Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

A Senator Walker would also be an insult to reason, rationality, and decency.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

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

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

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

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

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

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

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

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

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

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

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

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

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Squishable Morning Thread

Squishable Morning Thread

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Climate activist Greta Thunberg ethered misogynist douchebag/criminal Andrew Tate, a failed reality TV figure turned hard-right “influencer” whom I’d never heard of before this morning:

Squishable Morning Thread 2

Then the douchebag and his douchebag brother got arrested for human trafficking and organized crime in Romania. See Rolling Stone for details and a bonus perp-walk photo here.

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

288Comments

  2. 2.

    rikyrah

     

    That whole Tate situation…if a screenwriter had put that situation in a script, it would have been returned to them marked
    “TOO INCREDIBLE”

    Never fails….

    TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION 😒😒

  6. 6.

    Baud

    got arrested for human trafficking and organized crime in Romania

    But Dems and LGBT folks are.groomers….

    It’s all projection.

  8. 8.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Before this morning I had never heard of Andrew Tate. If only I could turn the clock back to my blissful state of ignorance.

  10. 10.

    NotMax

    Jumping the gun, already scribbled in 2023 on the first few fresh checks in the checkbook.

    Post-dinner nap stretched from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. (huzzah for sleep!). Is mixing up a martini at 4 in the morning gauche?

  11. 11.

    Shantanu Saha

    I read that the rant video that Tate put out in response gave the Romanian cops the evidence that he was in country and thus easy to arrest. In front of him was a pizza box with the name of a Bucharest pizza joint. Genius criminal, he was.

  14. 14.

    Donatellonerd

    surprised Betty has never heard of him — obviously most people haven’t, but those who have are often — like me and Betty Cracker iirc — mothers of young adult or teenaged daughters, often unable to avoid his vast online presence (until a few months ago — and now again on elmo’s toy with his permission).

  15. 15.

    mali muso

    One of the best parts of the whole story is that he was only let back on Twitter by genius Melon Tusk. Which is the platform where he couldn’t resist trying to rile up Greta, leading to the whole chain of events.  Schadenfreude!

  16. 16.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Around the time UK police were investigating abuse allegations, Tate is understood to have left the UK for Romania. In one video explaining his reasons for the move he suggested it was because it would be easier to evade rape charges. This is “probably 40% of the reason” he moved there, he says in one video, adding: “I’m not a rapist, but I like the idea of just being able to do what I want. I like being free.”

    Completely acceptable on the Right. He is regularly photographed with Right wing politiicians in the US and UK. This is an association they seek out and promote.

  18. 18.

    Ken

    [Tate] implied that he was moving to Romania for its lax approach to law enforcement. (from the Rolling Stone piece)

    I guess he’ll now find out whether the flipside is an absolutely draconian and largely unchecked response when the police do act.

    I could easily see that, if the “lax approach” is due to bribery of the local cops. Once the arrest is made, they’d be eager to separate themselves from him, as would those further up the chain (plus perhaps some payback for not being included in the original bribes).

  19. 19.

    Kay

    @Donatellonerd:

    Tate’s views have been described as extreme misogyny by domestic abuse charities, capable of radicalising men and boys to commit harm offline. But the 35-year-old is not a fringe personality lurking in an obscure corner of the dark web. Instead, he is one of the most famous figures on TikTok, where videos of him have been watched 11.6 billion times.

    The central role of misogyny on the Right is underplayed and underexplored, IMO.

  21. 21.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Women who are around him just seem to accidentally get their jaws broken.

    Another rabid Right winger imported from the UK. This one specializes in hatred of women.

  22. 22.

    Spanky

    @Kay:

    where videos of him have been watched 11.6 billion times.

    I didn’t know Mattie Gaetz’s thumbs could move that fast.

  23. 23.

    sab

    I was thinking Greta Thunberg was too young for such jokes. Then I googled her and she is 19. Kids grow up so fast these days.

  25. 25.

    sab

    @Kay: Instead of being all hyperalert about our southern border we need to be keeping a better eye on our international airports for Brits coming in.

  28. 28.

    Starfish

    The whole “recruiting youth to misogyny and right wing extremism” pipeline is not great.

    There was a Twitter hack a while ago where a bunch of big accounts on Twitter got hijacked to steal crypto. The person who did that was 17 years old. He had gotten his start through scamming people on Minecraft when he was 14.

    This was nuts, and it made me a little squirmy about accounting for the underdeveloped brains of minors in sentencing.

  29. 29.

    Ken

    @Baud: In the late-night thread, I speculated that Bolsonaro might get a job at Mar-a-Lago (since TFG has a history of hiring foreigners at his places). Maybe Tate can also find something there

    EDIT: This is reminding me of a science-fiction short story, name forgotten, where people abused time-travel technology to create parallel universes with strange or ironic twists on our history. Like a Bavarian hotel that circa 1940 was staffed entirely by the men who, in our timeline, were the heads of the Nazi party. Goering as headwaiter, Goebbels as a bell-hop, Hitler at the front desk…

  33. 33.

    PST

    I see that this Andrew Tate guy is a native of Chicago and spent his early boyhood in Goshen, Indiana. I wonder if he is still a U.S. citizen entitled to consular help after a foreign arrest. I, too, didn’t know about him until yesterday and hope to forget him tomorrow.

  34. 34.

    Soprano2

    The other day, in a thread that was dead, people were talking about solutions for chapped lips and hands. I found that Laniege Sleeping Mask lip balm is a miracle substance for me. I’ve tried so many things for the perpetually chapped lips I have in the winter, and this is hands down the best thing I’ve ever used. I put it on at night before I go to bed, and it’s still on my lips when I get up in the morning!  Amazing stuff, a little pricy but if you can afford it worth the money because it actually works!

  37. 37.

    Jeffro

    The entire Fro family was laughing about this at breakfast this morning.

    Biggest self-own (self DOUBLE own, actually) in the history of self-owns.

    Karma, she is…she is tough!

  38. 38.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: To Republicans “freedom” is “being able to do whatever I want to whoever I want to do it to”. It’s disgusting.

  39. 39.

    Ken

    @PST: Apparently he keeps changing countries so that he can ignore the laws, so it would be totally in character for him to now scream for the protection of the law.

  40. 40.

    Jeffro

    @Kay: ol’ Tucker spent at least one episode earlier this year decrying the “hate on the Left” for Tate.

    shocking, I know

  41. 41.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: Conservative men hate hate hate that now they have to compete with women for better, higher-paying jobs. They think they alone deserve to have those jobs, and women should go back to being housewives, teachers, nurses and secretaries before they have children.

  43. 43.

    DrDaveChemist

    @NotMax: Depends on whether you consider it this morning or still last night.

    One of my sons needed a ride to the airport at that sort of ungodly hour earlier this week, but thankfully the other one has shifted his sleep schedule so much that he just stayed awake, saving me the trouble of having to get out of a sound sleep to act as chauffeur. I will do a lot for my sons, but a one hour drive each way in the wee hours of the morning is pushing the envelope…

  44. 44.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    It’s just funny that they’re all so worried about “the children!” when it comes to drag shows but this violent, criminal, Right wing misogynist has a HUGE platform where he recruits boys and young men into a hating and abusing women club (at 9 dollars a month) and there’s not a peep out of the protectors of children on the Right. Twelve year old boys are children. He’s literally grooming them to attack girls and women.

  46. 46.

