The real reason people voted for Trump is because unvarnished racist, sexist, xenophobic demagoguery appealed to them. But if you ask Trumpers why they voted for Trump, they’ll say something like, “He’s a successful businessman who knows how to make deals.”
That’s bullshit on stilts; the serially bankrupt Trump would be far richer than he (probably falsely) claims if he’d stashed his inheritance in an index fund. But it’s true that he sold his own mottled orange hide to the public along those lines:
Let’s roll the tape on how Trump got his kicks during the DHS funding negotiations, shall we?
March 2018: Democrats offer $25B in border all funding for a pathway to citizenship for the dreamers. Trump kills the deal by tacking on draconian cuts to LEGAL immigration.
December 2018: Trump demands $5B for wall; Democrats counter with a $1.6B offer. Trump shuts down the government, costing the U.S. economy $11B.
January 2019: Trump caves, ends shutdown in humiliating political defeat, vows to get WALL funding as a condition to fund the government after 2/15/2019.
February 2019: Trump indicates he’ll sign a bill with $1.375 billion “fencing” funds to avoid another shutdown.
The prospect of another stinging humiliation in the form of this bill had Trump pre-whining on Twitter yesterday about “the Radical Left” thwarting his “Border Security” plans. He also lied that “the Wall is being built” when pretty much everyone who’s not a slack-jawed moron knows that’s not true.
But he’ll almost certainly sign the goddamned paper when it lands on his desk. McConnell isn’t going to endanger his own political prospects with another shutdown. One way or another, that bill will pass, and the degree to which Trump has been taken to the cleaners in this negotiation will be expressed in hard numbers.
Even math-phobes like me who are routinely swindled in negotiations know that when your opponent’s offer drops from $25B to $1.6B to $1.375B — and you accept the low number along with all the damage incurred along the way — you’ve just had your very own ass handed to you on a silver platter and a giant golden “L” tattooed to your forehead.
After this debacle, Trumpers will need to invent a new justification for their vote. Or maybe just tell the damned truth.
Open thread!
low-tech cyclist
As Paul Revere and the Raiders once said, “kicks just keep gettin’ harder to find.” Sucks to be you, Donnie.
Keith P.
He’s lucky the Dems didn’t give him a bag of glass beads for the double play.
BC in Illinois
. . . and while he’s been doing all this — all for the sake of a huge, beautiful wall along the southern border, emblazoned with a huge middle finger toward the south, and beautiful, golden letters that say “NOT YOU! — the polls show that support for increasing immigration has been, in fact, increasing.
cope
It’s a cliche, I know but I can’t help but be reminded of the Black Knight’s “It’s just a flesh wound” while he’s hopping around on one leg. A self-aware trump would not be nearly as entertaining. I hope he continues to work at his “art form”.
ruemara
I’m stuck on a treadmill because I’m injured as heck lately & Fox News was on. His base exist in an alternate reality. They’re going to insist he won even with these numbers staring them in the face.
Kay
Don’t be silly. He’s a “dealmaker” and a “builder” except he can’t make any deals or build anything.
He can’t even build a big, dumb wall let alone something useful like roads or bridges.
I said when he came on the scene I wouldn’t hire him to repave my driveway and NOTHING he has done has changed that estimation.
Instead of repaving my driveway he’d give me 15 different varying estimates, rudely and insultingly demand I make a “down payment” when he hasn’t bothered telling me what I’m buying, and then start a fight with my neighbors and base his additional demands on how horrible my neighbors are. Two years later I still wouldn’t have a driveway, and everyone would hate me.
“Builder”, my ass. Builders make things. He makes a mess.
JKC
My guess is that Trump will beat on that “The wall is being built” drum all the way into 2020, because the one thing America has plenty of in the 21st century is slack-jawed morons.
Major Major Major Major
Thanks for putting googly eyes on his stupid evil face!
JPL
I had eleven people on my roof ripping off shingles starting at 7:30. Now they are in the banging stage. Mr. Finch is a trooper. After the initial shock, he just said wtf and went back to bed.
greengoblin
It really will be a beaded curtain.
JPL
@Kay: True and I sure wouldn’t hire him to install my roof.
Shantanu Saha
Betty, did you give up your practice of not posting the actual tweets because you now have a way of hiding Trump’s face behind the pig mask, or is this a one-time thing?
Bostonian
But how else will El Paso be made great again?
Kay
Whatever happened to the “builders” infrastructure plan?
The community organizer built a lot more with the stimulus than this clown has gotten done.
Show me what he built. Because it wasn’t just Trump fanatics who claimed he was a “builder”. All of media did. Show me those completed construction projects we were promised.
SFAW
@Keith P.:
This is not a game. Don’t be Ludi-crous.
PST
The real story of Trump’s turning his back on the original deal is that denying a path to citizenship for a couple of million young Americans (by every measure except documented place of birth) was more important to him than his wall. Cruelty trumped stupid waste. I’m proud that Democrats cared more about the Dreamers than they did about getting their way on the wall. Unfortunately, so did Trump. In the end, we will substantially prevail on both.
SFAW
@Kay:
His bank account, which he’s built from almost-zero, to more-than-zero in the last two years. Was Obama able to grift the country the way Shitgibbon has? NO!!! Game, set, and touchdown, libtard!
