Whenever I bring up the looming constitutional crisis of Trump firing Mueller or pardoning himself, people think I’m either being too flippant or too doom pr0nographic. But I don’t see how we can ignore it.
I think something changed last week after Charlottesville. I don’t think — never thought really — that Trump will be able to turn Confederate statues into a wedge issue that appeals to the NASCAR dads in the I-20 corridor or however Chuck Todd would describe it. And I now think something I never thought before: that the media’s (justifiably strong) reaction to Trump’s repulsive comments is a sign that they won’t go easy on Dolt 45 when he fires Mueller or pardons himself. I still don’t think Republicans will do anything to Trump if/when he does this, but I now think they’ll pay a big political price for refusing to do so.
What do you think? Am I being too optimistic here?
TenguPhule
Yes.
This is what I think you’re too optimistic about. Not even Nazis can get their fucking base to give a rats ass about this country.
Fucking Nazis.
WaterGirl
Trump just said that the media was bad/evil, just like he did with the “mexicans”, gays, women, etc. So NOW that the fucking media has been personally attacked, the media is now viewing things with a different lens.
Do I have any sympathy for the media? NO! Do I think this changes the game? Quite possibly.
efgoldman
Different time and very different people, but the blowback when Ford pardoned Tricksie was pretty strong, and nobody questioned that he was a “real” president, competent, properly elected, who appointed mostly qualified people, who wasn’t trying to destroy the government from within, and not openly (key word) racist. The parties are now so divided, I expect the political fallout will be huge, especially if he starts pardoning his family. Even mouth breathing flying monkeys don’t go for that shit.
TenguPhule
@WaterGirl:
“Fakenews!” may be Trump’s most base and cunning achievement.
TenguPhule
@efgoldman:
I would have believed that before they went all in on Nazis and the KKK support.
Major Major Major Major
fuckin Sugar Ray, really?
Robert Burns
The problem with Nazis is they think they’re better than everybody else.
On whether you are being too optimistic a man should have his dreams. And once the dreams deflate a man should have his drinks.
Major Major Major Major
OT: The Onion:
A Ghost to Not
Hope for the best, plan and prepare for the worst.
We are well along in our preparations.
catclub
so what? they will yell and scream, but then realize that the system has no concrete laws against it.
A Ghost to Not
@Major Major Major Major: No wonder I didn’t recognize it.
BruceFromOhio
We’ll be fighting in the streets
With our children at our feet
And the morals that they worship will be gone
And the men who spurred us on
Sit in judgment of all wrong
They decide and the shotgun sings the song
Personally, i think we have a 50/50 shot at avoiding civil war. It hinges heavily on the two-bit ratfuck soulless criminals that infest the Legislature, and local police departments’ response when the Nazi militias start gunning down civilians.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
He’s already paying a big price. Dude is at 35% and going down. People don’t like this shit. It may be that the Republicans have gerrymandered enough districts to hold the House next year, but they’ve tethered themselves to this lead weight, and they can only defy political gravity for so long.
catclub
@Major Major Major Major: This is going to get quoted in some rightwing news outlet as seriously what she said.
with attached fake outrage.
lollipopguild
tRump has a base of supporters(27%) that will follow him thru thick and thin. No matter what he does they will support him. How soon do the GOP idjiots start to turn away and what event(s) cause them to turn away? Stay tuned.
Weaselone
@catclub:
I wish she’d actually said it.
A Ghost to Not
@BruceFromOhio: Some of us are going to be ready to shoot back.
No cages for me.
WaterGirl
@Major Major Major Major: It’s like The Onion is Hillary’s Luther. Everybody needs one.
efgoldman
@TenguPhule:
You give them credit for more power than they deserve. They are a minority of a minority. They make a lot of noise, and like leftier-than-thous, have a much bigger presence on the highly-amplified toobz than IRL. Nor should they be ignored – they should be mocked and opposed at every turn.
But as we saw in Boston last week, they are hugely outnumbered cowards who will slink back under their rocks if they get pushback. How many additional rallies did they cancel after last week?
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
The day the Onion made more sense then real news.
WaterGirl
@Major Major Major Major: @A Ghost to Not: I don’t get the Sugar Ray references. What am I missing?
Tim C.
It will come down to just how much ZEGS and The Turtle hate Trump. Likewise, if Trumps’ approval nosedives, as well it could in that scenario, then all bets are off. The problem the Republicans have at the moment is with their own base. They dump Trump, they lose the white power voters and they cant win without them. If they start losing the “weak Trump” supporters and it’s game over. Sadly, it wont be a political crisis like self-pardoning that does that. It will have to a Bush style fuckup on the economy, military situation, terrorist attack or natural disaster. That’s what will break Trump, nobody in the GOP has been able to handle those kinds of problems on any level since Bush 41.
catclub
@efgoldman:
1. what blowback? He nearly was re-elected. The GOP was NOT slaughtered in House and Senate in 1976. Democrats got one good year 1974 for winning seats due to Watergate.
2. this does not follow from what you wrote: The parties are now so divided, I expect the political fallout will be huge
it actually is the opposite, because the parties are so divided there will be no fallout from a unified rejection of any pardons.
efgoldman
@BruceFromOhio:
Oh for FSM’s sake! Another dystopian world ending. Isn’t one of you enough? You got your bunker in the mountains provisioned yet?
jeer9
Trump’s hoped-for departure seems more likely to present another glaring example of RWNJ hypocrisy. When the Dems take over the House in 2019 and begin impeachment hearings (as they politically should to make the R senators own this travesty of a human being), Mueller’s evidence regarding Russia is almost certain to incriminate VP Dense. While it seems more plausible every day that the “we’re the adults in the room” caucus might want to come together to rid us of the man-sized infant, they will not be nearly so willing to do the same with his unctuous underling, not if the result resembles President Pelosi. Which means that the only wall that may get built during this administration will be protection for the Hair Fuehrer, despite widespread senatorial loathing of him. They will be forced, in a deeply divided war of solely pragmatic inclinations, to support Fifth Avenue Mussolini and declare it a victory of principle. Whether this strategy undermines their electability with the public enough to flip the Senate in 2020 still seems, sadly, debatable.
TenguPhule
@efgoldman:
That’s not what I’m getting at.
Yeah, there was pushback by sane people.
But the fucking Republican base fucking supports fucking Nazis. No pretending, no dogwhistling, no plausible deniability. They outright fucking support actual Nazis now.
WaterGirl
@Tim C.: I think the complicating factor there is how deeply ZEGS and The Turtle (and others in office) are tied to the Russia scandal. If Trump can take them down with him when he goes down, I don’t think they make a move against Trump, no matter how low he goes.
TenguPhule
@WaterGirl:
The post title is an opening song lyric.
Its a BJ thing to make musical references.
catclub
@TenguPhule: most days ending in y.
‘Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is ended’
Shell
How many times have Republicans said, “If you don’t have anything to hide…”
jacy
It feels like the worm is turning, however slowly. The thing is, the worse things get for Trump, the more he’ll flail. It’s a shitshow feedback loop. So I predict that things will go very awry more quickly than some anticipated, and still not quickly enough.
TenguPhule
@efgoldman:
Not the world that ends, but our country might.
It couldn’t happen here.
Until it did.
smintheus
@efgoldman: Trump’s base consists of idiots and @ssh0les, and I think nearly all of them would be delighted to see how much he was angering his critics by self-pardoning or firing Mueller. At least, that’s what they’d say.
The main negative effect would be that it would drive up turnout in 2018 among the half-hearted voters, the totebaggy voters, and the lefty purists.
FlyingToaster
@efgoldman:
Some astroturf group called ACT was supposed to have sixty pro-Trump rallies on Sept 9(?); on Twitter I saw that all but 4 were cancelled, primarily due to a) failure to obtain permits or b) didn’t want to be associated with local Nazi organizers.
A Ghost to Not
@efgoldman:
What we see are the cosplay nazis. Most of them are gutless cowards. Some of the others are all in. I grew up in that community; some of them are ready, willing, and armed to the teeth. The percentages have yet to be seen.
Also, don’t discount the silent support of many, many people who tacitly agree with these fascists.
Mike in NC
On the subject of statues, per USA Today tributes to Stalin are making a comeback in Russia. Thanks mainly to Putin painting him as a strong nationalist leader. The guy broke a few eggs, but what an omelet he made!
