Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

It is not hopeless, and we are not helpless.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Also, are you sure you want people to rate your comments?

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Stand up, dammit!

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Thursday Morning Open Thread: The ‘Comfort’ of Long Practice

Thursday Morning Open Thread: The ‘Comfort’ of Long Practice

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Not, it would seem, a hoax.

***********
While we’re all wondering when the unthinkable became so damned mundane, here’s an amazing story from the Washington Post:

Like any good student with a sensitive question, Harold Hering approached his teacher after class, out of earshot from his classmates.

“How can I know,” he asked, “that an order I receive to launch my missiles came from a sane president?”

It was 1973. President Richard M. Nixon was seriously depressed about Watergate. Hering, an Air Force major who rescued downed pilots in Vietnam, was training to be a missileer — the guy who turns the keys to commence nuclear Armageddon.

“I assumed there had to be some sort of checks and balances so that one man couldn’t just on a whim order the launch of nuclear weapons,” Hering, now 81, told Radiolab in a remarkable interview earlier this year.

Hering was wrong. And decades later, so is anyone who thinks President Trump, having recently threatened “fire and fury” for North Korea, can’t order a nuclear attack anytime he darn well pleases, even from a fairway bunker on the golf course.

Just ask Hering.

Back in 1973, the drama that followed Hering’s question did not, as he hoped, fundamentally alter the fate of the world, but it certainly reshaped his life. Forced to retire, Hering took up a career with a less dangerous set of keys: long-haul trucking…

All these years later, Hering does not regret asking the forbidden question. After driving trucks, he became an addiction counselor to homeless people at the Salvation Army. He lives in Indiana. He still worries.

“It bothers me immensely that the only area there is not a check and balance is the one that could literally result in the end of the world,” he told Radiolab. “That seems strange to me.”…

And yet!… We are still here, somehow; and Mr. Hering seems to have had a good life, helping other people. Sometimes the minion enables the monster; sometimes the minion makes the better choice.
***********

Apart from meditating upon the unthinkable, what’s on the agenda for the day?

Reader Interactions

194Comments

  1. 1.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Because of the bizarre rules of nuclear deterrence, to have a check on someone launching the missiles undermines the entire MAD scenario. So one person can decide to destroy the world. We’ve always assumed that no one would ever think seriously about launching the missiles. Then you get Un and Donald together, two emotional children, and holy shit we’ve got a problem here.

  5. 5.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    FBI just broke down my door – SHIT!

    Nobody knocks anymore.

    They’re seizing everything – they’re even taking the cats. ?

  8. 8.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    Even the liberal Sean Hannity:

    Sean Hannity ✔ @seanhannity

    . @SenateMajLdr No Senator, YOU are a WEAK, SPINELESS leader who does not keep his word and you need to Retire!

    2:30 AM – Aug 9, 2017

    2,333 Replies
    6,053 Retweets

    If a Democratic President and Majority Leader were publicly trashing each other we’d be inundated with 17,000 articles on Dems in Disarray. But, IOKIYAR

  10. 10.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    Communications Director:

    Anthony Scaramucci‏ @Scaramucci

    .@RyanLizza is the Linda Tripp of 2017. People know. And he is up at night not being able to live with himself.

    5:46 PM – 9 Aug 2017

    4,164 replies 1,382 retweets 4,021 likes

    Jesse B @MacEnvy

    I think he’s saying he blew Trump.

    5:54 PM – Aug 9, 2017

    20 Replies
    24 Retweets
    292 Favorites

  11. 11.

    OzarkHillbilly

    21 re-imaginings of The New Colossus

    Making America Grating Again

    Givemeyourdictators,yourpoorpollutersyearning
    nottoworryifpeoplebreathefree,thegropable(“tens”
    only,ofcourse)womenofyourteemingbeautycontests
    andshores,sendthese,theRussianoligarchs,totakeadvantage
    ofme,asIworshipmyreflectioninmyhotel’sgoldendoor.
    — Bob Hicok

    Poem Dictated to Eric Trump at 3.46am After a Marathon Video Binge of Twilight and its Two Sequels

    “Iwilldissectyourheartandlungs,immigrant,
    Removetheirmassesandeatthem,
    Awretchedmeal.Yet,Iteem
    Withhealthinallweathers.Lookatme
    Ascendingmygoldenescalator!”–xoxoDonald.
    — Bhanu Kapli

    The New Colossus as Donald Trump

    Idon’tneedmoretiredorpoor
    Letthemuckymassescampontheirowndirtyshore
    Letthemstaywretched,itiswhattheydeserve
    Sendmeonlythosewhoknowhowtobow,scrapeandserve
    OrelseIwillclosethegatetomygoldenhotel
    — John Yau

  12. 12.

    Baud

    @David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:

    If a Democratic President and Majority Leader were publicly trashing each other we’d be inundated with 17,000 articles on Dems in Disarray. But, IOKIYAR

    To be fair, the liberal blogs would be in disarray with side taking if that happened. GOP voters don’t seem to care.

  15. 15.

    Schlemazel

    Love the photo, fake or not. When we lived in Florida we were at a sporting goods store buying track shoes for #1 son. Right next to the shoes was the gun case so we browsed while the shoe guy went back for the right size. There was a .25 auto in the case, not much bigger than the palm of my hand, I turned to my son & said “Look, just the right size for your book bag!” The gun clerk just about swallowed his tongue

  26. 26.

