Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

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

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

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

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

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

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

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

I really should read my own blog.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

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

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

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

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

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

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / 2020 Elections / Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Think Diagonally

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Think Diagonally

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(That’s Dan Scavino, Trump’s former golf caddy and reputed twitter-ghostwriter.)

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124Comments

  1. 1.

    David ??Booooooo?? Koch

    Tay Anderson
    @TayAndersonCO

    The weather outside is frightful

    But impeachment is so delightful

    And since he used quid pro quo

    He’s got to go, got to go, got to go!

    #ImpeachmentEve

    918 Retweets 4.2K Likes

  3. 3.

    Zinsky

    Echoing the tweet encouraging everyone to get out and march for impeachment this evening. I plan to bring a large sign reading “Impeach and Imprison”. It’s not enough that we throw this criminal deviant out of the White House – he needs to rot in prison. Many men have gone to prison for far less (e.g. a pound of pot).
    BTW – I did not know Trump had a ghostwriter for his tweets. He is even more lame than I thought!!

  4. 4.

    Quinerly

    Good morning! Poco and I are getting on the road from Eastern NC back to St. Louis. Hope to make it without a hitch for our overnight stop in Morehead, KY. Poco likes the Motel 6 there. Stay warm. Have a great day.

  13. 13.

    Betty Cracker

    The New Yorker published a longish piece by Brian Entous on the Ukraine scandal. It’s based on extensive interviews with Yuriy Lutsenko, former prosecutor general in Ukraine, Rudy Colludy and others.

    Giuliani’s on-the-record assertion that he “needed Yovanovitch out of the way” is getting some attention in other outlets. But good lord, what a load of crap this whole caper was from beginning to end. An excerpt:

    In a phone call with me on November 21st, Giuliani described some tips he was hearing from his sources in Ukraine, including allegations that a Ukrainian oligarch had made illegal campaign contributions to Hillary Clinton totalling forty million dollars, “that Biden helped to facilitate.” In addition, he said, “I was told Biden had participated in the hacking”—a reference to the penetration of Democratic National Committee computer servers in 2016, which U.S. intelligence agencies have attributed to Russia’s military intelligence agency, the G.R.U. The conspiracy theories were endless. “They may be true, they may be false,” Giuliani said of the rumors.

    So Biden funneled money to Hillary AND hacked the DNC server for…reasons. They’re not even trying to make sense. Honestly, it makes me wonder if Ukrainians who are tired of being unwilling participants in our sick politics are trolling Giuliani with this nonsense.

  19. 19.

    Baud

    We’re Not Ready for the Next Disinformation Attack

    NYT > Top Stories / by Suzanne Nossel / 12min

    The last election weakened our election. Why aren’t we preparing for the next one?

    True. People still trust the NYT’s domestic political coverage.

  20. 20.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: Almost as funny as notorious butt-dialer Rudy being paid millions for cybersecurity consulting! They’re all a bunch of grifters. Saw some reporting yesterday about Parnas and Fruman trying to set Rick Perry up in an exclusive contract with the Ukrainian state natural gas company. No doubt Trump and Rudy would get a cut somehow. That whistleblower sure blew up a lot of schemes. No wonder they hate him.

    It’s a pity none of these bumbling, crooked schemes are likely to get the airing they deserve in congressional hearings. But with any luck, details will dribble out during the run-up to the election via the Parnas and Fruman indictments, unless Barr manages to sweep it all under a rug, which also wouldn’t surprise me.

  22. 22.

    germy

    Trump was asked by reporters today what Giuliani shared with him about his trip to Ukraine. Trump responded "not too much." On Friday, Giuliani said to the WSJ that he told Trump "more than you can imagine."

    — Jim Acosta (@Acosta) December 16, 2019

  24. 24.

    germy

    Fun facts about this account retweeted by the president:
    —Account is 1 day old
    —First tweet was retweeted by the president
    —Follows no one
    —Claims to be a Jewish Trump supporter from Boro Park
    —Profile picture is from a NYTimes story about Jewish Trump supporters in Borough Park pic.twitter.com/vC8GsEZe7e

    — Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) December 16, 2019

  25. 25.

