;)
The Commentariat -- August 25, 2016
Tim Arango, et al., of the New York Times: "Turkey sent tanks, warplanes and special operations forces into northern Syria on Wednesday in its biggest plunge yet into the Syrian conflict, enabling Syrian rebels to capture an important Islamic State stronghold [-- the town of Jarabulus --] within hours. The operation, assisted by American warplanes, is a significant escalation of Turkey's role in the fight against the Islamic State, the militant extremist group ensconced in parts of Syria and Iraq that has increasingly been targeting Turkey." -- CW
Richard Perez-Pena of the New York Times: "President Obama turned a vast stretch of Maine woods into the nation's newest federal parkland on Wednesday, siding with conservationists who want the wild lands protected, over residents and officials who oppose intrusion from Washington and restrictions on use of the land. Mr. Obama designated more than 87,500 acres of rugged terrain, donated by a founder of the Burt's Bees product line, as the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument, administered by the National Park Service, a day before the service's 100th anniversary. It became by far the largest region of federal parkland in Maine, surpassing the 48,900-acre Acadia National Park on the coast." -- CW
Why aren't we talking about Huma [Abedin] and her ties to the Muslim Brotherhood? Why aren't we talking about the fact that she was an editor for a Sharia newspaper?" -- Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.), interview on CNN, Aug. 23
Roger Stone, a top adviser to GOP nominee Donald Trump, described Abedin on Aug. 23 as a 'Saudi asset.'... Duffy asked why the alleged Muslim Brotherhood connections to Huma Abedin are not being talked about. Perhaps it's because they are bogus.... Vague suggestions of suspicious-sounding connections to her parents don't pass the laugh test, even at the flimsiest standard of guilt by association. The journal edited by her mother, meanwhile, is not 'sharia newspaper' but a sober academic journal with a range of viewpoints on Muslim life around the world. -- Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Jane Mayer of the New Yorker: "The unfolding embarrassment at the [Fox 'News"] network poses a host of questions -- not the least of which is how the network's executives justified their Javert-like pursuit of [Bill] Clinton's extramarital affairs, given their boss's own repeated sexual misconduct. If you go back and look carefully at the chronology, some of [Roger] Ailes's most egregious alleged harassment of women was taking place at the same time that Fox News was suggesting that Clinton deserved to be impeached." CW: Read on.
Presidential Race
Adam Pearce of the New York Times: "Republicans have narrowed the Democrats' lead in registered voters in several swing states, especially in North Carolina and Florida. Although there are still more registered Democrats than Republicans in these key states [which include Nevada & Colorado], the margin is much smaller than it was in 2012." -- CW
Annie Karni of Politico: "With 75 days until Election Day and new emails once again casting a pall over her campaign, Hillary Clinton aims to 'run out the clock,' confidants say, on the latest chapters of the overlapping controversies that have dogged her campaign since the start." -- CW
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Matt Yglesias of Vox has another excellent takedown of the AP's "Secretary Clinton Met with Clinton Foundation Donors!" story. "The AP put a lot of work into this project. And it couldn't come up with anything that looks worse than helping a Nobel Prize winner, raising money to finance AIDS education, and doing an introduction for the chair of the Kennedy Center. It's kind of surprising." -- CW ...
... Adam Peck of Think Progress: "The Associated Press blasted out a 114-character breaking news alert on Tuesday afternoon with a hot scoop: an analysis of publicly available data showed that while Secretary of State, more than half of Hillary Clinton's meetings were with individuals who also donated to the Clinton Foundation. One problem: that statistic is false.... The Clinton campaign ... asked them to remove the false tweet. According to her campaign, they refused, arguing that even if the tweet is inaccurate, they stood by their reporting...." -- CW ...
... Matt Yglesias Update: "The initial article was bad..., and while the defense of the article usefully clarifies a key point, it is also bad.... There has been a lot of discussion around potential conflicts of interest related to the Clinton Foundation, so the absence of any clear evidence of actual misconduct is a useful contribution to our understanding. The story the AP wrote -- full of arbitrary math, sensationalistic tweets, and strange insinuations -- is not." ...
... CW: Hey, let's see if Donald Trump & Co. dealt with the news that Clinton came out squeaky-clean ...
