I'm starting to reach a breaking point with unserious people.
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) October 17, 2017
Not an elegant solution, stripping the individual tweets like this, but I hope y’all will overcome your aesthetic instincts to read the whole thing anyways:
2/ I watched the segment @chrislhayes did tonight RE whether Trump called or sent letters to the families of the 4 soldiers KIA in Niger
3/ it kinda unexpectedly wrecked me. I heard about it earlier, & like w much that he does, my response was sarcastic humor. But watching…
4/…it overwhelmed me, & I ended up in tears. It was one of those moments where it was devastating to think about the defective human…
5/…now with power to make some of the most consequential decisions w the most catastrophic effects in human history. Specifically…
6/…it reminded me of my role in bringing a dog from Iraq to the United States. In 2006 I managed a Congressional campaign vs a Repub…
7….incumbent who–like nearly every one of them-voted for the Iraq War. As late as early 2006 there were still a lot of Dems afraid of…
9/…opposing the Iraq War & making the campaign centered on it. Like many Dems unafraid of opposing the war, he won. He asked me to be…
10/…his chief of staff. And in 2007 I took on the job of setting up his operation & positioning him for reelection.
*****14/…BUT, he was not elected to represent only people opposed to or not involved in the war. He was elected to represent all +700,000 people in his district…
*****19/ Fast forward a few months. We get word the family had tried to get help from one of the state’s 2 Repub…
20/…senators but we’re getting ignored. They reached out to us. The last photo of their son was him holding a puppy. The next day…
21/…he was killed. They wanted to know if we could he them bring them the puppy. From Iraq. To the US. From the start, I made it clear..
22/…I would likely fire anyone on our staff who should do any of the following: A. Guarantee we could get the dog B. Request anything…
23/…that could get anyone else wounded or killed C. Mention anything about what we were doing to anyone in the press. This was…
24/…something the family wanted. We were doing it for them, & because their son had made the ultimate sacrifice for his nation. Remember
25/…the man we worked for was elected for opposing the war in which their son was killed. I assumed they voted for the Repub incumbent…
26/…but _it didn’t matter. We had a duty to act in the interests of everyone in the district. And we took that duty seriously. So, for…27/…the next several months, in addition to all out normal work, & helping a guardswoman who’d gone AWOL to attend a custody hearing…
28/… for her son, & a soldier who wanted to donate a kidney to his mom, we worked to find a street dog in Iraq, get it quarantined…
29/…in Iraq, transported through three countries, & delivered to a family in the US, & keep it secret from the press. The help we got…
30/…still makes me choke up; the soldier’ squad, the commander of the 82nd Airborne, DHL, customs officials in three countries…
31…and especially the 20-somethings on our staff who took on this task as professional, as public servsnts, as patriots, and as…
32…this connects to today–as serious people doing serious work. When I saw the tape of Trump today, I wanted to punch the screen…
34/..& we were more professional, serious, responsible, ethical, & patriotic in getting an Iraqi puppy than POTUS is commanding our military
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) October 17, 2017
***********
Apart from resolving to NEVER STOP RESISTING, what’s on the agenda for the day?
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
guachi
I refuse to retire from the military with Trump as my commander in chief.
Himahamma
That was intense. Thanks for pulling that together for us twitter averse folk
Chet
gme1. I was up late grading exams. I sat down with a stack and a nice cup of tea, but by the time I was finished I had switched to whiskey. I’m going to need to do some damage control.
I watched the clip of Trump where he was asked about the Niger four. At the beginning of his response he has no idea what to say. He starts babbling about the letters having been written and they’ll probably go out tonight or tomorrow, like it’s a check that’s “in the mail” but isn’t really. But you can tell when he’s found a base of bullshit to stand on, when he decides to say that he does than past presidents, especially That One.
NorthLeft12
What a miserable lying creep. He just has to tear everyone else down in a pathetic attempt to make himself look better.
What a miserable lying creep.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Schlemazel
@Chet: @NorthLeft12:
and yet he has a solid 30% of the country that thinks he is doing a great job, better than ‘that colored guy’. I have no more anger and hate left for the asshole, I hate the Americans who elected him or stood by and let it happen. Maybe a nuclear exchange would finally convince them he is a disaster, but I doubt it.
Betty Cracker
Thanks for rendering that in non-Twitterese, AL. It really does illustrate something important — about people who take a serious job seriously, and about the miserable lying creep (thanks, NorthLeft) who disgraces us daily.
It’s a daily degradation, and it gets harder to live with as time goes on. I find myself trying to walk away from it for my own mental health but unable to do so. It’s inescapable.
And it’s unforgivable. Not just Trump and his sleazy family and lying, obsequious enablers, but also the shitheads who voted for him, including my own father and various family members and neighbors.
It’s like finding out half the people you know — and a third or so of your countrymen — were running a kiddie porn ring. Fuck all of you, you repulsive bastards. No, we can’t agree to disagree, not about this.
Mustang Bobby
@Betty Cracker: And to top it off, the people who back him and his faux patriotism are the same ones who have their tits in an uproar about a football player and teammates exercising their First Amendment rights in a non-violent and moving way. Fuck them with a garden rake.
OzarkHillbilly
@NorthLeft12: He is exactly what we knew he was all along.
geg6
@Betty Cracker:
Yup. You said it all.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
guachi
My father-in-law unfriended me on Facebook when I pointed out that some BS meme-graphic he posted on Facebook was lies. It stated that a number of mass killers were registered Democrats and I pointed out they weren’t true. He mocked me for taking the time to point out his lies. I responded and outright called him a liar for knowingly spreading falsehoods about people with intent to slander them.
He’s also the liar who posted that Beau Bergdahl’s father was claiming the White House for Islam when he said something in Arabic while standing next to Obama when Obama announced Bergdahl would be released. And, get this, I’m an Arabic linguist so I didn’t even have to look up anything to know it was a lie. I mean, did he think I wouldn’t notice?
Oh, and he claims to be a Christian. And he’s one of those Christians like Pence who calls his spouse “mother”.
HeleninEire
Morning all. Its a beautiful fall morning here in Dublin. The sun is out and the air has that crisp autumn coolness that we all love so much.
Took a walk through the city center and except for the fact that the LUAS (light rail) isn’t running because of downed power lines everything seems normal. Outside of the city center there are numerous downed trees and, as a result crushed cars.
But all in all it looks like we came through Ophelia relatively unscathed. Thank FSM.
FUN FACT: LUAS is the Gaelic word for “speed.”
Baud
@HeleninEire: Glad to hear you all are ok.
Mustang Bobby
@guachi:
Just like Norman Bates would do.
Baud
@guachi:
That’s usually the first sign that they’re not.
Maybe people who actually follow Jesus should start calling themselves Jesusians.
rikyrah
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
YES!!
Baud
I can’t believe someone who attacked a Gold Star family during the campaign would act like this.
We had warning.
rikyrah
@Betty Cracker:
I have said for awhile:
Those who voted for Dolt45 and those who voted third party will NEVER be forgiven
NEVER ?
rikyrah
@HeleninEire:
Glad to hear from you ???
OzarkHillbilly
@guachi: Lots of husbands call their wives “Mother” or “Mom”. My father did, I think he started doing it because all us kids were. In later years it became more pronounced as he slid into Alzheimers. As his dementia took over more and more I suspect his mother and his wife were merged into a singular figure in his mind.
NotMax
@HeleninEire
Also too, meth..
;)
Attention all game players. Set aside time to watch The Gamers: Dorkness Rising. Freakin’ hilarious.
guachi
@OzarkHillbilly: At first I thought nothing of it. But he’s a conservative Christian and after hearing of Pence calling his spouse “mother” I wondered if it was because of religion. It’s one thing to hear it when the parents still have young kids in the house. But it’s odd when the youngest child is 48.
Mustang Bobby
Via the Washington Post:
And she’s running in my district.
trnc
Sorry, I know this is way outside the spirit of the post, but for the love of god, twitter is not the place for long form writing. Post it somewhere and link to it on twitter!
Ladyraxterinok
@Schlemazel: I’ve said this several times here: we live in an entirely different world than the Trump true believers. Just watch a few minutes of some Jim Bakker shows. There Trump is ‘God’s annointed’ and those in opposition are doing Satan’s bidding.
All the Religious Right programs have the same message – John Hagee, Jack van Impe, Hal Lindsey, etc. Bakker has guests and for me is somewhat funny.
The Bakker show recently had a spinoff program in which they interviewed ‘the man in the street’ in Springfield MO. If the people weren’t fake, it was a surprising bunch opposed to Trump and his policies. I say possible fakes because they weren’t dressed ‘Sunday go to meeting’ and were dismissed as obviously ignorant and uninformed. I just thot they made sense and was surprised they were shown until I realized they were ‘opposition hippies et. al taken into captivity’ to prove to the show’s audience how ‘unbelievably’ wrong-headed Trump’s opposition is.
NotMax
@Mustang Bobby
Brought up and bandied about a bit yesterday; her son-in-law is Pence’s deputy chief of staff.
