Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

In my day, never was longer.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

I would gladly pay you tuesday for a hamburger today.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

Keep the Immigrants and deport the fascists!

Dear legacy media: you are not here to influence outcomes and policies you find desirable.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

You are here: Home / Jan 6: Hearings / (Not Enough) Friday(s) Morning Open Thread: Never Bet Against Nancy Pelosi

(Not Enough) Friday(s) Morning Open Thread: Never Bet Against Nancy Pelosi

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I mostly agree with Popehat here…

… but I can understand the counterargument, too:

Reader Interactions

173Comments

  1. 1.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Pelosi’s response to hearing Trump might march to the Capitol is definitely worth watching a few million times

    FTFY, @Acyn

  2. 2.

    Baud

    We must lose our democracy in order to save it!

    Alternatively, we could just proceed directly to saving it.

  4. 4.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Baud:

    Did they air it to demonstrate what a total badass she is, or was it more “OMG! Violent threats against the Preznit!! Both sides!!!”?

  5. 5.

    Eolirin

    That counter argument ignores the uncertainty around the potential for emergency declarations that would have been being made without a congress able to resist and a Supreme Court likely to be permissive. Biden at minimum would not legally have been certified to have won the presidential election on Jan 6th.

    It’s completely impossible to know how any of that would have played out.

  6. 6.

    japa21

    We definitely came close to losing democracy. If the insurrection had been successful democracy as we know it would be gone.

  9. 9.

    Sanjeevs

    Liz Truss has just sacked her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng after just 6 weeks in office.

    Awkward given they are widely rumoured to have had an affair in the past.

  10. 10.

    Baud

    @Eolirin:

    It’s completely impossible to know how any of that would have played out.

    Agreed.  Which is why all speculation about alternative histories is largely a waste of time and mental energy.

  11. 11.

    Eolirin

    @Sanjeevs: Somehow I don’t think this will improve her standing much. Maybe she can sack herself next. That might actually work in terms of improving public opinion.

  13. 13.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I got my bivalent and flu vaccines a week ago Wednesday, no side effects. Then on Tuesday my nose started running. “Allergies.” I said. Then yesterday something hit me like a ton of bricks, Uncontrolled coughing all day, lots of phlegm in many colors, nose running constantly. I felt like hammered shit. Self tested for covid twice with “Invalid” results both times. It finally alleviated last night and with the help of NyQuil I managed to get some sleep.

    It’s not too bad now, limited coughing (some phlegm), my nose has stopped running but my diaphragm is sore as all fck.

    WTF, who knows.

  14. 14.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly: The only illness I’ve had since Covid started has been “allergies” which got worse (never tested positive for Covid).  I’m pretty sure I didn’t get it from people because I have been social distancing and masking.

  15. 15.

    Betty Cracker

    Popehat is correct, though. Stolen election liars are on the ballot, and some will probably win. The outrage against the coup attempt on the part of corporate America was almost as short-lived as the elected Republicans’ temporary sobriety before they crawled back to the bloated orange meat-sack.

    A proper response to what happened on January 6th would be overwhelming national outrage that consigned the Republican Party to the political wilderness until they regrouped, had an internal reckoning and kicked out all the crazies. Republican pols strongly associated with Trump would be dead meat politically.

    Instead of any of that, Republicans were allegedly on track to retake both chambers until the corrupt SCOTUS reclassified half the population as second-class citizens and Trump picked a bunch of crackpots to run for senate seats. So the consequence is they’re less favored to win in 2022 than the out-party usual is.

    This wouldn’t be the case in a healthy democracy. Not saying we’re doomed, but yes, we did come really close to losing our democracy, and yes, that danger is still acute.

  18. 18.

    Math Guy

    And now the media will subject us to countless hours of handwringing over Speaker Pelosi’s “lack of civility “. Hours of precious airtime will be devoted to panels of reporters interviewing each other about reactions to her reaction to the enraged mob that tfg unleashed. Lunatic republican representatives will call for investigations and Pelosi’s expulsion from the House. All of this will be forgotten in a week – another week when we could have had a serious discussion of – oh, I don’t know; maybe something important like the real threats to Democracy, or the climate, or . . .. And maybe that’s the point: to avoid having to deal with genuine issues.

    It is really hard some days not to get discouraged.

  19. 19.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Eolirin:

    Maybe she can sack herself next. That might actually work in terms of improving public opinion.

    “Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked, have been sacked.”

    -MP&HG Møøse credits

  20. 20.

    OzarkHillbilly

    One Tory MP:

    “The idea that the prime minister can just scapegoat her chancellor and move on is deluded. This is her vision. She signed off on every detail and she defended it.”

  22. 22.

    sdhays

    Umm…”if we lost 100 Senators” the formalization of inaugurating the new President would have been disrupted and Trump would have filled that void – ending democracy in America. Maybe it still wouldn’t have worked, but asserting that it definitely wouldn’t have has no evidence backing it.

    “We’d have more elections” misses the entire point.

  23. 23.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker:

    A proper response to what happened on January 6th would be overwhelming national outrage that consigned the Republican Party to the political wilderness until they regrouped, had an internal reckoning and kicked out all the crazies. Republican pols strongly associated with Trump would be dead meat politically.

    While I agree, but I also try to keep in mind that the Civil War did not come close to killing off the Democratic Party (which at the time occupied the place the Republican Party has today).

    Sadly, it also seems to me there are a lot of Dems and libs over the last two years who have continued to ask things of Democrats other beyond not being seditionists and anti-democracy as a condition of continued support.  If we haven’t been unified, it hurts our ability to persuade normies and non-Dems to unify with us IMHO.

  25. 25.

    Baud

    @Math Guy:

    It is really hard some days not to get discouraged.

