A significant fraction of the American electorate wants this whiny brat to be president.
I am totally gobsmacked.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
A significant fraction of the American electorate wants this whiny brat to be president.
I am totally gobsmacked.
My comment from earlier.
“A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man you can trust with nuclear weapons.”
I’m just trying to imagine any other free-world leader saying such a thing. Hmm, well, yeah, Putin, but then he’s Trump’s BFF anyway. Do people really respond to this kind of bluster?
?
Okay, SC, “any first-world leader.” Does that help?
Trump claimed to have “the best words” and bragged how great his vocabulary is. Are there Trump supporters who can believe that statement after watching this clip? Not only is his taunt that of a child in lower grade school, he uses vocabulary to match.
Oh, you wanted to hit someone, Donald? How hard did you feel like hitting him? “Sooooo hard.”
Posted in Moments of Political Madness (with the wrong year).
Bill Bogert, a “lifelong Republican” who did an Anti-Goldwater ad in 1964, has now recorded an Anti-Trump ad. CBC Radio One’s As it Happens interviewed him.
He considers Trump to be far worse than Goldwater – the latter was at least competent. He is not big fan of Hillary Clinton, preferring Elizabeth Warren, bu he will vote for her. He has harsh words for those who won’t vote.
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-thursday-edition-1.3699151
Sorry – thought you were responding to my comment just above.
I get a little worried about repeated expressions of disbelief that Trump has a significant chance of being president. That seems to be a factor in how he got here in the first place.
Trump’s a know nothing who wants to make America white again. That isn’t a new threat and we shouldn’t be surprised that a party that had pandered to white supremacists for years fully nominated an explicit and nonapologetic one.
re 9
agreed.
the problem is not so much Drumph being a racist douche weasel but that such a [expletive] got elected by a significant number of republicans. That population of Drumph supporters is the bigger problem. even when [sic] Hillary gets inaugurated the people who voted for Drumph will still be out there being more than resentful. yuk. still worried, even after Hill accepting nomination.
“Are we a nation of two year olds?”
No.
Four year olds?
Yes.
qwints
And Trump continues the inglorious tradition of white supremacists who are the worst possible examples of the alleged superiority of the “white race”.
At this point given a choice between Trump/Pence versus Bush/Cheney, it is a no brainer to vote for Bush/Cheney. Hillary/Kaine is now beyond no brainer.
lotharloo: Too true.
Rather, Trump (like many on the right, but his case is egregious) has a huge store of negaknowledge – stuff he “knows” that isn’t so.
Sorry, the quote@15 is from quints@9. And I should add – Trump does evidently know how to tap into and nurture the meanest fears, resentments and hatreds of many millions of Americans. As others have said, the response to Trump is extremely worrying, even if he loses in November.
A lot of Trump supporters might as well be conspiracy theorists, if they aren’t already. It is an article of faith that Clinton is an evil corrupt woman who, like Obama, is intent on destroying America for her own gain. Her personal body count is currently around 30 (American opponents she’s supposedly put hits on), last time I checked.
Thus they have inoculated themselves from being able to absorb and comprehend any criticism of Trump. Not only don’t they care, they don’t even hear it. It doesn’t exist. Just like flat-earthers who refuse to engage in a debate they know they will lost, they just don’t engage, or best case, they will tell you “Sure, he’s not perfect” and then go on a 10 minute rant about the evils of Hillary Clinton again.
More and more, this is Alex Jones’ America. People see what they want to see, feel what they want to feel, and are immune to reason. Throw in a touch of old-fashioned racism, and a big dollop of populist anger, and we have Donald Trump, undoubtedly the least fit, least prepared major nominee for president in decades, if ever.
The one upside. In future, when my Republican friends whine about Democrats being too enamored with Hollywood and celebrity, I will have a two word answer ready for them.
new meme?
hope so.
Given the fact that she’s been a first lady, then senator, then secretary of state, and therefore enjoyed enormous clout and influence over the past 25 years… if she was one tenth as evil as conspiracy theorists claim she is, her kill count would be thousands of times higher.