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
@Betty Cracker: People who take a serious job seriously. Who was the last Republican Congressman you can think of that you could say that about? Feed enough rubes enough bullshit about evil government overreach for enough years and you create an entire generation of “politicians” who don’t believe in governing. So they get in on the grift, because that’s how they came up and that’s all they think there is. I swear a lot of them act like legit Dem policy proposals are just bad versions of their own scams, and maybe a lot of them think they are, just targeted to ‘the blacks.’ Somebody at the Orange Satan dug up a nugget from an old Barthes essay about professional wrestling, and the audience for it, being all about “spectacle upon spectacle” for its own sake, with nothing behind it. Americans are fucking world class at spectacle. Concerts, sporting events, cinema and television, you name it. Unfortunately spectacle now seems to be all there is for a significant portion of the population. And those fuckheads vote, and make decisions for the rest of us because it gives them a thrill. May or may not be up their leg, mmv. At least the Romans could blame lead pipes.
Ladyraxterinok
@Baud: Saw at democraticunderground- someone suggested a bumper sticker ‘let’s put Christ back in Christians.’
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
@HeleninEire: Glad everyone seems to be doing relatively well
Frank Wilhoit
There is no such thing as “Trump”. He does not exist. He is a projection of, and a metonymy for, his voters, who voted for him because they identify with him. Say what you will of him: you are actually talking about them.
Now say what is to be done.
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
@Mustang Bobby: Needz moar chemtrails. However, if she manages to get on a televised debate there could be some notable highlights.
Baud
@Comrade Nimrod Humperdink: Good point.
bystander
I’m glad to read I was not alone in my reaction. When the shock of watching twitler excuse his dereliction with “whattaboutObama?” wore off, I found myself in tears. I hate the mixture of anger and sadness.
Baud
The mobile site is being hijacked by a $1000 gift card scam.
Ladyraxterinok
@Comrade Nimrod Humperdink: Barthes reference is intriguing. Thanks.
Drunkenhausfrau
This hurt to read. Not sure we keep our Republic after all this.
debbie
@HeleninEire:
Glad you’re okay. Was there much damage to those beautiful stone walls that are all over the country?
different-church-lady
These are not unserious people. These are malicious people.
Kay
That’s funny because I haven’t had any direct experiences like that and it still struck me as much more awful than the daily Trump Administration nastiness. Sometimes they exceed expectations in bad behavior.
You wonder how low he’ll go. I don’t think we’re near bottom yet.
satby
@rikyrah: Good morning! â? on tap this morning.
OzarkHillbilly
@guachi:
No, it’s not. It may or may not be more prevalent in conservative Christian circles, I really don’t know as I do not know many (any?) such people, but I have known a significant number of husbands who did and do refer to their wives as ‘Mother’ or ‘Mom’. And their wives all tended to refer to their husbands as ‘Father’ or ‘Dad’. While it isn’t the norm, it certainly isn’t uncommon in my experience.
Baud
@Kay: It’s worse because it involves deaths and grieving.
rikyrah
Finally read the entire Twitter thread and got angry ? all over again.
different-church-lady
@Frank Wilhoit:
DING DING DING DING DING DING WINNER WINNER WE HAVE A WINNER!
Pray?
Ohio Mom
@OzarkHillbilly: I went through that phase when my kid was young, calling my husband “Daddy.” Likewise, my husband called me “Mommy.” When your kid has a language disability, you try to make things as simple as possible for him.
Then our kid’s language developed some more and we went back to calling each other by our names. My husband did that easily, I had to work at it.
On another note, I am also having more trouble these days not being enraged at people I know or suspect voted for that monster. It seems to me that my anger is like grief, it comes over me in waves, sometimes with identifiable triggers, sometimes not.
Kay
@different-church-lady:
They’re also such spoiled, ungrateful brats. MOST of them are either wealthy or well-off. They lead these coddled, cushy lives where they go from the SUV to the “event” and back to their luxury homes. Yet they pretend they’re on a “battlefield”. Bannon uses all that ridiculous warrior language.
I keep hearing Mr. Khan from the campaign- “you sacrificed nothing”.
That’s why they’re unserious to me. There’s no real risk for these people. It’s a game to them.
germy
satby
So John McCain made a speech yesterday and it was a barnburner. I guess the guy decided that a terminal illness has freed him:
Anne Laurie
@trnc:
rikyrah
@germy:
?????
OzarkHillbilly
@Mustang Bobby: You lucky dog.
Betty Cracker
@Frank Wilhoit: Defeat them. Utterly. Taking action toward that goal is the only thing that keeps me putting one foot in front of the other these days.
different-church-lady
@Kay: But malicious is far worse. It’s one thing to be spoiled and drifting and careless and inept. It’s quite a degree higher to be purposeful, to be spiteful, to use hate as a tool. There’s a difference between negligence and malice.
rikyrah
@germy:
Will the person who signed her to the $17 million dollar contract be held accountable??
Ramiah Ariya
I strongly believe that Trump’s voters think he is “cleaning the swamp” because so many people have been fired from his administration. The fact that he hired them himself and then fired them is a nuance. Soon, you will find Fox and others pushing that the firing of Michael Flynn to Scaramucci is Trump fulfilling his campaign promise.
Baud
@Betty Cracker: Right. My formula is three consecutive Democratic wins in federal elections, two of which are presidential. We can end this by 2026.
different-church-lady
@rikyrah: I’m sure he/she will be “sentenced” to the presidency of another network as soon as there’s an opening.
JPL
@Baud: You sure it’s a scam?
Frankensteinbeck
@Betty Cracker:
I feel like I’m the only person here who isn’t shocked day to day. Depressed as Hell when he was elected, yes, but I don’t get hit when he does something godawful stupid and classless. His deliberately letting Puerto Ricans die is the only thing that has depressed or scared me from Trump, and even then I wasn’t actually shocked.
I think it’s different because there are no surprises here for me. I knew he would be like this, and he’s not getting worse, just continuing to be the asshole he was from the campaign on. More importantly, I knew that a huge minority of Americans were just as stupid and evil. I knew it before Fox News was ever a thing. Maybe that, in turn, is because I have not only grown up in the cesspools of this hate, but I did it on both sides of the line as a white male they sometimes accepted as one of them, and sometimes unleashed their hate on for not conforming.
EDIT – @Ramiah Ariya:
“Cleaning the swamp” means ethnic cleansing. I’ve heard them use it that way. If you think about it, the metaphor is disgustingly unsubtle.
@satby:
I think one thing that’s going on is that without having to face a black man as their boss day after day, some of the less extreme (but still godawful bad) Republicans are calming down enough to look around and realize things have gotten too batshit even for them.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@germy: I’m sure Kelly will get a ratings bump this December during her White Xmas marathon.
Baud
@JPL: I thought it was real at first because the first ad was Amazon, and I’m always accidentally clicking on the amazing ad. But the next time it came up, it was Walmart. It requires you to go through several surveys.
different-church-lady
@Baud: Quit breaking my heart — you think these Orcs are gonna succumb to mere increased effort?
There’s something seriously damaged in the American soul, and Trump is only an external manifestation of it. I don’t know what the answer is, but we need to figure it out soon, before it metastisizes further. GOTV is only a temporary solution: it manages the symptoms but doesn’t cure the disease.
germy
@rikyrah:
I think they made a conscious decision to promote her, and the more she fails, the more they’ll promote her. I don’t trust NBC or ABC. CBS evening news has been somewhat better reporting on 45, but there’s something toxic going on behind the scenes at NBC. They’re Fox-Lite.
debbie
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
I wonder how many of his supporters who are military veterans will come out and state their support for his “alibi.” Will they really toss aside their long-held loyalties to their brothers in deference to this Ultimate Betrayer of the military?
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@satby: Meh. He pulled his punches. He should have denounced Drumpf by name.
The sore loser had no problem smearing Obama.
different-church-lady
@debbie: If the Jedi Mind Trick Trump pulled on football fans is any indication, they really will. This is a cult of personality we’re dealing with here.
Baud
@different-church-lady: I do. They are easily broken, but we have to actually try to break them. They exist because their party has had veto power in Washington since 1981, save for two non-consecutive two year periods. And most of them are old; six years out of power will be a lifetime for them.
Baud
@germy: It does seem that way.
Baud
@debbie: If you’re focused on his supporters, you’re going to be disappointed.
satby
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: baby steps. . It’s coming. I hate John McCain but it seems that with a drastically shortened life ahead, he’s out of fucks to give. Ol Party First just called out his party and, very obviously, the leader of it.
Another Scott
@Frankensteinbeck: It takes a long time for the public to change its mind about politics. It’s still early in Donnie’s admin, but he already has the worst approval ratings in modern history.
I try to remind myself that most people are either too disinterested, or too busy living their lives, or both, to pay as much attention to what’s going on with Donnie as we are. They (deep down) trust our institutions (“Well, he has more information than I do, so there must be a good reason for what he’s doing.”). They haven’t seen any real disastrous effects yet, so they just shrug it off.
Look at how many people voted GOP in November 2008 even after they blew up the world economy!?!
Hang in there. The ship of state will change direction if we keep pushing on the wheel.
