This is just…well, watch for yourselves if you didn’t see it live:
Donald Trump cares so little about mass shootings that he says it happened in the wrong city ("Toledo").
What's worse, he seemingly read it off the teleprompter, meaning the entire White House didn't care enough to get it right, either.pic.twitter.com/OKLVs6nj5V
— VoteVets (@votevets) August 5, 2019
Trump uttered the words “white supremacy” under duress in the speech, snorting, eyes darting around like a hostage forced to read a sentence denouncing his comrades for a propaganda video. That’s what the media will almost certainly focus on, that Trump acknowledged that “white supremacy” is bad.
Most won’t bother to put it in context, i.e., to point out that the acknowledgement of the obvious was made necessary because one of Trump’s deranged followers murdered innocent men, women and children after parroting Trump’s own xenophobic demagoguery as his motive. Here’s a hot take from the non-Fox News media:
.@weijia on the president's remarks on the El Paso shooting: "He really did set a different tone than he did in the past when it comes to condemning this hate" pic.twitter.com/wDxNDd1HiP
— Norah O'Donnell?? (@NorahODonnell) August 5, 2019
The fucking fuck? No, he did not “set a different tone,” you feckless fail muppets! Trump read an error-laden compilation of shitty platitudes designed to deflect blame from himself and shield gun owners and manufacturers from any consequences. And he did it poorly. Any pundit uttering or implying a “pivot” should be kicked in the junk repeatedly (metaphorically).
Meanwhile, back in Toledo:
High school classmates of the gunman who killed nine people early Sunday in Dayton, Ohio, say he was suspended for compiling a "hit list" of those he wanted to kill and a "rape list" of girls he wanted to sexually assault. https://t.co/lEAGcCTOwW
— KTLA (@KTLA) August 5, 2019
Fellow citizens, we either kick the Republicans out of power at every level, or their insanity will engulf this country completely. We’re more than half way there right now. It really is as simple as that.
Keith P.
Give Trump some credit – he omitted the “Go fuck yourself” that someone inserted before “Toledo”
Barbara
I heard it because I was in the waiting room of my dentist. It was not as awful as I expected, but it was perfunctory and without real feeling. I didn’t catch naming the incorrect city in Ohio. That’s inexcusable and really epitomizes the kind of Washington official who sees the places in between the coasts as flyover country.
Elizabelle
Holy Toledo, Moscow Mitch.
What a fuckwit. Insincere. Ugly. Appalling.
That’s as much of his speech as I will ever watch.
Jerzy Russian
Everybody loved that zany Cpl. Klinger from M*A*S*H, so naturally when prompted to name a city in Ohio, everyone blurts out “Toledo”.
Elizabelle
Norah O’Donnell is a tool. I cannot stand her.
The Dangerman
Did we see his fingers at the time to make sure they weren’t crossed? Did he spit like Sylvester afterwards (“suffering succotash”)?
I don’t care about Toledo; that was probably on the Teleprompter (because Trump hires the best people) and he was told by Kellyanne that he’d get an electric shock to the balls if he went offsript.
rikyrah
Let’s be clear:
The victims in El Paso and Dayton were targeted for THEIR EXISTENCE.
Nothing else.
Just for BEING
rikyrah
@Elizabelle:
Can’t stand her either.
West of the Rockies
Well, he did the same thing when he visited “Pleasure” after the Camp Fire. The town is Paradise.
Oh, but Obama says 57 states (referring, of course, to the 50 states and 7 protectorates), and wingers piss themselves.
The Moar You Know
They are desperate to keep this buffoon in office for four more years. He has paid all their salaries and bonuses as well; if he loses, well, all those clicks and traffic and MONEY revert back to the online terror cells in which his followers were radicalized.
We’re going to have to FORCE the media to report accurately because they’re simply not going to do it otherwise.
West of the Rockies
@rikyrah:
BTW, I haven’t seen anyone address this… Did he mean to shoot his own sister? Was that “friendly” fire?
Rob in CT
The Dayton shooter seems to have been an asshole who had violent fantasies (kill/rape list) for a long time and finally acted on them. Since he’s dead and there’s no rambling manifesto to read, it’s informed guesswork, but it seems more likely a personal crime than a political one.
dexwood
@Elizabelle:
So true, she’s one of the highest paid propagandists out there. Cronkite is spinning so rapidly in his grave seismographs in New Mexico are recording it.
dmsilev
First reply to that Norah O’Donnell tweet:
That’s from Jennifer Rubin. She really is going through the same transition that John did back in the Bush days.
Jager
My MAGAT relatives are avoiding the family Facebook page. Even my RWNJ brother in law is silent.
Elizabelle
@West of the Rockies: That is very odd, isn’t it?
Ladyraxterinok
@West of the Rockies: Read somewhere she had a black boy friend, so maybe he viewed her as a ‘race traitor.’
Adam L Silverman
Apparently they need paper towels distributed in El Paso and Dayton.
geg6
@Elizabelle:
This. I guess CBS selected her for new anchor in order to get past all the sexual harassment/assaults committed by their poor hires. But this woman has been a bimbo suckup to power her whole career. She’s worse than worthless.
FelonyGovt
And Ohio is one of “his” states, that he will need electoral votes from, and he STILL can’t be bothered to get the city right.
And what’s up with all the snuffling?
dexwood
@Adam L Silverman:
Those poor cities have suffered enough.
germy
Elizabelle
@dmsilev: Proud of JRub.
opiejeanne
@Barbara: I have heard Democrats blamed for thinking of all the states in the middle of the country as “fly-over country”. I always suspected it was more likely that elected Republicans felt that way except about their own personal state that sent them to DC..
geg6
@Rob in CT:
There’s nothing political about misogynistic fantasies of rape and murder by a mass murderer? I beg to differ.
Betty Cracker
@dmsilev: I am deeply skeptical of Never Trumpers and expect 99.9% of them to revert back to their old ways as soon as a Democrat is elected again. But if I had to take bets on which of the current Never Trump crop might experience a sincere conversion, I’d put my money on Rubin. She was one of the more loathsome neocons, so this surprises me.
smintheus
Beto’s cussing out the media for playing dumb, refusing to connect the dots of Trump’s behavior, and passively accepting Republican propaganda as the norm, was extremely credit worthy.
Possibly their most glaring sin at the moment is parroting Republican bad faith claims that the mentally ill are particularly dangerous, even as the media stay silent about the fact that Republicans nominated, elected, and continue to run interference for a president who obviously is mentally ill.
dmsilev
@Adam L Silverman: I guess California should count its blessings, that our mass slaughter just a few days ago was small enough in comparison that Trump’s political team didn’t feel it was worthwhile sending him here.
OK, Stephen Miller certainly wouldn’t have wanted to come with Trump; vampires and garlic….
Origuy
I’m seeing claims on Twitter that Biden did the same thing, but no evidence. Is this another 8chan phony meme so that RWNJs can whattabout?
john b
@geg6:
Is that misogynistic language really necessary?
That I actually enjoyed CBS This Morning when she was a co-anchor really speaks to how good Gayle King was in order to reign both her and Charlie Rose in.
Repatriated
This is going to drive the QAnon mob right off the rails (not that they were ever on them to begin with).
indianbadger
I am a brown man immigrant. Depending on where you see me; I either look Mexican or Muslim. The two ‘people’ a significant minority of people in this country seem to hate viscerally. With the President now OPENLY encouraging this; and deciding that doubling down on this is his way to get re-elected; I have decided that I am going to step away from both engaging in discourse or even paying close attention to the politics. i will send in my money when the Democrats decide on a candidate. I am no longer going to be involved in the primary debate, or hell even the presidential race; except to vote. I aM going to concentrate on local issues.
I have finally come to a realization that the upcoming national election is for the majority 75 % community that identifies as White; to decide what country they want. There is a solid 30 % that already knows what they want. My ‘engaging’ in this conversation with them is pretty much useless. People who hate people like me are not going to be convinced by me. People who like people like me are not the problem. If enough of the rest of the 45% think that they are willing to put up with the racism; as long as they get what they want (either Tax cuts, Abortion restrictions; Gun rights; etc); I, and what I say, no longer really matter. Trump WILL win.
What I am saying is this. The majority community has to talk to their friends and family., especially those that are persuadable. This is YOUR fight.
Betty Cracker
@Adam L Silverman: It would be something if the people of those cities take to the streets.
Adam L Silverman
@dmsilev: I’m not sure she’s going to stop keeping kosher though. And I doubt she looks good in overalls.
dmsilev
@Betty Cracker: Most of the NeverTrumpers became “lets give him a chance” became “OK, I’m with Trump”. Rubin’s gone in the opposite direction, from NeverTrump to “GOP Delanda Est”. I respect that.
West of the Rockies
@Ladyraxterinok:
Oh, FFS. Another layer of idiocy upon a panorama of hatred and stupidity. I wonder what the parents are feeling now.
Elizabelle
@dmsilev: I can’t get the Norah O’Donnell tweet to come up. Is it still there? It won’t load for me.
@geg6: She is such a fake ass. Disgusted with CBS.
Elizabelle
@john b: Yes. It is necessary. Norah O’Donnell is a compleat suckup courtesan. A whore for the corporate media viewpoint. She distorts the news, does not necessarily present it.
MattF
@The Moar You Know: The notion that Trump is changing his tone now is just laughable. Lack of affect is not ‘better’ affect.
@dmsilev: Rubin is now openly contemptuous towards any Trump apologist.
Adam L Silverman
@FelonyGovt: They medicate him before these things. Otherwise he won’t stay on the telemprompter script, he ad libs, and then he starts taking questions. This morning’s remarks were clearly written by KellyAnn Conway. The snuffling, the flat affect, the dry mouth, the pronunciation problems are all because they’ve got him pharmacologically slowed down.
bemused
@germy:
Ha, good one. Going further back, Fox News did to our parents (grandparents) what they thought the Beatles and The Rollings Stones would do to us.
smintheus
@Jager: My MAGAt neighbor who loves nothing so much as joshing me about his political views, has not only gone silent. He’s gone quiet and sought to avoid conversations entirely.
Adam L Silverman
@Betty Cracker: I think what you’re seeing is her realigning with the vast majority of Jewish Americans. The Israel fetishism isn’t out of line with the majority of American Jews her age and older. The rest of the neo-con stuff is.
geg6
@john b:
Oh fuck off. Call a spade a spade. She is what she is.
And, as a woman, I really don’t need you policing my tone. Do you tell other minorities how to talk about their own?
smintheus
Fwiw, I suspect that “Toledo” was intentional and planned. His way of winking to the white supremacists, signaling that his announcement was all about duping the liebral media and then moving on as if nothing had happened.
Adam L Silverman
@dmsilev: He won’t go, and they won’t send him, to California unless they absolutely have to. Texas and Ohio are supposed to be “Trump States” in regards to the electoral college, so they’re sending him to try to shore up the base, not to actually do anything realistically useful. This trip is all about his reelection.
Ella in New Mexico
Fellow citizens, we either kick the Republicans out of power at every level, or their insanity will engulf this country completely. We’re more than half way there right now. It really is as simple as that.
I posted this down below on Cheryl’s post last night’s, but I think it fits better here:
john b
@geg6:
Women are a minority now?
and in what way does calling her a bimbo even further (or even accurately describe) what you’re trying to say? Bimbo is a purely gendered word that is unnecessary and misogynistic. I wouldn’t accept it from a man and I don’t know why it should be okay for women to behave in an equally unacceptable way.
Elizabelle
Another El Paso shooting victim has died. Death toll at 21.
Kay
It’s sad. Every single day they think he will get better, and he never does. He’s much worse now than when he took office.
Bad hires never get better, only worse. Mediocre hires can get better, but not bad ones. Donald Trump is not going to turn into a good person after 7 decades as a bad one. It just isn’t going to happen.
Adam L Silverman
@Betty Cracker: The Jewish community in Pittsburgh told him they didn’t want him. So did the mayor and the governor of PA. He went anyway, lied to both the mayor and governor to play them off against each other. And the result is that in order to have someone Jewish greet him, they had to arrange to have Israel’s ambassador to the US meet him in Pittsburgh and welcome him there. As if the Tree of Life synagogue was an Israeli consulate. And then, in order to get anyone Jewish who has any ties to that community to say something positive about that shitshow, Bari Weiss, who grew up in the area, had to be brought in from her sinecure at The NY Times to provide sound bites for news media consumption. She’s a ghoul.
ruemara
@West of the Rockies: He was a misogynist. You have any idea how many serial killers prey on others and when they fully escalate, kill their female family members? Almost all. She was dating interracially. He was a violent racist. Ownership of the bodies of women in the family isn’t just unique to non-American cultures.
