Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

This is dead girl, live boy, a goat, two wetsuits and a dildo territory.  oh, and pink furry handcuffs.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Fear and negativity are contagious, but so is courage!

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

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

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

“In this country American means white. everybody else has to hyphenate.”

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

We still have time to mess this up!

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

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

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Dolt 45 / Monday Morning Open Thread: The Toddler Files

Monday Morning Open Thread: The Toddler Files

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As I mentioned Sunday morning, I’ve got an old friend visiting from out of town, so my participation here is liable to be (even more!) spotty and unreliable this week. Think of it as a chance to rack up some TBogg comment units (500+ on a thread), and to read some of the longer projects available:

… The point of the [original April 25] tweet was to push back on the occasional impulse by Very Serious People to claim that some speech or act by Donald Trump proved that he was “growing into the presidency.” The hard-working staff here at Spoiler Alerts has been examining Trump’s words and actions for the 2016 presidential campaign and thought this was nonsense. Hence the tweet.

The thing is, it quickly became clear that the evidence that Trump was not growing into the presidency was hiding in plain sight. Barely a week or even a day could pass without someone with access to Trump telling the news media in no uncertain terms the ways in which he was unfit for office. So I decided to keep adding to the thread…

… While Twitter followers can find the thread when I add to it, the functionality of Twitter is not ideal for finding it. Therefore, I have decided to curate this thread here at Spoiler Alerts as well. Below are all the tweets in this thread, in order. Every week I will update this post to include any additional tweets…

One last point: All I’m doing is curating these stories. The real credit goes to the myriad reporters who have wrested these anecdotes and quotes from individuals who, in all likelihood, genuinely want this president to succeed. Yet, in their heart of hearts, they know that the commander in chief of America’s armed forces has the oppositional nature of a 3-year old…

Most recent, so far:


***********

Apart from being eternally grateful to the Republican Party for wishing this stunted monster on the rest of us, what’s on the agenda as we begin another (hopefully slow news) week?

Reader Interactions

145Comments

  1. 1.

    Patricia Kayden

    Trump has demonstrated over and over again that he’s not qualified for his current position. But the MSM keeps desperately trying to gaslight us into believing that he will pivot any day now.

  2. 2.

    hg

    Could someone recommend a book about the Manhattan Project? Was discussing this with a friend today and its fascinating stuff. (I’m looking for something thats NOT very technical or full of equations!)

  5. 5.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    Via the garbage Vichy Times

    “White House officials privately express fear that colleagues may be wearing a wire to surreptitiously record conversations for Mr. Mueller.”

  8. 8.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    Via the Palmer Report:

    [one of the Times reporters] overheard Trump attorney Ty Cobb while they were both dining at the same steakhouse. Cobb was overheard accusing his colleague, White House Counsel Don McGahn, of having his own spies within the administration.

    in the process McGahn became aware of what Cobb had said about him. This prompted McGahn to privately “erupt” at Cobb. It also led Chief of Staff John Kelly to “reprimand” Cobb for having discussed such things in public at a restaurant where he could be overheard.

    Well, Drumpf said he would only hire the best people.

  10. 10.

    Villago Delenda Est

    The “Very Serious People” got us into this mess with their constant pearl clutching about emails and their deliberate discounting of Donald’s long track record of chicanery, incompetence, and immaturity.

    They are all on the tumbrel manifest.

  11. 11.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @hg: Second Brian’s rec & #6. TMOTAB is about so much more than the Manhattan Project but you won’t notice. Reads like a well-written novel, memoir & history book combined into one. You will enjoy every one of the ~800 pages. I’ve read it cover to cover 3 times & keep an extra copy to lend out. And when you’re finished with it you can segue smoothly into Rhodes’ sorta-sequel, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb which is almost as good though a bit fuzzier in focus.

  13. 13.

    NotMax

    @hg

    The go-to book usually mentioned is Richard Rhodes’ The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Comprehensive without being stodgy.

    Much less definitive, but a cracking good read, is the Manhattan Project section in physicist Richard Feynman’s Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, which is a wonderfully entertaining and wide-ranging collection of stories, anecdotes and topics which piqued his interest.

  17. 17.

    Montanareddog

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    When you think your colleagues may be wearing a wire, you might be working for a criminal enterprise

    But if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear, right?

  23. 23.

    Robert Sneddon

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    When you think your colleagues may be wearing a wire, you might be working for a criminal enterprise.

    When you think your colleagues may be wearing a wire, you wonder whether you should be wearing one too.

  25. 25.

    rikyrah

    @Baud:
    One of the funniest parts of the interview between Coates and Chris Hayes was when Coates brings up that he often goes, when looking at the SHYT that Dolt45 has done:

    ” What if 44 had done this?”

