Donald Trump is campaigning in Altoona and Erie, Pennsylvania today. Those are pretty good choices for him. The Altoona area should be a region where he picks up some votes, and Erie is a swing region that probably leans right. But Trump’s real problem in the Keystone State is his increasingly non-existent support in the Philadelphia suburbs. If he can’t turn that around, he’ll need unheard of turnout from the “Pennsyltucky” (a.k.a. the ‘T’) region of the state.
Visiting Altoona can help him there, but not if he doesn’t use it as an opportunity to activate volunteers and identify supporters. He needs a ground army to drag every last voter to the polls or he has no chance at all. And, yet, he says he doesn’t need any GOTV effort and he certainly doesn’t need the help of the RNC and their resources and contacts and lists.
“We are gonna have tremendous turnout from the evangelicals, from the miners, from the people that make our steel, from people that are getting killed by trade deals, from people that have been just decimated, from the military who are with Trump 100 percent,” he went on. “From our vets because I’m going to take care of the vets.”
“I don’t know that we need to get out the vote,” the Republican nominee concluded. “I think people that really want to vote, they’re gonna just get up and vote for Trump. And we’re going to make America great again.”
As an old Pennsylvania organizer who spent 2004 working for Project Vote to register and get out the vote in Delaware and Montgomery (suburban Philly) counties, I know that a good ground game can boost county-level turnout several percentage points. While it’s never possible to know what exact impact your organizing has had on an election, John Kerry did significantly better than Gore in the counties I organized even as he was doing less well statewide. On election day in 2004, my crews visited every name on my list three times or until we’d verified that they had voted. It made a difference, especially considering that long lines in places like Norristown cost us hundreds if not thousands of votes.
If the election isn’t close then obviously this grind-it-out type of ground game doesn’t matter (except, perhaps, for other races on the ballot), but we all remember Florida in 2000. And Barack Obama won North Carolina in 2008 and lost it in 2012 by a whisker.
For a candidate like Trump who is behind in the polls and banking on unprecedented turnout in his core areas of support, the indifference to a ground game is confounding.
This sort of reminds me of the Mets in their first few years, when the newspaper would go over their pitching rotation in the next series. You know, can a guy with an ERA over six keep the team in a game when the team averages under three runs a game? Usually no.
I’m trying to think of what could cost Clinton the election, and it’s not Trump. Maybe a huge scandal, but there are numerous scandals there to be seen and the media continues to ignore them. Why wouldn’t they ignore them until the election is over?
Our MSM is marching us to war, with the expectation that H. Clinton will lead us. The MIC is already creating mayhem for next year, with bombers in the sky and troops on the ground in Libya. If anyone thinks that the attempted infiltration of Crimea by Ukrainian terrorists was done without Washington’s wink and nod then they don’t understand how power works.
So don’t worry, folks. You’ll get the war you were promised.
“If anyone thinks that the attempted infiltration of Crimea by Ukrainian terrorists was done without Washington’s wink and nod then they don’t understand how power works.”
Bob: You are playing rhetorical tricks on your readers. Your proposition (that Ukrainian “terrorists” were “infiltrating” Crimea–which nearly no country recognizes as legally annexed by Russia–with a “wink and nod” from the US government) is framed in such a way that it is impossible to negate. After all, none of us knows what communications might have occurred between the US and Ukrainian governments. You don’t either, of course, but then your implication is that you know there was winking and nodding because you do “understand how power works”, unlike the rest of us naifs.
Give me a break!!!
Someone “knows,”, but they’re not telling., But they cannot help but leave little clues around when an operation such as the NA]TO-based Ukraine thing happens for a number of years.
Google “Victoria Nuland” and “:Ukraine” and catch up to the last 4 years or so of reality.
AG
P.S. Nuland is the odds-on favorite to be HRC’s Sec. State. Ms. Kissinger Jr. WTFU.
You don’t know. Bob doesn’t know. I don’t know. Speculation and knowledge are different.
If you depend only on knowledge to make your poltical decisions, you likely have a difficult time or are ignoring where you have to speculate (with some sort of analytical and contextual checks).
We don’t know because we do not have access to the diplomatic correspondence, even four years (and sometimes seventy years) after the fact. We don’t have reliable journalism in war zones because journalists are now the first targets.
But as I’ve said before, if our objective in turning Ukraine towards Europe and NATO instead of being a neutral buffer with Russia we risk one set of problems. If the objective is to threaten Russia’s hold on the Sebastapol naval base, we ore on a road to war. One of the things that we don’t know is US intentions (for real, not the propaganda).
What we do know is that certain foreign policy advisers who were in the Bush administration sought to implement the blueprint outlined in the Project for a New American Century’s analysis. We know that many of those same people have been advising the Obama administration are now endorsing Hillary Clinton. But the American people no longer know actual US diplomatic intentions, so far have rhetoric and actions diverged.
Well, you’re obviously right, Tarheel, about the epistemological issue. But I think there’s a big difference between informed speculation and flat-out conspiracy mongering.
Russia inherited the Soviet Navy and found its warm water port was in Ukraine. The two countries came up with a scheme for Russia to keep using the Sebastopol base, and it’s stupid for the US to interfere. But it was also stupid for Russia to invade and annex Crimea.
Conspiracy-mongering is when someone knows something you don’t know and are too afraid of investigating.
A few years ago I said the US moved in Ukraine as part of its anti-Russia strategy. Russia has been supplying natural gas through pipelines that run across Ukraine to Europe. The US doesn’t like this kind of “free trade”. The US would rather that Europe buy its natural gas from us or our allies (Qatar, which is backing Sunni rebels in order to remove Assad and build a pipeline across Syria).
You know about LNG terminals being built along the Atlantic coast of the US, right? You know about the LNG terminal built in Poland and sitting idle, right?
Do you actually think that our country gets involved in wars for strictly moral reasons?
well, no. The naval base has been Russian since founding, 18th century. The soviet period is only one period, one third of the history as it were.
I think you’re exactly right that Ukraine should be a neutral buffer between NATO countries and Russia. Expansion of NATO is a mistake and any designs on acquiring Sebastapol are foolish. We should treat Russian annexation of Crimea as a done deal and move on.
Recent endorsements for HRC from neocons have more to do with their dislike of Trump and their fears that he does not share their fixed views of the world.
I would say that the American people largely do not care about our diplomatic intentions. I would say the same of Russian people. Most probably have no interest in re-establishing USSR borders but some in the political class do have that aim.
Joel, follow my links so you know. Thanks in advance for your dogged pursuit of truth.
You do understand that as a matter of power politics, Russia is absolutely not going to give up its Sebastapol base on the Black Sea without a fight.
Repeating the neoconservative framing of the Ukraine-Russia situation will not change that and the US doubling down on enforcing a questionable legality could very well lead to a war we don’t want and would not prevail in. It is time for the US to play the Khrushchev role for sanity on this and blink.
Our ambassador to Ukraine is still Geoffrey Pyatt. No doubt there is also a CIA station (most likely a welcome one) in Kiev. Given the aggressiveness of US policy in Eurasia, one wonders about the information being fed from the field to DC. Too many people involved with preconceived and well-articulated agendas that clearly are out of the neoconservative foreign policy ideology.
