The story about Trump’s proposed immigrant-dumping in so-called “sanctuary cities” broke last night. Unless a rogue drone snatches the clump of hair off Trump’s noggin, or Javanka are exposed as masterminds of a global kitten-pelt purveying ring, or “acting” WH Chief of Staff Mulvaney discards his skin suit to reveal himself as a razor-toothed alien life form (not scenarios that can be discounted in this administration), that story deserves wall-to-wall media play. From The Post:
White House proposed releasing immigrant detainees in sanctuary cities, targeting political foes
White House officials have tried to pressure U.S. immigration authorities to release detainees onto the streets of “sanctuary cities” to retaliate against President Trump’s political adversaries, according to Department of Homeland Security officials and email messages reviewed by The Washington Post.
Trump administration officials have proposed transporting detained immigrants to sanctuary cities at least twice in the past six months — once in November, as a migrant caravan approached the U.S. southern border, and again in February, amid a standoff with Democrats over funding for Trump’s border wall.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s district in San Francisco was among those the White House wanted to target, according to DHS officials. The administration also considered releasing detainees in other Democratic strongholds.
It’s outrageous on so many levels. First, there’s the basic indecency of a proposal to transport frightened, desperate people to distant cities and dump them like so many stray dogs. We rightly revile and criminally charge people who treat unwanted pets this way, and here’s the White House pressuring federal agencies to do this to human beings.
It’s particularly scandalous considering that Trump demonizes immigrants constantly, routinely portraying asylum-seekers and immigrant detainees as murderous gang members bent on marauding through our streets in search of young blond women to rape and kill.
So, if we take Trump at his word about the character of the people in our custody, Trump tried to loose violent criminals on unsuspecting populations for the crime of electing Democrats. By his own lights, that’s a direct violation of Trump’s duty to protect U.S. citizens — all of us, not just MAGA chuds.
It’s also important to remember that this is consistent with Trump’s other actions to wage war on non-supporters. There’s the Trump administration’s absolutely catastrophic failure to assist fellow Americans who live in Puerto Rico, contrasted with Trump’s March 4th tweet about Alabama:
FEMA has been told directly by me to give the A Plus treatment to the Great State of Alabama and the wonderful people who have been so devastated by the Tornadoes.
That tweet barely caused a blip in the media, despite the clear implication that the POTUS personally directs which grade of “treatment” devastated communities receive in the wake of natural disasters from the taxpayer-funded organization charged with assisting ALL Americans.
Then there are the provisions in that plutocratic grab-bag of a tax bill that specifically target people in blue states by imposing property tax caps, which will eventually have the effect of tanking local education budgets.
There’s also the citizenship question ruse in the proposed U.S. Census questionnaire, which was designed to reduce the headcount and political power of states like California and New York. There’s the lowering of auto emission standards to depress green job growth. The list goes on.
The Republican presidents I personally have clear memories of include Reagan, Bush I and Bush II. They were all terrible. But all at least gave lip service to the notion that they had a duty to serve all Americans.
Their awful policies harmed huge groups of voters, including minorities, women, the disabled, young people, etc. But I can’t recall them obsessing over maps and drawing up plans to surgically strike back at entire regions of the country that gave electoral votes to an opponent.
It’s outrageous, and it’s a danger to the country. But this is the Trump administration, so I guess it’s just Friday.
Cheryl Rofer
Well said, Betty! Here’s my quick take from last night.
NotMax
Municipalities on the west coast at one time were buying one way plane tickets for the homeless to Hawaii. Dunno if that is still an active policy.
OzarkHillbilly
Repost from previous thread because it addresses this point so well: New Government Data Shows Trump Wanted to Close the Wrong Border
tamiasmin
The only good thing to be said about this administration is that there are still some people in it who are resisting the worst excesses of the man at the top. For now.
Immanentize
@NotMax:
That reminds me of the “bus to Georgia.” Miami and other southern Florida cities would round up homeless people and bus them north to Atlanta. Atlanta started busing them back….
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
This is who he is. This is all he is. The only things that drive him are greed and sadism. He’s the sickest politician this country has coughed up in 100 years.
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax: It is a common practice (or so I’ve read) for municipalities in FL to buy bus tickets to distant towns for their homeless.
Boris, Rasputin's Evil Twin
Amazing, a think tank of Jackals working for weeks couldn’t come up with anything half as dickish as the Tangerine Ballsac can invent in seconds. Shows us something of the level of evil in the man.
Paul W.
We also have Trump’s sickening ban of transgendered troops kicking in today, a furtherance of deeming them “non persons”, as well as Barr and the DoJ no longer enforcing federal laws against female genital mutilation (https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/1116468093931458562).
If people don’t recognize we are on a path that leads to Germany circa the 1930’s as Hitler broke down internal resistance to create the full blown Nazi monstrosity of 39 then they are part of the problem.
Roger Moore
I don’t think this is the way Trump and his base will see it. Their basic attitude is “if you like asylum seekers so much, you take care of them”. It’s one more way of owning the libtards, and the people who already love him will see it that way. I would hope you’re right and it will get a lot of negative play in the media, but I expect to be disappointed.
Betty
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): And sadly he has too many enablers around him – Miller, Barr, even Rosenstein, it seems.
Immanentize
And speaking about war against the blue people, Georgia’s new Ethics Chief (a republican donor and Kemp supporter) is subpoenaing Abrams’ campaign financials….
ETA. And I was once told “blue lives matter.”
OzarkHillbilly
@Immanentize: beat me to it. Sick minds and all that.
Turner Hedenkoff
When it comes to trolling, this administration is the absolute best, A-1, tip-top. With everything else, they could fuck up a baked potato.
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly: I’m in good company here.
Joe Falco
The forced transfer of human lives to unknown places has been an American tradition since the time of our nation’s founding so that’s one conservative “value” Trump has no problem upholding. Take that, libtards!
One other point: What’s stopping some of these same cities who treat homelessness as a problem that can be bussed out to be someone else’s problem (e.g. San Francisco and NYC) from doing the same to a group of people that are in a more vulnerable position?
Mark
A desperate move by a loser that can’t get his way on immigration. So much winning!
OzarkHillbilly
@Immanentize: Jackals, one and all.
donnah
I’m proud to live in a Sanctuary city and would not have a problem with more immigrants coming in. The point is, Trump and undoubtedly Stephen Miller would have used it as a thumb in the eye to largely Democratic populations, and the idea of using human beings as game pieces in a sick strategy makes me heartsick and furious.
