What a golden age this is for comedic media enterprises like Saturday Night Live, with new material raining down like manna from the heavens daily. Also, if this New York Times article is accurate, perhaps President Obama is responsible for Donald Trump after all:
Donald J. Trump arrived at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in April 2011, reveling in the moment as he mingled with the political luminaries who gathered at the Washington Hilton….A short while later, the humiliation started.
The annual dinner features a lighthearted speech from the president; that year, President Obama chose Mr. Trump, then flirting with his own presidential bid, as a punch line.
He lampooned Mr. Trump’s gaudy taste in décor. He ridiculed his fixation on false rumors that the president had been born in Kenya. He belittled his reality show, “The Celebrity Apprentice.”
Mr. Trump at first offered a drawn smile, then a game wave of the hand. But as the president’s mocking of him continued and people at other tables craned their necks to gauge his reaction, Mr. Trump hunched forward with a frozen grimace.
But if PBO’s public pantsing of Trump sent The Donald in search of political power as the only balm that could soothe his exquisite butt-hurt, it was mainstream Republicans like Mitt Romney who negotiated the price:
On the day [Trump] was to deliver the endorsement in Las Vegas, according to Mr. Romney’s advisers, Mr. Trump met with Romney aides and said he hoped to hold a joint news conference with Mr. Romney, raising for the campaign the terrifying possibility that Mr. Romney might end up on camera responding to reporters’ questions next to a man who had spent months questioning whether the president was an American citizen.
In an appeal to Mr. Trump’s vanity, the Romney campaign stressed that his endorsement was so vital — with such potential to ripple in the media — that it would be a mistake to dilute the impact with a question-and-answer session.
“The self-professed genius was just stupid enough to buy our ruse,” said Ryan Williams, a former spokesman for the Romney campaign. While they agreed to hold the event in a Trump hotel, the campaign put up blue curtains around the ballroom when the endorsement took place, so that Mr. Romney did not appear to be standing “in a burlesque house or one of Saddam’s palaces,” Mr. Williams said. On stage, as the cameras captured the moment, Mr. Romney seemed almost bewildered. “There are some things that you just can’t imagine happening in your life,” he told reporters as he took the podium, taking in his surroundings. “This is one of them.”
The Romney spokesman can sniff about Trump’s hotel looking like a house of ill repute all he wants, but that doesn’t change the fact that Romney was the trollop in that scenario. And now the whole party has the clap.
Baud
Haha.
For those interested in equal time, Reddit is all excited about an SNL skit with Hillary. Since it’s Reddit, I assume the skit portrayed her in a negative light. (I haven’t seen it.)
MattF
And, as PBO has mentioned, no one had any idea of what was going on upstairs.
amk
and the contrast between the kenyan and mittbot couldn’t be any starker.
PaulWartenberg2016
I’ve been told last night’s SNL was actually damn good.
O. Felix Culpa
Oooh, SNL Florida jab: “Who wants to go to Florida? The only time you go is if your sister calls and says Mom is dead, we have to go to Florida.”
Having been thus insulted, will Florida now run for president to recover from wounded feelings?
debbie
@Baud:
Take a look at it. It’s Hillary adapting to Bernie, in more ways than one. Shouldn’t be upsetting.
Amir Khalid
“The uploader has not made this video available in your country.”
Sigh.
ThresherK
CBS Sunday Morning, usually a good show, was about Guns today. I saw some of it and turned away in disgust. It was like Public Radio Fail on TV.
Anyone else catch the entire of it?
Baud
@debbie:
Oh I’m sure it’s not upsetting. Reddit overreacts to everything.
Major Major Major Major
i hate daylight saving time so much but at least i get to win lots of bets about whether there’s an s at the end of saving or not
Arm The Homeless
Did anyone catch Kevin Williamson’s primal scream against the Trumpanzees?
National Review has now turned their turgid guns on the unwashed white masses, the same way they have against women and minorities. It’s an interesting read, but the link is behind a paywall. Best $0.25 I spent this morning. The straight – up bile, hatred and disgust at the base of his party is delicious.
O. Felix Culpa
@Major Major Major Major: Huh. You are right. Never noticed that. Thanks for providing my Sunday morning enlightenment.
bemused
Todd Purdum wrote in Vanity Fair, May 2012, “Not even a complete lack of principle can quite explain Mitt Romney’s bizarre loyalty to Donald Trump.”
I haven’t forgotten the birthday party/fundraiser Trump gave Ann Romney with that indescribably awful birthday cake. I wonder if Ann was able to force down a piece of that cake. Yeah, they really sucked up to Trump.
different-church-lady
The reason SNL is still on the air after 40 years is because every four there’s a presidential election.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@PaulWartenberg2016:
It is nice they can still pull that off once every 10-15 years
beltane
@Arm The Homeless: Who does the NR think has been electing Republicans all these years? The din from all those Burkean bells ringing must have made them deaf to the outside world.
different-church-lady
@Arm The Homeless: A conservative figured out white people use drugs? MAN BITES DOG!
Major Major Major Major
@Arm The Homeless: Ho-lee shit. I’d say something about Frankenstein’s monster but that poor guy just wanted to pick flowers and didn’t understand his own strength. This is more of a… thoughtlessly programmed AI situation, like if Skynet was stupid and racist.
The Sheriff Endorses Baud 2016
@Arm The Homeless: “The peasants are revolting!” “You said it, they stink on ice!”
Anya
Of course Obama is to blame. Did we ever doubt it.
I laugh at the media when they claim Trump is going to pivots to the centre (whatever that it) as soon as the primaries are over. The guy is a thin skinned lunatic with no impulse control. He’s also addicted to chaos.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@ThresherK:
yeah, it was the sort of both-siderism I have come to expect from them. They did do a piece on a 10 YO boy who shot his sister to death by accident that included studies showing boys finding a gun & using it without thought. They also did a brief piece on the Australian miracle. They reduced gun ownership by 50% and have not had another mass shooting, reduced gun suicides by 75% and still there is a wingnut down there claiming the gun laws did not make things better. But mostly it was a love note to gun ownership in the US
Major Major Major Major
@O. Felix Culpa: asperger’s (also properly spelled with no ‘s) isn’t always maladaptive :)
Baud
@Anya:
If Trump does manage to win the presidency, we should have a pool on the first pundit to say, “Who could have predicted Trump would be a fascist bigot?”
Arm The Homeless
@beltane:
This is their moment to show they were on the high ground as Trumpism washed away their lovely village. What they don’t get is that the tsunami isn’t over yet, and their high ground is being quickly eroded. I suspect Williamson is angling to replace BoBo once all the ugliness subsides and conservatives get back to 29/8 Clinton hating.
beltane
@Baud: If Trump wins the presidency there will not be a single US based pundit with the courage to say any such thing.
O. Felix Culpa
@Major Major Major Major: True on both counts. :)
Now time to take the dog and myself for a walk. Both of us are getting a little thicker about the middle. I’ve heard that a little more exercise can help that condition.
Frankensteinbeck
@Arm The Homeless:
Ah, yes. Another cry of ‘How dare you reveal that everything I believe in is just a dog whistle for racism, and how dare you prefer that clown over me!’
So many, many people are invested in their cover story that shitting on the poor and minorities is mature and responsible.
Lamh36
but he still “intends” to vote for the GOP nominee which is likely to be Trump… so BS statement like this mean nothing.
Marco Rubio Thinks Someone Might Get Killed Because of Donald Trump
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Get a U-Haul and go. Ima keep my quarter and guess this means quit whining about the plant that closed and move to Memphis and work the graveyard shift loading trucks for FedEx?
beltane
@Arm The Homeless: A bigger problem is that the American media establishment largely exists in a bubble, hermetically sealed off from the America most people live in. Maybe someone should take them on a bus tour of their country so they can see for themselves how people actually live.
Anya
@Baud: Does Don Lemon count as a pundit?
different-church-lady
[Redacted, redundant]
Baud
@Anya:
What else would he be? A “journalist”? lol.
Arm The Homeless
@Frankensteinbeck: I guess you have to respect that their philosophy of disdain for anyone not pulling in a million in dividens a year, extends to the unwashed white masses too.
It’s equal opportunity disgust
Arm The Homeless
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: yup. Thats the blinking neon sign.
“Your kids only deserve to serve me and my kids”
mark
That was funny when my President punked the Donald at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.
That was just before Osama bin Laden was killed.
President Obama has great comedic timing and a wonderful delivery. He doesn’t get the credit that he is due.
History will be very kind to President Obama!
