Another out-of-touch limousine liberal:
Louise Linton, wife of Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, was forced to make her social media presence private after sparking outrage with an Instagram post that flamboyantly bragged about a slew of designer labels she was wearing while disembarking an official Air Force jet.
The caption on the now-deleted photo read: “Great #daytrip to #Kentucky! #nicest #people #beautiful #countryside #rolandmouret pants #tomford sunnies, #hermesscarf #valentinorockstudheels #valentino #usa”
But at least she gets how middle Americans feel:
“Glad we could pay for your little getaway. #deplorable” Jenni Miller, a mother of three living in Portland, had commented on the photo.
Linton swiftly lashed out at Miller with the following rant on the post, which has since gone viral:
Aw!!! Did you think this was a personal trip?! Adorable! Do you think the US govt paid for our honeymoon or personal travel?! Lololol. Have you given more to the economy than me and my husband? Either as an individual earner in taxes OR in self sacrifice to your country? I’m pretty sure we paid more sacrifices toward our day “trip” than you did.
At some level who gives a fuck what Steve Mnuchin’s trophy wife says on Instagram? On another, you can be sure as shit that if an Obama appointee’s wife had done this, that appointee would resign within 24 hours.
These assholes have spent 30 years wanking about the size of Al Gore’s house so fuck them.
Villago Delenda Est
The French Solution is looking better and better for dealing with these vile people.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
and more’s the point, IMHO, the unifying principle of the Republican party, is that people like Steve and Wheezy are being crushed by the weight of taxation, so we need “tax reform”. Nazis, nepotism, corruption great and small, collusion with the Russians, no price is too great for tax cuts for the rich. Mike Pence may want nine Gorsuchi on the Supreme Court, Lindsey Graham may want five hot wars, and so does Ryan cause that’s how he gets poor people in the Bible Belt(s) to vote for his party, but Ryan would take nine RBGs and toss South Korea to the wind if that were the price of eliminating the capital gains tax and shutting down Medicaid.
eclare
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: You forgot the death tax, that has to go too. Hate that the Rethugs’ campaign to change it from the estate tax to the death tax seems to have worked.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
I know it’s worn out but can you imagine the freak out on FOX News and other right wing news orgs if President Obama had blown through the budget of the Secret Service in less than 8 months? And if he was making money off the Secret Service at the same time by charging them rent and forcing them to pay money directly to Obama’s businesses?
Wjs
Why didn’t Linton just tell that peasant to self-fornicate?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@eclare: I do believe Mrs Ryan has a trust fund from family oil interests worth about $5 million. I’m sure Paul has explained to her that this will disincentivize her to work and they have to give it away to…. no wait, can’t fund Moochers. Whatever is an ethical Randian trust fund baby to do?
Don’t make me read one of those fucking books
West of the Rockies (been a while)
Is this glamour-toad Linton actually identified as a liberal because she once took a self-aggrandizing trip to AIDS-stricken children in Africa?
If she’s actually conservative, I’m sure Hannity and little Tucker and co. will defend her or ignore entirely the story.
Villago Delenda Est
Randites are devoid of ethics.
rikyrah
she’s a damn trophy wife who doesn’t know that she shouldn’t have opened her mouth.
Yarrow
And don’t forget her “memoir” about her gap year in Zambia where she made up a bunch of stuff and pissed off Zambians. They pulled the book from publication it was so awful.
pseudonymous in nc
Last time I checked, most of those clothes weren’t made in the US, a bit like Mrs Munchkin.
(Munchkin is onto wife number three, like his boss.)
different-church-lady
@Villago Delenda Est: But are you willing to have decimal clocks as a result?
different-church-lady
Please, folk, please, you GOTTA remember: this is all the result of democrats not caring about the economic anxiety of the White Working Class!!!!
Yarrow
@Yarrow: Forgot link to story. BBC.
Kay
It’s just weird that the Treasury Secretary is running around like a celebrity.
They’re all odd.
WTF is this:
I was in a fancy section of Lake Michigan at the beginning of the summer and I saw (one of) the DeVos yachts in a race. She owns racing yachts.
Is that why she needs this obscene expenditure on security? Because of her enormous personal wealth?
Yarrow
@Kay: I thought of you when I saw this story about Mnuchin’s wife last night. They’re just so TACKY. Everyone associated with the Trump administration just has no class. I’m sure a few exceptions prove the rule, but in general they’re all just so, so tacky.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Kay:
I keep wondering at what point the slobbering right-wing masses will collectively notice and grab their pitchforks, howling, “Burn the witch!”
zhena gogolia
@different-church-lady:
hahahahaha!
Lurking Canadian
I’ve been in a very melancholy emotional state this week. I read Mieville’s October (about 1917 in Russia), followed by Democracy in Chains, by MacLean, and one thing is coming into focus. It’s the same damned fight over and over again. It’s the same fight now that it was in 2012, and 1933 and 1917 and 1861 and 1848 and 1789.
