Women's World Cup Final! U! S! A! (open thread too!)

by Ugh

Let's do this.  For some reason the game is at 11am Eastern instead of 3pm like the semifinals, but whatever.  Need to by me a Rapinoe jersey and walk around by the White House with it on if they win.

Separately - go Coco!  And really, All England Club, this "no middle Sunday play" nonsense has got to stop.  Srsly.  Also, love that the French starts on Sunday, the other tourneys should do that too (though I guess the Australian technically starts on Sunday in the US).

What other less than horrible sh1t is going on out there?

Open thread 

Comments

[sapient]

just to see how Mittens would vote

Turtle would never let it get to a vote.

[bobbyp]

we should try to make it be an effective tool for 2020.

Well, duh. The whole point is what should our Dem leadership do right now? Right now their political judgement is under extreme criticism as it appears to be utterly failing. Their inability to move the political needle is hanging over them. The perception that they lack the willpower to take the MF'er in chief on is killing us.

Sh*t or get off the pot. Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead. You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. Tippecanoe and Tyler too. The time is now.

Get the picture?

One of these days the Dem leadership's bullying hippy punching will come home to roost and the hippies will really stay home, just like the AFL-CIO did in '72. Ya' know, they really could find someplace else to go. Yes...it's possible.

Thanks. Hang in there.

[John D. Thullen]

Each country gets a maximum of two Reconstructions.

Then we deconstruct.

Ya remember when irony, sarcasm, humor, and satire were enough to get us thru the day regarding those funny old dyspeptic conservatives.

It was like when John Calhoun could be dismissed with a bit of funny-talking, homespun cracker surliness in 1854 or when Hitler's funny walk was goofy to point at in 1928, and say, lookit 'at guy, imagine if everyone walked like 'at.

Naah!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCDj5Jbmcv8

Ya know, before it dawned on folks a little late in the day that, golly, we might just have to fucking kill those clowns if this keeps up.

Ya 'member when we had to just tell ourselves gentle stories about conservatives, so as to be nice to them and not hurt their feelings and sully their image of the wide, wide wonderful conservative world:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iweXpwP9QUc

This just in: We're done.

[sapient]

Right now their political judgement is under extreme criticism as it appears to be utterly failing.

It would appear to be failing no matter what they did. They subpoena people, and the subpoenas are ignored. What will happen when the impeachment hearings start? Same. The problem is that Congressional deliberation is boring. Politics is boring. Atrocities are interesting. Democrats are boring. Republicans are interesting.

That's why things "appear" as they do. It's a statement about us, not Democratic leadership. But, sure, I agree. It's time for them to do whatever they can do. It will land like a thud, because it will appear to be meaningless, just like the subpoenas, just like the emoluments litigation, just like the investigations. Thud.

[bobbyp]

If anything the Dems try will "land like a thud"" then (a.) They have not tried/considered everything; or (b.) They have nothing to lose by going to the mattresses.

[Tony P.]

If you're going to be stoned to death for blasphemy anyway, you might as well dance around in your loincloth, kicking up sand and yelling Jehovah! Jehovah!

--TP

[John D. Thullen]

I love that Cleese is 14 feet tall in that scene.

[russell]

Prudence is great, but at some point, you have to quit worrying about the "what if's" and just do stuff.

That time has arrived.

Trump is going to keep flipping the world the bird until somebody yanks his leash. And he does have one, and the House holds the other end of it.

Impeach the SOB.

[John D. Thullen]

America is an innocent girl.

And conservatives just wanna get in her pants:

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/fox-friends-clayton-morris-portugal-lawsuit-fraud

[John D. Thullen]

Abolish all Courts.

What are conservatives going to do, call the fucking government?

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a28400996/conservative-judges-donald-trump-mitch-mcconnell/

[bobbyp]

Turtle would never let it get to a vote.

Could be.

Still not a sufficient reason to oppose initiating impeachment. Do we rally the troops or just sit back and pray for a miracle?

[John D. Thullen]

Kevin Drum counsels Democrats to be "Lincolnesque" in the conservative republican race war.

