Maddow did a segment last night on the destruction of the State Department. I know she drives some of y’all crazy with her long windup, but it’s worth watching. Skip to the six-minute mark to bypass the soup and seafood courses and dive right into the entree.
[Edited to remove video embed code because MSNBC interface fucking sucks — just click the link above to go to the shitty MSNBC site and watch the excellent content that deserves a better online home.]
Foreign Policy ran a piece earlier this week that also highlighted the alarm signals sent by senior diplomats, including current American Foreign Service Association President Barbara Stephenson:
“Our leadership ranks are being depleted at a dizzying speed,” Barbara Stephenson, a former U.S. ambassador to Panama and current president of the American Foreign Service Association, the union for foreign service officers, wrote in a letter for the December 2017 issue of the Foreign Service Journal.
Scores of senior diplomats, including 60 percent of career ambassadors, have left the department since the beginning of the year, when President Donald Trump took office, according to the letter. There are 74 top posts at State that remain vacant with no announced nominee…
Morale at the State Department is crumbling, as Foreign Policy reported in July, amid an ongoing effort by the Trump administration to sideline the traditional motor of U.S. diplomacy. At a meeting last week, White House national security advisor H.R. McMaster appeared to justify the assault on State Department staffing by saying that some officials there did not support the president’s agenda, according to Reuters.
In a Nov. 2 interview, Trump responded to a question about unfilled positions at the State Department by stating, “I’m the only one that matters.”
Yesterday, I noted that Trump is making a fool of himself on his Asia trip. As Maddow noted, during the campaign, Trump blustered about China “raping” the U.S. through imbalances, currency manipulation, etc. Yesterday, he could barely detach his lips from Xi Jinping’s buttocks. His bellicose campaign rhetoric was embarrassing, but Trump’s deference is humiliating.
Also, it turns out that being a serial liar and backstabber has diplomatic consequences. Trump is finding no takers in sideline efforts to forge bilateral trade agreements. And why would anyone want to make a deal with him? World leadership has shifted to other players.
But back to the question Stephenson asked and Maddow highlighted: It’s time to ask why the State Department is being gutted. Who benefits when the U.S. abdicates its role as a world leader? Why is the man who received an Order of Friendship medal from Vladimir Putin taking a sledgehammer to State?
Funny how all this incompetence just coincidentally benefits the world’s most powerful authoritarians, chiefly Putin. It looks less like a clown show and more like a flock of vulture capitalists stripping a distressed enterprise down for parts.
debbie
Never mind.
dedc79
“Cleansing” the state department of the careerists was a republican wet dream for decades. Trump and Rex made the dream a reality.
It’s akin to clear-cutting a forest. While the forest may eventually grow back, it will take decades to look anything like what was cut down. And in the meantime it won’t function the way it should.
Yarrow
Russia Today is an arm of the Kremlin.
Baud
Speaking of trade, I’ll post a link to rikyrah’s shameless copying of my comment in the morning thread. (Her comment provided a link to the story).
https://balloon-juice.com/2017/11/10/thursday-morning-open-thread-how-low-can-the-gop-go/#comment-6628783
debbie
@dedc79:
You can’t be #1 or Exceptional without a State Department to spread your message. Trump certainly isn’t the vehicle for that. I know he’s being manipulated by Bannon.
Trump will stand in a cold, lonely room just waiting to make deals. There will never be any.
Baud
@Yarrow: GG screed on freedom of the press in 3…2….1…..
Gin & Tonic
Two close family friends are career Foreign Service officers. One has already left this year, and the other is just counting down to 20 years so she can hit the exit door.
Yarrow
Excellent article in The Atlantic on State back in March.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Yarrow:
I remember on a trip to Washington DC in early 2015, I saw lots of RT posters plastered all over the place, trying to appeal to the conspiracy minded anti-war left. I didn’t think much of them at the time, but now I think they were trying to influence America’s most powerful people.
They should either register as a foreign agent or be banned from the US.
dedc79
@debbie: He/they think diplomacy is for wimps/cowards, and that it produces agreements/treaties that constrain american power. They think the career diplomats at state are more sympathetic to our competition and our enemies and that they undermine american interests. The fewer the better.
Corner Stone
Every day Trump remains in office pushes the US further into irrelevancy on the world stage. His desire for autocracy damages our Republic in many ways, large and small. Every decision that is made looks like the angle is to punish some specific group or person.
Trump loves Putin and he loves Xi. That is the setup he wants for himself. To be an autocrat/dictator that decides who to reward and who to punish. His word is law and there are no checks or balances.
Baud
I tried watching a video of Rachel a couple of weeks ago on their website and it was buggy as all get out. It’s almost 2018, people! Sheesh.
Felonius Monk
@Baud: Maybe GG should be required to register as a foreign agent also.
schrodingers_cat
Putin’s coup has been a resounding success so far.
Baud
@Felonius Monk: Hmmm. Interesting.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Yarrow:
It’s only over if we give up.
Baud
RT has been showing up more on my Google feed lately. Did you know that Russia had nothing to do with hacking the DNC?
Betty Cracker
@dedc79: I don’t think this is fulfillment of a preexisting wingnut wishlist. This is a radical act of destruction that doesn’t serve U.S. interests — Republican or otherwise. We need to ask ourselves whose agenda is being served and why.
schrodingers_cat
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: I think we still have a small window to undo the damage done by the Rs. There is no other country that can step into our shoes right now.
Yarrow
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: That’s what they’ll have to do.
Russia has been playing a long game here. As Adam says, penetration at all levels. This article about two popular twitter accounts that were suddenly “activated” to support Trump and turned out to be Russian trolls is enlightening. Here’s a bit on one of them:
This part is fascinating. The account was active since 2014.
JGabriel
Foreign Policy via Betty Cracker @ Top:
Given that Trump is, as Shakespeare once wrote in a different context, an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing, one feels compelled to ask, “What Trump agenda?” I mean, the man doesn’t have an ‘agenda’, just a collection of sound bites from Hannity and Fox & Friends.
Ladyraxterinok
Isn’t destroying the State Department treason??
It and the military are the 2 forces that protect the US. It would be treason to weaken/destroy the military. Why not the same re State??
Amir Khalid
Secretary of State was Hillary Clinton’s last job in government. One of her big achievements there was to restore morale and effectiveness at the State Department after it had languished on the sidelines under W. And that restoration was carried on under John Kerry. I suspect the fact that it’s her hard work they are destroying makes it all the sweeter for Trump and his crew.
schrodingers_cat
@JGabriel: I am not convinced that McMaster is holding the line, to use Adam Silverman’s terminology. I would love it if someone could convince me otherwise. He is all in on T agenda if I judge him based on his public actions.
oatler.
