AP poll: 65% think Trump doesn’t have much respect for US democratic institutions & traditions or none at all: https://t.co/Eri4mGa8VW
— Michiko Kakutani (@michikokakutani) June 15, 2017
Greg Sargent, in the Washington Post, Republicans are privately angry at Trump for accidentally unmasking their big scam”:
House Republicans are angry with President Trump for blurting out an inconveniently candid view of their health-care bill, Politico reports today. Trump reportedly told a closed-door gathering of GOP senators that the House repeal-and-replace bill is “mean” and called on them to make it “more generous.” This promptly leaked, and a lot of people are noting that Trump undercut House Republicans politically and provided Democrats with ammo for a thousand attack ads…
House Republicans are now angry at this, Politico reports, because they stuck out their necks making the case for a bill that would leave many millions without coverage and gut protections for people with preexisting conditions. They “explained to their constituents” that the last-minute changes to the bill (adding all of $8 billion) would make it less destructive to that latter group. But Trump has now upended all of this, putting them at greater political risk.
But their anger over this is particularly galling, because Republicans themselves do not want their constituents to actually know what is in the bill they are set to pass. And they are taking active, extensive and possibly unprecedented steps to make sure they don’t. Trump merely made this harder for them to get away with…
… Republicans are angry that Trump admitted, in a way guaranteed to leak, that he knows it will hurt huge numbers of people, when they had taken such great pains to obscure that. Trump’s real transgression was to provide the public with a glimpse of a reality that they themselves have gone to extraordinary lengths to keep hidden.
.
Apart from #Resisting, what’s on the agenda for the day?
.
Baud
Private anger = Not angry.
These stories are pernicious because it makes the GOP seem like it’s fighting Trump without having to do anything publicly. That has been McCain’s schtick for a while now, but people are slowly starting to catch on to him.
Gvg
If something becomes law, people ARE going to find out what is in it. Short term thinking is stupid. I guess these idiots are too used to meaningless obamacare repeals and aren’t adjusting to real legislating well. There is a simple solution to not getting constituents mad. Don’t pass enraging laws. Dummies.
Baud
If reporters are going to write these types of stories, they should explain that, although the GOP is privately angry, they are too weak and too scared to take Trump on directly.
Amusing Ourselves to Death
I’ve been proven right again.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud:
There is no need to take him on unless he gets in the way of tax cuts for the uber wealthy.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: But they’re so angry!
Baud
WSJ (paywall)
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Maybe they should engage in some 2nd Amendment solutions.
Quinerly
@Baud:
CNN and Bloomberg have pieces up if you don’t want to deal with the WSJ and its pay wall. He’s the laughingstock of the world.
Baud
I can’t believe Trump renegade on a promise (Newsweek)
Matt McIrvin
Jennifer Rubin wrote something about how the Senate was never likely to come up with their version of the AHCA and now they certainly won’t. This is at variance with everything else I’ve heard on the subject. Any feeling for what’s going on there? Is Rubin, as an anti-Trump winger who presumably believes that some sort of magic wonderful free-market health reform is possible, just being unreasonably morose?
Baud
@Quinerly: You’re the laughingstock.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@Baud: This correct. No need for any others comments.
Iowa Old Lady
Trump is up and tweeting:
Quinerly
@Baud: @Baud: HA! Companion immigration piece. Salt Lake City Inman who has been a citizen for 7 years went to Kenya for family. Detained on his return: http://www.sltrib.com/news/5404414-155/muslim-is-detained-in-kenya-on
debbie
@Baud:
Just like what was said a couple decades ago: Silence = Acceptance.
debbie
@Baud:
They aren’t scared. He’s their ticket to dominance for their agenda. They just wish he was a bit more controllable.
Quinerly
@Iowa Old Lady:
I see that Melania being in the WH has had a calming and moderating influence. Pivot!
Lapassionara
@Baud: I don’t think people are catching on to McCain. I think the same about Graham. Somehow, the press writes stories about their “concerns,” and their furrowed brows, but in the end these Senators fall in line. Same with Collins, etc. Meanwhile, the press has moved on to some other shiny new toy.
Good morning, everyone.
Baud
@Quinerly: A confusing story. It says he is a legal immigrant but also says he is a citizen. And it says the U.S. didn’t give the order.
Baud
@Lapassionara: I’ve seen more pushback, but probably a drop in the ocean.
Quinerly
Josh Marshall breaks down the WAPO obstruction of justice piece. Picked up some stuff I had missed last night: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-wapo-obstruction-blockbuster-and-the-world-of-hurt-to-come
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud:
My wife is a legal immigrant AND a US citizen. They are not mutually exclusive.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone ?? ?
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: Once you’re a citizen, the legality of your immigration status becomes irrelevant.
Quinerly
@Baud:
I picked up on that. Plus the family allowed in. Seems that he is clearly a citizen though….maybe it’s trying to say he came here originally legally?
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie:
They wish he would just STFU.
FlipYrWhig
@Iowa Old Lady: Who is “they”? He’s such a fucking idiot. He’s the president and still has no idea what the president does or how other non-president people affect it.
Kay
Ugh. We could move dramatically backward on children’s health care with the Senate bill. The US has made huge gains in covering children- exclusively because of Democrats. It took 20 years. Republicans fought it every step of the way.
