Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

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

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

White supremacy is terrorism.

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Come on, man.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / Rising Dawn Open Thread: Hopefully, A Tipping Point

Rising Dawn Open Thread: Hopefully, A Tipping Point

by | 153 Comments

This post is in: , , , , ,

Since Black women have been the backbone of the Democratic party, it would be extremely fitting if it turns out that three Black women journalists heralded the public implosion of the GOP’s latest Thane of Cawdor.


“Trump’s first try at pivoting to Harris blows up in his face”:

Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday took his first big swing at the revamped Democratic ticket — and it did not go well for him.

Trump participated in a controversial live interview at a convention of Black journalists in Chicago and quickly stumbled into racially insensitive remarks about Vice President Kamala Harris as he questioned her identity and qualifications…

His remarks, one of many tense exchanges in a Q&A session at the National Association of Black Journalists, underscored the Trump campaign’s floundering efforts to blunt the momentum of Harris since President Joe Biden agreed to drop his reelection bid.

The interview marked Trump’s first major attempt to pivot a campaign designed to defeat Biden toward a younger and more challenging opponent, and laid bare the difficulties the Republican nominee and his movement more broadly may have in taking on a woman of color without veering into misogynistic, racist invective. While many in Trump’s base may agree with his blunt assessment of Harris as a political token, it may reinforce the former president’s vulnerabilities with swing voters heading into the final stretch of what looks to be a very close election…

Trump’s entire 34-minute exchange with Scott and two other journalists on stage was contentious, as the GOP nominee groused about not being able to hear the questions, a delayed start that he blamed on the conference’s own technical problems and Harris’ decision not to appear before the National Association of Black Journalists.

In his most watched public appearance since Harris took over for Biden atop the Democratic ticket, Trump’s coarse, cutting and at times snappish responses, including calling one of Scott’s questions “nasty,” showed him to be very much the same person he has always been despite the assassination attempt earlier this month that he initially claimed had changed his outlook and approach…

Rising Dawn Open Thread: Hopefully, A Tipping Point

Conservative / libertarian take:

Reader Interactions

153Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    Trump: I have never been asked a question in such a horrible manner, first question. You don’t even say “Hello, how are you.”

     

    Hello, it’s me. I was wondering if after all these years you’d like to answer some questions To go over everything. They say that time’s supposed to heal ya, but I ain’t done much healing from your administration.

  3. 3.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Politico is still cleaning up for Trump.  It was so much worse than just the ‘not black’ thing.

    Holy shit, Loomer.  That’s racist as HELL.  Trump believes it all, too.  His campaign has said that being convicted will make black men like him more.

    Marcus, Kamala is inherently more exciting than Biden.  All of Biden’s excitement was the press’s determination to drag him down.  You’re blaming the victim.  Still, having lost that narrative, they do have much more room to report on how bad Republicans are.

  4. 4.

    TBone

    It’s safe to say this has not been the greatest week ever for Blake Masters or Peter Thiel. Despite outspending Hamadeh at least 3-1, Masters went on to lose in a crowded Republican primary in AZ-08.

    Source: Business Insider

  7. 7.

    TBone

    My fervent hope is that we can stay in a state of array without quibbling (my polite term) or recriminations over the Veep pick or anything else.  It’s important that we have no weakness to exploit from here on out, they’re gonna be searching out any teeny crack in the facade to widen.

  9. 9.

    sanjeevs

    Looks like Nashville has its George Santos – the Trump endorsed Andy Ogles

    Ogles has faced criticism that he hasn’t been truthful about his career. News Channel 5 in Nashville reported that Ogles embellished his résumé in several ways. According to the report, Ogles had said he was an economist by profession, though didn’t have the educational experience to back it up. He also said he worked in law enforcement, revealed to be a volunteer reserve deputy for Williamson County Sheriff’s Office, a position from which he was terminated.
    He also had to amend his Federal Election Commission reports to reflect that a $320,000 loan he reported making to his campaign was actually a $20,000 loan. Ogles’s campaign said it was a mistake at the time.

    Trump Endorsement Saves Lawmaker Dogged by Resume Questions – WSJ

  10. 10.

    JWR

    God, that tie! Somebody should ask him why he’s so weird and his mom dresses him funny.

  12. 12.

    Bugboy

    Can someone please explain how Trump’s ear grew back, and why hasn’t anyone noticed?

  19. 19.