It’s not new to welcome immigrants to specific cities. I can remember a large influx of Vietnamese people coming to our town in the 1970’s, sponsored by local churches. I am saddened by the vitriol and hate being leveled at people who are desperate to survive. Cruelty is not the answer.
khead
Just an FYI, but the RWNJ’s think this is a GREAT idea. It’s right up there with the argument “why do you have a fence on YOUR property if you are ok with people going where ever they want?”
chopper
these fuckers can’t keep track of asylum-seeking kids 10 miles from the border, they’re sure gonna do a great job after sending them to chicago.
trnc
All dem candidates need to state explicitly in every speech and interview that their policies will help all voters including the ones who don’t vote for them, and that none of their policies are designed to hurt people who disagree with them ideologically. Say it three times in every speech. Regardless of the outsize amount of news made by racists, this will appeal to a large majority of voters, and it has the benefit of being true.
MattF
All true, although since paying the Blue State tax premium (last week), I’m so unsurprised that I could fall over right here. I’ll note that this ‘make them pay for it’ policy isn’t just Trump/Miller, it’s just a slight intensification of the usual ratfucking.
rikyrah
Not that this surprised me, because nothing surprises me with these folks. If it’s rotten and evil, they’ve considered doing it.
Duane
If the citizenship question is on the census form it needs a good ratfucking. Everyone claim to be a citizen. Give them numbers that are useless. Don’t help this illegitimate administration. Resist.
trnc
@trnc: Missed the edit window for the last comment, but wanted to add this – These speeches should include statements that some Trump policies are designed to hurt certain citizens and vulnerable people, but NOT statements about Trump voters. At all.
Kylroy
“…this will appeal to a large majority of voters, and it has the benefit of being true.”
Well, I *half* agree with you. If improving everyone’s lives appealed to a majority of voters, we wouldn’t have the modern GOP.
randy khan
This is a reminder that Trump believes a lot of his lies – I’m sure he’s convinced that people who cross the border without authorization (or at least the ones who cross the southern border) are desperate violent criminals, despite all evidence to the contrary, and that therefore dumping detainees in sanctuary cities will cause pain for the people who live in them. He probably also believes that the detainees will immediately start getting welfare, food stamps, and Medicaid.
One more reminder that we need to do whatever we can to defeat him in 2020. Not that we needed it.
Bruce K
@Kylroy: I’ve noticed a disturbing trend recently of the GOP wielding power despite not having the support of a majority of voters. I mean, we’ve got the worst President since Jefferson Davis in the White House despite the fact that he trailed Hillary Clinton by three million votes.
Jay C
I think it’s a case of “assuming facts not in evidence” to consider that anyone in power in the White House actually views asylum-seekers and/or any would-be immigrant as actual “human beings” in the first place*. At best, they’re seen as dehumanized abstractions, faceless members of a “horde” or “swarm” of “illegals”. And this Administration rarely does or sees anything (Melania’s idiot campaign notwithstanding) “at best”.
*except, of course, for “investors” who can buy their way into residency: those they’re fine with.
Mike in NC
Our domestic policy comes from a moron whose greatest influences are Sean Hannity and Stephen Miller.
trnc
@randy khan: I was thinking the same thing. It wouldn’t really hurt the cities the way he thinks it would, and it would undermine any arguments his admin makes about immigration policy, likely making it harder for even DT friendly federal judges to rationalize bad faith rulings.
Evil Paul
My first thought is to put those asylum seekers right back on a bus and send them to a Red State. Preferably one of the ones that doesn’t actually have an economy without government handouts. Then reality kicks in and I remember these are human beings we’re talking about. That’s the thing that’s really sickening, in my opinion. The fact that Trump is happy to play ping pong with literal human lives, knowing full well that the people he’s attacking are too decent to reply in kind. It’s like the High School bully shoving the school Janitor, knowing the Janitor can’t legally shove him back.
Also, someone needs to be asking Trump exactly what he means by A+ treatment. Why does FEMA need to be told to give A+ treatment to any American State? Doesn’t that apply to everyone? We already know the answer, but we need to keep driving the point home.
Emma
@Kylroy: Actually the majority of voters elected Hillary Clinton. Ratf_king by the Russians and voter suppression did the rest.
Ohio Mom
Meanwhile, we Red states are emboldened and inspired to screw ourselves over without any outside help.
Today’s — or maybe more accurately, yesterday’s — example is the draconian anti-abortion “heartbeat” bill Ohio’s new governor signed into law. No exceptions, not even for rape or incest. If a women with an unwanted pregnancy doesn’t act before two weeks after her period was due, no legal procedure for her.
It’s the same bill that Kasich vetoed twice because he said it would only lead to an expensive court case. Not that he didn’t sign other anti-abortion legislation.
All the obvious reasons why this is an awful reason aside, Ohio is already losing population, especially younger people. Our population skews older.
This isn’t going to do anything for our image and our attractiveness to all the factors that bring growth and economic development. We are busy downward-spiraling.
hueyplong
They are who they thought they were.
The two things that sustain a modicum of optimism are (1) their substandard level of competence and (2) the sure and certain hope that those close to Trump are invariably poisoned and destroyed.
Brachiator
This is stupid on so many levels. But a tiny part of me says that this would be better than indefinite detention and family separation.
It also has a hint of Br’er Rabbit. “You want me to go back to my home country? Please don’t throw me in that sanctuary city over there!”
This is bullshit. There is no reason to take Trump at his word over this.
James E Powell
@Roger Moore:
Agree completely. And the press/media will continue with their standard coverage of Trump: “Look what Trump did! Isn’t he something?” Cable shows will have two people come on. One to argue that it’s an outrage, the other to argue that it’s what the libtard cities deserve and Trump is the greatest president ever.
rikyrah
@chopper:
But, they can keep track of pregnant immigrants menstrual cycles.
Peale
@donnah: if I remember right, though, in 2014 busloads of children were met with protesters. Even though this is a nasty policy, it would probably be effective at getting pressure placed on local governments to drop sanctuary laws by overwhelming them with homelessness. Lots of voters live in sanctuary cities who aren’t even aware of it. The point is to get rid of those laws. There will be local voters flipping out and they might be mad at the sheriff and councilmen more than Trump
patrick II
The lip service meant nothing and they were probably more dangerous. Bush 43’s election was a fraud. It was under Bush 43 that the justice department that Monica Goodling sent in her report of which U.S. attorneys supported Bush politically. They fired the rest, including among them David Iglesias who was let go because because he had not indicted a democratic nominee before the election.
The effort to hold down minority vote, the voter ID plan hatched under Bush and Karl Rove. Republican media started pounding the drum about improper voters, republican u.s. attorneys were looking for cases of voter fraud, the republicans judges did their part by finding that about thirty voter fraud cases spread over ten years and the entire united states was good enough to remove voting rights for hundreds of thousands of voters unlikely to vote republican. Not to mention Citizens United.
And if this category is for disaster relief victims only, look no further than the thousands of people held up in the superdome for a week while the Bush administration could not find a way to get in one truck of clean water.
