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You are here: Home / The four people you meet in hell

The four people you meet in hell

by DougJ|  January 31, 20179:56 am| 362 Comments

This post is in: Our Awesome Meritocracy, Our Failed Media Experiment, Our Failed Political Establishment, Technically True but Collectively Nonsense, We Are All Mayans Now

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A few years ago I did a post about the three different kinds of conservatives in the media. I decided they were:

  1. “Atlas Shrugged” conservatives: Megan McArdle, the Reasonoids, Larry Kudlow, etc.
  2. “Chronicles Of Narnia” conservatives: Ross Douthat, Peggy Noonan, many other Catholic conservatives.
  3. “300” conservatives: Victor David Hanson, war bloggers, any neoconservatives.

I thought it might be time to revisit this classification in the age of Trump. Enough media conservatives have come out against Trump (and, not surprisingly, many even-the-liberals are busily enabling Trump) that I don’t want to make this about conservatives per se but about Trump supporters and enablers. The front page of Reason was almost all anti-Trump today, and Jen Rubin’s column these days could double as a Daily Kos diary, so to start, I’m not putting neoconservatives or Reasonoids on the list…but Megan McArdle will remain, in a different category. And Narnians will also stay in the classification.

Here we go:

  1. Narnians: Peggy Noonan, Rod Dreher (supporters); Ross Douthat (enabler). These are folks who believe that the United States is first and foremost a magical Christian nation. Therefore, Trump is at best Aslan and at worst a boob who was brought to power by left-wing excesses.
  2. Narcissists: Megan McArdle, Charles Lane, Frank Bruni, Nick Kristof. These self-styled centrists can’t let their beautiful minds be consumed by partisanship, so they have to spend as much or more criticizing impolite protesters and the Oberlin student council as they do criticizing Trump. Show business kids making movies of themself, you know they don’t give a fuck about anybody else. It pains me to leave Ron Fournier off this list, but he’s been very tough on Trump.
  3. Nihilists: Bob Woodward, most Republican elected officials, everyone who works at Axios. The nihilists have no political convictions, they only care about access and power. If you haven’t noticed, B Dub is all the way in the tank for Trump. Republican elected officials would give Satan a rim job if it killed the Great Society. Axios has already run a great deal of Satan-sponsored content.
  4. Neo-Nazis: Marc Thiessen, everyone at Breitbart. Needs no explanation. Say what you want about their tenets…
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Reader Interactions

362Comments

  1. 1.

    The Moar You Know

    January 31, 2017 at 10:00 am

    Political alignments have changed in an odd way recently. Turns out I have far more in common with John McCain than any libertarian. Wasn’t that way even eight years ago, but here we are.

    (bitter hell yes I’m bitter)

  2. 2.

    Elizabelle

    January 31, 2017 at 10:01 am

    Believe Bobo goes in with Peggy and the narnians?

    Incidentally, did you know that rich people work harder? Bobo told me so. It’s all character.

  3. 3.

    Doug!

    January 31, 2017 at 10:02 am

    @Elizabelle:

    He’s really reamed Trump the last few columns so I left him out as much as I hate him.

  4. 4.

    Amaranthine RBG

    January 31, 2017 at 10:03 am

    Why do you think Democrats were unable to assemble a coalition to defeat the Republican miscreants whose moral flaws are so obvious?

  5. 5.

    FlipYrWhig

    January 31, 2017 at 10:08 am

    @Amaranthine RBG: Because Republican voters are hateful, vile people who enjoy being that way and voting for people just like themselves, and there are millions upon millions of them?

  6. 6.

    oldster

    January 31, 2017 at 10:08 am

    Major props for the perfectly deployed Steely Dan quote.

  7. 7.

    Starfish

    January 31, 2017 at 10:10 am

    @Amaranthine RBG: Because when they are not being kicked in the head, they resort to in-fighting. I am still seeing a “Bernie was robbed” faction on the internet and some Jill Stein “Clinton = Trump” stuff still. It’s less, but it is still there. After the electoral defeat, everyone was worried about the thing that mattered to them most as opposed to who was realistically in the most danger at the time.

  8. 8.

    Dan

    January 31, 2017 at 10:10 am

    you do make all sorts of strange buddies in a foxhole during wartime, as it turns out: Jennifer Rubin’s twitter feed is actually readable now, and she will approvingly retweet Neera Tanden now. She’s actually been… kinda great? Specifically, at noting how the GOP bears special responsibility for the rise of Trump and they’re the ones who need to get off their asses and stop him.

  9. 9.

    RSA

    January 31, 2017 at 10:12 am

    @Elizabelle:

    Believe Bobo goes in with Peggy and the narnians?

    Boundaries may be shifting:

    David Brooks: The Republican Fausts

    Bill Kristol: Is Trump a Sufferable Evil? The Republican party is looking down the road to disaster

  10. 10.

    Mikefromarlington

    January 31, 2017 at 10:13 am

    What are the chances Obama will rise and lead the revolution to take back control of state houses and Congess.

    Maybe he should take control of the dnc and get them back to winning again for a start.

  11. 11.

    Kay

    January 31, 2017 at 10:14 am

    and the Oberlin student council

    This whole post made me laugh :)

  12. 12.

    MattF

    January 31, 2017 at 10:14 am

    There’s also the Trump Family. They’re getting their own diorama when a Museum of Psychopathology is built on the Mall.

  13. 13.

    dedc79

    January 31, 2017 at 10:16 am

    Need a category for the faux liberals like Greenwald and Michael Tracey (much less well known, dumber, and even more unpleasant) who took their swords out for Clinton and gave Trump a mostly free pass.

  14. 14.

    schrodingers_cat

    January 31, 2017 at 10:18 am

    Alternate hamburger!

  15. 15.

    schrodingers_cat

    January 31, 2017 at 10:19 am

    What category does the Vichy Times fall in?

  16. 16.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    January 31, 2017 at 10:19 am

    Where does Melanoma fit on your list?

    I have heard nothing on her anti-bullying initiative she promised (actually, she’s been disappeared since inauguration day – she might be Real Doll, hauled out to prove that Deadbeat Donnie isn’t a homo when questions arise). If she’s real, she could start by taking his cellphone and not scrolling it, but smashing it on the bathroom floor like my wife did when I was particularly assholish in a facebook argument with an acquaintance’s father in law (the acquaintance is a facebook friend with her boss, who mentioned it to her because he thought it was funny).

    Anyway, maybe Lucrezia can roll over one morning and take it from him after an appropriate post coital couple selfie, of course….

  17. 17.

    Weaselone

    January 31, 2017 at 10:19 am

    Need a category for the faux liberals like Greenwald and Michael Tracey (much less well known, dumber, and even more unpleasant) who took their swords out for Clinton and gave Trump a mostly free pass.

    Pretty sure they fall into a subcategory of narcissist, although maybe the fifth category of paid Russian hack needs to be added.

    Ironically for the “Chronicle of Narnia” conservatives, I suspect that their Aslan will actually turn out to be an ass dressed in a lion skin.

  18. 18.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 31, 2017 at 10:19 am

    Have people been reading Frum’s piece in the new Atlantic? https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/03/how-to-build-an-autocracy/513872/

    I think it’s pretty spot-on.

    Outside the Islamic world, the 21st century is not an era of ideology. The grand utopian visions of the 19th century have passed out of fashion. The nightmare totalitarian projects of the 20th have been overthrown or have disintegrated, leaving behind only outdated remnants: North Korea, Cuba. What is spreading today is repressive kleptocracy, led by rulers motivated by greed rather than by the deranged idealism of Hitler or Stalin or Mao. Such rulers rely less on terror and more on rule-twisting, the manipulation of information, and the co-optation of elites.

  19. 19.

    EriktheRed

    January 31, 2017 at 10:20 am

    @Mikefromarlington:

    Personally, I’d like to see him run for Governor of IL.

  20. 20.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    January 31, 2017 at 10:20 am

    @oldster: I missed that the first time through, and had to go back and read it again. That was epic, as the kids say these days.

  21. 21.

    Elmo

    January 31, 2017 at 10:21 am

    No love for Halperin or Moanin’ Joe among the nihilists?

  22. 22.

    Doug!

    January 31, 2017 at 10:21 am

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Narcissists

  23. 23.

    chopper

    January 31, 2017 at 10:22 am

    Therefore, Trump is at best Aslan and at worst a boob who was brought to power by left-wing excesses.

    likely he’s Shift.

  24. 24.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    January 31, 2017 at 10:23 am

    Hey, where’s Maureen Dowd? Her tweet deck is the stuff of Mean Girl legend – she’s in a squabble with Neera Tanden over “but her emails”, and is just a raging asshole who deserves to have every goddamned tooth punched out of her mouth (if Tanden was that sort of person to do punching).

  25. 25.

    Dave

    January 31, 2017 at 10:24 am

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: She’s in the category of doesn’t matter and is a distraction worth zero time or thought. She may be horrible or just a slightly ruthless person that miscalculated when finding her meal ticket or hell she could even be decent. It doesn’t matter because she doesn’t matter to politics or policy and focusing on her barring something unprecedented (it could happen we are in uncharted territory) is a waste of time.

  26. 26.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    January 31, 2017 at 10:24 am

    @Dan:

    I’m crushing on Jen Rubin in a big way, actually.

  27. 27.

    Weaselone

    January 31, 2017 at 10:25 am

    @chopper:

    likely he’s Shift.

    Nope. Shift is Bannon.

  28. 28.

    Kay

    January 31, 2017 at 10:25 am

    I love the new standard conservatives have set for “qualified”. “Qualified” now means “no experience in the job whatsoever”

    Does this apply to everyone or just the Trump Administration? I think I’d be darn good at running Ivanka’s shoe line. She should appoint me president. I know as much about selling shoes as she does about family leave. More, I bet. I buy shoes. She doesn’t need family leave.

    You’ll notice “no training or experience” as a plus only applies to elites. The teeming masses still have to train and THEN be CEO. They’re great at everything!

  29. 29.

    Jeffro

    January 31, 2017 at 10:26 am

    @RSA: I was just about to toss out this little excerpt from Brooks:

    …it is hard to think of any administration in recent memory, on any level, whose identity is so tainted by cruelty. The Trump administration is often harsh and never kind. It is quick to inflict suffering on the 8-year-old Syrian girl who’s been bombed and strafed and lost her dad. Its deportation vows mean that in the years ahead, the TV screens will be filled with weeping families being pulled apart.

    None of these traits will improve with time. As former Bush administration official Eliot Cohen wrote in The Atlantic, “Precisely because the problem is one of temperament and character, it will not get better. It will get worse, as power intoxicates Trump and those around him. It will probably end in calamity — substantial domestic protest and violence, a breakdown of international economic relationships, the collapse of major alliances, or perhaps one or more new wars (even with China) on top of the ones we already have. It will not be surprising in the slightest if his term ends not in four or in eight years, but sooner, with impeachment or removal under the 25th Amendment.”

    The danger signs are there in profusion. Sooner or later, the Republican Fausts will face a binary choice. As they did under Nixon, Republican leaders will have to either oppose Trump and risk his tweets, or sidle along with him and live with his stain.

    Trump exceeded expectations with his cabinet picks, but his first 10 days in office have made clear this is not a normal administration. It is a problem that demands a response. It is a callous, bumbling group that demands either personal loyalty or the ax.

    The lights are blinking red, Republicans. The time to pick – your party, or your country – is fast approaching.

    With most administrations you can agree sometimes and disagree other times. But this one is a danger to the party and the nation in its existential nature. And so sooner or later all will have to choose what side they are on, and live forever after with the choice.

  30. 30.

    dedc79

    January 31, 2017 at 10:27 am

    @Weaselone: Thought about narcissists, but DougJ defined them to be supposed centrists. I’m talking about the people who claim to be liberal but really aren’t.

  31. 31.

    danielx

    January 31, 2017 at 10:28 am

    @Elizabelle:

    Incidentally, did you know that rich people work harder? Bobo told me so. It’s all character.

    Why, of course they do! It’s why Gary Cohn is worthy of a $123 million severance package!

    Ecrasez l’infame….

  32. 32.

    Juice Box

    January 31, 2017 at 10:28 am

    I no longer feel dizzy when I find myself agreeing with David Frum and Bill Kristol and that worries me.

  33. 33.

    rikyrah

    January 31, 2017 at 10:30 am

    The Four N’s – love it.

  34. 34.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 31, 2017 at 10:31 am

    @dedc79: he needs a category for useful idiots and fifth columnists.

  35. 35.

    Dave

    January 31, 2017 at 10:31 am

    @Juice Box: Right? Honestly though it’s not surprising they both benefit from the system functioning. They are comfortable. Now I want the system to function while reforming it to be better. I don’t think they really care but they do not want the system blown up because then their comfort and position will be threatened. And hell maybe this will wake them up to what they’ve supported it can and does happen.

  36. 36.

    rikyrah

    January 31, 2017 at 10:32 am

    Bannon’s Contempt For Congressional Republicans On Display
    by Nancy LeTourneau
    January 31, 2017 10:07 AM

    ……………….

    That is the context in which to understand much of what happened in the lead-up to Trump’s announcement of the executive order on immigrants and refugees. It is especially telling when considering what was reported last night by Politico.

    Senior staffers on the House Judiciary Committee helped Donald Trump’s top aides draft the executive order curbing immigration from seven Muslim-majority nations, but the Republican committee chairman and party leadership were not informed, according to multiple sources involved in the process…

    The work of the committee aides began during the transition period after the election and before Donald Trump was sworn in. The staffers signed nondisclosure agreements, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

    Not only was the Republican committee chairman, Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) not informed about the development of the executive order, his staff was recruited to work on it in secret and required to sign nondisclosure agreements about their work.

    It is important to keep in mind that Rep. Goodlatte is not some squishy centrist when it comes to immigration. He has received a 100% rating from FAIR, the extremist anti-immigrant advocacy group, and has spoken out in opposition to birthright citizenship. But this is the guy the Trump administration wanted to keep in the dark about their executive order.

  37. 37.

    chris

    January 31, 2017 at 10:32 am

    @Major Major Major Major: [Insert obligatory Canadian apology for Frum here.]

    @sarahkendzior called it last night IMHO: an accelerationist autocracy. Welcome to the Dark Enlightenment.

  38. 38.

    liberal

    January 31, 2017 at 10:33 am

    @Mikefromarlington: Obama was the one who was the leader of the party when the state parties were dying, so I think I’ll pass.

  39. 39.

    Jeffro

    January 31, 2017 at 10:33 am

    @Major Major Major Major: Sure did read it (linked to it last thread – I think several of us are on the same wavelength, or following the same people on Twitter more likely! =)

    We’re not even a month in and this whole thing is about to collapse around Trumpov’s ears. Andrew Johnson, Warren Harding, frickin’ W, and James Buchanan don’t mind moving up a notch in the rankings, I’m sure.

  40. 40.

    Weaselone

    January 31, 2017 at 10:33 am

    @Major Major Major Major:

    NeoRussians?
    The Kremlins?
    PutinBros?
    The Natasha’s?

  41. 41.

    danielx

    January 31, 2017 at 10:33 am

    OT, but yet another player (a good ‘un) from my misspent youth gone.

    King Crimson and Roxy Music bassist John Wetton dies aged 67: Prog rock lynchpin loses cancer battle

    Fuck cancer.

  42. 42.

    Buskertype

    January 31, 2017 at 10:33 am

    Woodward is the prototypical access journalist. Once he gets the right scoop he will dump on Trump with all the fury that his current co-writer can summon.

  43. 43.

    dww44

    January 31, 2017 at 10:34 am

    @FlipYrWhig: Exactly, and for our part, when we field a thoroughly capable candidate but one who doesn’t have the charisma and obvious likeability of an FDR or an Obama or even a Reagan then we get the situation we got on November 8. I was a Hillary supporter from the get go and worked in voter canvassing, but she was not actually able to energize voters and supporters around me. Hence we ended up with voters not committed enough to go out and vote for her to protect the country and its institutions from the likes of a Trump.

  44. 44.

    Jeffro

    January 31, 2017 at 10:35 am

    @rikyrah:

    Not only was the Republican committee chairman, Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) not informed about the development of the executive order, his staff was recruited to work on it in secret and required to sign nondisclosure agreements about their work.

    It is important to keep in mind that Rep. Goodlatte is not some squishy centrist when it comes to immigration. He has received a 100% rating from FAIR, the extremist anti-immigrant advocacy group, and has spoken out in opposition to birthright citizenship. But this is the guy the Trump administration wanted to keep in the dark about their executive order.

    Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy…Goodlatte’s the dick who wanted to gut the House Ethics committee. Karma, baby!

  45. 45.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 31, 2017 at 10:37 am

    @Jeffro:

    I think several of us are on the same wavelength, or following the same people on Twitter more likely!

    Or it’s, you know, this month’s cover article in a widely-read publication ?

    @Weaselone: there are people in that category who only incidentally serve Russian interests while advancing their own agenda; but they’re certainly Putin enablers.

  46. 46.

    liberal

    January 31, 2017 at 10:37 am

    @rikyrah: I loved the NDA bit.

  47. 47.

    amk

    January 31, 2017 at 10:38 am

    why four when we can have one size fits all – gasbags

  48. 48.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    January 31, 2017 at 10:40 am

    @Major Major Major Major: everyone’s labeling it a must read, so I guess I’ll have to overcome my hostility to Frum long enough to read it

  49. 49.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 31, 2017 at 10:41 am

    @Juice Box: @Dave: they’re people who understand the system–the bipartisan consensus as it were–and while of course they depend (or in Frum’s case used to depend) on a merely evil Republican Party to get their paychecks, I imagine they would be distressed to see it being destroyed anyway. Also, by having an insider understanding of the system they’re better able to see and articulate the exact ways it’s breaking down.

