Once again President Uber-“Patriot” doesn’t know the words to one of the US’s patriotic songs. In this case God Bless America!
Trump unable to remember words to "God Bless America" at replacement event he commissioned to prove his patriotism: https://t.co/LrMPaCEnen pic.twitter.com/oCcWMX9g39
— Deadspin (@Deadspin) June 5, 2018
President Uber-“Patriot” previously had to bluff his way through the national anthem, which he said would be loudly and proudly played at the White House today during the event in lieu of meeting with the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles. The President’s Star Spangled Banner troubles were at the 2018 National College Football Champion game.
Also, why does Fox News hate Christians at prayer?
Fox News uses pictures of Eagles players praying to pretend they were kneeling for the national anthem (no Eagles player actually did) pic.twitter.com/BbgzmyGdpn
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) June 5, 2018
Why does Fox News and Chris Wallace, who produced this episode, and Rupert Murdoch hate the 1st Amendment and America and freedom?
While we wait for someone to report those answers so we can all decide, David Roth at Deadspin has some excellent thoughts on this whole stupid mess (emphasis mine).
The President of the United States just fucking sits there and watches television all day long, in large part because he is on television a lot now. He is either pleased or displeased by what he sees, and he shapes his actions—and, more or less by accident, the scope and tenor of our broader national politics—in response to what he sees. Some unlucky but mostly invisible people suffer greatly as a result. Some even unluckier people might even die. They may be dying now. They may in fact be dying right outside, right now, but the program is in commercial break at the moment. William Devane is telling the people at home about gold. An octogenarian former game-show host the color of a walnut is explaining how a reverse mortgage works, kind of.
None of this troubles the loop. Trump watches and emotes; he excretes and consumes. That a great and greatly conflicted experiment in self-government has come to this—a whole nation trying to talk a shitfaced trust-fund lout into a cab so that he won’t mow down everyone on the sidewalk, and then talking about what a fantastic job he did barfing in the ashtray—is one thing. It’s many things. But none of those things are complicated.
Everything, everything, about Donald Trump’s two-year war against the NFL, which took its latest oafish turn when the president disinvited the Super Bowl-winning Philadelphia Eagles from a White House visit that the team seemed less than eager to accept in the first place, has been predictable. The only people who could not have seen it coming are the very people who did not see it coming—the plump defective oligarchs who run the NFL, many of whom gave millions of their own dollars to Trump’s rancid failed prank of a campaign. They believed that Trump was their peer or their friend or anything but what he is and has always so blaringly been, so they tried to make some sort of deal with him on the player protests against police violence and impunity that Trump identified as something that could be weaponized in his favor.
Because NFL owners are quite stupid even by the water-brained standards of the ultra-rich, they devised a strange sort of tiered non-compromise compromise on the protests in the hopes that Trump would stop ranting about their league and the ungrateful, un-American, subhuman thugs who are both its labor and its product. They did this without the consent or even the input of the players, which displeased the players. And Trump, because he is Trump, did not accept the deal. He’s a man who only knows how to do a couple of things, but one of those things is to find a bruise and then push and push on it. He does that very well.
Trump told the owners this, directly, but they didn’t believe him. “You can’t win this one,” Trump reportedly told Jerry Jones in a phone call. “This one lifts me.” The owners thought, despite that, there was a solution that could lift everyone—a nice deal that lets everyone continue to do their respective looting in happy parallel. In that, they fundamentally misread the situation and misunderstood their counterparty. They haven’t listened to the people mounting the protests, of course, but they somehow misjudged Trump, too.
The people mounting the protests have made the same simple and humane points for years and have been answered only with the laziest umbrage and bad faith, which is more or less the response that such protests elicit in America. But Trump also hasn’t changed his broader position; he is not listening or learning or changing, because those are not things he does. He is pushing and pushing and pushing at this issue because that is what he does, and because he is nothing without something to push against. There is no compromise to make. Trump wants to become the world, to erase and expunge everything from it that is not him or about him. A generation of the worst and most hard-hearted people that this country has ever produced are lined up outside the church he has opened, and they are willing to leave everything outside in order to gain entry. It’s the only way in. It’s the only way there will be enough room.
