Even the conservative National Review has Trump pegged:
He has had a middling career in real estate and a poor one as a hotelier and casino operator but convinced people he is a titan of industry. He has never managed a large, complex corporate enterprise, but he did play an executive on a reality show. He presents himself as a confident ladies’ man but is so insecure that he invented an imaginary friend to lie to the New York press about his love life and is now married to a woman who is open and blasé about the fact that she married him for his money. He fixates on certain words (“negotiator”) and certain classes of words (mainly adjectives and adverbs, “bigly,” “major,” “world-class,” “top,” and superlatives), but he isn’t much of a negotiator, manager, or leader. He cannot negotiate a health-care deal among members of a party desperate for one, can’t manage his own factionalized and leak-ridden White House, and cannot lead a political movement that aspires to anything greater than the service of his own pathetic vanity.
He wants to be John Wayne, but what he is is “Woody Allen without the humor.” Peggy Noonan, to whom we owe that observation, has his number: He is soft, weak, whimpering, and petulant. He isn’t smart enough to do the job and isn’t man enough to own up to the fact. For all his gold-plated toilets, he is at heart that middling junior salesman watching Glengarry Glen Ross and thinking to himself: “That’s the man I want to be.” How many times do you imagine he has stood in front of a mirror trying to project like Alec Baldwin? Unfortunately for the president, it’s Baldwin who does the good imitation of Trump, not the other way around.
Read the whole thing, but only if you have the brass balls it takes to sell real estate.
WereBear
Yes, worth it to go over to that site, one I normally avoid.
But this was dead-on balls accurate.
dedc79
Depends on the writer. Some of the supposed NeverTrump folks at NR have transitioned to being anti-anti Trump (e.g. Rich Lowry).
debbie
Is there any evidence he even tried? It seems he does nothing more than delegate absolutely everything. Even this morning, it’s “What have you done for us, China?,” as if America expects to just sit back and wait for the world to fix everything for us.
debit
Coffee is for closers.
FlipYrWhig
I’ve been saying since the campaign that Trump’s gestures are more feminine than masculine. I think they’re extremely similar to Peak Joan Rivers. I’m surprised, but glad, that Peggy Noonan of all people, with all her psychosexual hangups, is the one who raised the idea that Trump isn’t particularly manly.
WereBear
Of course, what this ultimately means is “tRump has failed conservatism!”
Reboot, rinse, repeat.
Wapiti
@debbie: Except he doesn’t even delegate. That implies that he has told an underling that they need to do something, and he holds them responsible – but also implies that he doesn’t allow other underlings to interfere. I think Donald delegates tasks like he fires people. Not face to face, because our Donald is a coward who won’t risk conflict, but by hints and implications to third parties.
Starfish
@debbie: China has given some people in his admin sweetheart deals. For example, people are saying that Scaramucci got 15% more than his hedge fund was worth by selling to a Chinese company, the HNA Group.
cope
Oh, you took back your original closing salutation, that’s what nudged me over to NR to read the whole piece (and which explained your original last line).
Anyway, thanks for the link, too bad president* Drumpf will never see or hear about it.
SiubhanDuinne
@Wapiti:
Be fair, Wapiti. He told Reince Priebus to kill that fly.
Barbara
I should have made my comment here. Williamson nails Trump but what he will never do is nail the system that made him possible. Just as he did a brutal and frankly mean spirited take down of the white working class voters who tend to support Trump without ever owning up to economic forces that make their lives harder, or the Republican party that shamelessly exploits their tribal instincts. There is no room in this world for better leadership because such a person might actually challenge the social and economic ecosystem in which Williamson’s masters thrive.
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne: Do we know, if he did kill the fly though?
debbie
@Wapiti:
I do not get this love for chaos. No group of any kind or size can thrive and grow in an atmosphere of chaos. Is this something they’re teaching in business schools?
I once got into it with a woman in upper management. (I think I am permitted to say things like this because I’m significantly older than most of my co-workers). Everything kept changing, even org charts and policies, all in a time of great stress and overwork (including mandatory overtime, which I hated).
I must have rolled my eyes or sighed at something she said because she turned to me and pointed out that we all needed to be flexible and adapt to changes. I told her I had no problem with change, but to jump on to the next process before knowing whether the current process might even work only prolongs the chaos.
Wapiti
@SiubhanDuinne: You’re right, I was unfair. He’s completely fine with ordering servants to do stuff, like killing a fly, or having Cristie picking up takeout, or having a goon carry a “you’re fired” note to the FBI building.
oldster
Hate to be dense, but: who is Shelley Levine?
Matt McIrvin
Except, of course, to Noonan a man being unmanly is the ultimate defect in itself, rather than just something that makes you ridiculous if you are always playing alpha dog.
debbie
@JPL:
It’s still contained in his cheek pouch.
OzarkHillbilly
@Barbara: “It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault!”
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
Pretty sure he didn’t. That’s probably the real reason he was fired.
JPL
@debbie: It’s a scene from Little Shop of Horrors.
Brachiator
Apparently, the National Review has decided to go all anti-Trump. Senior editor Jonah Goldberg appeared on BBC News Hour podcast and did not have a single positive thing to say about Trump.
Meanwhile, the Sunday Observer UK flat out calls Trump unfit in a scathing editorial.
It will be interesting to see if anyone on the Sunday pundit shows will lay it out plain.
ETA. I have problems doing a clean link with my phone. The Observer Editorial should be easy to find. Sorry.
schrodingers_cat
Man or woman, I have never seen a politician whine as much as T does, all the damn time.
Another Scott
‘morning all.
Andy Slavitt:
We have to fight them every single day.
Cheers,
Scott.
(“Who thinks Twitters web page conventions are designed to sow confusion…”)
SiubhanDuinne
@oldster:
It’s actually Levene, not Levine. From the first paragraph of the linked article:
debbie
@Brachiator:
NPR has been interviewing Goldberg seemingly every week. He’s been against Trump for quite awhile; I think it was that speech at the CIA, but I could be wrong.
Wyatt Derp
Trump doesn’t know how to negotiate, only how to threaten. But it only works on contractors and rubes at Trump U. If the people you’re threatening aren’t afraid of you you fail. And nobody is afraid of Trump anymore.
Also, loved the movie and never thought about Trump trying to be Alec Baldwin. LOL!
