Ronna McDaniel
@GOPChairwoman

From open borders to government-guaranteed jobs, today's Democrats are no longer the party of FDR.

Was off the grid (camping, Yellowstone) for ten days. Anything interesting happen?

Stop the presses.

Well, if you made that comment before RTFA - well done... because -

If we stopped the presses every time Trump or one of his lackeys availed themselves of his favorite communications media to say something stupid, the presses would never run.

99% of people aren't going to read the 412-page FISA warrant or the Nunes memo, much less understand either. A partisan news outlet can just call on some partisan expert to come on and say whatever they want. If you get enough partisan news outlets, you can always claim that people who disagree are being equally partisan.

There's lots of lawyers here. Any of you read the FISA warrant?

So in a country of over 300 million people, wherein one of the more popular communications media limits the user to 140 characters, someone said something stupid.

No one serious pays attention to Trump's tweets.

No one serious pays attention to Trump's tweets.

lol, go back under your rock, it's been 280 for about a year now.

So in a country of over 300 million people, wherein one of the more popular communications media limits the user to 140 characters, someone said something stupid.

lol, go back under your rock, it's been 280 for about a year now.

Judging from the rudimentary design of his MySpace page, Sub-Beta isn't the most tech-savy hipster around.

Iraqholster Ray:
”You're right; instead, the left just seems not to care about it, as they fellate Iran and assail America's bakers.”

“I thought that was a very strange tag to put on the whole monologue. I thought, ‘That’s not homophobic.’ You taught me new terms! As a gay man, I didn’t know certain things. It was titillating, not homophobic.”

In the UK in the 80s, it was common for the Thatcher-Reagan relationship to be satirised as a romantic relationship. So yeah, it's not only when it's two men.

If anyone serious paid attention, the markets would be in a massive sell-off today. But of course no one serious does.

which allows the Trumpkins to engage in the pure hackery of saying that there's nothing in there other than the dossier

Very Stable Genius: "Did I Say I Wouldn't Come In Your Mouth? Oh, sorry. Meant to say I would. My bad. Now go ahead and swallow that, sweetheart."

That's basically Trump's excuse for all the treasoning he did yesterday in Helsinki. … But Trump still couldn't quite pull his tongue all the way out of Putin's ass.

That's one of the tells here: not only are the jokes not funny, but they're not -- at least, the "jokes" on this board -- actually an attempt at humor. They're literally just attacks on perceived Trump supporters.
You can certainly have gay humor that isn't homophobic -- such as Seinfeld's "not that there's anything wrong with that." Done without malicious intent and not as a mean spirited attack. But this is not that.

Is there anything more sad than a Buckner & Garcia greatest hits tour?

How about just Buckner? "On November 17, 2011, Gary Garcia passed away unexpectedly at his home in Englewood, Florida." Wiki

Iraqholster Ray:
”You're right; instead, the left just seems not to care about it, as they fellate Iran and assail America's bakers.”

How long 'til we bring back this oldie but goodie?

Yes, there was surely no greater foe of government guaranteed employment than FDR.

did the Times ever cover the Metro NYC area as a day-to-day news beat

Clearly to get back to the party of FDR we need internment camps and Supreme Court packing.

How often do you guys make a new thread, every week?

No one serious pays attention to Trump's tweets.

To insult a male by characterizing him as a “fag” or his behavior as “gay” is not necessarily the same as accusing him of literally being homosexual. Given. But that’s beside the point. To use a scale of “gayness” as your measure of negativity is definitively homophobic. The fundamental assumption there is that to be gay or to engage in a homosexual action is decidedly in the negative column.

It is worth noting that words or phrases specifically evocative of female acts of homosexuality are quite rarely used. Indeed, that’s because calling a man a “fag” is analagous to comparing him to a woman. The shade of difference is quite slight. Simply put, homophobia is an expression of misogyny. Patriarchy – which is institutionalized, enculturated, structural misogyny – demeans women for being women and, with the club of homophobia, demeans men who are too much like women. There is nothing about these attitudes to admire or defend.

Very Stable Genius: "Did I Say I Wouldn't Come In Your Mouth? Oh, sorry. Meant to say I would. My bad. Now go ahead and swallow that, sweetheart."

That's basically Trump's excuse for all the treasoning he did yesterday in Helsinki. … But Trump still couldn't quite pull his tongue all the way out of Putin's ass.

Ray's been spouting this same moronically false "if it's mean, then it's not funny, or even a joke" thesis

To insult a male by characterizing him as a “fag” or his behavior as “gay” is not necessarily the same as accusing him of literally being homosexual.

Sincerely Liberal gay men like Dan Savage and Jim Parsons are in a bit of a bind because they are 1000% Trump Foes.

any minute now...

