When I heard yesterday that President Trump said this about the informant who leaked stuff to the phone-call whistleblower,
“I want to know who’s the person who gave the whistle-blower the information because that’s close to a spy. You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart with spies and treason, right? We used to handle it a little differently than we do now.”
. . . I realized that the President needed to go, and go now. For spying and treason are about the most serious crimes you can commit against the government, and both are punishable with death. This is flat-out Tony Soprano mafiosi threats to whack an opponent, unworthy of not just a President, but of anyone with power.
It looks as if Trump’s reached the state of complete irrational ranting, like a bull, poked by picadors, trying to gore anything it sees. For further evidence, here’s a tweet from our “President,” which someone had the sense to retract. Reader Simon sent it to me and gave this commentary:
I broke down and checked the twitter rants of our fearless leader this afternoon. He’s melting down. George Conway’s feed (I don’t follow either of them, they tweet too much) is also amusing. Interesting times. The tweet below – now deleted but much copied – is particularly amusing (and much mocked). Singular plural dissonance, spelling errors and issues with the names of punctuation elements……I know he doesn’t proofread, but really. He’ll explode if he gets too much mockery.
Every day it gets more bizarre and unbelievable that this is the leader of the United States.
_________
UPDATE: For more on “Liddlegate” see this article in The Atlantic (h/t: Simon). An excerpt:
Anyone who thinks the way to write little is liddle’ reveals themselves as having lived a life at a great distance from the printed word, alarming in someone running a nation. Here is the man who refuses to read briefings, even when sanded down to the level of basic instructions penned on a Magic Slate. Here is the man who pulled that splendid bit about the British threatening our airports during the Revolutionary War, suggesting he had trouble reading the teleprompter, likely because he is too vain to use visual aids. But if he’s nearsighted and won’t wear glasses or contacts at 73, this all but bars him from print much smaller than the hollywood sign.
“Trump has reached rock bottom”? I’ve thought the same thing several times in the past, and he has always managed to prove me wrong.
With Trump, there is no bottom.
Truth.
Only when he dies.
It’s bottom all the way down.
Trump is like a turtle. His ignorant supporters are his shell, and he sticks his neck out. I hope this time, he is not able to withdraw his head in time.
Don’t you swear at a turtle like that!
trump
has
not
reached
bottom
yet
you
just
wait
.
.
.
v
Yes, I fear our host underestimates the depth of The Donald’s bottom.
I’m not liking my mental imagery right now.
He will go on and no ,until he pops up in Tiananmen Square .
There is no bottom with Trump. There is something wrong with this guy. Narcissistic Personality Disorder, or something.
As we move along, people will be called to testify in congress. There will be further leaks. He’ll start doubting who he can trust, or not. Eventually, someone will flip and testify for immunity.
All this will just further agitate his condition, further his paranoia.
There is no bottom with this guy. The question is how far down do reasonable Republicans want to go before exiting the elevator?
reasonable Republicans?
I’m tempted to say, what’s that? But, in the end, these politicians who back tTump are probably not actually backing tRump. They are protecting themselves and hoping to live another day to help shape the future – post tRump. At core, many are probably decent people with weak knees who just need a little help standing up.
I don’t think the problem is in the knees. Their backbones have gone missing.
I think the North Koreans were right – he’s a dotard. (Might be comorbid with a few other things, though.)
Really makes you proud to be a Canadian, eh. I’m using that if I have to travel anywhere.
I can tell from your accent (the way you pronounce ‘eh’) that you are just pretending to be a Canadian. You can’t fool me, no siree.
The only way to settle it (as per Michael Moore’s film Canadian Bacon, is for Randall to name the capital of Canada.
Ottawa. Oh crap did I spell it right?
“Yeah, right. Do we look that stupid? Ottawa!”
You’re in! We’ll gladly take you. Class up this country.
No, tell me what the lotto music at Shoppers plays in French and how many PC points you have.
One sure sign that you’re Canadian when you travel,(at least in the eyes of many furriners), is if you wear a Tilley hat with or without souvenir buttons on it.
Fedora, Duckbill, Tec-Wool, Outback?? 🙂
As an (expat) Brit, I feel slightly smug. We’ve only got Boris Johnson.
Now I realise that in any sane world, (i.e. excluding the rather large country located between the Great Lakes and the Rio Grande), this would put us in leadership terms temporarily at the bottom of the heap, arguably slightly below North Korea and Russia. But even in his dodgier and most devious moments the Boris does show a degree of awareness; he knows that what he’s doing is likely to be controversial. And on most topics other than his committed obsession Brexit, he seems positively rational.
Hopefully we (Brits) will be rid of the Boris rather more quickly than it’s taking you folks to get rid of your orange mistake. Would you like the Boris when we’ve finished with him? It would be a step up…
cr
😉
Are you able to imitate the cry of the beaver/castor, both in English and French?
LOL!
We should also be mindful of the fact that the alternative we had was not all that palatable either. The product sucks because its competitors perhaps suck even worse (at least in the mind of sufficient number of consumers.)
If you’re referring to Hilary, and are saying that she’s just as bad, I would have to vehemently disagree. Most of the accusations about her were generated by Russian provocateurs and are patently false. She would have made a competent president, unlike in every way to the current occupant.
Oh, yeah? Whaddabout the child sex ring Killary was operating outta the basement of the Comet Ping-Pong Pizzeria, henh?!!1!!
And don’t forget the Clinton Body Count – dozens of murders [somehow covered up]
Trump is probably already trying to find and hire the guys that pulled that off.
Do you know that every American I asked when I was on a conference in Vegas believed that shit. And they followed up all presidents have people whacked, even Obama. I was very sad about it.
Jeez. Did you attend a Republican conference by mistake?
What’s sad is most were Hilary supporters and hated Trump except one guy and I don’t think he even said the Hilary thing. It’s like Democrats believed the bullshit fed to them by the other side.
What you get for going to an Area 51 conference. 🙂
Oh, I would have liked to have seen that one.
