Commented rcocean, after I posted a massive block of links to articles about the Trump/CNN town hall.
Maybe rcocean was referring to things I do elsewhere — I blog mainstream news every day — but I didn't read any of that analysis of the town hall. I watched the town hall myself, and I stayed tuned for some of the CNN panel discussion afterwards, but I was getting nothing out of it — it seemed like pro forma outrage — and turned in for the night, slept until time for the sunrise run, and, finally approaching the blog at 6:30 a.m., wrote that post to distance myself from the yammer about the town hall
I don't subject myself to an ordeal of reviewing liberal media. I follow my own interests, which, you can see, had to do with a song I'd heard on my run/walk and some feathers strewn on the trail before I posted that block of links, which I called "an image of outrage," about the town hall. It was a snapshot of something seen only from a distance.
What's striking to me now, writing this post, is what's not in those headlines: There was no one terrible thing Trump said that everyone's talking about.
There's just generic stuff about how Trump is awful. It's hard even to think of an answer to the question: What would you use if you had to choose one thing from the town hall to attack Trump?
Calling E. Jean Carroll a "wack job"? Saying he'd (maybe) pardon (some of) the January 6th convicts? Refusing to agree that Ukraine must be the winner? Standing by his longtime insistence that the 2020 election was "rigged"? Agreeing with himself that women "let" stars sexually abuse them? It's all a big stew.
And some people love the stew. There were all those people in the audience lapping it up! You could attack them to attack Trump. Why, they laughed at some things about which other people maintain sobriety! Want to use that? I see some Trump antagonizers are using that talking point... in amongst so many other talking points... it's all so blah blah blah.
পোস্টগুলি
৭৩টি মন্তব্য:
"There's just generic stuff about how Trump is awful."
And that's enough, isn't it?
"it's all so blah blah blaj"
Yes, it's boring, the worst sin the Althouse catechism, but it works.
Progs vent, increase the likelihood Trump will be the nominee, and reinforce the notion that no nice person could be so uncouth as to support him.
"blaj" You misspelled "blah"
A city in Alba County, Transylvania, Romania.
Interesting, homeland of "blaj" the vampire.
On the subject of a sunrise run: are you running trails or pavement?
I shifted from pavement to trails in my late forties, 25 years ago. Roads seemed to be wearing my joints back then, and after all these years they are as good or better than when I switched to trails.
Where I live "trail" generally means lot of hills. That can be challenging, but it feels like I can stick with it.
@Althouse wrote: There's just generic stuff about how Trump is awful. It's hard even to think of an answer to the question: What would you use if you had to choose one thing from the town hall to attack Trump?
This is a long way of outlining "Trump Derangement Syndrome."
Many anti-Trump brains short-circuited on election night 2016 and never recovered. From Obama on down they laughed and laughed and laughed at the mere thought that Trump could win, so their egos were built around superiority to all-things Trump. They are unlikely to ever recover, for they gave Trump a huge nest in their brains and thereby lost their own identities in the process.
Thank you for clarifying. However, anything mainstream at present is left/liberal crap.
Trump is an outsider, which is what people like, but even should he win, he will find it impossible to clean up what has gone wrong. Running elections with trillions of dollars at stake on the "honor system" was doomed to fail. Trump is like "Lord Jim" who rose to the head of the little band of natives based on his obvious good nature and good intentions, but when confronted with evil, in the form of a pirate, he had no answer, assuming good faith from the pirate, and failed. It led to the doom of the people it was his job to protect.
Half the people you argue with here are insincere, and have no interest at getting at the truth through some kind of adversarial process of debate. These people are here to obscure the truth, and see debate as a threat to their power, and so shut it down as best they can by muddying the water. It's probably better to bury one's head in the sand, and hope that somehow the steady hand of our sterling statesman of a POTUS will avoid bringing in the missiles over the pole due to the war he provoked, both as Vice President, and then as President.
Mao is rumored to have said that he preferred dealing with right-wingers than communists, because at least with right-wingers, he knew what they actually wanted.
Another even further offf topic: how many republican congress persons are shorting the market in anticipation of their big move. Perhaps a certain ex-president is also about to show us just how smart he is, too.
"Pro forma outrage" is a great phrase.
And I'm so, so sick of it.
American needs a fresh start. At the Vivek speech, I sat next to a former atheist from CA. She had a full complement of colored tats all over her body. She also had facial piercings. She is not a lawyer. We had a very pleasant and extensive conversation. By outward appearances, we could not be more different. Her comment to me was, "We don't need an 80-year-old president."
After all that's just how he's run his super successful businesses all these years ...