    AM in NC

    @Kay: Yeah, we have just a slight misogyny problem. But if we all smile and look pretty, I’m sure they’ll treat us fine.

    STILL wondering (not wondering) why we haven’t seen Epstein’s Big Black Book.

  48. 48.

    indycat32

    OT – two more kittens (both female) are back from the clinic and hiding under my neighbor’s deck.

  49. 49.

    oldgold

    Over the past few days, I have scanned over a few of the transcripts released by the January 6th Committee.

    One of my take always is that the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution that limits a President to two terms needs to be tweaked.

    During the Trump / Biden “transition period” and until this day Trump has done things intended to damage the Biden presidency. Trump has done so, besides being a malignant narcissistic flaming asshole, to enhance his chances of being elected President in 2024. The poison a toxic former President, operating in bad faith, can inject into the body politic, as we have witnessed, is enormous; particularly, if they are not legally a lame duck. The fact Trump could once again be President, is in large measure, what empowers him.

    Although it would not solve the problem completely, I think the 22nd Amendment should be tweaked to state a President defeated in an election for a second term should be precluded from ever running in the future for a second term. 

  50. 50.

    NotMax

    @AM in NC

    Not to instigate a storm but it’s not all purely based on hatred. There’s also the misbegotten belief entrenched in some quarters that they are an inferior model of the species.

  55. 55.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @oldgold: there’s almost too much to digest in these transcripts

    Joyce Alene @JoyceWhiteVance 17h

    Alyssa Griffin transcript: “It was the first COVID, like, morning meeting that Jared led after [Biden won]..& Dr. Birx..said, “Well, should we be looping the Biden transition into these conversations?” & Jared just said, “Absolutely not.” & then we just moved on.”

    and, not for the first time, where the hell were these people, the Gina Haspels, the John Kellys, Silent Jim Mattis, the alleged “national security professionals”, during the second impeachment trial?

    Joyce Alene @JoyceWhiteVance 17h

    Griffin also testified she was told Trump tried to fire CIA Dir Haspel & install Kash Patel, but Haspel had put a suicide pact in place so IC leaders would resign if that happened, forcing Trump to back down: “allegedly, for about 14 minutes, Kash was actually the CIA director.”

  57. 57.

    Suzanne

    @Kay:

    Right wing misogynist has a HUGE platform where he recruits boys and young men into a hating and abusing women club (at 9 dollars a month) and there’s not a peep out of the protectors of children on the Right. 

    You know that’s because hating and abusing women is what they consider their male birthright, and they are pissed AF that that has been threatened.

  58. 58.

    oldgold

    About the only things Grover gave us, not directly, but indirectly, was a bunch of phony states that plague us to this day and the Baby Ruth candy bar.

  62. 62.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Shantanu Saha: OK, some of the obscure jokes are starting to make sense now. I had heard that some guy got pantsed by Greta Thunberg, but hadn’t bothered to chase down the details. And I saw something about “I can recommend a pizza place in Romania” but had no idea what that was supposed to mean.

  63. 63.

    NotMax

    @oldgold

    and the Baby Ruth candy bar

    CYA myth, that. It was rushed to market to compete with an extant Babe Ruth candy concoction which was eating into Curtiss’ bottom line. Curtiss previously attempted to woo Ruth to lend his name but his asking price was deemed too exorbitant.

  64. 64.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Trump tried to fire CIA Dir Haspel & install Kash Patel,

    Aside from the rampant criminality, why is it that Republicans seem to think that you can put any random intern into positions of enormous responsibility, so long as they’re loyal? It’s like they don’t even recognize there’s such a concept as “competency”.

    Which, judging by the A team of Trump lawyers, is probably true.

    I still remember hearing about random 25-year-olds being shipped overseas after W’s Iraqi misadventure and being told, “congratulations, you’re now the Minister of Education”.

  69. 69.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @oldgold: reminds me of an old SNL skit, Dan Ackroyd as Nixon old:

    the sage of Yorba Linda plotting his comeback with the slogans: “Can a country really be free if a man can only be President twice?”

    and

    “The New Dick!” It’s short, it’s sweet, and everybody wants to see it!

    Jane Curtain’s Edward Albee inspired Pat, sneering and holding a martini: “It’s short and sweet but I don’t think anybody wants to see it” Wild stuff for NBC in 1975

  74. 74.

    Geminid

    There has  also been no fresh news about the Moore County power grid attack that cut off power to 45,000 residents December 3rd. Last week somebody did hang a banner on an overpass there contained neo-Nazi slogans. A local citizen spotted it, took it down, and then notified police. Two similar banners have been hung in the county this past year.

    Moore County citizen-journalist Cheryl Christy-Bowman wrote up the incident and its aftermath on her blog Moore Voices. Her article is titled, “A Pattern of Racial Hatred and an Unconcerned Sheriff and Newspaper.”

    A (fingers crossed) link:

    https://www.moorevoices.net/post/a-pattern-of-racial-hatred-and-an-unconcerned-sheriff-and-newspape

    Ms. Christy-Bowman has been blogging since 2018 on Moore County politics, in particular the radical takeover of the Republican party there and its malign effects. The December 3rd grid attack prompted her to begin a five-part series on local radicalization. She released “Timeline of Terror-Part 1” a couple weeks ago. It covers events 2014-2018. Later parts will vover events up to the power grid attack and its aftermath

    Christy-Bowman became involved in her county’s politics as a public education advocate. I encountered her on twitter at @moorevoicesnc.

  77. 77.

    kalakal

    Tate seems to have hung around with some prize specimens in Britland. Photo ops with Nigel Farage, racist & Islamaphobe  criminal Tommy Robinson (head of the English Defence League, which is exactly what it says on the tin) who is a “solid guy” with a “good heart”.

    “doing his very best to protect England from Islamisation.” according to Tate*.

    Since news of the arrest broke the usual vile right wing media motor mouths like Julia Hartley-Brewer are desperately deleting their messages of support and attacks on Thunberg.

    He’s a vile bastard who’s made a lot of money out of hate, I hope he rots in jail for years

    Here’s a very good & very funny takedown of his idiot video

    https://twitter.com/wsebag/status/1608742310413475840?s=20&t=yhtmZbVc7DzCyzstTmRZ7Q

    *Tate used to turn up with Robinson’s other goons to threaten journalists at their homes in the early hours of the morning

  78. 78.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Suzanne:

    Recall the Kavenaugh hearings.  Republicans absolutely lost their shit that democrats thought committing rape was a disqualifier.  They were offended, outraged, vomiting bile about it.

    I just erased a much longer comment about it, because the topic is just too vile.

  80. 80.

    Suzanne

    @kalakal:

    He’s a vile bastard who’s made a lot of money out of hate, I hope he rots in jail for years 

    In the contemporary era, one of the best parts of sending loathsome criminals to prison is that they can’t tweet.

    Improving public safety + a modicum of peace and quiet = Serious twofer

  84. 84.

    Suzanne

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Republicans absolutely lost their shit that democrats thought committing rape was a disqualifier.  They were offended, outraged, vomiting bile about it.

     

    100% correct.
    I said at the time, they believe he did it, absolutely everybody believes he did it…..they just don’t think it’s a big deal. And why don’t they think it’s a big deal? Because every one of them either did it or wishes they had.

  86. 86.

    AM in NC

    @NotMax:  Yeah, I’m using misogyny broadly here to mean hatred of and the other constellation of feelings behind oppression of women.

