More Random Observations.

Ivanka Trump is getting center stage in the last week. My best guess as to why is that the poll numbers for Trump with women are sliding due to security concerns and the Dickensian treatment of detained children seeking asylum.

Did E Jean Carroll’s description of Trump in a changing room contribute? Who knows. Maybe one or two women coming forward might have other agendas. But 22 of them who kept silent for decades for fear of retaliation – and then *getting* that retaliation? Yeah, that’s pretty hard to brush off. It starts to sound entirely too plausible after awhile.

So, keep an eye on the White House for more Ivanka as she attempts to stop the hemorrhaging while doing absolutely nothing to affect policy whatsoever.

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Trump just made an ass of himself in North Korea and lowered the reputation of the United States around the world.

Let’s suck up to as many murderous strongmen as we can in 24 hours. That’ll show them NATO freeloaders.

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One more infusion to go, guys. Sometimes, it feels like forever. I’ve got major fatigue, cratering white and red blood cells, and blisters on the soles of my feet. That was a new one. Didn’t expect that. Been walking around with socks on my poor toesies in upper 80 degree weather. One side benefit: I don’t have to shave my legs! Or anything else! My head is also not misshapen. So, you know, there’s that.

Still, I dream of a vacation at the beach. Like a week. No hurricanes. Since 2011, I’ve had nothing but no vacation or hurricane vacation or crazy relative ruined EVERYTHING vacation. I only wish I were exaggerating.

I’ve had a bit of a break in the past two weekends. My favorite Republican has taken good care of me. His kindness is astonishing.

But I’m really beginning to loathe the mere mention of the word “staycation”.

For now, a beach vacation is just a dream.

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Identifying with the Glorious Sons in this song. It’s exhausting being sane all the time. Psychosis is definitely not a good thing from what I have observed but at least no one tells you to not take a rest.

$205/month

I am so proud of Lt. Governor John Fetterman and State Senator Muth for not backing down when this tyrannical, maniacal Republican asshole tried to shut them up.

Heart pounding. Watch this male lawmaker scream over his female colleague for 3+ minutes while she tries to read a powerful letter written by a formerly homeless man begging them not to end public assistance. This *is* the GOP. Heartless. Angry. Abusive. pic.twitter.com/t3glwiaTJJ

— Scott Hechinger (@ScottHech) June 29, 2019

Fetterman is the former mayor of Braddock, which is about 5 miles from my house. He looks like a taller, more intimidating version of Billy Bob Thornton. In this clip, he’s wearing a suit, highly unusual for him.

I don’t think any Republican in the rotunda has a snowball’s chance in hell of getting Fetterman to back down. He’s got the confidence of a big guy with a solid reputation behind him. And I think that definitely helped Muth continue going when GOP asshole tried to shut her up.

Welcome to the new reality. It’s not so easy to stuff a sock in it anymore.

The vote to strip poor Pennsylvanians of $205/month in general assistance funds will deprive them of their bus passes, make it more difficult for them to go to work and throw vulnerable people back on the streets.

Yeah, that’s something to be proud of, loud mouth.

$205/month.

Jimmy Carter says what we’ve all suspected

“There’s no doubt that the Russians did interfere in the election. And I think the interference, although not yet quantified, if fully investigated would show that Trump didn’t actually win the election in 2016,” Carter said https://t.co/o5hdNR2A7A

— CNN (@CNN) June 28, 2019

That should make some headlines. Carter is a nonagenarian. It’s not like he’s got a career to worry about. I doubt that anyone is going to make him eat those words.

They’re out there and they are designed to rattle the cages of the militaristic Trump supporters who think they can just do a Purge if the rest of us express our outrage over Trump and Mitch McConnell’s illegitimate power grab.

Someone is figuring out how the Trump messaging system works.

It took long enough but I like it.

Here’s another clip.

Jimmy Carter: “Trump didn’t actually win the election in 2016. He lost the election, and he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf.”

Jon Meacham: “So do you believe President Trump is an illegitimate president?”

Carter: …pic.twitter.com/xJm9zGEuEb

— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) June 28, 2019

For what it’s worth, I believe Carter. Not only that but I’m certain that the degree of illegitimacy *is* quantifiable but that intelligence agencies have chosen to keep quiet due to national security concerns. But it will all come out.