There is no reason to assume that Donald Trump even knows the words to the national anthem. He definitely does not know the words to “God Bless America.” Because these songs are not about him, there’s no real reason to believe Trump really cares about them much at all. What matters about the mild and respectful protests that NFL players staged during the playing of that anthem, to Trump and everyone lined up behind him, is how it can be used. He understands that because it is about him and can be used to his benefit, so he cares about it a great deal.
Trump doesn’t honor anything on Earth more than himself. The republic for which all this stands is an abstraction in which he transparently has no interest, or anyway nothing that he’d put above even his pettiest personal or business interest. He is not sincerely offended by black or brown players performing an act of protest during a song so much as he is offended—affronted, sure, but more deeply threatened—by their disobedience in doing so after having been very clearly told that it bothered their betters. He is not alone in this, but here as elsewhere Trump has backed into being a perfect avatar. He is not the only person who believes that people protesting against unrelenting, unjust, unaccountable state violence are doing so primarily to be annoying, but he is the only one who can get those other disordered people to pile into a convention center to listen to him interrupt himself and complain about it for a couple hours.
Trump doesn’t understand loyalty in any meaningful way, because he is not capable of it in any meaningful way. There is no other person on Earth who really seems to mean much to him outside of what they say about or could potentially do for him. But he definitely has an understanding of loyalty, and that is roughly as something that an employee owes an employer—as a thing that runs up and only up, and is non-negotiable, and is in the end about always and without complaint doing what you’re told. Among Trump’s many strange rhetorical tics is using “like a dog” as the most devastating of insults, which is weird enough when you consider how awesome dogs are but which seems more significant in light of the fact that his understanding of what loyalty looks like is otherwise synonymous with what dogs show their masters.
He is not the only person that understands it this way, either. It is a very easy and very lazy and fundamentally worthless way of valuing loyalty, and as such it is very useful to the people who tend to line up behind Trump and figures like him—the little authoritarians who see or want to see themselves as sitting naturally atop an important hierarchy, who very deeply believe themselves to be owed things that they don’t really feel like they owe anyone else, and who also do not appreciate being smarted-off to by their lessers.
Much, much more at the link. Roth’s piece is worth reading in its entirety.
Open thread!
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Roseanne should have sung the anthem – the crowd would have loved it.
Gin & Tonic
I know I’m among friends and nobody will judge me here — but I don’t know the words very reliably either.
chopper
i’ve faked my way through songs like that before in 4th grade. but i’m not the president of the united states.
Platonailedit
magaing is sooo hard.
sanjeevs
Its been two weeks now since Nunes had his little review of the evidence against Trump.
Since then (i) Trump’s gone full on with the pardon stuff (ii) Nunes has been noticeably silent as have the rest of the GOP.
My guess is the evidence was watertight on Trump.
And it doesn’t depend on any testimony from the conspirators or anyone else. Its all emails, intercepts, electronic messages etc. If was dependent on testimony then Fox and friends would be busy trashing them.
hilts
Every day of his administration, Trump ascends to a new level of peak scumbaggery. Mueller needs to find the smoking gun that will get this fucking asshole removed from office.
Gin & Tonic
@hilts: Please provide the class with a list of 67 Senators who will vote to remove him from office.
dmsilev
@Gin & Tonic: I know the words, for the first verse anyway, but would never try to sing it. It’s hard, even for singers with actual talent.
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: You’re also not using these performative displays of “patriotism” as a weapon.
Schlemazel
@hilts:
If Manafort was really free because he ‘knew’ he was safe since he was using the incredible encryption of WhatsApp it is entirely possible Mueller has the guy over the barrel. We just have to be patient. It really is not going to be better with Mike ‘Norman Bates’ Pence in office. Lets just savor the Dump family going down in agony
Gin & Tonic
@Adam L Silverman: Just shows how little you know about me.