That's the point of Trump at this point - to get everyone in every direction OUTRAGED.
It's the point. Trump will never build a big beautiful wall, nor will he ever see the inside of the White House ever again... but the outrage machine must roll on.... and he delivers.
If we ignore him, he grows stronger.
If we confront him, he grows stronger.
If we convict and imprison him we will have the first president serve his term from a jail cell.
well i'll bite, why are you attacking desantis if you know entitlement reform will be necessary before the programs collapse,
but they are still stuck on their precious jan 6 the delta house jamboree, and all of their other k tel collections,
One thing: Trump, who trumps all other considerations.
What would you use if you had to choose one thing from the town hall to attack Trump?
They’ll think of something.
we try to avoid the james michael curley route, you see the uniparty is all in on the destruction of this country, so they cancel tucker and leave thses dregs,
they want us eating bugs and shivering the dark, they want the future from soylent green where the streeta are a grey sea of humanity,
The fact that there was a townhall at all is very good news. There were folks like AOC who shrieked that it shouldn't have even happened.
CNN apparently needs Trump in order to survive. Desantis won't cut it.
It's true; there was not one single thing that dominates the post-townhall discussion. No single Trump lie, or policy pronouncement or personal outrage.
That is because there were fifty of them.
My gut feeling on the import of the night; it was good, because it helps cement Trump with his 28% base. And so it will help him win the nomination. And then, with loads of video clips from events like last night's event, Trump will lose another election.
It's been a hard place for me to get to; rooting for Trump to win the GOP nomination in order to beat him again and make him an even bigger loser for all of posterity. But that is where I am at. Trump is so bad for the country, that he needs to be beaten again.
I voted for him in 2016 (reluctantly), but peeled off in 2020. Practically every '2016 and 2020' Trump voter whom I know voted for Trump without any reluctance, but is now expressing great reluctance about voting for him again. Most say that they will not vote for Trump in a primary, and some say they will not vote for Trump at all. I think Trump loses a "2020 rematch" by a larger margin than 2020.
Her comment to me was, "We don't need an 80-year-old president."
@Dave Begley, the question for your tatted acquaintance is whether age is more important than an understanding of finance and macroeconomics. The US economy is not a mess because Joe Biden is old; it’s a mess because Democrats do not understand economics.
Jonah Goldberg (WSJ, National Review, Weekly Standard, The Dispatch and Liberal Fascism (2008)) had the best line of the night last night.
In the pre-townhall panel discussion, he was asked, "Jonah, what will you be looking for tonight?"
Goldberg replied, "The exits."
Thanks for the response! And the clarification.
American needs a fresh start.
The American spirit needs a fresh start. We began a noble experiment in 1776, screwed up real badly in the beginning but quickly fixed our mistake, and screwed up a lot less badly the second time around. But the experiment failed. Some things we failed to envision (notably political parties and political machines), some things we assumed would prevail, didn't (commitment to Western Civilization and its values) and some things haven't worked (impartial justice system). It's clear that the next Constitution needs to include a clause that says: "The Constitution and Federal Laws mean exactly and only what we who wrote them and voted for them want them to mean. If you want to change their meaning, pass an amendment. The judicial branch may not change their meaning by Court decision.".
But, it's too late for America. We've gone too far into the ditch. We are reaching a point at which the Left refuses to leave the Right alone, and the Right is getting tired of taking the Left's shit. The answer is to do as the Pilgrims did, and leave for greener pastures. But there is no where else to go here on Earth. I have two suggestions. The first is space. I'm a stronger Heinleinian about exploiting and colonizing space. It will absolutely give us a chance to start over. The people who are willing and eager to go to space are the types we want.
The second idea is a little wild. Go to a country like Greece. Greece is poorer than shit and has a declining population. Whole villages are abandoned or hollowed out. Make a deal with the government to buy a piece of land from them the size of Monaco or larger. Sea access a plus. (Greece has lots of coastline) Move all the Greek people out into the surrounding villages. Tear down everything not historic and rebuild to American standards. Bring in former Americans to run the farms and villages, build some nice estates for the wealthy and create a modern-day "Switzerland" with a new and explicit Constitution doing a better job of protecting our rights and freedoms.
HBTPFH: "It's the point. Trump will never build a big beautiful wall, nor will he ever see the inside of the White House ever again... but the outrage machine must roll on.... and he delivers."
Must be another day ending in "y" because once again, as always, HBTPFH is running interference for the dem-aligned GOPe.
McConnell and Ryan smile.......
narciso: "well i'll bite, why are you attacking desantis if you know entitlement reform will be necessary before the programs collapse,..."
