Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Let there be snark.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

You are here: Home / Politics / Impeachment Inquiry / Late Night Open Thread: Courtiers to the Mad King Preznint

Late Night Open Thread: Courtiers to the Mad King Preznint

by | 65 Comments

This post is in: , , , , ,

Speaking of ‘small, weak & fearful’…

On the other hand, at least one RWNJ grifter — I mean, “reporter” — with a sensitive antennae for the prevailing political currents is publicly renouncing His Lardship…

Reader Interactions

65Comments

  3. 3.

    Debbie(Aussie)

    @cain: ditto
    Except of course he’s your president and I would like to add BJ on behalf of all decent citizens of the UK and our PM ($cumo). Bastards all the way down!

  6. 6.

    Kent

    In Today’s Washington Post: A story about the Amish PAC in support of President Trump:

    The “Amish PAC” Seriously. This is a real thing: https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2019/10/09/famously-secluded-amish-are-target-republican-campaign-drum-up-pennsylvania-votes-trump/?fbclid=IwAR2dvPuOo0f1RztfKfoPtbKVhWIHHgnP1xFJIS5MtcBSElFg4_iEStnh6Xc and it is being promoted on Amish-oriented ministry web sites such as this: https://www.mapministry.org/

    From the article. 90% of Amish register as Republicans. Only 1% register as Democrats. Similar numbers for conservative Mennonites. These are my people. My parents both come from conservative Mennonite roots and I have extended relatives who have married into the Amish so I have Amish relatives show up for family reunions and funerals and such. Although they are not evangelical (quite the opposite) they are most definitely conservative fundamentalists and every bit as right wing as your biggest southern Baptist evangelicals.

    Out of curiousity I pulled up the 2016 election results from the most Amish/Mennonite counties in the US (in rural Pennsylvia and Ohio) which turned out to be more pro-Trump than many of the most conservative counties in Alabama:

    Mifflin County PA: Trump 75%, Clinton 20%
    Holmes County OH: Trump 79%, Clinton 16%
    Rural Lancaster County PA (outside the city limits): Trump 81%, Clinton 14%.

    And you know what. They are pretty much just as racist as their southern Baptist counterparts. Just in a different and much more subtle way. Not overt racists, much too polite for that. But racist in their absolute dismissal of anything and any culture not of their own.

  8. 8.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): …and we get Pence, who is fucking terrible as well and maybe makes people feel relieved enough just by not being Trump that he gets a popularity honeymoon. If it’s timed right, maybe Pence wins reelection just on the strength of that. Would have to be timed exactly right, though, since I doubt the honeymoon would last long.

  9. 9.

    Kent

    @Major Major Major Major: Mennonites have this reputation as liberal pacifists. And the pacifist part is true as far as that goes but hasn’t really been much of an issue since WW2 and especially since conscription ended. And there are indeed some very liberal Mennonite churches in places like big cities and college towns that are mostly populated by younger educated people who have left the rural areas long ago. But they the bulk of them who still live in rural areas are just as reactionary as all their neighbors. Guns, God, and Gays are the big 3 issues. Conservative Mennonites are more virilently anti-Gay than southern Baptists. Bush sucked in a whole bunch of them on the anti-Gay Marriage crusade. Last family reunion a bunch of my Mennonite cousins skipped out on stuff to go visit the big local gun show and came back with a couple paychecks worth of armaments stashed in their trunks. AR15 type crap not shotguns. My Dad attended a Mennonite boarding school in Oregon in the 1950s and he told me that pretty much all the guys had shotguns and rifles in their dorm rooms.

  11. 11.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @The Golux: Remember that Ewick Ewickson once advertised himself as a “never-Trumper” but now is a full blown brainwashed member of the cult.

  12. 12.

    Mike in DC

    Support for removal at 51% NOW. Wonder what it’ll be at after a couple weeks of new revelations and evidence? 55% is the point where some Republican senators start jumping ship.

  13. 13.

    Major Major Major Major

    So I’m kind of surprised by the number of companies kowtowing to the CCP. The NBA, Apple, Blizzard… even SF ‘startup incubator’ ycombinator seems to be banning pro-HK threads from its Hacker News discussion boards.
    ETA I guess this is modern globalism!

    @Kent: my current cat-sitter grew up a Bay Area Mennonite and her family is conservative AF and they don’t talk any more.

  14. 14.

    Keith P.

    I’d love to know the behind-the-scenes story as to why Trump changed his mind on using DiGenova/Toensig as his personal lawyers (or whatever it was). IIRC the story was he soured on something about how they came off in-person, but I bet the specifics would be pretty harsh, coming from Trump

  15. 15.

    Cacti

    It’s not possible to be a good person and patriotic American, and still support Donald Trump.

    Support for the fascist coup needs to be a scarlet letter of shame that follows the enablers for the rest of their days.

