Looks like boycotts work!
My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person — always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 8, 2017
In other news, drain the what now? Via TPM:
The Department of Defense is working to rent space in Trump Tower in order to provide security to President Donald Trump and his family while they are in the building, CNN reported Tuesday evening.
“In order to meet official mission requirements, the Department of Defense is working through appropriate channels and in accordance with all applicable legal requirements in order to acquire a limited amount of leased space in Trump Tower,” a spokesman for the Defense Department, Lt. Col. JB Brindle, said in a statement to CNN. “The space is necessary for the personnel and equipment who will support the POTUS at his residence in the building.”
The military has made security arrangements for past presidents before, including being present in former President Barack Obama’s Chicago home.
Yeah, but did the Obamas charge them millions of dollars in rent? Let’s ask them when they get back from vacation:
Hey Mom and Dad
When you're coming back from vacation this babysitter is weird.. ? pic.twitter.com/r8Lc67N8zG— Adii fabloso (@Adirya3) February 3, 2017
Open thread!
Patricia Kayden
Good. This is what you get for being related to an odious turd. A pox on all their houses.
cope
She may be pushing but he ain’t doing…
Ian G.
@Patricia Kayden:
“Related to”? Tiffany is related to Combover Caligula. Ivanka is an active participant in this travesty and deserves to be treated with as much contempt as Bannon or Sessions.
Belafon
Gin & Tonic
So the disassociating himself from the family businesses thing is going well, I see.
Baud
So Ivanka is being treated like immigrants? Good to know.
Hal
So now I can finally open up that big can of stfu to every Republican who bitched about how much the secret service protection for the Obama’s cost when they went on vacation.
LAO
@cope: I had the same reaction — she may be “pushing” but Ivanka is clearly failing. PS — I don’t believe she is actually pushing him to do the “right thing.” What does “the right thing” even mean to these people?
Betty Cracker
@Patricia Kayden: If she was just related to the odious turd, I’d cut her some slack and even have some sympathy for her since my dad is a Trump-voting wingnut. But she promoted his candidacy, worked with him to develop policy, used his campaign to cash in for herself and her husband and leveraged her media platform to try to “humanize” the monster.
I wouldn’t vote for my dad for town council because he lacks the empathy, know-how and qualifications to do the job and would thus suck at it. If I can figure that out, Ivanka can too. ZERO sympathy. I hope Trump’s disastrous political career pauperizes the whole bunch.
Major Major Major Major
@Patricia Kayden: Ivanka should have her shit fail by virtue of being a horrible person regardless of who her father is.
Patricia Kayden
@Ian G.: Right. In fact, I’d argue that Trump is treating Ivanka as if she were his wife, i.e., taking her with him to pay respects to the fallen soldier and to attend meetings with foreign dignitaries, etc. She’s his advocate and should suffer the consequences as such.
NorthLeft12
I would have to say that Ivanka is not pushing hard enough or is possibly pushing in the wrong direction as Deadbeat Donald continually does the wrong thing.
Is this how the next four years are going to go? Donald continually tweeting his outrage over perceived slights to his royal family. And here I thought the US was founded by people who objected to royalty. They would be sickened how many of the current Americans are eagerly embracing the ruling elite.
SAD!
MazeDancer
Note, he needs to be pushed to do the right thing. Because, otherwise, he won’t. He’ll be in his default position of not knowing or caring about right or wrong.
Bodacious
Haven’t spent time/money in Nordstrom’s in years, but I’ll be swinging by promptly to drop some moo-la. It just seems like a president-diss like this should be illegal. Is there any precedence for this in history? Then again, what would that matter to this baboon?
comrade scotts agenda of rage
The Treason Tower rental is the first public grift. All that sweet, sweet taxpayer dollars going to enrich the family.
Just wait till Cruella DeVos starts shunting federal edumacation dollars to myriad voucher scams.
It’s sad watching my country die.
Baud
They clearly don’t know how to run government like a business.
Mike in NC
Yay Nordstrom!
Larkspur
The Obamas have been having so much fun, and looking good doing it, but damn, it’s true: this sitter is weird. I wish they would hire me to be their official dog care person. I’d relocate in a second. Although I would miss all my many dog friendswhere I live.
Continuing from the last thread, I don’t know how I’d survive without libraries, dogs, and cats. San Quentin is located near me, and I know that their Pen Pals of San Quentin program (a project of the Marin County Humane Society) is really rewarding. Inmates have to work hard to get into the program, but once they do, they are assigned puppies and dogs to train and socialize so the dogs can be returned to the Humane Society to be adopted out. I can only imagine what a comfort it would be to have a dog to care for, a dog that will love you, when you’re in prison.
Patricia Kayden
@Betty Cracker: I should have clarified that in my original comment but yes to everything you said. Although, to be honest, I wouldn’t care about seeing all the Trump kids’ business adventures fail. I still don’t understand why tax payers have to foot the bill for Uday’s travel to Uruguay and cannot imagine the outcry had President Obama’s daughters demanded the same treatment.
hovercraft
Why is everyone being so MEAN to me and my family? I give and I give, we’ve made all of these sacrifices for you and you are not grateful to me, why? You know in his head we are all just jealous.
@Gin & Tonic:
He’s disassociated, he read about it in the papers, he has no contact or input and neither does she, promise.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: and thank god for that.
Rasputin's Evil Twin
@LAO: Grift as much as you can, as fast as you can.
themann1086
@Belafon: God damn, Senator Casey. Well played.
ETA: That’s my Senior Senator!
Larkspur
@Hal: I know! That was one of the most surprising things I experienced with people I know who are “different” (you know, Republicans) – they showed such alarm and displeasure with the Obamas, even though it was right after the most vacation-prone president ever. I shouldn’t be surprised, because I already know it doesn’t make sense.
rachel
@Betty Cracker:
I just hope the rest of us don’t go down the drain with them.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Baud:
Fixed.
schrodingers_cat
I think this is the ongoing revenge for the Obama’s 8 years in office. The people who hated President Obama and everything he represented are willing to burn the country down rather than have another Obama like figure emerge and succeed.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: I have some good qualities. But I don’t know if I’d call myself Obama-like. Seems premature.
TriassicSands
Of course, I never listen to what she says. She’s a great person, but weak! Sad!
Mike in DC
Thought this was going to be a post about the absurdity that is Dr. Jill Stein.
hovercraft
@Betty Cracker:
THIS .
They are not collateral damage, they are participants, and deserve to be held in as much contempt as their father, They knew/know what he is and they still helped to foist him on the world. He is dangerously ignorant and unprepared for the job and they helped him, so fuck them all with a rusty chainsaw.
And before you ask, yes I am bitter, very bitter, the damage they do will take years to repair. Climate change alone will have a devastating effect on future generations, all in the name of some ridiculously rich assholes making even more money they can never spend.
MattF
There’s the possibility that Ivanka’s designs just aren’t good and don’t sell. I guess Nordstrom hasn’t gotten the message that reality is mutable.
dmsilev
Shouldn’t the legions of Trump fans be lining up to buy Trumpdaughter’s products? Oh wait, the stereotypical Trump voter doesn’t shop at Nordstrom’s and the people who do are the ones that Trumpfather is busily pissing off.
RobertDSC-iPhone 6
That mom & dad tweet is so funny.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@Mike in DC: Me too.
Baud
@Mike in DC: She heightens the contradictions between herself and reality.
hovercraft
@Major Major Major Major:
Why are you millennials always so negative? Especially to her, she is the reason that you still have the rights to marry and get benefits, you should be genuflecting at her feet, she is your champion, no?
Elizabelle
@TriassicSands: you made me laugh.
Baud
@dmsilev: That’s the funny part. The Trump family would never socialize with the Trump voter. Hate is all that binds them together.
hovercraft
@Bodacious:
Their shoe department is excellent.
rikyrah
Sean Spicer Makes Up Atlanta Islamist Terror Attack
Kellyanne Conway is not the only Trump adviser to make up a terrorist attack. White House press secretary Sean Spicer has repeatedly listed Atlanta among cities wracked by Islamist terror.
02.08.17 1:00 AM ET
Kellyanne Conway’s “Bowling Green massacre” isn’t the only case of a White House aide pointing to a terror attack that didn’t happen to make the case for President Donald Trump’s controversial executive order limiting travel from seven majority-Muslim countries.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer has repeatedly pointed to Atlanta, along with San Bernardino and Boston, as one of three U.S. cities that have been attacked by Islamist terrorists to argue that the Trump administration needed to act quickly to prevent another attack in the future.