Betty Cracker
@Shantanu Saha: Probably a one-time thing. The tweet was so masturbatory that merely quoting it didn’t seem to do it justice, and yet I don’t want to expose y’all to his hideous visage unless it’s absolutely essential to the narrative. So I put pig stickers on it like a fourth grader.
MattF
Ms. Cracker suggests:
Ha ha. Making a jokey-joke, I see.
Kay
The first thing the low quality contractor and his bottom of the barrel hires should do is pay us back for what the shutdown cost us.
Complete waste of money. He burned thru tens of millions of dollars and he doesn’t even have a vanity wall to show for it.
We were robbed, like everyone else who has ever come in contact with any of the Trumps. I want to be made whole. I never would have hired him, because he sucks at everything. I don’t want to pay for his supporters poor judgment.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
He likes making deals. Preferably big deals. Right. Well, if by “big” he means “humiliatingly shitty”, then he sure got his big deal here. I hope he got a kick or two out of it, preferably in his nose.
trollhattan
My top source of irk with his fans is their insistence his self-evident stupidity and ignorance are merely performance art to own the Libs. “Have you ever considered he might really be that thick?” “Impossible, he’s a billionaire. Billionaires have to be smart.”
Rinse and repeat.
Ryan
If you like Chris Hayes, he was hillarious on this very topic last night!
https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/president-trump-waves-white-flag-on-shutdown-deal-1441631299892
gene108
The number of slack-jawed morons rivals the number of not slack-jawed morons. It is a significant number that believe Trump, unconditionally.
Betty Cracker
@JPL: Lucky! My dogs went absolutely ape-shit for two days when we got a new roof several years ago. It was hellish.
WaterGirl
Discouraging to read this and know that Barr will almost certainly be our next AG in spite of the fact that he is not fit to serve.
BobS
“…because unvarnished racist, sexist, xenophobic demagoguery appealed to them.”
We’d have known what you meant if you’d simply wrote “..because they’re Republicans”.
schrodingers_cat
I like what you have done to enhance the beauty of our Orange President.
JPL
@Betty Cracker: I was babysitting my son’s maltese and I delayed the roof until they were settled in with the baby boy. I brought Nona home before this event. She would not fare well.
This is a great post, but trump’s base won’t know he lost since they only listen to the right wing loonies.
Punchy
They do this daily. I think they’ve internalized about 3,927 of them, more than enough for one term. And if they run out, they’ll recycle them.
There’s literally nothing Trump can do/say/kill that will make 99.5% of them admit their mistake. They’ve bought the product, and lost the receipt, and too embarrassed to admit that it was purchased from some sketchy Pinkos.
Brachiator
Why not both?
Trump’s version of the prosperity gospel is built on resentment, and the idea that America will be great again once it gets even with all the nations and people who have been stealing from real white heterosexual Christians.
schrodingers_cat
Pigs are intelligent and cuter than the current occupant of the WH
gene108
@ruemara:
I think an underlying belief among right-wingers, like those on Fox News, is that conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed. When Bush, Jr., who was touted as the most conservative President ever, who did things to enhance the power of Fundies, and based all his domestic policy decisions on “free-market solutions”, turned into a colossal failure, he was immediately decreed his failure was due to being “too liberal”.
If the economy, for example, tanks under Trump, he will deemed to be a closest liberal.
I think once I realized that their reporting, analysis, etc. stems from an iron-clad belief that the far-right agenda they are proposing is destined to bring glory and greatness to all, everything else sort of falls into place.
Why does conservative media work so hard to justify Trump? He’s the current leader of the conservative revolution. He is still popular, among those who matter, and therefore cannot have done things that would lead to failure.
chris
@Betty Cracker: Gotta love the intertoobs. You can follow the Shitgibbon at thetrump twitter archive without pics or giving him clicks.
different-church-lady
And some people paint really really badly. Just sayin’.
germy
This is hilarious:
https://splinternews.com/never-trump-podcast-implodes-after-dust-up-over-howard-1832514441
Steve Schmidt (principled and centristly reasonable anti-trumper and Starbucks candidate supporter/worker) throws a tantrum, curses and walks off a podcast.
He says the majority of voters will be more frightened of the “democratic base” than they are of trump’s base before he ends the interview.
(This is the guy who gave us Sarah Palin, so it’s important we listen to everything he has to say)
Betty Cracker
@JPL: The right wing loons are unhappy! Coulter, Ingraham, etc., are openly saying Trump got rolled. Even the nauseatingly obsequious Sean Hannity is calling it a “garbage compromise,” though he blames Republicans rather than Trump. I’m not saying this capitulation will prompt Trumpers to own their mistake or vote for Democrats, but anything that lessens their enthusiasm is a good thing.
jacy
He’s just going to keep building that alternate reality. Hopefully fewer and fewer people are going to live there.
