There are so many allegations of sexual misconduct coming at Trump right now that’s easy to lose track of them all and have some fall between the cracks.
I’m hearing that things are so bad in Trump world that he just cancelled on Sean Hannity.
Liberals I’ve talked to are so disgusted with the latest revelations (which include leering at 10 year olds, walking in on teenage girls while they’re changing, and sexual assault against reporters and unsuspecting citizens) that they’re not really enjoying this. A lot of women are having difficulty because these stories dredge up unpleasant memories and traumas they have experienced. And absolutely no one wants their young kids hearing about this or their older kids thinking that this is what politics is all about.
It may be nice to know that Donald Trump will never be our president, but that doesn’t mean that there is some kind of celebratory mood. Yet, I do think that people will want to make Trump pay for putting the country through this, and the only way to strike back at him is to vote against him. I wouldn’t expect disgust in this instance to translate to non participation from Trump’s opponents. People are going to pay for babysitters and take the day off from work just to vote against this guy.
Ok, I live in MA. I don’t have access to out and out Trumpers because they are keeping their heads down and I don’t want to cause waves on my street.
Is ANY of this making a dent in the conversation? Are there any “smoke=fire” arguments being made? Are the true believers beginning to getting Trump Fatigue?
Cognitive Dissonance and Projection, the twin pillars of the modern US Conservative movement, provide the support needed to continue the delusions of US conservatives.
US conservatives are unable to correctly observe objective reality. And if they get too close to actually seeing it, they double down on the delusions.
Ultimately, it’s much easier to continue believing bullshit than it is to admit to yourself and everyone you know that you’ve been played like a fucking chump for your entire political life.
So, no. There is no Trump fatigue. Conservatism isn’t failing, it is currently being failed, by Ryan, and Erik Eriksonerikson, and anyone else who isn’t a Trump believer.
Trump simply used lockerroom language, never mind that he used it in context of action that would be sexual assault if done by anyone else who wasn’t rich/famous/celebrity. And, like, if what Trump said is so bad, how come people bought 50 Shades of Gray books, and stuff.
Besides, Hillary lies constantly, and if she becomes President, this country is done. She and Bill murdered Vince Foster, and deleted over 33,000,000 emails relating to Benghazi, Sidney Blumenthal’s conspiracy to support ISIS, and the destruction of US sovereignty through open borders to bring in illegal immigrants to take away jobs and commit voter fraud.
Ad nauseam. Until they all die of alcohol and cocaine abuse.
Absolutely. What’s funny is the difference between the Republicans and Republican leaners I know who won’t vote for him versus some of the folks on our side of the aisle. For the Republicans, it’s simple: he’s unqualified and crazy. They know life will go on under Clinton and they won’t be happy, but Trump is way too unhinged.
Yet, a few of my more left wing friends are all caught up in Clinton conspiracies, the “phony” Russian hacking, and the litany of wrongs the Clintons are supposedly responsible for. I’m amazed that a friend is totally committed to the idea that Trump would be better in the “long run” for progressives. It’s so disconnected from reality, it’s the joining of Brietbart and Green. Telling him about Attorney General Rudy Giuliani, the open racism Trump’s unleashed, just gets a big “yah but.”
Thankfully, I think more people, as the election gets closer, are seeing Trump and his acolytes as forces need to be shut down electorally.
“Yet, a few of my more left wing friends are all caught up in Clinton conspiracies, the ‘phony’ Russian hacking, and the litany of wrongs the Clintons are supposedly responsible for. I’m amazed that a friend is totally committed to the idea that Trump would be better in the “long run” for progressives. It’s so disconnected from reality, it’s the joining of Brietbart and Green. Telling him about Attorney General Rudy Giuliani, the open racism Trump’s unleashed, just gets a big ‘yah but’.”
Some of that attitude here as well, obviously. Heighten the contradictions! The workers, peasants and soldiers will soon form a soviet and depose the fat cats.
Your princes, truly.
Absolutely, because that worked out so great for Ernst Thälmann: “first Hitler, then us” he said. Until Hitler sent him to Buchenwald that is.
