As ever: Thanks for absolutely nothing, Bob. Where were you in March?
“A Shakespearean tragedy unto itself,” says Bob Woodward, of Jared Kushner recounting an Oval Office conversation in which he said Kayleigh McEnany said Pres. Trump might be better off politically because of Covid-19.
“I said ‘is that possible?'” said an astonished Woodward. pic.twitter.com/6PudJZ26Jr
— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) October 29, 2020
WH Deputy Press Secretary demonstrates who’s really important:
Amazing that Gidley’s first impulse was to talk about the VP and not his supporters, that’s first-rate PR work right there. https://t.co/zD7KODUSyF
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) October 28, 2020
Trump’s base has no idea how much he despises them and everything about their lives. https://t.co/AbwLFUCxjQ
— The Hoarse Whisperer (@TheRealHoarse) October 29, 2020
You know how we think movies are unrealistic, when the villain says his plot out loud? https://t.co/q45YduGccZ
— Peter W. Singer (@peterwsinger) October 28, 2020
Trump literally installed a big donor as head of the postal service with the explicit instructions that he make sure people’s votes don’t arrive by Election Day, and then the guy did exactly that, you excruciating dork. https://t.co/6sDPvYMAKM
— Ken Tremendous (@KenTremendous) October 27, 2020
Remember Rich ‘Sparklepants’ Lowry, who thought Sarah Palin was the GOP’s future leader?
That’s all it was ever about. https://t.co/MnrygHxzOF
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) October 26, 2020
you say that these people just want a license to lie and people call you hyperbolic and then the senator from utah says i would just like permission to lie and welp https://t.co/HUfZQNy0p5
— the ribald sportsman (@CalmSporting) October 28, 2020
And finally… ‘LARPing Mark Felt’!
https://t.co/5zSZbLO8ST pic.twitter.com/rwcFymvp4d
— Zeddy (@Zeddary) October 28, 2020
this LARPing Mark Felt Professor Chaos bullshit made for a mildly amusing weekend 2 years ago. Before impeachment, before a Chernobyl-scale coverup of the pandemic.
Unless you’re the actual Ukraine whistleblower, shut the fuck up & live with the stain of your complicity forever.
— Zeddy (@Zeddary) October 28, 2020
Miles Taylor was a critical part of the team that decided to separated thousands of migrant kids from their parents, resulting in lifelong psychological trauma. He would like you to believe otherwise.
— Jacob Soboroff (@jacobsoboroff) October 28, 2020
‘I Was The Resistance Inside the Hitler Administration,’ by Albert Speer
— James Palmer (@BeijingPalmer) October 28, 2020
“All Those Terrible Fires, Yeah, I Totally Saw Them Being Set: My Heroic Journey to Telling You Months Later” — by [an ex-Trump staffer]
I hate this genre so, so much.
— The Hoarse Whisperer (@TheRealHoarse) October 29, 2020
Baud
It’ll be interesting to see what comes out after Trump is finally gone.
Benw
Seriously, anyone in Trump’s admin who hasn’t quit and dumped everything they’ve seen and heard can get fucked. Complicit in mass murder
Calouste
Interesting news out of the UK: former leader Jeremy Corbyn has been suspended from the Labour Party for denying anti-semitism was a problem in the party
geg6
Fuck these people. Just fuck them all. So sick of them all.
David Evans
@Calouste: Corbyn says his enemies were exaggerating the extent of anti-Semitism for political reasons, not that there was none. I can believe that. If you’re a strong supporter of Palestinian rights and attack Israeli actions in the occupied territories you can easily be accused of anti-Semitism.
Lapassionara
@Calouste: I wish I were better informed about this issue. I continue to be astonished at the ineptitude of Boris and his gang, and I would think their openly racist policies would get roundly criticized. Instead, we get articles about Labor’s faults.
Cheryl Rofer
@Baud: We will be seeing it for the next twenty years.
dmsilev
@Baud: I’m sure there will be many many former Trump admin appointees who will swear up and down that they stopped even worse things from happening.
Don’t care.
rp
@Lapassionara: Johnson is in power because Corbyn is a truly incompetent leader. With him gone, Labour might be able to finally start clawing it’s way back to power and setting the UK on the right track.
Danielx
An honorable person would be able to say “the president asked me to serve in this position and I said sorry, got plans to stay home, wash my hair and listen to my old Chuck Berry records”. Either that or quit after the first meeting with him and publicly say “I quit because he’s a Nazi nutcase and so is anybody who continues to work for him”.
If you didn’t do either of those things I really don’t want to hear any fucking apologies.
Raoul Paste
Continuing the clown theme, I see that Jerry Falwell Jr is suing liberty University for besmirching his good name
Good luck with that
Baud
@David Evans:
I don’t follow British politics as much as others here, but the reporting seems to suggest that Corbyn has a similar problem denouncing anti-Semitism as Trump does with white nationalists. You can find clips where Trump mouths those words, but he simply cannot do it clearly and unambiguously and consistently. Even if everything Corbyn has said is accurate (and I haven’t seen what he said first hand), it seems like a tone deaf way of handling a persistent problem that he’s faced.
The Moar You Know
Which was the argument that literally got him off the gallows at Nuremburg, and then the lightest prison sentence of any of the defendants.
The only judges that didn’t buy it were the Russians (who wanted every last one of them hanged) but they lost the vote count.
germy
Bibi accused one of his political rivals, Lapid, of anti-semitism.
NotMax
The car in question, of course, being a second-hand Yugo.
Matt McIrvin
Like I said earlier–this isn’t just late-arriving ballots. In the states that start processing on Election Day (including PA, MI, WI), this would mean throwing out the majority of ALL early ballots, even ones banked a month ago, because they can’t process them in 24 hours. (Based on what I’m hearing from Pennsylvania, in some districts it might even mean throwing out much of the Election Day vote.)
germy
So am I, to the point of physical exhaustion.
