By the way, wasn't that Hillary Clinton's plan for the debates — "get under Trump's skin"? Wasn't there an old idea way back then that Trump was "thin-skinned"* and could be defeated by getting under his skin? He'd self-destruct? That's how I've packaged my memories of how everybody who tried failed to keep Trump from winning.
Back to the WaPo article, which is by Perry Stein and David A. Fahrenthold:
Having sought to create unprecedented disruption in Washington, his critics will now seek to bring unprecedented disruption to his life as president — including demonstrations that follow him when he travels, and protests that will dog his businesses even when he doesn’t.Why aren't these people afraid that Trump draws energy from this negativity?
There have been small gestures of pique: lipstick graffiti on the sign at Trump’s golf course in Los Angeles, and a plan for a mass mooning of his hotel in Chicago. There have also been more organized efforts to take time and money away from family businesses — a boycott of stores selling Ivanka Trump’s clothes and a campaign to flood Trump businesses with calls demanding that the president divest from his holdings.Why would what hasn't worked yet suddenly start working?
For Trump’s opponents, these demonstrations are a way to change his behavior by denting the president’s own self-image, as a popular man with a successful business.
“You know how Yellowstone National Park is built on one of the world’s biggest volcanos?” said Ben Wikler, the Washington director for MoveOn.org, a liberal activist group. “It feels like that just exploded in terms of grassroots energy.”Nice to run into Ben, by the way, in the middle of an article I was already blogging. He was a familiar face here in Madison in the 1990s, when he was in high school.
Trump himself has dismissed these protests — operating on the theory that he doesn’t need these protestors to like him and that their anger might actually help him by pushing others closer to Trump.
_________________________
* Back in June 2016, I had a post "About the anti-Trumpers insult of the moment: thin-skinned":
Hillary said it: Trump is "thin-skinned and quick to anger [and] lashes out at the smallest criticism." And now Elizabeth Warren has said it: "Donald Trump is a loud, nasty, thin-skinned fraud who has never risked anything for anyone and serves nobody but himself,"
So let's think about this word. My first thought is, it's just an old trick to get your interlocutor to stop talking, like saying he's being "defensive." Who has not encountered an antagonist who criticizes you and then, when you respond, says something like: "Oh, I guess I hit a nerve" or "Don't be so defensive" or "You're awfully thin-skinned" or "You need to grow a thicker skin"? It's a call for unilateral disarmament! They want to keep attacking you, while you demonstrate how good you are at not fighting back. To be called "thin-skinned" heightens the aggravation yet if you react, they'll glory in your proving of their point. Aha! So you are thin-skinned! They knew it!
You've had that experience, haven't you? What did you do? 1. Accept the insight into your personality problems and try to model forbearance and a willingness to absorb blows without lashing back, 2. Withdraw from this fight and resolve to extract yourself from future discussions that might cause you to feel that you need to fight, 3. Confront your antagonist on his self-interested, phony psychoanalysis and insist on your right to respond to his attacks with commensurate forcefulness, 4. Ignore the distraction of the meta-conversation — the conversation about the conversation — and just keep fighting hard on the substantive issues that you were already talking about, 5. Take up the challenge of turning it into an argument about psychological shortcomings and hurl some equivalent insults at your opponent.
Now that you've thought about how you respond to this conversational gambit, think about what you want in a President. Maybe a good President needs all 5 options (and more), but it's obvious that all #1 all the time — or all #2 — would be absurd. I like ##3 and 4. Trump seems to like #5 —"If she wants to go the low road, I'm fine with that... I can handle the low road if I have to do it" — or at least he knows how to make his opponents feel they're not going to win that game.
But maybe Hillary and Elizabeth Warren think that "thin-skinned" is the one mean insult that can work, because it's the one where, when you try to return fire, you seem to be confirming their assessment. They also like it because it seems to fit a strategy of scaring people. The idea is that a thin-skinned President might lose his temper and take us into a war. Do people believe that? We've been in a lot of wars, but did they ever arise from a President getting mad? There have been bad decisions to go to war, but I think these had more to do with grim, sober analysis or with political calculation. Still, there's always the idea of the button. Hillary followed her "thin-skinned" remark with: "Do we want his finger anywhere near the button?"
Anyway, I got very interested in this word "thin-skinned" and did a search in the NYT archive. Here's a 1998 essay by Frank Rich recommending the "old-fashioned adjective thin-skinned" to describe the complaints of perpetually offended Americans:
Let any theater, museum or entertainment company float a project that might offend someone -- even sight unseen -- and that someone will scream, tempting the offending party to retreat or stick to the tried, the safe and the PG-rated in the future. No one can call this insidious syndrome censorship, because the protesters are always careful to say they are not demanding censorship and their targets are equally careful to say expressly that they do not back down in response to protests. But it's a disingenuous dance. Does anyone believe that NBC elected not to rerun the Puerto Rican Parade ''Seinfeld'' episode for any reason other than the public complaints? Or that the Library of Congress postponed an exhibit on Freud solely for budgetary reasons rather than because of a heated petition campaign by such prominent anti-Freudians as Gloria Steinem? This cautious cultural climate -- fueled by the right, the left and virtually every religious, ethnic and racial group -- can't be accurately described by that tortured term P.C., which is always in the eye of the beholder anyway. A better term would be that old-fashioned adjective thin-skinned.So Rich wanted to use the insult "thin-skinned" to push back political correctness. How interestingly Trump-related! Trump is notoriously thick-skinned when it comes to political correctness and his antagonists are betting on the thin skin of American voters, whom they nudge to feel outrage at anything Trump might say that could be interpreted as racist/sexist/xenophobic.
And here's something from April 5, 2008, when Hillary was fighting Barack Obama for the presidential nomination. Some young Obama supporter fretted about the hostility she'd been expressing toward Obama, and she said:
“For those of you who are new to politics,” she said, “it can be a little eye-opening especially when you choose sides and you’re for one or the other of us you can take personally anything one of us or the other says. Believe it or not, there have even been some things said about me. I don’t take it personally. I don’t take most of it seriously.”Isn't it funny? Obama is often praised for his cool temperament, but he's also been called "thin-skinned" quite a lot.
Then, suggesting that perhaps Mr. Obama, or at least his supporters, were a bit thin-skinned, she added, “If you can’t take the heat, don’t run for president, because it’s a really hot kitchen in the White House. You’re supposed to present your case and critique the other case,” she added. “It is not a coronation. This nomination is worth fighting for and I’m going to fight for it.”
I think we should be thin-skinned about "thin-skinned." It's a tricky insinuation about a person, and I think we should be sensitive about it. I'll even be so sensitive as to suggest that it's an under-the-radar race word: Why are we talking about a person's skin?
Posts
331 comments:
1 – 200 of 331 Newer› Newest»The protestors certainly are under Althouse's skin.
They own a good chunk of her mind. Sad!
These idiots still think that they are important.
What would what hasn't worked yet suddenly start working?
They aren't doing this because they think it'll "work". They're doing it because this is what they do, regardless of who's in charge.
I guess that's what our 95 million unemployed people can fill their time with.
And, of course, these assholes think that the only person on the planet who gets inconvenienced by their antics is President Trump. Everyone else who's life is affected is just collateral damage, just one more egg broken to make the revolutionary omelette.
I suspect that we're about an average of six months away from these people starting to get beat up on sight by everyone who is just sick & tired of their antics. Sooner in Red States, later in deep blue.
It would really be more effective anti-Trump move if they just sit back & let him bigly screw-up & then have a protest. But, no, it starts from the get-go, thus putting Donald Trump in the most unlikely position of being the underdog that a sizable chunk of America roots for, as opposed to a bunch of, well, hard-lefty thugs. But, as has been pointed out here before, the Left isn't afraid of Trump failing. The Left is afraid of Trump succeeding.
Scott Adams had an article about this topic awhile ago, mentioning a Dale Carnegie course where he learned to turn anxiousness into excitement. That for someone who thought like this, the negativity, etc, was fuel.
"Why aren't these people afraid that Trump draws energy from this negativity?"
Because at some point we know he and his "movement" will implode. Those who didn't speak up when they could've/ should've will have to face the music.
Expect more of this as well ;-)
Nobody likes being insulted. We all know that, which is why people hurl insults even when they don't get a reaction. But it's more satisfying when you do get a reaction, and one thing about Trump is, he reacts.
I'm inundated with tweets about how Trump is unstable, a nutjob, a madman, and about how the Constitution is in crisis. If so, is it really a good idea for people to try so hard to get under his skin? Or could it be that those alarums are as empty as the heads of the people who solemnly issue them?
Hillary followed her "thin-skinned" remark with: "Do we want his finger anywhere near the button?"
Funny, wasn't her husband president Bill Clinton well known for wagging his "boney" (i.e., necessarily thin-skinned) finger?
Jersey Fled said...
These idiots still think that they are important.
...and there aren't that many of them. At Berkeley, what, 100 or 200 people out of 38,000 students.
