The fabulous Meryl Streep called Trump out last night while accepting a Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globe event. Via WaPo, here’s an excerpt of her speech:
An actor’s only job is to enter the lives of people who are different from us and let you feel what that feels like. And there were many, many, many powerful performances this year that did exactly that — breathtaking, compassionate work. There was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good. There was nothing good about it. But it was effective and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth. It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter. Someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it. I still can’t get it out of my head because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life.
And this instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing.
Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. And when the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.
With characteristic lack of self-awareness, Trump responded via Twitter that Streep is overrated and a big loser Hillary flunky. Kellyanne Conway was all over the morning news shows to repeat the lie that Trump wasn’t imitating New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, even though it’s obvious to any sentient creature who views the video that’s exactly what he was doing.
Like Trump himself, Conway is a sworn enemy of the truth. But this morning’s performance surely makes her the favorite for this year’s “Most Hilarious Use of Projection to Deny Reality” Award:
.@KellyannePolls: I'm concerned that somebody with a platform like Meryl Streep's is inciting people's worst instincts pic.twitter.com/QjITaedKnV
— FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) January 9, 2017
Neither Trump nor his flacks asked the violent, racist creeps who committed hate crimes in Trump’s name in the wake of their Electoral College victory to knock it off.* But Meryl Streep is the villain here because she won’t fall into line behind Cheeto Benito.
It really drives the Trumpsters nuts, this continued resistance, this lack of deference, this ongoing contempt shown toward their idol. That tells me we’re on the right track.
Give Trump a chance? Nope. He’s a person of exceedingly low character who has already damaged the country before being sworn in. I owe Trump and his pack of grifting hyenas exactly nothing.
But I believe I owe my country resistance to the Trump agenda, and my project today in service of that idea is to call my senators and urge them not to even consider confirmation of Trump’s cabinet picks without completed background checks and ethics reviews.
The Republicans have the numbers to push their slate of extremist billionaires and delusional cranks through without Democrats, and they’ll likely peel off a few flinchy blue dogs like Manchin. But to the extent the Democrats can make Trump and the GOP own that cabal of greedheads and incompetents, they should. If you agree, please consider calling your senators too.
*ETA: Turns out, my statement above is not accurate — in a 60 Minutes interview, after saying he hadn’t heard the reports of violence carried out in his name, then saying he’d only heard of a couple of incidents and attempting to minimize the issue, Trump did say, “Stop it.” Thanks to commenters who pointed that out. I don’t think it detracts from the point, though: Streep isn’t the one who is “inciting people’s worst instincts” — Conway’s boss is.
Cermet
The un-elected but selected Donny Dump wants to rule all and be loved by all; if not, he will finds ways to make you pay. A three year old will soon be president of the US thanks to morons. Great.
kindness
I hate twitter as a medium. It promotes ‘the stupid’ (ideas and people) more than anything else.
Steeplejack
I love how the subtitle on the Fox screen is “Tinseltown vs. Mr. Trump.” Respect must be paid!
ETA: Didn’t even notice “Mr. Trump: Streep was big Hillary supporter.” I guess this is a Fox thing now.
BGinCHI
Gonna go out on a limb and guess Meryl Streep’s approval rating is WAY higher than Trump’s.
O. Felix Culpa
I love the fact that Meryl Streep never called T***p by name, yet everyone somehow knew who she was talking about, including the man-baby himself.
Comrade Jake
Saw that @redsteeze tweeted at Meryl a map of the US showing the red and blue counties, with a sarcastic “nice speech”. Prick.
Yeah, great job. What you’re illustrating are all the parts of the country who watched Trump mock a disabled reporter, and didn’t give a shit because at least he wasn’t “Shillary.” Salt of the Earth, these people. Real good hearts.
tpherald
The way the GOP rose out of the ashes of their 2008 demolition by the Dems was to hold firm, act as the loyal opposition and oppose EVERYTHING from Obama. The blueprint for success was written by Sen. McConnell and is right there sitting under the Dems’ noses.
O. Felix Culpa
What would those “worst instincts” being incited be, anyway? Exercising one’s constitutional right to free speech? Shocking!
aimai
Great speech. I will be at the Boston march with my daughters. Trump’s supporters, and Trump himself, were quite upfront that their motto would be “hate trumps love.” Its going to get very ugly for the next four years.
Droppy
Thank God our President-elect has the insight to understand that responding on Twitter to movie stars’ comments is the true measure of gravitas. FDR was all like, “Hey Marlene Dietrich – go back to where you came from” and Abe Lincoln that one time: “Saw JW Boothe in ‘Hamlet’ last night. Overrated! His name definitely not going down in history! Sadness!”
Kryptik
What’s more, people accusing Streep and whatever celebrities present there for ‘insulting Real Americans’ by that speech. Apparently, asking for basic empathy and not using one’s power to punch down and cruelly mock people for the sake of just cruelly mocking them is an insult to ‘Real America’.
EDIT: Apparently, it’s a real American value to grind your heel onto those who you lord power and status over and invite your “fellow Americans” to live vicariously through your cruelty.
Chris
“It is one of the biggest dividing lines between liberals and conservatives: sensitivity. Liberals are supposed to be the sensitive ones, but even the liberals who worked themselves into a froth over George W. Bush never really cared very much about what he thought of them. But conservatives care what President Obama thinks. They care to the point of imagining what he thinks.”
Chris
@tpherald:
To be fair, they could count on elite and institutional support that Democrats even in the best of times could only dream of.
tpherald
@Kryptik: Empathy is for losers. “Real Muricans” don’t have disabilities.
Roger Moore
@Comrade Jake:
And, to a substantial extent, you’re showing a map of the empty parts of the country vs. the full parts. Yeah, Montana and Wyoming are big, but they don’t have very many people in them, so that big red area on the map doesn’t mean very much.
Peter
@tpherald: It’s also how they wound up with Trump in the first place. We should be careful about emulating them too closely; the country straight up will not survive rule by two parties of manbabies.
That does not mean Dems should wager in their opposition to reprehensible policy. They should not hesitate to stand up for the people of America and oppose the agenda the Republicans are about to try to shove down it’s throats. But the reflexive and unthinking opposition that was so typical of McConnell’s minority caucus is not what we want, I don’t think.
Kryptik
@tpherald:
I honest to god wonder how many voters believe that earnestly. Empathy and Shame have somehow become the two greatest Mortal Sins in politics.
EDIT: Oh, except when it’s Empathy toward the winners and the ‘default’ Americans. Then it’s a necessity, as a reminder to us fake Americans who the ‘real’ Americans are, and to cater to their whims instead of our piddly little needs.
Chris
@aimai:
Heck, it’s been ugly enough just for the last eight years.
Woodrowfan
@Roger Moore: empty territory and empty heads
donnah
I watched Meryl Streep’s speech last night and had tears in my eyes. She selected a specific, documentable event in which trump showed himself to be cruel and without an ounce of decency. She wasn’t ranting; her voice carried the weight of truth and honor.
Ms Streep spoke more for the plight of the country in those few minutes than half the leading Democrats have summoned the courage to do. I was deeply moved and glad she speaks for those who have been targets of trump’s ridicule.
It’s just beginning, folks. We have to give it all we’ve got.
Mnemosyne
@tpherald:
It sure would be nice if Dems could stick together. Any chance you can get the Sanders dead-enders to quit whining about “party corruption” and the DNC? Major^4 voted for some local Democratic Party positions in the Bay Area yesterday and there were people running for those positions on a platform of New York state’s primary rules being unfair to Sanders. Note again, this was in San Francisco.
Bobby D
Forty quatloos to the first lady journalist who asks Kellyanne Con-lady, “Why do you bother to come onto national television and tell bald faced, ridiculous lies to the American people? Do you really think anyone with an IQ above potato salad believes anything, and I mean ANYTHING that comes out of your lying mouth?”
I know there are plenty of Nasty Women™ in the journalism biz with the stones to put Kellyanne Conlady in her place. Who will be the one to finally do it?
O. Felix Culpa
@tpherald:
The sad fact is that many do and are about to lose the government support that helped them live with their disabilities. Of course, one major compounding disability they apparently all have is the incapacity to diagnose the source of their problems correctly.
napoleon
@Droppy:
Well done!
Mnemosyne
@Kryptik:
Unfortunately, yes. And these are the people we’re being admonished are the real Americans while those of us who believe otherwise are apparently fake Americans.
Sorry, assholes — no sale.
Hungry Joe
Trump rises to the bait EVERY DAMN TIME. It’s still kind of amazing.
napoleon
@Chris:
Where is that quote from?
catclub
@tpherald:
That is not actually what loyal opposition does. Loyal opposition has loyalty to the nation.
Yarrow
We really need someone to call out Trump. Someone that people who voted for Trump, other Republicans and the media will hear. Like Joseph Welch did during the McCarthy hearings. “You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
Is there anyone like that out there? Someone people will hear who can point out that the Emperor has no clothes?
Starfish
He has mentioned it. I don’t think he can really stop the hate boat at this point. I think the only way he could truly discourage it at this point would be to discuss it every single day and stop phrasing things like “Happy New Years!” in terms of his enemies. That was ridiculous.
O. Felix Culpa
@Hungry Joe:
Part of his narcissistic personality disorder. He cannot help responding to anything that wounds his ego.
catclub
@Bobby D: I think you will never spend those quatloos.
Aleta
That’s the only response KaC could come up with, but fortunately it’s also page 1 of their manual. Lie going out of the gate, and keep the lies and unacceptable nominees coming so fast that most of them get through.
Xenos
@Woodrowfan: and lots of heroine, guns, wife-beating and fundamentalism.
Humdog
Am really stuck on how to deal with my evangelical family. I think of their group as American nazis now. Evangelical, republican, stupid. They aren’t overtly evil and only one is openly racist. I don’t want anything to do with them, I won’t even call them back. But I keep thinking that even if I were terribly wrong about something, I would expect my family to stick with me. But if I were hurting others, I would expect my family to reject me. Did their suspected vote for the rancid Cheeto rise to the level of hurting others that I can now reject them? Aaaaagh, how does a crappy election destroy a family?
SiubhanDuinne
@napoleon:
Tom Junod’s Esquire piece on sore winners.
Chris
@napoleon:
An article that came out back in 2010 at the height of the teabagger rage (can’t remember if I got it from here or elsewhere) – http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a8800/sore-winners-102710/.