    The look on Coates’ face said it all.
    The curve for unqualified White Men is REAL ?.

  28. 28.

    Mustang Bobby

    Schools in Miami-Dade are re-opening today. Only one of the 350+ locations is still without power — an elementary school — so the students are being taken to another school until the power is restored. I still don’t have internet or landline phone at home and AT&T is playing the same recording it did last week about restoration of service.

    Glad to be back at work, but now bracing for Maria. Oy.

  30. 30.

    Baud

    @rikyrah: I still have to read Coates’ article, but I searched to see what he said about “deplorables.” I was disappointed that he didn’t mention it at all, other than in connection with Sanders’ comment after the election. As you’ll recall, the “deplorables” in her speech were the bigots, yet the media treated her remarks as controversial.

  32. 32.

    Mustang Bobby

    @raven: My friends in Pinecrest — three miles north of me — are still powerless. Well, at least I haven’t heard they’ve got it back, and they’re not the type to keep that news to themselves. The latest from Florida Power & Light is Tuesday. They swear.

  34. 34.

    rikyrah

    @Baud:
    They want to walk around the racial element of it all.hence all these phucking articles about understanding Dolt45 voters. I don’t have to understand shyt. Their vote for him shows their lack of character. Period. And, they did it for racial reasons. Because they were mad that the Black man was a successful President.They weren’t mad because 44 was the Black George Bush. They were mad because 44 belongs on Mount Rushmore. His excellence upset them. So, they went out and voted for Dolt45. But now, this vessel for White Supremacy is an incompetent joke.

  39. 39.

    Schlemazel

    @Robert Sneddon:
    This is my real wish, That junior and Jared and a couple others come to believe they are going to take the wrap so they contact Mueller and start making a deal for leniency. I think they believe hair furor will pardon them but if the storied floated about state charges keep coming . . .

  42. 42.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: I thought the Nazis were protesting not getting their white privilege free ride and their gold star for proper toilet usage.

  43. 43.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly: I take them at their word that they are concerned Jews will replace them.

    It’s a reasonable concern. As president, I do in fact intend to replace Nazis with Jews. Details are still being worked out.

  47. 47.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Deadbeat Donnie is an old guy with a shit diet, lousy attitude and level of incompetence hitherto unseen in modern western leaders. It is quite likely that most of us here will be alive to witness his last tweet, whether it is done before he falls off the toilet in a rage or in the moments before the inbound missiles detonate. What will that tweet be?

    My choices are these:

    #fakenews says I’m doing bad job,made things worse. #crookedhillary could not do better.

    US lucky about my big electoral college win! CrookedHillary would have done this much worse!

    World might be ending, but Rosie O’Donnell is still a fat, ugly loser. Would never bang.

  48. 48.

    Feathers

    @Baud: The various rebuttals to Coates are basically comic relief. He’s not saying that there is nothing else going on, he’s saying that without the racism, you don’t get Preznit T. Now I think there is the companion essay to be written about how without the misogyny, you don’t get Drumpf, but that essay would just get either ignored or shit on from all sides, take from that what you will.

    The compulsion to ignore and excuse the racism and misogyny of powerful men led to the reflexive unwillingness of the media to call out T for who and what he is.

  51. 51.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    @rikyrah: I am not feeling bad for them. The contrary, I think it’s great that one or more have become informants are inside the tent gathering evidence against the Drumpf crime family. It’s like watching a Brian DePalma film (“The Untouchables” and “Scarface”) in real time.

  53. 53.

    Victor Matheson

    @NotMax: Nice recommendation about Feynman. I was going to suggest the same book. Not exactly a comprehensive view of the manhattan project but a great tangential read.

  54. 54.

    Feathers

    @Baud: You are right, there have been. But in many ways, the compulsion to see it all as racism can be viewed as desperation to avoid the issue of misogyny.

    The popularity of intersectionality as a concept is how easy it erases the misogyny in any given situation. Discuss.

  56. 56.

    Dnfree

    @hg: I second NotMax’s suggestion for Feynman’s book. I have read it a couple of times and enjoyed it both times. There is also a graphic biography about him that includes some of the personal info he left out.

  58. 58.

    Baud

    @Feathers: I saw an interview with Hillary who said she believes race plays a bigger role than sex in voting, but that people really don’t like seeing women in positions of leadership.

  61. 61.

    MomSense

    @Mustang Bobby:

    It’s no fun. We were without power for a couple of weeks after a massive ice storm some years ago. I hope to never go through that again. We were lucky because we had fireplaces and wood stoves but it was a very cold couple of weeks for many people.

  62. 62.

    bystander

    I may be overthinking it, but I half expect twitler to make some remark about Rosie O’Donnell’s ex committing suicide. If he does, and lately he seems just manic enough to cast aside any last tissue of restraint, you heard it here first.

