I can’t believe no one has posted this yet:
If there was a Pulitzer for editorials written within 24 hours of what prompted them, this Baltimore Sun editorial would win. Searing, and real. https://t.co/P3iDAr2p5X
— Dan Gillmor (@dangillmor) July 28, 2019
Figured you might want to talk about it.
I’m getting ready to send my houseful of company home today. I’ll try for a nice, respite post later today. I may even have a recipe. LOL
Open thread
zhena gogolia
It was in the comments last night. It’s amazing.
Baud
The last line is spot on.
low-tech cyclist
It’s about time a big-city paper called Trump what he is. If anything, it’s the rats that should feel insulted by the comparison.
dmsilev
Have NYT political reporters started sniffing about civility yet, or are they all sleeping in this morning?
SRW1
@dmsilev:
In New York they famously take civility questions extra seriously.
Cheryl Rofer
Read the whole editorial, it’s good. But yes, the last line is a winner!
sdhays
I see via Twitter that apparently Racist-in-Chief’s advisors think this is a strong message for 2020. i guess they assume that lots of deplorables sat on their asses in 2016 because they weren’t convinced Donald Trump was racist enough.
I’m not sure I believe that they truly believe that. I guess it depends on which advisors. Kushner will believe anything as long as it’s stupid enough. I don’t think anyone who actually has experience running campaigns thinks this is a winning strategy, even if they tell Politico they do.
A Ghost To Most
We are preparing for a visit from my sisters, one of whom is basically sane, the other has been in on the crazy. Both have wingnut hubbies who aren’t coming. We have no idea what to expect; I haven’t seen the semi-crazy one in 12 years. This could be great, or another legendary dustup. Either way, it will be time in the mountains rather than endless yard work preparing for their visit.
M31
Between Trump’s ears is shithole country
Yarrow
This thread on Twitter is about not letting “quiet” Trump supporters get away with it. These tweets are from the middle of the thread but click through and read the whole thing:
debbie
NPR interviewed one of the writers this morning. Worth listening to; he knows it’s wrong to “take the bait,” yet in this instance, it was mandatory.
chris
I’m shocked that the Wall Street Journal has used the word RACIST! As Joy Reid pointed out this morning the FNYT is not there yet.
MattF
@sdhays: I doubt that Trump’s crazed response to criticism is the mark of a considered long-term strategy. There’s an old vaudeville routine…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slowly_I_Turned
rk
I learned today that there’s a place called Prettyboy in Maryland.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Sounds like it’s the season for family visits. Mr DAW’s sister and BIL are coming tomorrow and staying with us for three days. I’m looking forward to it.
debbie
@Baud:
I think we need to label Trump as a vermin. “No Vermin in 2020!” “Rid the White House of Vermin NOW!”
M31
This is good news for Vermin Supreme.
sdhays
@MattF: Nothing Trump does is long-term strategy. It’s literally beyond his feeble mental capacity. But his advisors have an interest in getting the MSM to pretend that they have a strategy and they’re following it, and the MSM is always willing to believe people who regularly lie to their faces. Or at least write about people they know are lying as if they aren’t lying.
opiejeanne
@Dorothy A. Winsor: My daughter is about to head to Maryland for most of August, to visit with her fiancee’s family at a beach house they rent every summer. I know they’ll spend some time in Baltimore this trip because it’s a great place, and they do every time they visit.
stinger
Does Trump, a lifelong New Yorker, imagine that there are no rats “and rodents” in New York City? In D.C.? Heck, there are probably rats in the White House; it’s a huge, old building. There’s one, for sure.
Kay
@sdhays:
There’s no way to know, IMO. They all lie constantly which means the sources for these stories also lie. They lie to prosecutors, they lie to Congress, they lie to their supporters. They lie when there’s video evidence showing it’s a lie playing at the same time they’re telling the lie. Why wouldn’t they lie to political reporters? It would be shocking if they didn’t.
For the opposition, I’m no longer sure coming up with a strategy to counter their strategy is useful in this environment. More and more I think it’s “do the right thing and just tell the truth” time- like this editorial or the newscaster yesterday. All of the agonizing over “this is a distraction! Don’t fall for it!” or “this is THE PLAN, come up with a counterplan!” assumes someone somewhere is being told the truth about something. and there is NO evidence for that. There’s a shit ton of evidence for the opposite- that it’s all fucking lies and so useless as information.