Really an astonishing document, and although a good bit before my time, the whole civil defense apparatus scared the bejesus out of me as a kid, particularly the test of the EBS. Everytime I'd see a fallout shelter sign, I'd get the sweats.

the majority of GOP voters would approve if Trump suspended the 2020 election will.

So no comment at all on Trump's highest job approval rating yet, or the fact that 88 percent of the GOP is down with the Prez after Helsinki?

I sat in the bleachers with my mom and cried hysterically though the whole thing

I sat in the bleachers with my mom and cried hysterically though the whole thing


Prepared you for a lifetime of Mets fandom.

I was born winter of '66, so I'm right behind ya on the timeline. Had to be some psychic effect when some of your first memories were Vietnam coverage on tv. Not to mention Tricky Dick.

Michael Moore

Yeah, why would anybody listen to that loon...

Coming back to the hotel after appearing on Bill Maher’s Republican Convention special this week on HBO, a man stopped me. “Mike,” he said, “we have to vote for Trump. We HAVE to shake things up.” That was it. That was enough for him. To “shake things up.” President Trump would indeed do just that, and a good chunk of the electorate would like to sit in the bleachers and watch that reality show.

I realize reaming Ray a new one (see what I did there?) is fine sport, but I do think that "cockholster" and other submissive sex references (be they Trump/Putin or Thatcher/Reagan or Clinton/Everyone) are in poor taste and at best only marginally misogynistic (and yes, homophobic if done "wrong"). Sincerely Liberal gay men like Dan Savage and Jim Parsons are in a bit of a bind because they are 1000% Trump Foes.

Anybody else notice how the whole Iran threat came out of nowhere?

Oh, except that:
-- it comes on the heels of Trump's terrible, awful, not-very-nice week
-- it comes the week of the start of Manafort's trial.

Other than that, yeah...pretty inexplicable.

Look the other way: Donald Trump's Iran rant a distraction from controversial Putin summit

Trump’s escalation does not appear premeditated or thought through. He faced intense bipartisan criticism after last week’s inept summit with Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin. He is under relentless pressure from the official inquiry into alleged 2016 campaign collusion with Russia. Trump may have been looking for an easy target on which to vent his pent-up frustration. ........Intentionally or not, Trump has distracted attention from his domestic troubles, at least for now.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders dismissed suggestions that with his tweet, the president was inciting conflict with Iran in order to distract from his domestic political troubles including negative reaction to his rapport with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

So often, we're left to figure out why the president is tweeting what he's tweeting at the time. And as you know, after the head-slapping Helsinki moment that saw his approval ratings in terms of how he's dealing with Russia drop, you have to ask the question "Did this have to happen last night? Is this a distraction of some kind?" [followed by Trump "planting the seed" and reading his 2013 anti-Obama tweets]

As Trump threatens war with Iran, few know whether to take it seriously

It’s an awkward feeling. On the one hand, the Commander in Chief of the world’s strongest military is publicly raising the prospect of a deadly conflict, and it seems irresponsible to just shrug that off as background noise. On the other hand, most observers realize that Trump is an erratic amateur with the temperament of an elementary-school bully, who finds joy in chest-thumping bluster, and whose occasional tantrums frequently amount to very little.

The former suggests last night’s presidential tweets were important. The latter suggests we should roll our eyes and focus our attention elsewhere.

The uncertainty is itself an issue the nation needs to come to terms with. When a sitting American president threatens a war, and no one’s sure whether to take it seriously, there’s a problem.

Who knows, maybe Trump is actually preparing for a conflict. Or maybe he saw some forgettable segment on Fox News that got him all worked up again, but it won’t last. Or maybe the president hopes to distract everyone from his long list of unrelated problems. (Paul Manafort, who led Trump’s political operation, will be in a federal courtroom this week for the start of his multi-count criminal trial.)

We can say with some certainty that Trump sees Iran threats as a convenient domestic political tool – because he’s already told us so. He tweeted in 2013, “Remember what I previously said – Obama will someday attack Iran in order to show how tough he is.”

One week on from the Putin summit, no one can stop talking about it. And Trump's defiance and failure to publicly rebuke the Russian leader in Finland over election interference is spurring unusual criticism from Republicans.

"The evidence is overwhelming," South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy said on "Fox News Sunday."

"It can be proven beyond any evidentiary burden that Russia is not our friend and they tried to attack us in 2016," Gowdy said. "So the President either needs to rely on the people that he has chosen to advise him, or those advisers need to reevaluate whether or not they can serve in this administration. But the disconnect cannot continue. The evidence is overwhelming, and the President needs to say that and act like it."

