Instead of doing Questions of the Day during the conventions, I'm going to be posting Convention Threads, since the big speeches happen in the evenings, and I thought we might all want a place to discuss.
Tonight's theme is: "Make America First Again."
America has always been an exceptional nation. Our Founding Fathers created a system of government that has protected our liberty, allowed American ingenuity to flourish, and lifted people out of poverty by creating the conditions for opportunity and prosperity. Unfortunately, years of bad policies and poor leadership have weakened our position in the world. Under a Trump administration, America will once again be a beacon of progress and opportunity.
Likely story.
Tonight's slate of speakers includes such luminaries as Phil Ruffin, Businessman (What—you haven't heard of Phil Ruffin? Well, he's only the owner of 65 convenience stores and 12 hotels, you fool!); Pam Bondi, Attorney General of Florida (who
recently had her ass handed to her by Anderson Cooper); Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker; Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz; Newt Gingrich; and vice-presidential nominee Mike Pence!
Can't wait!
At least there are some actual elected Republicans whose names people might recognize speaking tonight. Quite a coup for a Republican convention!
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Maybe it's just me who's feeling two minutes away from crawling into a cannon and firing myself directly into the sun, since I've been totally immersed in dumpster fire that is the Republican Convention for three days straight now, but just in case it's not just me, here are some pictures to remind us what next week will look like.
Everyone say cheese! (Except security.)
THE LOOK ON THAT LADY'S FACE!!! ♥
I'm with her.
[Photos care of Hillary for America.]
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[Content Note: Misogyny.]
So, Chris Christie, who delivered one of the most despicable speeches of the Republican National Convention during which he staged a "mock trial" of Hillary Clinton, declared her guilty, and oversaw the convention audience erupting into an angry chant of "lock her up," now says he didn't start it.
Everything happens in a vacuum. Apparently.
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My time is again tight today because of convention stuff, so let's continue to crowdsource this! Please feel free to use this thread to share news items of interest you've seen in your travels 'round the web today.
(As always, please be sure to add relevant content notes. Thanks!)
Here are a couple of links of interest:
[Content Note: War; drones; death] US Airstrike Allegedly Kills 56 Civilians in Northern Syria.
RIP Garry Marshall.
[CN: Misogynoir; harassment] Twitter Permanently Suspends Conservative Writer Who Orchestrated Attack on Leslie Jones.
How Melania Trump's Speech Veered Off Course and Caused an Uproar.
And related to that: "Trump Campaign Concedes Melania Knew Michelle Obama Passages Were Lifted." If Melania read the speechwriter the passages, how did she not then say, "Wait, this is what I read you" when she got the speech?
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[Content Note: Violent imagery; misogyny.]
I've got a new essay up at BNR: "We've Reached Peak Hillary Hate (Thanks to Our Noxious Media)." It details a number of historical media offenses against Hillary Clinton, as well as some recent garbage, including a shockingly awful headline in today's Washington Post: "In Trump's moment of triumph, Clinton is in the crosshairs."
And it comes on the heels of another absurdly dishonest headline from them: The continuing political decline of Hillary Clinton.
The "political decline." Of a woman who just made history. Who won her primary by a large margin and is leading in the general election polls. Who is the closest any woman has ever come to the White House.
The story opens thus: "If it weren't for Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton would be the most disliked major-party presidential nominee in recent American history."
Sure. If it weren't for Donald. It doesn't have anything to do with a media who has been writing dogshit articles like this about her for thirty years.
And continue to write them, even as the Republican convention is peppered with unfathomable garbage like Dr. Ben Carson suggesting she's aligned with the Devil and prominent speakers leading chants of "lock her up."
After calling for someone who has never been convicted of a crime, or even indicted, to be sent to prison, where is there to go from here? Republicans' hatred of Hillary has escalated to a point where literally the only room left is calls for violence.
And here we are: "United Airlines suspended pilot and Republican West Virginia lawmaker Michael Folk from flying after he said Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton should be hanged." Repugnant, to say the least.
Unfortunately, he's not alone: New Hampshire state representative Al Baldasaro, who advises Donald on veterans' issues, said "Hillary Clinton should be put in the firing line and shot for treason."
There's
a lot more at the link, including a huge section on how holding Clinton to the wholly unreasonable standard of
perfection is part of what drives this swill.