Sooner than later.

Dear Joe, may I call you Joe?

There’s a rumor going around that you said this about Kamala:

Wow. @JoeBiden campaign pits out statement saying “Harris is doing exactly what Trump wants.” Jesus

— JodiJacobson 🇺🇦 🩸🦷 @jljacobson@mastodon.social (@jljacobson) June 28, 2019

Jeesus, Joe. {{facepalm}}

I suspect I know where you’re coming from and who your target audience is. But I think you are missing the point about Kamala and Lizzy and Julián and Amy and all the others who are not you, Pete or Beto.

Here’s the short summary:

The country consists of voters who voted for Trump and an overwhelming majority of voters who voted for Hillary Clinton. Now, you could be forgiven for acting like the majority of voters do not exist. The media, either through embarrassment, misplaced blame or Russian psy-ops has tried very, Very hard to make Hillary go away and to take her loser voters with her. Amirite, people? That’s what we have observed.

If you want to know exactly why Trump seems to have outsized influence on the stories that get covered and why he seems to get away with murder, it’s because the media has created a HUGE power vacuum on the left by telling Hillary to sit down, go away and STFU every time she makes a statement. Then it goes into the heart of East Jabip, Indiana to find the one diner where a bunch of crotchety, curmudgeonly 75 yr olds who have never had to work with anyone outside of their tiny sphere of influence are gnawing on biscuits and sipping black coffee and, poof! The rest of us no longer exist.

But we are out here, Joe. We DO exist and we are going to vote so fucking hard in November 2020 it’s going to make your head spin.

The thing is, no one has heard a peep from us since November 2016. Well, except for our impressive women’s matches and our even more impressive 2018 congressional wins. Do you REMEMBER those things, Joe??

Do you think we did all that because we were doing what Trump wanted us to do? Do you think that speaking up for the vast majority of voters including ourselves is somehow BAD for us??

If you’re saying that the only real people who count are those Hoosiers in diners, then I’m afraid you’re going to be eliminated pretty quickly.

Ain’t nobody got time for that anymore, Joe. And we’re done with preserving the status quo for more do nothing presidents and their veeps.

Please retire gracefully. We’re busy.

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Greg Sargent at WaPo digs a little deeper to show how Biden’s dogwhistling days go the white blue collar guys is OVER. Harris just stuck a knife in it. It’s done:

The most charitable way to put this is that Biden comes from a Democratic Party that precedes its new “wokeness,” so those voters might be more comfortable with him. A less charitable way is that Biden’s past association with things like his opposition to busing — which meant capturing the political energy of white racial backlash — carries an implicit racial and cultural signaling that will reassure them.

One key reason that Biden’s nostalgia over white supremacist senators blew up on him is that it ripped the lid off of all this. Just as Harris does, I believe Biden when he insists he was, and is, horrified by their white supremacy.

But what still remains ambiguous is whether Biden does or does not conceive the source of his claimed appeal to conservative whites as rooted in subtle appeals to blue collar white identity politics, as Jamelle Bouie has detailed.

This ambiguity was pushed forward when Biden adamantly refused to back off his praise for segregationist senators and, worse, when he dressed down African American Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) over the matter.

What Harris did last night

What Harris really did is to pin down this ambiguity and not allow it to remain hidden any longer. What she demonstrated is that, whatever Biden’s actual intentions, any whiff of such racial and cultural signaling no longer has any place in today’s Democratic Party.

The Dems can choose to be distracted by these voters and try to pander to them or they can make a case that the world is moving on with or without them and we’ve got more important economic and global issues on our plates than whether some poor black parent somewhere gets free vaccinations and healthcare for her kid.

Harris called it not a minute too soon. Who the f*ck cares what Trump thinks?

It’s yet to be determined whether she’s the nominee but she’s already done us all a big favor. We are moving on.

Democratic Debates Super Elimination – Round 2

Heavy hitters tonight. On deck are Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, the holy trinity of the young, Ivy League White grad student guy. The rest of us ain’t seeing it but they SWEAR by these guys to the point where Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand are invisible.

Well, you know, Kirsten and Kamala are over 50 and therefore unfuckabke. You don’t really expect Chuck Todd and Ezra Klein types to get all excited about them do you? Besides, Mayor Pete is a RHODES scholar. Don’t you want a president who is smart?

