My 80-percent-white hometown in Arkansas is flying a Black Lives Matter banner downtown. Your move, literally everywhere else. pic.twitter.com/24R0jMIxE9
— Sam Eifling (@SamEifling) February 2, 2017
Not a permanent solution, of course, but at least some of the poor wretches trying to put their lives back together should be able to patch something together while it lasts. From the Washington Post, “Federal judge temporarily blocks Trumpâs entry order nationwide“:
A federal judge in Washington state on Friday temporarily blocked enforcement of President Trumpâs controversial ban on entry to the United States, and airlines planned to begin allowing passengers from banned countries to board, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Following the ruling, government authorities immediately began communicating with airlines and taking steps that would allow travel by those previously barred from doing so, according to a U.S. official. At the same time, though, the White House said in a statement that the Justice Department would âat the earliest possible timeâ file for an emergency stay of the âoutrageousâ ruling from the judge. Minutes later, it issued a similar statement omitting the word âoutrageous.â…
The federal judgeâs ruling, which was broader than similar ones before it, set up a high-stakes legal confrontation between the new president and the judicial branch over his temporary ban on entry by citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries as well as refugees. In his opinion, U.S. District Judge James L. Robart wrote that âfundamentalâ to the courtâs work was âa vigilant recognition that it is but one of three equal branches of our federal government.â
âThe court concludes that the circumstances brought before it today are such that it must intervene to fulfill its constitutional role in our tripart government,â he wrote.
The ruling is temporary, and the ultimate question of whether Trumpâs executive order will pass constitutional muster will fall to higher-level courts. Legal analysts have said the ban could be difficult to permanently undo because the president has broad authority to set immigration policy.
Robart granted a request from lawyers for the state of Washington who had asked him to stop the government from acting on critical sections of Trumpâs order. Justice and State department officials had revealed earlier Friday that about 60,000 â and possibly as many as 100,000 â visas already have been provisionally revoked as a result of Trumpâs order. A U.S. official said that because of the court case, officials would examine the revoking of those visas so that people would be allowed to travel…
Immigration lawyers said Friday night that they were still assessing the Washington case but were heartened by it.
âThe order makes it clear that all of the main provisions of the executive order cannot be enforced at this time,â said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Unionâs Immigrantsâ Rights Project. âThat means that a lot will have to change immediately, and the government will have to make clear how they intend to follow the order with respect to all of the ways in which immigrants here and abroad are being affected at the moment.â…
With any luck, by Monday the President-Asterisk will have been distracted by his new feud with Arnold Schwarzenegger, or the rumor that Nordstrom’s stopped carrying Ivanka’s clothing line, and “President Bannon” will decide he’s pushed his white-nationalist agenda as far as he can until the shouting dies down…
***********
Apart from that, what’s on the agenda for the weekend?
OzarkHillbilly
Called the # to the Senate Homeland Security committee (thankyou Rikyrah) yesterday, left a message. Had to stop with “I’ll leave it at that.” as all the descriptive words that were about to fall off my tongue were of the less than acceptable in polite society kind.
Baud
Impressive, Fayetteville.
prob50
Well, it’s certainly a start. Anything that derails the Trump Desecrate & Destruct Express, even temporarily is a plus. As you noted, Generalissimo Von Trump is often easily distracted if he’s not personally attacking someone in particular.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: I have friends in Fayetteville. I am not surprised.
Lapassionara
This is heartening. Wonder what the story is. In other news, seems that the Iraqis fighting for Mosul aren’t happy with the Trump administration’s EO. Imagine that.
OzarkHillbilly
@Lapassionara: Fayetteville is home to the University of Arkansas. It’s hard to learn with a closed mind.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly:
Wait, you have friends?
Raven
And then there is Fayettnam!
Waldo
I’m sure the plan is to keep bulldozing norms in all areas until the critics collapse from outrage fatigue. Seriously, who can keep up?
OzarkHillbilly
@?BillinGlendaleCA: What other people call “lesser enemies” I have to call friends. It’s akin to having a wolverine gnawing on my foot instead of my balls.
Raven
@OzarkHillbilly: you have. . .?
Raven
Too good to pass up when it’s put on a tee!
OzarkHillbilly
@Raven: Let me check….
