Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

The willow is too close to the house.

This really is a full service blog.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Not all heroes wear capes.

This fight is for everything.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Late Night Open Thread: Death Cult Remoras Scuttling for Cover

Late Night Open Thread: Death Cult Remoras Scuttling for Cover

by | 63 Comments

This post is in: , , , ,



Don’t look in that closet… don’t go in the basement… please not under the bed…

Ali Alexander (not always under that name) has been grifting from easily agitated right-wing conspiracy theorists for at least the last decade…


Wealth of entertaining replies to this tweet:

Reader Interactions

63Comments

  1. 1.

    RaflW

    My current not-gonna-happen wish is that Mitt, now that he knows a) how close the horde came to seizing him, and b) that not one Republican “colleague” or “good friend” would have lifted a finger to save him, that he is this week letting his caucus know there have to be 17 GOP votes to convict, or he goes Independent immediately, caucuses with the Dems, and they push through a replacement organizing resolution that makes it clear the old 50-50 plus Kamala deal is dead.

    Pure fanfic, I know. But what a moment it would be. And how much pressure would it put on Murkowski! Oh, well.

    In the real world, the best we can hope for is that Mitt still votes to convict, and then who knows? Does the Mike Lee wing of the UT GOP exact revenge?

  2. 2.

    Shalimar

    I do not think Ali Alexander is going to find 10 million Republicans willing to live in the same city as Ali Alexander.

  3. 3.

    C Stars

    I definitely get the feeling there’s some terrible shit that could come out about what the GOP has been up to lately. On the other hand, the American electorate and especially Trump supporters seem pretty much completely inured to terrible shit. Like, the violent insurrection was just slightly not OK to most Republicans. No biggie though. And remember when the extent of Trump’s dealings with Putin started coming to light, all the Repubs started making the case that Russia was in fact a pretty great place and quite well governed?

    All of the last four years have felt like a psyops exercise in getting us used to just terrible, vile, heinous shit being perpetrated by politicians as a matter of course. Is there such a thing anymore as political dishonor or disgrace (particularly if you are a Republican)? I don’t think so.

  5. 5.

    C Stars

    @RaflW: Yeah, I doubt it’s going to happen. They need to lose a few more elections because of raving lunatic Trumpists. Then maybe the worm will turn.

  7. 7.

    Anne Laurie

    @Shalimar: I do not think Ali Alexander is going to find 10 million Republicans willing to live in the same city as Ali Alexander.

    Don’t be silly — someone has to mow the lawns and mop the floors!

    When Repubs think about ‘a city of ten million PATRIOTS!!!’, what they envision is approximately one million White people, with nine million  serfs to cater to their every whim.

    Ali Alexander, in this scenario, is the guy on the Home Owners Association board — excuse me, city council — who’s never given a chance to make any decisions, but he’s in all the publicity shots to prove that We’re Not Racist, We Honor Diversity Here.

  10. 10.

    different-church-lady

    From what we’ve been told, a dispropotionate percentage of these creeps can’t manage their own finances correctly and are complely anti-tax, so how they’re gonna have an entire city that has any kind of functional funding is pretty far-fetched.

  11. 11.

    Mallard Filmore

    @RaflW: 

    Mitt, now that he knows a) how close the horde came to seizing him, and b) that not one Republican “colleague” or “good friend” would have lifted a finger to save him

    That’s being generous. Any Republicans captured with Mitt would point him out.

  14. 14.

    Redshift

    @different-church-lady: Oh, speaking of which, we have a new entry in the Republican primary for governor of Virginia, some “think tank” wingnut welfare guy who’s never held public office.

    His big idea is to cut the state income tax to zero, and “the state could wind up with more revenue without the tax because the change would fuel business and population growth.”

    The Republican War on Arithmetic continues…

  16. 16.

    Starboard Tack

    Brian Kilmeade by way of Crooks & Liars.

    “I think we have to, as a country, stop protesting every election result.”

    My post COVID fantasy after all teh TeeVee is back to normal; leopards loose on the Fox & Friends set. Who do you bet would squeal the loudest? My money’d be on Steve Doocy. Ahhh, I can dream, can’t I?

  18. 18.

    Starboard Tack

    @mdblanche:

    There’s maybe even some actual Nazis left to hang out with. Not sure they’d get along with Ali, though. They only like Aryan grifters.

  19. 19.

    Kent

    Honestly.  I’m not sure what secret shit people expect to find.  Nothing about the GOP over the past 4 years has been secret.   They have been overt racist sociopaths for a long time.