... Theodore Schleifer of CNN: "Donald Trump and Republicans are pouncing on a report that more than half of the private individuals with whom Hillary Clinton met as secretary of state donated to her family's foundation.... 'It is now clear that the Clinton Foundation is the most corrupt enterprise in political history,' Trump said in a statement.... At a rally in Austin, Texas, Tuesday night, [he said,] '... The specific crimes committed to carry out that enterprise are too numerous to cover in this speech.'... The Republican National Committee also cited the report to hit Clinton. 'This is among the strongest and most unmistakable pieces of evidence of what we've long suspected: at Hillary Clinton's State Department, access to the most sensitive policy makers in U.S. diplomacy was for sale to the highest bidder,' RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement." -- CW ...
... CW: In fairness to TrumPriebus, Ed Rendell (D) is still an idiot. Christopher Massie of BuzzFeed: "Former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell said in a radio interview on Tuesday that the firewall between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state was 'ineffective.'.... Rendell ... was asked about [the] AP analysis.... 'No, I agree,' Rendell said, when the host argued that newly released emails between Clinton Foundation and State Department employees show there was no firewall. 'I don't know if it was a lie..., but it was pretty ineffective. But look, the bottom line is, what they did, I wouldn't have done, it creates a bad perception. But will it hurt her? It's obviously not gonna help.'" -- CW
The Great Wall of Trump. Eli Stokols of Politico: "Donald Trump, after several straight days delivering a more scripted message, loosened the rhetorical shackles tightened by his new campaign manager and went off-script several times Wednesday afternoon [at a Tampa, Florida, rally], offering a more passionate but at times self-contradicting case for his candidacy.... As he was appealing to Hispanic voters, he twice referred to the 'drugs coming in' from Mexico.... 'Bad, bad things are going to be happening with these people pouring into our country,' Trump said.... 'We're going to build a wall, don't worry about it,' Trump said. 'We're going to build the wall and Mexico is going to pay for it, 100 percent. And it's going to be a big wall. It's going to be a real wall. It's going to be as beautiful as a wall can be, but it's going to be a real wall.'" -- CW ...
... Jeet Heer of the New Republic: "Speaking in Tampa..., [Donald Trump] said, 'The only people enthusiastic about [Hillary Clinton's] campaign are Hollywood celebrities -- in many cases celebrities that aren't very hot anymore.'... Trump's remarks also remind us of his habit of projection. After all, at the Republican National Convention he brought out celebrity endorsers like Willie 'Duck Dynasty' Robertson, Scott 'Joanie Loves Chachi' Baio, and Antonio 'Miscellaneous Soap Operas' Sabato Jr.... They hardly stack up to the Clinton supporters who seem to have set Trump off.... Trump's outburst supports the general rule that most of his insults are reflections of his own insecurity." -- CW ...
... CW: I suspect Trump was referring to Cher, who at one of several fundraisers for Clinton called Trump a "fucking idiot." Cher is 70 years old, and as we know, Trump has no use for older women. They're not, you know, "hot." ...
... Patrick Healy & Alexander Burns of the New York Times: "After months of flailing attempts, has begun to recast his political message in more structured terms and wrestle with his temptation to go off script, as his campaign seeks to revive his fading candidacy.... Working off a script from his reshuffled team of advisers, Mr. Trump is also drastically tempering his language about the signature issue of his campaign: immigration.... Still, if aides have helped bring new focus to Mr. Trump's stump speech, they have been unable to tame him on social media, where he continues to deliver outlandish attacks on all manner of adversaries, especially in the news media." -- CW
Sean Sullivan & Jenna Johnson of the Washington Post: In Jackson, Mississippi, "as Donald Trump listed the ways that he would make life better for African Americans living in poverty, he suddenly shouted, "Hillary Clinton is a bigot!" The line was included in prepared remarks distributed to reporters...." -- CW
Jenna Johnson of the Washington Post: "... during an immigration-focused town hall in Austin, Tex., that was hosted by Fox News and broadcast on Wednesday night," Donald Trump polled the crowd on immigration policy. -- CW ...