I am not sure Bush, actually Karl Rove and Cheney, weren’t more dangerous than Trump, just more circumspect in their partisanship. They moved us well down the road to where we are now. So their lip service to all Americans was denied by facts on the ground. Well, except for brown baby kidnapping, I’ll grant you Bush didn’t do that one.
waspuppet
From Splinter:
And the obvious counter-argument, if we even need one, is that when Trump starts a war, let’s only send troops from states that voted for him, and rejigger the federal tax rates specifically for those states so they can pay for it.
James E Powell
@Mark:
Trump does get his way on immigration in this sense. It is still the flashing red light that obscures everything else his administration is doing. It is still the issue that animates his supporters and binds them to him and the Republicans. It is still the press/media-approved way to express white supremacy.
Tenar Arha
I keep thinking about boys, & their toys. There’s a metaphor here for the nastiest of this administration having tantrums, ruining friendships, & driving away the people who could help them accomplish their goals. Or something. I haven’t quite figured out how to put it together.
Maybe because it feels like they’re trying to punish “blue” states with the things they think are absolutely terrible, the things that are terrifying to them. It doesn’t properly hurt us, it just pisses us off and makes more people push back. I forget the name of the fallacy this is, but it’s like the ability to mirror & understand others’ motives is atrophied. (Yeah yeah everybody makes this mistake, but what happens when you’ve been deliberately suppressing the empathy that helps us all do this?)
Barbara
You know, it’s really stupid to think of “Blue” states this way because unlike the bevy of low population red states, most “blue” states are large population states that have a significant number of congressional Republicans. Texas and Georgia are probably the highest population red states, but California, New York, Illinois, and New Jersey are among the highest population blue states, and as I kept pointing out, before 2018, they had between them close to the 26 Republican members that were the difference in who controlled the chamber. Add swing states like Pennsylvania or Virginia or Florida and after a while, you’re just cannibalizing your own power. Which, hey, is fine with me, but it highlights the extreme myopia of Trump and his inability to figure out the nature of the government and the country he governs, God help us all.
rikyrah
DEMONS!!!
Workers find 27 possible human GRAVES at notorious Florida reform school for boys where children were ‘locked in chains, beaten and sexually abused’ – taking potential number of burials at the site to more than EIGHTY
Possible human graves have been discovered at the shuttered Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Florida
Department of Environmental Protection workers found disturbed soil while preparing to clean up fuel storage 500 feet adjacent to Boot Hill Cemetery
Finding could put the figure of people buried in the vicinity up to 82
The 27 possible graves are on north side of campus, where African-American boys were buried when the school was segregated
The school’s own records show that more than 50 children were buried on the grounds, while more than 30 other bodies were sent elsewhere to be buried
A 2009 investigation report by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement found there were 81 school-related deaths of students from 1911 to 1973
A later report in 2012 put the death toll at 98
Governor Ron DeSantis wrote in an April 10 letter to Jackson County Chairman Clint Pate that agencies were looking at ‘best course of action’
By DAILYMAIL.COM REPORTER
PUBLISHED: 00:37 EDT, 12 April 2019 | UPDATED: 09:05 EDT, 12 April 2019
FlipYrWhig
I write versions of this everywhere — it’s kinda my thing — but it’s clear to me that Trump thinks migration by Spanish-speakers to America follows the pattern of the Mariel boatlift, to wit, that shady foreign governments are dumping mental patients and hardened criminals on foolish, naive Uncle Sam. That scenario colors every last thing he says about migrants and asylum-seekers from every country (and he doesn’t really understand either that there are different countries Down There). This is what he thinks happens. My theory is that he remembers the new coverage from the Carter administration, then saw Scarface, and then since deciding to run for president Fox News and the fascists among the border guards keep telling him urban legends that confirm his already deep-seated bias. I mean, he never changes his mind and never learns anything even under the _best_ circumstances, but this is the particular reason for this particular fable to be so securely fastened in his skull.
Brachiator
The cap is on state and local income taxes. I cannot find the old reference on this, but the Trump administration wants to force blue states like California and New York to conform to federal law and reduce or even eliminate state income taxes. The fantasy is that people would see how much lower their federal taxes were and demand similar reform at the state level.
Of course, the new tax law also repealed the ability of teachers to include some of their expenses as itemized deductions.
And the potentially biggest hit on public education is the expansion of plans that would let parents save up for kids who go to private K-12 schools. Previously, these plans let kids use these funds for college. Here the Trump administration is underwriting segregation academies.
Barbara
@FlipYrWhig: That just adds to the evidence for my thesis that Trump stopped imbibing new information in or around 1980. It explains a lot of how he sees the world, that’s for sure. It’s also why he appeals to people who look back on those years — basically, 1960-1980 — as the heyday of their own lives.
Barbara
@Brachiator: My husband finally noticed that our taxes are going up because of the cap. He’s pissed.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Trump thinks he is running an hotel.
FlipYrWhig
@waspuppet:
Yes.
Alternatively, he wanted blue-city politicians to have to explain why they were upset at this, so that he could then say “bwahaha we knew you didn’t REALLY want to live around a bunch of scary mud people, in your face, libs!”
FlipYrWhig
@Barbara: Agreed. And it’s NYC specific, too. It’s that whole Kitty Genovese-Death Wish-Bernhard Goetz-Central Park Jogger arc.
khead
@FlipYrWhig:
This. As I said earlier, it’s not even the alternative option. They think they are straight up owning the libs.
Brachiator
@FlipYrWhig:
He doesn’t believe this. He just knows that he can tell any lie he wants and it will be sucked up by his supporters, reinforced by his staff and the GOP leadership, and given a cursory nod by the press.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Roger Moore:
One thing that we won’t see is the anti-immigration people asking the obvious – so what is stopping these people from just leaving those cities for the Red States were their labor is in demand? Do they imagine the US government has check points at the city limits like in Escape from New York?
Raoul
Betty, your post title is not over the top. Sadly.
I strongly recommend George Packer’s Atlantic cover piece (could be a good Long Reads post in the next few days, FPers?)
The gist is, we should be looking to the ethnic fuckedupedness of the Balkans for the roadmap of how Trump is operating.
I went to Hungary, Serbia and Croatia almost a year ago. I had been thinking our MAGA crap was styled after Victor Orban, but now it seems Packer has constructed a convincing argument that what Miller, Gorka, etc are fashioning is the preamble to Bosnian-style feudalism, cronyism and, if necessary, ethnic civil war (or straight up atrocities).
Thinking “it can’t happen here” will not save us. Decades of the rich ripping all of us off has made the politics of our country so mercurial and unstable that I’m not at all sure it cannot.
The way the social order collapsed so quickly in the Balkans so that neighbor murdered neighbor over ethnic & religious identities is shocking. It also happened very quickly between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda, that rapid inflammation and mass killing.
I’m sorry to be so dark. But the people in Trump’s orbit are evil, and they are using a very, very deadly playbook in my view.
Steve in the ATL
@Immanentize: ethics in Georgia politics? Lol!
Now if you’ll excuse me, there is golf to watch….