MattF
@Adam L Silverman: Rubin recently called out Bolton as a yes-man and ass-kisser– notable, since she’d said positive things about Bolton relatively recently.
Gravenstone
@West of the Rockies: Sheer speculation on my part, but I’m guessing his sister was the first target. Those close to her (emotionally or physically) were the next tier. Given what we’re hearing about his history, I’m wondering if she either turned down his advances, or was involved in a relationship that he disagreed with? In the end, unimportant as it won’t bring her or the other dead back, but it’s our human nature to seek explanations where possible.
Aleta
BC your take on him and your writing are extra good and surprisingly just getting better. Thanks for yr example.
Feeling personally hopeless about what I have to do today, so OT here;s
Grand cage escape of Houdini the cat!
on inst gram.
bemused
@Jager:
@smintheus:
Interesting. I guess there are a few trumpers that feel some discomfort once in awhile but report back if it lasts with them, especially the maga males. I’ve noticed that with some I know they clam up until they check in with their foxbot sources to get the latest propaganda to spout off again.
jl
Even the offers of policy remedies are full of red herrings. Video games (trouble in River City!) Any evidence at all the Gilroy, El Paso, Dayton shooters were into video games? Two of them were political extremists, and the third seems to be unbalanced with a history of violent threats (edit: though we’ll see if evidence emerges there was some racism underneath his mental problems). From what I read the Dayton shooter made written threats of sadistic violence against specific classmates, both men and women. Nothing was done, no intervention for him?
And, of course, with limited measures proposed for more commonsense gun regulation, call that it be paired with immigration reform. He undercut his own message in the speech. The Trump immigration crisis was manufactured with PR lies about unprecedented undocumented entries (false) and sabotage of policies that worked through several administrations, both GOP and Democratic. Once a person or group digs such a deep hole of bad faith, it is hard to get out.
And, Trump’s calls for policy changes, even with possible poison pills, has to get support from the GOP. Will the corporate media remember that Trump is the leader of his party, is at least partly responsible for making sure his party helps get his proposals to his desk They sure remembered it with Obama.
West of the Rockies
@smintheus:
I think you’re giving to much intellectual credit to Trump and his drooling followers. They can only think one move ahead at checkers.
Honus
@Jerzy Russian: but Klinger was a cross dresser from a family of arab immigrants.
The Moar You Know
@Adam L Silverman: Interesting idea. In some ways he presents like a classic benzo addict; he’s either on them, and acts somewhat normal but also comes off as cognitively impaired, or he isn’t, and he’s a tantrum-throwing paranoid rage baby.
I hope he’s not, to be honest. Benzos are OK until they are not, and then management of the patient gets pretty difficult.
rikyrah
@Rob in CT:
He drives to a whole other part of town that has nothing to do with his daily life…..
smintheus
@Kay: A lot of journalists are bad hires as well. They keep deliberately forgetting all the times Trump has made disingenuous statements, as if the list of them was too long so they decided not to study for that part of the exam.
BobS
Trump said “…our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy…”.
Okay- I condemn Donald Trump.
Elizabelle
@john b: Norah O’Donnell is a dick’s dick. Is that better?
In plain English: she is beautifully groomed; was trained up at NBC News, which excels in raising up lickspittles who are there to assuage any discomfort of the owning class elites. Chuck Todd, anyone?
WRT being named anchor at CBS: I remember all those pioneering women in news, none of whom I would call bimbos or whores. (That more properly describes O’Donnell and her ilk.)
It makes me sad that women ascend to anchor of Big 3 network news just as the format’s failures become so clear. It’s some news, in short segments, padded with infotainment and pharmaceutical commercials. It has been eclipsed.
You will never hear me call Jane Mayer, also a female, a bimbo or suckup. Because she is not. She is a real journalist; does not just play one on TV.
Norah O’Donnell deserves shame. She is the Washington Press Corpse, with probably better hair.
Kay
Saying “Toledo” rather than “Dayton” is a big mistake. I think it’s because no one in the Trump Administration has any familiarity with these places. They think they’re all the same.
It’s funny because I watched a clip of DeWine’s appearance in Dayton last night, and they didn’t seem sad- they seemed pissed. You can see it dawn on DeWine’s face that his “thoughts and prayers” speech isn’t going to cut it. They’re mad. They want someone to do something. I don’t know that no one in the White House even knowing where they live will help matters.
Barbara
Another House member from Texas announced his retirement today, this time, Kenny Marchant of the 24th Texas congressional district, a suburban Dallas district. He has won by a slimmer and slimmer margins and barely hung on in 2018.
Adam L Silverman
@The Moar You Know: Also, he won’t wear his glasses in public, which makes it harder for him to read anything.
Felanius Kootea
Can’t watch him. Can’t stand anyone who knowingly votes for or supports him at this stage.
When you put a sociopath in power it brings out all the others. Dems need to start the impeachment process and drag it out as long as possible so that Moscow Mitch definitely comes across as Putin’s other bitch when he decides to acquit.
I still think it’s necessary to repeal the 2nd amendment, not just ban assault rifles. Yes it will take 30 years but all the school kids with shooter drills will back repeal.
Elizabelle
@Kay: Anger is good. Stay angry, people. You are entitled to your anger.
Betty Cracker
@john b: There may be more of us numerically, but we are definitely marginalized, especially under this presidency, which is a daily, incarnate insult and reminder of our second-class citizenship. I don’t have standing to tone-police other women for using that type of language since I’ve been a repeat offender myself, but FWIW, I am trying to change that. I think I edited this post when writing it to replace a gendered insult with “fail muppet” above. Also, I find “drama llama” to be a delightful replacement for “drama queen.” :)
jl
Heard in interesting interview with an expert who worked with FBI on the type of people who commit these types of crimes. Apparently the FBI went ahead and set up a mini task force on its own to study this type of shooting and the perpetrators. Had some interesting preliminary conclusions. Most of them were not people who suddenly ‘snapped’ and the idea of shooting up people spring from the snapping, they planned some type of mass shooting for months or years before the crimes. Most of them did not meet any standard definition of mental illness, so the sorts of red flags that are usually mentioned wouldn’t stop most of them (though, I note Dayton shooter may be minority that did show a big bold red flag). Most of them had ideological leanings, were suggestible, and had problems with violent ideations.
IMHO, just the kind of people who would be encouraged by extremist rhetoric from political leaders. Trump, Trumpsters, and vast majority of GOP comes to mind.
Soprano2
@Ladyraxterinok: I wondered about that. I think that explains it all. I figured it was a black nightclub when I heard about how many of the victims were black. He sounds like an incel to me, with a “rape list”. Probably mad that the cute, popular girls wouldn’t fuck him.
Kay
@smintheus:
You-all think it’s ideological, but I don’t. I think it’s admiration of power, however power is embodied. They’re conventional. He’s the boss and they defer to the boss, because that’s the natural order of the universe.
They admire bullies. It’s that simple. They’re not alone in that. We got actual pushback when we put in anti-bullying education at the public school. There are a group of people who are like “well, they’re stronger! They should win!”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Christ, I just heard The Beast talking about the death penalty for mass shooters. I’m guessing that was the only part of the speech he connected to
germy
@Adam L Silverman: He can’t see, he can’t hear, and he can’t think.
joel hanes
@Rob in CT:
it seems more likely a personal crime than a political one.
All but two of his victims were black.
I don’t think that’s an accident.
john b
@Elizabelle: so to be clear you only use gendered insults to describe people you don’t like? I don’t see why you’re doubling down on language that distracts from the valid point you’re making on the fact that Norah O’Donnell is a corporatist hack.
JR
I’m still glad that they are still trying to put on a veneer of respectability by denouncing white supremacy. Even if it was a halfhearted attempt. Once they stop doing that, well…
germy
@Elizabelle:
Anger is an energy.
Barbara
@john b: For whatever it’s worth, I concur in the push back on gendered language. It doesn’t help women when incompetent specimens are identified as bimboes. I think “empty suit” is a good non-gendered way of conveying that O’Donnell and many other news anchors have an actor’s appeal for their exterior grooming and professional appearance, not to mention speaking voice, but are vapid in every other way.
@Elizabelle: Some of us have stopped using male words as insults as well. I will happily take the trade off in having less “colorful” but more egalitarian insults.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: WaPo: ‘Do something!’: Ohio governor drowned out by angry chants at Dayton shooting vigil.
People are angry. Good.
MattF
@Adam L Silverman: And steaks! And diplomas!
leeleeFL
@Elizabelle: “feckless fail muppets” is my new favorite nickname for the media stenographers! Accurate, dismissive and delicious! Norah should stick to making and raising her family. Tool doesn’t begin to describe her.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I remember Norah O’Donnell interviewing Cindy Sheehan when the latter first started speaking out against Bush. O’Donnell was visibly angry at Sheehan for criticizing the man she kept insisting, as I remember it, was a very popular president.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
that was the first thing I thought of when I heard she and her date were the first victims
jl
@Kay: I think a good intuitive summary of the preliminary findings on what kind of people commit these crimes, according the the person who worked with the FBI mini-task force on white domestic terrorism who I heard this morning.
Should make certain people and organizations in leadership positions in this country uncomfortable, if they have a conscience. From statements made over the weekend, a few of them do have a conscience, but probably too few to make a difference.
FlipYrWhig
A Democratic president who said the wrong city where a massacre took place would be ritually humiliated and hounded from office immediately. It would be remembered as one of the greatest gaffes in political history and credited with effectuating anything that happened in the state in question for a generation. Contrariwise, with Trump, this will be like a mild rueful chuckle that peters out over an afternoon.
smintheus
@West of the Rockies: But we know that Trump makes a point of signalling when he’s reading some bullshit statement of concern about the behavior of his base. For example, he’ll read it in a stilted manner, or mispronounce words to show that they aren’t his words, or mug while he’s reading it.
debit
@john b: How about you stop trying to derail the conversation?
germy
@Barbara:
But I wonder what we see as vapidity is instead deliberate and willful work to promote the agenda of her bosses.
I used to see her on the CBS morning show, and she was toughest when she was interviewing Democrats or liberals. She had a subtle way of framing stories that echoed the usual Republican point of view.
I think she’s a strong, powerful, effective woman. The same way KellyAnne is. They have a job to do, and they’re doing it. Of course I despise them and everything they’re doing, but I don’t see them as weak or vapid.
Chief Oshkosh
@The Moar You Know:
How do we do that? Genuinely asking.
jl
@Barbara: I don’t think there should be push back on gendered or ageist language wrt to the type of person who typically commit these crimes. They are typically young men. And for domestic white supremacist terrorism, obvs, white. There apparently was a woman who was planning a mass shooting recently, but she was stopped before she could commit the crime. I forgot if she was shot in attempt to apprehend her or she committed suicide as law enforcement was closing in. But women are a very small minority of those who commit this time of crime and terrorist acts.
joel hanes
@Gravenstone:
I’m guessing his sister was the first target.
This is my understanding.
And her date second.
My unconfirmed hunch is that her date was one of the black persons murdered.
Elizabelle
@Barbara: Norah O’Donnell is a traitor to the truth, and to other women, in propping up the [Republican] ruling class. She likely got her anchor position because she “looks the part.” [Big TV didn’t learn with Brian Williams, apparently. And his biggest sin was realizing the real news gets reported on the late night comedy shows, not at the august anchor desks.]
Back to Norah: That makes her a dick in my book. Wear your dickhood, Norah.
I guess I should learn some better insults. That is true. But I don’t think cutesy names that are not recognized outside our bubble are that useful. (I enjoy “feckless fail muppets”, but a lot of explaining goes with that one, if you have someone who has not been following the “news.”)
germy
@FlipYrWhig: Did you know Al Gore claimed he invented the internet?
Chief Oshkosh
@Adam L Silverman:
Someone better brief Toledo tower and approach control. You never know what Trump’s idiots will tell AF1’s pilots.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Elizabelle: As The Boss says, “Hold on to your anger. Don’t fall to your fears.”