    CM

    There are 3 words to keep in mind today.

    The first 2 are “probable cause”.

    And the last 1 is “crime”.

  27. 27.

    Betty Cracker

    @Quinerly: Is Miller a secret billionaire or something? Otherwise, I can’t account for his success with the ladies. He’s so hideous, with that pathetic beard failing to disguise the fact that he has no chin. Sorry to start off the day with a “lookist” comment, but that dude is butt-ugly inside and out.

    @magurakurin: Took me a while to figure out what that was all about. I wish I still didn’t know.

  34. 34.

    Quinerly

    @Betty Cracker:
    I thought the same thing. But have we seen a good looking person affiliated with the Trump campaign? Think about it..ok, maybe Melania before all the Botox. Ugly bunch of people…inside and out.

  35. 35.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    That’s why Mattis had to say what he said. From everything I’ve read on the topic, nuclear deterrence is really about political, as opposed to military, decisions. Credibility and unified leadership must be unquestionable for deterrence to work.

    Tillerson actually lost the plot on this by his fumbling and attempts to walk it back – deterrence theory would require a unified expression, which Tillerson is too goddamned stupid to understand. Mattis has been to the Command and General Staff school – he gets what has to be done, no matter how distasteful. To him, the center must hold, and there will be a return to norms one day.

  37. 37.

    bystander

    @Quinerly:

    Page Six reported that Miller and Delgado went to a Las Vegas strip club with members of the media the night before Trump’s final debate against Hillary Clinton…

    I knew Clinton was somehow at fault.

  39. 39.

    magurakurin

    @OzarkHillbilly: It is the mark of the Brocialists Movement. A rose to symbolize socialism. They were out in major force last week attacking Kamala Harris and to a lesser extent Cory Booker and Deval Patrick. They are the vanguard shock troops of the revolution. but it is nothing more than the mark of a wanker.

  41. 41.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Schlemazel: I’m asking about the roses=fuckwit. Couldn’t care less about some numbnut who can’t keep his dick in his pants, SSDD.

  42. 42.

    debbie

    I was worried back then, and I’m worried now. Apparently there’s a plan in place for air strikes on the missile sites?

  44. 44.

    Quinerly

    @bystander:
    This story has been percolating for awhile. I actually remember reading some gossip about it after the election. Miller turned down jobs in the Administration over it. Couldn’t find mention if baby mama is married. I suspect not. I guess we can blame HRC for that too.?

  45. 45.

    Schlemazel

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    That comment will make no sense now. I realized they had a different thing and edited it but you were already typing your response I guess.

  46. 46.

    magurakurin

    @debbie: I’m pretty sure there is a plan in place for an airstrike on Buckingham Palace and Paris Disneyland, too. They have a plan for everything. I imagine there have been and are multiple plans for strikes on North Korea. All of them leading to a rather bad outcome, which is why none have ever been seriously considered…until white America elected a shit stained circus clown to be president.

  47. 47.

    Betty Cracker

    RE: the rose thing — on Twitter (and perhaps other platforms, I dunno), Never Hillary leftists include a rose emoji in their names. I don’t know why, but it’s become a symbol of a certain type of assholery on the left as surely as Pepe frogs have on the right.

    ETA: Never mind — see Satby at #38. Didn’t realize the rose was for a specific party (DSA); it must be coincidence that rose-tweeters are anti-Clinton scolds.

  49. 49.

    Quinerly

    @satby:
    Immigrant/refugee Goldens taking perfectly good homes from Goldens born in America. We need to find out Baud’s campaign position on this. Poco (disclaimer…he is part Golden) needs coordinated messaging on this issue. I was picking him up from school when the NPR/PRI story came on. He was very interested. We had a “driveway moment.” Well, sorta…we have no driveway but we listened at the curb, but I digress.??

  54. 54.

    Quinerly

    @Baud:
    Baud, your position on these hoards of immigrant/refugee/Muslim Golden Retrievers pouring in over the border taking jobs and homes from American born Golden puppies? Poco needs to have his messaging on point. He sees this as a big campaign issue. Baud/Poco2020!?

  56. 56.

    magurakurin

    @Baud: their thing now is that anyone who doesn’t support Sanders’ single payer proposal, schedule for release next month (right after his tax returns I guess), is a faux progressive and deserves a primary challenge or worse. Mindless fixation with the term “single payer,” and very little knowledge of genuine policy details or challenges. fuckwits.

  57. 57.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Schlemazel: Yeah, I’m running behind this morn, computer locked up, had to shut it down, then it decided to update for 20 mins, then Mama had to leave for work and I always take her stuff out so she doesn’t have to hump it all at once…

    Just disjointed this morn.

  61. 61.

    satby

    Last statistics gathered were 56% of dogs and 71% of cats in shelters are euthanized due to lack of placement, illness, injury, or aggression/behavior problems. Source

    We’ll never get to no euthanasia because it has a place in humane animal care, but euthanasia of adoptable pets due to overcrowding in shelters happens hundreds of times a day.

  64. 64.

    satby

    @Baud: The alternative of a slow horrible death from injuries or illness in the wild or by a vehicle is how we rationalize it, but it’s soul crushing to have to kill sweet, frightened animals just because humans can’t be bothered to be responsible.
    So yeah, I’m a wet blanket about happy stories of up to 1000 dogs imported by a breed rescue to place primarily because they don’t have purebred strays to place here. Shelters do get purebred strays, but most of the ones put down are mutts, which are the best dogs of all, IMHO.

