More of this, please!
The only places Trump is not likely to get booed at are his own rallies & maybe white evangelical churches. Wide swaths of the population see him as toxic.
— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) November 3, 2019
All my NYC people say he’s loathed there. One read he’s leaving reputedly is his attorneys got through to him about inherent jury pool bias.
— GeorgeWilliamHerbert (@GeorgeWHerbert) November 3, 2019
yeah, I know. perhaps unfairly I thought the political makeup of a ufc crowd might self-select differently, and I feel bad about that now
— Gerry Doyle (@mgerrydoyle) November 3, 2019
Gravenstone
Loudly flips a middle finger at NYC, then somehow thinks he’ll be well received at an event in the Garden? Sounds about right for him.
Cheryl Rofer
Jim, Foolish Literalist
If he’s indicted in NY, wouldn’t the jury pool be the same no matter where he lives
I think he underestimates, slightly, the size of that base. I think he’s got about 30%
bluehill
One of the headliners, Masvidal, is a Trump supporter, so that is probably why he’s there.
Raoul
It is interesting, isn’t it! I don’t know who has advised Trump to get out and attend public events, but it seems like for the first time in his presidency he has twice now had the fact presented to him that he is widely unpopular.
He basically can’t go out in public except to the most carefully managed events without being booed.
It won’t really get through to him, he’ll just shrug it off, but his narcissism is being sorely tested right now! Which tickles me.
Cheryl Rofer
Geoduck
@Raoul: Shrug it off? You did see his reaction to being booed at the Nats game, right?
Matt McIrvin
Well, I guess Trump isn’t going to carry DC or New York state after all.
Brachiator
Well this is a nice surprise. I figured that an event like this might be pro-Trump.
@Gravenstone:
Very good point.
John Revolta
30%, 40%, it doesn’t matter. New Yorkers have always been on to Trump. The only reason they didn’t hate him previous to his being President is because that would have required taking him seriously. He was nothing but a dumb joke until Nov. 2016.
He got about 5% of the vote in NYC.
John Revolta
Correction: he got 10% in Manhattan. 19% overall.
CaseyL
Open thread? Great!
I just saw what I believe is an amazingly good movie that critics seem to be trashing, so I want to sing its praises.
“The Current Wars,” about the rivalry between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse over who would be the country’s primary provider of electricity is very, very good. Nikola Tesla also is in it, though he’s not one of the major players. The subject matter sounds dry; it isn’t. Or anyway, not in the movie. It’s a sheer delight.
The performances are wonderful. Cumberbatch – well, of course. I’m not sure he could give a bad performance if he wanted to. (Still kind of a hoot to see him play a Yank.) Michael Shannon, whom I adore, and it was fun to see him play not-a-villain. Tom Holland proves he can do more than Spidey.
Costume and scene design are scrumptious. Lots of late Victorian-Early Edwardian steampunkiness.
The story is not just well told, but poetically told.
Recommend highly.
Jay
hells littlest angel
Did he strut around in a leotard, taunting the crowd as they booed him?
geg6
I have to say, I’m shocked. If I thought any crowd outside his Nuremberg rallies or a fundie church would welcome him with open arms, it would be a UFC fight. Really flabbergasted.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Does NASCAR have a season?
Martin
@geg6: Locale. NYC hates Trump. Has for decades. Hell, I haven’t lived there in nearly 30 years and I departed with a hatred of him.
Omnes Omnibus
@geg6: You shouldn’t be. UFC fighting isn’t my cup of tea, but it is real competition between elite athletes. Its fans are knowledgeable about the sport. Why would they like a complete fraud?
Jeffro
@Gravenstone: @Cheryl Rofer: @Raoul: @John Revolta: @geg6:
Even if it weren’t NYC…only about half of all Americans vote, so it’s quite likely that he was getting booed by a WHOLE LOT of folks who might not normally vote, but who have been following the shitshow that is this presidency*.
Fertile ground for our 2020 Dem nominee: “If you’ve never voted or only occasionally vote and really want to send a message…now’s the time!”
NotMax
Mind boggles at what the security details must have entailed as it isn’t at all feasible to just shut down the LIRR, PATH, Amtrak and subway stations underneath Madison Square Garden.
Tony Jay
+++++++++++++++BREXIT NEWS++++++++++++++++++BREXIT NEWS++++++++++++++++
ARE YOU TAKING NOTES ON A CRIMINAL FUCKING CONSPIRACY?
BBC Radio 4 News Report, 7.50 a.m.
Welcome to a little slice of the only version of Britain that the political appointees currently running (down) the show over at the BBC ever care to explore. We join yet another intrepid ‘journalist’ parting the fronds alongside a muddy riverbank marking the border between the hermetically sealed bubble-habitats of those Remain-voting ‘Metropolitan London Elites’ and the idyllic rural pastures inhabited by their evolutionary cousins, the hardworking, no-nonsense, plain-old tea-drinking Common Folk of Brexitland. This is Tilbury, 26 miles down the Thames from the capital and (hold onto your hearts, people, because you’ll never believe what I’m going to say next) yet another bastion of Leave-voting numpties. It went 70%/30% around here in the Referendum, so it’s even more amazing that it’s taken this long for the BBC to vox the local pop about their opinions on the coming Election and, bien entendu, the role Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party might play in it. The first native in the trap is Andy. He sounds young, possibly on his way to work, possibly on his way home from a night spent gay-bashing and staring back at himself with haunted, self-loathing eyes from the smashed mirror in a filthy public toilet after yet another moment of weakness with a passing lorry-driver, it’s hard to say on such short acquaintance.
