The President of the United States just tweeted this a short while ago:
#FraudNewsCNN #FNN pic.twitter.com/WYUnHjjUjg
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 2, 2017
Yesterday, Trump addressed the people (mostly Republicans on Fox News) who are begging him to get off Twitter thusly:
My use of social media is not Presidential – it’s MODERN DAY PRESIDENTIAL. Make America Great Again!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 1, 2017
As if the problem were the use of a social media platform! Nope, the problem is not Twitter — it’s the deranged person controlling that particular Twitter account, who commands the world’s most fearsome arsenal and influences one of the planet’s largest economies.
The press response to the president posting a fake video showing himself beating up a news network will be telling. Not just CNN — all of them. It’s a wannabe strongman play, but I hope our media is up to the task of identifying it for what it is: profound weakness. Can’t say I’m confident they will handle this appropriately, but much depends on their response.
Luther M. Siler
He only ever gets worse, no matter what. There is always a new low, and it’s usually no more than a day or two away.
cope
In my most paranoid thoughts, I could not have predicted what life in this country would be like under such an administration. I still feel like it’s a bad dream and I am going to wake up in a sane world.
Sigh…
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
Jeff Zucker is arguably the worst human being currently in cable news, so I wouldn’t bet on it.
And since this is an open thread: Hey guys, remember Nina Turner?
rikyrah
Those who voted for him owe the world an apology. Your vote for him displays YOUR LACK OF CHARACTER
Lahke
Good morning! Off to the gym–4 pounds lost last week, so I just have to do the same thing for another 15weeks, and then never gain another pound again ever.
PsiFighter37
Utterly pathetic. This is how democracy dies.
germy
So he’s learned how to embed video.
This should be an interesting summer.
Of course, it’ll be the perfect distraction while congress and his admin. dismantle the New Deal and Great Society.
Betty Cracker
@cope: Yep. Nearly six months in, and it gets more surreal every day. @Luther M. Siler is right, too — it’s only going to get worse. Trump is flailing around in a job he’s not qualified for, and for the first time in his life, his money can’t buy his way out of a jam. He’s already decompensating, and it will get worse.
Citizen_X
That video: I challenge him to try to pull off that choreographed bullshit today.
MattF
You see, Trump considers insulting people on Twitter to be part of his duty as President. It’s his job.
@Lahke: Ha!
JPL
Yup, he is still crazy. Mueller I’m pleading with you, if you think charges are imminent, please do it before he goes to the G20 meeting next week.
Villago Delenda Est
He is utterly unfit to hold any office, at any level of government, in this country or any other.
Hillary warned us of this, and 60 million very stupid people ignored her because emails and vayjayjay.
germy
I remember when he announced his candidacy, and some humorist put together a mock newspaper front page; all stories about “President Trump” and I said “ah ha ha ha ha ha! (gulp).”
JMG
Foreign travel, which Trump hates, is on the agenda. Some of the other world leaders at the G-20 will be unable.unwilling to hide their contempt for him, and he will lash out once more.
JPL
@MattF: He’s Modern Day Presidential.
MattF
@JPL: Before Trump gives Alaska back to the Russkies.
Jeffro
Weird that he would go after CNN and not after the New York Times which just printed that huge list of all his lies.
I guess he thinks CNN’s pulling that one story makes them easily bullied where is the New York Times is clearly standing up to his bullshit
germy
If he gets out of control with the videos and goes really inappropriate, Maybe he’ll be the first president banned from twitter.
Future middle school students in the year 2117 will have it as a test question: “Who was the first president banned from twitter?
A) Nixon
B) Ford
C) Obama
D) Trump
Villago Delenda Est
@rikyrah: The only apology I will entertain from those who voted for him is a Captain Needa apology.
PST
CNN should be Trump’s best friend. With its insistent bothsiderism, it has always given his most aggressive supporters a platform for reaching those beyond his base. It’s not Fox, but it reaches potentially susceptible voters ouside the 30 percent. As with Morning Joe, Trump loves to bite the hand that could be feeding him.
MattF
@Jeffro: Also, Trump is still the guy from Queens looking for a pat on the head from the Establishment. And yeah, in New York, that’s the NYT.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
phony machismo cartoonishly celebrating violent dominance
trump in nutshell, in nutty GIF
Citizen_X
To quote Wonkette, “Jesus, Donald Trump, what the fuck is wrong with you?”
GregB
The descent into madness quickens.
jheartney
Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Thursday: “The president in no way, form or fashion has ever promoted or encouraged violence.”
debbie
His use of social media may be modern presidential, but his behavior is decidedly juvenile psychopathic.
germy
I predict sometime this summer he’ll tweet a video and some comments so vile that the next day he’ll be using the old “I was hacked!” excuse (favorite of drunk tweeters everywhere)
How long before he gets into Carl Palladino forwarded email territory?
Waspuppet
@Betty Cracker: Small correction: His father’s money. He has less money than if he’d put his inheritance into an index fund.
pamelabrown53
@germy:
If you don’t mind…what exactly does “Carl Palladino forwarded email territory” mean?
Thanks, germy.
Betty Cracker
@Waspuppet: Good point.
germy
@pamelabrown53: Carl Paladino got caught forwarding some vile, racist “jokes” to his email list of friends during the Obama administration. Typical stuff the “conservatives” forward to each other. Photoshopped racist stuff.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/carl-paladino-email-apology_us_58629a35e4b0d9a5945920ff
pat
How long until he actually shoots someone?
The Thin Black Duke
@pat: Maybe he already did and the Russians got it on video. I’m sure Donnie thinks “Hostel” is a porn movie.
Gvg
@Jeffro: he watches TV, doesn’t read. Therefore CNN is more important TO HIM than NYT. Doesn’t calculate that other people read, therefore he should care. He does like magazine covers but has notably in the past framed covers of stories that were actually unflattering to him.
Gvg
The big networks and papers haven’t reacted to this video yet but local TV stations have noticed per my google. The few I looked at were just putting it up, not much commentary yet on what it means. This one boggles my mind.
ruemara
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): Nina Turner demonstrates that these Our Revolution folks are the Trump supporters of the left. Cognitively impaired, narcissistic and delusional.
@Gvg: He operates under the principle of all press is good press. Why? Because he’s a narcissist.
TriassicSands
@rikyrah:
And intelligence, and judgment, and foresight!
Kristine
@Jeffro: Maybe he’s still the Manhattan outsider who wants to impress the folks at the hometown paper.
And @MattF got there first….
d58826
AH WTF
Well then throw money at the things that work and stop funding those that don’t. Really should not be that hard. Oh wait, this is the ‘I can’t remember the stocks I bought’ guy.
https://twitter.com/MeetThePress/status/881500091042942976
Frankensteinbeck
@JPL:
I doubt seriously it will take less than a year for Mueller to indict anyone. Doing an investigation right takes a long time, and the team he’s recruiting has the consistent theme of ‘ruthless competence.’ When he moves, it will be because he’s ready to nail people to the wall.
@Villago Delenda Est:
Most of them didn’t ignore her. They looked at Trump and said ‘At last, a mean, racist dimwit like me!’.
@JPL:
Trump IS Modern Day Presidential. It’s no coincidence the last Republican president was also an inarticulate, bullying dumbass!
Holaitsmonica
@Citizen_X:
I bet someone told him “Oh Mr. President, that was a REAL burn!”
Kay
He’s getting worse, is the thing.
The only hope here was that he would become a completely different person as President and instead we’re finding out he’s even worse than people thought.
It goes to my belief that a bad hire is a bad hire- it never gets better, always worse. You really know all you need to know after two weeks.
joel hanes
@Jeffro:
Weird that he would go after CNN and not after the New York Times
CNN is TV. The Donald had a career of sorts in reality TV, and gets _all_ his news and ideas about the world from TV. He cares deeply about TV.
The NYT is print. The Donald is functionally illiterate.
Newspapers barely impinge on his personal, emotional reality, except for the photos.
The Enquirer is his idea of a newspaper.
Frankensteinbeck
@The Thin Black Duke:
It’s a child prostitute. Fits his record and displayed interests. The pee thing was just his petty hatred of Obama.
Laura
It’s as though this doofus of a President cannot, will not tolerate criticism of any kind, from anyone. And now, in the cold light of day, he’s caught and exposes as the utterly incompetent, in over his grody head unable to control the narrative and only able to command and control those few he always has, and unable to control the rest of us including the rest of the entire planet and the President who proceeded him and is his superior in every possible way.
As we laugh at his mighty sword it infuriates him. And it only serves to further infuriate him. And he’s going to end up doing something so vile, so awful and beyond our ken. That’ll teach us.
His idiot spawn could have stopped him. They are every bit as to blame as their foolish stupid idiot of a dad. Fuck the lot of them.
d58826
@germy: Now now it is only liberals who say hateful stuff. The linked samples are all in the category of ‘Well someone sent it to me. I though it was true. I apologize if I might have maybe offended someone’. Said with fingers crossed behind back. As the Huckleeberry WH spokesperson and noted Biblical scholar has said ‘when a person smites you on the cheek, smite him back 10 times harder’. It’s right there in the Falwell version of the good book (or was that the Alex Jones version).
Iowa Old Lady
@Laura: They thought there was money to be made, so they didn’t stop him.
tobie
It’s all too painful to watch this. And no matter what he does rural, white America continues to support him as their standard bearer. Sigh. 30% of the population is unreachable.
On another note: I’ve been surprised to see questions surfacing about the integrity of the voting process this past week in places like TPM. I guess Kobach’s vote-stealing commission brought the issue into focus. Pennsylvania has a Democratic governor. I know he’s as bland as skim milk, but is there any chance Dems in the state can put pressure on him to audit (or to call for ab audit) of the state’s election equipment before the midterms? PA was likely a prime target for hacking.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Kay:
I think he’s always been this bad, but his rudimentary filter has broken down in his dotage.
JPL
@Frankensteinbeck: Will our democracy survive his constant assaults?
schrodingers_cat
@ruemara: They want the same thing that many delusional T supporters want, destruction of the present order, the status quo.
MattF
@Kay: Let’s not forget that Trump’s last rival for the R nomination was Ted Cruz. Republicans were seeking the worst possible candidate.
JPL
CNN just released a statement. I’m sorry that I can’t copy and paste it
https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/881521068078505985
schrodingers_cat
@JPL: Yes, but it will be injured. The R party is the bigger problem. Their actions show that they don’t want to co-exist if they can’t dominate.
JMG
Trump’s golf course in New Jersey where he’s spending the weekend is the site of the US Women’s Open in a couple of weeks. That means the US Golf Association is essentially in charge of the course. Either Trump wasn’t able to play it, or he was and found that the USGA has made the course much harder than he’s used to. Whichever it was, bound to make him extra cranky.
Frankensteinbeck
@JPL:
I think so, but it will be ugly going for awhile. California is my model, here. It took decades once the GOP lost their shit and went in full, scorched earth mode for Democrats to get the power to override their fanatic attempts to destroy the state. Our hope is two things: That liberals get as pissed and active as conservative racists, and that liberal new voters over time outnumber conservatives. We have to outvote them.
The former looks like it’s happening. Nothing like the current protest environment has happened since Vietnam, and maybe not then. But we won’t actually know until 2018. The latter is definitely happening, mostly because the country is turning brown. (It’s not really about old bigots dying off, but about the new voters being added.)
