Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

No Kings: Americans standing in the way of bad history saying “Oh, Fuck No!”

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

Their shamelessness is their super power.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Come on, man.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Keep the Immigrants and deport the fascists!

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

That meeting sounds like a shotgun wedding between a shitshow and a clusterfuck.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Hail to the Hairpiece / Monday Morning Open Thread: Reasons to Go On

Monday Morning Open Thread: Reasons to Go On

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In less high-minded news…

… That’s a steep drop from the president’s standing one year ago, in March 2017, soon after his first address to Congress had received good reviews. Then, 47% expressed approval, a high-water mark for him in the poll; 44% expressed disapproval.

What’s more, the intensity of feeling is hardening against the president. Now, the percentage who “strongly disapprove” of him is more than double the percentage who “strongly approve,” 39% compared with 16%.

A new CNN poll released Sunday put Trump’s approval rating at 35%, his lowest level in that survey…

When it comes to Trump’s approval ratings, there also are some significant demographic divides. Younger voters are the least likely to approve of the job he is doing as president. Just 31% of those under 35 years of age express approval, compared with 42% of those 50 and older.

The president’s standing is strongest among whites, although a majority still disapprove of him, 44% approve-55% disapprove. Only about one in five Hispanics and one in ten African-Americans approve of the job he’s doing…

Any bets on how soon he breaks the Crazification Factor?

(One reason I’m not on twitter: I would absolutely encourage the Twitter-verse to applaud ‘President’ Dollhand’s breaking-the-CF “triumph”, and he absolutely would, after which I’d probably get a visit from the Secret Service… )
***********

Apart from that, what’s on the agenda as we gear up for another week?

Reader Interactions

127Comments

  1. 1.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Amy Siskind @Amy_Siskind

    New CNN poll has Trump’s approval at the lowest since he took office:

    approve 35%
    disapprove. 58%
    …
    110 replies 736 retweets 1,813 likes

    Norm Eisen @NormEisen

    “Lowest of any president at this point by 12%…”

    44 replies 530 retweets 906 likes

  4. 4.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Not to be ignorant but, what is breaking-the-CF “triumph”,

    The google gave “How do you break in your engines” and then a MacArthur Bible commentary, Alexander the Great, commentaries on the Book of Luke, and then Hillary Blachland (whoever she is)….

    I relate all this just because it amazes me the disparate results a google search can return.

  5. 5.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Does anyone have an opinion on Patty Hearst?

    CNN has been running a 6 part series on Sunday nights.

    What strikes me as odd and peculiar is how this rebellious feminist, urban guerrilla, firing machine guns turns into boring stepford wife. It’s like she was brain washed after she was arrested.

  6. 6.

    raven

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:

    The eternal Thompson gunner
    Still wandering through the night
    Now it’s ten years later
    But he still keeps up the fight
    In Ireland, in Lebanon
    In Palestine and Berkeley
    Patty Hearst heard the burst
    Of Roland’s Thompson gun and bought it

  13. 13.

    Anne Laurie

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Not to be ignorant but, what is breaking-the-CF “triumph”

    Sorry! (I’m tired, on my way to bed, you guys are just getting up) When Trump finally sinks to only 27% approval, he’ll have reached the C(razification) F(actor) — and ‘achieving’, in TrumpBrain, is SPECTACULARLY BREAKING, yes?

    So *if* enough vulger twitterers were to “congratulate” the narcissistic dotard on this amazing accomplishment, he’d no doubt tap out a tweet or a series of tweets congratulating himself on his NEVER BEFORE SEEN “win”… and none of his handlers are well-read enough to google ‘crazification factor’ before he hits the send button… I like to think the ensuing global mockery would be a laff fest for the rest of us.

  14. 14.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Frankensteinbeck: Lol!!! He’s put forth a valiant effort to keep the racists happy. Expressing support for White Supremacists in Charlottesville. Calling every country in the entire continent of Africa “sh*thole”, attacking a Black Congresswoman, attacking Black football players, attacking a Black woman sportscaster and even going after Civil Rights hero John Lewis just wasn’t enough, I guess.

    Sad!!

  15. 15.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @opiejeanne: @Anne Laurie: OK, thanx, it was the ‘triumph’ that was throwing me off. When I think of the Crazification Factor it is always in terms of sinking to it, but you are right Anne, in the Dotards mind it could well be considered a great triumph!

  21. 21.