    Whether it’s recognizable as hatred or just the fucked up belief that not being able to grow or feed another human being with your body makes you a better person, it’s all bad.

    Not sure what term covers all the varieties of ways women are degraded, penalized, attacked, preyed upon, etc. by a patriarchal culture.

  91. 91.

    Soprano2

    @AM in NC: STILL wondering (not wondering) why we haven’t seen Epstein’s Big Black Book.

    As Atrios would say, “Some of your faves may be in it”. Way too many powerful men in there for it to ever see the light of day, and I suspect their political affiliations are all over the map.

  92. 92.

    oldgold

    Back to main point, after Grover won in ‘84, the GOP recognized a solid Democratic Dixie could spell electoral and Senatorial  problems for them in the future. Their solution was South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.

    That was bad, but manageable; however, now that Dixie is politically aligned with these false states, we have a real and enduring problem.

  93. 93.

    Geminid

    @Steeplejack: As the youngs say, “no problem!”

    I am very impressed by Ms. Christy-Bowman’s efforts. She is an efficient reporter/historian. And while she focuses on her own county, Christy-Bowman believes the phenomena she reports on are common to many other rural/exurban counties elewhere, and I think she is right.

  94. 94.

    Soprano2

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: I still remember hearing about random 25-year-olds being shipped overseas after W’s Iraqi misadventure and being told, “congratulations, you’re now the Minister of Education”.

    That was one reason the Iraq Occupation was so fucked up; a bunch of people who had never been in charge of anything were put in charge of rebuilding a country because they worked at the Heritage Foundation! R’s have a long history of often not caring that much about competency. They care about loyalty more.

  96. 96.

    Soprano2

    @Suzanne: They think all women should want to have sex with them, and can’t understand that there are women who don’t. Thus this attitude.

  97. 97.

    Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)

    OT, but this has been bothering me for a few days.

    George Santos, is not 1) college educated, 2) Jewish or descended from Holocaust survivors, 3) gay, 4) a financial whiz, 5) add your own here – I can’t keep it straight.

    Is there any proof this lying shite is a real person, and not a GQP hologram?

  98. 98.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Soprano2: the Libertarian Terrarium experiment. Almost twenty years later, I forget if that was critical snark or aspirational cluelessness from one of the think-tank cheerleaders

  101. 101.

    NotMax

    @oldgold

    You left out Washington (admitted 1889).

    Washington, Montana, Idaho and Wyoming were already nominal geographically designated territories. Only Dakota Territory was split. That Montana wasn’t remains somewhat a puzzlement.

  102. 102.

    Geminid

    @Soprano2: Also, procuring under-age sexual partners was only a part of Epstein’s influencing/ blackmailing/espionage(?) operation. Many if not most of the people named in this book probably had no part in Epstein’s criminal exploitation of girls, although some may have had first hand or second hand knowledge.

    Epstein drew many wealthy and/or powerful people into his web over 35 years, and while there was a wide range of knowledge and involvement they would not escape the guilt by association, whether or not it was deserved.

  103. 103.

    Soprano2

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: The Republican neocons had so many crazy ideas about Iraq, like the one where we depose Saddam, they fly in Ahmed Chalibi and install him as the new leader so Iraq will recognize Israel and all the other Middle East countries will follow them, Middle East crisis resolved! As if the Iraqi people didn’t exist and wouldn’t have anything to say or do about it. This was the crux of the problem, because everything else they did depended on installing Chalibi, and when that didn’t happen they tried to do everything else anyway.  I read Rick’s book about this, the military people had plans to use the Iraqi military people to rebuild buildings and infrastructure that had been damaged; they were shocked when the order came down to disband the Iraqi military. IMHO that was the absolutely worst decision of many incredibly bad decisions made by the Bush administration about Iraq (with the first bad one being to invade and occupy it in the first place). Lots of the things we’re dealing with in the world now related to terrorism started with this decision.

  104. 104.

    kindness

    Greta’s reply tweet was funny as hell.  I hadn’t seen humor in her before.  Bravo Greta.  And then to have the Bros get arrested & perp walked?  Masterful karma on display.  The only thing nice I can say for the Bro is the Bugatti is a really nice car that I will never own.

  105. 105.

    Steeplejack

    @Geminid:

    [. . .] Christy-Bowman believes the phenomena she reports on are common to many other rural/​exurban counties elsewhere, and I think she is right.

    I agree.

  109. 109.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    again, almost too much to digest

    Lisa Rubin @lawofruby

    NEW THREAD: Chief WH Usher Tim Harlech was almost fired with 3 weeks left, Stephanie Grisham said. Why? Because he shared move-in information with the Bidens & the USSS made sure it got back to Trump. 1/

    How did Grisham know that? Because Melania called her, said Meadows had called both Trumps, that the president and Meadows were angry and ready to fire Harlech–and that Melania intervened, if only because she was concerned about what Harlech knew & could say publicly. 2/

  110. 110.

    Ken

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: why is it that Republicans seem to think that you can put any random intern into positions of enormous responsibility

    Personal experience?  “I started as an intern at Dad’s company, and within three years I’d worked my way up to CEO,” that sort of thing.

  114. 114.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Soprano2: Bush’s occupation authority in Iraq was in many ways the model for the Trump Administration in the US. Bush’s clown brigade was just barely too smart to actually do it in their own country.

  115. 115.

    Betty Cracker

    @Soprano2: Those of us who lived through the W admin as adults really did have every reason to believe we were surviving the dumbest, most hubristic clusterfuck in the history of the U.S. and that its mind-bogglingly arrogant fuckery was unlikely to be rivaled in our lifetimes. A mere eight years later, we saw another GOP admin plumb new depths. I don’t know if the country could survive another Republican president. Let’s not find out, okay?

  118. 118.

    Geminid

    @NotMax: It occurs to me that I probably think of Gen-Xers as “youngs.”

    Now, the real youngs probably have their own phrase for, “you’re welcome.”

  121. 121.

    oldgold

    @NotMax:

    Yes. The were territories and should have remained so. They account for 10 Senators. Their combined population is a fraction of California’s, which has 2 Senators.

    Of course, I think the Senate was a bad idea from the get go. But that is a long tangled discussion for another time.

  125. 125.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Betty Cracker: I don’t think there’s any way we can really avoid it. Nobody holds the White House forever, and term limits mean we can’t even have an FDR-like situation where we hold it by repeatedly electing the same popular person. If the Republicans don’t take it in 2024, it’ll be 2028 or 2032.

    There’s always the hope that repeated losses drive them to sanity before it happens but that didn’t really work before (or it didn’t take for long).

  127. 127.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Good chance Tate’s misogyny is all fan service.  At lot of these Extreme Fighting fans are clearly basement dwelling moma’s boys living out their tough guy fantasy threw these fighters.  It’s not so much they hate women because of job competition, as they are afraid a woman might beat them up, lol

  130. 130.

    artem1s

    @oldgold:

    Although it would not solve the problem completely, I think the 22nd Amendment should be tweaked

    not entirely sure I agree with the current 22nd limit anyway. the problem is the endless running/not running for POTUS to make $. extreme campaign financing reform would be a better solution. the disruption caused by TFG is only the tip of the iceberg. take the grift off the table and there would be no reason for any of these assholes to be engaged in any of these ‘disruptions’. start with overturning Citizen’s United. put OMB style grant regulations on reporting campaign revenue and spending with an NIH type cap limit for salaries of campaign staff and that should take care of a lot of it.

