
bloodthirsty neoliberal $hillbotin the process!It’s not fucking OK, because it plainly shows that even with the election of a legitimate fascist to the presidency, even with a unified government determined to turn the safety net into Swiss cheese, even with a white electorate that increasingly wants to paint the country with bleach…clearly it is more important to you, as a white man, to let the world know that you despise Hillary Clinton.
It’s not fucking OK, in short, because this shtick, along with your past conduct, shows you to be an utterly immature, narcissistic waste of carbon far more concerned with leftier-than-thou posturing than about actually advancing liberal goals.
So either shut the fuck up about the neoliberal hivemind, and actually act like, you know, a fucking adult, or get the fuck off this site and go sniffing your friends’ farts at the Jackoffbin and Counterpunch comment sections.
BTW, how’d the “vote for the warmongering neoliberal shill who is literally THE SECOND WORST” argument work out for you?
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Newsworthy is decided by an editor.
Interesting is decided by a reader.
Had I been the editor involved, I would have printed the Wikileaks information because it provided insight into the decisions made by Clinton campaign. Also, I note that as far as I saw, the information that was printed was double checked for veracity with the participants.
I’ve already given you my assessment as a reader.
So, can you demonstrate that the Wikileaks information was false, or that there was any journalistic reason to suppress it?
prob50
@Betty Cracker:
Yeah, but at least the cat will still shit in his catbox and cover it up with sand, unlike Trump, who will insist it’s not shit at all, and anyway it smells faaahbulous.
Aleta
@germy: Strong-arming the forced obedience of the servants to buy (likely overpriced) lemonade (likely from cheap concentrate) out of their (likely low) salaries; and calling this an early business success.
I saw something very similar once. Some kids who were way too wealthy for the vacation their parents had picked. They set up a stand, where local kids the week before had sold elaborate painted quirky rocks and shells for 5-30 cents.
We went over to indulge the new kids, who were surly as anything. They’d set out a handful of rocks they had picked up on the roadside, uglier than any they could have easily picked up on the beach across the street. Priced at 5-10 dollars, and then they tried to intimidate us into buying. Lessons from their Texas oil dad I think. Sad for real.
Kay
@Aleta:
But we won’t know what happened because she’s completely unaccountable and this “process” she’s using is non-transparent.
This is what I mean about rapidly declining “norms”. Obama met with insurance companies and providers during the health care fight. Obama. The President. Who is accountable and subject to public transparency. Michelle wasn’t negotiating health care policy with people she knows or likes or happens to get a meeting with!
It’s nuts. They bring down the standards every day they operate. They’re not functioning within any structure or process. It’s like “gosh, I hope Ivanka is nice and a good person!”
We’re already accepting the rock bottom standards that apply to Trump Inc. That’s the whole point of process and conflicts checks- so we don’t have to rely on people being “good people”.
Keith G
@Brachiator: I believe you have that just about right. In the end voters just didn’t care enough about Donald Trump’s negatives, most of which were well known, for them to factor that into their voting behavior. That is what cooked Hillary’s goose. Much of her carmpaign’s energy was devoted to reminding folks what an awful person Trump is. When enough voters decided not to care about that, sayonara HRC.
low-tech cyclist
@Brachiator:
Tru dat. But they have a lot of choices in terms of how they’re going to cover campaigns.
And if they fail to inform the electorate about where the candidates and parties are coming from on issues that matter to the voters, and at least give them some idea of what will happen differently if one candidate wins than if the other one does, then when the voters make up their minds, it’s GIGO.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@liberal:
I love this one. Like, you know, the investigators wouldn’t be able to see the emails that were received by others. If you want to be discreet the email should say “call me”, otherwise you know it’s out there somewhere.
The poor chicken has about had it.
Brachiator
@liberal:
Clinton was the superior candidate in 2016. Period. End of Issue. But it obviously didn’t matter.
Clinton was not the best candidate in 2008. Period. End of Issue.
The private server gave Clinton’s enemies the stick to beat her with. But had it not been the server, it would have been something else. Because that’s how strong the Clinton hate is (which includes hatred of Bill).
I have no idea what point you are trying to make.
Kay
@Aleta:
Ivanka comes back and says “I made a good faith effort but any action on climate change is impossible”
What am I supposed to do with that as a regular citizen? Is she telling the truth? What’s a good faith effort? Who did she meet with? What did they say?