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/07/liberals-need-to-be-lincolnesque-in-our-latest-race-war/

How'd that work out the last time?

Does he mean we should end up being shot in the head from behind for our troubles?

Does he mean we should put up with General McClellan's dilatory caution in taking the killing directly to the confederate republican enemy as long as Lincoln did, or should we "borrow the Army" sooner and get to it?

I mean, the Confederate Republican subhuman vermin aren't just encamped on the outskirts of Washington D.C. this time around. They hold the city and are raping and pillaging it.

At any rate, can we dispense with the theater-going until all of the traitors, the tens of millions of them among us, are executed, imprisoned, or exiled by brutal force to the countries of their foreign paymasters.

[sapient]

Still not a sufficient reason to oppose initiating impeachment. Do we rally the troops or just sit back and pray for a miracle?

I agree with you, as I said. But what I expect will happen is that the usual suspects will accuse Democrats of failing. Yes, they should proceed even with the consequences being what they will certainly be. I hope they begin impeachment hearings as soon as they return from summer break. That would be a good time.

[cleek]

precedence:

That said Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, unmindful of the high duties of his office and the dignity and proprieties thereof, and of the harmony and courtesies which ought to exist and be maintained between the executive and legislative branches of the government of the United States, designing and intending to set aside the rightful authority and powers of Congress, did attempt to bring into disgrace, ridicule, hatred, contempt and reproach the Congress of the United States, and the several branches thereof, to impair and destroy the regard and respect of all the good people of the United States for the Congress and legislative power thereof, (which all officers of the government ought inviolably to preserve and maintain,) and to excite the odium and resentment of all the good people of the United States against Congress and the laws by it duly and constitutionally enacted; and in pursuance of his said design and intent, openly and publicly, and before divers assemblages of the citizens of the United States convened in divers parts thereof to meet and receive said Andrew Johnson as the Chief Magistrate of the United States, did, on the eighteenth day of August, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-six, and on divers other days and times, as well before as afterward, make and deliver with a loud voice certain intemperate, inflammatory and scandalous harangues, and did therein utter loud threats and bitter menaces as well against Congress as the laws of the United States duly enacted thereby, amid the cries jeers and laughter of the multitudes then assembled and in hearing, which are set forth in the several specifications hereinafter written, in substance and effect, that is to say:...

[Girl from the North Country]

Spookily appropriate....

[Pro Bono]

In general, it seems unreasonable to hold a wife responsible for her husband's sexual misconduct. I suppose Hillary was against it.

Also in general, I'm opposed to dynastic politics. Having a politically influential husband or father is not a good criterion for elected office.

[John D. Thullen]

"Precedence"

Whazzat?

Love,

Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh

John Roberts has furrowed his brow and you can read portents either way in the furrows, but it's merely to build suspense for inevitability.

More likely than the impeachment of p, the case of the impeachment of Andrew Johnson will be reopened by the Federalist Society via a Federal Appeals Court in a state formerly belonging to the Confederate States of America and brought to today's Supreme Court for re-adjudication and Johnson will be cleared on all counts.

The racist conservative majority will cite Johnson's rescission of the "40 Acres and a Mule" program designed as reparations to freed slaves by Abolitionists as evidence that Johnson was on the side of God, Country, and the Constitution of pre-Mandela South Africa.

He will run posthumously as p's Vice Presidential running mate in 2020, Mike Pence having been outed as a cross-dressing karaoke DJ by his wife, merely so that she doesn't have to witness p eating with that mouth of his at state dinners for a second term.

Next up, Brown versus Board of Education will reach the docket once again with Alito and Gorsuch clerks leaking rumors that the two Justices don't consider brown an acceptable color except as a sure ticket to prison, preceded by a whoopin.

