"is one crazy Muslim away from presidency."
To me that sounds like Trump is VP and he put a crazy Muslim at the top of the ticket. Which, given the lengths they're going to try to frighten everyone, might be their next move.
Thank you for taking the time to provide us with your valuable information. We strive to provide our candidates with excellent care and we take your comments to heart.As always, we appreciate your confidence and trust in us.
I guess Indian candidates also rely on fear of crazy Muslims.
Or as the Germans would put it, Amoklaufer Shitstorm
I'll stand by my previous comments: I don't actually think that an attack by Islamic terrorists will throw the election to Trump. I think that his response and demeanor would be so flagrantly inappropriate that Clinton would look like the calm, strong leader we need.
To explain the background to that, I read something a week or two ago arguing that it's not that chaos and fear lead to greater support for conservative candidates and/or non-incumbents. It's that chaos and fear lead to greater support for calm, strong candidates. Trump didn't see even a tiny bump after Orlando because his response was... unreassuring. He essentially is the candidate of chaos.
My corollary, that cop-killing is good for Trump, is that in that case, the two sides aren't chaos vs. calm, it's a much more familiar American dynamic of blacks vs. cops, and Trump is clearly the candidate of the latter, and that's a majority of Americans. Or at least a bigger minority than he otherwise commands.
Yeah, I'd say crazy black + 24/7 media saturation + over-reacting cops might well do it. Positive feedback loops get loud quickly.
Until Obama stops killing police officers with his body language, we'll never have domestic order.
Yeah, Clinton needs to get on that right quick. Too bad there's no Sister Souljah who says, or could be presented as saying, killing cops is a great idea.
I think all the gangster rappers from my youth are now playing police officers on TV.
Trump has it in the bag now. He's been endorsed by North Korea.
Clinton should be able to make hay with this, but she's probably too dull.
An endorsement he secured some time ago.
Twice.
I came here to say basically 6, but can't say it any better than 6.
I came here to say basically 6, but can't say it any better than 6.
But you can say it more often.
Nothing much seems to be moving his poll numbers from around 40% (Islamic terrorism or otherwise). The movement is from people supporting Hillary to going undecided/third-party or back.
13 gets it right, but I can't say that I agree with 14.
16: I'm curious whether what's looking like a disaster of a convention will matter, whether he'll get the standard bump, no bump, or even a negative bump (likely in the form of movement to HRC).
If I were on my computer, there'd be a post about Melania Trump.
If it weren't for Hillary, you'd be on your computer.
Phones are computers too.
This was a good post, if I do say so myself.
23: I believe he is saying we already discussed Melania Trump's speech in 2008 when it was delivered by Michelle Obama's speech.
Do we all agree that this must have been deliberate sabotage?
24.1: That should end "Michelle Obama." I no speak too good.
I believe I was saying the same thing he said but with More American. Because I will never give up or let you down.
Melania knows the rules, and so do I.
Seriously- we've known each other for so long.
27: But I don't! What are you talking about?
The question I still have is was this the work of a true patriot doing their part to save the American experiment in democracy? Or was this part of an intra-Trump feud with children of earlier wives trying to make Melania look bad?
It's not like they've previously shown a knack for competence and professionalism.
Latest from JMM suggests that she might have written most herself. Which still doesn't answer the question because she could be trying to save the country from her husband. Immigrants- they get the job done.
33: The person that did it is probably the source for that story.
Marrying Donald counts as a job Americans aren't willing to do.
35: You'll find out how wrong you are when Donald is the next Bachelor.
So, maybe the wrong tone here. What I've heard from my mostly peripheral contact with people who are either into Trump or who will consider voting for him are the following two things:
1) Hillary Clinton lies and steals.
2) I don't take Trump's crazy statements at face value. His way of speaking directly and sincerely while addressing my concerns, not like a typical politician, shows that he's a good alternative, a way to shake up a broken system.
I think that 2 is a dead end with even a very low level of information. It only holds up if T is taken solely at his own soundbite terms, fragile to even the most rudimentary knowledge of his actions, which are going to get broadcast over and over again. Nixon got elected as a law and order candidate in 1968, after a bunch of US cities had large-scale riots and the DNC and surrounding protests was a bloody media circus. I claim that 1968 was particularly bad for giving people real reason for fear. I don't think I know anyone in a swing state well enough to talk politics, though.
I wouldn't be at all comfortable thinking that (2) won't hold up. Remember how Romney and Ryan openly proposed getting rid of social security and huge cuts on taxes for the upper income tax brackets? That first sentence in (2) is one of the single biggest reasons that that didn't especially hurt them.