  65. 65.

    evodevo

    @Baud: LOL most of them I know don’t even know who the Senate Majority Leader is. They’ve heard of Mitch because he is our Senator from Ky, but they wouldn’t be able to tell you anything else.

  66. 66.

    Cermet

    I am lost why so many are concerned that North Korea can hit the US with a nuke; hell, it is unlikely they can hit Alaska with a missile much less put a nuke on it that would work/reach any US territory. That said, hasn’t russia has many thousands of nukes (and they are orders of magnitude more powerful in explosive force) targeting the US for decades but no one is even concerned? As for a strike by the US, doubt we have any ICBM’s targeting NK; rather, I’d expect the only weapons are sub based cruise missiles (but they are rather long term to pre-position) or tactical nukes on bombers that could do the job. That delays things and gives people doing this a chance to raise an alarm (when planning for targeting occurs at high levels with the lower level people who do that stuff being told.)

  68. 68.

    Baud

    @satby: I only get rescue dogs. Not judging, but I have no particular interest in pure breeds over any other type of dog.

  69. 69.

    Quinerly

    @Baud:
    How about keep it simple and a bit vague? “All dogs need to be vetted, no matter where they come from.” Baud/Poco2020?

  76. 76.

    Quinerly

    @Baud:
    Thanks for catching the typo. You are the one who needs to be vetted. Are you up-to-date on your shots and tags? Baud/Poco2020?

  79. 79.

    germy

    @Baud: I don’t know if she’s signed on specifically. She said yesterday at a town hall: “You need to have that not-for-profit goal. Your goal is to help people not profit.”

    She said Republicans would accept granting Americans the option to buy in to Medicare at younger ages as part of a broader compromise to shore up insurance markets.

    It’s getting headlines here because of her town hall event. By the way, not a single audience member disagreed with her.

  80. 80.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: When we got the Woofmeister we were looking for a Lab mix and just happened to find a purebred in the local pound. In general, Lab/Lab mixes are the sweetest dogs.

  81. 81.

    Kay

    The Wal Mart story probably is employee error though. The Wal Mart here is understaffed to the point where it’s dirty. The store is weirdly dark too, for a grocery store. I have a friend who is convinced they made the stores darker to hide the fact that they’re skimping on cleaning. The outside of the building is a mess too- I don’t think they’ve put any money into maintaining it since they built it and the buildings were cheap shit when they slapped them together in the first place. I went into one in Muskegon, MI this summer and it was a dump. They have acres of check-outs and like three of them are staffed.

    The Wal Mart heirs should stop sucking all the profit out and handing it to far Right politicians. The stores – supposedly their business and the reason they’re so incredibly wealthy- need attention. Maybe turning a retail store into a platform for the lazy heirs right wing causes wasn’t such a great idea. If there’s some decent employer who is actually interested in running stores instead of running tax policy, now might be the time to knock out Wal Mart.

  82. 82.

    Baud

    @germy:

    . By the way, not a single audience member disagreed with her.

    Meaningless at this point.

    My concern isn’t that the single payer people will succeed. My concern is that they will fail and their failure will rip the party apart.

  83. 83.

    satby

    @Quinerly: I knew Poco was a rescue! The crowd here are great rescue supporters. I just am less enthused about “feel good” stories that are great for those specific animals but obscure the dark side of what the importation of those animals means.

  84. 84.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly: Right. I wouldn’t shun a rescue pure breed. The whole issue is simply irrelevant to me.

    ETA: You’ll remember what the reaction was over the loss of the public option.

  85. 85.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Eric S.: It happens. Race cars have cradles to catch them just in case. Imagine a drive shaft bouncing around a race track at 200 MPH..

  86. 86.

    magurakurin

    @germy: And neither do I. But that is an incremental step. You and I think it is wise and a positive step, but the roses will attack her for incrementalism if she doesn’t push single payer achieved in a single hammer stroke.

  87. 87.

    germy

    @Kay: Our local wallymart is bare bones. A giant structure built with all kinds of tax breaks. When they first opened it was brightly-lit and full of employees. They had senior citizen greeters. (I remember them because when I walked in with my mixed-race niece, the “greeter” pointedly turned his back on us.)

    The “greeters” are long gone. Most of the employees are gone. Half the lights are out. Of course, the place is filthy. The frozen food aisle has filth from the floor mopped into thin piles under the freezers. Only a few sarcastic cashiers. (Being replaced by self-checkout)

    I expect another ten years it might be converted to low-income housing, which would actually be more useful to the community.

  88. 88.

    Chyron HR

    @Betty Cracker:

    Didn’t realize the rose was for a specific party (DSA); it must be coincidence that rose-tweeters are anti-Clinton scolds.

    “The fragility of the rose represents the concern for the welfare of the downtrodden.” So, uh, how’s the past 6 months been working out for the “downtrodden”?

  89. 89.

    Quinerly

    @rikyrah:
    JL is one of the Beatle kitties abandoned in a box at a local vet. I had a choice, although George had already been adopted. Adopted him (gray tabby with lots of white, white nose that looks like cream on his face) because I thought Ivan needed a friend 5 plus years ago when left alone when first Leo and now Poco and I were in NC and NM. Ivan hates him with a passion. That’s why Ivan vacations at the beach…to get away from obnoxious and fat John Lennon. Very mixed-up household here. We juggle. John Lennon and Poco adore each other.

