Battlegrounds

[McLoofus 35,182]

21 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Speaking of AOC:

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/21/democrats-defend-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-yoho-376190

Dems defend Ocasio-Cortez after tense exchange with GOP lawmaker

Rep. Ted Yoho reportedly directed profanity toward the progressive lawmaker.

Yeah, I think Yoho aurally misspelled "family values". 

[TitanTiger 20,481]

2 hours ago, homersapien said:

Speaking of AOC:

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/21/democrats-defend-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-yoho-376190

Dems defend Ocasio-Cortez after tense exchange with GOP lawmaker

Rep. Ted Yoho reportedly directed profanity toward the progressive lawmaker.

Why is it too much to ask these days for some basic decorum?  You don't have to agree with her or even like her.  But act like you've held a real job before where you have to sometimes work and/or negotiate with people who see things differently than you.

[TitanTiger 20,481]

Quinnipiac poll out today in Texas:

Biden 45%
Trump 44%

I don't expect that to hold 'til November, but good gravy if TX is that close...

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

10 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

Quinnipiac poll out today in Texas:

Biden 45%
Trump 44%

I don't expect that to hold 'til November, but good gravy if TX is that close...

I might run around my neighborhood naked if Trump loses Texas.

[TitanTiger 20,481]

3 minutes ago, Brad_ATX said:

I might run around my neighborhood naked if Trump loses Texas.

Dear President Trump:  Please spend more money in TX.  thxbye.

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

Interesting read about current demographic trends.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/who-s-behind-trump-s-big-polling-deficit-two-key-n1234605

[homersapien 11,373]

23 hours ago, TitanTiger said:

Why is it too much to ask these days for some basic decorum?  You don't have to agree with her or even like her.  But act like you've held a real job before where you have to sometimes work and/or negotiate with people who see things differently than you.

Ted Yoho’s apology to AOC, offered as a masterclass

Opinion by

Alexandra Petri

Columnist

July 23, 2020

“I cannot apologize for my passion, or for loving my God, my family, and my country! I yield back!”

— Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.), apologizing(?) to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)

 

You may wonder, “Ted, how did you get so good at apologizing?” What can I say? It’s a gift. I’ve literally never done it before. Some (the recipient of my apology, technically) would say that I still haven’t! Welcome to my master class, where I’ll showcase just a few of the tricks that I employed in my apology on the House floor to my colleague from New York!

“Wait, I thought he called Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a ‘f---ing b----’ under his breath in front of a reporter!” those who heard this apology said. “But I guess what happened was that he said, ‘I LOVE MY COUNTRY AND I LOVE MY GOD,’ in a very garbled mutter under his breath, and some member of the lamestream media badly misheard him!”

Most people say that a good apology accepts responsibility, acknowledges the harm done and seeks to make amends. This is not true. A good apology does none of these things! A good apology is like the Battle Hymn of the Republic: It is a patriotic song about America that never says it’s sorry, not even one bit.

To apologize or otherwise take responsibility for something you have said or done in the past is deeply un-American, and you must put your foot down and refuse in no uncertain terms, or an eagle will lose its wings.

Every good apology contains five parts:

1) What sounds like the beginning of a normal apology. Announce that you are going to apologize, because you are a bigger person. Do not be afraid to expatiate on all the ways you are a bigger person — there are probably lots! That is what the apology is about: to remind people how great you are, and how you have never done anything wrong, ever, in your life.

2) Denial that the event in question even happened. Try to obfuscate, because a good apology is full of suspense. Like “Memento”! And also, like “Memento,” your audience should spend the majority of it wondering (a) what even happened and (b) whether the guy in question did anything bad at all.

3) Apology for something that someone else did wrong. Now for the best part of any apology: the unexpected twist! “The offensive name-calling words attributed to me by the press were never spoken to my colleagues, and if they were construed that way, I apologize for their misunderstanding.” Wow! What even happened? It sounds like this man is magnanimously apologizing for somebody else’s misunderstanding — which he should not have to do! Whatever this guy has to say, I’m listening!

4) Panegyric about yourself. Be sure to indicate that whatever it was that happened, it was not your fault; you were too busy thinking Great Thoughts About the People’s Well-Being to do anything that could be unworthy of a patriot and statesman. Be sure to mention that you are a father of daughters, no matter what you are ostensibly apologizing for. Make it clear that you are only apologizing because you are such a bosom companion of Jesus Christ …

5) Refusal to apologize! … and that you will not apologize for any of these things! “I cannot apologize for my passion, or for loving my God, my family, and my country! I yield back!”

Now that’s an apology!

People should start your apology thinking they understand that you are asking forgiveness for calling your colleague a sexist obscenity under your breath and end it by being confused and thinking that maybe you are being asked to apologize for being too good a person, who loves America too much? By the time you are done speaking, your listener should be saying to himself, “Well, what could be more American than insulting a woman of color who is supposed to be your respected colleague!”