It’s the crazily arrogant idea that we all have to assume these people are somehow special and good. Tens of millions of people can’t rely on that. It’s crazy for the Trump’s to demand we rely on it.
Major Major Major Major
@Kay: You don’t remember when Malia negotiated the auto bailout?
Это курам на смех
@Elie: Ignoring customs and courtesies, appointing incompetent cronies, stealing from the Treasury, and upsetting the geopolitical balance are a far cry from a ruthless fascist takeover. And I don’t believe that is their goal. Yes, they will work to consolidate their political power. But when they tank the economy, the money boys will have to step in and restore some normalcy. I’m not going to panic, although I will be carrying a towel.
XTPD
@Brachiator: Because he’s a worthless purity troll.
Elie
@NR:
Pretty fair guess based on what they are already doing. You see a rules based transparent process being implemented? As I said “get real”.
Aleta
@NR: The only animals the brothers seem to care about are ones they have spent money to kill.
Brachiator
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: RE: that she set up the private server so that she could deliberately delete damaging information.
This is where the private server was a no-win situation. The whole shit was trivial, but the “Lock Her Up” brigade is absolutely certain that Hillary deleted everything concerning her role in Libya and Benghazi, the murder of Vince Foster, and the secret recipe for Coca Cola from her private server. But this lie was also kept alive by her Congressional persecutors, who kept promising to come back and get to the bottom of things.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: liberal keeps it real. Man. Way fuckin’ real. Too real for the bougie neoliberal sell-outs around here.
ruemara
@Mnemosyne: Not if they keep humping Bernie Sanders’ leg, reading Jacobin & Intercept and generally acting the fool about who the real enemy is. The flood of articles coming from supposedly leftist sources detailing that identity politics is responsible for neo-nazis and Trump – that hasn’t slowed down. Right now, I’d say keeping the fragile coalition that has given Dems presidential victories before the brutal voter suppression affected the black community, that’s not going so well. If you’re going to piss off the activists, you’re headed towards putting off the base you need to win anything. I’m not hopeful. Even now, people are laser focused on how Hillary is awful and that’s why, but we can’t be bothered to talk about voter suppression. The left has been deriding the right for ages over their consumption of obvious propaganda and lack of ability to focus on reality. Hate to break it to anyone, but we’ve become what we despised.
Elie
@Это курам на смех:
I surely hope that you are right It worries me that you think that the money boys will keep our processes in place ( though they like stability it doesn’t have to be a representative democracy accountable to the public). We will see. ( sorry but what is the towel for?)
NR
@Elie:
No, absolutely not. But I also don’t understand how someone can think that punishing people for not following the rules they make is some horrible new thing that Trump and the Republicans are going to invent starting next year. That’s pretty much the way every system of government in the world works.
Major Major Major Major
@Elie: it’s a reference to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Don’t panic and always know where your towel is.
@XTPD: Oh, you noticed?
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: “Covers campaigns” is carrying the freight there, IOW, “vet.” The MSM did an monumentally shitty job of it when it came to Trump. There were exceptions, but so few that I can practically name them all. Outlets like the NYT and CNN were so focused on appearing objective that they made mountains out of molehills when covering stuff like Clinton’s emails and covered Trump’s Everest-scale corruption and dishonesty problems as if they were comparable when they were not. I’ve seen data that bears this out, including an analysis at Vox that showed how much more coverage Clinton’s emails got than Trump’s “Muslim ban.” It’s impossible to quantify its effect on the outcome exactly, but I believe it was significant. YMMV.
@liberal: I don’t go on and on about the halcyon days when the media was perfect, but I think it’s pretty obvious that the proliferation of outlets, self-siloing, ref-working, etc., has had a negative effect on our ability to function as a democracy and indeed has created such strong self-reinforcing reality bubbles that someone who aspires to be an informed citizen must transcend them to get at the truth. YMMV.
XTPD
@Major Major Major Major: That is pretty much the only thing he does at LGM, and he’s been doing it since the start of October. (And as you can see above, is both incredibly thin-skinned and childish).
NR
@Betty Cracker:
I completely agree with you here, but I would say the problem isn’t so much “fake news” as it is the fact that people are too lazy to do research even though the Internet has made it massively easier than it used to be.
Elie
@NR:
I don’t agree but it seems you see this regime as a minor variant from business as usual?
Major Major Major Major
@Betty Cracker: having a handful of trusted media sources that reported actual truth was a historical aberration.
