Miss... hit and explode.... look dumbfounded when things don't go as you intended. There will be TWEETS, I promise you!

No, not the kind of conviction Mueller is bringing. I mean conviction in the sense of deeply held belief. tRump does not truly believe in anything but himself. Imagine Obama working through the night, night after night, to get ACA ready. Obama had conviction. He truly believed that the government should make sure its citizens' health was protected. Now try to imagine the same from Donnie. Kind of difficult (if not impossible) to picture Donnie doing anything during the night except eating ice cream and tweeting nonsense.

Conviction leads to purpose, which in turn leads to hard work. If a politician is convinced he or she must help the people in some way, then that politician works tirelessly until that goal is accomplished. What exactly would the conviction behind ACA repeal be? Maybe that tRump knows better than Obama? It certainly has nothing to do with helping average Americans.

Yes, tRump is convinced he is better than everyone else. That is pretty damned obvious. He campaigned last year on the strength of that conviction alone. Many, many gullible people were swayed by the power of his conviction. If you yell loudly enough that you are the best, then people will start to believe as you do without proof. After a while, though, the absence of proof becomes unbearable, and the conviction that the person is the best becomes untenable.

Promises were made. Promises were based on tRump's conviction in his own superior competence. That competence has been tested and has been found to be sorely lacking.

I was thinking about the Mooch's latest swearfest. The question on my mind was, Is this the new norm and, if so, isn't there a good case against it being the new norm? Knowing that everyone in the WH is a good Christian, I wondered if I could find any remarks about profanity on a Christian website. Sure enough, I found plenty. I think that this article actually makes a decent case for why it is unChristian to use profanity.

The Trouble with Cussing Christians: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2013/april/what.html

Excerpt that caught my attention (author had been using marriage counseling as an example of where contempt is found):

Contempt is a mixture of anger and disgust, expressed from a position of superiority. It denigrates, devalues, and dismisses. It's not hard to understand why even subtle levels of contempt are damaging—not only in marriages but in all human interaction.

If profane language has a privileged place in the lexicon of contempt, then Christians have a unique mandate to avoid profanity. It's not that abstaining from pejorative language outfits us with some holier-than-thou halo. It's that we are called to live with a servant's heart, affirming the dignity of every human and the sacredness of existence.

I am posting this single response as my example because it is well reasoned and well explained. It makes sense, and you don't actually need to be Christian to accept its core premise in the last line.

It is, of course, absurd to think that a tRump goon would adhere to Christian principles. It is equally absurd to believe that tRump might be shamed by Mooch's profanity by showing him how unChristian it is. But I do like calling out the hypocrisy of the tRump WH. I also think that hitting the repugs here might cause some damage.

OMG!

Did a 9-year-old called ‘Pickle’ really write that letter to Trump? Yep, he’s real.:https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/did-a-9-year-old-called-pickle-really-write-that-letter-to-trump-yep-hes-real/2017/07/27/94090856-730c-11e7-8839-ec48ec4cae25_story.html?utm_term=.e22584593447#comments

We had eight years of Obama straining to hold down the lid on the seething cauldron of hatred we call America. Every single one of his gray hairs was earned. We had eight years of RWNJ talk radio stirring that cauldron. We had a year of the tRump campaign stoking the fire underneath. Now that cauldron has blown its lid sky high, and the hate soup has boiled over.

There is no way we can blame Obama for not doing more. Give me a break. He worked his damnedest against an obstructionist GOP.

There is no way we can blame Hillary or the DNC. Just what kind of message do you think was going to contain that hate and turn it to love and tolerance?

We MUST change our own narrative and admit that the problem lays with America's own innate blend of misogyny, racism, xenophobia, and homophobia. If we continue to try and come up with a message that reaches everyone, we are not addressing the real problem. Are Dems more afraid of losing votes than calling out the hate? Well guess what, we are already losing votes. Time for a radical revision in approach. Shun the haters. Screw them. We have a platform that takes care of the majority. To hell with you if you are only interested in keeping your neighbor down. You cannot join our party. We are not going to allow you to sway our party's ideals to suit your selfish desires. Be offended. We don't give a damn. Call us elitist because your definition of elitist is someone who has moral values. We aren't going to stick our finger in that cauldron to have a taste.

In other words, it's the strength of the message and the conviction behind it that will draw voters. No milquetoast appeasement crap from now on. No more casting blame on individual Dems who didn't win. They are part of the party, and the entire party is to blame. Time to suck it up and work together

https://twitter.com/SenJohnMcCain/status/889652943791824897

Some of the responses

https://twitter.com/dataandpolitics/status/889660164848013312

https://twitter.com/Zylie/status/889671013637603328

https://twitter.com/pax_8erna/status/889654666316963840

https://twitter.com/ZaackHunt/status/889661365367001100

The year was 1992. I was in college and full of high ideals. Perot and his numerous charts spoke to me about the things that concerned me at the time: rampant deficit spending coupled with a monstrous national debt. So I voted for Perot. I even put a Perot bumper sticker on my fridge. I was very proud of my contribution to the political dialogue.

Several years later, in graduate school, I had a TAship at UConn, and I led a discussion group once a week. I forget the exact nature of the discussion my students and I were having that week, but one undergrad student became very upset with the rest of the class. He stood up and lectured them on how wrong they were to believe our country was a two party system.

I had a very similar incident last fall when one of my students (who had just turned 18) told me she was very excited to be voting for the first time but had no idea whom to cast her vote for. She was very smart, very serious about voting responsibly, and she had no idea who was the better candidate.

My point is that I am still young enough to remember thinking I could change the world with my vote even if I voted third party. I smile inwardly when a new voter assumes the mantle of "participant in our democracy" with such zeal and so little understanding of how unfair the system truly is. I'm not going to preach educating these people in order to set them straight. I'm not even sure a few months on DU would convince them to vote strategically. I think they will learn about disappointment on their own after another election or two.

I won't post the pic because it will scare the faint of heart. I don't know what's worse, his "tan" or his veins. Just a little lactic acid buildup!

Link:http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2722442-tour-de-france-cyclist-shows-off-ridiculously-vascular-legs-after-16-stages?iid=ob_article_organicsidebar_expansion

I was thinking about this earlier, and it makes perfect sense. They have the divorce papers drawn up and ready to go, and then he has to go and win the stupid election. That would piss the hell out her. She's been fooling around with the SS detail, who must have some intelligence connections. Her name is already being dragged through the mud more than she could have imagined. What is there to lose? The best part of it would be that she gets revenge by driving him nuts over a scandal that is happening right under his nose.