FlipYrWhig
@smintheus: Maybe, but also he doesn’t read well and frequently appears to only understand writing once he has spoken the words aloud and heard himself say them. I’m virtually positive he has a learning disability.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: okay, looks like I misremembered, but the facts aren’t much better for O’Donnell. From July, 2006
“let me begin….”
O. Felix Culpa
@geg6: Thank you.
Chief Oshkosh
@FelonyGovt:
They gotta get ‘im coked up to give these “focused” presentations.
geg6
@john b:
Okay, how about she’s an whore? And yes, women are minority even though we outnumber men in population. Until we’re full citizens with all the full constitutional rights of all other citizens, We’re treated as shabbily as any other minority, so that makes us minorities.
Barbara
@debit: People love their sexist and racist language when it’s THEIRS. O’Donnell is not worse than Matt Lauer, she is basically chosen for the same qualities, which is to proceed on the assumption that wealth, power and privilege are proxies for “merit,” which basically freezes out the point of view of anyone who isn’t a member of their demographic group. Calling her out mostly for her femaleness isn’t just sexist, it’s inaccurate. Whatever you can say about a variety of national female anchors, their acceptance of their situation is from a kind of ignorance that has nothing to do with lack of education or general cluelessness.
Betty Cracker
CNN’s top headline right now: “Trump condemns white supremacy”
They do a little better than stenography in an article about the El Paso death toll:
Emphasis mine.
jl
I think ‘corporate hack who worships power’ is non-gendered. That is the way I typically describe those types. ‘hack’ for short.
germy
@joel hanes: Last time I checked, the Associated Press was playing dumb about a motive. Reporting that he killed too many people too quickly to have been targeting any specific group. (!) Even reporting that “hate didn’t seem to be a motive”
They are obtuse.
smintheus
@Kay: No, I don’t think American journalists are so bad because they’re ideological. I think they’re feckless, and they’re more than willing to give in to whatever system of rewards seems most positive for themselves.
Some of them do admire bullying, but many others just won’t stand up to bullies.
Adam L Silverman
@jl: That is exactly the demographic. I’ve been working on this stuff since 1994. I’ve done work on it for DOJ funded via the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). Every piece of evidence we have is that 1%, at most, of those who undertake terrorism – domestic or international – are mentally ill.
The Moar You Know
@Kay: In order of horror: Football parents, cheer parents, other sports parents (wrestling is the worst). They all have this mindset. It’s really disturbing.
jl
@Barbara: I agree.
Adam L Silverman
@germy: What could go wrong?
smintheus
@germy: Hate didn’t seem to be a motive for a shooting rampage?!!!
Betty Cracker
@FlipYrWhig:
Exactly! I get that sense every time he does a teleprompter speech — he often seems genuinely surprised by what’s coming out of his mouth. He’s even gone off script to emphasize something he just said in a marveling tone, e.g., “so true, folks…” It’s weird and disconcerting.
Adam L Silverman
@jl: It won’t. They have their rationalizations and conjuring words: prayer taken out of our public schools, video games, rock music.
Barbara
@jl: I would have added that one of the reasons O’Donnell et al. are so willing to give Trump credit any time he deviates even an inch from his usual hateful script is that Trump is daily proof that wealth and power are not ipso facto correlated with merit, and it just kills them. They so, so, want that to be true that they are desperate for Trump to turn the corner, so they can breathe easy again about the validity of their assumptions.
debit
@Barbara: Is this a conversation we need to be having right now? I should be upset about gendered insults when people are being slaughtered? Congrats, john b, you have successfully derailed!!
The Moar You Know
@john b: Heard enough of your bullying bullshit. Funny how you’re just picking on the women.
To the pie filter with you, jackass.
Elizabelle
From the LA Times over the weekend:
Op-Ed: We have studied every mass shooting since 1966. Here’s what we’ve learned about the shooters
What amazed me about this essay: the word “gun” appears once. Count it. And as part of “handgun.”
They have nothing whatever to say about banning assault weapons. They suggest a packet of milder regulations. Starting with metal detectors and more police. Oh joy.
The writers are a psychologist and a sociologist, and they go so heavily at the mental health/social factors, and skate right past guns. I find them rather lacking. I wonder about their funding.
It would seem far easier to remove the military grade weapons from the picture, than to make us all responsible for identifying potential snipers.
jl
@Adam L Silverman: Certainly not ‘mentally ill’ by current standard definitions. But I have to wonder if a person who has a history of habitual ideations of violence that are expressed needs some more attention in this society.
@Elizabelle: people who study this topic have to be careful about talking too much about guns. Might get harassed because of restrictions on federal funding. So, good chance there is an ulterior motive to their lack of attention to guns, but hard to tell which way it might cut in this specific case.
MattF
@smintheus: I think they are mostly careerists. It’s a job and they want to rise in the hierarchy. And, uh, if possible, get rich. Also, political reporters see the wreakage of a life in politics from up close, so they’re generally careful to maintain a distance.
joel hanes
@germy:
They are obtuse.
If they ignore what’s staring them in the face _deliberately_, is obtuse really the right word? I feel it’s giving them too much credit.
IMHO, they are deliberately suppressing the racial identification of the sister’s date. This is not being obtuse: this is complicity trying to disguise itself as “neutral”, as “objectivity”.
A loud fuckem in loving memory of efg
Barbara
@debit: Yeah, I’m sorry, but introducing sexist imagery and tropes into the conversation is what derailed it, and it is ALWAYS worth pointing it out. And if you read the rest of my comments you will see that I am not letting O’Donnell off the hook by any means. Calling her a bimbo, literally, lets her off the hook because it suggests that she is too stupid to do any better when that is surely not the case.
O. Felix Culpa
@leeleeFL:
While I appreciate the effort at non-gendered insults, “muppet” suggests cute and these people and the effect they have on our society are anything but.
Capri
A while ago there was video of Trump boarding Air Force One with toilet paper stuck on his shoe. Wanda Sykes was on some show right after that happened and made the comment that it proved that everybody around Trump hated him. She went on to explain that if anybody liked or respected the president they would have taken him aside and pointed out what was going on before he became the butt of jokes.
I think the Toledo instead of Dayton thing is similar. A speechwriter screwed it up and all the other people who saw it and perhaps were in the position to correct it didn’t bother to because they dislike both the president and the speech writer and want to see them fuck up on National television.
Adam L Silverman
@Elizabelle: They’re prohibited by Federal law and Federal regulation based on those laws, at risk of losing their funding from the NIJ/DOJ, from advocating anything pertaining to gun control or gun safety.
john b
For what it’s worth, I had no idea gege6 was a woman until she said so in this thread. But I guess you won’t see this?
smintheus
@FlipYrWhig: Quite likely that he does. But he also mugs and does other things very deliberately to make sure that his base recognizes when he’s treating something as a travesty.
germy
@joel hanes: Yes, you’re right.
Adam L Silverman
@jl: In some cases there are histories of depression. In others long histories of inability to self control one’s temper leading to violence. I’m not sure the latter is diagnosable.
debit
@Barbara: Nora may have sold her soul instead of her sex, but that still makes her a whore. And I’m not sorry for calling her one.
ETA: Feel free to pie me.
Adam L Silverman
Do you all want me to do a front page post for this scintillating discussion of Nora O’Donnell? I can title it: Balloon Juice Debates, You Decide: Nora O’Donnell – Bimbo, Whore, Both, Neither?
debit
@Adam L Silverman: Sure! Let john b guest post.
Barbara
@debit: Maybe you don’t have daughters who get called bimboes but I do. I will push back any time someone uses gendered insults instead of reasoned criticism. I don’t care if it upsets your desire for a hate fest free of internal dispute.
Betty Cracker
Not a fan of Tim Ryan, but good for him!
scav
Ah yes. all expressions must be deemed invalid unless filed in triplicate on the proper form, in blue (not black) ink and with proper use of the Oxford comma and zero (0) greengrocer’s appostrophe. Substance deemed invalid and irrelevant unless all stylisitic conventions upheld: no exceptions.
Frankensteinbeck
He’ll walk it back, and he’ll walk it back soon. Maybe the first time he gets to go off script. Same as every other time he’s been forced to condemn white supremacy.
debit
@Barbara: Again, great derailing. 10 out of 10. Also, again, feel free to pie me.
Adding, I’m female, and I have a daughter. Also, too, whoring isn’t exclusive to women, nor is cocksucking. Since apparently we’re doing this, I await your retort.
germy
Scott Pelley was excellent when he was anchoring the CBS Evening News.
I’m always skeptical of broadcast news; the story details they always leave out, but I was amazed at how he connected the dots. It was almost like watching a Balloon-Juice jackal or front-pager delivering the news.
Of course, he was pushed off in favor of Glor, and now we have O’Donnell.
trollhattan
When Trump says “white supremacy” he’s just honoring dad who, after all, was arrested at a Klan rally. The apple dwells directly below the tree.
Ruckus
@germy:
Ahhh, such a delightful example of rethuglican leadership.
Dumb, mean, dumber, meaner, dumbest, meanest. The republican leadership staircase, the only way they have of getting ahead. Their manifesto can be summed up in two words, hate and stupidity.
James E Powell
@Adam L Silverman:
Nailed it.
FelonyGovt
@Betty Cracker: Tim Ryan seems to be feeling freer to say what he really thinks now that he’s suspended his campaign. That’s great! Props to him and to Beto for their strong language. We need it.
ruemara
Come on, y’all. Yes, you feel powerless in other areas, but you’re not gaining power by arguing about what’s the right politically correct insult on here.
Barbara
@Adam L Silverman: Who chose to put a Norah O’Donnell clip in the post? Were we not supposed to discuss it?
trollhattan
@debit:
Will he bring the sloop?
Doug R
@Elizabelle:
I remember in my DailyKos days we used to call her “Darling Nell”
Elizabelle
WRT the
ToledoDayton shooter’s sister being among the first targets:Did you recall that pioneering mass shooter Charles Whitman’s first victims were his wife and his mother? He stabbed them to death, in the predawn hours of August 1, 1966, and then climbed a tower at UTexas/Austin to pick off victims with a rifle. 14 dead, 31 injured.
I looked that up Saturday night. Learned some new vocabulary. Uxoricide is killing one’s wife (or romantic partner). Mariticide is killing one’s husband, and far more rare.
From wiki:
and
He was prepared too. Check out the arsenal (including earplugs): from wiki:
Barbara
@Elizabelle: Kip Kunkel killed his parents first. Elliot Rodgers killed his roommates.
trollhattan
@Capri:
Hard to argue but I insist that at least Miller and Conway both think he’s dreamy. Probably Mulvaney, too.
debit
@trollhattan: Others may love you for your wit and wisdom, but I do for your ability to earworm. Well done.
Barbara
@ruemara: Gendered language, including insults, is a pox on society. It shouldn’t create waves of distress to point it out on a blog that is supposed to reflect the equal worth of people without regard to gender, and a host of other traits.
Elizabelle
@Adam L Silverman:
Le sigh. Do you recall when those regs went into effect?
TenguPhule
19 years too late.
Betty Cracker
Stock market is tanking (down 750 last time I looked), so Trump is back to shitposting about China again.
bystander
@Betty Cracker: Rubin finally realized that as a Jew and a woman, she could very easily be the next target. Just a guess.
I always want to ask her and Nicole Wallace just what they thought was going on in the repub party when they were shaking their pompoms.
rikyrah
@germy:
When they want to be. They know that’s not his neighborhood. THAT location was chosen for a reason.
debit
@bystander:
Probably that it could never happen to them.
O. Felix Culpa
@TenguPhule: Enough with the demoralizing comments. I’m not prepared to give up. If you’re not going to actively help, then at least don’t make things worse. A blog comment hippocratic oath might be useful.
Elizabelle
@Adam L Silverman: Can we add “dipshit”? That’s kind of gender neutral.
Although it is an insult more properly heaved at Trump.
Barbara
@bystander: Well, I think it was more like, she knew anti-Semitism when she saw it and she became genuinely afraid of where this particular direction in our national discourse would lead. She is a neocon — that is, her conservatism is mostly animated by policies on national security and Israel.
Adam L Silverman
@Elizabelle: I know the CDC ones did by law in 1996. I’m not sure if the restrictions for other parts of the government/Federal funding for research was the result of the same legislative and regulative package or a later one.
TenguPhule
@Betty Cracker:
To be fair, she seems smart enough to see her future in a Trumpian Future is a disposable womb with a view as a Handmaiden.