Now We request you, brethren, with regard to the coming of The Corporation and our gathering together to It, that you not be quickly shaken from your composure or be disturbed either by a spirit or a message or a letter as if from Us, to the effect that the day of The Corporation has come.
tobie
Looks like another general’s reputation is swirling down the drain. And one wonders again: was the reputation deserved in the first place?
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: US global cultural/economic hegemony is probably gone forever (whether that is good or bad). A functioning foreign policy, that could certainly come back.
laura
@Corner Stone:
Trump loves Putin and he loves Xi.
I’m not convinced the he loves them. He craves attention -from anybody, but the two represent what he really, truly, always, only has loved, power. Flattery gets each of them what they seek and our Village Idiot gets a tongue bath on a global stage and believes that this is an acknowledgement of his right to rule.
Otherwise I am fully in agreement with your opinion.
germy
@Baud: GG screed on freedom of the press in 3…2….1…..
Well, he retweeted this:
schrodingers_cat
Also is Flynn the only one among the brass that is carrying water for the Russians?
Jack the Second
@Betty Cracker: I don’t think it was a Reaganite/Bushie principle but the wingnut modus operandi is to take slogans like “government is the problem” and turn them into principles. Political strategists 30 years ago knew they just meant “the parts of the government that help other people or keep corporations from doing what they want”, but the modern wingnut thinks “all of it”.
Frankensteinbeck
I think this is major. Yes, Russia is certainly paying Trump to gut America’s diplomatic corps, but it’s an easy buy because it fits with Trump’s mentality. He sees no point to the existence of the vast majority of the State Department. He personally should negotiate all deals. Diplomats exist only to let people go around him to get things done, and to tell him facts and what he can and can’t do. Both of those enrage him.
gene108
I think a lot of what Trump is doing, which reduces American standing in the world, would be done by any Republican President.
Republicans hate the U.N., they hate international treaties of any kind, and the non-Trump foreign policy folks are all neo-cons, who pushed for the Iraq War. There was an update to the Law of the Sea Treaty a few years ago, which we could not ratify, because most Republicans were opposed to it, so we couldn’t reach the 2/3’s majority needed in the Senate to ratify.
Trump is just accelerating our decline.
Part of the problem with maintaining America’s as a global superpower is how fucking different Republican and Democratic Presidents are. Bush, Jr. caused a lot of damage with the Iraq War. Obama rebuilt a lot of the damage done, but now we’re off in a completely different direction.
But every Republican candidate in 2016 was opposed to the Iran nuclear deal. They said it was a terrible deal and they would look to undo it.
If there’s a Democrat elected in 2020, foreign policy will shift again. And if the Democrat is followed by a Republican, it swings the other way.
Why bother agreeing to anything the U.S. offers, when the next President, if he or she is of the opposing Party will just look to undo it.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin:
Based on what do you draw this conclusion?
Big Ole Hound
I’m sorry guys but the State Dept is so bloated with lifers it makes the pentagon look slim. All the folks that feathered their nest since Clinton was president are getting out now that they have to actually do something other than lunch and State dinners. Trump may not be replacing some necessary postings but on the whole this down sizing may not be a bad thing.
chris
@Betty Cracker: A number of people have pointed out that everything in US politics can be traced back to racism. The Glorious White Homeland will not need diplomats but rather more border guards to keep the mud people out. “White genocide” is real to these people, Trump probably included.
ding7777
and the mutiple auto rewinds is odd
lollipopguild
No country is going to talk to trump about trade or anything else because they know he will change his mind 5 minutes later. England was slowly becoming a small player on the world stage but Brexit will reduce them to a non-entity. Reality bites!
WereBear
This is their culture, unchanged. Loretta Lynn married at 14; her parents weren’t happy, but it was legal. Elvis came from there, and Jerry Lee Lewis.
It was been kept in these hardcore fundie cultures. Where women are not seen as people, anyway.
Doug R
Our “fearless leader” was offered a chance to renew the softwood lumber deal, but decided to wait because “trump’s a businessman”.
She’s no longer premier.
Looks like Prime Minister Trudeau has a game plan.
ET
@Amir Khalid: Kevin Drum brought that up on a post ask Why as well. It seems like a crazy thing but tRump is that petty and so far, it is the only thing that makes sense. He hates/is is that jealous of her. I mean he is trying to erase Obama’s legacy, so is it so far fetched?
Mike in NC
Bannon stated months ago that he was out to destroy the “administrative state”, whatever that is supposed to mean. He’s still very much leading idiot Trump around by the nose.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: There’s got to be a loss of trust sooner or later. Why would anyone negotiate any kind of agreement with the United States, or rely on the stability of our economy or our money, when we might elect another Trump and take the wrecking ball to everything? It’s got to be an issue hanging over us even when the next Democratic administration gets in.
Kofu
The current administration associates the State Department with Hillary Clinton and what she was doing there. Why doesn’t this get mentioned more often?
Just as Trump has made it his business to dismantle any legacy that Obama might claim, he is also committed to destroying anything touched by Hillary Clinton. Along with that are the endemic tensions between diplomatic and military approaches, CIA and overt processes, and transnational corporations and other multinational initiatives.
GregB
@schrodingers_cat:
Based on the turning of the wheels of time and reality.
Trump nomination, a body blow.
Trump election, sucking chest wound.
Trump’s continued policy implementation and presence as a leader. 6 feet under with dirt being thrown on us daily.
We will never recover from him.
Gelfling 545
Ahem. Not on topic but please forgive. Proud mom is proud! My daughter’s embryonic law career is trending to the human rights direction.
https://www.amnestyusa.org/press-releases/amnesty-international-usa-files-foia-on-burn-pits/
Dolly Llama
@dedc79: I think it’s simpler than that. He’s trying to dismantle everything Obama ever accomplished out of a sense of vengeance. Hillary was SOS under Obama. So there’s double the incentive to dismantle it. He could give a shit about anything else except score-settling and his own personal benefit, and he sees no way to personally benefit from the State Department.
ETA: Or what Kofu says about three posts up even better. One day I will actually make myself read the damn thread before jumping in and cluttering it up with stuff that’s already been said.
Yarrow
@schrodingers_cat:
Maybe he is “holding the line” but in ways that aren’t visible. In his public actions he seems like he’s full on supportive of the administration, but maybe he has to be to get to stay there and protect what he can protect. Not saying this is how it is, just speculating that it could be possible.
I sometimes wonder just how bad things could be if some people in the administration weren’t there doing what they’re doing. Who knows, maybe that’s not a real thing and everyone in the administration is corrupt. But maybe there are some good people there keeping us from even worse disaster. We won’t know for awhile. More indictments, trials, more dirt coming out. At some point the story of this mess will get told.
