You Can't Make This Stuff Up -- 2016 Republican National Convention Open Thread

by wj

The anti-Trump forces have failed in their attempt to force a roll call vote on the convention rules. Featured during the attempt: the person chairing the convention up and walked off the stage for 10 minutes. Didn't bother to try to gavel things back into order. Just left.

Just caught on the radio, this from a delegate on the whole roll call vote effort: "Trump is our nominee. We should just do it, without messing around with rules or anything." Because why should rules, whether Rules of Order or any other kind, be given any notice when what is important is doing what we want? Good to know.

Comments

[Ugh]

TPM says it seems there are some shenanigans going on to avoid a roll call vote.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

Yes, because the "bound delegates" are not bound to vote a particular way on a rules question, so they want to raise a motion "unbind all delegates".

And unless it's a roll-call vote the Chair can just say "too bad, you lose", no matter what the actual tally. Which is exactly what happened.

I think the NeverTrumpers were going to lose anyway, but it seems that Ryan and the GOPe didn't want to take any chances.

[cleek]

i'm a big fan of Melania's blatant plagiarism. classy!

[hairshirthedonist]

Speaking of "you can't make this stuff up," WTF is with this plagiarism thing? It's weird as cat sh1t.

[hairshirthedonist]

cleek!

[cleek]

it's like they think the whole country is as dumb as the typical Trump supporter.

[hairshirthedonist]

it's like they think the whole country is as dumb as the typical Trump supporter.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

Not JUST plagiarism, but also rickrolling, it seems.

Makes you wonder, if at the end of the con, Trump just says "PUNKED!" and drops the mic. Sounds plausible.

[Countme-In]

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/07/melania-trump-stole-part-her-convention-speech-michelle-obama

Happily, Melania vetoed Trump's peoples' suggestion that she give her speech in blackface while shucking corn.

Dr. Ben Carson advised her to "just be an as*hole like the rest of us. It'll kill."

[cleek]

that had to be deliberate sabotage by the speech writer. steal stuff about the importance of hard work from a self-made black woman and give it to the imported 3rd trophy wife of a racist huckster ?

[Ugh]

Trump is supposed to say "The Aristocrats" and then drop the mic, per John Cole.

Scott Baio was there to give everyone pink-eye.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzbSF2Tvl3U

David Kurtz:

The irony of the Melania Trump plagiarism is that she was the only element of Monday night's low-rent infomercial tableau that wasn't saturated in violence, revanchism, Dolchstoss myth-making, and darkness -- but it was tainted, too.

[Countme-In]

Immediately after the interview, Christie shut down all the bridges Lauer might have ridden in on, and for good measure, set the Cuyahoga River on fire with a single seismic lit fart from his ample, corrupt, Republican backside.

http://www.eschatonblog.com/2016/07/you-didnt-build-that.html

[Countme-In]

Let's keep in mind that Trump et al can win this thing based on the very dumbass incompetence they displayed last night, which close to 49% of the pathetic electorate now identify as their birthright over and above any snooty, Ivy League elitism any of the rest of us, including the three traditional Republicans left in the country, might lay claim to.

Their victimization is their victory.

The worse they look and do, the more they are sorely victimized by our politically incorrect criticism of their behavior and the angrier and more armed his supporters become.

If we were Jews in 1937 Germany, we wouldn't be making eye contact with the jackbooted Nazis who were making us shovel snow off the sidewalks, would we, for fear they would take it as a challenge to their brutal mano on mano dominance born of bullshit victimhood, and then really put it to us.

Nevertheless, carry on.

[Countme-In]

Let's keep in mind that Trump et al can win this thing based on the very dumbass incompetence they displayed last night, which close to 49% of the pathetic electorate now identify as their birthright over and above any snooty, Ivy League elitism any of the rest of us, including the three traditional Republicans left in the country, might lay claim to.

Their victimization is their victory.

The worse they look and do, the more they are sorely victimized by our politically incorrect criticism of their behavior and the angrier and more armed his supporters become.

