It’s hard not to be paranoid about the open criminality of the Republican party during this election season. And yet, there is this consolation: The Trump people don’t know what they’re doing, and the Permanent GOP (McConnell, Meadows, the various deep-pocket donors) are handicapped by their inability to control the various petty tyrants and third-rate goniffs busy pulling one last heist before the money train runs off the track.
And now the Beltway media sense blood in the water. Professional journalistic assassin Olivia Nuzzi, for NYMag:
… It was a sign of impending doom, to some, when earlier this summer Parscale began coming in more often just as the target on his back swelled to carnival proportions. The polls? Trump trailed his almost-invisible challenger by double digits nationally and by a considerable margin in most battleground states. The messaging? Well, you try to “spin” six months in which 160,000 Americans died and at least 5 million more were infected by a virus you first said wouldn’t be much to worry about. Six months in which your best case for reelection — the greatest economy in the world — was destroyed too. The offense? Trump couldn’t even settle on a nickname for Joe Biden. Was he “Sleepy Joe,” or “Creepy Joe,” or “Beijing Biden”? That tiny Tulsa rally Parscale had organized — which followed weeks of massive hype — preceded a spike in coronavirus infections in the city that, local officials said, was probably born of the event, where the guest list included Herman Cain, who later died. Meanwhile, nationwide, there was civil unrest that Trump, whose political career had begun with a media tour to promote a racist conspiracy theory called birtherism, was unfit to handle. Yet there was an attitude, naïve and cocky, that led Parscale to compare the campaign to the Death Star, ready to fire but with no apparent idea where to aim. What was next? Locusts? How could the circumstances be any worse? The campaign was in a hole so deep it was actually historic — a deficit not just bigger, at this point in the race, than any an incumbent had ever overcome, but bigger than any an incumbent had ever even faced.
Even Trump was finding it more difficult to believe the fiction that everything was going great, and easier and easier to see the nihilistic wisdom of open warfare with the Postal Service in a way that might both cut Democrats’ likely vote-by-mail margins and delegitimize the election more generally. His closest advisers were now telling him that the bad numbers and bad reviews weren’t the fruits of Fake News or a deep-state hoax but a genuine reflection of what could happen in November. Though it took some time for him to accept it. The president recently asked a second senior White House official to review Biden’s performance after watching him speak. “I said, ‘I think if we lose to this guy, we’re really pathetic,’ ” the official told me. “The president said to me, ‘I’m not losing to Joe Biden.’ I said, ‘You’re losing to Joe Biden.’ ”
It was July before he “saw for the first time” that he could be defeated, according to the official. And he didn’t blame himself. He blamed a cruel world, a crueler media, and the Death Star’s failure to defend him from both. “They thought they were running one campaign: We’re on cruise control for the president who gave us the greatest economy of all time, and all the messaging would flow from there. Which socialist are we running against? Bop, bop, bop. And everything changed, and they didn’t change,” the senior White House official said. “The president started to hate the ads. He hated ‘Beijing Biden’ — he didn’t come up with that name.”…
“The president wonders who’s truly loyal to him and who’s not and who’s making a buck on him,” George Conway told me, explaining that, from his perspective, “triggering Trump’s paranoia” is one way to defeat him. “It doesn’t matter who is the captain of the SS Trump, because Trump is the one who is going to run it into the iceberg in the end. If there’s more chaos, all the better. We try to trigger the chaos in Trump’s DNA.”…
… Parscale, and those who liked him, believed it was Kellyanne Conway who wanted him gone the most. During the 2016 campaign, Conway made no secret that she was annoyed by Parscale’s folksy habit of announcing, to outsiders, that he didn’t know much about politics — and annoyed, too, that he didn’t know much about politics. “It’s charming that Donald Trump has never been in politics before,” she told him once. “It’s not charming that the people who work for him have never worked in politics before.” Parscale thought Conway wanted to take control of the 2020 campaign and that to do so, she needed to prove to the president that Kushner was fucking everything up, and that to do that, she needed to sabotage him. Trump was aware that Parscale saw Conway this way, but Trump also seemed terrified of Conway and never at risk of doing anything to intervene. For reasons Parscale could only speculate about, Conway’s job was always safe. (Conway thought the allegation was ridiculous and that if Brad had focused as much on Michigan and messaging as he did on nonexistent infighting, things might be a little bit different. As she saw it, Parscale’s demotion came after he tried to deny what the president saw with his own eyes — crowd size in Tulsa, the profligate spending, and the polls showing Biden ahead.)…
[Note: Conway’s a monster, but she’s a professional monster. She’s done very well off the Trump campaign, but she fully intends to have a career after the word ‘Trump’ has been memory-holed by the entire Republican party. The grifters & amateurs surrounding Trump will *never* understand how Conway, or her husband, see the world.]
By the third or fourth interview of the day in which a Trump campaign official argues, with what sounds like sincerity, that not only are the polls all wrong, they are wrong owing to intentional malpractice on the part of major polling institutions and their partnered major media outlets, and not only are they wrong but, actually, polls don’t even matter, because there is a silent majority of American voters who fear telling surveyors what they really believe and because the polls were wrong in 2016 (although they weren’t — national polling correlates to the national vote, not to the Electoral College, and Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million, about what the polls indicated she’d win by, whatever the prediction models created by data journalists suggested), you begin to suspect you are the victim of something that’s not quite a conspiracy but more like a practical joke…
People on the campaign say they believe — have to believe — there’s a way forward. If they just win North Carolina (where Trump leads by an average of one or two percentage points), Florida (where Biden leads by five), and Arizona (Biden by two), states Trump won in 2016, then they need only one state in the so-called blue wall of Pennsylvania (Biden by six or seven), Wisconsin (Biden by seven), and Michigan (Biden by seven or eight). These three states had gone Democratic in every presidential election since 1992 before Hillary Clinton lost them by 77,000 votes combined in 2016. Staffers assume that Ohio is already a Trump lock, although Biden is ahead there, too, by an average of more than two points…
But while Stepien has focused August ad spending in battleground states with early voting, effectively trying to stall the race long enough for the national picture to change, few on the campaign he’s running seem to be thinking in strategic terms at all, never mind enough to generate the kind of miracle the president needs. Instead, they seem to think that if they got lucky the last time, and proved the conventional wisdom wrong, maybe they’ll just happen to get lucky again…
this is far and away the biggest non-kremlinology takeaway from the nymag piece – these dipshits legitimately think they’re running a ground campaign and in actuality nothing is happening. good luck fixing that in august https://t.co/N6TCElbr24
— kilgore trout, new tone haver (@KT_So_It_Goes) August 16, 2020
Furry Friends: Jenny Howard – First Anniversary of a Balloon Juice Rescue, August 17th, 2020
RepubAnon
Pity we can’t convince Drooling Donald that he has the election in the bag, so no need for him to do anything other than Tweet, golf, and call into Fox.