Low to moderate information voters will absolutely 100% continue to believe that his crazy statements are exaggerations or misquotations or whatever as long as humanly possible and dismiss reports to the contrary because not doing that means accepting that our political system is genuinely, seriously that far removed from the reality they were assuming it was, and that it's bad enough that not paying attention to it (let alone cheerfully voting Republican because, hey, that's what my family has always done) is genuinely morally reprehensible. I'm not saying that they'll do it indefinitely, but I would never bet on them doing it soon enough to make a really big difference.
Also, for people in the mood the current lineup of (political) bets here is hilarious. I want to know how they handicapped that. I mean, when it comes to which candidates will win what I can see how you'd go about giving odds, but how many times there will be a break in Trump's speech for booing? No idea.
Way more than six. Most of his speech will be about Hillary Clinton.
"From a drop of water a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other."
Melinda Trump
I'll stand by my previous comments: I don't actually think that an attack by Islamic terrorists will throw the election to Trump. I think that his response and demeanor would be so flagrantly inappropriate that Clinton would look like the calm, strong leader we need.
Fivethirtyeight has some polling data. The most interesting thing is that Clinton has an advantage on almost every single issue except Trump has a small advantage on "Economy/Jobs" and ISIS).
Trump has a narrow edge on terrorism (and it grows a bit larger if polls ask about the Islamic State group specifically). But Clinton has an almost 2-to-1 advantage on foreign policy and on the handling of race relations. She leads by 18 percentage points on handling an unnamed international crisis. She also has an edge on immigration, which Trump has tried to tie to terrorism and crime. Neither candidate has an advantage on guns. Recent polls haven't asked explicitly about crime.
The last time I checked the line for over/under was 6.5 so 41 and 42 have some betting to do.
We're going to stop naming our international crises? I suppose it's possible that we've run out of names.
Every international crisis has been renamed "DaveL."
Is this still about Taylor Swift/Wests or have we gone back to the campaign?
It's about the petulant children, duh.
This makes me feel like I do understand Set Theory or that it doesn't matter than I don't know Set Theory.
You know the set theory that matters but you don't know the set theory that doesn't. Assuming that words like "the Continuum Hypothesis" mean nothing to you.
I love the old Robert Ludlum books.
Where by "set theory that doesn't matter" I mean stuff that matters to foundational mathematics, but is esoteric and usually ignorable if you aren't deep into that level of math/logic/philosophy.
People have mentioned it at times, but it's never been on the test.
I don't actually think that an attack by Islamic terrorists will throw the election to Trump.
I hope you are right,* but my fear is that, as ogged so eloquently puts it, we are one crazy Muslim away from a Trump presidency. An incident on American soil in September or October? The Donald and his First Third Lady Melania are redecorating the White House in 24K gold and marble, with fountains and cherubs and maybe some faux-equestrian touches (classy!).
*I also, needless to say, hope we need not test your hypothesis.
One thing I always thought about the art in D.C. is that it didn't have enough nipples. European capitals have art that is full of nipples.
the art in D.C. is that it didn't have enough nipples.
Are you suggesting that D.C. lacks the contemporary, avant-garde art of liberal, topless Europe? Or that D.C. lacks the devotional tradition of artistic representations of Madonna and Child (because Our Lady is almost always breastfeeding an infant, or maybe even a toddler, in those pictures, and nobody in Europe is offended, because Madonna and Child).
Nice that he got to stand right behind her. I suppose small delegations have advantages for photobombing.
58: I was thinking of the Trump Taj Mahal.
Did Ben Carson really call Clinton a Satanist?
At least Garry Marshall didn't live to see this.
The Trump speechwriters did the copy/paste thing again, apparently:
https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status/755601024908300288
This is just recycling—same guy wrote the speech & the article.
pretty unbappy with DC art. Fucking Hirshhorn has their best stuff in inaccessible storage-- great pieces by Richter and Schnabel, in some shitbead's sub-basement.
And after all of today's Melania chatter they still didn't run everything through a checker? Not technically plagiarism, but amazing. Pushes me further to the Producers hypothesis.
I think they're much more likely to be staggeringly incompetent than deliberately subversive. It is kind of amazing that we're debating about which of those labels applies to the campaign of a major party presidential nominee, admittedly.
It doesn't make me believe the Producers hypothesis, tbc.
While I still believe incompetence to be the best way to interpret the Trump campaign, the sheer magnitude of the apparent incompetence really is breathtaking. It's particularly astonishing how unforced most of these errors are, and how easily they could have been avoided.
I mean, openly embracing white nationalism and the politics of resentment is bad enough, but it would totally have been possible for them to do it without also plagiarizing all their speeches.
It might bespeak unconditional inviolate status for the Trump clan, no enforced oversight from Manafort or anyone else, that the two big things have been with their speeches. Makes me wonder what the others have coming up, especially Tiffany.
Yeah, there definitely seems to be some sort of deference for the Trump family at work here.
