Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

The world has changed, and neither one recognizes it.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Let me file that under fuck it.

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

I did not have this on my fuck 2025 bingo card.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

No one could have predicted…

the 10% who apparently lack object permanence

The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Dolt 45 / Open Thread: “President” Manbaby

Open Thread: “President” Manbaby

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91Comments

  1. 1.

    Another Scott

    Also too, ICYMI, Drum is very busy with good posts today.

    Why you should be skeptical of Hersh’s claims about Syria chemical weapons attacks (as other have mentioned here).

    A very brief primer on single-payer health care with a very revealing graph of what our enlightened betters actually pay for in their healthcare systems.

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    (On #2, to be clear, we need to cover much more as a nation, but can’t get caught up on chasing an ideal that nobody follows.)

  2. 2.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    I never believe anything Hersh says. My life runs better because of that…

  4. 4.

    Jeffro

    This whole ‘taking the high road’ thing…it does wear on a person. Because frankly the president* is a total loser, and someone should tell him that to his face.

    I think he and we would all have been a lot happier if we’d just set him up with his own “The Presidentice” TV show, let him bloviate at length about whatever’s on his mind, fire some people, institute imaginary policies that magically worked overnight, and have him being adored everywhere he goes, with higher approval ratings than Washington x Lincoln x FDR squared. I mean really, wouldn’t that work a whole lot better than this crap?

    Declare victory and go back home to reality TV, Trumpov.

  5. 5.

    Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)

    @Another Scott: I fondly recall his accusation two years ago on how Obama faked bin Laden’s assassination and supposedly threw the Pakistani intelligence agency under the bus in its cover story, just to be a dick.

    Also: Doesn’t the case against intervening in Syria, etc., actually become a lot weaker if it finds it necessary to say that “the side the state broadly opposes never does anything truly beyond the pale?”

  6. 6.

    hilts

    Donald Trump needs a pacifier or an enema or both. He’s simply too fucking crazy, too fucking dumb, and too fucking dishonest to be President.

    Hopefully, Robert Mueller’s investigation will yield enough evidence to get this unrepentant ratfucker removed from the White House.

  7. 7.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Another Scott: The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, via labs in multiple countries, has found sarin of the type used by the Syrian government in the samples it has taken. That alone destroys Hersh’s argument. Kevin Drum didn’t include that in his post, but I tweeted it at him.

  8. 8.

    pamelabrown53

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
    Agree. Somewhere it appears that Hersch went off the rails. I think Jeremy Scahill is following Hersh in his footsteps. What do they both have in common? Dumped by the New Yorker who maintains a rigorous standard in vetting sources.
    I don’t caare that the New Yorker is an “elite” publication, it maintains a high standard for factual reporting in a world that is increasingly embracing chaos and conspiracy.

  9. 9.

    rk

    Every day I hate the people who voted for him more and more. I don’t care if they lose their jobs, their health insurance, die of drug overdose or black lung or in a fire. So I’ve become as bad as Trump and I hate him for that.

  11. 11.

    Mike in NC

    Disagree with Mark Hamill that he’s not a bad person. Evil, rotten clown who could blow up the whole world.

  12. 12.

    Another Scott

    @Cheryl Rofer: No doubt Seymour’s unimpeachable source would say The Illuminati is behind that fake evidence.

    >:-)

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  13. 13.

    Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)

    @pamelabrown53: Scahill is one of the better members of the Intercept staff (though also rather crappy w/r/t electoral politics), but yeah, that worries me also.

    Probably the kookiest thing I can recall Scahill saying was about 2007-09 on Milosevic, where he said that while he was almost certainly a war criminal his cause célèbre status was mainly to discredit his knowledge of US war crimes. (I don’t recall what got him canned from The New Yorker, however).

  17. 17.

    efgoldman

    @Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):

    Scahill is one of the better members of the Intercept staff

    Sorry, but being “one of the better members of the intercept…” is the journamalism equivalent of Tangerine Torquemada being one of the better non-cannibal “presidents”
    Just a leftier-than-thou version of Fox; no more credible, and actually much less influential.

  18. 18.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    @rk:

    I feel the same way about those who still support and defend the jackass… I imagine a few very low-information voters who now are embarrassed for voting for him might be forgiven.

    I’m stunned that according to some polls, 8% of Democrats still approve of him. Undoubtedly, if you ran a survey, you’d find 3% of respondents are undecided about if Hitler was an evil man.

    I’m not trying to defend such knuckleheads, but acknowledging their existence. A certain segment of the population is simply too, too stupid to be able to make instant cereal.