However, I expect a few more rats are swimming for shore, and the rest are buying water wings
Sloane Ranger
Vaguely related to this topic, CNN just announced that Kamala Harris ‘ Secret Service codename is “Pioneer”. Apt.
NotMax
The Gang That Couldn’t Loot Straight.
Frank Wilhoit
“…’triggering Trump’s paranoia’ is one way to defeat him….” This got me thinkin’ (always a mistake). Why has no one ever stood up to Trump? I don’t say “…as far as we know”, because we would know. John Kelly could have surgically removed Trump’s personality with one blow of his tongue; and it wouldn’t even have to be a Marine. Five minutes’ skilful verbal abuse would reduce him to permanent catatonia. Why, over all the years (not just the past four), has this not happened?
Calouste
Amateur mistake by Parscale there. Kushner fucks everything up, sabotage doesn’t matter. And nothing is going to convince the shitgibbon that Kushner is fucking everything up, because Kushner and his wife are the only people the shitgibbon really trusts.
Splitting Image
Beijing Biden?
I’ve heard the other two, but am I the only one who never even heard this one?
Also: the idea that the idiot’s schoolyard insults are the products of focus groups makes him sound even more pathetic to me. I’m astonished with myself that that is still possible.
sdhays
One of the things I learned in 2016 is that Republicans don’t need a ground game.
Hopefully, that’s something that’s going to be unlearned this year.
mrmoshpotato
FYWP!
Again – they may be chucklefucks, but they’re chucklefucks who need to be crushed with Democratic votes in as many states and as many contests as possible.
Kent
So how long before they completely give up and start looting the rest of the $320 million Trump has raised and not yet spent?
It would be interesting to know the actual discount rate on a Trump contribution. If I give $1 to the Trump 2020 campaign, what percentage of my donation is actually put to productive campaign use and what percentage is looted? Compared with $ donated to the Biden campaign.
sdhays
@Kent: I expect you’d need to rigorously define “productive”.
HumboldtBlue
Erin Harris is Biden’s new Political Director
Erin Wilson, thanks JR
And it appears Kamala’s Secret Service nickname will be Pioneer.
As pointed out above @Sloane Ranger:
Kent
Their 2016 ground game was to go around to every bumfuck corner of America and hold big MAGA rallies. They can’t even do that this year.
*I know that’s not what you meant by “ground game” but it was what the were doing. This year it’s lots of stupid shit on Facebook and then crickets.
Baud
@Sloane Ranger:
Why exactly does the Secret Service reveal that?
Jinchi
The answer to the first question is 0%.
I’m not sure what the answer to the second question is.
Kent
Touche. I was just defining it as actually being spent on campaign ads rather than being outright stolen in the form of overhead and consulting fees. But whether they are actually productive is a whole different issue.
NotMax
@Kent
The hamberder slush fund alone is humongous.
//
Bobby Thomson
@sdhays: evangelical churches are the Republican ground game.
New Deal democrat
Aside from the horrible substance – 150,000 dead plus on his watch – the pandemic has short-circuited Trump’s ability to effectively campaign in two ways:
1. It has short-circuited his feedback mechanism.
As a demagogue, in 2016 Trump’s process was:
1. Hold rallies.
2. Throw lots of chum into the water.
3. See which lines got the most enthusiastic feedback.
4. Repeat ad nauseam the lines that were most successful.
By preventing rallies, the pandemic has cut off #3, the feedback mechanism. As a result, Trump has no idea what sales pitch would get the most favorable reaction and close the deal.
2. The pandemic has forced Biden to run a “front porch” campaign, which ironically is the most effective way to avoid making his own mistakes and instead allow all the focus to be on Trump’s horrors. Trump also has a feral ability to sniff out an opponent’s weak points. But by not actively campaigning Biden is failing to supply Trump with a target.
In other words, the pandemic is causing Trump to be hoist by his own petard.
Bobby Thomson
@Baud: that always seems weird to me. Unless it’s misinformation similar to the double that emerges first before every president.
Jinchi
The ones who did were fired.
J R in WV
I read this article top to bottom,
astonishingno surprise that the totally incompetent Trump family organization is incapable of dealing the the reality of Trump’s complete failure to do the bare minimum to deal with the plague. I have begun to refer to the novel coronavirus as the Trump plague, as he is the reason it matters so much.Then I read an article (dunno who by, etc — I’ve always been bad about authors and back stories…) about the reporter driving from scheduled volunteer training meeting to other scheduled meeting, finding no one there, finally arriving at a regional HQ full of people who sent out emails, didn’t know emails had been sent, were shocked that no one showed up even though they sent emails.
If that’s the Trump campaign, no wonder they’re scared, or should be scared. What a piled up team of dumbassery!
Perhaps my desperation late at night, in the wee hours of despair, is not real? Hope so very hard!
Anonymous At Work
“Good luck fixing it in August”??? Hell, it’ll be late September before they realize that Brad hasn’t unlocked the data files on precinct captains to start doing door-to-door or robocalling voters to check on them.
Sister Golden Bear
OT: A federal judge just blocked the Trump administration’s anti-trans healthcare rules that were schedule to go into effect tomorrow, ruling that the rules violate June’s anti-discrimination ruling by the Supreme Count.
Sayeth the judge: “HHS was apparently confident that the Supreme Court would endorse the Administration’s interpretation of sex discrimination…its confidence was misplaced.”
The judge also took a swipe at HHS for approving the rules three days before the SCOTUS decision, knowing that the decision was imminent: “The timing might even suggest to a cynic that the agency pushed ahead specifically to avoid having to address an adverse decision.”
It’s only a temporary injunction at the moment, but still hugely good news—both for this specific case—trans healthcare discrimination has been a huge issue—and for Bostock becoming a wider precent for striking down other anti-LGBTQ discrimination laws/policies.
And yes, I am tearing up.
Sab
Totally OT for Watergirl,
I am on a mobile. Every time I hit the arrow to the bottom to comment and then scroll up to the comment box I pass ” No Cabin Fever for Us!” and it makes me laugh out loud and cheers me up a lot.
HumboldtBlue
@Baud:
Probably because it’s a name that’s actually used around reporters so it’s not like it will be a state secret.
J R in WV
@HumboldtBlue:
Link calls her Erin Wilson, not Harris… oops!