Sign up for this master class now for further tips and tricks! A few spots are still remaining, but they are going fast!

Coming soon: How to make the person you are apologizing to the villain in this situation if she tries pointing out that this wasn’t an apology at all.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/23/ted-yohos-apology-aoc-offered-masterclass/?hpid=hp_save-opinions-float-right-4-0_opinion-card-b-right%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans

[McLoofus 35,182]

Pretty remarkable that a freshman congresswoman could have enough power over that dude that he would be that bothered. If any participant in that exchange was a little bitch, it wasn't her. 

[autigeremt 6,614]

On 7/21/2020 at 4:27 PM, aubiefifty said:

why you gotta pick on blind people? why not just call him a big dummy?

My bad. 

[autigeremt 6,614]

On 7/22/2020 at 8:20 AM, homersapien said:

whoops!  I was confusing her with Ihlan Omar.  My bad.  Thanks for the correction.

But AOC is a liberal, and that's just as bad.  

She’s worse than a liberal. 🙃

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

Updated NPR analysis at this point.

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/03/897202359/2020-electoral-map-ratings-trump-slides-biden-advantage-expands-over-270-votes

[McLoofus 35,182]

13 hours ago, Brad_ATX said:

Updated NPR analysis at this point.

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/03/897202359/2020-electoral-map-ratings-trump-slides-biden-advantage-expands-over-270-votes

Hate that it's still this close, but maybe those looking for reasons not to vote for Biden will drop the "he's mentally unfit" facade after seeing that trump interview with Jonathan Swan. I can't believe trump and his team agreed to this. 

 

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

2 hours ago, McLoofus said:

Hate that it's still this close, but maybe those looking for reasons not to vote for Biden will drop the "he's mentally unfit" facade after seeing that trump interview with Jonathan Swan. I can't believe trump and his team agreed to this. 

 

There's a ton of Frost/Nixon in this interview.

[McLoofus 35,182]

7 minutes ago, Brad_ATX said:

There's a ton of Frost/Nixon in this interview.

I saw it described as that mixed with This Is Spinal Tap. 

[homersapien 11,373]

39 minutes ago, McLoofus said:

I saw it described as that mixed with This Is Spinal Tap. 

So - according to Trump's logic - we could stop all testing and the death rate would fall to zero. 

 

[savorytiger 182]

3 minutes ago, homersapien said:

So - according to Trump's logic - we could stop all testing and the death rate would fall to zero. 

 

Everything's ok if you just look at the right statistic...

EDIT: also really glad someone actually asked "who says that?" and "which books?" to Trump.

[McLoofus 35,182]

9 minutes ago, homersapien said:

So - according to Trump's logic - we could stop all testing and the death rate would fall to zero. 

That's exactly what he's been saying all along. 

[AUDub 11,148]

20 minutes ago, homersapien said:

So - according to Trump's logic - we could stop all testing and the death rate would fall to zero. 

 

We've discontinued pregnancy testing. Poof no more babies. 

[homersapien 11,373]

How to interview a serial liar and narcissist who is unfit to be president

Opinion by

Greg Sargent

Columnist

August 4, 2020 at 10:14 a.m. EDT

President Trump’s peculiar brew of relentless dishonesty and utter shamelessness often acts as a shield against his interviewers. The lies tumble out at such a furious pace, and the display of corrupt motives is so blatant, that pinning Trump down on them is like (and apologies for the cliche, but nothing else is better) nailing jello to a wall.

Axios’s Jonathan Swan conducted a stunning interview with Trump that is gaining praise for getting around this problem. But the full import of how Swan did this, I think, is still eluding attention, and properly accounting for it exposes core truths about this extraordinary moment that we still struggle to find the right language to express.

Again and again, Swan practically pleaded with Trump to demonstrate a shred of basic humanity about the mounting toll under his presidency, and to display a glimmer of recognition of responsibility for it. Again and again, Trump failed this most basic test.

The beseeching quality of those lines of inquiry contrasted jarringly with Trump’s serial inability to rise to this fundamental threshold, or even to perceive what was being asked of him. This, I think, is the source of this interview’s unsettling revelatory power — and it captured a crucial aspect of Trump’s unfitness to serve as president that I suspect a majority of the country has figured out.

Swan noted that experts believe “the wishful thinking and the salesmanship is just not suitable at a time when a pandemic has killed 145,000 Americans,” and added: “For the past five months, it’s been, ‘the virus is totally under control,’ and the cases have been going up and the deaths have been going up.”

Trump responded with silly evasions about what was previously understood about pandemics, absurd distortions about how other countries are faring worse than we are, and his usual grotesque exaggerations about the efficacy of his halting of travel from China.

And then:

TRUMP: Those people that really understand it, they said it’s incredible the job that we’ve done.

SWAN: Who says that?

TRUMP: Banning China from coming in —

SWAN: But it was already in here!

