Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

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

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / 2020 Elections / Sunday Afternoon Open Thread: The Way ‘Trump Nation’ Lives Now

Sunday Afternoon Open Thread: The Way ‘Trump Nation’ Lives Now

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It would be funnier, if they weren’t so damned sad…

The SPLC’s take on organizer Harim Uzziel, “Hardcore American Patriot”.

Errol Webber, U.S. House candidate caught between the warring armies.

Award-winning closer on the full video!

Reader Interactions

71Comments

  1. 1.

    Brachiator

    When I saw that this was at an LA Denny’s, I admit that I was thinking Louisiana for some reason. But Culver Freaking City, California?

    Damn.

  4. 4.

    germy

    All those young conservatives.

     

    So much for the “scooter riding old folks who will die out soon and leave the country to us liberals and progressives” meme.

  5. 5.

    NotMax

    “Would you like a container for your leftovers?”

    “Leftovers? What’re you, some kind of heathen commie socialist librul?”

  9. 9.

    mrmoshpotato

    @germy:

    The folks inside are a rather diverse group of Trump supporters.

    I don’t even know what I just watched, or what the weirdest part is. But it definitely is weird seeing women and non-white people supporting a white supremacist misogynist.

  10. 10.

    James E Powell

    I used to live right up the street from that Denny’s. Been there many times, though not recently. Looks like they remodeled it a bit.

  11. 11.

    debbie

    I kind of feel badly for the restaurant. Did they know these clowns were going to take over the place like they did?

  14. 14.

    Brachiator

    @NotMax:

     

    Educated guess one point of commonality is being lousy tippers.

     

    I don’t think that this is necessarily the case at all.

     

     

     

    @germy:

     

    The folks inside are a rather diverse group of Trump supporters.

     

    Republicans are of course a minority in California, and Trump supporters a smaller subset of GOP voters.  But it is not that unusual to find non-racist Trump supporters.  The thing is, of course, as shown here, these people exist in a weird bubble in which they are blind to the raging racists who also love them some Trump.

  15. 15.

    Kristine

    @James E Powell:

     

    I used to live right up the street from that Denny’s. Been there many times, though not recently. Looks like they remodeled it a bit.

    They’ve been running a few new commercials featuring POC patrons in an effort to overhaul their image. Someone in Corporate is probably seeing this in the news and banging their head against the wall.

  18. 18.

    Jeffro

    Incel-a-palooza!

     

    Figures they would hold it at a Denny’s, and with no music or weed.  Total mystery why they aren’t getting laid.

  19. 19.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Brachiator:

    it is not that unusual to find non-racist Trump supporters.

    There is no such thing.  Perhaps what you mean is “personally not harboring racist animus”.  But that’s not the same thing as “non-racist”.  When you support a racist regime, knowing it is a racist regime, you’re a racist.  Now, perhaps they’re just morons, dropped too many times on the head as infants: that’d explain it.  But they ain’t non-racist.

     

    A story from history.  It seems that Heinrich Himmler was complaining in the Nazi equivalent of interoffice memos, about how many letters he’d get from good Nazi rank-and-file, about various “deserving Jews” that needed to be spared from the camps.  He observed (with some fury) that “there are no deserving Jews!”  These Germans, writing to Himmler to have their Jewish friends spared, were just as racist as any other Nazi — they supported and continue to support the Nazi regime.  But each of them could tell themselves that “hey, we’re not racists — we tried to do what we could for this particular Jew”.

  20. 20.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Brachiator:

    it is not that unusual to find non-racist Trump supporters.

    Another example: I have a friend whose mother lived in Pittsburgh.  She’s Chinese-American, and had lots of (white) friends who would tell her that she wasn’t “like those other Chinese”.  This is racist.  They they really liked her, doesn’t change this.

  21. 21.