The world consists of two groups of people. The people who own fucking everything, and everybody else. And the people who own everything think democracy is a bad idea. They’re okay with “political freedoms” in rare cases, as long as the proles don’t get to tell them what they can and can’t do with their stuff, the proles don’t get to judge them if they commit crimes and the proles for damned sure don’t get to take their money.
And this is obvious to them. it’s like shit flowing downhill. “Of course we should be treated better by the law. We ARE better.”
You rarely see it stated quite as clearly as this citoyenne just did, but that’s at the bottom of it.
Doug!
Maybe I should have gone with “she’s a big teaser” as the title.
Yarrow
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: The President should be allowed X number of visits to their private home(s) at taxpayer expense. A certain number of vacations and other types of things covered. Everything outside of that should be paid for by them. They get a house to live in for free plus Camp David where they can go and relax. If they want to go visit their own private home(s) every weekend, we should not have to pay for that. It’s ridiculous that we should have to spell that out.
MomSense
The Republicans are a bunch of sociopaths.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Doug!: this was a rare instance where I figured out your lyric!
Somebody tweeted out that previous Treas secs have flown commercial, I have no idea if it’s true, don’t really care, and I guess her taking up a seat didn’t make the trip cost anymore. But somebody else, several somebody else, said on twitter, naming, tagging, brands like that on Instagram etc is something Kardashians and the like do to get free stuff. Rich people love to get free stuff.
Kay
@Yarrow:
Shouldn’t the treasury secretary fly commercial anyway? Why does he need special transportation? This was an emergency trip to Kentucky? What for?
Let’s just go back to our go-to explanation: Trump is a horrible manager who hires horrible people.
zhena gogolia
@Lurking Canadian:
Where is Blanche Yurka when you really need her?
Major Major Major Major
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
They really do, the awful ones at least. It seems like the more awful of a rich person they are, the more they go out of their way for free shit.
SiubhanDuinne
@Yarrow:
Yes. Not to mention Javanka’s numerous vacations (conveniently and curiously, always at a time of particular crisis in the Trump White House).
terraformer
Something about being first against the wall when the revolution came….
MJS
This is just another line for the “So What” chorus. No matter what Trump does or says, or what his appointees do or say, the response of Trump supporters will always be, “So what?” Typically followed by an ill informed reference to emails, Benghazi, Obamacare. Black Lives Matter or something else that in their mind is far “worse” than anything perpetrated by the Trump administration.
Yarrow
@Kay: Yes, he should. And it all falls to Trump. He makes terrible hires. He’s so tacky himself, he just hires people like him. Greedy, awful people.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yes, they do. They all tag their stuff and get tons of free stuff. It’s become something of an issue because it’s blurring the lines between regular posts and ads. The FTC has got involved and has required some posts be tagged with and ad hashtag. I doubt it matters though.
You’re sure right about rich people not only loving to get free stuff but getting lots of free stuff. They are showered with free stuff in hopes they’ll promote it and sell more. People make a living out of being “social media influencers.”
Kay
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
If I am seeing your racing yachts on Lake Michigan and you are the Secretary of Education, which, let’s face it is not a job where your presence outside DC is ever required, I think she should pay her own bodyguards.
I get it- she’s incredibly wealthy so feels she needs this army protecting her but why should we pay for that? Just hire a normal person who doesn’t require bodyguards. What extra value does she bring over a non-bodyguard candidate for the job? Not a million dollars worth a month! She’s horrible at the job at any price and we’re not paying “any price”- we’re paying luxury prices.
SiubhanDuinne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
If Louise Linton Mnuchin really had any class, she’d wear nothing but clothes, shoes, and accessories from the Ivanka Collection™.
Sab
Doug!: I get the “limousine” part, but where did the “liberal” come from?
chris
@Lurking Canadian: Socialism or barbarism.–Rosa Luxembourg 1917(?)
And here we are. Again.
Boots Day
What’s your job in the government, honey? What duties do you personally, as opposed to your husband, perform on behalf of the American people?
If the answers are “none” and “none,” then this was a personal trip.
chris
Dammit! In moderation for soshulism. Help please.
Mike J
@Doug!: At first I couldn’t place the lyric. It took me so long to find out,
I found out.
Nicole
No need for an addition line, Doug. Excellent lyric reference.
I guess we liberals who don’t actually own limousines could start tweeting and emailing and tagging unflattering things to/about the brands these moochers are tagging in their posts. There’s a reason most of them have down-market lines, too- there aren’t enough ultra-wealthy to keep them in business.
rikyrah
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
Which is why we must keep those receipts. Never ever let them away with this nonsense.
NickM
I checked Louise Linton’s Wikipedia site earlier this morning, and when it mentioned her marriage to Mnuchin, it noted that she married him because he was the highest bidder for her services. I went back to check it just now and that quote is gone.
petesh
Have you
given more totaken more from the economy than me and my husband?FIFH
Major Major Major Major
@Sab: It’s sarcasm.
different-church-lady
@NickM: Wikipedia vandalism can be very droll.