[…]
In a Jan. 29 appearance on ABC’s This Week, Spicer explained to Martha Raddatz that the White House needed to implement its executive order quickly, before another terror attack could take place. “What do we say to the family that loses somebody over a terroristic (sic), to whether it’s Atlanta or San Bernardino or the Boston bomber?”
Spicer used a similar line the following day on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, when The New York Times’ Jeremy Peters asked him if President Trump had signed the executive order as the result of an imminent terror threat on U.S. soil. “Too many of these cases that have happened, whether you’re talking about San Bernardino, Atlanta, they’ve happened, Boston,” Spicer said. “Jeremy, what—do you wait until you do? The answer is we act now to protect the future.”
The White House did not respond to a request to clarify what Spicer was referring to when he named to Atlanta in a list of past Islamist attacks. In 1996, a pipe bomb exploded at Centennial Olympic Park during the Atlanta Olympic Games, but Eric Robert Rudolph, a Florida-born domestic terrorist, was convicted of that bombing.
MattF
@rikyrah: Terrism is always Islamic.
geg6
@themann1086:
Mine, too! And I really have discovered that I have a lot of love for him recently. I was always kinda “meh” about him, but he’s really been stepping up and taking real and brave stances since the election. I called his office on the DeVos thing and actually got him on the phone a few days ago. He said he’d been taking calls as much as he can so he can talk to constituents about their concerns and also to give his staff a break from the 900% increase in call volume. It was quick, but he was really great and very enthusiastic.
geg6
@MattF:
The ones I’ve seen (on a clearance rack in Marshall’s) were hideous prints and made of cheap polyester.
ETA: I also know she got in trouble for stealing the designs for some of her shoe line.
Aleta
@Patricia Kayden: She’s a marketing ikon and has been for years. (Including her unscrupulous work to swing the contract for the DC hotel.) No difference now that it’s the Tr-brand presidency.
And it wasn’t until Kushner;s grandmother’s oral history about the Holocaust was broadcast that her PR came out about their supposed ‘liberal-leaning’ intervention to “save” gays from the drafted religious discrimination EO. Which did not dismantle the EO by the way.
Humboldtblue
These local folks have taken the term power lunch to a whole new level.
raptusregailter
@LAO:
That one’s easy: the “right thing” is whatever makes them the most money.
schrodingers_cat
Do you guys remember a long blog post by a youngish person that was making rounds about how student loan debt is crushing and everything is falling apart and how someone between a rock and a hard place might just be tempted to vote for you know who. Several people linked to it over here too but the name of the blog is escaping me at the moment.
Major Major Major Major
@Humboldtblue: oh, arcata.
There’s a good crepe place there.
Gin & Tonic
Glen Kessler of the WaPo says the timestamp on this Tweet is in the middle of the time when the official WH schedule says he was receiving his daily intelligence briefing.
Aleta
@rikyrah: They put this list out to remind us that bombs go off in public places. After everyone has talked about all those attacks for awhile, maybe they’ll edit it to match the title. Meanwhile, Anderson Cooper plays a series of clips of attacks to prove he covered them.
Kay
I love how the Trump Family have dropped any pretense of not profiting off the Presidency. They have gotten worse since he was sworn in, not better. I don’t think anyone knew they would be paying for 2 different residences for Trump and his wife, for example, nor did anyone know Kushner would be directing policy.
It is actually worse than predicted and I didn’t think we could go lower with this crowd.
Humboldtblue
@Major Major Major Major:
Indeed, Renata’s
The Moar You Know
@rikyrah: Let me help:
Eric Robert Rudolph = Muslim
Charles Manson = Muslim
Tim McVeigh = Muslim
Jack the Ripper = Muslim
Barack Obama = Super Muslim Overlord
This “alternative education” moment was bought to you by your good friends at Fox News!
Fox News, Always Helping™
TriassicSands
@Elizabelle:
Between tears, I imagine.
rikyrah
For decades, there have been few photographic images of Harriet Tubman depicting how the abolitionist and Civil War spy looked in her lifetime.
Now there’s one more.
New York City auction house Swann Galleries has announced that it will auction a newly discovered photo of Tubman March 30. The photo shows her seated, wearing a black blouse with an overlapping white collar, and a white patterned skirt.
Dr. Kate Clifford Larson, author of the biography “Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero,” estimated that Tubman was between 43 and 46 years old when the photo was taken, placing it shortly after the end of the Civil War. At the time, Tubman was living in Auburn, where she had purchased land in 1859 from then-Sen. William H. Seward — land that will soon become part of the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park.
The photo comes from an album owned by Tubman’s friend and fellow abolitionist Emily Howland, of Sherwood, Larson said. The same album also contained the widely known picture of Tubman standing with her hands on a rollback chair in the early to mid-1870s.
Larson said the new photo communicates parts of Tubman’s life that previous ones have not. She’s clad in simple but beautiful clothing that accentuates how Tubman was actually petite and feminine, Larson said, whereas most of the previous photos showed a weary veteran of the Underground Railroad and Civil War.
“What’s remarkable about this photograph is that she’s so proud and dignified and beautiful. She looks so young,” Larson said. “This is the vibrant young Tubman just coming off her work during the Civil War. She’s building her life with her family in Auburn.”
Larson continued, “It just surprised me, and I think it’s going to surprise a lot of people.”
Humboldtblue
It’s probably not a good idea to tell a powerful, accomplished, and brilliant woman to shut up even if it’s done procedurally.
hastag- shepersisted has taken off
The Moar You Know
@Gin & Tonic: OH HOORAY, I FEEL SAFER ALREADY
SiubhanDuinne
@Mike in DC:
She is beyond delusional.
Montanareddog
Freedom, libtards! Nordstrom’s is denying the economically-distressed WWC their constitutional right to pay $699 dollars for Chinese-made plastic shoes. SHAME!
Baud
@rikyrah:
Hariett Tubman’s somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more.
Aleta
@rikyrah: Thank you for this.
Mnemosyne
So the fake news of the day that’s flying all over Facebook is that two former employees of Planned Parenthood claim that they were rewarded with pizza parties for meeting abortion quotas. I did a quick Google for the debunking but haven’t found it yet — has anyone else found one?
Kay
@Gin & Tonic:
Oh, I’m sure that’s reliable. It’s fake. Like everything else that comes out of that place. They lie constantly. The Yemen raid was a huge success:
Trump hasn’t even been faced with “an event” yet. The screw ups he’s lying about are voluntary. He chose to do these things.
JordanRules
@Humboldtblue: That is great!!
Baud
@Mnemosyne: Who even cares if that’s true?
Gin & Tonic
@SiubhanDuinne: She is bought and paid for.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne: Her voters must be so proud.
rikyrah
Keith Boykin Verified account
@keithboykin
Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley’s State of the State address tonight: “If Alabamians can put man on the moon, we can build new prisons.”
Baud
@rikyrah: Keep reaching for the stars.
Ramiah Ariya
I live in India now, but was on H1B in the USA between 2000 to 2005. About this whole Trump “immigration” ban, I need to say a couple of things:
The Democrats and the media have totally focused on the refugee story; and that of immigration. However, there is a reason why both the Democrats and the media are responsible for this kind of crap. They have enabled for long the American public practice of viewing every foreigner (particularly non-white) setting foot in the USA (irrespective of whether they are tourists or on work visas or are students) as an “immigrant”. This is not very usual. It is not a practice in every country. This habit of the American public has made it appear to them that the issue is simply one of great generosity and munificence from the American public to any random visitor with a valid visa.
In reality, Trump’s executive order empowers CBP to deport anyone whether with a valid visa or green card whether suspected of a crime or not, far away from border entries. The practical implementation of this will enable foreigners that the US lawfully admitted to be in a state of constant fear (particularly non-whites) even though they may be in the US just for a visit or may be a student or on a work visa. I certainly do not want to be handcuffed along with my children when on a visit to Disneyland or on a business visit.
If this was policy in every nation, there would be no business travel – it is a crazy order. After all, Americans visit other countries for business and tourism. But by focusing on immigration all the time, the media and the Democrats have made this order to be a fight between “Well, we need a border” vs a spluttering “American values” bull.
If Americans believe that their country exists in a splendid isolation, needing no trade with anyone; and that people visit their country only to immigrate, whose fault is that?
Groucho48
I believe Biden charged the SS rent for the cottage they occupied. On the other hand, the Clinton’s didn’t charge rent at their NY home.
