The Voters Are Economically Insecure Horrible Racists

Since the election there's been this weird back and forth about whether Trump voters were motivated by The Economic Insecurity or by The Racism. This is yet another proxy battle in the 2016 primary battle between Bernie The Racist Who Thought Economic Justice Would Solve Racism and Clinton The Neoliberal Who Really Hated Racism (this is caricaturing the arguments so do not get mad).

I think it's important to note that the average Trump voter isn't actually an unemployed coal miner, because facts matter, and the portrayal Trump as Working Class Hero (sometimes they remember to write "White") is silly and wrong. Trump's base are not the marginal voters who switched to him from Obama, they are the same Republicans who vote Republican every 4 years.

But as for the "but they're racists!" argument. Yes, yes they are. People who are racists generally vote for Republicans. Some (many?) of Trump's voters were motivated to vote by the racism specifically, though many of those people would have voted as they always do anyway - for the Republican.

So what do Democrats do about that? If you just dismiss the 2016 election as "but...they're racists!" Then? I mean, what's the answer to that? This is about 2018, not 2020, because the world probably won't even exist by then.

Eclipsed

Something I realized watching my partial (74% I think) eclipse versus the total eclipse (on the teevee) was that they are very different things. Previously when I heard tales of stupid humans who lacked the constant CNN eclipse coverage and completely freaked out when the eclipsed happened, I had the wrong idea. The thing is anybody who experiences a partial eclipse probably is not bothered at all, even if they are not educated by Wolf Blitzer about what it's all about. Mostly because we generally don't look up into the sun and a partial eclipse...really isn't that dramatic. A day might get a bit "cloudy" without actual clouds, but that would barely be noticeable. Even if you looked up at the sun (like King Donald), you wouldn't even really be able to see it.

But the full eclipse isn't a slow eating of the sun by the moon (as people see it), a slow transition from light to shadow to dark.... It's a sudden, short, freakish disappearance of the sun followed by the presence of a wacky glowing fire. The light is there, the light is gone. The sun is there, the sun is covered. It's dramatic. If you experienced it and had no idea what was going on... it'd be really freaky.

There Was Never Any Doubt

As Pareene warned us, the way to be a Good President is to be a president who promises to kill a lot of brown people in other countries.

Tonight is a new President Trump: Acknowledging a flip-flop and talking about gravity of office, history & substance.

— Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) August 22, 2017

Good #AfghanStrategy & excellent speech by @POTUS laying it out to the nation.

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) August 22, 2017

Does Trump Become President For The 37th Time Tonight?

A promise to kill more people is always the best way.

Happy Hour Thread

I did not go blind.

Afternoon Thread

Rock on.

Secret Service is Out Of Money

Basically, Donald Trump is, as usual, not paying the people who work for him because he just doesn't believe in it.

Overwork and constant travel have also been driving a recent exodus from the Secret Service ranks, yet without congressional intervention to provide additional funding, Alles will not even be able to pay agents for the work they have already done.

Nothing Is Real

I just saw another piece, which I won't bother to link because I'm tired of rewarding this stuff and the sourcing was more abysmal than usual (really, it's so often at the level of "some guy who heard something at a bar"), but it was all about White House Intrigue. Basically, it's WHO IS LEAKING AGAINST WHO IN THE PRESS. Of course "the press" know this precisely, but can't say, so you get all these weird stories. And while they're fun gossip and they can matter - to the extent that who is up and who is down can influence policy - none of these people seem to care about anything except shitting on each other in public and none of them know a damn thing about policy.

Morning Thread

Thank goodness Dear Leader's vacation is over. I don't know how much more of the madness I can take. Maybe now that he's back at work and too busy to watch tv news, things will calm down.

Everyone Else Should Be A Hero

We can question the efficacy of speaking out, but I'm pretty sure the largely silly norms of journalism (conventions that make it work, not exactly commandments on a holy tablet) are less important than the fate of the nation. If all those people think this and are not saying it, maybe you should tell us who they are and why specifically they think it? It's pretty important!

"Republicans in Congress, the highest of intelligence officials, the highest of military officers in our country, leaders of the business community -- all of whom have dealt with the White House, and many of them dealt personally with Donald Trump -- have come to believe that he is unfit for the presidency," Bernstein told CNN's Brian Stelter on Sunday.

He said those people are "raising the very question of his stability and his mental fitness."