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
A guy was complaining on FB about how he makes good money but at the end of the month is broke. It seemed like an educational opportunity so I replied:
There was a thing on the news about 10 years ago. The woman’s dad had been an miner on the Iron range. Adjusted for inflation he made $80k in 2005 dollars, plus he had a company paid pension that allowed him to retire without a burden on his income. He sent his daughter to the UofM at an adjusted cost of >$8k a year. She got a degree and became an accountant, she married an accountant. Together they made $80k a year. They have to pay for their own retirement, everything they buy is much more expensive even adjusted for inflation and a year at the U is almost $20k. You are poor not because of taxes, not because of government regulation, you are poor because the owners have broken unions, because the focus of companies is about enriching a small handful at the expense of everyone else, because owners feel no responsibility for the community they live in or the nation they live in, you are poor because they have broken the social contract that says profits should be shared with the people who made them possible and that everyone does better when we all do better. We have seen where this road can take us, Charles Dickens wrote several books detailing that world, the Bolsheviks wrote, in blood, a potential alternative to the destination. Neither of those alternatives is to be desired but unless our owners wake up (and it may be too late for that already) one of those dystopias will be the future.
bemused
@mark:
I wonder if the notoriously thin-skinned Trump getting so publicly dissed by Obama spurred him on even more to run again.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’ve been going nuts the last few years listening to Respectable Republicans– Jeb Bush and Rubio stand out in the last years or so– piously intone that Obama has been divisive and divided us. If this has ever been challenged by a Villager, I’ve missed it. In this rather depressing but interesting piece by Jamelle Bouie on how Trump feeds off white status anxiety, I get an answer. Lori isn’t a high GOP muckety-muck, but in her own way she’s eloquent in her incoherence
Shell
As if we don’t have enough things to worry about,…there was a news squib today about the risk of stroke increasing for the two days after Daylight savings time. Not sure why, possibly the disruption of our circadian rhythms.
Major Major Major Major
@Shell: And tomorrow is the day where everybody basically drives like a drunk.
PaulWartenberg2016
@different-church-lady:
I know! This is when SNL is at its best: mocking the entire circus that is a Presidential election cycle.
ThresherK
@Schlemazel (parmesan rancor): a year at the U is almost $20k
Is that one of the State U’s which has been hollowed out, a la California’s and many others?
PaulWartenberg2016
@mark:
There’s a “Proud of President Obama” thread on Twitter right now.
OzarkHillbilly
@Schlemazel (parmesan rancor): I am so stealing that.
PaulWartenberg2016
Link to https://twitter.com/search?q=%22Proud%20of%20Obama%27s%20Presidency%22&src=tren
different-church-lady
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Oh, no need to wonder about that Lori — whether you like them is the last thing in the world they have time to give a shit about.
Baud
Via Reddit, a Trump float in Germany.
PaulWartenberg2016
@Anya:
No.
Next question!
NotMax
What is this daylight saving of which you speak?
/Hawaii
PaulWartenberg2016
@Baud:
There’s not enough hot air in Germany to make that float.
Amir Khalid
@bemused:
I’m apprehensive about the consequences of The Donald running for president. If Obama (with or without Bill Clinton’s help) has provoked him into breaking the Republican party and its toxic influence on your country, good. But then what? What new beast will come out of the old one’s carcass?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: Kate McKinnon’s Hillary [redacted—do we do spoiler alerts on comedy bits?]. It’s pretty funny, but I like McKinnon in general and her manic Hillary. The “I Can’t Make You Love Me” bit cracked me right the fuck up.
Arm The Homeless
@Major Major Major Major: They were supposed to code a fail-safe but then the project was outsourced to Pakistan and they left that out, probably due to cost-overruns.
My only real fear is how Progressives will react when the masses of “moderate conservatives” (this is what the media will describe them as) arrive on the DNC shores.
Mike in NC
P. T. Barnum would have appreciated the likes of Donald Trump and Mitt Romney. There are so many suckers out there eager to be fleeced.
Amir Khalid
Lieber Gott. Now Trump is challenging Bernie to a rumble: my guys versus your guys.
bemused
@Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
Partnered with the wages of the majority of americans’ wages stagnant or barely increasing in the last several decades while the 1% have been raking in millions more. I don’t know when Republican voters are going to get it that trickle down/supply side was a gigantic con job on them and stop believing in the GOP “evil” taxes, regulation, union, welfare propaganda.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I just watched the clip. It was funny. I need to find the other one you mentioned.
Elizabelle
@Lamh36: More on Marco Rubio opening his piehole:
WaPost: Rubio: “There is no doubt” Obama helped stoke recent political chaos
By telling the truth, apparently, if you read young Marco’s “charges.” Mr. Rubio cannot be out of American politics fast enough to suit me.
Rubio complained about Trump, but
Self-awareness. Decency. It escapes the modern Republican party.
The WaPost reader comments are divine. Sort them by “most liked”, to escape the worst of the troll infestation.
redshirt
@Amir Khalid: Something worse, I’d bet, but also less politically viable.
mark
@Major Major Major Major: I’m a shift worker, worked the graveyard last night, will work one more graveyard tonight, 12 hour shifts. I go through that every couple of weeks. Been doing it since 1990. The other couple of weeks are 12 hour day shifts. It’s been a hell of a ride. Can’t wait for retirement. Been doing it for the money!
different-church-lady
@Amir Khalid: TAPPER: Where you gonna find Bernardo?
TRUMP: At the debate tonight.
TAPPER: But the debate’s neutral territory.
TRUMP: (Innocently) I’m gonna make nice there! I’m only gonna challenge him.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@ThresherK:
Yes, It is a two pronged attack. The state has not funded to keep up with demand, that is something we could fix if we just had the political courage. The other is more insidious. The U has entered the current ‘arms race’ Universities are engaged in. Bigger, fancier buildings and more elaborate facilities. This spending is out of control with a tiny amount to classroom things more on dorm facilities (no kid shares a room any more – the horrors!! Share a room?!?! and the most of athletic facilities. In the UoMs case they are building a $200million palace as a practice facility and and rooms for the football and basketball teams. Of course there were promises of private donations but those have fallen 40% so far and someone will have to pay that shortfall – the students.
Frankensteinbeck
@bemused:
The exact moment they’re offered hard racism and can shit of minorities without hurting themselves. See Trump. Of course, Trump has already noticed that he can give away the farm to the rich and the base doesn’t care, so long as they get that racism.
mark
Another thing, it will be 40 years since I went in the Army, the 15th of this month. Doesn’t seem that long ago.
Four years on active duty and three years in the Guard. I used to be young!
Fair Economist
@Arm The Homeless:
If they’re not so stupid as to leave in a huff it won’t matter. Sander’s massive numbers among the young show the Democratic party will be a socialist party within a decade, if they’ll just stay Democrats and vote.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@bemused:
I mention every chance I get that I believe the Koch brothers are communist saboteurs. They are spending billions to produce a government that will lead directly to an armed insurrection and a communist government. Capitalism will be so sullied by their and their handmaidens actions and policies that communism will look good in comparison. I am only half kidding.
rikyrah
How Trump Happened
It’s not just anger over jobs and immigration. White voters hope Trump will restore the racial hierarchy upended by Barack Obama.
By Jamelle Bouie
…………………
For some on the left, Trump is the result of decades of divisive politics—the inevitable outcome of a Republican political strategy that stoked white racial resentment to win elections. “Trump’s campaign can best be understood not as an outlier but as the latest manifestation of the Southern Strategy, which the Republican Party has deployed for a half-century to shore up its support in the old Confederate states by appeals to racial resentment and white solidarity,” writes Jeet Heer in the New Republic.
For some on the right, Trump is the grassroots response to Republican elites who have abandoned their working-class voters to the whims of laissez-faire capitalism. “[T]he Republican Party, and the conservative movement, offer next to nothing to working-class Trump supporters,” writes Michael Brendan Dougherty in the Week. “There are no obvious conservative policies that will generate the sort of growth needed to raise the standard of living for these working-class voters.”
……………..
All of which is to say that we’ve been missing the most important catalyst in Trump’s rise. What caused this fire to burn out of control? The answer, I think, is Barack Obama.
There have been some conservative writers who have tried to hang Trump’s success on the current president, pointing to his putatively extreme positions. But in most respects, Obama is a conventional politician—well within the center-left of the Democratic Party. Or at least, he’s governed in that mode, with an agenda that sits safely in the mainstream. Laws like the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the Affordable Care Act weren’t impositions from the far left; they were built out of proposals from the right and left, passed by a majority of Congress that was elected to pursue solutions on health care and the economy. Barack Obama is many things, but conservative rhetoric aside, he’s no radical.
We can’t say the same for Obama as a political symbol, however. In a nation shaped and defined by a rigid racial hierarchy, his election was very much a radical event, in which a man from one of the nation’s lowest castes ascended to the summit of its political landscape. And he did so with heavy support from minorities: Asian Americans and Latinos were an important part of Obama’s coalition, and black Americans turned out at their highest numbers ever in 2008.
Elmo
@Major Major Major Major: And tomorrow I have an 8am flight out of BWI, which means I need to leave the house at 0530.
Seriously considering just staying up and sleeping on the plane…
NotMax
SNL is the blind squirrel of late night television.
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
What the actual fuck does that even mean? She’s anxious about random black people in stores wondering if she likes them? That’s such a bizarre concern that I’m having trouble fathoming the logic behind it or imagining what silent cues she interprets as Obama-triggered scrutiny of her all-important self.