Doug R
@john b: Chuck Todd is a bimbo as well.
TenguPhule
@Betty Cracker:
Markets panicking about the Trade War. Never mind that its been going on for months and they believed Trump when he promised them he would pull out in time.
Elizabelle
@Doug R: Yes he is!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Elizabelle: Personally, I go with asshole. Everyone’s got one.
TenguPhule
@O. Felix Culpa: If you want to fix a problem, you must first admit the problem exists.
Too many are still at step 1.
joel hanes
@Adam L Silverman:
In others long histories of inability to self control one’s temper leading to violence.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that this is one of the predictable symptoms of being poisoned with lead — seriously impaired impulse control.
germy
@Doug R: The presidential candidate Chuck Todd seemed most excited by was Schultz. I’m serious. I tuned in one day and Todd couldn’t contain his enthusiasm. His guests sat quietly and smiled while he rambled on and on.
Ruckus
@FlipYrWhig:
The wrong location for a mass shooting? This would be a major fuckup by any of the other 44 presidents, or a governor or a news reader in east bumfuck, nowhere. It’s just another day by trump standards. A jr HS would expect better from someone in speech class. Hell anyone above 3rd grade would be expected to do better just standing up and talking.
Many, OK all of us, thought he’d be horrible at this. How many thought he’d be this bad? Regan at least had his wife to intercede, trump is surrounded by people who let him walk onto AF 1 with toilet paper on his shoe. (A bit from Wanda Sykes Netflix special. It would be massively hilarious if it wasn’t real life and shit for brains wasn’t president.)
kindness
Half way there? Well….yea, they’re killing us. We don’t roll that way though. We aren’t going to start killing them.
I grew up in the late 60’s early 70’s. We had fantasies about how to change the world. Some were real and some were….well fantasies. Sure seems as if a large contingent of the population doesn’t make that distinction any longer. I think the social media these folk go to feeds them this stuff and tells them it’s real. And they seem to believe it.
Maybe my generation had better filters. None the less we raised a self absorbed generation. Our kids learned the wrong lessons of Boomerisms. It’s our own damn fault. If only we taught them to be less selfish and more giving to others in need. My kid turned out OK, I’m thankful for that.
The Moar You Know
@Chief Oshkosh: The GOP did it and then some. This should not be hard. The GOP did not find it hard.
debit
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I am fond of shitstain. It has a certain je ne sais quoi.
mrmoshpotato
QUESTION: What the fuck is “great legislation?”
This fucking asshole and everything being “great” and “tremendous” and “bigly”…
joel hanes
@Elizabelle:
He also packed food … Dexedrine
speed kills
It is known.
TenguPhule
This from the asshole calling for “a strong dollar.” and damn the torpedoes.
Martin
@Barbara: ++
Elizabelle
@O. Felix Culpa: Just pie him. You’d be amazed at how clever the pie filter sayings are! See new ones, all the time.
Happily, we can peek under the pie filter to see if the pied are saying anything worthwhile. Which some of them sometimes do. There will be a little arrow at the bottom of the pie comments.
My rule of thumb: if you would not sit next to someone in a coffee shop and listen to this spew, you don’t have to do it online either. They’re not entitled to your eyes and ears.
People who try to demoralize one are the worst, and most insidious, in my view.
ETA: Mind you, I realize I may be pied myself, for my horrible gendered insults. The horror, the horror.
dww44
@Elizabelle: Agreed. She became a permanent tool in my book with her 60 Minutes interview of Valerie Jarrett somewhere during Obama’s second term. She was deliberately offensive to Ms. Jarrett for no other apparent reason than she seemed to clearly dislike the woman. Jarrett was cool as a cucumber. Now, if O’Donnell would try the same schitck on Kellyanne, I might cut her a bit more slack. Thus far, she’s sent me out of the CBS evening news corner. It’s now Lester Holt and NBC.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
Think you misspelled appalling. They know he’s a shitstain of humanity. They don’t care. He sells clicks. They’re in a symbiotic relationship with him. Like those little birds that clean a crocodile’s mouth.
Doug R
@Adam L Silverman:
It would make an excellent alternate tag to “our failed media experiment”.
joel hanes
@germy:
Schulz is a billionaire, and he ran
1. to forestall the Democratic Party from moving an iota to the left.
2. to both-sides everything by blaming “partisanship” instead of Republicans for breaking our governments.
Of course Chuck Todd found his candidacy compelling.
Elizabelle
@TenguPhule: Remora wannabes.
TenguPhule
@Adam L Silverman:
Are they using too much or not enough?
Adam L Silverman
@joel hanes: Yes, but in the younger mass shooters and terrorists we’ve been seeing, I’m not sure how you account for it.
TenguPhule
@Elizabelle:
Sharks don’t eat the remoras for shits and giggles. Crocodiles are known to do that to the birds.
satby
@john b: @Barbara: boy, you two sure know how to hone in on the critical discussion we should be having instead of the one inspired by the topic of the post. So glad y’all came by to school us.
I’m a female, since that seems critical to this debate.
geg6
@debit:
I’m thinking it was the whole point.
So sick of this shit. I’m so furious, I’m shaking. I’ve been that way all weekend. And then I have to have assholes here tone policing me. Fuck all of the media whores, male and female. But something too many don’t seem to understand is it is a special kind of betrayal to be such a suck up and toxic presence when it is someone of their own gender/race/ethnicity/religion/sexual orientation. I’m pissed and really don’t want to hear any bullshit about stupid stuff like this. People are dying and I’m supposed to give a shit that I’m being mean to Nora fucking O’Donnell. Jesus.
Adam L Silverman
@Doug R: I’m still trying to get the “There’s no time for pants” line added.
TenguPhule
@kindness:
WW II shows otherwise.
The Moar You Know
@TenguPhule: Benzo junkies have an issue, once they become dependent, where it is either “not enough” or “too much”, no middle ground. And that’s what I’m seeing with Trump in his public appearances – no normalization whatsoever. He’s either manic, off-script and aggressive, or sniffling and reading like a robot.
I think, in addition to the many other ways he’s not fit for the job, that the dude is a fucking drug addict.
trollhattan
@debit:
:-)
Some come here for wisdom, I come for a receptive audience because at home the dad humor does not go over well.
TenguPhule
@geg6:
Amen. Got room on that couch?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: I’m sure that Cole and Baud would approve.
Ruckus
@smintheus:
I’m not so sure any more, that it’s all an act. I’ve thought that he’s getting farther into dementia for quite a while now.
I’ve seen dementia up close a couple of times in relatives and the farther you get down that road it can seem like intentional acts because they are trying to compensate but can not. OTOH he is a racist’s racist and he is not all that smart. In Regan’s case he had one person managing him who could do this – not that she should have been, but she was at least capable of it. trump has no one who is capable to any degree, they all have their own agendas, none of which are in any way good, all of their agendas being greed, hate and power.
PST
For those old enough to remember: when the National Lampoon used to do parodies— Sunday paper, high school yearbook, and so on — they would be from Dacron, Ohio, which was a kind of compilation of Ohio’s interchangeable second tier of cities. P.J. O’Rourke, who used to edit those things (and used to be funny) was from Toledo. I think there are several other jackets who grew up there, but I haven’t read the thread yet. I’m going next week to see my 95-year-old mother-in-law.
Barbara
@satby: Hey, Satby, what is the topic of the debate? In 25 words or less. I’m dying to know because I am not the one who started with the “Norah O’Donnell is a bimbo” line, but I guess it was okay for someone to say that but it was not okay to say that was not just sexist but inaccurate — which has always been my point — it’s actually LETTING HER OFF THE HOOK to call her a bimbo when what she is doing is way more subtle and pernicious than stupidity. Maybe the three of you grandes dames of BJ can be so good as to start every comment session by telling the rest of us what the acceptable topic of the debate is supposed to be. Signing off, so you don’t have to respond.
Elizabelle
@geg6: I am thinking that, WRT Norah O’Donnell, her being Mean Girl brings out the Mean Girl in me.
@TenguPhule: Did not know. And why we don’t have slang, like “remorabrains.”
Lynno
So what is Homeland Security doing? School is about to open and there appears to be a new threat for all those minority school districts. Is HS so tied up in Trumps concentration camps that they have no time to address this new threat to American children. HS must have names, photos and detailed info of white men with licensed AK’s they should be on the lookout for.
debit
@geg6: There’s a reason I don’t visit or comment very much anymore.
joel hanes
@Adam L Silverman:
Some people still get seriously lead-poisoned.
Renovation of a house with lead paint while you’re living in it can do it, or chewing paint chips. So can lead in your house’s drinking water from old-style plumbing. Using old-fashioned solder without washing your hands. Using old lead split-shot fishing weights, and crimping them on the line with your teeth. Eating duck or pheasant killed with lead shot, and swallowing pellets. Living in a neighborhood that was once downwind of a lead smelter (some Iowa towns have this problem).
?BillinGlendaleCA
@trollhattan:
Eyeroll?
Per the AP. another person in El Paso passed, so that 22 killed.
germy
@joel hanes: I wandered over to Kiko’s House and saw your comment on “Richard Codor’s Cartoon du Jour” and I couldn’t agree with you more.
I think Codor is a personal friend of that blogger, because I never see his work anywhere else He isn’t very good.
Ksmiami
@germy: let fury have the hour- anger can be power. the GOP deserves eradication and our vengeance they’ve earned it
Elizabelle
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Will take that under advisement.
debit
@Barbara: Just in case you come back: we weren’t the ones who were telling people the words they can and cannot use. That would have been john b and you. Perhaps you’d like to start that list.
O. Felix Culpa
@TenguPhule: On this blog? I don’t think so. What are you doing IRL to get people past Step 1?
geg6
@Doug R:
Totally. He definitely is.
JanieM
@West of the Rockies: @Gravenstone: @joel hanes: @joel hanes: I don’t have time to search for links right now, but I have read repeatedly that the “companion” who came with them in the same car is not dead, and is talking to the police, and is not believed to have known about the shooter’s plans. His race was not mentioned, but like Joel, I was betting almost immediately yesterday that that’s the direction from which race would factor into this story: his sister was dating a black guy, so lots of people had to die. Not that I will be happy if my hunch proves right, and not that his pathology doesn’t go long and deep, based on the stories of his kill and rape lists.
joel hanes
@germy:
I’ve treasured Mullen’s blog for many years; I was disappointed to see that cartoon there.
Trump is driving us all over the edge.
satby
@Barbara: here’s my capsule summary: fuck off.
The Moar You Know
@Lynno: There is no requirement to license an AK model rifle anywhere in America. Or any gun, for that matter. Something something freedumb.
In CA, you are supposed to register them, but not a lot of people have.
TenguPhule
@The Moar You Know:
You need a lot of money, a certain quality of ruthlessness and message discipline.
Elizabelle
@debit: That’s sad. It’s lovely to see you here. For one thing, I always think of sweet Walter.
Martin
@Lynno:
Homeland security, with no appointed secretary, deputy secretary, or chief of staff, no undersecretary for management, no undersecretary for science and technology, no undersecretary for strategy, policy, and plans, no directory of citizenship and immigration services (and acting is Ken Cuccinelli), and no administrator of FEMA?
I’m guessing they’re not doing much in the way of leadership.
TenguPhule
@Elizabelle: Come for the political argument, stay for the interesting science factoids.
JanieM
Addendum to my 1:26: I suppose it’s possible that the sister’s “date” was not the person who came with them. But I have read repeatedly that the person who came with them is wounded but not dead, and is not a suspect.
Mandalay
@debit:
What part of “Open Thread” don’t you understand?
Anyone is free to post their opinion on anything in this thread. How about you take your hall monitor routine somewhere else?
O. Felix Culpa
@debit: Others have complained that the commenting environment has changed. I suspect it’s because of the horrible timeline we’re in. People are tense, upset, and afraid, making light-hearted, clever banter difficult. And people act out because it’s sort of “safe” here. I’ve done it too. I wasn’t entirely joking when I mentioned a “hippocratic oath of blog commenting” earlier. If we’re truly community, we should endeavor to be kind to one another as much as possible. While also dragging the opposition mercilessly. :)
germy
@joel hanes: I like the blog, but that cartoonist is irritating. I remember his “Hillary the Queen sitting on her throne” cartoon during the 2016 election.
debit
@Elizabelle: Thank you. I miss the old guy so much. Ellie’s face is almost all white now and I keep thinking about how Walter would look as Senior Dog Statesman.
chopper
@FelonyGovt:
anxiety. my guess would be that he’s being forced to read this stuff when all he wants is to go back to the comfort of spouting eliminationist, dehumanizing rhetoric about brown people in front of crowds of his gibbering supporters.
debit
@Mandalay: How about you blow me?