But, it sounds like the SS would be paying 3 million a year in Trump Tower. Unless Trump gives them a discount. Yeah, I know…
hovercraft
@MattF:
Maybe the Olympic Park bombing way back when? See the media failed to report it out, and they buried the fact that it was Islamic Terrorism. The fact that you all don’t know this is exactly what they’re talking about. Stop burying this stuff !!
rikyrah
Trump’s faux-pas diplomacy
The State Department is struggling to contain the fallout as Trump goes off topic in calls with foreign leaders.
02/08/17 05:08 AM EST
President Donald Trump spent much of a recent phone call with French President Francois Hollande veering off into rants about the U.S. getting shaken down by other countries, according to a senior official with knowledge of the call, creating an awkward interaction with a critical U.S. ally.
While the Hollande call on Jan. 28 did touch on pressing matters between the two countries — namely the fight against the Islamic State — Trump also used the exchange to vent about his personal fixations, including his belief that the United States is being taken advantage of by China and by international bodies like NATO, the official said.
At one point, Trump declared that the French can continue protecting NATO, but that the U.S. “wants our money back,” the official said, adding that Trump seemed to be “obsessing over money.”
“It was a difficult conversation, because he talks like he’s speaking publicly,” the official said. “It’s not the usual way heads of state speak to each other. He speaks with slogans and the conversation was not completely organized.”
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
Chortle.
hovercraft
@Gin & Tonic:
The Idiot in Chief was distracted and tweeting during his intelligence briefing? I am shocked!!
H.E.Wolf
This is my favorite photo of Harriet Tubman, taken in 1911, two years before her death at age 90.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Tubman#/media/File:Harriet_Tubman_late_in_life3.jpg
ETA: Drat – link trouble.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
I’m still waiting for my dream miniseries of Tubman’s life starring Octavia Spencer. Someone in Shondaland needs to get on that, stat.
Peale
@SiubhanDuinne: I look forward to that slate of Green Party senate and state attorney general candidates in 2018 that will really stick up for the common man for a change.
Mnemosyne
@Baud:
My idiot “pro-life” cousin. But given the source, I guarantee you that it’s NOT true, so I’d like a debunking link.
Brachiator
@hovercraft:
At least you have not lost your sense of optimism.
Sometimes I wonder whether the damage Trump causes will be beyond repair.
schrodingers_cat
@Ramiah Ariya: So you are blaming the media and Democrats for exactly what? I need a translation for that word salad you just barfed.
Mike J
Number one trending word at Merriam-Webster is “Impugn.” Followed by bodega, calamity, and betrayal.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/news-trend-watch/see-all
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: I think debunking a true-believer’s lies is a fool’s errand. Tell her that you think she is full of shit and you don’t believe a word that she says. That’s how I have been answering my JS voting purity pony ex-friend. I don’t give a damn whether I offend her or not.
J R in WV
@Patricia Kayden:
” I still don’t understand why tax payers have to foot the bill for Uday’s travel to Uruguay and cannot imagine the outcry had President Obama’s daughters demanded the same treatment.”
Hate to defend a Trump, really, but I think that cost was for hotel space and air fare for the Secret Service guys keeping the locals from attacking Uday Trump while he was there in Uruguay.
I expect Uday’s air fare and hotel and meals came from a
a different White House travel fundfamily checking account or Trump GOLD credit card, based upon a partnership with Deutsche BankDeutche Banke. Well, one or the other, I dunno which, really!Cacti
@Patricia Kayden:
The “ick” factor on the dynamic between those two is off the charts.
Elizabelle
@H.E.Wolf: Love that photo. Such dignity.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: I agree. Debunking never seems to work.
Mike J
Houle points out that the Trump tweet was sent from an iPhone, not his Android. Was probably Ivanka that sent it.
Brachiator
@Ramiah Ariya:
Well said. The executive order and the way Trump wants to see it implemented creates problems and does not keep Americans safe.
TriassicSands
But, but, but…a few weeks ago Trump said the replacement plan was almost ready. I guess maybe having to run it through a spell checker has slowed things down a bit.
Hmm. Is it Deth Panel or Deth Pannel? Is it pore person or pour person? Is it emergency rume or emmergency rume?
Baud
@TriassicSands: Good. next year is an election year.
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
There’s a video that goes along with it, so that’s why I would like an actual debunking.
For now, I just said it was fake news, but it would be nice to have an actual debunking on hand if I get challenged.
Van Buren
Wait, is he saying that it’s terrible that ivanka tries to get him to do the right thing?
That would explain a lot.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@schrodingers_cat:
Exactly. I typically fall back on the late Steve Gilliard’s now-legendary (well to those of us who were regulars there back in the day) post:
Forced birthers or anybody else living in their favorite, right wing, single-issue ghetto are a lost cause. The husband of a friend was able to keep his house because of extended unemployment benefits during the Great Recesssion and a number of other things he can trace directly back to Obama policies and yet, he always votes straight GOP because GUNSGUNSGUNSGUNSGUNS. Stoopid phvck.
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah:
We know that’s not what Spicer is referencing since the perpetrator was White. It’s good that the media is catching them in so many lies so early on. It will be harder and harder for them to lie and fool anyone later on when they try to start unnecessary wars.
The Thin Black Duke
@SiubhanDuinne: Jill Stein is Putin’s other sock puppet, isn’t she?
Ian G.
Anyone here following Cheeto Benito’s Twitter vomit who can parse his last tweet? What the fuck is “easy D”?
SiubhanDuinne
@The Thin Black Duke:
One of several, I would guess.
Patricia Kayden
@Aleta:
We can expect an anti-LGBT EO or bill any day now. His Religious Right supporters will demand this to stick it to “the gays”. Since gays were allowed to get married, all of our marriages have been messed up, doncha know?
Gravenstone
@rikyrah: Yeah, I was going to point out that Atlanta was a Christianist white guy. Ya know, one them there “lone wolves” the right likes to wring their hands about so much. Yet chooses to do absolutely nothing about.
Ajabu
Just an aside on our celebration of actual heroes:
Has anyone else noticed that two gentlemen I hold in high regard – for entirely different reasons – Frederick Douglass & John Elroy Sanford (Redd Foxx) literally look like twins although they were born about a century apart?
Just a coincidence, but still…
SiubhanDuinne
@Ian G.:
From the context, I’m guessing “easy decision,” but it’s a weird way to put it. UNFAMILIAR ABBREVIATION! SAD!
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
This is a deliberately planted false story. If you do a google search for “planned parenthood pizza,” thousands of phony news reports pop up.
How can you debunk a total work of fiction when true believers are determined to cling to a lie?
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah: Chills. She looks regal in the photo.
hovercraft
@rikyrah:
But they really hate the government picking winners and losers. I’m sure it has nothing to with the wads of cash the private prison industry shoves at them or that the people who vote for them love to just lock “them” up. Then again, the Shitgibbon has handed the keys in DC over to Wall Street, so as long as their the ones calling the shots, they have no problem with handouts and bailouts to corporate America. Just make sure that you give those people the shaft.
SiubhanDuinne
@H.E.Wolf:
She looks like an Empress.
Another Scott
@schrodingers_cat: Dunno. The Alternet linky in this thread?
HTH a little.
Cheers,
Scott.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
So there is going to be a March today at McConnell’s megachurch. Dont know elwhat attendance is going to look like, but hopefully, big McConnell supporters are going to start seeing us in their faces at their homes, businesses, clubs and churches.
A woman who works for Refugee Ministries and I threw it together this morning, on my observation that we needed to avoid a courthouse protest and to hit him where it hurts.
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne: I’ll never forget when they fell for that billion-dollar “abortionplex” thing from The Onion. LOL! Send that to the fertility cult cousin!
Patricia Kayden
@Mnemosyne: What the hell is an “abortion quota”? LOL. Ridiculous.
Why not lie and say that Planned Parenthood employees say that they would get a new car and mansion if they murdered at least one thousand babies each month? Lie big, I say. Like a Trump.
pamelabrown53
Spouse and myself are making plans to go to DC for the April 22nd “March for Science”. While spouse is a retired physician, I’m not a scientist and was wondering if anyone has suggestions for signs or hotels?
P.S. It makes perfect sense that Nordstrom’s dropped Ivanka’s clothing line: maybe they decided that they don’t want to be political or maybe the quality and design wasn’t selling or up to their standards.
Baud
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Very cool.
Glennis
So the head of the US government is using his position of power to criticize a private company’s business decision.
Yikes.
Gravenstone
@Gin & Tonic: We know Flynn rewrites/summarizes the PDB, then orally delivers it to Trump (ew). How long before they have to resort to someone putting it into comic book format for Lord No Attention Span (or Impulse Control)?
Betty Cracker
@Mike J: Then it was retweeted from the @POTUS account. That both bolsters your theory and compounds the tackiness of the entire thing.