BobInPortland: Of course Eurasia actions can be done without a wink and a nod to Washington and Langley. When done well, it provides the plausible deniability that lets the President walk it back without shame. Moreover the right-wing parties and militias in Ukraine are likely not controllable by US operatives. They can wildcat at will.
Also, I am very suspicious whose interests are being protected when a commenter acts as an agent to protect readers from some putatively overdone information. Most readers can do their own parsing of comments. And most blogs don’t require an active “truth squad” to protect its reputation. Or when did the internet cease being freewheeling?
Being drummed into a war of choice with Russia or China is something that I as a citizen would not support. Using information asymmetry to accomplish that bypasses a whole lot of Constitutional checks and balances that all school kids are taught makes the US great. I don’t love the donkey that much to go down that road. I have children and grandchildren whose future safety means too much to me to not speak out when there is a march of folly going on.
A “wink and a nod”, plausible deniability and wildcatting are all shades of the same thing. In all cases the Ukraine junta knows how long their chain is.
For ex, the military of Honduras would not overthrow the elected government there if not for some reassurance from the US. The consequences of alienating the people who train them and arm them and control their economy would be too dire to take a leap of faith into that gaping maw.
Evidence, Bob?
I’m kidding. Of course you have none, because that makes so sense. The comparison of Russia with Honduras gives the game away. Those countries have absolutely nothing in common.
Unpaid Pravda servants…I thought we were done with that 20 years ago.
Booman,
Is Bob’s last name Avakian?
It would explain so much.
Namecalling now? The best way to prove that Putin is a danger to America is to call me names.
Well, it’s going to be your war. Enjoy it. I can only hope that someone you love dies for Exxon on the frigid steppes of Russia.
So we are turning to a little McCarthyist thought policing now, are we?
When the US media has become totally unreliable on coverage of foreign affairs, other sources fill the gap so long as you are clear about who’s speaking.
I’m not so sure that US citizens have broken knee-jerk Cold War reflexes enough to understand that the current dominant ideology of the Russian Federation is Russian Orthodox nationalism. And the economic system is oligarchic capitalism. Putin and Trump are much more alike than most people think, given Putin’s KGB background. The difference is that Putin understands politics and Trump doesn’t. And Putin has a very clear idea about the limits of his current power.
You are well aware that the US hands in foreign policy are far from clean; you’ve written about it yourself.
Unity does not mean groupthink.
“I’m not so sure that US citizens have broken knee-jerk Cold War reflexes enough to understand that the current dominant ideology of the Russian Federation is Russian Orthodox nationalism. And the economic system is oligarchic capitalism. Putin and Trump are much more alike than most people think, given Putin’s KGB background. The difference is that Putin understands politics and Trump doesn’t. And Putin has a very clear idea about the limits of his current power.”
Very well put. It applies to some on the left as well, and would explain some of the pro-Putin sentiment I keep seeing here, which really does not fit present realities. I would add that most on the left seem to have very little understanding of the diversity of views in post-Soviet Ukraine. And not only is fascism a much greater influence in Russia today than it is in Ukraine, but much of the fascism that does exist in Ukraine is manipulated by Russia.
Yes indeed. Some act as if Putin is the avatar of the great dialectical materialist revolution to come. They forget the alliance of Putin and Kirill the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. They also missed Putin’s crackdown on Pussy Riot’s protest at the major Russian Orthodox church in Russia.
Yeah, so culturally Putin and Russia aren’t modern and worldly. Such change takes time. And it’s not as if US politics and politicians are so advanced themselves on equal rights for women and the LBGT community. It did the damn SC and not DC politicians to decide the question of same-sex marriage for the nation. And that was only in 2015; so let’s not give ourselves too many pats on the back.
How is threatening Russia going to lead to positive change for those people and their leaders? If the US is so powerful on the issue of human rights, how come our BFF, KSA, exacts harsh punishment, including death, for homosexuality?
One thing constant in Russia’s history, even through the Communist period, right up to today, is caesaro-papism, the control of the church by the state.
The revival of the orthodox church, as such, is not my chief concern. My chief concern is the union of the orthodox church and the mafia oligarchy that runs the place.
Marie, it’s not that “change takes time” — it’s that the kind of change you’re talking about is not in the cards at all. It has nothing to do with threatening or not threatening. It’s an internal dynamic.
I interpret the pro-Putin sentiment as a misguided expression of disgust with US foreign policy. It’s not that the commenters expressing such sentiments are actually fans of the Russian system (oligarchy overlaid with Orthodox Christianity).
My impression is that it’s less oligarchy and more petro-kleptocracy.
Like say, Texas.
I see that the National Geographic Channel is running a six-part series on, er, bad men and movie starts. The first one is Pablo Escobar. They’ve got one on Saddam Hussein, and there’s one on Putin. In the preview Leon Panetta says to the effect that “He (Putin) thinks he can get away with anything.”
More propaganda.
Once you recognize that propaganda is being directed at you it’s easy to spot. So what do Saddam, Escobar and Putin have in common? Saddam and Escobar are “bad men” we replaced. Putin is a “bad man” we’re getting ready to replace.
Joel, you hit the nail on the head. But that’s the kind of “enemy of my enemy is my friend” naiveté that makes people so receptive to Russian disinformation and propaganda. People believe what they want to believe, unfortunately.
I’m too disgusted to argue with anyone who has anything to good to say about Putin.
I’m not thought policing. I’m am however fighting the urge to purge the site of people who appear to be apologists for Putin.
Regurgitated Russian propaganda is close to a banning offense in my book.
So far, though, I’ve just decided to spend much less time conversing with people on my own site. It makes me sick to see what these primaries have done to this community.
It’s so bad around here that someone accused you of ‘thought police’……which is of course an actual example of thought police.
Self awareness is dead around here.
.
Sorry to hear that. NO doubt it’s better to spend time with your son that disputing the stuff that disgusts you.
You see, if you read only the US media then you miss half the story. If you read anything that’s contrary to US propaganda you are an “unpaid Pravda servant.”
Well, you got the unpaid part right. In this era of maximum snark sometimes it’s hard to figure out how serious these personal attacks are. In this time when supposedly free thinkers have become nothing more than purveyors of propaganda it’s sometimes hard to tell.
Jeez. Trump as a tool of the Kremlin. With as many facts backing that accusation as the proof behind the WMDs.
When America wants a war (or three) Americans get in line. Then people die.
The next four years should be interesting times.
Evidence for what?
It isn’t so mechanistic, Bob In Portland, and it is not a guarantee that any country that the US would like to turn into a proxy knows how long their chain is. Recent case in point, Turkey. After over 50 years of cultivation, Turkey does not snap to and send troops to quash Daesh/ISIS/ISIL. They play a double game with Daesh in order that the Kurds not get too strong. Something related to the military at Incirlik air base caused Erdogan to suspect that the US was behind the military coup that tried to overthrow him. He went to Russia to try to hedge his bets on survival. (According to John Helmer, it did not go well. So from the Russian view, it did not go well.)
I doubt that even the Honduran junta hops to every time the US says “Jump!” These relationships are matters of mutual convenience. Even clients and tributaries have a moderate degree of independent agency to make life difficult for patrons and empires.
The US need not know what the Ukrainian regime is doing in eastern Ukraine, except as that regime tells them through formal information and back channels. And it is in the nature of informants, and that includes informants of US intelligence to spin to their own interests.