But they expose the malfeasance and dishonesty of their sorry excuse for a mayor and the 100-some Berkeley teacherettes who signed a ridiculous letter full of lies, and their ilk e.g. Reich and the "I'm a professor! How dare you!"** creature.
**Too long for a bumper sticker?
These skin problems can be overcome with exfoliation of the damaged layer and the parasites embedded in it. Or with scleroderma: a hard shell where the party being attacked just shrugs and punches back twice as hard.
"I suspect that we're about an average of six months away from these people starting to get beat up on sight by everyone who is just sick & tired of their antics. Sooner in Red States, later in deep blue."
Leftists wouldn't dare pull this shit in rural Texas, where Trump voters actually live, because they'd get their asses beaten in. They prefer to foul their own nests because it's easy. The cops stand down in Berkeley, the mayor does nothing, the pols are sympathetic to them. So they feel free to inconvenience the lives and trash the businesses of people - who probably voted for Hillary.
It doesn't seem like a winning strategy to me, but hey, be my guest.
The Democrats are at a loss to come up with viable strategies. They're flailing, and they are lashing out at anyone who isn't already with them. If Trump does three outrageous things a day, and tomorrow brings another three outrageous things, and the Democratic Party reaction is to throw three hissy fits a day, Trump wins because the alternative looks insane. Besides, some of what the Democrats are calling outrageous are in fact unobjectionable, adding to the impression that the Democrats are mentally and emotionally unstable.
Small children who behave like the Democrats usually put to bed. We can't make the Democrats take a nap, but they would benefit from a timeout.
What would what hasn't worked yet suddenly start working?
Do you mean "why?" As a protester, getting under dontrump's skin was a side benefit, definitely not the point.
sunsong said...
Expect more of this as well ;-)
I hope so. I hope they block the road when someone you love is being taken in an ambulance to the hospital. I hope they delay you when you need to get across town or have to catch a plane. I hope they smash in the windows of coffee shops you frequent. Maybe they'll set another limo belonging to a Muslim immigrant on fire.
I hope they make the lives of blue staters absolutely miserable. Yeah, that'll sure show Trump!
It is no longer about Trump. The Left has to figure out a way to keep the fires of resentment smoldering. If they stop there may be some introspection Consideration of the last eight years and the glide path of the Democratic Party must be avoided at all costs.
I seem to remember a definition of insanity. Something about doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
No skin is thinner than that which is irritated by microaggression.
BillySaturday: "Because at some point we know he and his "movement" will implode."
LOL
Yes. Of course they will.
Of course.
I love it when leftists shit in their own bed and blather about it on their own news sites. They are demonstrating who is really thin skinned.
I know they won't leave their stupid little blue bubbles but if they do try this crap out here where we live they will get an education.
HT: "As a protester, getting under dontrump's skin was a side benefit, definitely not the point."
Poor HT. He's off-meme.
The newest talking point is that the protestors aren't protestors at all but instead Milo-affiliated right-wing COINTELPRO operatives!!
Do try to keep up with the latest leftist fantasies.
readering said:
Nobody likes being insulted. We all know that, which is why people hurl insults even when they don't get a reaction. But it's more satisfying when you do get a reaction"
Yep. Trump supporters didn't like being called "deplorables" and it sure was satisfying when they reacted to that on election day.
Blogger Lyin'PB_Ombudsman said...
"The protestors certainly are under Althouse's skin.
They own a good chunk of her mind. Sad!"
The thing is lyinPB is just stupid enough to think this is a victory. Ann is a liberal and voted for obama once. She is the swing voter and PB thinks it is awesome he and the douchebag brigade have made her mad.
Trump 2020 campaign should report these people and their crap as an in kind contribution.
What would what hasn't worked yet suddenly start working?
@Althouse, please define "working."
IMHO the strategy is counterproductive, but right now do they have any other strategy? One problem for the left, as Lyin'PB points out upthread, is that it is very easy for ordinary people to conflate loud nuisance protests with the riots at Berkeley and the assaults and window smashing and limo burning during the Trump inauguration. With this strategy the Democrats are advocating that everyone view them as the party of violence; I don't think that'd work very well outside a few big, blue-leaning, cities.
Do these people have any idea how ridiculous they have become?
@Achilles, Althouse may be mad, but I think angry is a better word.
@mockturtle, no but don't tell them. Trump only managed to win thirty states. If they keep it up he might win 40 to 45 in four years.
Five different lefties in the first 20 comments. This post must have a struck a nerve with Soros for him to spend this kind of money on it.
I do wish [hah!] that the media would quit reporting their every utterance. That would diminish their self-satisfaction by 90%.
Wait until the lefties get really steamed and bring out their ultimate weapon, the Big Puppets. That and another attack of Pussy Hats will bring down the Walls of Jericho.
Achilles,
If you want an microcosm of this entire debate, all you have to do is consider the exchange between tough guy lefty Tim Marchman, the editor of Deadspin and the man who finally called him out:
After Marchman tweeted this out, taunting Cruz supporters:
Hundreds of dudes who can't do a pushup are tweeting at me but literally not even one has had the brass to send me an email.
10:40 PM - 24 Jan 2017
and
Unsurprising that not one Ted Cruz-supporting cuck/Twitter user is willing to face me in the UFC octagon.
Tim Kennedy, MMA fighter and former Army Ranger, who looks like he can do a pushup, answered him:
"I'm your huckleberry. I also take note that you are a pathetic cyber bully. My email is tim@rangerup.com I'm available at your leisure."
Thousands of conservatives promptly went out to buy popcorn; unfortunately Marchman didn't accept the challenge - probably because he has yet to emerge from under his bed.
http://www.dailywire.com/news/12808/deadspin-editor-insults-cruz-challenges-cruz-hank-berrien
Compare and contrast the reaction of the election of Donald Trump and Scott Walker.
The spark is different-the election of Donald Trump vs. the proposal of Act 10.
The actions of Democrats are similar-Hitler comparisons, protests, fleebagging to Rocklin in WI; not attending committee meetings in DC).
In WI Walker survived a recall; the Assembly is more Republican than 2011; WI went Trump and has an R Senator. Despite the Democrats' obstruction, the Republicans have done well in the state. Republicans also have the majority on the WI SC.
Democrats are behaving worse nationally than they did in WI. If the sore loserism continues, expect Republicans to at least hold their own if not strengthen in 2018 and 2020.
mockturtle: "Do these people have any idea how ridiculous they have become?"
Au contraire mon frere.
They believe, truly believe as all leftists do, that if they simply scream loud enough and hold their hands over their ears long enough and pretend no other value systems or political beliefs are valid then they will "win".
Leftists have no feedback internalization capabilities so they must, by necessity, double down on the one tool in their toolbox: violence. It's all they have so they will run with it till the bitter end.
Fuck the Left. Say it loud and say it proud until they disappear.
BTW, given that MoveOn.org is 100% astroturfing, I rather doubt that Ben Wikler would recognize genuine grass roots activism if it jumped up to squirt mustard in Ben's ear.
"You Trump supporters are violent hateful Nazis!" - the Leftists say as they smash Starbucks windows.
" Trump sure is thinskinned!" - the Leftists say as they shut down Milo for saying mean things about trannies and lesbians and Islam.
"We're winning!" - the Leftists say as they bust up their own cities.
exiledonmainstreet: ""You Trump supporters are violent hateful Nazis!" - the Leftists say as they smash Starbucks windows.
" Trump sure is thinskinned!" - the Leftists say as they shut down Milo for saying mean things about trannies and lesbians and Islam.
"We're winning!" - the Leftists say as they bust up their own cities."
You forgot to add Step 4:
"It wasn't really us protesting! It was right-wing paramilitary provocateurs!!!" - the Leftists shout in order to avoid all responsibility for everything, as is their wont.
What would what hasn't worked yet suddenly start working?
These are socialists. I don't think that argument carries much weight with them.
Disrupting blue cities doesn't really seem like a way to win people over.
"In WI Walker survived a recall; the Assembly is more Republican than 2011; WI went Trump and has an R Senator. Despite the Democrats' obstruction, the Republicans have done well in the state. Republicans also have the majority on the WI SC."
Indeed. For a Wisconsin resident, it is indeed eerie to see the same madness that enveloped this state during the runup to the recall (documented so well by Althouse) be repeated on a national scale today. The Madison leftists were so sure that they reflected the emotions and desires of The People; the People had other ideas on election day.
Perhaps that's why the anti-Trump demonstrations and marches here have been relatively muted compared to what has been happening in other places, notably California. The left here still doesn't know what hit them after Walker was reelected.
I also wonder if the rage in California has something to do with the fact that the biggest, most populous state, the state that always been the trend setter, simply didn't matter in November. It has Silicon Valley. It has Hollywood. And those flyover, glamorous types just didn't care. It's as if the pretty, rich, spoiled girl is throwing a fit because she's been passed over for the quiet plain girl who wears hand-me-downs.
Those who didn't speak up when they could've/ should've will have to face the music.
Yup and the lefty trolls are here to let us know.