Haha. It was an Oracle conference but these were people I met in ubers and in the strip attending other conferences.
I detect someone who didn’t vote, and is trying to rationalise that borderline insane decision to themselves.
Of course the alternative wasn’t “even worse”. She was vastly, vastly superior in every single imaginable way.
People shouldn’t just get away with making the claim you’re making without some pushback.
Saul, you are right in your suspicion. I didn’t vote because as a matter of principle I don’t vote. I am an anarchist. I don’t believe in the state.
Also, as a practical matter it is silly to take the trouble of voting. It’s irrational to vote. The chances that I would determine the outcome of an election where millions vote is practically zero. I would vote if I were in some legislative body but not in general elections.
Finally, the US presidential elections are dog and pony shows. It’s hard to choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee (who agreed to have a battle). Birds of a feather, horses of the same breed. If I had been around, I would have voted for Eisenhower and for Coolidge — but not for any on offer in the recent ones.
“The principle that the majority have a right to rule the minority, practically resolves all government into a mere contest between two bodies of men, as to which of them shall be masters, and which of them slaves.”
–Lysander Spooner (1808 -1887)
Well whoopdie-doo. You’ve pointed out something that everyone who votes is perfectly aware of; that their single vote isn’t going to turn the tides. And yet the vast majority of people vote nevertheless. It’s almost as though casting one’s vote represents something more complex and significant than a cross in a ballot.
And either it’s irrational to vote or it isn’t. Saying you would have voted for Eisenhower or Coolidge…but you wouldn’t vote for Clinton, who was the alternative to the most dangerously incompetent politician in the history of the postwar west, is just intellectual gibberish. Why was a vote for Coolidge rational? Why bother voting? Your vote would’ve been pointless then too by your own logic.
As far as I can see, the anarchist position is the kind of inane solipsism that entitled contrarians adopt as a way to cover up their own privilege. Not too many working-class anarchists, or minority anarchists. Just tosspots Wykehamites and offspring of the rich and famous.
When you are not an anarchist at 16 you have no heart, if you’re still an anarchist at 26….
Huh? Like it doesn’t exist? Or maybe if you pretend it isn’t there it will go away?
Talk about your willful self delusion.
Not denying the existence of the state. I believe that the state is our enemy, a la Albert Jay Nock. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Enemy,_the_State
Trump’s moral core is as hidden and unreachable and, for all practical purposes, non-existent as the solid part of Jupiter, buried below great suffocating clouds of poisonous gas.
Hahaha, perfect.
We’re all just Ganymedes, Europas, and Ios in Trumpworld, man.
Moons/ cup bearers. Ewwww.
‘Tis a Bizarro World.
Talking of Jupiter’s solid core, it is very likely that it does exist although not yuuge (unlike Trumps moral core.)
“In 1997, the existence of the core was suggested by gravitational measurements, indicating a mass of 12 to 45 times the mass of Earth, or roughly 4%–14% of the total mass of Jupiter. The presence of a core is also supported by models of planetary formation that indicate how a rocky or icy core would have been necessary at some point in the planet’s history. Otherwise, it would not have been able to collect all of its hydrogen and helium from the protosolar nebula – at least in theory.”
https://www.universetoday.com/14470/does-jupiter-have-a-solid-core/
New Study Shows 99.9% of Americans are genius
1. Can you spell “little”?
2. Do you know what an apostrophe is?
Congrats, you’re smarter than a Stable Genius.
TDS strikes again.
What depravity would it take from Dear Leader for a deep-state Trump cultist to abandon ship?
We know shooting someone of Fifth Avenue wouldn’t hack it. Is there some line he might cross for you, omg?
That’s a good question, worthy of an investigation.
There’s many a Trump cultist who thinks that strong-arming a weaker country to get what you want is perfectly legit. And it’s totally American, and “A-OK” to treat an authoritarian dictator as friend and sharing US intelligence with said dictator’s minions (if not with the dictator himself). U.S. Intelligence is totally bogus and fake, so it’s OK to disregard them as well and kick them to the side. And now, it’s even kosher to have your opposition labeled spy and thus executable. And who can forget that it’s completely acceptable to grab women by the pussy, and bribe those you’ve had extra-marital affairs with to keep their mouths shut.
And yet when anyone expresses concern and dismay over these behaviors coming from “the leader of the free world”, they’re labeled deranged. So says the pot. (I forget which WEIT reader I stole that from.)
The way Donald Trump and his hardcore, dead-end cultists see it, it’s a dog-eat-dog — or, rather, man-fucks-over-man — world out there, and the Donald is just doing unto others before they can do unto him.
That’s been the Trumpian weltanschauung going back at least to his days as a silver-spoon-in-the-mouth Manhattan real-estate jockey (and, maybe, all the way back to the cradle).
Yes, I suppose you’re correct; he is the leader of those who find logic and comfort in the zero-sum game.
Thanks for using weltanschauung, haven’t seen that word in a while. And Trump is a liar, it’s the Germans who have the best words. 🙂
As I think you’re aware, Trump is of German lineage on his father’s side (original family surname “Drumpf”), although his old man, Fred, tried to pass himself off as Swedish during The War.
Ja, die Drumpfs sind Tyrannen, keine Soldaten.
That’s an uncharacteristically self-aware comment from you. I’m glad you’ve admitted that you have TDS.
If he has to go he should go the old fashioned way, losing an election.
I doubt he will lose to Warren or Sanders or Biden though.
Why should Trump get (another) special exemption? If he gets convicted by the GOP run Senate, you can’t say it was unfair.
(well you could say it, but…)
Yeah, and we should have waited until the 1976 election to let Tricky Dick go out “the old fashioned way”. Give me a fucking break. Trump’s crimes are likely going to make Nixon’s look like a High School prank. These kind of crimes are not something that should be handled by voters. This isn’t a matter of opinion anymore.
My fear is that, if he loses the election, Trump will contest the results and not go quietly. He’ll claim that the results were rigged or tainted somehow, just as he did last time. The situation could get really ugly.