So unless those who are so certain of US actions and motives have the sort of evidence they are demanding that you provide, we don’t know any facts at all. We know US spin, Russian spin, Crimean spin (they aren’t mindless proxies either), Ukraine spin and most likely several different sources for each of those.
What is clear is that Russia has signalled that it will absolutely will not give up Sebastapol without a fight, that it likely is not interested in administering Ukraine again as a constituent of its empire, that it will defend ethnic Russian residents of Ukraine, who for now Russia sees as Ukraine citizens deserving of the rights of citizenship.
The partisans in Ukraine and the Donbass area of Ukraine will still try to play their big brother US off against big brother Russia so that they do not have to come to a just political compromise themselves.
The US doesn’t want to defeat ISIS. They want to defeat Assad. ISIS was created by US’s good allies in the region, Qatar and the House of Saud. You know, the guys who blew up the World Trade Center so that we could invade Afghanistan and Iraq.
I’m not sure what Erdogan did to tick off the US, but when planes who played a part in the failed coup flew out of the US airbase at Incirlik (where NATO stores atom bombs) and the units behind the coup were Turkish NATO units, you have to have Gladio come to mind.
And there is a difference between going along with American policy, going against it, and having a coup staged against you by military with “made in the USA” stamped all over them.
I keep thinking that the US wouldn’t be so stupid as to get into a hot war with Russia, but the US keeps doing things to tick off Russia. You may not think that the US is planning on war against Russia, but the Russian press thinks so.
Every day, another beat.
Did you hear that the State Department wants to hang more trade embargoes on Russia for the hacking of the DNC, something that no one has in any way proved. Sort of like shooting down an airliner and blaming Russia (by proxy) when the US refuses to offer the “proof” that Kerry claimed in the week after the MH 17.
Um, that was snark. And we can’t have that here.
Also too, Bob’s post looked (at least from the only cursory skim I gave it) already so far down the road to 9/11 Trutherism that I’m genuinely (even if only mildly) curious whether he has completed that journey.
Also three, note that I practiced what I have sometimes preached: even whatever snark my question may have contained was in direct response to Bob’s comment — a practice I have in fact condoned in the past — not trolling the whole board to snark about him/it. Jus’ sayin’.
Indeed, and I appreciate the point. I have tried to be careful in commenting accordingly.
Lemme guess. You know the whole truth about 9/11. The government would never lie you into a war, right?
The fifteen Saudis, many of whom had intelligence backgrounds, were because of bin Laden, and that’s why we’ve been in Afghanistan for the last fifteen years. Sounds logical. An alleged conspiracy of twenty or so people, or so we’re told, so let’s spend trillions, kill thousands and occupy a country for a decade and a half, a large part of that time AFTER the guy we invaded Afghanistan to catch was killed in another country, a country that’s supposed to be an ally.
You believe that? Then you will believe that Trump is Putin’s agent because of non-existent proof that Russia hacked the DNC. Makes all the sense in the world, at least all the sense that you need.
Now, because you’ve swallowed the hook, just don’t get upset when someone points out the hook in your mouth.
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
When you don’t have an answer it’s probably not good to announce it.
Fifteen years in Afghanistan. Any clue why we’re still there? Apparently not.
you weren’t satisfied by it.
Besides, I know where the sort of answer you’re demanding leads. Been there, done that. Similar past experience says it would be utterly pointless. Better things to do with my time.
Obama has said “we know” who shot it down, but never said who iirc.
“I am very suspicious whose interests are being protected when a commenter acts as an agent to protect readers from some putatively overdone information. Most readers can do their own parsing of comments. And most blogs don’t require an active ‘truth squad’ to protect its reputation.”
Good Gawd, Tarheel, did you actually read the short comment I wrote about Bob’s remarks? I wrote that he was playing rhetorical tricks. He framed his argument in a way that is irrefutable because it’s built on assumptions or claims that are themselves irrefutable or inflammatory. Bob apparently intuits the content of diplomatic cables between Washington and Kiev. He calls the Ukrainians involved in some “border” incident “terrorists”. He “understand[s] how power works”, unlike fools like yours truly. It’s not possible to craft a point-by-point reply to this sort of thing because there are no points, just claims. It’s a rhetorical game. Sort of like this:
By the way, Tarheel, do you still beat your spouse/partner? What about you, Bob in Portland?
Truth squad. Give me a break.
When the government can tell what I buy from Amazon and read all my emails, there is no secrecy. If you followed Ukraine in the foreign, non-NATO press, you know the extent of the CIA presence in Kiev. You would know about the seventy-year history of the US with the OUN/B and you know the US’s part in overthrowing a democratically elected government in Ukraine in favor of a group of corporatists, fascists and stone cold Nazis. And all that was okay because (you fill in the blanks).
While Ukraine is not the most reliable client state of the US, starting a war with Russia is part of the US’s grand plan, and has been since WWII. Little jabs here and there are part of the program. Maybe you haven’t noticed how we start wars. Maybe you haven’t noticed the NATO exercises along the Russian border. Maybe you haven’t heard all the scare-mongering against Russia in Eastern Europe.
As far as who owns what in what is the former Ukraine, I guess if you can justify and support the collection of Nazis who took over in a coup, then the people of Crimea who voted in all the elections to be part of Russia since the Kremlin carved out Ukraine after WWII can consider themselves Russian. The people of Donbass never voted for the coup government. And Poroshenko and what remains of the rump state will not allow for elections for independence anywhere, because there is doubt that they could get a majority in the rump state, much less in Donbass or Crimea in a fair election.
Ukraine has a lot of problems, being bankrupt being the biggest. Most people have no stomach to kill their neighbors and relatives in Donbass. The exceptions are fascists we’ve been cultivating since Hitler withdrew at the end of WWII. They, along with a few Salafists and mercenaries, are the people who want a war (a genocidal war) against Russia. You know all about the talk of the worldwide Russian Jewish conspiracy in Kiev, right?
Of course, without US (NATO) support they’ll lose badly. How do you think the Russians will react to a war in Ukraine?
What do you know about the team of Ukrainians who came across the border? What were they armed with? What did they do when they crossed the border? You can’t even read about it in the US press.
So let’s go with your point about the legality of the Crimean annexation. How is it different from bombing Serbia for a couple of months to get them to surrender Kosovo?
And of course, there’s the question of what is obvious. Beyond the enormous geopolitical importance of Crimea to Russia, beyond the fact that since the 90s elections have shown about 90% of Crimeans would rather be in Russia than Ukraine, there is the little problem that Crimea has been and is the territory to house its biggest navy base.
So whether or not Crimea’s annexation is legal in the eyes of the world, or most of the world, or most of the NY Times stories you read, the bottom line is that Russia and Russians have been in Crimea since before Ukraine was created after WWII. And Russia has nuclear weapons.
So maybe you think it’s okay for Ukrainians to go across the border and blow up a few things, because, hey, America recognizes Crimea as part of Ukraine. Take a moment and recognize reality.
My point was and is that Americans are being prepared for war with Russia. The propaganda, from talk radio during the day, from MSNBC, from the NY Times, from the internet are all pointing us to war. It’s an even stronger call to war than what Dubya and his gang did in 2002 because middle-of-the-road Dems like you and Boo are all onboard.
The fact that you don’t seem to notice it is only a commentary on your lack of powers of observation.