I’m curious what you make of this:
http://twitter.com/wgbhnews/status/786322382839508992
then. That headline is accurate. The Democrats in MA have a super-majority, yet they do stupid stuff. The people in MA I know knew this would happen. Why couldn’t they? I could say the same for Ferret-head’s right-hand man, Chris Christie.
That sounds stupid, but I don’t know a lot about MA politics. Seems like they should revisit the law.
They should but then it was stupid of them to pass it in the first place. The Democrats have a super-majority, IIRC, in both houses of the Massachusetts legislature. So they can override any Baker veto.
I think Christie’s more of a big toe right now.
My FIL (a Republican) just came out and admitted he voted for Hillary (by mail).
He voted for Romney in 2012, Obama in 2008 (against Palin).
As Dumbledore said, “It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.” Please thank your FIL on our behalf.
In what state, and did he happen to tell you how he voted on down ballot races? It would be interesting to know if he felt like he needed to “punish” his party down ballot.
Im not enjoying it because the damage to congressional GOP and state parties is limited. Marquette showed Feingold only up 48-46 ffs.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/senate-update-clinton-is-surging-but-down-ballot-democrats-are-l
osing-ground/
The sense that I — and others too — are getting from knocking on doors on the south side of Milwaukee is that too many people have heard too little from Feingold. It’s literally “Feingold who??”. It’s troubling because any Democrat who wants to win in Wisconsin has to pull a ton of votes out of the south side or get blown away in the suburban counties adjacent.
Not sure what’s going on here, it looks like Feingold got complacent after being up in the polls for months.
How can you live in WI and not know the guy?!
Then again, I almost never predict because I cannot get into the mindset of an average voter.
Live far from Wisconsin, and I know what an idiot Johnson is. I hope Feingold knocks on doors himself, if need be.
Well, keep in mind he’s essentially been out on the road for the last six years. Taught for a while at Stanford, worked for Obama for a while in Africa. Six years is a long time.
I’ve knocked on a lot of doors in Latino neighborhoods on the near south side and there, people do understand what Trump represents and don’t like it. They were not sold on Clinton before the first debate because of her class politics but since then, support for her seems to have increased. But Feingold doesn’t have a strong position on the pro-vs-anti Trump axis.
Farther south it’s all middle-income white working class folks that used to be solid Democrats back in the day. Nowadays people are much more skeptical of Democrats in general though. In those neighborhoods Feingold would have to be out selling himself and his program to gain support; taking it for granted is risky.
Also — it was the right-wing radio stations from the Milwaukee suburbs up to Green Bay that got out the vote for Johnson last time; they are likely doing the same this time as well. In other words what the polls show is not Feingold losing support but Johnson gaining. That said, Feingold needs to come up with a plan or Johnson is going to become a real threat.
It may be that as Trump really heads off the ledge that it is easier for people to try and hold onto the belief that he is NOT a Republican, that he’s an outlier and they can keep pulling the R lever and not vote for Trump. And that may make it a little easier on the down-ballot runners.
But Trump’s real impact will be turnout, for and against him. His unconventionality makes turnout models from past years almost useless.
-He’s gonna turn out the racists.
-He’s gonna turn out women and minorities.
-He’s gonna depress overall R turnout up and down ballot, I suspect. How could he not?
Since accurate polling is all based on who turns out, it’s got to be a royal scramble.
Balls.
The wingnut turnout will not be massively more than it has been for the last 4 elections. If they won’t turnout to vote against the N* they won’t turn out to vote against the white B*.
And no, NOONE is voting FOR Trump. He’s Eddie Haskell after 20 years of selling coke and ruined condos.
Sorry, I’ve got to stop commenting while drinking.
Totally misread the post.