    Kay

    @germy: 

    The general consensus is the country got more corrupt with conservative’s gutting campaign finance laws because it’s pay to play, but with Trump and the low quality hires I think you have to add a much more direct impact- we catch a lot of criminals for violations of campaign finance rather than their actual crimes. That’s what Guiliani will eventually be charged with.

  26. 26.

    Kay

    The Bearded Crank
    @beardedcrank
    ·10h
    Possibly relatedly, Dem support went from 90/6 (+84) to 77/12 (+65), which was the main reason impeachment went from 50 to 45. It’s possible Dems are terrified of it boomeranging, as many in the media have been pontificating.

    I don’t know how we fix this.

  27. 27.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    We have a poor track record of having Dem leaders backs. I’m worried our voters will forget impeachment as soon as it’s over.

    Anyway. I’m certainly not worried about losing the votes of skittish Dem voters. Onward.

  28. 28.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    You probably all saw this yesterday, but I just read it. Apparently Trump thinks the president runs the debate process.

    ….The problem is that the so-called Commission on Presidential Debates is stacked with Trump Haters & Never Trumpers. 3 years ago they were forced to publicly apologize for modulating my microphone in the first debate against Crooked Hillary. As President, the debates are up…— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 16, 2019

    ….to me, and there are many options, including doing them directly & avoiding the nasty politics of this very biased Commission. I will make a decision at an appropriate time but in the meantime, the Commission on Presidential Debates is NOT authorized to speak for me (or R’s)!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 16, 2019

    btw, I don’t recall any problems with Trumps mic. Did that happen?

  31. 31.

    Baud

    @Kay: 

    Another poll.

    Among Democrats, 85 percent say Trump should be impeached and removed, while 86 percent of Republicans say he should not. Independents split 47 percent in favor and 46 percent opposed. Republican support for impeachment has slipped from 18 percent in October to 12 percent today.

  33. 33.

    debbie

    @Baud:

    Can’t find it now to share, but a constituent said Drew had just lost his chance to be reelected. In fact, the potential GOP candidate in his district called Drew’s party switching a “weasel move.”

  34. 34.

    Kay

    @Baud: 

    They are nervous though. I had someone ask me about Bloomberg. Like “who is this person?” A retired railroad worker. He’s fretting, I can tell. I said “you don’t even know who he is- why do you think he’d be better than Biden?”

  37. 37.

    Baud

    @Kay: 

    I think there’s a reason why our last two Presidents have been highly charismatic people. Anything less, and our people get nervous that Dems aren’t going to win over enough white people.

  39. 39.

    debbie

    @Baud: 
    I know! I expected him to gloat in a Moscow Mitch kind of way.

    My ideal gift for Christmas would be that Drew was the only Dem to vote against impeachment. Please, Santa…

  40. 40.

    Betty Cracker

    @debbie: Heard a brief interview with Rep. Slotkin yesterday on NPR. She’s a first-term Dem narrowly elected in a Trump district but is voting to impeach. Said she hopes her constituents would rather have a rep with integrity than someone who panders, and she said she’s voting her conscience, consequences be damned.

    Anyhoo, the interviewer asked her about Drew, and she said his vote is pure political calculation. I hope the Drew story blows up in Trump’s face. Hard to say — the media loves a “my party left me” story. But the people who’ve shown real courage are taking the opposite vote.

  42. 42.

    Kay

    @Butter Emails: 

    Twitter isn’t real life but cable pundits aren’t real life either and so Twitter serves a valuable purpose- at least we have two relatively small and isolated political islands instead of what we had before, which was one.

  46. 46.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker: 

    I think he’s revealed by Amash. You don’t have to join the opposite Party to break ranks. You can be an independent. What Drew did was throw every one of his Democratic voters and donors under the Drew bus. Amash’s is the honorable dissent and it’s available to anyone.
    It’s amusing because even their dissenters are sleazy. They can’t even do that right.