After the Andrew Johnson decision, Clarence Thomas' toes will be feted at on the P White House lawn in a game of Catch a Nigger By The Toe And Never Let Him Go with introductory remarks by Leonard Leo, Executive Vice President of the Federalist Society to a guest list consisting of the Proud Boys, Storm Front members, the KKK Grand Dragon, and the Russian Ambassador to the NRA.

p will announce a Presidential Pardon of Bill Cosby at the ceremony for his contributions to roofie science and applications in the field of unconscious nut not mutual affection, and p will name him Superintendent of the newly formed all-black Thurgood Marshall National School District, into which all black students in America will be folded into one single campus out of reach of all public and private bus routes in perpetuity, just to make sure.

Cosby will be asked to use the drinking fountain near the men's washroom off the main Hall.

p, with his usual flair for compassion and least-racist-man in-America chops, will disgrace the memory of Sammy Davis Jr by slaughtering and quartering a mule and mailing one quarter to each of the four dusky representatives who comprise the Squad.

"Don't say I never did anything for you," the attached note on White House stationary will say, "but you are out of luck on the acreage, because all of it is designated for the construction of Trump resorts and golf courses. Any of you girls caddy?"

[John D. Thullen]

"Which 3/5ths of you are American?" the racist, nationalist republican c8nt Conthemalltheway asks a reporter.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/conway-reporter-ethnicity-trump

The couch George Conway is sleeping on will be exhibited at the Smithsonian in a new dedicated wing entitled:"The Phyllis Schlafly Memorial Exhibit For Conservative Husbands Who Aren't Getting Any."

[cleek]

Gerson says what i've been thinking.

The problem, however, is not merely a matter of management. The deeper scandal is this: Trump is trying to make desperate, suffering people the villains of our national story. He compares refugees fleeing repression and violence to snakes. He smears them as rapists and invaders . In his warped moral vision, mercy is a form of national weakness. Kindness and respect are crimes against the state. His approach to nationalism involves slander against the voiceless. It demands further oppression of the oppressed. Trump wants to change not just the policy of our government, but also the character of our country, into something hard, and dark, and dishonorable, and pitiless.

and the GOP is a cult that's more interested in cheering for themselves than facing reality.

[John D. Thullen]

W.E.B. Dubois:

"One cannot ignore the extraordinary fact that a world campaign beginning with the slave trade and ending with the refusal to capitalize the word 'Negro', leading through a passionate defense of slavery by attributing every bestiality to blacks and finally culminating in the evident modern profit which lies in degrading blacks -- all this has unconsciously trained millions of honest, modern men into the belief that black folk are subhuman ... a mass of despicable men; inhuman; at best, laughable; at worst, the meat of mobs and fury."

It is fully conscious now, the training.

[bobbyp]

More from LGM.

[cleek]

take me to the river!

Rep. Al Green says he will file articles of impeachment against Trump tonight, despite pushback from Democratic leaders

The Texas Democrat told The Washington Post that he has notified Democratic leaders of his move to file the articles Tuesday night. Under House rules, Democratic leaders can decide to try to table the impeachment articles, effectively killing them for now; refer them to the House Judiciary Committee for consideration; or allow the vote to proceed as is.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2019/07/16/rep-al-green-says-he-will-file-articles-of-impeachment-against-trump-tonight-despite-pushback-from-democratic-leaders/?utm_term=.fc6d825f9800

[John D. Thullen]

If this morbid feedback loop could be rigged to effect the mass extinction of only all conservatives and republicans among the human race worldwide, I would join those right wing vermin who prevent us from doing a fucking thing to ameliorate or reverse the process of mass Death:

https://www.balloon-juice.com/2019/07/16/acid-tripwire/

As carbon dioxide will not discriminate, however, I'm making a list of who I need to kill to preserve my son's future.

There is much overlap with conservative nationalist racist murderers on my hit list.

Two birds with one stone times about 50 million filth in this country alone adds up to 25 million stones as weapons, though following the NRA's theory of 100-bullet gun clips, I'm gathering 2.5 billion stones to be on the safe side.

Let's check the math from time to time while there is time.

[wj]

Bobby, I'd say that, contra your LGM link, economic anxiety was responsible for Trump's victory. Not that the vast majority of his supporters weren't responding to his racism and white nationalism (followed by some straight-party-ticket tribalism). But those economic anxiety voters were, I believe, the margin of victory.

