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Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Too little, too late, ftfnyt. fuck all the way off.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

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Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

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Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

You are here: Home / We all need someone we can bleed on

We all need someone we can bleed on

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Trump is a weird guy:

“So what happens is, this guy falls off right on his face, hits his head, and I thought he died. And you know what I did? I said, ‘Oh my god, that’s disgusting,’ and I turned away,” said Trump. “I couldn’t, you know, he was right in front of me and I turned away. I didn’t want to touch him… he’s bleeding all over the place, I felt terrible. You know, beautiful marble floor, didn’t look like it. It changed color. Became very red. And you have this poor guy, eighty years old, laying on the floor unconscious, and all the rich people are turning away. ‘Oh my god! This is terrible! This is disgusting!’ and you know, they’re turning away. Nobody wants to help the guy. His wife is screaming—she’s sitting right next to him, and she’s screaming.”

[…]

“I was saying, ‘Get that blood cleaned up! It’s disgusting!’ The next day, I forgot to call [the man] to say he’s ok,” said Trump, adding of the blood, “It’s just not my thing.”

“Most in this Ohio bar share Trump’s distaste for blood”, I’m sure.

Reader Interactions

196Comments

  1. 1.

    Kristine

    I always wonder at what the reactions would be if PBO or HRC said anything like this.

    I mean, I know what the reactions would be. But part of me still has trouble accepting it.

    Also, PLEASE HURRY UP MR. MUELLER.

  2. 2.

    Corner Stone

    Speaking of bloody old men, Rep Scalise is making his triumphant return to the floor of the House and addressing the crowd.

  3. 3.

    Served

    Can someone explain to me how after 2 years of campaigning and almost a year since the election, not a single newsroom dug these interviews up?

    And yet somehow we all needed to know Podesta’s risotto recipe ASAP

  4. 4.

    Corner Stone

    @Kristine: That he was in shock and didn’t help the guy? That he fainted at the sight of blood? That the guy’s wife was screaming and no one in the assembled audience went to his aid? Or that he was more concerned about his beautiful marble floor and forgot all about the guy?

  5. 5.

    rikyrah

    Republicans can’t run from Roy Moore’s record forever
    09/28/17 10:42 AM—UPDATED 09/28/17 10:54 AM
    By Steve Benen

    I don’t generally see eye to eye with Karl Rove, but about a week ago, the Republican operative reflected on Alabama’s U.S. Senate special election, and he raised a perfectly legitimate point.

    “Roy Moore would be the Todd Akin of 2017 and 2018 for every Republican on the ballot,” said Karl Rove, the Republican strategist, who is aligned with the Senate Leadership Fund. “Republicans will be asked, ‘Do you agree homosexuality should be punished by death, do you believe 9/11 was a result of God’s anger?’ He’ll say outrageous things, the media will play it up, and every Republican will be asked, ‘Do you agree with that?’”

    Well, yeah, of course they’ll be asked, “Do you agree with that?” Their party is poised to welcome to the Senate a theocrat who believes his radical religious beliefs supersede American laws. If Republicans are going to support Roy Moore’s candidacy, it necessarily means they’re at least comfortable with his brand of Christian nationalism.

  7. 7.

    Corner Stone

    @Served: Everything was right there the whole time. Major media outlets had covered Trump the persona for two+ decades. They knew where every nook(ie) and cranny was.
    This would not have even been investigative journalism. It wouldn’t have even been work. Assign an intern to search the archives for “Trump” and they would have had front page stories for weeks. That none of this happened is self-evident in their collusion and guilt.

  8. 8.

    Frank McCormick

    Was he perhaps one of the models for Samuel L Jackson’s character in “Kingsman: The Secret Service”?

  9. 9.

    FlipYrWhig

    Christ, that’s awful. Would his defense be “I was trying to make the story funny because it was on Howard Stern”?

    I still wish Hillary had run more ads about how his fraud links up to his vanity and vice versa. Using donated money to buy giant portraits of yourself to hang in your private clubs seems to me to be SUCH a window onto Trump’s particular form of demented narcissism. Maybe when they tested it it didn’t change any minds. Worrying about the old man’s blood on your beautiful marble floor seems like the kind of thing that crystallizes the Trumpness of Trump too.

  10. 10.

    Corner Stone

    @rikyrah:

    If Republicans are going to support Roy Moore’s candidacy, it necessarily means they’re at least comfortable with his brand of Christian nationalism.

    The POTUS said it was A-OK to grab women by their pu$$y. Anyone who thinks a thoecrackpot as a candidate is a handicap in 2017 or 2018 is delusional. The time when “I’m not a witch” or “2nd amendment solutions” or “use a chicken to pay the doctor bill” were somehow damaging or disqualifying are long gone. I bet if Todd Akin was running this cycle he could state that he really did believe in “legitimate rape theory” and get elected.

  11. 11.

    bystander

    I’m really shocked. I would have thought Trump would have taken off his jacket, rolled it in a ball and cradled the man’s head while trying to decide if he should give him mouth-to-mouth. You just never can tell about somebody.

  13. 13.

    Just One More Canuck

    @Corner Stone: Why would anyone tell a story like that? What’s the point? The best it does is tell people that he panicked and then was too embarrassed or thoughtless to see if the guy was alright. At worst, it tells people that he’s an asshole that, like you said, cares more about his marble floor than the guy who was hurt.

    Then again, since it’s Trump, maybe telling people that he’s an asshole that cares more about his floor than the guy was the point, since his base seems to love that

  14. 14.

    Corner Stone

    @FlipYrWhig:

    I still wish Hillary had run more ads about how his fraud links up to his vanity and vice versa.

    I wish she had run some ads with some kind of message about the economy and how she was going to help the forgotten man.

  16. 16.

    Steeplejack

    I’ve been practically stroking out from rage already this morning, and this just dials it up to 11. Trump is a monster.

    Bro’ Man and I were talking about Trump, and I told him that I can no longer laugh at anecdotes from history about crazy rulers. “Silly Romans! The emperor put his horse in the senate!” “Marie Antoinette built a fake village at Versailles so she could play at being a shepherdess. Ha-ha, Frenchies!” “He called himself the Moon King and built a fairy-tale castle with a Venus grotto on the grounds! Suck it, Bavarians!”

    Somehow all that seems much less funny now.

  17. 17.

    Hungry Joe

    Aversion to blood is a visceral reaction over which one has no conscious control. What makes Trump’s story so odd is his not understanding that his lack of interest in helping the injured man, and his concern instead over the state of the marble floor, is abhorrent. Yet he tells this story ABOUT HIMSELF. He has no idea how normal people feel and think and react.