Patricia Kayden
@Gin & Tonic: You’re not going around calling protesters “sons of bitches” and accusing them of disrespecting the flag and the military. Or claiming to be super patriotic.
sdhays
What’s so funny about that is that all he had to do was keep his mouth shut and let the Chorus sing. That would have been dignified and no one would have even discussed whether he knew the words or not. But he’s stupid and undignified, and he needs to display that ALL THE TIME. He’s like a dog pooping on the rug and being so proud of it that he wants everyone to see it and smell it and tell him what a good boy he is.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Drumpf attended a military themed boarding school.
I’m sure “god bless america” and “star spangled banner” were common place. Still, the privileged bum didn’t bother to learn the words.
lgerard
I have the perfect solution to diffuse this situation and restore good feelings between trump and the NFL.
The Eagles invite him to Philly on September 6th for their home opener.
And have him sing the National Anthem.
It’s a Thursday night so it won’t even interfere with his golf.
A Ghost To Most
Pro-tip to Manafort: Don’t automatically backup your witness tampering chats to the cloud.
debbie
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
She got plenty of hate at the time. How things have changed!
Has Fox apologized yet?
Gin & Tonic
@Schlemazel: I’ve been thinking about how stupid Paulie must be. I may not know a lot about counterintelligence, but I can’t help thinking that if I’m a subject of a special prosecutor investigation, and if I *know* that there’s been at least one FISA warrant on me, then the *only* thing I’m using my computer for is privileged communication with my lawyer. Period. If I want to talk to *anybody* else, about *anything*, I’m meeting them in the middle of Union Station, or Grand Central Terminal.
Mike in NC
@Gin & Tonic: As school kids we were basically required to memorize the first few stanzas of ‘America the Beautiful’, ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ and others. Also had to memorize the Gettysburg Address and the Preamble to the Constitution. Might be very quaint by modern standards. Trump certainly never read any of that stuff.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: Sort of…
sdhays
@Schlemazel: The thing with Pence is, he’s a vegetable compared to Trump. There’s no Alzheimer’s fueled fascist lunatic charisma there. He’s just a Christianist vegetable. The Village will be relieved that our national nightmare is over, but he would be a very damaged and inherently weak candidate going into the 2020 election. I don’t know if he could even survive the Republican primary if someone really challenged him.
Anyway, if we can get Spanky out of the Offal Office one way or an other, Pence will be better because he’ll be a weaker and weakened opponent.
Gin & Tonic
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: He was *sent* to a military-themed boarding school because that’s what some parents did in the 60’s if their son was a complete asshole.
VeniceRiley
back from voting on a provisional ballot, because I just moved. Yech. Great experience though. Volunteers very helpful. One lady in particular was very sharp, knowing the whole process and showing me the machine I’ve never voted on before. So, what did I do?
I voted 1) D 2) with my vagina. 3) for minorities if no unobscure D woman was on the ballot 4) caveat for qualifications and experience in some cases
For Governor, I voted Chiang. Because I think he really would be a good governor, and the other 2 D are macho showboats in ways that I find off-putting.
DIFI because she rocks. Knows her sh** and who else has the decades of serious service that can get away with Why did you release it? “Because I felt like it.” and Republicans barely even peeped. We need her right now. 2 Jr. new Senators at this point of crisis is just not going to cut it.
CA 49 I voted for the FemDem UCI professor and not the other 2 UCI professors with penises to take on Mimi Waters.
YellowDog
“Triumph of the Will” it’s not.
Another Scott
Least surprising news about Donnie in quite a while – maybe 20 minutes…
In other news, TheHill says the House GOP leaders are really, really trying to come up with an immigration bill:
(Emphasis added.)
Yeah, they’re really, really trying hard.
Lest we forget, Goodlatte was the guy who killed the bi-partisan Senate immigration bill in 2013.
I’d be very surprised if they actually do get enough votes for a (genuine) discharge petition – Republicans are almost always Party Über Alles, but who knows. Maybe they are genuinely afraid of being swept out of office by the Blue Wave. I guess we’ll know more Thursday.
Cheers,
Scott.
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: We don’t need a FISA warrant to surveil Konstantin Kilimnik, Manafort’s GRU handler. So communicating with Kilimnik in any way was going to get picked up. By us, by GCHQ. By the Finns, the Estonians, the Latvians, the Germans, etc.
