(H/t Scout211)
The events as they unfolded. The family as never heard before. #Unprecedented. Coming soon to #discoveryplus. pic.twitter.com/Pir3dAdBuk
— discovery+ (@discoveryplus) June 23, 2022
Maybe we *can* turn the GOP’s tactics against them…
I think what some misunderstand about the January 6 hearings is that they don't have to persuade people to reject Trump to somewhat succeed. They just have to get people to tire of him and his drama enough to want to move on to other GOP candidates in 2024. https://t.co/Ar184mRevK
— Yair Rosenberg (@Yair_Rosenberg) June 22, 2022
All of this because one guy who was widely disliked lost an election. https://t.co/KicXFxLGgD
— Jane Coaston (@janecoaston) June 23, 2022
War For Ukraine Day 120: Just a Brief Update Tonight
Old Dan and Little Ann
I’ve been telling my wife for who knows how long that they need to make this shit show like a “24′ episode to make normal people pay attention. I can’t believe it actually exists.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Re the Sarah Longwell tweet:
I’m not sure what that changes. He WILL run again, he WILL get the nomination if he runs, and everybody who voted for him will vote for him again, and everybody who got on the stand and swore up and down they knew he was corrupt, has publicly said they’ll vote for him.
But I suppose it’s progress that they’re hoping he won’t run.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: I’ve had a couple of random musings on trump vs DeSantis. On the one hand: would trump’s survival instinct lead him to conclude that whatever else happens, DeSantis will protect him, even pardon him. On the other, the ghost of Fred comes in the night of January 21 2025 and says, “You couldn’t beat Biden, but that little twerp did? I should’ve stuck with Freddie.”
On the third hand, growing out of the first: Can trump trust DS to protect him?
patrick II
Whenever I see the phrase ” criminalizing politics” I feel compelled to correct it to 1 politicizing criminality”.
VOR
No. SATSQ. None of these people have any honor or loyalty to anything other than themselves. If either TFG or DS told me the sky was blue I’d want a second opinion.
2liberal
Tony Jay will be pleased:
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/uk-politics-61789404
Tories lose by-elections to Labour and Lib Dems
danielx
Pretty much. And he didn’t even want the job in the first place.
Major Major Major Major
Does anybody ever challenge non-firearm restrictions under the 2nd amendment? I feel like I should be allowed to walk around with a sword now. It’s only fair.
mvr
I would have thought that the number of interviews was inversely proportional the intelligence of the interviewee, but now I either have to rethink that hypothesis or my views on which Trump kid or in-law is the dumbest. (HInt: It isn’t Baron.)
James E Powell
I have very low expectations for the film. I expect it to soft soap Trump. Treat him like entertainment.
James E Powell
@Major Major Major Major:
“Nunchuck skills, bow hunting skills . . . ” Napoleon Dynamite
cckids
@Major Major Major Major: The Oklahoma guy who (last week?) was carrying an assault rifle around town/schools got stopped by cops who said that by OK law, the gun was fine, but arrested him because he had brass knuckles.
Jesus, this is a stupid timeline.
TheTruffle
@2liberal: How did THAT happen?
Major Major Major Major
@cckids: yeah I saw that! I guess hand to hand weapons just don’t have a powerful lobby that’s completely captured one of the major parties.
Dangerman
@mvr:
My money is on Junior. I don’t think he or his Pappy could spell Ukraine if you spotted either one “kraine”.
Jackie
Other wonderful news:
“Senate passes most sweeping gun bill in decades, setting up House vote”
Nancy Pelosi hopes to have the House vote and pass tomorrow, sending the bill to Biden’s desk before everyone leaves town for a two week break.
Ken
The only member of the family who will say Donald is crazy, though she uses nice medical terms.
(And IIRC, Tiffany was doing well enough by having nothing to do with the rest of them, but then showed up at one of the White House political rallies?)