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I haven’t gotten all the way through it yet (about 2/3) but so far it’s a lot like something I’ve been meaning to write. So take that for what it is ?

  50. 50.

    dedc79

    January 31, 2017 at 10:43 am

    @Jeffro: Goodlatte is also the guy pushing to gut Chevron deference. Remember when conservatives railed against “judicial activism”? Well this bill would result in a lot of judicial activism. Federal agencies would get no deference from courts in their interpretation of enabling statutes.

  51. 51.

    Это курам на смех

    January 31, 2017 at 10:43 am

    @Jeffro: It’s not going anywhere. They have the power and they will use it, no matter how fucked up it will appear in the public sphere. The thugs got what they wanted and they will find ways not to give it up.

  52. 52.

    rikyrah

    January 31, 2017 at 10:44 am

    @Juice Box:

    I no longer feel dizzy when I find myself agreeing with David Frum and Bill Kristol and that worries me.

    Add Rubin to that.
    just scares me.

  53. 53.

    danielx

    January 31, 2017 at 10:44 am

    I am certain Betty will be thrilled beyond measure.

    Trump urges Rick Scott to run for prized Florida Senate seat

    Fucking Voldemort in the Senate. Hey, why not?

  54. 54.

    germy

    January 31, 2017 at 10:44 am

    @Elizabelle:

    Incidentally, did you know that rich people work harder? Bobo told me so. It’s all character.

    Drumpf is the hardest working man in show business.

  55. 55.

    Captain C

    January 31, 2017 at 10:47 am

    @RSA: On the other hand, from that Brooks column:

    In the first place, the Trump administration is not a Republican administration;

    In fact, it is the quintessence of a Republican administration. This is typical Brooksian self-serving bullshit.

    Trump exceeded expectations with his cabinet picks

    If by “exceeded expectations” Bobo means “even worse than anyone thought,” I must agree. Also, by lumping Sessions in with this, Bobo pretty much negates the milquetoast boilerplate anti-bigotry earlier parts of this column.

    And while this may be true

    With most administrations you can agree sometimes and disagree other times. But this one is a danger to the party and the nation in its existential nature. And so sooner or later all will have to choose what side they are on, and live forever after with the choice.

    from Bobo it seems less like a principled stand and more like laying down a marker to protect one’s own ass when the shit inevitably hits the fan.

    That said, it’s nice to see fractures beginning already in the Republican coalition.

  56. 56.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 31, 2017 at 10:48 am

    CNN alert says democrats are boycotting panel votes on Mnuchin and Price.

  57. 57.

    cosima

    January 31, 2017 at 10:48 am

    @Kay: I have a friend (using that term loosely — I’d do anything needed to help her because she’s the daughter of one of my favourite people in the world, but I find her annoying as hell) who is a former Oberlin student. She’s on the side of the angels, politically, but as they say here in Scotland, ‘away with the faeries.’ Her son is running for a junior msp seat. He’s a self-proclaimed communist, though he does not say that on his facebook page, I try to educate him about politics when I see him, with minimal success.

    What category is MoDo in? I saw in the thread below that she is being mean on twitter, taking pride in that, but I did not have the stomach for reading the tweets. She is worse, in my mind, than McArgleBargle.

  58. 58.

    Captain C

    January 31, 2017 at 10:49 am

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    Where does Melan[ia] fit on your list?

    Stockholm syndrome?

  59. 59.

    Corner Stone

    January 31, 2017 at 10:52 am

    My God. I made the mistake of flipping it to MSNBC to check the Sessions bid. Former GWB talkingperson just compared Valerie Jarrett to the role Steve Bannon is playing in the Trump WH.

  60. 60.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    January 31, 2017 at 10:52 am

    @Major Major Major Major: Orrin Hatch, who said Obama was too partisan to appoint someone like Merrick Garland, is shocked at this obstructionism

    Sarah MimmsVerified account
    ‏@ SarahMMimms
    Sen Hatch: Dems “are deliberately boycotting… Why that’s an important thing for them I’ll never understand.”

  61. 61.

    Thoroughly Pizzled

    January 31, 2017 at 10:53 am

    @Major Major Major Major: Greenwald and his ilk called Obama a dictator for eight years, accused him of gleefully inflicting suffering for no purpose other than enjoying it, said that he could rape a nun on live television and have all his supporters excuse it, then smeared anyone who disagreed with that characterization as a fool in thrall to “Dear Leader.”

    And then when confronted with an actual man who embodied to the letter the Obama of their fantasies, they bitched about Hillary instead. They are untethered.

  62. 62.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 31, 2017 at 10:56 am

    @Corner Stone: of course.

    @Captain C: has Brooks picked a side yet?

    That first quote you pull reminds me of Andrew Sullivan’s blathering about how a true Conservative is whoever he happens to agree with at the moment.

    @cosima: Dowd is far worse than McMegan, in venue, reach, and damage done.

  63. 63.

    Humboldtblue

    January 31, 2017 at 10:56 am

    And then there is Jeff Sessions who is in a category all by himself. Here he is at the confirmation hearing of Sally Yates. She’s really good.

  64. 64.

    Juice Box

    January 31, 2017 at 10:56 am

    @Captain C: Nope. In it up to her ears. Look up the video of Melania on the Joy Behar show pushing the birther crap. She grew up as the daughter of a Communist Party member who is now thought to be worth more than $100M. She was raised in comparative luxury. She’s no “poor refugee”.

  65. 65.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    January 31, 2017 at 10:57 am

    Frank Thorp VVerified account
    ‏@ frankthorp
    Hatch on Ds boycotting Mnuchin/Price vote: “To not be here & participate, it’s a total abrogation of their duties as Sens…it’s pathetic”

    Ellen L. Carmichael
    ‏@ ellencarmichael
    Hatch says Senate Democrat boycott is “beneath the dignity of this body.” He says maybe he should change the rules if Dems keep doing this.

  66. 66.

    Larkspur

    January 31, 2017 at 11:01 am

    @Captain C: I expect that Melania gets a lot of pressure from her family, which has enjoyed all the Trump-related perks. This is OT and none of my business, because we’re not really supposed to harsh on family members, but I imagine Melania is treated strictly as arm candy, that she’s happy to be away from Agent Orange, that she loves her son, and that the pre-nup, while it probably provides adequately for her and her son, would serve to knock a lot of her relatives and hangers-on right off the gravy train. I don’t actually enjoy thinking about Melania, but I hope she has friends, because I imagine she gets very little, emotionally, from DJT.

  67. 67.

    cmorenc

    January 31, 2017 at 11:02 am

    You forgot a key fifth category: The neo-Confederates like Jeff Sessions, who pine for the 1950s as it was in the southeastern U.S., but also with a hazy overlay of the 1850s. Because there truly often was a skewed but genuine personal intimacy between whites and some people of color in southern society of that era, which carries forward into near-peer acceptance of a small handful of blacks who have so thoroughly assimilated themselves into white culture and conservative political views that they pass in the eyes of neo-Confederates as “honorary whites” (e.g. Tim Scott) – they imagine themselves to not be racists, even while maintaining sneering hostility toward “those people”.

  68. 68.

    Timurid

    January 31, 2017 at 11:02 am

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Dr. Frumkenstein is having second thoughts about his monster? I can’t even begin to tell you how bad I feel for him…

    And, in other news, his hypothetical Trump regime is much too ‘optimistic.’ The real Trump has already exceeded it in some ways, only 10 days in.

  69. 69.

    Ian

    January 31, 2017 at 11:02 am

    So where does Ron Fournier fit into this?

  70. 70.

    Turgidson

    January 31, 2017 at 11:02 am

    @Doug!:

    Give it time. He’ll “evolve” when he decides it’s in his career interest to do so.

    1) “I’ve opposed trump from the start, but he really impressed me with his statesmanship when he met Merkel and managed to make it thru the meeting without commenting on her rack. Maybe he’s learning.”

    2) Trump did a good thing today when he pissed off the dirty hippies. I’m officially Trump-curious.

    3) Trump’s ability to guide the tax cuts for Jesus bill through Congress was very Burkean in its Niebhurishness. The left will never admit it but he’s doing a good job.

    Wait for it.

  71. 71.

    Frank Wilhoit

    January 31, 2017 at 11:05 am

    You are missing the foremost impact of Trump Himself: the eclipse of pseudophilosophy. The subtext of your categorizations is that conservatism has always been a movement kept afloat on the afflatus of its own pseudophilosophies. It has always been purely irrational and destructive. Hitherto, the defiance of rationality and such oxymoronic notions as “creative destruction” were universally thought to require extensive pseudophilosophical justification, hence the trillions of tons of paper that have been wasted on the dishonest effusions of “conservative” “thinkers” down the centuries.

    Trump has swept all that away. Henceforward, all of the conservative pseudophilosophies are tl;dr .

  72. 72.

    Applejinx

    January 31, 2017 at 11:06 am

    @Captain C: The Kremlin minder. She’s actually a very powerful woman, doing her job superlatively, and the one person that Trump cannot get rid of no matter how much he hates her. Unfortunately, that’s because she is his boss (or at least the one running Trump, and my, how he seems to hate that).

    Who said we didn’t get a woman as the most powerful person in the world? ;P

  73. 73.

    Jeffro

    January 31, 2017 at 11:08 am

    @Major Major Major Major: I guess that was some sort of paper-beats-online crack? Ah well. Important thing is it gets read and gets people inspired to make sure Trump’s autocracy never comes to pass.

  74. 74.

    Turgidson

    January 31, 2017 at 11:09 am

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Fuck it. A big part of Frum’s thesis is that Obama’s executive order protecting certain undocumented workers was what allowed Trump to happen and that liberals “scorn borders.” Fuck that guy. When he can comment on the current shitshow without the quota of mendacious anti-Democrat throatclearing I’ll give him a chance.

  75. 75.

    Yarrow

    January 31, 2017 at 11:10 am

    In what I guess is modern tech jargon, Trump is a disruptor. He’s going to upend our political alignments and possibly remake both major political parties. Whether we can survive him as a country–or even as a world (nuclear annihilation)–remains to be seen.

  76. 76.

    chopper

    January 31, 2017 at 11:13 am

    @Weaselone:

    makes sense. trump could be puzzle, but puzzle actually redeemed himself near the end, so that’s a no go.

  77. 77.

    Tenar Arha (same Tenar, more Nameless Ones)

    January 31, 2017 at 11:13 am

    @Jeffro: Ooh, he’s still hoping to rescue himself & his cushy gig from the wreckage. He’s beginning to realize that this time around we’re planning on hanging anything orange cheeto or Republicans do around the necks of enablers like himself & making them own up to their responsibility for the return of Nazis to public life.

    Reading down further in the thread —>
    @Captain C: Or what you said. Are you also listening to my favorite Brooksologist’s Professional Left Podcast? ?

  78. 78.

    Ian G.

    January 31, 2017 at 11:14 am

    @Juice Box:

    What planet am I on where I’m eagerly awaiting the latest from Jen Rubin or David Frum so I can throw my fist in the air and yell “speak truth to power!”

    BTW, among the dissidents on the right, Evan McMullin’s Twitter feed is must read as well. Unlike Rubin or Frum, I had no idea who he was before the election, so I’m not sure if he was ever really a GOP cheerleader or more of a Wilmer-esque pain in the ass to them.

  79. 79.

    Oatler.

    January 31, 2017 at 11:16 am

    The Narnia conservatives,quoting Chesterton, C S Lewis, Tolkien, St. Robert of Heinlein until all the bullies who pantsed them in school are sobbing for forgiveness.

  80. 80.

    Corner Stone

    January 31, 2017 at 11:16 am

    Goodness, I love you Tamron Hall but please stop calling Trump’s EO a “Travel Ban” or an “Immigration Ban”.

  81. 81.

    The Moar You Know

    January 31, 2017 at 11:17 am

    Why do you think Democrats were unable to assemble a coalition to defeat the Republican miscreants whose moral flaws are so obvious?

    @Amaranthine RBG: Dems are a far weaker party since Reagan destroyed them, since then at least four different divisions of the party fighting for power, who cannot and will not unite to win presidential elections unless enabled by the catastrophic failure of a preceding Republican president (Clinton in 1992 on Bush’s recession, Obama in 2008 on W’s war and recession). The loss of the House has been incremental, but all in one direction, and that margin of loss has done nothing but getting larger. Same with the Senate. We are now so weak as a party that a dipshit like Trump can win the presidency. We may well not get the House back in my lifetime.

    We’re not getting stronger in response. The interest groups comprising the Dem party, it seems, have largely either gotten what they wanted and are out of the game, or thrown in the towel in despair and are out of the game, or have been ratfucked by Russian propaganda into voting for purity candidates that cannot win.

    I don’t have a good solution. Dems pride themselves on their “independence”, insistence on “going high” and refusal to march in lockstep, but it’s those qualities that are killing us as a functional party.

  82. 82.

    Brachiator

    January 31, 2017 at 11:17 am

    @Amaranthine RBG:

    Why do you think Democrats were unable to assemble a coalition to defeat the Republican miscreants whose moral flaws are so obvious?

    They failed precisely because they made it about morality, and so stepped on their own message.

    Even now, some people want to whine about how Trump is a bad man, when the main message should be that he is an incompetent boob and egomaniac who believes that total, absolute ignorance of any goddam thing related to government is all right, and who is aided and abetted by a GOP leadership who pretend to care about the law and the Constitution, but who think that a return to rigid Christian conservative conformity is finally within their reach.

  83. 83.

    schrodingers_cat

    January 31, 2017 at 11:18 am

    @Corner Stone: Call it what it is. A deportation order.

  84. 84.

    RoonieRoo

    January 31, 2017 at 11:19 am

    I’ve been enjoying reading RadioFreeTom’s twitter (Tom Nichols).

  85. 85.

    clay

    January 31, 2017 at 11:21 am

    @Weaselone: Actually, Bannon is Tash. Trump being Shift is just too perfect.

  86. 86.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 31, 2017 at 11:22 am

    @Jeffro: no, not at all. Just saying that given its prominence it would be easy to run into the piece in multiple unrelated information streams.

  87. 87.

    sherparick

    January 31, 2017 at 11:22 am

    @Amaranthine RBG: Because the Democrats did not win Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, and/or North Carolina in the 2016 election and Jodi Ernst and Cory Gardiner won in 2014. Hence the Republicans have 52 votes plus Pence for all of Trump’s nominees. And make no mistake, Trump is doing what the majority of the Republicans who vote in primaries, what scares all these Republican Senators, want him to do after being stewed and raised in the smog of Fox News and Right-wing Talk Radio the last 30 years. These people have no problem being enthusiastic for lawless dictatorship as long as the hippies and Brown people are being punched.
    Further, not reported by the NY TImes (apparently not as sexy as E-mail management), is Trump’s and his minions growing ability to effect a Coup d’Etat through all this Sturm and Drang (notice how DHS has gone all “Andrew Jackson” on the court orders telling them to stop deporting Green Card holders?) https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/trial-balloon-for-a-coup-e024990891d5#.3si01men0

    Being in the “Resistance” may soon not just be snark.

  88. 88.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    January 31, 2017 at 11:23 am

    @RoonieRoo: also Dan Drezner, Rick Wilson, John Weaver and Ana Navarro. Even the terrifying Liz Mair.

    It’s fascinating to me that the hacks and flacks, at least the ones I know, have stayed anti-Trump, while the electeds have all fallen in line. I still think principled anti-Trumper is the smart long-term play for an ambitious, younger Republican like Sasse

  89. 89.

    Timurid

    January 31, 2017 at 11:25 am

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Did you see my response to your question from the dead thread(s) below?

    And also; I like the sound of ‘Orange Aurangzeb.’

  90. 90.

    cmorenc

    January 31, 2017 at 11:26 am

    Anyone else notice how much Steve Bannon looks like he could be Elton John’s separated-at-birth evil twin brother?

  91. 91.

    Это курам на смех

    January 31, 2017 at 11:26 am

    Republican water carriers like Bobo and Frum can write all the high-minded columns they want. Let me know when they switch parties.

  92. 92.

    Aimai

    January 31, 2017 at 11:28 am

    @chopper: isnt bannin shift? But trump isnt the donkey. Not sure who trump is. Narnia didnt contain anything that evil and stupid.

  93. 93.

    Brachiator

    January 31, 2017 at 11:28 am

    @Yarrow:

    In what I guess is modern tech jargon, Trump is a disruptor. He’s going to upend our political alignments and possibly remake both major political parties. Whether we can survive him as a country–or even as a world (nuclear annihilation)–remains to be seen.

    Trump is already destroying America.

    Turns out, you cannot “run the country like a business” unless you destroy the Constitution, ignore the law, and have the majority power in the legislative branch working in lock step with the executive branch (destroying the idea of checks and balances). And you need a sullen, stupid, resentful citizenry who have been duped into not giving a shit about little details, like truth, competence, and rationality with the promise that the sheer naked exercise of power will magically work to make America great again.

  94. 94.

    elm

    January 31, 2017 at 11:28 am

    @rikyrah:

    @Juice Box:

    I no longer feel dizzy when I find myself agreeing with David Frum and Bill Kristol and that worries me.

    Add Rubin to that.
    just scares me.

    I think that American (or Canadian in Frum’s case) Jews understand what happens when Nazis take power.

    For the timebeing, Frum, Rubin, and Kristol share interests with us. That is good. I would rather have more allies than fewer.

    If/when this danger passes, I expect we will return to disagreeing with them.

  95. 95.

    Gindy51

    January 31, 2017 at 11:28 am

    @Yarrow: 6 Surely you mean his puppet master Bannon. He is the Rasputin character of the idiot czar, Trump. His strings are tweaked by Putin, but not totally owned.

  96. 96.

    PJ

    January 31, 2017 at 11:29 am

    @Yarrow: This is the kind of creative disruption this country has been waiting for. Social safety nets and legal protections have been holding back the real innovators, who are primed to extract maximal value through synergistic depradations. In other words, I’m not saying we won’t get our hair mussed. But I do say, no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops! Depending on the breaks.

