Twitler doesn’t understand much, including how the government works. But he does know how news cycles function in the celebrity-driven media circus that swirls around him, so he knows he’s about to get hammered for failing to achieve anything of note in his first 100 days:
No matter how much I accomplish during the ridiculous standard of the first 100 days, & it has been a lot (including S.C.), media will kill!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 21, 2017
Aside from forwarding the Heritage Foundation’s choice for the stolen Supreme Court seat to be rubber-stamped by the thieves who stole it, Trump has achieved remarkably little, especially considering that he nominally controls both houses of Congress. Nobody knew presidentin’ was hard!
Maybe the fucker will become so enraged by the “first 100 days” coverage that, in a fog of confusion, he’ll file divorce papers on Ivanka, put Melania in charge of graft operations in China, hand the Middle East portfolio off to Spicer and drop a MOAB on Mar-a-Lago.
Open thread!
Baud
In this case, the lack of achievements is a victory for America.
hitchhiker
Yeah, donald. It’s the standard that’s ridiculous, not you. Uh huh.
Wag
As a big fan of the desert southwest and the amazing landscapes around Moab, I am really ticked off that the biggest conventional bomb in our arsenal is named after the area.
Corner Stone
I don’t know why he’s so fixated on First 100 Days as I thought everything he promised his voters would happen on Day 1.
Elizabelle
He’s achieved a lot. It’s just all negative, and doesn’t do anything for the average Joe. Plus, our credibility is shot.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
The fucking 1st Amendment, how does it work?
schrodingers_cat
Well, he has filled the swamp with hedge fund alligators and white nationalist crocodiles. So much winning.
amk
If twitler does read, he could see for himself how many people are being ‘appreciative’ of his yuuuge success in his own tweets.
Corner Stone
I hate it when MSNBC has people like Ned Ryun on a panel to “discuss” some issue. He’s rude, he talks over other guests, repeats the same framing over and over again. Just an asshole.
In this case he kept talking over two other female commentators.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Other than the stolen soooopreme court seat, the only other “accomplishment” would be signing all the Exec Orders that negated whatever he could negate from the Muslim, Kenyan Usurper’s presidency.
Actually, give this bastard time. We were informed yesterday that EPA has already been given authority to offer buy outs and that DoD’s buyout lump sump was increased to 40K. Not sure why they want to gut personnel in DoD given the Popular Vote Loser’s public rantings but EPA’s been told their workforce will be cut by 30%.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Corner Stone:
Of course he did because in his mind, they should be there.
Major Major Major Major
If only.
LurkerNoLonger
@Baud: I agree. We can only hope his remaining 100 days are as ineffective as his first 100.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Elizabelle:
Hey, speaking of average Joes, why hasn’t Joe the Plumber (Joe the Dumber) been awarded some big spot yet in the administration?
hovercraft
@Baud:
I posted this downstairs, but his lack of achievements is awesome.
Winning! Trump, GOP Congress Are 0-4 On Major Campaign Pledges via TPM
Chris
What the fuck is that peckerheard talking about? Does he imagine that 100 days is some kind of legal limit after which point presidents are no longer authorized to make any changes?
… please, don’t anybody disabuse him.
lollipopguild
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): Our special snowflake president needs his “safe space”.
schrodingers_cat
We could not go to husband kitteh’s cousin’s wedding, which was in India last week. I actually miss those noisy affairs. I must be getting old, when I was younger I couldn’t stand them for the most part.
So a wedding song with none other than my girl crush, Priyanka and Shahid Kapoor from Kaminey (Rascals)
in Raat Ke Dhai baje (2.30 at night). Girl is killing it in the traditional nine yard saree. Its been years since I have had an occasion to wear one.
Ric Drywall
There were actually a few things Trump promised that would have been good, such as allowing importation of drugs from Canada.
Honus
This quote from Erwin Rommel seems aropo these days. Just change the names as needed:
“Manstein is a man of illusions. … He believes Hitler will listen to facts.”
Elizabelle
@schrodingers_cat:
Fabulous, Ms. cat. Will try to remember that phrasing.
Corner Stone
@Ric Drywall:
My ex asked me yesterday if Trump had actually done anything good, anything good for the country.
We went back and forth on this but “good” here is loosely defined as benefiting the country as a whole in a positive way or outcome.