Taibbi’s article is still the best one of its kind on this, but this one included that particular phrase which stuck with me.
SenyorDave
@Bobby D: Forty quatloos to the first lady journalist who asks Kellyanne Con-lady, “Why do you bother to come onto national television and tell bald faced, ridiculous lies to the American people? Do you really think anyone with an IQ above potato salad believes anything, and I mean ANYTHING that comes out of your lying mouth?”
She’s preaching to the choir, but she knows her choir will believe anything she says, since she is a Trump surrogate. She’s is very good at her job in a Goebbelesque kind of way.
daveNYC
@Mnemosyne: NY’s rule on switching parties is herp-a-derp. Not sure what it has to do with a vote in SF though. Free Mumia only different I guess.
Bobby D
I like disabled people who don’t get mocked. /drumpf
Maybe a TV spot with Serge, Max Cleland, Tammy Duckworth, Steven Hawking doing impersonations of Trump would cause his fat orange head to explode.
I always find the “them Hollywood librul elites” whine from the wingnuts hilarious. They spend about half their disposable incomes trying to look and sound like something out of a TV show or movie, their entire pop culture is dictated downward via the entertainment industry out of California and NY, and they lap it up like it was the last oxycontin in mama’s doublewide.
SatanicPanic
@Kryptik: Real America is digging a really big hole for itself. They might want to quit before they open a new trade route to China.
O. Felix Culpa
@Starfish:
That was beyond ridiculous. It was dangerous, profoundly anti-democratic, and un-American. Since when does a PEOTUS publically characterize the people who voted for a different candidate as “enemies”? Such a designation constitutes an implicit threat to political opponents – including ordinary citizens – and must be fought at every turn.
(Nixon’s “enemies’ list” doesn’t count. Although evil, it was not meant for public consumption.)
Yarrow
@O. Felix Culpa:
So the best thing to do is to do things that we hope wound his ego. Keep up the pressure.
Kryptik
@SatanicPanic:
They won’t stop until the hole is big enough to bury us ‘fake’ Americans in.
Droppy
@Humdog:
I think that’s a tough call. It can be hard to say how much is individual fault and how much is beyond an individual’s ability to control – conditioning, ignorance, even mental illness? Hell, I’m such a squishy liberal I even feel qualms about blaming Trump for everything. If all this talk about narcissistic disorders is possibly true, how much is out of his control? But then that puts real, irrevocable blame on those Republicans who knew (they had to know) he was not suited to the office because of his mental state, but they let it happen anyway. Insofar as your family can be blamed for that, fuck ’em.
Steeplejack
@tpherald:
“Loyal opposition”? WTF? Did you forget a snark tag?
O. Felix Culpa
@Yarrow:
Yes. Including keeping up the pressure on Congress. Letting them know we’re here and won’t go away.
karen marie
@Chris: They only care insofar as they make up out of whole cloth a damning script that they then use to prove he hates them. Sorry, they don’t get credit for that.
randy khan
Apropos of Betty’s excellent suggestion to call your senators about the confirmation “process” being undertaken by the GOP in the Senate (and repeating something I posted yesterday), it also wouldn’t hurt to contact the chairs and ranking members of the relevant committees for the nominees who haven’t bothered to complete their disclosure forms. (Ben Carson (Housing and Urban Development), Betsy DeVos (Education), John Kelly (Homeland Security), and Wilbur Ross (Commerce).) You should remind the Dems that Senate rules permit them to unilaterally delay a hearing by a week or until the next scheduled meeting of the committee, whichever is later.
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs: Chairman, Ron Johnson; Ranking Member, Thomas Carper
HELP (Education): Chair, Lamar Alexander; Ranking Member, Patty Murray
Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs: Chair, Richard Shelby; Ranking Member, Sherrod Brown
Commerce, Science, and Transportation: Chair, John Thune; Ranking Member, Bill Nelson
You can reach each Senator’s contact page from the link.
Let them know.
Betty Cracker
@Humdog: I’m struggling with that myself. Family is extremely important to me, so it’s painful, but I can’t forgive or forget their endorsement of the orange fascist. It has changed the way I see them in a way their past votes for Republican extremists didn’t. “Ripping a family apart” is an accurate description.
Steeplejack
Redacted.
Villago Delenda Est
I prefer “Tinseltown vs. Fuckface von Clownstick”, myself.
Chris
@karen marie:
That phrase isn’t meant to give them credit.
Ksmiami
@Peter: I want it because all of the GOP ideas and policies are destructive to the nation. All of them katie
SuzieC
I think Trump’s delicate fragile ego was wounded by the public call out from Streep on national TV. Of course he knows that she is a big star, far more successful in the entertainment industry than he ever was. Hasn’t he whined that he never was nominated for and never won an Emmy?
Trump’s long list of enemies are on the right track here. I hope big stars in the entertainment industry continue to call him out at every upcoming awards show, causing his fat orange head to explode.
Villago Delenda Est
@SenyorDave: She’s a Nazi bitch. That’s what she is.
O. Felix Culpa
@SiubhanDuinne: Wow. That’s a good and sadly prescient article. Thank you for the link.
Elmo
@Humdog:
Families aren’t – or shouldn’t be – about shared blood. At their best, they are about shared values. About mutual support, sympathy, and understanding.
I don’t share any values with Trump voters. They do not support me, sympathize with me, or understand me.
I really resist this whole framing of the election of 2016 as “just an election,” or “just politics,” in an effort to diminish its importance relative to other parts of life like family and friends. Elections and politics are about fundamental choices: what do we value? How should the nation be governed? How should the weak and unfortunate be helped – or should they at all?
This wasn’t an election to a local zoning board or water district. This was an election over the most fundamental questions of who we are as a nation. People who genuinely want the cruel, dishonest, ignorant, lying, narcissistic, clown of a game show host to be in the Oval Office – to make life-and-death decisions, to steer the nation’s course, to oversee our relations with the rest of the world – those people are not my family, not my countrymen, not anything but … well, let’s just leave it at “not my family or countrymen” and stop short of anything more.
FlipYrWhig
@Steeplejack: I thought tpherald was using “loyal” in the sense of sticking by one another — unified opposition, in other words.
JordanRules
Their reflexive responses are enabled by the security in knowing that nobody is going to take them to task on the actual content of the speech. This happens repeatedly. They get to respond to the fake reality they create for their followers. Framing done before it even starts.
Meryl told no lies and that’s all they respond with – straight bullshit and lies. They know they own this kind of privilege and it’s on steroids now. They revel in it and throw it in our faces.
Elizabelle
Incidentally, how are plans for that nice Mr. Trump’s inauguration coming along? Has he lined up any more “stars?”
Is Kellyanne rehearsing her musical number?
Yarrow
@Humdog: Everyone handles this sort of thing differently. Some people refuse to talk politics and still interact with their family. Some people don’t want to do that and drop their family. Some people use it as an opportunity to educate their family – if they’re really evangelical, asking how Trump is a Christian, ask how when Trump does X it correlates with this or that Christian value. Everyone is different in how they choose to go forward with their families. There’s no one right path.
Ksmiami
@Humdog: Eff them they are -and I don’t say this lightly- enemies of America and as I have done I’ve cut off the crazies in my family and I don’t miss them or the awkward conversation dodges etc. why spend time and energy with people diametrically opposed to good?
Humdog
@Droppy: thanks for your response. So many times when I comment here it gets no notice and feels like I am shouting into the wind. Kinda like talking to my family….
Thanks again for hearing me.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Bobby D: I could see Joy Reid doing it, which is why KaC will never come within a mile of Joy Reid. From the clips I saw, Maddow did a much better job with Conway than I was expecting, I still couldn’t bring myself to watch the whole thing. Like her boss. the sight and sound of her makes me sick.
After one of the debates, the MSNBC panel was marveling at Conway’s ability to keep a straight stream of bullshit without apparently breathing much less having a twinge of conscience. The fatuous nitwit Chuck Todd interrupted to reassure everyone that he, as a bonafide, I-know-how-to-find-Sally-Quinn’s-bathroom-without-asking-where-it-is insider, knew the real Kellyanne Conway: “She’s not just good at her job,” simpered Chuck, “but she’s a good person.” A couple of weeks ago, he tweeted something about a journalist’s New Year’s Resolution should be “It’s not about you, it’s about the story.” He may be the least self-aware Villager on TV
O. Felix Culpa
@Droppy:
Ms. O is a psychotherapist by training. The person suffering from personality disorders still has agency and is still capable of making choices, including the decision to get help. I am comfortable holding both T***p and the GOP responsible for their spectacularly bad choices.
zhena gogolia
Streep was great. Just called my senators.
Humdog
@Betty Cracker: yes Betty. This election ripped off the niceties. Before, I could say my family and I had disagreements about the role of government. Now it is painfully clear that we have disagreements about basic values and that their judgement is total crap. that they were not horrified by the rancid Cheeto makes me think we have lost the basic vocabulary needed to communicate.
Calouste
@Kryptik:
Indeed it is. Did you somehow miss the last 400 years of American history?
Yarrow
@Elizabelle: Someone posted yesterday about the band from an historically black college marching in the parade. So that’s happening.
O. Felix Culpa
@Calouste: Not always. We’ve had some good moments and some exemplary leaders. See Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address:
Betty Cracker
@Villago Delenda Est: I’d really appreciate it if you could find another epithet. Conway deserves all the scorn we can heap upon her, but calling her a “bitch” walks right up to a really ugly line I’d rather not see us cross. I’m not trying to drag on you — I’ve used that word myself, but I’m trying to banish it from my vocabulary because of its use against women, and I respectfully ask you to consider doing the same, at least here. Thank you.
@Elmo: This right here:
I haven’t irrevocably cut ties with the deplorable half of my family yet, but your description above about what their vote meant resonates deeply.
SenyorDave
The “tell” on whether Trump was specifically mocking the reporter is when Trump referred to him as “the poor guy”. He knew exactly who Serge Kovaleski was, and aside from the fact that he was on a first name basis with the guy, it was obvious when used the poor guy remark. My wife taught kindergarten for 15 years. Her school had been completely modernized a few years ago, and became one of the schools in the county that had a large number of children with disabilities. In all the time she taught she never remembered any issues where a child harassed or made fun of another student because of a disability. She said if one of them had, they would have called the parents and they would have met with the guidance counselor and dealt with the issue. That’s the problem, Trump’s parents never nipped his behavior in the bud.