    And before you say “not possible” just remember yesterday’s golf ball assault video.

  65. 65.

    Baud

    Hypocrisy check. Let’s see who speaks up. Looking at you, Bill Mahar. (LA Times)

    Catholic University of America has abruptly canceled a speech by a well-known, popular Jesuit priest because of protests over his support for gay and lesbian Catholics.

  68. 68.

    Jeffro

    @rikyrah: if 44 had made the p-grabbing comment, he would have been duct taped to the next NASA probe launch and be halfway out of the solar system by now

  70. 70.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @MomSense:

    We had an AWFUL ice storm that took us down for a number of days (2009, IIRC). I still haven’t cut up all the wood that came down.

    What I learned is:

    1. Fireplace inserts look pretty and are nice when the heat is on. It doesn’t throw heat for shit. We punched out after one night, when we got lucky on a hotel room.

    2. When you live in woods and an ice storm is predicted, park at the end of the drive, out by the street (I did, and found it invaluable. Others weren’t so lucky. Works for big snow, too.

    3. Turn off the water and salt the toilets. Before the power came on, internal house temp had dropped to 26.

    4. Keep a chainsaw in good working order – with fuel – and take it with you if you have to drive.

  71. 71.

    rikyrah

    @Baud:
    That not only bothers them, but it shocks them. Our absolute resistance to “moving on”.
    That we don’t give Dolt45, and ultimately THEM- his voters- “the respect that is due the office.’

    Then, when we bring up the receipts from 44’s Administration, they get offended that we collected the receipts and bring them forth.

    Respect the office?

    I tell people that this should be your automatic response:

    Dolt45 will receive the same level of respect that he showed 44.

    Deadpan it. Drop it on them and just walk away.

  72. 72.

    bystander

    @debbie: You’re right. There’s hope we will be spared that while he makes an embarrassing spectacle of himself at the UN.

    ETA The only way twitler pivots is if Melania drives a nail through the arch of his foot. This would be a pivot I would welcome.

  73. 73.

    Kay

    Ha, ha, ha. Donald Trump wants to hit Hillary Clinton! Sean Spicer lies all the time! What other hijinks will these delightful mavericks get up to!

  74. 74.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    2. When you live in woods and an ice storm is predicted, park at the end of the drive, out by the street (I did, and found it invaluable. Others weren’t so lucky. Works for big snow, too.
    ….
    4. Keep a chainsaw in good working order – with fuel – and take it with you if you have to drive.

    Around here there is no point, you aren’t going anywhere anyway, and any attempt is foolhardy at best. If you are lucky you end up in a ditch.

  75. 75.

    satby

    @rikyrah: Good morning ☕

    I’m up and cranky as hell because I have to get to work earlier today for the last of the endless “trainings” on the new electronic records system. I skipped most of them because it’s all on YouTube and they were on my single day off or while I was at the market, but I’m going to this one because it’s supposed to be an end to end process run through. Which it better be, because this is supposed to go live Thursday.

    They’ve asked me to help set up their home laptops to be able to remote in. I’m considering third party software just because I want something easy for them to use after I quit. Because I’m also giving them a four week notice this week. Two weeks, if they delay this damn rollout again.

  76. 76.

    Kay

    Whatever Mueller does or doesn’t find, thank God he’s not Ken Starr. You never hear a word out of him or any of the people he hires. Has anyone advised him on the career/grifting opportunities he’s passing up? Surely he can get at least a book deal or a no-show job out of this celebrity.

  77. 77.

    Baud

    @Kay: I’m glad that Spicer mocked his own deceit. Apparently, the media coverage isn’t sufficient to get the message across just how awful this administration is.

  78. 78.

    Kay

    I’m helping with an anti-heroin program at the middle school today. This is based on absolutely nothing other than my own opinion, but the older I get the more I think middle school (junior high) is way more important than high school.

    It’s Ohio Dept of Ed and state AG. I’ve seen numerous presentations by the AG and in my opinion they are deliberately excluding the huge role played by pharma companies, one in particular, so I’ll make sure to add that info :)

    Purdue Pharma was founded in the late 19th century in New York City, and the firm was purchased in the by the Sackler brothers, three physicians. Some years later, the firm began producing opioid pain relievers.
    One of the Sackler brothers, Arthur, who died in 1987, had been inducted into the Medical Advertising Hall of Fame for his promotional work in helping Valium to become the first US$100 million drug.
    In 1996 Purdue Pharma introduced a new drug – a time-released formulation of oxycodone, an opioid painkiller. OyxContin, as the drug was called, was touted as having a low risk of addiction.
    Purdue backed OxyContin with an aggressive marketing campaign. Key components of this effort were pain-management and speaker-training conferences in sunshine states such as California and Florida, attended by more than 5,000 physicians,
    nurses and pharmacists, many of whom were recruited to serve on Purdue’s speakers’ bureau.
    The company also used a bonus system to incentivize its pharmaceutical representatives to increase OxyContin sales. The average bonus exceeded the representatives’ annual salaries.
    Of course, Purdue was not alone in marketing its pain-relieving products in this way. The Oregon assistant attorney general, for example, described the practices of Insys Therapeutics in marketing its oral spray painkiller as “among the most unconscionable I’ve seen.”