The Senate bill could undo 20 years of gains on children’s health care coverage. There was a lot of attention to how older people’s premiums would go up but very little attention to what it does to children. It makes absolutely no sense. The vast majority of children don’t need complex or expensive medical care. It’s a no-brainer to cover them. They’re sort of the ideal population for our current system- a giant group who require only cheap preventative care and a much smaller group who are expensive to cover. Conservatives aren’t just “mean” on health care- they’re dumb and mean.
Baud
@Quinerly:
I suppose. But it’s irrelevant whether he did or not if he’s a citizen.
Ian G.
Veto the AHCA, Donny. It’s a way to get revenge on Paul Ryan for disrespecting you, and it will probably help your approval ratings and get praises from the “fake news media” whose approval you desperately seek.
Baud
@Kay:
Your rhetoric is divisive, Kay. You stop that right now.
Kay
@Iowa Old Lady:
Trump thinks they are his private lawyers- employees- the people he can demean and intimidate and not pay. But, they’re not!
This is the part where reality would come in handy for him. “THIS and not THIS” Just your basic categories.
satby
Good morning everyone! Besides the Plumline op ed, Jennifer Rubin’s in the same edition talks about the same thing, almost the same way as Sargent. And Kathleen Parker’s column goes on to speculate that Trump is making people certifiably nuts.. on the right.
It’s almost like the tsunami of bad press Clinton always got, but this time it’s all true.
Patricia Kayden
@Baud: What Republicans are expressing isn’t even anger. It’s just frustration that Trump has spoken the truth (for once) about the fact that Trump Care is “mean”. Republicans don’t care that it’s mean or that millions of Americans will lose healthcare. In fact, if they could get away with it, they’d simply repeal the ACA and leave it at that.
@Baud: That’s kind of odd because I thought the whole point of the Travel Ban was to kick out Muslims while favoring Christians vis-a-vis immigration.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: If you lied to become a legal immigrant, your citizenship can be revoked.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: In a strictly by the letter of the law sense, this is true, but it does not change the reality of being an immigrant in America where one is always not really an American if one speaks with an accent. Even more so if one has a darker shade of skin or non-Caucasian features.
satby
@Baud: it should be… But after all, he was from Kenya, and those people never fully become citizens, even after they’re born in Hawaii.
Lurking Canadian
@Patricia Kayden: That was Trump’s stated goal. The rank and file at ICE, however, want to kick out everybody.
Kay
@Baud:
One thing you could say about the US health care system was “well, at least they cover children and the elderly”. It’s literally the only successful piece. That’s why we must get rid of it! :)
amk
rethugs’ anger, outrage etc. are all FAKE NEWS.
rikyrah
@Baud:
Baud is right…all a fraud
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’m discussing the legality of preventing him as a citizen from returning to the U.S. Not legal.
rikyrah
@Quinerly:
Of course he is, which is why he cancelled the trip to England.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Yesterday a castle, today a palace. The Palace of Westminster taken in 1979 and scanned from a Kodachrome 110 slide. The sky has been photoshoped to remove noise and grain and clouds have been added.
Peale
@Baud: yep. Or just let the lie pass. There isn’t some super secret inner GOP that is caring, generous, public minded that would help out if it could just find it’s true inner self. It would be more rational to form a cargo cult hoping that a ship full of canned meat will arrive in Idaho than to pray for the day that the good GOP will show itself.
rikyrah
@Baud:
But…it was going to be CRIMINALS remember?
That’s who we were going to round up and get out of the country.
Serious question:
If they were here from Iraq, it means that they went through the proper vetting process, right?
So, why the hell are they being round up?
ThresherK
@OzarkHillbilly: Just wanted to tell you I liked your recounting of the canoe trip downstairs. I imagine you’ve read Patrick McManus on the subject of outdoorsing.
rikyrah
@Quinerly:
Marshall has had Dolt45’s number from the beginning.
rikyrah
@Kay:
They are sociopaths.
The.entire.lot.of.them.
Quinerly
@rikyrah:
Yep. Been reading TPM since the Bush years. I smile at your posts. You and I are pretty dedicated readers of the same sites.?
Tenar Arha
@Iowa Old Lady: Current mood = full driftglass.
The fact that this will actually fly with the people who’ve turned themselves into the re-programmable meat puppets of the GOP base by letting Rush & Ailes and all the other grifters take a dump in their heads is both depressing and infuriating. It’s going to be “Nixon wasn’t so bad” all over again unless we hold the Republican Party responsible for their sins.
I’ll be making more calls today.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Republicans want to yank the citizenship of native-born children of undocumented immigrants. Trump already suggested revoking the citizenship of people who desecrate a flag. Surely there are other categories of citizens whose citizenship is null and void in their eyes.
rikyrah
@Patricia Kayden:
When you are taking away Healthcare from Millions of people in order to give millionaires and billionaires a tax cut, mean is one of the nicer descriptions of what you are doing.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Matt McIrvin:
Those born in Hawaii with Kenyan fathers?
Matt McIrvin
@Tenar Arha: Over on LGM, Scott Lemieux mentioned that Nixon had promised Robert Bork a Supreme Court seat in exchange for firing Archibald Cox (it came out in Bork’s posthumous memoir). This is the first I ever heard of that! Republicans are still acting hurt that Congress prevented Reagan from giving him the reward!
Matt McIrvin
@?BillinGlendaleCA: That doesn’t count, because being born that way actually retroactively moves their birthplace to Kenya.
SFAW
@satby:
And it’s spreading like wildfire.