Better for DeSantis to deal with these issues now than in a general election.
And DeSantis is going to have to explain alot: his votes for TPP and TPA, his votes to raise the min age for Soc Security and Medicare (yes, I do believe those votes might be a topic of conversation for the dems in a general election), DeSantis' support for Paul Ryan's foreign policy, his signalling support for the forever wars, etc.
If DeSantis cannot address these issues now, in a primary or pre-primary mode, in a way that effectively makes his case or negates the coming democratical attacks, he'll have the entire midwest rural/blue collar vote walk away from him....and there's more of them than there are of suburban dem-adjacent pro-abortion educated white women.
There was no one terrible thing Trump said that everyone's talking about.
This has always been the media's problem. They find him so objectionable they don't feel they need to explain their objection.
There's just generic stuff about how Trump is awful.
Well, what was the Democrat argument against Reagan? The first time around was that he was a B-list actor who was going to launch a nuclear strike (wow, some of that sounds familiar, doesn't it?) Then the argument was that he was lying about what policies he was going to implement (again, sound familiar?)
GHWB was an out-of-touch patrician
Dole and McCain were just out of touch and out of date dinosaurs with questionable choices for VP
The argument against W was a combination of smirking frat boy and flag-waving cowboy. The only policy argument I remember hearing was that his plan to revise Social Security was entirely unnecessary because SS was doing just fine, even though every other election the constant refrain was the GOP wanted to eliminate it.
Romney was too rich and too goofy (magic underwear) when he wasn't abusing his dog or causing his employees to contract cancer.
I don't think there's been a single election in my political lifetime that the Democrats have actually contested on the grounds that their policies would be more beneficial to the country as a whole than the policies of the GOP. After Carter and Mondale lost to Reagan but especially after Dukakis got his wonkish ass handed to him by GHWB, the go-to tactic has been to gin up outrage against the GOP nominee. It is working less and less well because more and more people are deciding that having the right enemies is a good justification to vote for some one.
Remarkably, CNN declared "no mas" with 20 minutes left to cut to a panel of seven of which only one was conservative. And Donald won that debate hands down. The longer Collins went, the more all could tell she was horribly biased and ineffective, and so she resorted to interrupting and trying to not let Trump finish his answers. And then CNN today felt compelled to issue a statement in Collins' defense. It was that bad.
"I don’t want to talk about each topic and how Trump answered questions about the past. Trump is Trump. If you are a Trump supporter, you loved the town hall. If you are a NeverTrumper, your hair is on fire over the event. The thing that this town hall exposed is the rank hypocrisy of the left and their minions in the media. The left is incapable of arguing political points and philosophy anymore. Instead, the left just wants any opposing opinions to be shut down, squelched instead of allowed to debate. Most importantly, if something is said that the left does not agree with, the default position is to call that opinion a lie."
"Freedom of speech only goes one way for the left. The left is panicked that they may get what they want – another Trump versus Biden election. The comparison of Trump’s America before the pandemic – a booming economy, no inflation, strong jobs market, secured (as much as possible) southern border, no new wars, conservative judicial picks, and a strong environment for small business entrepreneurs versus Biden’s America and the failure he has been as president is stark. Like him or not, Trump reminds American voters of how life can be and it’s a lot better than it is now."
As long as Biden is president and Garland is AG, there will be Trump. And thank God for that.
Two things you look for in a President are (1) the power to do what we need and (2) the willingness to do it for us.
The Orange Man from the Bronx has both. Usually the candidates pretend the have both but secretly have only one. In Biden’s case he has neither one which every one knows now. Biden is nothing but a paid assassin with a contract to kill the USA and whominstalled by the Globalists who want the USA dead.
So the election will be 90/10 in Trump’s favor. But the vote count could be the usual third day final ballot harvest stuffed vote squeaker for the Dems.
That will be a shame for my grandchildren who are the ones that face the Biden Gang’s Gulag.
Meanwhile, all A-B brands - not just Bud Light - are down significantly across the entire country. Not just red states. All states. Down 18% in California - CALIFORNIA. Fed-up people do the craziest things at the ballot box.
it just occurred to me that Dylan Mulvaney and Anheuser-Busch have finally triggered The Macho Response in America
I almost forgot it was possible
HBTPFH: "That's the point of Trump at this point - to get everyone in every direction OUTRAGED."
I seem to recall "everyone in every direction" being "outraged" at Mitt Romney for putting a dog on his roof, giving a woman cancer, not paying his taxes, lying about what obama thought about russia being a geo-political foe, having an elevator for his cars in his San Diego home, etc etc etc.
