Looks like the Saudis got more than a curtsy for flattering Trump during his recent visit:
During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar – look!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2017
So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2017
…extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2017
I’m not particularly knowledgeable about national security and Middle Eastern politics, but even I can see what’s happening here: The Saudis and their allies are playing Trump like a goddamned fiddle.
The (Obama appointed) US Ambassador to Qatar is reduced to subtweeting the so-called president:
Seems a good time to RT this one. https://t.co/AJ1BA29UnU
— Dana Shell Smith (@AmbDana) June 5, 2017
This is so important, I'm sharing it again. Great partnership, real progress to counter terrorist financing. #Qatar https://t.co/yjnEg2IJlF
— Dana Shell Smith (@AmbDana) October 26, 2016
What a fucking nightmare every day is with this clown in the White House. Stupidity and belligerence is such a toxic combination.
Corner Stone
That Saudi is going to point the finger at any one for funding terrorism…sheesh.
dedc79
For a supposed billionaire, Trump can sure be bought cheap. They spend a few hundred thousand dollars at his DC hotel, a few mil on his visit, and make a bunch of unenforceable promises to buy US weapons, and look at all they’re getting in return.
Corner Stone
I wonder if Trump is aware there are some 11K US persons on a tiny little, unheard of base in Qatar?
Corner Stone
This week has the real potential to turn into a once in a lifetime shitshow, if what Robert Costa is reporting about Trump live tweeting Comey’s testimony is true.
Jeffro
@Corner Stone: I may need to take the day off and make a trek down to that pub in DC that’s opening early…
NorthLeft12
This reminds me of the Reagan years……our [the Saudi supported ones] terrorists are really “freedom fighters” and just all around swell fellas, once you get to know them. And their guys are the worst of the worst, real monsters, who are not fit to live, etc. etc.
rikyrah
@Corner Stone:
I know.
I know.
Irony is choking.
at work guy so staying in the shade
jesus fukin Christ
WW 2.5 on the horizon
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Corner Stone: You are a very funny man. Without spellcheck on twitter he couldn’t spell Qatar and sure as hell can’t find it on a map. If he knows where 1/4 of the US bases outside the US are I’d be shocked. Or half of those here.
daveNYC
And if Iran steps in to help Qatar, that’ll just confirm Qatar’s guilt and put them next on the hit parade.
Anyone got a good tagline for Gulf War 3?
Jeffro
@Corner Stone: “Qatar: America’s very, very large aircraft carrier” – seen on the Twitters earlier this morning.
Redshift
@dedc79: Same thing with nearly all Republican politicians (and the occasional Democrat.) It’s not surprising they’re for sale, but it’s always a little surprising how low the price is (and how that makes it a far better investment for one percenters than anything on Wall Street.)
chopper
jesus, KSA must be wondering how they managed to roll this motherfucker so easily.
i mean, KSA just convinced the president of the united states that their smaller neighbor is the big problem with financial support for islamic terrorism. FFS, man, the saudis did that.
Bobby Thomson
One of the downsides of him being a complete dumbass.
MattF
We should be grateful for Trump’s ignorance– not to mention his greed, his stupidity, his general incompetence, and his inability to keep these aforementioned ‘qualities’ under control. Saving graces, in a way.
Villago Delenda Est
If you’re looking for an “extremist ideology” one need look no further than the nearest Wahhabi Imam.
Bobby Thomson
@chopper: we have always been at war with Qatar.
amk
9/11, bin laden, twitler – guess mission accomplished for saudis.
hovercraft
@Corner Stone:
He’s counter programming.
Trump To Speak At Religious Conference While Comey Testifies Before Senate
Bobby Thomson
@MattF: his incompetence and stupidity hold him in check domestically, but he can cause a lot of problems internationally.
MobiusKlein
Why do I get the sense that this is more about reducing the oil supply to boost the price?
Get sanctions vs Qatar, stop them from selling oil, and profit.
Aleta
Not being a thinker or brave, competent or original, he needs to fit under someone’s wing to move out into the world. First was Roy Cohn, later Russia, now Saudi. If he believed what he’s saying he’d now add Qatar to his travel ban, but he can’t because $$ and investments.
JPL
@Corner Stone:
enough said
SFAW
@Bobby Thomson:
There’s an upside?
And, no, his being the very fat butt of jokes, entirely of his own making, is not an upside. It would be, had he not stolen the election, however.
MattF
@hovercraft: Topic A: Building a majority with the use of ‘Freedom Camps’.
Westyny
Nobody who supported this idiot should get a pass in conversation either public or private ever. They have lost any claim to being a serious person. Unfortunately, silly people can produce serious consequences.
clay
So, I don’t know a lot about Middle Eastern sections and alliances, but I was under the impression that the big split was between Sunni and Shia Muslims. So this has me confused (from Wikipedia):
I would’ve thought that SA and Qatar would be natural allies. What’s causing the split?
rikyrah
@Corner Stone:
BWA HA HA HA HA HAH HAH A
rikyrah
CNN has announced it will livestream Thursday’s Comey testimony without requiring a cable subscriber log-in.
— Al Giordano (@AlGiordano) June 6, 2017
Aleta
@MattF: true
Waldo
@Corner Stone:
Or to put this in historical context, imagine Nixon heckling witnesses during the Senate Watergate hearings.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I thought trump asked for the resignations of all US ambassadors a while ago? People were pointing out that it’s a typical courtesy by incoming administrations to wait till June for those with school-age children.
I can’t remember where she worked, but on some MSNBC panel during the trip some straight reporter was talking about how the trip was a success because trump got such a warm and lavish welcome! She specifically mentioned the thing with his giant head being projected on his hotel. You would think most people would find that at least a little tacky, and given trump’s well-established authoritarian tendencies and megalomania, a little disturbing.
Just about twenty-four hours ago I saw Stephanie Ruhle, who’s far from the worst thing Andrew Lack has done but…, stating as fact that trump’s visit to KSA was a success, unchallenged by the less-bad Ali Vashir. (Sp? on those names)
The Moar You Know
Trump punked the chumps who wanted some coal,
But the Saudis found Trump was even easier to roll.
(mine, distribute as you wish)
MattF
@Waldo: Can we hope for a CNN chyron with Trump’s tweets?
Matt McIrvin
@clay: I’m thinking SA is trying successfully to divert US suspicion from themselves.
Also, Al Jazeera is Qatari; that might have something to do with it.
Gretchen
I’m looking forward to when Eric, Donny Jr. and Jared are called to testify. They’re all dumb as rocks and too arrogant to realize it.
clay
@MattF: Donnie Deutsch was on Morning Joe, and he said that (and I’m barely paraphrasing) our system has checks and balances, and Trump is his own check and balance, therefore the system works!
No one managed to point out that the fact that Trump has to be his own check and balance proves that the system is very broken.
Bobby Thomson
@SFAW: the upside
amk
daveNYC
@MobiusKlein: They produce 1,522,902 bbl/day, that has them in 9th place in OPEC, right ahead of Algeria. This is more SA looking to shut down anyone getting friendly with Iran with the added bonus of maybe taking out Al Jazeera too.
Depending on how it shakes out, it could also end up being the bullshit excuse used to go after Iran.
Barbara
@clay: Qatar has caught up to the 21st century to a greater extent because it refuses to let the sectarian divide totally color its view of the world and the Middle East. It maintains back channel relationships with Iran. At its core, Saudi Arabia hates Iran mostly because Iran is Shiite, and secondarily because if Iran could ever ditch its neo-Medieval extreme supreme committee (which more or less serves the same role our Supreme Court does in swatting down progress, only from the perspective of its “originalist” interpretation of the Q’ran) it would be the largest and most influential Islamic country in the Middle East. it is more than three times the size of S.A. and its population has not been coddled by decades of oil wealth and has a legitimate tradition of commerce and engagement with the world.
MattF
@clay: Hmm. There’s a sort of logic there. Not in a good way, though.
Bostondreams
@clay:
Iran. Qatar gets along with Iran, and the Saudis hate them for it.
Probably deeper than that, but based on what I have read, that kind of sums up at least a big part of it.
Corner Stone
@clay: Well, you see, here’s the thing about fundamentalism in religions. Like the old joke goes, at some point when you’re deciding who is the keeper of the one true faith – that other guy is going to be the heretic.
Bobby Thomson
@clay: Deutsch is one of the closest things to a friend that Trump has. I assume there was no disclosure of that.
hovercraft
@MobiusKlein:
Their most “urgent” issue with Qatar is their support for the Muslim Brotherhood, which offers the people in their countries an alternative to their corrupt autocracies. So it’s not the supposed support for terrorism, it’s that Qatar is supporting people who might depose them, as opposed to people whose focus is the West, Israel, or most importantly Iran. The Saudi’s above all else want to be the dominant force in the ME, Iran threatens that.
raven
@rikyrah: I’m betting it turns out to be a big nothing burger.
Frankensteinbeck
He who pays the piper calls the tune. Does anyone here know in detail the financial ties Trump has to the Saudis? I know they are extensive. These people are bribing the Hell out of him.
@SFAW:
A very large one. He’s so god damn stupid he’s doing a terrible job of pushing his unspeakable, country-destroying agenda. Among other things, the travel ban probably would have passed the courts if Donald weren’t so outrageously stupid as to announce repeatedly it’s about hating Muslims.
Barbara
@Matt McIrvin: Quick! Somebody better remind Trump that 17 out of the 19 9/11 bombers were Saudi. And Osama bin Laden too! What a great day it would be if Saudi Arabia woke up one day and found that all of its oil had evaporated. Kuwait doesn’t feel the need to use its oil wealth to export terrorism.
Iowa Old Lady
@dedc79: Trump stiffs contractors for relatively small amounts. He’s one of those people for whom there’s no such thing as enough.
Jeffro
@amk: what? they let their Trump Tower lease expire?!?
next you’ll tell me they aren’t laundering money through Trump’s condos, and aren’t buying any of his crappy steaks either!
hovercraft
@MattF:
I’m still bitter about the FEMA camps that never materialized! If Obama had built them, and we had filled them with deplorables, we would not be in our current predicament! Thanks Obama!
zhena gogolia
@raven:
That’s what I’m afraid of.
