Rule by idiots:
Addressing Syria’s use of chemical weapons last week in an attack against a rebel-controlled region of his own country, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s behavior was worse than that of Adolf Hitler, “who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons.”
“We didn’t use chemical weapons in World War II,” Spicer said Tuesday as he criticized the Russian government for its support of Assad. “Someone who is despicable as Hitler who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons. You have to, if you’re Russia, ask yourself, is this a country that you, and a regime that you want to align yourself with?”
President Donald Trump did not attend the annual White House Passover Seder held on Monday night, a spokeswoman confirms to PEOPLE.
His daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, who are both Jewish, also skipped the event, a tradition started under former President Barack Obama in 2009.
Don’t want to upset Bannon and the Stormfront Base.
Humboldtblue
In the irony of ironies Hitler was actually the victim of a gas attack on the Western Front.
These people are so fucking stupid they make Palin seem Obama-like.
rikyrah
They All Lives Mattered the Holocaust.
The Passover Seder looked absolutely tacky and pitiful, and they WOULD NOT ATTEND?
How many more clues do people need?
Droppy
Nazis generally sound pretty stupid when they try to use Nazi analogies to make themselves look less like Nazis and to make their enemies seem more like Nazis. The Nazi just escapes out of them like a Herman Goehring fart.
hovercraft
John you need to add his clarification to your post, it’s so delicious.
MomSense
BTW the White House Passover Seder wasn’t even held in the White House. It was held in the Executive Office Building.
Karen S.
@rikyrah:
Yep. They really are awful people, and I count anyone who voted for Trump & Co. as being awful, too. The way I’ve been feeling lately, there’s nothing a Trump voter can ever do to make me think they’re anything but selfish, ignorant, spiteful, bigoted, disingenuous jerks.
Humboldtblue
Oh, and for that fucking Easter Bunny with no clothes on, during the invasion of Italy the Germans bombed American ships in the harbor at Bari and guess the fuck what you bungling cockwhistle?
One happened to be carrying mustard gas shells and guess what the fuck happened when the German bombs hit the SS John Harvey, that fucking mustard gas then proceeded to kill and maim hundreds of military personnel and Italian civilians and the interaction of the mustard gas and the oil on the water continued to injure for weeks after the attack.
Axis Sally has a field day reporting about the horrible and mutilating injuries suffered by sailors, soldiers and civilians who were affected by the gas.
You motherfucking pig-ignorant shitbag.
(I bet he’s not even reading this comment thread, the bastard)
Mike in DC
This entire past two years is the most elaborate rendition of The Aristocrats joke I’ve ever seen.
Hunter Gathers
It’s a good thing that my hipster sister wrote in Wilmer’s name when she voted. On step closer to Wilmer’s Glorious Workers Paradise! Where college be free and identity politics no longer exists. Sure, she gave fucking Nazis a hand in installing their new Fuhrur, but Hillz was a corporate sell out.
Corner Stone
Uh-oh. Brian Williams picking up coverage on MSNBC at 2:30 CT PM. What the hell is going on?
Brachiator
Once again, the rule seems to be that anything that Obama did was wrong, bad, anti-American and is to be repudiated.
I hate these people.
rikyrah
@MomSense:
No!!!!
hovercraft
OT I know you are but what am I……….
Turns out Obama was the real Russian stooge
By Rich Lowry
The circumstantial evidence is mounting that the Kremlin succeeded in infiltrating the US government at the highest levels.
How else to explain a newly elected president looking the other way after an act of Russian aggression? Agreeing to a farcically one-sided nuclear deal? Mercilessly mocking the idea that Russia represents our foremost geo-political foe?
Accommodating the illicit nuclear ambitions of a Russian ally? Welcoming a Russian foothold in the Middle East? Refusing to provide arms to a sovereign country invaded by Russia? Diminishing our defenses and pursuing a Moscow-friendly policy of hostility to fossil fuels?
All of these items, of course, refer to things said or done by President Barack Obama.
To take them in order: He re-set with Russia shortly after its clash with Georgia in 2008. He concluded the New START agreement with Moscow that reduced our nuclear forces but not theirs. When candidate Mitt Romney warned about Russia in the 2012 campaign, Obama rejected him as a Cold War relic.
The president then went on to forge an agreement with Russia’s ally Iran to allow it to preserve its nuclear program. During the red-line fiasco, he eagerly grasped a lifeline from Russia at the price of accepting its intervention in Syria. He never budged on giving Ukraine “lethal” weapons to defend itself from Russian attack.
Finally, Obama cut US defense spending and cracked down on fossil fuels — a policy that Russia welcomes, since its economy is dependent on high oil prices.
Put all of this together, and it’s impossible to conclude anything other than that Obama was a Russian stooge — and not out of any nefarious dealings, but out of his own naïveté and weakness.
Obama didn’t expect any rewards when he asked then-Russian President Dimitri Medvedev during a hot mic moment at an international meeting to relay to Vladimir Putin his ability to be more “flexible” after the 2012 election; he was, to put it in terms of the current Russian election controversy, “colluding” with the Russians in the belief it was a good strategy. His “kompromat” was his own foolishness.
The cost of Obama’s orientation toward Russia became clearer over the last two weeks. When he pulled up short from enforcing his red line, an agreement with the Russians to remove Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons became the fig leaf to cover his retreat…….
To be sure, Donald Trump’s statements about Russia over the last year-and-a-half have often been stupid and shameful. But there was always a good chance that Russia’s blatant hostility to our values and interests would make any attempted Trump detente unsustainable. With his secretary of state and UN ambassador hitting Russia hard over the Assad gas attack and Trump’s strike challenging Russia’s position, the administration looks to be adopting a hard-headed attitude without bothering with a doomed re-set first.
Even if Obama eventually got tougher on Russia — imposing sanctions after the Ukraine invasion and sending contingents of US troops to countries near Russia — he never entirely shed his reflex toward accommodation.
No matter what conspiracy theorists might say, there’s nothing to suggest anything untoward about Obama’s relationship with Russia. But based on the record alone, you might have suspicions.