    JWR

    According to the Politico article:

    Trump’s entire 34-minute exchange with Scott and two other journalists on stage was contentious, as the GOP nominee groused about not being able to hear the questions, a delayed start that he blamed on the conference’s own technical problems and Harris’ decision not to appear before the National Association of Black Journalists.

    But The Guardian reports that:

    During the wait, Philip Lewis, the HuffPost deputy editor, shared on X that the hold-up was being caused by a disagreement between the NABJ and the former president. “I’m told that Trump is demanding that NABJ not do the live factchecking and that’s why the event hasn’t started yet,” he wrote. “We’re in a standoff.”

    I think I’ll take the word of the HuffPost guy.

  26. 26.

    Starfish

    @Bugboy: It’s bigger than that. We just don’t notice that someone tried to shoot him at all. That seems a little weird.

  27. 27.

    Princess

    They can keep Trump in a bunker until Election Day and make Vance the face of the campaign because he’s younger and more pop— oh wait. No.

    HAHAHA.

  31. 31.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Princess:

    They can keep Trump in a bunker until Election Day and make Vance the face of the campaign because he’s younger and more pop— oh wait. No.

    HAHAHA.

    Brilliant! LOL!!!!!

  35. 35.

    p.a.

    During the wait, Philip Lewis, the HuffPost deputy editor, shared on X that the hold-up was being caused by a disagreement between the NABJ and the former president. “I’m told that Trump is demanding that NABJ not do the live factchecking and that’s why the event hasn’t started yet,” he wrote. “We’re in a standoff.”

     

     

     

    espn had a show called Pardon the Interruption where 2 talking heads talked abt sports issues.  Years ago the show included two intern-ish guys with laptops to real-time factcheck the talking heads.  espn!  Years ago!  Doing what our vaunted MSM won’t.😡

  38. 38.

    lowtechcyclist

    I’m working my way through the NABJ interview, a bit at a time (because Lord knows, who can take very much of TCFG at one sitting), and I’ve got to where he’s talking about the border and ‘Black jobs.’ He says other countries are emptying their prisons and mental institutions and sending them here.

    Apparently he’s saying that people fresh from prisons and mental institutions who also don’t speak English are capable of taking jobs away from Black people? Damn, that’s some serious racism, I don’t know how else to say it.

    (I’m also interested in the would-be logistics if this bullshit claim had any truth. Other than Mexico (and if it’s Mexico, why doesn’t he just say ‘Mexico’), all these other countries are a long ways away. Are they running buses from Honduras and Colombia and Venezuela to transport these prisoners and mental patients to the U.S.-Mexico border? It’s not like you could hide that! Seriously, completely aside from the blatant racism which they refuse to call out, why is anyone in the media letting this just slide by?)

  40. 40.

    Suzanne

    Simone Biles, on X, a day after winning her ninth Olympic medal: “I love my black job 🖤”

    God, she’s amazing.

    I am loving how people are also revisiting JD Vance’s bullshit comments about her being weak, as well.

  43. 43.

    MagdaInBlack

    @WereBear: LOL, yes! If you try to reason out what he says, you will short circuit your brain. This is why his cult just nods and cheers: circuits fried.

  44. 44.

    Suzanne

    @Starfish: “Weird” is like “funny”. My friends and I used to differentiate between “funny ha ha” and “funny uh oh”.

    The thing I like about “weird” is that it hits conservatives — who are almost all authoritarian conformists — right in their sore spot. It undermines their presumed cultural authority, it implies that they’ve been conforming to a niche cultural orientation.

    Plus, it obviously deeply unseats Rod Dreher. I loathe Rod Dreher and anything that makes him feel bad is policy I can support. His #divorceddadenergy is so potent one could see it from space.

  45. 45.

    Princess

    I liked the Harris team response to Trump’s NABJ failure —speaking of his hostility. Trump is weird and hostile. No one wants to be around hostile people, no one.

    The response made no mention of the words race or racism. Trump and his people would love us to have a fight about what is racist and what isn’t because they know white people would circle the wagons. Harris won’t go there.

  46. 46.

    WereBear

    I know we’ve expressed worries about Trump’s well-being with a Cassius type as his VP pick, but how many MAGAs want to be ruled by Shady Vance?

    Cult Leaders never prepare for a successor. Why should they care? They are malignant narcissists.

  47. 47.

    Princess

    @Suzanne: Rod Dreher is the weirdest of the weird and deep down he knows it. He may be even weirder than Vance. What person moves to Hungary where he has no family and does not speak the very difficult language except someone trying to hide from his own very deep weirdness?

