The internal polling must show Trump getting clobbered in the suburbs because he keeps returning to this unhelpful point like a concussed garden snail trying to gain entry to a salt shaker. Actual tweets today from the President of the United States:*
* Images subject to defacing via electronic graffiti — thanks, Microsoft Paint!
The HUD mandate Trump suspended in 2018 and rescinded last week has jack and shit to do with building public housing projects next door to suburban developments. Rescinding the mandate “continues the status quo in which some communities are strengthened by taxpayer-supported programs and amenities while other neighborhoods are starved and deprived of opportunities,” as Lisa Rice, president and CEO of the National Fair Housing Alliance, put it in a comment to NBC News several months ago.
It’s the same naked zero-sum race-baiting lies Trump engaged in as a candidate in 2016, half-dressed in official policy language. He tweet-screamed something similar at “Suburban Housewives of America” last week. But it’s possible the people who would be most receptive to such a message haven’t got a goddamn clue what the “AFFH Rule” is. I think the message was more effective in the Original Wallace.
Open thread.
marklar
MAKING AMERICA GROTESQUELY ANTEBELLUM! MAGA!
Ivan X
You deserve an effing Pulitzer.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
I give up – does he have the slightest idea of what he’s babbling about? If he was a family member, you would’ve hidden the car keys, the credit cards, and you’d be on the phone to the doctor and lawyer a long time ago
And the “concussed garden snail” is one for the ages.
leeleeFL
@Ivan X: Impressive image indeed!
bbleh
I like the “Suburban Lifestyle Dream.” Comes with tail fins on the car and Jet Age kitchen appliances.
But as to the “right” people getting the message, I think they will. It’s a housing rule adopted under the Black Guy. ‘Nuff said.
Roger Moore
@Ivan X:
Have they created a new category for best invective?
O. Felix Culpa
My favorite electronic graffiti of yours is the pig face. A perfect visual summation.
On the verbal side, please continue with the invective. It is so delightfully schadenfreudelicious.
Leto
Major US military units to leave Germany as part of large drawdown to begin within weeks, Esper says
I’ll say this is what his call with Putin was about: putting the final touches on this shit show. Can’t bring up bounties on the heads of American service people, but what else can we do to help weaken NATO? Goddamned fire hydrant of horrible, all the time, no relief.
Major Major Major Major
Brachiator
Ugh. Some bitter irony from the George Wallace speech.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
Who are these “housewives” he’s babbling about? I thought they were extinct.
Suburban Mom
I very seldom comment, but this thread really begs for it. This won’t work in most northeastern suburbs. Our town council flipped from 100% red to overwhelmingly blue after 2016. Our congressional district flipped after decades in Republican hands. Historically the town has leaned Republican. But people are very freaked out about Trump and what he represents.
Ken
I remain convinced that in the alternate universe where Hillary won, Trump’s children had him declared incompetent and committed in late 2017.
I also remain convinced that it’s a 50/50 chance it will happen in early 2021 in our timeline.
The Moar You Know
The condescension dripping from the phrase “Suburban Lifestyle Dream” is really a bit much.
mrmoshpotato
@bbleh:
And your choice of an 8mm or 16mm camcorder to document it.
Madeleine
“Suburban Housewives of America”—a woman with short blond hair, in a pastel shirtwaist and frilly apron smiling as she washes dishes, does the laundry, mops the floor. How many such creatures exist in the US in 2020? Is his television tuned to 1956?
Sheesh. That image just makes me grind my teeth to dust.
The Moar You Know
@Madeleine: In so many ways, yes.
mrmoshpotato
@O. Felix Culpa:
SAME! I can’t stand to look at Dump’s face, not even his Twitter picture.
taumaturgo
I do hope suburbanites women (and men) will experience an awakening from having being charmed by the conspiracy theorists in chief, otherwise, we can wave the reign of the empire goodbye.
laura
President king of the shite-bags is just following a family tradition for pete’s sake!
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/a-story-about-fred-trump-and-woody-guthrie-for-the-midterm-election
This gal’s suburban lifestyle dream was supposed to have a taco truck on my doggone corner and yes, I’m still pissed off about that.
Redshift
As with his “housewives” tweet (and many others), he’s stuck believing it’s perpetually 1973 and the suburbs are all white flight, with their top concern keeping out “those people.”
That may be true for the gated communities of the GOP donor base, but it’s definitely not going to attract the additional supporters he needs.
MattF
All those right-wing commentatarians who are sniffing out a ‘change in tone’ and declaring that it’s not too late are getting a reality check. Trump is what he is and not some other thing.
In reading news, I’ve started Anne Applebaum’s new book ‘Twilight of Democracy’. It’s good. In the first chapters, she goes into some detail on the authoritarian governments that have risen in Poland and Hungary. She hasn’t (so far) drawn the direct parallel between Trump and the new authoritarian leaders in Central Europe, but it’s quite obvious. We’re lucky that Trump is an incompetent sociopathic moron. The situation could be much worse.