... Trump Proposes Amnesty Policy He Calls "Not Amnesty." Scott Bixby & Ben Jacobs of the Guardian: "... Donald Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity that although undocumented immigrants living in the United States will get 'no citizenship', they will pay back taxes in exchange for possible legal status. 'They'll pay back taxes, they have to pay taxes, there's no amnesty, as such, there's no amnesty, but we work with them,' Trump said, in remarks set to air [Wednesday] on Hannity's show." -- CW: The "New Donald"'s proposal sounds a lot like what his GOP rivals were advocating during the primary. ...
... Nick Corasaniti & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "Republican pollsters and strategists speculate that Mr. Trump's newfound attention to blacks and inner-city conditions is aimed less at actually vying for African-American support than at softening his image among suburban whites.... Even as he tries to talk about black voters in his speeches, he openly talks about the potential for voter fraud in areas of Pennsylvania that are heavily African-American. And some African-Americans who have been listening say the picture Mr. Trump has been painting of black America -- a nightmare of poverty, death and danger, brought about by failed Democratic policies and leadership -- is unrecognizable." -- CW ...
... Andy Rosenthal of the New York Times: "I think we know the real Donald Trump. He's the one whose campaign is enrolling 'monitors' to station at polls this November, supposedly to turn away fraudulent voters -- a problem that exists only in Republicans' imaginations. The real point is intimidation, and not of middle-class suburban white voters. Reading slightly less offensive speeches from teleprompters, however long that lasts, doesn't change anything." -- CW ...
... Paul Waldman: "We've now seen this on multiple occasions: Trump will give a speech in some all-white suburb and go on a rant about how terrible African-Americans or Latinos are doing, then suggest that the people he has just belittled ought to vote for him.... This is, to say the least, not the way politicians ordinarily reach out to groups of voters.... Trump can't bring himself to reach out to [Latinos, either,] with anything beyond a condescending message that says if they knew what was good for them, they'd be voting for him.... Perhaps this is little more than an extension of Trump's larger 'America: What a Rathole' strategy...." -- CW ...
... Digby in Salon: "... Trump has held racist views for a very long time and has not shown the slightest ability to evolve or change in even the slightest ways for over 40 years. He hasn't even changed his hairstyle since 1975. Donald Trump today is exactly the same man who wrote that full page ad in which he declared, 'civil liberties end when an attack on our safety begins!' Racial, ethnic and religious minorities know exactly what that means.... Rick Perlstein memorably wrote about this a few months back, in which he noted that Trump's appeal stemmed from a very specific conservative archetype that came from America's urban dark side: the avenging angel. He discusses Trump's father's apparent affiliation with the Klan and Trump's own run-ins with the Department of Justice over the family business's refusal to rent to welfare recipients...." -- CW ...
... The Surrogates' Dilemma. Ben Mathis-Lilley of Slate: "... the only thing Trump is actually promising when it comes to immigration -- or pretty much any issue for that matter -- is that he isn't promising anything at all. That, though, is obviously not something his surrogates are going to say. And so instead they speak a bunch of words and say nothing at all." CW: Just like Trump.
Contributor Diane says Rachel Maddow takes down Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway in classic style. I won't have time to listen (nor am I inclined to -- Maddow talking fast, which she does when she's nervous -- is nerve-wracking), but here's a pirated video. If MSNBC takes it down, the full interview, divided into segments, is on Maddow's site. ...
... Update: The pirated copy got disappeared; there are others up right now (6:30 am ET), but I assume they'll go, too, so you'll have to go to Maddow's Website. You can watch the full episode if you sign in with your cable/dish provider.
Inae Oh of Mother Jones: "Taking a page out of last week's 'says who' denial playbook, Donald Trump's newly appointed campaign manager Kellyanne Conway is dismissing near-universal polls that show the Republican presidential candidate is lagging far behind his rival Hillary Clinton. Conway's logic, which she explained in an interview with the United Kingdom's Channel 4 on Tuesday, relies heavily on supporters she described as 'undercover voters' who will inevitably break their silence and vote for Trump this November.... When asked if she could provide numbers for this invisible population, Conway quickly deflected. 'I can't discuss it,' she said. 'It's a project we're doing internally. I call it the undercover Trump voter, but it's real.'" -- CW ...
