I just read an absolutely brutal take-down of Putin’s useful idiots on the left. I’m not a hippie-puncher and I don’t think the number of Putin apologists on the left is very large. And of course it’s the Republican party that actually nominated a pro-Putin stooge, not the Democratic party. But Jill Stein, Assange, and some of the commentators at The Nation relation truly disgraced themselves during the last election cycle. There’s no way around that reality.
A lot of the #NeverTrump right is going in that direction too. Eli Lake, Damon Linker, Charles Lane, and others are now screaming about Deep State coups rather than worrying about the fact the White House is quite possibly being run by covert Russian effects.
I understand that there was a lot of paranoid red-baiting that went on in American politics in the past. I don’t see what that has to do with a right-wing dictator interfering in our elections.
I understand that Russia is different from other countries culturally. All the ethnically Russian emigres from Russia that I know revere Putin, even though all are educated, whereas I’ve never met an educated person from, say, Turkey or Iran or Zimbabwe who supported their country’s oppressive regime. And Russia has never had a middle-class, so it is probably generations away from having a western-style democracy.But that doesn’t mean anyone on any side of the political spectrum should we make excuses for a dictator who has had over four dozen journalists assassinated.
Hating the Democratic party is a hell of a drug. I’m surprised that there are democratic socialists who hate Hillary Clinton so much that they’re willing to get into bed with Trump and Putin. I wish I could say I’m surprised that #NeverTrump right hates Democrats so much they are too.
Update. I’m not trying to say that Stein or other pro-Putin stooges have much influence on liberalism in this country or that “Bernie bros” love Putin or something like that. I think that’s completely untrue. Likewise, I don’t think the #NeverTrump people have much influence within the Republican party. I just find the actions of both groups to be remarkably pathetic and transparent.
Jerzy Russian
I am not convinced this “Jill Stein” is a real person. Nobody can be that dumb and clueless, can they?
Baud
Yes it is.
I’m not. See above.
schrodingers_cat
Actually, I have the opposite experience, my Russian friends hate P and were in DC marching with p-hats the day after inauguration.
Doug!
@schrodingers_cat:
Are they ethnically Jewish or Armenian or Tatar or something like that?
rikyrah
Stephen Miller called Brooklyn U.S. Attorney at home and told him how to defend travel ban in court
In the chaotic hours after President Trump signed on a Friday afternoon the sloppily written executive order meant to fulfill his Muslim ban campaign promise, Stephen Miller called the home of Robert Capers to dictate to the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District how he should defend that order at a Saturday emergency federal court hearing.
That’s according to a federal law enforcement official with knowledge of the call, which happened as Department of Justice attorneys cancelled plans, found babysitters and rushed back to their Brooklyn office to try and find out what exactly it was they were defending and who was being affected by it — how many people were already being held in America, how many were being barred from arriving here and the exact status of each person.
Y’know, the information a competent administration would have been prepared to collect before implementing the order.
The Eastern District declined to comment on any contact between Capers and Miller, the 31-year-old former Jeff Sessions aide and America First true believer with no legal background of his own, who a few months ago was warming up Trump’s campaign crowds and is now writing executive orders for the President
efgoldman
I have said many times here and elsewhere that if the Democratic party dies, leftist purity ponies will be the death of us.
In a gerrymandered country, where the electorate is oh, so, closely divided, even the smallest peeling off of potential voters can kill us. The Naderites and Steiniacs and their obvious preference for destructive right-wing leadership, and their fucking idiotic “not a dime’s wort of difference” are at least as destructive as the RWNJ Flying monkeys.
Will Rodgers was right, of course. Democrats will never be in lockstep (although we’re closer than we’ve been in a long time – total minority status has a way of clearing the mind). But goddamit, we’ve got to find a way to hook these purity assholes back in. Damned if I know what it is.
Fuckem
Thru the Looking Glass...
I would not discount the possibility that some of those individuals have been bought and paid for…
Cash on the barrel head has made for some highly unlikely bedfellows in the past…
What did Bob Dylan once say? “Money doesn’t talk… it swears”?
schrodingers_cat
@Doug!: Nope, ethnically Russian, this does not include my two Russian Jewish friends who also are not fond of the T person.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Baud:
I rather think Steinistas, Bernie Bros, Naderites, and such so want to think themselves right and morally superior that they become ridiculous (see Susan Sarandon).
I don’t think HRC was a flawless candidate (no one is.) But she would have been ten thousand times better than SCROTUS.
Thru the Looking Glass...
@rikyrah: I notice that the esteemed Mr Miller, along w/ Ms Conway, have been rather quiet the last week… I’m guessing Premier Bannon was not pleased w/ their performances recently…
Doug!
@schrodingers_cat:
Well, good for them!
sukabi
@Thru the Looking Glass…: could be wrong but I think KAC has been “retired”. Reports earlier that WH, Preibus, and others quit following her on fb, Twitter.
schrodingers_cat
@Doug!: As you say they would kinda make excuses for Putin before, but propping up T was too much even for them.
Baud
@West of the Rockies (been a while): I’d give my left nut for Hillary to be POTUS right now, but how much more influential would these corrupt leftists have grown within our own circles if they had a Hillary administration to complain about?
rikyrah
Steve Benen
@stevebenen
Steve Benen Retweeted The New York Times
Were there pieces in 2009 about conservatives needing to be far nicer towards Obama voters with whom they disagreed? I don’t recall them.
Thru the Looking Glass...
@sukabi: I’m not surprised… that was one model of battlebot that simply wasn’t working for them…
KAC is lucky she wasn’t working directly for Putin… she might have just been ‘disappeared’…
Didn’t someone once else high up in NSC crowd get canned over the weekend?
But… but… the administration is running like a well-oiled machine!
Chip Daniels
I see leftist friends on FB make these sorts of Greenwaldish comments about not falling for some new Redbaiting McCarthyism.
I try to point out, gently, that Russia is in fact not friendly to America, and has demonstrated a willingness to fuck with our systems.
Doesn’t make them the Evil Empire necessarily, just not someone to be trusted.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: Every cabinet appointment would be an opportunity to wail about betrayal and neoliberalism
I wonder if Comey hadn’t waded in, if Katie McGinty and/or Feingold, maybe even Kander could have pulled out a win.
and I wonder how many angels can dance on a hanging chad
ETA: @rikyrah: and as somebody said on twitter the other day, remember all the pieces checking in young voters, minorities and other Obama supporters to see how happy they were with his first weeks? Of course, the PL was busy keening about how the size of the Stimulus was because Obama sided with Larry Summers instead f Christina Romer. And that creepy preacher who said a prayer at his inauguration.
opiejeanne
What happened with that AP story about Trump using the National Guard to round up undocumented immigrants? There was a lot of screaming about it the day the memo surfaced, all eleven pages of it, but I haven’t heard a peep about it since. Did it just disappear without further comment, forgotten in the wake of some new idiocy?
Thru the Looking Glass...
@Chip Daniels: Hell… Russia isn’t even ‘red’ anymore…
I have to keep reminding myself that… Putin may be Russian, but he’s not a Communist.
Roger Moore
@efgoldman:
I think we’ll have a much easier time trying to get occasional voters to the polls. The purity assholes are never going to be convinced.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@efgoldman: @Roger Moore: after grandstanding about Nader and not a dime’s worth of difference in 2000, Sarandon endorsed (IIRC) John Edwards in the primary and campaigned for John Kerry. Not that she moves a lot of, or any, votes, but she seems to be a good example of a Steiniac
Aleta
An article that appeared during the campaign (Huffington?) argued that HRC supporters’ concerns about Russian interference were merely a resurfacing of the old paranoia toward Marxism that had been used to attack the left in the 50s. (That’s how I remember it.)
Doug!
@schrodingers_cat:
It is actually true that the young Russian in our department is only moderately pro-Putin and having doubts now because of Trump. I had forgotten about her.
But I’ve always found it strange: with people from every other country that I know of, bring up the dictator who destroyed their democracy and you’ll see hate-filled tears (literally, and understandably), but not with Russians. I don’t know why.
efgoldman
@opiejeanne:
Maybe they asked an actual lawyer to read the thing.
And maybe an actual politician looked at it and said “What’s the biggest state you want to round up. California, right? You think Jerry Brown is gonna’ call up the guard, even if we try to federalize it? Plus there’s this thing you don’t knmow about. It’s a law – I’ll have to teach you about those….”
fuckwit
I am now fully convinced that the “deep state” bullshit is Russian propaganda.
They have figured out how to manipulate people on the internet. It’s surprisingly easy.