I also seem to recall "everyone in every direction" being "outraged" at John McCain for having destroyed 5 aircraft while on active duty in the Nav, being far to "angry" and out of control to be President (remember the dripping blood magazine cover?), etc etc etc
I also seem to recall "everyone in every direction" being "outraged" at GW Bush for being a deserter and going AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard.
I also seem to recall "everyone in every direction" being "outraged" at GHw Bush for supposedly abandoning his rear gunner in his crippled plane and bailing out too soon, thus consigning the rear gunner to an unnecessary death.
Next step for HBTPFH: find a way to blame Trump for the dems lies about Romney, McCain and the Bushes and pretend this sort of thing ONLY happens now because of that darn Trump.
And believe me, HBTPFH has fully demonstrated she is completely up to THAT task, though sadly few others.
""blaj" You misspelled "blah""
I know and it's actually the second time this morning that I misspelled "blah"!!
From the comments at the Jeopardy post:
"What I like about this ruling is that it makes me laugh out loud every time? The smugness on Mayaya Blahblayblahblah's face is so hilarious."
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2023/05/jeopardy-will-never-accomplish-total.html?showComment=1683814774575#c1652983697525222465
Bad question mark there too.
Drago - You must have forgotten that Trump supported McConnell's re-election.
Trump called Kaitlyn Collins smart at the beginning then nasty right before the end. They were shaking hands at the end. Would you shake hands with a person who just called you nasty? Probably happens all the time, I just don’t notice. It was entertaining, that’s why there was so much laughter.
Big Mike:
She also included Trump.
As he gets older and with more baggage, Trump gets more erratic. I'll vote for him in the general but not in the primaries. We have baggage free candidates who can win.
Many female voters will never vote for Trump. With Ron and Vivek, there's a chance.
HBTPFH: "Drago - You must have forgotten that Trump supported McConnell's re-election."
Trump will often go along with things that cannot be stopped in order to gain whatever advantage there might be by supporting the inevitable choice. Ronna Romney as GOP chair is an example of this.
You aren't very good at any of this, are you?
And note: HBTPFH chose to shift the topic instead of criticizing McConnell and Ryan for sabotaging the wall funding along with so many other polices.
Because of course.
The Crack Emcee: "it just occurred to me that Dylan Mulvaney and Anheuser-Busch have finally triggered The Macho Response in America
I almost forgot it was possible"
That's a good catch.
“Agreeing with himself that women "let" stars sexually abuse them?”
I think the grab them by the pussy thing is absolutely true, although it is in locker room language that all men use but is not acceptable in public (Trump said it in private but it was secretly recorded.) Weinstein showed that women would have sex with powerful men. Girls went after Clark Gable and Errol Flynn. The rock stars were flooded in sex. The bad boy routine is also true, women put out for the stars, the alpha boys. Why is this considered a false statement?
I don’t have the text of the quote, but I don’t think Trump said he personally grabbed them, but implied that it was a social phenomenon. He said they let you grab them, this is not to say that he did grab them.
I watched a number of clips from the Townhall and Trump did fine. He was prepared and amusing. He got a lot of applause. He seems to be back on his skills and less obsessed with 2020.
"The comparison of Trump’s America before the pandemic – a booming economy, no inflation, strong jobs market, secured (as much as possible) southern border, no new wars, conservative judicial picks, and a strong environment for small business entrepreneurs versus Biden’s America and the failure he has been as president is stark."
I don't know who you are quoting, Milo, but the statement is absolutely correct.
And yet, for alleged "conservatives" like Jonah Goldberg and LLR Chuck, "Trump is so bad for the country, that he needs to be beaten again." By Joe Biden, of course, the person most responsible for the starkly horrific state of affairs we are dealing with.
"The US economy is not a mess because Joe Biden is old; it’s a mess because Democrats do not understand economics."
Hmmmm...say what?
What Big Mike said...
@ 10:37 AM
The disdain that oozed from Kaitlyn Collins represents more than what she and her ilk think of Donald Trump. It is the disdain they hold for half of America. It's the same disdain that Madison, WI holds for most of the state of Wisconsin.
I assume it was a Trump friendly NH audience, but the laughter at (not with) Ms. Collins was genuine...as her questioning and lying became completely disingenuous.
It's not really an interview when all you do is basically ask, "So you're not going to say what I want you to say...again, just to be clear, you're not going to say what I want you to say". That's all Collins did.
Democrats are willing to sacrifice and endless supply of young Ukrainians to support their flag waving, war promoting virtue signaling. So are the people at CNN.