Peter
@Ksmiami: I absolutely agree. But they must be opposed because they are bad ideas.
zhena gogolia
@FlipYrWhig:
That isn’t what it’s supposed to mean. It means, I oppose the administration’s policies but I am a loyal American.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@Mnemosyne: I know one Sanders fan who just ran for delegate in California and won, but his platform focused on policy and his approach was very positive. I was pleased.
Brachiator
In my fantasy universe, Meet The Press and all news shows have the following policy: “Political surrogates will be taken off the air as soon as they lie and will never be invited back again.”
tobie
Trump’s response was typical for him though sick for anyone else and just cements Keith Olberman’s video commentary that there’s something not right in the head about this man.
I wrote to Sen. Cardin re confirmation process over the weekend and will follow up with calls to him and Chris Van Hollen today.
In the meantime I have something of an odd request for tips/information/suggestions. I know a very liberal, Orthodox Jewish family desperate to attend the march with their children. The problem is that the march is on the sabbath. They’re looking for a place where they can spend the night and then walk to the march. They’ll bring their own food, sleeping bags, and air mattresses. Mostly they need a place to sleep that’s walking distance to the march. Does anyone have any ideas of people/organizations to contact? Thanks.
O. Felix Culpa
@Brachiator:
Co-signed. But I never watch those shows anyway. Who is their audience? (real question)
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker: For Villago: “Lying Shit-Ass” works well for Kellyanne. It’s accurate, truthful, pays well for her, and can be applied to any gender.
@Elmo: Well said. Notice how Trump voters are trying to minimize that. Because. Shrillary. and Emails. But it’s a fundamental character and values question.
I don’t like that non-Trump voters are along for the ride, but maybe the Trump voters can only learn by seeing their “political values” in practice. As in, shoddy services and no voice. Plus, day to day cruelty and indifference.
hovercraft
I owe this nest of vipers no deference, they have not earned it or my respect. Respect begets respect, and they have shown absolutely no respect for the millions who voted for his opponents, no humility for a technical victory, while losing the majority of the country. My contempt on the other hand, they are re-earning that every single day.
I’ll call Booker and Menendez today, they should not support any of these kleptocrats he is trying to bring into his cabinet.
dww44
@randy khan: Here’s some more ammunition to use in one’s calls to one’s Senators and the Majority leader. Mention the McConnell letter to Reid in 2009 demanding the very same things that the former is pushing back against now. h/t to yesterday’s diary at Daily Kos by PollWatcher
McConnel’s Requirements for Obama Nominees
Elizabelle
@tobie: Look at the march route, and contact any synagogues that are relatively close? Maybe they will open public rooms for travelers.
Great question.
bemused
@Cermet:
Even three year olds know the difference between being mean or nice and being mean is a very bad thing to do. Our three year old granddaughter watched a Charlie Brown Christmas show and told her mom that Lucy used a naughty word to Charlie Brown. Mom asked what Lucy said and our grand girl said Lucy called Charlie Brown stupid.
SiubhanDuinne
@O. Felix Culpa:
Yup. I remember having read it years ago but had honestly forgotten both the article and its author until Chris quoted it in his (her?) comment and I looked it up. Not sure why or when I lost track of Tom Junod. I’ll start looking for him again.
Yarrow
@Brachiator: Maybe some enterprising writer or producer should come up with a “Sunday Show Makeover” online show. Something that has actors playing the hosts and and the guests and does the Sunday shows the way they should be done. For example it would have “Chuck Todd” ask hard questions and hold “KellyAnne Conway”‘s feet to the fire and calls out her lies. Pick the most egregious show of the week and redo it. Could be kind of popular. Everyone would wonder which show was going to be the recipient of the treatment this week. I’d watch that show.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Each other. Steve Benen did his year-in-review count of guests, and for the first time in years a non-Republican pol made the top five in number of appearances. It was, of course, Wilmer. A couple of years ago, Bibi Netanyahu had more appearances on American political TV than any elected Democrat.
tobie
@Elizabelle: Great suggestion. I’ll pass it on to my friends. Thanks.
Jack the Second
@daveNYC: New York’s party-switching rules make a certain amount of sense in the context of New York’s many minor parties and cross-party endorsements. We currently have 8 parties with automatic ballot access, and cross-party endorsements are both considered significant and sought after.
If you can rapidly switch parties, you can play a lot of games, caucusing with multiple parties in a single election and whatnot.
You can argue it is slightly unfair to some less engaged voters once a decade or so, but just dropping the slow party switching would have consequences for elections every year in between.
It’d be far more impactful, democratically speaking, to consolidate New York’s elections so that everything were on a single election cycle. Right now local candidates can squeak through without Presidential year turnout and most voters don’t even try to turnout to the polls sometimes five or more times a year.
Big Picture Pathologist
“Neither Trump nor his flacks asked the violent, racist creeps who committed hate crimes in Trump’s name in the wake of their Electoral College victory to knock it off.”
I still hate the man, but IIRC he DID ask exactly that in a post-election interview (60 Minutes?).
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: You rightly called it a fantasy because it’ll never happen, but the press will have to figure out how to cover an unending stream of increasingly consequential lies for the next four years. They failed miserably in the election, but I think at least in part that’s because they didn’t take Trump seriously as a candidate.
Well, he’ll be the president in 11 days, and they’ll have to take him seriously. I don’t watch the news shows except as clips I see online, but some of that hasn’t been total rubbish. For example, unlike Fox & Friends, CNN’s Chris Cuomo didn’t sit still for Conway’s lies about what Trump was doing in that video about the NYT reporter. He said Trump was obviously mocking the reporter and should have just apologized, which left Conway meeping about why Hillary got the benefit of the doubt (as-fucking-if!) and Trump doesn’t. It’s a small victory, but I’ll take it.
Betty Cracker
@Big Picture Pathologist: I stand corrected. Thanks!
SenyorDave
@tobie: @tobie: I would start with synagogues in the DC area. I just did a search for “reform synagogues in Washington, DC”, and got a DC map with three reform synagogues. Try it with all the denominations (Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Orthodox), and consider contacting the synagogues directly to see if they can help out. It is somewhat surprising they are Orthodox, almost all of Trump’s support among Jews is from the Orthodox community.
XTPD
@Elizabelle: For a nickname that straddles the line: Kolette Barbie. (Of course, Betty Cracker’s own “Mouth of Shit-Gibbon” works just as well).
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: They wanted him elected or at least their bosses did. The press has acted as an arm of the Republican party since at least Bush II came to office. I am talking of the respectable media here, your Pure BullShitters and Nice Polite Republicans and the Vichy Times.
Mike in DC
A lot of those “Hollywood elites” come from working class and middle class backgrounds. But the GOP has successfully portrayed people who put in 14 hour days on set and have a slew of travel and promotional obligations as “idle rich”, unlike those salt of the earth multibillionaires funding the GOP.
Larkspur
@tobie: I don’t know the city, but there has to be a near-by Jewish Community Center and any number of synagogues. Since they are bringing their own food, they could even inquire at Conservative or Reform synagogues. I would contact someone at any or all of those places, and I’ll bet they’ll get some hospitality pretty quickly. Wish them well for me.
ETA: What everyone else already said.
Brachiator
@Yarrow:
Be careful with this. The last time his ego was wounded, Trump ultimately decided to run for president. And won.
Booger
@tobie: There’s a synagogue at 6th & I NW, not too far off the route, don’t recall the name. Check there?
Calouste
Btw, I think the “look in his heart” comment by Conoway is an explicit appeal to fundies. It definitely sounds like a phrase they would use.
opiejeanne
@tpherald: The term “loyal opposition” is misused here. They were not loyal in their opposition, they did not oppose out of loyalty to the country or the Constitution, they simply opposed everything Obama did because Obama.
Yarrow
@schrodingers_cat: Agreed. If they veer too far out of line, their bosses will let them know about it.
@Betty Cracker:
I expect most of them to normalize Trump being a figurehead and Pence doing most of the work. And Jared Kushner being the real power behind the throne will also be normalized–treated as if it’s always the case that the son-in-law decides what information the president sees.
If that’s what you mean by “take him seriously” then yes, that will happen. I don’t expect any of them to point out that these arrangements are unprecedented and not how our system of government is supposed to work.
tobie
@Elizabelle: @SenyorDave: @Larkspur: @Booger: Thanks, folks. You guys are terrific and I really appreciate all the tips.
O. Felix Culpa
@Calouste: She’s missing the point or hasn’t read her bible recently if that’s what she’s doing. The “look in his heart” reference leads directly to this quote from Luke 6:45, which doesn’t say what I think she means to say:
ETA: And, as a friend of mine commented, since when are reporters supposed to be “heart readers”?
Yarrow
@Brachiator: It’s the best shot we have. He’s already going to be president. If he’s going to blow up the world because of his wounded ego, it’s going to happen eventually anyway. It might also cause him to do something that gets him removed from office. I’m not going to tiptoe around because of his ego. Others can make their own decisions.
Major Major Major Major
@Calouste: Isn’t that what W did with Putin?
hovercraft
@Elizabelle: @Betty Cracker:
Evil incarnate, she is evil because she knows better, she helped him knowing how terrible a person he is and how terrible a president he would be. With every breath she takes she lies, but that is endemic across the republican party, where she excels is in lying so glibly and at such a fast pace that no one can keep up with the torrent of lies spewing from her mouth. She brings out the worst in people, I am tempted to call her all of those words that we have fought so hard to retire, but we must not stoop to her level, because then they have won. She is a lying shit ass, but more than that she is evil.
Perhaps a survey of non sexist epithets for her is in order?
FlipYrWhig
@zhena gogolia: Agreed, but it’s an easy mistake to think it means an honor-among-thieves arrangement of total unity within the oppositional group.
Calouste
@Yarrow: I can’t imagine Uday and Qusay being too happy with Kushner (instead of them) being the power behind the throne, nor Steve Bennon and his neo-Nazis.
bemused
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Au contraire, Chuck, KC is very good at her job. She can sling wingnut crap with the best of the them and doesn’t lose a second of sleep over it. Chuck is an idiot.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: Wonder when we get the results? ?