Frankensteinbeck
@Yarrow:
I have no problem with the president going wherever he wants as much as he wants on the taxpayer’s dime. It’s a drop in the bucket. I have problems with a president using that as a method of funneling money into his own pocket, and I have problems with a president who is too lazy to do his job.
Mnemosyne
IIRC, it’s required by law that if a government official has his/her spouse travel with them on government business, that official is supposed to reimburse the government for their spouse’s travel.
Any enterprising reporters out there who want to look into that?
sharl
We have the bestest and most glamorous oligarchs. Suck it Russia! USA!, USA!, USA!…
Shell
For the eclipse? But no. He was going to tour the inside of Fort Knox. The first time a Treasury Secretary has been inside it for decades. And he was positively bubbly about it.
WaterGirl
@Doug!: Not to worry, you can go with that in about 45 minutes when she does the next stupid thing along the same lines.
Yarrow
@Doug!: Think I might have gone with ” I ain’t sayin’ she a gold digger.”
WaterGirl
@Mike J: :-)
edit: or I could have said Heh like the cool kids do.
catclub
@Kay: T
Well, there has been reporting that Mnuchin went to inspect the gold in Ft Knox. And actual inspections by the Treasury Sec are pretty rare – like once every 40 years or so.
Kay
I LOVE the “self sacrifice to your country” part because that’s the whole subtext of the Trumpsters- they’re doing us a favor.
I just feel like they don’t understand what this job is, what the role is. Yesterday Ivanka posted a photo of herself at the NASA museum. It’s not about her going to the museum. We all know she can go to the NASA museum.
The key thing in those events is the regular people. That’s the POINT of the event. I mean, do it or don’t do it but if you are going to do it figure out how to do it properly. Even when they make an effort it’s all wrong and looks odd because THEY are always the center.
lgerard
Hey
What’s Ben Carson up to?
catclub
@Mnemosyne:
I suspect that travel on a very expensive Air Force Jet, gets rated as ‘commercial first class’ for re-imbursement purposes – a substantial discount on actual cost.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne:
Sounds right up David Fahrenthold’s alley.
trollhattan
@Kay:
They’re all nuts, the Trumpsters. We’ve got Pruitt at EPA with a full-time security detail–even at HQ–plus had the phone and computer removed from his office and only certain employees have access there. And he’s from the elites of Oklahoma.
They’re both royalty and paranoid, the lot.
Yarrow
@Frankensteinbeck: Yes, this is the crux of the problem. We should have some sort of ethics laws, but apparently we only have norms and traditions. Those can be tossed aside.
However, if we can’t make the president follow ethics norms then we need some other kinds of laws he or she has to follow. Like they can only have the Secret Serve be paid for by taxpayers for X amounts of things. Or certain types of things. Outside of that, the president is required to use the Secret Service but has to reimburse.
WaterGirl
So depressing. Trump may be an idiot fuck-up, but there are plenty of energizer bunnies in government who are systematically trying to turn the clock back on all that is good. They are relentless.
A thread about puppies is about all I can handle right now.
Yarrow
@Mnemosyne:
From the NYT article on it.
Kay
@trollhattan:
Wasn’t that wild, that story about him? Jesus. What an ego. It’s all top-secret at the EPA!
You can’t give some people power, you really can’t. They just immediately become monsters.
TenguPhule
@Villago Delenda Est:
Oui.
Insane Clown POTUS
@Yarrow:
We really need to have laws with teeth to avoid this in the future. Presidential candidates should have to disclose their tax returns. They should have to have a physical and mental evaluation. A winning candidate must divest of their business interests in a provable way. There can be no direct profiting from the office during the administration (cash in later with all the memoirs and speeches you want). There are no end of norms that have been cast aside.
Kay
@trollhattan:
They’re never going away, either. We will hear about the Trumps for the rest of our lives. It’s too late. They’re in now. Ivanka’s senate run is right around the corner. They’re never going away.
Ivana Whisky
@catclub: Check his pockets.
bluehill
@Lurking Canadian: Yeah, it is kind of depressing. Another dimension to the saying “we’re only human,” which is why, I guess, history repeats or rhymes. “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” by Richard J. Hofstadter written in the early 60’s seems just as topical now. So does The Prince and Game of Thrones scarily enough. Winter is coming, but so is spring. It’s a never-ending cycle.
Ruviana
@Mike J: Doug! was taking the easy way out.
Yarrow
@Insane Clown POTUS: Yes. Absolutely. We need real laws with teeth. For that we need more Democrats in office so we need to focus on that.
@Kay:
In what state? New York? Don’t think they like the Trump family very much. Probably less now.