    As for those who are bigots, racists, homophobes, misogynists… is there an ice floe big enough?

  19. 19.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @pamelabrown53: Hersh belongs to a group of people who are all too willing to believe the worst of the United States. That’s not too surprising after his scoop on My Lai, although one might think he could discern among various types of behavior by different sorts of people. But apparently he has gone to the extreme of believing anyone who has a persuasive story that aligns with his prejudices. Additionally, he’s getting old and he hasn’t kept up with the kinds of evidence available to all of us these days, including very high-quality overhead photos. The Bellingcat group has been analyzing those photos and challenging Hersh to locate the building he claims was hit. It would be easy to look at before and after photos (perhaps even on Google Earth, depending on when they update) and see the building whole and then damaged. Hersh has responded in an interview that the sorts of photos that are openly available are of much lower quality than what is available to the government and therefore he isn’t going to do that. I’ve seen interviews in the past where he clearly has no idea of the technical aspects of what he’s reporting on and gets things wrong.

  20. 20.

    efgoldman

    @Ladyraxterinok:

    What about his story on the Mai Lai

    50(!) years ago. Things happen to people, especially as they age.
    Hell, Saint Ralph was a young hero then, too.

  21. 21.

    Brachiator

    I said it in the thread below and I say it again. Trump is nuts. And he forces his staff to defend and justify his absurd obsessions. This is bad enough. But increasingly, he is also using his powers as “Man Baby in chief” to force the federal government to investigate his quixotic reveries.

    It’s also a sign of his increasing agitation and derangement that he insists on flying back to his home in New Jersey where he can wear his most comfortable jammies and suck on his pacifier while he posts on Twitter. The White House is a prize that he won, not a home for the president of the United States.

    Maybe he would like the White House more if he could paint it gold.

  22. 22.

    BBA

    @Major Major Major Major: There’s also Singapore, which has a complicated system of private accounts, subsidies, and government-run catastrophic backstop insurance that basically adds up to French-style pseudo-multi-payer but makes it look like cheap, efficient “free market” healthcare to the untrained eye.

    I’ll make a deal with conservatives: we can have Singapore-style free market healthcare if we can also get Singapore-style housing policy.

  23. 23.

    pamelabrown53

    @Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):
    Not being a fan of the Intercept, couldn’t vouch for Scahill being a better contributor. My sense is that reporters like Scahill, (Hersch) become ideologically wedded to a cause. then they have a like-minded “friend” in a government agency. This is when they crossover from journalist to polemicist with an ax to grind.Doesn’t always mean the ax isn’t worth grinding but it does mean that they no longer are bona fide investigative reporters? What am I missing?

  26. 26.

    Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)

    @efgoldman: It’s more a downmarket version of The Nation or 2016-primaries-Salon: That is, a core of five to seven decent-to-pretty-good writers swimming among an ocean of SHIT. You want the lefty version of Fox (or rather, WND), go to Counterpunch.

    And not liking Greenwald won’t make him not-influential, you know. Especially since wingnuts like Tucker & Ingraham have used him as an even-the-liberal cudgel.

  27. 27.

    efgoldman

    @Brachiator:

    he forces his staff to defend and justify his absurd obsessions…. he is also using his powers as “Man Baby in chief” to force the federal government to investigate his quixotic reveries.

    He’s not forcing anybody to do anything. He might think he is. Generally, there’s no staff available to do what he wants, so he’s ordering the air around.
    As far as shit like the”voter fraud” fraud, it’s an obsession that Kobach whispered in his ear. He has no more idea what it’s about than I do about being swallowed by Jonah’s whale. Kobach knows fucking right well that there’s nothing to it – he hopes to obtain just enough numbers to “prove” the massive fraud everybody knows is there. It will go out over the RWNJ noise machine, and 45% of the country will believe it.

  28. 28.

    pamelabrown53

    @Cheryl Rofer: @19.

    Thanks for your response. I believe the whole site benefited I was particularly interested in your analysis re: Hersh hasn’t kept up with the technological times..

  30. 30.

    Jay Noble

    I don’t think they’ll get the clock turned back enough to allow dueling again, but sooner or later Trump is gonna insult someone who is old school enough to know how to take down a bully. Words won’t do it. He’s going to insult someone’s wife or daughter and he’s gonna get punched out on the spot – one punch. Or better yet he will try to grab some you-know-what of a smallish woman and he’ll get the classic knee to the groin followed by an uppercut to the jaw. The longer his in the more likely this will happen. If it happens in public there won’t be much chance of defending himself afterwards. If it’s behind closed doors, no one will have seen a thing.