Chip Daniels
@Thru the Looking Glass…:
Russia may not be Communist, but they are still very similar to how they were prior.
In the same way that the Bolsheviks behaved a lot like the Czars they replaced, Putin governs much like the Communist Party he grew up in.
There are plenty of evil authoritarian governments, and Communist are merely one type.
Eljai
I can understand being critical of US foreign policy, but I don’t get the venom the purity left directs at Hillary — as if she was solely responsible for every decision. Norman Solomon was one on the left who could not bring himself to say one decent thing about Hillary during the election. Now he believes we’re trying to start a war with Russia. I used to respect his writing for being a principled anti-war voice, but now he’s just being an asshat.
schrodingers_cat
@Doug!: Are the older Russians more paranoid? I have seen that among Chinese people too, most are very reluctant to say anything bad about the political leadership.
efgoldman
@Thru the Looking Glass…:
Fascist authoritarians gotta’ authoriatate…
Doesn’t matter what label you put on them. All the same thing. There’s no tradition of democracy or republicanism.
aimai
@rikyrah: Exactly! Its always these assholes with a permanent sense of injury who the press weeps over.
Gin & Tonic
@Doug!: Russians want a strong czar. Always have and (at least so far) always will.
Mnemosyne
@Doug!:
The only immigrant Russian I know well is my dentist, and he does not seem fond of Putin (and he’s a strong Democrat). AFAIK, he’s Russian and not another ethnicity — So Cal has a lot of Armenians, so they’re easy to identify.
Doug!
@schrodingers_cat:
I think that, as with Americans, younger Russian and Chinese people are better informed than their elders.
sukabi
@Thru the Looking Glass…: yeah, some guy drumpf appointed got the ax for not bootlicking…
khead
Re: Thread title. The judges also would’ve accepted any lyric from I.G.Y.
TriassicSands
OT Observation: I just watched a clip with Chris Wallace “interviewing” Rush Limbaugh. It was very revealing and puts the lie to Wallace’s contention that he is an objective journalist. Limbaugh spewed a bunch of nonsense and Wallace let every lie go unchallenged. For example, Limbaugh whined about how the “judiciary” is against Trump (and it’s basically a bunch of judges appointed by Obama and other Democrats) and that’s why the courts have ruled against him so far on the “Muslim ban.” Wallace could have easily pointed out that in the Washington case, the initial judge was appointed by GW Bush and of the three appellate judges who ruled — unanimously against Trump — one of them was also appointed by a Republican. Wallace is a phony.
Mart
I listen regularly to Thom Hartmann on progressive radio. Hartmann broadcasts on RT (Russia Today). He regularly has Stephen Cohen on air. Per wiki Cohen “is an American scholar and professor emeritus of Russian studies at Princeton University and New York University. His academic work concentrates on modern Russian history since the Bolshevik Revolution and the country’s relationship with the United States. Cohen is married to Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the progressive magazine The Nation, where he is also a contributing editor. Cohen is also the founding director of the reestablished American Committee for East-West Accord.”
The past couple years Cohen was warning of US/NATO aggression towards Russia and an upcoming war. The last couple times I listened to him he just seemed unhinged, rambling pro Putin stuff. Hartmann seemed taken aback. Hartmann does not seem to be overtly pro-Putin when talking about Russia. Still it is weird, that picture of Jill Stein and Flynn celebrating RT’s success at a table with Putin; and Hartmann and Cohen on RT broadcasts…
Gin & Tonic
@Mart: Stephen Cohen has been an apologist for the USSR/RF since the days of Brezhnev.
Baud
@Eljai:
A lot of it is straight up sexism.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Andy Richter @ AndyRichter 4h4 hours ago
Where were “Birtherism Isn’t Going to Win Over Obama Voters” or “GOP May Be Shooting Itself in Foot by Obstrucing Everything” takes?
has everyone seen or at least heard of today’s NYT thumbsucker about how Dems are too mean, smug and condescending to Trump voters? This is in reference to that
The three Trump voters we’re driving away are the above, a self-described conservative from South Carolina, a 72 year old upstate NY “lifelong Democrat” who says the party left her for “identity politics”, and tech bro from California
mai naem mobile
I’ve been wondering what Bill and Hillary Clinton did to piss off so many people so deeply? It’s a serious question. I don’t want just some flip answers. There’s so much hatred even from the left. The hate from the right is crazy too. It can’t be just that they weren’t the right pedigree. Neither was Carter. I expect the right’s hatred of Obama because of the color of his skin but the Clinton stuff really has me stumped.
schrodingers_cat
@Gin & Tonic: Can’t Pure BullShit Newshour find another Russia “expert”?
Turgidson
@Chip Daniels:
Greenwald is the biggest fucking clown on the planet. Leaks and transparency used to be the greatest example of patriotism possible. Per se great. Leakers were heroes.
Turns out that this only applied when the leaks were directed at the US intelligence community (bonus that it was also embarrassing “Dear Leader” Barack Obama). To Greenwald, the IC are the most pernicious force of evil in the history of civilization.
Leaks that make Trump look bad or cast Russia in a bad light are bad bad bad, dangerous, how DARE these leakers be undermining the elected government!
And this is the same fucking guy who used to exaggerate to the point of absurdity about how the US treated whistleblowers and leakers (the US locks them up forevah! “Disappears” them! ZOMG Barrett Brown!!!), but is now saying all this angst about VLADIMIR FUCKING PUTIN is overblown. Vladimir.Fucking.Putin. The guy who really, actually, brazenly does all the stuff he claimed he was against.
Fucking clown. He should be taken as seriously as Michele fucking Bachmann at this point, he’s so far gone.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The NYT is garbage.
efgoldman
@TriassicSands:
He’s trying not to be his father, and to be his father, at the same time. Poor Mike must be spinning…..
khead
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
She’s getting crushed. You should go back and read her stories where she rode with Trump voters to the inauguration.
JPL
@Jerzy Russian: I think she was ran simply to take votes away from Hillary.
Turgidson
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
So she took the Nader lesson to heart for a whole four fucking years.
Then conveniently forgot it when the choice was between a qualified center-left Democrat and DONALD GODDAMN TRUMP, just because her miracle unicorn Bernie got beat fair and square in the primary of a party he does not even belong to.
What a dolt.
Gin & Tonic
@schrodingers_cat: The bookers for those programs want to do as little work as possible. Finding someone you don’t know is work, calling up Steve is easy.
Thru the Looking Glass...
@Chip Daniels: @efgoldman:
That I don’t doubt in the least… after the Milo Yiannopolous riot in Berkeley, there were, oddly enough, ‘hammer & sickles’ spray painted around town here and there… I started thinking about it and that didn’t make any sense… Communism is just about gone, except for a half dozen countries…
Yeah, China is a pretty big player but Laos? Vietnam?
Putin may be a ruthless strongman but he’s not a Communist…
Thru the Looking Glass...
@sukabi: Jesus Keeeerist… they’re coming and going so fast, you need a score card to keep track of ’em… it’s like the manager of a bad baseball team, substituting players left and right, desperately trying to find something that works…
In the words of the late, great Casey Stengel…
efgoldman
@mai naem mobile:
How old are you.
It was Broder, if memory serves, who slagged them (I don’t remember the exact quote) as being “the wrong kind of people” i.e. Arkansas hillbillies – not true, either. Then the Newtniks took over congress, the VSP (mostly the NYT) got a permanent case of Clinton derangement syndrome, and away we went.
ThresherK
I clicked on a Politico link today, for about the first time ever. It’s the Casey Michel one from a link in his Daily Beast one.
I have seen too many FurnieFroze and Steinways put up that stupid graph in FB about every press outlet except Democracy Now being the same, mainstream, and corrupt.
sukabi
@mai naem mobile: all were “outsiders” and actually did what the privileged insist everyone else needs to do… They pulled themselves up in spite of class / privilege obstacles and excelled. They proved themselves better than / more competent than the Washington power players and cocktail weenie crowd.
NR
@JPL: It is impossible for a candidate to “take” votes from another candidate. The votes do not rightfully belong to any candidate in the first place. Candidates have to earn votes. If they can’t do it, that’s on them.
efgoldman
@Turgidson:
Nobody takes him seriously except certain blog commenters and a few purity ponies who take diametrically opposed stands at the same time. He is a nonentity; irrelevant; we shouldn’t waste any energy, time, or pixels on him.
Fuckem.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
looks like the bat(shit) signal has gone up
JPL
@NR: Stein muddied the water and gave some people an alternative.
