Since she claims to be in some sort of fashion design business, I’d guess zero based on that horror show she was wearing.
Good point. Speaking of Melania’s plagiarism, NPR is reporting that a number of delegates in the hall expressed disgust in response to the revelation that she admires Michelle Obama. I knew their final explanation wasn’t going to go over well among the party faithful. (My wife hears more antipathy at work for Michelle than for Barack and Hillary combined–and she works at an elementary school, exclusively with female colleagues.)
Right? I was bummed that everyone seemed to be passing it by. Glad it’s starting to catch on, because…words can’t describe it. You just have to see it, especially the last two minutes. Here it is again, for convenience: http://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/michelle-van-etten-trump-is-ultimate-ringmaster/2016/07/20/ac3b1bec-4ec0-11e6-bf27-405106836f96_video.html
My 16-year-old son said this was “literally” (big Parks and Rec fan) the worst case of public speaking he is ever seen from anyone over 14, and maybe even under 14. And it was on national TV in primetime, from a lady involved in a pyramid scheme whose bio already looked ridiculous before we even saw her speak. Serious Keystone Kops situation among the people running this convention.
Yeah, was that supposed to be some sort of miniature cape, like flying squirrel style? :eek:
Clearly MMV, because to me he comes across, as I said, like a parody of a rich '80s douche, American Psycho style. (Is that his real voice?) And the photos of him holding the elephant tail he just cut off will come back to haunt him if he runs for office.
Yeah. In my head, I know that can’t be what she meant to do and it’s just an awkward attempt at a wave or something, but, watching the video, I’m hard-pressed to consider that explanation satisfactory. There’s just no reason to extend your arm straight out like that, locked elbow and palm down, if you’re trying to wave. Even in the completely innocuous photo of Carter linked above where the arm is straight, the arm is straight up, to be seen from far away, and the wrist is cocked in a wave. There’s just no confusion about what’s going on there.
The best I can surmise is that it was some sort of mangled pointing gesture, but really, who screws up at pointing? It’s just so odd.
Yes, but having a cadre of neonazi thugs on your side comes in handy when you need the crap knocked out of a would-be tomato-throwing BLM protestor. Or, you know, whatever losers need punched in the face.
She sells “franchises” and some of the products they claim to sell are sold by Alex Jones on his radio show.
I thought the opposite. I think it looks worse in a still frame, esp from the side.
The word “apparently”? Does that mean you assume this is so, or that you have explicit evidence? Reason I ask is, just as you point out, the wording of the thing is not really inflammatory, it simply doesn’t directly “endorse”.
Now, I could easily buy a rumor floating round about Cruz’s intentions. Pro-Cruz folks might well have thought it was better than Trump deserved, and prepared to bask in his gratitude. Anti-Cruz folks would want to insist on hearing the actual word “Endorse!”
And, of course, if the speech give to the RNC was, in fact, different that the one Cruz actually gave, that would be easy to prove, they would have done it already.
I wonder if the Republican Leadership will bring themselves to say “Radical Cruzlamic Terrorism”?
I want to see Bernie Sanders wholeheartedly endorse Hillary Clinton at the Democratic convention – prompting a cheery note that the ‘expert dealmaker’ was dumb enough to believe people would keep the promises he thought he’d haggled for, while our future president actually gets, y’know, results, by wisely convincing people to put aside their differences and cooperate.
If we can discuss policy for a moment: it’s interesting to hear how enthusiastically all the Republicans seem to be endorsing the concept of bring our manufacturing jobs back from overseas, by re-negotiating trade deals.
The GOP has traditionally been the party of Big Business, whom I’m sure are perfectly happy with having their manufacturing done in Bangladesh sweat shops. Has anyone resolved this disconnect?
Sure. They’ll just remove all of those pesky regulations that keep Americans from being treated like Bangladeshi sweatshop workers. Yay?
Isn’t it tradition for the Speaker of the House to be standing up there on the podium running the convention? Who’s doing that for this one?
Paul Ryan. He made the big pronouncement that the Donald J. Trump and Michael X. Pence are officially the nominees of the Republican Party.
A pundit on NPR said that he was blinking “torture” in Morse code while doing it.
“Good news! We tripled our workforce and still reduced the total payroll!”
I used to work in telephone directory distribution for over 20 years - my family owned one of the largest distribution companies, doing from 10 million to 40 million books every year, from 1985 to 2012. I did everything from delivering books myself to retrieving books out of innumerable dumpsters to corporate sales with ATT, Sprint, Verizon, etc to running the entire back office operation (7 departments, 125 employees): pretty much everything one can do in such a business, I did it.
As you can imagine, phone book delivery isn’t one of those insanely complex things - hell, my family’s business was noted for having the top 3 people having had college degrees - and the nature of the job itself is not at all attractive to people with, shall we say, more attractive options than trying to deliver 500 pounds of books with a Toyota Tercel.
What I’m saying is, the entire industry is full of WWE-Americans. I have dealt with them from 1984-2013 (when I finally got out of the industry for good), and there is one thing I am confident of: lazy-ass WWE-watching redneck boys and girls don’t vote. Oh, they bitch, they complain, they fuck and fight and fuck again, they love to go to rallies where they can drink beer, kick shit, and yell up a storm… but to actually go out and do something as prosaic as voting? Not the people I worked with.
Here’s what happens when push comes to shove to typical Redneck Man:
“You gonna go do <whatever that involves effort>?”
“Not today honey, my disability’s kickin’ up.”
“But, Gene…”
“I said NOT TODAY HONEY!”
So Trump can play to the WWE crowd all he wants, they won’t turn out for him.
This isn’t just one person’s observation, class bias in American voting patterns are deep rooted.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/income-gap-at-the-polls-113997#ixzz4F5PI5uYa
It’s true about the establishment. But opinion polls find that Democrats support trade deals significantly more than Republican voters, and ironically (given Bernie) young Democratic voters support them most strongly of all. So we are seeing the politicians shift to where the votes are.
I would assume that “class bias” in voting also comes from a sense of hopelessness and helplessness, more time pressures, and the difficulties of rural areas in stuff like infrastructure.
Trump’s speech was leaked to DNC by insider.
Agreed. Practically nobody actually self-identifies as a Nazi, or a KKK member, or any of that other nonsense. Some of the recent KKK “rallies” that have made the news have been completely farcical in terms of their single-digit turnout.
…AND YET, the idea that America is under siege by minorities and immigrants is powerful. The idea that America needs to return to some kind of mythological golden age is exactly what people like Trump appeal to. On almost a weekly basis we see police officers murder or assault black people for no identifiable reason whatsoever, and literally millions of people are voting for a candidate who promises a fascist government.
Because that’s what we’re talking about. It doesn’t matter whether anyone actually gets up in the morning and says, “I am a fascist.” 50% of Americans still support a political party built from the ground up on racist, fascist, and anti-intellectual ideology, they just choose to call it “Republicanism.”
Y’know, I could almost buy the narrative that Trump deliberately approved the speech just because he was raring for a fight, and wanted someone to punch at the convention… but if that’s the case, then the last thing he should have done was admit that he approved the speech. Admitting that is admitting that he wanted someone to beat up on him. That’s not the image of strength that he’s trying for.
And was that circus lady drunk? It looked to me like she was on the verge of passing out.