Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

All your base are belong to Tunch.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

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

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

The revolution will be supervised.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

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

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

A dilettante blog from the great progressive state of West Virginia.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

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

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / 2020 Elections / Monday Morning Open Thread: Seasons’ Greetings

Monday Morning Open Thread: Seasons’ Greetings

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… Ristine, who has served as the church’s lead pastor only since July, said the church often uses its Nativity scene to tackle a societal issue. Southern California’s homelessness crisis has been invoked in past depictions, she said. A more traditional Nativity scene, showing the Holy Family reunited, can be found inside the church, which serves a congregation of about 300 people, Ristine said.

“We don’t see it as political; we see it as theological. I’m getting responses from people I don’t know … I am having people tell me that it moved them to tears,” she said. “So if the Holy Family and the imagery of the Holy Family and the imagery of a Nativity is something you hold dear, and you see them separated, then that’s going to spark compassion in many people.”…


Dug out my copy of The Friends of Richard Nixon, written by former Assistant U.S. Attorney George V. Higgins, and found this in the introduction:

… Thinking ahead, in criminal business, is of surpassing importance, even more so than in legitimate commerce and in politics, where it certainly does no harm. The professional outlaw seldom loses sight of the possibility that he, or someone working for him, may make a mistake, or suffer some bad luck, or succumb to overconfidence and get hooked for something big because he bungled something small. He is on guard from the instant he begins to make his operational plans (he does not cause his conferences to be tape-recorded, and he invites to those discussions only those with a pressing need to know, and he does not confide this agenda to the uninvited). If something goes wrong, and the cops come, he is not reduced to frantic, random foraging in the early morning hours, for a willing though sleepy attorney, and a bail bondsman. Nor does he negligently permit his operatives to carry his phone number in their belongings, helpfully annotated to show that, yes, it is his number. The practical crook is a man of provident humility, who sees to it, in advance, that investigation will be arduous, protracted, dispiritingly unproductive, and, in the long run, unsuccessful. By that foresight in frustrating the orderly procedures of American criminal justice (by leaving nothing to chance, and very little to be found), he exonerates himself from the alternative, more difficult, and vastly more dangerous obligation to obstruct the processes of American criminal justice. There is no substitute for knowing what you’re doing…

It looks to be Rudy Giuliani’s week for going under the Trump bus. Mr. Giuliani, during his long career flirting with the romance of Big Crime, might’ve done himself better if his reading (okay, viewing) had included more narratives from the side of the prosecution, IMO.

And finally, a happy dream to start the week…

Reader Interactions

126Comments

  1. 1.

    opiejeanne

    My parents were members of that church the last 25+ years of their lives. I went with Dad sometimes after Mom was gone, and they were good people. He complained that they were too liberal, but he loved the liberal pastor that was there when he was a member, and they went every week. Both my parents’ memorial services were held there. It’s across from the Claremont Colleges, Harvey Mudd is directly across, I think, and next door to the Methodist Seminary.

     

    Seeing this made me very happy.

  2. 2.

    opiejeanne

    As for the possibility of seeing Kamala Harris as anyone’s VP partner, I am not holding my breath. She is a Senator who will not be replaced by a Republican if she agrees to a cabinet position or to the VP, but she’s already been AG in California. I know she’d be great in that position, but I’m still not sure if she’d want it. I’m also not sure who I support with her out of the race.

  3. 3.

    David ??Booooooo?? Koch

    Looks like Pete and Warren are going to take each other out.

    Warren has called on Pete to release details about his fundraisers and Pete countered by demanding Warren release her tax returns from before she entered public life. Warren released a spreadsheet of her prior income but refused to release her returns. I’m sure there’s nothing in them, but she’s concerned Wilmer will start screaming about corporatism. She might as well release them, Wilmer’s cult will never vote for her and at least it keeps the corporate media hyenas at bay for awhile.

  4. 4.

    OzarkHillbilly

    At the Kennedy Center Honors dinner in Washington on Saturday night, the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, introduced honoree Linda Ronstadt with a play on the title of one of her best-known songs.

    “Ms Ronstadt,” the most senior US diplomat said, “thank you and congratulations. And I will say my job, as I travel the world, I just want to know when I will be loved.”
    ………………………………..
    “Ronstadt rose to the microphone a feet away from the host’s table and looked straight ahead. ‘I’d like to say to Mr Pompeo, who wonders when he’ll be loved, it’s when he stops enabling Donald Trump.’ Then she sat down.”