Cheers,
Scott.
HeleninEire
@debbie: Looks like no. Those ancient walls withstood modern weather! The govt is meeting at noon and they will report about damage and plans for cleanup.
MJS
@debbie: His supporters won’t address his alibi. His supporters will quickly denounce anyone who brings this up as “politicizing” the deaths of those 4 servicemen. I don’t watch Fox, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re doing it there right now.
Kay
I worry that the poison the Trump Administration spreads will lower participation across the board. I read the other day that Romney got more votes in Wisconsin than Trump did and that was after just Trump’s shitty, nasty, lying campaign.
Most voters aren’t as invested as the respective bases and it’s natural and human to disengage from such horrible people.
Dave Weigel is covering on the ground Democratic events and voters are saying Democrats aren’t talking about “issues”- except they are. They are talking about issues. Weigel says MOST of the Dem ads in Georgia in that early race there were issue ads.
They’re just unhappy. Poison spreads and it isn’t just gonna spread to “normal” Republicans. Democrats will flee too.
James E Powell
I have yet to see or hear anything from Trump that wasn’t apparent or to be expected during the campaign. Also too I have yet to see or hear anything from the press/media expressing regret for promoting him into the White House. It’s all like someone else decided to make emails the number one issue in the campaign.
debbie
@MJS:
Okay to politicize Benghazi though, amirite?
Frankensteinbeck
@Another Scott:
I am hanging in there, better than anyone else, I think. He lost by 3 million votes, and even then it took a perfect storm of cheating to get him barely over the line for a technical win. We can certainly do this, and electorally it gets worse for them, not better. And as you say, while I always knew there was a huge minority as evil as him, he is truly bludgeoning absolutely everyone else with his awfulness, peeling away the entrenched but theoretically reachable.
debbie
@HeleninEire:
So glad to read this. I did lots of pencil renderings of stone walls back in art school. I still love them!
Frankensteinbeck
@Kay:
So far, Democrats are showing up to the polls pissed and determined. May it continue that way.
Baud
@Kay: People’s views of Dems has almost nothing to do with what Dems are actually doing.
But hasn’t Dem turnout been up in just about every special election so far?
That said, I’d like to hear some reassurance from Virginia peeps. I keep hearing news about close polls.
Another Scott
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Meh.
Kelly seems to be a bit of a chameleon. I don’t care about her, or morning TV, or celebrity interviews. She did some good things battling with Donnie during the campaign. But she will always be suspect in my eyes being such a big wheel on Fox News.
Variety has a good piece on her recent difficulties on Today.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
James E Powell
@Kay:
People who say “Democrats aren’t talking about the issues” when in truth they are talking about issues are telling us that they don’t like and aren’t going to vote for Democrats.
As the last election showed, these people can’t be reached. We need to focus on identifying & registering people who will vote Democratic.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@different-church-lady: there’s always been underlying racial resentment of football players. There’s the infamous incidents of Jimmy the Greek freaking out over a single black quarterback and Al Campanis freaking out over merely discussing if blacks should be coaches.
Whites were so resented uppity black players celebrating in the end zone and, separately, by taking off their helmets that the NFL made the practices illegal to placate angry whites.
.
It was always a well of #economicanxiety he could easily tap into.
Another Scott
@Baud: I haven’t checked closely, but none of the polls in VA that I’ve seen have ever put the Teabaggers ahead. But it’s close enough that I don’t think we can assume it’s in the bag.
There’s dissension in the Teabagger ticket, which should help.
Also too, on our official NoVA sample ballot put out by the Board of Elections, the Democrats are the first choice for all of the races. That has a small, positive effect, also too.
We have to fight for every vote, but I’m optimistic.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@Baud:
I hope they’re going door to door. The sad truth is you have to get Democrats out. I don’t know why they’re such a giant pain in the ass and they have to be begged and cajoled and flattered into 15 minutes of voting activity, but they do.
I joked about it when the Obama people came in ’08 because…it’s a big country! Can’t canvass the whole thing! But luckily they had that weird zealous blankness of true obsessives and they were just like “sure you can, and we intend to!” Then they they did.
Baud
@Another Scott: Thanks. The polls I’ve seen are usually likely voter polls, so hopefully Dems will bust through their expected turnout numbers.
It’s amazing how Republicans are never accountable as a party. It’s lone wolves all the system down.
Matt McIrvin
@Another Scott:
It’s the worst sustained ratings for this early in an administration, but he’s still far above the endgame for Dubya, Carter and Nixon. And he’s only lost about 1% since May, with some fluctuations up and down. The incredible series of disasters and own-goals and appalling behavior of the past few weeks hasn’t really done anything but undo the tiny gain after Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.
I think he’s basically at a floor for the current situation, and that for him to lose more, there has to be either a major war or a new economic crisis–Trump’s behavior alone won’t do it, because the people who currently support him actually like that stuff and will welcome more of it. And the war would help him in the shorter term.
JMG
@Baud: I read stories saying the same thing, but the published polls in the last few weeks (only seen two) have not been close, Northram by 7 and by 13. Of course, both sides have an incentive to say their private polls show a close race, so that might be smoke blowing. I think one effect of the last election is that journalists will never again trust any poll showing a Democrat in the lead.
Baud
@Kay:
I don’t know. I think it’s a couple of factors. One, as you indicated, Dems are more likely to shy away from nastiness, and the GOP brings a lot of nasty. Also, too, I’m afraid that old canard that the candidate needs to “earn my vote” has been internalized by a lot of Dems and had the intended effect of self-suppressing our vote.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Another Scott: Fake News.
You’re forgetting Roger Alies and Fox didn’t think Drumpf could win so they tried to undercut him in favor of ÂĄJeb! The feud got so bad that Drumpf boycotted Fox until they caved.
Alies ordered Kelly to hit him with hard questions on women. It was all an act. After all, she knew of the rampant sexual harassment going on Fox and she never cared. Only when Drumpf targeted her personally did she become suddenly concerned, and then her concern was only limited to Drumpf and not to O’Reilly’s and Alies’ rampant sexual abuse.
Kay
@Baud:
I’m gonna help with the Ohio gov but I have to wait until there’s a candidate. Please give me something to work with. If I get another FBI agent without a driver’s license and sketchy relationships with woman who are not his wife I will be upset.
The driver’s license hurt him more than the (probably true) rumors about affairs. People in Ohio just rejected that- even Democrats. “He doesn’t have a driver’s license?” He was DRIVING, he just wasn’t LICENSED. It somehow put him out of the running as “grown up”.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Agree. He’s this low with a good economy. That’s not good for him. I’m not sure a war would even help him at his point unless we were directly attacked first.
OzarkHillbilly
@Another Scott:
That was all Clinton’s fault, just ask them.
Baud
@Kay: Republicans have no such qualms.
JPL
During the Trump presidency, I find myself going to bed angry and waking angry. I fear that I’m not alone.
@JMG: If it is close, Gillispie could always send himself an envelope with powder in it. That will get out his base. It sure worked for Handel in georgia district 6.
Baud
@JPL: You’re not alone.
Baud
@JPL: Or fake an MS-13 attack.
different-church-lady
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: For the record, Al Campanis was a baseball executive.
Patricia Kayden
@OzarkHillbilly: I have to give it to Trump because although I knew he would be bad, I wasn’t expecting him to be this bad so quickly. Normally, Presidents get a grace period and try to lay low for a couple of months until the country gets acclimated with him. Trump came in like a wrecking ball from the very beginning and hasn’t let up on the outrages and lies. He really can’t pretend to be something other than the stupid, loudmouthed bigot that he is.
rikyrah
@Frankensteinbeck:
I am hanging in there. I expected everything, except for incompetence plus racism targeting 3 million fellow American citizens. I can barely put into words the rage that I feel about Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
Kay
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
She’s awful. Something is wrong with cable as a market that these people make so much money. They’re awful.
different-church-lady
@Baud:
and at this point the only way to earn that vote is if the candidate delivers a personal foot massage.
rikyrah
@Another Scott:
She spent too many years race baiting on Fox, for me ever to give her ‘ a chance.’
Too many receipts on insults toward 44 and Forever FLOTUS.
Patricia Kayden
@JMG: I’d take Gillespie seriously if he says that his private polls show the race much tighter. That’s what happened in Maryland and that’s how come we have a Republican governor. Hogan claimed that his internal poll showed him winning and most of us guffawed and scoffed at him. When I woke up the next morning and heard that he had won, I was shocked. Hopefully, Northam wins handily with the help of Northern Virginians.
Kay
John RobertsâVerified account
@johnrobertsFox
The assholes have to come up with an excuse for why they cover Hillary Clinton more critically than the actual President, so they invented “shadow President”
It’s good for their careers to attack Clinton and it has been good for 30 years. Why not just say it? There’s an entire cadre of NYTimes employees who make their living off it.
Baud
@different-church-lady: Apparently, the Russians have hacked the Baud! 2020! campaign’s strategic plan.
Ladyraxterinok
@Another Scott: IIRC extent of world financial crisis not clear to all in 08. Extent only got clearer aft!er Obama in office. Even then disaster not clear enuff for some GOP in congress to want to listen to Obama.