The left is really getting crazy. I had to unfollow Michael Totten on facebook because one of his commenters went nuts with the idea that I think blacks have lower IQs. The median is a standard deviation lower but that does not apply to individuals, Asians are about a half SD higher than Caucasians. There are a whole series of racial factors that are becoming more important in medicine as we get close to "molecular Medicine."
The guy went just nuts. He went to my facebook page and copied a photo. It is weird.
I like Michael Totten although I think he is a bit of a lefty and now his bubble is smaller. I didn't unfriend him. I still read his articles.
I can't figure out how to block commenters. I turned off notifications but that doesn't do it.
it is indeed eerie to see the same madness that enveloped this state during the runup to the recall (documented so well by Althouse) be repeated on a national scale today.
Yes and it is worrisome because these people seem not be getting any calmer.
It is nice to be out of California.
@Michael K,
"The left is really getting crazy. "
They sure are. Exhibit A - campus riots at UC Berkeley.
The key is to highlight their craziness, and peel away sensible, normal people in the middle, who are witnessing this meltdown.
"Why aren't these people afraid that Trump draws energy from this negativity?" Because they want to turn the culture war into a civil war, and bet they can win. As Tim Kaine said, they intend to fight in the streets. They already have the media in full and constant attack mode. Now they are trying to make college campuses unsafe for anyone to the right of the left. The judiciary is getting in on the act -- see the WA federal judge decision. Wisconsin had a critical mass of moderates and conservatives to block the madness; whether the country as a whole can withstand the leftist assault remains to be seen.
There have been small gestures of pique: lipstick graffiti on the sign at Trump’s golf course in Los Angeles, and a plan for a mass mooning of his hotel in Chicago. There have also been more organized efforts to take time and money away from family businesses — a boycott of stores selling Ivanka Trump’s clothes and a campaign to flood Trump businesses with calls demanding that the president divest from his holdings.
You know, perhaps his critics should eventually explain what they are for. Since "mass moonings" sounds like the actions of a collection of imbeciles, this Gang of No isn't going to work out too well.
And, you know, BRAGGING about HARASSMENT seems like an idiotic decision, but the Left isn't known for brains. Just credentials.
Because at some point we know he and his "movement" will implode.
You've been fabulously wrong so far.
"Thin skinned" is a common insult used in the corporate setting by feminists and spineless managers.
And defending yourself or even uttering a declarative sentence makes you a "bully."
Unfortunately, not kidding.
Drago said...
"They believe, truly believe as all leftists do, that if they simply scream loud enough and hold their hands over their ears long enough and pretend no other value systems or political beliefs are valid then they will "win".
Leftists have no feedback internalization capabilities so they must, by necessity, double down on the one tool in their toolbox: violence. It's all they have so they will run with it till the bitter end."
This is very true. And very disturbing. And very sad in its own way.
Just drove past Air Force One parked at the airport. People seem to like Trump around here.
The sound and the fury of Twitter notwithstanding.
So are Clinton and Warren "milquetoasts"?
"a plan for a mass mooning of his hotel in Chicago"
They need to provide the hotel employees with sunglasses if that happens because I imagine that 99% of the moons will be blindingly white.
It will be the biggest display of ugly asses since the DNC convention.
And, of course, these assholes think that the only person on the planet who gets inconvenienced by their antics is President Trump. Everyone else who's life is affected is just collateral damage, just one more egg broken to make the revolutionary omelette.
Hey! Republican assholes have made an entire industry out of inconveniencing people's lives. From welfare mothers to a million incarcerated blacks to the lives lost for false wars to the cut benefits and tens of millions uninsured they clamor for and disrespected heroes both veterans at home and abroad....
You guys certainly are experts in figuring out how to justify controlling a nation that hates you and your ideas. Don't ever give that up. How's the next gerrymandering session going? Is Trump pretending to be as much of a progressive as in 2016?
Yes and it is worrisome because these people seem not be getting any calmer.
It is nice to be out of California.
It's nice to see you leave a state with that much innovation and culture and social progress, to return back to the laggards and dullards and retrogrades that you identify with much better.
CC: "Hey! Republican assholes have made an entire industry out of inconveniencing people's lives."
"Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."
Womyn rioters are paid less than men rioters.
Drago retorts: Au contraire mon frere.
That would be mon soeur, s'il vous plait. ;-)
The left is really getting crazy. I had to unfollow Michael Totten on facebook because one of his commenters went nuts with the idea that I think blacks have lower IQs. The median is a standard deviation lower but that does not apply to individuals, Asians are about a half SD higher than Caucasians. There are a whole series of racial factors that are becoming more important in medicine as we get close to "molecular Medicine."
Oh yeah. There's a useful conversation. The "science" of IQ and race. Not that there's anything social about what "intelligence" - let alone IQ - even means. But it's good you recognize Asians as your superiors. From their politics, I wouldn't have thought so. But maybe you envy the predominance of totalitarian states among them. They're definitely better at controlling things. If only Mikey could convince his fellow Americans that controlling people and being controlled is a sign of "intelligence."
Drago said...
"They believe, truly believe as all leftists do, that if they simply scream loud enough and hold their hands over their ears long enough and pretend no other value systems or political beliefs are valid then they will "win".
IOW, just another messaging problem.
CC: "It's nice to see you leave a state with that much innovation and culture and social progress..."
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/25/local/la-me-0126-compton-20130126
snip: "The attacks on the family are the latest in a series of violent incidents in which Latino gangs targeted blacks in parts of greater Los Angeles over the last decade.
Compton, with a population of about 97,000, was predominantly black for many years. It is now 65% Latino and 33% black, according to the 2010 U.S. census. But it's not only historically black areas that have been targeted."
https://www.africanglobe.net/headlines/mexican-gangs-drive-black-families-southern-california/
snip: "Mexican Gangs Trying To Drive Black Families Out Of Southern California"
http://mashable.com/2014/11/21/public-poop-san-francisco/#Ov91stJzyOq0
"Social Progress"
And to think this is where I grew up!
"Social Progress"
"Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."
Were you taking him literally instead of figuratively in this "post-truth" politics? Were you listening to his words instead of what's in his heart, as Conway says about Trump?
Either way, it would be nice to see how this meant anything in terms of policy. Clearly it was a speech about politics and political involvement. (Which is at least as admirable as governing through gerrymandering. Good old fashioned civics, imagine that). And I didn't notice that work was a bad thing. Do we want a high unemployment rate? Are we looking for rewards without investments? (Maybe in the bubble economy of the aughts). Does cynicism portend well for the republic? Should we outsource our political priorities to the lobbyists? Is an uninvolved democracy tenable? Can an uninformed one be sustained? Is self-improvement somehow unAmerican all of a sudden?
“You know how Yellowstone National Park is built on one of the world’s biggest volcanos?” said Ben Wikler...
Built you say. Interesting use of the word. One of the rare cases where Obama's admonition that "You didn't build that." Is 100% true.
CC: "Were you taking him literally instead of figuratively in this "post-truth" politics? Were you listening to his words instead of what's in his heart, as Conway says about Trump"
I was watching his policies and the legislative outcomes.
Why does the left disavow their violent side? All the political violence in this country is being generated from the left. I assume they hope to create a backlash that drifts into fascism. Then breaks out into a gun war. All because the left doesn't really believe in free speech.
Oh. Urban L.A. Equivalent to an entire state.
Methinks someone's obsessing a little much on demography. I think when whites do it with cops instead of with gangs it's called "gentrification."
In any event, who cares. Angelinos are fleeing for the relative tranquility and stagnation of methamphetamine-addicted, evolution denying red states - like Kansas! Cutting taxes and blowing up deficits. But oh, the innovation. When's the last time they came up with a new industry?
This is really the argument you wanted to have today?
I can't wait to see where all those secret undercover COINTELPRO right-wing protest provocateurs show up next to try and make the lefty innocent protesters look bad.
I wonder if these right wingers will attempt to show their lefty protestor "cred" by defecating on police cars. Cuz that's usually how you know you are dealing with the lefty "real deals".
Well as long as we are talking about skin, there are a group of lefty loons who plan to protest in Chicago (in mid February!) by dropping trou and "mooning" the Trump building there.
Boy Gollee! That will show him!
Well actually it will show a couple of hundred naked backsides hanging out in what I hope is a very brisk and icy breeze off Lake Michigan. But it might have the effect of actually raising the intellectual level of the anti-Trump protests.
I was watching his policies and the legislative outcomes.
That's not what you quoted.
CC: "When's the last time they came up with a new industry?"
Food.
It's a real thing.
Look into it.
"Because they want to turn the culture war into a civil war, and bet they can win."
Anyone who thinks a revolution or civil war in this country wouldn't quickly result in a victory by the conservative majority of the military, police, veterans, and civilian gun owners is certifiably dead from the ears up.
Why does the left disavow their violent side?
We don't.
All the political violence in this country is being generated from the left.
Thank you for crediting us with this honorable American tradition.
I assume they hope to create a backlash that drifts into fascism.
What's the net worth of Trump's cabinet? How close are they to a corporatist agenda?