I am entirely done with soft-peddling this stuff. The media is fomenting violence against her. And I will not sit quietly by.
Neither will my colleague Peter Daou: "
Explicit Calls for Violence Against Hillary on the Rise."
In his piece, he references a fundraising email just sent out by Clinton's campaign, authored by Clinton, the subject line of which is "A Witch Hunt," and which reads in part:
When I emailed you yesterday, I thought the behavior at the RNC couldn't get a whole lot worse. Tuesday night proved me wrong.
Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey (and a possible attorney general if Trump wins), stood on stage and accused Hillary of being a criminal, bellowing "GUILTY" over and over again as the crowd egged him on.
He had the entire arena chanting "lock her up" -- a cry that has become the mantra of the RNC.
If you closed your eyes, you could imagine it being a lot like a witch trial -- they were barely one step removed from screaming "burn her at the stake."
It felt like a dark turning point in American politics -- a sign that our nation is on the brink of something dangerous that we might not recover from.
Honestly, I'm sitting here just on the verge of rage-tears after reading that. THIS IS NOT OKAY.
I want to ask every fucking Republican why I just had to get an email from my candidate telling me she feels like she's being hunted because of their violent rhetoric. I am
livid about this.
For months, I have spent virtually every waking moment of my day doing everything I can to get Hillary Clinton elected and push back on the increasingly disgusting and dangerous rhetoric emanating from the Republican Party. I can't find any more time in my day to dedicate to this cause unless I sleep less. Well, if that's what it takes, then that is what I am going to do.
After reading that email, something in me has changed. Forever. I cannot abide this. I will not.
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He assures me this is comfortable. I am dubious.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
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I've got a new piece up at BNR on how, the day after his wife plagiarized a Michelle Obama speech, Donald Trump borrowed Bill Clinton's '92 campaign slogan:
After the roll call officially confirmed that Donald Trump is his party's presidential nominee, he decided to make a remote appearance at the convention, during which he said: "This is going to be a leadership, by the way, that puts the American people first."
One small problem: "Putting People First" was Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign slogan...
Do I think Donald plagiarized? No. What I think is that Donald didn't even know—or do the basic due diligence to find out—that one of his first campaign promises after being officially nominated was the campaign slogan of a Democratic president.
Who also happens to be the husband of his current Democratic opponent. Oopsy!
Click through to read
the whole thing!
Is this the most elaborate prank in history? WHAT IS EVEN GOING ON WITH DONALD TRUMP'S CAMPAIGN? Good grief!
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[Content Note: Bigotry; sexual harassment; theft.]
HOO BOY that was quite a day of EVEN MORE turgid garbage!
I again did some live-tweeting of the primetime trash parade, and I've Storified those tweets for anyone who wants to read them.
It was supposed to be jobs night, as the theme was "Make America Work Again," but there was no discernible jobs plan anywhere to be found, unless you count the cottage industry of Hillary Hatred. And I'm not sure there are any openings, since the Republican Party seems ALL STOCKED UP.
What was most remarkable to me was who wasn't there to talk about jobs. Usually, on jobs night at the Republican convention, there are corporate bigwigs as far as the eye can see. The biggest name Trump managed to finagle into speaking was the general manager of his own winery.
It's really an extraordinary feature of this convention—the absence of who you'd expect to see in a typical election year. But this time, there are so few women. No corporate honchos. A dearth of major name Republicans.
Speaker Paul Ryan stood out like a sore thumb, in that he was recognizable and vaguely credible. (By shitbox standards.)
It's just absolutely gobsmacking what a complete mess this convention is, in every way, not least of which is that it was so obviously always going to be a complete mess that hardly anyone who isn't Scott Baio bothered to attend.
Yikes.
Anyway. The roll call was yesterday, too, so Trump's now the nominee. Officially. And although there were persistently rumors of an insurgency to deny Trump the GOP's nomination, the "Never Trump" movement was a phenomenal flop. So much for all that talk about how Trump's extremism isn't representative of the party. When it came down to it, they nominated him without any drama at all.
Which proves what I've been saying all along: It isn't that Trump isn't representative of the party. It's just that he uses a bullhorn instead of a dogwhistle. He's not outside the party; to the contrary, he is its gold-plated unfiltered id.