FlipYrWhig
@Brachiator: No, I’m sure he believes it. It’s one of the few things he *actually* believes: that foreigners are taking advantage of soft-hearted American do-gooders.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Brachiator:
I think it’s more accurate to say Trump believes these lies like his base. This isn’t like say the Bush’s who knew better but cynically exploiting the GOP Base’s idiocy, Trump is one of those idiots.
Ruckus
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
QFT
I’m not sure he’s the sickest. He’s the sickest with the most power for sure. But there are some sick motherfuckers in the republican party.
Raoul
Oh, and about that natural disaster aid. Trump is just saying bluntly what the GOP has believed for years. Look at how red state congress critters voted on relief aid to NJ et all after hurricane Sandy.
It was gross and wrong then, but now it’s being done administratively, a la strongman patronage. Huh.
VeniceRiley
I’m sick to my stomach at this. It’s so … how do people take paying jobs to do this to children and then show their face in church on Sunday?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/11-year-old-ordered-deported-without-her-family/ar-BBVQZaK?ocid=spartanntp
Brachiator
This signals to Trump’s base that he really really cares about America, and that Puerto Rico is, after all, one of those Mexican countries.
different-church-lady
“Allowing people we don’t want to come into the country to come in to the country to OWN THE LIBS!!!”
This must be the part of comic book where you go, “Wait, why are Batman and Superman enemies, this shit doesn’t make any sense!”
jon
I live in Tucson, and I’m not sure if this is a sanctuary city or a “Sanctuary City” or is just plain welcoming to immigrants. When we heard detained children were in our midst at various facilities in town, drives for clothing, books, translators, toys, and other things were held. Then the children were moved elsewhere. Texas, I think.
The thing the Trump Administration would fear is a community welcoming immigrants with housing, food, jobs, and other assistance. Our community does that now with Syrians, Somalis, Nepali, Sudanese, and other immigrants. We’d do just as well with Guatemalans, Honduran, Salvadoran, and others. There are a lot of empty homes in my midtown neighborhood. We’re not full. Not even close.
debbie
I think this, more than almost anything else, shows Trump’s true nature.
Jay C
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Well, inasmuch as these sort of policies are tailored to appeal to the most simpleminded prejudices of the RW audience, they probably assume:
1. That those immigrants who are violent criminals (the majority of them) won’t dare venture into Real America ™ for fear of being Second-Amendmented in a heartbeat.
2. The violent criminals will want to stay in the cities to rob, rape and murder the dumb disarmed libtards who will then just make excuses for them.
3. The handful who aren’t violent criminals will want to stay in the cities to mooch off the over-generous welfare giveways the dumb libtard blue-states invariable offer to “illegals”.
NOTE: this isn’t completely a satire: one can find arguments along these lines on any RW blog….
Brachiator
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Bullshit.
Trump is a grifter who knows how to play his base. He knows how to rile them up, and knows that a great deal of his success lies in ramping up and exploiting their fears. And in creating fear where there was none before.
On top of this, Trump is a stone racist who believes that all Hispanics will inevitably degenerate into criminals and rapists even if they are not criminals right now. Except maybe for those Hispanics he use to employ at his hotels and other properties. Or maybe they were criminals and rapists, but you know, Trump could keep them under control with the strength of his mighty whiteness.
Ruckus
@Bruce K:
In Trump’s tiny, demented, broken mind those 3 million votes don’t count, didn’t happen and were illegal. Actually in his tiny, demented, broken mind, every democratic vote doesn’t count, didn’t happen and was illegal. He doesn’t think he won by anything other than a resounding win of every vote. Sort of like his admired dictators win their elections by.
Ruckus
@Mike in NC:
Considering said moron, it could be said that Hannity and Miller are actually the responsible morons in charge.
brantl
It was only lip service. Trump, while a total douchebag, is infrequently, honest.
Raoul
The timing of the leak about the Sanctuary City immigrant release program is also a warning.
Much as I despised Nielsen as she ran the family separation disaster and lied repeatedly about it, I assume she was fired for refusing illegal things like this Milleresque horror.
The warning is that the next head of DHS will be much more pliant.
trollhattan
@Barbara:
We’re getting craphammered–combination of loss of deductions, cap on state and local taxes and fees and the fvcked-up federal withholding schedules. Yeah, an under-withholding penalty is our plutonium cherry on top.
brantl
@Mark:
You forgot the ‘h’ and added an ‘n’.
Baud
The important thing is that y’all remember to remain civil.
trollhattan
@Ruckus:
Why are we leaving Little Tucker out of this list? He needs to be on it as well.
different-church-lady
@Brachiator: You’re both right and wrong at the same time: Trump’s “beliefs”, if you can even call them that, are most heavily influenced by whatever will get him adoration. He is a convincing con man because he has the ability to believe his own bullshit. And the bullshit he chooses to believe is bullshit that his base is already predisposed to get riled by. It’s a feedback loop. The more riled they get, the more attention he gets for riling them, the more easy it is for his warped, damaged brain to believe the crazy shit his supporters believe.
ETA: …which he was also already predisposed to believe.
Martin
@Cheryl Rofer: That’s my take as well. I’m happy to take as many immigrants as want to come here. CA has 10s of millions of them, what’s a few thousand more.
But the outrageous part of this to me is the targeting of government policy based on politics. In CA we’ve suspected that Trumps policies are directly tied to how the state voted. Pulling emergency funds from the state, how the tax plan raises taxes in blue states, attacks on environmental policy which seem to be influenced by CAs direct actions. This just confirms it.
And the GOP better the fuck consider the consequences if this norm of governance falls away, because it’s going to be fuck-all easy for President Harris to rain economic hellfire on the red states.
oatler.
Well, they fired on Ft Sumter . Where do we go from here?
different-church-lady
@oatler.: The problem is Jefferson Davis is in the White House.
cliosfanboy
I remember back to LBJ. So add Nixon to the list. I think Ford was the least bad of the repubs that I remember.
Hoodie
Was watching interview with Tony Blair this morning on Morning Joke (yeah, I know). The discussion turned to about how those over 65 overwhelmingly supported Brexit because of resentments about economic displacement and immigration, but that younger Britons overwhelmingly want to stay in the EU. Blair went on to argue that, because this split, progressive politicians have to balance the desires of the young with appealing to the generally older voters who fall for things like Brexit, even though acknowledging that the Brexit offered in the referendum was a fairytale Brexit and that now the cockup is that real Brexit isn’t necessarily all that great and reveals the UK’s fundamental devolution from a world power to something far less than that. My son spent the last year in Paris, and he noted that just about every young educated person he encountered speaks English, so it’s a mystery to me why the British – particularly the English – would want to leave the EU and try to go it alone as a relatively small, resource-limited country. They’ve got a natural cultural hegemony Europe and, if they were smart, they should try to take advantage of it, especially since the US has abdicated the role of being the major anglophone influencer in Europe.
