We’ve had months to get used to a nuclear-armed Twitter troll rage-tweeting from the White House, but it still seems surreal:
The Republicans never discuss how good their healthcare bill is, & it will get even better at lunchtime.The Dems scream death as OCare dies!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 19, 2017
The latest plan is that the Republicans will fix their historically unpopular, demonstrably shitty bill over burnt steak and ketchup at the White House this afternoon. That’s pretty fucking delusional, but no more so than this:
"You're going to have such great healthcare at a tiny fraction of the cost"
"It's going to be so easy" pic.twitter.com/HDZqtGD0pA— Sven Henrich (@NorthmanTrader) July 18, 2017
The “Dems scream death as OCare dies!” bit though, that’s just…weird. Trump’s incoherent rants about Obamacare have always oddly personified the law. For months now, Trump has been spitting out the words “Obamacare is DEAD,” like a pimply rube in a cheap horror flick who prematurely claims to have vanquished the monster.
It’s damn sure not because Trump disagrees with the law’s provisions, which he could not enumerate on a bet. Trump hates “Obamacare” because it’s a reminder of President Obama, whose very existence as an accomplished, beloved, self-made and knowledgeable man is an intolerable injury to Trump’s fragile ego.
Trump can’t obliterate the man himself, so he’s pursuing the namesake law with the obsessiveness of a Captain Ahab, minus the bravery and with twice the hubris. If Trump has to sacrifice the political lives of Republican elected officials and sink the GOP for another opportunity to harpoon Obamacare, so be it.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer crew. We must stand ready to toss additional anvils to the swimmers as needed.
Hal
The Doctor with the white coat and stethoscope is a nice touch. Very subtle.
MattF
Psychological analysis of Trump is just depressing and pointless, so I’m not even going to try. I’ll just note that anyone who thinks he’s a ‘populist’ isn’t paying attention.
oatler.
Hebephrenia. CALLED IT
BGinCHI
If they repeal without replacing, it’s gonna hit white, rural America very hard.
Anybody think Trump’s constituency will turn on him then?
O. Felix Culpa
If it weren’t obvious already, Trump’s psychopathy is being fully revealed.
eric
Just so we are clear: Obama/Reid had to get SIXTY dems to vote for the ACA and Mitch/Trump had to get 50 repubs to vote for a bill that also included massive tax cuts for the wealthy and they could not do it. I am not even gonna compare Nancy Smash to Ryan. But, lets be honest, isnt John Boehner the happiest guy on earth right now to watch this shit blizzard?
Steeplejack
@Hal:
Needed one of those mirror headband gizmos for ultimate credibility.
Captain C
@BGinCHI: More likely the boyars*, at least as first.
*=Other Republicans, if no Dems are nearby enough to blame.
OzarkHillbilly
@eric:
I saw a picture of him just the other day with a great big bowl of popcorn and a shit eating grin.
Cain
His tweets make more sense if you just remove the care part of Obamacare. It is what he is thinking all along.
MattF
@OzarkHillbilly: @eric: Hold on. Mixed metaphor alert!
sherparick
Trump is the basic, 71 year old, white male, semi-sociopath businessman, with all the mentally narrowing and stultifying mental habits of a person who makes business success and money making an obsession, who has destroyed what brain he has left watching Fox News and listening Rush Blowhard these last 20 years. No more, no less.
Tom Levenson
Anvil at the ready, Ma’am. Launch on your command!
OzarkHillbilly
@BGinCHI:
A few will, I suppose if things get bad enough they might even be reduced to the 27%, but it will take a while to get there.
JPL
@BGinCHI: Short answer NO! The whites will just think that the others are getting all the help. They probably think they are still paying fifty percent in taxes to the federal government, also.
The Dangerman
Damn, talk about beating a dead horse; maybe he thinks Ivanka will finally do him if he can get this bill passed and he can’t let it go, um, so to speak.
Chyron HR
@BGinCHI:
Turn him on? My god, have you LOOKED at them?
TriassicSands
@Cain:
I think you’re right. This has nothing to do with health care or even Obama’s presidency. It’s all about the Correspondent’s Dinner when Obama made fun of Trump.
O. Felix Culpa
@sherparick:
Semi? Full on, 1000% sociopath, seems to me.
Gin & Tonic
Anybody notice that the pronoun he always uses in his tweets when he refers to Republicans is “they”?
rikyrah
Trump wants to let the health system fail, but won’t accept blame
07/18/17 04:16 PM
By Steve Benen
……………………………..
Let’s unpack this a bit, because it’s an amazing statement.
Right off the bat, the idea that Trump has long been an advocate of skipping the legislative process is pretty much the opposite of the truth. In fact, he’s repeatedly pressed lawmakers to pass a reform bill – any reform bill – rather than simply letting the Affordable Care Act wither on the vine.
What’s more, “sitting in the Oval Office.” “waiting to sign something,” isn’t presidential leadership. Congress is run by Trump’s own party, and if a health care overhaul is a priority for him, the president could get engaged – perhaps by learning some of the basics of the debate. For months, he hasn’t bothered.
But what matters most is Trump’s stated willingness to let the American health care system “fail.” He didn’t specify whether he intends to pursue deliberate failure through sabotage or through malicious neglect, but either way, this is an exceedingly rare – if not completely unprecedented – example of a sitting president announcing support for allowing much of the country to suffer, on purpose, in order to pursue some kind of political objective.
And as far as Trump is concerned, if/when this happens, he will insist that the buck should stop somewhere else. “I’m not going to own it,” he said.
Of course he will. He’ll “own it” in part because the systemic failure will happen on his watch, as a result of his choices, but also because he’s telling everyone his plan out loud.
Trump is effectively declaring, on camera, “Hey everyone, I’m prepared to let families struggle without security, but I hope I can convince people that I’m not responsible for my own actions.”
“So we’ll see what happens. There are some other things going on right now as we speak. But I am disappointed because for so many years I’ve been hearing repeal and replace. I’m sitting in the Oval Office right next door pen in hand waiting to sign something, and I’ll be waiting and eventually, we’re going to get something done and it’s going to be very good….. Something will happen and it’ll be very good.”
Villago Delenda Est
@MattF: That would be the vermin of the Village. For their fate, my nym provides guidance.
Spanky
So far, and only because he knows he can’t. So far.
Kay
Why is he complaining? He wanted to move off Russia. We did that.