When they say shit like that, they forget that Warren, Harris, Klobuchar and Gillibrand are Senators. Warren is an expert in her field abs taught at Harvard Law school. Oh, sure, Harvard is a rinky dink second rate safety college. Come to think of it, Pete might have been taught by Warren if he’d decided to go to Harvard law.

Are we going to have another foreign language competition? Who besides Pete knows Norwegian?

Can you tell I’m completely non-plussed by the guys?

But I’m looking forward to some of them throwing down the gauntlet at Trump. Smacking him with a sweaty leather glove would be satisfying.

Kamala and Kirsten tag teaming against Biden, Bernie, Buttigieg and Hickenlooper is something to look forward to. I just wish the guys would go run for Senate so Lizzy Warren could slam dunk Mitch McConnell.

Predictions, people? Put them in the comments.

No offense, Jay, but…

… you freely admit that Climate Change is your number one issue, not that there’s anything wrong with that.

However, you act like your actions on healthcare and reproductive rights for women have ticked the requisite box for you. Whew! Glad you got THAT out of the way. Let’s move on to carbon cap and trade!

Amy Klobuchar says not so fast:

Amy is not my numero uno but she makes a good point, one that I think is still lost on the Jay Inslees and Chris Matthews’ types. Here it is:

Women are going to make you accountable. You had your fun in 2008 and 2016 when you didn’t consider the threat to women serious enough to curb your casual knee jerk sexist attacks on the only female presidential candidate we have ever had. Oh sure, she was a shoe in. What harm was there in tearing her down a little? It kept the race entertaining, didn’t it? Wasn’t that photofinish exciting?

Except it all went tits up for two major reasons: 1.) The interference of a foreign power for the other candidate and 2.) the inability of any good statistician to create a predictable model based on polls because a female nominee had never been tried before.

You’d think the news media would have conducted a thought experiment based on what they were doing and how it might affect the outcome. It didn’t.

We double XX’s have suffered incalculably for those miscalculations. From now on, checking a box for women’s reproductive rights and healthcare is not going to be anywhere near good enough.

Don’t think you can pull your reproductive rights card out of your pocket, wave it in front of a crowd and then proclaim noisily that climate change is THE most important thing in the world to you.

It may very well be the most important thing to humankind. But it’s not the most important thing to American women.

From now on, we will insist on complete equality and recognition before you can go on to any other thing.

And no, Jay, you didn’t work harder on women’s issues than Lizzy, Amy, Tulsi, Kirsten, or Kamala.

In fact, with so many extraordinarily talented women running, it’s extremely telling that you, a man, feel like you have to run at all.

I guarantee you that any one of these women as president will have your climate change issue as their top priority – right after they take care to remember the ladies.

No one will love us as much as we love ourselves. We come first from now on.

Long Debate Night

The first culling of the herd of Democratic Presidential candidates is tonight. You can watch it on MSNBC, Telemundo and probably Youtube. I’ll try to add some links as the hour grows nearer.

It still seems too early but we have so many contenders that we’ve got to do an early elimination round or two. Tonight’s big draws will be Warren, Booker and Beto. Will Tulsi Gabbard steal the show? Unlikely, but she does look good on camera. Julian Castro and Jay Inslee are also on tonight.

Most of them seem overqualified. I mean, compared to who is president now. Trump will probably spend his time tweeting what he considers to be clever names for his competitors. Let’s ignore him for now. What am I saying?? The media can’t ignore him. It’s like some kind of mutualism. They’ve got to cover every stupid tweet and Trump has to over supply. They complete each other.

So, what are you interested in hearing? Will Lester Holt ask Warren about being part Native American? It’s the most pointless, uninteresting question out there so for sure someone is going to ask.

Will Beto get all wispy eyed and channel his best Robert Kennedy before he chirps, “This is fun! I can do this jumping on a countertop!”

Will Booker say anything not maudlin or overly sincere?

How long will it take Tulsi to self-eliminate?

What questions do you want them to ask? Who do you want to succeed? Will Amy bring her eating comb?

Have at it, people.

Two things about Trump

His ugliness makes him hateworthy.