Patricia Kayden
This must be the most hurtful factoid for Trump. He can’t even buy love while his predecessor is madly in love with a beautiful, intelligent, witty woman with whom he shares compatibility and chemistry. Trump will never have a Michelle. The fact that Melania can barely tolerate him is on full display for all to see. Sad.
SiubhanDuinne
@debbie: Ewww.
WereBear
Exactly. They never want to admit that the call is coming from inside the house.
Wapiti
@oldster: I’ve never seen the movie or play, but I think it’s the older salesman character in Glengarry Glen Ross.
Brachiator
@FlipYrWhig:
Hell, you don’t need a psychology degree to see that Trump talks tough to hide a deep insecurity. Also why he surrounds himself with tough types. You can also see this in his sons.
Oddly enough, even though Trump is obsessed with Ivanka’s mind and hot body, she did not marry a man who either looks or acts like her father.
SiubhanDuinne
@Another Scott:
Credit where credit is due.
Patricia Kayden
@Barbara: Williamson nails Trump but what he will never do is nail the system that made him possible.
Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.
@FlipYrWhig: Peak Joan Rivers is a good call – especially Rivers notorious “joke” about Geraldine Ferraro. Most of his laff lines are a variation on this. What’s interesting us that he’s adopted this Borscht Belt put down persona later in life – in videos from his 30s and 40s he’s almost comically self-serious.
Another weird aspect of his personality that runs counter to his image is that a huge proportion of his utterances are forms of *pouting*. It’s so…gross, especially for somebody from his background (and his age!). I can’t think of another person who gets away with it, and certainly not anyone non-white, non-male, non-wealthy.
Another Scott
@Barbara: Yup.
Trump is the TV personification of what they’ve been saying they want and represent for nearly 40 years:
– “He tells it like it is and isn’t politically correct!”
– “He’s not a politician and not controlled by special interests!”
– “He’s rich and can’t be bought!”
– “He’s rich so he’s obviously smart and knows how to work the system to get what he wants!”
– “He’s strong and has a beautiful wife so he is worth looking up to!”
Yada yada yada.
Facts and reality doesn’t matter to people who buy this cartoon. It’s all tribal.
With luck, once we survive his maladministration (and most of us will, but too many won’t), voters won’t pooh-pooh their votes any more. The vote is the shield that protects our Democracy, our progress, and our future – we can’t leave it in the basement.
Cheers,
Scott.
NotMax
Sure, blame it on da Jooze.
;)
Actually, more than a little of a Willie Loman psyche on unfortunate display.
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie:
My reply to this kind of nonsense? “If you took the time to get it right the first time we wouldn’t have to be flexible in the face of all these bullshit changes.”
Snarki, child of Loki
“…what he is is “
Woody AllenMoe Howard without the humor, talent for managing underlings, or keen intelligence”FIFU, Shellers. Nyuk nyuk nyuk
MattF
Trump is eternally Queens to Obama’s Manhattan. And I can say that– I grew up in Queens.
Schlemazel
@debbie:
Not true! cockroaches and rats thrive in chaos. Hair furor is the former & his team is mostly the latter
Amir Khalid
@debbie:
You know how manager types like to say, “Don’t come to me with a problem, come to me with a solution!” If you already had the solution, why would you need to ask the boss? Trump doesn’t know how to do anything a POTUS does, so he expects other countries to do things for him.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Didn’t want to push it. I need the job. ;)
Kay
For me, conservatives miss the essential problem with Trump. It’s not that he’s incompetent- although he is- it’s that he’s nasty. He’s poisonous. He brings out the worst in people.
He’s not going to get better at this job because he lacks essential elements- empathy, humility, honesty. Competence is beside the point. “Doing a good job” is grounded in something. It doesn’t just arise as a separate trait divorced from the essential elements of the person. He could learn competence but he can’t become a completely different person and learning something takes humility, which he lacks. They’re ticking off elements on a resume and ignoring the person. One comes before the other. Why doesn’t he have any relevant experience? Because he didn’t have the qualities to get any. He didn’t just stumble into his father’s business. He didn’t do anything else because he couldn’t.
debbie
@Amir Khalid:
I was hoping China would have a very pithy response, but that would probably have issued by now.
Laura
@Barbara:
he will never do is nail the system that made him possible.
And Barbara nails it! It’s what Driftglass has been writing for over 10 years about David f’g Brooks, Andrew Sullivan, Peggy Noonan, et.al., any and every effort to lay the results of conservatism at conservatism’s feet will not be allowed. It’s denied outright by bothsiderism and other tropes so that the public is purposefully denied the opportunity to compare and contrast the policies that each party promote.
The system is saved time and again, because the system has been very helpful and very profitable to a powerful few and good for ratings and so it goes.
artem1s
Great. the National Review has the asshole pegged. When are they going to tell the rubes that they, and the rest of the genius pundits in the media, stuck them with this pile of crappy leads? The whole GOP primary was a pile of candidates who were the equivalent of ‘swamp land in Florida’ investments. Only two of them were even remotely qualified to do the job, JEB and Cruz. Cruz is Blake x1M on a mission from God and JEB is an incompetent boob who sailed thru every position he’s held on the coattails of his family legacy. And The National Review and every media outlet out there has spent the last 30 years feeding the rubes in middle America the same pablum; anyone can do the job as long as they have Regeanesque hair and can read a few lines off a teleprompter. They have now lowered the bar so much that their preferred idiot du jour can’t even pull off those two simple tasks. He is so fucking inept that not only is the rest of the world laughing at America, they are seriously questioning whether we are going to take the whole fucking world down the drain with us.
We are heading for a world wide financial and/or environmental crisis that could, if we are lucky, send us all back to the middle ages. If we are unlucky, end in nuclear annihilation or make the planet uninhabitable for human life. But hey, at least the political wonk with lifetime of qualifications and her vagina emails isn’t sitting in the WH actually fixing shit and getting shit done.
Tuna
The right has discovered that all of Trumps problems are self inflicted. Remember conservatism cannot fail. Trump’s self destruction is his failure.
NotMax
@Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.
One more time: “No, Trelane“
Another Scott
@SiubhanDuinne: Andy’s saying that it’s not dead.
Effectively, it is, because McConnell sees he doesn’t have the votes at the moment for the bills he’s tried thus far. But there’s nothing (other than lack of votes) that keeps him from trying Reconciliation again before September 30.
At least that’s how I read it. With Twitter, it’s hard to know unless you see the original graphic versions of the tweets (and even then it can be ambiguous)…
Cheers,
Scott.