Little was reported about her time on RT or at state dinners with Putin.
just sayin
stinger
You probably know more ethnic Russians than I do, but I know two quite well–my closest friend and her husband, both with Russian undergrad and graduate degrees and additional US grad degrees–and both loathe Putin, as do their families back in Moscow. It’s like saying all miners and farmers are Trump voters.
NR
@JPL: Are we now saying that people having alternatives is a bad thing?
People always have an alternative regardless of who is running, and that is to simply not vote. Candidates have to convince voters to vote for them. If they can’t do that, that’s on them.
efgoldman
@Thru the Looking Glass…:
“Communist” is meaningless in the 21st century. Kruschev, Brezhnev, etc were nominally “communist” who paid lip service to Marx. Top-down dictator is top-down dictator. The only difference is, in Putin’s Russia, the criminals are allowed to be show off rich – until they piss Putin off, when they get purged, essentially, by being killed, or arrested and tried on trumped up charges.
Just like the old days.
MikeBoyScout
Doug, I literally know and interact with hundreds of Russians; both ex-pats and those who have stayed.
Maybe 3 openly express positive thoughts about Putin, up from 0 six years ago.
Over the past 19 years I’ve closely interacted with Russia the political attitude has gone from hopeful for democratic pluralism to resigned that such a thing is not probably possible. Quite like the feelings about politics 30 years ago.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
Oh, look, here’s the collaborator whining again about how if people couldn’t be arsed to prevent AN ACTUAL FUCKING FASCIST from taking office, it was all Hillary’s fault, and certainly not the fault of the voters who looked at AN ACTUAL FUCKING FASCIST and thought, Eh, I’m white, he’s not going to hurt me much.
Turgidson
@efgoldman
Newt coming in was the point of no return as far as the GOP officially becoming a deranged death cult who viewed anyone to the left of Attila the Hun as sworn enemies. The debt ceiling hostage taking and pretty much the official party’s entire response to Obama’s existence owes to Newt’s conception of politics as steel cage death match and the only acceptable compromise being “we get everything we want, and fuck you for breathing.”
But I think the Beltway media and pre-Newt GOP had it out for Clinton even before 1994 in part because it wasn’t supposed to be possible for people like him to win the presidency. Draft-dodging, pot smoking, womanizing, progeny of poor white trash, who dared to be DEMOCRATS, were not supposed to get as far as Clinton did. So they hated him for not staying in his place.
Baud
@Turgidson: Don’t forget how controversial it was for Hillary to be a smart woman interested in policy.
efgoldman
@JPL: Troll is back
Let’s relitigate the fucking primary again. Just as useful as it’s always been.
Thru the Looking Glass...
@efgoldman:
In other words, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss…”
Absolutely… I’ve just noticed how many people still associate Russia w/ the old USSR… hell, I’ve had to watch myself and stop making comments about commies and reds…
It’s funny, how strong the old associations are… like seeing those ‘hammer & sickles’ around Berkeley after the recent riots…
NR
@Mnemosyne: Oh look, here’s the moron whining again about people pointing out the fact that voters have no obligation to vote for anyone, while still unthinkingly and unquestioningly supporting the incompetent Democratic party leadership that ran a campaign so bad that they lost the White House to AN ACTUAL FUCKING FASCIST.
Haydnseek
Yeah, Doug, and Peggy Noonan didn’t know one person who didn’t vote for Romney! C’mon, man. If you’re gonna fuck with us, at least put a little effort into it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@efgoldman: Brian Beutler had Buttigieg and Perez on his podcast last week(Ellison was invited and declined), and it strengthened my opinion that Buttigieg should be DNC Chair, both to put the primary to rest, and it seems to me he gets more than the other two that it’s an executive/organizing position, not a non-voting Senator or talking head job
ETA: Of course, I don’t have a vote
Mnemosyne
@NR:
I know it’s hard for you to accept that you looked fascism in the face and immediately surrendered, but that’s what you did. Now you know in your heart that if Anne Frank had lived on your street, you would have turned her in because you didn’t want any trouble.
efgoldman
@Baud:
Absolutely. People forget now, but her “I won’t stay home and bake cookies” remark during the campaign was a big scandal, sort of.
Eljai
Uh oh. Did someone forget to use the code word? Now, where did I leave my pie filter?
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I could live with Buttigieg. He had a weird tweet the other day that rubbed me the wrong way, but in general he seems to be solid. Not sure they’ll risk it since he’s so new to the national scene, however. We’ll find out in a week!
NR
@Mnemosyne: You are completely full of shit and have no idea what you are talking about. But of course, that’s nothing new.
Meanwhile, your continued cluelessness is enabling the fascists more than anything anyone on the left is doing. The sad part is, you’re too stupid to even understand that. But hopefully some people around here will get it, at least.
Smiling Mortician
@mai naem mobile: They hate Hillary a lot more than they hate Bill. It’s largely misogyny, I think. She was the first First Lady in their memory who took on an active role in the WH and spoke her mind. Unforgivable.
gbbalto
@NR: They were competent enough to take Bernie out. Your keening is just boring now.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@rikyrah:
Of course not, silly. But there were plenty of articles urging Obama to reach out to conservatives.
Doug!
@MikeBoyScout:
I wonder if you know a lot of people who left because they disliked the government whereas the ones I know just left for opportunities. In any case, it’s strange to me to hear Russian PhDs defend Putin (which I do), and it makes me think that it will be hard for Russia to become a democracy.
NR
@gbbalto: So you’re now admitting that the Democratic party leadership was on Hillary’s side in the primary? Good to hear.
Anyway, yep, they took out a 74 year old socialist and then promptly lost the White House to a clown that was on tape bragging about serial sexual assault. Bang-up job, guys! You sure showed… um… some people!
Felonius Monk
@Baud:
Since it appears so frequently, I’ll bet you have this phrase coded to a hot key. :-)
Doug!
@Haydnseek:
I’m serious, though, and I find it jarring every time I encounter it.
Baud
@West of the Rockies (been a while): It was important for Obama not to spike the football.
Baud
@Felonius Monk: Muscle memory.
I wish I had fewer opportunities to use it.
sharl
@opiejeanne: Here’s something that recently came out on that very topic: A suspicious pattern is emerging for how the White House handles its most controversial plans
Although the article is anchored by the incident of that National Guard activation draft memo that never was approved, the article addresses what appears to be a pattern of behavior by White House media operations:
It’s a sleazy though maybe effective way to float trial balloons to gauge public response. I think government leaders have used strategic leaks for a very long time, it’s just that Trump’s people now get to do their favorite thing – beat up on reporters as part of the process – which of course their core base eats up.
Haydnseek
@Doug!: Fair enough. I was thinking more about small sample size and the trouble with generating any sort of conclusions from that. I get that you were speaking anecdotally, and understand how you would find their attitude perplexing.
Baud
I think they help channel stuff that’s already there. Even without Russian interference, American liberalism has its issues.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
Uh-huh. The Russians were interfering in House races, and you still think the problem was the Democratic Party.
You bought into all of the right-wing propaganda about the Clintons. The Republicans ran their Big Con on you, and you lapped it up.
Villago Delenda Est
Russians love their autocrats. From the Tsars, to the Commissars, to Vlad.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
Yes, I’m sure that Steve Bannon and his anti-Semitic white supremacist propaganda machine would never have attacked the Jewish socialist in the general election. Good one.
Villago Delenda Est
@NR: You are a vile creature.
Raven Onthill
@Doug!: There’s plenty of US PhDs who defend the Republicans, after all. Some of them even defend Trump.
@Gin & Tonic: This differs from Americans how?
efgoldman
@Baud:
I could live with any of them; let’s just get this fucking thing over with so we can get to work.
Of course, no matter who it is, the whining will commence…..
Felonius Monk
Best tweet of the weekend came from Chelsea Clinton regarding Drumpf’s Sweden nonsense:
(Source)
Cacti
@Mnemosyne:
You give it too much credit.
It’s a Trump voter posing as an aggrieved lefty.
gbbalto
@NR: What the fuck are you talking about? Democrats prefer Democratic candidate – Stop presses? There were a few more factors involved in the D loss, as everyone notes except you. Go win an election, if you can lower yourself enough to run, then tell us you told us so.
eldorado
i have been hate-reading nakedcaptialism for awhile now, but had to stop over the last few weeks because the lengths they will go through to blame hillary for everything are just insane.
Baud
@efgoldman: Next weekend. The Rumble in Atlanta.