Ivanka is alleged to be the smart one, which implies that she's less likely to plagiarize her speech. We'll see.
TRUMPEACH THE TRUMPEROR
55: Trump has fumbled every single opportunity he's had to capitalize on anything that could be even semi-plausibly called a "radical Islamist attack" since his campaign began. Every. Single. One. He even persuaded one of his own former staffers to break with him and publicly announce that he didn't really want the Presidency after the infamous "I alone can solve" tweet. Worry about realistic things.
Starting out so stupid nobody felt required to take him seriously was how he won the primary. That and the assholes who voted in that primary. But the point is worrying about it is what keeps it from being realistic.
Worrying about the result while still assuming that sanity would prevail didn't win us the Brexit referendum.
But assuming it would fail and thus putting it up for cheap political points lost it.
Assuming your opponents will fail to win the popular vote purely because they're incompetent liars does seem like a pretty dicey proposition, given recent experience.
It's fairly salutary to reread Nate Silver from almost exactly a year ago on how unlikely he thought it was that Trump would win the nomination.
Worrying about the result while still assuming that sanity would prevail didn't win us the Brexit referendum.
I thought sanity would not prevail and it still didn't.
83: Just in terms of getting through the day marginally sane, it's hard to know what the best alternative is.
This is straying into magical thinking. Trump will either win or lose, even if we manage to think the right thoughts about it.
I'm not straying into magical thinking about anything but the telepathic powers of children born right at the time of the partition of India. Assuming Trump can't win makes it more likely that he will win. You need to get people to vote and whatnot. This is harder if it is assumed he can't win.
Trump will either win or lose, even if we manage to think the right thoughts about it.
So learn from our experience, get out there and fucking ORGANIZE! If I were a US Democrat right now, I'd be terrified by my side's lack of a positive emotional hook like Obama's "Yes We Can" to counter the image Trump is putting out: the alpha-male silverback beating his chest and roaring with rage as he looms over the unlikeable, crooked grandmother. Quite seriously, what has Hillary got to compete with that?
Not giving a speech that explicitly insults 75% of the people eligible to vote?
I am curious about how Clinton will run the campaign in the general. Especially if there are debates.
89: You mean that we, people on the Internet, should write Clinton's campaign slogan for her? How does that work?
Or how about, "YESTERDAY'S GONE, MOTHERFUCKERS!" -- see it references the Clinton's beloved old campaign song, but adds a little edge.
93 is good and necessary, but ot sufficient.
Actually, knocking on doors, calling folks known to support Dems, will make a huge difference not just in the presidential race, but in whatever state/local races there are.
Talking, in public, early and often, about how utterly unsuitable Trump is is also worth something. The Zeitgeist is made up of millions of tiny particles.
Thinking may not do much good, but active engagement is better than glum resignation.
100.2: Darn! I'm so much better at thinking and glum resignation.
The zeitgeist is star stuff.
Charley gets it. "Getting out the vote" is what it's called. Neither sexy nor easy, but half the point of having organised political parties at all.
100.1 is mostly what I'm doing.
I don't know if I told this story at the time, but when we had our spring break DC meetup, Nia didn't want to go into Busboys & Poets because they had a picture of Trump with his delegate count up (along with all the other candidates at the time) and she's only interested in Girl President, as she calls Clinton. I had to explain and show her they weren't saying any of the people in the restaurant were fans of his, just that they were marking what was happening. She was still skeptical, but willing to believe me for pancakes.
Almost certainly I'm part of the problem, but knocking on doors with three black kids in tow while trying to move is not on my priority list. So I'm taking the easier way out and talking but not actually volunteering.
How about "WE CAN DO IT!" -- with Hillary posed like Rosie the Riveter?
Too certain. How about "It's very likely that we can do it, but the world has more contingencies than we can plan for."
She was still skeptical, but willing to believe me for pancakes.
The archetypal independent voter!
I like the Girl President concept.
Or
GRANDMOTHERS FTW! VOTE HILLARY!
"Isn't it Girl President already?" is usually how it gets expressed. ("STILL not over??")
How about "Girls go to college to get more knowledge, boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider"?
I don't know if she wants to use Hamilton lyrics.
The bizarre element about the Trump candidacy that I wasn't expecting is the whole Ottoman-family element, with the children of the senior wife at war with the junior wife and so on.
Hillary's slogan should be "Keep America Great!"
115 Or "America is great, asshole." But she'll probably go for "Vote for me, I'm qualified."
115 Or "America is great, asshole." But she'll probably go for "Vote for me, I'm qualified."
||
The Turkish government has fired 11,000 teachers for being part of the coup. Thank God we're avoiding the crackdown that Barry Freed warned us would follow a successful coup.
|>
Don't recall anyone suggesting Erdogan would not crack down. Link?
What do you know, Tiffany Trump had already spoken when Donald Jr. did (for 5 minutes).