He’s quite far-right, he tells us, not to the extent of the old National Front, but probably somewhere around the British National Party, which doesn’t really work as any kind of argument in the first place (like trying to differentiate between the post-Civil War KKK and its post-WWI imitator) but it crumbles entirely when he follows this up by explaining how important he thinks race is to national culture and how high levels of immigration can dilute the necessary racial purity all cultures need to….. yeah, you know what, Andy lad, I think anything more than fourteen words spent on that is a bit too many. The point being, a) Andy is going to vote for the Brexit Party if they put up a candidate, and b) When asked “But you’re not a racist?” Andy is quite clearly smiling as he tells the BBC “No, I’m not a racist”.
These fucking people.
Anyway, that was my morning commute, and a major reason I’d rather get two buses in than drive the car. Speed-scrabble is infuriating (give me a fucking vowel you cheating S.O.B, what is this, Wales?) but very rarely makes me want to steer into oncoming traffic on the off-chance I take a few of the xenophobic bastards with me. And we’ve got weeks and weeks of this to come, because Britain is (drumroll) getting ready for yet another early General Election.
How did we get here? Wasn’t Parliament just getting ready to debate the nitty-gritty of Clown Prince Flobalob’s Extra-Supergood Withdrawal Bill and then bury it under so many committee changes and planned amendments that it collapsed under its own weight like Robert Patrick’s liquid-metal terminator at the end of T2: Judgement Day? Why yes, that was the plan, and a damned good one if you ask me. There’s nothing Tories dislike more than a stream of cleansing sunlight cascading across their stygian dealings, so dragging each poisonous clause and sub-clause out of the reeking pit where Johnson was trying to hide his humiliating failure in Tough-Guy negotiating would have been a great way to spend a few weeks before Parliament actually had to seriously start thinking about voting for a General Election early next year. If the rest of the Opposition Parties had stuck to their guns that’s what would have happened, but apparently the leaders of the Liberal-Democrats and the Scottish Nationalists had a different calculation in mind when they let it be known that they were willing to agree to Johnson’s sans-testicular bleating for a chance to avoid democratic scrutiny.
I know why Johnson wanted an Election. His Withdrawal Deal was shit, worse than May’s on Worker’s Rights and regulatory protections by some considerable distance and chock-full of all the pitiful ‘surrenders of national sovereignty’ he had been very specifically elected (by the Tory Party’s mad, sad membership) to reject. If he couldn’t get it rammed through the national poop-chute immediately and without any opportunity for genuine debate he was going to pull it and demand an Election every single day until he got one, regardless of how needy and pathetic that made him look outside of the emphatically Tory Press and BBC. But why would the Lib-Dems and the SNP drop the tactic that had got Britain – this – close to repulsing Brexit and its enablers once and for all, only to hand Johnson a last-minute Hail Mary?
The SNP I sort of get. They are the Scottish Nationalist Party. Their entire reason for existence is to take Scotland out of the United Kingdom and turn it into an independent nation. They’re what the old UKIP dreamed of being and what the current Tory/Brexit Party mishmash intends to market itself as. For them an election now sort of makes sense. They lost the last Independence Referendum of 2014 fair and square, but after five years of continued Tory Austerity and the overwhelmingly English drive towards a disastrous Brexit cliff-edge it’s a fairly safe bet that that margin of defeat (44.7%/55.3%) will have reduced and could even have reversed. If Labour win a majority they’ll get another bite at the apple, but probably not within the new Government’s first term, so the SNP has to then factor in the transformative effect that having a Labour Government legislating for centre-left national policies down in London would have on the fortunes of the moribund Scottish Labour Party, which has been in a sad state ever since Corbyn’s predecessor, Ed Milliband, made the colossal error of campaigning with the Tories against Independence in 2014. Scotland does not forgive shit like that easily, but it used to be a (very strong) Labour heartland and could be again with a properly left-wing National Government willing and able to offer (and exceed) the goodies the SNP has been semi-bankrupting the devolved economy to lavish on Scottish voters. What chance a successful 2nd Independence Referendum then, eh? OTOH a minority Labour Government reliant on SNP votes in Westminster would be better for them and they could almost certainly prise an earlier Indie Ref out of Corbyn in negotiations, but that would still risk a partial Labour resurrection north of the Border and threaten the margins in an Independence vote. A Tory victory, needless to say, would be a short term disaster for Scotland, but I could easily see the SNP calculating that they’re going to win such a majority in Edinburgh anyway that they could survive the interval between Johnson forcing through Brexit and overwhelming Scottish demands for another Indie Ref burning through Tory reluctance to break-up the Union. What self-respecting Scot is going to stay yoked to England while it turns into a mouldier Qatar?
Why now, though, and not later? Well, my suspicion is that the SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon didn’t want to be seen taking the lead in ‘giving in’ to Johnson’s petulance, but luckily for her she didn’t have to. You see, the other Opposition leader willing to make a deal with Johnson was the Liberal-Democrat Jo Swinson, and she was, as always, more than happy to be the centre of attention. The SNP’s 35 seats would obviously be more important than the Lib-Dem’s 19 in any Election vote, but from the media coverage south of the border you’d have been forgiven for thinking it was the Lib-Dems alone who were breaking ranks to make this happen.