Kent
Getting fun here in Washington.
The hayseed small town MAGA sheriff who is challenging Jay Inslee for governor just compared his stand against gun control to Rosa Parks and the Holocaust. Yep
king5.com/article/news/politics/republican-candidate-loren-culp-rosa-parks-nazi-germany-comments-dra…
cain
This. Because I recalled when we were all slapping each other on the backs – that he didn’t even have campaign offices in a number of states.
He literally did not have a ground game.
NotMax
Takes some doing to put together a team comprising such a vacuum of feck.
HumboldtBlue
@J R in WV:
Yes please, let’s do what you said!
pluky
@Frank Wilhoit: I sure it has. Why else his aversion to firing people in person? Perhaps more than once the person being fired took this as the perfect opportunity to read him to shit.
Mousebumples
The Wisconsin ground game REALLY sucks at targeting for the GOP. Had a door knocker a few weeks ago and answered without thinking. Told the guy there was no way in hell I’d be supporting Trump. I also had a priorities USA call before the primary last week, reminding me to vote.
I get that I’m probably the suburban housewife Trump thinks he can peel off but they’re wasting their money on me. (and hopefully others that will never go Trump)
Bobby Thomson
@New Deal democrat: the primary difference this time is that all the sexy stories relate to Trump, and they are all bad. They played the Burisma card too early and, while it didn’t result in Trump’s removal, the impeachment effectively neutralized the would-be butter emails story.
I’ve seen defeat snatched from the jaws of victory enough not to trust a four corners/prevent defense (Guy Lewis says Hi), but Biden really does need to focus on staying alive, avoiding public mistakes, and ensuring Democrats can vote.
J R in WV
@HumboldtBlue:
No offense intended ~!!!~ Hope you understand I was merely correcting a typo in your remark…
laura
President cornered shithouse rat is acting like a cornered shithouse rat who knows the arms of the law await him should he not win, and so this “campaign” is to deny reality at every turn. Seriously, when has the ability of the postal service to deliver ever been called into question? Never- that’s when. And now he’s questioning the safety of drop off boxes absent a scintilla of proof and he’s preregistering his complaint against ballots received and postmarked but not counted even before early voting commences. And so much sleaze is about to come to light as his former attorney is about to unveil the mother of all otherwise attorney/client privileged details of the world of trump organization and the courts are ruling in favor of his sex assault plaintiffs and even his bought and paid for wife wont hold his scuzzy hand because she knows where it’s been.
I’m so tired of this administration and every Republican legislator who has and continues to allow his lawless conduct. I’m tired of the costs of the campaign and all the self-enrichment that the tax payer is stuck with. I want to know where all the money has gone. I want an American Nuremberg starting on or before the inauguration- and a will work like a rented mule to get the Biden/Harris ticket elected by as many votes as is possible.
Also, I could use a pony.
Adam L Silverman
@Sloane Ranger: She should’ve leaned into it and gone with “Cop”.
geg6
I read this with my morning coffee this morning. Amazeballs.
WaterGirl
@HumboldtBlue: What happened to the old political director?
Roger Moore
@Bobby Thomson:
Which is undoubtedly connected to Trump’s desire to reopen them for in-person services.
Adam L Silverman
@Frank Wilhoit: Kelly didn’t because 1) he was indoctrinated for over 40 years that you say “Sir, Yes Sir!” to the president and then move out sharply and 2) he largely agreed with what he was doing, what he didn’t like was how he was doing it, the tone, etc.
WaterGirl
@Bobby Thomson:
?????
Adam L Silverman
@Splitting Image: It was briefly rolled out during the impeachment trial when the President, live and on camera from the South Lawn of the White House, asked the PRC for dirt on Biden.
dmsilev
@Kent: Don’t forget boats. Lots and lots of boats.
I guess technically that’s a water game rather than a ground game.
randy khan
@RepubAnon:
I dunno. I think we need him giving more long, rambling press conferences and maybe endorsing more “unproven” (as in totally untested and probably at best ineffective) cures for the coronavirus. Those seem like excellent campaign tactics. For the Dems.
Geoduck
@Kent: Slightly relevant data point: I live in the WA state capitol (well, the next town over, which is mashed together with the capitol and a third town in one big clump.) And I have yet to see any Shiatgibbon signs on display, but I have seen a few for the idiot sheriff. I’m not sure what that portends towards GOP voing patterns in the area.
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: Because viagra and cialis don’t work for Chuck Todd, but insider tidbits like this do.
Sloane Ranger
@Baud: CNN implied that it wasn’t an official announcement, more a leak from a Secret Service contact.
VOR
They have Facebook memes and talk radio as their GOTV mechanism
One of the books reported that Trump was upset the 2016 transition planning team was out fundraising. He viewed it as stealing HIS money, even though it was a completely separate fundraising effort from the campaign. And then there was the money spent on the inauguration which was unaccounted.
satby
Lincoln Project’s beautiful new ad endorsing Joe is out.
Adam L Silverman
@Bobby Thomson: We have a winner! Please see Anne Laurie on the mezzanine level to claim your prize.
dmsilev
So I guess we’re going with the rewrite-history approach:
Either that or it’s “Save the Post Office: Vote Joe Biden!”, which would be an innovative campaign strategy to put it mildly.
Sab
Out of idle curiousity I am going to mail myself a bunch of letters from mailboxes around my little city and find out how long it akes them to get back to me. I am intending to mail from various political and social demographics, but all on my side of town. Every mailing will have a letter that says when and where I mailed it, and when they scheduled pickup was.
I mailed my dad’s tax return with a big check on July 14, 2020. Ohio nased fed return that owed so mailed to Fresno CA ( that makes sense? used to go to Cincinnati.) Bank statement came and check still hasn’t cleared.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Sister Golden Bear: Good.
tokyokie
@Sister Golden Bear:
And keep in mind that temporary injunctions are not granted unless the judge believes that the party seeking the TRO is likely to win at the trial level.
Roger Moore
@New Deal democrat:
Except Biden isn’t really running a front porch campaign; he’s running a Zoom campaign. Yes, he’s mostly staying home, but he’s not relying exclusively on surrogates, which was the method in the traditional front porch campaign. He’s actively engaged with voters using modern technology. If anything, campaigning that way gives him more time to connect to voters because he isn’t spending time moving from place to place. He can do a rally in North Carolina and jump straight to a fund raiser in California without missing a beat.
WaterGirl
@Sab: Thanks so much for sharing that! That makes my day.