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
Reposting from below:
WTF is right
Frank Wilhoit
I want to know who is writing his material. He has to top himself each time and it takes first-rate professional writers to think up material like this — as witness the number of stand-up comedians and TV shows that have tried and failed. So who are the writers? And is he paying them out of his own pocket?
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yup. Another example of Toxic Masculinity.
Frank Wilhoit
@schrodingers_cat: Everything that you say here has been true since 1979. It hasn’t gotten any true-er.
Karen
after seeing that clip this morning I was left wondering how many generations it will take before US is ever taken serious again; what a mess is being left for grandchildren to deal with
Tom
@rikyrah: something I say to people a lot. To their faces.
Aleta
Something he’s mulling over today:
“I am thinking about changing the name #FakeNews CNN to #FraudNewsCNN!”
He hasn’t decided yet.
The chilling part is how he’s intentionally going back to the civil war talk of October. He’s always talked about the election as his glorious defeat of an enemy. Today it’s “(to win) the 2016 election (..) I had to beat #FakeNews, and did! We will continue to WIN!”
Today he’s leading the battle against “The FAKE & FRAUDULENT NEWS MEDIA working hard to convince Republicans and others.” To prove it he shows a faked pro wrestling video.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?:
The Dangerman
It’s almost as if he’s TRYING to get 25th Amendment removed; recall, it was reported he hated being President, where he has to shake hands and meet people of color all the time, and the job hasn’t lived up to all his desires (riding on the big plane, getting richer off the emoluments, and getting blown by Ivanka in the Oval Office).
He can’t quit and go home. But he can get removed and go home. To get removed, he has to be nuts and, well, here we are (the Mika thing shoulda done it, but here we are). The CNN thing won’t do it either so we might end up with The Donald showing up bareass at one of the untelevised press briefings.
Villago Delenda Est
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: Yo! Donald! Let’s see those tax returns first!
Frankensteinbeck
@JPL:
Holy shit. Has CNN EVER released anything so candid and vicious? It’s like something you’d read here on Balloon Juice, at least from the less sweary commenters.
@Frank Wilhoit:
It doesn’t take a writer. It only takes a complete lack of filters. People who have them can’t imitate it. Among other things, our instinct to at least bend the truth rather than flat-out lie with no provocation is too ingrained.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Frankensteinbeck: The new protest movement and positive movement in votes for the special elections is looking hopeful. It’s a start. We have to get new people engaged and voting. I’m even open to allowing former Trumpsters who’ve realized they’ve been duped into the fold. All hands on deck to defend democracy against this asshole and his Russian pimp.
I’m also happy to see various factions on the far-right having circular firing squads
JPL
@The Dangerman: That won’t do it because Obama wore a tan suit.
GregB
@Frankensteinbeck:
Did the CNN anti-Trump screed end with: Fuck LBJ?
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@JPL: So CNN does have a backbone. Color me – well, not impressed, but pleasantly surprised.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@?BillinGlendaleCA: @Villago Delenda Est: Don’t you leftist SJeWs know? God-Emperor Trump says there’s nothing wrong in those tax returns, so that’s that.
Laura
@Iowa Old Lady: The grift is strong in this family. How messed up in the head and entitled do you have to be to do this, to be so naked in the lust for cash? It’s pathological.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@JPL: That’s pretty blistering for CNN. Bully for them
Frankensteinbeck
@GregB:
No. It ended with, and I quote: “We will keep doing our jobs. He should start doing his.”
@The Dangerman:
25th ain’t happening. Too many of the needed people have more lucrative grifts under Trump than they would under Pence.
Schlemazel
@germy:
Congressman “Hike the Appalachians” has been whining that hair furor is keeping them from enacting their agenda. Maybe we are lucky hair furor i in the WH
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@JPL:
Foolishly, I scanned the first couple dozen comments after the CNN statement. Trump fans never progress past the level of a smug 7th grade bully with an IQ of 86.
Frank Wilhoit
@Frankensteinbeck: No, it would also take imagination, which people like Trump do not have. I’m speaking as a creative artist here; your mileage may vary, but you might like to listen to some of my work and decide for yourself whether I have some imagination. Trump doesn’t have filters, but even if he did, he wouldn’t: what he has are borrowed feathers, beneath which there is no bird. I insist that he could never have thought up this stunt by himself.
Duane
Ana Navarro,Republican strategist,just lit into Trump like a bad dog.The other commenters on ABC This Week,appeared stunned. She sounded like a particularly upset BJ commenter.
d58826
@JPL: I don’t know whither the reporters who put that story together should have been fired or suspended or what ever. CNN certainly pushed thew story for a couple of days. Something changed (perhaps a Joe/Mika style blackmail threat?) and resulted in the firing. But if you are going to fire a reporter for an inaccurate story the only thing running on Faux news would be the test pattern (young’ins can google the term)
pamelabrown53
@germy:
Thanks again. The only problem is that trump has already surpassed Palladino by virtue of being “president”. He has far more power to damage and destroy societal norms. trump reminds me of the savage Jack in “Lord of the Flies”.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): Yes, and it’s the exact reason there will be no wave in 2018.
aimai
@Betty Cracker: Yup. This is like watching a psychiatric patient decompensate on national tv. Its also like watching our country turn into North Korea with the inability of the press or other politicians to call him out for this crazy level of behavior and aggression.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: OK, my bad.
khead
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):
A tweet isn’t “a backbone”. Let’s see how CNN “Keeps on doing their jobs”. I’d prefer they do a better job than they have been doing.
CarolDuhart2
@Frankensteinbeck: You’ve confirmed that I’m not the only one thinking that. The Republican party has long ago burned the bridges it would need to reach a younger, browner America. It’s Christian Fascism turns off the Asian/West Asians who aren’t Christian, hatred of science and education turns off educated immigrants regardless of race: and they certainly aren’t making any inroads among blacks and Hispanics either.
Name one urban mayor in the top 25 who’s a Republican now. Once Republicans could get at Mayor Lindsay, even a Mayor Guiliani. Now they can only win in places where there are more cows than people, and even those places are starting to empty out as there are no jobs that pay anyone higher than minimum wage.
If Republicans were smart, they would at least try to make friends with the most conservative cohorts of the rising demographics. But pandering to their yahoo base means they lose these educated conservative people and a source of decent leadership.
Rand Careaga
I’ll venture to predict that within a year he will explicitly urge the infliction of physical violence upon his foes.
Aleta
Nice timing though, grabbing a piece of the minutes on the morning shows that might have been devoted to health care, protesters, the Peter Smith story, the investigations.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Duane:
She said ‘fuck’ alot on air?
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@Aleta: Exactly, ignore the Tweets, focus on the corruption. The MSM is getting rope a doped everyday with this dumb stuff and they don’t need a daily briefing to do their jobs either.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@CarolDuhart2: Hell, LA had Dick Riordan as mayor..
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@khead: OK, not a backbone, but certainly at least a notochord. Though of course this response isn’t anywhere near good enough.
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: That can’t help (and The Nation is quickly moving into late-era Daley Salon territory), but if we’re waving the white flag already, then they’ve already won. Same reason why “left” can’t be ceded to the [BONERS] Brigade.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Rand Careaga: Hopefully he’s either been removed from office or had a debilitating stroke before then. Does the presidency still age you if you spend all your time on a golf course?
Elie
@CarolDuhart2:
Their plan is to have an American white dictatorship in place to enforce their white dominance. They are not thinking about appealing to the other. Suppress and remove is their goal
father pussbucket
When Trump took office, a friend posted on of these Trump wrestling sideshows on FB, understandably thinking it made him look bad. How long before he posts the pussy-grabbing video in what he thinks is a favorable context?
Mike in NC
At the G-20, Trump will announce that the USA is withdrawing from NATO and that he’s going to give the Panama Canal to his puppetmaster Putin.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Elie: And to suppress and “remove” whites who disagree with their agenda
Cheryl Rofer
@Frank Wilhoit: A number of reporters are saying that the gif came from the Reddit Trump forum. Dan Scavino, previously Trump’s golf caddy, is in charge of social media and has also been sending out hateful tweets.
Frankensteinbeck
@Frank Wilhoit:
I am a successful writer, and have lived with narcissists and alcoholics and surrounded by angry bigots. Trump spouts exactly that kind of bizarre gibberish. It seems creative because no normal person would consider lying about whether it rained to people who were actually there.
Another Scott
@khead: This.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ryan
@MattF: Also too Kasich, who I think is delusional.
d58826
So he posts this altered/fake video. Does he have the techie skills to fake such a video? I know I don’t. So someone else in the WH is helping him with this. It looked like a much young Trump, so you have to go out on the internet pull a video from an achieve and then alter it. Probably not rocket science for folks who are into social media but Trump himself? Time stamp is 9:21 today. What adults would be in the west wing of WH to help with that? Or was it done in the residence? Watching my youn’in nieces navigate social media, there is one person I can think of who would have the skills but not be in a position to say no, Name starts with a B.
OK comment 97 may be an answer.
hitchhiker
The rally-Trump people LOVE this stuff. They cannot express their delight in it enough. The other R-voters cringe at it, but they console themselves that they had no choice. The Independents who thought he’d do okay because business-millions-mumble-bumble are slowly getting the picture.
schrodingers_cat
@Schlemazel: Tell that to the 8 people that have died in ICE custody since T won.
Suzanne
I firmly believe that Trumpism will only ever be contained when we absolutely marginalize his voters. I hope they lose friends, jobs, resources.
The man is crazy and evil and mean and incompetent and stupid, and yet a fuckton of people saw all of that and said, “Hmmmm…..okay!”. Nope. If they ever want to be part of polite society, they need to take responsibility for tearing it down first.
Frankensteinbeck
@d58826:
He found it on the internet. Remember that he loves googling himself.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
It’s not quite Caligula’s horse in the Senate, in no small part because trump isn’t trying to make a point. I’m sure there are better predicates in the courts of German princelings in the late eighteenth century. Of course, Bush put a real estate lawyer and middling GOP operative on the TX Supreme Court, and then appointed him Attorney General
opiejeanne
@d58826: It’s not a fake video, it’s a real video of a fake fight between Trump and whoever the other guy is.
schrodingers_cat
@Frankensteinbeck: I read your nice comment about me in the early morning/late night thread. Thanks!
Karen
since we all doubt that dolt was able to do this on own I ended up wondering if Barron helped him, or if Barron is too old and mature for such things
Another Scott
@Rand Careaga: That’s an easy prediction to make. ;-)
Time (from February 2016):
Of course, there’s no evidence that he actually paid anyone’s legal fees…. and he never said he would, etc., etc.
Cheers,
Scott.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?:
He’s lazy as shit, eats ugly and doesn’t sleep.
Plus, his primary sedentary activity appears to be rage-watching Fox News. This is what he is.
He’ll age even worse.
d58826
@Mike in NC:
And the patriot saint of the GOP St Ronulus the Unready will turn over in his grave. After all he said something along the lines of ‘we built it, we them stole it, we should keep it’ after Carter returned the Canal to Panama
tobie
@Suzanne:
A few small changes to the extraordinary subsidies that go to agriculture would do that. Rural America lives on the federal dime.