@Felonius Monk:
efgoldman
@Doug!:
I’d guess, impossible. Not because of Pootie Kazootie (he’s got to die or get overthrown some day) but because there’s zero tradition of it, most Russians don’t know how to deal with it, and most favor some form of strong leader, no matter what name it has.
Sab
@mai naem mobile: I have admired Hillary a lot for moSt of my adult life, but Bill made a bunch of legislative compromises in his second term that have come back to bite them both over the years: Defense of Marriage Act, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell for gays in the military, Welfare Reform, Crime Bill, Drug Free Workplace Act. Some of their oldest friends broke with them at the time over welfare reform and the crime bill. Also Hillary’s healthcare reform process was opaque. I had a small business at the time and I was convinced the costs would put me under.
I am old enough to remember the political climate at the time, and to understand that Bill made these compromises to prevent worse legislation, but his name was attached to this legislation, so every time someone you know got kicked out of the Army for being gay, or had welfare benefits cut after five years because she was home with an unhealthy child, or you had to pee in a bottle to get a temp job as a file clerk at a publicly financed hospital, or your kid had to get drug tested for any job because Clinton Era policies enabled private workers comp insurers to follow the government employer rules, we’ll it passes you off. I remember the politics of the period, and understand why theyou did it. My kids do not. They just thought they were hypocrites who said good things, signed bad bills, and then got paid a lot to give speeches at Goldman Sachs.
Not fair, not actual, but that’s the optics. Bill had incandescent charisma. Hillary is just a very hardworking, extremely decent and dutiful person whose warm and charm is obvious in person, but doesn’the project that much.
Their legislative compromises made her look like a hypocrite, which I think is 180 degrees from her actual personality and character, but that’s not how my kids saw her. They voted for her holding their noses, but lots of their friends stayed home.
Felonius Monk
@Smiling Mortician:
I guess they forgot about Eleanor Roosevelt.
NR
@Mnemosyne: The Democrats have been losing all across the country since 2010, and you still think the problem was the Russians.
And hey, you’re the one still supporting and donating to the Democratic party so they can write six- and seven-figure checks to political consultants who guide them to loss after loss after loss. So who, really, is being conned?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
do you know how they feel about that decision now?
Baud
@Sab: I have no sympathy for those kids’ future. And if that’s unfair, then they know what it feels like.
Teddys Person
Trump tweeted that the Sweden story was something he heard on Fox. Sweden should demand an official explanation for why Trump made that remark in a public speech. Some day soon, Trump’s off-hand remarks are going to start World War III.
NR
@Cacti: You agree with Trump about more things than I do, Cupcake. See: Chelsea Manning.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Teddys Person: yeah, it was a Tucker Carlson show (!) story alleging a dramatic increase in crime since Sweden started accepting Syrian refugees. I don’t know how much, if any, truth there is in that, but I’m sure Pudge played it up so that his audience is convinced Sweden is more dangerous than Aleppo
Mnemosyne
@Sab:
Sad but true: your friends bought into the incessant anti-Clinton and anti-Democratic propaganda.
Most people don’t realize that there’s actually two halves of that propaganda: Democrats and Republicans are equally corrupt, so therefore it doesn’t matter who you vote for. Even people who don’t entirely buy into the first half are susceptible to the second half, as demonstrated by the number of people who voted third party or left the presidential line blank this past November.
The Republicans convinced them that their vote didn’t matter, and that’s how they voted. Hopefully it’s not too late for them to learn their lesson.
sharl
Trump – or one of his minions on his behalf – fessed up on the weird Sweden thing just before 5pm on twitter:
Since Sweden had officially asked about this, I’m guessing they felt they had to say something.
Ashley Feinberg had already figured this out yesterday:
Like Chauncey Gardiner – but devoid of the gentle charm – Trump likes to watch television.
aimai
@Mart: No one should ever forget that Putin is a murderer and a dictator. This is not the case of the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Putin is not the enemy of our enemies–he is a friend to our enemies. Its revolting to see the modern US left having anything at all to do with Putin.
jake the antisoshul soshulist
@sukabi:
Both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama should be heros to the right. Raised themselves up
by their bootstraps from nothing to become president. The Clinton administration passed some of the right wing’s wet dreams (welfare reform, NAFTA, deregulating the financial industry). But the right hates them with the fire of a thousand supernovas.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
the R’s weren’t the only ones…
aimai
@Mnemosyne: Hell, NR would have turned her in for the fun of it.
Thru the Looking Glass...
@efgoldman:
Yes… this… similar problem w/ some of the more troubling ME and S Asian countries too…
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
For some reason, that particular formulation cracks me up every time I see or hear it. And once again, it did not disappoint.
opiejeanne
@efgoldman: That would make sense, and Jerry Brown farts in his general direction, but I was asking about why the outrage over the “Fake News” just shut down after the one day. I had a troll telling me it was a fake memo (just look at it) and that AP had written it themselves; then she switched to it being an old memo from 2006, blaming it on W. I kept asking for proof and she finally blocked me.
It seemed to completely disappear from the news overnight and I was wondering if I missed something.
NR
@Villago Delenda Est: Yes, I’m the vile one, not the person calling other people Nazi sympathizers.
You’re really something.
NR
@aimai: You’re disgusting.
Teddys Person
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: His penchant for verbal diarrhea scares the shit out of me. He’s got all this sensitive/classified information rattling around in that orange melon of his, and no one can control how it comes out.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
No, I think the problem was the massive voter suppression program designed and implemented by Karl Rove to gerrymander the whole country, a program that just happens to exactly match up with your favorite map of blue states that turned red.
Funny, though, you never seem to want to look at how precisely those two maps overlay each other. Almost like you want to pretend that Republicans are not deliberately and systematically preventing American citizens from voting on the basis of their race, something that Republicans have openly admitted they’re doing. Why is that, exactly?
ETA: Link added, just in case anyone here doubts your dishonesty.
Villago Delenda Est
@NR: If you’d stop behaving like a Nazi sympathizer, I might change my opinion of you.
Baud
@Teddys Person: Hopefully, the sensitive information is presented to him in a very boring format, so he doesn’t really retain the information.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
Yes, because it’s worse for me to point out that you’re a fascist sympathizer than for you to actually be one. That’s how racism works, too, or so racists keep insisting.
JerryRich
@mai naem mobile: The Clintons were successful in making Democrats acceptable as national presidential materiel again, and they did it by working within the system. Also, they did not call for an immediate end to capitalism, which made them “neo-liberals”. This was totally viewed as a betrayal of the middle class and the poor. Furthermore, the Clintons were strongly supported by African-Americans, who foolishly did not flock to leftier-than-thou candidates.
NR
@Mnemosyne: And just like all the other times you’ve made this assertion, I’ll point out the fact that much of the country was lost in 2010, before gerrymandering and voter suppression was in place.
And I’ll also point out the fact that in Minnesota last year, a state controlled by Democrats and without gerrymandering or voter suppression, Hillary won by only 1.4%, which is down by over 5% from Obama’s 7.7% margin over Romney in 2012, and the Republicans took over the state legislature.
And I am quite sure that you will ignore these facts, just like you have every other time they have been pointed out to you. You are 100% invested in your narrative that you and the people you support can do no wrong, and everything bad that happens is someone else’s fault. Which is really sad.
NR
@Villago Delenda Est: In what way am I behaving like a Nazi sympathizer?
randy khan
@opiejeanne:
Spicer said they weren’t going to do it, which kind of ended the story.
And I’m all right with that. One important function the press serves when it gets these kinds of leaks is allowing the outrage to happen before the Administration does the crazy thing it wants to do. It can kill some of the crazy before it sees the light of day.
Also, in this case, it makes the Administration seem less committed to the crazy than its supporters want. Anything that makes those people wander towards disillusionment and disengagement is fine with me.
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
??”Mister, we could use a Tsar like Nick the Second again….”???
kindness
Doug!, don’t worry. It’s been well noted that if the moderates & progressives stuck together like the right does in elections, our side would win most of them. We took the Maine voters national and like Maine1 a whole bunch of lefties refuse to admit what is needed for us not to have a Maine 2. Go figure.
NR
@Mnemosyne: No, it’s worse for you to make disgusting and false attacks on people whose only crime is pointing out facts that go against the narrative in your head.
Thru the Looking Glass...
@Baud:
Hmmmmm… are you saying that in Trump’s case, ADHD might be a good thing?
Someone up above compared Trump to Chauncey Gardiner watching television, which seems likely too… does this mean there’ll be rumors about someone in the WH streaming porn at 3 am?