Barbara
I find it so hard to comment on gibberish, but this kind of thing shows that Trump’s view of America basically fossilized somewhere in the mid to late 70s. Who talks or even thinks like this anymore?
bbleh
@Madeleine: She washes dishes, until she nags her exhausted, hard-working, henpecked breadwinning husband into buying her an Atomic-Kleen Five-Speed Automatic Electronic Dish Washer (in white, pink, or ivory, not all colors available in smaller markets).
PPCLI
@Ken: And then all three of Ivana’s kids would visit Daddy in the institution daily to try to manipulate him into cutting the other 4 siblings out of the will.
A family tradition….
Ken
@Leto: I’m kind of hoping that Biden Executive Order 1 says “All Executive Orders by Trump are revoked, and all policies and interpretations of law are returned to the status quo of January 19, 2016.”
How hard would it be to reverse these deployments of material, assuming the military doesn’t slow-walk them so that they haven’t even begun by next year? Obviously the damage to our reputation and relations with Europe will be much harder to repair.
Ken
@PPCLI: I like it. Sounds a bit like a role-playing scenario, but maybe it would work as a board game.
zhena gogolia
@Suburban Mom:
Better late than never.
mrmoshpotato
They’d wait until 2017, and late 2017?
Bit long to stick around before fleeing the country with daddy’s mob money.
zhena gogolia
@laura:
Me too. (I live in the city limits, but it ain’t much of a city so the neighborhood feels suburban anyway.) Those taco trucks would come in right handy about now.
FelonyGovt
Suburban Lifestyle Dream comes with Barbie’s Dream House and an Easy Bake Oven.
mrmoshpotato
@The Moar You Know:
It also drips with yearning for the 1950’s – or whatever idealized vision of the 50’s is in Donnie’s deteriorating pumpkin head.
(Again, apologies to Stan Winston, Lance Henriksen, etal)
Leto
@Ken: that’s my only hope here. The military can slow walk like nobody else can. Plus this involves the potential movement of a number of headquarters, as well as an F-16 squadron. Meaning: this is will require a lot of $$$ to make sure the receiving units are ready for the incoming personnel/assets, AS WELL AS there’s still the little quibble of will the host countries accept the additional personnel/assets? SOFA agreements take years to hammer out. Trying to be a bull in the china shop about this won’t work.
But I agree with Biden Executive Order 1. I don’t see how we’re seen as a stable alliance partner after this. That’s way above my pay grade.
LuciaMia
Jesus, why doesnt he just bring back red-lining?
geg6
@mrmoshpotato:
Yeah, I’m thinking Uday and Qusay would have ended up in Saudi Arabia and Lolita wherever Wendy Deng Murdoch is these days.
mrmoshpotato
@laura: Oh to be able to see 8 taco trucks from my building’s front door…
Leto
I put this in one of the morning threads, but I’m going to drop it here again because they talk about this subject: The Michelle Obama Podcast. Her first guest is Barack and they discuss community, and what that means for all of us. Honestly probably one of the best 45 mins you’ll spend today. I shared this with a friend this morning and her reply was, “I’m 10 secs in and I already miss them so much.”
Ken
BTW, this shows that he’s still obsessing about that Fox News poll that had him way underwater with suburban women.
zhena gogolia
Trump is an evil disgusting racist pig.
Barr is an evil disgusting racist pig.
geg6
@mrmoshpotato:
Tell me about it. How handy would that be right about now? I haven’t had a decent taco since February. And yes, I’ve made some but mine are definitely not those found in any of the little Mexican places around here. And only one of those is open and it’s a little too far to bring home still warm and not mushy from sitting in the car for the 20 minutes it would take to get it home. I’d kill for a taco.
MagdaInBlack
@LuciaMia:
Week ain’t over. There’s still time.
jonas
Shorter Trump: “Hey Suburbia! I just guaranteed that there’ll be a whole lot more homeless people in your communities in the future! Enjoy!”
This will go over well.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
watching clips of the Swan interview with trump and, once a-fucking-gain, how does anyone see this babbling moron (“I read a lot… I comprehend tremendously”) as ‘tough’ or ‘a successful businessman’ or, as two typical “suburban” Republicans said on the Ali Velshi show just this past weekend, a “good manager”.
To be fair to them, we were still a few hundred under 150K deaths from Covid when that interview was filmed.
mrmoshpotato
@MattF:
Shit – has been since the 70’s.
How racist – and blatantly racist – do you have to be to get sued for discrimination by the Nixon administration?
Ruckus
@Madeleine:
Not his TV, his excuse for a brain.
jonas
…and which he assumes is because they’re bitter old racists just like his base, and so blowing some 1960’s-70’s style racist dog whistles ought to bring them around.
Patricia Kayden
Subsole
@Leto:
Is this something the military can slow walk for another, say, 5 months?
Or are we counting on Putin not being stupid enough to roll a dozen MRDs up to Ramstein after we leave?