Adam L Silverman
@Jinchi: Given how his face looks, aside from the normal changes brought on by aging and weight gain, someone appears to have. He’s been beaten badly – jaw/mandible, cheek bones, nose, eye sockets. You can tell, even under the make up, when they do close ups of him. And it would help to explain why he suddenly decided he needed to paint his face various shades ranging from pumpkin to tangerine to rotisserie chicken about 20 years or so ago. My guess is he tried to play grab ass with the wrong guys’ wife or daughter or both and he was taught an abject lesson.
Falling Diphthong
Thiessen did an interview with Trump last month, along Thiessen’s more recent “alas, had the president just listened to me…” schtick as opposed to the spring’s “virus, what virus?” attempts. And what stuck out to me was that when Thiessen arrived the president was going over his polls, which were incredibly excellent.
Now of course this is stagecraft. Most presidents would be “hard at work on the pandemic” when the reporter arrived. Some would instead go for “dealing with an urgent foreign policy matter, because the rest of the job doesn’t stop for the pandemic.” Trump decided the way to present himself was as a man insisting his crowd size was bigger than everyone knew it was.
WaterGirl
@Sab: I’m not sure I should tell you that if you hit COMMENT (on the left side, in the same menu bar) it takes you right to the comment box.
Adam L Silverman
@Sister Golden Bear: Good!
Kent
@Geoduck: Yesterday an asshole F250 driver with a 4×8 plywood Culp sign in the back of his truck cut me off in the turning circle of my neighborhood. I almost crashed into him. I was in the circle and he came barreling in without stopping like was supposed to.
This is Camas WA (Portland suburb) that is pretty purple but has a vocal MAGA minority who have to asshole to the max
I see a few Inslee signs and some Culp but mostly it’s Jaime Herrera Beutler signs everywhere. She must have an enormous sign budget.
Adam L Silverman
@Kent: Bozhe Moi!
Sister Golden Bear
@tokyokie: I’m aware. Given Bostock, it wasn’t unexpected, but the way the Republicans have packed the courts, ya never know.
VOR
OT, but there is a report Trump considered visiting the George Floyd memorial during his visit to Minnesota today. Per MN Governor Walz (D):
Gotta say, I think Governor Walz has a better track record for honesty than the White House.
Jinchi
I’d put Biden’s chances of winning the election at about 95% – a virtual certainty – but I wouldn’t want my life to hinge on that extra 5%. Desperation might be a bit much, you should give your soul some space to hope, but worry is what any sane mind would do until this guy is dragged from the office.
Catherine D.
@Adam L Silverman:
Or the wrong woman.
Kent
Some local Trump Campaign news from Portland
mrmoshpotato
@Sister Golden Bear: Good!
MisterForkbeard
@RepubAnon: It’s alarming, but there’s an explicit note in here that Trump is blowing up the post office because he thinks mail-in voting during a pandemic MIGHT help Democrats.
@Splitting Image: I’ve heard it. Lots of bots/trolls on facebook use it or a variation of it.
Sab
@WaterGirl: I know that. I like to scroll by the other offerings. Otherwise I forget they are there. I often do it your way also when I really need to comment NOW (usually a bad idea.)
mrmoshpotato
@Sab:
Be happy about it. It was a terrible movie.
laura
@Adam L Silverman: could you speculate that he was on the receiving end of some wet work for business related actions or do you believe it was just domestic lady messiness?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@New Deal democrat: Trump’s rallies in 2016 also gave him free media. While he’ll get his share as the incumbent, it’s not like he got 4 years ago.
JPL
I would not mind an ad that said President Clinton lied about a consensual affair and trump lied about that plus tens of thousands other things. Then start rolling the lies.
Ken
Well, duh.
The Moar You Know
Conway is not Trump’s employee. She works for the Mercers.
So does George, which is something you might want to think about.
something fabulous
@Adam L Silverman: EWW
Sab
@mrmoshpotato: I didn’t even know it was a movie. I just like the title. Makes me laugh and cheers me up. Sucks to know popular culture like you do. I just wander in my happy innocence/ignorance.
something fabulous
@something fabulous: Ewww
something fabulous
@something fabulous: eeeeew
Kay
Just breathtaking, the extent of the collapse of the federal government. Nothing works right, or at all.
The ONE thing that could at this point is collect the information and they refuse to do even that.
HumboldtBlue
@J R in WV:
Of course, no explanation needed. I may be a complete idiot at times but I am usually rational and still ridiculously handsome.
@WaterGirl:
There is need to know and there is need to know if you know what’s good for ya!
JPL
@VOR: You mean the guy who said the police in Minnesota were not allowed to do what they should be able to do? That guy? Yeah probably best that he didn’t
Bobby Thomson
@WaterGirl: “double” may be overstating it – but I’ve seen people come out of Air Force One who for a split second look like the president.
Adam L Silverman
@Kent: I’ll just leave this here:
balloon-juice.com/2015/10/09/bad-historical-analogy-theater-jewish-armed-resistance-against-the-nazi…
Comrade Scrutinizer
Kelly Anne Conway is Robert Mercer’s tool. Her job is safe as long as she’s good with them.
Adam L Silverman
@cain: He just picks up his ball and carries it over to the green and drops it two inches from the cup.
Kay
Maybe the postal service could collect the numbers on the school cases. They go to every school 5 days a week. Let’s scrape together our few functioning institutions, give them a bunch of additional funding and parcel out the work.
It’s not just that they’re not tracking it in real time- they won’t have collected any national information for the next pandemic.
Adam L Silverman
@J R in WV: @HumboldtBlue: I’m missing something, did she get married and change her name? Get divorced and change her name? Or just change her name?
Ken
Personally I lean toward “tried to play when you own ten million dollars, it’s the bank’s problem with the Russian Mafia and found out how very, very wrong he was.”
Adam L Silverman
@WaterGirl: He’s at a farm upstate where he can run around all day and play with the other political directors.
NotMax
Quasi-OT. Necessarily gentler than some of his other efforts, nevertheless betcha Mr. R’s latest will result in you cracking a smile.
cain
@The Moar You Know:
Yeah, I think they are both playing a game. They are going to get money either way.
Adam L Silverman
@Geoduck:
We told you folks not to mess around with the experimental matter transporter.//
Ken
Oh, the poor things. Are there no surgeons who could help?
mrmoshpotato
@Sab:
Haha
JPL
So Jill Biden’s ex is claiming Joe is a homewrecker, and he’s writing a book. Maybe he should be meet up with Tara Reade. What’s next?
Yutsano
@Kent: BTW did you see this dog’s breakfast of a column from Henry Olsen? Hoo boy he really should at least visit the other Washington before releasing such stupidity.