One bizarre reaction to Obama’s presidency that I’ve personally encountered is my old granny’s belief that after Obama was elected, black representation on TV commercials went through the roof. She asked me if I’d noticed it, and I said no. She then insisted that there are now more black actors than white ones in TV commercials. I rolled my eyes.
O. Felix Culpa
@Amir Khalid: Lieber Gott indeed. Trump really is a schoolyard bully. Not exactly a newsflash, but still.
MattF
@Elizabelle: Rubio’s just awful– he looks acceptable only in comparison to Trump. Seriously.
Anoniminous
@bemused:
Never. Especially in the South where 400 years of economic, social, and cultural backwards was buttressed by poor whites’ racism. Southern whites will take any sort of exploitation as a long as they can feel superior to the “near sheriffs.”
Patricia Kayden
@Arm The Homeless: So Williamson’s solution is for White lower class people to move out of their trailer park neighborhoods? So out of touch. How about creating job opportunities for poorer people wherever they live and paying them livable wages for their work?
Republicans/Conservatives have no empathy with lower class people at all–including those who are White. It’s amazing that working class Whites don’t see this.
Baud
@Fair Economist:
If the young are not so stupid, can we really consider them Democrats?
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Two options:
1) Adjust the contrast control on her TV
2) Adjust the brightness control on her.
#1 is far, far easier.
bemused
@Amir Khalid:
I can’t even bear to imagine the consequences of Trump, Cruz or Kasich in the White House. If Trump gets the nomination, I can only hope that it’s true that the majority of americans are already so appalled by Trump right now that he will get trumped himself. Trump just gets more provocative. iirc, he said something about being more moderate if he gets the nom. How does he do that without alienating his raging supporters? And he would have to talk about actual policy instead of me, me, me, wouldn’t he? He is such a chameleon that it’s impossible to predict how he would try to change his spots to run in the general.
Patricia Kayden
@Amir Khalid: He’s threatening to send his goons to disrupt Sanders’ rallies. Sanders is a classy guy who wouldn’t incite his supporters to beat up or heckle Trump protesters. I can guarantee that.
MattF
@bemused: Rubio too. See link above: @MattF:
bemused
@Frankensteinbeck:
Trump would get the yooogest screams ever at his rallies if he would just say he wants to make America white again.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Elizabelle: “basically said” and “basically implies”
and… isn’t the Ryan budget about rewriting the social compact? Undoing the New Deal? Own it, Little Man.
Elmo
@Betty Cracker: The thing about black actors in commercials is really a Thing. Spend even a little time on FreeRepublic, for example, and you’ll see it over and over again. It isn’t just your granny.
SFAW
Although there have been far too many times in my life when I have been somewhat thin-skinned, and responded (in)appropriately to pricks (so to speak), compared to Trump, I am the thickest-skinned person since Creation. What a fucking whiner he is.
Without Daddy’s millions to allow him to get away with his shit, he’d have become a mucker, years ago, in response to the slings and arrows of day-to-day living in a world that didn’t kiss his ass all the time. (Apologies for mixing metaphors, or whatever the hell it was that I was doing.)
Baud
@bemused:
If he’s running against Hillary, he’ll focus on his outsider status.
If he’s running against Bernie, he’ll hit Bernie with traditional GOP talking points about taxes and big government.
Trump has no core and can change personalities from day to day with impunity.
Elmo
@bemused: He doesn’t need to say it. They all know it’s what he means.
MattF
@Betty Cracker: Well, there are certainly more black Presidents on TeeVee than there used to be.
retiredeng
@Major Major Major Major: Stupid daylight saving time: when we put an hour in the bank and get it back in the fall with zero interest.
Andy
@Baud: Revolutionaries! Redux
Patricia Kayden
@Baud: I didn’t think it was negative towards Secretary Clinton at all. It certainly wasn’t mean spirited like Fey’s on point mocking of Palin back in 2008. I get the feeling that SNL is rooting for the Democratic candidates so their jokes aren’t meant to debase either of them.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Elmo:
Doesn’t really matter. Monday morning at any airport will be maddening, time change or not. And expect a full plane. I hope you can get some sleep. Traveling while deprived of rest is miserable.
I get to skip the airport tomorrow. I do have a travel assignment but amazingly it’s 0.9 mi from my office.
ThresherK
@Schlemazel (parmesan rancor): I’ve totally forgotten what state you’re in. Is “M” meaning Michigan, Mississippi, Minnesota or Maryland?
That doesn’t sound like Montana, Maine or UMass, despite the rep of Montana football and Maine hockey. I hope UMass’ entry to Div IA football doesn’t blow up on them.
WaterGirl
@different-church-lady: Did you make that up or was that Tapper on Twitter?? That’s really good.
oldgold
@Elizabelle: @Elizabelle:
Last night at a party a group of well-heeled Republicans, while guzzling their expensive blue goose, were claiming the Chicago debacle was Obama’s fault . Their argument, best I could tell was: 1) Chicago is his city; 2) People are mad because he ran the country into the ditch; and, 3) He should have preemptively called off the liberals from instigating this chaos.
Despite my wise spouse giving me the old fish-eye, beer fueled I waded in. The party got pretty damn raucous. Quickly pummeling them with logic into a fact based corner, they started screaming “Benghazi!” Right into my wheelhouse. I convinced no one as to the errors of their ways, but had a hell of a good time. My better half sees it differently.
Kay
@SFAW:
True, and it isn’t getting better. His son who is involved in the campaign is even worse. He lies constantly too and whines every time it’s pointed out. It’s only March. They’re not even in a Presidential campaign until June and they’re manhandling media, threatening to arrest dissenters, and the rallies get more racist with each passing day.
SFAW
@bemused:
A) Where are they gonna go?
B) “He’s just saying that stuff to fool the Lie-berals, we know he’s really one of us!”
C) SPLUNGE!
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Patricia Kayden:
My bias is to take criticism of the GOP seriously and discount criticism of the Democrats, but I do think SNL comes down harder on the Republicans. Maybe they’re just better targets. Or maybe humor has a known liberal bias.
beltane
@Patricia Kayden: It would seem that working class whites are starting to see this, though they are seeing it through a highly distorted lens. If Trickle Down theory was still persuasive, they would have chosen one of the many candidates offering it.@Schlemazel (parmesan rancor): Extremist movements of all stripes have always tended to draw heavily from the ranks of the downwardly mobile. There was a series of stories in The Guardian last week about millenials, and to a lesser extent Gen X, and how they are measurably less well off than their parents at the same age, and have correspondingly been left out of the political discussion. Donald Trump is merely the harbinger of nasty things to come. The political establishment as a whole seems unprepared.
debbie
@srv:
Perhaps stage rushers are becoming too numerous to count, but here’s an interview with a rusher in Chicago.
Elizabelle
@oldgold: Proud of you! Will drink my next beer to you.
Benghazi! Shorthand for “I got nothin’ else to say. Benghazi!”
The Lodger
@different-church-lady: Kudos for the West Side Story ref.
Baud
@Patricia Kayden: It’s “negative” in a technical sense, like much comedic razzing is, but I thought it was funny. McKinnon does do a nice Hillary.
NotMax
@ThresherK
The mention of the Iron Range points to Minnesota.
WaterGirl
@Elmo: If that’s true, it’s not out of any sense of anything good – it must be so they can sell more products to “the blacks”. They won’t give you respect, but they’ll damn sure take your money!
SFAW
@Kay:
At the risk of going all Godwin-y on this thread: I am wondering what form a latter-day Reichstag fire would take, and when it is going to happen.
No, I’m not saying it’s going to happen, but it would not surprise me if it did.
Of course, the pundits would do a “both sides do it” in response.
bemused
@Anoniminous:
I take the temperature of my local rightwingers by reading what they say in letters to the editors but more from what they are suddenly silent about. Just my opinion but I think many of them do realize some awkward facts such as republican policies are failing them but that’s not going to change their minds. Even if they do comment, it’s both sides do it. I do think their bitter resentment of other people getting “socialism” rather than them is a huge factor and it’s probably 97% white people here.
debbie
@Baud:
Another good skit was the takeoff on Dickens when the Ghost of HIllary Past visited today’s Hillary.
Elmo
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Lucky you!
I’m used to the Monday morning airport mess: I travel a ridiculous amount for a senior exec in a non-sales position. This week BWI-SFO; next week down; following week driving to Parkersburg WV; then Dulles-Burlington VT; following week National-Portland ME; and at some point I have to figure out how to squeeze in a trip to Seattle.
Shit, and I have to get to El Paso too. Almost forgot that one.
MattF
OT, but some good news. The human Go champion won a game against the computer. Computer doesn’t do as well against ‘surprises’.
bemused
@SFAW:
Sigh, that’s true. He owns them now so they can’t quit their hero.
Baud
@MattF: Didn’t Captain Kirk prove that a long time ago?
bemused
@oldgold:
You rabble rouser. Was it just you against the well-heeled R’s?
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Speaking of the Trumpling, John Legend squashed Trump Jr. on Twitter yesterday.