If we were Jews in 1937 Germany, we wouldn't be making eye contact with the jackbooted Nazis who were making us shovel snow off the sidewalks, would we, for fear they would take it as a challenge to their brutal mano on mano dominance born of bullshit victimhood, and then really put it to us.

Nevertheless, carry on.

[hairshirthedonist]

Self-plagiarism is the worst.

[Countme-In]

My second 10:48 AM comment bears absolutely no similarity in word, tone, or meaning to my first 10:48 AM comment.

I deny any inference you may be suggesting.

I'll concede the two side by side are more like the first two lyrics to a rhythm and blues song, the first line repeated, but wearily and without hope that anyone heard me the first time.

You know what I'm saying?

[Countme-In]

If you pop over to cleek's joint, he has more on the pattern emerging via a vis Trump looking within the soul of the boy sitting next to him so he could cheat on his metaphysics exam.

[wj]

WTF is with this plagiarism thing?
...
it's like they think the whole country is as dumb as the typical Trump supporter.

Well, they can be certain that their supporters will look at any suggestion that Melania** plagerized from Michelle and instantly react that it's a fraud by the elites. In short, they won't believe the fact, because that's not what they do.

As for the rest of the country, I'm not sure Trump really accepts that we won't buy it, too. After all, he managed to scam the majority of the Republican Party in the primaries. When everybody kept saying he couldn't. So who's to say he can't do the same for the general election?

[Slartibartfast]

I am a member of no organized political party.

[bobbyp]

Yeah. I see stuff from the NOPP all the time. Hard to tell where they're coming from at times.

[bobbyp]

On the other hand, there is the Asshole Party. There is no doubt about where they're coming from.

[Countme-In]

I don't have a TV, so I'm always a little late to this stuff:

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2016/07/christmas-in-july.html

So I also missed completely the Republican opening funnyman act, as a unit of the Ohio Minutemen traipsed (I thought only liberals traipsed; maybe we sashay now) through the streets brandishing weapons of war.

[Countme-In]

Things go viral:

https://www.statnews.com/2016/07/19/norovirus-republican-convention-cleveland/

Now the audience can vomit back at the speakers.

[Countme-In]

Get a gander at Trump's congratulatory tweet to Melania (I'd like to brainya, but I'll abstainya) for her speech last night side by side and word for word next to Barack Obama's tweet to Michelle at the 2012 Democratic convention.

Scroll down to see it.

http://juanitajean.com/melania-loves-michelle/

WTF is bizarro going on?

What are Trump and his people up to?

It's going to be even more sidesplitting when we find out than wj's proffered theory that Trump is working for Putin and the Russians.

It's like the Seinfeld show when Elaine starts hanging out with BizarroWorld Jerry, Kramer, and George.

[Slartibartfast]

In a contest between Steve King, Philip Bump, Chris Hayes and Charlie Pierce to see who can out-stupid the rest, that is an accomplishment of some...note.

It even out-distanced Hayes' assertion that "if you're looking at the ledger of Western civilization, for every flourishing democracy, you have Hitler and Stalin as well". For every one. That's a lot of Hitlers and Stalins.

That's some weapons-grade stupidity on display, there. Remember, though, that he represents a lot of stupid back home.

[bobbyp]

As the wreckage of the GOP convention unfolds, you might want to peruse a pretty good primer on how so-called free trade has died.

This is an issue that has caught on - on both sides of the political aisle.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

"As the wreckage of the GOP convention unfolds,"...with an outbreak of norovirus, it seems.

Or maybe Obama was keeping a special vial of Ebola, just for the GOP!

[CharlesWT]

The US would be better off to instigate unilateral free trade. But, if it did that, individuals and institutions inside and outside the country would scream bloody murder.

[Matt McIrvin]

Get a gander at Trump's congratulatory tweet to Melania (I'd like to brainya, but I'll abstainya) for her speech last night side by side and word for word next to Barack Obama's tweet to Michelle at the 2012 Democratic convention.