Gvg
Trump’s meeting with Putin is comming up. Lawrence Tribe brought up doubts that Trump can keep his mouth shut about classified info. That is actually more likely to be a disaster than his “deliverables” crap since our Presidency is not actually an autocracy and most things need Congress’s consent. Words can’t be unheard. I wonder what steps the IC has taken to keep him from hearing anything important. Dangerous waters.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@opiejeanne:
Trump couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag. The man is a physical coward -always has been.
d58826
@Another Scott: Little or no evidence that he ever paid for ANYTHING in his life that was physically dragged out of his pocket.
scav
There’s certainly developing room for describing a hell of a lot of videos on the it’sallyouyouyoutube as “Presidential” — or, to go old school, it’s time for America’s Funniest Presidential Videos!
CarolDuhart2
#ImpeachmentMarch today!
ruemara
@Frankensteinbeck: You know, that I believe. I knew the pee part was just him reacting to his humiliation at the correspondents dinner. But I am dead certain he’s into child prostitutes.
Jeffro
@The Dangerman:
Hell, he wants to quit but is terrified of being seen (rightly) as America’s biggest loser. Plus he has way, way too much spite and hatred in his damaged little brain – being president means he can lash out with impunity. For now.
On a side note, my RWNJ dad emailed earlier saying he thought Joe Manchin and Chris Coons were looking good in the 2020 Dem primaries with “…Liz and Corey flaming out early”. Where the heck that came from, I have no idea. But he asked what I thought, and I told him it looked like the desperate wishing of someone who knows the GOP’s going to get shellacked in 2020, hoping that the Dems nominate the most ‘moderate’ white guys on the D team. He didn’t really like that response. =)
opiejeanne
@Frankensteinbeck: I read your rational reaction to the Furries thing and want to thank you. I know a bunch of furries and the vast majority are harmless people just having fun.
My son is one.
CSI didn’t get it right but a couple of major magazines have done a great job, Rolling Stone being one of them.
This recent devastating story involves people they knew pretty well:
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/furry-community-shocked-after-gory-triple-murder-w443647
Another Scott
@Ryan: Kasich is a monster and I really don’t understand why/how people refuse to see it and continue to talk about how “moderate” he is. (But Clinton Derangement Syndrome is a real thing that boggles my mind too, so there’s that.)
All I need to know about him was illustrated in the infamous 2014 Plain Dealer incident.
Few things get my goat more than a displayed feeling of entitlement by a politician. Kasich showed it in all its glory, and all the rest of his horrible policies are built upon that entitlement foundation. He’s no “moderate” – he shows through his actions that he’s just as bad as all the other Teabaggers, he just slightly more skilled in manipulating the press in furtherance of his goal to get even more power.
Cheers,
Scott.
WereBear
As soon as someone dares him…
“What? I’m the President! When the President shoots someone, it’s legal.”
CarolDuhart2
I wouldn’t be surprised, the unconscious/subconscious being pretty powerful, that Trump engineers something that takes care of that for him through some feat of self-undoing. What it can be, I wouldn’t know, and even guesses..
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
He won’t get better at it because the characteristics he brags about make it impossible for him to get better at it. He lists them- he doesn’t apologize, he doesn’t prepare, he doesn’t study anything or learn anything and he surrounds himself with people who are beholden to him. He’s proud of these things. He told Morning Joe “you apologize, I don’t apologize”
I believe this comes from privilege. Most people HAVE to learn these things. Donald Trump never did and they’re not fun to learn! They come out of hard experience. He was just exempted from normal human interactions his whole life- getting along with others.
I think it’s weird as hell that the only emotion he ever expresses is anger. No joy, no sadness, just anger. That’s fucked up. He has a flat affect unless he’s angry.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
Stat I read recently: In somebody’s recent poll, Trump had 25% approval among the general population and 89% among Fox viewers.
The good news I take away from that is that Fox viewers are down to the level of the crazification factor and not 50% of our population.
I’ve given up on the hope that the old racists/misogynists/Nazis will simply die out. I’ve been hoping that since the 70s, when today’s old racists were young racists or not even born yet. It didn’t happen; they breed and train new ones. But nevertheless I can still convince myself that on average their numbers are shrinking and the arc of history is indeed bending in the right direction.
d58826
@Gvg: Given Der Fuhrer’s lack of wins else where, Putin will play on that. He will offer up some kind of ‘concession’ or ‘deliverable’ in bright gold gift wrap that on the surface looks like a win for Der Fuhrer but once the pretty wrapping paper is removed it blows up in the face of the US. Get him to do or say something like the self-inflicted wound over Article 5. It won’t be that exactly because that landmine has already exploded but something similar. It won’t require congressional action, nothing his staff can do to stop him from tweeting it out. And Putin will be able to sit back with that ‘cat got the mouse’ look.
I’m just wondering if Putin will greet Der Fuhrer by saying ‘so nice to meet you again, but now as POTUS’.
GregB
@Elie:
I wonder if there is a paper/digital trail of these monsters explicitly stating just that.
Kay
I take that back, he has no emotions because even the anger is phony. He doesn’t hate CNN. He loves tv. Christ almighty CNN MADE him into what he is today. They helped create this.
Frankensteinbeck
@WereBear:
Too cowardly. Trump is the biggest chickenshit in the world. All talk, actually owes other people cattle.
Another Scott
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: It just occurred to me that that problem of Donnie’s supporters being Fox News viewers (I doubt they’re “The Simpsons” viewers ;-) could (in principle) be solved very easily.
In addition to Betty’s reminder to enable parental controls, Fox News has just a handful of choke-points in reaching viewers. They’re not a broadcaster – they’re on cable. A national boycott of Comcast and AT&T and TW and all the rest of the big cable oligopolies until they drop Fox News would certainly make them feel some hurt in the wallet. (Yeah, pipe-dream, but that’s what it takes to get Murdoch’s attention.)
As long as they keep making money, they won’t change.
Cheers,
Scott.
Duane
After her second comment, I expected an f-bomb. She was seriously pissed off.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I always say John Kasich was Paul Ryan when Paul Ryan was reading Atlas shrugged for the first time, without the big blue eyes and aw-shucks affect; Kaisch was always a prickly prick. He was the Beltway’s go-to “just a green-eye-shade numbers guy”/Deficit Hawk back in the 90s. He was also Tweety’s first man crush (that I know of, and I’ve been watching Tweety off and on since Mary Matalin was his lead-in show). I think the embrace of Medicaid in OH was a big political shift for him, but I still trust him about as far as I can throw him and I think his real goal is undoing the New Deal
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Responsibility for T in the WH lies with
*His voters
*R party
*JS voters
*BS and his most ardent supporters
* The media the fringe RW media and the prestige media like PBS and NYT.
DCrefugee
@Suzanne:
We also need to be thinking long game. Progressives really don’t have to worry too much about removing Trump. He’ll accomplish that all by himself soon enough. After he’s no longer in office, regardless of the scenario, the narratives will reset to the new “normal” behaviors. We need to start hanging all this on Republicans generally, not just Trump. Start with Pence and work our way down.
Presuming we’ll have fair and free elections in 2018, we can start turning this around, but progressives need to make the Republican brand as popular as Bill Cosby’s. This is not just Trump — this is who the Republican party is.
Another Scott
@Frankensteinbeck: Speaking of chickens…
He’s too stupid to know when he should be careful until it’s too late.
Cheers,
Scott.
Millard Filmore
@WereBear:
No! Its only legal when a Republican President does it.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Kay: Exactly – that’s why this is just a BS distraction. CNN is in on it. They’re the “face” (the bad guy in wrestling).
WereBear
Best thing I’ve heard all week.
KithKanan
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: The word you’re looking for is “heel”. The “face” is the good guy.
Frank Wilhoit
Kasich took the Medicaid expansion because it gave him opportunities to put his friends in position to skim Federal funding. No other reason. It should not be seen as a “political” act or a piece of intriguingly-contrarian positioning. Those who do have never stepped foot in Ohio.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
?? MSNBC just apologized to trump for something, I think, and referred to trump’s NJ gold resort as an “estate”. It’s not an “estate”, it’s a private, profit-making business that trump uses the Presidency as a marketing hook for
schrodingers_cat
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: As are Mika and Joe.
gene108
When you have a President, who is in the Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame, get ready for the SMACKDOWN libtards!!!!!
Woooooooooooo!!!!!!!!
Oooooohhhhhh Yeaaaah!!!!
Elizabelle
@DCrefugee: I like your comment # 135 and agree with it.
Along with Pence, we need to make Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan as popular as a floating trash barge afire as well. They have shown their true colors. Take them down.
My fantasy is ending up with President Nancy Pelosi, ascending from Speaker of the House.
Another Scott
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: On Medicaid, there’s potentially an overide vote on Thursday. I don’t have enough knowledge of Ohio politics any more to know what’s going on, but one could easily imagine Kasich’s veto being over-ridden fitting in with his greater plan so that he could get the “best of both worlds” – “I vetoed the cuts, but my hands were tied when they over-rode the veto and now I have to (wink-wink) slash Medicaid. I’m so Moderate! Vote for me!!11″
(sigh)
We’ll see what happens.
Cheers,
Scott.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@tobie: Why was FarmAid a thing if farmers have gotten such generous subsidies since FDR? Geniunely curious
Splitting Image
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):
That insufferable, self-satisfied smirk is the hallmark of a Lyndon Larouche supporter. Bernie Sanders’ “revolution” started to make more sense the first time I saw it.
Frankensteinbeck
@Kay:
I contest this. Trump is ALL emotion. He is unrestrained id. Twenty years ago he could be calculated, but now he’s too senile. Almost all of that emotion is hate, and there’s barely any gratitude. Everything is also based on right now. There is no past, and a future only if he wants something concrete from you, and then only maybe. If you are paying him, he at least feels well disposed towards you. If you are praising him, he feels contempt because you’re a lesser showing you know your place. If you defy him in any way, he feels such rage that he has literally shown he can’t sleep at night.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Kay:
You’ve zeroed in on a character flaw I’ve noticed – no genuine joy in anything he does. Look back as far as FDR, and each seemed to take joy in some aspect of his life outside his office, and had some record of some accomplishment. Roosevelt was born to great wealth, but was committed to making life better for common men and took the risk of attacking his own class with humor in order to achieve it. Harry Truman was a tough little artillery officer with a really funny side. Eisenhower took on a Herculean task as a general and was genial when serving as an older president. Kennedy liked doing sports and sailing, and had tough wartime duty. Johnson, rough as an old cob and a tough political infighter, nonetheless overcame the prejudices of his region and worked on doing a lot of decent things, and had a positive relationship with family.
It goes on and on.
Trump is made happy by nothing. He eats, sleeps, shits and rages on Twitter. He’s intellectually incurious but full of opinions, even if he has to wing it. He has no actual hobbies (I think his golf is more of a “old white guys play golf, so I have to”), and is too physically and mentally lazy to bother.
I mused this morning about why we had to wind up with him as a billionaire president instead of Warren Buffett, Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Elon Musk or similar, and then realized – the WWC would have rejected them, as each would have demonstrated empathy.
The problem isn’t the candidate – it is the WWC electorate.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Good to see Trump is channeling Henry II with that video. I think it’s time for the Republicans to admit Trump can’t even pull off a useful fool for them.
Another Scott
@DCrefugee: We can’t wait for 2018 to turn things around. We should be doing all we can to flip NJ’s and keep VA’s governor’s mansions and increase Democratic seats in state-houses. The Census is coming up and the states have a huge effect on how redistricting is done.