JanieM
From The Daily Beast.
TenguPhule
@Mandalay:
The entire First Amendment Paradox in two lines.
Fair Economist
@dmsilev:
Congratulations, you win the thread!
Miss Bianca
@john b: Interestingly, “bimbo” originally referred to men. And still can. Thanks for playing.
Gravenstone
@mrmoshpotato: I’ve said before that Trump would be struck nearly mute if you took away his ability to speak in adjectives.
TenguPhule
So not a completely horrible weekend then.
geg6
@Barbara:
Oh god, you are fucking hilarious. I’m the one who called her a bimbo and I do not take it back at all. She is, just as Chuck Todd is a bimbo. And for you to be whining that we’re telling YOU what is acceptable vocabulary here is just too fucking funny. Been taking lessons from Trump and the GOP on gaslighting much?
ruemara
@Barbara: What did I just say? And, she’s a bimbo, like many men are. Last I’ll speak on this.
Sloane Ranger
I just saw Christian Amanpour interview Kelly Ann Conway who tried to gaslight her. Amanpour was like a teacher with a particularly difficult pupil, patiently but firmly bringing her back to the point.
Trump sounded like he was in a hostage video. It reminded me of the speech he gave in response to the puzzy video, which he rowed back on within days as he will this time.
Finally, I only have access to CNN and their presenters are totally ignoring the Toledo slip. Are the other channels doing the same and, if so, what’s with that?
smintheus
@Doug R: Fwiw “bimbo” is the Italian word for a male baby, a shortened variant of “bambino”. “bimba” is feminine.
TenguPhule
India set to withdraw Kashmir’s special status and split it in two
I see the rest of the world is rushing to set themselves on fire too.
Baud
Baud!/Bimbo! 2020!
chopper
@jl:
two white supremacists and an angry incel commit three mass shootings? obviously, video games are to blame!
O. Felix Culpa
@Miss Bianca: Huh. You’re right. Not that I ever doubted you. :)
OK, now back to the regularly-scheduled squabbling.
trollhattan
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Stage 1 is eyeroll or side-eye.
Stage 2 is punch dad. She’s coaching at a kickboxing gym part time. I’m her after hours heavy bag now.
Martin
@The Moar You Know: That law just went into effect last year, and I think 75,000-100,000 have been registered. Is that 90% of them or 5% of them? I don’t think anybody knows. I’m guessing we’ll get a new round of laws that will help improve monitoring of that. Expanded confiscation laws.
Gravenstone
@Adam L Silverman: It’s still possible to have significant lead exposure if you grow up poor in an old, unremdiated home. But it’s certainly not as pervasive as when we were dumping tons into the atmosphere annually via gasoline combustion.
TenguPhule
I remember when the media didn’t have to parse over word counts in public speeches.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The Newtown shooter also started at home, IIRC
Mowgli
@indianbadger:
I agree that this is about white people deciding what kind of country we are going to live in. Sadly, I’m not sure I want to know the answer. But I will get involved to register voters and to try to sway some minds where I can, that seems the minimum I can do as a white male (besides donating and voting)
trollhattan
@Baud: @O. Felix Culpa:
It’s also a brand, which hilariously advertises heavily at futbol pitches all over the world, including the States.
Ruckus
@Elizabelle:
I always thought that dipshit was a lower level insult. A couple levels above dip, which was a level above drip, but still not all that high on the insult chart.
trump really can’t be a dipshit, that’s not enough of an insult for him. Fucking jackoff asshole is starting to get there, notice it takes more than one word insults to properly describe trump. No one word insult shows the gravity of the assaults upon humanity that he levels every day.
TenguPhule
@Baud:
You are only allowed to run for one position per election. //
catclub
@dmsilev:
delenda, but whatever. My suspicion is that when a Democratic president is not 110% behind Bibi and the Israeli far right, she reverts to type.
Happy to be proved wrong.
Elizabelle
Bimbo can also stand for some delicious packaged goods, more imaginative than the US variety of sugared snacks and cakes. Bimbo brand’s mascot is a little bear that is whiter than the driven snow.
I see their stuff, branded under their own name, all the time in California, and maybe it’s on the East Coast too. US subsidiary is based in Horsham Township, PA.
They also bake a LOT of traditionally “American” products. Thomas English muffins. Sara Lee. Amuses me, when I think what is on the breakfast table of your typical MAGA supporter. Look closely, dudes!
Martin
@TenguPhule: I think we underestimate the benefits of having major world leaders that would intervene and try to avoid these kinds of conflicts. Obama would see that as troubling to US interests. So would the PM of the UK. Trump could care less. Boris has bigger problems.
Ruckus
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Most of us have enough sense to keep our assholishness in our pants. But some seem glad to display it openly and proudly, right up above their chins. trump is example one.
Elizabelle
@trollhattan: You got there just before me, as I was scrolling through all the familiar brands Grupo Bimbo bakes/owns, whatever. Enlightening. Fattening, even.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Ruckus: I’ve become partial to ‘nitwit’ in recent years. Too benign for trump and his contagious malevolence, but good for most media people
?BillinGlendaleCA
@trollhattan: IIRC, they bought Hostess after they went BK.
TenguPhule
Encyclopedia Brown, where are you when we need you?
joel hanes
@Miss Bianca:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bimbo_(Fleischer_Studios)
O. Felix Culpa
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yes he did. Killed his mother first, who had the guns in the house and had taken him regularly to target practice for shooter training.
TenguPhule
@Elizabelle:
/cracks up laughing
I remember my college business course about “Unfortunate Branding Marketing”
Martin
@Elizabelle: It’s actually a Mexican brand – quite an old one too. Huge company. They’ve been buying failing and struggling US bakeries for a while as they expand north from central america and Mexico. They bought Hostess as well. They own Entenmanns.
AThornton
@FelonyGovt:
One of the tells for a coke head.
joel hanes
@TenguPhule:
when the media didn’t have to parse over word counts
We have all perforce become Kremlinologists, because the Executive branch is staffed with liars.
Elizabelle
@TenguPhule:
The star being the Chevy Nova.
Brachiator
Typically, Trump will vehemently contradict what he is forced to say in a speech when he holds his next political rally.
@TenguPhule:
So, does this mean that Trump is going to stay off the Internets??
Sigh. At least he didn’t blame Satan or the gays, which is probably what Mike Pence wanted.
ETA. Trump is a fool. The Republcans are all fools. Any idiot pundit who will say that Trump’s speech is “at least a step in the right direction” is a fool.
TenguPhule
@Martin: No Kidding.
Its not like having two nuclear armed rivals suddenly having a unstable mutual border is an international concern….oh wait.
Karen
@smintheus:
What kind of rewards are we talking about? Money? A position in his Cabinet?
Would the threatening of their jobs count as “rewards?”
But by the end of the day, the official news will be Mental Illness and by the end of the week, (since both men are white) the media will forget this ever happened. And when he’s at his rallies, he’ll say “Illegals wouldn’t have been shot if they didn’t cross the border.”
joel hanes
@Ruckus:
that’s not enough of an insult
In future years, assuming we have a future, I expect “trump” to become a categorizing insult, just as the names “quisling” and “judas” have.
TenguPhule
@Ruckus:
I thought this was a pants optional blog.
Elizabelle
@Martin: So interesting to look them up. I had no idea.
More power to Bimbo! Holy Bimbo!
Just One More Canuck
@trollhattan:With the Trumps, it’s that the turds don’t fall far from the asshole
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
IC what you did there.
schrodingers_cat
@TenguPhule: This is bad news for India’s existence as a nation. This is a blunder of epic proportions.
scav
@TenguPhule:
Well, hey, more digits were spelt here over the proper gendering of insults than anything else. Apparently, the tender status of a few daughters feelings rank right over the emotional needs of conservative white men: the first in line of importance in all circumstances, forevermore — reliabilty of the press or bullet-ridden bodies bedamned.
TenguPhule
We are all Tim Ryan.
patrick II
@joel hanes:
I generally call that “aggressively ignorant”. I don’t know that, and you aren’t going to teach me either.
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
“Twitter is on my phone, not the internet. Checkmate, libs!”
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat: And with the rest of the world otherwise occupied with shit being set on fire, its probably going to be up to India and Pakistan’s leadership to try and resolve matters between themselves without a third party mediator.
Any chance anyone in India’s current government is up to it?
Elizabelle
@trollhattan: Oh. Right.
Um. Entirely. Intentional.
smintheus
@Karen: Yes, a lot of media people are risk averse and Republicans for decades have been engaged in a highly effective campaign to intimidate them. One of the rewards for pretending not to recognize that Republican politicians are stoking hatred and bigotry, lying or talking nonsense is that your inbox doesn’t fill up with quite so many threatening and abusive screeds.
TenguPhule
Go home Biden, you’re tired.
TenguPhule
joel hanes
@patrick II:
“aggressively ignorant”. I don’t know that, and you aren’t going to teach me either.
This is precisely my understanding of Trump’s attitude toward briefings of all kinds.
TenguPhule
October is going to be the worst month for stocks since the Great Depression. Calling it now.
sukabi
My 2¢ on the drumpf clip above:
Drumpf is pissed that he’s got to be giving the speech. He’s doing it under duress (his handlers are making him). He’s jacked up on his snort of choice, can’t go 3 words without his annoying sniff. And he doesn’t believe a word that he’s reading.
Wrong city is salt in the wound, THEY DON’T CARE.
The Lodger
@smintheus: And in the Pacific Northwest it’s a Mexican baked goods company. I almost ran off the fucking road the first time I saw BIMBO on a bakery truck.
Uncle Cosmo
@Just One More Canuck:
Either I coined that about ten years back, or it was an independent (re)discovery. Just FTR.u
Ruckus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The thing is with insults is that you want one that the subject wouldn’t like, not just not understand.
I get the concept of gendered/racist insults being out. But everyone, there are so many that are gender/racist neutral, like BinG said, asshole, we’ve all got one. It’s a discussion that’s worth having but both sides have points here. greg6 points out that life is so bad right now that wrong insults are the least of our worries. And sometimes I’d think that a woman has the right to insult another woman, who is using her femininity as a tool towards restricting other women, in a way than men should not. Do we say men can’t call another man a dick? Of course here we are discussing a trait, not a specific part so maybe that’s a bad example. Or maybe some people are such assholes that they beg to be called an inappropriate insult.
We are insulting people. What does appropriate actually mean when one is trying to insult someone else?
trollhattan
@sukabi:
I’m finding considerable credence to the report he snorts Addera11 (or however I need to spell it w/o invoking FYWP). “It’s not like I’m taking a drug, I’m taking medicine.”
Martin
@TenguPhule: I don’t know, August is shaping up to be a contender. Down 1,100 in not yet 3 days.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
Sadly, you are probably right. This is madness. From BBC News.
I don’t think that any US official has said anything about this situation.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-49231620
The Lodger
@Elizabelle: Take this cupcake with the frosted sugar, it is my body…
schrodingers_cat
@TenguPhule: No this is bigger than bilateral relations with Pakistan. BJP-RSS is setting the Indian Constitution on fire. This is going to end badly for India.
jl
@TenguPhule: Add Trump’s smart move of almost immediately undercutting Fed rate cut with new tariffs on China. And then saying that he thinks the Fed is obligated to do anything and everything to counteract whatever damaging economic policy nonsense he decides to commit, in order to keep his fake ‘Trump economy’ roaring ahead. That probably killed the Fed’s appetite to appease Trump any further. And, prudence suggests the Fed save its means to control an economic downturn for when it’s needed, rather than pursue the hopeless and impossible task of trying to make up for Trump’s blunders.
Krugman says column tomorrow will be on possibility that the all out trade war Trump think is so easy to win may finally get underway. China moved to reduce the value of its currency. It has not been actively managing it to be undervalued, but it has the means to do so, and in a big way.