SatanicPanic
@The Moar You Know: I imagined Oompa Loompas singing this and I chuckled
Corner Stone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It reminded me of the TV show Tyrant, and also of the Goldie Hawn movie Protocol where she is basically a bribe to a King to get a base built in his country.
Also too, I like Ali Velshi, and I am fairly meh on Stephanie Ruhle. But a solid hour of Velshi & Ruhle is just too freaking much.
Barbara
@zhena gogolia: There is too much he won’t be able to say. That’s the problem. The questions he will answer will be limited to his personal interactions with the president, not the status of any investigation.
Major Major Major Major
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I believe trump asked for their resignation letters.
Corner Stone
@clay:
I didn’t see that but that is surprising. DD is a full on Trump hater and flat out says all the time Trump is nuts and a liar and incompetent. He had to be talked down off a recent Nicolle Wallace program as he was getting worked up.
Frankensteinbeck
@Barbara:
This is what I’m expecting. Comey won’t try to hide anything for political reasons, he just can’t talk about the big stuff, even after he’s been fired.
Barbara
@Frankensteinbeck: He is more susceptible to flattery than nearly any other person I have ever observed. He must be pathologically insecure, and, of course, his profound ignorance extends to being profoundly ignorant of just how ignorant he is, which makes him an even bigger threat.
NorthLeft12
I hate to say this, but these tweets are further proof of how indestructible Deadbeat Donald is. He has converted [in his and his supporter’s minds] a full blown eff up into a great diplomatic victory!
We’ll see which way the media goes on this, but I’ll bet there will be a lot of hemming and hawing and how this series of events could work out great for the US, and enough rationalizations of the fake President’s unorthodox methods that enough people will believe this is a win, and a win due to Trump’s deal making.
I don’t know enough about the overall Mideast situation as to whether this leads to war, and loss of life, or if it is just another further step down the chaos path to complete instability in that region.
MattF
@Barbara: If Trump would let sleeping dogs lie, I think the media would be ready to let the todo over Trump ties to Russia die down. But I doubt that will happen.
Chris
@Jeffro:
We can call it “Airstrip One.”
SiubhanDuinne
I’ve been mildly amused the last day or so at the fact that NPR apparently has no pronunciation guide for “Qatar.”
Seriously I’ve heard four different hosts/reporters/commentators pronounce it, variously:
KUT-ter
CAT-ter
kuh-TAR
KAH-TAR
MattF
@NorthLeft12: What else could it be, other than a huge victory?
clay
@Bobby Thomson: To be completely fair, I didn’t hear the whole segment.
MattF
@SiubhanDuinne: Also, ‘gutter’.
raven
Ya’ll ever read “The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture Paperback – September 14, 1999
by Frank R. Wilson (Author)”? Lot’s about musicians and artists and how they tried to figure out “handedness” but never really did.
MomSense
I swear just reading the news kills brain cells.
raven
@SiubhanDuinne: Ever been to Veet Naam?
clay
@Corner Stone: In case I wasn’t clear, the reason DD thinks Trump is his own check and balance is because he is so incompetent, ignorant, and self-destructive. As in, whenever he tries to do something dangerous, he gets in his own way and it doesn’t happen.
Which, again, isn’t the “system working”.
Ryan
Isn’t he on record as stating that 9/11 could have been the Saudis, it could have been the Chinese, it could have been 400 lb. men in New Jersey? Or am I misremembering?
hovercraft
@clay:
I found this on Quora
Confusing, seems to me like the dispute between the Judean People’s Front and ……………
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
This is going to go bad quickly for the men and women at CENTCOM.
Already, Qataris have emptied their markets of food items, since the country is a huge food exporter and there is, in essence, a blockade going in. The rational act would be to now expel Americans, after Trump’s idiocy in taking credit for the diplomatic upheaval.
SiubhanDuinne
@MattF:
I’ve also heard that, just not on NPR in the last 24 hours.
Chris
@clay:
Well, the basic premise of Trump et al isn’t exactly wrong, in that Qatar has in fact been more willing to both break rank with the other GCC members and support radical politics of various kinds that the Saudis and others would rather they not. That includes more enthusiastic support for islamist militants, but it also includes their willingness to talk to Iran, and the fact that they’re the home base of Al Jazeera (which many governments throughout the Arab world hate for being willing to speak more frankly about them than they otherwise would be).
Aleta
@The Moar You Know: Would work great in a song.
raven
@Ryan: Twarnt Mormons
(Del Gue, Jeremiah Johnson)
Peale
@daveNYC: If Iran helps Qatar, it will just confirm to Mattis and a bunch of Iran hawks that Iran was behind ISIS all along.
JMG
I think we should remember that Comey’s interaction with the President is as big or bigger a deal than the rest of the investigation. He is going to at least imply (and I don’t think Senators will let him off the hook) that in his opinion Trump tried to obstruct justice.in on the record sworn testimony.,And since it has been reported Trump plans to live tweet the event, he’s liable to confess in a rage tweet.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
LOL, you must be one of dem boys from Illinoise.
Jeffro
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I can see that being an added feature at his campaign-style rallies soon.
hovercraft
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
He did, all the Obama appointees left, and yes in the middle of the school year, but the career State Department people are there as acting ambassadors. Most of them are the actual ambassadors when it comes to the day to day. The political appointees are often figureheads, think of them as the President in countries with parliamentary systems, they perform the ceremonial duties, and are there to be the public face, articulating the views of the administration, but the State people run the day to day operations, they are the Prime Ministers and their cabinet.
El Caganer
@raven: Does he have anything to say about tiny hands?
Hungry Joe
@Barbara: He’s not just susceptible to flattery — he has a pathological fear of being laughed at. When he says “People are laughing at us” he means “I’m afraid that people are laughing at me.” In some alcove of what’s left of his brain he knows that the only reason he’s not the assistant night weekend manager at Walgreen’s — after years of working his way up — is because he was born with a silver shovel in his butt.
cmorenc
If Quatar is indeed such a hotbed of terrorist sympathizers/supporters, then the 2022 FIFA World Cup the corrupt Blatter FIFA regime inflicted on world football could be even more of a potential nightmare than trying to play games in the intense heat. Whocuddaknowd if something goes horribly wrong with FIFA WC 2022’s misadventure in Quatar?
Schlemazel
@SiubhanDuinne:
Locals I have met say the pronunciation is not fixed, they are not fussy. The Arabic letter represented by the Q in English does not exist in English but It was common to sound mostly like “GUT-ter” years ago. It has been Westernized a bit by softening the C and most common seems to be “CUT-ter” now. That may have been to remove the reference to gutters or they may just have gotten tire of correcting Westerners.
SFAW
@SiubhanDuinne:
It that the way it should be pronunciated? I thought it was something like “Ill-lie-NO-iss”
Learn something new every day, one of the reasons I come here.
Gin & Tonic
@SiubhanDuinne: I was surprised when I went to Des Plaines and found out how it was pronounced.
Ian G.
@amk:
This would be completely, utterly nuts of Frum to suggest of any other president, and completely 100% believable with Shitgibbon.
Schlemazel
@raven:
In the 60s there was a local Sunday morning general aviation program on the local TV. He loved to carry war news related to aviation & he pronounced the country as “VITnam” all one word.
Edit: I just remembered the guys name was Sherm Bowen & one of his kids became a report for CBS news though I don’t remember his name.
SFAW
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The weird thing was, they also projected his hands, and STILL no one in the crowd could see them.
Jeffro
@Barbara:
This can’t be overstated, and it’s probably one of the top two reasons why a Trumpov presidency creates such a fundamental sense of ‘wrongness’ with those of us who actually, you know, care about our country. He’s a complete fucking moron who not only doesn’t begin to know what he doesn’t know, but he thinks he knows everything. “I’m, like, a smart person”. “I have the best words”. Only a complete babbling idiot would even come close to saying shit like that.
(The other reason causing the ‘wrongness’: he’s just about the most vile human being around.)
me
OT: The Intercept helped burn their source.
raven
@Schlemazel: yup
Chris
@SFAW:
Ill Ih Noy.
Is how I’ve always pronounced it.
hovercraft
@Iowa Old Lady:
Someone on TV yesterday pointed out that in his world there is no such thing as a “win, win”, HE MUST WIN, and YOU MUST LOSE ! Anything short of that leaves him throwing a tantrum, which is why even though he won the all important electoral college, he can’t let the fact that he lost the popular vote go. He hates that the media breaks down and explains how his “victories” are not the victories he claims they are, it’s all or nothing for this moron, and the world is all watching the leader of the free world have a meltdown in front of our eyes.
Schlemazel
@hovercraft:
all inter-faith battles are exactly The Judean Peoples Front vs. The People Front of Judea. They are so vicious because the differences are so tiny
Iowa Old Lady
@SFAW: I have fuzzy memories of a video game in which a giant head was projected. As I recall, it kept repeating, “I am the boss of you. I am the boss of you.”
rikyrah
AWE…
NEW YORK (AP) — Publicist says Amal Clooney, wife of George Clooney, gave birth to twins Ella and Alexander on Tuesday.
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) June 6, 2017
raven
@Chris: That is not how you pronounce it, that is the correct pronunciation. Any other way is ignorant.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo fka Edmund Dantes
@NorthLeft12:
Eye on the prize – destabilization and low level conflict in the Middle East leads to higher oil prices which benefit, in order, Putin, Fleet Street, and the Texas oil boys.
JPL
@me: Yup!
Rather than discuss Russian hacking, the media is concentrating on the Reality Winner. The disclosure is barely touched upon, in local news.
The Moar You Know
@Aleta: My previous career was professional musician – and songwriting (two very different disciplines as it turns out). I have many rules for songwriting, but here’s the two that apply:
nothing topical
nothing political
I wouldn’t use it in a song, but that part of my brain is obviously good for writing snarky blogpost rhymes too.
rikyrah
@SiubhanDuinne:
Qatar
I always thought it was KUT-ter
rikyrah
@Barbara:
Yep yep and more yep.
Don’t sleep on the Persians.
Amir Khalid
@dedc79:
As I’ve noted here before,Trump has the business ethics and the business sense of Mundungus Fletcher.