OzarkHillbilly
@Brachiator: The Observer view on Donald Trump’s unfitness for office
Observer editorial Here you go.
Villago Delenda Est
@debbie: Furthermore, is there any evidence at all that his party ever actually wanted to do something about health care other than deprive it from millions of Americans because the parasite .01% gets yet another tax cut?
Schlemazel
@Patricia Kayden:
The problem for the GOP is that without that bunch of morans they never win another election. They are on the horns of a dilemma & the smart ones know it. They can’t govern the madhouse they created and they can’t win without it. As a nation we are in deep shit.
Imagine a world where Clinton had won (or Bernie for that matter) with a GOP Congress. 4 years of unrelenting investigations and bullshit. We have one functioning party and a system that allows the dysfunctional hoard control. It is the conservative media that made this possible & the government cannot undo that. We need to find a way back to sanity but neither the media nor the government are going to be helpful in this effort.
Kay
It still shocks me that the President lies constantly. I don’t think we should get used to that. A lie by the President used to be a big deal- scandal, follow up, explanations. Now it isn’t. It’s just one of today’s lies.
I can’t imagine where we go from here. Can’t the next President just point to Trump and (rightly) say “he lied 50,000 times and it was considered normal- why am I being held to this standard?”
I think that’s what bothers me most. I don’t know how you go back up when you’re down this far. Nothing will count as a scandal. There’s going to have to be some conscious, formal repudiation of this – an announcement of what standards and norms were dropped and a public effort to bring them back and I don’t know how that happens if everyone decides it’s best to just move on and let elections take care of it. This happened. It will have to be reckoned with.
I guess you could start with actual rules- disclosure requirements, rules barring nepotism and conflicts- maybe that’s the way to go- stop calling them “norms” and make them written rules.
MattF
I’d like to see a conservative address the question of why Trump found the Republican party so well-suited to his temperament and goals.
OzarkHillbilly
@Brachiator:
Tough talking types. The people he surrounds himself with are all John Wayne caricatures, but they are all pansies. Not a tuff guy in the bunch.
Iowa Old Lady
@Kay: The connection between personality and competence is interesting. The grad program I taught in admitted only very smart students, but at some point, their success became a matter of personality, not intelligence. Could they admit they didn’t know something? Could they let go of what they were already successful in doing and conduct original work? Could they collaborate even to the extent of bouncing ideas off a colleague?
Iowa Old Lady
@MattF: Do you think he (or a similar demagogue) could have taken over the Democratic primaries in the same way? I’d like to think not, but I need to articulate why.
Brachiator
Bernie Sanders is acting up again. From The Hill.
Wouldn’t you have to repeal Obamacare in order to replace it? Seems to me that Sanders is confusing the issue, muddying the waters and possibly providing the GOP with ammo and opportunity.
VOR
@schrodingers_cat: That’s because everything is about him, all the time. Honestly, this guy is the 7 Deadly Sins made flesh. I might give him a pass on gluttony other than to comment on the well-done steaks with ketchup. I’m not sure about Envy, except of envy to be Putin. But Lust, Greed, Pride, Wrath, and Sloth all fit.
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: One of the advantages of being a union carpenter. ;-)
Ella in New Mexico
@Patricia Kayden: read a thing on Twitter about how Trump takes Propecia for hair loss. Finasteride has been linked to hormonal changes that knock out men’s libido and interfere with erections and sexual function, even in younger men.
In a man who thinks he’s some kind of “super alpha male”, all that sexual frustration is a dangerous thing…
Baud
@Kay:
Not it he or she is a Democrat. He or she can’t even call fake scandals fake.
@Iowa Old Lady:
Why you trying to crush my hopes?
Villago Delenda Est
@VOR: The Seven Deadly Sins made flesh, and Evangelical “Christians” love him to pieces.
WereBear
From which I gather that among white, male, wealthy people, that “infantile bar” is set rather low…
Brachiator
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yep. Largely true. Some of his generals have actually accomplished things, and have actually been in battle. But Trump cannot clearly separate the real deal from bullshit artists like Flynn.
And oddly, a few of Trump’s billionaire friends are people of substance.
Kay
They also have to let go of the idea that what made some people see thru Trump was “being smart” or “being educated”.
He’s surrounded by people with plenty of formal education. What they lack isn’t formal education. They lack an ability to judge character and if that depended on education well-educated people would never get played and they do get played, all the time.
I said during the campaign that I wouldn’t hire Trump to resurface my driveway and I wouldn’t need his resume to figure that out. You just don’t hire people who lie constantly. They ALSO won’t have a good track record as a driveway resurfacer but the lying prevented the good track record. One excluded the other.
How can anyone “make a deal” with him? He lies constantly. His word is shit.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator: Actual billionaires hold him in nothing but contempt.
Iowa Old Lady
Mr IOL is watching Chuck Todd and Corey Lewandowski is on there sliming Richard Cordray and saying he should be fired.
Baud
I assume this is referring to the incest.
MattF
@VOR: Oh, Envy is easy– e.g., Trump was (and is) deeply envious of the elite in NYC. Gluttony, not so obvious. Also, I think his ‘Lust’ is more due to Envy and Greed than sexual desire.
NotMax
If social security is the third rail of politics, health care is now the catenary.
SiubhanDuinne
@Another Scott:
Yes, I see, and I learned a very long time ago to take nothing for granted, to refrain from counting unhatched chickens, that it ain’t over til it’s over, and all that wise advice.
I possibly paid more attention to the linked comment….
….than to Andy’s own comment.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@debbie:
He’s simply the laziest fuck that ever walked.
JPL
What are the odds that the DOJ announces a special council next week for Clinton’s emails?
Trump desperately wants a win, and even though Sessions can make it happen, Rosenstein appears to like his job.
Kay
The part I can’t figure out about the people he hires is how his bullshit is so public. Are they really flattered when he says they are the “best”? They know he said that about the people he’s replacing a month ago, right? I mean, I know it. I can read.
Can they not read? How is it even flattery? It’s just bullshit. He says everyone he hires is the “best” until he says they’re not.
They must think they’re special. So super-awesome that they really will be “the best people” – those other people Trump said were “the best people” were not.
Waratah
@OzarkHillbilly: I suppose it is too much to expect reality editorials from our news.