Ridnik Chrome
@Melville: You got it. That’s the mot juste.
Captain C
@liberal: I remember the 1992 Republican Convention being described in the Mainstream Media as a “hatefest.” I think that was the one with the Pat Robertson quote about how “Feminism Encourages Women To Leave Their Husbands, Kill Their Children, Practice Witchcraft, Destroy Capitalism & Become Lesbians.”
NR
@Elie: I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see.
But the point is, every government makes rules and punishes people for not following them. It’s been that way for thousands of years.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Yup
I’m not so sure. I think there was at least one poll, which I’ve looked for and can’t find, that showed Bubba was more popular with Sanders supporters. Part sexism, part personality, she does seem to get under people’s skins for reasons I don’t get. One of the many ways I’m out of step with most Americans, I’ve always preferred her to him.
Elie
@Major Major Major Major:
Ok. Why do I need to know about the towel? I accept “don’t panic” as a general admonition but I also think it’s important to know best you can what situation that you are really in. You don’t want to miss any opportunities thinking it’s all ok when it isn’t. We want to have as many options open as possible
Major Major Major Major
@Captain C: that was the convention with the “sounded better in the original German” speech, right!
Major Major Major Major
@Elie:
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Это курам на смех:
I think that you need to go look up the definitions of autocracy and fascism and report back. What Trump has been selling is a laundry list of these things: extreme nationalism (MAGA); supreme ruler (“I am the only one who can protect America”); social and class separation; racism; this guy is, if not a budding fascist, then certainly an autocrat. Refusing to face that fact is whistling past the graveyard.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Major Major Major Major: Molly Ivins is dead and Peggy Noonan is still alive. One of the things that shakes my faith in my own atheism, cause that’s a sick sense of humor.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
What new information did the story provide to voters that was urgent for them to know at that time?
Stop playing the clown. You know as well as I do that the information in the email leaks was a feature story at best with no actual news value. Or did they stop teaching the difference between “news” and “feature” after I left?
rikyrah
@Kay:
Good grief. If you don’t fight, then what the phuck as you gonna do? Just roll over?
For friggin’ sakes. HILLARY WON THE POPULAR VOTE.
WANNA ASK SOMEONE…ASK YOUR FELLOW OHIOANS WHY THEY VOTED FOR A LIAR.
Brachiator
A little good news:
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
Take out the word probably, there is no uncertainty in this. None.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: I saw that. Woohoo!
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne: I can even understand why Beltway journalists jumped on the WikiLeaks emails — there were so many fun, gossipy tidbits — more feature than news, with the exception of the DNC sniping at Sanders, and even that didn’t amount to much, IMO. What I found inexcusable was the lack of context. It was confirmed fairly early on by multiple government agencies and private security experts that the Russians were deliberately tampering with a US presidential election with an object in mind. That should have been in the lede of any story referencing the WikiLeaks material.
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
We did actually win the vote. It’s just that we don’t really have a representative democracy. If we did we’d actually use the popular vote. But we aren’t smart enough to elect the better candidate, we have to let our political betters do that for us.
Do I sound bitter? Good.
Elie
@Major Major Major Major:
LOL. Thanks for the info. Something to think about and smile.
sapient
@Ruckus: Maybe you should check out the Attorney General list, with the link I posted upthread, and call some of those folks to use Larry Lessig’s argument in court. It’s worth a try.
rikyrah
@Immanentize:
THANK YOU.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
Once again we make the mistake of thinking the product of the media is information. It is of course, not. The product of the media is ad money. Whatever brings in the most ad money is what is always going to be seen. We can cry about it, we can say all the nasty things we want about journalism and nothing will change. Because profit is the product for the media. We don’t buy it as much because it is useless. That makes the people that do buy it the target audience. Not us. Not the truth. Not reality. Whatever sells. And what sells is like all cons, bullshit. The more outrageous, the better, because that’s what sells. The media has found it’s audience. And It’s paying audience likes bullshit.
Elie
@Immanentize:
Thank you for the important reminder We cannot be lazy or passive about thinking and checking everything.
Captain C
@Major Major Major Major: I believe it was. Pat Buchanan was the speaker described, IIRC. Molly Ivins remains a national treasure.