  90. 90.

    germy

    @magurakurin:

    the roses will attack her for incrementalism

    Plus they’ll attack her for her husband’s venture capitalist status. The idiots will be here on balloon-juice with new nyms, screaming “Haven’t you people learned anything from the hillary fiasco???!”

  93. 93.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay:

    The Wal Mart story probably is employee error though.

    I find “employee sabotage” or “practical joker” to be far more likely.

  94. 94.

    germy

    @Baud:

    Meaningless at this point.

    It’s upstate New York. A few years ago the teaparty brigade would have heckled the shit out of her.

    I think their absence means something good.

    I believe Karl Rove’s protege Elise Stephanik is holding “telephone” town halls. She wouldn’t dare the sort of open forum Gillibrand hosted yesterday.

  95. 95.

    Baud

    @germy: I think it means Trump is in the White House so they don’t care about heckling or aren’t getting paid to heckle anymore.

  99. 99.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Why can’t we do buy-in to Medicaid, sliding scale? I feel like Lefties are snobby about Medicaid. They focused so much on the exchanges in Obamacare and so little on the Medicaid expansion, and the Medicaid expansion was the real liberal victory. The “public option” on the exchanges would be tiny compared to Medicaid. The Medicaid expansion did something amazing here- it created competition for Medicaid patients. We have two new walk-in clinics. We essentially had a monopoly- a “medical group” who owned everything. Now there’s a nonprofit walk in clinic and a Toledo hospital storefront clinic. I feel like they think Medicaid is lesser and not good enough for the general public, but wouldn’t it be a better “public option” than Medicare? With Medicare you have to buy supplemental policies. They know those are private, right?

    I will never get over them dismissing Medicaid. The MOST LIBERAL part of Obamacare, by far, and they dismissed it as something for poor people. Obamacare was a no-brainer for liberals. Why do you support it? Because it vastly expands health care for lower income people. You don’t even have to “decide”- the answer is “yes”.

    I heard about a study yesterday where they’re positing that the Medicaid expansion saves on the Social Security disability program for low income people- there are two disability programs- one is income-based. Apparently a lot of them were applying for disability not because they can’t work at all but because they needed health care. It’s HUGE. I think it’s the biggest expansion of an entitilement in my lifetime.

  100. 100.

    germy

    @Quinerly: The very thing they feared when Obama was president. They truly believed Obama would appear one day in the rose garden with a leopard skin robe like an African dictator and declare himself Ruler For Life.

  102. 102.

    Baud

    @Kay: Once the talking points became that Obamacare was a Republican plan designed to bail out the insurance companies, it was all over.

  106. 106.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    SCHIP in 1997 was the biggest expansion of public health benefits since 1967. Obama expanded that by 4 million children. To say you’re interested in public health care and to ignore Medicaid is insane. I feel like they don’t really want a public program, because public programs come with trade-offs. They want a public program that operates exactly like what they’re used to, which is employer-provided insurance. Public health care would re-jigger the whole health care system. It wouldn’t be just government-paid vouchers for anything and everything. Food stamps doesn’t even operate like that. There would be upsides and downsides.

  108. 108.

    Baud

    @Kay: That’s why I said above that the absence of hecklers is irrelevant. Obamacare was unpopular until the GOP tried to take it away. Single payer has to pass the test of an actual bill before public opinion means anything.

  109. 109.

    Betty Cracker

    @germy: Good for Gillibrand; I agree 100% with having not-for-profit status as the goal. That’s really the important thing, IMO, regardless of how many “payers” are involved. The profit motive distorts the way care is delivered.

  111. 111.

    kindness

    Maybe I prefer to be delusional but I am comforted by the notion that our military isn’t made up of bots and if an order to launch came out of the blue, people along the chain would refuse to carry out the order. Even if it meant great personal loss (of their jobs) for them.

  114. 114.

    magurakurin

    @Kay: this is correct. The Medicaid expansion was huge stealth move to single payer. Medicare for All would be better sold as Medicaid for All Who Want It. But the Roses and the Brocialists don’t really do policy

  115. 115.

    Baud

    @raven: Wasn’t there a Russian who saved the world by not following the launch order in what turned out to be a false alarm? Admittedly, this is a different situation.

  119. 119.

    rikyrah

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    Tillerson actually lost the plot on this by his fumbling and attempts to walk it back – deterrence theory would require a unified expression, which Tillerson is too goddamned stupid to understand.

    He’s the Secretary of Exxon. I will continue to say this – he NEVER thought that he’d still be on the job 6 months in. He never did, so learning or even attempting to learn what was necessary for the job was never in his mindset.

  120. 120.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: Drum was commenting that the way it was written seemed designed for this result, he wanted to be a martyr. The only thing missing is a cross.

  128. 128.

    Quinerly

    @Baud:
    I’m not. It’s interesting that this kind of stuff is being polled. Makes them sound even crazier to the sane wing of the party and to the rest of us. In other news, my day has begun… City raccoon raided my goldfish pond, ate some good sized goldfish that had survived the winter even with this small pond freezing. She ripped apart the fountain and tore apart the filter, pooped in the courtyard and left two headless little bodies. Tuck pointer coming at noon to get cash so he can start on a huge job I have put off. 81 year friend on home dialysis, who built a beautiful home on Beaver Lake near Eureka Springs, Arkansas is arriving Friday for extended stay with me. He and his family have been speculating that his second and much younger wife might be poisoning him (I kid you not). If anyone has wondered why I’m on the road so much. I’m escaping from this circus here. Semi retirement is stressful. I ALMOST rather be back to trying jury trials. Have a great day, Balloon Juicers!