On another topic, I was talking to my daughter last night (she is 26 and a 6th grade public school teacher), and our conversation ended up talking about birth control. She long ago decided she doesn’t want children. Really decided. She told me she looked into having a tubal ligation and found that no doctor she could find would do one unless she was “over 30 and already had at least 2 children.” What kind of fucking patriarchal bullshit is that? I find that fucking unbelievable. It’s just got me really steamed on general principals. A) because you’re a woman, you can’t make decisions, and B) your main contribution in life must be to have children. Now, I love kids –I have five and I would have had more given time and unlimited resources — but jeezly-pete, if I had decided, for whatever reason, that I did not want children, I would certainly want the option of permanent, non-hormonal birth control. And if I asked for it and was willing to pay for it, I would fucking expect somebody to give it to me. (end rant)
gene108
@schrodingers_cat:
Pigs are man-eating death machines:
Another gruesome tale of pigs eating farmer
Despite the media’s best efforts to pass pigs off as cute – “Charlotte’s Web”, Peppa Pig, Arnold Ziffel, etc. – pigs are dangerous animals.
jacy
@germy:
Steve Schmidt hasn’t been on the Nicolle Wallace show since she looked aghast at him during his disastrous vanity candidate rollout for Mr. Coffee. Hope he got paid up front.
schrodingers_cat
What is MIT thinking by inviting one of the most loathsome Indian politicians as a speaker?
catclub
@Kay: ,
ah, Foreign Policy
TaMara (HFG)
Hugh Hewitt just said if Trump kicks AOC/Harris/Warren hard enough, no one will notice the wall isn’t really a wall.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@gene108: they’re making a movie of Deadwood! Omnivorous pigs may be a feature.
gene108
@germy:
It is always important to listen to what conservatives say. They can never do anything to disqualify them from being important. Ken Starr still gets consulted as a legal expert on cable news, despite the highly partisan witch hunt of Bill Clinton he lead, his defense of Jeffrey Epstein, with regards to running a child sex trafficking ring, as well as turning a blind eye to rape at Baylor, which got him fired.
Robert Bork, who executed the “Saturday Night Massacre”, was promoted to an appellate court appointment and got an up and down vote in the Senate for a SCOTUS seat, which the Senate decided not to confirm him.
A couple of Ken Starr’s flunkies during the Clinton witch hunt are now on the SCOTUS.
Conservative politics, in the USA, is like some sort of mafia, wherein, if you do not rat out the movement, you’ll be in good standing, no matter what you do.
I think Schmidt knows this, which is why he found a guy, who could fuck Democrats in 2020, to make sure he can still have good standing with the
mobconservative bosses.P.S. Also shows, no matter how much Never Trumpers make sense to us, they are in their heart of hearts conservatives, who would rather destroy the country, than see it prosper under Democratic rule
germy
@gene108:
Definitely. Schmidt sounds like a real asshole in this podcast. He views, but also his tone, which reminds me of a belligerent caller on a morning drive radio show.
And the young lady, the co-host. At one point she goes into a knowledgable recollection of Ross Perot’s campaign; how she remembers watching him on TV and thinking he made sense.
She must have been a particularly bright two year old, as she was born in 1990.
catclub
@gene108:
Think of how stupid the average USian is. Then realize that half the population is dumber than that.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I didn’t see the guy who plays Wu in the cast list, but hope he makes it back so we can revel in Wu’s conversations with Swearengen.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
If the Parkland kids direct their energies at Schultz, Starbucks’ board may demand he divest his shares whatever his ego does about a presidential campaign
catclub
@TaMara (HFG): This is pretty accurate. and I just came from commenting on the intelligence of the US population. Now on to their attention span – or lack thereof.
JPL
@TaMara (HFG): Wow.. He just proved that what Betty said was true.
Keith P
@trollhattan: Sooo excited for the Deadwood movie. Almost as much as for the Twin Peaks revival. I still say Deadwood is HBO’s best show.
randy khan
Oh, noes! Chris Cillizza says the Dems “are handing Donald Trump a viable path to a second term.”
Link, if you dare;
If you don't dare click the link, it's late term abortion and the Green New Deal. [eye-rolling emoji]
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@trollhattan: Keone Young– the movie is on his IMDB page– phew!
Looks like they brought back almost everybody, all packed into a two hour movie.
Brachiator
Problem is, people and the economy took the hit, not some random Trump business.
This morning there were some idiot radio talk show hosts stubbornly blaming Democrats for not taking Trump’s offer. This included a news reporter whose husband is a federal employee who had been furloughed. Some people just refuse to see what is plainly in front of them.
randy khan
Fixing a borked post just above that I can’t edit:
Oh, noes! Chris Cillizza says the Dems “are handing Donald Trump a viable path to a second term.”
Link, if you dare
If you don’t dare click the link, it’s late term abortion and the Green New Deal. [eye-rolling emoji]
karensky
“Bullshit on stilts”. I loved that. Made my Wednesday
Yarrow
@Brachiator: Some people are paid to express certain opinions.
I would like to see all pundits wearing suits that show their sponsors like the NASCAR drivers do. At the very least there should be a required statement from them before they talk–“I am sponsored by X and Y and Z,” which is repeated at regular intervals. For TV pundits a crawl at the bottom of the screen talking about who pays these people should be required.
Just One More Canuck
@JPL: We had ours done last year – it was like watching an ant’s nest
schrodingers_cat
@randy khan: This is not the first time I have heard this talking point about late term abortions, last week Jowls of Concern on PBS Snooze Hour made the same point.
Major Major Major Major
@gene108: the same, of course, can be said for any domesticated animal larger than a medium-sized dog.
Brachiator
@randy khan:
From his nonsense.
Simple reply. “Trump is a liar and a loser. It’s time to send him back to Putin.”
WaterGirl
@jacy: Women are apparently children and unable to make adult decisions until the are 30?! Wait, not just 30, it has to be 30 with two children. This makes me want to bang my head against the wall.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Egades, CNN was uncivil enough to ask Stable Genius and totally not colluded PONTUS if he is so critical of Omar (D-MN) why hasn’t he said anything about King (R-KKK).