  80. 80.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Sanders lies more than he does and it’s never even mentioned anymore. Mission accomplished. Standard lowered.

    Now we move on to the next phase, where they all make money off it.

    Remember when Susan Rice gave a boilerplate diplomatic statement to Jake Tapper and they flogged it as a lie for 12 months? Wow. The rules sure have changed!

  83. 83.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I love how the Trump people keep planting stories about how “mad” Trump is at Sessions. I can’t imagine what kind of dumb game they’re playing and I don’t want to know. I realize I don’t care why Donald is mad at Jeff.

  84. 84.

    Baud

    @Kay: I don’t believe Sessions offered to resign. The only way he gets dragged out of the DOJ is if he is fired, and Trump won’t do that.

  88. 88.

    Betty Cracker

    @Feathers:

    I think there is the companion essay to be written about how without the misogyny, you don’t get Drumpf, but that essay would just get either ignored or shit on from all sides, take from that what you will.

    True, and the implication is obvious.

  89. 89.

    MomSense

    No general is going to control twitter toddler. It’s a pretty basic rule that if you give your toddler a time out, you have to first take away their toys.

    Letting twitter toddler go to the residence with his stupid phone is never ever going to work.

  90. 90.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Well, we disagree. Trump enjoys a new and dramatically lower standard. I don’t care that much. What they want is to restructure the tax code to lock in income inequality for generations to come. It’s an existential threat. That gap can’t keep widening. It will be impossible to turn it around if they succeed. Ohio State is now 26k for an in-state resident who falls in the middle of the pack academically. That is an entire year’s wages for a lot of these people. They can’t even go to a state school without borrowing in excess of 100k, so like double the value of the homes they came out of. It’s a crisis.

  93. 93.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Almost no one at the state level agrees with Jeff Sessions that we should be locking more people up. His opinions are discredited. Kasich actually lowered sentences for a whole category of crimes by executive action. Sessions is far Right. He’s out of the mainstream. It’s as if he’s been in a time capsule since 1989- he is quite literally out of touch.

  94. 94.

    Kay

    Did the emmys really “honor” gross sleaze Ailes? My goodness. You’d think they’d wait for the 500 lawsuits to settle before they rehabilitate that scum.

    Is Fox News still a cesspool, do you think? Are the multi-million dollar “talent” still trolling the hallways assaulting people and making racist comments?

  95. 95.

    bystander

    @Kay: “Honored” Ailes in the sense that his photo was shown in the What Industry People Died This Year segment. Not a full on choreographed musical sequence.

  96. 96.

    MomSense

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    I was surrounded by woods and all the roads were impassable. It was like mother nature was playing pick up sticks with the forest. Two neighboring families moved in with us because they couldn’t keep warm at their houses. There were some funny things about it. Word went out that somehow you stay warmer if you sleep naked. Couple of weeks of no tv, freezing cold temps, and sleeping naked -nine months later there was a baby boom of “ice storm babies”.

  97. 97.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @hg:

    Could someone recommend a book about the Manhattan Project? Was discussing this with a friend today and its fascinating stuff. (I’m looking for something thats NOT very technical or full of equations!)

    I’ll second Rhodes and add “Critical Assembly,” by Lillian Hoddesen, Paul Henriksen, Roger Meade, and Catherine Westfall. It is subtitled “A Technical History of Los Alamos during the Oppenheimer Years, 1943-1945.” It is shorter than Rhodes. If you’re looking for a narrative of what they did and how, it’s much better than Rhodes – easier to follow the technical story. It’s not devoid of people interactions, though.

    There are a great many biographies of Oppenheimer, as well.

    ETA: No equations and I think the authors of “Critical Assembly” make the technical part reasonably easy to understand.

  99. 99.

    Kay

    So who has been “rebranded” so far? Trump (of course) and Ivanka’s on her 3rd or 4th, but also Bannon and Spicer.

    That’s the thing. There’s no risk for this behavior. Moral hazard. It’s the softest, comfiest “revolution” ever.

  100. 100.

    raven

    So they had Spicer on and honored Ailes and I’m a jerk because I thought there should be some notice of the Burn’s Vietnam premier?

  102. 102.