I guess one thing that should bother about you such a discussion is the need to appeal to the irrational emotional needs of people who have one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. Old folks (like me) can be great when we can provide actual wisdom born of experience, but can be pretty useless or even destructive when wallowing in nostalgia or resentment. Stupid people are still stupid when they get older, and getting old often makes even smart people nostalgic or bitter because they often don’t feel all that well, don’t have the energy to take on new things and are more cognizant of their own mortality (oddly enough, that tangentially came up in the conversation with Blair).
cliosfanboy
@trollhattan: yep. I usually look forward to a refund. This year we owed. Not a lot, but Virginia hurt more than federal due to some weirdness in the state tax laws. #@!÷×@#
Brachiator
@hueyplong:
I don’t understand why this would reassure anyone.
I remember getting into some heated conversations with smugly complacent Westside (Los Angeles) liberals who seemed to take great pleasure in remarking on how dumb Dubya was. It really seemed important to them to point the degree to which they were his betters. This was before 911 and Iraq and Katrina and the financial meltdown.
Trump may be incompetent, but he is still wreaking havoc, and is protected by the GOP leadership. People are hurt by what Trump does. And he may lead us into greater disasters.
rikyrah
@Barbara:
Another blue stater who will be paying this year. That’s why I didn’t even bother to print them out until this morning.
Hoodie
@rikyrah: Blue staters are not the only victims. There are plenty of professional/managerial types in places like NC that are getting hit as well. This is also hitting blue enclaves in places with high wages or high property values.
Patricia Kayden
I know that Pelosi has said otherwise but Trump has done more than enough to be impeached. I see no downside in the House initiating such procedures. We have a racist thug in the White House and impeachment proceedings in the House would focus Americans on his criminality.
SFAW
@Immanentize: @OzarkHillbilly:
JHC, get a room, you two!
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
Wasn’t forming a complete list of shitheads, just responding to a comment.
If you want the complete list it will take a while to compile.
Brachiator
@different-church-lady:
I’ve seen a few petty and not so petty criminals up close, and I think that many of them are coldly amoral. They don’t believe in anything except their own need to succeed. They see a world composed of cops, competitors, nobodies (most people) and their marks. They quickly size up what the marks want and the easiest way to get money from them. But they don’t in any way respect their marks or give a shit what they believe. But people like Trump know how to focus in on the marks’ fears, desires and wants. He understands their beliefs so that he can cultivate dependency. But this is not the same thing at all as sharing their beliefs. Trump pretends to give the marks what they want, but he is ultimately in it for whatever serves him.
Remember that over the years, Trump has been a Democrat, an Independent and a Republican. He used to be “friends” with the Clintons. Did he believe in them back then, but change his mind? I doubt it.
The only thing that is remotely “real” about Trump are his hatreds and resentments. They fueled his fierce disdain for Obama and certainly characterize his presidency.
Bound up in this, as you note, is Trump’s need for adoration, a weird sense of inferiority which is also protected and nursed by his hatred and resentments. And so he feeds on the admiration of his supporters, but also demands this of his staff, his appointees and the GOP leadership.
Brachiator
@trollhattan:
Keep in mind that the threshold for the under-withholding penalty was lowered to 80% (from an initial 85 percent for 2018).
rikyrah
Phuck Outta Here ? ?
This is incredible. Reporters are calling around to Dem strategists, asking whether border crisis will hurt Dems. The deeply ingrained assumption that Trump has magical political powers on this issue will never die — no matter how glaringly obvious the evidence is otherwise: https://t.co/ZbuGo4x3dD
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) April 11, 2019
Jinchi
I can’t be the only person to remember that ICE literally dumped hundreds of people unannounced in El Paso last Christmas.
This wasn’t just their plan, they acted on it.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/25/us/el-paso-immigrants-ice-christmas/index.html
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: I just got back from the garden store, happily thinking about spring and gardening and pretty flowers. Within a minute I read this, and I am back to feeling like I am going to throw up in disgust while spontaneously combusting with rage.
When you take a break from all the evil, even for little while, you turn around and the evil just smacks you in the face. This is such a disheartening time that it’s difficult not to feel hopeless.
bemused
The republican party vile, venal and vindictive people, authoritarian bullies who live to make people suffer.
rikyrah
@Jinchi:
You aren’t the only one who remembers it.
They are phucking demons, I tell you.
Kay
I myself would welcome more immigrants to my rust belt county, which has not increased in population for 30 years and skews older every year. This isn’t sustainable. There’s a town to the east of here that is conservative but has a religious tradition of welcoming immigrants and it has the highest land values and home prices in the area, because it’s vibrant and growing.
It’s such a shitty ideology, Trumpism. So petty and small and ungenerous and cynical. A lot like the man himself. It’s all fear-based.
Evil Paul
Now that I’m thinking about it, a good way to counter-attack against some kind of asylum-seeker bussing program would be to sit those people down with interpreters and civil-rights lawyers, and start taking depositions about the way they were treated in custody: Were they fed/housed adequetly, did they get access to legal representation, were their children separated from them, etc…
Start building up a case file. Start publishing details about this nightmare. Bring it all out into the light of day.
Ruckus
@Hoodie:
Well stated.
This is why I’m for a younger candidate for president. Sure there are issues that affect mostly/fully olds, and are important for large numbers of folks (not that a lot of the olds that have been elected over the decades to answer those issues have done a very good job) but the country moves on, the world moves on, it changes more rapidly than it has in the past, and placing one’s head firmly in the ground or up one’s own ass has never, ever done anyone any good. Conservatism is being left behind because the world is not the same as it was even 40 yrs ago. Not the same by a long, long ways. And change will accelerate, as it always does. Those stuck in a past that didn’t exist will never see that change as a positive because they are already delusional. Those who refuse to adapt will be the sand in the wheels of time, as they always have been.
WaterGirl
Am I the only one whose first thought on this dumping of immigrants into sanctuary cities is that surely this has to be better — for parents and children who would be separated — than ripping children from their parents and not keeping track of them so they can be put in cages and never reunited?
Some days I really struggle with the fact that the world we are living in is actually reality and that they get away with these horrors day after day after day. Combine that with the fact that we may never see the whole Mueller report just about leaves me rocking in the corner.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Exactly.
Going backwards at full speed with out any concept of how to drive, eyes closed, mind closed, has never worked out well. Or at all actually. And only recognizing what one sees in a mirror as the standard of everything has the same result.
trollhattan
@Kay:
“A
tacopupusa truck on every corner!”bemused
@Kay:
Me too. I’d like to have more interesting restaurants and groceries. I drool at all the choices in food when we are in Mpls/St. Paul.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@WaterGirl: Rock in that corner for as long as you need to. Some days I’m right there with you. Just be prepared to come out snarling with fangs and claws swinging in every direction when the time comes.