Mike in NC
King of Chaos Trump reminds me of the famous Bungee Boss cartoon by “Dilbert” creator (and glibertarian asshole) Scott Adams. Many of us have had to deal with such lunatics in our careers: if they didn’t leave in a hurry, we did.
Amir Khalid
@Brachiator:
Sanders isn’t a party joiner by nature; nor is he highly thought of in Congress as a collaborator. It seems to have left him with little sense of legislative process and tactics — a serious failing in one who has spent something like thirty years there.
MattF
@Kay: My theory is that the people involved want to get to the top of that greasy pole and are willing to endure whatever they have to in order to get there.
OzarkHillbilly
@VOR:
Not Putin, Obama. He envies the respect Obama receives everywhere he goes, his intelligence, his money (unlike trump, Obama actually earned his), his rags to riches, his ability to elevate those around him, etc etc ad nauseum.
OzarkHillbilly
@Brachiator:
You ever hear them flapping their gums, talking about what they are going to do to anyone who crosses them? No.
Mr Stagger Lee
The late Leona Helmsley had a hilarious and brutal take on the Donald in a Playboy Interview,
Classic quote
Another one
There were some others ones just as good.
WereBear
I see the case of Edwards as someone like this who did fade in the stretch.
Kay
@MattF:
Which is why they’re bad people, and so we go around and around again.
The “bad people” problem keeps cropping up and it will continue to crop up. It’s like saying “Trump’s bad hires would be good hires if they weren’t bad people”.
Kelly Anne Conway “needed a shower” after stumping for Trump but there she is! She must shower a lot!
Baud
@Brachiator:
Long piece about single payer by NBC News.
nbcnews.com/storyline/democrats-vs-trump/government-run-health-care-democrats-new-litmus-test-n78758…
Yarrow
@SiubhanDuinne: Posted this yesterday re: where the Kill People bill stands:
MattF
@SiubhanDuinne: Had not known that reconcilation was a one-shot deal. That’s important!
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Is Shelley Levene the character played by Jack Lemmon in the film?
IMDB check: yep.
I didn’t watch the film all the way through, couldn’t stand it. I remember that character, he was a desperate aging salesman trying to close one more big deal. But the thing was, everybody in the movie was reprehensible. They were a boilerplate operation trying to talk people into condos they couldn’t afford, trying to lock people into contracts they couldn’t get out of. If Levene had succeeded (as I said, never finished it), he would just be a SUCCESSFUL slimeball instead of a failed slimeball.
I’m sure I’ll make enemies with this, but I’ve never understood the attraction of this play/film. And I love Mamet and his brand of cynicism in most things (State and Main is a masterpiece). Actors seem to love Glengarry, but actors always love the slimeballs. I guess those personas give them room to play. I just don’t get the whole “let’s spend two hours with a bunch of terrible people” genre of entertainment. Most recent one I remember was August, Osage County. Meryl Streep seemed to be having a blast playing it, and I could appreciate that, smile at her having fun. But could still live without seeing it.
woodrowfan
some of the comments are a hoot. take some popcorn and root for injuries on both sides…
OzarkHillbilly
@SiubhanDuinne:
And just too cool. Thank you, John McCain. Words I never thought I would utter.
scottinnj
This Trump Administration is so terminally ill it won’t be long until Newt Gingrich divorces it.
schrodingers_cat
@Iowa Old Lady: BS did catch the fancy of many. His ideas such as they were, were dated and not well thought out.
Brachiator
@Villago Delenda Est: There are a few rich folk who like Trump. From a recent news story.
Of course, this guy is an idiot when it comes to judging Trump’s merits.
There’s a couple of other rich people that reporters go to. But yeah, there are also others who think little of Trump. But I’ve also noted the hypocrisy here. There are rich people who claim to hate Trump but who are eager to kiss his ass and party with him in the Hamptons, and invite him to all their social events, both before he became president and now that he is even more powerful.
The only difference between old money and new money is that old money has been stinking longer.
OzarkHillbilly
@Yarrow: There appears to be some disagreement among people who should know about these things. Hopefully someone will sort it out for the rest of us soon.
WereBear
@SiubhanDuinne: From your quoted article:
True. And I am astonished and grateful and puzzled. Selflessness has not been a prominent part of the man’s character.
Heck, even if it was petulance, it was in the service of Good.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Kay: None of this is normal and we need to remember that. It’s hard when so many people have become inured to it and (seem to?) just accept it as if it were acceptable.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I don’t think I”ve ever seen Nancy Smash earn her nickname so forcefully. Charm, bully, abandon, sue. I mean…. Dayum. If this happened yesterday afternoon, I can’t believe the Ape hasn’t fired off a stream of tweets yet.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That’s awesome.
Villago Delenda Est
@JPL:
I see what you did there!
Immanentize
@debbie: I was in upper.admin at my University for over three years. In that time I served under three Provosts, three presidents and two General Counsel as well as a whole group of other administrators. When I finally asked to be returned to the faculty, my go-to comment when asked why was: “I am not change adverse in the least. In fact I am pro-change! I am chaos adverse. “
schrodingers_cat
@Patricia Kayden: Indeed, T is no aberration but a logical conclusion of the insanity that calls itself movement conservatism.
zhena gogolia
@WereBear:
Love the ending.
OzarkHillbilly
@scottinnj: Heh.
debbie
@Villago Delenda Est: @Villago Delenda Est:
Not just health care. Everything. They have no certain plan for anything. The GOP has relied solely on slogans and catch phrases. They are empty suits with empty promises. If nothing else, Trump has pulled back the curtain on their fakeries.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mike in NC: Donald loves chaos because it offers him cover to steal.
The Thin Black Duke
@MattF: My wife (a fellow New Yorker) respectfully disagrees. Trump isn’t Queens; he’s Staten Island.
zhena gogolia
@artem1s:
I hear ya.
Villago Delenda Est
@debbie: They’ve been the party of nothing but obstruction for the past 8 years. They have no clue as to how to govern. All the Republicans who knew how to govern are dead, or have been purged by the teabaggers.
MomSense
@Kay:
This is what authoritarian power grabs are like. They blast you with a firehouse of scandals so that you can never catch your breath. I think I sort of lost count at about a dozen impeachable offenses – some ongoing like the multiple violations of the Emoluments clause.
debbie
@Immanentize:
Did they move you back where you wanted?
In one single year, there were 6 division heads (one served twice) and I had five different supervisors.