Smiling Mortician
When Reagan was re-elected, I was just finishing grad school and I moved to China because I couldn’t stand to live here. It worked out well because I met my adorable spouse there and we came back to the U.S. and lived for 30 years.
Now, we’ve decided to retire early and move to Spain. I’ll still vote absentee, you can count on me. I’ll do my part from overseas. But I really can’t live here anymore. This country has gone nucking futz, which has wreaked havoc on my mental health. If my physical health hadn’t already gone to hell this past year, maybe I’d be OK? Dunno. But I’m outta here.
Gelfling 545
I know the words to pretty much all of the “patriotic” songs. Extra verses too. I am sure that yhere are many people more patriotic than I who do not. About all the information is good for would be possibly answering a Jeopardy question. But if you’re going to parade it as a mark of patriotism you’d best study up on them.
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: And had gotten big enough to hit back.
lgerard
Alabama Sheriff who starved his prisoners in order to to buy a beach house loses election
sdhays
@Another Scott:
Agreed, but I’m already shocked that they’re supposedly within 3 votes. That’s a lot closer than I thought they’d ever get when talk of this started rumbling a couple weeks ago.
Another Scott
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: He’s a brain damaged old man. If he knew the lyrics when he was young he probably couldn’t recall them now.
(I’m not a physician.)
Cheers,
Scott.
Bobby Thomson
@lgerard: battery night?
Gin & Tonic
@Adam L Silverman: True, that.
encephalopath
God bless uhh… Mercia
EBT
Oh wait, same race as before.
Litlebritdifrnt
I know the words to God Bless America and the National Anthem and I am bloody English. (Way too many Friday nights at High School Football Games for my sins). But this is a classic example of where Donny Dollhands doesn’t hire “the best people”. Scene: Staffing Meeting after Twitler announces he is disinviting the Eagles and putting on a “patriotic music event” shuffling of papers, going through schedule. “Okay gang POTUS is going to be at an event where the National Anthem and God Bless America is going to be played what do we need to do” (Slightly competent staffer): “Perhaps we should brief him on the lyrics, you know we don’t need another youtube video debacle where he clearly didn’t know the lyrics to the National Anthem” (Totally Incompetent Staffer): “Nah, no-one will remember that lets just make sure he’s wearing the right colour suit”.
These are not smart people. Anyone worth their salt in any kind of PR business would have spent three hours going over the lyrics of both songs with him so he knew them inside out and backward so that he didn’t make an absolute and utter fool of himself YET AGAIN on National TV. Twitter was all over it today. If Theresa May was shown on National TV not being able to sing the words of God Save the Queen the government would have her arse out in a heartbeat. This is not rocket surgery, it is simple optics. How can these people be so damn incompetent? The only explanation is that their dear leader is simply incapable of learning, in which case the world is in a fubar situation that is beyond redemption.
Jeffro
@hilts:
All of the smoking guns are right the heck there already: conspiracy against the United States, hacking, receipt of stolen goods, money laundering, lying to federal agents, and so on. These are things that can be proven without much effort at all.
The problem is, Trumpov can’t be impeached with the current congress, much less reined in.
So the solutions are threefold: keep accumulating evidence (and attendant indictments) until it’s time to drop them all on the perpetrators’ heads; keep letting the perps themselves (Trumpov most especially) help build your obstruction cases for you; and buy time for a D wave in November, so that the eventual report doesn’t get buried and/or all of the evidence & proceedings of the Special Counsel* can be duplicated…perhaps even multiplied…in public hearings in Congress.
Adam L Silverman
@sdhays: The moderate, for lack of a better term, GOP members of the House are convinced if they can pass immigration legislation it might save their jobs come November. So they’re willing to join all the House Democrats on this. The House Dems are perfectly happy to let them twist and turn and cut themselves into pieces over this knowing McConnell won’t touch it in the Senate and the President won’t sign it even if it were to pass the Senate.
oatler.
I always thought Republicans wanted to treat “virtue signalling” as a liberal evil. Well, chocs away!
sdhays
@Adam L Silverman: I had read that, but I just didn’t believe there were that many.
lgerard
@Bobby Thomson:
I’m thinking that people will be too busy laughing to be mad. And trump can spend the next few years relating how everyone told him he is the best singer ever!