Trump saying the priority was to end the war so young Ukrainian and Russians stop needlessly DYING! That's the position of a moral peacemaker.
Once again, we see that the real Donald Trump is nothing like the raging maniac that is portrayed by the media - conservative and liberal - in clickbait headlines, dishonest paraphrases and out of context quotes.
This is why Trump has been largely disappeared since 2021. They want you to see their creation, not reality.
I don't have the text of Trump's Ukraine remarks. If he expressed doubt or uncertainty as to the preferability of Ukraine winning, that will hurt him over the next few years. Russia is going to look worse and worse, and becobecause Russia is in this for the long haul. We have to understand that Putin is not engaged in an act of whimsy. The Russians know that all they have is natural resources, and lots of ready cannon fodder. Little Muscovy became Russia and then the Soviet Union by becoming a conquest culture. All we can do is slow them down until demographic collapse destroys Russia from within.
Collins question on trying to get Trump to say he would accept the results of the 2024 election was basically, "Will you commit to accepting the results of a fraudulent election like we insisted you do in 2020 but refused?"
Trump smartly, honestly, and truthfully didn't bit. He answered, "I would be honored to accept the results of an honest election". Good answer. The only answer.
We ALL know 2020 was fraudulent. 2022 Arizona was fraudulent. Kaitlyn Collins and the CNN panel know it. And there will be plenty more fraud in 2024. America's last honest election was the 2016 surprise when Trump won. Democrats didn't think they had to cheat in 2016. Hillary's win was supposed to be guaranteed.
More than likely Trump's margin of victory in 2020 was what he was ahead by when they stopped the counts...because he was so far ahead.
This is why we are living under an installed, corrupt executive that has ZERO accountability to the voters.
Dave Begley: "We have baggage free candidates who can win."
Suurrrre you do.
Dave Begley: "Many female voters will never vote for Trump. With Ron and Vivek, there's a chance."
Many more rural, blue collar and minority voters will never vote for Ron or Vivek, particularly in the midwest. With Trump there's better than just a "chance".
And there are millions more rural, blue collar voters that fit that category than there are white, "educated", suburban pro-abortion women that a republican might be able to drag back across the political divide by abandoning other republican principles.
LLR Chuck said in his 10:36 AM comment:
"It's been a hard place for me to get to; rooting for Trump to win the GOP nomination in order to beat him again and make him an even bigger loser for all of posterity. But that is where I am at. Trump is so bad for the country, that he needs to be beaten again."
What a revealing comment!
Presumably, every Republican identifying person believes that "Republican" policies are best for the country. Likewise, every Democrat identifying person believes the same about "Democrat" policies.
To claim to be a Republican, and advocate for a Democrat to win the Presidency - just to spite one man - is the most rabid case of TDS I have ever observed.
Whatever, "bad" things Trump did while in office, they will not be changed one whit by him losing in 2024. However, you are clearly rooting for all of the "bad" things a Democrat President will impose.
I am well and truly gobsmacked by such a political philosophy!
Have been a reader nearly since this blog's inception. In the last few years the ratio of political/nonpolitical posts seems to have tilted towards the former, in that not only does it seem as if this has turned into a mostly pollical blog, but also one with a significant emphasis on the red-meat issues (GO TEAMS!!!11!).
Maybe it's just misplaced nostalgia on my part, but I don't think so. Because it's the reason I stopped coming here for awhile (I can get that crap anywhere). And now after coming back for a look, it seems even worse.
It may come as a surprise to our esteemed host, but as a non-binary human, not only do I not give two fucks about Trump, I'm also not interested in this blog's seemingly near-daily focus on transgender issues (the political wedge-issue de jour), which causes me to wonder if Ann is actually a left-wing propagandist plant pushing the Progressive narrative as opposed to a free-thinker, as was my initial impression.
Blogger Chuck said...
It's been a hard place for me to get to; rooting for Trump to win the GOP nomination in order to beat him again and make him an even bigger loser for all of posterity. But that is where I am at. Trump is so bad for the country, that he needs to be beaten again.
I voted for him in 2016 (reluctantly), but peeled off in 2020.
--
Chuck said...
"I am afraid you are mistaking me for someone who has an interest in fair treatment of Donald Trump. I'm not your guy. I am interested in smearing him, hurting him and prejudicing people against him."
3/4/16, 4:46 PM
Yeah...the struggle is real.
