Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

You cannot shame the shameless.

This fight is for everything.

I was promised a recession.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

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

Nothing worth doing is easy.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

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

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

Bark louder, little dog.

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

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

People are complicated. Love is not.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

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Saturday Morning Open Thread: Foreign Affairs, Foreign Concepts

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Worth the three minutes to watch, IMO:

Two more years of bad punditry, because something has to fill those column inches, {sigh}…

Reader Interactions

108Comments

  2. 2.

    Baud

    I’m not giving Perry Bacon, Jr. a click, even though I’m curious what a clear way to choose an alternate would look like.  I guess it’s easier to replace a leader in a parliamentary system, but people don’t vote directly for the leader in those systems.

  6. 6.

    eclare

    I am so glad it looks like Biden will cruise to renomination.  A contested primary would be disastrous.  Hopefully we can watch TFG and Rhonda Sandtits destroy each other.

  8. 8.

    Another Scott

    OT – Thanks AL for all that you, and the rest of the front pagers, do for us here on B-J. I’m too often a cynical critic of things in the news and know that that comes off as criticizing the work of bringing it to us for discussion. That’s not my intention, but I know that it can be annoying and aggravating all the same. Sorry when that happens!

    Have a good weekend!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  9. 9.

    p.a.

    I do occasionally consider re-upping to twitter for the chance to call the Chaits of the world fuckwads.

    Do miss Charles (LGF) Johnson’s comments.  Don’t see him linked here much; has he bailed from twitter?

  14. 14.

    H.E.Wolf

    Misogyny is so much a part of the world’s cultures that we don’t always notice it. Take nicknames, for instance.

    Ron DeSantis is a horrible person. I get twitchy when we indicate “horrible” by making it female.

  16. 16.

    Princess

    Everyone has forgotten that the GOP basically cancelled all their primaries in 2020 because they were so scared someone would run against Trump. The Dems are holding primaries, only no one credible will run because we like Joe and he’s doing a bad job. But we’re not keeping the media entertained enough with Dems in disarray stories.

  20. 20.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: One of my old caving buddies (rip Walter) regularly rode a bike for years. He had an ass that could crack walnuts.

  23. 23.

    Gvg

    The media must be being paid to write this nonsense about a chance Biden will not be the nominee. A contested primary for an incumbent President just does not happen very often and when it does, it ends badly for the challenger. I mean yes it does weaken the incumbent but it does not result in a different nominee. If Biden’s health gets bad, he will step aside, and Harris will run. That has been the obvious truth since he picked her her for VP. Too obvious, the writers would not get paid much if they reported it then moved on to….working to informing us about something we don’t know but might want or need to know.

    Nobody good is going to run against Biden because they care about their career and don’t want to throw it away. Also they don’t want to be hated by the majority of potential loyal democratic voters who know we need to stick together right now more than most times in history. Not only is the democratic government elected caucus very United right now compared to history, they reflect their voters to a large degree who are also unusually aware that this is no time for purity politics and internal fights. Remember how careful most of the candidates were in the last primaries to not attack each other in ways that could be used against the party in the general? The serious candidates were careful. The freaks got 1 to 3 % of the votes partly because they were clueless on the rules. This is not some decades in the past, it is now and we know where we are. So Biden is going to run and we are going to support him and these news articles are written by stupid people.

  24. 24.

    WV Blondie

    I think WaPo got so beaten up about their RW hacks (Thiessen, Olson, a couple others that I assiduously avoid), they decided they needed a LW hack to help counterbalance. I read that column by Perry Bacon Jr. and remembered again why I never bother.

  25. 25.

    Jeffro

    We should probably remember that this is the same snooze media that at various times has tried to tell us all sorts of nonsense in the hopes of generating clicks or whatever.

    Think “Bloomberg 2020”.

  28. 28.

    Jeffro

    Henry Olsen alllllllmost gets it: Republicans Must Stop Biden From Stealing Their Populist Thunder

    (I don’t know that they have “thunder”, Henry…more like a thin veneer of populism over their usual plutocrat bullshit

    “…the Heritage Foundation’s latest proposed budget argues for spending cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, as did the Republican Study Committee’s most recent alternative budget. Both conservative budgets also include changes to Social Security that would cut spending over time.

    Biden played these proposals like a drum. By goading Republicans into denouncing them, he forced them to take any entitlement cuts off the table. This strategic retreat shows that even Old Guard bigwigs know that popular sentiment favors some form of economic populism.

    The GOP’s challenge now is to marry those sentiments with its traditional support for markets, which requires doing something that few Republicans aside from Ronald Reagan have ever tried: making an affirmative case for government intervention.

    Such an approach would emphasize two points: national security and the need to live a dignified life in modern America. These would form the basis for policy proposals that offer Americans a distinct vision from what Biden and the Democrats offer.

    Um what?  That’s exactly what President Biden and the Democrats are offering, thanks!  >(
    Olsen’s just mad that by doing this, the Rs are going to be left with nary a fig leaf to be found and revealed for the bottomless haters that they are.

  29. 29.