Tazj
@trollhattan: Last night, a local sports writer complained on Twitter about how much more he had to pay this year in taxes. Immediately, a bunch of Trumpsters replied that he didn’t know how to do his taxes right and just wanted to bash Trump.
To their credit, almost all of our local sports radio hosts and writers described Trump from the beginning of his presidential run as the racist con man and fraud that he is, and stood up to the criticism that they should just stick to sports. Too bad most members of the national media didn’t do that.
JR
I pay every year thanks to end of year distributions from mutual funds, but this year was a little sharper than most.
Kay
@trollhattan:
I don’t get why they don’t see the economic sense in it. It’s more activity! We need that! It’s so weird how they always look at people as net negatives. It’s win/win. This idea that we can be super picky and exclusive as far as people moving here is just delusional. Oh, yes, by all means- you must meet our incredibly high standards. If they have first and last month’s rent they’re in.
Soprano2
@Immanentize: I listened to a podcast that talked about this; it’s a thing all across the U.S. Even Hawaii flies them to the mainland! Cities seem to think part of the solution to people who are homeless is to just send them somewhere else.
Bobby Thomson
The whole point is not to do it but to get Democrats to complain about it and then accuse them of hypocrisy.
bemused
@Kay:
They don’t believe in win/win, only in win/lose. They’re zero sum people. Whatever someone is given is taken from them.
Ruckus
@Patricia Kayden:
Trump has done far more than enough for impeachment.
But. And it’s the biggest, firmest but in the world. Impeachment is a political tool. We do not have the leverage that using that tool requires. It will back fire upon us.
Trump is a narcissist, he is a moron, he is an asshole, a political conservative but so are his political associates. They will back him as long as it benefits them, and they think that it does benefit them a great deal right now.
Impeachment is the wrong tool at this time. It’s like deciding that a Caterpillar D8 tractor is the key to your car. It isn’t, you can’t put it in the door or the ignition and get good results. It will destroy your car, it won’t let you drive away in it.
Kay
@Bobby Thomson:
Hundreds of Trump political appointees spend days and weeks and months on nasty, mean-spirited political schemes like this. It’s all they do. I like to imagine the tens of meetings and hundreds of hours. These are “jobs”.
Kay
@bemused:
I’m very practical so I’m like “hi! Would you like to buy something in our city?” Can I interest you in this ramshackle house, perhaps? We actually have an entire incorporated “village” that had so little property tax collection it had to be absorbed by the county. I got nothing but space. Come on in.
Ksmiami
@NotMax: Republicans are vile animals and should be treated as such. there are no good people on that side- sorry.
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
Yes it is.
And that is part of the concept of so much of this, make you feel hopeless. Whenever small animals are cornered they turn on everything to try and scare you, to try whatever they can to get what they want and think they need. Conservatives are reaching that corner, they are being backed into it and the only way they succeed is to scare you into backing away. They are throwing everything they can think of at us. Of course all they can think of is shit so that’s what they throw. We think we are in the political fight of our lives. And we are, because a cornered animal will do anything and everything to escape or take you with them.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Yep. That nails it.
Steve in the ATL
@bemused: Taco Bell gives you Latin American food, Sbarro European, and the local cat meat place Asian. What more do you need?
rikyrah
@WaterGirl:
I can honestly say, as a Black woman, that this country has definitely been worse.But, we will have to fight. I think some folks don’t grasp that. We can’t let up.
Josie
@Raoul:
I just read the article and it is chilling. This is the paragraph that struck me:
“Twenty years after Dayton, five years after Holbrooke died when his aorta tore open during a meeting in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s office, a woman in Sarajevo named Aida began to experience insomnia. Though she had lived through the entire siege, she never counted herself among the hundreds of thousands of Bosnians with post-traumatic stress disorder, but now, two decades after the war, she lay awake night after night, unable to take her eyes off the American presidential campaign on TV. Something about the people at Donald Trump’s rallies was deeply familiar to Aida—their clothes, their faces, their teeth, the men’s mustaches, the women’s hair and makeup, the illogic of their grievances, their rage, their need for an enemy. She knew these people, and as she watched them her heartbeat raced, her breathing turned rapid and shallow. She began having flashbacks, not to the war but to the years just before it, when things once unacceptable even to think suddenly became commonplace to say, until every boundary of decency was erased. Moments in the American campaign brought up uncanny counterparts from those years in the Balkans. Late one night, during the Republican National Convention, Aida suddenly heard the voices of 1 million Serbs in the streets of Belgrade shouting for the head of a Kosovar leader—“Arrest Vllasi! Arrest Vllasi!”—while Milošević cupped his ear and goaded them: “I can’t hear you!” In Cleveland they were chanting “Lock her up! Lock her up!”
Brachiator
@FlipYrWhig:
You are absolutely right here, but this is something different.
Trump totally has a big thing about people, institutions, nations, taking advantage of America. He has a perpetual chip on his shoulder about this, and is always looking to punish someone or to make them pay up or do right.
But I don’t think that many ordinary people believed this, certainly not in the way that Trump does. But he has successfully cultivated this resentment in his supporters and others, and changed the nature of the debate on immigration.
But also note that none of this is founded on any need to believe that immigrants are criminals. And not even Trump could believe that women and children are rapists.
But Trump clearly is a racist who believes that Hispanics and others are shit hole people from shit hole countries. And he is going to prove how tough he is by ridding the country of them and keeping them out forever.
And he will spin whatever lie he can to get the country to accept this or to simply sit back and do nothing while it happens.
West of the Rockies
@Ruckus:
Maybe that explains Assange smearing poop on walls. That’s all he had left: no more intellectual comebacks, no moral high ground, no witty rejoinders… He had his poop. May it keep him warm in prison.
trollhattan
@Tazj:
It was telling when the billionaires boys club of NFL owners blocked Trump from buying a team (lord knows how he’d actually afford it, but anyway). They know who and what he is and it doesn’t surprise me it’s a view shared across sports. At the end of the day, “What do you do on the field?”
bemused
@Steve in the ATL:
Ha, ha. I think Taco Bell showed up in one Iron Range town many decades ago but I never ate there that I recall. I wasn’t much interested in fast food even then.
Martin
@Brachiator: I think it comes from the fact that most of our institutional protections comes from the generally correct assumption that really amoral people tend to be dumb. Either they can’t figure out how to do bad shit on a really large scale, or they do it in such a way that they’re easy to catch after the fact. (We’ve been discussing this notion at length in the context of the admissions cheating scandal – we aren’t well protected from the individual that really knows how to play the system, but we’re pretty good for the huge numbers of people that try to game the system.)
It’s this class of individual that gives Florida its unique reputation. Amoral + smart is what people are really terrified of – mostly due to a notion that Bond and superhero villains are really a thing, but also due to the fact that they are sometimes a thing. Trump may aspire to be Hitler, but he’s not smart and disciplined enough to pull it off. Simply avoiding achieving that tier of malice is something to be at least a little thankful of.