  7. 7.

    Butter Emails

    She might as well release them, Wilmer’s cult will never vote for her and at least it keeps the corporate media hyenas at bay for awhile.

    It won’t keep the corporate media hyena’s at bay either. Note the framing of what amounts to around 65K per year in legal consulting fees as OMG Warren made almost 2 million over 3 decades in corporate legal gigs!

  8. 8.

    MattF

    The very idea of bringing the woes of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph into the Christmas narrative is obviously a libtard ploy to open new front in the War On Christmas.

  11. 11.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Trump’s trade war creates ‘nightmare before Christmas’ for US toy-makers

    For America’s toy-makers the next few weeks are usually the most wonderful time of the year. But thanks to Donald Trump’s seemingly ceaseless trade wars this year is one of the most worrying in living memory. “It’s absolutely the nightmare before Christmas,” said Jay Foreman, chief executive of Basic Fun!

    Just days from now the Florida-based toy-maker, whose licenses include Tonka, Care Bears and Baby Shark, will learn whether or not the president will turn out to be the Grinch that stole Christmas. On 15 December the Trump administration is set to impose another $155bn of tariffs on Chinese-made products imported to the US. Previous rounds of tariffs have mainly hit industrial goods and America’s farmers. This time the tariffs will include cellphones, laptops and tablets, office and schools supplies, Christmas ornaments, some clothing – and toys.
    …………………………..
    The industry is living with a sense of “impending doom”, said Foreman. He compared the situation to the hurricanes that annually threaten his home state of Florida. “It feels like we’ve got this hurricane of trade talks and friction and negotiations that have been lingering for a year or more.”

    More infuriating still is Trump’s attitude. “Badly run and weak companies are smartly blaming these small Tariffs instead of themselves for bad management,” Trump tweeted in August. “Excuses!”

    “It’s just galling coming from a guy who’s bankrupted so many businesses in his career,” said Foreman. “It’s the first time I’ve ever heard a Republican president criticize small businessmen. You know, entrepreneurship is supposed to be the backbone of this country. And when you have a president that’s working against entrepreneurs, it’s really shocking.”
    …………………………………………..
    Trump’s suggestion that manufacturers move production back to the US strikes manufacturers as ridiculous. With US unemployment at 50-year lows and Trump sealing the border to low-paid workers from Latin America, there is no way to make affordable toys in the US, said Foreman.

    “We don’t have the labor here that is interested or willing to do the kind of work that you need to do to make toys, to paint eyeballs on Barbie dolls, to stitch up stuffed animals, to assemble action figures,” he said. Moving to India or Vietnam would mean more costly safety checks and who is to say Trump won’t decide to impose tariffs there too, or remove the Chinese ones after the toy companies have shifted production.

    Nobody is winning in this trade war. According to a recent JP Morgan study all the proposed tariffs will cost the average American household $1,000 per year. The knock-on effects will be felt throughout the economy, said Woldenberg. “We pay taxes, we pay salaries and benefits that matter a lot to the people that work here and the wages that we pay are well above Illinois’s average pay. These are good jobs. And all that’s endangered,” he said. Even if Trump’s latest threat to hold off on a deal proves to be yet another bluff, the damage is being done. “I got to spend money to keep the business healthy, to make contractual commitments to lots of different people,” said Woldenburg. “But you can’t when the basic rules of the world are being decided at the last minute over and over again.”

  12. 12.

    Betty Cracker

    @Butter Emails: Exactly. The Post’s framing on this was almost as bad as The Times’ usual output. The bit about Warren representing “creditors” in the context of the Enron debacle was an especially nice touch.

  15. 15.

    Nicole

    @OzarkHillbilly: Well, if Mike Pompeo’s feelings are hurt that Linda Ronstadt thinks so little of him, he has a wide catalog of fine recording artists who think he and Trump are just ducky to console himself with.  There’s… Kid Rock… and… Ted Nugent… and… uh… later Charlie Daniels Band?