Not “good for his voters” or “good for a subset of some group” but the country largely overall. I could not think of any example. Anyone?
Elizabelle
@West of the Rockies (been a while): I know. And, to our knowledge, he was not included to hang with the Wasilla Hillbilly, Mr. and Mrs. Crazy Ted Nugent, and Kid Rock and fiancee. Poor Joe!
Corner Stone
I am glad we got the aid worker freed out of Egypt. I wonder what we paid for her?
Corner Stone
AAAARRRGGGHHH!!!! The Confederate Elf!! On my TV!!
Patricia Kayden
Betty, you are hilarious, Dahlink!! Thanks for the belly laugh.
Actually, we already know what he’ll do if he’s not pleased by the 100-day media coverage — rage tweet himself into an alternate state of consciousness like he always does when he’s not happy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I don’t know him, but if memory serves there was a memo sent around rightwing think tanks that advised them how to handle TV appearances. Never raise your voice, stick to your talking points, keep talking, interrupt. I don’t know if Ann Coulter was the model for it, but that’s what she did, keep repeating arrant bullshit and get whatever liberal was on with her to start screaming and look crazy.
Patricia Kayden
@Corner Stone: That’s Attorney General Confederate Elf to you, Sir!!
Bokonon
Trump still has a very high approval rate inside the GOP (like … 89 percent). So long as he can keep that up with the bread and circus routines of executive orders, bashing the federal government in the face, dropping large bombs and sabre-rattling … nothing will change. The opinion of the rest of the nation (and the world) literally does not matter.
And that’s what this whole 100 day thing is about. It is about controlling the media cycles, and keeping the people inside the GOP’s bubble from scratching their heads and asking inconvenient questions.
NotMax
Another day, another holler.
amk
@Ric Drywall: Term limits for cong critters was another good lie.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Elizabelle:
Well (sniff), one does prefer the right sort of people, doesn’t one?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
also in Thrush’s twitter feed, the little visit with the racist pig and trashy word-salad-shooter lasted four hours, and they talked about Russia– can’t bring myself to read the article.
ETA: I don’t actually care, but I vaguely wonder if Todd was on the visit
hovercraft
@hitchhiker:
That’s why they’re trying to change it, you have Twitlers tweet and:
GOP ‘200 Day’ Agenda Calls For Spending, Tax Cuts. But What About The Deficit?
January 26, 2017
They always knew that they had no workable plans and they would have to try to lie their way through. Maybe try to ram some of it through during th summer when everyone’s on vacation and not paying attention
NotMax
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
Just wait. He’ll be given the portfolio to stop the leaks.
“Isn’t that what plumbers do?”
amk
Baud
@hovercraft: Whoa, whoa. Hold on there. Save some of the agenda for the second term.
Westyny
@schrodingers_cat: Albino crocodiles?
Betty Cracker
@Corner Stone: His electoral college win disabused millions of people, including me, of our overly optimistic views about the strength of our national institutions and the intelligence and good will of our fellow citizens. I guess revealing the truth is a good thing, even if it was painful on our part and unintentional on his.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Patricia Kayden:
Any chance Sunny Baudelaire can bite the head off that elf?*
(The film A Series of Unfortunate Events)
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
I’m wandering around old campaign ads and footage on YouTube (came about due to my last gander at Nixon’s interaction with Pat and his family – he had another side that was very positive). Based on what I’m looking at, Nixon was actually a pretty decent retail politician in terms of how he interacted with people – friendly, pleasant, and forward. Couldn’t have gotten to the utter destruction of McGovern without that skill.
Given Trump’s general assholishness as a person, I’m surprised that Trump got the level of support that he did, and am trying to form some sort of thesis for that.
schrodingers_cat
@Westyny: Sure!
amk
the tweets gonna be yuuuge whines.
lollipopguild
@Baud: Yes, there is golf to be played and chocolate cake to be eaten. You wouldn’t want trump to keel over from work stress or anything.
Elizabelle
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: All the more reason to not watch cable TV political shows. CNN etc. should be ashamed of the talking heads they invite on. It drives out time to cover actual news.
schrodingers_cat
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: That’s what’s most troubling, that millions saw that and decided that it would be great to elevate that personality to the highest office in the land.
hovercraft
@amk:
So I guess that Weigel is just another shrill liberal hater?