Kay
@Baud:
I try to be mostly polite and I mostly am, but the messenger really does matter. The Trump Administration and Republicans in general just have no credibility on this. They spent all of last year arguing that their own rhetoric had no effect at all.
This is why people bother gaining credibility. So they can use it when they need it. Republicans haven’t banked any. There’s no incentive to worry about reputation or credibility if anyone and everyone can claim it whether they earn it or not.
Not using violent rhetoric is a good goal, but I don’t accept this scolding from them. They’re not in a position to scold anyone- they didn’t earn it.
Immanentize
@Patricia Kayden: Or is ICE creating evidence that the actions are not religion based Islamophobia? Yesterday there was an NPR story about shifting immigration judges to the southern border areas, particularly Texas and Louisiana. And, the piece revealed that those areas really dont need the extra judges. My first thought was — that right there is pretty good proof of racial discrimination in enforcement.
satby
@Matt McIrvin:
Liberals, for instance.
Immanentize
@?BillinGlendaleCA: this is such a critical point. Lying on your original immigration form is how we expell ex Nazi guards decades after they became citizens
artem1s
@Kay:
they are dumb and mean and want to stick it to Hillary and Obama every fucking chance they get. Undoing SCHIP is undoing Hillary’s signature health care initiative as much as undoing ACA is designed to fuck with Obama’s legacy. They are dumb, mean, and petty.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud:
And I am talking about the reality of being a naturalized US citizen. Above I started out saying “In a strictly legal sense, this is true” but changed it to “In a strictly by the letter of the law sense, this is true” because we all know the laws are not always applied as they are written. Lady Justice may wear a blindfold but cops (in this case federal agents), prosecutors, and judges don’t, and no matter how they suppress their prejudices and biases, they are still there. The law is what they say it is, until somebody above them says it isn’t.
rk
I wonder if anyone can answer this. I’ve been reading Josh Marshall’s pieces about Trump, and it seems quite clear that Trump is thoroughly crooked in his business dealings. Does not seem to care about following the law at all. So why is it that he’s not been investigated before? If he’s involved in money laundering, fake foundations, overall crookedness etc, how has he been getting away with it for so long? Surely it would have raised red flags long ?
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: On another blog I read, there’s a commenter currently tut-tutting the rest of the commentariat over the violent rhetoric of liberals–and he’s a repeatedly-banned troll who posts the same bit of boilerplate about fetus-murderers to every thread, while constantly switching his nym to avoid filtering. Sorry, I do not accept that scolding from him.
satby
@SFAW: I have to hope it matters. Rubin and Parker are conservative writers, Rick Wilson was a Republican operative, etc. If they openly don’t fall in line as good Republicans always do, it has to give other people reason to look around, doesn’t it? No one wants to be with the loser everyone makes fun of. Especially the bullies and mean girls of the Republican party
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin: Roll Call says there’s no bill yet, in part because they can’t figure out how to gut Medicaid expansion without, you know, punishing states with people on Medicaid.
One has to assume they’ll come up with something (they are the majority and the GOP almost always falls in line with their leadership) before the end of July (their new deadline), but if we keep fighting them maybe they’ll back down.
(The double-speak from the Teabaggers in that story is infuriating.)
Cheers,
Scott.
SFAW
@Quinerly:
Seconded re: Josh. Although some here seemed to reserve some level of animus for Josh because he’s more centrist than they’d like — although, in fairness, I haven’t seen too much shade thrown his way these days — he’s usually been pretty good at drilling down into various areas that most people might be oblivious to. And he doesn’t generally mince words when it comes to Shitgibbon, which seems to be unusual for a journalistic site.
Some of the reporting by his minions needs to be tightened up, but TPM is a site I visit daily.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: Then we are in agreement.
artem1s
@satby:
AAAAAAnd that is the rest of the story. 25-30 years of CDS as payback for going after Nixon and Iran/Contra sent them all round the bend. The GOP has finally hit the jackpot of non-stop, step-on-your-own-dick crew of fuck ups. Anyone they run for office is going to look like a genius in comparison, but the joke is on them. They have killed their farm club system and made it into the never ending gobstop wingnut factory. I think most of them couldn’t recognize a competent human being if their very lives depended on it.
Immanentize
@rikyrah:
Not necessarily — they may have overstayed a visa, not reported properly, brought other family in from Canada, missed a visa step back in Iraq, etc. There are so very many ways to not be properly documented. That is one reason that anger at “illegals” is so terribly misplaced.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: My cousins were mixed Japanese-Caucasian descent, living in Tucson. They had to carry their birth certificates along with their drivers license most places or they frequently ended up in custody as fence jumpers in the 70s and 80s. Especially coming back from shopping trips to Nogales. This has been going on a long time for people who aren’t as pasty as me.
SFAW
@satby:
Yeah, except for Rethugs, it’s not the citizenship that should be null and void, it’s liberals’ existence.
Not joking as much as I would like to be.
Matt McIrvin
@satby: Cheech Marin made a whole song about it! That was made into a movie!
artem1s
@Patricia Kayden:
Then why not do exactly that? Why go thru this obscene exercise of pretending that they are actually working on a bill at all? Just line up the GOP members of Congress, tell them the game is over and they all need to find another boogie man to fight against. the repeal is real and that’s the end. they will get all the same stuff they want, without all the haggling, in the end anyway. More money for pharma and billionaires and more blacks and poors and women dying. What they lose is the non-stop news cycle that they are doing something for the dumb rubes who they turned against Obamacare in the first place. They are stuck in irons and can’t get going again because they don’t know how to do their jobs if it doesn’t involve destroying something in the process.