    On the other hand, I expect the other shoe to eventually drop with respect to Trump and the Russians.  And probably some other GOPers as well.   Biden needs to root all that shit out and push it pubic.   With all the proof.

  20. 20.

    Joe Falco

    @RaflW: It’s a nice fantasy. Easily West Wing episode material complete with inspirational music at the end. You could almost imagine the actor playing Mitt snarling to the Republican senators behind closed doors that either they find their sense of duty to convict or find themselves locked out of power for the next decade.

  21. 21.

    Mai Naem mobile

    OT, I got one of those fund raising emails disguised as a survey from the DNC today. Normally I never even open this stuff but this one sounded very local and wasn’t obvious it was the DNC. Anyhoo, it had a list of priorities you wanted the Biden folks to focus on(COVID, economy,race,guns,climate, education etc.) No voting rights stuff. None. WTF. I hope this was just some fundraising come on and not the real list. They didn’t have judges either . Anyhow I added it in under ‘other.’

  23. 23.

    a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio

    What in the cotton-candy colored hell is going on with the Lincoln Project? There seem to be explosions and strange lights and noises.

  26. 26.

    Comrade Colette

    @a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio: True colors showing at last?

    I dunno, I’ve enjoyed the hell out of “The New Abnormal” podcast and some of their anti-Trump ads without ever deluding myself that they’re not, ya know, Republicans. Worse yet, “Republican political operatives” – in other words, scorpions. It would have been more surprising if there had not been some kind of post-election melting of their Mission Impossible-style fake-face masks.

  29. 29.

    DMcK

    @Kent: Adam’s recent posts have convinced me that we’re well beyond “probables” and “perhapses”; that the GOP, in collusion with hostile foreign states and for quite some time, has been actively involved in the funding, arming, and propagandizing on behalf of a domestic terrorist body with the intent of establishing a white nationalist authoritarian state. That’s what they’re afraid of being brought to light. Even if that extreme state of affairs is not exactly accurate, it’s pretty clear that the GOP is not a political party in any way that involves actual policy within the confines of constitutional government. They are the political wing of a domestic terrorist movement, and likely have been for years.

  31. 31.

    ColoradoGuy

    I would go a little further. In addition to attempting to set up a white nationalist authoritarian state (with aid from authoritarian foreign powers), the GOP is engaged in covert warfare against the American people. How else can the COVID denialism and vigorous anti-masking campaigns be explained? That wasn’t incompetence, that was malice, and it resulted in a stupendous death toll, social disorder, and profound damage to the economy. If the GOP has one common principle, it’s nihilism and contempt for the people of the USA.

  33. 33.

    scott (the other one)

    @RaflW: The thing that’s so frustrating is that, you’re right, he could absolutely do that…without even running any risk to his political future.

    He’s never going to get primaried out in Utah and he’s never going to lose the general. The mainstream media would swoon over how terribly John McCain statesman-like it is of him. And until the current defendant, he’s truly rich, so it’s not like losing wingnut welfare is going to hurt him. It’s almost nothing but upside for him.

    And yet.

  35. 35.

    Steeplejack

    @Anya:

    And there are questions about where the money went. (AP story.)

    Of the $90 million Lincoln Project has raised, more than $50 million has gone to firms controlled by the group’s leaders.
    [. . .]
    Since its creation, the Lincoln Project has raised $90 million. But only about a third of the money, roughly $27 million, directly paid for advertisements that aired on broadcast and cable, or appeared online, during the 2020 campaign, according to an analysis of campaign finance disclosures and data from the ad tracking firm Kantar/CMAG.

    That leaves tens of millions of dollars that went toward expenses like production costs, overhead—and exorbitant consulting fees collected by members of the group.

  36. 36.

    sab

    Lincoln Project trying to reform things, but at their heart(s) they are still Reagan and post-Reagan Republicans. They are so utterly corrupt that they don’t even know how to run a clean operation. They have never been there or done that.

  37. 37.

    sab

    Democrats for the last generation have been funded in the old ways. Periodic minor corruption scandals where local malfactors go to jail.

    Republicans for the last generation have been funded through the NRA (Russia) and personality disordered billionaire oligarchs with no transparency at all. What could possibly go wrong?

  41. 41.

    Ken

    @tokyokie:I encourage them to build a city in Antarctica.

    Not allowed, by international treaties. It would also be an ecological disaster, with all those tons of rotting flesh the first time the power goes out and they realize no one in Galt’s Gulch knows how to fix it.