Then breaks out into a gun war. All because the left doesn't really believe in free speech.
It's funny how the right-wing confused "free speech" with "the freedom for me to say stupid things without being criticized for it."
Food.
CA grows plenty of food. So do other blue states.
I think you mean the kind of factory food that gets bar coded and slaps proprietary labels on crops so that they can claim intellectual property, sue nearby small farmers and inject them with genes to make them resistant to carcinogenic herbicides like Round-Up sold by the same "food companies."
That's what you meant, right?
So sez Pedro, the chocolate asterisk destroyer.
Lulz.
Are farmers pro-AGW denial and pro-Monsanto/GMO?
I didn't realize that they were.
I think you were referring to huge agribusinesses that employ lowly factory farmhands.
Not farmers. Different thing. Entirely different beast altogether.
Remember, just because Trump never intended to "drain the swamp" doesn't mean a corporatist agenda in other industries will win politically, etc.
You guys certainly are experts in figuring out how to justify controlling a nation that hates you and your ideas.
I see MacDonald's shift change occurred.
If only Mikey could convince his fellow Americans that controlling people and being controlled is a sign of "intelligence."
Intelligence is a topic you had best stay away from, Ritmo.
CC is very upset that his guy didn't win the dem nomination.
His guy didn't win because Hillary and the dem establishment and the media worked together to shaft him.
CC, like Bernie, has decided to reward the dem establishment with their fealty.
It's touching really.
Well, that was as unresponsive as usual, Michael K. Who taught you that avoiding substance was mature?
Was it your wetnurse Mammay? Every time she proposed an actual activity you pulled back on to that tittay and said you weren't done yet.
He. Just. Refuses. To. Answer. The. Actual. Question. Waaaahhhhhh! Give me that tittay, wetnurse Mammay!
How am I rewarding a Dem establishment?
If Trump thinks he's entitled to my support, he can stop lying, stop getting obsessed with crowd coverage and media food-fights, etc., stop being a douchebag on international alliances and stop filling his cabinet with corporate shills or other nobodies to whom he simply feels he owes political favors by either beating them or needing their loyalty (i.e. Sessions).
As it happens, it seems he's trying to delegate as much as he can to the same interests he pretended to oppose a few months ago, and basically handing over the reins to President Bannon on everything else.
I have to oppose him. He's revealing himself to be a puppet with misplaced priorities and outsourcing most of the big decisions to a crank publisher.
Democrats are a different, and at this point, much smaller problem. But Trump's doing all he can to unite us against the greater evil.
As a protester, getting under dontrump's skin was a side benefit, definitely not the point.
What was the point?...breaking windows at Starbucks cuz they wouldn't hire you to pour coffee?
What was the point?...breaking windows at Starbucks cuz they wouldn't hire you to pour coffee?
I think Starbucks might be a bit above Ritmo's level.
I have no way to know for sure, but my sense is that the rise of the Soros-funded protest left has coincided exactly with the steep decline of the Democratic Party. So I can only assume that Soros’ real goal is not to target the right but instead to dismantle the Democratic Party and replace it with the hard-left socialism of his Eastern European youth. Or, conversely, maybe he indeed is interested in fighting the right, but fails because he's grossly incompetent.
"CA grows plenty of food."
And they need water to do it. .
And they need water to do it. .
How much climate science will Trump's cabinet and anti-EPA EPA suppress?
With all the glaciers Republicans want to pretend aren't melting, CA could probably get some desalination action going. It's becoming cheaper. I guess that's the kind of disruptive technology that Republicans are ok with AGW promoting. Just not energy sources apart from fossil fuels.
Bouncer at the Brazilian Steakhouse.
How protestors plan to get under Americans' skins wherever they go.
Effective. Perhaps a baby trial held outside the chamber will increase their leftist creds.
"What was the point?...breaking windows at Starbucks cuz they wouldn't hire you to pour coffee?"
No, it's because they're dirty capitalists. Forget that Starbucks engages in PC virture signaling whenever it can, from gun-banning to vowing to hire refugees. That doesn't fool the radicals, especially when they're hungry after a bit of rioting and want some iced coffee and blueberry muffins to fortify themselves with before they go find another woman to pepper spray.
"just one more egg broken to make the revolutionary omelette."
Well, they “must trample down many an innocent flower, crush to pieces many things” for the Welkgeist to continue its transformation of all soceity. So, everyone so inconvenienced should feel grateful and honored to join in such progress.
What was the point?...breaking windows at Starbucks cuz they wouldn't hire you to pour coffee? when you refuse to distinguish between protesters and anarchists.
Keep it up, leftist holes. What you get with that is more Trump.
Ritmo is opining on climate, Hilarity ensues.
Here's a learned and cultivated leader of Ritmo's New American Revolution, not only an intellectual, but a PROFESSOR no less! Move over, Sam Adams and Paul Revere!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJa_s_2QX_c
I just walked by the TV and there are hundreds of idiots protesting in Miami Beach. At least it's warm. Why aren;t they at the pipeline in North Dakota showing how tough they are ?
To Commander Crankshaft: OK, you win. The cognitive dissonance in your posts is overwhelming me. I'm taking the dog for a walk. At least the dog is honest and coherent.
The intellectual achievements of Thomas Jefferson are as nothing compared to the wisdom and eloquence of this NYU professor. Truly, when it comes to noble acts of defiance, the only one that comes close is the distinguished scholar who dared to berate Ivanka Trump on that plane.
Anti Trump protesters get pleasure from the thought that their efforts are making Trump annoyed or angry. And Trump feeds that with his tweets (the SF protestors are punks, the women's march signs are all wrong). But very possibly Trump is playing the protesters: winding them up (with few seconds of effort on his part) to spend hours and days planning and executing their clever anti-Trump protests (which he privately shrugs off, or perhaps doesn't even notice). And incidentally Trump is also creating schisms in the anti-Trump camp (protests outside Schumer's house because he is insufficiently anti-Trump, threats to run primary challengers against Dems who are anti-Trump-enough).
So (if this is right) by (say) early-mid summer, we'll be reading columns from the left bemoaning the inefficacy of "our protests". "six months of intensive efforts and we still have Gorsuch on the supreme court, Devos at Education, Pruitt at EPA, Tillerson at State, Puzder at Labor, and the Muslim country 'ban' has been re-instituted, and there's a repeal of Obamacare, and there's a new tax reform, and... what was all that clever signage all supposed to do?"
The more protests and the more violent they are - the more the protesters push people into Trump's side. Maybe Trump's EOs and appointments are designed to elicit these reactions. People are not even listening to the protesters anymore. Just more and more of the same old nothing.
"Why aren;t they at the pipeline in North Dakota showing how tough they are ?"
Near a house I've got someone is displaying a "standing w/ Standing Rock" sign.
Presumably displaying a (printed by a graphics shop) sign is enough for some folks sine they probably remember this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMSuYsZCUew
I think you're correct, Molly.
And this is especially pertinent: "threats to run primary challengers against Dems who aren't anti-Trump-enough." That will really put the Dem Senators who are up for reelection in 2018 from states won by Trump in a bind. It will truly be hilarious if they lose in the primaries to far left moonbats who will be easily defeated in the general election.
Thanks to these nimrods, I am thinking election night '18 will be almost as much fun as election night 2016 was.
Moll and Exile,
I'm sure that DJT was doin' this mind-jujitsu thingy on Arnold at the prayer breakfast, too.
That DJT sure is smart, good thing y'all come up w/ all the reasoning that explains the DJT smarts that aren't obvious to folks who aren't as smart as y'all, and DJT.
Lots of smarts, carry on.
Don't forget that DJT has been displayin' these smarts for a while:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEEgplXwNWk
Good thing y'all are smart enough to know what DJT is really doing.
Carry on.
What would what hasn't worked yet suddenly start working?
Bit confused by the syntax, which one assumes is a typo (says the past master of the involuntary art of kamikaze prose) but one gets the gist, for all that.
Althouse implies the famous maxim attributed to Albert Einstein about insanity or futile being defined by failed actions being repeated again and again in hope of success. Whether the great man is justly credited, it is nevertheless a valid observation though a bit shopworn.
Over the past several years I have been devouring histories and biographies relating to the outbreak and prosecution of the Great War. More British and French were killed or maimed in the 50 months of First World War than in the 72 months of the Second, chiefly because their commanders failed to learn the lessons of battlefield experience and to appreciate the nature of their enemy, the German soldier — resilient, resourceful, and the absolute master of his weapons of choice: heavy artillery and the machine gun. For more than a year the hot-headed martinet, Sir John French wasted the long-service professionals of the B.E.F. in utterly useless frontal assaults against the German trenches until they were finally extermined at the Battle of Loos. Thereafter the destroyed regular British Army was replaced with a new army of conscripted civilians and "Territorial" amateurs. French was replaced as well, but with his loyal deputy, Douglas Haig, who picked up where French left off with virtually the same strategy and tactics, but with improved artillery shells. He believed the new shells would demolish the German barbed wire and clear the way for yet another, and this time brilliantly successful, frontal attack. Haig's infantry would then open a hole in the German lines through which his cavalry brigades would pour like a torrent of thundering hooves and flashing steel. It didn't happen, of course. Yet to the very last day Haig kept tens of thousands of horse-mounted cavalry in reserve against the mythical day a breakthrough would allow them to gallop to Berlin. And to the very last day, Haig could think of nothing else but another direct assault by infantry advancing with bayonets fixed.