Maybe Kelly Ann Conway can tell us what we should be talking about. Made In America seems fraught to me given that the Trump Family makes nothing in America, but she could have another fire truck parade if she wants. Everyone likes fire trucks, especially the President. Beep beep, Mr. President. Here’s a stick-on Junior Firefighter star.
I don’t know if it’s national but we do Safety Town here for entering kindergarteners. They go to the police and fire station and learn about safety. They all get hats and badges. Do Trump and Pence know they just did the same thing our 5 year olds do in August? They’ll be in the newspaper, too!
germy
And they’re the ones who called it “Obamacare” – not Obama.
Obama never made it a personal ego thing and he often admitted he was open to anything that was better.
Frankensteinbeck
I want them to stop trying, because I want this dead. Any vote, any new scheme, has a small chance of success.
That said, neither McConnell nor Trump are winning any friends in the senate pushing this on and on. And nobody in DC likes Trump. A dinner with him pushing repeal will only harden resistance against it.
Jeffro
“It’ll get better at lunchtime” – say what now? You’re going to be able to just tweak it a bit here n’ there, maybe twist an arm or two, and you’re History’s Greatest, amirite there Donnie?
Wow-o-wow. The guy’s going to be more unhinged in the next (his last) six months than we ever imagined…
Ellen R
Why don’t they just pass a resolution to name it Trumpcare, now that it’s popular, and declare victory?
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Hal:
The image was focus tested before an audience consisting of 60% white men and 40% white women aged 70 and older. Scored a positive Q on feelings of security and safety in the 90th percentile….
Villago Delenda Est
@rikyrah: “Something will happen…I have no clue what it will be, because, you know, it’s so very complicated…but my people (Yertle the Turtle, ZEGS, and their band of idiots) will come up with something that will be very good, and by very good I mean it will provide health care for all who matter (you know who you are) much cheaper than it does today under failed Obamacare.”
The essence of Donald’s vision.
Jeffro
@Kay:
Maybe he saw the Politico story about him being fat, er, the ‘least athletic’ of the past dozen presidents? It’s enough to drive a man to golf, I tell ya…(provided that you have a cart handy) LOL
dmsilev
@Frankensteinbeck: Yeah, I’ll breath easier once ‘early next week’ has come and passed and either McConnell decides not to have a vote (likeliest, I think) or there’s a vote and it fails. Because ‘there’s a vote and it passes’ is possible. Unlikely at this point, but possible.
eric
I think Obama should ask for the repeal of the 22nd amendment so he and trump can go one on one, in a loser leaves the country match. Jim Ross must do the debates….
MattF
Bluster, bluff, lies, threats, empty promises. That’s his repertoire. And that’s all, folks.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
I hate to be the doomcryer, but do y’all realize that he has yet to face any crises, whether man-made or natural…
Kay
@germy:
It is a win for Obama personally though because Obama was better at the job than Trump is. The truth is Trump doesn’t work very hard.
His tweets about Democrats sometimes sound wistful, like he wishes he was one. Pelosi and Reid would have passed a law and Democrats in Congress and the executive were often at odds under Obama. They didn’t get along all that well. Obama had the fucking “blue dogs” who were a giant pain in the ass, as were the anti-abortion Democrats. They each blamed the other for the 2010 losses. It was fractious. They passed a law anyway and it must have been a pretty good law since 9 GOP governors are panicking at the thought of losing it.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Kay:
Yeah, but if Trump worked hard, he wouldn’t be Trump.
JPL
@Jeffro: Unhinged is the new normal.
MattF
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: There’s the looming debt ceiling crisis. I expect wingnuts will demand add-ons that will keep Democrats from going along. “Why, those devilish Democrats claim to believe the things they say! Not fair!”
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack:
9 out of 10 doctors recommend Winstons.
OzarkHillbilly
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Obviously you mean crises outside of his own admin and of their own creation.
Frankensteinbeck
@dmsilev:
How is a majority leader chosen? Because if McConnell forces this vote, his entire caucus will hate him. He’s screwing his chance of accomplishing anything difficult later, just to punish his senators for not marching off a cliff with him.
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 7/18/17
Trump, Putin had second, undisclosed, hour-long encounter at G20
Ian Bremmer, political scientist and president of The Eurasia Group, talks with Rachel Maddow about the revelation of an undisclosed second encounter between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin that left US allies concerned and no official record.
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 7/18/17
Another person ID’d at Trump Jr collusion meeting of, now, eight
Rachel Maddow reports on the revelation of the identity of an eighth attendee at the meeting where Donald Trump Jr was told he’d receive anti-Hillary Clinton intel from the Russian government. This new person has an uncomfortably close history with money laundering.
sherparick
And he is a typical Republican of 2017. They are all like that, look at McConnell, Ryan, Price, Mnuchin, and John Kelley. And by the way, the Base loves him still because of Kelley and ICE are doing the mass deportation, which has kind of flown under the radar between the Trump Poison Pill (I prefer that to Trumpcare) and the metastasizing with the Russia Treason Scandal, but Kelley and ICE are bringing hell into the Hispanic community and Scott Pruitt is making all the hippies cry on the Environment (of course, about everyone will be crying in about 30 years, by which time I will be gone from this vale of tears).
dmsilev
@Frankensteinbeck:
Broadly speaking, by a vote of the caucus, but I don’t know the details beyond that (for instance, is there an equivalent to a Parliamentary vote of no confidence to oust the leader or is he set until the end of the Congressional term in fall of 2018?).
MattF
@dmsilev: Well, it’s the Senate, so it takes place behind closed doors, and no one can articulate exactly how.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Frankensteinbeck:
To a great extent, Addison has built this monster personally out of a reflexive opposition born of his whoredom to Big Health. It is who he is, and now that Big Health has moved on to some extent, he is drowning in swamp weeds on what comes next.
bystander
I would enjoy a remake of Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, with an Obama-like RR and a bloated pantload coyote. Who wouldn’t enjoy watching Acme deliver the goods to Chump?
germy
Where do we go from here? I’m glad they couldn’t agree on the monstrous “health care” bill, but they’re still working overtime to kill our ACA. Creating uncertainty like the vandals they are.
Aleta
As I remember it, Repubs were the 1st to replace the Affordable on ‘Affordable Care’ with Obama, to compel haters and racists to reject care for their own families. Hopefully their instinct for backfire means good associations with O Care have been reinforced for a few. Anyway, his name remains in battle against the Republican Congress’ death panels of 2017.
smintheus
Who will get to be the sole survivor off The Gopquod when it goes down?
trollhattan
Looks like Bannon swiped Trump’s phone.