Certainly they were conned. Trump isn't concerned about the economic situation of anybody but Trump -- although the benefits do lap over on the very rich. The question going forward is a combination of how many of those economic anxiety voters can bring themselves to admit they were conned. Or how well can the Democratic candidate convince them that she has a better plan for them.

[cleek]

any chance that anxiety is driven by the GOP screeching, 24/7, "THE IMMIGRANTS ARE GONNA TAKE YR JERBS!" ?

[wj]

Some of it doubtless is. But I was including those folks in the white nationalist/racist category. By economic anxiety voters I meant those have increasing difficulty making ends meet, and who see the rich getting richer while they cannot see how their children and grandchildren will do better than they did, the way their parents and grandparents did. For all that it was an obvious (at least to us) con job, Trump did at least purport to be speaking to their concerns. While the Democrats failed to articulate their (superior) vision for the problem.

[Tony P.]

He, Trump is a pussy grabber.

Yertl McConnell, Little Lindsey Graham, and Father Pence are just a few of the pussies He has grabbed and caused to melt into his arms -- unlike many of his women victims.

The "economic anxiety" voters who fell for He, Trump are more like Melania Knaus: not bright, but willing to get fucked by a transparent charlatan offering baubles and beads. They won't abandon He, Trump any more than Melania will divorce Him.

Stop -- just stop -- talking as if the "white working class" voted for He, Trump on any other basis than his Archie-Bunker-without-the-decency schtick.

--TP

[wj]

Yeah, but Meliana at least got paid for prostituting herself. Trump's voters have not only not gotten paid, in many cases he's made their economic situation worse.

[cleek]

they don't care about that.

he's telling them that they're winning. and they believe him.

[wj]

he's telling them that they're winning. and they believe him.

But if you're a Midwestern soy bean farmer, and you've got crops rotting in the fields because the Chinese market you spent years building have been closed thanks to Trump's trade wars? Believing you're winning get really difficult.

[Tony P.]

Talked to any Midwestern soybean farmers recently, wj? I admit I haven't, myself.

I freely acknowledge that Midwestern soybean farmers may be smarter and more competent in many ways than I am, so it's easy to assume that if I can see that He, Trump has screwed them then so can they. But then again, I know Massachusetts high-tech engineers who I know are smarter and more capable than me, and they still make excuses for Dear Leader. They'll vote for Him in 2020 because nativist yahooism, if not outright racism, is the foundational creed of their cult.

--TP

[bobbyp]

Believing you're winning get really difficult.

I would hazard a guess that 'owning the libs' is way more important to them.

At the margin, there were a whole host of things that cost Clinton the election (cf Comey, James). The matter of "loss of (white) manufacturing jobs" and the associated economic anxiety has been a trend since the 1980's in the upper midwest. When China was admitted to the WTO, this trend accelerated under GWB. Absent you providing any evidence to the contrary, I'll go with Lemieux as they have discussed this issue at great length on their blog since November, 2016.

[cleek]

Believing you're winning get really difficult.

NPR has done approx 834,321,239 stories about these people. they all love Trump, despite the tariffs. they just love the guy and are willing to eat shit for years if he tells them it's what winners do.

[sapient]

It's nice that the House condemned Trump's racist tweets. I'm really glad they did.

Let's move quickly on though, because everyone knew he was a racist (and his supporters want that), and the past two days have taken national attention away from the camps. It's probably good to have it on record in the House that Trump is a racist, so that whenever anything is brought before a judge [appointed by a Democrat, because R's don't give a flying f***] that thing is on the record.

Jesus, help me. (And really, Jesus, if you're listening, I don't care whether you're God or not.) I am so pissed off.

[wj]

I would hazard a guess that 'owning the libs' is way more important to them.

Important? Certainly. But more important than facing bankruptcy and losing the family farm? No. (Let alone "way more important".)

