You’d think that was the one thing he was qualified to run, but noooo…
Jared Kushner, asked about holding the presidential election on November 3: "I'm not sure I can commit one way or the other, but right now that’s the plan." https://t.co/x8dp61iIdS
— Charles ?. Davis (@charliearchy) May 12, 2020
I’m sorry. So we’re setting aside Art II section 1 of the Constitution and the federal statute 3 U.S.C. section 1 to let Jared Kushner decide whether we will hold our presidential election this November? Even putting this question to him is an insult to the rule of law. https://t.co/5B1xNDA5cm
— Sherrilyn Ifill (@Sifill_LDF) May 12, 2020
Ooopsie!
In a statement provided to @NBCNews Jared Kushner says: “I have not been involved in, nor am I aware of any discussions about trying to change the date of the Presidential election.” This after he raised eyebrows on the matter during an interview w/ @TIME
— Kristen Welker (@kwelkernbc) May 13, 2020
yes, prince failson, you have correctly identified the problem. https://t.co/8JYMblGkyl
— golikehellmachine (@golikehellmachi) May 12, 2020
Keep talking Jared, you're doing great buddy. https://t.co/OLZQPliXZm
— Schooley (@Rschooley) May 12, 2020
I am begging people to understand that the virus will still be a big deal in November https://t.co/cprxTNdZDG
— The face toucher (@JonIsAwesomest) May 12, 2020
He’s so far over his head and ahead of his skis that he’s at risk of doing something anatomically impossible to himself https://t.co/P4WWfct4z5
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) May 13, 2020
Every time Jared opens his oddly shaped mouth I am reminded that this is Trumpworld’s “intellectual.” https://t.co/nZVg7l9epj
— Molly Jong-Fast? (@MollyJongFast) May 13, 2020
If his calendar isn’t completely booked in November, it certainly will be, in January…
"Project Airbridge," the medical-supply delivery program championed by Jared Kushner, is being essentially grounded, according to coronavirus task force documents obtained by NBC News. https://t.co/kNgHJa5i4L
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 12, 2020
Newly released transcript shows Jared Kushner misled Congress about a contact involving Russia https://t.co/lwCe8ySGtT
— Dan Friedman (@dfriedman33) May 11, 2020
Scoop: Last week started with the reveal that Jared Kushner turned to inexperienced outsiders & private equity firms to secure hospital equipment. Now he’s received a 29 page plan to overhaul Social Security & Medicare created by… the US State Department https://t.co/Xz53CNj3oq pic.twitter.com/XBvLiEuANN
— John Hudson (@John_Hudson) May 10, 2020
Jared Kushner needs to be investigated for many reasons. Here's an incomplete list:
-Use of private emails on his shadow task force
-Running the Trump campaign from the White House
-Selling Cadre shares 2 weeks before the market crashedhttps://t.co/z7MtZKrnmT— Citizens for Ethics (@CREWcrew) May 11, 2020
… assuming he survives the pesthole his wife’s old man has turned the West Wing into, that is.
MattF
Laurence Tribe has it right– Kushner’s head is so far up his ass that he has to open his mouth to blow his nose.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
He looks around whatever meetings he’s in, in rooms draped in American history, sitting with people like Fauci, and just like when he looked around the Executive Conference Room at Kushner, Inc, he is absolutely assured that he got to his chair on pure merit, and thus the lesser folk, like Anthony Fauci, owe him the deference they show him.
danielx
Backpfeifengesicht.
SiubhanDuinne
This UVH* regularly enrages me to a level I wouldn’t have thought possible.
*Uncanny Valley Homunculus
Gin & Tonic
As I said downstairs, I’m not sure I can commit one way or the other to playing for Liverpool when the EPL season resumes.
Mandalay
Nobody could have predicted that Team Trump Pushes CDC to Revise Down Its COVID Death Counts:
If the numbers look really bad, just change the way you count the numbers. Problem solved!
The Trump Administration is going to move the goalposts to make sure the death count never reaches 100,000.
Nora
Why would you even ASK Jared Kushner about whether there’s going to be an election? Other than for the pleasure of watching him make a complete ass of himself, of course, but you don’t need to go out of your way to give him opportunities for that.
Krope, the Formerly Dope
Journalism fail, back to 8th grade civics for you.
Hoodie
Like I said in an earlier thread, the GOP has decided that we’re all going to take the punch. Jared hates that some people will have to die, but he can live with that.
Now that it is clear they are making this choice, one thing Dems have to keep in mind is that the GOP leadership will do anything to make it happen because they are fully invested after an initial period of indecision. Don’t have any illusions about whether reality will cause them to change their minds, even though what they are committing to will likely end in failure, even on their terms. Jared is basically saying they’re not going to change their minds, no matter what happens.
We’re dealing with a socially isolated party vanguard that is the functional equivalent of a bunch of Leninists committed to maintaining a particular world view, irrespective of what the world actually is. It doesn’t mean that they are consciously evil; I imagine many, of not most, of them have convinced themselves that this is the right course, and it’s just coincidence that it happens to benefit themselves and requires them to do nothing, at least for the short term. It also doesn’t mean all Republicans are on board, or that there are not some tactical advantages to espousing “bipartisanship” in the manner Biden does. There are certainly going to be waverers (e.g., the true NeverTrumpers) who can seek redemption and there is a sizable block of nonpartisans who can be moved by such appeals. It’s not wrong to reach out to an adversary and seek unity against a common threat; the stupid thing is to count on them reciprocating.
Barbara
So Kushner hails the remarkable success of the federal response to COVID-19 (“we have met the moment!”) when it comes to reopening, except for elections, and then maybe it’s not safe. He is a fucking moron.
Jinchi
Agreed. It was a stupid question to ask him, unless there’s some evidence that the administration is actually considering it, in which case that should have been made explicit in the question.