  18. 18.

    Mnemosyne

    You know, not everyone is good in an emergency, but everyone should at least know HOW TO CALL FOR HELP, FFS!

    And, yes, if you are somehow in charge of the place where this happens — like being the owner or figurehead — you should at least pretend to be concerned to keep your customers calm. Jaysus.

  20. 20.

    Corner Stone

    @Just One More Canuck: It’s what immature bros do to bond. It’s a story that only a male with no sense of decency or maturity could tell another human being and not feel shame about it.
    This is why they sold the Hollywood Access tape as “locker room talk”. Because this is the kind of shit some man-children do as ways of signaling what a cool kid they are.

  22. 22.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Corner Stone: The policy-based ad I saw a fair amount in Virginia was the SCHIP one. I don’t remember ads about taking steps to improve the economy. Speech lines, yes, ads, no, or at least not that I remember. Sigh.

    IMHO what they didn’t take into account enough was that ads have two purposes: to persuade the persuadable on the one hand AND to drive media coverage on the other. If you focus group an ad and it doesn’t connect in the room, there’s still a chance it could have led to some kind of news story _about_ the ad and its contents, which might make it effective after the fact. But IANA marketing major.

  23. 23.

    Corner Stone

    @Steeplejack: I sincerely hope whatever had you in a rage was something different than what you discussed with your brother. Because if that’s your flashpoint…we’re going to need to get you some help.

  24. 24.

    Tilda Swintons Bald Cap

    @FlipYrWhig: The more I see and read the more I am convinced the election was actually stolen. So I don’t think any ads would have made a difference.

  26. 26.

    Corner Stone

    I just looked up and saw the chyron on MSNBC and at first read I swear it said: “Rep Scalise: You have no idea what it feels like to be black”

  27. 27.

    Served

    @SatanicPanic: I’m not commenting on whether it would matter, but on the absolute malpractice the media committed during the campaign and continues to commit today.

    Poor dumb Maggie today is twisting herself in knots to avoid the l-word to describe an obvious lie:

    The president appears to have invented a scenario of a senator in the hospital t.co/ODvrEyIFfD— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) September 28, 2017

  34. 34.

    Roger Moore

    @Corner Stone:

    The POTUS said it was A-OK to grab women by their pu$$y. Anyone who thinks a thoecrackpot as a candidate is a handicap in 2017 or 2018 is delusional.

    Except:
    1) He lost the popular vote by a substantial margin, so he clearly wasn’t extremely popular to begin with
    2) He’s lost popularity since then

    I’m not saying that interest in deranged crackpots is gone, or even that it’s necessarily declined since Trump’s election. But it didn’t start with Trump, either, as the nomination of people like Akin and O’Donnell- and the repeated election of people like Roy Moore- attest. But we shouldn’t over-interpret Trump’s election, either; it isn’t a sign that everything has suddenly changed and all the old rules can be casually tossed out the window.

  47. 47.

    The Moar You Know

    Holy fucking hell. Hey Two Scoops, here’s an idea. Help. And if you don’t know how to do that, call 911 and go pray with the poor fucker’s wife.

    Jesus, I don’t think I’ve ever read anything more offensive in my life. Anyone who reacts like that is not a human being.

  49. 49.

    Betty Cracker

    Even in the hyuk-hyuk-hyuk environment of a Stern interview, that’s a weird and disturbing anecdote. Not so much the part about Trump freaking out over the blood but the admission that he fretted about the marble floor and was so clearly unconcerned about the injured man. It seems quaint in retrospect to have been so disturbed over Romney’s revelation that he lashed the family dog to the roof of his car for road trips.

  50. 50.

    rikyrah

    White House tax debate has started with two outright—no other word for it—lies: wealthy don’t get a tax cut and cuts will pay for themselves
    — Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) September 28, 2017

  51. 51.

    Corner Stone

    @Roger Moore: IMO, we should pay umm more attention to the fact that Roy Moore crushed the candidate Trump had stumped for.
    Trump did lose the popular vote, obviously. I believe the media’s endless fascination with the theme “Trump voter still sticking with Trump!” is a ruse. It’s not so much that we have a “Trump cult of personality”, it’s that – as I think most here believe – we have a solid chunk of people who hate everything about America and want to destroy it. The earlier test runs by Akin and Angle and O’Donnell were all the warm up lap. Trump’s election was the starters flag.

  52. 52.

    Chyron HR

    @Corner Stone:

    I wish she had run some ads with some kind of message about the economy and how she was going to help the forgotten man.

    I hope you mean the forgotten WHITE man. We don’t cotton to identity politics in the new and improved Bernocratic party.

  54. 54.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Corner Stone: In Alabama it’s not a handicap. But Trump had an appeal to resentful suburban conservatives in the North that I suspect Roy Moore mostly doesn’t. (Not to say there aren’t theocons up here–there are, I’ve seen them. But pure “screw you” conservatism is more prevalent.)

  55. 55.

    Another Scott

    ObOpenThread? NavyTimes:

    To the likely relief of many an exhausted ship crew, the Navy will for the first time institute formal rest guidelines for sailors on ships, part of a sweeping set of new rules outlined in a command message obtained by the Navy Times.

    Naval Surface Force commander Vice Adm. Thomas Rowden’s message comes as investigations into the fatal collisions involving the destroyers Fitzgerald and John S. McCain this summer continue, and as a harsh spotlight has fallen on the surface fleet’s training, maintenance and readiness problems.

    In an internal Navy message issued Friday, Rowden said surface fleet skippers will be required to implement watch schedules and shipboard routines that better sync with circadian rhythms and natural sleep cycles.

    Such a move aims to give sailors a more consistent and less erratic sleep schedule, resulting in a more rested and alert crew.

    In further guidance sent out this week, skippers were given the choice from among several watch schedules that follow this natural cycle, according to copies of the messages obtained by Navy Times.

    While the guidance does not mandate any specific schedule, it will likely mean the end of grueling 5-hours on, 10-hours off watch schedules, known as “five and dimes,” because that does not align with circadian rhythms and a 24-hour daily cycle.

    “You’re going to have to form some level of watch bill that protects sailors’ sleep,” Naval Surface Force spokesman Cmdr. John Perkins said.

    Commanders will also take into account a ship’s manning level, deployment status and current missions for such watch calculations, he said.