There was an article in the International New York Times a few days ago pointing out teh trum-prat has consistently lead in the polling of one particular group: White male registered voters without a degree. And that happens to be one of, and perhaps the, largest single group of voters, so large that, as the Times puts it, “these voters are supporting Mr Trump in larger numbers than they supported Mitt Romney four years ago. It’s enough to keep the election close. It could even be enough for him to win.” (The One Demographic That Is Hurting Hillary Clinton)
First Dog on the Moon’s take, Hillary Clinton, the luckiest woman alive (cartoon): “Whatever her many many many faults, compared to Trump she is an avenging angel driving a truck full of hot waffles”.
As I see it the big problem with electing Trump isn’t Trump himself – it’s the people dragging themselves along in his slipstream. Trump himself is an incompetent mess of slogans and blather. That’s a problem – he’d be an utterly useless president – but everything he says and does is insincere showboating. If it were just Trump you had to contend with then he’d get nothing done and make a fool of himself on the international stage, but politics below the level of President would carry on much as it normally does. It would be a containment exercise for four years, but he is not the kind of calmly maleficent and actually vaguely competent despot you get with Putin or Dick Cheney. He’s not actual Hitler, he’s comedy internet Hitler.
But what he does do is open the door to a whole flood of genuinely resentful, nasty, bigoted, evil and destructive people – most of them at the fringes of the Republican Party until now – and allows them to get their hands on the levers of power.
And a number of people shrug their shoulders in a state of utter debilitating confusion when presented with a choice between Trump and Clinton.
Is he even capable of finishing a complete sentence? He sounds an awful lot like someone who let their Adderall prescription run out months ago, and has been managing to coast on inertia and denial that they still need the meds.
(I am not a psychologist, and this is just personal observation, not a diagnosis. Anyways, I prefer Vyvanse over Adderall.)
Ichthyic@18,
No idea – it came into my mind, but whether it was planted there by someone else, I don’t know. FWIW, googling “negaknowledge” doesn’t produce any exact matches on the first page. Googling “negaknowledge definition” found this use of the hyphenated term in the same sense I used the unhyphenated one from January this year, but since I never go to reddit, that’s not where I got it. So maybe it’s just a term that Trump’s rise has made so obviously necessary, that it’s emerged from Tumbolia of its own accord.
I absolutely disagree – and the most important reason for that was neatly summed up by Hillary Clinton and has already been quoted in this thread by SC@2:
KG, #26
I’m not sure that’s anything more than alarmist propaganda based in cold-war posturing to be honest. The President of the US can’t just fire nuclear missiles at anyone he chooses for any reason he likes. It might have suited the administrations of the 50s, 60s and 70s to pretend as much, but you have constitutional checks on declaring unilateral acts of war as much as any other civilized country. If Trump seriously ordered the military to fire nuclear warheads at someone who had merely insulted him in public, I doubt the order would get anywhere.
If Congress and the House of Representatives are packed with the kinds hawkish, bloodthirsty, morally questionable people who ride on Trump’s coat-tails on the other hand…
But there are other country leaders as small and petty and hotheaded and vindictive as he is, who DO control their armies much more singlehandedly than our president does. And what’s going to happen if you get them in a room together with Donald and the insults start flying? They set up a show of force, we respond, and boom. A lot of people could get hurt, even without going nuclear.
And even if it doesn’t go to actual physical harm, he’ll destroy trade relations right and left and fuck our economy over like we can’t even imagine. I think the statement is a pithy stand-in for the essence of everything that can go wrong with his personality type in power.
Oh, I’m in no way saying that Donald Trump’s personal influence as president would be negligible. It would be disastrous. The point I’m making is a comparative one – his retinue would cause far more, far deeper, and far more damaging atrocities than he himself could. It’s the people his presidency gives legitimacy to who will cause the most lasting damage.
I think this needs saying, because so much attention is focused on the man himself right now. He’s a bloated, bloviating orange demagogue whom everyone loves to hate. He sucks in media attention and his antics stick in people’s minds. But we need to focus on those behind and around him just as much. Perhaps more. We mustn’t let his spectacular clowning obscure the soft-spoken bigots operating in his wake.