  132. 132.

    Geminid

    @Matt McIrvin: I think Iraq’s new constitutional framework that we sponsored has hobbled their democracy. Proportional representation through nation-wide party slates seems to be problematic in many ways, and Iraq has yet to have a stable or popular government. The best they’ve done is to muddle through.

  135. 135.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @NotMax: there’s a Sorkin-esque fantasy among never-trumpers and Grand High Broderists that Liz Cheney will lead an exodus of principled Republicans to a new party, under the benign guidance of Elder Willard, with the support of Manchin and Sinema. I think at least those last two would be all over it.

    I still think Liz Cheney is finished in electoral politics.

  137. 137.

    Geminid

    @Matt McIrvin: Republicans may be out of power for longer than that. The Roosevelt coalition held the White House from 1932 to 1952. It might have held it longer had Harry Truman and his Joint Chiefs not let MacArthur screw up the war in Korea.

    I can see the Obama-Biden coalition keeping the White House and Congress through 2036 and beyond.

  142. 142.

    RedDirtGirl

    @Matt McIrvin: if you haven’t read Imperial Life in the Emerald City about life in the Green Zone in Iraq, it is chock full of stories about the mismanagement.

  143. 143.

    rikyrah

    @Frankensteinbeck:

     

    Recall the Kavenaugh hearings.  Republicans absolutely lost their shit that democrats thought committing rape was a disqualifier.  They were offended, outraged, vomiting bile about it.

     

    Nothing but truth.

  144. 144.

    Brachiator

    @Geminid:

    Republicans may be out of power for longer than that. The Roosevelt coalition held the White House from 1932 to 1952. It might have held it longer had Harry Truman and his Joint Chiefs not let MacArthur screw up the war in Korea.

    What more positive outcome to the Korean War was prevented?

    In any case, presidential term limits make any one party dominance less likely. And Eisenhower might have been a lock no matter what. But who knows? Alternative histories don’t much matter.

  147. 147.

    Soprano2

    @Betty Cracker: I don’t know if the country could survive another Republican president. Let’s not find out, okay?

    I totally agree! I shudder to think of what incompetents would work for another TFG administration, because no one with any actual competence would get within 100 miles of that WH.

  149. 149.

    Brachiator

    @Leto:

    Trump tax returns…

    The Boston Globe has a nice graphic summarizing the tax returns. Unfortunately, they sometimes throw up an ad that covers over the site display.

  150. 150.

    Geminid

    @NotMax: When the Whigs imploded many of them moved to the American (“Know Nothing”) Party. It in turn dissolved itself in 1860 and its Northern members joined the new Republican Party. Their ideological descendents remain there today and now are very powerful.

  151. 151.

    tobie

    @Soprano2: Norman Lear tapped deep into the fears of white working class men with the lyrics to “Those were the days.” (Lear is 100 and still going strong. God bless him.)

    Guys like me we had it made

    Those were the days

    Didn’t need no welfare state

    ev’rybody pulled his weight

    gee our old LaSalle ran great

    Those were the days

    And you knew who you were then

    girls were girls and men were men

    Mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again

  152. 152.

    NotMax

    Inspired scene just now on the TV.

    Two guys trying to gather evidence by listening at the paper-thin wall to the adjacent hotel room. One Good Guy trips over something, making a loud crash.

    Bad Guy #1 rushes out to pound on the door to the next room.

    After a short delay, door is opened by the two Good Guys, now dressed only in underwear. “What is it?”

    Bad Guy #1: “Okay, fine. Now I get it.”

    Bad Guy #2, sticking head out the door of the next room: “Problem?”

    Bad Guy #1: “No. Just people fucking.”

  153. 153.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Geminid: Biden isn’t in great shape, poll-wise. Better than several months ago, but reelection is not going to be a walk, especially if DeSantis is the R nominee and the media remain in the tank for him. Democrats outperformed general expectations in the midterms, but I don’t see a situation where a hugely popular coalition can retain power for a long time.

    Granted, if it’s Trump he’s up against, Biden probably knows how to take him again.

  154. 154.

    Geminid

    @Brachiator: The positive outcome would have been achieved if Truman and and the Joint Chiefs had ordered MacArthur to have his engineers select a line 70 miles or so north of Seoul where the peninsula was still narrow, and fortify it. The Chinese would not have entered the war and North Korea would have been left a rump state occupying a bunch of impovershed hills and mountains.

  155. 155.

    Jackie

    @Ken: President Biden doesn’t completely trust the SS either. Per Political Wire:

    “President Joe Biden was so disturbed by the Secret Service’s handling of text messages sought by the House January 6 select committee that he stopped speaking candidly in the presence of special agents assigned to his protection detail, a new book on the Biden White House has revealed,” the Independentreports.

    “In The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House, author Chris Whipple writes that Mr Biden’s discomfort with the post-Trump era agency began early on in his presidency, when it became clear that “some of” the agents charged with protecting him from assassination were strong supporters of the man he defeated in the 2020 election, former president Donald Trump.”

    ”Also interesting: Biden’s relationship with his security further strained after an agent claimed that the president’s dog had bitten him — an allegation that Biden doesn’t quite believe.“

  157. 157.

    Brachiator

    @raven:

    So why ask  “what positive outcome. . .”?

    I don’t know.

    Curiosity?

    Because we are all having a genial conversation, not a rigorous debate?

    Because other commenters often have good knowledge of history and offer interesting insights?

    I am generally extremely skeptical of political and history hypotheticals, but have no problem reading them.

  158. 158.

    Leto

    @Brachiator: I think you had made this point a few days ago, but as we all know the IRS staff is just seriously undermanned. Combine that with the complexity of his criminal enterprises and here we are. This also illustrates the point we’ve made about trying to properly tax the rich.

  159. 159.

    Geminid

    @Matt McIrvin: I think the economic initiatives Democrats have enacted will bear fruit for the rest of this decade and I believe there will be more. Demographic change could enhance Democratic power, and Republicans seem hellbent on marginilizing themselves.

    But this is a common story here: two informed and intelligent people looking at the same set of facts and drawing different conclusions.

  160. 160.

    Hoodie

    Didn’t know about this guy until my son called me about it last night.  Point being, not all of this is old farts in MAGA hats, there’s a younger generation of douchebags on TikTok and other media.

  161. 161.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Jackie: the whole Ornato story– he took a “leave of absence” to work for trump, then went back to a high-ranking position, in charge of training, IIRC– should be a scandal. I think he quit to protect himself from 1/6 committee subpoenas?

    There’s some fucked up shit going on with federal LEOs. Nicolle Wallace led her show yesterday with this story of the “Suspendables”, a group of FBI agents who refused to cooperate with the trump investigation, got suspended and are now lining up to be the stars of Gym Jordan’s hearings.

    Mr. Piro, 55, was a highly decorated agent in the F.B.I. During his 23-year career, he earned a national intelligence medal for the months he spent interrogating Saddam Hussein, supervised several high-profile shooting investigations and consistently earned reviews that were among the highest for agents who ran field offices.
    Now, he stood accused of misconduct by a group of former agents who had been placed on leave and called themselves “the Suspendables.” In a letter sent this month to Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, the group surfaced persistent accusations against the bureau, saying it had discriminated against conservative-leaning agents. The group’s letter also falsely suggested that Mr. Piro, who once ran the F.B.I.’s office in Miami, had played a suspicious role in the bureau’s search this summer of Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald J. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida.