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/schlapp-struggles-steve-king-amid-omar-critiques
Yarrow
Speaking of the Green New Deal, apparently McConnell is planning to hold a vote on it to make Democrats in the Senate go on the record as voting for or against. Those votes will be useful for Republicans for campaign ads in 2020.
Timurid
@schrodingers_cat:
Subramanian Swamy? Were Steve Bannon and David Duke were already booked?
Major Major Major Major
@Yarrow: I’ll admit it’s kind of funny how “ok let’s vote on your proposed resolution” is being spun as some sort of dirty trick.
ETA I think it was Yglesias yesterday who pointed out that this also happened with M4A and everybody forgot.
JeanneT
@gene108:
People forget that pigs are intelligent, omnivorous and opportunistic, and in confinement, bored. It makes them a lot like us humans…. Really, considering all the pigs we eat, we had just hope they never start making plans to get even.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Yarrow: they tried this last summer with health care
VeniceRiley
The Fox News Bubble will ensure these people stay insanely lost. That and their conservachurches.
Oh, and it only takes about 15 minutes of throwing facts at some lady maga head for her to drop all pretense and start raving about abortion.
Brachiator
@Yarrow:
I don’t know that it makes much difference if you separate the mercenaries from the true believers. Either way, they eagerly spout nonsense.
In this instance, we are talking about one of the top English language talk radio stations in the Los Angeles market. Curiously, the station also has some left leaning hosts who are more honest about politics.
Gin & Tonic
@jacy: I’d be surprised if they didn’t apply fairly similar guidelines to vasectomies (can’t say for sure, because I was over 30 and a father of three when I had mine.)
Gin & Tonic
@gene108: Willy Pickton sure knew that.
tobie
@randy khan: The Green New Deal is getting hit — even from progressives like Catherine Rampell — and deservedly so. As far as I can tell, it is nothing but a set of vaguely defined, lofty goals with no specifics whatsoever on how to achieve even a 60% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030. The regulation of carbon monoxide is not even included in this non-binding resolution, which to me reads like a set of platitudes cooked up in a late night session in a college dorm. Mitch McConnell wants to bring it to a floor vote because he thinks Americans will balk at the price tag associated with this resolution, which covers everything from guaranteed healthcare to guaranteed jobs to guaranteed housing. Is he right? I dunno but his pollsters are obviously telling him that.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
executive time Don Draper only dreamed of….
Major Major Major Major
@tobie: everybody is also trying to conflate the resolution with the actually-bad FAQ about the resolution that Ocasio-Cortez put up on her website. Which, I mean, maybe don’t do stuff like that, AOC.
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker: Please continue with that. Pig stickers make it palatable.
Not fair to pigs, of course, but it’s more fair to us.
I laughed when I saw this. Pig stickers and “art form.” His only “art form” is his hair, and why were are not seeing GIF after GIF of him fixing it up in the morning — like Christian Bale in American hustle — I cannot say. I would make one if I had the tech skills.
[The Bale scene is excellent. I suspect Trump does look like that, only worse. Thinking it might be a prosthetic belly gut on Bale? Anyway …]
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Major Major Major Major: back to that whole ‘not quite ready for prime time’ thing
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Democrats will run on health care again. It’s easy. Republicans have absolutely nothing. They never had anything, and now they don’t even have dog-whistle anti-Obama disguised as a health care policy platform.
It’s sort of amazing there are so many of them and they offer absolutely nothing, and for so long! My whole lifetime.
dmsilev
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Now now, Donald Trump has assured us that he’s Working Hard during Executive Time and he would never lie to us about that, would he?
tobie
@Major Major Major Major: This is true, and I appreciate your point. The real problem with the FAQ is that AOC’s office posted it online and sent it to the major media outlets. This wasn’t a random document that somehow made its way into the public eye. They wanted it out there. But this doesn’t change my view that a non-binding resolution, now called aspirational, is nothing more than a symbolic vote. I hated when the GOP did this with their endless repeal-and-replace votes and I don’t like it when our side does it either.
Major Major Major Major
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: her chief of staff and “policy guy” are… not great, at least based on their twitter presences.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: I absolutely agree. I’m also waiting, as centrists and just-the-facts reporters earnestly tell me that he can’t back down on Wall because ‘it was a campaign promise’ for smart-ass anchors and hosts (Ari, Nicole, I’m looking at you) to start running clips of ‘we’re gonna fix health care, we’re gonna take care of everybody, for a lot less money, something terrific, it’ll be easy, believe me’
The Moar You Know
@jacy: The same kind of “patriarchal bullshit” where no doctor would give me a vasectomy based on the same criteria, save the age I was repeatedly given was 35. It’s utter bullshit regardless. I knew I didn’t want kids since I was fucking fifteen years old. The medical profession utterly refuses to believe that young folks can make that particular decision for themselves.
Major Major Major Major
@tobie: I heard an interview with her yesterday where she basically talked about how she was trying to copy what republicans did with those resolutions, and what Trump did with the wall by promising something insane but aspirational, because Trump tapped into voters’ wishes for aspiration, or something. It was on Morning Edition I think.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@jacy: Wow. Sounds like she talked to more than one doctor and still got the same crap? I think a lot of OB/gyn’s are women these days. Did she get that from women too? That steams me up too.
tobie
@Major Major Major Major: Oh gawd. Please, please, please let’s not copy Trump/GOP tactics. By the way: is Samwise liking New York? I imagine this is his first exposure to winter.