Trump Jr.: Ha 5 students when asked why they were protesting couldn’t even answer. The participation medal/micro aggression generation is pretty sad!
John Legend: I think they were protesting your racist father. This isn’t complicated.
beltane
@Patricia Kayden: My son and a half-dozen of his friends took part in an anti-Trump protest in Burlington, VT earlier in the winter. Yes, they happened to be Bernie supporters (18 and 19 year olds), but they were there to express their disgust at Trump, not because of anything having to do with the Sanders campaign. The older and wiser people out there did everything they could to discourage people from showing up to protest, but the protests still ended up being yuuge by Vermont standards.
Young, left-of-center people hate Donald Trump and also tend to love Bernie. They are also the demographic most likely to show up at a protest. That’s all there is to it really.
WaterGirl
Wow, I just clicked the link in #112 and it took me to the times. What happened to 10 free articles? They said they can see I have an Ad blocker install dos they won’t let me see a single article. My choices were SUBSCRIBE or WHITELIST (in my ad blocking program). How long has this been going on?
Edit: even if I google the article and click a link from there. I will never whitelist them.
Baud
@beltane: Agree.
Shell
As someone else pointed out to this “Its all Obamas fault” nonsense …If people are so damned mad at Obama, how come they’re not protesting and disrupting his appearances?
Matt McIrvin
@Arm The Homeless: Man. When the chips are down, those guys immediately turn against their beloved Real America.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker:
I had to copy that so I could read it again and laugh out loud. Again.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Elmo:
We could compare airline miles. I’m just a grunt tech at best and at worst a cart horse for 200 lbs of laser repair equipment. I cover the US, Mexico and Ontario as needed. All of the adaptive behaviors for getting through an airport smoothly fail on Monday morning.
Matt McIrvin
@SFAW:
We had that already. 9/11.
Kay
@SFAW:
I don’t know of course, but I kind of disagree. Presidential campaigns are really hard and really long and if they do nothing else they do seem to expose weaknesses. Trump may not be great at this. His GOP opponents could just be really weak- ARE really weak. I don’t think we know yet. Bernie Sanders (!) is hitting him really hard right now- Trump is attacking Sanders at every Ohio event and Sanders is hitting back and that fight just started.
Betty Cracker
@WaterGirl: Expect that trend to accelerate across many publisher sites over the next couple of years.
gogol's wife
@PaulWartenberg2016:
Really nice. Too bad I’ve taken a vow never to find out how to tweet.
But I’M PROUD OF OBAMA’S PRESIDENCY, ASHAMED OF HIS TREATMENT.
Teddy's Person
@Betty Cracker: Thanks for sharing. I needed a laugh while I try to adjust to daylight saving time and get moving.
Anya
@Elizabelle: Josh Barro makes excellent points here:
Marco Rubio and other Republicans paved the way for Donald Trump’s ‘narrative of bitterness and anger’
Lamh36
@Amir Khalid: saw that earlier this morning
oh…so Trump sets his sights on Bernie-bros and media and now folks are just terrified…but when just PBO/POC…basically crickets
now you get this from Yglesias and Vox…
MattF
@Kay: That’s the one big positive about (most) Presidential campaigns– if you pay attention, you can learn what you actually need to know about a candidate. It’s certainly worked out that way this year.
oldgold
@Elizabelle:
They were also all p-o’d that Obama did not go to Nancy’s funeral. I told them I remembered well how upset they were when W did not Lady Bird’s funeral. NOT!
Anoniminous
@bemused:
Republican policies are failing the vast majority of Americans and people don’t like it. Trump is prescribing the standard Fascist remedies: a mixed economy where major corporations are the chosen business form and given protectionist and interventionist economic policies so they will provide mass employment all wrapped-up in a coating of nationalism.
This really is straight out of the 1930s.
Baud
@Lamh36: Good point. I wonder if Trump has bitten off a demographic he can’t chew by going after Bernie’s supporters.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@WaterGirl:
I still get 10 free articles/month when I go to them directly. For most of the ‘web I use Adblock Plus and it’s never been a problem. I do accept their cookies.
NYT posts links to articles on FB. There doesn’t seem to be a limit to the number of those you can read.
WaterGirl
@Anya: Josh Barro is about the only Republican that I think makes any sense.
MattF
@Lamh36: Well, that’s interesting. Yglesias admits he deliberately goes contrarian, and he admits that it has backfired wrt Der Trump.
Johnnybuck
@Baud: He might be worried about some of his support slipping to Sanders, especially in Ohio where he’ll need every vote because of kasich.
Lamh36
Forewarning the original tweeter is a Trump supporter, I posted the RT link
WaterGirl
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Hmmm. I did make a couple of changes to AdBlock this week (not Ad Block Plus) so I could get rid of the evil video that autoplays on every single BJ thread. Interesting.
I don’t use Facebook, but when I went to the NTY Facebook page online, they cover half the page with their “hey, sign up!” window. I really don’t want to browse their site or go there to find interesting articles, but I am looking for a way to click the occasional NTY link from here or elsewhere.
thanks for the info!
dww44
@ThresherK: I did and just sent a quite long email taking issue withthe show on guns and the cowardly reliance on the “both sides have meri” approach. They probably won’t read my email, but I feel better.
The one segment that was the most disgusting was on guns in Wyoming with Alan Simpson proclaiming with his seriously stale no longer cute curmudgeonly blountness, “that without the gun the West would not exist”. No pushback at all by Ted Koppell, a new addition to the contributors to the show.
But most sick in that segment was Koppel’s interviews with a couple of fathers at the gun range teaching their quite young daughters how to shoot. When Koppel asked the little 5 year old blond girl about her experiences, it was obvious that she had no idea about what she was being asked. A soft magazine show is not a good forum for reporting on the entirely serious issue of guns and gun violence in the country.
raven
So Chuck interviews Trump and presses him on the sucker puncher. Trump says the fucker was justified because of the horrible hand gesture by the protester. Chuck forgets to ask him if he thought it was ok for the dude to say “next time we may have to kill him”.
debbie
@WaterGirl:
Hmm, I read an article there this morning and there were no issues with my installed AdBlock Plus. Last time I opened an article, a message popped up telling me i’d read 5 of the 10 free articles I was allowed and asked if I wanted to subscribe. When I was done reading, I deleted my nyt cookies and basically started from zero.
Chyron HR
@MattF:
Maybe that’s why we beat them at Go nearly half the time, huh?
TallPete
Ha Ha! Well said, Betty.
Germy
@raven: The protester gave the hand gesture because of Trump’s “Go home to your mother” remark. The protester’s mother died when he was a young boy.
MattF
@Lamh36: Yup, some of Cruz’s pals are genuinely batshit. I’ll give him a pass on his daddy, but e.g., there’s this guy, and there’s also David Barton. And, presumably, there are others.
WaterGirl
@Lamh36:
Holy fuck! :: eyes wide open in surprise, seriously ::
It’s just wrong that any of these guys could actually get the nomination.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@ThresherK:
Sorry, Minnesota.
A once great land grant college dedicated to enriching the state and the nation by providing top quality education to our children. Now a minor league development camp for the NFL, NBA and NHL that happens to have some kids hanging around to help pay for the student-athletes march to the meat grinders
WaterGirl
@debbie: I use Ad Block (not Ad Block Plus) and I did change some settings last week so I could get rid of the evil video window. I wonder if that’s what did it.
Anya
@Kay: The talking head discussion confuses me. Why is Trump targeting Sanders instead of Clinton? Why does he believe the protestors are Sanders supporters? It seems to me the media is buying it. I wasted several minutes when I watched CNN’s “Reliable Sources” and some right winger claimed the protestors were Bernie supporters and every panellist acted like that was an established fact. And of course they clutched their pearls over Sanders supporters disrupting political ralies and denying citizens participation.
Kay
@MattF:
You really do. Despite all the complaining that they never talk about anything “substantive” (which I complain about too) just the daily grind of it reveals a lot. That’s why I thought Clinton’s comment that Trump won’t “wear well” was great. If there’s anyone who knows how long and hard it is, it’s her. Like anything else that is long and hard it takes discipline and Trump lacks discipline, partly because he was literally privileged from birth and never needed it. I watched his son interviewed and he wants to be taken seriously on “policy”, but he hasn’t done anything to earn that. He just believes it should be given to him- he’s offended that it isn’t. He widens his eyes with outrage and his whole face is pouty and put out.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Young Ryan, with a smile on his face like a three year old just starting to realize that grown ups will laugh for some reason laugh if he says certain words, is holding up a shirt that says “Trump the Bitch” on one side and “Hillary sucks” on the other
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@Schlemazel (parmesan rancor):
Donald Westlake was a great crime novelist & id you are not familiar with his “Dortmunder” you are missing some great comedy and crime (ignore the movies made from his work, they mostly suck).
Anyway here is a snippet from a one of them that is probably 20 years old now. It is relevant:
Steve in the ATL
@MattF:
Contrarians are annoying AF. Don’t most outgrow being-contrarian-for-the-sake-of-being-contrarian in college?