The Moar You Know
Hitler was terrified to use chemical weapons in battle. He’d been there, done that, wasn’t going to let that monster out of the bottle.
Had no problem using ’em on civilians, though. The guys who made the Zyklon B, two companies, both swung for that crime at Nuremberg in 1949.
Assad is using this shit on civilians, not troops. Just like someone whose name escapes me at the moment. Perhaps I should call my buddy Sean Spicer. He’s really good with names.
They will be the last to leave, just like that guy in the bunker whose name I can’t remember.
eemom
The Latest Test for the White House — Pulling Off Its Easter Egg Roll
Dave in Dallas
Is the Naval War College affiliated with Trump U? I mean, WTF.
gkoutnik
Hitler didn’t use chemical weapons if you don’t count the gas at Auschwitz.
Adam L Silverman
@MomSense: It is on the White House grounds/part of the White House complex.
rikyrah
The Coming White House Egg Roll Catastrophe
by Martin Longman April 11, 2017 10:36 AM PM
With so many potential story lines percolating at the moment, I’m pretty certain that Julie Hirschfeld Davis wasn’t entirely thrilled to draw the assignment of covering the Trump administration’s preparations (or lack thereof) for the annual White House Easter Egg Roll. But she certainly did as much as a human can reasonably be expected to do, essentially hitting a grand slam with her hard hitting and thorough exposure of a catastrophe in the making.
Here are some things her reporting uncovered. Sesame Street will only be sending one (unnamed) character to the event rather than its usual full complement. A typical White House Easter Egg Roll has about 2,000 volunteers. This year it might draw only two hundred volunteers. Last year there were 37,000 attendees at the event, but sources say that Trump will be lucky to get half that many people this year. Washington-area public schools have historically received as many as 4,000 invites, but they haven’t heard a peep from the White House. The same is true for military/veterans organizations that normally account for about 3,000 egg rollers. And, most importantly, the event is normally supplied with approximately 85,000 wooden commemorative eggs, but this year the Trump folks ordered them so late that they’ll be getting only 40,000.
How did this happen? What explains this rank incompetence?
Well, you might want to blame the absent First Lady.
……………………………
This isn’t all that Julie Hirschfeld Davis uncovered. She also learned that military bands will have to fill in for the “A-list entertainers like Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Idina Menzel and Silentó who have performed for Egg Rolls past.” She verified that “members of Congress have not received word from the White House about whether they will get tickets to distribute to their constituents.” And, vitally, none of “the organizers of the Yoga Garden featured on the South Lawn during Obama-era Easter Egg Rolls [have] been asked to share their asanas.”
…………………………………………………………..
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah: We’ve had all the clues and hints for a long, long time. We don’t need any thing more. Getting caught discriminating against Brown/Black tenants, birtherism, demanding the death penalty for the Central Park 5, etc., etc.
chopper
oh FFS with this shit.
dmsilev
Amazingly, Spicer kept digging. Via TPM,
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah:
Hope Sesame Street sends Oscar the Grouch. What a nerve Trump has to ask anything of Sesame Street when Republicans have been trying to cut federal funding of PBS for decades.
Corner Stone
Sec Mattis does not seem well.
rikyrah
@Adam L Silverman:
.
The one from this year looks like they went to Costco for decorations.
The picture from Last Year’s that David Koch posted in the Morning Open Thread, showed clearly that they were in one of the White House Rooms, with formal china and linens. You know, GIVING RESPECT.
Adam L Silverman
1:
2:
3:
Patricia Kayden
@dmsilev: Because Spicer is so dumb that he doesn’t know that Hitler used gas to kill millions of Jews and other concentration camp victims. Alrighty then.
Chris
@hovercraft:
As I’ve been saying since election season: their whole “Obama is Neville Chamberlain!” thing would be a lot more convincing if they weren’t following it up with “and that’s why you should vote for Oswald Mosley!”
The Moar You Know
@hovercraft: Literally the only eight words in that steaming pile of horseshit Lowry laid on us that I agree with.
And, frankly, with regards to the real enemy of the American people, the GOP, that reflex really hurt us all.
Adam L Silverman
@rikyrah: It is what it is. If it was no longer going to be something formal, organized, and attending by the President and First Lady, then it is going to look like this. Informal, ad hoc, and kind of sad.
Miss Bianca
@eemom: They can’t manage to organize an Easter Egg Roll, but they’re going to “destabilize” the situation in Syria. Yeah, right. Sure. Sure, you are, boys. But only because the situation is ALREADY as unstable as it can possibly get.
These people. These fucking people.
Iowa Old Lady
@Adam L Silverman: You’d think the Trumps would at least know how to throw a party, but time after time, they put out the paper plates and send the invitations late.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: “The persons responsible for sacking the previous persons who were to be sacked, have been sacked.”
Droppy
@Chris:
I love this comparison, although I think Trump maybe really is Oswald Mosley while Obama isn’t at all a Chamberlain; still, well played!
Patricia Kayden
@Chris: We were safe during the Obama years and President Obama took military action when necessary. I don’t feel safe under this nincompoop and don’t believe a word he says about anything. It feels as if we’ve stepped back in time to the Bush 2000s. Not good.
patroclus
@Corner Stone: They’re thinking that the U.S. is considering bombing North Korea because of the movement of the carrier.
Is Spicer really defending Hitler???!!!!! The guy who gassed all the Jews (and gays and gypsies and Poles)?????!!!!!
dmsilev
@Adam L Silverman: Clearly delivering poison to victims via airplanes is worse than delivering victims to poison via trains.
Or something.
rikyrah
@dmsilev:
OH MY PHUCKING GOD!!!
I didn’t think that could possibly be real.
HOLOCAUST CENTERS??!?!?
Patricia Kayden
@hovercraft: Not reading anything written by Rich Lowry. Only have a few braincells and need to save them for thoughtfully written articles which make sense. And no one in their right mind believes that President Obama was Russia’s tool, but good try Rich.