What were Swinson’s reasons? Well, I could go on for hours about how much more comfortable she is co-operating with Tories than those dirty little Reds around Corbyn, and how as a Minister in Cameron’s Coalition Government between 2010 and 2015 she voted with the Tory whip more often than a good chunk of the current Tory Cabinet, loudly supporting the Austerity policies that led directly to the social degradation and crippling inequality that made the ‘economically-anxious’ part of the Brexit vote possible. It’s also undeniable that since becoming Lib-Dem leader her main strategic thrust has been to try and peel Remain-voting supporters away from Labour by constantly and dishonestly mischaracterising Corbyn as a closet Brexiteer and the Liberal-Democrats as the only genuine Party of Remain, while simultaneously turning her own Party into a safe haven for a few impatiently ambitious and militantly ‘centrist’ ex-Labour and a lot of ‘not-insane just a bit evil’ ex-Tory MPs desperate for a new political platform. Without Brexit to rail against the Lib-Dems are just the powerless rump of the Party that tossed aside every single one of its ‘core beliefs’ in exchange for a taste of power back in 2010 and ended up dumped at the side of the road five years later with all of the shame and most of the blame while Cameron zoomed off into his second term, ostentatiously zipping up his fly and deleting their contact details from his phone.
My suspicion is that she saw the possibility of Labour finally getting some credit for putting the knockers on Johnson’s Drive for Brexit and – horror of horrors – taking the lead on forcing an amendment into the Withdrawal Deal that would ensure it went to a national confirmatory vote (a 2nd Referendum by another name) even if did squeeze through Parliament. There’s no way on this or any other possible Earth Swinson was having that, especially not after she’d dragged the Lib-Dems away from their long-term policy of wanting a 2nd Referendum in favour of simply Revoking the legislation enabling Brexit on Day One of any theoretical (for which read utterly mythical) Liberal-Democratic Government, just because Labour had finally reached the long awaited internal consensus that allowed it to make a 2nd Referendum party policy, and Jo Swinson isn’t happy sharing a planet with Jeremy Corbyn, never mind a national policy on Brexit. Her entire political focus revolves around the dictum that “Corbyn Never Gets A Win”, so instead of playing second fiddle to the Bearded Beast of Bolshevism she decided to blow the whole thing up after one last cynical poke in the Labour leader’s eye, choosing to tweet out an open letter she’d sent asking him to support her own 2nd Referendum amendment to the Parliamentary Bill authorising the passage of Johnson’s Queen’s Speech (which opens the new sitting of Parliament), knowing full well that, a) he was never going to do it because, b) the ex-Tory MPs whose votes it would need had already said they’d vote against it so, c) it was just going to fail and give Johnson an unearned victory over the very idea of a 2nd Referendum which is why, d) the actual People’s Vote movement had said it was a bad idea and could she please stop being such a grandstanding dick?
Calm. Calm. Feel the wind on your eyelids, Tony. It’s in the past now, let the emotion go…
Anyway, yeah, so, in a move so obviously choreographed it might has well have been filmed dancing on an animated staircase with a cartoon cat, Swinson used Corbyn’s latest UTTER BETRAYAL of the Remain cause as her excuse to flick him the V-sign and ‘reluctantly’ agree that a General Election was the only way to achieve a 2nd Referendum (if you ignore the much likelier possibility of tagging it to the passage of Johnson’s Withdrawal Bill, which the Media obediently did). The most laughable thing about it was that Corbyn himself is well-known to want a General Election ASAP, being entirely confident that Labour has a manifesto that will win votes and very conscious of the fact that every day the Tories spend in office is another day the most vulnerable people in Britain are suffering under their vicious and deliberately vindictive policies. The actual opposition to an early Election has always come from the Cabinet members on the Right of the Labour Party, who alternately fear losing their own precious, precious seats in a wipe-out drubbing or else having to stomach serving ‘loyally’ in a genuinely socialist Labour Government and having to call Jeremy Corbyn “Prime Minister” for five years. These are the people Swinson has been quietly colluding with in an attempt to get substantial numbers of them to defect to her Party (she has such grandiose ambitions) or at the very least join in her own constant screeds against their Party’s leader to show how bipartisan her intense dislike of the man is (more successful, until recently). Her decision to give Johnson the Election he so desperately wanted must have caused the likes of Hillary Benn and Tom Watson some intestinal discomfort, so not all bad then.
It’s also, I’m sure, just a random coinky-dinky that Swinson’s abandonment of the whole 2nd Referendum struggle just so happens to coincide with the boardroom coup reported to have taken place within the People’s Vote group itself, with Roland Rudd, head of the Open Britain organisation (one of the five groups to found People’s Vote back in the day) and brother of former Tory Minister Amber Rudd ‘firing’ the Director and Chief of Communications in order to move the PV movement away from building a consensus for a 2nd Referendum and towards a post-Brexit campaign to rejoin the EU. God knows what’s really going on there, but with loyal Blairite utilisateurs d’arts sombre like Alasdair “Just call me Saint Al” Campbell and Peter “The Millionaire’s Friend” Mandelson (a man so repulsively slimy even his shadow leaves grease stains) on the other side of the argument it’s hard to feel anything more than a general sense of pity for the hundreds of hard-working, dedicated campaigners who have found themselves dropped in the middle of a Twat-Fight just when they should be zeroing in on the business end of a three year campaign.
That aside, the only question remaining now that Johnson had the votes for an Election was when it would be held. The Tories, of course, because they’re Tories, wanted December 12th, the day – after – most students go home for Christmas Break. Can’t have those Yoofs voting against Tory candidates in their University constituencies, can we? Not when they trend overwhelmingly towards Remain and probably for Labour. The other Parties, including Labour (after an acrimonious shadow cabinet meeting in which I can imagine Corbyn and his loyalists giving the trembling flowers of New Labour defeatism scant sympathy) argued for December 9th, but with the bulk of the ex-Tories submissively laying their votes at Flobalob’s feet they lost, and so December 12th it is.