Ken
@2liberal: From your link: “Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer says the result shows the country has lost confidence in the Tories.”
Huh, from the way Tony describes Starmer, I would have expected an apology for taking the seat from the Conservatives, and a promise that the new MP would vote as instructed by the Tory Whip.
Jackie
@Ken: Tiffany was blackmailed of future inheritance if she didn’t cooperate wholeheartedly. (No proof – just speculation)
Major Major Major Major
@Jackie:
Have they passed the damn semiconductor bill yet? It’s taking forever.
Jackie
@Major Major Major Major:
♀️
Alison Rose
Oh. So, same as their sex life.
You couldn’t get me to watch this documentary for all the tulips in Holland. You’d have to Clockwork Orange me to make it happen.
Major Major Major Major
@Jackie: looks like the senate and house just entered year 2 of hammering out their differences on it. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-congressional-leaders-meeting-semiconductor-chips-bill-tuesday-2022-06-21/
mrmoshpotato
Cry harder, UK Trump trash!
mrmoshpotato
Same. I didn’t watch the trailer, but I know any of it would make me wish I were blind and deaf.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
some good old-fashioned pre-trump losing Republican politics
the applause is notable for its smattering quality
Jackie
@Major Major Major Major: That’s not good news.
BUT, the gun law getting passed, and Ukraine and Moldavia moving to being accepted into the EU is great news.
Also, too, TFG getting closer to being indicted is great news!
A lot of positive news today, IMO.
2liberal
see comment #64 in the morning open thread every day a busy day
https://install.local/thursday-morning-open-thread-every-day-a-busy-day/
Kent
Ha ha ha….Joke’s on her.
You think the Donald is leaving an inheritance that consists of anything more than overdue debts?
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
That’s just cosplay.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: only if you’re in a costume, otherwise you’re just some weirdo with a sword. And a scofflaw cuz it’s not a giant gun.
Felanius Kootea
@Major Major Major Major:
Read an interesting (paywalled) article from the New York Times on how states can do an end run around some recent Supreme Court rulings. The article was written by someone who clerked for Sotomayor.
On the recent ruling that would have forced the state of Maine to provide tax dollars to religious private schools, she notes that the Maine legislature quickly passed a law that prohibits any schools in the state of Maine from discriminating against children based on gender or sexual identity. Faced with being forced to accept LGBTQ students, the schools that had sued are now declining taxpayer dollars in order to continue discriminating.
For the NY gun control case, she says:
I like her thinking and some of the BJ lawyers have already mentioned liability insurance on this here blog. State legislatures should make it so.
frosty
@Major Major Major Major: When we were in Portland (at an excellent cocktail bar) a woman walked in and sat down next to us with a sword strapped across her back. I had to ask. It was an umbrella with a sword handle that she’d bought at a Renaissance Fair. And yes, she said it has intimidated people usefully a number of times.
Calouste
@Ken: Tony is one of those people who likes attacking the Democrats from the left, but with a British accent and verbal diarrhea.
frosty
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Here’s my take: If we want fresh thinking* in the Senate, my vote is for Fetterman in PA.
* Shorts and Carrhart also included. Also included, the current SLOP (Second Lady of Pennsylvania).
JWR
@James E Powell:
Probably, and that stupid 30 second trailer doesn’t tell us anything at all, but who knows, when it comes to the raw footage (digitalage)?
But boy, what a day this has been!
Felanius Kootea
@Felanius Kootea: Whoops – his thinking. Don’t know why I thought the article was written by a woman.
VeniceRiley
3 more US sleeps and I’m out! It’s all so exhausting. At least over there, I’ll have a family.
trollhattan
120 hours of Trumps is 119:45 more than I can handle, but they must have some doozies on record.