Come on. Trump is a stitch. We all know the E. Jean Carroll trial was bullshit, and she was lying. We know the Manhattan Jury had to get him with something. But they give disingenuous "journalists" like Collins and Jake Tapper that ability to say "but a jury found you liable".... Oh bullshit. You have to be a moron not to see the corruption and political bend of a Manhattan jury.
The way Trump said the word "va-GI-na" when stating that was the name of E. Jean Carrol's dog or cat was hilarious. Reminded you of the way he says "CHI-na".
That's why millions love Trump. We all know bullshit when we see it and hear it. Trump calls it out like a master, and give zero credence to the partisan interviewer.
The clips are great. You can see Trump taking issues like dead Ukrainian's seriously, and the destruction of our country and economy...but when it's complete bullshit he just bats it around like a killer whale with a baby seal....
Collins did well demonstrating the humorless scold ice queen, repeatedly interrupting with appeals to unspecified or dubious authorities.
The biggest surprise was a Trump receptive audience.
How on Earth did CNN enable/allow that?
I was surprised as well how Trump was quick enough to get in points like the effects of the media suppression of Laptop and persecution of any lawyers trying to help with election concerns. It was less Town Hall and more interrogation.
Try to imagine Joementia enduring a similarly hostile grilling.
Bob.
Put the comic book away. You're the last person to lecture anybody on economics.
What would you use if you had to choose one thing from the town hall to attack Trump?
Trump is being Trump. Still. Same old shtick. Same old drama. Same old, same old.
Cook - link is complete bullshit.
Updated: 07/13/2018 04:35 PM EDT
During the news conference alongside British Prime Minister Theresa May, when CNN’s Jim Acosta attempted to ask a question, Trump responded, “CNN is fake news. I don’t take questions from CNN.”
---------
My, how times have changed. Trump now loves to appear on "CNN fake news". Part of his total sell out to the mainstream media.
I voted for Trump. I was ECSTATIC!! that he beat Hillary, who would have been a terrible President and would have continued all the bad parts of the Obama Administration and created her own NEW bad parts.
Four years later I was DEVASTATED that Biden beat him, but the Biden Administration was even worse than I had expected (yes, Biden "beat" him; yes the Democrats cheated. So what? They ALWAYS cheat. Republicans are supposed to deal with that, and Trump, a babe in these woods, was caught with his diaper down, and let then cheat too much).
In January 2025 we need a new Presidential administration, with a new more-or-less supportive Congress, to begin to rebuild the government. If it were a Trump administration, it would be headed by a "lame duck", who couldn't help himself from focusing on the past.
Thank you Donald for your service.
Next!
I voted for Trump. I was ECSTATIC!! that he beat Hillary, who would have been a terrible President and would have continued all the bad parts of the Obama Administration and created her own NEW bad parts.
Four years later I was DEVASTATED that Biden beat him, but the Biden Administration was even worse than I had expected (yes, Biden "beat" him; yes the Democrats cheated. So what? They ALWAYS cheat. Republicans are supposed to deal with that, and Trump, a babe in these woods, was caught with his diaper down, and let then cheat too much).
In January 2025 we need a new Presidential administration, with a new more-or-less supportive Congress, to begin to rebuild the government. If it were a Trump administration, it would be headed by a "lame duck", who couldn't help himself from focusing on the past.
Thank you Donald for your service.
Next!
Trump’s big stupid mouth may be the cause of yet another defamation suit. Another few million? Or more this time because of the increased amount of malice?
“E. Jean Carroll May Sue Trump a Third Time After ‘Vile’ Comments on CNN
In an interview, her lawyer said that the former president’s mocking comments in a town hall broadcast could create fresh legal jeopardy.
Ms. Kaplan, her lawyer, said Thursday that a decision would be made soon on whether Ms. Carroll will file another defamation suit in light of Mr. Trump’s comments on CNN.
Everything’s on the table, obviously, and we have to give serious consideration to it,” Ms. Kaplan said.”
NYT
@Cookie (12:19), if the article to which you linked is an example of what you regard as sound economic thinking then no wonder you write such insanely stupid comments. It's pretty well established using actual tax data that the bulk of the benefits from Trump's tax cut went to the lowest earners, people making an adjusted gross income of $15,000 to $50,000 saw tax cuts in the 16% to 26% range. Morons like you, who blindly repeat the "tax cuts for the rich" mantra simply don't know what you're talking about. Tax cuts benefit all income brackets, obviously, but under Donald Trump most of the benefits went to people making a modest income.
Ampersand said...
I don't have the text of Trump's Ukraine remarks. If he expressed doubt or uncertainty as to the preferability of Ukraine winning, that will hurt him over the next few years. Russia is going to look worse and worse, and becobecause Russia is in this for the long haul.