As for drunken over-posting this election cycle, I’m right there with you pal.
but your Eddie Haskell comment is stellar
As a non-Minnesotan, I get all of Feingold’s emails and I too have been worried about his race and others. For an interesting take, how about this comment from my favorite commenter at No More Mister Nice Blog
http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2016/10/im-not-sure-republicans-could-have.html
Holy cow! Michelle Obama is speaking right now in New Hampshire, passionate and powerful and she has eviscerated Trump without ever abandoning her dignity and class.
It’s on CNN, the quality is crap, but find it! Find video of it! Watch or at least read it! But you need to hear the anguish, the power, the resolve in her voice.
Here are at least a portion of her remarks.
link
Notice her complete failure to address the economic insecurity of white working-class men?
This is why the Democratic party is doomed.
That’s Hillary’s job. Michelle is there to express the feelings of almost all women, regardless of party affiliation or colour, at being manhandled or demeaned by the likes of Trump, something most women have experienced at one time or another. She is actually being almost non-party political at that point – as is appropriate for a First Lady – and many Independent and Republican women will no doubt agree with her without necessarily going on all the way to agree with her endorsement of Hillary.
Michelle is opening the door for republican and Independent women to vote for Hillary, but it is Hillary who has to close the deal. Hillary also has to make her case for disenfranchised feeling white working class men to vote for her, but that is an altogether more difficult sell, given her identification with the party establishment all these years, and she doesn’t have to win many of them over to win the election.
Frank, you forgot to notice who you’re responding to.
as we used to say in the days of usenet: YHBT. YHL. HAND.
Whatever the intention to troll, I think it is worth pointing out how well Michelle is articulating a point of view that almost all women can identify with, and which therefore doesn’t get immediately dismissed as partisan advocacy. As First Lady, Michelle is uniquely well placed to play that role, and she has the eloquence to pull it off really well. ATM she is making the case against Trump better than anyone else, and neither Trump nor the Republican establishment have a clue how to respond without digging an even bigger hole for themselves.
“make Trump pay for putting the country through this…”
Well, how about making the REPUB party pay for putting the country through this? The Repub party, its base voters, they are the ones who thought Der Trumper was the man of the hour. They are the ones who apparently couldn’t do much oppo research into the guy. Why not make THEM (as well as Trump) pay by removing them from power?
“Independents” supposedly decry gridlock and partisanship, yet keep voting for divided government. What’s the definition of insanity again? They don’t seem to want what the “conservative” Repubs are selling, and apparently not what the Dems have on offer, either (to the extent they know what that might be, I have a hard time seeing any easily explainable Dem policy being aired in the ads or blatted out by the corporate media. But I digress..)
Yes, our prez elections are on a downward spiral, and we are a disgrace, a world laughingstock—and given the state of the world, that’s saying something. Now we’ll be litigating the technology of airline armrests of the 80s and why an 18 year old beauty pageant kid didn’t commence a federal lawsuit after pageant “owner” Trumper forced a nauseating kiss on her.
Which is fine, Der Trumper knowingly brought it on himself with his insane denial of what he (and everyone else with eyes to see) knows that he most surely did. And how curious that “decades old!!” groping allegations are irrelevant but Bill’s Ladies from the 80s are of decisive importance, but one cannot plumb the wonderful depths of the “conservative” mind…
Anyway thanks, “conservatives”! USA! USA! In a sane and serious country, you would indeed be made to pay for engineering this circus and for placing this braindead smeared dog turd in nomination…
How cool is that?
It’s ridiculous. You can’t have a Nobel Prize for literature where there is no literature.
Poetry is a literary form, I thought?
I’m going through this exact exchange on another site.
Yes, song lyrics can obviously be regarded as poetry. But that’s not the point: it’s a literature award awarded to those who write novels and poems which are overtly literary projects. If they’re going to include lyricists then they’re changing the entire implicit framework of the award. To say “Oh, by the way we also include song lyrics” is to change the entire premise (they even had to put in a disclaimer explanation as in Bush v. Gore). I mean if we’re including lyrics why not Pete Seeger or John Lennon or David Bowie or Leonard Cohen or Elvis Costello or Lou Reed, all of whom are vastly more accomplished from a strict “here are the good words” standpoint than Dylan?