When you have no clue what to do, do the right thing and let the chips fall :) That’s a saying, right? In the bible or somewhere. Maybe Mark Twain.
opiejeanne
@stinger: Yes, probably rats in the White House, but remember he doesn’t think it’s a nice place at all. He famously called it a dump last year and tried to pretend he hadn’t after everyone yelled about it.
dexwood
My grandfather was a printer at the Sun for over 40 years finally retiring at 82 in the 1970s. He loved that paper as much as he loved Baltimore. He was a kind, intelligent man who disliked narrow-minded people. I’d like to think he’d be proud this morning.
MagdaInBlack
@Yarrow:
Individually decent because what is happening does not (they think) have anything to do with them: this is pretty much the shrugging lack of concern I run in to on a daily basis. This is the 1\3rd that would stand and watch. I havent quite known how to deal with that attitude until now.
Thank you for the primer
Bruuuuce
@stinger: Considering the amount of projection he does (nearly 100%), I assumed El Gordo was describing Trump Tower. (Also, too, remember that his own restaurants were written up for vermin this year.)
sdhays
They pulled their punches here. They could have brought up that he’s a credibly accused rapist, an unindicted co-conspirator in a felony, and only unindicted for obstruction of justice because he’s the President.
Butter emails!!!
@stinger:
I believe the White House has been noted to have traps for rats. Unfortunately, not large enough to catch the variety currently in residence and probably not using the right bait.
Mandalay
@stinger:
NYT recently did an article on the rat problem in NY:
One reader comment: “The City That Never Sweeps“.
Gelfling 545
Thought you all might enjoy a chuckle. Mr granddaughter is the bridesmaid and the “ring bearer” hears the call of the wild open spaces. From my daughter’s wedding yesterday.
https://www.facebook.com/mrsnstarr/posts/10215447112474154
dmsilev
@sdhays: The Washington Post had a story yesterday covering that:
Pretty much says it all. Professional Republicans want to go with veiled racism, and Trump wants to rip off the veil.
SenyorDave
To start with, the Baltimore Sun editorial was great except I do think they unfairly denigrated rats by lumping them in with Trump.
I live in the 7th, in Columbia, about 25 miles south of Baltimore. The town is a planned city, was conceived by James Rouse (known primarily for malls/shopping areas, did Faneuil Hall in Boston) as an egalitarian community, and is very diverse. Parts of Baltimore are very high crime, have been for years and unfortunately seem stuck in a pattern. The city of Baltimore is truly a dichotomy. There is some serious old money near Johns Hopkins University, pockets of gentrification all over, but one major problem (IMO) is that there is almost no black middle class. For decades many blacks left the city as soon as the could afford it. I don’t know the median incomes stats by race, but I suspect the difference is pretty unbelievable. So you do have areas that everyone who can avoids, such as West Baltimore, which has a violent crime and drug problem through the roof . Another problem is that the last two mayors have been corrupt, and the previous one, Martin O’Malley, seems to have taken the job in order to try and raise his national profile (it didn’t work, did it Martin?). There really is no leadership, and the city does seem to be in a holding pattern. It is a fun city to visit, great museums (the Walters and the Baltimore Museum of Art are fantastic, and both free), amazing seafood.
debbie
@Mandalay:
Of course, you remember Pizza Rat.
MagdaInBlack
We seem to get lost in the weeds over his use of “rats, vermin and infestation.”
He isn’t talking about the 4 legged kind. He is dehumanizing the population.
He means the people.
joel hanes
@dmsilev:
Trump wants to rip off the veil
Trump is incapable of the self-discipline it would take for him to maintain the veil, even if he wanted to maintain it.
otmar
Meh. Baltimore isn’t dsgvo compliant so, they simply refuse to serve content to EU countries.
debbie
@MagdaInBlack:
I wasn’t the least bit lost.
opiejeanne
@otmar: Can you repeat all of that but in English this time?
opiejeanne
@debbie: Yeah, I think we all know what he was talking about.
sdhays
@SenyorDave: The National Aquarium is fun too, although definitely not free.
debbie
@Gelfling 545:
“Llamas are so innocent.” Not this one!