Do you have any concern about nuclear war or the fact that we are depleting our military stores and our economy by sending everything to Ukraine ? I assume you don't care about the graft pouring into politicians' pockets. If we are in a war while this regime is running the country, we will lose. Is that OK with you?
Blogger Robert Cook said...
"The US economy is not a mess because Joe Biden is old; it’s a mess because Democrats do not understand economics."
Hmmmm...say what?
Another communist who does not understand successful economics. I assume you are well informed in Marxist economics, such as it is.
Since the courts and public opinion now know Trump as a defamatory sexual assailant, Althouse does the fascist conservatives a great service in her posts of elevating him to the status of just another political leader. Anyone who doesn’t respect the political role of this defamatory sexual assailant is an antagonizer.
I’m sure even once he’s in jail Ann will caution us against antagonizing him - you know. Because he gave the office he was supposed to serve so much of the respect that she apparently expects us to.
Respect Trump, demand the fascist conservatives! No other president has shown the virtue he has, clogging White House toilets with flushed documents, losing sexual assault lawsuits, etc. All hail this great lying, stupid rapist of a man! The libs are so bad!
Do you have any concern about nuclear war or the fact that we are depleting our military stores and our economy by sending everything to Ukraine ? I assume you don't care about the graft pouring into politicians' pockets. If we are in a war while this regime is running the country, we will lose. Is that OK with you?
Oh, Michael KGB Chamberlain. If you want to be a Putin appeaser, just say so.
If Tucker Swanson Carlson can devote a whole show to testicle tanning, then certainly he can coach you to be a more persuasive Putin appeaser.
Oh well. It’s not like you nativist conservatives weren’t trying to appease (and sympathize with) Hitler 90 years ago. So I guess going from Father Coughlin to Tucker McNear Swanson Carlson is a bit of progress, in a very pitiful sense.
Another communist who does not understand successful economics. I assume you are well informed in Marxist economics, such as it is.
Putin appeaser Michael KGB still believes in the Laffer Curve - even after it’s been disavowed by Arthur Laffer himself.
Either that or he just hates the working class so much and can’t stand to see the government doing anything remotely as useful for them as it does for the billionaire class that he wishes he was a part of.
It's pretty cool that a broadened statute of limitations and TDS jury can extract millions for a crazy columnist without evidence.
Can Bergdorf Goodman sue Carroll for making their store a scary place where sexual assault victims are ignored?
Oh..wait. She just walked out of there, maybe stopping to pick up some new tights....
Counterpunch is a 9-11 conspiracy theory website.
Your name from now on is Robert Kook.
"Either that or he just hates the working class so much and can’t stand to see the government doing anything remotely as useful for them as it does for the billionaire class that he wishes he was a part of."
I love it when the fools on the left invoke ," The working class". You have no idea where anything comes from or who "the working class" consists of but you'll champion them none the less while you revile them for voting for people who use their wealth to create actual jobs.
Leave "the working class" alone, puddin'. The last thing they need is your, "help".
Putin appeaser Michael KGB still believes in the Laffer Curve - even after it’s been disavowed by Arthur Laffer himself
A link to where Arthur Laffer “disavowed” the Laffer Curve, or it never happened.
The Laffer Curve is based on a mathematical theorem, Rolle’s Theorem. I realize that math is hard for Liberals, Progressives, and other such useless mouths to feed. Theorems are things that have been proved to be true. Theorems do not care about politics, they do not care about th pipe dreams of academic elitists. They are true, period.
There is a problem with the presentation of Laffer’s curve, where economists tend to draw it as a symmetric curve, usually something like Gauss’s famous bell-shaped curve. But the true curve is almost certainly asymmetric, with a maximum somewhere around 30%, based on my observations over the years (I’m a septuagenarian).
Robert Cook and hpudding claim to be for the workers, but they aren’t. The real working people massively support Donald Trump. And I mean specifically Donald Trump, not the Republican Party. Why is that? Elitists believe that the workers are misguided, have fallen for flim-flam, and need the educated elite to set them straight. Self-serving bullshit by people who couldn’t tell a pick from a shovel. The elite view workers with poorly-disguised contempt, but that’s just elitist arrogance. The kind of people who fix your plumbing or drive the taxi you ride in or even collect your trash, they’re a lot more shrewd than they are given credit for.
Meanwhile a reasonable person could ask why it should be the case that multi-billionaires like Reid Hoffman, George Soros, Bill Gates, et. al., are so lavishly funding the Democrat Party? Is it because these ruthless businessmen have suddenly found a warm place on their hearts for working people? Or is it because they see a way to influence Democrat policies to benefit billionaires like them?