I watch network TV news, and they’re all gearing up for the noisy Superbowl/Heavyweight Boxing Match/Election Night coverage, and I’ve decided I can’t watch.
I’ll check in here to see what people are saying. Maybe what Kyle Griffin is tweeting. Much more than that I can’t take.
Ruckus
@Baud:
How many of those problems that he’s faced did he help create or at the very least do nothing to even slow them down?
That’s the problem with bad leaders. They never help fix anything, they always make so many things worse. Humans need leaders, like every other herd animal. But when the leader they choose is so lacking in character and ability it all goes to shit. And conservatives are the worst at actually leading, their total program is controlling the money in their direction, even if they are only looking for a bit of the action, they are still looking for that.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
A few days ago there was discussion about the Quakers talking about resistance, as if the Quakers were about to take up arms. Quakers don’t do that. They are always in the forefront of resistance, but non-violently. And they are in the forefront of this one.
So I’d like to talk a little about what the Quakers are doing and what the rumor might have been based on.
I’m not a Quaker but I’m Quaker-adjacent. There are a couple of meetings I attend from time to time and I know a lot of Quakers. A couple of weeks ago I attended an online seminar about resisting the possible upcoming coup given by George Lakey. Lakey is well known in activist circles as a trainer of resistance movements and the author of A Manual for Direct Action that was used by the civil rights movement. He talks matter of factly about things like being beaten up and about the safest thing to do when the cops start getting violent (paradoxically, sit down). He’s an amazing, quiet but powerfully spoken man.
I think the event I heard was this one. But another in the same time frame is this one. (I can’t find a video link there. Isn’t there some way to watch a Facebook Live event after the fact?)
So in his matter of fact way he is telling us what to expect in a Republican coup and what to do about it. That is probably what started the rumors. I expect Quakers nationwide are taking this advice on and doing Quaker-prepping.
Here is Lakey’s web page on preparing for the coup.
Here are “Ten Things You Need to Know to Stop a Coup”
Much more on each of those points at the link.
Matt McIrvin
@germy: I haven’t followed Election Night on TV in decades.
germy
@Matt McIrvin:
It’s a shitshow.
cmorenc
I get that Woodward’s judgment is due scathing criticism for withholding so long the info in the Trump and Kushner interview tapes until the timing was optimal for his book release, rather than earlier when it might have created timely public pressure on Trump & Kushner to have taken less recklessly dangerous approach to handling COVID. Nevertheless, let’s not completely shit on the value of Woodward having snowed Trump into dropping his guard into doing the interviews and speaking freely, such that he captured such a clear portrait of Trump’s and Kushner’s recklessly callous sociopathy and complete dishonesty. The release of that info did still come in good time to have contributed substantially toward undermining Trump’s chances for a 2nd term. I will take Woodward as a flawed hero, who owes us a substantial period of hair-shirt penance before we give him the portion of admiration due for his accomplishment.
Baud
@Ruckus: Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe it’s all bullshit. We certainly saw that here with Hillary and the media. But whatever Corbyn said apparently pissed off the current Labour leadership, and it’s certainly not like the whole anti-Semetic thing is a brand new “gotcha” issue for him.
Matt McIrvin
Maybe Trump just lacks nuance, as usual. But what he’s openly touting isn’t a plan to steal it if it’s close. It’s a plan to forcibly reverse a landslide.
Tony Jay
@Baud:
Let me put it this way. There’s also reporting out there that Joe Biden is suffering from cognitive decline and won’t properly condemn left-wing terrorism because he’s part of a paedophile ring.
I don’t believe that reporting because it’s full of shit.
What’s happening in the UK and to Jeremy Corbyn is an orchestrated gish-gallop of bullshit designed to smear the left wing of the Party and lay great big obvious traps in the path of all the left wing candidates standing for election to the Party’s National Executive Committee right this minute.
I’m not going to say any more about this right now because I am literally seething with rage and I don’t want to lash out at people.
Uncle Cosmo
@Raoul Paste: Discovery should be
epicnauseating.patrick II
Trump 2020 Press Sec. Hogan Gidley:
Trump
MattF
Politico: 45 Self-Evident Truths About Donald Trump. Yeah, it’s clickbait. If it’s self-evident, why bother publishing it?
Matt McIrvin
@patrick II: “Some of you may die, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.” –Lord Farquaad
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Raoul Paste: Well, arguably every serial killer whose neighbors said “he seemed like such a nice, quiet guy” before they dug up the bodies in the basement, could be said to have his good reputation ruined by the police.
I’m sure they could find lawyers to take on that suit.
NotMax
@Matt McIrvin
Haven’t the slightest clue how it began or why it continued; the traditional set-up for gathering around the flickering cathode ray tube on election night while I was a growing sprite was a table holding a huge bowl of walnuts, nutcrackers, several pitchers of apple cider, large tumblers and another empty bowl in which to deposit the nutshells. Nothing else ingestible was permissible, just walnuts and cider.
Baud
@Tony Jay: Thanks. I won’t press if you’re angry about what’s happening. Of course, the BS stories about Biden (or Hillary) did not cause Dems to formally distance themselves from either one. Sounds like Labour may be in even more disarray than the Dems on their worst day. I hope it all works out.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Matt McIrvin: I’m like you, worried about what kind of crap they’re going to pull that the Supreme Court will back them up on.
But this guy (Bob Bauer, head of Biden’s voter protection effort) seems pretty confident that Trump can’t succeed.
(h/t WaterGirl from yesterday)
Barbara
@Matt McIrvin: I like you but I can’t take you anymore.