  47. 47.

    Betty Cracker

    @germy: They’re just following their C-in-C’s lead in admiring fascists. I may do a post on that later if I have time. It’s really alarming — not just the Nazi fanfic that tweet highlights but white supremacist groups in the military and recent polling about perceptions of Russia, which is something like twice as positive among military families as non-military Americans’ attitudes.

  48. 48.

    Patricia Kayden

    So, Rudy Giuliani just claimed that AMB Yovanovich denied a US visa to four guys who had damning evidence about Joe Biden.This is what an old guy who doesn't know about air travel, or the internet, says when he's trying to make up a story like it's still 1970.— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) December 17, 2019

  49. 49.

    Patricia Kayden

    Joachim Peiper, the Nazi colorized and pictured on the DoD's official Facebook page, was given a death sentence for ordering the killing of POWs in WWII.

    After 35 years, his sentence was commuted. He moved to France, where he burned to death when his home was molotov cocktail'd.

    — Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) December 17, 2019

  50. 50.

    Kay

    Andrew Feldman
    @AndrewFeldman
    · Dec 14
    Following his appearance at the #PublicEdForum @PeteButtigieg faced some tough questions from reporters including one about @reedhastings’ upcoming fundraiser for the campaign given his relentless support for privatizing education

    The problem with Reed Hastings is much more specific. He’s Netflix and they poured money into the Louisiana governor’s race to defeat the Democrat. That just happened. So on the other side of what Democrats consider a big state race and one that humiliated Trump. I mean, you just have to start parsing this fundraising very fine – he’s going to cross this line a lot. The line is they can’t actively work to defeat Democrats. It’s true for Bloomberg too. He’s funded lots and lots of Republicans against Democrats. Even Democrats who don’t care about pay to play will care about that. They want to win.

  51. 51.

    David ??Booooooo?? Koch

    @germy: That’s Nazi war criminal Joachim Peiper. He killed more Americans than Bin Laden could ever dream of.

  52. 52.

    Kay

    I mean, there will BE a time where Bloomberg will have to explain supporting the Michigan GOP governor over the Democrat, particularly because after that happened it came out that the Michigan governor Bloomberg supported literally poisoned the Flint water.
    This is not abstract. It’s not 30,000 feet notions of bipartisan or “campaign finance”. These people have done things and the things they have done directly contradict what Bloomberg (now) says he supports.
    The Michigan governor wasn’t even anti-gun and pro-environment, so what was that about?

  53. 53.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: Wow, that is pretty inexcusable, especially given the recency of the campaign to defeat the Louisiana governor. It’s such a conundrum, money’s corrupting and insidious influence. I understand the arguments against unilateral disarmament. But accepting wads of cash from fat cats undermines the argument we make to unaffiliated or loosely attached voters (which is most gettable voters these days!) that Democrats are for the people instead of rich donors. 

  55. 55.

    different-church-lady

    So, I see the new servers have not cured the “post not posted until you hit refresh three times” problem, plus now WYSIWYG editing is gone. Ain’t complainig, just reporting.

    ETA: and now it’s back THE MOMENT after I hit post.

  57. 57.

    Another Scott

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I predicted many, many months ago that Donnie wouldn’t debate the Democratic nominee. He’s a coward and won’t have the questions funneled to him beforehand as he was in the past, so he’ll find an excuse.

    I could be wrong, but so far it doesn’t look like it.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  59. 59.

    germy

    @Another Scott: 

    He’s a coward and won’t have the questions funneled to him beforehand as he was in the past, so he’ll find an excuse.

    Didn’t W wear some sort of listening device during one of his debates? Or is that just a legend…

  60. 60.

    Baud

    Trying to predict what Trump will do eight months from now is a fool’s errand.

    Relying on Trump’s words to inform your prediction is even more foolhardy.

  61. 61.

    Another Scott

    @germy: There was a “rectangular bump” on W’s back in one of the debates.  I have always thought that it was nothing (a trick of the light, a lumpy clothing, etc.), but who knows.