The Moar You Know
@Patricia Kayden: Think this is far worse. Bush was an imbecile, but he knew how things were supposed to work, had a goal (bad goal) and most importantly had a rather large coterie of his dad’s hires working for him.
Trump has none of that. Doesn’t know what he’s doing, doesn’t know how anything is supposed to work, has nobody competent working for him, and his goals change daily. This is dangerous in a way that Bush never was. Government by Magic 8-Ball would work better.
randy khan
@rikyrah:
The Easter Egg Roll is trivial in many ways, but if they can’t do it properly it will feed into the narrative about the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. And you can be sure that there will be plenty of stories about it that highlight the differences between the last Administration and now, particularly is attendance is (as seems 100% likely) way down.
All that said, if they can get Spicer into the bunny suit again, I might feel a touch more charitable towards him.
hovercraft
@Patricia Kayden:
Spicer is as dumb, He knows nothing, that’s why he’s the perfect spokesperson for a president who also knows nothing.
@Adam L Silverman:
So dropping bombs on unsuspecting towns and or villages and killing random people is worse than rounding up only certain people and having them know that death is coming, have them live with the certainty that they’re going to die any day now is better.
MisterForkbeard
@The Moar You Know: In my high school government class, we had an assignment to create an unorthodox system of government. I proposed a system by which binary questions were asked of a pig, and then the pig was kicked. If the pig squealed, the answer was yes.
This has numerous advantages over the current Trump regime.
Hungry Joe
Trump didn’t attend the Seder … so during the Four Questions part, who played the role of the Simple Son?
Mnemosyne
@Hunter Gathers:
If she complains about Twitler, remind her that she wanted anyone but Hillary, and she got exactly what she wanted.
Chris
@Patricia Kayden:
Whatever his flaws, and whether or not the times he took military action were good ideas, the nice thing about Obama was that at least you knew said military action wasn’t being dictated either by “my approval ratings really need a boost and this’ll do it,” or by “this is how manly men act to show other people they gotta respect them,” or by “I just don’t know what the hell else to do because I literally understand nothing but blunt force in international relations.” Same would’ve been true of a Clinton presidency. Same is emphatically not true of Trump, nor was it true of Bush.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@Brachiator:
Once again, the rule seems to be that anything that Obama did was wrong, bad, anti-American and is to be repudiated.
Obama never drank drain cleaner…
trollhattan
I’m sure it’s too much to ask of Spicer to know we staged a shitton of chemical weapons in WWII.
Yarrow
@rikyrah: It’s just unbelievable. Holocaust centers? It’s like something straight out of a Nazi propaganda handbook.
Mnemosyne
@dmsilev:
So Syrian civilians were innocent but German Jews were not?
Nice own goal, Seany.
Ridnik Chrome
@rikyrah:
Tell me that’s not deliberate…
SFBayAreaGal
O.T.
“As a result of the #UnitedAirlines incident, #SouthwestAirlines came out with their new #missionstatement today!! -GG ”
https://mobile.twitter.com/TheGhermGuys/status/851594584408940545
Hungry Joe
@Mike in DC: I hereby present you with The Internets — in perpetuity. Your comment explains EVERYTHING.
Captain C
@Brachiator:
If we can include breathing, eating, drinking water, and not drinking Drano in the category of “anything Obama did” and convince the Trumpsters that all these things are wrong, it might actually help the situation.
AliceBlue
@dmsilev:
Of course it’s worse! Those other people got free train rides to the “Holocaust Centers.”
Hunter Gathers
@Mnemosyne: As long as the IPA flows, she don’t give a fuck. Worrying about political stuff is lame.
ruemara
@hovercraft: Are you trading in ridiculous articles today?
Ridnik Chrome
@Mnemosyne: Sometimes I almost feel sorry for Sean Spicer, but then something like this reminds me why I shouldn’t.
Captain C
@gkoutnik: Apparently, per Spicer, it’s not as objectionable to gas civilians if you first round them up and lock them in communal “showers.”
Percysowner
Anne Frank Center Demands Trump Fire Sean Spicer Immediately For “Most Evil Slur” Of “Holocaust Denial”
Mnemosyne
@Patricia Kayden:
There’s an Errol Morrisdocumentary called “Mr. Death” about a guy who’s spent his life claiming that the Nazis were using Zyklon-B to kill lice, not people. Morris does his usual thing of letting the guy talk himself into a corner and then ripping the rug out from under him with facts. The supposed “expert” didn’t know that you actually need LESS Zyklon-B to kill humans than lice because humans have lungs and lice do not.
Steve in the ATL
@Yarrow:
They have since been renamed “Planned Parenthood offices”
Mnemosyne
@SFBayAreaGal:
I shouldn’t laugh but, damn, that’s funny.
Percysowner
Let’s see if I can get this to not go into moderation Anne Frank Center: Trump ‘must fire Sean Spicer now for engaging in Holocaust denial’ http://www.rawstory.com/2017/04/anne-frank-center-trump-must-fire-sean-spicer-now-for-holocaust-denial/
dmsilev
@Mnemosyne: Well, they were guilty of being Jewish; wasn’t that enough?
(Just for the record, a fair number of my family members were among the victims. Cousins of various remove of my grandparents for the most part)
Mnemosyne
@randy khan:
Only if they then give all the kids sticks and tell them he’s a piñata. Fun for the whole family!
Gravie
I just participated in a Facebook conversation in which a simpleton asserted, and continued to defend the assertion, that Zyklon B was a delousing agent therefore Hitler didn’t actually gas anyone. (This sounds like a Pepe the Frog talking point for right-wing morons to use in appropriate circumstances.) The simpleton was impervious to numerous factual responses, so a true Trumper, I guess.
Captain C
@dmsilev:
So the Jews, Sinti, Roma, and others in the camps were thus not innocent?
Spicer is a thoroughly awful human being, and I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt that he is in fact a human and not one of David Icke’s Lizard People or suchlike.
