Guy at Alabama rally was hoping Trump would offer "$50 for every confirmed kill" along border http://t.co/yfhnRi38YJ pic.twitter.com/sJDC5XOc5R
— Joe Sudbay (@JoeSudbay) August 22, 2015
From the NYTimes article:
… “Now I know how the great Billy Graham felt, because this is the same feeling,” Mr. Trump, referring to the celebrated evangelist, thundered from a stage built for the night’s rally, where the vast stretches of empty seats indicated that attendance had fallen short of the more than 30,000 people he had predicted…
By the time of the flyover, some Trump fans had been at the stadium for about 12 hours, attracted to an event whose potential for scale and boisterousness surged as the week went on. Mr. Trump’s campaign at first intended to hold the rally at a far smaller site. But as word spread that he would bring his red, white and blue road show to Mobile — an easy drive from New Orleans, Birmingham, Ala., and Jackson, Miss. — his aides said that interest was outpacing their plans…
Although Mr. Trump has drawn criticism for unveiling few detailed policy proposals, many of his supporters said they were unbothered.
“When he gets in there, he’ll figure it out,” said Amanda Mancini, who said she had traveled from California to see Mr. Trump. “So we do have to trust him, but he has something that we can trust in. We can look at the Trump brand, we can look at what he’s done, and we can say that’s how he’s done everything.”…
He has the electrolytes plants crave!…
The thing is, even if Trump gets bored and drops out, those people excited by him will still probably vote.
— Bob Schooley (@Rschooley) August 22, 2015
Robert Costa & David Weigel, for the Washington Post:
… His speech focused heavily on illegal immigration — “We’re going to build a wall,” he declared to booming applause. And Trump basked in the early success of his campaign, noting all the states where he leads in the polls, including Bush’s Florida.
“Has this been crazy? Man! I mean, it’s been wild,” he said while suggesting that the United States should have an expedited election as in some other countries. “I’d like to have the election tomorrow. I don’t want to wait.”…
As the crowd formed Friday morning, Trump tweeted from New York: “We are going to have a wild time in Alabama tonight! Finally, the silent majority is back!” He echoed Richard Nixon’s 1968 “silent majority” pitch that was aimed at attracting disaffected white Southerners…
Trump chose Mobile for his big rally in part because it is the hometown of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R), an immigration hard-liner who has been counseling Trump and helped him develop his immigration policy paper. Trump brought Sessions onstage. The senator put on a white “Make America Great Again” hat…
I spoke w/ 13 die-hards who showed up super early. 10/13 said their 2nd choice is Carson. 2/13 said 2nd choice is Cruz. 1/13 said Walker.
— Robert Costa (@costareports) August 21, 2015
Matt Taibbi, at Rolling Stone:
… Trump is probably too dumb to realize it, or maybe he isn’t, but he doesn’t need to win anything to become the most dangerous person in America. He can do plenty of damage just by encouraging people to be as uninhibited in their stupidity as he is.
Trump is striking a chord with people who are feeling the squeeze in a less secure world and want to blame someone – the government, immigrants, political correctness, “incompetents,” “dummies,” Megyn Kelly, whoever – for their problems.
Karl Rove and his acolytes mined a lot of the same resentments to get Republicans elected over the years, but the difference is that Trump’s political style encourages people to do more to express their anger than just vote. The key to his success is a titillating message that those musty old rules about being polite and “saying the right thing” are for losers who lack the heart, courage and Trumpitude to just be who they are…
People are tired of rules and tired of having to pay lip service to decorum. They want to stop having to watch what they say and think and just get “crazy,” as Thomas Friedman would put it.
Trump’s campaign is giving people permission to do just that. It’s hard to say this word in conjunction with such a sexually unappealing person, but his message is a powerful aphrodisiac. Fuck everything, fuck everyone. Fuck immigrants and fuck their filthy lice-ridden kids. And fuck you if you don’t like me saying so.
Those of us who think polls and primaries and debates are any match for that are pretty naive. America has been trending stupid for a long time. Now the stupid wants out of its cage, and Trump is urging it on. There are a lot of ways this can go wrong, no matter who wins in 2016.
Speaking of which…
What Trump hath wrought: "Donors feel powerless. Republican officials have little leverage.” http://t.co/7H7gZ79E5D
— David Frum (@davidfrum) August 21, 2015
Maybe it's just that one third of Republicans have a really edgy sense of humor. pic.twitter.com/hCExpRXbai
— Bob Schooley (@Rschooley) August 22, 2015
Does @realDonaldTrump really do best among less educated voters? Short answer: yes http://t.co/OB0EXGTp9f #Cato2016 pic.twitter.com/MYZeyGN6cA
— Cato Institute (@CatoInstitute) August 22, 2015
Love this Murphy quote in the post http://t.co/AV86mpn4rr pic.twitter.com/aTcP5BdTri
— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) August 21, 2015
No one has suffered more from Trump's rise than Scott Walker @tripgabriel @jmartnyt http://t.co/x961C6QKdm
— Michael Tackett (@tackettdc) August 20, 2015
Cruz camp manager Jeff Roe says he'd rather 2,500 tonight than "12k in a football stadium in AL.Those people are going to be part of a show"
— Trip Gabriel (@tripgabriel) August 22, 2015
Who doesn't? RT @BuzzFeedAndrew: "Privately, Paul repeatedly mocks Trump…" http://t.co/MF9i2l1bPn
— Jen Stroup (@JenStroup) August 21, 2015
TRUMP: “If I’m going down, then Bush is going down with me. He’s not going to be president of the United States.”
http://t.co/FiDeRREyxj
— Gabriel Sherman (@gabrielsherman) August 21, 2015
Olaf Childress is handing out his neo-Confederate newsletter to attendees pic.twitter.com/HOld3IgFzx
— Robert Costa (@costareports) August 21, 2015
Remember, Trump's supporters are very, very passionate. https://t.co/VTRaePLfP3
— Daniel Drezner (@dandrezner) August 22, 2015
Mike E
Another Trump thread? Teh Donald approves!
seaboogie
Although I am not a fan of horror, I thought I’d dial into the Donald’s speech in AL because a commenter downthread said he dissed a horse. Just a couple of minutes in, and Trump is saying (as he motions to the crowd) “what people, great people, the people who built this country – and then let’s talk about illegal immigration”.
Clearly narcissism and stupidity have eaten away and consumed that last bone in his body that could possibly harbor any awareness of irony. And once again, into the breach of the ultimate narcissism….taking a breath, and then diving…..
Craigie
Of course all these folks direct their anger at anyone but the people who are really holding them back – the robber barons who own the government. But saying that makes me a commie. Offering to shoot economic refugees makes you a man.
piratedan
how can any of us really be shocked by this… we’ve had decades of GOP influenced media telling us that government is bad, immigrants are a disease, sluts are to be shamed , teachers are incompetent, unions are evil and scientists are grifters. Be afraid of the Muslim, the other, hoard your wealth, THEY are coming for you, so buy gold, buy guns and only trust us, who will lead you and yours to salvation behind the gated community or trailer park of freedom.
Those not wholly in the bag for this message, are busy making sure that issues never reach clarity, that both sides are bad and that nothing can be done anyway, unless your solution can fit in a five second sound bite or fit on a bumper sticker.
They didn’t want you educated and NOW they’re concerned because an even savvier grifter has hijacked their mojo and is cutting them out of the loop and its red meat all day, every day.
I would enjoy watching them squirm but we have to face the reality that we’re next on the monster’s agenda and I hope like hell we can take it down because I really don’t have much faith in the grifter brigade doing the job as they’ll find that the 4th estate wants ratings and cash and the monster provides them with plenty of each. That’s the problem with underlings for hire, there’s always a better paying supervillian just over at the next dormant volcanic lair to steal away your most efficient minions.
Fuck those shortsighted asshats and their disdain for the rest of us… this is the same set of folks responsible for the vision of invading Iraq, and we all know how well they planned that fiasco.
seaboogie
I wonder how John Roberts is sleeping these days. His Citizens United decision that favors favorite son Jeb! is getting Trumped by “Jeff Sessions, come up here – this guy’s like 20 years old” (that is as far as I’ve gotten into the speech – no dissing of a horse, yet). Deep breath, and once more into the breech….
BR
This is also disturbing:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/08/22/1414429/-They-Yelled-White-Power-From-the-Stands-at-Donald-Trump-s-Alabama-Rally
You know, Trump isn’t funny anymore. Or rather what he’s stirring up.
Sophist
The sleep of reason produces republican primary voters.
Amir Khalid
So this really is a thing never seen before in American presidential politics: a rabble-rousing buffoon with no presidential substance or decorum or inclination to listen to reason is now the runaway favourite for his party’s nomination. No one has any idea how far the Trumpwagon will run before the wheels come off.
People are hoping against hope that he’s gonna crash sometime soon; but no one can really be sure of that. The poxy bastard might just win, and turn America into Marty McFly’s hometown as ruled by Biff Tanner.
Do I have that about right?
BR
@Amir Khalid:
Oh man, I think you nailed it. I never would have thought of that but it’s a perfect description of who Trump is and what he would do.
Yatsuno
@Amir Khalid: The only thing I can think of that comes close is the candidacy of William Jennings Bryan. But even Bryan had some solid political chops behind him. And not even the robber barons of the Gilded Age wanted much to do with politics besides pulling the strings behind closed doors. I don’t know what’s going to happen here, but for certain the Republican party is going to be changed by all this. And something tells me not for the good.
M. Bouffant
Also too:
jl
@M. Bouffant: Did anyone ask this crazy person whether she was gong to go back this ruined lawless dystopian wasteland California?
BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: Would it be unkind to hope not?
jl
@BillinGlendaleCA: She probably won’t come back if she and her posse have been gone for a few days. The hordes have moved into her property by now, torn it apart and taken it away. Now excuse me I have to get my bazooka and pop off a few rounds to keep the illegal zombie robots sent by the Mexican government away from my stuff.