  16. 16.

    Kent

    @Major Major Major Major: Engagement with China was sold as bringing democracy and western ideals the place. Kind of like the fantasy of how blue jeans and rock and roll were supposed to have brought down the USSR. What has actually happened is the opposite. Engagement with China is actually exporting their brand of authoritarianism directly to our shores due to our corporate overlords relentless obsession with the Chinese market. And it is scary as hell. Trump’s obsession with Huawai might be the one single thing he accidentally got right.

  18. 18.

    scav

    Ahh, the rekindled Greatness of Merka is radiant today. Presumably they’ve gone all weak-kneed in sheer wonder at its resurgent glory.

    Or is it weak-spined?

  20. 20.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Kent: yep.

    We’ve actually just banned(?) companies from selling to their AI and surveillance companies, too, which is another example of what a sensible & strong China policy would look like.

    Although there are some here who tell me tariffs, bans, and other trade tools are insane radical moves that no sensible democrat should support the mere idea of.

  22. 22.

    Kent

    @Cacti:

    It’s not possible to be a good person and patriotic American, and still support Donald Trump. Support for the fascist coup needs to be a scarlet letter of shame that follows the enablers for the rest of their days.

    The House needs to inform every damn Federal employee that obstruction of the impeachment inquiry of any kind will be considered cause for dismissal, revocation of security clearances, and possible future prosecution, and not the thing they want to be considering if they ever want to continue working in ANY type of Federal employement after 2020 or in any industry or advisory role that requires security clearances. I’m pretty sure they can do that and any future Dem President can enforce it.

  24. 24.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Remember that Ewick Ewickson once advertised himself as a “never-Trumper” but now is a full blown brainwashed member of the cult.

    See also Glenn “Blackboard! Conspiracy!” Beck.

  26. 26.

    Kent

    @NotMax: Actually not actual Amish web sites, but the web sites of conservative Mennonite organizations who evangelize to the Amish. Kind of like how missionaries go to the Amazon to find primitive tribes. Except closer to home and you can sleep in your own bed at night.

    These people eat their own. The endless extent of church scisms and infighting and such in that small part of the world would make Machiavelli stand back in awe and makes office politics in academia look like child’s play.

  28. 28.

    Redshift

    @Kent:

    I’m sure its simple and craven. Someone probably dissed them on Fox and that was that. Occam’s Razor usually applies.

    Trump’s Razor: the stupidest answer you can think of that fits the facts is probably the correct one. (h/t Josh Marshall)

  29. 29.

    Mary G

    I guess the Republican Party is going all out to get the Amish to vote to pin down Pennsylvania and Ohio.

    It looks like Pelosi’s getting ready to turn off the money spigot, but I don’t know how that’s going to work.

  30. 30.

    Kent

    @Mary G: A 1% gain in African American turnout would wash away any gains they make in the Amish vote 10-times over, which is going to be tiny as only the men would actually vote. They aren’t going to let their wiminfolk do any such thing. The 19th Amendment doesn’t apply to the Amish community. They aren’t THAT modern.

    What are you talking about with respect to Pelosi? Or are you referring to Warren’s opposition to big dollar fundraisers?

  31. 31.

    frosty

    @Kent: You’ll probably see the same results in York County minus the city on the other side of the Suskie. And we’re not Amish or Mennonite.

  32. 32.

    Betty Cracker

    @Keith P.: Haha, it probably is the mustache! Though Trump might come around on DiGenova now that he has declared Trump a king on TV.

  33. 33.

    NotMax

    @Kent

    Not all that widely known is that the Amish are exempted, by law, from paying into Social Security or worker’s comp (although not universally, there are exceptions based on income derivation/circumstances) as in practice they do not accept the payments if eligible for any.

    Also that there is a brisk stream of Amish snowbirds who travel during the winter to Florida.

  34. 34.

    Kent

    @frosty: Yeah, but those folks already vote. So they are already in the tank for Trump. The Amish and Mennonites traditionally haven’t. That’s why the GOP obsession with outreach. It started with Dubya in the 2004 election when Rove when all in on the anti-gay marriage initiatives in Ohio and got some of them voting for the first time. Most of them have been Americans for going on 300 years. The Civil War, slavery, great depression, New Deal, Great Society, Vietnam War. None of that got them to the polls. But the chance to vote discrimination against gays into law? That did it.

    I don’t know what hook the Trump people are planning to use. Probably just overt racism and sense of Christian persecution. As in you’re violating our rights to be bigots towards the LGBT.

  36. 36.

    Kent

    @NotMax:

    Not all that widely known is that the Amish are exempted, by law, from paying into Social Security or worker’s comp (although not universally, there are exceptions based on income derivation/circumstances) as in practice they do not accept the payments if eligible for any.