Never forget. For some, blacks are only Aunt Jemimas, little pickaninnies, or Step-n-Fetch-Its. (NEVER watch a clip of his; you’ll be heart- and soul-sick for a long time afterwards.)*
*Heard a while ago on an NPR program that he was a very smart man and earned a great deal of money in the only sort of role possible to blacks in the Hollywood of the time. And that he gave way a lot to black causes.
rikyrah
@Kay:And ,it should have disqualified him. I know my disgust when I read about it. That was basic shyt. Simple azz basic stuff that he blew. And, the Democrats did no vetting, because that would have been caught.
Baud
@Kay: BREAKING: Shadow President uses private email server for official shadow business.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Looking at old Gallup numbers some more, I wasn’t quite right about sustained ratings–Gerald Ford was actually doing about as badly at this point in his administration, but it was after pardoning Nixon and during a long recession with high inflation.
Patricia Kayden
@germy: Good. That’s what happens when you fire people of color to replace them by a mediocre White Rightwinger. Fire her and bring back Hall and Roker then.
Kay
If Hillary Clinton is the “shadow President” and they intend to provide the same shitty coverage they provided in ’15 and ’16 can she get some real power?
Because the country should get some upside out of political media’s vendetta against Hillary Clinton. It’s not fair that we still have to see their coverage when she’s NOT the President.
Shadow power. Let’s see some.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: Yeah, but he was never elected, so no one was invested in him.
Kay
@Baud:
I’m not as democratic as the rest of you. I could be talked into a coup.
Unprecedented just means it hasn’t happened yet, Baud! :)
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@different-church-lady: certainly, I included it because it represented attitudes.
Vince Lombardi is considered the greatest coach in NFL history but even with all his talent he couldn’t get a head job until age 46 because he was Italian. Even then, when he was hired, it was by one of the worse teams in history.
Patricia Kayden
@Frankensteinbeck: That’s what needs to happen. How does being pissed and not voting change anything?
Ladyraxterinok
@Ladyraxterinok: OT: blacks in 30s-40s movies, tv – Raxter on the Jack Benny show, Lum and Abner, the 2 black guys doing ‘comedy relief’ in one of the 2 ongoing Charlie Chan series, black slave girl in Gone With the Wind, …
Betty Cracker
@Frankensteinbeck: Well, I grew up in a dismal Confederate backwater too and have remained nearby, among the very people who elected the malignant clown. And somehow I’ve retained the capacity for being shocked and horrified on a daily goddamn basis. Which makes me feel like a fool.
OzarkHillbilly
@Ladyraxterinok:
I think they were all well aware of how big a disaster it was, they just thought the best way to handle it was to let the Free Market Fairies kill off the weak and the dispensable.
Baud
@Kay: I hope she gets to name the next Supreme Court Justice.
Leto
@guachi: I’m sort of in the same boat, but my situation is a bit different. I was originally planning to retire back in May. In fact I had the ceremony, official retirement orders, all that jazz. Then Dotard took office and froze GS hiring. The plans my wife and I had meticulously laid for the past year went up in smoke. Sent me scrambling to find a job, short notice, but I was hired by the National Guard as a full time technician. So, pulled my retirement orders and got approval to swap over.
Bigger point being: all of my original retirement paperwork was signed by President Obama. That’s my official retirement paperwork and the only one that I will ever recognize/care about. If I were to retire again tomorrow (and I could) and my new unit even attempted to give me anything that Shit Gibbon signed, I’d fucking burn it right in front of them and shit on the ashes. Unprofessional? Sure. But I will NEVER keep anything that bears his signature/signature block. Never.
Patricia Kayden
@MJS: After how Conservatives/Republicans politicized the hell out of Benghazi (and are still doing it now), they would have a nerve to accuse anyone of politicizing the deaths of any servicemen under Trump’s regime. Their hypocrisy is an illness, tbh.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: This is what worries me more than anything else — that Trumpism will increase already heinous levels of apathy. In a way, I can’t blame people who say “fuck it — nothing matters.” I have to fight that feeling daily myself.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Bill Clinton is the weirdest case: he’d briefly been as unpopular as Trump during his first year (right when Hillarycare collapsed? I’m not sure–the economy sucked, anyway) but at this point he was well back in positive territory. I lived through that time and I’m not even sure what was going on.
AMinNC
@germy: I never understood why any legacy network would hire her. It seemed manifestly clear that she was ratings gold on Fox solely because their old white guy audience wanted to have their angry hateful worldview confirmed by attractive young white blonde women every evening. Take her out of that very particular context and there’s no reason to hire her.
Baud
@AMinNC: Legacy networks are run by old white guys.
germy
@Patricia Kayden:
Roker is so gracious. I don’t know if you saw Kelly’s first episode, but it started with her showing up early (with no makeup; amazing how much of her “allure” is the right amount of eyeliner and fake lashes) and Roker rode up on his bicycle. She climbed on the back and he escorted her to the studio on his bike.
JPL
@Baud: Can’t imagine why I hate these people.
germy
@Leto:
Every four years my wife collects those plastic rulers that have every president’s portrait. As a brain exercise she recites the presidents by memory.
I asked her what she’ll do when she gets the ruler with the 45 portrait. Her reply? “That’s what hole punchers are for.”
OzarkHillbilly
“Christian conservatives should give up the ruse â theyâve made a bargain with the most irreligious and faithless president in history, a man who holds what they value in contempt. Their scam â that they and their candidates operate from some high, moral plane and are the true repositories of American values â should end with this president. They are nothing more and nothing less than an anti-abortion, anti-gay lobby group that seeks to enlist government to impose their ideological positions on others. In short, they are what their critics have always claimed.”
-Jennifer Rubin.
JPL
Tom Marino withdrew his name from consideration.. hahahaha
Maybe he’ll choose Marsha Blackburn next
Matt McIrvin
@Patricia Kayden: I expected Trump to be in every way this bad, but I also expected the Congressional Republicans and his own administration to be far more united behind him in malice than they are. Experience of the pre-2006 George W. Bush years, and Congressional obstruction under Obama, had taught me that Republicans always vote as a disciplined bloc, and the supposed moderates make some noise but always cave to the far right. But things seem to be different now.
Congress’s inability to even pass an ACA repeal bill is a surprise: I expected that to get a rubber stamp on Inauguration Day, within minutes of the swearing-in, immediately following the elimination of the Senatorial filibuster. But it turns out they don’t have the stones/gall/unity to quite get behind that.
bemused
@OzarkHillbilly:
The older generation did and by older I mean my parents generation, people who would be in their 90’s and older now. When we got married in the 70’s, it never occurred to my guy to call me ma or mother. I would have throttled him if he had. I’ve also heard guys say, “my old lady” but thankfully I haven’t heard that in years. Another chokeable offense.
One couple call each other dear quite often. There is a down side though while driving in our wild wooded area where we have a huge problem with deer suddenly jumping out in front of your car. You have to keep your eyes really peeled for deer on the road edges and don’t have much time to slow down when you see then. My friend would watch for them to warn her husband in the driver’s seat and he thought she was saying dear resulting in a few near misses. They had to change up the warning signal.
Cermet
Yeah; last weekend, I posted that I would work on upgrading my home built power supply to 120 kV. Well, it easily reached 140 kV and foolish me, pushed it to over 160 kV – blowing a diode (I hope.) Nice that my simple and cheap neon sign transformer with a simple voltage multiplier circuit (series of diodes and capacitors) can reach that high of a voltage (of course, the diodes/caps are under oil.) If the damage to the stack isn’t bad, I will fix it and be able to get my deuterium accelerator to finally work!
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: This. We need to not scare ourselves into inaction or apathy.
gene108
@Kay:
A lot of it has to do with the media filter, which has been bent to promote right-wing framing. Even if Trump wasn’t President, people would still not know what Democrats are about.
Before the 2012 election, my mom, a fairly reliable Democratic voter, was thinking of not voting because she wondered what the Democrats had done for the economy, and why they had to spend so much time on healthcare (she has always had employer coverage). She was getting discouraged. Romney was so off-putting she decided to vote.
Unless liberals can pour billions into buying up the media, like conservatives have done, it will be hard to get people to realize Democrats focus on issues most of the time.
Baud
@gene108:
Or we can just try not shitting on ourselves for a while. It might help.
Elizabelle
WaPost: Marino withdraws from consideration as DEA chief.
Take note, DougJ.
germy
No matter what he does, no matter how crazy things get, he’ll always have his defenders.
Baud
@germy: Is that Bob Novak’s kid?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Ladyraxterinok:
The easiest people to male a sale to are other salesmen because they want to believe all these tricks really work. So no surprise that Trump, the master lying sack of shit, is the king of that pack of lying sacks of shit. As for their congregations, those are self selecting for the easily manipulated since anyone who questions the con is ostracized from it (not that have much reason to, since the preacher is just merely telling them stuff they want to hear anyway)
OzarkHillbilly
@bemused: Yeah, on further reflection I think it is more common among older couples, tho I’m not sure if that is because of the prevalence of divorce in mine and following generations. It would be a little weird for me to call my wife ‘Mother’ even tho she is one when we have no children together. Parenting is not one of our shared experiences. As for the use of “Dear”, it is a sure way to irritate my wife beyond all reason. I really don’t know why but I use it when I want to get her goat.