    Kay

    @raven:

    I watched it with my youngest- he’s a high school freshman. He was really quiet which is uncharacteristic of him. He read The Things they Carried last year so he has some sense of it. The only part I didn’t like was the rewind portion- where they have the famous film clips running backward. I feel like we would have “got” that we were going to the history without that.

  103. 103.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    He can be mad at Attorney General White Citizens Council.

    Doesn’t matter.

    Man will NEVER resign.

    Fulfilling his White Supremacist fantasies……he will have to be fired.

  104. 104.

    Heidi Mom

    @hg: If, along with the excellent books recommended so far, you’re interested in a fictional look inside Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project, try Los Alamos by Joseph Kanon. I’ve read several of his subsequent spy thrillers, but Los Alamos was the first and IMHO the best.

  105. 105.

    Steve in the ATL

    @MomSense: that’s my origin story as well. Blizzard in Chicago in [year redacted because it makes me feel old] and the following summer every family in the neighborhood had a new baby.

    When my dad told me that I thought “I really did not need to know that”

  107. 107.

    Amaranthine RBG

    @rikyrah:
    Yes, the prejudice driving a vote for a white man over a white woman is obviously racism.

    /s

    That was one of the defects in the Coates essay – once you think a single thing explains everything, you start warping reality to conform to your tidy theory

  108. 108.

    NorthLeft12

    his staff stops talking about him like a misbehaving and whiny toddler.

    I think Mr. Drezner left out the qualifying adjectives/adverbs. I have two grandsons who are toddlers, and they never behave as badly as Deadbeat Donald does on his best day.

  110. 110.

    rikyrah

    Senate Dems issue a ‘red alert’ on Republican repeal efforts
    09/18/17 09:00 AM
    By Steve Benen

    Senate Republicans only have 13 days remaining, including today, to pass the final iteration of their regressive health care plan, and most of the stakeholders continue to act as if the GOP crusade will fail. In recent days, Senate Democrats have become far less sanguine about the possibility.

    Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) issued a “red alert” to health care advocates late Friday, and we’ve seen similar sentiments from Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Kirsten Gillibrand‏ (D-N.Y.), and Al Franken (D-Minn.). Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told health care proponents, “Drop what you are doing to start calling, start showing up, start descending on DC.” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has been focused on his single-payer proposal, but he added yesterday, “Our immediate concern is to beat back yet another disastrous Republican proposal to throw millions of people off health insurance.”

    Among opinion leaders, progressive voices like the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne and the New York Times’ Paul Krugman both devoted their columns today to warning the public that the threat to the existing health care system is quite real.

    Politico reported over the weekend, “Obamacare repeal is on the brink of coming back from the dead.”

    Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his leadership team are seriously considering voting on a bill that would scale back the federal government’s role in the health care system and instead provide block grants to states, congressional and Trump administration sources said.

    It would be a last-ditch attempt to repeal Obamacare before the GOP’s power to pass health care legislation through a party-line vote in the Senate expires on Sept. 30.

  111. 111.

    rikyrah

    Obamacare Repeal Could Still Actually Pass. Really.
    by David Atkins
    September 17, 2017

    While most of America looks the other way, Republicans are once again trying to pass tax cuts for the rich by way of taking away the healthcare of millions. Though it has flown mostly under the radar until the last few days, the Republicans’ last-ditch effort at Obamacare repeal called Graham-Cassidy has reportedly far greater chances of passage than many suspect. Senator John McCain, who famously helped kibosh earlier Republican efforts, has tentatively come out in favor of the bill. If he were to follow through all other Republican votes remain aligned as previously, then Graham-Cassidy would make its way out of the Senate.

    September 30th is the deadline for any bill to be considered under reconciliation, which allows Republicans to pass budget-related legislation with only 50 votes. So action would need to come quickly, perhaps even before a full scoring by the CBO. Of course, the less the public knows about the legislation and the less actual analysis of its effects, the better for Republicans. As with previous versions of Obamacare repeal, it’s not so much a conservative good-faith effort at healthcare reform as it is a tax cut for the wealthy (though it retains more of the taxes than previous versions) and a pathway to damage President Obama’s legacy.

    The legislative path would also be tricky. As Dylan Scott explains:

    The odds are stacked against it. The window is small, few other Republicans seem particularly interested in revisiting health care, and the actual policy of the bill still needs to be litigated. Senators haven’t even had a chance yet to unpack how the bill’s complex funding formula would impact their specific states.

    “No Senate GOPer will say anything negative about the bill because in concept, sure, more state flexibility is a good thing,” one health insurance lobbyist told me.

  112. 112.

