Trump, May 2017: 100 days of [unintelligible]

and then we will invent the spindizzy and all the cities will fly away. #blishforpresident

cool, turn them all into wild space

xp

freeing companies to expand and invest outside metropolitan areas. Those gains never materialized.

huh gee I wonder why that would be, maybe the wsj has some insights

xxxps

Not trying to argue this point too much, just maintaining that Trump carried no county nor city of any considerable population in California.

FWIW, Bakersfield voted Trump.

Final numbers/visualization
http://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/sov/2016-general/ssov/pres-by-political-districts.pdf
http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-pol-ca-california-neighborhood-election-results/

Bakersfield is rural as fuck. Also a former oil boom town (milkshakes were drunk there). Also has a large basque minority for some reason.

the GOP House Majority leader also reps Bako

From what I understand, the uneducated american middle class care a lot about gun rights

I'm not so sure about the "middle class", but the gun rights issue is powerful and intractable everywhere in rural America. It's a combination of things. Guns having always been more common in rural households, and there is a strong association of guns with security. Both in terms of the sheriff might be 50 miles away and guns put food on the table due to hunting game.

But I think there is also a deep-seated feeling in rural areas that they are embattled, fighting and losing a war for economic viability. Rural people don't know exactly who to blame for this (except immigrants) or how to fix it, but they feel better if they have a gun (five guns more likely), because they are damn sure they have enemies and someday they may need to shoot them.

Because it is interwoven with so much fear and anger, you just aren't going to have much success arguing people out of their position on guns. The only message that's going to resonate is to mirror back their feelings, which doesn't get us closer to curbing gun violence. But until conditions change, preaching gun control just amps up the (mostly rural - see electoral map for details) resistance and empowers republicans, who are more than happy to win those votes, turn them into tax cuts for the rich, and screw over those rural voters worse than the democrats ever would.

Also has a large basque minority for some reason.

Ain't no 'for some reason' about it, there's a very good reason:

http://articles.latimes.com/1989-04-16/news/mn-2496_1_california-s-basques-basque-shepherds-sheep-business

Bakersfield is a post-apocalyptic shithole that I pass through on occasion/deal with for work (but it's pretty far from SF)

but thx for the link Elvis, the LA Times map is great and does indicate regions in the Bay that are pretty close to me (sparsely populated and rural - but duh) that went for Trump

xp

Also has a large basque minority for some reason.

ranching

lol xp

why didn't Merle Haggard write more songs about Basque sheepherders

From what I understand, the uneducated american middle class care a lot about gun rights

uh the educated middle class does too

why didn't Merle Haggard write more songs about Basque sheepherders

Probably did and just changed the names.

Also has a large basque minority for some reason.

― officer sonny bonds, lytton pd (mayor jingleberries), Friday, May 26, 2017 2:15 PM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so does Elko NV apparently

Yup, was just (very randomly) reading up on the Basques of Nevada the other week. There's a Center for Basque Studies in Reno:

http://basque.unr.edu/

And that was also the heritage of Paul Laxalt, which I didn't know about at all until recently. But with an 'x' in the last name I should have guessed!

Probably did and just changed the names.

― Ned Raggett, Friday, May 26, 2017

"I'll love Itxaso Jackson til I die"

this movie features basques crossing the wild west towards california, defending themselves via the means of pelota

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e1/Thunder_in_the_Sun_FilmPoster.jpeg

"The film is infamous among Basques for its misunderstandings of Basque customs"

Meantime, whomp whomp

"Bannon used to go around bragging that he ran Drudge" https://t.co/DVm7nDba5B cc: @DRUDGE

— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) May 26, 2017

Biggest Basque community in the US is in Boise, with a mayor of Basque descent who speaks Basque fluently, too (no small feat)

Jeff Chandler kinda freaks me out.

I've got several good friends of Basque ancestry. The Catalans are more mysterious, man.

he was versatile though...

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3mjqpUrBFGQ/VXOX0L0KVbI/AAAAAAAAcSw/NV1siVRqkr4/s1600/Flecha-rota%2B%25289%2529.jpg

http://www.doctormacro.com/Images/Chandler,%20Jeff/Chandler,%20Jeff%20(Two%20Flags%20West)_01.jpg

their food is also delicious. I do not apologize for this thread derail btw.

i keep feeling like there should be another huge D.C. protest. keep the pressure on. maybe Dump's head will pop off.

big signs that say WE REFUSE TO SPEAK RUSSIAN! COMRADE TRUMP MUST STEP DOWN! TRAITORS OUT OF THE WHITE HOUSE!

stuff like that.