Everyone goes home happy!
TS (the original)
The Pundits are still so very polite
“The president” doesn’t remember the words” should be
“The president* doesn’t KNOW the words”
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
Sounds a lot like slavery.
Ouch. That’s gonna leave a fucking mark on the so-called conservative “patriots”. They love America and freedom so much they’re willing to let a corrupt evil buffoon become the first American dictator.
schrodingers_cat
@Another Scott: Goodlatte bill is worse than the one floated by Cotton et al in the Senate which had the WH blessings. They want to slash legal immigration by half and void all the approved I-140 and I-130 petitions (i.e. those waiting in the GC line for quotas to become available).
hilts
@Gin & Tonic:
Neither you nor anyone else know where this investigation is going or what revelations will be uncovered in the coming months, so spare me your goddamn motherfucking certitude that Trump won’t be removed from office.
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
?
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Adam L Silverman:
But couldn’t Congress just override his veto? I’d love to see his reaction to that; to being made impotent. To make him see that the presidency isn’t like being an executive of a company and he is not all powerful.
lgerard
@Litlebritdifrnt:
You are talking about a staff that put him behind a cafeteria table with a few stray consumer goods on it in Puerto Rico. He looked like he was working a table at the local flea market. And they had to know he would pick up something and throw it.
marv
@Smiling Mortician:
Sorry for the health problems, but aside from that I really enjoyed reading your post. It’s an interesting question to me whether it’s a weakness, or a strength, or both that has driven you from the country. I come down solidly on the side of strength, and wish you well.
Adam L Silverman
What could possibly go wrong?
https://nypost.com/2018/06/05/dennis-rodman-will-be-in-singapore-for-trump-kim-summit/
M4
@EBT: such disarray, those democrats.
Gin & Tonic
@hilts: I will contribute $100 to the charity of your choice if Trump is not President until January 20, 2021.
Adam L Silverman
@sdhays: They only needed about 20 of them.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: They’re not very good at doing this. So this is the result you get. A sort of, maybe, if you have twitter and squint the right way apology.
Cheryl Rofer
@Adam L Silverman: Don’t forget the Ukrainians!
I spent the day with friends visiting from a very different state. Went to Bandelier National Monument for the first time since the forest fires and flash floods. The wreckage of great trees floated on the floods is impressive, but there was less damage to Frijoles Canyon than I expected. Probably looked worse closer to the floods. Water is very powerful.
And I come back to not much changed since yesterday – no new Trump crises, just the continuing ones.
Refreshing.
Adam L Silverman
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: There aren’t the votes in either chamber to override a veto on this type of bill.
Gin & Tonic
@Cheryl Rofer: The Ukrainians, unfortunately, decided they preferred Javelins to cooperating with Mueller.
VOR
@Adam L Silverman: Clearly we are sending the best people to negotiate a nuclear arms treaty. Crazy thing is Rodman is probably an improvement.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Adam L Silverman:
Even in your hypothetical of a bill passing the Senate?
Adam L Silverman
Anyone heard anything from Cole recently?
Gin & Tonic
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Need 67 Senators to override.
Mike in NC
@Adam L Silverman: To think we could have been much better off with a President Rodman.
J R in WV
@Smiling Mortician:
How do you go about that? I’m curious because I would like to spend way more time abroad, maybe not 100% of my time, but 60%+ perhaps. So advice and coaching begged for! Anyone?
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: I miss hiking at Bandolier!
And was not meaning to slight the Ukrainians.
opiejeanne
@Gin & Tonic: I was either in the band or orchestra playing the National Anthem, from the time I was 14 until I was nearly 30, so I had to relearn the words.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: Remember when I said I thought he might last six months? Let’s revise this to maybe six weeks:
NMgal
Damn fine writing; thanks to Adam for highlighting this piece. I’ve no interest in sports, but there are sports writers out there good enough to make me want to read them anyway.
jonas
Wow. You need a cigarette after that Roth piece. Thanks, Adam.