  164. 164.

    Betty Cracker

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: The idea that the FBI is crawling with anti-Trump liberals is so preposterous. It’s possible that one lesson from 2022 is that, outside of a few hard-right states, people don’t want extremists running things. I hope it blows up in Jordan’s face when he parades these whiners around as cancel culture victims.

  165. 165.

    Another Scott

    @Steeplejack: Oooof!  [ chef’s kiss ]

    (Unfortunately, around here the county doesn’t take pizza boxes for recycling (I guess the cheese residue messes up the value of the paper).)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  166. 166.

    Brachiator

    @Leto:

     I think you had made this point a few days ago, but as we all know the IRS staff is just seriously undermanned.

    The Audit division has its own problems, but more than that, the IRS is still hugely backlogged by its inability to process millions of paper filed returns, and to update customer records. This has been quietly reported, and industry insiders keep track of this, but it is a goddam scandal which may also impact the upcoming filing season.

    Combine that with the complexity of his criminal enterprises and here we are. This also illustrates the point we’ve made about trying to properly tax the rich.

    It says much that New York state was able to nail Trump fairly quickly, once they focused on him. The GOP has not only favored the rich with generous tax cuts, but has actively impeded the IRS. This is typically deeply cynical and shameful.

  168. 168.

    tobie

    @Soprano2: I gather the lyrics were written by Lee Adams and the music was composed by Charles Strouse but Norman Lear worked closely with both. Adams and Strouse were famous for their collaboration on musicals.

  169. 169.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Another Scott: Yeah, my impression is that even a tiny bit of food grease makes paper or cardboard unsuitable for recycling, but I was resisting the urge to “well actually” Thunberg’s magnificent joke…

  170. 170.

    Leto

    @Brachiator: NY State was able to do it because they had a dedicated team just for him. They could focus all their efforts on a single entity. I don’t know how to extrapolate out how many agents we’d need for all of our mega rich, as well as companies, but I know the 88k personnel the IRS is supposed to add will help. Def agree that conservatives have actively sought to impede/dismantle the IRS, as well as every other government agency that might impede their cash grabbing schemes.

  173. 173.

    cmorenc

    @Soprano2:

    @Kay: To Republicans “freedom” is “being able to do whatever I want to whoever I want to do it to”. It’s disgusting.

    I’d say it’s more: “being able to do whatever I want….without obligation to be concerned about whether or how my actions may harmfully impact or burden others“.   It’s the rejection of any collective responsibility to society.   To the extent they feel bothered to justify it beyond the simplistic slogan “FREEDOM!”, their explanation always boils down to some close variation of the Randian principle that the greater good is best served by the aggregation of individual selfishness, coupled with a petulent: “you can’t tell me what to do.”

    BTW: guess what the slogan is on Lauren Bober’s (still up) billboards, e.g. along 70 business into downtown Grand Junction, Colorado, in BIG letters underneath her grinning face?  “Freedom“.  And by “freedom”, it’s certain that her concept thereof is exactly what we described above.

  175. 175.

    JMG

    @Leto: Most of those 88,000 new IRS employees will go to the task of processing refunds in a more timely manner. That’s important, too. I’d say for most voters, it’s way more important.

  176. 176.

    tobie

    I don’t know much about federal procedures but is there any chance Biden could replace the IRS commissioner Charles Rettig? I wouldn’t mind seeing Chris Wray, Joseph Cuffari (IG of DHS) and Michael Horowitz (the DOJ IG) fired but that’s too much to ask for.

    Horowtiz has bugged me for some time. He never completed the investigation of leaks from the NY field office of the FBI in 2016, and he seems to have sat on every other investigation, hoping it would die, except for the one of Andrew McCabe.

  177. 177.

    Leto

    REPORT TO THE HOUSE COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN RICHARD NEAL Prepared by staff of the JOINT COMMITTEE ON TAXATION ON WAYS AND MEANS

    By letter dated June 16, 2021, to Treasury Secretary Yellen and Commissioner Rettig, Chairman Neal, House Committee on Ways and Means, requested certain tax return information under section 6103(f) to evaluate the mandatory examination program for the returns ofa sitting United States President (the “June 16″ letter”). In particular, the June 16″ letter requested the following returns and related Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) audit materials of former President Donald J. Trump (“Mr. Trump”) for each of the tax years 2015 through 2020, including whether an IRS examination of the returns took place and the present status of the audits, the applicable statutes of limitations,’ and the issues considered:

    The Federal income tax returns of Donald J. Trump (Form 1040),
    The Federal income tax returns of the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust,”
    The Federal income tax returns of DIT Holdings LLC (Form 1065),
    aw Rehr The Federal income tax returns of DIT Holdings Managing Member LLC (Form 1120-8),
    The Federal income tax returns of DTTM Operations LLC (Form 1065),
    The Federal income tax returns of DTTM Operations Managing Member Corp (Form 1120-S),
    7. The Federal income tax returns of LFB Acquisitions Corp (Form 1120-S),
    oo
    The Federal income tax returns of LFB Acquisition LLC (Form 1065), and
    9. The Federal income tax returns of Lamington Farm Club, LLC d/b/a Trump National Golf Club-Bedminster (Form 1120-S).

    This report is a summary of our review of the examination of the Federal income tax returns received in response to the June 16″ fetter. It should be noted that our review was limited to the materials received from November 30, 2022, through December 11, 2022. The following discussion only includes a summary of noteworthy issues based on our review of such materials that we believe would have warranted examination. Any returns listed above that were received and reviewed but not mentioned below did not appear to have noteworthy issues. We did not have any investigatory powers (such as the ability to issue information document requests (IDRs”) or to interview the IRS revenue agents assigned to the audits) that would have provided us with more insight into the accuracy of the returns and the rationale for the scope of the audits. Thus, we express no opinion regarding whether any adjustment, or increase or decrease in tax, would have resulted if these issues had been pursued on examination.

    The structure of the organization must be understood to understand the flow in which the tax items were reportable. Mr. Trump is the beneficiary of a revocable trust, noted as request number 2 above. The trust is characterized for Federal income tax purposes as a grantor trust, a disregarded entity for tax purposes. As a disregarded entity, the items of income, deduction,
    gain, loss, and credit accruing to the trust appear directly on the Federal income tax returns of
    Mr. Trump. The trast in turn has an ownership in various pass-through entities (partnerships and S corporations) and the items of income, deduction, gain, loss, and credit from these entities flow to the individual Federal income tax returns of Mr. Trump (because the trust is a grantor trust). These pass-through entities own interests in other pass-through entities, the income, deductions, gains, losses, and credits from which flow upwards to the owning entities. In short, the items from the lowest tier entities flow up to the next higher level of pass-through entities and keep flowing upwards, eventually appearing on Mr. Trump’s Form 1040s.

  178. 178.

    Drunkenhausfrau

    I confess i have been enjoying the Greta smackdown of this professional cretin WAY TOO MUCH.   Despite trying to ween myself from twitter, this little comedy has sucked me in!  Hilarious!  My gen Z kids and I have been sharing the schadenfreude!

  179. 179.

    cmorenc

    @JMG:

    @Leto: Most of those 88,000 new IRS employees will go to the task of processing refunds in a more timely manner. That’s important, too. I’d say for most voters, it’s way more important.

    And RW media (social and mass) is busy propagating the meme that all of those 88k agents will be armed, and will be put to use as IRS SWAT teams to harass ordinary citizens.