That tweet was a fake, wasn't it? I think it was just somebody's joke.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

CharlesWT: that sounds like policy that the UK followed in the late 19th century. One problem: if you unilaterally remove tariffs/barriers, you lose all negotiating leverage to get others to lower their barriers.

[Countme-In]

Matt:

Ah, good to hear humor can still outrun reality
on occasion.

[CharlesWT]

In the long term, tariffs/barriers are likely to harm the country setting them more than the countries that wish to trade with it.

In the US, price supports/barriers for sugar cost consumers billions of dollars a year while make a few people in Florida and elsewhere very rich.

And, in the case of sugar, the external harm is pretty high to. A lot of people in the Caribbean islands, Central and South America would be living much better lives if they could sale sugar to the US at free market rates.

On the other hand, just about everybody would be better off consuming less sugar and other sweeteners.

[Slartibartfast]

Maybe if we get Trump revved up that most sugar subsidies are going to guys with furrin-sounding last names like Fanjul, we can finally get rid of them. The subsidies, I mean.

But that'd require that he win, first, and that's not something I look forward to.

[Slartibartfast]

...and because sugar prices are elevated, HFCS has stepped in as a cheaper alternative.

It's a cascade failure.

[Countme-In]

Well, he'd have to get rid of guys with furrin-sounding names like Rubio too, if he expects to make any headway against big sugar.

[Ugh]

This is your shit show Paul Ryan, but somehow the press is not going to make you eat it.

[wj]

I'm trying to remember if there has ever in my lifetime been a previous case where the nominee left town, and wasn't present on the day that he was actually nominated by the convention.

Yes, transportation is faster and communications are better than ever. But still, to just up and leave town. Weird.

[wonkie]

Trump left town?

Scott Whathisface tweeted that Hillary is a c**t.

Melania made a truly memorable speech, dispelling any attempt to sell her as more than arm candy.

The chair actually left the podium for over five minutes while the delegates yelled at each other.

ONe of Trump's fundraisers ahs quit, made over how the roll call vote was handled.

One of the speakers said Obama is a Muslim (Cotton?).

Even the corporate media isn't buying that poor lady's claim that Hillary killed her son.

No one is dead yet. I was expecting violence, and it hasn't happened. Yet.

So, so far I'd have to say I have been enjoying the convention. But I'm assuming that the convention give Clinton a bump. I still wish Bernie had gotten the nomination, but CLinton is running a better campaign than she did last time and Trump evidently can't organize his way out of a paper bag.

So I am feeling cautiously optimistic.

I do hope that there is not violence.

[bobbyp]

In the long term, tariffs/barriers are likely to harm the country setting them more than the countries that wish to trade with it.

As a universal rule, this assertion is absolutely not true....cf Japan, S. Korea, China.

But then again, your conception of the "long run" is longer than most. But it is an assumption that needs to be spelled out, not smuggled in to the discussion as a "given".

and....SAUL ALINSKY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[bobbyp]

So with NAFTA we beat up Mexico to enable us to sell them cheap corn and they, in turn, would kick all their inefficient peasant farmers off their land and send them to labor in the factory system making cheap stuff to export to the USA.

How did that work out for you, free market anti-mexican immigrant conservatives?

[wj]

I'm working on a concept for a new game. The challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to come up with things that you could do if your goal was to stage a convention which would do maximal damage to your general election prospects. You have to include the reason why it would be counterproductive (just to show that, unlike the Trump campaign, you have a clue).

BUT, you are not allowed to include any of the things actually done by the Trump campaign this week. That's what makes it a challenge.

[CharlesWT]

Japan, South Korea and China hardly prove a counterpoint. Japan has been in the economic doldrums for decades. South Korea and the other Asian tigers went through severe economic upheavals in the '90's. And China may implode at any moment.

Why would free marketeers be against immigration?

[russell]

"I'm working on a concept for a new game."

I might have some actor come out and talk to an empty chair.

[wj]

OK Russell, you get half a point. On the basis that not all of the chairs were empty at the actual convention.

[Countme-In]

I, from the great state of WTFistan, am going to nominate the empty chair to lead the country.