There were better brains who knew better answers, but they were seldom listened to. One of those brains belonged to Winston Churchill, who as First Lord of the Admiralty invented the solution to the entrenched machine gun, which he called a "land ship," but we know more familiarly as a tank. It took more than a year technical innovation and political jawing to get Churchill's land ship project off the drawing boards and into Flanders to face the foe, yet their initially stunning success at the Batlle of Cambrai was wasted because those armored fighting vehicles were treated like horse cavalry by Haig and his like-minded officers, who thought of the tank as a new-fangled kind of bullet-proof charger. After a penetration of almost seven miles into German-held Belgium the tanks were encouraged to range ahead of their accompanying infantry, now footsore and exhausted. Once denuded of their infantry support the Germans found it easy to close in behind the advancing tanks and destroy them with mortars and grenades.
(continued in my next comment)
"The more protests and the more violent they are - the more the protesters push people into Trump's side".
Pure bullshit. This canard has been repeated ad nauseum. No one who hasn't already crawled up Trump's ass will go up there because Americans are protesting.
(continued from my previous comment)
French and Haig and Joffre and Nivelle, all never lost faith in the frontal assault, thus reinforcing failure with repetition. In the end, it wasn't any of those profligate attacks that ended Imperial Germany, even after the Americans arrived to exercise their own version of fully frontal futility. In the end, it was starvation at home caused by the total blockade of all seaborne commerce with Germany and the Great German General Staff's own uselessly costly headlong attacks at Verdun and later in the desperate Michael offensive of March 1918, that forced the Armistice on Germany.
I am not surprised that the Left has taken so few lessons from history in their confrontation with a revolutionary President, even though the class of academic historians is absolutely dominated by like-minded ideologues. Perhaps they can no longer consider the past with sufficient clarity, that they see as through a glass and darkly. Could it be that virtually opaque LGBTQIA filter they use to peer at the universe? Do they need to shave a few letters off that bullshit acronym, or in the style of the truly mad, add a few more?
Enemy of The State @jflysocal Feb 2
I was NT, but the last few months have been cathartic. The left has got me regreting not voting for Trump.
Jim Wilke @JimWilke Feb 2
Left ballot blank in November, will vote for Trump in 2020.
@JohnEkdahl Ayep. Wrote in McMullin. Now realize Dem/media complex is a clear & present danger to the republic. Must be fought & defeated.
Congrats, lefties! Your tactics are really working well! Keep it up!
"I am not surprised that the Left has taken so few lessons from history in their confrontation with a revolutionary President,"
Dude, if ya want to suggest that olden days stuff will fail in the future, you may want to familiarize yourself w/ the future re old economic sectors in the States, relative to the stuff DJT says and the states that support Rs v those on the other side.
IOW, don't support backwards lookers if you want to claim that looking backwards will result in failure.
Sheesh.
John Ekdahl @JohnEkdahl Feb 2
Media is also driving Trump-haters like me to reluctant support, because it is YOU that is dangerous. America is in crisis because of YOU.
Greg @BankofGSimms Feb 2
@JohnEkdahl I wrote in Rubio, but man I'm about ready to cast my 2020 vote for Trump now
Swinging Cod @SwingCod Feb 2
@TVatHome @JohnEkdahl @fsnco2 @CML_Texas for the first time in 20 years, I didn't vote (Weld put me of LP) The nutters keep pushing me Trump
Excuse me, "Billy Saturday" what were you saying?
"Dude, if ya want to suggest that olden days stuff will fail in the future..."
Translation: PBJ can't take any lessons from history, because he doesn't know anything about history.
Sheesh. The side that is supposedly so intellectual is pig-ignorant and proud of it.
BillySaturday wrote: Pure bullshit. This canard has been repeated ad nauseum. No one who hasn't already crawled up Trump's ass will go up there because Americans are protesting.
One of Doug Haig's staff officers were you, Billy? You certainly think like one.
You didn't see it coming last November, so why would one expect you to see more presciently now?
BTW Those who don't know their Latin should avoid using it in their sentences, Ad takes the accusative, which in the case of nausea is nauseam.
That will really put the Dem Senators who are up for reelection in 2018 from states won by Trump in a bind. It will truly be hilarious if they lose in the primaries to far left moonbats who will be easily defeated in the general election.
I think we will see some party changes as 2018 begins. Phil Gramm was gentleman enough to insist on running for his seat again in a special election when he changed parties. I doubt there are any gentle people on the Democrats side anymore but I do expect three or four party changes, especially if the moonbats really get wild.
Nice summary Quaestor. Churchill was also correct about the Dardanelles. If the Royal Navy had forced their way through in spite of losses to mines, the war might have ended several years earlier.
The Germans were the ones with observers in the American Civil War. They fought the Franco-Prussian War a few years later, My thing is medicine but the Germans used the American Medical History of the Civil War to upgrade their care of wounded in the 1870 war.
Just imagine if the British had gone to school on Sherman and his mobility tactics. Liddell Hart wrote an excellent biography of him but it was after the war in the 1920s.
Quaestor, it's too bad they hadn't read Sun Tzu. Had they even read Clausewitz?
Lying whatever wrote: ...you may want to familiarize yourself w/ the future
WOW! I have seldom read a concatenation of words more at odds with reality. Congrats for re-setting the bar below snakeshit level, a new world record!
I'll leave tarot reading to the idiots. As for me, I'll familiarize myself with the future when it becomes a fact rather than a fantasy.
Although I am a dedicated Anglophile, I will admit that their military strategies have been sadly wanting in many cases mostly due to the fact that the British don't believe they can learn anything from anyone else.
At least the dog is honest and coherent.
And on your level. I won't mention sniffing ass and licking balls.
"I'll familiarize myself with the future when it becomes a fact rather than a fantasy."
You geezers really should thank those of us who are actually doin' the work to MAGA.
Anywho,
carry on w/ you backwardness pride, we got ya.
Had they even read Clausewitz?
Lyin'PB_Ombudsman probably thinks Clausewitz is a treatise on kosher pickles.
The intellectual achievements of Thomas Jefferson are as nothing compared to..
his sexual achievements? Yes, raping slaves is fun. I'm sure you wish you could have been one for that very purpose, meek and submissive as you are IRL.
The reason conservatives in America want to make this like the colony it was prior to 1776 is because they were the ones siding with the king at that point. Which explains their support for the authoritarian Trump presidency perfectly. 1/3rd of Americans were revolutionaries at the time, 1/3rd loyalists and 1/3rd indifferent.
You can bet the conservatives were monarchists. And still are. As Richard the Nazi Spencer said, "Hail Trump!"
I'm sure all those blue collar workers are thrilled with his cabinet picks. More wealth in his neck of DC now than a third of the country. Talk about returning power to the people. All those people on executive boards, your power will now return. Now watch as we gut financial regulation and start the bubble for another Great Recession.
I get it Q,
that's your way of sayin' thanks to those of us who pushing the future growth of the US economy.
You're welcome.
when you refuse to distinguish between protesters and anarchists.
It's easy. The protestors have crisp $100 dollar bills in their pockets.
I see that you have evaded answering the question. So, I'll repeat.....What is the point?
But very possibly Trump is playing...
With his wispy hair plugs? Yes, that's about the extent of what Trump thinks about.
Now go get his legal staff to justify the next round of law-breaking! Next!
You geezers really should thank those of us who are actually doin' the work to MAGA.
I congratulate you on doin' the work to MAGA, though I must point out that work you are doing is not quite what you think it is.
Think of this way, your work kinda like the work the rats do toward rodent control when they nibble the poisoned bait.
The tactic here of ridiculing protesters sounds like an effective one. Everyone knows how badly the Republicans were beaten back when you pointed out how illiterate, crude and generally insane their own astro-turfed loudmouths were. Bought and paid-for by Kochs, no less.
No wonder they don't believe in grassroots dissent. They need donors even just to rise up. They can't fathom that normal human beings don't need payment to simply speak out when they feel their chief executive is an abominable, lying, lawless, reckless douche. They can't fathom it! Leaders are supposed to be unhinged, they reason! How else would the right-wing know whom to follow!
Q,
You got me. Like the rat, at some point (probably soon) I'll realize how awful I've got it.
Carry on.
No wonder they don't believe in grassroots dissent.
On the contrary, we do believe in grassroots dissent. That's what happened last November.
What happened in Berkeley was grass-rooted dissent. And assorted other chemicals.