MattF
@smintheus: The Whale.
Betty Cracker
@dmsilev: Agreed. We can’t let our guard down.
Gretchen
I was pleased that my Senator Moran got the message when he got an earful at town halls he held in rural western Kansas (he wasn’t brave enough to visit the blue-ish Kansas City suburbs) and said he’d vote against the bill. But this morning he said he’d vote to proceed to repeal Obamacare. I called his office and asked what’s that about? If he can see that tweaking it will hurt people, why doesn’t he see that repealing it will hurt more? Did the Russians update him on the kompromat they have on him?
The Moar You Know
@sherparick: News was that up in LA ICE was doing no-knock raids and driving everyone they could grab across the border. Then I stopped hearing news about it.
I assume it’s still going on.
So far as I know that has not been the case here in San Diego.
Whenever Dems get hold of power again, one of the first things that needs to happen is that they need to fire every ICE employee, Reagan-style, and hire back only on a case-by-case basis. The overwhelming majority of them decided to start enforcing Trump’s edicts to the letter and have consistently refused to abide by any court rulings to the contrary. That can’t stand.
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 7/18/17
What would Russia want from a pliant US leader?
Rachel Maddow updates the show’s running list of what Russia would likely want to get out of a pliant U.S. leader, including weaker election security and cyber policy.
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 7/18/17
US under Trump shifts toward Putin worldview
Wendy Sherman, former under secretary of State for political affairs, talks with Rachel Maddow about how the Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. State Department serves Vladimir Putin’s goals as the US abandons its role as leader of the community of nations.
MattF
@Betty Cracker: It looks like the political dynamic is that, at any given time, just enough Senators to defeat the current monstrosity (whatever it may be) will go public and prevent it from going into effect. This is not an argument for complacency, but it’s telling that McConnell is always just one vote short of his goal.
Aleta
@MattF: It won’t be Trump’s fault that’s for sure. At least it will be another opportunity to reprint the spending numbers so far for his family’s travel and find out if they’ve asked Congress for money to replace ‘old’ WH furniture.
I wish there were a giant public digital counter that would tick upward every weekend for his weekend golf trips and the hotel costs for security people.
rikyrah
@The Moar You Know:
Amen.
Damn straight.
Obdurodon
“We must stand ready to toss additional anvils to the swimmers as needed.”
Best line of the day. Thank you.
WaterGirl
Holy fucking shit. The president of the united states tweets that. And here I thought there was nothing he could do to shock me anymore. This man truly does not understand that he is the leader of the entire country, he has no idea.
First I had him pegged as a 10-year-old, then 8, last weekend I brought him down to kindergarten level, but that apparently wasn’t low enough.
Barbara
@Gretchen: He’s letting Collins, Murkowski, and Capito, and maybe a few other select members take the heat. They only need three. The question is whether Heller can locate his spine in time for the vote. He seems to have lost it utterly. Portman is also a question mark. At this point, from the outside, it looks to me like senators are more or less conspiring to see who should be raising their head to throw which grenades. So far, they seem to be coming up with just enough opposition to tank things while keeping most members well covered from being at fault. What is happening in the Senate has a lot more to do with the Koch brothers than it does with Russia.
WaterGirl
@Hal: I don’t know… I think of the doctors in white coats as the ones who come to take you back to the asylum.
MattF
@Barbara: I’m reminded of the old joke about Kurt Waldheim– he doesn’t need a spine because he has an exoskeleton.
catclub
@zhena gogolia:
“Doctor, would you recommend your patients smoke Winstons instead of taking cyanide?”
Chris
@MattF:
Marty McFly basically summarized all there was to say almost three decades ago – anything beyond that seems superfluous.
(Yes, Biff Tannen was supposed to be Donald Trump. Or at least the Alternate!1985 version was).
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
Is Trump even capable (mentally/emotionally) of murdering or ordering somebody murdered?
Shell
Pffffft. Till the very last they’ll still be chanting “Why won’t they give him a chance!”
kindness
Trump never got over the White House Correspondents Dinner where Obama royally ridiculed him from the podium and it has shown ever since. How anyone could think such a little tiny mind should occupy that office regardless of the tribalism on the Fox News right I still don’t accept. I understand it but refuse to accept their acceptance.
WaterGirl
@Kay:
I love this, Kay. I’m beyond sorry that it’s true, but your take is spot on and I love your mockery of the Baby President. This would have made a great front page post. hint hint
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Chris:
An opening!
Marty Realizes Trump is President:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g5xs4vMx-fM
SiubhanDuinne
@oatler.:
Great word, helpful concept, and dead accurate for Trump.
Thanks for adding usefully to my vocabulary.
NorthLeft12
The first tweet is just priceless. Since I initially did not know about the “working lunch” at the WH, the overall meaning of his primal scream was completely lost on me.
Why would it get better at lunch? Everything is better when you have had a good turkey breast with swiss, avocado, romaine, and mayo on whole wheat sammich ?
khead
I’d like to buy Betty a Cordoba with rich corinthian leather for that fine thread title.
Chyron HR
@WaterGirl:
Actually, they’re white slavers. The coats are how they advertise.
mwing
Dems scream death as OCare dies!” bit though, that’s just….bad poetry-slam material?
Hungry Joe
My current fear (and oh, there are so many these days) is that the Trump House refuses to reimburse insurance companies for low-income-earners’ premiums and announces that it will no longer enforce the mandate. That would likely instigate the Obamacare “death spiral” Trump has been dreaming of. And the blame would fall … where?
Chris
@rikyrah:
What Russia wants from a pliant U.S. leader is, above all, that everybody know that there is a pliant U.S. leader. That alone works wonders for their foreign policy objectives.
hedgehog the occasional commenter
@NorthLeft12: Or an MLT, when the mutton is just right…
SiubhanDuinne
@Gin & Tonic:
I have noticed that, often. It’s just one more example of his narcissism — there’s ME and there’s OTHER.
He probably includes close family members in the ME category, but his worldview is a binary US versus THEM, even people who are supposedly on his side. His speech patterns and word choices reflect that.
Frankensteinbeck
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
No. He’s certainly mean enough. He has no moral qualms about it whatsoever. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s floated the idea and been disappointed when nobody took it off his hands and ordered it themselves.