    (Full disclosure, with the exception of “Devil Went Down to Georgia,” I don’t think I could sing two bars of any of the aforementioned performers’ songs)

  18. 18.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Amir Khalid:   It’s not his fault:

    Pompeo, who said “I just read them” after his When Will I Be Loved gag prompted laughter, also said he was “a big fan of Linda Ronstadt … an icon of folk and country music” whom he saluted for “30 albums, 10 Grammys, a bestselling memoir”.

    Other lines Pompeo was given to read in his brief tribute to Ronstadt might not have sat well with a senior member of an administration dedicated to building a wall on the southern border and clamping down on immigration in general.

    See? It’s so not his fault.

  21. 21.

    Nicole

    @Baud:

    I wonder if she’ll get Dixie Chick’d.

     

    Good on her for her decency.

     

    As she’s not performing anymore, she’s got nothing to give up.  I’m not taking away from what Ronstadt did; it was the right thing to say and directly to his face, too and I’m totally going to rewatch video of her performing on Letterman today, but it’s not the same as what the Dixie Chicks dealt with.   She’s not dependent on the public’s affection for her career anymore; she’s retired.

    On the bright side,  the Dixie Chicks made a terrific album in the aftermath.

  23. 23.

    Betty Cracker

    Question for small town news outlet consumers: Do y’all’s papers gleefully obsess over mugshots? I subscribed to the digital edition of the local paper when we moved up here last year, and damn, do they love to publish mugshots! They even send emails out announcing the weekly mugshot round-up for the county and splash the piece at the top of the front page of their site, no matter what else is going on — which usually isn’t much, so maybe that explains it? Seems kinda voyeuristic to me.

  24. 24.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Nicole:   Aw c’mon… A favorite camp fire song:

    People say I’m no good and crazy as a loon’Cause I get stoned in the morningAnd get drunk in the afternoonKinda like my old blue tick houndI like to lay around in the shadeAnd I ain’t got no money but I damn sure got it made
    ‘Cause I ain’t asking nobody for nothin’
    If I cant get it on my own
    If you don’t like the way I’m livin’
    You just leave this long-haired country boy alone

    His early stuff was good. I don’t know WTF happened, maybe he found Jesus or something, but he and his music went to hell in a handbasket somewhere along the line.

  25. 25.

    Amir Khalid

    @Nicole:

    Don’t worry if you can’t sing any Kid Rock songs. Kid Rock can’t sing them either. Ted Nugent’s musical fame comes from stealing Chuck Berry’s guitar riffs and singing crass odes to “poontang” over them. You would probably not want that in your vocal repertoire. Charlie Daniels is the only really good musician in that trio, and it’s a shame about him.

  27. 27.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Betty Cracker:   Ours doesn’t (Sullivan Independent news)

    They go for car wrecks (I really liked the pic of my ex’s car after she almost killed 2 people in an I-44 DWI cross over. When ever I’m feeling depressed I pull it out and I get the warm fuzzies all over again) and house fires. After the front page it’s all Chamber of Commerce and HS sports.

  28. 28.

    Betty Cracker

    IMO, if anyone has to worry about being socially ostracized, it’s the Pompeos of the world and other officials who are enabling the incompetent buffoon who daily makes America more ridiculous. I’m convinced that’s one reason they’re fighting so hard to normalize Trump’s increasingly bizarre and criminal behavior. They’re afraid of the personal backlash and career derailment if Trump goes down.

  29. 29.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker:

     

    Maybe, but (1) the Bush people weren’t ostracized by general society and (2) the wingnut space contains many people so he never really has to surround himself with decent folk again.

    Isn’t Pompeo rumored to go back to Kansas to run for something?

  31. 31.

    painedumonde

    Statuary in cages, meh.

     

    Well then, once you get into the fifth and sixth string you can’t expect much.

     

    Interesting pairing and highly electable – in Bizarro world.

  32. 32.

    Baud

    We don’t usually get trolls in the morning thread. Ramping up for 24 hour shifts for campaign season?

  34. 34.

    Nicole

    @OzarkHillbilly: 

    Why I said “later” Charlie Daniels. I think he was reasonably, if not liberal, at least moderate, earlier in his career. He supported Carter, anyway.

    I liked “Devil Went Done to Georgia.” Anything the Muppets saw fit to perform on their show was fine with me. :)

  38. 38.

    debbie

    @Baud:

    A lot happened overnight. Both of these stories (NZ, Russia) were still just developing when I was listening to the BBC just six hours ago. I worry about the rescuers caught in the volcano eruption.