Adam L Silverman
@laura: Could’ve been either one.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
Tuvix was a far, far better character than either of the two templates ever were.
;)
HumboldtBlue
The Minsk Philharmonic has made an appearance.
Adam L Silverman
@The Moar You Know: Conway’s grandfather was a senior enforcer for the Philadelphia mob, which controlled things into New Jersey. His career was ending as the President was moving into the Atlantic City casino business, using one of the mob’s lawyers who was Don McGahn’s uncle, to resolve his problems with the NJ Gaming Commission that should have denied him a gaming license. He knows exactly what happens to him if he upsets KellyAnne.
gwangung
@Bobby Thomson:
Fortunately, that last one contains plenty of offense for Biden.
mrmoshpotato
@HumboldtBlue:
Fixed.
HumboldtBlue
@Adam L Silverman:
Nah, just got the name incorrect.
Elsewhere it’s the Philadelphia 76ers versus the Boston Celtics in the NBA playoffs and as always, Fuck the Celtics!
@mrmoshpotato:
Hah!
cain
@Kay: You can add Red state govts to the tally. It’s just amazing how wilful they are – they just can’t accept that they need to change their behavior.
We are going to be dealing with this for a long time to come… I doubt we will ever get rid of it with this kind of nonsense.
Adam L Silverman
@Ken: My only issue with that scenario, which is plausible, is he would have had his personal hitters – Keith Schiller and Matty Calamari – with him and in close proximity for interactions like that to ensure he didn’t get hit. It is more likely to have occurred at a social event where a pissed off husband and/or father could get close before Schiller and/or Calamari could get to him and intervene.
Sab
@mrmoshpotato: Haha back at you. I was oblivious to culture references Just happy in the moment.
Not personal. We each have a different perspective. I hope Watergirl takes it my way, or at least sees it my way even if she meant it otherwise.
This is why I avoid popular culture.
NotMax
OT.
Down in peach country, State Rep. Tommy Benton Stripped Of Chairmanship After ‘Disgusting’ John Lewis Remarks .
The very least that could be done to such a putrid, vile, hate-filled, racist mound of scum. Homo Scrape-the-bottom-of-the-barreliens.
WaterGirl
@Sab: I will look forward to seeing the results of your experiment.
mrmoshpotato
@Sab: I highly recommend avoiding terrible movies. House of the Dead – also terrible. :)
Manos The Hands of Fate – fuckin’ masterpiece!
CarolPW
@Mousebumples: I live in eastern Washington state, very red area, but I have been a Democrat since the 60’s. The NRCC has been calling me frequently the last couple of months. I had not answered until last week when I was so pissed about the Post Office I answered and told the lady she could go fuck herself (and why) and to not call me again. Waiting to see if that stops the calls or not.
Sab
@Sab: I was irked. Now I am embarrassed that I was irked. Life in Ohio is unpleasant. We are all on the knife edge politically
Forgot reply button. Response to mrmosshpotato
Hope I got his nym right.
Miss Bianca
@Sab: Now, ours in CO go to Cincinnati instead of CA. The lady at the PO and I were talking about it as I bought a certified mail receipt for my tax return.
WTAF?
WaterGirl
@Adam L Silverman: ha!
Roger Moore
@The Moar You Know:
I have always assumed their opposite political stances were calculated. They are pure mercenaries without a drop of real conviction between them. Having one in tight with Trump and one a never-Trumper guarantees they’ll still have work no matter how things turn out.
mrmoshpotato
@Roger Moore:
Yup. George is full of shit past his eyeballs.
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
There’s a special circle of Hell wherein anti-gems such as Frankenstein’s Great Aunt Tillie run on an endless loop.
Stale, moldy popcorn and warm, flat sodas provided gratis.
:)
Sab
@Miss Bianca: So useful to have our tax returns and payments wandering the nation.
Yutsano might have a theory. I am guessing no, there is no theory. Just phucking with the bureaucracy phucks up governance.
Barbara
@Frank Wilhoit: There is a certain kind of person who does not hear criticism or truth if it hurts. I had a secretary who wore a new outfit nearly every day. She was broke all the time, but she was so insecure that she basically lived via her wardrobe. Anywho, we were talking to each other and I said something like “some colors are more flattering than others for people with certain coloring” — just really generally, and she kept saying thank you. All she heard was, “you look great in black,” or whatever it was. I don’t know what Trump hears when people tell him the truth, but it isn’t what you or I would hear.
Sister Golden Bear
@Adam L Silverman:
Could someone really do that much damage before Trump’s goons intervened?
mrmoshpotato
I don’t think things are going smoothly on Isla Nublar.
Sandia Blanca
@J R in WV: I was confused when you mentioned an article that discussed events that didn’t happen–that IS this very article cited in this post. Or did you mean something else?
moops
Isn’t “Ground Game” just code for what you write in the memo box when you write a huge check to your friends from the campaign account? The spent a hundred million in 2016 on Ground Game and there wasn’t anything there. It should be illegal to do that, but here we are.
Adam L Silverman
@Sister Golden Bear: Yes, if they catch him at a social event. Especially something where they would be well out of arm reach and he could be gotten alone.
Geminid
@Adam L Silverman: Matty Calamari? Maybe there was a squid pro quo.
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
Begin marketing My Pet
RockBone, silly.Along with Boney Babies.
“Kids, collect them all!”
:)
WaterGirl
@Sab: If I was supposed to take offense at something in this thread, I totally missed it. So we’re good. :-)
I went back and tried to figure it out, was is that the potato man :-) said there was a movie called No Cabin Fever For Us! ?
I think that was a joke on his part, but if there was a movie, I certainly never heard of it.
Kent
Yeah, jungle primary results really don’t mean that much. Especially when one party has multiple candidates competing and the other just a single incumbent. I really couldn’t follow his argument. But we have plenty of polling and past experience to suggest he is full of shit. The last time a Republican won the presidential election in WA was 1984 when Reagan beat Mondale. The last Republican to win state-wide for governor was John Spellman in 1985. But yes, the hidden red wave is going to sweep Trump into office here in WA this time. Because, rural Washington is growing and the Puget Sound suburbs are not? Heh.
Kent
It won’t. They aren’t that organized or efficient. It’s about the grift. And besides, no one wants to cut their numbers down because that looks bad.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax:
SiubhanDuinne
@Sister Golden Bear:
Well, I’m tearing up on your behalf. Good news. Thank you for sharing your amazing journey over the past several years, including the legal/political challenges and victories.
Adam L Silverman
He actually told the truth about something!