Put another way, who is really doing the harm – Trump or McConnell? I’d argue it’s the latter. Without him, Trump would have gotten vastly less done.
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
What was that definition of progress, two steps forward, 1 1/2 back?
I can see, even as an old white man that the world of a black person has gotten better. Is it good enough? Not even close. Now the world for a lot of white folks ain’t all that and a bag of chips either, but it’s better in many ways and neither of those is good. We should be equal, but we all should have better as well. I’m saying that not only do we need racial parity, we have to get past the idea that conservatives have sold to their side that racial parity will harm them. That concept has been the worst political baggage that we have in this world, that “others” will demean and debase us. We don’t need others for that we’ve done far more than our fair share of that all on our own. And it is in no way an American concept. It is a human concept. We have never been able to afford that concept but the cost has risen and will continue to rise till it destroys us, unless we recognize the world rather than only our own tiny back yards. If we live together we can exist, if we attempt to divide we will only destroy.
Martin
@Brachiator: It’s simpler than this. His dad called him a loser. He has a malignant need to prove his dad wrong (which is impossible given that he’s now dead) and so when Obama called him a loser, he needed to prove Obama wrong. Becoming president has now tied the nations perceptions of itself to his. So it’s not enough that we have a positive reciprocal relationship with others, we need to win, because he needs to be a winner.
That’s been a mainstay of his rationale and speech for 30+ years. He is Ahab, and we are the crew of the Pequod.
Searcher
@FlipYrWhig: To be fair, their devious plan was to bus them to small-to-midsize sanctuary cities, not the metropolises.
I still think that as long as they weren’t increasing the population by more than (say) 1%, it’d still probably be fine.
ruemara
@rikyrah: I’m tired of people who refuse to grasp that this is a fight not just for rule of law, but it’s a fight for people to live. These bastards are not kidding around.
bemused
@Kay:
It seems to me that they aren’t much interested in boosting economy, local or national unless it puts money in their own pockets and doesn’t raise business or their personal taxes in the short term. They don’t like the idea of investing in policies that will boost economies in the longer term/future. One example: they scorn the idea that getting homeless people into permanent housing will save money for communities in many ways. Too nebulous for them and they don’t see any benefit to themselves.
Ruckus
@Martin:
Because Trump has always been who he is, it was impossible for him to impress his father even when dad was alive. Also it seems that dad was not all that impressive as a human being either and had an oversized view of himself. The shit doesn’t fall far from the asshole.
Brachiator
@Martin:
I’ve tried to point out that this is not necessarily true, or incomplete. Amoral criminals are often very effective at being criminals. Even if they are dumb. Amoral criminal cunning is a special category of wiliness. Look, it got Trump to the presidency (along with luck and some Russian help).
Yes, but these people, Dubya, Madoff, Trump all do a tremendous amount of damage before they are caught.
Yeah, Trump is no master criminal, no Professor Moriarty. And he could easily have been stopped if the Republicans had not let him pass “Go” in the GOP primary. Now, they are scrambling to try to contain his excesses. Meanwhile, you have goofballs like Steve Bannon promising that Trump will be even more insufferable if he wins re-election.
I keep hearing dumb stuff like this. There are people who think that they are or will always be safe from Trump’s predatory behavior. They keep ignoring or minimizing the hurt that he has already caused. And they probably under-estimate the degree of damage to come.
If you were an eleven year old immigrant, sitting alone in a cage, not knowing where your parents were, would you give a shit about who was worse, McConnell or Trump?
And McConnell ain’t president.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
I think it’s because they’re fundamentally negative people. Negativity seems to me to be the defining characteristic of contemporary conservatism. Say what you will about Reagan, he at least had the idea that his job was to make America a better place. He may have been 100% wrong about how to do it, but he wanted to make things better and was eager to get started on it. Contemporary conservatives see everything as a disaster, but the only thing they want to do about it is whine and blame Those People. They not only don’t have any real suggestions on how to improve things, they’ve given up on the idea of improving things.
Ohio Mom
@patrick II: Atrios agrees with you — he’s always reminding us that Bush 2 was more awful than we remember and actually worse than Trump.
I can see arguments either way. So far, Bush has a much higher body count. Starting two wars will give you that. But Trump is normalizing corruption and bigotry at astounding levels.
Roger Moore
@Soprano2:
And it’s not just actively sending them elsewhere; it’s trying to make their city such a miserable place to be homeless that all the homeless people will move somewhere else. A classic example of this is the complaint about homeless people defecating outside. Why do they do that? It’s because the cities they’re in have decided they don’t want homeless people around, and a way of driving them away is closing all the public restrooms at night. Homeless people can’t just hold it until morning, so they’re forced to go wherever they can.
Maybe if we provided adequate sanitary facilities, homeless people would stop shitting on the sidewalks. If they had access to showers, they wouldn’t have BO. If we provided them with a safe place to keep their stuff, they wouldn’t be dragging all their worldly possessions with them wherever they went. It’s almost as if a punitive approach to homelessness has made things worse for everyone instead of better.
Ruckus
@bemused:
To those you are talking about, anything past themselves is not necessary. Leaving a better country, state, city after they are gone? Who gives a shit, right? They don’t care because they are focused only on increasing their value to themselves. Look at most of their policy ideals, they are only ways for them to improve their value to themselves. And of course they are in competition for everything in a zero sum world so whatever is good for them is probably not good for someone. But they don’t care as long as they get more whatever it is.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
It’s always projection. Always.
J R in WV
@FlipYrWhig:
Your theory about Trump and immigration is way too complex. He’s a stone racist about everyone who is the least bit brown. End of Story right there. Nothing will ever “cure” Trump of that mental disease, it is nearly always incurable.
Roger Moore
@Martin:
I think they’re more effective as a team than either would be alone. McConnell lacks Trump’s ability to appeal to the masses and doesn’t appear to have any positive program of his own. He’s been capable of blocking the Democrats, and he’s been reasonably successful at getting Trump’s appointees confirmed, but he has no vision of what to do with power when he has it.