I don’t want to be accused of hijacking the thread again, so back to my point. There is no reason to worry about Trump except for the media badjacketing him with Putin. But it really says something about the general ignorance of Americans to worry about Russia spying on the DNC when there is no proof at all (you’ll have to get to the fifth or six paragraph of NYT’s stories) when we know that our government is spying on us all of the time. The NSA probably even have copies of your last colonoscopy.
H. Clinton wants war. She’s going to get it. And sometime in the next year or two you’ll be scratching your head and asking yourself “How’d that happen?”
But if you want to waste your next three months worrying about the bad man Trump, go right ahead.
Jesus Bob.
Jesus what? You pray for rain. You vote for politicians.
I see what you’re setting the ground for here. I’m fairly certain Ukraine is incapable of reclaiming Crimea through military force. But, this “terrorism” you’re referring to provides a pretext for further Russian military action against Ukraine which you will excuse as justified.
So, let’s see what happens in the next few months. I wonder what propaganda you’ll be selling on behalf of Russian interests if there is a military conflict. I’ll note up front, before the accusations, that I oppose all efforts by the US and American politicians to antagonize the Russians in their sphere.
Just the opposite. It lays down the groundwork for more war in Ukraine.
Bob sez: “The fact that you don’t seem to notice it is only a commentary on your lack of powers of observation.”
Say Bob, did you notice that I baked an apple pie last night? It was sitting on the kitchen counter, fer chrissakes. The fact that you didn’t seem to notice it is only a commentary on your lack of powers of observation. (ZING! I can play the game too, Bob.)
“You know all about the talk of the worldwide Russian Jewish conspiracy in Kiev, right?”
I’m descended from Jews from Ukraine and Poland, so yes, among the various antisemitic tropes I have encountered in my lifetime, Jewish conspiracies are somewhere near the top of the list.
In terms of what I read about current events, they include both British and French sources.
Apparently you did not understand that Bob in Portland is referencing this Ukrainian Party:
Svoboda (political party)
Svoboda is in the right-wing tradition of Ukrainian nationalism of this man:
Stepan Bandera
Bandera’s relationship to anti-semitism is described in Wikipedia thus:
The sly reference by Bob in Portland is to the fact that the muscle in the Euromaidan protests that came to violence against Ukrainian authorities was supplied by Svoboda and Right Sector activists, one of whom was quoted in the above paragraph. The implication is that the current Ukrainian regime has sufficient antisemitism mixed among its ant-Russian sentiments among the Ukrainian nationalist parties.
No, I did not get Bob’s convoluted allusion, but yes, I was already familiar with Stepan Bandera and Svoboda.
A big problem I have with claims about Ukrainian “Nazis” is that is strikes me as historically ignorant. The real, German Nazis invaded the Soviet Union with the intention of killing, deporting, or “Germanifying” the population, thereby making room for German colonists. Slavs were Untermenschen. And the Germans were in fact systematically starving the population in the occupied Soviet lands until the Red Army drove out the invader. There are no doubt Ukrainian fascists like Svoboda, nasty pieces of work, but they’re not Nazis.
true re: untermenschen but you’re conflating everything – the Nazi Bandera discussion is specifically about W Ukraine.
Bob also leaves out the inconvenient reality that Putin has been funding right-wing/fascist groups all across Europe. If he cared to look into it he’d also learn that there is some overlap with those promoting Russian and Trump propaganda on social media.
I don’t have a problem with distrust of US mainstream media. I happen to feel the same way. However, we should be a bit more skeptical of the news from external sources that have their own agenda and interests. Otherwise, you’re just setting yourself up to be a different kind of mark.
The references to Nazis serves the purpose of justifying any reaction by Russia towards Ukraine. I think that Svoboda has had a great deal of negative influence but there are pro-Russia fascist groups as well. The point being… these are all bad actors and we should not be taking anyone’s side.
The current situation is complex b/c the Ukrainian oligarchs are independent of govs, as it were, and pay for their own armies operating in E Ukraine. “Ukraine” is looking more and more like a failed state, and the more successfully we stay out of some proxy war there, the course Obama has pursued, the better.
And you didn’t happen to read about our seventy-year history of support for the Ukrainian fascists, both in Ukraine and here in the US.
Here is an interview in The Nation with Russ Bellant about this:
https:/www.thenation.com/article/seven-decades-nazi-collaboration-americas-dirty-little-ukraine-sec
ret
When Bellant wrote the book back in the age of Bush I, its title was Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party. The difference twenty-five years later is that it’s a bipartisan exercise, underwriting Nazis to do our dirty work. That’s why Clinton gets praise from Kissinger.
Have you read that article linked above? Will you? The best censor is the one that’s inside your head.
Have you read this yet?
https:/www.thenation.com/article/seven-decades-nazi-collaboration-americas-dirty-little-ukraine-sec
ret
Here’s a copy of Covert Action Information Bulletin from 1990.
https://ia800505.us.archive.org/1/items/CovertActionInformationBulletinNo35TheCIAInEasternEurope/Cov
ertActionInformationBulletinNo35-The_CIA_in_Eastern_Europe_text.pdf
I’d be curious if you know any of this. I’m guessing you don’t. Do you remember the story in 1988 about George H. W. Bush’s scandal of using ex-Nazis in the GOP’s Ethnic Heritage group?
Russ Bellant, who did the initial reporting back ink The Nation in 1988, has a story included in the CAIB issue I’ve linked about the NED. It was okay not to like the NED when the Republicans were doing it. Now it’s bipartisan. Bellant’s book was Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party. Now Democrats back then could distrust the US government and the use of Nazis because back then it was Republicans.
So here’s the question: Will you read about our use of Nazis and fascists to take over Eastern Europe to include the 2014 coup in Ukraine? Or will you call me names because I’m 25 years ahead of you on the subject?
Two links: Will you read them?
Or do you know all of this? Your internal censor is telling you not to look up this stuff. Do you have the courage to read something from 25 years ago?
The Jewish people have been living in the region for a millennium. Before the Lenin Revolution, there were regular pogroms as the Jews were readily scapegoated in case of poor harvests, poverty or political strife. See my diary a fortnight ago:
○ Kiev, Ukraine in 2016: OUN Heroes, ‘The Jews Had It Coming’
The CIA used Nazi’s in post-war Europe for espionage and anti-Soviet strategy … see Gladio reports and every single declassification of Cold War National Archives. Indeed, German and fascist war criminals could serve with impunity for the U.S. Government.
Crimea is critical for Russia’s defence of the Southern Front and will remain Russian forever no matter what sanctions the Western imperialists impose on the leaders and people. A quick comparison can be made with the attempt by Khrushchev to install missiles on Cuban soil in 1962. The US had B-52s on full alert across the globe for a nuclear attack on Soviet cities. I lived through the fear of the times. After the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, Kennedy authorizes Operation Mongoose to overthrow the Castro regime.
It seems to me that president Putin is following Kennedy’s playbook of the Cuban missile crisis!
○ German FM Steinmeier Blasts NATO ‘Saber-rattling’
Also see “The Devil’s Chessboard” for an eye-popping expose of this issue. It was integral to creating and maintaining the Cold War which apparently “educated” people in this country can’t do without.
“For a candidate like Trump who is behind in the polls and banking on unprecedented turnout in his core areas of support, the indifference to a ground game is confounding. “
Two reasons:
>>the indifference to a ground game is confounding.