120, 122. In fact it was entirely predictable (though the scale of this one is astonishing). Yet another reason to oppose coups, as if you should need one.
72, 73: Plagiarism could be incompetence; plagiarizing Michelle Obama has to be sabotage.
Barry, can you recommend any blogs/whatever on Turkish politics?
BELIEVE ME FOR PANCAKES! is a good slogan.
I won't promise to believe you, but you can totally make your pitch while I'm eating.
Well nobody supports failed coups. I mean, other than bloodthirsty members of the ruling clique.
Lee Iacocca supports failed coupes.
Well nobody supports failed coups.
Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
Why, if it prosper none dare call it treason.
And the RNC is now officially disease-ridden.
125 Not really knowledgeable about Turkish politics blogs but I follow a few Turkish political accounts on Twitter, though mostly for other reasons (cultural commentary).
Do you follow Zeynep Tufkekci? She's pretty excellent and interesting and was there at the time of the coup.
Mustafa Akyol, a journalist and worth reading
Ezgi Basaran, another journalist.
And a number of others I can't find right now.
131 I'm worried this could turn into the Rage virus from 28 Days Later.
Thanks Barry. Don't do Twitter, but following up those names.
Zeynep is well worth your time generally, she's a sociologist IIRC. Really good on tech and society issues.
133: But how would they notice?
Speaking of political organizing, there are posters recruiting people to circulate a "petition on government transparency." The posters violate trademark (picture of Pikachu and the quote 'Gotta catch 'em all') and possibly labor law (pay is per signature). I'm wondering who this is. It reminds me of how Ralph Nader got sued off the ballot because of a similar incentive that resulted in lots of fake names.
You guys, you guys, the plagiarized speech was a brilliant move by the Trump team. Now all the snobby know-it-all liberals are complaining about plagiarism, but that's a school policy thing, who cares about that in a speech? Whereas real Americans just heard a princess of a woman give a really inspiring speech. If it pisses off wonky whiners, who cares why?
More seriously, I find it surprisingly interesting what was changed between the speeches. It's not happy-to-glad edits of the kind intended to throw off plagiarism detection, it's meaningful phrases added or removed. In the often-cited paragraph about their parents teaching them to treat people with respect, Obama said that she was taught to be nice to people "even if you don't know them, and even if you don't agree with them." Trump left that part out.
It is possible that I am an easily manipulated sucker, but I've been loving the ads I've seen of Hillary's. (Mind you, I live in CA and don't-even-have-a, so I only have to see political ads if I choose to.) But you know. Sweet faces. Dad and baby. People in ads with lots of shapes and faces. It is so nice not to be shouted at. It is so nice to have my tastes directly targeted by the ads. I like that they aren't the usual political clichés.
I keep hearing similar anecdotes about long time Republican couples. The man will vote for the Republican candidate, even Trump. But this year, the woman can't bring herself to vote. I think these kid-based ads are a real good approach for reinforcing that, if not bringing her over to vote for Clinton.
I also wonder if all the screaming about Satan is going to have the same effect on the Jewish vote that Buchanan did. Only 30% of Jews went for Romney in 2012, but that still leaves room to drop.
140 You mean the ones still willing to vote for Trump after he tweeted anti-Semitic based anti HRC propaganda?
141: There have to still be a few low-info ones left.
Maybe more are moved by antisatanism than antisemitism.
120: Barry clutched his pearls over our our values because we were pondering the upsides of a successful coup. (Actual quote "Your values suck.") Now, predictably, Erdogan is revealing himself to be the tyrant that he clearly always was, and taking steps to ensure that he will be leaving office only in a pine box.
141. Maybe "Jews for Jesus". I can't imaging many others.
New statement from Melania Trump's personal speechwriter (McIver) invoking the Doris Kearns Goodwin defense (confused notes with quotes).
144 Upsides for Americans removed from the consequences is not a look I like wearing. Every single opposition party came out immediately against the coup. The Turkish people came out against the coup and people put their bodies on the line against it. And I'm not ashamed to stand with them even as I despise Erdogan as many of them do. It's possible to hold these two things together you know.
Just so we can be clear, here is the ranking of desirable "Turkish coup" options that any sane person should agree with:
1) it would be much better if no coup had been attempted at all;
2) a successful "restore the secular values of Ataturk our former state" coup, if available (not clear that this is what this coup was, at all) would have been better than
3) a failed coup that allows Erdogan to full on consolidate power over the now-shredded remnants of the Kemalist state.
There, now we can all agree.
I don't agree to that. It depends on what you mean by "full on consolidate power".
Optimistically, we'll all get to have our cake and eat it not so far in the future when the army mutinies instead of killing the millions of protesters coming out against the pine box scenario.
"Optimistically". Kill me now.