Villago Delenda Est
@The Thin Black Duke: Peter Parker is Queens. Steve Rogers is Brooklyn. Tony Stark is Manhattan.
Donald Trump? Yup, Staten Island.
Yarrow
@OzarkHillbilly: Andy Slavitt in this tweet is responding to someone asking about the reddit post linked above claiming the bill is dead. The person is asking if it’s true.
I think we have to be extremely vigilant. It’s like one of those horror movies. The call is coming from inside the house, the bill’s not dead yet and there are endless sequels.
debbie
@The Thin Black Duke:
No difference between the two. SI: Eric Gardner. Queens: Howard Beach. No difference.
OzarkHillbilly
@Yarrow: It will never be dead dead as long as the revanchist Republicans continue to exist..
RepubAnon
@WereBear: Yes, indeed – when reality conflicts with the RepubliCult’s basic premises, blame a scapegoat and repeat the same behavior in the hope of a different outcome.
Hey, as long as one can fool 50% +1 of the folks allowed to vote in your gerrymandered districts, you retain power – and that’s the point, right?
Brachiator
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Great speeches and a setup that provides for great acting. And the play gets to the heart of a certain desperation in American culture that is both hated and celebrated. No surprise that some of the greatest plays and movies in American culture are about salesmen of one type or another. Death of a Salesman. Elmer Gantry. Glengarry Glen Ross. The Music Man.
And if you are a blonde make actor, you have got to take a stand at the closest thing to an American Hamlet, The Great Gatsby, about a man who tries to reinvent himself, the better to sell himself to upper class society.
And works about terrible people succeed when you know what they want and are intensely curious to see whether they will get it. Richard III audaciously addresses the audience. He never seeks your approval or forgiveness. But he is a hoot to watch, and none of the other characters in the play are very good or noble.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Yarrow: vigilance and skepticism are absolutely still required, but I”m just thinking… I think Collins is gone for good, with her eye on the ME gov’ship, and their attempted bullying of Murkowski may have lost her forever. There’s been some speculation that McCain killed the last vote as a favor to a whole bunch of people who voted for it hoping it would fail– I think somebody here said Chuck Todd said that could’ve been as many as ten? I would never underestimate McConnell backed by just about every billionaire in the country, but they’re gonna have a damn hard time of it.
Gotta take the optimism where I can find it.
Gelfling 545
@Brachiator: She’d have done better to have married someone who couldn’t be taken in by her father’s con.
Patricia Kayden
@JPL: Clinton’s emails and involvement in Benghazi have been investigated numerous times. Nothing new is to be found out so I don’t see what a special counsel would accomplish. Bugging the Clintons is not a winning strategy when your White House is in meltdown mode and when your Congress can’t govern. It’s just a minor diversion to please your stupid supporters and when it ends with another nothingburger, they’ll just be even more frustrated as your failures continue piling up. .
pamelabrown53
I see there’s a new post up. Almost sorry to see it so soon. I have loved reading all the comments on this thread. So many comments deserve a thumbs up!
MattF
@The Thin Black Duke: I can see that.
Gelfling 545
@SiubhanDuinne: And why people who don’t want to vote for experienced politicians so often end up disappointed.
Yarrow
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I tend to agree, but am keeping a close eye. That was me who said that about Chuck Todd. He said that McCain “took one for the team” with his vote and there were about a dozen Republicans who didn’t want it to pass. He was providing them cover.
NotMax
@The Thin Black Duke
Queens is Archie Bunker, Staten Island is Adolf’s bunker.
Frankensteinbeck
@Another Scott:
Officially, technically, it still exists. McConnell has three hard no votes against any deathcare bill he could offer, and a bunch of waverers who don’t want it to happen and are pissed at him for forcing them to take votes. He has been publicly humiliated, and officially declared defeat.
ACA repeal is dead, at the very least until the next congress. Probably permanently.
@Iowa Old Lady:
Sanders is the Democratic version of Trump: No facts, no plan, not competent, the angry id of the white liberal. He is the closest you can get to Trump while being compatible with Democratic values. He got his ass shot down.
Patricia Kayden
@Yarrow: Hopefully, the AHCA will continue to float over the Senate like a bloated ghost until November 2018 when our side re-takes the Senate. Democratic Senators running for office should put out ads denouncing the AHCA and promising that they will work to fix the ACA and not to destroy it. Given the recent popularity of the ACA, that should be a winning strategy now that Republicans have made it clear that they are more interested in tax cuts for the rich than healthcare for the average American.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Hey! I’ve had that same thought. A lot of his on-stage schtick is/was very latter day Joan Rivers, more gagging noises and hammy retching than actual jokes. And I believe they were “friends”, in the sense that she was on his reality show more than once with that sad daughter of hers, and they were both obsessed with staying on TV.
pamelabrown53
@Brachiator: @115.
Love your response to Ceci…I think it’s one of the most astute comments you’ve ever written, (IMHO, of course).
debbie
@Patricia Kayden:
GOP as Scrooge. Love it!
Brachiator
@Baud:
Thanks. I like that the article talks about different approaches to universal health care in different countries and is honest about the costs.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Frankensteinbeck: Like Perot before them, trump and Sanders both appealed to some deeply held belief in the American psyche that politics should be easy if its weren’t for some vaguely understood idea of corruption or, for the would-be sophisticates with their NPR tote-bags, “partisan bickering”. If you just look at health care, trump promised “something terrific” that would “take care of everybody” and cost a lot less and it’s going to be so easy, you won’t believe it, believe me. Sanders’ line is still, I think that there’s “no reason” we can’t have single payer health care, because like so many of his internet devotees, he thinks that actual voters are just a distraction used by corrupt Democrats to not do what he thinks we should.
Immanentize
@The Thin Black Duke: so true. There is a great poem about Brooklyn by ???? (Maybe Nikki Giovanni??) That I remember ending with
“Stop treating us like we are from Staten Island.”
I would love to find that poem again.
Patricia Kayden
@FlipYrWhig: I’m not sure what is meant by “manly” or “masculine” though. Those are very subjective terms. Trump appears to be a macho, sexist man who revels in sexual aggression (or at least he loves boasting about this). Noonan is so annoying that I wouldn’t be surprised if she is trying to insult Trump by decrying his (perceived lack of) masculinity.
Whatever his masculinity or manliness, Trump is impulsive, lacking in self awareness, bigoted, non-curious, and prone to temper tantrums. That’s the real problem.
rikyrah
@Another Scott:
Yes, and we will fight them.