Yes, we need a wave in 2018, but we need to be fighting now. (I’m sure you agree, but wanted to make it explicit.)
Cheers,
Scott.
d58826
@schrodingers_cat: and unfortunately the founders that created a system where 80k overrode 3 million, i.e. the electoral college.
There is a saying floating about : 1. once happenstance
2. twice co-incidence
3. third time enemy action.
This is the second time the EC has failed in less than 20 years.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: Your wrestling terms are unforgivably mixed up – the “heel” is the bad guy and the “face” the good guy. And I don’t even watch wrestling.
JMG
Re Muelller’s sraff: It’s unlikely such hotshot attorneys would join up unless they felt their talents would be out to good use.
Hoodie
@Kay: it’s all a game to them. We’ll spend days on this juvenile crap while McConnell rips health care away from 30 million
WaterGirl
@germy: I love your test question!
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@opiejeanne:
I grew up in Fullerton. I have a niece who was a furry for a time. I have no blanket observations about the community of Fullerton or the community of folks who cosplay as furries… people are people. It’s cool that you clearly support your son and don’t judge.
JWR
@Duane:
I really enjoyed that last roundtable segment, when she spoke directly to that Ponnaru guy. He smiled politely, at first, but by the end of her rant, his polite TV smile was gone, gone gone!
SatanicPanic
@CarolDuhart2: San Diego, sadly has a Republican mayor. We finally elected a Democrat, only to have him be a serial groper. I HATE that guy,Bob Filner, almost as much as Trump. our Republican mayor survives by being quiet.
Another Scott
@Hoodie: In case you didn’t see this downstairs:
We can and should make things hard on Mitch. Follow the lead of the women.
Cheers,
Scott.
germy
@WaterGirl: Multiple choice.
nightranger
I doubt the media can be bullied. They love a good shit show. They will just report this stuff even more. I wish this would make them realize that reporting both sides viewpoints doesn’t work when one side is trying to create an alternate reality. That’s not going to happen. So nothing will change with the media.
Karen
@Kay: from my contact with psychopaths it is “normal;” most can fake other emotions but the spoiled rich have never had a need to do that since money buys anything
Enhanced Voting Techniques
So Trump clearly is bluffing with this anti media rage to cover up something that’s terrfing him, but what? So many choices:
Trumpcare failing in the senate?
It being shown one of his campaign staff contacted the Russians to hack the election?
Trump having to got the G20 and get his arm sprained again by the President of France and anyone else who feels like beating up on a wussy, LOW Energy Beta 70 year old posing as an Alpha?
Trump’s up coming facial with Putin?
Tillerman feed up before the G20 and going public about it?
So many Red states slapping down Trump’s election comission that Trump needs to prove he really won the election?
As a lot of people have said, dumping on Mika was to much of the media and Trump knows it?
Something we don’t know about yet?
It’s been quite a week of SAD failure for Trump.
CarolDuhart2
Sometime the resistance doesn’t know its own strength. Some people may get amused and distracted for a couple of days. But we’re so large that we can multitask. Besides, this is a holiday weekend. Nothing is going to happen before July 4th.
Ruckus
@Kay:
Really bad usually doesn’t get hired. But just plain bad does. My shortest time employee lasted less than 1 hour. At least that person had a collection of tools, even if he didn’t know what any of them did. drumpf has no tools in his non existent tool box. He’s all ego, hauling along a huge collection of psychological issues.
Frankensteinbeck
@Another Scott:
Having lived in Kentucky, I know that McConnell is corrupt, at least in the ‘anything to get what I want’ sense, racist to the point he can’t ever forgive that Obama was president, enjoys hurting people, and views his voters (accurately) as idiot rubes he can easily manipulate. His constituent services are terrible. He is disliked even by his base, but he tells them the Darkies Are Coming and they vote for him slavishly. At this point, I don’t know what he wants or how much of the Kool-Aid he has drunk, but it’s entirely likely his only motivation is wiping Obama from the history books and ensuring no black man can ever become president again.
Origuy
Remember a few years ago when Colorado Springs voters decided they didn’t need to pay for government? How did that work out?
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Yes, unfortunately, bigots and bullies won’t just die off en masse. They’re like shark teeth.
We can hope, however, that like a constant flow of water over rock, a cultural push back against their behavior will diminish their numbers and abilities to be jerks in the public sphere.
Frankensteinbeck
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I don’t think that’s clear at all. Sure, his fear of something is stoking his other emotions, but Trump is a spoiled toddler. He throws a tantrum when he is criticized in the slightest way. He’s not using it to cover for anything. His behavior for the entire campaign and presidency is consistent with this.
Patricia Kayden
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): Yes I remember Nina Turner. Now that she’s turned into an anti-Democratic Party parody, I’ll ignore her. She’s lost to our side.
Jim Parene
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: Minor point: the “Face” is the good guy. The “Heel” is 45*, the bad guy.
The distractions are the “work”, the scenario of the performance. the foregone (rigged) conclusions of a match
Kayfabe.
pamelabrown53
@d58826:
Your comment re: 80k votes overriding @ 3mil. because of the electoral college reminded me of a comment I saw last night (MaryQ)? about by the year 2040, 70% of the population in the 15 largest states will be represented by 30 senators while the remaining 30% of the population will be represented by 70 senators. This is seriously freaking me out. I’m obsessing over this stat.
Aleta
Story in the Wa Post, about Dr. Ayaz Virji, “town doctor, 42-year-old father of three, and as far as anyone knew, the first Muslim to ever live in Dawson, a farming town of 1,400 people in the rural western part of (Minnesota).”
Since the election, he’s reluctantly agreed to give three community talks.
Another Scott
@Frankensteinbeck: Good point. Who knows what’s “in his heart” – it doesn’t matter anyway. His actions matter. And his actions show it’s all about political power for him and his party. He’s a disgrace.
Cheers,
Scott.
Patricia Kayden
@Origuy: Libertarian Paradise, man!! Ayn Rand rules!! Who needs the dang, stinking gov’ment anyhow? Freedom!
I better not laugh too loudly about this since Trump and his ilk may try to bring all that “freedom” to other parts of the U.S.
Ruckus
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
I know you are right, he’s always been this bad. What kept him in the crazy, wealthy idiot position was that he had no power. Except to rip off people he hired, and to pretend fire people on TV. But now he has something he thought he was entitled to his entire life, real power. And he is unprepared in every imaginable and unimaginable way. Unprepared is perhaps not the proper word. It’s true but implies that he could get prepared. He is not capable in every imaginable and unimaginable way.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@JWR: sounds like a rant to look for. She’s mostly been on my radar since trump got into the White House, and it’s been hard to understand why she’s an R, except for taxes. Then trump announced he was reversing Obama’s Cuba policy, and she almost approved of it. Also, she’s apparently personally (as well as politically) committed to Jeb and his family.
I think in a lot of ways Jeb is worse than his brother, and would’ve made the country and the world even worse by playing out even more of their infamous family psycho-drama, but never got a chance to do the damage.
ThresherK
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): I’d forgotten her. And remembered why I didn’t care about her when she unleashed the mighty “Wilmer’s the most popular pol today!” crap.
I have enough friends on social media like that that I don’t hafta read an interview with one. I do know she’ll be those folks go-to for continuing the cult.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Origuy: I am disappointed in that artical because basically it just says the Colorado Springs business community turned on their mini-Trump and got a moderate conservative technocrat in to run the place. It never talks about Mini-Trump’s voters; did they just shut up and stay away from the polls, quietly change their minds after having “government run as a business” rubbed in their face every day for four years? Why wasn’t Min-Trump just replaced by a Mini-Trump +1, since conservatism can never fail?
Frankensteinbeck
@ThresherK:
It’s amazing how high ‘generic politician’ polls. Always has been. If all people know is your name and that you’ve criticized someone they don’t like, you’re hugely popular.
kindness
Republicans in Congress won’t lift a finger against Trump until it becomes clear Trump is hurting their ability to achieve massive tax cuts for the 1%, killing the ACA, regulatory rollback & gutting the EPA. So they are getting the EPA gutting & the regulatory rollback. They aren’t getting the killing of the ACA and without that they can’t get the tax cuts via reconciliation. Will 2 out of 4 be enough to keep Trump around? Depends. I think the 0.1% control the Republican party right now and they want them some tax cuts dammit! They aren’t liking this at all. So we’ll see.
tobie
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: The economics of agriculture are such that you need to have a minimum of 2000 acres to farm to break even. Agricultural equipment is really, really expensive but you need to have it if you want to farm corn or grain or soy in large quantities with minimal human labor requirements. Essentially our ag policy supports and promotes this kind of industrial farming. I’d be happy having subsidies on scale–smaller farms and organic farms receiving more than the huge farms of the midwest, which actually produce more crop for animal feed than human consumption. (This incidentally is why meat consumption is related to climate change.)
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Ruckus:
To a great extent, I blame New York media which insisted on repeatedly asking the idiot public policy questions over the course of decades in a way they never did with Gates, Buffett and the like.
??? Martin
@Another Scott: ‘What’s in his heart’ really needs to be retired for adults anyway. Its an excuse for everything that an adult at a minimum should know better and as a leader is paid to do better. The whole point of elevating these people into positions of power is that they can square what’s in their heart with what they do, as you note. Those that can’t do that should be removed from those positions – which is why Democrats tend to quicker to resign from positions. They know that it doesnt matter what was in their heart.
Frankensteinbeck
@kindness:
The 27% control the Republican Party, or Trump would never have been their candidate, with Ted Cruz as second in line. However, they don’t mind giving the 1% what they want, from a combination of ‘Yeah, fuck the poor!’ and ‘Yeah, fuck what liberals want!’ It has been a smooth alliance for decades, only showing any cracks lately – and those are only cracks.
pamelabrown53
@Frankensteinbeck:
I disagree. Anger is a secondary emotion used to assuage fear/insecurity. Since anger is what Trump primarily exhibits, it speaks to a bottomless pit of fear. HE probably doesn’t recognize it as such because if he did, he’d totally destroy himself. In fact, it would be easy to argue that a piece of him apprehends this in a limited way. Hence, he is decompensating at an accelerated rate.
Iowa Old Lady
@Ruckus: His incapacity shows in the way he has time to watch TV. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be doing otherwise.
Frankensteinbeck
@pamelabrown53:
Oh, he definitely lives his life in terror and it magnifies his anger. He’s just not using it as any kind of calculated distraction. He feels bad and lashes out.
Ruckus
@Frank Wilhoit:
Imbedding a video? Yeah I’m going to have to agree with you here. He doesn’t have the skill set to accomplish this. Nor the ability to learn. But he does have people who are propping him up, supporting him. Why I can not fathom but he does. Possibly they see that they are even less suitable to any level of power but some one else with a similar level of skills has made it and he’s “rich,” so they see him as their god and will help and support him. They have to, otherwise they’d have to admit that their entire belief system is wrong.
Frankensteinbeck
@Iowa Old Lady:
Okay, but it’s willful ignorance. A consistent theme of leaks from the White House is that he refuses to do the job unless he’s manipulated into it with constant ego stroking. I agree in essence. The time he spends watching TV demonstrates that he’s too stupid to do the job. I’m just adding ‘and lazy.’