  97. 97.

    schrodingers_cat

    January 31, 2017 at 11:29 am

    @Timurid: The only difference is that Aurangzeb, had some redeeming qualities. Yes, I did see your answer.

  98. 98.

    Timurid

    January 31, 2017 at 11:29 am

    More seriously, Aurangzeb might be the last time somebody so awful led the most powerful nation on Earth.
    Hitler and Germany didn’t qualify, as he found out, the hard way. Neither did Stalin. You could perhaps make an argument for Napoleon?

  99. 99.

    RoonieRoo

    January 31, 2017 at 11:29 am

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’ve been reading Dan Drezner but I’ll check out the other three.

  100. 100.

    Roger Moore

    January 31, 2017 at 11:30 am

    @Dave:

    Right? Honestly though it’s not surprising they both benefit from the system functioning.

    I don’t think that’s quite right. Frum, Kristol, Rubin, et. al. are neocons, which makes them heavily focused on foreign policy and almost diametrically opposed to Trump’s views there.

  101. 101.

    trollhattan

    January 31, 2017 at 11:32 am

    @Ian G.:
    Their usefulness is limited to penetrating the thick pates of “nice Republicans” who are finally awakening to the sin committed by pulling the lever for Trump, just because he’s Republican. Yes, all you Rotary folks, you’ve elected a monster. Happy now?

    Once we finally return to “normal” Brooks, Ruben et al will return to their primary task: pointing out us right here as the real problem. Romney 2020!

  102. 102.

    Iowa Old Lady

    January 31, 2017 at 11:34 am

    How much will you bet that Trump is saying, “What’s this Saturday Night Massacre they’re talking about?”

  103. 103.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    January 31, 2017 at 11:35 am

    @FlipYrWhig:

    Because Republican voters are hateful, vile people who enjoy being that way and voting for people just like themselves, and there are millions upon millions of them?

    Because Republicans voters have been conditioned since the late 70s that voting Democrat will make then and their kids into over educated, Muslim-Secular-Communists with facial hair, glasses, AIDS and teh gay virus. They don’t agree with Trump, but they have to save the bearded babies.

  104. 104.

    Brachiator

    January 31, 2017 at 11:36 am

    Peggy Noonan, Rod Dreher (supporters); Ross Douthat (enabler)…Megan McArdle, Charles Lane, Frank Bruni, Nick Kristof…. Bob Woodward

    None of these people matter at all. None of them. Not in the slightest.

  105. 105.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 31, 2017 at 11:37 am

    @Это курам на смех:

    Republican water carriers like Bobo and Frum can write all the high-minded columns they want. Let me know when they switch parties.

    And I’ll just be over here, working with every ally I can get to stop a bunch of de facto dictatorships from taking hold in the west.

    @Roger Moore: Other than being a neocon Frum is a good-government Canadian conservative, so left of the republicans and possibly some democrats on safety nets and certainly liberal socially.

  106. 106.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    January 31, 2017 at 11:37 am

    @RSA:

    David Brooks: The Republican Fausts
    Bill Kristol: Is Trump a Sufferable Evil? The Republican party is looking down the road to disaster

    It’s standard Republican Detachment Disorder weasel-speak. These guys’ fee-fees are hurt because they don’t actually disagree with anything the GOP has to say, just that their presidential nominee says it so baldly. They’re like “I never had anything whatsoever to do with this madness during my career as a GOP functionary or water carrier. And I’ve never heard of this Limbaugh guy either!” They try to liken the Trump Phenomenon just suddenly appearing one day like a mushroom cloud over the offices of the RNC. Don’t give David Phvcking Brooks one iota of credit here. He had no problem passively letting the likes of Malkin, O’Reilly, Beck, Hannity and the rest work long and hard on weaponizing the stupid and when it’s blown up in his face, well…Republican Detachment Disorder. I’d end this with my usual comment about how Brooks belongs in the same tumbrel with the likes of Chuck Phvcking Todd and Mrs Greenspan but then I start to sound like a Trump supporter.

  107. 107.

    Elizabelle

    January 31, 2017 at 11:39 am

    @Doug!: Yeah. I did see Bobo’s Faust column this morning.

    A little slow on the uptake, would we agree?

    #nomercyforBobo

  108. 108.

    amk

    January 31, 2017 at 11:42 am

    @Brachiator: Yup. They are not experts or even insightful on things they bloviate about. I never get the american urge to analyze or parse these pundtwits.

  109. 109.

    schrodingers_cat

    January 31, 2017 at 11:42 am

    I need some help, since I don’t swim in delusional alternative facts can someone explain what liability of whiteness means. Is it as bad as it sounds.

  110. 110.

    joel hanes

    January 31, 2017 at 11:43 am

    @Mikefromarlington:

    What are the chances Obama will rise and lead the revolution

    Zero. Not his job. It’s our job.

  111. 111.

    schrodingers_cat

    January 31, 2017 at 11:43 am

    @Timurid: A had spartan tastes though he did kill his siblings and imprison his father to become the king. So I guess its a wash.

  112. 112.

    sherparick

    January 31, 2017 at 11:44 am

    @Yarrow: So was Julius Ceasar, Robispierre, Adolph Hitler, and Oliver Cromwell.

    In addition to the meme above, here is Forbes on the same subject.

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2017/01/30/hidden-danger-of-trump-immigration-orders-dismissal-of-court-orders/#2a1506872cf4

  113. 113.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    January 31, 2017 at 11:44 am

    At the McConnell protest in Louisville at the Federal Courthouse (his voicemails are full). Guessing 1500-2000, not bad after the 10000 to 20000 last night. Horns are honking in support.

    This is a good time town. We don’t protest. This is great!

  114. 114.

    Corner Stone

    January 31, 2017 at 11:45 am

    The problem with skimming through most of the anti-Trump R writers/contributors is that you can only go about 3 tweets, or 3 sentences if it’s a column, before they include some toss off anti-Obama, anti-HRC or anti-fact statement that makes you want to slam their head into a desk. A few times.

  115. 115.

    MomSense

    January 31, 2017 at 11:45 am

    @schrodingers_cat:

    What category does the Vichy Times fall in?

    The dumpster. New York Times is garbage.

  116. 116.

    Captain C

    January 31, 2017 at 11:46 am

    @Major Major Major Major:

    has Brooks picked a side yet?

    I’m guessing the Republican side, while being in full denial that that side is congruent with the Trump side.

  117. 117.

    Mike J

    January 31, 2017 at 11:46 am

    Annie Waldman ‏@AnnieWaldman 4 minutes agoMore
    [email protected] asked all nominees that passed through HELP committee to submit 3 years of #taxreturns. All of Trump’s picks refused.

  118. 118.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    January 31, 2017 at 11:47 am

    One of the signs is “I wonder if Putin’s calls are going to voicemail?”

  119. 119.

    schrodingers_cat

    January 31, 2017 at 11:47 am

    @MomSense: I miss their Cooking section. I haven’t read it since September.

  120. 120.

    Captain C

    January 31, 2017 at 11:49 am

    @Tenar Arha (same Tenar, more Nameless Ones): Not right now, but I’m very familiar with his oeuvre.

  121. 121.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 31, 2017 at 11:49 am

    @Captain C: he came dangerously close to endorsing Obama in 2012, but one must maintain one’s carefully-cultivated ‘man from everywhere’ shtick if one’s livelihood depends on it, now mustn’t one?

    @schrodingers_cat: probably as bad as it sounds, yes. From the folks who brought you “there’s no such thing as male privilege”, I imagine.

  122. 122.

    Corner Stone

    January 31, 2017 at 11:50 am

    @Mikefromarlington:

    What are the chances Obama will rise and lead the revolution to take back control of state houses and Congess.

    “Knock, knock, knock”
    “Oh, hi Salma Hayek. Thanks for coming to dinner.”
    .
    .
    .
    (somewhere an infinity of chances lower than that)
    .
    Obama doing the thing that was mentioned wayyyyyy up top.

  123. 123.

    martian

    January 31, 2017 at 11:50 am

    @Major Major Major Major: “he needs a category for useful idiots and fifth columnists.”

    Maybe Numpties?

  124. 124.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    January 31, 2017 at 11:51 am

    @RSA: “David Brooks: The Republican Fausts”

    Ok, I can see that. Trump is going to get impeached because he placing loyality to himself over the loyality to the republican party.

  125. 125.

    Captain C

    January 31, 2017 at 11:51 am

    @Brachiator:

    the main message should be that he is an incompetent boob and egomaniac who believes that total, absolute ignorance of any goddam thing related to government is all right,

    I was worried, correctly as it turned out, when I found out that the Dem strategy for the campaign was to attack Dangerous Donald, not Deadbeat Donald.

  126. 126.

    Steve in the ATL

    January 31, 2017 at 11:53 am

    @Mike J: unrelated question: if I had a few hours to hit the Oregon coast tomorrow (driving from and back to Portland), where should I go?

  127. 127.

    O. Felix Culpa

    January 31, 2017 at 11:53 am

    O/T Action Note: I just called my Senators (D-Yay!) to vote NO on Jeff Sessions. Their poor staffers are so overwhelmed with calls that I recommend you just state your name, that you’re a constituent (maybe provide zip code), and the position or action you want your legislator to take. The staffers have no time to listen to an elaboration of reasons. Thank them and hang up.

  128. 128.

    Yarrow

    January 31, 2017 at 11:54 am

    @Gindy51: No, I meant Trump because he’s the president. He’s also on record saying he wants to destroy things and leverage the chaos.

  129. 129.

    Humboldtblue

    January 31, 2017 at 11:56 am

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    They don’t agree with Trump, but they have to save the bearded babies.

    Oh, as Hemant Mehta the friendly atheist links to there are millions of good Christians gleeful that Trump is in power.

  130. 130.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 31, 2017 at 11:56 am

    @Captain C: the Berlusconi theorem says that the correct thing to do is attack his policies. The Chavez theorem says that the right thing to do is cultivate an image of Democrats as the true inheritors of American patriotism. The Putin/Erdogan theorem says, duck and cover. None of the analogies I’ve seen drawn suggest that attacking Donald himself is helpful. Maybe, though, a critical difference here is that if you attack Deadbeat Don he discredits himself through his hyperbolic reactions.

  131. 131.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    January 31, 2017 at 11:56 am

    @rikyrah: So not only is it a humanitarian foreign policy, administration crises done in a way to offend both Jews and Arabs, it’s also a violation of separation of powers.

  132. 132.

    FlipYrWhig

    January 31, 2017 at 11:56 am

    @schrodingers_cat: Sounds like, “Oh yeah, well, as far as I can tell there’s no such thing as White Privilege, more like White Liability, amirite, with all that reverse racism we have to deal with?”

  133. 133.

    The Truffle

    January 31, 2017 at 11:56 am

    @The Moar You Know: I am so hoping that Keith Ellison gets the DNC chairmanship. I really think he’s best equipped to address different demographics in the US in a way Sanders can’t.

  134. 134.

    dogwood

    January 31, 2017 at 11:57 am

    @liberal:
    Jesus you are a stupid fool. Presidents are head of the Party in a figurative sense. But they have this other pesky little day and night job that takes a lot of time.

  135. 135.

    Yarrow

    January 31, 2017 at 11:57 am

    @PJ: Yeah, I didn’t say it would be a good thing. But if you look at other “disruptors” like AirB&B or Uber, they have really changed how things have worked.

    In the context of the original post, a political realignment already seems to be happening. I think Trump’s election is both a result of that and is going to be a massive cause of it going forward. I don’t know if we as a country will survive. I guess we’ll see. We have to fight but it’s weird to go to the barricades with people like Evan McMullin or Jennifer Rubin.

  136. 136.

    oklahomo

    January 31, 2017 at 11:59 am

    @Aimai: Bannon is the guy who taught Jadis the Deplorable Word.

  137. 137.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    January 31, 2017 at 11:59 am

    @Humboldtblue: That have some Biblical word that basically means “useful hellbound fool” that I am sure they are using to decribe Trump.

  138. 138.

    Kay

    January 31, 2017 at 11:59 am

    @cosima:

    I have a friend (using that term loosely — I’d do anything needed to help her because she’s the daughter of one of my favourite people in the world, but I find her annoying as hell) who is a former Oberlin student.

    I too have a Lefty friend who went to Oberlin. She’s a religious Lefty, though, so maybe not stereotypical.

    She’s kind. I think she likes me because I swear so much. She never says anything bad about anyone. I’m like her bad person alter-ego :)

  139. 139.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 31, 2017 at 12:03 pm

    @The Truffle: it’s an administrative position, or at least it should be. Question, I honestly don’t remember, was Howard Dean on TV all the time when he was chair?

  140. 140.

    Yarrow

    January 31, 2017 at 12:04 pm

    @sherparick: Yep. As I said above, I didn’t say it was a good thing. But it seems to be true that Trump is going to disrupt things. It very often does not work out well for the average person. I’m concerned and I expect most of the world is worried.

  141. 141.

    The Truffle

    January 31, 2017 at 12:06 pm

    I kind of predicted that we’d see the Republicans tear into each other. I didn’t think it would happen so quickly.

  142. 142.

    zhena gogolia

    January 31, 2017 at 12:06 pm

    @Kay:

    “Oberlin student council” is great!

  143. 143.

    Shalimar

    January 31, 2017 at 12:07 pm

    @O. Felix Culpa: I guess I should call Rubio’s office.
    “Jeff Session is my father’s cousin and I have known him for most of my life. Please vote against him so he doesn’t embarrass the family by being remembered in future history books as the Heinrich Himmler of the Trump administration.”

  144. 144.

    hovercraft

    January 31, 2017 at 12:08 pm

    @Starfish:

    I am still seeing a “Bernie was robbed” faction on the internet and some Jill Stein “Clinton = Trump” stuff still. It’s less, but it is still there. After the electoral defeat, everyone was worried about the thing that mattered to them most as opposed to who was realistically in the most danger at the time.

    These people had the luxury of holding out for the purest candidate evah! Or so they thought, they fixated on bullshit memes and right wing smears that the media was only to happy to blast out in the interest of holding Hillary’s feet to the fire. Now they can’t admit that their stupidity resulted in the disaster currently unfolding, so they insist on clinging to their excuse that she was a flawed candidate. Talk about the ultimate “first world problem” bullshit excuse for fucking over the entire planet. Hillary had E-ghazi, so now we get to watch the national parks auctioned off to the highest bidder, she lied about whatever, so we get to watch a blizzard of lies spew forth anytime anyone in this administration opens their mouth, but hey I get it, these purity ponies get to go to sleep every night telling themselves they didn’t bow down they stuck to their principles. I hate them as much as I hate the Shitgibbon voters, they at least had the courage to vote for chaos and destruction, the purity ponies cut off their noses to spite their faces because they lack the maturity to understand that you don’t get everything you fucking want period, 80 % is better than 0%, which is what they got. I pity the people in their lives, having to live with or deal with these people insufferable all or nothing jackasses, spoilt brats each and every one of them, and just as destructive as the terrible toddler they helped elect. Some of them are finally beginning to realize the gravity of what they did, but far too many are still smugly going around believing their pure candidate would have done better. Bullshit, Hillary had turnout levels in Philly that none of the others would have gotten, and while black people would NEVER have voted for the Shitgibbon, many would have stayed home, they came out for her, because we have a history with her, and she has always been there for us.

  145. 145.

    Brachiator

    January 31, 2017 at 12:10 pm

    @schrodingers_cat:

    The only difference is that Aurangzeb, had some redeeming qualities.

    Redeeming qualities?

  146. 146.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    January 31, 2017 at 12:10 pm

    @Corner Stone:

    You are included dinner in that fantasy date?

  147. 147.

    schrodingers_cat

    January 31, 2017 at 12:10 pm

    @FlipYrWhig: @Major Major Major Major: My JS voting purity pony friend threw it at me, when I asked her opinion about the immigration EOs. Why is everyone so mean, she asks me.

  148. 148.

    Kay

    January 31, 2017 at 12:11 pm

    Betsy DeVos, President Donald Trump’s pick to be secretary of education, apparently lifted entire phrases and sentences from sources without attribution in her written responses to a questionnaire from the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
    The Washington Post first flagged the phrasing similarities on Tuesday.

    They’re such bad role models, conservatives! They can’t be around Our Youth. Youngsters, as my grade school principal called us.

    If they had any sense they’d withdraw DeVos. Come on. Bad hire. She’ll be nothing but trouble.

  149. 149.

    Captain C

    January 31, 2017 at 12:12 pm

    @Major Major Major Major: Attacking his (non-existent) business acumen and painting him as a con man would have made for a better campaign strategy than the one they used. For now, I think attacking his policies, tying him and the Republican Party together (and resolutely opposing them) so they are seen as one and the same, and continuing to paint him as a cruel, incompetent fraud is a good way to go.

    ETA: The attack on his business skills would be right out of the Rove playbook of attacking an opponents strengths (in this case, perceived strengths which were actually bullshit). Once those were widely seen to be fraudulent, he would have had nothing to offer as a candidate except incoherent rage and naked racism and misogyny.

  150. 150.

    Corner Stone

    January 31, 2017 at 12:12 pm

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Sure. If you’ve got a chance that Salma Hayek is knocking on your door you may as well go all out.

  151. 151.

    schrodingers_cat

    January 31, 2017 at 12:13 pm

    @Brachiator: Comparatively speaking of course.

  152. 152.

    hovercraft

    January 31, 2017 at 12:14 pm

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
    Melanoma is back in NYC and Jersey where she belongs, and where she doesn’t provide him with a daily reminder that he can’t get it up, people would wonder why they had separate rooms on separate floors. Lucretia provides the eye candy, but her presence is okay because since she is the forbidden fruit he can look and fantasize without having to explain why he’s not touching. Win win.