Heidi Mom
@Lurking Canadian: I hear you. What I took away from The Reactionary Mind by Corey Robin is that while they will pay lip service to democratic ideals, their first priority, always, is the preservation of the hierarchy that puts them at the top. I’ve been a liberal Democrat since casting my first vote for George McGovern, but looking back over the decades, I can see that my naivete was astounding. I thought John Kerry was the best Democratic candidate for 2004 because he really was a war hero, so if we nominated him that whole “Democrats aren’t patriots” thing wouldn’t get any traction. I thought that if President Obama “got Bin Laden,” he’d be acclaimed by everyone and coast to re-election in 2012. I thought that Hillary would win because the country couldn’t possibly want to go from Barack Obama, with his 50+% approval rating, to a sleazy huckster. Why yes, I am an eternal optimist, why do you ask? So now I say to myself, in Sansa Stark’s voice, “Stupid girl!” So I’ll try to go forward without the rose-colored glasses. At least my tombstone can say “She Fought Nazis,” something I never thought would be possible.
A Ghost To Most
This woman should remember what happened to Marie Antoinette.
She now has a tumbrel manifest number.
Timurid
@catclub:
Damnit, Goldfinger, stop tickling Bond’s nuts with that laser and do something useful for once!
catclub
@Yarrow:
yet.
Seanly
To paraphrase Chief Brody: “We’re gonna need a bigger tumbrel.”
james parente
@Major Major Major Major: I worked as a tech in sports TV for many years. I was always disgusted by rich people looking for free tickets and other swag.
catclub
@trollhattan:
So he is like BinLaden? No electronic messages, only trusted couriers in and out of his office?
catclub
@james parente:
The reason many rich people are rich is that they make a point of having money stick to them, much more than the average.
ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
Not usually quite as far along as you in this matter but I’m gaining on you as I type.
The French often get things right.
rikyrah
@Kay:
I disagree, Kay. They’re all going away.
In orange jumpsuits.
mai naem mobile
Litten had a piece in Town & Country about their wedding. Even in that she came across as a gold digger nouveau-riche idiot who wanted to make sure everybody knew that she was rich really rich. My guess is that she will continue to cause more problems like this and he will eventually dump her for a newer less troublesome model.
JCJ
@Yarrow:
I don’t know for certain, but my brother would refer to himself as “muzungu” after he spent a year practicing medicine (oncology) in Uganda. He explained that muzungu means white person, so to say “white muzungu” seems kind of silly.
Quinerly
@Yarrow:
Trump just had that little war summit at Camp David. Pence came back from South America early for it. I guess you caught that Trump couldn’t even be bothered to stay at Camp David even for the night.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
She’s not the only one Kay.
Fucking Scott Pruitt at the EPA has a full security detail too.
They really want to make it hard for the angry mobs to tear them limb from limb when the revolution comes.
SatanicPanic
@Heidi Mom: I can sympathize with this. We all want to think the best in people or we wouldn’t be liberals.
sigaba
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
In my experience most rich people got rich by getting other people to put up equity while they collected some cut of the profits for “services.” These services are sometimes very genuine, sometimes they are very nebulous. But they are always very opaque to everybody except the people at the center.
I know one particular film exec who simply refused to build a theater on his studio, and insisted that Dolby had to build it for him in exchange for the right to say they Jeff Katzenberg and Dreamworks Animation were Dolby’s “customers.” And Dolby did it.
rikyrah
@Quinerly:
He hasn’t figured out a way to monetize Camp David for himself…that’s why he has no use for it.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@A Ghost To Most: She’d probably deserve it more than Marie Antoinette, who, by all accounts, seems to have been a well-intentioned and charitable if somewhat naïve young woman caught in the wrong place at the wrong time (she certainly didn’t say “let them eat cake”, at least).
Quinerly
@NickM:
The Jezebel piece I posted in the early morning thread on her is a must. It’s from last summer. I feel so out of the loop…can’t keep all the blonde trophy wives straight…they all look alike. I could pick Melania out in a line up, though.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
Mulligan, disappear them from history. If Russia could do it to their czars, we can to these deplorables.
TenguPhule
@A Ghost To Most:
A double digit one at that.
trollhattan
@catclub:
I’m not positive the table shown in the photo at the bottom or this press release is his desk, but you get the general idea. Friend of a friend is in the photo–unsmiling–and says “he had the computer removed from his office, never uses his phone, and is never not accompanied by an armed guard, even in the building.”
Am glad my friend and others at EPA are sticking it out, at least for the time being. Among the most profound areas of damage to the government–our government–is the loss of career professionals across the board. It will take a generation, not just one or two sane administrations, to recover from Trump.
ArchTeryx
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: And Clear Channel’s streaming station is busy blaming the Secret Service for extravagant spending.
Quinerly
@trollhattan:
Yes, I’m dwelling…but I still can’t get over that Bannon didn’t use a computer during his tenure in the WH….from the piece I read it sounded like he didn’t even have one in his office. Everything was on paper, passed back and forth.