TenguPhule
@catclub:
I wanted to cry the first time I saw that one.
The truth really hurt.
Redshift
@WaterGirl:
He’s been saying that since near the beginning of his campaign. Remember the reporters who had to be escorted out of his rallies for fear the goons he’d urged to turn on them would actually do it?
I don’t know why they’re taking it more seriously this time. I’ll take it, and hope it continues, but I don’t get it.
...now I try to be amused
@efgoldman: Ford was a “real” president, but he was not elected.
TenguPhule
@A Ghost to Not:
Yep, the iceberg principle.
What you see on the surface isn’t all there is to it.
A Ghost to Not
@FlyingToaster: c) gutless cowards pissing their pants over antifa.
TenguPhule
@Redshift:
Trump didn’t have actual fucking power back in 2016.
Now, the threats of force actually have meaning.
BruceFromOhio
@efgoldman: World-ending? Hardly. Just a very messy clean-up on aisle America. The freaks who hid underground and stayed out of the light for most of my lifetime are marching in the streets of American cities with guns, Confederate flags, chanting white power slogans with upraised fists. If you think they will just go away quitely by themselves, you are far more hopeful than I.
And I said “50/50”, right? Glass still half full – there’s plenty of good folks finding their voices and realizing what can happen when the good guys band together. Get some leadership with some fucking backbone, and the long road back gets a wee bit shorter.
@TenguPhule: This.
@jacy: And this. Everyone keeps making the same mistake, applying templates of normal human behavior to this shitshow parade of fail. No template exists for what’s going on right now, unless you want to apply Germany 1939. And I really don’t want to do that.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
So you’re saying I should buy moar popcorn
Redshift
@FlyingToaster:
Officially, yes, but it’s been noted that their signup numbers are pathetic, and those are probably just excuses to avoid showing up with an embarrassing turnout.
bystander
After reading trumpleton comments on facebook attacking Media Matters, Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren, there’s one analysis of the trumpanzees that makes me laugh.
efgoldman
@TenguPhule:
A slowly shrinking base of a slowly shrinking party. That a lot (not all) of the institutional party reacted immediately and unequivocally to Henna Hairshirt’s post-Charlottsville remarks is a start. No immediate action, nor would I have expected any; yet it makes a little, tiny crack in the wall.
Major Major Major Major
@efgoldman: they won’t be happy until we all have to live in the bunker with them.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@A Ghost to Not: I didn’t but now I do and now I have an ear worm
FlyingToaster
@A Ghost to Not: Those are the guys who didn’t show up in Boston.
There’s an anecdotal story going around here about a Hummer-load of 2A nuts from New Hamster who parked at one of the outdoor lots down toward the Seaport — the attendant took one look at their camo, took their money, and called the cops. Before they could unload they were surrounded by uniforms (with Tactical Team pulling in) and informed that they could get back in their vehicle and go home to NH or they could be arrested on firearms violations. And no, they couldn’t have their $50 back.
They left, with a marked car escort to 93. (This is at best 4th hand, and probably a complete fabrication, but it does sound like Commissioner Davis)
WaterGirl
@Redshift: You may be right. Maybe the nazi KKK white supremest stuff opened their eyes, but to me his attacks on the media have a different quality or intensity to me. Or maybe they just figured out that their way of life is being threatened, and (finally) that changes everything?
edit: every time i see your nym lately I feel like I should be asking you how you’re doing. I don’t remember details, but I think something was going on with you so I’ll risk looking like an idiot by asking without being more specific.
TenguPhule
@efgoldman:
That was said in 2008 too. And look where we are in 2017.
A whole new generation of idiots, assholes and fucking Nazis replenishing the Republican ranks.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I think that’s Samantha Bee
(anybody else think Sam Bee, Stephen Colbert and Steve Carrell all did their best work post-TDS? especially Carrell, who I always found pretty meh as a correspondent)
A Ghost to Not
@BruceFromOhio: There’s been a raft of lefty purists on WaPo boards about being nice to the fascista. I’m having none of it, even invoking and explaining Cleek’s Law. I told them it was time for Cleek’s Revenge: unceasing mockery, ridicule, and questioning of patriotism and linking them to treason.
I’m done even thinking about being nice to those assholes.
WaterGirl
@TenguPhule: Thanks. Yeah, I know about the musical thing, but there was nothing in the title that rang a bell for me.
edit: I had never even heard of Sugar Ray Leonard until I googled Sugar Ray just now. To me, Sugar Ray is Sugar Ray Robinson, and that didn’t say music to me at all.
hovercraft
@efgoldman:
Sadly I’m with @TenguPhule: , they are the Black Knight at this point, nothing will shake the base, so the sniveling cowards in Congress won’t do shit.
BruceFromOhio
@efgoldman:
Yes, and now Dems have to step it up with messaging, candidates and campaigns better than “we’re not Nazis!” Policies and positions that got drowned out or completely ignored by Stenography Inc. (brought to you by But Her Emails!) have to be front and center, or that long road back gets a wee bit longer. It has literally become matters of life and death.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
I’d be happy if you could point me to a peaceful real world solution that doesn’t involve wishful thinking.
I have always had great sympathy for Cassandra.
BruceFromOhio
@Major Major Major Major: Its a three bedroom, one-and-a-half bath split with a nice patio, though I could fold out the futon if you feel that you can’t drive home after dinner. I’ll even loan you a toothbrush!
Chyron HR
@catclub:
This is going to get quoted by True Progressive Berniecrats as what she seriously said. With completely sincere outrage.
Major Major Major Major
@BruceFromOhio:
The 2016 campaign was those policies front and center AND “we’re not Nazis”. (The former were ignored unless shouted by an old man and the latter was ridiculed.) Do we have to just pick the one?
Chris
The problem is, the media’s reaction largely doesn’t matter except to people who are already persuadable in the first place – Democrats and all the mushy moderates. It won’t cost Trump his Republican base which is already convinced the media is a liberal plot, which means it’s very hard to imagine the party turning on him. At best, it means a solution will happen, but only at the ballot box. (At best).
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I had to stop watching Samantha Bee after the election. Too painful.
efgoldman
@TenguPhule:
@BruceFromOhio:
So there are thousands of armed nazis out there who are going to take on the whole country. Right. I’ve seen this movie before, when the MSM discovered the militias in the 90s.
Yes, there are some demented nasty-ass people out there. Yes, someone like Eric Rudolph or Dyllan Roof or the Orlando shooter or the Aurora shooter can and will do real harm. But the crazies are always with us, and always will be, no matter the label in which they cloak themselves. Absent real firearms control, unlikely in my lifetime or yours, the victims will be just as dead no matter the shooter’s ideology or “reasoning.”
A Ghost to Not
@FlyingToaster: The trick is figuring out which is which. I can name a couple of all-ins amongst my ex-family and their friends, but I think most are gutless cowards.
BruceFromOhio
@A Ghost to Not: Yes, I also weary of attempting logic, accommodation, hell, spell check and proper grammar with these fucking morons. Tried it, now time to try something else.
eclare
@Major Major Major Major: Forwarded on, thanks! And yeah, Sugar Ray, really?
barbequebob
@catclub:
minor technical point but Gerald Ford was never elected to VP or POTUS
He was appointed VP to replace Spiro Agnew who resigned in wake of corruption scandal, and of course then replaced Nixon as POTUS when he resigned
BruceFromOhio
@Major Major Major Major: All of the above and then some, thank you. Personally, I’m focusing much more on the local stuff in ’18: Kay can tell you better than I just how fucked up shit is just in Ohio.
efgoldman
@Major Major Major Major:
Not me. I hate camping.
A Ghost to Not
@efgoldman:
Timothy McVeigh grew up in the same culture that I did. I dated a girl from his high school. There are a metric shit ton of people like McVeigh in WNY. I used to know some of the worst, but cut bait ten years ago. Extrapolate WNY to the rest of the country. Take into account 300+ million guns, and most Americans don’t own a gun.
TenguPhule
@efgoldman:
They don’t have to take on the country. It’s an infection, not an invasion. Social norms are being turned upside down. All of the unspoken rules are being thrown out or rewritten. And at the end of the day, this country is not going to be what it was on 1/20/17.
The rule of law is shattering a little more each day as we watch Trump and the GOP pissing on it without consequences. Its not something that happens right at the start, but erodes into the bedrock of the public over time.