... David Graham of the Atlantic: "Donald Trump's campaign manager [Kellyanne Conway] says he's actually winning, thanks to 'undercover' supporters. Plenty of past presidential hopefuls have mistakenly believed the same.... Mitt "Romney felt so good [on election day 2012] he didn't even write a concession speech until that evening, when the writing was on the wall. Just as for McGovern, Mondale, and Dukakis, the crowd [of supporters at last-minute rallies] was a mirage.... A campaign adviser told CBS that running mate Paul Ryan was 'genuinely shocked.' In his case, it turned out there had been a hidden vote -- but it was for Obama. The Romney campaign underestimated the number of minority voters who would turn out." -- CW ...
... CW: There may be an "undercover" vote for Trump. It's not because voters are ashamed to admit they'd vote for a racist, but because they're ashamed to admit they would not vote for a woman. Like Trump, they think Clinton "doesn't look presidential." I've heard older men who are life-long Democrats say they just "can't imagine" Hillary Clinton as president. Same difference.
Dana Milbank: "In choosing Stephen Bannon to be the CEO of his campaign, Donald Trump has accomplished the extraordinary: He has found somebody as outrageous as he is.... Trump found in Bannon a character like himself: a bully who targets racial and religious minorities, immigrants and women." Milbank catalogs a long list of outrageously wacko things Bannon has said or written or published in Breitbart. "There is more, but you don't need to read it here. Just wait for Trump to say it." CW ...
... ** Zack Beauchamp of Vox: "Understanding Breitbart ... helps us understand the rot eating away at the foundations of American conservatism.... One of Breitbart's key distinguishing features today is lurid, fearmongering coverage of minority groups, particularly African Americans and Muslims.... [Steve] Bannon frequently uses the word 'populist' to describe his worldview, and that's how he saw Breitbart's coverage. The goal was to stand up for 'lower- and middle-class' people against the big-government conservatives in Washington.... Breitbart's errors [in its 'scoops'] were repeated and endemic.... Bannon and the rest of the Breitbart hierarchy [welcomed] the mainstreaming of sexism and racism on their site.... 'We're the platform for the alt-right,' Bannon enthused to Mother Jones's Sarah Posner in a July interview." ...
... CW: Breitbart is just another vehicle of elitism, where the "elites" are educated or semi-educated white guys who lecture to the "lower- and middle-class" peeps. I'm just waiting for Bannon to punch out Kellyanne Conway, the girl campaign manager who is reportedly the "brains" behind Trump's "new" Bush-Rubio-Cruz-style immigration policy. I hope there's video.
Katie Kim of NBC News Chicago: "The Chicago Police Department denied ... Donald Trump's claim this week that he met with a 'top' Chicago officer and argued the city's violence would not be solved with 'tough police tactics.' 'We've discredited this claim months ago,' CPD spokesperson Frank Giancamilli said Tuesday in a statement. 'No one in the senior command at CPD has ever met with Donald Trump or a member of his campaign.' Trump ... [told] Fox News' Bill O'Reilly that he met a 'top' Chicago officer who reportedly said he could 'stop much of this horror show that's going on' within a single week. Trump added that he knows officers in Chicago who would put an end to violent crime 'if they were given the authority to do it,' a claim that Giancamilli refuted." -- CW
Lenny Bernstein of the Washington Post: That time "Trump wanted to keep Americans critically ill with Ebola out of the U.S." CW: Read the whole article. If you wonder what kind of a president Trump would be, the answer lies within. When circumstances call for tough decisions, Trump will always make the wrong one.
Ha Ha. The Washington Post Editors are all concerned about Rudy Giuliani's health. They catalog symptoms he has shown of "nerve damage, stroke..., Alzheimer's disease ... [and] heart disease.... Mr. Trump, 70, has taken the same nondisclosure stance on his health records as he has on his taxes, asserting there is nothing to hide while hiding everything. Ms. Clinton, by contrast, has released some test results, which, as far as they go, indicate good health. That hasn't stopped Mr. Giuliani from trading in scurrilous and debunked theories about the Democratic candidate. Come to think of it, he should see a doctor." -- CW
Very Unfaaair. Donald Trump's losing his hard-on re: immigration reform wrecks Ann Coulter's book party for In Trump We Trust, no doubt a treatise as fine as Thomas Paine's Common Sense & John Stewart Mill's On Liberty. -- CW
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd.