    Skippers will have to submit their plans by Dec. 20, he said.

    Several ships are already using such a rhythm, with the 7th Fleet cruiser Shiloh adopting such a pattern this month.

    The Navy’s aviation and submariner communities codified sleep regulations years ago. But while the surface fleet has in recent years encouraged skippers to try different watch schedules to encourage better sleep, this new order marks the first time the surface fleet has regulated such practices at the surface force level.

    [blink]Government watchdog studies have found sailors on ships working more than 100 hours a week, and have cautioned that this can lead to fatigue and reduced readiness.[/blink]

    […]

    Ya think? :-/

    Here’s hoping they actually implement these things, and also have enough people on the ships to do the work required…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  56. 56.

    The Moar You Know

    Would it have mattered? I mean, which is worse- “I watched an old man die” or “I sexually assault women”?

    @SatanicPanic: Well, I’ve watched an old man die. He arrested right in front of me as he was walking down an airplane aisle towards my seat. I yelled for the crew and for a doctor and for someone to grab the defibrillator, and then stood the hell back because three doctors were there in thirty seconds. Nothing I could do, and as it turned out, three defibrillators later, nothing anyone could do.

    “Watching an old man die” is situational. Sexually assaulting women, not so much.

  57. 57.

    A Ghost To Most

    @Corner Stone: Yea, people are calling it a miracle.

    The miracle would be if it caused him to renounce his racist and fascist ideology. I’m not holding my breath.

  59. 59.

    germy

    @The Moar You Know: The difference is that you felt some concern for the old man. Your anecdote doesn’t involve worrying about blood stains on the aisle carpet or annoyance at a delayed flight.

  63. 63.

    Steeplejack

    @Another Scott:

    Long before he became an RWNJ, my RWNJ brother was a “surface warfare officer” on destroyers in the ’80s. He said the experience was like working—and living full-time—in a really loud, dirty factory where double shifts were the norm and it could get worse than that at any time.

  65. 65.

    Citizen_X

    Oh, Doug! You picked the wrong line for this one.

    Saw an old man dying of a heart attack in Manhattan
    He died while we just stood there laughing right at him
    Ain’t he cute?

    I don’t care about you
    Fuck you!

  67. 67.

    glory b

    @Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: I believe that too. Here in PA, Trump is the first R presidential winner since 1988. Hillary and Katie McGinty (D for senate) were ahead of Trump and Toomey the entire campaign. Not by a lot, but never below. Three or four other statewide races (think Atty Gen, Treasurer, etc.) in 2016 all went to Dems. Dems over performed in the last three elections.

    Trump and Toomey were fishy.

    And I don’t believe that voters voted for 2 Rs and the rest Ds. Doesn’t make any sense.

  69. 69.

    Elizabelle

    @rikyrah: Thank you for the Maddow link. I don’t have or watch MSNBC, but am interested in this segment. Dickerson’s story was really well written.

  70. 70.

    germy

    @A Ghost To Most: You’re right, it was Bill Frist.

    While he was a medical school student in the 1970s, Frist performed fatal medical experiments and vivisection on shelter cats while researching the use of drugs on the mitral valve. By his own account, Frist improperly obtained these cats from Boston animal shelters, falsely telling shelter staff he was adopting the cats as pets. In his book, Frist asserted that he succumbed to the pressure to succeed in a highly competitive medical school.

    Frist’s treatment of cats first became controversial in 1994, in his first Senate campaign, when the opposing camp in the Republican primary called him a cat-killer. The matter again created public controversy in 2002, after mention in a Boston Globe profile, published after his election as Senate majority leader

    wikipedia

  71. 71.

    Elizabelle

    @glory b: Yeah. I am hoping Mueller’s investigation finds a thread to proveable vote fraud.

    I think Trump is an illegitimate president. I would like to have him proved so.

  73. 73.

    Roger Moore

    @Corner Stone:

    It’s not so much that we have a “Trump cult of personality”, it’s that – as I think most here believe – we have a solid chunk of people who hate everything about America and want to destroy it.

    I would argue the details of this point. They hate many things about America that we love, but they also love many things about America that we hate and want to change. Their vision of a racist, patriarchal America is certainly closer to our real past than our vision of what America is supposed to be.

  74. 74.

    germy

    @Kristine:

    I thought that was Bill Frist.

    They should pass a Wellness Check law. Anyone adopting an animal should be able to prove the pet is being cared for.

  78. 78.

    Corner Stone

    @Steeplejack: Smokin’ hot, you mean! Yes, that is the ad she should have had in rotation across the nation!
    “I ain’t sayin she a gold digger
    but she ain’t messin with no broke, broke”

  79. 79.

    sharl

    The Daily Beast site is down (not just the story). I have no idea why, but a story like this might have earned them a DDoS attack from aggrieved maga chuds.

  80. 80.

    Corner Stone

    @Roger Moore: Point being, to return to the America they may “love” and idealize would destroy the progress that has been made and what truth America may otherwise be heading for.
    I don’t think there is any argument that most white people whitewash America’s true history to some degree or another. They don’t really want to return to a past America, they want to live in “America”.

  81. 81.

    Mike S.

    @glory b: We’ll never know if totals were altered in PA, because there is no way to audit or recount in most of the state. They just take the totals for each candidate off of each machine at the end of the day. We have electronic systems where I vote with no paper trail.

  84. 84.

    Fair Economist

    @Served:

    Poor dumb Maggie today is twisting herself in knots to avoid the l-word to describe an obvious lie:

    I really don’t think he’s lying. His brain is falling apart. He’s far more incoherent than he was even a year ago. A year ago he was spouting his nonsense policies and claims – “build the wall”, etc. He could more or less respond to a question with one of his canned responses. Now he seems to just be rambling incoherently and can’t even respond to a question. Stuff just tumbles out of his mouth. I don’t think he has any idea about what’s going on in general, never mind Senate whip counts.

  87. 87.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Corner Stone: They may not like multilateral treaties but they do like the economic power that comes with being the reserve currency of the world. They may not like science but like their iphones and smartphones and so on. What they want is contradictory.

  90. 90.

    schrodingers_cat

    Russians would never have succeeded to the extent they have if there was not a captive audience that was willing to digest all the lies they dished out. I blame the Republicans for creating the ground for this poisonous crop. Their attack on reason and rationality made this possible.

  91. 91.

    StringOnAStick

    What a strange reaction, Howard Stern’s show or not. I guess all forms of blood are “disgusting” to drumpfh, which adds a bit more nuance to his Megan Kelly “blood coming out of her whatever” comment. He’s an 11 year old snotty boy who just found out about tampons.