Yarrow
@Major Major Major Major: Her staff is bad. They did not help anyone except Republicans with that mistake. If more things like this keep happening and she still keeps them on then I guess she’s satisfied with how they’re performing.
Knowing she was helped by the Justice Dems to get into office has made me skeptical of her from the beginning. This sort of big mistake that continues to cause problems for Democrats is not helping my impression of her. I like her social media skills but being a legislator is more than being able to clap back on Twitter.
Mandalay
@germy:
From your link:
I must admit I thought Schmidt was one of the more reasonable never-Trumpers, but how can anyone trust a word he says on anything after that stunt? And more importantly (not that I care), how can Howard Schultz have any confidence in him?
The Moar You Know
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Schultz is a Republican, regardless of his stated party affiliation; he is going to attempt to do what Sanders did, which is run as a Democrat while not being one.
At least Sanders really does have a majority of issues in common with Dems. Schultz has, literally, zero.
Dem party better not give him one fucking thin dime.
jonas
For some reason, even people who have played Trump walk around claiming he’s a business genius. Remember Tom Barrack, the billionaire real estate tycoon and one of Trump’s best buddies and chair of his extraordinarily grifty inaugural committee? Barrack sold Trump the Plaza Hotel in 1988 for a record $400 million dollars, a sum most observers said was way over the top. (Trump even bragged about overpaying) Sure enough, it turned out to be a spectacularly bad deal and Trump was broke a few years later and had to unload the hotel on a bunch of Saudi investors for a fraction of what he had paid. But Barrack would go around for years talking about what an amazing deal-maker Trump had been. Yeah. For *him*. The idiot paid $400 million for an old hotel just to he could say he owned it. Talk about writing checks your ass can’t cash. How does that make you a savvy businessman?
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
Subramanian Swamy is certainly repellent. Is he popular or influential?
Yarrow
@Kay: Dems can also run on taxes again. People are seeing how the tax law didn’t really help them and there will be another round this time next year.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m torn on the whole GND because I do think it’s a real crisis and we need to talk more about it, but OTOH larding it up with every item on a progressive letter to Sanders Clause just makes it easy to demagogue. Also, AOC’s high-energy and eagerness to engage can make her sloppy, and her would-be imitators even more so.
Also, if you’re going to look to other pols as models, maybe Kennedy (“we choose to do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard!”) is a better example than “Wall! Beautiful Beautiful Wall!”
Martin
I think the simple explanation here is that a huge number of americans can’t differentiate reality TV from reality. I don’t see that as any different of a problem relative to americans being unable to differentiate between russian bots and actual humans on social media.
Jeffro
@germy:
Well, this certainly explains why Howard Schultz is running, I guess – to make the majority of voters more scared of Dems than the GOP/trumpov.
Howard, don’t be a coward: run for the nomination of the party you really represent! Don’t shy away from challenging trumpov for the nom, you’re both Republicans, after all!
Yarrow
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Isn’t Nancy Smash sending the GND off to a committee so they can actually come up with some stuff that they can pass?
Brachiator
@JeanneT:
The only thing I need to know about pigs is that they are tasty. Bacon, pork chops, ribs, char siu….
Shana
@Kay: As someone currently trying to get estimates to deal with a basement waterproofing issue (3 contractors with vastly different solutions offered) I feel for you. And that reminds me, we’ll have to have the driveway sealed come Spring. Perfectly accurate assessment of his “abilities.”
JR
@jacy: Your daughter is definitely eligible for tubal ligation if she insists on it. And she may have to be forcefully insistent on this matter. If a given OB won’t provide one for whatever reason, she should ask to be referred to one who will.
Cermet
I just hope the orange fart cloud signs the bill; those poor (literally now) desperately need their pay checks. So, if this goes thru I don’t give a shit who won but that these people get paid. Glad he’s taking a hit but his base will still lick the ass of their orange God and disbelieve anything that doesn’t support their beliefs (sounds familiar – the not believe reality, not the ass licking part.)
Ocotillo
Something is going on with the abortion stuff. It has been showing up on my Book of Faces feed from wingnuts I have friended. I know the Northam comment spawned some of it but I think now that Bart O’Kavanaugh is seated, they (wingnut media) are getting the PR machine primed up for when the cases start coming to the high court. By 2020, it’s going to be a full throated issue again like immigration is now.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Oh, that’s most excellent news! Good sleuthing.
JanieM
@jacy: I’d tell your daughter to go to the nearest Planned Parenthood office and ask for guidance. They might be able to steer her to someone with more sense.
Shana
@jacy: Eventually the only ones who still believe him will be like the residents of the apartment building erected by El Mystico and Janet.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Dear lord, that’s one tiny step from having somebody play the simulator for him while he watches and yells at them for doing it wrong. Jared?
Major Major Major Major
@Ocotillo: yep. Their long-term project to overturn Roe is nearing completion.