  49. 49.

    MomSense

    @Princess: Kamala and her campaign is like the cool house on the street where all the neighborhood kids want to play.  Trump’s campaign is the house the kids walk in, feel uncomfortable and get out as soon as possible.

  51. 51.

    Princess

    @MomSense: You think going to the Trump house will be fun because they’re rich and maybe have cool toys but when you get there you find there are all these weird rules about what you can do and where you can sit and the furniture is uncomfortable. And Trump wants to control everything you play.

  53. 53.

    Suzanne

    An additional note on Dreher: a constant theme in his writing is lamentation that much of “Christendom” is becoming less religiously observant and oriented. And a such, the kind of social ordering power of religion is also diminishing, the social hierarchy is different. “Weird” is a further reminder of that. Now they’re the weird outcast kids.

    I mean, I grew up in Mesa, AZ, which was at the time, and may still be, the most conservative large city in the country. Being a girl and wanting to go to college and not aspiring to tradwife life and not being into conservative religion and being an ally to your LGBT friends (who were often threatened and beaten) was a pretty weird thing there at the time. So I adjusted to being out of step — weird — during that time. It became part of my self-concept to be weird. And it’s fine. But these people have no experience of it. Their self-concept is threatened.

  55. 55.

    Suzanne

    @Princess: He has kids with his ex-wife.

    He’s apparently being funded somehow by the Hungarian government, is my understanding. Which is….weird AF.

  56. 56.

    WereBear

    @Suzanne:  His #divorceddadenergy is so potent one could see it from space.

    A famous woman hater ran with a semi-professional woman hater. It’s like it’s designed to get all the woman haters. Including those who hate themselves.

    And leave the rest to us. How many just find their brains are not used to this much thinking, declare themselves out of politics, and become Trump’s people in that they are Christian gun owners, and they don’t vote.

    Just like Trump said.

  57. 57.

    Tony Jay

    After a couple of weeks of Democratic full-spectrum dominance over the electoral battlefield, this – this?!?!? – is the best response the MAGOP could come up with?

    Vance’s ‘Authors -With A Twist’ faceplant was bad, if funny, but this is just Granpaw Failure drunkenly raving outside his more successful black neighbour’s slightly larger house at three in the morning.

    More of it, I say. Deploy that smelly gobshite to more Areas of Opposition and let him spout off with the full range of resentments beloved by the Grey Incel movement. Define yourself, DonOld. Define yourself good and hard.

  58. 58.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Starfish:

    Honestly, it seems completely off brand for TCFFG to almost never mention it, to make it some big martyr-grievance thing. Weird.

  59. 59.

    TBone

    Someone made a meme consisting of four Rethug Family Xmas photos featuring large, automatic weapons of war (where even the kids are posed with guns) and wrote across the middle of the collage:

    “What is weird.”

    I’m sending it across the nation today.

    Some of the guns are bigger than the kids holding them.

  60. 60.

    Suzanne

    @WereBear: I have a feeling that the gender gap is going to be one of the most salient social divides revealed by this election. Dobbs, of course, but there’s more. But there is interesting data coming out that young women are increasingly liberal and young men are increasingly conservative and the gap there is the largest ever in the modern political era. And I also saw a really interesting chart about the gap in attitudes between divorced men and divorced women, and it’s also huge.

  61. 61.

    WereBear

    However the NABJ came to this decision, what happened was three black women professional journalists vs Donald Trump…

    and it was GREAT.

    This is how you talk to him. This is how an audience reacts.

    Makes the corporate media, whatever their stripes, all panic about how they are supposed to take their cues from the Trump campaign when he’s doing things they can’t cover up or “recast.”

  62. 62.

    Princess

    @TBone: Yup, that’s weird. I come from a gun owning hunting family (no hand guns). Guns were locked away when not in use. I can’t imagine having them out for Christmas family photos. That’s weird af.

  63. 63.

    Princess

    @WereBear: And one of those women was completely in the tank for him. Made a little campaign speech for him about inflation, better than he or Vance could do. He had nothing to complain about.

  64. 64.

    WereBear

    @Suzanne: There are open discussions of younger generation dating issues. Sadly, the same issues they have always been.

    Young ladies excited about their careers have better things to do with their time, and they would rather hang out with friends and pets for a while. See what happens.

    South Korean has a movement on this subject which is even larger and more committed, 4B. They have a really serious problem, and this was the only way to make the government pay attention.