Today I imagine.
opiejeanne
@Betty Cracker: The ripping apart of families because of Trump is devastating to those of us who feel it; the only parallel I can think of is the Civil War but hopefully that stays too extreme a comparison.
Mustang Bobby
(wink wink nudge nudge)
Yarrow
@Calouste: These kinds of cracks in the Trump inner circle are about the only small comfort I can think of. I also think Chris Christie would do anything in his power to take down Kushner. He may have a few strings left to pull. We’ll see.
Larkspur
@Humdog: Oh, I hear you too. I’m wondering if your family interactions are like what mine used to be. (My parents are dead, and my brother and sister and I are not close – not enemies – but not close. None of has any children, so no extended family to complicate things at holidays.) Do they use these political differences to fight old family wars? Do these clashes re-enact early, non-related grievances? For example, my parents discovered that when it came down to it, they just did not enjoy children very much. It was all a lot more work than they expected. We kept needing food and clothing and attention.
When we started getting bigger and talking and having opinions, that was just too much to deal with. It sounds weird, but they were always in competition with us, and they always set us up to fight with each other. I did well in school, but I was awkward and not popular. This both pleased and irritated my parents. They wanted smart kids, but not kids smarter than they were. Popular kids would seem like a natural choice, but both of them had reasons to appreciate my social trouble. (My mom – an only child – had been very popular and pretty and well-dressed in school; my father felt like the schlump of his large family. Both were deeply insecure.) It never came near to being verbalized, and it took me a long time to understand it, but it comforted my parents if I wasn’t as good as they considered themselves to be. And if I exceeded them in any way, it hurt them, and I paid for it.
So if your family encounters are all about the underlying, ongoing dysfunction, there’s probably nothing you can do, because your differing opinions and your attempts to explain yourself or convince them are only going to satisfy or feed their antipathy, whatever the source. On the other hand, if there are activities or events during which all of you have been able to lay down arms and enjoy the moment, then maybe you can still interact with them with the aid of a firewall.
Kristin D
@Betty Cracker: Which is why I cannot take the idea that Streep’s speech demonstrates that she’s out of touch with “American values.” American values are not cruelty, indecency, lack of humanity, no matter how much Meghan McCain wants to argue otherwise.
opiejeanne
@Elmo: Heck, it’s making neighbors here squint at people we thought of as friends but no longer trust because they voted for Trump.
opiejeanne
@FlipYrWhig: Yes, but that phrase already exists and has a specific meaning, hence the question of another poster as to whether they forgot the snark tag.
Betty Cracker
@hovercraft: Recall her seamless segue from Cruz flack to Trump flack. She shifted from telling one set of lies to telling another. “Liar for Hire” — if her business card were accurate, that’s what it would say.
@opiejeanne: Well said.
Bobby D
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Good call, Joy would shred her. And Chuckles Toddler…about what I expected from that no-talent, clueless assclown. American Meritocracy™ at it’s finest.
hovercraft
@Brachiator: @O. Felix Culpa:
They will never hold their feet to the fire, remember that even after the scales had fallen off the eyes of the American people, after Katrina and Iraq, the media did everything in their power to keep propping up the Shrubs administration, the crash was the final straw. The senior management calls the shots, they hire producers with gop tendencies, and they skew the guests that way. Remember when Bush was president they claimed that since they had the power, it was important to talk to the power brokers, when the democrats swept everything it became important to hear the voices of the opposition, when they took back the house, it was still important to listen to them, because.
The audience is the beltway, they are talking amongst themselves, they watch the weekend shows and that drives the coverage for the week. At least that is supposed to be the way it works, but between social media and the 24 hour beast that needs constant feeding, it no longer does. Remember NO ONE WATCHES them, their viewership is minuscule.
dexwood
@opiejeanne:
More recently, the Vietnam war put quite a wedge between family members. I remember what it did in my family and the families of friends.
daveNYC
@Jack the Second: NY requires party registration be done six months before the primary if you’re not a new voter. I’m not a huge fan of same day party switching, but I’m pretty sure there is something in between those two options that might work better.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I hope Princess Budweiser attracts enough attention that a couple of million people tell her how ridiculous she it. I don’t expect it will sink in, but she deserves to mocked often.
In 2012 she loudly offered her services as a campaign consultant to anyone stepping up to “kick Obama’s ass!” Not even Michelle Bachmann or Rick Santorum took her up on it.
Chris
@hovercraft:
Remember what a complete shock the 2006 midterms came as?
Steeplejack
@FlipYrWhig:
That’s at odds with the common understanding of the term:
The Republicans, starting with the night of Obama’s inauguration in 2009, went far beyond “legitimate dissent,” opposing everything about Obama, including his citizenship, his eligibility for office, even his status as commander in chief of the military. That is anything but “loyal opposition.”
MomSense
Called Sen. Collins’ office and left a message.
Called Sen. King’s office and staffer told me that he fully supports waiting until Trump nominees have completed the Office of Governmental Ethics process before holding hearings. He said Sen. King is fighting an uphill battle and that calls in support are appreciated.
Make those calls everyone even if your Senator supports waiting until the OGE has finished their process.
Belafon
@hovercraft: Question: If a few million liberals started watching the show in the morning, how would we influence what gets shown?
I ask this in all seriousness because the WaPo seem to be influenced a bit by the new subscriptions it’s received since the election.
Botsplainer
@Kristin D:
The circumstances of this election would beg to differ, insofar as “heartland Real Murka” is concerned.
hovercraft
@Betty Cracker:
She is the heart of darkness, everything she says is simply evil. I haven’t watched this, because I refuse to watch her, but if the person she’s talking to didn’t laugh out loud in her face they are nuts.
Conway: What’s In Trump’s Heart More Important Than What He Says (VIDEO)
“She was given the benefit of the doubt here constantly,” Conway said on CNN, referring to Hillary Clinton. “You can’t give him the benefit of the doubt on this? And he’s telling you what was in his heart. You always want to go by what comes out of his mouth rather than look at what’s in his heart.”
Chris
@Mike in DC:
They’re also, you know, not outrageously liberal. That may be the majority tendency, but Hollywood is or was also John Wayne, Ronald Reagan, Charlton Heston, Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Jon Voight, Mel Gibson, Chuck Norris, Fred Thompson, Ben Stein, Tom Selleck, Ron Silver, Kevin Sorbo, Adam Baldwin, Angie Harmon. It’s really not hard to find right wingers in Hollywood, and unlike us, they actually have the delusion that having been a rich movie star qualifies these people for public office.
opiejeanne
@tobie: @Elizabelle: I would add mainstream churches to the list of places possibly hosting marchers. United Church of Christ, Methodist, Episcopal churches are good candidates.
Major Major Major Major
@daveNYC: It wasn’t even that, though. The person in question was talking about the “purge“, which was bad but there’s a conspiracy that it was a plot by Clinton to steal the NY primary.
MisterForkbeard
@Mustang Bobby: Yeah. One comment saying “stop it” in a milquetoast manner after being pressed on it by a journalist isn’t anything beyond CYA. Especially when he’s directly and indirectly promoted violence and anger several times,
Mnemosyne
@Thoroughly Pizzled:
That’s great! I’m glad to hear about anyone on the Democratic side who got energized to get more involved after November’s fiasco. I’m only mad at the people who are continuing to try and run on a platform of the DNC was mmmeeeeaaaaannnn to us!
Tell your friend congratulations from a total stranger on the internet and I hope he does well.
Calouste
@Yarrow: I think there has been a trade that the shitgibbon is going to keep Christie from being convicted for Bridgegate, and Christie is going to keep his mouth shut. If I were Christie, I would have put everything I know out on the internet with a dead-man switch on it.
sunny raines
should be the adopted motto of every American patriot
zhena gogolia
@Mike in DC:
It was very effective when she talked about where various people had come from.
Calouste
@Chris: That list of Hollywood right-wingers is almost exclusively men. Which is telling.
zhena gogolia
@Major Major Major Major:
No, he looked into his soul, I believe. Neither one of these entities exists.
sunny raines
@Chris: one of the news reports in NYC showing snippets Meryl Streep’s speech, showed a flash to Vince Vaughn – an avowed gun nut, scowling. Ole Vince is probably an across-the-board wingnut.
tpheraldb
@opiejeanne: Do you always get this tied up in knots on little things?
Mnemosyne
@tobie:
One other suggestion if they can’t find any synagogues that can help — commenter Shana mentioned the other day that she might have floor space available, but I think she’s only near a metro stop, not near the March itself.
FlipYrWhig
@Calouste: Patricia Heaton is often on those lists.
hovercraft
@opiejeanne:
While I’m fortunate enough not to be facing a civil war within my family, ( I suspect very few black people have to deal with that), I do not think that I could tolerate anyone close to me who supports him. This is personal, he ran on the idea of taking this country back from people like me, relegating us back to where we belong, as a black woman with two young kids that is unacceptable period. If you support a person who espouses such views you are my enemy, not my opponent, not a person with a different perspective, my enemy. You are trying to literally harm me and mine, so no I would not be able to tolerate such people around me be they family or friends. It may not be quite as extreme as the civil war, but it is the modern day equivalent, for those who have been saying for years that “the South shall rise again”, this to them is the that day, they have risen again. They may not be able to put us back into slavery, but they would like to go back to at least Jim Crow. Fuck em.
JPL
@sunny raines: When you watch the entire speech, the scowl on Vaughn’s and the anti-semitic sitting near him, occurred at other times. They just looked disappointed that the room became silent, and they had to shut their mouths.
Fox has put together various times that Trump has mocked other people. I guess the message is see, he mocks everyone. If this comes up, I’m going to say his family must be so proud of him. Mocker in chief.
XTPD
@sunny raines: Calling them “hyenas” is far too kind; “swarm of screwworms” would be more apt.
celticdragonchick
@SenyorDave: That is hy I call her “KellyAnne Riefenstahl” now. She is a propagandist.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: I’m sure I voted for some delegates who supported Wilmer in the primaries. I just made sure to avoid anybody running on the “Reform Dems” slate (the ones who said they were dedicated to opposing Trump and the “corporate democrats who allowed him to win” in their pitch), as well as anybody who mentioned what candidate they supported in the primary at all. (I should note that only one group of supporters mentioned who they supported during the primary.)
Steeplejack
@tpheraldb:
It’s not a little thing. Your original comment brought into question whether you understand the common meaning of the term “loyal opposition.” By all means please clarify things for us.