I’m evil that way. ;-)
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Or ‘Sister.’
Ladyraxterinok
@Kay: In 80s (?) NY Review of books ran an essay claiming there was a concerted national effort to run govt so messed up and ineffectual that people would get turned off, think their votes and work couldn’t make a difference, and would therefore opt out of voting and politics completely.
I think they claimed Vigurie (sp?) group was behind the project.
OzarkHillbilly
@Cermet: What about the Tokomak? You gonna get that up and running too? ;-)
eta spelling
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Mustang Bobby:
The Truth is Out There.
Kay
@rikyrah:
Partly it was Kasich was all but unbeatable and no one wanted to run. If you want to win you take an open race. The odds are better. Most incumbents are re-elected. They’re picking when to run.
It’s also just bullshit that there are “350 million people and so few people run!”. Good candidates are talented. There’s not a huge number of them. There aren’t “spares” hanging around just waiting to be asked. There were no good candidates in Ohio on the Dem side. 12 million people. Zero good candidates for governor. No one was refusing the good candidates entry into the race- they just weren’t available.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Even so, Ford’s numbers recovered somewhat shortly after that and his approval was in the forties for basically the rest of his couple of years in office. He lost reelection but it wasn’t a landslide by any means; his showing was respectable.
The weirdest thing about that election in hindsight was that Carter’s win was the last appearance of the Democratic Solid South–the map looked like something out of the 19th century, a real anomaly for the post-1964 era.
Jeffro
Good morning everyone!
Michael Gerson’s column today lays into the ‘religious right’ (of which he used to consider himself a part) for its “conversion to Trumpism”. And he’s right, but just like Jennifer Rubin is right and Evan McMullin is right…they keep pointing out Trumpov’s manifest unfitness for office without taking that last, most important step: joining the Democrats. The last few sane Repubs are going to have to join the Dems and help us break through if we’re ever going to get past this stalemated, democracy-stifling situation we’re in. That goes for solving the problems of big-donor Dark Money, gerrymandering, and helping both parties’ reps (but most especially the GOP ones) worry more about making centrist appeals than they do about fringe primary challengers.
So that’s what I’m going to start doing: write these talking heads and op-ed writers, and point out that until they join the center-center party, we can’t make much of anything good happen here.
Spanky
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: My, how times have changed:
ETA: Then again, Franklin’s not, you know, Italian.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Kay:
Remember how Brentbard stroked out during an on-line argument and Bannon and company when so far as Photoshop him in some medieval suite of armor.
A Ghost To Most
@Jeffro: Is our Gerson learning? Or is this just flop sweat?
Peale
@Kay: yep. They plan to run against her forever for some reason. There was no reason to make her the center of Harvey Weinstein’s scandal, but they did. And then I read ostensible liberals agreeing that she needed to give those campaign contributions back. And next I’ll hear that she should just retire…like she is in office somewhere. She might as well run for something. People seem to think she’s a monumental force. Along with Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Kay
@rikyrah:
I’m actually bothering this local man to run. He ran a factory here- he’s retired now. He was a moderate Republican but he went to a trade conference in Chicago and Senator Obama was there and they met and he was impressed, so he backed Obama early and endorsed him in the local newspaper. He’s a big employer so it got a lot of attention. I think it actually moved votes. Our sons are friends. I think he should run for something- US House. He’s pretending I’m joking when I say it but I’m not and he knows it. But there aren’t a lot of these people, good people who should run and could win.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: That provoked a thought: I have several male friends I call ‘Brother’ but I don’t call any of my female friends ‘Sister’.
different-church-lady
@Baud: YOU’VE GOT MY VOTE!!!!
Cheryl Rofer
@Jeffro: I would back that off just a little: Until they vote with the center-left party. Telling people to change the way they’re thinking hardly ever works, but asking them to change their actions can be more effective. And then, as a psychologist friend once told me, attitude follows behavior.
germy
@Baud: Wait… Bob Novak reproduced?
Woodrowfan
my wife is a govie and she told me that his official portrait is starting to go up in the US Govt office building lobbies. She said he has a stupid look on his face, like he is trying to look tough, and failing.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Schlemazel
That’s Nixon post Watergate levels. 27% of the people will simple support a Republican no matter what, including murdering and eating babies.
Kay
@Peale:
I felt like making Clinton the focus of the Weinstein coverage was deliberate because most people don’t know who he is but everyone knows who she is. They used her to promote the story, she was the hook that took it out of a smaller group to a larger group of readers, which is fucking ironic, right? The first woman major Party candidate? Used?
Bravo, NYTimes. Good work. They fuck up even a genuine scandalous news story.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay:
And they are made over a number of elections. Some have a natural talent that is honed with time, other’s are built brick by brick. And they all have a ceiling which only time and circumstance reveal.
different-church-lady
@Kay: I’m wondering what’s going thru their heads that they have to embrace the idea of a “shadow president” — every losing candidate is told to get off the stage, but I can’t remember any where the opposition brought the loser so metaphorically close to the winner.
SFAW
@Leto:
Well, in fairness, it’s not as if Shitgibbon’s smearing an “X,” written using his own feces, is the kind of thing you’d frame.
germy
@different-church-lady: The republicans need Hillary as a piñata, otherwise they keep swinging at each other.
SFAW
@Woodrowfan:
Well, it’s difficult to look tough when one’s mouth looks like a prolapsed pig rectum.
What, you thought Sunununununununuuuuuuuuuuu was the only one like that?
Kay
@different-church-lady:
I agree. I think it’s a dumb tactic. We have a shadow President because the real one is a fraud? Is that it?
There’s actually quite a bit of this. They elevated Kelly to “President” status, too. I love how they think it’s a PLUS. OMFG why does he need a minder?
different-church-lady
@Kay: Biologically based click-bait algorithms.
Back in 2005 I used to wonder why there were so many articles about Apple on Huffington Post. Turns out it was because their statistics showed them that Apple in a headline was guaranteed to generate clicks.
Reporters are doing the same thing with Clinton, except the algorithms are in their heads: they know Clinton will get reads and buzz, so everything is still Clinton Clinton Clinton. Then they use the excuse that “she’s still in politics” as justification for it.
different-church-lady
@Kay:
“Shadow President” is a tell which reveals exactly that.
TenguPhule
Hello from Japan.
I have been Trump free for two glorious fucking weeks.
And they have sour cream and chives doritos here .
different-church-lady
@germy: Yes, but they’re supposed to say, “Loser, go home!”, not, “Hey, stop acting like an alternate winner.”
Peale
@Kay: did you know he gave tens of thousands of dollars to democrats. That several tens with three zeros at the end of it. And Hillary didn’t do a background check on him. I’m trying to imagine this new standard where Democrats need to hire security firms to look into the private lives of all their donors. That’s expensive, and will drive their donors insane, but necessary if we want to achieve the necessary level of purity. Maybe all potential donors will wear anklets like parolees for a few weeks while we check them out.
Kay
He hires bad people because he’s a bad manager. Picking people is 90% of his job and he’s bad at it. He’s also bad at the “soft” parts- the ceremonial parts, so that’s 10% and we’re at 100%.
Ladyraxterinok
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: See Wikipedia article about Jack Trice. He was a black football player at Ia State, the 2nd black college football player in US history. He died in 1923 as the result of injuries he received his 2nd (?) game while Ia State was playing vs MN. Tbe wiki article notes there was concern that the opposing players targeted him. Ia State didn’t play vs MN for 40 some years afterward. The Ia State football stadium is now named after him. (There was a long student and alum campaign for this.)
George Washington Carver was a student at Ia State, and a major building is named for him.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
You forgot the 10% for effort.
So we’re actually at 110%.
Kay
@Peale:
There will be another one- Weinstein isn’t the only rich asshole assaulting women- and the candidate who is not Hillary Clinton will not be held responsible and they’ll show their bias yet again.
They’re almost reckless with their credibility. They don’t care if they keep it.
Betty Cracker
@Woodrowfan: Trump has never taken a good photograph in this century because he’s hideous inside and out, but his official portrait is truly awful. I used to have a job where I approved graphics and photos before publication. I wasn’t the greatest at it, but even I would have immediately sent that horrible photo back to the art team with an “are you fucking kidding me?” note.
The funniest thing about the photo in question is that somehow the hair and makeup team fucked up his iconic comb-over, leaving a wide strip in the top layer that allows you to view the layer beneath, where the hairs run perpendicular to those in the top layer. (I like to think this was on purpose.) He’s trying to make a tough-guy scowl, but he looks like a mean, constipated old gangster wannabe trying, without success, to pinch a loaf. Sad!
different-church-lady
@Matt McIrvin:
Because Carter was a southerner.
If Bill Clinton had been from Michigan, GWHB might have won a second term.
cleek
@trnc: hear hear!
