Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Shut up, hissy kitty!

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Ah, the different things are different argument.

So cool that a Black prosecutor nailed his ass.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

In after Baud. Damn.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

The lights are all blinking red.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

The jury literally has a bell they can ring to force Trump to show up on command. Greatest thing ever!

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

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Archives for July 2022

Global Affairs Open Thread: Steven Pinker Has THOUGHTS

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It’s all very well having ‘Time’s “The 100 Most Influential People in the World Today”, 2004’ and multiple ‘Foreign Policy’s list of “Top 100 Global Thinkers”‘ hits on one’s LinkedIn profile — one does not stay in demand as an Aspen-level Thought Leader(tm) without an ongoing supply of press notices, preferably laudatory. How to market a well-honed talent for expressing that All Is for the Best in This Best of All Possible Worlds in this new age of virality?

Bad choice, Professor Pinker!

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Summer Rerun: Reality Winner Deserves Her Pardon

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60 Minutes originally ran Scott Pelley’s story last December. They re-ran it on Sunday, and posted the entire transcript online:

… In 2018, at the age of 26, Winner pleaded guilty. The judge said he would make an example of her—she served four years behind bars, plus three, now, answering to a probation officer. She still can’t talk about the case.

Reality Winner: I’ve had four years of just trying to say I’m not a terrorist. I can’t even begin to talk about my actual espionage indictment. Or have a sense of accomplishment in having survived prison. Because I’m still stained by them accusing me of being the same groups that I enlisted in the Air Force to fight against. So I don’t let myself feel anything regarding the actual act or the charge. Until I can let it be known that I’m not what they said I was.

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Tuesday Evening Open Thread: The Cowards Currently Running the GOP

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Marc Short is a lifelong ‘conservative MBA’ for the Republican party (i.e., not a good person), but unlike Liz Cheney, he’s not giving up on the rotted GOP structure just yet. Bring in a team of professional exterminators, he figures, shoot the diseased raccoons and rabies-carrying bats that have taken up residence in the attic — maybe hire one of those companies that provides hazmat fumigation after a murder / suicide — plenty of good years left in the old place, in lieu of burning it to the ground. (Or in lieu of burning Marc Short’s career to the ground, at least.)

If you believe Tim Miller, Short’s GOP colleagues are not gonna make it easy…

We are all, by now, familiar with the most appalling, “boy did that age poorly” anonymous quote in the history of American politics, published by the Washington Post less than two months before the deadly siege of the U.S. Capitol and the attempted assassination of the vice president:

“What’s the downside for humoring him?” they mused…

The quote was rattling around my brain last Thursday night as I watched Liz Cheney ruthlessly eviscerate her cowering colleagues like a lioness gnawing on a carcass in an NC-17 nature documentary. But it was during that savage meal that something rather alarming occurred to me.

Liz might be winning the argument for history and in my living room. But in present-day Republican politics, that anonymous “what’s the downside for humoring him” moron actually won the day. And not just that day, but today. Because despite how brutally and blatantly their strategy in managing Trump’s psychopathy failed, Senior Republican Officials (SROs) are still employing it…

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Accessories Before the Fact

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The sentencing hearing for the shooter in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre in Parkland, Florida is ongoing this week. The shooter, Nikolas Cruz, pleaded guilty to the murders, so the trial is to determine whether he’ll spend the rest of his life in jail or be executed for the crimes. In Florida, death sentences require a unanimous verdict.

Cruz committed the murders with an AR-15 on February 14, 2018. He was 19 at the time and a former student. He is now 23 but still looks like a kid to me. (Perhaps because he’s about the same age as MY kid, whose adulthood I outwardly respect but secretly do not accept.) It’s fairly rare for a school shooter to be tried in court; most kill themselves or are killed by the police.

Sentencing Trial
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter, Nikolas Cruz, listens during the penalty phase of his trial at the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale on July 19, 2022.
MIKE STOCKER / POOL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Cruz randomly murdered 14 students, a teacher who was trying to lead students to safety in his classroom, and the school athletic director and a football coach, who ran into the building to try to save students. The armed school resource officer took cover outside as the shooting unfolded. An additional 17 students were shot and injured. All of this happened within six minutes on three floors of one building.