Ksmiami
@hovercraft: Preach it. The people who voted for Trump represent the worst of America. No quarter, no sympathy. I offer only scorn, derision and vengeance. And to Democratic party members etc – No more sporks at the gunfights.
Bostondreams
@Chris:
I know he is a Republican, but (recognizing his history of sexual harassment and worse), is Arnold Schwarzenegger really all that right wing, at least as compared to some of the other folks on that list?
opiejeanne
@dexwood: Yes. Vietnam.
Also, Kent State caused huge rifts during the Vietnam war. I remember college kids saying they’d never go home again after that, never speak to their fathers again. They were already at odds but the knee-jerk reaction of primarily their fathers was the cherry on top of that shit sundae.
Stan
Meryl in 2020?
FlipYrWhig
@Steeplejack: I get it, and I even know how the phrase gained popularity in 18th c. England, but I’m not surprised people might think it means something different.
J R in WV
@O. Felix Culpa:
Yes, and Nixon’s enemies list was shorter than “most of the nation”, and was people who actually got selected by Nixon as enemies. Not just a grand arm-sweep of half+ the nation by the Grand Poo-Baah.
Now I’m gonna look into taking a trip to get certified to dive again at some wonderful place. When I learned what I know about diving (Mostly from reading the US NAVY Diver’s Manual) I never bothered to get certified – I could get air anywhere in Key West back then, it was like being in another world without rules. Like being in one of Jimmy’s songs, really.
Cacti
Being nice to the disabled causes economic anxiety.
EBT
Pitchforks and torches.
Major Major Major Major
@opiejeanne: What was the default reaction of their (mostly) fathers? Those kids deserved to get killed?
Starfish
@hovercraft: How much longer can they get away with blaming Hillary Clinton for everything? Can some talking heads just tell her “But she lost, and it is not about her anymore. Tell me what your dude is gonna do” or would Conway not go on their show if they did this
celticdragonchick
@Steeplejack: agree.
There was nothing “loyal” about the opposition. It was unprincipled, overtly racist and utterly nihilistic.
Tazj
Trump has had months to change his tune, “pivot”, become more presidential or just behave like a mature, responsible, decent human being and he has chosen not to do so. He could have even given one of those non apology apologies, “If anyone was truly offended…”, but he couldn’t even do that He insulted and belittled that reporter, we saw it with own our eyes. There’s no “both sides” to this, there’s no other way of looking at this. He behaved like a jerk then, and many other times after and Conway can’t tell us we’re wrong and we don’t understand. As Chris Rock has said, Trump’s behavior would disqualify anyone else from a job working at Burger King.
JPL
UH OH
http://gizmodo.com/trump-just-dismissed-the-people-in-charge-of-maintainin-1790908093
celticdragonchick
@EBT:
The response will be militarized cops with armored cars and submachine guns. A lot of LE are just waiting to put down some protesters…
daveNYC
@Major Major Major Major: Wankers. I swear we could probably get a troupe to perform a variation of the Life of Brian Colloseum scene and nobody would suspect a thing.
Brachiator
@Yarrow:
I used to be in the “mock him early and often” camp.
I don’t think it matters, and might even strengthen him. I also think that, for now, the GOP and business interests will do everything they can to defend him and provide cover for him, because he is such a useful tool for their agenda. He will be in office as long as he serves them well.
cmorenc
@Betty Cracker:
This is like AG nominee Jeff Sessions citing his disapproval of the Klan as proof he’s not a racist, when critics are actually referring to all this other background about him (e.g. why he failed to win confirmation as a Federal Judge a couple of decades earlier).
Likewise, one gentle admonition from Trump to his followers to “stop it” hardly undoes the overwhelming cumulative weight of his previous words and actions at his rallies and otherwise.
opiejeanne
@tpheraldb: I will just say this: my comment was meant to be helpful; apparently you didn’t see it that way.
My question to you is, why did you single me out, out of all of the people who corrected you?
celticdragonchick
@Brachiator:
Mocking him does feed the rural right wing grievance machine (Those damned libruls HATE REAL ‘MURICANS!!!)
However, mockery is a real weak spot with him. The gains may well outweigh the costs.
charluckles
WTF. Trumps entire schtick was attacking people. And he attacked Americans for their disabilities on more than one occasion. Now people are defending him and trying to say that’s not what he meant? Who are you going to believe me or your lying eyes?
opiejeanne
@Steeplejack: Thank you. I thought it was important.
Chris
@Bostondreams:
As I recall, not that much (he governed as a moderate, mostly, who wasn’t a free-market-fundamentalist or other loonie but was still happy to throw bones to his constituency on things like gay rights), but he’s still a Republican in Hollywood, that breed that we’re told doesn’t exist or is driven underground. And conservatives were happy to promote him that way until he disappointed.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
Yes, contrary to what some trolls like to claim, I actually have no problem with people who simply preferred Sanders in the primary. I only have a problem with the conspiracy theorists who are continuing to cling to that grudge (yes, mistermix, I’m giving you some side-eye from this weekend’s idiotic post).
GregB
Kelly Ann thinks that Julian Assange and Vladimir Putin have more First Amendment rights than American actors.
JPL
@charluckles: Well in all honestly, Trump mocks those without disabilities too. That seems to be the new spin from the right wing.
cckids
@SenyorDave:
My son had CP; his hands/wrists were quite contracted. And yes, kids did mock and tease him, not at school, but in the neighborhood. We’d try to educate them/their parents, or when that failed, land on them with the wrath of God herself, but seeing that behavior from a grown-ass man, a major party’s candidate for President? Just destroyed me. And to find that family members supported him & are dismissing all his BS and shitty behavior ? Fuck them.
O. Felix Culpa
@Major Major Major Major:
A shocking number of people in that era did say that those kids at Kent State deserved to get killed. Alas, hateful attitudes are not new.
J R in WV
@Betty Cracker:
I’m reasonable sure my brother and his immediate family voted for Trump. He’s really always been a Republican because our parents were. But they do live in Texas, and so I can rationalize that his votes didn’t individually do anything to elect Trump.
Regarding “Nazi Babe” KellyAnne Conway, maybe that’s a better way to call her out? Although I know 70 year old great-great-grandmas who are better looking that KellyAnn; but just for calling out…
Stan
@O. Felix Culpa:
I wonder…. Lincoln was truly great and in some of the same ways Obama has been great.
But I wonder sometimes if we all would have been better off if Union policy had been quite a bit harsher. If we had executed or given life in prison to every Confederate elected official and every officer in their army we might have saved ourselves a lot of assache later.
Major Major Major Major
@daveNYC: I saw that movie (for the umpteenth time) around Christmas and I was shocked by that scene. I hadn’t seen it in a while. And other than some minor edits for what would now be transphobia, that scene is still 100% spot-on parody of the left.
@JPL: It’s OK, though, Rick Perry will I’m sure appoint only the best and brightest to run our nuclear arsenal.
raven
@O. Felix Culpa: It wasn’t shocking, it was America.
Larkspur
@Mnemosyne: This is totally (well almost) OT, but communities can rally wonderfully around people who have an urgent need. I knew a young woman, a long time ago, who was on one of those leadership trips in the Maasai Mara in Kenya. They had a campsite with tents and everything. One night a hyena ripped through the tent of this young woman and mauled her face and arm severely before one of the camps Maasai guards chased it off with a spear. Her team members carried her on a stretcher for hours until they got to a place where a plane could land. Then she was flown off to a Nairobi hospital.
In the Nairobi emergency room, she was asked her religious affiliation, and she told them she was Jewish. At the time, as I recall, there was no big synagogue exactly, but there was a small, vibrant Jewish community, and the hospital had the name of a man who was always called when needed. So this man was called – and I swear this is true – he happened to be entertaining an Italian plastic surgeon at the time, and both men came right down to the hospital. The surgeon went to work on her, the other man contacted her family and helped make arrangements for her father to come and take her home. She was left with significant scarring, and had numerous further surgeries in subsequent years, but without that Italian surgeon’s intervention, it would have been even worse. The family still maintains ties with members of the Nairobi community and has donated to the hospital.
So someone knew who to call, and that person knew who to call, and everybody helped out and did their best, for a stranger.
Mnemosyne
@JPL:
I suspect this is part of the scheme to get the Senate to push Trump’a appointees through without being properly vetted — we have to rush this through because those jobs are vacant!
Fuck them. Even though I have two Democratic senators, I’m calling both of their offices at lunchtime to tell them to stand firm.
hovercraft
@Starfish:
In a normal world it would have stopped already. The GOP will whine, but Obama blamed Bush for everything forever, but newsflash, Bush was president, Hillary was not. Their problem is that Obama is way more popular than the shitgibbon, so they are going after Hillary, I suspect that even these morons will start to point that out once he is sworn in. KAC has shown no compunction about lying and or ignoring what the interviewer has to say when she wants to. A couple of people have tried to be tough on her, but she simply lies. The other thing to remember is that she particularly is friends with these people, they have known each other for years, and they like her, so they tend to go easy on her, even when she went on Bill Maher’s show, he was very gentle with her, he explained that they’ve been friends for over 20 years.
opiejeanne
@Major Major Major Major: Yes. The kids shot and killed at Kent deserved it. Their fathers were mostly WWII veterans, and almost all of the kids who announced they’d never go home again were young men, college kids, very draft-able if their grades slipped.
The LA Times did a very good article at the time on exactly what happened as well as who those kids were, and I had to stick it under my own dad’s nose and tell him to read it. Later he was very much against the war, said it was a terrible mistake, but that was quite a few years later and a different conversation.
Major Major Major Major
@raven: Good point. We still have people saying that the dead kids at Sandy Hook deserved to be killed since that’s what you get when you make schools a “gun-free zone”.
Betty Cracker
@Starfish: I can’t answer for the Beltway types, but I’ve found that imposing a “no Clinton, no Obama” rule in political discussions with wingnut relatives pretty much renders them mute. They can’t defend Trump because he’s an amoral asshole, so they always-always-always turn the conversation to Fox News lies about Clinton or Obama. If you take that off the table, they got nothing except easily vaporized lies like, “He’s a good businessman.”
O. Felix Culpa
@raven: I was a kid then and still shocked by injustice and hateful attitudes.