I don’t understand your being “confounded”.
The indifference to a ground game is stupid and shortsighted and simply ignores everything any professional politician knows about winning elections. Therefore it is obviously what Trump will do, because he doesn’t respect professional politicians and never considers any way of doing things that isn’t his way. His behavior is as predictable as stuff falling down not up.
Donald J Trump tweet:
Billmon responds:
Never fear — bloggers will continue to spend the next 2+ months working hard to figure out the clown.
Just curious, what the heck is the origin of the phrase “eleven dimensional chess”? I know it has been applied pejoratively to Barack Obama….
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2009/2/10/8179/36722/media/-11-Dimensional-Chess-Goes-Viral
I seem to remember Captain Picard playing it on “Star Trek: Next Generation.”
Or maybe it was Captain Kirk, but I can’t imagine him playing a board game to its logical conclusion without getting frustrated, knocking all the game pieces off the board and punching his opponent in the tentacles.
It was three-dimensional chess, and Kirk routinely beat Spock at it…and for this and other reasons your characterization of Kirk is all wrong and is not appreciated. He had a cool, calculating intellect (and was, at least in the original show, played in a reasonably understated way…the scenery chewing came later, as it did for Pacino, Walken etc. — it was a sign of the times).
We never had much respect for Captain Kirk in the Kremlin. Must have been the “Trouble With Tribbles” episode.
Not necessarily pejoratively.
indeed, iirc it was/ is a compliment
I have been able to piece together some of the early uses of the phrase. I think some of us here at the BT may have a different view of it, because Booman very early on interpreted it in a positive way.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2009/9/25/122222/497
But Big Tent Democrat, who claims to have coined the phrase, meant it derisively:
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2009/9/25/14291/7585/otherpolitics/11-Dimensional-Chess-And-The-Public
-Option
The following day, Boston Boomer piles on:
https:/riverdaughter.wordpress.com/2009/09/26/the-obama-delusion-and-health-care-reform
(Although I, for one, was never under the illusion that Obama was, secretly or otherwise, fighting for the Public Option — and I have to wonder at the perspicacity of those who did think that.)
However, as early as February 9, 2009, Bob Herbert, in a column headed “The Chess Master”, wrote: “Mr. Obama is like a championship chess player, always several moves ahead of friend and foe alike. He’s smart, deft, elegant and subtle. While Lindsey Graham was behaving like a 6-year-old on the Senate floor and Pete Sessions was studying passages in his Taliban handbook, Mr. Obama and his aides were assessing what’s achievable in terms of stimulus legislation and how best to get there.”
So, although Herbert did not actually use the phrase “11-dimensional chess”, he used the general idea, and of course it was complimentary to the President.
Four days later, “Big Tent Democrat” comes out with this:
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2009/2/13/12749/3246/otherpolitics/From-Drill-Baby-Drill-To-It-s-The-E
conomy-Stupid-
Definitely pejorative.
It seems that in the early days, more often under the rubric “Obama is playing chess”, (often with a complimentary phrase something like “they [or the Republicans] are playing checkers”, this was a genuine debate. Google that phrase and you can find examples. Essentially, those who thought Obama was outsmarting the Republicans took it as complimentary, while those who thought the Republicans were outsmarting him took it as pejorative.
Although I am not an unqualified admirer of everything Obama has done, I do think he outsmarted the Republicans almost every time.
Field offices cost money. Specifically, field offices cost money that doesn’t get paid to Trump properties in any form.
Something that has also occured to me. Trump doesn’t like doing anything at all unless it inures to his personal financial gain.
Whether he truly believes he can sew up the election with his outrageousness – but not doing the traditional ground game stuff – is beyond my pay grade to analyze. However, I can see Trump feeling uninclined to make an “investment” that promise him some direct financial return.
I’m not really qualified to analyze Western PA, but my super rightwing family members are from Pittsburgh – who also have some roots in Altoona – claim that the GOPers there view Trump with growing disdain. Now, admittedly, they trend more towards the Country Club Repub types, but they know others who trend more working class.
Their claim, fwiw, is that Trump keeps bleating about “re-opening” the steel mills. Those mills have been closed, torn down and replaced with other stuff several decades ago. IOW, there ain’t any steel mills right now to “re-open.”
While it’s “nice,” I guess, to “promise” to bring back US manufacturing, including steel, it doesn’t make much sense to blather about “re-opening” mills that are long gone and replaced with something else.
So I’m not sure how popular Trump is in Erie and Altoona. But that’s just view from afar.
Not having any ground game will just make matters worse.
Braddock still has the Edgar Thompson Steel Works. But there’s no chance in hell that Braddock or any of the surrounding communities is going to go for Trump or any other Republican. Even today, the Mon Valley is still blue. You can still draw a straight line of blue precincts from Pittsburgh to Morgantown, WV.
North of Pittsburgh, it’s deep red all the way to Erie.
That’s where the “T” reference comes from, I’m thinking.
Haven’t spent much time in that part of Pensyltucky, so not well versed. I was thinking more of the obvious steel mills that used to line the rivers in Pgh but have been gone for years and years. My dad didn’t work in the mills but work in an industry associated/aligned w/steel. I think those mills he used to work with have been gone for decades. Dad retired well over 40 years ago, and some of those mills were history even then.
I do know about Braddock, but I don’t know much else. Just going on what my family said to me this summer. They loath Trump. But Pgh is close enough (just) to NYC (and they go to NYC regularly) that they know who Trump is. Not at all impressed. Disgusted in fact. But it’s “their” GOP, and this is what their party has been working at with the Southern Strategy for years.
I restrain myself from saying: “I told you so.” not worth it.
I don’t find it “confounding” at all — but then I’m a lifelong New Yorker and I’m familiar with Trump. This is who he is. This is how he does everything — this is what he thinks it means to do something. This is “winning.” The awful buildings (made from mob concrete by illegal Polish workers with no hard hats), the bankruptcies, the suits and ties, the steaks, vodka, water…all of it.
Trump isn’t some cynical P. T. Barnum type. That characterization has always been wrong. He’s a pampered, naïve fortunate son who has the temperament of a baby and never learned any better.
And he’s stupid. He didn’t “pivot” because he thinks it’s a basketball bracket (he already “beat thirty people and has one to go” — he’s got the momentum.) He doesn’t need a ground game because he’s already filling stadiums (he doesn’t understand the numbers involved). He doesn’t need advisors because, as Digby keeps emphasizing, he thinks all he has to do is “figure out” how to fix all of our “deals” between November and January. He’s the guy at the end of the bar who’s got everything figured out — he’s the mediocre dead-end employee on the cigarette break who mutters about how he would “fix everything” if he were the boss (which is usually a fantasy about firing people and telling people off, combined with another fantasy about luxury). He’s exactly that kind of stupid person.
So, his indifference to ground game — to actually understanding any mechanism so as to master it — is not surprising at all. What you see is what you get — a man who knows how to brag into a television camera and doesn’t know anyone else.
And you know something? I don’t even think this is about the press or stupid voters or indiscriminate republican voters, in the end. It’s about the basic American fantasy of wealth — about how wealth connotes superhuman ability and Randian superiority rather than exploitative sleaze and luck.
Excellent insight Jordan. I’m from New York too and I think you’re exactly right. Resonates as true though I’d not have thought of it myself because at the surface it looks like straight up narcissism or other mental illness of some sort.