But simply asking him the question implies to both him and us that he actually has the power to do it. It’s the sort of thing you might ask President Xi or Putin, not the son-in-law of the American president. It normalizes the idea that we’re living in a dictatorship with only the trappings of democracy.
Gin & Tonic
Contrast photos of these choads with, say, the President and ministers of Slovakia. Or the President of Ukraine. Leaders lead by example.
Baud
No one ever talks about the millions of Americans who haven’t died from Covid.
raven
@Jinchi: Fuck some “evidence”. What does anyone need after three years of this motherfucker?
Hoodie
@Jinchi: The reason to ask him is that, because he is a self-important idiot, he gives you insight to the underlying mindset of his group. Here, it’s pretty clear that they think they’re in control, which would be consistent with them having decided that they’re really not going to do anything about the virus except manage PR.
The Moar You Know
More than anything else, McConnell’s howling about the deficit tells me that the GOP is expecting to lose the Presidency in November.
Kushner said the quiet part out loud, because he is a moron, but I fully expect an attempt to delay the election as long as possible. That cannot be allowed.
Also, speaking of Kushner, I want a law stating explicitly that no family members allowed to be hired for Presidential staff or cabinet. Yeah, we wouldn’t have gotten RFK that way, but maybe he wouldn’t have gotten shot either. The potential pitfalls are too high as we are seeing, although I’ve noticed that even Trump realizes that Eric and Don Jr. are too incompetent to be…well, anything.
Sometimes nepotism hires are fine. I had a job once where two of the owners sons worked there. One ran the place; sixteen hour days, totally on top of it, one of the better people I’ve ever worked for. A perfect argument that yeah, hiring a member of the owner’s family can not only work but work well. He knew that the business doing well meant he and his family would do well.
The worst co-worker I’ve ever had was the other son. Made Jared Kushner look motivated and competent. Employees would call him a lazy jerkoff to his face. He just laughed. He wasn’t going anywhere save for trips to go offroading in the desert and a monthly hooker run down to Tijuana.
Barbara
@Mandalay: So Birx is willing to shit on her entire career as a public health doctor in order to placate Dear Leader.
Mandalay
@Jinchi:
Oh poppycock. It was a revealing question.
You ask him because he is arguably the second most important person in the Trump Administration, and you want to find out what his response will be. The notion that all questions from the press should be reasonable and appropriate, and mindful of The Constitution, is absurd.
Pearl clutchers fretting that he was even asked need to get a grip.
donnah
@Barbara:
Oh, that ship sailed the day when she said she was impressed by Trump’s reading and analysis of the incoming virus data. Immediately sealed her sycophant status. And she only got worse.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Barbara: Indications are…yes.
Barbara
@The Moar You Know: Not hired, whether with or without pay, and never given security clearance. Kushner has very evidently used national security intelligence for private profit. Anyone who starts bellyaching about the best person for the job or how unfair it is to have your wings clipped just because you are a family member needs to be met with complete derision. We have enough talent that we don’t need to resort to relatives and if you don’t like the family sacrifices don’t run for elective office. I am not talking about all jobs or all relatives, just high ranking jobs for close relatives.
Jeffro
@SiubhanDuinne: Same here. I try to keep calm, but the idea that he’d even *think* the election could be delayed, or that it would be up to him, does wind me up something fierce.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Barbara: someone compared her to Rosenstein, who thought he could be a little bit pregnant with trumpism. Tillerson, Mattis, McMaster, Mnuchin…
cmorenc
@Hoodie:
Exactly. Your’e not going to get that sort of information with a question rather than one more designed for cross-examination (which the subject will interpret as hostile cross-examination and clam up), rather than an open-ended question that tempts the subject to speak more off the top of their mind (which is more likely to be unintentionally revealing). Although Kushner unsurprisingly denied there’s any plans afoot in the Trump Admin to try to delay the election – nevertheless the way he phrased the denial are revealing in that Kushner thought it necessary to elliptically qualify his answer , e.g. “I’m not sure I can commit one way or the other, but right now that’s the plan (to hold the election as scheduled”.
Why exactly would he have any uncertainty he can commit one way or the other to his answer about potential for election postponement?
randy khan
I always used to think of the 1992 Vice Presidential debate – Admiral Stockdale’s “I’m out of ammunition” moment – as the best proof that politics was a real profession that required experience and expertise at the highest levels. But I think that I’m going to have to replace that with the entire Jared Kushner oeuvre.
catclub
The Slate article on this was pretty good. It emphasized the contradiction between everything about the economy was: ‘Go! Today!’
while on the election it was: “maybe we should wait on that’
A Good Woman
@Barbara: Jared and Ivanka are both volunteers, but with staffs! They got security clearances, Daddy said they could have them.
Delk
Lock him up.
Baud
With Jared as Trump’s right hand man, is it any wonder that Trump does so well with white working class voters.
artem1s
@Mandalay:
They’ve gone full metal Chernobyl now.
All those people in Ukraine died from leukemia, and lung cancer and old age! Not because of a nuclear reactor blowing up – which also did not happen – would you like to spend the next 30 years in a Siberian work camp comrade?.
JMG
So CNN’s latest poll had Biden up 51-46. Monmouth had it 50-41 Biden, and there was yesterday’s poll showing Biden up 46-43 in Wisconsin. Citing those three polls, Nate Cohn, the Times’ poll/vote analyst, concluded on Twitter “race unchanged, Biden maybe up by a point.” This is data analytics? Cohn got burned bad in 2016 when Trump won, so he now simply believes all polls underestimate Republicans by like 4-5 points. OK, maybe he’s right, but a little more showing his work would be helpful.
eric
@Delk: that is why the election is an existential moment for these clowns. I have zero doubt that Trump will explicitly pardon all of them to protect from the prosecutions that are coming. While he may stave off federal prosecutions, he cannot stop state ones. Moreover, a reasonably clever lawyer could get all of these mopes to lie (even after a pardon) such that the pardons would not apply to the resulting obstruction charges. There will be no looking forward this time, and these crooks know it, so they will do everything to stave off a dem president. Remember it is a jury that gets to hear the evidence against citizen trump, and not the GOP controlled senate.