  65. 65.

    Mousebumples

    @lowtechcyclist: Apparently he’s saying that people fresh from prisons and mental institutions who also don’t speak English are capable of taking jobs away from Black people? Damn, that’s some serious racism, I don’t know how else to say it.

    I’ve heard speculation that he doesn’t understand the difference between political asylum and insane asylums.

    (if I remember Mary Trump’s first book right, I think there was a family member in a mental asylum, maybe?)

    That confusion might also explain how Hannibal Lecter made its way into his rally speech.

  66. 66.

    Baud

    @Suzanne:

    Young men realizing what white people realized long ago: you can’t have the benefits of liberalism without eroding your place in the social hierarchy.

  67. 67.

    SFAW

    @Bugboy:

    Can someone please explain how Trump’s ear grew back, and why hasn’t anyone noticed?

    Maybe he’s from the same planet as the Tony Shalhoub character in Men in Black? Or maybe his own, personal Jeebus reached out and touched ear?

  68. 68.

    Betty Cracker

    @Suzanne: I feel like I understand Dreher on a molecular level because we’re about the same age, and we were both weird bookish kids who grew up in swampy backwaters around religious fanatics. If he wasn’t a proponent of so many cruel, harmful policies, I’d feel sorry for him. But he is, so fuck him.

  70. 70.

    WereBear

    @Betty Cracker: Yes, I was raised in small town Florida. Doubly scorned because “we weren’t from there.”

    Gave me an early outsider’s view, which bookworm me might have had stamped on their forehead.

    I was told I’d never get married if I didn’t give that up. I did not. 🤣

  71. 71.

    JWR

    Wow. Seems like a lotta loot! From NPR:

    Harris announces record-breaking $310 million July fundraising haul

    Vice President Harris’ presidential campaign says it raised more than $310 million in July, driven by a record-breaking $200 million in the first week after she replaced President Biden as the likely Democratic presidential nominee.

    Last month’s totals include a number of shattered fundraising records, the campaign says, including the fastest time to raise a billion dollars and the weeklong outpouring of donations after a struggling Biden said he would no longer run for president.

  72. 72.

    SFAW

    @Baud: Maybe Mike Lindell’s and Joe Arpaio’s crack(ed) investigative teams can uncover her birth certificate in Trenchtown.

  74. 74.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    Loomer’s “comments” indicates the GQP has finally burned the last copy of Lee Atwater’s Racial Political Playbook.

    I welcome this as it makes it easier to ID the real racists.  The insidiousness of his approach has extended into a lot of other arenas including certain policy items on the left and it’s harder and tedious to combat.

    If somebody is simply out there screaming “ni*CLANG”, the counter messaging is pretty easy by comparison.

  75. 75.

    Matt McIrvin

    I’m deeply, deeply weird. Always have been. I tend to be drawn to other misfits and outcasts. And from pretty early on, I figured out that any people who got grief for being different were, if not natural allies, at least people who shared the same enemies.

    Like I said in another thread, I think when these guys complain that the “weird” attack is hypocritical because aren’t liberals always on the side of the weirdos?… they really don’t get that that’s the point. A huge part of conservatives’ identity is that they’re the voice of the silent majority of long-suffering normal folk under assault from minorities and freaks on all sides who are looking for special treatment or handouts. And they’ve used this as a pretext to bully everyone in the world who isn’t them.

    This is taking that away from them. It’s asserting that they’re not the normal folk. People who can basically get along with people who are very different… that’s modern America. That’s an important skill to have and it’s one that, on some level, most people have developed if not mastered. And it’s what calling the right “weird” is trying to encourage.

  77. 77.

    SFAW

    @WereBear: ​
     

    but at least it is making me laugh.

    Then my work here is done.

    No, not really. I haven’t annoyed Omnes yet today. Well, as far as I know, that is.

  78. 78.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Mousebumples: ​
     

    I’ve heard speculation that he doesn’t understand the difference between political asylum and insane asylums.

    That might may be so, but he still believes that people dumped out of Latin American insane asylums who don’t speak English can take jobs away from Black Americans. ‘Nuff said.

  79. 79.

    BritinChicago

    Lots of (fully justified) criticism of TFG  over his latest self- besmirching. But what I haven’t seen much of is an “He’s too old” buzz around him. That was devastating for Biden. How can we get the same buzz going around  TFG? I think it would actually be more justified about him than about Biden.  (Perhaps Biden’s age shows in ways that are superficially more obvious, though less disqualifying.)