    (I have trouble listening to more than one conversation at a time, myself.  Someone yammering in my ear under a highly stressful situation like that would be over-the-top distracting.)

    Cheers,

    Scott.

  63. 63.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker: 

    So here’s my question. Why is it not okay for liberals to go against Democrats but is okay for centrists to go against Democrats?
    It’s a double standard.

  67. 67.

    zhena gogolia

    Ice storm here. No marching for me. (Not that I was planning to, anyway. Not a marcher, I’m afraid. More of a donater.)

  68. 68.

    zhena gogolia

    This whole thing of not having one’s comment appear is far more annoying than entering the nym and address every time. I hate to say it.

  70. 70.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    It’s always been a problem with supporting “issues” instead of candidates, which is kind of the post-political Party theory. The theory goes that you can pick and choose, no party or tribe, just pick a set of issues and support those, so Mayor Pete said at that forum, “I have 700,000 donors and I don’t agree with all of them on everything”. Fair enough. That’s the “issues” argument. But that doesn’t really align with Party politics or..reality when it comes to supporting “an issue” which leads directly to opposing the Democrat, as in Hasting’s case. That’s where the theory falls apart, because then you’re really horsetrading- “I will trade MEDICAID for this money”. D’s need a majority. Numerical. It’s nice that Bloomberg wants gun regs but to get them we need two Michigan Senators and those Senators come with issues Bloomberg doesn’t support. He’s not just picking “issues”. He’s setting priorities. Gun regs go up, health care goes down.

  72. 72.

    Baud

    A candidate we don’t talk about much.

    Cory Booker on socialism, “identity politics,” and animal rights

    “We have to start having policies that are far more conscious to that intersectionality of life itself.”

  74. 74.

    Kay

    My daughter is expecting in January. The health care company she works for was sold to another health care company so she gets a new health insurance policy January 1, and the new policy treats the hospital she’s using as “out of network” so she has a choice- switch hospitals and pick one without a NICU, or pay 6k out of pocket with insurance.

    Okay, so both she and her husband are health care people so they’re going with “NICU” in case it goes south, but jesus christ. Insurance companies should spend less time and money lobbying and buying lawmakers and more time simplifying their product. How much time do people spend on this shit over the course of a year, do you think? We’re all unpaid health insurance workers. They even called the health insurance portal “navigator”- we all just accept that we have to spend X number of unpaid hours “navigating” this wildly expensive service.

  79. 79.

    Kay

    @rikyrah: 

    I feel like Biden is an olde-timey pol who would know better than that. I feel like that’s what he would be good at- things like how the Louisiana governor’s race fits into the broader scheme, because he’s a “relationship” pol which it’s fashionable to dismiss but there are actually a ton of them and they’re successful.

    My favorite Ann Laurie post of all time was her “defense of machine politics” post. Now that’s a mavericky position.

  80. 80.

    Kay

    Ian Kullgren
    @IanKullgren
    ·1h
    Just in: The PBS NewsHour/Politico debate will proceed Thursday. Food service workers at Loyola Marymount reached a tentative contract agreement.

    I’m glad. Democrats can’t cross a picket line. This was funny because I think there are only 150 workers. They were briefly in charge of all decision making :)

  81. 81.

    zhena gogolia

    @germy:

    I have this funny theory, and I don’t have time to track it down and see if I’m right. But the Russian word for ICU is “reanimatsiia,” which sounds to the English ear like “reanimation.” It always gives me pause when I hear it, and it feels as if the person is being “brought back to life.” I wonder if this is the origin of this story that Shokin was “brought back to life” three times. Did he just say he was in ICU three times? (I don’t believe the whole story, so it’s moot, but just kind of curious.)

  83. 83.