149 - I mean "purge the judiciary, military, and educational system in massive numbers" which is what seems to be happening now.
It seems a little early on that. It's just common sense to do a little purging of the military after a military coup. I don't know about the rest of it.
147: Jesus Christ, will stop with the moral grandstanding? You are so noble to stand with the Turkish people. I've never heard anyone derive such self-satisfaction over their opinion on a conflict that they're not directly involved in, and I've been on the Internet 30 years now.
The Turks I know are enraged that Westerners are glad the coup failed, because they know that Erdogan is going to smash them and people like them.
Zeynep is well worth your time generally
Sigh. Shortly before my HS GF dumped my ass, I met an extremely cute redhead of this name. Shortly after my ass was dumped, I learned that she'd had a big crush on me, but had now moved on. I don't recall her last name, and occasional desultory Googling has never revealed her future. But that was one of the all-time near-misses.
They fired 2,700 judges. As a civil law system they need mire judges than we do but still, that's gotta be a huge chunk of the judiciary and an end to its independence.
For God's sake, bad results from the coup, even very bad results, do not constitute even weak proof that a successful coup would have been a better outcome.
That's true (see 1) but there are reasons to think thay a coup along traditional Turkish-military lines would be preferable to what's going on now, at least for secular Turks.
158: Sure, but ranting about our we're immoral because we're speculating about the upsides of the coup is dickhead behavior.
I just saw a headline that 21,000 teachers had been fired. Bad times for Turkey.
159: Is there much evidence that it was that sort of coup? Actual Gulenists don't seem like an improvement and I'm still not sure how much was spin.
I stand with the people of Tu...actually, as a Persian, I think I'm not supposed to like the Turks. If we have to have a jackass theocracy, they should have one too.
Gulen lives in Pennsylvania, so how good could he be?
I'd totally support Mobyocracy on the internet.
I still have yet to see any evidence of actual Gulenism in the wild. That said, the coup that didn't happen is always going to be sweetness and light compared to the crackdown that did.
Or eat his pancakes, at least.
Speaking of Persians, that reminds me that even if your standard of judging a government is how much it helps maintain the secular nature of the government, it's good to remember that repressing democratic sentiment can really backfire on you, theocracy-wise.
One friend of mine who's a political scientist who studies Turkey thinks it was not Gulenist.
146: Ranting is probably too strong, but I thought this comment and others in that thread were dickish.
162 - it's still pretty unclear AFAICT, see 148.2. But no one sane here or elsewhere to my knowledge has been saying anything stronger than "If this is like previous 20th Century coups by the Turkish army, which it may or may not be, having ithe coup succeed could be better than having it fail if a coup was going to happen anyway."
The Turks have apparently started extradition procedures for Gulen, so actual evidence or lack of it should be public quite soon.
"If a coup was going to happen anyway" is not a reasonable standard to use for comparison.
173: It is in Turkey! They have had four coups since joining NATO. I think this is the first failed one.
Plenty of people at first were thinking "OK fine, another coup, that is what traditionally happens in Turkey to keep radicals from consolidating their power"
I don't think anybody is arguing with 148.1. I also don't see what 148.1 being better than both 148.2 and 148.3 has to do with the ordering of views on 148.2/3.
175: And, in general, having fewer coups would seem like a positive step.
178: So you would have opposed the supposedly-planned coup against Hitler in 1938, and the actually-attempted coup in 1944?
Tell me, if you had a time machine, you wouldn't go back in time and kill Hitler as a baby? Just as I thought.
I wouldn't kill Hitler as a baby, because morals. I might kill his father.
Why do people always talk about killing baby Hitler? Why not kill soldier Hitler during WW1?
You'd kill a man named Alois? Hasn't he suffered enough?
Unless the time machine took me to when Hitler's father was a baby.
Also, I think that comparing Erdoğan to Hitler is not particularly defensible unless you are Kurdish. And if you are Kurdish, whoever planned the coup is probably just Hitlery as Erdoğan.
There's a Wikipedia page on the Hitler Family, if anyone is looking for a sitcom idea.
Would anyone blind or cripple Hitler as a baby? It would keep him out of the army in WWI and forestall his political career.
Or for the truly non-violent among us, there's the option to go back in time as an influential art critic, and make such a big fuss about how great Hitler's paintings are, that he never decides to go into politics at all.
172
When Erdogan did his previous purge of the military after an alleged coup plot was discovered, he and his minions just fabricated the evidence. Nothing to stop him from doing that again.
187: Just a question of whether the US will buy it.
182
I'd go back in time and cause Hitler's grandfather to not name Hitler's father Alois: something manly like "Gunter" or "Dwayne."