    Our media sucks, but I prefer to be discouraged by things that actually happen, not my own predictions about things that will happen.  YMMV.

  26. 26.

    Eolirin

    @lowtechcyclist: Hey, it’s a very cunning plan; on one hand she’d still be Liz Truss, but on the other, she’d be the person who made Liz Truss go away. I figure those should roughly cancel out to neutral.

  27. 27.

    Lapassionara

    @OzarkHillbilly: That ton of bricks feeling sure sounds like COVID. I took mucinex D, and that alleviated the running nose, etc, but the fatigue hung around. I started feeling better day 5. I still don’t have the same appetite I had before COVID, and my taste is still affected.

    I had lots and lots of chicken noodle soup. Hope you feel better soon.

  31. 31.

    RepubAnon

    Add a few income tax brackets and boost the maximum marginal rate to 90% for incomes of all types over $10 million.  This will help drain the money from the Billionaire Dark Money swamp.  Without seed money, the astroturf groups will disappear, and hate radio will need to rely on advertising again.

    It won’t solve the problem completely, but it’ll help get it under control.

  33. 33.

    kalakal

    From a (very) competent individual to a complete clown here’s the UK’s new Home Secretary* being greeted by her Labour counterpart at her first parliamentary session in the role. Yvette Cooper nails her to the floor, it’s great

    twitter.com/YvetteCooperMP/status/1580602933623676928?s=20&t=xa4YyYaUYvzNPf6L4-kgNw

    As for her boss The Economist came up with an insult I have to steal

    Ms Truss entered Downing Street on September 6th. She blew up her own government with a package of unfunded tax cuts and energy-price guarantees on September 23rd. Take away the ten days of mourning after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, and she had seven days in control. That is roughly the shelf-life of a lettuce.

    *Braverman inexplicably was Attorney General for the last 2 years, she’s allegedly a lawyer but in her time in office showed less knowledge of UK law than a sardine. She is also a real piece of work, in her speech at the Tory party conference she waned lyrical on the prospect of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda

    I would love to have a front page of The Telegraph with a plane taking off to Rwanda, that’s my dream, it’s my obsession

  34. 34.

    TaMara

    In my fantasies, I often wonder how things would be different if the insurrectionists had broken through and got to Pence. How much bloodshed would have happened as the USSS fought to protect him. Would that have changed the dynamic? Would the House and Senate have made serious changes to address it? Would the Republicans have abandoned the trump train (although they’d still be on the fascist route, I’m sure)

    It was bad enough as it was…but what if it had been worse?

    And Nancy Pelosi is bad ass. But those of us paying attention already knew that.

  36. 36.

    Eolirin

    @RepubAnon: I don’t think that works, not that I’m against income tax increases and not that I don’t think we need to break the ability for billionaires to dominate our media.

    But I don’t think we can succeed at accomplishing the latter just by doing the former. It’s going to be a lot harder than that.

  38. 38.

    Quiltingfool

    New cat update:  She is still under the bed in the guest room.  She has food, water and the litter box in the room and I go in there every so often to talk to her.

    I’m pretty sure she prowled around last night, though.  The catnip stuffed fish toy was on the floor, not on the coffee table and I think she walked around on the sofa.  Baby steps!

  39. 39.

    terraformer

    @Betty Cracker: ​
     

    This is what keeps me up at night – how *close* things came then and apparently will be next month.

    For the former, I believe that had T***p not completely fcked up COVID, he’d be in office right now.

    For the latter, I believe that had SCOTUS not ruled against abortion, Republicans would be doing much better in the polls (even though we know polls suck).

    Just a couple of tweaks and we’d be in a much darker place right now. This is why I fear the so-called “competent authoritarian” pol.

  43. 43.

    Nicole

    “I’m going to punch him out; I’m going to go to jail; I’m going to be happy.”

    I want that on a T-shirt.

    It’s cool to think we’ve been here to see one of the best Speakers in the history of the nation.  She is extraordinary.

  44. 44.

    Amir Khalid

    @Sanjeevs:

    Looks to me like Kwarteng is being scapegoated for the wildly unpopular “mini-budget” announced a few days ago. But I’m doubtful that throwing her Chancellor under the bus is going to help keep Truss in her own job for much longer. She’s been an absolute train wreck as PM.

  45. 45.

    Geminid

    Senate debates don’t seem to be high profile events nationally, but tonight’s Walker/Warnock debate was previewed in the CBS radio hourly news this morning. One of their reporters was in Georgia, interviewing Peach State voters. She said a commonly expressed desire regarding the debate was “the truth,” about both policy and personal matters.

  46. 46.

    zhena gogolia

    @Quiltingfool: She’ll come around. It took my last batch about a week to come out from behind the books on the bookshelf. (Better than behind the washing machine, where they spent the first day.)

  48. 48.

    JWR

    @Betty Cracker:

    Stolen election liars are on the ballot, and some will probably win.

    If any of these election liars win, and find themselves in a position to actually know better, will they still pull a TFG stunt? I know they say they’ll do it, and say they would have done it the last time around, but will they really stick their necks out, especially if TFG isn’t on the ballot? I say no, but only if TFG and assorted others are held to account.

  49. 49.

    sab

    @Quiltingfool: We had baby steps with our Dobby. He started out hiding in the basement for months. A year and a half later he sleeps in my bed every night and frolics on the carpeted steps every day. And comes when I call his name.

  50. 50.

    Baud

    Alaska is paying for its history of voting GOP.

    Alaska snow crab season canceled as officials investigate disappearance of an estimated 1 billion crabs

  51. 51.

    Tom Levenson

    Who could have predicted that leaving the choice of PM of the UK to ~160,000 people willing to pay money at regular intervals to the Tories and whose last choice was BoJo would end in bathetic disaster?