Mnemosyne
@Frankensteinbeck:
Toxic narcissists are control freaks and micromanagers while being bad at their actual job functions. Not a good combination.
Baud
@Gelfling 545: Congratulations!
ding7777
@Big Ole Hound:
the goal of an expanded State department was to reduce military conflict, correct?
patrick II
@Amir Khalid:
I have read somewhere (here perhaps?) that Tillerson has hundreds of State employees looking through Hillary’s old directives and emails looking for some evidence of perfidy. So, in addition to losing a bunch of people they are having many of the remaining ones working on a task that has nothing to do with furthering our national interests, a purposeful distraction from their jobs. At times like this I think Trump is really crazy and thinks it really was Hillary who was colluding with the Russians to get him elected.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@gene108:
What will the GOP do when America has declined to Russia’s level? They won’t be able to throw our military around as easily and the rest of the world will follow their own paths. Not to mention the decline of the US dollar?
I don’t understand what they think all of this is going to get them.
Gin & Tonic
@Big Ole Hound: How many friends/acquaintances/family members do you have who work at DoS?
rikyrah
@Baud:
They believed him
Suckers
Could care less
But, Dolt45 was WHITE, and said that he would MAGA.
UH HUH
UH HUH??
Lee
I’ve been tracking this for awhile. The only silver lining that I can up with is that maybe 3 years a bunch of new graduates will be able to find work with the Dept of State.
rikyrah
@debbie:
He is a list
Why make a deal with a liar?
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@GregB:
With that attitude we won’t.
LAO
@Gelfling 545: Mazel Tov. That’s wonderful.
aimai
@Big Ole Hound: ?Amazing! So that is what it sounds like if a poster actually doesn’t know anything.
Frankensteinbeck
@WereBear:
Yes. The evangelicals aren’t going to see much of a problem with Moore’s behavior. They see women and children as property, and sex in those terms. They specifically are angry against the rest of the country’s attempts to make them give children any freedom, or women any control over their sexuality*. Moore is a warrior of their people taking his reward. Their worst reaction will be that he’s been embarrassing about it. I would say most of them think he’s doing the right thing.
The rest of the Republican Party aren’t that much behind in those attitudes.
*Counterintuitive disclaimer: It’s not specifically men controlling women’s sexuality. It’s the people around her controlling each woman’s sexuality. A mother in theory has as much control over her daughter’s sex life as the father. In practice, since the father controls the mother, there are override issues.
GregB
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
It’s not an attitude. I am not saying the world is over, but the place that the US occupied in the world will never return.
I think that is a fact.
schrodingers_cat
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: R party needs to die, they made T possible.
rikyrah
@Yarrow:
That is a powerful quote
rikyrah
@Corner Stone:
Which is why he MUST wind up in prison.
Yarrow
@rikyrah: It stuck with me. The whole article is really good, though. Worth a read.
Betty Cracker
@chris: I’ve always found that explanation overly simplistic, but who the hell knows?
Ian G.
@germy:
Russia Today is “critical media”? It’s a fuckin’ cheerleading squad for Shitgibbon. Who the fuck is it “critical” of aside from ordinary citizens who don’t want their country hijacked by hostile foreign dictatorships?
How much does Greenwald get paid by the Kremlin anyway?
Corner Stone
@Big Ole Hound: Thanks for the Hot Take! But I think @SlatePitch is over that way —>
schrodingers_cat
@Yarrow: That is not enough of a reassurance for me. I refuse to give the benefit of the doubt to people who willingly go to work for this administration and make supportive statements that are indefensible.
trollhattan
Since Roy Moore is going FULL TRUMP defending himself against his sexual misdeeds we can use Alabama (Alabama?!?) as a proxy for how Trumpism is faring. Are there still enough true believers for folks to ride his coattails?
randy khan
@ Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) :
RT has been placing ads all over DC for years. In 2016, they were about how valuable it was to get a different perspective. The ones that are up now highlight the well-known Americans who have shows – Larry King, etc. One of them even has a tag line that’s more or less “Is that American enough for you?”
Epicurus
Reminds me of this moment from Goodfellas:
laura
@Gelfling 545: Proud mom has every right to be Proud! Your girl does good.
Yarrow
@Ian G.:
At this point they’re probably keeping him afloat.
trollhattan
@Ian G.:
Greenwald never more happy then when hippie punching, but his oligarchphilia makes him truly repellent.
schrodingers_cat
@GregB:
That remains to be seen. Elections results of this Tuesday give me hope.
Corner Stone
@Yarrow:
I think we are in a “what you see is what you get” environment. There is no background subterfuge going on where McMaster is putting on a front and then gathering a cabal to do the real work in the background.
It’s normal for us to be desperate to cling to some other option, some myth we can believe in. Any adult who has spent under five minutes around Trump knows exactly who he is, how unfit he is and how flat out batshit crazy he is. There is no way to mitigate that by staying silent.
Lee
@trollhattan: It’s Alabama. The allegations won’t matter one iota to the true believers.
Yarrow
@schrodingers_cat: I’m not saying it’s definite. Just that it’s possible. My impression is that there is a lot we don’t know.
randy khan
@Big Ole Hound:
Oddly enough, that’s pretty much counter to the reporting in days following the installation of Tillerson – people who formerly were very busy working to advance U.S. interests basically were told to stop doing what they were doing, and so were coming to work and leaving at normal hours rather than keeping the crazy schedules they’d kept before.
As an aside, I’ve seen this before when someone who believes entirely in top down management takes over an agency and refuses to let people do their jobs. It happened at the FCC under GW Bush, when the second chairman (Kevin Martin) took over. I had friends there who basically came in and did the crossword puzzle because they weren’t allowed to do anything without specific direction from the Chairman’s office. It was a real morale killer, to say the least – a very high percentage of the professionals working for government agencies are there because they think what the agency does is important, much more so than in private sector jobs, so not being permitted to do their jobs was killing them.
Yarrow
@Corner Stone: I guess we’ll see.
Waratah
They seem to me to be moving rapidly wth a sledge hammer, not only with the state dept.
While they wreck all the government departments they have been busy lately passing federal judges. There does not seem to be away to stop them before they have wrecked everything.
debbie
@laura:
Trump speaks to them as an equal; they speak to him as a churlish child who needs to be humored but can certainly be exploited.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Probably has faith that I’m going to win in 2020.
Doug R
@Yarrow: Hey-GG’s gotta pay for that gated Brazilian compound somehow. Can’t be slumming in the favela after all.