Tony and cleek may be right that the Cult of Trump will carry all before it. For some. But

[wj]

A lovely map of the pain pill epidemic.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/76-billion-opioid-pills-newly-released-federal-data-unmasks-the-epidemic/2019/07/16/5f29fd62-a73e-11e9-86dd-d7f0e60391e9_story.html

Interesting that they used a reddish color (at least as shown by my browser), since it maps so well to Trump country.

[cleek]

oh, hey, tax cuts!.

as always, the GOP lied about what would happen.

[John D. Thullen]

House leaders complain p's tweets not racist because we assassinated both Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King equally and without discrimination, and we "partied" afterwards for both outside agitators' demises:

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/house-gop-trump-racist-tweet-resolution-condemnation

[John D. Thullen]

"as always, the GOP lied about what would happen."

Worse, they believe their own lying eyes.

Moore, Kudlow, Laffer can't fucking die soon enough.

Too bad our non-existent rule of law sez it has to be of natural causes.

[John D. Thullen]

Women in business and government, let alone housewives, aren't going to be invited anywhere individually, unless of course they agree to jump out of a cake, by these crypto-Christian conservative republican cocksuckers.

The vile horndogs find themselves so attractive to the opposite, contradictory gender that they are afraid the ladies won't be able to help themselves and will beg the filth to grab their lady bits.

I guess the women will have to meet together among themselves in they want to conduct any business in pigfuck America, at which point vermin subhuman male Christian conservatives will accuse them of lesbian tendencies.
Unless his wife is on hand, or has him in hand, Pence can't help "accidentally" dropping his silverware and then diving under the table to fetch it when dining with KellyAnne Conway.

Excuse me, but the FOXNews pussycats are on the tube at the moment and the cameras are pointing right up their skirts.

Gotta run.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r8Ze6eXMVU

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

Roger Ailes is in his over-sized fatboy coffin without pants.

[John D. Thullen]

The link to go with the 7:41am haha.

https://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2019/07/we-live-in-strange-country-chapter-1685.html

Gentleman, my face is up here. Talk to it.

[John D. Thullen]

Remember, with conservatives/republicans, it's always about the plumbing.

[John D. Thullen]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-support-rises-among-republicans-after-racist-tweets-poll?via=newsletter&source=CSAMedition

Gingrich wins again.

Because the vermin was permitted to live to win again.

[cleek]

can we call them deplorable yet?

[novakant]

You can call them what you want, it's just rather unwise for a presidential candidate to do so.

[wj]

Women in business and government, let alone housewives, aren't going to be invited anywhere individually, unless of course they agree to jump out of a cake, by these crypto-Christian conservative republican cocksuckers.

It is odd that their paranoia about possible false accusations has survived the obvious evidence during the past two years that even TRUE accusations don't significantly damage the perp. See Trump, D., Kavanagh, B., et al.

[hairshirthedonist]

The Invisible Hand driven by the pure-snow profit motive.

https://news.google.com/articles/CAIiEA65hkuebcfI4LAluFCrwmgqFggEKg4IACoGCAowl6p7MN-zCTCtvxU?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen

[hairshirthedonist]

A more direct link:

https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/17/opioid-crisis-drug-makers-pills-federal-data-epidemic

[John D. Thullen]

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/kennedy-squad-horsewomen-apocalypse-trump

Directions on a shampoo bottle, hunh, you fucking republican cock ring.

There are reasons for gun sights on sniper rifles, too, Gene.

[JanieM]

Per wj @ 10:41: maybe your snarky edge is meant to imply this, but let's make it explicit: this is just another line of attack in the war to send women back to their place, which is at home cooking meals, providing sex for the lord and master, and having babies.

Great punch line to a letter to the editor in the nearest thing I have to a home-town paper: I get a hoot out of right-wingers who defend individual freedoms unless they involve a bedroom or reproductive choice. (Or think life begins at conception but ends at birth, after which you are on your own.)

[cleek]

it's just rather unwise for a presidential candidate to do so.

i'm not sure that's true any more.

the US is no longer a polite and statesmanly state (if it ever was). "fuck the other guy" is where it's at.

for example: Trump's popularity has gone... up, since his latest outburst.