    OzarkHillbilly

    On Thursday, Alabama tried to execute by lethal injection convicted murderer Doyle Hamm, 61, who has spent more than half his life on death row. After about two and a half hours of trying, the state called the execution off because issues with Hamm’s veins could not be resolved before a death warrant expired at midnight.

    “It was a gory, botched execution. They gave up when they could not find a vein,” Bernard Harcourt, a professor at the Columbia University law school who is representing Hamm, said by email on Sunday.

    Ah yes, conservative “pro-life” Alabama.

    “I wouldn’t necessarily characterize what we had tonight as a problem,” Jeff Dunn, Alabama correction department’s commissioner, told reporters shortly after the execution was called off.

    No problem, it was a great success!

    There were two sets of medical personnel who tried to place a line in Hamm’s groin area or in an area between his knees and feet, Harcourt said, adding the inmate, who was examined by a doctor after the execution attempt, had at least 12 puncture wounds.

    Now who coulda predicted that? His lawyer!

    In court filings in the days before the planned execution, Hamm’s lawyers said he had terminal cancer and a history of intravenous drug use that had severely compromised his veins.

    Let’s see, terminal cancer. The good Christian people of Alabama can’t let God take him in his own time, they have to

    …..Alabama was rushing through a specialized execution protocol, increasing the chances of a flawed procedure.

    Pro-Life my ass. They want to kill. I mean, they wanna, they wanna kill. Kill. they wanna, they wanna see, they wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in their teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. They wanna kill, Kill
    KILL, KILL.

    The state responded at the time it knew what it was doing and could handle the lethal injection. It has not indicated if it will seek a new execution date.

  24. 24.

    raven

    @opiejeanne: Nah, she and Weed were pretty low key. Ever see “Katherine” with Sissy Spacek as a “Diana Oughton”character?

    Sing a song for the children who are gone
    Sing a song for Diana
    Huntress of the moon and a lady of the Earth
    Weather woman Diana

  25. 25.

    Immanentize

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: @raven:
    The only opinion I have about Patty Hurst is from Patti Smith in her version of Hey Joe:

    You know what your Daddy said,
    You know what your Daddy said Patty,
    He said, he said, he said,
    She was such a pretty girl,
    And now there she is with a gun in her hands

  27. 27.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @OzarkHillbilly: I do not have permission to edit. Sigh….

    The state responded at the time it knew what it was doing and could handle the lethal injection. It has not indicated if it will seek a new execution date.

    Yeah, they really knew what they were doing.

  28. 28.

    opiejeanne

    @OzarkHillbilly: I know a bit about the Hearst family; I’m a native Californian and have visited the Castle a couple of times and Hearst’s history was constantly reported on. There were a lot of other heirs of William Randolph besides her father and he didn’t have access to the family investments. He had money, this is true, but not anywhere near the massive wealth of the old man who built Hearst Castle.

  29. 29.

    Immanentize

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    can’t let God take him in his own time,

    This is the very essence of the death penalty. They did something similar to Jerry Bird in Texas who had a debilitating massive stroke just days before his execution. Got him well enough to be transported to Ellis 1 so they could kill him before he did so on his own.

  30. 30.

    Chyron HR

    But when is Jane S*nd*rs, our rightful first lady, going to publish HER memoir? That’s the story America* really wants to hear.

    * “Ordinary Americans”, not “identity politicians”.

  31. 31.

    Immanentize

    My editing gave out too. Hearst, not Hurst. I guess I was thinking shifters. (trying to get ready, tired, and type on my phone)

  34. 34.

    opiejeanne

    @raven: Not familiar with Oughton but I googled and read about her just now.
    We had a chapter of SDS on my college campus 1968/70; it had 7 members and the joke was that 4 were FBI informants.

    We were startled when we first learned there’s a weather page called Weather Underground.

  37. 37.

    opiejeanne

    @BruceFromOhio: I didn’t know that cardinals sang. We’ve had some very confused robins show up in the neighborhood the past two weeks. Today it hailed for half an hour, then rained for a while, then snow, then it all stopped (eye of the storm, we think) then it started hailing like mad and ended by snowing for a couple of hours. It’s too warm to stick, though. The temp was hovering between 36 and 42 the whole time.

  38. 38.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @raven: Harris is articulate, candid, affable, but is disassociated from the gravity of his actions. They spend a little time on Remiro and Little as their arrest is the impetus for the kidnapping (they wanted a prisoner exchange).