Betty Cracker
@Ian G.: I thought it was a rapper shout-out at first, but decided it must be “easy decision.”
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah:
Impossible!! Not the eloquent, intellectual, world-savvy man just elected to lead the free world? The official must have Trump mixed up with someone else. Off with his head!
? Martin
@rikyrah: NYT has an article about a white supremacist in Bowling Green that had an arsenal and a target list of jews and african americans.
I wonder if Atlanta is another such fact washing effort – take Eric Rudolphs Christian terrorism and recast it as an act of foreign terrorism, relying on people to remember the event but not the details.
ChrisGrrr
@Brachiator: Yeah. This.
I think the damage is _already_ “beyond repair” in our lifetime.
Never have I wanted to be so incomparably wrong…
? Martin
@Gravenstone: From what I understand, the best way to handle it would be for the National Security Advisor to present it on Morning Joe every day. That seems to be how Trump mainlines information early in the day.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@rikyrah:
Melissa McCarthy NAILED his persona on SNL. I hope it stung badly.
Another Scott
@Mnemosyne: They’re recycling crap from 2014 (and probably earlier). DailyCaller – DO NOT CLICK
Let the meme die, please.
Cheers,
Scott.
Gravenstone
@rikyrah: Maybe he means we can build those prisons – on the moon! Yeah, that’s the ticket.
/facepalm
? Martin
@Brachiator: It’s not beyond repair. We thought the same thing after Bush’s Iraq misadventure. Obama was able to fix things. High bar in selecting our next president, though.
J R in WV
@Ramiah Ariya:
Hi Ramiah,
When it comes to “If Americans believe that their country exists in a splendid isolation, needing no trade with anyone; and that people visit their country only to immigrate, whose fault is that?” is it possible you are conflating what Trump and his minority government believes with what most Americans think?
No one I know believes that. No one I know voted for Trump except my brother in Texas, where his vote was but a drop in the ocean of red votes there.
Best wishes for you in India, and everywhere else you travel and live.
JR
hovercraft
@Brachiator:
I’m optimistic that this too shall pass, but like I said there will not be a quick snapback to normalcy. The GOP and it’s voters are insane, getting rid of the symptoms is merely step one. The party and it’s echo chamber are the host, their voters are carriers, his approval rating among republicans is north of 80 %, and at this point we don’t have a vaccine, let alone a cure.
The Moar You Know
@Brachiator: You can’t, but you can not only call them liars, but tell everyone else that they’re liars as well. Don’t bother debating, as that great Steve Gillard quote (posted by comrade scott up above). Just tell ’em you’re here to destroy their party and goals and there’s not going to be any more discussion.
In addition to shutting these lunatics up for a few minutes, using that phrasing tends to really freak them out (they think they have a monopoly on threatening language) so it’s kind of a win-win.
Jeffro
@MazeDancer:
Exactly! Internal moral compass? NOT What a fucking scumbag this guy is. I can just picture if Penguin/Random House had stopped publishing/promoting Chelsea’s latest book and Hillz slammed P/RH on Twitter (or anywhere).
Does anyone want a free million dollars? Just compile a list of double standards that the GOP has been displaying since the campaign started (but most especially since Trumpov “won”). Put one per page (you’d have about 300 pages already) noting how it it was a Dem doing this crap, much less Hillary Clinton, he/she would have already been cast into an active volcano by now, and you’ve got yourself an instant bestseller.
BETTER STILL: across from each page describing the double standard, have a detachable postcard, pre-addressed to GOP officials, folks in big media, etc, asking them to either hold the GOP accountable, or be prepared to let Dems slide next time we’re in power. Can’t have it both ways!!
Jeffro
PS unless this clown meant that Trumpov is an ‘asset’ in the sense that he’s an ‘asset to comedians’, it’s bye-bye Under Armour at the Fro household!
Brachiator
@J R in WV:
I didn’t think this at all after Bush.
But I take your larger point. We are only three weeks into the Trump Administration.
bemused
TPM reporting series of tweets Islamic State is taking the ban as prez FUBAR is running scared. Pretty sure Donnie didn’t see that coming.
? Martin
@rikyrah: This is important for Democrats to understand.
Alabama has a shitty economy that is poorly aligned with the national economy. One of their better industries is taking prisoners from other states. Running a prison is a lot of low-medium wage, low education jobs – the kind that would normally be automated our outsourced, but we aren’t willing to outsource our prisoners to Mexico yet. But California is willing to outsource to Alabama.
Democrats need to tell their states to stop outsourcing prisoners, and to tackle prison and sentencing reform. If states would take responsibility for their own prison population, then Alabama wouldn’t be able to build an industry off of it. Alabama therefore benefits when federal guidelines are harsh and lead to more incarceration, which guys like Trump and Sessions will be more than happy to push, along with many of GOPs in Congress. This is a negative feedback loop, where states aggressively lock up populations that they don’t want to deal with in terms of a safety net or employment, and ship them off to states like Alabama who can turn a profit. Democrats need to break that loop locally by pushing their state to keep all prisoners in-state.
hovercraft
@Patricia Kayden:
If you schedule 20 abortions a day you get a Prius, if you perform 100 you get a Tesla.
Betty
@themann1086: Not sure what woke him up, but thank goodness!
schrodingers_cat
@Another Scott: Nope that’s not the one, it was FYWP personal blog. It was a rather long post. Thanks, anyway.
chopper
@The Moar You Know:
oh, FFS.
Baud
@hovercraft: Planned Parenthood’s Points program is also a really good deal.
hovercraft
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Great news, hound them where they live ( not their homes, where their kids live, where they spend time, you want to play a nice round of golf, look whose camped out outside), work and worship, make them feel our wrath. For far too long they’ve had the passion, show them that this time we are not going to simply take it, we are fighting back, and just as he made every tiny little thing a monumental battle, he aint seen nothing yet.
NeenerNeener
@Patricia Kayden: Oooo, can we make “lie like a Trump” a thing?
MisterForkbeard
@SiubhanDuinne: I know too many people that still defend her, too. What a nutbag.
@Mnemosyne: This is another one of those accusations that doesn’t make sense on any level. If I see this, I’m shooting it down mercilessly.
Mnemosyne
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
To be clear, I’m not planning to actually argue back and forth. I’d just like to be able to post a link so people can see the truth for themselves.
Snopes has debunked another of the claims from the same forced birth group, so I assume someone is working on this one as well.
chopper
@Ian G.:
trump’s hip-hop alter ego?
aimai
@Ramiah Ariya: Uh. Not the Democrats fault. Not at all.
Miss Bianca
@Mnemosyne: I used to work for Planned Parenthood in Chicago. I was a patient advocate at the clinic where we did the abortions. I not only counselled women getting abortions, but actually went in the room with them while the procedure was being done – held their hands, literally.
You can tell your idiot cousin from me that I didn’t get any fucking pizza out of the deal. What I got was such an awful dose of pain and grief every goddamn Saturday I was doing it that I had to lie down for the rest of the fucking day. Counselling, in more than one case, women who called themselves pro-life until *they* were the ones facing an unwanted pregnancy.
SHIT, I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE GETTING PIZZA OUT OF THE DEAL?! Evidently, we must not have been making our quotas! And if we weren’t making them in Chicago, shit, where would we be making them?
You can also tell her from me that only a bloodsucking fiend would believe that her fellow humans would be fucking CELEBRATING “abortion quotas”.
Denali
I get a little squirmish about marching at a church- too similar to the Westboro Church’s tactics. Just me, I guess.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
Oh lordy, back in the day I had my membership number memorised.
MCA1
I’m torn on this. On the one hand, tweeting out a company name to attempt to punish them for dropping a relative’s product line is a disgusting and unbelievable abuse of power that needs to be addressed. On the other hand, Trumpanzees shop at Walmart and Burlington Coat Factory, and I’d wager a large majority of Nordstrom shoppers despise Cheetolini and will be more inclined to shop there out of solidarity after hearing of this, so it’s counterproductive and I kind of welcome any unforced error that hurts the family brand.
Interesting times when partisanship has overflowed so much as to divide the country on corporate and branding allegiances in addition to political parties.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name.
Mike J
@Patricia Kayden:
No fair. The only thing the people escorting patients through the protesters ever got was new black robes and candles for the ceremonies.
? Martin
I don’t understand this plan at all.
So, the carbon tax – ok, that part is fine. But returning the money to consumers as a dividend achieves what? If I got a carbon dividend check, that tells me that I can get more money by emitting more carbon. That’s the opposite of what they are trying to get to happen. This is supply side magic thinking.