Hoodie
@Delk: Better than that, take all his money. He loves that more than his freedom, which is obvious given that he has devoted himself to a hollow psychopath like Trump. If I had an in-law like that, I would only stay married if my spouse agreed that we never have to spend any time with the family.
The Moar You Know
@A Good Woman: And sadly, that is exactly how the law works. The President is THE classifying authority. He could give a clearance to Putin and Xi both; totally legal. It’s his call.
While I have my wishlist going, a literal top-to-bottom revamp of clearances and the entire bureaucracy surrounding them is desperately needed. As in “pull everyone’s clearance and then only give them to people whose jobs really require them.”
Immanentize
@Gin & Tonic: I like the Leader of Slovakia who said, “Just because we have to wear masks doesn’t mean they can’t look cute.” Her matching dress/mask ensemble is really great. Even though I am ethnically Moravian and those Slovaks are thieves.
Baud
@The Moar You Know:
A lot of our laws assume a non-treasonous president.
Elizabelle
Cuomo O’Clock. Starts out by saying wearing a mask is a sign of respect. It says that I care about you. He’s in Jefferson County today, far north of NYS.
https://www.ny.go
WRT lives lost: “These are not numbers. These are families.”
Cuomo O’Clock is an antidote to Trumpworld malevolence and misery.
randy khan
@JMG:
Given that it’s Twitter, he may have meant that Biden’s lead increased by a point. But who knows?
Immanentize
@Barbara: I hate this recounting plan with a hot passion. No, my wife didn’t die of stomach cancer, she died of respiratory and heart failure, now didn’t she?
cain
@Nora:
So it would be posted on this blog, spread on social media, and then earn a shit ton of page clicks or whatever and so forth. Remember, we are not living in journalistic times, we are living in info-tainment times, and everything is about info-tainment not necessarily important questions. It’s a game these people have to play.
Shalimar
Gidley: That idea is preposterous. Pathetic. Laughably stupid. There is no way the president would ever support it.
Reporter: The plan was requested by Mr. Kushner.
Gidley: Well, it’s certainly under consideration. After peace in the Middle East, who could doubt such a genius?
Immanentize
@donnah: Birx should have decided to take care of her granddaughter instead of pouring her soul onto the altar of Satan.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: I realize Howard Stern has changed a lot over the years, I came to enjoy him on Letterman and he makes for an interesting interview, even if I never listen to his actual show, but dammit if he might not suck me in…
Baud
@cain: Agreed.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I heard about that. It is spot on. Has Trump ever gotten physically closer to his supporters than being on stage during one of his rallies?
Hoodie
Speaking of Republicans, what’s up with Lynne Cheney? She defended Fauci against Rand Paul’s idiocy today. Is that genuine or some sort of “hey, dumbass, keeping Fauci around and pretending to listen to him is part of the con to pretend that we actually care”? Considering the source, my bet is that it’s the latter. Certain members of Team Sacrifice the Weak may be worried that certain other team members are too dumb to carry this off.
Gin & Tonic
@Immanentize: See, that’s what I love so much, the Eastern European ethnic feuds that last for *centuries*.
randy khan
@Immanentize:
Everyone dies one of two ways – your heart stops or your brain stops. (Sometimes it’s a race between the two.) But most of the time neither of those things is the cause.
JMG
I wish to apologize to Nate Cohn, who has clarified that he meant Biden had increased his lead by a point, not that that was his overall lead. So please disregard post #31.
Shalimar
@Mandalay: I don’t think faking the numbers will work put as well as they expect. Say 500,000 die and they massage the number down to 120,000 officially. That is 380,000 dead with friends and family who know what happened and who to blame for their friend/relative not counting. A lot of people with motivation to vote who might not have voted otherwise.
Frankensteinbeck
@The Moar You Know:
I will be fascinated to hear their plan, since it’s a process run by the states and every blue state will hold their election. McConnell will just LOVE having only Democratic electors picking the president and only Democrats voted to Senate and House seats.
@cmorenc:
Sounds like a nonanswer from someone who wasn’t prepared for the question and has no position, to me.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Hoodie: whatever else you want to say about them, the Cheneys aren’t stupid. Also, and I’m sure at play here, is that the great Neo-Con Adventurers hate, hate, hate Rand Paul and his isolationism with a passion. Dick Jr not only wants to bomb MENA into peace and hegemony, she also wants to avenge Daddy’s reputation and make his enemies bleed.
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
Southern states didn’t vote in the 1864 election.
Hoodie
@Frankensteinbeck: He has no position, true, but the thing it reveals is that he thinks they can alter the timing of the election. There is no basis for that constitutionally, as it’s controlled by state governments and it appears that Trump would still have to leave office irrespective of whether all states had voted (giving us President Leahy?). So, yes, he’s probably just an idiot, but he’s not being disabused of such notions because he’s surrounded by people who regularly think they either make the rules or the rules don’t apply to them because they have a higher purpose.
Realist
An insane, tinpot leader who lets his family loot the public treasury.
Food lines.
No jobs.
widespread alcoholism and drug abuse.
How does it go again? Upper Volta with Nukes?
The USA is a Third World Country.
We can no longer let the Red States rule us–time for drastic action.
Mandalay
@Barbara:
Looks that way.
If Birx was pressing for more accurate numbers overall, to include undercounting as well as overcounting of Covid-19 deaths, she’d have credibility.
But her mission is purely to retroactively reduce the published number of deaths, and accuracy be damned.
Realist
@Baud:
John Roberts will issue a ruling declaring the election invalid, precedent be damned.