Thank you very much. You’re too kind!
I’ve just been walking past those fucking buildings for too many decades to be fooled by the guy. You have to be seriously perceptually deficient to build Vegas-style crap like that in the middle of Manhattan and think it’s “luxurious.”
I mean, look at his hair. The story’s right there in plain sight.
Would seem true but then he’s snookered a lot of New Yorkers into believing it. Just because one lives in a sophisticated city doesn’t make one necessarily any less provincial. I have relatives who have tons of money but are in my opinion — how do I say this nicely? — less than tasteful in the way they spend it. Doesn’t make them bad people. There but for the grace of God and all.
There’s a certain mindset, crude and uneducated, that he appeals to. And you’re right that he’s not only narcissistic (as he certainly is that) but also very much of that tribe. He’s not just pandering. That crude way of seeing and relating to the world is baked deeply into his personality. I imagine his parents must have been the same way. They just knew to stay in Queens and not try to be accepted in Manhattan. Trump’s great goal as a young man was to go to the heart of the city and gain acceptance.
Is there any other kind in NYC? Might be the one contractor that Trump didn’t stiff.
The point is that, given its height, its location, and the purported “luxury” and “quality” involved, it really should be a steel-framed building.
At the time it was built, it was the largest reinforced-concrete building in the world. It’s a shoddy way to do anything that size; it’s bordering on irresponsible. But he was in with the Jersey concrete boys.
…Referring to the original 1980’s “Trump Tower” on Fifth Avenue, which may be the last building that he actually built rather than licensing his name to some other developer.
Trump Tower was part of a building spree in that specific three-square-block area at the time that included the IBM building, Phillip Johnson’s AT&T building (now the Sony building) and several others — part of that early-eighties Koch-era boomlet. And Trump Tower sticks out like a sore thumb; it’s so much worse than any of those other buildings. It’s extremely crummy architecture (in an area where it’s surrounded, as I’m saying, by some of the best architecture in the world). He doesn’t get this; he still thinks it’s just great — even though the passing decades have been especially unkind to that particular 1980s Gordon Gekko “bronzed curtainwall windows, brass, gold plating and pink marble” Hyatt-house style. (The real Hyatt hotel in Times Square from that era has been torn down.)
No building codes and building approval board in the city? Were the architects and engineers paid off? Not sure their E&O carriers would be pleased about that.
Not going to argue with you about the aesthetics of Trump’s. Tacky — glitzy always looks cheap.
The 1980s real estate development environment in New York City was famously corrupt…breathtakingly corrupt. There were easements and graft and dirty deals everywhere; books have been written about it. It was like Tammany Hall or the Boss Tweed era — one of those legendary New York eras of pure corruption.
I’ll give you just one (generic) example: zoning envelopes. Every parcel of land in Manhattan has, basically, an imaginary concentric box around it indicating where you can build and where you can’t — as the building gets taller it’s got to get narrower (by means of setbacks, insets and ziggurats) so as to stay within the zoning envelope, so that the street keeps getting the right amount of sunlight. These are involate rules.
Or they’re supposed to be, because in the late 1970s and early 1980s developers (who obviously want their buildings to rise straight up from the sidewalk because it increases the rentable square-footage) started making deals with the city: they were permitted to violate the zoning envelope (and block the sky) if they did something public-spirited like renovate the local subway station or provide a public plaza. Under Koch, developers started being required to make this quid-pro-quo: they were encouraged to break the zoning envelope so the city could get some dubious benefit like a little marble area to eat lunch, or work done on the street paving or something.
So, yes, there probably are all kinds of code violations up and down Trump Tower (and many other buildings of that era). Like I said, books have been written about it — and about Trump specifically as one of the most crooked developers around.
NYC is bigger; so, bad construction/development periods will be bigger there as well. The best periods seems to be the window from after it hits a trough and near the beginning of the next cycle, but the timing of that varies by location and the length of the trough. Sounds as if NYC was at the head of that late seventies/early eighties trough. Atlantic City is so hideous that pulling it down and starting all over could the best solution.
Look up the the concrete Trump used for the Trump Tower. It isn’t what other builders used, for good reason.
As I’m not a builder or building construction engineer (nor to the best of my knowledge are you), I’m not in a position to evaluate the construction quality of the NYC Trump Tower. My comment had to do with the concrete building trades in NYC and as late as through the 1980s it was fairly widely known that it was Mob controlled. And the number of concrete contractors that can deliver a pour of this size is very limited.
If it’s such a POS in NYC, seems odd that two decades later that the Chicago Trump Tower would also be a reinforced concrete building and it’s the largest concrete-reinforced building in North America. (James McHugh Construction is a highly rated mid-large general contractor that performs its own concrete work.)
My understanding is that it’s not the quality of the concrete that was the issue but rather the speed with which it must be used once mixed. So, Trump Tower is a fine building built with excellent materials, but no builder at that time would have given the mob that kind of leverage by using quick-drying concrete.
Been a while since I read about this, so I may have a detail wrong here, but Trump didn’t just do what every builder did. What he did stood out for it’s stupidity and could best be explained by going out of his way to please the mob.
I don’t understand why you’re being so contentious about this. It’s a very simple point and it’s not a matter of opinion.
What are you objecting to, exactly? Trump builds shoddy skyscrapers; he uses concrete when he should use steel; he uses bad concrete; he’s mobbed up and that’s the reason for both of these.
It fits in perfectly with every other attribute of Trump: everything is glitzy surface over cheap, deceptive, inadequate, sleazy content. (Even his own personal physical form: he’s a fat, balding, out-of-shape man of a certain age shellacked with spray-tan, dyed-and-sprayed combed-over-hair and bad suits.)
I mean, lots of things are subtle and/or controversial. Donald Trump isn’t. He’s like a caricature of overcompensated-for inadequacy.
Not contentious. With a plethora of concrete data to use against Trump, why are you going after him on subjective (“shoddy buildings,” should have been steel and not reinforced concrete) measures? He went for fast (and it wasn’t cheaper) and a dirty secret about concrete work in NYC is that it’s Mob connected. So what? Do you propose attacking all owners/developers of all NYC buildings that employed Mob connected contractors?
The right, center, and left fall into this trap all the time. It’s helpful if one wants to let the big fish get away. Focus on nothingburgers or minutia that is sketchy but leads no where is how public attention gets exhausted and corruption gets more prevalent and the rewards get larger.
There are some engineers that claim the steel framed WTC buildings couldn’t have collapsed from the known events on 9/11. And the “truthers” run with that because it conforms to what they want to be true; i.e. controlled demolition brought down the buildings. As they have no evidence for that hypothesis, they keep adding more fantastic hypotheses to bolster their case. Meanwhile, practically no real information about those events beyond what was known within the first few days has emerged because nobody with the clout and resources to do so is looking for any.
“Birthers” are similar idiots and jumping on that one (rather late) should have disqualified Trump from seeking any public office.
You don’t think you’re being contentious? OK
I’m disagreeing with you on the facts and also making a larger point about the trap of weak arguments for or against any policy of candidate based on minutia, either facts or subjective conclusions. IOW, beware the trap of minutia based arguments because they begin as narrow and get narrower over time until they finally lose with the general public. That’s not the definition of contentious.
Exactly and precisely.