  153. 153.

    dogwood

    January 31, 2017 at 12:14 pm

    @Major Major Major Major:
    The DNC and the RNC are not very powerful. The rise of the primary system is part of that, along with changes in the mechanisms that enable candidates to raise money on their own. The national party organizations have devolved into one of many but not the main source of fundraising. They oversee primary elections and organize the national convention. The reality of Donald Trump as the republican nominee is a testament to the limited power of the RNC.

  154. 154.

    Corner Stone

    January 31, 2017 at 12:14 pm

    @The Truffle:

    I kind of predicted that we’d see the Republicans tear into each other. I didn’t think it would happen so quickly.

    What? Where?

  155. 155.

    Cacti

    January 31, 2017 at 12:15 pm

    @The Truffle:

    I am so hoping that Keith Ellison gets the DNC chairmanship.

    Hell no.

  156. 156.

    Brachiator

    January 31, 2017 at 12:18 pm

    @hovercraft: RE: I am still seeing a “Bernie was robbed” faction on the internet and some Jill Stein “Clinton = Trump” stuff still. It’s less, but it is still there. After the electoral defeat, everyone was worried about the thing that mattered to them most as opposed to who was realistically in the most danger at the time.

    These people had the luxury of holding out for the purest candidate evah!

    It’s not just about purity. Clinton lost by a squeaker (popular vote does not matter). Some people believe, unrealistically, that Sanders would have won. Don’t matter. What does matter is getting a candidate that appeals to a wide, inclusive amount of the base, and in having a coherent message.

  157. 157.

    mdblanche

    January 31, 2017 at 12:18 pm

    @Turgidson: To be fair, if Trump can make it through a summit without groping Merkel he’ll still have exceeded the standard set by the last Republican president.

  158. 158.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 31, 2017 at 12:18 pm

    @Captain C: I agree it would have been better, especially since Trump didn’t really have any “policies” per se that you could point to.

  159. 159.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    January 31, 2017 at 12:20 pm

    again, they haven’t lost yet, but an unhappy Raul Labrador is not a bad thing

    Lauren Fox ‏@ FoxReports 12m12 minutes ago
    “I’m hearing a lot of members saying they want Obamacare light,” says Rep. Labrador says. He’s disappointed by that.

  160. 160.

    The Truffle

    January 31, 2017 at 12:20 pm

    @Corner Stone: And you want to scream, “HILLARY! AND OBAMA! ARE NOT! IN CHARGE!”

    I notice McCain and Graham are at least making a pretense of standing up to Trump. And now we find out that the Kochs hate the Muslim ban.

  161. 161.

    bemused

    January 31, 2017 at 12:22 pm

    Ha. Alexandra Petri’s “Sean Spicer is Right. That Five Year Old Refuge Has Diabolical Plans” is great. In these times, I laugh and sob at the same time.

  162. 162.

    hovercraft

    January 31, 2017 at 12:23 pm

    @Juice Box:

    I no longer feel dizzy when I find myself agreeing with David Frum and Bill Kristol and that worries me.

    While I agree with most of their criticisms of the Shitgibbon, I still can’t take the seriously because they both still keep insisting that his rise is the democrats fault, especially Obama’s. Frum says because Obama was weak and kept running roughshod over the GOP, that republicans were conned into going for the faux tough guy who would restore America’s strength with a strong tough new leader. Rubin on the other hand is still no fan of Obama’s, but at least she is cognizant of the extent to which the GOP did this to themselves, they went for short term gain at the expense of principle, and now they are fucked because the base bought into all the bullshit they spouted for years and this is the result, and it’s dangerous for all of us.

  163. 163.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    January 31, 2017 at 12:25 pm

    @Captain C: there are a lot of people saying around the tubes that the blowback from the last few weeks will be as much about trump’s incompetence as his extremism. People who don’t really care about facts and issues (swing voters, tote-baggers) will be turned off by the general chaos. I think there’s something to that.

    I’ll be curious to see how Trump’s SC nominee plays out. My hope is that with far less complacency and Trump being more personally unpopular than Bush II, if this nominee will get people paying attention in a way I still can’t quite believe they didn’t with old Sourpuss Sam Alito and his “unitary executive” (it was less surprising that the genial perjurer Roberts (“I just call balls and strikes”) slipped past people’s alarms).

  164. 164.

    Immanentize

    January 31, 2017 at 12:25 pm

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    How much will you bet that Trump is saying, “What’s this Saturday Night Massacre they’re talking about?”

    Nothing because Roger Stone, who was right there when it happened, has probably explained it to Trump as the best thing Nixon ever did.

  165. 165.

    Captain C

    January 31, 2017 at 12:26 pm

    @hovercraft:

    he’s not touching.

    Assumes facts not in evidence.

  166. 166.

    PJ

    January 31, 2017 at 12:27 pm

    @Yarrow: For app based services like Uber and AirBnB, their success seems to be a combination of network effect (the larger they get, the more people feel they have no other real alternative) and avoidance of regulatory costs (by pretending not to be providing the service they are providing) and avoidance of employment costs (by requiring the people who provide the actual service to be, in effect, if not name, contractors). There are pluses and minuses to these businesses (and I tend to think the side effects, like removing regulated rental housing from the market, are big minuses), but I don’t see much comparison with the kind of “disruption” that Trump is engaging in.

    Trump’s M.O. seems closer to MBAs/consultants/vulture capitalists who take over a business in order to strip its assets, break any unions, fire employees, and basically squeeze as much cash out of it in as short a period of time before letting it go bankrupt and blaming it on the greedy workers. The kind of chaos and intransigence that Trump deals in helps him because it throws potential negotiating partners off balance. In a normal governmental situation, the actual business mostly consists of consultation and negotiation to reach workable solutions (though the Republicans, since Gingrich, have been working to end this kind of model). Trump is going to have none of that, so negotiating partners (at least the ones that don’t give up) are forced to use all their power to oppose him on everything and work on leveraging him out of power, which means applying all available pressure to the Republicans.

  167. 167.

    Cacti

    January 31, 2017 at 12:27 pm

    @The Truffle:

    And now we find out that the Kochs hate the Muslim ban.

    They also vehemently oppose the tariff idea.

  168. 168.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 31, 2017 at 12:29 pm

    @PJ:

    I don’t see much comparison with the kind of “disruption” that Trump is engaging in.

    Trump’s M.O. seems closer to MBAs/consultants/vulture capitalists who take over a business in order to strip its assets, break any unions, fire employees, and basically squeeze as much cash out of it in as short a period of time before letting it go bankrupt and blaming it on the greedy workers.

    Yep. Agree. As much as we slagged Romney for being one of these, he wouldn’t have actually literally run the government that way.

  169. 169.

    dogwood

    January 31, 2017 at 12:31 pm

    @Cacti:
    Ellison is a great congressman; that’s a full-time job. I have no idea why he is preferable to someone like Perez, who has run a federal agency with great skill, served as assnt attorney general for civil rights etc., and won’t hold another job while serving as DNC chair.

  170. 170.

    bemused

    January 31, 2017 at 12:32 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Dignity, Hatch? Traitorous bastards, all of them.

  171. 171.

    Gelfling 545

    January 31, 2017 at 12:32 pm

    @dww44: @dww44:

    Hence we ended up with voters not committed enough to go out and vote for her to protect the country and its institutions from the likes of a Trump.

    If Trump showing his ass to all and sundry, making clear just what a disaster he is was not enough to “energize” voters, they just plain didn’t care about the fate of this country. That can’t be laid at Hilary’s feet. They wanted an entertainer, not a president. Hope they’re enjpying the show as they’ll be paying a steep price for it.

  172. 172.

    Captain C

    January 31, 2017 at 12:33 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    there are a lot of people saying around the tubes that the blowback from the last few weeks will be as much about trump’s incompetence as his extremism

    People will accept a lot of bullshit as long as the bullshitter-in-charge keeps things running well. There’s a reason Buddy “I make Tammany Hall look clean” Cianci got re-elected as the mayor of Providence after he was busted for felony corruption.

    (Side note: my sister used to live in Providence and knew someone who met him at some social function. He asked said sister’s friend how things were in their neighborhood, and friend mentioned either a long-standing pothole, or broken stop sign, I can’t recall which. Buddy asked where this was. The very next morning, there was a crew out there making repairs.)

  173. 173.

    O. Felix Culpa

    January 31, 2017 at 12:33 pm

    @Shalimar: Wow! Sessions is family? I won’t tell anyone. :)

  174. 174.

    Raven Onthill

    January 31, 2017 at 12:34 pm

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Melania is probably as much Trump’s victim as the rest of us. Until she does something that shows her active, supportive participation in the Trumpublican government, put the name-calling away.

  175. 175.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    January 31, 2017 at 12:36 pm

    @dogwood: as an Obama-bot and a Wilmer-hater, I should be pro-Perez and against Ellison, but I’m having trouble selling myself. Perez has a great track record but he’s a lousy politician, too given to trying to come up with clever slogans that fall flat. OTOH the last thing I think we need is another talking head for cable shows, and as we keep seeing/saying, the job of DNC chair is more about administration and behind-the-scenes work than media appearances (at least I think so). It’s kind of a vague job description, managing limited resources and making them less limited, and I think the only way we’ll know who’s right for the job is to have seen someone do it for a while. And Ellison, while given to a bit of Green Lantern-y self-righteousness a la his mentor, says all the right things about building the party on a state and local level, and has promised to resign from Congress if elected.

  176. 176.

    The Moar You Know

    January 31, 2017 at 12:38 pm

    I am so hoping that Keith Ellison gets the DNC chairmanship. I really think he’s best equipped to address different demographics in the US in a way Sanders can’t.

    @The Truffle: Hope away. Personally I think he’d be a catastrophe.

    But I feel that way about everyone running at the moment. Obama won on the work done by Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy. It’s a frustrating strategy. It needs the one thing that Dems are 100% not willing to give, which is a fair amount of time. But it’s the ONLY way that Dems are going to pull out of the legislative numbers nosedive they’ve been in since Bill Clinton was elected.

    We need a fucking 50-state strategy. The GOP has had one since the fifties. Look where it’s gotten them.

  177. 177.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    January 31, 2017 at 12:38 pm

    @Captain C: have you heard about the podcast “Crimetown”? they’re going to look at organized crime on a local level, and their first season is heavily focused career and connections of Buddy Cianci.

  178. 178.

    Jeffro

    January 31, 2017 at 12:40 pm

    @Major Major Major Major: Got it – my bad. Great piece and glad it’s being widely read in any & all editions.

  179. 179.

    Immanentize

    January 31, 2017 at 12:42 pm

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: @Raven Onthill:

    I second Raven O. And that particular nickname for Melania is just plain karmic-ly bad. As Carl Reiner said:
    “You mock the things you are to become.”

  180. 180.

    Jeffro

    January 31, 2017 at 12:42 pm

    @Captain C:re: Brooksie

    I’m guessing the Republican side, while being in full denial that that side is congruent with the Trump side.

    Ding ding ding – you are correct, Cap! It was his first of four points he deigned to make in today’s column.

  181. 181.

    Cacti

    January 31, 2017 at 12:43 pm

    @dogwood:

    I have no idea why he is preferable to someone like Perez, who has run a federal agency with great skill, served as assnt attorney general for civil rights etc., and won’t hold another job while serving as DNC chair.

    Ellison’s past association with Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam would also be an endless distraction that we just don’t need in the party chair right now.

  182. 182.

    Yarrow

    January 31, 2017 at 12:44 pm

    @PJ: Far enough. But keep an eye out for the “disruptor” concept. The tech world seems to like it and they’re full of the bro-libertarian types. It could be spun as a positive along those lines. Best to use your “MBAs/vulture capitalists destroying business” take and be prepared to counter.

  183. 183.

    TG Chicago

    January 31, 2017 at 12:44 pm

    Fournier was “tough” on Clinton up until election day, so fuck him.

    You can add Steve Inskeep and David Greene of NPR to the Narcissists list. They’re both determined to prove that liberals are as shrill as Trump is intemperate.

  184. 184.

    Jeffro

    January 31, 2017 at 12:45 pm

    @O. Felix Culpa:

    O/T Action Note: I just called my Senators (D-Yay!) to vote NO on Jeff Sessions. Their poor staffers are so overwhelmed with calls that I recommend you just state your name, that you’re a constituent (maybe provide zip code), and the position or action you want your legislator to take. The staffers have no time to listen to an elaboration of reasons. Thank them and hang up.

    Great advice – thank you for pointing this out!

    Just think years from now, we’ll be able to weigh in online, uniquely, about a whole host of issues and our MoCs would know exactly where the district/state stood, and represent us accordingly. Oh wait, we could do that now but don’t…why is that?

  185. 185.

    dogwood

    January 31, 2017 at 12:46 pm

    @Raven Onthill:
    I hope Melania spends the duration in NYC, showing up occasionally for those formal events. Maybe we’ll get away from this idea that First Ladies are supposed to work, unpaid, 24-7 taking crap, fulfilling some antiquated notion of how women are supposed to behave. I don’t see Melania as some feminist by any stretch of the imagination, but she speaks English as a second language which makes speaking without prepared remarks dangerous. And we all saw what they did to her when they gave her a prepared speech at the convention.

  186. 186.

    Corner Stone

    January 31, 2017 at 12:49 pm

    @dww44:

    I was a Hillary supporter from the get go and worked in voter canvassing, but she was not actually able to energize voters and supporters around me.

    I saw an incredible amount of energy and enthusiasm for HRC, all around the country. So did the R legislatures. That’s why they went all out on voter suppression. Because they knew if they left it to the voters they would be toast. And in the end, the voters beat them anyway.
    I am just not a fan of still propagating the idea that somehow energy and enthusiasm were missing on our side.

  187. 187.

    hovercraft

    January 31, 2017 at 12:49 pm

    @Brachiator:

    It’s not just about purity. Clinton lost by a squeaker (popular vote does not matter). Some people believe, unrealistically, that Sanders would have won. Don’t matter. What does matter is getting a candidate that appeals to a wide, inclusive amount of the base, and in having a coherent message.

    Sure, but those delusional people still won’t come to terms with what happened, JS got almost 50K votes, and GJ got 140K, if the Stein votes and a portion of the voters who went for Johnson, she could have won, same thing in WI, the 30K JS votes swing the state to Hillary.
    Woulda coulda shoulda, who knows? What is clear though is that Hillary did have a clear platform that she allowed the media to drown out with e-mails bullshit, her platform was good, what she lacked was a short pithy pitch like MAGA, every speech she gave was policy specific, but not easily mined for sound bites. Her messaging was poor, and the media did everything in it’s power to drown it out. They did an effective job of branding her as unlikeable and untrustworthy, every time they mentioned her they mentioned those two words, and they stuck, you had everyone saying the exact same thing about her, Wilmer, Stein, Shitgibbon, and the media, and so it stuck, she was less honest and trustworthy than him. How do you combat a united wall against you, saying I’m not a lying bitch would not have worked. Putting this all on Hillary, I think is unfair, much like the voter suppression efforts that finally bore fruit this time, the smears and branding of Hillary Clinton was a long term project, because they always feared she would run, and too many democrats rewarded their efforts, for that I’m still bitter.

  188. 188.

    Jeffro

    January 31, 2017 at 12:50 pm

    @Corner Stone:

    The problem with skimming through most of the anti-Trump R writers/contributors is that you can only go about 3 tweets, or 3 sentences if it’s a column, before they include some toss off anti-Obama, anti-HRC or anti-fact statement that makes you want to slam their head into a desk. A few times.

    It is irritating. Even Eugene Robinson does this, most columns.

  189. 189.

    Corner Stone

    January 31, 2017 at 12:51 pm

    @TG Chicago: Fournier could put on a monk’s robe and abase himself everyday for ours in a town square and there is still nothing he could ever do to climb out of the hole he has spent his professional life digging.

  190. 190.

    Shana

    January 31, 2017 at 12:51 pm

    @rikyrah: I saw that earlier and still can’t figure out how a NDA is legal in this circumstance. I understand if you work for someone they can require you to sign one, but the f*%king Congress?

  191. 191.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 31, 2017 at 12:52 pm

    @Cacti: Agreed. It’s unfortunate but that doesn’t make it less true. (Although Ellison should really have known better.)

  192. 192.

    NeenerNeener

    January 31, 2017 at 12:53 pm

    @Jeffro: Are we sure Goodlatte wasn’t told? He could be just covering his ass in the wake of the backlash.

  193. 193.

    hovercraft

    January 31, 2017 at 12:54 pm

    @Captain C:
    Apart from the public groping and some furtive fumbling, I’m assuming that since he can’t get it up, he contents himself with groping that won’t ever lead to any questions about his ability to take it further.
    Ugh, I need to stop thinking about this.

  194. 194.

    Corner Stone

    January 31, 2017 at 12:54 pm

    Great. Trump is treating the SCOTUS pick as if it were a beauty queen pageant.

  195. 195.

    The Moar You Know

    January 31, 2017 at 12:54 pm

    Just think years from now, we’ll be able to weigh in online, uniquely, about a whole host of issues and our MoCs would know exactly where the district/state stood, and represent us accordingly. Oh wait, we could do that now but don’t…why is that?

    @Jeffro: Until you can tie a person’s legit identity to an online identity, what you’re proposing is government by right-wing email chain and trolls. Which is not the result I think you’re hoping for.

  196. 196.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    January 31, 2017 at 12:55 pm

    @Shana: Yeah, this introduction of NDA’s into the executive branch, any branch, is really troubling. Is it normal? I know it’s SOP for Trump from his executives down to his chauffeurs and colorists.

  197. 197.

    SenyorDave

    January 31, 2017 at 12:56 pm

    @dogwood: Maybe we’ll get away from this idea that First Ladies are supposed to work, unpaid, 24-7 taking crap, fulfilling some antiquated notion of how women are supposed to behave.