It's fitting that his nomination capped off a day in which the media was preoccupied with discussing the plagiarized address delivered by his wife Melania last night; in which his campaign put forth a litany of accuses for how that happened, including his son's eventual admission that she used speechwriters, thus also implicating her in a lie for having said she wrote it; and Trump again speaking at the convention—albeit remotely—because his ego won't let him not be the center of attention for a single day.
Theft, lies, and conceit. The Trump Trifecta.
Two more days of this crap.
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Instead of doing Questions of the Day during the conventions, I'm going to be posting Convention Threads, since the big speeches happen in the evenings, and I thought we might all want a place to discuss.
Tonight's theme is: "Make America Work Again." Hahahaha I can't wait to hear a bunch of people talk about how Donald Trump is going to be GREAT for jobs, when he's spent his entire career stealing people's labor and refusing to pay them.
The slate of speakers includes such luminaries as Kerry Woolard, general manager of the Trump Winery; Kimberlin Brown, soap opera actress; Dr. Ben Carson, and not one but TWO Trump kids: Donald Trump, Jr. and Tiffany Trump.
Can't wait!
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So, first Melania Trump definitely wrote her own speech with as little help as possible. We heard it all day yesterday. How she was so proud and Donald was so proud and she worked on it for six weeks and it was going to be tremendous.
Then it turned out Melania had plagiarized parts of a Michelle Obama speech. Sad!
Then we heard a litany of excuses from the Trump campaign and its surrogates about how it definitely totally for sure wasn't even plagiarism and Hillary Clinton should be in jail, anyway.
The latest excuse? Damn speechwriters.
Donald Trump Jr. is laying the blame for Melania Trump's convention address on her team of speechwriters, addressing the accusations of plagiarism in an interview with CBS News' Norah O'Donnell.
"I imagine there's people who shouldn't have done that or who should have cleaned it up better," Trump said in the interview, scheduled to air Tuesday night.
...When asked if Paul Manafort, the campaign's chairman and Trump's convention manager, should have done a better job overseeing the speech, Trump Jr. defended Manafort.
"Paul didn't really have anything do with the speech," he said, acknowledging that Melania Trump "of course" worked with speechwriters.
"Having never done this before you have to work with speechwriters," he said. "Those are the people that did this, not Paul."
Donald Trump's comments come just hours after Manafort told "CBS This Morning" that Mrs. Trump "never cribbed from another speech."
So, if it was the speechwriters' fault, then Melania lied when she said she wrote it herself. And someone
still plagiarized Michelle Obama's speech.
Theft and lies: The Trump calling cards.
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[Content Note: Transphobia.]
Racism. Misogyny. Homophobia. Islamophobia. Calls for Hillary Clinton to be thrown in prison. Calling her a cunt. Skeevy behavior. Plagiarism. And transphobia:
"For thousands of years, mankind has known what a man is and what a woman is," [former GOP presidential candidate and current Donald Trump supporter Dr. Ben Carson] said to applause Tuesday at the Florida delegation breakfast near the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. "And now all of a sudden we don't know anymore. Now, is that the height of absurdity? Because today you feel like a woman, even though everything about you genetically says that you're a man or vice versa?"
"Wouldn't that be the same as if you woke up tomorrow morning after seeing a movie about Afghanistan or reading some books and said, 'You know what? I'm Afghanistan. I know I don't look that way. My ancestors came from Sweden, or something, I don't know. But I really am. And if you say I'm not, (then) you're racist,'" the former presidential candidate continued.
..."Anytime the secular progressives want to get people on their side, they go back to the civil rights movement, and they say this is a civil rights issue and it's not a civil rights issue," he said. "But we have to be willing to stand up, we have to be willing to call out people for this absolutely ridiculous stuff that they're trying to put over on us, that they're trying to put over on our children."
No, Dr. Ben Carson. Being trans is
not the same as waking up and deciding you're "Afghanistan."
I would be terrified that a medical doctor could be so ignorant, if I hadn't already had that particular circuit in my brain blown by Carson' stance on abortion.
This convention is utterly contemptible.
I recommend reading Josh Marshall: "
Violence, Blood, and Betrayal Inside the Trump Potemkin Village."
The sort of ignorance and hatred expressed by Carson here is not a bug of Trump-era Republicanism. It's a feature. The central, defining feature.
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[Content Note: Sexual harassment.]