And seeing him at a rally might remind people of the boss from hell who had all of his traits. Except for the true believers (in Eric Hoffer’s sense of that phrase).
And thus the suggested debate question for Trump: Where under Trump Tower is Jimmy Hoffa buried?
Wow. I don’t think I’ve read a more concise synopsis of the man.
I think I will have to share this far and wide.
Well said. You elaborate better than I could, but this is pretty much how I’ve always seen Trump. I used to live in the Philly area in ’80s when Trump was in his earlier days of making big splash. Back then almost everyone I knew thought he was spoiled rich dork who was “making it” because he had Daddy’s money. Plus he was viewed as tacky and vulgar.
Some people liked Trump’s style. He always had a following, but most people I knew didn’t care for him, his trashy style or how he mis-managed his businesses. I’ve known about how he ripped off and screwed over his workers for years and years. And it has always been well-known that he used a variety of undocumented workers in various aspects of his businesses to save pennies on the dollar.
Trump’s a fake through and through.
I tossed out my tv years ago and have never watched any reality tv show in full. I find them all pretty putrid. Never saw Trump’s show. Have friends who claimed they liked it. Whatever. Clearly he made money from his tv shows. He should have stuck with them. I think he made his money somewhat more honestly from them than from anything else this predatory parasite has done in his life.
What a frickin blight he is, and he’s got his moronic fans so riled up. It’s really disgusting.
Great commentary, though. Good insights. Thanks!!
reconsidered while cringing over “exploitative” (key questions: what does something that’s “exploitative” “exploitate” anyway? Even more to the point, what does “exploitate” even mean???).
An English adjectival form derived from the verb “to exploit” actually exists! Here it is: exploitive*.
(And no, I don’t care at all that you can find dictionaries/sites accepting “exploitative” [ouch, hurts just to type it]. Dictionaries long ago abdicated (if indeed they ever held to) standards in favor of merely documenting “usage”, including linguistic/etymological abominations like “exploitative” and its twin abomination “preventative” [same questions apply!] and the related abomination “orientate”. These days they’ll also tell you it’s fine to pair “data” and “media” with singular forms of verbs, just as if they were singular nouns!!! [I blame Microsoft and ESRI especially, and more generally, lax editing “standards” going back quite a while now for this sorry state of affairs. Wouldn’t be surprised at this juncture to see Word’s “autocorrect” function “correct” the correct pairing of either with a plural verb form!!! [end pedantic rant])
*
That one and “orientated” always irk me. It’s “oriented” and shaddaaaaappp.
After almost 15 years in the design biz I’ve become used to “creative” as a noun, but I still hate “leverage” as a verb.
Says the English major. I’ve tried really hard to not be a jerk about this stuff but I still fail frequently.
Yeah, sounds really jarring when I think of a sentence using it that way.
Think I’ve heard “leverage(d)” as a verb so much for so long that it no longer registers.
I, too, mostly bite my metaphorical tongue in situations like the above. Once in a while my inner pedant gets the best of me, though, and I just have to let out the rant. I’ve heard some people find that annoying! Can you imagine? (I’d presume they’re the ones who need the editing, wouldn’t you?) Also too, who has time? There’s so much that merits grammar/spelling/usage policing, it would be a Sisyphean task to take on.
Plus I realize (as I presume you do, too) that efforts like that above are totally hopeless and futile rearguard lost causes. Like you could reverse the flow of the Amazon by jumping in and planting your feet on the bed.
I’ve heard the story that some earlier pedant (Mencken perhaps?) waged a similarly futile rearguard action insisting that “news” is a plural noun, supposedly responding to a message inquiring “Any news?” with “Not a new.” (I try to remind myself of that when pairing of “data” or “media” with a singular verb form is on the verge of setting me off.)
It’s not all bad. Language does evolve, and is at least arguably enriched in the process. The early stages when simply ignorant misuse begins its journey to acceptance through becoming common usage can sure be annoying, though. And linguistic/etymological abominations like “exploitative”, “preventative”, and “orientate” will never come to seem normal or ok to me. Think I can pretty much guarantee that much.
Language gonna language.
Yeah, “creative” as a noun is standard at design/marketing/PR firms. Has been since the Mad Men days as I understand it. Refers to both the product and the people who make it. It’s still relatively controversial–lots of us aren’t thrilled with it because it sounds like a made-up term that trivializes/devalues what we do, but it’s definitely a pick-your-battles thing.
My attitude about it got much more relaxed when I actively chose to not be a reactionary jerk anymore. I’m still working on that for some things, but I think I’ve successfully pulled the stick out for all the silly superficial crap I used to get weird about (music/film taste, type/logo/design choices, language/grammar).
Nobody likes a pedant, and it’s refreshing to see the cultural tide turn against those famous last words “well actually.” Plus I have no real reason to be hypersensitive about anything. Most of my stupid comments on blogs like this happen when I inexplicably forget that.
I do not have the time to really research this, but…how big and how efficient was the “ground game” for the Brexit vote. Lots of media coverage…almost all anti-Brexit…but did the Brexit folks have to ” drag every last voter to the polls” in order to win?
I think that we are facing a Brexit moment in November. Amexit for want of a better word. (USexit just won’t do…)
The same overwhelmingly establishment-friendly media; the same basic issue…economics on the national level.
Remember who won? To the amazement of the establishment?
Yup.
I think the U.S. population is stupider than the U.K population, overall. Whether that means that they’ll sheeple on along behind the massive media pro-HRC effort or trundle on down to the polls to surprise everyone…including Trump, I think…is still an open question.
Isn’t it.
AG
P.S. And that’s without any of HRC’s orbiting pieces of baggage crashing her campaign. If that happens? All bets are off.
That was a straightforward vote tally — it’s not comparable or applicable, because there’s no electoral college or districts (or downticket considerations). It was a single issue with every citizen participating in a straw poll.
Also, their population and geography is much smaller. They had some promo busses (besides the TV ads); that evidently was enough.
“AmExIt: Don’t Leave Democracy Without It”
“I think the U.S. population is stupider than the U.K population, overall.”
Of course Arthur thinks that.
Unfortunately, in the parallel to Brexit AG employs in this comment, he’s saying that if the voters were as smart as the Brits they would vote for Trump.
AG, the Ron Paul supporter, wants Trump to win. Of course Arthur wants that.
I have spent a fair amount of time in Great Britain and Scotland…I stand by my opinion. Everything else in the post is predicated on that one observation.
You write:
i am quite plainly of two minds about how this thing is going to shake out.
Neither group of voters is exactly genius level overall, centerfielddj. The best opinions that I have read on how that Brexit vote came to be is that the so-called “smarter” voters In the U.K. voted against Brexit and were overwhelmed by the equally so-called “dumber” voters.
In a recent post I took issue with Booman referring to “poorly educated white guys” as the only people who will vote for Trump.
I wrote:
I really don’t know who’s smart and who’s dumb anymore. I have nearly illiterate friends who understand politics on a better, more accurate level than do many people in the media. Or…as you so plainly illustrate with your completely wrong-headed idea that I am somehow a Trump sympathizer…as do many people on this site as well.
Not being an HRC supporter only translates to being a Trump supporter in some two-dimensional, stick figure world. I support neither and I cannot even begin to predict which one would be worse for the country and the world in general.