    Gin & Tonic

    Obscure bleg here. On Sunday afternoon, around 1:30 EDT, the Sirius ‘Real Jazz’ channel was playing a version of Take the ‘A’ Train that I’m not familiar with. Duke Ellington Orchestra, but a female vocalist that wasn’t Ella, and a long tenor sax solo. Their info extends only to the name of the piece and the artist, but not the album. This was recorded live, but I’ve been unable to track down when/where, i.e. which recording. I’d like to find it.

  85. 85.

    different-church-lady

    @Gin & Tonic:  SoundHound is your… well, not exactly your friend, because anything that gathers data on you isn’t your friend, but it is rather useful in situations like that. (Too late now, but I keep the button on the first page of my phone, and it’s helped me go less insane the past few years.)

  87. 87.

    different-church-lady

    @Kay:  They don’t want the product to be simple. They want the product to be as complicated as possible, so that people just throw up their hands in confusion and then just pay whatever they’re charging.

  88. 88.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

     

    I mean, there will BE a time where Bloomberg will have to explain supporting the Michigan GOP governor over the Democrat, particularly because after that happened it came out that the Michigan governor Bloomberg supported literally poisoned the Flint water.

     

     

    tell it, Kay.

  91. 91.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: Someday I’ll get around to writing my “The Tent Is Too Damn Big” post. It’s a real problem, how factionalized we are. IMO, it’s an outgrowth of the Republican Party’s descent into madness. There’s tons of analysis on how that affects the GOP, but it affects us too. Maybe the “issues” voting thing is a response to that, but like you said, it doesn’t work. There’s no  à la carte in a two-party system.

  92. 92.

    schrodingers_cat

    Balloon Juice elders and fellow jackals, I just figured out that the troll in the comments on my guest post yesterday is the same exact one who showed up in the comments on my post in Kashmir. And he posted almost identical comments in that thread as well. Do I engage or ignore?

  95. 95.

    PJ

    @different-church-lady:  If by anyone, you mean the media, then you are right. For media workers, whatever the Twitter consensus is, is “reality”, just like Facebook messaging represents “reality” to a lot of older members of the lumpenproletariat. This disconnect with actual reality is why twitterers are still consistently shocked and outraged that Biden leads in the polls, because no one whose tweets they follow is supporting him. Unfortunately, because these people are also the people who write and edit the news, the twitter “common knowledge” affects how everyone perceives réal reality because the writers and editors implicitly or explicitly incorporate it into their reporting or opinion pieces. It doesn’t help that the nature of twitter means that what people express is often their unfiltered and unconsidered thoughts, which means that it is hot garbage.

  96. 96.

    Betty Cracker

    @schrodingers_cat: I’d be interested in reading your rebuttal, and I’m confident anyone who reads it would be more informed on the issue. But it’s got to be worthwhile for you too, since it’s your time and effort.

  97. 97.

    PJ

    @Kay: because Centrists are obviously operating out of principle, and are therefore noble, while Liberals just operate from knee-jerk sentimentality  and liberal bias and should not be taken seriously.

  98. 98.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Betty Cracker: @Elizabelle: Thanks for your input. The gish gallop of half truths and out right lies does need a rebuttal. But this is a tried and a tested Sangh debating and derailing technique to lump all the atrocities real and imagined perpetrated by Muslims to justify the anti-Muslim bigotry in general and anti-Muslim actions taken by the BJP-Sangh government in power in New Delhi.

    ETA: The Sangh wants Indian citizens of Muslim heritage to pay for the actions of the Muslims who voted for a separate homeland for Muslims in 1947. Unfortunately this has a resonance among many Indians.

  99. 99.

    Jay

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Ignore. Trolls feed on engagement and work on exhausting the truth with lies and fake news.

    Even bad ( poor quality) trolls,

    like ones who blame Kashmir Terrorism on “Muslims” and the resultant refugees on Muslim Indians,and the Indian State of Kashmir, which anybody with half a brain can see is bullshit and a bullshit argument,

    ”win” by drawing out the arguments and “flooding the field” with bullshit. Their goal is to twist evetything up to the point that “facts” and “truth” are subjective and sell their arguments to people with little knowlege on the basis of sterotyping, confirmation bias and shared resentments.

    just call them what they are, an underpaid Russian trained, Sangh Modi fluffer, too dumb to get a job in a call center who’s last job was phone banking for IRS Fraud scams.