Brachiator
Today in Trump
So, Trump is, what’s the technical, the clinical term, fucking nuts. And yet he has mastered deferential Authoritarianism. He posts Twitter rants and his staffers defend him instead of throwing up their hands and saying nothing (or resigning). The GOP leadership looks the other way. Pundits, like charlatan priests in a pagan temple, pick apart the empty residue of Trump’s infantile mutterings for signs of presidential policy.
But in asking for voting records, Trump takes it a step too far. It’s fun when he just rants about crazy shit, or obsesses over his margin of victory in the presidential election. But now he is trying to use the federal government to investigate his conspiracy theories. So far, there is some push back, but this is not going to stop.
Trump is also accelerating his “grumpy old man who’s set in his ways persona.” Over this holiday weekend he keeps flying back to his digs in New Jersey so he can sleep in his special comfy bed with his widdle blankie.
And so we say goodnight to the leader of the Free World, and dread what he might do next.
Another Scott
@Frankensteinbeck: The GOP was too clever by half in trying to swing the primary process so that the leader (JEB! obviously) would win going-away. Trump didn’t win a majority of the actual votes in the GOP primaries. He won because of all the “winner take all stuff” that was supposed to make it look like a landslide for Jebby. Like how the EC bit the rest of the country, their process bit the GOP and gave them the incompetent insane man we have now.
They’ll probably learn the wrong lesson and make the process even less democratic in 2024 (or whenever they try again to win without a bunch of clowns)…
(sigh)
But we shouldn’t feel sorry for them, of course. We need to crush them until they’re less popular than the Whigs.
Cheers,
Scott.
Frankensteinbeck
@Brachiator:
So has every alcoholic. All you have to do is scream at anyone weaker than you who contradicts you in any way. It’s literally easier than respecting your position and your inferiors. The GOP and pundits happen to have interests that align with his.
Voter suppression was always a big part of his mandate. Yes, it’s a scary thing that’s finally starting to show itself. So far it’s incompetent, thank Gorilla Grodd.
??? Martin
@tobie: Problem is a bit bigger than that. Industrial farming is really a byproduct of cities. When distance separates the farm and the people that will consume it, packaging and distribution costs tend to exceed the cost of actually producing the food. And you get a vicious circle going on that front – density always drives up land costs, which makes farm operations more expensive, which drives them further from the people being fed, which drives up packaging and distribution costs. You can’t actually subsidize small farm operations unless you are willing to directly tackle land costs and taxation. The main reason why CA still has small farms in urban areas is becuase of Prop 13 – one of its unintended benefits. We have a high-end nursery nearby – Rogers Gardens. It’s in Newport Beach, at a premiere location with ocean views. It’s 9 acres (including parking lots, etc.) where land is probably in the $25M/acre range. So here’s a fucking nursery sitting on a quarter billion dollars worth of land. In any other state the property taxes would eat it alive, but the tax assessed value of that land is probably $1M or so simply because it’s been there forever. You would need to replicate that kind of dynamic across the country.
Instead, the US needs to shift to this model.
It’s an indoor vertical farm, almost completely automated. It’s 100x more efficient per acre than a traditional farm, uses vastly less water, and because of it’s efficiency, you can build it in or next to a city and also reduce the packaging and distribution cost.
The US is extremely proud of our nationwide supply chain, but it’s really fucking expensive and inefficient. Other countries, most notably China have moved away from that.
Brachiator
@tobie:
How is this different from Trump trying to reinvent 19th century industrialism? Large farms are efficient, and fewer people want to live on farms and work that hard lifestyle.
pamelabrown53
@Frankensteinbeck:
With that I agree. Fortunately, he appears to lack the discipline to calculate much of anything when it goes beyond his immediate gratification to the big picture. He is a seriously damaged person who cannot handle the weight of the presidency. He was able to careen from crisis to crisis as a corrupt real estate developer and marketing his brand. Even then he had to declare bankruptcy…what, 6? times. Now, he’s got all the real power and attention beyond his wildest dreams and he just flails. Still doesn’t mitigate the damage he’s doing to our country, to our citizens.
ThresherK
@Patricia Kayden: Copper thieves in Galt’s Gulch! Ha fcking ha!
Isn’t Colo Springs overrun with Christianist hucksters?
CZanne
@jheartney: and you know, that’s such a *low* bar of expectation, right in the same range as “the president has never smeared his own feces on the wall,” and “the president has never distributed meth to a pre-K class.” Time to develop an early childhood drug treatment protocol.
@JPL: the contempt in that is highly enriched. ?
@Rand Careaga: Optimistic. Weeks, if not days.
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: well, he’s gained about 20 pounds in 5 months, he exchanged the carry-ons under his eyes for over-sized, checked Samsonites, and what was word wedge salad is now word chopped salad headed for word coleslaw in texture, so…. yep. And he’s *worse* now that Melanoma is in da houz, so no calming influence there.
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: 40K foot overview: crop supports between FDR and Nixon were on an Ever Full Granary principle, so the Feds ensured a minimum floor price for certain crops. If it was a poor growing year, the farmers could sell on the open market for more, but in a glut year, they were assured a living income and the granary stayed full against the coming poor year. Nixon’s SecAg, Earl Butz, dispensed with this. Crop support now came in subsidized crop insurance; the Butz plan is far more complicated than that, but it made it extremely easy for large agribusiness to get subsidies (because they can afford the overhead to do the paperwork and have the revolving credit and capital) and much harder for small operators without those resources. This created a credit and farm-land price bubble as smaller farmers scrambled to buy enough land to play in the bigger league and to upgrade equipment. Which popped, as bubbles do. And the banks started calling in their paper.
At the same time, in the same areas, the other major industry was automotive manufacturing. Lots of families made it because one person farmed full-time and picked up shifts at the factory during the winter, and another worked full time in the factory. And in the 70s, the Big 3 got smacked hard with the oil shortages. That only lasted a couple years, but the Big 3 had a hell of a time retooling, in part because they resisted it; their expertise was not in small and efficient, but land yachts; they truly believed bigger and heavier was safer and had built their business model on more power. But also because the UAW resisted it — a retool means layoffs while the line is rebuilt, and the UAW knew their membership couldn’t survive a layoff. And the UAW was already at a low morale point. So eastern and upper Midwest got hit with two distinct economic crises that hit both of their major industries within a few years. Damage to those industries does damage to every other industry in the area as a knock-on effect. The economics of the 70s and 80s are kind of fascinating in a horrifying way, but the takeaway — the Rusty Grain Belt went into regional recession in the mid-70s and has never recovered. (There are other issues, regarding educational policy and a smaller population base, but that’s the simple one.)
George
How long before Chris Cillizza and David Brooks and Van Jones and Fareed Zakaria say that this tweet makes Trump look presidential?
Patricia Kayden
@kindness:
Not for now at least. Wouldn’t be surprised if they pulled that one off though since hating on poor people is their national past time.
Frankensteinbeck
@Another Scott:
An unrealistic expectation for anyone in such a crowded primary. Plus, #2 was a famously stupid, bigoted asshole who the establishment hates.
Mike in DC
Do we have to wait until he violates the Terms of Service on Twitter? Nobody in his circle has the power to delete his account and smash his phone. He clearly doesn’t listen to his lawyers either. It’s bad enough that Twitter doesn’t do anything about the bots and Nazis, but we get to have this ass clown embarrass the nation too.
sdhays
@Gvg: This. Trump can’t/doesn’t read, so he doesn’t read the New York Times, so it’s not as big an enemy as someone on TV being critical, even if the criticism is more mild. He has to wait for someone to tell him what the nasty NYT said about him, and summarize it in 2 or 3 sentences, but he watches all the videos, so he knows much more quickly how CNN dissed him. He’s a lazy, pathetic, and profoundly stupid man.
??? Martin
@Frankensteinbeck: Yep. The GOP, by pushing bills with no text and <20% voter approval are acting like a party that doesn't need to participate in a fair election again – becaues they don't intend to. Rigging the vote and getting their agenda through are co-dependent. That Trump was ideologically lazy enough to allow the Federalist Society to hand him judges and batshit enough to put Kobach in charge of an election commission is nothing but win for the GOP. If it all blows up in his face, the party will blame him personally and try and wipe their hands of the whole thing that they also rely on. Trump losing the popular vote was a huge gift to the GOP becuase he'll now try and federalize that which the GOP has only been able to do in certain states. They couldn't have asked for a better outcome here.
JPL
@George: The Homeland Security Advisor did say it made him look genuine. Ana Navarro
later in the segment on This Week, called him a wuss for not standing up to Trump.
sdhays
@Mike in DC: Would Twitter dare to ban Trump even if he violates their terms of service. As much as we wish he wasn’t, he’s the POTUS and a major driver of their continued relevance; kicking him off could be risky and would be considered a political statement, even if it’s a clear violation.
Mnemosyne
@Frankensteinbeck:
This. The whole reasons narcissists get away with stuff is not because they’re smarter or more creative than other people, but because they do stuff that normal people would never consider doing. Like my brother’s estranged wife showing up at his house with a U-Haul less than 6 hours after he died inside that house.
MattF
@George: Cillizza is searching his emoji dictionary right now. For his job, he needs to express an opinion about Trump, but 140 characters is 139 too many.
ThresherK
@Brachiator: As you much as you’re spot on with most things, I’d amend that idea to
The normal response to labor shortages is no longer the norm. The self-sustaining family farm is hardly a thing anymore, but the fetish lives on for nostalgists,and if that’s not Trump voters I don’t know who is.
Speaking of migrant labor, I don’t know if produce and grain harvesting are mechanized to the same extent.
MattF
@JPL: And she went on to note that Trump is surrounded by a group of enablers. If you don’t think he’s doing just great, you’re out of the WH game.
sdhays
@Frankensteinbeck:
I can still take a tiny bit of pleasure that Ted Cruz goes to work every day knowing that as shitty as his colleagues knew Donald Trump is, they still preferred him over Ted Cruz.
lgerard
@pamelabrown53:
This is why I think the conventional wisdom that demographic trends favor the Democratic party is completely wrong. I think it is the exact opposite because it ignores the geographic sorting that not only mitigates that phenomena, but overrides it.
Frankensteinbeck
@??? Martin:
I’m not sure if they don’t intend/need to participate in a fair election again, exactly. We may totally agree, because this is an issue of word parsing. I think they know they can’t, and heavy duty cheating is the only way they’ve held onto power even this long. THEY know VIVIDLY that they lost the popular vote by 2.8 million. Most of them are stupid and the rest are racists, so I don’t know if they believe they can keep this up forever or not. Since Trump is also a huge bigot who thinks brown people should not be allowed to vote, it is definitely a match made in heaven.
Uncle Cosmo
@ruemara:
Or maybe because he thinks* only in terms of “growing the brand.” IIRC there are studies that show that the most significant predictor of whether someone will buy a product is whether the product name is recognized – regardless of whether the product has negative associations in the potential consumer’s mind.
—-
* Yeah yeah I know, “assumes facts not in evidence”….