Chris
@Jeffro:
The way Trump talks whenever he’s discussing any substantive issue is instantly recognizable to me, and, I would think, to anyone: it’s how any of us sound whenever we’re caught short and try to bullshit our way through. And done in such a half-assed way that it’s instantly recognizable in a way that any of my middle school teachers would have shut down in a second. (Sarah Palin sounded like this all the time, too. “All of them, Katie!” is what you say when you tell your teacher that oh yeah, you’ve totally read the assignment and she asks you “really? So which parts of the book really stood out to you?” “In what respect, Charlie?” is what you say when you’re trying to buy just a few seconds in order to get your bullshit together. Etc).
Which everybody does from time to time, even as adults, but it becomes a real issue when a person has that as their default fucking setting, even when that person isn’t in the White House.
Barbara
@rikyrah: People who know Arabic tell me that the thing that most westerners get wrong is the sound of the initial consonant, which is transcribed as Q, but is a very guttural sound that is somewhere between a K or a hard G and that is not natural to English speakers, especially when it is used at the beginning of a word. So even when you try to get it right you usually get it wrong.
The Moar You Know
@me: I hate those sons of bitches with a fury, but she took ZERO precautions to hide her tracks.
Nothing you can do to help someone that stupid. She’ll get a trial and a few years in jail and deserves it, and when she’s out I hope to be able to thank her for what she did one day. Because that piece of info really did need to get out there.
chopper
@clay:
it feels like much of this is standard behaviour of ME countries jockeying for position in the geopolitical pecking order, aka KSA throwing somebody up against the wall to reassert dominance in the region. part of it seems the be that qatar has starting funding terror orgs that aren’t ‘saudi approved’, and are using them to their own specific ends in other countries. this sort of specific meddling pisses of KSA because, well, that’s their privilege.
SiubhanDuinne
@hovercraft:
I guess this (one of probably hundreds of versions) is obligatory:
opiejeanne
I pronounce Qatar the way I pronounce “catarrh”.
Chris
@raven:
Well, of course. I always pronounce words correctly. Everybody else is just wrong.
Barbara
@Chris: This reminded me of an incident that happened in my first year criminal law class, in which a student who had not done any of the reading was called on to summarize the highlghts (or lowlights as it were) of an old English case, which was invariably a rape case. He began thus before being drowned out by laughter: “Well, Mr. Rex . . .” Trying to sound knowledgeable when you are ignorant is perilous territory. Unfortunately, it can be hard to get through to those who are similarly ignorant and feel a certain sympathy, a camaraderie of ignorance as it were.
piratedan
it strikes me that this is a huge win for Putin (again!) because if the ME goes up in flames as the proxy fight erupts into real blows, what is likely to get toasted is the oil production from the countries involved. Guess who’s oil suddenly becomes more valuable because of the oil fields burning in Saudi, Iran, Qatar and Kuwait? Plus the demand for all of those war machines suddenly punches up the need to run those weapons.
Mike J
@hovercraft:
What’s really funny about it is that we had a president for eight years who time and again looked as if he was losing to the republicans in congress, but it would always come out in the end that he had gotten everything he wanted and all the Republicans got was a few press releases full of bluster.
Trump is the exact opposite. Doesn’t care at all about results, but demands large and loud demonstration of “winning.”
As for the ongoing debate on how to pronounce the name of Qatar, as in all things, we should look to Echo and the Bunnymen.
low-tech cyclist
@SiubhanDuinne:
I’m going with option #3, so I can sing “While My Qatar Gently Weeps.”
The Dangerman
Can’t we just give money to Trump to build the fucking wall and tell him not to come back to DC until it’s finished?
chopper
@Gin & Tonic:
you should visit Bourbonnais some time.
Amir Khalid
@The Moar You Know:
You must have been a fine songwriter in your time, I’m sure. But I’m kind of glad that Marley, Guthrie, Seeger, Springsteen, Rage against The Machine, and a whole bunch of other people didn’t work to those same rules.
SFAW
@raven:
Next you’ll be trying to tell me that “Illini” (as in “the Fighting Illini”) is pronunciated “Il-LYE-nye” (or “Il-LIE-nie).
pamelabrown53
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: #73.
According to an article today on CNN, Qatar hosts the largest U.S. military base in the ME.: 11,000. Do they get expelled too?
Le Comte de Monte Cristo fka Edmund Dantes
@Chris:
For me, he’s authentic bullshit scammy developer, telling his most enthusiastic investors and customers whatever it is he thinks they want to hear. And why not? This Schultz just has worked in his dealings with the New York investment community and New York media for decades – they’ve been fucking stupid enough to buy his brand of bullshit, and love them some scammy blowhards, so he keeps it up.
Amir Khalid
@low-tech cyclist:
As I understand, the correct pronunciation is rather like that of the French word for “four”, quatre.
hovercraft
@Barbara:
As you say it;s a sound not natural for English speakers, I speak Ndebele and Tswana, so it’s easy for me. Years ago I took my friend to visit Zimbabwe, and Botswana, when we landed at the airport in Gaberone, I pointed out the signs which had:
GAGOGOWE all over the place, of course he pronounced it as it looked, but all the G’s are pronounced the same way the Q in Qatar is, like someone clearing the phlegm from your sinuses. When I introduced my cousin Qaqambile he gave up. It’s a sharp double click off of the roof of your mouth.
Quinerly
Top law firms won’t represent Trump: https://www.yahoo.com/news/four-top-law-firms-turned-requests-represent-trump-122423972.html?soc_src=mail&soc_trk=ma
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
I saw it written before I ever heard it said, and originally pronounced it “Kuh-TAR” in my head (like “catarrh”). But soon thereafter I trained myself into “KUT-ter.” It’s only recently that I’ve been aware of such a variety of pronunciations.
And I was really making the point that NPR seemingly doesnt have a standard pronunciation, which strikes me as odd. For radio and TV, such a guide is right up there with the written style guide, not just for correctness, but for the sake of consistency where alternative choices exist.
Bobby Thomson
@me: that was a feature, not a bug. Pour encourager des autres.
SFAW
@Amir Khalid:
Amir, ol’ buddy, I loves ya, but that’s bullshit. Mundungus at least did something in the fight against the Dark Lord. Not a lot, of course, but far more than anything Shitgibbon would ever do.
GregB
Qatar Hero!
SiubhanDuinne
@hovercraft:
That is fascinating! Thanks.
japa21
OT, but a new progressive voter came into the world today, though it will be a while before he can actually vote. Spouse and I are celebrating the birth of our 6th grandchild. He is 8 pounds 15 ounces, which is not necessarily huge, but consider that the mother wears size 1.
hovercraft
@Mike J:
I know, loved his humility, he kept saying that he was willing to compromise and didn’t care who got the credit so long as it got done and would help people. As you say while everyone one was bitching and moaning, he quietly got it done. I just wish the purity ponies had payed attention to the end result and not the noise, but hey he’s gone, the witch is dead and they got Twitler!
Schlemazel
@SFAW:
I used to really enjoy a Linnies but then Miller bought them & they went to crap
Mike J
@Quinerly:
You can call somebody who won’t pay you all sorts of things, but “client” should never be on the list.
SiubhanDuinne
@Schlemazel:
This guy, I’m guessing (link).
Schlemazel
@japa21:
Mozel tov!
Chris
@Barbara:
Yes to the camaraderie of ignorance.
There was something deeply pathetic about the way, every time Sarah Palin stuck her foot in her mouth, you’d instantly get a gaggle of wingnuts trying to explain that, no no, what she was really trying to say was… a very profound and important point that we just made up and attributed to her! And it’s only your liberal elitism that stops you from recognizing it!
Same thing has been happening with Trump, i.e. last week when he tweeted what seems to’ve been a typo, and somebody came up with “ah HA! This typo vaguely resembles this Arabic phrase! Clearly, what Trump was trying to do was to pass a secret message of encouragement to unspecified allies in the Middle East! What a genius! What a mastermind! And how could you liberal elitists in the media possibly have missed that?”
Part of the problem in both cases, of course, being that they themselves could never admit that they’d goofed (or even just brain-farted), let the media and opposition have its laugh, and move on.
pinacacci
@Iowa Old Lady: That was Zork: Grand Inquisitor. I AM THE BOSS OF YOU! I like to say that to the dog sometimes but he doesn’t listen. Totemize him!
ETA totemization not tokenization
MattF
@Mike J: Also, he’s GUILTY. Although I suppose that’s a lower order concern for lawyers.
guachi
The ‘Q’ in Qatar is pronounced similar to ‘K’ but your tongue bounces off the soft palate in the back of your mouth and not your hard palate.
Otherwise it’s like KUT-ter. Accent on the first syllable. All vowels are short.
If you say it like ki-TAHR (short ‘i’ long ‘ah’) then you are saying ‘railroad train’.
StringOnAStick
Some are saying Comet’s testimony will be a just because he won’t be able talk about the meat of the Russian issues, just about his interactions with the *resident. Well, aside from the fact that he can’t do that, he shouldn’t because it would compromise the ongoing investigation(s).
Here is one important thing it will do though: get the press all hopped up about what he refuses to say. The amount of speculation will be impressive and long lasting. They can’t tolerate knowing there are juicy things they aren’t allowed to know, and that alone means they will not only not drop it, they’ll talk and write more.
cain
@clay:
I dunno. I’ve been to Qatar, (my wife lived there) and it’s a pretty progressive place. The prince is fairly westernized and has been pushing for greater progressive reforms than under the old monarchy. It is way way different than KSA where women can’t even drive or where men can’t hold the hands of their wives etc.
Great fruit shakes too! Yum. I’m still mad at my (ex)wife for taking me to pizza hut and subway instead of the local food stuff. She still goes on and on about how awesome and cheap the falafels are. She never took me there ::shaking fist::!!!
Camembert
@Mike J:
the sequester rulez
me
@The Moar You Know: Sure, they knew that 6 people had printed that document but the dot code narrowed it down to one.
Mike J
@MattF:
Even guilty people deserve representation.
Schlemazel
@SiubhanDuinne: Yup! That guy. Got the spelling wrong but I had not seen or heard of him in 45 years.