Adam L Silverman
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Yep, the votes wouldn’t be there to override the veto.
jonas
@Adam L Silverman:
Ok, I’ll give Rodman some credit for some insight there…
Peale
@Adam L Silverman: the police need to set up a road block. O.k. That won’t work. Shoot out it’s tires. Well, scratch that. Find a giant can opener?
I guess pursuing it hoping it runs out of gas is all they can do.
Yutsano
@Adam L Silverman: All I can say is when you’ve lost Mia Love something’s gonna happen.
Adam L Silverman
@Peale: Tomorrow’s headline: Seb Gorka, PhD Goes Rogue!
Anybody see if that 113 has an Art of War license plate?
satby
@Smiling Mortician: don’t blame you a bit. Take care of your health.
bluefish
Thank you for the whole thing. Beautifully done. The Roth piece is amazing. Special extra thanks. Made my heart race to read it. Indeed to all of it. Hallucinatory.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Adam L Silverman:
You think he’ll make the rounds on Fox News playing the victim? Those mean Germans!
SiubhanDuinne
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
The only way he would have learned it would be if the words were:
Oh say can you TRUMP
By the DON’s TRUMPY TRUMP
What so TRUMPLY we TRUMPED
At the TRUMPET’s last TRUMPING.
Whose broad TRUMPs and bright TRUMPs
Through the TRUMPETY TRUMP
O’er the TRUMPARTS we TRUMPED
Were so TRUMPILY TRUMPING.
And IVANKA’s red TRUMP,
MAR-A-LAGO’s a TRUMP
DON JUNIOR’s a TRUMP
Also ERIC’s a TRUMP.
Oh say does that BEDMINSTER
GOLF CLUB yet TRUMP
O’er the Land of the TRUMP,
Home of DONALD J. TRUMP.
Brachiator
But this little charade was not about patriotic songs, or whether Trump knows the lyrics. Trump wanted to show the Eagles players, especially the black ones, who is the Boss Man. He is, as he insists, their President, and he will be obeyed.
And as some pundits and others have noted, it is no accident that Fox, the propaganda channel of Christian America, took footage of black players kneeling in prayer, and deliberately falsified the images by labeling it as protest.
Look for Trump to tell lies about this “celebration” at an upcoming political rally. He will brag about how he chastised rebellious football players and made them show the proper degree of deference to the country, and to their Dear Leader.
HumboldtBlue
First election results are in and at least here on the North Coast it’s all Newsom. He’s far ahead of Chiang (Humboldt results only) with the GOPer Cox running second. Fiona Ma and Betty Yee did very well up thisaway as well.
Cheryl Rofer
@Adam L Silverman: So at this writing, PNG leads recall.
Mary G
That David Roth column was awesome.
Polls closed here in California. A number of Juicers chose John Chiang, who would be an excellent governor, so of course he stands no chance at all.
Found out Paul Ryan’s PAC snuck in with a shitload of dark money and claims to have knocked on 400,000 doors here in the O.C. I checked the SOS’s website and confirmed my ballot was received and accepted on June 1.
VeniceRiley
@HumboldtBlue: When LA surround comes in LATE because huge, I expect a lot of votes for Antonio V. Could take until tomorrow late to figure 2nd, maybe later.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Brachiator:
Here’s the thing: he wasn’t obeyed. He couldn’t even get people to come to his pity party without resorting to using government employees. That’s a huge emasculating loss for him.
HumboldtBlue
@VeniceRiley:
Good point
Brachiator
Polls are closed and the count begins here in California. In very early tallies for governor, the Republican Cox is in second place, behind front runner Gavin Newsom. Di Fi is cruising to a easy Senate win.
I was one of the hundred thousand or so voters strangely dropped from the rolls, and my polling place also changed. But I got a provisional ballot and the poll workers made sure that everything was handled as smoothly as possible.
We will see what happens.
Adam L Silverman
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: That’s where the President found him to begin with. Doing commentary by taking his twitter troll schtick on Fox.
cynthia ackerman
@SiubhanDuinne:
Say, that’s pretty catchy!
Just heard from a relative that the whole business about “above the law” in the last couple of days is really just proof that, as “we” have been saying, Obama was a tyrant.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: Yep!