Paul Farhi on teevee "pundits" as "propaganda pass-throughs": "Savvy viewers might be able to tell when commentators are merely parroting partisan talking points spoon-fed to them by campaign operatives, or even by the candidates themselves, during conference calls or email blasts to surrogates.... But often there's little or no disclosure about how much coaching came from the campaign before the televised discussion begins.... CNN [employs four commentators] to speak for, or in defense of, Trump.... CNN, however, also employs a number of identifiable advocates for Democrat Hillary Clinton, including Paul Begala...." -- CW
Oliver Willis, et al., of Media Matters: "...Sean Hannity, who has been informally advising Donald Trump's presidential campaign while serving as its primary media cheerleader, has effectively turned his nightly prime-time show into Trump's second campaign headquarters. According to a Media Matters analysis, Hannity's program has given Trump what amounts to more than $31 million in free advertising in the form of dozens of fawning interviews with the candidate since Trump declared his candidacy in June 2015." -- CW
It's a bitter pill (more like pilloried) / So shall we now be Trumped or Hillary-ed? -- from the poem "Dual Airbags," posted on the Website Hello Poetry ...
... Trump as Muse. Charles Bethea of the New Yorker: "Avoiding strict metre..., [Donald Trump] leans on simple poetic devices. Epistrophe could be heard at the end of his R.N.C. acceptance speech: 'We will make America strong again. We will make America proud again. We will make America safe again.' ... But Trump's greatest contribution to the poetic arts is undoubtedly as muse. Since last summer, some two thousand user-generated poems about Trump have appeared on the seven-year-old Web site Hello Poetry." -- CW
Way Beyond the Beltway
Nick Miroff of the Washington Post: "After 52 years of fighting and nearly four years of grinding negotiations, the Colombian government and the country's FARC rebel group have reached an agreement to end the last major armed conflict in the Americas, officials said Wednesday. 'They have a definitive accord to end the war,' said Bernard Aronson, the U.S. envoy to the peace talks, in an interview several hours before the formal announcement was made." -- CW
Rick Gladstone of the New York Times: "Syrian military helicopters dropped bombs containing chlorine on civilians in at least two attacks over the past two years, a special joint investigation of the United Nations and an international chemical weapons monitor said on Wednesday in a confidential report. The report also found that militants of the Islamic State in Syria had been responsible for an attack last year using poisonous sulfur mustard, which, like chlorine, is banned as a weapon under an international treaty." -- CW
AP: "Four Iranian small boats harassed a U.S. Navy warship near the Persian Gulf, but no missiles were fired, the chief of naval operations said Wednesday. Adm. John Richardson said the incident involving the guided missile destroyer USS Nitze reflects the greater competition the U.S. is facing at sea. He added it underscores the naval tensions with Tehran, which include other similar incidents as well as the brief detention in January of 10 U.S. Navy sailors who mistakenly steered into Iranian waters." -- CW
News Lede
New York Times: The town of "Amatrice[, Italy,] was the worst hit by [a 6.2 earth]quake [Wednesday], which also damaged surrounding towns. As of Thursday morning, the deaths totaled at least 247, officials said. The story describes the heartbreaking search for victims." -- CW
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Reader Comments (21)
Maddow's interview with KA Conway tonight was a master class in facilitating a major train wreck. She smiled and complimented the conductor on her shoes while the runaway train barreled down the tracks. Yikes! Conway was exposed on soooo many levels. My favorite parts were Rachel's tutorial on the McCarron Act as it related to "extreme vetting", the request for a less absurd Trump medical report and if he had apologized to the Khans.
The year is 2036 and we see a hunched over, overweight, bald man ambling along the nation's highways. He's carrying a sign but it's hard to read it's message–-something about a wall. But when we stop our car and ask the fella if he needs some help––he looks bedraggled and slightly looney––-he shouts:
'We’re going to build the wall and Mexico is going to pay for it, 100 percent. And it’s going to be a big wall. It’s going to be a real wall. It’s going to be as beautiful as a wall can be, but it’s going to be a real wall.'”
We call the authorities and discover this man is none other than Donald J. Trump who has been walking up and down the roads, shouting his message, thinking he is back in 2016 running for President. Losing that position he never fully recovered.
"I hate losers"–––those sentiments can do a number on you, I reckon.