His show was 15 minutes long (old radio shows were often that length but TV gave way to 30 minute minimums). The other 15 minutes was taken by a model railroading show. I lost interest in model trains as a teen (never could afford one as a kid & it became passe by the 60s) and was put off by Shems constant “more good news from VITnam” week after week.
SiubhanDuinne
@japa21:
Wonderful, happy news! Congratulations to the japa clan, and welcome to the newcomer!
TenguPhule
Donald Trump is the stupidest man on the face of the Earth.
Amir Khalid
@SFAW:
Dung’s recruitment into the Order of The Phoenix had to do with his skills as a petty criminal, rather than his business talent, as I recall. And in the end, he wound up betraying the Order by giving away the location where Harry, Ron and Hermione were hiding out.
ETA: I loves ya too.
MattF
@Mike J: Not suggesting otherwise. But it’s not irrelevant either.
hovercraft
@japa21:
Congrats!
Barbara
@Mike J: A guy who won’t pay generates a dispute that usually stays private. A guy who won’t listen makes you look like an idiot and then blames you when bad stuff happens as a result of not following your advice. And because you are bound by AC privilege, you can’t defend yourself by explaining that he did not actually do what you told him to. So not paying might not actually be the most biggest concern. And “not paying” would be matched by “getting a hell of a lot of free publicity.”
japa21
Saudi Arabia has looked at a lot of the gulf states that border it the same way that Iraq viewed Kuwait. Qatar is one that it has little influence over and it would like to have more.
Barbara
@TenguPhule: He is certainly the stupidest man with the most power.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
OT, even though I think this was mentioned in this thread, but..
…. may I just say, O, please, Mr President. tweet your plump arse off. I’m sure you won’t do anything even remotingly resembling ah attempt to intimidate a witness in an on-going investigation. Again. And no one will tell the Showboat (broken clocks, et cetera) what you are tweeting and get his dudgeon up.
Woodrowfan
@rikyrah: that’s one of the two ways Wikipedia says to pronounce it
Davebo
@MobiusKlein: Qatar has almost no oil. But tons of natural gas.
Worlds largest exporter in fact.
TenguPhule
@Corner Stone:
I have a bad feeling about this.
dmsilev
@Quinerly:
When you’re too scummy for Lanny Davis…
cain
@hovercraft:
Depending on where, the Muslim Brotherhood isn’t exactly a benevolent force. But then, the way things are right now it seems only a very strong regime can keep elements together because of the fractionalization of Islam. The true work that needs to be done is to get these different groups to work with each other. Autocratic regimes (like the Republicans) exploit these divisions to maintain power.
Chris
@Amir Khalid:
IIRC, it wasn’t even his skills as a criminal so much as his connections as a criminal.
I struggle to find any Harry Potter character that really reminds me of Trump. I can think of a few in other franchises. Eric Cartman. Biff Tannen (whose alternate!1985 incarnation was actually based on Trump). Possibly the Red King from the Dresden Files (the leader of a superpower who’s really an unstable addict prone to erratic behavior and violent mood swings).
celticdragonchick
@daveNYC:
World war three…mushroom clouds for free!
TenguPhule
@daveNYC:
The Day Iran Kicked Our Ass.
TenguPhule
@chopper:
To be fair, they had a lot of practice working on the Bushes.
Corner Stone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Trump doesn’t have the balls to live tweet during Comey’s testimony. He’s a gutless coward whose lawyers are controlling his every move! What a scaredy cat, too much of a wuss to let THE TRUTH be heard!!
celticdragonchick
@Chris: He’s an older version of Joffrey Baratheon.
Betty Cracker
Rep Swalwell’s take:
My guess is Twitler didn’t discuss Twitter-firing Qatar as an ally with anyone. I’m pretty sure everyone involved was completely blindsided.
TenguPhule
@MattF:
Indoctrined Programming or Concentration?
Peale
@chopper: And the worst part of it, is that the Saudis aren’t actually all that competent at diplomacy.
TenguPhule
@Betty Cracker:
All of them, Katie.
Betty Cracker
Haha, I swear I had not seen this before commenting above:
hovercraft
@Chris:
Remember back when we thought that Dan Quayle was the epitome of stupid? Who ever thought that we’d wish for the competence of Dan Quayle? Also too, remember that when he was a congressman, Pence was in close competition with Louie Gohmert* for the tittle of dumbest man in congress. That party no longer just uses stupid people to get them elected, the stupid people are now the elected representatives, which is why they have to attack, the truth, objective fact, otherwise know as reality. experts, and “elites”, they are the party of , for and run by dunces.
* Really Texas? WTF
WTF
celticdragonchick
@Betty Cracker:
My God.
TenguPhule
@clay:
Power struggle over which is the True Sunni faith. SA has the religious sites advantage, Qatar has the “we’re not as extremist as the Saudis”. They’re also divided on proper doctrine of Islam, from what I understand.
So not as bad as the Sunni/Shia split, but almost.
JPL
@TenguPhule: Trump will be speaking at the Faith and Freedom coalition luncheon at 11:30, so it appears his staff will try to keep him away. I assume they will fly Melania in on Thursday, so she can babysit him Thursday night.
ruemara
@japa21: Congrats! Annnnd a size 1. How could a sylph bear a human child?
celticdragonchick
I had to walk away from the computer and scream for a minute.
Half a fucking division of US troops in Qatar and he does this?
Corner Stone
@Betty Cracker: If only Bob Corker had any power in the R party. Too bad he’s standing on the sidelines with the rest of us, all smacked in the gob and shit.
TenguPhule
@Frankensteinbeck:
Unfortunately, Congress Republicans are willing to go to bat for him. So a lot of damage is still being done anyway. That and the traditional deference given to the executive branch is letting his shitparade appointees to still do a metric shit ton of damage to our country on multiple levels.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Lawyers must need IV benzo drip to survive live tweeting during testimony. You know he won’t be able to resist. Perhaps all his phones can be confiscated? I’m sure that’s what counsel are hoping.
Amir Khalid
@Chris:
You are correct about Dung Fletcher. I sit corrected.
I agree: there’s no one Harry Potter character who compares directly to Donald Trump. Although if Dung had inherited a business and a shitload of money as Trump did, I reckon he would have become a person very much like Trump.
TenguPhule
@celticdragonchick:
If we’re lucky, Qatar will just revoke our basing rights and our military gets to scramble to get everyone out.
If we’re very lucky.
ruckus
@Aleta:
All 4 yr old children need someone to make a path for them. Why should he be any different?
Jeffro
Breaking: Senator Mark Warner says Russian election hacks/attacks were even broader than leaked NSA document shows…
TenguPhule
@JPL:
Are you trying to reassure me or terrify me?
Jeffro
Story here
Chris
@japa21:
From what I understand, the “establishment” within the GCC is basically Saudi Arabia (the heavy hitter), Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, plus Bahrain which does whatever the Saudis want. Qatar and Oman are the two outliers, who are frequently wiling to break with their partners when they disagree with them. The difference is that Qatar tends to be more radical about it (in a whole bunch of ways, from supporting Muslim Brotherhood groups to hosting Al Jazeera) whereas Oman tends to be more the Switzerland of the group, conservative and businesslike and “can’t we all just get along?”
Corner Stone
@TenguPhule: Qatar may announce some pissy PR statements but they aren’t going to lift a finger against US troops or our base.
hovercraft
@cain:
Of course they are not benevolent, they are hardline fundamentalists who want no part of the modern western world. I’d say the people in the GCC are stuck between a rock and a hard place, the autocrats have decided to back Wahhabi hardliners of their own in exchange for being allowed to rule, and keep the Brotherhood out of power because the Botherhood wants to rid their countries of the corrupt autocrats who they see as robbing the countries wealth while indulging in all things corrupt and western. It’s complicated, but the bottom line is there are no good guys, and the GCC autocrats who just cut ties with Qatar are themselves still the biggest sponsors of terrorist groups like ISIL and Al Qaeda.
TenguPhule
@NorthLeft12:
All of the above.
Mnemosyne
@The Moar You Know:
What I read is that she used her work computer to access her personal Gmail account, not her work email, so she was probably caught by a keylogger.
This is why I comment on this site from my personal iPhone while I’m at work.
ruckus
@Gretchen:
Arrogant as rocks. Dumb as posts.
Wonder who they are using as an example?
Chris
@Amir Khalid:
Yeah. Which is why I briefly considered Draco Malfoy, but even he is still smarter, more talented, and probably braver than Trump ever has been.
ruemara
@Jeffro: Unsurprising. I believe they both targeted voters with purges of democratic voters and manipulated voting totals. Problem is, we have a complicit RNC. What we should be doing is having an electoral redo but there’s simply no process. It’s one of the many things we need to have codified into law if we can regain a majority.
cain
@japa21: Which is precisely why there is an American base on its premises.
cain
@dmsilev:
It’s not that Trump is scummy, it’s the fact that he won’t listen to anyone. He won’t shut up, and he’ll drag you and your firm into the mud inadvertently in a high profile case. In the end, nobody wants to be associated that way. That’s why nobody wants to take his case, he’s a lousy client who has no discretion.
TenguPhule
@Corner Stone: I’m not so confident about that. Trump is messing with very deep waters here. Qatar has been balancing between us and the Iranians, but SA just upended everything with their cutting off of all ties and now Trump is appearing to support SA’s actions.
They’re going to judge Trump’s words now by his past behavior.
Chris
@cain:
From what I understand, the Muslim Brotherhood’s main appeal other than tribalism is corruption. Namely, that they denounce it when it’s a rampant problem with the existing regimes, and that the services they themselves provide are far less mined by corruption than their equivalents provided by the authorities. This was supposedly key to the appeal of Hamas (which started out as the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood) over Fatah. Not sure how much of that is fact and how much is propaganda, especially after so many years of their rule over Gaza.
cain
@TenguPhule:
“Bye Bye, Mr.trump and Bannon, drove my covfefe into the levee, and blew shit up and lost”
hovercraft
@TenguPhule:
The Saudi’s problem is that they have a whole bunch of weaponry they we’ve sold them, but no troops with any real military experience, Iran on the other hand doesn’t have all the of the latest toys with all the bells and whistles that go along with them, but they do have a bigger standing army with troops who have been battle tested. They’ve been at war for decades, they have militias who are disciplined and battle hardened, Hezbollah, and The Brotherhood, not to mention their own Revolutionary Guard. Saudi is afraid of Iran because they know that in an all out frontal war they;d get their asses kicked, that’s why they were so pissed at Obama for negotiating the Nuclear Deal, any opening to Iran, threatens their place as the dominant force in the Mid East. Unfortunately for them, that’s not going to change, getting rid of Saddam is what undid the balance of power, Iran is ascendant now, and they know it.