    We got home from Europe in the wee small hours Sunday, went to work on Monday and now I’ve got a miserable cold that felled two other coworkers that same day. The trip was great, this cold and cough not so much.

  95. 95.

    Starfish

    @Corner Stone: Do you wish she would have more beers in bars in Pennsylvania to show what she had in common with the white working class? That didn’t really help her in her election against Obama because it came across as disingenuous.

  97. 97.

    sharl

    @Served: Did they scrub this link? It doesn’t appear to be working anymore.

    I just got it to load. The entire Daily Beast site was down for a while, for whatever reason (DDoS attack maybe?).

  98. 98.

    Mnemosyne

    @germy:

    If he had done it to dogs, his political career would have been over, but unfortunately just enough people still hate/fear cats that he was able to get away with it.

  99. 99.

    Steeplejack

    @rikyrah:

    Jesus fucking Christ. My rage level just went to 12.

    Rage reduction strategies: I decided to finish the bottle of pre-made Cuervo margaritas in the kitchen. There was about one big glass left. All the windows are open to let the breezes in, and the weather is glorious here in NoVA: sunny and 79°, humidity 44%. The housecat is dozing peacefully at her workstation beside me (heating pad set to 1, “Is this thing on?,” appropriate for prevailing conditions). In a bit I’m going to get cleaned up, take the doughty Kia to get washed and then transport a friend to the doctor to get a cast removed from her arm. Hopefully will avoid Trump-related news.

  101. 101.

    Mnemosyne

    @germy:

    That’s one of the reasons shelters started charging money to adopt pets — they usually charge more than you would be able to get by selling that animal to a lab. Because people are assholes and do that shit.

  102. 102.

    Corner Stone

    @Starfish:

    Do you wish she would have more beers in bars in Pennsylvania to show what she had in common with the white working class?

    That might have done some good this time around. Just any kind of message, really. And maybe not have been so prepared for the debates. Come across a little more genuine.

  104. 104.

    No Drought No More

    Just like Barbara Bush, Trump doesn’t feel the need to waste his beautiful mind on such matters.

    It’s a two-fer to say as much, knowing how deeply Barbara Bush would resent being favorably compared to Donald Trump.. But there it is, Babs, from me to you.

  105. 105.

    sharl

    This entire thread from Zeynep Tufekci is worth reading (starts with first tweet below). She has been writing critically on Facebook for years, well before the 2016 election and the ratfucking by the Russians, warning that FB’s business model invited the very things that ultimately happened.

    1.If you don't like viral misinfo, fake news & Russian ads—you're just uncomfortable with "ideas". 2.This is what getting played looks like. pic.twitter.com/nrOLJ1krvG— Zeynep Tufekci (@zeynep) September 28, 2017

    Through intense public pressure, right/alt-right played Facebook into being passive to deliberate misinfo campaigns before the election.— Zeynep Tufekci (@zeynep) September 28, 2017

    Facebook has also been super helpful to Trump campaign, working as their competent embedded ad-agency when they were so disorganized.— Zeynep Tufekci (@zeynep) September 28, 2017

    The motivation for Zeynep’s thread is Zuckerberg’s mewling response to Twitler’s latest bout of oral diarrhea claiming that FB has always been against him. Zeynep is quite rightly calling bullshit on that, and she has the receipts.

  106. 106.

    randy khan

    @Steeplejack:

    Even if you give him credit for that (which I am disinclined to do), the problem is that Cochran’s vote wouldn’t have made a difference, given that there were at least 3 (and, actually, probably at least 5) Republican Senators who were going to vote no.

  107. 107.

    Gin & Tonic

    @sharl: Maddow had a good segment last night about the Russian FB ratfucking of Ukrainians in 2014, after the Maidan demonstrations and the annexation of Crimea. Ukrainians have had the receipts for three years now.

  109. 109.

    Jeffro

    Noted anti-trumper Jennifer Rubin (didja catch that, Corner Stone?) weighs in on how Americans As A Whole Haven’t Lost Their Minds, But The GOP Has

    Voters say Trump is not “fit to serve as president,” by a 56 to 42 percent margin. Voters disapprove (57 to 36 percent) of his performance (so 6 percent think he is fit, just not doing a good job). It gets worse:

    Voters disapprove 57 – 36 percent of the job he is doing as president. . . . American voters disapprove 62 – 32 percent of the way President Trump is handling race relations. Disapproval is 55 – 39 percent among white voters, 95 – 3 percent among black voters and 66 – 28 percent among Hispanic voters. President Trump is doing more to divide the country than to unite the country, American voters say 60 – 35 percent.

    The anti-Twitter sentiment remains high as voters say 69 – 26 percent that Trump should stop tweeting. No party, gender, education, age or racial group wants to follow the Tweeter-in- Chief. Voters say 51 – 27 percent they are embarrassed to have Trump as president.

    Unfortunately, J-…er, Ms. Rubin, another take on this polling would be that 42% of voters have seen everything this clown has said & done for the past two years, and still find him to be ‘fit’ to serve as president. That would almost have to translate into…wait…she’s already run the GOP-specific numbers:

    The bad news is Republicans overwhelmingly like him, his policies, his distractions, his character, his racial appeals, etc. Among Republicans 79 percent approve of his performance, 79 percent think he is honest (!), 85 percent think he cares about ordinary Americans, 62 percent think he is level-headed (!!) and perhaps worst of all, 78 percent think he shares their values.

    Now, it’s possible that having voted for him these Republicans don’t want to admit he is, as LeBron James eloquently put it, a bum. But it’s also possible that a declining share of voters identify as Republicans but that those who do, by and large, live in a Fox News-created political universe in which Trump is just the best. They refuse to see Trump as a bigot or an incompetent narcissist. They believe what he tells them about immigrants, the world and the “liberal elites.”

    Nothing new there, except I’m still in shock that 79% of Republicans think Trumpov is honest, or that 85% think he cares about average Americans. I thought at this point they were ‘in on the joke’, as it were – “he’s an asshole and a liar, but he’s OUR lying asshole”.

    And this leads her to – for the umpteenth time – the question: where does the non-Trumpkin 20% of the GOP go?

    It doesn’t seem possible that logic or experience will change the minds of the 75 percent to 80 percent of the GOP who remain in Trump’s quarter. (Some hope that Trump is like a high fever that will pass, leaving the patient back to being his old self; I think that’s unlikely, but it’d be nice if the fever theory turns out to be correct.) You can change a president or a presidential candidate but can you change a party’s composition? I find that hard to believe. Trump’s beliefs and views are their beliefs and views.