@Diane: I agree, Maddow is so skilled at friendly interviews that eventually reveal whatever it is she is after––those zingers, but done in such a way it puts her guest in a verbal knot. My favorite was the interview she did with Santorum. She put him safely in a leaky boat, let him drift for a spell, then one by one took away his oars and we watched him sink.
There have been several articles about Trumps medical letter (not report) in the last two days all saying the same things. The Dr. does not have the qualifications he says he has, the letterhead lists two doctors, one has been dead for six years. This post shows a photo of the doctor which may say it all.
https://www.rawstory.com/2016/08/sanjay-gupta-reveals-doctor-behind-trumps-questionable-medical-note-lied-about-his-credentials/
Again, my guess is that Trump has some serious medical problems besides the ones in his tiny brain.
I don't think that it is correct to say that Hannity’s program has given Trump what amounts to more than $31 million in free advertising. The people who watch Hannity will vote for the Republican candidate regardless of who it is.
I'm sorry, but Cher was hot, is hot, will always be hot, and her hotness has nothing to do with her looks.
That being said, she still looks great. :-)
Great comment in the NYT today from "pjc" in Cleveland about the Orange One's attempt to reach out to African-Americans and Hispanics:
"I'm kind of going out on a limb here, and I may be wrong, but I think this is his first baby steps at trying to understand empathy.
"Funny thing about empathy, though, is if you haven't figured out empathy by the time you are 70, you might just have to face the fact you are a sociopath."
Marvin,
The picture of the doctor who supposedly wrote that idiotic letter purporting to describe Trump as the healthiest president in history (how he examined the other 44 I have no idea), makes me wonder what the rest of his group of advisers and those who have had an enormous influence on his development look like. It took a while, but here they are:
Trump's economics professor
Adviser on military affairs and national security
Consultant on African-American culture
Science adviser
Real estate project management team
Mexican cultural attachés
Monetary policy expert
Banking policy advisers
Women's rights consultant
Strong role models!
There. Now don't you feel better? Donaldo always hires the best people.
Akhilleus, funniest post ever! Unfortunately it is conceptually accurate to the extent that Trump actually takes the advise from anyone.
Wait..."Secret undercover voters"?
Is that like double secret probation?
So now we have Trumpy whining about his wall that will be beautiful, will be big, and let's not forget that it will be real. Very real. Ex-TREEEEME-ly real.
Add that to the secret plan to destroy ISIS in one day, the secret plan to end violence in urban areas the DAY HE IS INAUGURATED, those 10,000 Muslims boogalooing down Broadway on 9/11 (whom no one else saw), this "top cop" in Chicago who told Trump he could end all violence in that city in ONE WEEK, but he can't tell us his name.
All these real things. Sounds a bit like a three year old complaining that those monsters under the bed are-so real.
Any day now we'll be hearing about secret meetings with the Easter Bunny to ensure that egg production will go up dramatically the day he is elected, because........omelettes. Or something.
How is it possible that major media outlets and reporters still talk about this guy as if he's a serious candidate? How? The guy is certifiable and we have to listen to idiots talk about him every day like he's fucking Adlai Stevenson.
@Marie. I agree in regard to pundit high speed talking. I recently resumed watching Maddow because of the election. She seemed to have it pretty well under control last night.
Speaking of verbal sandblasting, Steve Kornacki is the worst. On 8/21 Driftglass had the perfect description of Kornacki in the post about Taibbi and both siderism, "Mini Shuck Todd machine-gunning meaningless poll numbers at me."
And what the in the hell is going on in Campvs Trvmpvs?
He fires the guy with Putin on speed dial and brings in a racist troglodyte and a pay to play pollster to run things. The racist guy has been cheering on Trump's every nasty insult to minorities, especially his depiction of blacks as drug addled murderers and Mexicans as deranged rapists, and raves about the forced deportation and the big wall. He's also a darling of secessionists and white supremacists, just like Trump.
But on the other hand we have this sycophantic muse cooing into Trump's cauliflower ear (if she can find it under the day-glo orange wig) that he needs to cool it, that the wall and that trail of tears back to Mexico for 11 million rapists are something TBD later.
So what's going on?
I hesitate to offer any kind of analysis because analyzing Trump's moves for some semblance of a rational plan is like trying to read tea leaves in a blacked out room: a superstitious indulgence made infinitely more difficult by constant immersion in total darkness.
But let's give it a shot anyway.