Calouste
@TheTruffle: One of the Tories got expelled from the party because he was convicted of sexually assaulting a fifteen-year-old boy, and the other resigned because he got caught watching porn in parliament. So two by-elections followed. In both, the Tories lost about 20 percentage points of their votes, and the good thing is that most of the Labour voters in one of the constituencies weren’t purity ponies and switched to the LibDems and got them the majority.
trollhattan
@Kent:
“You, get a bill
“And you, get a bill
“And you, get a bill
“Reach under your chairs, everybody gets a bill!”
trollhattan
@Calouste: Gaetz and Jordan, sittin” in a tree….
Seems totally okay, here. Tories have higher standards than Republicans?
P Thomas
Links to the tweets would be so nice.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@trollhattan: You’re stronger than me; I’d nope out with 119:59:30 run time remaining, because my cardiologist keeps telling me I need to be cautious of my blood pressure.
prostratedragon
@JWR: Oh I don’t know, the trailer might be setting up a kind of “How it started/How it’s going” thingy.
Yes, it was one of the better news days lately, despite a bump or two from the SCOTUS.
Bill
@cckids:
Until a couple of years ago, it was illegal to carry so-called “gravity knives” in NYC. NYPD would arrest construction workers, stagehands, and electricians (disproportionately minorities, of course) for carrying the tools needed for their jobs:
https://pappalardolaw.com/2019/06/gravity-knives-legal-in-ny/
Tony Jay
He is. Flobalob left to flobber about “mid-term blues” and “listening to voters” after his Party just lost two by-elections, one of them by a ridiculously huge and historic swing. It fills me with great pleasure. Unlike the gobshites who infest the Labour Right I want Tories to lose seats all of the time, not just when it’s my faction calling the shots.
The dip in voting numbers, especially in Wakefield (where the turnout dropped by nearly 40%) is concerning, but that’s a matter for another day. Today is all about the determination of those people who did vote to do so intelligently and for the candidate best positioned to get rid of the Tory. There will be Tory MPs all over the country shitting bricks and deeply regretting their mistake in keeping Flobby in the hot-seat when they could have removed him a few weeks ago.
I bet he thought being out of the country for these elections (in Rwanda, for various reasons, including a UN meeting) would be a smart way of dodging primary responsibility for bad results, but with his Party Chairman jumping ship and the sheer scale of the collapse in the Tory vote, it’s looking more like he’s way out of position while his enemies and rivals back home have free rein to plot his removal.
Tony Jay
@Calouste:
Uh huh. And when did that happen? Feel free to scan through your list of copy and paste ‘biting comebacks’ for something to say, but maybe next time you should put in that little bit of extra effort and edit out the America-centric references before shit-posting? M’kay?
Well you got it half right.
Tony Jay
@Ken:
Heh. Some things have to be kept behind the scenes, for appearances sake. 8-)
David ☘The Establishment☘ Koch
I realize that’s a low bar, but the real reason the D-List escort declines interviews is because she barely speaks any English. It’s a hoot of corruption that she entered the country on an Einstein visa (an immigrant visa reserved for “individuals with extraordinary ability”).
livewyre
Momentarily indulging in a bleary fascination; namely, where such a characterization comes from. I live to dissect such things.
“One of those people who likes” – this construction has something perversely captivating to it; a crystallization of meanings. I don’t want to put anyone on the spot because where I disagree with it is on the significance of “who”.
It doesn’t matter in particular who says it, is the thing for me. Rather, what gets me about it is how routine these things are, and even more what makes them that way to such a point where almost everyone does them. Something in the social fabric urges us to put things in those terms. A norm.
It’s… normal to consider others in terms of “kind”, isn’t it? To sharply categorize and sort into bins. I don’t think of it as helpful or necessary or inevitable, but there’s something to be learned about why we keep doing it in spite of those. We figure a kind, then we attribute to it an internal state – a pattern of thinking, a fixed viewpoint, a script. Something about that kind of puppetry is just satisfying even if it doesn’t work.