Roger Moore
@Danielx:
I have some sympathy for the first batch of Trump appointees. I think a lot of them served with the basic idea that the “resistance” people are making: they thought Trump was inexperienced and needed some old hands around him who could keep the government running and tamp down his worst impulses while he grew into the role. Some of those people quit when they realized he never would grow into the role, and I think they deserve respect even if it took them way too long to come to that realization. But the people who never did come to that realization, or who stayed on because they saw advancing their personal agendas as more important, can go fuck themselves sideways with a chainsaw.
Gin & Tonic
@The Moar You Know:
25 million dead will do that to you.
Jeffro
I know it won’t be part of Biden’s victory speech the night of November 3rd…
…but dang, I want him to speak out LOUDLY on November 4th, reminding all of trumpov’s corrupt henchmen that they will. be. prosecuted. if they destroy government records and files (ie, ‘evidence’) or try to cover up crimes in any way between 11/4 and 1/20.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Only one way to test it.
Sure Lurkalot
As I intimated on a days ago thread, my lifeboat has no room for Miles, George, Bob, Rick, Steve…the list could go on and on. Jennifer, Nicole and Stuart may be truly converted but they can well afford their own boat.
I try to amuse myself by guessing how many hours or days will elapse before Melania splits if Trump loses.
Ian
WRT the Rich Lowry thing, I really do think there is something to that. A good friend/coworker showed up with a “Make Liberals cry again” sticker on her car and a “Trump 2020: Fuck your feelings” shirt. Being the idiot I am, I bothered to ask why she felt that way.
There are a lot of people who view the past twenty + years as a forced assault of modernity down their throats, who have been told by fox news and others we are actively persecuting them, and telling the rest of the world to get fucked makes them feel good. This is why they can follow a policy of “raising the middle finger” without putting a whole lot of critical thought into it. From their point of view, we liberals have been the ones raising the middle finger to them for a generation.
germy
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/rupert-murdoch-thinks-trump-is-going-to-lose–and-thats-not-a-bad-thing-for-fox-news/2020/10/28/9547fbdc-1192-11eb-bc10-40b25382f1be_story.html
Baud
@Ian: Makes perfect sense to me. It’s the flip side of “speak truth to power” or “down with the man” that you might see on our side.
MattF
@germy: One assumes that Fox ‘News’ will carry on, one way or another. However, I don’t believe they can just shake off the Trumpstink. Lying has immediate benefits and long-term costs, and Fox’s unapologetic dishonesty is right out in front.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
She showed up to work like this?
Danielx
@Ian:
Yeah, they feel totally oppressed and persecuted because they can’t say n***** in everyday conversation.
Raven
@germy: It would be great for the gun makers too.
germy
I saw the perfect encapsulation of Lindsey Graham over at LGM (thanks to Kirby Bucket):
Just One More Canuck
@Raoul Paste: discovery will be interesting
Ksmiami
@dmsilev: it’s like the quote and I’m paraphrasing, “Some people followed Hitler because of patriotism, some for economic reasons, some because they were angry at their neighbors. They were all Nazis- no one cares about their reasons anymore.”
Ksmiami
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: see to me she wouldn’t be a good friend anymore. She’d be shunned
The Moar You Know
@Gin & Tonic: I don’t really disagree. I will say this for Speer; he spilled his guts, as the mob guys say. Told ’em everything. There’s a lot we know about the Third Reich that we would NOT know if not for his testimony. And that’s useful knowledge.
On the other hand, he made all the bullets and bombs. I’d have probably given him the Hess treatment; life in Spandau. Not ten years and out in four.
Bruuuuce
@Ian: They’re scared witless. They are seeing well-defined roles and lines become blurred. They’re realizing that such privilege as they had is evaporating (some faster, some slower), and they fear having to both compete and to have to learn new social standards. And, of course, some are just hateful, soulless, heartless putzim and putas who have no empathy (or possibly none beyond their own family). Plus, of course, libertarians, for whom property is important and people are not, except when they’re the people who need care and therefore deserve the best, free. (Those last two sentences are almost identical groups, of course.)
J R in WV
@David Evans:
Attacking the racism and fascism of the current Israel government is not even anti-Israel, much less anti-semitism~! It’s anti Bibi, anti-racism, anti-fascism, which is very much not the same thing.
Geminid
@Tony Jay: I believe you when you say you are angry. That was a fairly brief comment for you. Almost Laconic. Not that your longer posts aren’t good and informative reading. I hope you’ll weigh in when the time is right for you. This sounds like a consequential event for the Labour Party. I just wish you folks had more frequent and regularly scheduled elections. I can see how the system worked well in the 18th century, at least for the wealthy, but I think it currently disadvantages Britons. Except, I guess, the wealthy
Ceci n est pas mon nym
I know we post lots of Lincoln Project ads, but this one just got me in the gut, sneaked up on me and put literal tears in my eyes.
Baud
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
I’m so jaded, I expected her to say she was voting for Trump and then the kid would get mad at her and run away from home.
Omnes Omnibus
@dmsilev: The Germans and Vichyites who claimed that after WWII generally had people who would testify that they had repeated and intentionally “mislaid” paperwork that would have sent people to the camps. Or they literally tried to blow up Hitler. Or other things like that. I guess what I am saying is I am open to that claim from people who worked were Trump political appointees, but the burden of proof is on them. Until and unless they prove otherwise, I am going to see people who took a political appointment appointment under Trump as people who are acceptable in any kind decent society.
I am guessing that this probably puts me on the overly forgiving side compared to most around here.
Amir Khalid
CNN reports that legendary golf legend Jack Nicklaus is endorsing Donald Trump. I was never a fan of golf or of Nicklaus; still, I’m disappointed.
LurkerNoLonger
@germy: it would be best for him if he lost, then he can finally come out of the closet. Maybe it would help his mental state and cut down on his drinking.