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
Yep. The emails weren’t “leaked.” They were stolen. And that fact was considered less newsworthy than John Podesta’s risotto recipe.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: stolen by a foreign government and released in a way as to do maximum damage to a presidential candidate. Like, really really obviously. It’s so crazy.
geg6
@Kay:
I agree with them. I’m completely getting out of it. It’s too damn depressing and a complete waste of effort. I’m just hunkering down and hoping that me and mine don’t get stomped during the fascist takeover that I’m now completely convinced is coming. It’s over, America. Over and done with. I’m completely out of hope and energy. And I’m not wasting any more energy or time on politics. I really don’t have much money, so that’s a win for me. And I’m going to be 60 soon, so my energy is tapped out. Not wasting any more of either of them when no one else seems to give a shit.
Elie
@Major Major Major Major:
Amen. I will never get over what happened and how/why it was normalized. Why weren’t we all screaming from the roof tops?
Ruckus
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
See my comment at #230.
The role we assign to journalists is telling the truth. The role the people who pay them want done is to bring in profits. They think that bullshit is more profitable than the truth, so we get bullshit. The truth may be far better for them in the long run, but not in the next quarter. And they have been proven right, or at least not wrong. They make far more money now than they did when the news approximated the truth, so bullshit is what we are going to hear. There is no other concept than profit. None.
NR
@Mnemosyne: CNN fired Donna Brazile after it was revealed that she’d provided debate questions to the Clinton campaign ahead of time.
But, you know, it was all about risotto.
Major Major Major Major
@Elie: we were too busy with left-v-liberal infighting. By design.
Captain C
@Major Major Major Major:
Not only that, but a government run by people to whom the other candidate seems to owe hundreds of millions of dollars. You’d think that would be newsworthy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@NR: was it one of the questions Bernie couldn’t answer, like what legal authority he would use to break up the banks? Or why HRC”s WALL STREET SPEECHES were corrupt? or what he was going to do about down ticket races? or how he was going to get his agenda through Congress? or…
Mnemosyne
@NR:
We’ll have that engraved on your tombstone, sweetie: “But … but … Clinton!”
Steve in the ATL
@Brachiator:
I strongly disagree. The information presented was highly prejudicial and held close to zero probative value. There was no justification for doing that at that time.
tobie
@rikyrah:
Thank you. Our best message right now is: NO MANDATE!
We won the popular vote; we’ve triggered a 3.2% GDP growth rate; we’ve brought unemployment down to 4.6%; we’ve created 15 million jobs, and we’re wiling to give the GOP lessons on sensible policy free of charge.
Major Major Major Major
@Captain C: well, so we think. He wouldn’t release his taxes, another non normal thing not endlessly covered.
Mnemosyne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Don’t forget, it’s just a coincidence that Assange and Snowden both have connections to Russia. Total coincidence. And Trump’s, Sanders’s, and Stein’s connections to Russia. Nothing but a series of strange and unrelated coincidences that have no meaning at all.
Look, over there, somebody said something mildly dismissive about Saint Bernie! ATTACK! Good dog, NR! Uncle Vlad will be along to give you a belly rub any minute now …
Ruckus
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap:
That poor chicken has been digested long ago but this one won’t let it go.
geg6
@Brachiator:
That they were brave truth tellers, out to save the world and that they were the only truthful people out there, unlike that big fat liar Obama. And that we should trust their shitty, traitorous asses.
Elie
@geg6:
I understand how you feel but I don’t see how we can just capitulate. Not sure what I will be able to do but there will be something
Calouste
@Comrade Scrutinizer: IMO Trump is far more an autocrat than a fascist. Fascism of course has strong leaders, but it also puts emphasis on the party, the country, and the people. Trump is just about Trump. Actually, he is a kleptocrat rather than an autocrat. Think Ferdinand Marcos.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: god I hate Snowden so fucking much. People look at me like I have two heads when I talk about that out here.
Mnemosyne
@geg6:
As I’ve said, I fully expect one of President Trump’s first actions after his inauguration to be to pardon Snowden. And fucking morons on the left will say, See, Trump is more liberal than Obama! He doesn’t punish whistleblowers!
Chris
@Betty Cracker:
It really is mind-boggling – though I can’t say entirely surprising – that the Liberal Derangement Syndrome has now reached the point where even Russian attempted interference in the U.S. election is considered a non-story, not only by declared partisan GOP outfits, but by pretty much the entire media and the director of the FBI. I’m not even saying that they “stole the election” or whatever – the mere fact that they even tried should be huge news.