Kay
I’m going to a 4-county meeting for a new group of anti-Trump women at noon and my husband is going to a Michigan meeting for a group of anti-Trump environmentalists, Great Lakes division.
You’ll be able to pick your very specific group of anti-Trumpers soon- he won’t be able to go anywhere without running into a faction :)
Sab
@OzarkHillbilly: @OzarkHillbilly: Are you in Missouri or Arkansas? I am in Ohio where we are warm and fuzzy all the time (unless we are voting for our next government). If we are voting then we consider jackals to be unacceptable leftists.
japa21
Based on the reactions both here and abroad, I have come to the conclusion that Trump has fulfilled his main campaign promise to Make America Grate (on everyone’s nerves) Again.
Baud
@Kay: Take back the Midwest, Kay.
Kay
This is theft. They’re stealing wages that were earned. Trump’s labor dept nominee regularly steals from people who make 7 dollars an hour. In a just world he would be in prison. In fact, any of those employees would have been sentenced to jail time for stealing from Hardees.
OzarkHillbilly
@Sab: Washington Co MO, about 70 miles SW of St Louis. I know a lot of Arkie folks from my caving days down there. We aren’t very warm or fuzzy, more like a frozen cactus.
trnc
OT, but I just sent a fax to Sen Burr to reject DeVos. There is almost no chance he will because, you know, sweet campaign cash, but I read in another thread that faxes are a good idea because they create a trail and they aren’t as likely to be lost among thousands of emails, etc. I used faxzero.com and got some good tips for writing the letter from here.
http://bebusinessed.com/congress-fax-numbers/
Also, this was on top of everyone in the house calling and leaving voice mails where we could.
I created a fax cover page template that I expect to be using a lot.
Baud
@Kay: Hillary’s son-in-law works on Wall Street. Which is worse, Kay?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: I covered for ya on the previous thread(“The NYT is garbage”).
MomSense
I’m still laughing about the national prayer breakfast. Those stupid, stupid fundamentalists.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: And did you know Hillary had an email server in her basement?
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: Thanx, Kay. All these years I’ve been boycotting Hardee’s and it wasn’t until now that I knew why.
OzarkHillbilly
@MomSense: What happened?
Kay
@Baud:
No Democrat will ever say this because it’s impossible, and of course it’s anecdotal, but more and more talking to people here about Trump I’m finding out his strongest supporters are a certain kind of white working class man. There was a huge gender element in that election that was ignored. These are men who are mad at women for various reasons- divorces, child support, what they feel are false allegations of domestic violence or just their sense that the US is too touchy-feely, too “girly”. They are people who have not had success in their personal lives and they attribute that to what I would describe (they don’t say this) as broad complaints about a “feminized” culture. I hear this A LOT. I’m not bringing up Trump. They are.
I don’t think Democrats can reach them and still be Democrats because the fact is a lot of the Democrats domestic agenda is focused on things they consider unimportant – what pundits called “mommy Party” stuff in the 1990’s. Democrats also can’t fix whatever has failed in their personal lives that makes them so bitter.
TriassicSands
U.S. District Judge James L. Robart obviously hates Amurka and is a secret Islamist-loving terrorist. I assume Trump sees no reason to pay any attention to a judge, which is why I’m surprised Trump is even bothering to challenge the order in court. Why doesn’t he just fire the offending judge? I mean somewhere in all those Articles Trump has never read is the power for the president to fire anyone who pisses him off.
Shalimar
@OzarkHillbilly: I was boycotting Hardee’s because they advertise huge servings of greasy food for fat slobs and I am perfectly capable of cooking those meals at home for 25% of the price.
MomSense
@OzarkHillbilly:
He showed up bragging about his election and then humble bragged/prayed for Arnold’s ratings in The Apprentice.
Kay
@Baud:
So more and more I’m feeling like this isn’t about wages, these people are secure economically, it’s about failures in their personal lives- disappointment in relationships with women, their children didn’t turn out “okay”, that sort of thing.
That’s not really a political problem. It’s clearly a problem if their families are falling apart but that won’t be fixed by a President.
Immanentize
@?BillinGlendaleCA: by “basement” you of course meant to write “evil neoliberal lair”
Amirite?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kay: Yup, ya hit the nail on the head, Kay. These people are unreachable. I really don’t think there are a great number of voters who voted for Obama and then Trump.