Baud
@Kay: Agreed. We have to self police, because no outside group had credibility to preach to us about morals.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: As I suspected.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@Kay: Who said this?
Tenar Arha
@Matt McIrvin: Funny (LOLSOB) thing is that Bork got a vote in the Judiciary Committee and then it went to the Senate and Republicans and Democrats decided he was too extreme. And afterwards plenty of Supremes still confirmed using normal order. The present day Republican Party bears no resemblance to it’s past self from 25-30 years ago, let alone 50 years.
The arguments over Bork are one of the many changes I was vaguely aware of but I didn’t really remember. (I got this from listening to Brian Beutler’s podcast the other day, and the lawyer (former SC clerk etc) he was interviewing pointed out that the extreme talking points about Bork moved into mainstream Republican policy in the 2000’s under GWB).
Immanentize
I just read that the other person shot at the baseball practice was a lobbyist for Tyson foods. Man, the GOP don’t go nowhere without those types.
And — Drain the swamp!!!
OzarkHillbilly
@SFAW:
Usually shows itself when he has leveled some dead-on accurate criticism of the left.
Jeffro
@Iowa Old Lady: Who could have imagined Trumpov would blow all that free ‘unity’ goodwill yesterday on a tweet knocking the special counsel? Truly, it was impossible to see that coming…
L
O
L
zhena gogolia
All day long yesterday there was ONE thread. It reached a TBogg unit and beyond. I go to bed at 10:30 PM. I open BJ up this morning and there have been about 50 interesting threads overnight that I missed. It’s frustrating.
Jeffro
.
Betty Cracker
@rk: During the campaign, I think a number of factors came together to shield Trump from the kind of scrutiny he deserved. First, Trump is a clown, so folks didn’t take him as seriously as they should have. Second, he’s such an obvious crook and crackpot, which ironically made reporters less inclined to chase stories about him — far more fun to dog the earnest and serious Secretary Clinton! Third, both-siderism, as we’ve covered extensively. These are explanations, not excuses. There are no excuses; it was a historical media fail.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
I don’t think you have to. One can completely accept the idea and still say “no, not from you. You don’t model it”
What’s the incentive for anyone to model anything if everyone can claim the same legitimacy? Credibility is like a bank account. The only incentive to build it up is so one can spend it. They’re spending something they haven’t earned and don’t have.
I don’t know a thing about Mueller, but Mueller seems to be trusted. He earned that. It was hard! Any Tom Dick and Harry can’t just come along and insist they should get it! That’s not how this works. “Institutions” are just groups of people. They can’t keep pulling out trust and credibility that was banked by others who came prior. They have to put some in. Then they’ll have it when they need it. They need it now.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@satby: That’s why I told the wife and kid to get passport cards when they renew their passports and carry it with them. They’re planning on going to Korea next year, if it’s still there.
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly: Actually the only time I got frustrated with Josh was when he felt compelled to write several columns insisting negligent shootings really were all accidents dammit! It was an odd hill to die on. That and his whole bitch-slap theory which he has since abandoned.
And I do wish he had a thousand investigators to do more muckraking investigations (Sanders/Russia would be fruitful,).
satby
A couple of good storms came through last evening and gave the ground a much needed soaking while dropping the temperature 20 degrees. Relief! It’s going to be warm today, but not hot, and I really want to blow off the farmers market so I can work in the yard. Until I can get in on Saturdays it doesn’t seem worth going, my first Thursday take hasn’t been repeated. What to do…
Jeffro
@rk:
I’d probably go with, “Rich folks get away with quite a bit in this country” as the most likely explanation. I mean, he has gotten sued out the wazoo for various scams, nonpayments, etc. But in-depth investigations would require a lot of investigators, and my guess is that the various agencies who’d handle the investigations are already stretched pretty thin.
OzarkHillbilly
I am shocked, shocked I tell you:
satby
@zhena gogolia: I feel you! I’m not a late night person and it feels like I miss all the fun.
Matt McIrvin
@Tenar Arha: I’ve noticed a tendency to rewrite that history to claim that the Democrats filibustered Bork’s nomination.
It’s similar to the widely accepted, but false, myth that the religious right became politicized in 1973 as a reaction to Roe v. Wade (even the Southern Baptists were actually in favor of abortion rights at the time–evangelical Protestant opposition to abortion was invented later as a conscious political strategy, so they could gain a powerful-sounding moral cause and ally with conservative Catholics).
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly: that right there is what you call an emolument.
Tenar Arha
@artem1s: Actually, I think they thought they would and could do a plain Repeal until the Women’s Marches on Jan. 21st. In early January they were still planning on passing a bill that Trump could sign in the first week or two.
ETA IIRC the obvious unpopularity of Trump, combined with his initial court challenges managed to slow them down enough that they decided to try their next fig leaf ploy of “repeal & replace” and so on
Quinerly
Know there are some Rachel fans. Rolling Stone has a piece up: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/rachel-maddow-the-rolling-stone-interview-w487750
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
The time to bank credibility on violent rhetoric or speech was when Donald Trump was strutting around stage crowing about Second Amendment solutions and bellowing “lock her up!” Maybe they should reconsider promoting the people who were strutting around Starbucks with AR-15’s slung over their shoulders, scaring normal people.