    That leaves distressed Republicans and ex-Republicans with three options — recruit new non-Trumpkins to the GOP (but which Americans would want to join?!) to out-vote Trump’s base; start a new center-right party (with an invitation out to moderate Democrats); or set up shop across the aisle as the new Blue Dog Democrats. Much depends on the direction the Democrats take (will it be the party of Sen. Bernie Sanders or the party of Truman/JFK/Bill Clinton — policy-wise, that is).

    Commenters are trying to help Ms. Rubin find the obvious answer here. Frankly, they can twist in the wind if they can’t summon the courage to move from center-right to center-center.

  110. 110.

    tobie

    @glory b:

    Here in PA […] three or four other statewide races (think Atty Gen, Treasurer, etc.) in 2016 all went to Dems.
    Trump and Toomey were fishy.

    I just checked. The three other statewide races on the ballot were Atty Gen, Treasurer and Auditor. Dems won all three. The Sen and Presidential votes stink to high heaven. Can the governor in PA request an election audit? I gather the Secretary of State (Pedro Cortes) is also a Dem.

  111. 111.

    Steeplejack

    @Corner Stone:

    One thing that has struck me about Clinton in all the book-related interviews she has been doing lately is how genuine she comes across. No boilerplate, no hedging, no hesitation, just really smart, experienced Hillary telling it like it is from her perspective. If only that had come across more in the campaign. (Not saying it was her fault, necessarily; the media played a big role.)

  112. 112.

    LurkerNoLonger

    Headline in the trending section of Facebook: Moore’s win conjures 2018 nightmare — for both parties ‑ politico.com I’m not even gonna bother reading. That headline is garbage.

  113. 113.

    The Moar You Know

    Anyone adopting an animal should be able to prove the pet is being cared for.

    @germy: I wholeheartedly agree.

    Most of the specialty breed rescue organizations do exactly that, before and random post-adoption surveys. But that requires manpower and money that the local pound just doesn’t have, and my fear is that if you extend that sort of level of oversight to pet adoptions, you’re going to see the number of people willing and able to do it go way down. Which we absolutely do not need.

  114. 114.

    Corner Stone

    @sharl: Have never been a fan of Zuckerberg the person, for several reasons. But the business model was always going to lead to this. His response as a business is completely predictable.

  115. 115.

    Jeffro

    @No Drought No More:

    Just like Barbara Bush, Trump doesn’t feel the need to waste his beautiful mind on such matters.

    It’s a two-fer to say as much, knowing how deeply Barbara Bush would resent being favorably compared to Donald Trump.. But there it is, Babs, from me to you.

    Coincidentally, I was just griping about that very statement with a co-worker two days ago. Such a small thing, and yet so telling and so infuriating…

  117. 117.

    Tilda Swintons Bald Cap

    @glory b: Here’s a tweet with an embedded video showing the actual relation between Facebook and Cambridge Analytic. The corporate officers of both companies should be investigate, tried, and if guilty spend many, many years in jail.

  118. 118.

    Peale

    @Served: I was kind of out of the US news cycle out of the country for a bit, so the first I heard of the collapse of Graham Cassidy was in the airport. When Trump talked about a senator in the hospital, I had no idea he was lying. I figured that part must be true, because…it’s so easily checked. But why bother. The only thing we can do is lie some more and say that some Senator up for election was in the hospital. Start talking about his health issues and fitness for office. Someone should start talking about Bob Wicker’s stage III Prostate Cancer that he’s hiding from us so that we won’t know that he’s unfit. Make him deny it. Make him have an independent exam on TV.

  119. 119.

    Mnemosyne

    @Fair Economist:

    I’m not so sure about that. Trump is a toxic narcissist who has gotten by for decades on being able to gaslight and lie to people who have no way to prove that he’s a liar or throw his words back in his face.

    Now his every public utterance is recorded and people are scouring his Twitter account for past and present tweets. He’s trying to rely on his familiar strategies of spinning the truth until everyone else gives up, but that’s hard to do when they can play back a recording of you saying the opposite.

    That’s why he’s flailing, IMO. He thought he could control what the media says about him, but that’s impossible.

  121. 121.

    Miss Bianca

    @Another Scott: wow, I’m kind of amazed that the navy hadn’t done this sooner. I mean, that watch schedule is right out of the 19th century.

    Wonder if hospitals will finally follow suit with decent schedules for medical students? I mean, how many people have died in hospitals owing to the fact that the exhausted intern attending to their cases were on their 24th or 36th hour of their shift?

  122. 122.

    Mnemosyne

    @Steeplejack:

    I felt like she really came across like that at the DNC, which is probably why the Sandernistas spent so much time trying to make it all about themselves.

  123. 123.

    Corner Stone

    @Peale: You see? This is where the right wing has it all over the left. They would already have invented 20 or so conspiracy theories about different D Senators “secretly” having to be hospitalized, with each one needing emergency care for a different malady that damaged them in their state.
    IMO, instead of saying he’s hospitalized for cancer, we should say he had to have a foreign object removed from where it was lodged in his anus. Not really sure how it happened but his nephew that brought him in said he wasn’t sure how it got there.

  124. 124.

    sharl

    @Corner Stone: Have never been a fan of Zuckerberg the person, for several reasons.

    He does offer occasionally useful information, like on making toast.

    This is amazing bc 1) No one eats toast like this 2) It's two different takes, toast on plate changes shot-to-shot t.co/SJtyhwtqFM— The Dying Pundit (@deep_beige) September 25, 2017

    Totally normal human, just traveling the country, and particularly interested in talking to the teens.

    HELLO FELLOW HUMAN TEENS I HEARD THE COOLEST PLACE FOR US TEENS TO HANG OUT IS Ｔｈｅ Ｃｏｌｏｓｓａｌ Ｐｉｌｌａｒ ｏｆ Ｗａｓｐ Ｅｇｇｓ LETS GO DO NOT BRING WEAPONS— Glempner (@pisscop) May 9, 2011

    (I love the classics…)

  126. 126.

    les

    @Corner Stone:

    I wish she had run some ads with some kind of message about the economy and how she was going to help the forgotten man.

    FFS, are we back to this shit? Just check the picture here.