More broadly, a failed secularist coup plus more or less openly tyrranical leader in Erdogan feels like the final end of a particular form of government for Turkey which, while it had tons of very major flaws, was on the whole a big net success for almost a century, from about 1925-2005. Maybe the end was inevitable anyway and maybe Erdogan won't be as bad as he seems right now, or maybe something else will happen. Who knows. And tons of blame lies with the EU for not offering a plausible path to membership or semi-membership. But a hope for a more "normal" (by 20th C standards) Turkey, even if that Turkey was messed up,isn't crazy. In any event the attempted but failed coup is maybe not the worst of all worlds, but a pretty bad one.
Maybe it wasn't a failed secularist coup. Given how quickly the coup failed, it sure doesn't seem like the old Ataturk gang.
Nor is it clear what fraction of a Hitler Erdogan will amount to.
There's a Wikipedia page on the Hitler Family, if anyone is looking for a sitcom idea.
I think we can all accept that you need to be .08 Hitler to justify a coup and .23 to make it morally required to participate if you are able.
And in conclusion we all agree that we don't know what happened and we don't know what will happen.
Comity!
go back in time as an influential art critic, and make such a big fuss about how great Hitler's paintings are, that he never decides to go into politics at all.
But that's just punishing art lovers instead.
Given how quickly the coup failed, it sure doesn't seem like the old Ataturk gang.
Turns out that "getting the gang back together for one more coup" works better in the movies than in real life, especially when the members are over 100 years old.
BTW, I've been enjoying Johnny Pez's Drowned Baby Timeline, in which a careless nurse drowns newborn Hitler in his bath. I assume it, or another of his works, was linked here.
I'd forgotten Erdogan and Gulen used to be best buddies. And Gulenists have been fabricating coups for years:
a retrial finally resulted in the acquittal of more than 200 Turkish military officers who had been convicted of plotting a coup in 2003 against the then-newly elected Islamist governmentAnd are friends no more:
But, until recently, the "Sledgehammer" case - named after the fictitious coup plot - was widely viewed as heralding the long-overdue democratic subjugation of Turkey's meddlesome military to its elected government
One ally in particular was crucial. The Gülen movement...did the heavy political lifting.
Bugging devices were recently [2013] found in Erdoğan's office...Yet Erdoğan, known for his brash style, responded with remarkable equanimity. If he harbored any doubt that the movement sits on troves of embarrassing - and possibly far worse - intelligence, the bugging revelation must surely have removed it.
195: Gulenists look plausible:
We also know that Erdoğan was preparing to make a major move against the Gülenists in the military. A few officers had already been arrested for fabricating evidence in earlier trials, and it was rumored that a large-scale purge of Gülenist officers was in the works for next month's meeting of the Supreme Military Council.
So the Gülenists had a motive, and the timing of the attempt supports their involvement. It is a supreme irony that the coup Erdoğan long feared from the secularists may have eventually come from his one-time allies - who themselves were responsible for fabricating myriad coup plots against Erdoğan.
124: Could this story be true?
In working with Melania Trump on her recent First Lady speech, we discussed many people who inspired her and messages she wanted to share with the American people. A person she has always liked is Michelle Obama. Over the phone, she read me some passages from Mrs. Obama's speech as examples. I wrote them down and later included some of the phrasing in the draft that ultimately became the final speech. I did not check Mrs. Obama's speeches. This was my mistake, and I feel terrible for the chaos I have caused Melania and the Trumps, as well as to Mrs. Obama. No harm was meant.
I do think it should be a semi-moral value to oppose full-on undisguised rule-by-superior-firepower, such as military coups, with some consistency, regardless of whether they're objectively better or worse than what they replace (measured in short-term rat-orgasms). But the discussion here is so (inevitably) wrapped up in hypotheticals and unknowns that I suppose I got more worked up about it here than I should have and ascribed autocratophilia via uncharitable parsing.
208: Sure, but the hysteria made 201 possible, so maybe it's all worthwhile.
208 is a clearer version what I was trying to say except that uncharitable parsing is sort of my hobby.
I'm not sure what a long-term rat organs is, granted. Iain M. Banks / Harlan Ellison mash-up?
207: Possibly! I want to see independent confirmation of the fact that the supposed staff writer actually exists and isn't just Donald Trump wearing a dress and speaking in a high pitched voice about how great he is. I mean, it's not like he hasn't done similar things before...
Either way though that is probably the number one excuse you get from plagiarists, including ones where the plagiarism was very obviously intentional and not even remotely an accident. So that much rings true, at least.
Worry about realistic things.
Eh? I'm not sure this would really work for me. I engage in a lot of needless worry over unrealistic outcomes as a way of managing anxiety. Call it superstition, or magical thinking, or what have you. But the idea is to sort of prevent it from happening by having worried over it in advance.