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Corner Stone:
He confirmed for me that white voters in the south and rustbelt, as a demographic whole, are raging assholes who would prefer personal destruction to recognizing great structural mistakes.
Baud
@amk: Awesome.
lollipopguild
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Trump voters do not care about the retail politics crap, they just want trump to kill/punish all of the people that they do not like. He could kill and eat a baby for breakfast as long as it was a baby that they did not like.
Corner Stone
@Patricia Kayden: I quickly changed it to The Beeb for some ST: TNG reruns to regain my sense of normalcy and reality.
FlipYrWhig
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: For 50 years Republicans have been training their voters to hate and resent everybody who isn’t like them, and Donald Trump’s one talent is that he is an offensive asshole, which means he’s not “politically correct,” which means he makes liberals cry, which means he’s awesome, because he’s really sticking it to the people who aren’t like them. By that standard, it all makes perfect sense.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
A bit OT, but regarding that Palin/Kid Rock/Nugent White House visit.. I wonder what the invitation looked like.
If I saw my name on a list with, say, Busey, Victoria Jackson, and Scott Baio, I’d check myself into an institution.
hovercraft
@lollipopguild:
Speaking of golf, I though it was supposed to keep him out of trouble?
Trump’s quiet meeting with former Colombian presidents matters
By Steve Benen
04/21/17 11:06AM
When Donald Trump traveled to his private Florida resort last weekend, he made time for golf, but as the Miami Herald reported, he also made time to meet with Álvaro Uribe and Andrés Pastrana, former presidents of Colombia, and it wasn’t just to exchange pleasantries.
President Donald Trump quietly met a pair of former Colombian presidents last weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, thrusting his administration into an ugly power struggle in Latin America that threatens to undermine the country’s controversial peace agreement with rebel leaders.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos is expected to push Trump to support the peace accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia at their first meeting at the White House next month. He wants the Trump administration and Congress to maintain the $450 million in foreign aid promised by former President Barack Obama to implement the plan to end Latin America’s longest armed conflict.
Uribe and Pastrana oppose the plan, and the meeting with Trump was reportedly arranged by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who also opposes the Colombian plan.
Part of the problem with this is the secrecy. It’s one thing for a president to visit with foreign dignitaries; it’s something else to leave these meetings off the president’s official schedule and fail to disclose them to journalists who were there to report on his activities.
There’s also the apparent dishonesty to consider. A White House spokesperson told McClatchy News the meeting happened, but said this was an instance in which the former Colombian presidents were at Mar-a-Lago and they “briefly said hello when [Trump] walked past them.” Pastrana, however, extended his thanks to Trump for the “cordial and very frank conversation” about Colombia’s challenges.
As a rule, when the White House finds it necessary to lie about what Trump’s up to, it only raises more questions about why the dishonesty was deemed necessary.
NotMax
“Okay, let’s look at what we’ve got so far on the whiteboard for accomplishments.”
1) Didn’t drool on national TV
2) Remembered to wear pants
3) Spelled name correctly when signing
“Great start. Now let’s roll up our sleeves and expand that to a Top Ten list. Ideas?”
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker:
I wonder if you are going to see a Trump economic effect of tourism to red states, in particular, tanking? Because I have become wary about spending my money or time in states that supported that moron.
Plus, the foreign visitors who decided not to come. The students who chose other universities.
But mostly, I am just sick of what the Trump voters brought upon us. I am ashamed of them, and ashamed for my country.
amk
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: yup. gishgallop has been rw media tactic for years.
germy
@West of the Rockies (been a while): from what i understand, snowbilly got the invite. She brought the others as her guests.
GregB
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
His base is steeped in assholishness.
It is the only thing that can qualify as a value for millions of them now.
Heckling, rolling coal, shitty t-shirts, playing the victim.
It is pretty much all they have now.
schrodingers_cat
@NotMax: Can you read his signature? It looks like one of Betty’s chickens danced on paper with inky claws.