  128. 128.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Jeffro: Nate Silver believes that as Donald has shat the bed, more and more people are no longer self-identifying as Rethugs, so his relative approval among Rethugs stays the same, percentage wise. Not raw number wise, though.

  129. 129.

    Amir Khalid

    @FlipYrWhig:
    The people who voted for Trump knew perfectly well what he was — spectacularly unfit in every imaginable way — and that was what they wanted. I’m not sure that there was any winning rational argument Hillary (or Wilmer, had he been the Democratic nominee) could have presented against a personally gratifying but irrational choice. And with people who liked what Trump was saying, as stupid and hateful as it was, talking policy would have been a waste of breath.

  130. 130.

    Corner Stone

    @les: Look, the media may have made too much out of her emails. But that doesn’t say why she didn’t have a message that stuck with the forgotten man. More ads, on point and making a genuine effort to tell them how she was going to bring back their coal jobs, may have made a difference. But I guess we’ll never know.

  131. 131.

    Elizabelle

    @germy: Yes. I think Gorsuch should be removed from the Supreme Court. He is illegitimate too.

    Fuck Mitch McConnell. That was Obama’s USSC seat.

  132. 132.

    TenguPhule

    @Corner Stone:

    Speaking of bloody old men, Rep Scalise is making his triumphant return to the floor of the House and addressing the crowd.

    Proof that there is no just and loving god and that only the good die young.

  133. 133.

    trollhattan

    @Jeffro:
    Since election:
    1. Trump does______ i.e., awful act/utterance of the day.
    2. Trump voter declares, “He’s just doing what he promised. Yes, I totally support him.”

    Before election:
    1. Trump does______ i.e., awful act/utterance of the day.
    2. Trump supporter declares, “He’s just doing what it takes to get elected. He’s from New York, they all talk like that, but he doesn’t really mean it.” Pundit: “He’ll have to pivot at some point, certainly will if he’s actually elected, which totally can’t happen.”

  134. 134.

    TenguPhule

    @rikyrah:

    Their party is poised to welcome to the Senate a theocrat who believes his radical religious beliefs supersede American laws.

    Incorrect.

    They’re poised to get the first one who is actually honest about it.

  136. 136.

    Steeplejack

    @randy khan:

    No, I agree with all that. My concern is that I am starting to see some first warning signs of epistemic closure on the left. That’s how the right drove itself crazy over the last 20-30 years: “We know what we know from an array of cross-pollinating sources, and we ignore/​deny anything that doesn’t fit.” I don’t want to see us driven down that same road by Trump’s insane antics.

    So now we have “Trump totally made up a senator in a hospital! He’s senile!” Yes, Trump was wrong, and what he said was idiotic, but it wasn’t completely untethered from reality. If someone told you, “So and so is recovering from an illness,” you might conclude that he or she is in the hospital and just roll with that. Stupid, yeah, but, hey, Trump.

    In a similar way, there is the trope now that “Trump said Melania wasn’t there when she was standing right next to him!” As I pointed out to Adam L. Silverman when he posted that clip, there was a bit of artful editing involved there. The viral clip that made the rounds ended right after Trump said, “Melania really wanted to be here,” or whatever, and did make him look like a nut. But the longer clip provided a little more context that could at least possibly make the case that Trump was intending something like “Melania really wanted to be here, so that’s why she came.” Again, I’m not discounting Trump’s idiocy, but the tendency to amp up his miscues and misstatements worries me a little.

    ETA: Also, “Trump is flashing that ‘OK’ white-power hand sign!” He does that all the fucking time, even when he’s discussing what he had for breakfast. Okay, it’s white-bread toast, but still . . .

  137. 137.

    TenguPhule

    @SatanicPanic:

    I mean, which is worse- “I watched an old man die” or “I sexually assault women”?

    Hey, if “I’m gonna have our military torture people to death and their families too” didn’t get any fucking traction, everything else was just an afterthought.

  138. 138.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Jeffro:

    who do, by and large, live in a Fox News-created political universe in which Trump is just the best.

    Fox is just validating what they already believe.

    I thought at this point they were ‘in on the joke’, as it were

    Bear in mind, part of the ‘he’s our liar’ attitude is to never, ever admit that we’re right and he’s lying. However, I do think a large proportion of them believe he’s honest in every important way – about how kneeling NFL players should be fired, for example.

  139. 139.

    Amir Khalid

    @Corner Stone:
    Coal? These jobs are going, boys, and they ain’t coming back. Nobody can bring them back. Had Hillary said she was going to do that, she would have been lying.

  141. 141.

    Lapassionara

    @Amir Khalid: my view is that Trump was elected by people voting third-party, especially the Jill Stein voters. I wish the press would do stories on them, instead of on the people who voted for the monster.

  142. 142.

    les

    @Corner Stone:

    Look, the media may have made too much out of her emails. But that doesn’t say why she didn’t have a message that stuck with the forgotten man. More ads, on point and making a genuine effort to tell them how she was going to bring back their coal jobs, may have made a difference. But I guess we’ll never know.

    What BS. The media made little to nothing of her policies, is the point. She spoke about the economy every fucking day. She had economic policy statements on her web site. Do any of your poor neglected WWC have minimum wage jobs? She wanted to raise it. Would any of your poor neglected WWC benefit from a union? She wanted to make it easier. Do any of the poor neglected WWC need better health care, or cheaper education, or a strong safety net? She was for them.

    Or do your poor neglected WWC have some special need that no other working person has, that she neglected? Like to always be better than the non-white guy down the line? Like some special welfare program like all them blacks have?

    Corner, you’re stupid or racist. And I ain’t sure you’re stupid.

  144. 144.

    TenguPhule

    @Lapassionara:

    my view is that Trump was elected by people voting third-party, especially the Jill Stein voters. I wish the press would do stories on them, instead of on the people who voted for the monster.

    I’d prefer both groups be placed in exile and some Clinton voters actually be interviewed for a change.

  146. 146.

    TenguPhule

    @schrodingers_cat:

    They may not like multilateral treaties but they do like the economic power that comes with being the reserve currency of the world.

    Unfortunately, they think A) We should be back on the gold standard or B) There is nothing they can fuckup enough that would endanger said reserve status.

  148. 148.

    Steeplejack

    @Jeffro:

    But it’s also possible that a declining share of voters identify as Republicans but that those who do, by and large, live in a Fox News-created political universe in which Trump is just the best.

    This is the thing that I keep wanting to see addressed by the pollsters: how has the raw number of self-identifying Republicans changed from poll to poll to poll? I believe that his “popularity among Republicans” percentage remains high because there are fewer and fewer of them willing to self-identify as such, but that’s just a hunch.