@KayThat’s pretty much what exit polling showed, the under 50k folk voted for HRC, it was the more well off that voted for Trump.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA: My man! I hoping M^4 finishes roboBaud soon so we can focus our energies on more complex matters.
lollipopguild
@OzarkHillbilly: Trump showed up and whipped out his ego and waved it in everyones face.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Immanentize: : Of course, my bad.
Kay
My son brought two apprentices here for dinner last night. They have nicknames. They call one of them “money”- it’s sarcastic because he talks about buying expensive stuff all the time. I love that nickname. It’s so cool! “Money”
If I were him I’d make sure that sticks.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Kay, I think we’re seeing a repeat of 1968 in the 2016 election. Society is changing and these people don’t want it to change and feel aggrieved by the changes(the changing role of women, immigrants, and BLM).
lollipopguild
@Immanentize: The server was in her evil liberal cave on her evil liberal secret island that she bought from Dr Evil. Nah hah hah!
amk
@MomSense:
class vs crass
kindness
Suggesting Bannon has an ounce of polite strategy is a point I have yet to see. I suspect he will double down as he’s already set the stakes. Now he’ll defend his turf as he knows how. Look at the Breitbart website. That is all he knows how. Get the rubles frenzied & howling.
Why to right wing nutz have to be such easy marks anyhow?
Kay
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
It’s uncomfortable for me because I wonder why they feel they can say this to me because I am a woman. They’re not putting me in some category I probably want to be in :)
I just had no idea there were so many men who were like “this country is too female” because I don’t think it is AT ALL. That really is cultural though. It would be a very different Party if Democrats were to pursue these voters.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Kay:
I have to disagree. In a truly just world, he should be getting dragged to a bullet-pocked wall, pissing himself and gibbering incoherently about how it was “just business”, to please grant him mercy….
Elizabelle
@Kay: That’s a great comment, about Trump supporters resenting “feminization” and the Mommy party.
It holds true for Trump women supporters too. Lot of women are the type that will hold other women back, or prefer the male hierarchy. It’s how they were raised, and they either did not do any critical thinking or are afraid to think for themselves.
randy khan
Trump’s nominee for Secretary of the Army has withdrawn, saying it would be too hard to separate himself from his business:
Public service is hard
This is a guy Mattis did not want but the Trump team picked anyway. It will be interesting to see who gets chosen to replace him.
Kay
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Right, but “feminized” specifically, because that touches their whole lives- relationships, etc. They’re attributing “failures” in their grown children to “coddling” by women- which I don’t think is even true- I’m stricter with our kids than my husband is, he’s a pushover :)
I could see how Trump would appeal to them.
Oldgold
Outrageous and frightening!
@realDonaldTrump
The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!
So-called?!?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@kindness:
They’re not all that bright.
Kay
@Elizabelle:
I agree and I’m acquainted with a lot of them but I think they would say they prefer men who are like Trump. It’s a conscious choice. They are thinking, and choosing.
Baud
@Kay: Agree, Kay. The key is not to try to win them over but to lessen their influence over our marginal voters.
kindness
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Who knew hippie punching was such a powerful drug?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kay: Exactly, they equate feminized with weak. Seems to me they’re resentful because the opposite is true.
TriassicSands
@randy khan:
Well, you can begin your search with billionaires. They seem to be the favored employee pool for Trump.
Kay
@Oldgold:
The President going after federal judges is where the institutions will draw the line. I know he went after one in the election but it’s no joke when the President does it. If institutional actors are ever going to stand up to him it will be when he attacks a federal judge. It’s like hallowed ground.
I hope he keeps it up. He’s a moron. There are lines he can’t cross and that’s one of them. If they DON’T rein him in we’ll know it’s completely out of control.
Peale
@Oldgold: “who are you to judge me!” “Well, I’m actually a judge.”
Maybe he thinks she just opened up her own court?
Betty Cracker
@Kay: That description absolutely fits the Trump supporters I know.
OzarkHillbilly
@Shalimar: That’s what I thought too, but I like Kay’s reason better. Makes me sound high minded or concerned about social justice or something.
@MomSense: Ah, that. I was hoping I had missed something.