Then I'm to sit Grover Norquist's drowned baby in the chair for four years and let the corpse rot in the rain on the front lawn of an empty White House with Walker Percy vines cracking the masonry so the filth among us get a good stinking whiff of their fulfilled desires.

But, I question the premise:

"our goal was to stage a convention which would do maximal damage to your general election prospects."

Being a lout, and surrounding one oneself with louts in order to appeal to the lout element in America .. running roughly at the 44% of the electorate rate at the moment, and said louts fluffed vigorously by the Republican Party for 40 years leading to this moment .. is a game that has worked for Trump et al since he was knee-high to a mass murderer.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-ghostwriter-tells-all

[Nigel]

"The Republicans just nominated the Bluth family..."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/20/donald-trump-is-the-nominee-its-his-republican-party-now/

And the Telegraph is very definitely a conservative newspaper...

[Countme-In]

Lou Holtz ...

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/lou-holtz-immigrants-invading-must-assimilate

... and fuck football too, becomes right wing theocrat vermin Erdogan:

http://www.wlwt.com/national/turkish-president-demands-us-send-rival-cleric-home/40748682

BLack Lives matter needs to gun and ammo up militarily to kill the gummint filth who come after them:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/dan-patrick-investigate-black-lives-matter

That will be the true meaning of the Second Amendment

[Donald]

Rod Dreher drives me nuts sometimes. That disclaimer out of the way, this is a great column with links to other interesting pieces about how the Republican elites deserve Trump. ( I never imagined I'd want to read a piece by Tucker Carlson, but the excerpt from his piece sounds pretty good.)

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/trump-deserved-moment-of-triumph/

[Donald]

Okay, I read the Carlson piece. That wasn't so great, though the potshots at rich people self righteousness rang true.

[Donald]

And even the excerpt was Trump- like in some ways. Note to self-- the enemy of my enemy isn't necessarily my friend.

[Tony P.]

Setting wj's proposed game in the specific context of the current GOP convention:

1) Give a prime time speaking slot to He, Trump's head detective in Hawaii (Hugh Jim Bissell) to reveal his shocking findings about Obama's birth certificate.

2) Bring a 3-foot-tall stack of paper onto the stage to represent He, Trump's tax returns and set it on fire.

3) Buy the rights to every Capitol Steps song about He, Trump going back to at least 1990 and play them as theme music. Or better yet, do that without buying the rights.

I can't find it on line, but the Capitol Steps 1990 (!!) song "No-Trump Bid", sung to the tune of "If I Only Had a Brain", includes such lines as

Oh, I-I-I-I am Donald Trump!
Although I made my wife Ivanna cry,
My three best friends are always standing by.
Their names are Me, Myself, and I.

The New York financial powers
Are a-selling off my towers;
They are things you can obtain.
But I'll still be quite unsubtle
With my last name on the Shuttle.
If you only had my plane ...

Once Ma-a-a-rla said that I
Was the very, very best she ever knew.
And if we do the deal I'd like to do
What I did to her, I'll do to you!

While my debts are liquidating
I promise I'll be mating
With discount beauty queens.
And I'll still be controversial
When I film my next commercial,
In my No Excuses jeans!

Explaining the ways in which these convention stunts would sabotage the campaign (while, and by, firing up The Base) is left as an exercise for Very Serious Persons.

--TP

[Countme-In]

I'll be introducing this as the Trump/RNC Presidential campaign theme song when I sing it at Karaoke tomorrow night:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o39etJFlW7k

[Snarki, child of Loki]

Have the nominee "on a trip, away from the convention" when the actual nomination vote takes place. Then, after the vote, have them connected by video to the Jumbotron.

Except that it turns out that the nominee was in the middle of a Furry & Farm Animal bunga-bunga orgy party when the video camera is turned on, and so distracted that he doesn't notice that the camera is live.

The guys in the control booth are so shocked that they immediately have a seizure, and are too busy twitching on the floor to cut the feed.

Hillary Ensues.