Peale
@Matt McIrvin: I’m beginning to think that for Trump this is really about stopping the vote in California where “all those Illegals vote and made it look like Clinton won the popular vote.” Since California always takes a long time to get a final tally.
dm
Have you all seen Jon Ossoff’s take-down of David Perdue at the debate the last night? It seems like something Anne Laurie would want to highlight. One of those, “I need a cigarette” moments:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/10/29/1990656/-Ossoff-s-hard-hitting-Georgia-Senate-debate-performance-goes-viral-for-good-reason
Aleta
These Attorney General Races Could Be a Firewall for Abortion Rights
scav
@Amir Khalid: Good to see the cheating at golf contingent come out swinging — or maybe he’s more the usual pussygrabber cohort? Must admit, I too have never bothered many braincells to remember the individual.Wonder how many battalions he’s got?
Peale
@Amir Khalid: Yeah. Saw that on Twitter. Not at all surprised. Golfing is a GOP sport so there isn’t going to be much to do about it.
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
I can’t believe an old wealthy white male golfer supports Trump.
Danielx
@Amir Khalid:
not surprised, he’s what, like 103?
J R in WV
@Omnes Omnibus:
NO, I don’t think so. If someone can show that they helped little children escape from the Trump Camps on the southern border, those staff should not be
prosecutedforconvicted of child abuse. [ETA to fix this contradiction]I don’t think there are any Homeland Security staff that can show that they saved children from the camps and their cages, but IF they did, and have documentary proof, they should be acquited in their trials. Everyone else needs to get several years for every child they tortured.
Guards who didn’t call for a doctor when a little girl was sick. Management who signed orders for a child to be seperated….
etc, etc. Jail time for everyone. Build new prisons. Not private prisons, those folks should be in the indicted pool.
germy
@Danielx: He’s the same age as Ringo Starr.
germy
How about house arrest for them? Make them wear ankle monitors.
germy
Borat 2 Fans Raise $80,000 (And Climbing) For Pranked Babysitter
There was a wonderful woman in the movie (she was unemployed because of COVID) who thought she’d agreed to be in a documentary. She tried her best to help Borat’s “daughter” in the film.
She was upset when the movie came out that she’d been used in a comedy, instead.
Their goal is $100,000.
It should be more, in my opinion. Cohen made a fortune.
Omnes Omnibus
@J R in WV: Okay, we are talking at cross-purposes here. I don’t think that anyone who actually committed a crime should get a pass. I am saying that taking a position in the Trump administration is, in and of itself, sufficient proof of bad character, that absent proof to the contrary, such a person should be shunned. But please do feel free to read part of what I said and go off in a rage; I would hate to prevent you from being you.
scav
@germy: Repurpose Mar-a-Lago. Guantanamo of the north. Huis clos is their likely playbook when left to amuse themselves.
J R in WV
@Omnes Omnibus:
We are talking at cross-purposes, because I thought I was pretty much agreeing with you. Not sure where you get “go off in a rage” out of what I said, either.
But that’s all OK, nothing you say can upset me more than I already am.
different-church-lady
@Baud: It will be interesting to see if Trump is ever gone.
PJ
I am not British, and do not follow British politics closely, but from an outsider’s perspective, it seems like Corbyn was a terrible leader for Labour. The last election should have been framed by Labour as a choice between anti-Brexit, pro-stability, and pro-economic growth on the Labour side, and pro-Brexit, pro-Chaos, pro-Russian manipulation, and pro-economic disaster on the part of the Tories. By failing to come out against Brexit, Labour made it a choice between lukewarm Brexit and gung-ho Brexit. It’s no wonder they lost (it doesn’t help that Corbyn was historically unpopular.)
The smart thing Biden did, and a big reason why he is the Democratic candidate and is crushing Trump now, is he ran a campaign arguing that Trump is the candidate of chaos, violence, division, economic destruction, and death, and that he is the candidate of decency, stability, rule of law, justice and economic growth. If someone like Bernie were the Democratic candidate, they would spend half their time arguing why Medicare for All was the solution and the other half why they were proposing wasn’t really socialist but just social democratic. (And all the while refusing to acknowledge other perspectives.). Now is not the time to get into the weeds on that shit.
different-church-lady
@Calouste: Shouldn’t he have been suspended for losing 82 elections in a row?
(I admit I don’t really follow UK politics…)
AliceBlue
@The Moar You Know: Speer was sentenced to 20 years in prison on October 1, 1946 and served the full term. He was released at midnight on October 1, 1966. The 10 years out in 4 guy might be Karl Donitz.
Sab
@Tony Jay: Whenever I get exasperated with our system I see you guys and Canada and Australia and thank God we are not a parliamentary system completely dominated by Party and party leadership battles.
different-church-lady
@PJ: Bernie is chaotic good and Trump is chaotic evil. In the zeitgeist of 2016 chaos played well. In the zeitgeist of 2020 there’s already so much chaos in people’s lives that nobody wants it coming from their presidential candidate, whether good or evil. We got lucky that Biden pulled it out, because he’s much better suited to the world we wound up in, even though we didn’t know we were headed there at the time.
Omnes Omnibus
@Sab: Yeah, getting things done is soooooo much easier here.
Omnes Omnibus
No, we didn’t get lucky. We, the Democratic Primary voters, chose him. We have agency and we used it well.
James E Powell
@Ian:
Some years ago, I saw a Noam Chomsky interview in which he explained how the ruling class managed & manipulated the inchoate rage of working class & middle class Americans and got them to focus it on selected targets so that they didn’t focus it on the ruling class. He lamented the fact that liberals don’t even try. No one pointed out that liberals don’t own any TV or cable networks, but I think he already knew that.
Brachiator
@Tony Jay:
Thanks for your comments on the Corbyn issue.
I am just another US observer on this and don’t pretend all the nuances here. But I note that this is not just a matter of media reporting, this is how the Labour Party itself is dealing with this.
I don’t know whether Corbyn’s response was felt to be unhelpful. But I get the idea that there is some internal confusion about the future direction of the Labour Party.