When I react as I do (saying it’s ridiculous) people seem to think that I’m confused; that the premise needs to be explained to me. I do understand; I’m just saying that it’s a stupid move (and I don’t care if it’s the Nobel committee; they’re as capable of being stupid as anyone else on Earth).
Hey, I’m no expert! This is not my area.
I have read however that lyric poetry is one of the earliest poetic forms? One of his songs, Desolations Row, is apparently in the 2006 Oxford Book of American Poetry. There’s plenty of scholarly work out there on his lyrics, treated as poetry. Probably more so than the other songwriters you mentioned. So to untutored lil’ ol’ me this prize seem’s fine.
It’s their award, so its framework is whatever they decide it is.
And of your suggested alternatives, only Lennon is even within shouting distance of Dylan’s cultural footprint and influence and he is dead, hence ineligible.
Dunwoody
Indeed.
For whatever it is worth, Nobels will:
Alfred Nobels testamente
Prize for those who during the last year have done humanity most use … one part to whom has within literature produced the most excellent in idealistic orientation;… for litterature [decided] by the Academy in Stockholm
The “during the last year” part goes for all prices, it is also ignored for all prices, except possibly peace. With “idealistic orientation” he probably meant as infusing the reader with more empathy and higher morals, also ignored. The only part that really matters is that the Academy decides.
Oh, and the Nobel Foundation was only allowed to invest in safe interest bearing papers, which is boring and so profitable. That was a bit harder to ignore but in return for welcoming in the Swedish Central Banks prize and treating it as a Nobel prize the Foundation got to ignore that rule.
So the only thing that matters from the will is who decides the prize. And that institution decides the rest.
But they’re changing it midstream in a way that interrupts its cultural meaning. By suddenly making songwriters eligible they’re elevating Dylan over all songwriters. They never said Hemingway or Steinbeck of Elie Weisel were better than any other novelist ever, because they’d been giving that same award for decades.
They are breaking precedent to be sure, but there is nothing to stop them giving the award to Leonard Cohen next year. And if you have to chose one artist to break a precedent for, it has to be Dylan, for the quality, range and sheer volume of his opus. And he does rely primarily on words for his impact. Dylan’s music is less inventive, and his voice was never the best – although strangely, few artists produce better versions than he does. I think you are being more traditionalist than even the Nobel committee, who have tended to be very orthodox in their evaluations of literary merit.
It “had to be Dylan” because when you look at rock/pop/folk from the outside you see him first. Just like you see Einstein or Hawking first if you look at science, or you see Picasso first if you look at modern art, or Brando first if you look at movie acting. It’s pure convention; pure iconography — in other words, it’s exactly the kind of shoring up of conventional opinion that the Nobel Prize is supposed to work against.
Please don’t patronise me. I lived through the rock era. You are welcome to regard some other artist as superior, and musically, some were. But if you judge him by the quality and sheer volume of his lyrics and the influence he had over several decades, no one else comes close. Sorry.
I’m not patronizing you. I’m saying that those are two different questions. Yes, he was influential; that’s incontrovertible — but does it mean he’s good? Not necessarily.
If you want to argue Dylan’s worth on the merits, go ahead. If you want to argue it on his peer accolades (Bowie, Lennon, Costello etc. all swearing he’s the best; he’s the reason they did what they did) it’s a different argument; I confess it baffles me because (as I said) I think all three of those artists I mentioned are vastly better than Dylan.
But if you want to argue that the Nobel has to go to Dylan because he’s the most influential…and therefore the best; the most deserving…I’m not sure. I can’t really see it. And yes, you’re not an “eternal viewer” (apologies for the inadvertent insult) but the fact that this external viewpoint exists — that any dictionary or encyclopedia of the 1960s is going to show a picture of Dylan — does tend to distort the aesthetic evaluation.