That's a big story! Probably bigger than "oh boo hoo nobody will ever talk off the record with Carl Bernstein again."

Afternoon Thread

enjoy

Whatever

Which White House aides aren't completely horrible incompetent human beings? All the ones we are aware of are.

"You have no idea how much crazy stuff we kill": The most common response centers on the urgent importance of having smart, sane people around Trump to fight his worst impulses. If they weren't there, they say, we would have a trade war with China, massive deportations, and a government shutdown to force construction of a Southern wall.
"General Mattis needs us": Many talk about their reluctance to bolt on their friends and colleagues who are fighting the good fight to force better Trump behavior/decisions. They rightly point out that together, they have learned how to ignore Trump's rhetoric and, at times, collectively steer him to more conventional policy responses.
"Trump's not as evil as portrayed": All of them talk up the president as more reasonable off Twitter and TV than on it. This gives them hope (though almost all increasingly say it's fleeting hope) he will listen to his better angels, or at least the pleas of Ivanka.

Source for that last one: Rhymes with Mivanka.

Why Doesn't Everybody Love Me

By all accounts, Trump has always been a social climber, desperate to get the approval of celebrities, models, important businessmen, rich people, etc. Now he's president and most people are too embarrassed to even be seen with him.

If only Trump had read this sucky blog and heeded its wisdom, he'd have known that he would really hate being president.

Saturday Night

I think? I don't even know what year it is most of the time these days.

That Is Why They Call Me Rolf

Have a video.

Curious

If shutting down a white supremacist rally (nonviolently) is good, why is shutting down white supremacists like Charles Murray from speaking at universities bad?

More Thread

Sucky blogging schedule I think (you never know!). Gotta tune out sometimes.

Random Thought

There is something deeply wrong with a country in which "see your credit score for free!" is actually an enticing marketing tactic.

Morning Thread

Have a song.

Cars Are Deadly Weapons

This isn't my usual car thing, just for many many years I've wondered, mostly to myself, but rarely on this sucky blog, "why don't terrorists who are willing to die just run people over with cars and buses and even big trucks?" "Willingness to die" is what really makes terrorism scary. That's the part that makes it hard to prevent. Gotta be crafty to do something without getting "caught." Easy to do just about anything if you don't care much.

Hijacking planes is hard. Making bombs correctly and setting them up to be especially dangerous is pretty hard. Not incredibly hard, but you gotta work at it a bit. Running people over with large vehicles is really easy.

I wondered it mostly to myself because I thought, "how the hell do people not know this?" I was a bit scared to say it out loud because... what if this is some big secret that only I am aware of? That's silly, I know, but the fact that it wasn't a regular occurrence, to the extent the terrorist attacks were regular occurrences (not so regular in non-war zones, though that requires a digression into how we define terrorism, but they happen), confused me.

But now they're a thing. That's bad, and I have absolutely no idea what to do about it from a security perspective. I suspect it isn't that big of a deal compared to the number of non-terrorism (as we define these things) gun deaths we have in the US, but in Europe they don't have the guns. My point is not "OH MY GOD THE CARS ARE GOING TO KILL US ALL." My point is...yah, really, there's nothing to be done about it.

Do They Literally Not Have Anything To Do

There are a couple of reporters who get most of the White House Kremlinology, but there are many many who get some. It's like these people just call or text or whatever reporters all day, and presumably they need to do so in a way which doesn't get traced back to them (not overheard, not tracked electronically, whatever), so.. do any of them ever bother going to work?

I don't get it.

Do They All Take Cocaine?

Just asking, of course. The endless puffing out of the chests, WE WILL OWN YOUR ASSES ON TWITTER kind of stuff that hasn't been seen since the glorious warblogger era when the Keyboard Kommandos all enlisted and typed furiously for victory.

Cernovich made the claims that he’d release a series of “scoops” if Bannon is officially pushed out of the White House on an eleven-minute, self-recorded Periscope Thursday night.
“If they get rid of Bannon, you know what’s gonna happen? The motherlode. If Bannon is removed, there are gonna be divorces, because I know about the mistresses, the sugar babies, the drugs, the pill popping, the orgies. I know everything,” said Cernovich.
“If they go after Bannon, the mother of all stories is gonna drop, and we’re just gonna destroy marriages, relationships—it’s gonna get personal.”

Hey, sure, but...I doubt it.