It seems odd that there is this disunity when the Conservatives are doing everything they can to prove their incompetence.
Again, thanks for your comments.
Bill Arnold
@cmorenc:
I’d put it as Woodward has taken away several news cycles from the planned (well, plan C) Trump October surprises. The press was prepared for those (team R) surprises anyway, but Woodward gave the interesting anti-Trump material, that will sell/has sold eyeballs, right before the election.
That’s a win. (You sort of said this, I’m just being explicit.)
Tony Jay
@Geminid:
Thanks, I will.
I will just say that the Blairite Bourbons who are doing this to the Labour Party are as maliciously short-sighted as their French namesakes.
In the short term they’ve torn the Party in two and will pay a huge electoral price. In the medium term they’ve guaranteed that the next time the Labour membership gets to choose a leader it will be someone utterly devoid of Corbyn’s fatal belief in compromise and consensus. And in the long term they’ve handed their ‘friends’ on the Right a club that will be used to hammer the Party for years to come.
But they’re too busy rubbing shit into each other’s hair right now to notice how many bridges they’ve burnt.
I’m going to get drunk now. It must be beer o’clock somewhere.
Citizen Alan
I am very pleased that I don’t have any “friends” in my life like that, mainly because I cut all the garbage humans out of my life years ago.
cain
@patrick II:
Notice they don’t give a fuck about the people in the crowd, the organizers, and various others.
DId the Trump campaign issue an apology to the folks in Nebraska for that clusterfuck?
Brachiator
@germy:
I have not seen any of the films, but some talk radio host recently noted that this woman seemed to be decent and trying to help. This seems to be a common view.
I don’t see the point in making kind and decent people objects of ridicule just because a filmmaker thinks it is “funny.”
cain
@NotMax:
I suppose now it is liquor and edibles and cheetos?
cain
@MattF:
I actually think the next iteration of the GOP party will require even more extremism and I think a lot of Fox News watchers will move on to OANN. I also expect Trump to start his own media empire that competes with Fox.
Trump is going to be a thorn in Fox News.
Also a telecommunications act will be coming that should knee cap them.
Sab
@Tony Jay: I have always had a visceral dislike of Tony Blair going back to the mid 1990s. So I was right on that?
different-church-lady
@James E Powell: Also, liberals are usually further down the life-path away from allowing inchoate rage to be a primary influence in their lives.
mrmoshpotato
I want Dump to curse out one of his dumbshit, racist white trash crowds just to see how they’d react.
C’mon you orange loser. Just lay into one of your cult gatherings. Let them know this was 4 years of complete bullshit.
JustRuss
@Amir Khalid: Considering how Trump is famous for cheating at golf, Nicholas’ endorsement is really disappointing. Just another old white guy…..
Roger Moore
@J R in WV:
Just keep them in the same cages they locked those kids up in.
germy
@Brachiator: I don’t mind him “punching up” but I don’t like when he punches down.
Sab
@Amir Khalid: Ask the black community of Benton Harbor MI about Jack Nicklaus.
Gov Rick Snyder and he used Gov Snyder’s budget cutting to destroy local towns’ and cities’ finances. Flint lost control of its water plant and got poisoned by the state sent idiots. Benton Harbor (an old, old by American standards mostly black community) lost its Lake Michigan beach front public park. Nicklaus got to buy it and put a private fo-profit golf course on it.
Tony Jay
@PJ:
Just… no.
One thing. The majority of seats Labour lost in its Red Wall were due to lifelong Labour voters there being told that Corbyn was going to take their Brexit away and voting Tory as a result.
The next time someone can explain to me how campaigning full-on anti-Brexit in 2019 would have prevented those defections will be the first time. Underpant Gnome nonsense is still just nonsense.
Oh, and BTW, the author of that Brexit policy is the current Labour leader.
I’m done.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Part of the communication problem might be that you apparently left out a word in your previous comment.
Sorry if I misinterpreted your intent.
scav
@Sab: The speed at which Toady Blair switched his adoring eyes and willing tongue from Clinton to W revised my opinion of the possibility of theoretically sentient doormats.
oatler.
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2020/10/29/fbi-arrests-accused-neo-nazis-michigan-crackdown-extremism/6067038002/
germy
Three people have been killed following a knife attack in a church in Nice. The incident occurred at around 9am local time this morning. A police source has suggested that one of the victims, a woman, was decapitated in the attacks which saw many others injured. The French anti-terrorist prosecutor’s department is investigating the attack, which took place in Notre Dame church – the largest Roman Catholic church in the city.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tony Jay: To me, it seems like the issue of Brexit did not really break along party lines. From my distance, it seem more an urban/rural, globalist/isolationist sort of thing. Worldwide problem. We’ve got it here too.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack (phone): Oops, my bad. Sorry, J R in W V.
Brachiator
@different-church-lady:
I’m reserving a lot of my speculation until November 4.
Don’t want to get my hopes up too high.
Ian
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
We don’t work in front of people, but yes.
Tony Jay
@Brachiator:
I’ll confine myself to saying that the media reporting on this entire issue going back to 2016 has been entirely reliant on internal Labour Party politics. Right-wingers who lost the policy debate and were horrified by how popular Corbyn’s brand of Socialism proved itself to be in 2017 responded by colluding with the Media to “but her e-mails” the issue of anti-Semitism in the hope they could use it to attack the leadership and drive away moderate voters.
It worked. They ‘won’. Now they’re all-in on purging the left from the Party in the expectation that that will win over ‘soft-Tory’ voters and guarantee friendly media coverage.
They expect this because they are political idiots whose entire ethos is a version of Cleek’s Law. Their centre-right elitism lost Labour its Scottish heartlands, lost it chunks of the ‘working class’ North, and now it’s going to lose tens of thousands of left wing votes, mine included, probably.
I’m getting wound up again. I’m going to leave it here and consider my options.