Anya
@WaterGirl: I didn’t know he was a republican. I follow him on twitter and he never makes reference to being republican.
Lamh36
@Betty Cracker: actually I also had the same thoughts the representation of POC and also interracial coupledom represention has seemingly increasing to my own eyes as well.
As a POC myself though, I’ve always been aware of when I see someone like me in tv because let’s be honest at some points in the past we were delegates to side kicks or sassy friend or some such outside of media outlets not “geared to” white audience. Prior to PBO it really was a vast landscape of whiteness on tv with sprinkling of color here and there. Quick name the last time a show with an AA or POC lead was on mainstream non-cable prime time and a big hit prior to PBO election? Look now and you can name a lot more.
He’ll go no further than the influx of minority pundits employed and put upfront and center by cable news nets after PBO elected? would we really have a Joy Reid, Melissa Perry, TaNehisi, etc as front and center if not for the election of PBO? I don’t think so.
PBO presidency changed America pop culture more than folks know and or now beginning to realize
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@beltane:
So unaware that they are actively promoting their own destruction. Since they refuce to change it is just a question of how long people put up with it. You are right on about Drumpf just being the harbinger.
Baud
@Anya:
Whenever you hear people talking about “reasonable Republicans,” they mean Josh.
SFAW
@Steve in the ATL:
No they don’t.
I’m sorry, is this the five-minute argument, or the full 30 minutes?
Germy
@Anya:
Ever since George W left office, I’ve noticed many republicans never mention being republican. They’ll call themselves “independent” and then repeat republican talking points.
W poisoned the brand.
MomSense
Had to take a mental health break this morning. Watched some Latin ballroom competition dancing. The hair and costumes are over the top but in a good way.
Gin & Tonic
@oldgold: I’m actually not sure I can come up with an example of a sitting President attending a former First Lady’s funeral. St Ronaldus didn’t go to Bess Truman’s, for instance.
Bobby Thomson
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: different strokes. I haven’t laughed at her once.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Schlemazel (parmesan rancor):
Interesting. I’ve been reading a lot of crime novels lately and I’m looking for new authors. Are there any titles you’d recommend, or where a newb should start?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Trump is both a cynical manipulator who despises the howler monkeys whose cheers and hoots he needs, and paranoid and delusional megalomaniac who probably believes very sincerely that Bernie Sanders is conspiring to make him look like a demagogue stirring up a bunch of racist troglodytes
SFAW
@Matt McIrvin:
Huh. Never pegged you as being a Truther.
One hopes you were just snarking.
Lamh36
@Betty Cracker: saw that too. one of the trump supported tried to clapback at Legend about where he was educated and Legend reminded him that John actually graduated from “the same university as the Donalds”. not surprisingly that tweeter got quieter
WaterGirl
@Anya:
yep. this is from a quick google. i imagine many republicans no longer consider him a republican…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Did I just see that MTP clip right? Is Trump claiming one of the protestors had “ISIS ties” because of some mock up photo from twitter or Facebook?
Gin & Tonic
@Lamh36: Quick name the last time a show with an AA or POC lead was on mainstream non-cable prime time
I think some cop shows have been good for a long time. Homicide, for instance, where arguably the two leading characters were played by Yaphet Kotto and Andre Braugher. NYPD Blue struck me as pretty diverse. The various Law & Orders have had black and brown leads at various times.
Bobby Thomson
@srv: since when is Matt Yglesias liberal? I suppose Kaus calls himself a Democrat, too.
Kay
@Anya:
I don’t think it matters what they’re pushing at this point. No Sanders supporter was voting for Trump anyway.
This is a narrative based on a myth :)
They’re just really conventional people. I don’t think they’re “conservative” so much as “rigidly conventional”. They only know how to do “compare and contrast” in the most basic sense. Bernie Sanders is “like” Donald Trump because Sanders is the insurgent who talks about trade. Soooo- it’s Sanders v Trump!
WaterGirl
@Lamh36: My first thought is that you can get a job on a commercial but academy awards – and the number of roles that would let you get them – are out of bounds.
Gin & Tonic
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Someone here on BJ recommended James Church’s Inspector O series, and I’ve really enjoyed the first two so far. Takes place in North Korea of all places.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I laughed, but you are right. And he may be the only one left!
oldgold
@Gin & Tonic:
The last President to attend a First Lady’s funeral was JFK. He attended Eleanor Roosevelt’s funeral. The Big Dog attended Jackie O’s internment.
The really BIG ONE was Dolly Madison’s in 1848.
MattF
@Gin & Tonic: They’re very good– although the series seems to have run out of steam lately.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Gin & Tonic:
Thanks. I’ll read some reviews. Since I travel a lot I have a continuous appetite for books. I’ve read more in the last 3 years than in the previous 15.
debbie
@Kay:
That would also describe Tag and Mitt.
Mitt’s head tilts downward a bit, but it’s basically the same thing.
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: @Lamh36:
Someone somewhere did a montage on national TV showing the one role that black males could get – the police lieutenant. There were lots of them but it was clear that that was about the only TV action available. I wish I could recall what it was or where I saw it.
Bobby Thomson
@Kay: Trump is shrewdly doing what he can to raise Sanders’ profile.
Lamh36
@Gin & Tonic: Homicide ended in 1999. NYPD Blue in 2005. Law & Order is/was a well established brand and the POC weren’t sidekicks, but neither were they the leads for any of the shows either. Still just supporting players, albeit good ones.
I’m talking dramas LEAD by POC. a lot of the Lead roles were relegated to comedy shows and even then name the last BIG net comedy show lead by POC prior to say 2008?
Gin & Tonic
@oldgold: Thanks. I don’t remember Dolly’s funeral myself, nor, for that matter, Eleanor’s.
Davis X. Machina
@Amir Khalid: In 1924, the two parties were essentially the Republcans, and the Klan.. I’d expect something similar, mutatis mutandis.
Lamh36
@WaterGirl: right. the thing about representation is, when you’ve never had it or when it’s few and far between you do notice everytime there seems to be an uptick. And there mostly def has been just since PBO first election.
Bobby Thomson
@Anya: simple, really. Getting in a public pissing match with Sanders makes Sanders stronger in Democratic primaries. It’s why Clinton attacked Trump as Republican primaries were starting.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@bemused:
Race trumps class every time. I don’t understand why this isn’t an accepted fact, with so many examples under our nose. It’s still the elephant in the room, although to be fair I’ve heard the word “racist” more in the last 2 months than I have in my whole life. Most of it spoken by Republicans, ironically.
Kay
@Anya:
I’m sorry they did that part because Trump lied about police advising him to cancel. He’s now lied about it twice, on two different occasions. No matter how excited they are about what fabulous tv this is, the GOP front runner lied deliberately and carefully, twice, on what law enforcement told him. They have an obligation to say that. He’s running for President. He has no qualms about inventing stories involving law enforcement in order to cover his ass on bad “optics”. That’s a scary precedent they’re setting. Is this okay? I guess so!
Bobby Thomson
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: well, Trump certainly is a whiny little punk ass bitch, so that side seems like truth in advertising.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
I think his first was “The Busy Body” it starts to introduce the characters that show up, John Dortmonder is primary. He is a low level con man & thief & he is surrounded by similar. They live in an NYC that does not exist any more so some things are anachronistic now. I don’t think any of them are bad so you can pretty much start anywhere. although you may miss references to past adventures if you skip around they won’t spoil anything for you. I think “God Save the Mark” and “Whats the Worst That Could Happen” are stand alones (no Dortmunder) that capture the flavor of his writing. The bad guys never really win but they never lose as much as they could and everyone else pretty much gets what they have coming to them.
Lamh36
@Bobby Thomson: I think that’s true. personally I think he or his people may believe…
1) He can beat up on Sanders and not get backlash for “beating on a girl” tag.
2) He can get Sanders folks riled up and focused on him instead of HRC (this scenario fits into conspiracy theory that he’s an HRC plant)
3)
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Bobby Thomson:
Yup. He’s itching to go after Bernie and his proposal to do the largest peace time tax increase in American history, to give the country away to *those people*. We ain’t seen nothing yet if it gets to the angry white guy on angry white bro violence.
Betty Cracker
@Lamh36: I agree diversity has increased, and so has inclusion of gay characters (on TV shows, movies and commercials). It’s all good in my book, but I have no idea how it correlates to PBO’s presidency. I’m sure there’s a study out there somewhere that could tell us definitively.
Kay
@Bobby Thomson:
I’m still reluctant to go with “Trump as genius mastermind” just yet. He’s either elevating Sanders or covering his ass on his scary, clusterfuck rallies that he can’t seem to manage. I’d flip a coin.
Ultraviolet Thunder
Hokay, I just ordered Westlake’s The Hot Rock and Church’s A Corpse in the Koryo. Those should keep me busy on airplanes for a while and if I like them there are plenty more where they came from.
Thanks for the recommendations.
Roger Moore
@SFAW:
The obvious answer is another terrorist attack on US soil.