Martin
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah. Look, California has the roadmap for the GND. For the last 40 years we’ve been working on this, with a solid mix of fuck-up and real successes. They should hand the GND to Jerry Brown to draft. I’m not kidding on that. He knows what didn’t work. He knows what did work. He knows the science here – and the scientists. He’s not a profligate spender – he pinches pennies, he looks for remedies that industry won’t like, but won’t bankrupt them. He’s been working with other states and even other countries. CARB knows their shit better than anyone in the US. We know how industry has responded to all of these initiatives, so any claims of ‘oh, that will bankrupt the nation’ you just point to CA and say ‘they did it, and grew economically’.
If there was ever a case of the states being the laboratory of democracy, this is it. We are on track to meet the Paris goals. We fell below 1990 emission levels in 2016 – 4 years ahead of target. Getting to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030 will be really difficult, but we’ve got plans in place.
Here’s the current state of things in terms of emissions by state. CA is 3rd lowest at 9.26 metric tons of CO2 per capita. Our goal is around 5 by 2030. The place we’re having trouble is transportation. Pretty much everything else has a decent roadmap, but transportation is going to hurt. (NY is lower than CA solely because the population center of NY doesn’t rely on cars to get everywhere – that’s how big a problem cars are.)
Seriously, just give the GND to the CA delegation. Dems need to throw their weight behind what we come up with because it’ll be practical and effective.
tobie
@Martin:
I could get on board with this. Gov. “Moonbeam” Brown has a long history in tackling climate change and knows the issue inside out. Al Gore would be another person to tap for this effort.
tobie
@Ocotillo: You’re definitely on to something. That the Virginia executive branch collapse happened right after the SoTU whenTrump spoke in incendiary terms about late term abortion–along the lines of babies being ripped from the womb–makes me think there’s a concerted strategy at play.
Kay
I just love how lazy he is. People put more effort into arguments they have on Twitter than this guy does for his campaign.
Isn’t he the former CEO? What does he do all day? Not “preparing”, that’s for sure.
jc
That anyone at all still falls for Trump’s bullshit on stilts is what’s so disturbing. That there are 60 million all day suckers in this country is scary.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I like that idea.
Kay
@Ocotillo:
I think abortion becomes more important to them with Trump, because they need an issue they feel morally superior on.
I disagree with people who say they “don’t care” about how they’re perceived. They care a lot about moral superiority over liberals. This is the one issue they have left where they feel they can lord it over on liberals. They abandoned everything else in exchange for Donald Trump. I think we’ll see Republicans who were NOT radically anti-abortion become so.
Martin
@jacy: Purely anecdotal, but my wife made the same decision around 24. Really decided. Doctor wouldn’t do it. She and I met that same year, got married 18 months later. She still didn’t want kids. Really decided. 3 years later, we’re up at the Santa Barbara zoo (really nice zoo, if you haven’t been), she sees all the moms pushing strollers around and turns to me and says she wants to have kids. I always wanted kids but stayed quiet figuring she just needed time. We now have two adult kids. I asked her OB about his decision to turn her down in the middle of delivering our first child (we had plenty of waiting time on that one) and he said that a lot of young (particularly single) women that come in for tubals and men for vasectomies are actually torn about the choice to have kids and figure that a non-reversible decision will eliminate the difficulty of the choice. If you think about it, we do that kind of thing in a lot of situations throughout life.
I think cases like my wife are maybe a bit more common than people realize which is why doctors are gun shy about non-reversible means of contraception when there are a number of reversible ones to bridge until a bit later in life.
Not a judgement on whether her decision is final or not, just that the option to change one’s mind is important.
NotMax
@SFAW
I see what you did there, Magister.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: It’s almost like our oligarchs aren’t really the most hardworking, knowledgeable people in America, huh? ;-)
Kay
@Ocotillo:
They have massive corruption, a President who has no personally redeeming qualities, daily lies from his entire team, even deficit-scolding is lost to them.
But they have liberal baby killers. Northam EXECUTED that baby.
chopper
@Ryan:
i love it. dumb shit shuts the government down for 35 days only to take a worse deal than the one he walked away from in the first place.
his utter humiliation is complete.
Martin
@Kay:
I think it’s important because they see their window is closing fast. Let’s be honest here – restricting abortion is only a viable expectation if men are running everything. Sure, there are plenty of women that oppose abortion, but you put a 50/50 mix of women in Congress and on USSC and we’ll have national legislation making abortion legal, making RvW redundant. And 2018 moved us a shitload closer to that kind of a reality. Who are the frontrunners on the Dem side – 4 women and one man (who is very good on abortion rights) and even Republicans aren’t sold on Trump being reelected. Realistically they may only have 18 months to get this done.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I’m pleased they are scared of the Lefty youngs. The Koch’s have an entire new campaign effort focused on scolding youngs about the evils of liberals.
They’re such absolute cream puffs. They meet the slightest resistance and they’re all put-out and pouty.
NotMax
At least all the fetid blechoric* about NATIONAL EMERGENCY seems to have dispersed.
*rhetoric reeking of bullsh*t
Brachiator
@Martin:
With the current Supreme Court, this may be all the time that they need.
Major Major Major Major
@Betty Cracker:
HERETIC! ? ??
Kay
@Martin:
I feel like they don’t have the things they used to tell themselves any more- that they’re frugal and faithful to their spouses and good with a budget. That they’re religious and the “backbone”. Trump took all that away from them. They felt they had it with Bush. He was “A Good Man”. IMO that was HUGELY important to conservatives.
If they can tell themselves it was all worth it “for the babies”, they will. They already are.