So, for example, as I noted recently in another thread, I have an admittedly irrational fear of flying, even though I know that the odds are being killed in a plane crash are infinitesimally small. I also know that the odds of being killed or seriously injured in a car crash are quite a bit higher. But I don't really worry too much about auto accidents, because I have to drive a fair bit, and that's just a little too real -- if I gave in to worry over driving, I'd be more or less immobilized.
Anyway, given his determination to alienate the members of every demographic group save that of white males, I don't really see how Trump can win the general election. And yet. And yet. A year ago, I was confident (wrongly, as it turns out! I have never been more wrong about anything related to American politics) that the Donald couldn't possibly secure the GOP nomination. So now I don't know whether I should be worrying (unrealistic outcome?), or not (all too realistic outcome?).
216: Hey, your journey is your journey, whatever works.
I kind of just get impatient sometimes because I notice that liberalism in North America can have a tendency toward mordant defeatist Eeyorism (or maybe Threepio-ism? at any rate a constant pattern of shouting "We're doomed!") and being tempted to give up and throw the fight before they've even faced a punch, which against an opponent as spectacularly self-undermining as Trump is utterly ridiculous and a bigger threat to their chances against him than Trump himself is. So when you see me going in, that's what I'm about. Feel free to ignore me if that's totally unconnected to what you're doing.
Re: 216.3 all I'll say is that winning inside the Republican bubble is, especially at this time in GOP history, nothing to do with one's chances of winning the general. He managed to topple an obviously-rotten edifice and replace it with something even more rotten, but that doesn't make him Destiny's juggernaut by any stretch.
Sean Paul Kelley previous of Agonist, is now apparently in Turkey and reports at great length about the coup.
As of 3:00 AM Central Daylight Savings time in the United States the BBC estimated the following have been purged with more to follow:7,500 soldiers have been detained, including 118 generals and admirals
8,000 police have been removed from their posts and 1,000 arrested
3,000 members of the judiciary, including 1,481 judges, have been suspended
15,200 education ministry officials have lost their jobs
21,000 private school teachers have had their licenses revoked
1,577 university deans (faculty heads) have been asked to resign
1,500 finance ministry staff have been removed
492 clerics, preachers and religious teachers have been fired
393 social policy ministry staff have been dismissed
257 prime minister's office staff have been removed
100 intelligence officials have been suspendedAgain, the BBC makes a crucial observation: "The purge is so extensive that few believe it was not already planned. And there seems little chance that everyone on the list is a Gulenist."
Freed has apparently gone native and developed a taste for brutal torturing authoritarianism with a veneer of democratic legitimacy. Leave it to the crowd to connect it with Clintonism.
Jacobin article on Turkey by Guney Işıkara, Alp Kayserilioğlu, & Max Zirngast
My guess is a) false flag, or more complicated, b) a desperate attempt by Gulenists to save their lives knowing the purge of 218 was coming. Erdogan knew the coup was coming, and let it happen and fail.
Americans might read the SPK piece down to the games Turkey has been playing the week with Incirlik AF base, USAF platform for Syrian operations and the home of 60-70 tactical nukes.
Yeah sure, Erdogan seizes (with his 1/2 million man army) those fuckers we'll just atomize Ankara and Istanbul, right?
Sic Semper Tyrannis latest on Turkey, mostly about Incirlik and the hydrogen bombs based there
The state of emergency will be renewed over and over until he has consolidated absolute power behind his Islamist street mobs. IMO what he has in mind at present is to humiliate the US as he easily humiliated the EU. He is operating on the theory that the US is a feeble, weak minded "paper tiger." Others (Qaddhafi, Saddam and some of his predecessors) operated on the same theory. He wishes to make the Sunni world community believe that he has mastered the US by his superior force of intellect, character and adherence to what is essentially Muslim Brotherhood ideology. In re the air base at Incerlik, the power is still off, fuel supplies are dwindling as are all other kinds of supplies. the US part of the larger Turkish base is essentially besieged. He intends to force the US to extradite Gulen and in that way demonstrate his superiority. Depending on the outcome of that ploy he will decide how much father he can go at present with regard to the US. plpat lang
Whew. Sure glad the coup failed, huh?
Halford has the comfort of knowing bob is one his side.
He is operating on the theory that the US is a feeble, weak minded "paper tiger." Others (Qaddhafi, Saddam and some of his predecessors) operated on the same theory.
And, uh, how did that work out for them?
Comme ci, comme ça.
Followup to 215: SHE DOES EXIST!
Her job appears to be "covering for Trump by saying that some dumb thing he did/said was totally all on her" which is amazing.
Also I would do that thing so if anyone here is Trump*, hey there, hire me for that I will cost less seriously I have no shame.
*TigreIamlookingatyou.
"I have a speechwriter you haven't met. She's Canadian."
So apparently Laura Ingraham ended her speech with an actual Nazi salute.
And Ted Cruz pointedly refused to endorse Trump.