Yarrow
It’s Friday. I need a little of that Mueller-indictments-dropping-Monday crack to keep me going over the weekend.
Emerald
@Felonius Monk:
GG knew what he was doing when he moved to Brazil.
Gawd I hate him. My sister believes every word he writes.
Sloane Ranger
@lollipopguild: May probably still hopes she can, she’s desperate but everyone else has noted the 300% tariff Trump slapped on Bombardier and drawn the correct conclusion.
And the Brixiteers can’t wait to leave the EU. The government plans to place the date and time of leaving into law. The Jeremy Vine show had a segment today about it. One guest wanted to hold a 2nd referendum once the actual deal was known.
The responses were overwhelmingly negative. The people have already spoken they said. So, on that basis, as the people spoke in the recent General Election, we don’t need to have another ever and the only debate should be over whether we have by-elections to fill seats made vacant by death or resignation or just leave them empty?
Corner Stone
@Yarrow:
Oh, baby! Gimme what I need today!!
Duane
Trump is blatantly failing to do his job on numerous levels. He’s putting our country in danger, and should be impeached for it.
debbie
@Sloane Ranger:
May has enough of her own troubles. The EU is refusing to even talk until the UK coughs up the payments they’ve been trying to weasel out of.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
I watched the whole thing at Betty’s link — or, I should say, I listened to most and actually watched very little. The audio and video were wildly out of sync.
chris
@Betty Cracker: Yes, it is simplistic but I’ll bet it it’s the foundation layer of all the other stuff that’s happening.
Doug R
@Baud: Roman hegemony is gone forever! (Except the RCC took over)
Spanish hegemony is gone forever! Was that such a bad thing?
Dutch hegemony is gone forever! Heineken would beg to differ.
British hegemony is gone forever! Brexit kinda proves it’s a good thing.
Doug R
@Sloane Ranger: Yeah, but 2,800,000 LESS voted for him.
(edit) Why do I feel a new thread is coming up?
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne: It’s remarkable how poor it is.
@Doug R: Nothing gold can stay.
Mnemosyne
@chris:
It’s hard for me to look at the decisions a majority of white people made with their presidential vote in 2016 and not think they were primarily driven by racism, whether that racism was conscious or subconscious.
Brachiator
Holy shit!
Sadly, this kind of shit plays well with the rubes, and once again shows that Trump’s appeal is that even though he has always been a spoiled, protected elitist brat, he thinks just like his most ignorant constituents. And this is why they will always love him.
A good chunk of the anti-intellectual ignorati think that diplomats are sissified candyasses, and that all you need is a strong big daddy like Trump to come in, shake things up, and make America great again. But in reality, other countries love to see Trump coming because they realize that they can manipulate him like the dope that he really is.
ETA. Britain’s Theresa May is equally in over her head. Her chief BREXIT negotiator is an ineffective dope and she recently had to sack one of her foreign office ministers because the idiot blundered into an easily avoidable diplomatic mess while on vacation in Israel. Meanwhile, more seasoned diplomats are sidelined.
@Big Ole Hound:
Sorry, that dog won’t hunt. And to try to pin it on Clinton is ridiculous. Yeah, State may have some bloat. But Trump cannot distinguish between the talented people who get stuff done and the window dressing. And Tillerson is installing people who are looking out for the oligarchs, not the interests of the nation.
divF
@Big Ole Hound: Pied.
chris
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: OT: Thanks for that Rational Wiki link on 911 truthers that you posted last night. I’d forgotten a lot of that stuff. It’s relevant today because I (finally!) met one in the flesh here in the back end of nowhere Nova Scotia. Had to walk away shaking my head. Thanks for the ammo.
WereBear
I’d as soon not return to a time period in which:
The previous Western Civilizations were all bombed to rubble
Other participants had barely climbed out of feudalism
While still others had to throw off imperialism
So maybe this is, after all, a win.
La Caterina (Mrs. Johannes)
@Gelfling 545:You’ve got good reason to be proud! Looks like daughter is doing some important work. I hope she has a long career of impact litigation ahead of her. It’s a tough but rewarding practice.
No Drought No More
“It’s time to ask why the State Department is being gutted”.
Actually, no. The answer is self-evident to all but the politically timid and lame, most of all to those Americans who still can barely wrap their heads around the fact this country was lied into waging war in March of 2003. The democratic party turned blind eyes and muted tongues to the Bush/Cheney treachery then and ever since, and Donald Trump exploited their collective misjudgment for having done so. Needless to say, that won’t be the case after Mueller’s report is released and the indictments begin to rain like hellfire/manna from heaven. And when fair minded Americans currently withholding judgement comprehend it- and they will, in the beat of a collective heart- they will know a fury the likes of which this nation has never seen before. Richard Nixon went out with a whimper. Not this time..
debit
@divF: Yeah. That kind of stupid is a deliberate and crafted stupid, that blinks at you and go, “Wut? Why are you so angry?”
chris
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, the bigots have been in the wilderness a long time, this is their big and maybe last chance. Fortunately I know that America is better than them.
dogwood
@aimai:
I’d add – A poster who doesn’t know anything but thinks he knows it all. To quote the last democratic president, “Cynicism is a sorry kind of wisdom.”
Gelfling 545
@La Caterina (Mrs. Johannes): Thanks. She went to law school specifically to do this kind of work. i know many people have the intent and later change their minds but she loves this stuff.
Sloane Ranger
@debbie: but the Brexiteers think the EU owes us money as we are “unfairly” the largest contributor. We should be demanding they give us our money back! (caller to Jeremy Vine show today)
@Doug R: Never say never. Forever is a long time!
@Brachiator: Priti Patel didn’t blunder into anything. She’s arrogant enough and May’s authority so damaged, she had every reason to think she would get away with it.
WereBear
@La Caterina (Mrs. Johannes): Thanks for asking about me in an earlier thread… still managing a health challenge, but things are getting better.
Dread
This also makes war more likely. If diplomacy is denigrated and looked at as pansy ass talking and only the bomb gets respect, we’re much more likely to resort to force early and more often and end up getting bogged down in even more conflicts that do nothing to benefit the United States.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
@Matt McIrvin:
It is supremely ironic that Trump boasts about making America great again, when he may be presiding over the end of America as a superpower. Oddly, this might please a certain kind of progressive who sees America as the root of all evil.
But inevitably, one dominating power supercedes another and any future American foreign policy may drizzle out into irrelevancy as new powers pursue their own interests. You saw this after World War II, when Britain finally recognized that it was worn out, exhausted and unable to respond when the US started flexing it’s muscle around the world.
Manyakitty
@Gelfling 545: Right on!
