I don’t claim to be a genius deal maker, but if the G7 / NATO meeting was such a “home run” for Trump, why is he trashing Germany today? Also, it appears Trump is back to dismissing the conclusion of multiple U.S. intelligence organizations that Russia did interfere with our election as “fake news” rather than focusing on the perfidy of leakers:
Speaking of “fake news,” just a couple of days ago, Trump was fuming about reporting based on anonymous sourcing:
But when Fox & Friends offered a single, anonymous source to counter the story about Kushner’s desire to use Russian intelligence assets to communicate with the Kremlin without being intercepted by U.S. intelligence, it’s okay:
This after the rightwing media spent all weekend telling us it was perfectly normal for an incoming administration to open a “back channel” line of communication to the very same hostile foreign power we knew even then was bent on sleazing said administration into office. It’s all so confusing. These incompetents need to get their story straight.
clay
You mean Trump is intellectually inconsistent? The devil you say!
By the way, I’m trying to understand how Germany “paying FAR LESS than they should on… military” is bad for anyone. I mean, the last time Germany spent significant money on their military… well, it caused some problems.
Trentrunner
RW scandal stages:
1) It didn’t happen
2) It did happen, but it’s not that bad
3) It’s bad, but it’s not our fault
4) It’s our fault, but look what Hillary did!
Corner Stone
If Trump had stood at the briefing room microphone and flatly stated that the main goal of his foreign trip was to weaken NATO and severely damage our relationship with Germany I doubt he could have been more clear about his intentions.
piratedan
saw a tweet posted over at fellow travelers website LGF (or maybe even here) that summed up the WH frustration with the onslaught of “bad press” and questioning of their actions and activities indicating that the WH does not appear to have a conclusive plan or response to all of the information being released because they lack any kind of ethical underpinning or understanding of what Government is supposed to do. They apparently thought that if they were “in charge” that people would do as they say and that would be that.
these folks have little understanding of how Government actually works… it’s like they never even saw schoolhouse rocks.
Ladyraxterinok
Found this quote from Seneca in a novel I”m reading “Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.”
debbie
It was okay for the right to use “unnamed sources” when slamming Obama. Guess they’ve contracted amnesia.
Barbara
@piratedan: Most executives who take over the helm learn this lesson the hard way. The bureaucracy outlasts most elected officials. For good or ill (and it can be either), that reality confounds CEO types who are trying to impose fundamental change when they are used to having everyone try to do exactly what they say.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@piratedan:
The vast majority of Americans don’t understand how the Government works. Our big problem is that tens of millions of Americans wanted this outcome.
Corner Stone
@clay:
“All right, Mr. Burns, you win.
But beware– we Germans aren’t all smiles und sunshine.”
Barbara
@debbie: Or unnamed sources claiming that Obama wasn’t actually born in the U.S.A. Where were Princess Ivanka and her prince charming when crazy Daddy Trump was running all over the country making those outrageous claims against Obama?
HeleninEire
LOL. Tiger Woods’ mugshot is on the cover of every daily here. And there are, like, 8 of them.
Jeffro
@clay:
How is it that my 11-year-old understand this concept, but the president does not?
? ?? Goku ? ?
@clay: Trumpy would have praised Hitler for his strength. And Adolf would have loved it, since that would have meant him having a freeer hand in Europe
geg6
Just read at NYM that, apparently, Dolt 45 thinks he should be running his own press office. So no rush on hiring the new comm director and poor Sean Spicer is getting less camera time in favor of the Dolt answering questions on his own.
Nothing could go wrong with that plan, amirite?
Barbara
@geg6: Even I might watch the press conferences if that happens.
dmsilev
Would that “source” by any chance have a name similar to Kared Jushner? Or perhaps he’s using his new code name of Deep Blazer.
The Moar You Know
It would be nice if America, as a body politic, would think through what it will mean to our bottom line to hand world hegemony over to Europe.
But we won’t. Not until we realize we’re the same quasi-third-world country that we were back in the late 1800s, respected by none, a backwater on the world stage.
But chances are too many of the responsible parties will be dreaming of fucking their own family members to care even then, in between binging on cheapass TV shows and Oxycontin.
Of course, for the rest of the world, this may represent a considerable improvement in the state of their existence.
dmsilev
@geg6: We should be so lucky. Though Trump wouldn’t actually answer questions in that scenario; he’d just go on camera, give a long-form variant of one of his Twitter rants, and then walk away.
TaMara (HFG)
When this ass and his minions are dispatched, I am deleting my twitter account and never, ever visiting this site again*,
*may or may not be a true statement. But will look forward to not having to check it every hour to see what the embarrassment-in-chief has done.
Iowa Old Lady
Re this “war room” they’re reportedly organizing, what would constitute effective “hitting back” against something like Mueller’s investigation or the one in NY? They can spread all the sunshine they want, but if the investigation continues, reality should eventually catch up. Or am I being naively optimistic?
jacy
I never understood why people said they wanted a businessman (and I use the term “businessman” very loosely) to run the government. It’s not a business, and can’t be run like a business. Trump obviously doesn’t understand this at all. It’s just grift all the way down from top to bottom.
They’re calling it a fucking “portfolio” for fuck’s sake. What the fucking fuck is wrong with people? Fuck.
? ?? Goku ? ?
@dmsilev: Maybe even walk away before it’s over like he has before at these things
Fair Economist
Imaginge Trump’s increasingly strange behavior being on the news every day.
LAO
I think it’s pretty simple, Trump is tired of all the winning.
@clay: I made a joke this weekend (to a jewish audience), that thanks to Trump, Germany is now the leader of the free world, I’m sure nothing will go wrong.
PS — I wasn’t actually joking.
Morzer
bemused
Manbaby has very few working cognitive skills and no morals. His brain is driven by ego, bullshit and bullying. There’s nothing but yooge stinking messes that can be expected from him.
eclare
@TaMara (HFG): Agreed. Or CNN’s Breaking News: what the fuck did he do now edition.
LAO
@dmsilev:
I’m not sure Trump would actually have to answer questions, I expect his rambling, nonsensical musings would be enough.
Laura
Anyone here think it would be fair for Germany to ask the US to fold the tent and go home on our military bases?
rk
Not really. You forget that they’re catering to republicans who are possibly the stupidest people on the planet. They voted for Trump. They’ll believe anything, fall for every scam and every lie. I’ve seen Facebook profiles of a few Trump supporters. They’ve got pictures of Putin in the background and repeat every contradictory thing that the right wing media is saying. Being a rightwing reporter is an easy gig. You can say whatever you want and you’ll be believed by the faithful.
bupalos
Memorial Day get together with the mothers-in-law yesterday… red lights are flashing and alarms are buzzing for me now. One of them is very educated and accomplished, both of them favor “liberal” positions pretty much across the board although the less educated one is unreliable on race and gender issues. Both of them hear the political news, neither of them really processes it, I think because they came from a time when you didn’t have to.
BOTH of them used the term “fake news” yesterday, and basically in the context that maybe we just can’t trust anyone or anything and no one can ever know what’s really going on. Not at all in direct defense of Trump, and yet that is how it functioned.
Trump is effective because he is a smelly condensate of modern mass-branding, the idea of dumbing something down to the atavistic/reptilian level to overcome our modern immunities. He has seized on and transformed this “fake news” term and is going to repeat it and repeat it and repeat it in every context imaginable. The “goal” is simply to create an amoral paralyzed relativism, to derail trains and muddy waters. “What happened today?” “Who knows, maybe something, maybe fake news. Some say this, some say that… let’s eat.”
I’m getting scared. The mothers in law are a pretty good focus group, the last time these buzzers sounded was when their mouths were forming the word “emails.”
mapaghimagsik
Man baby is exhausting.
Jim Parish
@jacy: “Portfolio” actually is a term of art in government service. Look up “minister without portfolio”, for instance.
Morzer
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/05/russians-think-trump-might-be-a-russian-asset.html
Barbara
@Iowa Old Lady: The best way to “hit back” is to explain — to release tax forms and so on. The fact that they are hiding lots of details about communications and relationships with Russians can’t just be messaged away. But then, we are talking about the instincts of someone who thought it would be a good idea to bring Paula Jones to one of the presidential debates and to fire James Comey. In other words, Kushner is not the brightest star in the political sky. And why would he be?
? ?? Goku ? ?
@bupalos:
It reminds me of what some of my relatives have said in regards to media reports about scientific studies. They say that science says one thing and then says something else. I always try to tell them that difference is new evidence coming to light
Muddying the waters also helps distract the masses while you take their rights away and corruptly benefit yourself and yours
Iowa Old Lady
@bupalos: I have to admit when I heard that the Russian ambassador had sent that “you won’t believe what Kushner just did” memo, I wondered if it was — not fake news exactly, but a fake-out by the ambassador. It’s hard to know what to believe, given that our news media didn’t sort things out well during the election.
bemused
@jacy:
I’ve never understood that either. I get that self-serving Republican business people and the wealthy would say that. The rest of rightwing voters who buy into that are just idiots.