Roll on next Tuesday.
trollhattan
@scav:
Recalling how Arlington National Cemetery is the site of RE Lee’s plantation, it would be nice to seize Mar-a-Lago after Trump’s tax evasion conviction and turn it into a veteran’s home or somesuch. After an exorcism.
Bill Arnold
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
This is worth reading. I hesitate to summararize beyond the abstract, other than to say that it is hopeful.
The Future of Nonviolent Resistance (Erica Chenoweth, July, 2020)
Abstract:
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
I saw the first Borat, and I thought the thing that made it somewhat acceptable was that he avoided making decent people the butt of the joke. His whole shtick is that he meets people and starts acting more and more outrageous to see what happens. Sometimes people refuse to go along, and funny things happen when they throw him out of their office or whatever. Sometimes people go along for a little while because they’re trying to be polite to a clueless foreigner but eventually make it clear he’s acting unacceptably. Sometimes they go along because they agree with him, and sometimes they push him along. He gives them plenty of rope to hang themselves, and what they do with it is up to them. I don’t remember anyone who was basically a decent person coming across badly.
Tony Jay
@Sab:
Definately. And his political heirs are now ruling the Labour roost again, with their policy of “one inch to the left of the Tories in all things” exhumed from its dank crypt.
I hate those people, and they richly deserve it.
Tony Jay
@Sab:
Definately. And his political heirs are now ruling the Labour roost again, with their policy of “one inch to the left of the Tories in all things” exhumed from its dank crypt.
I hate those people, and they richly deserve it.
Tony Jay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Correct. It broke down on racist lines, basically, and Britain has had been on a diet of vile racism via 90 percent of its print media for decades. Add in the explosion of Talk Radio and the exploitation of social media and BOOM, there goes the dynamite.
But some people prefered to blame Corbyn because that’s what they do. That’s all they do.
GoBlueInOak
@Tony Jay: This right here. Seeing a lot of “I don’t follow British politics but here’s my opinion on why Corbyn is bad” nonsense.
The Blairite wing has had it out for Corbyn since Day One. Even since Day negative 1000. Momentum and the unions opened up Labour in a way that displaced the corporate insider of the Parliamentary Labour Party to actually provide grassroots membership a say in who the leadership of the Party was. And the Blairites would NOT have that.
Your average American just blindly puts their own lens on everything and cocks it up. In America, Jewish voters are overwhelmingly Democratic, liberal leaning voters. In the UK, over 2/3 of Jewish voters are Tories (Conservative), and about a quarter are Lib-Dem (Moderates). Only around 10% are Labour voters. Second, Muslims are about 5% of the UK population, while in US, Muslims are only about 1% of the US population – and they mostly vote Labour.
At this point, one can already see the framework for an immense amount of ratfucking by a corporate stooge wing of a political party to stick the shivs in its left wing, which would be whole-heartedly abetted by its Conservative Party rivals, as well as by the Establishment-leaning press in that country.
There’s surely anti-semitism issues in the UK, just like in every country. There’s also anti-MUSLIM issues in the UK, which loom larger there due to Muslims being a larger portion of the UK than in the US – and which doesn’t get nearly the press. And these are societal issues which get turned into issues for a “party” as a function of which particular religious ethnicity makes up which portion of which political party.
LongHairedWeirdo
With respect, do you think we’d be discussing Trump and Jared’s malfeasance with respect to Covid-19 *now*, if Woodward had brought up what he’d been told in March? Or would it be old news by now?
More importantly, just as with the “Trump knew” revelations, the Jared tapes didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know, or at least, didn’t know with 99% certainty, because it sure *looks* that way, and it’s Trump.
The Republican Party stood by Trump, and lied for him, during impeachment. They proved that:
1) they lie like cheap rugs about revering the constitution, which demands the President see that the laws are faithfully executed; Trump broke the law
2) they don’t give a damn about foreign policy – “if our President shakes you down, and he doesn’t get caught, you better pay to play; if he gets caught, don’t worry, *he* won’t get in trouble.”
3) they don’t give a damn about naked corruption – using the powers of office for purely personal/partisan advantage.
It’s hard to express this, but Vox once pointed out that the *only* way to survive this was for the right wing to assume they could maintain epistemologic closure – to insist the truth is what it plainly is not, and to maintain their base through that.
I’ll add to this something else I’ve seen. One person said, in an essay, that the US Civil War was actually *not* the normal “civil war”. Most are cold civil wars, which is what we have now. One side is willing to use the power of government against its enemies, and to use the power of government to cover for its friends. The other side doesn’t believe they’re actually in a war, even though, for example, truthful, well supported accusations of corruption and criminality are turned around with the most specious of sophistries, and those who make those accusations are soundly punished – sometimes via the use of law enforcement.
Trump is flat out insisting he’s planning to win this election by hook or by legal-crook; most of the US is all “oh, it’s just Trump being an unfit, corrupt, idiotic, criminal; what can you do?”
What would have happened, then, if he’d spoken up in March? The right wing would have a new bogeyman for a few weeks, and Woodward would be under injunction not to release his book or notes/tapes because of super-sensitive national security issues.
Maybe he was a naked opportunist; maybe he was a bit patriotic as well, or a real patriot whose primary desire was “get this madman out of the oval office”; probably a bit of both.
But he’s far better than “anonymous” (why bother using his real name?), which I think Zeddy’s tweet expresses best:
Sorry, Conway – you were right about some things these past 3.75 years, but people who *loved* our country were people who actually took a chance, and tried to do the right thing by our country.
Ruckus
@Danielx:
Also think about the republicans in national office.
They are also enabling shitforbrains, because they believe in the same things shitforbrains does. They aren’t any better than he is, just less obvious, at least they used to be. But less obvious has been their go to for the last 50-100 years. Until shitforbrains, who made it OK to be loud and proud about their entire platform, racism and stealing everything not tied down.
patrick Il
I assume that’s rhetorical
Aleta
@Brachiator: After watching it I assumed (w/o any info and wrongly ) that they would have been decent and offered her big money for her work, which was important to the film. But no, they didn’t. From the Independent:
Shabby. Betrayal by lying to a person who’s doing the right thing cuts a deep injury.
