Trump reverses stance on ordering military to break international laws https://t.co/LRaLGTScTN
— Todd Tucker (@toddntucker) March 4, 2016
First woman gets within winning distance of the Oval Office, and the Repub men leap from sabre-rattling to literally bragging about their mighty weapons, in front of a live audience and an appalled world….
Thing is, this is news. The likely Republican candidate conceding he won't deliberately commit war crimes is news. https://t.co/r2cgY2rE53
— Alan Beattie (@alanbeattie) March 4, 2016
Every time @realDonaldTrump is challenged on foreign policy, his personal wall of bulls**t gets ten feet higher.
— Daniel Drezner (@dandrezner) March 4, 2016
He is the best negotiator, mostly with himself and his positions. https://t.co/Wv9y6gzGPu
— Jon Ralston (@RalstonReports) March 4, 2016
Won’t somebody think of the GOP children?!?…
Every negative stereotype I have tried to combat for the last 8 years about republicans has been utterly destroyed in the past 9 months.
— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) March 4, 2016
***********
Apart from #facepalm, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
redshirt
I have a Spy Magazine publication before me mocking Donald Trump in the 80’s.
And yet somehow here we are.
E: It’s “Separated at Birth” which is just 80’s awesome.
Joe Isuzu.
mclaren
More facepalm, please! I’ve got my extra-jumbo-size bucket ‘o popcorn ready.
Last night’s GOP debate made the Three Stooges look like an Oxford seminar. This is better than Monty Python.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Like it’s a party that caters to people who were born on third and think they hit a triple? of unearned wealth and aristocratic dynasties? And that metaphor underestimates both her sense of privilege and her lack of self-awareness. Remember in 2012 when she let it be known she was available as a consultant to help any Republican campaign “kick Obama’s ass!”
Meghan is precious.
Litlebritdifrnt
There was a tweet today about Trump saying that he was called a “world class business man” in a recent news article. One clever reporter found the article that he was quoting, turns out the person calling Trump a “world class business man” was Trump.
p.a.
No second act in Repub pols lives because there’s no accountability. thanks MSM. buffoonery today, buffoonery tomorrow, buffoonery forever.
Comrade Luke
The first woman in the Oval Office will dropping bombs on the Middle East by Memorial Day 2017.
This place has become such a clown show.
amk
awww, poor, poor meghan.
Frankensteinbeck
Is she declaring victory or failure?
Baud
@Comrade Luke: Yeah, as opposed to now.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Comrade Luke: so you’re saying she’s going to continue Obama’s foreign policy?
K488
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m thinking that she means “confirmed”.
F
If Trump tries to “pivot” to the center for the general election, he’s toast. He’ll have successfully alienated every significant voting bloc in the entire country.
Misterpuff
Rachel Maddow going Godwin on Drumpf tonight.
redshirt
@Comrade Luke: I hope she nukes the whales.
schrodinger's cat
On the agenda tonight:
Pimping my blog post about two newly released movies with kick ass female protagonists.
Plus a Friday night kitteh! caught red-pawed.
Gravenstone
@Litlebritdifrnt: So he learned from the Cheney school of “propaganda vaulting”?
Germy
@F: Who was it that said Trump pivoting to the center for the general election is like when the velociraptors learned how to open doors?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Frankensteinbeck: @K488: d’oh! you guys beat me at reading comprehension!
Speaking of GOP children: Has anyone else seen that ad where Li’l Marco declares himself a child of the Reagan Revolution? I know I’m not his target audience, but I imagine even a lot of Republicans find that cloying.
Peale
@Frankensteinbeck: yeah. Like aren’t stereotypes supposed to be destroyed?
SiubhanDuinne
@Anne Laurie, I hadn’t thought of this connection explicitly, but the more I ponder it, the more it makes a ghastly kind of sense. One has to wonder whether all the overt GOP dick-measuring would have taken place at all if the Dem leader were Bernie or Martin instead of Hillary.
Germy
@SiubhanDuinne:
Probably.