Kay
@TenguPhule:
“Hiring good people” is underrated in the US because we worship CEO’s and they like that we worship them so they don’t mention that they’re successful because they’re good at hiring. Other people.
NotMax
@Ladyraxterinok
Rochester was the character portrayed with dignity and aplomb by Eddie Anderson on Jack Benny’s shows (radio and TV), a comic foil role like the white regulars on Benny’s programs (Don Wilson, Phil Harris, Dennis Day, etc.).
Lum ‘n’ Abner were stereotypical white Arkansas hillbillies (primarily radio, although there were a handful of films).
germy
@Betty Cracker: He has several facial expressions he’s cultivated:
the Churchill Scowl (most portraits)
the Contented Cat smile (when Jimmy Fallon petted his hair)
the “You’re Fired!” Bellow (pursed lips, angry eyes)
the Lower Jaw jut (when he’s making a point during a speech against an adversary, foreign or domestic)
different-church-lady
@germy:
in a petri dish, perhaps.
Woodrowfan
@Betty Cracker: I have not seen it, but she said he was pursing his lips and just looks like an idiot.
Another Scott
@rikyrah: Yup. Good points.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jeffro
@A Ghost To Most: Both? Who knows. I’m still gonna write him and ask him to contemplate The Unthinkable.
Jeffro
@Cheryl Rofer: vote with, join, publicly support…point taken, but it’s all the same to me. Let’s see what response if any follows…
TenguPhule
@Kay: Even most CEOs at least try to make a pretense of actually working.
Trump doesn’t even try to pretend he’s doing anything other then fucking around on our dime.
I’ve been making great efforts to avoid the news, because even here in Japan, he’s on all the fucking time.
Betty Cracker
@Woodrowfan: It’s linked in my comment above, but I don’t necessarily recommend clicking through.
JMG
PS: Yet another Va. poll today, Northram up 50-44. Harry Enten of 538 tweeted that these polls show that Northram is ahead but that Gillespie could win because it’s inside the margin or error. I guarantee you that if any Republican for any office was ahead by 6,7, and 13 points in October polls, Enten, who’s a respectable analyst, would sincerely believe the election was a foregone conclusion. The political journalism world no longer believes any Democrat can win a reasonably close race.
PS: CNN poll today shows Dems up 16 (!) in generic 2018 Congressional ballot. Guarantee you the number crunchers will all use the word outlier to describe it.
Matt McIrvin
@different-church-lady: That was the first election in which people started talking about “born-again Christians” as a bloc–and they went for Carter! Then turned on him hard four years later.
rikyrah
I didn’t know that they had given Harry Connick, Jr. a talk show.
A talk show?
rikyrah
@Matt McIrvin:
They have been able to hide their sociopathy up until now. But, now…they have to do it all out in the open.
Which is why we must resist and fight for the 20th Century.
Amir Khalid
@rikyrah:
Yeah. I’d much rather hear him sing or play the piano. And/or lead the house band.
Matt McIrvin
@JMG: Well, it probably is an outlier–no other national poll I’ve seen has that big a gap.
The generic Congressional situation is hard to judge because there are only a few tracking polls and they have big systematic differences. PPP consistently says the Dems are something like 10-11 points ahead, though they had one in August where it was 14. YouGov/Economist consistently says it’s about 6-7 points, and Politico/Morning Consult fluctuates wildly between about 2 and 7 points, often around 4-5. And the other occasional polls you see are anywhere in that range.
Since most analyses say there’s a magic threshold of something like 7 points to get over the gerrymandering disadvantage, a lot rides on this margin.
O. Felix Culpa
@Kay:
Respectfully disagree. He hires bad people because he’s a bad person and deliberately surrounds himself with other bad people to do his bidding. Feature, not a bug.
Betty Cracker
@Matt McIrvin: I was a kid when Carter won, but IIRC, it was during his presidency that my old Dixiecrat relatives started ostentatiously converting to Republicans. They had voted for Nixon before anyway, but they made their conversions publicly known during the Carter years, lapped up the Moral Majority bullshit during the Reagan years and have voted for every GOP puke ever since, the worthless bastards.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Betty Cracker: It’s particularly tempting to say “nothing matters” when your candidate wins the popular vote but does not become president. That’s happened to me twice now. It begins to feel like voting doesn’t matter.
A Ghost To Most
@TenguPhule: Vacation, work, or emigrating?
rikyrah
@TenguPhule:
Hey!!!
Hope you are having a good time :)
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@Cermet: Why not just order a proper Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor? It has a guarantee and everything, and I understand it really cuts down on your trash disposal issues.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@SFAW: Yeah, in my son’s preschool, the little darlings called one another “dummy fucker asshole face.” Trump actually does have a dummy fucker asshole face.
Amir Khalid
@Betty Cracker:
That look on his face conveys grumpiness rather than Churchillian determination. And his hair! He’d look a lot more dignified if he just let himself go bald on top.
rikyrah
Holder fires back at Trump’s claim Obama didnât call fallen service membersâ families: âStop the damn lyingâ
BY REBECCA SAVRANSKY – 10/17/17 08:16 AM EDT
Former Attorney General Eric Holder is calling for President Trump to stop the “damn lying” after Trump claimed former President Obama didn’t call the families of fallen U.S. service members.
“Stop the damn lying – youâre the President,” Holder tweeted late Monday.
“I went to Dover AFB with 44 and saw him comfort the families of both the fallen military & DEA.”
Stop the damn lying – youâre the President. I went to Dover AFB with 44 and saw him comfort the families of both the fallen military & DEA. pic.twitter.com/HhE4KbTBkJ
â Eric Holder (@EricHolder) October 17, 2017
http://thehill.com/homenews/news/355773-holder-fires-back-at-trump-claiming-obama-didnt-call-soldiers-families-stop-the
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
@Matt McIrvin:
Doesn’t mean anything yet. Trump is oblivious to polls. He will angrily dismiss them as fake news and then get staffers to kiss his ass. The GOP is firmly behind him, and there are too few moderates who might defect.
And Democrats have yet to craft a clear alternative to Trump or the GOP. A lot of voters want what Trump offers even if they see him as flawed.
Let’s see how this looks as we get closer to midterms.
JMG
Matt Yglesias used the word outlier on the CNN poll in a tweet not 30 minutes after my prediction, and criticized somebody for mentioning the poll in a tweet. It is hard to call any poll an outlier when it is competing with only two other polls done regularly. There’s just not enough data to even generate an accurate average,nor should there be, really, since the election in question is 13 months away.
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
Exactly.
They are seriously malicious.
They take their hate seriously.
They take their stupidity seriously.
They take their bigotry seriously.
d58826
@Mustang Bobby: Or as Alan Rickman said in Robin Hood – ‘cut their hearts out with a spoon because it will hurt more’
Ruckus
@Kay:
I don’t think that’s true. They act like it’s a game, something they do, like join the club. But I do believe that they are serious. They really think that the country is worse off after 8 yrs of President Obama. They really do believe in tinkle down economics. They really do believe that most/all blacks are drug addicted pimps and whores, who if they exist at all should only be to serve their masters.
They are seriously fucked up deniers of reality.
Patricia Kayden
So most people have figured out that Trump has completely messed up the response to the hurricane destruction in Puerto Rico and his ratings are down. Puerto Ricans are suffering for Trump’s incompetence and racism. And he’s still yakking about the debt that Puerto Rico owes to creditors as if he doesn’t owe millions of dollars to creditors because of his lousy business practices.
A Ghost To Most
@O. Felix Culpa: Rump hires bad people because only bad people are willing to work with a traitor.
Jeffro
Ok, I just sent off my email to Rubin and Gerson. I won’t hold my breath, but you never know…
Jeffro
@rikyrah: I’m noticing an uptick in bad language directed at the president* (usually on Twitter) from former Obama staffers. Good!
lollipopguild
@Ruckus: They see it as a “game’ in the sense that they feel that they will never be hurt by what they do to their enemies. Trump acts as if he is our GOD/Emperor and must be worshiped. These are people who would burn the house down to get rid of termites. No matter what goes wrong it will always be someone else’s fault-always.
Barbara
@Matt McIrvin: You really expected unity on the ACA? Let me say that I would have expected more unity if Paul Ryan had not included provisions that not only killed the ACA but killed the original Medicaid program as we know it. That, right there, was seriously toxic to every state budget and separated true believers from believers out of convenience, of whom there are more than enough in the House. Those guys from New Jersey who resurrected the bill after it died should be (metaphorically) hung from meat hooks when they run for reelection next time.
Then, killing Medicaid expansion would have imposed even deeper wounds to the budgets of 31 states, hurting first and foremost those red states that expanded against their own political proclivities because they knew they needed to. And even killing the exchanges had very serious impact in specific Republican districts — like the South Florida trio of Republican led districts that between them account for the highest proportion of individuals covered by the exchange in the entire nation, at more than 10% of their population. Not their voting population — their entire population. An engaged president would have taken stock and tried to figure out something that would at least try to address these concerns. We don’t have an engaged president. We have an outsourcer in chief with an assistant who has had this starry-eyed business plan ever since he got out of college and who has now definitively exposed how incompetent and implausible of a leader he would actually be if left to his own devices.
lollipopguild
@A Ghost To Most: A lot of the people who work for trump see this as a way to become rich/famous. Bannon strikes me as a guy who is in to pretending that he is a very powerful person who controls history and can make happen what ever he wants to happen.
jeffreyw
A Fire Story
A Ghost To Most
@lollipopguild: Like I said, bad people.