I mean there are people who can’t stand Picasso, or Sinatra, or Hemingway. You can’t talk them out of it by saying, “Come on; you must admit that [whichever of the three] is so historically significant.” There are all kinds of circumstantial reasons for that kind of canonization.
taste. You don’t “get” him, like his music, or appreciate his genius. Others are “vastly better”. Your opinion. You’re entitled to it (as I’m entitled to mine that you couldn’t possibly be more clueless about this).
It’s odd that you don’t seem to see what looks clear to me, which is how that antipathy is coloring your “assessment” on the merits of the Nobel Committee’s decision. Like it was the Committee’s responsibility to consult with you first, ascertain your criteria, and apply them.
Gotta say I wouldn’t have expected from past experience to find the narrow-mindedness you’ve put on display here about this topic.
or we might say rather they’re expanding the cultural meaning.
once they did choose to make songwriters eligible, I think Dylan very clearly rises to the top of the list.
I don’t think we’re going to start seeing rock’n’rollers heading to Stockholm every year instead of authors and poets. IMO very few can even attempt to meet the standard of lyrics as literature, not just good pop songs.
the committee has a less narrow view of literature than you do
>>all of whom are vastly more accomplished from a strict “here are the good words” standpoint than Dylan?
I don’t think you’ll find very many fans or music critics who’d agree with you here. Dylan’s best work is miles beyond the people you name, IMO. David Bowie was brilliant and influential, but as a performer much more than a songwriter.
What you’re saying is factually untrue — Bowie is miles from being “best remembered as a performer.” He was a brilliant performer, and singer, and musician (in fact he did all those things far better than Dylan, who doesn’t have much of a voice and isn’t particularly interested in musical innovation or complexity) — but his songwriting was outstanding. Off the top of my head, writing “Jean Genie” about Jean Genet was not just clever and erudite but tied early-20th-century art concepts to mid-century nihilism in a very subtle and profound way. Bowie used elements from Orwell and William Burroughs and Byron; he did recitations; and, throughout, he never lost his pop sense of the simplicity of rock’n’roll. He was, unlike Dylan, a smart man; a true sophisticate; an artist in the truest sense.
well, I think we just disagree on the songwriting aspect.
this has been a lot of discussion of music without any music, here’s one of my favorite Bowie songs
Whatever the relative merits of Dylan or other songwriters, Dylan has had more influence than probably the last 10 Nobel literature prise winners put together. Can you (or most people) even name most of them without looking them up?
But has he had more influence than JK Rowlng?
Nope!
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What influence has JK Rowling had – besides entertaining a lot of people. Has she changed peoples lives? I must have missed that!
This is pretty myopic.
Just Harry Potter;
450 million books sold (and climbing)
71 languages
8 movies (and climbing)
7.7 billion box office (and climbing)
Do you realize what 450 million books sold in 71 languages means?
It means a world wide commonality, in their native tongue. Translate Harry Potter into Russian and you get the same story as in English, a story of loyalty, friendship, and LOVE. Translate Bob Dylan into Russian you get….gibberish.
That’s what separates good books from lyrics, a good book (call it literature if you want, but I don’t because the word has become limiting) has a universal appeal. It’s message translates.
.
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Yes and people watch thousands of hours of TV every year. So? Does it change them or give them new insights into the life around them? I have nothing against entertainment – and Harry Potter is certainly that – b ut it doesn’t exactly change the world. Bob Dylan is one of the few redeeming feature of the USA since Vietnam.
Here I thought music was entertainment.
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You don’t really “get” Dylan so, do you?
Actually, I listened to him Thursday and Friday, in homage. I have almost all of his 60’s and 70’s albums, in original vinyl. Is that ‘getting’ him? I have no idea. For gods sake, it’s just a song. Meryl Haggard has just as many great songs, and is just as influential, for far longer.
As far as ‘deserving’, he as ‘deserving’ as any other musician.
But that was not my point. What I was trying to point out is the arbitrary nature of the award in literature, and it’s overall uselessness.
The committee would never, ever give the award to a ‘popular’ author like JK, not matter the enfluence (which is indisputable IMO). They will never ever give the award to an Amercan author, and Drum is on point about that when he says this is an insult. It is.