    SFAW

    Meanwhile, in the vein of “Every accusation is a confession”:

    According to TPM:

    Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) accused CNN and the Daily Beast of being accessories to “criminal activity” on Sunday after the two outlets reported on his alleged dealings with Lev Parnas, one of Rudy Giuliani’s indicted associates.

    So is it “The Traitor Nunes”? Or “The Criminal Nunes”? Or perhaps “The Criminal Traitor Nunes.”

    I know, I know — por que no los tres?

  22. 22.

    SFAW

    @Chetan Murthy:

    She’s Chinese-American, and had lots of (white) friends who would tell her that she wasn’t “like those other Chinese”.

    “She’s one of the good ones.”

  26. 26.

    Brachiator

    @Chetan Murthy: 

    it is not that unusual to find non-racist Trump supporters.

    There is no such thing. Perhaps what you mean is “personally not harboring racist animus”. But that’s not the same thing as “non-racist”. When you support a racist regime, knowing it is a racist regime, you’re a racist. Now, perhaps they’re just morons, dropped too many times on the head as infants: that’d explain it. But they ain’t non-racist.

    Some of the Trump supporters in the video appeared to be Latino and black. I doubt that they are racist in the way that you mean.

    A former co-worker and her husband are both from Mexico, and recently became US citizens. The co-worker hates Trump with the fury or a million suns. Her husband is a huge Trump supporter. Huge.

    The Armenian American owner of local coffee shop is an otherwise decent guy who also likes Trump. The other day he sneered at the impeachment hearings as a big waste of time.

    We might agree that these people are blind to the danger that Trump represents. One of the people in the video seemed not even to understand why the extreme right nutjobs might hate him.

  28. 28.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Brachiator:

    Some of the Trump supporters in the video appeared to be Latino and black. I doubt that they are racist in the way that you mean.

    When I was younger, I harbored racist feelings towards other Indian-Americans (my own kind, note well).  I felt they were different from me, and that I was better.  Thankfully, after enough years living in a majority-minority city & state, those feelings have passed.

     

    The phenomenon of racism (and also misogyny) expressed by a member of an oppressed group, against other members of that same (or other) oppressed group, is well-known.  A black man’s callous disregard for the effects of Shitler’s regime on other black people, or other people of color, isn’t non-racist just because he’s black.  And as I noted before, the only excuse for not *knowing* about those effects, is grievous mental deficit.  Anybody with a near-median IQ knows.  They may not care, but they know.

  29. 29.

    Brachiator

    @Chetan Murthy:

     

    The phenomenon of racism (and also misogyny) expressed by a member of an oppressed group, against other members of that same (or other) oppressed group, is well-known. … And as I noted before, the only excuse for not *knowing* about those effects, is grievous mental deficit. Anybody with a near-median IQ knows. They may not care, but they know.

     

    I acknowledge your points, but think it’s a little more complicated than this.

  30. 30.

    SFAW

    @Chetan Murthy:

    When I was younger, I harbored racist feelings towards other Indian-Americans (my own kind, note well).  I felt they were different from me, and that I was better.

    I am not the person to do it, but one could probably make a case that Clarence Thomas hates black people.

  31. 31.

    JPL

    Paging Adam

    Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper asked for the resignation of Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer on Sunday after losing confidence in him over his handling of the case of a Navy SEAL accused of war crimes in Iraq, the Pentagon said.

  33. 33.

    J R in WV

    @JPL:

     

    When I was in the USN in the early 1970s, I had little to no respect for senior leadership of the service. Way too many people in charge of things because they had the years in, not because of their competence.

     

    Once I got into tracking modern Navy management, from short staffing crew numbers and training on warships, leading to those two collisions with giant cargo ships and loss of life, to the newest carrier being unable to take its place in the fleet, unable to launch aircraft and to move munitions to the flight deck because of changes made that block the elevators, it’s obvious that the Admirals and the civilian leadership of the USN are totally not competent at the things they are supposed to be experts in.

     

    Of course, the best I can tell, the USAF is much the same with the money being poured into the F-35.

  34. 34.