Cheryl from Maryland
Does anyone else find the Kushner/Flynn back channels reminiscent of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and the Russian mole?
Barbara
@Morzer: “Thousands of calls” is laughable on its face. “He forgot” just makes him sound like he is an idiot, which, if true, just disqualifies him further. Usually, when given the choice of stupid or evil, stupid is usually the right answer, but I don’t buy stupidity for a minute as the reason he asked to use top secret Russian facilities to communicate with Russian government officials. Because Trump wanted someone to do it and Kushner volunteered because he wanted to goose the chances that if sanctions were lifted Russian banks would reward him by investing in the building he paid too much for and has desperately tried to get foreigners to invest in — ding, ding, ding.
germy
@Trentrunner:
1) No such thing as “global warming” and temperatures aren’t rising
2) Climate change is normal; it’s been happening through the ages, it goes up and down
3) OK, temperatures are rising, but it has nothing to do with Man
4) Temperatures are rising but there’s nothing we can do about it
5) Global warming: Why didn’t Obama do something about it?
Morzer
@Laura:
That’s the next logical step – and I don’t think Germany would be alone in taking it. Trump is so incoherently unreliable that the Europeans would be extremely foolish not to explore the notion that America simply cannot be relied on to honor its obligations.Once that conclusion is reached, Europe’s interests will switch to removing any possible means of American coercion from its member states, while developing their own conventional forces and, almost certainly, albeit in the more remote future, a separate pan-European nuclear deterrent.
Steve in the ATL
@jacy:
Every time I have said to a rightwinger that government is not a business and can’t be run like one, the rightwinger responds with “well, it should be!”
As usual, they are impervious to facts and logic.
Jeffro
@Morzer: Lemme go ‘like’ that tweet…
debbie
@jacy:
I think the one good thing to come out of this disaster, providing the country survives, is the death of the myth that a country should be run by a CEO as if it was a business. No CEO could stand the accountability and scrutiny given to government, and no president should expect to rule a democracy by fiat and edict.
Iowa Old Lady
@Barbara: You mean if the facts support them, they should trot them out. That would be nice.
bupalos
@? ?? Goku ? ?: I think the biggest mistake we make is underestimating the innate power of stupidity. Some of the Nietzchean inversions are becoming clearer to me as we go along here.
Jeffro
@Barbara:
I’m shocked that they aren’t even half-bright enough to release faked tax documents that show little to no Russian financial connections. Perhaps several dozen versions of them.
Even Putin must be like, “Jesus, this guy…”
Morzer
@debbie:
No, no, no. What will die is the myth of Trump’s brilliant business mind. Conservatism is the con that cannot die. They’ll just re-calibrate to “The government should be run like a business and Trump was never a real businessman, therefore he failed QED.”
FlipYrWhig
@jacy: I feel like not enough people are saying WHO THE FUCK IS JARED FUCKING KUSHNER TO RUN ANY FUCKING THING? He’s a despicable, sniveling little shit with no accomplishments and no talent. He is nobody. Why is he the fucking Prince Regent? Why do we have to put up with this? It’s absurd.
Iowa Old Lady
@debbie: Besides which, in a company, the end goal is making money. The product is a means to that goal. In running the country, you’d hope the opposite was the case—money is a means to the end of a better life for the inhabitants. But I guess given Trump’s grifting, he is thinking like a business.
debbie
@Laura:
I’d rather Germany point out that at no time since the beginning of NATO has the US come to the aid of Europe the way Europe came to the US’s aid after 9/11, so shut up, Trump.
debbie
All you Al Franken lovers, he’ll be interviewed on Fresh Air today.
Morzer
@Jeffro:
I think they wouldn’t release faked documents because that would involve possibly asking the relevant tax lawyers/accountants etc to commit perjury when asked to confirm that said documents were authentic. It also creates a crack in the wall which Trump has so desperately maintained, namely that his business affairs are purely his business. There’s obviously a lot more thoroughly unsavory material to come out, once that wall crumbles.
SFAW
@FlipYrWhig:
Because of HER E-MAILS.
Or maybe to heighten the contradictions.
Or her voice is not mellifluous.
Or the Moon is in Klutz
Or veeblefetzer.
Fester Addams
@Steve in the ATL:
Who do they figure are the customers, suppliers, and shareholders of this government business?
Do they understand running a business means taking as much money as possible from the customers, paying as little as possible to the suppliers, and sending the difference to the shareholders?
FlipYrWhig
@Steve in the ATL: The government should be run like a business! Because of the free market, no one has to suffer bad experiences with businesses, right, customers of United Airlines, Comcast, Verizon, etc.?
Felanius Kootea
@debbie: The myth never existed among left-leaning people, who understood then and understand now that a CEO is essentially a company’s dictator. I recall seeing a number of jokes about what would happen if someone protested the CEO of their company the way people protest government officials. On the right though, I don’t think the myth of the effective CEO president will ever die.
SFAW
@debbie:
The various service members stationed over there since the Cold War started might disagree.
Morzer
@SFAW:
We were born under the sign of the discombobulated donkey with the enraged elephant in retrograde. Sucks to be us, but then the fault actually is in our stars, not in ourselves.
Morzer
@FlipYrWhig:
*cough* ENRON, ENRON, ENRON!
debbie
@Steve in the ATL:
I’d be curious to know whether they’ve ever worked in a very large corporation. I do, I’ve been there more than 6 years, and I still can’t believe the waste and inefficiencies and just plain bad policy. The government is much more efficient than the large corporations, which seem to endure despite themselves.
FlipYrWhig
@Fester Addams: “Run like a business” means “able to cut costs” and “able to fire people,” which means, by analogy, “able to cut off mooching welfare recipients and lazy public employees leaning on shovels.” Or, in other words, what the people who want government to be run like a business actually want is to stop black people from getting a free ride. Or, in other other words, what all Republicans think about everything all the time.
Jeffro
@FlipYrWhig:
Why Flip…Kushner is of a “clannish” mindset, which also involves “rookie naivete’ “, according to ol’ Brooksie this very morning. No I won’t link to it but this part is good for a chuckle or two:
Hey David, let’s let J-Kush’s fucking lawyers do the ‘splainin, ok?
Morzer
@FlipYrWhig:
Guns for us and no butter for you.
eric
i feel i must step up and defend German honor. I understand the issues with Germany’s past military spending, and its embracing racism. But, is there any evidence that Germany has more racists today than we do with our VASTLY greater expenditures on military budget and history of exporting American hegenomy? Asking for a friend.
FlipYrWhig
@debbie: They’re not thinking of the internal dynamics of large corporations, they’re fantasizing about being the boss of the place where they work, and getting rid of the dead weight.
HeleninEire
@debbie: And his new book was released today. Pre-ordered it and it was on my kindle when I woke this morning.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@debbie: He’s also doing the programming in Sirius XM’s Grateful Dead channel 23 today.
Barbara
@Felanius Kootea: And in reality, most CEOs do get the difference between running a business and running the government. That’s one reason why most don’t apply for the job. Some CEOs or business people probably do develop skills that make them effective in government service, but most don’t. I always trot out the example of Robert Rubin, who was the managing director of Goldman Sachs. Clearly, he figured out how to get things done by keeping a bunch of prima donna financiers in line, which turned out be a very useful skill for dealing with the average member of Congress during budget negotiations. Apparently Newt Gingrich never forgave him for outplaying him so well during the 1995 budget negotiations (in which the government was shut down twice).
Morzer
@Jeffro:
I am starting to believe that David Brooks regards JarJar the Son-in-Law as bearing the white man’s burden.
Jeffro
PS could we make “clan-like behavior against the formal system” a tag? Or at least mail Brooksie an award for that level of disingenuousness?
Morzer
@Jeffro:
Mafia clan-like behavior against the American system of government.
FlipYrWhig
@Jeffro: Alternatively, Jared Kushner could be a spoiled brat with no abilities who’s over his head and trying to get away with it with daddy’s money and a sharply tailored suit, like the Bret Easton Ellis character he’s been for half his reprehensible life.
Jeffro
@Morzer:
Who among us hasn’t tried to set up secret communications with hostile foreign powers in their own facilities? WHILE working on world peace and streamlining government, mind you.
If Hillary’s son-in-law had been up to this kind of stuff, the wingers would have already pulled the both of them out of the WH and mounted their heads on the Wilson Bridge. And need I add, no progressive columnist would be making these kinds of omega-level excuses for the SIL, either. “Rookie naivete’ ” – get the fuck out of here with that crap, Brooks.
kindness
The Donald saw The Godfather and thought that is how things are supposed to be run. Now he’s trying to imitate the movie because he thinks it will make him appear the Capo di tutti.