??? Martin
@CZanne: I think that’s very astute. The looming problem as I see it is that I don’t see any particular benefit that the rural communities provide to the cities any longer. They used to grow food and make cars and durable goods, but it’s just a matter of time before there’s a bunch of giant food factories in New Jersey and Connecticut turning out produce that doesn’t need to come from Iowa. Even the Central Valley in CA is steadily turning from ground crops to tree crops, I think unknowingly because of this. We’ll almost certainly have lab-grown meat in stores within 5 years. I think autos are going to see a radical transformation in how they are produced and how rapidly we depreciate them that will only further hurt that industry.
All of these moves lower the value floor on that labor. In order to compete, they’ll have to do it for less and and less, which only drives those educational and population problems to worse and worse outcomes. Many communities do recognize that trend and are building around it. There’s almost this attitude that we’ll elect a mayor that will find a new industry for us, but a governor and president that will fight for our old industry tooth and nail, even though we know it’s pointless. Seems counterproductive to me.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@??? Martin: Fuck these assholes. The NRA bullshit is going to bite them so hard in the was if they pull the voter suppression shit and try to pass that Deathcare bill
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@??? Martin: Move to the cities, like back in the old days. Retooling the education system to push people to Green technology jobs seems like the very first thing that should be done.
Brachiator
@Frankensteinbeck:
RE. And yet he has mastered deferential Authoritarianism.
But every alcoholic is not president of the United States. Trump is toying with and pushing the limits of presidential power. His staffers look silly defending him and justifying his actions. But the problem for all of us is that no Republican yet has had the courage to say enough. The GOP leadership still has his back. It’s as though no one really believes that Trump could go “full dictator” and the Republicans are convinced that they can comfortably use him to achieve their agenda.
But Trump is working to his own goofy internal clock and he might do something that endangers the country until cooler heads can intervene. It’s a crazy way to live, but we are deep into it.
And yeah, you’re right that the GOP is working the voter suppression angle, but the bigger issue is that Trump also appears to be indulging his fantasies of perpetual personal vindication, using government agencies to stroke his ego. This cannot end well for the country or democracy.
The incompetence doesn’t make things better. It squanders opportunity and creates chaos. For example, insurance exchanges are in danger as much from the inability of Republicans to pass a new health care law, as much as it is endangered by the vile law itself.
sukabi
@germy: I’m betting HE’LL be the guy that posts the pee pee video to his own twitter feed… And why not, he’s pretty much verified all the other accusations against him via Twitter.
Karen
@Brachiator: in many places it isn’t that people don’t want to live on farms, they can’t afford to thanks to property taxes. as for the amount of work? I spent 30 years with farmer as back neighbor, thanks to crop insurance and roundup ready crops he was still making money when weather killed the crops. The dairy farm down the road went from a herd of 200 to 2000 and became a business that now hires dozens of people. In many states farmers can no longer leave the family farm to their children, the only way around that is to set up an LLC and make children partners; even then the paperwork is thick.
The back neighbor gave up dairy herd and focused on two main crops corn and soybeans; he leased bigger and bigger machinery so that it takes 2 people to work what is now 1500 acres of farm. The only time the children help is during harvest and they drive the semis the farm now owns; the one year he was late planting the land didn’t even grow weeds; the crops are basically grown on chemicals and water.
The two small operations that make money are organic vegetables and grass fed beef; they are labor intensive since vegetables have to be cultivated for weeds rather than sprayed. Grass fed means that you need to rotate fields, moving cattle around and fencing is expensive. The worst part is after you have paid for certification all you need is one large operation to spray fields on a windy day and lose that years crops and good chance of more than one year. I lived in WI and the one place that still sold raw milk had so many fees and hoops to jump through that they were thinking of giving up; after generations of family farm they were seriously considering the offer from developer.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Brachiator: TenguPhule is right. This country is headed towards civil war. I can see it. We may outnumber them, but they have the reigns of power right now. 10 or 15 years down the road I’m not sure. I think I’m going to look into getting a passport just in case
CarolDuhart2
@??? Martin: Urban farming is already a things, with many communities having community gardens. Watch Detroit as it retools into an urban agricultural paradise. Food is decentralizing away from those farm areas to suburban and urban farms.
The only way to save those towns is the one thing they hate: immigration. Taking in climate refugees are pretty much the only way to repopulate-but it comes at a price of social change and racial change. Which triggers an anxiety about being “replaced”. When Steve King in Iowa was talking about being “replaced” this is what he was talking about. Their kids have left for the city and aren’t coming back until (maybe) retirement when they long for a quieter life or plan to take over the old family homestead. Instead, the people who are coming in are foreign: Hispanics, Immigrants who want cheap land and a less rushed lifestyle. The kids in school aren’t their grand-kids.
Another Scott
@Frankensteinbeck: Remember Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs? Dukakis got 42% of the primary vote then, so that kinda supports your point, but he won 55.6% of the contests without any “winner take all” tricks (I don’t think – there’s no mention of things like that). He eventually got 70% of the delegates as people dropped out and their delegates were reassigned.
It was crowded because of their stupid too-clever-by-half rules. They thought that by having (nearly) 35 people on the stage (or at the “kids table”) in the debates they would build interest and ratings and donations and all the rest. But they thought JEB! was ultimately going to win. Until his book tour imploded, and his announcement imploded, and all the rest. They were incompetent and destroyed their party in the process.
They turned into a political party that let anyone (who had a billionaire (or multimillionaire) pushing that old guy’s pet project) participate. They thought they could take the money and control the outcome.
And too many of them still do.
(sigh)
But you’re right – not winning the majority of votes in the primaries isn’t that unusual. Still, the outcome could have been different if the GOP had had sensible rules.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Did they know all along that he was a fake? Hoping that asking any question might relegate him to a level of no importance at all? After all he’s always been this tacky, puffed up, wealthy, snot nosed brat. The only thing he had going for him was his ego, and I’d bet that if you hang around enough wealthy or rich people you’ll see plenty of those. Far, far more puffed up egos than any thing else. I’ve met a few wealthy people, working in professional sports, and some were nice and genuine. Most were egos with legs, looking for a boost to shore up their bullshit. Not that there is necessarily a shortage of that in the working class. After all we all have egos, the key is how much we let that rule our lives.
Chet
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Trump captured the white vote up and down the socioeconomic ladder. So maybe GTFOH with that classist bullshit about the dirty proles being uniquely and innately deplorable.
Karen
remember when the new flotus said that she was going to make cyberbullying her thing? she could get rid of biggest bully in cyber space but shutting down dolt45
tobie
@Brachiator: Monoculture has contributed to all sorts of environmental ills. We shouldn’t be encouraging it with our agricultural policies.
Mike in DC
@lgerard:
Yes and no. With respect to the House and state legislatures, geographic sorting does impede or mitigate demographic shifts. However, at a state and presidential level, 3 states are now majority-minority and 19 more are on track to be over the next 1 to 3 decades. That’s a lot of electoral votes (including, I believe, Florida and Texas). So it will impact the presidency and US Senate. Vote suppression is a bigger problem impeding that demographic political shift.
Brachiator
@ThresherK:
In the 19th century, people abandoned farms for cities even if it meant living in slums in terrible conditions. Wages were better, but I’m not sure about total benefits.
But few people want to be farmers even though this means owning their own business. And I keep hearing that in California, for example, farmers have increased wages, but still cannot attract workers. But this is also because the wages may be lower than minimum wage, or even when higher do not come with a guarantee of raises. Also, the living conditions for workers is not something that people would put up with unless they were escaping from fire poverty. Work camps, not homes or apartments. So benefits are inherently inferior to an urban job.
Also, there are increasing attempts to mechanize migrant labor. It’s still expensive because the food products have to be handled and processed with care.
bemused
Bill Maher: You’re never too rich to be white trash.
tobie
@Karen: I live behind a ‘conventional’ farm that grows corn or soy on an alternating basis for chicken feed and once a year without fail they get a helicopter to spray herbicide across the entire field. Now I buy my water and have installed a reverse osmosis filter in the house for cooking, washing, etc. People with well water in rural areas worry about this sort of stuff all the time…and it’s only those with money who can do anything about it.
danielx
Well, he’s got one thing right.
Brachiator
@tobie:
Smaller farms don’t solve the problem. And again, it’s not just policy. People do not want to be farmers workers.
lgerard
@Mike in DC:
Having the presidency doesn’t mean a whole lot if both houses of the legislature are controlled by the opposing party
See 2012-2016
Mike in NC
If we lived in a sane country, Trump would celebrate Independence Day by announcing his retirement because of [something]. But instead this entitled freak will continue to brag and bullshit and embarrass the nation up until the inevitable Katrina-size disaster he’ll be directly responsible for (even as the mentally damaged man-child dodges responsibility for everything). We can only hope the physical damage and loss of human life are minimal.
d58826
@Karen: Interesting comment. I guess at the 50k foot level my take is
is a relic of bygone days. In most cases it is no longer the cradle/daycare/school/job/nursing home of 3 or 4 generations. Even John-Boy and his siblings moved away. I think we have to look at it as the family owned farming business, just like the family owned car dealership. I’m not suggestion that we just go out and dump[ on these folks for no good reason, but at the policy level we have to stop romanticizing ‘the family farm’ . If for no other reason that it has gone from 80-90% of GDP to around 5-10%.
I know you can’t eat a credit default swap so there are policies/programs/etc that we need for a viable farm economy but they have to be looked at on an economic basis and not how can we help John and Olivia keep Walton’s mountain.
Another Scott
@Brachiator: It’s not just “not wanting to be farmers”.
In 2015 in the USA, U.S. Cities were Home to 62.7 Percent of the U.S. Population, but Comprised Just 3.5 Percent of Land Area.
This is one reason why I don’t get too worried about small states having even more of the US senators in a few years – even small states have cities, and problems and benefits and needs of people in cities are pretty universal.
Land doesn’t vote.
Cheers,
Scot.
Brachiator
@Karen: Thanks very much for your insights. Farmers certainly get buffetted from all angles. And in addition to the challenges that family farms face, there’s not much to encourage new people to come out and try farming.
ETA. I have to admit that I don’t see the great benefit to raw milk production, but I am not caught up on all the battles and controversies here.
Another Scott
@Brachiator: Raw milk is dangerous, and a political talisman among too many people who should know better.
I would think that after the problems with Odwalla, people would have given up on non-pasteurized milk, processed foods and beverages, but no….
IMO, of course.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
A lot of farm work is blue collar (or if you actually look at the collars at the end of the day, dirty collar work) and more and more people are seeing that a good living may be made not having to do that. And that’s even with all the machines and modern methods. I’ve worked in blue collar jobs most of my life, done OK, and had one job that required cube sitting when not traveling. It was nice but I was restless because it’s not what I was used to. But a lot of people would be glad to give up dirty collar work. It’s hard on the body, and as one ages it can become much more difficult. Hard to enjoy retirement when pain is the over ridding component of the day. I even know people who work dirty collar and at 50ish are beat up from their work to the point of constant pain. People wonder why there is a opiate crisis in this country. A lot is that we use people up, work them till they can’t take it and then throw them away. We really aren’t a first world country for a lot of our citizens. That those citizens see that making things better also helps people that don’t look like them is a major problem, that they see the answer is to make the problem worse is even more bewildering.