    I don’t think its unreasonable that the spouse of the US head of state as an unofficial role, unpaid role. I assumed that Bill Clinton would have carved out some type of role as First Man.

    I don’t see much to be gained by being critical of Melania Trump, but she is certainly fair game. She did go on TV to support the birther crap, and specifically added fuel to the fire that the Birth Certificate was fake. She might have started out okay, but like everything else exposed to Trump has turned rotten.

  198. 198.

    Humboldtblue

    January 31, 2017 at 12:56 pm

    @Raven Onthill: You mean like the time Melania went on national TV to support her husband’s racist attack on Obama and the birth certificate bullshit? That time she showed her silly ass?

    Mail Order Melania is no victim, she allowed that vile man to purchase her uterus and her looks and now she stands proudly by while he fucks the country. Sorry, but fuck her.

  199. 199.

    Kay

    January 31, 2017 at 12:57 pm

    Leahy on Trump’s claim of 3 million illegal votes, which Sessions has not questioned:

    Terrifying that the prospective AG believes this crap. If he believes it he’ll act on it. Start getting used to the idea of defending your right to vote. This is gonna be ugly.

  200. 200.

    dogwood

    January 31, 2017 at 12:57 pm

    @hovercraft:
    What I learned from 2016 is that if you run a a candidate and do what’s been normal and accepted, releasing tax returns, etc. the media will demand more and more . Release every email you’ve ever written. Release transcripts of every speech etc. but if you run like Trump and Sanders, refusing to release tax and financial disclosers, the media give you a pass.

  201. 201.

    Yoda Dog

    January 31, 2017 at 12:58 pm

    I’ve never read the Chronicles of Narnia. Didn’t know it was in the horror genre. I learn something new here everyday!

  202. 202.

    dogwood

    January 31, 2017 at 12:58 pm

    @Kay:
    He doesn’t believe it, but he’ll act on it anyway.

  203. 203.

    Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire

    January 31, 2017 at 12:59 pm

    There is some speculation, based on her own words, that Melania worked illegally when she first came to the U.S. So no tears for her, but I can’t say I blame her for wanting to stay away from Cantaloupe Caligula.

  204. 204.

    Kay

    January 31, 2017 at 1:01 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Perez has a great track record but he’s a lousy politician, too given to trying to come up with clever slogans that fall flat.

    My husband agrees.
    He’s seen him twice at state Party political events and he’s defying my direct order to support him :)

    He’s going with the South Bend mayor. Said he was the best of the bunch.

  205. 205.

    hovercraft

    January 31, 2017 at 1:01 pm

    @Raven Onthill:

    Melania is probably as much Trump’s victim as the rest of us.

    She campaigned for him, albeit minimally, she helped him get where he is, she is an enabler, she is a grown woman who helped a madman get the most powerful job in the world. If he is as terrible a husband as we all think, she can leave, she chooses to stay so she is responsible for her part in getting him there, she is not a victim. Given her age, he probably wouldn’t put up much of a fight to keep her, so she could get away if she wanted to. My opinion.

  206. 206.

    Raven Onthill

    January 31, 2017 at 1:02 pm

    Since we’re discussing why the election was lost, I offer this quote, co-authored by an authentic commie:

    “In the meantime, the task is much harder: you must tell them the truth. You cannot lie to the working class, James, not even once. They will know, and they will never trust you again. Lie to the bourgeoisie all you want, because they will hear only what they wish, and to the aristocracy, because they will not hear at all, and certainly to the government, the organ of the other two. But never to the working class.” — fictional Fredrich Engels, Steven Brust and Emma Bull, Freedom and Necessity

    And so it is. There are too many people who were thrown out of their homes and into long-term unemployment in the last administration, which all the while claimed to be for the “working class” or “people” or whatever. You can’t message these things away; these were concrete things which people will remember for the rest of their lives. It was the same during the William Clinton administration, though the pain was less and mostly on the poor and African-Americans.

    In the clinch, when it came time to turn out the voters, slight majorities voted for someone who at least promised to do something for them in concrete terms.

    And maybe Sanders could have won. Maybe. Or maybe the two-foot shelf of Republican oppo research would have done him in.

    I think most of the argument blames the wrong things for the loss of the last election. The immediate causes were sexism, racism, bad press (Comey!), and bad luck. But in the previous administration the Democrats didn’t deliver on major things and people knew. You complain that the Republicans prevented them? Perhaps. But where were the arrests of bankers? Why did the Democrats not make a big loud show and embarrass the Republicans? But the Democrats couldn’t; they would have had to go against the huge amount of money that puts them in office. Instead, they quietly rolled over, just as they are rolling over now as Trump guts the government. Oh, they’re talking a better game. But why are any of Trump’s cabinet nominees getting through? (The DeVos nomination has just been passed out of the committee. Why couldn’t the Democrats have denied the Republicans a committee quorum on every nominee?) Why aren’t the Democrats fighting tooth and nail every step of the way? If ever there was a time to do it, it is now.

  207. 207.

    trollhattan

    January 31, 2017 at 1:02 pm

    @Corner Stone:
    Will the nominee descend via escalator? That would be cool.

  208. 208.

    zhena gogolia

    January 31, 2017 at 1:03 pm

    @Raven Onthill:

    Engels can go f–k himself.

  209. 209.

    PJ

    January 31, 2017 at 1:03 pm

    @Yarrow: Oh, for sure. On the bus back from the Women’s March on DC, there was a Canadian tech bro (who lived in NYC) who had gone to both the inauguration and the march, apparently just to see them, not because he had any ideological or political sympathy with either. He raised the point that maybe Trump shaking things up will be good – you know, at his job, they’d brought in some coders who’d never worked on this type of project before and they came in with a lot of good ideas, etc. He was both glib and wrong about current events (he’d read “somewhere” that no real jobs had been created under Obama) and willfully ignorant about history and culture (claiming that he saw no evidence of “white supremacy” having any power in the US). People offered up plenty of historical and contemporary examples, and he did seem kind of interested in learning, but he’d clearly just gotten his opinions from reading crap on the internet and his own little world, and couldn’t be bothered to read a book about anything.

  210. 210.

    TenguPhule

    January 31, 2017 at 1:04 pm

    All the GOP come latelys to realize that Trump is Facism reborn are only useful as meat shields for absorbing incoming fire. They made their bed in November.

    The talking heads in support of Trump? Up against the wall when the revolution comes. And Bobo too.

    This is going to be a war to the knife. And examples need to be made.

    When you support a facist, your head ends up on a spikey pole. No exceptions, no excuses.

  211. 211.

    Captain C

    January 31, 2017 at 1:04 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I have not. I will be looking for it, and telling my sister also.

  212. 212.

    Corner Stone

    January 31, 2017 at 1:04 pm

    Why is all of MSNBC calling the EO a “Travel Ban” ?

  213. 213.

    The Moar You Know

    January 31, 2017 at 1:05 pm

    Yeah, this introduction of NDA’s into the executive branch, any branch, is really troubling. Is it normal?

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: It’s fucking stupid. The way you deal with this is to make them all get clearances and then classify everything they do as secret. Like every other president has done. NDAs have proven to be not really legally enforceable.

    I know it’s SOP for Trump from his executives down to his chauffeurs and colorists.

    What I said above. This is not rocket science, it’s just that nobody on his team knows how the federal government works (which is becoming more obvious by the day).

  214. 214.

    catclub

    January 31, 2017 at 1:05 pm

    @Jeffro:

    We’re not even a month in and this whole thing is about to collapse around Trumpov’s ears.

    my wingnut friends were CERTAIN that Eric Holder would be impeached the first year over fast and furious and solyndra.
    I suspect we are mirror images of that today.

  215. 215.

    trollhattan

    January 31, 2017 at 1:06 pm

    @Raven Onthill:
    If the working class is so excellent at sniffing out lies why do they ever vote Republican?

  216. 216.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 31, 2017 at 1:07 pm

    And so it is. There are too many people who were thrown out of their homes and into long-term unemployment in the last administration, which all the while claimed to be for the “working class” or “people” or whatever. You can’t message these things away; these were concrete things which people will remember for the rest of their lives. It was the same during the William Clinton administration, though the pain was less and mostly on the poor and African-Americans.

    In the clinch, when it came time to turn out the voters, slight majorities voted for someone who at least promised to do something for them in concrete terms.

    Your analysis is wrong.

    Obama was the most pro-American-manufacturing president since Eisenhower. Elkhart, IN was Obama’s flagship for this. It went gangbusters. But the people there thought it succeeded not because of Obama but in spite of him, because they’re spiteful idiots who believe Republican lies. The election was not about the economy.

    And, yes, communists can go fuck themselves.

  217. 217.

    hovercraft

    January 31, 2017 at 1:07 pm

    @dogwood:
    I think the pass would only be given to white men, if Obama had run saying that he would only release what he wanted to release and when he wanted to, he would have been pummeled just as badly as she was for releasing more than anyone else. Just sayin’.

  218. 218.

    zhena gogolia

    January 31, 2017 at 1:07 pm

    @trollhattan:

    Right. What Romantic b.s.

  219. 219.

    Peale

    January 31, 2017 at 1:08 pm

    @Corner Stone: Because we lost the “muslim ban” argument when the order didn’t extend to all Muslims in all countries. Just this specific set of countries.

  220. 220.

    Captain C

    January 31, 2017 at 1:08 pm

    @Corner Stone: How about spending the rest of his life as a minimum wage janitor in a refugee camp, helping those he’s helped to screw?

  221. 221.

    The Moar You Know

    January 31, 2017 at 1:09 pm

    Why is all of MSNBC calling the EO a “Travel Ban” ?

    @Corner Stone: They’re helping. Helping Trump, more to the point.

  222. 222.

    Raven Onthill

    January 31, 2017 at 1:10 pm

    @hovercraft: She can leave and loose all contact with her children, and probably be deported, or possibly even jailed.

    Lay off. She’s a minor figure at best, and doesn’t deserve the venom you are directing at her.

  223. 223.

    glory b

    January 31, 2017 at 1:10 pm

    @Major Major Major Major: Like I said in another thread, the chair of the DNC is not the head of the party. In order to demonize DWS and explain away Wilbur’s loss (due to his inability/unwillingness to reach out to African Americans, Kacie Hunt at nbc said his rallies were about as diverse as Trump’s), they made it seem as if the DNC picks and anoints candidates.

    The DNC charter says that it runs the convention, schedules the debates and supports local candidates and fundraises and that’s about it. Some chairs have had more tv face time than others, but they don’t run the party.

  224. 224.

    Yoda Dog

    January 31, 2017 at 1:10 pm

    @Raven Onthill:

    You complain that the Republicans prevented them? Perhaps.

    Perhaps? Give me a fucking break. Your whole spiel was NYT-level-garbage but that sentence was the real ass-chapper. Fuck off with blaming Obama/Dems for the recession and/or supposedly-slow-recovery. I’ve heard that schtick enough. It has zero factual basis, which you probably full well know. If you do, STFU and quit trollin. If not, buy a clue.

  225. 225.

    Captain C

    January 31, 2017 at 1:11 pm

    @dogwood:

    if you run like Trump and Sanders, refusing to release tax and financial disclosers, the media give you a pass.

    Hell, they won’t even question your statements on how great and/or principled you are, at that point.

  226. 226.

    Ridnik Chrome

    January 31, 2017 at 1:11 pm

    @Raven Onthill: The next time anyone is tempted to argue about why Hillary lost, remember this: the last Democratic president who succeeded another Democrat by election, rather than by the death of his predecessor, was James Buchanan. Hillary was trying to do something that hadn’t been done since before the Civil War. So go easy on her…

  227. 227.

    catclub

    January 31, 2017 at 1:11 pm

    @Yoda Dog: The Narnian category is not people from Narnia.= – those seem ok. It is people who think that we are in Narnia and they think they are on the obvious right side of things.

  228. 228.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 31, 2017 at 1:11 pm

    @Peale: Or, just throwing this out there, it’s because fuck MSNBC.

  229. 229.

    catclub

    January 31, 2017 at 1:12 pm

    @Ridnik Chrome: The US has the memory of a gnat when it comes to needing the GOP to rescue us from years of Democratic peace and prosperity.

  230. 230.

    ? Martin

    January 31, 2017 at 1:13 pm

    Woke up this morning thinking we’re fucked, that we’ve passed a tipping point.

    More and more the explanation for Trumps win was purely to fuck over liberals. There was no positive policy basis, there was no self-interest, it was simply a Limbaugh/Hannity desire to make liberals suffer, and political retribution is Trumps primary selling point.

    Liberal response has been protests and a hardening on cooperating in the sake of governance. We’re demanding that Dems reject all Trump nominees, filibuster or otherwise hold up the SCOTUS pick (not inappropriate given the handling of Garland by the GOP).

    We’re going to see more of this. Trump is upholding Obama’s LGBT protections but will almost certainly sign an EO allowing government officials a right of conscience to deny those protections if it goes against their religious convictions. Protections on paper, but utter chaos in practice as whether you are protected or not will depend entirely on who you talk to, something which people have limited control over.

    In short, battle lines are drawn, nobody is willing to yield – Trump was hired to never yield, after all. This is a civil war without a shot yet fired. Liberals will grow ever more outraged, not only at Trump but at their own representatives who give even a hint that they are open to ungrinding the wheels of government. Someone will exploit this opportunity – China will push their situation in the South China Sea, Russia with the Balkans, etc. We’ll be caught flat-footed, and without leadership. Liberals will blame Trump and the GOP, conservatives will blame liberals. It will explode. 50% of the country doesn’t hate liberals with a burning passion, but the 27% that do are enough to primary anyone out of a seat, and we’re seeing armies of liberals in the streets of cities that are ready to primary any Dem that wavers. We simply won’t make it far enough for the GOP to cave to constituent pressure – the dynamic that I think will prevail should we hold on to mid 2018. I no longer think we’ll get to that point.

  231. 231.

    The gray adder

    January 31, 2017 at 1:15 pm

    @The Moar You Know: Pity Mac’s a paper tiger.

  232. 232.

    Tenar Arha (same Tenar, more Nameless Ones)

    January 31, 2017 at 1:15 pm

    @Captain C: It’s funny (as in OMG why?!) that we’re still separating the Republican Party from Trump, since they are directly responsible for cultivating him in their multiple-ists poison gardens. (The racist, anti-semitic, sexist, misogynistic, xenophobic, homophobic, bigoted….)

    We really have got to stop that, especially now since they are refusing to stand up to him. They need to own every devastation their policy agenda will cause.

  233. 233.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 31, 2017 at 1:16 pm

    @? Martin: Pretty much.

    We’re going to see more of this. Trump is upholding Obama’s LGBT protections but will almost certainly sign an EO allowing government officials a right of conscience to deny those protections if it goes against their religious convictions. Protections on paper, but utter chaos in practice as whether you are protected or not will depend entirely on who you talk to, something which people have limited control over.

    It’s OK, I wasn’t going to go outside of San Francisco or Manhattan for 4-8 years anyway.

  234. 234.

    Kathleen

    January 31, 2017 at 1:16 pm

    @Thoroughly Pizzled: They are evil.

  235. 235.

    catclub

    January 31, 2017 at 1:16 pm

    @Major Major Major Major: The bit about not lying to the working class? Both sides have refused to say
    “those jobs are not coming back”
    Trump has lied more egregiously by saying that coal jobs and steelworking jobs will come back.

    I would say a different class of lie is needed for the working class. A believable Bill Clinton feeling your pain.

  236. 236.

    Corner Stone

    January 31, 2017 at 1:17 pm

    @Peale: It’s not like he could be expected to include Muslim majority countries he has business ties/dealings with or anything. What are you, a madman?

  237. 237.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 31, 2017 at 1:18 pm

    @catclub: Hillary said it about coal mining and IIRC made a few noises about it re: automation. She got slammed.

    But yes, nobody is addressing that particular elephant, which is wildly irresponsible.

  238. 238.

    ruckus

    January 31, 2017 at 1:18 pm

    @danielx:
    FUCK Fucking Cancer.

  239. 239.

    Captain C

    January 31, 2017 at 1:19 pm

    @Raven Onthill:

    And maybe Sanders could have won. Maybe. Or maybe the two-foot shelf of Republican oppo research would have done him in.

    He would have had a steep uphill road to climb after the first rounds of ads claiming that a middle class family of four would be paying $500 extra in taxes/month (correct, as per the Vox tax calculator) or way more (the usual M.O., at which point the debate becomes about the size of the lie) so that Those People could get free stuff. And then you would have had the oppo research kick in.

  240. 240.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    January 31, 2017 at 1:19 pm

    @Raven Onthill: But where were the arrests of bankers?

    I think of all the purity pony lefty whines, this one annoys me the most. You do know about things like defense lawyers, juries and the appellate process, don’t you? Your doughty, noble, pure-hearted white working class, so intolerant of lies and so alert to high-ranking financial malfeasance has voted, in the last four national cycles, for the people who tell them, flat out, that Wall St is suffering from an excess of regulation.

    “But I wanted theatre!”

  241. 241.

    joel hanes

    January 31, 2017 at 1:19 pm

    @glory b:

    In order to demonize DWS

    I was a long-time critic of DWS, not for any of the reasons you deride, but because she acted to protect her Republican friends Ros-Lehtinen and Diaz-Balart from Democratic challengers. That’s maybe excusable in a House member from a deep red state, but it should be completely disqualifying for head of the DNC.

    Water over the dam, now, and the last time I’ll ever write anything about this should-be-dead issue.

  242. 242.

    Immanentize

    January 31, 2017 at 1:20 pm

    @danielx: Yes Fuck Cancer! But hooray for King Crimson!

  243. 243.

    catclub

    January 31, 2017 at 1:20 pm

    @? Martin:

    In short, battle lines are drawn, nobody is willing to yield – Trump was hired to never yield, after all.