David Koch
I’m Shocked! I’m Shocked!
You routinely hear on many democratic sites that economic populism (as espoused by Edwards or Sanders) will bring the white working class voter back to the fold. Nope.
If given the choice to vote for an increase in social security benefits and free dental or to stick it to those brown people, they’ll choose the later every time.
M. Bouffant
@jl: You have to wonder.
If everything were “up for grabs” I’m sure I’d be running Korea Town like the glibertarian superman I am.
Tommy
@jl: What the heck was done to her in CA? I live in a pretty darn liberal state here in Illinois. Maybe not Calfornia liberal. But I don’t know anybody running around saying the state is unliveable because we’re so liberal. I mean we got a Republican Governor and a Republican Senator. Still not sure how that happened, but even in a state where we are called liberal Republicans can win elections.
jl
@Tommy: I assume that the poor woman is slightly nuts.
Elizabelle
@jl:
But quotable.
These people are morons.
Tommy
@jl: Yeah I think you are right there.
I’ve said in other comments here my parents are not the most liberal folks you will find but they think Trump is shit all crazy. I am often the person that brings up politics with my parents. They have brought up the topic of Trump with me and can’t stop talking about it.
If the Republicans would put up somebody semi-sane they would vote for him/her. But they seem incapable of doing this.
David Koch
BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: Worse, the illegal zombie robots might try to feed her; they do that to me here.
Tommy
@David Koch: Yes. My mom, in her 70s voted with us for the first time because she felt Palin was shit all stupid. She has voted for Obama twice.
Dad still not so much.
But he is livid about Trump. There are a few people in the clown car he could vote for. But never for Trump. Never.
Keith P.
Classiest…thread…ever.
NotMax
Mobile phoney.
@Amir Khalid
The hangover after carousing at the all you can bleat buffet, when the Trump campaign has petered, out will be epic. One might even say YOOGE.
Tommy
@M. Bouffant: And I bet they hate there is a Korean Town. I always lived in small rural towns. When I moved to DC after college and I could head to China Town I was elated. Or that the place I worked in Falls Church, across from it a market owned by a family from Honduras. I did not know you could do so much stuff with banana leaves :). I guess this is my way of saying I so like immigrants. I wish more of them here, not less. Fuck you Trump!
NotMax
Fixed for clarity. (No edit function.)
Mobile phoney.
@Amir Khalid
The hangover following carousing at the all you can bleat buffet, after the Trump campaign has petered out, will be epic. One might even say YOOGE.
jl
@BillinGlendaleCA: Every couple of minutes I throw some flashbangs out the window to keep away the hybrid blood sucking batboy space alien mutants spawned by the liberal government. And the rent is too damn high! due to the damn liberals. My ammo budget is tight.
Tomorrow I’m rigging up a plow for the font of my car so I can get through all the bombed out rubble and dead bodies that make running red lights and fleeing the radioactive werewolves such a nuisance these days in ‘Frisco.
Thanks, Obama! Trump will fix it.
Trump voters are a sad lot, I just watched this bit on Trumps fantasy ‘military advisors’
Trump’s Military Strategy: Watch Lots Of TV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86imTiUNEWo
The thing is, all the GOPer spout the same BS as Trump and just as dirt ignorant. The others just present their ignorant fantasies in a way we are accustomed to, as per the mind training provided by our worthless media.
Elizabelle
WaPost:
Higher taxes? That’s all Jeb! can sloganeer about?
Trump’s supporters are scary stupid people, who know they’ve been had, but can’t figure out by whom. Or don’t want to admit that it’s by their rich overlords, gaming the system.
Meanwhile, MSM/cable is all about Hillary emails — investigation!
I fear the MSM’s potential impact: remember the Ebola and ISIS wall to wall in midterms. And that was CNN.
Also wonder if we’re seeing more crazy since we don’t have Colbert and Stewart to poke fun, in real time.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tommy:
Horrors, where else would you get Korean food. Yum, kalbi.
Tommy
@M. Bouffant: Oh one other thing. I had a roommate that had a girlfriend from Korea. He married her while we lived together so she was a fixture in my house. I’d never known a person from another nation.
She taught me so many things. Mostly about food. She introduced me to sushi. Kimchi. The importance of owning a rice cooker. We bought rice by the metric ton. Clarie was a wonderful lady.
raven
@Tommy: I assume you are younger than David Foster Wallace? I have learned that he was quite a tennis player and probably played in my program in Urbana and that there is a decent chance that he was on a grade school basketball team I coached.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Elizabelle: I passed a bus stop with a picture of Mr. Colbert saying his show starts on Sept. 8; it’s only a couple of weeks away.
raven
@BillinGlendaleCA: My favorite was yakimono. We’d get it in the village and it was years until I learned that my favorite Korean food was Japanese!
BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: Hang in there jl, reinforcements will be on their way from Trump HQ.
Remember Scott Walker said that being an Eagle Scout prepared him for being CinC. I’m also an Eagle Scout, I’m certainly not confident that it would qualify me for leading a military.
Elizabelle
@BillinGlendaleCA: Thank Dog! September 8.
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: Korea was a colony of Japan from from 1910 to 1945. Cities and people were renamed and Koreans were taught to speak Japanese. They really tried to eliminate Korean culture.
Tommy
@raven: I can do things on a tennis court that will blow your mind. I mentioned the other night I was at a tennis camp where I beat, and a kid, every player from the Univeristy of Illinois-Chicago. I was kind of full of myself. The lady that ran the camp put me on the court with a 12-year-old lady. She ran me off the court. 6-0. 6-1. Pretty sure she gave me that one game out of petty. Time I realized I wasn’t going to make my living playing tennis.
Mezz
@Amir Khalid:
I’ve been thinking that the Biff Tannen takeover of Hill Valley in BTFII is exactly what every Republican wants for years.
raven
@BillinGlendaleCA: Yea yea, what does a 17 year old GI know about that shit!
raven
@Tommy: So are you younger than this guy?
Tommy
@raven: Not sure his age. I am 46.
raven
@Tommy: He was born in 62 and killed himself in 2008. There is a movie about him that just came out and it was directed by Jim Ponsdolt from Athens.
The End of the Tour
jl
@BillinGlendaleCA: Just don’t eat any brains you find lying in the street, even if the French Laundry is putting road kill on the menu out of desperation.
Rommie
Somebody’s going to ask Trump what he would do about Iran, and he’s going to come right out and threaten to Nuke them if they don’t genuflect on Inauguration Day. What can the other Klowns say to that? They’ll look like Liberal Sissies if they don’t agree with him.
And it doesn’t work in reverse, because Trump can just say the equivalent of “Hell Yea, I’ll Glass the Place!” and it makes him look even more Leader-ly in his supporter’s eyes. He’s the only one that can get away with Doubling Down on any tough-guy talk.
Tommy
@raven: That movie you linked to I think is not the movie you wanted to link to. But one I’d like to watch.
Botsplainer
Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer.
Another ridiculous demagogue, disdained by smarter people, playing exactly to the prejudices of a white majority that has been propagandized for decades.
BillinGlendaleCA
OT: This was a rather pleasant surprise, a few weeks ago I got a UHD(4K) monitor and it’s worked quite well paired with my HD touchscreen on my primary computer which is 2 years old. I also plugged my old(6 yo) computer into it, though I usually access via Remote Desktop. I was doing some work directly on the old box and that 6 yo graphics card will actually drive the 4K monitor at full resolution. I’m both surprised and impressed.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Botsplainer: My high school German teacher met that Fuhrer guy.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I need a monitor like that. My eyesight is getting so poor.
Baud
@Botsplainer:
Ein Donald.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: It’s really nice, I can also view the 4K videos I can take with my phone. Windows 10 really handles the dual resolution monitors well.
David Koch
¡Jeb! isn’t good at this.
Elizabelle
@Tommy: Glad to see you back, bud.
David Koch
1. that’s hilarious coming from a virulent ugly race baiter like BillO
2. BillO is telling his sheep not to support his ideological and emotional twin can only mean his paymasters are now in full panic and have put out a contract on Trump.
David Koch
A red state Senator like Tester provides moving support for Iran Deal, while a deep blue Senator like Schumer stabs the President in the back and votes for war.
bemused
CabIe news cuts away to far, far too much air time of the Trump shows. Our youngest son is visiting and we are groaning in disbeIief. At one point, our son asks what the heck is he even trying to say? None of us have a cIue. His themes are tossed together wiIIy-niIIy coIIiding into one another Iike bumper cars. He and Sarah bear have that in common.
Yet his fans adore him. I had to giggIe when Trump said, ‘anyone drive a Mercedes Benz, weII a Iot of peopIe drive them’. Many in that crowd may have jobs in the factory, sure doesn’t mean they can afford to buy one. Didn’t seem to register with the crowd tho. This is petty but eyeing the fans behind Trump made me groan. Just from appearances, I wonder how many of them made it through HS.
Trump is doing considerabIe damage to the GOP and they can’t do a thing stop him. Is it possibIe the Trump show couId batter the GOP into compIete chaos for years to come? We are in very bizarre poIiticaI times.
OzarkHillbilly
@David Koch: McCaskill has come out in favor too.
WereBear
I love this so very much.
This is the fruit of fifty years of resentment, hate, and massive sucking up. No matter where it comes from it is that Minion Mentality. They don’t want good education for their children, access to health care, and potholes fixed in the roads. They can do that themselves, they dream and fantasize.
They want bread and circuses.
Fred
@Botsplainer: Been thinking in the same vein. They say the first person to bring up that little unpleasantness in Europe back in the ’30s and ’40s loses the debate. But this stuff is getting a little too close. We’ve been flirting with this thing a long time but I fear we may finally be walking boldly up to the edge of the nightmare.
magurakurin
@M. Bouffant:
I would have told that crazy lady, “Yeah, we ate Califonia’s 55 Electoral Votes with pinto beans and fine bottle of Malt 40.”