Brachiator
@pamelabrown53:
Wow. Thank you very much for the kind words.
Immanentize
@debbie: Yes, I’m a tenured professor…. Woot!!
rikyrah
@Brachiator:
I disagree. She married a man just as crooked as her father.
Patricia Kayden
@Kay:
This a million times. In one week, he gave speeches to the Boy Scouts and a police organization, only to have leaders of those groups come out and apologize for his awful, inappropriate remarks. I don’t recall this ever happening to President Obama or even the horrendous 43rd President.
MattF
@Patricia Kayden: I have a strong suspicion that, for Noonan, ‘manliness’ is defined by Ronald Reagan.
A Ghost to Most
tRump is a symptom; “conservatism” is the disease. Luckily, the symptom is throwing light on the disease.
Let’s hope the patient gets treatment before it is too late.
rikyrah
@Iowa Old Lady:
Can’t fire him. He can only quit.
rikyrah
@Yarrow:
We gotta run out the clock on these muthaphuckas
Adria McDowell
@Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.: As someone who grew up in the Borscht Belt, I promise you no one I grew up with/around was ever as big an asshole as Donald Trump. I promise.
I really, really hate this man.
NobodySpecial
Eh, the article would be much more impressive had it come from folks who never voted for or supported him, and who didn’t secretly lust for all his objectives.
NotMax
@Patricia Kayden
Dubya was forced to rescind those notorious 16 words in the State of the Union address.
The only thing Dolt 45 has ever rescinded are marriage vows.
Iowa Old Lady
@Patricia Kayden: You’ll notice the Rs passed their “investigate Clinton” suggestion to the FBI rather than holding more hearings themselves. This tells me they don’t think the public will tune in excitedly for hearings.
Yarrow
@rikyrah: We sure do. Topher Spiro’s twitter feed has links to people thanking Collins, Murkowski and McCain. Someone flew a plane with a banner thanking Murkowski! Click through for the picture
Murkowski was welcomed home at the airport, people put up signs along the road thanking McCain, Collins was applauded at the airport. I hope that sort of thing strengthens their resolve. I called their offices on Friday but could only get through to a staffer in Collins’ Bangor office. I broke down in tears telling the intern to please thank the Senator for her vote.
Frankensteinbeck
It’s worth noting on the ACHA thing that McConnell has three hard ‘no’ votes that don’t include McCain against anything that slashes Medicaid. No Medicaid cuts, no tax cuts. Without either to try for, why put his hand under the hammer again?
WereBear
He’s taken the “plausible” out of “deniability.”
Villago Delenda Est
@Patricia Kayden: As long as the hate is kept at a fever pitch against the browns and the blahs, it’s all good, from the resentful trumpanzee standpoint.
Yutsano
@rikyrah: One thing that helps: Grandpa Walnuts won’t be back until after recess. If he comes back.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Yarrow: there was a long twitter thread on Murkowski the other day, and I can’t vouch for the accuracy of it, but the gist was that Murkowski won her famous write-in victory over the Tea Bagger who beat her in the GOP primary on the strength of indies and Dems who broke for her, including large portions of the Native communities. I don’t know anything about Alaska politics, but I’m guessing given the small population and her and her family’s long history in politics she has personal relationships and an understanding of her voters that will trump, so to speak, anything the Rough Beast or even the Mercers can throw at her.
The flip side of that, I guess, is that she might be persuadable in exchange for a big chunk of cash to protect her constituents.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Patricia Kayden: You know, when there’s no good new tunes out, the DJ has to go back and play the old standards.
Villago Delenda Est
@MattF: Knock me over with a feather!
James Powell
@Patricia Kayden:
But it’s worked for them for so long. And the Beltway courtiers and the New York Times still hate the Clintons so they will cooperate and amplify every slander and lie told about them. Also, and maybe more important, no new Democratic “enemy” has emerged, so they have to stick with the ones that their dullard base voters are familiar with.
Villago Delenda Est
@Yutsano: That may well have been his last act as a Senator. The cancer he has is aggressive.
If this is the case, he’s secured a legacy despite picking Our Sarah as a running mate.
pamelabrown53
@Brachiator: @134.
de nada :-).
tybee
@scottinnj: dayyum :)
Yarrow
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The twitter thread you saw is correct. She won the write-in candidate as an Independent against the Tea Party guy who won the Republican primary. That was during the height of the Tea Party and Sarah Palin’s influence. Palin had supported the Tea Party guy who won (forget his name now) and screwed over Murkowski. Murkowski already detested Palin, so that didn’t help. Murkowski managed to cobble together eough support from Independents, Dems and some horrified Republicans to win. The Alaskan Native community was instrumental in her win.
I think given her family’s long political history in Alaska, Murkowski knows if she serves them she can keep her Senate seat for life. It’ll be a hard sell to get her to screw over her constituents too much. Tossing money at her could work, though. The low price of oil has hurt the Alaskan economy and I think there were even some noises made about possibly dipping into the Alaska Permanent Fund for something. It’s a third rail of Alaskan politics – you do not mess with the Permanent Fund. So given that, I wonder if money could work now more than when the oil prices were higher a few years ago.
SiubhanDuinne
@scottinnj:
That’s it, everybody else can go home now.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MattF: @Villago Delenda Est: Ronald Reagan had a shoe that was more man that trump will ever be, or that Peggy Noonan could ever dream of
(deep Dolphin Queen history, there– she once wrote a sweaty love letter to Ronald Reagan’s brogan, and published it as a column. She is considered one of the smartest people on Chuck Todd’s Xmas card list)
Adria McDowell
@The Thin Black Duke: The only good things to come out of Staten Island: garbage barges and the Wu-Tang Clan.
James Powell
@MattF:
Worse, it’s the characters that Reagan and John Wayne played in movies.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Heh. Forgot all about that part of it.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Brachiator: Bernie’s actually helping shift the Overton Window leftward on Heath Care.
Ruckus
@Barbara:
Noticing a trend here?
Conservatives can do the verbal/written thing, but actual work or logical thought? No fucking way. And that verbal/written thing is most often just a regurgitation of something else, nothing original.
Which means of course that most often the verbal writing thing is bullshit. In this particular case it doesn’t take work or logical thought to create the verbal/written thing, just anything close to reasonable observation and not swallowing someone else’s bullshit. Every conservative I know has no concept of actual thought about anything to do with politics, they just regurgitate what they’ve heard. If and this is a huge if, they actually listen and think, they can and often do change their minds. It takes time and effort because they aren’t used to evidence, reality or thinking.