Baud
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Trump couldn’t have succeeded during the Cold War because we had to care how respectable we looked to the rest of the world. And we hated the Russians back then.
lollipopguild
@NotMax: 4) Did not piss/crap pants while in public.
mike in dc
Trump’s 100 day agenda had 28 items on it, with 18 executive actions and 10 major pieces of legislation. He’s gotten 0 major pieces of legislation passed. Travel ban was blocked as unconstitutional(twice!), NAFTA isn’t being renegotiated, hiring freeze got lifted, China not declared a currency manipulator, constitutional amendment on term limits not proposed(and probably DOA in Congress). At best, he’s accomplished maybe 10 items on his agenda, and half of those are really minor, like the lobbying “ban”. Really nothing to brag about, aside from the SCOTUS pick.
Past about November of this year, it becomes nearly impossible to get major legislation passed in an election year. So we’re about 1/3 of the way toward blocking that legislative agenda entirely. The debt ceiling may be a good opportunity to kill funding for the border wall.
germy
@Elizabelle:
My dilemma is that we need work done at our house. My electrician is a proud progressive, but aside from him every contractor who ever showed up is a dick dynasty devotee.
Last week I had a landscaper do some work and he was complaining about being forced to pay his workers an increased minimum wage.
Baud
@NotMax:
I’ll actually have to give him that one.
prufrock
@Betty Cracker: That was the thing that killed me too. I thought I was a cynical bastard, but I was a babe in the woods.
Never again.
Miss Bianca
@Baud: glad to see you back! We missed you round this joint.
Baud
@Miss Bianca: Thanks, Miss Bianca. It’s good to be among the jackals again.
low-tech cyclist
No matter how much I accomplish during the ridiculous standard of the first 100 days, & it has been a lot (including S.C.), media will kill!
Saith the Whiner-In-Chief.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Your harem missed you. Welcome back!
feebog
@Corner Stone:
I’ll give you one. Wednesday he signed an extension to the Veteran Choice Act. This allow vets who live a long way from the nearest VA medical facility to receive care by a local doctor who is reimbursed by the VA. My brother was able to have cataracts in both eyes replaced by a local doctor rather than have to make numerous trips to his VA in Roseburg OR.
Betty Cracker
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: An even greater mystery to me is the reelection of FL Governor Rick Scott. I understood his initial win — it was the tea party wave year, and the Dems ran a charisma-free bankster. But Scott is literally the worst retail politician I’ve ever seen. Twitler is a know-nothing buffoon, but he has the schoolyard bully thing down pat, and we all know from our own schoolyard days that playground thugs can always attract at least some followers.
But Scott. His debate performances, etc., were so painfully awkward that even I was cringing for him, and I hate the motherfucker’s guts. He makes Jan Brewer sound like Cicero. For a brief, painful sample of just how horrible he is, check out his one-minute closing statement in the 2014 gubernatorial debate here, starting at about 54:40. It’s so fucking bad. Yes, the Dems ran a slippery, retread Republican, which was dumb. And Florida, obviously. I still don’t get it. Never will.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: Thanks, SC.
Это курам на смех
Democracy dies in
darknessbullshit.West of the Rockies (been a while)
@germy:
How old is “Kid” Rock anyway? Doesn’t there come a day when you stop with the diminutive nicknames? Kid Kissinger, Lil’ Mitchy McConnell….
Yarrow
@Corner Stone:
He may end up destroying the Republican party or at least severely damaging it. That would be a very good thing.
Baud
@feebog: That’s good.
germy
@West of the Rockies (been a while): Someone on LGM made an amusing observation:
“Kid” “Rock”
sukabi
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Two different eras… Society was still “polite” with Nixon, there were rules of behavior that were still operable. The Springer Show hadn’t and wouldn’t have been tolerated then. Now we are so far beyond Springer with all the other “reality” shows there are no longer any meaningful ‘standards of behavior’ …which is how someone like Drumpf can accepted as ‘presidential’.
lollipopguild
@Betty Cracker: Voters saw Scott as a large dick who would crap on all of the people and things that they want crapped on. Trump was Scott on a national scale. If enough people in a democracy decide to vote in politicians who will destroy the democracy that they live in there is not much anyone can do.
NotMax
Repeating for the mid-day crowd.
Looking ahead into the weekend on TCM, Brute Force airs at 10 a.m. on Sunday. Gritty prison drama. Slight physiqued Hume Cronyn gets to strut his stuff as the vicious and sadistic captain of the guards and even is given a fight scene versus burly Burt Lancaster.