Go kneejerk off someone else. Or yourself, of course. Whatever gets you further off, apparently.
Me? I’ll have none of it.
Thanks anyways…
AG
Tell us more.
I never thought Trump really wanted to be President, and now he is talking like it. This is also a screw-you to the RNC types who are pushing downticket races at his expense. Downdicket races are not going to be able to mount their own GOTV operations. Popcorn is tasty.
Reinforcing this, Doug Kass, someone Bloomberg thinks worth listening to, has predicted Trump will withdraw from the race.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2016-08-11/athletes-have-always-cheated-and-they-may-never-stop
Something else that’s been nagging at me the last 24 hours: Trump’s stoic response about what if he loses: It is what it is; he put the message out there — and he’ll “go back to his great lifestyle and take a long vacation.”
It’s not the stoicism or the complex psychology about reconciling yourself to not “winning” — a person who loses as often as he does (bankruptcy, failed businesses, bad investments etc.) must be very good at rationalizing it and moving on, despite all his braggadocio.
It’s the idea that it’s all right, if he loses, because he’ll go back to his lifestyle — He’ll be fine. And I’m like, wait — I thought our nation was in the throes of some kind of bleak existential crisis? That Obama was the worst president in history? That only Trump could save us?
What about all that? It doesn’t matter? We’re just doomed, which means he’s doomed (since these dark hours of America presumably affect even the golf courses)?
The solipsism and self-absorbtion is truly promethian — like, winning the presidency (and changing the fucking fate of the earth) is the same as winning an Oscar; it’s all about him winning, not about us.
Even Hitler believed that his failure was tied up with the ascendency of “Bolshevism” — he believed there was much more at stake than his own fate. (And yes, Hitler; I’m going to continue making the comparison because it’s so apt: Hitler, Hitler, Hitler; Trump is Hitler.) Trump is answering questions about his potential defeat as if the fate of the nation isn’t even part of the question; as if he’s discussing losing the Olympics. (As if he could ever muster the discipline and rigor to participate in anything as demanding as the Olympics even though it doesn’t involve anyone else.)
Actually, toward the end, Hitler felt that the German people were losing because they failed HIM personally (look towards the bottom of the page).
Right, I thought of that and was considering mentioning it. But the Trump story diverges most radically from the Hitler story at the moment of national election (“knock on wood” etc.) because actually getting elected is (or would be) a moment of terrifying hubris — as Josh Marshall pointed out after the primaries, Trump is one of those dark, scary people who gets less cautious and more expansive in his hubris as he gets closer to the levers of power; he’s not remotely humbled.
If Hitler had lost that election (I’m saying) he wouldn’t have shrugged and gone back to painting or writing (even his writing was all about, God damn it, we’ve got to save this fucking country…not about “the art of the deal” or whatever blinkered bullshit Trump “writes” about). (And Hitler wrote his books.) He was deeply committed to the Fatherland. He would never say this stuff about how it’s okay because he’ll be fine, personally. Say what you want about Hitler (and there’s obviously a lot to say; it’s Hitler) but he was genuinely selflessly committed to his country.
“at least he had an ethos, Dude.”
Just joshin. Couldn’t resist.
“Well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.”
“Shut the fuck up Donny.”
Her whole campaign strategy could just be “STFU Donnie” at this point.
“His country” was actually Austria, which he conveniently annexed.
I don’t think there’s a way to respond seriously to statements about He Who Must Not Be Named’s devotion to his fatherland. Satire is the only appropriate approach; I’ll leave that to someone else.
selflessly committed to his country? are you nuts?
I’d say Hitler’s manifestation of self-aggrandizement was connected with his concept of Fatherland, not so for Trump, for whom it’s about perception of personal wealth. Hitler’s personal sadistic cruelty imo is downplayed because he was so much about mass murder discussed in impersonal terms
Another good point. Well said. Yeah, I’ve thought about that, as well. Trump’s painted this incredibly bleak horrible picture of the USA in tattered, smoking ruins with this horrid dictator Obama at the top who’s done nothing but make things worse and worse. And only Trump can “fix” this smoking ruin.
But if he loses? Eh? Just kidding. I’m off to the Bahamas. See ya see ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya.
Yeah. What a hero. Not.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but as far as I know, Trump’s many losses have not actually done him any harm. In effect, he wins by extricating himself unscathed from a failing situation caused, usually if not always, by his own ineptitude. And that fits with the way his campaign is developing, or rather, disintegrating. He loses, but he wins, with (exactly as you say) “I’m off to the Bahamas. See ya see ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya.”
… leaving the GOP and his erstwhile supporters with a smouldering ruin.
And perhaps Donald will also get 37% of the vote…
It appears that we really DO have “The Producers” running wild.
The last figures I can find are that Trump has raised order of magnitude $130 mil to his campaign and has something north of $70mil on hand. This is $$ that does not go thru any PAC or Repub hands at all.
I’ve seen the number 6M spent on Trump properties. Obviously, not all of that is profit but every drop helps.
Sooooooo….what happens to the rest?
PS: Not relevant in any possible universe, but I enjoyed the comparisions: what the campaigns could buy
The Clinton campaign has touted a 50-state strategy and unity campaigns with state parties in this election.
In North Carolina, that also means a 100-county (every county) campaign as well with active organizing with county-level Democrats — even in very red counties.
What is going on in Altoona and Erie as far as the Clinton campaign goes? They might swoon over Trump but will they get themselves to the polls to vote for him with the national polling in the toilet?
Or will they too wake up with the visceral feeling that Donald Trump is exactly like their own boss from hell? And the Trumpistas that surround him are like every sycophant they have ever met on the job?
There’s no there there. There’s nothing to “understand.” Everything he says is to 1) build up his own ego through hyping himself or tearing down others, and/or 2) to get attention by saying “controversial” things (and so build up his own ego). Everything.
So yes, you can take this or that statement and occasionally find some plausibly rational process behind it, but that’s misleading. There is no greater substance there. There is no greater “thought process” there. At best you could perhaps speak about the various permutations of deeply unconscious insecurity and consequent defense mechanisms.
Oops. You could also add 3) “How can I rip somebody off here?”
3-4 (after getting down 0-1 in regulation; getting equalizer; ending regulation time tied 1-1; staying scoreless through the two 15-min. extra time periods).
Thus eliminated.
Sweden’s keeper saved very first U.S. pk, putting us in shootout hole from the get-go.
But then Solo made a pk save (tipped over crossbar) to get it back even.
Then poor Christen Press did the one thing you can never, ever do in a shootout: failed to put her pk on goal (you GOTTA make the keeper make the save!). IIRC, same problem did them in in, I think, the 2011 World Cup final vs. Japan (TWO pks not on goal if I remember right).
Remaining pks were in, and that’s all she wrote.
Oh, well. World Cup 2019 here we come.
(At least I’ll save some $ on beers out watching in bars, since I can’t get the broadcast at home.)
For what it’s worth, our incumbent republican state representative (Tom Quigley) went door-to-door in our MontCo PA neighborhood 2 weeks ago looking for support. I’m a rare Democrat in a solidly republican district and it’s the first time in my 6 years living in the 146th that the state rep has ever taken this approach to garnering votes…especially from registered Dems.
It’s anecdotal, but that tells me the Republicans are terrified of how badly Trump is going to get crushed in the Philly burbs and how much that is going to hurt down ballot.