Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Let there be snark.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

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

Come on, man.

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

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

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

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

Second rate reporter says what?

You can’t love your country only when you win.

The willow is too close to the house.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

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Ultra (Open Thread)

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I was finally able to finish Rachel Maddow’s “Ultra” podcast during solo Thanksgiving travel. Even if Maddow’s old MSNBC show wasn’t your cup of tea, it’s worth a listen — the pacing, etc., is entirely different.

The series is about an “America First” movement (sound familiar?) that gained popularity before the US entered WWII. Lots of Americans (including the most popular radio host at the time, civic and cultural bigwigs and dozens of members of Congress) joined the far-right, antisemitic, pro-fascist movement, and some engaged in nutty plots to overthrow the government and replace it with a fascist dictatorship.

The parallels to figures in the present day are often startling. The subject matter isn’t pleasant, but Maddow’s guests, including historians and journalists, keep the discussion lively and entertaining. Overall, I found it kind of comforting to know that Americans faced down this threat before and neutralized it. The methods used to shit-can the fascists then are also instructive for our time.

Not quite a spoiler: the justice system wasn’t fully equipped to stop the plot and punish the perpetrators — that required action from a lot of Americans, including journalists, activists and voters.

As an aside, it’s interesting that the story about a sprawling, pre-WWII fascist plot was so thoroughly stuffed down the memory hole. I’d heard of “American First” and certain prominent Americans’ antisemitism and fondness for fascism in the run up to WWII (Lindbergh, Coughlin, etc.), but most of stuff covered in the podcast was news to me. The saying about those who forget history comes to mind…

Anyhoo, check it out. Open thread.

Reader Interactions

156Comments

  2. 2.

    R-Jud

    I’ve been recommending Ultra to everyone I know who listens to podcasts even though I never warmed to Rachel Maddow’s regular show. The insane trial of the America First seditionists who were stuffing envelopes for pro-Nazi members of congress during hearings made my head spin.
    When I’m at my parents’ for Christmas, I want to dig up my grandmother’s diaries from the period to see what she might have said about it–she was a news junkie from an early age and constantly passed snarky comment on the likes of Father Coughlin. Plus her penmanship was flawless.​

  3. 3.

    Baud

    Thanks for the reminder.  I might listen to it during my travels.

    ETA: Is it only available on Spotify?

  4. 4.

    sdhays

    I suspect part of the problem with remembering these events is that, just as we’ve see ourselves, there’s a strong tendency to downplay the severity of the threat if it fails to be fully realized. The fact that America was strong enough to beat it back leads people to believe (incorrectly!) that the threat wasn’t as terrible as it seemed.

    The other part is that big parts of the media and elite were compromised, and they want to move on so that no one holds them accountable. We see that now too.

  5. 5.

    JoyceH

    Oh, and open thread comment – the White House Christmas decorations are in the news today, and isn’t it NICE to have an administration that gives us NORMAL Christmas decorations? Makes a body feel… almost festive.

  6. 6.

    JoyceH

    @sdhays:

    The fact that America was strong enough to beat it back leads people to believe (incorrectly!) that the threat wasn’t as terrible as it seemed.

    Some times I wonder how different things might be if the insurrectionists had actually managed to hang Mike Pence.

    At the very least, we wouldn’t hear that crap about almost like a normal tourist visit.

  9. 9.

    C Stars

    @JoyceH: Whoa! That’s very Christmasy!!

    I found images on NPR

    We still haven’t gotten out our Christmas decorations yet. Just getting over two weeks of Covid, feeling like the house needs a good firm declutter before we bring out any more stuff.

  11. 11.

    Baud

    @Yutsano:

    Every word in that piece is a lie, but I welcome more of it.

    ETA: Interestingly, the word “abortion” does not appear anywhere in it.

  15. 15.

    Butch

    @Yutsano: I found that piece a little bizarre – seeming contempt for the GOP and yet lines such as this:  “….two years of one White House/Democratic failure after the other,….”  Name some, please.

    Also (not a question directed at Yutsano), do you need a cell phone to listen to a podcast?  Sorry for the dumb question; I don’t own a cell and don’t know how to download a podcast so I’ve never even listened to one.

  17. 17.

    Leto

    @Baud: it’s available wherever you get your podcasts. So Apple podcasts, Spotify, the MSNBC site… it’s pretty much everywhere.

  18. 18.

    Betty Cracker

    @R-Jud: That would be cool if you can find some contemporaneous commentary about the events!

     

    @Baud: I think all the major platforms carry it. Apple’s definitely does.