Villago Delenda Est
You know that trope from The West Wing, “Explain it to me as if I’m a three year old”?
Works on three year olds, but not on Donald.
Robert Sneddon
@Lee: The problem is that diplomacy is a lifelong thing, the same people talking to the same people decade after decade between nations. Britain’s Ambassador to the United States is a forty-year veteran of the Diplomatic Service and Foreign Office, his senior team in Washington DC will be the sort of high-flying staff who will represent the UK around the world in years to come. Graduates three years out of college aren’t going to hack that sort of experience in US embassies around the world.
Another Scott
@Big Ole Hound: If one wants to make a case that State (or anything else) is too bloated, the way to do it is create a sensible restructuring plan and justify it to Congress during the budget process. Not refuse to appoint people and say “I’m the only one who matters” and “Only I can fix it” and all the rest of the mouth noises that Donnie has made over the last couple of years.
It took over 4 months for State to have an official press spokesperson. That is not normal, and it is not the actions of someone with a coherent plan to restructure a Federal agency.
If you think that there are too many old geezers in State, the way to get rid of them is to offer them early retirement bonuses as part of a restructuring. Not by disingenuously claiming that you’re doing a bottom-up reorganization that just happens to match a 32% cut decreed from on-high.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Betty Cracker
@chris: So sexism isn’t a problem in U.S. politics? That’s the problem with attributing literally “everything” in something as large and complex as U.S. politics to a single ill — you exclude other things that are self-evidently also factors.
Cheryl Rofer
Quick stop here among the other things I’m doing, and a quicker google: The budget for the Department of State in 2010 was $25.7 billion. The budget for Department of Defense was $692 billion. The disparity is probably similar today. Tell me how State is overstaffed.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator:He wants to make America White again, what he is doing instead is making America weak. Gutting the state department is just one step towards that goal.
Brachiator
@Sloane Ranger:
I disagree. Lord Polak clearly manipulated her into making secret contacts with Israeli leaders. And she might have been able to get away with one meeting, but 12?
And her lies that Boris Johnson knew about the meetings was easily disproved.
Her actions violated every basic tenet of foreign policy protocol. And no matter how arrogant she was, there is no universe in which she could pursue foreign policy or any initiative independent of the government. It would be like a member of Congress negotiating a treaty with China independent of all standard diplomatic channels.
And even a weakened May easily got rid of Patel. Once the matter became known, Patel could not defend herself at all, and no one could protect her from being sacked.
Ramalama
@Baud: You can download a podcast of the entire show – video or just the audio. I don’t get MSNBC up in Canadia, but thanks to the magic of cloaking my computer, I can listen to her show while walking the dog….or cleaning my oven. I use itunes, but they might offer the show on some other not Macky Mac format.
Ruckus
@tobie:
My take is that a lot of officers can be decent in their duties in the military, partially because of the rules, structure and concept of loyalty. The borders of a job are fairly well known and understood. And if you are bad at it they will squeeze you and blackball you until you straighten up or leave. What is desired is competency, not outlandish greatness. You take away those borders and limitations and competent people can get overfilled with themselves (many were already, but the constraints of the military can knock the edges off of that) and without the specific duties of the job they can let their tiny little minds roam free. Flynn and Kelly would be perfect examples.
Hoodie
@randy khan: It’s the Chainsaw Al syndrome. New exec comes in promising to remove bloat and increase shareholder returns. Dumbshits (including investors) fall for it, the company gets gutted solely for the exec’s ego and profit, company fails. Trump treats the government like he took it over in an LBO.
chris
@Betty Cracker: Of course sexism is part of the problem. It’s the PBJ in the whitebread sammich.
Must go now to the woodpile, the temperature has dropped 8C since this morning.
debit
@WereBear: I didn’t know you were unwell. Glad to hear you’re feeling better. {{hugs}}
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
Trump has a number of mindless agendas. He is crippling all departments except the military. This is separate from his white nativism agenda.
And again, sadly, the rubes think he is implementing the conservative fantasy of shrinking the federal government down to almost nothing, the way that the Baby Jesus would want.
Jeffro
We interrupt this thread to remind everyone: IT’S ALMOST TIME FOR A NICE BIG OL’ FRIDAY NEWS SPLASH!!! What will it be today? Who will be indicted? What will the Deep State drop on us next? Inquiring minds want to know!
Sloane Ranger
@Brachiator: Her mistake was not owning up to all the meetings when she had the opportunity to do so.
She got a pass when the original story broke but she didn’t tell May about the meetings that weren’t in that story.
When the new meetings came out May had no option but to sack her. If she’d told the full truth initially she’d still be there.
Suzanne
@Corner Stone:
Hilariously, I think that that is how Trump has always thought that the American presidency operates. He ginned up this ludicrous, irrational hatred of Obama and now can’t do shit, because he has never understood a damn thing about law or government.
But, you know, let’s have a CEO president. Who needs relevant experience and/or education for the most difficult and important job in the world?
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: Don’t you think that the nativism agenda is weakening America? The whole scale attack on the rights of immigrants is weakening America. More than 50% of agricultural labor and one third of doctors are immigrants. These are just two examples of the sectors being affected. Not to speak of the adverse affects on international tourism.
Anecdata, at least two people I know postponed or canceled their trips here after the first travel ban went into place. Oh and btw neither is from the targeted countries or an adherent of Islam.
JR
@Suzanne: This is, in essence, what Charles I of England thought of monarchy, and look where it got him.
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
Well……
There is the concept of course that the average 3 yr old is more mature than drumpf. I’d guess the confidence level is at about 87%. If you raise the control age to 4 yrs that confidence level is about 99%
Corner Stone
@Jeffro: Jeffro Mensch! Stop your teasing and start yo pleasing!
WereBear
@debit: Thanks! The three day weekend is going to help :)
Corner Stone
How does MSNBC continue to find the one black male in any city that was a Bernie supporter?
mai naem mobile
@schrodingers_cat: they don’t understand and they don’t care. None of this shit is taught in school and that’s assuming these morons even graduate high school. These idiots don’t read. They intentionally don’t watch the news. I mentioned Dolt45’s treatment of the soldiers widow to a few people and they had no idea because theyre too busy watching se hip hop reality show or a wedding show on teevee. Watching the news is ‘too depressing.’ There’s a whole lot of Americans out here who are completely ignorant and have no curiosity beyond their cell phone, snap chat,their paycheck and their shopping.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
I prefer to use the concept of bigotry or prejudice rather than racism or misogyny or….
It covers the bases so to speak. It isn’t specific of course so at times it needs to be clarified with racism, misogyny……….