I’m against the death penalty in every case, including this one. If Cruz had killed or injured my kid, I’m sure I’d have an entirely different view, and I expect the parents and families of those killed and injured at MSDHS are hoping for a unanimous verdict of death. It’s perfectly understandable.

Cruz had been a troubled mess for many years. Law enforcement missed so many red flags. Cruz caused so many unendurable losses, and some of the victims and families have channeled their rage and sorrow into gun safety activism, including students Cameron Kasky, David Hogg and X (formerly Emma) González, and also Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter Jaimie was among the victims.

All school shootings are horrific, but for me, this case has been haunting from the beginning. I wrote about it here a couple of days after it happened, believing it might finally change the thinking on guns, even just a little. It did, a little. The wingnut-dominated Florida statehouse and then-Governor Rick Scott did what was previously unthinkable and enacted new gun restrictions. Not enough. But not nothing either.

Anyway, I doubt they will, but I hope the jury spares the shooter’s life. And I hope everyone involved, even him, finds a measure of peace. Cruz is responsible for the horrors he visited on that school, all the lives he took and all the pain he caused. But America gave him the gun that made such a deadly rampage possible. This country — our sick gun culture — is an accessory.

Open thread.

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Star Chamber (Open Thread)

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A CNN article on “the inside story of how John Roberts failed to save abortion rights” contains no real surprises. GOP political operative/Chief Justice John Roberts allegedly worked on Kavanaugh all spring to soften the majority opinion, hoping the court would gut Roe but leave a fig leaf in place — as the wingnut majority had previously done to the VRA — to mitigate potential backlash to the Republican Party.

As previously surmised, when the Alito draft leaked in May, the players were basically frozen in place:

Roberts and his colleagues spent a few anxious days quietly awaiting publication of the document, stretching through the afternoon of May 2, when all nine were together for a live-streamed memorial at the court for the late Justice John Paul Stevens. Politico first published its story about the draft that night at 8:32 p.m.

Roberts launched an investigation into who might be behind “this betrayal of the confidences of the Court.” He vowed that court’s work “will not be affected in any way.”

But, of course, it was, most notably in diminishing whatever chance he had to dislodge the five-justice bloc set to overturn Roe. The aggressive leak investigation worsened the existing strains among the justices, their law clerks and other employees in the nine chambers… Friction among all intensified as protests began, fencing and barricades were erected around the court, and some usual end-of-session lunches and parties were dropped.

Not the usual lunches and parties!

I have lots of sympathy for Justices Sotomayor and Kagan and retired Justice Breyer (what a shitty way to go out), plus incoming Justice Jackson. But maybe it’s best that the artificial comity was stripped away as their Republican operative colleagues exercised raw political power.

Everyone else knows the “balls and strikes” model Roberts tried to sell us as he prepared to rig future games is complete bullshit.  So the justices needn’t pretend to be opera buddies anymore.

As for the leak, ask yourselves who it served. A couple of days ago, the AP published a piece on the status of the investigation:

The Supreme Court won’t say whether it’s still investigating.

The court also won’t say whether the leaker has been identified or whether anyone has been disciplined.

Or whether an outside law firm or the FBI has been called in.

Or whether the court will ever offer an accounting of what transpired.

Or whether it has taken steps to try to prevent a repeat.

To these and other emailed questions, Supreme Court spokeswoman Patricia McCabe said by email: “The Court has no comment.”

The AP piece also says “the public might never know.”

My guess is former and current cult member Mrs. Justice Thomas is the leaker. She already tried to overthrow the government, so what’s a draft opinion leak to the likes of her? Since the unaccountable star chamber doesn’t feel we’re owed an explanation, we’ll have to draw our own conclusions.

Open thread.

ETA: Paul Campos at LGM theorizes that Alito leaked his own draft. I think that’s a better theory than my Ginni Thomas guess.