  56. 56.

    zhena gogolia

    @Layer8Problem: I suspended my watching of it. He is very good, but it was just too depressing to watch a comedy show about Ukraine right now. I’ll resume watching when/if things get better.

  57. 57.

    stinger

    @Amir Khalid: Like his mother, he does his job, even when he’d rather not. It was pretty clear he’d rather not have been doing it then. Just before the door opens to admit Truss, an aide is saying to the King, “No, just this one, Sir.” Or possibly, “Just this once.”

    To your comment, I’m thinking we’d better check on the King’s health toot sweet.

  58. 58.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Nicole:

    “I’m going to punch him out; I’m going to go to jail; I’m going to be happy.”

    I want that on a T-shirt.

    With a pic of Pelosi of course.

    Yeah, I’d wear that tee.  I’d alternate it with my “Dark Brandon Rising” tee.

  59. 59.

    Burnspbesq

    @Betty Cracker:

    kicked out all the crazies

    Not going to happen. The crazies hold all the levers of power in the Republican Party. And David Corn, in his new book, posits that it has been thus since at least the 1930s, if not the 1890s.

  61. 61.

    lowtechcyclist

    @JWR:

    If any of these election liars win, and find themselves in a position to actually know better, will they still pull a TFG stunt? I know they say they’ll do it, and say they would have done it the last time around, but will they really stick their necks out, especially if TFG isn’t on the ballot? I say no, but only if TFG and assorted others are held to account.

    Oh come on. It’s tribalism uber alles with this gang.  Doesn’t matter if their 2024 candidate is Trump or DeSantis or whoever, they’ll use the powers of their offices to put as big a thumb on the scales as they possibly can.

  63. 63.

    Tony G

    Ha!  With the exception of my wife, all of the women in my family are Italian-American.  I’ve heard that tone of voice many times in my life.  The weapon of choice when my mother had “had it up to here” used to  be a wooden spoon.  That tone means: “Back the hell off, and do what you’re supposed to do!”.

  65. 65.

    Geminid

    @Betty Cracker: Yes, and more Georgia voters will tune in because of this factor. Senator Warnock can benefit from a larger audience even if Walker doesn’t blow his own campaign up. Warnock is an accomplished communicator, with decades of public speaking under his belt.

  66. 66.

    Betty Cracker

    @Tony G: My husband’s mom is Italian American — sweetest lady I’ve ever met and barely over five feet tall. But everyone instinctively knows not to piss her off. According to my husband, it never ends well.

  67. 67.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Baud: While I agree, but I also try to keep in mind that the Civil War did not come close to killing off the Democratic Party (which at the time occupied the place the Republican Party has today).

    And the Republicans were impeaching their own president before most of the war dead were buried.

  69. 69.

    Fleeting Expletive

    @OzarkHillbilly:I did the same last Saturday. The Covid vaccination in my left arm was a little sore, the flu shot in my right felt like I’d been hit with a bat, all hot and red and sore. I’d never had much of a reaction to either kind before. It all went away in a couple of days and I’m feeling relieved that I won’t get the flu because I know how much worse that could be.

    worth it!

  70. 70.

    NotMax

    FYI.

    Wall Street staged its biggest comeback in years [Thursday], as stocks roared back from steep morning losses caused by a worse-than-expected report on inflation.

    The S&P 500 jumped to a gain of 2.6%, a stunning reversal after earlier being down as much as 2.4% and touching its lowest level in nearly two years. The Dow Jones Industrial Average swung more than 1,500 points from its low to its high. The turnarounds were the biggest for each index since March 2020.

    Other markets around the world likewise veered sharply from losses to gains, while analysts offered possible reasons for the reversal but little that was concrete. Source

  72. 72.

    OzarkHillbilly

    “I know you are but what am I???”

    Elon Musk under federal investigation over $44bn Twitter deal – filing

    Elon Musk is under a federal investigation related to his $44bn takeover of Twitter, the social media company has said in a court filing made public on Thursday. While the filing said he was under investigation, it did not say what the focus was, or which federal authorities were investigating.

    Twitter, which sued Musk in July to force him to close the deal, said attorneys for the Tesla CEO had claimed “investigative privilege” when refusing to hand over documents it had sought. In late September, Musk’s attorneys provided a “privilege log” identifying documents to be withheld. The log referenced drafts of a 13 May email to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and a slide presentation to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Twitter said.

    “This game of ‘hide the ball’ must end,” the company said in the court filing.
    ……………………………….
    Alex Spiro, an attorney for Musk, told Reuters that Twitter’s court filing was a “misdirection … It is Twitter’s executives that are under federal investigation.”

    He is a manchild.

  73. 73.

    Layer8Problem

    @zhena gogolia: I know what you mean. My partner and I recently finished watching it. He’s intelligent, funny, and works well with the ensemble, Kvartal 95 people I think. We liked it. It had its slapstick, over-the-top situation comedy stuff but you really get a sense of a different place and a man who loves his country and has a sense of humor about its day-to-day life and corruption and wants better for it. The heartbreaking part is laughing with him and his cast, watching them in a peaceful environment that’s gone, and then turning off an episode, getting online, and seeing in the present moment a grimly serious war president in a army green t-shirt talk about his country and its fight and knowing what horror is going on and what the Ukrainian people are suffering and enduring. Having laughed with these people is painful.

  75. 75.

    sab

    When I lived in California we got mail packet laying out the ballot with issues and candidates.

    Ohio we have crickets. Two big statewide issues on the ballot with no discussion at all in the press. Thanks media guys.

    One issue is whether to block all the bail reforms. Of course it is not presented that way.

    The other issue is whether to allow municipalities to allow green card holders to vote on local issues. Who even knew this was a problem?  Ohio Sec of State Frank LaRose thought it was serious enough to amend our state constitution. Local ballot issues are usually only local income tax and local property tax.