Punchy
So Douchebag Extraordinaire Mike Lee (Douche-UT) put a hold on Fed funds to address lead in the water in MI. I hope for karma that his state is hit with a massive earthquake and some D Senator puts the brakes on aid to his state. What a colossal fuckstick.
mclaren
@Comrade Luke:
Any inhabitant of the Oval Office will be dropping bombs on the Middle East by Memorial Day 2017.
America is now the land of the Forever War. Burning brown babies and clusterbombing new brides and infants are the new inaugural rites of the American presidency.
Think of it like moving into a new home: you set up the drapes, then you arrange the furniture, then you burn some brown babies in the poorest third-world countries. Standard stuff.
Matt McIrvin
@SiubhanDuinne: That connection was what I thought of within 0.00001 seconds of hearing about this whole business.
Gex
Who do the establishment Republicans think they are fooling? They love to pretend their party is about everything other than Nixon’s Southern Strategy playbook. They love to pretend Trump is violating some fundamental principles of the GOP. But the base is the litmus test, and Trump’s policy bullshit that is completely negotiable as long as it comes with the right kind of hatred of the other is very, very familiar and pleasing to the base.
Baud
Question: Is the GOP’s discussion of Trump’s dick more or less dignified than Obama putting his feet up on the oval office desk?
F
@Germy: I don’t know, but they sound stupid. How is Trump going to get all the microcephaloid centrists who want someone who “knows business” to the polls to if he’s alienated all the people who might volunteer to work the phone banks?
catclub
@K488: yes, that, or perhaps ‘the GOP has doubled down on’
Steve in the ATL
@SiubhanDuinne:
Note that they didn’t start the dick measuring until after the black guy dropped out
#stereotypes!
catclub
Can we get Meghan to list those GOP stereotypes?
SiubhanDuinne
@Germy:
You think? We’ll never know, of course, but I believe I could make a good case for the shenanigans over in GOP-land being a direct, if subconscious, reaction to the “threat” of a woman rival in the White House/as Commander in Chief.
mike in dc
Someone is going to get badly hurt(or killed) at one of Der Trumpenfuhrer’s rallies.
Baud
AnastasiaDate dot com is an amazing ad.
rikyrah
@Gex:
You are correct. That is who they are to the bottom of their non-existant souls.
SiubhanDuinne
@Matt McIrvin:
You are a better feminist than I. Well done. It took me a bit of consideration before I slapped my forehead and said “Duh! Yeah! Of course!!”
SiubhanDuinne
@Steve in the ATL:
Whoa!!
redshirt
I was within 3 miles of Donald Trump recently by total chance and it was weird.
SiubhanDuinne
@mike in dc:
I’m actually amazed it hasn’t happened yet.
Peale
@Gex: exactly. Trump is running on the same platform that republicans run on in mid terms when they know democrats won’t come out. The only difference is that you’re not supposed to run on that in presidential years.
GregB
It seems that most Republican men spend an inordinate amount of their day thinking about other men’s puds.
magurakurin
For the popcorn fans here. Kos announced that the ban hammer officially comes out at the GOS on March 15. It looks like the week before India and Pakistan broke apart over there now. Lots a folks packing their bags and a few vowing to defy the “Establishment” of Kos. Gonna be a lot of refugees wandering the intertube hinterlands after the Ides of March. I imagine more than a few will be passing through the Shire here.
Mike in NC
Donald Trump: the Mouth that Bored
SiubhanDuinne
This is O/T (and Lordy, Lordy, 2016 so far has had way too many of these RIP O/T comments from me, and others) but how sad that the wonderful Bud Collins has died. Possibly the best tennis journalist ever, and always came across as a very kind man. May he RIP.
(For some reason the embed link thingy isn’t working for me tonight, so here’s a hot link: http://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2016/03/04/the-inimitable-bud-collins-was-all-aces/BQkGEvAxgacgWGFzSHx2gO/story.html#comments)
Baud
@magurakurin: More recruits for Baud! 2016!