Great. It’ll be cold, probably wet, maybe stormy. It’s a weekday and a school-day, so that should cut down nicely on the hours most people can actually get to a voting station. Speaking of which, it’ll take some kind of titanic effort by the brave folks who actually organise and staff our elections to find places we can vote that close to Christmas. How many Church halls and saucy bordellos are already booked out for festive orgies and carol singing contests? On the other hand, would be nice if large numbers of Brexit supporting halfwits were unable to get to the polls out in the wilds of Gobshiteshire because of the weather, bless their cold, xenophobic hearts. I can’t see many Remainers staying away from the polls, not when the alternative is a full five-year term in office for “Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, MP”. It could be Sharknado season out there and I’d just take an extra umbrella and some of that Bat-Shark Repellent Spray I cooked up while trying to make Meth in the garden shed. Should still be good for a few doses, and the cause is self-evidently good.
Let’s make one thing clear right from the get go. Everyone, every pundit, every expert, every prognosticator, influencer and decider in the whole wide world thinks Labour has about as much chance of winning this Election as I have of being selected to teach a special Adult Education Course on Cloak and Gown Hygiene at Hogwarts. They could well be right. After Labour came within a few percentage points of pulling off the most astonishing underdog victory in British political history since a bloodied Ada Lovelace nut-clenched the Duke of Wellington into submission in a No Holds Barred Skirts vs Boots Rumble following a night of reckless poetry recitation and made him admit that he kept Napoleon’s underwear under his pillow, the same pundits, experts, prognosticators, influencers and deciders made a solemn vow under the light of a Blood Moon that they would never, ever be made to feel that inadequate ever again. It’s been two and a half years since the 2017 Election and if in that time the British Media has uttered a single, solitary word about Jeremy Corbyn that hasn’t been openly contemptuous and entirely hostile I confess I haven’t seen it. Frankly it’s astonishing that the Polls only have Labour somewhere between 10 and 20 points behind the Tories. To the average British voter who gets their news in short, infrequent bursts from, well, from The News or Newspapers, Labour is that Party whose leader hates Jews and somehow caused or prevented Brexit depending on the immediate needs of the “This Is A Bad Man” narrative. It’s like going into an Election for Britain’s Best Butcher with Paul McCartney as your candidate and a jury consisting of glaring men wearing “Paul is Dead” and “Wings Sux” T-shirts.
But, and it’s a big old but, these things can change a lot in a short space of time, and a few things are already pointing towards difficulties for Johnson that might rebound to Labour’s (and the country’s) advantage. For a start, the roll out of Labour’s policy priorities was pretty well received, so much so that The Guardian felt it necessary to headline their report “Corbyn refuses to say if he’ll resign on losing election”, bless their hearts. Then there was the delightful image of Johnson getting booed by irate NHS Staff on leaving the latest hospital to be selected as backdrop for his “sleeves rolled up, not a posh fuck” reimagination campaign. That must have stung quite a bit, because the BBC didn’t even have it buried deep in their Local News section, which is always a tell. And then there’s the slowly swelling issue of Johnson’s refusal to release the UK Intelligence Report on Russian interference in Britain’s political system, which is not exactly a good look and is only going to get worse. What exactly could be in the report that a Tory Prime Minister so intimately associated with the 2016 European Union Referendum would want kept under wraps during a General Election, he asked innocently?
And then there’s Trump.
I can’t think of anything Labour would like more than to see this Election become less of a Grand Mal seizure on the issue of Brexit and more of a judgement on Tory mismanagement of the country, in particular the NHS and what a Tory Brexit would mean for it. In which case Gawd Bless the Prisoner of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and his deeply inopportune (Ha!) opinionating on what his ‘good friend Boris’ should do and what he can hope to get out of a post-Brexit deal with the US. Personally, and apart from the “Boris and Nigel should my favourite bit was Trump denying that he had any interest in seeing American private healthcare corporations get their teeth into the NHS in a UK/US Free Trade Deal despite (waves receipts) saying exactly the opposite last time the topic came up. I know you guys are used to the constant sluice-gate of bullshit but this is Britain, where our esteemed national news broadcaster would very much like to keep up the pretence that the President of the United States is not a totally corrupt gobshite who turns everything and everyone he embraces into rancid shit. When he sticks his tiny little finger into this pot, however, he makes it very easy for Labour’s campaign organisers to make the point that a Tory Brexit is a Trump Brexit and that has a LOT of value. So…. thanks Donny.
And then there’s Nigel.
I was a little bit worried that the whole “actually a wholly owned subsidiary of the larger operation to monetize the western world’s inability to tell the difference between ‘what a funny chap’ and ‘nice country you’ve got here, I’ll take it’ geopolitical confidence trick” might have led Farage to take it easy on the Tories and concentrate on trying to prise a few northern seats away from Labour to help the whole Brexit effort along. I mean, why risk the investments of actual important people when it’s all just a con anyway? But it turns out that there’s shit going on that I don’t quite follow, and the Brexit Party are going to make Johnson strip down to his nudie bits if he wants them to get in his corner. No official pact and a full and non-negotiable abandonment of anything but the most No Deal of No Deals, then no Tory/Brexit collusion to sort out the best exchange of votes to guarantee a win for the bad guys. That’s quite surprising, but I’ll take it. I suppose you can’t keep the voting bloc of something as newfangled as the Brexit Party loyal while pissing in their mouths and telling them its lemonade on such short notice. The Republican Party took decades and actually put the work in to desensitise its electorate with already fully conceptualised Nationalist Racism (thanks Dixie) before going utterly apeshit. There was already a whole set of Red Lines in place beyond which the Klan Brexit would not move before Johnson made himself their sacrificial lamb, and his failure to bully Parliament left him in a position where he had to bellyflop through so many of them that it’s actually in the interests of the interests behind Farage to risk a Corbyn led Government rather than make it obvious the whole thing is a total con.