  39. 39.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @raven: I am now. What a blast from the past, a whole bunch of organizations I haven’t read of since…. Was gonna say the ’80s but come to think of it, 2008.

  40. 40.

    ThresherK

    @opiejeanne: You know of Hearst? I’m gonna ask you about a movie.

    Not Citizen Kane, but The Cat’s Meow. It’s plenty of fun and nobody knows what really happened in the death of Thomas Ince. But does the family consider the movie taboo?

  41. 41.

    debbie

    There’s all kinds of reasons to go on, the most recent being the dismissal of a lawsuit by a coal company (Murray something) against John Oliver. Murray wanted, among other things, Oliver to never again show the broadcast when he had depicted Murray as a geriatric grandfather (or something similar). I hope Oliver starts showing that clip on every show going forward!

  48. 48.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Immanentize: I have this fantasy/nightmare. I get cancer but because the GOP has killed the ACA because rich people need their tax cuts I am unable to get my very treatable cancer treated. I find some uber rich MF’er who has more money than he can spend in a hundred lifetimes (think Koch brothers) and kill him. I get myself arrested. Now, because the state very much wants to kill me, THEY provide the very expensive and needed treatment for my cancer and it goes into remission . Because of appeals I am able to drag it out for 15 years. The cancer comes back, this time it is untreatable. I am put in hospice care. The pain is becoming unbearable when they come and get me for my execution and I die in the warm embrace of a morphine overdose.

    The absurdity of our system makes that seem feasible.

  50. 50.

    Feathers

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: Having done to a seven sisters college quite some time ago, I can tell you that that of the rich young women who are feminist, rebellious and interesting (art history major!), a high percentage will drift back into the lifestyle they were raised in. The trajectory is even sort of expected.

  52. 52.

    Feathers

    @OzarkHillbilly: one of the crazy things is that the new hepatitis cures aren’t available on many (most?) insurance plans, while states are required to cover it for inmates. IIRC, there was a case here in Mass where a rapist was treated in prison, while his victim’s insurance company denied her the same.

  53. 53.

    Another Scott

    ‘Morning all.

    Re: the last Tweet. I do so wish people would stop saying the economy is in some sort of boom. It’s not true. A boom is when: 1) you can quit your job every 2 years and get a 20+% raise at every new one. 2) when middle-class wages are rising at substantially more than 2 points above the core inflation rate. 3) when labor is able to demand things like higher wages, higher benefits, greater job security and shows it via effective strikes. 4) When governments are running surpluses and expanding hiring and services to attack backlogs. Etc.

    We don’t have those things.

    It’s not a boom. It’s still a tepid to reasonable recovery. That’s all.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  54. 54.

    opiejeanne

    @ThresherK: I’ve heard of the movie, I remember when it was being advertised but I haven’t seen it. No idea what the Hearst family thinks about it.

  55. 55.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @BruceFromOhio: Yes. The snow geese have been flying over my house heading north for about a week now. Mind you, we can still get a blast of winter, but the robins too have returned..

    Had a really cool experience last Tuesday. Usually the geese are flying at an elevation 3-500 ft, sometimes as much as a thousand (one can still hear them but they are almost impossible to see). On Tuesday it was rainy with a really low cloud deck. I was sitting inside when I heard them coming and they were loud, so I knew they’d be close. Rushed out the door and 200 snow geese were just 40-50 ft over my head. I could practically count their feathers.

  61. 61.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @opiejeanne:

    I didn’t know that cardinals sang.

    One of their songs, to me at least, sounds like they are saying “Purty purty purty purty” as in what a purty(pretty) bird.

  66. 66.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    The coordinated Ivanka roll out is gross. I guess we get one of these a year. You didn’t like last year’s Ivanka? No one bought the bullshit that she was secretly a liberal? Try this. Now she’s a conservative. How does that test?

    They will re-introduce Ivanka and Jared until we surrender and give them the affection and respect they feel they are due. They are easy to repackage because they are as empty as the man who hired them.

  67. 67.

    opiejeanne

    @OzarkHillbilly: I guess you could look at it that way; her father might have been a more valuable target. She was an easy target because her family didn’t think she was a target at all so they didn’t arrange any security for her. And the kidnappers lived in the neighborhood, can’t remember how nearby.
    The kidnapping and the subsequent robberies, murders, etc were a constant drumbeat in California from the moment they took her to the moment she was found, what a year and a half later? We watched the shootout at the house in Los Angeles live on tv, we were on vacation in the eastern Sierras where our car radio didn’t work very well but had taken a side trip to Carson City so we heard that Patty had been found as soon as it was announced. I was surprised that she was found alive.