Major Major Major Major
@james parente: @catclub: That’s what’s so galling about the petty stuff, though. It’s completely unnecessary. They’re already rich. It’s pathological by that point.
trollhattan
In a perhaps more positive light, drip-drip-drip.
germy
@trollhattan:
The funny thing is, Hannity is on twitter saying “tick tock tick tock” but for different reasons:
The Dangerman
@eclare:
I’m always amazed when some poor Souls have to go to some hell on Earth to spill blood, it’s “Freedom Isn’t Free”…
…but when a corresponding sacrifice is roughly (yes, it’s no real comparison, but roll with me here) required by paying some fucking Taxes, these assholes just say GM,FY.
Doug!
Possibly my favorite Beatles song
Quinerly
@trollhattan:
Drip, drip, drip…..the Pee Tape is being flushed out!!!!
Villago Delenda Est
@The Dangerman: Jefferson considered the Estate Tax to be one of his most important accomplishments. He wanted to end the generational accumulation of wealth that he saw as the source of so much misery in Europe.
Mnemosyne
@Quinerly:
If a single one of those papers was destroyed rather than filed away, Bannon violated federal records laws. ? The law is a little bit unclear about emails, but not at all about actual paper.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I guess she could carpet bag down to Florida. No offense to Floridians, but Rick Scott is on his second term. Also, too, Li’l Marco
germy
@Doug!: Your comments are needed here:
http://www.heydullblog.com
Hoodie
@sigaba: A lot of rich people I’ve known care inordinately about getting what they “deserve,” like they have ledgers in their heads. They don’t leave a nickel on the table (even though they may spend extravagantly) and, as they get richer, they become very focused on people taking what belongs to them. Maybe when you are defined by wealth your perception is distorted by that abstraction.
Heidi Mom
@Major Major Major Major: Yes. They can’t ever let go and say “money doesn’t matter anymore,” because money is all they have.
TenguPhule
@ArchTeryx:
Fuck me, are you serious!?
TenguPhule
@Hoodie:
You can’t just toss a straight line at us like that. Think of the children who read this family blog!
Just One More Canuck
@NickM: Did you see the last entry in her filmography – “Odious”
Quinerly
@Mnemosyne:
all well and good. now tell me who’s going to enforce the law? who’s going to hold endless Congressional hearings? head ethics guy resigned about a month ago and as I understand it the next in line was skipped over in order to install a Trump appointee. You think Trey Gowdy or someone else who is a committee chair is going to schedule hearings on Bannon…..now? They are still working on scheduling hearings on Loretta Lynch, Bill Clinton, and HRC’s email server.
germy
They should schedule a hearing on Trey Gowdy’s barber.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Speaking of liberals, Jen Rubin has gone the full John Cole with her anti-Ryan screed today.
Quinerly
@TenguPhule:
those Secret Service guys love to ride around in expensive golf carts…no exercise…it oughta be a crime.
TenguPhule
@Quinerly:
Shhh, you’re not supposed to ask that question here. That’s gloom pron. Or something.
Major Major Major Major
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Yawn. “The full John Cole” would be registering as a Democrat and working towards progressive goals. She just wrote a mean thing to a fellow Republican.
Quinerly
@germy:
speaking of haircuts…there was a guy with what they are calling a Neo Nazi haircut (long on top, short on sides…a la Richard Spencer) who was getting out of or in his car and was stabbed for his haircut…long Book of Faces posting that went viral. Swears he’s not a Neo Nazi, just likes the haircut. BTW…does Eric Trump still have his Richard Spencer haircut? He might want to rethink it.
sharl
This piece written by newly unemployed sports writer David Roth is extremely good writing, and is also TRAGIcomically accurate. It concludes by telling us what most of us already know: our leader is never going to become better, let alone good. Despite the confirmation it provides for those who are not willfully blind or hopelessly ignorant, I linked it here anyway because of the eloquence with which Roth delivered the message.
germy
@Quinerly:
There’s a first time for everything.
Major Major Major Major
@Quinerly: It was a normal haircut. Reasonably popular at least here in the bay area. The musician Macklemore had it until like last week. I’m sure lots of people haven’t gotten the memo that Twitter and Tumblr have suddenly declared it a symbol for being a Nazi.
mr_gravity
@The Dangerman: This. About a million times. Freedom isn’t free. Nor is a free country. Pay your damn taxes.
cokane
“Have you given more to this economy than me and my husband…” is such a perfect distillation of the rot at the heart of upper middle class, “respectable” Republicanism these days
Iowa Old Lady
The wife of a cabinet secretary felt free to get snarky with an American citizen who criticized her. Do none of these people have any self control?
Major Major Major Major
@cokane: “Upper middle class”, or the top 15% according to wikipedia, starts at $100,000 married/$65,000 individual per annum. I don’t know if that’s quite what you wanted.
Miss Bianca
So, Doug, I just forwarded this article on to my friend A, with a little note – “isn’t this your ‘friend’ from college days that you were telling me about? Sounds like a real piece of work!”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
OT repost from below
(On MSNBC right now, Katie Tur rather condescendingly, and with that affectation of world-weary disappoinment so common in the Beltway, asking Congressman Ruben Gallego if calling trump a racist is “helpful”. As ever, being a racist isn’t divisive, pointing out racism is. There might just be some people in the MSNBC dressing rooms who might like to have this discussion on the air with Katie. And I’ve kinda liked Katie Tur.)