I think we are all a little hesitant about saying that. Hate feels impolite. You’re not supposed to hate someone. But some people are so unworthy of any respect whatsoever that they need to be taken out of power as soon as possible. Impeachment might be quicker. I’d go with quicker at this point.

Trump is capricious, dangerous, careless, cruel and there’s one more thing I’ll get to in a minute.

Last night, as I was dozing off, I heard some asshole Republican going at Chris Hayes, shoving Trump down his throat saying something to the effect, “He’s your president whether you like it or not and he’s going to be president for another four more years”. Now I wasn’t watching this fanatic’s face when he made this offensive statement but I can almost imagine his thighs shaking and sweating as he made this comment. Rage and defiance and ecstasy all rolled into one.

I would caution Republican asshole to not get too ahead of himself.

He’s counting on the electoral college to re-elect Trump or some additional Russian help.

But Trump allegedly won in 2016 with Pennsylvania and Florida. And I’m not so sure he can count on those states this time.

We outnumber you, Republican politician. Like Union vs Confederacy outnumber you. At best, Trump’s support is at 41%. You can wag your dicks at us all you want but in the end, our numbers are solidifying. We loathe this man. And we are not ashamed of saying it.

The second thing we know about Trump is that he is weak.

He doesn’t know how to negotiate. He pounds the table, issues demands and blames people. Maybe that’s what the Trumpers wanted but he’s up against a brick wall because he doesn’t have the capacity to make better deals. So, you guys who are holding your breaths for a better immigration deal where you can treat human beings like shit because it makes you feel good better enjoy that feeling now.

If you don’t get what you want, you bring the condemnation of the world upon you.

If you do get what you want, you’d better shut the fuck up about immigration.

Do you think Trump has any incentive to solve this immigration crisis that he has singlehandedly created? No. If he solves is, what can he make you all hard about? Who will he take on next? What line will you let him cross next?

But that’s all he’s got. Beating up on little kids who can’t fight back. That’s what you’re getting all excited about. A big powerful man making children dirty, miserable and susceptible to disease in unsanitary detention centers.

Big guy. Ooooo, big, stupid, mean guy. Picking on children. Because he can.

You don’t even get any pay out for that. Nothing is being done to prevent employers from hiring illegals. Are we fining them? Putting them out of business? Of course not. Where would Trump get his own workers for his resorts?

He’s also weak on Iran. He tore up a perfectly serviceable agreement that the world signed onto. For what reason?

There was no reason to do this. He brought us to the brink of war and at the last second pulled out of it.

He did that because he’s weak. He knows it. There was only bluster to satisfy a few of the thigh shakers. If he put the rest of us at risk by bringing international sanctions against the US, that would have shown just how weak he is. Plus, we wouldn’t have even one single ally on our side going into Iran. That’s why he pulled out. He couldn’t risk the injury to his image, his supreme humiliation that the world does NOT respect us anymore and especially doesn’t respect HIM. He’s already a colossal failure.

A completely, ignorant, lumbering fool of a failed “commander in Chief”. And he’s WEAK. He has no stamina.

He’s out. Forget about a second term. It’s going to be a bloodbath electorally for Republicans next year. You think you’re filled with fury and rage?

Just wait.

This part is interesting… to

It’s from Jean Carroll’s account of her rape by Donald Trump in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman:

You could focus on inconsistencies in this account. Where were the cameras?? Where were the sales attendants??

But not knowing whether Trump’s whole penis or part of his penis is all the way in would be consistent with Stormy Daniels’ description of Trump’s short, mushroom shaped, um, head.

You can’t make that up.

Carroll says that incident was the last time anyone had his penis in her, halfway or all the way. Twenty-three years with no sex. Something about that encounter turned her off that kibble for more than two decades.

That might be Donald’s worst crime.

I’d hate to be this DOJ lawyer caught on tape arguing about toothpaste and beds for migrant kids.

A Trump official tried to argue that detained children don’t need soap, toothbrushes, or beds to be ‘safe and sanitary’ while in Border Patrol custody pic.twitter.com/sRFPZsDbwy

— NowThis Impact (@nowthisimpact) June 21, 2019

A passenger gets tooth cleaning devices, hot moist towels and plenty of leg room on a 7 hour transatlantic flight on Lufthansa. In coach.

You just have to ask yourself, would you leave your kid with.a Trump overnight?