They should run it the way that CA does – tell utilities that they can raise rates by ½ the amount that consumers reduce consumption, and tax emissions and return that money to fund replacing carbon emitting plants with renewables. Consumers are incentivized to conserve because they get to personally keep half of what they eliminate, and producers are incentivized to sell less power because the rate increase is nothing but profit in the long term. Their revenues go down (because consumers use less power) but their costs can be flat so they can keep the excess rate. Or they can invest the excess into rebates for their consumers to continue to lower. It’s a virtuous cycle because both supply and demand side are incentivized to reduce. It’s why CA per capita power usage has been flat for 40 years, compared to the rest of the nation where it’s doubled or more.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Probably.
What’s happening is that morons are taking the hint from Trump’s phony claim about fake news as an opportunity to create and spread their own fake news stories. The Planned Parenthood crap lies about everything that PP does and stands for.
Snopes and other debunking sites are going to have their work cut out for them.
hovercraft
McTurtle seems to have really shot himself in the foot with his stunt last night.
How about these headlines at TPM
02.8.2017 – 11:29 AM
Self-Destruction
In Civil Rights terms, which are appropriate for the context, Sen. McConnell’s victory over Sen. Warren is comparable to Sheriff Clark’s at the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
– Josh Marshall
Schumer Condemns ‘Shocking Double Standard’ After Warren Silenced
The senate minority leader accused Republicans on Wednesday of applying a “shocking double standard”…
Sessions’ Record On Voting Rights Back In Spotlight After Senate Rules Scuffle
He’s getting hammered everywhere and the democrats read the letter today anyway. The letter is now getting a lot more exposure than if he’d just let her read it while only a few people were paying attention. SAD!
? Martin
@MCA1:
Thats a result of voters feeling that their political input has diminished. When the approved levers (voting, contacting your constituent) stop working, you get creative, and going after corporate loyalty is a valid approach, particularly when voters feel that the corporations have influence that the voters lack. When that breaks down, you’ll get more creative, probably more violent responses.
IOW, democracy finds a way to break through – one way or another.
hedgehog the occasional commenter
Called Bennet’s office to say thank you for voting no on DeVos. He’s a definite no on Sessions. The staffer in the DC office was very happy to get my call (and I was on hold for a couple of minutes.) Left a message on the Denver office line.
Keep banging!
? Martin
@hovercraft: Not just TPM. CNN and WaPo have the same framing.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@hovercraft:
The expansion for Closetcase is going to be identification of his biggest local donors and their businesses. Golf clubs, too, as we can find them.
There’s some sort of bullshit small county Chamber of Commerce event later this month that we actually have time to plan for – that promises to be fun.
Steve in the ATL
@Baud:
It was great when our 12-year old daughter got her tenth abortion for free–we used the money to buy more crack
p.a.
@rikyrah: Ooh. tRump Presidency* #
kinda reminds me of :
MattF
OT. The NYT reports that the Metropolitan Museum is allowing downloads of images of all the works in the museum’s collection that are in the public domain. This is a new policy– with the old policy, one could not download a clean, useable image of, e.g., Sargent’s Madame X. But now you can.
David Spikes
@Gravenstone: coloring book-keep him interested.
The Moar You Know
@? Martin: I was curious. Did a quick bit of calculation. That’s 1100 pounds of ammo, using the lightest rifle (AR-15) cartridge in his “collection”. He was just one guy. How the fuck was he going to move all those guns and ammo?
I appreciate a well-executed plan just as much as anybody, but this guy was not operating in the real world (obviously).
hovercraft
@ Martin: The plan is about as well planned as their efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare.
First off this is actually better than I expected :
Poll: One-Third Of Americans Don’t Know Obamacare, ACA Are The Same Thing
But this is ridiculous, and the fact that the media let them get away with years of bullshit sloganeering is malpractice.
On health care, Republicans are lost without a map
02/08/17 12:55 PM—Updated 02/08/17 01:33 PM
By Steve Benen
So, how’s that Republican plan to repeal, replace, and repair “Obamacare” going? Not well.
Senate Republicans have not yet begun to work in earnest on a replacement plan for the Affordable Care Act, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said on Tuesday. It was a rare public admission of what has become obvious from the outside, as Republicans find both the politics and the substance of Obamacare repeal more difficult in practice than in rhetoric.
“To be honest, there’s not any real discussion taking place right now,” Corker told reporters in the Capitol.
Last night, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) participated in a forum on the ACA where he was asked about his party’s plans. The far-right senator attacked the law, and committed to eventually repealing it, but Cruz otherwise dodged the question.
As for the president, who’s never seemed to understand the basics of the debate or the process, Donald Trump told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly the other day that he and his team are putting together “a wonderful plan,” which Americans may be able to see “within the year and the following year.”
As the GOP repeal crusade hits a brick wall, let’s not lose sight of the fact that this wasn’t the way Republicans expected the process to go. As recently as Jan. 10, Trump said his party would repeal the health care reform law “probably sometime next week,” and he’d be ready to move forward on a replacement “very quickly or simultaneously, very shortly thereafter.” A few days earlier, Mike Pence said repealing the ACA would be the “first order of business” for Republican policymakers in 2017.
The entire campaign was going to snowball before Obamacare proponents even knew what hit them – right up until the snowball melted.
Even at the recent House Republican retreat, which was supposed to be a working meeting at which GOP lawmakers reached some important policy decisions about health care, we know from private recordings that Republicans are as confused behind the scenes as they are in public.
To be sure, the party knows where it wants to end up, but for now, it’s lost without a map. Republicans may hate “Obamacare” for reasons they’ve struggled to explain, but they have absolutely no idea what to replace it with, despite years of effort trying to figure this out. Trump’s assurances last month that his administration’s blueprint is nearly complete – they’re just crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s – were apparently fiction.
There’s more than one reason to explain how Republicans found themselves in this position. For one thing, they remain deeply divided among themselves, not only over strategy, but also over what their specific goals should be for what an ACA alternative.
For another, while GOP officials assumed there was a broad public appetite for Obamacare repeal, Republicans are also discovering that the Affordable Care Act is (a) increasingly popular; (b) enjoys more support than Trump or Congress; and (c) inspiring activists to put up a fight that has caught Republicans completely off-guard.
Making matters much worse, GOP leaders – on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue – vastly over-promised on what they could deliver, painting the party into a corner from which there is no easy escape.
What’s left is a party that has no plan, but does have some new buzzwords Paul Ryan seems to like. It seems oddly appropriate given the circumstances: when Republican policymakers were supposed to be working on substance, in classic post-policy fashion, they instead focused on public relations and talking points.
The core truths, however, remain the same: GOP officials have been working on an alternative to the Affordable Care Act since the summer of 2009, and they’ve produced nothing of significance because they can’t. Their ideology won’t allow them to craft an effective reform blueprint, and political considerations won’t allow them to unveil a bad one.
Health care proponents shouldn’t pop the champagne just yet; conditions can change quickly and the Trump administration can do real damage to the law even while Congress spins its wheels. But in the meantime, the Republican campaign is looking more pathetic than scary.
Kay
Yeah, sorry, I know this is probably too high a standard but these people are just sleazy. Common man, elites, whatever they are – they behave badly. They should stop worrying about the Trump Brand and worry about the United States Brand, which is taking a real fucking beating.
Brachiator
@hovercraft:
The Republicans are willing to lose the public relations war, as they move ahead to ratify Trump’s choices. Nothing so far has derailed Sessions nomination.
And moving forward, the rumors are that Trump’s choice for Solicitor General is Chuck Cooper. Cooper is Jeff Sessions’ personal choice for the office.
Ohio Mom
@Mnemosyne: I followed Scott’s link and it looks like PP does what every other well-managed non-profit does, tries to plan for the coming year in as business-like manner as possible.
I don’t doubt for a minute that they predicted X number of abortions in the coming year; they must also have had numbers for how many exams, Pap smears, STD tests, etc., etc. they expected to perform. How else can you plan for staffing assignments prepare a budget?
In turn, the proposed budget includes a breakout per performed service of what that particular service costs to provide, including overhead. It looks like slightly over $300 per abortion. Again, they must also have the cost of exams and tests also broken out this way.
I also assume that PP monitors the budget throughout the year and makes corrections as needed, and does the kind of juggling that is necessary to balance the books: if they can bill for one service at a higher rate to make up for another that they tend to lose money on, that’s what they do.