When people see liars, cheats and thieves acting freely, more and more are going to tell themselves “why should I be the only honest sucker?”.
The system only works if everyone believes it does and the majority behave accordingly.
Gator90
@A Ghost to Not:
Commonly known as “Republicans.”
A Ghost to Not
@TenguPhule:
We have Buzz Windrip.
catclub
@barbequebob: Of course. but how would you phrase this?:
“he nearly won the 1976 election, which would not be his re-election, because he was not actually elected president, except he was elected Vice president by the House and Senate when they approved his nomination by Richard Nixon.”
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@TenguPhule:
And it is a distinct geographic divide. Bad, bad news.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
You know we’re all thinking the same thing.
moops
Sadly, even now, after everything, if Trump actually could manage to pivot the Media would let bygone be bygones and embrace him and carry water for him. They don’t like having to do actually journalism and would rather go back to being bothsiderism stenographers, go back to their “balanced” news reporting, and be welcomed buddies with the White House.
Few news agencies have the backbone to hold anyone accountable, or even the ability to remember things from 4 months previous. Trump could have them all back and loving him and giving him favorable press and free publicity and stroke his monstrous ego with one mea culpa and an offer of peace. He wouldn’t have to even do anything differently. The Bush administration were evil assholes and did worse things than Trump has manged to do. Reagan lied as much as Trump and even when the press pointed out his fabrications they still treated him well.
the NYT so-badly wants to switch to the old mode and have the rest of the press join them. All the news outlets want to go back to stenography and press-release-journalism and leave all the adversarial stuff to comedy shows. Their editors are super uncomfortable calling out Trump and his obviously dangerous flaws.
BruceFromOhio
@efgoldman:
That’s some creative editing, and while we can certainly dissect the exact contemporary definition of what does or does not constitute a ‘nazi’, you can find plenty of folks just like that in the Buckeye. They HATED Obama, and were trained to HATE Hillary, love their guns, and are plenty pissed off that the American Dream doesn’t include them anymore because brown people. We stand a good chance of losing one of the most progressive Senators left standing to a corporate fascist wind-up toy who makes Ryan look like a piker as these same folks vote, yet again, against their own self-interest. They may not take on the whole country, but they have NO fucking problem dressing up and playing the part, because why not?
As I said in the first place, if you believe they will simply slink away quietly, you are more hopeful than I. And I will be overjoyed if later discovered to be wrong, wrong, wrong.
A Ghost to Not
Hey, I’m hoping for the best, and think most of them gutless, but I know some of them aren’t.
Do what you think best, efg.
TenguPhule
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Blue islands of sanity in a hostile sea of red morons.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: Some people are of the rather odd impression that Feingold would have won if he’d gone to Wisconsin. Or, at least, their actual thought makes as much sense.
Chris
@moops:
I don’t know what’s worse, knowing how ludicrously low the bar’s been set in the last fifty years, or the fact that Trump repeatedly fails to clear even that.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@BruceFromOhio: So WASF? I’ll just curl up into a ball in my closet then.
germy
Ian G.
Neither here nor there, but “Fly” by Sugar Ray may have the most inane lyrics of any pop song I’ve ever heard, which is really saying something.
Anyway, my newfound optimism about what happens when Trump fired Mueller doesn’t come from new media criticism of him, but the fact that he’s napalmed every bridge between him and the GOP Senate. They’re not going to stand up for him in situations where he could drag them down too. They’ll rationalize it in that they at least got Gorsuch on the court.
eclare
@TenguPhule: That’s me, I like my blue oasis, but I don’t venture out very far.
Frank Wilhoit
“…Am I being too optimistic here?”
The short answer is: probably.
The long answer is that there is no way to determine whether or not you are being too optimistic; all historical parallels have failed. And the failure of the historical parallels is biforme: it is not only because today’s conditions are, in detail but comprehensively, without precedent; it is also because even if the parallels could be relevant, none of today’s participants remember any of them.
On a related point, the resurgence of Nazism is bang on schedule: one human lifetime after its initial defeat. We are now about to witness yet another demonstration of the Fire Extinguisher Principle, which states that each fire extinguisher can be used exactly once, after which it is empty and cannot be used again.
TenguPhule
@germy:
They will be. They will be.
Frank Wilhoit
@efgoldman: Come see what things are like in the real world before you flap your mouth off.
TenguPhule
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
With a big slice of apple pie. But unicorns!
TenguPhule
@Frank Wilhoit:
No free refills?
ChrisH
Problem is I don’t know how to properly calibrate my level of concern for the country. We are in foreign territory.
Like… yesterday I literally had the thought “I don’t think the country is going to be plunged into civil war but maybe I should get a hunting rifle to hedge my bets.”
JohnO
A great deal changed for me in Nov., I now consider 40% of the country a moron and/or a-hole, damaging all kinds of relationships with friends and family, and making my already reclusive self almost housebound. It hasn’t been good.
So I’m with you, Doug, I think the GOP has cracked the code. The election of DT (and, I predict, the GOP keeping the House in 2018) plus what is to me an obvious personality evaluation of The Boy King makes both a self-pardon or firing likely at least. And nobody knows what happens from there.
Things are going to get worse. I mean, wait until something bad (that isn’t self-inflicted) happens.
randy khan
@catclub:
I think you can credit Ford with at least a little of what happened in 1974, as the pardon did not help the Republicans.
As for 1976, the Dems, after winning big in 1974, kept their 61 seats (plus 1 independent who caucused with them) in the Senate in 1976 and actually increased the majority by one seat in the House, from 291 to 292. To put those numbers in perspective, the 38 seats in the Senate and the 143 seats the Republicans had in the House after 1976 are both the fewest that any party has had in those houses since that time. It would have been hard to do much better.
SFAW
@smintheus:
I don’t think Bernie and Jill Stein can run for more than two seats in total, however, so that might screw up your calculation.
Major Major Major Major
This thread is somehow less fun that the work I’m avoiding. Enjoy your doom-mongering.
The Thin Black Duke
It’s over, we’re fucked, there’s no hope, The Man in the High Castle is just around the corner, I love Big Brother, blah blah blah. Jesus. Some of you guys are ridiculous.
Turgidson
The only way to be certain the media will treat Hair Furor’s attempt to kill Mueller’s probe – whether by a flurry of pardons including to himself or attempts to fire Mueller – with the seriousness it deserves is if the attempted killing blow is communicated via private email server.
efgoldman
@Frank Wilhoit:
Which “real world” is that? The real world where most people live and work, or the world full of empty acreage and yahoos with traitor flag pickups making a lot of noise, drinking a lot of beer, getting their hate on?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Trump’s not a normal president; he’s doing a reality TV show set in the White House. When his rating die, he dies and going by his poll rating, Trump’s auis slowing getting bored with him, it’s been six months of Trump 24/7 and he’s already had a white liberal woman killed and comitted treason; How’s Trump going to top that to keep his audiance shocked? Trump just can’t go to being president because sucks behind big time as when tries that, and his Angry Granpa Pants on the Floor act is getting old for everyone
Skepticat
@Chris: Painfully spot on.
randy khan
My feeling is that pardons and like (a Saturday Night Massacre repeat, for instance) would bring a hail of outrage down on Trump from the media, including pointed questions to ZEGS and the Turtle about what they’re going to do. It would be a terrible bind for them unless they saw that the base had turned on Trump. (And, honestly, that kind of thing might be what would do it, although I wouldn’t count on it. It’s essentially an admission of guilt, after all.)
efgoldman
@The Thin Black Duke:
Thank you
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: I foresee a great deal of pie in some commenter’s future.
TenguPhule
@randy khan:
They’ll ignore and deflect the questions. They’ve learned from Nixon, Reagan and Bush. The trick is to have no shame or guilt and make sure there is no paper record. The media doesn’t have the energy or competence to follow up long enough before the new shining object catches their attention.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
Who says we don’t do good deeds here.
Brachiator
Wow. So many comments already.
The quoted section, I think, is key to understanding Trump. He has always been a nasty piece of work and described himself as a counter puncher when he is criticized or attacked. But now he is able to wrap the dignity of the office of the president around himself and increasingly mobilize a core of his most ardent supporters.
In short, Trump has no problems bringing the country down around him as he flails against attackers. Not even Nixon would have been so craven.