"Left-wing campus groups had been planning the riot for months, as detailed in “The Official Anti-Milo Toolkit,” a comprehensive strategy document prepared by a coalition of leftist organizations outlining exactly how to get Milo’s Berkeley appearance canceled, and providing shockingly fascistic rationalizations as to why free speech should not be allowed for conservatives."
zombietime brackets
Trump's plan for keeping working voters supportive: Me businessman! You businessman! We successful! Yeay, go economy! (Thump chest for effect).
Like the rat, at some point (probably soon) I'll realize how awful I've got it.
Don't feel too bad; ideologies like all things have their life spans. Your misfortune was to choose one that, like the rodent's, is all too brief. Ours, however, is... how shall I put it? More elephantine.
On the contrary, we do believe in grassroots dissent. That's what happened last November.
In four states. Yes. Go four-state strategy!
Your problem is he will do nothing to maintain that support. Or anyone else's.
And you know it. Stop bullshitting. He hasn't a clue and will just do whatever Bush did (or whatever his Bush-like advisors and President Bannon dictate to him).
This doesn't keep the support of those four states, let alone any of the others. They will turn on him quicker than rats off a sinking ship.
Somehow, deep down, you must know this. This guy promised different from past Republican performance, and has stocked up his cabinet with the same swamp-like elements he promised to drain.
Goodbye, Trump "movement". It was nice knowing you.
"This guy promised different from past Republican performance, and has stocked up his cabinet with the same swamp-like elements he promised to drain."
Addendum:
On steroids.
Lyin'PB_Ombudsman said...
Moll and Exile,
I'm sure that DJT was doin' this mind-jujitsu thingy on Arnold at the prayer breakfast, too.
That DJT sure is smart, good thing y'all come up w/ all the reasoning that explains the DJT smarts that aren't obvious to folks who aren't as smart as y'all, and DJT.
Lots of smarts, carry on.
And yetm he defeated the best the Republicans and the Democrats could run against him.
Lying, antisemitic, racist , misogynist,thieving, con man stupid, fascist, pussy grabbing narcissistic won the biggest prize on the planet.
Ha Ha Ha.
Lefties are nasty little shits. This is what they do. Code Pink immediately disappeared 8 years ago, and right on cue, they are back...along with all the anarchists, socialists, one-worldists, and the public unionists.
They are only playing to themselves. Nobody else wants anything to do with them. The more batshit crazy they are, the more they confirm why Trump won.....which, I suspect, is why Reich tried to blame the rioting on the right. He knows it's hurting the libruls.
- Krumhorn
Goodbye, Trump "movement". It was nice knowing you.
If the Left knew more and believed less they would realize how closely Republicans reactions to FDR in 1933 track proglodyte reactions to Trump, excepting of course the death threats, the crude fabrications, the wanton criminality, and the generally philistine vulgarity displayed with pride (which goeth before a fall) by the infantile myrmidons of anti-capitalism. Roosevelt's an aberration, the harrumphing oligarchs assured themselves. He's violating the Constitution! He'll be impeached. FDR will be gone in '36, bet your boots! No, make that '40... wait, wait... '44, definitely 1944. Little did they realize in 1933 they were witnessing a movement that lasted until Obama ate the seed corn while watching the Golf Channel.
CC: "This doesn't keep the support of those four states, let alone any of the others. They will turn on him quicker than rats off a sinking ship."
The same folks telling everyone Trump had no chance to win these states is now telling us Trump has no chance to hold those states.
Perhaps the lefts time would be better spent telling their democrat betters not to steal the next primary.
But they won't. In the end, the lefties are quite easily led around like sheep.
Blogger Commander Crankshaft said...
And they need water to do it. .
"How much climate science will Trump's cabinet and anti-EPA EPA suppress? "
It is the left that suppresses science. There are numerous articles and quotes from scientists who describe what happens to you when you don't say the right thing on climate science.
But keep telling yourself what you want to hear. You guys are a religious cult now. I have tried to engage you on the science of climate change. You are a joke. What is going to happen is you will no longer be able to suppress the other side and the church of climate change will wilt under scientific peer review.
@Achilles, absolutely! Michael Mann's "hockey stick" graph was debunked almost immediately yet he is a hero to the AGW crowd. Judith Curry tries to apply solid scientific method to climate science and is hounded from the field.
Ah, the old canard about Jefferson! It is of course, stupid in the extreme to reduce the Author of the Declaration of Independence to a rapist, and there is no evidence of it, but that's what dimwitted, impotent Commies who are losing the argument (along with their minds) do. Sorry, but I prefer Jefferson to prize asshole Jean Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau, who was way ahead of Planned Parenthood when he forced his mistress to put their infant children in foundling homes, almost a certain death sentence in those days. Rousseau, a pioneer in legal infanticide - what a fitting hero for the Left.
Marx was a model hubby and father too - well, except to the kid he sired with the servant girl. The son he never acknowledged, the kid who was forbidden to enter the house through the front door and had to stay in the kitchen. Another example of just how much leftists love equality.
Then there's a real leftist star, the man Ritmo secretly wants to be - Lavrentiy Beria. Now there's a guy who pulled a lot of trim and he didn't have to bother with sweet talk or flowers either.
You should make note that the degree of LyinPB's faux "happiness" is inversely proportional to republican/conservative electoral and policy success.
Perhaps all this faux excitement/happiness by lefties is just a coping mechanism for the weakest of them.
Well, time will tell.
Thank you, Fullmoon! I truly enjoyed my visit to zombietime, particularly the Hall of Shame.
That creep with the peace emblems painted on was especially creepy. Now we know what happened to Ritmo.
The same folks telling everyone Trump had no chance to win these states is now telling us Trump has no chance to hold those states.
Where do you get your reali -- I'm sorry, alternate reality from? Kelly Anne Conway? Michael Moore knew this would happen all along. Most of us knew it would be close. You're confusing the pollsters who spoonfed whatever bullcrap the Democratic establishment ate with all the rest of us looking at reality and wonder where his "results" will come from.
The guy's all in it to enrich President Bannon, his Perpetual Twitter War, and his corporate buddies. If you disagree then dig into the reality around you and let me know how that's wrong. What is he doing that will benefit the two-time Obama voters in the rust belt that allowed Putin's puppet, President Haystack Head, to win.
Come one. Debate reality once again. You did a good job of it during the primary and general. What happened? Did you think I'd be shilling for Hillary now if she won? Of course I wouldn't have.
And that's why the Trump win actually did turn out to be the more dangerous/wrong turn of events. Everyone on his RINO team is so ecstatic to have held on for dear life to power for one more cycle that they refuse to hold him to account and have no idea where this is going, or even where it could go.
I didn't expect that the worse of two evils won in November. But when I look at his enablers, you guys, I'm convinced it has. No way the Democrats or anyone on the left would have been as complacent about an elected Hillary as you partisans have proven to be about an elected Trump.
Go ahead and rebut all that on the basis of the facts. Alternative facts, real facts, whatever Conway and Spicer have approved you to call them. Go ahead and appeal to them. Use them.
Goddamn. I know that narcissists are delusional and distort reality constantly. But I never knew it was politically contagious. Except when you look through history at how tyrants retained power.
Good job.
Ah, the old canard about Jefferson!
Canard?
It looks like we can add DNA to the number of science-based concepts that Republicans refuse to believe in.
"How much climate science will Trump's cabinet and anti-EPA EPA suppress? "
It is the left that suppresses science. There are numerous articles and quotes from scientists who describe what happens to you when you don't say the right thing on climate science.
But keep telling yourself what you want to hear. You guys are a religious cult now. I have tried to engage you on the science of climate change. You are a joke. What is going to happen is you will no longer be able to suppress the other side and the church of climate change will wilt under scientific peer review.
Pruitt lost every case that he took against the EPA when he ran that state's corporatist interests.
But go on. I love it when people who've never set foot in a lab, never conducted an experiment, and certainly never came across a finding - let alone one that made it past peer review - lecture everyone on how science works.
It's like listening to George Will go on about baseball.
Charles Krauthammer likes to write about baseball a lot also. In his wheelchair.
You could win an Olympic gold medal in synchronized swimming - from your bathtub.
Just put your mind to it. It's all in the not-knowing and not-doing.
Propaganda doesn't need any real-life experience. This is the post-truth, internet-ready cyber-world, and a corporatist puppet who appeals to "alternative facts" is now running the show - from the vantage point that his narcissism will delude him into painting all around him.
You've got your man in the office. Perhaps you will upgrade your own delusions to match his own. Go on, do it. AGW is a Chinese conspiracy against the American economy.
Up your game. It's all in how delusional you can be these days. And Trump is setting the bar mighty high!
Commander Crankshaft said...
The tactic here of ridiculing protesters sounds like an effective one"
It sure worked in Wisconsin during the recall. Even Democrats were rolling their eyes at the Madison sing-a-longs and "Walker is a Nazi!" signs.
Stop frothing at the mouth and straining to come up with insults you haven't thought of before and ask yourself this: what reason to you have to think the protests will be effective?