So that’s where we are. The official campaigning season hasn’t started yet, so far as I know, but punches have been thrown and they’ve mostly landed on Tory chins. I think you all know where my sympathies lie, so it won’t be any major surprise that I will be busy doing whatever I can to ensure a Labour Government come December 13 short of hard-core sex-work and complicated algebra. Wish us luck and the same goes for Project: Impeach the Fail-in-Chief. It’s all the same War, just different fronts.
Oh, and welcome back Baud. There’s a Provisional President seat with your name on it if you’d only make that deal with the Overseers of Dimension 5. Come on, man. What’s one soul? It’s not like they won’t grow you another one.
Bed now. See you on the morrow.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Me too, I would have assume wrestling fans was his base.
West of the Rockies
@CaseyL:
So the performance was electrifying then, yes?
In all seriousness, I always enjoy movies based on historical events.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Raoul: It could be that since Trump doesn’t believe in poles or science or the English language he doing this as a reality check.
David ??Booooooo?? Koch
he went to this because he’s desperately looking for a standing ovation to counter balance the massive boos he received at the World Series.
Sad!
West of the Rockies
So no realistic chance the UK will just revote on Brexit?
westyny
@hells littlest angel: Haha! Perfect.
Omnes Omnibus
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: MMA is not wrestling.
Kay
Nasty, mean-spirited people in that administration. They should get booed everywhere they go.
Tony Jay
@West of the Rockies:
If Labour win, yes. If the Tories win, not a chance.
If the Monster Raving Loony Party win, yes, but we immediately invade either Chile or Laos directly afterwards.
Matt McIrvin
@David ??Booooooo?? Koch: He needs to go to a place that is not deep, deep blue to begin with. This shouldn’t be hard. Doesn’t he have his little hate rallies all the time?
Luthe
Stopping by with a little tin-hatting this evening:
Does anyone else consider it a little suspicious that the Chair of the Oversight Committee died and very shortly thereafter the Vice Chair was forced to resign because of leaked pictures? It’s like someone is trying to stymie the Committee’s investigations…
Bruuuuce
“My plan compares favorably with [Biden’s] in that it exists.” -“E Warren” at Iowa from tonight’s SNL cold open
Raoul
@Geoduck: I mean that, while I hope it will gnaw at him, he is incapable of adjusting course or behaving in any way other than how his id drives him. I coulda been clearer about that.
David ??Booooooo?? Koch
Imagine Obama being boooed in his home town of Chicago or Honolulu. You can’t, cuz it would never happen.
Imagine Obama being boooed at a basketball game or a soccer match. You can’t, cuz it would never happen.
But here’s Dump, being mercilessly boooed at a violent event in his own home town.
So much winning.
NotMax
@Luthe
Vice-chair does not automatically advance to the chair upon a vacancy there. The Acting Chair position is traditionally ranted by the Speaker to the majority party member with the most seniority, as it was when Cummings died – to Carolyn Maloney of NYC.
Raoul
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Maybe idiot Parscale thinks Trump should get out more and be seen among the people as he tries to start shifting to a campaign footing (good luck with that as the press digests the first damning tranche of Mueller notes).
I doubt Trump thought this up himself. Even before the Florida residence b.s., it was pretty clear Trump himself prefers the safety of Mar-a-Dodo and his various grifty golf courses. He’s barely been in NY, and to fly up and then get booed? Brilliant! Give that campaign strategist a cigar!
NotMax
@NotMax
granted, not ranted
TaMara (HFG)
@CaseyL: i am excited to see this.
Millard Filmore
@Tony Jay: Will the legal problems described here impact near term results? There have been some criminal referrals.
Johnson ‘knew about Vote Leave’s illegal overspend’, says MP
https://www.democraticunderground.com/108818078
artem1s
Some in the video thread were suggesting that the boo’s and chants should be part of all sporting events. Not just the ones he shows up to. Could be an interesting holiday season – mash ups of Santa Claus is Coming to Town and Lock Him Up! spontaneously breaking out in malls across the US.
Jeffro
Mueller memo disclosures tonight show that the IC is leaking like a sieve that has a huge hole in the bottom, and that the CI investigation info is surfacing.
GOP Senators…come on. You have to see how this is going to shake out.
Geoduck
@artem1s: Not a bad idea, though I don’t imagine the Shiatgibbon watches any kind of sporting event where he’s not directly involved.
tomtofa
As I mentioned in the last thread (and Omnes reiterated in this one), UFC is a real sport – combination of boxing, kick boxing, judo, any number of other martial arts. It’s not the world of reality show staged wrestling matches. Different audiences.
smedley the uncertain
@Tony Jay: WTF over.
JAFD
@CaseyL: If anyone in the NYC area would like to try out the boardgame Tesla vs. Edison: War of Currents,
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/132544/tesla-vs-edison-war-currents
let me know. (you provide table, I’ll bring game)
West of the Rockies
@Jeffro:
Links? Where can we find more?
MisterForkbeard
@Jeffro: Pretty sure the memo disclosures are coming from a legit FOIA request by Buzzfeed, actually
ETA: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/mueller-report-secret-memos-1
Major Major Major Major
So that’s why there were black Escalades with red and blue lights everywhere.
mrmoshpotato
@artem1s: ? They’re Trump trash when you’re sleeping. They’re Trump trash when you’re awake. You damn well better believe it! They’re been sucking Kremlin ass since at least ’88!?
Ken
@Tony Jay:
Does “well bless your heart” mean the same thing in British English as in US Southern English?
p.a.
Hell LDS Mitt Rmoney clearly outperformed native *ptoui* son Dollhands in NY
Edit
The politics of New York State are dominated by the heavily populated area of New York City, which Barack Obama won in a historic landslide, taking over 80% of the vote and sweeping all 5 boroughs. Obama took 1,995,241 votes in New York City, to Mitt Romney’s 436,889, giving Obama 81.19% of the vote to Romney’s 17.78%. No other presidential candidate of either party has ever received more than 80% of the vote in New York City.