  20. 20.

    frosty

    @JoyceH: Their stupid gallows would have collapsed if there was any weight on it. Videos of the attempt would have been just as damning as success, though. IMHO.

  22. 22.

    geg6

    @Baud:

    I got it on iTunes.

    Haven’t finished it yet.  Some of it is new to me but I knew quite a bit of this story (especially the pro-Nazi congresscritters and their staffs/sychophants) as I had several history classes in which pro-Nazi America was discussed and a political philosophy class in which we discussed fascism and authoritarianism where it came up.

  23. 23.

    JoyceH

    @frosty:

    Their stupid gallows would have collapsed if there was any weight on it.

    That’s certainly true, and yet – they DID build a gallows. If they merely wanted a symbol, a noose thrown over a tree branch would have worked just as well. Nobody goes to the trouble to build a gallows, however inexpertly, unless they actually intended to use it.

  25. 25.

    jonas

    @C Stars: ​
      For the Right, liberal democracy has never been an end in and of itself — it’s merely a convenient, and completely expendable, tool with which to seize the levers of power under the color of legitimacy and that can then be done away with.

  26. 26.

    Gravenstone

    @Butch:  Name some, please.

    Any Democratic success for common people is de facto a failure in the eyes of the religious fanatics on the far Right.

  27. 27.

    narya

    Also recommending! It was much more tightly focused and solidly done than some of her shows–less wandering. Did NOT like the music in the background, tbh, but that is such a small quibble; I’ve been recommending it to everyone.

  28. 28.

    mrmoshpotato

    @JoyceH: No trees from a deleted scene of The Shining, or Edward Gorey-inspired decorations this year (or last)?

    Isn’t it nice to have a decent family in the people’s house again?

  29. 29.

    Tony G

    When I was a high school kid (only about 35 years after the events in question) the Memory Hole in my “education” was even more extensive.  We were taught that Lindbergh had been a courageous aviator (which, in fairness, he was), but there was no mention of him as a Nazi sympathizer.  Coughlin wasn’t mentioned at all in school (although my mother, to her credit, told us one time about that “evil hateful man” “Father Coughlin”.  At this point, about 85 years after these events, I imagine that the Memory Hole is even deeper.

  30. 30.

    TinRoofRusted

    We listened on the drive from DC to NY on Saturday which unfortunately took so long we were able to listen to the whole thing. Traffic was as bad as I have ever seen and we have been driving to DC since our daughter started school there in 2017. It was very interesting and did help pass the time. I definitely recommend it. Especially if you need something to take your mind off of insane traffic and insane driving by some. I have never seen so many folks driving in the emergency lane for no apparent reason other than they were tired of doing 20 MPH.

  31. 31.

    Winston

    I listened to Ultra on Amazon Prime Music ! The one lesson I got was don’t try 24 insurrectionists with 22 lawyers at the same time. It can cause the judge to have a heart attack.

  35. 35.

    Miss Bianca

    @Yutsano: OMG, what a fucking idiot. He really believes that the biggest problem with the GOP leadership is that they don’t pay *enough* attention to white evangelical Christian culture war BS?

    @Baud: Yeah, OK, seconded on both your points, for sure.

  38. 38.

    jackson

    The British seem to have had perhaps even a greater “flirtation” with fascism. And it is not forgotten — at least in the popular culture I consume. Oswald Mosley and his thugs featured in the more recent Upstairs Downstairs. Dorothy Sayers wrote about the Prince of Wales / Edward VIII / Duke of Windsor’s close ties to the nazis. Second season of the Crown of course laying out the duke’s treachery during (and before) the war. And so on.

  39. 39.

    Gravenstone

    @Tony G:I’m pretty sure that Mar-a-lago is nicely decorated with blood ketchup-red trees.

    Credit to the artiste where due, please.

  40. 40.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Butch:

    do you need a cell phone to listen to a podcast? Sorry for the dumb question; I don’t own a cell and don’t know how to download a podcast so I’ve never even listened to one.

    No, you don’t need a cell phone.  Podcast apps like iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, etc make podcasts portable and a bit easier to find, but many of the apps have websites too.

    Also, some podcasts have their own websites where their episodes are available.

  42. 42.

    Miss Bianca

    @JoyceH:

    @C Stars: Oh, wow, such lovely decorations! How normie-lly Christmas-y!

    Love the Commander and Willow figurines. And Jill Biden’s apple crisp recipe card. : )

  43. 43.

    JaySinWA

    @Butch:do you need a cell phone to listen to a podcast?