    Betty Cracker

    @Amaranthine RBG: It’s not so clear-cut as you make it out to be: Clinton was a white woman who explicitly called out white supremacy during her campaign, and Trump ran on a white identity politics platform. Of course race was a huge factor. That you can’t recognize it as something that might “drive a vote for a white man over a white woman” indicates that you need to examine your own blind spots — could be more profitable than pointing out others.’

  113. 113.

    rikyrah

    A Nightmare in New Hampshire
    by D.R. Tucker
    September 18, 2017

    They might as well have been shouting “You will not replace us!”

    State authorities in New Hampshire are investigating a possible hate crime after a family reported that their 8-year-old boy was pushed by teenagers off a picnic table with a rope around his neck, injuring him. The boy, who is biracial, was treated in the hospital and released, the police said.

    The attack occurred Aug. 28 in Claremont, a city of about 13,000 in the western part of the state, and came to light after the boy’s mother, Cassandra Merlin, posted a photograph of her son’s bloodied neck and a statement about it on her Facebook page. “It truly saddens me that even in a city so small, racism exists,” she wrote.

    Ms. Merlin could not be reached for comment. She and other relatives told news outlets that their understanding of events came from the boy and his 11-year-old sister, and that there were no adults present at the time.

    The boy’s grandmother, Lorrie Slattery, told Valley News, a New Hampshire newspaper, that he and others were playing in a yard in their neighborhood when the teenagers, who are white, started calling the boy racial epithets and throwing sticks and rocks at his legs.

    Ms. Merlin, the boy’s mother, said in an interview with The Root that one attacker used a dangling rope that had held a tire swing. “The older boys had put the ropes around their necks,” she said, adding that they then told her son it was his turn. She said her son “got up on the table and put the rope around his neck, and another kid came up from behind him and pushed him off of the picnic table. And they walked away and left him there hanging.”

    Ms. Merlin said the boy’s sister screamed for help and described her brother kicking his feet, grabbing at his neck and turning purple before dropping to the ground.

  115. 115.

    rikyrah

    Trump admin shields Mar-a-Lago visitor logs from scrutiny
    09/18/17 09:30 AM
    By Steve Benen

    Americans wondering about the visitors getting an audience with Donald Trump at the White House will have to keep wondering: soon after taking office, Trump World decided to scrap Obama-era transparency rules and announced White House visitor logs would be kept secret.

    But this president doesn’t just hold meetings with visitors to the presidential residence; Trump also hosts conversations at the Florida resort he still owns and profits from. Perhaps the public can see the visitor logs from Mar-a-Lago?

    In July, a federal judge sided with watchdog organizations, which sued to gain access to the information, asking not for club members’ names, but only the names of those who’d met with the president. On Friday afternoon, following a hurricane-related delay, the Trump administration responded to the request, and as the Washington Post reported, it wasn’t much of an answer.

    The list had just 22 names, all from the same group of visitors: a delegation of Japanese officials and assistants who accompanied Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on a February stay at Trump’s resort…. Of course, that’s not the full list of visitors to Mar-a-Lago.

    Many hundreds of other people entered the club during the days when the president was there. They included club members: Initiation now costs $200,000. Nonmembers, who came for one of the charity galas in the club’s ballrooms. Members’ friends, who joined them on the dining terrace. Chinese officials, including President Xi Jinping, who famously shared “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake” (in Trump’s words) with the president at the club while U.S. Navy ships were preparing to launch missiles at military installations in Syria.

    None of those names were released.

  116. 116.

    Kay

    John Harwood‏Verified account @JohnJHarwood 15h15 hours ago
    More
    John Harwood Retweeted Jay Rosen
    there is no doubt media coverage exaggerated the significance of Clinton’s e-mails in a way that was not just dumb but obviously ridiculousJohn Harwood added,

    This has become a kind of test for me. It’s not that the ridiculous coverage was biased. I don’t know what the motives were. But they have to admit it happened. They don’t even have to admit it mattered- just that they did it.

    I don’t need nefarious motives. I need a recognition that they did a bad job. The effects or “what it means” is open to discussion. The fact that it happened shouldn’t be.

  118. 118.

    rikyrah

    This is nothing but a GRIFT.

    PERIOD.

    Questions surround Trump’s $25 million inaugural concert
    09/18/17 08:30 AM
    By Steve Benen

    We’ve been keeping an eye in recent months on Donald Trump’s inaugural committee, which by some metrics, was a great success. After his election, the Republican eliminated caps on individual contributions – caps that George W. Bush and Barack Obama both utilized – and sold “exclusive access” for seven-figure contributions.
    The result was a fundraising juggernaut: Trump’s inaugural committee took in $107 million, much of which went unspent during poorly attended festivities.

    The Associated Press picked up on the thread over the weekend, shining a light on an increasingly interesting mystery.