Wow that's.. something that really looks like something someone does after the realize they did it on camera rather than privately. I mean, sure, Laura Ingraham so it's not unbelievable. But still, good god.
227: McManus gets more malignantly crazy and incoherent with time, and I thought my respect for him had bottomed out in '08. I guess his occasional Weeaboo posts about anime and Japanese cinema must redeem it all.
Yes, it looks like she was going for the point and wave and slipped, but somehow slipped into a Nazi salute that she practices in front of the mirror each morning to get herself psyched up for the day. Like "I'm feeling good! Let's Nazi! Clear eyes race hate can't lose!"
Hah, I just saw that. They're all doing Nazi salutes in the bathroom mirror to psyche themselves up.
But seriously if 233 doesn't become an emblem photo for this year I dunno what will.
Why settle for crypto-fascism when you can just go all-out?
If I understand 233, Clinton can buy that picture for $575 and use it in her campaigning?
In 232, I guess the psych-up-in-the-mirror-Nazi-salute should really be "Clear Eyes! Full Hearts! Hate Jews!"
Apparently Cruz couldn't bring himself to endorse Trump.
Potentially at the last minute, actually up there at the podium.
God it's fun watching Republicans realize what they are, even if it's only for a few seconds.
231: Nah, the nation and world are becoming more malignantly crazy and incoherent, I have stayed pretty much the same. When you have a support group, which I don't, telling you all the craziness is over there on the other side, it's easy to pretend you're not looking in a mirror.
I'm a bit like Cornell West, y'all have moved away from me. Ten years ago it was possible to oppose pointless war and Empire while pretending to be a Democrat; now, anyone making that claim is...insane. That means all Clinton supporters.
Madness is rare in individuals, but common in crowds, Nietzsche said. I have always used that as a guide.
Can I play with madness?
The prophet stared at his crystal ball.
Can I play with madness?
There's no vision there at all.
A Fish Called Wanda was pretty good.
241: It's even stupider, turns out! Cruz supplied the exact text ahead of time, and they didn't realize it was a pointed non-endorsement, even to the point of having a following speech by Newt which referenced Cruz's endorsement, which section Newt ad-libbed over. And now Trump has felt the need to tweet about how entirely he doesn't care.
245 appears to be the emerging consensus, and it may well be true, but it also seems possible to me that the Trump campaign approved Cruz's speech precisely because they expected this reaction and wanted to make Cruz an object of hatred for the deranged crowd. This probably gives them more credit than their deserve given their repeated fuckups to date, admittedly.
And of course my line about the Trump campaign's fuckups include an obvious typo, but whatever.
As did my follow-up comment! Maybe I should read these before posting them.
249: Let's not set an unreasonably high bar to participation, please!
247: And there are other reports out intimating that the Trump people were waiting for this and stirred up the boos, so who knows really.
Yeah, that's what made me think of the alternative interpretation.
Cruz is a pragmatist when it comes to getting the completely insane and dangerous shit that he wants, so my guess is that he thinks that a Clinton Presidency with another insane obstructionist Republican congress might make it easier to get what he wants than a Trump Presidency with an insane Republican congress. That and he probably expects that Trump will lose and smart enough to not endorse a big loser while positioning himself so that he can say "well hurr durr what's so controversial about vote your conscience derp" and look like a more civil, moderate politician* when he calls for a federal abortion ban and a 5% flat tax in 2020. He's a slimy one, but I think people actually are wising up to Republicans pretending to clutch their pearls over where this party has gone so that they look like moderates.
I haven't made the comparison, but I think if I were to re-read George Romney's letter on why he skipped the 1964 convention side by side with Cruz's non endorsement of Trump, I'd end up weeping for the Republican party.* I'm sure if I looked into (George) Romney Republicanism I'd find lots to disagree with, but contemporary within-the-party alternatives to contemporary Republicanism are so much worse.
*Ok, there might be some schadenfreude too at how they've fucked up their own party.
But George Romney didn't get much farther in politics, as with Rockefeller, whereas Nixon dutifully fell in behind Goldwater, which apparently reaped him rewards later.
I suppose the key factor will be if Trump is like Goldwater, rearranging the party for a generation-plus, or a temporary aberration which everyone will be anxious to forget in four years. Maybe the latter could happen with an embarrassing enough landslide defeat, but there's so much potential for narratives like dolchstoss, unskew, fraud, etc. I'm not optimistic.
254: There's no way the Republicans don't blame Lyin' Ted (among others) if the election goes badly for them.
He does have a face that makes you want to assume everything is his fault. But I suspect this won't hurt him at all.
256: I'm thinking more about what the Republican party lost when that more liberal wing disappeared, not about any lessons for the future. There might have been hope for internal opposition to do something good in the Republican party in 1964 and now there isn't even that.