The GOP goal of a white Christian patriarchal dictatorship will be realized.
Baud
@Realist:
We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Frankensteinbeck
@Hoodie:
I don’t think it does. It reveals that someone asked Jared a question he wasn’t expecting, and he didn’t want to give any definitive answer of any kind, like your standard confused idiot with a high opinion of himself.
Realist
@Baud:
The Blue States need a collective action plan, up to and including removing ourselves from the Union if they steal a presidential election for a fourth time.
Baud
@Realist: No one is going to waste time on that.
Sure Lurkalot
@Immanentize: This! If or dog forbid when I lose a loved one from this disease, I will be furious if the cause of death is some condition the deceased would have otherwise managed for years or decades.
Amir Khalid
@Realist:
This makes about as much sense as your idea to let red states secede from the US. That is, none.
Frankensteinbeck
@Realist:
Good luck with that. New York, California, and probably several other states will declare they do not recognize the federal government. They’re only hanging on now because they don’t want to break the system. If the Republicans break it rather than exploit it, the states that run the US economy will leave. The dumbest of the dumb will think it’s great to have solid Republican rule of what’s left, but McConnell knows that without the biggest states he’ll be ruling a garbage heap. He does not want that, and he is far more powerful than Trump, who exists because McConnell allows him to.
schrodingers_cat
I see that Russo-Imperialist is here again to foment talks of secession.
HumboldtBlue
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Agreed.
Mandalay
@Hoodie:
My guess is that she is going to run in 2024, but she walks a fine line. She backs Trump, and shits on Pelsoi, but defends Fauci, and goes rogue now and again (“Questioning the patriotism, questioning the dedication to country of people like [National Security Council Adviser Lieutenant Colonel Alexander] Vindman…and others who have testified” is “shameful,”).
Her 2024 presidential pitch will be that she is a sane, mature and moderate Republican, but (unlike Cruz and Rubio) she also has a spine. It might fly.
Elizabelle
@Realist:
You guys have no idea how charming it is to to see Sea Lion chow, and pupcake, and catcake.
You know what to do. Hit the pie at the top of this blogpost (just above where the comments begin).
You can always “toggle” to see what the pied one is saying. If you care that much …
ETA: And you can always remove someone from “pied” status. Sometimes I keep the pie filter going, just cuz I love seeing Sea Lion Chow.
Realist
@schrodingers_cat:
Everything gives you cancer, or is a Russian plot.
Immanentize
@Sure Lurkalot:
I got this email from one of my colleagues who lives in Chelsea, MA — one of the hardest hit neighborhoods in the State. My other colleague and I sent her a big basket of fancy food she would never get for herself, but loves:
How can people suffering so much be so gracious when our putative leaders are so damn mean spirited?
Realist
@Frankensteinbeck:
Yes. Partition is clearly becoming the solution here, the more the GOP tightens its grip on the USA.
Two Coastal Blue State Social Democratic Republicans and a White Christian Nationalist Patriarchal Neo-Confederacy in the middle. With appropriate transfers of population, of course.
pluky
@The Moar You Know: Now let me guess which one was the favorite indulged child, and which the “I’ll do anything for a shard of attention and affection” child.
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
I keep meaning to ask (and keep forgetting to), what is meant by “Sea Lion”? From context, it seems to be either a synonym for troll, or perhaps a specific subset of troll. But where did it come from? What does “Sea Lion” signify that “Troll” doesn’t?
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne: Mnemosyne is the expert on identifying them, but Wikipedia has an entry for these blog disruptors.
laura
@Hoodie: He has no money – he has debt and he’s leveraged that debt so much that he cannot service it. Revealing the details of his debt – and exactly who owns him would be the comeuppance that he is desperate to avoid. Trump’s a broke ass joke.
He? has? no ? money
Hoodie, I made the mistake of thinking you were talking about trump and now see the reference to failson. He’s owned too. 666 Park Ave. Middle East wealth fund came to the rescue. They’re both really bad businessmen. Really bad.
Betty Cracker
@Frankensteinbeck: The Union blew its chance to get rid of the moocher states (and dominate college football) more than 150 years ago.
Elizabelle
@Baud: Yes, was surprised to see Wiki has an entry.
My comment is in moderation. Think the paragraph I quoted had too many links embedded.
scav
They’re somehow never even at all convincing as actual people rather than scripts, however ad libbed. One is rather tempted to pat them on the head and hope they haven’t quit their day job, only to realize this is their day job.
I suppose out of work theater critics could amuse themselves by writing reviews of their efforts. We could recreate a whole interdependent industry here.
Elizabelle
Trying again without the embedded links. Wiki:
Incessant is such a perfect word here. Bad faith sums it up, though.
Elizabelle
There will be a quiz on sea-lioning at the end of this blogpost. LOL.
Frankensteinbeck
@Realist:
You have completely missed my point, which is that the Republicans with the power to break the system are the ones most invested in keeping it intact. Your hypothetical will not happen.
PenAndKey
Outside of a for-children Disney flick few evil people actively consider themselves evil. That doesn’t change the fact that to any outside observer their status as a villain is, usually, plain as day. It’s no different with the modern GOP. We’re now measuring the death toll of their latest blunder in the tens of thousands and the job losses in the millions and people are still trying to “both sides” things or deny reality or see them as simply misguided. Not you, mind you, but enough that they have a non-zero chance of maintaining power despite being so evil you’d have had a script featuring them as villains laughed off as “too unrealistic” even twenty years ago.
Realist
@Frankensteinbeck:
They stole the 2000, 2004, 2016 Elections, and Democrats rolled over and did nothing. Why not this one?
West of the Rockies
I said in the late-night thread that it would take the Covid-related deaths of several prominent Republicans to make the mouth breathers take matters seriously. I then named a few wishful examples. It was NOT a call to violence.