What Trump says or does is simply a Rorschach test. People with idle time are free to waste it on such meaningless “analysis”.
Sure Critter,
He's pretty inconsequential.
Mew.
I love it when the fools on the left invoke ," The working class". You have no idea where anything comes from or who "the working class" consists of but you'll champion them none the less while you revile them for voting for people who use their wealth to create actual jobs.
Oh, I see! You mean like the Waltons - that notorious family of right-wing billionaires who have shuttered mom-and-pop shops across the country, become the biggest employer in America and driven down wages so low that their workforce is one of the largest groups on Medicaid and receiving food stamps in America? Those job creators? The ones who normalized low wages and government dependency nationally?
Or maybe you mean - Elon Musk - the guy who lost most of Twitter’s value and lost 80% of its jobs? That must be a tough one for you, since I’m sure you hate the professional class and its computer coders, even though you need them to buy goods and keep demand in the economy. And also, the cars he manufactures employ laborers - but you probably hate the fact that they don’t run on petroleum. What a headache that guy must present you with, keeping you from knowing what to support or reject!
And we haven’t even gotten around to mentioning any of the left-wing billionaire “job creators!”
Or the fact that you only speak for rural or suburban manual laborers… the ones decimated by 40 years of Reaganism (policies which Trump continued). Plenty of workers in the cities that I’m sure you hate for some reason or another, which is probably what kept you so divided from them and politically powerless.
No, you’re not much of a working class spokesperson - Rusty. Just a midwestern tool and die guy who perfectly fits the bill of John Lennon’s “working class hero.” Kept doped on religion and sex and tv, (and ethno-nationalism), but without much to show for it.
Leave "the working class" alone, puddin'. The last thing they need is your, "help".
Tell that to Bernie Sanders or anyone else not so ignorant to have forgotten FDR and everything he did to rescue the working class from depressionary Republicans and the war their isolationism and economic depression created. And, oh yeah - the middle class that his policies created in America for the first time in the process.
But then, I’m sure you hate the middle class, too.
Big Mike’s rant is a case study in how little attachment the Rain Man-style theorem-obsessed eggheads have with reality. But he did talk about “useless mouths to feed.” Too bad those so-called “useless mouths” make enough of their own money to not succumb to whatever Aktion T4 program he has in mind. (Even though such programs would have doubtlessly killed off him and his fellow autistics, as well).
But couched deep within his hatred for the professional classes (and probably just professionalism, in general), one can make out the fact that he never seems to have learned about a state called Kansas. Shame, too - tucked deep as it is within that great big old American heartland that he pretends to identify with.
Anyway, Kansas is about as close to a case study in supply-side Reaganistic Lafferism as they come. Real-life stuff, not “theorems” or whatever crap his anti-humanism keeps him from getting out of his mindblinded bubble to learn a thing or two about. Inspired by Lafferism in its purest form, Sam Brownback signed into law a 2012 budget and set of tax policies to do all the things 40 years of Reaganomic Lafferists have always assured America and the media that they would do - but to the disastrous results predictable to anyone with a brain. State revenue shortfalls of hundreds of millions of dollars, slashed infrastructure, economic growth far below average. And on and on. Results so disastrous that even in one of the reddest of red states they were forced to admit the disastrous failure and backtrack. (And yes, the so-called Great Arthur Laffer himself was one of the many to admit that failure).
As stark a repudiation of trickle-down economics as ever existed.
Results so horrible that, try as they might to hide the blame for them when they play out nationally, the tricker-downers couldn’t hide when they inflicted them so grievously and openly and to so much fanfare on one poor, very conspicuous state.
One little laboratory of democracy in which the right-wing fantasy experiment was brought to full fruition. And it gave Kansas an economic Frankenstein.
But of course, that’s just the human impact in a real-life red state. And Big Mike doesn’t do real life or human very well.
Meanwhile, he again repeats the calumny (of Rusty’s) earlier that only red-state, right-wing tradesmen exist in the working class. Again, he has to marginalize every part of the workforce in that sector who’s not in a red state, not a right-wing jackoff, or who knows how to use a part of their body beyond just their hands to make a living. You can thank decades of right-wing assaults on organized labor for perpetuating this stereotype - just as you can for its real-life results: A steady decline in QOL-adjusted wages over the several decades that these policies have dominated, while the Wall Street types that these policies favored have enriched themselves more and more. (And taken over and bought out the political process as well - thanks to Citizens United. But that’s for a different thread).
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