  68. 68.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    Now she’s a conservative. How does that test?

    FWIW, I think it’ll test poorly. Looking forward to next year’s model.

  69. 69.

    evodevo

    @BruceFromOhio: Not quite … global warming (HOAX! HOAX!) is screwing with the timing of spring in a lot of temperate climes, but birds respond to diurnal cues, not to temp, and are staking out their future breeding sites. (Hey! All you competitors, heads up! This territory is MINE! Back off, I’m feeling RAMBO today!) All my tulips, hyacinths, etc., on the other hand, respond to temperature, and are trying to come up. They will ALL get a shock in a few days when the cold front comes through.

  72. 72.

    OzarkHillbilly

    You can’t fix stupid.

    Anti-vaccine campaigners have found a growing political voice for their debunked ideas in Texas, the adopted home of discredited British researcher Andrew Wakefield, and now hope to unseat a moderate Republican in the heart of Houston. Texas has seen rates of children opting out of vaccines for philosophical reasons skyrocket after Wakefield – the man behind the UK’s MMR vaccine controversy in the early 2000s – moved to the state’s capital, Austin, more than a decade ago. Since the early 2000s, when he arrived, the rate of Texas children exempted from at least one vaccine has shot up by 1,900% according to one analysis, while Houston has become a battleground for anti-vaccine activists of growing clout. Now, Wakefield sees the upcoming Republican primary in Houston on 6 March as an “an extremely important time” to advance his anti-vaccine agenda.

    He means his religion of disease and death.

    Conservative Susanna Dokupil has received enthusiastic support from Texans for Vaccine Choice as she challenges fellow Republican Sarah Davis. Texans for Vaccine Choice declined to comment for this story. Dokupil did not respond to a request for comment. Davis angered often women-led anti-vaccine groups, which prefer to be called “vaccine choice” or “medical freedom” campaigners, when she urged lawmakers to mandate human papillomavirus vaccines for foster children.

    “There are clearly a number of candidates running with this platform front and center – vaccine choice, medical freedom,” Wakefield told the Guardian. “The members of Texans for Vaccine Choice have been very successful in their lobbying.”

    “Vaccine choice”. “Medical freedom.” Just shoot me.

  73. 73.

    evodevo

    @opiejeanne: Yes … we did too, at Univ of Ky… they were obviously NOT FROM AROUND HERE ( a couple of pale, anorexic-looking, East Coast Commie types lol) and were hilariously unsuccessful at our southern-style party school. On the other hand, when the war and the draft heated up a couple years later, our student body radicalized the same as everywhere else… self-interest beats random organizing attempts every time.

  74. 74.

    opiejeanne

    @OzarkHillbilly: I’ve seen cardinals only once or twice. The one time I remember was when I flew to KC for my grandmother’s funeral the day after Thanksgiving. It was 10 F but with the wind chill it was well below zero, a totally foreign concept to this Californian, but I bundled up and went outside for a while to walk in the snow. Didn’t go far, but there were cardinals visiting her bird feeders and if it hadn’t been so cold I’d have stayed outside much longer. When I stepped out onto the porch the lining of my pants froze because I hadn’t tucked them into my boots. She made me take a scarf and that was when I learned why you need a scarf in cold weather.

    I don’t remember for sure but I think I saw one in DC, near the Smithsonian.

  76. 76.

    ThresherK

    @opiejeanne: It is a delight for us old souls, and hardly the kind of thing Hollywood does anymore.

    If you like movies about the netherland between reality and making movies, I recommend it highly.

    PS Also a great turn by Edward Herrman (RIP) as Hearst.

  80. 80.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @opiejeanne: It was nearly everyday news here in Misery too. I remember watching the shootout on TV, tho I doubt it was live. A lot of people were surprised she was still alive after it was all over.

  82. 82.

    JPL

    @opiejeanne: Patty obviously bonded with her captors and I wonder if that wasn’t a part of her psychic anyway. Once released she married the police officer who was her body guard. By all appearances they were happily married until his death a few years ago.

  84. 84.

    ThresherK

    @kd bart: Parsons, goes the rumor. Also it’s said (i didn’t read reviews myself) she was much nicer reviewing the oft-miscast Marion Davies in the years after that and that found favor with WRH.