    President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee raised an unprecedented $107 million for a ceremony that officials promised would be “workmanlike,” and the committee pledged to give leftover funds to charity. Nearly eight months later, the group has helped pay for redecorating at the White House and the vice president’s residence in Washington.

    But nothing has yet gone to charity.

    What is left from the massive fundraising is a mystery, clouded by messy and, at times, budget-busting management of a private fund that requires little public disclosure.

    Of particular interest was the AP’s discovery that Trump’s committee spent $25 million on a pre-inaugural concert at the Lincoln Memorial, which the Associated Press described as “head-scratching” for good reason. Barack Obama’s pre-inaugural concert at the same location eight years earlier featured far higher-profile entertainers, roughly 40 times as many attendees, and cost one-fifth as much.

  119. 119.

    Kay

    Because the NYTimes could make that distinction. They could say “while our coverage of the emails was excessive and ridiculous our position is it had no effect on the race”. That’s a position. The other is just delusional.

  120. 120.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay:

    The fact that it happened shouldn’t be.

    QFT. One thing that’s semi-heartening is that people aren’t letting it go. “But her emails” is a national phenomenon, and the Beltway idiots it lampoons can’t raise their head in public without getting an earful about it. Their reaction indicates that it gets under their skin. Of course, the reaction is more denial.

  122. 122.

    O. Felix Culpa

    Good morning, all! I slept in today. Now I’ll go up to the top and start reading your comments.

  124. 124.

    Feathers

    @Kay: And the US really drops the ball on middle school. Elementary school kids are our beloved “children.” High schoolers are either college bound or “in trouble.” Both have resources and think pieces thrown at then. But what we don’t have is a strong national education policy that addresses the entire school journey.

  125. 125.

    Aleta

    @MomSense: The radio said “Go check on the elderly.” So I decided I should check on Ev, the 90 yr old woman across the street. She had a nice fire going in her Franklin parlor stove out of dry lilac she had stored in her barn, with oatmeal cooking and hot tea water. She fed us and we got thoroughly warmed. Being good citizens, we checked on her several times a day for the rest of the week.

  126. 126.

    raven

    @Kay: I got to spend some time with Tim a few years back and it was nice to see him. The rewind was cool with me but I’m sure it wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

  127. 127.

    schrodingers_cat

    I saw a really disturbing and incredibly brave movie that was on my must see list for a while. Anurag Kashyap’s movie about the 1993 serial bomb blasts in Mumbai, Black Friday. It was a tough and unflinching look at the police investigation of the those blasts and the riots in December and the pogrom in January that culminated in the blasts. Moving and a gut punch. He named names, did not hide behind pseudonyms. I think it is still available on Netflix.

  128. 128.

    Tazj

    @Feathers: I’ve always thought that middle school, or at least the way we have handled it in the U.S., was a bad idea. My opinion is based on nothing but life experience since I’m not an educator(that’s probably apparent).

    I think it was a bad idea putting a large number of kids of that age together without giving them more attention. I think pre-k through 8th grade is a better idea, and giving kids that age more responsibility for mentoring younger kids might foster a sense of maturity and confidence in them. They would be the oldest kids in a school instead of just being around a bunch of kids their own age who are struggling.

    I could be completely wrong, there’s probably studies that show that there’s no better outcomes or experiences for kids that go to pre-k through 8th grade compared to middle school, or age groupings are such a small factor compared to other things. I just remember middle school being such a hell hole when I was young.

  129. 129.

    Lucy

    Hey, y’all. If any of you are in the Norfolk/Bristol senatorial district in MA, don’t forget you’ve got a Primary tomorrow. One of the nominees is a Bro who voted for Trump so, you know. Let’s get the actual Democrat into the race.

  130. 130.

    rikyrah

    The politics of the Equifax mess pose challenges for Republicans
    09/18/17 10:00 AM
    By Steve Benen

    It’s been a week since the Equifax controversy first broke, and the scope of the story is still coming into focus. One of the nation’s largest credit reporting agencies was apparently the target of a major hack that “may have exposed private information belonging to 143 million people,” including Social Security numbers, credit card numbers, birth dates, home addresses, and in some instances, driver’s license numbers.

    Making matters worse, three Equifax executives sold stock in the company after the breach was discovered (they deny any wrongdoing). Making matters worse still, it took about six weeks for the company to tell the public about the breach.

    So, what does this have to do with politics? Quite a bit, actually. The Equifax mess has made it vastly easier for progressives to make the case that federal officials should be regulating the heck out of the credit-reporting agencies, but as the New York Times reported, that’s unlikely to happen given the direction of the prevailing political winds.

    The credit bureaus have for decades successfully fended off calls in Congress for more oversight, despite warnings about potential problems that go back to Senator William Proxmire, a Wisconsin Democrat, in the 1960s. Now, the industry is likely to find support in the agenda of President Trump, who has pledged to strip away “burdensome” business regulations. […]

    Equifax spent $1.1 million on lobbying last year, up from $300,000 in 2006, according to data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics.