I heard someone in the know about such things say that if he refuses to leave the White House, the military will escort or drag him out kicking and screaming if they have to. I would love to see that — the Commander in Chief dragged out by ‘his’ army. Sounds like something from Suetonious.
That should be “Suetonius”.
I agree with the prediction. Military types like there norms and standards. tRump must seem to many as the antithesis of a loyal American. They wouldn’t hesitate to pull him out of the Oval Office tied to a pole.
Explain to us how someone who’s flat-lined at a 40 to 43% approval rating — someone whose disapproval rating has never once been below 50% for his entire presidency — and is mired in multifarious scandals, “wins” an election in a two-party system (I mean, without major foreign fuckery of some type in our electoral process).
Yes, and the fact is, tRump won largely because he was not expected to have a good chance and I’m sure a lot of voters sat on their hands. This time, however, anti-tRump sentiment is extremely high. We may have a record turnout in 2020. That gives him a very low probability of winning.
I long for a good, solid turnout from the Dems. Again and again. Main elections, and then during midterms. It would sure help a lot.
Correctamundo. There’s nothing like the worst president ever to get people excited.
“someone whose disapproval rating has never once been below 50% for his entire presidency” is not correct. His compound disapproval rating first hit 50.6% on Feb 13, 2017, less than a month into his presidency, before that his disapproval ratings were in the 40’s. They never went below 50% since March 16, 2017.
What is true is that he never hit a compound approval rating over 50%, not even during his first weeks (highest at 47.8%, five days into his presidency).
It is absolutely stunning how ‘flat-lined’ his ratings are indeed, no president (at least sine WWII) comes even close.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/?ex_cid=rrpromo
A 40%-er can ‘win’ in a two party system, because the EC is not really proportional -albeit not as bad as the Senate. A vote in Wyoming has 3,5 times the weight of a vote in say, NY, CA or TX (as jblilie pointed out about 2-3 years ago). Small, rural states dictate who the president will be, as it were.
A candidate winning the electoral college while losing the popular vote has happened but five times in the US’s 59 presidential elections — thrice in the 19th century (1824, 1876, 1888) and twice in the 21st (2000, 2016).
Were Donald Trump to pull it off back-to-back — and especially were he to lose the popular vote by even more than the 3 million ballots he did in 2016 — I think it would spell the end of the electoral college. Good riddance, I’d say.
+1 I echo, Mr Kukec, .that. riddance.
Yeah: Electoral College = out and gone.
Blue
First of all I think Dem turnout will bury Trump in 2020, but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. Starting with 2016’s results, Trump can lose Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and he’ll still win.
Biden would trounce Trump in the critical states, but if Warren is the nominee she has her work cut out for her. Still lots of voter suppression in critical states.
But not Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan or North Carolina*. If the other states remain as in 2016, he’d lose.
* I mention North Carolina as a battleground state, since it was one of the states (as PA and WI) where Ms Clinton won the exit polls, but lost the count with a discrepancy well outside the margins of error (which leads us to suspect counting fraud, the Dems would do well to keep an eagle’s eye on the count in those states (as well as in Georgia and Florida).
Yes, and the other ones were by small margins, 2016’s 2.7 million stands out as a really large ‘popular-vote-that-didn’t-win-the-EC’. The largest margin ever, by far.
I’m not sure it would spell the end of the EC, since it would be relatively easy* to change the number of electors per state to make it more representative. One elector per half a million (eg).
I think the small states already got a humongous advantage in the Senate, a vote in Wyoming weighs not 2.5 times, but more than 70 times one in NY.
*The problem is, of course, that the minority in power by means of an unrepresentative system (Senate) are not likely to give up their advantage in the EC.
Maybe jblilie, who knows about these numbers, can tell us what percentage of Senate votes countrywide gave us the present Senate majority. I would not be surprised it is less than 40%, in theory it can be even be less than -quick estimate- 25%.
That should read: … not 3.5 times, but more than 70% times …
Would it take a constitutional amendment to simply pass legislation that the Electoral College is all enfranchised citizens?
Maybe, maybe not. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact ) is the most feasible way to achieve an effective popular vote solution. If it gets to critical mass (agreeing states totalling 270 electoral votes) it will be challenged in court (the GOP isn’t going to relinquish it’s unfair advantage without a fight), and it’s hard to predict how that court battle will go.
Maybe while the democrats are trying to put together some impeachment acts they should just change all the locks on the white house. Force him to Florida where he can hang out with all the club members. I guess three different committees have already subpoenaed Pompeo. What are the chances he would even show up?
Trump is in such a bad situation, I don’t even think resigning will help him at this point. Sure, he can be pardoned by Pence, but Pence can’t pardon all his crimes.
And if he doesn’t resign and loses the 2020 election, “unindicted co-conspirator 1” will soon be roommates with his old buddy Mike C.
His only real way out of this debacle is to win the 2020 election and run-out the clock. Unfortunately for him, his hopes of winning in 2020 seem to be dwindling away by the hour.
My hope for his roomy is Roger Stone.
Uh-oh! Roger is going to have to get a new tattoo.
Probably hard to make Nixon look like Trump – might have to get a second one, color this time, orange to go with the jump suit.
Oh boy, that’s good. You’re comment and JezGrove’s. !!!
🙂
Not the you are a comment. LOL. I’m making apostrophe mistakes like him.
Just your stable genius showing through!
I think I have a solution, Douglas:
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/56e5a5cdf8508224be05cc64/1541476849555-D59IQ3PVIDPGAUM6RLK7/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kICuQGtBKl8a4B16WWHnybRZw-zPPgdn4jUwVcJE1ZvWQUxwkmyExglNqGp0IvTJZamWLI2zvYWH8K3-s_4yszcp2ryTI0HqTOaaUohrI8PIZn3HZcQxAptwM7wNF0FtX6FWm_cA3wg3kxjL0U1XIBsKMshLAGzx4R3EDFOm1kBS/nixon%2Btrump.jpg
Nice! It would have to be a pretty good tat artist!