    No, any computer with audio can play through most cloud based podcast hosts. There are apps for TV players like Roku or Android TV devices as well.

    ETA and I see while I was typing, others beat me to it.

  44. 44.

    ian

    @Yutsano: The author of that piece lives in a fantasy world detached from reality.  Glad to see them infighting, but why a reputable source flaming piece of garbage like the Hill would give that person an opinion column in the first place is beyond me

    Edit: I should read all the comments before I post mine.  I see I’m not the only one who waded through that crap.

  46. 46.

    Miss Bianca

     

    Dorothy Sayers wrote about the Prince of Wales / Edward VIII / Duke of Windsor’s close ties to the nazis.

    @jackson: She did? In an essay, or in one of her LPW novels?

  47. 47.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: No, not just Spotify.  I added it to Sticher over the weekend

    I have even been thinking about whether to see if anyone is interested in having some BJ threads about it, kind of like a book club, only different

    So it’s great to see this post from Betty Cracker.

  49. 49.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Tony G:

    I’m pretty sure that Mar-a-lago is nicely decorated with blood-red trees. 

    Probably, but we don’t have to see that crap splattered across the national news anymore.

  50. 50.

    Sure Lurkalot

    I have listened to Ultra and then again a couple of episodes with my spouse on our Thanksgiving drive. The parallels are frightening.

    I took the time to look up a couple of the players (most of whom I did not know) on Wiki and it seemed that the main description for their actions was that they were “non-interventionists” or anti-communist with only brief mentions of connection to pro-Nazi/anti-Semitic sympathies. Like today, they thought themselves patriots and it seems some of the historical record minimizes their sedition.

  52. 52.

    Citizen Alan

    @JoyceH:  I doubt it would have gone well for us since Mike Pence would have only been killed after the mob had already gotten through Pelosi, Harris, and probably enough Dem Reps and Senators to swing both houses to the GOP.

  55. 55.

    MattF

    Just a footnote: Steve Benen on Trump’s reaction to Jack Smith being named Special Counsel— it’s a plot, with Eric Holder and Obama as the puppeteers. This is a pretty overt dog whistle— after all, what (pray tell) do Holder and Obama have in common? But TFG does this particular claim all the time.

    ETA: Nym got mashed again. I’m MattF.

  56. 56.

    JPL

    I might wait until after the holiday season.   Those Angry Days by Lynne Olsen had my stomach in knots and that only alluded to the rise of Nazism in the United States.

  58. 58.

    Baud

    @Miss Bianca:

     He really believes that the biggest problem with the GOP leadership is that they don’t pay *enough* attention to white evangelical Christian culture war BS?

    On reflection, I think that piece is an attempt to warn the GOP about “moderating” in the wake of a disappointing midterm for them.

  60. 60.

    Butch

    Thanks to everyone who responded.  I’ll give it a try.  I’m not what you’d call hep to the jive when it comes to electronics.

  62. 62.

    Geoduck

    @jackson: The humorist P. G. Wodehouse also parodied Mosley with his reoccurring character Roderick Spode.

    Getting back to the American side of things, Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here depicts a successful fascist takeover of the US. The instigator, one Buzz Windrip, bears more than a passing resemblance to the Shiatgibbon.

  63. 63.

    MrsCoachB

    I like Ultra very much. I have started “The Revolution” with STeve Kornacki—-also MSNBC.   This covers Newt Gingrich rise to power in mid 80s to 90s.   I was not politically aware back then so it’s very interesting to see how the GOP got where it is.

  64. 64.

    JaySinWA

    @Butch: You should be able to go to the MSNBC site and play it on your computer from there

    And if listening isn’t for you, there are links to the transcript there too.

  66. 66.

    Mustang Bobby

    I’m not old enough to remember WWII (missed VJ day by seven years and a month) but I certainly remember reading about the America Firsters and Col. Lindbergh’s role in the movement.  It was part of my American history class in high school in the 1960’s.  I guess we were “woke” then.

    For a great read, check out Philip Roth’s “The Plot Against America,” which is an alternative history of the time where Lindbergh beats FDR in the 1940 election and makes peace with Hitler.  Scary stuff, and the book is better than the HBO version.

  67. 67.

    C Stars

    @JPL: Good plan, I am thinking the same thing. It’s still too close to “red wave gate,” in which the mainstream media caused me to feel nauseous and suicidal for two weeks before Nov. 7 finally arrived and I realized they had been full of shit the whole time.