Patrick
@David Koch:
Schumer should not be majority leader.
Germy Shoemangler
@Patrick: Will there be any political consequences for his Iran vote? I read that he was endorsed by Reid and Warren. I wonder if that will change?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Patrick: I agree, but I don’t have a vote in the Senate Democratic Caucus.
Tommy
@BillinGlendaleCA: Pretty sure it was you that talked about upgrading. Made me do it. Windows 10 was just a flat out wonderful experience. I have been upgrading OS since the 80s. This was the easiest and fastest process ever.
OzarkHillbilly
@Patrick: I don’t think we have to worry about that just yet. The Dems have to take the Senate back first and I’m not sure they can.
Kay
Classy.
When does he release his tax returns? We’ll need to see the sources of his income and his (actual) assets/debts/income and also the lists of entities and people he owed and didn’t pay with those bankruptcy filings- just like all the other candidates would have to do. Running for President is fun and probably lucrative, later if not right now, but if he’s going to promote his career by attacking vulnerable, ordinary people someone should go after him. A lot of this stuff has to be public record- instead of broadcasting the blather he spouts over and over maybe someone could look into it. I’d be interested in the corporate welfare checks he got from cities and states. Is that how he paid for the plane?
http://www.salon.com/2015/06/21/the_donald_trump_scandal_no_one_is_talking_about_partner/
Tommy
@Fred: I hate to almost agree with you but I wonder what times were like in Germany. I often note my parents are not the most liberal people in the room but sane. They are revoking against their party.
Botsplainer
@Fred:
Urbane, cosmopolitan Berlin laughed at the ridiculous Austrian corporal and his goofy, sad sack followers. Ten years later, they were getting their asses kicked back into Germany on three fronts, their city getting routinely bombed. Ultimately, the country was decimated, their city burned out and divided.
A Trump presidency would likely lead to similar results.
Poopyman
@Botsplainer: l’m surprised it took until the 47th comment for the comparison, but yeah, he’ll happily head in that direction. And if the economy goes to shit again …?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Kay:
There are people that make a career of doing that, what are they called? Reporters, I think. Well, at least they used to do that.
Poopyman
@Botsplainer:
Except now we have nukes.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tommy: It’s a really painless upgrade. As I said above, if you have multiple monitors the improvement is really worth the time to upgrade(there’s no monetary cost if you have win7 or win8). There’s still a few bugs, but MS is still putting out builds to insiders. They didn’t just go out for a beer after they popped out build 10240.
magurakurin
@Botsplainer:
Similar in the way that high explosive is similar to a thermonuclear weapon. A Trump presidency would leave the world glowing green. Bad, very bad. 15 minutes to Wapner bad.
Kay
I’d also like to see Mike Huckabee’s income information and the sources of that income, while we’re at it. I bet that would be interesting. Ron Paul may be off the hook since he’s a full-time private sector grifter now.
Peale
@Rommie: yep. Which is why he’ll appear to mop up everybody in debates. I mean, look at his plan to destroy ISIS and take the oil. He’ll pick a real general like Patton or MacArthur, not some pussy Washington general, and have them encircle and destroy ISIS, which sound military-ish…maybe he’ll change that later to “outflank”. It sounds so easy and tough. and direct. O.k., fine, we like to think the majority of the voters don’t want to go back to Iraq again, but maybe they will be ok if they think it will be heroic and make us great again. Or maybe they think we can encircle them with planes.
But what’s Hillary supposed to say? I think the reasonable response to ISIS also sounds a bit crazy, and not nearly so heroic.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Poopyman: Randy Newman – Political Science
Davis X. Machina
@bemused:
A poem should not mean
but be.
Kay
@BillinGlendaleCA:
How long does he get a free ride? Obviously the Republican Party and his opponents are too frightened to challenge him. The best Jeb “the wimp” Bush can do is whine about how much Trump’s wall on the border will cost. Pathetic.
Tommy
@BillinGlendaleCA: I have a MA in journalism. Funny thing, never really practiced it. But I got it back in the 90s. I had teachers that taught me well “old school” stuff. My major professor was Sig Mickelson. Go Google him. He is most famous for shit canning Edward R Murrow. But he taught me things like speaking truth to power. We are the fourth estate and we need to stand up. I am stunned how many don’t do that.
Germy Shoemangler
ABC morning show:
“trump supporters wearing Donald wigs”
This is beatlemania.
Except beatlemania was a benign movement.
They’re reporting now that HRC is cutting her vacation short to face some “very tough questions about her use of emails”
——–
Now they’re talking about the market slide. “Interest rates will go up. Things will get more expensive: mortgages,car loans…”
BillinGlendaleCA
@Kay: Watch Morning Joe, they gush over Trump for a few minutes and then talk about Hillary’s email like it’s the greatest scandal since Watergate. So to answer your first question, he gets a very, very long free ride.
OzarkHillbilly
C’mon guys, let us all return to reality. Yes, if you listen too closely the rhetoric sounds really scary. And if you look at the followers, and realize that a fair number of them have guns, it is not irrational to think somebody somewhere someday will get shot for the color of their skin (and in reality, that would be different from all of American history, how?), or their sexual orientation (again, how diff?) or any # of excuses.
But I want to point out a few things:
#1: 21st century America is not in any way shape or form analogous to 1930s Germany. Politically, demographically, or any other ‘ically. Even the most cursory look at history will show that.
#2: Trump is in no way shape or form like Hitler. Hitler had a philosophy that he was able to espouse on for hours in speeches that enthralled. Trump has word salad.
#3: His followers are not brown shirts. They are mish mash of disaffected people who are tired but they don’t know what of, and know even less what the Donald is saying, but they are glad he is saying it.
So relax. Enjoy the show. And remember, God is a stand up comedian playing to an audience that is afraid to laugh. Trump is a joke. His followers are a joke. And if by some chance he should get elected?
Well then laugh, because the joke is on you.
bemused
@Davis X. Machina:
Trump practices streams of unconsciousness and it’s poetry to the ears of his yooogest fans.
bemused
@Germy Shoemangler:
Trump wigs, seriousIy?? Oh, why am I even asking, not after seeing idiots wearing hats with teabags hanging from the brims.
Peale
@Germy Shoemangler: yep. I’m sure Janet yellen looks at the strong dollar, the falling oil prices, the declining stock market, Chinese currency shocks, and thinks…yeah, let’s jack up interest rates.
Tommy
@Germy Shoemangler: I was too young to be around when “Beatlemania” was a thing. I had a co-worker once say on a conference call that the Beatle’s suck. This lady, and only in her early 20s, went all tribal. Never forgot it.
Germy Shoemangler
@Peale: ABC news is reporting that Yellen will “take the training wheels off of the economy” and this includes raising interest rates.
I have the TV on in the backgound; sort of absorbing the ABC morning show as a counterpoint to Balloon-Juice comments.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Glenn Beck’s very busy with the 1930’s Germany analogy: Planned Parenthood/Mengele experimentation; Syrian Christian murders/Jews marching to the gas chambers; Obama doing nothing about ISIS/Neville Chamberlain; the US not allowing Syrian Christians to emigrate to America/St. Louis — to name but a few.
But he’s very busy doing something about this. After morphing into MLK next weekend in Birmingham, as one of his first actions, he will go to Mexico where a couple hundred Syrian Christians will be waiting (Mexico allowing immigration), and he will personally walk them across the border, in the face of gunfire if necessary.
If nothing else, this might take attention from Trump.
HRA
Trump’s goal was to take the oxygen out of the other R candidates and he has succeeded. Look also at how many times we have Trump first and foremost here among the D supporters. How many times can there be comments about his uneducated followers, his latest idiocy, etc. when we are looking for information and thoughts about D candidates? The lack of oxygen has worked it’s way to the D side, too. This, above all, is why Trump was sent out.
Germy Shoemangler
@bemused: I remember Beatlemania. Everyone (my teachers, some classmates) insisting that the “moptops” wore wigs. And yes, some stores sold beatle wigs, although I never saw anyone who admitted buying or wearing one.
The village media is sort of like Murray The K, playing his hits all day and night.
Germy Shoemangler
@HRA:
True. The ABC-news morning show led with the Trump rally. It was the top story.
I don’t recall them giving this much attention to any Sanders rallies. And the NY Times put scare quotes around the Bernie Sanders “Revolution” as if to say “tsk, really?”
debbie
@Kay:
Kay, I just listened to a local reporters’ roundtable program, and apparently Jeb’s people are raising demands for more information about Jobs for Ohio.
Germy Shoemangler
@Kay:
I can see wingnuts using this as evidence the social security system is broken: “He’s collecting SS on top of a $174k salary?? No wonder it’s bankrupt!”
Mike J
@Germy Shoemangler:
It wasn’t that long ago Republicans were complaining that interest rates hadn’t gone up so investments had lousy returns and why is Obama trying to kill capitalism by keeping interest rates low?
SFAW
@Tommy:
Kim bob/bab/bap is Korean, sushi is Japanese. Probably not a great idea to mix the two, considering what the Japanese did to the Koreans before and during WW2
@Tommy:
I may be mixing up memories or BJ commenters, but isn’t your father the history professor? Maybe also taught at the War College (or at least has a deep knowledge of the War of Northern Aggression and so forth)? One would think/hope that someone of his academic and (theoretically) intellectual credentials and ability would be less into the “My Partei right or wrong!” thing. Or is he also a David Horowitz acolyte?
WereBear
I’m saying to everyone: Yes, look, and be horrified. Because Trump is doing a very good thing, actually. He’s showing, not telling.
It’s been stark to us for years, but for a vast lump of the voting populace, it’s just a lot of meaningless culture shoving and something icky called politics. It has nothing to do with them, and their daily lives, and their struggles and hopes.