ETA: Especially that people would wish death on other people’s children, even if they had long hair and were exercising their First Amendment rights on an issue you disagreed with.
Oh, and fuck LBJ.
JPL
@cckids: Trump is a disgusting individual, and I’m so sorry that your family couldn’t understand the pain that Trump caused.
raven
Ha, this just hit my mailbox”
Jack the Second
@daveNYC: You could probably do 3 months safely within the current elections, but with a month deadline you could easily participate in a caucus for one party, then change your affiliation in time to vote in a primary for the same election for another party. You might be able to manage two caucuses and a primary, honestly, voting to put a candidate on three lines on the ballot.
I’d be fine with 3 months instead of 6, maybe even 2 after I really stare at the election calendar for a few hours, but I don’t think that would either substantially alleviate whatever the problems the long deadline creates, or make anyone happier.
And that’s not even getting into the headaches on petitions.
raven
@O. Felix Culpa: Well, I was all of 21 but a bit more “salty” if ya know what I’m sayin.
JPL
@Major Major Major Major: Maybe it will be okay to leave those appointments empty then.
raven
@O. Felix Culpa: Thank you,thank you very much.
Mnemosyne
@Larkspur:
It’s one of our better characteristics as a species, when we choose to exercise it. ?
And I’m sorry your parents were asshole narcissists. My parents were merely dysfunctional (partly because they were both raised by narcissists but escaped becoming ones themselves) and that was hard enough to deal with. At least I never had to doubt that they wanted me to do better than they did.
O. Felix Culpa
@raven: All in a day’s work. :)
raven
@O. Felix Culpa: We didn’t give a fuck about the short haired or the Vietnamese ones either for that matter.
Starfish
@cmorenc: It has not been one. Here he admitted that supporters were violent during the campaign and is advising them to be mellow because he won. They are not having it. There is not much that he can do to undo the psychic wounds that he caused with his rhetoric. I admit, he is not trying *very* hard, but I really don’t think there is much he can do now.
tobie
@JPL: OMG. My heart stopped when I read the link. He’s not even trying to hide that he’s working for the Russians.
Chris
@Stan:
Oh, good Lord, yes. To your first sentence, at least. I don’t know about the second, but we’ve been paying for 150 years for the failure to stomp hard on the C.S. after 1865.
Major Major Major Major
CNN news alert says Kushner will be appointed ‘senior adviser’
rikyrah
They need to get THE PHUCK over themselves.
because, not only is HE not getting any deference…
but, their azzes will be getting THE CONTEMPT FOR THEIR LACK OF CHARACTER,WHICH THEIR VOTE FOR HIM PUT ON DISPLAY, front ant center.
Gravenstone
@Peter: Aside from the fact that all Republican legislative proposals are likely to be so egregiously bad, that vigorous opposition will be the only appropriate response. So lockstep by outcome rather than as a goal in and of itself.
hovercraft
@Belafon:
We don’t count, we are dirty fucking hippies. Morning Joe can demonstrate that he is so far up the shitgibbons ass that he can’t see daylight, he can insult a democratic president, but Keith O., Melissa Harris Perry, and Phil Donahue step out of bounds just a little bit and they are gone, Joe has shitty ratings and has had for years, but he is still there with management saying that ratings don’t matter, his show is about setting the tone of each days discussion, and getting the people who matter on the show. Any liberal host whose ratings dip, is off the air. The billionaire owners are republicans, so regardless of who we watch, they will always skew right.
We are dirty fucking hippies, our views are not serious, what’s needed are strong policy oriented guests who can espouse serious policy proposals, you can balance that with a democrat, but everyone knows that real policy comes from the GOP. We were branded hippies in the 60’s and 70’s, and the media still treats us that way, we are not the serious party. That is why regardless of whose in power the GOP will dominate the talk shows, because they are the grown ups. When they fail, it’s because an individual has failed, it is never the party or their ideas, when we fail, it is our party and our philosophy, and the cure prescribed for us by the media and the grown ups, is always for us to became more republican. Heads they win, tails we lose.
Gravenstone
@Bobby D: Conway’s entire public career has been built on her ability to convincingly lie with obscene facility. The fact that she wraps that ability in a nominally telegenic package explains her continued employment to this day.
Mike E
@hovercraft: Keith Olbermann did a nice tidy segment on his early brushes with KAC, her husband, their circle of rat-fuckers, and the Fox News phenomenon back around the time the Monica story broke…they actually thought he’d catapult their propaganda. Meanwhile, he was taking notes about their little cottage industry that’s still going strong today
Literally
I don’t think resistance “drives the Trumpsters nuts.” I think they love it. They feed on it. They enjoy conflict, fighting, hatred.
SiubhanDuinne
From Gizmodo, via Charles P. Pierce:
(CPP claims credit for the “terrified boldface emphasis,” but if he hadn’t, I would’ve.)
Our next president is deranged. There is simply no other way to describe him.
Spanky
@Major Major Major Major: That was My father’s reaction. His daughter was getting ready to graduate college about a hundred miles from Kent State. I was turning 16, and not quite ready to process that – it didn’t jibe with what I believed or with what I’d thought he valued. Caused a real rift between him and my sister.
Strange days.
randy khan
@dww44:
Great stuff – thanks!
hovercraft
@Major Major Major Major:
Report: Jared Kushner To Be Named Senior Adviser To Trump
President-elect Donald Trump’s son-in-law is expected to serve as a senior adviser to Trump in the White House, according to ex-Politico reporter Mike Allen.
Allen, writing in his new media company Axios’ morning newsletter, reported that lawyers had “worked out a way” for Kushner, the influential husband of Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, to serve in the West Wing as “senior adviser.”
Such a position would not require Senate confirmation, though it is still unclear how Kushner and Ivanka Trump, both close advisers to the President-elect and vice chairs of his transition team, would serve in his administration without violating the spirit of anti-nepotism laws.
In December of last year, Trump ally Newt Gingrich suggested Trump simply exercise the presidential pardon to excuse members of his family who may break the law by working in government.
In response, Richard Painter, President George W. Bush’s chief ethics lawyer from 2005-2007, said: “If the pardon power allows that, the pardon power allows the president to become a dictator.”
JPL
@Major Major Major Major: Anti-nepotism laws don’t apply, because. I’m waiting for someone to mention that the President hired his mother-in-law to help with Malia and Sasha, so both sides.
Plantsmantx
@SiubhanDuinne: That’s a real head-nodder of an article. I couldn’t help laughing at the lack of awareness of inferiority complex afflicted white Southerners feeling that SEC football makes them feel as if they’re just as good as everyone else.
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne:
Mnemosyne at 183 thinks that is his way to get his nominee approved quickly.
My feeling when I first saw the article is we are so f..ked.
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
Sorry, had not seen your comment, let alone the link, when I wrote my #208.
But maybe it’s worth repeating. I hope very much that Adam will front-page this story and give us his own informed take. Because this is fucking terrifying news.
JPL
@hovercraft: Once Ryan and McConnell lower taxes for the one percent, and give us a coupon book to use for health insurance, education and retirement, they will impeach him.
Tenar Arha (same Tenar, more Nameless Ones)
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’ve read too much history, because every time a talking head says that now (including Rachel) I can’t help thinking “Good German,” or more accurate for our nation, “Good Master/Mistress.”
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne: If not Adam, maybe someone with more knowledge about the regulatory commission. It is definitely terrifying, because Rick Perry will soon be in charge.
Kay
I like Streep because I read once that she is on a local public library board which is a thankless horror of a job :)
West of the Rockies (been a while)
I’m very late to the thread but want to say again that Conway is a loathsome person. The SNL version suggests she’s aware, reluctant, but she isn’t. She is wilfully supporting a destructive, vile man. I hope she goes down in flames.
O. Felix Culpa
@Kay: I like Streep because I read once that she is on a local public library board which is a thankless horror of a job :)
Kay
@hovercraft:
The Trump Family will push (and break) every boundary unless they’re sued and an injunction goes in, and even then they’ll ignore it because they don’t have to follow rules.
Everyone likes to say the SCOTUS doesn’t have an army. That’ll be tested before this is over. Special Rules for Special Snowflakes. They only want to help!
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
And that may very well be (part of) his “thinking.” But that doesn’t make it any less daft.
And according to the Gizmodo piece, he doesn’t yet even have a nominee.
Kay
@O. Felix Culpa:
We had patrons complain that our library had too much junk- too lowbrow. I told them this is what they read- they read junk. Deal with it :)
Yarrow
@JPL: @SiubhanDuinne: This is huge. Paging Adam Silverman. Our existence is in jeopardy.
And yes, using every means available to install your people in government at every level is another hallmark of authoritarians. Our institutions will not save us. Unless we make them.
lurker dean
is it betty corleone cracker or betty cracker corleone? :o)
Bobby D
@Plantsmantx: I always got a laugh that most of the big SEC football fanatics…never went to college at all, nevermind the school they “root for”.
Mel
@tobie:
The family looking for lodging for attendance of the march might try contacting DC area Quaker Friends meetings to see if any of the meetung members might be able to assist them. Quakers have a long history of peaceful protest and human rights activism, so maybe one of the Friends would be a possible source of assistance.
? Martin
@SiubhanDuinne: Buck up – Rick Perry will be on the job as Energy Secretary, as overseer of the nuclear stockpile.
opiejeanne
@O. Felix Culpa: I don’t remember how many, but at least two of the four killed were not part of the protest and were on their way to class, and one of those was a member of the ROTC. I can’t remember about the other two, but the reaction that they deserved it was shocking to me. I was 20, still a Republican because my parents were and I was not yet involved in the Real World enough to see it clearly, not yet against the Vietnam war. I was horrified when my own father said the same, but he did back down after reading the article in the Times.
I went to Cal Poly Pomona, a fairly conservative campus, but we held a “moratorium” on the war in 1969 that filled up the quad and beyond. I was there when everyone looked up at the Business building and saw the men in dark suits, wearing sunglasses, setting up tripods probably for cameras but we didn’t know that. Everyone scattered, there was outrage from everyone on both sides of the issue, and the President announced that it would never happen again, that the moratorium should reschedule and the attendees would not be harassed or photographed, that the men in suits were not welcome on campus.
I told my kids this story and they used to think I was nuts. They don’t think so now.