[wj]

Just to offer my own entry:
You could speak in praise of beets (as well as avocados).

For the record, there is only one way to make either one edible: feed them to pigs and make pork out of them.

[hairshirthedonist]

I'm still scared. I know it's too early to say, but Trump's chances of winning are still way too far from zero for me to feel comfortable.

We still have the DNC and debates to be held, not to mention whatever else comes out between now and November, so things could look way better in a few months. But, right now, this situation has me nervous.

I'd put it this way - given where we are right now, I would accept a guaranteed Romney presidency over the possibility of Trump beating Clinton. (Hell, I might take another GWB term in lieu of that. It's that much of a nightmare.)

[hairshirthedonist]

So weird.

[wj]

HSH, you mean because she says of Mrs Trump that "A person she has always liked is Michelle Obama."

Wow! How well will that play with the Republican base?

[hairshirthedonist]

That's one part of the weirdness. But the fact that it happened at all, the incoherence of the response(s) from the campaign - the whole thing is just goofy.

[cleek]

i like the fact that McIver's statement, the one in which she refers to herself as an in-house staff writer for The Trump Organization, is on The Trump Organization's letterhead.

The Trump Organization is Trump's corporation's name. she's an employee of Trump's corp, doing campaign work using the corp's resources.

if we had a functioning Federal Election Commission, this would be something for them to investigate.

[wj]

Well wouldn't Trump Organization be just as much of a person as any other company? So why shouldn't it donate resources to the candidate of its choice?

Now if the resources exceed whatever the donation limits are these days, or if the campaign fails to report them properly, that's a different story. But the next reporting deadline is still a ways in the future.

[jeff]

Taking McIver's statement as true leaves me wondering why it didn't set off any alarm with Mrs. Trump when she pre-read the script?
Being that she knew precisely were those words came from.

[Countme-In]

The black actress Leslie Jones subjected to this racist Republican vermin abuse on Twitter needs to gun and ammo up NRA-wise, unlimited capacity clips, and find these f*ckers and take care of business.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/20/486726291/twitter-permanently-suspends-conservative-writer-for-targeted-abuse

Here's a piece of sh*t Republican as*hole of a different color:

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/07/19/3799606/trump-pastor-partisan-prayer/

He was interviewed in NPR this morning over the phone and he was all chickenshit "er, umm ... well, in the context of, ... the Lord is with me ... my job was to ... blah, horseshit, blah ... Donald believes in the sanctity of marriage .... we are all God's people (no we're not, I am, the Pastor isn't. He's Lucifer's lickspittle) and refused to repeat his threats to me and all liberals on the radio.

I guess it was the wrong venue.

He then got back to the Convention and ate chitlins off Bobby Knight's nutsack before Knight pummeled him with a metal folding chair for being a "boy" and missing the lay-up on Public Radio.

See, the Republican Party, as I've pointed out before, in their politically correct big tent way, seeks out the biggest, violence-threatening, motherfucking, eminently killable, Godsucking, pigfucking, self-aggrandizing, subhuman vermin of every race, creed, color, nationality, and gender and takes them to its hate-filled scum bosum, which then Trump ogles as it bounces by.

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/07/19/3799606/trump-pastor-partisan-prayer/

We need many more guns and killer ammo to save this country.

[russell]

You could speak in praise of beets

Yikes, another red / blue divide?

My wife and I grate raw beets on salads. We love them roasted and dressed with a nice vinaigrette. Shred them up and mix them into potato pancakes.

My wife loves avocado on her burgers.

Pork, of course, is also OK with us. We contain multitudes.

I'm looking forward to the (R) convention, the (D) convention, and the election as a whole, being over and done with. I'm somewhat startled to say that I really don't know who's going to win it. Whoever it is, we'll deal with it, one way or another.

We've had some really, truly, crap Presidents. Just utter rubbish. Somehow we've gotten through it.

Maybe we will this time, too.

It seems to me that the liberal program that held sway from FDR through LBJ, and which continued in a bastardized (in every sense of the word) through Nixon, is kind of played out.