SiubhanDuinne
@Sab: Do keep track and let us know the results of your experiment.
Captain C
@Catherine D.: Or got behind on his debts to the wrong people (ones who don’t accept legal bankruptcy as an excuse).
Though I could see a combination of all of the above, too.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Michelle Obama is the last speaker tonight, right? though I gather she’s already recorded her speech. Nicolle Wallace played a bit of it, I think. I saw something that they’ve recruited people to serve as an audience, they’re going to show they’re live reactions. If I have that right, I’d like to see that.
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
“Hey, there’s no sauce on these ribs!”
:)
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: There is a movie called Cabin Fever. It is not a good movie. As result, no Cabin Fever for you is rather good advice.
mrmoshpotato
@WaterGirl: It’s a movie called Cabin Fever from 2002 by Eli Roth.
Five college graduates rent a cabin in the woods and begin to fall victim to a horrifying flesh-eating virus, which attracts the unwanted attention of the homicidal locals.
It’s terrible. Watch Jurassic Park instead. They have a T Rex!
Adam L Silverman
@Geminid: Frankly, everyone in the writer’s room for this stuff should be fired. And he looks just like you’d expect:
Mike in NC
@Geminid: Beat me with the calamari joke!
SiubhanDuinne
@Catherine D.:
Dare we hope that Melania laid into him good and hard?
Kay
@cain:
If they find out there are persistent effects of the virus, they’ll want to know how children caught it. Under what conditions. I just can’t believe they’re not planning on collecting this information. They need it now, sure, to plan next week but they’re just going to let all this information slip thru their hands? They’ll never be able to recover it.
Require every public school to report infections. They can remove the personal identifier information (like they do when they report test scores) and still report the basic information- age, sex, ethnicity, reported preexisting conditions. What a huge, huge loss for researchers.
HumboldtBlue
I’m not a cable TV watcher cuz I’m too poor to afford the shitty service available here but I am a sports streamer and I just saw an ad for a Smirnoff product that I believe featured folks from a Drag Queen show.
I can remember when liquor was banned from TV ads and the only black people you saw in ads were sports celebrities. Now we get terrible Smirnoff blends and fabulous black drag queens, the times they are a changin’.
Captain C
@Adam L Silverman: “Hey Donnie, we got this young one for ya, looks just like Ivanka, come this way…”
Baud
@Adam L Silverman:
I take it the Jews are less excited about the coming Battle of Armageddon.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: “There’s no meat either! They’re just bones! Literally just bones! And not this Bones!”
Ahhhh, I miss Bones. It was a great, albeit gorey, show. Good effects department.
Calouste
@Adam L Silverman: Well, partially. Of course the US moved the embassy. The Israeli capital didn’t move.
gwangung
@Kay: I can believe this.
Fundamentally stupid, selfish people.
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: Pretty much.
WaterGirl
@mrmoshpotato:
It sounds utterly charming.
@Omnes Omnibus:
I can’t imagine why you thought it wasn’t a good movie. //
NotMax
@HumboldtBlue
Fingers duly crossed it was NOT for their watermelon flavor.
//
SiubhanDuinne
@Kay:
The wilful stupidity is going to kill us. Literally.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: I don’t know why I even try to help anymore.
Adam L Silverman
What are the odds that Connecticut law enforcement and the Capitol Police have issued a BOLO for Nina Turner?
mrmoshpotato
@HumboldtBlue: Not sure if you’re happy, sad or confused.
J R in WV
@Sandia Blanca:
No, no, I was confused… forgive me, as I say, I’m not good with author names, etc.
I read the article about R campaign events not taking place in another place on the WWWeb, and the bits quoted here didn’t seem to include those bits. My confusion, totally, I suspect.
Sorry I confused you too!!!
Mike in NC
@Adam L Silverman: Matt “Goombah” Calamari
SiubhanDuinne
@Adam L Silverman:
I don’t think she changed anything. I think someone saw (or thought) “Harris,” as in Kamala, and had a little brain fart as they typed. Could happen to anyone.
Calouste
@Adam L Silverman: Any chance those injuries would be consistent with the impact of a golf club? It would be straightforward to prove your theory, it should take 2 months or so to recover from injuries like that, so he should have disappeared from the papers for that amount of time.
NotMax
@WaterGirl
Yup. Those friendly, mirthful flesh-eating viruses are so much more entertaining.
“You’ll die laughing.”
– Rolling Bone
:)
Baud
@Adam L Silverman:
His attempt to rehabilitate himself won’t work on me, but it gives me joy that he is pissing off the bros in the attempt.
Sister Golden Bear
@SiubhanDuinne:
I’ll chip in to get her martial arts training.
dmsilev
Via the Post, this was probably inevitable:
Geminid
@Mike in NC: I’m good at bad jokes.
mrmoshpotato
@Adam L Silverman: That Bloomberg headline is a-fucking-dorable. ?
MisterForkbeard
@Adam L Silverman: Nah. Don’t you understand that Bernie betrayed all Left people when he dropped out?
Seriously, this is what they’re going with. Only people like Nina Turner have the will to stay strong. Oh, and she should have been VP or something.
HumboldtBlue
@Mike in NC:
He’s good friends with Joey Bologna from Philly PD.
@SiubhanDuinne:
Yup.
dmsilev
@Adam L Silverman: According to some of his more …fervent followers, Bernie Sanders stabbed Bernie Sanders in the back, an act which if nothing else speaks well for his flexibility and agility.
NotMax
@dmsilev
Aren’t they under indictment? Or am I misremembering?
mrmoshpotato
@Mike in NC: Matt “Nice place you got here. Be a shame if anything happened to it” Calamari
Baud
@dmsilev:
If I were one of his fervant followers who felt betrayed, I might point out that Bernie could have stood up to them in 2016 and saved the country a lot of grief.
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
I never thought I’d align with Speaker David Ralston on anything, but I give him full marks for acting swiftly and decisively in this case.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: Hey now. Maybe we fleshy skeletons just haven’t discovered a flesh-eating virus that knows how to PARTY!
Geoduck
@Kent: Beutler used to be our rep as well, before we got a new district centered around Olympia. I suppose it made her safer in re-election terms, but I was glad to be rid of her. Denny Heck, now running for Lt. Gov, was nothing special, but I’ll take a Dem back-bencher any day.
Martin
@Frank Wilhoit: It’s why nobody killed Obama – nobody gets close enough. As soon as you start seeing people that might stand up to you, you get rid of them, and replace them with sycophants. If they get religion, you get rid of them too. There’s 7 billion people on earth, surely we can always find a few dozen who will always tell your clothes are glorious.