     

    ETA should’ve been called brown wave…

  68. 68.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Geoduck: somewhat ironically, Wodehouse ended up in Nazi custody during the war and ended up being used by them in propaganda broadcasts. He was never charged with any crime after the war in conjunction with them because most seem to have decided that Wodehouse was just an exceedingly naive, apolitical person who ended up in over his head, but he did go to the United States rather than remaining in Britain.

  69. 69.

    West of the Rockies

    @Miss Bianca:

    And yet I hope the piece is effective in its unintended consequence of discouraging the vile evangelical base from voting.  Stay home and pout, creeps!

  71. 71.

    weasel

    Have not listened but I never miss a chance to give a shout out to Gen. Smedley Butler.  Am taking a wild guess that he plays a big part in the forgotten history bit :)

  72. 72.

    dm

    The stacks of books on each side of a fireplace seems very Dr. Jill.

    Add another recommendation for Ultra.  Maddow’s earlier series, Bag Man, about the race to get bribe-collecting Spiro Agnew out of office before he got to replace an impeached or resigned Nixon is also very good, again with parallels to another corrupt, self-dealing figure in public in recent years.

    @weasel: In addition to the circus of a trial, the thing that amazed me most was the fact that Ultra wasn’t about the other attempted coup to depose FDR in the thirties — in fact, Maddow never even mentions it.

  73. 73.

    Geoduck

    @Matt McIrvin:  Yeah, Wodehouse was enough of a naif to be hanging out in France as the war broke out, and then agree to do pieces in his usual vein about being in captivity. Most people in England never even heard the broadcasts, evidently, but as you say, the backlash was harsh.

  74. 74.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Yutsano:

    As the post-mortem goes on, or pretends to go on, many conservative and faith-based voters can easily shout out the main reason for the GOP’s shameful loss: “You actually have to believe in something. You have to walk the walk, on the rule of law, sovereign and protected borders, smaller government, lower taxes, the need for fossil fuels and lower energy prices, anti-woke education, a strong and non-woke military, accountability, and faith.”

    Yeah, all that’s in the Bible.  II Hezekiah chs. 12-14, amirite? ;-)

  75. 75.

    Brachiator

    @zhena gogolia:

    Foyle’s War also covered it. Great Charles Dance episode.

    Yep. Great episode. The series was wonderful. Foyle is one of my favorite fictional detectives.

  77. 77.

    ian

    @weasel: I give credit to former General Butler for not joining the Business Plot and speaking out against it to Congress, but let us not forget the reason the conspiracy chose him to approach in the first place.  He had undone Democracies and elected governments plenty of times before, all in service to the United States.  The conspiracy chose him because he was the most experienced at that.

    I recommend Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, The Marines, and The Making and Breaking of America’s Empire by Jonathan M. Katz.  The book covers all the times Butler helped overthrow Democracies, as well as his months long anguish over whether or not to go public against the Business Plot once he learned of it, and finally his turn towards anti-fascism in the last years in his life.

  78. 78.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    the far-right, antisemitic, pro-fascist movement, and some engaged in nutty plots to overthrow the government and replace it with a fascist dictatorship.

    A movement that’s greatest hit was a bunch of businessmen plotting to stage a coup against FDR using a bunch of dissected WWI vets lead by Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, and arrogantly ignored the vets were outraged at conservative attempts to deny them their service pensions and Bulter’s own book were he described his own military service as mostly being a gangster enforcer for Wall Street.

    I think the lesson from the Business Plot is that any American leader who is capable successfully of overthrowing the US government is going to think threw the consequences and reject such a coup attempt as idiotic.

  81. 81.

    Brachiator

    Just downloaded the Ultra episodes on the Pocket Casts podcast app.

    Look forward to listening to them.

  83. 83.

    Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)

    @JaySinWA: Thank You! I much prefer reading to listening to podcasts or Books being read out loud and I hadn’t thought about checking for transcripts. I’ve started reading Episode 1.

  84. 84.

    The Moar You Know

    I gotta be honest, I really liked Melanoma’s Christmas decorations principally because I absolutely hate the holiday.  Bad childhood experiences and all that.  Her decorations were curiously appropriate to how I view the event.

  88. 88.

    Tony G

    @C Stars: Jesus also loved those semi-automatic rifles with high-capacity magazines (or were they clips?).  That’s why he famously said “Kill ’em all!  Let ME sort ’em out!”.

  91. 91.

    Anotherlurker

    @mrmoshpotato: I just finished watching “Foyle’s War” for the third time.  The show had the same wow factor for me, the third time around as it did the first go around.  It is a great series!