5:45 p.m. Sunday, Witness For the Prosecution. ’nuff said.
lollipopguild
@Это курам на смех: Democracy dies when enough voters decide that they want a dictatorship that promises to give them what they really want.
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: I’ve seen items in the local papers about tourism taking a big hit here in FL already. FL is extremely dependent on tourism — domestic and international — for jobs and state revenue. My Trump-voting father owns a tourism-dependent business. I’ll be sure to rub it in when he pisses and moans about the hit to the bottom line.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@GregB:
Keep in mind also that Trump flies in last minute, enters through a cordoned-off tunnel, spews his venom in a moron of the people fashion, and leaves the same way he entered. Rarely does he truly interact with commoners.
Corner Stone
@feebog: That does sound positive. Hadn’t heard much about it, I wonder what the details are. It seems like there has to be a catch somewhere, or somebody’s palm getting greased.
NotMax
@lollipopguild
No memory of the execrable Joe Pyne’s TV show?
hovercraft
Pete Souza, master troll.
Obama’s Photographer Slyly Responds To Palin Mocking Clinton’s WH Portrait
Pete Souza, the former White House photographer for President Barack Obama, continued his crusade of needling President Donald Trump at every turn Thursday.
Souza shared a photo of Obama and his then-chief of staff Bill Daley under a portrait of President Ronald Reagan with the caption “being respectful.” He posted the photo on the same day former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and musicians Ted Nugent and Kid Rock posted a photo mocking Hillary Clinton’s White House portrait.
mai naem mobile
I wish people on our side wouldn’t make a bug deal of Dolt not accomplishing anything. Firstly,it’s a good thing and he’s dumb enough to buy that he’s doing awesome things by signing new post office name. Secondly, his administation has rolled back Obama era rules.
Chris
@sukabi:
No, there are still standards. They just only apply to one party.
mike in dc
At best, Trump has effectuated 10 out of the 28 specific promises of his first 100 day agenda. 0 for 10 legislatively. Travel ban overturned, hiring freeze lifted, plans to label China a currency manipulator scrapped. NAFTA renegotiation doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Half of the 10 promises are penny-ante stuff like the lobbyist “ban”. The other half are mostly just dreadful, like scrapping regulations and giving polluters free reign.
Betty Cracker
@lollipopguild: See, I understand that assessment about Trump, but Scott can’t even credibly pull off the bully-boy routine like a Trump or Christie. He’s an awkward, pencil-necked crook and looks like a child molester at a church camp. I think it’s more tribal voting patterns than anything else, and I will note that he pulled off both wins with less than 50% of the total. If the Dems had run someone even marginally better, they’d have won.
Shana
@hovercraft: I expect that’s why no cabinet members went down to Mar-A-Lago last weekend.
Baud
@Corner Stone:
Extension of prior program. Passed by voice vote.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/544?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22veterans+choice%22%5D%7D&r=1
lollipopguild
@NotMax: I remember Pyne’s show but I always saw him as a fringe person not mainstream. Rush Limpdick and Fake News took the fringe stuff and made it mainstream. Trump benefited from the last 30 years of right wing lies and bullshit.
Elizabelle
@Это курам на смех:
That’s true. We could never have a Trump in office if the society was not already awash in bullshit. Poor us.
I agree that Trump’s biggest effect may be proving why we had standards, norms, and ethics requirements in effect before. And that we need to strengthen them. Think he’s going to have a firehose of scandals coming up.
And if he takes down Big Media, I am OK with that too.
That said: USA Today made a real effort at finding out what real estate, precisely, Trump owns/controls, and who is buying it. Shell corporations abound.
Trump condos worth $250 million pose potential conflict
NotMax
@lollipopguild
What with the expansion of the sheer number of outlets, nowadays we’re bombarded with more fringe than present in a formal Victorian parlor.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
Palin is trying desperately to run with the junior high mean girls squad. What a sorry excuse for a grown woman.
Corner Stone
@Baud: Ok, that does explain why it wasn’t registering with me. I thought we already had something like that in place. Seems we did and we just amended the sunset date! Thanks
Yarrow
@West of the Rockies (been a while): Sarah Palin has always been a mean girl.
amk
his tweets on twitler’s fails are very good.
germy
amk
eta: was getting worried all the treason was getting buried under all those bombs.