    Roll Call reported last week that Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee have been pressing for hearings on the Equifax scandal, but Banking Committee Chairman Michael Crapo (R-Idaho) was undecided on whether to bother. (The bipartisan leadership of the Senate Finance Committee, however, sent a written request for information to Equifax last week.)

    And what about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which congressional Republicans have been trying to gut?

  131. 131.

    rikyrah

    ‘Putin’s favorite congressman’ sought deal for WikiLeaks founder
    09/18/17 11:00 AM
    By Steve Benen

    As a rule, it’s best not to get too worked up about random quips from Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.). The California Republican, for example, recently argued that last month’s violence in Charlottesville was staged by liberals and was “a total hoax.”

    But while foolish palaver like this is easy to dismiss, some of Rohrabacher’s antics are harder to overlook. The Wall Street Journal reported the other day, for example, that the GOP lawmaker reached out to the White House last week about brokering a deal in which Donald Trump would help WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and in exchange, Assange would provide evidence exonerating Russia in the scandal surrounding the attack on American elections.

    The proposal made by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R., Calif.), in a phone call Wednesday with White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, was apparently aimed at resolving the probe of WikiLeaks prompted by Mr. Assange’s publication of secret U.S. government documents in 2010 through a pardon or other act of clemency from President Donald Trump.

    The possible “deal” – a term used by Mr. Rohrabacher during the Wednesday phone call – would involve a pardon of Mr. Assange or “something like that,” Mr. Rohrabacher said. In exchange, Mr. Assange would probably present a computer drive or other data-storage device that Mr. Rohrabacher said would exonerate Russia in the long-running controversy about who was the source of hacked and stolen material aimed at embarrassing the Democratic Party during the 2016 election.

  136. 136.

    TerryC

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: @Feathers: Grr. When my kids hit middle school, in the 1990s, I was appalled at the immensely strong effort by teachers and staff to keep parents away from involvement. Up until then it had been the reverse. I really felt pushed away when I was needed most.

  137. 137.

    Ruckus

    @Tazj:
    One of the things that I noticed about grades 7 and 8 were that there was a lot more physicality about the kids than earlier. Fights, a lot of growth which allowed a fight to be much more serious. Even phys ed was stepped up a lot. I’m not sure that having younger, smaller kids around all of that would be good. A side note, I was one of the smaller kids in middle school so maybe I noticed this more. But it is a memory of the time. And the same kids in HS were not as physical. Now also the district I attended had something like 5 or 6 elementary schools, one middle school and HS. It may have been that most everyone was meeting new kids all the time in middle school. But I also noticed that a lot of the fights were among kids that knew each other, had been in the same schools, so I’m not sure about that.
    Just two cents in here.

  140. 140.

    Anne Laurie

    @Tazj:

    I think it was a bad idea putting a large number of kids of that age together without giving them more attention. I think pre-k through 8th grade is a better idea, and giving kids that age more responsibility for mentoring younger kids might foster a sense of maturity and confidence in them. They would be the oldest kids in a school instead of just being around a bunch of kids their own age who are struggling.

    Bingo. I went to a first-through-eighth (parochial) school, and the nuns always stressed that the big kids had to set a good example for ‘the little ones’. So the seventh- and eighth-graders really did their best to keep the sixth graders from going full Lord of the Flies on each other. At least in the late 1960s, there was a limit to how much awfulness 12-year-olds could think up on their own…

    It was still a shock to the 14-year-old ‘freshmen’ entering high school and going back to the bottom of the pecking order, but by then every class had mostly shaken down its internal rankings, for good or bad.

  141. 141.

    SgrAstar

    @hg: Among my favorites are Richard Rhodes’ award-winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb and Dark Sun. After you’ve read those- they are gripping!- there are some excellent biographies of the participants, including American Prometheus about Oppenheimer, and James Gleick’s Genius, about Richard Feynman. Enjoy!

  144. 144.

    gvg

    @Anne Laurie: I think it would be a terrible idea to put middle school kids with the little ones, precisely because that is the age I remember the worst bullying. You can “hope” they would be improved by more responsibility, but I want a more fact based response. Smaller schools might help, bigger ones sure won’t.
    In fact I have seen an interesting idea of breaking up elementaries into upper and lower based on the huge size differences of those ages prek thru 5th leading to bullying. I have also read of a Mississippi town that was trying to overcome racial zoning = minority schools being worse by having one school per grade and thus one school district. It sounded interesting but no results yet. I thin my town is too large for that exact plan to work.
    Middle schools probably need a lower teacher pupil ratio. Not sure what else.

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