Kay
@Baud:
It’s a shame because I felt like Obama made real inroads with white working class women. They liked him. I think a big part of the reason is how well he treated his wife and daughters. It’s just such a step backward for “manly” to be defined as treating women like shit. It’s going back 50 years.
zhena gogolia
@amk:
Not to mention Barack knows his Scripture in and out, always quotes it pertinently and in a non-cliche manner.
Oldgold
I think he may have earned a new title: So-called President.
Darkrose
@Oldgold: Yes…. /rubs hands together
I truly want to see him go after the federal judiciary. I know people keep bringing up Andrew Jackson; the difference is that now the federal courts’ role is enhrined in 200-odd years worth of norms and customs. And unlike Congressional norms, it seems to me (IANAL) that regardless of partisan leanings, the one thing judges agree on is that you don’t fuck with them. Having the President publicly going after a federal judge will hopefully piss off his colleagues.
It also helps those of us on the ground to have him refusing to back down. If they had any sense at all they’d say, “We don’t agree, but we’ll abide by the law,” and wait for the protests to die down. Instead, he’s keeping us fired up and keeping the issue in the foreground.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: What they resent is the loss of what it means to be a man. They don’t know what to replace it with. I have worked with these people all my life and you just can’t fix stupid.
randy khan
@Oldgold:
@Kay:
A “so-called” judge appointed by George W. Bush, to boot.
Jeffro
This article has been out for a week, so my apologies if someone here has already linked to it. It’s just…wow.
The Data That Turned the World Upside Down. Psychometric profiles of all 220 million American adults, all ready for manipulating with individually targeted messages.
I remember seeing a similar article about a week before the election and was blown away at the use of targeted messages (like HRC’s ‘Super-predators’ comment) to drive down D turnout as well as increase R turnout. Couple that with fake news to rile up the R base and Russian assistance and the Comey interference…they just keep coming up with ways to try and hold back democracy.
One quick takeaway: quit “liking” anything at all on Facebook…I know several here are not fans anyway…perhaps leave it entirely or minimize use of it. I know my mom is on quite a bit and she certainly got quite a few of those targeted messages from the GOP.
debbie
@MomSense:
The thought that any of them had an inner twinge of doubt or nausea while listening to Trump going off on Arnold is strangely rewarding. I hope one day they choke on their sanctimony.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
A lot of their grown children are a mess- not working, addictions, they’re intervening to care for grandchildren but it seems like such a cop out to blame all that on women or “culture” and then to admire or turn to a person who has no friends, multiple failed marriages, what I consider weird overly-dependent personal relationships with his own children- shouldn’t they be modeling after Obama? He’s the national Dad. He was so comfortable in that role. I think Obama considers “father” as his essential self. It permeates everything he does.
debbie
@Elizabelle:
In other words, they’re just downright mean, resentful, and unChristian.
amygdala
Forgive me if this was already posted and I missed it, but this is an interesting take on the state of Virginia’s complaint against the Muslim ban: that it had its roots in Plessy, that we didn’t sit still for it with marriage equality, and it’s bogus now. I hope all of that is true.
I’ve been in NY the past few days–I have a ticket to see Hamilton tonight. Riding the subway or walking the streets, hearing so many different languages and seeing people from all around the world… this is the country I know and love. There will be setbacks as we push back against he current plague inside the Beltway. But we had a few victories this week, amidst the ongoing horror, and we just keep at it. This America, noisy, strong, and diverse… is worth fighting for.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Sorry, one quick little correction:
Jeffro
Also, I think this is the kind of thing we should be sharing far and wide, prefaced with, “These people don’t know what they’re doing and it’s dangerous for the country”: Bannon/Miller vs Kelly/Mattis at 2 a.m.(!)
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Kay:
So yesterday, I noted a new follow on my twitter. I go by my real name and it was for my law practice, but I’ve been….florid….in my comments.
I typically target the following for my worst:
Liz Spayd
Dean Baquet
Jill Stein
Glenn Greenwald
Richard Spencer
Donald Trump
Julian Assange
Wikileaks
Maggie Haberman
Andrea Mitchell
Chuck Todd (when he doesn’t have me blocked)
I’ve got kind of a blowtorch twitter voice, and the mentions are a hoot.