They didn’t make any deposits. Now they want to make a withdrawal? The political leader in the United States who is most credible on restraint and civility is one B. Obama. He has it. He can spend it. They don’t. They’ll have to earn some.
Immanentize
@Matt McIrvin: And people also forget that Roe was a 7-2 Supreme Court decision written by a Nixon appointee (Blackmun). It really wasn’t so controversial in 1973.
Shalimar
@Iowa Old Lady: I assume most people will come at that from the opposite end. Trump clearly put pressure on many people to end the investigation, which is collusion. Why would he do that if the story itself was fake? Why is the White House so secretive and dishonest about Russia? Standard PR practice is to release all information yourself, weather the brief negative publicity and then move on.
D58826
reposting from a dead Cole rant
From Cole’s earlier thread. I think all security should be pulled from all of these critters. They and the their state level equivalents have become lap dogs for the NRA. They have created a situation where the average citizen is a sitting duck for every angry nut with a gun. So Congress critters – no security and join the rest of us in the duck pond that you helped create.
Along the same line as more and more of the rightwing critters blast the democrats my ‘what you do to the least of my children’ reservoir is rapidly draining when it come to Steve Scalise. He supports dropping 23 million people from heath care coverage and doubling the number of kids w/o coverage, so while I haven’t yet gotten to point of wishing for a bad outcome, I really will not shed any tears if it happens. As to his family, well maybe they can seek some comfort from the parents of the 20 first graders at Sandy Hook that the GOP doesn’t give a rats rear end about. It was the RW that ridiculed Obama for tearing up when talking about those babies and now they want us to honor their tears for one of their own. NO F** WAY.
Chris
@Baud:
I’ve always thought it the fact that the GOP even pretended to want to carve out a special exemption for Christians was another kind of sick, your archetypical “I don’t give a fuck about people unless they’re My Kind” thing. But this certainly isn’t any less horrific than when it’s another group, either… And sadly, it’s not surprising either. The decade of occupation in Iraq made it pretty clear that the U.S. authorities didn’t give a flying fuck about protecting minorities that were being targeted for ethnic cleansing by jihadist groups, even when they were Christian.
Baud
@Kay: They don’t need credibility. They have projection.
Matt McIrvin
@Immanentize: Basically every excess of conservative partisanship has to be recast as a legitimate reaction to some sin the other side committed. And they’ve had a lot of success at sending the actual history of these things down the memory hole, and replacing it with their manufactured version. With rabid Christianism, it’s Roe; with parliamentary assholery, the creation myth revolves around the Bork nomination.
OzarkHillbilly
@Immanentize: Josh is not above criticism, I have just noticed that there is a cohort on the left (shocking, I know) who freak out when ever somebody ostensibly lefty looks in the mirror and sees a less than perfect reflection. It gets tiresome.
satby
@Jeffro: I think Betty is on the money on this. One of my casual friends from high school is a well known local journalist in Chicago and during the last election we had some serious arguments about the difference in coverage between Clinton and Trump.I insisted the constant negative press was a “thumb in the scale” potentially slanting the election; his feeling was that they were merely keeping the scrutiny on the next president and there was no sense wasting resources on Trump because no one took him seriously. Personally, he was a Wilmerite, though I assume he voted for Clinton because he’s not actually stupid. I haven’t spoken to him since the election because if I did, I’d punch him in the mouth.
Quinerly
Repug satisfaction down to 41% 17 point drop in a month: http://www.gallup.com/poll/212252/seventeen-point-drop-satisfaction-among-republicans.aspx
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: Good comment. Didn’t a garbage paper the other day blame the GOP’s hostility to dealing with climate change on Democratic hubris?
Baud
@satby: Lots of people were essentially free riders in the last election, counting on someone else to uphold American democracy.
satby
@Baud: and they still deny that. It’s a nation of bed-wetting two year olds.
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
What I think I’ve noticed is that he seemed to incur it when he’s not breathing enough fire toward the Rethugs vis-a-vis their latest atrocity. It’s a variant of purity-pony-ism. Although, as I hinted, it seems to have abated somewhat in recent months.
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly: as ever. I totally agree. There is a thin line between righteousness and self-righteousness and we seem to have enabled the latter in our society recently. Wish it weren’t so.
ETA Makes me want to move to a mountain somewhere?
Tenar Arha
@Matt McIrvin: Yep.
There’s a very good reason I said m current mood was full driftglass. Yesterday’s shooting is evidence that GOP will ignore what they said yesterday to score political points today. And no one in their media sphere will ever hold them accountable for that. But, part of the problem is until recently CNN, MSNBC & the other major news networks didn’t either. There’s signs that that’s breaking down under the onslaught of the orange gasbag, but there’s still only signs.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Excellent example! It’s as if climate denialists hadn’t been busy smearing Stephen Schneider with out-of-context quotes in the late 1980s, as if Al Gore hadn’t been a target of mockery from “Earth in the Balance” on. No, this was all something that happened after 2008 because Obama overreached in some way.
D58826
THe critter seems to have forgotten:
1. Trump suggesting a 2nd amendment solution would be appropriate to prevent Hillary from selecting federal judges
2. Der Fuhrer’s butler suggesting hanging Clinton/Obama w/o losing his job
3. Ted Nugent, who has been issuing death threats against Obama and Clinton for the past 8 years scored a WH dinner with Der Fuhrer. And at that dinner he and the wacko from Wassilla staged a disrespectful selfie in from the First Lady Clinton’s portrait.