LuciaMia
And Im convinced come February 1, 2021, Melania starts those divorce proceedings.
germy
trollhattan
Caught HBO’s “Stockton On My Mind” last night. Fascinating look at the city’s relentless grinding poverty and the mayor’s efforts to break the cycle. Even if I hadn’t lived there it would have been well worth watching. Mayor Tubbs is something else.
ETA the latest “Frontline” on Alex Jones and his impact on Trump is…whew.
trollhattan
@germy:
Heh :-)
Ruckus
There are a number of taco trucks near to my place, open every night.
Yutsano
@Patricia Kayden: Sigh. I wish people would stop assuming Dolt45 knows anything. I would bet a fiver this is a Scavino tweet. He barely knows how to tie his shoes. Why would an obscure rule that barely anyone knows exists be of any mind to the Oval Office Occupier?
Subsole
@mrmoshpotato:
Suburban Lifestyle Dream?
Dude, my fucking grandparents don’t talk like this. And they were my age in the fifties.
Amir Khalid
@mrmoshpotato:
As racist as his dad, whose racist landlording was the topic of a Woody Guthrie song.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Madeleine:
The pearl necklace is a bit different….
Yutsano
@Subsole: No…but shady real estate developers do.
mrmoshpotato
@geg6:
Not sure I want one that badly. ?
I think it’s club sammich wrap time!
Wapiti
@laura: While I don’t have a taco truck nearby, I do have a tamale place that has a walk-up window a couple of miles away.
(Frelard Tamales, for those in Seattle. They used to be at the farmer’s markets, but they have a prep kitchen near Green Lake.)
LuciaMia
What? No Avocado or Golden Harvest?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Ruckus:
I can almost remember an old Simpsons gag, a vision of Homer’s brain as a 1954 black and white Philco showing old school cartoons from the 30s. Somewhere in there is an image of trump’s brain. I just don’t know how to work in the Dynasty reruns where he got his ideas about class and elegance and how rich people live.
Anoniminous
Scaring suburban white women with THE NEGROES ARE COMING!!!!! has been a mainstay of Republican victories since the dawn of the Southern Strategy. It worked right up to 2018. Losing suburban white women was a direct cause of the GOP wipe-out in the mid-terms. Recent reports (see: The Hill) say Republicans are freaking out, thinking they could lose 20 more House Seats, a majority in the Senate, and the Presidency all in one fell swoop.
Trump has lost the economy and Law and Order as issues. All he’s got left is racism and bigotry.
Subsole
@Redshift:
Yeah. Here in Texas the metro suburbs are NOT what he’s picturing. At all.
More diverse, today. Ethnically and financially. You have trailer parks and working class neighborhoods and college kids on their first home as well as traditional middle class families and apartments and condos. Lots more PRIDE flags and Beto stickers next to the yellow ribbons and High School Football signs. Hell, even the mid-size towns are starting to go that way, too.
It really is entirely about a bunch of delusional mediocrities forcing time to reverse its flow and let them be 19 again one last time before they go the way of all things.
Ruckus
@geg6:
Tacos are easy. But then I’ve been making them for decades. Mom made a mean taco and I learned from her. And here, in north Mexico, better known as LA, there are some extremely good places for all ranges of Mexican food, from good to amazing. My favorite closed about 15 years ago. When you walked out the door you were looking at Mission San Gabriel.
Ruckus
@Anoniminous:
Racism is all he ever had.
mrmoshpotato
@Leto: Cool! Queueing it up.
Omnes Omnibus
Suburban housewife dream?
laura
@mrmoshpotato: count your blessings, an abundance of choices is a wonderful thing. So glad that people who come to america bring the fullness of their cultures and holidays and foods. And to think that anti-immigrationists see no value in that.
Betty Cracker
@Anoniminous: I think that’s correct, plus the suburbs aren’t as white as they used to be, at least in a lot of places they aren’t. Like folks were saying up-thread, Trump’s views are fossilized.
Suburban Mom
@zhena gogolia: For sure! And we have a taco truck in walking distance.
Subsole
@LuciaMia: That is, in fact the color of my grandma’s kitchen tile – gold and orange linoleum.
She LIVED through the time this guy is trying to sell. She wouldn’t go back if you paid her.
lgerard
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think it is Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous that keeps running through his head.
If only those housewives families had been wealthier they could have been enjoying Champagne Wishes, instead of the far less desirable Suburban Lifestyle Dreams
Ken
@Omnes Omnibus: I think this one is more like what Trump means. Even in 1982, it was being treated as parody.
Baud
Biden should make a plea to the PATRIOT FARMERS OF THE HEARTLAND!!!!
Subsole
@Baud:
And then increase the sugar ration from 50 grams to 30.
Baud
Also, too, the SUBURBAN LIFESTYLE DREAM does not include being trapped in a SUBURBAN LIFESTYLE DREAM because a deranged president ignored a pandemic for political gain.
Ken
@Baud: “Enjoying what the tariffs have been doing to the soybean and corn markets? Ready for four more years of that?”
mrmoshpotato
@Subsole: LOL
“Suburban Lifestyle Dream” just drips of marketing speak.
bbleh
@LuciaMia: Oh mercy no! What sort of dirty colors are those? And so hard to see spots on
You must be talking about when those awful hippies showed up and just ruined everything.