  93. 93.

    Kay

    ONTARIO, Calif.—The unsolicited proposal from Elon Musk’s tunnel-building venture arrived in January 2020. To the local transportation authority, it felt like finding Willy Wonka’s golden ticket.
    Officials had started planning for a street-level rail connection between booming Ontario International Airport and a commuter train station 4 miles away, with an estimated cost north of $1 billion. For just $45 million, Mr. Musk’s Boring Co. offered to instead build an underground tunnel through which travelers could zip back and forth in autonomous electric vehicles.
    Dazzled by Boring’s boasts that it had revolutionized tunneling, and the cachet of working with the billionaire head of EV maker Tesla Inc., the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority dumped plans for a traditional light rail and embraced the futuristic tunnel.
    When it came time to formalize the partnership and get to work, Boring itself went underground—just as it has done in Maryland, Chicago and Los Angeles. Boring didn’t submit a bid for Ontario by the January 2022 deadline.
    The six-year-old company has repeatedly teased cities with a pledge to “solve soul-destroying traffic,” only to pull out when confronted with the realities of building public infrastructure, according to former executives and local, state and federal government officials who have worked with Mr. Musk’s Boring. The company has struggled with common bureaucratic hurdles like securing permits and conducting environmental reviews, the people said.
    “Every time I see him on TV with a new project, or whatever, I’m like: Oh, I remember that bullet train to Chicago O’Hare,” said Chicago Alderman Scott Waguespack. Boring had backed away from its proposal for a high-speed tunnel link to the airport there.
    Mr. Musk and Steve Davis, president of Boring, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

    Just completely full of shit, clownish people.

  94. 94.

    redoubtagain

    @Tony G: Lindbergh was a eugenicist, too.  His wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh (daughter of a Standard Oil exec and former Ambassador to Mexico)’s book The Wave Of The Future was a paean to fascism.

  96. 96.

    Kay

    Veterans of the tunneling industry note that tunnel-boring machines have been electrified for decades, and that neither continuous construction of the tunnel lining nor digging in from aboveground is new.
    Boring’s speed claims are “totally unrealistic,” said Lok Home, president of the Robbins Co., a leading maker of tunnel-boring machines. “There’ll be improvements here, for sure, but there’s not going to be a revolution.”

    There should be a word for pretending to invent something that already exists.

  98. 98.

    dm

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    A movement that’s greatest hit was a bunch of businessmen plotting to stage a coup against FDR using a bunch of dissected WWI vets lead by Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, and arrogantly ignored the vets were outraged at conservative attempts to deny them their service pensions and Bulter’s own book were he described his own military service as mostly being a gangster enforcer for Wall Street.

    I think you may be in for a treat.  Ultra is about a completely different plot with different players!  There was more than one fascist coup plot against FDR in the thirties!  And that doesn’t even count whatever Huey Long was up to before he was shot.

  100. 100.

    Shana

    @Matt McIrvin: Wodehouse was eventually forgiven officially for his Berlin broadcasts and offered a knighthood in the last year of his life but at that point he’d been an American far longer than a Brit and turned it down, dying just months later.

  101. 101.

    Shana

    @Geoduck: He hung out in France because if he’d gone to England his pekes would have been in quarantine for 6 months or so and decided to take his chances by remaining in France. So, yeah, pretty naive.

  102. 102.

    dm

    @Kay: back before the Twitter fracas, I read someone suggesting that you might be able to understand a lot of what Musk does as preparation for Mars:

    the Boring company?  A Mars base will probably be mostly underground, connected by tunnels.

    electric vehicles with autonomous driving?  Mars base construction probably won’t have traffic complexities, and certainly won’t be using internal-combustion engines.

    battery technology and photovoltaics (is he still involved in rooftop solar?  I’ve lost track and I’d be unsurprised if he has as well)

    Starlink?  Mars doesn’t even have an ionosphere to bounce radio waves off of, so it will need a “satellite ionosphere”.

    Learning that the name “Elon” was used in a 1952 Werner von Braun book, The Mars Project about a Martian civilization governed by “the Elon” (an elected position) made this somewhat more credible to me, though “Elon” is a perfectly normal Biblical Hebrew name (meaning “oak tree”).

  105. 105.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Miss Bianca:

    @jackson:

    There is a story arc (or sub-arc) in Thrones, Dominations about the death of King George V, the accession to the throne of King Edward VIII, and the latter’s chumminess with Ribbentrop and other Nazis — along with other examples of his careless behaviour, such as leaving confidential documents lying around, departing the country without notifying anyone, etc.