    ETA My takeaway has always been if you don’t understand a ballot issue vote NO. A no vote changes nothing. The status quo still stands.

  78. 78.

    Geminid

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: Andrew Johnson was not really a Republican. Lincoln chose the Tennessee War Democrat to run with him 1864. This was one of Lincoln’s few political mistakes, but it was a very consequential one.

    Johnson actually started his presidency advocating a vengeful policy towards the South.”Treason must be made odious” he warned. By some accounts only Grant’s threat of resignation prevented Johnson from putting Lee and other officers on trial.

    Johnson soon realized that he had no future with the Republican party, and swung towards a lenient Reconstruction. His conflict with Congressional Republicans over this led to his Impeachment.

  79. 79.

    Paul in KY

    @TaMara: I think the Secret Service would have had to break out their automatic weapons and shoot a bunch of insurrectionists. Would they have had to expend all their ammo? Hopefully no.

  80. 80.

    Amir Khalid

    Kwasi Kwarteng’s replacement as Chancellor of the Exchequer has been announced: Jeremy Hunt. I know nothing about the man, except that a BBC radio interviewer once had an on-air slip of the tongue and introduced him to her listeners as Jeremy C***.

  81. 81.

    Betty Cracker

    @Layer8Problem: And what an inspiring leader Zelensky turned out to be. I can’t think of another person in recent history who’s risen to the occasion like he has.

  85. 85.

    Paul in KY

    @sab: If she can easily handle her, then it’s not ‘forced handling’. Will she allow you to pick her up? If not, then don’t pick her up.

  86. 86.

    TS

    @Sanjeevs:

    Liz Truss has just sacked her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng after just 6 weeks in office.

    And she sacked him for wanting to implement her policies.

  87. 87.

    Scout211

    I enjoyed reading  this analysis on CNN.com   that catalogued TFG’s  very bad, no good day yesterday.

    If you have a few minutes, it’s a satisfying read

    “Being subpoenaed by Jan. 6 committee wasn’t even the worst of Trump’s day”

  89. 89.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Paul in KY: They did shoot one. I don’t know if that made any difference.

    The footage of the insurrection is always shocking, no matter how many times I see it. The insurrectionists are so filled with hate and violence, and so sure they’re untouchable.

  90. 90.

    MazeDancer

    Send the Speaker the House she needs. Write PostCards!

    We got Elaine Luria addresses for those that enjoyed her on J6. And Wiley Nickel in NC, which gets a potential Beasley voter to the polls as well.

    PostCards increase turnout. And turnout is what we need.

    Head to PostCardPatriots.com or click on my nym.

  91. 91.

    Geminid

    @Betty Cracker: This might have been payback. The King planned to give a speech at the COP27 climate change conference in Egypt next month. But on October 3, British media reported that “on advice” from Prime Minister Truss, Charles would stay home.

    The British political system makes the PM’s “advice” more or less mandatory in such matters, but nothing prevents Charles from flipping Truss the figurative bird.

  92. 92.

    Eunicecycle

    @JWR: I was wondering that too. If they are the ones running to elections, are they going to admit it was fraudulent?

  93. 93.

    Layer8Problem

    @Betty Cracker:  Yep.  A comedian!  That’s almost certainly what Putin thought.  No, it turns out he’s much more than that, and always has been.

    And in passing, thank you for the pointer to Bad Sisters!

  96. 96.

    Brachiator

    @Amir Khalid:

    From one news agency…

    A former foreign minister, Hunt has twice been unsuccessful in running for the governing Conservative Party’s leadership, once losing to Boris Johnson and then being knocked out in the first round of voting in a contest which saw Truss take the prize.

    Seen as on the centre-right of the party, Hunt endorsed Truss’s leadership rival, former finance minister Rishi Sunak to become prime minister, and is seen by many in the party as a safe pair of hands.

    Hunt, who has also previously served as health minister and culture minister, becomes Britain’s fourth finance minister in as many months.

    Truss’s office also said Edward Argar had replaced Chris Philp as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the second most important job in the department.

    Neither man has any particular expertise in economics or finance. They appear to be safe choices, from the perspective of Conservative Party officials. They don’t ruffle feathers, but are not hardliners.

    Liz Truss is still on shaky ground.

  99. 99.

    Old School

    @MazeDancer: Mrs. School just received her postcard in the mail this week.  She was going to vote anyway, but it was appreciated that Cait from Oakland took the time for a handwritten message.

  101. 101.

    Matt McIrvin

    @JWR: Reality is infinitely malleable for these people. A lot of the state legislators who were gunning to declare election fraud in 2020 got reelected on the same ballot. They all had some kind of reason why Biden’s election was fake but their simultaneous election wasn’t. It was only the Biden ballots with downballot undervotes that were fake, etc., etc. There’s always something.

  103. 103.

    Matt McIrvin

    @zhena gogolia: My impression was that the Secret Service was actively trying to prevent Pence from stopping the coup. If it had come down to the mob actually coming for him, maybe they’d have just figured the mob was winning, turned around and shot him.

    I do think that the Secret Service plotting to assassinate the President and/or VP is a thing we have to at least plan for. As funny as it would have been for the case of Nancy Pelosi becoming Acting President, I think having the Speaker of the House as third in line of succession is a terrible idea and needs to be changed, for that specific reason. There shouldn’t be any possibility of the White House changing party control through violence.

  104. 104.

    Tony Jay

     

    A BILLET-DOUX FROM BREXITANIA

         “You Were Only Supposed To Blow Their Bloody Doors Off!”

     

    Given my advancing age and geographical location on the Island of Lost Souls, I’ve already put far too much thought into what I’d prefer as a soundtrack for my last boxed-up journey.