Jeffro
@Punchy:
It’s funny you should mention that…the ‘Fro family was just out in UT and at the risk of sounding quite Friedman-esque, both of the shuttle bus drivers we encountered talked about the SLC area being a bit tectonically active and the ground being prone to liquefaction.
That’s got to be a good feeling. But hey, Mike Lee, let’s just wait around so that the karma bill mounts up…
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
Aw man.
Iowa Old Lady
@magurakurin: I see someone there wrote Kos an “open letter,” defying the “censorship” and asking people to vote on whether Kos should be allowed to choke off their “free speech” like that.
Villago Delenda Est
@mike in dc: That is what I think will, at last, signal the death knell of the Drumpf candidacy. His psychoic fan base will do something criminal, and it will reflect on him.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mike in NC:
Nice.
Villago Delenda Est
@magurakurin: The BernieBros have pressed the limits of what will be tolerated there? Surprise, surprise, surprise!
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
I know :-(
Peale
@magurakurin: yeah. I don’t know. But the comment that Kos’ family ran death squads in El Salvador to explain why he was supporting the establishment rightly ticked him off.
Matt McIrvin
@Villago Delenda Est: Or we discover that the American people really hanker to bash heads in, and his numbers go up.
Anne Laurie
@Steve in the ATL:
I knew I could count on the commentariat to make that connection!
(Yep, I had noticed that too.)
Baud
@Villago Delenda Est:
I think the date assumed Hillary will have an insurmountable delegate lead. If Bernie comes back by then, then it’s a different story.
Felonius Monk
@redshirt:
How did you know? Could you hear him fart? I understand they’re yooooge.
Origuy
@magurakurin:
We’ll treat them like Merry and Pippen treated Saruman and Wormtongue.
magurakurin
@Iowa Old Lady: yeah, it’s pretty pathetic over there the Wreck List today. But I think that dust up the other day really opened Kos’s eyes. I don’t think he had fully realized just how bad things were getting over there. Some of the stuff was getting way over the line. It looks like the hardcore are going to make a rear guard action at redditt (and I am too old to fully understand just what that is) and a couple of other sites that appear to be springing up. Probably best, though, that Kos is getting his ducks in a row at an early date. The bile was getting very bitter indeed over there.
I do expect some activity here as a result, though. Should be good for some laughs…
Steeplejack
@Frankensteinbeck:
Yeah, I think she means the opposite of what she actually said:
Ready
The party is coming together surely but slowly. We will coalesce around our eventual nominee. It will not be Trump.
#NeverTrump
#HedgeFundBoys
#LosHermanosCubanos
magurakurin
@Origuy: that’s kind of what I was thinking as well.
redshirt
@Felonius Monk: Secret Service caused minor traffic jam.
magurakurin
@Villago Delenda Est:
I wonder what the age cutoff is now for someone to know what show that is a reference to? Sadly, I appear to make the cut…
redshirt
@Ready: #CantelopeSeason1
Baud
@magurakurin:
Who’s the mole who’s telling the outside world about Balloon Juice?
ETA: I thought we were an invitation only site.
magurakurin
@Baud: The first rule of Balloon Juice is don’t post on Twitter all day long….doh….it’s John Cole. Cole is the Mole.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: I’ve been informed that I am paid to post here.
SiubhanDuinne
@Felonius Monk:
“Little Marco’s farts are puny, so puny you would hardly know he farted at all, and Lyin’ Ted Cruz says he farted but he really didn’t, he was lying, as usual. Lyin’ Ted, Lyin Ted. And Little Marco with his tiny little baby farts that you can hardly even hear. But my farts are the biggest, classiest farts you would ever hope to hear and smell. When I fart, the President of Mexico gets down on his knees. Chris Christie? Nice guy, a loser, but a nice guy, I like him, but he has never in his life cut a fart that can even come close to the farts I let loose every morning, sometimes — can you even believe it?! — six, seven, eight in a row! Yuuuuge numbers of farts, they come so easy to me, I am a very gifted farter, I am telling you. Weak Jeb Bush, his farts are like his loser campaign, total low-energy farts, just little ass-whimpers, not even really farts at all. I am not bragging, but I am a very good farter. Very good, the best. When I am President, there will be so many great farts coming from the White House that you will get tired of all my farting, this I will tell you.”