    Now we’re getting into Citizen Kane territory. It was only a matter of time, eh?

  86. 86.

    Betty Cracker

    @opiejeanne: I was a kid when the trial was going on, but I remember my mom saying she thought Patty Hearst was treated too harshly by the justice system. Mom felt that Hearst was a victim who went along with her kidnappers to survive, so it was unfair to jail her for activities she would have never engaged in voluntarily.

    Oh well. Life seems to have worked out okay for Hearst. She married a corrections officer, demonstrated an admirable sense of camp via a cameo appearance in a John Waters film (Serial Mom) and raised a show dog that won a major award a couple of years back.

  91. 91.

    raven

    Return of the Secaucus Seven

    Seven former college friends, along with a few new friends, gather for a weekend reunion at a summer house in New Hampshire to reminisce about the good old days, when they got arrested on the way to a protest in Washington, DC.

  93. 93.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    I can’t wait until she’s arrested too

    It’s a shame the DA in NYC never pursued the fraud she and her brother perpetrated against investors. He had emails where they were conspiring to defraud people.

    Makes you wonder how long the Trumps were protected by corrupt people at all levels and stages. What sticks out in the Manafort filings is how long he has been a blatant crook. YEARS these people have been operating like this. For Donald Trump it’s 50 years. And in the “media center of the world” no less.

  98. 98.

    ThresherK

    @raven: Throw in a pile of Motown songs and that’s basically The Big Chill.

    I always disliked the effect that movie had on “soundtrackizing” non-musical movies. It sorta led to a lot of the same.

  99. 99.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    As president, I think I’ll appoint a Special Prosecutor for Cleaning House. Maybe even Mueller if he’s done with Trump by then.

  100. 100.

    opiejeanne

    @evodevo: I went to Cal Poly, Pomona, a state university that was mostly known for its Ag department and the breeding program for Arabian horses. The Arts majors outnumbered the Ag majors eventually but it was a fairly conservative campus, and this was when all the boys were studying their asses off to stay in college and out of the draft, 1968 – 1970. There were a lot more men on campus than women, but the school had only started admitting women in 1966 or 67. When I went back to finish my degree in 1973 half of the guys were gone because now there was the lottery.

    We did have an event, an anti-war rally/protest on the quad in the spring of 1969 but it wasn’t so much fiery speeches as sorrowful recitations of friends and family killed in Vietnam, the numbers of dead on both sides (we thought we knew how many). I stopped to listen between classes because I recognized the speaker, the daughter of an engineering teacher, so I was there when people started pointing at the roof of the adjacent engineering building and we saw men in suits and dark glasses setting up tripods. We didn’t know if they were going to mount guns or cameras and we didn’t stick around to find out. The next day the administration apologized and announced that we could have our rally again on the following day and those guys in the dark suits wouldn’t bother us. Campus police were pissed off we heard later because they considered us their property and they would do the arresting, if any was necessary, thank you very much. They were always like this about the kids back then.

  101. 101.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @JPL: Oh no, California has it’s own center for crackpot medical theories. It’s everywhere. If you read the article, Wakeman goes into great depth about how social media has aided his campaign for for profiting off the needless deaths of innocent children from preventable diseases.

  103. 103.

    Kay

    So IMO the high school activists have their first real political challenge because the NRA + shills have succeeded in turning “the debate” into whether or not teachers should carry assault weapons.

    I feel for them. We’ll see if they can pull off a real debate. In some fuzzy way I feel like it has to be THEM.

    I am pulling for them but boy, it’s difficult to get them off a narrative once they run with it.

  105. 105.

    bystander

    @raven: Secaucus Seven is 800X better than The Big Chill.

    I think Patty H. became a championship French bulldog breeder. I like that John Waters has given Patty a lot of rehab.

  106. 106.

    opiejeanne

    @OzarkHillbilly: I really want to ask some of these idiots if they at the very least vaccinate for polio. They used to read the polio death toll every week, mostly children but sometimes it was a man or woman aged 40. I knew kids who caught it just months before the Salk vaccine was available in our area. They survived but their legs didn’t work any more; one victim was in my kindergarten class.

  107. 107.

    NotMax

    Mention of Patty Hearst allowed for a bit of a meander down memory lane. For a time she was holed up not all that far from where I was living in the wilds of the Poconos. Driving narrow, winding, two-lane country roads in the area where she stayed, one passes corn fields, cows, horses, ramshackle ancient farmhouses, lots of forest and, all of a sudden, comes upon something completely unexpected – a Russian Orthodox monastery.