Swan is not just challenging Trump’s distortions. He’s also practically begging him to acknowledge the fact that after Trump’s glorious China ban, a whole range of failures to take action subsequently allowed the coronavirus to rampage out of control here.

The unspoken question hovering over much of this was Swan pleading with Trump to share in our collective horror about the consequences that have unfolded since, and to take some measure of responsibility for those consequences. This taking of responsibility would itself speak to the gravity of what the country is enduring, and show basic respect for the sick, the dead and the bereaved.

Trump couldn’t do it. He made only the most perfunctory reference to the dead, even as he hailed his own great response again and again while blaming everyone else for the toll that Swan kept reminding him of, from the “fake news” to China.

Swan then tried to access Trump’s humanity through the portal of his narcissism. He did so by bringing up Trump’s great rally crowds.

“These people, they listen to you,” Swan pleaded, by way of suggesting that he should use his power over his followers for good, that is, to get them to take the virus seriously for their own well-being.

In the most perfect moment ever, Trump’s immediate response to this was to accuse the media of downplaying the size of the crowd at his Tulsa rally.

“Why would you have wanted a huge crowd?” Swan asked, again trying to focus Trump on the consequences his words have for his supporters.

“Because that area was a very good area at the time,” Trump replied.

In fact, cases were rising in Oklahoma at the time — and Tulsa saw a surge after the rally — but the more important unspoken truth revealed here is that Trump could not rise to the challenge of showing basic humanity.

This exchange underscored the point:

SWAN: Many of them are older people, Mr. President — it’s giving them a false sense of security.

TRUMP: Right now, I think it’s under control.

SWAN: How? A thousand Americans are dying a day.

TRUMP: They are dying. That’s true. It is what it is. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t doing everything we can. It’s under control as much as you can control it.

Even during the very occasional moments in which Trump did show a glimmer of awareness of the human toll, he immediately marred it with absurd blame-shifting to governors, who were screaming about the dangers for weeks early on while Trump dithered.

“I’m talking about death. It’s going up,” Swan said, in another effort to break through to Trump during this subsequent exchange:

.@jonathanvswan: “Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population. That’s where the U.S. is really bad. Much worse than South Korea, Germany, etc.”@realdonaldtrump: “You can’t do that.”

Swan: “Why can’t I do that?” pic.twitter.com/MStySfkV39

— Axios (@axios) August 4, 2020

That is superficially a debate about statistics. But it’s actually a debate over Trump’s inability to show that basic human empathy and decency that the exchange demanded of him.

As Tim Miller says, Trump simply doesn’t view the coronavirus as something to be defeated. Making this more destructive, Trump and his propagandists are working to keep the actual real-world failures of his response cosseted away in a place where they cannot be subjected to outside criticism — or corrected.

I would only add that Trump’s true position here, laid bare, is that this is the best we can do. Whether this is due to narcissism and the inability to hear criticism and self-correct, or whether it’s due to naked malevolence, that may be the biggest revelation here of all.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/08/04/how-interview-serial-liar-narcissist-who-is-unfit-be-president/?hpid=hp_save-opinions-float-right-4-0_opinion-card-d-right%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

10 hours ago, McLoofus said:

Hate that it's still this close, but maybe those looking for reasons not to vote for Biden will drop the "he's mentally unfit" facade after seeing that trump interview with Jonathan Swan. I can't believe trump and his team agreed to this. 

 

Dude, he can't even pronounce Yosemite correctly.  A national park literally everyone is taught about from a young age, and he can't fricking pronounce it.  But people question Biden's mental aptitude?

https://mobile.twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1290669154136215554?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1290669154136215554|twgr^&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.yahoo.com%2Fhuffpost%2Fobituary-coronavirus-blames-donald-trump-114855464.html

[alexava 6,973]

4 hours ago, Brad_ATX said:

Dude, he can't even pronounce Yosemite correctly.  A national park literally everyone is taught about from a young age, and he can't fricking pronounce it.  But people question Biden's mental aptitude?

https://mobile.twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1290669154136215554?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1290669154136215554|twgr^&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.yahoo.com%2Fhuffpost%2Fobituary-coronavirus-blames-donald-trump-114855464.html

 

[McLoofus 35,182]

8 hours ago, alexava said:

 

My thought, too. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if that clown didn't even know there was a state park by that name. But I'd be very surprised if he didn't know about this guy.

Then again, he might not have ever seen it in writing. 

Another day, another day closer to fulfilling the Idiocracy prophecy.

[McLoofus 35,182]

Damn. I made fun of trump for not knowing how to say Yosemite and then I called it a state park.

 

[AUDub 11,148]

Republicans working hard to get Kanye on the ballot in Wisconsin. 

 

[alexava 6,973]

57 minutes ago, AUDub said:

Republicans working hard to get Kanye on the ballot in Wisconsin. 

 

Are you sure these are republicans?