AlbertZ
@O. Felix Culpa: Look into your heart reminds me of this (youtube).
les
@Betty Cracker:
Baghdad Barbie works for me. She may surpass Bob for sheer up front dishonesty.
stinger
@J R in WV: Why “babe”? Does the insult have to be gendered?
Calouste
@Stan: Yep. Instead Confederate officials were back in the US Congress and as Governors and state officials the moment Reconstruction ended. At least they could have banned the traitors from elected office for life.
Another thing that should have happened is abolishing all the Confederate States and draw new state lines and assign new capitals. That would have severely disrupted the existing political networks there.
Yarrow
Maybe people can just call her NaziAnne Conway. Gets right to the point. No gender-ing necessary.
hovercraft
@ Martin: @SiubhanDuinne: @JPL:
That’s what’s so horrifying, not only is he removing the experts, but he is leaving behind Rick 3 Departments, Fucking Perry behind to fill the vacuum. This is the problem with people who do not value education and expertise, they do not understand what they don’t know until it’s too late. Bush felt the Michael Brown was a stellar appointment, until he had to actually do the job. We are so fucking screwed.
SenyorDave
@cckids: I should have qualified my statement that I was specifically talking about kindergarteners not making fun of disabled students. Fortunately, most five and six year olds haven’t learned how to be cruel. But is is incredibly disheartening to realize our soon-to-be president is that cruel. And the people he surrounds himself don’t have a problem with it.
My wife actually has a movement disorder. Its nowhere near as severe as the reporter’s, but it forced her to stop working and go on disability. To me it is inconceivable that an adult would ever mock a person’s disability, and it is just as inconceivable that this person will be our president in 11 days.
opiejeanne
@Major Major Major Major: Doesn’t Trump have a horse that he could have appointed?
Major Major Major Major
@Yarrow: I like Kellyanne Riefenstahl as suggested by celticdragonchick.
glory b
@hovercraft: Sure it’s only them, talking to each other.
Why else would Boeing have commercials on then? We’re not their market.
catclub
@opiejeanne:
The democrats handled this badly. They should have repeatedly said that: “Given a choice between good for the country or bad for the country, they will pick bad for the country if that hurts Obama.”
hovercraft
@ Martin:
This is what is horrifying, he is ignorant and poorly educated, so he doesn’t value those who are not like him. Actually they make him feel insecure about himself, they were able to something that is beyond him, so he appoints people who make him feel better about his own ‘credentials’. But hey Rick 3 Departments Fucking Perry is on the job so don’t worry world, we are in good hands. Bush thought that Heck of a Job Brownie was up to the task, how’d that work out. Hang on tight everyone.
glory b
@opiejeanne: See, another good reason for living in a predominantly minority neighborhood.
I can guarantee that 90+% will be loyal Dems.
Mnemosyne
@catclub:
The problem is that, as shown this past November, Republican voters have no problem doing what’s bad for the country as long as it hurts liberals. They are perfectly happy to conspire with a foreign government to stay on top.
Mnemosyne
@glory b:
Or picking the right workplace. Even the white guys I work with voted third party at worst, and Hillary won CA by a very good margin.
hovercraft
Now Trump’s lying about dress shops, because there’s nothing he doesn’t lie about
By Hunter
Monday Jan 09, 2017 · 1:04 PM EST
Donald Trump is a compulsive liar. It’s pathological.
“We are going to have an unbelievable, perhaps record-setting turnout for the inauguration, and there will be plenty of movie and entertainment stars,” Mr. Trump said. “All the dress shops are sold out in Washington. It’s hard to find a great dress for this inauguration.”
This is a damn strange thing to lie about, and by strange we mean stupid, and by lie we mean Jeebus Crisp, how would you even invent such a thing? Your greatness is so vast the nation’s collected fashion industries are incapable of even finding clothes for your too-many admirers?
So Racked had to fact-check this, because this is our lives now, and it is indeed a load of hot flaming garbage pulled from the Dumpster fire that Donald Trump calls his ego.
An employee at the Neiman Marcus at the Mazza Gallerie told Racked, when asked whether it had evening gowns available, “Absolutely. A lot of them!” A staff member at Saks Fifth Avenue at Mazza Gallerie informed us that it does indeed have evening collections in stock at the moment. An employee at Gucci City Center said that clients can shop its ready-to-wear by appointment, and that offering “absolutely” includes evening dresses. A local Lord & Taylor has “a lot of eveningwear dresses,” according to an employee, and they’re 15 percent off with a Lord & Taylor Card! Betsy Fisher is “definitely not sold out,” […]
And so on and so on and so forth. All right, so what brought on this latest compulsive lie from the compulsive liar to whom we’re giving the nuclear codes?
It apparently—drumroll, anyone?—because Meryl Streep made him sad. So Donald Trump took to Twitter—of course—to insult Meryl Streep, and in the process of his tantrum he bragged that his inauguration was going to be the bigly-est, with stars, and hookers, and blackjack, and chocolate fountains hand-pumped by orphaned waifs from Rex Tillerson’s own personal waif dungeon, and it’s not like you Hollywood stars could even get in if you wanted to because a million jillion people are going to be there and they’ve already rented all the best clothing. Or something.
The important thing is that Donald Trump apparently cannot stop lying about everything, all the time, about anything that he sees as even remotely challenging to his unhinged evaluations of his own grandeur. And he’s stepping into the most visible, most critiqued job in the nation.
He’s going to be insane by April, you know. They’ll have to wheel him in and out of the Oval Office in a gilded wheelbarrow.
catclub
@Mnemosyne: I know. I just read “The Authoritarians” It was published in 2007 or 2008 and is depressingly prescient.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@tobie:
Yes, I mean the guy is the president elect, WTF does Trump even care about what some actress thinks about him? Trump is leadership turned into a farce.
Mnemosyne
@glory b:
Also, too, funny neighbor story from So Cal —
One of my work friends lives across the street from someone who had Trump signs up, and the morning after the election, she went and stood on the sidewalk in front of their house to flip them off, turning slowly so the gesture was fully captured on all of their security cameras.
Oh, and there was a big obnoxious Trump sign in my neighborhood that got taken down within a couple days of the election. He probably got tired of being a pariah.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Humdog: You can view them as pack of evil jackels or a bunch of clueless saps. My bet would it’s really the later since Trump just said anything he could to please people.
Mnemosyne
It would be too wordy, but I’m tempted to get a t-shirt saying something like, “I’m
one of the 45 percent of white women who isn’t a Trump-voting moron.”
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: But if we shun them then they’ll never get over their economic anxiety!
NR
Trump will get respect from me as soon as he starts showing it to ALL of the people he’s supposed to be working for. Until then, nope.
Brachiator
@SiubhanDuinne: RE: Trump, however, appears determined to immediately push out everyone who was appointed by Obama, regardless of whether or not he has anyone in line for the job. Or, as our source put it: “It’s a shocking disregard for process and continuity of government.”
Trump’s outlandish behavior may set new precedents, and do long term harm to the presidency, and to American democracy. And yet his most fervent admirers cheer him on. Just sad.
Ella in New Mexico
@Betty Cracker: I’ve had to step away from all my frustration and bewilderment towards the four family members by marriage-three of whom I’ve known since I was 16 years old- who supported Trump. For years, we have shared so many values that I was astounded they could support the guy. Yes, they are Republicans, but no radical crazies. The Parents-in-law voted for Clinton twice.
But they’ve become isolated, especially the Parents-in-law who disconnected their internet 10 years ago because it was too complicated to manage. They’re aging (78 and 81) live in a small, conservative echo chamber of a town in Pennsylvania. They’re good people at heart but they’re just not well informed. The Brother-in-law and his wife are much the same, but also add in that they’re not dry intellectually curious.She’s a pretty rigid person, to boot-so much like the “Church Lady” the resemblance is scary.
All of them view being Republican as some sort of identity that they associate with being “right”- it’s a part of who they are, whether they agree with all of it or not, they’re gonna be loyal to the party, period.
So my forgiveness is more of a sad acceptance that they made a stupid and uninformed decision, egged on by the propaganda machine against Clinton and pumped out by Fox. My sister-in-law unfriended me on Facebook, but my husband’s brother didn’t-we’ve loved and known one another since high school for Christ’s sake. Plus all his siblings, niece and nephews also voted for Clinton so he’d be pretty lonely with only his cranky Church Lady to keep him company.
My only hope is that they come to realize just what a stupid mistake it was to believe this jackass and his nasty Party when they flush everything they’ve ever thought they could count on down the toilet.
les
@? Martin:
Yeah–as soon as somebody in the maladministration figures out DOE is in change of nukes. So far, they don’t seem to have noticed.
Elizabelle
@Mnemosyne: How ’bout just
On that tee shirt.
And wear it proudly, with your pu ss y hat.
opiejeanne
@catclub: Agreed.
catclub
@Kay: From Kevin Drum – The Trump cabinet:
I disagree only with Stockman, he was not actively horrible while Reagan was president. Or maybe that is how mulvaney will turn out – most sane of an insane bunch.
ETA: Also left out Goering and Himmler. There is still time!
opiejeanne
@glory b: I live in Western Washington, for crying out loud, in a neighborhood of mostly democrats, a few RW nut jobs, but the Others have come out of the woodwork and I was surprised by a couple of them, considering who they were, their background, etc.
zhena gogolia
@stinger:
Yes, it has to be gendered because she uses her long blonde hair as a signifier that women are okay with DJT.
GregB
Bannon is Goebbels.
opiejeanne
@hovercraft: i just had a revelation: while I already figured Trump would never live in the White House, I do believe that Ivanka and her beloved Mr Kushner will be staying there, despite the news item that they’re looking for a house there. Nope, they’ll be living there full time by this summer. It will start out with just a sleep over now and then, because they’ve worked such long hours and are just too tired to make it to their own house. Eventually it will be staying there weeknights, so they can have some time together, and then eventually they’ll just move in.
jackmac
@tpherald: The Republicans were hardly the “loyal opposition.” Substitute obstructionist a**holes and you’re moving closer to the truth.
zhena gogolia
@catclub:
You mean Mike Flynn?
tobie
@Mel: Thanks for the good suggestion.
I also need to find the comment by Shana that Mnemosyne referenced. Hints anyone about how to search the Balloon Juice archive?