Ruckus
@tobie:
They won’t acknowledge the rest of the items in your comment but here is where you ran right off the rails.
1. Nothing good is free. Therefore the lessons are worthless.
2. Sensible policy is like krypton to conservatives. They like bullshit.
So what we have learned is that conservatives don’t value sensible policies. We know that because they never, ever talk about them other to try to destroy them, and none of the policies they they come up with make any sense at all, other than to profit someone that might trickle back 1-2% of that profit to the conservative politicians.
Betty Cracker
@Ruckus: The frustrating thing is that it isn’t universally true that the MSM sucks at every level. Journalism is still alive at the local level in many cities. Real journalism is still happening in MSM outlets like the WaPo, which has Villager scum like Chris Cillizza its payroll alongside outstanding journalists who do actual first-hand reporting like David Fahrenthold. It’s just that the profit and/or laziness-driven crap overwhelms the quality product.
Mnemosyne
@Chris:
Every person who opposed Hillary in this election had ties to Russia.
Every. Single. One.
And yet this information was not considered newsworthy. At all.
Kristine
@germy:
So full of win. Must steal.
Aleta
@Ruckus: And then there’s the headline writers. I don’t know anything about who does those headlines that misrepresent an article or sensationalize for clicks, except that it’s not done by the writer. And it’s not just the fake news or the rw sites or the NYT. I’ve even noticed it at TPM a couple of times.
geg6
@Elie:
Seriously. She’s a bigger piece of shit than he is, I think. Mainly because I think she’s smarter, which means she’s about a thousand times more evil.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: even Johnson?
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
I was saying back when he first took refuge in Russia that I suspected he was working for them, and I got shouted down. Anyone out there still want to argue that the only reason St. Ed is living in Russia on Putin’s dime is that it’s the only country that will protect him?
In about 30 or 40 years, I think we’ll find out that the information Snowden brought with him to Russia was pivotal in the theft of this election. Assuming we’re allowed free information about God-King Trump by then, of course.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: No, he’s just stoned or a moron; or both.
MomSense
@Major Major Major Major:
I’ve hated him all along and I think events have shown that we are right.
geg6
@Elie:
This. All this naive talk about the 2018 and 2020 elections. And how it’s great that Ivanka has that man’s ear!
Holy fuck people. You are going to have to come to grips with the idea that we are about to become prisoners in a fascist state. And no, I don’t think I’m over reacting. The country I knew and loved is gone. You may not have noticed it yet, but you will. Oh yes, you will.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
I have my suspicions. He had a lot more money than the libertarians usually do, and his own VP pick turned against him.
geg6
@Keith G:
I do not agree with you at all. And I don’t want you in my foxhole because stupid optimism is not at all what’s called for right now. Find one with someone else who thinks the world is going to on as it always has to hunker down with. I’m not interested in cock-eyed optimism. I’m preparing for simple survival.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: I don’t think he was working for them when he went rogue. I think he’s now being allowed to exist with a moderate amount of autonomy by Putin, who (accurately) predicts that he’ll reliably slag the US.
Steve in the ATL
@Major Major Major Major:
I’m with you, brother
The Moar You Know
@Betty Cracker: Sadly, not in San Diego County, where every single last newsprint outlet was bought out by the same Republican billionaire back around 2010 or so. The local radio/TV media have dutifully all “gotten with the program”. I don’t know where I’d find news on something if it happened on the next block over.
I can tell you it’s a scary feeling.
geg6
@Brachiator:
I do.
BERNIE RAWKS AND WOULD HAVE KICKED TRUMP’S ASS! BERNIE IS THE BESTEST, MOST WONDERFUL AND PERFECT PERSON AND IF YOU DIDN’T VOTE FOR HIM, YOU ARE A NEOCON, WALL STREET WHORE!
That’s it.
Chris
@Major Major Major Major:
I’ve hated the guy ever since he came out and said that the big Moral Event Horizon that persuaded him not to join the CIA was when they asked him to spy on/recruit a Swiss banker.
Not overthrowing a democracy, not running arms to terrorists, not violating a congressional arms embargo, not carrying out operations on American soil or against Americans… spying. On a foreigner in a foreign country. (In a community fairly well knowing for sheltering everyone’s dirty money). He joined a spy agency and then claims he became disillusioned because the spy agency asked him to spy on someone.