I should be thankful the Donald isn’t using Apocalypse Now as his muse.
hovercraft
@Iowa Old Lady:
I think you are being overly logical. Someone told them that the Bush and Clinton Whites Hoses set up “war rooms” to deal with their “scandals/legal problems”, so that the rest of the White House could continue to do the actual work of governing. This pit of vipers doesn’t have a strategy for it’s defense, let alone one for governing. If “reports” are true, then the war room will be run by Jared, Bannon, Rinse, Corey and David Bossie, who does that leave to do the governing? So far their governing philosophy has been to react to whatever has Twitler’s knickers in a twist and then spend the next week trying to clean up the mess he’s made. If the people running the clean-up operation are the same ones running everything else all you’ve done is stagecraft, not an actual strategy. As far as I can tell all the war room will do is call people liars and scream FAKE NEWS, over and over again. Apart from the base, no ones buying that shit.
Last week I read something, I think it was Nate Silver, that said the concern for the WH needs to be that his approval ratings among republicans has slipped into the 70’s which is dangerous, and if you dig into those numbers this strong support/approve has slipped a lot, which is the real danger. These people are still saying they support/approve of him but with a lot less intensity than the people who strongly disapprove, to win elections you need an energized base of support, these people lack the intensity to get out and vote. Republicans can celebrate wins in blood red places like they are accomplishments, but their margins are way down and they shouldn’t be struggling to beat hippy, nudist, tax dodgers in places like Kansas and Montana.
tobie
@Cheryl from Maryland:Yes, all this is reminiscent of Tinker, Tailor. Le Carre has a new novel coming out in September and as soon as I can I will advance buy.
bupalos
I admired the term “Mayberry Machiavellians” for the Bush II crew, it was mostly apt on multiple levels. In that spirit I’m looking for the right ‘N’-location to pair with ‘Nietzschean” for these guys. Naples Nietzcheans? The idea would be they are very comfortable stupid people who are seeking power by fucking around with the absolute fundamentals of modern western civil society, the things that in the end makes their gilded parasitic way of life possible.
Post-Truth, will-to-power, Putin-crony, NY-Florida snowbirds.
This would be Aristophanes level funny if it hadn’t actually happened.
SatanicPanic
@bupalos: That’s not encouraging. Yikes.
geg6
@eric:
Nope, America is vastly more racist than today’s Germany. They still have their skinheads and neo-Nazis, but they aren’t running the government and are actively despised by most of the population. Yes, Germany has a bad past, but they’ve done a lot of education and work to make sure that it never happens there again.
Betty Cracker
@eric: I’d much rather have Merkel in charge of our nukes than Trump. I’m not worried about Germany rearming itself either. But it is disturbing that Trump seems completely unaware of why NATO exists and how it works.
bupalos
Oh yes it does.
Nothing is true. All is conflict.
Morzer
@Jeffro:
It never stopped Gandhi from nuking me.
Steve in the ATL
And, as has been mentioned here before, if the federal government were run like a business, a whole bunch of red states would have been consolidated, closed down, or sold off to other countries for pennies on the dollar.
Patricia Kayden
@clay: Why is Germany the enemy but Russia is not? Odd. It’s as if Trump is deliberately trying to destroy NATO which would be perfect for Russia.
bemused
@Fester Addams:
I can’t remember which GOP legislator recently wrote a letter to other members about, iirc, AHCA and the word “stakeholders” popped out at me and I don’t think he meant the majority of Americans.
Steve in the ATL
@Betty Cracker:
But it is disturbing that Trump seems completely unaware of why [literally almost anything] exists and how it works.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@bupalos:
May I suggest Numb-Skulled Nietzcheans?
It’s not geographic, but it is accurate.
Morzer
@Steve in the ATL:
Actually, maybe that government as a business concept is worth exploring further…
hovercraft
@jacy:
Several people interviewed at polling places last week said that they didn’t like the the body slamming, but they voted for him anyway because he’s a businessman. Who knew that there were places in the world that have never seen empty storefronts where business people had failed. The government of the United States has been functioning for 240 years or so, providing security and services for it’s people, lots of bumps in the road, but humming along steadily improving the lives of it’s citizens, in the lifetimes of most of us, our parents, or grandparents, “business” has almost single-handedly brought the country to it’s knees, but the “businessman” is still worshiped by the right. For some of them it’s a toss up between who is more revered, Jesus or Mammon, shit whom I kidding, Mammon always wins.
Kay
I have to admit it’s fun to watch Trump get beat by the steely Angela Merkel.
And the French guy! He’s tougher than big, puffy crybaby Trump. Also MUCH better looking :)
pamelabrown53
@debbie:
debbie, I’m not at all sanguine about Trump’s disastrous behavior signing the death knell of the “America should be run like a business” believers. One needn’t go further back than dubya’s incompetence as the “first MBA president” to question how impervious to logic and evidence are the adherents. There are definitely a large # of Americans who suffer from epistolic closure.
mai naem mobile
These people are stupid. Just fucking stoopid to the core. The rules and traditions of democratic government have developed over decades if not centuries and there’s a freaking reason why each of those rules are there. These morons couldn’t even figure that little out and Dolt 45 doesn’t have one freaking person, just one person who has said ‘Noooo,this is not the way to do things. This is going to end badly’ The hubris is breathtaking.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Kay:
Gerard Depardieu today is better looking than Trump.
Morzer
@pamelabrown53:
Dubya failed to find oil in Texas, Trump went bust running a casino. What more is there to say?
West of the Rockies (been a while)
I anticipate another damage IC leak on Trump within 24 hours. His Twitter rant won’t go unanswered.
Kay
It’s a small thing but I was ashamed of Trump in that golf cart. He really can’t walk? What’s wrong with him?
Just that he has to be hauled around while everyone else is striding along. You would think HE would feel foolish.
bupalos
@West of the Rockies (been a while): Just calling them stupid doesn’t really invoke the paradox. I need that part in where they are expressing their will to power by hacking away at the roots of their own tree.
Nascar Nietzscheans?
Morzer
@pamelabrown53:
Dubya failed to find oil in Texas, Trump went bust running a cas.ino. What more is there to say?
Kay
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
I’m old to enough to remember when US conservatives were making fools of themselves portraying French leaders as less than manly. They’re manlier than Donald Trump! As it turns out the bullshit abusive handshake is the extent of Trump’s “toughness”
Morzer
@Kay:
Macron crushed. Literally.
Kelly
@germy:
On a recent camping trip with old friends we were talking about the local geology. I told the story that my freshman geology class didn’t have a textbook for the first couple of months because plate tectonics had recently changed everything. The most right wing guy in the bunch immediately seized on that as evidence scientists don’t know anything and Global Warming is a 120,000 year cycle we can’t do anything about. Completely missed my point about the threads of evidence braiding together to a new understanding.
trollhattan
@Kay:
Walking is for little people; he’d be toted in a sedan chair if he thought he’d get away without any ridicule. Too, there’s the whole Trump exercise-is-bad-for-you belief. It’s why he’s yuge,
eclare
@debbie: I’ve said for years, anyone who thinks the government is a bureaucracy and inefficient has NEVER worked for a large corporation. You would not believe what I had to go through once to get a goddamn light bulb replaced.
debbie
@Morzer:
I don’t remember W focusing on his business “acumen,” such as it wasn’t. Wasn’t it more about his last name, governorship, and philosophy of compassionate conservatism?
amk
the numbnutz is confused only on twitter?
Morzer
@trollhattan:
And since he’s now a Russian colony… I guess that makes him Yugoslavia.
Steve in the ATL
@eclare: how is work today? Did everyone show up unwashed and unironed clothes?
Kay
Cohen coulda kept his nice life as Donald Trump’s personal lackey and not gotten in over his head, but he’s too stupid and arrogant to know his limits.
debbie
@eclare:
Hell, I almost got into a fist fight with a maintenance worker who wouldn’t redirect an a/c vent just a touch so the very cold air wouldn’t blast directly on the back of my neck. All I did was say I’d climb up and do it myself if he wouldn’t…
Frankensteinbeck
@Corner Stone:
Unfair. Multi-million dollar bribes from the Saudis was the primary point of the trip. Destabilizing NATO is #2.
NorthLeft12
@Trentrunner:
There fixed it for you. One thing I have learned about Repubs, they never, ever, ever admit that something that is perceived to be bad or wrong is their fault.
schrodingers_cat
@Morzer: Both sides do it, but Democrats are worse haha!
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: It probably made him feel like he was being transported by palanquin.
SFAW
@eclare:
Well, that’s because they were trying to figure out how many [pick a group, not necessarily ethnic] persons it would take to change the light bulb. You know how many variations there are out there?
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Having no shame is freeing.
George Spiggott
@Jeffro:
The Clan of the Craven Boor.
eclare
@Steve in the ATL: We have power here, but I overheard one woman say she didn’t feel very clean. I work near Oak Court mall, Poplar/Perkins area, came out Poplar, over half the traffic lights out. Police directing traffic at large intersections. But I guess in this thread re: government vs business, that is encroaching on my FREEDUMB!
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
Well, maybe, but in real world golf carts are for old, frail people. My mother in law rides around in one, but she’s TWENTY years older than Donald Trump. When she was 70 she walked. She wouldn’t have been caught dead in one if other people were walking.
hovercraft
@Betty Cracker:
But it is disturbing that Trump seems completely unaware of why NATO exists and how it or anything else works.