So this new follow is someone I knew from mutual friends since high school, and who I used to think of as a friend (I was in his first wedding, am godfather to his oldest daughter, did his dad’s probate, advised him on critical things in his divorce, and still take his calls when he’s fucked something up royally). He fits your description to a T, and has been running neonazi right for the last 15 years (his dad was weird as shit, and he started demonstrating ingrained racism in his 20s). He’s also been a failure at everything – lazy, angry, misogynist. Some of his domestic violence was horrific, and I misread it as justifiable rage against an even lazier and mouthy partner (I now see what I missed before). Instead, her depression and complaining was a symptom.
For him, his excuse is that his life sucks because “Jews, ni55ers, pu55y and sp!cs”, not because he’s lazy and incurious, bouncing from shit job to shit job and woman to woman. He now lives outside Ocala and is long haul trucking, and apparently is some sort of figure at NatVan.
I blocked him from my facebook about 18 months ago when he started arguing with my youngest daughter on my wall and posting white supremacist bullshit. on the follow I just noticed, he’s got a frog head Trump avatar and uses his first initial and last name followed by 14. I guess he noticed me scalding a Prison Planet twit.
The 14 pisses me the fuck off. I’m not going to have his 14 word bullshit posted at me, so I think I’ll toss a block in his direction. It’s actually sad – I like his sister (she was always the normal one) and like his kids.
amygdala
@Kay: It could be interesting to see how they react to women now being required to sign up for Selective Service. For African-Americans, Japanese-Americans, and LGBTQ folks, it cracked the door open some for broader acceptance. But it also represents an incursion into–oh, the irony–one of the last safe spaces for these guys. So who knows?
Baud
@Kay: It’s a shame and a tragedy.
NotMax
Do Jared and Ivanka have a shabbos viceroy?
Inquiring minds…
Baud
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Good list.
ET
@?BillinGlendaleCA: you know what is sad? They think they actually believed his clap trap about money not making anyone happy or some such. He literally fells just the opposite.
danielx
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
That’s been going on since January 20, 2009. You know, when the Kenyan usurper moved into the WHITE House
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone???
rikyrah
For me, the most outrageous thing is the cancellation of the visas.
Did Dolt45 tweet yet?
Bupalos
@Kay: How about just “a certain kind of person with a certain disappointing and destabilized life experience?” It’s not limited to men, economic class, people with motorcycles, people with beards… sure you can find lots of ways to divide up these folks by category, but to me all that does is reinforce the false notion that it’s their membership in that category that is to blame. It’s pretty easy to see the potential harm in that and nearly impossible for me to see the benefit.
Personally I think the biggest factor in the rise of Trump and the Republicans is a decades long degradation in certain values that people thought of as objective but are increasingly and undeniably subjective and temporary. Chief among these is the value of basic physical labor which served as a kind of underpinning of human economic value. That does probably traditionally start with men but there’s a whole human economy affecting everyone and everything that rests on it. I think a lot of these folks struggle with the notion that in their traditional accounting they may be essentially valueless or worse.
And some version of this happens every time and in every society where this basic value of human labor suffers a sudden destabilization. In it’s first throes I think you tend to see this attempt to directly resurrect that value above all.
JPL
@Kay:
Unfortunately, I don’t see anyone of the republican side reining him in, until they have their tax cuts and destroy Medicare and Social Security. I hope I’m wrong though.
rikyrah
@Kay:
thanks for realizing that they can’t be reached. let’s move forward.
Lapassionara
I have three sisters, and I spent my childhood mostly being parented by women. Boys were a mystery to me, until I had a son. Then I learned how completely primal they can be, especially when in groups. Like watching the monkey mound at the zoo. In the work place, it is a rare man who does not need to play ” my _____ is bigger than your ___.” The idea of being bossed by a woman is abhorrent to them. They are the type that “roll coal” (or want to) and admire T for his disgusting treatment of women. Democrats would be crazy to try for their votes.
ET
Off topic but interesting. CNN is reporting that Trump’s candidate for Army Secretary just withdrew. Said something about not being able to successfully navigate the confirmation process. Whatever it was must have not been good.
rikyrah
@MomSense:
can you believe the reaction if 44 had done that? It was outrageous???
ThresherK
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: You’re a lawyer with a blowtorch Twitter voice and all the right enemies? Bravo.