  129. 129.

    Peale

    @Baud: Yep. I mean we THOUGHT in 2009 that people hated being screwed by their insurance companies. We thought that providing fairer plans that screwed people over much much less and providing more coverage would be a no brainer. Don’t attack the doctors – people love their doctors and want them to be rich. But insurance executives – well that was supposed to be the weaker link. Nope. Turned out that people could be spooked by any change to their insurance and they managed to convince themselves rather easily that insurance executives were their best friends ever.

  131. 131.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Quinerly:

    Half of Repug voters believe Trump won the popular vote.

    110% of Trump voters are morans. Good morning!

    ETA: Make that venal, fascist morans. But I repeat myself.

  134. 134.

    Kay

    This Buzzfeed piece is amazing-not because it reveals Trump is “obsessed” with Obama- that was clear when Trump launched his birther campaign, but because it shows how weak other countries think Trump is.

    Because it really is competitive. Other countries vie for position (as they should) so weakness really does matter in negotiating. Part of the reason they believe (rightly) that he’s weak is because he’s poorly prepared- he doesn’t know what he’s negotiating. They will take advantage of that, again, as they should. Trump’s negotiating partners don’t care that Americans elected a dope. That’s an advantage for them. They’ll play that for all it’s worth.

    How funny is it that the big swaggering assholes on Team Trump are the weakest people in the room, and everyone else knows it. They are that special kind of ignorant, where they are the last people to know no one outside their base is buying this bullshit. So much for the supposed “savvy” of the real estate heir. They think he’s a chump.

  135. 135.

    rikyrah

    @magurakurin:

    @Baud: their thing now is that anyone who doesn’t support Sanders’ single payer proposal, schedule for release next month (right after his tax returns I guess), is a faux progressive and deserves a primary challenge or worse.

    Shut these muthaphuckas down…

    ” If single-payer is all that…how come it wasn’t implemented in VERMONT?”

    Purse the lips as you wait for the answer.

  136. 136.

    rikyrah

    GOP food fight: Trump and McConnell take aim at each other
    08/10/17 08:00 AM
    By Steve Benen

    Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) spoke to a Rotary Group in Kentucky on Monday, expressing some frustrations about Donald Trump’s “excessive expectations about how quickly things happen in the democratic process.” The GOP’s Senate leader added that the president doesn’t yet understand the “reality” of the legislative process.

    The New York Times reports that the two Republicans spoke by phone yesterday, and Trump expressed “his disappointment” with McConnell’s comments. Soon after, the president’s private concerns became public concerns.

    “Senator Mitch McConnell said I had ‘excessive expectations,’ but I don’t think so,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Wednesday afternoon, as he and lawmakers took time away from Washington during the August recess. “After 7 years of hearing Repeal & Replace, why not done?”

  139. 139.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: This drives me nuts! The most important part of the ACA WAS a single-payer program! And when people talk about “Obamacare” as if it’s the same thing as the exchanges, there’s no pushback, even though it’s the Medicaid expansion the Republicans really want to kill, and it’s what made their plans so intolerable.

  144. 144.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @rikyrah:

    I will continue to say this – he NEVER thought that he’d still be on the job 6 months in. He never did, so learning or even attempting to learn what was necessary for the job was never in his mindset.

    Nor has he staffed the gazillion empty positions in the State Dept. I love how titans of industry run government into the ground. See: Bruce Rauner.

  145. 145.

    rikyrah

    Donald Trump loves to bluff, despite being bad at it
    08/10/17 08:41 AM
    By Steve Benen

    When Donald Trump raised the specter of a nuclear confrontation with North Korea this week, he wasn’t just saber-rattling; he was issuing a specific kind of warning. As Rich Lowry put in a new Politico piece:

    North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un was on the receiving end of the alliteration heard around the world, when Trump promised “fire and fury” if Pyongyang continued to threaten the United States.

    It was classic Trump – a memorably pungent expression that dominated the news cycle and probably didn’t reflect more than about 30 seconds of thought.

    It was a promise, however, that the American president had no intention of keeping. Trump vowed “fire and fury” in response to North Korean threats, which naturally led to more North Korean threats. The Republican, confronted with the provocation he’d just said would be unacceptable, responded quickly – by complaining about Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

    Kim Jong-un didn’t hesitate to cross Trump’s bright red line, just as Trump didn’t hesitate to back down from the “fire and fury” promise he’d made for all the world to see.

    The president, in other words, was bluffing – something Trump does often, despite being horrible at it.

  146. 146.

    rikyrah

    A Rolling Catastrophe in the Making
    by Nancy LeTourneau
    August 10, 2017

    The title of Fred Kaplan’s piece here at the Washington Monthly about how the Bush administration allowed North Korea to get nuclear weapons could very easily be a description of Donald Trump’s presidency: “Rolling Blunder.” But it goes beyond the title. Here is Kaplan’s summary of what happened in the early 2000’s.