SFAW
@Amir Khalid:
I don’t think Mundungus did that of his own volition.
Now I’m blushing.
hovercraft
@Betty Cracker:
So in this administration there really is an apology tour. Mathis, Rex and friends have to travel to all the countries Twittler is pissing off to apologize for the fact that he has no idea what he’s talking about and don’t worry in a week he’s “forget” he ever said it. They should just put the decals on their planes:
Sorry He Didn’t Mean It!
TenguPhule
@hovercraft: And If Iran hasn’t been siphoning weapons from the Iraqi military for their own use, I’ll eat my hat.
Iran is just one of those places I hope we never ever have to fight.
cain
@hovercraft:
At some point, there is going to have to be a “come to Jesus moment” and they need to start working their problems out with each other if there is ever going to be peace. It can happen, but I suspect it will only happen once they do an all out war with each other without nuclear weapons. They’ve got centuries of hate they need to let go of. I have no confidence that they can do it peacefully as long as autocratic leaders continue to exploit them.
dww44
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Where did they get Stephanie Ruhle? She’s very definitely not my favorite among the recent MSNBC moves to the right of center. I actually do like Ali Velshi (I cheated and googled his name in order to spell it). Google also provided hints why he seems to be a sane pundit, being from Canada and born in Nairobi. The former’s delivery seems forced and inauthentically energetic, i.e. fake.
celticdragonchick
@Corner Stone:
Host countries can make life real fucking unpleasant for US troops. Those SOFA agreements can be manipulated.
Any bets on whether a bunch of US servicemen suddenly get charged off post for serious felony crimes by Qatar authorities?
Chris
@hovercraft:
Yeah. Saudi Arabia and the U.S. have been drifting apart for years now. The catalyst was probably the Iraq War (which the Saudis refused to participate in, and the removal of U.S. troops followed shortly thereafter), but it continued on into the Obama years especially after the U.S. reaction to the Arab Spring. Both of those things are elements of the same problem – that they no longer think the U.S. can be trusted to support stability in the region and is willing to throw away old and established allies as soon as it’s convenient (they see Mubarak and think “if we ever hit a rough patch, this could be us.”)
This hasn’t led to a serious breach in relations, but it’s definitely led to a cooling in relations, and it’s led to the Saudis getting more directly assertive in the region than they ever have been before. The reason we haven’t broken relations is that we still have a hell of a lot of interests in common and that there’s kind of a shortage of convenient alternative allies, for both sides. But you never know; I seriously doubt if Trump’s election is a reassurance to them with regards to America’s reliability.
TenguPhule
Oh New Zealand, we love you.
I welcome our new Kiwi Overlords.
pamelabrown53
@Betty Cracker:
Thank you, Betty. I asked about about largest ME military base in Qatar about a 100 comments ago and you’re the first person to address this very serious diplomatic breach. How could this not have consequences?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Ha! Corker issued a North Korean-esque statement on trump’s trip that rivaled Hope Hicks’
Google suggests the local TN press was not impressed by Corker’s impressions. Corker played golf with trump and Peyton Manning last weekend.
TenguPhule
@celticdragonchick:
Unfortunately, I don’t think charges are what they’re going to have to worry about.
I’m betting all leaves have been cancelled in Qatar. Nobody leaves the base unless armed and in a group.
cain
@Chris: He’s even worse because he is completely unpredictable, and the fact that he will change alliances as soon as he is alone in the room with someone else is part of that.
Peale
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, and so what? Corker was the lead Harpie shitting over the Iran deal by writing that letter of Congressmen stating that they would never abide by the Iran deal. I’m sure he can be convinced to be gleeful.
Villago Delenda Est
@TenguPhule: The stupidest person on the face of the Earth.
Jeffro
@TenguPhule: That’s great…and that’s just for Tillerson…
Before too much longer, cabinet officials will be trying to pass as Canadians while on overseas trips, LOL
TenguPhule
@pamelabrown53:
In my defense, I’m in a different time zone.
cain
@pamelabrown53:
His support with the top brass will continue to erode. Putting your troops in serious jeopardy due to loose lips will not sit well to them. I’m sure the service men feel the same. I’d be interested to know what Trump supporting service men are going to think especially those who are put at risk.
Uncle Cosmo
@Redshift:
IIRC
PatientGrifter Zero for this “fee”-nomenon post-WW2 was one Spiro T. Agnew, VPOTUS 1969-73, who was alleged to have accepted $268,482* in bribes during his 2 years as Governor of MD (& was still being paid off as Veep), in hand-delivered white envelopes none holding more than $10K in ca$h.—-
*The exact figure, as near as the plaintiffs in the case seeking restitution to the MD State Treasury could ascertain. Agnew eventually forwarded a cheque for that precise amount to the state treasury,
goblue72
@MattF: Even the guilty deserve a lawyer. Unless you don’t believe in a civilized, democratic society that operates under the rule of law.
Betty Cracker
@Villago Delenda Est: Every time I see Devin Nunes on TV, I think of that guy. Worst. Henchman. Ever.
hovercraft
@TenguPhule:
No doubt, and remember Putin is their friend, he sold them weapons, they just don’t have the air power that the Saudi’s have, but as we’ve seen everywhere, you can’t win a war in the air, you have to put in ground troops at some point. @cain: I don’t know if either side will resort to all out war, the internet has complicated everything, all these countries have young restive populations that are chafing at the restrictions imposed on them by religious authorities and the lack of economic opportunities while they ruling families live in extravagant palaces. they have their hands full just holding onto power, that’s why they have all these proxies fighting their battles for them.
@dww44:
I think from CNBC, she’s a Wall Street/financial reporter type, but she tends to come down hard on Twitler and his bullshit, she’s just very pro Wall Street.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Just turned on MSNBC to see if we were at war or the Rough Beast had wandered naked down the mall looking for his mommy. I caught Craig Melvin asking some random Dem about remarks Hillary Clinton had made about trump going after Sidiq Kahn. Craig is very Concerned, you see, that this might mean Hillary Clinton is trying to make herself the leader of the Democratic Party, and is this good for Democrats. This is the second time in a week I’ve heard Craig smarmily and passive-aggressively trolling Dems about Clinton> I don’t know if he’s always been an asshole, or if maybe he just bought a house and feels Andy Lack peering over his shoulder, evaluating his work product.
@goblue72: that’s true, Dwight, and if anyone ever prosecutes you for your terrorist threats against police, I for one hope you have a public defender. And they lose.
NotMax
Jared will fix it.
Right after he’s done perfecting the coal-powered perpetual motion machine.
Mnemosyne
@hovercraft:
Everything they accused Obama of doing, they are doing their own damn selves.
Every. Single. One.
schrodingers_cat
Ever since mummy midwifed the birth of SA as a counterweight to fight the Ottomans in WWI. What has the kingdom done with its immense oil wealth? Also, its interesting to note that the two of the biggest problem countries in the Arab-Muslim sphere are the regimes that have been propped up by the so-called leader of the “free-world”, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Coincidence? I think not.
hovercraft
@TenguPhule:
I saw that, what I found funny is that the US reporters were “surprised” by the hostile reception Rex got. I swear they’re so used to the Shitgibbon that when normal decent people react as they should, they are shocked. Who knew that democrats constantly criticizing him are not just bitter about Hillary’s loss, we actually find his behavior reprehensible and dangerous, we aren’t being partisan.
TenguPhule
Yeah, not confident that this is going to end well at all
Blockades and Sieges are nasty. Very nasty.
With friends like Trump, who needs more enemies then that?
NotMax
@pamelabrown53
Was addressed (along with other informative Qatar-related stuff) in a tad more detail within the Tuesday Morning Open Thread.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The correct answer to any question this jackass asks is “You have the Broder disease. Get it treated, or it will kill you.”
Peale
I guess we’ll know what this is all about, but I’m also going to assume that the Trumpian interest in Qatar is getting them out of the deal to buy Rosneft and inserting Exxon in.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
Remember how they accused Obama of running death squads and planning to lock up “deplorables” in concentration camps?
Well if this holds true to form……
TenguPhule
@Villago Delenda Est:
Corrected for accuracy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Pence squeaked something the other day about how “the Left”, and not just here in the US but abroad, have become obsessed with climate change, for some reason. “The Left”, like Angela Merkel and Nicholas Sarkozy. Even LePen had, at least as an official position, some strong messaging on climate, I believe. Then again, Pence thinks that Noah and The Ark Water Park in TN or KY is a Museum of Natural Science. With a big flume.
Mother has promised he can ride the big flume if he survives his eventual interview with Impeachment Committee and they get to move up to the White House.
Gravenstone
@Corner Stone: As with anything, it’s a question of the “right kind” of terrorist. Remember, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.
The Moar You Know
@TenguPhule: Not how it works. You don’t leave base armed, period. Well, unless you’re invading, which we are decidedly not. Either they can leave (unarmed) or nobody’s leaving. And I’ll bet as of right now, nobody is leaving.
NotMax
In praise of (some) attorneys, who recognize a toxic quagmire when they see it.
Barbara
@cain: Speaking from a little bit of experience, no attorney wants their client to waive privilege and make them part of the substantive story as a witness. The chance that could happen here is more than non-negligible.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
OT – I’ve been trying to find the post from John Cole many months ago that listed all of the race wars/terror events in our history. He had linked to all of the most egregious events. Can someone with better google-fu than me find it?
Thanks, BJ hive mind.
Gin & Tonic
Written by the WSJ editorial board. Spend a minute pondering that.
hovercraft
And while we are distracted by Twilter’s latest fuck-up, his minions continue to destroy the nation.