MomSense
Did anyone see the video the NRA released against Deray McKesson? I am so furious.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Another Scott: That’s just Big Milk telling you propaganda
Karen
@tobie: I hear you, when ex and I bought old farmhouse on a few acres we didn’t have to worry about that since the farmer behind us was dairy and the land was used as pasture. There was still an old hand dug well that used for water my animals, my garden was “organic” in as much as it was possible, step child had cystic fibrosis so healthy food was a must. Over the years I watched as one after another small farm went bankrupt and farmer behind bought up the places (his father left him some money, it was just enough to pick up those farms) I watched as he stopped milking and switched to corn/soybeans. Instead of waiting for soil to warm he started using anhydrous ammonia to heat the soil, he got a “good deal” on bulk seed by buying roundup ready and was able to afford crop insurance. About the same time the dairy farmer down the road died and his sons took over the operation, next thing the barn was gone and there were two massive sheds one for milking and one for rest of time, the herd went from just under 200 to nearly 3000; he bought a couple of bulls and starting selling semon.
My garden would get spray drift, what animals I had were moved to near road rather than fields; filled in the old well and used the deep well only and had it tested for chemicals yearly. Since the land next to ours was marsh most of the chemicals went there and into the river.
I still remember ex’s grandfather saying that what took so many of his children from the farm was greed and laziness; they would rather slave in city for money and short work hours than the slow pace of farm. They wanted store bought fancy clothing, refused to wear handmade anything; he was happy with the things they bought him over the years but he said he missed the days when could decide that after milking the day was to be spent going fishing.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@MomSense: What, are they encouraging their members to play Shoot the Darkie?
-ly Ballou
@MomSense: They’ve really outed themselves as an overt white nationalist org, haven’t they?
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Owning a small farm is probably like owning a lot of small businesses. It’s hard work to balance all the things that have to be balanced, produce a product or service well and consistently and not spend all your time, working. The risks are big, the rewards iffy, and the time demanding. And once you get established, you think you can relax a bit, but if you do, you’d be wrong. And no matter how good you are and how hard you work, it can all disappear in a flash. I can also see why people who have wealth are considered winners, in the game of life (if you play it as a game) it’s the common measure of success. Not that you’ve done something well or saved lives or made lives better, just that you’ve succeeded. You’ve won.
Karen
@Another Scott: it isn’t that raw milk is dangerous so much as lack of cleanliness; dairies that sell to large companies can have a higher bacteria count since pasteurization will take care of that. there was guy down road (which was glad he was still milking since it meant the plow truck kept road past place open) whose place was filthy, I asked ex’s uncle how could even sell his milk? Since uncle was still milking and selling, he said the only place that would take his milk was cheese factory; the bacteria count was too high to be sold as milk, cream, butter but it could still be sold to processed cheese places.
The uncle got good money for his milk, but he was certified organic and sold to place that bottled and sold raw milk. You could eat off the floor of his milking parlor, it took a lot of hot water and hard work to keep up to standards but he felt it was worth it. He also had an old family farm that grew rocks, so pastures were best way to go.
d58826
Well this answers the question about adults in the WH
You wonder how long some of the people with real public reputations will continue to serve in this day-care center. It is getting to the point that some one like McMAster, for example, will be judged by his remaining in this WH rather than by whatever he achieved in a long and honorable military. People live kellyanne and Scavino have long since sold what ever souls/integrity they might have once had.
I feel like the helmsman on the USS Cain during the typhoon wondering ‘Does any one know what they are doing’?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-tweets-video-of-him-punching-cnnwhite-house-officials-think-its-really-funny
“Pure Trump,” another official tersely messaged.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
Yep. Well said.
ETA. The issue of drug use is complicated. Drugs make you feel good. And drug use accelerated in communities where there are few jobs and opportunity, psychic pain as much as physical pain.
tobie
@Brachiator: Actually, small farmers tend not to participate in monoculture. For monoculture to be effective, you need to use machinery and to afford to own or lease farm machinery, you need scale. I feel like we’re talking in circles here. I’m not advocating going back to the 19th century. I am saying that you have a catch-22 situation where to be cost-efficient in agriculture, you need heavy equipment and to pay for heavy equipment you need large farms devoted to a single crop. The ecological consequences of industrialized farming are well documented, as is the effect of such farming on nutrition and public health. For instance, antibiotic resistant bacteria strains come in large part from the heavy use of antibiotics in chicken farms and cattle ranches.
d58826
@Another Scott: Since I don’t want to do a bacteria culture every time I drink some milk I’ll just go with ‘pasteurized milk’ Seems like some Frenchman became famous for the process and the folks who had been drinking the
non-pasteurized milk seemed to like the idea. :-)
tobie
@Karen: It’s unbelievable how similar the stories seem to be throughout the country. My experiences are on the eastern shore of Maryland; yours are the same even if elsewhere. It’s hard to process just how much of agriculture is to producing not food for human beings but feed for animals. That for me is the biggest motivation for being a vegetarian.
Thanks for your really informative comments. I hope, by the way, your step child is okay.
Uncle Cosmo
@The Dangerman: PLEEEZ go read the 25th Amendment with particular reference to Section 4.
TL;DR version: It only functions if everyone, including most specifically POTUS, agrees that the circumstances warrant its application. The clear rationale for Section 4 is to provide for continuity in command when POTUS is clearly (perhaps temporarily) unable to assert command, e.g., under general anesthesia pursuant to surgery (as it has been applied several times).
Any attempt to invoke Section 4 when POTUS disputes its necessity could very quickly turn into The Mother Of All Parliamentary Shitshows. Impeachment & removal would actually be easier (& could be much faster).
I understand full well that you are suggesting Trumpolini might agree to being removed under the 25th Amendment. I disagree with you because it would be far easier & quicker for him just to resign, with no stigma for “incapacity” attached. I just want everyone to be completely clear that th chances of a”25th Amendment solution” are effectively zero short of Cheeto Benito being unconscious or otherwise completely unable to object to the process.
Another Scott
@Karen: I understand the arguments, and I appreciate the need for cleanliness from the get-go and agree that after-the-fact pasteurization can hide problems upstream, but raw milk is dangerous. People cannot know that it’s not contaminated, either from freak accidents, or by incompetence, and the consequences can be deadly.
E.g.:
Pasteurization has been a tremendous boon to humanity and I won’t be convinced otherwise. Sorry.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
No Drought No More
“..but much depends on their response”.
At this point, I think Trump’s deranged behavior speaks for itself, and that journalists need only report the facts as they unfold. Americans have already drawn bead on the sick bastard, and Mueller’s report will finish him.
And Trump is without a doubt a genuinely sick man, and in the throes of a unprecedented and historic public breakdown. He’s been busted; he knows damn well he’s guilty; he also damn well knows he’ll soon stand naked before an entire planet of people. all of whom will celebrate his fall by mocking his teeny, tiny, grasping hands; that, as surely as he knows the history books will record and remember him as a Great American Farce… and there’s not a damn thing that anyone, not even Roy Cohn were Satan to furlough him from hell, can do to fix it..
d58826
@tobie: The nutritional consequences of pre-industrialized farming are also well documented. The word famine comes to mind.
As in so many of our policy disputes in comes down to make a buck at all cost. So you use the farmer/rancher uses excessive amounts of antibiotics because it helps his bottom line. For him ‘antibiotic resistant bacteria strains’ are an externality that doesn’t affect him (until the kids get strep throat that is). We just can’t seem to hit that middle ground that allows the farmer to make a profit and the rest of us eat well and still benefit from antibiotics.
I realize there are a whole lot of other issues that need to be balanced. I just picked the one
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
The differences are tremendous as well. Dealing with the weather is a huge difference. Imagine operating a McDonald’s joint. Only there’s no roof. But you still have to keep the place cool. And the food free of insects. And you not only have to pay workers, you may have to provide temporary housing for them.
I haven’t had to review farm tax returns. I am still amazed at how much of the tax code was built around farming, and astounded at the myriad of complex decisions and distinctions that have to be accommodated.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Yes, drug use is a complicated issue. But at it’s basis is pain, physical or not. I’ve been on a opiate drug for a short while. The lack of pain is wonderful. Having your entire world turned a shade of dull gray is not. My doctor didn’t take me off of it, I did. But you don’t realize what it’s doing, closing off everything else other than relieving pain until you stop because it works slowly. I was taking a very low dosage and am not normally or easily susceptible to addiction, but I can see how this could go wrong, quite easily. Not living in pain is amazing, when you live in constant or consistently reoccurring pain. If your world is already a shade of gray, then getting a shade darker isn’t nearly as big an issue.
sukabi
@Uncle Cosmo: maybe, but he seems awfully close to flinging his own feces…if that happens a straight jacket, ball gag and a trip to the farm upstate would be the quickest route.
d58826
@tobie:
Well we are not feeding those animals just for the love of cattle or pigs. I understand the impact on how/why those crops are grown. And cow/pig/horse farts are a good chunk of the green house gas methane going into the atmosphere.
And then you have the issue of fertilizers and insecticides on crops to deal with even if all the crops are meant for human consumption..
I have no idea if any one has done a study as to whither you can feed 320 million people using all natural/eco-friendly farming techniques.
CZanne
@??? Martin: Food factories still require inputs. Those basic Lego bricks of carbs, amino acids and fats have to come from somewhere. Can we get algae and yeast making the basics? … Yes? In theory, we can create enough calories just from photosynthesis if we plan it right. (1.9 calories per square centimeter of sunlight per minute.) Theoretically, we’d need around 30,000 square miles of algae and yeast tanks to feed the United States. That’s not that difficult — Arizona is 113,000 sq miles; Nevada is 110K sq miles. But our farms aren’t just *feeding* us.
I am sitting at my dining room table. Without moving my head let me count the number of things made at least partly of corn within reach. A bottle of ink (pigments; alcohol); acetaminophen (several of the binders and all of the active ingredient list); spouse’s moisturizer that he hasn’t taken to his bathroom yet (several lipids, an alcohol and vitamin E tocopherol); the starch, ink and glue used to build a pasteboard tissue box; superglue; a widget we printed with PLA plastic (corn-based); the ink and starch used to produce a magazine; allergy tablets (same as acetaminophen); my coffee glass (I had some half-and-half in the cold brew). And that’s what I know and can define. I can do the same with soy.
But it’s more efficient to just grow the corn and turn it into lab-food. (I have no objections to lab-food except my gallbladder’s general objection to all carbs.) At this point, the monoculture corn and soy fields we’re growing are extremely large scale hydroponics; the land itself doesn’t contribute all that many nutrients and it’s basically there to serve as root support, like rockwool cubes in a hydro setup. And turning those giant farms back into small-scale family farms is not practical. People gotta want it, and people don’t. Urban farms? Yes. Suburban? Yes. But we’re not going to get thousands of urban farmers to move back to Indiana and Iowa to raise corn when they’re making better money and living better lives selling brassicas and tomatoes at farmer’s markets — and those crops are not subsidized.
Part of the reason we use so much industrial corn and soy is because we heavily subsidize those crops with the crop insurance, so they’re cheaper than other feedstocks. There’s some pretty good evidence that it’s more efficient to NOT make fertilizer and pesticides from oil and natural gas, turn those into automotive fuel, and put them in the tank than to grow corn that becomes ethanol that is added to gasoline.
And that’s just in the US. A heck of a lot of USAID aid comes in the form of food — sacks of wheat, corn and soy — so if we’re not producing it, someone one else isn’t eating.
I admit that the way we’re doing farming is destructive and not sustainable. But the solution is not ending farms. We can’t. We need a mechanism to convert sunlight into carbohydrates, fats and proteins. That’s plants in large quantities, and those are farms.