And then there’s people like Tommy’s father, who still holds his nose and votes Republican because his whole life has been about not being a Democrat. Or whatever excuse they have now, at this point, when it’s been getting worse and worse. Is this the moment where such folks look in the mirror and realize the truth?
This is what Republicans are.
Always before there has been hiding of the hatred. Code words. Orwellian names. Goodferbizness.
Some see chaos, I see opportunity. We get to the polls because of high-mindedness, but there’s a metric ton of people who need to get out and vote, be roused to action, and if it takes fear of a man in a mutant combover, I’ll take it.
Together, we can be Trump Anti-Matter.
bemused
@Germy Shoemangler:
I remember it too but not yet a teenager. Every young person had their favorite BeatIe. Parents, oIder peopIe hated the hair and didn’t seem to know what had happened to the music/teen cuIture. It was a huge change. I think there is stiII a cuIturaI difference today between peopIe who were teens before and after the British invasion era, not just in tastes and styIes of music but aIso in cIothing, etc, etc.
SFAW
@Mike J:
To paraphrase O’Reilly: “Interest rates go down, interest rates go up, no one knows why. But anything bad associated with the changes is all Obama’s fault.”
raven
@Tommy: That’s exactly the movie I meant to link to. David Foster Wallace was a tennis player a writer.
“The story of the five-day interview between Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky and acclaimed novelist David Foster Wallace, which took place right after the 1996 publication of Wallace’s groundbreaking epic novel, ‘Infinite Jest.'”
p.a.
Trump hasn’t won anything yet. You don’t think the other Repub ratfvcker crews don’t have oppo research on him? McCain S Carolina 2000. The question then becomes his supporters; disillusioned apathy or torch the edifice?
SFAW
@debbie:
I’m waiting for the vids of him walking on the surface of the Rio Grande
Germy Shoemangler
@bemused: Here’s an interesting article about Beatle haters:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111903703604576584751511927440
W.F. Buckley despised them. He didn’t think they’d last; called it a hoax.
Patrick
@Mike J:
They were also complaining about high gas prices in the beginning of Obama’s term. With the Iran deal gas prices are likely to decline, yet the Republicans are unanimously against the Iran deal.
Before Obama took office, deficits literally didn’t matter according to Republicans. But the second Obama took office, the deficit was immediately destroying America.
I am not for a minute surprised that Trump is attracting uneducated folks…
SFAW
@p.a.:
What are they going to do to him? There ain’t a whole lot that is going to bother him enough to respond with anything other than his usual disdainful bullshit. And his supporters — if the various crazies quoted here are in any way indicative of his support in general — will not care.
About the only thing that would create a problem for him would be the proverbial live boy or dead girl, and even then …
Germy Shoemangler
@debbie: Syrian Christian immigrants good – Christian Mexican immigrants bad? I don’t understand Glenn Beck’s logic.
SFAW
@Germy Shoemangler:
And he was right, they only lasted about seven years as a popular group.
Of course, the object of his own affections, or the affections of his followers — the CSA — only lasted for about four years, so I guess there was nothing to that, either.
Kay
@debbie:
Good. Hopefully Jeb Bush will take down John Kasich. That Jobs Ohio scam has spread to the county level. Republicans are setting up mini versions in rural counties. We had a new lawyer, son of a judge, one year out of law school, appointed as “CEO” of ours. I know him slightly and he quite literally has never had a job and he is now the CEO of “job creation”. What’s funny about it is even Republicans treat it with contempt. It’s no more popular with them than it is with Democrats, so maybe Bush is internally polling Ohio and knows this.
I had a nice conversation with a woman I met yesterday. She works for Circle K, the convenience store. They’re all over the place here- I don’t know if you have one. Anyway, she was a manager working 60 hours a week for salary. There was a class action lawsuit against Circle K for wrongly categorizing employees as “managers” and stealing overtime from them. Circle K got scared and re-classiified all the managers as employees. She now works 50 hours a week and makes +/- 100 dollars more a week. 450 a month is the rent for her and her two kids.
She got 10 hours a week back to spend with her kids and a hundred more every week. She was thrilled. She found out why they did it on a Facebook site that local employees set up. They did their own research. She’s worked there ten years. They robbed her for ten years.
debbie
@Germy Shoemangler:
That’s because there is none.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: Disaffected people are dangerous people. I hope you’re right, but anything that gives free voice to the kind of person who would propose hunting of humans along a border (with bounties!) is more scary than funny to me.
PurpleGirl
@Tommy: I was at the 1964 Beatles’ concert at Shea Stadium. Some 60,000 fans screaming at the same time… you couldn’t even hear them playing. Rumor was that they were landing on the infield by helicopter; every time a chopper passed overhead the sound level went up. (Actually they came in by truck to the dugout…)
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Off to swim and run errands.
Germy Shoemangler
@PurpleGirl: I remember when the Beatles played at Forest Hills. My older sibling won a free ticket on a radio contest. My father took both older siblings to the concert and bribed the security guard to get in. I was deemed to young to go; also pressing their luck with only one ticket.
My father said you could barely hear the music from the screams. The girls were screaming; their boyfriends were throwing hard candy at the stage. My father remembered seeing one of the Beatles actually flinching and dodging the thrown candy. The concert lasted barely a half hour, and then a helicopter flew them away.
In ’64 I was taken to our local movie palace to see “A Hard Day’s Night” and the audience was full of screaming girls. Whenever there’d be a close-up of a favorite Beatle, the screaming got louder. I could barely hear the dialog. As I recall, Paul got the most screams, followed by John.
WereBear
@Kay: And this is why Republicans want “tort reform.” So they can stop this kind of thing.
Germy Shoemangler
@PurpleGirl:
Paul is still going strong on his solo tour. Amazing to me that he’s still doing two-plus hour shows; amazing stamina.
This is a first rate Beatle blog:
http://www.heydullblog.com
Please share your memories there, if you wish.
bemused
@Germy Shoemangler:
I was and stiII am more of a Stones fan. Poor BeatIe haters, the BeatIes were just beginning of the Iong-haired hippy era…
rikyrah
Trump’s people only half-filled a stadium. this is true. But, he got 20k people in Alabama to come see him. …that actually is the story.
20k
rikyrah
@p.a.:
Trump has been in the public eye for forever and a day. Somewhere, the story has either been written about him, or is on video. It’s not there hiding.
Problem is….the ones inclined to vote for him DON’T CARE.
Trump’s dirt is already out there. You can google it.
They don’t care.
Germy Shoemangler
@bemused: Interesting debate on Beatles vs. Stones:
Keith recently dissed Sgt. Pepper’s, which added fire to the debate.
B
@seaboogie: “I wonder how John Roberts is sleeping these days. His Citizens United decision that favors favorite son Jeb! is getting Trumped by “Jeff Sessions, come up here – this guy’s like 20 years old” (that is as far as I’ve gotten into the speech – no dissing of a horse, yet). Deep breath, and once more into the breech….”
Just fine. The long term effect is to promote the power of the 1% of the 1%.
rikyrah
@Kay:
I appreciate you always being on top of this story, Kay. You always bring it.
Schlemazel
@SFAW:
I think Trump believes he could walk across the surface of the Rio Grand.
B
@Tommy: “What the heck was done to her in CA? I live in a pretty darn liberal state here in Illinois. Maybe not Calfornia liberal. But I don’t know anybody running around saying the state is unliveable because we’re so liberal. I mean we got a Republican Governor and a Republican Senator. Still not sure how that happened, but even in a state where we are called liberal Republicans can win elections.”
The Browns, Blacks and Yellows are running around in enough numbers that she doesn’t feel like an overpowering majority anymore.
Given a choice between 80-90% white vs. anything else, she’ll take the former.
Tom
@Elizabelle:
“You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons.”
Gene Wilder in Blazing Saddles
Vtr
I’ve been thinking about the difference between Then and Now. In 1968, a man named Pat Paulen, rest his soul, ran for president against Richard Nixtin and Herbert Humphries. Absolutely every citizen of the United States understood that it was a joke.
Iowa Old Lady
People like O’Reilly complain that Trump makes Republicans look bad, as if you could take Trump out of the picture and the people in that stadium would disappear. To paraphrase Forest Gump, Republican is as Republican does.
debbie
@Kay:
Wouldn’t it be something if she and others could claw back just like the big guys???
Another Ohio bit: Josh Mandel is backing Marco Rubio over Kasich. Hopefully, it’s Mandel’s last stand in politics. If nothing else, Ohio’s politics will become much more interesting.
SFAW
@Schlemazel:
And he’ll do it in a very classy way. It’ll be yoooge.
You’re just a hater if you think he can’t. And you’re dumb. And you got no class
SFAW
@Vtr:
It was? Why’n’t anyone tell me?
Schlemazel
@SFAW:
You mean I am a loser? Thank pasta I am not woman because then I would also be a fat hormonal pig and a slob.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: Disaffected people can be dangerous people but are mostly just…. disaffected, disillusioned, disorganized, disinterred, disappointed, and dissed.
as I said above: And if you look at the followers, and realize that a fair number of them have guns, it is not irrational to think somebody somewhere someday will get shot for the color of their skin (and in reality, that would be different from all of American history, how?), or their sexual orientation (again, how diff?) or any # of excuses.
I just can’t be persuaded that the end of the world is near because a famous 4 time bankrupted bloviating businessman who can’t speak in coherent sentences has somehow convinced 27% of GOP voters that he is the embodiment of the Second Coming.
rikyrah
@BR:
Trump is not doing anything new. He’s just not talking in dogwhistles. What he represents, and the sentiment behind it, is the core of the GOP and has been for decades. Others just hid behind dogwhistles.
You see something new in Trump. I don’t.
THIS is who the GOP is and has been for a LONG TIME.
Folks just can’t hide behind shyt anymore.