This is an example of things being taken completely out of context. Probably too complicated for your cousin to understand.
trollhattan
@Steve in the ATL:
Do they have it on an app yet? We had our punchcard up to seven (just three away from a free abortion and admission for two at the Creation Museum) when it went through the wash, goddamit, and the PP asshats wouldn’t believe me when I asked for a replacement! #TheAbortionplexFoodcourtIsBetter
Chris
@hovercraft:
What the fuck has been in all those “votes to repeal Obamacare” that they’ve held time and time again? Just a “we should repeal Obamacare, and we don’t know with what yet” text followed by a lot of blank space?
hovercraft
@ Martin:
I know, the Vichy Times this morning had a more wishy washy headline, “She Was Warned”.
But they also have a link right under the story to the King letter, so it’s still a net bad for Sessions and McTurtle. It was a stupid thing to do.
But in other news they are now showing :
T.J. Maxx Backs Away From Ivanka Trump as President Assails Nordstrom
I guess president little hands needs to start accustoming himself to people saying FU in response to his tantrums. SAD!
ETA: the link is to the NY Times.
Peale
@Chris: They just want to appear to be “torn” about it so that their voters think that their own GOP congressman is one of the good ones. When 20 million people lose their health insurance, they’ll know to blame the democrats and keep their own GOP guy in there because he’s a generally good guy. There will be no replacement for Obamacare.
Mnemosyne
@hovercraft:
So, basically, Republicans in Congress believed their own hype that there was a “silent majority” that agreed with them, and now they’re shocked and horrified to find out they were living in a bubble.
Sounds about right.
p.a.
@Chris: playing to the peanut(brained) gallery. Politics, it’s what’s for dinner! With a heaping helping of incompetence…
TriassicSands
@hovercraft:
It would be so much simpler if the Republicans could just repeal Obamacare and leave it at that. They don’t care about the millions of people who will lose coverage and trying to come up with a replacement plan is sooooooo hard.
Life is sooooooo unfair to Republicans. Nordstrom’s drops Ivanka’s clothes line, which is just mean. Perhaps, Daddy, can send in the Marines, occupy Nordstrom’s, and re-instate her clothing. Obama would have.
Or maybe Trump can order drone strikes on Nordstrom’s stores. Sure, there will be some collateral damage, but that’s a small price to pay for Daddy’s little girl getting her way.
If someone wrote a book about a president who did this crap, critics would say it was simply too unrealistic. No president would ever tweet about his daughter’s clothing line…
MisterForkbeard
@Chris: Everything they’ve done in the past was either a straight repeal, an effective repeal (removing enforcement or funding), or occasionally had a completely pie-in-the-sky unworkable solution.
They also included “reform” efforts such as allowing insurance to be sold across state lines and other ‘fixes’ that just make things worse for everyone. They’re not really politically or economically palatable, but just served as an excuse for Republicans to claim they totally have a plan guys. :)
Jeffro
Meanwhile, Intel’s competitors would like to know exactly What. The. FUCK?!?!?
Get real GOP…you have sold out and you are going to pay in 2018.
Just picture:
“Hi America – live from the White House, I’m President Hillary Clinton and this here’s my good friend Anna, CEO of PatchouliWorks. Anna, tell us all about your upcoming product line and how awesome it is?”
MCA1
@ Martin: Yep. For the time being, it is working, however. They were acting partly in the interests of their employees, but the companies lining up against the travel ban are also signaling to consumers. The market reactions to the same sex marriage threats and whatever else in Indiana and North Carolina in the past couple years is another example.
To some degree, this is the gerrymandering coming home to roost. The so-called liberal elite, which happens to constitute a majority of the best consumers (i.e. upper middle class) are reacting to the outsized influence of the exurban/rural federal gov’t teat sucker Talibangelicals and saying get your bigotry the hell out of my neighborhood through economic means instead of political. That upper middle class “conservatives” are also majority socially liberal helps, too.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
my poor iPad.
hovercraft
@Brachiator:
I agree they will get everyone confirmed, but they are taking a hit this time. The big difference is that this time they have power, they can bitch and moan about the democrats being mean, but the bottom line is they are getting their way. Even the people who don’t pay attention know that they won bigly, and the democrats lost bigly, so they have no excuses not to fuck everything up as much as they want to. They are also making the mistake of escalating their war with the media, their usual games are not having the same effect as they normally do on the media, there is a great deal more pushback than I expected, and we’re barely into this. They are winning skirmishes, the first prize is NJ and VA this November, and then the midterms next year, that is the goal.
Waldo
I’m sure my WWC friends and relatives are glad to have a reason to avoid Nordstrom that doesn’t involve it being too pricey or not quite Wal-Marty enough.
MisterForkbeard
@Jeffro: This is really embarrassing. The president is running a QVC sale out of the Oval Office. I can’t watch this stuff without cringing.
SiubhanDuinne
@hovercraft:
Also, BooMan has a really interesting piece up.
Steeplejack (tablet)
Anybody else watching this Sean Spicer live press conference? Trippy.
Jim Faith
@? Martin: Please check out the Citizens Climate Lobby, a real grassroots organization. http://citizensclimatelobby.org/
In short – the dividend is intended to reimburse people for the higher costs that carbon emitters will pass onto them. It’s not intended as a payment in the same way Alaska provides dividends to it’s citizens.
Mike J
Patty Murray up now speaking against Sessions. CSPAN 2
SiubhanDuinne
@MattF:
Tom Levenson will be happy to see this. (Where is Tom, btw? Haven’t seen him in a few days.)
Captain C
@SiubhanDuinne: Maybe she’s getting marching orders from Putin these days? If so, I wonder what he has on her.
waysel
@Mnemosyne: Live Action/ James O’keefe. Wiki Probably too new of a fabrication to have been de-bunked. All you can say is that James O’keefe is a liar and a convicted criminal. Live Action is the name of the forced birth association breaking this fabrication.
Captain C
@Cacti: Could that be the video that Putin has on Trump? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@rikyrah: Well, we get to find out the answer to the question “What if the head of state of the most powerful country in human history was a narcassist with deminta?”
And I though France wasn’t a member country of NATO?
Gin & Tonic
@SiubhanDuinne: Tom is always active on Twitter.
Another Scott
@Ohio Mom: Thanks for your work!
It’s maddening that these RWNJs take the worst possible interpretation of what normal people doing a job are actually doing and [b]low it up into some huge scandal. But that’s what they do…
Cheers,
Scott.
The Moar You Know
@Waldo: You’re assuming that the WWC catapulted Preznit Spray Tan into the Oval Office. They did not. Plenty of people with money, middle class (I live in such a town in CA and Trump got 40% of the vote here) voted for that orange motherfucker.
Nordstroms is solid middle-class that sells to those who aspire to be “upper middle” class. People with “Money”, real money, would no more shop there than at WalMart. They’re in shopping malls, for chrissake.
Brachiator
@MattF:
This is very cool.
? Martin
@The Moar You Know: These guys usually operate on the assumption that once they start the race war, Obama would ban the sale of guns and ammo, and so they need to have enough inventory on hand to last through the war and support their allies.
SiubhanDuinne
@Gin & Tonic:
I’m not on Twitter and almost never think to check other people’s accounts. But glad to hear it, thanks.
Gravenstone
@Jeffro: Well, now we now why Intel did not participate in the amicus brief in support of WA state’s suit against the “Muslim ban” EO. Is the quid pro quo‘d yet?
Peale
@The Moar You Know: Yep. The White Middle Class bears as much responsibility for this. They’ve been voting for Republicans forever. His approval is 90% with republicans – its more than just 40,000 under-employed miners in Kentucky.
Aleta
@Patricia Kayden:
Yes. I imagine (not being that knowledgeable) that all he has done is disassociate a little of the language from the T-brand, but leave the power to discriminate in place for anyone who claims they object (or is pressured to object to) the freedom of LGBT and gender neutral people.
Goes without saying, what the evangelicals are all about is complete control over others and invading others’ privacy to punish . It completely at odds with what the the tea party and gun dolts say they want. I wish there was an effective way to make congress feel the heat (OK, melt like wax dolls)) over this hypocrisy. Seems like the courts are the method we have since the media is being driven like bumper cars.
Gin & Tonic
@SiubhanDuinne: Looks like a couple of dozen Tweets and re-Tweets so far today.
Immanentize
@Steeplejack (tablet): I just saw that Spicer claimed the President tweet attack on Nordstroms was appropriate because their cutting Ivanka’s line was a direct attack on the President?
? Martin
@Jim Faith:
I appreciate that, and that’s a good thing to do, but you don’t tie it back in a positive way to consumption – that only leads to more consumption. What they should do is a subsidy for power from a baseline, and let the consumer keep any savings for going below baseline.