Damn Ken, are you trying to give us readers nightmares?
readers’
The apostrophe-monkey is on my back tonight.
This thread is hard to keep up with. Might need to pick it up tomorrow before I drink too much and write something that breaks Da Roolz.
No! that’s a hyphen, can’t you tell a hyphen from an apostrophe?
I say Nixon on the dorsal, Trump on the ventral with Roger Stone’s navel for Trump’s mouth.
However, Roger Stone is so weird, he may not have a navel. He may have hatched from an evil wind egg (aka Cock egg, according to Wikipedia).
https://i1.wp.com/www.rogerogreen.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/nixontrump.jpg?resize=288%2C388
Excellent! Just has to go viral.
Good one! I still see more Nixon than Trump – probably the hair 🙂
Would you buy a used car from that man?
Not even a new one.
I *really* doubt he’s in any serious danger of being removed. Something like 20 GOP senators would have to vote for that, and that simply isn’t going to happen with ~30% of the voting population (= more than half of the GOP base) being rabidly pro-Trump.
But I think you’re right about post-President stuff. SDNY seems ready to tear him a new one once that pesky “can’t indict a sitting President” thing becomes irrelevant.
I’m afraid you’re right. In the present climate, few GOP will turn on trump no matter what comes out in the hearings. Unless, of course, what turns up is much worse than we already have against him. I’m betting he wins in the Senate, but loses at the ballot box. The Dems have no choice but to go for impeachment, simply because to let him get away with this can be seen as endorsement.
I think it quite possible that the day he leaves office, Trump is indicted and arrested by New York State authorities for state crimes committed before becoming president in regard to his business activities. I believe in theory the state could indict him while he is in office, but I don’t think it will do that. Trump’s defense will be that he can’t stand trial because of mental impairment, i.e.,dementia.
Yep. He will play on the thing we have and he doesn’t. The thing he feels makes us weak – empathy. He will accuse us of being unkind to an old man with an illness.
If we are lucky enough to be able to elect a legitimate candidate in 2020, that should be enough.
The tone of the anti-Trump talk I am reading seems to indicate that people hate Trump so very much that they are willing to permanently damage our whole system of government to get at him. That seems excessive to me.
As far as I know, he has not destroyed the economy, or started any new wars. There are no pogroms. Violent crime rates are half what they were in the early 1990s. We spend a smaller percentage of our income for groceries than any people in modern history, and food costs are increasing slower than the overall inflation rate, which is under 2%.
The above are indications that we have it better than almost anyone else, ever. Our most serious problems seem to predate this administration and the previous one.
But people are acting as if we are living in a dystopian hellscape, which will become a utopia if only we can punish Trump. Not just defeat him in an election, but really hurt him and anyone who supports him.
One thing I think we need to address here on this athiest-centric forum, is that people might be wired for religion in unexpected ways. We might remove traditional faith from people’s lives, but they could be just replacing one irrational fervor for another. People do seem less able to keep things in proper perspective than was traditional. Everything is always up to 11.
When the globe heats past 2 degree Celsius we will be living in a dystopian hellscape. tRump knows he can handle the heat. He will be dead.
I don’t think we’re living in a dystopian hellscape, Max. But I also don’t believe there can be much doubt among rational, informed people that Donald Trump is the most-inept, least-fit US president — by experience, by intellect, by temperament, and by character — ever to serve in that office. He is also the only US president about whom there are reasons to have serious concerns over whether he has undivided loyalty to the the best interests of the United States of America.
Yet over a third of the US population seems willing to follow him to whatever moral depth he is willing to plunge this nation in pursuit of his own self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment. That’s not derangement; that’s a matter for grave and legitimate national concern.
I cannot argue that Trump is unpresidential in a multitude of ways. I have not seen evidence that he has divided loyalties. There are claims of that, but it seems to me the only country he has fully supported is Israel, but many believe that the survival of Israel is a key step in ensuring global stability. So supporting them is in our best interests, in many aspects.
He does tend to flatter despots while negotiating with them. I believe that those comments are made primarily for the audience of the despots home country, and is a reasonable tactic. If flattery keeps KJU from turning the Korean peninsula into a nuclear wasteland, I say flatter away.
Utter nonsense. No one here has made a suggestion to “permanently damage our whole system of government.” That’s just right wing hysteria, and only the poorly educated believe it.
I did not mean to imply that the tone I was reading only included what I read here. I can see that I worded that poorly.
I do think abolishing the electoral college would be a step towards instability. That has been mentioned in these comments.
On the contrary, disallowing people to choose their leaders results is more instability (as we can see in our current situation, and in the history of unelected leaders).
I don’t think upholding the democratic principle of one person/one vote would destabilize our Republic. And I don’t see why the electoral college system devised in 1787 for 13 states of relatively similar size along the eastern seaboard presents the optimal method for the modern United States to select its president.
But if we are to keep an electoral-college system, let us have an open national discourse on the question, and consider whether there might be some better way for it to be constituted. Then people who feel as you do, Max, can make the case to a farmer in the central valley of California why his or her vote for president should count for only 28% as much as the vote cast by some city-slicker in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
Consider the weasel: the wiliest of animals. Able to extricate itself from any variety of tight corners and close calls.
Now consider a weasel of extraordinary natural prowess, who had something like a supernatural ability to vanish from responsibility and leave others carrying the can, time after time, throughout their life.
That is Trump – he is the uber-weasel and no metaphorical trouser leg can contain him.
But wait. There’s going to be more. Maybe a lot more.
I don’t doubt it. The question is not justice or ciminality, however, it’s GOP Senators wanting to be reelected. The “more” would have to get a majority of conservative voters to want to vote for a Senator who impeaches Trump. Care to give an example of what that would be?
I’m not sure, Mr Nixon’s popularity among his supporters crumbled quickly.
When more and more cracks are showing, there must be a point where Rep Senators see the deluge coming, will cut their losses and drop him like a rotten egg (the rotten egg he actually is).