SFAW
@Schlemazel:
If you had any class (you loser), then you’d have the required operation(s) so that you could be.
rikyrah
huh
HUH?
……………………
‘Give me back my gun,’ train attacker pleads with Americans
Paris (AFP) – A gunman tackled by young Americans on a train between Amsterdam and Paris pleaded with them to hand back his Kalashnikov after they overpowered him, one of the group said.
Everything happened very fast,” Anthony Sadler, a student travelling with friends Alek Skarlatos and Spencer Stone, both members of the US military, told France’s BFMTV.
“I didn’t realise what was happening until I saw a guard run past. I looked back and saw a guy enter with a Kalashnikov. My friends and I got down and then I said ‘Let’s get him’,” said Skarlatos, a 22-year-old member of the National Guard in Oregon, who has recently returned from service in Afghanistan.
“We didn’t know if the gun wasn’t working or anything like that. Spencer just ran anyway and if anyone had gotten shot, it would have been Spencer and we’re just very lucky that nobody got killed,” he added in quotes shown on the BBC.
http://news.yahoo.com/back-gun-train-attacker-pleaded-americans-074842971.html
Joel
@OzarkHillbilly: life is just a show, laughing as you go, just remember that the last laugh is on you…
bemused
Trump is everywhere, dammit. I went to apt therapy for a nice break from the DonaId and there is a post, what wouId a Trump White House Iook Iike. The front of the White House with goId striped piIIars. CIassy but needs some beat-up ratty sofas and chairs on the portico to thriII Trump fans.
rikyrah
Analysis
Shaun King is no Rachel Dolezal: Look who’s calling him white
Another activist is being accused of putting on blackface. But this time, the stakes are higher for the civil rights community.
On Wednesday, Breitbart.com posted a report stating that Shaun King, a civil rights activist and prominent figure in the Black Lives Matter movement, “is white and has been lying about his ethnicity for years,” including using deceit to get an “Oprah scholarship” at the historically black Morehouse College. By early afternoon, Shaun King was a trending topic on Twitter.My private past and pain have been used as jokes and fodder to discredit me and the greater movement for justice in America.- Shaun King
“He’s no Rachel Dolezal,” King’s wife wrote in a Facebook post, referencing the inevitable comparisons to the former head of the Spokane NAACP whose parents said she’s white though she identifies as black. King himself posted a further explanation on DailyKos.com on Thursday afternoon, asserting that he is biracial. King says that his biological father was black and that the white man listed on his birth certificate was not his actual father.
At first glance, this may seem to be similar to the media uproar that surrounded Dolezal. But many of the same people who found Dolezal’s case the source of much entertainment are not laughing about King.
The difference? Though Dolezal was relatively unknown outside of Seattle before her controversy, King is well known in activist circles, and many are invested in his work. Also, for many that follow King on social media, the source of the accusations is a cause for concern.
Race continues to be a difficult topic for many Americans. On Wednesday, an article on Vox.com asked whether there was any way to “figure out whether King is black or biracial,” before answering its own question. “Unfortunately, no,” Vox writer German Lopez wrote, “because the entire concept of race is arbitrary to begin with.”
Certainly, the question of racial identity can be a fraught and difficult one. And ultimately, as King’s wife wrote in her Facebook post, it is his story to tell.Rachel Dolezal says she’d like to write a book
But, two questions remain: Even if Shaun King is white, who cares? And perhaps more important: Who is asking?
http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-who-cares-if-shaun-king-is-white-20150820-story.html
rikyrah
hmmph
……………….
In the lull of summer, Clinton goes where the money is
By Anne Gearan August 21 at 7:34 PM Hillary Rodham Clinton has a solution for the summer doldrums in big-money politics: Go where the rich people go.
Specifically, where the rich liberals like to go.
Clinton will be in Water Mill, N.Y., on Saturday at the home of New York philanthropists Arthur and Selma Rabin. She returns to the Hamptons next weekend for a dinner reception at the Southampton home of celebrity fashion designer Tory Burch.
Last weekend, fundraising parties were held in her honor on the Massachusetts resort islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. Democratic donors have also hosted fundraisers for her this summer in Park City, Utah, and Aspen, Colo., as well as a pair of events on Cape Cod.
“I’m just hoping that people who are Hillary supporters are going to be behind her,” Arthur Rabin said in an interview. “I want to let her talk, explain to people her views and work with her to become the president.”
Rabin said he preferred not to say much more, noting that Clinton’s hosts next weekend “are the big people,” as Democratic donors go. “I’m a small person.”
The event he will host is similar to those Clinton has attended at least once or twice a week since entering the presidential race in April. They have helped her raise a record $46.7 million between April and the end of June.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-the-lull-of-summer-clinton-goes-where-the-money-is/2015/08/21/a9910ec0-4835-11e5-8e7d-9c033e6745d8_story.html
rikyrah
uh huh
uh huh
Trump’s audacious Southern spectacle is part of his strategy
By Robert Costa and David Weigel August 22 at 12:03 AM
MOBILE, Ala. — It was the most audacious Donald Trump spectacle yet in a summer full of them, as the Republican presidential front-runner, in his Boeing 757, thundered over a football stadium here Friday night and gave a raucous speech to one of the largest crowds of the 2016 campaign.
But Trump’s flashy performance was about more than showmanship. His visit to Alabama was coolly strategic, touching down in the heart of red America and an increasingly important early battleground in the Republican nominating contest.
The Manhattan developer, who strode onstage to “Sweet Home Alabama,” is trying to show that his candidacy has broad and lasting appeal across every region of the country — especially here in the South, where Alabama and seven other states are holding a clustered voting blitz March 1.
The scene Friday night put an exclamation point on an extraordinary run in which the flamboyant mogul has thoroughly disrupted the presidential campaign and kindled a national discussion about not just politics but American culture itself.
“We have politicians that don’t have a clue,” said Trump, wearing a red hat on which was printed “Make America Great Again,” his slogan. “They’re all talk, no action. What’s happening to this country is disgraceful.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-audacious-southern-spectacle-is-part-of-his-strategy/2015/08/21/31da2a88-4812-11e5-846d-02792f854297_story.html?tid=pm_politics_pop_b
SFAW
@rikyrah:
A small part of me, somewhere in the recesses of my (alleged) brain, hopes that, in about six months, Trump announces that this whole thing has been trolling on an epic scale, or perhaps performance art:
“For the last nine months, I’ve been saying $#!+ that appeals to the very worst beliefs and impulses of a lot of people in this country, and a lot of people have screamed their approval, and urged me on.
“Those people are not Americans — at least not in the sense of what I was taught, and most rational, patriotic people were taught, before the Republicans turned ‘smart’ and ‘intelligent’ and ‘community’ and ‘helping your fellow man/woman’ and ‘science’ into dirty words and expressions.
“I’m here to say that my candidacy has shown that there are far too many people in this country who are proud of the hatred they feel and show toward ‘The Other’ — whether that ‘Other’ is brown, poor, non-Christian, whatever descriptor you want — and that most, if not all, of them vote for Republicans without question, because that’s the Party where those sentiments reside in abundance.
“Republicans talk about ‘making this country great (again)’ — but what they forget to tell you is that THEY ARE THE ONES WHO HAVE DRAGGED IT DOWN FOR THE LAST 35 YEARS. And, despite their best efforts, the United States of America is still doing pretty damn well. In a more-perfect world, a lot of the Republican leadership would be tried for treason. But America is — most of the time — a generous and forgiving country, so that won’t happen. But it sure as Hell will if I get elected.”
Then I snap back to reality, and my depression (figuratively speaking) deepens. But I still hope The Don will someday say it was all an epic troll. (Of course, if he does that, someone better put DougJ on suicide watch.)
Another Holocene Human
Comes straight from American business culture, if you’re not a sociopath, you’re a loser and a chump. And maybe an asshole, too.
rikyrah
Sure, Michael.
whatever.
…………………
Jordan says ‘it was never about the money’ after $8.9M jury award
A delighted Michael Jordan said “it was never about the money” Friday night after a federal jury ordered the owners of the defunct supermarket chain Dominick’s to pay him $8.9 million for using his identity without permission in an advertisement.
Beaming outside the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse moments after the verdict was announced, the basketball legend added that he would give the award to charities in Chicago. “It was all just about protecting my name and my likeness,” he said.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-michael-jordan-dominicks-case-0822-biz-20150821-story.html
rikyrah
Ok, now we gotta worry about mutating lice?
what da phuq???
………………………
Some lice bugs have mutated to resist over-the-counter treatments
When head lice, a pesky and persistent threat for schoolkids everywhere, recently showed up on Courtney Jager’s 9-year-old daughter’s scalp, the mother moved quickly to eradicate the bugs.
But when drugstore shampoos, repeated washing of clothes and even “an electrocuting comb” weren’t enough to end the problem, Jager started to panic.
“I did everything I was supposed to do. I bought everything I could find at the store,” she said. “I was so defeated. I know they’re not dangerous, but they’re horrific.”
The Midlothian mom’s experience coincides with an itchy reality that doctors, researchers and lice eradicating business owners across the U.S. have identified in recent years — in some communities, lice bugs have mutated to be resistant to over-the-counter treatments. These so-called knock-down resistance or “super lice” mutations require antibiotics prescribed by doctors, they say.
This week, a researcher from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville shared research that lice resistant to over-the-counter treatments have saturated 25 of 30 states tested, including Illinois. And early findings in ongoing studies show that in 48 states tested, only five states remain without the “super lice” strains, said Dr. Kyong Sup Yoon, assistant professor of biology.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/health/ct-head-lice-drug-resistant-met-20150820-story.html
NotMax
@PurpleGirl
Well, whaddaya know? I was there as well (it was a very last minute thing, as someone I knew got very ill and offered me his ticket).
Thought I recognized you. :)
From the nosebleed seats, they looked like four grasshoppers outfitted by Carnaby Street.