Just One More Canuck
@dmsilev: The Law of Holes is for losers
SFBayAreaGal
@Mnemosyne: I know what you mean. I was laughing and feeling guilty for laughing
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: Because what Syria needs is further destabilization.
different-church-lady
Will not attend opening day. Will not attend the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Will not attend the Easter Egg hunt. Will not attend Passover Seder.
If we’re lucky, Trump will eventually not attend the Oval Office.
Quinerly
The Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect is demanding that Spicer be fired immediately. “On Passover no less, Sean Spicer has engaged in Holocaust denial, the most offensive form of fake news imaginable by denying Hitler gassed millions of Jews to death,” the Executive Director of the center said.
Yutsano
@Hungry Joe:
Spicey Boo, natch.
Adam L Silverman
@Chris: @Droppy: It would be even better if almost anyone, anywhere actually had a proper understanding of Chamberlain, his actions vis a vis Britain’s national security strategies at the time, and the reality of Britain’s military situation.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2013/09/neville_chamberlain_was_right_to_cede_czechoslovakia_to_adolf_hitler_seventy.html
tobie
@Patricia Kayden:
Nor does he seem to know that many of the victims were Germans because in his warped mind Germans can’t be Jews/Jews can’t be Germans. Guess he believe in the Nuremberg racial laws.
ThresherK
@Patricia Kayden: I would like to pay the creepy unauthorized Elmo, now in Times Square busking unwanted photos to tourists, to show up there.
Low-rent imitation kiddie TV star for a low-rent imitation President.
randy khan
Speaking as a Christian who married into a Jewish family, it seems to me that you’d actually expect that the President would be invited to and attend the seder at his daughter’s home (or, if he’s as freaky about security as I think he is, have it at the White House). But that’s only if there’s anything normal about the family, which I’m guessing there’s not.
On the topic of security, I work relatively near the White House, and it seems to me that the Secret Service is increasingly cutting off access to Pennsylvania Avenue and the walking path south of the White House. Maybe it’s my imagination, but it sure feels that way.
Mnemosyne
@Gravie:
See my #60 above. It’s a common denier claim, made by morons who don’t realize that lice don’t have lungs, what with being insects and all. You can kill a human with a fraction of the amount of cyanide that you need to kill a louse.
Adam L Silverman
If anyone is wondering: John asked me to make a quick edit for him, that’s why the page wouldn’t reload and you had to go back to the front page and start all over. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Betty Cracker
Dude on Twitter summed it up pretty well:
Yep.
Adam L Silverman
@dmsilev: Or mobile gas trucks, which was one of the original techniques.
MomSense
@rikyrah:
Holocaust Centers????
randy khan
@Mnemosyne:
I probably would pay to see that.
Adam L Silverman
@hovercraft: We report, you decide!//
rikyrah
@Ridnik Chrome:
Uh huh
Uh huh
MJS
With Spicer at the podium, the writers for “Veep” must be thinking, “Great, now we have to come up with another character. Our idiot communications guy now doesn’t seem so idiotic.”
different-church-lady
@Adam L Silverman:
When you get around to apologizing for every inconvenience, let me know.
hedgehog the occasional commenter
@rikyrah: Anvils dropped on their heads, a la Wile E. Coyote. But I am dubious even that would work….
Adam L Silverman
@Patricia Kayden: @tobie: He does not think well on his feet. In other words he is in absolutely the wrong job. I highly doubt he denies the Holocaust. Until Preibus brought him into the Administration he had a reputation as a bog standard Republican staffer. There is also some speculation about whether his mother is Jewish. I think this is an Occam’s Razor type of explanation: he is just poorly suited to be the Press Secretary, or, at least, the Press Secretary for the current Administration.
Captain C
@Adam L Silverman: While this is definitely a reasonable article, I sometimes wonder what would have happened if Czechoslovakia had, right after Munich, said, “screw you all, we’re fighting!”
different-church-lady
@rikyrah:
That unnamed character is pretty creepy.
hedgehog the occasional commenter
@Patricia Kayden: They actually had a character named Donald Grump. I think that would be perfect.
Chris
@Adam L Silverman:
Well, now you’re just asking for the moon.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@The Moar You Know: He actually would’ve used it but for his (initially unfounded) fear that the allies also had access to nerve agents and would retaliate in kind.
Brachiator
@Chris:
Very good!
@Chris:
Again, I largely agree with you here.
My gut feeling is that Hillary Clinton might have been excellent with respect to foreign policy (not limiting this to military action), and I have no patience with those who presumed that Clinton would have been pro-war based on their fantasies and false assertions.
On the other hand, Trump has exceeded my worst expectations.
ETA: Disaster Spice is just pathetic. Somebody get him off the podium.
Mike Fearl
@Mike in DC: It’s been an extraordinary rendition.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@rikyrah: Silento counts as A-List now? Fucking REALLY?!??!!???
The Moar You Know
@Adam L Silverman: I’ve read Shirer, who at that early date blamed Chamberlain while acknowledging that there was really nothing else to be done. Seems kind of shitty to me. Chamberlain simply didn’t know what he was up against, and couldn’t have done much else if he had.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
mapaghimagsik
Maybe the Easter Egg roll will be at Mar-a-Largo?
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
What a disgrace.
From the photo, it looks like they held the dinner in the basement on folding tables on top of a picnic table cloth, using metal office chairs.
Trump dinner (photo) vs Obama dinner (photo)
Adam L Silverman
@Captain C: They would probably have still been overrun. It just would have taken more time.
Turgidson
@hovercraft:
And I keep being told that Lowry is one of those “thoughtful” conservatives. What a pile of rhino santorum that column is.
Adam L Silverman
@The Moar You Know: The issue is also: given the state of Britain’s military and where they were in the generation cycle of material and personnel, there was nothing they could do. All of the more recent historiography, as the article indicates, recognizes that they all knew they would have to fight again, they just knew they couldn’t fight right now. So the strategy they developed had one strategic objective: play for time. I know that seems really callous to the Czechs and Slovaks and everyone else who suffered before they were ready, but that is the reality.