Maybe it doesn’t “need” to happen, but it has a function. Unfortunately I suspect that function is a bit of an appendix. In short, it serves to sort us into good or bad. Not what is good or bad to do, or helpful or harmful, but what an acceptable state of being is. A judgment of essence, a judgment of “who”. A decision of the merits of an action based on the disposition of the actor.
The way I look at things, that’s attached to some of the larger questions we’re facing, such as whether to govern by law or by force. If bad things are a result of bad people, then something has to be done about the bad people, no matter what – whatever is to be done, it’s justifiable as long as the good people are doing it. Morality by attribution. That’s one of the norms I think we need to question (in ourselves as well as others) in order for society to continue, let alone unfold.
David ☘The Establishment☘ Koch
It’s easy to forget Dump lost Iowa and only received 35% of the vote in New Hampshire (2 of the whitest states). He was pushed across the finish line in the primary by the corporate media who spent 40 years creating his myth as a self made, financial wizard and by their donation of 5 BILLION DOLLARS in free media; as well as running against a putrid roster of low energy bores who ran on cutting social security and turning medicare into a voucher.
Even then, he lost the popular vote by millions and only eked out an electoral win with by the unprecedented interference of a foreign country combined with a last minute FBI coup.
Princess
Any/every future Republican President will pardon the January 6th insurrectionists and anyone else who gets convicted for fraud, phony electors etc. There’s no daylight between them there.
JWR
Believe it or don’t, I’m actually watching the replay of the hearing on PBS, (I was fading in and out when it was live), and wow, the texts between all these co-conspirators pushing Jeff Clark for AG! I can just hear Trump screaming, “where’s my Robert Bork?! “Where’s my trusted puppet?!”
Meanwhile, over at Politico:
Yeah, right, lil’ Richie. Like I’m gonna click on that one! : )
Brachiator
@David ☘The Establishment☘ Koch:
Yeah, Trump started slow. However,
Ultimately, Trump dominated a weak field by promising his base what they wanted and by appealing to their anger and bigotry.
I agree that the 2016 election was BS.
I don’t know if Trump will run again. I don’t really care. But the anger and stupidity he stirred up is waiting for someone who can benefit from it.
Ken
@JWR: Maybe he proposes an acceptable alternative, perhaps involving the public square, stocks, and rotting cabbages?
Barbara
@JWR: Clark’s actions were extraordinary. The hearing brought that out well.
bjacques
@JWR: Where are my eagles!??
Or, for more modern audiences…
Wo ist Wenk?
Wo ist Steiner?
Geminid
@Brachiator: You seem to be talking of the rise of trumpism-without-Trump. This is the reality, I believe.
The “tea party” movement did not rise and fall between 2010 and 2015. The anti-establishment radicals continued to hack away at the Chamber of Commerce elites that used to call the shots in the Republican party.
In my state they formed an alliance with political evangelicals and were gaining the upper hand by 2015. They took Eric Cantor’s scalp in a 2014 primary, and then two fairly young Congresssmen retired in 2016 rather than run a gauntlet of caucuses and conventions to hold their seats. The Republican elites who had welcomed in the tea partiers and bible thumpers to replenish their partiy’s depleted ranks found themselves the lesser faction.
That was the dynamic in many other states when Trump came along and turbocharged the radical faction. As “independent conservative” M.D. Russ put it in his Bearing Drift article, “Trump did not hijack the Republican party… he just answered the casting call.” Trump’s presidential win emboldened Republican radicals, but his excesses helped our party regain its footing in the 2018 midterms.
Now we are starting to see a post-trump Republican party. Their 800 lb. Gorilla is becoming a 300 lb. mangy monkey. But Republicans elites always seek power, and now the “grass roots” are also willing to rally behind sleeker candidates like Youngkin and DeSantis.
Some observers likened Trump’s post presidential strength to a toxic, unstable radioisotope. The question was, what is the half-life? We can’t be sure, but it’s starting to look like Trumpium’s half-life may be 30 to 40 months. Trumpism will dominate the Republican party for the next few cycles, though. If they can steal enough elections, it could dominate the whole nation.