However, he is an abject coward. Stunningly so. Outrageously so. The man is so utterly chickenshit he makes the 10st Chairborne look like actual Green Berets. He is such a complete spineless wimp that he could not fire Comey face to face. His lawsuits are all against people so much poorer than himself that they can’t pay legal fees. He runs away from his law suit threats against people who can actually meet him in court. He is constitutionally incapable, by his own utter cowardice, to pick on anyone who he doesn’t have an absolute advantage over. Ordering someone killed? It requires too much spine.
Chris
@The Moar You Know:
There are at least a few federal agencies that I actually do want disbanded entirely and their successor rebuilt from the ground up, but sadly, it’ll never happen. And yes, ICE is at the top of that list.
trollhattan
@khead:
And we shall christen it Ricardo.
NorthLeft12
@WaterGirl: I think you are being completely unfair to children of all ages. I have two grandsons [ages three and one] who have never been as mean, vicious, ignorant, and stupid as Deadbeat Donald is.
Donald is what he is, a seventy year old man who has demonstrated again and again that he is shallow, racist, hateful, arrogant, greedy, lecherous, creepy, careless, obnoxious, violent, and ignorant. He owns this behavior, and he has made all the choices that have developed his character to this sickeningly low level.
Don’t try to infantilize him or attribute these characteristics to children either.
rikyrah
@Frankensteinbeck:
I feel you. I hear you.
NotMax
The pustule-in-chief is certifiable.
“Look, it’s simple. Change the name to the Super Duper Happy Fun bill. Problem solved! Now, who wants seconds?”
rikyrah
Key point: Trump didn’t just welcome Russian efforts to help him, he also assisted in undermining election integrity https://t.co/vtC2VsrN4T
— Susan Hennessey (@Susan_Hennessey) July 19, 2017
No Drought No More
“If Trump has to sacrifice the political lives of Republican elected officials and sink the GOP for another opportunity to harpoon Obamacare, so be it”.
That fact is less a double edged sword than a ceremonial knife used by samurai to commit seppuku. When Mueller’s report is finally released, and Americans are finally apprised of the damage thus far done their country, it won’t take congressional republicans any longer to jettison Trump than it takes them to fart.
Those Americans that Lincoln noted are always with us- those who are fooled “all the time”- will be increasingly marginalized nationally, as they have been already have been in California. And as it happens, democratic shot-callers should damn well go for republican throats in the process, with none of this “my friend and colleague from across the aisle” bullshit. Why say that? Because republicans are the mortal enemies of our democracy, and they must be overpowered and scattered to the electoral winds if it’s to survive..
Chris
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
This is great.
The sad thing about watching the Back To The Future series is that people thirty years ago already realized pretty much exactly who and what Donald Trump was. Sadder than that is to realize that the idea of Trump being president (or at least, Most Powerful Citizen) sounded as much like a bad joke to people in the 1980s as… well, as the idea of Ronald Reagan being president did to people in the 1950s. (“Ronald Reagan? HA! The ACTOR?”) That’s pretty much our history of presidential regression right there.
MattF
@NotMax: That would make sense if he was SpongeBob. No, seriously.
Aleta
From WSJ
NorthLeft12
@JPL: Funny, I once made a business trip to Baton Rouge La., and took some good natured ribbing from some customers about Canada’s high tax rate. I replied that I felt like I got good value from it; decent health care, a good education system, reasonably decent and safe infrastructure, besides the usual stuff that is included in good government.
Chris
@Frankensteinbeck:
I mean, he called for a lynching back in New York. Not much of a leap from one to the other, although I think inciting a lynching is far truer to Trump’s character than ordering a hit.
Frankensteinbeck
@No Drought No More:
I think this is the accurate model, but I remember it includes decades of chaos when the Republicans still had enough power to sabotage everything in reach.
Kay
I know this is mostly symbolic, but it’s important to me that Democrats oppose the nepotism.
This is wrong. It’s wrong that Trump installed his kids and gave them access to information the public doesn’t have, partly because the Trump Family reveal nothing – not even the few things they are legally obligated to reveal.
Jared Kushner didn’t “forget” 100 foreign contacts. He lied on that form and he did that because he thinks he’s untouchable.
No one ordered Donald Trump to hire his family and both Ivanka and Kushner could have declined the offer. They need to be treated like everyone else. It is things LIKE THIS that erode faith in government. It has to be fair.
There can’t be two sets of rules. I don’t work in government but people who do should fight this because it harms them. They need credibility. They can’t operate without it. Trump is damaging THEM.
burnspbesq
@rikyrah:
You say that like it’s a bad thing. I’m way more comfortable with Merkel, Macron, and Trudeau “in charge” than Trump and May.
catclub
Politico link, but useful.
Nick Hanauer on how plutocrats should be acting to avoid (near) future pitchfork encounters.
Frankensteinbeck
@Chris:
A huge leap. It’s the leap of personal responsibility. Calling for a lynching is suggesting to a friendly audience that other people take a problem off your hands, while knowing nobody’s really going to act on it. In terms of morals and hate, they’re basically the same. In terms of cowardice, it’s a ballpark’s distance between that and actually ordering a hit. Hell, you can see how he envies dictators who have the guts to do it.
Chris
@Kay:
Which, of course, is the point. Conservatives want to continue to decredibilize the government as much as possible in order to continue to give cover to their process of feudalizing the country into a bunch of private fiefdoms for rich people above the law.
NotMax
@Aleta
Which in any normal building would be the 52nd floor. Remember, he lies about that too.
SenyorDave
@eric: But, lets be honest, isnt John Boehner the happiest guy on earth right now to watch this shit blizzard?
I always thought in an alternate reality Boehner might have been somebody who could have been semi-reasonable for Pelosi to work with. He’s a hack who clearly wanted to be on the 19th hole somewhere killing off his third martini, but I never saw him as someone who wanted to hurt people intentionally. McConnell and Ryan would happily take people’s insurance away and have them die for political gain.
TriassicSands
@NorthLeft12:
In fairness to Watergirl, you left one important adjective off your list — immature. And while Trump has many attributes that distinguish him from a child, his immaturity does not. It’s not wrong to say Trump acts like a baby, given what that means in that context, but no one thinks that anyone calling him a baby really thinks he’s anything like a baby except in his penchant for throwing tantrums.