TenguPhule
@The Thin Black Duke:
You were warned.
hueyplong
In my lifetime, no one has done more than Trump to rehabilitate Richard Nixon. He’s done wonders for George W. Bush as well.
efgoldman
@randy khan:
Suppose he pardons everybody for everything, including his family. OK, then the NY grand jury issues indictments for violations under state law. Not a goddamned thing anybody can do about it.
TenguPhule
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Donald Trump: Hold my beer, bitches!
JohnO
When 40% is your floor, and I mean Nazi-saluting-Idiocracy as documentary FLOOR, you’ve rigged the House through gerrymandering, you have an organically conservative Senate, your voter suppression tactics have largely been successful, 50% of the country doesn’t even bother to vote, AND you have your own propaganda apparatus, I find the “What? Me worry’s?” amusing.
We’ll see!
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@TenguPhule:
Well, to be fair, Ryan will furrow his brow and compress his lips tightly in what passes for him as both a grimace and smile.
Yertle will perspire lightly, mumble some platitude, and turn away in a show of busyness.
The Thin Black Duke
@TenguPhule: Dude, I’m a 62-year-old black man living in White America. You think you’re telling me something new?
TenguPhule
@efgoldman:
And which lucky duckies get the privilege of enforcing it against private armed bodyguards and with the implied threat of political retaliation up to and including getting said lucky ducks fired from their agency and hounded from getting another job?
The Republican party has too much to lose if they start following the laws now.
Major Major Major Major
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I try to only pie trolls, but man…
rikyrah
THEY are going down with him.We have given them the chance to do the right thing. They have refused. Oh well. It will get ugly.
eclare
@hueyplong: I know, it’s like a rule now: each successive Republican president has to be worse than the prior one. Don’t want to think too much about what that means after POS.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@TenguPhule: You mean like the self pity rant he did in Phoenix that they were walking out on him?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: The comment wasn’t intended to be directed at you.
Frankensteinbeck
The media didn’t turn on Trump when he threatened them. He’s been doing that forever. They turned on him because it was rubbed in their face that Nazis are real and Trump supports them. They really wanted to believe racism is dead. Truthfully, his support from them has been degrading slowly but steadily.
GOP voters always supported white supremacy. All that has really changed in that regard is that a lot of people who didn’t want to see that now do, and are angry.
It looks like Mueller will get to finish his job. The Senate has said that if he is fired, they won’t allow a replacement that could fire Mueller. Either way, an impeachment is unlikely and New York State is going to get a pile of evidence to nail Trump on financial crimes.
The cosplay Nazis are the brave ones. The armed to the teeth militia types have been with us for decades. They have had their call to battle multiple times. They sit in their bunkers talking hate and do jack shit. Yes, they look scary up close.
The demographic clock continues to tick.
It looks like the GOP is actually losing ground on voter disenfranchisement. The conservatives on the SCOTUS are not as supportive of it as you would think, and lesser courts are overturning stuff, even demanding redistributing, right and left.
We outnumber them. By a lot. It took a perfect storm to get stuck with this asshole, and it happened by the tiniest margins.
As always, it comes down to voting. Results from the special elections show huge shifts, way beyond even polling. People are PISSED.
Stop panicking, and let’s vote the fuckers out.
Beth in VA
@BruceFromOhio: Seriously? 50-50? How would this war work?
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
Or you could sit the thread out instead if you don’t care for what’s going on in it.
Major Major Major Major
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I know. But thanks for thinking of my feelings.
@TenguPhule: you mean every thread from about 3 until you go to sleep?
Chris
@hueyplong:
Fuck that noise. Hitler didn’t rehabilitate Mussolini, ISIS didn’t rehabilitate al-Qaeda, and Star Trek: Enterprise didn’t rehabilitate Star Trek: Voyager. A shitty thing with an even shittier follow-up is still a shitty thing.
TenguPhule
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
More like the Comey firing. Or authorizing a fuckup mission in Yemen.
Trump has no impulse control. This makes it impossible to predict what kind of stupid shit he thinks is a good idea at the time.
efgoldman
@TenguPhule:
Sorry. I forgot to go hide in my bunker, curl up under the bed, and suck my thumb.
Now where’s my TnguPhule bear?
The Thin Black Duke
@Frankensteinbeck: And Frankensteinbeck drops the mic.
SatanicPanic
@eclare: I know I’m in the minority on this, but I still maintain GWB was worse. Trump hasn’t managed to lie us into a war, ignore terror warnings like GWB did before 9/11, or preside over a failed response to a hurricane. The GWB death toll still towers over Trumps. So far anyway.
TenguPhule
@Chris:
I admit, I laughed.
schrodingers_cat
@Major Major Major Major: WASF, Rs always win bigly. Anarchy, no elections, we always lose. Did I forget anything?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: I was just joining you in venting at the WASF shit.
efgoldman
@SatanicPanic:
W hired competent people and staffed all the departments. Evil, misguided, mendacious but competent.
Jeffro
@JohnO:
Ugh. Hard to argue with any of that.
hueyplong
@Chris: Not talking about in my mind, or in yours. But how many times have you read or heard “not even Nixon…” on this very site?
zhena gogolia
@Frankensteinbeck:
Excellent comment.
Jeffro
@Frankensteinbeck:
and yet, I have to agree with all of that, too.
Frankensteinbeck
Oh, and the super gloom and doomers? I know you’re not trying to troll, so take heart, and look back: Almost none of your worst-case scenarios have come true. No ACA repeal. No conservative nightmare legislation being passed en-mass. No shootout slaughtered at protests. No martial law ignoring courts. No campaigns of violence and intimidation beyond the ICE being total assholes to the immigrant community. There’s more I’ve forgotten. We may not be out of the woods, but you thought this stuff would happen by now. It didn’t. So take a deep breath, and stop panicking.
Mnemosyne
@efgoldman:
99 percent of the time, guys in militias and white power groups want to meet up and egg each other on, usually online, but they’re too chicken to do anything more than take their gun to Chipotle.
But there are always outliers mixed in with those groups who get impatient that all they ever do is talk, and those are the “lone wolves” that pop up to kill people.
Dev Null
@WaterGirl:
Baud, stop posting under an alias.
[/joking]
SatanicPanic
@efgoldman: Like Michael Brown? Alberto Gonzales? Harriet Myers? Paul Bremer?
Were those competent people?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@SatanicPanic:
Neither had GWB at this point.
We won’t know until something bad happens.
Heard about the storm off the coast of Texas?
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat:
If Constitutional Crisis’s were simple, they wouldn’t be crisis’s.
Major Major Major Major
@Jeffro: Sure it is. Who says 40% is the floor?
eclare
@SatanicPanic: All good points, and I was (and am) irate, beyond pissed, etc., over all of those things. It’s like a horrible debate topic, who is worse? Pick a side.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: I thought it was 27%.
SatanicPanic
@?BillinGlendaleCA: come on man, I put so far anyway in bold, how do you ignore that?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@eclare: In August of 2001 we were talking about shark attacks and a missing blonde girl.
Chris
@hueyplong:
Well, fuck. Now that you mention it, I’m pretty sure I’ve said that.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@SatanicPanic: Even by that metric, I think you’re wrong.
BBA
There’s no way it can go on like this for three years, and yet I can’t see any way he leaves office before then.
Dev Null
@Tim C.:
Damn, and no Katrina on the horizon.
[/sociopathy]
FWIW, I have beaucoup connections to the DPRH (Democratic People’s Republic of Houston), pro and con. Lotsa peeps gonna die. I grieve for them.
And Louisiana will be hit. A large fraction of my extended family lives in Louisiana. Louisiana is already drowning.
barbequebob
@catclub:
sorry, was just responding to the word “re-elect” and wanted to make sure everyone knew that Ford was not elected in any national general election.
With the benefit of time to think about it, and recognizing it is very easy to be critical of someone else’s writing, I guess I would say something like “nearly won the 1976 election” and stay away from the word re-elect.
As i said, a minor point in the scheme of the thread.
Roger Moore
@efgoldman:
Except Cuomo.
SatanicPanic
@?BillinGlendaleCA: How?
grandpa john
@germy: Hey looks like kelly anne has mastered her masters skill of every statement is a lie and how to breathe while lying endlessly
TenguPhule
@Frankensteinbeck:
By the skin of three fucking defecting R Senator’s teeth. A little too close for comfort.