If he were to be elected POTUS, how long before he’s impeached out of office? He’s already said/done things that are likely unconstitutional – as a private citizen, he can ban WashPo reporters from privately funded campaign events. Can he legally ban WashPo from government press appearances? Then there’s the solicitations for foreign campaign donations and email hacking.
If there ever was a time to school someone when they say “Meh, they’re both the same”, now is that time. Based only on the speeches each gave at the conclusion of their respective conventions, it is glaringly obvious to any one with just a few active brain neurons working, Hillary, with her faults (and who doesn’t have faults), is the only choice for those who love this country and can’t image living in the dystopia presented by Trump.
Vote early. Vote often. Do not take anything for granted. This is too important.
@cartomancer
Partially true but Trump is a completely separate political animal compared to the others around him. Take for example, his latest comments about Russia hacking Hillary Clinton’s emails. It was basically an offer of implicit deal to Russia that if Russia helps him win by exposing more Clinton emails, he’ll be willing to reward them later when he becomes the president. There is really no reasonable other way to interpret what he said. He offered a deal to the Russians. That is what he means by “making deals”. Nothing is beyond pale when it comes to Trump making deals. What if Russia offers Trump a few billion dollars in exchange for Trump doing massive favors for Russia, I don’t know, like 10 billion dollars for crippling NATO? Donlar will take it, maybe he’ll first negotiate it to 50 billion dollars but I’m willing to bet the only thing that could stop Trump from taking such an offer is the practical limitation of pulling it off and not get caught. He would have no moral problem whatsoever in doing whatever that personally benefits him.
cartomancer@27
I’d be interested to know exactly what these constitutional checks are, and who exactly you think would countermand the order and how, but in any case, I’m not primarily thinking of a foreign leader mocking Trump’s hairdo and receiving an immediate thermonuclear response. Rather, of Trump getting into a political crisis with (say) Putin, and, seeing it – as he does everything – almost exclusively in terms of his personal prestige, ratcheting up the tension to such a degree that one side or the other takes a step too far, the other threatens a nuclear response, the first thinks it’s a bluff…, or there’s a technical malfunction which in the crisis atmosphere leads to a “response” to a non-existent attack… It’s foolish complacency to think that because a nuclear war hasn’t happened in 70 years, it can’t or won’t. There have been at least three close calls since the Cuban Missile Crisis – google Able Archer, Stanislav Petrov, and Black Brant Scare. The first two, both in 1983, resulted from Reagan’s stupid “Evil Empire” rhetoric combined with Soviet misinterpretation or malfunction, the third was again a technical malfunction in Russian systems, and occurred in 1995, when US-Russian relations were much better than they are now. Fortunately, Boris Yeltsin happened to be sober when it occurred. While the weapons to destroy civilization in a matter of hours exist, we cannot afford to have a malignant narcissist with a hair-trigger response to perceived insult* such as Trumpelthinskin in a position to order their use.
*Putin is also a malignant narcissist, but a much cooler and more calculating one.
cartomancer #29 wrote:
Agree, but I think the definition of Trump’s “retinue” ought to be extended outside of the Republican party and include the people who vote for him. They’re not even hampered by being familiar with politics or the political system — it’s all zeitgeist. If Trump wins it could very well resemble what happened when Britain voted to leave the European Union. All the yahoos, bigots, and Angry White Guys are emboldened to think the tide has turned, they’re on top again, and it’s time to flex their muscles. Gay beatings, race riots, and Bible readings in public school. Damaging atrocities indeed — but at an even lower level than state and local government: mobs and vigilantes.
Actually, it’s difficult to think of any. Putin is certainly as vindictive, but much less hotheaded. Kim Jong-un maybe comes closest, but we really don’t know how far he’s actually the sole ruler he’s presented as. Who did you have in mind?
I anticipate debate techniques involving breath-holding, laying down with kicking and screaming, and possibly a thrown toy or two.
I can’t imagine anybody over 15 not beating the crap out of Donald Trump.
Most people that boast about hitting other people would shit themselves if they actually got in a fight.