I mean, I know the riots at the DNC convention in 1968 were instrumental in sending Democrats to the WH in 68 and 72, but other than that shining example of success, can you give me another example of why you think screaming in the streets is effective? Your little Jacobin fantasies are tough to give up, but Middle America - you know that scary place west of Planet Manhattan - is pretty repulsed by them.
The protests don't have to be "effective." They are reality. This guy is despised, and he's making things worse for himself - -and the country. And the world. He ain't unifying shit. Wisconsin? Give me a. fucking. break. Who the hell cares about what goes on there? Even Trump put Scott Walker back onto his bad side, wherever that is. He seems to have a bad side all around him. (Narcissists usually do).
The question is whether Trump will be effective - at anything he promised. I understand that all you care about is power, but here is where he loses it: He lies. He isn't delivering. He's running a global superpower, not a tiny state whose principal industries are cheese and... well, whatever the fuck else Wisconsin does well. Beer! Yeah, that's it. Beer!
This is about something much more than cheese and beer. Trump is failing his tests. And he will spin that into a success the same way he did his failed businesses. But results will matter.
Not that you care. But that puts your integrity on the line. I know you're too timid to tell what it is you think he's actually done right so far. So define your own metric, then. It's become tiresome debating with people for whom the entire concept of objective criteria doesn't exist.
So you tell me. What will a post-Trump America look like? Apparently 4% unemployment is too high for him. What will he lower it to. Apparently we're jokes on the world stage. What will he do in international affairs? Or do you have to consult President Bannon to tell me what that would look like?
You guys don't even know what you want. You are confused, disoriented, disheveled. And increasingly delusional.
But that describes the guy you've tied your fates to, and all you care about is the politics, anyway.
Prove that wrong.
"The DNA test only proved that one of Hemings’ children was fathered by one of potentially two dozen Jefferson men in possible proximity to Monticello at the time. But headlines were deceptively more emphatic."
But of course, bozos like Ritmo believed the headlines.
"And DNA disproved that descendants of a Thomas Woodson, ostensibly a Jefferson-Hemings child, were related to any Jefferson. A Jefferson overseer later disputed claims of his overlord’s intimate ties to Hemings, reporting he regularly saw another man leave Hemings’ quarters in the morning. According to the Scholars Commission, the descendants of the only Hemings child DNA links to a Jefferson long believed their ancestor was Jefferson’s “uncle,” a likely reference to Jefferson’s brother. "
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304211804577500870076728362
DNA, how does it work? How about something known as "verifiable evidence?"
Of course, the researchers who debunked this tosh didn't have a crack Manhattan pharmacist on the team. That might have changed everything.
Will Pedro get deleted tonight?
Stay tuned!
Thank you barrenwombonmainstreet. I kind of already knew that Y chromosomes are shared between male blood relatives. I guess that was news to you?
Well, anyway, you got one guy's say-so and a biased society's endorsement - on one hand. Then you got the fact that your hero never denied the slave-fucking rumors in his day and how prevalent slave-fucking was at the time. About a third of African American males carry "European" Y chromosomes. I guess that's a lot of illicit affairs between slaves and their not-masters.
So, it's not really as credible. And let's nevermind the fact that you're debating a point I'd think you'd embrace, anyway. I mean, if anyone could defend the not-really-consensual nature of slave-master/slave-owner fucking, I'd think it would be you.
Someone as submissive as you - I'd figured you'd probably find that sort of thing romantic.
Go on. You tell me about the prevalence of random white person/not-their-slave black person romances in the antebellum south, dunderhead.
I guess that was the reason for anti-miscegenation laws, right? I mean, the south should have been really gung-ho on inter-ractial marriages and liaisons once there weren't technically slaveowners to have sex with their slaves, now that they weren't their slaves any more.
You are as incoherent as a cousin-to-cousin's procreative fruit, fruitlesswombonmainstreet.
I'm not barren. I've mentioned here that I have a daughter.
What about you? Any kiddos or is all that DNA going into a Kleenex when you jack off reading The Gulag Archipelago? Or was it fileted for parts at Planned Parenthood? You seem creepily obsessed with procreation. A guilty conscience perhaps. I have no such guilt.
@quaestor: I read your comments about WWI with interest. It's true that the Allies didn't know how to properly capitalize on the use of the tank, but the same might be said of the Germans and their use of poison gas. Although the Germans lost the war, it's hard to point to any winners...... The Prussian General Staff knew how to manage a war, but in all other aspects of statecraft they were stupid beyond measure. They could have forestalled British entry into the war by not invading Belgium. They assured the Kaiser that the war would be over before the British could launch an expeditionary force. They could have forestalled US entry into the war by not engaging in a unrestricted submarine warfare. Here again they thought the war would be over before America got involved. On the eastern front, where they actually won, they demanded so much territory in Poland and the Ukraine, that the forces they sent to occupy those regions caused them to actually lose manpower......There were no winners, and there were no brilliant generals. Nonetheless, the Germans were the biggest losers, and their generals were the biggest jerks. And beyond that, there's the awful fact that they never truly realized that they had lost the damned war.
Wow. Pretty mature talk for a parent.
Whose was it? Jefferson's brother?
Lol. I kid.
Are you done changing the subject? How will the "success" that your master Donny Tinyhands always talks about will be measured? Or is it just about political legerdemain?
I'm sure you can get more graphic and weird and gross if you feel your latest subterfuge and distraction attempt wasn't cool enough.
I'm out. Check back on you later. Maybe appeal to the mighty Scott Walker for inspiration if you run out of ideas.
Randolph Churchill was said to have contracted syphllis after a liaison with one of the maids. The servant population on those great estates gave full service. Tolstoy fucked everything female on his lands. African kings had hundreds, sometimes thousands of wives. By the term "wife", I mean, of course, slave. Tell me why Sally Hemings was uniquely disadvantaged?
Tell me why Sally Hemings was uniquely disadvantaged?
That wasn't what she was saying.
She was saying: It Didudn't haaaappunnn.
And Trump's tiny hands ain't never touched any places they weren't really supposed to be in.
It must be tough being the type of woman to always be conflicted about which lie you'd prefer to support. You know. For "political" reasons.
But hey. Alternative facts will fix that.
Alternative facts.
I think theDems are rather like the Prussian General Staff. They don't recognize the fact that they lost the damned war. Perhaps if they can find a leader with charisma and swagger who can organize midnight marches, they can can win the next war.
I'm going to out to dinner now dearie, and can't be bothered with your silliness any more. But really - Any kids? I never thought to bring it up here but since you're as bizarrely fixated on the womb of a woman you know only as pixels on a computer screen as Andrew Sullivan, amateur OB, was with Sarah Palin's plumbing shouldn't you let us know if you have a wife and family if if not, why not? Or if you were going to be a daddy, but scrape scrape, plop and the pesky brat ended up in the garbage pail? Why should I get all the personal questions?
Opines William: And beyond that, there's the awful fact that they never truly realized that they had lost the damned war.
The real defeat came after the Treaty of Versailles.
So, Commander Crankshaft is drinking heavily again. Two nights in a row with hard liquor could spell a bit of a problem.
Get help, Commander Crankshaft.
Carry on.
C'mon Pedro, lose it again.
How many times has it been now? 10? 20?
Do another line, man.
We value your cool, unruffled opinion.
Aw, he must be off having chocolate asterisks.
Wash your face and hands!
Miami has a lot of that sort of thing.
Lots of Brazilian hookers too. All 5 genders.
Also very hairy.
"Why are we talking about a person's skin?"
It's a pretty accurate metaphor. An important biological function of skin is to protect what is underneath. The skin can be cut, bleed and heal without damage to the underlying structure.
It's funny this insult is coming from the Left, who are notorious to be offended and outraged by anything which does not come from their Hive Mind. Even that X-Men Apocalypse billboard in Hollywood. A BAD GUY was chocking a woman who ATTACKED HIM. In FICTION.
These constantly aggrieved people are having the exact opposite effect. I was a Never Trumper. But their protests, violence and property damage persuade me that HE isn't the Problem: THEY are.
Of course, one of the big disconnects in normal people, realistic people, people with a sense of proportion who don't get their panties in a twist over a golf course, is that we don't understand the mind of the Leftists.
If they get their head beaten in by the cops because they engage in criminal acts, they think they are MARTYRS and not CRIMINALS. This gives them a sense of nostalgic validity from days of Selma.
For most people, being jailed or hit would be instructive. Instead it is edifying for them.
How do you 'correct' such people? You can't talk to them, jailing them doesn't have the salubrious effect it would on the sane, and spankings don't work.
I would suggest that Trump cut all Federal funding to universities. If they are going to be hotbeds of insurrection, let them do it on their own dime.
I can see the Title IX Letter: Any university which does not enforce a TOTAL rule of freedom of speech which does not include violent protestors inhibiting free speech, will forfeit all Federal funding up to and including Pell Grants. They are in violation of the Constitution and the very ideals of education.
Then send Milo on a tour of all the Ivy League universities.
So I take it "mainstreet" (whatever occurred on mainstreet) isn't going to define for us how "success" will be defined according to the presidency of Mr Terrific Tremendous. As was expected.