    Well, technically it’s not an Amish exemption. Any religious group can claim it providing they have been around since at least 1950 and provide their own alternative retirement and disability services. You just file IRS form 4029: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f4029.pdf

    But in practice it is mostly Amish and other conservative sects of Mennonites, Hutterites Holdermans and such. People who leave those groups end up pretty screwed as they don’t have the education for much more than labor and trade jobs and don’t have any retirement savings built up. It’s one of the ways they keep hold of their members.

  38. 38.

    NotMax

    @Kent

    Although Hutterites (again, not 100%) are more congenial to computers and the internet, and from what I’ve read have widely embraced cell phones.

  39. 39.

    Kent

    @Calouste: I agree 100%. I grew up around these people. Take away the violence and there frankly isn’t much difference between the Amish and the Taliban. Both organize their lives around Iron Age religious texts and keep their women barefoot and pregnant.

  40. 40.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kent: I used to work with a lady from Kansas who’d been raised in the Amish sect and left it as a teen. She had all kinds of horror stories.

  42. 42.

    TriassicSands

    I was just browsing through recent polls and the fact that more than 40% of those polled approve of the job that the Mad Emperor is doing (saying everyone opposed to his criminal idiocy is committing treason, that Pelosi and Schiff — another traitor — should be impeached, abandoning the Kurds, etc.) is disturbing beyond words.

  48. 48.

    worn

    @Kent: It’s funny you mention that. When I attended Clemson in the 1980s, for two years I lived in the ‘old’ Johnstone dorm. Those who were there know what that was all about.

    But between each room pair was a wooden cabinet with a built-in rack for several rifles. Seems funny now.

  49. 49.

    hervevillechaizelounge

    @ts:

    dregs of the once revered media

    If there’s one lesson I learned during 2016 it’s that the NYT is going to spend 50 percent of their general election coverage shitting on the Dem nominee and 50 percent on Trump.

    It doesn’t matter who our nominee is, and it doesn’t matter how piffling the alleged transgression is—the NYT will gin something up if need be. And if they’re spending only 50 percent of their time on Trump’s innumerable scandals his corruption and evil deeds are going to seem miniscule in comparison.

    I already had one friend turn on Biden because of Ukranium One—apparently the company (one of the companies?) the Biden failson worked for is headquartered in Cyprus and she’s convinced the country is evil.

    It boggles my mind when I think of all the things we don’t know about Trump: the Alfa Bank server connection, Melanoma’s nonexistent modeling career and Einstein visa, the suspicious Kushner vacation with noted Chinese spy Wendy Deng.

    And we knew everything about Hillary—she showed us her fucking pap smear results and her 5th-grade report card and the receipts for every Etsy purchase and the NYT still wasn’t satisfied. Fuck me.

    Off topic: I just watched the Parrallax View because someone on here obliquely referenced it earlier this week—that movie was amazing. Many thanks to the jackal who mentioned Austin Tucker and Joseph Fraidy!

  50. 50.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kent: What a time to be alive.

    @hervevillechaizelounge: Just yesterday, the NYT ran an op-ed on government corruption from Peter Schweitzer of “Clinton Cash” fame. It was a very both sidesy op-ed, going into great detail about Hunter Biden’s large paydays and also the buckets of cash dumped on Mitch McConnell and wife by the latter’s shipping magnate father. Not a word about the shitgibbon’s emoluments-palooza or the Trump-spawns’ hinky international machinations.

  51. 51.

    WereBear

    @Kent: Thanks muchly.

    I’ve been peripherally aware of Amish involvement because of my animal rescue interests, but it turns out, they are just as cruel to their own children.

  52. 52.

    patrick II

    Even though it is a large business with billions in revenue, the NBA can be bullied by the Chinese government. What would be very useful to the NBA is someone with the same power level as the Chinese government, say the President of the U.S., to back them up. To say that in America we practice free speech. As long as individual companies go up against a powerful government, it is difficult to stand up against them if they want to do business in China.
    That is part of the whole problem we have dealing with China, their national strategy against our business tactics. We need a national strategy to match, not just some guy who’s daughter could use a few more patents and is only interested in dirt on Joe Biden, but a real strategy that stood up for our companies while at the same time laying some constraints on them. For instance, don’t give away trade secrets, which are coerced out of individual countries doing business with China just as the NBA’s silence is coerced if they want to do business. Stand up Donald, for once you s.o.b.

  53. 53.

    Betty Cracker

    @Major Major Major Major: I think much of that is attributable to white backlash in response to the Black Lives Matter protests. I’m convinced that if the protests happened in 2012 instead of 2014, President Obama wouldn’t have been reelected.

  54. 54.