Skeptical Partisan
29 July 2016 at 9:16 am
“If he were to be elected POTUS, how long before he’s impeached out of office?”
Probably a long time, since it’s the Republicans that have to do the impeaching.
In an election that Trump wins, it is inconceivable that Democrats could win the Senate.
Fascinating, that he quite voluntarily declares his strongest compulsion was to hit ‘a very little guy.’
Either complete obliviousness to what is coming out of his mouth, or he thinks this will make him more popular. Terrifying thing is, I think it might be the latter.
Little boy Drumph listened to the DNC and tweeted his reaction to Hil’s acceptance speech:
yeah, by quoting him. and listing reputative records of his business dealings. This tweet sounds so much like a small child’s response to things he said earlier that day,
.
to paraphrase a fictional character (because he existed you know): Inigo Montoya: “Facts, Trimple keeps using that word. I don’t think it means what he thinks it means”
And he also tweeted a complaint about how loud she talked. When the crowd got loud, she raised her voice to be heard. When the crowd quieted down so did her voice. She may have bumped her volume to emphasize a word here and there. Compare to Drumph’s acceptance speech [cueing DVR] his entire speech was shouting at the crowd, as if he was fully unaware of the microphone in front of his mouth, regardless of the audience volume.
Shouting like an angry adult at a naughty child. Is that what he thinks the audience in TVland are? That his shouts will sway the undecided to his side? shit no. I can imagine being undecided and being yelled like that would drive me away, not toward. What planet does he think he is on? seriously. not as hyperbole.
_______________________
what is it with this [redacted] and its obsession with twitter? I’d think a presidential candidate would have more resources to get his thoughts out to the world than a cesspool of tweets. (especially a multi-billionaire)
slithey tove, #40
LOL @ Trump accusing anyone of making things up.
LOL @ “made up facts“
“Make America grate again.”
that deal might in fact be implied and I am sure he would use any crap the Putin could dig up but if the past can be used to predict future behavior the follow through on Trump’s part might be some what less than what the implied promise might be seen to be. In fact I would suspect that he would reward Putin and the Russians in the same manner as all the rest of his “marks” that is to say he would swindle them out of what ever clout and respect they might have had.
He simply has a very slim record on delivering on what he is selling being any where close to what he “promises”
As for it not being just Trump himself the thought of who would be asked to serve and be willing to serve in his administration in the cabinet and other posts does give one pause and a queasy feeling.
uncle frogy
laurent weppe @ # 19: … if she was one tenth as evil as conspiracy theorists claim she is, her kill count would be thousands of times higher.
The only estimates I could find for the consequences of BH Obama/HR Clinton’s war against Libya are 30,000 in the direct-intervention phase of 2011, plus 2700 Killed and Wounded (counting only from 2014 on).
Still not a patch on her husband’s corpse count, or what Trump would do, but let’s check back on this in 2020…
Speaking of two-year-old-level reactions: Pence Scolds Obama For DNC Speech: Name Calling Has No Place In Politics!
here is a nightmare for you.
Trump wins the election by some smallish margin. He takes office and continues to speechify insulting and bloviating for a year to a year and a half by which time he is growing tired of having to pretend to work all the time and his inability to fire the democrats in congress who are making threatening noises about corruption and malfeasance he decides to pull a Palin and resigns leaving the vice president to assume the office
uncle frogy
Further to #33: I’ve returned to this elderly thread because I’ve come across a good summary of what checks and balances there are on a POTUS ordering a nuclear strike. Constitutionally, there’s exactly one safeguard, and it’s hardly a robust one, contrary to what cartomancer@27 claims: the Secretary for Defence has to verify that it is indeed the President who has issued the order (via the “nuclear football” that accompanies the latter everywhere, and allows the POTUS to choose from a menu of nuclear attack options). That’s it. The Sec. of Def. has no veto power, nor does anyone else, and the Sec. of Def. is constitutionally obliged to issue the verification – if it is indeed the President issuing the order. The article says they could resign rather than do so, but then the responsibility would devolve on their deputy. And of course Trump could appoint any toady he liked as Sec. of Def.