Why should I get all the personal questions?
Because when I try for facts you get all flustered and shift to personal issues. See above.
But good on you to trumpet around that whole single mother thing. You never can stop banging on about that sort of thing, can you. And the obsession with abortion.... sounds like it must have been an, er, "unplanned" pregnancy. I'm sure your priest filled you in on all the details about that. Who needs an OB when you've got a morally anal retentive celibate to compel you to do things.
So, what was it? Broken marriage or just the ordinarily respectable thing about ignorant, hapless kids who apparently don't know the first thing about birth control? Or didn't care?
Was it like that Boston teenage pregnancy cult?
You know, I really don't actually want to know the details. But you sort of seem fixated on making a big deal about all of this so I figure I'll let you know how respectable this all makes you sound. Not a lot of people out there who think a horny vivacious gold-digger must have something to brag about when obsessing about her single mother status, but maybe it's a Jesus and Mary thing.
Maybe she was immaculately conceived.
Maybe you were just too good a goody two shoes to know where babies came from. Or how to have a decent enough relationship to keep it from going that way.
Of course, it's also possible you're a widow. But nothing in your character indicates that. Unless you poisoned him. I could believe that.
Either way, it's telling that this is the sort of thing you'd prefer talking about. And not in a good way.
Not tonight I guess, although the night is young.
Mean drunks are the worst.
They could have forestalled British entry into the war by not invading Belgium.
Yes, but by their strategic appreciation made in response to the Russo-French Rapprochement (1891-93) and updated periodically, the real threat was the Russian Army. The only plan that they had confidence in involved a rapid defeat of the French Army by the envelopment and capitulation of Paris followed by an attack on the rear of the French main body fighting aggressively through Alsace-Lorraine into the Saarland. If the German Army faced the French across their common border it was clear from the staff work that such a policy was a recipe for total defeat. Over the intervening years, the Great Greman General Staff used their highly advanced Kriegspiel simulation methodology to "game out" dozens of scenarios, but the result was always the same. Because of the cramped terrain, the Germans and French became deadlocked in vicious fighting for the river crossings in the vicinity of Metz or further east in the Saarland. The stalemate always gave time for the slow-moving but overwhelming Russian Army every condition it needed to capture everything east of the Elbe. It was these game results that demanded an overwhelming advance across Belgian territory to attack France on a broad front from Sedan to Dunkerque — the notorious Schlieffen Plan. "Lassen Sie den letzten Mann auf dem Recht bürsten den Kanal mit seinem Ärme," was von Schlieffen's expression of the vital importance of an unbroken sweep from the Ardennes Forest to the sea.
As it turned out the German appreciation of the Russian Army in 1914 was as fatally flawed as it was 1941. The Russians mobilized much faster than any pre-war Kriegspiel had anticipated. Consequently, more German troops were committed to the East than had been planned, which in turn reduced the "overwhelming" power to be projected through an acquiescent Belgium to virtual parity with the Anglo-French forces — not enough to force a quick decision. Joffre stopped the Germans on the Marne but was unable to repulse them. Thus the trenches appeared, spreading rapidly east and west as both sides struggled to gain a flank on the enemy while avoiding being flanked themselves.
While it's true the Germans inflicted a sharp defeat on the Russians at Tannenberg, the Russians licked the Austrians soundly in the Carpathians. If they had had the supplies and the bold leadership needed to turn Hindenburg's right flank they could have beaten Germany.
Mean drunks are the worst.
Mean drunks are the worst entertainment. Tedious, repetitive, and imperious to rationality. FIFY.
This sounds like a threat to potus. They probably need some investigating.
Aw c'mon crankmeister, go for the gold.
Cuervo gold, fine Columbian.
Let it all hang out Pedro.
Ritmo, darling, I must commend you on your imagination. Just as you've imagined what Thomas Jefferson's sex life must have been like (and whether he slept with Sally or not, the fact is you're still a nobody throwing spitballs at a colossus), so too you've concocted a laughable scenario about what my life must be like. Too bad you're as ridiculously inaccurate about that as you are about everything else.
I take it you're not a dad. Childlessness is apparently fine for you although you condemn it in others. Well, it's a good thing, since any child raised by you would be dreadfully scarred by your excessive drinking and verbal abusiveness. Come to think of it, any woman with the misfortune of becoming involved with such an asshole would suffer terribly too. But I would imagine smart women steer clear of involvement with you.
You like hurling personal insults at others. Back at ya, gamma boy.
Portugese be some baaad 'shut yo' mouth!'
Portugee
I had a Portugee 'girlfriend' for 20 years. We met in the spermy, spermy hot tubs of a spa in Titusville Pennsylvania.
Hot and very, very hairy.
But that was then.
Now, there are many solutions to the problem.
Licencing, Health Department inspections.
Razors.
Pedro is our best troll.
True or false?
Bribes.
Depilatories.
Free sessions.
Identifies as a male (I think).
But whines just like a little girl.
Did you delete your account yet?
I finally found a picture of Ritmo.
So.... no answer on how the surprise baby made its way into your, er, parts. The same "parts" that Republicans once claimed could "shut themselves down" in case of what they called a "legitimate rape." Which could be the case since now you're going on about abuse etc. Ahh... the good old days of creative Republican policy. No wonder those guys aren't setting reproductive health policy.
But it would make sense. You go on and on and on about abortion, claim I'm too unimaginative to imagine that it might have been a "legitimate guy" and spew endless snark back in response to my queries about this personal life that you say you've been very forthcoming about. Especially while defending a likely slave rapist, given that thing called DNA and the social norms dictating antebellum Southern slave-white person sexual liaisons, as I've explained to you at least a couple of times.
Well, since that's the only alternative left, just know that I disagree about the "ends justifying the means" in such a scenario, much as it isn't my decision to make. I think it would be horrible for anyone to submit to use of her body for the purpose of carrying a rape baby. But then again, unlike you, I'm not a submissive.
In any event, while I wish I hadn't been led (by you) to entertain this only likely remaining scenario, maybe it was your own sick way of getting it off your chest and claiming martyr status. Again, I'd have preferred if we'd not gone there at all - but your pride being what it is, you seem to not be able to help yourself.
So, if it's wrong again - hey I'm only human - your love for Greek sorority letters notwithstanding. But you will always win the submissive game with me. No matter how much you insult, deflect, divert and whine. Because you're a sub. It's what you do.
The excess drama just deludes you into thinking it made for a more interesting story than anyone here thinks it did.
Get help.
Ha Ha, Jizzbag Ritmo strikes again.
Did you finally wake up?
Or did it take you that long?
This is very amusing.
Ritmo tries to be a person without being an asshole.
Fail.
Let's hear it, Ritmo.
Chill, you can always disappear down in the Keys.
BTW, it's interesting you use TJ's full name, but refer to his slave in a very intimate/familiar way: "Sally."
She had a last name too, you SUB. It was Hemmings.
Say it with me: Sally Hemmings
Downplaying what probably happened between her and her master doesn't give you a right demean her - whatever your reasons for doing so, with your cutesy personal name of reference - doesn't give you that right.
Tell your male Republican colleagues that regardless of how it happened, how Jeffersonian DNA got into her kids, she's still not less than what you feel a need to pair her with.
But with the way you call me "Darling" and "Dearie" it's just more of your passive-aggressive female bullshit, from a phase you got stuck in that some women learn to grow out of. The stage at which they learn that self-respect is linked to how well you can respect others.
It's a stage that submissives never graduate to. They remain stuck, more or less forever, in a service-servant mode.
Grow up. Shut that thing down.
They are "simulators." That is a theory ("Simulator Theory") of how to interpret other people; they think Trump is just like them and will react the way they react, in this case to petty insults.
Everything over the last 2 years, and maybe Trump's whole career, would suggest this is wrong.
btb, the alternative is sometimes called "Theory Theory," in which you develop a theory of how the other person will act/react, and tailor your actions accordingly. This is considered the more adult and useful approach, though of course you have to be right (more or less).
Another comment from Ritmo.
Drink!
Lame-ass shit from Ritmo.
Try again.
Someone needs a life, and doesn't know he doesn't have one.
Ritmo, you lag a few hours.
Please take some "pep pills" so you can keep up.
Thanks in advance.
Oh, no, Ritmo, we'e done talking about me and my personal life. What about you? Try your luck at the anti-Trump protests because the ring-nosed, pink-haired sows the left calls womyn might be willing to give you a tumble. You'll get lucky with them. Any woman with brains and self-respect wouldn't put up for a second with your vile mouth, rage, drinking and irresponsibility. Your sons and daughters are in the bottom of a slop bucket, aren't they, gamma boy? Sold for parts because you can't handle being a father. And so your DNA goes nowhere and you will be forgotten 10 minutes after you die.
There! I'm summed up impotent gamma boy and his ridiculous posturing, his insecurities and his sad low-t rages. That's all there is to you, dearie. Maybe you'll find a girl in a MAGA to pepper spray or punch one day, just like your comrades in Berkeley. You'll feel real alpha then - for a few seconds.
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