It’s different now. So many Trump fans are irrational in the extreme and all too willing to avoid the influence of evidence. It’s a cult, and Dear Leader’s supremacy is not open for discussion.
Although the implicit death threat was targeted at those who talked to the whistleblower, Trump is leveling plenty of antagonism towards the whistleblower, who is probably a CIA employee.
So he’s basically picking a fight with the CIA – yet another strategic blunder.
Where did Trump learn English? Obviously he can’t tell an apostrophe from a hyphen or a “d” from a “t” but the Urban Dictionary gives a couple of related definitions of “liddle” that would apply to him;”the side effect of taking too much adderall, causing one to flip upside down, masturbate booty raise high, squishing the wall, while yodeling.”
However his use of the apostrophe is baffling (and would be just as baffling if it were a hyphen). It must be one of the finer points of English grammar that I didn’t study in school. I must dig out my Fowler.
I’ve long suspected he gets his orthography from his twitter feed, which of course is full of assorted conspiracy nuts and Russian trolls.
That very well could be the case. I consulted a handbook of rhetorical terms to find a word that describes that particular howler but could find none that fit the bill. Cacozelia and malapropism don’t capture the insanity of his imaginary grammar.
Maybe he’s trying to communicate to his base in “Li’l Abner”-speak, but isn’t fluent in bumpkin-ese, either.
Funny that Li’l Abner and his language were invented by a Jewish guy from New Haven.
As for his base, this ‘ is a hyphen. Given that everything he says is true to them, nothing could dissuade them from this conviction.
Oh, I finally got it! The penny finally dropped. I was wondering where the ‘hyphen’ was.
Thanks.
cr
When Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated Trump seemed quite fascinated by the whole thing.
Ever since then, the clock has been ticking.
I think this is unfair, Jerry … to Tony Soprano.
He, at least, could show some redeeming humanity from time to time.
Every day it gets more bizarre and unbelievable that this is the leader of the United States.
…and is supposed to be leader of the free world. 😏
‘Leader of the free world’ is (as we all know) an unofficial courtesy title probably more believed in within the USA than overseas. Past glories… Other countries generally seem to go along with this as a courtesy, more notably when the President is acting with some acceptable credibility.
At the moment, given your Orange Clown’s stance on everything from climate change to trade wars, he would appear to be a leader with no followers. I rather doubt whether anyone (outside a percentage of Republicans) would currently grant him that title.
Whoever succeeds tRump is going to have a lot of hard work to do to regain that former position, if they want it used other than ironically…
cr
The title probably originated in WWII.
Let’s start the countdown until Trump rolls Rudy G under the bus on the Ukrainian One deal.
Has anyone warned Attorney General William Barr that the real Roy Cohn died in ignominy? (Which, chrissakes, is almost as bad as dying in Schenectady.)
A documentary came out last week that I mentioned on a previous thread: Where’s My Roy Cohn?. I doubt Barr will die of complications from AIDS…er, I mean, liver cancer…but I doubt he’ll escape ignominy.
Cohn beat the rap on three federal indictments. There aren’t many who’ve pulled that hat-trick.
Still, New York state disbarred him on his deathbed.
Here’s my Roy Chon!
On Friday (it’s still Friday here but barely) the FBI released over 700 pages of documents relating to Cohn https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/27/fbi-releases-file-on-trumps-late-lawyer-roy-cohn.html. I must have a look at them.
Stephen Miller?
I knew from the get-go that Our President didn’t know shit from Shinola or his ass from a hole in the ground — but not knowing a hyphen from an apostrophe?!
At long last, sir, have you left no sense of decency?
Ummm – I thought his twitterings were considered Presidential documents so that deleting them is illegal.
Rock bottom will be attempting to prove his “shoot someone on Fifth Ave.” hypothesis.
LOL Someone just needs to dare him, he seems to not be able to withstand peer pressure.
I can’t wait for him to be gone. What a damn moron.
It must be a real moral booster to hear this guy say things like, Whoever told this whistleblower any of this stuff is like a spy, a traitor. We use to know what to do with spies and traitors. Such an idiot, he thinks our own security people are spies for telling on American wrong doing. You do not get anymore twisted than this. I feel for all those in our government in security that must work for this clown.
The fact that tweet came from the President of the USA is, or would be in any other time, jaw-dropping. Frankly unbelievable.
If shown that tweet 8 years ago and told “this will be tweeted from the President in the future” it would be impossible to believe. You’d presume it was some 6th-grader joke.
Trump has turned the White House in to some Bizarro-world.
Cripes, there’s no amount of complaining and hair-pulling bafflement about Trump that hasn’t been echoed already thousand times by other normal people.
Someone repeating the 6th grade for the third time, maybe.
He also managed to misspell “describing.”
Breaking news from WaPo: At that weird May 2017 meeting Trump had in the Oval Office with the two Sergeys (Lavrov and Kislyak) the day after he fired FBI director James Comey — the one where the Russian media was invited in, but the US media excluded; the one where he said he had “taken the heat off” the Russia investigation by firing Comey — Trump told the two Russians he wasn’t concerned about Russian interference in the 2016 election. The transcript of that meeting is one of the ones locked-up in the White House’s top-secret, code-word classified database.
Un-freakin’-believable. The damn is bursting.
… “media” were …
“dam”
Damn the dam! Full steam ahead! I guess if this comes before the committee, he’ll lose a few republican votes in the Senate. But, he still wins, I think.
Trump’s special envoy to the Ukraine, Kurt Volker, whose name is all over the whistleblower’s report as facilitating Rudy Giuliani’s contacts with Ukraine, just up and resigned tonight, too.
Time to “cry ‘havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war.”
Interesting. Did he jump? Or was he pushed. Is this then going to exonerate Giuliani? I’m thinking it doesn’t help anyone except Adam Schiff. Is another shakeup of the cabinet in store – to distract from the impeachment? Or, maybe a quick war with Iran.
This is what The Daily Beast has to say about Volker’s resignation https://www.thedailybeast.com/us-special-envoy-to-ukraine-kurt-volker-resigns-after-giuliani-implicates-him-in-trump-ukraine-mess-report?ref=home.