  109. 109.

    bystander

    Just saw the teen from Stoneham who’s speaking out against the NRA cut off Mike Barnicle’s five minute long “question” at the two minute mark. Wow. He really is savvy. Mike started larding on the treacle, and the kid just interrupted and cut to the chase, sparing us all the aural glop version of Barnicle’s prose.

  111. 111.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @ThresherK:

    I don’t think I ever actually saw the movie, although I certainly read McCarthy’s novel when it first came out. Not sure why I missed the film — I was aware of it, and it had a good ensemble cast.

  112. 112.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @raven: I should note that Remiro wasn’t interviewed. He’s still in prison. I don’t think he’s ever been interviewed on camera.

  114. 114.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    We need some enforceable rules. People like the Trumps are basically rule-generators. They are the people who make rules necessary because they don’t have any ethical grounding or standards and they take advantage. They RELY on the fact that other people mostly follow norms and standards because they see that as a competitive advantage.

    It’s really cynical. Trump doesn’t get enough credit for his extremely cynical world view. It sucks, the way they see the world. It’s all getting one over on people and assuming that other people also have no character or ethics and would behave like the Trumps do if they were smarter or more savy. It’s poison. I also think you’re much more likely to find it on the Right than on the Left, so the Trumps belong on the far Right. They found a home.

  116. 116.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Political media mirror the Trump world view and make it acceptable. They admire it, because hey, it’s a tough world and they’re fierce competitors too- if the Trumps bend the rules to breaking that just means they’re smart.

    It turns people who follow rules into chumps. Fools to be taken advantage of. It’s corrosive.

  121. 121.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    It’ll be hard to return to higher standards because there will be separation of powers issues, and obviously now that Trump has benefitted from breaking every rule, all other pols will want the same low standards applied to them. Because it’s an advantage. Chumps follow rules. Smart and savvy people don’t have to. That message is clear.

    So it has to be a campaign issue. The candidate for President him or herself will have to agree to put some rules in. The best we’ll get is a promise for some voluntarily imposed limits.

  122. 122.

    NCSteve

    hen it comes to Trump’s approval ratings, there also are some significant demographic divides. Younger voters are the least likely to approve of the job he is doing as president. Just 31% of those under 35 years of age express approval, compared with 42% of those 50 and older.

    Further evidence for the childhood environmental lead exposure theory of voter behavior.

  123. 123.

    frosty

    @Kay: I worked with a guy like this once. We all worked hard and tried to get the job done while he skated. It was pretty easy to see his view of life was defined as getting one over on the chumps. Happy to say this is easy to spot and gets you fired within a couple of months at my current employer.

  124. 124.

    Benjamin Mays

    @opiejeanne: Back in the late 60’s, my father was an administrator at an urban public university campus. While he was primarily ab engineer, he had the campus police under his aegis, A few years ago, he happily related the story of his senior officers detaining Army Intelligence hanging out on campus. The campus Police viewed them as stalkers.While Dad was a Goldwater Republican, he (and they) were not going to allow harassment of “their” students.This was Chicago post-DNC period, but still….

  125. 125.

    donnah

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I know! I love cardinals. We have a husband and wife who habitate in a tree in our yard.

    They also sing a sorta “bob white, bob white, pew pew pew pew” thing. Such pretty birds!

  127. 127.

    J R in WV

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Many, many years ago when I was in boot camp, which is much like being at a prison camp, I was walking somewhere very fast. It was spring, at Great Lakes by the Big Lake, and something happened I had never seen before.

    Canada Geese, just a few of them, flying in a tight V formation, making soft geese noises, just 50 or so feet up, FREE to FLY away, to wherever they wanted to go.

    Man, right then and there I got an ache to be free in my heart. It passed. I had never seen geese flying in formation, I grew up on a dry ridge, and all the creeks in my county were headwaters, little bitty things that geese had no truck with. Blew my mind! Then I had to break into a trot to get wherever it was I was going, on the clock to be there on time.

    Worst thing you could do in boot camp was to get ASMOed, set back to an company that started after you did. Like being held back in grade school. I think that was the slang back in that day. Ah, yes, Google confirms my memory, stands for Assignment Memorandum Order. Held back. I came close when I was ordered to stay in my bunk with Pneumonia, but I studied the book.

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