4. The one flagrant example of inappropriate speech by a prominent liberal, Kathy Griffin, was quickly shut down by liberal Hollywood celebs, democrats and various gig’s cancelling her appearances.
In the meantime Steve ‘watermelon thighs’ King set a land speed record getting to that baseball field to complain about ‘violent’ rhetoric by democrats.
But by all means D’s and the political left tone it down and be oh so respectful
Tenar Arha
@D58826: Even worse, King’s Democratic opponent dropped out of the race because of death threats.
ETA IMHO They have no sense of shame anymore. Years of never being held responsible for what they say or do has damaged them all.
sm*t cl*de
@Immanentize:
And illegally-working Slovenian nude models.
OzarkHillbilly
@SFAW:
Heh, ever so true. Sometimes he says something along the lines of “They’re Republicans, this what they do.” without the appropriate venom.
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
You suck.
Oh, wait — in which direction to I direct my venom?
My mistake
Immanentize
@sm*t cl*de: Excellent snark from down under!
Chris
@Baud:
Yep. It’s become a recurring complaint from me that Democrats are expected to be the nation’s mother, maid, nanny, and every other kind of clichéd “person who will pick up after me whatever it is that I fuck up.”
manyakitty
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Don’t tell Melania.
OzarkHillbilly
@SFAW:
No, I blow. (caver humor)
sdhays
@rk: One possible explanation that Marshall has floated is that Trump has actually been protected by the FBI, which further complicated their dealing with Russian collusion last year. Felix Sater, who is someone who comes up frequently in Trump’s Russia-dealing in the past decade or two, is a (low/mid-level) Russian mobster who got caught and had a deal with the FBI to hook bigger fish. No one will allow us to know what Felix Sater did to earn his freedom, but it stands to reason that he continue committing crimes while doing it. And he was directly involved with the Donald Trump while this was going on.
So the theory is that the FBI sat on a bunch of crimes that they knew about, ostensibly to protect their more important investigations, and by doing that, those crimes became untouchable from a law-enforcement perspective. Of course, the behavior of the FBI’s NY office last year could lead one to wonder if their complicity in those crimes went deeper…
Wyatt Derp
@Baud:
‘I never thought leopards would eat MY face,’ sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.
Shalimar
@Tenar Arha: While it is good that she had declared early and was getting support, and terrible that death threats were part of what convinced her to drop out, King’s announced opponent from a few months ago was not locked into a nomination. Someone credible will arise in the next year to challenge the disgusting Steve King in a year which should be pretty good for Democratic opposition candidates.
manyakitty
@Immanentize: Hey, how’s Mrs. Imm holding up to her treatments?
rikyrah
@Another Scott:
How to cut 880 BILLION from a program, and pretend that people will not be harmed by that.
Uh huh
Uh huh
Matt McIrvin
@Tenar Arha: The latest one is the attempt to elide the entire Southern Strategy and the revolt of the Dixiecrats, and claim that modern liberalism is an outgrowth of the pre-1964 Democratic white supremacists–even while actively courting modern white supremacists. What makes it insidious is that some liberals will seize onto the tiny crumbs of truth in that, in exploitable ways. You can complain that your opponents are the party of the Klan or you can get support from the Klan, but doing both at the same time requires special brazenness.
Chris
@Wyatt Derp:
To be fair, I don’t think most Arab Christian immigrants are in the group you’re describing. You can still find rabid right-wing trash in that community (the GOP loves to trot them out as mascots), but for the most part, trust in the GOP is pretty low among those immigrants even if they’re not Muslims. It’s nothing like, say, Miami Cubans.
(Though even those guys aren’t what they used to be).
The “we’re going to make special rules to save the Arab Christians!” talking point was for the benefit of tenth-generation white bread Southern Baptists. Not the actual Arab Christians, most of whom know better and none of whom the GOP gives a shit about.
rikyrah
@Tenar Arha:
I still remember Ted Kennedy’s speech about Bork and the America he wanted. Hadn’t really paid attention to judicial hearings before that, but I knew Kennedy’s description was an America I wanted no part of, and even though I was young, I knew Bork had to be stopped.
rikyrah
@Kay:
And, certainly twitter didn’t take the scolding. Twitter was bringing receipts all day yesterday.
Chris
@Tenar Arha:
Also, while the Orange Gasbag may have finally broken through at least some of their resolute “both sides do it, but liberals are worse” mentality, most of them are still desperate for a “normal” Republican. Any sign of that will have them reverting en masse back to the old ways (if they left them at all in the first place).
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: …the climate-denialist litany itself involves some memory-hole action: there’s the popular lie that scientists were all predicting an ice age in the 1970s, so why should we believe them now? (They weren’t. There were some sensationalist magazine articles on the subject, and certainly more uncertainty than there is in the science today, but the majority of climate scientists in the 1970s were more worried about global warming than global cooling. It even showed up in some popular media of the time–the movie Soylent Green is an example. But the fake history seems to have been accepted in a dismaying number of modern popular accounts, even if they’re not denialist accounts.)
Matt McIrvin
@Chris: Also some wishful thinking whenever Trump shows signs of behaving like a normal Republican, even though it usually only lasts for a couple of hours.
D58826
@Tenar Arha: I saw a tweet late yesterday that a third democrat has dropped out of a state level race because of death threats on his/her kids.