[Tony P.]

What cleek said.

And about He, Trump's rise in "popularity": if we live among people so deplorable that some of them who disapproved of Him before the racist tweets switched to approving of Him afterward, then I suggest the Dem candidates should start calling them "despicable". Namby-pamby, touchy-feely words like "deplorable" are too kind.

--TP

[sapient]

i'm not sure that's true any more.

It wasn't true at the time. The faux hurt feelings were just another way to stick it to Hillary Clinton.

We need to think and repeat to ourselves this: There is an international conspiracy of oligarchical nationalists who, headed by Russians, have used illegal mob tactics to interfere with elections to bring down liberal democracies throughout the world. Although it's true that the conspirators have exploited existing cultural resentments and divisions, as well as systemic weaknesses, those factors have always been there. The dictatorships that have resulted are going to be increasingly effective at accumulating and holding power. We really need to know what it is we're fighting against.

Continuing the mythology that Hillary didn't use the right words, or didn't campaign enough in the right states, is doing a disservice to the truth.

[wj]

Per wj @ 10:41: maybe your snarky edge is meant to imply this, but let's make it explicit: this is just another line of attack in the war to send women back to their place, which is at home cooking meals, providing sex for the lord and master, and having babies

I would say (overlapping, but not quite identical) that it's another manifestation of living in the idealized mid-20th century. I recollect my high school's Dean of Boys saying that he always left the door wide open when meeting with a female student. Because "if she gets upset, all she has to do is rip her [own] dress and scream. And you have no defense."

These fossils are living in the past. And apparently assume that everybody else is, too.

[wj]

Life in fantasy land:
Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh said "The President’s record of accomplishments strongly appeals to all voters, including women, blacks, Latinos, and everyone else.” "record of accomplishments"????? What accomplishments?

(Empty) gestures (accomplishing nothing)? Sure. But actual accomplishments? Well, cutting taxes on the rich -- but how that appeals to non-millionaires is less than obvious. The appeal of appointing a flood of incompetents (regardless of their judicial philosophy) as Federal judges is also not exactly obvious.

[Marty]

wj. We fire people where there are true accusations, otherwise we just let them go.i dont know what century you're in, but your examples arent from walking into hr with a complaint.

[cleek]

according to one subject on today's NPR Cletus Safari, Trump has done great things in foreign policy by meeting with leaders that no other President was able to.

[wj]

your examples arent from walking into hr with a complaint.

Well duh! What HR department do you imagine has jurisdiction here?

[cleek]

also fuck Rand Paul.

[russell]

I was actually not put off by the judge's choice to not meet with female colleagues alone and/or someplace where they could not be observed. The bit about wanting to be "respectful to his wife" seemed... odd, but the part about transparency and not providing any opportunity for misunderstanding is, I think, common best practice nowadays.

Not to say that there isn't significant weirdness in (R) messaging about women.

A lovely map of the pain pill epidemic.

76 billion-with-a-b pills.

230 oxy hits for every man, woman, and child in the United States.

That's a lot of sciatica.

[sapient]

I was actually not put off by the judge's choice to not meet with female colleagues alone and/or someplace where they could not be observed.

Whatever policy is adopted should be gender neutral. Two colleagues shouldn't meet in private ever? Seems unworkable to me.

If the #metoo movement has created gender apartheid in the workplace, it has failed women.

[russell]

Whatever policy is adopted should be gender neutral.

Agreed.

[Michael Cain]

What accomplishments?

Court makeup. DOJ reversing the government's position on a number of issues. Combined, leading a significant push to put control in a range of areas back in the hands of the states, eg, gerrymandering and voter id.

Roll back most of the progress the Obama administration made in the direction of climate change. Open up more federal land to oil and gas drilling. They haven't found a way to force increased use of coal, but they're still looking.

The national Republicans aren't trying to turn California into Alabama, they're just trying to keep enough Alabamas around to control the Senate, the EC, and occasionally the House.

[Girl from the North Country]

[email protected]: I completely agree.