We’ll soon know more, but again, Rudia has something to do with it. (Rudia is Giuliani’s drag queen name.)
Giuliani used some message Volker sent him to ‘prove’ that he really did have State Dept. authorization to stick his nose in this pile of stercoraceous matter, and he called himself a ‘whistleblower’. We’ll know more, soon, but given this NYT article https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/27/us/politics/volker-ukraine-resigns.html, I’m inclined to give Volker the benefit of the doubt. I think he knew that he had to the hell outta Dodge before sundown, but that’s a provisional statement.
Giuliani has become a maniac. With friends like that…..
Thanks for the new word, Jenny: stercoaceous😬
Thanks for the background. Wait and see. Rudia? 😎
“Rudia” is Rudy’s nom de drag. Years ago, he and The Donald made a spoof video in which Giuliani was in drag (the stuff of nightmares) and Trump “motorboats” him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9Kp_eHMQ7s
From Business Insider:”Giuliani made a splash several times dressing as “Rudia” — his drag alter-ego — for the event. (A 1997 report from The New York Times of Rudia’s first outing described the spectators as ‘thunderstruck.’)”
I remember that. At the time, as I recall, tRump was already regarded as a thug, while Giuliani was doing very well in public opinion. The attempt to smooch foreshadows a career I can’t stand to dwell upon.
I know I will be thought of as crazed for stating thus.
By w e i t readers. Some, that is. Likely, many.
And.
I don’t give one shite. Unapologetically.
THE r e a s o n we have this person as
the president
of our beloved country is … … simply
woman – hating.
It will happen again come 03 November y2020.
Wanna wager me ?
Blue
I r e a ll y like y our erra tic use of spac-ing.it gives your p o s t a kind of po e tic qual-ity like a hai ku or … somet hing
jP
03 November y2020 is, to the day,
… … one century’s time … …
from 02 November y1920.
Things have NOT changed. Have they ?
AND they will not. Mr Trump will be re – elected.
Blue
You have a fair and dire prediction.
Do you have any strategy to perhaps curtail said prediction? I like to involve myself and give money where I can. Small deeds, but helps my esteem. I hope you at least try to stem your future’s dire predictions into positive offense. We are in dire need of offense against the pressures of corporate dominance (fascism); the trenches are friends to no one. Peace.
Sweet what you provide, Mr Mark R, especially
in re “positive offense” and do I have any.
I do. But it will not happen. IF from
Mr Hitchens’ beseeching of it, it has not
happened, then it certainly is not going
to occur from My Begging for it: give women
their due. As of thus posted yesterday:
http://www.twitter.com/saffroncobra/status/1177275040498212864 . We will take THE care of
the Planet. We will. Everywhere. The World
Over … … Mr Hitchens sought. Has not
happened. And will not.
Just this morning’s news: Hundreds of
shackled children finally found and rescued
in Nigeria. In the 21st Century of y2019,
with science and technology, there are
STILL so very many evil men conducting
such barbarism ?! Truly ? Well then,
we are fucked. Cuz what Mr Hitchens and
I want ? .THAT. does not count next to …
… such. Does it ?
I myself have still the hard, hard work
of grieving to get done. I figure I shall
simply hang out for the next five years’ time
… … as a reclusive hermitess … …
doing … … that work. Then, when Mr Trump
is out ( given that he has not done away with
the eight – year limit by y2025 ! ), I shall
resurface. Regroup and reconsider. Offenses.
Positive ones. Then.
I am sorry, Mr Mark R. I am. There is
nothing to be done. Now.
Blue
y2025 ?
Harkens on to y2525, does it not ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N03Uoj6p9QA
Blue
Sadly, I think you may be partially right. If Warren wins the primary (or another woman, but she’s leading right now so I’ll use her as the example), I think there’s going to be a significant fraction of the electorate that won’t vote for her purely out of sexism.
But the Dems should still nominate their best candidate, whomever that may be and damn the torpedoes. For two reasons. First, because you never know, and frankly Trump’s popularity has never even hit 50%. Second, because gay, female, black…with every such major candidate, it gets more normal and that bias reduces. Who knows, maybe in a few more election cycles, we may be as tolerant of non-white-male candidates as the rest of the western world.
There’s definitely a significant anti-woman bias in this game (POTUS election), but remember, in the last election, a women got the most votes.
One of the USA’s biggest problems is that the person that gets the most votes doesn’t necessarily win. Think about where we’d be our system didn’t have that design flaw.
I see some are still at it late tonight. I want to say one more thing and then shut up for now. For many months I have maintained this guy was not going to get reelected, maybe not even make it to the next election. Most of the comments I received or read here say I was wrong and did not know what I was talking about. All the old pundit talk that we here everywhere. So look where we are now.
I will predict this president is now done, you can stick the fork in him. He will not make it to the next election. The only thing to know know is how does he leave. He can either do the smart thing and take that helicopter ride, just like Nixon. Or he can hang around for the trial. I think he goes in the helicopter and the Senate, the thing you have been so afraid of all this time will be irrelevant.
sorry for the bad spell. know now.
I still hold that he will resign. Let’s see if he will. But shhhhh you’re going to hex it.
Wouldn’t shock me to see Donald Trump eventually come to a Roberto Duran-style “no mas” moment by walking away if the flood waters continue to rise.
What he’ll need is a face-saving excuse — maybe, that he’s tired of doing all the winning for ungrateful Americans and no longer wants to pass up the opportunities he has to make tens, or even hundreds, of billions of dollars for himself.
He’d try to pardon himself, and his whole crooked clan, before he goes.
Things like the Trump presidency tend to come apart slowly, bit by bit, at first, then, suddenly, all at once.
Bit by bit, crack by crack, until the dam bursts and the floodwaters spill.
It happened that way with Mr Nixon, so there is some hope it may happen with Mr Trump indeed.
I think in the course of just the past week, we’ve essentially done the equivalent of jump from 1973 to 1974 in the Nixon Watergate saga.