Children will survive having Trump called a child, because the vast majority of them will do something that Trump will never do — grow up.
Kay
@Aleta:
It is disgusting how this family continues to treat the public with such contempt. It is humiliating.
I wasn’t dumb enough to buy the Trump Family con. I resent paying public money into Trump family coffers. The people who fell for this scam should be billed separately.
WaterGirl
@NorthLeft12: Point taken.
The Moar You Know
@No Drought No More: Not one Republican will ever raise a hand against this so-called “president”. Will not happen. Doesn’t matter what Mueller reveals, not even if Trump and Vlad are caught plotting to nuke every city in the United States. They know if he goes down they all go down.
If we want Trump out we have to do it ourselves, the hard way, the long way. Today’s GOP is not the GOP of the Nixon years. Not a one has any honor.
@Chris: Even when they fuck up, I’ve always been adamantly against this kind of solution to federal agencies that are not behaving as I’d like. The air traffic controllers never recovered from Reagan’s purge, and that had some pretty serious consequences on American aviation and passenger safety for a number of decades.
But damn, ICE is breaking the law, refusing to acknowledge they’re subject to court rulings, and operating on their own with no direction and they refuse to stop. I really see no other solution.
JPL
@NorthLeft12: Rush and Sean told them that is what they pay, and Limbaugh and Hannity would never lie.
Those are the hardcore trump voters.
Chris
@The Moar You Know:
Yep. To top it all, this becomes truer as time goes by. The more Republicans in Congress run interference for Trump and try to sweep his Russia dirty laundry under the carpet, the more enmeshed they become in the scandal, and therefore the more of an interest they have in preventing anything from coming to light, or at least preventing any consequences if it does.
Kay
@Chris:
Lots and lots and lots of Republicans work in government too. They’re going down with the Democrats.
Every day this family chip, chip, chips away at credibility. We will pay for that- ALL of us, Republicans and Democrats.
It isn’t even just Trump. WTF is wrong with Ivanka and her husband that they would continue to behave like this? Grow up. Stand up to him. Say “no”. What’s running thru her head when she takes the US President’s place at a table? Who fucking RAISED these people? 24 years of the best education money can buy and she got NO standards or ethics or sense of what’s right and wrong?
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Chris:
Yup. Biff Tannen was Donald Trump without the money and fame, until he got that sports almanac from the future in BTTF 2. I believe one of the producers in an interview mentioned this recently.
My favorite part of that video is Trump shooting a revolver into the air to cheers and Marty’s horrified reaction afterwards.
Encapsulates the Trump error pretty well.
FlipYrWhig
@Kay:
Someone quipped during the George W. Bush years that his photo ops collectively showed he was treating the presidency as “his own personal Make A Wish Foundation.” Trump does the same thing but FAR WORSE.
rikyrah
@No Drought No More:
We should take the knife to their throats and have no mercy.
This is TREASON.
Nothing less.
They are aiding and abetting TREASON.
And, should be dealt with as such.
NO.FORGIVENESS.
MOVE ON?
PHUCK OUTTA HERE.
LurkerNoLonger
Very funny bit on Colbert with Keegan Michael Key bringing Obama’s anger translator, Luther, out of retirement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D3oBaWYIwQ
Aleta
@catclub: Whew. Thanks for pointing that out. Such a liberal. When it comes to education, he doesn’t mention funding local public schools, only that Harvard is not for everyone. He was writing about The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats in July/August 2014 Politico too.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Keep on telling it.
You have to enter a password 20+ times to get to the end of the security clearance form.
Forgot it my azz.
PHUCK.OUTTA.HERE.
Kay
@Chris:
Kushner never should have accepted the job but it’s still on him to fix it, and he could fix it today. He’s an adult. He has agency. He should resign.
This idea we have adopted that as long as the Trump’s aren’t actually in prison they’re wholly without responsibility for their own actions is already a lower standard. Sacrifice. Ivanka and Kushner need to make one.
MomSense
@O. Felix Culpa:
And he isn’t exactly the high functioning type.
Frankensteinbeck
@Chris:
Since the edit didn’t go through, I’ll make it an extra comment. I would actually put money that Trump has said to his staff something like “I wish I could just have them killed,” and been consciously disappointed when nobody picked up on it.
Kay
@rikyrah:
He is untouchable! NPR keeps telling me nothing can be done- that the King does whatever the fuck he wants.
The Trumps are taking advantage of people. They rely on other people behaving decently.
You don’t have to hammer everyone and install a cop in every kitchen but the Trumps are what laws are made for. They’re WHY you need regulations.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Which is why they need to go down and go down hard.
Brachiator
i’m presuming that only Republicans were invited to this luncheon. And yet Trump complains about the Democrats not helping with healthcare reform.
What a farce.
Aleta
@Kay: The two of them are taking attention and probably funding and potential jobs from informed caring people in the field, who might do something real, while instead money goes to I- and J ‘s vanity meetings about women-led business, government technology networks, sex trafficking.
Immanentize
@Kay:
This is so true — and what is so odd about our crrent times. Laws/regulations like campaign finance limitations, and Section 5 of the voting rights act, environmental protections, etc. are things that we as a society came to understand we needed to keep this ship afloat. But somehow all that learning and experience means nothing to these people. Sexism, racism, poisoned water and air, looting, profiteering — It’s all “meh” for these jokers.
Mike in DC
@No Drought No More:
When you have them down, step on their necks. Because situation reversed, they’d do it without hesitation.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
I regret to say that this fucking idiot is a partner at a law firm here and apparently does substantial work there.
Trump has nominated him for the 6th circuit, and he’s stumbling and mumbling his way around avoiding admitting that he was simply acting as a conduit for false information in order to manipulate public impressions…
rikyrah
@No Drought No More:
The longer this goes on..
The more that they protect TREASON..
The harder that we get.
It’s been since the election..
More and more people are like ‘ phuck you, and your Mama’.
They don’t wanna see no more articles about ‘ misunderstood Trump Voters.’ Folks are like ‘ phuck these muthaphuckas.’
And, the wimps in Congress – I’m glad that we have been lighting up their azzes and telling them that, hell no, you shouldn’t be working with these clowns – ON ANY PHUCKING THING.
I’ve said this repeatedly..
this isn’t 2000.
This isn’t even 2004, after Shrub lied us into two damn wars..
This is on a whole other level, and people don’t wanna hear shyt about understanding and forgiveness.