    Also, are there really any “distressed Republicans”? Anybody who is truly distressed can scarcely call himself or herself (h/t morning thread) a Republican with an ounce of self-respect. What I think is more likely is that there are a lot of nice, polite Republicans who honestly deplore Trump but sort of wouldn’t be too unhappy if he cleansed us back into an imagined 1950s sitcom universe.

  149. 149.

    CaseyL

    Maybe this is some kind of epistemic closure on my part, but the more we hear about Russian ratfucking with the 2016 election, the more I wonder whether Dolt 45 actually won in WI, MI and PA. His margin was less than that of the number of Stein voters and less than that of voters who weren’t able to vote (because the lines were too long, or they had been removed from the voter rolls).

    Knowing for sure won’t change the status quo, since this country has no history of addressing outright stolen elections (cf Rutherford Hayes and George W Bush, at least) but it would make me feel a little better.

  150. 150.

    Corner Stone

    @les:

    The media made little to nothing of her policies, is the point. She spoke about the economy every fucking day.

    Woah, woah, woah. The link you provided with the chart showed that Trump talked way more about jobs than HRC did. If she were talking about the economic recovery for the forgotten man every day than why wouldn’t the chart better reflect that? And having policies on a website is great and all, I remember being told to go check out the details for Obamacare on some website I couldn’t access for hours at a time. No, sorry. If she had run a few more ads and been a little more genuine in the debates maybe we could have avoided all this mess. Fancy detailed speeches are nice and all, but where’s the gut level connection? That’s what we were missing.

  153. 153.

    Steeplejack

    @Jeffro:

    Noted anti-trumper Jennifer Rubin (didja catch that, Corner Stone?) [. . .].

    Thank you! I always pictured her, uh, operating on herself, but that was scarcely less brain-bleachy than Corner Stone’s vision.

  154. 154.

    TenguPhule

    @rikyrah:

    HUH?

    Someone forgot to check on the photos they had in a history textbook.

    A photoshopped one got slipped into the printing.

  155. 155.

    Mnemosyne

    @Steeplejack:

    ETA: Also, “Trump is flashing that ‘OK’ white-power hand sign!” He does that all the fucking time, even when he’s discussing what he had for breakfast.

    I think that one is working the other way around — white supremacists have picked it up from their hero and are using it as a signal to show that Trump is their guy. That’s why the tiki torch mob cosplayed as Trump in white polo shirts and white slacks.

    It wasn’t a white supremacist signal before Trump was elected, but it has become one thanks to him.

  157. 157.

    sharl

    @les: Here’s a somewhat long (22-paragraph) piece from Appalachian scholar and east Tennessee-born Elizabeth Catte, on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and how she subsequently wrote about Appalachia (West Virginia specifically) in her (HRC’s) just published memoir. The title of Catte’s article is WHAT HILLARY CLINTON IS STILL GETTING WRONG ABOUT APPALACHIA

    I couldn’t find just a couple paragraphs to excerpt that neatly summarize the article. Also she writes from the perspective of a leftist/progressive, so I intentionally included the title of her article so a lot of folks here – and you know who you are – will know up front to say “No Thanks!” and get on with your day without spending reading time that you’ll regret never being able to get back.

    One other thing worth noting: for some time Catte’s bête noire has been J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy. Anyone who favorably cites that guy is bound to get on Catte’s bad side.

  161. 161.

    TenguPhule

    The Big Shitshow coming down the Supreme Court

    With a conservative majority back in place, the Supreme Court on Thursday announced it will once again hear a challenge to the required payment of fees to public-employee unions, an important but controversial tool for the American labor movement.

    Some public employees say their free-speech rights are violated by the requirement, and conservative legal activists have at least twice asked the Supreme Court to overturn a decades-old precedent that allows “agency fees.” Approximately 20 states allow them.

    It appeared they would be successful the last time the issue was before the court, in January 2016. But Justice Antonin Scalia died a month later, and the court announced it had split 4 to 4 on the issue.

    Now Justice Neil M. Gorsuch has taken Scalia’s place, and the groups advocating for the change are hopeful he will provide the fifth vote.

    Fuck the “Right to Work for Less” Movement.

    They’re going for a death blow on unions. And this is why I am so confident the shit is about to get a lot worse.

  162. 162.

    Steeplejack

    @Corner Stone:

    Hey, it’s “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I cannot take anything in your comment seriously after such a grievous error. Good day, sir. I said good day!

  166. 166.

    SiubhanDuinne (at some point in the indeterminate future to be known by my real name, Judith Mann Costello, but maybe not quite yet)

    @StringOnAStick:

    What a strange reaction, Howard Stern’s show or not. I guess all forms of blood are “disgusting” to drumpfh, which adds a bit more nuance to his Megan Kelly “blood coming out of her whatever” comment.

    There was also his tweet a few months ago about Mika Brzezinski “bleeding badly from a facelift.”

  167. 167.

    Steeplejack

    Okay, I’m off to take my friend to the doctor. Might calm myself by pulling my cable-knit sweater a little closer around my shoulders and listening to some yacht rock on SiriusXM. “Music as smooth as the hands of a man who loves the sea but has people to do all that boat stuff.”

  168. 168.

    Tilda Swintons Bald Cap

    @Mnemosyne: This is correct, along with wearing the same outfit that Trump wears to golf. BTW, to me, that hand gesture is very effeminate.

  169. 169.

    trollhattan

    @rikyrah:
    In case link isn’t working for ya. The image is worth finding–like a still frame from “Zelig” but with Yoda instead of Woody Allen.

    Mohammed bin Attia Al-Harthi, the Saudi Arabian education ministry’s undersecretary for curriculum and education programs, was fired this week after an edited image of Yoda, the iconic “Star Wars” character, showed up in a history textbook, Saudi-owned television channel Al Arabiya reported on Monday.

    Per the report, education minister Ahmed Al-Issa also fired “others responsible for the mishap who reviewed and approved” the image of the late King Faisal, then a prince, signing the United Nations charter in 1945 with Yoda by his side.

    Al-Issa apologized for the error on Twitter.

    Saudi artist Shaweesh created the image as part of a series superimposing “U.S. cultural symbols ranging from Captain America to Darth Vader onto famous historical events,” according to his website.

    Shaweesh told the BBC it was not clear how his work ended up in the school textbook, but said he did not mean to offend with the edited image, and chose Yoda to accompany the monarch because their characters were both “wise, strong and always calm.”