Which means he’s either so fucking stupid he shouldn’t be trusted to pour piss out of a boot with instructions written on the heel… Or he’s full of crap, it’s all just posturing, and knows he can get away with it because there are just enough “gentlemen shouldn’t read other gentlemen’s mail” types that he’ll have a following even with that kind of weak-ass “revelation.” Needless to say, I lean towards the latter and the “ulterior motive” explanation.
Major Major Major Major
@Chris: I think he’s an idiot with a severe Dunning-Kruger problem.
Betty Cracker
@Elie & @geg6: I haven’t yet met an Ivanka apologist who wasn’t a dude. (No idea if NR is male or female.)
sunny raines
you left out the most important part that ensures the lies and cover up keeps happening over and over and over:
4. corporate media is mum on the lie and republican support for it.
geg6
@Elie:
I’m not capitulating, but I’m not fighting any more either. Not unless they come for me and mine, an event that is not unlikely. I can’t take the people here acting as if the 2018 elections will get it all straightened out or will happen at all. I can’t take the people in my community, most of whom voted for this disaster. I can’t take a single solitary news source because I find every single one of them totally untrustworthy. I’m laying low and waiting to see what happens. As long as my family and I are safe, I’m going to do what I can to make sure it stays that way. That’s the only fight I consider worth having at this point. The country is dead, dead, dead. Not worth fighting for at this point. Survival. That’s where my head is.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
Regarding Johnson, he spent a lot of time blathering about how the US should work “hand in hand” with Russia on foreign policy. So, yeah, I’m guessing there are ties there that nobody bothered to look into.
Betty Cracker
@The Moar You Know: I’m in the Tampa media market, and in the decades-long duel to see which of the two regional papers would survive, the non-wingnut one won. I understand that’s rare.
The Moar You Know
@Betty Cracker: I’m both glad and pleasantly surprised. The outcome here was inevitable, sadly. I don’t know what it is about SoCal that drives almost everyone into servility, but it’s been that way my entire life and I am tired to the bone of it.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: I know Johnson was a big Snowden backer and they’re both fucking idiots.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
You are correct. But I relate it to the same concept of good cops. Sure, there has to be some, just from the law of large numbers. But the bad cops and vast majority of the media outweigh the good folks by too large an amount to allow it to be overcome, baring some unforeseen cataclysmic event.
A democracy, especially a representative one, has to rely on the people working within it’s bowels and the media to be truthful, to follow the concepts of the democracy in running and enforcing it’s laws for the benefit of all of it’s citizens. We no longer have that. And it’s about to get dramatically worse in 45 days.
Calouste
@geg6: I’m sure the 2018 elections will happen, even North Korea has elections. Of course, whether those elections will be fair, open, and democratic, even compared to the gerrymandering and voter suppression that has been going on throughout US history, is a completely different question.
Calouste
@Ruckus:
“No longer have” is a bit of wishful thinking there, is it? Try “never had”.
NR
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I don’t know. It was probably one of the questions Hillary couldn’t answer, like “How can I beat Donald Trump?”
NR
@Mnemosyne: It’s not “But Hillary!” to point out that the leaked emails weren’t a great big nothingburger like you guys claimed.
Just one more thing in a long list of things you were wrong about.
Ksmiami
@Keith G: except for the nuclear annihilation thing that is.
Ksmiami
@geg6: pretty much.
prob50
@geg6:
Giving up? Well, OK, if you really can’t handle any more. Yeah, the ’16 election of the ridiculously unqualified and mendacious Donald Trump has certainly handed us a bountiful all-you-can-eat load of shit. I’m not sure that bunkering-up is the best way to deal with this, but if you really think so then maybe it’s what you need.
I guess it’s a little easier out here in SoCal because the hurt is pretty much shared by the community at large, which gives some cause for hope, which can evolve into energy and a readiness to join in action when a bit more clarity on exactly where things stand sinks in. The current situation stinks, so the place to start is the 2018 elections.
Ruckus
@Calouste:
Point made.
It would have been better to say that we no longer have the appearance of that. And we did for a while. I think it was for about 5 minutes 10 or 20 yrs ago, I can’t remember.
Chris
@prob50:
Yeah, I’m half hoping that living in blue blue Maryland will shield me from at least some of the coming bullshit, and half wondering just how much of the bullshit it can actually shield us from (the federal government does have a ton of power and, their protests to the contrary, wingnuts have never been averse to using it to strong-arm the states they see as ungood. Going all the way back to the Fugitive Slave Act).