[Pro Bono]

Must be a different Rand Paul from the one who voted for a massive increase in the deficit to fund tax cuts for the rich.

[sapient]

Thanks GftNC. My worry now is that we know, but we're ignoring it. This is a podcast that I started listening to today: https://theassetpodcast.org/

I accidentally started with Episode 4, and it was really good. Catching up with the rest now. (It narrates things that we have all read, but in a way that's easy to digest. I have the Mueller Report in my living room, but have been to busy to read it yet.)

[Tony P.]

Michael Cain lists what the MAGA maggots would surely agree are examples of He, Trump "getting things done". This should reinforce my oft-repeated point that "getting things done" is NOT what The American People want, no matter what the pundits claim to know. Some Americans want certain things done; other Americans not only want different things done, but want to prevent the "certain things".

I keep waiting for some Democrat to say it plainly: "The Republicons are out to screw you and we're going to stop them". The MAGA maggots will respond that they just love getting screwed by Dear Leader for the benefit of their betters, but so what? We're trying to beat them, not convince them.

--TP

[sapient]

GftNC, I just realized that you were referring to a different comment of mine than I thought you were. My bad for posting more than I can keep track of.

But thanks for acknowledging.

[sapient]

And russell, thank you too. Something I often think, but rarely say.

[sapient]

One more thing though: the Russia related comments are more important. We are f'd because we ignored it, and we're still ignoring it.

Trump's racism has been obvious for a very long time. I'm glad we're finally acknowledging it. The cruelty of the Republican party has been a given for a long time ("drill, baby, drill"). What's new? Feminists arguing vulnerability versus strength and equality is a complicated and difficult story, generations old.

The fact that we have a foreign agent in the White House is a really weird and new thing to deal with. Nobody knows what to do. Is it too late? Maybe somebody will think of something. Putin did.

[russell]

Apologies if some of this shows up in a somewhat different form, I can never tell if a comment went to the spam trap, or if I just forgot to post after editing.

To Michael Cain's list, I will add, "and the markets are roaring!".

There are a lot of people who are more than pleased with the substantive accomplishments of the Trump administration. Not just the cartoon people peddled by the NYT - "economically insecure" former factory workers in flannel shirts in a diner in Indiana - but all kinds of people. People in my neighborhood and yours.

That disturbs me, because it tells me exactly how freaking broken we are as a people.

We aren't going to make progress until we are talking about stuff other than Donald J Trump and whatever freaking horrendous thing he did today. And I don't think we'll be able to do that until he is the hell out of the Oval Office. If then. Because he won't allow it. It's not how he wants it, and now he has the biggest freaking bullhorn on the planet.

He is the turd in the punchbowl, and he likes it that way. It is, literally, the source of his power.

The Russian thing is enormously consequential, because Vladimir Putin, having extorted murdered and otherwise criminally advanced himself to the head of a nation somewhat reduced in international clout, has discovered that money is as good as guns when it comes to exerting influence. Better, maybe, because with money you can corrupt your adversaries and rot them from the inside out.

Putin wants to undermine NATO specifically, and undermine the rule and influence of tolerant non-authoritarian self-governing open societies in general. Trump is his fncking dream come true.

As a sort-of aside - if we don't navigate the current issue with Turkey skillfully, they may end up out of NATO, and from there either be unallied or else unambiguously within the scope of Russian influence. Turkey is, to an unparalleled degree, a strategic piece in the geopolitical puzzle. All that has to happen to totally bollocks that situation is for Trump to be a dick. Place your bets.

Lather rinse and repeat for Iran, Israel and the Palestinians, China as a hegemon in the Pacific Rim. And on and on. Trump's approach to everything is to yell at people until they do what he wants. He is no longer playing in the NYC real estate market, and he's no longer playing with other people's money. He is dealing with actors who represent old, in some case ancient, societies, who have been around the block more times than Trump has crapped in his golden toilet, and who have the subtlety to play him like a violin. And he's playing with the fucking planet.

I don't think he has the chops for this game. He is not an unintelligent man, but he is bone ignorant, and profoundly, narcissistically vain, and vulnerable to flattery and cupidity. He is a walking, talking mark. It's disturbing.