HumboldtBlue
Our congressman is winning easily again as expected as are the North Coast’s state reps, although that’s all to be expected. Dems outnumber GOP here in even greater numbers than the state average.
Feinstein wins easily. Villaraigosa is going to need an awful lot of help from LA, he is way behind Cox currently.
Brachiator
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Remember that Trump is delusional and Trump lies. He got Fox to falsely smear the players. He got the NFL owners to come up with new rules about observing the anthem.
Coming home, the CBS radio station is interviewing some dope about Trump’s shambolic celebration as though it wasn’t the shit show that it actually was. People are still not ready to openly admit that Trump makes himself look foolish with this stuff.
So yeah, objectively Trump looks like an ass. But no one will tell him so to his face, and his supporters will continue to pretend that he is their God king.
SFAW
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Wow, talk about oxy-ing that Moron.
ruemara
@hilts: He’s not going to be removed from Congress unless & until Dems control, with a sizable margin, both houses of Congress. There’s already abundant evidence. It just doesn’t matter. The evidence will implicate multiple members of the GOP caucus, very wealthy people, members of LEO, & a good portion of the party itself. Evidence need not apply since they have the power to waltz past it.
SFAW
@Brachiator:
Not sure they’re pretending.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Brachiator:
That’s why you have to harass them until they admit that they’re wrong.
Ruckus
@Mike in NC:
I can’t remember if I had to learn all of that, I’m pretty sure not. But as I sound like a very bad recording, played through a very bad amp, and speakers that have been out in the rain for months, I never really sang along anyway. It’s in everyone’s best interest. All that’s to say, I doubt that I could sing any of those songs, for sure not all the way through. But then I also don’t consider singing a song to be all that patriotic. Because I’m pretty sure that if I was a spy, I’d know all the words and could sing any one of them all the way through. Badly sure, but I’d know them.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
That’s sort of like printing the retraction in 5 pt type, on page 42 of the 2018, June 3rd Sunday NYT for a story that was written and published on June 1. 1963.
Adam L Silverman
Before anyone asks, I pulled and trashed the new post I put up.
I’m heading to bed.
Try not to eat each other for a change…
Adam L Silverman
@Ruckus: Or the NY Times apology for the coverage of HRC’s emails at the end of October compared to their headline and reporting clearing the President, then candidate, of any suspicion regarding Russia.
Yarrow
@Adam L Silverman: Bummer. I was going to post my favorite tank scene from a movie in that thread. Oh well.
oatler.
@Adam L Silverman:Bullshit!I I want meat! Or Cheetos,whatever.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: I wondered if I imagined that post about Seb.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: Damn, I only saw the title. Though I can guess what it was about!
Adam L Silverman
@Yarrow: @oatler.: @?BillinGlendaleCA: @Major Major Major Major: I decided it was gratuitous and largely only cruelly funny to me due to a past run in with the Sebster.
ETA: felt like punching way, way down. It was using him as a foil for that armored personnel carrier that was stolen earlier tonight. Anyhow, it wasn’t necessary, so I yanked it.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: What’s a top 10,000 blog for if not petty mockery?
Steve in the ATL
@Major Major Major Major: almost top 10,000. You are worse than Fox News!
SiubhanDuinne
Adam, what happened to your post about the purloined “tank” in Richmond?
Major Major Major Major
@Steve in the ATL: Really depends on the time of year.
Yarrow
@Adam L Silverman: His license plate alone makes him an obvious target for mockery.
SiubhanDuinne
@Adam L Silverman:
But why?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I know nothing about CA voting, but I’ll leave you with this optimistic note
TriassicSands
It’s no wonder Trump’s reality sit-com-melodramas were such a hit — his stage presence is otherworldly. Just watching him attempt to lip-sync “God Bless Amurka” had me nearly in tears. Clearly, Trump missed his true calling — opera.
Major Major Major Major
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: And thanks to ranked-choice voting, we might not know who won the SF mayoral election for some time!
TriassicSands
Trump’s ambitious goal for his four-year term in the White House — learn the words to two songs. Yes, it is a lot to ask, but Trump is the smartest person on the planet.