  80. 80.

    TBone

    @NotMax: an anti-Kamala ad popped up in the middle accusing her of being THE most liberal of liberal prosecutors 😆

    Show me more nice time good things, YouToobz!

  81. 81.

    lowtechcyclist

    @JWR:

    Wow. Seems like a lotta loot! From NPR:

    And best of all, none of it will be going to pay for her (nonexistent, unnecessary) defense lawyers!

  82. 82.

    Kay

    @Princess:

    A baffling speech about inflation – if high interest rates on credit cards were the reason people can’t get ahead no one would have gotten ahead for the last 30 years. What does she think the credit card interest rate was before inflation? Whether you’re carrying a balance at 18 or 22 you’re still in trouble.

  83. 83.

    Jeffro

    I know that I would enjoy, nay, savor the trump campaign’s implosion all on its own merits – a Hindenburg with the world’s worst passengers aboard is the opposite of a tragedy.

    The fact that certain RWNJs in my life were so gleeful during the RNC hate-fest, and are utterly despondent now, well…is there a word past ‘savor’?  That’s where I am right now.

    SO GOOD to have actual principles, to not be tethered to a bigoted orange moron, to have a campaign and a party that makes you proud.  Ahhhhhhhh…

  84. 84.

    Kay

    “Hi, I’m Kyle Rittenhouse, Outreach Director for Texas gun rights. A lot of people are upset that I said that I’m going to be writing in Ron Paul for president of the United States, and that is true, I will be writing in Ron Paul,” the 21-year-old said in the clip, referring to the former Texas congressman”Unfortunately, Donald Trump had bad advisors, making him bad on the Second Amendment, and that is my issue,” Rittenhouse added.

    Liberals have some grifters but not anywhere near the number Republicans do. There is just so much money sloshing around on the Right they have to create new ways to waste it.

  85. 85.

    SFAW

    Probably not the first to think of it, but:
    If MVP ever responds to Shitgibbon’s “she didn’t call herself Black” bullshit, one possible retort might be “That will be news to all the people who have used the N-word on me since since I was a kid.”
    Of course, the danger there is that the RepubliKKKans will demand she provide names and dates, “or it didn’t happen,” which will give another shiny object for the MSM.

  86. 86.

    Bupalos

    Just a little break tap on the “three black journalists” love. Trump not only got along fine with 1 of them, they were in cahoots. She did a dumb mysticism-based “question”basically trying to establish Trump as a prophet and referencing his miracle survival of the assassination attempt.

  87. 87.

    NotMax

    @TBone

    As my browser is configured to squelch ads on YouTube, I always forget other people are subjected to them.

    Meantime, a music track to bring things into Focus.
    ;)

  88. 88.

    hueyplong

    Theory: Trump thinks they all look alike, so he was angered and befuddled to see that he had somehow been transported to a criminal courtroom to be cross-examined by three prosecutors at the same time.  Terribly unfair.  No one has ever been treated so unfairly.

  89. 89.

    Ken

    @Starfish: We just don’t notice that someone tried to shoot him at all. That seems a little weird.

    In the universe where the shooter wasn’t the usual right-wing nut, the news media is still running it 24/7, and the House has begun hearings. So it all averages out, though you have to be Doctor Strange to appreciate it.

  92. 92.

    SFAW

    @Jeffro: ​
     

    The fact that certain RWNJs in my life were so gleeful during the RNC hate-fest, and are utterly despondent now, well…is there a word past ‘savor’? That’s where I am right now.

    Palmolive? [As in, “you’re soaking in it,” a reference which we olds get, but maybe not you, youngster.]

  94. 94.

    Jeffro

    @BritinChicago:what I haven’t seen much of is an “He’s too old” buzz around him. That was devastating for Biden. How can we get the same buzz going around  TFG?

    It would help, but we actually have something better than “trump’s old”.  We have “trump is back to being trump“.

     

    For the last year, we’ve been hearing about the “disciplined”, “competent”, and “professional” campaign Donald Trump is running. After his chaotic 2016 and 2020 campaigns, he brought in longtime Republican operatives Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita to lead a “low-drama” operation.

    Well, the cat lady is out of the bag.

    The trauma caused by the broadly panned choice of Sen. JD Vance as a running mate, combined with President Biden’s withdrawal from the race and the massive outpouring of support for Vice President Harris, have had a terrible effect on Trump: They have caused him to revert to being himself.