True. Trump is just fucking with all of the rules and regulations instead.
Yet. I do not like how he’s stoking his base for it.
Yet. They’re working on it with a list of shitty judges to be appointed in federal courts. To their credit, Democrats in the Senate are slowing it down for now and all the oxygen is currently being eaten by the Trump-made disasters. But this is an ongoing threat.
Nipped in the bud at Charlotteville for now.
But again, I do not like how he’s prepping his base to make it more acceptable.
The problem is how to fix this mess. There is no incentive on the R’s side to follow the rules anymore. And Democracy doesn’t work without two sides.
eclare
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Boy does that seem like forever ago. Agree with you, curling up into a ball and crying WASF into a pillow does no good. If I can refuse to do that in a red state (it is tiring, I admit), anyone can.
Dev Null
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Predictions might have changed since I looked 4 hours ago, but 1.2m (4 feet) of rain is Biblical flood territory.
Admittedly that’s the extrema (update: er, extremum. [pauses] I think. sorry, nouns and verbs. what are they about?!?)
TenguPhule
@barbequebob:
We are all pedants here.
Dave
@The Thin Black Duke: Right. I’m looking at the current situation and while I can certainly see how it could go sideways in a very ugly manner I’m not seeing the unstoppable juggernaut of doom. The question at this point isn’t really if the crazy toxicity, which has found it’s perfect vessel in Trump, can win but if it can ensure we lose with it. Trump is not a winner.
As for those worried that Nixon’s impeachment didn’t result in more than a bad election cycle or two for the GOP well the country was primed for a massive right wing/revanchist lurch at the time. It may have delayed that a cycle or two but it couldn’t derail that. We are at the end of that lurch the situation is sort of mirror image to that except again it’s a toxic GOP president.
My biggest concern outside Trump doing something spectacularly stupid with say nuclear weapons is how long GOP can delay their denouement by screwing with voting etc and if they manage to wreck everything in their desperation. I have a secondary concern that the media will feel the need to destroy any Democrat that follows Trump out of their desperate need for balance.
There is a third major concern and that is Trump sufficiently accelerates our relative loss of status that it leads to a near future foreign policy loss, possibly military, that causes people to further lose their minds since people don’t tend to react well to the sudden awarenesses they are no longer on top and I can’t see modern America handling that inevitability with any grace.
Ian G.
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Right. As of 8/24/01, the worst foreign policy crisis of the Bush administration was that Chinese warplane that crashed into our spy plane.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@SatanicPanic: Up to this point in his presidency what had GWB done? There was the stem cell thing, No Child Left Behind was passed in May, and the 2001 tax cut.
@Ian G.: Yup, forgot about that, thanks.
Frank Wilhoit
@efgoldman: The real world of paper houses or the real world where people play with matches? I am candidly surprised, as well as disappointed, that you choose to play games around the meaning of the word “real”. Flash back to 1979-80. Reagan’s people were only in it for the headbreaking. He told them (through surrogates and behind closed doors) that they could break heads. Then he turned around and told them they couldn’t. Ever since (thirty-six years — count the days — is a long, long thirst), they have wanted only one thing: for someone to tell them, and mean it this time, that they could break heads.
Also, too, they don’t care which heads. Whichever are most convenient, where ease of identification by sight is an aspect of convenience.
Jeffro
@?BillinGlendaleCA: @Major Major Major Major: I’m pretty sure that despite excusing Nazis after an innocent woman was killed and ranting (both at that post-C-ville news conference and again in Arizona) like the mentally ill person he is, Trumpov’s polling in the mid-high 30 percent of American voters. We might have to split the difference (between 27% and 40%) here.
SatanicPanic
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I’m making the point that IF (obviously a big IF) Trump were to continue on the current path and somehow managed the avoid the things I cited re: GWB then Trump would be less bad overall.
EDIT- obviously Trump might find new and novel ways to fuck things up, and is already well at work at that, but the Iraq War alone was a massive crime that would be hard to replicate.
Roger Moore
@SatanicPanic:
You’re wrong about at least one of those. He has not only ignored terror warnings, he has done his best to shut down the department that’s been giving them. It’s just we treat it differently because the terror warnings he’s shutting up are about terror by domestic, white terrorists. As for the other two, he’s working hard on starting a war with North Korea, and we’ll soon get to see just how badly he can fuck up response to a major hurricane.
Shorter: give him time; he’s only had 7 months.
MomSense
?I just wanna fly
Put your arms around me baby
Put your arms around me baby?
That song stalked me like an 8th grader with a crush. It was on the radio constantly every day for about a year.
Dev Null
@Ian G.:
er, and three weeks later .. 9/11
Perhaps that’s your point.
Frankensteinbeck
@TenguPhule:
Again, you thought all this stuff would have happened already. You, and several other people. Honestly, things have calmed down a bit here as several posters noticed it wasn’t happening. As scary as it looks, it’s not nearly, nearly as bad as you thought. So keep that in mind, and remember that if what looked inevitable to you until now didn’t happen, then what looks inevitable to you now is at least far from certain.
And they have very few incentives to break the rules. They have a lot of incentives to bend them, but that only goes so far. The last six months have shown that. Trump will probably not be impeached, although it’s far from certain because if it does happen, congressional Republicans will turn on him suddenly. But that is far, far from the whole system breaking down. We will certainly have free elections. Yes, there will be a lot of voter suppression, but that’s not new, and right now it doesn’t seem to be getting worse. Bear in mind Kobach is utterly powerless, and the people he would posture to won’t get any worse because of him.
So calm down, please. No, it’s not a good situation, but it’s not the apocalypse it looks like at a glance. Not even close.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Frank Wilhoit: What color is the sky in your world?
TenguPhule
@Dave:
Never said it was an unstoppable juggernaut of doom. What it is is about a dozen Constitutional Crisis’s all waiting to explode at once. And we’re trying to disarm it blindfolded and with only our thumbs available.
The uncertainty of it is what’s so maddening. There’s one way it could go right and a thousand ways it could go wrong.
I’d be happy to be continually slagged by Bill, Ef and Majorx4 if I’m wrong and things do work out. It would be a price worth paying.
randy khan
@Roger Moore:
Cuomo is many things, but he is not so stupid as to think that pardoning Trump wouldn’t end his political career instantly. Trump’s probably 60 points underwater in New York (or worse).
And in New York, the Attorney General and district attorneys are elected and wholly independent of the Governor.
Major Major Major Major
@Jeffro: he is polling there right now but he hasn’t yet failed in a way that materially affects a lot of low-info voters. That’s quite low, by American standards, contextualized like that.
Chris
@Jeffro:
Never forget, 27% is the floor.
eclare
@?BillinGlendaleCA: And had taken a lot of vacation….that brush doesn’t clear itself!
Ruviana
@?BillinGlendaleCA: To be SCRUPULOUSLY FAIR, Chandra Levy was a missing dark-haired girl.
TenguPhule
@Frankensteinbeck:
I do hope you’re right.
SatanicPanic
@Roger Moore: Damn, you too? I put SO FAR in there for a reason.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Ruviana: You’re correct, I was thinking Natalee Holloway; that was 4 years later.
Roger Moore
@Major Major Major Major:
Exactly. Imagine what his poll numbers would look like if there were a recession.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@eclare: And those balls don’t roll into holes by themselves either.
geg6
@The Thin Black Duke:
Yup. The day I find myself scared of the idiot Trumpers (who live all around me in droves) is the day the unicorns who poop gold appear. I know these assholes, up close and personal. First, they are too stupid to organize anything that requires making tactical decisions or long-term thinking. Second, with the exception of the College Republicans, they are old and have a myriad of health issues, just starting with obesity, alcoholism and mental health issues and encompassing the very mundane arthritis, type-2 diabetes and heart issues seen in most old men. The College Republicans are the dweebiest of dweebs who run if you say boo to them. And their so-called leaders are no better than they are. Look at the Crying Nazi as a perfect example.
I’m so tired of the gloom and doomers. Quit bitching and do something about what is happening. And just stop it with depressing all morale on our side. It is beginning to feel like we’re being trolled. Why continue to project your horrible defeatist attitude on the rest of us. It’s infuriating to us who are doing what we can to constantly hear that people supposedly on our side want nothing more than to discourage us.