  180. 180.

    Leto

    @JMG: Agreed. Demonstrating to people, in concrete ways, that government is responsive and able to meet people’s needs goes a long way.

  181. 181.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @tobie:

    I don’t know much about federal procedures but is there any chance Biden could replace the IRS commissioner Charles Rettig?

    his term expired last month, I believe

    ETA: MSNBC just dropped the nugget that trump took his salary as POTUS in 2020, in spite of his showy pledge to donate it to charity

  189. 189.

    Another Scott

    @Geminid: Something, something frog and scorpion something something it is my nature.

    MacArthur wanted to be President.  He wanted a big victory.  Like Custer, his hubris got him and there was no other conceivable outcome with him in charge.

    Beware of generals who were gigantic momma’s boys.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  191. 191.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Baud: right, just a nugget that he’s a liar and a hypocrite, nothing illegal

    in 2017 at least he would make a big photo-op show of giving a giant novelty ‘check’ to a charity every quarter, and in 2020 he just pocketed the money. Maybe to make interest payments.

  193. 193.

    Burnspbesq

    @PaulWartenberg:

    One of the people arrested in conjunction with the Tate brothers was a woman (?!) police officer as part of the “conspiracy to start a criminal enterprise”.

    Who better to feed young women arrested for petty crimes into the insatiable maw of the online-porn industry?

  195. 195.

    zhena gogolia

    Wow. I just came across this passage in Tolstoy, Hadji Murat, about Tsar Nicholas I. Sounds so like Putler:

    “The blatant, unceasing flattery of those around him had so far detached him from reality that he was no longer aware of his own inconsistency and ceased to relate his words and actions to reality, logic or plain common sense, fully convinced that all his decisions, however senseless, unjust and inconsistent they were in fact, became sensible, just and consistent simply by virtue of having been made by him.”

  199. 199.

    Ken

    @lige: Yes, exactly! Thank you very much. I knew it had an unusual title, but my mind kept sticking on Erik Frank Russell’s “Allamagoosa”.

  201. 201.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Tony G: at a guess, pay-per-view and endorsements?

    I read not long ago that every single Kardashian sister is a billionaire in her own right. Even if that’s an exaggeration, they seem to be fantastically rich from being famous for being famous. The zombie Gabor Sisters are gonna eat them first out of jealous rage.

    ETA: I think one of the things trump has been covering up is how much of his money comes from that game show, a similarly popular but cheap-to-produce operation

  204. 204.

    Steeplejack

    @Tony G:

    Per the Guardian profile linked at #167 above:

    In less than three months, the strategy [of manipulating the TikTok “algorithm”] has earned him a huge following online and potentially made him millions of pounds, with 127,000 members now paying the £39 a month to join Hustler’s University community, many of them men and boys from the UK and US.

    That’s almost £5 million ($6 million) a month.

  205. 205.

    Qrop Non Sequitur

    @Baud: I’ve noticed Tate for some time because he gets talked about by a lot of the people I follow on YouTube.

    Funnily, the most recent instance was a legitimately leftish individual recommended to me by a Trumpy friend arguing that Tate shouldn’t have been banned from Twitter.

    I’m not a big fan of this dude’s program, but more because of format than having heard any takes that were bad in principle

    Eta: His basic argument was assorted redpill man-babies and Nazis shouldn’t be deplatformed because people need experience answering their nonsense takes. This goes double for college campuses.

  206. 206.

    Geminid

    @Tony G: There is a ton of money in social media for someone like Tate. A couple years ago I read about some young teenager who was making millions evaluating toys.

    Podcasting alone is putting money in some peoples pockets who never made a fraction as much as straight journalists.

  209. 209.

    Kent

    @BlueGuitarist:So is Duke in Glass Onion a parody of Tate?

    I assumed he was a parody of Alex Jones.  But then I had never heard of Tate until yesterday when Greta defenestrated him.

  213. 213.

    zhena gogolia

    @Baud: NYT:

    Trump made no charitable contributions in 2020.

    As a presidential candidate in 2015, Mr. Trump said he would not take “even one dollar” of the $400,000 salary that comes with the job. “I am totally giving up my salary if I become president,” he said.

    In his first three years in office, Mr. Trump said he donated his salary quarterly. But in 2020, his last full year in office, the documents show that Mr. Trump reported $0 in charitable giving.

    Also in 2020, as the pandemic recession swiftly descended, Mr. Trump reported heavy business losses and no federal tax liability.

    In the earlier years, White House officials made a point of highlighting which government agencies were receiving the money, starting with the National Park Service in 2017. The tax documents released Friday show that Mr. Trump reported charitable donations totaling nearly $1.9 million in 2017 and just over $500,000 in both 2018 and 2019.

  218. 218.

    trollhattan

    I had not heard of the Tate dude until Greta handed him his ballsack on a bespoke saucer. That he decided he needed to troll her to begin with (because, reasons) informs me his decisionmaking abilities are suspect. Someone had a screengrab of his Wikipedia page showing his kickboxing match record topped with a loss to Thunberg, 27.12.22, location Twitter, before it was deleted.

    Delicious, the whole thing.

    Oh, a troll attempted to restore his cred in LGM comments yesterday. You can guess how that went.

  221. 221.

    Qrop Non Sequitur

    @Another Scott: Of course, (almost) everything he has ever said is a lie, so this is the least surprising thing today.

    If the theoretically true bits were in service of a different lie, they were still lies.

  224. 224.

    Kent

    @Betty Cracker: @Soprano2: Those of us who lived through the W admin as adults really did have every reason to believe we were surviving the dumbest, most hubristic clusterfuck in the history of the U.S. and that its mind-bogglingly arrogant fuckery was unlikely to be rivaled in our lifetimes. A mere eight years later, we saw another GOP admin plumb new depths. I don’t know if the country could survive another Republican president. Let’s not find out, okay?

    But the reality is we will and we can.   Permanent Democratic rule is not in the cards.  Never has been and never will be.  We survived Nixon and Reagan and Bush and Trump who were all horrible in their own unique ways.    If DeSantis wins we will survive him too, although the damage will be immense as it always is with every GOP administration.

    In fact, arguably, the damage done by Reagan and Bush was greater than the damage done by Trump.  Trump damaged democratic norms which is enormously problematic.  B he didn’t leave much impact on actual institutions like say the EPA or DOD.  Reagan and Bush damaged the actual country.

  225. 225.

    NorthLeft

    Like most of the population of Earth, I had never heard of this Tate fellow.

    I hope he has learned that he is not in the same weight class to mess with Greta T. on Twitter.

  226. 226.

    trollhattan

    @Another Scott: The only surprising thing about Trump is when he accidentally says something true, such as Jeb!’s brother did NOT keep us safe on 9/11 (the very same day Trump Tower became New York’s tallest building, from where one could see dancing Ay-rabs celebrating the day over in Jersey).

  228. 228.

    eclare

    @Brachiator:   When I worked in corporate state tax we were much more worried about a CA audit than we were about being under continual audit by the IRS.  NJ was ruthless, too, arguing against its own statutes.

  230. 230.

    eldorado

    @Matt McIrvin: ​

    if desantis is the nominee, trump is going to be on the ballot 3rd party. getting revenge on his former ‘friends’ is trump’s total reason for being

  231. 231.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kent: I’d heard that some parts of the government like the State Department were absolutely hollowed out, by positions never being filled and by frustrated people jumping ship. And a bunch of positions were converted to political ones so Trump could fire people. But by and large the civil service survived, which is what right-wingers talk about when they complain about the Deep State.