J R in WV
@Ken:
It will be his only path to staying out of jail, mentally unfit to stand trial. I’ve been dreading that judicial finding for a long time now, since he revealed his dementia to the whole world.
ETA: Fortunately, that strategy won’t work for any of Trump’s cabinet members, nor his West Wing staff members. They are all volunteers in loyalty to Trump, and liable for trial for their crimes. Same for the kids, who have undefined responsibilities in the White House of some sort… jail, confiscated all their ill gotten gains!
Jeffro
God I HATE the way he throws “Enjoy” out there, like he’s some beneficent monarch, bestowing gifts far and wide across the land.
FUCK
YOU
trumpov
mrmoshpotato
@laura: Haha, more of a comment on the 8 street corners I can see. Ten if I look really hard west.
ETA – congrats on comment 69
ETA 2 – and yes, it is great to live in melting pot.
MagdaInBlack
@mrmoshpotato:
Oh THAT intersection?
Lyrebird
@Betty Cracker:
1. you’re so right, like usual.
2. THANK YOU for covering that vile visage.
3. I’m sure you saw the crude mention of Cory Booker as a scare tactic. I already wanted Sen. Booker to be a big presence at the convention, partly because he’s so likeable, and partly because his ads were gorgeous.
4. This white suburban mom was NEVAR EVAR gonna vote Trump, but the more he turns off my neighbors, the better!
Leto
@Ruckus: mind sending one my way? Seems like you have an excess and we could really use one here :)
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Great point. My most excellent MIL reports that being trapped for several months in their ACTIVE LIFESTYLE COMMUNITY is souring some of the geezers in her neighborhood on their former idol. No cruises, bingo, etc., will do that.
Matt McIrvin
If he thinks he’s gonna ethnically cleanse Fairfax County, he’s about 40 years too late.
Ken
@Betty Cracker: Someone – maybe Baud? – has repeatedly noted that Trump is losing the senior vote, because they know exactly why they aren’t allowed to see their families.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@MattF:
And it will be, when Josh Hawley runs for office and wins.
Ohio Mom
Not only are suburbs not all white anymore, plenty of them have school kids on free/reduced lunch and neighborhood food banks. There may not be glaring poverty but there are lots of families holding on by their fingertips.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@MattF: I agree. I am continually amazed at how destructive Trump has been, given he is a moron. i am amazed that anyone took him seriously. I hadn’t counted on the total failure of the Rs to put country ahead of party and power, but think where we would be with a competent would-be dictator.
raven
@Leto: I have a great Save the Taco Trucks Shirt!
“Carne Asada is Not a Crime”!
Ken
@Ohio Mom: Don’t worry, once all the kids go back to school the pressure will be off the families. For about three weeks, tops – so just in time for the start of early voting.
Ken
I knew Biden wasn’t the right choice this year.
sdhays
@Ruckus: At least one of us is getting to experience having a “taco truck on every corner” like we were promised if Hillary was elected.
Kathleen
@trollhattan: Thanks for the rec. I lived in Stockton from 1959 to 1961. Ed Murrow filmed Harvest of Shame while we were there. I loved living there and recall it as the best years of my childhood.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Suburban Mom:
That’s heartening to hear. I agree with your assessment that a lot of people don’t want Trump and are scared of what he represents
Leto
@raven: Haha, I like that!
Kathleen
@LuciaMia: Remember shag carpeting? Though that was the 70’s.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@The Moar You Know:
He’s perpetually stuck in the 50s when he was a child. Both parents have to work nowadays. That’s been the case since like what, the 70s?
JPL
AJC breaking news says a source said Obama is speaking at Lewis’ funeral.. Get the hankies ready.
J R in WV
@Redshift:
Here is a link to the Consent Decree Fred and Donald and their lawyer Roy Cohn signed in 1975, pursuant to a case filed in 1973 by the Fair Housing section of the DoJ.
Amazing that your comment specifies the very year the Trump real estate companies were first accused of organized racism in their business activitees.
J R in WV
@Barbara:
Pretty sure when Trump talks like this he is in obvious violation of the consent decree he signed back in 1975, to end a law suit filed by the Fair Housing unit of the DoJ in 1973. Looks like Roy Cohn helped negotiate that agreement.
Kent
Naw:
#1. Do you honestly think Trump will leave office without arranging a blanket and open-ended pardon for every and all possible crimes he has ever committed? And the same for his family.
#2. The rich do things differently from everyone else. Melania will just hire a Nurse Ratched who will keep Trump sedated and locked into a wing of their penthouse where he can watch Fox 24/7. He will just be made “unavailable for medical reasons” while the rest of the clan runs wild with his holdings.
Subsole
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): It was waaay before my time, but plenty of my elders tell me it was like that in the 50s and 60s too. Women worked, it was just they weren’t supposed to work some jobs, and didn’t get much credit for the jobs they did. Dobie Gillis was always full of shit.