Leto
@germy: I like the cut of her jib.
@SFAW: His signature is what you get when you give a pen to a two year old. Or if you’re looking at certain wave forms on an oscilloscope.
O. Felix Culpa
@A Ghost To Most: Sigh. Sadly prophetic.
Chris
@Frank Wilhoit:
Truth.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Its a game to the so called liberal talking heads of the media. The constant giggling on the politics segments of the “serious” Newshour is a clue. Also, see also Washington week. They cover it like a game, with them as commentators analyzing the game for us. Their home team is the Rs. That’s the reason for the excessive focus on the Presidential contest. Its easy to cover as a fucking game. If they covered policies and how it would affect the people that live here, we would have a different polity.
O. Felix Culpa
@schrodingers_cat: I listened to All Things Considered recently for the first time in quite a while. Was shocked by the giggliness – over issues and events that are not in the least cute or funny. I now understand what you’ve been saying about NPR.
ETA: The cutesy approach to serious news made me want to shoot my radio, except I don’t have a gun and I still need my old car.
schrodingers_cat
@O. Felix Culpa: Tamara Keith and Amy Walter were giggly about the massacre in Las Vegas, when the bodies were not even cold. It was the Politics Monday segment.
Chris
@Kay:
Years ago I read an online essay by some right-wing asshole talking about how there were two wars going on, one with the jihadists of course, but another one with the “lousy, stinking commies” back home, by which, of course, he meant everybody who didn’t vote for George W. Bush. And he meant to fight and win that war.
I remember thinking how deeply convenient it was for him that out of those two existential conflicts, the “war” he chose to fight in was the one against unarmed hippies, where the “battlefield” is his own air-conditioned computer work station at home, and where the “battle” consists of word-vomiting an online tract every few months in which you tell people who agree with you that you agree with them. As opposed to, you know, signing up for the Army and spending a few years in a destroyed country dodging explosions and bullets while trying to cope without the body armor they were supposed to send you.
O. Felix Culpa
@schrodingers_cat: Dreadful. I wonder whether the female giggliness – and it seems to be mainly females – is the Fox-ification of NPR. You can’t see the cute blondes, but you can hear the cutesiness in their demeanor.
Leto
@Amir Khalid: He doesn’t want to complete the full Lex Luthor look. Of course, that’s insulting to Lex.
Gelfling 545
@Ramiah Ariya: when in fact heâs draining the swamp right into the White House.
schrodingers_cat
@O. Felix Culpa: One of the reasons I like BBC World News is that giggling is at a minimum. They are better interviewers too. Exception is Katy Kay, who is a typical Villager but with an accent. She is not super giggly though like the PBS women.
ETA: Men may not giggle but they are just as bad about both-siderism and covering politics like a game.
Ksmiami
@different-church-lady: reeducation camps: lock them up
Gelfling 545
@Baud: Had trouble with similar at TPM a few months ago. They claimed it was nothing to do with them and were unable to determine what was happening. I suggested that, if it was indeed theirs, annoying readers for ad revenue might not have quite the effect they hoped for.
Chris
@satby:
In the words of another guy whose name starts with “Mc,” welcome to the party, pal! This country has been stewing in an increasingly toxic brand of nationalism based on the scapegoating of political opponents as treasonous and unpatriotic in order to avoid facing the problems those opponents are bringing up, oh… since the fucking Red Scare of the 1950s, and that’s only if we’re talking about the modern version of the phenomenon. Without that, you can probably go all the way back to the early days of the republic, when all the Federalists were closet monarchist Tories scheming to give the colonies back to the British, and all the Jeffersonians were wide-eyed anarchists guided by a French Revolution they wanted to replicate here at home.
And you, John Sidney McCain the Third, have been riding that brand of nationalism your entire fucking life. Glad you’re finally waking up to the fact that it’s a problem.
O. Felix Culpa
@schrodingers_cat: I’ll give them a try. I miss English language Al Jazeera. I started watching them when I was based in Uganda and they had great world news coverage.
ETA: I get what you mean about covering politics like a game. Makes me crazy. People’s lives and well-being are at stake, but these privileged fuckers float above all that.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Seeing this too.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: It is not new. I hate the fucking ads, especially on the mobile site. Both TPM and Balloon Juice have become unreadable because of those ads.
Matt McIrvin
@Barbara: Yes–based on what they’d done in the states, I had no trouble believing that all the Republicans would enthusiastically vote to hurt their own constituents, then blame it on somebody else. I thought it’d be a clean repeal bill with no replacement at all, just “the ACA is hereby repealed, ding dong the witch is dead”. But without Obama at the top it was evidently a lot harder to do the blaming part.
catclub
@trnc:
Reading it, I wondered if there is an app in twitter that will convert paragraphs to tweets. There should be. That would be useful.
O. Felix Culpa
@Matt McIrvin: That’s one of the few bright spots for me – the Republicans are exposed as incompetent. Can’t even repeal and replace the ACA after seven years of braying about it. Sad.
Kay
@Chris:
That’s why we have to be careful with “the resistance”. It’s too dramatic to describe calling polite congressional staffers.
What if there has to be a real resistance? We won’t have a word- used up! Keep your rhetorical powder dry :)
It’s mean and shallow but they are so SOFT, these people. They’re all.. puffy. Newt Gingrich would look perfectly at home with bows on his velvet slippers. Can Bannon even walk? He looks like he needs a golf cart.
Matt McIrvin
@Chris: Most of the weird symbolic nationalistic rituals we’re socially obligated to participate in were cooked up during the period from about 1880-1920, which was also not coincidentally a period of great anxiety about immigrants, the peak era of lynchings, and the heyday of Confederate monument construction.
bemused
@Betty Cracker:
It’s his official photo so he must have thought it was beautiful and perfect. His tough guy poses are ridiculous. He just looks like the petty punkass he is.
@Amir Khalid:
If the rumor that he got a botched hair transplant is true, he might not want to reveal what his bald head looks like. otoh, he could also think that his hair style is fantastic and everyone admires it.
A Ghost To Most
If need be, there will be.
Matt McIrvin
@O. Felix Culpa: Trump is trying to do exactly what I described all by himself, through executive action. Kill Obamacare any way you can, bring the chaos and gloat. But he doesn’t actually have the legislative branch behind him.
catclub
@Brachiator:
and would rather vote fr someone who promises something that will never be delivered than vote for someone who accurately tells them that thing will not be delivered.
This is a variant of the “two Santas” model of politics. Promise no pain and all gains, let the other side deal in facts.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Betty Cracker:That’s really his official picture? That makes Trump look like a constipated, local TV, news anchor .
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: I can think of Churchill’s contemporary who was braver than him. Gandhi and every ordinary Indian who marched and protested against the so called liberal Empire. I can’t imagine the personal courage it took for the ordinary protestors to protest a tyrannical regime with nothing other than the belief that your cause is just. A regime that was not above beating and battering and killing you, and charging you with sedition for the temerity of doing so.
catclub
@Baud:
I think a new president with this good an economy should be in the 65% approval range – so he is about 30 points below that.
bemused
@OzarkHillbilly:
I don’t want to be called dear either. I have a perfectly fine birth name I answer to. I just remembered how I refused to write Mrs. in front of my name after I got married. This was when it was still not uncommon to see Mrs. John Smith in newspapers instead of Mrs. Jane Smith.
zhena gogolia
@different-church-lady:
I love Greg Sargent’s headline this morning — Trump’s Incompetence Won’t Save Us from His Malevolence.
Chris
@Ramiah Ariya:
I think this misunderstands what “the swamp” actually is, in Trumpland.
To Trump supporters, “the swamp” means the civil service. All those useless lazy corrupt bureaucrats living high off of my tax dollars in the various useless and unconstitutional departments of the federal government, who you just know are all looking down on us in the heartland and think they’re so fucking smart with their fancy-pants degrees and expertise. Them and all the politicians and pundits who support that huge wasteful useless meddlesome Big Government machine, the politically correct socialist Democrats and the spineless establishment RINOs.
“Draining the swamp” means firing these people, drastically reducing their departments, and keeping them on a tight leash, and preferably replacing them with businessmen who Know Things and can Cut Through The Red Tape and Get Shit Done because they’re smart people (you can tell they’re smart because they’re rich). When Trump guts institutions like the EPA or State Department and puts oligarchs in charge of them who’ll primarily use them for personal enrichment, as far as they’re concerned, he is draining the swamp.
schrodingers_cat
@bemused: Traditional Hindu wives are supposed to consider their husbands as Gods. Fuck that shit.