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus: So then where have you been?
Peale
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m paying you from the wads of hundred dollar bills I get from my do nothing MIC weapons building contract.
SciNY
Hmm, I wonder what finally drove Trump to recant on torturing prisoners and executing their families? Seems like a BFD, since he labeled Cruz an ** expletive deleted (meow) ** for saying something along these lines (though Ted was lawyering around the fact that waterboarding IS torture).
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: I am apparently either not paid very well and/or I am goldbricking.
redshirt
%.99 a post!
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus:
Sweet. How did you get that gig?
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: I am told that the Pentagon gave it to me.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus:
And here I thought it was because you’d been “born with the gift of laughter and the sense that the world was mad”, like your nymsake. Guess I got some catching up to do.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: I think that is why the Pentagon gave me the job.
Adam L Silverman
@SciNY: My guess is that somebody he knows and trusts, who is a retired senior military leader, or someone like Rudy Giuliani, took him aside and explained to him that the bulk of US military personnel – both uniformed service and civilians/civil service (and I’d even kick the contractors in here as a lot of them, like the military civilians are either former uniformed service/retirees), tend to be conservative and vote Republican. And that if he kept asserting that if he gave unlawful orders they’d obey regardless, and being a leader is all about being obeyed (which it isn’t and is not what we teach in Professional Military Education), that he risked having a large, significant, and powerful voting block unwilling to support his candidacy and vote for him.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Wait, I thought we got paid by the Koch brothers now.
Though my husband was relieved to find out that I apparently am NOT a 19-year-old male PFC masquerading as a middle-aged woman. We’ve been married 10 years this July, so he was getting a little creeped out by the idea.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus:
I wasn’t aware that the Pentagon was noted for its sense of humor. This wonderful world!
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: Well we no longer have don’t ask/don’t tell, so you’d be okay career wise.
Miss Bianca
@Mnemosyne:
Your husband was confused about this point?
PurpleGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: Probably not. They are too scared of being bested by a woman that they have prove their manhood.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: Oh, it has a sense of humor alright; it’s just quite perverse.
chopper
@SiubhanDuinne:
perfect. just perfect.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus:
Now I have images of Ernest Scribbler from Monty Python running thru’ my head…crouched in the basement of the Pentagon writing Killer Jokes…
Mnemosyne
@Miss Bianca:
More like, Wait, why would anyone … ugh, never mind. He is not always as appreciative of News From Balloon-Juice as he should be.
Did you say in one of the other threads that you’re a librarian? G started his MLIS through San Jose State last month and is quite the rara avis in the library world: a middle-aged straight man. He’s really loving it, though, even when he has to deal with the mentally ill patrons.
PurpleGirl
@Iowa Old Lady: Kos can do whatever the hell he wants do to in terms of “censorship” — his blog, his rules. So many people do not understand that the 1st Amendment only restricts the power of the government.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: Two peanuts were walking down der straße. One was assaulted … peanut.
chopper
@Iowa Old Lady:
that’s awesome. “we all got together and decided how your blog has to be run”.
NotMax
@Mnemosyne
Used to be (perhaps still is) a Hungarian bakery on Manhattan’s upper east side that made an apple pie which must have weighed in at ten pounds.
Extra $5 deposit for the heavy duty pie tin it came in, as there was no way a foil one ever would have supported it.
NotMax
Whoops. Wrong thread.
Miss Bianca
@Mnemosyne:
Alas…always a tech or program director, never a MLIS…altho’ I do have the dubious distinction of having applied to three different library programs. Always accepted, never enough money to go…but I may renew my application to UW-Milwaukee next year. They have the most sane out-of-state tuition. Altho’ I have heard that San Jose State is also good that way.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus:
As Johnny Carson would put it: “See, the *reason* that’s funny…”
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: I like Milwaukee.
