Curb Your Authoritarianism? The 2016 Conventional Wisdom Thread (Elections, Part 6)

What, all Colin Powells look alike to you?

Should've just been a checkerboard of alternating Powells and Carsons.

Condy Rice is now stuffed down the memory hole?

a 3x2 grid of black republican portraits where one of the spaces is filled by a logo

They could've at least used some anonymous stock image.

It's not like anyone in their party would've been curious enough to try to figure out who it actually was.

Meantime

"When Moochelle said it she was lying. When Melania said it she was telling the truth."

http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=364800

(I promise I will shut up about this soon but for now it is still providing lols)

like the first rule in crisis communications is get in front of the story and apologise if at all possible

Only if you are talking to people outside your base. The people who agree with you have already constructed excuses for you, and you want to affirm those points. Obviously the question of whether or not you should be protecting your voters or seeking new ones is something else. It's possible me that trump at this point is worried about losing his support in some areas, so is choosing to validate his base's excuses rather than apologise and seem others (which would involve contradicting those who have already supported him).

What the hell site is that? xp

Ace of Spades, one of the many junky right-wing sites that are just that.

Meantime, as I posted on the Fox News thread, the last sentence of this excerpt is really firing off conspiracy theory thoughts in my brain right now:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/07/sources-kelly-said-ailes-sexually-harassed-her.html

As New York reported yesterday, Rupert and sons James and Lachlan, the three top executives at 21st Century Fox, have, according to multiple sources, decided that Ailes needs to be removed. Kelly, who has become something of a feminist icon thanks to her tangles with GOP nominee Donald Trump, is seen by many inside Fox as the future of the network. She’s currently in contract negotiations, and given that Bill O’Reilly has said he’s considering retirement, Fox can’t afford to lose her.

According to two sources, yesterday afternoon lawyers for 21st Century Fox gave Ailes a deadline of August 1st to resign or face being fired for cause. Ailes’s legal team, which now includes Susan Estrich, former campaign manager for Michael Dukakis, has yet to respond to the offer. Ailes has also received advice on strategy from Donald Trump and Rudy Guiliani, sources say.

http://verysmartbrothas.com/the-rnc-where-steve-king-defends-white-supremacy-and-melania-trump-disproves-it/

I won’t say too much more about poor Melania, because every joke worth making has already been made. Instead, I’ll just say that the only person feeling worse than her about her speech this morning is Steve King. All that fuss about the master race. And then, a couple hours later, the Grand Wizard’s wife refutes that entire argument by stealing the words from a regular Black girl from the South Side

Hah!

Only if you are talking to people outside your base. The people who agree with you have already constructed excuses for you, and you want to affirm those points. Obviously the question of whether or not you should be protecting your voters or seeking new ones is something else. It's possible me that trump at this point is worried about losing his support in some areas, so is choosing to validate his base's excuses rather than apologise and seem others (which would involve contradicting those who have already supported him).

― two crickets sassing each other (dowd), Tuesday, July 19, 2016 12:06 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

imo this is close but it gives trump too much credit for acting strategically, his behavior is mostly intuitive and it appeals to the gop base and not to everyone else, trump is just being trump is how i break it down to an extent

scapegoating a staffer for the plagiarism would give him the chance to say 'you're fired' tho

and then fire a tshirt cannon into the crowd while ticker-tape rains from the ceiling of the convention centre

and gallop offstage on a glorious white horse firing pearl-handled pistols

xxp sure. when it comes down to it I doubt there is any conspiracy involved.

scapegoating a staffer for the plagiarism would give him the chance to say 'you're fired' tho

― report your crimes to my burning ghost cock (bizarro gazzara), Tuesday, July 19, 2016 12:24 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is a good point someone shd pitch it to him like that

catching trump in dumb lies gon be a media sport before this is over https://twitter.com/AmarAmarasingam/status/755439932659859456

http://theslot.jezebel.com/day-2-of-the-republican-national-convention-all-hell-b-1783881235

Check it out, Dinesh Dsouza is out of jail!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/19/on-melania-trumps-plagiarism-a-laid-off-journalist-watching-in-an-l-a-starbucks-scooped-everyone/

The Trump campaign has cycled through various denials and explanations for the, um, overlap between the Melania Trump and Michelle Obama speeches. Perhaps the best so far came from campaign spokeswoman Katrina Pierson, speaking to the Hill: "This concept that Michelle Obama invented the English language is absurd."