TenguPhule
@Iowa Old Lady:
Do you even have to ask at this point?
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@germy:
My votes for the most damaging and despicable conservative pundits are Limbaugh and Hannity. Blimpo has been a toxic fountain of misinformation for three decades, but Squeaky has risen to the top suddenly. Limbaugh can at least craft a semi-cogent argument at times. But smirky boy relies on snark, ridicule, and outnumbering opponents.
Quinerly
@Major Major Major Major:
I had thought it was pretty normal for some. My ex boyfriend’s best friend who I am close to (it’s complicated) has the same haircut…he is blonde and of German ancestry. Also, at 67 years old, I think he’s a bit old for it. I think he is changing it, though…I hope he is….mostly because of Eric Trump’s cut.
TenguPhule
TIllerson holding a news conference now.
Much ado about nothing expected from him.
Quinerly
@Iowa Old Lady:
well, she is a self described Scottish actress.
ArchTeryx
@TenguPhule: Dead serious.
TenguPhule
Look, we’ve found some actual unicorns!
Antiwar conservatives decry Trump’s Afghanistan surge
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@TenguPhule: Ron Paul and Justin Amash, too. FWIW.
Not much, I know.
Yarrow
@Miss Bianca: Please let us know what your friend says!
Patricia Kayden
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That’s the key. Republicans don’t care if taxes go up for the rest of us peons but for the rich to pay their fair share of taxes is a travesty on the level of the crucifixion of Christ. They’ll never stop whining about the “crushing tax burden on our job creators” until the mega rich are at a 0% tax rate and we ordinary, no good Americans are paying enough taxes to cover their lack of payment. That’s how we ended up with a “President’ who hasn’t paid personal federal taxes for nearly 2 decades.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The people who require the MOST political correctness are white people of substance and means. One must never criticize current leadership, past leadership, past actions, or enthusiastic ideas from white establishment conservatives lest you make Sweet Baby Jesus cry.
That is why you can never remove a confederate monument, tear down a confederate flag or criticize some hayseed drawling fucking redneck preacher for shooting video of a burning Koran, lest you be blamed for Benghazi and are forced to cough up emails.
Miss Bianca
@trollhattan: It’s not just that they’re nuts. Actually, they’re not nuts to be paranoid – they really ARE hated, and they do stuff all the time to make sure that they’re hated. It’s just that there’s never any sense of self-reflection or perspective with these folks. They’ve woven this fantasy about the violent alt-left – which I guess includes people concerned about education and the environment – that enables them to feel persecuted. That they might, actually, legitimately DESERVE to be confronted, if not physically assaulted, for the piggy, heinous things they’ve actually DONE, never seems to enter their heads.
TenguPhule
@ArchTeryx:
And its too early to start drinking.
Sigh.
Patricia Kayden
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It’s interesting to hear about Tur defending Trump against allegations of racism given how he treated her during the primaries. You’d think she wouldn’t be defending someone who told his Nazi rally attendees to turn around and boo (and otherwise harass) her. But here we are.
Patricia Kayden
@cokane: Percentage wise of our incomes, most of us in the working/middle class probably do pay more taxes than the Mnuchins. They just happen to have more money on which they pay taxes.
Gravenstone
@Yarrow:
Yet …
sharl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That issue of Trump’s racism came up in the David Roth piece I linked at #114 (I included a link from Roth’s piece):
That comes about as close to my view regarding the particular “flavor” of racism exhibited by Trump. Despite it being the NYT, the link in the blockquote seems to do a decent job in how Trump has dealt with people of color, and the bottom line is – as always – whether he thinks hanging with particular individuals from among those people will benefit him in some way.
Gelfling 545
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: A friend of my father conned me into reading Atlas Shrugged when I was 18. He’s been dead 20 years and I still haven’t forgiven him.
Gelfling 545
@rikyrah: Yes. I feel certain it wasn’t her conversation that attracted him.
Miss Bianca
@Yarrow: and I quote
> : >
sharl
@TenguPhule: Paleocons like Pat Buchanan and loony libertarians like Justin Raimondo have been pretty consistent on this specific issue, as well as Iraq, from the get-go. They are still reliably racist nuts in their own unique ways on so many other topics, but they deserve a gold star and pat on the head for being right here I suppose.
Iowa Old Lady
@sharl: That was a good article. Thanks for the link.
clay
@TenguPhule:
These people — along with many, many people in the media, as well as a lot of leftists — never really understood WHY Trump was saying we should get out of Afghanistan for so many years. It wasn’t because he was anti-war, or anti-imperialist, or whatever. It was because Obama was the one conducting the war. That was the extent of Trump’s thoughts on the issue.
That’s just idiotic.