In Heated Session, Betsy DeVos Refuses To Answer On LGBTQ DiscriminationVideo at the link.
In a heated exchange during a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing, Sen. Jeff Merkley tried to force Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to explain her position on “murky” federal laws defending LGBT students from discrimination, but she robotically answered, “Schools that receive federal funds, federal law must be followed.”
………….The Senator explained that private schools have their own admission policies, “that they will not be allowed under your program to discriminate against LGBTQ students?”
DeVos replied, “I said it before and I’ll say it again that schools that receive federal funds must follow federal law.”
When you’re uncertain what a law is, this is a standard response to cover all the bases.
Merkley pushed again and she replied, “On areas where the law is unsettled, this department is not going to be issuing decrees…that is a matter for Congress.”………
“What you said earlier didn’t help us since this in an area of unsettled law, but I think you just said that where it’s unsettled such discrimination will continue to be allowed under your program. If that’s incorrect, please correct the record, ” Merkley said.
Sen. Merkley tried to get her to respond on the grounds of religious discrimination, but she stood on her original answer, “schools that receive federal funds, will follow federal laws period.”……………..
Barbara
@Chris: What is happening in these countries is what already happened in Iran and Egypt. The governments are able to effectively cut off secular opposition but find it harder to interfere with non-governmental religious groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, and when unrest occurs, it is only these kinds of groups that are prepared to fill the void. That is what happened in Iran, and more than 40 years later that’s still who wields most of the power. So SA’s response isn’t to open up the kingdom to secular parties that are more concerned about non-religious bread and butter issues. No, it is to find a way to tamp down on any opposing force, whether inspired by political or religious opinion. Qatar is getting in the way of that.
Chris
@hovercraft:
Are these people really that thick?
As a general rule, the United States government is not popular with foreign populations. Period. The Republican half of the United States, much less so. And with presidents who have gone out of their way to say “fuck you” to as much of the world as possible – Bush did this, and Trump’s put it on steroids – that popularity is going to be pretty much as low as it gets.
I could see Trump drawing large crowds of supporters in Israel and Russia, but that’s it. Any other place on the globe, he’s going to meet far more critics than friends.
Jesus Christ, people. Your “the average citizen is a Wholesome Small Town Country Folk who loves Republicans for their authentic heartiness and embrace of their Christian values, honest work ethic, and simple patriotism” shtick doesn’t even really describe the U.S. anymore, but it sure as shit doesn’t describe the rest of the planet. Normal people who look at Trump just see a dumb, unpleasant bastard and want him the fuck off their lawn.
HeleninEire
@japa21: YAY!! CONGRATULATIONS!! Good news is always welcome.
jl
Trump got souked on that trip!
Ha ha. That’s a joke.
I’ll check in later to see what Silverman has to say about this, if anything. Mind boggling though.
The Saudis flattered Trump and let him join the sword dance, and now he’s in their bag.
Evidence that Putin didn’t have to do much to get Trump in his pocket.
I also read in the news that the Saudi arms deal is vaporware. It’s all either tentative proposals or very early stages of deals that Obama approved in principle. So, either ideas that might go nowhere, or stuff that Obama initiated.
J R in WV
@Jeffro:
From a FTFY in a thread down below…
hovercraft
Karma, that bitch!
‘Try Obamacare’: Internet Mocks Fired Breitbart Writer For Begging For Donations For Medical Bills
Breitbart writer Katie McHugh has been fired after she tweeted highly-prejudiced comments about Muslims in the wake of the London Bridge attacks………….
her tweet seems to have been the proverbial last straw for Breitbart editor-in-chief Alexander Marlow, who “announced McHugh’s departure internally Monday morning,”…….
Later in the morning, McHugh confirmed the story herself on Twitter, sharing a link to the alt-right crowdfunding WeSearchr website asking for $10,000Â to cover her “essential medical bills” as she seeks new employment. …………
Twitter reacted to the news with humor – and no small amount of awe that Breitbart, which kept McHugh on the payroll to write “black crime” stories in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, would actually see fit to fire her for any reason.
jl
Trump is a fool and dunce an order of magnitude dimmer than I imaged the morning after the election.
SRW1
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Donald Trump: “You’re goddamn right I ordered
a code redthe investigation to be stopped!”NotMax
@jl
Sou-Sou-Soukio.
zhena gogolia
@jl:
Yep, order of magnitude. And as it was, I was trembling all night in fear of what was to come.
NotMax
@zhena goglia
Make that several orders of magnitude.
Setting the bar so low that a flatworm couldn’t limbo beneath it.
trollhattan
@jl:
Living down to and exceeding our expectations. Winning!
Chris
@Barbara:
Yep, exactly right.
For maximum irony, the U.S. has for a long time supported these regimes’ crackdowns that have made religious movements like the ones that bombed us on 9/11 the only viable opposition. That was even true in Iran, IIRC: the Shi’a clergy was one of the few places where the Shah could find support against Mossadegh, because they were afraid of the prospect of land reform and what it might mean for their privileges. Oops.
TenguPhule
@NotMax:
The bar is so low that its generating its own internal gravity well.
trollhattan
@zhena gogolia:
Didn’t sleep more than an hour or two for a week after and each morning checked to see whether it had all been a bad dream. Like the worst, so awful I didn’t think I was capable of creating it bad dream.
pamelabrown53
@cain:
Wonder how Mattis and McMaster will be able to clean this insane mess. Especially, when it comes out that the 110 billion dollar KSA deal was fake news.
jl
@zhena gogolia: Persian food is damn good. They can inveigle Trump to a big Persian banquet at a summit someplace, and talk him up after he is stuffed and feeling good, and surround him with hot Persian bebes, Trump will switch sides. It’s really that simple.
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris: The Village mindset makes them that thick. They all have advanced Broder Derangement Syndrome. They can’t get themselves out of the “both sides do it” box. People overseas can detect this more readily than Americans can.
Alain the site fixer
@Amir Khalid: Amir, in case you’re still about. It just dawned on me – you self-taught German and, as I recall, Spanish. Do you participate in any German or Spanish-language communities like you do here, with us?
NotMax
@TenguPhule
Gravity is only a theory and fake science!
;)
eclare
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That is my idea of hell, golf with Corker, Peyton Manning, and POS. And yes, I went to UT, and I despise him (prob the only alum who does). Word has it he may run for senate. I cannot get away from the damn idiot.
Villago Delenda Est
@pamelabrown53: They won’t. They’re now as compromised as Donald himself.
eclare
@Peale: Neither TN senator signed that letter.
Uncle Cosmo
@rikyrah: , @rikyrah: No doubt Trumpolini will be tweeting his widduw digits off right up until he gets to the mike. If Comey works this right (not that I think he has the wit or the huevos to do so), Cheeto Benito will fling his prepared remarks into the audience & go Krakatoa.
NotMax
@jl
Can already see in the mind’s eye him drenching the koofteh with ketchup.
hovercraft
@Chris:
The problem is that “real America” doesn’t know shit about America, let alone the rest of the world, these people really believe all the ra ra shit and we are the greatest country on Earth shit. It’s true that many people do want to come here, but many more want no part of us, not our processed food, not our shitty patchwork health system, and definitely not our crappy schools that produce so many ignorant people. Pull up at a gas station in Europe and chat with some random people and they’ll know a lot about what’s going on in the world, where places are and how that affects them, pull up at a gas station in East Bumfuck Kentucky and try to get any information about our country and how it works out of them, and you’ll get Rush Limbaugh bullshit. I’m not saying that other countries are better, but I am saying their citizenry is much better informed about the world. The nationalism currently infesting Europe is mostly the result of economic strife that in turn feeds xenophobia, unfortunately this is a human failing, in times of strife, we want to blame someone else, we refuse to believe that it was our fault for believing we could have it all, low taxes, great services and everything we ever wanted including constant raises and more stuff. Somehow, all our dreams would come true fr less money than we ever dreamed of, just like magic. The same policies that said that low taxes and freedom were the keys to economic growth, fuck investing in the country, are the same ones that say oops now that we’ve crashed the economy, we need even lower taxes and you need to just accept less now, the people who did this to you are fragile and upset right now, so we don’t want drive them into a depression so we all need to sacrifice and give them some incentives to keep fucking us over.
That was supposed to be about “ugly American’s” who give the rest of us a bad name.
Mnemosyne
@eclare:
Peyton Manning at least seems to have a sense of humor, even if he doesn’t keep very good company.
eclare
@Mnemosyne: He was the quarterback for four years at UT. Always choked to FL, our biggest rival at the time, spectacularly. I mean like 20-30 points. He lost to Memphis. Was treated as a god. Year after he graduates, we win the BCS, with a different qb. This guy is held in nowhere near the regard although he beat the Gators. Guess what color he was.
ETA> way overrated smarmy prick.
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yeah, I believe it. It’s just, for fuck’s sake. How can you not even have the basic mental agility to realize that the rest of the world doesn’t operate on the same rules as your own domestic audience. World ain’t full of Americans.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne: Peyton Manning is a sexual harassing son of a bitch.
? Martin
@Chris:
American Exceptionalism, as presented from the right, asserts that the world should be full of Americans.
TenguPhule
Oh Canada, What the hell?!
Worst of all, the woman was later killed in an unrelated shooting. So she didn’t even get an apology to her face. They had to do it to her mother.
Canada still has an unaddressed racism problem against Native Americans. Especially women.
eclare
@Villago Delenda Est: That too.
pamelabrown53
@Villago Delenda Est:
I find this almost tragic.I’m sure they both started out as trying to be countervailing influences but that writing should be on the wall and in high relief so that they cut their losses. It terrifies me how many republicans, those in the media, and maybe a couple of patriots refuse to acknowledge that Trump is so vile, vulgar and incapable of fulfilling his job that the only way out is to resign and or resist. He literally has to be the cheese stands alone.
cain
@schrodingers_cat: Pretty much any where there has been Western influence it has become a trouble spot that comes back and kicks us in the ass. We have really shitty foreign policy skills.
Iowa Old Lady
@pinacacci: It’s odd what trivia the brain kicks up sometimes.