Nonetheless, the nutters don’t care about a John Prine. If stout Sean Hannity croaked, maybe they’d care a little. Maybe not. But because of their selfish “I want my haircut and a beer!” mindset, tens of thousands more will die. Maybe most of them will be rural fellow red necks, but not all.
I hate this timeline. The remedy is not “drastic” measures. It is GOTdamnV!!!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Kushner, dear little boy as Lincoln pointed out about McClellan when they wanted McClellan to stage a coup – only those who are successful in a time of national crises get to set up dictatorships.
I really find it hard believe a pack of serial lizard brains like the Republicans will risk their lives and fortunes on backing a creepy serial failure like Kushner as dictator for life. They know those things will be safe under a president Biden. With Kushner it will be race before Kushner decides they are part of deep state, the lynch mob from the counter revolution, the virus, or the post coup collapse trials gets them.
PenAndKey
Exactly. I don’t read too much into this. As far as I’m concerned Jared is basically Douglas from the IT Crowd tv show (or a member of upper management from Better Off Ted) without being at all funny. His answer completely lacked substance, serving as nothing more than a classic MBA-language non-answer, and it’s about what I’d expect from a clueless wannabe upper crust “executive”. In short? He’s too dumb to realize the executive branch has absolutely zero authority to change the election date but still wanted to sound like his group was in charge and ‘deliberating the actionables’.
waspuppet
@cmorenc: If Jared Kushner were a black Democrat, our “liberal media” would spend the next three weeks talking about how he spends most of his time doing business in foreign countries and never really found any serious success here, so obviously he doesn’t have any real sense of how Americans do things — our customs, traditions and system of governance — and how someone like that really shouldn’t be in the White House.
They could just as easily do that with Trump himself.
But of course they won’t do that here.
Frankensteinbeck
@Realist
They exploited the system around its margins. For example, Trump won the 2016 election within the existing system, because the flaws in that system all lined up at their most extreme. That is not the same as the situation you are describing. Just as all the predictions I’ve heard of martial law and arresting journalists and political enemies proved to be false, so is this.
And to those saying Realist argues in bad faith, you are likely correct. I have heard this paranoia enough from people who are arguing in good faith that I figure it’s worth explaining occasionally.
Kay
“Covered”. Ahem.
Yeah, no thanks, Amy. We’ve been down this road, in 2016. The replay is boring as hell.
Trump has been very, very good for the NYTimes and their various aligned celebrity “brands”. Has NOT worked out so well for millions of ordinary people.
Amir Khalid
@West of the Rockies:
Not that I want to continue the argument, but is calling for them to die by pestilence any less bad?
In any case, I doubt that, if the Grim Reaper came for Sean Hannity or any other star of the Right, it would be a wake-up call for any of that ilk. They’ll just say, FIDO.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Realist: The Committee meets on Tuesday mornings at ten, in the basement of Ruggiero’s Dry Cleaners on 3rd St. Go ’round back to the alley, knock thrice upon the door next to the dumpster. When an unseen hand twice knocks in reply, give the password, “The bats fart in the morning.”
and bring donuts
waspuppet
@laura: Your first paragraph is still absolutely correct. This is why Trump and his failchildren are out trying to make as much money off this presidenting gig as they can. All our six- and seven-figure media stars seem so mystified by their actions, and won’t consider the most obvious answer.
Trump has no money. Literally none. He lives from loan to loan, and the only reason he isn’t at the bottom of a river is because of the Secret Service and because his mob creditors figure his being president means they’ll get their money eventually.
West of the Rockies
@Immanentize:
Serious answer: intelligent, compassionate parents and teachers who make clear to their children the importance of fairness, equality, effort, kindness, generosity, creativity, and respect.
Your Kushners, Trumps, McConnells, Hannitys, Carlsons, Limbaughs, Millers, Palins, Pirros, etc., are greedy, selfish, transactional people, traits founded in youth.
PenAndKey
I’m from Wisconsin and my first national election (that I missed voting in by less than two weeks) was Bush v Gore. Between the hanging chads and the “we’re going to certify the results before they’re all in because reasons” Supreme Court fiat that wasn’t a good first impression for instilling faith in the integrity of the system.
Add in that Wisconsin has had multiple last minute, late night upsets since the GOP took power that have flipped elections from blue to red and I’ve long suspected that at least in WI the system is compromised. As much as “I fight” if you ever see me being particularly pessimistic about the trajectory of this country it’s probably because I’m thinking about that very topic. I won’t constantly one-note it like the latest commenter seems to be doing to the annoyance of many, but I understand the sentiments.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay: How is it a revealing question?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Frankensteinbeck: Not to mention the King of Real American will be Stupid Ranting Hitler from the Bunker Scene Trump with shadow President Failson Creepster Kushner. Trumps never pay their debts, they always screw the people they are in debt too, so it would only be a matter of time before Turtle is imprison and executed by the Trumps.
So McConnell can chose between an almost certain public humiliation and death or the possibility of being out of office.
J R in WV
@SiubhanDuinne:
IIUC a Sea Lion variety troll doesn’t disagree with someone on the face of the conversation, but asks for proof of the color of the sky, the smell of filtered air, the rising of the sun, over and over again, never accepting the extant proof, offered proof, etc, etc.
“I understand your position, yet I have questions about the validity of that position. Can you prove with real evidence that….?” etc, etc. ad infinitum…
It took me a while to see what the bag of chow was, actually, but now I find it appropriate and hilarious…
West of the Rockies
@Amir Khalid:
I am not “calling for them to die” anymore than Swift advocated the roasting of children.
lumpkin
Every day they do these now considered banal little another day in trumpworld things that would have caused mass hysteria when Obama was president. And pretty much nobody cares.
Kay
Here’s the thing- do you miss it? Are you pining away for another series of interviews with Trump voters in diners? Is the Biden coverage one bit different than it would have been had they been actually covering him? Asking him over and over about Reade can (and was) done remotely. We all know Trump doesn’t answer real questions and that’s the same.