The Moar You Know
@Adam L Silverman: Which is what makes him so much fun. In fairness, nobody could do what a press secretary for a President Trump would have to be able to pull off every day, but he’s particularly bad at it. You can see every time he steps to that podium he goes into pure panic, fight-or-flight mode.
rikyrah
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
I’m still offended by those pictures.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
In less than 100 days these motherfuckers have turned us into a clown country.
kd bart
They weren’t Holocaust Centers. They were Day Spas.
Adam L Silverman
@The Moar You Know: In the dictionary next to the phrase Greek tragedy is a picture of Spicer.
Patricia Kayden
@hedgehog the occasional commenter: Now that WOULD be perfect. LOL!! PBS would lose its funding via Executive Order the very next day.
Adam L Silverman
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: @rikyrah: Odds are that this was put together by these staffers. They’re probably new to DC, don’t have any other contacts/connections and didn’t have other invitations. There only appear to be two couples/families there. The real tragedy is that the Kushner’s didn’t think to host something for them.
Patricia Kayden
@mapaghimagsik: And Billionaires can search for stocks and bonds strewn around the expansive grounds. Sounds like fun to me.
Screw the kids!
Roger Moore
@Iowa Old Lady:
They do know how to throw a party. They just think the first rule of a good party is not to invite the plebs, which causes problems with big public events like the Easter Egg Roll.
D58826
A long piece by historian Rick Perlstein in the NYT.
I won’t try to summarize it other than to say the Trump is the latest manifestation of a deep vein of righwing thought in America that goes all the back to the founding. It includes the KKK, German Bun d, McCarthy, Goldwater and Reagan.
Just one long quote that could have been uttered at a Trump rally but dates back 10 1926:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/magazine/i-thought-i-understood-the-american-right-trump-proved-me-wrong.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
Patricia Kayden
@Adam L Silverman: I guess this is a good time for Spicey to say, “I can’t be anti-Semitic. My mom is Jewish!!” He’s a mess.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
I’m guessing that this is all quite the non-story at Fox? Will CNN, NPR report I wonder….
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@rikyrah:
Which sent me just about over the edge. Today, I found this in a link at James Fallows’ twitter feed, where there was a robust discussion of successive WH Seders:
This demonstrates the othering the GOP does instinctively (or reflexively, or intuitively):
And now we have Spicer performing a triple lutz of Holocaust denial, with each clarification making it slightly worse. It’s a regime that Bannon fits into perfectly. Racist motherfuckers.
Chris
@D58826:
The past is prologue. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Everything old is new again. When you see one white supremacist, you’ve seen them all.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@D58826: This is a good one too.
jonas
@dmsilev: Holocaust “centers”? Where did this doofus learn English? Or history?
PJ
@Adam L Silverman: @Captain C: I think it can be credibly argued that Europe as a whole would have been better if war had started in the fall of 1938. The Czechoslovaks had mobilized and had 35 divisions ready to fight. Their border with Germany was mountainous and well-protected by fortifications, which German generals, upon inspection after occupation of the Sudetenland, believed would have slowed them down immensely. The German generals also believed that they were not ready for war, and there were plans to stage a coup if Hitler actually went to war then.
How long could have Czechoslovakia held out alone against the Germans? They were outnumbered, population wise, by something like 6 to 1, but they had a large modern air force (only lacking bombers, which was a big mistake, but their air force was totally defensive) and a motivated population. I think it would have taken several months, if not longer, perhaps long enough to shame France and Britain into honoring their treaty commitments. Prague would have been leveled, and hundreds of thousands of Czechoslovaks would have died, but I think it’s better to fight and lose than capitulate and lose. It also would have saved, for a time, the Jewish population of Czechoslovakia.
Even if Germany defeated Czechoslovakia and no other countries came to their assistance, it would have been much more difficult than the invasion of Poland, and they bloodying they received may have made them think twice about starting another war so quickly. At a minimum, it would have been better for France and Britain. Militarily, Germany was in a much stronger position in 1939 than in 1938: they gained the Czech treasury, the entire Czech munitions (planes, guns, tanks – they rode Praga tanks into France in 1940), millions of laborers for the Reich (some slave and some paid nominally), and, maybe most importantly, the Czech industry which would support them during the war, and which they would probably had destroyed in an invasion. It also gained them the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact which paved the way for the invasion of Poland, meaning that they would not have to fight a war on two fronts (unless they chose to, as they ultimately did). I can’t see that the French and British rearmament that happened during the same time period in any way counters the huge advantages Germany gained by France and Britain abandoning Czechoslovakia.
Adam L Silverman
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: Spicer was the RNC Press Secretary and Director of Communication before being brought to the Trump Administration by Reince Preibus. Who do you think either wrote or oversaw/approved those announcements from the RNC?
Miss Bianca
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Why looking at that photo of the Obama WH seder suddenly makes me want to weep, I don’t know why.
Is it too much to ask to have actual ADULTS in charge at the White House??
@Adam L Silverman: Nah, Greek comedy. Phony phalluses a plus!
Captain C
@Adam L Silverman: Assuming, of course, Halder doesn’t lead a successful coup against Hitler, after which I suspect that while the overall shape of things would be similar, the details might have been drastically different (Germany would still be itching for revenge for WWI and especially Versailles, but wouldn’t have been as bound to the batshit specifics of Nazi ideology and perhaps not as willing to risk all on an unproven blitzkrieg strategy).
Raoul
@dmsilev: Spicer saying “Holocaust centers” is among the many things that freaks me out about this. He appears to be stunningly, mind-numbingly ignorant.
He also appears to be stunningly, mind-bogglingly bad at high pressure moments. He can’t think on his feet to save his own ass. Add in the multiple corrections after, and you can see a flailing idiot-jackass at work.
Being comms director for the RNC is such a different job, with little of the daily probing and (even though I complain about them) many at least medium-competent journalists facing him now.
The disastrous thing for the admin and the USA is that if he resigns (when!), the replacement will be worse, because I cannot imagine anyone competent signing on to the SS Trumptanic as she sinks.