MagdaInBlack
@debbie:
Then you’re not among the “we.”
This is the same language he used with regard to the “border crisis”
debbie
@otmar:
Here you go:
opiejeanne
@otmar: Never mind. I figured out what you were saying.
debbie
@MagdaInBlack:
Not just the border. McClellan considered Native Americans to be vermin, and the British authorities considered Aborigines to be vermin. Jews have been vermin since before the Middle Ages. It probably goes back even further.
moonbat
@Kay: You nailed it. It WAS Mark Twain who said, “When all else fails, tell the truth.” Words to live by. That’s where I am right now too with regards to this fire hose of bile he turns on the nation everyday. Just call him and all his supporters out for what they are. Eleven dimensional chess thinking just ties you in knots and normalizes the indecency of this administration.
Sab
@Gelfling 545: Llamas and men in kilts in the same wedding party? What was the theme?
prostratedragon
@Bruuuuce:
They also have mice.
gene108
I think we need to remind people, especially those in the media, that despite his base being 100% behind him, no matter what he does, Trump still lost the popular vote by 3 million, and has always had a net negative approval/disapproval rating.
He is the most unpopular President ever, given the relatively strong economy, low unemployment, crime rates, etc.
The media really has adopted the idea that Trump is strong and tough and unbeatable, because they have internalized the reality of Republican voter suppression, and Russian interference giving Trump an EC edge, no matter how many people vote against him, and therefore it’s always stories about Dems in disarray or will this how can Dems beat Trump.
Trump is a weak, useless, divisive do nothing President, who would be viewed as such by more people, with a more honest media.
Yeah, he’s getting away with crimes, self-enrichment, gifts from foreign powers, etc., but he’s also done nothing other than pass a disastrous tax cut bill, and created concentration camps and baby jails. The media is so focused on optics, they are just like “wow, Trump said THAT! And his followers approve of him more and more! He’s incredible!”.
Trump’s an historically unpopular President, who won by the confluence of Russian interference, helped exponentially by a compliant media wanting to knock Hillary down a peg or two, and a spoiled brat of a Dem primary opponent, who wouldn’t concede and helped divide Dem voters.
TL; DR: Trump’s a loser. He’s Shit Midas, as Betty Cracker dubbed him. He makes everything awful, and most people in America hate him for it. But the media keeps acting like he’s strong and unbeatable, which is wrong.
Roger Moore
@MattF:
Whether it’s a conscious strategy or not, it’s clearly going to be part of his behavior pattern. We need to adapt to it and learn to use it to our advantage.
SiubhanDuinne
@Sab:
And a chuppah!
prostratedragon
@Gelfling 545: Whoa, Seabiscuit! 8)
Mandalay
@Kay:
John Kerry can speak with authority on the consequences of adopting that approach.
HinTN
@Butter emails!!!:
Vlad used the right bait.
tokyokie
@Sab: At least the theme wasn’t llamas in kilts.
Ruckus
@stinger:
There was a story not long ago about how the residents of NYC are so used to the rats in the subway that they don’t notice or bother with them any more.
I was once cleaning out a shed on our property in Los Angeles and up popped 2 rats that could have been close to 10 lbs. Each. They were bigger than my friends 7lb chihuahua. Not having something to shoot them with, or the desire to, I left them alone. They reciprocated.
Kay
They lied to the SCOTUS. Under their own names. Signed, sealed and delivered. All of the people who did that still work in the Trump Administration. How reliable is anything they say, to anyone?
It’s a strategy, or it’s not. It’s a distraction, or it’s not. The whole organization is built on lies and they’re all liars. That’s the only thing we know. So, IMO, we just do what we do – “the next right thing”- and the hell with trying to figure out what they’re up to. It’s a hall of mirrors. Get out of there.
cain
@A Ghost To Most:
Whoa.. good grief. Its crazy what politics can do to people. Man it must suck to have a wing nut as a spouse. I don’t have any… although my ex wife was always somewhat right leaning.
HinTN
@opiejeanne: What he means is that European IT security standards are higher than ours and won’t let poorly secured content through.
ETA: Still hoping for something on the 14th.
Ruckus
@Butter emails!!!:
A mirror?
prostratedragon
@Sab: Wool?