I know that different cultures can have drastically different prejudices but it seems to be learned things through the culture. And trying to remain free of those cultural prejudices or to unlearn them is difficult, requires effort. Very worthwhile effort but effort still.
Shana
@Gelfling 545: Mazel tov! You SHOULD be proud.
Amir Khalid
@Gelfling 545:
Your daughter has noble ambitions, and the smarts and drive to see them through. The world is a better place for having people like her.
@Suzanne:
I read that he recently had a meeting with Native American leaders where, to their astonishment, he urged them to disregard Federal law and regulations, and just extract mineral resources as they pleased. This stinking defecation of a President has no concept of the law or his duty to uphold it.
Bill Arnold
@Yarrow:
Been staring at those stories for days. (e.g. https://www.thedailybeast.com/exclusive-russia-activated-twitter-sleeper-cells-for-election-day-blitz )
What we urgently need, IMO, is sensors and automation (and/or human analysts) that can detect, and maybe weaken, these coordinated actions in real-time or even predictively/proactively. It is not an impossible task, at least for the sorts of social media bot networks that have been assembled and detected so far – the speed in the study just needs to be improved by several orders of magnitude. (Note that it would be crazy not to assume that some have not been detected. And the usual thoughts about arms races. )
germy
I get the feeling Moore has no intention of dropping out of the race.
Ruckus
@Hoodie:
Because that’s all he knows. Borrow and wreck. Go back and look at his life, it’s borrow and wreck.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@Corner Stone: Craigslist ad?
Seriously though it’s irritating how the rare Black/Non-white people who get onto MSNBC always seem to be there to criticize Dems.
Lyrebird
Maybe time to re-watch that Daily Show episode covering the coward Bill O’Reilly and his accomplice who went and insulted people in Chinatown. Makes me happy to watch it. That same creepy accomplice, Jesse Watters, is still insulting people, and New Yorkers are still telling him where to go.
Technical question if anyone cares to answer – if I’d like to save that Daily Show clip for a few years down the road, like until the younger family members are out of elementary school for instance, what’s a simple way to do that?
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
It’s more than that. Trump is destroying the idea of America. The US has never been all white and all English speaking, just as for example, India has never been all Hindu. Diversity has always been baked into the nation, culture and society, and has helped to make both countries great.
Trump don’t care. A State Department official said that skilled people from Haiti, Honduras and Nicaragua should leave and help “their own” countries.
Nativism by definition devalues the lives and contributions of immigrants. You cannot challenge them with numbers or facts. It’s like a racist who would rather die than be treated by the most talented immigrant doctor.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: I am not trying to convince the current President or his followers, just putting out the facts.
ETA: Its up to us to make sure that Miller’s vision for this country is not realized.
Amir Khalid
@Ruckus:
It’s very difficult just to take the first step, and see our own prejudices for what they are. We fight it because those prejudices are part and parcel of what we were taught (and what our teachers were taught, and their teachers …) about how the world works. It’s hard and painful when our understanding of things crashes against reality, and we must rebuild it from scratch. So to avoid the hardship and pain, we resist it.
germy
Brachiator
@Sloane Ranger: Commentary in The Guardian raises key points.
If Patel was running some policy independent of the government, she was always doomed. You couldn’t keep someone like that in the government. And May was already wobbled by the resignation of the defense minister over sexual impropriety. And if this were some kind of secret diplomacy gone wrong, Patel would still be vulnerable.
Amaranthine RBG
@Amir Khalid:
This is very true.
MattF
TPM has coverage of the latest Flynn news (via WSJ). Apparently (OK, allegedly) Flynn was going to kidnap Fetullah Gulen and ‘exfiltrate’ him to Turkey, for a fee of $15 million. It’s hard to exaggerate how crazy this is. Gulen is a legal resident of the US, and Flynn had already been designated National Security Advisor for the upcoming Trump administration. Cripes. And Holy Cow.
NotMax
Billions for war, bupkis for peace.
Mike in DC
Louis CK has responded to the Times story with an admission of guilt and what, to me, seems like a pretty solid apology. I’m not sure what the ideal response in these circumstances would be, but I think his response contains at least some of the elements one would hope to see or hear.
germy
@MattF:
germy
@Mike in DC:
MattF
@Mike in DC: Classically, a real apology has three parts. If you are apologizing for doing ‘X’:
1) I did ‘X’
2) ‘X’ was wrong
3) I have undertaken to alter my behavior by taking the following steps: (etc.)
ETA: I.e., confession, contrition, penance.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
I think that the damage to the social fabric, to what the nation stands for, is more important than the economic impact of Trump’s nativist policies.
We can rebound from a decline in agricultural workers. The country dies if we are driven to hate each other.
lollipopguild
@Amir Khalid: You are 100% correct.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Hoodie:
Like Trump said “he’s the only one that matters”, cut the staff, pocket the savings, screw investors has been the Trump way of buisness for years. Just this time the Investors can throw him in prison for it.
I take another view on this. I don’t see China rushing out to be a super power, sure China becoming a regional power in Asia is an inevitable so Trump’s bumbling just speeded that up. This is more like a self indulgence of a super power that has no real competition – like the Romans letting the Cilician Pirates get out of control because the Senators were to jealous of each other to appoint someone to suppress them. Eventually it will get bad enough to get everyone to stop playing games. The one I see as the real idiot is Putin; WTF the does he think he is doing stirring up a mess in the US, if he really does break the US, then China is the sole super power and China has already said they want Siberia back from the Russians. Russia is like Japan, South Korea and Vietnam that they need the US to balance out the Chines. Most likely the next administration after Trump is going to go full Neo-Con with returning to containing Russia.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
I understand. To expand a bit though, the changes in the world in the last few years, like the internet and cell phones has taken away a lot of the limitations of human existence prior. That of just not being able to know/contact people outside the little worlds that are our daily lives. Take this conversation. Without that interaction we never would have been able to do this because we never would know the other existed. Sure we would know there are real people all around the world, but have a casual conversation? As this builds I suspect that the differences between people will fall away. Never entirely I’d bet but far less demanding of conformity with the local community. Doubt if I’ll see that day but it is possible, as I see the beginnings in young people already.
Wyatt Derp
@Baud: “I never thought Leopards would eat my face” says man who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.