TriassicSands
Two years in office have proven beyond any doubt that that Trump’s two primary claims to fame are colossal jokes.
The book “The Art of the Deal” did a lot to spread the idea that Trump was a genius at crafting deals. It is now obvious to anyone other than brain dead KoolAid consumers that Trump has absolutely no idea how to negotiate. Bullying, bluster, and bullshit are not negotiating.
Trump’s reality shows were supposedly based on the idea that Trump was a tough critic and excellent judge of talent and would always hire the best possible people. (Note: I never saw his shows and never will but I have read some about them.)
After two years of the most laughable display of personnel-choosing incompetence, it is clear that Trump is the world’s worst judge of talent, character, and competence. A coin-flipping gerbil could do a better job. He wouldn’t know a good employee, or cabinet secretary, or lawyer…ever…period. The man is an idiot. The only “good”* appointments he’s made have been his court nominees but he has nothing to do with choosing them. He gets the names of radical right wing jurists from The Federalist Society and passes them on. A chimp could do what he does. (Apologies to chimps and gerbils.)
*Note: “good” means they will accomplish the ultra right wing agenda of a Republican Party that has abandoned democracy.
jacy
One of my closest friends was totally against having kids — and she and her husband had been married for 20 years and at 40, she decided she actually did. So i understand the reluctance. But I still think if someone makes the decision, they should be allowed to do it. Cate has a lot of experience with kids (She has much younger siblings, and she has been platonically domestically partnered with her best friend for the last four years, being the other parent to her two children, and she’s been a teacher for two years), she doesn’t even know if she could share her life with a significant other.
And speaking of her best friend (and I am NOT judging, just making the observation) she is 26. and has a 5-year-old and an 8-year-old, who were both unplanned pregnancies (she was never seriously involved with either father, and one father has nothing to do with his child, while she is in a constant custody battle with the other father). She has tried for two years to find a doctor in Louisiana who would do a tubal ligation and was told she would have to wait until 30. Guess what? She has another unplanned pregnancy. This time she’s getting married, but is it just because she’s pregnant? Who can tell.
Yarrow
@Kay:
So true! It’s why I don’t worry too much about a massive, organized armed violence campaign by the wingnuts. They’re wimps. They back down when you challenge them. Trump’s just like them. I’m glad to see Dems are starting to figure this out.
Joy in FL
I like the new icon on the faux president’s Twitter feed : )
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Brachiator:
If the conservatives know what’s good for them, they won’t do that.
bemused
@Kay:
“all put-out and pouty” is a perfect description of rightwingers! Why doesn’t everyone see how awesome I am. Whine, whine whine.
MisterForkbeard
@Martin: I have friends with similar experiences. I know three women who were dead set on never having children, for moral, practical, or personal reasons. They did ask a doctor for sterilizing treatments while in their early 20s and were turned down. We were all pretty pissed about it at the time.
15 or so years later, two of them changed their minds and have kids. The 3rd doesn’t, and she eventually got her treatment. But I can definitely see doctors not wanting to perform permanent procedures on men or women when a reversible procedure is possible.
chopper
@TriassicSands:
also, trump’s ‘dealmaking’ in the private sector involved burning every person he deals with. here he comes back to the same guys he burned before and he gets gornisht.
ixnay
@jacy: Interestingly, our then-28 son had no problem getting a vasectomy. (My mantra: I will never ever ask you when I will be a grandmother.)
Tazj
@Ocotillo: The conservatives I know have gone absolutely crazy over the NY Reproductive Health Act and Northam’s comments.
It makes me so angry that Trump’s comments about abortion at his last rally have received very little push back from the media, about how difficult these pregnancies are. I’d like to see more OB/GYN’s on television commenting about fetal anomalies, preterm births and the difficult choices parents have to make than pundits applauding Trump scoring political because of his lies.
When I heard Northam’s comments I knew exactly what he meant. I suppose it would have been better if he would have said that it was ridiculous question and no doctor would do an abortion while a woman was in labor. Instead he just explained what actually does happen when a woman gives birth too early or to a baby with severe fetal anomalies. Parents do get to decide whether they will resuscitate or not, and what measures will be taken to prolong life or not. There is such a thing as comfort care and perinatal hospice for infants.
Some of these conservatives are just blissfully ignorant, but many conservatives are exploiting other’s suffering for political gain and the media is doing nothing to educate people otherwise.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: Neither actually. He is more like an obnoxious troll, who says provocative things. The charlatan has a PhD in econ from Harvard.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay@Yarrow: : Agreed. They wilt when you stand up to them and complain about how mean you are.
Gravenstone
@randy khan: Saw that headline yesterday and knew hit had to be Cillizza. No fucking way did I click through then, or now. Fuck giving them hits for such base stupidity.
Steve in the ATL
@gene108:
Tax cut and judges
Gravenstone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Or walking…
pat
Don’t forget that 80% of evangelicals voted for trump and it was primarily because of abortion.
One of my (former) best friends was one of them.
geg6
@Keith P:
Oh good god, please. The Wire by millions of miles.
MagdaInBlack
@jacy:
Its been so for a very long time: neither my husband or I wanted children ( and this was in 1980) and could not find anyone who would accommodate our wishes.
It is considered impossible for someone to actually NOT want children, and to this day ( Im 60) I still get grief for the decision.
I am kind of amazed this is still an issue.