    DLS wrote the first few chapters of Thrones, Dominations, but abandoned it early in 1938, leaving the incomplete manuscript and a few random notes which were found after her death (1957). The Sayers estate finally permitted Jill Paton Walsh to complete T,D and it was published in 1998. JPW wrote an additional three* Wimsey-Vane novels — A Presumption of Death, The Attenbury Emeralds, and The Late Scholar. She died in 2020.

    *Or possibly four more. There are persistent rumours that JPW may have left a manuscript at her death, and periodic flurries of excitement that we just might see a posthumous LPW novel. But it’s been over two years now, and seems increasingly unlikely.

  106. 106.

    weasel

    @ian: Yeah, he definitely had a lot of blood on his hands, but I think his essay War is a Racket and actions later in life went a long was to making up for it.

    Thanks for the rec too!

  107. 107.

    Lady WereBear

    @redoubtagain: She was raised in a place and time where divorce as we know it now was unthinkable. Since I think she was an abused wife — emotional abuse at the least.

    Perhaps an attempt to appease him? He was a cruel control freak in private.

  108. 108.

    Miss Bianca

    @SiubhanDuinne: Ah, there we go. I have read Thrones, Dominions -more than once, actually – but it’s been a long time.

    ETA: And now I’m remembering giving that book to my dad for his birthday or Christmas or something, which would have been right before he died, and now I’m all wistful all of a sudden. Dad turned me on to Sayers in the first place.

  109. 109.

    raven

    @Kay:

    The tunnels were built in the first decade of the 20th century as part of the New York Tunnel Extension. The original plan for the extension which was published in June 1901, called for the construction of a bridge across Hudson River between 45th and 50th Streets in Manhattan, as well as two closely spaced terminals for the LIRR and Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR). This would allow passengers to travel between Long Island and New Jersey without having to switch trains; at the time, LIRR trains ran to Long Island City, where passengers took ferries across the East River to the 34th Street Ferry Terminal in Manhattan. As part of the extension, the LIRR became a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Railroad.[2] In December 1901, because of the high cost of building a bridge,[3] the plans were modified so that the PRR would construct the North River Tunnels under the Hudson River.[4]

  110. 110.

    Kay

    @dm:

    The Republican Hogan administration sped up the bureaucratic process for Boring, granting a conditional permit in October 2017 and an environmental permit a few months later. All Boring had to do was bring its machine and start digging, former Maryland officials said. But months, and then years, passed. Boring deleted the Maryland project from its website last year.

    They just never showed up.

  111. 111.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    @Kay: There should be a word for pretending to invent something that already exists.

    “Muskrating”?

    ETA one “t” or two?

  113. 113.

    karen marie

    @Tony G:   Trump’s “Christmas decorations” will be using red spray paint on the leftover decorations from Tiffany’s wedding.

  115. 115.

    Kay

    @raven:

    Thanks. Those big projects are fascinating.

    I had a sixth grade teacher who was an Erie Canal enthusiast/historian. We spent weeks on the construction of the Erie Canal. I loved it but he would probably get fired now. I’m pretty sure we were supposed to be doing something else.

  116. 116.

    Kay

    @dm:

    The Maryland no show is a good example because Elon whines that he can’t work because of regulations. Hogan got rid of all the regulations for him. Still a no show.

  117. 117.

    Hitchhiker

    Glad to see Ultra getting recommended — I knew none of this history beyond the name of Fr. Coughlin and that Lindbergh was on Hitler’s side. Maddow does a good job with it, too. I think long form podcasts might be her best medium.

    In an interview about the show, she recommended a novel called The Oppermans, which I found and read. Just an astonishing book. Can’t recommend enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oppermanns

    I’m probably the last one to hear about the podcast called Gangster Capitalism — but just in case anybody doesn’t know about it, it’s very good. They do a series of shows teasing out the facts behind famous cases of thugs. The NRA. The College Admissions people. Fucking Jerry Faldwell Jr and fucking Liberty University. Very worth the time.

  118. 118.

    C Stars

    @The Moar You Know: I thought the intense focus on the decorations was silly at the time, especially with all the other genuinely immoral and awful stuff going on in that administration. Who gives a shit about the trees? Also, It’s such a dumb sexist trope that president’s spouses are judged by Christmas decorations or cookie recipes or garden layouts or whatnot, and all the criticism of Mrs. Trump’s decorations seemed to play into that ridiculously outdated gender role dynamic. I’m guessing TFG was actually the one who directed that particular project, given his penchant for interior decorating (gold toilets, ketchup, whatever).

