The movie stuff is overblown in at least the prayer rug element, since that idea predates the movie by several years in the right-wing fever swamp (Breitbart 2014).

A friend of mine was at school with Miller and I treasure her snort of disbelief at a profile article that described how the young Miller had "divided his synagogue".
"That's not true at all. Everyone hated him."

I assume we have until the continuing resolution runs out.

I don't think you need to posit that Miller or anybody else is orchestrating Trump's worst ideas. Trump is orchestrating Trump's worst ideas.

I'm glad the first link is not what I feared: a breakdown of how various Steve Miller Band songs prophesied Trump policies, which would have given lourdes nightmares for decades to come.

I'm not sure Trump has any ideas at all. I feel like Fox News and Miller are orchestrating Trump like Daffy and Donald play Hungarian Rhapsody.

I think that's going easy on him.

Trump was doing plenty of horrible shit before Miller was old enough to be held responsible for even his own actions.

Semi-OT: McMegan is still a jackass.

The second link makes me feel better about America.

There's a fucking polar vortex going on and 1000 prisoners in a federal jail are without heat. WTF?

Wouldn't we all be better off if Trump spent more time contemplating the pompitous of love?

I think Trump is a stone cold racist, sure, but that Miller stiffens his spine when Trump is looking towards doing something regarding immigration that would be generally popular, but would be kryptonite to the unhinged base. My guess is that Miller reminds him, correctly, that immigration really is the one thing that could alienate the crazies, because it's the one thing they most care about. Tax cuts -- not going to make a difference to most of them. Manufacturing jobs? The people who supported Trump aren't looking for that kind of employment. No, they are fed up with (a) people of color expecting rights and (b) the 40+ year project of trying to get them to be less racist.

Right, but Trump hired Miller to do that job.

Miller's right, I think, about the political trade-offs involved.

I think there are a couple of different racisms at work. One is older, middle class or better people who don't like the idea of not being able to tell jokes that were funny in their youth and are vaguely alarmed by the idea of an America in which white people are not a majority, but generally behave decently toward people of other races and consider themselves egalitarian. That's a lot of Trump voters, some of whom are reachable to some degree. The other is downwardly-mobile white people who correctly perceive that racial equality means a loss of relative status for them and are deeply pissed off about that. Those are Hillary's deplorables and they're not reachable, but a stronger, more stable economy away from the major cities would reduce the temperature a bunch.

I don't think all of the unreachable racists are downwardly mobile. I think the common idea that they are is a huge fucking help to Trump.

16: I think that's right. there are a lot of stone cold racist suburban dads who make 60K a year and are rabid trump supporters spreading fake news on facebook. distracting readers with an endless series of thinkpieces on trump-voting yokels is an abdication of responsibility by the press, and a kind of sleight of hand that distracts from a huge part of the problem.

The whole idea is that the REACHABLE racists are downwardly mobile. Those are the ones who voted for Obama and then voted for Trump. Nobody has ever claimed the average Trump voter is the salt of the earth. Obviously the average Trump voter is the average lifelong Republican.

Low information voters do flip around more. Still, I think the midterm showed maybe the easier votes are in the suburbs.

As long as Trump is around, that's going to be true.