Major Major Major Major
@Uncle Ebeneezer:
I dunno, it sounds like they’re being treated equally to white people, who are always invited on MSNBC to criticize Dems.
ewrunning
Thanks for highlighting this story, which is finally starting to get the attention it deserves. Even Bloomberg is talking about it today. I retired in 2008 after 26 years in the Foreign Service. I served through Reagan’s effort to force us all to be polygraphed (blocked by George Schultz), James Baker’s era in which Foreign Service Officers were deemed untrustworthy, Gingrich’s 1995 government shutdown and its sequels, and the GW Bush administration’s efforts to browbeat us all into volunteering to serve in Iraq. What Trump and Tillerson are doing to the Department makes all these guys look like pikers. See also Foreign Policy (http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/11/01/white-house-taps-pence-associate-to-run-foreign-service-diplomacy-state-department-tillerson-redesign-foreign-policy-director-general//) on how they are trying to install a former Mike Pence underling with a grand total of eight years of Foreign Service experience as Director General of the Foreign Service. As the article states, this is the equivalent of taking a former Army captain who has been out of the army for over a decade and making him Chief of Staff of the Army. The former Director General quoted in the article, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, was the highest ranking African American officer in the Foreign Service prior to her September retirement. According to an earlier news story, she had one meeting with Tillerson, at which she told him the Foreign Service was ready to serve the President as it did Presidents of all parties. She never heard from him again.
Citizen Alan
@schrodingers_cat:
Obviously we will hopefully recover in some local ways. But it is certain to me that we will never recover our former World status. Other world leaders would be idiots to grant the US the deference that we’ve had since World War II now that we’ve shown that our democracy is so fundamentally flawed that we will be living in cycles of competent decade followed by grossly incompetent decade for the foreseeable future. I can foresee a time when future trade deals with the US will includes demands for nuclear disarmament because getting nukes away from the crazy Americans will be an international priority.
lgerard
@Lyrebird:
go to the comedy central site on youtube here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX8jZTN0CdU
use savefrom.net to download it
Brachiator
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
China’s leader specifically talked about taking a bigger place on the world stage in his recent conference party speech. They are not waiting on Trump or paying him much attention.
Suzanne
@Amir Khalid: I read about that incident, too. He has absolutely no clue of what it means to be a nation of laws. And every single person who voted for him is responsible for the destruction of American greatness.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: How are we defining superpower? China is well on their way to being one, if not one already.
marcopolo
Been waiting for a new thread but I gotta go do life. Two things I saw today that I found encouraging:
1) List of R Congresscritters in districts where Hillary won the 2016 vote ranked by % of households using state/local tax deductions–in other words the House tax plan looks DOA.
https://twitter.com/kristinapet/status/929058580342468613
For example, 53% of returns filed in NJ7, Leonard Lance’s district, took the deduction. The lowest percentage is still almost 20%.
2) New Alabama Senate poll taken after sexual misconduct allegations shows a tied up race.
Take that with a large grain of salt but these folks were fairly accurate in their polling for the primary.
Elie
@schrodingers_cat:
I agree with this — but we can’t linger…. its urgent that we remove these folks as soon as possible…Its a stark reminder that we can never take our freedom and democratic form of government for granted. Its on us for having forgotten that, but we can make up for it. On a good note, our local elections here in Whatcom County WA had pretty good turnout (45%) and the progressives prevailed in all districts but one. This was particularly good because we had a big redistrict and no one was sure how that would turn out.
So to everyone, dig in, lots of work ahead — but lets be joyful warriors because of the nature of what we believe — freedom, justice and the natural beauty of our diversity — are righteous values….
“We who believe in freedom cannot rest” — Sweet Honey in the Rock — Sing it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6Uus–gFrc
Major Major Major Major
@marcopolo:
Apparently the “you can deduct $10k of state/local property taxes” was the sop to these guys, and they’re supposedly on board now.
ETA regarding #2, they did a poll in like six hours??
Ruckus
@Cheryl Rofer:
Not to be contrary here but a lot of that military budget is equipment and support for same. Example, we are still building 2 new carriers and have 11 now. I believe our closest competition has 1. We have a number of subs, both missile and attack, our closest competition has a lot less. Not to mention the tanks, and I haven’t even talked about the AF. An F35 is around a hundred million. One F35, $100,000,000. The cost so far to get to an almost unusable plane? Over $4,000,000,000,000. That’s 400 billion. For one plane, that will never be everything to every user.
The state department just has to put smart people in seats, the military has to build and buy the seats.
Now that I’ve typed this out an old thought reoccurred. Maybe if we’d quit fucking spending way too much money on stuff to go to war with we wouldn’t need to go to war as often.
I also wasn’t trying to say that the state dept budget was too big, I don’t think it is, rather it is too small. If we cut back the defense budget to far more realistic levels, I’d bet the world would be better off as well. But then I’m a crazy fucking liberal.
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
I agree that China is a superpower. I didn’t want to spend time on that point, but mainly wanted to note their leader specifically saying that their 5 or 50 year plan meant exercising more influence throughout the world. How that plays out and what that means for America will be interesting to watch.
Elie
@Citizen Alan:
Ok — I get you are anxious — we all are to some extent. You cannot give in to the vision you just repeated. You are willing that outcome everytime you think it. Think of what you WANT instead and let that fuel your energy. We can’t afford to curl into a ball of despair .
satby
@Gelfling 545: Well done Gelfling daughter!
Immanentize
@Ruckus: my favorite facts along this line are:
What is the world’s largest airforce?
A. The US Airforce!
What is the world’s second largest airforce?
A. The US Navy Airforce!
gbbalto
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Absolutely agree about Russia. China will go along with them only to the extent that it benefits themselves. Mao and company disliked and mistrusted the Soviet Union all along, and only cozied up to them for the benefits. Once China has caught up with Russian technology, Putin will find out how little they care for his schemes.
DISCLAIMER – I am not an expert – just my impressions from decades of taking an interest.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator:
You are missing my point. Even people who support the nativist agenda are going to be affected adversely by this anti-immigrant jihad.
Jeffro
@MattF:
Even Ollie North is like, daaaayum, that’s out of bounds.
Brachiator
@marcopolo:
@Major Major Major Major:
The Senate is doing their own tax bill and taking a different approach.
I don’t think that there are any Republican senators from high tax states.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: The Senate tax bill has zero SALT deductions, the House bill included the $10,000 property tax thing after the blue state republicans we keep expecting to save us said they couldn’t support it. (This, of course, only benefits the landed.) We’ll have to see what compromise they work out.
The Senate bill is less insane in general, IIRC.
Jeffro
I’d just like to point out:
– Mueller is investigating Flynn’s/Flynn Jr’s kidnap-the-cleric plot
– Mueller is talking to Stephen Miller about the Comey firing
– Mueller is investigating Flynn’s meeting(s?) with Rohrbacher
None of which you can find on FoxNews dot com.