    I think the gish gallop by Trump continues. The Russian interference in the election is completely forgotten in the new chaos of the day.
    The conflicts of interest are mostly forgotten – certainly not grabbed onto like the pitbull jaws of media interest in ….. emails!
    What else has already been forgotten? I forget.

    ETA: tax forms.

  244. 244.

    dogwood

    January 31, 2017 at 1:21 pm

    @trollhattan:
    Indeed! Romanticizing groups based on their race, class, ethnicity is bizarre. Every group and class consists of some extraordinary people who accomplish great things in their communities, country and the world, and every group contains people who orchestrate malevolence or enable it.

  245. 245.

    Weaselone

    January 31, 2017 at 1:22 pm

    @? Martin:

    Liberal response has been protests and a hardening on cooperating in the sake of governance. We’re demanding that Dems reject all Trump nominees

    No. Liberals are largely hardening on the worst handful of Trump’s picks, because they are rancid, incompetent pieces of shit. I doubt there’s going to be many primary challenges based on the vote for Governor Goodhair, or Senate Majority Leader’s wife.

  246. 246.

    The Moar You Know

    January 31, 2017 at 1:23 pm

    More and more the explanation for Trumps win was purely to fuck over liberals. There was no positive policy basis, there was no self-interest, it was simply a Limbaugh/Hannity desire to make liberals suffer, and political retribution is Trumps primary selling point.

    @? Martin: I’ve been saying that Trump, post-primary, was running as the living incarnation of Cleek’s Law and it should be no shock to anyone he’s “governing” as such.

    The GOP will be riding that formula to victory for a while. They’ve paid absolutely no consequences for doing so…and won’t.

  247. 247.

    catclub

    January 31, 2017 at 1:23 pm

    @Major Major Major Major:

    She got slammed.

    Right. Never lie to the working class. Also, never tell them something they don’t want to hear.

  248. 248.

    cmorenc

    January 31, 2017 at 1:24 pm

    @Raven Onthill:

    I think most of the argument blames the wrong things for the loss of the last election. The immediate causes were sexism, racism, bad press (Comey!), and bad luck. But in the previous administration the Democrats didn’t deliver on major things and people knew.

    The most damaging thing Obama did early in his administration was trusting the advice of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner (an ultimate Wall Street insider) that the paramount priority in rescuing the economy was to save (bail out) the banksters (or else Geithner maintained the entire economy would collapse) – instead of seizing the opportunity to force the breakup of the big “too large to fail” financial institutions and choosing an AG whose highest priority would be to aggressively and quite publicly seek prosecution of both high-level executives and ground-level greedsters responsible for the mess. Even the likes of Sen. Lindsey Graham was initially on-board with breaking up the banks, as were several other prominent GOP congress-critters. By contrast, ordinary homeowners caught in the crunch were still being subjected to aggressive foreclosure policies by the banks – and the HARP program the Administration implemented proved ineffective – the banks simply end-ran or ovar-ran any mitigation efforts.

    The net result was a loss of cred in blue-collar and lower white-collar America that the Obama Administration never was able to overcome, especially when incomes of those below the top 5% stayed flat and solid middle-class jobs continued to disappear. TRUE the GOP began their obstruction campaign and advocated trickle-down big-corporation friendly tax cut policies that would only reinforce this, but with the spotlight on the Administration, this impression provided the fuel that helped the tea party get off the ground.

  249. 249.

    ruckus

    January 31, 2017 at 1:25 pm

    @dww44:
    Have a friend who voted for BS in the primary and voted for Clinton in the general and hates the Republican president with the heat of a nova, and he didn’t like Clinton but doesn’t know why. I explained to him that 30yrs of media bashing builds up if you let it.

  250. 250.

    Ksmiami

    January 31, 2017 at 1:25 pm

    @TenguPhule: THE ONLY PLACE FOR BANNON ET AL IS AGAINST THE WALL., RYAN TOO

  251. 251.

    Corner Stone

    January 31, 2017 at 1:25 pm

    @rikyrah:

    Senior staffers on the House Judiciary Committee helped Donald Trump’s top aides draft the executive order curbing immigration from seven Muslim-majority nations, but the Republican committee chairman and party leadership were not informed, according to multiple sources involved in the process

    If every one of the aides that worked in secret are not fired then we have all the confirmation we could have ever needed that the House is completely gone.

  252. 252.

    ? Martin

    January 31, 2017 at 1:27 pm

    @catclub: Hillary did say it about coal jobs. But there is no political upside to telling people their jobs aren’t coming back. Its an admission of a different problem – that government has lost the power to help the citizenry. Free trade and automation are inevitable economic outcomes, but the public doesn’t care about that. They want government to be powerful enough to overcome economic hard truths because we vote for government but not for economic systems. So we ask for tariffs, which will only make things worse, but they are at least an example of government overcoming one economic truth, overlooking that it will fail another (that trade will benefit the overall economy more than it will cost to deal with the localized losses). It feels like we’re at least doing something, even if that something is ultimately counterproductive.

  253. 253.

    The Moar You Know

    January 31, 2017 at 1:27 pm

    But where were the arrests of bankers?

    @Raven Onthill: Everything those sons of bitches did was perfectly legal. That is the problem.

  254. 254.

    Raven Onthill

    January 31, 2017 at 1:29 pm

    “Lie to the bourgeoisie all you want, because they will hear only what they wish.”

    @trollhattan: it’s not that they sniff things out; it’s that they pay attention to big concrete things in their lives. Losing your house, being out of work for years: they don’t ignore that, because they can’t.

    @Major Major Major Major: Directly the Obama administration did little for the people of Elkhart. It was long-term and trickle down. People still lost their homes. People were still out of work for years. This, while the government showered the banks with huge amounts of money and did nothing against the people who brought about the crash. And, yes, the people of Elkhart made the best of it and came back, but they could have used a lot more help.

    I think Hillary Clinton got it, by the end of her campaign: the “two baskets” speech explains this. But by then not enough people were willing to listen.

  255. 255.

    catclub

    January 31, 2017 at 1:29 pm

    @cmorenc:

    The most damaging thing Obama did early in his administration was

    starting his administration 18 months too soon. FDR did it the right way. The GOP and Hoover soaked in it for 3.5 years. The market went down 80%, unemployment burgeoned to 25% – THEN he was inaugurated.

  256. 256.

    Peale

    January 31, 2017 at 1:31 pm

    Your Mexican WC (MWC) would also like to get out of the NAFTA yoke. Its tired of being pushed around….although I thought we thought Mexico was the one “winning.” I thought we were told that it was the Mexicans that were pushing us around.

    #confused.

  257. 257.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    January 31, 2017 at 1:32 pm

    @Raven Onthill: @Major Major Major Major: Directly the Obama administration did little for the people of Elkhart. It was long-term and trickle down

    Yeah, single handedly saving the auto industry did nothing for the RV manufacturers in Elkhart.
    ETA: but some drawn out trials laden with the arcana of financial regulation and ending in acquittals reported on in the middle of the network news shows no one watches and NPR’s Marketplace…? That would’ve totally moved Elkhart into the Dems’ column for generations!

  258. 258.

    trollhattan

    January 31, 2017 at 1:33 pm

    @Raven Onthill:
    But Hillary won low-income working class, despite the “accepted” view they went to Trump. If the Dems missed anything, it was effective GOTV in the “firewall” states. Fewer than 100k swung the election.

  259. 259.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 31, 2017 at 1:34 pm

    @Raven Onthill:

    Directly the Obama administration did little for the people of Elkhart.

    Well, I’m done with this conversation if you’re not going to live in the real world.

    @trollhattan: The distinction is education. People without college degrees moved hard Trumpwards regardless of income level; people with them moved towards the Dems regardless of income level.

    There are more people without college degrees.

  260. 260.

    rikyrah

    January 31, 2017 at 1:34 pm

    @dogwood:

    I’m Team Perez without any doubt.

  261. 261.

    catclub

    January 31, 2017 at 1:35 pm

    @The Moar You Know: Not everything. the foreclosure perjury on every single filing, combined with teh NOT filing proper change of title inevery county land registry – instead just creating straw owner of all the mortgages – were illegal acts.

    Only legal in the sense that if you have enough big time lawyers defending to scare all the state ATTY’s Gen’l from prosecuting.

  262. 262.

    The Moar You Know

    January 31, 2017 at 1:35 pm

    Its tired of being pushed around….although I thought we thought Mexico was the one “winning.” I thought we were told that it was the Mexicans that were pushing us around.

    @Peale: NAFTA destroyed almost every last family farm in Mexico. I’m surprised that there really hasn’t been any backlash against that until now.

  263. 263.

    Corner Stone

    January 31, 2017 at 1:35 pm

    @catclub:

    Also, never tell them something they don’t want to hear.

    So, racism is real and is corrosive to our society and our souls. And automation is inevitable.
    Those are at least two of the top things a politician running for office should never say out loud. Got it.

  264. 264.

    dww44

    January 31, 2017 at 1:36 pm

    @Kay: I saw him a few weeks back somewhere on TV and I was very impressed. I hope there’s enough depth there to go along with the charisma and good vibes.

  265. 265.

    Raven Onthill

    January 31, 2017 at 1:38 pm

    @catclub: ” Both sides have refused to say ‘those jobs are not coming back.'” Sanders and Clinton both said it to the coal miners.

    @The Moar You Know: “Everything those sons of bitches did was perfectly legal.” Not in the housing market! Laws of property that existed before the Republic were violated. Now, it might have been a difficult prosecution, but it was certainly worth making the case, even if it was lost. And they just didn’t. The system comprehensively failed at both state and federal levels.

  266. 266.

    Peale

    January 31, 2017 at 1:43 pm

    I just wanna point out that the good people of Wisconsin and Ohio, whether they were just WWC or WMC, overwhelmingly voted to vote in governors to stop Obama’s single biggest public works project in 2010 – the high speed rail connecting New York and Chicago and Chicago to Minneapolis. They made a very conscious choice in that matter since both Walker and Kaisch ran on that issue. So please don’t tell me that the good WWC wanted some kind of national stimulus boost. They voted to screw over union government workers, teachers and stop the rails and stopping the deficit, Obamacare, Ground Zero Mosques and Mexicans that election. But they very clearly rejected more stimulus in favor of Republican cost cutting.

  267. 267.

    ? Martin

    January 31, 2017 at 1:46 pm

    @Weaselone: So far. But I can confirm that DiFi has been getting fucking blanketed by constituents demanding she vote no across the board. Sheldon Whitehouse faced the same thing last night.

    I agree that in this moment you are correct, but consider how far things have moved in just the last 11 days. If Trump is defeated on some of his nominees, he’s going to go ballistic and he’s going to double down. That’s what he does. He NEVER concedes a position. He is the presidential equivalent of the GOP obstructionist Congress of never backing down. This is only going to escalate. His actions last night should make that clear enough. Dems will have no choice but to reciprocate. The only resolution to this crisis is congressional Republicans brokering a middle ground – formally pushing back on some of Trumps excesses so as to release the pressure. But I suspect they are so hardened themselves that should that come it’ll be too late.

  268. 268.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    January 31, 2017 at 1:48 pm

    @Raven Onthill:

    Problem was that the violations of law with regard to all the severing of mortgage obligations from notes was gone at repeatedly – EVERY lawyer I knew who attempted that litigation from 2003 forward ran headfirst into the judicial wall of “I don’t want to see anybody get a free house” when litigating those cases in state courts.

    Those judges were stunningly wrong about the effect (bank simply winds up at the back of the line, and has to enforce a feeble judgment lien from that shitty spot). I kept telling them to hold off until the better case came along, which I felt was a second lien or mechanic’s lienholder that wanted to take first position.

    Those don’t tend to come around much.

    Anyway, by the time O comes to office, state courts had by and large blessed the slicing and dicing – try running a criminal case on that.

  269. 269.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    January 31, 2017 at 1:48 pm

    @Peale: also, this was such an anti-free trade, anti-establishment cycle that the Rust Beltians of Ohio voted overwhelmingly for Rob “Friend of the Working Man” Portman, and in WI they turned against plutocrat elitist Russ Feingold.

  270. 270.

    catclub

    January 31, 2017 at 1:51 pm

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Do you remember the name of the straw corporation that was created to hold all the titles – for ease of transfer of title? The name escapes me.

  271. 271.

    catclub

    January 31, 2017 at 1:52 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    anti-establishment cycle

    also returned the usual 95%+ of incumbent house members.

  272. 272.

    rikyrah

    January 31, 2017 at 1:55 pm

    The 12 Early Warning Signs of Fascism
    by Martin Longman January 31, 2017 12:23 PM

    If you go to the U.S. Holocaust Museum, you can see a sign hanging there that tells you what to look for if you’re worried that your country may be slipping into fascism. Let’s take a look at their twelve early warning signs of fascism.

    EARLY WARNING SIGNS OF FASCISM

    1. Powerful and continuing nationalism
    2. Disdain for human rights
    3. Identification of enemies as a unifying cause
    4. Rampant sexism
    5. Controlled mass media
    6. Obsession with national security
    7. Religion and government intertwined
    8. Corporate power protected
    9. Labor power suppressed
    10. Disdain for intellectual and the arts
    11. Obsession with crime and punishment
    12. Rampant cronyism and corruption

    You can follow the links above, but it shouldn’t be necessary if you’ve been paying any attention. Trump’s message is based on putting America “first,” making America “great again,” and is clearly a powerful form of nationalism that we’re also seeing arise in other countries in Europe and Asia.

  273. 273.

    Timurid

    January 31, 2017 at 1:56 pm

    @? Martin:

    The moment of truth is probably only weeks, if not days, away.
    It happens when Trump does something blatantly impeachable, something that would make Nixon blush… and the Republican caucus has two choices: Impeach him, or crown him King. The sooner that moment comes, the better. Democrats should obstruct, obstruct and obstruct some more on everything. Provoke Trump into breaking cover before he is ready, before his control of the executive and judiciary is fully consolidated. And make it clear that if the Republicans decide to bend the knee to His Majesty, the country will be ungovernable.

  274. 274.

    Roger Moore

    January 31, 2017 at 1:56 pm

    @Shana:

    I saw that earlier and still can’t figure out how a NDA is legal in this circumstance.

    It doesn’t matter if it’s legal. What matters is if it cows the people who sign it into keeping quiet. As long as it makes people shut up until it’s too late, it’s served its purpose.

  275. 275.

    The Moar You Know

    January 31, 2017 at 2:07 pm

    And make it clear that if the Republicans decide to bend the knee to His Majesty, the country will be ungovernable.

    @Timurid: We’re already there. They have bent the knee. And everyone is pretending that we can still use the old ways of getting stuff done to stop this dictator in his tracks. It’s not working.

  276. 276.

    Slag

    January 31, 2017 at 2:09 pm

    @Major Major Major Major: Not immediately but it is the Republican way.

  277. 277.

    Another Scott

    January 31, 2017 at 2:10 pm

    RawStory: Kushner is sad and has lost 7 pounds!!11

    But Kushner’s influence may be waning already, the magazine reported.

    He spent hours last week trying to set up a meeting between his father-in-law and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to discuss Trump’s proposed border wall — but that all fell apart after Trump tweeted the face-off should be canceled if Mexico was unwilling to pay for the wall.

    “Kushner was fucking furious,” the source told Vanity Fair.

    The source said Kushner had lost seven pounds and grown pale since Inauguration Day, and his relationship with his father-in-law appears to have changed.

    The Trump White House has turned into a soap opera on top of everything else…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  278. 278.

    Raven Onthill

    January 31, 2017 at 2:16 pm

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: “Anyway, by the time O comes to office, state courts had by and large blessed the slicing and dicing – try running a criminal case on that.”

    “The law doth punish man or woman…”

    That, of course, is why Federal intervention was called for. There was an entire failure of both federalism and the system of checks and balances; all three branches of government supported at state and federal levels blessed the mess.

    @catclub: Mortgage Electronic Registration System, MERS.
    It is still around, though it can no longer forclose in its own name.

  279. 279.

    glory b

    January 31, 2017 at 2:16 pm

    @Captain C: “…he would have had nothing to offer as a candidate except incoherent rage and naked racism and misogyny.”

    In other words, a dircet appeal to their base?

  280. 280.

    Captain C

    January 31, 2017 at 2:20 pm

    @Another Scott: Real jobs are stressful. Especially if one has never had one*.

    *that wasn’t achieved through nepotism or cronyism

  281. 281.

    Captain C

    January 31, 2017 at 2:23 pm

    @glory b: The 27%, yes.

  282. 282.

    kd bart

    January 31, 2017 at 2:26 pm

    @Brachiator: They also tend to live with the belief that the factions that backed Trump wouldn’t have done to Bernie what they did to Hillary. They think he would’ve skated thru a general campaign untouched like it was the primary. They wanted Trump and would’ve ripped into Bernie with both hands and feet.

  283. 283.

    dogwood

    January 31, 2017 at 2:26 pm

    @Timurid:
    I don’t see Republicans turning on Trump for real until after the midterms. In ’18 McConnell has a shot at 60 republicans. They need to flip 6 seats which isn’t impossible. I can think of 3 seats, Heitkamp, Donnelly, McCaskill that will be hard to hold. And since we’ve got 25 seats up and they’ve got 8, the money that will be poured in against people like Baldwin, Brown, and Shaheen will be obscene. This is why I’m not gonna waste my time worrying about primary challenges to people like DiFi.

  284. 284.

    kd bart

    January 31, 2017 at 2:30 pm

    @Captain C: At D’Amato basically operated the same way in NY. Most knew, especially on LI, that he was crook but he was great at handling constituent services. So people kept voting for him.

  285. 285.

    TenguPhule

    January 31, 2017 at 2:30 pm

    @Timurid: The moment came and went on day 1 of the Old Republic’s death and the Empire’s birth.