Discounting New York City’s votes, Obama still would have carried New York State, but by a closer margin. Excluding New York City, Obama’s vote total in the state was 2,490,636 to Romney’s 2,053,607, giving Obama a 54.03%-44.54% win outside of NYC.
Joey Maloney
@Matt McIrvin: For Dump’s last Two Hour Hate, he went to the giant metropolis of [checks notes] Tupelo, Mississippi, population about 40,000. Whether this means he can no longer draw a large enough crowd to soothe his narcissistic ego in any major city, or if it’s just that he’s stiffed them all and can’t go back, I can’t say.
Spider-Dan
@Tony Jay: It sounds like you’re saying that Corbyn isn’t a Leaver, but (from the outside) it seems like every step he takes is to prevent No Deal Brexit or Tory Brexit… in favor of a superior “Jobs Brexit” or whatever. To this day, has Corbyn ever come out and stated clear and unequivocable support for Remain?
And that brings me to your second comment: if Labour wins and gets a whack at negotiating Lexit, wouldn’t any referendum that includes Remain as an option necessarily pit Labour’s Brexit against Remain? It’s difficult to imagine any Labour leader campaigning for Remain against their own deal, but it’s impossible to imagine Jeremy Corbyn doing so.
NotMax
@p.a.
Trivia:
In ’08, Obama won 4 of NYC’s 5 boroughs (McCain got 51.7%).
In ’12, Obama won in all 5 (50.7% in Staten Island).
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
I simply cannot parse this sentence, no matter how hard I try. Help?
NotMax
@NotMax
Stupidly left out three little words that make it clearer.
Amended: (McCain won 51.7% in Staten Island)
piratedan
still waiting for an enterprising or even a mildly intrepid reporter to ask GOP Senators to show them where in the Constitution the President is allowed to commit crimes. If its not in the Constitution, then perhaps the specific Federal Law that states that the President is Above The Law. Maybe even have a handy pocket Constitution for them to examine while they search… Maybe even start asking Congressman… or wondering idly if Bribery is no longer a crime, how much is an article exonerating the President worth? Perhaps we can check with the NYT to determine what the current going rate is, in order to establish value…
NotMax
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
Still maintain the change of residence is being done to fight extradition if/when he’s found guilty in NY.
As for that troublesome sentence, I think it’s meant this way:
One read [of why] he’s leaving (reputedly) is his attorneys got through to him about inherent jury pool bias.
Still, even that way a perception entirely ungrounded in logic when it comes to state charges. Perhaps meant to apply to federal charges, as Florida is included in the 11th Circuit (along with Alabama and Georgia)?
smike
@piratedan:
This!
I’ve been waiting for this to be tested.
J R in WV
Deleted – please. Too over the top for me, really.
John S.
@Tony Jay:
So many splitters out there that it’s hard to imagine the Judean People’s Front don’t end up handing a victory to the Romans.
Amir Khalid
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice:
I don’t get this either. If the state of New York decides to prosecute Trump for anything, he will surely be tried in a New York court with a jury of New York residents.
rikyrah
@CaseyL:
Thanks for the review
Tony Jay
@Millard Filmore:
If the Media cover them, maybe, but it’s more likely they sit on any revelations until after the Election so as not to “give the appearance of bias”. Frex, six hours ago the BBC we’re covering his burying of the Russia Report as if his refusal to release it until after the Election was simply a natural event, like the tides or the first snowfall of winter, and that was the end of the matter.
That said, the London Authority’s investigation I into his use o millions in public money to get into bed (in all senses of the word) with an American businesswoman linked to the alt-Right seems to have legs. It’s amazing how different things become when the people asking questions have the power to bring criminal charges, isn’t it?
Tony Jay
@smedley the uncertain:
What can I say? I like to vent on Open Threads.
Tony Jay
@Ken:
It does when I’m using it.
Tony Jay
@Spider-Dan:
There’s no genuine confusion to be had on this issue anymore.
In the case of a Referendum where it’s Tory Brexit vs Remain, Corbyn backs Remain and campaigns for it.
In the case of a Labour negotiated form of Brexit bs Remain, Corbyn stays studiously neutral and let’s his MPs back whichever alternative they choose. He simply doesn’t think Prime Ministers branding a Referendum option as a vote for or against them is helpful or fair, and he has a point. How many millions pulled the lever for Leave in 2016 to stick it to Pig-fucker Dave?
I’m fine with that. As a grown up, I don’t need even politicians I support to hold my hand when it comes to simple choices like Leave or Remain.
Tony Jay
@John S.:
Don’t worry, the Judean People’s Front have a plan to prevent that.
First, campaign against the fucking People’s Front of Judea…….
Shalimar
@David ??Booooooo?? Koch: Not just Obama. Imagine George W. Bush getting booed. Even during his persona non grata years, when he didn’t appear in public anywhere, it was because he was viewed as incompetent and wouldn’t have helped anyone politically, not because most of the country personally hated him.
Ivan X
@Matt McIrvin: it is not hard for me to imagine that, as he changes his residence, he doesn’t still hold out for the idea (his and his only) that he is loved, somewhere, anywhere, in his hometown.
Shalimar
@Kay: If they wanted to make it a realistic educational experience, they also needed a table where kids could cut holes in the wall with a tiny saw.
Ivan X
@Shalimar: Cheney, on the other hand…
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax:
Florida will spit him up in a NY second, especially after NY freezes all fund transfers to Florida from 401ks and IRAs invested in the stock market.