    Smart trolls come at you sideways, building a common rapport over time, with you and the readers, using smart and clever engagement, good questions,…….

    then sandbag you.

  100. 100.

    Yarrow

    @schrodingers_cat:
    I’d recommend posting something like what you commented here in that thread. “This is a troll who posted almost exactly the same thing in X thread. It’s using Y technique to derail the thread and discussion. I will post more about this tactic used by this group in a separate thread.” And then do a post on the trolling/disinformation technique and what it’s hoping to accomplish. Only if you want to do that, of course.

    I’d definitely be interested in reading about it. Calling out the disinformation strategy and its implementation rather than focusing on specific points is possibly more useful than refuting point by point. Once you get into refuting their stated “facts” you’re playing on their turf.

  102. 102.

    Aleta

    @schrodingers_cat:
    I saw the name elsewhere on the internet, saying similar things. If your sense is to distance yourself instead of respond, imo following that feeling is a good call. (The information you contribute is always valuable.  Your (what word to use ? peace of mind …well-being… ) comes before responsibility to engage imo.)

  103. 103.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    the “even” here is such a tell

    amy walter @ amyewalter
    21m21 minutes ago
    Good news/bad news for D’s in new NPR/Marist/PBS poll. Many Dem policy priorities like background checks, Gov’t reg of prescription drugs, even wealth tax, get majority support (59% or better), but 44% of voters said D ideas would move country in right dir/45% wrong direction.

    Walter and her fellow travelers are so warped by the Morning Joseph “socially liberal but fiscally conservative” worldview that they can’t see that trump won both the primary and the general in no small part because he rejected the Gingrich-Bush-Ryan stance on “entitlements”– also vowed to raise taxes on himself and his “rich friends”, who he told us during the campaign were “really mad at me” for saying that. Right after his reelection, Dumbya tried to spend his political capital on Social Security privatization and it blew up in his face.

    Of course, the other side of that coin is Dems who bought into the idea that because “Medicare For All” was a popular slogan, people were cool with eliminating their existing insurance.

  104. 104.

    Jay

    There are good places on Twitter.

    Journalists and Citizen Journalists on the ground in places like Lybia, Palistine, Ukraine, Venezuela, Hong Kong, places the media forgot, or like Ukraine, buried under Doltus bullshit to the point that Ukrainian issues no longer exist in the coverage, just Rudy Colludy Nutti Tutti Fruitti bullshit and Im Peach Mint,

    And they are covering “important” stories, not published in the MSM. As an example, what little coverage the MSM has of Lybia, suggests that once again, Haftar and the LNA are about to take Tripoli and defeat the GNA. They are not.

    Amongst the Twitteratti, there are voices that you will rarely hear elsewhere. LGTBQ, Protest leaders, anti-facists, digital security researchers, human rights people, voices from communities in crisis, prison reform,…… the voices are endless.

    There are scientists, entertainers, the obscure, idea people, eg.

    Fun fact: you can get access to the list of everybody purged from voter registration rolls and use digital ads to reach them directly and get them re-registered at relatively low cost. https://t.co/iUZ7rCCMAO— Samuel Sinyangwe (@samswey) December 17, 2019

    The #1 Twitter rule is stay out of the responses. There be trolls.

  106. 106.

    Elizabelle

    @Aleta: 

    I believe you lost your brother this week? Think I saw that in last night’s posts.

    Am very sorry to hear that, and I wish you only the best. My condolences.

  108. 108.

    Patricia Kayden

    Look, McConnell is absolutely right. Everyone knows that in good faith negotiations around an impeachment trial you must first pledge that you will coordinate completely with the WH during said impeachment trial. That's just the ABCs right there folks.— Sam Stein (@samstein) December 17, 2019

  109. 109.