The pragmatic realpolitik liberalism V2.0 from Carter through Clinton and Obama, maybe likewise.

The resurgent conservatism of Reagan and the Bushes, likewise.

Trump, for all of his numerous faults, seems to have hit upon something that has some real energy. I'm not sure he has the ability to channel it in any kind of positive direction, and I'm not sure how much of a positive direction is even there as a potential.

But by god it has some juice.

No matter who wins, it's not going away.

We need to figure this sh*t out.

[bobbyp]

Trump, for all of his numerous faults, seems to have hit upon something that has some real energy.

R.A.C.I.S.M.

We need to figure this sh*t out.

Yup.

[russell]

We need many more guns and killer ammo to save this country.

FWIW, you can count me out on this one. If I have to go shooting people I disagree with to save the country, my choice is to let the country fall by the wayside.

A country that needs its own citizens to kill each other to stay together just might not actually be a country. And yes, I am aware of the civil war. If anything, it might just make my point.

I have friends and family members who think Mexicans are a scourge, who own remarkable arsenals, who are stocking up on dry goods to prepare for whatever the Armageddon of the week is, who are voting for Trump, who are living out whatever strange (to me) right-wing fantasy you can think of.

I am, somehow, still able to sit down and have a meal with them and enjoy myself. Once in a while, I learn something from them. Mostly, I think they're nuts, but I know a lot of nutty people.

I'm not interested in shooting any of them. None of them actually seem to want to shoot me, when it comes right down to it.

I'm sick of guns and talk about guns as any kind of path to helping anything other than, maybe, actual threats of truly imminent physical harm. Is a bear charging you? You want a gun. Politically, as far as I can tell most of the positive changes that have come about in this country have been through primarily peaceful means. Let's stick to that.

The fact that "the other guy does it", even to the degree that is is true, is, to me, not persuasive.

[russell]

R.A.C.I.S.M.

That certainly is a part of it. Folks who think not are, IMO, living in magic pony land.

But, as always, it's not the whole of it.

[wj]

In tonight's amazement, scheduled speaker Ted Cruz
a) manages to totally avoid endorsing Trump,
b) slips in an admonishment to "vote your conscience" in November (thus playing to the meme of the NeverTrump folks), and finally
c) gets booed off the stage.

Definitely a tour d'force performance in this tightly scripted event. And from Trump's expression as he walked onto the stage at the end, he is seriously regretting letting Cruz speak.

Seriously, if someone wrote a novel (or even a short story) with a scene like that, "utterly unbelievable" would be the kindest review it would get.

[cleek]

Trump is such a fool. why on earth would he let Cruz speak?

and millions of people think he has what it takes to run this country.

w.t.f.

[wj]

Maybe he let Cruz speak because he was running out of children and employees..? Just a guess.

[Tony P.]

"Unbelievable" is among He, Trump's favorite adjectives. It often seems more apt than He seems to intend.

As for Russell's assessment that we have survived crappy Presidents before, all I can say is that we know how Nixon's presidency turned out but we will never know how much better (or worse) off we would be if Humphrey had won in 1968. Or what the country and the world would look like now if Gore had been elected in 2000. "Survive" is a low bar.

I say we, the US, dodged a bullet in 2008. For one thing, neither Sotomayor nor Kagan would be Justices of the Supreme Court now and for decades to come if McCain-Palin had won. With apologies for the metaphor, we have to dodge a howitzer shell this year. Our right-wing friends and relatives have to learn to suck it up,

--TP

[russell]

'"Survive" is a low bar.'

with this, I will not argue

[Countme-In]

Shit: Figured out.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/laura-ingraham-called-appearing-nazi-salute-article-1.2719389

Russell, you're a better man than I am.

However, I think your friends and mine "living out whatever strange right-wing fantasy you can think of", are not unlike Aryan Germans who tolerated and did business or who were taught by Jews, or perhaps even dined with Jews, but a few years later were shoveling the latter's gassed bodies into ovens.