/end rant
Major Major Major Major
@Roger Moore: Right around 27, I’d wager.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Roger Moore:
That would be the result of the failed Obama economic policies.
Frankensteinbeck
@TenguPhule:
I know. It is perfectly natural to see the dark stuff going on and think about the worst possible outcomes, but anxiety spirals, and all it really does is make people miserable, you first and foremost. If it helps, one reason things are not as dark as they look is that very little of what is going on is new, or even getting worse. Other than a corrupt, screaming incompetent in the white house, the US has not changed much since 2015. What happened is that people are getting a good look at what they didn’t want to see for decades. Yes, it’s scary, but the battle isn’t harder than it has been, or more doomed.
Jeffro
@Chris: I’m thinking that so far, it’s a bit higher than that…Trumpov has some additional things going for him (in his supporters’ eyes) that Alan Keyes never did, which is where the Crazification Factor comes from. Trumpov has
– much higher name recognition and ‘brand’/image going in (thanks, TV!)
– decades of public perception (again, we’re talking his supporters here, not rational people) as a BUSINESSMAN who GETS THINGS DONE and ISN’T AFRAID TO SPEAK HIS MIND
– plus dogwhistles (hell, air-raid sires) on race that Keyes could never pull off
– plus near-perfect alignment with Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting
Related to that, he has his supporters perfectly conditioned to accept no bad news – #FakeNews! – from the real world. Keyes never had that.
So…I think it’s optimistic to think that Trumpov’s base or poll numbers will ever go below 35% or so. That’s why GOP lawmakers, craven as they are, are having such a hard time doing the obvious about such an obviously incompetent, mentally ill president: he’s wired in with 35% of all voters and 75-80% of GOP voters (minimum).
Nevertheless…despite that somewhat pessimistic take on things, I have to agree with Frankensteinbeck that there are signs that he’s at or close to that base, and that the rest of the country has solidified pretty well in opposition. And it’s worth fighting for, of course.
Mike in NC
This hurricane bearing down on Houston looks like some horrible shit, and we can all bet Fat Bastard will be cluelessly swinging at golfballs when it makes landfall. He’ll have a ready list of Republican politicians to blame just in time, though, since nothing is ever his responsibility.
Annie
There were a lot of predictions that Dolt 45 would fire Mueller in August.
I do realize we’ve got a week of August left, but it hasn’t happened yet.
I think Dolt 45 is like the 3-year-old who keeps insisting he wants to touch that hot stove. Then he does touch it and it hurts like the devil so he shrinks back from the stove, certainly for a long time, maybe forever. To me, firing Comey was like touching the hot stove — there was a lot of blowback and it didn’t achieve the desired result. Also Mueller is going about this very quietly — no leaks from his operation, he’s not drawing a lot of public attention.
Also, who can fire him? IIRC Rosenstein would have to be instructed to fire him, and he’s been burned once by Trump. IF he refuses to do it, then the search starts for somebody in the Justice Department who will — under circumstances that would be, at best, very embarrassing for the Deputy AG who did the firing.
All of this by way of explaining that I’m not so sure Mueller will be fired.
Hey, a girl can dream, right?
Doug R
@lollipopguild: When did 27% become a majority? We got to keep standing up, 40 idiots surrounded by 40,000 is a good start.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@geg6: Thank you.
WaterGirl
@TenguPhule: Are you trying to make everyone else discouraged, or do you not see that is the effect that you have? Serious question, not an accusation.
Major Major Major Major
@Doug R: yeah I don’t give a shit what the rump does or thinks.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
All of Bush II’s early fuckups didn’t culminate until 9/11.
That’s what I’m braced for — a third party actor that we haven’t even thought of taking advantage of our chaos.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: I’m with you.
Ruviana
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I wondered if that’s who you’d been thinking of.
Doug R
@A Ghost to Not: Not that many. We outnumber them.
WaterGirl
@Frankensteinbeck:
Worth repeating.
Tim C.
@Major Major Major Major: This 1000 times. Remember the “adults” in the GOP are the ones who gave us the Iraq war, a bungled Katrina response and and economic collapse. Part of the reason Trump could rise was the “adults” failed so badly. That’s why Bush III got about all of 1 delegate in primary. Trump and the bootlickers can’t even rise to that level. The Trumpers have been doing all this fantasy stuff because it’s all just on TV for now.
Brachiator
@SatanicPanic:
Nope. Trump may be insane and is manifestly unfit. He could lead us into disaster and not even realize it.
Doug R
@TenguPhule: Nah, his support ain’t much deeper. What we saw were the true believers, and they were gutless cowards. Gutless cowards support serial liars like trump. When he gets more unpopular, they will have NEVER supported him, like the gutless LIARS they all are.
WaterGirl
@schrodingers_cat: Hope, maybe.
eclare
@geg6: Cosign. Very well said.
ETA> Wasn’t there someone who had a call and response of “Fired up!” “Ready to go”?
WaterGirl
@efgoldman: Heckuva job, Brownie.
efgoldman
@Mnemosyne:
Right. And they have always been with us, and always will be. It has nothing directly to do with politics or ideology, although those are sometimes used for rationalization/explanation.
JohnO
@Major Major Major Major:
The Boy King has been hovering between 35-40% approval in the aggregate polling even NOW.
Yes, it is horrifying.
SatanicPanic
@Brachiator: Like when Bush was all “heckuva job Brownie”? Or when people in his admin were telling us we’d be greeted as liberators in Iraq?
J R in WV
@A Ghost to Not:
What are you doing to prepare? Specifically, because I have time and resources, but no real clue how to prepare, really. Any advice will be received with appreciation and evaluated with respect and care.
WaterGirl
@TenguPhule:
Seems to me that you do say that, just not in those exact words.
raven
@J R in WV: Unass the AO.
efgoldman
@Roger Moore:
People who are much more informed about it than I, are convinced he has national ambition. Issuing pardons would screw whatever little teeny small chance he’d have in the Democratic party.
vhh
@WaterGirl: This of course may be why he attacks them and they remain quiet.
WaterGirl
@vhh: That’s what I think, but of course there’s no way to know for sure.
CaseyL
I’m watching hurricane coverage on Weather Underground, and there was a funny: one of the anchors (?), talking about getting out when you’re told to get out, noted that most storm deaths are because people didn’t listen to evacuation orders, “and are, regrettably, avoidable.”
Did she mean it was regrettable that the deaths occur, when they can be prevented?
Or did she mean it was regrettable that stupid people who might otherwise be removed from the gene pool might not stick around and die?
Either way, I laughed.
Patricia Kayden
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Yeah, that’s what I’m hoping. Trump cannot avoid controversy and he’s a magnet for scandals. I just don’t see things getting better for him or his brand. If Mueller comes out with charges, he’s done. The majority of Americans who voted did not vote for him and his political capital is dwindling even among those in his Party.
efgoldman
@Frank Wilhoit:
So the places where most of us live and work are so many Potemkin states? Feels and looks real to me.
WaterGirl
I choose Team Let’s Fight This rather than Team It’s Hopeless, We’re All Going To Die.
p.a.
I’m very uncomfortable seemingly being in the ‘optimist’ camp.
(It’s just not my natural inclination.) Of course when the optimists’ argument consists of feeling there’s a slightly better than 50% chance the nation will survive as a democracy…
Brachiator
@SatanicPanic:
Still not the same thing as Trump’s combination of angry insanity and pig stupid ignorance.
Bush wrecked the economy. Trump could destroy the world.
debbie
@Mike in NC:
He’d love to help, but he’ll be busy creating traditions for himself.
Jeffro
@JohnO: Yup
Patricia Kayden
@Frankensteinbeck:
But did you see Roger Stone’s interview where he claimed that anyone voting for impeachment of Trump was endangering his/her life and insinuated that there would be civil war by Trump’s armed supporters? Straight up thug.
p.a.
@CaseyL: reminds me of a local news anchor’s description of I don’t remember what: “the severity was very bad.” Pretty sure it’s not grammatical, but it is understandable.
Roger Moore
@SatanicPanic:
I stand by my point that he has not simply ignored warnings about terrorists but has officially discouraged investigations into their activities. The Trump Administration shutting off funding to fight right wing extremists is worse than Bush blowing off warnings about bin Laden. Bush may have treated worries about al Qaeda as ass covering, but he didn’t actually try to shut them down.
dexwood
@geg6:
I wanna be on your team. Pick me, pick me (waving arms, jumping up and down).