  40. 40.

    rikyrah

    The voting behavior of black Americans is one of the defining phenomena of U.S. politics, and yet, folks still don't understand this bloc. Here are five myths that need dispelling & are especially pertinent as Dem primary voting begins in a few weeks. https://t.co/eowFHEjUgc— Theodore R. Johnson (@DrTedJ) December 8, 2019

  41. 41.

    rikyrah

    The reason Barr's $30,000 bash at Trump hotel is troubling is because he's the nation's top law enforcement official. He's supposed to be objective. But rather than investigating the abuse of power (and possible 18 USC 201 violation) related to Ukraine, he funnels cash to Trump.— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) December 8, 2019

  42. 42.

    rikyrah

    Been thinking a lot about why Trump will survive impeachment when Nixon didn’t. For 20+ years Fox News (and rightwing talk radio) has told GOP voters that Democrats are evil. As lawless as Trump is, Republicans believe Dems are worse. That’s the power of propaganda.— Gabriel Sherman (@gabrielsherman) December 8, 2019

  43. 43.

    ola azul

    @Baud:

     

    Countdown starts now to Trump idiotically sticking his compensatorily-long tie inna woodchipper w/an insipid tweet commending the Russians for availing themselves of every advantage.

  44. 44.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: Bush was a terrible president and so is Trump, but IMO, they’re terrible in unique ways that could have different implications for how they’ll be regarded by history. Bush’s horrible policies were grounded in the wretched morass of mainstream Republican thought. Trump is basically a cult leader.

     

    It’s possible Trump will leave office, retire like a normal ex-president and be regarded as an elder statesman by his party, but I don’t think that’s a sure thing. With Bush, it was.

  46. 46.

    Searcher

    @David ??Booooooo?? Koch: Serious question, how does one go about obtaining 30 years of tax returns?

     

    I save my last 7 or 10 years, because I heard that was a thing I need to do, but if I needed 30 years, can I, what, submit a request to the IRS?  Do they still have their copies?

  49. 49.

    Kay

    Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is pushing ahead on her plans to cancel only a portion of loans taken out by defrauded college students, even amid legal setbacks and as House Democrats prepare to grill her during a hearing next week.
    DeVos in recent weeks directed the Education Department to carry out a new policy that will provide partial loan forgiveness to many borrowers whom the agency determines were duped or cheated by their colleges, according to an internal memo obtained by POLITICO.
    The memo, which was signed by DeVos in mid-November and hasn’t been reported previously, instructs department officials to resume issuing decisions on some of the roughly 227,000 pending applications filed by borrowers seeking debt relief based on their colleges’ alleged misconduct. That process has been stalled for the past 18 months.
    Department officials now plan to move ahead adjudicating those claims — most of which allege fraud at for-profit schools like Corinthian Colleges and ITT Tech — by using a new formula. It calculates loan forgiveness based on how much a defrauded student’s “estimated earnings” differed from those of students who attended similar programs across the country.
    The policy is a departure from the practice of the Obama administration, which provided full relief to all borrowers that the Education Department determined were defrauded. And it comes as DeVos has been at the center of a legal and political firestorm over her handling of the claims, which are made under a provision of federal law known as “borrower defense to repayment.”
    DeVos has agreed to testify about the issue before the House education committee on Thursday after the panel’s chairman, Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), threatened to subpoena her amid a monthslong dispute over access to documents about the program.
    The new policy follows a federal judge’s decision last year to block DeVos’ first attempt at providing partial loan forgiveness to a group of borrowers who were misled by Corinthian about their chances of getting a job if they enrolled at the now-defunct for-profit college. U.S. Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim of the Northern District of California ruled that the department violated federal privacy law in how it used borrowers’ earnings data.
    More recently, Kim held DeVos and the department in contempt of court and imposed a $100,000 fine for violating her order to stop collecting on the loans of those Corinthian borrowers. The department this week was forced to disclose that it erroneously targeted more than 45,000 Corinthian borrowers for collection, nearly three times the amount it previously said.
    The Washington Post reported Thursday that DeVos’ setback in the case had drawn the ire of some White House officials, who are reportedly scrambling to come up with a more populist student loan forgiveness plan to compete with those offered by Trump’s 2020 Democratic rivals.
    The new partial loan forgiveness policy — which the department calls a “tiered-relief methodology” — will apply to all existing claims except those from Corinthian students that are part of that class-action lawsuit. The new policy relies on “publicly available earnings data” in order to avoid the privacy law problems that halted the administration’s first strategy.
    Liz Hill, an Education Department spokesperson, said that the agency planned to make an official announcement about the new methodology “as soon as it is able,” but declined to address specifically the memo DeVos signed last month.