Trump founded America, so he's technically responsible for all decisions made within its contiguous borders since then. Just the good ideas, though.

There's also now a story floating around about the multiple claims about Melania's college degree...despite a number of mentions in the past about having dropped out before graduating. Again: why? Why not decline to mention her higher education altogether rather than tell stupid and easily disproven lies about it?

trump gonna trump

xxpost

Trump will point out the, like, words that were different from the cribbed passages and, what, did Michelle Obama invent words now? We're not allowed to use words just because other people used them? Rigged system. Sad!

― Night Jorts (Old Lunch), Tuesday, July 19, 2016 7:55 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://mobile.twitter.com/AmarAmarasingam/status/755439932659859456

See a CNN anchor whine "WhHHYYY?!" on-air!

You can't make this shit up. Except that you clearly can at this point.

I'm seriously considering changing a handful of words in Art of the Deal and self-publishing the resulting product. It's not like Donald Trump invented words (or even wrote the ones in his own book).

Clinton's facebook page is live streaming a list of lawsuits Donald Trump and his companies have been involved in. It's been going on for a little over half and hour now.

Meantime...

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/07/rnc-2016-gop-republican-party-leaders-future-donald-trump-214065

Pence is on TV right now talking about meeting Reagan in 1988--"You can probably Google it and find the photo." Which he clearly already did.

http://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/mike-pence-veep-donald-trump-career-02.jpg?quality=75&strip=color&w=758

just checking out the gipper's package, no big thing

New defense being floated on CNN right now: you can also say that Melania stole from Kid Rock and John Legend and House of Pain and Public Enemy, everyone steals from everyone, it's impossible not to.

So Melania is Girl Talk?

hmm i like the "cover version" defense, it's at least new

trump's speech will begin with Reince storming the stage with an airhorn yelling REEEEEEEEEEEEMIIIIIXXXXXXXX

https://vine.co/v/5ZDuVZYtAz3

So apparently Stephen Baldwin is there and rapping

I'm combing the transcript and finding all sorts of suspicious phrases:

"Let's all come together in a national campaign like no other!" -- Beatles

"There will be good times and hard times and unexpected turns" -- Chic

"...love and compassion for each other that will bring us together — and keep us together" -- the Captain & Tennille

Very troubling.

did this get discussed? https://www.buzzfeed.com/mckaycoppins/how-the-haters-made-trump

When host Seth Meyers took the mic, he piled on with his own rat-a-tat of jokes, many of which seemed designed deliberately to inflame Trump’s outer-borough insecurities: “His whole life is models and gold leaf and marble columns, but he still sounds like a know-it-all down at the OTB.”

The longer the night went on, the more conspicuous Trump’s glower became. He didn’t offer a self-deprecating chuckle, or wave warmly at the cameras, or smile with the practiced good humor of the aristocrats and A-listers who know they must never allow themselves to appear threatened by a joke at their expense. Instead, Trump just sat there, stone-faced, stunned, simmering — Carrie at the prom covered in pig’s blood.

https://mobile.twitter.com/AmarAmarasingam/status/755439932659859456

See a CNN anchor whine "WhHHYYY?!" on-air!

because he's an unrepentant narcissist and serial liar. its not hard, lamestream media.

there was a similar article in the times a while ago, enlightening def xp

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/07/19/republican-national-convention-norovirus-outbreak-california-rnc/

trump flew home without notifying the group of big donors he was supposed to be meeting with http://time.com/4413148/republican-convention-donald-trump-corporate-donors

baller move imo

he just does what he wants god bless

also has a really intense thing abt sleeping in his own bed

Republicans now saying the plagiarized part of Melania's speech actually came from Twilight Sparkle of My Little Pony, fucking lol

i can't even tell if that's a joke anymore

The group was led out to the football field, where NFL champions the Cleveland Browns play, to take pictures before they were let go with no information about when and if a third meeting might take place.

wait

heh wrong team