Brachiator
@tobie: Hundreds of millions of people have to be fed. I am for whatever gets that done most efficiently and at a reasonable cost to consumers, with environmental concerns addressed. I don’t ask for much.
Mike in DC
@lgerard:
If 22 states become majority-minority and the demographic party split roughly holds, that’s 44 Senate seats in the bank. And there are a few lily white states like Vermont that are fairly hard left.
I do agree that redistricting and geographic distribution are an issue, though again my more immediate worry is suppression.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
You have some tremendous insights with respect to this issue. And not just into the seductiveness of drugs, but what a trap they can be.
All this makes crafting a way out for people an incredibly difficult challenge.
tobie
@d58826: @Brachiator: I don’t disagree with either of you on this. Again, I’m not advocating giving up all advances in agriculture. But I am open to seeing how agriculture works in other countries where (a) the cost of fresh produce for consumers is considerably lower than here and (b) monoculture hasn’t taken over everything. Germany has managed to encourage mid-sized farms and the cost of food at supermarkets is considerably cheaper than here. (The government subsidizes it.) German farmers also use fewer insecticides and herbicides because of crop variety. Monoculture makes you particularly vulnerable to all sorts of blight. Since joining the EU, France has been under pressure to industrialize its agricultural system, and it’s hard to tell what agriculture will look like there in 20 years.
But what’s key is that most European counties have found ways to feed millions without fear of famine and while still preserving crop variety. It’s stupid not to look at what other countries do to see what’s effective and what’s not.
No Drought No More
ANNE NAVARRO: “I’m a CNN commentator. I think that is unacceptable. I think that is the president of the United States taking things way too far. It is an incitement to violence. He is going to get somebody killed in the media, maybe that will stop him”.
Because Trump is a very sick sick man, there exists the very real possibility that it won’t stop him. Which makes his ouster from office all the more imperative..
..Remember the good old days, when the only people who had real reason to fear a POTUS were brown and foreign?
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
Who are the people who lead the cause of anti vaccination? People who should know better. They mostly have education and the ability to read and comprehend and they don’t. Some of the people in charge at Odwalla believed that pasteurization is bad for the nutrition and flavor.
People are fucked up and believe whatever they want, facts and reality be damned. People think that drumpf is going to save them. From what, prosperity, having black people breath, what? People on the left thought and still do that an old fart who rants to himself on one issue for which he has no real answers, would make a much better president than a person who has spent her adult life working at learning and being a better person, because she has a vajayjay, those people?
Another Scott
@d58826:
Sorry, you’ve punched one of my buttons. :-)
It’s burps, not farts(, and its overwhelming from cows).
National Geographic:
Changing their feed can make a huge difference to climate change (and simultaneously increase weight gain as less waste gas is produced for pound of feed).
And that’s why Teabagger attempts to make fun of “wasteful studies of cow farts” is so wrong on so many levels. Don’t feed the wrong memes. :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Karen
@tobie: sadly she died in 92; she was on transplant list and moved in with her cousin since she was old enough to be on own. after years of adults making sure she was eating properly, getting her therapy she went into rebellion; took up smoking (last thing a CF patient needs to be doing), drinking and bar hopping.
Johannes
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Henry II was the father of the common law and a brilliant strategist and administrator. His “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest” was oblique enough that he was untouchable. Trump wishes he was Henry II, if he knew who Henry II was.
J R in WV
@schrodingers_cat:
I contributed to and worked for Hillary’s campaign for weeks last fall… I will always wonder if I had done more (don’t know how I could have done more!) if things might have been different. I know that isn’t rational, one guy making door-to-door house calls and working phones can’t sway a national election. But it’s how I feel sometimes…
At least I can rest easy knowing that I didn’t do anything to help Trump towards his pyrrhic victory. That would really hurt a normal person now that the reality is becoming so obvious.
Another Scott
@CZanne: Great post. This struck me:
I hadn’t thought about it that succinctly, but you’re right.
E.g. 532 bushels/acre corn yield record – the plants are growing so much that the soil physically can’t provide the building blocks. It’s all the “chemicals” that are used to provide the building blocks that the plant turns into corn.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Karen
@Another Scott: not going to disagree, the problem with raw milk is that is has to be sold and stored in glass which is expensive. It is one thing, like ex’s uncle, if it is sold locally; the biggest reason that people even buy it from the local store, cheese factory is that it can’t have any antibiotics in it. So the customer base is those whose health would be compromised by adding hormones and antibiotics that is present from large dairies. When my goats were dry for the winter I would purchase milk from him, but back then it was still legal for farmer to keep some milk back for family use. I wouldn’t buy from store and never if it was sold in plastic.
J R in WV
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?:
Because only well-off white farmers with large acreages make any money off the federal government. Small farm farmers get nothing, black farmers get nothing, in fact many black farmers have had their land stolen by racist conspiracies of wealthy landowners greedy for one more tract of land.
My neighbors were farmers, raised everything they ate, grew tobacco for a cash income, probably did $3,000 in their best years. Never got a dime directly from any government agency. Tobacco quotas and price supports helped them stay afloat, and the ability to get along on a near to nothing as could be done.
tobie
@Karen: I’m sorry to hear about your step-daughter. It sounds like a really sad and painful experience.
Karen
@CZanne: I have heard time and time again, we will just have small family farms broken off from these massive ones; they are nuts! I have no idea how many years it would take for all the chemicals to be washed away, since most of them don’t break down into anything safe. So the land would have to sit until it grew weeds, which would help the land start to heal (I understand that the growing of hemp would speed up the process), then you would still be limited in what crops you could grow until there was enough humus in soil to support food crops.
I know from experience that it took me almost 20 years to turn a patch of very poor soil into a deep rich organic soil; I spent a couple of years simply cleaning barn and chicken coop on to where wanted garden. And this section of land had never had chemicals used on it; so 20 years to build up soil after waiting 30? years for chemicals to be leached from soil? So even if you broke up a mega monoculture it would be 50 or so years before it could be counted on to even grow healthy crops.
tobie
@J R in WV:
Bingo. While I don’t think small farms alone could feed the nation, I am against giving untold amounts of aid to agribusinesses that earn more than enough in profit already. Supporting agribusiness to the tune we do is the same as giving subsidies to Exxon, which we also do. Unfortunately we will never review our agricultural policy because there are too many senators from land-rich, population-poor states that have to defend their local industry.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
The challenge is not crafting a way out, the challenge is how to pay for it. Is the pain more or the same as our parents and their parents (and so on) generations? If it is can we lessen or mitigate the pain so that it will less cost in suffering? If it is less then why are we spending so much to make it go away, at huge costs from the after/side effects? Are we even considering the side effects or just trying to keep people from complaining? And of course nothing is that simple or easy. People have been looking and will continue to look for ways to lessen pain, no matter the source or cost. We sell alcoholic beverages in every state don’t we? We allow pot to be sold in how many states, even as it is still a schedule drug on the federal books? As long as there are humans there will be problems with substance abuse, be they legal, prescription or illegal drugs. Could we do as some of the European countries have done, make drugs legal and available as long as guidelines and controls are met. Seems to have worked out for them. That may be a bit too far for our puritan backgrounds though.
I don’t drink, haven’t smoked pot in 34 yrs and all my drugs are prescription. And I’ve had from those prescribed drugs all of the following: hallucinations, and a rather unpleasant graying down of my life, and better health. And even then the drugs did solve what they were intended to solve. The cost was just way too high, no pun intended. Modern life isn’t for everyone, any more than going back to the 1800s is good for anyone. But we have arrived at a point that it’s all or nothing and for more than just one side of the political aisle. That’s a far bigger dilemma than controlling drug usage. How do you know who to trust?
Ksmiami
@West of the Rockies (been a while): 86 is generous. trump supporters are stupid , Petty and vile people and I’m tired of sharing a country / planet with them
Karen
@tobie: well, I can honestly say that my life as a whole has never been boring and has contained some period of complete horror and terror. I found the only thing that have never managed is a “normal” 9 to 5 or locked inside building job; everything else? I have earned my grey and wrinkles
Uncle Cosmo
@sukabi:
(FTFY, FWIW.)
You might be right…but some judge would have to sign the commitment order & some physician qualified in mental health care would have to present evidence he was "a danger to himself &/or others" to that judge. At which point the injunctions & lawsuits start flying. Heck, maybe that would be The Mother Of All Shitshows (TMOASS).
It is not beyond the realm of possibility that one of his military aides keeps a sedative injector under his dress-whatevers with instructions from the Joint Chiefs that If he ever orders an unprovoked nuclear strike on anyone anywhere, jam that sucker into his thigh & call for assistance ASAP. but it’s still pretty farfetched.
Villago Delenda Est
@Another Scott: Teabaggers are an utter waste of oxygen on so many levels. This being just one of them.
The very meme has been tainted from the start; the Boston Tea Party struck at a corporation, not a government.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@KithKanan: Oops! I did mean heel. Thanks ?
J R in WV
@Another Scott:
I’m happy to buy and drink organic pasteurized milk. When I was younger and tried small farm life, we kept a dairy cow, who we bred to a neighborhood bull after artificial insemination didn’t work.
She produced far more milk than we could drink, make butter with, feed her calf, feed the pigs, etc.We were really clean, washed her before milking, rinsed the tools in boiling water, never had any problems with the milk. And it was wonderful, rich, creamy milk, too. But that was me milking our milk, and keeping things clean.
We have friends who keep dairy goats, very successful, huge market for their billy goat kids, great cheeses, but they don’t sell any. They don’t care to get a pasteurizer, and don’t care to risk selling it. We’re happy to eat the great cheeses, because we’re right there to see the care they invest. She was actually head sanitarian for a couple of counties around, so extra aware of sanitary requirements.
They brew great beer too, by the way…
But I agree with you – raw milk is nothing to fool around with.
Older
@Karen: My information is old (from back in my child-having years, which is why I took milk so seriously), and probably very local. But when I knew anything about it, the allowable bacterial counts for already pasteurized milk were higher than for raw milk. And we’re not talking about different germs here. I think raw milk is actually illegal here now, but I’ll bet I know where I can get some.
Fortunately, I don’t have to go to the trouble to find the underground raw-milk supplier, because there is a local commercial dairy which is very picky about other things that might be found in milk, and because they don’t strip out milk solids along with the fat, for separate sale, their low fat tastes as good as full fat. So we’re happy, because, y’know, even though the kids are gone, we still drink milk.
opiejeanne
@West of the Rockies (been a while): I asked him some pretty candid questions about furries and he talked about the controversies, the fringe members (Yiffers) who give the larger group a bad name.
And over the past year they have had to close down a planned convention just days before it opened, and expel about 10 % since Trump because they are Neo-Nazis.
Karen
@Older: I hear you, one reason had goats was that it was good for step daughter, then when SIL had babies she found she barely had any milk (goats milk is nearly exact formula as mother’s milk) so I kept goats and her in milk until her children were older. I made cheese from the extra milk and froze quart jars of it to carry nieces through winter. I was “lucky” there was goat dairy down the road and owner was willing to lend me a buck every fall.
I had many people who refused to even taste the milk, cause of all the myths about taste, I would tell them it depends on what you feed. My best milker loved her sweet16 with high molasses content, so her milk was always a little extra sweet.