On the slightly more serious side, I doubt very much that trump will find much in the way of refuge in FL law. He can pull all the high priced lawyers he wants out of his ass, the best they can do is delay extradition by a month or 2.
OzarkHillbilly
@Tony Jay: I just wish you’d stop beating around the bush so much.
@Shalimar: If they wanted to make it a realistic educational experience, they would have put the kids in cages for weeks on end without toothpaste, soap, or medicine, and made them drink the water out of the toilet..
Tony Jay
@OzarkHillbilly:
I have many layers. Unfortunately they’re all uniformly shallow and reliant on dick-jokes.
JR
@CaseyL: I liked Empires of Light, it’s a good story.
Zinsky
Unless you are a multi-millionaire/billionaire who got a massive tax cut from this pig, why would you “like” him? Any self-respecting woman should loathe the creepy, misogynistic sexual predator. Intelligent people despise him because he disrespects science, learning and educated people. Anyone under 35 should hate him for underfunding education and student loan and leaving their generation a crushing debt burden by his reckless deficit spending! And of course, anyone who is a person of color has nothing but contempt for this old, deviant racist.
Who does that leave? Old, white, uneducated and/or stupid men. And they are (thankfully) a dying breed!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Well apparently the media official narrative is Trump was cheered.
https://www.yahoo.com/sports/president-donald-trump-at-ufc-244-024121515.html
So Trump projects, he’s getting his fake news.
“It ended here Saturday at the Ultimate Fighting Championship with a somewhat warmer reception — at least among the jeers there were audible cheers and waves from the Madison Square Garden crowd.
Call it a split result in an already loud and amped environment that made deciphering what everyone thought difficult.
,…
The audience consuming the sport it is not what the outdated stereotype would have you believe. While it remains popular with young, white men, it is not just a sport for young, white men.
The sport of MMA counts male and female fighters from every nook and cranny of Earth, representing every race, nationality, religion and sexual orientation. The UFC has long been a major proponent and sponsor of LGBT rights and more than any other major sport has meshed both male and female competitors to equal footing — it is not uncommon for women to headline cards.
,…
Some of them were happy to have him there. Some weren’t. Each side expressed their opinion.”
And it reads like it was written before the event.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
And with the Miller docs being released, yes Trump was was manipulated by the Russians, but in the stupidest way
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/newly-released-mueller-probe-docs-show-manafort-blamed-ukraine-for-dem-hacks
Basically Maniford works for some Russian tool Kilimnik, Kilimnik keeps on claiming that the Ukrainians hacked the 2016 election not the Russians. Maniford repeats this to Trump, so naturally Trump decided Trump is the real victim because because Trump (the papers do not say, but I assume Trump’s conspiracy theory is the Democrats knew Trump was going to win by the most awesome of margins ever in history, so the Democrats got their Ukrainian buddies to hack the election to make Trump lose the popular vote) he thinks the Ukrainians have all the Democrats emails and that’s why Ruby was there.
cmorenc
@Omnes Omnibus:
True, although ironically the best MMA fighters who are most sustainably able to stay at the top of the sport are those with a background in high-level wrestling in combination with one of the top-level fist / kicking martial arts. Those with only top-level skills in the latter tend to be too vulnerable to being taken down and held down to the mat and exhausting their energy trying to wiggle out while getting pummeled by their dual-skilled opponent.
bemused
@Kay:
Worst people in the world. Someone working with Trump administration said, “Everyone loses their minds over everything and nothing can be funny anymore”. Rightwingers’ idea of humor is almost always ho-hum lame at best or kick down bullying at worst. I’m surprised someone there (cough, Stephen Miller) didn’t dream up a fun activity for kids to lock up immigrant kids in cages.
trnc
@Kay:
Theses are basically the same people as the ones who put cartoon characters on cigarettes to attract kids to smoking.
Gvg
@Shalimar: umm, I disagree. I still personally hate Bush. Torture was unforgivable. I just hate Trump more. Bush was hated. There are places where he would have been booed and his team didn’t send him there because they weren’t that incompetent. I thought Bush had a lot of incompetent people but Trump surpasses him and it’s not funny.
trnc
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
The headline said he got a mixed reception, and that’s accurate based on what I heard. It definitely was a somewhat warmer reception than he got at the ball game because there was zero audible support for him there. Still, it was good to hear the amount of booing at MSG that it would have taken to be heard.
Chief Oshkosh
@Tony Jay: So, the puff pastry (or mille-feuille, for you Continentals) of political blogging?
Skepticat
The people who most need to hear the loud, frequent boos are the senators who will have to vote on impeachment.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@trnc: Ha, They changed the headline lol The first headline was “Trump cheered at MMA event”. It looks they changed the opening paragraphs too. You can almost hear this guy’s colleges telling him “you stick to that story and everyone is just going to consider you a hack”
And yes, mixed reaction is contestant with the video Cheryl posted.
trnc
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Is our media learning?
Uncle Cosmo
@Jeffro: @Geoduck: Maybe someone should persuade Daddy Impeachbucks Tom Steyer to drop some serious ca$h for ad time on Fux Noise & run nothing but looped video of the crowds at Nationals Park chanting Lock him up! & the UPC crowd booing, on the off chance it’d goad Cheetolini into a massive stroke…
Frankensteinbeck
@Shalimar:
Yes. Bush was widely disapproved of and (correctly) considered incompetent. A plurality of this country become angry just seeing Trump or hearing his name. Only among evangelicals and carefully selected crowds of fans can he be reliably safe from booing, even in the Deep South. There has been nothing like this situation in living memory, not even conservative hatred of Obama.