    I don’t really like the idea of people being sad on my account, so as three half-naked Bolivian strippers carry the coffin into the Chapel of ‘I Told You So’, I’d like it to be to the theme tune from ‘Red Dwarf’. It’s a happy, bouncy little number that should put people in mind of sandy beaches and cocktails rather than the sad, silent gap they now have in their otherwise meaningless lives. During the service itself, preferably carried out by a violently drunk atheist preacher eager to seize this unexpected opportunity to rain thunderbolts of doubt upon the faith of captive well-wishers, I think a barely audible cover version of “To All The Girls I’ve Loved Before” by K. T. Tunstall should add needed pathos to the proceedings. Then, as they lower the flower-strewn casket into the pit, a booming performance of Monty Python’s “Sit On My Face (And Tell Me That You Love Me)” by a choir of local schoolchildren will drown out the noise of my panicked screams and frantic scratching as the mix of edibles and absinthe wears off, really bringing the big day to a fitting conclusion. After which everyone goes back to the community centre and wipes away the memory of the last few hours with cheap wine and tequila slammers.

    It’ll be nice.

    Anyway, here in rainy old Anglo-Saxonia, the Truss Government is hovering around the last chorus of Julio Iglesias’ mammoth hit and moments away from noticing that it’s very dark in here and all the plush velvet padding has left them feeling a bit cramped.

    You’ll have no doubt heard that Kwasi ‘It’s not pronounced Quasi’ Kwarteng, Liz Truss’ hand-picked Chancellor and author of the worst received budget since James Cameron pitched “Titanic meets Waterworld – on ice!” has been unceremoniously gifted a first-hand view of the exhaust pipe beneath the Tory Party’s Big Blue Bus.

    This has happened for a number of reasons.

    • It’s fucking funny.

     

    • According to the latest polling, only 16% are satisfied with Liz Truss’ performance as Prime Minister, which is an astonishing figure for a Tory leader barely five weeks (and one dead monarch) into their Premiership. I mean, who the hell are the 16% of people who would willingly admit to satisfaction with this level of cluelessness? More to the point, though, Kwarteng is/was on 12%. That’s less popular than pubic lice and tied with Ebola on Toast for breakfast.

     

    • It’s still fucking funny.

     

    • He’s that unpopular because he just slapped a coating of ideological C4 to the hull of the HMS British Economy and smiled like a blissed-out Cheshire Cat as he pressed the plunger, costing us tens (hundreds, probably) of billions and taking a bat’leth to the pensions and mortgage repayment plans of a LOT of people. I’m assuming the 4% difference consists of people so obdurate in their racism that they’ll only eat mayo and Caerphilly cheese on white bread, but the other 12% who still like him after all that? No idea.

     

    • Just checked, and still so, so funny.

     

    • The Tory Party under Truss is polling between 30% and 40% behind Starmer’s NuNew Labour, which is basically the equivalent of coming fifth in a beauty contest where all the other contestants are confections of smegma and old white dog poo, and there’s only three of them. That’s not something the people who fund the Tories are going to allow to continue.

     

    • One last time, with feeling, Ha Ha fucking Haaaaa.

    This all happened on a day when Kwarteng himself was supposed to be in Washington DC receiving acknowledgment of his fealty to the High Table attending an IMF meeting but was instead instructed to jump on a jet back to London so he could be humiliated on his native soil. Apparently, it was one of the most tracked civilian flights in the air today, mainly so that British journalists (who become ever so brave when they know someone is on the outs) could make jokes about it performing u-turns before landing.

    Because that’s what’s going to happen now. The non-Glibertarian/Crude Right factions of the Tory Party have clearly agreed to bury their mutual hatreds for as long as it takes to finally – FINALLY – swat a rolled-up copy of the Will to Power across the collective noses of Truss and the 100+ MPs who foisted her on them. The noxious (but officially ‘centre-right’ in the eyes of our awful News Media) failure Jeremy Hunt has been installed as Kwarteng’s replacement, which looks like a holding manoeuvre until they can agree on what happens next week. There have been constant rumours of MPs being despondent about their chances of winning the next election (no shit, Sherlock) and Party grandees laying plans to present Truss with an ultimatum, and while this is that start of that, just levering Kwarteng out of Number 11 Downing Street isn’t going to do it.

    If the Tory Party is going to be able to face the voters with a plausible (not credible, just plausible) argument about Truss & Co being an accidental mindfart that is now consigned to the past, and more crucially, bring their Media co-rulers along for the ride with them, they’re going to have to break the power of the whole ERG/Brextremist/Tufton St Lobbyist wing of the Party and settle for two years of grey, non-chaotic mundanity.

    They either do that loudly, by forcing Truss to resign (risking a spiteful announcement of a General Election, maybe) and waging open civil-war in which all Tory MPs and their donors and the Media have to take sides, which won’t look good at this time of economic and social collapse, but has the advantage of getting the whole shitshow over with quickly and possibly leaving enough time to drive a narrative of “at least now the adults are in charge” through the Press.

    Or they do it quietly, by allowing Truss to stay on in the manner of a Japanese Emperor, with a Cabinet reshuffle to turf out the completely unacceptable lunatics (looking at you Braverman, Coffey, etc) and leave a coalition of MPs who’d actually quite like to stand a chance of not being buried under a 2024 Election landslide to run the country while Truss functions as an obviously neutered figurehead. She can then step down more or less gracefully a year before the next Election top give time for a whole ‘new’ Conservative Party to campaign as the solution to all the problems they’ve created and maybe – just maybe – squeak out a very narrow majority or a hung parliament.

    As Old Big-Ears said, dear oh dear.