(Insert Fry meme of “Shut up and take my money!”)
rikyrah
@Kay:
you bring this up a lot, and I thank you. of course, he would put a horrible person like this as Labor Secretary.
rikyrah
@Kay:
that sounds wonderful???
dmsilev
@rikyrah: Yes he did. Angry Twit is angry:
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
Ksmiami
here In Beantown for the weekend and visited the Tea Party Museum Et al. If a bunch of bedraggled farmers with muskets can defeat an empire, we can bring down Trump and the GOP. It might not be tomorrow but soon.
Baud
@MomSense: Jesus is an Apprentice fan. Remember what he said in the beatitudes: Blessed are the winners, for they shall not be fired.
Baud
@Ksmiami:
At first, I was like, why, Boston? Then I remembered.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Because he didn’t have his father, getting fatherhood right was very important to 44.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Bupalos:
If you look at the America of the 50s and early 60s, mediocre white men could always count on a sinecure. Look at some of those useless vocations – service station attendants who cleaned your wipers and checked your oil as gas got pumped. Bloated city works departments. Bloated state roads departments. Line jobs to the shop steward’s stupid brother in law. Legacy admissions to Ivies.
Equality chews that up and makes them compete – and to them, loss of privilege looks like repression.
rikyrah
did we ever hear more about the purge at the Secret Service?
rikyrah
@dmsilev:
so-called judge?
Da hail??
amk
@Bupalos:
Now what kinda jobs that could facilitate that? The jobs in infrastructure projects? Healthcare? Oh, that’s right, they consistenly voted for rethugs who consistently voted against such things for 8 years. Yeah, their failures are their own and they can gft for the plights they find themselves in.
scav
@dmsilev: Isn’t it sooo annoying when so-called judges get above themselves and barge their way into the legal sphere?! As though their so-called “opinions” mattered. Shouldn’t someone point out the twittergod that appointing a so-called judge to a supreme court will only encourage their delusions of relevance? Best not.
Tenar Arha (same Tenar, more Nameless Ones)
@Kay: This Tweetstorm, starting about where I’ve quoted below, seems related to your point about disappointment-
bemused
@Elizabelle:
Sometimes I think wingnut men really resent women because on some level they realize that so many if not most women are smarter than them. Clearly, I am biased.
Quinerly
@ET:
Good piece up at WAPO about the Army Secretary nominee withdrawing. He’s another billionaire with tangled up investments.
dmsilev
@rikyrah: One hopes that someone brings this tweet to the attention of the judge. Judges love being disrespected.
Elizabelle
@bemused: I think that’s true. They would not have to work so hard to hold women down, if they were truly inferior.
Society without women in it lacks a lot. Liza Mundy wrote a great essay about that a few years ago. The first thing the Taliban did: remove the women from the public sphere. Because they are a moderating force.
SRW1
@Kay:
Russia has recently cancelled some laws that criminalized domestic violence. Apparently, for real men a beating a week is therapeutic and a sign of affection.
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: Steve Clemons tweeted that it was actually IT staff that was forced out; he had been mistaken they were Secret Service.
A Ghost to Most
@Jeffro:
I fear for all the progressive people whose whole lives are on the Domesday book.
What will happen when Der Undergropenfinger and his henchman decide to act on all that evidence of insufficient fealty?
It smelled like dogshit 10 years ago; now it smells like a sewer plant.
sdhays
@Elizabelle: So they were too effective and were getting in the way of Russian spying, I guess?
randy khan
@TriassicSands: Reports are that Mattis wanted Michelle Flournoy (not sure I got the spelling right) who was in DoD under Obama. That probably won’t happen, but you never know.
SRW1
@A Ghost to Most:
Umerziehungslager.
OzarkHillbilly
@Quinerly: Unlike Trump and family, he seems to think ethics laws actually apply to him.
Tazj
@Kay: I’m upset at those voters but I also feel sorry for them, because of their kids. I’m furious with Trump, his gang and the media for using people’s pain to get the presidency. All of these people (Trump,etc) had success, can enjoy their life and should know better. However, now the country and its institutions are at risk and these troubled voters won’t get the help they need.
bemused
@Elizabelle:
It’s pretty easy to spot the insecure men at workplaces by how a man handles being outperformed in the same job, experience, etc. by a woman or women.