It's somewhat less of a bind when you consider that poor taste, and marginal mysogyny, and homophobia (if done wrong) are not in of themselves disqualifying reasons to attempt a joke.

....

The fact that the line used servile sex as political metaphor is just fine. ...

I know it is a tired trope to say that we got Trump because we were mean to him but it is generally true than when one side of the political spectrum attacks the established leader of the other side that side tends to rally behind that leader regardless of how stupid doing that is.

It would be absolutely stupid to think that 40% of the population want us to be close allies with Russia, that Russia has good intentions for us, and that are allies are lazy meanies that are our true enemies. But since Trump is saying that and being attacked for it people feel the need to defend him. Before June of 2015 the amount of people in the GOP that wanted what Trump wanted in terms of foreign policy was probably well below 10% of the party. Now suddenly all these people have seen the light? No.

Weakening the impact of Trump’s rhetoric

Political scientists have done a great deal of research to figure out how much the president’s words matter — if they matter at all. Here’s what’s generally agreed upon: Presidential communication matters in a number of important ways. It can shape what issues citizens think about in the first place, how the public views the particular meaning or context of a major event, and provide important cues to partisans about where the party stands on a given issue.

Trump is facing a different dynamic than other presidents, though: He’s regularly contradicted by members of his own party on Capitol Hill. Take the president’s downplaying of Russian interference in the 2016 election. It will be harder for Trump to convince even most Republicans of these arguments as long as senators from his own party, like South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, keep saying there was interference. Indeed, a (small) majority of Republicans believe the U.S. intelligence agencies’ finding that Russia interfered.

* * *

On paper, Trump, particularly on foreign policy, can still largely ignore Congress and implement his agenda if he chooses. But in reality, he keeps backtracking. Take his interest in implementing a more pro-Russia foreign policy. We think the criticism from congressional Republicans is a big part of that hesitancy on Trump’s part. The verbal opposition from fellow Republicans tends to lead to an escalation of opposition against Trump. Criticism by fellow Republicans frees the press, always leery of appearing too liberal, to attack controversial Trump initiatives more directly. That bipartisan and media opposition helps move the public in these instances to oppose what Trump is doing. Facing such opposition, the president often retreats.

NY Times:
The president’s conduct and the fight for control of Congress have overshadowed the 36 governor’s races this year. But the state elections could prove even more consequential in reshaping policy and altering the long-term balance of power both in Washington and state capitals.

Just as Republicans pulled a host of moderate states significantly to the right after their success eight years ago, victorious Democrats could enact sweeping changes on labor, health care and energy to tug a number of centrist states to the left and expand their policy ambitions in liberal states — fulfilling the growing expectations of their progressive base.

Democrats would also be in position to protect their members of Congress when the House map is redrawn after the 2020 census. With 56 Democratic challengers outraising Republican incumbents in the last fund-raising period, senior leaders in both parties believe Democrats are likely to gain the 23 seats they need to take the chamber. Because state governments control redistricting, new Democratic governors could help cement the House gains, or at least block Republicans from repeating the post-2010 gerrymandering that helped entrench their power in Congress.

The November election could have “decadal significance” because of redistricting, said Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington, the chairman of the Democratic Governors Association.

…………….Should 2018 yield a large new class of Democratic governors, Mr. Inslee said, they would move quickly next year to shape policies that would put blue-tinged states even more sharply at odds with a Trump-led federal government. “We’re seeing a clean-energy jobs message can be very effective, virtually, in every state,” Mr. Inslee said. He also cited gun-control and voting-rights laws as other areas where Democrats would take action. Across the country, he added, “You cannot overstate the anger, the concern and the desire to vote.”

…………..Even if Democrats win governorships in places like Ohio and Florida, they are all but certain to face divided governments and formidable Republican opposition. ………..But if Republicans are likely to hold on to some measure of power in many states, there was no mistaking the deflated demeanor of a number of governors in Santa Fe.

………….“This is the only time in my lifetime when I’ve ever been aware of so many Republicans, moderate Republicans, who are throwing up their hands and in some cases writing checks to support Democratic candidates,” said [Colorado Governor John] Hickenlooper, whose state is an example of one that has moved gradually to the left. “I’ve just never seen this level of dissatisfaction.”

‘A difficult situation’: Republican women run in the Trump era
If this is the ‘year of the woman,’ GOP women on the ballot aren’t feeling it.

For the past 20 months, four-term Republican Rep. Martha Roby has had to grovel to President Donald Trump to regain her political standing and beat back a primary challenge in her staunchly conservative Alabama district.

Her crime? Standing up for women.