    The “privacy issue” the students sued on is this- DeVos hired a far Right lawyer to lead a team to use the student’s personal information to investigate the students and deny their loan relief claims. The personal information was collected by the Department in the process of administering the loans- it’s illegal to use it for other purposes.
    I imagine they’ll be back in that court since if looks like they lied about how many students they targeted- they told the court targeted 16,000- the correct number is 45,000. I think they only corrected the lie because they have to appear before a House committee this week, and the House committee may have know the original number was a lie when it was submitted to the court.

  51. 51.

    Baud

    @rikyrah:

     

    For 20+ years Fox News (and rightwing talk radio) has told GOP voters that Democrats are evil.

    Twenty percent of our presidential candidates say the same thing.

  58. 58.

    Kay

    If Democrats hadn’t have won the House there wouldn’t have been any oversight of Betsy DeVos and her low quality hires using student’s personal information illegally to target the students except for lawsuits brought by private litigants and lawyers.

    The only protection the students had was to join a lawsuit and litigate for several years. When Republicans held the House they did no oversight of DeVos whatsoever, which allowed her to break the law and target students using their personal information unlawfully. Their constituents.

    Not only do they not help them, they use aggressive and illegal tactics to target them.

  63. 63.

    Kay

    Democrats should run a specific ad on DeVos in Michigan. That’s why Trump hired her and can’t fire her- because she’s been a life-long far Right political lobbyist in Michigan.

    They know her best. They won’t need any context.

    It sounds like they’re worried about not offering anything on student loans and their record is much worse than that- they have aggressively worked against student borrowers, up to and including hiring and paying lawyers to target them. The Corinthian students have already been thru private litigation, which is a fucking nightmare, so they won’t be as intimidated as other people might be in coming out publicly against the Trump Administration. They’ll probably be personally targeted by the President and the low quality Trump hires, but they’ve already been thru the legal wringer so it will be less intimidating. Make an ad with them telling what DeVos did to them.

  64. 64.

    Cheryl Rofer

    From a tourist just leaving White Island when the volcano blew –

  65. 65.

    Steeplejack

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    “Badly run and weak companies are smartly blaming these small Tariffs instead of themselves for bad management,” Trump tweeted in August. “Excuses!”

    Trump can’t even keep his stories straight. I thought the evil Chinese were paying the tariffs, so why should any American company have to worry about them? ?

     

    Also, I can’t help but laugh at the doom and gloom coming from a guy whose company is named Basic Fun! (exclamation point!).

  66. 66.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: DeVos seems like an irredeemably evil person, and she’s not even the worst of her litter. I wonder if she’s personally profiting by using her office to take the side of predatory fake schools against defrauded students, if that’s just how she rolls or both.

  67. 67.

    J R in WV

    Linda Ronstadt, yet another of my musical heroes. Such a shame she can’t perform anymore, I know she would love to do duets or trios with Emmy Lou and Dolly. Those are the best female vocalist albums of mainstream folk-rock I recall.

     

    Not to put down Sarah McLaughlin or Nora Jones, who are both fabulous, nor any other of the many great female vocalists, but we all get to have favorites, and the Trio girls are mine. Such feeling in their music.

     

    And yes. Linda was a hero to say that so quickly to Pompous Mike, took quick thinking and bravery and she obviously didn’t hesitate a bit.

  69. 69.

    ola azul

    @Betty Cracker:

    Bush’s horrible policies were grounded in the wretched morass of mainstream Republican thought. Trump is basically a cult leader.

    I would argue that Trump is basically cult leader … whose horrible “policies” are grounded in the wretched morass of mainstream Republican thought, namely a reptilian will to power and the joy of eliciting librul tears. Trump has transformed the Republican Party into fan-service for his radicalized rabid base. Trump, imo, contra Biden, who misapprehends nearly everything, is pointedly *not* an aberration of Republican governance, Trump is the deliverance of it. The apotheosis of it. The logical culmination of 50-odd years of movement conservatism.