You’re welcome.
SFAW
@Morzer:
Damn you.
scav
Speaking of “secret communications with hostile foreign powers using their own facilities, my mother was wondering last night about other-than-Russian efforts and if there was any known evidence for same. Haven’t found the correct thread yet by front-pagers in the know to ask it in, so here’s it posted for the jackal horde-mind. There are some obvious foreign power candidates, bien-sûr . . .
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Kay: Gerard D would beat Trump’s ass in a throw down. Yes, this Conservative notion that the French are weak is just more of their ludicrous world view. By denigrating others, they feel better about themselves.
Kelly
@Kay: My 80 year old mother insists on mowing her yard. Takes about a half hour.
Patricia Kayden
@piratedan:
In other words, they thought they would be running a dictatorship where no opposition is allowed. Kind of like what is going on in Russia, heh?
schrodingers_cat
@FlipYrWhig: It was mainly the 1percenter women in medieval India who would be transported in palkhis.
Haydnseek
@SFAW: One more word out of you and I just might Moxie your axolotl. And if you’ve ever had your axolotl Moxied, you know just how painful that can be…….
jl
@debbie: IIRC, Dub focused on a new brand of compassionate conservatism which would accomplish many liberal ends in a better and more sustainable way, and humbility in foreign affairs so as not to risk needless wars and improve relationships with adversaries around the world. It was a much more conventional appeal that recognized democratic norms, and appealed to civilized ideals and goals.
It all turned into a mess very quickly because of Dub’s, let us very very politely say, limitations, delusions, and some of Dub’s nutcase religious and personal beliefs.
The results of Dub were the kind of disasters we fear from Trump. But the political pitch to the nation was very different. Dub was capable of some decent proposals and accomplishments, like Medicare Part D and proposal for immigration reform. We can’t even hope for that much from Trump. Hard to beat Dub as a bad president, but the GOP knows how to top itself on that score.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Kay:
We went from a president who could play basketball shirtless (and look damn good, says this straight guy) to a pontificating putz who chows down on KFC and Cokes.
GregB
Most of the media has already adopted the back channel definition spin.
Way to go.
SFAW
@Kay:
Until I read that, and then reflected on Macron’s hand-crush, I wouldn’t have thought of that obese motherfucker as “frail.” But you might be right.
Maybe SNL can have Alec Baldwin ride a golf cart to the podium in the White House, etc.
smintheus
Is it narcissists who live in fear of others “laughing at” them? The threat of people laughing at the US appears to be a regular theme in Trump’s self-justifications.
FlipYrWhig
@schrodingers_cat: Point taken. I was thinking more of mustachioed white settlers huffily demanding that tawny-skinned porters schlep their corpulent asses around the tropics.
FlipYrWhig
@SFAW: I dunno about “frail,” but he would appear to have center-of-gravity issues.
jl
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
Cheeseburgers, great cakes and fries,
Strict rules against thought and exercise,
Keeps a man healthy wealthy and wise.
NorthLeft12
@eclare: Yes, I cringe whenever I hear someone say that governments should be run like a business. Those people that say that either have very little exposure to the bureaucracy that is part of a large business, or they are an integral part of one of those bureaucracies and think that is the way things are done.
hovercraft
@bupalos:
Your MIL not withstanding, the strategy if it is one, I think it’s just reflexive denial, “no you’re the puppet”, is not working with the vast majority of Americans. We need to remember that God help us, we are just 4 months into this hell, and his credibility is shot, people who hate the media are saying in polls that they believe the press more than they believes the vipers. If they had confined their lies to plausible shit perhaps they could have convinced more people, the problem with “don’t believe your lying eyes/ears” is that you can’t do it every day and expect people to believe you. Granted some people will say yes he lies, but all politicians do, but the longer it goes on and nothing gets done, even those people will get pissed.
Alcana Bent
@bupalos: Nietzsche di Napoli. Abbondanza di corruzione!
David Spikes
@jacy: Streamlining the gov’t.=not making it run better but just cutting the budget.
The way to make a car run better is of course to remove the gas.
jacy
@Kelly:
My 80-year-old-mother spent all day yesterday bagging leaves. And then she cleaned all the windows. Nervous energy, she said.
zhena gogolia
Yesterday morning the phone rang early. In the 5 seconds it took to find out it was a robocall medical appointment reminder, I had a fantasy flash through my head — it was my brother calling early on Memorial Day to tell me that POTUS and VPOTUS and the whole crime family were resigning in shame, and I had to think of where to go to get a bigass Roman candle to set off in the front yard even thought I DETEST fireworks.
It was a nice fantasy while it lasted.
schrodingers_cat
@FlipYrWhig: I am sure that happened as well but it was mainly considered to be a feminine mode of transport for dainty ladies of refinement.
jl
@bupalos:
” Naples Nietzcheans? ”
I suggest you consult Nietzche’s little known book of humorous aphorism, Die Untermenschen.
Edit: not sure if ‘Die’ is correct.
hovercraft
@Kay:
Canada and France were probably why he rode the golf cart, not only young and fit, but popular, and he thought riding was a better look than sweating and panting next to the others. SAD !!!!!
SFAW
@Haydnseek:
You’re all brave and shit now, but we’ll see if you’re singing the same tune after I send Mickey Bitsko to go all medieval on your ass.
GregB
@bupalos:
Fifth Avenue Fascists?
Spanky
Hey Helen! File under “Only in America”*:
* Sorry! I meant “File under ‘Only in America, Bitter Irony’ subfolder”
Corner Stone
@zhena gogolia:
Oh man, you got Mensched.
Kay
When are we having Trump corruption hearings? I have to plan. July is best for me.
My eldest son is really looking forward to it. He’s too young to have watched the other big hearing events. I may be overstating the drama, but I don’t think so in this case, with this band of oddballs and weirdos. They’ll say all kinds of crazy shit. Put zip ties around the chair legs! They’re angry people and they’re under a lot of pressure. Maybe some kind of spit shield… this may take planning.
Lapassionara
@eclare: for some reason, I never saw a news report about this storm. I remember the one that had the fierce straight-line winds several years ago. There were tarps on roofs all along Central avenue. Was this one like that?
I grew up in Memphis, and I still love it. BTW, why isn’t the plural of “roof” “rooves”?
NorthLeft12
@Kelly:
You know, I could almost respect the RWNJs if they would take this approach with respect to climate change. The sheer intellectual dishonesty in denying anything is happening is the cowardly way out. They don’t have the courage to argue that trying to do anything about it would cause too much economic disruption to the world and we are better off hoping for some natural phenomena or scientific advance which can “fix” this problem.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@jl: “Untermensch” is masculine, so the correct word would be “Der.”
ETA: Never mind; apparently plurals are feminine.
Hoodie
@Kay: speaking of running a country like a business, I’d be more inclined to invest in Merkel and Macron as a management team of a union with serious distributional issues but a largely heathy public secto, than an overweight septuagenarian who prefers golf carts to walking and his sniveling and corrupt son in law, who preside over a bloated and overused military complex and a crumbling domestic infrastructure.
hovercraft
Nunes Told Donors Russia Probes Are Just Dems Trying To Justify A Clinton Loss
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, offered a different explanation for his decision to step aside from the panel’s investigation of Russian interference in the U.S. election at a fundraiser in California in early April, the day after he stepped down from the probe.
He also hinted that he was eager to return to the probe, which he painted as an attempt by Democrats to explain away Hillary Clinton’s election loss.
Nunes told attendees at the Tulare County Lincoln Dinner that he stepped aside in order to protect vulnerable Republican House members from facing questions about his actions from the media, according to a video of the event published by the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday. The video was provided to the newspaper by someone who attended the event and filmed part of Nunes’ remarks.
“The reporters and the national news were going to chase David and every other member of Congress around the country for the next two weeks. Basically what I said, I said, ‘Well, screw you,’” Nunes said at the fundraiser, referring to neighboring Rep. David Valadao (R-CA). “So I did something that they never thought I would do and I stepped aside, and I gave them a gift.”
Useless piece of shit, what are the chances of giving him the “gift” of early retirement?
The list of people I hate grows every day, this is not good for me : (
Van Buren
@? ?? Goku ? ?: well to be fair, Hitler never gassed his own people.
That was so many fuckups ago.
Ninedragonspot
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): Untermenschen is plural, so add the plural nominative article, Die.
Ocotillo
@Kay: Was telling Mrs. O. yesterday, Trump is the fattest president since Taft.
The Moar You Know
@geg6: You are right about that in all the superficial ways and so wrong about that in the most fundamental ways.
Look up what it takes to become a German citizen (not just a resident) sometime. It’s eye-opening.
Corner Stone
I know nothing about this person, but pulled from Joy Reid’s twit feed:
NorthLeft12
@NorthLeft12: I would love to hear the RWNJs write off those people who are about to suffer the most due to these changes and also to dump the problem onto their kids, grand kids, and their children.