That’s effectively what CA does – rates can only go up when consumption goes down. You pay more per kWH, but only when the aggregate kWH goes down. If you aren’t conserving, your bills go up. When you are conserving, your bills go down. Because the utility also benefits when conservation takes place, they have programs everywhere to help consumers conserve. It’s on this end that consumer subsidies would be the most helpful. You don’t want to pay people’s inefficient power usage – you want to replace their appliances with more efficient ones and naturally lower their power bills, even against rate increases.
That’s the trick to CAs energy plan, if consumers conserve, consumer rates go up but their bills go down, and providers generate less power, but they earn more for that power, so they trade out revenues for profits – and most being public utilities, invest those savings into either more conservation rebates (for a few years we could CF light bulbs for free) or into replacing fossil with renewable fuels. Both sides of the market are incentivized in the same direction. Now, if you resist conserving, your bills go up because your rates go up and your usage doesn’t go down. There’s a guy around the corner from me with $1000 electric bills. He was bitching constantly about them, but he runs his AC 24/7. Mine rarely exceed $30/mo, but I replaced my AC with a whole house fan and ceiling fans. 3-4 days a year we’re pretty uncomfortable, but I’m saving thousands of dollars, so I’m good. He put solar on his house to support his lifestyle, which I’m fine with. He can be as inefficient as he wants with his own power. I can’t justify solar on my house because my bills are so low it’d take the rest of my life to pay it off.
That’s the kind of virtuous cycle you need to construct. The rebate doesn’t do that because I would get the rebate as well – and I’m far from poor. I’d almost certainly blow that $2000 on something that creates more carbon output.
The Moar You Know
@? Martin: Ah, the old “Charles Manson” theory. Still hasn’t worked, has it?
Jeffro
@MisterForkbeard:
That’s a great way to put it – may have to steal the ‘QVC’ line and tweet that out!
It really is all he knows, sheer hucksterism and snake oil sales.
Businesses better watch out, though: Trumpov is way underwater in popularity and it would be easy to pick these clowns off one at a time if they line up with (or even promote their crap with) him.
Ksmiami
@hovercraft: We have to shut down the FOX/Breitbart rightwing noise machine and then defoxify America in much the same way we denazified Germany. But first we must utterly destroy them.
? Martin
@Patricia Kayden: No, he won’t. Ivanka talked him off of that ledge. Instead you’ll get a religious conscience law that lets individual public and private sector workers discriminate, which would have largely the same effect. In fact, in some ways it would be worse because an LGBT individual wouldn’t know how they would be treated as it will vary employee by employee. Blanket discrimination at least has the advantage of providing a clear set of rules that you can route around in one way or another.
The evangelicals want the conscience rule more than the anti LGBT stuff because it allows them to discriminate on anything – birth control, muslims, etc.
? Martin
@The Moar You Know: A guy can have dreams, no?
Sandia Blanca
Not sure if this has already been posted, but here’s a Pennsylvania lawmaker who is not cowed by the Loser in Chief.
jl
Yeah, the baby sitter is weird, and seems to eyeing THE KNIFE RACK!
Wonder if Barack Obama will ever get some color back in his hair? Is the stress effect on hair color temporary, anyone know? He wouldn’t get gray like that in four years naturally. IIRC, was a study that found high elective executive office like president ages the incumbents way faster than normal.
If we are lucky, Trump will be so obsessed with trivial BS that he won’t have time to cause real trouble like voter suppression, starting wars, or oppressing the most economically productive states in the Union in order to get them back under control. The pathetic infant is apparently obsessing over McCarthy’s epic impersonation of Spicer. SNL needs to do put on slam dunk satires of the whole Trump executive branch. Priority list starts with Bannon, Flynn, Sessions, Pruitt, IMHO. Who should give them a treatment on SNL?
Gravenstone
@Jeffro: QVC should sue for infringement of intellectual property.
Jeffro
@Immanentize:
Somehow, Spicer and his Orange Overlord just know that it was due to ‘displeasure’ and not poor sales, right? Because how could sales for beautiful Ivanka’s stuff EVER drop, right? The projection, it is reaching IMAX levels here…
Well, only because Ryan and the House aren’t going to impeach him for his obvious conflicts of interest, sure…but that’s in a world with PRINCIPLES and STANDARDS, SEAN.
If they were properly divested of the business…or if Ivanka weren’t so deeply involved in caregiving for her senile sire…this wouldn’t be a fucking issue then, would it Sean?
This bears following up on, a la SNL and Jimmy Carter and ‘the attack of the 50-foot-tall woman’ (old reference)
“Was the president in the Oval Office when he was, ‘free’, Sean?” “NO!”
“Was the president in a bathroom when he was ‘free’, Sean?” YES!”
“Was the president taking a large Trump in john, Sean?” NO COMMENT!”
The Moar You Know
@? Martin: Got to. But mine tend to be a bit less…loserlike.
Baud
@Sandia Blanca: Very cool.
Gin & Tonic
@? Martin:
According to authoritative source Ivanka.
Gravenstone
@jl:
Sorry, the pesky details of keeping the Other down is being farmed out to Pence and company, using the Heritage Foundation and ALEC as willing co-conspirators (they’ll be providing the needed legislative templates). Trump won’t have to focus on a damned thing, outside of the 30 seconds it takes him to sign a bill then mug for the cameras.
Jeffro
@Gravenstone: True true true.
Meanwhile, as we’re hyping shit LIVE! from the Oval Office, our competitors are going all out for their clean energy futures, and our enemies are assembling vests full of C4…but this douche has a limited skill set, and so we get Intel hype and bitching about Ivanka’s frickin’ purse line being canceled…
jl
@Jeffro: Need a list of who should impersonate the Trump team, so Trump gets upset and fires them all.
We could have a repeat the great skit SNL did on Jimmy Carter answering phone calls on a radio show.
“Okey, Mr. President Trump, what color was the pill you took? Uh huh…. hu-huh…. yes…. OK. You probably took a back widow speedball. I’ll talk you down…. listen to me carefully…”
The Moar You Know
@Jeffro: Oh, how embarassing and unfortunate for everyone concerned. Intel isn’t the only player in that game, and although they’re preferred by most of my employees, I guess everyone’s going to get AMD machines for a long while.
Incidentally, always preferred AMD. My house finally has its first Intel laptop in it, and truth be told, I’m not that happy with it. Hot like a stovetop.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@The Moar You Know:
I suggest not being personal about it though “This arguement from the Alt Right is a lie, and such a obvious lie I would have to be an utter idiot to debate it” or “I have no problems with conservatives or people who voted for Trump, outside the liars and racists, both are scum and trash” Attack the arguement, not the person as they say.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Immanentize:
Yup.
I had to retire to my fainting couch because I made the mistake of leaving MSNBC on after Spicer and they went to Betsy DeVos’s “meet and greet” at the Education Department. She made some bullshit statement about everybody coming together for the good of American students’ education. It was like hearing Cole’s “tire rims and anthrax” date make a plea for everyone to come together to have a great dinner.
andy
I’m seeing a degree of butthurt in some quarter over video of Obama kitesurfing, as in “why aren’t you here trying to clean up this mess?” I’m wondering why the coitus couldn’t they have been bothered to drag their fine selves to the polls in 2010?
Immanentize
@? Martin: “Conscience” laws are already unconstitutional — or do you think they will try to overturn the public accommodation aspects of the commerce clause?
jl
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Pointing out the obvious and patent nonsense and untruths, irrelevance, and disregard of reason and evidence of the alt-right and Trump’s statements and actions as president is very easy and can be done very quickly in short sentences of one syllable words. So, I think we should make the effort.
hovercraft
@SiubhanDuinne: Between Comey, the NYC office and Jeff, they should be able to recreate that atmosphere.
Weaselone
@? Martin:
How do you see emitting more carbon as leading to a net gain for yourself? On an individual basis, emitting more carbon means you pay more in carbon tax and has essentially 0 impact on your personal dividend which would be divided equally among all tax payers. The people that make out the best under this system are those who don’t use carbon, therefore pay no tax and get to pocket the dividend.
I guess there is somewhat of a perverse incentive in that an individual has some reason to encourage everyone else to consume carbon so as to maximize their own benefit. Dude, you should totally drive the Hummer today . Ka-ching.
Jeffro
Speaking of breathtaking hypocrisy: when a Trumpov-ordered raid results in civilian deaths, a SEAL’s death, and gets us kicked out of a country we were working with, that’s a “disservice” to the dead SEAL.
When US diplomats die in Benghazi, however – not ordered into battle, just attacked by hostile forces – well, then we might need a Congressional committee or eight.