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
Milwaukee is full of Schlltz.
Mnemosyne
@Miss Bianca:
SJSU is going to end up costing around $25K for the whole thing, which is quite reasonable for a master’s degree. Plus you pay per unit, so if you can only afford to take 1 class per semester, they’re fine with that as long as you finish within 7 years.
He took a summer class with UW Milwaukee and wasn’t totally happy — they don’t seem to have their distance learning thing together yet. (Plus the instructor had some major personal problems after a death in the family that meant she wasn’t keeping up on grading and things like that.)
He also considered University of Illinois, but since we live in California, SJSU made sense. Almost every librarian out here went to either SJSU or UCLA (which is in-person and more expensive).
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus:
Wait, is that a joke?
Oh, no – I get it – that *must* mean UW-Milwaukee is the best library program! You’ve convinced me. : )
@Mnemosyne:
What I *should* have done, of course, was gone to U-I while I was still living in Chicago, working at the NU Law Library. Then I could have got my law degree as well, and had a happy life as a law librarian. Oh, well…instead I’m in the wilds of CO looking at a job as a prison librarian! No joke! ; )
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
I recall that one of the first things we learned about the UCMJ in boot camp was that unlawful orders did not need to be followed. It seemed to me that figuring out which were unlawful could be quite the struggle. Don’t recall we were ever told how to tell the difference. And that of course was about the time the company commander was telling us that his word is final.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: No, I am from Wisconsin and I honestly like the city of Milwaukee.
debbie
@SiubhanDuinne:
Back in the early 1970s, I was walking to the trolley stop in Boston near the Longwood Tennis Club, and Bud came briskly around the corner and almost knocked me over. Very nice and very apologetic, but not very tall.
Adam L Silverman
@Ruckus: There is that part of it. But as one goes up the rank ladder over the course of one’s career, this stuff gets clarified. Given that the Army Doctrinal Publications dealing with interrogation and prisoners specifically forbids the use of torture and includes definitions and examples, this one would be easy to figure out.
SciNY
@Adam L Silverman: That makes almost TOO much sense for me to imagine it inside Trump’s head. His whole dominance/alpha-dog/authoritarian shtick is a major part of his brand, and on the torture and civilian targeting issues, he’s been consistent for months despite huge negative feedback from experts (including many whom he has reason to trust, as you point out). He even may have been told that ordering war crimes and human rights abuses rises to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” The cynic in me thinks this is just a pivot to the general election, so he can’t be held accountable. I think it’s one of a long litany of issues related to his lack of awareness or respect for the rule of law, which need to be prosecuted vigorously during the fall campaign. Too many people won’t know or remember otherwise.
Adam L Silverman
@SciNY: Ultimately there’s no way to know. He seems to be doing all of this almost entirely by feel and reading the room. He’s the perfect example of the baby boomer raised on television as everything he knows is what he’s seen on his TV. Or convinced himself he has. He’s like the large number of Americans that would call the Coast Guard and ask why they couldn’t rescue the castaways on Gilligan’s Island. The stupidity, naivety, and gullibility of the average American is nothing new.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus:
Never been there – yet. I’ve only ever been to Madison, which I thought was lovely. I still have friends there. And Janesville, both many moons ago. All kidding aside, from what I’ve heard I think I’d like Milwaukee, too – sounds like it’s more blue-collar than Madison, more like Detroit, where I grew up.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman:
Wait – that was a *thing*?
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: It is more blue-collar than Madison. But it also has a good art, music, and food scene. Just don’t cross streets during the Don’t Walk sign. The German heritage in the city makes that a terrible offence.
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: Yep, it really happened. Large numbers of Americans actually thought it was a reality show.
http://www.ew.com/article/2011/07/12/sherwood-schwartz-gilligans-island-brady-bunch
http://magazine.foxnews.com/celebrity/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-gilligans-island
Ridnik Chrome
@Ready: Serious question: if it turns out that you’re wrong (you know, like you were wrong about Jeb!) and Trump actually is the nominee, will you support him?