    Butter Emails

    I know Rick Wilson is a favorite here, but I’m getting a little turned off by his shtick. Yeah, asshole the Democrats are bad at power, politics and communications by the Republican definition (which is apparently that all 3 be used to achieve more of the 1st regardless of ethics, truth, integrity or the national interest), but that bullshit is also largely why Republicans policitionsare a collecting of ever more deplorable shitweasels catering to an increasingly rabid base disappearing up its own asshole.

  55. 55.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @Calouste:
    See blog of Chrissy Stroop. Raised Evangelicsl , she had posts and links after 16 disaster about how fundamentalists/Evangelicals are trained 24/7 to follow authority, ie, the teachings of the church as set forth by the preacher.

    No deviation or rebellion is tolerated.

    The material is frightening.

    Yet so many of our democratic party leaders and media people appear to have little awareness of the danger these people pose.

    The 80% of white Evangelicals putting T in office and the pronouncements of Franklin G and Robert J seem to be waking them up a bit!!

  56. 56.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @NotMax: @worn:
    In my 1st yr teaching a a smallish super conservative (with some very startling exceptions!!) Christian college, a young man from a super conservative background plaintively told me after class one day he hadn’t known there was anything in the Bible that said god gave Christians the right to have guns. He was honestly puzzled and confused.

  58. 58.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @Betty Cracker:
    Agree! I was stunned at how freaked out those protests made whites I read and talked to.

    Ferguson protests seem to have especially upset them.

    It was as if whites just knew everything was just wonderful in this best of all wonderful countries USA. And blacks just meanly wanted to get on tv and were spoiling things for everyone else!

  59. 59.

    Mel

    @NotMax: When I lived in a tiny town in a dry county in the rural upper south, there was a large Amish farming community about 5 miles away.

    The Amish families there, as expected, didn’t have electricity or phones “in their homes”; instead, the families paid to install phone lines to little enclosed wooden booths that each Amish husband would build as an outdoor attachment to their barn. The local phone company service person dubbed it “The Amish Tardis”.

    My morning class started at 8 a.m., so I was usually on my way and grabbing a coffee at the local convenience market by about 6:30 a.m.. There would always be a buggy outside, with several Amish kids waiting patiently for their father. Different families on different mornings. What wasn’t different was that each Amish dad spent at least 10 minutes at the magazine rack in the back alcove of the little store, where the owners stocked a wide (and often shocking) array of international porn magazines. One of my international students went to buy some fashion magazines there, and said she nearly fell over when she saw the titles of the naughty mags on display in full view. When you can shock a Dane who has lived in the Netherlands, well…

    The lady that worked the early morning shift at the store said that it had been going on for years, and said, “As long as they keep their hands where I can see ‘em, I don’t care how many of those plastic covers those fellas tear open. The more they look at, the guiltier they feel, and more money they put into my tip jar!”

  60. 60.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @frosty: No, “you’re” just a bunch of parasites who work, go to restaurants, & support sports teams in the Baltimore metro area but moved 500 yards over the Mason-Dixon line so they wouldn’t have to pay those awful MD taxes. (Not you personally of course, but a whole shitton of people I know from as far back as HS.) Essentially the same thing that’s strangling Baltimore City within MD – take advantage of all the good stuff that’s there because of the city (or state) but move across the border to avoid paying for it – but worse in the City’s case, because they also keep their representatives in the General Assembly from doing anything to help.

  61. 61.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    I think you can see this Kurd mess as a direct result of the Trump threatening war with Iran and then backing down when the Iranians replied “bring it” . What Washington still hasn’t figured out that the rest of the world has is Trump is a complete and utter coward. Trump isn’t kissing Putin’s ass because he admires Putin, Trump is scared of Putin. The Kurds are going to be the first of many humiliations for the US as long as Trump is president.

    As for the GOPs and why they don’t get it, well they’ve spent their entire lives being conditioned that Trump’s behavior is Super Alpha Male Plus deluxe behavior because frankly the entire movement is based on fear.

  62. 62.

    Hoodie

    @Mel: A friend from Charleston told me about a similar place in SC where all the good Baptist deacons would stop on the way to or from the beach. They actually carried titles like “Creamy Crotch” and “Shemale,” reminded me of the Mr. Show “Taint” magazine gag. Re Trump’s story about the Kurds abandoning us at Omaha Beach, it seems to reinforce the impression that Trump is locked into about 1975, full of Nixonian resentment about junkies and hookers in Times Square,while at the same time he’s knee deep in coke and porn stars (the Sudafed is probably for the chronic congestion caused by prolonged abuse). The guy is a fucking mess and he’s President of the United States.

  65. 65.

    joel hanes

    @Ladyraxterinok:

    how freaked out those protests made whites

    Latent authoritarians are triggered when someone says that cop violence is illegitimate.
    They may not revere politicians as authority figures, but law enforcement they regard as Elliot Ness/Matt Dillon.
    One must not disrespect their authoritah.

Comments are closed.