I do not apologize for this thread derail btw.

OTM, I ate at a Basque restaurant in Winnemuca and it was delicious

I'm enjoying imagining the three of them trying to deal with a (self-inflicted) crisis mode.

Trump, with Bannon and Kushner, to set up 'war room' crisis management unit to address Russia probe - officials https://t.co/SKbs3MCwPe

— Reuters Politics (@ReutersPolitics) May 26, 2017

^ Good. This will consume nearly all their energy for a while to come.

Here, we see the three of them in one of their spirited 'war room' daily meetings. (Spicer, having wandered into the room, is on the floor contemplating his life choices.)

https://thecinefilewrites.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/reservoir-dogs-03.jpg

Boehner pops up for a Tiger Beat on the Potomac appearance

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/26/john-boehner-trump-disaster-238862

lol Ned

OTM, I ate at a Basque restaurant in Winnemuca and it was delicious

― HONOR THE FYRE (sleeve), Friday, May 26, 2017 2:58 PM (twenty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i really want to go to san sebastian and just eat and drink my face off

i took today off, what's happened?

Trump removed his mask and he is actually Hillary

Boehner praised the president for his handling of international affairs and foreign policy, especially his aggressive stance toward the Islamic State.

What? I fail to see any concrete actions that indicate a change in policy toward ISIS. He went ahead and backed the Kurds for the Raqqa, even though it pisses off Turkey, but Obama was already preparing to do the same thing.

in other news

"Some of the drop in approval comes from Republicans," noted Fox News in its write-up of the survey. In their poll, Trump's support among GOP voters had hovered between 84 percent and 87 percent during his tenure in the White House, but in the new survey that fell to 81 percent. Fifty-three percent of white voters without a college degree approved of the job Trump has done, a decrease of 9 percentage points in just one month.

Spent several days in San Sebastian several years ago. Beautiful. The trash cans were all tagged with ETA graffiti that said "vote aqui."

I fail to see any concrete actions that indicate a change in policy toward ISIS

Boehner didn't say there was a change in policy.

perhaps I haven't come across one as such, but I have not read a reckoning re: how very very peculiar it is that the conservative movement/ latest iteration of the republican party are now going through all sorts of contortions on behalf of Russia. Rather like a lot of shit that's gone down in the past 2 years, this turn of events would have been utterly inconceivable from 1946 to the Reagan era. Is it simply that Putin's Kremlin is shorn of any intimation of socialism and makes no pretense towards any value other than the demonstration of sheer power, and so its okay to risk entanglements that would have resulted in shrieks of treason from the GOP during the 20th century?

right-wing plutocrats stick together

Boehner was just grasping for something good to say. Trump's foreign policy has been an incoherent and ineffective mess so far, except where it is a straightforward continuation of Obama's policies.

OTM, I ate at a Basque restaurant in Winnemuca and it was delicious

― HONOR THE FYRE (sleeve), Friday, May 26, 2017 2:58 PM (twenty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i really want to go to san sebastian and just eat and drink my face off

― jason waterfalls (gbx), Friday, May 26, 2017 8:20 PM (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There right now ;)

my dad's been baffled by the Russia thing too. My explanation of the GOP's magical waving away of cognitive dissonance is that for their largely ignorant voting base, Russia stopped being evil when they surrendered to Reagan, and any larger context/details are just noise that they don't care about (who among them can point to Ukraine on a map etc.)

xp

Doesn't seem so complicated, conservatives admire Putin/Russia for the same reason they admired Francoist Spain or Pinochet's Chile. Russia is a plutocratic and intolerant kleptocracy, in many ways a model of ideal conservative governance.

yeppers

"look at this guy, he wrestles bears and tickles children, he must be alright!"

Putin is such a lovable fellow, there's plenty on the (far) left who like him too.

[citation needed]

In Europe, definitely.

is that some "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" shit? cuz I don't see what leftist principles Putin embodies.