Right in the middle of this piece about Fox News' Megyn Kelly disclosing that she, too, has been sexually harassed by Roger Ailes comes this little turd of info:
According to two sources, Monday afternoon lawyers for 21st Century Fox gave Ailes a deadline of August 1 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 Giuliani, sources say.
Emphasis mine.
Another thing to bear in mind the next time some outlet
tries to draw a false equivalence between how Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump treat the press. Clinton doesn't do pressers. Trump gives advice to men who sexually harass female journalists.
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My time is tight today because of convention stuff, so let's crowdsource this today! Please feel free to use this thread to share news items of interest you've seen in your travels 'round the web today.
(As always, please be sure to add relevant content notes. Thanks!)
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[Content Note: Exploitation; bigotry.]
I've got a new piece up at BNR about Donald Trump's career of thieving:
On the opening night of the Republican Convention, Melania Trump gave an address that clearly plagiarized Michelle Obama's "One Nation" speech. Irrespective of whether it was written by her with a little help, as she claimed, or penned by a speechwriter, it should have been thoroughly vetted by her husband's campaign. The buck stops with Donald.
When he came onstage to introduce her, Donald made a dramatic entrance set to Queen's "We Are the Champions," despite the fact that the band has repeatedly asked him to stop using their music.
Donald is the nominee of a party whose platform is rife with bigotry. He has eagerly embraced that bigotry, flaunting it like a badge of honor. So it's hardly shocking that day one of the Republican convention featured the unabashed theft of the intellectual property of a Black woman and a queer man.
There is much, much more
at the link.
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Titchy business!
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
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[Content Note: Racism; misogyny; dehumanization; harassment.]
Leslie Jones, who plays Patty in Ghostbusters, has been subjected to an unfathomably relentless campaign of racist harassment on Twitter.
If you're on Twitter, you can tweet support for her using the hashtag #LoveForLeslieJ. And you can tweet her directly at @Lesdoggg.
If you don't want to compose anything yourself, and would rather just RT what I've already tweeted, here you go:
No one deserves this despicable shit under
any circumstances. But goddamn does it just add a whole other layer of fuckrage that it's being directed at a woman for her participation in a film that has brought so many other women so much happiness.
Leslie Jones, I take up space in solidarity with you. ♥
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[Content Note: Bigotry; sexual harassment; theft.]
HOO BOY that was quite a day of turgid garbage!
I did some live-tweeting of the primetime trash parade, and I've Storified those tweets for anyone who wants to read them.
For anyone who didn't tune into ONE MILLION SOLID HOURS of Republican nightmare conventioning, here's my Executive Summary: BROWN PEOPLE ARE SCARY! HILLARY IS A MONSTER! DONALD TRUMP IS A TREMENDOUS AND CLASSY LEADER! AMERICA HAS BECOME A BIG TURD BUT IS ALSO THE BEST! USA! USA! TAKE HILLARY TO JAIL! YEAHHHH!
In other news: Chris Christie is the Commandant of Creeptown.
And finally! It looks like Melania Trump straight-up plagiarized a Michelle Obama speech. Not just any speech, either: Her 2008 Democratic Convention Speech. Her famous "One Nation" speech. And it was a section about passing on good values to your kids. LOL. You can't make this shit up.
Michelle Obama: "Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: That you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you're going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them, and even if you don't agree with them. And Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values, and to pass them on to the next generation. Because we want our children—and all children in this nation—to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them."
Melania Trump: "From a young age my parents impressed on me the values that you work hard for what you want in life. That your work is your bond and you do what you say and keep your promise. That you treat people with respect. They taught and showed me values and morals in their daily life. That is a lesson that I continue to pass along to our son, and we need to pass those lessons on to the many generations to follow because we want our children in this nation to know that the only limit to your achievements is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them."
Welp.
UPDATE: And, naturally, the Trump campaign not only refuses to acknowledge the theft, but blames Hillary Clinton for trying to attack Melania:
"There's no cribbing of Michelle Obama's speech. These were common words and values, that she cares about her family, things like that," said Mr. Manafort. "I mean, she was speaking in front of 35 million people last night. She knew that. To think that she would be cribbing Michelle Obama's words is crazy."
He added, "This is once again an example of when a woman threatens Hillary Clinton, how she seeks out to demean her and take her down."
He
also said: "We're talking about words like compassion, love of family, respect. These are not words that are unique words, that belong to the Obamas." Unreal.
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