MoxieM
Attributed to Winston Churchill, wrongly:
“Well,” says the gentleman, “just for the sake of our argument, suppose I offered you $1000—would you spend the night with me?” The lady, smiling coquettishly: “Who knows—I might very well!” The gentleman: “Now suppose I offer you $10 for the night?” The lady: “But what do you think I am?” The gentleman: “We’ve already established what you are. Now we’re just haggling over the price.”
Also, slut-shaming, but hey, if the Manolo fits…
Gretchen
@Major Major Major Major: Yeah, my son has that haircut. It’s fashionable right now.
No Drought No More
I think a little perspective is called for here. Some say Imelda Marcos was driven crazy, too, by her obsession to carefully note the shoes of every woman that she met. Certainly her ladyship Mnunchin has never had a political opponent assassinated by the Philippine army at the bottom of the ramp of an airliner he was forced to vacate alone and under guard, has she. I mean, yet..
In other words, she’s obnoxious, arrogant, and very stupid, but in a typically American way. She’s one of our own.
rikyrah
‘Go back to India’ — Chicago CEO goes public with racist taunts he receives
Heidi Stevens
Balancing Act
When President Donald Trump went off-script Tuesday to defend Confederate monuments and the hate groups who love them, Chicago executive Ravin Gandhi had enough.
Gandhi, founder and CEO of GMM Nonstick Coatings, a global supplier of coatings for cookware and bakeware, penned an op-ed that night for CNBC, where he routinely contributes business and political commentary. It was published Wednesday morning.
“I recently told the New York Times I was ‘rooting’ for certain aspects of Trump’s economic agenda,” Gandhi wrote. “After Charlottesville and its aftermath, I will not defend Trump even if the Dow hits 50,000, unemployment goes to 1 percent, and GDP grows by 7 percent. Some issues transcend economics, and I will not in good conscience support a president who seems to hate Americans who don’t look like him.”
The reaction was swift and demoralizing: Bigoted tweets and emails rolled in by the dozens.
During a client lunch Thursday afternoon, a GMM sales representative forwarded Gandhi a voicemail he received inviting Gandhi to “get your (expletive) garbage and go back to India.”
(He grew up in Waukegan.)
“You can stick your stickies up your sticky Indian (expletive) and you can take that other half-(expletive) Bangladesh creep with you, Nikki Haley,” a woman says in the message. “She’s the one that started all this when she took down the Confederate flag. So don’t tell us that you gave him a chance. We don’t give a (expletive) who you gave a chance, OK? We’re going to start taking down Buddhist statues and see how you and Nikki Haley like that.”
(Gandhi is not Buddhist.)
The caller continues for a minute and a half, weaving in her distaste for Martin Luther King Jr. and ending with another invitation for Gandhi to “go clean up your own (expletive) country, it’s a filthy mess.”
(Again: Gandhi was born here, grew up here, lives, works, votes and pays taxes here.)
He took it public.
Thursday night, he posted the voicemail to YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. He shared some of the nastier emails he received as well.
rikyrah
Tried to chat with Malia Obama as she stood around during student move-in day. She politely declined. #Harvard pic.twitter.com/z0lzVKfKV4
— Steve Annear (@steveannear) August 22, 2017
Malia Obama and family spotted in Cambridge as Harvard University starts move-in week: t.co/h0vPRISVOF pic.twitter.com/2iNoja3XKS
— MetroBoston (@MetroBOS) August 22, 2017
Miss Bianca
@MoxieM: I’ve heard that quote attributed to George Bernard Shaw – A. Lincoln
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Gelfling 545:
A is A….
Yarrow
@No Drought No More:
She’s Scottish.
Miss Bianca
@rikyrah: Guess we might call Charlottesville a rude awakening for a lot of people. huh?
Gelfling 545
Speaking of obnoxious rich people, did I remember to mention that the NYS Board of Regents kicked Paladino off the school board?
Yarrow
@Miss Bianca: She sounds like a real piece of work, even when she’s with “friends.”
Raoul
So why aren’t we all becoming howling jackals to make this happen. I am sick of the “if this had been Obama, they’d have…” comments. IT’s weak, and the response isn’t to compare, it is to go after them since the underbelly is obviously exposed here.
Yarrow
@rikyrah: I hope they leave Malia alone. She’s not a public figure and is keeping a pretty low profile. It would be great if she can have as normal a college experience as possible.
trollhattan
@rikyrah:
God, I hope she doesn’t get the Chelsea treatment. Oh, who am I kidding?
zhena gogolia
@Raoul:
I don’t happen to own a television network or a newspaper.
WaterGirl
@Yarrow: @rikyrah: Quality people attract quality people… Barack and Michelle found each other, didn’t they? Malia will make some good friends and hopefully will settle into a nice life for herself at Harvard. Maybe I’m not optimistic, it wouldn’t be the first time.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
I bet I know people Gandhi knows. I grew up on the North Shore and had Indian friends, and they had a pretty active social community for the various families.
trollhattan
@Miss Bianca:
Emanual Methodist Church should have been enough, but at the time we didn’t have a president declaring “both sides” so just maybe, this has been instructive to the naive.