HinTN
@Ruckus: ???
Mandalay
@gene108:
All true, yet Trump’s approval is currently the highest it has been since shortly after he became president.
The silver lining is that while his approval level is rising, his disapproval level is also rising. Rather than winning hearts and minds, Trump is just polarizing the voters.
joel hanes
@debbie:
The God of the Old Testament considered Canaanites to be vermin, and ordered their extermination.
Bruuuuce
@prostratedragon: :-)
Ruckus
@Sab:
Fun?
J R in WV
@stinger:
There’s at the very least 239 pounds of rat in the White House, that we can be sure of!
MattF
@Kay: Trump’s minions are always going to declare victory. Media types see this as ‘spin’, but that’s not right— it’s more like enabling Daddy’s delusions. A kind of codependency, I guess.
Bill Arnold
@MagdaInBlack:
As is this tweet:
When trump says no human being wants to live in Baltimore, he is saying that the large numbers of human beings who happily live in Baltimore are not actually human beings. That is Nazi talk.
debbie
@joel hanes:
I knew someone here would know more than I!
B.B.A.
People who call other people vermin are vermin.
Signed, a vermin.
MattF
@Mandalay: Kevin Drum keeps publishing this chart:
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/07/donald-trumps-approval-rating-is-set-in-stone/
It’s a ten percentage point gap, and it shows no sign of changing.
Gelfling 545
@Sab: Having a good time! The caterer was a Taco truck.
Roger Moore
@Ruckus:
Hamberders. Covfefe. Overcooked steak with ketchup.
Mandalay
@Yarrow: That was a great thread, which included the famous Elie Wiesel quote:
And here’s Marco Rubio speaking about his friend, Ricardo Rosselló, who was just ousted as Governor of Puerto Rico:
This is a text book example of cowardice from Rubio. He couldn’t defend the indefensible, so he chose to proclaim that he had “no opinion” about what his friend had done. Rubio is a gutless liar.
Kay
I look forward to the next step. Where thousands of earnest people point to GOP districts where there is crushing rural poverty – white people poverty- and ask why Trump doesn’t point that out and we don’t hear about “infestations” there, but it won’t matter a bit because they’ll simply all lie and deny it. We have a tiny municipal subdivision here in Republicanland that had to DISBAND because it no longer had enough tax revenue to meet the definition of a separate entity. It is deserted. The only occupied building is a ramshackle house they use as a post-release rehab, and it’s federally funded.
James E Powell
@dmsilev:
The WaPo’s analysis is off. Trump’s political base is not with the white working class. It’s the white suburbs. And that is the problem we Democrats must work to overcome in 2020. These white suburbanites – college educated – may not say the things Trump says, at least not in public. When you confront them they will say they don’t like what he says, or how he says it. They may even agree that it’s wrong for him to say it.
But they won’t say that what he says is false. They believe what he believes and they are going to vote for him again.
Ruckus
On to the subject at hand. The shitstain in charge of our government.
That’s right it isn’t his government, it’s ours. All of ours. As president he has a mandate to run it for all of us. Every president has that mandate. A few of the 45 have actually done that. Many have not, but trump is the worst at that. He probably doesn’t even understand what the word mandate means. Probably thinks it means some one is gay. Of course he’d use the word queer. He’s so quaint. He’s not acting this way to energize his base, he is the base, this is the way he thinks. Don’t make the mistake of giving him too much credit. Even banks who would loan billions to a billionaire won’t loan him a dime – they give him no credit. Neither should we. Some will say not to underestimate him, I’m not. What you see, what you hear, is what he is. And he’s turned himself into a cornered rat. Ugly, vicious, diseased and far more scared of you than you are of him. Is he dangerous? Sure, he’s a cornered rat. But we all live with rats, they out breed us, eat crap we won’t and don’t need 8,000 sq ft for two of them. And the Baltimore Sun has his number. One of the best editorials I’ve ever read.
StringOnAStick
I think we’re seeing the upward sloping line that defines resistance to tRump as his minions. I didn’t day “beginning” because we are well past beginning. It’s going to seem quiet in D C because it’s summer recess time though I’m betting there are staffers there keeping the investigation fired stoked while the pols are back spending at least half their time begging and schmoozing for dollars (One more season why Citizens United needs to be burned to the ground; being in Congress should not mean that half your time is spent dialing for dollars, it should be spent governing).