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Well I don’t know about the USA, but outside the USA Dylan is as influential as any other American, if not more so, and most people haven’t heard of Meryl Haggard. I would go as far as to say that Dylan (and Springsteen) is one of the few good things about America since Vietnam, as far as most of the rest of the world is concerned. The USA has fallen a long way since its mostly righteous intervention in WW2, but Dylan is a major redeeming feature, and maybe the Nobel committee sought to recognise that…
And I don’t think they were trying to insult anyone else.
BTW Dylan and George Bernard Shaw are now the only two people ever to have won both a Nobel and and Oscar. Indeed a playwright and a musician have much in common: Their words require a cast and a lot of props to be revealed in their full glory.
Merle Haggard would fare only marginally better in such a comparison. (Confusing Merle with Meryl Streep is perfectly understandable and forgiveable . . . who among us doesn’t do so multiple times a day?)
All imo, obviously, just in case that needs disclaiming.
I don’t think Haggard inspires this level of obsession.
Nothing against Merle, but there’s a big difference here.
We have people who devote their entire careers to just studying and teaching Shakespeare. We have countless others who do the same with the New and Old Testaments, and also with the Ancient Greek greats, mainly Homer and Plato.
This is because they built a language out of a pre-existing language. I earlier used to examples of Goethe and Nietzsche for German, because they served that role for that language.
This becomes important if the resulting myths become universally known, as with the Old Testament, for example. But it’s almost important if the mechanics of it, rather than just the stories, become the platform for each new generation of artistic people.
So, for Dylan, he’s doing it all, and he’s doing it both lyrically and musically, but also for our purposes, he’s creating a folklore.
Importantly, for these kid of archetypal geniuses, they create an architecture and that artictecturhe can begin to look rudimentary after a while. So Robert Johnson might sound primitive compared to Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, and they might sound simplistic compared to Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix. Yet, no matter how far the innovators take the initial art, no one can ever really replicate what the initial artists created.
Try improving on the Book of Job, for example. What you get is The Brothers Karamazov, not another, better Hebrew holy book.
We can go back and nitpick Plato to death and for good reason, but no one is going to write better Dialogues.
Dylan belongs in this Pantheon.
Merle Haggard is fantastic. But he doesn’t.
I’m not really taking as much time thinking on this as I should, but,
My understanding of what you are partially saying is,
‘I can see so far because I am standing on the shoulders of giants’.
It seems if you took what you are saying to its conclusion, then music would always be considered over writing for this prize, simply because there are more living musicians closer to the ‘source’. The recipient needs to be living. Yet Very very few writers, and probably zero ‘popular’ writers, and zero poets, are not standing on the shoulders of giants.
Certainly Dylan is a ‘giant’. But then what of the Beatles? They arguably took their genre just as far as Dylan. And world wide influence? No contest…Beatles win.
And that is my point, which I’m not sure you have disputed, that once ‘literature’ goes Dylan, there is no turning back.
We seem to disagree on the requirements (standards) to win this prize. You seem to imply (correct if I’m wrong) that it’s important that the person have influenced (changed, advanced, revolutionized) their genre. Certainly that has not always been the case in the past for this prize, which seemed to put emphasis on being a great example of the written word, and not ‘revolutionary’ in the sense of ‘omg, now a whole generation of writers will write like this’.
Kind of a disjointed comment, but those are my disjointed thoughts.
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Sorry, an addition,
The written word as ‘art’, rather than an example of revolutionary change. So if that has been true, then Haggard still stands out…as ‘art’, rather than ‘revolutionary’.
If the criteria is now different, and being a change agent is the new standard….how does a living author ever win over a musician?
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I’m not really arguing for or against Dylan getting this prize per se.
It seems to bother you. I wouldn’t wipe my ass with a Nobel Prize, so I could not care less.
All I care about is Dylan as a man of letters.
On that scale, he is one of the true giants.
Does that make him worthy of this years’s literature prize?
In my mind, it makes him worthy of a lot more than that.
I could not be a bigger booster of David Bowie.