.
eta: I *love* that spellcheck underlined my misspell of Trumptanic and accepted my manual correction. So that seems to be in common useage these days!
hedgehog the occasional commenter
@Patricia Kayden: I fear you are right about the loss of funding…
Quinerly
@Miss Bianca:
I actually cried when I saw both pictures. How can this shit go on for 4 years? I’m so embarrassed for the country. Find myself having a hard time lately saying “my country.”
jacy
@rikyrah:
Holocaust Centers. Like Rec Centers, but with less ping pong tables.
Roger Moore
@randy khan:
That assumes that his daughter and son-in-law are seriously practicing Jews. I get the impression that they are Orthodox Jews in the sense that they aren’t attending an Orthodox synagogue on Saturday rather than not attending a Christian church on Sunday.
Captain C
@Captain C: And also what PJ said at #121.
Origuy
@rikyrah: I bet Bill Clinton would have organized a great Easter Egg Roll.
Chris
@Roger Moore:
XD XD XD
mike in dc
On the Passover snub thing, I’ll repeat my joke from yesterday:
“Why is this night no different from any other night?”
Turgidson
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap:
I don’t think that quote is entirely accurate, though. All of those people had important roles to play in how the Right became such an incoherent cesspool of braindead grievance that an obvious charlatan dolt like Trump could take over its political party just by swaggering around like a racist moron.
Trump is the endpoint of decades of right-wing politicians and thinkers like WFucking Buckley, Goldwater, and St. Ronald of Reagan, who thought themselves to be, and were and are generally considered to be, better than Trump/Trumpism, indulging it, cultivating it, flattering it for their own ends, assuming or hoping that the bill would never come due, or that they wouldn’t be around to deal with the fallout. And since all those guys are dead, I guess they were right. Thanks, assholes.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
Actually, I see even Fox is covering the story (their website anyway), so Spicy has definitely soiled himself again. Is this all part of the big 100 Day reset?
mai naem mobile
@Adam L Silverman: I am sorry but I cannot believe these people were so ignorant as not to have the Kushners hold a Seder in the WH. Kushners supposed to be an Orthodox Jew and Trumps got at least a couple of Jewish people in the Cabinet where it should have come up. And his lawyer and the Israeli ambassador who’s supposed to be a good friend. I think it’s deliberate. It’s either not to turn off Bannons anti semitic America First crowd or Kushner is really planning to run for POTUS and doesn’t want an obvious “Jewish” picture. I also think Dolt 45s family and friends are so into profiting from the government that they don’t have the time for the little niceties. I have yet to hear a statement from the Dolt 45 WH on a celebrity’s death. Just something simple – stuff that I have heard since the Reagan years. Nothing on Mary Tyler Moore or Chuck Berry. I don’t get it. It’s a dumb mistake.
randy khan
@Roger Moore:
In my experience, Passover to Jews is like Christmas for Christians – even if you don’t do anything else, you celebrate, and the way you do it is with a seder. It’s the ur-Jewish holiday, the one that teaches children what it means to be a Jew and the story of how Judaism was created. Even pretty secular Jews, the kind of people who do not belong to a synagogue and wouldn’t consider joining one, celebrate it. Heck, the guy in my 5th grade class who brought in peanut butter and bacon sandwiches on matzoh celebrated it.
In other words, it would be exceedingly strange if the Kushner-Trump family did not have or go to a seder.
Seth Owen
@PJ: This is largely how I see it. The British and French were playing for time, but time was actually on Hitler’s side — at least in the short term. Germany became much stronger between 1938 and 1940, relative to the Allied powers. Chamberlain made a judgement call, but his judgement was flawed.
WaterGirl
Each of you said exactly what I was thinking.
@dmsilev:
@hovercraft:
Lyrebird
@hovercraft:
day-um you have a taste for the bitter!
I agree that the clarification is possibly just as telling as the original statement.
re: Seder-skipping,
The ones of them with any shreds of self-awareness would find the whole dinner bitter, not just the maror, hearing refugees described as heros and hearing people chant things they oppose, like “let all who are hungry come and eat!”
EBT
North Carolina legislature files bill to ban gay marriage. http://wncn.com/2017/04/11/nc-bill-looks-to-ban-gay-marriage/
patroclus
I’m gonna swing by the Holocaust Center this afternoon – anyone need anything?
The Moar You Know
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: You gotta start at the source: George Wallace, Bull Connor, and the brightest of lights in this unholy constellation, Richard Nixon.
THEN you can go to Buckley, Goldwater and the monster, Reagan, and it will all make sudden sense, the dogwhistles will become very audible. I’ve heard them all my life. Apparently others can’t.
zhena gogolia
@rikyrah:
This is so unbelievable it’s unbelievable. I’m afraid to turn on my computer these days.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker:Okay, I know the subject matter is not funny at all, but that was so perfectly done that I laughed.
Aleta
-NYT https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/us/school-vouchers-disability.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront
TenguPhule
That didn’t take long.
I hope every third party and Republican same gender preference enjoy being hoist by their own petard.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
NANCY SMASH!
TenguPhule
@Aleta: Feature, not a bug. Compassionate Conservatism at its finest.
trollhattan
@Adam L Silverman:
Was it Dana Perino who didn’t know what the Cold War was? Never thought I’d miss Dana Perino.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Patricia Kayden:
What Spicer meant to to say was all the those Jews (and Gyspys and Slavs) who got gased, all those women, childern, the old, the sick who couldn’t work on Albert Speer’s slave factories, what Spicer clearly mean to say was those people weren’t innocent.
The Moar You Know
@EBT: The idea is to make the governor have to veto one of these every month (or as often as possible) while calling him a homo-lover, child molester, etc, and then have the GOP candidate ride the inevitable Jesus-freak butthurt back into office. It will probably work. North Carolina is very, very fragile. Overwhelmingly red with a few blue spots of sanity.
randy khan
@TenguPhule:
I’m actually surprised it took this long. I guess they are hoping the Department of Justice will come in on their side in the lawsuit. (Not that I want this to pass, but I think the current DoJ might just do that, and it likely would be bad news for the Administration, both in court and in public opinion.)