Muthaphuckas gotta go!!
There has been a shift in Democratic Voters……and the politicians better catch up with us.
StringOnAStick
Semi OT, but not really. Husband and I have been watching hours a day of the Tour de France right now. One of the things I find so striking as they ride through the rural farming areas of France is that all of these areas look reasonably prosperous, in stark contrast to what our rural farming areas look like. Granted I know they pick these routes to show nice countryside, but how can they find day after day of 180 km rides that all look good? I think we’d be hard pressed to do the same here. My cross country trip from CO to FL last fall was shocking to me at how bad and hard pressed the rural areas looked; I used to do a lot of work in those kinds of places in my old career and the change from then to now is stunning.
Being a very late Boomer, I grew up at a time when the country was heavily investing in things like infrastructure and science, and we coasted on that for years. It also was the kind of spending that supported and increased the size of the middle class. The Nick Hanauer – Politic link above is well worth reading; he gets it.
rikyrah
Billions of dollars in student loan debt may be wiped away over missing paperwork: report https://t.co/DaHzqmph0f pic.twitter.com/V8flsvDRH6
— The Hill (@thehill) July 19, 2017
ted mills
“The Dems scream death as OCare dies!”
How can you not hear that in a Ronny James Dio voice, with an octave jump on the last word?
randy khan
“The Dems scream death as OCare dies!” seems like the end of an epic 19th century poem or like a line in the middle of some experimental 1960s play.
Timurid
THIS IS FINE, COMRADE.
JoeyJoeJoe Junior Shabadoo
@Shell:
I’m Reminded of the statement put out by Rep Earl Landgrebe in August 1974 – “Don’t confuse me with the facts. I’ve got a closed mind. I’ll support the President even if I have to be taken out of the building and shot.” He went on to get 39 percent of the vote in a 74 percent Nixon district.
SiubhanDuinne
@randy khan:
TenguPhule
Betty, do you truly believe Trump is incapable of murder?
TenguPhule
@BGinCHI:
NO. SATSQ.
They will blame the Democrats. Just like they blame Clinton for 9/11 and Obama for Katrina.
Patricia Kayden
@MattF: He’s a populist among a certain pointy-headed, sheet wearing group of Christianist folks.
germy
patrick II
@Hal:
I think you mean: The “Doctor” with the white coat and stethoscope…
Central casting occasionally sends doctors, African Americans, and white guys holding “African Americans” for Trump signs to his rallies. The angry looking white people are mostly for real.
TenguPhule
@MattF:
Not looming. Directly overhead at 40,000 feet and approaching terminal velocity.
MattF
@BGinCHI: I’d entertain the possibility if there was any evidence for it– but there isn’t. See, e.g., Kevin Drum. Trump’s polling has held constant, period.
Aleta
Jun 29
Today, Jul 19
Major Major Major Major
@Aleta: Can the Speaker just put whatever they want (or remove whatever they want) in legislation without an amendment process?
Jeffro
@The Moar You Know:
I agree this is true for most of the GOP in Congress and especially the leadership. There are still a few who will do the right (or at least, politically expedient) thing when it all finally comes out – they’re already bucking him on other issues. The governors are also not falling in behind Trumpov now. Some enterprising young souls will denounce him as his (metaphorical) plane is on fire, spiraling downward…
Agree with this regardless of what I just said above. We have to keep the pressure on until they break and he’s gone.
jl
Trump accuses the GOP of not discussing how good their healthcare bill is.
The problem is that their health care bill was so awful, every time they slipped up and ‘discussed’ what it actually did, public support for it dropped by 25 or 50 percent, until only 12% of the population declined to hate it, probably out of ignorance or blind loyalty to Trump/GOP.
So: Wrong!
scav
@Frankensteinbeck: Of course Trumphf is going to outsource any messy and non-photogenic activity by a disposable {nb that’s a noun here}, especially an anonymous, unpaid one if there’s any possible downside or blowback involved. What else are adoring minions for?! And, nearly everyone is considered a minion, why else the incohate rage when those unprecedented and inconceivable ones don’t do as expected? Democrats aren’t blowing up health care! Media aren’t on-demand fawning PR-burnishers! The damned electorate didn’t show up in visible obeisance at his coronation!
TenguPhule
@Kay:
Worse, lost in all the noise is that those fuckers and him still control his assets and that he’s still using the government to make money off of them. With an example like that, the rot is gonna spread.
And cutting federal worker pay is going to make it worse.
Bribes are going to start working their way into our government functions.
Keith P.
Trump’s lunchtime Trumpcare sell is a sight to behold.
Aleta
@germy: And yesterday, IMO to divert whatever bit of attention he could from that story today,
TenguPhule
@Kay:
She’s a Trump.
She’s never faced consequences for bad behavior in her life. Yet.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
Which is what I’ve been saying all along.
And why I don’t think elections in 2018 is going to solve our fundamental problem.
patrick II
@sherparick:
In one way watching the Trump presidency has been like a detailed look at the underbelly of the old “Lives of the Rich and Famous” show that they would never allow under normal circumstances. We are getting to see what at least one of those guys who own those fantastic houses and yachts with the trophy wife are like close up. Trump isn’t the only one, just the one dumb enough to be the front man and let us see the details of his pathology. The Kochs, Mellons, Ichan, Adelsons, and way too many others we never hear about, keep out of the spotlight as much as possible but the Kochs in particular are every bit the sociopaths Trump is.
ruckus
@catclub:
Well if they smoke Winstons then the doc might get paid to care for them for a few years, if they take cyanide, poof gone in 60 seconds.
PIGL
@BGinCHI: nope. They’ll be too busy dying of complications from Diabetes, COPD, CHF, dementia, opiate addiction, or the more lingery sorts of cancer. Some might call it “justice”.
Aleta
@Major Major Major Major: All I know is that hers was an amendment to a bill, not yet passed, and her victory so far was simply to bring open debate to the floor. But
trollhattan
@randy khan:
“Waiting for GoD’OCare”
Frankensteinbeck
@scav:
That includes deciding things and giving orders, especially scary orders. I have never seen such a chickenshit* individual in my life, and I grew up in Kentucky.
*Defined as talking tough and aggressive, applauding and promoting violence, but personally being unwilling to take any risk or effort.