So many of these folks want to go back to an America that never existed except in a tv studio.
And you’d think people would notice the incongruities. I mean, who the fuck wears pearls in the kitchen???
I wonder how much of 50s programming was blowback against Rosie the Riveter demonstrating she didn’t actually need a husband if she could do his job. Particularly when she did his job better than he did.
mrmoshpotato
@MagdaInBlack: :P I live in the middle of my block.
And the street dead-ends into a T going west. Again – :P
Kent
I live in an upscale suburb surrounded by suburban white women. What do they care about more than any other issue BY FAR?
EDUCATION
I don’t think Trump’s “open all the schools and hope for the best” is going to play very well. They want this shit to be over so they can get back to pushing their little Hannahs and Justins into 13 more extracurricular activities so they can beef up their Stanford applications.
Matt McIrvin
@MattF: Viktor Orbán seems to have used COVID-19 as his opening to seize the last bits of absolute power he didn’t already have. Trump is trying to do this but his choice to play down the pandemic and pretend it wasn’t happening really hamstrung him there. Getting utterly hysterical about COVID germs everywhere would have actually served him better, though I suppose his rich friends wouldn’t have liked it.
geg6
@Ruckus:
Sadly, I live in bumfuck almost Appalachia Beaver County, PA. There are only four restaurants that serve Hispanic food in the entire county. However, one of them is absolutely excellent and there are several over the county line in Allegheny County. But they are all at least 20 minutes or more from my house and the mediocre ones aren’t even open. And I like my taco Tuesdays, but my tacos don’t hold a candle to the ones I’m craving.
Frankensteinbeck
@Kent:
He will certainly try. That does not mean he will succeed. State crimes are the commonly mentioned gap in his powers, but Trump fucks up everything. He will find new ways to fuck up pardoning himself, ways that we don’t think of because they’re too stupid to be believable.
He doesn’t give two shits about his family, and they’re probably not smart enough to directly blackmail him like Stone did. Actually, ‘only tries to save himself so his family turn on him’ is one of the likely scenarios for how he self-destructs.
Certainly true, but…
The rest of the clan are self-absorbed toddlers who hate each other, and are held to one purpose solely by their need to keep Daddy happy to get his money. Remove him from the picture in any way, and they will turn on each other, not cooperate to keep him out of the picture.
MagdaInBlack
@mrmoshpotato:
Oopsy. I had a vision of that lovely intersection on Milwaukee. =-P
geg6
@Leto:
Ha! Yes, you would live in a taco desert, too, wouldn’t you?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Subsole:
Perfectly describes 21st century American conservatism
Frankensteinbeck
@Subsole:
This is outside of my specialty, but my understanding is that you’ve just described the leading historical explanation for the massive cultural rift between 1940 and 1950 sexual/cultural/family values.
Bill Arnold
Did D.J.Trump write those tweets, or was it Dan Scavino(, or someone else) ?
Re “Suburban Lifestyle Dreams”, for the science fiction readers among you, this novel has a “suburban lifestyle dream” component, embedded in a (much) larger nightmare.
Glasshouse (Novel, Charles Stross, 2006)
It’s also mind-bending, and has the best (and only :-) pun I know of about optimal resource allocation in a novel.
WaterGirl
@Ivan X: @Boris Rasputin (the evil twin):
Cole likes to go through the rotating tag nominations and “like” a suggestion 3 times before he lets it go live.
Would it be wrong for me to tell Cole that he has seen this twice before and liked both times?
Asking for a friend.
mrmoshpotato
@Betty Cracker: LOL
They don’t like their orange idol anymore?
geg6
@WaterGirl:
Go for it. It’s one of my favorite Betty lines of all time. He’s so freaked out by COVID, he’ll never remember whether he did or he didn’t.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Matt McIrvin:
I really think that, once the Dems have unified control over the federal government, we have to come up with a strategy to deal with leaders like Orban and stop their brand of authoritarianism from spreading.
What can the US government do about strongmen like Orban?
Kent
@Frankensteinbeck: I’m liking the image of Trump sedated and locked in his penthouse suite by the medical staff while his spawn squander every last time in feral infighting and insane business deals. Then in a moment of lucidity he emerges to find that there’s nothing left and he has to go on medicaid and check into a medicaid nursing home.
Who the hell is ever going to do a deal with Jared or Ivanka when Trump is no longer in power?
Betty Cracker
@Frankensteinbeck:
With that one minor edit, the sentence above is a serviceable description of every past Trump debacle and a terrifying prophecy of all future ones.
mrmoshpotato
@Ken:
Yup. Those who voted for him are seeing their god emperor as the naked manbaby that he’s been for decades.
(Yes, phrasing – I would’ve written The Emperor’s New Clothes as something else.
P.S. Dump’s naked orange ass!)
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Frankensteinbeck:
That tracks with how I view the Trump family. They don’t really love him, only what he can do for them and vice versa. In that way, it’s a functional (transactional) relationship.