The thing is, its not just violent, as in ‘hang the b**’ rhetoric that is the problem. Faux news spent 8 years trying to de-legitimize Obama as president and as a citizen. Birtherism, secret Muslim, Michelle’s ‘white tape’, Rev Wright, Bill Ayers ghost writing Obama’s books, Obama’s real father was a black communist, etc. Not only where these comments made by the Faux VSPs like Hannity, O’Reilly, Megan, and the Fox and Friends cast but the guests like Newt, Hucklebee and Trump. The GOP establishment never pushed back on any of it. At best it was a ‘keep moving nothing to see’ or ‘well if he say’s he was born in Hawaii then I’ll take his word’. MSNBC/CNN/MSM may well have been critical of Trump (I know that is open for debate but bear with me here) but they have not questioned his citizenship or the fact that he is the legitimate president. Sure they keep bringing up the popular vote but that is usually in reference to a Trump tweet bragging about his great victory or the EC college maps that Trump hands out. They refer to him as the President or President Trump. Sure on blogs and comment threads the left is not as respectful (i.e. Der Fuhrer) but the opinion leaders, both in the Democratic party and the media play by the normal rules of respect.
In pedophilia cases they talk about how the pedophile ‘grooms’ his victim. In this case Faux was ‘grooming’ its audience to hate Obama/Clinton and view them as not legitimate actors on the political stage. Now I don’t think there is a short straight line between this grooming and someone committing a violent act. I suspect it is not just a co-incidence that the number of threats against Obama was at a record high and the fact that the RW militia movement seems to have mushroomed.
And I certainly have no idea what triggered the guy yesterday but he did seem to have a violent personality and harbored a long standing grudge against the GOP, not just Trump.
rikyrah
@OzarkHillbilly:
straight up bribery
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
Yeah. The yearning for a “normal” Republican can express itself in wistful dreaming of somebody else being President (like that nice smart young man Mr. Paul Ryan), but can also express itself by leaping on any opportunity to claim that Trump is that man. Hence all the “this is the day Trump became president!” moments.
@D58826:
I remember noting at the time of the Giffords shooting that a few “moderate” Republicans in Arizona had also resigned in the wake of the shooting, because of the number of death threats to them and their families. And I remember thinking at the time that this is basically reaching the point of literal rule through terror. I don’t know if the far right is doing any of this intentionally, but if whipping up their base into a frenzy helps to cut down on their list of opponents because more and more of their opponents are too terrorized to run, I doubt if they mind.
rikyrah
@Baud:
Oooh..say it again, Baud.
Tell that truth.
danielx
@satby:
Got that right, except that you could add ‘humanity’ to ‘citizenship’. Libs are ‘other’ to them.
Saw a bumper sticker last evening at the grocery; wish I’d taken a picture. Went roughly like this:
Conservative. Christian. Gun owner. What else can I do to piss you off?
I wanted to piss on his car, but you know, public place and all that.
bemused
Too busy to keep up with all the sordid news so did Trump tweet out the GOP bill was mean along with telling GOPers in closed meeting or did the GOPers leak that out themselves?
D58826
@rikyrah:
To wit the moderate GOP supplied the critical votes to getting the civil rights laws passed in the 1960’s. In the end a critical mass came over to support impeaching Nixon. And Teddy Kennedy and Orien Hatch (one a reasonable if honorable conservative republican) were friends and worked together on bipartisan legislation. It can be done but the GOP has been hijacked by RW extremists and the blood suckers like the Koch brothers and Adelson. Faux news was the enabler of this take over
Tenar Arha
@Chris: Yeah. I’m reading Evan McMullen, Max Boot or Anna Navarro (even seeing a summary of fuckin’ Joe Scarborough) & I’m nodding in agreement, & then suddenly I’m gagging.
I’ve started trying to think of these commentators (who obviously finally woke up from self-interest) as like our Soviet allies during WWII, we have to be prepared for them to take advantage towards the end. (Even I have an impulse to slap them on the back and say “bravo friends!” I have to forcefully remind myself: They really were fine with everything that allowed them to win until Trump came and said the quiet parts out loud. Until & unless they begin to support Democratic priorities and policies we really can’t turn our backs on their pasts).
LurkerNoLonger
Trump says to pray for Scalise. The only time Trump has been on his knees is to suck Putin’s dick.
OzarkHillbilly
@D58826:
It was karma that made him do it. All those calls for ‘2nd amendment solutions’ and it never occurred to the GOP that they were vulnerable.
grandpa john
@Kay: They are more than mean, they are the face of purer evil. Their willingness and desire to enact programs that will result in death and suffering for Millions while enabling the rich is an open view to the extent of evil in their hearts.
amk
twitler pig is squealing loudly today.
rikyrah
Kay brought this up earlier:
New Analysis Finds Uninsured Rate for Kids Would Increase by 50% Under AHCA https://t.co/Ffjw7Eg6Ob
— Georgetown CCF (@GeorgetownCCF) June 14, 2017
rikyrah
Trump warned of a ‘constitutional crisis’ if president faced an investigation
06/15/17 08:43 AM
By Steve Benen
In June 2016, after the Democratic presidential primaries, Barack Obama officially threw his support behind Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump, borrowing a page from Fox News, pushed a very specific line: “Never before,” the Republican tweeted, “has a president endorsed someone under investigation” by the Justice Department.