The Pale Scot
@Patricia Kayden:
I pray that Sesame Street will send Ronald Grump. the trash tycoon that tried to buy Sesame Street.
Peale
@EBT: Yep. Hopefully our side will pay some attention when this gets vetoed, but I’m not that hopeful. We lose one more judge, and gay marriage is gone, and don’t think for a second that they’ll respect marriages already conducted. The fact that it can be vetoed and the legislature doesn’t have a super majority is the only thing that will keep this stuff down.
WaterGirl
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Wow, it appears they hosted it in a church basement. Ugh.
The Moar You Know
@Aleta: Jesus. If this woman had used the education I PAID FOR and used reading for words that mean things, she would have figured out “why” in 15 seconds. Fuck her. Hope she enjoys her stay-at-home pet for the rest of her life.
TenguPhule
@randy khan:
Douch was just sworn in on the Supreme Court.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Adam L Silverman: I second this motion. Chamberlain and “appeasement” is almost universally misunderstood.
WaterGirl
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: Slightly worse? You must be grading on a curve, with very low expectations! :-)
randy khan
@TenguPhule:
That doesn’t get them the 5 votes they need. You can be sure that Kennedy will protect his decision as long as he’s on the court. In fact, this kind of thing might make him more inclined to stay.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Mnemosyne: These people are time wasting twats to beging with, even if the Nazis never killed a Jew their starvation politcy they inflicted on Soviet POWs would still be one of the great outrages of human history, not to mention stuff like “let’s bomb Rotterdam for the LUZ”.
Schlemazel
@Humboldtblue:
Actually the mustard gas came from US shells brought in by ship in preparation for retaliation for threatened chemical attacks that never came. It is a horrific story well buried by the DoD & Allied history.
But Spicer is still an ignorant pigwhistle
The Pale Scot
@patroclus:
Hitler’s changed his groove! He’s a rapper nowadays
…Everybody Hitler-hatin’ when they speak my name
But it’s the new millennium and the Führer’s changed
And what I bet ya’ll didn’t know is now I’m down with the Jews!
The gypsies, homosexuals and retards too!
Cause I stopped burnin’ people, started burnin’ CD’s
Stopped battling’ the world, started battlin’ MC’s
Just started bustin’ rhymes, finally found my groove
And now the “S.S” on my jacket stands for “Super Smooth”…
lamh36
OT, but What da….
Alabama Senate Approves Bill for Church Police Force http://wkrg.com/2017/04/11/alabama-senate-approves-bill-for-church-police-force/ via @WKRG
So this church can’t just pay for security like any other private bidness
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@The Moar You Know:
I was watching this BBC show were they were inteviewing Douglas Bader, the top RAF ace for the Battle of Britan and he claimed that the year of peace Munic gave Britan to rearm was the only thing that saved them.
A Ghost to Most
@lamh36:
Lemme guess – They’re going with an all-white uniform with a cross on the chest, and an optional hood?
Raven
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: the only thing that save them was us.
hovercraft
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
Feature not a bug, there’s a narrative to be spun, Churchill is the hero, savior of Western Europe, there has to be a goat. As is usually the case in politics, a simple message works best, people forget that campaign messaging is not usually accurate or the entire story, (if you’re explaining, you’re losing). Throw in GOP stupidity and American ignorance of history, especially “foreign” history and you have this myth that Chamberlain was naive and wanted to be besties with Hitler.
I think a great deal of the GOP’s love for Churchill is actually as much about his determination to also never surrender to the nationalists in the British Empire who were all clamoring for independence.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Nice view of the tower of the Old Post Office building in the background. Isn’t there a hotel there now?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@D58826: Hiram Evans then went on to be busted for raping a woman he picked out at random on a train. I take great heart in that story and that sooner or later the inner depravity of these wingnuts demogogs will get out.
Origuy
@patroclus:
I could use a couple of lampshades.
Sorry. I’m really sorry.
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah: rikyrah, I love your responses!! You’re killing me. Trump is tacky beyond belief. He acts like someone who is nouveau riche. Hard to believe his Papa was a millionaire because he doesn’t act like old money.
EBT
@The Moar You Know: And the NCAA games sure as shit aren’t going to come back with this garbage.
Patricia Kayden
@lamh36: That’s one church I’d avoid like the plague. If you need police officers to protect you at church, you need to stay home and worship there.
TenguPhule
@lamh36:
Wait, are the police protecting the churches or the churches running the police now? Either way, now that Trump burned the Constitution, I see the rest of the gang has decided to join in now.
TenguPhule
@randy khan:
I wouldn’t put money on that. Or on him having an ‘accident’ to be replaced by a more reliable vote now that there are no rules in the Senate beyond might makes right.
EBT
@Schlemazel: Then again Goering said that the only reason that they didn’t use gas at Normandy was that the horse gas masks they had developed didn’t work.
Origuy
@lamh36: Nobody expects the Alabama Inquisition!
The Pale Scot
@Mnemosyne:
Sister works for SW, they’re loving it.
lahke
@Patricia Kayden: Hey, Dylan Roof was just sentenced–can you crank your memory back at least a week?
debbie
@rikyrah:
That was the first empty Seder table I’ve ever seen. They’re always crowded with plates, glasses, Seder plates, piles of matzohs, etc. In fact, I’ve complained in the past because there’s no room for my beer.
Groucho48
Sounds to me as though Spicer came very close to saying that the difference is that Assad gassed innocent citizens while Hitler only gassed non-innocent types in designated Holocaust Centers.
debbie
@Patricia Kayden:
Ah, that’s not fair to the kids. They should send all of their characters, if only as an f.u. gesture to the administration.
Mnemosyne
@lamh36:
I wonder what would happen if a large mosque wanted its own police force.
Just kidding, I don’t wonder at all. ?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@trollhattan: It was the Cuban Missile Crisis, to which her husband said, “Oh Dana…”.
laura
@Quinerly: Quinery, take heart. IT IS OUR COUNTRY. Full stop. It is currently run by the grossest and most incompetent moran and pack of grifting fuckweasels. And the world looks on and wonders what the hell were we thinking to elect such an imbecile.