Ksmiami
@Elizabelle: rude pundit had the best post on this btw I think it was a few months ago
waspuppet
Trump talked about what he was going to do in his first 100 days for more than a year. By tweeting this, he literally still thinks he’s the boss and no one can say anything or else we’re fired.
BTW: For all his sycophants’ boot-licking about Trump’s use of Twitter as “communication,” does anyone know of an example since he announced he was running of him actually answering a reply to a tweet of his? It’s just the 21st-century equivalent of Mussolini’s microphone on the balcony, right?
Mnemosyne
Everyone loves the idea of electing a celebrity “outsider” who isn’t all about “politics as usual,” but those outsiders ALWAYS get their asses handed to them by the actual politicians. See also Jesse Ventura and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne:
A notable exception being Sen. Al Franken.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Betty Cracker:
If he’s like most of his ilk, he’ll find somebody else to blame, Obama, Pelosi, government regulations the Popular Vote Loser hasn’t had time to repeal, etc.
Mnemosyne
@Bokonon:
I would not be surprised to see Trump’s approval rates among Republicans stay high, but the number of people self-identifying as Republicans to drop precipitously.
Jeffro
@Corner Stone: exactly. Repeal and replace will be 99 days overdue on day 100 .
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I guess you’ve mentioned that before, but it made me goggle-eyed for a minute. I’m lucky that my immediate family is pretty liberal, or at least reliably Dem-voting. My brother, a regular voter but never very engaged politically, has started reading political news to me off his phone. He hates trump.
SiubhanDuinne
@schrodingers_cat:
Well, if you’re into graphology….
mike in dc
@SiubhanDuinne:
Yeah, but he dialed down his celebrity and did the hard work necessary to be an effective politician.
Corner Stone
God damn I hate these DC pundit courtiers. This fucking Jonathan Allen asshole.
hovercraft
@germy:
Good, I was worried that in the age of Twitler, there was no line anymore.
Mnemosyne
@germy:
You might want to slip a $20 to each worker when the guy isn’t looking. He sounds like a wage theft kind of guy.
cmorenc
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Your question answers itself. The % of “general assholes” in our electorate is much higher than we wish it would be. There’s the noisy “Tea Party” and “Freedom Caucus” assholes, but there’s also an abundance of closeted assholes, e.g. neighbors who seem just peachy-fine and even considerate within the realm of interpersonal interactions, so long as you refrain from touching on any political, social or racial resentment stress-points that open the doors to the unsavory closets within these people.
Immanentize
@Mnemosyne: this is already happening.
Mnemosyne
@NotMax:
Is there a beautiful actress whose acting skills were more underrated than Marlene Dietrich’s? Discuss.
SiubhanDuinne
@mike in dc:
Exactly. That’s why I called him a “notable exception.”
Miss Bianca
@Mnemosyne: Marilyn Monroe? Actually a very talented comic actress, but relegated to bimbo-hood.
amygdala
@Betty Cracker: I can’t remember where I read it, but evidently it’s already looking like overseas visitors are starting to stay away. Not to make too much of anecdata, but the SFO-FRA flights that I’ve taken a lot over the past dozen years or so was a ghost flight last month. Had an Two empty middle seats on the way back and the row to myself on the way back. Even in the months after the 2008 crash, it wasn’t that empty. On the way out, there were maybe a dozen people in the back section of economy.
The airlines will rewrite their protocols soon enough and we’ll be packed in like sardines again, no doubt. Still, you’d think a guy who runs so many hotels and is intensely self-absorbed might have thought this through a little better.
Mnemosyne
@SiubhanDuinne:
Interestingly, Franken didn’t run as a celebrity or an outsider. He ran as the heir to Paul Wellstone and a loyal Democrat (DFL in that state) who would stick with the Democrats.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The article is dizzying, with too much overlap IMHO between what happened before and after the election, but a lot of money has gone to Trump and his family since the election, and it’s not at all clear who’s writing the checks
Immanentize
@Mnemosyne: that’s a hard one. I have two one offs — Gene Tierney in Laura and Jeane Craine in People Will Talk?