  31. 31.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Mike in NC:
    I think that part was snark? From Hamill, I mean.

    @West of the Rockies (been a while):

    I’m stunned that according to some polls, 8% of Democrats still approve of him.

    Bear in mind there is still a significant number of ‘Reagan Democrats’, that is racists who like to claim they’re liberal but always vote for Republicans. A number of them finally changed affiliation for Trump, but I’m sure there are plenty left. Frankly, I think they dominate cable news and are a big reason the news is always trying to justify the Republican Party as motivated by absolutely anything except hate. And after all, lying about who you vote for and why is practically the America’s official hobby.

  32. 32.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Here’s more from Eliot Higgins, the founder of Bellingcat.

  33. 33.

    Brachiator

    @Another Scott: The June 29 BBC News Hour Extra podcast had an interesting program on “What’s the best health care system.” As with the article you linked, the host and guests get into good comparisons of various programs and funding mechanisms. Oddly enough, the American guest was reluctant to endorse any government based universal system, but had difficulty offering any coherent objections.

    Still, an interesting program. You can Google it and get a version you can listen to it download. Apologize that the mobile browser I’m using does not behave when I try to include links.

  36. 36.

    Lurking Canadian

    @West of the Rockies (been a while): In mathematics and gambling, 8% is different from zero. In polling, I think they are the same thing. You can probably get 8% of the population to agree with the statements “Aliens built the pyramids”, “The world was created last Tuesday” and “The moon is made of green cheese”.

  37. 37.

    efgoldman

    @Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):

    not liking Greenwald won’t make him not-influential

    How many votes does he move? How much legislation can he push or halt? How many laws has he written for state legislatures? How many candidates that he disfavored have lost? How many that he endorsed have won?
    I hate to say it, but it’s true: the Koch brothers have more influence in one day’s worth of phone calls than Glennie has had his whole life. His idea of his own importance and usefulness is driven only by his ego, not reality.

  40. 40.

    gene108

    @Major Major Major Major:

    @Another Scott: he dared to point out that single-payer how a mechanism and not a goal, and that places like Japan exist and have governments? The nerve!

    Single payer is a goal. Without it, is will True Progressives drive health insurers out of business?

  41. 41.

    Brachiator

    @efgoldman:

    .He’s not forcing anybody to do anything.

    Didn’t he have someone who was not just a press side ask states for their voting records? This is wandering into an abuse of presidential power.

    The partial support for his travel ban is already causing more harm than good, and TSA employees are not ignoring Trump, but are actively implementing his orders.

  43. 43.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    @Lurking Canadian:

    Would such people be so easily duped? Statistically speaking, isn’t a not-insignificant segment of the population functionally (if irretrievably) stupid?

  44. 44.

    rk

    @West of the Rockies (been a while):

    It’s very hard to get over this. It’s as if you’ve been stabbed and someone pokes the wound every day. There’s no relief. It’s hard to watch his enablers justify his every action and hard to know that a significant percentage of people are fine with it and voted for him. I really want to leave and there’s nowhere to go. Leaving the country is out of the question for various reasons. I turned off the TV and did not watch anything for a long time. But how long can one avoid what’s in front of you. So everyday is a fresh insult. Yesterday was a nice day spent with family and today I see this garbage tweet everywhere. He’s so disgusting and vulgar. If he’d just shut his trap and stop tweeting there may be some relief, but we have to put up with 3 1/2 (or maybe even 8 more) years of it. I just want him to break his fingers on the golf course or something.

  45. 45.

    efgoldman

    @d58826:

    Capt Queeg and the caper of the missing cheese.

    Long time since I read it (or saw the movie) but I thought it was strawberries.

  46. 46.

    Lurking Canadian

    @Mike in NC: I’m really impressed with Hamill for the way he’s going after Trump. For that matter, I’m impressed with the Giant Evil Corporation in that they haven’t tried to shut him up to prevent the flying monkeys from boycotting Star Wars. Studied neutrality is a much safer financial bet. Good for them.

  48. 48.

    scav

    @Lurking Canadian: There’s a strong likelihood that there’s a far greater percentage of people amusing themselves by lying their heads off to pollsters and enough randomly came up with that particular combo. BS is now a first language and personal branding lifestyle choice for many.

  49. 49.

    JPL

    Manbaby is going to represent the U.S. next week at the G20 conference. ugh!