So press secretaries keep legitimate reporters away. In the old days he’d just blackmail them with help from the Enquirer. Pretty sure that’s the leash that’s on Graham.
It’s part of the benefit of having never been a danger to anyone. Even a mayor or governor is a threat, but a real estate guy and a reality TV host? Who cares about that guy? You don’t stand up to nobodies and Trump was always a nobody. But he hit back hard. There was no benefit to standing up to him, but there was a lot of risk in doing so.
Then one day he wasn’t a nobody. The people from his old world were also nobodies, so they wouldn’t be believed, and the people from his new world were all sycophants since they were all new to him. It’s taken some time for them to see something, to get kicked out, and then to be heard. And honestly, it’s hard to believe even them, because it’s so wildly fantastic that the purported greatest democracy in the world elected a guy who is so grossly incompetent in every way. To face that full-on, you have to accept with it that democracy can work pretty fucking poorly, and perhaps the assumption that we’re all fundamentally the same and act in good faith is complete bullshit. That’s hard for anyone to face.
mrmoshpotato
@dmsilev: I know they aren’t allowing reporters at the RNC (fascists), but is it even being broadcast?
mrmoshpotato
@dmsilev: LOL
joel hanes
@Sab:
The IRS sent almost everyone home to work from home fairly early-on, maybe mid-March. Many of their offices closed down almost completely for in-person work.
There are reports from IRS employees that US Mail to the IRS was received and stored, unopened, for at least a month. (Electronic filing and payments continued more or less as usual.)
This is consonant with my own experience: I sent the IRS a check in mid-June and it finally cleared the bank early in August.
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
You’re well on the way to selling to Hollywood Pauly Shore’s big comeback vehicle. Title it Naked Munch and it’s practically a shoo-in for the burgeoning direct to video market.
;)
Kay
@SiubhanDuinne:
I don’t think anything OTHER than a government can collect information on children – children would be protected from any private effort like that- and it should be the federal government, because they already require public schools to collect and report reams of other information. It wouldn’t even be that difficult for the schools- they’re already annually reporting absences, for example. Can you imagine how valuable? Maybe the incidence is REALLY low for little kids but much higher for those over 12. That changes the whole problem for schools. Starts to let them get their arms around it. At the end of this they will flying as blind as they were when it started. They’ll have only what amounts to almost anecdotal info- each school.
dmsilev
@NotMax: Yes, they’re facing charges of some sort or another (I don’t remember the details). It’s the RNC; a couple more accused criminals will hardly be noticeable.
dmsilev
@mrmoshpotato: Rumor has it they’re still using the free version of Zoom, so the feed will cut out after 45 minutes.
Splitting Image
@Adam L Silverman:
Thanks. It must have tanked hard if Trump abandoned it so quickly.
Kent
The blue parts of WA-3rd (Vancouver and suburbs) are growing faster than the red parts (rural Clark County and Cowlitz and Lewis Counties). A lot of it is Portlanders moving across the river for cheaper housing and such. But some of it is also MAGA Oregonians moving across to cut their income taxes and find exurban sprawl lots in places like Battle Ground where they can shoot their guns and ride their ATVs. So kind of a wash. But I think the district must be slowly getting more and more blue.
We shall see. I wish we had a stronger candidate than Carolyn Long. But you go with who you have.
SiubhanDuinne
@mrmoshpotato:
I don’t know for sure, but since Donnie never met a TV camera he didn’t love (and since it’s already been reported that he’s going to make an appearance all four nights), I’m guessing yes.
Poe Larity
When your opponent is down, it is important to keep kicking.
For those of you in swing states, or maybe even Kansas, signing up for the Trump maillist is a good way to take one for the team and waste their resources.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@dmsilev:
good lord
Mike in NC
@mrmoshpotato: Wife is a huge fan of the old ‘Perry Mason’ show with Raymond Burr. The other day she taped a black and white episode about a family of Italian-Americans in the Long Beach, CA area. They spent most of the show yelling at each other at the dining room table while gobbling down bowls of spaghetti. Talk about offensive stereotypes. Through the magic Internet I was able to determine that episode dated from 1965!
sanjeevs
Trump’s former DHS Chief of Staff Miles Taylor on Trump (he’s now a never Trumper_
twitter.com/RVAT2020/status/1295428130170195968
Scary, especially the mention of Trump’s 2nd term
NotMax
@Jim, Foolish Literalist
“Next up, Mr. (gets name wrong) and his Suburban Housewife!”
//
different-church-lady
188 comments already? I’ve been asleep at the switch…
For him or for us? The horrible thought I have is that it feels inevitable that some fresh new crisis is bound to arrive before November 3, and it we will be just as incapacitated and frozen as we are now, because whether we like it or not we only move in the direction the president takes us in.
different-church-lady
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It’s really cool Trump is peddling racism at a time when racism has never been less popular.
Baud
Via LGM
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Stop that! I loved what you wrote.
NotMax
@Mike in NC
Gotta link it (1969).
:)
Barbara
@Baud: It helps when those who are the most strident about holding caucuses prove themselves to be incapable of actually holding a caucus that meets even minimal standards of fairness.
dmsilev
@Baud: Will nobody thing of the corn dogs?
Jinchi
What about the Navy seal convicted of war crimes?
Ken
Gotta dance with the one who brung ya.
SiubhanDuinne
Hope NotMax is still around.
youtu.be/AAkGG4mCiX0
dmsilev
@Jinchi: You have to hold some people back so they can be surprise guests.
WaterGirl
@Sab:
That’s why I refer to him as mr. potato – I can never recall how to spell it.
Ken
@dmsilev: They can still have corn dogs and fried butter. Then they can go cast votes in a primary, like everyone else.
Besides, even in four years, do you think people will want to crowd into a small room?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
saying the quiet part out loud again
It wasn’t even about those people, it was about the other those people. Has there ever been a politician more openly contemptuous of his strongest supporters?
david
Tried watching that Democratic Convention thing on NBC, and it took less than 3 minutes to see a reporter interviewing some random “regular citizen” from Michigan who’s a self-described “disturbed Republican”, and she doesn’t care about the issues she just wants someone who “can reach across the aisle” and that was pretty much all I could take of this crap.
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne: We’re number one, btw when you look at the number of cases per 100,000
Martin
@Ken: If Iowans don’t want a say in the selection of the Dem nominee, that’s their choice.