Mnemosyne
@NR:
The fact that the right wing ginned up enough of a fuss to get Brazile fired and that you were stupid enough to fall for it isn’t proof of anything but your gullibility, sunshine. You realize that’s the same CNN that saw no ethical problem when Lewandowski stayed on Trump’s payroll while CNN paid him to be an on-air commenter, right?
Let’s see: white supremacist financed by Russia vs a candidate who (allegedly) saw the debate questions ahead of time just like the sainted, twice-elected Reagan did. I didn’t think that would be a difficult decision, but apparently even the people who were purportedly on my side were even stupider than I imagined.
Mnemosyne
@prob50:
I think geg6 only just realized that she now lives in a red state with a bunch of malicious idiots who are happy to shoot themselves in the foot as long as someone tells them the ricochet will hurt a black person. That’s not a fun thing to have to come to grips with.
Ruckus
@prob50:
Remember, while we have a very large economy in CA in our own right, we are part of the whole, like it or not. We can’t secede, that was tried a while back. We suffer an economic collapse just like everyone else. And we suffer the loss of several federal programs, just like everyone else. Could we have (afford) our own health care program, like or better than the ACA? And what about SS/Medicare? It is possible that we won’t suffer quite as badly as some other states but lots and lots of our citizens will suffer just like those other states. Me for one. All of my friends, for others. And I’d bet a lot of people that you know.
Mnemosyne
Okay, I found the Snopes coverage of the Donna Brazile “leak”.
So, basically, what happened is that the Russian propaganda outlet Wikileaks put out an email that purportedly revealed that Brazile had shared debate questions from an upcoming Hillary/Bernie debate with Hillary, and the Berniebros ate it up with a spoon and begged Comrade Putin for more.
The American left really is too stupid to live.
Chris
@Mnemosyne:
This was the elephant in the room with the whole “not a dime’s worth of difference because speeches and Wall Street” argument. Suppose you concede everything that they said about Hillary being corrupt and establishment and playing dirty, and you actually are left with a crook or fascist choice. You still are left with the fact that there’s absolutely no moral question who you should vote for and whether you should vote in that situation, and that there’s something deeply, deeply, deeply fucked up about you if you consider it at all a hard choice.
Lizzy L
From my local paper: “Feinstein Plans to Lead the Resistance.”
http://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Feinstein-plans-to-lead-the-Resistance-to-10690787.php?google_editors_picks=true
geg6
@Betty Cracker:
Happened here in Pittsburgh, too. The Scaife wingnut mouthpiece the News-Tribune is online only as of last week. That leaves us with the Post-Gazette which is non-wingnut but has an almost fatal case of both sides do it-ism.
Neldob
@rikyrah: Nixon was the first I heard of who suggesteded a guaranteed income.
geg6
@prob50:
I live in Western PA, which used to be as blue as blue could be. It is Trump central now. We literally don’t socialize any more. Not to go out to eat, not to attend community events. I can barely stand to deal with students and parents I have to deal with at work who I know voted for that man. I almost got into several bar fights in local establishments. I am a 58 yo woman and weigh about 135 pounds. The people wanting to punch me were all men. All taller and bigger than me. You either sufficiently grovel to that man and his minions or prepare to be assaulted. It’s real thing.
NR
@Mnemosyne:
I didn’t “fall” for anything. Brazile shared debate questions with the Clinton campaign ahead of time and got fired for it. Those are facts.
This is hilarious considering that you just got through accusing me of saying “But Hillary!” and are now yourself saying “But Trump!”
Believe it or not, it’s possible to acknowledge both that Brazile was wrong to share debate questions with the Clinton campaign, and that CNN was wrong to employ Lewandowski as a commentator when he was contractually forbidden from saying anything negative about Trump. Neither one of those things is excused by the fact that the other happened.
You’re honestly pathetic. You simply cannot admit that you or someone you support has ever been wrong about anything. You always either deflect by pointing to something bad that someone else did, or find someone, anyone, else to blame for the bad situation you find yourself in. You lack the emotional maturity to even acknowledge your mistakes, and this means you will never learn from them. It’s fucking sad.
debbie
@geg6:
You don’t see PA going back to blue when Trump fails to bring all of the jobs back like he promised he would?
Mnemosyne
@NR:
In other words, you still think that there’s no moral difference between Clinton and Trump, even after seeing Trump hire a fucking anti-Semitic white supremacist to be his chief advisor in the White House.