As far as vermin goes, my elderly father has 3 sheds and one of them is filled with his professional reports, work and reference materials plus hundreds of pounds of rock samples in cloth bags. All this in the heart of Hanta virus country. I dread having to deal with cleaning up his home and these sheds for sale and that day is getting closer given his age. I doubt there’s an unchewed page or unnested corner in there and it’s easily a 10 by 16′ space.
James E Powell
@MattF:
The only change in Trump’s approval l expect to see before November 2020 is that it will go up as soon as he is running against a Democrat. The press/media is going to help him out with that by elevating some trivialities to the level of being a racist, corrupt liar in order to make his re-election more likely.
What we should be doing is generating attacks against Republicans generally and specific Republicans in vulnerable districts and states.
prostratedragon
Via RawStory, Joy Reid and guests also run down the Kushner family’s role in the state of Baltimore, which I know has been mentioned in the past on this blog. Just as the video cuts out they were reminding us how the head rat used homeless people to bust out apartment buildings that he wanted to take over.
low-tech cyclist
@Gelfling 545:
I still want a taco truck on every corner. Starting with mine!
schrodingers_cat
@Yarrow: I don’t think they are individually decent, what they are is hypocrites.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
Normal bait is food or a food like substance. Those things you mention are garbage. OK that is a form of bait for this one. But.
You are far smarter than to make the mistake of using the wrong bait for a raving narcissist.
CaseyL
@HinTN: The 14th is a weekday, so that might limit it for some folks. I don’t get off work until 6:00, and likely wouldn’t be able to show up before 7:00 :(
I know you mentioned where you’d be, but I can’t remember right now: will you be in Seattle? What part of Seattle?
SiubhanDuinne
@StringOnAStick:
“Rats in my Room”
Ixnay
Dr. Ms. Ixnay grew up in the northern part of MD-07 and my first visits to her family left me enamored of the Sun, well, Natty Bo and crabs feasts too. Baltimore Sun in the AM and how civilized, The Evening Sun in time for cocktails. The ghost of H.L. Mencken is proud of that editorial.
opiejeanne
@StringOnAStick: Hire an expert to deal with rodent infestation in Hanta disease territory. Seriously, it’s not something you should do yourself.
JoeyJoeJoe
@James E Powell: A lot of the districts that flipped to Democrats last year were suburban districts. Some were swing or de-leaning ones with formerly popular Republicans, like CO-6 and MN-3. Others had been strongly Republican in the past. GA-6, the one where Karen Handel lost, was Newt Gingrich and Tom Price’s old seat and the one with the special election where Jon Ossoff spent $30 million. Hillary narrowly lost it, but Obama lost it by over 20 points in 2012. TX-32 and TX-7 (north Dallas and west Houston) had incumbents who had not had competitive elections in years and both lost. Both districts voted for Hillary and also for Beto, so 2016 results weren’t a fluke. Romney got at least 60% in both, and these two were Ronald Reagan’s two best in the nation in 1984 (north Dallas was in TX-3 back then). He got 82 and 83% respectively. There’s other examples, like the Republican collapse in Orange County California, but those are the most extreme. In short, suburbs all over have been trending Democratic from 2016 on.
A Ghost To Most
@StringOnAStick: Nuke it from space, just to be sure. Not just Hanta, but also plague.
MomSense
@Gelfling 545:
I’m at a brewery listening to my kid’s band eating food from the taco truck! This is the world we should be living in with a taco truck on every corner!
A Ghost To Most
@B.B.A.:
I can live with the guilt.
joel hanes
@Ruckus:
But we all live with rats
Steve in the ATL
@JoeyJoeJoe: I live in GA-06. I’m thankful to have a decent human being as my representative for the first time. We have a large and growing Asian population, but many of them are fundamentalist Christians and right wing (read: rabidly anti-abortion) Catholics. Let’s hope the trend holds.
otmar
@debbie: thanks.
opiejeanne
@joel hanes: I don’t. I have cats.