@Germy Shoemangler
Murray The K spun stacks of wax.
Trump spins stacks of crap.
rikyrah
uh huh
uh huh
…………….
Aaron Schock’s attorneys trying to keep documents from feds
In a bid to keep some documents out of the hands of federal prosecutors, attorneys for Aaron Schock said in a court filing Friday that the former lawmaker has a Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination with respect to any records from his congressional offices.
Their argument comes amid an intense legal battle over what records Schock, who quit Congress on March 31, must turn over.Ex-Rep. Aaron Schock spends heavily for legal help
On Thursday, the top federal prosecutor in the case asked U.S. District Court Judge Sue Myerscough in Springfield to consider holding Schock in contempt of court for failing to produce documents.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Bass wrote in a court filing Thursday that “No court has recognized that a public official … has a constitutional right under the Fifth Amendment to avoid the compelled production of publicly-funded, non-private, public or official records within his official … office.”
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-aaron-schock-document-fight-met-20150821-story.html
Another Holocene Human
@Tommy:
For me it was Filipinos in Prince Edwards County. Taro root! Bitter melon! I feel more comfortable when I get on transit and hear 5 different languages. Tolerant. Open. Cosmopolitan. Educated.
Why are these bad things?!?!
Another Holocene Human
@Tommy:
Rice cooker and hot water heater. (As it so happens my rice cooker is indeed Korean, Chinese sold it to me, and my hot water pot is European. My grandmother had a Japanese one but it died.)
It’s a lifestyle.
piratedan
@Amir Khalid: @8
I think you can find some Huey Long parallels here if you look for them
NotMax
@Another Holocene Human
Them’s fightin’ words, son (or ma’m).
/the nutball right
rikyrah
for those of who concerned about Trump and what he’s unleashing:
and when I say this is who the GOP is… I mean it.
Ronald Reagan, born and raised in the Midwest. Was Governor of California.
So, why the phuck did he announce his candidacy in PHILADELPHIA, MISSISSIPPI?
See – dogwhistle.
Black folks knew what was up with him from that one action.
But, the MSM continues to try and cover about why he did that.
Because, of the dogwhistle, they can pretend.
Trump doesn’t talk in dogwhistles.
So, those mealy mouthed muthaphuckas who try and hide behind reasons why they’d vote GOP, are just gonna have to embrace the hate fully, and show who they are. Folks might embrace the hate fully, but isn’t it better to know – no hold barred- who your enemy is and what they represent – than to allow them to pretend that they are something other than they are not?
Plus, the non-pretending is good for our side too….just tell folks LOOK AT THEM. ..and tell me why you don’t have time to vote. Dogwhistles let the lazy on our side off too. How many times do folks post here that they know someone who just doesn’t believe that the GOP believes this, because ‘ that’s crazy’.
Donald Trump eliminates that excuse from our side. And, the rest of the pack, in order to try and keep up with them, can’t do so in Frank Luntz-approved dogwhistles.
shell
Whats just as disturbing is the guy felt perfectly comfortable saying all this out in public. How many people standing around him nodded at his comment.
Another Holocene Human
@David Koch:
You may be right. I can’t believe BillO called another conservative racist. Liberals sure, in that disingenuous “I know you are but what am I” way, but someone running as as Republican?
Bill does this, though. He has always nutpicked the right to make it look like he’s a moderate when he’s as paleoconservative as they come.
And it doesn’t have to be his employer. BillO has an ego to go up against Trump, any day. Bill is extremely egotistical and selfish.
Another Holocene Human
@David Koch:
Schumer has always been that way. Always found it ironic that Dodd went down when the housing bubble burst but Schumer walked away unscathed.
Chris
@BR:
Actually, IMDB claims that Biff Tannen in his alternate-1985 incarnation was “loosely” based on Donald Trump. So, even truer than you think.
g
“Has this been crazy? Man! I mean, it’s been wild,” he said while suggesting that the United States should have an expedited election as in some other countries. “I’d like to have the election tomorrow. I don’t want to wait.”…
Calling for a coup.
Schlemazel
@rikyrah:
We have the technology now that the brilliant sons of the south needed in the past, we can solve all of this. Lets DNA test every American and if there is any DNA there that is not European (and perhaps Northern European, we may have to reintroduce a few classes for the darker, Southern Europeans) then they shall be classified as “colored”. The old rule was a single drop of colored blood, now we have the ability to verify the results! People will have to list their ‘race’ on all official documents so there can never be a doubt.
Another Holocene Human
@Peale: Hey, hey, now, being Always Wrong isn’t easy!
Schlemazel
@SFAW:
Don’t count on it, its not gonna happen.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Baud
I agree with this.
shell
Dont hold your breath, little man. We cant even get election day changed to the much more convenient Saturday.
Another Holocene Human
@SFAW:
Funny, multiple Korean-owned restaurants in my area happily sell sushi along with Korean dishes.
While that is Japanese style sushi (because it sells), from what I understand all of the coastal East Asian cultures in that region have their own style of sushi. For example there’s Taiwanese sushi.
Woodrowfan
@Another Holocene Human: same here. My wife and I picked an ethnically and culturally diverse area on purpose to live in. It’s far more interesting. people are people. little kids running around their yard laughing sound the same in any language.
Another Holocene Human
@Germy Shoemangler:
Because the Mexicans are Catholics–oh, wait.
SFAW
@shell:
If the Rethugs in Congress thought that changing it to St. Swithin’s Day would guarantee them a win, the bill would be on Obama’s desk in 48 hours.
Tommy
@SFAW My dad is a history professor. Not always sure his thinking of stuff.
Another Holocene Human
@Kay: Circle K’s owners are assholes. They were big fat homophobes funding anti-gay organizations back in the day. Too bad Keanu Reeves gave them all that good press in Bill & Ted.
WHAT A SHOCK GIANT HOMOPHOBIC GARBAGE EXPLOIT THEIR WORKERS TOO. It’s almost as if bigotry and assholery is all connected!
Another Holocene Human
@rikyrah: Heh. If I ever get enough caffeine in my belly, we’re driving to my favorite swimming hole. (Note: NOT in my county, I need to get out of here for a day. I’m headed somewhere a little more … cosmopolitan.)
SFAW
@Schlemazel:
Yeah, I’m stunned to hear you say that, because I was SOOOO counting on it.
Let me have my fantasies, will you? It’s less expensive than Ashley Madison, after all.
SFAW
@Tommy:
I think there might be a word or two missing from that sentence, because I can’t parse it. Or maybe it’s just me.
Tommy
@Another Holocene Human: They are not bad things. They are wonderful things. Why I get so mad when I hear Trump talk about immigrants. I want more people of other cultures to come live here. Come one come all!
Schlemazel
@SFAW:
sorry dood
Petorado
Thank God conservative pundits and the Beltway media are such staunch upholders of civility in politics. They won’t allow the public rhetoric get uncivil, will they?
Tommy
@SFAW: No that is kind of what I meant to say.
My dad was against the war in Iraq from the get go. Also pro choice. He is a gosh darn atheist. But he votes Republican. I don’t understand it.
Another Holocene Human
@rikyrah: Wow, we knew this guy had no shame, but now documents from his public office are covered under the 5th?
Delaying the inevitable.
Mike in NC
@Botsplainer: Trump just needs to grow a classy toothbrush-shaped mustache to match the thing on top of his head.
Randy P
@Another Holocene Human: My favorite little sushi joint in Philly is Korean (or so I surmise from the kim chee on the menu). A Korean friend grew up under Japanese occupation and didn’t appear to harbor any resentment of Japanese culture or language. Indeed, he offered to teach me Japanese, saying that Korean was too hard for Americans to learn. He used to say that Korea was where Japanese would go on vacation if they wanted good Japanese food but not at Japanese prices.
Iowa Old Lady
@shell: Yet another constitutional issue that he doesn’t seem to recognize.
Tommy
@PurpleGirl: I travel the US looking for concerts. Maybe the best I ever saw was Paul McCartney. I had spent the day at Jazz Fest. Went to the Super Dome to watch Paul end the day. His last set was only Beatles music. I guess as close as I could ever get to seeing them play live.
Update: I should note this was 1992.
SFAW
@Tommy:
Probably tribal. Or perhaps some “childhood” trauma that’s Dem-related. (Re: the trauma comment: perhaps some Dem or group of Dems did something so egregious that your father vowed never to vote for them again.)
But regarding your statement being what you meant to say:
“Not always sure his thinking of stuff.” does not translate, as written, into standard English. Maybe you meant to write “re: his thinking” or “on his thinking,” but as written, it’s not parse-able.
Emma
The monsters have arrived on Maple Street…and their creators are crapping their pants.
Another Holocene Human
Given what I know of Shaun King’s work, why would I give a shit what color he is? I pretty much assumed he was Black given that pretty much no white people were that deep into reporting on the facts and the reportage of Ferguson and other instances of police violence against African Americans, and also based on his twitter photo (you know: one drop rule).
The explanation from King’s wife is plausible. There are lots of Americans passing for white right now who aren’t. It seems like every other prominent white power dipshit is mixed race (or Jewish). I read a great graphic novel a few years back by a guy who is “legally” Black (his ancestry is African-American, census records whatever) but has passed for white his whole life (his cousins look Black, though). He used art to explore the notion of the color line, and how it was policed.
I also read an essay once by a guy who looked white and his father looked white, but he was considered Black in segregated Illinois in the mid-20th century. Then the schools were desegregated…. He was very tuned into the structure of white privilege, having had it, having it taken away, then unexpectedly getting it back. Feeling alienated from white people because they did not share that experience and didn’t understand.
Another Holocene Human
@Randy P: My personal opinion is that if Japan would just acknowledge the past and stop teaching bowdlerized claptrap in the public schools there would be way less tension between South Korea and Japan.