A Ghost to Most
@SRW1:
Thank ceiling cat for google translate, but yes
Lizzy L
@Quinerly: At least he recognizes that he might have a problem — unlike, say Puzder, or Pruitt, or Price, or DeVos. Ethics, how do they work?
Iowa Old Lady
@Darkrose: I’m guessing John Roberts would be one of the people upset by Trump going after a federal judge.
sdhays
Here’s an interesting article from a non-political news site about how Trump’s tweets are going to be used against him in the Muslim Ban EO. My favorite quote from one of the attorneys:
Brachiator
@Kay:
Conservatives, Republicans, Facebook “friends” should always be asked, “Are these the burdensome regulations you think should be eliminated?”
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@A Ghost to Most:
As giggling MAGA cap wearing reconditioners work on me in the FEMA camp I’m dragged to, they can enjoy a never ending stream of invective and insults about their morals, parentage and dick size.
Kay
@Tazj:
It’s so complicated though because they need the help but at the same time they resent needing the help. That’s the contradiction Trump exploited- he told them the only reason they need this help at all is because of liberals.
They want to retain the idea that they are wholly self-sufficient and they can’t, because they’re not. They never really were. Where I live labor unions played a huge role in “self sufficiency” – a private entity, a collective- that did what government wouldn’t or couldn’t do. Ag subsidies? Create “self sufficiency”. I get that self sufficiency is a myth for modern people but they believe it and beliefs aren’t destroyed using facts.
Ksmiami
@Baud: Remembering our American roots feels good; We must defeat Trump and restore our Republic
Kay
@Tazj:
Liberals have to figure out a way of talking about valuing the work that people do without demonizing people who can’t work or sounding like elitists- people who only value certain kinds of work. I personally think that connection was something labor unions offered Democrats. They kept them plugged in to work and wages. Democrats lost that connection with the decline of labor unions. They started being the people who talk about the earned income tax credit and student loan programs and incredibly complex health insurance subsidies They need to get closer than that.
Ivanka won’t connect at all with white working class and a tax credit for child care. It’s something Brookings would come up with – it won’t mean anything to them :)
Closer. This stuff is too far way and abstract.
Citizen Scientist
Just thought I’d share this from a friend of an acquaintance in re: Sen. Toomey (R – Whorestreet):
I don’t think we’ll shift Toomey on voting to confirm DeVos (FSM knows we’re trying in PA), but maybe we’ll get something else.
Larkspur
@?BillinGlendaleCA: There’s kind of a repeat of post-WWII, also, except for the higher standard of living. All the girls and women who’d been working in industry, who had been flying transport planes and teaching men to fly, who had been out of the house and earning their own money – they were all urged (ordered?) to go home so the returning veterans could get the jobs and return society to its normal configuration. It was a whole campaign, “Give us back our wives and mothers!” If you worked anyway, you were taking a job away from a head of the household, the rightful bread-winner.
It kinda worked, and thinking about it over the years has given me more compassion for my mother’s generation (I, uh, didn’t used to be so compassionate; young people are so callow). But the freedom (and of course the burden – it’s hard out there making a living) never got extinguished as an idea. (And of course, millions of women neverstopped working – they were the housekeepers, laundry-workers, nannies, seamstresses, farm workers, etc.)
But it never returned to the illusory olden times. Then civil rights, then women’s rights – with, finally, the means to control one’s reproductive life, and now it never will. I can picture the anxiety that would cause for some men. You can’t even count on the little woman at home, making things seem normal, not being as well-informed or as worldly as you, and needing you. My father loved being king, and he mostly chose to be benevolent. But the choice to be benevolent hinges on having the power to begin with. (He also ordered my mother to find a job when we kids were all in school all day; he said it was time she “contributed financially” to the family.)
Of course life gets better when two people, life partners, choose to work together. But they have to respect and value each other, and in a zero-sum world, that takes a huge adjustment that hasn’t been accomplished yet. So there are men who are angry and miserable. There are also plenty of women who hate other women for being so pushy, for wanting too much.
Timurid
@SRW1: A pan of sizzling bacon grease to the face is just how she says “I love you.”
hovercraft
@Kay:
This so much this, they have been embittered and so they want to screw everyone and everything around them, they are pissed off at life and women especially, and that black guy who got that job that I should have gotten. They vote republican because they echo the fuck everyone, get off my lawn philosophy they believe in. Hillary was never going to get their votes, in fact they took the opportunity to come out and vote against her, thinking it would piss off that ex-wife, the Shitgibbon was their revenge against the wife and everyone responsible for making them miserable, let everyone else get a taste of what they’ve been experiencing.