Well, I should say that I don’t live with rats in my house because there have been steps taken to exclude them. The house is new enough and in good repair that it’s not at all what Updike describes inside the walls.We also have something called a “rat slab” in the crawl space, and there are no trees or shrubs against the house or roof.
. We do have one or two (or more) that visit our garden, and we also have mice, meadow voles, and elephant shrews which are tiny things with long snouts. I think the meadow voles and the crows cause the most damage to our garden.
James E Powell
@JoeyJoeJoe:
Those results were all great, but I don’t see them as harbingers of changes in 2020. If Trump’s white suburban support was in decline, we’d see some decline in his overall support. That hasn’t happened in two and half years of racism, corruption, open scorn for the law, general incompetence, and constant lying. More to the point, none of those things are going to cause his support to go down.
In 2020, he is going to be running against a Democrat, quite possibly a woman, quite possibly a woman of color. Trump’s white suburbanites who don’t vote for Trump will still vote against any Democrat, and against not all women, but certainly “that woman” and against not all persons of color but definitely “that one.”
Trump’s blunt message – “are you with us or with them? – connected powerfully with white suburbanites in 2016. That connection has not been severed and it has not eroded over time.
Sab
@Ruckus: @Ruckus: @Gelfling 545: It looks like they succeeded.
mrmoshpotato
?Ducks and dogs and foods! Oh my!?
zhena gogolia
@Yarrow:
That’s great. I’m trying to live that way, but I haven’t encountered any Trump supporters lately.
zhena gogolia
@Gelfling 545:
So cute! Looks like a really nice wedding.
Aleta
There were tweets about this yesterday, and the investigative reporting appeared in Propublica and NYT last year. A few details:
Trump’s used’ infested’ 3 times in 6 weeks that I can count: against immigrants in June; to describe countries connected to u.s. congresswomen earlier this month; and now to race bait the congressman who’s started to hold I and K accountable. As usual the truth is leaking from Trump’s own self. Infested with diseased, out-of-control thoughts racing around his deserted being, fixated only on scavenging from what’s living.
chopper
@MomSense:
what’s the sound of your kid’s band eating? can you hear the chewing through the PA? are they some experimental outfit? i have so many questions!
Kay
Three Republicans and one Democrat. To analyze the Democratic debate.
The only person who covers the Democratic base is Dave Weigel. It doesn’t exist outside of his reporting. There’s a “Republican base” in this world and then all the other voters are one lump: “potential Trump supporters”.
It isn’t that they hate us. They just don’t believe we exist.
Kay
I know that when I want to put my finger on the pulse of the Democratic primary electorate I turn to Chris Christie, Meghan McCain and the Democrat who couldn’t win a primary in Chicago.
This Is America, to me. These three. What was Chris Christie’s approval rating at the end of his terms? Was it even double digits?
JPL
@Gelfling 545: That made me laugh and how fun.
Aleta
Rodents work hard and contribute as part of a whole. I might liken the liar Trump to a dead half-decayed rat who choked trying to eat his branded tie, but he doesn’t rise to the level of living rats. They don’t lie like a toxic waste dump replacing the air with fumes.
Steeplejack
Nina Simone, “Baltimore.”
HinTN
@Ruckus:
Yes, indeed.
Steeplejack
@Kay:
Goddamn, I am still pissed as hell that Christie apparently skated on Bridgegate!
HinTN
@CaseyL: We’re coming in on the ferry from Victoria and staying close by the port. We can take Lyft any reasonable distance. Understand about Wednesday, work, and 1900 arrival. Let’s see what develops.
HinTN
@MomSense: Wait, you’re
Sounds like Slurp slurp?
I see @chopper: beat me to it.
Baud
@Kay:
I guess it’s a good thing they couldn’t find any Democrats willing to trash the party to get on TV.
LuciaMia
Ive only been living in Baltimore County for over a year and I’M mad as hell!
Steeplejack
Going to my “keep me sane” song for this summer: Durand Jones and the Indications, “Sea Gets Hotter.”
Mandalay
@Kay:
As far as I’m concerned Rahm Emanuel is no Democrat. If you look at his positions and actions on race, unions and civil rights, and his dirty dealings with Wall Street, he’s the ultimate self-serving DINO. I loathe and despise that vile fuck.
trollhattant
If you can stand ten+ minutes of continuous lying, here’s Mulvaney laying it thick on Chris Wallace today. [spoiler alert, Democrat Party is the real racists]
Thanks South Carolina, you’ve produced another winner with this asshat.