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus:
If a town’s got good music, art, and food, then it’s a good town…I’ll have to see if I can handle little old ladies screaming “KEIN UNACHTSAMKEIT im Straßenverkehr!” at me. Might give me quite a turn.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman:
Oh…dear…God…I…OK, this might just finish me for the night. I think I gotta lie down now.
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: Sorry to have done that to you.
Technocrat
@Adam L Silverman:
Your Google-Fu is amazing. But with great power comes great responsibility.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: If you go there, some of us around here will have restaurant and bar recs for you.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman:
You didn’t do it to me. The American People have, apparently, done it to me. G’night!
@Omnes Omnibus:
I look forward to it. : )
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Is the spy-themed bar still in business? I was telling someone at work about it, but I couldn’t remember its name.
jl
Gong to be fun watching ol’ Donny dance to the middle for the general.
Maybe a panicked dash would be a better metaphor.
Or panicked dashing back and forth across a shooting range.
And his thuggish fans will be doing most of the shooting. Except for his slap happy ‘what me worry?’ authoritarian followers who don’t really think he means what he says, but they just trust him, and think he would make a great strong man, whatever he does. Trump better hope enough of his followers are in the latter camp.
Adam L Silverman
@Technocrat: In this case I already knew this particular factoid, I just wanted to find a link in case someone wanted proof… Its been that kind of night around here.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: Safe House. And yes, it is still there.
Oregon Rose
@Iowa Old Lady: @PurpleGirl: @chopper: Yeah, the reason I started reading here every day several years ago was that DK got to be such a pit of vipers. This primary season I made the mistake of checking back in there, and it was worse than ever. I’m hoping that Markos laying down the law will help, but I’m skeptical. Reading BJ is a lot more fun.
Matt McIrvin
@SiubhanDuinne: I have a lot of experience talking to douchey guys. Fear of powerful women is always connected to talking about genitals.
Amir Khalid
@Omnes Omnibus:
Tsk, tsk. You don’t use the dativ for die Straße in that sentence. You use the akkusativ, like this:
Zwei Erdnüsse gingen die Straße hinab. Eine davon war gesalzen.
Omnes Omnibus
@Amir Khalid: I had a two week course in German when I arrived there in 1989. The rest of what I know, I picked up on my own. If you want a grammar fight, let’s do French, At least, I studied that at a university level 30 years ago. Moi I think I did okay with the German.
Amir Khalid
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m completely self-taught in German and French: I was in a bookstore one day, and saw a self-instruction kit … In the former, I’ve learned that the case system is the skeleton to which all the language’s muscles are attached.
Sondra
Poor Meghan McCain
Matt McIrvin
@Amir Khalid: Romani ite domum!
Ken
@Adam L Silverman: See, people were just as crazy and stupid forty years ago. All that’s changed is that we have the internet instead of telegrams, so everyone gets to read their messages.
Uncle Cosmo
@Oregon Rose: Same here. I hardly ever post over at DK anymore–I got good & sick of The Bernie/Hill Show & its shrill hypersensitive slapshtick. I hang out on BJ, despite its infestation with Stealers & Cheatriots fans, the rampant petophilia & the repeated frontpaging of diabeticidal recipes (sugar in the evening, sugar in the morning, sugar at suppertime), because with the exception of a few trolls & neostalinists, the clientele here is generally more interesting, astute, & pungent. Even Old King Cole. YMMV.
Bonnie
The whole balloon juice blog seems to have become nothing but a place to see twitter posts reposted. The blog writers at this site are all such good writers that I really miss them; and, wonder where they went.
labradog
@Frankensteinbeck: That’s the miracle of modern Republicanism; victory is undistinguishable from failure, so every failure can come with bragging rights
labradog
@Baud: If you have to ask that, your zipper’s probably down – and you like it that way.