Corner Stone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: But, of course, there is no way an investigative journalist or reporter could have possibly known this in the year before the election. The only information that was knowable was Trump’s charitable giving, or lack thereof.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: watching Tom Reed R- NY defend trump’s “privacy” on his taxes. Craig Melvin is talking about tax reform, which I think is a good political point, but I think trump’s profiteering and a real chance of an emolument clause violation is just a tad more important.
of course, I don’t see how Ivanka’s Chinese dealings aren’t already a de facto emolument
Chris
@germy:
You should’ve hit him back with your own complaint about how landscapers are all overpaid whiny little shits who take up your time bitching about their problems instead of doing the work you hired them for.
Wyatt Derp
@Yarrow: Yes indeed! This would be his greatest contribution.
TriassicSands
Let’s hope so. That would be an improvement on all fronts over current Trump chaos. Especially the Mar-a-Lago renovations. There are even pretty good odds that daddy will be home when the MOAB hits.
hovercraft
@Mnemosyne:
Also too he talked about issue with depth and understanding, I know a novel concept since most GOP congresscritters can’t do that no matter how long they’ve been there. Then once he was elected, he refused almost all national TV appearances, sticking to local TV and radio, he didn’t want to be a celebrity he wanted to be a senator.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne:
Oh, I know. Used to listen to his radio program on Air America (R.I.P.) and remember his kind of thinking out loud about a possible run. So you’re right, he didn’t run as a celebrity, but the fact that he was already very well known as an entertainer gave him a platform to launch his political career.
Southern Beale
Not exactly a rubber stamp. Senate Republicans had to break a longstanding rule to force that one through. Trump’s only “achievement” (and I choke on the word) only happened with a shit-ton of heavy lifting from the Senate.
Mnemosyne
@SiubhanDuinne:
I’m sure Franken’s celebrity didn’t hurt his campaign, but Schwarzenegger ran on “changing the way Sacramento works,” as did Ventura, and as did Trump. That’s not what Franken ran on, which is why he’s been so much more successful.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Southern Beale: and had to violate pretty much every norm of the Senate to keep the seat open. The skyrocketing increase in Village hand-writing only when Democrats (barely) refused to play along shows just how deep the Brodeorist cancer is
glory b
@schrodingers_cat: There used to be a channel on Comcast in Pittsburgh called AZN, it offered a dizzy panoply of Asian programming, news in English from Japan, Singaporean (?) cooking shows, Indian soap operas, etc.I started watching Indian movies that were played on Saturday mornings and afternoons and really fell in love with them. My kids teased me about taking twice as long to finish Saturday morning housecleaning, because I had to look at the captions.
Anyway, the station didn’t last, probably because it couldn’t be all things to all Asians, but thanks for posting your stuff. I don’t think ever said so before.
Frankensteinbeck
@Miss Bianca:
Not Monroe. She was well known and lauded for her incredible acting talent. It was the only reason directors put up with her unreliable personality. The poor woman had giant depression problems and could not even take care of herself in basic ways. I find her a sad and fascinating figure.
As for the bimbo part, that was more than just a reputation. I don’t think promiscuity is a bad thing, but yeah, she was promiscuous beyond even the famously exaggerated standards of Hollywood at the time. She announced one of her marriages by calling a reporter in the middle of the night and saying “Harry, I’ve sucked my last cock.”
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne:
Gotcha. And I agree.
catclub
@amk: Another not very often mentioned achievement: Imposing a Federal Hiring freeze and then rescinding it about 45 days later.
The hiring freeze hurt Vets with Federal hiring preference.
That should count for two, right?
schrodingers_cat
@glory b: You are most welcome! Hindi movies were the sound track of my childhood, I have been rediscovering them since the last couple of years. Hindi movies have been undergoing quite a renaissance in the last ten years or so. I became more aware of that because I had completely lost touch with them in the nineties and aughts. Plus the amazing diversity of talent, truly in many ways the best India has to offer. I have never seen any movies made by Hollywood from the POV of communities that are targeted as sympathetic to terrorists, for example. Hindi movies have tackled that difficult subject and the subject of communal discord more than once and with sensitivity. It takes guts to do that in the Indian context.
Mainstream movies had become formulaic and I lost interest in them in the 80s and early nineties. Did you check out the review I did of Queen with Kangana Ranaut.