Just accept it, the Japanese military pressed Korean women into service as comfort women (rape camps), just as the invading US military would do to the Japanese later in the war. War is hell. It’s nice to be nice. There, that wasn’t so hard.
Another Holocene Human
@SFAW: I read that as “Not always sure (of) his thinking ON stuff,” which is perfectly clear.
Unless that wasn’t a typo and Tommy is trying to blow our tiny little minds.
(of) is in parens because sometimes an “of” is elided in spoken English so I don’t find it to be a major grammar faux pas.
Not always sure/
His thinking of stuff
does make some interesting verse
SFAW
@Emma:
Only because they’re worried that they’ll lose the election because part of the country still finds their screechings vile and ugly. But if they saw polling that said people are ready to elect whoever hates on Others the most, they’d be all-in.
SFAW
@Another Holocene Human:
That’s what I figured he was trying to say, but without the extra words, we may never know ….
Tommy
@SFAW: I talk to my father almost every day either via email, text, or on the phone, but closer to my mother. My mom and I have wide ranging conversations. Not so much with my father. Why he votes Republican is beyond me. But at many levels I don’t push him to think the way I do because he never did that to me. He raised a raging liberal. Let me figure shit out for myself and didn’t judge me or tell me how to think about the world.
Myers
@piratedan:
Piratedan you nailed it perfectly.
The MSM whether it is stupidity, willful obtuseness or simple refusal, to acknowledge the role they have played in pandering, encouraging and by so doing, legitimizing a demographic, for the sole purpose of manipulation, all in the name of cynical politics, is frighteningly close to, if not already pathological.
SFAW
@Another Holocene Human:
That will happen right after Turkey accepts responsibility for the Armenian genocide.
Actually, I think any Japan apology or quasi-apology would happen long before Turkey even considered something like that.
Tommy
@SFAW: If you want to know just ask. I will be the first to admit at times my use of the English language can be lacking. I thought my comment was clear. I guess not.
Emma
@SFAW: Agree completely. It’s not losing their humanity, it’s losing their power.
PurpleGirl
@rikyrah: If it truly wasn’t about the money, it would be nice if Michael Jordan donated all of it to charities, maybe even food banks and charities feeding people in the supermarket chain’s region.
ETA: Doh, just read the 2nd para and that he said he’d give the money to charities.
SFAW
@Tommy:
All you gotta do is let us know which words were missing. I provided some possibilities, Holocene did too.
NonyNony
@Kay:
When Mitt Romney releases his.
Trump is in a unique situation here – both he and Romney are rich, but Romney was basically Thurston Howell III. He came across as too rich to understand normal people.
Trump’s base thinks Trump is one of them. He revels in telling them how much money he makes. He has no need to release his tax information at all. Hell I can see how it would go down:
1) Reporters ask to see Trump’s tax returns
2) Trump attacks the media – or for added fun personally attacks the reporter asking him the question – for their ridiculous nonsense, tells everyone he’s worth “billions” and isn’t afraid to brag about his wealth, so why do they need to see his tax returns
3) Trump’s fans cheer because he’s punching the media
Repeat every time a reporter pushes him on it.
The “advantage” that Trump has is that he’s not a “serious” candidate. He’s built his campaign as a carnival barker media sideshow campaign that plays up all of the populist shibboleths that the Tea Party base need. They might have cared about Mitt Romney’s tax returns, but only because they hated Mitt Romney and wanted him taken down. They don’t care about Trump’s tax returns, so it won’t hurt him.
(Again, though – the only thing keeping Trump’s numbers up is that there isn’t a “reasonable” candidate for the non-Trump voters to coalesce around. If this were a normal primary with 5-6 candidates instead of 17, Trump’s numbers would not look nearly as good.)
Tommy
@SFAW: There are no words I would put in what I said.
Hal
@rikyrah: Why such confusion from so many over Shaun King? A bi-racial black man with a light complexion is an anathema to people? King or people like Mariah Carey, Wentworth Miller, or Jay Smooth are not pretending to be black just because they aren’t the right shade of black certain numbers of white folks in this country apparently think is needed to not be considered white. I’m just so surprised at the amount of ignorance surrounding this made up controversy. Especially given the source.
debbie
@NonyNony:
If the returns are hinkey, Trump will just use it as proof that the system is broken and only he can fix it. Much like he freely admitted he bought politicians.
Germy Shoemangler
@Hal: The point is the right wing’s politics of personal destruction. Dare to speak up from the left and they will work overtime to discredit you.
Which is why so few progressives are willing to sacrifice themselves on local elections. Harassing phone calls in the middle of the night, death threats in the mail, dead animals on your porch. Most folks say “no thanks…” I
NotMax
@Tommy
Rarely.
Let me “repeat that.” Rarely.
Keep on plugging away, though.
/gentle ribbing
Mike in NC
@shell: Same people who flocked to the McCain/Palin rallies, where when the name “Obama” was mentioned, they’d shout ‘kill him!’.
NonyNony
@debbie:
There’s that too – but I don’t think that Trump would release his returns at all. Not necessarily because he would be embarrassed by them (I think The Donald must have had his embarrassment surgically removed at a young age) but because part of his image is that he refuses to submit to other people’s demands.
I could see him doing something like you’re saying if his tax returns ended up getting leaked to the press, but he isn’t going to volunteer to turn them over himself. That would be a sign of “weakness” and “losing” and Trump’s campaign is all about showing no “weakness” and “never apologizing” and “winning”. Just like he’ll say all kinds of horrible things and never apologize for them, he’ll also never turn over records just because a reporter asks for them and other people running for the office have done it.
Frankensteinbeck
@rikyrah:
You have 100% nailed it. After 7 years of Obama presidency, how can anyone not see this? Was the conservative uproar over the national anthem being sung in languages other than English in a Coca Cola commercial not enough? White power tracts have all the modern conservative arguments, they just add ‘because blacks are animals.’ Hell, wasn’t Reagan’s main schtick telling America ‘No, no. You’re not racist. You’re responsible.’
In other words, 27% of the GOP is so sick and tired of not being allowed to yell ‘nigger’ in public that it overwhelms all other considerations. They found a candidate willing to say openly, undeniably racist shit in a national forum, and that’s enough for them. Nothing else matters. This is the Rush Limbaugh crowd, and they are sure as Hell not new.
The next 50% are the reason Reagan had to sell his message. They are desperate to avoid the public shaming of being called racists. They still are, of course. They just need, need that deniability. Bill O’Reilly is their king.
I don’t understand why this isn’t obvious to everyone by now.
NonyNony
@Frankensteinbeck:
That only gets you to 77%. Who are the other 23% here?
Matt McIrvin
@NonyNony:
Do we know that? At some point (some soon, some not until the spring) some of these minor candidates down in the low single digits are going to drop out of the race. But I could see their votes going to Trump as easily as to some establishment figure.
Tommy
@Germy Shoemangler: I mentioned that. My dad isn’t a liberal but he refuses to run. He’d be a good guy. But wil not run.
NotMax
@Tommy
Nothing wrong with that.
Having run for office myself (once), can affirmatively state it is a grueling, debilitating, all-consuming slog.
NonyNony
@Matt McIrvin:
Doubtful – for the “serious” minor candidates their voters are looking for something in particular. The Jeb! and Walker and Rubio and Kasich etc. supporters are not going to flock to Trump just because their guy got knocked out. For the other crazies – maybe, but still doubtful. If you haven’t already glommed onto Trump and you’re backing Carson or Cruz or Paul or Jindal or whoever, it’s probably because you’re in that 52% or so of the GOP that can’t stand Donald Trump. (Okay, maybe the Cruz supporters would move to Trump if he were to drop out). I contend that Trump’s ceiling in the GOP is 27% +/- 5% and I’m sticking to that. (Of course he’d get at least 46% of the national vote in a national presidential election – that’s the GOP floor. GOP voters will vote for a monkey waving a Republican flag before they’ll vote for a Democrat.)
What’s really hurting the GOP right now compared to 2012 is that in ’12 there was really just one “serious” candidate, everyone knew it, everyone hated it, but all of the people who considered themselves “serious” voters knew they had to back Romney because the only other choices either couldn’t make it out of Iowa/NH or were the wrong kind of crazy. There are too many “serious” candidates in this race right now and none of them can close the deal with the “serious” voters (the money men backing Jeb! is blowing up in their faces) and so we get the crazybase running the show. If someone were to get ahold of Jeb! and Rubio and Walker and Kasich and, yes, Fiorina and convince the three bottom feeders plus either Jeb! or Walker to drop out, the last one standing would likely surge into a tie with Trump as those voters resigned themselves to voting for the only “serious” candidate left in the race.
But given Citizen’s United, that’s unlikely to happen. So the “serious” voters will continue to split their votes and Trump will reap the benefits.
NotMax
@Mike in NC
Worse, those on the stage let such comments stand unaddressed.
Lots (lots!) to revile McCain for, but his direct confrontation with crazy hair lady was commendable. And proper.
Frankensteinbeck
@NonyNony:
No group is completely monolithic. I’m trying to be generous in allowing a serious chunk who are moral scolds that can’t get over the Hippies, people who are weak to abusive arguments that you have to hurt people to help them, 1% of rich assholes who don’t care for or against racism, they just want their egos stroked, and folks who absorbed from authority figures they should vote Republican and now have their fingers in their ears going ‘LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU.’ That last thing is a major human trait. It’s part of how the lizard brain thinks. So I should give it some room.
Woodrowfan
@Tommy: @SFAW: There are no words I would put in what I said.
you sure you were raised by an academic? We can always find extra words to put in!!!!! ;)
moonbat
@rikyrah: Bernie Sanders got 20,000 people to come see him and no one is suggesting that he will turn the nation into a soci@list utopia. Unfortunately….
SFAW
@Tommy:
Let me cluesplain this to you:
If the above sentence were “translated” into whatever language you used in the original comment:
There are no words I would put what I said.