MattF
@Kay: I agree. Trump is mostly mixing free-association and fantasy. Now, it happens that this kind of wild public dishonesty has been, historically, a lead-in to fascism– but Donald is just doing what comes naturally and not strategizing.
bemused
@MattF:
Ha, Rubio didn’t even enter my mind. It feels like he’s done already.
WaterGirl
Very smart post by BooMan: What Really Made the Right Nuts
bolding was mine.
JGabriel
Betty Cracker @ Top:
It would be nice if Conservativism could be cured with anti-biotics.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Schlemazel (parmesan rancor):
Thanks. I referred to Wikipedia and found the earliest novel with Dortmunder as protagonist was The Hot Rock in that listing. I ordered that and one James Church novel (the first Inspector O) from Amazon Marketplace to try out.
MattF
@JGabriel: Hah, like ulcers. “I’m sorry to say, but you’ve got a bad case of Helicobacter Conservatus“
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@WaterGirl: I have the Times’ javascript disabled via NoScript, and it let me in without complaint.
I consider an ad blocker an essential part of my defense against malware. No site’s news is worth the risk.
Amir Khalid
This seems anticlimactic now. The Donald pulls a statistic about Muslims out of his heinie.
NotMax
@Gin & Tonic
I Spy?
Mike J
@Ultraviolet Thunder: I use noscript and NYT works great, better than if I allowed javascript. To be fair, it does break large portions of the web. Many times the lack of javascript still allows a site to work and just makes it uglier. For the sites that don’t work at all, I decide if I want to allow random strangers on the internet to execute any code they like on my computer or if I just want to read a different site.
SFAW
@Roger Moore: (and Matt McIrvin’s earlier comment)
I must be watching too much Alex Jones or something.
I should have been clearer in my original comment: I was thinking of the “false flag” aspect of the Reichstag fire, not just its use as justification to codify Fascism. Yeah, I understand that the whole false flag thing has not been proved, but it seems within the realm of plausibility — unlike anything from Alex Jones.
Apologies for not being clearer earlier. And, yes, I agree that another terrorist attack on our Heimat would probably do the trick.
Drumpfland, Drumpfland uber alles
Mai.naem.mobile
Anybody who saw Trumpster all shook up when that guy rushed to the stage yesterday knows he’s a pussy. He probably soiled his underwear. There’s something really really psychologically wrong with Trumpster.
JMG
Trump reminds me of the scene in “The Naked Gun” where Frank Drebin impersonates the umpire in a baseball game. First batter, he calls the pitch a strike very tentatively and home crowd cheers. So next pitch he bellows strike two although it’s way outside. Bigger cheers. So for called strike three, he’s moonwalking as he does it. Trump is both a narcissist and a man who needs the approval of others. His anti-Mexican remarks at the start of the campaign were strike one, and he’s just built from there.
Eric U.
@Arm The Homeless: I have tried to game out the break-up of the Republican party. It seems to me that would end up destroying the Democratic party too. But I don’t know if there are enough sane Republicans left to actually join with the Blue Dogs to make a reasonable center party
scav
@JGabriel:
I’m going to assume this was an auto-correct of anti-bigotics because it’s so very apt.
SFAW
@Amir Khalid:
It’s probably the same 27 percent that support Rethuglican insanity, no matter what. Ergo, all militant Mooslims are Republicans, and vice versa.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
They made a movie staring Robert Redford, a dreadful mess. The book does have a lot of elements of a Dortmunder book though. I hope you enjoy it, I love them.
Also, after posting earlier it occurs to me that “The Busy Body” is not Dortmunder although the story is the same sort of screwball crime. I believe he probably invented the characters and fit them into the stories similar to that first book.
Gin & Tonic
@NotMax: Bill’s a non-person now, isn’t he?
Scotian
I started reading this thread to see if two points I was thinking about were pointed to. One of them was, by Bobby Thomsom regarding Sanders protestors becoming a target of Trump. I think though so far no-one has quite hit the reason I suspect, although its come close. That being Trump is looking at the actual Presidential race and examining Clinton and Sanders for which his style of attacks would have the greater impact on, namely getting under the skin of. On that front, it is hard for me to see how Sanders would not look like the far better choice for Trump on pure personality and emotional control grounds alone based on what the Dem Primaries and debates have shown so far. Sanders whether you love him and his message or not has shown a serious point of weakness in this process, his skin is very thin for this level of political environment. Clinton, whatever you want to say about her, love her or hate her, a fair person has to acknowledge she has a very thick skin and exceptional emotional control, indeed it is this which in part gives her that feel of phoniness for some. So I think Trump is doing this at least as much for strategic reasoning in that he feels he can provoke Sanders into false positioning and outbursts far more easily than he can Clinton, and this is his way of trying to game that result by boosting Dem solidarity with Sanders.
Do I know this is his thinking, of course not. Do I see it as a very real possibility? Oh HELLS YES! I do not and never have dismissed Trump as stupid or a simple panderer/demagogue. You simply cannot have done as much as he has in building his businesses and brand for as long as he has without his being far smarter than his public image and actions would lead one to believe. I’ve never been a fan of the man, but I learned a very long time ago to never let my dislike/contempt of someone colour my evaluation of them, especially as a threat potential. Trump worries me a very great deal not just for your domestic context but for the wider international scene, which includes some nasty spillover for us up in Canada. So please, take seriously the notion that he will do what he can to pump Sanders up because he sees Sanders as more beatable, not because of socialism, but because of temperament and the main way Trump has shown he goes after people, especially his GOP competitors to date. I really do not think Sanders is at all mentally equipped nor prepared for that sort of heat/firepower, and THAT is what would make him a weaker candidate, especially with the angry white working voter class wanting strength above all else in their outsider champion.
My second thought came with the basic premise of the OP. I would agree there is a valid argument to be made that Obama was the motivating factor for Trump finally deciding the seriously enter a Presidential race because of that dinner and the way he punked him, Trump is after all a walking id/ego and he does NOT take well being the butt of others humour, that would be fairly well established already. However, that only covers his motive to run, his ability to be credible, successful, and win, and at this point clearly be the odds on favourite for the GOP nomination, no, that is ALL on the GOP and its last quarter century of playing with fire politically speaking. When they married the Southern Strategy with the pandering to the religious right and made compromise mean date rape (a rather infamous comment from the early period of the so called Contract With America from Gingrich regarding actual governing collaboratively with Dems) in political relationships they made this end inevitable.
You simply can not do that kind of pandering for so long without either following through on a major amount of it or you get what kind of anger, disbelief of the establishment of the party, and the fertile ground for a true demagogue of rage/hatred to rise in. I’ve been watching this for decades wondering when this bill was finally going to come due for this idiocy, and it looks like this is that year. Obama may have been the spark, but the GOP establishment and all its media cronies and institutions, they were the ones that dried the ground and removed all the water and firebreaks from the region/turf they are on. Which exactly would any rational person blame more for the wildfire in that scenario, hmmmm? Not the spark.
Oldgold
Zachary Taylor, who attended Dolley Madison’s funeral in 1849 and gave us the term “first lady” in his eulogy — or so the story goes; there’s no written evidence of it. Madison is an American icon.
Dolley Madison remains belle of the first lady ball. Who wouldn’t have gone to her funeral? No one!
Dolley Madison fell ill in July 1849. She lingered for five days, and died on Thursday evening, July 12. She was 81 years old and had known every president from George Washington to Zachary Taylor. Her funeral oration on July 17 was a state occasion, attended by the president, cabinet officers, diplomatic corps, members of the House and Senate, Supreme Court justices, officers of the army and navy, the mayor and city leaders, and “citizens and strangers.” As the Washington newspaper, The Daily Intelligencer, noted: “All of our country and thousands in other lands will need no language of Eulogy to inspire a deep and sincere regret when they learn the demise of one who touched all hearts by her goodness and won the admiration of all by the charms of dignity and grace.”
Mike J
@Schlemazel (parmesan rancor): I thought The Hot Rock was a better adaptation than Bank Shot was. And didn’t they make one with Gary Coleman where the gang kidnaps an obnoxious kid, or was that just a bad dream?
And for someone who hasn’t read Westlake, don’t forget the Parker books. They’re the non-comedy flip side of the Dortmunder books.
Tenar Darell
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Laurie’s illogical confusion is actually her discovery of Atwood’s corollary: White people worry if black people like them. Black people worry that white people will destroy or kill them.
(Yes, too clever by half. But after John Crawford, Tamir Rice, so many others killed by police, unnumbered arrests for driving while black in Ferguson, and so much else, my little attempt at being clever certainly feels apropos).
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@Eric U.:
My hope is a three party split. The Dems remain with the GOP split into two, the religious/social nut jobs and the corporatists in the other with the racists split depending on their level of belief/stupidity. Yeah, that means that the Democrats will have to absorb a bunch of merely rigntwing lemons. Hopefully they will get diluted while Dems take control and being undoing the evil we have suffered over the last 50 years
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Schlemazel (parmesan rancor):
I saw the movie and yes it’s terrible. But allowing for film adaptations usually being inferior to the original source (Elmore Leonard’s books were particularly ill served in this regard) I bought the book anyway.
muddy
@WaterGirl: Regarding the NYT articles: I get a daily roundup from them in email each morning, they let you read all those for free without counting them.