The good news [for them and us BTW] is that the RWNJs who are spouting this nonsense will be dead in the not so distant future.
Corner Stone
I fucking love these Progressive commercials with Susan Lucci. Those are the absolute best thing on TV right now.
Patricia Kayden
@smintheus: Because he probably knows that we (the vast American populace) are laughing at him — even while we resist his fascist tendencies. He sees it every Saturday night on SNL.
SFAW
@NorthLeft12:
It’s not the bureaucracy that’s the problem vis-a-vis government as a business. The problem is that most businesses are not there to do anything other than make Wall Street happy. For the unenlightened businesses — of which there are far too many — there is no room for caring for/about the 99-percenters, which was (until 37 years ago) a big part of government’s raison d’etre.
Since the Rethugs have managed to convince 45 percent of the electorate that getting screwed over so that the rich can get richer is a GOOD thing, it’s going to take some time to overcome that (and a lot of education, which is one of the reasons the Rethugs are so hell-bent on destroying the public education system.
hovercraft
@debbie:
When he was running, it was to be our “first MBA President ” because America was just begging for one? Huh? They played down the nepotism aspects and focused on his business acumen and his morality as a born again Christian who would keep it in his pants.
Kay
@Hoodie:
I know. Me too. It makes me sad. We need a wholesale transformation in the US. We’ve been riding on past gains too long. The Trump voters are horrible but our “elites’ are also low quality. The rot started at the top.
I look at it like a building. The foundation is now crumbling. They just sucked too much out for too long without putting anything back in. The plundering has to stop. There’s nothing left.
smintheus
@FlipYrWhig: Or puffed up Romans picking up slave litter-bearers in their provinces. Do you know Catullus Poem 10?
Gretchen
I’ve got to disagree about Jared wearing “well-tailored suits.” I’m sure they’re expensive and made to measure, which always has me wondering why they fit like Pee Wee Herman’s suits.
Morzer
@Lapassionara:
Rooves is an obsolete plural. Why it became obsolete, nobody seems to know.
Patricia Kayden
@hovercraft: He’d have to be voted out of office which is doable in California. I hope that that is exactly what happens as soon as voters get the chance to kick him out of office. It’s astonishing how Republicans have circled the wagons on protecting Trump against obvious Russian connections.
tobie
@bupalos: Looking at the age of so many of these criminals (Trump, Giuliani, Stone, etc.), I’m tempted to go with something like “Nursing Home Nietzscheans.” Wasn’t it Jason Kander who quipped that we call people who play golf regularly and go to Florida weekly retirees?
Lapassionara
@Morzer: how interesting. Thx
Jeffro
@Corner Stone: he & his team of goons are also going to be hitting the road soon, connecting with ‘his people’
They really think they can just brass their way out of these problems. Why not, it’s always worked for Trumpov before, right?
Meanwhile, J-Rubs notes that Trumpov can fire all the communications people he wants, the problem ain’t going away:
SFAW
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):
Except when applied to the Obese Eunuch-in-Chief*, then it would be “Das.”
* As LBJ said, “Make him deny it.”
Kay
@The Moar You Know:
My son is married to a person from Denmark and he travels for work a lot and he says the same thing. He was shocked by it. He did a long project in Ireland and his co-workers were casually telling him what was wrong with black people in Chicago, where he lives and they do not.
Peale
@David Spikes: “I want to run the government like a business. Did you know that our government has antiquated IT systems that were developed in 1993! Those lazy government workers are just trying to protect their jobs with bureaucratic red tape. I’ll show them!”
“Wait, it will cost $5.8 billion to install Windows 2025 on their computers and another $15 billion to install SAP. Government Waste!”
TenguPhule
@Kay:
You do realize that in construction, they’d demolish the whole structure with high explosives and start over from scratch.
Dunno whether or not that’s the metaphor message you intended.
jl
@Corner Stone:
If Trump is going to build a political ‘war room’ run by thugs like Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie, and gin up support by doing more Trump 2020 campaign rallies, seems like he is going to try to make his base the majority of the country through sheer force of will and volume of yelling and attempts at intimidation. Trump is getting ready (to the extent those words mean anything in regard to Trump) for that doomed effort.
hovercraft
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
Isn’t he a fan? Didn’t he move to Russia because he loves Putin? Having Putin’s puppet running the world’s only superpower should please him, no?
MattF
Jen Rubin gives Trump no quarter.
ETA: As Jeffro pointed out a minute or so ago.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Gretchen:
That’s fabulous! And I imagine Kushner actually sounds like PeeWee.
pamelabrown53
@Morzer:
Or “run like a business” means bread for us and circuses for you!
TenguPhule
@piratedan:
To be fair, they are working to get to this point as quickly as they can given their incompetence.
TenguPhule
@jl:
Or he could actually be getting ready to drop the other shoe towards fascism.
Its the waiting for that shoe to drop which is so nerve wracking.
eclare
@Lapassionara: For some reason it just didn’t make the news…I wasn’t here for Hurricane Elvis, but this is just on a slightly smaller scale. Third biggest outage in history after that and an ice storm that think happened in the 90’s.
Jeffro
Btw Ross Douchehat is on a twitter tear*, encouraging folks on the right to walk away from Trumpov, now that they’ve gotten their precious Gorsuch seat on SCOTUS. He’s giving a lot of lame reasons why it was okay to “hold your nose and vote for Trump” back in November, but says that “[the GOP] is being asked to pretend Trump’s a good president when he’s obviously an incompetent one. No thanks”.
Sorry, Ross baby, but it doesn’t quite work that way…there was and its a shit-ton of enabling going on, to say nothing of treasonous looking-the-other-way. Y’all have a lot to account for and Bob Mueller’s going to help get it alllllllll out there for everyone to see…
*no, I don’t follow him…just happened to see his tweets pop up in my feed…
smintheus
@Patricia Kayden: Except ‘people are laughing at us’ was a constant theme on the campaign from the beginning. What kind of an adult talks that way?
Kay
So a normal President would get asked what he plans to do to address the trade situation with Germany. What’s the plan? Tariffs are out. He plans to yell at them so they stop exporting high quality machinery to the US in response to US demand?
It’s not just that he’s unfit for this office. He doesn’t even know how to use the power he has. To me he just so projects weakness. He’s so ineffectual yet so extremely loud and needy.
I really don’t understand the word “strong” if this bullshit is “strong”.
hovercraft
@SFAW:
Sadly they are done till the Fall. Maybe with some pressure NBC could be persuaded that during this national crisis, they should not get the Summer off?
Humdog
@hovercraft: I really don’t like all the hatred that has been stirred up within me these past eight months. If I feel like this after eight months, I suppose I can understand why some right wing nuts have had to turn to hard drugs or have lost whatever fricken minds they had if they stewed in this hatred for eight years.
zhena gogolia
@Corner Stone:
Can you be Mensched by a fantasy?
ruckus
@Jeffro:
Your 11yr old is extremely likely to be dramatically smarter than the head asswipe in the WH. So is your dog. Your dog is also much more likely to be a better president.
germy
@Corner Stone:
I saw a commercial a few days ago that made me laugh. A ford commercial (I think) a cat is riding in the back seat. The car stops at a red light and a dog starts jumping up and down behind a fence, barking at the cat.
The cat pushes a button and rolls his window up. The light turns green and the car continues on. Cat is dignified throughout.
OldDave
@eclare: Street names sound like Memphis. Off to Google. Issues from the weekend storms?
Spanky
jl
@Patricia Kayden: Nooness is from SE of Fresno, where the now very purple San Joaquin Valley starts turning into deep read Kern Basin. Will be hard to defeat him there, even after his miserable performance, But I think it is true that several of GOP House members from the general area will be very vulnerable in the midterms.I don’t think what a joker like Nunes did or does after his pratfall can help them much. He’s just saying whatever shit he thinks will keep his rancid GOP big donor money flowing.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@hovercraft:
Did he really? I hadn’t heard. In all candor, I’ve never been a Depardieu fan anyway. His casual talk of sexual assault, pissing on a plane, his general angry aura… how did he keep getting paired up with attractive women in films?
TenguPhule
@debbie:
Subcontracted it out, then stiffed the vendors.
pamelabrown53
@Steve in the ATL:
OMG, Steve, your comment at @85 moves me to say: I like the cut of your jib!
smintheus
@Gretchen: I’ve wondered why all of Trump’s suits fit so badly. The fabrics are often very obviously expensive ones, but the tailoring is poor. Most of his jackets have issues that I wouldn’t accept in an off-the-rack suit.
? ?? Goku ? ?
@hovercraft:
Oh, he’s a businessman. That’s excuses thuggish criminal behavior. Morally bankrupt people vote for morally bankrupt politicians. Garbage in garbage out. Just like George Carlin said
MattF
@Lapassionara: OED says ‘rooves’ is a possible plural, so ‘roofs’ may be a consequence of some fool systematizer trying to be logical.
germy
TenguPhule
@Spanky:
Put him to the rack and wheel, tongs & hammers and hot iron p%kers. That will get the truth of the matter from him.