First possibility: He's trying to have it both ways. He wants to retain the knuckledraggers who read Breitbart while playing with themselves on the toilet. But he also wants to "prove" to normal people that he's not the dangerous monster his astoundingly scary declarations have shown him to be. That sounds way too sophisticated for Trump though. He's a meat cleaver not a paring knife.
Second possibility: There's an internal fight for the ear of the Head Monkey. Somewhere I read that it's likely that Breitbart Steve will be punching out KA Conway any day now ("Take that, bitch!"). That sounds like more his speed. I can't see him signing on to a stunt like Trump pretending to care about blacks and wanting his deportation thing "not to hurt" His biggest supporters (and BSteve) WANT it to hurt. They WANT those dirty messicans to weep as they're separated from their children and hauled back to the motherland in chains.
Third possibility: It's clusterfuck central, same as it's always been. A fierce fiesta of fucked up incompetence and amateurish ineptitude on a grand scale.
Guess I gotta go with Three.
Thank god I'm not a Republican. This shit is wrist-slitting stuff.
@Akhilleus: Despite your assertion, Donald Trump is not fucking Adlai Stevenson. He only fucks the hot ladies.
Also, I do not believe Adlai Stevenson, on his worst day, would have fucked Donald Trump. He only fucked the smart ladies. (Like Katharine Graham of the WashPo & Marietta Tree.)
Marie
Marie,
Ba-dum-bum.
Good one.
Maybe all that running from bedroom to bedroom was what gave Stevenson that hole in his shoe.
Rachel Maddow talks fast? Hmm, maybe I never noticed because I have a sister that talks like Alvin the Chipmunk on speed. Reminds me of the time that our receptionist at work buzzed me to say that I had a call on line 1 but she didn't catch the name because she was talking too fast. I said, "Oh, that's my sister". (It was).
I enjoy watching Rachel Maddow interview the political opposition because, like Jon Stewart, she manages to ask the hard questions without being offensive or impolite, and often pre-emptively apologizes if a question may sound offensive. That said, I was somewhat amazed to discover that I didn't hate Conway. Like Rachel, she was never snarky or impolite although she would give the typical non answer and deflect the discussion to something Hillary did whenever she couldn't answer a question. I didn't consider the interview a take down so much as that it showed the impossibility of Conway's job, which is to try to make Trimp palatable to rational people. Some of her answers did drive me bonkers, but gosh she said them so nicely!
They're all grifters.
Yesterday we had to endure Eric (the Dolt) Trumpy lecturing us about how stupid we are thinking we could begin to understand the recondite perplexities of Daddy's tax returns (note to Eric: they might be difficult to an egotistical brat born into wealth who hasn't had to work a day in his life, but the rest of us work hard for our money and we have a pretty decent grasp of how tax forms work, especially those who don't have a battery of tax attorneys to fill out those forms for us. Asshole.), and today we find out that sister Ivanka (the smart one) is lecturing her interns, who do most of the work in turning out content on her blogsite, that they should be frugal when trying to live in New York City because they won't be getting a penny from her.
Trump fille's money making operation "...it seems, involves free labor: Ivanka Trump has been employing a cadre of unpaid female interns to write copy, work on licensing, help with marketing, and do graphic design. A blog post written by one of these unpaid interns last month surfaced in recent days when Ivanka tweeted a link to her 2 million-plus Twitter TWTR +0.77% followers. In ‘How to Survive as an Unpaid Intern’, Ivanka’s copywriting intern interviews three other young women working for free at “Ivanka Trump HQ” on how to get by in New York for a summer sans salary."
And to top it off, Trump decorates "her" blog post about how to survive on peanuts, with a graphic featuring emojis of a black woman(!!)
As Daddy lectures "The Blacks" on why they should vote for him, because, of course, they have no money and no hope and nothing to lose, his daughter uses images of black women to embellish her blog post about making money off work done by interns who get paid nothing (she probably came up with that idea while cruising the Mediterranean on a yacht with Rupert Murdoch's ex--not a black person in sight, unless they're serving the drinks). Which, it turns out, is probably illegal:
"The New York State Department of Labor advised that interns and employers alike get to know the 11 wage requirements for interns at for-profit businesses. Among the criteria: that interns 'do not function in ways that replace or augment regular staff,' and that 'the activities of trainees or students do not provide an immediate advantage to the employer.'"