But this comparison is not helpful at all.
Dylan is archetypal. He’s Homer, not Sophocles. He’s Shakespeare, not Byron.
He’s the foundation for what comes after.
As for the criticism that he doesn’t translate into Russian, you can’t translate iambic pentameter into a foreign language and retain its meaning either. It’s irrelevant. Dylan is a master of our language, not other languages. You might as well dismiss Goethe and Nietzsche’s skill with German because it is lost in translation.
That doesn’t mean Dylan is worthless in translation at all, but that’s not how he should be judged.
they gave their reasoning – comparing with Homer and Sappho, poetic works to be performed, not written in books. it’s not just lyrics.
Obviously, either you have that wrong or Dylan’s lyrics constitute “poems which are overtly literary projects.”
Or both!
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/10/heres-why-bob-dylan-won-nobel-prize-literature-today
bleah. i’m pretty much done caring what Kevin Drum thinks.
Ha. Me too, about some things. Mostly because I am Kevin Drum. He’s an almost perfect reflection of the absolute and reflexive centrism that’s in my heart.
(Acknowledging that wasn’t your intended point.)
You missed her: Joni Mitchell
(Can’t help wondering what, if anything, it says that all your alternatives were male.)
you may not consider literature, but the Nobel Committee does (and I agree).
Obviously.
They awarded it.
That’s a circular argument. By that logic they can’t make a mistake, because it wouldn’t be a mistake, because they did it.
Errrrr, well, they CAN’T make a mistake, because they gave the award, and someone received it, and because they received the award, the person obviously deserves it.
It’s for literature, people! It’s as worthless as a Pulitzer.
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Here’s to circular arguments!
I am Jordan, so everything I do will be exactly the action Jordan should take, because it’s what I did, and if I hadn’t done it but did something else instead, then that would have been the appropriate action for Jordan to take, by definition, since it’s what Jordan did. So I never have to worry about doing the wrong thing and I can never be critiqued for what I did — my only job is to do the thing that Jordan did.
Recognizing that those invested with the power to set the criteria and then apply the criteria they set are, in fact, those invested with the power to set the criteria and then apply the criteria they set is “circular”.
OK, whatever.
But it looks pretty obvious at this point that a “mistake” = setting and applying criteria that differ from those Jordan would set and apply.
How dare they!
Quite a speech Trump just gave.
Yes it is!!!
AG
Are we still supposed to “bet on” a Trump victory, since you were correct about him being the nominee? (“Like dat” etc.?)
The most interesting part?
No coverage on Google News homepage that I can see.
None whatsoever.
AG
His unique ability to voice the economic anxieties of white, working-class men, requires that he be silenced!
No, he needs to be silenced because he is a traitor to the controller class. PermaGov treason, as it were.
No matter his positions, no matter his personal peccadillos, etc., his real sin is speaking plainly to the people of the United States about how the UniParty fix really works.
AG
The Parties and the voters who support them are not the same. That has been shown to be abundantly clear over recent decades, recent years, recent months, recent weeks, recent days, recent hours and recent minutes, with the evidences of the differences brtween the Parties and their supporters coming at escalating volume and speed now.
Trump doesn’t speak plainly, at all. That Arthur claims he does- SAD!
I mean, did you see him talking about the international Jewish banking conspiracy that is bankrolling the media to destroy his campaign?
With the Clintons are the center of the octopus!
He’s the only truth teller out there, so he MUST be silenced!
.
They’re plotting right now. In secret. Enriching themselves and their supporters.
There is another way to make Trump pay. Boycott his brand, make his name worthless. Not that I was going to stay in a Trump hotel anyway, but maybe others could make a difference.
Question: why didn’t any of this come up during the primaries? Is this a case of the press not stopping for people trying to flag them down? Did the other GOP candidates not dig enough? Did they know but remain silent because he was going to be their nominee?
I think the other candidates’ oppo research sucked (I mean, everyone knew that he was on Stern). But, more fundamentally, they may well have thought that the primary voters wouldn’t care or would see Trump’s actions as a plus.