    Redshift

    At our local library today, there was a woman gathering signatures to get Marianne Williamson and Tulsi Gabbard on the ballot in Virginia. Strange times.

  35. 35.

    HalfAssedHomesteader

    Not that anybody was actually asking the question but we are living in the answer to, “What would happen if all those people on COPS got really politically active?”

  37. 37.

    Raven

    @Chetan Murthy: John Uzo Ogbu (May 9, 1939 – 20 August 2003) was a Nigerian-American anthropologist and professor known for his theories on observed phenomena involving race and intelligence, especially how race and ethnic differences played out in educational and economic achievement. He suggested that being a “caste-like minority” affects motivation and achievement, depressing IQ scores. He also concluded that some students did poorly because high achievement was considered “acting white” among their peers. Ogbu was also involved in the 1996 controversy surrounding the use of African American Vernacular English in public schools in Oakland, California. The 2000 book Eminent Educators: Studies in Intellectual Influence focused on him as one of “four intellectual giants of the 20th century.”

  39. 39.

    Jay C

    @JPL:

    Yes, of course Adam’s take on this would be (as usual) welcome, but a little closer reading might be in order:

    It seems like SoD Esper fired Spencer for going behind his back and trying to cut some kind of deal with the WH to “gracefully””retire” Eddie Gallagher. Without, supposedly, informing anybody.

  41. 41.

    TS (the original)

    @Jay C:

    Esper and Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, learned of Spencer’s private offer to the White House when they spoke with President Trump on Friday, Hoffman said.

    Never trust trump – he will always spill the beans

  42. 42.

    jeffreyw

    I was overjoyed in a previous thread when the back button and the refresh button woes seemed to be fixed.  I see now that I was just a credulous fool.  Alack and alas!

  43. 43.

    Patricia Kayden

    In my first 11 months I’ve cosponsored 339 pieces of legislation, authored 15, took on Big Pharma w/ my colleagues in hearings that brought PreP generic a year early & exposed abuse of power.In 4 years, you’ve jailed kids & made corruption the cause celebré. Try to keep up. https://t.co/lyg30LKVCd— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 24, 2019

  44. 44.

    WaterGirl

    @jeffreyw: Ouch!   Maybe when you notice that –  in a happy way or a sad way – take note of whether there are twitter embeds in the post and/or comments.

     

    The tweets make “transportation” a lot less reliable, because the programming takes you to the right place and then the tweets fill in and move you around the page based on the space the tweets take.

     

    Having said that, I do believe the site is not currently behaving as it should, in a way that goes beyond the issue of tweets.

  45. 45.

    JPL

    @Jay C:   Gallagher dissed both Sullivan and Rear Admiral Green today on Fox and he will now be allowed to stay.    He should have been fired for insubordination after the show.

  47. 47.

    Chetan Murthy

    @JPL:  IIUC Gallagher threatened death against the SEALs who turned him in?  You’d think that that alone would cause the entire command structure to resign rather than allow him to remain.  I mean, disregarding the (non-)merits of his case, such indiscipline seems pretty unacceptable in a military unit.

  49. 49.

    trollhattan

    @Chetan Murthy:

    IIUC Gallagher threatened death against the SEALs who turned him in? You’d think that that alone would cause the entire command structure to resign rather than allow him to remain.

    Or as Donny puts it, “He’s my kinda guy!”

  50. 50.

    jeffreyw

    @WaterGirl: My happy place was in the morning thread with just one embedded youtube.

    ETAdd:  The back button seems to be good, still.  I can follow our Q&A back to my alas and alack comment by clicking @nyms and then get back with the return button.  So there is that!

  53. 53.

    opiejeanne

    @Chetan Murthy: My niece is married to a Mexican-American and he hears this, “Oh, not you, you’re not like those other Mexicans” all the time. Does not make him feel better about their racism.

  54. 54.