I remember that story about Trump slapping junior around all because he was wearing his baseball uniform instead of a suit for a meeting or something junior didn’t even know he was supposed to attend.
In some ways, I really sorry for his children. And even Trump, honestly. I sometimes wonder if they had been raised by better people how different they all might’ve turned out
evodevo
@LuciaMia: I’ll have you know that my harvest gold Kenmore clothes dryer is still going strong…must be the color lol
Ken
Make careful use of our influence and soft power to gather a coalition and apply economic and diplomatic pressure.
No, wait, that’s impossible after four years of Trump. Um, carpet- bombing followed by a decades-long, fruitless occupation? Less than ideal, I guess.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Ken:
Well, Germany and Japan turned out okay afterwards. But you’re right. That would be less than ideal.
As for soft power suggestion, I honestly think it would work. As evidenced by the grumblings of BoJo, our allies really really want Biden to win. I would take that to mean that they understand our domestic political struggles, that they themselves are not immune from similar ones, that we’re stronger together, and would willingly welcome us back in if only because the other options (Russia, China, etc) may be more stable but are much worse morally speaking
Roger Moore
@Subsole:
Women didn’t just start working all at once. Going by BLS data, the labor participation rate for women rose fairly steadily from about 32% in 1948 to a high of about 60% in the late 1990s. That’s a substantial real change, especially when you realize a lot of that change came from middle class white women moving into the workforce.
Brachiator
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
BoJo is not much of an ally, and I don’t really believe that Sunday Times article.
Boris Johnson is Trump’s mini me. However, I believe that the other European leaders would be relieved if Biden wins.
raven
@Roger Moore: It must have been higher than that during the war?
Steeplejack (phone)
Lost in the background noise:
zhena gogolia
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Dynasty was the pinnacle of elegance compared to the Trump Lifestyle Dream. There’s no Diahann Carroll in Trumpland.
Roger Moore
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I think the first thing is to do everything we can to go after Putin, who is doing his absolute best to support and encourage them. Anything else we want to do will be much easier if they aren’t receiving foreign support.
debbie
@Roger Moore:
Much simpler to stop foreign aid.
Kent
Trump fucked him like he does everyone else in his life. The UK was supposed to get a glorious favorite nation trade agreement with Trump after Brexit. Trump promised as much during the campaign when the Obama administration was saying. Yeah, we have an agreement with the EU, not so interested in a separate one with the UK.
All Trump has done is threatened the UK with tariffs and sanctions if they don’t follow his lead on Iran and punishing China and cracking down on Huawei. In other words, to Trump they aren’t a partner, they are his battered bitch.
Not what BoJo signed up for.
Subsole
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
To a point, yeah.
Then again, I have known people from some pretty damn abusive households (bad enough to land them in foster care after their parents got drunk and abandoned them) and they ended up kind, trustworthy people who were largely beloved by their communities.
If the Trump kids grew up in a bell jar, then yeah. But most folks learn to be their own person, some way. One woman I know learned that not everyone was like her dad because her brother would hide her and take the beatings instead. So even under appalling conditions it can be done.
Shit, people could be magnanimous in gulags and concentration camps, and I know the Trumps didn’t live that hell.
They have more means to walk away than many people I know. Guess who managed it, and who never fucking tried?
Baud
@Brachiator:
All that means is that Boris only cares about Boris.
The Moar You Know
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Maybe – just a crazy idea but hear me out – nothing. Not a fucking thing. I was born in 1966 and we’ve been at war with one country/ideology or another for almost my entire life. Think we’ve maybe had 8 “official” years of not being at war. So how about we drop the world cop job, which everyone hates us for anyway, and let the EU (who are really the people who need to be dealing with this as Hungary is an EU member) take care of their own garbage for once?
I am done with war. I am done with being the world police. The pandemic will be more than enough for Biden’s term(s), assuming our luck holds and we manage to not lose this election. Can we just focus on getting one thing right?
zhena gogolia
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
It was because he wasn’t in a suit to go to a BASEBALL GAME.
Kent
@Roger Moore: The biggest problem is that Orban and others like him are completely propped up by the EU which funnels billions of dollars to him and his cronies. He’s really their problem. I don’t have a good answer. But it’s sort of like Germany asking what they can do about an out-of-control governor in say Michigan (which is the same size as Hungary).
zhena gogolia
The arrival of my Mary Trump book keeps getting postponed. It’s the one book about The Evil One that I’m actually looking forward to reading. I really like her.
Jay
Subsole
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
The best thing we can do is chop the legs out from under Putin and let Europe handle Europe.
mrmoshpotato
@Kent:
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Roger Moore:
That sounds about right
@Brachiator:
Point taken
@Subsole:
Yeah, I suppose. Then again, if your entire worldview has been tainted and warped from the start, it would be fairly hard to break out of that after a certain point. People are capable of change, but it’s said that the older you get the harder that can be
debbie
@Major Major Major Major:
Huh, looks like those full page ads Trump used to place in the NYT from time to time. //
CaseyL
@Subsole:
All of it, Katie.