“I cannot look my children in the eye … and justify a vote for a man who promotes and boasts about sexually assaulting women,” the mother of two said in the fall of 2016. Needless to say, her constituents — many of them Trump-loving Southern men — didn’t like that much. Roby quickly changed her tune after Trump won the presidency, unfailingly praising him and his policies as she went on to survive a primary runoff Tuesday that almost ended her career.

Roby’s plight highlights the unique challenge Republican women face campaigning for office with Trump in the White House. While their female Democratic counterparts have benefited politically from going against the president on women’s issues, GOP women don’t have the same luxury.

..................Retiring Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who called Republican women an “endangered species,” was blunter: “The base is with Donald Trump, and he can do no wrong. … He’s going to be hanging on you like an albatross around your neck. Ugh! It is a real knot for female candidates."

Interviews with more than a half-dozen female GOP lawmakers and candidates revealed what Ros-Lehtinen called the "difficult situation" many of them face: Like male GOP lawmakers who go against Trump, Republican women who blast the president risk alienating a base they need for reelection, as Roby did. Failing to speak up, however, risks turning off independent-minded women who are skeptical of the president, a key voting bloc. ................Some Republican women say they've struggled to ride the wave of empowerment that their Democratic counterparts have.

.....................But it’s not just Democrats, or Trump, who make it challenging for Republican woman. While Democrats tend to favor female candidates over men, all things being equal, some Republican women say their gender is held against them by a sliver of voters in their party. ..............Rep. Kristi Noem, who’s running for governor of South Dakota, a state she referred to as “a good ol’ boys club” [said,] “For some reason, they were willing to vote to send a woman to Congress for years, but to put a woman in the governor’s office, it’s very different. I didn’t anticipate that being an issue. And we think, in our primary, we lost several points because of that.”

................Currently, about 10 percent of the GOP Conference is female, while almost a third of the Democratic Caucus is made up of women. Ros-Lehtinen said Republicans have got some work to do to boost those numbers.
“Things have changed, but for Republican women, sadly the number has more or less stayed at a dismally low level,” she said.

Legendary Knicks writer Frank Isola among those to get axed

re 77. The thing of it is is that come 2020 those Trump voters will likely be re-energized. There will always be the other side bogeyman. Someone is always going to be the horrible villain that will ruin the country if not stopped. So the real issue isn't Trump but who gets nominated for the Dems. If it can be some charismatic Obama type nominee that can build a big tent and inspire voters he's sunk. If it is Clinton part II or someone divisive then we're back to largely focusing on a couple hundred thousand voters here or there.

Just 36% of independents approve of Trump’s job (down 7 points from June). Independents prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress by more than 20 points, 48% to 26% (in June, the Dem lead among indies was just 7 points).

2019-2020 looks a LOT different with even just one chamber of Congress actually functioning as a co-equal branch and exercising its oversight authority rather than playing vanguard.

I am entirely confidant that 2017-2018 will mark the high water mark of Trump's popularity.

New NBC/WSJ poll:

Just 36% of independents approve of Trump’s job (down 7 points from June). Independents prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress by more than 20 points, 48% to 26% (in June, the Dem lead among indies was just 7 points).

Yeah, well, how many people were entirely confident that 2015 was Trump's high water mark?

I dunno. If the GOP loses a chamber, that just gives the Trump marketing machine more grist for the "Dems are stalling" mill. Say what you will about the man, he knows how to manipulate a significant portion of the electorate. I agree that hating HRC was a huge component in 2016 that's unlikely to be repeated, I would just hate for - frankly, ANYONE - to become complacent about a Trump fadeout.

First, as always, people still have this tendency to analyze reaction/approval/popularity of Trump without remembering (as in, they truly seem to forget) that half the country or more hates him.

Rep. Trey Gowdy has a theory: "I have not seen one scintilla of evidence that this president colluded, conspired, collaborated, with Russia. And neither has anyone else, or you can rest assured, Adam Schiff would have leaked it."

Gowdy also says that "Carter Page is more like Inspector Gadget then he is Jason Bourne or James Bond." And he wants the public to understand that because treason is a capital crime, John Brennan might be willing to see Donald Trump hanged by the neck until dead.

Trey Gowdy is the chairman of the House Oversight Committee.

But, as I said last thread... this is a common occurrence when one is new to the movement.

The Clinton II does not exist.

Even fat men slipping on banana peels gags are a no-no

The Clinton II does not exist.

Wait until Chelsea runs!

the whole civil defense apparatus scared the bejesus out of me as a kid, particularly the test of the EBS.

Legendary Knicks writer Frank Isola among those to get axed

Damn, from what I can tell he was the only guy left in the NYC scene that had any real sources on the Knicks.

That reminds me of a slowfooted and dimwitted American Legion teammate who tried to steal second in the last of the 9th when we were 4 or 5 runs behind.