    Discipline has broken down, and the out-of-control Trump — suppressed in recent months with varying degrees of success — is back on full display.
    …As if that weren’t evidence enough that the Trump campaign has gone off the rails, Trump ally and former adviser Sebastian Gorka could be seen on television calling Harris “a disaster whose only qualification is “having a vagina and the right skin color*.  She’s a DEI hire, right? She’s a woman, she’s colored. Therefore she’s got to be good.”

    *yes, he really said that!

    And there on Fox News was host Jesse Watters, a Trump mouthpiece, telling viewers that he “heard the scientists say the other day that when a man votes for a woman, he actually transitions into a woman”**

    **YES, he REALLY said that!!

    Now all we need is for trump to come out as anti-vax, or something. ;)

  96. 96.

    Ken

    @Princess: You think going to the Trump house will be fun because they’re rich and maybe have cool toys but when you get there you find

    the bloodstains in the bathtub and the cells in the basement.

  97. 97.

    p.a.

    The mocking isn’t new, it just finally “took” with the organized Dem Party: remember during the W admin when assorted R govs & state gubmints were attacking abortion rights, and women would rage-text & phonecall the pols with medical questions abt their gynecological issues to shame them?

    Include “crotch-staring amateur gynocologist party” in the weird meme.

  98. 98.

    Jeffro

    @Kay: Liberals have some grifters but not anywhere near the number Republicans do. There is just so much money sloshing around on the Right they have to create new ways to waste it.

    right??

    It’d be one thing if all these billionaires were getting something for their money (well I guess in the case of SCOTUS, they are).  They’re actually getting worse results than if they just recruited more Youngkin-types: pleasant-sounding folks who can gloss over the GOP’s many horrific anti-family and anti-worker policies.

    (don’t tell them I said that!)

  100. 100.

    SFAW

    @TBone:

    Madge, actually, but it’s a common mistake.
    ETA: And I see our resident Old Fart (waves to NotMax) beat me to it.

  102. 102.

    BethanyAnne

    @WereBear: Oh, hey! I saw your response in an earlier thread, but it was dead by the time I dropped by. I was a 70s baby, but I grew up reading about Beezus and Ramona. I <3 Beverly Cleary.

  103. 103.

    Soprano2

    @lowtechcyclist: For the same reason they let all of the idiotic things he says slide by – they want him to win! Any other candidate would face withering coverage and questions about the things he says, but he gets away with it because they say “It’s TCFG, he’s like that, what can we do?” and then shrug their shoulders.

    Just take how he talks about Hannibal Lecter as if he’s a real person. Would they let any other politician get away with that with no insistent questioning? Of course not!

  104. 104.

    gvg

    @Princess: Have you seen photos of the Trump residences? Ugh. Vulgar gold fake Versailles style very unfun. No kid would want anything to do with it. I thought he and his first wife had trashy taste when I saw them in the 70’s….worse than televangelical TV preachers. Not at all kid cool ever. I really do not understand how he ever got elected the first time though. Even his rich fans seem to have no taste. It’s not just no morals which oddly they think are the best morals.

  106. 106.

    Ken

    @Suzanne: I also saw a really interesting chart about the gap in attitudes between divorced men and divorced women, and it’s also huge.

    That’s not surprising to me, but the researchers could have saved money on the poll. Just listen to the radio ads for the “men’s rights lawyers” and you’ll learn of a fascinating alternate universe where the whole legal system is biased against men and like nothing better than to take their kids away.

  107. 107.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Kay:

    Liberals have some grifters but not anywhere near the number Republicans do. There is just so much money sloshing around on the Right they have to create new ways to waste it.

    Their embrace of Rittenhouse is pretty damn weird. Even if he couldn’t be convicted of murder, he shouldn’t have killed those people, and if he’s ever felt the least bit sorry that he did, he sure hasn’t shown it. He was certainly no hero, but he killed libs, so they’ve embraced him as one.

  111. 111.

    p.a.

    tRump & “nasty”.  Didn’t the author of Art of the Steal Squeal Deal say tRump has a functional vocabulary of 500 words?

  112. 112.

    TBone

    @NotMax:

    @SFAW:

    D’OH! 😆 I iz old

    In my defense, I was distracted by my reward for listening to Focus- this JD Hillbilly Funeral mockup:

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3TVgL1sjzvc

    And I just had to phone up and instruct a contractor that the job he sent his underling to do here yesterday, now half-finished, may be being installed incorrectly.  Ugh!