     

    Think what Trump has amply proven is that the only ones who ever gave a shit about Paul Ryanist “conservative” “intellectual’ thought (to say nothing of “principle”!) are the DaddyWarbucks wing (cuz it’sa useful lie) and the folks who fap to wouldn’t-it-be-pretty-to-think-so? fabulist white-papers (cuz you gotta say sumpin thoughty-sounding so’s you don’t sound like a cruel fucking moron when talking to Chuck Toddler, right?). Trump proved none of that was necessary. At fucking all. Certainly not for the Republican base, and certainly not for the Chuck Toddlers of the world. (This, I think, was a revelation to GOP pols; who knew you didn’t have to provide even the pretense of reasoning and the press would let you get away with it? Whatta liberating moment for freak-flag-flying, no fucking wonder they love Trump.)

     

    Even Paul fucking Ryan betrayed he don’t give a shit what Paul Ryan has to say come nut-cutting time.  Same for Lindsey Graham. Rand Paul. Ted Cruz. The list is endless. Notta goddamn one of their conservative pillars meant shit to any one of them.

     

    Guess I’m agreeing with you, Betty, just adding that I don’t view Trump as different from Bush far’s Republican policies goes, big exception being the xenophobia, which most Repubs never hadda problem with in principle *except* on account of in practice the big money boys din’t want it cuz it’s bad for bidness.

     

    It’s oft said that Trump says the quiet parts out loud — he does, and that’s precisely why his base loves him so. His cruelty and mean-spiritedness is a feature notta bug. He’s proud of it, and they love him for it.

     

    Just saying think them notions been laying dormant all along, just waiting for the populist reactionary idiot made manifest in Trump to show em to the promised wasteland.

  71. 71.

    Baud

    Justice Department watchdog to issue report on FBI handling of Russia probe

    We’ll see how the media both sides this, although early stories seem to be presenting this as a vindiction of the investigation.

    Also too, wonder what Barr will say to please his boss.

  72. 72.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Nicole:   I know, I was only speaking to your sore lack of knowledge of his earlier music. ;-) His Fire on the Mountain album had several good pieces, In addition to Long Haired Country Boy, there was Trudy, Caballo Diablo, Georgia, and No Place to Go.

     

    ETA I can, and do, sing along with all of the above

     

    (also the highly overplayed South’s Gonna Do It Again) He truly went off the deep end.

  73. 73.

    Steeplejack

    Anybody else having the “Recent Comments” list lag? Mine is currently showing the latest comment at 7:57, but there have been five or six since then, including my immediately previous one.

  76. 76.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

     

    It’s ideological. Republicans in the House defend the schools based on ideology- that the for profit market system delivers a better product than a public or nonprofit. This has to be true, because if it’s not everything else they do is called into question.

    This seeps over in healthcare and the two sectors have a lot in common, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone. The decades where they insisted that any public sector involvement in health care would lead to a loss of quality? That HAS to be true. Since the opposite appears to be true in education- a profit motive leads directly to cheap junk that rips off mostly poor and minority and first gen college students, they must deny it’s happening.

  77. 77.

    Betty Cracker

    @ola azul: Good points, and I didn’t mean to imply Trump is an aberration in the sense that he’s a creature wholly not of the party from which he sprang. He is the logical conclusion of a decades-long project to incite the rubes.

     

    At the same time, he’s apart from the Republican establishment in that he doesn’t give a shit about the party (or country, for that matter) except as a vehicle he can manipulate to serve his personal needs. Republicans are riding a tiger, and they know it.

     

    The GOP and its affiliated propaganda network fomented bigotry and cultivated ignorance for decades to build a base that would allow them to loot the Treasury in peace. Trump is facilitating that aim now because it aligns with his personal interests, but he’s unstable, compromised and malleable in a unique way.

  78. 78.

    sdhays

    @Baud: I agree.

     

    And thank you for using “couldn’t care less” instead of “could care less”. I know “could care less” is now accepted, but it doesn’t make any sense, so I appreciate it when I see it used “correctly”.

  79. 79.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: That makes sense. I like the idea of running DeVos-specific ads in Michigan too. They know her since her terrible ideas wrecked schools on a local level before she took her act national.