Baud
Like normal people?
sab
@Geminid: In my state the tea party is deeply imbedded in churches. Normal decent people I know have become toxic.
I just hang in there. They are neighbors. This winter they will need help in the snow, or will provide help in the snow. Deep down a lot of the church guys are decent. Make them continue to be neighbors and they will rise to the occassion.
Gun nuts are a whole different ilk. A lot of them are also barflies. Just bad people
ETA We trade flower bulbs. We commiserate about the squirrels stealing our bulbs and moving them to each others yards. Our kids went to school together. Our kids beat drug problems together. We are neighbors. That means something around here.
Geminid
@Tony Jay: I am happy to hear your obsevations on Democratic party politics. But I think the commenter is wrong to say you have taken a stand favoring the party’s left wing. I have not seen you try to apply your perceptive analysis of Labour’s infighting to matters across the Atlantic, and I don’t think you would. The political systems are simply too different.
lowtechcyclist
Republican Senators want to take school lunch money away from trans kids.
Like the saying goes, when they show you who they are, believe them.
O. Felix Culpa
@Baud:
Unpossible.
lowtechcyclist
Trumpism (with or without Trump, it really doesn’t need him as more than a symbol anymore) will dominate the Republican Party until something more extreme comes along and pushes it aside as too moderate.
It’s hard to imagine what that could possibly be, but that’s been the arc of the GOP since the late 1970s.
sab
@lowtechcyclist: My brother used to be a normal Republican. Then he went to work for a mutual fund with one of those charismatic salesman. It’s a cult. If you want to survive professionally you must buy in. And bro did. I don’t even know him anymore.
Ken
@O. Felix Culpa: They can do incredible things with CGI nowadays.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: I don’t think a more extreme strain of fascism will knock aside trumpism but rather will grow organically from it. Ambitious politicians will know when to move with that trend. The trend may be dynamic enough to claim an electoral majority beyond just dominating Republican primaries. But it could just marginalize the party even further. Even now, I think the Republicans may only be able to win in purple states and nationwide by stealing elections, and their situation might only get worse. I think they know this, and that makes the next two cycles very dangerous.
SFAW
@danielx:
[I want to preface this by saying that, in general, I really like your comments. However …]
I’ve seen this comment, in various forms, in various places since 2016. I’m not sure why people continue to believe this. He wanted the job; he wanted the power that goes with it, the fame, the attention — with the additional benefit of being able to grift millions from his moron supporters and the government. He didn’t want to do the hard work that presidenting entails, but outside of that, it was a win-win-win-win situation for him.
Tony Jay
@Geminid:
My take on American politics is pretty simple. No Republicans and Republicans, No!
Hey, I got my edumacation here on BJ, these things rub off.
NotMax
‘@Geminid
Republican candidate for governor of Minnesota just came out with his “bold” solution. Soo-prize, soo-prize, it’s the same old song, repackaged in economic buzzword du jour wrapping.
Raoul Paste
@sab: Sorry to hear about your brother, but I found your comments about neighbours to be very helpful. So thanks.
Paul in KY
@Major Major Major Major: I thought you could walk around with a sword..
I guess it is characterized as a knife over so many inches. What about a mace or a flail?
Paul in KY
@lowtechcyclist: Some sort of ‘benign’ Big Brother stuff, all privatized, of course and amendments to constitution to allow the Dear leader to be voted in as President-For-Life.
Major Major Major Major
@Paul in KY: California at least bans, explicitly, in statute, long blades, as well as:
Paul in KY
@Major Major Major Major: Thank you, sir. I guess a mace would fall under ‘melee weapons’.
J R in WV
I don’t even know what several of those named and banned weapons are, and I’m a big reader of military Sci Fi and Fantasy… Air gauge knives? Anyone?