Vhh
@rikyrah: Families struggle? How about “let people die.”
rikyrah
To those covering ‘election integrity’ commission: repeating lies about voter fraud without fact-checking them is journalistic malpractice
— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) July 19, 2017
ARI BERMAN IS A VOTING RIGHTS BOSS!!!
rikyrah
A fantastic gesture from Timpson. Free outfit cleaning for anyone who is unemployed and has a job interview.#WednesdayWisdom pic.twitter.com/GcNqIabTDs
— NinetyFive (@NinetyFive_UK) July 19, 2017
rikyrah
GOP’ers know the only way they win is to prevent Americans from voting.
They’re unpopular. Their policies are unpopular. They must cheat. https://t.co/ClhznAl3AL
— Pé Resists (@4everNeverTrump) July 19, 2017
Kris Kobach wants to dismantle the National Voter Registration Act, making it harder for Americans to vote. https://t.co/Y7IjiEtbnm
— ACLU National (@ACLU) July 18, 2017
rikyrah
The Pence-Kobach voter purge commission meets today. We must remember what their true goal is. My @nytimes op-ed: https://t.co/JtQHQh5n4i
— Vanita Gupta (@vanitaguptaCR) July 19, 2017
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Timurid:
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@rikyrah:
They must really want a civil war. This is stupid. They can’t really believe that millions will just accept having their voice in their government taken away from them and have shit like the BCHRA or whatever shoved their throats?
glory b
@patrick II: To be fair Elsie Mellon Hillman was an OG Republican who was a pretty great person.
She believed that she had an obligation to better all of society, gave away a lot of money, and was, according to my next door neighbor who was her cook, and a work friend who taught her kids’ piano lessons, good to the help.
She came to a little church in part of Pittsburgh’s deepest inner city to go to my neighbor’s funeral (Larimer, for those of you who are familiar with the ‘Burgh).
randy khan
@SiubhanDuinne:
I’ll accept that as a friendly amendment.
TenguPhule
@rikyrah:
Someone tell me again how we’re going to have free and fair elections in 2018.
randy khan
@TenguPhule:
I am so not Betty, but I don’t think he could do it if it had to be him doing the deed. He’d certainly be willing to suggest the idea to an underling, almost certainly in a way that would allow him to think he could deny that he meant for it to happen, but the man is a coward.
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
Yes, yes they can. They have the power and they will use it as they want.
We are no longer a nation of laws, but of men.
They will not go peacefully.
catclub
@germy: wow. another echo of that time Kevin McCarthy(?) said “There are two people I know are being paid by Putin, Trump and Rohrabacher”, that has mostly been sent down the memory hole. Paul Ryan immediately tried to change the subject.
TenguPhule
@randy khan:
Even cowards can kill, provided the victim doesn’t get a chance to fight back.
SiubhanDuinne
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
They can now. IOIYAR.
SiubhanDuinne
@randy khan:
I adore McGonagall. He’s just so over-the-top awful, it’s almost loveable :-)
Gravenstone
A law given its namesake solely because of … Republican spite. Remember, those assholes affixed the “Obamacare” moniker solely because they were so confident that it would collapse, and take down Obama as a result. So now Trump is flailing away at the white whale whose name comes from his own tribe. Fitting, somehow.
Brachiator
@randy khan:
@TenguPhule:
RE: Betty, do you truly believe Trump is incapable of murder?
I am so not Betty, either. But Trump ain’t got the balls to do murder. Who do you think he is, Hillary Clinton?
bemused
@StringOnAStick:
We have family in the south and when we drive to visit them, we taken different routes to sightsee along the way, Blue Ridge Mountains, historical sites, etc. Some of the highways took us through areas that should be beautiful, rolling hills, winding rivers but the poverty is obvious judging by run down homes and the small towns we saw. One highway looked promising, winding along a river but there were two nuclear power plants along it with a campground/trailer park which appeared to be used by retirees, lower income people long term residency. I hope no one fished there. We were pretty sure one town in a river valley was overlooked by a coal mining operation even if you couldn’t see it over the mountain. The air didn’t smell great either.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
They have a rude awakening then. No people are totally immune from sliding into authoritarianism, but democracy is too entrenched in this country to get away it for long. The power comes from the people. We can make this country come to a halt if we want to
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
The Southern Segregationists would say otherwise.
We’ve been sliding towards this for decades.
Whether we can stop this in its tracks, that’s the question now.
Barbara
@glory b: I met Elsie Hillman once when I was working at an event. Let’s just say that she was the only person attending this event who came into the kitchen to talk to those of us working there, and she made a point of complimenting us on the food. She is a throwback in more than one way.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Brachiator:
I could see him slyly suggest like a gangster to an aide that it sure would be a crying shame is something happened to that n*igger and his ugly bitch wife, framing it as some kind of twisted joke but hoping someone else would pick up on it do the dirty work for him.
But really, Trump ain’t Nucky Thompson from Boardwalk Empire. He’d never have the huevos to kill someone personally or order it. He delegates the hard decisions to underlings to make. Too cowardly, like you said.
jl
I try to look for silver linings wherever I can.
So, another advantage of the GOP health care self-messing, for me personally, is that I now have an incentive to live as healthy a life as I can.
I am going to put my fitness program into over drive.
Why? No matter what my life and career decisions, looks like I have a good chance at getting decent health insurance over the next few years now. Why the inverse moral hazard?
I want to live long enough to see this episode in the first history books that come out on the Obama and Trump eras. I want to see pics of Obama, Reid and Pelosi beaming after their accomplishment. I want to see how crazy ol’ Joe Biden’s f-bomb is recorded for posterity. Probably history books will have video and audio lnks by then. That will be fun.
I want to see GOP political cruds jumping Congressional trolley tracks, running out of back doors, hunkering down in the bushes and behind dumpsters. I want to see how history records McConnell’s frown after his well-deserved legislative defeat.
Is that nice and kind of me? No, but who cares, and SEZHOO?
TenguPhule
@Brachiator:
At this point in time, I would put no criminal act beyond Trump.
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
Did you ever see the interview where he asked if his chief bodyguard would kill for him and the man said yes?
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
I disagree. There’s too many of us now and too many in the system in positions of power to hamstring this shit. Do you think state republicans want to give up their powers to the feds? No way. They like their little fiefdoms
Peale
@MattF: Yeah. I’m sorry. But I see no reason for the Democrats to vote to keep the government open as long as Trump is in the oval office. There’s no benefit in it for them. The GOP does not want to negotiate anything with the Democrats so I don’t see a reason to keep services running. The GOP has the votes to continue to fund the government. If they wish to cut popular programs they can cut them without Democratic help. If people wish to whine about their ruined family vacations to national parks, they can show up next November and vote about it.