  106. 106.

    scav

    @Tony Jay: One does somehow begin to wonder the number of rapid u-turns it  would take to self-underbus — or would that more properly be auto-underbus??— and, given a proper burst of speed, how many complete layers of simultaneous auto-underbusment might yet be achieved.  Stay tuned to Political Bake-Off I guess and meet the latest soggy bottems.

    Eta.   Under-Trussment!?

  110. 110.

    ellenr

    @OzarkHillbilly: ​
      I watch a lot of medical/clinical/education webinars on covid. The clinical people report that many of their patients allergies seem to have been exacerbated recently, presumably by Covid. Seems to be the case whether or not one has been ill enough to know that they’ve had Covid at all. Lots of increase in allergy symptoms in 2021 and 2022.

  112. 112.

    Citizen Alan

    The tweet from Millard Filmore’s Whatsisnuts is disingenuous bullshit. They didn’t need to kill anything close to 100 senators. They just needed to kill enough Dem Congress members to swing the House and enough Dem Senators to produce a filibuster-proof majority. Then, they’d have reappointed Shitgibbon and run the country via junta until “the special elections,” whenever those happened under whatever new Calvinball rules the junta would have put in place.

    Bear in mind, SCOTUS will soon be deciding whether state legislatures (most of which are GOP controlled) will be able to ignore their own state constitutions in setting election laws and procedures.

  113. 113.

    dnfree

    @Wag:

    @OzarkHillbilly: Get officially tested for both flu and Covid, as Wag says.  My husband had flu last November, and that’s what the urgent care place did.  He had flu and they gave him Tamiflu, which helped.  Don’t delay—go now.  The time limit for Tamiflu being effective is limited.  Neither of your shots would have been fully effective yet.

    My husband thinks he got the flu in the very same urgent care center.  He was originally there for the mandatory Covid test before cataract surgery.

  115. 115.

    Tony Jay

    @R-Jud:

    Somewhere out there in the multiverse there are whole clusters of universes where Ed Milliband didn’t listen to the Church of Divine Triangulation in 2015 amd swept to power campaigning against austerity and the Coalition’s destructive priorities.

    No Referendum. No Brexit. No Flobalob. No Truss.

    Also, no deep-throating of Gulf dictatorships, Qatar pulls its billions out of Man City, Liverpool have won the last four Premier League titles by a mile.

    Better world, man. Better world.

  119. 119.

    Eolirin

    @Citizen Alan: I think this has the potential to be a massive self own, if they do it and I’m not convinced they will, as it would free NY and CA to engage in red state like gerrymanders that would make it much easier for us to take the house back. They have more state legislatures but we have more seats.

  122. 122.

    Mike in NC

    As long as Trump is breathing our democracy is in danger. He has dreamed for 20 years of being the American Putin.

  123. 123.

    Paul in KY

    @zhena gogolia: I’m sure they wouldn’t like shooting fellow travelers in wackoland, but they couldn’t just hand him over. Think that would look bad when you are trying to get promoted, etc.

  125. 125.

    Geminid

    @Eolirin: Had New York’s court of appeals upheld Albany Democrats’ gerrymander, Democrats were on a path to a pickup of five seats. Instead they might only hold their own in November, maybe even lose a seat.

    Illinois succeeded in gerrymandering the state’s congressional districts as effectively as did New York’s, maybe more. But a different court reviewed their map, and their relevent law may be different too.

  126. 126.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Paul in KY: Unless they were betting on a “none dare call it treason” situation. Of course that would also require trusting in Donald Trump’s willingness to reward his loyal lackeys instead of throwing them under the bus, but that’s a mistake people do keep making over and over.

  127. 127.

    The Moar You Know

    The crazies hold all the levers of power in the Republican Party. And David Corn, in his new book, posits that it has been thus since at least the 1930s, if not the 1890s.

    @Burnspbesq: hard to refute.  If you take a look at the GOP’s response to the Great Depression and especially to WW2, their actions have been indefensible.  No other words will suit.  Indefensible.

    I can’t speak to their voters but their leadership – as shown by words and deeds – has been batshit for over a century.

  128. 128.

    Tony Jay

    @Geminid:

    Technically, yes. The PM ‘asks’ the monarch to dissolve Parliament and off we go.

    In the real world its supposed to be something that at least the Cabinet supports, but let’s not disregard the awful optics of a Tory Party desperately trying to row back from a General Election announcement if Truss were to call one out of spite.

    This is the story of the last decade of British politics. Tory Party internal feuds translated into shitty national catastrophes.

  129. 129.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Eolirin: This requires Democrats to shed all the good-government impulses that have led the fight against gerrymandering and other antidemocratic measures in the first place, and meet tyranny with tyranny. I’m not convinced we will do it even if we should do it.

  130. 130.

    artem1s

    The best part of Nancy Smash voicing her frustrations over TFG’s plan to crash the Capitol with his mob of insurrectionists was her up front acknowledgement that reacting with violence would come with a price. It was never an “I was kidding” excuse to avoid consequences should her exclamations be taken out of context by someone else who decided she was giving permission to behave badly.

    Strong leaders take responsibility. TFG never would and never will because he’s a coward who couldn’t imagine confronting Pence and Congress without an armed mob behind him. He always has a mob of lawyers doing his lying and dirty work for him. Coward.Period.

  132. 132.

    The Moar You Know

    As Old Big-Ears said, dear oh dear.

    @Tony Jay: I gotta, say, watching Charles give her the exact same treatment – both manner and verbiage – that an exasperated retail manager gives a spoiled-rotten Karen who’s complained one too many times really has given me a soft spot for the guy.  He’s not afraid to let her know she is an utterly insignificant, transient annoyance in his life.

    If more people had treated her like that earlier in her life perhaps she wouldn’t be such an asshole.

  133. 133.

    jonas

    @Citizen Alan: ​
     

    Bear in mind, SCOTUS will soon be deciding whether state legislatures (most of which are GOP controlled) will be able to ignore their own state constitutions in setting election laws and procedures.