    “Everyone loves King Faisal here, even the younger generations,” he said. “Someone should have checked the image before printing.”

  170. 170.

    ruemara

    @germy: Jesus Christ

    @Frankensteinbeck: Re: early teenage girls. It’s like people didn’t notice Don’s infatuation with his daughter right around 13. What the fuck else do you think is in that tape? It’s preteens and I wouldn’t be too surprised by a bit of snuff. Let’s say I’ve met a few wealthy manhattenite males of Trump’s ilk. When you’re alone with them and underage, they give off a stomach churning mental wave of possession & cruelty.

    I’m steaming from the – granted, hearsay – that the Trump administration was planning to do nothing in response to PR. I do not need America to be called up to the Haight for crimes against humanity. I’m pretty furious at these bastards in power, but I’m more angry at everyone who decided that purity uber alles was more important.

  171. 171.

    trollhattan

    @CaseyL:
    Pretty much the crux of it at this point. Fewer than 100k votes across three states–is it such a stretch that the meddling could have affected the vote by that much?

  172. 172.

    frosty

    @tobie: Were there more total PA votes for Pres and Sen than for the statewide? That would be consistent with new or occasional voters coming out for Trump and skipping the down-ballot candidates.

  173. 173.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Steeplejack: HuffPollster was aggregating that before they had their big budget cuts. It seems to depend a lot on whether you’re filtering for registered/likely voters or not:

    Party ID-adults
    Party ID-voters

    Party ID is consistently higher for Democrats than for Republicans, and for the most part they go up and down in synchrony, with people either deciding they’re “independent” or coming home to the parties. And the trend for “independent” seems like it’s almost opposite depending on whether you poll voters, or all adults, which suggests that a lot of “independents” don’t vote at all. That said, up to June, depending on whether you’re looking at adults or at voters, Republican ID was either holding steady or gaining–I don’t see any evidence that Trump is making it collapse, as people sometimes suggest.

  174. 174.

    Yutsano

    @trollhattan: There was a study (at work so can’t research it) that it was just THREE COUNTIES that decided the election. And Michigan and Wisconsin also had oddities re: asymmetrical Dem/Rep wins. This whole election stank.

  175. 175.

    joel hanes

    I do not need America to be called up to the Haight

    or to the Hague.

    Although I’d love to see Cheney and Kissinger there.

  176. 176.

    Peale

    @Matt McIrvin: Nope. And Unitl I hear stories about how voter registration for the Dems is through the roof without a massive Democratic effort to register voters, I’m not going to believe any talk about some groundswell of support for the Democrats. We lost with a majority of the vote. We will continue to lose until those hidden pockets of liberals who can’t be arsed to register themselves get upset enough to actually try to vote. Otherwise, we’re stuck with the same voters in 2018 as we had in 2016 and 2014 and that’s not nearly enough. Superior party identification means jack shit.

  177. 177.

    Mnemosyne

    @trollhattan:

    To me, that says that someone pulled the image off the internet rather than getting it from an archive or a photo agency like Getty Images.

    IOW, they tried to cheap out and get a free version of the image and it bit them in the ass.

  178. 178.

    Mel

    @Steeplejack: I understand what you mean. The constant excuses and false equivalencies are exhausting.

    At least, after this latest nightmarish Trump anecdote, you likely won’t have to listen to a Trump / Countess Elizabeth Bathory comparison.

  179. 179.

    J R in WV

    @schrodingers_cat:

    I think the Republicans, some of them at least, and in the leadership, have been turned by the Russians for decades now. Look at how divisive they are, how they don’t at their roots love America at all. Double agent Republicans since Nixon’s times is my bet.

    Could be wrong, but with all we’ve learned the past year, who would bet their life against it?

  181. 181.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Peale: Democrats’ overperformance in recent special elections is an encouraging sign. People may not be registering to vote, but Democratic voters are turning out when they normally would not. They are sparse data points, of course.

  182. 182.

    Mnemosyne

    @J R in WV:

    I think it’s more likely that it started happening in Reagan’s time at the earliest, and probably more Bush I. People like Putin could see what was looming and started getting their ducks in a row to take advantage of it.

    Remember how young most of the current Republicans are, relatively speaking. I think it was David who had a statistic saying that the majority of House Republicans have only served one or two terms.

    And Paul Ryan is my age (late 40s). He was a toddler in the Nixon years, but a young adult in the Bush I and Clinton years.

  185. 185.

    Dave

    @Miss Bianca: Military as a whole (well at least the Army/Marines can’t speak for the Air Force) has an issue with this. Too many commanders on down can’t seem to recognize that while there will absolutely be times where your people will have to operate with minimal or no sleep and you have to train for that contingency that it doesn’t follow that you should be consistently operating in this manner when it isn’t necessary. I’ve seen too many units deploy run their people ragged during relatively low operational tempo times and then moving into high tempo times with already burnt out personnel. And as much as people like to pretend otherwise exhausted people simply will not and can not perform as well as well rested people. Trying to have this conversation though was pretty much akin to ramming my head against a wall; it’s actually impacted my post service life as I have a huge bar to waking sleeping people even if they want me to if I do judge a situation as life or death.

  187. 187.

    Matt McIrvin

    …The other thing you notice if you look at aggregates of party ID from polls is that there’s a lot of spread in the numbers, much more than you get in most opinion-poll results. I suspect what you get depends very sensitively on how the question is worded and may not actually mean much. That’s one of the reasons that it doesn’t make a lot of sense to try to re-weight poll results by party ID (Rasmussen does this, and it seems to be one of the main reasons their numbers are so weird).

  188. 188.

    Millard Filmore

    @Corner Stone:

    Fancy detailed speeches are nice and all, but where’s the gut level connection?

    Soundbites! We need soundbites!

    The government should be small. It should be barely big enough to protect ME, but not so big it protects YOU.

    Taxes: I know better how to spend my money than the government. If I had an extra thousand dollars, it would be a choice between a high-def big-screen TV and that flood control project in the next county upstream from me. (such a hard choice, right?)

  189. 189.

    les

    @Corner Stone:

    The link you provided with the chart showed that Trump talked way more about jobs than HRC did.

    Are you having me on???? The link showed media reporting was more about Trump’s job talk, not about which of them said what. Learn to read.

  191. 191.

    evodevo

    @germy: I think you are referring to Bill Frist, if I recall correctly …

    Never mind … several commenters beat me to it …

Comments are closed.