    The pattern of decision making that led to this debacle…will sound familiar to anyone who has watched Bush and his cabinet in action. It is a pattern of wishful thinking, blinding moral outrage, willful ignorance of foreign cultures, a naive faith in American triumphalism, a contempt for the messy compromises of diplomacy, and a knee-jerk refusal to do anything the way the Clinton administration did it.

    What we are dealing with now is delusional thinking, a hair-trigger temper, willful ignorance, triumphalism, a decimation of the apparatus of diplomacy and a knee-jerk reaction against anything the Obama administration accomplished. While the Bush administration took their eye off the ball of North Korea’s attempt to get nuclear weapons due to their obsession over whether Saddam Hussein had them, we are watching the Trump administration threaten nuclear war with North Korea and do everything possible to put Iran back on track to get them.

    If you haven’t already, I highly recommend that you read Kaplan’s piece on North Korea. It is important to know that the Clinton administration made use of both this country’s hard and soft power to develop what was called the “Agreed Framework” in 1994, which halted North Korea’s work on obtaining nuclear weapons. As commitments to the framework faltered (on both sides, apparently) the administration was on the cusp of a renewed agreement in 2000 when the election was finally decided in favor of Bush. That is when the descriptor above came into play and the rest…as they say, is history. Kaplan sums it up with this:

    What explains Bush’s inaction before North Korea crossed the red line–and its weak response afterward? Historians will surely debate that question for decades. Part of the answer probably lies in the administration’s all-consuming focus on Iraq. Military mobilization toward the Persian Gulf was in full swing; the invasion would start in March. It would have been a bit much–in money, matériel, and mental concentration–to start mobilizing for northeast Asia, too. In January, a senior administration official told The New York Times, “President Bush does not want to distract international attention from Iraq.”

    In short, Bush took no serious military action because, in a sense, he couldn’t. And he took no serious diplomatic action because he didn’t want to.

  147. 147.

    Kay

    I hate how dumb the healthcare debate is on the Left. “Single payer” doesn’t mean anything by itself. Private school vouchers are “single payer” but other than the funding NOTHING about them is “public”.

    “Publicly-funded” doesn’t now and has never meant “public”. They’re not the same thing. You could have a really far Right government funded payment system. This isn’t only a “possible” outcome, it’s an actual goal of the Right in other systems, like education.

    You could have “Medicare for all” that was publicly-funded and wholly private sector. We do have it to a certain extent- that’s what Medicare Advantage is. Medicare isn’t even wholly public. One section of it is. They’re making a kind of profound category error. They have to start over and define terms. I don’t even think they know what they want let alone how to get there.

  148. 148.

    rikyrah

    He was not called ‘No Drama Obama’ for nothing. Now we have a drama queen bleating like a donkey on Twitter every day with insane tweets pic.twitter.com/Pcc0RdinZp

    — Sarah✨ (@Sarah_Alden83) August 9, 2017

  149. 149.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: Here’s an excerpt from that Buzzfeed article that tells us all we need to know about Trump:

    Some diplomats noted that Trump understands power dynamics, and seems eager to affirm his place within these. “He gets that Germany is important. He is very graceful with China’s Xi Jinping. The impression is that he is seeking affirmation and approval as president of the United States,” a senior European government official said.

    Imaging being so damaged that even being POTUS isn’t enough to fill that howling void inside and having to continually seek validation that you’re good enough, smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like you! It’s just astounding that this person is president.

  150. 150.

    Jeffro

    @Quinerly: I knew if I took the time to read the thread, someone else would have posted this story first – thanks Quinerly!

    Folks, we need our Democratic leaders and whatever sane Republican ones there may be left to stand up, NOW, and get loud about this. This is where our democracy could get severely damaged, all in the service of one 71-year-old Fox News addict’s fragile ego. He. Fucking. Lost. The. Popular. Vote. We still followed the process and the Constitution and let him be president*. He for fucking goddam sure is going to follow the process and the Constitution and keep regular elections and respect every adult American citizen’s right to vote.

  151. 151.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    I hate how dumb the healthcare debate is on the Left. “Single payer” doesn’t mean anything by itself. Private school vouchers are “single payer” but other than the funding NOTHING about them is “public”.

    Nothing but truth, Kay.

  152. 152.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Kay:

    How funny is it that the big swaggering assholes on Team Trump are the weakest people in the room, and everyone else knows it.

    Swagger is frequently a cover for weakness, and an awfully transparent one at that.

  153. 153.

    A Ghost To Most

    Fuck “president” Buzz Windrip and his fascist friends. If they make me go to war with them, I’m all in.

  154. 154.

    tobie

    @Kay:

    They want a public program that operates exactly like what they’re used to, which is employer-provided insurance.

    My sense is that most advocates of single-payer or Medicare-for-All have little sense of what this would actually mean. The best way to achieve universal coverage with minimal disruption is to follow the Bismarck model as practiced in Germany and Switzerland. It works well there. The overwhelming majority of the population receives health insurance through the employer with a highly regulated market or medicaid-like programs for individuals who don’t get coverage through a job. The Swiss healthcare system is particularly efficient. And it’s not single payer.

  157. 157.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    The Wal Mart story probably is employee error though. The Wal Mart here is understaffed to the point where it’s dirty.

    I hate Wal Mart. There are two near me. One is nice. The other just looks disgusting. Has a grimy feel to it. REALLY hate going to it.

  159. 159.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    even though it’s the Medicaid expansion the Republicans really want to kill, and it’s what made their plans so intolerable.