If you’re not saying that you really have to question how much value voters get out of the billion dollar campaign coverage industry. If they stay shut down all summer will you know less about Trump and Biden?
What if we have an election without it? Huge loss?
Betty Cracker
@PenAndKey:
That sounds spot-on to me. My extraocular muscles are in a perpetually strained state from rolling my eyes in meetings that include self-important wankers who are similarly deluded about their level of power.
Kay
It’s a little bit of an experiment, right? A Presidential election without the elaborate media apparatus. Better or worse?
Maybe it’s a bit of a one-off because Democratic voters really, really know Biden so there’s not too much they would learn anyway.
Bookeater (formerly JosieJ)
Responded to a stupid comment, stupidly.
Nothing to see here, folks!
Frankensteinbeck
@PenAndKey:
Very understandable. Just remember: If the GOP had the power to directly change election results, Roy Moore would not have lost. They threw everything at that election, in a state where they had the power. Republicans cheat hard with voter suppression, gerrymandering, and all that exploiting the system. That’s why they haven’t already been crushed. They’re straining their limits already. We can do this.
catclub
Not me, not with Morning Joe either. Those guys have known Trump for twenty years and it took them until this year to figure him out and say something against him. Instead of when it might have made a useful difference in 2016.
I have never met trump but I already know what he is.
Elizabelle
@Kay: Up on the Fuck the Fucking NY Times website, this very moment. On the front page. This headline and this blurb.
And, and — it’s so comprehensive that it’s got FOUR FTF NY Times reporters on it.
Katie Glueck, Lisa Lerer, Shane Goldmacher and the always reliable, wired for Republicans Alexander Burns. Burns is from Harvard and Politico. Whoopie.
Emma from FL
@Realist: One answer before the pie. What the fuck makes you think we’re blue-tinted rednecks here? Many of us live in red states you dumb jackass. Go away.
Elizabelle
And this will amaze you — amaze you — but all the NY Times picked reader comments slam Biden. Every single fucking one. And the DNC. Which is … a bit of a tell, no?
They just throw this out as a sea-lioning chowfest for aggrieved Berners and others with lotsa time on their hands.
Because, quite honestly, all the “NY Times Pick” comments slam the Democrats as much as they do Biden. Including one by “blackman.” Right.
AnotherBruce
@Realist: Hey “Realist”, why do you want to break up the United States? I thought that was Putin’s job.
Kay
@Elizabelle:
I’ve been doing this thing with my youngest where we talk about what’s “essential”. His part time job serving ice cream at a drive thru was deemed “essential” but his school is closed, so that’s where it started. We think school is essential, ice cream is optional.
What if it’s better, for voters, without covering rallies and interviews in diners? What if they’re like “well, without all this NOISE I find I can just pare it down to essentials- which candidate is not insane, etc”
It’s a good experiment!
catclub
Aren’t the Serbs and Croats working on millenia?
On universal understanding, one is reminded of the lesson of the babelfish. Ignorance is better.
Salty Sam
This! I have distrusted the “official” numbers for weeks already, due to “official” numbers being based on (insufficient/inadequate/virtually non-existant) testing.
But I know of several friends who have been sick with what was surely COVID19; there are some Jackals here on this site. Due to lack of testing, they have not appeared in any official count. Fortunately, none of them died, but if they had, I would know how and why.
As people in the heartland start to drop dead, their loved ones will know.
ETA I see some have beaten me to this @ #62
catclub
Right! he took no preference between roasting, boiling or baking.
natem
@Elizabelle:
Silly rabbit, Democrats are always worrying/in disarray.
MomSense
Speaking of running their mouth, Dr. Ronny Fucking Jackson has gone deep state Obamacare Truther. His handle says RonnyJackson4TX. Is he running for office?
Betty Cracker
@Kay: The crack NYT Beltway team adds zero value, but I’m sure they’ll find a way to keep right on making the electorate dumber virtually.
sdhays
@Kay: I would like Amy to tell us more about how much acid she’s been doing.
James E Powell
@catclub:
Who has the longest running ethnic feud going? I’m too lazy to do the research right now.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I love elections but I was dreading it. When you canvass you find out that a lot of people hate it. It isn’t that horrible “oh, they’re all LIARS” thing. I suspect a lot of those people don’t vote. These are earnest voters and they just find the barrage over the top and not helpful to them. They look pained, like it’s punishment.
One of my sisters hates musical theater in her usual vehement over the top way and she says “the only people having fun are the people onstage”. Like that.
Who is it FOR? Not us! Maybe they could reconsider the whole model.
JaySinWA
@MomSense:
Internet search says yes: https://ronnyjacksonfortexas13.com/
Another medical genius to save us.//
chopper
@Betty Cracker:
except to the people who sell them the crack.
Miss Bianca
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah, Howard Stern is kind of like Gene Simmons that way. An abrasive asshole who can be remarkably no-bullshit and insightful when he wants to be.
Salty Sam
@Realist: Dude, your nym is really misleading…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@catclub:
IIRC and FWIW, Stern was pretty loud about his support for Clinton in ’16
Miss Bianca
@Elizabelle: I’m seriously tempted with this one.
Mandalay
@Kay:
Exactly.
Political reporting continues to swirl around the bowl overall. But a small sign of progress is that any news organization that goes to the diner and the coffee shop in a small town in Nebraska at 10:30 a.m. on a Wednesday morning to interview the “typical voter” now gets rightfully shamed, mocked and humiliated online.
Omnes Omnibus
@Realist: If it makes you feel better, I am perfectly willing to entertain the idea that you are an idiot.
Miss Bianca
@scav: Take it from this out-of-work theater critic – you would have to pay me A LOT.