    He’ll probably tell Putin that we can now say Merry Christmas because of him.

  51. 51.

    efgoldman

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Remember the USC poll from last year, where all of Trump’s black support was one dude?

    Bernie swept unopposed thru one Brooklyn precinct in the NY primary.

    There was exactly one voter.

  53. 53.

    efgoldman

    @JPL:

    Manbaby is going to represent the U.S. next week at the G20 conference. ugh!

    Last nite there was news going around that he plans to meet one on one with Rootie Pootie Kazootie, and he’s looking around for concession that he can give to Pootie as a gift. This will end well, I’m sure.

    @Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):

    neither is he sub-[BONERS] in terms of influence.

    Freddie is a waste of protoplasm, oxygen, and pixels. Can’t believe that John once gave him the keys to the blog.

  54. 54.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    @rk:

    I hear you… some days, I’m able to ignore it, concentrate on being kind to those I meet in my city, being a good father, being personally productive… other days I’m filled with resentment and bitterness.

    BJ is a FSM-send where we can vent, laugh, cry, and fortify.

  55. 55.

    Another Scott

    @efgoldman: The USC-Dornsife poll had all kinds of weirdness about it, but it shouldn’t have been ignored as much as it was. Polling is getting more and more difficult (with CallerID, prescreening, people not answering calls from people they don’t know, etc.). This poll asked the same people the same questions throughout the campaign and got around some of those issues. They really didn’t get it right (Donnie didn’t win the popular vote), but it should have worried the Clinton Campaign that things weren’t in the bag as much as they thought.

    It would be interesting to see how their poll would have behaved under Trump, but they dropped it after the November election.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  56. 56.

    pamelabrown53

    @Jay Noble: @30.
    Heh. Maybe dueling is a better choice than chaos: at least there were stringent rules…and seconds!

  58. 58.

    Gelfling 545

    “and someone should tell him that to his face.”
    I’d be happy to. Tell him to drop by.

  59. 59.

    HeleninEire

    Dublin is so rife with Georgian churches that on my run today a woman stopped me and said, clearly exhausted from trying to figure it out, “Which one is Christchurch?” Good question. She was in a part of Dublin that has at least 5 huge churches within 5 blocks.

  62. 62.

    d58826

    Ok I’m going to post this link twitter.com/AaronMehta/status/881573272793620480

    The American president wants to sneak into London in the dead of night because he’s scared of protestors.

    The one RT bio say’s he works for defense_new covering the pentagon and the other is a political report in the UK.

    With any other president my reaction would be that the ONION has lost it’s mind.
    But it seems he wants to follow thew ‘flying into Baghdad’ playbook while he is in Europe for the G20. Sneak into London, no advance notice, quick 24 stay at 10 Downing and then home. That way he can avoid the protesters but still claim a Huge win in visiting GB.

    As I say sound more like the Onion or Monty Python (since it is GB) but with Der Fuhrer it does sound creditable. And if not then its just one more good joke at his expense.

  65. 65.

    pamelabrown53

    @efgoldman: @53.
    The meme that’s going around that trump will give away Alaska? Hilarious. Impossible. Until he does it. Nah…that’s even too paranoid and pessimistic for me. UNTIL IT HAPPENS.
    Only the Shadow knows.

  66. 66.

    efgoldman

    @Another Scott: @d58826:

    he wants to follow thew ‘flying into Baghdad’ playbook while he is in Europe for the G20. Sneak into London, no advance notice, quick 24 stay at 10 Downing and then home. That way he can avoid the protesters

    What ever happened to the triumphal ride thru London in Her Majesty’s golden coach? Turn into a pumpkin, Deadbeat Donnie?

    @Another Scott:

    Polling is getting more and more difficult (with CallerID, prescreening, people not answering calls from people they don’t know, etc.)

    I was polled exactly once last year, for the RI primaries. I told them I loved Dr Jill (I lied), since I’m sure they had very few samples from such a small state and i was hoping to skew the results.

  67. 67.

    Yarrow

    Please keep calling your Senators.

    1: ALERT: McConnell just sent a revised bill to CBO. They’re close to a deal. This is CODE RED.t.co/9TTStGJGVm— Topher Spiro (@TopherSpiro) July 2, 2017

    2: Vote expected in mid-July. Republican staff reportedly told lobbyists “The store is open”—meaning they think they can buy off moderates.— Topher Spiro (@TopherSpiro) July 2, 2017

    These are from a thread. More details if you click through.

  68. 68.