JDM
@Snarki, child of Loki:
Except that Moe Howard had money sense. Not only for himself, but he was the reason Larry Fine had retirement money.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I did not know that. Little things like that about old show biz types fascinate me for some reason.
If you know about the Stooges, was it Curly who thought Lou Costello stole his shtick, or the other way round?
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Bravo. One of the best unkempt secrets of humanity.
I would add that there is an additional bit and that is “And new money wants desperately to become old money, to remove that whiff of incivility of theft.”
Frankensteinbeck
@Villago Delenda Est:
Almost certainly a factor in his decision making.
Kathleen
@schrodingers_cat: He’s also a symptom, not a cause. Which is the point both you and @Barbara have made.
Ruckus
@Patricia Kayden:
The people bankrolling conservative politicians do not want leaders, they want followers or incompetents who will listen. And do as they are told. They didn’t pay all that money for great thinkers or problem solvers, they paid it to have all those horrendous tax rates lowered to zero.
Chris
A few points:
This makes him basically the same as George W. Bush, another poor businessman who fucked up everything he touched and spent a career failing upwards on the strength of a family name and the ties among important people that it implied. And they’re not the first two Republicans politicians who’ve been like this. Historically, the National Review has preferred to fluff these people’s business credentials and accused those of us who pointed out that they were bogus of being jealous socialists. It’s a little late for second thoughts.
This, also, perfectly describes Reagan and Bush, not to mention Cheney and Wolfowitz and God knows how many others, draft-dodging chickenhawks full of meaningless posturing that you kept telling us was Great Leadership. It’s a little late for second thoughts.
You’ve been telling us for over fifty years that anyone who thinks “being smart” is an asset in politics is an ivory-tower fancy-pants elitist intellectual, and that we should get rid of all these people in favor of people who follow their guts. It’s a little late for second thoughts.
“Never apologize, it’s a sign of weakness” has also been a mantra on the right for as long as I can remember. It came out very loudly, to take one example, when Obama was accused of apologizing for America in the wake of its worst and bloodiest foreign policy disaster since Vietnam. It’s a little late for second thoughts.
Kathleen
@Yarrow: Come to think of it, Chucky looks like McTurtle.
youtube.com/watch?v=WcSLuxBdYJ8
Chucky & McTurds also give off same vibe.
artem1s
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
a lot of people were criticizing Shumer for waiving off the Dems applause and taking a victory lap afterward. I think he understands exactly how many Rthuglican Senators were in that group that were saved by McCain and exactly who they are. I think he wants to keep them in his back pocket the next time Zombie Kill the People Bill resurfaces. We need to keep them safe until the 2018 midterms or until the GOP finally figures out that they are deep into Stockholm syndrome with Dolt45 and it’s time to come out of the closet. Because the next vote is going to be on Social Security or Medicare vouchers or some such ZEGS bullshit. And we will need another one of them to fall on their swords at the last minute as long as the deciderer vote is being cast by Dence. Fist pumping, victory keggers, and Mission Accomplished banners only make you look stoopid when you celebrate the victory and lose the war.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Well said. Right wingers aren’t the only ones who want the self-indulgence of political theatre. I don’t mean the actual legislators who’ve been sweating at this for months who reacted viscerally to what was on some level a surprise and a huge relief, but the people whose primary interest in politics often seems to be making their rightwing family members as angry as they (we) are.
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
People who actually observed saw that he is a 1/2 in wide and a 1/4 in deep. He’s a one hit wonder, little talent and no substance but who can at least strum cords.
Ruckus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Didn’t turtle offer her that? And she passed.
She stood up for her constituents and for the rest of the nation.
Thinking more about something I wrote yesterday, she is, at least currently, what a national office holder should be. I think Collins and McCain had personal motives, she didn’t. Yes she’s pretty safe election wise but that usually comes from either actually doing the job or being totally corrupt. She seems to have got to this point honestly.
Chris
@debbie:
I think it’s a simple matter of people who’ve been privileged and sheltered their entire life imagining that they’d do well out of the chaos.
There are also people who genuinely thrive on chaos and don’t care that most others don’t, but that’s not where the majority is. The majority is elsewhere.
germy
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I remember seeing a documentary about the Stooges. Moe was the brother with a head for numbers. He prepared Curly’s tax returns for him.
Curly was in the movies long before Lou Costello. I never knew of any rivalry, though. Curly actually got his “Woo Woo” from the comedian Hugh Herbert. No stealing, just being an influence.
father pussbucket
@Snarki, child of Loki:
If only Trump had read Three Stooges as well as Two Corinthians.
HRA
Great post MM! Kudos to all the comment persons, too!
Wapiti
@Yarrow:
I think, though, that she wouldn’t cave just to money tossed at her. You’d have to toss money to her constituents, in which case they’re not getting screwed over as badly.
Barbara
@Brachiator: This was actually a really good summary of the options and trade offs involved. I am pleasantly surprised.
George
@debbie: I work in a federal land management agency that has been undergoing budget cuts and much uncertainty for over a decade. The upper management person you describe could just as easily fit in with the middle- to upper-level management in my agency. Either they are so ruthless that they are willing to ramp up the level of chaos because they feel doing so will help their careers advance, or they have been promoted so far beyond their level of competence that they have no idea of simple things, such as cause and effect.
Chris
@Iowa Old Lady:
No.
First, because the Democratic base isn’t willing to give its politicians the complete pass on policy and competence that the Republican base is. Even as little as I think of Bernie Sanders, his half-assed “let’s break up the banks,” “let’s make college free for everyone” and “let’s have single-payer” sayings were still more of a solid grasp of policy than most of the Republican candidates had. (And Sanders lost).
Second, even if they were, the external environment wouldn’t be as forgiving of Democratic candidates like this as they are of Republican ones. The media would never have covered for a Democrat that was even close to Trump’s level of incompetence the way they did for Trump for all of 2016 (I never believed all the “the media just wants a horse race” comments; there was more to it than that). Being a Democrat in American politics is another instance of “you have to be twice as good to get half as much” (and that goes double if you’re female or nonwhite).