    There’s a project on the Right that’s been going on for a long time to deprecate and eventually remove civil service protections completely, so that the entire executive branch becomes nothing but political appointees. The old spoils system returned. It’d basically be a bust-out of the government. Newt Gingrich is big on it, and people like Giuliani, and so was Trump. I expect them to make a serious go at it the next time they have enough of the government–from their perspective it’s rooting dangerous leftists out that have burrowed into the Deep State.

  233. 233.

    trnc

    @OzarkHillbilly: Before this morning I had never heard of Andrew Tate. If only I could turn the clock back to my blissful state of ignorance.

    I hadn’t heard of him either, but I take the opposite view. Outside of obituaries, learning about assholes because they’ve been arrested is the best way to learn about assholes, so I’m happy to be introduced to others in this way.

  235. 235.

    Geminid

    @topclimber: I would not know. That’s an interesting question though.

    There were Whig remnants and Democrats in Lincoln’s coalition too.

    Lincoln got around 42% (I think) of the vote in 1860. The rest of the vote was divided between two different Democrats- Douglas and Breckinridge- and a “can’t we all just get along” candidate, John Bell.

    I always thought “John Bell” would be a good name to give when ordering takeout if one had an an unusual name that must be spelled out. I use a variation of it when I order. I believe that has already saved me over 2 hours total just ordering pizza!

  236. 236.

    Another Scott

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Schedule F is still out there, lurking…:

    As lawmakers flew home for the Christmas break last week, following weeks of intense negotiations over a pair of must-pass bills, one issue left unresolved was an effort to block the revival of a dead initiative that aimed to strip tens of thousands of federal employees of their civil service protections.

    Although never implemented, Schedule F is considered by many federal employee groups, good government nonprofits and policy experts to be an ongoing existential threat to the nonpartisan administration of government services that has been in place since the passage of the Pendleton Act of 1883.

    [ image ]

    In October 2020, then-President Trump signed an executive order establishing a new Schedule F within the federal government’s excepted service for federal workers in policy-related jobs and exempting their positions from most civil service rules. The edict ordered agencies to identify positions that would qualify for the new job classification and convert employees in those jobs to Schedule F, effectively making them at-will employees.

    Although some agencies had begun work on the process of finding and requesting permission to proceed from the Office of Personnel Management—and the Office of Management and Budget received the go ahead to convert 68% of its workforce to the new job classification—ultimately there wasn’t enough time to implement the order before President Biden was inaugurated. Biden then quickly rescinded Trump’s executive order.

    Fast forward to earlier this year. After around 18 months of quiet, reports revealed that former Trump administration and conservative think tank staffers had continued working on Schedule F all along, with plans to reimplement the initiative immediately upon the election of the next Republican president. The activists had gone so far as to identify 50,000 federal workers who could be immediately moved to Schedule F and then threatened with removal.

    […]

    More at the link.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  237. 237.

    different-church-lady

    @Baud: It’s looking like Trump rejecting Twitter reinstatement might be one of the few smart things he’s ever done.

  238. 238.

    Kent

    @Matt McIrvin:

    @Kent: I’d heard that some parts of the government like the State Department were absolutely hollowed out, by positions never being filled and by frustrated people jumping ship. And a bunch of positions were converted to political ones so Trump could fire people. But by and large the civil service survived, which is what right-wingers talk about when they complain about the Deep State.

    There’s a project on the Right that’s been going on for a long time to deprecate and eventually remove civil service protections completely, so that the entire executive branch becomes nothing but political appointees. The old spoils system returned. It’d basically be a bust-out of the government. Newt Gingrich is big on it, and people like Giuliani, and so was Trump. I expect them to make a serious go at it the next time they have enough of the government–from their perspective it’s rooting dangerous leftists out that have burrowed into the Deep State.

    Yes but none of that is really permanent.  You can always rehire new people.  Permanent damage is changing laws and regulations to permanently undo the efforts of your predecessors.  Trump and his lackeys were frankly too stupid and lazy to do that for the most part.  And when they tried to do it like relaxing mining laws they did it so incompetently and bypassed so much required process that their actions were easily overturned by the courts or unwound by the Biden Administration.

    The Bush and Reagan people were far more competent in their unwinding of the regulatory state.   And things like the privatization of the military and other government agencies

    As a former Federal employee I would argue that the Reagan and Bush left a much more lasting destructive legacy on Federal institutions than Trump did.  Trump’s legacy is more in the area of breaking democratic norms and normalizing corruption.  Which is, of course, bad too. But in a different way.     It is like comparing apples and oranges.  Different types of bad.

  239. 239.

    kalakal

    @Tony G: It’s quite likely they’re rented for photoshoots etc and he doesn’t own them. ‘Influencers’ often depend on putting out a rich, successful image to attract the rubes. Rent the multimillion mansion, cars etc for a week, shoot the videos and let the suckers think that’s your normal lifestyle. Trump’s been a clown living on credit for decades but he did at least start with money

  241. 241.

    brendancalling

    When I first saw this story, it was about Tater’s response to that sick burn. My immediate response was “who’s this, what’s with the robe, is he in wizard school?”
    I’m sure the hardened criminals in Romania’s jails and prisons will be duly awed by Tater’s kickboxing skills, and won’t gang up on him regularly to beat the crap out of him. I’ll bet the food is great and the conditions are more than humane. And, if all else fails maybe he can use some of the spells he’s learned in wizard school.

  242. 242.

    kalakal

    @Matt McIrvin: I seem to recall reading that they do recycle them in parts of Germany, maybe they do in Sweden too.

    You’re restraint was right, too good a joke to be troubled with facts

  243. 243.

    Brachiator

    @eclare:

    When I worked in corporate state tax we were much more worried about a CA audit than we were about being under continual audit by the IRS.

    Yep. I work in California and agree that the Franchise Tax Board does not fool around.  They would sometimes invite the media to watch as they padlocked a delinquent business. And they often publicly identify tax cheats.

  245. 245.

    Bill Arnold

    @lige:

    The sci-fi story I think you are remembering is Rumfuddle by Jack Vance

    Thanks! Ken intrigued me too on that one; usually good with SF story ids. Seemed Jack Vance-ish, but had not read it.

  250. 250.

    Ruckus

    @sab:

    Greta also seems to be quite smart, well spoken and has quite a lot of experience in the public spotlight. Her views also give her a fair amount of pushback from some corners of world so I also imagine that she has grown a rather thick skin these days.

  251. 251.

    Barbara

    @Matt McIrvin: My county recycles pizza boxes with composted yard waste. Also, chicken bones and meat scraps. It seems strange, but I think it’s possible because commercial composting takes place at a higher temperature and includes a lot of grinding.​

  253. 253.

    trollhattan

    @Barbara: ​CA made separate handling of food waste mandatory this year. Am still working on accommodating it, which largely means food waste going into the yard waste bin, but not entirely.

    Too many containers!

  254. 254.

    Qrop Non Sequitur

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: there’s a Sorkin-esque fantasy among never-trumpers and Grand High Broderists that Liz Cheney will lead an exodus of principled Republicans to a new party, under the benign guidance of Elder Willard, with the support of Manchin and Sinema. I think at least those last two would be all over it.

    So I shouldn’t expect especially good principles?