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
Awfully late to declare the thread won, but there you go.
WTF
Come on, now. Let’s not mock and ridicule the disabled. I don’t mean the malignant narcissism and sociopathy. It’s the Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders. Three distinctive facial features are used diagnostically.You all know what a philtrum is, right? Trump has one so faint, it might as well not even be there. His upper lip is non-existent, and the eyes.They are a dead give-away even without measurement, small palpebral fissures.
Behaviorally, it could be any number of issues, hence the classification as a spectrum of disorders.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Peale:
Agree. They should however come up with an alternative budget that would not suck to show “hey, this is what serious and popular policymaking looks like”.
Gin & Tonic
@SiubhanDuinne: Are you tired of all the winning yet?
Gravenstone
@Hal: Looks almost like he’s been photoshopped into that still.
Mike in DC
Side note: Please try to restrain yourself from becoming too cynical or negative. Cynicism and negativity generate apathy, which is precisely what our political opponents want and need in order to succeed.
Similarly, it’s generally way premature and probably counterproductive to muse about violence, civil unrest etc.
I mean, knock yourselves out if thats how you vent, but i dont see much benefit to it in a collective action sense.
randy khan
@TenguPhule:
I think Trump likely is genuinely frightened by Obama and never would take the risk.
schrodingers_cat
@Mike in DC: Amen!
SiubhanDuinne
@Gin & Tonic:
So much beautiful winning!
Dupe70
@Hal: “I’m not a doctor but I play one on TV.”
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
The word you’re grasping for is “backsliding.”
Fortunately for all of us, many of the heroes of the last war are still with us, like John Lewis, and can advise us on how to win again.
It took two tries to dismantle militaristic Germany.
jonas
@BGinCHI:
As long as they can continue to watch ICE agents punch brown people and upset liberals on TV…probably not.
Robert Sneddon
@Mnemosyne:
Actually the first try worked quite well until the Versailles Treaty was gutted, in part because the whiny Americans thought it was too strict. That allowed the rearmament of Germany and the military reoccupation of the Rhineland. After the second World War the Americans immediately rearmed and re-equipped the Wehrmacht and pointed them at the Soviet Union again, leading to the Cold War and a number of scares.
J R in WV
@rikyrah:
Fire them for cause, for failure to adhere to the most recent court rulings pertinent to their work assignments. It’s LAW enforcement, not just round ’em up and throw ’em out!
Worse than Texas deputy sheriffs!!
TenguPhule
@Robert Sneddon:
The Treaty was why it failed in the first place.
Robert Sneddon
@TenguPhule:
The Versailles Treaty said “no major rearmament”, the Germans re-armed and the treaty was not enforced. The treaty said no German military forces in the Rhineland i.e. next to the French border. The Germans moved their much-larger-than-the-treaty-allowed military into the Rhineland and the treaty was not enforced. There was no Versailles treaty left at this point so blaming the terms of the treaty on the subsequent events is rather puzzling.
Sure the right-wing militaristic Germans were pissed off about the treaty, they were supposed to be because it was an attempt to prevent them trying to attack France again as they had in 1914 and 1870. Generally though regular Germans who had lived through WW1 didn’t want it to happen again and were generally OK with the military side of the treaty.
Marguerite Hill
@Brachiator: The KKK never discuss how great their love is for African Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, and Jews.
Tiger Woods, Newt Gingrich, and Donald Trump never discuss how great their marital fidelity was/has always been and the importance of monogamy.
Rush Limbaugh never discusses how great his opposition is to international travel to countries that allow sex tourism and how firm his disapproval is of exploitation of child male prostitutes.
Sarah Palin never discusses how widely read she is, how her love of reading is so well known, and how she loves nothing more than an afternoon spent reading “War and Peace.”
TenguPhule
@Robert Sneddon:
The Germans rearmed in large part because the Fascists came into power because of the harsh terms of the treaty. Had the Allies at the time not been so fucking stupid about making Germany pay for the war, they wouldn’t have midwifed the monster it later became.
Robert Sneddon
@TenguPhule: The harsh terms of the treaty, especially the military limitations but also the reparations were meant in part as punishment to say “don’t ever do this again but they were never enforced in any real manner — the German successor government was originally given seventy or eighty years to pay the reparations, the sums were negotiated down again and again and by the early 30s they were abandoned totally, even before the Fascists came to power. At the same time the British and French governments had borrowed heavily to pay for their war efforts and didn’t see why the Germans who had started it should get off scot-free when they were being dunned by American bankers to repay the loans.
The reason for the rise of the Fascists was the Dolchstosslegende and the collapse of the Weimar Republic due to financial mismanagement on a giant scale leading to hyperinflation. The Fascists gave away bread on the streets to people with no food, paid for by financiers and industrialists, and said “we can make Germany great again.” Coupled with a lack of will to enforce the military provisions of the treaty the result was having to do it all over again. This time around though the Russians made damn sure the Wehrmacht wasn’t going to make another dash for Moscow even with Western support.
TenguPhule
@Robert Sneddon:
Come again?
Germany defaulted on the debts because it couldn’t pay them.
Not enforced? What the hell do you call the Occupation of the Ruhr?
The German government collapsed, that’s why it finally ended.
Robert Sneddon
@TenguPhule: The Occupation of the Ruhr lasted about a year or so and was over by 1924 when the American Dawes Plan was implemented to reduce the reparations, loan the German government badly-needed money and extend further the reparations repayment period. The Fascists took power in 1933, nine years later.
Less than forty years before the French had paid similar financial reparations to Germany after the war of 1870, a sum that the Germans expected would cripple France for two generations. They paid it off in two years with no seventy-year payback period option as the Germans had after WW1. Those reparations were assessed on the basis of what Napoleon had claimed from Prussia back in 1806…
The Versailles Treaty was brutal in terms of loss of territory and financial repayments, punishing the nation that had started WW1 but it was never enforced the way it was meant to be enforced, in part to drive Germany into a rural de-industrialised economy that could never threaten Europe again. Because it wasn’t enforced properly the Germans re-armed and started it all over again. If it had been enforced there would have been no European-theatre WWII although its effects might have included more strife down the road (and no European Union).