I think his excuse would be the deep state prevented him from making meaningful change and that he tried but their corruption was too much so they were forcing him out.
Sub
Mr Trump always accuses his opponents of what he’s guilty of himself. That is his modus operandi.
Now that he’s accusing his opponent of being a spy, we must seriously consider the possibility that he is, not just ‘Putin’s poodle’, but an actual spy.
I kinda doubt it.
Putin strikes me as a pretty canny politician. Would anyone in their right mind rely on DT to (a) report anything accurately and reliably and (b) remember to always keep their mouth shut about it?
One might weasel or coax bits of information out of Trump from time to time (under the impression he was ‘deal making’) but one would never, ever formally employ him.
cr
He’s been a pretty effective (unpaid?) employee of Putin, actually. I don’t see how Vladimir could have expected anything more in his wildest dreams.
Spy, mole, traitor, asset. We all know Mr Trump’s choice of words is poor. The role he ascribes to the whistleblower would indeed be closer to an asset or mole than an actual ‘spy’. We have to meet Mr Trump on his terms here (accusing of what he’s guilty of himself).
I also note he actually did give classified info to Russian operators, in the WH, of all places.
Things do seem to keep coming back to Russia, even though Trump and the GOP were convinced they’d managed to wriggle free of that accusation.
Why is Trump reading off a laundry list of Russian requirements for the Ukrainian president to fulfil? Why is he pushing so hard for Russia to be let off the hook re. interference?
The suspicion is that he’s doing it so that the Russian sanctions can be lifted. Why is he still so desperate to help Russia that he’d bring it up in a meeting with Ukraine and then go all-out to cover it up?
Does anyone really, seriously think that he’s been cleared of collusion? Sure, they didn’t find a smoking gun…but that’s no wonder, given he apparently rips up every piece of communique he receives. The guy’s a crook. He’s good at this.
He hatched a desperate harebrained scheme to help with the next election, got caught, and unknowingly confessed to a crime. He’s not that good at this.
I don’t buy that Trump is a “spy.” It would not surprise me at all, however, to find out the Russians consider him an “asset” — someone over whom they can exercise undue influence. That would explain why Putin and the Russians went to such lengths to help him get elected. And it would account for Trump’s otherwise inexplicable deference to Vladimir Putin and the Russian international agenda.
Trump’s compromised position vis-à-vis Putin may stem from Trump’s financial entanglements with Russian oligarchs — which would explain why he is desperate to keep his tax returns and Deutsche Bank records secret. It would also explain some of Trump’s more outré financial dealings, such as his sale of a Florida mansion to an oligarch for a multiple of its market value, his sale of numerous Trump condominiums to wealthy Russians, and his purchase of several pricey, money-hemorrhaging golf resorts, for cash, at a time when Trump lacked the visible financial wherewithal to afford them.
You’re very likely correct. Trump lacks the self control to be an actual spy. But he makes a perfect asset for Russian intelligence services.
Exactly.
I have slept well several nights in a row realizing that the White House is in chaos and that many of the principals involved in the destruction of our democracy may soon get their comeuppance.
Hopefully true, but past history does not make this outcome at all certain.
Very sorry I missed the opening of this thread…hilarious stuff.
…And I would defend Tony Soprano from the calumny of the Trump comparison. Tony did some bad, murdery things, sure, but he cared about his family a great deal, and was wise enough to know that appreciating the little things in life is what gives it meaning. Can you imagine Trump saying something like that? And even though Tony was embarrassed by his son he never hid him away like Trump does with Tiffany(apparently because she’s too fat).
Frankly, all of the characters in The Sopranos are more genuine and human than the characters in Trumpworld, because The Sopranos was created by clever, human individuals, while Trumpworld was created by nasty, ugly moral cretins.
Probably so, Saul, but Richie Aprile and Ralphie Cifaretto mighta fit right in to Trumpworld. 🙂
Well, Ralphie certainly had one thing in common with Trump – although it only came to light when they were disposing of his body, don’t know if you remember…
Richie was just pure poison, one of the more two-dimensional characters…so yeah, he’d have fit into Trumpworld pretty well.
…Whenever people moan about Americans culture I point them to the Sopranos and tell them to come back once they’ve imbibed it. The Simpsons, Seinfeld and The Sopranos; no country responsible for such greatness can ever be derailed by someone as poxy as Trump.
Along with the three greats you mentioned, I’d like to add The Wire.
Indeed, The Wire gets my vote as the best dramatic series ever to grace a tv, though The Sopranos was the game-changer, showing what could be done with the medium.
I tried, tried for quite a while, to get into The Wire, but I found it often mind-numbing. I enjoyed the second and the fourth seasons, but I lost interest and never watched the final season(which is apparently a bit of a mess).
I can see why it’s admired – its sweep is huge. But it’s more of a _journalistic_ enterprise than The Sopranos, more interested in laying out the facts for you piece-by-piece, in reporting.
The Sopranos is less interested in telling a story(really, nothing much happens over its run, nothing you can really point to as an arc) and more interested in people, and the beauty and poetry and mystery of their most intense moments. It’s much more subtle in my opinion, stranger and richer. And it has the greatest soundtrack of anything on TV ever. (Full stop. That one’s not up for debate.)
The Wire is more about the big socio-political systems that govern us; The Sopranos is more about people themselves.
And they’re both brutally honest about the unlikelihood of change; The Wire suggest the systems don’t change no matter how hard we try to change them – The Sopranos suggests that people don’t change, no matter how hard they try to.
LOved both shows.
@SST:
The Wire was as densely plotted as a Russian novel — it was, in a sense, American teevee’s Dostoevsky.
The Sopranos, OTOH, was Shakespearean. Not top-shelf Shakespeare, maybe, not Hamlet or Macbeth or Lear. But second-level Shakespeare, like Anthony and Carmela, er, I mean, Antony and Cleopatra. 🙂
…and perhaps Breaking Bad…
Love BB too. I thought it was good the first time around, but then I watched it all again a few months later with someone else and it improved significantly. Quite looking forward to the Netflix spin-off movie too. I was watching Better Call Saul for a while too but sort of lost interest in season 3.