  119. 119.

    Barbara

    I will definitely give Ultra some attention.  I really like history podcasts, but I tend not to like podcasts on current events, mostly because I get too much of it as it is.  We’ve been listening to Emperors of Rome for several years, now up to episode CCI, and I just started listening to Mike Duncan’s Revolution podcast.  They are great for long car rides, or baking projects that demand a lot of time in the kitchen.

  120. 120.

    C Stars

    @dm: Melon Husk is all hype and no loop

    All vac and no train?

    All suck and no go?

     

    OK, still working on this….

  122. 122.

    trollhattan

    @Kay: Tunneling is fraught with surprises. Friend here in town was a project manager on Seattle’s Alaska Way Viaduct replacement tunnel project, which required a custom tunneling machine “Big Bertha” larger than any that had been built. It proved to be underdesigned for the task and got stuck in a spot that nearly killed the project.

    Whee!

    Any good geologist will attest you can never know the conditions below ground surface with confidence, until you get there.

  123. 123.

    Jeffro

    @Yutsano:

    @jonas:

    @Miss Bianca:

    The WaPo’s Hugh-Hewitt-Lite, Henry Olsen, seems to think that the impending crackup of the GQP comes down to his astute of analysis of the GOP’s various factions

    The new Republican Party breaks down into four rough factions in response to this query, and none has a clear plurality. Instead, the party has three factions of nearly equal size and a fourth tiny one whose votes might be decisive.

    The three lions are Mega MAGA, the Old Guard and the MAGA Adjacent. I estimate each are about 30 percent of the party’s voters and are numerous in virtually every state. The minnow is the Never Trump group, which constitutes about 10 percent of GOP voters

    Um great, Henry, thanks for playing.  You’re forgetting two key things:

    There aren’t four factions in the GOP when it comes down to it: you either want trumpov, or you want him out.
    For the three largest factions/90% you’re describing, by far the largest motivating factor is to “own the libs”.  Not kidding.  If we went hard on a “oxygen is good for you” campaign, the GQP would be a party of three people (maybe two) within an hour.

    The only thing better than Republicans’ tears the next two years will be their flailing and wishful thinking

    ETA: MAGA + MAGA-adjacent = 60% even by Olsen’s calculations and that’s the ballgame there, champ.

  126. 126.

    Jeffro

    @schrodingers_cat: have to agree.  Abernathy’s “aw shucks” approach and constant lying about trump critics’ motivations – and especially that by going after trump, they’re slandering the good people of the heartland – is beyond irritating.

  127. 127.

    bjacques

    There were *eight* episodes of Ultra? I thought it was just five, when someone here mentioned it. Guess I’ll have to catch up. I listened to it at work and was gobsmacked.

  128. 128.

    C Stars

    @Jeffro: I saw, but didn’t click on (out of spite), a recent Post op ed about how DiSantis will bring normalcy to the party after Trump. Probably should have read it, but it strikes me that moderate Republicans/Independents who think Trump and MAGA (MAGAGA?) are regressive probably aren’t going to be really excited about DiSantis’s whole persecuting LGBTQ+ people and banning books schtick.

    I mean, maybe they will, I can’t really understand anything about those people (by which I mean those who still proudly identify as GOP)

  130. 130.

    J R in WV

    @frosty: ​

    Who was that guy who wrote that shit?

    He worked for Reagan and G H W Bush both (and perhaps G W Bush at the Pentagon?), so has obviously been a RWNJ for several decades now. No wonder he wrote as if all the RW talking points were gospel facts, instead of propaganda lies.​

  131. 131.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Kay:

    There should be a word for pretending to invent something that already exists. 

    Since words can have multiple definitions, can we use “jackassery?”

  133. 133.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Kay:

    I had a sixth grade teacher who was an Erie Canal enthusiast/historian. We spent weeks on the construction of the Erie Canal. I loved it but he would probably get fired now. I’m pretty sure we were supposed to be doing something else. 

    I take it that this wasn’t a sixth -grade engineering class. 😁

  134. 134.

    redoubtagain

    @Lady WereBear: Agree.  She tried to tell him, repeatedly.  The Nazi decoration from Goering she called “the Albatross.”  She even told him not to give the speech where he blamed “the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt administration” for World War II.  “It was a match lit next to a pile of excelsior” she said later.