/Yes, I’m quoting from the Spanish Inquisition, why do you ask?
FlipYrWhig
@Gretchen: Touche, but everyone’s suits look Pee Wee-esque to me now. Not a great sartorial moment for males of the species cursed with chests and posteriors.
TenguPhule
Stuck in mod hell. help.
germy
@Spanky:
“Says Who?”
MattF
@germy: Is that regarded as surprising?
low-tech cyclist
What struck me the other day was how the GOP base had willingly – almost eagerly – adopted the role of the proles in 1984. Two years ago, Russia was a hostile power, now they’re our good buddy. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.
Corner Stone
@Jeffro:
***SHUTTERS***
sukabi
@Steve in the ATL: “run like a business” you mean like Enron, Bear Sterns, Drumpfs Taj Mahhal, Bernie Madoffs company, or any of these.
Don’t know about you, but driving a company into the ground hurts a significant number of people*…driving a country into the ground hurts everyone**.
*CEOs and other officers usually make out like kings, people that actually do the work get screwed.
**If we treat the presidency like a CEO then we’re going to get a screwing like no other …
schrodingers_cat
@Gretchen: And wearing sheaths won’t make you Jackie O, Ivanka.
FlipYrWhig
@smintheus: Trump himself is just doing a combination of two things: (1) gorilla dominance shit, trying to look as big as possible; (2) continuing to dress, as many men his age are wont to do, the way he did in his heyday, which happens to be the big-shouldered floppy-pantsed 1980s.
jl
@TenguPhule:
” Its the waiting for that shoe to drop which is so nerve wracking.”
Everything I’ve read about his plans to recover politically so far indicate it will be a clown shoe dropping. Trump needs to give a reason for the GOP to stay with him to get seriously on the road to political repression and consolidation of power. Instead hie is heading into a rickety crony clubhouse with stupid and abusive cronies that will be ostentatiously called a bunker.
Uncle Cosmo
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):
Umm…no. Plural declensions of articles & adjectives auf deutsch are, quite simply, the same for all genders, i.e., gender independent. E.g., the dative case of the definite article is declined
.
You;re very welcome! /Pedant
TenguPhule
@mai naem mobile:
Its been too long since the last Civil War. The idiots have no idea what the alternative is to peaceful coexistence. They think that oppressing the poors and the colored folk will be just like now, only better for themselves.
In time, they will learn just how wrong they were. But many will not live to profit from that lesson.
liberal
@eric: yeah…The claim that what Germany did before is somehow highly predictive of what would happen if we let Europeans pay for their own defense is, at best, highly speculative.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I’d appreciate an acknowledgement for coming up with Manbaby. Gracias. I love that it seems to be taking hold, though.
jl
@smintheus: Well, in fairness to the suits, they have to go over His Trumpness.
liberal
@The Moar You Know: you’re fucking high on crack.
NorthLeft12
@Kay: Yes, it is always astonishing to me how people can be such experts on human behavior on people they have never, and I mean never, had any more than the most casual/infrequent contact.
My father recently expounded at length about the problems with the indigenous Canadians and why they are not successful in Canadian society. He did this in front of my sister’s husband [my favourite BIL] who is an indigenous North American. When I challenged him about this he was quite surprised and said to me that he was an exception, and he showed how the natives can be successful in Canadian society. I then got him to admit that my BIL/his SIL is the only indigenous Canadian he has ever spoken to. But that never stopped my father from stereotyping an entire culture/society which he knew nothing about. Sad.
TenguPhule
@jl:
His base of wingnuts and fascists, racists and weasels are all good about it. They’ll stick with him because they’re riding the tiger now and they can’t get off.
muddy
@FlipYrWhig: I knew someone who was a full blown narcissist like that. She was a hoarder. She’d put a tablecloth over a hoard pile and think it disappeared. Problem solved! I think of it every time I see his floppy suits.
mapaghimagsik
@West of the Rockies (been a while): I always picture him as a prissier C3PO
sukabi
@Gretchen: because under all that expensive tailoring is a scrawny 98 lb. weakling?
germy
@sukabi: or 100 lbs of kevlar
smintheus
@jl: I think Trump is giving Lewandowski a job now because Lewandowski knows stuff about JK and/or Russia. Trump wants him to feel that loyalty is rewarded.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@geg6: Jesus, I can’t wait to see him take over all his communications. That’ll be epic, as the kids say these days.
hovercraft
@Jeffro:
I think this is what’s driving him nuts, he spent four glorious days and nights away from all this shit, he got a medal, (did anyone tell him Obama and Bush also got the same medal), and the media gave him credit for not stepping on his own dick, which given it’s size is nigh on impossible, they kept him so busy he couldn’t tweet. And then came Europe, they were not willing to kiss his ass and project his image on the side of his hotel, they did not keep a leash on the press to keep negative headlines off the front o the papers or the top of the news broadcasts. Just like with the debates last year, he thinks that since he didn’t take a dump on Merkel, he should be lauded, remember for him it’s all about appearances, but even if you went with that, he screwed that up, he looked like a lout, and the papers said so. I think at that point he said well if they are going to be mean to me, I’ll show them, I’m going to be mean to them, just watch, they’ll all come crawling to me, just see if they don’t! Bullies only know one way to react, they bully, too bad for him he’s finding out that world leaders and bureaucrats know just how to hit back at bullies.
debbie
@jl:
Don’t forget that compassionate conservatism practically required that there be proselytizing. I think that was more responsible for failure than anything else.
liberal
@? ?? Goku ? ?: well…depends on the science. There’s a lot of biomedical research that really is like that.
Global warming? I _wish_ the evidence and modeling wasn’t convergent, but it is.
jl
@TenguPhule: Not enough GOP Housers can win the next election with that crew. The Trumpsters need to start serious voter suppression efforts soon. GOP Housers will have to decide whether such efforts will work well enough to rely on in what may be a big wave election, and if they have doubts, they will flee Trump in an attempt to save themselves.
Trump is going into combative bunker mode. Not working with GOP politically, or on any coherent policy that will produce the results Trump promised that got him elected. The situation is serious and scary, but I don’t see how giving into defeatism is helpful.
TenguPhule
@hovercraft:
I want Nunes head. Just his head.
Fair Economist
@hovercraft:
Trump needs to be concerned about sweating and panting trying to keep up with Angela Merkel.
hovercraft
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
liberal
@Morzer: while Trump’s way of going about that is idiotic, why is Europe looking after its own defense needs a bad thing?
The Moar You Know
@Kay: I didn’t even want to get into that aspect of it, which was also pretty amazing to an American who’d been told all my life that Europeans weren’t as bigoted as we are, because jazz or some bullshit like that.
But to me what really points it out, with any society, is who they’re willing to admit to full privileges and under what circumstances. And any of the European nations fail that test dismally. Let’s take Germany, again. They’d let me live there. And they’d give me benefits. And they love young migrant labor. But they damn sure wouldn’t give me citizenship, or my kids, or my grandkids, even if I married a German citizen – and I’m white and part German.
pamelabrown53
@trollhattan: “Walking is for little people”. You’re so right: the Saudis would have provided that sedan chair to honor our American potentate.Which reminds me of how positive were the reviews from our republican leaning “liberal media”as they gushed over Trump gushing over the Saudis who were gushing over him.
jl
@smintheus: Fact that so many of Trump’s cronies, and Kushner, and maybe Trump himself, are dirty with something or other that will get them indicted or impeached or removed from government one way or another, may be driving everything Trump does now. If so, that is good, since leaves no resources to build anything the GOP House can rely upon for midterms.
liberal
@Morzer: if it didn’t die in the aftermath of 2008…
TenguPhule
@jl:
Start? Dude, they’re already setting the stage and their merry little minions in the states have been working tirelessly to suppress, deny and corrupt the voting for 2018. All the oxygen is being sucked up by Donald Darksoul but the GOP state legislatures are quietly killing Democracy on the ground.
hovercraft
@germy:
One of the greatest moments in the history of TV interviews. It was gob smacking.
liberal
@FlipYrWhig: I thought I’d heard something about his family knowing how to deal with the mob. That’s something, isn’t it?
TenguPhule
@liberal:
WW I & II for starters.
Fair Economist
@? ?? Goku ? ?:
Whenever I push her to be healthy, my mother brings up my great-aunt, who smoked, drank, and gorged, and lived into her 80’s. I point out she spent the last fifteen years on oxygen, in a wheelchair, incontinent, and with a colostomy, and she usually changes the subject.
TenguPhule
@Fair Economist:
Okay, that got a smile from me.
Peale
@Steve in the ATL: One of the reasons the middle of the country is so hollowed out economically (apparently!) is that they elected a bunch of people who refuse to let government behave like a government. Not only did they elect people to prevent other congressperson’s “pork”, they agreed not to seek any of their own. They aren’t businessmen. They are middle managers looking for promotion by proving that they are “tough” by volunteering to gut their own departments thinking that’s what the boss wants to hear.