His approach to solidifying political power within the US is to press every divisive button he can find. Repeatedly. That doesn't bode well for us.

And what worries the hell out of me is not Trump, but all of the people who think he is the best thing since sliced bread.

He tells it like it is! No, he says what you wish you could say, but are too embarrassed to say out loud in public.

Those are two different things, and you are fucking right to be embarrassed. Consider your embarrassment a mirror, a gift from whatever benevolent powers may exist in the universe, sent to help you save your damned soul.

And listen to what it tells you.

Rhetorical you, natch.

[JanieM]

And what worries the hell out of me is not Trump, but all of the people who think he is the best thing since sliced bread.

A rare disagreement with you, russell. Yes, those people should definitely worry you, but so should he. He is deliberately and gleefully stoking his people toward a point where blood is going to be shed.

I hope the Congresswomen, especially Omar, have good security. Other than that, I am beyond word.

[russell]

Without his base, Trump would be another rich asshole on the TV. He'd be a Kardashian, with a smaller butt. Or maybe not a smaller butt.

I don't give a crap about Donald J Trump one way or the other. It's the people who think "he speaks for them" that make me wonder where this is all going to end up.

[Nigel]

Trump is of course nothing without his crowd, but it is his crowd chanting “send her back”. It is a dangerous symbiosis.

[wj]

Without his base, Trump would be another rich asshole on the TV. He'd be a Kardashian, with a smaller butt. Or maybe not a smaller butt.

But definitely a smaller brain. (I disagree, obviously, with your thesis that "He is not an unintelligent man." He is exactly an unintelligent man. I'd buy dead average, but nothing beyond maybe 55th percentile. He's not interested in learning anything, but even if he decided he was, he's just not capable.

[russell]

Meanwhile... I have no idea what this is about, but it's a funny headline.

[Nigel]

Borderline psychosis ?

[cleek]

professional Republican at work?

[wj]

A woman from a foreign country is spreading dangerous ideas!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/07/18/republicans-have-decided-certain-woman-looks-suspiciously-foreign/

[cleek]

beautiful:

“We’re not going to let Donald Trump dismantle the Bill of Rights. For five and half years, every time we got to the floor and try to push back against an overreaching president, we get accused of being partisan at best and racist at worst. When we do it against a Republican president, maybe people will see it was a principled objection in the first place.”

-- current WH CoS Mick Mulvaney, chest thumping in 2016 about how he and the Congressional GOP were going to stand up to Trump.

[wj]

When we do it against a Republican president, maybe people will see it was a principled objection in the first place.

And he was totally correct. IF he and his buddies had done so, that would certainly have been evidence (not proof, but evidence) that they had been acting, at least in part, on principle rather than racism. But it must be said that their total failure to do so constitutes evidence that their objections to Obama being racist and partisan rather than principled.

Of course, anyone with a working brain cell knew that the vigor of their objections to Obama and all his works was solidly grounded in racism. It's not like most of them made a serious effort to conceal the fact.

[wj]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-immigration-policies-speak-louder-than-his-racist-xenophobic-words/2019/07/18/e8309a76-a996-11e9-86dd-d7f0e60391e9_story.html

Last week, the Department of Homeland Security sent its draft final regulation of the “public charge” rule to the White House for final review. This rule would make it more difficult for immigrants who’ve used noncash safety-net services to which they are legally entitled — or who are deemed at risk of ever using such services — to receive green cards or temporary visas.

Why am I guessing that, for this administration, "at risk" will translate seamlessly to "non-white"?

[cleek]

follow the leader.

all you xenophobic jingoists need to go back under your rocks, where you came from.

[Tony P.]

If the "xenophobic jingoists" ever get shamed into acting like decent human beings, it will be because people like Marty, McKinney, Slarti et al stand up to them. Criticisms from DFHs like us only gives MAGA maggots a woodie.

--TP

[Pro Bono]

UK politics are nothing to boast about, but no mainstream politician would go near Trump's racism.