ETA: I’m not actually sure that helps you “articulate why,” because both of those are points that no one who’s not already a Democrat would concede to you, but that’s why, IMHO.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Nothing new under the comedy sun, I guess. I forger which old legend it was (Shelly Berman? Shecky Green?) who more or less said Bob Newhart stole the whole one-sided telephone call bit from him. There was a book that came about a couple years ago, about the comics of that age, vaudeville through the fifties/sixties era when they all had a TV show at least for a few weeks in summer, that had a lot of interesting info but was so badly organized I gave up on it.
ETA: Made a google and it looks like Berman had a telephone bit, and both Shelly and Shecky are still alive at 90-something
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
It’s inherent in their ideology. Republicans are the people who firmly and devoutly believe that government either Can Not Work or Should Not Work. It doesn’t even occur to them that they’re supposed to govern. As far as they’re concerned, “fixing the nation’s problems” consists of dismantling the thing they’ve been entrusted with, and punting every problem to their friends in the private sector and telling everyone how they, not you, will fix them.
(The only possible exception being the military, where instead of being nihilists who don’t believe they have anything to do, they become merely Soviet-style ideologues trying to hammer square pegs into round holes long after it’s been proven that their shtick doesn’t work. But even there, privatization’s a thing. It went into overdrive during the Bush years).
Chris
@James Powell:
There seems to’ve been some point in the late twentieth century, when our traditional Man On A White Horse Syndrome changed. Traditionally, it meant electing successful generals, or at least war veterans, to the White House (Washington, Jackson, Grant, Roosevelt, Eisenhower). Nowadays, it means taking people who play such people on TV, even and especially if they were draft-dodgers or at least had never been anywhere close to a war zone.
Turning point was probably 1980, when the American electorate channel-surfed past two ex-military guys, one of them an actual war veteran (George H. W. Bush in the primary and Jimmy Carter in the general) to elect a dimwitted movie star who’d spent his war years in Hollywood but thought that he’d liberated Auschwitz. Bush and Trump are following in those footsteps. It’s funny: hagiography for the military is probably the highest now that it’s ever been, but at the same time, being an actual veteran doesn’t carry much currency in politics anymore, no matter what side of the aisle (McCain, Kerry) you’re on.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
It’s certainly been true at the presidential level. Don’t forget Bob Dole and (while not a hero) Colin Powell run out of the Bush White House by Cheney and peace-time veteran Rumsfeld. But I think the recent special election in KS the guy who stunned everyone did so because he was a vet. And Jason Kander out-performed HRC in Missouri by seven points. Okay, those are both losses, but I don’t think the electoral appeal of vets has completely disappeared, I think it’s given Tammy Duckworth a boost. I know my right-leaning cousin in Illinois, who hasn’t worn a uniform since the Cub Scouts, voted for her because of her service.
Steeplejack
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That sounds a little whiny. Like: “I invented the knock-knock joke, therefore nobody else can ever tell a knock-knock joke.” It would be different if he was saying that Newhart stole actual content.
germy
@Steeplejack: Shelly Berman wasn’t even the first to do a one-sided phone call bit. A lady in the UK was doing it a few decades before him. There’s nothing new under the sun in comedy.
Newhart was more likable than Berman. It’s possible that had something to do with his success.
Ruckus
@Chris:
I think it’s not quite as simple as that. In your first graph you discuss military people who were at a time when relatively huge conflicts were won by the military and there were no real statesmen (yes being gender specific for an obvious reason) that weren’t military.
Your second graph makes things too simple, not taking into account that Vietnam struck a nerve with most of the population. Some because we lost a war that we paid lots of lives to win and some because they were so tired and fed up with anything to do with the military after losing. Reagan was seen as a winner and not as a military loser. Yes Bush and Carter were vets of WWII but I feel that their military service was almost a black cloud by then. In every instance since we’ve chosen draft dodgers, or people who weren’t the right age during a war, hard as that is to believe, as we always are at war somewhere. There is a segment of the population that admires military people enough to want to elect them. But there seems to be a much larger segment that doesn’t. I think it shows that we are growing as a country, that we no longer need to look to generals as leaders but as what they are, military leaders. I’m also sure it’s not a conscious decision.
Steeplejack
@germy:
Or the content and delivery were better. Newhart’s deadpan style was unmatched.
Chris
@Ruckus:
I’d like to believe that “we’re growing as a country,” but as near as I can tell, the right-wing-authoritarian reflex that used to cause people to rally around victorious generals is still there. It’s just that instead of being applied to victorious generals, it’s now applied to posers like Reagan, Bush, and Trump.
Ruckus
@Chris:
Hey, I didn’t say we were growing reasonably or properly. Better than not. It would be better if we were growing up, maturing, rather than just growing but still it is possible. And as countries go we are basically teenagers. That is not always a good time, even if there is rapid and lots of growth. We are teenagers with money as well. We survived WWII a lot better than a lot of our allies and this is still affecting our politics. We should have gotten over it but teens don’t do that all that well. I see that coming to an end soon. The rest of the world has basically caught up to us and many countries have passed us by in many ways. But you don’t hear about that here, you have to look at the world to see it, your vision can’t stop at the borders, can’t be limited by your political myopia.
ETA I remember sitting next to a couple on a plane a number of years ago. She was sort of reading rush limpdick’s latest book, more like using it as a prop for all to see and gushing over the intellect she found. Being a better person I didn’t listen to the urge to take that 2 in thick book and use it to pound some sense into both of them. Besides I don’t like standing ovations all that much.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Ruckus: when I looked the first house I bought in the late nineties, they had both of Limbaugh’s books on the shelves, his complete works at the time, IIRC. On the wall next to the bookshelves were a couple of those frames where you put photos in different round and square holes. One was their wedding photos, the other was the husband posing with his red IIRC Camaro, collar popped in every shot.
they also left paint cans in the garage
Applejinx
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Condos?!? You’re giving them far too much credit. These are guys selling Florida swampland. They are straight up criminals. The point doesn’t register with big business aspirational types, but I thought it was pretty clear that the guys were straight up sharks. The reason they absolutely have to get the money deposited and signatures on ‘contracts’ is because there’s literally nothing there but fancy talk and promises. There are no condos of any sort. It’s ‘LAND’, Florida swampland divvied up into worthless chunks with fancy names on it.
J R in WV
@Patricia Kayden:
I would love to have a beer with Michelle Obama, or even Barack Obama. I think he enjoys a hoppy ale judging from his experience with Henry Louis Gates and the anonymous police officer…. I do too.