Brachiator
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo fka Edmund Dantes:
Too much oil in too many places for this to be a reliable tactic.
Chris
@? Martin:
Actually, I don’t think this is true. They value their specialness and aloofness from the rest of the world far too much to want that. What’s the point in being exceptional if you don’t have anyone to feel superior to?
NotMax
@cain
That questionable ‘prize’ goes to any place formerly under French dominion. IMHO.
Although we’ve been laboring like gandy dancers to wrest it from them.
ms_canadada
@TenguPhule: Yes, Canada, despite its Truth & Reconciliation Committee relating to the residential schools, must now encompass the maltreatment of all our First Nations, across the country. I have confidence in Justin’s capabilities to move forward in this process, however the time is NOW. This land is their land.
schrodingers_cat
@cain: No its not that simple. The foreign policy establishment in general has preferred dealing with the worse despots, thinking that they would be more easy to control. Hence the military dictatorship (Pak) was favored by the “leader of the free world” rather than the messy democracy next door. Same dynamic with SA and Iran, and many many countries in South America.
In many ways the United States picked up the baton from UK following WWII and continued many of its pre-war policies, especially in the middle east. That’s one of the reasons that ” leader of the free world” has struck me as a tad disingenuous.
The Moar You Know
@hovercraft: First time I went, I was in Germany and experienced this. OK. Maybe the Germans are on top of their shit, they have a reputation for that.
Went to England later, same deal. Goddamn bartenders and line cooks know more about their government and the entire world than our Senators.
Being an American is so fucking humiliating. And now it’s about a billion times worse, because Trump.
trollhattan
The Donald will always be The Donald “Nice little charity you got there, be a shame if anything happened to it.”
schrodingers_cat
@The Moar You Know: They have to, their countries are not the size of a continent surrounded by a moat of two oceans.
jl
@Brachiator: Also a dumb tactic. Previous oil spikes have spurred big and long term substitution into other energy sources that were more secure and reliable And that was decades ago when alternative sources where more expensive, based on the historical price of oil. Now, in most of the world for new plants (as opposed to expanding existing ones), renewable alternatives are cheaper.
If spurring a crisis in the Persian Gulf to increase the price of oil is an intentional plan, it is stupid, or desperate, or both.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Word was the Ay-rabs were told to have well done steak, with ketchup, ready for trump. Lamb and rice is too exotic. Reminds me of my cousin’s kid who at 18, so her father swears, still whines if chicken fingers aren’t on the menu.
@eclare: my recollection is Corker hemmed and hawed and half-hearted his opposition. Almost as if he would’ve voted for it in a secret ballot.
NotMax
@trollhattan
Taking “Charity begins at home” to the extreme.
Chris
@pamelabrown53:
It’s like watching an entire party go through their organized crime initiation. To become a “made man,” you first have to “prove yourself” by doing enough bad things that you have a personal stake in the survival of the gang, because if the gang goes down, you’re going down with them.
That’s basically what’s happened here. They’ve all tied their fortunes to Trump’s, which means that if he’s guilty, so are they by association, so he’d better not be guilty, so we’re going to do all we can to ensure that nobody finds him guilty, whatever that takes.
different-church-lady
…for Republicans.
Chris
@The Moar You Know:
At the same time, in a way, this makes it fun to be an American abroad: expectations for you are so low that if you can so much as count to fucking ten, you’ll have cleared the bar. No pressure!
… but I still prefer to travel on my French passport.
rikyrah
@Mnemosyne:
.
Uh huh
Uh huh
hovercraft
@The Moar You Know:
You get the same thing in Africa, according to my cousins, Twitler is know as Tramp, when I objected, I was told that Tramps stand around trying to con you out of your money, when you leave your home, they move in and take your shit, and by the time you come back, they’ve trashed the place. Seems about right.
rikyrah
@japa21:
I had missed this.
CONGRATULATIONS!!!!
jl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I figured beef koftah or kebab with yogurt sauce and tanur could be sold to Trump as a high class cheeseburger. The Iranians can put a bottle of ketchup down too. They’re prepared to make sacrifices to their national dignity to sway Trump.
Chris
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
There was a funny story in Charlie Wilson’s War where Gust Avrakotos and a few other CIA people, during a trip to Pakistan, have some right-wing nutjob’s aide foisted on them by some congressional committee or other. Because they really don’t want to have to deal with him, on their first night in Pakistan they all go out to a local restaurant and gorge on local food. Sure enough, the next day, the aide is completely knocked out by traveler’s diarrhea, and they don’t have to worry about him for the rest of the week.
I shouldn’t laugh, I get sick too when traveling outside of the West, and probably would be even more prone to it now. But it’s a funny story all the same.
Gin & Tonic
@jl: This is shallow of me, but when Iran had that uprising that made Sullivan turn his blog green, and there were pictures of protests all over Twitter, my son and I repeatedly commented to each other on the attractiveness of the women in those photos.
Chet Murthy
@NotMax:
King Leopold’s rotting corpse is scratching at the lid of his coffin, wants out to defend his right to the prize.
TenguPhule
@jl:
So right up Trump’s alley, in other words.
Brachiator
@hovercraft: Can I respectfully dissent from some of your points?
I agree with you big time that too many Americans are ignorant and lack curiosity about the rest of the world. And some seem to think that the rest of the world should not only envy us, but that they should also fear us.
However.
I’ve had conversations with locals and they can be just as ignorant about the US and the rest of the world as anyone else. Some of their ideas at their worst are about on the same level as a Donald Trump Twitter rant.
I don’t know. I just can’t buy “economic anxiety” either here or anywhere else as an excuse for xenophobia. The irony is that while the UK and France avoided the nasty racism of a Nigel Farage or a Marie Le Pen, the US has fallen for it, even if we refuse to acknowledge it and instead blame Hillary Clinton for pointing out the “deplorables.” In this, maybe people elsewhere show that that they can indeed be smarter than the average American Trump voter.
jl
@Gin & Tonic: Yes, that is shallow of you, and you should be ashamed. But I am gracious and merciful, and am partial to the Persian lady look too. Lucky for us guys that women look much better than men on average, and it seems to be a worldwide phenomenon.
Anyway, Trump’s foolishness is astounding. Trump’s approach to countering the threat of Iran is even dumber than Dub’s. We have to hope that Trump is so incompetent and feckless and changeable, and that the Deep State can clean up his messes fast enough, that the consequences won’t be has horrible as those of Dick and Dub.
Chris
@Brachiator:
Yeah, this is the one place where I’ll disagree. I do think the ratio of informed citizen to pig-ignorant is a better in Europe than it is in the U.S. (which doesn’t mean you can’t find a healthy dose of twits all the same) but I don’t buy the economic anxiety argument there either. In fact, part of the reason I loathe the “economic anxiety” argument so much when I heard it said about Trump was that I was already so goddamn sick of hearing it used to explain the FN’s rise.
Ascap-scab
@daveNYC:
Gulf War 3 – Wackyest War in the Gulf!
Starring dead Ernest Borgnine as Donald Trump, Tim Conway as Jared Kushner, and dead Joe Flynn as SecDef James Mattis.
jl
@Chris: You’ll find ignorant, bigoted and thoughtless people in every single place on this earth. But I think you are right. The ratio of those folks to people who try to inform themselves and be thoughtful about the rest of the world is higher in the US, from my experience travelling.
Chris
@jl:
I think better education covers some of it, and simple osmosis covers a lot more – smaller countries, a lot closer to each other, with a lot of foreigners passing through all the time.
Corner Stone
@Ascap-scab: Are you kidding me? I would take dead Ernest Borgnine 1000 out of a 1000 as a replacement for Trump.
Corner Stone
@Peale: I think you mean, “Oh,I wish I were in the land of Tom Cotton. Old lies there are not forgotten! Give away! Give away! Give away, American Leadership!”
jl
@Chris: I’ve made inquiries to people from other countries about my take on this. From Ghana to Baltics, one reason they give is that the US has lots of ‘insulation’, we are big and more isolated from effects of stuff happening in the world. Less reason for us to know.
A Ghanaian friend of mine put it in maybe an insulting way, but something about it strikes me as very true and insightful: ‘Being too rich insulated and privileged makes you stupid.’
Edit: which ties into the a pigin English saying he taught me: Beef destined for the slaughterhouse don’t hear the signal (to herd them inside), or IIRC, ‘bif fo de killhouse no ken de whistle’.
Mnemosyne
@trollhattan:
I would understand wanting documentation so the course can write it off on their taxes as a charitable donation. But insisting that cash money go to the Trump organization? That’s low.
catclub
@cain:
I would like to believe that, but they seem to lap up idiotic, fulsome praise. Rather than actual support. See Obama admin for an example.
hovercraft
@Brachiator:
Of course you can disagree, but as far as knowing more about the world, all I can say is both from living in England and Africa, and from being educated there, I knew more about the world than most kids here did when I graduated high school. I was educated in British schools and in order to pass my O Levels I had to know world history and geography, not to pass a multiple choice test at the end of each semester or school year, but to pass my O’Level exam at the end of 4 years, and all the questions were short answer or essay’s. When I came here to go to college, people asked where I was from. and when I told them Zimbabwe, they asked stupid shit like is that down South? I replied yes, but in Southern Africa, I got wow, how did you learn English, did you stop off in NY to buy clothes, how did you get to the airport. Every country has it’s share of idiots, but as a general rule from living in and traveling to many countries, we are more ignorant than most. I found that virtually every 100 level course and many of the 200 level courses were shit I learned in high school. Doing homework with the kids, I find that everything is too focused on this country and even then, it barely scratches the surface.