    Jeffro

    @Baud: truth

    (even though they’re the exact same age!)

    I wonder if Fox hosts are hyping The Return of Hillary yet (as part of their endless ‘Joe’s too old/who will replace him?’).  It feels like they are overdue.

    ETA: my bad, it’s The Hill that is already throwing it out there for ’24.  I wonder if they understand how name recognition works in politics?

  30. 30.

    Ken

    @Gvg: The media must be being paid to write this nonsense about a chance Biden will not be the nominee.

    Indirectly, at least, since they make a lot more in advertising revenue from a multi-candidate primary season.

    Mind you, I’m not ruling out direct payments…

  33. 33.

    eclare

    @Jeffro:   Ronald “I’m from the government and I’m here to help are the scariest words” Reagan made a case for affirmative government intervention?

    I want whatever he’s smoking.

  34. 34.

    Kay

    “Typical DEI training includes unscientific claims.”
    “The growth of DEI bureaucracies has fueled bureaucratic bloat.”
    “DEI offices… are in fact a threat to academic freedom.”
    We agree with these three claims. They come from a recent Manhattan Institute Issue Brief about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in public universities. The lead author, Christopher Rufo, is a pivotal figure in the nation-wide anti-Critical Race Theory movement and the brains behind Ron DeSantis’s wholesale efforts to remake Florida’s system of public higher education.
    As professors, we have long been skeptical of conventional DEI initiatives. We’ve argued that diversity training is ineffective, often counterproductive; that the push for more DEI administrators has swelled the ranks of unnecessary middle management; and that DEI offices have a pernicious predilection to undermine academic freedom.
    So we must be on board, then, with DeSantis’s new initiative to prohibit Florida colleges and universities from using any funding to support DEI initiatives? To the contrary. This measure, in our view, is inseparable from a broader assault on academic freedom in Florida. From the “Stop WOKE Act” to the installation of six new conservative trustees at New College (including Rufo himself), DeSantis and his allies are waging an aggressive, highly orchestrated campaign against faculty expertise, faculty autonomy and faculty governance.
    DeSantis and Rufo have framed this campaign as a form of heroic resistance to so-called “woke indoctrination” and the “illiberal takeover” of higher education by DEI offices and left-wing ideology. But make no mistake: whatever you think of their diagnosis of higher education’s problems, the solutions they are advancing are profoundly illiberal in their own right and should be roundly rejected by everyone who believes in the powers of persuasion and the virtues of academic freedom.”We started a dumb panic over DEI and CRT and everything else we coud throw into the “woke” basket and now state actors are using our panic slightly differently than how we demanded they use it!”

    That’s the trajectory of every single panic, ever. It was always going to end up here. Oh, well, Maybe they can write another stupid, self-aggrandizing pompous “letter” to address the speech supression they created. That’s about all they’re good for – they’ll be no help at all in actually stopping DeSantis.

  36. 36.

    Kay

    The lead author, Christopher Rufo, is a pivotal figure in the nation-wide anti-Critical Race Theory movement

    Nice leader the antiwokesters got there. Tell me again how these people are “liberals”. We should definitetly take their advice on electioneering and cower before the mighty Ron DeSantis.

  37. 37.

    Jeffro

    @Kay: Gov Youngkin and his allies in the VA House are going this route, as well, demanding to know just how much money state universities are spending on DEI.

    If I had my way, the universities would respond with, “All of it.  Every penny of our budget, when you think about it, goes to DEI.  Right?  Your move, Gov!”

    (I say this with the luxury – for now and knock on wood – of having a Democratic majority in the State Senate, which is keeping all. kinds. of. nonsense. from passing)

  38. 38.

    gene108

    @Jeffro:

    Olsen doesn’t get what would make Republican rule permanent. A socially conservative candidate, who supports strong social safety net programs.

    In 2016, Trump showed Republican voters don’t really care about traditional Republican economic policies. Trump talked about cheap affordable healthcare, taxing Wall Street, and strengthening Social Security and Medicare and Republican voters happily embraced it.

  41. 41.

    OzarkHillbilly

    The discovery of stone tools dating back nearly 3m years has raised questions about which hominin species was behind the ancient technology.

    The artifacts, found at a site in Kenya, are thought to be the oldest known example of a specific set of stone tools used for butchery and pounding plant material. The emergence of the so-called Oldowan toolkit is viewed as a milestone in human evolution and was assumed to be an innovation of our ancestors.

    However, the latest excavation revealed a pair of massive molars belonging to Paranthropus, a muscular-jawed hominin on a side branch of our evolutionary tree, alongside the tools.

    “The assumption among researchers has long been that only the genus Homo, to which humans belong, was capable of making stone tools,” said Prof Rick Potts, of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, a senior author of the study. “But finding Paranthropus alongside these stone tools opens up a fascinating whodunnit.”

    The site in western Kenya, Nyayanga, also yielded the oldest evidence of hominins consuming very large animals, with at least three individual hippos unearthed. Two of the incomplete skeletons included bones that showed signs of butchery. There were also antelope bones that showed evidence of flesh being sliced away or being crushed to extract bone marrow. The animals may have been scavenged rather than hunted.