  80. 80.

    sdhays

    @Kay: This has to be true, because if it’s not everything else they do is called into question.

    I think this is less and less true. Republicanism keeps getting reduced to more and more of its base elements, and I think the raw opportunity for getting money from people in business, any business, is what it’s all about at this point.

     

    Practicing corruption is so much easier when the money is getting laundered through your buddies.

  81. 81.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Kay: Iowa is currently suffering because the minute the state legislature became R, it privatized Medicaid, claiming it would save money. On the face of it, that seemed ridiculous to me. How can you provide the same services and turn a profit on less money? And of course, you can’t. So they’ve blown a hole in the budget. Thanks, Rs.

  82. 82.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

     

    Democrats should do it because Trump thinks it’s a problem, their hostility to student loan debtors. He doesn’t know anything else but he does know his voters.

    He’s telling us where they’re vulnerable. It’s a gift.

    The Corinthian stories are potent. They set up boiler rooms to sell the “colleges” specifically to low income, minority, single parents, veterans. Call them over and over and over when they fill out a form online expressing interest. They invented graduation rates and earnings past college. It was fraud. That’s what the Trump Administration and the GOP in the House are defending. The most vulnerable students, brutally ripped off.

  83. 83.

    ola azul

    @Betty Cracker:

     

    All valid points. I apologize if I came off as suggesting you felt Trump was an aberration; was not my intent.

     

    Guess it’s just that whenever I hear Biden talk about how Trump is an aberration, I wanna track him down and say sumpin to him inna public forum so’s he’ll get all chippy and challenge me to a push-up contest. Think it’d be good for both of us.

  84. 84.

    zhena gogolia

    The Kennedy Center Honors is maybe a small thing, but it’s so disgusting that he and his wife can’t be bothered to show up. He’s such a f–ing coward. GWB wasn’t probably the favorite politician of most artists, but he and Laura always showed up.

  85. 85.

    Steeplejack

    @Baud:
    I’ve been seeing it for a while, but it appears to be getting worse. Lately also omitting some comments from the list. I have reported it, but I wanted to make sure it wasn’t something specific to my setup.

  87. 87.

    Betty Cracker

    @ola azul: It drives me nuts when Biden says that too. I don’t think he can possibly believe that, given that he witnessed eight solid years of unprecedented obstruction first hand. So I guess he’s making a play for Obama-Trump voters or doing the bullshit bipartisan dance for the media. Maybe it’s the smart play (I have my doubts!), but it chaps my ass.

  89. 89.

    kindness

    I sure hope there aren’t two Senators on the Democratic ticket.  When we win, and we will, we are going to need every single Democrat in the Senate we can get.  Harris is way more powerful and important as a Senator than as a VP.  IMHO.

  90. 90.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay:  

    They set up boiler rooms to sell the “colleges” specifically to low income, minority, single parents, veterans. Call them over and over and over when they fill out a form online expressing interest. They invented graduation rates and earnings past college. It was fraud.

    That sure sounds familiar. I remember somebody having to settle some lawsuits over very similar practices just before taking office. Now who was that? It’s right on the tip of my tongue…

  92. 92.

    Cowboy Diva

    @Searcher: The IRS keeps copies of only 3 years’ worth of returns. Account Transcripts are available for as long as they’ve got server space; generally those go back 10-15 years or so, depending on how active the account was.
    My opinion on Buttigieg’s demand? 20 years ago he was probably working minimum wage so he could buy a pretzel in the food court at the mall after he finished his homework. This stunt really is a waste of time.

  94. 94.

    Sab

    @Steeplejack: Has anyone been seeing overlapping comments? There were several of those in last night’s thread. Comment #80 would underneath Comment #81, for example, so I would have to read through 81 to try to read 80. Mostly I couldn’t see it.

  97. 97.

    Steeplejack

    @Sab:
    I read that thread in real time and just checked it again. Didn’t see overlap then or now.

    In my feed Amir’s comment is just above a slot for an ad (empty for me). I wonder if that has some effect.

  101. 101.

    joel hanes

    @Baud:

     

    you know who released 100% of their tax returns. The Clintons.

    Also, IIRC, the Clinton administration was served with a huge number of subpoenas by the Starr investigation witch hunt, and complied with every one of them.

  102. 102.