Patricia Kayden
@WaterGirl: Resisting is all we can do and it appears to be working given the disarray in Congress. It certainly worked to put Republicans on notice that the vast majority of Americans didn’t want the ACA repealed.
eclare
@WaterGirl: I’m with you.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Patricia Kayden: Roger Stone likes to talk, the only painful thing he’s done in his life is getting the Nixon tat.
Emma
@TenguPhule: honest to Dog if they’re not paying you they should.You spend your days trying to crush hope out of everyone.
dexwood
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Not, however, the only stupid thing he’s done.
Major Major Major Major
@JohnO: That’s because literally nothing has happened yet. Nothing especially material, to a lot of people, that is.
I feel like this thread could use something like a picture of snowy sand dunes on Mars.
GregB
@WaterGirl:
My only quibble is that it wasn’t a perfect storm. It was the crime of the century.
Roger Moore
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
That shit works for people who have jobs and want an excuse to hate on the Democrats. It’s not going to work so well on people who are out of work, need help, and aren’t getting it.
Dave
@Emma: That and trying to ramp up people’s blood lust. Neither of which are helpful occupations.
NoraLenderbee
Will the world end tomorrow, or will the apocalypse hold off a little longer? This is a stupid thing to fight about. Kind of like fighting about whether venting your emotion by saying “Fuck that red state Texas!” means that you’d personally withhold clean water from a Texan if he’d voted Republican.
SatanicPanic
@Brachiator: He might, or he might not. As of right now, he hasn’t done anything so bad as the things Bush did. Maybe he will, we just don’t know yet. But I’m not willing to say Trump is worse based on what he might (or probably will) do.
WaterGirl
@p.a.: It’s optimism, graded on a curve. :-)
Dev Null
@geg6:
great Alex Pareene column at Deadspin:
The Future of the GOP
You wrote:
C’est moi, d00d. You’ll be there too, in the passage of time. Dissing us olds for health issues that are mostly inevitable …
… we’ll all die soon enough. You think things will change?
Patricia Kayden
@?BillinGlendaleCA: LOL! Unfortunately, I’m hearing folks on our side breathlessly reporting that what Stone predicts will happen so we should watch our step with pushing Trump’s impeachment. Naw, we should go for it anyways. If Republicans could seek to impeach President Clinton over a b.j., then definitely our side should impeach Trump for his real crimes and misdemeanors.
Mnemosyne
@SatanicPanic:
The tricky thing is that you can’t compare 8 years of Bush to 8 months of Trump.
I would say that, looking at each of their first 8 months, Trump is by far worse. But once you hit the 9-month mark, Trump is going to have to fuck up pretty spectacularly to match Bush at 9 months in.
Fair Economist
@Doug R:
27% is a majority of a majority. You can win an election with it if you demonize the other side enough and/or your side has a lot of gullible voters. (Kinda both with Republicans.)
Shana
@efgoldman: You mean like “Heck of a job Brownie”?
Patricia Kayden
@catclub: The MSM played a large role in normalizing Trump and giving him too much fawning coverage. Perhaps, they’ll flip the switch and actually act like the Fourth Estate which means that they will stop giving him favorable coverage. Given how much Trump hates criticism, that could lead to him melting down even more than he already has.
WaterGirl
On a happy note…
I love hummingbirds, and I was mentally beating myself up earlier today for not getting my hummingbird feeders out this year. But I have seen multiple hummingbirds today – they apparently love my mexican petunias. The last one fed at about 10 different blooms on my plant before flying off to parts unknown.
SatanicPanic
@Mnemosyne: Absolutely. GWB set the bar really high and I hate to think that people are already forgetting.
Omnes Omnibus
This thread is a shit show. Tenguphule is making me reconsider my refusal to pie people. Dude, it is fucking incessant.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s a fire hose of doom and gloom.
WaterGirl
@SatanicPanic: @Mnemosyne: Trump is still FAR worse than W.
Trump operates on a plane that is simply outside the norms in the United States and is causing an unbelievable amount of destruction on so many levels.
JohnO
@Major Major Major Major:
I’ve been saying a lot lately that a lot of the damage is intangible. He’s done MASSIVE amounts of damage.
Omnes Omnibus
@?BillinGlendaleCA: And I get that everyone has a bad day or moment of panic and despair on occasion.
p.a.
@WaterGirl: hummingbird bath
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Patricia Kayden: I’ve not been in the “be careful about impeachment” crowd. If you can’t impeach a President for this crap, it ceases to be a tool that can be used. It further weakens the Legislative branch.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes, but it was happening on a daily basis; now I just see pithy comments about pie.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: @?BillinGlendaleCA: I have to agree. He’s relentless. It’s so destructive because he actually takes part in the conversation, not to mention directs it in a downward direction. It’s easy to skip over the trolls. I had to fire an employee – that everyone in the office cared about – because she sucked all the energy out our group.
germy
Cheer up
As freaked out as everyone here is, drumpf is even MORE freaked out. He’s rage dialing the GOP trying to stop this thing, and he can’t.
SatanicPanic
@?BillinGlendaleCA: This. Impeach him, if the Senate doesn’t convict, impeach him again until it sticks.
Mnemosyne
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I mean, if we impeach Trump, what are they going to do, impeach a Democrat for getting a blow job? //
TenguPhule
@Frankensteinbeck:
I think I’ve been broken since Abu Ghraib. When our nation couldn’t even come together over fucking Torture is Wrong and those fucking Republicans stood by Bush, that was when it truly hit home just how much moral rot was present.
I thought, I hoped it had been driven into the wilderness when President Obama was elected.
I thought Trump was going to be the final stake in their fucking GOP hearts in 2015 and 2016.
Surely even those fucking idiots would see how bad he was?
And yet here we are.
And know that I do appreciate your reasoned words. It helps.
Omnes Omnibus
@?BillinGlendaleCA: That’s my point. If someone is having a bad day or needs to be talked off the ledge, it’s fine. But thread after thread, day after day, it starts to grate.
BC in Illinois
@Omnes Omnibus:
Do it. You’ll find that the whole site reads better.
All I see now is how often he posts–which is really often.
I check in every once in a while, usually when somebody responds.
I don’t have any sense that I’m missing anything by making use of the pie filter.
WaterGirl
@p.a.: I may never work again. Me want.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus:
I reached that point about 2 weeks ago.
eclare
@WaterGirl: Oh, having to fire someone sounds awful.
Major Major Major Major
@JohnO: right. And approval ratings tend to respond to tangible things.
rikyrah
UNDISPUTEDVerified account @undisputed
.@ShannonSharpe on Kap: Why is it when a black athlete does something, it’s a personal agenda and not for the betterment of their community?
twitter.com/undisputed/status/900738845158670336
WaterGirl
@eclare: It was hard because we were a close-knit office of < 10 people, but I gave her a lot of notice so she would have time to find something else. Our work environment was so much better without her. I ran into her maybe a year or so later and she had a new job that she was much better suited for, so happy endings all around.
Roger Moore
@Jeffro:
Yes and no. Trump has a number of things going in his favor, but he has one key disadvantage: people are getting a chance to see how he actually governs. Keys was a black carpetbagger with no track record who was pulled in at the last moment, so his numbers provide a kind of baseline for how many voters will reflexively pull the R lever even when there’s no positive reason to do so. What’s not at all clear is how many of those reflexive voters will continue to support somebody who has a track record of awfulness. W managed to fall solidly below 27% support toward the end of his second term, so there’s good reason to think 27% is no floor for a Republican who’s given his voters reason to hate him.
Gravenstone
@germy: Was that Kellyanne Con job? Was she actually threatening journalists? That they need to be ‘afraid’ of Trump people? Fuck that noise.
Major Major Major Major
@WaterGirl:
I was wondering what happened to our project manager.
germy
@Gravenstone: Yes, the grim reaper herself. She doesn’t like all the pushback she’s been getting lately; it makes her irritable.
eclare
@WaterGirl: Good news is always welcome! There was some book from a while back that described some people as energy vampires. I usually don’t buy into stuff like that, but it made sense. Some people just suck the oxygen out of a room.