LongHairedWeirdo
@Ruckus: It doesn’t matter if Republican officeholders believe in the same thing Trump does. They’re not just aiding and abetting via official actions, they’re supporting the propaganda that says he’s doing *just fine*. This isn’t just “silence = consent”, this is “aid and comfort = consent”.
Look, every Republican holding federal office, or a position in the federal government, has a duty first and foremost to the people of the United States.
To be derelict in your duty, or to take official actions counter to your duty, for personal gain (and that includes “let’s make my political party more powerful, which means I’ll benefit down the line”) is corrupt. You could teach a 6th grader that (though my 6th grade classes didn’t include “basic ethics”). The only reason Trump is still President is there are a huge number of people willing to be corrupt in exactly that way.
In many ways, they’re far, far worse than Trump if they *don’t* agree with him. I could see someone selling out principles for St. Ronnie Of The Blessed Memory – so, so many people had “starbursts” over him – but for *TRUMP*? At least Reagan sounded like he cared about *AMERICA*. Trump cares about Trump, and recitations of grievances, sexual harassment of the stars&stripes, and a policy that consists of saying “AMERICA FIRST!” does not mean a person cares about America.
ETA, Ruckus: sorry if the rant that came out sounded like it was directed at you. I wasn’t intending to criticize you, just… the rant boiled over. Um. And I don’t mean “I’m sorry if you were offended,” I mean “I’m sorry for what I wrote, if you thought it was critical of, or directed at, you – that wasn’t my intent.”
germy
@Aleta:
Sab
@Omnes Omnibus: Back benchers in UK cannot even sponsor legislation.The whole place runs like Mitch McConnell’s Senate.
John S.
I just got back from dropping off my and the wife’s ballots at the polling location (South Florida; 2 more votes for Biden!), and the Trumpistas had a giant banner that said “Save America. Vote Republican.”
America is needs to be saved because of Republicans and their god-emperor Trump. I know they don’t feel that way, but fuck their feelings. These people can get bent.
RaflW
Speaking of clowns. This flouncing away is just too damn delish.
I guess the Intercept still has some de minimus threshold of journalamalism, and wouldn’t publish one of Glenn’s screeds.
Buh.
Bye!
(He’ll still be on Tucker’s show, though. No doubt.)
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Ian: And no one at your’ company heard of Professional Conduct, you know; don’t discuss religion, sex or politics with your coworkers, much less come to work wearing the F bomb on your cloths like a buffon? The whole “Fuck your feelings” T shirt would be grounds for termination here in California.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
you mean have the fans apologized to Trump for letting themselves be left out in the cold die for him?
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
@Cheryl Rofer: Only twenty? Nixon’s been gone since 1974, and we still don’t have all the dirt out in the open. I’m going with fifty years, easily.
Tony Jay
@GoBlueInOak:
Yup. The Conservative Party has openly courted the far-right, closed ranks against BLM, utterly rejected calls from its own muslim members to investigate Islamophobia, elected a leader with a slug-trail of racist commentary behind him, and when asked its membership were happy to tell journalists that they didn’t like brown people and would never allow one to lead their Party.
But when the EHRC was asked to open an investigation on them it refused, too busy assembling a wickerman for Corbyn and far too chummy with the Government that funds it.
The UK is bust. The barbarians have knocked down the walls and are too busy prancing around in looted finery to notice the flames licking around their nethers.
germy
@RaflW:
LOL
Baud
@germy: Glenn isn’t principled.
Geminid
@Aleta: A veteran who suffered grievous injuries in Iraq sued Michael Moore for using his remarks about his “crushing” pain out of context in Farenheit 911. Moore settled, for substantial money. There was blatant misrepresentation, though, and Moore had made plenty of money on his “documentary,” enough to sweep the matter under the rug. But Moore is a fraud anyway.
germy
@Baud:
Looks like the Intercept just found itself $500k to support actual journalism
Baud
@germy: Saw that. LGM hates Glenn more than we do, I think. There were two posts, but I think one was taken down to consolidate.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
I meant to see the first Borat movie, but just never got around to it. But it seemed kind of an amped up “Candid Camera,” which is OK in small doses.
Ultimately, though, this involves a bit of manipulation, and editing. The filmmaker needs to provoke an extreme reaction, otherwise there is no “comedy.”
germy
Just Chuck
@RaflW: Now that’s some good news. Let’s bet on gg’s next stop: I say InfoWars.
jimmiraybob
I consider Trumpism to be the greatest immediate, intermediate and long-term threat to America. Given that and having given thought to the timing question, I’ve concluded that if Bob (or “Anonymous”) had come out sooner, the revelation(s) would have been buried from the constant rain of Trumpian bullshit and lies. As it is, the timing might be more effective, with no time to bury it, in persuading last-minute voters.
Four more years of Trump will probably doom the American experiment in democracy based on constitutional principles, including human rights and the goal of a fair and equitable justice guiding the rule of law.
...now I try to be amused
@Sab:
I’ve seen the Westminster parliamentary system described as an elected dictatorship. But if we had it, Nancy Pelosi would be Prime Minister and Mitch McConnell would be completely irrelevant.
...now I try to be amused
@mrmoshpotato:
Trump just might do it if he loses the election. His base will have failed him!
KenK
@Amir Khalid: @#58 “golf legend Jack Nicklaus is endorsing Donald Trump. I was never a fan of golf or of Nicklaus; still, I’m disappointed.”
As a native Ohioan and owner of Nicklaus-branded clubs, all I can say is that Jack can piss-off.