SiubhanDuinne
@sukabi:
From your linked article:
Holy crap. I can’t even.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
Yes, and that loss had absolutely nothing to do with relentless Republican propaganda about “death panels” and ending Medicare that targeted both the left and the right, amirite? It was just American citizens naturally rejecting the horrible overreach of government healthcare, or so I’ve been told.
And you might want to double-check when voter ID laws and other suppression techniques started going into effect. Hint: it was pre-2010.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne: Man. Talk about stepping on the president’s prerogative.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
So far, I’m the only one providing links to illustrate my points. Where are your links? You seem to have stopped linking to your favorite map once I pointed out how precisely it matched up with the voter suppression map from the Brennan Center.
If I’m lying about voter suppression being decisive in this election, then give us all the links that you say prove that voter suppression was inconsequential.
Teddys Person
@SiubhanDuinne: Well, he didn’t say anything about Ivanka that Lord Dampnut hasn’t said about her himself. But fuck, it’s just class all the way down with the Trump Bunch.
NR
@Mnemosyne: Okay, so first it was the Russians, then it was voter suppression, now it’s Republican propaganda about “death panels.” Is there anything else you want to put blame on? Other than you and the people you support of course. We all know you’re totally blameless, completely perfect in every way, just the constant victim of outside forces and bad acts by other people.
And no, most states didn’t have strict voter ID laws before 2010. Most states don’t even have them today.
Teddys Person
@Baud: Today’s winner of the internets: Baud!
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
Broder, as quoted by Sally Quinn:
Fucking despicable scum. Sorry I can’t come up with a more creative piece of invective right now.
EBT
@Mnemosyne: Remember who NR actually voted for again. This is exactly the thing he wants.
SiubhanDuinne
@NR:
Look who’s back.
Ruckus
@mai naem mobile:
It isn’t anything concrete about the Clinton hate. It’s liberals in general and 30 yrs of hate news. People who don’t do any homework have been hearing bullshit about them for all of that 30 yrs and it came home to roost in Nov. I have a friend my age, Marine, voted for BS in the primary, and for Clinton in the general. He told me he didn’t like her but had no idea why. Told him it’s 30 yrs of listening to the general news, that has been broadcasting RW bullshit since Bill first showed up on the scene. It’s what’s known as propaganda but I like bullshit better.
Mike G
Whereas the Republicans, and their neolib enablers, are working to ensure the US no longer has one.
Ruckus
@Turgidson:
You are way too kind to JS. She is a fucking asshole of epic proportions.
NR
@Mnemosyne:
You know that’s not how it works, right? You don’t get to claim something and then say “you have to prove this wrong.” If you want to claim voter suppression decided the election, it’s on you to prove it did. Not just that it happened, which pretty much everyone agrees on, but that it was decisive in the election. You made the claim, you prove it.
That said, Minnesota provides a pretty strong counterexample. No voter suppression there, and Hillary’s margin dropped by about 80% from Obama’s in 2012.
And just in case anyone thinks I don’t care about voter suppression, I’ll again say that fighting voter suppression is a good and worthy cause. If even one person is unjustly blocked from voting, that’s too many. But to blame all of the Democratic party’s problems on it (or the Russians, or whatever other bogeyman people here feel like conjuring up) is stupid, and will only lead to more Republican victories down the line.
Felonius Monk
@SiubhanDuinne:
Has Broder arisen from the grave? Oh, wait. He wasn’t referring to Trump, I guess.
NR
@EBT:
Hillary Clinton?
NR
@Villago Delenda Est: Still waiting on that answer you surely must have.
Patricia Kayden
@Jerzy Russian: Trump sure is so there’s that.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
I think there were multiple factors that went into November’s result, some of which started long before November. As shown by his 2012 meltdown on Fox News, Karl Rove thought he had gotten the formula right to ensure Romney’s victory, but Obama managed to squeak by, so Rove re-tooled the voter suppression scheme in time for what he thought would be Jeb’s victory in 2016. By the time the Republicans realized that Trump would be the nominee and not Jeb or another establishment Republican, it was too late to change it.
And, again, I have the facts and data on my side to show that this was the plan, that the Republicans arranged the plan, and that the Russians assisted in the plan with their propaganda efforts. The fact that you still believe the Russian propaganda about the Democrats and DNC torpedoing Bernie even though it’s not true either shows how effective that Russian propaganda was or how gullible you are — I’m not sure which. Probably both.
But, again, since all of this evidence shows over and over again how thoroughly you bought into the Republican message and Russian propaganda, I’m not surprised you’re still in denial.
Patricia Kayden
@NR: What will lead to more votes for Republicans are idiots deciding to vote for a party which supports bigotry, wars, lying, attacks on the media, etc. It’s pretty clear how dangerous Republicans are for this country so if you vote for them, you’re part of the problem. Period.
sukabi
@jake the antisoshul soshulist: I think it’s the fact that they proved it could be done, and done well, that p¡sses them off. Pretty sure “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” is code for “you ain’t moving above your class”
Plus it has the added ‘benefit’ of allowing no help to be extended….which would also explain the need to gut social welfare programs…gotta keep people in “their place”.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
As everyone here knows, I’ve provided multiple links like this one showing that voter suppression was decisive in this election.
So far, your response has been, “Nuh-uh!” with zero links to make your case.
It’s time for you to put up or shut up. Give us links to prove your claim that all of my links that I’ve provided over the past three months are wrong, or STFU.
NR
@Mnemosyne: That the Republicans made a plan is obvious.
What isn’t obvious, however, is that this plan, and whatever mucking about the Russians did, was completely, totally, 100% responsible for the election result, with the leadership of the Democratic party and the Clinton campaign holding no blame whatsoever for it.
leeleeFL
@West of the Rockies (been a while): As I say every day to anyone sentient, on her very worst, most awful, unacceptable day, Hillary Clinton is a better Man, Woman, Person, Leader than Donald Trump on his best. That is simply the truth and if ppl bring up discussion of this subject, I tell them this. Even if it costs me my employment, and it might, I CANNOT be silent about this.
efgoldman
@SiubhanDuinne:
Does Pootie Kazootie have a hemophiliac son?
Does he have his own Rasputin, or just Bannonazi over here.
Ksmiami
@Doug!: history of faith in strong men- also a geographic need to be protected as border areas are flat and have been prone to invasion. Finally, the average Russian is technically better off now than at any time in the past
low-tech cyclist
Do we even still consider Assange to be part of the left? He seems to be just a free-floating nutcase these days.
NR
@Patricia Kayden: What will lead to more votes for Republicans is Democrats failing to give people a compelling reason to vote for them.
Everything you wrote about the Republicans is true. But by itself, it’s not enough to get people to vote for Democrats in enough numbers to beat Republicans.
Democrats have to give people something to vote for. Milquetoast, status-quo centrism isn’t going to cut it, as we’ve seen.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
I’ve provided my links. Now provide yours. So far, all you’ve provided is your personal opinion with zero backup.
Put up or shut up.
Miss Bianca
@SiubhanDuinne: if you want to watch it scamper away with its tail between its legs, start asking why, since Democrats suck so bad and it knows all the answers, it’s not working to try to remake the party in its image or run for office itself. After a lot of sputtering about how the mean ol’ Neoliberals just won’t *let* it get involved and buncha other horseshit, it’ll exit stage left.
SiubhanDuinne
@Felonius Monk:
To be charitable, Eleanor Roosevelt was probably not within their memory, at least not as First Lady.
NR
@Mnemosyne: Your own link says that fewer than 600 votes were thrown out in Wisconsin because of lack of proper ID. Trump won the state by around 30,000 votes.
So, your own link contradicts your point.
patrick II
@efgoldman:
You may want to check for consistency of purpose in those last three sentences.
msdc
@Roger Moore:
This. New voters, irregular voters, hell, even Obama-to-Trump voters are more reliable than the purity trolls. And they’ll do less damage when they are part of a governing coalition.
Ruckus
@Doug!:
A lot of people will work with the shit they know rather than risk shit they can not work with at all. I’d bet a lot of Russians have not forgotten when it was called a communist country and “know” that resistance can not only be futile but very dangerous to one’s health. Also, look at our own system, we have a few people in this country who want basically total destruction of the last 50 yrs for all kinds of asinine reasons. Some people are not happy unless someone else is getting more fucked than they are. That’s not an American sickness, it belongs to all humans. Some of us have looked around and seen that the world can be better. It may mean that I shouldn’t dream of being one of the 1%, but I can be a lot better off if we work together. Many humans refuse to see that and don’t trust that it is even possible.
efgoldman
@SiubhanDuinne:
Yeah. Apparently it didn’t get the trollbatsignal that the election’s over and it can go back to harassing women anonymously on the internet.