Frankensteinbeck
@TenguPhule:
I’m trying. It’s natural to feel how you do, and I know you’re on the right side. But ‘natural’ isn’t the same as ‘correct’, thank goodness. Try not to despair, and we’ll help each other through this.
Major Major Major Major
@?BillinGlendaleCA: he is literally the reason there’s a mobile pie filter.
WaterGirl
@Major Major Major Major: It’s amazing how much difference one person can make in a group, isn’t it?
Procopius
@TenguPhule: We’ve reached the point where The Onion makes more sense than the real news every day.
WaterGirl
@Major Major Major Major: Thanks for that. I have never pied anyone before, but I did pie him just now. I don’t need any help feeling discouraged about what’s going on.
WaterGirl
@eclare: I think it can work in the other direction, too. One person can perk up a group (or a thread), too. I’ve noticed that threads where people like BGinChi and Major Major Major Major are engaged, to name a couple, can be livelier.
Jeffro
@Roger Moore:
Ok, but I’m not seeing what it will take…what he could do…that would make his voters hate him. Anything remotely likely, that is. I mean, if he said he was going to turn over the Treasury to Planned Parenthood and Black Lives Matter, maybe, but other than that?
He’s already demonstrating that he’s weak, that he cares not one bit for American soldiers’ and sailors’ lives, that he can’t deliver on ‘repeal and replace’, that he’s willing to enable polluters and even take away old folks’ right to sue their nursing homes for mistreatment. He’s sold out the country to a hostile foreign country: they respond by liking the hostile foreign country more. They don’t care. He vents his spleen for them, and that’s all they want. They’re locked in a bubble of misinformation and they don’t care or even know.
eclare
@WaterGirl: Agree, works both ways.
Procopius
@jeer9: With the DCCC (and the DNC and DSCC) already announcing that they will only support Blue Dogs and will not enter candidates in any district where Hillary lost, I think 2018 is going to be a disaster for the Democrats, not a glorious victory. Especially since it was publicly announced that they advise their candidates to lie about support for Medicare for All. Who’s going to believe any candidate endorsed by the DNC/DCCC/DSCC? It hurts the credibility of every candidate on the Democratic ticket, even the ones (lefty) the DNC/DCCC/DSCC oppose and work to sabotage.
WaterGirl
@Procopius: That doesn’t sound right. Do you have some links to the multiple pronouncements you just made in your comment?
Mnemosyne
@WaterGirl:
It sounded like Authentic Sandersbro Frontier Gibberish to me, too.
Omnes Omnibus
@Procopius: I am calling shenanigans on this comment.
Major Major Major Major
How does one only support blue dogs and only target Hillary-voting districts at the same time?
Roger Moore
@Jeffro:
He needs to actually hurt them, not just show the potential to hurt them. Bush was obviously awful for a long time, but Republicans continued to support him because he hadn’t actually failed yet. The things that really dragged him down were when Iraq went to hell, Katrina drowned New Orleans and he did fuck all about it, and then the bottom dropped out of the economy. If Trump manages to do something along those lines that converts his potential awfulness into obvious, tangible, kinetic awfulness, he is likely to see his support drop to 2008 W-like levels.
WaterGirl
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, I googled the nym. Not a ton of comments over the past couple of years, but seems to be a Hillary-hater and I loved this comment in response to MomSense on a thread from December. I got a kick out of that one.
@Omnes Omnibus: You put it better than I did.
germy
@Omnes Omnibus: But it was publicly announced that they advise their candidates to lie about support for Medicare for All. I mean, they SAY they’re for Medicare for All, but I know they’re lying.
Roger Moore
@Procopius:
Your concern is noted.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
I’m guessing that a Sandersbro or Sanderssis didn’t get the support they wanted to get from the DSCC, which of course means that the DSCC is rejecting ALL CANDIDATES EVERYWHERE. Because it’s unpossible that the DSCC looked at a specific person and said, Meh, pass.
WaterGirl
@germy: Yeah, just like some people knew, just knew, that Barack Obama was just giving lip service to support for LGBT folks and that he was never going to actually do anything to help him.
low-tech cyclist
@Ian G.:
If only that were true for me, it would up the game of pop music over the past 50 years pretty substantially.
I’m gonna go against the grain and say that “Fly” is a pretty good song. AFAICT, it’s the only decent song Sugar Ray did, but credit where credit is due. The line Doug quotes from in the post title is a pretty memorable line, as is “Love can make you hostage, wanna do it again?” But to each his own.
Procopius
@Mike in NC: There were reports back as far as Khrushchev that some Russians already missed Stalin and wished he were still in command.
Procopius
@Redshift: I don’t think they’re taking it more seriously this time. Wait a day and we’ll be seeing new stories about how Trump “pivoted” to be Presidential. Our famous free press is all about making money from attracting eyeballs or clicks. They don’t care if they’re not loved.
geg6
@Dev Null:
I’m old, too, dummy. That’s one of the reasons I know these assholes wouldn’t last an hour in a “battle.” For one, they think shunning healthy lifestyles hurts my liberal feelings instead of making them fat, gassy walking strokes.
moops
@Brachiator: I would claim they are both just as stupid. Trump has the added problem of having serious mental health problems, but that has cut against him more often than against his enemies. Bush might have been more predictable, but it was always predictably and reliably the wrong thing to do.
geg6
@Procopius:
On what planet did that happen? Because I missed that announcement at the last county Dem meeting.
Omnes Omnibus
@geg6: I am guessing Planet Pulledoutofhisass.
Matt McIrvin
@Roger Moore: Bush’s actual floor was about 24 or 25 percent. That’s within rounding error of the Crazification Factor. It was a remarkably good prediction.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Hey Omnes, are we not speaking?
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: Not that I know of.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Okay. I had replied to you a few times in the past week and hadn’t gotten a response, so I thought i would check in.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: I might just have missed your replies. I will torment you no longer with my silence.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Quite possible that you missed them, but after our “daft” exchange I thought it best to check in.
BruceFromOhio
@Beth in VA: Sorry so late to reply, got called away with stuff and things. Trying to figure out if sister and cousin in HOU are getting out, and if so, to where.
Simply going by the basic definition, really. Nothing like 19th century, we know better.
Reading comments further, seems that this thread went totally sideways, I blame DougJ for asking the question, “What do you think?” Usually I know better than to try to seriously answer that question, and it looks like the pie filter has been deployed, so it probably doesn’t matter anymore, anyway.
@Frankensteinbeck: This is spot on, thanks.
#Resist
BruceFromOhio
@geg6: LOL, you’ve been hanging around suburban Cleveland? There’s so much gas, it could be harnessed for another renewable energy source.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: No harm was meant by the daft comment, you know? I generally use it for agreeably off-kilter and similar things. We are all a bit daft here.
Doug!
@low-tech cyclist:
I agree
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Thanks for saying that. I can live with agreeably off-kilter!
Omnes Omnibus
@Doug!: Whatever merit it had as a song was sucked out of it by how ridiculously overplayed it was. It still makes me cringe.
burnspbesq
@hueyplong:
He’s just warming up. He will eventually rehabilitate Lester Maddox and Jesse Helms.
chopper
@WaterGirl:
while I have sympathy for team “we’re all gonna die”, I’m on team “fuck these fucking fuckers”.
fuck ’em. fuck ’em right in the fuckin’ ear.
Omnes Omnibus
@chopper: Maybe the WASFers are right, but is that any way to live?
schrodingers_cat
@geg6: Hear hear.@WaterGirl: I was emulating the gloom and doom contingent, should have added snark tags.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: TBH we don’t know the outcome, but if we don’t even put up a fight, they win by default.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: We are on the same page. It is interesting. I know a number of leftists from college who talked about how they would deal with fascists if it ever happened here. Adjusting for youthful hyperbole, the vast majority are out there doing something. Of course, I went to a LAC, so the vast majority isn’t a large number. But we are doing our bit.
terraformer
@catclub:
That’s a key point there. After this disaster, if there is an after, Congress should pass laws with the intent:
–that anyone running for President must provide full and complete tax returns for the past 10 years (or more? less?)
–to beef up the emoluments clause, or at least write something else, that neither the President nor his/her family or close associates may profit in terms of US government or taxpayer funds being paid to same or other through some other method with clear traceability.
I’m sure there are a bunch more, but it’s these two that are often first in my mind.