ETA: Not so much to write the reviews – you’d have to pay me to sit through the footage, and even more in hazard pay to attend one of their shitshow ‘press conferences’ live.
Salty Sam
Not. At. All.
JaySinWA
If they go to a diner that is open with people in it in this environment they will get predictable responses. Somewhat more virulent than before. I can see them sending out burner phones for man in the diner interviews over Skype or Zoom. Or maybe an orchestrated call in campaign from “real America”.
CaseyL
@Kay: I would LOVE it if people figured out we can have Presidential elections without all the media bells and whistles which have nothing to do with substantive issues. LOVE IT.
No more articles about crowd size, no more reporters letting themselves be herded into “First Amendment pens,” no more organized saboteurs showing up to heckle the candidate or beat people up… all we’d have (!) is information about what the candidates say, what they do, and what their policy proposals are.
(We’d still have the avalanche of paid political ads… but even those would have to change, as they couldn’t include shots of the adoring masses at rallies.)
Soprano2
@Kay: I actually think most of the voters are fine without all that campaign stuff. If you actually ask people they’ll say they only want the election to last 2 or 3 or 4 months. They don’t want to be bombarded with it constantly for over a year, to the point that you can’t watch live TV anymore. I think it’s only the journalists who want that. It’s fun and exciting for them. It’s why they like Trump so much – he’s unpredictable and exciting!! How much fun they have covering his daily outrages and crazy tweets. Those Democrats are so boring, who wants to cover them day after day? I have thought for a long time that the reason the press pumped up Trump so much in 2016 was that the thought of having to cover President Hillary Clinton every day for 4 years horrified them, so much so that anyone was literally a better choice to them. They were afraid they’d be bored to death.
hueyplong
@Immanentize: And pretty much every AIDS victim died of pneumonia.
different-church-lady
UNTIL EVERYBODY’S FRIENDS AND RELATIVES START GETTING SICK AND DYING THEN IT WILL BE VERY VERY EASY YOU FUCKING DIPSHIT.
Mandalay
@catclub:
Nor me, but this twitter exchange with Ted Cruz last week was interesting:
Cruz:
Scarborough’s response:
So Scarborough is now implicitly conceding what was blindingly obvious to everyone else: he promoted Trump on his show for months.
The highlight videos of Scarborough and Brzezinski kissing Trump’s ass are just brutal, and Scarborough realized he needs to put a new spin on that train wreck.
soga98
@James E Powell:
Chinese-Uighur ethnic feud has lasted over 3000 years
jc
Incredible to see the Trumpworld “intellectuals” pull their favorite trick again: conjure some Big Plan out of their ass, and then when it turns into vaporware two weeks later, they just dance along, pretending it wasn’t a huge, stupid waste of time …
… and now everyone should look at this new shiny object they’ve just conjured up. Don’t look at what our other hand is doing.
catclub
@James E Powell: I don’t know Chinese history – vis-a vis Vietnam, for instance.
So Greece versus Turkey – the Illiad, springs to mind.
catclub
@soga98: I am shaking my masked fist at your post!
catclub
haha, except for the two years where he was getting close to power by getting the nom and running for president and getting elected.
sdhays
@Mandalay: Wasn’t the Dump campaign also a source of smears toward Ted’s wife that she was being treated for depression or something. Whether it was true or not (and I don’t care because Mrs. Cruz private trials are none of my business, even if she were *shudder* First Lady), it was a nasty thing to do.
I have never understood the appeal of Joe and Mika, but I like seeing it stated plainly how Cruz was totally willing to sell out his wife and father for basically nothing because he has no core.
catclub
any intelligent person would take that as a reason to be VERY careful about opening up too soon. Because getting it wrong destroys government credibility for doing it the next time.
Jared and trump are taking more of a ‘watch my beer’ approach.
mrmoshpotato
I know Dump cannot cancel the election, but to hell with his pasty-faced, fascist failson-in-law and the rest of the traitorous Trump trash mobster crime family.
Bring on the American Nuremberg trials, President Biden.
Wapiti
@catclub: (eta: I think that…) The ancient Greek feud was with the Persians (ie, Iranians). Turks are a Central Asian people who took Asia Minor from the previous owners, the Eastern Roman Empire, in 1453.
mrmoshpotato
@danielx:
More like a face that needs to be caved in.
PenAndKey
And that’s why I’m hear and a dedicated voter instead of checked out and focusing on my leather working, brewing, and video games. Oh yeah, and my wife and kids. Them too.
Uncle Cosmo
You remind me of a comment I saw (IIRC) during the 1979 Cleveland mayoral election between George Voinovich (of Slovenian extraction) & Dennis Kucinich (Croatian). Some local pol was asked why the race had taken such a nasty turn & he replied, It’s the Balkan Wars all over again.
Or for that matter, when the Slovaks demanded they be allowed to leave Czechoslovakia to form their own nation, the relieved Czechs replied, Don’t let the dveře hit you in the osel on your way out… :^D
Mandalay
There’s no way Trump isn’t directly involved in both of these decisions…
dww44
@Mandalay: Am I the only one who thinks that Birx has pretty much sold out her credibility and that, just maybe, she really likes Trump? While Fauci has had to dance around a lot, when Trump was standing over him, she seems to like having her access. I can only presume that she is a Trump supporter and that has taken primacy over any of her scientific principles.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
this just boggles my mind– I can’t imagine going to a tanning salon, much less calling the fucking governor’s office because they’re closed. Issues of health (pandemic and otherwise) and priorities aside…. are the days not getting longer and warmer in WV? do pale people really need to go inside to get tan? is this some kind of state program to bring an MTV camera crew to “Appalachian Shores”?
dww44
@dww44: I posted before reading other comments. Glad to know I’m not along, But, still, I’ve concluded she really must be a MAGA T.