Male panic over female competence was a big factor in creating the ideal of the Perfect Housewife. More than that: lobotomizing women who were unhappy about being nothing more than housewives reached its highest level in the post-war decade.
mrmoshpotato
@Matt McIrvin:
How would he have responded to the yells of “Fuck you, Putin’s bitch! Why did you disband the CDC’s pandemic response team and ignore the playbook?”
I mean, aside from calling everything “fake” like a fucking manbaby.
Ruckus
@The Moar You Know:
Sounds like a good idea, but I can’t see this happening in this country. Unless we can break the spell of us being the world’s policeman, and I’m not talking kind and benevolent police here.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@The Moar You Know:
There’s a difference between the Nixonian and GWB “world policeman” and supporting international and multilateral institutions to collectively solve world problems
Do you think Putin and China won’t try to fill the vacuum? They absolutely will and the kind of world Xi would build is no one I want to live in
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@zhena gogolia:
Even worse. Did Trump think it was 1948 or something?
zhena gogolia
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kent:
We need to have talks with the EU about doing something about Orban, then. I’m sure the leaders of the EU have no great love for him to begin with
Brachiator
@Baud:
Boris Johnson is Trump’s mini me.
It also means that BoJo is intellectually lazy, but arrogant, and believes that being a white male gives him special powers and insight. BoJo is also largely incompetent, and yet insists on accruing more power to himself. He is committed to dismantling the government at the expense of his people, and depends on input from advisors like Dominic Cummings who give off hints of bigotry and nativist libertarian beliefs.
Ken
Which says so much about Trump.
It’s also the sort of thing that leads to the son paying the nursing home staff a little extra each month, to make sure the patient’s daily enema uses ice water.
Jay
Kent
Yes, but also no small amount of political panic at finding jobs for the 16 million or so American men who served in WW2 and needed to be put to useful civilian employment so they don’t get riled up like they did last time around with the Bonus Army and so forth. Politicians at the time REALLY REALLY did not want several million unemployed vets with economic grievances and too much time on their hands. The rise of Hitler was fueled in part by disgruntled WW1 vets.
Kent
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
@Kent:
Well yes, they need to kick out any country like Hungary or Poland that don’t adhere to certain universal democratic principals. That is largely what prevented them from accepting Turkey in the first place.
sdhays
@Kent: To be fair, BoJo is a total moron and, like everything with Brexit, even with a competent partner in the White House the magic pixie trade deal that he promised his electorate was never going to happen.
Dump hasn’t helped, but he really isn’t the problem in this instance. BoJo made outlandish promises and, unfortunately, way too many English people were stupid enough (or didn’t give enough of a shit) to believe him.
mrmoshpotato
@MagdaInBlack: Oh, Milwaukee, Damen and North how you keep us cyclists alert.
Roger Moore
@raven:
The BLS statistics only go back to 1948. I looked up a couple of quick articles on women working during WWII, and it sounds as if there were a more women working during the war than before or immediately after, but the overall effect wasn’t as big as you might think. Something like 11 million men joined the military during the war, but only about 6.5 million women joined the workforce to make up for them. That was about 15-20% of the working-age population. That’s a big jump, but even in the height of the war the majority of working age women didn’t work outside the home.
Brachiator
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Putin is an odd duck. He can engineer disruption, but I don’t know that it will benefit him in the long run. China just might become the world’s dominant economy, but not necessarily dominant in the political sphere. And the pandemic may change everything for everyone.
Betty Cracker
@Roger Moore: Elizabeth Warren wrote a whole book about that and how it provided cover for plutocrats to screw the middle class to the wall. (But her DNA!)
@zhena gogolia: I like Mary Trump too. She’s smart and funny. She’s relatable because she seems to be experiencing this nightmare just like we are, except with the added dimension of actually knowing and having been personally screwed over by the monster at the center of it all.
I hope she makes tons of money off her book and that someday her horrid cousins go broke and try to wheedle their way into her good graces, only to have the door slammed in their botoxed faces. Ha!
mrmoshpotato
Meidas Touch – Are You Better Off? | National TV Edition
ballerat
@Kent:
Trump doesn’t understand the concerns of suburban moms (or any parents) because he’s never been a parent. Oh, he’s fathered children but that’s not the same. He has no clue of the love, time, effort, money, aspirations and sacrifice involved in parenthood.
Push kids into a covid-filled school? Why not? They’re just objects to manipulate for his benefit. No clue of how threatening that can be for parents, whose children encompass the cares of their world. Everything they worked for is at stake.
Nor has he any clue about the necessity of the non-wealthy and connected getting an education. Their kids have to do well at school. They have to follow rules. They have to work hard. Their children will not be allowed to fail upward.
I’m inclined to think he banished his children from his life because he hated the competition for approval and attention. Only one self-centered 2-year-old is going to get the attention and that’s going to be him.
mrmoshpotato
@zhena gogolia: Hey Steve,
It was decades of you ratfucking sacks of shit who made enough of the electorate stupid enough to vote for the Soviet shitpile mobster conman!