TenguPhule
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I hate this. Its not a Potential Conflict you limpwaisted media whores, its AN ACTUAL FUCKING CONFLICT OF INTEREST.
Bribery is plain view and our media is blind, deaf and mute.
What Village said.
Kay
I’m so glad he’s upset that everyone knows he didn’t accomplish anything.
Trump is making me shallow and vindictive. Well, MORE :)
We have an old man in our county Dem council who says “blah, blah, blah- why doesn’t he shut up and do some work?” I always think of that when I see Trump whining.
ruemara
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: People are bastard sandwiches with bastard cream filling.
MCA1
@germy: Nice. Kind of like the radio format “cool jazz,” which is, of course, neither cool nor jazz.
ruemara
@Mnemosyne: People either don’t know or forget that Franken went to the Wellstone insitute to learn how. He took this seriously, not to mention he’s always been very smart & politically progressive.
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
Unlike Arnold Schwarzenegger, who went, How hard could this governating thing be? OH CRAP!
Honus
@Elizabelle: about that. Putting completely aside their general odious nature, as a man of the same generation that was taught some basic manners, my first thought was “didn’t anyone ever teach those guys to remove their hats when they were in the house?”
sukabi
@Chris: in general, outside of politics, the “norms” have all been busted, which is why an unqualified asshole like Drumpf is sitting where he is. Has been happening on a smaller scale for quite some time…see the entire “new class” of the Republican party.
Seanly
@hovercraft:
hahahahaha, NPR is so cute with their obliviousness.
Chris
@Mnemosyne:
Didn’t Arnold learn his lesson pretty quickly? I thought I recalled that he was one of the last sane-ish Republicans, and that the rest of his party hated him for it.
Frankensteinbeck
@Chris:
Certainly compared to his colleagues. I lived in California at the time, and while I was not hugely politically connected, I know he was heavily pro-green power, his attitude on Obama and the stimulus was ‘If the other states don’t want their share, California will take it’, and was crippled the same way the Democrats were crippled by the rest of the GOP’s insane ‘burn the house down’ tactics. These were the last days of California going through the process America is still early in, where whites stopped having a majority, and went batshit and did everything they could to destroy the state if they couldn’t own it. It took decades for demographics to move enough to stop them.
Mnemosyne
@Chris:
Arnold was a Republican hack, not an ideologue, so while he would do stupid crap like refuse to sign the bill legalizing gay marriage that our legislature passed, he would back down on budget stuff that you could prove was stupid. One example I can think of was that Republicans wanted to cut disabled Californians off home health care. Arnold was on board until somebody from the budget office showed him the numbers and explained that it would actually be more expensive to force all of those people into state-financed nursing homes, so he took those cuts back out.
That’s the kind of shit the California Republicans hated him for doing — refusing to follow their ideology when it was more expensive for the state.
Betty Cracker
@ruemara: So true it should be committed to needlepoint!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mnemosyne: He’ll have to do something extraordinary to get me to forgive “Don’t be economic girlymen”, at the ’04 RNC, which besides dumbing down our politics and being sexist and homophobic was so contemptuous of working people. I’d like to think Robert Kennedy and Old Man Shriver haunted his dreams after that. Also colored by impression of Maria that she let him get away with it
Mnemosyne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Oh, don’t get me wrong, he was a terrible governor who screwed up a lot of shit. However, he was better than, say, Brownback because you could actually show him numbers and he would comprehend those numbers.
clay
@SiubhanDuinne: That’s likely the difference between trying to be an executive vs a legislator. New Senators and Reps are expected to come in somewhat ignorant of how the process works, and they find a mentor who can learn from. (And Frankin is whipsmart and was willing to learn.)
A celebrity running for an executive position is more of the mindset of “I don’t need anyone; I can fix everything; I’ll show them what’s what.” And they quickly discover that you can’t just govern by decree.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: The Governator ran in to brick wall when he tried to fuck with the nurses. Never fuck with nurses!
glory b
@schrodingers_cat: I did! I find these posts very interesting! The songs and the movie trailers, etc. are great.
NotMax
@Mnemosyne
Besides those mentioned above, would suggest Hedy Lamarr, Linda Darnell, Dorothy Dandridge, Audrey Totter and possibly Wanda Hendrix.
NotMax
@NotMax
Would also belatedly suggest Anna May Wong.