    Searcher

    @Cowboy Diva: Soooo it may be a literally impossible demand being made of her, to release more than the decade or so of returns she already has?  And this is going to be what dominates news coverage from now to, God willing, 2029?

  103. 103.

    glory b

    @Betty Cracker:

    My father used to subscribe to the local Jacksonville FL weekly Black newspaper when he was alive. It gave him a connection to the place where he grew up (at least partially, he was born in Doctortown, GA). We used to tease him about its crime roundup section, so, yeah.

  105. 105.

    Amir Khalid

    @zhena gogolia:

    Maybe Trump just doesn’t grok the arts. He gets wealth, power, showing off; but music, literature, painting, sculpture, cinema, the performing arts — nope. He could be impressed by a successful artist’s wealth; but he’d have no understanding at all of the art itself, and absolutely no concept of artistic merit. Art is meaningless to him.

  107. 107.

    The Pale Scot

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    “Ronstadt rose to the microphone a feet away from the host’s table and looked straight ahead. ‘I’d like to say to Mr Pompeo, who wonders when he’ll be loved, it’s when he stops enabling Donald Trump.’ Then she sat down.”

    Please tell me she dropped the mic!

  108. 108.

    Matt McIrvin

    I recall seeing some speculation that picking Tim Kaine as a running mate actually hurt Hillary Clinton, because, instead of reassuring voters with some unresolved sexism that a man was on the ticket or allowing them to fantasize that he was somehow in charge, it bothered them more to see a man in a subordinate position to a woman–two women would have been less disturbing. (How this relates to Joe Biden’s position with regard to Barack Obama, I’m not sure.)

  111. 111.

    trollhattan

    @Amir Khalid:

    Donny likes to sneak off to punk clubs and join the fray. When you see a headline “Three crushed in mosh pit” it means he’s stage-diving again.

  113. 113.

    rikyrah

    @zhena gogolia:

     

    The Kennedy Center Honors is maybe a small thing, but it’s so disgusting that he and his wife can’t be bothered to show up.

     

    I thought it was obvious that he doesn’t show up because he’s afraid of being booed.

  115. 115.

    Miss Bianca

    @David ??Booooooo?? Koch: Why the fuck Wilmer’s cult thinks they have the right to demand *anyone* else release their tax returns after his refusal to do the same remains a mystery to me. Guess it’s true what my momma always said, some people have more nerve than sense.

  116. 116.

    The Pale Scot

    @Baud:

    She could still be socially ostracized

    I’m sure the feelings of Orange County circle jerk Thuglicans concerns her

  119. 119.

    TomatoQueen

    @rikyrah: We’re not in the least put out that for the 3rd year running we will not have to be polite to them. This is btw according to WaPo and elsewhere not a small event, but the most important cultural event of the local social calendar, so there will be plenty of 2nd and third level WH, Cabinet, Congress/Judiciary folk in attendance–Mnuchin always shows up, for example. The spirit of the Predecessors has been on show, and the people will get up and dance as they are moved.

    As for Linda’s riposte, she’s never done anything that she didn’t want to do and never cared what anybody thought, which makes it more than perfect.

    Now thingy, do that 504 error you’re so fond of. Do it again. Third time today, mofo.

  121. 121.

    opiejeanne

    @Sab: They’ll be taking on the entire United Methodist Church, and that would be interesting because they haven’t bothered with the conservative ones telling congregants who to vote for, and that will come out in a big way.

    I think one of the Lutheran churches (Pasadena, CA?) got some gas about have Martin Luther King, jr come and talk, and that went away pretty quickly

    When we were more active there were quite a few lawyers who were members of our congregation, but the Church already has its own lawyers.

  122. 122.

    Ruckus

    @Betty Cracker:

    With Bush, it was.

    He’s a leader in his party? He rarely or ever shows his face. Now he could be leading the same way he always did, silently and so no one will notice.

  125. 125.

    Ruckus

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    They didn’t do to save money for the population, they did it for themselves. In republican world, everything is about keeping the last penny. Doesn’t matter how or who gets hurt.

    They have been singing this song for decades and they keep saying they are helping the people but of course we know it’s bullshit. They don’t give a damn about people, except when they can screw them or keep a minority from getting even what they earn.

    Look what their elected congress people are doing right now, lying about everything and/or saying absolutely noting substantively about the process of impeachment, because they have nothing useful to say, all they can do is disrupt.

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