In other words, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck. You do the work of a paid employee and your employer makes money off your work, you should be paid.
Unless you work for a Trump.
Apples and trees, apples and trees...
Unfortunately I believe I see a pattern of 'swift boating' Clinton almost daily: 'pay for play' is the latest (AP), Clinton under investigation by FBI (NYT), Clinton not healthy, etc. anything to peel away support by falsehood, slanted reporting, 'turning mole hills into mountains'.
She or her campaign are always having to defend items that most folks would do: if I were in office and had to deal with multiple modes of email and email addresses, personal and foia record email, in a job that sent/received over 20,000 emails/year I'd want to deal with only one device at a time and maintain control over who would have access to personal email if I had a choice. Same type of issues with the Clinton Foundation, friends and acquaintances, having contact with the State Department with over 400 formal recorded meetings/year, not including folks calling, visiting with assistants that were not recorded, etc.
The opposition is trying to find any thing that can be used as an attack through misrepresentation, innuendo, or falsehood,while their candidate is an proven serial liar, misogynist, crook - failing to pay for work received, racist, and more; but through 'gaslighting' and dissembling, blackens his opponents (including Republican candidates).
Akhilleus---If you ever decide to do a mock donald trump cabinet
I recommend Craig Menear for Secretary of de fence. (He's the
president and CEO of Home Depot)
Forrest,
Arrrghh....
But that reminds me that a good choice for Veterans' Affairs (so to speak) might be David Petraeus, with Paula Broadwell as Deputy Secretary (or as Trump might put it, Under Secretary.)
A Trump cabinet poses quite a challenge but it's probably a given that the Trump Spawn would likely garner several choice positions. I'm sure that Ivanka, given her recent jaunt to European vacation spots, would, in the Trump mind, be absolutely qualified to run the State Department. Plus she could save taxpayers a bundle by firing all the career hands at Foggy Bottom, replacing them with 19 year old unpaid interns. Eric, given his astounding demonstration of the hazards of interpreting tax returns should be a shoo-in for Treasury.
But I have to stop now. As much as I'd like to think such possibilities to be utterly fanciful, the fact that an orange headed bigot's name will be on the ballot in a presidential election makes me rather ill, not to mention severely jaundiced about the appointment of anyone to a position of importance who isn't a jumping-up-and-down moron.
Plus, I don't have any assurance that Trump doesn't actually think that the cabinet post you mention is not, after all, related to de fence.
Jesus.
Oh boy, this is good.
You guys remember Racist Beefcake Boy, Scott Brown? The guy who used to walk and talk with kings and queens and heads of state whenever they wanted the skinny on majorly historic decisions that only a former Playgirl model could answer? The guy Elizabeth Warren beat like rented mule? Yeah. That guy.
Well, it appears he has been named as the perpetrator of sexual harassment in a suit by Fox personality Andrea Tantaros.
"In her lawsuit, Tantaros claims that when Brown appeared on Outnumbered, he made 'a number of sexually inappropriate comments' to her on set and then later in the cafeteria put his hands on her lower waist. None of her claims related to something that happened on air."
But we all know what really happened, right?
SHE is the abuser! Scott did nothing. NOTHING. And you know how we all know? (This is really good...)
"'This allegedly happened a year ago,' he said. 'Since then I’ve not only signed a new contract [with Fox], got a raise, I’m on almost every day… I had [Fox executive] Bill Shine call my house yesterday and say, 'Listen, you’re one of our best employees'
'I would have been fired immediately if I had done anything,' he added."
HaaaaHahahahahahahahohohohohohoho!
Stop it, yer killin' me!
Fired? From FOX? For sexual harassment and inappropriate comments and suggestions? Ha! That shit gets you a lifetime contract at Fox. Why do you think Loofah Boy is still on the air?
But Tantaros is the abuser. Sure.
Bqhatevwr, Scotty, bqhatevwr.
@Akhileus--in re Trump's name on the ballot: not in Minnesota...
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/08/minnesota-gop-descends-into-total-confusion-after-trump-left-off-state-ballot/
They'll figure it out eventually, but for now it's good for a smile.
Yet more evidence of how Trump's is gonna be the best administration in the history of the world!