All the words in the above translation are English words, but the sentence as written does not convey any comprehensible thought, outside of “there are no words.”
Actually, come to think of it, “There are no words I would put in what I said.” doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, either.
Ah, never mind, you keep talking Tommy-speak, I’m sure I’m just being pedantic toward the inarticulate.
Shakti
@OzarkHillbilly:
1.There’s a lot of significant differences. However, the demographics won’t matter if minorities are prevented from voting.
2.Shrub had word salad. Trump, sadly has more charisma than pretty much any Republican in the field. And people will stand in line for hours to listen to his word salad.
3.You don’t need a majority or even a significant minority of brown shirts to get brown shirt results. You just need enough people to look the other way.
HAHAHA, he’s not threatening YOUR citizenship rights with his stupid followers. I’m guessing people don’t automatically project the latest hated brown ethnicity onto your body or that of your loved ones, so I’m sure it’s ABSOLUTELY hilarious to you.
Ruckus
Lots and lots think that T Rump is a racist or is crazy or is stupid. It can be all three, or it could be something else.
The southern strategy has worked for the repubs for more than 40 yrs. Not every time but they have nothing else. And a lot of those voters and candidates have only heard the southern strategy as the party platform their entire adult lives. T Rump is just being loud and proud with the southern strategy. And the reason that many of the rich repubs want the southern strategy is that it highly favors the rich. It gives them leverage on the very people they are fucking over, someone to blame for their problems. Even though those problems have nothing to do with immigrants or blacks or browns, they are a direct cause of the rich, getting richer on the backs of everyone. That’s why Sanders is well received, that’s his message. Those not blinded by racism (racism fueled by decades of the southern strategy) can see that. If Sanders (or anyone) could wave a magic wand and rid us of even a good portion of the racism, we’d still have the financial problems. And due to the decades of the southern strategy if we were able to fix the financial inequality issues then we’d still have the racism that is the inherent element of that strategy. We have to address both at the same time or progress is not going to happen.
April
@Tommy: my great grandmother had stories of Germany at that time. She was an outspoken lady, criticizing the uprising fascist violence and brown shirts took it out on her family. They beat my great uncle nearly to death but she arranged to get him out of the country before the war. My other uncles were not so lucky and they had to serve Hitler because the brow shirts kidnapped my great grandfather and held him prisoner until the sons went off to serve in war.
I wondered how they recognized those who were against them unless they spoke up. Here, trump supporters can simply bash brown people and assume they are undocumented and therefore deserving of the beat down.
NonyNony
@Frankensteinbeck:
I think I agree, though I’m starting to think that I have an alternative explanation.
See, I know good people who continue to vote Republican. People who care about their community and their country, who don’t actually think that taxes are too high or that scary immigrants are coming to steal their precious bodily fluids. People who are not super religious types who think that it’s their Christian duty to vote Republican (though they are generally moderately religious – none of the atheists I know would vote for a Republican). People who think gays actually deserve equal treatment. And so on. They’re basically Democrats except that every election they go and pull the lever for Republicans.
For the life of me the only explanation I can come up with for these folks is that they’re the “flip side” of the 27%. They’re crazy, in a completely different way than the 27%ers that we’re used to talking about. I don’t know how many of them there are out there, but I’ll be damned if living here in Columbus Ohio I don’t know a lot more than I think I should. (I also know quite a few who live in Chicago, but I suspect that that’s a backlash to the Democratic machine that runs the city – and much of the time, the state – than it is anything else and so that’s explicable to me.)
Chris
@piratedan:
“Some” parallels, yeah… But Long was vastly better than Trump, favoring government relief for the poor and still being a massive improvement over his predecessors. His insistence on providing relief all around also led to him being attacked by the Ku Klux Klan with pamphlets that portrayed him with his arms around black people promising them free rides (the more things change), not a thing that would ever happen to Trump.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
I think at least some of the problem is that we’ve had two elections in a row where the Republican base was served an “establishment” candidate they hated and considered a RINO, lost, and went away convinced that that’s why they lost and if only they’d run a REAL, Palin style conservative freak, they’d have won.
Having been assigned the blame for not only the Bush era’s problems but the subsequent electoral defeats, the Republican establishment’s credibility is at an all time low and demands for an extremist candidate are higher than ever.
Tomtofa
Interesting that he’s concentrating on immigrants as his core issue. Same thing is happening across Europe. The Le Pen party in France or Jobbik in Hungary, for instance, must be very envious of us having a charismatic billionaire espousing their cause.
Drunken Orangetree
@piratedan: Depressingly accurate.
Ruckus
@Germy Shoemangler:
The reply to that is that they both paid into SS their entire working lives, they don’t deserve it, they earned it. Along with millionaires and billionaires, who, if they contributed to SS because they had wages, (if they just invested their inheritance and never actually had wages, they are out of luck for the pittance that is SS) they earned their proportion, just like that person on the factory floor or the fast food cashier.
Frankensteinbeck
@NonyNony:
Some of them are mildly racist, or in the ‘weak against arguments that you have to hurt people to help them’ category. This can be almost invisible in their day-to-day life. They can actively think that black people get a raw deal, but take seriously arguments that a black man who was murdered unfairly looked scary. Some of them are like a friend of mine, who is liberal in all opinions, very, very concerned with kindness and compassion, but he absorbed ‘Republicans are good’ long ago before the rest of his morality developed, and he can’t let it go.
Like I said, this is human. This is part of how psychology works. It’s been proven ad nauseum by scientific research. Being able to change your opinion because of facts requires effort and training. It is not a basic function of thought, and is actually counter to the basic functions of thought. Never be surprised if even a smart person has gaps where they can’t do it.
Ruckus
@NonyNony:
I noticed this about Ohio when I lived there as well. I see it much less in the hellhole called CA, but it still exists. I think it is a semi-conscious reflex for some and the anti-democrat position for others. Humans are paragons of habit. We learn a process and we keep doing that until it hurts us. Some even after the pain. Some of us are masochistic and seemingly like the pain, if you can believe that. And it is in all aspects of being alive. Eating, sex, travel, clothes, hair styles, religion…… And politics (which in many cases encapsulates every example I mentioned), especially politics. Many times it takes a generational and pronounced outside event to shake that political habit. There is also a built in defense to continue the habit, “I’ve been doing this for a long time and it has worked out well so I’m not going to stop. And my parents did this for ever and it worked.” It doesn’t have to be true, just believed.
ExpatDanBKK
@BillinGlendaleCA: The duck BBQ place, Sun Ha Jang. Yummy! Pro tip: bring extra Lipitor.
Woodrowfan
Bernie wants to build. Trump wants to break. it’s easier to do the latter than the former.
Bart
@Tommy:
Then he’s a hypocrite. Trump isn’t saying anything the others aren’t, they simply say it in a more polite manner. Trump’s opinions aren’t fringe, they’re perfectly normal Republican ones.
JGabriel
Amir Khalid:
I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic or not. If not, then possibly you’re forgetting George Bush the Younger, and Ronald Reagan, and Richard Nixon, and Barry Goldwater, and …
rickstersherpa
@Craigie: These are also the folks who regard every embryo as sacred. I guess someone should ask him if wants a double bounty for shooting pregnant women, you know anchor babies. Abortion is apparently okay as long as the mother dies as well.
Really,, 30% of this country are a bunch of tribalist asshole nuts. I guess that is the same for most countries, but we seem to have as country a gang that now celebrates their assholeness.
Of course, MSM the last 35 years, in pursuit of the dollar has found “both sides” as the means to fortune.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@BillinGlendaleCA:
We had a hard time getting used to 4k. All the older movies seemed (and to some extent still do) like behind the scenes footage.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Peale:
And that is why I support Bernie. He’d say something like “that’s utter bullshit”, and move on.
David Koch
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo): I saw Sanders debate crazy michelle bachman and he didn’t do so well. it’s hard debating crazy, it’s like trying to nail jello to a wall.
Anoniminous
Been saying for over a decade the GOP was heading for an intra-party slug fest. Here it is and I couldn’t be happier. With any amount of luck the GOP will rip itself to shreds.
Bobby Thomson
@Amir Khalid: I see you haven’t studied the Jackson administration.
dollared
@piratedan: Damn, that was good. Seriously.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I think Jeb?’s confidence that he can beat the Donald in a two way race is hilarious. Trump’s got a quarter of the GOP electorate right now. The folks in the “not currently for Bush or the Donald” camp will have to break heavily in favor of Bush rather than Trump, and given that Bush is stuck in neutral at best and may be losing ground, what evidence can he possibly have that those folks who are currently for Carson, Fiorina, or whoever aren’t going to favor Trump over him? Probably no evidence whatsoever, other than the pundits in the MSM and probably the other major republican donors, who are probably telling him there’s no way the GOP electorate is crazy enough to vote Trump. Yeah, like those guys are always right.
Jamey
Matt Taibbi is the indispensable man, but he’s also a condescending twat.
Donald is many things, all of them bad. However, dumb is not one of them–and to call Trump dumb is like trying to kill Godzilla with radiation.
SFAW
@Jamey:
Oh, stop bashing him. You make it seem as if he’s Satan incarnate.
But, as far as I know, he hasn’t kicked any dogs.
In the last 24 hours.
More than 3 times.
At a campaign event.
On camera.
So, do you see? He MAY not be Satan!
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: It’s been done before. Back in 19th century at least. Also, maybe Huey Long (who had a much, much different message).
Paul in KY
@David Koch: Maybe it’s just gangrene.
I can hope, can’t I?
Paul in KY
@Tommy: Much more money in being a courtier & dispensing propaganda.
Paul in KY
@SFAW: He’s a millionaire. When you are one of those, there are legitimate personal economic reasons to vote Republican.
Paul in KY
@rikyrah: They may actually not know about some of it. If I was another Repub, I’d at least put the most unsavory stuff out there. If you don’t, you’re not trying.