Because, obviously, if someone seeking the nation’s highest office is under investigation from the Justice Department, that’s inherently cause for alarm, right?
In November 2016, less than a week before Election Day, Politico reported on Trump’s closing message:
…………………
t’s not just Trump and his team who should face the question. The week before Election Day, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) told a group of voters, “Obviously, we all understand the importance of this presidential race. I would just ask everybody this: Can this country afford to have a president under investigation by the FBI? Think of the trauma that would do to this country.”
Yes, think of it.
The Huffington Post noted in March there were similar comments during last year’s campaign from prominent members of Team Trump, including Sean Spicer, Kellyanne Conway, and Reince Priebus.
What do you suppose the odds are that Trump World has changed its mind?
The Thin Black Duke
Ironically enough, the GOP has created a toxic environment where their bugfuck crazy voters would rather shoot a republican than vote for a democrat. Oh well.
rikyrah
The irony of the criminal investigation into Donald Trump
06/15/17 08:00 AM—UPDATED 06/15/17 08:09 AM
By Steve Benen
Donald Trump has spent much of his presidency obsessing over whether he’s personally under investigation as part of the probe into his Russia scandal. Ironically, the president’s focus grew so intense, he may have taken actions that put him under investigation.
Rachel noted on last night’s show the blockbuster new report from the Washington Post
rikyrah
Would Trump fire Special Counsel Mueller during the investigation?
06/15/17 09:20 AM
By Steve Benen
Former FBI Director Bob Mueller is the Justice Department’s special counsel, overseeing the investigation into the expanding Russia scandal, which now reportedly includes allegations that Donald Trump obstructed justices. There’s no shortage of questions surrounding the controversy, but among them is what kind of job security Mueller currently enjoys.
A Trump confidant this week said, for example, the president has “considered” firing Mueller. Christopher Ruddy, a longtime Trump ally, added, “I think he’s weighing that option.”
The comments caused quite a stir, and it was soon bolstered by a report from the New York Times.
…………………………
Possibility #1: Trump can’t go after Mueller now. Even if the president finds this confusing, someone from Trump World has probably told him that going after the special counsel, as some of his allies have recommended, would put his presidency in even more severe jeopardy. Nixon tried to pull this stunt at the height of Watergate with the “Saturday Night Massacre,” and if Trump did the same thing, this scandal would go nuclear. It’s not complicated: there’s little he could do to appear more guilty than firing the special counsel investigating him and his political operation.
Possibility #2: Trump will be desperate to go after Mueller now. Look, the erratic president, unconcerned with limits and norms, has already fired the director of the FBI, dozens of federal prosecutors, and the acting U.S. attorney general. The special counsel’s investigation is getting progressively closer to the Oval Office, making Trump himself the subject of a probe the president apparently sees as illegitimate. If he’s been “entertaining the idea of firing Mr. Mueller,” it stands to reason that urge will be even stronger now, consequences be damned.
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 6/14/17
Special counsel investigating Trump for obstruction: WaPo
Adam Entous, national security reporter for the Washington Post, talks with Rachel Maddow about breaking news that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating Donald Trump for possible obstruction of justice in the firing of James Comey.
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 6/14/17
Criminal charges filed in Flint water crisis
Congressman Dan Kildee talks with Rachel Maddow about the shooting at a Republican congressional baseball practice and the criminal charges, including involuntary manslaughter, being filed by the Michigan attorney general against officials in the Flint water crisis.
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 6/14/17
Criminal investigation of Trump a turning point in Russia probe
Ari Melber, MSNBC chief legal correspondent, talks with Rachel Maddow about the legal implications of the revelation that Donald Trump is being investigated for obstruction of justice for firing James Comey over the Russia investigation.
rikyrah
NEW: Trumpcare will impose lifetime/annual limits on 20-27 million in employer plans nationwide. https://t.co/BjRJQk5oK8
— Topher Spiro (@TopherSpiro) June 15, 2017
Villago Delenda Est
The GOP’s agenda is to steal from the poor and give to the rich.
Stupid bitch.
rikyrah
AHCA waivers could amount to a pre-existing condition exclusion for pregnancy, mental illness, and substance abuse.https://t.co/tusuBVZn9d pic.twitter.com/Zhvpueh64N
— Larry Levitt (@larry_levitt) June 15, 2017
danielx
Late breakfast, and Zoey the Bacon Kitty is parading around the kitchen loudly proclaiming “look at me! I’m a fine cat, and I’d really like some of whatever you’re having, the bacon in particular!”.
Gelfling 545
Right about now I’d bet some of the GOP are thinking that President Pence would never let them down like that.
D58826
@Gelfling 545: The only difference between Pres. Trump and Pres. Pence is Pence will use vasoline when he screws the 99%
Villago Delenda Est
@rikyrah: He should not forget gunshot wounds.
D58826
OT. This doesn’t inspire confidence in the jury system
my bolds
rk
@sdhays:
That sort of makes sense, but shocking nonetheless.
D58826
any body home?
Brachiator
@rk:
I won’t quite say that everyone does it, but everyone does it. There’s a level of venality that takes place to get stuff done, and if it isn’t excessive, no one much bothers to try to root it out. Also, he gets caught, gets his hand slapped, quietly settles, and moves on.
TenguPhule
@rikyrah: Projection, always projection.
TenguPhule
@D58826:
I thought the conversion to Russia’s norms would take a little longer.