I think they are for now fairly docile, but machete-hoarding (at the beck and call of the RMA -Rwandan Machete Association) Hutus, who will at some flash point, ignited by movement rhetoric like trump et al, by which I mean elements of the republican party base going back 40 years, will hack their neighboring Tutsis to pieces.

They remind me of Bosnian Serbs prior to the genocide of Croats and Bosniaks, again egged on by a terrifying political and media rhetoric.

Execute Clinton! Hang Clinton! At a fucking American political convention.

The radical Iranians clerics are at least bipartisan and want Death to all Americans.

[bobbyp]

Politically, as far as I can tell most of the positive changes that have come about in this country have been through primarily peaceful means.

Well, yes and no. The Civil War was hardly peaceful. The labor unrest from 1880 to 1935 was hardly peaceful. The civil rights movement of the 50's and 60's was accompanied by no little amount of violence on both sides.

The big things matter. When there are sharp differences about those big things, violence is a not at all usual solution.

So, the real question is this...are those things of great disagreement these days "big" or not?

Ya' never know.

[Countme-In]

By the way, I take no comfort that a piece of demagogic slime like Ted Cruz seems to be the only filth republican not rolling over for Trump.

Different asshole. Same machetes.

[bobbyp]

Trump is such a fool. why on earth would he let Cruz speak?

Because he needs to gain some sense of 'legitimacy' for his campaign? Because the usual metrics regarding what you need to do to conduct a national campaign do not matter?

Folks have been shorting DJ Trump since late 2015. If this were a real options market, those espousing that opinion would be busted flat.

Flat. Flat. Flat. Busted. Broke. Buried under margin calls.

F*ck this guy, but take him seriously. Our institutionalized past the post way of doing things will default to a horse-race narrative.

god help us.....

[wj]

Why would Trump let Cruz speak? Especially knowing, from the prepared text, that he wouldn't endorse.

Because without Cruz, Pence is the star of tonight's show. And Trump doesn't do co-stars. This way, Pence is an afterthought in tomorrow's news. A bit player carefully put in his place.

[Countme-In]

"Especially knowing, from the prepared text, that he wouldn't endorse."

There are tweets from the press reporting Cruz showed the Trump people one prepared speech, gave another.

Cruz's wife has to be escorted from the Hall afterwards so she wasn't torn to pieces, which, had it happened, would have been a piece of news that would have merely melted into the overall dumpster fire.

What, they murdered someone on the floor of the Convention? Yeah, took her head clean off, but did you see the tits on Laura Ingrahm?

Doesn't matter. Same Hutu tribe. They'll share machetes when the time comes.

[Countme-In]

Jailbird Dinesh D'Snooza's new film is due out.

Something to do with that c*nt Clinton.

Caught a preview on YouTube.

We definitely need immigration reform, especially to weed out right-wing vermin from the Indian sub-Continent.

[CharlesWT]

"As Donald Trump secures the Republican nomination for president, the GOP convention feels more like a wake than a wedding. And what's a wake without a good drinking song?"

The Day the GOP Died (YouTube)

[Nigel]

Don't know if anyone's posted it but there's a splendid photographs of the assembled Trumps (a Trumpery ?) reacting to Lyin' Ted's speech on the Atlantic website:
http://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2016/07/trump-time-capsule-48-third-night-of-the-convention-plus-nato-what-nato/492326/

[Nigel]

I don't have cause to say this often but here's a Jeffrey Goldberg article with which I am in unreserved agreement:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/07/clinton-trump-putin-nato/492332/

Trump recent pronouncements suggest his presidency would involve the US running an international protection racket...

[Donald]

I don't agree with the Goldberg piece. Trump is a maniac, but Goldberg's implicit praise of mainstream Republican foreign policy leaves me cold. The only bright spot in the Trump campaign was his criticism of the invasion of Iraq, which is a fine example of how American exceptionalism plays out in the real world.

[Countme-In]

The Day the GOP Died:

Trump's ghostwriter (The Art Of The Deal), now Judas, quoted this statement, attributed to Alice Roosevelt Longworth about Teddy Roosevelt, to describe Trump: "He wants to be the corpse at every funeral and the bride at every wedding".