If I want to read more, click on something and it says I can’t see that without signing up, then I just type “nytimes” in my search bar, with a word or two from the blocked headline. Then you can click through from the google search result and it doesn’t count you.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@muddy:
That trick doesn’t work for me any more. Once I’m over 10 articles/month it stops me unless it’s an article I clicked through FB to get to. It’s likely that deleting the NYT cookie world reset me.
Ben Cisco
@Lamh36: As it has been with practically every issue of consequence in the history of the republic. Pick a subject, track the trajectory, note when the powers that be and their courtesans in the press decided it was actually crisis time.
To quote the esteemed Vin Diesel as Riddick, “This ain’t nothing new.”
Felonius Monk
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Westlake was a true gem. Here’s a link to website.
You might start with The Hot Rock. This was made into a movie with Robert Redford. Classic Dortmunder.
Westlake also wrote under several pen names. Altogether over 100 books, mostly crime fiction.
ETA: Ah, that Parmesan guy beat me to it. C’est la vie.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@Mike J:
Bank Shot was worse & there is a non-Dortmunder book about two NYC cops that pull off a huge heist so they can retire that was the worst. I know the story you are talking about but don’t remember any movie (Thank Pasta). WHile it is not true to the novel “Whats the Worst That Could Happen” was a decent movie with Danny DeVeto and Martin Lawrence that at least gets the flavor right.
I am not a huge fan of crime novels though I have read some Parker. Westlake wrote two gritty novels I really like, One is “The Ax” about a very successful novelist who has run dry getting a story from a newbie who can’t get a publisher. I forget the name of the other but it is really chilling for a bunch of reasons including the ending (no spoilers!). The guy was laid off from his job in a dying industry so he sets out to kill anyone that might compete against him for the one job left & then the guy who has the job. How an amateur with no experience goes about killing people and how his thinking goes is sort of unpleasant.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Felonius Monk:
I just ordered The Hot Rock this morning. If that sits well with me I’ll dig into the others. Thanks for the recommendation.
Clem
Dave Neiwert has a new post up today where he says Trump has crossed the line:
Oldgold
“I started reading this thread to see if two points I was thinking about were pointed to. One of them was, by Bobby Thomsom regarding Sanders protestors becoming a target of Trump. I think though so far no-one has quite hit the reason..”@Scotian:
Perhaps, it was that many of them were carrying Sanders’ signs, wearing Sanders’ t-shirts and shouting “Bernie!” Just a guess.
Ultraviolet Thunder
Well, the lovely spring weather just brought a big limb down in my front drive. Gotta go get rained on to shift that out of the way.
Have a good Sunday.
GregB
It’s funny but the only real over representation of Black people on TV is the incredibly large number of Black conservative pundits and strategists. Talk about an affirmative action over representation of a minority of a minority group.
BBA
@JGabriel: The only cure for fascism is a bullet in the head.
But I suppose saying that is a bit fascist.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@WaterGirl: “Private Browsing” is your friend.
ctrl-shift-n on Chrome on Winders
ctrl-shift-p on Firefox on Winders
You can enable your ad blocker in the PB session and it should work.
Every time you start a new PB window and go to the NYTimes, you get a fresh set of cookies from them, so the counter gets reset.
Of course, if you read dozens of stories there a month, you should think about a subscription. If you’re like me and just browse the front page and Krugman, I wouldn’t feel guilty about subscribing.
As long as sites use simple client-side cookies to keep track of counters, there will probably be ways around it. (Though the Financial Times does some really annoying stuff for non-subscribers…)
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
I just got a robocall from Sarah Palin about Der Trump.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@Felonius Monk:
Hey us Westlakians have to stick together to maintain his name
BTW “The Ax” is the book about the guy murdering for a job. The other book, about the writers is called “The Hook”. Both good reads & not humorous at all.
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
@Betty Cracker: My guess would be that advertising and marketing execs saw the election of a black man and thought, “wow, minorities really are powerful now,” and adjusted their ad representations accordingly.
Again, just a guess.
Scotian
@Oldgold:
With respect, I was referring to the thinking of how this would be useful for Trump in the wider sense, why he would choose to really use it to make hay with. I think that part of the thinking is important to keep in mind too. I wasn’t talking about why Trump and his people would think that was who disrupted that rally, I was however thinking why he might decide to make it a major focus of his campaign strategy, nay even been hoping for such a reaction from the Sanders side (since they are the youth and clearly the side most likely to organize such protests, not a hard thing to foresee even for Trump) and how he could make major use of it. I thought that was clear from the way I wrote that comment, I’m sorry if it wasn’t. I hope this helps with that understanding.
Felonius Monk
@Kay:
Now there is an Oxy(Genius mastermind) Moron(Trump), if I ever saw one.
Roger Moore
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Race is inseparable from class in the US. A poor white is not a member of the same class as a poor black. Maintaining that class difference is the entire point of racism.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: damn, what kind of list must you be on! Interesting that someone on his campaign is keeping her off TV and away from big appearances, but it seems she’s active (I’m sure with a lot of guidance and maybe some “consulting fees”?) on the social media, and now robo-calls? Kind of how Willard used Drumpft in 2012.
ruemara
@Betty Cracker: Any black person achieving prominance is a sign of a massive loss to white people. Welcome to what black people have actually died and lost entire communities over. We’re told to strive hard and succeed, when we do, we get attacked. That’s just how things have been and probably will be until aliens live among us and hatred of the other has a bigger target.
Ruckus
@Elizabelle:
Self-awareness. Decency. It escapes the modern Republican party.
It didn’t escape. It was beaten up, shot and buried.
Felonius Monk
@Schlemazel (parmesan rancor): Have you read any of John Sandford’s books? The Lucas Davenport series and the Virgil Flowers series. The setting for all of these is your neck of the woods, I believe.
NotMax
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Sympathies. Takes a long time to clean puke off a phone.
WaterGirl
@muddy: It’s not the counting that’s getting me. It now comes up and says I have an Ad Blocker – I have only two choices: SUBSCRIBE or WHITELIST the NTY so my ad blocker doesn’t block their ads.
I won’t do either. What I don’t understand is why I am having this problem and some others aren’t. So far the difference seems to be Ad Blocker vs. Ad Blocker Plus. I wonder if that’s because Plus automatically allows some (supposedly) non-nuisance ads. I’ve already checked my settings in Ad Block and even unchecked one that I had changed last week. The only other change is that I added a line that blocks the evil autoplay video ad that Cole has been running on every thread for weeks.
NotMax
@Ruckus
More like tarred and feathered, then lynched.
Iowa Old Lady
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: I’m sure that sold you on The Donald.
Roger Moore
@SFAW:
The thing about terrorism is that it doesn’t require a false flag. There are people out there who would love to attack us, as the history of the past 20 years should show. And a terrorist attack doesn’t need to be international to justify a crackdown; something like San Bernardino or Fort Hood would be plenty.
JMG
@Schlemazel (parmesan rancor): If this has already been mentioned I apologize for duplication, but I heartily recommend the Parker series Westlake wrote under the pseudonym Richard Stark. The protagonist is a top-shelf amoral professional thief, Dortmunder played deadly seriously.
Mike J
@NotMax:
Shouldn’t sent all those phone sterilizers off on the B-Ark.
Betty Cracker
@Roger Moore: Watching the Trump phenomenon play out, I’ve wished many times my mom was still around so I could ask her about her experience of the rise of George Wallace.
elm
@Lamh36: It’ll be a cold day in hell when MattY and Vox stick to not writing contrarian and deeply moronic trash.
WaterGirl
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Scott, I use Safari and followed your advice. I was able to open a private browsing window and then open the BJ thread in a new private browsing table. Then when I clicked the link on comment #112, I was able to view the article. edit: thank you!!!
The other interesting thing I noted is that Ghostery has been grayed out on Safari lately, and I can’t find the reason, but it worked just fine when I opened anything using the private browsing. Interesting.
Mandalay
News alert!!! Bill Kristol is actually right about something:
Meanwhile, Rubio concurrently pledges his fealty to Trump, while blaming President Obama for Trump’s success.
SFAW
@Mike J:
Sounds like “The Ransom of Red Chief.”
bemused
Is Trump on every sunday show today? I just him on MTP and he’s getting the violent tone questions again. His makeup is hideous. Aside from the cheetos tone, the white stuff under his eyes looked like it’s been troweled on and it almost glows.
On second thought the brilliant white under eyes could be from wearing goggles when he spray tanned.