Ken
Does he mean he, personally, bought that much of the drug thinking (for some inexplicable reason, but see Kodak’s price this week) that he would be able to re-sell it for more? Well, tough luck.
Or does he mean the government bought that much of the drug, and now has no use for it? Yeah, bit of a waste of money (but we’re still subsidizing mohair), but it’s not like he has any personal stake in it, right? He couldn’t make any money from the sale.
In fact, if that’s the situation I’d argue that the government should be giving the drug to anyone in the US that needs it, which IIRC includes people with autoimmune diseases including rheumatoid arthritis.
Omnes Omnibus
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): There is a strong isolationist streak on the left as well as the right. IMO we must be a part of the world because the solutions to our major problems require global effort. We need to become good global citizens again and encourage others to do the same.
zhena gogolia
@mrmoshpotato:
Well, yes, but I welcome any help we can get at this point.
Jay
Jay
@Ken:
Jarvanka bought it with USTaxpayers money.
mrmoshpotato
@zhena gogolia: And burning the lifeboats after. No “We’re the teaparty now!” bullshit this time around.
Roger Moore
@Kent:
Yep. They passed laws requiring employers to rehire employees who had been away in the military during the war. Those same laws didn’t prevent employers from firing the people they had hired in the interim, so many of the women who had found jobs during the war were unceremoniously dumped immediately after.
Roger Moore
@Kent:
What would be even better would be a way of enforcing those democratic principles. I’m not sure exactly how that would work, but they already have all kinds of rules about government finances. It seems crazy that the EU can control how large a budget deficit Hungary is allowed to run but can’t require them to hold free and fair elections.
Jay
Brachiator
@Kent:
BoJo knew what he was getting into with Trump. Johnson even lied to the British people that a deal with the US would make up for a no deal BREXIT, which is insane.
In turn, Trump loved pushing a deeper wedge between the UK and EU.
Some British bloggers have also claimed that Johnson wanted to use a deal with US drug companies to destabilize the NHS.
Jay
https://openvallejo.org/2020/07/28/vallejo-police-bend-badge-tips-to-mark-fatal-shootings/
Jay
Captain C
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
It was worse than that; they were going to a baseball game, and Junior was wearing his Yankees hat (and maybe jacket).
Patricia Kayden
cwmoss
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I feel bad for the way the trump kids were raised, but no sympathy now. They’re just as much trash as their father now.
The story you refer to was a baseball game that junior was going to attend with dad. Dad got pissed that junior was wearing baseball schwag and told him to put on a suit. If you root around, there are a number of stories from classmates of Don Jr in college about what a pathetic fuckup he was and what a colossal asshole the old man was to the kid. But now the kid’s grown up and he’s decided what side he likes his bread buttered, so fuck him with a red hot poker.
Jay
debbie
@Jay:
The millions of people who need it for autoimmune diseases would take it off Navarro’s hands. Sell at a reasonable discount and he’d still be ahead.
Kropacetic
Even if what he said were true or informed or coherent, my response would be:
Fair Economist
@debbie:
Trump and his cronies are terrible businessmen. I can guarantee you they grossly overpaid for all that hydroxychloroquine.
Subsole
@Roger Moore:
Interesting.
One thing about war: there’s always propaganda.
Like posters of Rosie.
I wonder how visible that propaganda was? Was it limited to cities? Or industrial regions? Or was it omnipresent?
Maybe I didn’t work in a factory, but if I see images of me in a factory, doing “man’s work”, that has to erode traditional roles a little.
Subsole
@Kent:
Whyever not? General MacArthur’s ego (and the body to which it happened to be attached) did quite well out of routing the Bonus Army, if I recall.
He even kept an ear as a souvenir, or so I’ve heard.
Miss Bianca
@Baud: LOL, yes!!
Tehanu
You left out the string of pearls and the high heels.
Me either. I keep a black marker on the kitchen table to use when I’m reading the morning paper. He only has three expressions: smug smirk, grouchy inattention, and screaming rage.
Miss Bianca
@mrmoshpotato: Dear God. That intersection. The 30th anniversary of my getting bounced off some guy’s windshield at that intersection is coming up in September. Good times!
I was on my bike heading south on Damen. Guy decided he would ditch the light and cut through the parking lot of the service station on that corner and clocked me. Or so I’m told. I was knocked out from the impact.
The Pale Scot
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
That’s something the EU has to deal with. Until the UK crashes out 12/31/20 their options are limited. After six months of watching little England founder Merkel and Macron will have a big stick to wave at the proto fascists in Eastern Europe. It breaks my heart to watch what’s going on in Poland.
The Pale Scot
@Kent: Fuck a nursing home. I want him to be stuck in a central Florida trailer park with Hispanic healthcare attendants his only company. With a chronic pain condition that requires the attendants to administer the meds. Hell, I’d take the job. “Sorry Mr Dirtbag, you still have 55 minutes before I can give u another dose. Then hand him a Tic Tac
Jay Noble
Glen Campbell knew
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owoRK0rHUk8
SWMBO
@Ruckus: You bastard!