Steeplejack (phone)
@opiejeanne:
Yikes! I find that insanely plausible, somehow. Thanks for the nightmare fodder.
hovercraft
@catclub:
What are the monikers for the kids, or are we sticking with Uday, Qusay and Lucretia?
stinger
@hovercraft: Love Hunter! I have wondered if perhaps Melania told M. les Petits Doigts that DC (and NYC) was sold out of evening gowns so she has to get hers in Paris.
waspuppet
Big fucking deal. Call me back when he says we can knock the crap out of the violent racists and he’ll pay our legal bills. Or that in the old days when we were strong they’d be carried out on a stretcher and the next one would have to think twice before starting anything. Or when he tells the violent racists to go home to mommy.
We have ample evidence of how he talks when he REALLY disapproves of someone.
hovercraft
@opiejeanne:
Jared and Lucretia already bought a house a couple of blocks from where the Obama’s are renting, so unfortunately they will be neighbors. I think the White House is simply too tasteful a place for these people, and they cannot make it as garish as they would want.
Ivanka Trump buys Washington, DC home — see inside
Elizabelle
@stinger: And take “DJ Barron” with her to Paris to shop.
And then refuse to re-enter U.S. airspace.
Aleta
Astounds me how his lies and accusations are mirror images of things he is guilty of. Not just believing that other people do what he does (bad enough). But similar to a way of confessing that some sick people have. Even the ‘overrated’ he loves to use.
Humdog
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: this is where I hope to get, but you did not have to be political nor very aware to know the rancid cheeto is not a fit person to lead anything, even a trip to McD’s. settling in on criminally stupid, maybe?
Elizabelle
@hovercraft: It’s possible Lucretia has more restrained taste.
And I think the Electoral College President should be forced to live in the White House. For his security, since we have a fully staffed protective force, and to lessen the weight on taxpayers in New York City, and the US as a whole.
Gravenstone
@hovercraft: So Trump has his Grima Wormtongue all lined up and raring to go.
randy khan
@hovercraft:
It’s just amazing that we’re at the point where journalists have to call department stores to check on Trump’s tweets.
And speaking as someone who lives in DC, the vast majority of inaugural ball gowns are bought outside the city, because most attendees come from somewhere else. (DC people in the right demographics for inaugural balls pretty much go to no more than one – they’re boring! – unless they have an obligation to attend for some reason.)
? Martin
@hovercraft: What do you mean ignorant and poorly educated? The man got a ‘D’ in ‘Meats’. That’s a passing grade!
Gravenstone
@Major Major Major Major: I wonder how well she’d maintain her well practiced composure the moment someone replied, “You’re lying, Frau Reifenstahl …”?
? Martin
@tobie: James Fallows tweeted last week:
It’s the ‘obviously’ that makes one lose faith in our country.
Mnemosyne
@opiejeanne:
And then they’ll rent out the house they’re buying for a little extra income. Win-win.
Oh, and if anyone says anything, they’ll say that Michelle Obama’s mother owes back rent for living in the White House for the past 8 years.
pluky
@Bobby D: joy reid would do it in a heartbeat.
Ksmiami
@Stan: I actually think A Marshall plan for the south to industrialize and build would have been the right approach Along with a de-confederaztion program similar to de-nazification in Germany.
Chris
@opiejeanne:
I think many would be surprised by the number of people who still to this day hold that Kent State was a good thing.
As I’ve been known to say, this country has been in a hippie-punching drunken rage for half a century. The simple sight of this kind of protest drives them fucking insane.
mmeep
Participation in democracy is fun! Just left a message with Dick Durbin, and I used Betty’s words. No confirmation without complete background checks.
Ohio Mom
I haven’t kept up with the more recent comments since Betty added her update so maybe somebody else said this, but Trump was essentially goaded into requesting that his followers stop being dicks by the reporter who was interviewing him. He doesn’t deserve that much credit.
It’s like when your mom used to make you apologize for stuff you didn’t think was wrong to do to begin with, you just wanted her off your back. If you were at all slick, you could make it sound as sincere as Trump did.
Mostly wanted to stop by between everything I’m doing today to Thank Betty for the heads up about calling our Senators. Done!
catclub
@Chris: The Authoritarians! I just read it and now see it everywhere.
Not quite “The Aristocrats”, but close enough.
Doug R
@hovercraft: I’m calling her Goebbels.
Ruckus
@Stan:
And just as well as might not have. Racism is a learned trait in humans but it also is one that is very easily learned at a young age and by many people on the planet. It is not an American only issue, it is a human issue. It hasn’t been that long in the overall scope of things that people have been speaking up about it and opposing it openly and while it will probably never totally go away, it has to be marginalized, not rewarded as this last election did.
Captain C
@Betty Cracker:
I’m trying to use “asshole” for all such instances, myself. For example, calling Conway a Nazi Asshole gets the same point across without getting near that line (although in fairness, assholes are far more useful than Conway.)
ETA: Elizabelle’s comment at #80 works fine, as well.
hovercraft
@randy khan:
The other day I posted a link to an article saying the Tech companies on the west coast all have their PR flacks assigned to be up and at the ready at 3 am, because it tweets between 5 and 7, so they are on alert to do damage control if he goes after them on the twitter machine. I think it was CNN’s Brian Seltzer(sic).
SFAW
@Elizabelle:
Would that be the hummer she does with TEFA?
Ohio Mom
@tobie: Kesher Israel, the Orthodox Georgetown synagogue?
randy khan
@hovercraft:
Yeah, I saw that, too. smh.
stinger
@Elizabelle: LOL. I’m reading the First Lady’s book on the White House kitchen garden, and have been trying to picture Melania gardening, dancing with children, doing any of the amazing things the current First Lady has done to make sure the White House feels like “the people’s house”. But I can’t even imagine it. They’ll probably rip out the kitchen garden — they’ve already said they’re getting rid of the playground equipment — and no one not sufficiently attractive will be allowed inside.
rikyrah
@Villago Delenda Est:
YEP
Ruckus
@stinger:
So donnie won’t be allowed in then?
Ohio Mom
@opiejeanne: that may be a very good idea because there are a lot more churches than synagogues in the world.
Another option to consider is using Joe Liberman’s approach to the Washington subway: when he had to use it on Saturdays, he had a non-Jewish staff member swipe the fare card. There really is no one way to be Orthodox, though people pretend there is.
Elizabelle
@? Martin: Ahhhh. James Fallows is taking a six-month sabbatical to write, effective January 1. So few good accountability bloggers out there, although Kevin Drum has been really
goodshrill lately.** Kay isn’t the only one keeping up with Trump’s norms-breaking. That sounds like a fulltime job on its own.
*** Le sigh. Like “the country” is going to be reading a James Fallows “path forward” book. Unless it shows up in bite size fake controversy-bits on Breitbart or clickbait sites.
Or even that our careerist media is going to give it a good read and reporting.
Example A: the media types who looked at Jane Mayer’s “Dark Money” book, bloviated briefly about the Koch brothers’ parent’s (!) connection to Nazis (safe because it was “historic”), and didn’t expound much on the actual topic of her writing, which bleeds into the present.
randy khan
@Ohio Mom:
That’s a long way from the start of the march.
Captain C
@Major Major Major Major: Given that his wife will apparently be performing First Lady duties, this keeps them somewhat together. I’m sure that’s the reason why. Nothing to do with business, or Drumpf needing trusted family members around due to his own seemingly diminished mental capacity.
Captain C
@JPL: Or Article 25 him, or he’ll die a not-very-convincing natural death.
Captain C
@Kay: I’ve had the same complaint directly from a patron. She couldn’t understand why we didn’t get rid of the popular fiction and only stock classics and high literature.
Captain C
@Calouste: The War Nerd makes a good case that a few judicious hangings might have been best:
Captain C
@hovercraft:
As long as he signs their horrible legislation and puts in horrible appointees that they approve of, I’m pretty sure that the Republicans in Congress will let him get away with anything, up to and including banging Ivanka on the White House lawn, while Uday, Qusay, and Jared play bongos alongside and Chuck Todd narrates. Once he’s an impediment to them, or a drag on their
popularityability to win elections, he’s toast, as they’ll “suddenly” discover all the crimes he’s committed.The Lodger
@Captain C: Thanks. I thought of this post too, but couldn’t remember anything past “Nathan Bedford Forrest and the other guy.”
stinger
@Ruckus: Not if I have anything to say about! (on both electoral and attractiveness grounds)
Lurking Canadian
@Calouste: They should have re-admitted the entire Confederacy as one state. Give them two Senators to share and see how much filibustering happens.
Ohio Mom
@randy khan: Yeah, it’s far but it is the only synagogue anywhere near downtown I can think of. Before we were married, my husband belonged there during his misspent youth. There were members who lived in the city, maybe there is a current one who lives sorta near the march’s route who isn’t a complete Republican? There were some liberals in the congregation way back.
You also have to take into account that a lot of the Shomer Shabbos are champion walkers, they have to be.
dave
OT-but the subtext of reconstruction is concurrent with a novella I am working on(thanks for Wade Hampton BTW) in anyones opinion-what would be the “hot spots” of post civil war southern rebellion if there were actually any measures applied to change this situation?
debbie
The fact Trump called Streep overrated tells you all you need to know about Trump.
Calouste
@Captain C: I’m of the opinion that the US would have been a lot better off if after the Civil War they had prosecuted all the following as traitors:
– Members of state legislatures that voted for secession
– All members of the CSA Congress and cabinet
– All general officers of the CSA armies
With sentences ranging from being barred from being elected to any office for life all the way to the death penalty.
Kathleen
@O. Felix Culpa: And they said it to the parents of the students who were killed or injured. I just saw an old documentary about Kent State last week and the reaction of the nice towns people was noted.
MoxieM
Regarding the questions of ‘how does a family rip itself apart of an election?’, parts of my family ripped itself apart when Hitler was appointed Chancellor…they never spoke again, not to this day. And of course, 2-3 generations later, I don’t even know who those people might be. Honestly, I’m kind of grateful to my grandfather, even though he lived here in the USA (after all, he was born in NJ, although he grew up in Germany), that he put his foot down and forbade any contact with anyone who supported ‘that monster’. He certainly had moral clarity.
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne: Bingo. I figure by Christmas 2017 they’ll be settled into the WH.
cckids
@Doug R:
I’m partial to “Sewer Rat Barbie” myself. Found it on the book of Faces, and it fits.