Thoughts about the election that don't seem to belong anywhere else

[ThelmaLou]

…
On Wednesday, as his nominees labor through confirmation hearings, the president-elect is expected to hold his first formal news conference since July, in New York. (A note of caution: Mr. Trump has a record of scheduling and then postponing promised events.)…

Cite

Will it or won’t it happen? Any bets?

[QuickSilver]

I’m inclined to think he’ll go through with it but it’ll be not so much a Q&A as another gish gallop sortie against his “enemies” by the orange [del]buffoon[/del] muppet elect.

[Fiveyearlurker]

@ThelmaLou

Will it or won’t it happen? Any bets?

Not only will it happen, but we’re gonna learn about the super secret intelligence that the Russians were not involved.

[elucidator]

Oh, he meant* this* Tuesday or Wednesday!

[ThelmaLou]

…Trump is keen to avoid microbes, particularly those transmitted via touch. He is not alone in the world of celebrities and politicians, some of whom have been labeledgermaphobes of varying degrees. Toward the end of his life, billionaireHoward Hughesholedhimself in dark hotel rooms to dodge perceived germ threats.Television host Howie Mandel, who has spoken about struggling with germ fears, handles his anxiety with a far less extreme method: Mandel rarely shakes hands, preferring the fist bump.

But legion are the palms a president must grip. In June, Barack Obama half-joked that George W. Bush’s most sage advice was to always usehand sanitizer. The New Yorker once estimated that a president pumps about 65,000 hands over the course of a year. Trump, for his part, has called shaking hands a “barbaric” practice, fearingthe flu and “all sorts of things.”…

Cite

Maybe he can popularize bowing. Other people to him, that is.

[soonerblue]

Is there a fetish category that only likes to watch salacious pee-pee games? Not getting any on him of course…

[foolsguinea]

Trump is sort of the Bieber of USA politics.

If Trump is the Bieber of USA politics, is Don King the Usher? :shudder:

[foolsguinea]

@HurricaneDitka

I really doubt this. I know the far left is freaking out over his Cabinet picks, but most people don’t care. Most people couldn’t name more than one or two of his nominees, and very few people (in terms of a normal TV audience size) will make any effort at all to watch any nominee’s hearing.

ETA: let me put it this way: I strongly suspect more people will spend more time watching the Celebrity Apprentice than watching all the nominees’ hearings combined.

OK. Did those people vote?

[foolsguinea]

@Omg_a_Black_Conservative

No, they won’t. Only the most politically “attached” dedicate time to following confirmation hearings. The election is over, as a result most people have tuned out, so to speak. I doubt any significant percentage of those people who have continued to follow politics are following the hearings, much less with any sort of interest.

I’m not watching the confirmation hearings myself. That doesn’t mean I don’t want them to be done properly.

I don’t watch the NBA, either, but that doesn’t mean I want the refs to be fired and the games to be played out of order.

[foolsguinea]

Donald Trump isn’t that big a germaphobe. Ask Billy Bush.

[HurricaneDitka]

@foolsguinea

OK. Did those people vote?

Yeah, something like 130 million people voted. I’m certain most of them aren’t paying rapt attention to the confirmation hearings.

[foolsguinea]

OK. Does that mean that the cabinet picks objectively don’t matter?

[HurricaneDitka]

@foolsguinea

OK. Does that mean that the cabinet picks objectively don’t matter?

No, they matter, a bit. It’s just a well-known fact that most people don’t pay much attention to them, or at least their confirmation hearings.

[foolsguinea]

OK, but this is a politics thread.

Most people know nothing about microbiology, and don’t even want to know. But if you’re studying pre-med, you have to study it.

If we have a democracy, and we only pay attention to the Presidential campaigns and then tune out, we’re doing it wrong.

[ElvisL1ves]

The best television listing ever, thanks to the Scottish Sunday Herald:

President Trump: The Inauguration
4pm, BBC One/STV

After a long absence, The Twilight Zone returns with one of the ambitious, expensive and controversial productions in broadcast history. Sci-fi writers have dabbled often with alternative history stories – among the most common is the “What if The Nazis Had Won The Second World War” setting – but this huge interactive virtual reality project, which will unfold on TV, in the press, and on Twitter over the next four years, sets out to build an ongoing alternative present.

The story begins in a nightmarish version of 2017 in which huge sections of the US electorate have somehow been duped into voting to make Donald Trump president. It sounds far-fetched, and it is, but as it goes on it becomes more and more chillingly plausible. Today’s feature-length opener concentrates on the gaudy inauguration of President Trump, and the stirrings of protest and despair surrounding the ceremony, while pundits speculate gravely on what lies ahead.

It’s a flawed piece, but a disturbing glimpse of the horrors we could stumble into, if we’re not careful.

[E-DUB]

The nice thing about the “deplorables” line is that is was self-selecting. If you took offense at Hillary labeling half of trump’s supporters as deplorable, you’re probably in that half.

For the record, I’m a Democrat who, for only the second time in my life, voted in the Republican primary. I voted for Governor Kasich who, even though I agree with him on almost nothing, at least seemed to possess a modicum of decency. Decency should be encouraged, especially in Republicans.

But scares me really isn’t so much trump, but the possibility that trump himself may merely be a transitional figure, a Kerensky or a Hindenburg. You gotta wonder who Boobus Americanus will vote for next once they realize that trump isn’t going to drain the wall or swamp her up or whatever pithy three-word phrase he comes up with next.

[ThelmaLou]

Changed his mind…

President-elect Donald Trump is no longer expected to visit the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture in observance of Martin Luther King Day, senior level transition sources tell ABC News.

Senior sources initially said Trump would visit the museum, but ABC has learned that the visit was removed from his calendar due to scheduling issues and was not fully planned out.

Trump is expected to visit the museum sometime after he assumes office, the sources say. He will commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. Day in Washington, D.C., in another way, though details were not immediately available today…

Cite

[elucidator]

@ElvisL1ves

The best television listing ever, thanks to the Scottish Sunday Herald:

The Rev. Mr. Swift chuckles approvingly, and passes it over to Mr Twain, who remarks that it is wise of the Scots to import the Irish to write their humor.

[Velocity]

ISTM that a lot of pollsters who were predicting that Trump had no chance of winning, were using a sort of statistical ad hominem. They weren’t claiming that Trump was unelectable based off of his actual polling data, but rather because the notion of a President Trump was so ludicrous to their ears that they couldn’t picture or fathom it.

If another Republican - say, Robert Gates or Paul Ryan - had been trailing Hillary by the same single-digit figures that Trump was trailing Hillary by, then the pollsters wouldn’t think a Gates or Ryan victory that unthinkable.

[HurricaneDitka]

@foolsguinea

If we have a democracy, and we only pay attention to the Presidential campaigns and then tune out, we’re doing it wrong.

I agree. Lots of people are doing it wrong.