    In my opinion, Lefties dropped the ball in a huge way. They had Republicans on the ropes on a real single payer program. Republicans could not get rid of Medicaid expansion. They couldn’t do it because so many of their people were on it.

    Yet the people opposing the roll back weren’t Lefties- they were mainstream Democratic activists. The Establishment.

    This should have been the realization of a dream for them- low income working people GOT a government program and they liked it and wouldn’t let go of it. But they couldn’t admit that because they all opposed Obamacare and they opposed Obamacare because they focused on the smallest part of Obamacare- the part that might affect THEM. The biggest expansion of publicly-funded health care since 1967 and the Left not only didn’t support it, they opposed it!

    You know what it is? It’s elitist. Medicaid doesn’t count because it’s for poor people and real poor people don’t fit their 1930’s idea of the “working class”. One big reason people on Medicaid love Medicaid is because they had nothing else. They never had private insurance. It’s not “lesser” to them. It’s “the only”. I see 50 year olds who got the Medicaid expansion who hadn’t seen a doctor since their high school sports physical, which is free. Of course they love it. They’re not comparing it to a private policy they had in 1996. They’re comparing it to “nothing, ever”.

  162. 162.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    Why can’t we do buy-in to Medicaid, sliding scale? I feel like Lefties are snobby about Medicaid.

    Because they fall into believing the STEREOTYPE of the poster children for Medicaid.

    Medicaid impacts 76 million people in America.

  164. 164.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    I will never get over them dismissing Medicaid. The MOST LIBERAL part of Obamacare, by far, and they dismissed it as something for poor people. Obamacare was a no-brainer for liberals. Why do you support it? Because it vastly expands health care for lower income people. You don’t even have to “decide”- the answer is “yes”.

    I heard about a study yesterday where they’re positing that the Medicaid expansion saves on the Social Security disability program for low income people- there are two disability programs- one is income-based. Apparently a lot of them were applying for disability not because they can’t work at all but because they needed health care. It’s HUGE. I think it’s the biggest expansion of an entitilement in my lifetime.

    Keep on telling that truth, Kay.

  165. 165.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I argued that here and several people told me the Medicaid expansion didn’t count because Medicaid is a state/federal program so is vulnerable at the state level. But all programs are vulnerable, at every level. We just saw this. “Vulnerable at the state level” is a dumb argument. 90% of education funding is state level. Does that take it out of the purview of Lefties? 99% of criminal justice is state level. They’re abandoning that too? So they’re wholly federal people? That seems ridiculously limited and rigid and also unimaginative.

  166. 166.

    Quinerly

    @Matt McIrvin:
    Yep…I guess I read this stuff and post it not so much for serious numbers factor stuff…just because it still amazes me that we have a portion of the electorate who feels this way. Something has been unleashed. I fear that the country as we knew it will never be the same. My thoughts on it aren’t translating well on the tiny keyboard in this post. Plus there’s raccoon poop to shovel.?

  167. 167.

    rikyrah

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    All I can say is you have a right to be as big an asshole as you want. We have the right to treat you as the asshole you are. STFU you WATB.

    TRUTH.

    You can be an azz…but, expect the pushback. What they want is no repercussions.

  168. 168.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    The best way to protect Medicaid is to put some middle class people in front of the lower income people- add them, make them the face. If they think Medicaid is “vulnerable” adding higher income people makes it less vulnerable because higher income people have more political clout.

    People love sliding scales, too. They’re perceived as fair and they’re easy. Tax return and slot you in and you’re done.

  171. 171.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    This Buzzfeed piece is amazing-not because it reveals Trump is “obsessed” with Obama- that was clear when Trump launched his birther campaign, but because it shows how weak other countries think Trump is.

    I thought someone would frontpage it. Glad you brought it up, Kay.

    I have said that the disaster of Dolt45 is compounded because of the utter incompetence that he surrounds himself.

    Shrub was, Shrub….

    BUT….there was a cadre of PROFESSIONALS around him that the other PROFESSIONALS from other countries could sit down, talk, discuss, and relate.

    Dolt45 does not have that…and the world knows it.

  172. 172.

    Quinerly

    @satby:
    We hope so. Something is very off with the fairly new wife. Friend had a complete physical just before his 80th and great bill of health. Two weeks later, woke up in severe pain and called the ambulance. Complete kidney failure. Hospital in Arkansas almost 2 months. Drs questioned intensely about poisoning, anything that could have been ingested. Flash forward…dialysis 3 times a week, then the surgery a few months ago so he could do it at home. He’ll be 82 in January. A lot of weird health scares in between, a couple of hospitalizations. Just going to chill here for awhile. Daughter and granddaughter a few blocks over from me. Known him 30 plus years..close friend, client, and a business partner of mine a few years back in a bar/restaurant biz in the neighborhood. We’ll get through it. He has very supportive family. They just don’t have any room for him. Thanks for the comment. Serious business.

  175. 175.

    rikyrah

    @O. Felix Culpa:

    Nor has he staffed the gazillion empty positions in the State Dept. I love how titans of industry run government into the ground. See: Bruce Rauner.

    don’t get me started on THAT muthaphucka :(

  176. 176.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Baud: My question is whether Google Guy intentionally created this shitshow to martyr himself and get on wingnut welfare. I get a very strong “libertarian bro on the spectrum who spends too much time on Reddit” vibe, so he might not have.