    Michael Luttig, probably the most eminent conservative jurist in the country, published an op-ed the other day explaining why this “sovereign legislature” notion is completely batshit insane. No idea if it will sway any of the crazier SCOTUS members, but it might peel off Roberts and Kavanaugh.

  137. 137.

    hueyplong

    @lee: We know how this would have worked.  They’d have killed some Dems with the plan being to have cowardly GOPers fall into line and vote in favor of Trump’s will in order to avoid their own deaths once the number of Dem dead made the vote outcome a winner.  Before Pence could be cowed into going along with what he’d see as a fait accompli, the crowd would have hanged him or otherwise sent him off to the choir invisible.

    Oops.  But from Trump’s perspective, no harm no foul.

    Trump could then send in the previously withheld forces, blame it all on Antifa and the deep state, and voila, it’s done.  The subsequently “learned” details of the day would have been whatever he wanted them to be, and the most egregious actor among the GOP politicians would be the new VP (so long as he was obsequious enough while accepting the offer).  That particular race to the bottom would have turned the strongest stomachs.

    Little wonder there is some impatience to see people punished for actively advancing the above scenario.

  138. 138.

    jonas

    @Matt McIrvin: ​
     

    My impression was that the Secret Service was actively trying to prevent Pence from stopping the coup.

    I think one of the big unanswered questions about the insurrection is what Pence’s SS detail knew about what was going down that day and whether forcibly removing Pence from the building was discussed with any of the participants in the insurrection, anyone in the WH, or other members of Congress. Hopefully an answer is in that communications trove the commission recently recovered.

  139. 139.

    ian

    @Baud:

    While I agree, but I also try to keep in mind that the Civil War did not come close to killing off the Democratic Party (which at the time occupied the place the Republican Party has today).

    The Democratic party only won 4 out of the 15 presidential elections after the civil war, with Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson being the only 2 democratic nominees elected until FDR.

    They did not take control of Congress Between 1865-1932.

    That is pretty dead.

  141. 141.

    jonas

    @hueyplong: ​
      I think Trump’s plan was to let the mob ransack the Capitol, kill Pence and as many Dem reps as possible, then use the Insurrection Act to declare martial law, send in military forces to clear the building and stop any further vote count, cancel the Inauguration and suspend all other power transfer processes.

    We know Trump admires Hitler. He surely knows what the Reichstag Fire was and how it worked.

  142. 142.

    hueyplong

    @ian: This “dead or alive” analysis depends on how you look at it.  The Democrats had an iron, one-party grip on what used to be the Confederacy after 1877.  So long as the “former” Confederates ran their own lives just as completely as they had before the 1861-1865 unpleasantness, their complaints were few.

  143. 143.

    hueyplong

    @jonas: Totally agree, and was saying that while watching.  Today I just added some detail and talk of a different outcome on the vote that in fact took place re the GOPer’s attempt to create investigative commissions about vote fraud.

    Regardless of whether the plan was actually to kill Pence, he’d have been killed by the mob.

  146. 146.

    Tony Jay

    @The Moar You Know:

    His mum started her reign with a visit from Winston Churchill who, while a pretty shitty human being on a majority of levels, was a Pretty Big Deal in retrospect.

    Chuckie the Pen Chucker gets Liz Truss. He must be wondering how many of these transient nobodies he’ll have to be vaguely civil to before he even gets officially coronated.

  148. 148.

    The Moar You Know

    He must be wondering how many of these transient nobodies he’ll have to be vaguely civil to before he even gets officially coronated.

    @Tony Jay: He knows the next decade in the somewhat United Kingdom is going to be an utter shitshow, but then again his mom had to deal with plenty of that herself.

    When you’re in a position where you don’t HAVE to be nice to anyone, oddly enough it helps a lot in being able to stay polite to most everyone who crosses your path.  Truss strikes me as the kind of person who can burn through even that level of goodwill in about five seconds or so.  Smarmy.  That’s the word for her.  Kisses up, punches down.

  149. 149.

    Tony Jay

    @The Moar You Know:

      When you’re in a position where you don’t HAVE to be nice to anyone, oddly enough it helps a lot in being able to stay polite to most everyone who crosses your path.

    That’s, like, totally my Balloon Juice experience, too.

    Truss is about a week away from potentially being greeted at the Buckingham St gate like Elrond at the door to Khazad Dum

  151. 151.

    Bupalos

    @japa21: The mistake here is treating “democracy” as a kind of binary.

    We have been becoming formally and for the most part actually less democratic for a decade at least. The response to 1-6 was a slight acceleration of that, as Republicans moved on their attacks under the weakened VRA, and moved on their “election security” nonsense which actually means making it harder to vote and making it easier for less representative forces to substitute their will for the will of the voters.

    Democracy is a direction.

  153. 153.

    BC in Illinois

    On Jeremy Hunt.

    I know of him only from the lyrics of a 2013 Fascinating Aida song about OFSTED (Office of Standards in Education). At one point, they needed an insult that rhymed with “stunt” :

    In my opinion . . .

    . . . [long pause] . . .[think of what rhymes with “stunt”] . . .

    . . . he’s an utter Jeremy Hunt.

    [Laughter]

    If you’re not familiar with Fascinating Aida, here is their Brexit song, “So sorry, Scotland.”

  156. 156.