Sm*t Cl*de
@germy:
And if you don’t like his principles, that’s OK. He has others.
Geminid
@…now I try to be amused: Well, if the U.S. had the British parliamentary system and the election had been held in 2016, Kevin McCarthy could have been head of a government that would have run amok, with no relief until 2022.
Ruckus
@LongHairedWeirdo:
We obviously agree about the shitstain in office and the shit that he and his supporters spread far and wide, we just talk about it from a different angle.
I didn’t think you were referring to me.
Ruckus
@Sm*t Cl*de:
Just because he has principles, doesn’t mean he’s using them.
PJ
@Tony Jay: You know far more about this than I ever will, but:
Labour lost 60 seats, are you telling me they would have lost more if they had campaigned as anti-Brexit?
Nora Lenderbee
@The Moar You Know: Dead thread I know, but anyway–Speer was sentenced to 20 years, along with von Schirach. Doenitz had the lightest sentence, 10 years.
Speer’s sentence had less to do with any claims of resistance (except at the very end of the war) than his publicly stating that the slave-labor system was wrong and he regretted his involvement.
GoBlueInOak
@PJ: Its entirely possible. Both Labour and the Tories had/have pro- and anti-Brexit wings in their respective parties, which mostly reflects a Venn diagram covering metro London voters and Scotland. (I’m over-simplifying a bit). So you’ve got xenophobic whites in each party (of different classes), as well as anti-Brexit urban professionals, immigrants, and students in Labor, and anti-Brexit free marketeers and money men in the Tories. So a bit of a hot mess.
But, if you want to see what a strong anti-Brexit stance will get you, allow me to introduce you to the Lib-Dems who hold all of 11 seats in the Commons.
Sab
@GoBlueInOak: Maybe the Lib Dems under Nick Clegg shouldn’t have traded everything away to prop up David Cameron for no purpose whatever except to block Labour.
Sab
@…now I try to be amused: My formerly idiot congressman tried to oust Pelosi. In a parliamentary system he’d have been out on his ass. Instead she let him be him. She won. He now sees the error of his ways and is one of her biggest admirers. He still popular here (65%) because of his core issues (hungry kids, racism, where are the jobs?), but he has come to his senses on gun control and abortion.
I don’t think he could have made that transition in a parliamentary system. Nor would AOC be even electable in a parliamentary system. Leadership would have nixed them.
JML
@Sab: Brutal but fair: bad look for the LibDems.
I will say it’s possible for the Blairites to be executing a power-play by hyping up the anti-semitism issues AND for Corbyn to be a poor leader. (And for there to be legit anti-semitism issues within Labour, frankly)
I spent 10 years as a professional political consultant and Corbyn always came off as a guy in just a bit deeper than he could manage to me. but I have no idea if Labour has anyone better, and trying a Blair-esque “triangulation” strategy is a political theory that’s 25 years out of date.
Tony Jay
@PJ:
Dead thread, sorry, been watching Doctor Who with the boy, but a serious question deserves a serious answer.
You’re asking the wrong question. Labour lost those seats while not, actually, being the full-on Remain or Death Party the Tories and Farage’s scumbags painted them as. Would they have lost more seats if they had been? Quite possible. The propaganda onslaught was fierce and, as has been pointed out, the Party that did go full-on “Cancel Brexit and fuck you all very much” suffered a catastrophic electoral disaster as even its own middle-of-the-road voters abandoned them in disgust.
But in truth, Labour really was opposed to Brexit. It said it was a mistake and it voted against it in Parliament time and time and time again. Corbyn’s Labour is the reason Brexit didn’t happen in 2017, 2018 or 2019. But there was a Referendum and Remain did lose and legislation was passed that said we were leaving the EU and there was a massive propaganda campaign aimed at convincing the parts of British society that had lost out the most under Thatcherism and its successors that the EU, immigrants and ‘internationalists’ of all stripes were the ones responsible. Threading the needle and bringing home an electoral victory for the only Party promising to respect the Referendum vote, negotiate the best possible withdrawal deal with the EU and then go back to the people to ask if this is what they actually wanted was the only way Brexit was going to be stopped for good.
Unfortunately a large chunk of the Parliamentary Labour Party and its professional bureaucracy decided that they would rather see Britain leave the EU under an alt-Right Conservative Government than risk having to be part of a Labour Government with centre-left progressive policies. The Conservative’s and BXP handled the misinformation to pro-Brexit voters, but it was the Labour Right and the Guardian that made sure the anti-Semitism smear, combined with the myth that Corbyn was standing in the way of an election winning anti-Brexit Coalition, destroyed Labour’s chances amongst the moderate-to-left leaning anti-Brexit vote. And they did it by constructing an entirely fictional figure called ‘Jeremy Corbyn’ who was History’s Greatest Monster.
Now they’re burning him in effigy. Performative punishment to ensure that no one on the Left ever dares to challenge their control of the Party ever again. As for their commitment to ‘Remain’? Dumped by the roadside as soon as Starmer was in power. The man who actually wrote Labour’s Brexit policy is now saying Labour won’t campaign for rejoining the EU and his Shadow Foreign Secretary is one of the loudest pro-Brexit voices whose vote last year in favour of Johnson’s fake “Oven Ready Deal” played a huge part in breaking the Parliamentary bulwark stopping Brexit and led directly to the Lib-Dems and Scottish Nationalists combining to give Johnson the Election he craved.
I’ll stop ranting now. Sorry. As you were. I need another drink.
KrackenJack
@Tony Jay: Thank you Tony Jay. Thoughtful as always. This era in politics seems to designed to twist the knife in progressives hopes.
Have an appropriate number of drinks, decompress, and then look for a way to carry on.
PJ
@Tony Jay: Thank you for the thoughtful response.
SWMBO
@trollhattan: I would like to see a refugee camp there. Would be fitting, no? Actually all of Trump’s properties would make a nice refugee center.