Hey look, a pony! [runs off]
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
OT – I just got a CNN news alert about Marcellus Williams. My brain read it out as “Marcellus Wallace”.
Gave me a start, LOL.
Miss Bianca
@Yarrow: Harvard and Yale are pretty used to celebrity students, so I expect most will be cool about it. Princteon, too. Tho’ I’m so old I remember when Jody Foster went to Yale, and it was apparently something of a campus sport (at least, according to my best friend from high school who went there) to try and spot her and note, with some schadenfreude involved, that she didn’t look like she did in the movies. : /
Mark
I’ve never heard of her. I would bet that very few people have heard of her. I guess there is no such thing as bad publicity.
Joyce Harmon
Yes, cabinet secretaries ought to be flying commercial. A few years back, I was on a flight from Los Angeles to DC, and as I walked through first class on my way to my seat in steerage, I thought, “Hey, isn’t that Hank Paulson?” When we arrived, he was met by a group of Serious Men in Suits, and they got one of those big Dulles people-movers to themselves and wouldn’t let anyone else board. One of guys waiting with the crowd for our own people-mover asked, “Who does that guy think he is?”, and I said, “He thinks he’s the Treasury Secretary.”
Miss Bianca
@trollhattan: Yeah, you’d think. But some ethnic groups who have immigrated to the US have, I believe, got lulled into thinking that since they weren’t black, they were honorary “white” citizens. It’s probably been a very ugly shock to them to realize that in Trump’s America, they just look like brown furriners to many of their fellow citizens. I’d feel sorry for them – I do, in fact, feel sorry for them – but the ones who voted for Trump? Or even thought he had some good ideas? I’m like, “hello, welcome to America! No, I mean the REAL America, where you are not seen as a ‘real American.’ What, you thought it couldn’t happen to you?”
@Joyce Harmon: Ha! love it! ETA And it ain’t as if first-class on a commercial flight is some sort of hellish existence for the hoi polloi, either. Or maybe it is, these days. *I* wouldn’t know.
trollhattan
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Check back in if you start getting alerts about President Camacho. We need to know!
PST
@Miss Bianca:
I have already been outed once, so I will risk a bit of harmless fun at my expense by noting that in my day Harvard students put a high value on pretending not to notice the presence of famous people, even if they were watching closely through narrowed eyelids.
trollhattan
@Miss Bianca:
For many I’m sure it’s offered a veneer of comfort, if not in fact. My direct supervisor at work is Muslim, from Bangladesh and after the election I took pains to share my “What did we just do?” view of the outcome and in not so many words indicate “having her back.” Whether any of that was of any use I have no idea but at least I got any ambiguity of having voted for the monster out of the way.
Quinerly
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
? that movie.
ruemara
@Kay: Kay. If you think Ivanka is going to win NY, share whatever that spiked beverage is. Maybe if they move to Arkansas.
HeleninEire
@sharl: Thank you for that. Just shared it on the book of faces.
redoubt
@Mnemosyne: 44 USC 3301: Definition of a federal record includes “regardless of physical form or characteristics” so yes, he would be in violation of federal records laws if he destroyed anything.
(/former federal records manager)
ruemara
@rikyrah: Jeez, maybe she doesn’t have to talk to you, creep. They need to leave the Obamas alone. If they want to talk to you, they’ll let you know.
@rikyrah: Surprise levels in me are very low.
@Raoul: Liberals don’t really do that, partially because they want to hug it out for some reason.
fuckwit
@Villago Delenda Est: the tumbrels are coming, that is for certain. but the frightening part is: they’re not coming for these one percent douchnozzles.
instead, it’ll be WWC nazis with guns and torches, burning down their liberal neighbors houses and summarily shooting intellectuals.
be careful what you wish for.
i don’t think the versailles of mar a lago will fall. rather, the targets of mob violence will be us.
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
Hey, everybody knows that women are required to respond in a friendly way to any random dude who wants their attention! ?
NotoriousJRT
@eclare:
Hate that the Rethugs’ campaign to change it from the estate tax to the death tax seems to have worked.
Not on me.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
during the campaign, trump liked to say who knew many, many families who had lost their farms due to the death tax. Just wanted one of our dogged ink-stained types to say: “could you ask one of the many, many to talk to us?”
sukabi
@Shell: did they frisk him and his entourage prior to their exit of the facility?
Tehanu
Once again one of these greedheads reveals exactly who they are without even noticing. I don’t care how much someone has “given to the economy,” because I don’t worship Mammon, and people’s participation in material exchange isn’t my standard for their value. What has Mrs Linton given to (for example) the rule of law or to the world of aesthetics or to solidarity among citizens, and if anything, did it involve anything beyond writing a check — or tossing a quarter to a beggar on the sidewalk?