As an aside, is there a congressional district that does not have poverty and homelessness? Other than Jackie Speier’s I mean.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: I wonder what title or qualification they gave Megs in the chyron “Republican daughter”? R-Sidekick to Whoopi Goldberg? In 2012 she loudly announced that she was ready to work with any campaign that was ready to “kick Obama’s ass!” The phone didn’t ring, and it was everybody. Even Rick Santorum, Herman Cain and Michelle Bachmann passed on that.
As always… Imagine if a Sunday show invited Chelsea Clinton to opine about 2020
StringOnAStick
@A Ghost To Most: Yeah, I’m not planning on cleaning our that mess myself, someone who knows what the protocol is for Hanta and plague will be hired. The sad thing is because this is red neck CO I’m sure we could find plenty who would do it without proper safety equipment just for some $ in a depressed area, I could never allow that.
A Ghost To Most
Dan Coats is stepping down.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@trollhattant: I think Soledad O’Brien nails what sets Wallace apart (often, I’ve seen him commit plenty of partisan demagoguery) is that he’s not afraid of his Republican guests
She also did a brief critique of the dopiest of Sunday hosts, Chuck Todd.
A Ghost To Most
@Steeplejack:
I will have a listen when I go back to the man cave.
My go-to song this summer is “Lunatic Fringe” by Red Rider.
Steeplejack
@A Ghost To Most:
Good, but not the calming influence I’m needing right now.
Kay
@Baud:
It might be kind of interesting, right? To get a Democratic take on the Democratic debate? What happened to all that diner reporting? Democrats go to restaurants. I have heard.
Sab
@Gelfling 545: My stepkid is getting married in October. His fiance is definitely not a bridezilla. This should give them ideas.
Tehanu
@James E Powell:
Not only do they believe it, they keep spreading it. I work with at least one very nice, very well educated guy — a lawyer and finance expert — who goes apeshit when you mention the word “immigration.” His own great-grandparents immigrated from some godawful Eastern European dump in the 1880s or thereabouts, whereupon they and people like them were called “bohunks” and were the subject of endless editorials about how they were literally low-browed and stupid. And we work with Hispanic lawyers, engineers, financial analysts, and project managers every day. But he just plows on — you can’t get through to him.
JoeyJoeJoe
@James E Powell: where he improved over Romney was in white rural/small town areas, Appalachia particularly. Also in places with lots of Native Americans, but I don’t have an explanation for that. If the polls are correct, it’s just as possible that he’s been losing support among some groups and gaining among others as it is that he’s been holding steady with the same people since then. In my opinion, the 2018 election results, looking at both where Democrats did well and where Republicans picked up offices, eastern Kentucky and eastern Oklahoma to name two, tell me that it’s the former, but I could be wrong.
FlipYrWhig
@JoeyJoeJoe: My guess is that white evangelicals voted for him in 2016 but didn’t approve of him, but since he’s become president they now approve of him quite strongly, and that’s been having a marginal effect on the overall numbers for *approval*, which aren’t really the same thing as the numbers for supporting-with-a-vote. Meanwhile other people who voted for him without approving of him all that much, the ones who saw him as a nonpartisan practical businessman, approve of him less and won’t vote for him again. YMMV.
James E Powell
@JoeyJoeJoe:
@FlipYrWhig:
None of us knows for sure, but if he’s losing among college educated white suburbanites or white women no college, who is he gaining with? Any ideas?
I think we need to find those voters who voted for him mostly because they hated Hillary Clinton. They will never admit they were wrong, but they might vote D this time.
J R in WV
@Gelfling 545:
Where does one planning an all out wedding go to procure a wild Llama?
laura
@MomSense: Live the Dream! That has got to be a sweet moment in the life of a parent.
sdhays
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Chelsea is actually an activist who runs her family’s charity ethically and competently and knows a lot about policy and campaigning. She may not be self-made, but she’s not a dilettante, and she doesn’t deserve to be compared to miss “don’t you know who my daddy is”!
BroD
@LuciaMia:
Glad to have you among us, Hon!