[Countme-In]

Meanwhile, the business of America, butchering unarmed black men and women, continues:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/florida-police-shoot-autistic-man-black-caretaker

[cleek]

The only bright spot in the Trump campaign was his criticism of the invasion of Iraq

which only happened after it became acceptable to say such things. before that, he was OK with the invasion.

[wonkie]

I agree with COunt up thread. It is scary to me that the hatemongering that the Republican party ahs been promoting for years has become so open. There used to be a layer of deniability, which showed an understanding that hate mongering is wrong. I can remember having long discussions here with Moe and Charles where they tried to claim that either the Republican party ws not deliberately using hateful lies as a tool, or they would claim that "both sides do it" Implicit in either argument is an understanding that hatemongering is a bad thing. But now it is right out in the open: Hillary is a cutn, she's a criminal, she should be shot, Obama is a Muslim, there's no pretense of respectability at all. I don;t watch the corporate news, but I have gotten the impression that at least some of the "journalists" on the "news" are covering this behavior as bad behavior, not as normal or both sides do it. It would be nice if the corporate media woudl stop covering for rightwing extremism. Since I'm involved in dog rescue, I have hundreds of Facebook Friends and it is depressing how many of them believe the most obviously stupid stuff. One of them post the other day that Obama was going to use the Strong Cities program to institute martial law, back by UN forces. My policy is to do a quick google, get some sane links and respond with polite disagreement. To the credit of these rightwing FB friends, not one has dropped me. But i do not think the stiff they believe should go without contradiction. Silence is consent.

[Countme-In]

A view of what went down with Cruz's speech.

http://washingtonmonthly.com/2016/07/21/i-thought-trump-sabotaged-cruz/

Never mind the bullet points in Cruz's speech regarding his lies about praising government ... of all things, it somehow landed Norquist's baby on the moon ... praising Lincoln ... this crowd would shoot Lincoln in the back of the head again if they got the chance ... and his praise of Civil Rights legislation ... he's honkie vermin to the marrow of his bones.

Cruz and Trump deserve each other.

We are the corpse at their wedding.

[Countme-In]

Will today be the day that we learn filth Sean Hannity and vermin Bill O'Reilly, whose careers in what used to be quaintly referred to as journalism were non-existent when FOX pocked up their options, succumbed to loathsome toad Roger Ailes hopelessly romantic overtures to get their jobs?

[cleek]

I have gotten the impression that at least some of the "journalists" on the "news" are covering this behavior as bad behavior

since i don't watch TV news, my only real mainstream news source is NPR. sometimes they seem to be ever-so-slightly surprised by the tone, but not enough to call it bad. and never enough to call out the obvious lies, of course.

i'm sure they'll find their spines in Philly.

[Slartibartfast]

Trump is such a fool. why on earth would he let Cruz speak?

It's bread and circuses all the way down.

[Slartibartfast]

My wife and I grate raw beets on salads

See? Trump is already making America grate again.

[Nigel]

Goldberg's implicit praise of mainstream Republican foreign policy...
...went over my head - and I don't really care: after all, he is a Republican.
What the article was explicitly about was the rejection of a bipartisan US foreign policy consensus which has been in place since the second world war - a consensus which does not imply approval of, for instance, the Iraq adventure.

[Ugh]

See? Trump is already making America grate again.

Boo.

:-)

[Slartibartfast]

;P

[cleek]

it's hard to beet a good pun

[CharlesWT]

And bad ones should be punished with a beeting...

[Ugh]

This is good stuff.

Cruz in 2020!

[Ugh]

Can Erick Erickson call Trump "Cheeto Jesus" without being struck down by lightening? Apparently.

[hairshirthedonist]

Invoking Cheetos wouldn't be consistent with lightening. Snack foods tend to be fattening.

[wj]

If you are feeling nervous about where Trump is taking the GOP, there's this from George Will. After the way the convention treated Texas' favorite son last night, it looks even more likely.