? Martin
Country A with 54,000 troops stationed in country B should be a little bit more considerate toward their hosts.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@FlipYrWhig:
True. Trump thinks he’s a fierce Silverback, when he’s just a pink pimple ass.
Jeffro
@ruckus:
I’ll agree with you about my 11-year-old, but the dog is a border collie/cattle dog mix. All it takes is one frickin’ tennis ball and she’ll play fetch until her legs give out.
Still, she doesn’t tweet much…hmm…
jl
@TenguPhule: True but, they are not winning across the board. Democracy has had some big court victories recently. And if Trump heads to his rump political bunker, standard GOP suppression efforts won’t work well enough to save the GOP’s big majority in the House. But, sorry to disturb your morbid despair. I apologize. We are doomed, and should do nothing but moan about it, right?
? Martin
@TenguPhule: Precisely. The entire US economic expansion of the 2nd half of the 20th century was due to the US calming regional issues by taking over primary security concerns, allowing those countries to spend their GDP on buying US goods rather than on bombs expended on each other.
MoxieM
@eric: Thank you. Also, asking a couple of questions I’ve been mulling: Is there another country that has done as much to educate its population, particularly its younger generations, about its crimes against humanity? (Here I compare Germany to Japan, the USA, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, even France or the Netherlands, for example.) This, I know about.
What is the connection of the IMF to the ECB (which is presumed by commenters here to be controlled by German interests pretty much exclusively)? I really don’t know about this.
And related, and seriously not trying to reignite a shitstorm, what would have happened to the Greek economy without joining the EU (on honest terms, or not so honest ones), and what would have happened to the Greek economy without the nefarious German loans? Again, IDK much about international banking, so I am genuinely curious about informed commentary, not spittle-flecked invective.
Thanks.
TenguPhule
@jl:
Its not defeatism, its trying to not be caught off guard by the worst possible scenarios.
Our institutions have failed us. All of them.
It hasn’t really sunken in yet for a lot of people just how terrifying this is, both what it means now and what it implies for the future.
We are a nation of men, not laws, now. And this is really really bad.
liberal
@Betty Cracker: Trump is aware of nothing.
That said, the purpose of NATO was to counter the Soviet threat to W Europe. Since that threat no longer exists, NATO has no purpose.
eclare
@OldDave: Yes, I’m in Memphis. Depending on who you read, 70 or 90 mile an hour winds came through Saturday night. At its peak, 188,000 customers without power. I still don’t have power, and the utility is saying it could take up a week. Trees down, lines down, roads blocked.
But I’m at work today, and this made me laugh
Jeffro
@hovercraft:
the Saudis did play him like a fiddle, that’s for sure – good point.
It explains quite a bit – the lashing out of a severely damaged personality. No wonder he gets on with Bannon so well.
? Martin
@Jeffro:
You’re assuming that Putin isn’t throwing that proverbial ball for Trump. I wouldn’t be so certain of that.
MoxieM
@The Moar You Know: Um, yes they would. If you learn the language, and live there 7+ years. And are economically self-supporting. My daughter lives there, is how I know. (But there is the sticky question of the USA not liking dual citizenship). We were just talking about this the other day.
liberal
@Patricia Kayden: Europe could handle Russia fine. Have you compared the GDPs?
? Martin
@liberal:
Why don’t you head over to Ukraine and the Balkans and tell them how this works. We’ll be waiting to hear what kind of reception you receive.
TenguPhule
@jl:
And Trump and GOP Congress can gut the Courts at any time.
The problem with our “victories” is that they all depend on the other side honoring the rules and codes of conduct.
That’s what’s so nerve wracking, we are balanced on the knife edge above the abyss, and only Republican lip service to the rule of law is keeping us from dropping in.
liberal
@Kay: he can’t deal with stairs, apparently.
The man is not well, physically (or mentally).
Peale
@TenguPhule: As long as the Europeans agree that their borders are now set and set for all time, there isn’t really an issue for defense. As far as the major countries go, I don’t think there’s much issue. I don’t think that there’s an issue where France and Germany would go to war. Or Germany and Poland for that matter. Or that there are ulta-nationalist Austrians out there dreaming of putting the old empir back together. However, I’m not certain that without NATO and EU membership, Greece wouldn’t be at war with Turkey or the Balkans countries at war with each other. Would Russia actually try to absorb Estonia rather than just seek to find a friendly government to install there? Your guess is as good as mine.
Laura
Dr. Maya Angelou has passed away.
A glorious giant has left us.
? Martin
@liberal: My city has a higher GDP than North Korea, yet nobody is handling them ‘just fine’.
Once you can make weapons for vastly less money than the economic damage they would cause when used, GDP stops being a useful measure for offensive power. I would think suicide bombers would make that point clear enough.
Spanky
@Corner Stone:
What have you got against window coverings? Makes me shudder to contemplate.
jl
@TenguPhule: You should start writing your political horror mini series.. Maybe the BBC or Canadian TV will pick it up. You’ll need some cash after you are a political refugee.
Edit: or you could support voter protection efforts, or register people to vote. Or support a local challenger to beat a GOP Houser. But it’s all useless, so why bother? Just moan and despair are the best things to do.
TenguPhule
@MoxieM:
They’d have had a small economic meltdown instead of a large one. And would still be stuck in it unless someone bailed them out (China probably) and become a puppet client state.
Greece’s economic model has been fukkxxored for a long time. Their government simply doesn’t collect enough revenue to pay its bills and since they’re on the Euro now, they can’t print their own money to try and inflate out of it (not that it would do them much good, they don’t have the reputation that Iceland did when it had to sort out its own problems).
Greece simply can’t compete in world trade, everything it makes except for certain foods can be made cheaper elsewhere and imported in. And then there’s their tax avoidance problem.
TenguPhule
@Peale:
Have you even skimmed a summary of European history?
There are still arguments about borders under the EU, FFS.
geg6
@The Moar You Know:
They do not use the power of the government to discriminate against, let alone incarcerate, deport or kill, people of different race or creeds. What hoops you have to go through to become a citizen in any country is their own business as long as it isn’t discriminatory on the face. It’s not easy to become a citizen in France either. But that doesn’t make them racist. It just makes them typical French (or many other countries) who think only their native citizens are worthy of citizenship. Hell, it isn’t all that easy to get citizenship here, either.
rikyrah
High School Criticized by Betsy DeVos Fires Back: She ‘Messed With the Wrong District’
Teachers, students and parents at a Connecticut high school are fighting back Tuesday after Education Secretary Betsy DeVos criticized the school as an “adult daycare.”
“Betsy DeVos messed with the wrong district,” Annie Irvine, president of the East Hartford Education Association, a teacher’s union, said at a rally outside the high school Tuesday morning, according to the Hartford Courant. In a statement last week, Irvine called DeVos’ recent remarks “demoralizing.”
DeVos made the comment during a budget hearing before a House Appropriations subcommittee last week. She described meeting a former East Hartford student named Michael who was critical of his high school, and she used his story as an example of the need for more school choice.
http://time.com/4797758/betsy-devos-east-hartford-high-school-rally/
TenguPhule
@liberal:
I’m sure the Russian military forces are surprised to hear about that. You should go tell them.
liberal
@The Moar You Know: one of the best things about the US is jus soli.
MattF
@liberal: Except that there’s now a Russian threat to E Europe. It’s true that no one expects waves of tanks headed for the Fulda Gap any more, but…
TenguPhule
@jl:
All blue state. Republicans crushed into obscurity locally.
Nationally, we’ve got no real presence on the political scene since President Obama left office.
And none of this changes the fact that all those “efforts” you suggest depend on the flimsy reed of Republicans not packing the empty court slots with Republicans hacks.
So while the effort has to be made, don’t count on them to stop an enemy that doesn’t believe in the rule of law.
sharl
@Laura: Some on twitter have been noting her death, but it was three years ago Sunday (5/28/2014) when she passed. So it’s more of a remembrance and celebration of her life and work.
ETA: corrected the date.
Peale
@TenguPhule: I don’t think its actually fair, btw, to warn that a rearmed Germany would lead to WWIII, as if a rearmed Germany would be the problem. Germany isn’t going to rearm and start lopping off bits of the Czech republic all on its own. The issue now as it ever was is how the UK, France and Russia would handle a rearmed Germany. Those three countries in alliance with each other against Germany were not very stable in the past. Had Le Pen won and started crawling up Putin’s butt, that would probably have ended NATO quite quickly, much more quickly than a few words from Trump will.
OldDave
@eclare: Best wishes – may power be restored ASAP. I was driving from Nashville to St Louis around that time – it was an impressive storm.
We’ve lived through multiple Hurricanes that turned our power off for over a week per storm. When the water heater runs out of preheated water it’s officially no longer fun.
jl
@MoxieM: It was the Eurozone’s restrictions on monetary policy without countercyclical fiscal stabilizers that caused many of Greece’s problems after the Great Recession not the EU. The EU is a trade union, not a monetary union.
The German, and other, loans were not nefarious. But the misguided monetary policy with no fiscal stabilizers, following the Great Recession that caused the problem.