I do wish her luck in her search.
Kay
Spouse of the White House communications director.
We have low quality elites. They’re dumb. Really rich, but dumb as fucking rocks. I don’t know if it’s poor parenting or bad but expensive private schools, but it’s a crisis.
geg6
@MagdaInBlack:
Yep, I couldn’t get a doctor to give me a tubal. Ever. I tried for over twenty years. Then I gave up. Never married. Never had kids. Don’t have one ounce of regret. OTOH, I know literally dozens of women who had kids who regret it. Not that they don’t love their kids, but they didn’t have the lives they wished they’d had and now never will.
It goes both ways. Perhaps we should stop women from getting pregnant, too, because they might regret it. This is some really stupid conversation we’re having here about women’s decisions about what to do with their bodies. As much as the fundies are out front about their patronizing attitude about women, it seems from this thread that some liberals are just hiding their own. But not as well as they think they are.
sukabi
@Kay: you forgot the giant hole he’d make in your driveway and yard preventing you from using it PRIOR to any deal.
Because you know that asshole will do about anything.
J R in WV
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
My wife had her tubal ligation in the mid-70s in her 20s. Her ob-gyn was an old crusty guy who also took out her appendix while in there, no extra doctor charges. No kids wanted – her mom was a narcissist and her dad was a binge alcoholic, so her parenting skills from her family were non-existent.
Steve in the ATL
@schrodingers_cat: I remember back when I was young and naive and I was actually impressed with Harvard alumni. A couple of decades of interacting with them in the professional world and…not so impressed.
zhena gogolia
@geg6:
Ask me about my colleague who said in front of me, knowing that I have no children, to a colleague who just had a child, “You don’t really feel like a woman until you’ve given birth, do you?”
Betty Cracker
@geg6:
And not only might THEY regret it, they might ruin other lives by being a really shitty parent. You’re right; it’s a stupid conversation.
@zhena gogolia: What a fucking idiot that woman was.
eemom
@zhena gogolia:
Oh sure, you don’t feel like a woman until you’ve been the funnel squeezed through by a basketball. ?
James E Powell
@TaMara (HFG):
He is probably right. Or they may notice but not care because Cleek’s Law.
Uncle Cosmo
This has probably been said upthread but I don’t have time to look:
The Emperor Tang does indeed “get his kicks” doing deals – but his “kicks” come directly from being able to fuck over the small contractors foolish enough to sign contracts to do work for him & think that anything in those contracts unfavorable to Cheetoh Benito would be honored. He’s got bigger & better lawyers, he can throw delay after delay into the process till you go bankrupt, & if necessary he can send around the goons (Mafiya with/without the “y”) to throw bricks through the windows, set the office on fire, ambush you in a dark alley with baseball bats, etc. etc. etc.
What grieves me about the 60 million Trumpanzees is that for the most part they are the precise sort of people Needy Amin loves to fuck over, & yet… It’s like “if I tell Bad Daddy how much I love him, maybe he won’t heat the belt buckle over the burner before he beats me with it.” JFC.
MagdaInBlack
@zhena gogolia:
My MIL told me I would never know what it is to be a woman, if I did not have a child.
This is the brainwashing we deal with.
James E Powell
@tobie:
FDR’s New Deal was a set of vaguely defined, lofty goals with no specifics whatsoever on how to reduce unemployment.
Wherever we are going, we ought to start with lofty goals. Reality is the second act.
Betty Cracker
@eemom: My husband said it was like watching a St. Bernard squeeze through a cat door. It was no fun being that cat door!
Ceci7
@geg6: Yes. And as long as we’re sharing anecdotes: I encountered that reluctance from doctors (re hysterectomy, not tubal ligation) when seeking relief from endometriosis. Ability to become pregnant (regardless of desire for same) > actual quality of life, or so many medical professionals seem to believe.
jackmac
@Brachiator: I’ll add this simple bumper sticker (as posted elsewhere today): “Trump stole my tax refund”
TerryC
@tobie:
Perhaps it’s to counterbalance the expected information coming out about the abortions Trump has paid for? Except, this might make the environment amongst the right conducive to greater anger at Trump about it?
TerryC
@Steve in the ATL: “I remember back when I was young and naive and I was actually impressed with Harvard alumni. A couple of decades of interacting with them in the professional world and…not so impressed.”
I was offered a full ride at Harvard for graduate school as well as other schools. I visited each one day incognito and the second official.
After the unofficial day at Harvard (1973) I told my wife that I could never go there.
She asked, “Why.”
I responded: “This place would turn me into an asshole.”
chopper
@James E Powell:
i wouldn’t say the original new deal was so vaguely defined. they came in pushing for social security, unemployment, a jobs program, workers’ comp, a forty-hour workweek, a minimum wage, and ending child labor. among others.
the bills hadn’t been written yet, but many of those are specific ideas. the bills started pouring out pretty quickly; fdr’s first 100 days were pretty solid with bills.
debbie
Betty, love your embellishment of Trump’s profile pic!
Amir Khalid
@Elizabelle:
Don’t know if you’ll even see this reply, it’s so late. But no, that paunch on Bale is the real thing. He is very Method about these things, and he put on the weight for real.
debbie
@Amir Khalid:
Hopefully, you’re still here. Did you see Bale in The Mechanic? He dropped down to 115 pounds. When he took his shirt off, he looked positively anorexic.