I wonder how their keyboards don’t get clogged with Cheetoh dust and… other things.
Mike in DC
Greenwald is richly deserving of a similar takedown. Should just be a matter of compare and contrast at this point.
PatrickG
@Baud:
Lose your left nut, and you’ll end up leaning to the right. Might sink your 2020 campaign.
Please reconsider. You shouldn’t want to undergo a Right Wing Nut Job.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
Still waiting for your links. In fact, I’ve been waiting for three months for you to provide any contrary proof. Put up or shut up.
ETA: And, not surprisingly, you’re overstating Trump’s margin of victory in WI by 7,000 votes. Better find some better propaganda sources.
Seth Owen
For the love of God.
Am I going to have to listen to 9 out of 10 (10 out of 10 if you don’t count the threads about Cole’s house or pets) threads degenerate into Judean People’s Front vs. People’s Front of Judea blame orgies for the next 4 years?
Look. Clinton was a bad candidate. By definition. She lost. She was also clearly far better than Trump. Right?
Yes, our purity ponies, Bernie Bros, Stein supporters, etc. had some effect, maybe enough to make a difference. It was close. You can’t have it both ways. Either your vote and activism makes a difference or it doesn’t — and if it doesn’t then why do you do it?
To the extent that some forensic analysis might be useful down the road to do better next time it’s useful, but right now we don’t have time for that shit. We have a shitgibbon to oppose. Everything else, but especially internecine squabbling, needs to take a backseat.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
For fucks sake, the moron married it for the money.
Cacti
@aimai:
Nattering Republican’s greatest regret was being born too late to have served in the SS Viking Brigade.
germy
HRC ran with a progressive platform. I’m not sure why it’s called “milquetoast, status-quo centrism” (unless strengthening Medicare, Social Security etc. is centrist)
SiubhanDuinne
@Villago Delenda Est:
Dream on, VDE. Dream the fuck on.
NR
@Cacti: You agree with Trump about more things than I do, Cupcake. See: Chelsea Manning.
Cacti
@germy:
Because Bernie said so, and he would never lie. And I know Bernie would never lie because he said so.
NR
@Mnemosyne:
You can’t prove a negative. Maybe if you’d paid attention in school, you’d understand that.
Meanwhile, your own link goes against what you’re trying to argue. So I’m not the one who needs to go looking for proof.
NR
@SiubhanDuinne: Once again, still waiting for someone to tell me how I’m acting like a Nazi sympathizer.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
I know. It should be a droit de seigneur Mozart opera or something.
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
A reversal of that magnitude would snap ones neck like a stalk of fresh celery. Of course this one is about as smart as said stalk of celery……..
Mnemosyne
@Seth Owen:
Let me use a sports metaphor: if it turns out that your football team lost because the opposing team poisoned your quarterback and bribed all of the referees, does that prove that your quarterback sucks?
The Republicans won by cheating, and they won on a technicality. That’s why I can’t get on board with the “terrible candidate” meme, because that cheating means we probably would have lost with any candidate.
Let the campaign look at the mistakes they made — and I’m sure there were many — while the rest of us work on the problem of the blatant cheating that happened.
Baud
@Seth Owen:
I can live with that definition as long as it’s applied to everyone who loses.
This post started off talking about Russian interference into lefty politics, which I wouldn’t classify as internecine.
germy
@Mnemosyne:
He based his scheme on the theory voters would flock to Jeb! and to think all this time the MSM acted like he was a supergenius.
Maybe he got that reputation from standing next to W for eight years.
SiubhanDuinne
@Felonius Monk:
#yeahnoclinton
Smiling Mortician
@Felonius Monk: Yeah, that’s why I said “in their memory.”
rikyrah
A Letter to Mr. Medford of South Carolina
From the Judgmental Left
by Martin Longman
February 19, 2017
1:55 PM
Dear Mr. Medford,
I read about your opinions in an article in the February 18th New York Times Sunday Review. It seemed like you wanted progressives to understand and respect your point of view, which is understandable, but I think the reverse is true, too. We would like you to better understand and respect our value system.
………………………………………….
I think we all, as parents, try to teach our children some of the
same basic things about how to treat other people. It’s hard to find a
single one of those lessons that Donald Trump doesn’t violate on a
regular basis. Whether it’s being honest and respectful, or it’s
admitting your mistakes, or it’s having some humility, or it’s being
good on your word, or it’s how to treat women, or it’s judging people by
the content of their character, Trump sets a bad example in every case.
These things are hard to overlook precisely because there are no known and accepted moral defenses for them.
Since you’re a self-described conservative, we don’t doubt that there
are things about progressives and the Democratic Party that you find
not just unwise but morally incorrect. In our minds, these must be some
very powerful things to overcome the deficits in character that are so
easily observable in Donald Trump.
……………………………
You are being morally judged for this decision. We believe that you
will come to learn that you made a mistake, but what we’re really
interested in is making sure you understand where we’re coming from.
We don’t think it is okay that Donald Trump is the president of the
United States. We think this should have been obvious when it came time
to vote. And we think that it tells us something about the morals of
people that they would overlook his Birtherism and his race-baiting and
his characteristics that we discourage in our own children and his
treatment of women, and still support him because they have other
priorities that are more important to them.
Ruckus
@SiubhanDuinne:
I’m obviously not nearly as nice as you are.
Fuck that asshole. And I’m thinking of a 6 ft rusty chainsaw for the act.
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
Hmmmm.
rikyrah
@CharlesMBlow 4h4 hours ago
If you are not demanding EVERYDAY that Trump apologize for mocking my disabled colleague, don’t talk to me, smile at me, wave at me. Period…
@CharlesMBlow 4h4 hours ago
I don’t plan to make nice with Trump OR the ppl who support and defend him. I’m fighting for my family, my community, my country, mankind…
patrick II
@mai naem mobile:
Most of the responses to your question (why the Clinton hate?) have to do with why liberal Democrats don’t like them. Republicans hate them in part because they followed (with an interregnum of Bush Sr) Saint Ronnie Reagan who was already being deified by the repubs. Any democratic president who followed Reagan and raised taxes, allowed gays in the military (even if not allowed to say so), and was very successful in spite of those heresies was not just an affront to their politics but to their political religion.
Mnemosyne
@germy:
Rove knows how to manipulate election systems to get what he wants. See also 2004, where the Republicans added anti-gay marriage initiatives to every ballot possible to drive conservative turn-out.
But like most establishment Republicans, Rove thought he could control the crazy, and was surprised when the crazy broke loose and brought us Trump instead.
IMO, the whole voter suppression scheme was basically a dead-man switch that was set up to be triggered by any Republican, and it operated exactly as designed. That’s one of the reasons the Republicans have to stick with Trump — they’re wedded together by the scheme like the leads in Double Indemnity. No escape short of death for them both.
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
Ewwww. Gonna be a while before I can banish that image from what remains of my brain.
germy
@Mnemosyne:
Very true, and an interesting way of describing it.
Ksmiami
@NR: Because anyone with a lick of morality and empathy understands that America has never faced such a dangerous enemy within and your constant ready fire aim at the very party that can and does do the most good is stupid and destructive when we are facing a monster.
Mnemosyne
@SiubhanDuinne:
If you ever get a chance to see the touring company for the San Francisco Opera, jump on it. When I saw them do Marriage of Figaro at Cal State Long Beach, the audience was laughing at the actors’ performances, not when the funny lines were translated in the supertitles.
Brachiator
Lot of stupid attempts to blame Obama hold overs.
ETA. Fast post. This point may have been noted already. At the movies about to watch I am not your Negro.
Mike in DC
@NR:
Let’s go at this a different way. What, in your view, were ALL THE REASONS you-know-who lost the primary, specifically including any tactical or strategic errors made by his campaign? Not just external factors but internal ones.
raven
Today was Barkus in the Easy and St Louie!
SiubhanDuinne
@Seth Owen:
(1) First, I dispute your definition of “definition.”
(B) Part Deux, NO.SHE.DID.NOT.LOSE. A “bad candidate” does not prevail over her opponent by 2.9 million votes.
Smiling Mortician
@Seth Owen:
I only ever hear that from men. Funny.
NR
@Ksmiami: Except that the party you’re talking about hasn’t been doing much good lately. In fact, it’s been losing more and more of the country to the Republicans.