    Now its just a matter of who dies first and sets off the bloodshed.

    I recommend stop seeing Trump supporters as humans now. It will make things easier later when you need to defend yourself and loved ones from them.

  286. 286.

    Timurid

    January 31, 2017 at 2:32 pm

    @dogwood: I’m not sure Democrats or Republicans should base their decisions too heavily on what might happen or not happen in the 2018 elections. 2016 was the most corrupt national election in modern American history, and 2018 is going to be even more compromised. The only saving grace is that Congressional/midterm elections have many more moving parts than a Presidential election.

  287. 287.

    dogwood

    January 31, 2017 at 2:33 pm

    @Timurid:
    And significantly fewer voters.

  288. 288.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    January 31, 2017 at 2:35 pm

    @Corner Stone:

    Great. Trump is treating the SCOTUS pick as if it were a beauty queen pageant.

    Dear god, Trump isn’t feeling them up, is he?

  289. 289.

    Percysowner

    January 31, 2017 at 2:37 pm

    DiFi will vote on Sessions.

  290. 290.

    Yarrow

    January 31, 2017 at 2:40 pm

    @Kay:

    He’s going with the South Bend mayor. Said he was the best of the bunch.

    That’s Pete Buttigieg, right? Josh Marshall said he said this:

    Look, we’ve got a fight. We’ve also got to be fighting for our values. For far too long, Democratic strategy and policy has been organized completely around Republican strategy and policy.

    And all we do is take the yardstick of what have they’re doing and then fight over how ferociously to oppose it or how many parts of it to take up. That is not a strategy that is derived from our own values and our own principles. And if we’re talking about our values before we even bother talking about the republicans, then we can do things like talk about what’s right for the country. And dare Donald Trump to either do it or fail to do it.

    That’s good stuff. I heard he was also at the airport protests in Houston on Saturday because there was a DNC forum in Houston that day.

  291. 291.

    Adrift

    January 31, 2017 at 2:41 pm

    When the republicans are done there won’t be any room left in hell.
    Republicans move to sell off 3.3m acres of national land:
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/31/public-lands-sell-congress-bureau-management-chaffetz

  292. 292.

    Peale

    January 31, 2017 at 2:42 pm

    @Timurid: I think the Dems will get a boost at least a little. Changes of any sort has winners, it also creates losers and threats. So far though, Trump’s actions have mostly fallen on unpopular groups that either don’t vote or can’t vote or have such few voters that it doesn’t matter. He will issue his gay rights rollback eventually – its in the First 100 day plan. And something about Unions and something to piss off Mexico and that will create more parties with actual grievances. Healthcare and Social Security – they need to push that out there soon. We’ll see.

    But if the election were held today, we’d probably lose. Trump did something awful last weekend, but Congress hasn’t acted much on its agenda yet.

  293. 293.

    Yarrow

    January 31, 2017 at 2:43 pm

    @Another Scott: Is that why his tux fit so poorly?

  294. 294.

    ruemara

    January 31, 2017 at 2:43 pm

    @dww44: I wish this hot take would die already.

  295. 295.

    Roger Moore

    January 31, 2017 at 2:51 pm

    @dogwood:

    I don’t see Republicans turning on Trump for real until after the midterms.

    That’s probably true, but the thing that’s most likely to turn them against him is if/when they do terribly in those midterms. If they actually manage to pick up seats in the Senate and maintain their gerrymandered majority in the House, they’ll probably decide everything is peach and stick with him.

  296. 296.

    Это курам на смех

    January 31, 2017 at 2:51 pm

    @Major Major Major Major: Elkhart came roaring back because gas prices fell. The gas-guzzling RV industry lives or dies on the price of oil. Does Obama get any credit for lower energy costs? Trump’s masters are determined to drive them back up, and when they do, the RV industry will contract again. Of course the workers won’t connect the dots.

  297. 297.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    January 31, 2017 at 2:56 pm

    Dreher is not pro-Trump. He didn’t vote for him and the majority of his posts about Trump have been very critical.

  298. 298.

    dogwood

    January 31, 2017 at 2:56 pm

    @Roger Moore:
    Have you actually looked at who’s up for re-election in the Senate? Actually managing to pick up seats ain’t gonna be a heavy lift.

  299. 299.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    January 31, 2017 at 2:57 pm

    @catclub:

    I suspect we are mirror images of that today.

    Not an unreasonable position, but the way things have been going the last 11 days have been unprecidented short of Linclon’s first week. The bit I notice is the leaks were the admin officals are blaming each other and siege mentality from the Trump admin,…and this is the Honymoon?

  300. 300.

    Roger Moore

    January 31, 2017 at 3:02 pm

    @dogwood:
    I know the Republicans are in very good position to pick up seats in the Senate. They’re also protected against anything but a complete catastrophe in the House. That’s more or less my point. They’re only going to turn against Trump if he’s hurting them. If they think they’re doing well- and they’re likely to measure that by absolute outcomes, not comparison of outcomes to some theoretical model- they’re unlikely to turn on him. So if their very favorable map in the Senate and extreme gerrymandering in the House manage to keep them in charge in Congress, they’re unlikely to turn on Trump, even if he’s actually acted as a drag on their success.

  301. 301.

    Lizzy L

    January 31, 2017 at 3:04 pm

    DiFi has been getting fucking blanketed by constituents demanding she vote no across the board.

    @Percysowner: YES!

    This is how it’s done. I’ve called DiFi’s office 4-5 times about Sessions, and pushed all my friends to do it. There have been demonstrations at her office. FDR: “Now make me do it.”
    Would she have voted against him w/o the pressure? Don’t know. But when she does vote No, even if he gets in (hisssss –avert!) it will demonstrate to the people who called and wrote and marched in front of her office that she heard them.

  302. 302.

    Monala

    January 31, 2017 at 3:05 pm

    @Corner Stone: That is utterly bizarre, this view of Valerie Jarrett that the rightwing has.

  303. 303.

    Jeffro

    January 31, 2017 at 3:05 pm

    @NeenerNeener:

    Are we sure Goodlatte wasn’t told? He could be just covering his ass in the wake of the backlash.

    He’s certainly covering for Trump and for his (Goodlatte’s) staffers, as well as probably covering his own ass, yes.

    Some of these guys really will do just about anything for Dear Leader…it’s pathetic.

  304. 304.

    Jeffro

    January 31, 2017 at 3:06 pm

    @Corner Stone: @Monala:

    I can tell you from first-hand experience w/ my RWNJ dad that they are quite fixated on her. Or were, rather. Probably for the most obvious of reasons.

  305. 305.

    Roger Moore

    January 31, 2017 at 3:11 pm

    @Lizzy L:

    I’ve called DiFi’s office 4-5 times about Sessions

    I’ve tried, but I can’t get through to any of her offices.

  306. 306.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    January 31, 2017 at 3:13 pm

    @catclub:

    MERS

  307. 307.

    Lizzy L

    January 31, 2017 at 3:14 pm

    @Roger Moore: I call after 10 pm and leave VM. That’s the only way I’ve managed to get through. I haven’t been able to speak with a staffer yet.

  308. 308.

    Ian G.

    January 31, 2017 at 3:16 pm

    @Another Scott: I’m shocked, shocked to find this clueless aristocrat is being pushed out by the Nazi brigade. I wonder what belittling, antisemitic nickname Bannon has for Kushner.

  309. 309.

    Aleta

    January 31, 2017 at 3:18 pm

    I have a complete bias on interpreting this, but someone ‘at the Pentagon’ (I have two suspects in mind) is telling rightwing news that terrorists in Yemen have sort of actually attacked the US. Because when they ran boats into a Saudi frigate, it was an accident bc they meant to attack the US. I’m biased because I expect Bannon. Giulliani et al. to use terror alerts to change news coverage, and try to get public support against their huge opposition.

    To balance my paranoia, this is something David Cole wrote last fall in the NYRB:

    Americans did not sit back and accept that (Bush) was above the law. They protested, filed lawsuits, wrote human rights reports, lobbied foreign audiences and governments to bring pressure to bear on the United States, leaked classified documents, and broadly condemned the administration’s actions as violations of fundamental constitutional and human rights. Human Rights First organized retired generals and admirals; the Center for Constitutional Rights and Reprieve, aided by an army of pro-bono lawyers, brought the plight of Guantanamo detainees to the world’s attention; the Bill of Rights Defense Committee sparked a grassroots protest through local referenda on the Patriot Act; and the ACLU used the Freedom of Information Act to dislodge thousands of documents detailing the CIA’s torture program, which it and PEN American Center then disseminated in accessible form. The academy, the press, and the international community all joined in the condemnation.

    As a result, the course of history changed. By the time Bush left office in 2009, he had released more than five hundred of the detainees from Guantanamo, emptied out the CIA’s secret prisons, halted the CIA interrogation program and extraordinary renditions, and placed the NSA’s surveillance program under judicial supervision. His claims of uncheckable executive power had been rejected, and the Geneva Conventions applied to all detainees.

    Bush did not introduce these reforms because he came to realize his wrongs. But Bush was nonetheless checked—by American civil society, international criticism, and, for the first time in history, the Court and Congress.

    So if Bush could be stopped, notwithstanding widespread popular support, a large-scale attack on US soil leading to a war footing, and a history of judicial and congressional acquiescence in similar prior periods, Trump is also stoppable. He doesn’t have anything like the popular support Bush had after 9/11. And the recent history of the repudiation of Bush’s abuses will make it harder to repeat them.

  310. 310.

    Another Scott

    January 31, 2017 at 3:19 pm

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: That has a rather unfortunate other meaning these days, also too.

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    (Who wonders if all the acronyms/initialisms will be used up in the next 100 years or so – maybe sooner!)

  311. 311.

    Brachiator

    January 31, 2017 at 3:20 pm

    @kd bart:

    They also tend to live with the belief that the factions that backed Trump wouldn’t have done to Bernie what they did to Hillary. They think he would’ve skated thru a general campaign untouched like it was the primary. They wanted Trump and would’ve ripped into Bernie with both hands and feet.

    I think that both Clinton and Sanders waged flawed campaigns. But Clinton still racked up a popular vote majority. Trump did not bowl her over. I don’t think he would have run over Sanders either, and Sanders might have pulled more younger voters. However, I DO NOT believe that Sanders would have been an easy victor, which is the silly belief of the purity pony riders.

  312. 312.

    les

    January 31, 2017 at 3:23 pm

    @Raven Onthill:

    But in the previous administration the Democrats didn’t deliver on major things and people knew.

    Jebus I’m tired of this. If people didn’t know, they didn’t look. If what you really mean is that everyone didn’t get their particular fucking pony, guess fucking what? They never will. “The People” got vast expansion of access to health care, millions of jobs (ya know the net job creation under Bush? Fucking Zero.), they got the first uptick in wages in a decade, they got cleaner air and water (I suppose The People blame Flint on Obama, so scratch the water), they got more clean energy, they got two fine non-crazy SC justices. Etc. Unfortunately the bastard just couldn’t quit presidentin’ while black. So he failed.
    He failed the White Working Class. Somebody remind me what the WWC needs/deserves/should get that the rest of the working class doesn’t? Oh, right, a white male president.
    He was divisive. Well, he did persist in that black thing, didn’t he?

    The Dems failed to deliver. Jesus H Fucking Christ on the Cross, if that’s your standard just fucking go back to your hole, no Dem will ever deliver to whatever stupid ass standard you’re carrying.

  313. 313.

    TenguPhule

    January 31, 2017 at 3:26 pm

    @Aleta: Trump learned from Bush’s fatal mistake.

    Bush wasn’t ruthless enough to flout the law and dare his enemies to try and stop him.

    For all his evils (and Bush still deserves the noose for war crimes), ultimately Bush was still willing to follow American tradition and the courts.

    Can you tell me with a straight face that Darth Trump is willing to do the same?

  314. 314.

    dogwood

    January 31, 2017 at 3:27 pm

    @les:
    Amen

  315. 315.

    The Truffle

    January 31, 2017 at 3:27 pm

    @Brachiator: Sanders could have had trouble energizing minority voters, who have complained that the Dems take them for granted. We need candidates who can appeal to as many demographics as possible. And I’m tired of the whine over “identity politics.” The white supremacists are all about identity politics.

  316. 316.

    Doug R

    January 31, 2017 at 3:29 pm

    @Steve in the ATL: Do you like old school bumper cars? Go to Seaside. Like long bridges? Go to Astoria. Or look up a few places Lewis and Clark visited like Dismal Niche or Cape Dissappointment. Or buy some cheese in Tillamook.

  317. 317.

    Roger Moore

    January 31, 2017 at 3:32 pm

    @Another Scott:

    Who wonders if all the acronyms/initialisms will be used up in the next 100 years or so – maybe sooner!

    A quick check of Acronym Finder would show that they’re already taken.

  318. 318.

    Miss Bianca

    January 31, 2017 at 3:33 pm

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Why is everyone so mean, she asks me.

    “Why are you so dumb”, everyone asks back.

  319. 319.

    Brachiator

    January 31, 2017 at 3:37 pm

    @hovercraft:

    Sure, but those delusional people still won’t come to terms with what happened, JS got almost 50K votes, and GJ got 140K, if the Stein votes and a portion of the voters who went for Johnson, she could have won, same thing in WI, the 30K JS votes swing the state to Hillary.

    She also would have won had she brought out more voters or convinced the Stein and Johnson voters to back her. She didn’t. That’s on her. Johnson obviously wasn’t going to drop out, and the Libertarian party did much worse in previous elections. A good number of these voters didn’t like either Clinton or Trump. Stein voters are crazy. You can never count on them.

    Woulda coulda shoulda, who knows? What is clear though is that Hillary did have a clear platform that she allowed the media to drown out with e-mails bullshit, her platform was good,

    I disagree. Can you summarize her jobs plan?

    what she lacked was a short pithy pitch like MAGA, every speech she gave was policy specific, but not easily mined for sound bites. Her messaging was poor, and the media did everything in it’s power to drown it out.

    Her messaging was poor. That’s on her, not the media, which right wing fools think was in the tank for her. She was an OK campaigner, but that wasn’t good enough.

    People had been calling the Clintons liars and rogues for years. This was nothing new. Clinton did what she could to overcome it, but this was low hanging fruit. To expect anyone, including Sanders to not use this is foolish. And Sanders was running hard for president. He had no need to kiss up to Clinton just because you and I wanted her to win.

    They did an effective job of branding her as unlikeable and untrustworthy, every time they mentioned her they mentioned those two words, and they stuck, you had everyone saying the exact same thing about her, Wilmer, Stein, Shitgibbon, and the media, and so it stuck, she was less honest and trustworthy than him. How do you combat a united wall against you, saying I’m not a lying bitch would not have worked. Putting this all on Hillary, I think is unfair, much like the voter suppression efforts that finally bore fruit this time, the smears and branding of Hillary Clinton was a long term project, because they always feared she would run, and too many democrats rewarded their efforts, for that I’m still bitter.

    Clinton and everyone else believed the polls, and this was a fatal error. She might have campaigned harder or differently in the swing states had she paid more attention to the implications of the enthusiasm for Trump. Who knows.

    And with everything else, there was a wave of sexism and racial resentment that Clinton had to deal with, a totally unfair burden And she still came close.

  320. 320.

    les

    January 31, 2017 at 3:39 pm

    @catclub:

    the foreclosure perjury on every single filing, combined with teh NOT filing proper change of title inevery county land registry – instead just creating straw owner of all the mortgages – were illegal acts.

    With respect to which the Feds have zero jurisdiction or authority. I suppose Obama was supposed to file lawsuits in every county in the US where this shit happened? To have the results be “well, yeah, admin fuckups but we can’t punish the ultimate note holder, you lose on equitable grounds.” I agree on the illegality; what’s your solution? Connect me to “big bankers go to jail.”

  321. 321.

    les

    January 31, 2017 at 3:44 pm

    @Raven Onthill:

    “Anyway, by the time O comes to office, state courts had by and large blessed the slicing and dicing – try running a criminal case on that.”

    “The law doth punish man or woman…”

    That, of course, is why Federal intervention was called for.

    Does reality play any part in your world? What’s the federal grounds for overturning state law on a massive scale? I begin to take pleasure in knowing you will live a life of doom and disappointment as your childish dreams cannot be fulfilled by any human in this country.

  322. 322.

    Timurid

    January 31, 2017 at 3:47 pm

    I’m pretty sure some time soon there will be a private meeting between Trump, Ryan, McConnell and other leading Republicans, in a sterile room swept and secured with the best technology the FSB has to offer. It will go something like this:

    REPUBLICANS: Mr. President, you need to slow down. If you keep this up we’re going to get killed in 2018.

    TRUMP: You don’t need to worry about 2018.

    REPUBLICANS: What?!

    TRUMP: Do I stutter? Did you guys sleep through the 2016 campaign? I’m totally going to rig the fuck out of the 2018 election. 2020 too.

    REPUBLICANS: HOLY SHIT!!1!

    Everything hinges on what happens after the Republicans leave the room. Do they tell each other, “This guy’s fucking insane. Who brought the Articles of Impeachment?” or “Sounds like fun… Let’s do it!”

  323. 323.

    Aleta

    January 31, 2017 at 3:49 pm

    @TenguPhule: I agree they are well prepared to overcome the opposition to Bush-Cheney’s work. To me it’s an attack on the US that’s been building since at least the 80s. It’s also opportunistic, and I expect there are many weaknesses. I don’t know what will happen, but because we know history we know the worst is possible here too. I’m glad there are many good minds who are very worried and already acting.

  324. 324.

    Patricia Kayden

    January 31, 2017 at 3:50 pm

    “It pains me to leave Ron Fournier off this list, but he’s been very tough on Trump.”

    That Wanker attacked President Obama for 8 years nonstop so he better have something to say about a Narcissist like Trump. No credit to him at all.