We will never get those people unless we run an asshole like Joe Mancin,( who for where he is is fine, but would be a terrible candidate to represent democrats nationally), or some really hot chick they could all fantasize about schtupping, even then they’d probably vote against her figuring she’d be one of those strident feminists who wouldn’t give them the time of day. We need to focus on getting more of the people out there who already agree with us to get out and vote, we cannot change what we stand for, or become GOP light.
The media will continue to bash us as not being in touch with real America, by which they mean white America, that’s fine, so long as we get our side which is bigger and therefore actually real America, out to vote. Or given the first two weeks, the country is a smoldering pile of wreckage, a democrat will be elected to clean up the mess.
Timurid
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I’m not so comfortable with the whole ‘growing inequality and job destruction is a just verdict’ thing. That kind of thinking is especially widespread and toxic in academia. I got a long lecture on how the only way to cleanse unfairness from the system was totally savage, war to the knife meritocracy. From a cis/het white male with an Ivy PhD. Luckily for me, the discussion was online and not in person. That’s the only reason I’m not in jail right now.
Joey Maloney
@Kay:
If they don’t scapegoat, who are they going to blame? Themselves, for being shitty parents? Their kids, for being shitty humans?
MomSense
@Ksmiami:
Not sure if this little tidbit is mentioned at the tea party museum but Sam Adams pre-paid the ship owners for the tea before it was dumped in the harbor. Tea party was an AstroTurf operation even then.
Ksmiami
@MomSense: The collusion was hinted at. I mean the crew was docile about their year long cargo going overboard but the point is this Trump acting like a King will be his downfall. we are a messy noisy violent Democracy and he will be surrounded by enemies.
randy khan
@Jeffro:
You know what? If they’re going to come after me, Facebook will be the least of my problems.
Political contributions are a matter of public record, for instance. You don’t even have to do any clever data mining, since the reports list name, address, employer and occupation.
This actually makes me feel like I can be bolder – if the night of the long knives really does occur, I’m toast anyway, so I might as well own my opinions and act on them.
The Lodger
@Kay: I always wondered how certain white men dealt with Obama as National Dad. Now we know.
Tazj
@Kay: I agree with what you are saying, it’s complicated.
After the election I hated the whole Rust Belt narrative, “big parts of the country have been left behind and Democrats didn’t care.” Then you had Democrats like Tim Ryan and some in the media like Chris Arnade agreeing with that characterization which I think for the most part, wasn’t true. How could people vote for Trump who seems to only care about himself, and reward Republican obstruction? It has been really difficult for me not to resent Trump voters. Growing up in a family that needed food stamps and subsidized school lunches, and parents who grew up during the Depression, I was disabused of the fact that one could truly be self sufficient no matter how hard one worked(But I had to work hard and get my degree) However, when you mentioned their children not doing well I felt more sympathy towards them.
I agree that the decline of unions has really hurt Democrats. It seems that most voters just resent unions and the government, making it difficult to craft a message that can appeal to a wide range of voters. I know at the hospital where I used to work, many people loved our union(SEIU) and hated everyone else’s.
liberal
@kindness:
Because they have average to low IQs.
Shana
@trnc: I got an email from Tim Kaine last night that said he’d received 25,000 calls and mail about DeVos. One assumes that the vast majority were against her, but still 25,000? Kind of stunning.
Neldob
@Kay: So, what makes this guy a populist again?
Tazj
@Tazj: I wanted to add that even though I might have some sympathy for people I think it was wrong and dangerous for some in the media and some liberals to excuse and ignore the racism, sexism, xenophobia and ignorance exhibited by Trump and his voters. You can sympathize and point out that this is wrong and he can’t possibly be the answer.
TerryC
@Jeffro:
I made around 11,000 “likes” on FB in 2016. They already know who I am. ??
Barry
@Iowa Old Lady: “Iâm guessing John Roberts would be one of the people upset by Trump going after a federal judge.”
Has there been any sign that the SCOTUS Four care about that? Remember, GOP misdeeds and crimes are why they have power.
‘institutions will not save you’