    Maybe they can try seasteading.  I suggest 47°9′S 123°43′W; although it’s unlikely they’ll be eaten by Cthulhu, it is near the Pacific pole of inaccessiblity so they’ll be as far as way from the rest of us as possible.

  43. 43.

    SFAW

    @Matt McIrvin:
    “How will you turn a profit if you make a loss on every sale?”
    “Volume!!”

    Back when I was working for a small tech company, lo these many years ago, I saw that we were reselling some controller modules with — in many cases — very small margins, but in some cases, negative margins. [Meaning we sold them for less than our cost.] I mentioned to one of the draftsmen that we would make it up in volume. “But … what?”

    ETA: I seem to recall Milo Minderbinder operating in a similar fashion, but maybe he had a different grift. [Hey, it’s been 50 years since I read it.]

  44. 44.

    SFAW

    @Ken:

    Maybe they can try seasteading.  I suggest 47°9′S 123°43′W; although it’s unlikely they’ll be eaten by Cthulhu, it is near the Pacific pole of inaccessiblity so they’ll be as far as way from the rest of us as possible.

    First time I’ve heard of that location, thanks for the pro tip.

    I think they should complete the experience by living in these luxurious accommodations, air-dropped onto the site, with the Rethugs already in them. [Don’t worry, there will be parachutes to cushion the landing into the water, so that they can swim to shore without incident.]

  45. 45.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    While I’d feel bad for South America, even if only 100,000 MAGAts from swing districts deported themselves to NEWMAGACITY, it would be a great thing for this country.

  46. 46.

    Soprano2

    @Redshift: “the state could wind up with more revenue without the tax because the change would fuel business and population growth.”

    Planet Money did a podcast about a very small town that was run by Libertarians. They had no taxes at all – none. Their bright idea for how to finance city government was to get Wal-Mart to build a store near the local interstate, then have a sales tax for that area. Unfortunately, their “brilliant plan” fell through because they refused to asses any fees or taxes on themselves to pay the nearby larger town to extend the sewer main to the location where they wanted the WalMart, so WalMart said they wouldn’t build there. It was an interesting study in how having absolutely no taxes actually cannot work.

  47. 47.

    Kristine

    @different-church-lady: I’m envisioning Fyre Festival writ large. The grift possibilities are endless. Ali could travel from city to city with the designs and beg for donations. I’m betting he could take in a few years’ income before the penny dropped.

  48. 48.

    Kristine

    @Redshift: it has never worked, we have the receipts to prove it, and yet they never quit pushing it. It isn’t that they don’t learn, it’s that they refuse to.

  50. 50.

    Peale

    @Kristine: I’m envisioning the “mega city” failing miserably and then scores of thousands of MAGA refugees trying to get to the back up city, only to be turned away as undesirables. Maybe the Guatemalans will lock their children up in chicken coops to discourage them from coming.

  51. 51.

    Honus

    @Redshift: Reminds me of George Allen’s big idea when he ran for governor of eliminating the car tax.  It was very popular with the rednecks and was elected. The result was that people in prosperous populated areas like Northern Virginia, which had lots of new cars, benefited greatly, while small localities that had been subsidized by the car tax from the wealthy areas got hurt and had to raise property taxes.   The guys with nice pickups got a break though so everything was good.

  52. 52.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Shalimar: ​I do not think Ali Alexander is going to find 10 million Republicans willing to live in the same city as Ali Alexander.

    Sure he is. As long as his permanent address is “MAGA City Penitentiary, Cell Block X (Solitary).” Or maybe “MAGA City Cemetery, Informants’ Wall (mass grave, unmarked).”​

  53. 53.

    Ksmiami

    @different-church-lady: interesting- a big reason among many why the Confederacy lost was an unwillingness on the part of wealthy plantation owners and Southern businessmen to adequately fund their war effort…

  54. 54.

    Just Chuck

    When you get 10 million people together in a city, that city tends to overwhelmingly vote Democratic.  So hey, if he wants to deprogram 10 million MAGATs, awesome.  But not only will he he fail to reach even double digits, I predict even he’s not even considering moving himself.  Fantasyland is the only world these people know.

  55. 55.

    Honus

    @C Stars: I’m old enough to remember when a dozen or so republican senators went to s meeting in Russia.  On the Fourth of July no less.  I can only imagine if a group of democratic lawmakers went to Russia to celebrate Independence Day.

  56. 56.

    Ksmiami

    @ColoradoGuy: and if they’re fixing for a fight, we are going to have to face it so I say sooner than later. We need to crush the GOP and then run a full scale denazification education program nationwide

  57. 57.