  325. 325.

    Patricia Kayden

    January 31, 2017 at 3:54 pm

    @schrodingers_cat: Good one. Even cats are taking the mickey out of Trump and his sycophants.

  326. 326.

    Peale

    January 31, 2017 at 3:59 pm

    @Brachiator: Yep. Believing the polls probably cost her more. And she was not able to parlay the bounce from a very positive convention into a positive campaign. Why it is that when Democrats go negative they lose more voters than Republicans do when they go negative is a mystery. But her advertising in the last weeks of the campaign was about smashing him, but not much positive.

    I think Democrats also mis-measured how attacks on Mexicans and immigrants in general would rouse voters to the cause. I think there was way too much complancency in accepting the idea that once Trump went after the Mexicans, the margin of victory with the Hispanics would go up and that would carry the day. (The republicans can’t win unless they get 27% of the Hispanic Vote and Now they Won’t. Keep it up Republicans! Har Har Har). Apparently that isn’t true and in very few states does attacking immigrants lose votes for Republicans (who are now all on board with that) and gain them for Democrats. This is a riddle that Democrats have to solve, beyond figuring out how to get young people to the polls. Its not like the Republicans aren’t going to run in 2018 on immigrant hysteria and ending NAFTA. Its been a big winner in 2010 and 2014 and 2016. And each time, the response of Democratic voters has been “Meh.”

  327. 327.

    Aleta

    January 31, 2017 at 4:10 pm

    @TenguPhule: Though T is good at disregarding laws and protocol, he is vulnerable to international business interests. I think/hope that is going to be important.

  328. 328.

    Another Scott

    January 31, 2017 at 4:15 pm

    @Peale: Good points all around.

    Hindsight is 20:20, etc., etc., but in retrospect it seems like Hillary pounding on keeping Obama’s expanded overtime rules might have been a huge win even though it “only” directly helped 4.2 M people. And pounding on the GOP for taking it to court could have helped down-ballot races too.

    “For too long, companies have required too many people to work overtime without paying. I’m going to fight to keep Obama’s recent expansion of overtime for workers, and I’m going to work to make it even better for working people. Trump says ‘wages are too high’. The choice is clear…”

    (sigh)

    We have the issues on our side. We’re about more than just human rights and decency – we’re about a fair economy too. We have to pound on that more.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  329. 329.

    The Truffle

    January 31, 2017 at 4:16 pm

    @The Moar You Know: At least hire Dean as a consultant. The 50-state strategy is so needed.

  330. 330.

    Corner Stone

    January 31, 2017 at 4:17 pm

    @Brachiator:

    Her messaging was poor. That’s on her, not the media, which right wing fools think was in the tank for her. She was an OK campaigner, but that wasn’t good enough.

    “Her message! Her message! But where was her message?!”
    So tired of asshats like you trying to propagate this bullshit meme. Her message was pretty clear, on just about every major issue. Pre-K, public education, reducing the cost of education, tech/VOC availability, HEALTHCARE, tax the rich a little more to pay for it. Families, veterans.
    Give me a fucking break.

  331. 331.

    Miss Bianca

    January 31, 2017 at 4:17 pm

    @Raven Onthill: Bullshit. And don’t get me wrong, I love Steven Brust and Emma Bull, and I love that book. But quoting a fictional version of a 19th-century bourgeois theorist about the 19th-century English working class and thinking that that somehow applies to the realities of 21st-century America is even more fatuous than quoting the real thing.

    “The people” whom you reference are hardly monolithic. Which “working class” are we talking about? POC who are working class tended to break for the Democrats in a big way – and no, they weren’t voting for Senator Sanders, by and large.

  332. 332.

    Corner Stone

    January 31, 2017 at 4:20 pm

    What the fuck was Trump’s message? “Make America Great Again!” Ok, great. Now, how?
    Muslim ban! Exiting NATO, Sucking up to Putin!, BUILDING A WALL! And making Mexico pay for it! Assaulting women! Beating queers! Putting blacks in their place!

    Are we starting to suss something out here?

  333. 333.

    O. Felix Culpa

    January 31, 2017 at 4:20 pm

    @Another Scott:

    The Trump White House has turned into a soap opera on top of everything else…

    Oooh, Telenovela Trump! The opposite of must-see tv.

  334. 334.

    Brachiator

    January 31, 2017 at 4:22 pm

    @Timurid:

    It happens when Trump does something blatantly impeachable, something that would make Nixon blush… and the Republican caucus has two choices: Impeach him, or crown him King.

    The Republicans will crown him king.

    And it had better be a gold crown, or Trump will be pissed.

    The GOP leadership has been giving Trump a pass beginning in the primaries. They think that ultimately they can control him or get what they want from him. And they simply do not care what damage he does, as long as it doesn’t hurt them.

  335. 335.

    Brachiator

    January 31, 2017 at 4:27 pm

    @Corner Stone:

    So tired of asshats like you trying to propagate this bullshit meme.

    Get a grip. I was a Clinton supporter, but you keep weaving some lame ass fantasy that I was against her. But this does not make me blind.

    I have noted a million fucking times that she lost in a squeaker. But when anyone talks to people who did not vote for her, they note weaknesses that were plain as day. But keep blaming the media, or the conspiracy of your choice. Or simply believe that there were people who were unreachable. That will only guarantee that you will lose the next election.

  336. 336.

    Corner Stone

    January 31, 2017 at 4:39 pm

    @Brachiator: The people that did not vote for her were a)never going to or b)never going to or c)never going to.

  337. 337.

    dogwood

    January 31, 2017 at 4:40 pm

    @Brachiator:
    It’s harder to get your message out as a candidate when the best you can hope for is some sound bites from the stump, while your opponent has every rally broadcast live.

  338. 338.

    Corner Stone

    January 31, 2017 at 4:41 pm

    Her message! Her message! Wherefore art thou, her message!

  339. 339.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    January 31, 2017 at 4:42 pm

    @les: Does reality play any part in your world?

    Nope. For that one, all the world’s a graduate seminar, where all the other students are wishing the professor would shut that one up.

  340. 340.

    Central Planning

    January 31, 2017 at 4:42 pm

    Where do the End Times Christianists fit into this? Narnias?

  341. 341.

    Corner Stone

    January 31, 2017 at 4:45 pm

    “Yuh know, I was on the fence about voting for or teh other of them. It was a hard choice. I thought about all her emails, and her foundation and her scheming and her rapist husband and all the bodies she’s murdered. Then I weighed that against a TV celebrity who may be the best businessman that’s ever lived. And he wants deport messicans and take things away from blacks! Tough call, I tell ya. Now, where’s muh ballot?”

  342. 342.

    Corner Stone

    January 31, 2017 at 4:47 pm

    @Timurid: “Yippeee!! No more time spent in the fundraising cubes making endless calls! I never have to see or talk with a dirty fucking peasant ever again! Thank you, Sire Trump! What are my orders today?”

  343. 343.

    Another Scott

    January 31, 2017 at 4:50 pm

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Maybe, though, a critical difference here is that if you attack Deadbeat Don he discredits himself through his hyperbolic reactions.

    Yes.

    If you believe some of the bloviating we’ve gotten over the years, if we fight back we make them stronger. But if we don’t fight back, and they do what they want without opposition, we somehow make them weaker and ourselves stronger? How’s that work in the real world??

    :-/

    Yes, if Trump demands to be the center of attention, then let’s make sure he’s the center of attention. Let’s make sure Donnie gets 10x more blame for the death and injury in the Yemen raid than Hillary did for Benghazi. Let’s see the multi-week stories in the NYTimes and the WP and on Fox about it.

    Etc.

    aAG Sally Yates got under his skin, and quickly. I expect the State Department memo signed by ~ 900 will do the same. There are millions of people working in the federal government, and hundreds of millions that depend on it. If Donnie wants to trash it, we can’t let him do it without a fight. He and his minions have to own their policies.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  344. 344.

    dogwood

    January 31, 2017 at 5:18 pm

    Shonda Rimes should have run Hillary’s campaign. That DNC video of her at the table was amazing. She actually told a moving story about her mother and how her mother’s story informed her passion for public service. I thought that was going to be the Hillary we’d see after the convention. She certainly didn’t have to make a case based on qualifications. I understand her obsession with personal privacy, and her fear of seeming vulnerable, and a lot of that is on Bill. And it’s on the press for its malice and laziness when it comes to her. One of nicest storesI ever heard about Hillary was told by Barbara Bush at a public forum on CPAN a few years ago. I’m sure the press could have dug up other good stuff to “balance” their coverage of her, but they chose not to.

  345. 345.

    Brachiator

    January 31, 2017 at 5:18 pm

    @dogwood:

    It’s harder to get your message out as a candidate when the best you can hope for is some sound bites from the stump, while your opponent has every rally broadcast live.

    Clinton won a majority of the popular vote. She got her message out in most places. It’s hard, but not impossible. And if Trump doesn’t implode, this will be a challenge in the future. Excuses don’t matter.

  346. 346.

    Another Scott

    January 31, 2017 at 5:26 pm

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: [whine]But they didn’t even try!!1[/whine]

    Thanks.

    And lots of banksters were prosecuted, also too, for the record.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  347. 347.

    Barney

    January 31, 2017 at 5:30 pm

    To the Narnians, Trump isn’t Aslan – he’s Cyrus the Great. I just google ‘Cyrus bible’, and the 1st result is the Wikipedia page ‘Cyrus the Great in the Bible’ – “Cyrus the Great (c. 600 or 576 – 530 BC) figures in the Hebrew Bible as the patron and deliverer of the Jews.” 3rd result is a Christian Post article – ‘Is Donald Trump Like Cyrus From the Bible?’, taking the question seriously – a great ruler who delivers the chosen religious people from exile and servitude, and enables them to rule themselves again. You get that without even using Trump in the search query.

    And that was written in March 2016 – imagine how excited some of them are by now about him. And the size of their self-pity, thinking they are an oppressed people in need of deliverance.

  348. 348.

    Another Scott

    January 31, 2017 at 5:32 pm

    @Percysowner: I heard part of the hearing this morning on C-Span radio and she gave a great list of reasons why she couldn’t support him.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  349. 349.

    catclub

    January 31, 2017 at 5:32 pm

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Thanks! IAlso thanks Raven Onthill

  350. 350.

    catclub

    January 31, 2017 at 5:35 pm

    @Corner Stone: Don’t forget bomb threats to Jewish cultural centers and burning mosques.

  351. 351.

    dogwood

    January 31, 2017 at 5:35 pm

    @The Truffle:
    This 50 state strategy that gave us control in ’06 received a huge assist from W., and Hastert. And it gave us some people who weren’t progressive enough for the online community.

  352. 352.

    Another Scott

    January 31, 2017 at 5:36 pm

    @dogwood: Defeating any national incumbent is a heavy lift unless there’s a scandal. When there is a scandal, all bets are off.

    We’ve got some pretty big scandals brewing already, and he hasn’t been in office 2 weeks yet…

    Nothing’s pre-ordained. They broke history, we can break the “everybody knows that Democrats won’t do well in the off-year elections” conventional wisdom, too.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  353. 353.

    Raven Onthill

    January 31, 2017 at 5:40 pm

    @Miss Bianca: well, Brust is well studied in the Communist literature, and he has a good chance of coming to at least a historically plausible version of Engels. Doesn’t mean he’s right, of course. But the point that it’s near impossible to get someone who your lies hurt personally and badly to trust you again is I think excellent one and worth paying attention to. The distinctive thing about the Communist working class is its terrible vulnerability; when what you have is taken from you, it hurts and you remember. It’s a basic that the Democrats seem to have forgotten as they became a corporate-funded (a Marxist would say bourgeois) party. As the quote points out the bourgeois will hear what they want. It is clear as day that this is the result.

  354. 354.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    January 31, 2017 at 5:43 pm

    @dogwood: and Foley, and DeLay, and Abramoff, and Katrina, and Social Security privatization (I know you already mentioned Bush, but…)

    “50 State Strategy” is a fine slogan, but neither it nor Howard Dean is magic. If he has any concrete ideas about recruiting candidates, persuading them to give up their time and privacy and careers to run for state legislatures, or to give all that up and have to move to DC, and how to raise money to fund those candidacies, I’m sure Dean won’t keep them to himself. When he’s not joining Newton Leroy and Rudi to lobby for MEK.

  355. 355.

    Aleta

    January 31, 2017 at 5:47 pm

    @Another Scott: Yes, everything bad happened while he was out of the office, and he’s shocked and upset (about the bad press and criticism and Ivanka’s and brand and all that).

  356. 356.

    Steve in the ATL

    January 31, 2017 at 5:52 pm

    @Doug R:

    Dismal Niche or Cape Dissappointment.

    You really know how to sell those places!

    But seriously–thank you

  357. 357.

    Miss Bianca

    January 31, 2017 at 6:02 pm

    @Raven Onthill: Hellooooo, sunshine? THE FUCKING (WHITE) “WORKING CLASS” ALSO HEARS WHAT IT WANTS. And a lot of what it wants is completely unrealistic (and racist) horseshit. As in, “oh, boy, Trump says he’s gonna bring my grand-pappy’s job back! And he’s going to stick it those Mexicans/blacks/queers that are Taking My Job Away! that’s what I want to hear!”

    Does it matter that the market’s dropped out for coal, or that automation has cut the number of those jobs down to a handful anyway, or that Mexicans, blacks and queers aren’t the problem, guys like Donald Trump and the Koch Brothers, who own the fucking mines, are the problem? No!

    How many white coal miners do you know? Any? I know a bunch – and they all voted for Donald Trump, and they’re all getting screwed up the ass because of all those factors, and they don’t want to hear the truth, which is that those jobs aren’t coming back, can’t come back, and they have to figure out another way to make $40,000 a year – like, getting some education and getting the hell out of Dodge. They (just like you!) are going to blame the Democrats for that reality, even tho’ the Democrats didn’t create it and are the only ones even close to actually working on trying to come up with some solutions.

    Take this “oh, the Democrats are a corporate-funded party” crap and cram it. So are the Republicans, far more so, and your (white) working class voter has no problem voting for them. And I never said that Brust couldn’t ape a creditable Engels – I said that quoting a fictional Engels on the 19th-century working class as some kind of mystical guide to understanding 21st-century America is bullshit.

  358. 358.

    TenguPhule

    January 31, 2017 at 6:30 pm

    @Aleta: Only as long as it takes for him to find a weakness and rape it, Figuratively speaking (but won’t rule out literal if he targets female family members of “enemies”) . So far every response by the Facist in Office has been escalation, threats and gradual mission creep of the term “enemy”. Notice how its spread from Mexicans, to Muslims, to the media and now its the opposition party’s turn. Every major voice that speaks out is being marked down by the Dolt 45 for retribution and he now has the power to literally spy in their homes and offices to find leverage he can on them. Yes, it would be completely illegal, but again I repeat myself, what has he done lately that suggests he cares about breaking the law? Or that his red minions give a damn about it any more either?

    The best that can be said for the “Good Americans” is that most of them seem to be simply ignoring what’s happening rather then actively supporting him.

  359. 359.

    Raven Onthill

    January 31, 2017 at 7:26 pm

    @Miss Bianca: Don’t go sneering at people who want an honest wage for an honest days work. That contempt is part of the problem. It would be best if those jobs did not come back. More efforts ought to have been made on the miners behalf, both in finding other employment and in safety, and neither party did so.

    African American and Latino unemployment skyrocketed after the crash of 2008. Those groups were also among those hurt worst by mortgage and failed foreclosure policy.

    Since Buckley both major parties have increasingly relied on funding from the very wealthy. Will you deny it? Part of the job of a candidate became fundraising, and this meant that candidates spent a great deal of time listening to the sources of funding. It also enormously cramped the ability of politicians to appeal to voters who were not wealthy. They couldn’t promise people better wages, a pro-employment policy, or better banking regulation without risking their campaign funding and, ultimately, their jobs.

    When the crisis came, when we desperately needed to break up the big banks, return the bankruptcy system to something that allowed an honorable fresh start, and resolve the mortgage crisis in favor of the people whose homes were at risk, neither party was willing to do it — all those connections with money paid off for the money. People were put out of their homes and left unemployed for years. Would you trust a ruler who allowed that? Why?

    In the end, the Democrats had no credibility left with what you might call the working class. Now, people in New York who knew Trump knew how he treated the “working class.” I am one handshake away from 10 people he stiffed and if I still lived there and worked in building I would know many more. Everyone in building in New York City knows he is a giant fraud. The reports are legion. But the public is really poor at seeing the lesser evil and the Democrats, for whatever reason, didn’t attack him on that. Trump had credibility with the rest of the country and that helped make the difference.

    Clinton lost the election to sexism, racism, bad press, and bad luck. But in the longer term the Democratic Party tried to serve both Mammon and the people, and that turned out not to be possible.

    And, damn, go reread Clinton’s “two baskets” remarks. She had, by that point, got it. But it was too late.

  360. 360.

    Tehanu

    January 31, 2017 at 11:31 pm

    @Oatler.:

    I’ve loved Narnia and Tolkien and even Heinlein all my life, and I’m a yellow-dog Democrat. It really pisses me off that these conservatards think that Tolkien, in particular, would applaud their orcish attitudes — a man who told the Nazis he was sorry he wasn’t Jewish!

  361. 361.

    larry moseley

    February 4, 2017 at 12:28 pm

    instead of 4 maybe what about 5? what will happen when YOU check out? all the name calling, shouting, yelling, burning, lawlessness, hating authority, etc will be over and so will your little meaningless ideas, and then, and then, YOU will check out, i am not religious, so, how many religions are there, will it make things better for you in the bye and bye? but the here and now decisions might make it interesting for you someday. check out time.

  362. 362.

    larry moseley

    February 4, 2017 at 12:30 pm

    what the hell does moderation mean?

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