I suspect you hit the nail on the head there. A good portion of Trump’s voters likely don’t care about this kind of stuff. They don’t like political correctness, and are outright hostile to anything that could be branded as “liberal” in my experience.
They ALL knew all of it. They probably still know more than we’ve heard.
What they all did was avoid directly attacking him, because they wanted his voters. They couldn’t outflank him to his right (how could you?), because they didn’t want to sour their chances in the general election. So they gently scolded him while giving the usual wink, wink to the base, while the waited for him to fade, and they could scoop up all those racist voters without getting the hands too dirty. They all felt he would fade out.
He didn’t fade. The one thing Trump figured was that the base was much more frothy then anyone else realized. By the time Trumpenstien broke out of the lab, there was no way to stop him. Because the same dynamic of not having any way to peel off his racist voters without totally screwing the general election ‘etch-a-sketch’ routine was still in play.
And this is how it happened.
The all knew about the kind of man Then Donald was. Why they said nothing…2 reasons. First, they thought the Dems would do it for them but, during the primary was not good timing for the Dems. Second, they were weak. For the past 20 years all the GOP talks about is cutting taxes, reducing government, and legislating sex between consenting adults. The GOP has failed to do any of that which lead to their failure to dismiss The Donald with their usual talking points.
because
then either they‘re blithering idiots or they’re deluded that “the Dems” are blithering idiots politically.
From the Dems’ perspective, the GOP failing to keep the nomination from Trump was the best possible outcome, politically: an early Christmas present, in lovely, colorful wrapping and tied up with a beautiful bow — as Trump’s working hard to demonstrate on a roughly hourly basis.
If the Dems were privy to the info now coming out (seems likely to me; also seems likely they were source of at least some of the leaks; arguably be political malpractice if that weren’t the case), it looks like they wisely stuck to the give-’em-enough-rope-to-hang-themselves-with strategy (aka the when-your-opponent’s-digging-himself-into-a-hole-hand-him-a-shovel strategy) through the primary season.
>>why didn’t any of this come up during the primaries?
I think mostly they didn’t dig much. Anyone smart could have found a ton of dirt on Trump, but the other candidates didn’t include anyone smart.
Someone smart enough to dig for it might have seen the chance to peel off the women’s vote from Trump exactly like we’re seeing now. But no male Republican thinks that way, because it would require them to consider a woman’s point of view on something, and even the smarter ones are incapable of that.
One opponent that’s probably going to get mobilized is Fox. Many, including me, suspect that Trump did all this to form a new alt-right media organization that would be competing with Trump. A Republican flame-out doesn’t interfere with that but Trump being personally discredited does. It may be very much in Fox’s interest to thoroughly humiliated Trump, even to the point of causing serious damage to the Republican brand. They’re better off financially as the media mouthpiece of a permanent minority Republican faction than as the has-been and replaced network of a competitive one.
But, but, but . . . nobody respects women more than he does.
We shouldn’t underestimate the degree to which Trump undermines his credibility on all things by making such transparently false claims on sexual matters.
Called to make sure sister was registered — she said she’s been for weeks. So that began a conversation about the parents as I haven’t discussed the election with them out of fear. She says they’re full jumping into the deep end of that fascist pool. It’s a hop skip and a jump from what the Republicans have been peddling — as Obama says, there’s a straight line from Palin to Trump. But it’s still frightening to watch that frog boil as Trump takes the party to its fascist logical end point.
What Trump is doing is consolidating what base he has left and trying to whip up getting out the vote.
What the stories do is affect those who are not true believers (or not the Trump demographic, whatever it is). It is not white working class men; it is a specialized subset of the Republican party that tends toward white small business owners or independent business agents. In these parts it is a lot like Gingrich’s demographic.
Are the folks who go to his speeches just going to get whipped up or are they actually going to show up to vote. Who is going to turn them out? The preachers? The local GOP establishment? The local Tea Party activists? Who is carrying out that GOTV function locally? There is an important margin in those who are actively solicited to vote.