Barbara
@Raoul: I am never going to say never, but having grandparents who emigrated from the Balkans and other Eastern European countries, I think you have to recognize that the specific ethnic animosities that gave rise to the post-dissolution Yugoslavia were of long duration, and were held in check by a monolithic government structure that very intentionally tried to undermine those tensions. When a different strong man decided to aggravate them, it wasn’t hard. When I was growing up, there were nationalist fraternal organizations and those affiliated with Croats or Serbs were responsible for fire bombing each other’s respective houses, restaurants and clubs — in the 60s! It wasn’t common, but the point is, they had grievances against each other that had never been resolved and had been, in fact, greatly aggravated when they took opposite sides during WWII as a way to win dominance over each other. Hungarians and Romanians hate each other. Nadia Comaneci was forced to change her name because the Romanian government didn’t want her Hungarian heritage to be part of the story. And of course, everybody hated Jews and the abuse of civil rights of Jews and other disfavored groups was longstanding well prior to 1990. Why do you think people left Europe for America? It wasn’t all economic longing.
bemused
@Ruckus:
Yes. Their ideology is selfishness.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
How many things in our contemporary world did RR touch and make worse? How many things are those contemporary conservatives responsible for making worse? I think the score in making things worse is conservatives close to 100%. I agree with you the reasons, they are selfish and thoughtless, they don’t think things through, see what their policies will actually do, not only to others but to themselves as well. Conservatism has failed itself as well as everyone else. Conservatives have to keep going farther and farther conservative as their policies don’t work – they weren’t conservative enough, not that they were wrong. Conservatism is a failed political ideal, because it is harmful and doesn’t work. But the human condition of not being able to see themselves as possibly wrong makes doubling down the only possible course for them. Doubling down with 20 showing has never been a good percentage play.
Gravenstone
@Ruckus: Most of the insults Trump resorts to are ones he grew up hearing directed at him. All part and parcel of why he’s such a broken husk in human(ish) form.
laura
@Raoul: I’m sorry to be so dark. But the people in Trump’s orbit are evil, and they are using a very, very deadly playbook in my view.
This.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Brachiator:
You really need to stop with the History Channel if you think Hitler was an idiot like Trump is.
Martin
@Brachiator:
Nobody is saying that great damage isn’t being done – are any of these people you are referring to defending Trump? I’m sure not. They’re just slighly thankful that it’s not worse than that.
Martin
@Roger Moore:
McConnell is amoral, but he’s not malignant. He doesn’t seek to do harm, he just doesn’t care when it happens so long as it keeps him in power – and he’s exceptionally good at remaining in power by knowing how to push the levers. Trump seeks to do harm but lacks the understanding of how to do it effectively. So long as McConnell sees Trump as a way to stay in power, he’ll use his technocratic understanding to get Trumps stuff done.
Steve Jobs had this right: “To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.”
Anyone can be a malignant asshole. The world is full of them and we’ve developed a broad set of tools to cope with them. But someone who can execute an idea has power, and if they apply that to the idea of the malignant asshole, then heaven help us.
eemom
Dunno why folks see a need to argue over who’s more evil or who did more damage.
Brachiator
@Barbara:
I got the impression that some of these grievances had died down, even though they obviously were still below the surface. People were neighbors, lived next door to each other. But as you note, “when a different strong man decided to aggravate them, it wasn’t hard. ” It was as though the strong man said, “I know you are angry and want to hurt someone. Look at the people next door. They are Serbs (or Croats). You have always hated them. If you want to hurt them, do terrible things to the wife, kill the father and sons, go ahead.” It was similar in Uganda.
It is sickening to see Trump single people out as shithole people from shithole countries. And sickening to see the GOP happily go along. This is often how things begin. “You don’t need to respect your neighbors.”
And then, “go kill them. They don’t deserve to live.”
And people keep saying, “oh, it can’t happen here. Trump is too dumb.”
Barbara
@Brachiator: I am not saying things can’t happen here. Certainly, we have had race riots in the U.S., as well as lynchings, Japanese-American interment camps and some generally horrible things. I just very much doubt that it would take the form of what happened in the former Yugoslavia. Indeed we are seeing the form of the likely horror taking shape right now, which is an incredibly cruel and even more inhumane version of interment for undocumented refugees at the border.
We don’t have to wait for anything, because it’s already happening.
Mnemosyne
@Ohio Mom:
Ectopic pregnancies are not detectable until about 8-10 weeks, and it’s usually the embryo’s heartbeat that allows the doctors to determine that it’s implanted in the wrong place.
Hope Ohio is prepared for the thousands of deaths their decision is going to cause now that doctors will be legally required to let those women die needlessly.
Brachiator
@Barbara:
Yes, we have our own painful history, and I wasn’t quite saying that what might happen here would be like what happened in Yugoslavia. I was just trying to comprehend those events, and my impression that the strong men there actively encouraged people to hate their neighbors, using the lie that old wounds could never be healed.
But here is one thing about contemporary America. In my lifetime I never saw the federal government so blatantly ignore suffering and side with oppressors. Even during the 1950s, the federal government may have been slow to react, but they did not explicitly side with the segregationists.
Bonnie
I’m an American Indian and think we need to retroactively get rid of some undesirables starting with the Trump family.
Mike G
Trump is following the GW Bush philosophy that he’s only the President of the people who voted for him, and everyone else can go to hell.
OGLiberal
I have not read anybody’s responses, I will admit. But the only electoral friendly answer is, “send them, and if they want to go elsewhere we will help them get there when we can, if we can.” Anyrhing else sounds pussy and NIMBY.
.
I know there are details and nuances. Most voters don’t know this and don’t want or care about knowing this and never, ever will. Only answer is, “OK”.
Barry
@VeniceRiley: “…how do people take paying jobs to do this to children and then show their face in church on Sunday?”
Satanist church. I was wondering about that ‘black metal’ guy in Louisiana – why wear an upside-down cross these days, when you can wear it right-side up, and still openly practice Satanism?
For example, if Miller had gone to Sessions, and asked to worship his ‘god’, in his ‘manner’, Sessions would have known exactly what he meant, and would have welcomed him.
Bill Arnold
Just to make sure that people know that DJT weighed in today on this on twitter,
All hail states and cities that can and do push back, e.g. New York and New York City.
:-)
Brachiator
@Bill Arnold:
So, is Trump going to build Wall around sanctuary cities?
What if California declares itself to be a sanctuary state? I would approve of that in a heartbeat.
Bill Arnold
@Brachiator:
Might already be in some respects?
Half of all Americans now live in ‘sanctuaries’ protecting immigrants (May 10, 2018) (Washington Times link, so might be a thing parasitising RW headspace.)
Also, State and local investigations of D.J. Trump and his businesses. Just because the Law is the Law.
goblue72
What a moron. I have no doubt that if Trump decided to bus a bunch of asylees, refugees and other detained migrants onto the streets of San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, San Jose, San Diego, etc. – that he’d been handing an enormous PR coup to every Democratic politician (and the one mod Republican who is Mayor of San Diego) in the Golden State.
My Mayor (Libby Schaaf) already smacked Trump upside the head last year by tipping off immigrants to a pending ICE raid. Politicos in California would be lining up to announce programs to provide food, shelter, medicine, etc. and to protect the migrant victims of Trump’s sociopathy. He’s Enemy Number One in the Golden State – and I mean that quite literally. We’ve already laid down a line in the sand with his ass. We’ve sued his pasty butt 47 times to date each time he’s stupid enough to cross it. We’re the 5th largest economy in the world, larger than the United Kingdom, and do it with 60% of their population. And we are going to outlast his tinpot dictatorship.
Please motherfucker. DO IT.