    But not to worry, assholes with rose emojis in their usernames are starting to mine his online activity for clues!

  177. 177.

    rikyrah

    @Jeffro:

    Folks, we need our Democratic leaders and whatever sane Republican ones there may be left to stand up, NOW, and get loud about this. This is where our democracy could get severely damaged, all in the service of one 71-year-old Fox News addict’s fragile ego. He. Fucking. Lost. The. Popular. Vote. We still followed the process and the Constitution and let him be president*. He for fucking goddam sure is going to follow the process and the Constitution and keep regular elections and respect every adult American citizen’s right to vote.

    TRUTH

    Complete TRUTH.

  180. 180.

    Jeffro

    @rikyrah:

    Because [many Americans] fall into believing the STEREOTYPE of the poster children for Medicaid.

    Medicaid impacts 76 million people in America.

    Yes they do, and yes Medicaid is a godsend for those 76 million folks. And about half of them are on it for this reason: it’s the only way they’re going to get nursing home care. After they either impoverish themselves or make it look like they’re impoverished (the latter, of course, being middle-class folks who can pay a lawyer to ensure they’re able to pass on their wealth first.)

  181. 181.

    rikyrah

    @Jeffro:

    And about half of them are on it for this reason: it’s the only way they’re going to get nursing home care. After they either impoverish themselves or make it look like they’re impoverished (the latter, of course, being middle-class folks who can pay a lawyer to ensure they’re able to pass on their wealth first.)

    THIS THIS THIS THIS!!!!!

    The Poster Child – in terms of Medicaid $$$$$$

    Is Bobby and Emily’s Grandma and Grandpa.

  182. 182.

    Jeffro

    @Quinerly: Thanks! It just galls me, the unbelievable levels of IOKIYAR/double standards that the GOP’s willing to stoop to. The Kobach vote-suppression commission is bad enough – why can’t these guys win on the issues? Why can’t they win when all Americans participate and exercise their franchise?? But if there’s any crap about postponing elections or demanding super-doubleplusgood ID at the polls or anything like that, that’s IT. That’s my personal ‘red freaking line’. LET. PEOPLE. VOTE.

  183. 183.

    satby

    @Jeffro: copied tobie’s comment (@153) on FB and up popped my reliably RW acquaintance to agree, with the caveat that there be work requirements so “the able bodied don’t get a free ride”. Pointed out the actual statistics on Medicaid recipients, and that overall the program benefits rural whites more than other groups. Especially about nursing home care, and I get back the comment that “they worked and paid in all their lives” (and so deserve it). But of course, we don’t know that, that’s an assumption she makes based solely on their white classification. It’s crazy, the assumption and privilege.
    And yes, I pointed it out. I’m always surprised anyone friends me on FB ?

  184. 184.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    SSDD. It’s always projection with him.

    It’s only a matter of time before one of them goes full Internet Tough guy and claims to be a combat vet because they watched the movie Platoon and took a Self Defense class once.

  185. 185.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Quinerly: Apparently a 1/3 of the voters who still support Trump think he is a liar. We are in goverment by LARP now.

  186. 186.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @OzarkHillbilly: Supposedly the poor little oppressed white guy here claimed to have a doctorate from Harvard and someone bothered to contact Harvard and Harvard said he only has a master’s degree. With that context it sounds like the poor oppressed white guy was about to be canned for not performing to expatiations and that note was to force Google to fire him so he could change careers to Right Wing Grifter as the white male victim of out of control PC.

  188. 188.

    a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)

    @Kay: I work in one of the state offices that processes Social Security and Supplemental Security Income disability claims. I have had more than one claimant over the years tell me that they were filing in the hope of qualifying for medical care somehow. Some of them may be aimed in our direction by county welfare offices who have been forced to tell them they can’t qualify for Medicaid unless they are disabled.

    I think for a lot of people who have either never used the program or haven’t work with or around it, Medicaid is a vague concept–not quite invisible, but poorly understood and often dismissed as inadequate in comparison to Medicare, on the assumption that programs for the poor are always inadequate. I also think a good few don’t realize there is a difference between the two in the first place.

    Another thing the Medicaid expansion accomplishes is keeping people in the workforce–manageable health issues are controlled so that people can continue to work regularly and remain independent. We talk about the country’s needs as far as physical infrastructure goes, but a good many people–on the left as well as the right–don’t stop and consider the value on investing in our human infrastructure as well–and while training and education are important there, a workforce with healthy people in it is an important investment as well.

  189. 189.

    TomatoQueen

    @a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio): I’m at ODAR, court case level. Many of our claimants receive no routine medical care at all, thus are without adequate documentation, other than through the CE, consultative exam which we are still providing at no charge. Which is not to say the CE is wonderful, but if you’ve had either no care, or no access to care, it can be a lifeline. And for the person whose condition is declining while the bills pile up and the hearing waiting list gets longer, Medicaid begins to signify.

  192. 192.

    TenguPhule

    @Quinerly:

    Half of Repug voters would agree to postponing the 2020 election if Trump proposed that coarse

    Oh this is so not going to end well.

  193. 193.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: Not only that, the single biggest coverage hole in the ACA was created after the fact by the Supreme Court allowing states to opt out of the Medicaid expansion. Which they did, because they wanted to destroy Obamacare and hurt Democrats, and they knew that once people were on Medicaid it would be difficult to get them off again.

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