  114. 114.

    Geminid

    @Jeffro: My friend Debbie and I visited the Elkton boat landing yesterday. The South Fork of the Shenandoah is very low.

  116. 116.

    Jeffro

    Btw speaking of “savoring” – Bob (VA-05) NoGood’s recount is done, and he still lost!  I’m very happy to have been one of the 370 voters who provided the winning margin to his opponent.

    SEEYA, NOGOOD!

  117. 117.

    Jeffro

    @Geminid: oh no doubt.  I haven’t been out kayaking (other than when we went to the beach a month ago) all summer.

    There was a freak downpour back on Wednesday and it was really weird: monsoon-heavy north of I-64, not a drop south of I-64.

  118. 118.

    Kay

    Young apprentice electricians call second career, older apprentice electricians apprentosaurus. 

    Very funny!

  122. 122.

    Soprano2

    @WereBear: He likes to talk as if he’s the toughest person who ever existed, but he couldn’t even stand to take questions from three black women for more than 30 minutes before he had to bail. Weak!

  124. 124.

    SFAW

    Off-topic, but:

    The other day, there was a brief discussion her about the word “cuck,” it’s meaning, how much the RWMFs love calling libs/Dems cucks, etc.

    It occurred to me that given the definitions of “cuck” [ “a weak-willed or servile person” and “a man whose wife gets boinked by another man” (i.e., cuckold), it’s actually the RWMFs who, once again, are projecting.

    A) They are weak-willed and servile to Shitgibbon, and would do anything he asked of them.

    B) If Shitgibbon were to boink their wife/wives, they’d be OK with that. In fact, they might ask him to do that, because it would mean they’ve gained the favor of Shitgibbon.

    Just a random thought to brighten your day.

  125. 125.

    Soprano2

    @Mousebumples: If we had real reporters, one of them would try to get to the bottom of that, but they just shrug their shoulders and say “That’s TCFG, what can we do?”. There isn’t another politician I can think of who is treated the way they treat him. He can say whatever batshit crazy thing he wants, and they dutifully write it down and repeat it. They might say “That’s kind of strange”, but then they drop it. Anything he says is accepted as being OK.

  129. 129.

    Soprano2

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: I agree, I get tired of having to talk around what’s clearly true, that many people like TCFG because he hates the same people they hate and promises to hurt those people. Much of the anxiety about immigration is about the color of their skin, full stop. If it were a bunch of white people, none of the Republicans would be running on it. You can tell how much they think that issue will resonate with their voters because they’re all running on it, even ones whose job has nothing to do with immigration!

  134. 134.

    Trivia Man

    I think if it as “a white man is considered the default human.” If it is anything else you have to specify it is something unusual. There are now too many normal humans who aren’t that to make it no longer assumed by everyone.

    ”From a position of privilege, equality for all feels like oppression”

  135. 135.

    Trivia Man

    @Ken: and the party line is: the House isn’t investigating 24/7 so that PROVES it was orchestrated by the left.   They are hiding a conspiracy by the secret service to sacrifice trump before he REALLY drains the swamp .

  137. 137.

    K-Mo

    The overwhelming impression I get is that Trump has lost whatever magic touch he used to have for saying awful things and having middle America equivocate about it.

    There’s just a base level of “Grandpa’s saying a bunch of problematic sit again” about these clips.

  139. 139.

    SFAW

    @Trivia Man:

    Did the 500 — a big, strong 500 — come to him, tears in their figurative eyes, and say “Sir, no one in history has ever used us so powerfully”?

  141. 141.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Jeffro:

    And there on Fox News was host Jesse Watters, a Trump mouthpiece, telling viewers that he “heard the scientists say the other day that when a man votes for a woman, he actually transitions into a woman”**

    The contradictions of gender-policing at work: maleness is somehow both an immutable God-given property, AND a fragile thing you can easily lose by making any number of trivial mistakes. Obviously they don’t believe that there are two genders, there’s just this huge third category they label “WRONG”.

  143. 143.

    Quinerly

    Trump ally and former adviser Sebastian Gorka could be seen on television calling Harris “a disaster whose only qualification is “having a vagina and the right skin color*.  She’s a DEI hire, right? She’s a woman, she’s colored. Therefore she’s got to be good.”