Nor can you find anything about Roy Moore except for a tiny clip of Ed Rollins encouraging Moore to ‘be honest’ about whatever happened (impossible, since Moore denies anything happened)
Not. Word. One.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
I take your point. Nativists either don’t believe you, or they don’t care. They think, for example that an immigrant doctor is taking the place of a good white doctor. Get rid of the immigrant doctor and a white doctor will magically appear out of nowhere.
And as I noted, some people would rather suffer than to have to tolerate the presence of people they think should not be here.
NotMax
@Brachiator
Iowa ranks #4 in the list of highest tax states. Both Senators are R.
PJ
@Mike in DC: He’s sorry because now no one wants to distribute his new movie and they’re pulling all of his old programs. He could have made this apology months or years ago, and every time his behavior was brought up in an interview, he dismissed it as mere “rumors” that he wouldn’t dignify with a response. In his statement, he neglected to apologize for having his manager threaten his victims if they talked about it. He also probably inflicted his behavior on dozens of other women who have not yet come forward publicly, and he makes no apology to them either.
Major Major Major Major
@PJ: Yeah, fuck him.
EthylEster
@Yarrow: Several years ago I watched them occasionally over about 2 months, never knowing what RT stood for. They were on MHZ Worldview, which had news from many different countries (China, France, Germany, Japan). They were consistently anti-American and shortly thereafter I twigged: Russia Today.
geg6
If this happens the way I hope, there is hope here in PA:
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/state/gerrymandering-suit-can-proceed-pa-supreme-court-rules-20171109.html
Tehanu
@Frankensteinbeck:
Christ, what an asshole. A man who thinks Chinese insults are praise. (I admit that “thinks” is probably giving him too much credit.)
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
Again, “thinking” is not what’s happening. They’re imagining an openly white supremacist America, with white picket fences and nice clean polite teens saying things like, “Golly!”, surrounded by an impenetrable wall that only keeps out “undesirables” while still allowing pass-through by everything produced overseas that we like (like bananas and rare earths and cheap electronics), since nobody has invented a time machine to take them back to the imagined paradise of the 1950’s. Of course, they forget that Elvis and Dr. King and powerful unions and 90% tax rates on millionaires were bigger in the ’50s than any of their Andy Hardy-type fantasies.
@Brachiator:
Thank you!
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: Belief is not necessary, numbers don’t lie.
Mike in DC
@PJ:
A fair critique. Though it’s human nature to avoid an unpleasant moment of truth as long as possible. Which is to say, I think it’s possible that the apology is sincere or has sincere elements, even if it appears to be made under duress or in an attempt to mitigate the consequences of being caught out publicly.
EthylEster
@Mike in DC:
Here’s the problem I have with his response. When you deny something for years and then it is eventually shown to be true, an apology about what you denied is BS. How about: “I lied about this for years, to avoid any consequences of my bad behavior. I screwed up and now everyone knows I am a jerk. I wish I hadn’t been so stupid for so long.”
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
Numbers don’t matter to a person who can’t count.
Yarrow
@Mike in DC: @EthylEster: Wow, I just read his apology. He sure uses the word “admire” a lot. The women admired him. He was widely admired in his community.
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
I don’t think that the Senate has released the full bill yet, only an outline. But yeah, the outline seems less insane, but it’s still pretty crappy and a sip to the wealthy.
Yarrow
I missed this bit of entertainment yesterday.
Mike in DC
@Yarrow: yeah, a little bit narcissistic.
Millard Filmore
@Lyrebird:
Is it on Youtube? There is a Firefox addon that will download and save those things.
Brachiator
@Brachiator:
Goddam autocorrect. “Sop to the wealthy.” SOP. SOP.
Yarrow
Wow, the Republicans are just coming right out and admitting they’re traitors now. This guy when asked about Moore:
NotMax
@Millard Filmore
Yup. Video Download Helper rocks.
Jeffro
SO CLOSE!!! Jennifer Rubin, just like the rest of us, can’t believe the GOP has found yet another new low to sink to...and yet still can’t just do the right and obvious thing
The GOP Can’t Be Rebranded. Let’s Junk It
Am I missing something here, other than not wanting to associate with the dirty hippies of her imagination? Because today’s center-center Democratic party sure seems to fit this bill…
Mike in DC
@EthylEster: You have both a valid point and a valid point of view. What I would say in defense of my modest point is that adulterers may deny cheating for years and confess and apologize only when caught…yet it’s still possible for the apology to be at least somewhat sincere. Perhaps the best test of sincerity is what he does going forward, including addressing any shortcomings in his statement.
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat: I think by the time this is all over, Mcmaster will have two choices.
Revolver in the library or a firing squad.
TenguPhule
@Yarrow: Someone please tell me again these people are not trying to get us into a Civil War.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
Not really. Their version is in some ways even worse then the House version.
For starters, they left out some of the compromises that the House “moderates” demanded.
Whether or not this will help to keep anything from passing remains to be seen.
Corner Stone
@TenguPhule: I’m not a tax thingy guy but it seemed to me the Senate version was worse for average people, it just took a little longer to get there.
NotMax
@Corner Stone
Tornado versus hurricane. Neither is welcome.
Ruckus
@Yarrow:
Awwwww poor Rodger.
And fuck him with a 6 ft rusty chainsaw.
Lyrebird
@lgerard: Thanks very much! I wasn’t sure it was youtube, and I appreciate hearing from someone who’s actually made it work..
@Millard Filmore: Thank you too!
Some of our family rainbow includes Asian-American elements, and that rant is beautiful in spite of all the not-for-preschool vocal.
Aleta
@EthylEster:
@PJ:
I have a similar feeling about Mat Taibbi’s effort at explanation. He put it out at the start of. a book tour that coincided with media attention to the years of misogyny in his writing. (Including printing personal attacks against women by name, for no reason except attention and maybe his own pleasure.)
As an apology, he says he wishes he could go back and say to his younger self that what he was doing is wrong and hurtful to women. But women were pointing this out for over 13 years, without him acknowledging the harm until some book appearances were recently cancelled. Instead he responded by printing ugly insults about some who spoke out. (An especially lousy thing to do since this brought more attacks by his anonymous readers.) This is another way of making women go silent out of fear.
He didn’t mention the real life harm to Russian women that his book has caused. (Russian women have written about this.) Didn’t mention the lack of ethics, as a journalist, in passing the book off as true for years, for profit, and during interviews, but now calling it satire. (If satire, why wait 13 years to tell his Western male audience that Russian women don’t actually want to be raped on dates? Or that it’s not OK to get 15 year old girls drunk for sex.)
His main point seems to be that he never sexually harassed a woman in any office, and he apologizes for past actions caused by being “young and a jerk.”
Johannes
@Gelfling 545: Many Congratulations! It’s great to see folks who remember what drew them to law in the first place. (I know—I married one,)