I’ll have to just type this for now and let it out for real when I get home: FUUUUUUUUUCCCCCKKKKKKKKKK YOU SEAN SPICER!
? Martin
@Immanentize: Trump doesn’t care that its unconstitutional. He’ll cut a great deal, or some shit in his fantasy world.
cosima
And while the news talks about tweets this sort of shite is happening:
http://www.militarytimes.com/articles/trump-va-listening-session-no-advocates
I’m over Twitler — let’s talk about SCROTUS, because his Twitler persona is a distraction. If an idiot tweets in the forest and the media decides to report on policy, congressional action & legal issues instead, is he still an idiot? Yes, but we’re actually informed about the more important & actionable issues of the day, having paid no mind to whether or not Ivanka’s shoddy clothes are stocked in Nordstrom.
The Moar You Know
@andy: Fuck those people. He did his time. In return, we saddled him with a hostile Congress for six years, and no chance to get it back until 2022. Assuming that anyone shows up and votes, again.
It’s not incumbent upon him to come save us from our own stupidity.
Glidwrith
@pamelabrown53: Scientists have defeated one of the Four Horsemen and we are working on the others.
hovercraft
@Jeffro:
Good on Welker for being persistent.
I see John McCain is being his usual heroic self, trying to have it both ways, it was a failure, now it’s goals were met but mistakes were made. Clear as mud, that’s why talk of moderates is bullshit, they all tow the line in the end.
hovercraft
@andy:
Aren’t these the same people who couldn’t wait to see him go? These fucking people.
Baud
@The Moar You Know: This.
? Martin
@Weaselone:
Because I don’t pay the tax – the utility does. I don’t see it as a tax on me, but rather as a source of funds which shapes the rebate check. The more carbon the utilities pay for, the bigger my check. I can establish causation with the check because its immediate and tangible. The added cost to my utility bill is intangible. Consumers rarely understand intangible costs/benefits, which is why companies are so good at hiding costs. Sure that plane ticket is only $99, but a bag will cost you $50. You valued the ticket at $99, not $149. $99 is tangible, the rest intangible, and most consumers simply overlook it when they make decisions.
In order to be demand-driven (which works, unlike supply-side) you need that check to be tangible to savings. Show me my baseline (historic, community priced, etc.) and show me my savings from the baseline, and give me a check for the difference. Give me money when I don’t use electricity. Use the excess funds to subsidize only the rate increase for low-income folks.
hovercraft
@The Moar You Know:
You mean their stupidity, we had the good sense to see through the Orange Shitstains bullshit.
Mnemosyne
@cosima:
Heh. The commenters on that article are not having any truck with privatization.
hovercraft
This guy knows that he’s talking out load and in front of cameras and mics, right?
Spicer Calls Sessions’ Civil And Voting Rights Record ‘Outstanding’
Spicer praised Sessions’ record after he was asked about a letter from Coretta Scott King, harshly critical of Sessions, that several Democratic senators read on Senate floor on Tuesday and Wednesday. Senate Republicans voted to silence Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) Tuesday evening when she read the letter.
That letter and Democrats’ continued protests against Sessions’ nomination have shed new light on his prosecution of black voter outreach activists in Alabama in 1984.
“We have a lot of respect for her and the sacrifices that she made, and the sacrifices that frankly she endured in her life, but I would respectfully disagree with her assessment of Sen. Sessions then and now. His record on civil and voting rights I think is outstanding,” Spicer said.
He referred to the late Sen. Arlen Spector (R-PA), who said he regretted voting against Sessions for a federal judgeship more than two decades after the vote.
“And like Arlen Specter, the late Arlen Specter, I can only hope that if she was still with us today, that after getting to know him and to see his record and his commitment to voting and civil rights, that she would share the same view that Sen. Spector did,” Spicer said. “He said, although I voted against him, getting to know the man that he is now, I regret that vote.”
Spicer went on to call Sessions “a tireless advocate for civil rights.”
Asshole, disgusting piece of shit, perfect spokesperson for the Shitgibbon.
liberal
@hovercraft:
Who started the phrase “shitgibbon”? Here it is again.
scuffletuffle
@rikyrah: fuckity fucklington, that is how Trump speaks. Why does Hollande think he is special?
liberal
@Betty Cracker:
That’s exactly the right standard. That piece of shit known as “Ivanka” is fair game.
Still, IMHO it’s pretty obvious now that (apart from Trump himself), the biggest danger is Bannon, by far. Danger, as in “this stupid fuck is going to get us in a major war, possibly with another great power” danger.
sigaba
Saw a comment in Krugman’s Twitter: Buy on the Tweet, sell on the news.
Mnemosyne
@scuffletuffle:
Hollande probably thought it was all an act and was horrified to find out that it’s really what Trump is like.
liberal
@Mnemosyne: well, a google search has top hits that include a link to a purported video at National Review. Someone could waste their time watching it, to see if there’s anything incriminating.
Me, I’ve got an abortion quota…for Skynet. Retroactive abortions, for Trump, Bannon, …
liberal
@sigaba: Hah hah.
I wouldn’t at all be surprised if some high frequency trading douchebags set up a bot to mine his tweets and use that to push buy/sell orders.
MCA1
@The Moar You Know: I think you’re misidentifying the middle class, though. They’re not “people with money.” The working class is the middle class. They work, but they don’t have money. It’s been pretty well-documented that people who are in the top 5% or so of income/assets in the U.S. consistently think of themselves as being part of the middle class, when in fact they’re quite wealthy.
If by “middle” we mean a band that covers the center and then some percentage upwards and downwards, then it stands to reason, given that median household income breaches $60k in only a handful of states, that even $100k is solidly “upper middle” to “lower upper” class.
Folks at that $100k level, with a post-tax takehome monthly income of somewhere around $5-6,000, a third of which goes toward housing and another thousand minimum to utilities and food and other necessities (meaning they’re probably left with a disposable of less than a hundred bucks a day), do not shop at a place where shoes can run upwards of $300-400 a pair, and dress shirts beyond $125 are not uncommon. Unless they’re single. There are no Nordstroms in Alabama or Mississippi. There are, however, in a nation of 320 million, still millions of people making over a quarter of a million a year and can afford to shop at Nordstrom – they’re clustered together near large cities so perhaps give off the impression of constituting a much larger portion of the population than they actually are (about 3%), at least in those areas. They may aspire to be seen as fitting in the income class above where they sit, but that’s not upper middle.
Gin & Tonic
@liberal: Already done. Short-sellers were busy in JWN today, the second his Tweet went out.
liberal
@The Moar You Know: I’m pretty sure that at some time in the first decade, AMD had its nose stuck up 43’s ass. So it’s not like there’s anyone untainted here.
scuffletuffle
@Mnemosyne: You may be right, but I would have expected Hollande to be smarter than that. Sigh….
cosima
@Mnemosyne: That was my first thought when I read it — must assemble all available stooges for top-secret privatisation meeting… That’s hundreds of thousands of lives in the balance while the masses get excited about a shitty department store deciding not to stock a shitty clothing line. I try not to think about how many of fools/tools voted for the shitgibbon
liberal
@cosima:
Man, those guys are a bunch of RW shitstains.
Ohio Mom
@MCA1: We have a Nordstroms in Cincinnati and I periodically walk through it as a shortcut from the parking garage to the rest of the mall.
The shoe department is on the main route and like everybody else, I stop and gawk at the shoes. I have long suspected that they don’t actually carry the $$$$$ designer shoes — I think they have one shoe on display and that’s it.
Because I can’t believe they have multiple pairs in all different sizes in the back, just waiting for someone to come in and say, “I want to try this in a seven and a half narrow.” That would be a huge investment in inventory for a very small customer base in this part of the world.
I’m thinking if someone actually does want a pair of $600 shoes, they are temporarily out and have to make a special order. Which they are glad to do, it promotes their reputation of having fabulous customer service.
Wyatt Derp
Love it when Trump says she pushes him to do the right thing. What kind of non-sociopath needs to be pushed to do the right thing?
liberal
@Weaselone:
Martin sees lots of things that anyone with a basic knowledge of mathematics and economics doesn’t see.
liberal
@Gin & Tonic: It’s such a constant shit-stream that I can’t even keep track of which tweet this is now.
SgrAstar
@Gin & Tonic: I’m dying. Is the Ninth Circuit supposed to ignore this latest revelation? Kinda goes against the “but the Preznit knows” argument.
MisterForkbeard
@liberal: I read an article about that awhile back. It’s already happening.
Waynski
@jl:
Too bad, Chris Farley’s dead. He would have nailed Bannon.
Dean
@schrodingers_cat: I’m