    Mnemosyne

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    Additionally, he’s getting old and he hasn’t kept up with the kinds of evidence available to all of us these days, including very high-quality overhead photos.

    Given that his last major story that proved to be accurate was Abu Ghraib — a story that meant talking to a lot of people who were directly or indirectly involved or victimized — I think this take is correct. The sarin stories are too technical for Hirsch, who is an old-fashioned “talk to people to get the scoop” kind of reporter.

  69. 69.

    Ruckus

    @Lurking Canadian:
    This is why I say that statistics is not mathematics. It uses math in it’s operation and it has hard rules for what operations mean but it doesn’t control the any of the source. That takes it out of being mathematics and into a way of showing what you want to show. 8% of democrats vote republican. +/- what %? Based upon what question? Based upon how many answers to questions of how many people? It’s free form. Yes some people who get paid to work with statistics will argue my points about it’s accuracy and reality but one needs to know the answers to my questions and many more to actually use statistics reasonably.

  71. 71.

    debbie

    @JPL:

    Do you follow Pete Souza on Instagram (he was Obama’s official photographer)? He does a lot of Trump/Obama comparisons (ie, the trip to Europe, welcoming NBA champions, etc.), and Trump never comes out looking the better of the two.

  75. 75.

    Mnemosyne

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    Depending on the story, it can be enough just to talk to people. You didn’t need an expert to tell you what happened at My Lai or Abu Ghraib — the people who were there could tell you. But I think Hersch is out of his depth when it comes to technical issues and is too trusting of his sources to tell him the truth.

  78. 78.

    Another Scott

    @efgoldman: You devil you. >:-D

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    (Who was polled once a few years ago by Gallup. My responses were probably spoiled because after all the political questions that I willingly answered, I refused to answer their increasingly intrusive questions about our household income and lots of other stuff that I felt they had no business knowing. Who knows what they do with data like that once they have it.)

  80. 80.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @West of the Rockies (been a while):

    I’m stunned that according to some polls, 8% of Democrats still approve of him.

    Don’t be stunned. These polls either start with data from voter rolls on party registration, or ask respondents what party they’re registered with, & go on from there. Having said that:

    Lots of DINOs out there.. One quite logical reason for it is in a state like MD with closed primaries. In local districts (state legislature, city/county council, etc.) where one party dominates, the only meaningful election is often that party’s primary, so if you want to have any say in who represents you, you need to register as a member of that party in order to vote in the primary; then you vote as you please in the general. There are numerous districts in MD where registration is heavily Democratic & local elected officials almost all Democrats but which reliably vote GOP for statewide & Federal offices. I grew up in one such, in SE Baltimore County.

    And that doesn’t count anyone who registered as a Democrat as a teenager & is too lazy to change it. All of which can get you to 8% trumpistas pretty easily.

  81. 81.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Another Scott: Your “refusals to state” might’ve been inconvenient for their crosstabs but that’s about it. Any reputable survey operation should keep any identifying data strictly separate from the survey itself, using it only to select a sample with sufficient numbers in its multiple strata.(Unless it’s a panel survey where the same people will be polled again & again over time.) Of course that’s not saying they will, given how data-driven marketing is these days. Especially Rasmussen polls, which should be trusted about as far as you can throw your local courthouse.

  84. 84.

    KithKanan

    Studied neutrality is a much safer financial bet. Good for them.

    @Lurking Canadian: To be cynical for a moment, studied neutrality may be a safer bet domestically, but a large and increasing amount of their revenue comes from other countries and the rest of the world is near-unanimous in loathing the guy.

  86. 86.

    d58826

    @debbie: What I’m hoping for is for Vlad to walk across the stage grab Der Fuhrer’s hand in the Marcon grip and in a loud voice say ‘It’s so good to see you again. When was the last time, Oh right in the dressing room of the Miss Whatever pageant in Moscow back in 2013. Time flies and you have gotten a new reality show I see. Has it been renewed for next season?’

  88. 88.

    Jay Noble

    @stinger: People get up close all the time. And the Secret Service tackles first, maybe shoots later. In the private setting, I have this fantasy that it’s one of the Secret Service who does the beat down . . .

  89. 89.

    Chris

    @Mnemosyne:

    Yeah, it struck me as a stealth insult. Saying that Trump is not a bad guy, just manipulated by Russian spymasters, is saying that he’s just a dupe and a halfwit and not worth all this ruckus. For an egomaniac like Trump, being called another man’s useful idiot is far worse than being called a bad guy.

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