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
BOOM! I called it. The American side of this is as simple as ‘Trump heard the server is in Ukraine.’ His behavior only makes sense, even idiot sense, if he truly believes that a physical object exists containing Hillary Clinton’s 30,000 deleted emails which prove she’s the criminal and he’s innocent. That’s why his ‘fireside chat’ idea. It’s why he released a ‘transcript’ confessing to the crime. He’s the hero fighting to unmask the real villain, damn it! It’s right there in black and white!
MattF
I think NYC residents remember the Central Park 5 and Trump’s campaign for their execution— in spite of being exonerated. Trump bared his ass, everyone took note, and no one has forgotten.
debbie
@geg6:
Agreed. I really thought they were his people. But, instead, they proved just how pervasive Trump hatred is. Good.
debbie
@MattF:
Not just his racism. His general assholism was on daily display in newspapers and local news shows every single day. His alleged brashness grew old very quickly, well before his cas*no failed.
burnspbesq
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It starts up again in February, at Daytona.
O. Felix Culpa
@Tony Jay: I’m late to the party, but just wanted to say, Mr. Jay, that you are an international treasure. Thank you for your tragicomic (or is it comitragic?) screeds.
Ked
The money behind the UFC is far right.
The fighters in the UFC are a mixed bag – there’s a lot of white dudes who are Trumpbros, but there literally are all types.
The crowds at UFC events not in Vegas are pretty regional, so last night shouldn’t be a surprise.
The wider fan base… I dunno. There’s a great tradition among urban liberals of appreciating sportfighting in general, and one can argue that the modern UFC is the least-stupid and probably least corrupted place for that. But I think that the room at some random Bellator or even more local event somewhere in a large Missouri town is going to be about what many people would expect.
Cowboy Diva
@Zinsky: The White Evangelicals love him because he is their last, best hope for criminalizing abortion and LGBTQ folks.
Suzanne
I don’t think that I will ever see Trump truly punished for what he has done.
But seeing him shunned by the city and the people that he tried to impress for so long is at least somewhat satisfying. I hope Ivanka and Jared are equally humiliated.
Just Chuck
@Cowboy Diva: And they squandered it by betting on the most immoral slime that was ever squeezed out of a person. Not that this will affect their flock — they’ll believe whatever they’re told at any given time by their respective Ayatollahs — but the Trumpangelicals are going to have a stigma attached to them that will make the association with televangelists look like a mildly disapproving stare. But hey, these people should like having stigmata, right? I’ll be happy to supply the hammers and nails.
Dev Null
@Tony Jay:
So are sedimentary rocks laid down… in shallow layers, I mean.
I’m sure there’s a point to this metaphor [examines metaphor closely], I just haven’t figured out what it is.
/snark
Michael Cain
This chart on the political leanings for the fan base of various sports is pre-Trump (2013), but surprised a lot of people. With respect to the WWE (the overwhelming leader in professional wrestling), the fan base skews quite young, and their politics reflect that. Even UFC leans slightly towards the Dems. The “Republican” sports are NASCAR, college football, and men’s professional golf.
Tony Jay
@O. Felix Culpa:
You’re very welcome. It’s a kind of therapy for the situation we find ourselves in.
Tony Jay
@Dev Null:
Geo is the only logic I still have any faith in these days.
Thank you. Thank you. Don’t forget to tip your waiter.
Seriously, don’t forget. He’s on a zero hour contract and your tips are the only way he eats.
J R in WV
@Amir Khalid:
Yes, ordinarily that would seem to be the obvious case.
But, in this case, IIRC, Florida has a hitch in their extradition laws that allows a sitting governor, Ron DeSantis, a member of the Republican Party who took office on January 8, 2019, to disallow a specific case for extradition, to protect Florida citizens from cruel and arbitrary prosecution in “foreign” states, like New York, obviously a locale famously hostile to Florida, since only 1 in 12 New Yorkers move to Florida to retire!
A tiny remnant from our federal society of mostly days gone by…
Tony Jay
@Chief Oshkosh:
My God! What’s kind of pastries are you eating?!?!
I could really go for one now, though, and to hell with the suggestive shape.
DigitalAmish
@Suzanne: While I fantasize about Trump spending the rest of his life in an orange jumpsuit I think an even worse punishment for him would be to be put on public display every day and subjected to public scorn, ridicule, and contempt.
Jay C
@trnc:
Unfortunately, the multiple-choice answers seem to be:
A) No.
B) Not yet.
C) Never.
D) (max optimism) Maybe.
J R in WV
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
uh, No! According to Wikipedia, and in line with what I thought I knew:
In other words Mueller’s report opines that Kilimnik is a Russian agent and controller for Manafort. Kilimnik isn’t wealthy, but received funding from oligarchs/the Kremlin and sometimes passes some of that money on to Manafort. In Manafort’s world, Kilimnik is his go-to translator for secret financial dealings with Russian and Ukrainian power brokers of the fascist vein.
Spider-Dan
@Tony Jay: Two things:
1) The apathy that Corbyn showed in campaigning “for” Remain in 2016 does not inspire confidence. From his seven or seven and a half out of ten passion for remaining in the EU, to his claims that predictions of a Brexit recession were “myth-making,” “hype and histrionic claims,” on top of his 40+ years on the record that the UK should leave the EU, it seems pretty clear that Corbyn does want to Leave – just on Labour’s terms instead of the Tories. I categorize Corbyn’s performance in 2016 as akin to Bernie’s “I do not believe that Trump voters are racist” tweet days before the US election.
2) How would a PM Corbyn “remaining studiously neutral” about his own plan even work? Of course a PM Corbyn would campaign in favor of his own Labour Brexit plan! I agree that he may not require his MPs to do the same, but even still, Corbyn will be out there every day pressing the people to approve his “Jobs Brexit.” It’s just absurd to think that any PM could or would somehow maintain neutrality on their own plan.