Bex
@Adam L Silverman: Do you think he got the idea from Elizabeth I who painted her face white with ceruse to cover up her smallpox scars? Somehow I doubt it.
zhena gogolia
Love this Randy Rainbow, “Kamala” (Camelot):
youtube.com/watch?v=0RbKStEFNT8
Uncle Cosmo
@Mike in NC: Just FTR, “goombah” comes from cumpà (or compare), which in southern Italian dialects can mean “godfather” or “witness at a wedding” or “friend/comrade,” most commonly the latter. Not anything close to the derisive mobbed-up Murkkan corruption.
(Most of my summer vacations as a child were spent in Mom’s family’s home town in WV. While there we always visited this one older couple who lived down the street from my grandmother’s. I never understood why – they weren’t related to her, weren’t even Italian. I asked Dad once & he said they were cumpàs.
(Many years later I found out they’d hired my future mother to work in their dry-cleaners in a coal-mining town down the road … and every time they saw this one athletic Italian-American bachelor miner bringing in clothes, they’d very carefully arrange to both be busy in the back & send her to the counter. My future father wasn’t much for chatting up the ladies, & it took a little while … & that’s why we went by their house whenever we were in town. Friends indeed.)
JPL
@sanjeevs: It’s a sad day when that is not covered 24/7, but because we are in 24/7 chaos mode it doesn’t register.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
I assume so. The schedule lists both her and Bernie as the 10-11 pm slot. I’ll be streaming but probably mute Bernie, so I’ll have to keep an eye on the screen.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Adam L Silverman:
I want to believe this is true. Who was on Celebrity Apprentice in the early aughts or so who could have gotten close enough?
Joan Rivers? I bet she fought dirty, and agile.
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
Me likey. Mahalo.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@WaterGirl: The kid loves the mrmoshpotato nym.
dmsilev
Since the primetime DNC starts in about ten minutes, maybe a new thread for that?
Edit: Simultaneously with the comment, a thread appears. Magic!
bluefoot
@Sab: Interesting experiment. Please let us know how it turns out. I have noticed that mail has become very variable – some gets to me quickly, some takes 2 or more weeks. I haven’t checked against the locations of origin to see if there’s any correlation.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
a fresh and fun abuse of power! right after this word from our sponsors
Cameron
@dmsilev: Well, Michael Cohen tells us Trump is a fan of water sports…
Bill Arnold
@Bobby Thomson:
They can be worked.
Another Scott
@dmsilev: It was their audition, after all.
(groucho-roll-eyes.gif)
Cheers,
Scott.
Danielx
@Adam L Silverman:
“my accesssss…my PRECIOUS!”
Dan B
@Sister Golden Bear: Just a shout out about the appeals court shooting down HHS. It’s good news that every minority should applaud.
@Sister Golden Bear:
Adam L Silverman
@Bex: He wouldn’t know Elizabeth the First from Elizabeth Warren.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Adam L Silverman: or his sister Elizabeth, who as portrayed in Mary Trump’s book is almost a complete non-entity
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
He’s going to surprise the left into adoring him by pardoning Snowjob.
different-church-lady
@Cameron: That’s it: he’s gonna pardon Happy Days for jumping the shark!
different-church-lady
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Well, the far left, at any rate…
Sebastian
@Adam L Silverman:
I thought that was when he tried his usual stiffing the contractor/lender with the mob and they taught him to fear stairs.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@different-church-lady:
Shorter David Sirota:
”Trump has proven that he is truly the most progressive candidate – with this one action, he has destroyed the oppressive national security state.”
Greenwald couldn’t be reached for comment, as he collapsed and drowned in a gigantic puddle of his own splooge. Curiously, his right arm was raised in salute (and an elegant little hand flip) to the wisdom of his Leader.
different-church-lady
I love bourbon.
(DCL, +2 gin drinks…)
different-church-lady
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Jesus, stop teasing me…
Uncle Cosmo
Strikes me far more likely he tried to play grab-cash with some Mafiyoso’s bank account & the mob muscle threw him down a flight of concrete stairs – with a little alfresco skeletal restructuring as they dragged him face-down by his feet back up the staircase for another gravity-assisted trip earthward.
But opinions differ.
(ETA Sebastian got there foist at #230 supra, dammitol.)
(PS Did you mean object lesson? Accept the award for Today’s Sly Pun on behalf of your subconscious.)
Chris Johnson
@Adam L Silverman: You’ve said that before, Adam, and I took notice… but I think it is much more likely that he went to Russia to get money, and then didn’t think he had to pay them.
It seems like that would explain a lot, including why he got himself to be President and what he’s been doing while he was one.
People keep expecting sex or perversion-related kompromat but the real kompromat is this: he is a beaten dog without any real money or power of his own, and nobody must ever, EVER suggest this. It is all an enormous gilded fake, a huge lie.
Putin, Russian oligarchs, own him. And put up the money so he can posture like a big boy that matters… because they can use somebody in that position. But it’s all completely fake. And the notion of him getting savagely beat up twenty years ago or so would be part of that story.
Sebastian
@Adam L Silverman:
Not necessarily. Just a matter of manpower and number of guns. Not a lot Schiller and Calamari can do if the mob shows up with ten or twenty armed guys.
With that said, social event is possible but in that case someone might have noticed that he disappeared? Or they might have gotten him when he went to a hooker. So many possibilities with this guy!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Adam L Silverman: It’s hard to see Trump not boasting of something like that and claiming he won the fight and Trump has had access to professional make up people who would have recommend better options.
My personal theory is the Orange Julius look is because of some quack medicine thing. Someone told Trump that make up base cuts down on infections or something.
Sebastian
@Calouste:
You might be on to something …
Chris Johnson
@The Moar You Know: The Mercers are Cambridge Analytica, and Breitbart News. They are very sketchy and mysterious and don’t want to reveal their power level or what they’re up to.
In other words, Russian as fuck, and no wonder Trump doesn’t dare cross Kellyanne Conway. The whole alt-right scene is deeply tied to Russian operations and Cambridge Analytica is a whole datamining operation for the purpose of enabling all that.
joel hanes
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
We’ve seen Trump without makeup (and without lifts in his shoes) in those photos from the church service that he crashed on the way back from a golf outing, and from the early photos at the omelette bar at Mar A Lago.
church
omelette bar
Bill Arnold
@Chris Johnson:
Robert Mercer is quite American. In his younger days he was a respected computational linguistics researcher (at an US industrial lab) who was involved in some of the first decent work on speech recognition. Some of that was when the algorithms were too slow to run in realtime even on mainframes.
He went to the dark side (hedge fund, early 90s?) to become rich and is said to consider net worth to be highly correlated with personal worth. (Might have always been right wing, dunno.)