    Just Chuck

    @Ksmiami: Wouldn’t have mattered if they poured every cent they had into it.  The North had an industrial capacity that utterly dwarfed the South.  To say nothing of the South relying on exporting cotton which was piling up and rotting on the docks because it was embargoed or boycotted everywhere.

  59. 59.

    Minstrel Michael

    @mdblanche: Thanks! I didn’t know about that one!

     

    I did once ride a bus due west from the Brazilian city of Vitoria, and passed through several towns where the second language on the signs was German or Italian. One even had a Disney-fied Bavarian castle! The people who got off at that stop looked like a family of entertainers, wearing gypsy costumes and carrying guitars and other instruments. I hope they got well paid.

     

    Some day I hope to do an On the Road about stuff like this, but I seem to have misplaced the photos :-(

  61. 61.

    Another Scott

    @Honus:  I remember the hated (annual) car tax. Of course, they didn’t really get rid of it, they just did some shuffling of things around (there’s a listed payment by the state that covers ~ 90% of it, but the tax still exists). They did similar trickery with the gasoline tax. It’s not listed in the pump taxes any more, because it’s paid higher-up the chain (by the wholesaler/distributor).

    So, the GOP got to campaign on getting rid of taxes, but really didn’t, and made things more complicated, and usually ended up hurting some people who thought they were going to get a big benefit. Plus, probably by design, it makes it more difficult to actually have real conversations about having tax revenue match needed expenditures.

    Possibly relatedly, I’m reminded that when I was growing up in Georgia in the ’60s and ’70s they had an “ad valorum” tax on cars. I don’t know if it was a one-time sales tax or an annual thing. Another word for it is a VAT.

    Maybe Democrats should always use the Latin equivalent when talking about taxes…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  62. 62.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Kent: Honestly. I’m not sure what secret shit people expect to find.​

    IMO the real gold at the end of the all-white rainbow would be incontrovertible evidence of coordination and collusion among Putin’s kleptocracy and the PGOs (Putative Global Oligarchs), i.e, the Kochs (now singular), Mercers, Adelsons (now dirtnapping), etc., to funnel $$$$ to the Global Oligarchy Party and do the dirty work of voter suppression and hornswoggling the MAGAt faithful.

    It has long been my contention that the only reason the PGOs didn’t push back on Daddy Vladdy was that (like the USA, UK and USSR during World War 2.0) their immediate aims were much the same: the destruction of liberal democracy around the world. Not entirely the same – Putin wants to provoke the USA into civil war, partly for revenge, partly to give him & his Mafiyosi a free hand subjugating the states of the former Soviet Union. The PGOs want to displace every liberal democracy for a locked-in authoritarian regime that allows them complete freedom of movement and does not tax them but instead allows them to loot national treasuries at will for the monies collected from the peasants. Their Earthly Paradise is a world where capital moves everywhere at the speed of light, the rich move as fast as their pricey vehicles (limos, private planes, even rockets) can carry them, & everybody else is nailed in place to be abused. (ETA: And Orangecandyass just wants to hear the roar of the crowds as he exercises his hatreds and grifts off the rubes.)

    I think the current situation is (at least for the moment) favorable to the good guys for a few reasons.

    1. It may have dawned on the PGOs that a guy like Twitler doesn’t really share their interests; it’s not that they object to him “wetting his beak” – he is after all extremely small potatoes in their scheme of things – it’s that his resentment and grifting get in the way of their oligarchy.
    2. They may have realized that the same is true of Putin – and that it is exceedingly dangerous to play footsie with anyone who has at his disposal weapons of mass destruction and death squads with a global reach.
    3. The pandemic has made it quite clear that some important aspects of existence (like public health) depend on the entire population taking the proper actions – the richest bazillionaire can’t buy his way out of that short of an orbital habitat (a decidedly iffy proposition). Thuh Varss don’t care.
    4. And last, rabblerousing up populism is a dangerous proposition, because if the rabble ever figure out who has in fact been conning them for their own profit and power, they’re quite capable of turning on a dime and storming those private islands intent on stringing up the “malefactors of great wealth.”

    Now all that said (whew!) I think there is a very good chance that the PGOs have concluded that the time to make their move on the planet is not quite yet – not while there’s so much to be set right (including the sociopathic depredations of Trumplthinskin). Better to let Uncle Joe straighten things out & come back in ’24 or (more likely) ’28 with a more easily controllable catspaw as candidate. Meanwhile it’s the Democrats’ challenge to make the case that letting us run things really is better for the American people as a whole and individually. Let’s not fuck this up.​​​

Comments are closed.