Matt McIrvin
@bemused: It may have been a side effect of talking to children, who of course will refer to their mother as their mother. For a while I was regularly referring to my wife as “yer mom” when addressing our daughter, and sometimes it’d actually slip to just “Mom” which started making me uncomfortable, not to mention making it hard to figure out who I was talking about. Now I mostly just refer to her by her name; the kid is old enough that it’s not confusing.
Matt McIrvin
@bemused: My older relatives still occasionally address Sam as “Mrs. Matthew McIrvin” on cards and letters and such (or, in the milder version, just get her last name wrong). It really bothers her.
bemused
@schrodingers_cat:
We seem to have a problem with a segment of Americans who believe that too.
Chris
@OzarkHillbilly:
A non-trivial part of my sliding into the “firm liberal” part of the political spectrum was realizing that most of what conservatives accused liberals of was crap, while most of what liberals accused conservatives of was perfectly accurate.
cmorenc
@Baud:
Despite such potential electoral outcomes, it won’t be easy to undo the immense structural damage Trump has inflicted on us for far longer than that, IF Trump gets the chance to nominate replacements for Justices Kennedy and / or Ginsburg before his term runs out. A couple more Gorsuch-type justices, and the SCOTUS majority will be Hell-bent on undoing the entire modern fabric of American constitutional law going back to FDR.
Chris
@Kay:
Then we call it the Rebel Alliance.
@Matt McIrvin:
Either that or the 1950s, which was kind of the “return to normalcy” era culturally if not economically after twenty years of New Deal coalition – with all its Catholic and Jewish and even black members, not to mention all the white trash – running the country.
different-church-lady
@zhena gogolia:
That’s because his malevolence is our malevolence (collectively). “The hate is coming from inside the house!”
A Ghost To Most
@Chris: I’m nominating myself as General Akhbar.
It’s a trap!
/sheldon voice
bemused
@Matt McIrvin:
Antiquated propriety but a few of the older, older folks still think it’s socially correct way.
We have a small local weekly that has about three columns that report what is going on in their rural communities and what residents have been doing. A new person took over one column and was addressing the women as Mrs. Jane Smith or Miss Jane Smith. I thought what the hell is this, so old-fashioned and pretty odd to see even in these rural/small town parts. After reading a couple more of this woman’s columns, it was clear she was a very conservative, churchy woman and not that old either.
Chris
@bemused:
“Wives, submit to your husband…” The common phrase to explain the relationship is that “the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church,” so, yes, literally. If not gods, “good” Christian husbands are at least stand-ins for gods.
different-church-lady
@O. Felix Culpa: NPR has been high on their own fumes for about 15 years now, so I’m not surprised they’ve got the giggles.
Chris
@A Ghost To Most:
If I can be Wedge Antilles, anyone else can be anyone they want.
/diehard-expanded-universe-fan
bemused
@Chris:
I don’t know if it was in a thread here but I thought a bumper sticker that says “Let’s Put Christ Back in Christians” was great but then it occurred to me it would go right over the heads of those “good” evangelicals. Plus if I had one on my bumper, I might get mistaken for one of them. Horrors.
J R in WV
Good morning, rickyrah!
Several people had questions about our winter camp in today’s “On the Road” feature. I’ve added a description of the camp and the local area which should answer most (any conceivable) questions.
The fox photos are pretty good, it’s hard to catch a fox long enough for a set of photos.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Brachiator:
I think you overstate their support. They’re already starting to waiver. The rats are jumping ship.
Bullshit, the Dems haven’t. It couldn’t be more clear. The GOP and Trump want to kill people by destroying health insurance as we know it. Don’t go full Villager on us. I also don’t think enough voters currently support him to even win again.
The Moar You Know
@TenguPhule: Right there’s enough reason for me to ask for asylum and never leave.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@schrodingers_cat:
TBF, the British would only be considered liberal in comparison to the Japanese. Look at how they treated the Chinese. And the Chinese were culturally similar! But yeah, the British sucked. All imperialists do.
schrodingers_cat
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: The 2000 dead at Jallianwala Bagh beg to differ. The 55 million plus dead in manufactured famines beg to differ. The British reign of terror in India was almost 200 years in some parts (Bengal and Bihar). History did not begin with Hitler or in WWII.
Miss Bianca
@satby: Damn! Can we start saying. “this is good news from John McCain” now?
Karen
I meant to post on thread about dolt45 and fear; but my laptop decided it had enough and my new desktop had yet to arrive. So laptop is put away, still works just overheats quickly; so emergency use only.
I had commented in response to a friends post; and one dlot45 worshiper “explained” why I was still single. Seems that they now have a “real man” in the oval office, one who knows just how women are suppose to be treated. One who knows that anyone not straight is going straight to hell and that killing them would make the world a better place. He told me that I should be thankful, down on knees thankful, that “man” sitting in oval office is highly intelligent, successful business man, super rich and highly respected around the world. I am not sure if it was his comments that I found “frightening” or the number of people who climbed out of the woodwork to cheer him on. This lady whose post I responded to has large following, usually most of them lurk; she was upset enough to message me that she had no idea that so many who follow her spiritual site were such hate mongers when she mostly is posting either jokes or uplifting memes.
Brachiator
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
To the contrary. Look how McConnell was eager to appear with Trump and to promise that everything was on track, even though he looked like someone who had been taken hostage. And when Trump pulled his wretched BS with screwing with the Affordable Care Act, Ryan was very quick to come out and back Trump’s destructive interference with the program. There is some behind-the-scenes wrangling, but none of this really threatens Trump or the GOP’s noxious pursuit of their agenda.
RE: And Democrats have yet to craft a clear alternative to Trump or the GOP. A lot of voters want what Trump offers even if they see him as flawed.
The Democrats are playing defense. They reasonably oppose Trump, but they still have to react to him. And he is setting the agenda. Hell, he has even won on some areas without even talking about them. For example, no one, no one, no politician could ever argue that the US should take in more refugees fleeing Syria or other troubled countries.
People are still waiting to see if Trump will replace Obamacare with something better. It won’t happen. Ever. But voters are still giving Trump the benefit of the doubt on this. And the Republicans are still working hard to protect Trump on this.
This, for now, is a meaningless statement.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Brachiator:
But the thing is, things aren’t on track for them, for the most part. Their legislative agenda so far is like a Saturn V that blew up on the launch pad. They do some damage in the near-term for sure while they have power. T
But the majority of people hate them. Numerous polls bear that out. And they also show voters place the responsibility for healthcare succeeding on Trump’s shoulders by a solid majority. They’re all fucked four ways to Sunday. They’ve let the veil fall away to reveal what was always underneath: cold-hearted sociopathic fascists who wish to kill millions so they can give the rich a tax cut.
This is much our own faults as individuals for not challenging these repugnant ideas in person. Shout the other person down. Call them an evil monster. Call them unAmerican. The right wing has done this for generations and it’s worked. It’s time we returned the favor and reset the agenda.
It won’t work. The President and party in charge always take the blame for disasters on their watch. Trump can’t help himself and neither can the incompetent fascists in the GOP.
Tenar Arha
@Betty Cracker: There was an article (RawStory?) about how he has a whole process to prevent his turkey neck double chins from showing. But that because of doing that he’s stuck with a mean persimmon expression & only a couple of angles which inevitably end up emphasizing the stupid hair. And this vanity in the man who, up until him, holds the office of the most powerful head of state, would almost be a little funny if it wasn’t such a telling aspect of his character.
No Drought No More
This short essay by Dana Houle is one that should and likely will be included in most histories of the Trump administration.
Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Lest We Forget: As well, Trump has stated the war was fought for greed and profit. The sick sonofabitch insults all of America’s dead and wounded with those despicable remarks (and, of course, all those who served). The fact the people of the United States were lied into waging that war in no way diminishes the sacrifices of those who fought it. They are deserving of the same gratitude of those veterans who answered the country’s call and fought at Bunker Hill, or Gettysburg, or Iwo Jima, or Khe Sang. They were also betrayed, and continue to be by Americans who even still turn a blind eye to the plot and plotters that unleashed it.
tybee
@Cermet: when does the reactor come online?
LongHairedWeirdo
“C.” proves that this was not a Republican actor. And it is the right thing to do, especially before the dog is home, but it’s also the right thing to do period.
If it was a Republican actor, the rule would have been “you may only talk to the press on ‘deep background’ and *only* to members of the press who will take actions to our benefit because of it.”
wenchacha
@guachi: I wasn’t keen on my FIL, but he is dead now. And thanks to several #me too posts, today I told my husband of 38 years that his dad always creeped me out. And that it was never really overt enough for me to be able to point to it and say, make it stop. Just a little too familiar, brushing lint off the front of my shirt, aiming for my lips when we kissed goodbye, stuff I coulda shoulda said but felt pretty sure would be tsk-tsked away. We lived in the sAme town.
My husband apologized, and said he hadn’t known. I get it. Like I said, all stuff that, by itself, could be brushed off as nothing, except for that creepy feeling. Then my FIL got dementia for 14 or so years and died. I still feel guilt about telling my husband that his dad wasn’t who he wanted him to be.
But yeah. Your FIL doesn’t sound like all that great a guy, either. Fuck that shit.