If Greece had never been in the Eurozone, foreign capital would have come in during the boom of the early 2000’s, just as they did in the 1990s before the Asian financial crisis. But Greece would have had much more flexibility in how to handle the loans that they could not pay back. Devaluation of their currency being the most obvious course.
Corner Stone
@liberal:
I’m completely mystified by this sentiment.
TenguPhule
@Peale:
Not worried about Germany, worried about the reaction of everyone else to a rearmed Germany.
There are still WW II survivors living all over Europe. They haven’t forgotten the horror. And if Germany rearms, all the decades of apologizing and making amends will be forgotten in a heartbeat.
EVERYONE is gonna start stocking up on weapons and mustering their soldiers in the region.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Laura: This sentiment is late by three years, two days.
Fair Economist
@Corner Stone cites:
It’s not *him* that’s planning something. Those bots answer to Putin, not Trump. Putin is planning something and – once again – Trump will be following orders.
Corner Stone
@liberal:
Please tell me you were displaying the time honored example of non sequitur here?
Jeffro
@rikyrah: Typical 1%er…
1) if it’s “public” it must be third- or fourth-rate
2) a single anecdote is all the research she needs to do
3) the solution miraculously dovetails with a means for her thieving friends and family to make a gazillion dollars
She has to tell herself these things because it’s the only way she can justify being so incredibly greedy and stupid.
hovercraft
@Peale:
Short answer yes. I went to Richmond College in the eighties in London, and we had a large contingent of both Greeks and Turks and every goddamn party once everyone was good a liquored up they would fight, Cyprus is an open wound, the only thing that keeps them from breaking out into open warfare is their membership or desired membership in NATO and the EU. The Balkans still have foreign troops because they would start up again at the drop of a pin. Idiots like the Manbaby have no idea about these tensions, neither do they understand how dangerous the nationalism that we are seeing in Europe is. It’s true that for the Idiot in Chiefs lifetime Europe has been relatively peaceful, but that was not true for the preceding millennia, and most people attribute that peace to these organizations. Ethnic/nationalist sentiments can turn very quickly into genocide, hell the fact that Turkey still refuses to acknowledge the Armenian genocide shows just how close to the surface these simmering tensions are. The Hutu, Tutsie genocide seemed to come out of nowhere, but it was based on long simmering resentments, which Europe is full of. Why do you think Belgium can’t keep a government in place?
jl
@TenguPhule: OK, fine. You should either start arming yourself so you can go down in a blaze of glory, or prepare to flee the country, then, I think the second course is more promising, so quit wasting your time here and start writing your political dystopian miniseries in a way that will appeal to Brit or Canuck audiences.
Gin & Tonic
@liberal:
The residents of the Donbas and the Crimean Tatars would like a word with you.
Gin & Tonic
@Peale:
Ask the residents of Donetsk.
TenguPhule
@jl: I note that you’re not denying that Trump and GOP Congress have the power to pack the courts and render legal efforts fruitless.
Don’t get mad at me for being a realist.
zhena gogolia
@Gin & Tonic:
WHY ARE THE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES SO GODDAMNED NAIVE????
Corner Stone
Why do they keep calling him King Solomon?
Amir Khalid
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):
That’s not quite right. The definite article is the same for feminine and plural nouns in the nominative, accusative, and genitive cases; but they differ in the dative case.
vhh
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): The plural definite article is simply “die”. The plural nouns retain their singular gender. Der Mann becomes die Männer, die Frau becomes die Frauen, das Kind becomes die Kinder.
Keith P.
This Spicer defense of Trump is hilarious. Like Hope Hicks-level funny.
TenguPhule
First rat flees sinking ship.
Well this should be interesting.
Corner Stone
@Keith P.: It’s really delusional levels of delusional funniness.
jl
@TenguPhule: Packing the courts with enough packed up Trumpster judges to make a difference will be far more difficult if Trump goes into politically bunkered up crazed dipshit mode, which he appears to be doing.
MattF
@TenguPhule: Jumped or pushed? Either way, there are a lot of rats attempting to learn to swim these days.
Hoodie
@liberal: one of NATO’s many purposes was to keep Europe worrying about Russia instead of fighting internally. NATO is arguably more important now than ever, because a non-ideological/crime syndicate Russia is far more sophisticated in its understanding as to how to exploit divisions in Europe.
hovercraft
@Jeffro:
I think he also wants to lash out at Obama for the contrast between the reception he got.
Trump Set To Reverse Obama’s Cuba Policies
So reversing that and walking away from the Paris Global Warming Hoax will show him who’s boss!!
Unfortunately any reversals would only be symbolic, his beloved business leaders are going to do what’s best for their bottom line, they can pay lip service to his agenda with the best of them, but when you get down to it, they will stiff you, see Carrier. But hey, he should know all about screwing people over, they got the president to provide free commercials for them, and they still get to cut loose all the “dead wood”, WINNING!
I wonder how happy those Cubans in Floridah will be that he’s rescinding the Obama policies.
Steeplejack
@Lapassionara:
That’s just one of the many gooves in the English language.
MisterForkbeard
@Corner Stone: To be fair, the “Soviets” don’t exist any longer. But the Russian state still does, and it’s still belligerent.
@Fair Economist: Completely agree. There’s about to be a big push by wikileaks and/or Russian to buttress Trump and parrot whatever the next line is going to be. They’re doublign down on supporting him.
schrodingers_cat
@MisterForkbeard: Please don’t tell that to Nation’s Cohen and St Sanders of Vt and numerous acolytes.
Laura
@sharl: doh! Thank you for correading ting my error.
Amir Khalid
@liberal:
That was never the only purpose of NATO. Another goal, equally important, was to keep European countries from making war on each other by making them allies in each other’s defence, rather than rivals in dominance struggles.
Keith P.
@Corner Stone: I like how he was met with near universal praise wherever he traveled.
Amir Khalid
@vhh:
In the German case system, the plural is treated like a gender in its own right. But its case endings resemble those of the feminine gender in much the same way that those of masculine and neuter nouns resemble each other.
Corner Stone
@Keith P.: I don’t know if you caught it, because Spicey downplayed it, but Trump also laid hands on the innocent and cured them of their leprosy.
liberal
@TenguPhule: LOL. Try comparing Russian GDP to that of the EU.
Cutting them off immediately is a bad idea, but if someone claims that Europe is incapable of defending itself in the long run, they have no understanding of the issue.
schrodingers_cat
@jl: Thanks for articulating what many are thinking.
Keith P.
@Corner Stone: This is actually a major policy change, as laying on of the hands was previously something only Jared Himself (Praise unto Thee) did.
Alce_e_ardilla
@Betty Cracker: @Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):, But it’s plural so Die would be corr
HeleninEire
@Spanky: Izzit me you’re talking to? Yeah. It’s getting WAY interesting here. I spent many a year defending Ireland (meaning explaining their history); ummm perhaps I mean “excusing them” for all their political/religious bullshit. They are now so unbelievably more progressive than America that I am THRILLED to be here. And not there.
TenguPhule
@liberal:
Try comparing Russian Troops and equipment to German ones right now. Then dope slap yourself.
chopper
@bupalos:
a lot of people misuse the term “gaslighting” these days, but this is a good example of it. drumpf’s continued emphasis on everything being ‘fake news’ is in large part intended to so muddy the waters that americans far and wide start distrusting everything, even the stuff they see with their own eyes.
bupalos
@tobie: Well I like the snowbird/florida thing partly for this age issue. But I’m getting to be a gentleman of a certain age myself, so I’d rather the reference be more to the soft-hands/no-bad-weather lifestyle than to the path which we all must tread.
pat
@liberal:
.
You’re joking, right???
sm*t cl*de
@dmsilev:
You would see a lot more of the “Forgetting why I am here and shambling away in search of cake without the actual rant” (as in Trump’s meeting with Netanyahu).
People will become a lot more familiar with the concept of ‘sundowning’,
sm*t cl*de
@hovercraft:
The good news there is that the two communities in Cyprus are sick of being a proxy battlefield for kleptocrats and theocrats in Greece and Turkey, and are negotiating quietly towards a rapprochement.
ruckus
@Iowa Old Lady:
The product should be the end. But the league of Must Be Assholes has taken over business, especially big business, so their real product is profit. Now dumpf is a little different. His business is bullshit. It’s all he’s ever been remotely close to successful at.
J R in WV
@pat:
Oh, Honey, he isn’t joking at all !!!!
He’s a paid troll working for Putin, at several removes, but still, working for the Russian mob. And it isn’t funny at all, when you look at it that way, is it?
jonas
@Spanky: You bet Cohen refused to testify. As Josh Marshall has reported over at TPM, Cohen is up to his eyeballs in shady Russian/Ukranian shit.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@J R in WV: I find “a combination of terminal purity wankery and a severe case of Dunning-Kruger” a more accurate explanation than web-brigadiering.
prostratedragon
@bupalos: [Late I know, but … ]
“The Neapolitans are leaving. They have dirty consciences.”
—Todo Modo (1976)