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I Have Mixed Feelings

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There seems to be some upset in the press about this DCCC ad supporting Peter Meijer’s (R-MI-3) far-right primary opponent, John Gibbs. Meijer, as you might recall, is one of the few Republicans who voted for Trump’s second impeachment. The ad doesn’t really “support” Gibbs in a straightforward way – instead it argues that he’s “too conservative”, that he’s endorsed by Trump, that he’s anti-immigration, etc. In other words, the ad is made to appear that electing Gibbs will make the libs cry, and since it is a $425K buy, it will also probably raise Gibbs’ name awareness in the district. It’s made to inform and motivate hard-core Trumpers to vote against Meijer in the primary.

Apparently, Meijer’s district was redrawn and it is now D+3, so the DCCC is thinking that a nutcase beating Meijer sets up a more likely Democratic win. Maybe. There are a lot of issues here:

  1. Is this a clever ad? No. It reeks of 20 years ago. Now, maybe that’s what will motivate the Trumpers, who watch cable, but this ad is completely cookie-cutter, which is to say, ignorable. Also, why not go balls to the wall instead of being cute? Put together an ad showing Gibbs putting Mexicans in cages and burning down abortion clinics, while Peter Meijer cowers in the corner sucking his thumb. That would probably motivate the Trumpers far more than this weak tea. The reason that the DCCC won’t do that is they want to have it both ways: they want to elevate a Trumper, but they also want to say they didn’t tread on the underlying Democratic message.
  2. Is this a well-executed tactic that will help flip this district? I’m not sure. $425K is a huge lifeline to a Democratic campaign in a marginal district. The Democrat in the race is Hillary Scholten, who has raised $1.2 million to Meijer’s $2.7 million. She lost by 6 points in 2020, so she’s a credible candidate in what could be a winnable district. Could she perhaps spend the equivalent of 1/3 of her entire fundraising to date better than the DCCC? I’m guessing yes.
  3. Are Democrats doing bad by trying to prop up MAGAts in primary challenges? Fuck no. Peter Meijer voted the right way a couple of times, but he’s a vote for Kevin McCarthy otherwise. Spare me the pearl clutching about electing a “far right Republican” to a seat. I’m with Gallego on this one:

Finally, fuck Republicans like Peter Meijer. He’s a rich kid who seems to be human-adjacent — he served in Iraq, and has voted for a couple of good bills — but in the end his voting record is little different from MTG or Matt Gaetz. If he were really a good guy, he’d just switch parties. But he won’t, so, again, fuck him, and I hope the nutty Trumper beats him like a rented mule in the primary.

Still, I don’t know if the DCCC’s effort here will make a difference. It’s too cute by half, and the audience for this type of supposedly clever shit is in DC, not Grand Rapids.

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The Pride of Man

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Am I the only one who will go a little out of the way for weird landmarks? We were in West Texas and I wanted to see the namesake of the James McMurtry song. It’s pretty much as described.

One of the indicators of really small town is a sign bragging about whatever high school team won a state championship back when, and Levelland is no exception. When I see these signs, I don’t expect to see much in terms of local businesses (but I do expect a Dollar General, one of which is just down the street from this sign). I also expect that the area went at least 60/40 for Trump in the last election. (Levelland is in Hockley County, and the 8K voters there went 80/20 Trump in 2020.)

Like this one, it’s not uncommon for the sign to reflect long-ago glory, since a lot of these towns no longer even have a high school. Instead, the few remaining kids are probably bused to a consolidated school in the middle of a field somewhere, equidistant from the towns it serves.

Anyway, in an environment of loss and pain like this one, it’s no wonder that some demagogue came along to turn those feelings into targeted hate. In most cases, the hate and targets were probably already there, and Fox et. al. just channeled them.

Are there good people in towns like these? Sure — hell, they might even be the majority. But there are also plenty of haters who will never change, and the only influence they have is political, so it’s no wonder they’re all about minority rule led by someone who’s openly trying to steal elections.

(BTW, McMurtry says that he wanted use Floydada Texas instead of Levelland in the song, but he couldn’t make the lyrics work.)

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