    I said it once on this here blog and was misquoted in a later thread. I guess it was attempt at ridicule. At that time, that Gorka appearance (7/10) was being held up as what Harris was going to be hit with if Biden stepped aside. And as a reason Biden shouldn’t step aside. Harris couldn’t win with this kind of shit coming at her.

    So…..I’ll say it again, “I ain’t scared of Sebastian Gorka.”

    I actually think Lincoln Project should build an ad around his 7/10 interview.

    He’s weird.

  144. 144.

    Chris Johnson

    @Bugboy: The little self-inflicted cut healed up impressively quick! Pity not everybody else there had the benefit of fakery.

  146. 146.

    Juju.

    I think Habba is the last person who should be talking about her roots. They really looked like they needed a major touch up.

  147. 147.

    ChrisSherbak

    @Matt McIrvin: Exactly. Many of us embraced “weird” long ago. We’re weird to like drag, we’re weird to like Sci Fi, we’re weird to like show tunes, we’re weird to do Cosplay, we’re weird to be Furries, we’re weird to do re-enactments (shout out to my SCA friends.) Heck we’re weird to play chess or be on the speech and debate team.

    Not to focus on Mormons/LDS, but they ARE weird as well (however much they try to hide it/deny it/run away from it): they’re originally polygamists, they don’t allow women to be priests (ok a lot of Xtians are like that – still weird), they didn’t allow Black men to be priests, they are required to wear funny underwear, they don’t drink coffee, they do secret rites behind closed doors … etc. etc. etc. They have been running away from ‘weird’ like since the beginning and calling it out for the entire MAGA crew is … just popping their balloon.

    Trump isn’t “the Emperor with no clothes” – altho he’s pretty weird too – it’s the whole bloody enterprise that’s deeply, deeply weird.

  148. 148.

    ChrisSherbak

    In some ways I feel kinda sorry for the guy: he’s getting donked for being kinda clueless about Harris’ family background. He might very well only ever heard of her as Indian American – I’m sure he has no clue what the AKA sorority is or that Howard is an HBCU. (He likely DID think she was black – but after seeing Tulsi Gabbard and Nikki Haley, and MAYBE the Mindy Kaling You Tube, he revised her to being Indian American.) His limited world view – which normally endears him with his base and/or they identify with it – belies how narcissistic and uninformed he is.

    Also, I bet he was relying on the bad reception Nkechi Amare Diallo got and hoping to get some parity there with Harris “choosing” to be black as well. His vaunted instincts failed him there…

    For a ‘new to politics’ guy in 2016 all this ignorance was probably ok, but he was Pres for 4 years with access to pretty much every piece of information known to the human race. He CLEARLY learned nothing from all that and is the same guy from 2016.

    To paraphrase “OK Boomer, you’re old news. You’re TIRED!”

  149. 149.

    Roberto el oso

    @lowtechcyclist: someone else might have noted this already, but I suspect that Trump’s lies about mental institutions are maybe some half-remembered thing he heard about the Mariel Boatlift from Cuba, when many of the same accusations (prisons, asylums) were popular.

  150. 150.

    Roberto el oso

    @Kay: Before the “assassination” attempt I kept seeing that Rittenhouse was scheduled to speak at the RNC. I wonder if this is why he’s jumped ship?

  151. 151.

    Roberto el oso

    That’s some wild shit from Jesse (“I let the air out of her tires so she’d notice me”) Watters — about men transitioning into women if they vote for one. I wonder how GOP female pols will take it, because I’m pretty darn sure he didn’t mean it as a good thing.

    But maybe there’s something to it? I know I definitely feel smarter and better in every way when I vote for women.

  152. 152.

    karen marie

    “I know where my roots are”

    Not really something you should be saying to black people.

    Alina Habba might want to rethink her approach.

    What’s more, many of the African ancestors — untraceable through written records — are people who survived the deadly Middle Passage of the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, imprisoned and packed into slave ships for trips lasting as long as 80 days.

  153. 153.

    artem1s

    @Mousebumples: 

    I’ve heard speculation that he doesn’t understand the difference between political asylum and insane asylums.

    I think it’s more likely that he’s created some bizarre mashup of the Mariel boatlift (Carter) and Willie Horton (Dukakis) in his head and knows that they were useful attacks in past elections. We know he doesn’t understand any nuances of policy and has to rely on buzzwords and pop culture references to keep track of,…well anything. I’m sure somewhere in there is a nugget of understanding that R-Cubans in FL may be against wholesale amnesty, but really doesn’t comprehend the nuances of the why.

Comments are closed.