Adam L Silverman
@SiubhanDuinne: @SiubhanDuinne: As I wrote above:
?BillinGlendaleCA
@TriassicSands:
This what he claims.
Brachiator
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Sadly, a good chunk of them will never admit they’re wrong, and I have better things to do with my time.
I will correct them on the stupid bullshit they believe if it comes up in a conversation, but I don’t play political evangelist to these fools, or try to rescue their souls.
Chet Murthy
@VeniceRiley: There are many things I dislike about Dianne Feinstein. But in this existential moment for our Republic, I appreciate that she’s an old warhorse, and that that’s valuable. Also, her seniority. But mostly, that she knows how things are done. And to be totally honest, I kinda hate her, b/c she’s so goddam right-wing so much of the time.
Shoulda said: so yeah, I voted for her. “Strategic voting”, wot.
burnspbesq
@Adam L Silverman:
I don’t think it’s possible to quantify how much Merkel is going to enjoy PNG’ing this stupid little shit.
Adam L Silverman
@burnspbesq: How do you say: “Alexa! Order all the popcorn!” in German?
burnspbesq
@Chet Murthy:
Your reasons for voting for DiFi are perfectly rational and understandable.
I had one more.
I don’t trust DeLeon as far as I can throw him.
burnspbesq
@Adam L Silverman:
Alexea, bestelle das ganze Popcorn.
Adam L Silverman
@burnspbesq: Danke!
LongHairedWeirdo
Is that bozo checking his wallet every 5 seconds or something? You put your hand over your heart and, just like the soldiers at salute, hold it there. (Though in truth, I only ever heard of that done for the Pledge.) Oh, right… that’s what you do to show respect, rather than to show off, and he knows nothing of the former.
We should make it a meme that more people honor NFLers taking a knee than were at his inauguration.
(Also, not to get too personal, but for a guy who brags on his hands, WTF is wrong with his thumbs? They ain’t supposed to look like dicks, bending back like that.)
Shalimar
@Gin & Tonic: If you had to sing God Bless America in front of hundreds of people earlier today, I have confidence you would have memorized it and know the words now.
Amir Khalid
@Adam L Silverman:
A sane administration would never have appointed Grenell ambassador to a nation working hard to live down its Fascist history. An administration that had only momentarily taken leave of its senses in appointing him would have recalled him for what he said, without waiting for the backlash
Citizen Alan
@sdhays:
Hell, Dense was about to lose in Indiana when he got tapped to be VP. There is no way he can win in a national campaign given how inherently creepy and sexless he appears to be. Referring to his wife as Mother alone would kill his national ambitions.
Citizen Alan
@opiejeanne:
Yeah, I was in band too. I know the words to The Star-Spangled Banner, but sometimes I forget the tune and end up singing them to the tuba part.
Reformed Panty Sniffer
The Roth piece is a very good summary of the NFL and the stupid anthem controversy, among other things. Trump is the festivus president. It’s airing of grievances for 24/7. People should be able to see right through him but their own biases blind them to it. Or, they just don’t care. Deplorable.
boatboy_srq
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: My ears bleed just thinking about that.
JDM
Here’s a problem with this crap: just last night I watched the news in a Canadian city and they had a story about the WH v. Eagles. It was some feed from the states without local input (you wouldn’t expect that, particularly). The story was that Trump disinvited the players because of players’ protests. Never was it said that Trump was lying (or shading the truth, or whatever euphemism you might think of) about the Eagles players kneeling in protest. So the takeaway is whether or not you agree that protesting during the anthem is okay. There’s also the problem that just what the protests are and aren’t is not explained, but the big thing, IMO, is that Trump gets away with telling a massive lie about the Eagles players.
This is our biggest problem right now. News media is simply not doing their job, and they are helping rightwingers lie to the voting public.
J R in WV
@Citizen Alan:
I sing the tuba part too, I was first chair tuba in HS. Not that that made me fancy, I was just the best of the 6 guys willing to carry the damn things.
Kenneth Kohl
@hilts:
My wife has suggested this, perhaps in a different context…