    IIRC Lindbergh, being Lindbergh, was giving an America First speech on December 7th, 1941.  He was interrupted by the news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor–and then continued to give his speech as if nothing had happened.

    We already know he didn’t listen to his wife.  Why should he listen to anybody else?

  135. 135.

    Elizabelle

    Thanks for the reminder about Ultra.  Caught the first episode; much catch up.

    I read the transcripts, which linked to a lot of supporting material.  That airplane crash, which took out Senator Lundeen.  (Sounds like bad weather, actually.)

    Program was chilling, and very well done.

    No surprise why some stuff gets memory-holed, no?

    Whereas, we heard constantly about the returning Viet Nam vets being spat upon.

  136. 136.

    Anoniminous

    @redoubtagain: ​
     
    Not only just a intellectual Eugenicist. He put it into practice by spreading his superior genes by fathering seven children on three different German women. There’s even more than a bit of suspicion Lindbergh killed his own son because the boy was mentally and physically defective.

  137. 137.

    J R in WV

    @Anoniminous:

    … There’s even more than a bit of suspicion Lindbergh killed his own son because the boy was mentally and physically defective.

    Well~!!~   No Fascist could ever tolerate such a genetic error as a son who is mentally and physically defective, now can one? Unthinkable!!

  138. 138.

    Brachiator

    @Anoniminous:

    Not only just a intellectual Eugenicist. He put it into practice by spreading his superior genes by fathering seven children on three different German women.

    I wonder what these kids did with their lives?

  140. 140.

    Elizabelle

    @Anoniminous:   I think that’s a really cheap shot.  Sources?  Who is saying that?

    I did know about the second family (and then some??; hadn’t known of more than one other baby mama frau; was thinking what a mess it made of Scott Berg’s then-recent bio).

    But it is shitty to say such an awful thing about someone who underwent such a public tragedy, with losing his baby son.  Is it true?  Is it any more true than the Clintons and their condom Christmas tree??

  143. 143.

    Martin

    CA state legislators haven’t bought into Musks tunneling lies but they have bought into some of his battery ones. Part of the holdup of CA high speed rail is lawmakers want the engineers to research if battery electric trains would make more sense. That is obviously a stupid idea – the reason why high speed trains work the way they do is that they don’t carry any fuel or energy store on board – they get it from the overhead lines, and installing catenaries is pretty damn cheap to do.

    It’s astonishing how much damage Musk has done to the CA HSR project.

  144. 144.

    EarthWindFire

    @Yutsano: The abortion and gun words were conspicuously absent from that column. They’re delusional.

    ETA: I see Baud caught the absence of the A word.

  145. 145.

    geg6

    @Barbara:

    Have you tried the British History Podcast?   I’ve been listening for two years, on and off, and I haven’t even gotten to the Conquest! It’s fascinating.  I thought I knew a lot of British history, but it turns out I don’t.

  146. 146.

    EarthWindFire

    @dm: Robert Evans (iwriteok on Twitter, at least last week) did a Behind the Insurrections podcast after 1/6. Has an entire episode dedicated to the attempted coup on FDR.

  150. 150.

    Subsole

    @dm: Not just him.

    Hell, America still doesn’t realize just how big a ego  bullet it dodged when MacArthur failed to get elected…

    @Kay: A Republican at the helm. <shakes head, staggered by the sheer lack of surprise>

    Yep. Smell that fiscal responsibility, baby…

  152. 152.

    Another Scott

    @Elizabelle: Made me look.

    This book apparently claims that the kidnapping was staged as a result of one of his cruel pranks going very wrong. I haven’t read the book.

    Lisa’s October 6, 2018 comment mentions the 3 families in Europe (but says the authors don’t mention it).

    There were far too many famous American monsters back in those days. Henry Ford was another.

    FWIW. HTH a little.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  155. 155.

    StringOnAStick

    Sometimes I wonder if the memory holing of pre WWII fascism in the US has a lot to do with the incredible propaganda efforts during WWII used to rally all the citizens to the cause of winning the the war.  As a kid all I knew about WWII was based on Holly wood movies of that period and they are really overt propaganda

  156. 156.

    Lilly

    @narya: the plinky, over-the-top, Desperate Housewives style,non-stop music , made it almost impossible to follow.  I can’t beleive no one thought of lowering it. There are so many names and events that needed deep concentration , and because of the music I had to split each episode in several manageable segments. I almost gave up after the first half an hour but the story is so mind boggling I had to hear it all.

     

    @Sure Lurkalot: it says a lot they let all the pro-nazis free,

    while ferociously going after the communist sympathizers.

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