  257. 257.

    karen marie

    @JMG: Also, too, it’s not 88k new employees. It’s not even 87k new employees.

    Back to the 87,000 new agents: That number comes from a May 2021 report from the Treasury Department assessing how the IRS could use an $80 billion appropriation. The report says the IRS could add nearly 87,000 new staff — not all of them enforcement agents — in order to “rebuild” and “revitalize” the agency.

    In other words, that figure is not from the IRS or from the official law (how exactly the agency will spend the money remains to be seen). It’s an estimate that accounts for a huge amount of attrition at the agency.

  258. 258.

    Ruckus

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    It’s like they don’t even recognize there’s such a concept as “competency”.

    A great percentage of current day republican politicians has nothing to do with competency at anything other than raw power to institute their twisted concepts of power and control over anyone other than themselves. That is the only thing they seem to give any concept/requirement of competency. SFB was just one of the worst examples of that concept. But at least he’s too stupid not to be extremely visible at it.

  259. 259.

    karen marie

    @tobie: Rettig should be investigated.

     

    President Trump’s hand-picked IRS Commissioner, Charles Rettig, earns as much as $1 million in rental income from the Trump-branded properties he co-owns while facing demands from Congress to release Trump’s tax returns.

  262. 262.

    Ken

    @karen marie: [Santos] got a job as a “VP” at LinkBridge Investors (which, despite its name, is not a financial investment company – it hosts parties).

    Though I’m sure LinkBridge is a completely legitimate service, firms in that general line are sometimes cover for prostitution or — since we’ve been discussing Tate — human trafficking.

  263. 263.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @karen marie: Her father was a successful éminence grise, her mother a B-list functionary and pundit. She herself face-planted as a Senate candidate in a state with half a million people in it, before she betrayed the Golden Turd. I won’t underestimate her ability to hate, and I appreciate what she’s done, but the idea that she’s some kind of dark political sorceress pulling the wool over our eyes strikes me as absurd. YMMV.

  265. 265.

    Ken

    @Matt McIrvin: Finally, we’ll undo the reckless and newfangled leftist innovations of the Chester Alan Arthur administration.

    And, I’m sure, almost immediately be reminded why the anti-patronage laws were made in the first place. Next up: repealing the time-wasting laws requiring school buses to stop at railroad crossings.

    (Which I pick not just because of the horrific incidents that led to such laws, but because it’s the one they used in the Schoolhouse Rock video. So absolutely no excuse for not having heard of it.)

  266. 266.

    Ken

    @trollhattan: Have you considered a worm farm?  Turn food waste into rich soil!  (Though it still involves extra conainers, and you’ll have to figure out what to do with the soil.)

  268. 268.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Ken: only plant based foods, though, right? You can’t dump chicken bones or cheese rinds in the wormerator?

  269. 269.

    Geminid

    @karen marie: Liz Cheney will stay in public life. But I don’t think she will hold public office again.

    Adam Kinzinger on the other hand could make a comeback later this decade. He’s younger, an Air Force veteran, and a man.

  271. 271.

    Ken

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Sadly, yes, worms are vegetarians.  Perhaps someday science will produce a carnivorous worm, hopefully not resulting in the few human survivors living a precarious existence and never setting foot to soil.

  272. 272.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @karen marie: I have no doubt she’s not going away. She’ll be a generic if anti-trump pundit on ABC or NBC is my guess (anti-trumpist, like anti-De Santis would be a bonus). I wouldn’t put it past her to stage a kamakaze run in the ’24 primary, especially if trump awakens from his current torpor. But, as I said, she’s finished electorally. She’s tainted in blood-red, trumpist Wyoming, and (though I’ll defer to locals) too rightwing for any of the leafy districts of VA or MD where she has, I suspect, drawn most of her adult breaths.

  273. 273.

    Geminid

    @Ken: I’m not sad about that. Carniverous worms might make gardening problematic.

    But now I see you’ve anticipated that problem.

  274. 274.

    Ruckus

    @Leto:

    They have also led to questions from lawmakers and others about whether Trump claimed deductions on items that may not warrant it to avoid paying taxes.

    There is any discussion whatsoever?

  275. 275.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Ken:

    Perhaps someday science will produce a carnivorous worm, hopefully not resulting in the few human survivors living a precarious existence and never setting foot to soil.

    I’ve seen those movies! I think you can ride them into battle against your enemies

  276. 276.

    Qrop Non Sequitur

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Perhaps someday science will produce a carnivorous worm, hopefully not resulting in the few human survivors living a precarious existence and never setting foot to soil.

    I’ve seen those movies! I think you can ride them into battle against your enemies

    Or ghosts who have exploited your request for help to coerce marriage with a teenager.

  277. 277.

    laura

    @Soprano2: i got errrrbody that lip mask for Christmas. Spouse calls it cookie lip. The entire skin care line is excellent- spendy, but efficacious.

  279. 279.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Daniel Goldman @danielsgoldman 2h

    Trump had bank accounts in China while he was in office until 2018.

    Generally, you only have bank accounts in a foreign country if you are doing transactions in that country’s currency.

    What business was Trump doing in China while he was President?

  280. 280.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Ken:

    I take it we’re specifically talking earthworms here?  They’re detritivores.  Once it rots, they don’t care what it started out as.  Plants process into edible filth much faster and with less smell and bones problems, though, so for earthworm bag purposes I guess they might as well be herbivores.

  281. 281.

    Ruckus

    @Leto:

    Was it GWB who drastically cut back the number of IRS agents so that the returns of those that create thick returns if for no other reason than to make them much more complex and time consuming to audit and therefore could send in returns like SFB’s, with a shockingly low amount owed? If those that should pay far more aren’t having to pay much at all, doesn’t that put an undue burden on everyone else, who turn in 2 or 3 page returns after actually working for the prior year for relatively crap wages

    And doesn’t it mean that the majority of tax payers might be paying a higher percentage of their WAGES in tax, than those like SFB who cheat on theirs?

  283. 283.

    Rebel’s Dad

    @sab: If we’d been that diligent when Andrew Sullivan decided to gift us with his presence in America, think of all the shitty takes we could’ve been spared.

  284. 284.

    J R in WV

    @p.a.: ​
     

    @NotMax:

    Is mixing up a martini at 4 in the morning gauche?

    Not if you use gin.

    If you don’t use gin, it isn’t a martini~!~ And 4 am is late at night, not early in the morning. So… go for it!

    I’m more a Gin and Tonic guy, but still.

  286. 286.

    Ruckus

    @WaterGirl:

    At my apt complex we have dumpsters for trash and large covered green plastic trash cans for garbage from eatables. Everyone does this, homes, businesses, apartments. IOW it’s not just one big dumpster for everything thrown away. In my town there is a third trash can for homes so there are green, gray and black wheeled trash containers to put out in the street for pickup. At the apt complex we have dumpsters and green containers.

  287. 287.

    WaterGirl

    @Ruckus: So do you guys not have “recycling”?

    Here you have your garbage can and you have your recycling bin for plastic, paper, etc.  You don’t have to do the recycling part, but the hauling companies are required to offer recycling pickup as part of their garbage service, at no extra charge

    And it certainly doesn’t separate food waste from the paper and the other stuff that can be recycled.

  288. 288.

    SteverinoCT

    @J R in WV: And 4 am is late at night, not early in the morning.

    ”To be up after midnight is to be up betimes [early].” — Twelfth Night, Shakespeare

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