Uncle Cosmo
@Immanentize: Boyoboy, you are reminding me of things today! There is a passage early in Heinlein’s Between Planets when the teenage protagonist is informed (by an unsettlingly slick gaypayooshnik-type who’s been grilling him on behalf of the autocratic Earth government) that the family friend he’s been staying with has died of “heart failure.” A few pages later the young man realizes that any form of death can ultimately be attributed to heart failure.
Uncle Cosmo
@James E Powell: It’s a close call, but the Irish win at least the Eurozone qualifying round – starting in AD 1170 when Strongbow invaded the Emerald Isle on behalf of the Norsemen cum Normans who ruled England.
First runnerups are the Greeks, who have despised everyone north or west of Corfu since AD 1204, when the Fourth Crusade decided at the behest of the Doge of Venice to hang a left on the way to the Levant & pull a smash&grab on what was still standing of the Byzantine Empire.
Only then do the Serbs show up, pissed off at the Ottomans for crushing Prince Lazar’s medieval empire at the Field of Blackbirds (Kosovo Polje) on St Vitus’ Day (Vidovdan), 28 June 1389. (And pissed off at damn near everyone else in Christendom for not having come to their rescue – for which they extracted a Pyrrhic revenge exactly 525 years later when Gavrilo Princip ventilated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand & spousal unit in Sarajevo, thereby setting in motion a Great War that crashed three empires & wrecked European imperial domination of the globe.)
/tmi
Sm*t Cl*de
@Gin & Tonic:
The whole point of Slovakia is to unite the Moravians and Bohemians in shared pointing-and-laughing. I must correct you on “Eastern European”, though: the Czech lands are central Europe.
EthylEster
@Nora: Why would you even ASK Jared Kushner about whether there’s going to be an election?
Is our journalists learning? I don’t get it either.
But I would like them to ask about Pillow Man and HIS masks? Remember Pillow Man up on the stage with Dear Leader, telling us how he was switching to manufacturing masks instead of pillows way back at the end of March.
I can’t find any info about this beyond the announcement and all the reports covering the announcement.
MisterForkbeard
@Kay: When someone says “read Maureen Dowd” you can instantly discount them as a person of any intelligence or wisdom. Which isn’t to say they can’t still be important. :(
EthylEster
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Stern does nothing to undermine one of the most potent arguments for Evangelicals: God (who works in mysterious ways) sent Trump.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Because they are doing infotainment and not journalism.
EthylEster
@Frankensteinbeck to Realist: You have completely missed my point
Ya know, I think you have missed his point: sea-lioning.
catclub
So the did the evangelicals ever get around to “God (who works in mysterious ways) sent Obama, too.” I think I missed that part.
EthylEster
@Kay wrote: Here’s the thing- do you miss it?
First, it’s great to be able to read your comments again.
Second, I do not miss it at all. I would like two of the side effects of the virus to be (1) the death of those stupid conventions and (2) the dramatic shortening of the “election season”.
MisterForkbeard
@dww44: Wasn’t Birx a central (and malign) figure in the 80s with the AIDS response?
I think she’s somewhat competent but has always been ethically compromised. Just didn’t start out as bad as the rest of the Trump hires, but she’s had time to catch up….
EthylEster
@catclub: Remember, consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. And some of those folks have really tiny minds. ;=)
HumboldtBlue
@Uncle Cosmo:
Keep going …
JaySinWA
Makes you wonder if someone’s launched a prank call in campaign. Or perhaps one to make a deliberate statement on the absurdity of shutdown politics? Like a Veritas project on steroids
ETA I was wondering a while ago about what happened to flash mobs.
Steeplejack
@SiubhanDuinne:
Instead of all the descriptions, you’ll understand it better from the source: Wondermark, “The Terrible Sea Lion.”
Bill Arnold
@Hoodie:
In an actual fight, if somebody says that they are going to punch you, they might not succeed.
If somebody tries to punch me, they might end up with a broken arm. Or worse. (That’s both a metaphor, and not. Writ large, where the GOP is the adversary;, it means what it means.)
ballerat
@danielx: Absolutely. It’s a face just crying out for a fist in it.
Bill Arnold
@Mandalay:
They can run, but they can’t hide from the excess deaths numbers that emerge fairly quickly in any non-totalitarian state:
The problem is very clearly undercounting, not overcounting. This is clear from the US excess deaths figures (which also undercount due to reductions in tolls from other major killers that are mitigated by the lockdowns, like auto accidents and air pollution. Minus yes small effects in the other direction from e.g. reduced early diagnosis of cancer.)
From May 2 2020 (so stale information, and also deaths are not promptly reported):
Excess U.S. deaths hit estimated 37,100 in pandemic’s early days, far more than previously known (Emma Brown, Andrew Ba Tran, Reis Thebault, May 2, 2020)
Bill Arnold
@Realist:
Bullshit. This isn’t even competent trolling. Fuck off to a black hole.
Bill Arnold
@Realist:
Who is “We” here? I have ancestors who fought in the US Civil War[1], and I’ am pretty sure that all of their living descendants do not want a repeat.
[1] For the North, to forestall any stupid “snark”.
Bill Arnold
@Realist:
No, only carcinogens (and chance, and radiation if one considers radiation carcinogenesis to be distinct, and most are insignificant. And we’re still working out whether you are a Russian or not (I’m tentatively leaning to not), hence all this pinging to see you you react, looking for linguistic/self-doxxing tells, etc.
Bill Arnold
@Realist:
LOL. (I bet I’m much much older than you are.)
Another Scott
@Barbara: There are already post-RFK anti-nepotism laws, of course.
Jared and Flynn should have been locked up (pending trial) as soon as evidence was found of them trying to set up a back-channel (outside of the NSA’s prying eyes, and outside diplomatic norms) directly with the Moscow embassy. It was clear that he was dirty and a monster even before Donnie was sworn in.
Grr…
tl;dr – There are much bigger problems than nepotism with Jared.
Cheers,
Scott.