In TV drama terms the UK has nothing(that I can think of) that comes within a hundred miles of America’s best stuff from the last two decades. We have Line Of Duty, which is excellent, but we don’t really have the ambition that American TV has. UK drama all feels so parochial and lily-livered by comparison.
Yeah, BB needs to be watched at least twice imo. BCS isn’t as good, but I still enjoy it. It actually gets better and the last season they delve into how Gus built his enterprise/drug lab and his relationship with Salamanca. Maybe next season they’ll have a cameo with Heisenberg…the timeline is catching up.
Re. UK drama, I enjoyed Life on Mars and Downton Abbey is one of my all time favorite shows…not to mention BBC’s Sherlock, Cumberbatch and Freeman make the perfect Sherlock and Watson. I haven’t checked out Line of Duty, now I will.
I see your point regarding The Wire, though I still regard it as one of the best TV shows, esp. in that genre.
OMG the poor German guy in the last episode. I love BCS. I really want to find out what happens with Kim.
Mike is such a wonderful character! I have never been crazy about Kim, or somehow any of the female characters in BB or BCD,
I like a lot of the females. Jesse’s girlfriend, Skyler’s sister, Saul’s secretary, Gus’s contact for storage.
Loved Jesse. I generally like a lot of female characters, but not in these shows. Loved Carmela S.and the women in The Wire.
Yeah, Gus’s contact (German?) was kind of interesting.
Yeah, that poor guy, I actually didn’t think Mike had it in him. Kim Wexler is such a great character; I too wonder how she’ll end up.
I think this is where you see how Mike becomes purely about the job. You see him like that in Breaking Bad but here it’s the first time you see it. He’s always as kind as he can be under the circumstances though.
Breaking Bad was really good- Saul OK – and really liked Line of Duty.
And Tony really cared about Christopher’s girlfriend’s f**cking dog.
A strategy for exposing Trump: Keep making fun of him, giving him more opportunities to expose his weakness and ignorance. This should, hopefully, continue to reveal his deficiencies to voters.
Indeed, I see late night television (is TV still a thing?) comedians as some of the best weapons in the anti-tRump arsenal.
Well, I can’t complain that this discussion is not lively enough.
I don’t think civics is being taught properly, regarding things like the electoral college. I cannot argue that it seems fair that a popular vote would work in presidential elections. But seems fair and is fair are not always the same thing.
The entire government only functions peacefully because the vast majority of the citizenry have faith that their vote and voice counts.
Without the electoral college or some similar system, everyone’s vote would probably be counted, but people out here would realize that their vote is only symbolic, as they will always be outnumbered. The sheep may be allowed to vote for the dinner choice, but the two wolves will always get to decide.
“make the case to a farmer in the central valley of California why his or her vote for president should count for only 28% as much as the vote cast by some city-slicker in Cheyenne, Wyoming.”
Interesting perspective. Right now, I am writing this from the foreman’s apartment on the ranch. There is a river about 60 feet away from me right now, formed from snowmelt higher on our property. Your California farmer three states away has managed through lobbying to be entitled to a significant portion of that water that, as I mentioned, fell as snow on our property last winter. I don’t think Californians can generally complain that they lack representation in policy decisions.
‘…but people out here would realize that their vote is only symbolic, as they will always be outnumbered.’
That happens in the electoral college as well, does it not? Republicans in some blue states don’t get much say.
I think a close study of US civics reveals that the electoral college today is not functioning in the manner that the founders envisioned. It’s current functioning is more an accumulation of happenstance over the last two-and-a-half centuries.
All I’m saying is that, if we are to keep the electoral college as a US institution, let’s have a wide-open, vigorous public discourse on the optimal way of apportioning those electoral votes — that is, an open discourse regarding which citizens deserve to have their votes count for more than others.
I also think the interests of citizens in low-population states are more than adequately protected by the undemocratic nature of the US senate. As it stands, half of all senators represent something less than 20% of the US population. It’s probably time for an open discourse regarding that disequilibrium, too, though the two-senators-per-state apportionment is so deeply entrenched in Article 5 of the US constitution that the chances of ever changing it seem nil.
Nevertheless, if this nation is to remain true to its founding principles — including the founders’ enmity for the taxation of citizens without adequate legislative representation — statehood should be extended to the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. If there’s a principled, non-partisan argument against it, I haven’t heard it yet.
Besides the basic unfairness enabled by the electoral college, another detrimental byproduct of it is the notorious swing state.
Candidates must tailor their platforms to cater to a handful of states, but even worse is incumbent candidates are compelled to tailor their policy to cater to critical states. (Conservely, Trump can crap on California with minimal political penalty.)
The EC is clearly a design flaw that needs to be corrected.
After reading your comment, I went back and read Federalist Papers #10 of 1787, where Madison expands on how majority rule can trample minority rights. And I do believe that the founders were more convinced that the purpose of good government was more in securing the rights of the individual than making sure everything was perfectly fair.
Taxation without representation- DC has three electors. Residents of Puerto Rico do not pay income tax, unless they are US government employees.
Sadly, Madison also wrote vaguely in Federalist #43 that the reason for the seat of Federal government to be independent of the authority of any state “carries its own evidence with it.”
There wax no tax on the colonists’ income at the time of the American Revolution; any impost, tariff, or fee suffices.
And your reference to Madison’s Federalist #43 proves too much. Taken to its logical end, it would mean that the District of Columbia should have no votes in the electoral college or a (non-voting) delegate to the House of Representatives, either — or do you favor stripping them of those as well?
Is there some basis in logic (rather than a vague allusion in what is essentially our Constitutional Talmud or Hadith) that justifies denying those US citizens representation in the United States senate?
Also, Max, how does holding an election where the candidate who get the most votes actually wins deny any individual a cognizable right? Please explain.
When we think he can go no lower, he does. Just wait.