    James E Powell

    @Baud: 
    @Kay: 

    It seems like no matter how outrageous or beyond all prior experience Trump’s actions are, they are absorbed into the New Normal within three to seven days.

    A major factor in this is that the Republicans don’t just support Trump 100%, they combine passionate defense with aggressive attacks on Democrats and any persons who criticize Trump. [Somewhere Al Gore, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton are all thinking how much they could have used some of that.]

    Another factor is that the press/media more or less loves Trump and will not allow him to fall too far.

  111. 111.

    chris

    @Kay: 

    NICU, or pay 6k out of pocket with insurance.

    My little friend K turned eight in September. When she was born she went straight into the NICU and stayed for thirteen months. Three surgical teams, two from Toronto and one from the US, were flown to Halifax to work on her. Today she’s a very bright and active child.
    Her parents went through hell of course and there were costs and fundraisers and all that. But no medical bills and no insurance middlemen.. Every Canadian chipped in a little and K is alive today because of that.
    I wonder how many American children don’t make it because people “love their private health insurance,” are afraid their taxes will go up, or, gawd forbid, some people might lose their jobs in the for-profit end of healthcare.
    Just a thought.

  113. 113.

    James E Powell

    @Kay:

    It’s always been a problem with supporting “issues” instead of candidates, which is kind of the post-political Party theory.

    I don’t think issues in the sense of policy proposals move voters anymore. There are no doubt some exceptions, social security being the first that comes to mind. But “issues” as a marker for identity do count.

    Voters aren’t moved by issues because they don’t believe anything that politicians promise them. Or they don’t care. In general people aren’t interested in whether other people’s children get a good education. People who already have health care coverage are not moved by candidates who promise to extend health care coverage to other people. They may in fact oppose them because of the tendency to view others’ gains as their losses. This is, of course, especially so when the others are The Others.

    Bloomberg is not going to have to defend his prior positions because the press/media are not going to make him. They will protect him and characterize anyone who criticizes him as an out of touch far left anti American. Or they will just ignore them.

  117. 117.

    Jay

    @James E Powell

    There have always been “facts, issues and policy” voters, “narrative” voters, and “personality voters”,

    While these days, “facts, issues and policies” are for the most part, ignored by the media,

    “Narratives” and “personalities” are widely covered, moreso when it’s 6 “independent” white male voters, (5 Trumpistas and one local RNC chair) at a diner at 10am in Anus, Idaho. That kinda skews perceptions of “what matters” and that’s the point.

    Your propaganda sausage with extra Pravda is being made in real time, and is effective.

    Trump is spending furiously using his $165M to get out ahead of Democrats. Biden is spending less but hurting for money. Again Trump is using free media for advertising. Again media obsesses on covering what Trump says and not what he actually does. https://t.co/VGU4lUpmLF— Robert Young Pelton (@RYP__) December 16, 2019

  118. 118.

    Jay

    BTW, the people protesting Schiff,….

    the group that disrupted your speech are a white supremacists gang called the American guard.The guy who uploaded the video Brandon recor is a homophobic / racists part of the proud boys who likes to beat up gay people for #youTube views #proudboys #americanguard https://t.co/NSlQKYsRaT pic.twitter.com/8sicxt4GgK— Political Sculptor (@politicalsculpt) December 17, 2019

    In depth investigation you won’t find on NBC, CNN etc because it ruins the “narrative”.

  119. 119.

    Jay

    For those who caught the “penis fish” comment and front page post and remain “obsessed”,

    Safe for work, unlike a google search, for your pleasure,

    It’s a fat innkeeper worm livestream! https://t.co/kVYU0E9kyV— Monterey Bay Aquarium (@MontereyAq) December 16, 2019

    Probably the only safe for work penis+live cam video stream out there.

  124. 124.

    brantl

    @germy: That was GW Douche. The NYT had a picture of the big freaking bulge of the device on his back, and didn’t print it. Then he started arguing with the voice in his ear, before the debate crowd. In light of his stupidity/insanity, nobody reacted.

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