President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

He said that you are not to blame for your shitty lot in life, they are. And he was very entertaining and had just enough of a tongue-in-cheek delivery so as to claim plausible deniability if the spotlight got too bright.

The worst part is that it is all an act — he’s made money off of the rubes and likely doesn’t believe 90 percent of what he’s saying. The even worse part is that the moron in the Oval Office truly believes that Rush is a hero, solely because he supports Trump.

 

It may also be key for Klobuchar, who I believe focused her resources on Iowa & NH. Looks like her fundraising has improved in the last few days, but I assume it's too late for her to build much of a ground game in Nevada, so the debate should be important for her too.

 

If she gets the Culinary Workers endorsement (nobody may), Klobuchar will get her ground game.

 

Cool, cool.

Prosecutors Scared of Taking Cases That Could Anger Trump After Stone Intervention, Says Report

 

Oh, she said all the right things. But she wasn't a great campaigner. I never got the feeling that it was ever about anything other than it was Her Turn.

It works on the other side of the aisle. I don't agree with hardly anything Reagan stood for but he was a conservative who wanted to do something with the presidency.

 

ETA until Trump is tweeting about Gen. Kelly?

John Kelly Finally Lets Loose on Trump

 

Did Eric think up this quip or is he repeating it?

 

But for it to work, EVERYBODY needs to be in the pool of taxpayers funding it, correct? Thus, if you like your insurance and want to keep it, you'll be paying your premium AND the higher taxes involved in funding Medicare for All, correct?

This "shitty lot in life" card is being WAYYYYYY overplayed. Of the GOPers I'm familiar with, physicians and successful businessmen top the demographic above all others.

 

Talked with a friend last night who teaches anth at a land grant university. For the first time, she had to make a classroom conduct agreement for everyone to sign if they wanted to continue in her section. (Of course, at least one student informed her she "obviously hates the First Amendment.") I bring this up because the incident that was the last straw for her was an argument over Trump's decision to buy a new plane and change the traditional colors.

A student kicked off the festivities by saying the pictures of the new Air Force One made him feel proud. He saw it as America becoming the best it could be.
When questioned further, he responded that he felt like Trump was, "One of us. When I see him get on that plane, it will be like I'm on that plane."

My buddy said her jaw just dropped. She teaches in a part of the country not known for its progressive views on people who aren't Nice White Christian Folks, and she's heard a lot. This made her set up a code of conduct that focused on the content. She said too many classes are taken over by political arguments. The platforms are everywhere and the time she has to reach her students will no longer be one of them.

I asked her if it made her angry. She said it made her sad. She felt pity more than anything else and she said sometimes it was hard to hold out hope that exposure to new ideas about the way things are would take. (I can attest to this having co-taught classes where there was at least one kid spoiling to turn the semester into Scopes 2.0. Me: "It was a legal test about free speech in the classroom. You should also know that the ACLU staged most of it and the Rhea County powers that be wanted to use it to sell tourism in Dayton." Student: "Yew lah! Yew lah! Ahm gettin' mah deddy to talk to yew! " I didn't bother to tell them too much about WJB. But I digress.)

Thing is, this ex-classmate of mine is often the only one in the room whose SES comes near what Trump claims as his own. The kids who embrace Trump and Rush are usually the children of lower-middle to middle-middle class at best. Many of them skip Spring and Fall Breaks to work and spend their summers at minimum wage jobs. Some of them still have to pay their registration fees in installments and if there's not enough money to finish the term, they have to withdraw.

Ultimately, they get this from their parents. Some people have argued that it's the crudeness that attracts their base. I think it's more complex than that. It's the mindset. Whoever it was at The Atlantic who wrote that "The cruelty is the point" was spot on. The base is mostly made up of people with little else to hold their attention. Instead of looking outward to see what they can do for the world, they stay focused inward to see what the world will do for them. There is never a point where there is enough. They want to see people hurt and the current administration gratifies that desire to try to force people to bow to their perceived superiority or pay dearly for not showing proper obeisance.

 

I have a friend who barely graduated high school, scored a whopping 690 on his SAT, talked his way into college and has found his niche in pharmaceutical sales — thanks to a family hook up. He’s a Trump supporter, owns multiple MAGA hats and is one constantly bitching about how “messed up” this country is. He wasn’t pleased when I reminded him that, if he’d been born somewhere else he would have been shipped off to trade school and none of this would have been possible.

 

In which BTE begins looking at Kansas City (Missouri, not Kansas) real estate.

Playing on Kansas City Radio: Russian Propaganda