It’s obvious that the current strategy the Democratic party is using isn’t working. And yet people here want to double and triple down on it. So if I really was a fascist sympathizer, I’d be cheering you guys on and telling you to keep up the great work and not change a thing.
Instead, I’m trying to get you to adopt a more effective strategy, one that might actually be successful against the people you think are so dangerous. That’s a pretty strange thing for a fascist sympathizer to do, don’t you think?
NCSteve
@NR: “My vote must be eaaaaarrrrrned!” The battle cry of mathematically illiterate special snowflakes who want democracy to stop being mean to them and give them only perfect candidates.
Voting isn’t a goddamned economic transaction. It’s a civic duty gifted to you by millions of patriots-soldiers, suffragettes, civil rights protesters–who struggled and, very often, died to give it to us. To the extent that it’s like an economic transaction, it’s a debt that you personally owe to them not to waste it on the emotional mastrabation of voting for someone who the election day polls tells you cannot possibly win.
Because voting is also a act susceptible to very simple game analysis. In every election with two competitive candidates, a vote not cast for the person with a chancre of winning who is least objectionable to you is, mathematically, the same as one half a vote cast for the person most objectionable to you. That’s just the way it it. You can fool yourself and rage at me for saying it, but but math doesn’t fucking care about your feelings or your abiding sense of injustice that the universe refuses to give you 100% of want you, personally, want without regard to what the majority wants.
Mnemosyne
@germy:
I blanked on the name of Barbara Stanwyck’s character, or I would have said, “Like Walter and Phyllis in Double Indemnity.”
If I had to assign roles, I would say that Trump is Walter and Putin is Phyllis, because Trump is just dumb enough to think this whole thing was his idea.
ETA: Now we up just need someone like Edward G. Robinson’s character to unravel the whole scheme. Did you know that he did his big scene with the statistics in a single take? Wilder said the crew applauded after he said “cut.”
SiubhanDuinne
@Brachiator:
Looking forward to your review. I hope to see it fairly soon.
Saw George Takei’s Allegiance today, and was impressed. Favourably.
rikyrah
AP Central U.S. Verified account
@APCentralRegion
Hunters claimed immigrants attacked them near the US-Mexico border. Investigators say the hunters shot each other.
efgoldman
@SiubhanDuinne:
Cheetos are a delicious salty snack.
NR
@Mike in DC: I actually put most of the blame for Sanders losing the primary on Sanders and his campaign staff. Sanders was great at communicating his vision for the country, but he didn’t deliver enough on specifics for his proposals. And that hurt him. Also, his campaign didn’t do enough to turn out his core base of support, specifically young voters.
Unlike people here, I can admit it when someone I support screws up.
Frank Wilhoit
The real point here is that America has no, and can have no, foreign policy because there are (to an nth approximation) no Americans who are really aware that there is such a place as the rest of the world.
For all the others, overseas entities/phenomena — nation-states, political parties/philosophies, religions, individual foreign leaders — are only understood, and only cited, as allegories for domestic sociopolitical entities. Their names are sign-functions, held up like magical talismans, totally disconnected from any real-world referents, and having no purpose other than misdirection or dog-whistling. No one, Democrat or Republican, knows where or what “Russia” is. It is a stick to beat one’s domestic enemies. Likewise “Islam”, “socialism”, fill-in-the-blank ad infinitum.
In each case, it is necessary and sufficient to identify the domestic faction or tendency that is the real target and refuse to allow the talisman to have a place in the discourse.
JPL
@efgoldman: lol I actually backed off and instead decided to watch a movie.
NR shows that our little blog is still relevant though.
Ian
From your article Doug.
This is the author’s words. As we see Ill Douce shiv both these concepts in the back it is all young hippie liberals fault. This is the article you quote.
FlipYrWhig
People to the left of Hillary Clinton don’t like her because of the Iraq War vote, some kind of flag-burning ban thing, and some kind of video games rating thing. They used these to make up a story about how she was a conservative or a sellout or both. That’s where things stood until 2015, when they decided to make up a whole different story about favoritism to Wall Street that’s based on nothing. And now it’s a cult.
efgoldman
@NCSteve:
A-FUCKING-MEN!
And if the asshole troll and its ilk would JUST ONCE present a possibly workable plan, they might get some courtesy and respect. Repeating “yer doin’ it rrrooooonmnnnggg!” over and over doesn’t do fuck all.
J R in WV
@mai naem mobile:
Back in the day, people said things like ‘Bill Clinton is the first black president.” I think Bill and Hillary are genuinely post-racial, they don’t see race as anything other than a complexion thing. By loving their black constituents as they love everyone, by pushing color-blind policies, they allowed racists to hate them with the same irrational force they bring to bear upon the race(s) they hate.
Pretty strange, but that’s kind of how it looks to me. Irrational to the max.
Suffragete City elftx
@sukabi:
trump and Preibus still follow her
Mike in DC
@NR:
Fair enough. I would add a couple more things. Sanders was a little bit late to realize that what was intended as a protest candidacy had a real shot, and too slow to expand his base of support to include more people of color (who make up about half the primary electorate). Granted, he didn’t have much time to do so. The other mistake was maybe not reining in some of his more overzealous supporters, particularly online. That rubbed people the wrong way, including some who might have been sympathetic or persuadable.
NR
@NCSteve: Yes, candidates have to earn votes. I’m sorry if you don’t like it, but that’s a simple fact.
You can go on about math and “one half of a vote” all you like, but the simple fact is that people are not going to vote for a candidate that does not appeal enough to them. We’ve seen this over and over again, but the lesson doesn’t seem to have sunk in.
If you really believe that liberal voters have the power to throw the election to the Republican, then you had better get to work on earning their votes. If you continue to do what you’ve been doing, which is behave as if you are entitled to those votes, we’re going to keep getting the same results.
Elections are about winning votes. Democrats need to start doing that again.
Nicholas
Jesus Fucking Christ. Why in the FUCK would you link an article that uses the term “alt left”? There is no such fucking thing. Alt right=Nazis. Alt Left=????
Look. Democrats lost cause Hillary was a fucking shit candidate. Full stop. SHE LOST TO FUCKIN DONALD TRUMP. Democrats need strong messaging and clear coherent plans. Getting a Wal Mart board member didn’t, and it sent mixed messages to the poor. We need single payer, strong workers rights platforms and the party needs to move left. The Right is successful by moving right, why in the FUCK do we want to move right with them? Hippie punching is so fuckin whack and you knew that so again, why the fuck would you post this nonsense?
Thru the Looking Glass...
@SiubhanDuinne: Rumor has it that once happened to Aretha Franklin…
She called her local piano mechanic one day, complaining the keys were sticking on the baby grand in her home… guy comes out to see what the problem is and finds so much Cheeto dust between the keys, they ARE sticking…
Captain C
@Doug!:
The short, simplistic answer is that for many Russians, he’s a strong leader who has ended the chaos of the Yeltsin years and will make Russia powerful again. This is a recurring theme in Russian history.
Seth Owen
@SiubhanDuinne: She’s not in the White House.
She lost. Yes, she got more votes. She still lost.
Yes, our system is screwed up. She still lost.
Thru the Looking Glass...
@rikyrah:
Hmmmm… I wonder what the odds are that copious quantities of alcohol were somehow involved in this unfortunate incident?
Mnemosyne
@Mike in DC:
It didn’t help that Sanders and his fans pushed (and continue to push) the exact same attacks on Hillary that Trump pushed and continues to push. Sanders complained about how Hillary and the Democrats are “corrupt,” while Trump calls her “Crooked Hillary.”
And millions of idiots hear her being attacked the same way from both the left and the right and think, Gosh, she must really be corrupt if both liberals and conservatives say she’s corrupt!
Me, I still want to know when Tad Devine got his last check from Vladimir Putin. I’m guessing mid-November of 2016, with a nice performance bonus included.
NR
@Mike in DC: Sanders actually won the votes of non-white voters under age 40, albeit narrowly. But yes, he could have done more there, too.
As for his online supporters, I’m not really sure what he could have done. Assholes are gonna be assholes, and they come in all political stripes.
Mnemosyne
@Nicholas:
She lost to Donald Trump because a majority of white voters in this country are racists.
Full stop.
Seth Owen
@Smiling Mortician: Thanks for the sexist discounting of my point of view. Just for the record, I voted for Clinton.
Baud
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, I agree. The assumption that Trump was a bad candidate fails to acknowledge that he offered what his voters were craving, regardless of how that truth disgusts us.
Ian
@NR:
You’re a shitty troll, but even a broken clock is right twice a day. Good on you. Shithead.