    Baud

    A confidential White House review of President Trump’s decision to place a hold on military aid to Ukraine has turned up hundreds of documents that reveal extensive efforts to generate an after-the-fact justification for the decision and a debate over whether the delay was legal, according to three people familiar with the records.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/white-house-review-turns-up-emails-showing-extensive-effort-to-justify-trumps-decision-to-block-ukraine-military-aid/2019/11/24/2121cf98-0d57-11ea-bd9d-c628fd48b3a0_story.html

  55. 55.

    Another Scott

    @JPL: It’s probably too early to know what’s going on.   Spencer said he (and an Admiral) never threatened to quit.  Other reporting said they did.

     

    Ultimately, the military and military leadership must obey lawful orders and if they cannot they they must resign.  That’s the way the system has to work.

     

    Cheers,

    Scott.

  56. 56.

    Baud

    The House Intelligence Committee is in possession of audio and video recordings and photographs provided to the committee by Lev Parnas, an associate of President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who reportedly played a key role in assisting him in his efforts to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and Ukraine, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.

  57. 57.

    Aleta

    Here’s a  link to the Post story @JPL: mentioned:

     

    Esper asked for Spencer’s resignation after learning that he had privately proposed to White House officials that if they did not interfere with proceedings against Gallagher, then Spencer would ensure that Gallagher was able to retire as a Navy SEAL, with his Trident insignia.

     

    Spencer’s private proposal to the White House — which he did not share with Esper over the course of several conversations about the matter — contradicted his public position on the Gallagher case, chief Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in a statement.

     

    Esper and Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, learned of Spencer’s private offer to the White House when they spoke with President Trump on Friday, Hoffman said.

    ,,, 

    Spencer made his private pitch to the White House in conversations before a Thursday tweet by Trump, in which the president publicly pushed back against the Navy launching a review that could have stripped Gallagher of his Navy SEAL status.

  59. 59.

    WaterGirl

    @jeffreyw: FYI, video embeds do not cause the same issues that embedded tweets do.  That’s because the video embeds show up right away, and the way Twitter has designed things, the tweets fill in after the rest of the page loads.

    We could down the speed at which the page itself loads, which would allow everything to load at about the same time, but I think that would be nuts.  Nuts being a technical term, of course.

  60. 60.

    JPL

    @Another Scott: If the reporting is accurate, according to a Fox News reporter

    I am told by Navy source that they “can’t see a world where they go forward” with the other 3 SEALs peer review board hearing. “We need to move on.”

  65. 65.

    Amir Khalid

    @germy:

    A friend of mine likes to say:

    Die, die mit der Idee sich trösten, dass Bigotterie mit den alten Bigotten aussterben wird, vergessen, dass jeden Tag junge Bigotten mündig werden.

  67. 67.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Amir Khalid:  Ehh, Clayton Bigsby (of Chappelle’s sketch) believed.  These black Trumpists, they don’t believe — they’re just in it for the $$.  Look at Candice Owens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candace_Owens

     

    In 2007, while a senior in high school, Owens, who is African-American, received threatening racist phone calls that were traced to a car in which the 14-year-old son of then mayor Dannel Malloy was present. Owens’ family sued the Stamford Board of Education in federal court alleging that the city did not protect her rights, resulting in a $37,500 settlement.[10][11]

    This experience with injustice didn’t convince her that the other team were despicable; perhaps she just figured she should go to where the $$ is.  Certainly that seems to be the case with Paris Dennard and Diamond&Silk.

  70. 70.

    Shalimar

    @JPL: Spencer threatened to resign if Trump didn’t stop interfering in the SEAL case.  My first thought is that Trump didn’t have the guts to stand up to Spencer personally so he is having Esper fire him.

  71. 71.

    Shermanator

    @Brachiator: They’re definitely not racist — they’re just happy that someone is finally stopping Teh Illegals from taking all the welfare and medical care and speaking all that Spanish.

    As my MAGA father-in-law always says, the Mexican who cuts his lawn is fine with him, it’s all Those Other Ones who are the problem.

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