Betty Cracker
@TenguPhule: Not usually on board for your prophesies of doom, but this one sounds plausible.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: Membooba Mufti and Omar Abdullah have both been arrested. They are the former chief ministers of J and K.
Miss Bianca
@TenguPhule: Well, great. That doesn’t make me feel more insecure in the world today AT ALL.
catclub
@TenguPhule:
I bet it is not, simply because if you know this, then so does everybody else. It will either happen in August September, or never happen.
I could imagine a huge swoon inAugust September and Boris getting some hints from the business community. The Tories now hold a 1,
count it, ONE seat majority in Parliament. Parliament has voted pretty strongly to NOT have a no-deal Brexit.
Origuy
@TenguPhule: Is there a reliable citation for this? As I said on a previous thread, the only place I’ve seen this mentioned is on Twitter. I copied the text you posted and it comes from a site called kriminals.net.
I suspect 8chan ratfucking.
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat:
Oh, that bad.
Citizen Alan
@TenguPhule:
Funny, I remember when the media continually parsed over Obama’s speeches by counting the number of times he said “I” and “me” to prove he was an arrogant narcissist.
TenguPhule
@Origuy: Try here.
Martin
@trollhattan: LPT: accented characters get you past the filters. So Adderåll works just fine. Penîs.
On a Mac, option+vowel (or n) gets you a character or a diacritic on the next character. On iOS, press and hold a key to get a list of alternates for that key. Not sure about Windows.
jonas
1. Once again, marvelous wordsmithing from BC. 2. The MSM wants soooooo bad to believe they’re covering an actual president as opposed to the racist, treasonous, narcissistic turd some malevolent trickster god deposited in the Oval Office. Every time they try to pretend otherwise, they perform a pathetic faceplant. And yet, they never learn. Can I haz tireswingz now?
Timurid
@schrodingers_cat:
“Any of you history nerds remember the Hartford Convention?”
–Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana
satby
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: the connection of domestic violence and mass murder has been studied for a while now. WaPo had a letter to the editor on it last year, which cited statistics from Everytown for Gun Safety.
rikyrah
Sam Adler-Bell (@SamAdlerBell) Tweeted:
The FBI won’t investigate white supremacists because their boss, the president, is a white supremacist, and he likes white supremacists. A real conundrum. https://twitter.com/SamAdlerBell/status/1158363532402012162?s=17
schrodingers_cat
@Timurid: I am sorry, I don’t follow. Karnataka is a BJP stronghold now.
jl
@Betty Cracker: Will be worse for UK than for us, if the Brexit crash out actually happens. Small comfort. Medium term indicators for significant economic slowdown over next year, perhaps recession, rising over 50 percent. I was looking Econbrowser;s earlier this morning. Post there this morning discusses lower than expected investment being a big cause of concern. (edit: so, GOP rich man’s tax cut may be the ultimate cause of that problem, as well as reducing National Income as Krugman DeLong, and Baker predicted, important since consumer spending only thing keeping expansion going)
Another is slowdown in world economic growth. US cannot stand along against that, despite white nationalist pipe dreams, but as world is affected by US slowdown. If Trump finally gets the all out trade war he claimed he wanted, and we have a Brexit crash out, that will be bad news for world economic growth. Probably big bad news in short run.
TenguPhule
@catclub:
I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that there is a majority in Parliament that would choose cutting their own throats with no deal Brexit rather then risk Corbyn becoming Prime Minister without hesitation.
Ruckus
@joel hanes:
I think in future years we will have to be reminded that trump happened. This entire sack of bullshit is so unbelievable that most will actually try to forget it. We of course should never get to that point, of thinking that anyone can be president, that political parties can become so corrupted by crappy ideologies that they are dangerous to not just their opponents but to themselves. That our government is so broken that the only way to fix it is to destroy it. Somewhere along the line we’ve seen our government get bigger, cost more and do less with itself, except in militarism, that we don’t trust it and by extension ourselves. We mostly do not actually realize how big and how ineffective our government has become. We spend billions on stuff we don’t really need because we seem to be mired in the past, and for the same reason we refuse to look forward. Some are trying but we have laws against even studying mass shootings, looking at why and how to stop them. We are broken. We are racists. We are failing ourselves. Not all of us but far, far too many. Maybe trump is the wakeup call we needed. I hope so because otherwise what is next….
SenyorDave
@joel hanes: In future years, assuming we have a future, I expect “trump” to become a categorizing insult, just as the names “quisling” and “judas” have.
Interesting thought. Would Trump be the noun as in “you’re so stupid, you must be a fucking Trump”? Or an adjective as in “he’s a trumping moron”?
cleek
@TenguPhule:
Biden also promised to cure cancer, two months before Trump did!
next.
Ruckus
@Just One More Canuck:
That’s good. That’s funny. That’s horrible – because it’s true and we are living it.
Martin
@jl: It’s on now. China devaluing was the gauntlet dropped. They’ve determined that they cannot negotiate with the US, so now the rest of the planet has been invited into this shitshow.
This was always a ‘bringing a knife to a gunfight’ act by Trump. China has way more levers to pull than the US does.
catclub
@TenguPhule: We will just have to disagree on this until events prove one ( or none) of us right. I would
predict some Tory member opposing no-deal Brexit.
MattF
OT. As a service to this discussion, here’s a joke about Sisyphus.
https://existentialcomics.com/
jl
@SenyorDave: The saying ‘play the trump card’ will have an interesting future history, should we have one. As will ‘X trumps Y’. Used to mean ‘winning’, but could also mean insane self-destructive mess and defeat.
MomSense
@smintheus:
I think the problem, especially with television “news”, is that they are broadcasters and not necessarily journalists. There used to be some on TV who cut their teeth in real reporting, but they are mostly gone now or just brought in to discuss specific issues. For the most part we are getting our news from people who look nice and read well. There are some exceptions, of course.
Brachiator
@TenguPhule:
This might be the least of our problems.
HinTN
This scrum reminds me of some famous late night erm… tears that eemom would get on.
Sic ’em, jackals.
SiubhanDuinne
@schrodingers_cat:
Request that one of the Front Pagers — Adam would be a natural — invite you to do a guest post on this situation.
I, for one, would be grateful to know more about the implications for India, Pakistan, and global security writ large. Would you be willing?
mrmoshpotato
@Gravenstone: Haha. Probably.
jl
@Martin: China has been holding off on managed devaluation for quite a while. China not only has more levers for short run currency management detrimental to US, but China will probably be hurt less by the trade war. Part of that is due to China’s place in current international supply chain. And of course, much of it has to do with incompetent design of Trump’s tariff increases, at least for the war Trump claims he wants to fight and win easily. To much emphasis on tariffs for intermediate good.
catclub
@jl: In the days of the new deal, the fair deal,
and the Cleveland plain dealer. The US (mostly) has no idea about bridge the card game. We lost a lot of finesse in our language.
Why be on the horns of a dilemma when you can be skewered by Morton’s fork.
trollhattan
@Martin:
Adderåll
That looks much more sophisticated–like an Icelandic volcano or a death-metal band. I have a tiny handful of Windows characters memorized, such as the humble µ. [alt+0181] Comes from working on hundreds of Superfund reports containing analytical data. “TCE detected in groundwater at 350 µg/L.” Those were the days.
schrodingers_cat
@SiubhanDuinne:Actually AL made me a standing offer in May that she would FP whatever I wanted to write. I am just too upset right now, but I will write my thoughts about this and send it to AL soon.
Martin
@catclub:
Parliament can vote on whatever the fuck they want, but the current state of play is that the EU is kicking the UK out on Oct 31 based on the current agreement. Either they approve the EU approved agreement before Oct 31 or they exit without an agreement. My understanding is the only other option that the EU will entertain is not exiting, something that Parliament isn’t yet considering. Parliament may feel they can dictate what the EU will agree to, but that isn’t going to happen.
SiubhanDuinne
@jl:
Since November 8, 2016 (if not earlier), my go-to bid is always No-Trump.
MomSense
@The Moar You Know:
I think he is taking benzos and adder all depending on the situation. Can’t believe his heart hasn’t quit.
jl
@catclub: @SiubhanDuinne:
Few times I’ve tried to play bridge, it has been an unpleasant disaster and ordeal. Other card games have trumps. I thought it was still a commonly used phrase.
SiubhanDuinne
@schrodingers_cat:
Excellent. I understand your being upset, and not trying to pressure you, but you may end up doing some of your most powerful writing from that space (not unlike Tony Jay’s series of Brexit posts).
I really hope you will.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
There are people who like to say stuff like this, but I don’t think that this scenario has ever been successful. Not ever.
And in one of my worst case scenarios, there is no restoration. Trump ushers in the end of democracy as the rabble fixes on a succession of white authoritarian tyrants who promise to get things done.
The Romans who toppled Julius Caesar thought that they were saving the Republic. They had no idea of what would follow from their actions.
Chief Oshkosh
@TenguPhule:
More like: To be fair, she seems smart enough to see her future in a Trumpian Future is a victim of a 21st century “Final Solution.”
SiubhanDuinne
@catclub:
We are dummies.
Martin
@trollhattan: Maybe deathmetal (obligatory), but Icelandic would need to have 4 or 5 more ‘j’s in it.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Martin: Alt+various patterns on the numeric keypad (with Num Lock on), which is a particularly dumb way to input characters. alt+0223 will give you ß, for instance; alt+0225 will give you á; alt+0228 is ä; alt+0233 is é; alt+0237 is í; alt+0241 is ñ; alt+0243 is ó; alt+0246 is ö; alt+0250 is ú; alt+0252 is ü. I don’t remember most of the others; I only bothered memorising the ones for Spanish and German, the only two foreign languages I’ve ever had much knowledge of. (I still almost remember Spanish, even!) Unsurprisingly, when I need to type something in a foreign language, I usually go to my MacBook, because Apple’s approach makes it much less annoying to type foreign text. Oddly, European Windows machines have the altGr key, which is pretty similar to the Option key on Macs, but for whatever reason, Microsoft has never brought that Stateside. Naturally, this annoys the crap out of me whenever I need to type something in Spanish.
Also, I know I’m slowpoking a bit here, but I specifically want to push back against the use of slurs against sex workers, who provide pleasure and solace to many very lonely people, often at great personal risk to themselves – they are sexually assaulted and murdered at many times the national average, and they are frequently unable to report crimes against themselves due to indifferent if not outright hostile law enforcement. I don’t think any of those things can be said to be true of Norah O’Donnell. I’ll leave people to debate the overall merits and drawbacks of gendered language among themselves, but frankly, I think we can find plenty of inventive ways to insult people without drawing in a community that already has plenty of problems to deal with as it is without being tarred by association with the likes of Norah O’Donnell.
Ceterum censeo factionem Republicanam esse delendam.
catclub
@SiubhanDuinne: touche’
schrodingers_cat
@SiubhanDuinne: I will. I have a lot to say and not just about India. Just have been a bit busy this summer.
rikyrah
new post, please
TenguPhule
@Brachiator:
Donald Trump is no Julius Caesar.
Brachiator
@satby:
How does that work? I thought that a number of the perpetrators are single men not in relationships.
sukabi
@rikyrah: the FBI hasn’t felt the need, urgent or otherwise, to seriously investigate rightwing / white nationalist hate groups for decades.
Origuy
@TenguPhule: Thanks. I guess it really happened. Biden at least corrected himself later. He’s still a gaffe factory and not getting better.
debit
@(((CassandraLeo))): I can respect that.
jonas
@rikyrah: Can you imagine the five-alarm shitshow across all media we’d be dealing with now if the FBI were complaining to reporters that they were feeling pressure not to investigate some Islamic terror cells because a Democratic president considered those radicals “part of his base?” Mother of God.
catclub
@jl:
My prediction would be that we know the US is also setting up to go to 11 if
Trump revokes his saving of ZTE and Huawei as personal favors to the Chinese leaders.
That would have huge repercussions and hurt the most (relatively) innocent consumers.
artem1s
@Kay:
DeWine sat on the investigation of the Pike County murders and let the local media blame Mexican drug cartels for what everyone in that part of the state was a domestic violence homicide among known Ohio white supremacist/militia members. He can’t sit around and wait for the Columbus Dogpatch shift the blame to brown people this time. I imagine that is where his discomfort is coming from.
Ascap_scab
Stay strong Toledo!! Worst mass murder since the Great Bowling Green Massacre!!
O.T. J. D. Scholten is running against Steve King in the Iowa 4th again. Kevin Costner narrates this video.