But, hey, you’re a white dude, so why should you give a shit about Trump openly looting the US Treasury while preventing American citizens from voting based on their race? After all, Hillary might have gotten a few debate questions ahead of time, which is SO MUCH WORSE.
NR
@Mnemosyne:
I never said that, but I’m not surprised to see you lie like this. That’s your MO, after all. Lie, distort, deflect, blame others; anything to avoid taking a hard look at yourself and acknowledging the possibility that maybe, just maybe, you or the people you support might have been wrong about something.
I should probably be surprised that someone could make it through life like that, but the sad fact is that there are a lot of people out there who are just like you.
Ruckus
@debbie:
He just didn’t try hard enough.
This is the guy they always wanted. The complete, authentic, racist, misogynistic, self-made fucking asshole that ticks all their boxes. All the others in the last 50 yrs have been stand ins at best, sellouts at worst. They want the civil war to be replayed so everyone will know they won this time. They want the 19th repealed so that the womens will finally know their place. They want the world narrowed down so that they can stand out without wearing the robes. They don’t care that they won’t get good jobs (remember that the average income of a shit gibbon support was purported to be around $60K, which is not too shabby for rural living), they want everyone else to suffer like they think they have. If you live in east bumfuck and can’t see your way to move because America, Fuck Ya! then there is no saving you. Although as a native Californian I wouldn’t mind if a few of them left CA as it is pretty crowed here so if you don’t like it, feel free to get the fuck out. Just don’t tell me that I have to live like you do in east bumfuck because you are too stupid, racist or just too fucking crazy to fix that reasonably.
geg6
@debbie:
The state may go blue thanks only to Philly and Pittsburgh, but the Trumpsters have gotten a taste for bullying. I’m stuck in my house until they get smacked down politically. I no longer have enough faith in the American people to believe that is going to happen, so I don’t expect I’ll ever socialize with anyone but family ever again. And that’s the best case scenario. And worst case isn’t that someone will take a shot at our house (which. I fully expect to happen as our politics are well known locally) but that we will be disappeared. I do not think this is as unlikely as so many here do. Governments go bad quickly and I see no evidence that anyone in power on my side that is taking any of the danger to all of us very seriously. Even Obama is just sitting back and letting us all hang out here, completely vulnerable. No words of encouragement, no comment on all this craziness. We have no leaders, so I’m just going to hide in my house and hope one comes along. That’s pretty much all I can manage right now. Don’t know that I’ll ever manage more at this point. It doesn’t look good, I can say that for sure.
Gvg
@The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
I googled China threat to close embassy trump. Multiple mainstream sources about 2 days ago. Adam mentioned it in a thread recently and said the Chinese official being quoted was not excitable. It’s a big deal.
NR
@Gvg: It was a professor who talked about severing diplomatic relations in that article, not the Chinese government.
debbie
@geg6:
Take care of yourself.
Hellbastard
Well… I live in Texas. Perhaps rock-bottom isn’t too far down.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
Perspective. You lack it.
Again, whining about Brazile’s alleged actions in the face of Trump’s actual, documented actions shows that you still have no fucking clue what just happened. You still believe that Trump is just another Republican, you stupid fuck.
J R in WV
@NR:
Please provide a single email written by Hillary which discusses immoral or illegal activities approvingly. You can’t do it. There’s nothing in the emails worth talking about AT ALL.
It was a fraud from beginning to end, with no crime. We KNOW this is true, because there was never an indictment. Ever, even by Republican governments.
NR
@Mnemosyne: It’s pretty hilarious that you accuse me of a lack of perspective when your entire argument boils down to “You can’t talk about this bad thing because something worse happened.”
As I’ve said, it’s perfectly possible to talk about Donna Brazile’s bad actions (which aren’t “alleged,” by the way, they’re documented in the leaked emails) while also acknowledging how horrible Trump is. Trump being horrible does not give a free pass to everyone else on the planet.
But I tell you what. I’ll make you a deal. I’ll abide by your rules if you do the same. That means you don’t ever get to say another word about Bernie Sanders or the people on the left you hate so much. After all, Trump is so bad we can’t talk about anything else.
Do we have a deal? Or is “perspective” only something you require in other people but don’t have to have yourself?
NR
@J R in WV:
Well since I never said there were any such emails, I’m not sure what you’re arguing against here.
Three Dots
@Betty Cracker: oppobrium?