But he won’t be in charge forever, and there will be work to be done to address the damage, and our fellow citizens and non-citizen countryman will need us to step up and act like the responsible Americans that we are.
So take heart. There’s more of us than there are of them and we will meet the task forthrightly and with love and courage and never forget that this is our country and it is worth the effort to fix this mess.
Even on days when the only thing to do is pull the covers over our head and weep. But the next day, you get up, and you grab a broom and start the hard work of cleaning up this mess.
Please give Poco a scritching for me.
The Pale Scot
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho:
And then he heard a cock crow..
Mike in NC
Holocaust deniers have put up websites claiming that the Nazi death camps were actually reeducation camps that featured gyms, libraries, swimming pools and other amenities. “Guests” were allowed movies, concerts, ice cream parlors, and had wedding ceremonies. Bannon subscribes to this nonsense.
Anyway, fucking Spicer must go.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@laura:
The whole band?
JPL
@WaterGirl: The innocent people in towns.
The Pale Scot
@Quinerly:
But, those pics could be used by the propagandists to illustrate. Yea, the Democrat Party is hanging with wealthy elitist Jews, while the Cheeto picture shows striving family oriented Jews (take note of the infants) From the “Heartland” (there’s gotta be a Yiddish phrase I could use).
The Pale Scot
@Roger Moore:
Probably just to have access to the diamond market, it can make moving cash around easier.
No, I don’t put it past those two at all.
Quinerly
@laura: @?BillinGlendaleCA: Sometimes the band does get an itch, so I hear. MY Poco had a doggy spa day at the local Grateful Dead themed groomer….”Grateful Pets.’❤ Maybe it’s time to take this show on the road again.
George Spiggott
What part of Make America Genocidal Again don’t you understand?
Quinerly
@Origuy:
#131…..with lots of balloons!
Adam L Silverman
@PJ: No real argument here. I think you’re take on Czechoslovakia’s capabilities is sound.
TriassicSands
Just announced — Trump appoints David Irving as new ambassador to Israel. Spicer gushes over Irving’s qualifications.
Barry
@Adam L Silverman: “In the dictionary next to the phrase Greek tragedy is a picture of Spicer.”
Why? ‘Tragedy’ doesn’t cover a clown and liar disgracing himself.
Uncle Cosmo
@Schlemazel:
A horrific fustercluck. First, Bari harbor was swarming with ships, but only one (the liberty ship John Harvey) carried mustard munitions. Second, the Luftwaffe achieved total surprise with its bombing attack & pearlharbored the fleet at anchor. Third, the only two people on the scene who knew the mustard was there–the John Harvey‘s captain & the Army officer in charge of the munitions–were both killed when the ship was hit. Fourth, mustard agent (FTR, it’s a liquid at ambient temperatures) is not miscible in water, but does dissolve in oil–& there was a lot of loose oil floating around from damaged & sunken ships & a severed oil pipeline. Fifth, many of the men who ended up in the water were covered with the oil/mustard mix. Sixth–& most pathetically–when those men were fished out, the medics who were utterly unaware that there was chemical agent around, treated them for exposure, & wrapped them in blankets–which only trapped the mustard vapor coming off their skin as it was warmed by their body heat.
I only learned about Bari after I started working in chem-bio defense in the early 90s, & the story is still not widely known. Hee’s a fairly good writeup.
Ayup.
SiubhanDuinne
@Adam L Silverman:
This. So much has been made of Jared and Ivanka’s devout Judaism, it seems the least they could do would be to extend an offer of hospitality to the Ehite House Elijahs on Pesach.
Uncle Cosmo
@Adam L Silverman: One maybe-not-so-minor quibble: Those impressive border defenses were mostly smack in the middle of the Sudetenland, whose population at the time was majority ethnic German, who were hot to join the Reich. Any substantial fifth-column activity in the region would have immensely complicated the defense, & any attempt to relocate the Sudetendeutsch would have IMO been even more problematic. So there’s that.
SiubhanDuinne
@Miss Bianca:
I’m the same way. I was driving this afternoon, minding my own business, and suddenly the phrase “MISSING MICHELLE” roared into my mind, and I damn near went off the road with the power of that loss hitting me.
SiubhanDuinne
@Origuy:
Not sure why, or if you meant it to happen, but this made me laugh. Sounds kind of sketchy, but fun. Like Bill his own self.
SiubhanDuinne
@trollhattan:
She had probably heard of the Cold War writ large, but didn’t have a clue about the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Ksmiami
@laura: First item of business will be to impeach Gorsuch and strip him of his robe. I want to be in the front of that line
Ruckus
@The Moar You Know:
All of those right wing assholes that you mentioned are on the timeline of getting where we are today. And you have to include the Bush family and a few others like R. Stone, Newt G. and the current crop of right wing asshole legislative leaders, McTurtle, Bonner and Ryan. They are all enablers, some set the tone, some have done real damage to the country, ALL of them are not people who are trying to up hold what this country is supposed to stand for, in those words that were so nicely written at the start, and of course mostly ignored since before the ink dried.
Ruckus
@Miss Bianca:
Yes you do. They always were and are human beings. That’s why you miss them. You liked them and they liked you. They wanted the best for you, and were willing to put up with a lot to attempt to get it for you. And now all we have are assholes who only want the worst for everyone not them. The difference is stark and noticeable to anyone not a raving asshole.
laura
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Why not! Even smooth southern soft rock gods of yore can benefit from some scritchen and scratching.
randy khan
@TenguPhule:
I would put a lot of money on the proposition that Kennedy would protect the same sex marriage decision if it came before him, and I would put at least some money on him considering whether that decision would be overturned when deciding whether to leave the court. I am pretty confident that it’s one of the decisions he views as his legacy, and he’s been good overall on gay rights, writing 3 really important majority opinions – Romer, Windsor and Obergefell. Also, it’s essentially unheard of for someone to write a majority opinion and then a few years later turn around and change his mind. I can’t think of any examples of that offhand.