Ruckus
@cleek:
Old man here, not all that younger than either trump or Biden, just floating along waiting to see what’s next. Sill working, trying to make up for the last recession while I still sort of can. Biden and trump are farther along in the process than I am and both seem to be trying to show that they haven’t passed their sell by dates. But both have, just like I’m negotiating mine. The world doesn’t need their “wisdom,” it needs, if anything from them, to recognize that life moves on, that all of us are at best good for a little while in the overall scope of things and then it’s time to get out of the way and let the next generation move into the spotlight. trump is incapable of seeing this, his narcissism won’t ever allow him that. Biden is used to the spotlight, his last gig was a rather big one and he did it OK. But given what he’s done with his life, that last spotlight seems to have blinded him with the “One more step” disease. It’s not that he’s a bad person, like trump is, it’s just past his time and abilities and he refuses to see this. Anyone who gets old knows what I’m saying, even if they can’t see it or say it. Life is a hill, we climb up, and if we are at all graceful we climb down from our personal peak. If we aren’t graceful about aging, we climb to our personal peak and then we fall down the other side. If we are trump we climb way past our personal peak and knock people out of the way getting there and then we jump off the cliff because we are too stupid to recognize that we aren’t all that and a bag of chips. And we do the maximum amount of damage along the way because we think we deserve far more than we do.
SiubhanDuinne
@schrodingers_cat:
Got it. Thanks.
SFAW
@SiubhanDuinne:
Well, I do declare!
Now if only we could go for a Mega Slam (= infinity No Trump, of course).
Aleta
@Adam L Silverman: If you google lead poisoning + young people, for example, you’ll find articles just in the last few weeks about cities trying to address lead poisoning and its effects on their children. Reports from New Haven, Baltimore, Cleveland, Michigan…
catclub
@SiubhanDuinne: I will support the first politician whose motto is “The best contract for America is NoTrump”
catclub
@Aleta: and if you read a bit of Kevin Drum. you may learn that the lead poisoning/crime nexus peaked about twenty to twenty five years ago.
Martin
@Brachiator: There’s a middle ground, which we’ve employed multiple times, which is to match the norm breaking with norm breaking, take the position of power, and negotiate for a new set of laws to restore balance. That’s what FDR did, and that’s what Dems need to do now.
The counter to McConnell’s court strategy is to pack the courts, nullifying his advantage. When the GOP (understandably) complains, then you negotiate to a new state – 18 year terms on a senate-like calendar (2 per presidential term), nominations within 30 days of a vacancy, full Senate confirmations votes within 90 days or the nominee is automatically confirmed. That’s fair and stable, but you need to gain the upper hand first.
In a sense you are destroying the normative state of things without destroying the underlying structure. And there are other counters. States are more valuable than we often acknowledge. States advanced same sex marriage when Congress wouldn’t. They’re doing the same with pot legalization. Some are trying to do that with banning abortion. CA is also trying to do this economically. In 2016, I asserted that federal progress was stalled and shifted my focus to the state, coming from one that can act more like a nation. That’s what we need to do.
sukabi
@Kay: re getting the city wrong. News reports ALL had the correct info, no matter which station. The bubble encompassing our “leaders” must be quite opaque and impervious to reality because that’s a “mistake” that should be impossible to make given the saturation of coverage.
O. Felix Culpa
@Brachiator: They still have mothers and sisters and ex-girlfriends. Or girls who rejected their advances.
SiubhanDuinne
@Ascap_scab:
Not everyone will like that video, but I do. Has a nice nostalgic Field of Dreams vibe to it. (And I think it’s wonderful that the town barber has a big floofy white beard!)
Raven
@Ruckus: Fuck that, I’m goin down swinging.
SiubhanDuinne
@SFAW:
@catclub:
Y’all are tricky. I pass.
Brachiator
@TenguPhule:
He thinks he is.
However, my main point is that the GOP and Trump’s white supporters created a monster. The GOP should never have let Trump become their nominee.
The voters, and Putin, then elected a man who didn’t know anything about how the government is supposed to work and who does not care. Trump thinks that he is the boss and everyone should do what he says. The GOP Senate has his back and the Supreme Court has often been compliant.
Trump’s supporters installed an authoritarian tyrant because they were tired of democracy. And now a good chunk of citizens are intrigued at Trump’s promise of a white supremacist regime and foolishly believe that an ignorant, incompetent grifter like Trump can bring prosperity.
No, Trump is not Julius Caesar. The question is, is there a potential Augustus who will capitalize on the instability that Trump and the GOP has brought, and who will bring all the shit down.
ETA. The Democrats should never have let Sanders run as one of their candidates. If he does well in the primaries, even if he ultimately loses big time, his supporters will be trouble.
joel hanes
@cleek:
[waves hello to cleek]
Martin
So China dropped the gauntlets with the currency devaluation and are threatening to go one further by ignoring US sanctions on Iran and buying oil from them. Which I think is their right to do given that the sanctions are only there because Trump bailed out of the working agreement.
China sees their moment. Even under Trump the US still had a global leadership position, and while China won’t be inheriting that position, they’re removing the US from it. We’re going to have to earn it back under a future president.
If this continues, watch for the fall of the petrodollar, being replaced by probably the Euro. The ensuing sale of reserve dollars will be brutal to the US economy.
CatFacts
Apparently, McConnell’s campaign tweeted an image of Amy McGrath’s name (and others) on a cardboard tombstone. After the El Paso shooting, natch. Giving to her campaign might be a good way to channel some anger this morning, if anyone’s so inclined.
joel hanes
@MomSense:
There used to be some on TV who cut their teeth in real reporting, but they are mostly gone now
TV news began to die when they forced out Eric Sevareid.
Here’s his goodbye:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHGHm8iPeUY
joel hanes
@Brachiator:
[Trump think’s he’s Julius Caesar]
Nah, Trump thinks he’s Caligula. (He’s never read the Shakespeare, nor seen a production, but dollars to donuts he’s seen the Guccione production of “Caligula”).
But he’s mistaken.
Trump is Incitatus — or rather, the posterior aspect of Incitatus.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Agreed.
Our form of government is flawed, like all the others. Maybe as Churchill stated, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the rest.” We are a large group of humans, we have flaws, desires, hopes, dreams, hates, needs….. At least in a democracy we try to keep the damage to a minimum. Not all governments do that. But if we refuse to recognize that there is inequality and strive to overcome it, then we aren’t doing what we need to be doing to move forward. My screed on getting old above is really about this as well. The world isn’t the same as it was 50 or 100 or 1000 yrs ago. It is constantly changing, like it or not. And it changes faster now and will continue to do so, even as a majority live longer, still thinking that they are the future. And not all olds are standing in the way, some much older than me are working hard to leave this a better place, not the same place or worse. In that screed above I used personal peak, because the top of each of our lives will be at a different time and place. It’s not like we all become useless at 65, but the truth is that few are not peaking around that timeframe and some much later. trump peaked at 17 for example. Of course he has no clue and if he did he’d never admit it.
Brachiator
@Martin:
We have never had a president like Trump before. A leader who is openly ignorant and childish.
Also, the Democrats have to win.
Your vision of states’ rights is interesting. The federal government falls, as some desire, and some states continue as democracies, while others become oppressive regimes.
joel hanes
@Brachiator:
[Trump think’s he’s Julius Caesar]
Nah, Trump thinks he’s Caligula. (He’s never read Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”, nor seen a production, but dollars to donuts he’s seen the Guccione production of “Caligula”).
But he’s mistaken.
Trump is Incitatus — or rather, the posterior aspect of Incitatus.
Martin
@Martin: Oh, I missed that China has halted all agricultural imports from the US. Well, then. China may know how to play US politics better than we do.
TenguPhule
@Martin:
Republicans can’t negotiate and won’t.
joel hanes
@catclub:
Averages say nothing about the existence, or not, of outliers.
It is quite possible for Kevin Drum to be correct about the time of peak lead poisoning, and for some small fraction of young people to be suffering from serious lead poisoning today.
google “long tail”
Brachiator
@joel hanes:
Again, don’t focus on Trump. Focus on the voters who got tired of democracy, of checks and balances, and who willingly voted for an ignoramus who would run the government like a business.
This is even more stupid than voting for a general who promised to restore order.
Still, the common thread is that the people, who hold all the power, lost their faith in democracy and threw it all away. Or, they think that they can have democracy for white people only. The plutocrats and grifters have a surprise for these idiots.
Martin
@Brachiator: I don’t think either really happens. Even the Civil War didn’t result in that – but it did cause a massive realignment of how the federal government works. This is a cold civil war. It’s CA and NY against TX and AL, not with bullets but with policies and economic might.
The threat is agents like China who are, today, dropping the bomb that may get everyone to fucking pay attention again. Does Alabama want to ban abortion more than they want to sell chickens to China? That may force a return to Federalism. It may require something stronger. Eventually the federal weakness will result in a realignment. But we’ll ultimately return to the original framework as we always have.
Ruckus
@Raven:
I’d expect nothing less. From you or even me.
Wasn’t saying lay down on the tracks and let the train run over you, just have some realism about it. Our future is not as long as the average someone 20 or even 40. Nor are we normally working to support ourselves, we’ve done that part. We may even have something worthy to say and valid points, we are still citizens and some, like you paid a rather higher price getting here. It’s just that while it’s still our world as well, and we have to live in it for as long as we can, we are no longer the leading edge.
rikyrah
@Martin:
Uh uh uh
Play with the Chinese if you want to.
Raven
@Ruckus: roger
Mandalay
@Martin:
Right. As a politician said a few months ago, the position of the hapless British government towards the EU is “Meet our demands or we jump!“.
Bluff can be a legitimate and effective negotiating tactic by governments in international politics, but not when the other side is holding all the cards, and you have pissed your pants.
Aleta
@catclub: But still happening to individuals and still a major issue, with cases still undiagnosed/unreported because of class. Not just an urban problem–Britain has publicized info about kids who are poisoned by eating birds and deer hunted with (or birds who eat) lead shot, because the lead disperses into the meat. I read (Guardian I think) that a British market that sells game has announced it will no longer sell birds or I think venison that’s been contaminated with lead shot. In the US, anti-gun control people have fought against regulation of lead shot here.
eta I’m not talking about the biased use of stats for crime. Impairment on brain processes is still an issue.
Bill Arnold
@Betty Cracker:
That was an edit? Seamless – well done.
(For those unfamiliar with the word’s current meanings, https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Muppet&=true )
Chief Oshkosh
@The Moar You Know:
So how did the GOP do it? Again, genuinely asking.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
Biden is like a journeyman boxer who won a few big fights, and who doesn’t know when to hang it up.
News stories about Biden suggest that Obama picked him because Joe had no presidential ambitions, and would settle in and be a good VP to finish his political career.
But I also think that Biden thinks that the slate of Democratic Party candidates are weak, and that he has a real chance at winning. This is not just blind ego at play.
TenguPhule
@Martin:
Is this a trick question?
Jay
@Adam L Silverman:
An online life free of checks and filters, in a culture that rewards extremism and rageing.
Brachiator
@Martin:
No, it’s the GOP attempting to crush CA and NY in favor of TX and AL. More proxy war than civil war.
Yes.
Because Trump falsely promises that he will make sure that Alabama never has to suffer because of their stupidity.
This is also why you have some farmers continuing to back Trump even though tariffs are killing them.
Anonymous
@Elizabelle:
My only problem with the pie filter is that it pies all the comments about the pied dork. I want to see those, just not the dork’s inane, irritating, bigoted, or stupid comments. So I’ve mostly stopped using the pie filter.
I hear that the new release of Balloon-Juice may have an improved version of the cleek/Major^4 pie filter, which would be great…
Another Scott
@Kay: Yup.
Warning: Politico (from August 2017, after Charlottesville):
It’s just mouth noises to him. He’s not going to change because he’s incapable of learning anything.
Cheers,
Scott.
Fair Economist
@Brachiator:
Seriously, WTF? This is coup behavior, putting major politicians under house arrest.
Gelfling 545
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: So, they’re mentally ill but execute them anyway? Huh.
Brachiator
@Martin:
The Chinese were puzzled by Trump. His economic moves made no sense. They left no room for reasonable compromise.
They finally decided that he was a hapless amateur and have decided to bring the hammer down.