Mike in DC
@Mnemosyne:
It’s true that the line of attack echoed that of the right wing noise machine.
I think it’s far too simplistic to think that because a candidate loses an election, they must have been a terrible candidate. There are external as well as internal factors which affect whether someone wins or loses. A lot of external factors impacted the campaign–Russian interference, FBI interference, the difficulty of winning a third term for the incumbent party, voter suppression in key states, well-funded 3rd party candidates, etc.
Was she a perfect candidate? No. But she wasn’t a terrible one either.
Mnemosyne
@Mike in DC:
It really was a perfect storm of badness. You had the voter suppression schemes in full operation PLUS Russian interference PLUS a contentious primary PLUS racism and misogyny PLUS a terrible media PLUS some campaign screw-ups. Even one fewer of those factors might have swung it Hillary’s way.
As far as the Russians go, I keep saying that Putin managed to win the Perfecta — he put his money behind a whole lot of different people on all sides of the equation and was probably as astounded as the rest of us to see every one of those bets pay off.
Thru the Looking Glass...
@Mnemosyne:
I agree w/ this completely…
As far as I can tell, he’s the big winner in all of this… he’s managed to damn near destroy the Democratic Party, in the moment, get his personal chew toy installed in the WH, and should he be inclined, can probably blow Trump sky high anytime he chooses…
No matter what else happens going forward, he just wins, wins, wins… unless Trump does manage to start WW lll…
opiejeanne
@sharl: Thanks. I kind of figured that, but I still don’t understand why it was only the talking point for a single day.
Or did I miss something the next day that put it to rest?
dogwood
@Mnemosyne:
Putin was in a win-win situation. I imagine he expected Hillary to win and wanted to make it as difficult as possible for her to govern. Instead he won the super lotto. It’s going to be a long 4-8 years.
Sab
@jake the antisoshul soshulist: Clinton didn’the pass or sign NAFTA. Bush Sr did.
Baud
@Sab: NAFTA was passed under Clinton, although negotiated under Bush.
sharl
@opiejeanne: I don’t remember the sequence of events, but I think it was a combination of the White House not answering media pre-publication requests for confirmation or denial of the DHS EO/memo, and the general mad rush of other Trump-related news, that swept the story from prominent view. Once news outlets – with copies of the draft memo in hand (over DHS Secretary John Kelly’s name, though unsigned) – got tired of waiting for the White House to weigh in on the matter, they published, whereupon the White House acted like wounded innocents victimized by the “lying media.” It’s their favorite shtick of course.
I don’t recall if there were bigger stories at the time that quickly pushed this story out of the top headlines. I do recall the story being prominent, but only for a short time, so I suspect something like that happened.
opiejeanne
@randy khan: I’m good with that, the outrage stopping them before they commit the terrible stuff, but the WH was screaming FAKE NEWS!!!elebenty!@#$!
And then it stopped.
The claims made by the troll I mentioned and several others was stunning in how quickly they shifted their story about how the AP had made it up.
I did ask the first troll when she told me to just look at it, if there was a problem with the kerning. She didn’t get it but other people did.
zhena gogolia
@NCSteve:
Amen.
opiejeanne
@Teddys Person: Baud always wins the internets, except for a few days when he doesn’t.
El Caganer
@efgoldman: Hey, Mr. Vladi-man, Vladi me Bannon-a?
zhena gogolia
@rikyrah:
Brilliant.
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
Some of the restrictive voter laws were tied up in the courts so they weren’t in effect in 2012.
Omnes Omnibus
Sometimes I name and number all the things you gave to me
Your elastic love, this velvet-line purgatory
Sab
@Mnemosyne: I agree. Hope we are right.
By the way, I am not going to badmouth my Congress critter anymore in the comments here because the Republicans have found a not insane opponent and our guy does support ACA and foodstamps and Medicare and Social Security and Headstart and public schools.
Sab
@Baud: I stand corrected.Sigh.
Captain C
@aimai: “Look at what YOU made me do!!!”
Debbie1
@Mart: And don’t forget Ed Schultz (formerly a strongly progressive voice on MSNBC) who now broadcasts on Russia Today. Putin co-opting the extreme right & left, to benefit Repubs was not an isolated incident, and will continue.
evodevo
@Baud: Definitely. The press started out asking her about her favorite cookie recipe …. I remember that like it was yesterday.
” I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life. ”
How DARE she ?!!!!11!!!!
J R in WV
@NR:
You are actually, rarely correct that candidates must earn their votes. But I disagree that simply not voting is a legitimate choice. It is un-American and a failure to perform the minimal task necessary to support our democracy to fail to vote in every election.
I agree with the Australian requirement that all eligible voters cast a ballot in every election, or pay a fine.
I believe that every employer should be required to facilitate employees ability to vote. I believe election week should be implemented so that every one working in the nation has a day off to go vote. If they don’t, the fine comes out of their paycheck asap after the election they failed their duty as a citizen. If they don’t ever vote, eventually they should lose their citizenship, and become a legal resident, a green card holder. Only without the ability to test and take an oath to regain their lost citizenship. Number and type of missed elections to be determined.
I also believe states should be required to provide paper ballots, ballot boxes, and associated facilities according to population, and precincts should be equal in population and spread evenly geographically. Electronic voting should be illegal, paper ballots properly managed and counting done by selected citizens under observation will provide a winner in good time.
All states should be prohibited from releasing any data about totals until all ballots (provisional, absentee, challenged, etc) are processed and all states have completed their processing. In other words, no guesses about who won which state based upon polling or partial returns. Everyone gets all the numbers from everywhere at the same time.
All candidates should be required to release all of their tax records and other financial records (like foundations, trusts, loans past a single home mortgage, bankruptcies, court judgements (especially those formerly kept confidential)) in order to be on a primary ballot. If states want to use conventions the delegates need to be elected with the same requirements as candidates for public office, because being a delegate is a public office.
That’s my take on cleaning up elections.
ETA: And gerrymandering districts is in my mind treason to the principals of democracy!
Captain C
@Thru the Looking Glass…:
At least until the fact that he hasn’t expanded the Russian economy beyond extraction, weapons, and caviar finally bites him (or his successor) in the ass and we get 1991 again.
Mnemosyne
@Sab:
Just remember to keep calling and/or writing to him/her to keep them on track for 2018. Don’t let them get complacent.
Brachiator
@FlipYrWhig:
This is so idiotic. These fools hate Hillary more than they hate the actual architects of the Iraq war. And videogames and flag burning? Don’t get that at all.
different-church-lady
Seriously, I’m the only one who’s gonna note the Elvis Costello reference?
Captain C
@J R in WV: I could get behind just about all of this.
J R in WV
@NR:
Why, oh why do so many people at Balloon-Juice think you facilitated the recent victory of the fascists? While you continue to act like if we had only followed your leadership, the fascists would be wailing and gnashing their teeth and the rest of America would be marching into a glorious people’s paradise on Earth!
How can one person be so deluded as you are? Oh, wait, I forgot – you’re a troll. We don’t know what you believe, because you don’t believe anything, you just want to jank someone’s chain. Fuck you, asshole.
FlipYrWhig
@Brachiator: That was the original litany. It’s always been stupid. The desire was to avoid another Bill Clinton-style “triangulating” presidency that did things like welfare reform. Forgotten along the way was the idea that Hillary was the LIBERAL center of gravity in the Bill administration. But then the whole even stupider “Wall Street” thing kicked in and it was off to the races.
FlipYrWhig
@J R in WV: For NR the fact that conservative voters used to vote for conservative Democrats but now votes only for conservative Republicans is proof that what everyone REALLY wants is social democracy. And the fact that the Democrats who gained ground under the “50 state strategy” were Blue Dogs, who then lost, also shows something something Obama blew it. That’s the two articles of the faith.
zhena gogolia
@different-church-lady:
Hey, hi!
mainmata
I’m not going to defend Russian “political culture”, which is pretty much more complex and varied than the Russian emigre scene in NYC but having worked there in the ’90s, there were (and hopefully still are) a lot of very liberal, democracy seeking people among the educated classes that felt liberated by the demise of the Soviet Union. I don’t think they’ve just disappeared; they’re just trying to figure out how to survive in an ethno-nationalist, proto-fascist regime. An urban middle class certainly exists but it is nowhere large enough to yet make a difference.
No One You Know
@J R in WV: @Captain C:
And if three people, I say THREE people, walk in to the shrink and sing a few bars of “Alice’s Restaurant”…
…I sing soprano, BTW.