    Heidi Mom

    I don’t know if anyone’s still reading this thread, but anyway here’s my Covid story:  Last Sat. I woke up with what I thought was a cold, and it quickly became a pretty bad cold.  On Mon. I went to the nearest Urgent Care for a test, thinking that although it seemed like every bad cold I’d ever had, I wanted to make sure it wasn’t Covid.  Result:  It was Covid.  I started Paxlovid on Tues. and am now feeling much better–tired, but about 75% normal.  My point: At no time did this ever feel like anything but a bad cold.  I kept waiting for the Covid moment (heaviness in chest, etc.) but it never happened.  And I’d had every booster available and had been wearing a KN95 mask in public, so the test result really was unexpected.  Moral:  You never know, without a test.

  157. 157.

    Jay

    @LibraryGuy:

    there is almost and entire “age class” of King Crabs and Snow Crabs “missing”. Not only are they the preferred catch, but they are also the prime breeders. The problem is probably slot limit harvests in excess of what the population can bear, plus global warming. (it has been observed that both Snow and King Crabs have moves significantly further north).

  159. 159.

    The Lodger

    @BC in Illinois: Isn’t that song a perfect example of Cockney rhyming slang? “Don’t be a complete Jeremy about this, mate.”

    Ref. that famous sign from Scotland: TRUMP IS A JEREMY.

  161. 161.

    Ramalama

    @OzarkHillbilly: Maybe you need to up your swab game? I’d been doing it wrong. This CBC article clarifies:

    The Ontario Science Advisory Table said you should swab the insides of your cheeks, then your tongue or the back of your throat, and then your nostrils to make the tests more accurate. Previous guidance for rapid tests included only a nasal swab.

    Also, it does sound like you’ve got it. Any chance to get some meds to treat your COVID? One of my siblings got a Z-pack, which helped a lot.

    +1 on the Mucinex recommendation. I keep bleating on about melatonin, which was a game-changer for me. And I didn’t have any problem sleeping. An article in the Atlantic convinced me to try. Shit la rue, it was great.

  163. 163.

    lowtechcyclist

    Dead thread, but just had to respond to this:

    i’ve frequently been annoyed with schumer, but he comes across as just as competent as pelosi in all of these behind closed doors videos

    Oh sure, but what set Pelosi apart was her total coolness under pressure.  Just saw this clip of her on the phone with Mike Pence that day.  If that just isn’t the best thing ever!  I might’ve been competent in a situation like that, but there’s no way I could have been that calm. Love the bit with the Slim Jim, too.

  164. 164.

    Scout211

    @Ramalama: I had a PCR test last month prior to my colonoscopy and the hospital that did the test swabbed the back of my throat only.  I would agree that nasal swabs may be insufficient with these current versions of variants.  All the jackals here with recent cases of COVID complain a lot of throat pain.  The next time I have to do a rapid test at home I will make sure I include a throat swab.

  166. 166.

    Eolirin

    @Matt McIrvin: NY state already made the attempt. Several other blue states have succeeded. There’s the will to do it.

    Look, if we have majorities we pass a national anti-gerrymandering law and everyone’s back on a level playing field. But we can’t allow asymmetrical gerrymandering without giving up democracy and everyone is getting that now.

  167. 167.

    Ruckus

    @RAM:

    How well do you think the riots would go if they threw SFB in jail without a trial? They can riot, they did on the 6th. It’s never as easy as bing, bang boom. We as a nation are on two widely divergent paths. One is actual democracy and the other is actual subservient drones with the rich totally in charge. IOW we have to be precise, accurate and yes take our time here. We have a nation as split as it ever gets, with one side thinking that the only way is to survive is on crumbs scraped off the ground and the other knowing that no one deserves only crumbs or having to scrap the ground for them. Even those willing to settle. Many of the wealthy have run this country into the ground and deserve to be hung by their toes from lamp posts, and they spend a tad bit of money to insure that they have enough backing to make it far harder to have an actual democracy because not having one benefits their bank accounts. The real damage/danger is that enough of the wealthy have and are attempting to damage this country so that they can be richer, and it’s just for bragging rights because after your first billion you really don’t need more, it’s just lust for more. The rich are spending money to buy the government so that they can get even richer with far less risk. The issue then becomes that we end up a lawless, nothing of a country, owned by banks and the wealthy, and that is not even close to a democracy, like not in the same solar system.

  168. 168.

    evodevo

    @Paul in KY: ​
      Yep… that was shown pretty clearly with the Ashley Babbitt incident. The choads with her first announced it was just a “flash-bang” grenade and kept pushing, but when it became clear she was actually shot, they fell back pretty quick. I don’t think it would have taken much firepower to push them all out of the Capitol and back to the margins…in a big hurry.

  169. 169.

    misterpuff

    @ian: You are correct sir. But the Confedadems were a regional power and a legislative block to any civil rights advancement. So the lack of their demise (as an entity) retarded our growth as a nation for about 90 to 100 years (and arguably to the present, if you count the costume change from D to R)

  170. 170.

    Ruckus

    @Scout211:

    What I like about SFB is that every single one of his problems is self made and has been his entire life. He has failed at every single thing he tried to do and every single time it was his fault. He won the rethuglican presidential race because he’s a failure and that is what the rethuglican party was looking for, because the wealthy members want a non working government so they can have everything. They hire people like Mitch to be as big a road block to a better government as possible. Their only problem was that SFB is so bad and there is still a too large segment of the population that recognizes that rethuglicans are shit that they failed in being able to steal everything because SFB is all ego and has the intellect of a week old dog turd.

  172. 172.

    topclimber

    @Ruckus: Some translations have Jesus say that LOVE of money is the root of all evil. Because (since I know at all times what Jesus meant) acquisition becomes just an obsession, not a means to satisfy more human needs.

  173. 173.

    Eyeroller

    @topclimber: All translations say that because it’s the correct translation.  Also it was from Paul, not directly from Jesus, but that hardly matters.   It’s quite clear in the Greek New Testament and the Latin Vulgate.  I don’t know how it got shortened into “money is the root of all evil” in popular culture, but it changes the meaning considerably.

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