Fair Economist
@Brachiator:
To say the current slate is weak *is* blind ego. People who could be top tier candidates like Gillibrand and Inslee are getting lost in the crush.
Brachiator
@Fair Economist:
As S-Cat has noted, this is a huge betrayal by India of everything good it has stood for.
Anonymous
@Adam L Silverman:
We need more variations on the bananapants theme, also, too. David Anderson of Healthpolicy introduced that delightful term, which can be applied to Mr. President Fruit-loops Trump bananapants extraordinaire. Less derogatory term for crazy, according to Dave Anderson…
I’m not sure I need a less derogatory term for crazy, but I’m OK with it if people prefer it. It works for me, I guess I’m saying.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Brachiator:
True, not just ego. There’s a nice helping of patriarchal assumptions at play too.
Gelfling 545
@debit: In my, admittedly weird, social milieu both bimbo and whore are no longer gendered words. Applied liberally to any gender based on behavior.
Peale
@Brachiator: Trump’s moves make perfect sense if you think of him as a 19th century colonial king of a largely agricultural country who thinks that because he has a few boats with canons, a country should only buy his goods. That’s why he’s always complaining that China isn’t doing this or that – he things China can just buy his stuff whether they need to or want to or not. He seems to wants give each country a quota of agricultural products that they commit to buy. And its always ag products and nothing else.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
BTW, I love change. I am an old fart who loves change. It tickles me. And I think there have been many periods before of rapid change.
I have worked mainly in the tax and finance industry. I was on the ground floor when tax professionals were just starting to use primitive personal computers. I had a boss sagely tell me that PCs would never be a significant portion of the industry. But I have seen an entire industry evolve just during my working career. I have not had to read about any of this in a history book. I have lived it. I love it.
ETA. I also used to work in the newspaper industry. I think I may see the death of traditional newspapers in my lifetime.
laura
@trollhattan: I come for a receptive audience because at home the dad humor does not go over well.
I so enjoy your comments, peeks into your daughter’s teen life by a proud dad and bikey-stuff, so I just need to pull your coattails a moment. Your dad humor may not “appear” to go over well, but you’d be wrong. I was a well-loved daughter of a dad who was funny and a teaser and if I could hear one of his groaners right now. I’d eat a big. Keep on being that Dad!
Another Scott
@Adam L Silverman: Yup.
Liza Gold made an excellent point on 1A today (no transcript yet):
Roughly:
“We need to recognize that anger is not mental illness. Rage is not mental illness. We are all capable of great kindness and selflessness and also murderous rage. It’s part of the human condition…”
She’s right.
Of course people need to learn how to control all of their emotions, including anger and rage. But that’s not what causes mass murder. It’s not even the most important part. We can’t be distracted from the real causes.
Cui bono? Follow the money…
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
@Peale:
Great analogy.
Trump is fundamentally ignorant about the way a modern economy works. It is a scandal that conservative economists, who claim to be objective and hard headed, do not call Trump out on this.
J R in WV
@JanieM:
This is pretty weird, as the perp was armed, armored, carrying multiple giant drums of ammo… now exactly how do you not suspect impending foul play?? I saw the perp scurry into view of a security camera, and he looked so laden with gear he could barely move… where did all that come from? The trunk of the car? dubious… so strange!
I won’t ever use the actual name of any of these mass murder perps, they are anonymous monsters to me, forgotten as soon as they hit the dirt or enter the prison system.
artem1s
@joel hanes: living near or on property that had an old gas tank on the premises. So many people who used to dump their used car oil right on the gravel or dirt driveway where their kids played everyday. Or they used gasoline as a solvent or cleaner. And the downwind thing doesn’t have to be a lead smelting plant. Any large coal burning furnace will result in fallout of a variety of heavy metals. The entire rust belt has contaminated top soil from steel plants and other mills.
terry chay
Enjoying watching @john b mansplain gender sensitivity to two female commenters.
Some of these trolls have become parodies of trolls.
Gravenstone
@J R in WV:
Actually, not that unlikely. Load the car up ahead of time. “Drop off” sister and her date, pull around corner and load up for the massacre. Additional video surveillance from the area might clarify the exact events.
satby
@Brachiator: assaulting or killing family members (like moms) counts as domestic violence. Doesn’t have to be a sexual relationship.
satby
@Ruckus: Truth, you speak it.
Brachiator
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
Perhaps. But Obama really opened things up. I mentioned before that a “wise” pundit once insisted that there was a natural order of things presidential. That first there would be a woman president, then a Jewish president, and then, after a few cycles, presumably with more white men and women, a black president.
Obama blasted that nonsense. There should not be any preference, nor any sense that it is somebody’s “turn” to be president. Arguably, the most powerful Western leader is Angela Merkel, and her designated successor is also a woman.
Biden is a front runner as much because he served under Obama as because he think he might be an entitled male. But Warren and Harris and Mayor Pete bring their own strengths, and none of them have to settle for any nonsense that the nominee is “supposed to be” any particular sex, race or preference. Those days are over.
Brachiator
@J R in WV:
Yes, I also found this puzzling. But I guess that the police will be able to question the person who was with the the guy and his sister.
Kayla Rudbek
@Adam L Silverman: lead doesn’t get out of the environment without effort, so there are areas where I’m sure that kids still have too high of lead levels in their bodies. Heck, to this day there are still no-go zones along the Western Front in France and Belgium because of heavy metal contamination from World War One. see here
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: I wonder if that “wise” pundit realized black men got the franchise before women of any race.
smintheus
@MomSense: That’s part of the problem, yes. However in many other countries the TV news broadcasts are hard hitting and staffed by excellent journalists. Even in Italy which has long placed a premium on beauty. For example, one of my old friends, a fairly extreme left-wing journalist (with a serious academic background in early modern English dialects) who began at a Rome newspaper quickly got promoted to a job as a newsreader on a national network. I first met her as a quirk of fate – precisely because I could see that she was the no-nonsense kind of person I needed to help me at the moment when we happened to cross paths.
smintheus
@Kayla Rudbek: A lot of gun clubs are heavily infested with lead, especially those that have skeet shooting. There are companies whose business model is dredging the surface soil from gun clubs and winnowing out all the lead (as in, multiple truckloads of it per range).
It may be a partial explanation for how bizarrely gun humpers behave.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
None of this stuff was thought through. It was simply ratifying the status quo with some small adjustment.
However, some of the politically connected thought that Obama’s quest for the nomination was an affront to Hillary Clinton and to all white womanhood. Didn’t matter who got the vote first.
Mike G
It’s a dog whistle to their base that they don’t really mean it. “I Really Don’t Care, Do U?”
He’ll walk it back the next time he gets to rant on camera.
Another Scott
@smintheus:
I think Drum has made a compelling case that lead in the US population really needs to be looked at much more closely. Like, maybe, taking blood samples and testing for lead whenever someone is fingerprinted.
It would be very interesting to see the lead levels of 3%ers and NRA Life Members… The CDC and FDA should get right on it.
Cheers,
Scott.
J R in WV
@Chief Oshkosh:
Actually, the first thing, a womb, is stupid because Ms Rubin is 57 — a good looking 57, but way past being a womb for the MotU in Handmaiden’s Tale. Victim of a Final solution, that’s a real chance for lots of us. Why I have a carry permit, will not go alone.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
I like change as well. I especially like change for the better. Like equality. That’s a good change.
You want to talk work life change?
I programed our first 3 axis machine tool in 1973 to cut mold cavities. Before calculators even, let alone computers. With a slide rule and a knowledge of maths. The shop that was in was built as the depression started and my father did his apprenticeship from the man he bought the building from in 61. It had one motor overhead with jackshafts and flat leather belts to drive about half the machines. It was a relic from the age of industrialization. We went on to see a lot of changes and improvements in the work that could be accomplished with better tools. When the 94 earthquake ended that/my business I was doing work with a machine that was accurate to 50 millionths of an inch and would run all by itself for days on end. What I do today isn’t as advanced as what I was doing in the early 90s.
Everything changes, even people. The rate of change is what is different today from 70 yrs ago. Technology has allowed people to do things they could at best only imagine when I was born. It has also created a group of people who are relics of a time when there was a real ruling class, even if most of that class had less power than they imagined. They want a return to that time, even if they have never actually seen or lived it. We will always have those to whom change is the worst thing. They have no imaginations, they have no concept of change, they are afraid of change, they are afraid of losing what little power they held over someone else, even if holding that power was wrong.
And I know this because we are seeing this around the world. But in most cases the past is, as it always does, losing. Not without a fight mind you but losing it is.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Why would they? Most of the one’s I’ve heard of agree with him far more than disagree. Their claims are bullshit, like everything else conservatives say. Objective they are not, hard headed, that one is absolutely true.
J R in WV
@Fair Economist:
Yes, only the coup is by the national government, against an independent constitutional state within the nation**, not legal at all, constitutionally. Which is why people are under house arrest and troops are sent in. Scary, since both sides are nuclear states, and neither is particularly sane at this time.
How long would it take to build and supply a fallout shelter after a serious nuclear exchange in southern Asia? Versus how long it would take the fallout to arrive here in North America? There’s a good question!!!
** Like Trump attempting to subdue California by sending in his storm troopers!
J R in WV
@Brachiator:
I grew up in a newspaper newsroom, and met wife there. We watched the Saturday Night Massacre come over the wires late that night, knowing we were watching the end of a presidency.
Now we have good friends who are still reporters and editors, hoping to cling on to their profession until they can go on Social Security. I just hope the various forms of news media still remaining will keep us informed enough to kill off the Trump presidency before it is too late.
J R in WV
@Gravenstone:
“Actually, not that unlikely.”
See, I was assuming perp was riding with sister and date, not driving. Could be wrong, dunno.
Kathleen
@JanieM: Thread probably dead but my understanding is the same as yours based on my viewing of the 4:00 press conference yesterday. What I heard is 1) the shooter, his sister and what police chief referred to as a friend rode together down to Oregon 2) police could/would not say why they separated 3) the friend was shot but survived and was talking to police. I get the sense police are being very careful about making statements they are not in position to confirm at this time. I’m extremely impressed with Mayor Whaley, the Chief of Police, and the other officials in the city.
One other interesting note, at the end of his press conference the police chief told the media (and I’m paraphrasing as best I can) to be “loving” with their treatment of the victims. I found that very curious and wondered why he felt moved to make that statement.
J R in WV
@Another Scott:
How high a lead level should we allow before you can’t vote any more? I’m not a medical person, and most of my shooting has been outdoors… on the other hand, I chipped paint off a WW II vintage ship’s decks for 3 years, so… could be.
On the third hand, managed to get a degree in a technical field where I excelled for 25 years, ’til retirement time… so I dunno.
Kathleen
@TenguPhule: One of these “plant based” nutritional companies has a product called “Soylent”. Talk about great moments in branding.
TenguPhule
@J R in WV:
What makes you think they were going to use her own eggs? And yes, the technology has arrived to make older wombs feisable.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
Probably a dead thread, but no. Conservative economists have to deny what they have written before and also classical economics in order to support Trump.
Hell, Adam Smith opposed tariffs.
ETA. I note that this has been a fun and wide ranging thread
Amir Khalid
@joel hanes:
It is not a bad movie. It is a terrible movie. The writing is clumsy and the acting wooden. The music was taken from a bunch of second-rate classical composers. Its garish aesthetic is something Trump has copied in his real estate career. It lacks the insight to be a good history movie; and despite Guccione rewriting it over Gore Vidal’s protests to add more sex, it falls short of the wall-to-wall fucking you expect in a porn flick.
Another Scott
@J R in WV:
My (perhaps naive) premise was that the lead levels in a person’s blood would be used (along with much more) to make objective decisions about things like:
– Does this person need Chelation therapy or other medical interventions (e.g. for medical screening)?
– Does this person show signs of diminished capacity that would affect their judgement (e.g. for weapons permits, jobs with access to weapons or secrets)?
– etc.
Not voting.
But of course, any information and any sensible rules can be bent or ignored by people with nefarious intent. Obviously, we wouldn’t want Donnie and his minions anywhere near the information. :-/
Cheers,
Scott.
(“Who grew up loving muscle cars with their leaded-gas guzzling engines…”)
Waynski
@germy:
Nice John Lydon (a.k.a Johnny Rotten) quote. Well done.
Ignatz Thugg
@Ruckus:
How about bloviating colostomy bag