Nationalism and xenophobic scapegoating has always been higher during times of greater economic anxiety, I’m not saying that it’s right, as a black woman I have had to work harder for less all my life and I know that it’s not a Mexican or brown person causing that, but for people who’ve always had it easier, when stuff becomes harder because of globalization, they often want someone to blame, and there are always assholes out there ready to tell them that it’s because of those people that your lives have become harder. When you are doing well and everything’s just hunky dory you are less inclined to voice your resentment about the brown people who’ve moved into your town to work at the chicken or pig processing plant. After all they are shopping in your store and helping your bottom line, but when the factory your husband or wife is working at moves overseas, and suddenly they have jobs and you don’t, you start to resent those people, even though you’d never want to work in that slaughter house. Globalization has unsettled people way of life and brought uncertainty, it’s easier to blame those people, not our own constant demands for cheaper, and more. I don’t say the xenophobic nationalism is justified, but there is a correlation, if not causation. There’s a portion of the population that is simply racist, and wants to stop change, but they are a minority. We fell for it because of a confluence of things, the media hated our candidate, the Russians, meddling, Comey and Hillary’s not fully understanding just how damaging all those things working together were. She didn’t campaign enough in the mid-west, but she still almost pulled it off. She was not perfect, but without the other factors and GOP suppression, she’d have won. We unfortunately for us and the word were a wake up call.
ETA, I know that Twitler’s voters not the WWC voters making less than 50, they are on average higher up in income. So for them it’s and excuse, they are doing just fine.
schrodingers_cat
@jl: Its not the truly ignorant that are scary, its the ones who know a little and think they are experts.
Antivaxxers and peeps who rave about Monsanto come to mind.
NotoriousJRT
@Westyny:
This. Exactly this.
NotoriousJRT
@Bobby Thomson:
Morning Joe- the most chock-full TOOL box on non-Fox News television. Deutsch is the Swiss Army knife of that awful crowd.
Chris
@hovercraft:
I think it’s also that the standards that apply to us are higher than they are for foreigners from quite a few other countries, for obvious reasons. Like, if you were raised in rural Afghanistan and were pig-ignorant about the rest of the world, I wouldn’t hold it against your society; it’s been through a ton of shit in the last few decades, much of it inflicted from outside, that it would take years even in the best of circumstances to get the basic necessities patched up – much less the education system and that.
But America is an obscenely wealthy society, and a functional one, more or less, technically speaking. There’s nothing stopping us from having an educational system as good as the one you experienced in the U.K. – we’ve certainly got the money for it. We simply choose not to. As with so many other basic necessities.
And this is where I disagree. The FN’s case makes it somewhat easier to see, because that party has been on a slow and gradual rise for thirty or forty years at this point, spanning various good and bad economic times, and good economies don’t seem to send them into remission. Paul Krugman wrote an article about this soon after their big break in 2002, talking about not only the FN in France but its equivalent far right fringe here, and how the economic good times of the 1990s had done nothing to appease them.
Peale
@Corner Stone: Yeah. All those Republicans look alike to me. My bad. It really is hard to tell one kind of Southern Republican Senator from the others. If Ted Cruz weren’t so Slimy, I’d never recognize him in a crowd.
patrick II
I’m wondering how long it will be before the American Air Force base in Qatar is replaced by A Russian one?
ericblair
In sort-of related news, Adnan Khashoggi died. May I be the first to say fuck that guy.
jl
@hovercraft:
” After all they are shopping in your store and helping your bottom line, but when the factory your husband or wife is working at moves overseas, and suddenly they have jobs and you don’t, you start to resent those people, even though you’d never want to work in that slaughter house. Globalization has unsettled people way of life and brought uncertainty, it’s easier to blame those people, not our own constant demands for cheaper, and more. I don’t say the xenophobic nationalism is justified, but there is a correlation, if not causation. ”
I agree with this. I understand that for many people it is infuriating that bigoted whites who have always had, and continue to have, it better than others would complain. But evidence is that people perceive changes more than levels when evaluating their welfare. For the first time since the Great Depression, middle class whites knew what it was like for them, and their communities to take a very hard hit, and then not see things get better quickly, or better at all, for an extended period of time. The fact that other groups felt that hit several times, and continue to fare worse then they do on an absolute level doesn’t make much difference. They are angry and want to lash out.
I don’t think this is a separate issue from bigotry wrt to Trump voters. Something made them listen to the senseless vitriol and hate that Trump spouted. They had a choice. If they were cemented in their hatred of establishment Democrats, they could have gone Berner. But something made them gravitate towards Triump. So I have to suspect ignorance and bigotry played a role. The question is, how devoted are they to the bigotry, how much are they willing to sacrifice for it? We have to hope that for many of them, they aren’t willing to sacrifice much for the bigotry if someone can make a credible promise of improvement in their well being. The hard core bigot Trumpsters will sacrifice a lot, The hardcore are lost in the vicious head drama of their prejudices and ignorance. The ‘fair weather’ bigots will drop off as the Trump promises crash and burn, and are revealed to be cons and betrayals.
Corner Stone
@Peale: Just use your fists as a divining rod of punchability. Ask them to find, locate and take care of the most punchable face in any arena. My guess is they will find the face of Ted Cruz. For he is the most punchable face in all the land. Of course, if they miss and punch Trump or McConnell…I think we’re still all good.
Brachiator
@hovercraft:
I note that once I was at a party in Manhattan Beach, California (a beach city that can be its own universe) and mentioned that I had recently visited Bombay. One of the people there asked me what state that was in. So I can acknowledge woeful ignorance on the part of many folks here (also sometimes an angrily defiant ignorance at anything that is not USA! USA!), but apart from people who’ve been to university, it is easy to run into uninformed idiots anywhere.
Still, thanks much for the very thoughtful reply.
ETA: I mentioned “Bombay” instead of “Mumbai” because I didn’t think there was a chance in hell that anyone would have known the other name. And no one did.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: Tell me more, when were you in Mumbai?
NotoriousJRT
@Corner Stone:
Corker is free to join the resistance any time.
sm*t cl*de
@hovercraft:
Then US reporters are lazy dumb fuckknuckles. New Zealanders’ level of contempt for Trump and all his fuckpuppets is not exacty a mystery.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/93347474
Collectively the country regards ties with the US as worthless; they would prefer to shift into the Chinese sphere of influence.
The Pale Scot
@rikyrah:
Iran is our natural ally in that region. If the US had ignored Britain’s bleatings about commies ( Iran wanted the same deal with BP that the Sauds got from American companies, a 50-50 split, the uk said fuck no then Iran said fuck you we’ll nationalize the oil industry) Iran and the ME would be a very different place. The Saud parasites would be gone, and the ’67 and ’73 arab/Israeli wouldn’t have happened the way they did.
I can’t see Egypt not launching wars (Egypt was the arab military power, with a big population and Russian arms support, they would have lost face. That’s why the Egypt/Israeli accord is so important) but Jordan and maybe Syria would have acted differently.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
Years ago, almost in another life, I was able to take some time off work and travel. I wanted to visit India, just because. Great trip. Nepal (Kathmandu and a couple of other cities), New Delhi, Varanasi (or Benares), Jaipur, Mumbai, Agra, Udaipur. I remember that my room at the Rambagh Palace Hotel was larger than my apartment back in the US. I also was able to spend some time at a Tibetan refugee camp. Loved the experience.
Chris
@The Pale Scot:
The problem is that in the context of a region where Sunni/Shi’a is still the biggest divide, throwing in with Iran means you’re throwing in with what’s by far the smaller/weaker side. Only a handful of Muslim or even Middle Eastern countries are majority Shi’a, and not even all of these are ruled by Shi’a. Of those countries, Iran is the only one that’s a major regional power (Iraq and Syria might have been once, but today they’re broken, and there are doubts about whether they’ll ever crawl out of their current predicament). The Sunnis, on the other hand, have at least four major powers just in that particular neighborhood (Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and Pakistan), and a bunch more among the little countries. If you expand that to the Islamic world in general, the divide gets even more stark.
I say this as someone who considers the Al Saud to be one of the worst regimes on the face of the fucking planet. All things being equal, I’d way rather have the Iranians for allies. But I can understand why people would be hesitant to throw in given the broader context, even if you forget various political pressure at home.
Chris
@The Pale Scot:
Also, it’s not like we were entirely suckered by the British.
If I recall correctly, before the 1953 coup the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company had a monopoly on Iranian oil. After the coup, it got split up between eight different companies – a French one, a Dutch one, what was left of the AIOC, and five American ones. It’s not hard to guess that Ike’s price for helping out the British was an end to their monopoly and a big share of the pie for the Americans. Especially with the Dulles brothers running the show, whose foreign policy sometimes foreshadowed the Rex Tillerson “Ambassador for Exxon” model.
hovercraft
@Chris:
I agree, I know that in places like Afghanistan and Somalia and some hard to reach places people are more ignorant than us. The economic anxiety claims can be an excuse to for peoples pre-existing bigotry. The resentment is always there, these are people who really fundamentally want their communities to stay the way they’ve always been. They have always resented the changes occurring in society, in this country the civil rights movement, being forced to to treat people of color, women and LGBT people with respect, they grew up and raised their kids to believe that they are better and could and even should treat them as second class citizens. During the good times they are forced to be more circumspect about their true feelings, but during trying economic times they are able to voice their resentments in public more because people are already on edge and looking for someone to blame. At the end of the day it’s bullshit, as has been showed with tomatoes and other crops rotting on the vines, getting rid of those people does nothing to help these people, but they are spiteful enough to be satisfied that they’ve succeded in spreading their hate and misery.
@jl:
The constant references to “political correctness” is basically them admitting that they’ve been forced for years not to say that black people are thugs who live in ghettos, and brown people are shifty.
@Brachiator:
“but apart from people who’ve been to university, it is easy to run into uninformed idiots anywhere.”
Sadly these questions came from my fellow students!
satby
@SFAW: Ill-i-noi. There is NO ending S sound.
I’m sure you were snarking, but no S sound at the end, for the love of god.
Ruckus
@cain:
Well if you think everyone else is below you on some scale you are going to go into a country and act like everyone should kiss your ass. Look at Tillerson in NZ, crowds flipped him off. And a WP reporter couldn’t understand why he’d get treated that way. Conservatives seem to think that the world is still recovering from WWII and all the rest of it is backwards and stupid and it won’t ever get better without the help of the wonderful america, telling the rest of the world how to be better. And of course, the majority of the rest of the world isn’t like that at all. But if you treat the rest of the world like that, especially when your own country ain’t all that and a bag of chips, they are pretty much going to tell you to fuck off. And with a few exceptions we have been like that since the end of WWII.