Elie
Trump and his campaign are becoming increasingly unwound and chaotic. His mental status is much more fragile than people realize and he has few internal governors on what he says and does – He is in the midst of a type of narcissistic mania and its going to get worse — particularly as his fortunes decline — which they will. He is not going to be President. He will, however, do some real damage to the American political system that will take significant effort by all of us to heal. Sometimes you have dark periods and it is necessary to grow. I hope that is what this is but clearly, we won’t know for a while. I stand by my opinion however that he will not be President but that in defeat he will be reckless and dangerous. Of course, most here already know that.
scav
@bemused: That would make a really good Dorian Gray, Twilight Zone, Pinocchio twist episode: the canidate’s inner clown slowly and inexorably revealing itself publicly.
Ruckus
@NotMax:
True but to be tarred and feathered you need tar and feathers. That would be too much like work.
ruemara
It’s nearly 11:30 am. I’m already on a ginger vodka cocktail. I need to escape this country because I just don’t feel like the bulk of the American electorate can tell dangerous fascism from a carnival barker. And based on prior elections, I’m right.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
A lot of similarities that’s for sure. Some things really don’t change that much, Hate, racism…..
bemused
@scav:
Ha, good mental image.
Seriously, I couldn’t stop staring at the stark white under his eyes. It must be a bad week for bags under the eyes.
Elie
@bemused:
The man is barely keeping it together physically and mentally. He appears and behaves as though he is very tired. If what is said about his sleeplessness is correct, he will continue to decompensate. Many psychiatrist will tell you that if you have mental pathology (or even if you don’t), sleep deprivation will make it worse and worse. We do not hear anything complex or nuanced from this guy.. I think he is marginally able to function to put a sentence together. We will hear later about rages and completely incoherent experiences that people will have witnessed. He may have a break down on the air — who knows. This is going to get a lot worse….
NotMax
@ruemara
Heh. Strong black coffee with the merest dash of of Sambuca here.
bemused
@Elie:
No doubt. I have sleep issues so I know fog brain.
Fingers crossed he slips and says something so disgraceful and nasty, it makes almost everyone gasp.
Ruckus
@ruemara:
It’s not that they can’t tell. It’s that they like what they see.
Take me with you!
Elie
Running for President is a very strenuous marathon that takes its toll on even the most organized and coherent candidates. Trump doesn’t appear to have planned for this physically or mentally, unlike other candidates who get fit, lose some pounds and use planning to help organize themselves. He is all from the hip with some help here and there. He therefore is at the mercy of events and his declining ability to process complex responses and situations.
ruemara
@Ruckus: Ok, New Zealand it is or the family castle in Scotland. Can’t decide.
@NotMax: 2oz of vodka. I can’t focus my eyes without effort. working as intended.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The call came from the phone number registered to the Trump Organization, so there must be some Big Data somewhere that says registered Republicans in NC love them some Sarah.
Yeah, I’ve been officially on the R voter lists for a long time. The why involves Ray Blanton and Lamar Alexander, a period of inertia, and a perverse delight at my recent primary choices.
Ruckus
@Elie:
Well you do know that in his mind, he can do it all. By himself. All those people who work for him, they just do stuff he can’t be bothered with.
He is THE BMOC. (Originally typed PigManOnCampus. Works either way) He gets whatever he wants, whenever he wants it, because he’s The Donald. In this respect he’s worse than Cruz because he has enough money to get his way and has for decades. Cruz just thinks like this because his daddy has told him so.
Elie
@Ruckus:
He also has some real underlying pathology…
Sleep deprivation is also associated with increased risk for bad cardiovascular events …. by the by..
Take care of yourself, man. Have you had your doc evaluate you about this? Hope so —
Ruckus
@ruemara:
Partial to NZ (love actually) but have Scottish roots so that wouldn’t be bad either.
ETA Decisions, decisions.
Steve in the ATL
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
“Pardon Me Ray”
My reliably liberal mother somehow voted for both Blanton and Nixon. She is not proud of that.
Ruckus
@Elie:
Thanks for asking.
Actually sleep is one of the places that I’m doing better, lots better. Other issues, well let’s just say that getting old can be less fun than it sounds like.
Mike J
@SFAW: Jimmy the Kid was the one I was thinking of.
Betty Cracker
@ruemara: Ginger vodka cocktail? Sounds intriguing! What’s in it?
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Sarah Palin is stumping for Trump in Florida today. Interestingly, she’s not sharing a stage with Trump at his East Coast event but rather hitting a rodeo and the Strawberry Festival in the interior. More her type of crowd, I guess.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Elie: Remember when Trump complained about how horrible it was that an early debate was 3 hours (warning – Politco)?
He has told everyone, multiple-times, what his weaknesses are. He’s got no stamina. He can’t handle criticism. He can’t stand being ignored. He’s a coward. And on and on.
I hope Hillary’s team is taking good notes… (Bernie’s too, if he somehow manages to win.)
Cheers,
Scott.
Uncle Cosmo
@Amir Khalid:
And what crude beast, its power come round at last,
Slithers toward Washington to be sworn…
=8^0
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Steve in the ATL: Are you the cat that signs the pardons?
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Maybe some will get the idea to borrow from La Tomatina, only with strawberries.
alan
@Betty Cracker: He is very much George Wallace. Sounds unpleasant but I recommend reading a biography of Wallace. Wallace pretty much had one speech, if the crowd loved it, he was ready, if the crowd hated it, he was ready. Trump has this game figured, the more he pisses people off, the better for him.
NotMax
@Alan – Betty Cracker
Let’s go the the video.
(Tom Turnipseed has long since come over from the dark side.)
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@alan: Dunno. As horrible as Wallace was, I think Trump is much worse. Wallace was elected to office multiple times, and later in life he actually moderated his policies and recognized the reality that he needed AA votes to continue to win.
Trump shows every sign of becoming more reactionary as the campaign continues. He’s never held elective office. He shows no signs of being able to compromise with co-equal powers or interest groups that disagree with him. Even if one thinks this campaign has been an act that has gotten out of hand, one has to wonder how that reflects well on him if (SFM forbid) he were to win. “Oh he’s just saying that to win.” And he won’t continue to do that to force things through Congress?
Off the top of my head, Trump seems more like Robert Mugabe than Wallace to me. But without the actual political accomplishments that Mugabe had before making himself dictator….
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Elie
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
You are right. My take is that Trump is unbalanced and becoming more so. Comparisons to others who have held any kind of office or position requiring collaboration of any kind are not correct. He is not Wallace. He is not Mugabe either I don’t think. He is going to need an intervention before its over – not sure what and when but he is not stable and as such represents a very different kind of danger than just electing a fascist demagogue or some such….
Betty Cracker
@NotMax: Interesting insights from Turnipseed. Thanks!
Elizabelle
@NotMax: I used to be sorely tempted when Eric Cantor showed his mug at the Hanover (VA) Tomato Festival.
JPL
@Betty Cracker: I lived in New England at the time so Wallace was scorned among my relatives and friends. I recently read some of Wallace’s speeches and he is far more articulate.
alan
@NotMax: Excellent,thank you!
Ellie: agreed. Also Trump lost a brother to addiction, there may be something in there. Hopefully he’ll scream himself into apoplexy.
Kathleen
@raven: That’s not Chuck’s job.
Kathleen
@Lamh36: I know you’re right but, but…(whispers) it’s upsetting white people, which is the very worst thing that can ever happen anywhere. Ever.
Kathleen
@oldgold: I’ll bet Obama didn’t go that hers either. Pffft.
caring and sensitive
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
I think Donald Westlake’s “Parker” series is terrific Written under the pseudonym Richard Stark
Hal
Shorter Romney campaign: we allowed Trump to endorse us, not the other way around.
Matt McIrvin
@SFAW: Yeah, I was thinking about effects, not about the possibility that the Reichstag fire was a false-flag attack (and I also thought it hadn’t definitely been proven to be one).
Still, a Trumpist false-flag attack would presumably look like either Muslim terrorism or some kind of left-wing radicalism. Muslim terrorism would be easier for people to believe. Maybe terrorism by a Mexican who converted to Islam.
Matt McIrvin
(Fearmongering about Mexican Muslims is actually a thing I occasionally notice from time to time, years before Trump got on the xenophobia bandwagon.)
Barry
@Arm The Homeless: “My only real fear is how Progressives will react when the masses of “moderate conservatives” (this is what the media will describe them as) arrive on the DNC shores.”
They won’t. They’ll vote Trump.
These are the guys who looked around in 2000, and decided that what the country urgently needed was Dubya. These are the guys who looked about in ’08, and decided that what the country urgently needed was McWarMongerMcCain + Caribou Barbie.
They will vote for whomever has an (R) after his name.
mclaren
@Fair Economist:
Moderate conservatives won’t leave in a huff. They don’t drive European-made cars, only American-made.
mclaren
@Barry:
You are amazingly wrong, and the evidence is already piling up. Read redstate. The people running that site are in a panic, and attacking and demonizing their own readers for supporting Trump. This is full-on civil war in the Republican party, and it’s going to be a huge blow-out win for the Democratic presidential nominee this year.
I also predict reduced Republican turnout in this election cycle will help Democratic senate and house candidates. Look for a bunch of wins by Democratic house candidates who were never expected to pull through!