    It was not until the last paragraph that somebody mentions the first thing I thought of:

    However, Spoor added that it was not possible to discount the alternative explanation that the teeth belonged to a victim rather than the hunter. “We eat pork cheeks and those Paranthropus creatures had very big chewing muscles,” he said. “I’m sure they were very tasty.”

    Yeah.

  42. 42.

    eclare

    @Kay:   When I went to get one of my covid shots at Walgreens, all the pharmacy people were wearing “Walgreens supports DEI” t-shirts.  Walgreens.  Big Corp.  Big pharma.  People can shout all they want, that train has left the station.

  44. 44.

    Kay

    @Jeffro:

    That’s okay. Someone else wil clean up the mess these frightened ninnies made with their dumb “woke” panic- they should go look for another imaginary existential threat to start a panic over.

    They’ll have no part or role in the resistance to the state actor speech supression they actively promoted and cheered on – useless. Ordinary people will clean it up, as usual.

  45. 45.

    Jeffro

    @gene108: yeah I don’t know about ‘socially conservative’ or not…the majority of Americans are fairly socially liberal.

    But you’re right about supporting a strong social safety net: that is something that BIG majorities of Americans (even majorities of Rs) want.  It’s just that the Rs don’t want it for those people, and the crazy-ass R leadership & donors don’t want it for anyone.

  46. 46.

    Kay

    @eclare:

    Boy, DO NOT make fancy people sit thru a corporate training session! They DO NOT like that!

    It’s like we herded these big fucking coddled babies into work camps. They’ve been punishing us for 4 years because they were forced to undergo 4 hours of diversity awareness training.

    The “forced” is my favorite part of the whne. In their world apparently no one “forces” them to do anything at work. “Forced training” – my God! That’s…inhumane. You mean they make you TRAIN at work?

  47. 47.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Dark Brandon strikes again:

    More than 200 prisoners jailed by Nicaragua’s authoritarian regime during a ferocious two-year political crackdown have been freed and flown to the United States.

    “This is huge,” Georgiana Aguirre-Sacasa, the daughter of one of the prisoners – the elderly former foreign minister Francisco Aguirre-Sacasa – said on Thursday morning as she digested the news of her father’s release.

    “This has been a very long slog for us and I just can’t believe it,” she said, her voice breaking with emotion as she spoke.

    “I woke up at 5am to all of this. I cannot believe that he is on a flight to Dulles [airport in Washington DC] right now. I cannot believe it … It has been 19 months,” she said of her father who was arrested and jailed in July 2021.
    …………………………
    The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, called the release “a constructive step towards addressing human rights abuses” in Nicaragua and “the product of concerted American diplomacy”. The move “opens the door to further dialogue between the United States and Nicaragua”, added Blinken, who said the US was providing medical and legal support to the former prisoners “to ease their arrival”.

    I await Republican cries of Biden’s smuggling illegal immigrants into the US.

  48. 48.

    gene108

    @Kay:

    I wonder what’s going to happen to precious white conservative children, when they enter an ever more diverse workforce and, since they never had any DEI or SEL training, say something racist or sexist that gets them fired?

    Or is the current conservative plan to make sure only the children of rich and powerful conservatives get good K-12 and college educations?

    They really want to take us back to a 19th century stratified society, and basically do away with the social and economic gains of the 20th century.

  49. 49.

    Ken

    @OzarkHillbilly: It was not until the last paragraph that somebody mentions the first thing I thought of

    Well, you’d been primed by reading “The Yarn of the Nancy Bell”.

    Or had read of the earlier archaeological discoveries of human bones with butcher marks, suggesting that our ancestors were not ones to let protein go to waste.

  50. 50.

    eclare

    @Kay:   I have taken numerous sexual harassment/diversity and insider trading/collusion classes at work.  Yes some examples of what not to do seem ridiculous, but I guess someone has done them or legal would not have included them.

    You just click through the screens to get credit recorded somewhere.  No biggie to me, but I’m a peon.

  51. 51.

    Cameron

    @gene108: I think that’s the plan in Florida. First turn New College into Christian Nationalist School of Chiropractic, then repeat with all the other state schools. The governor himself,of course,went to Harvard and Yale.

  53. 53.

    cmorenc

    [says pundit Jonathan Chait]\:]

    “The main reason Biden is almost certain to be the Democrats’ 2024 nominee is that the party doesn’t have a clear way to choose a strong alternative candidate.

    Um, this is pundit-speak for “Biden is too popular within the party to tempt any potential primary challengers ).

  56. 56.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @gene108: Their goal is probably to try to end employers’ ability to reprimand or fire anyone for racism, misogyny etc.  They are deeply resentful of the fact that anyone, anywhere should ever suffer consequences for bigoted behavior.  These are the same people who will literally equate “I can’t even say (epithet/slur) anymore” with Slavery.

  58. 58.

    Geminid

    @Jeffro: Governor Youngkin seems to base his political program on a calculation of what will win Republican Presidential primaries, not what will win General Assembly races this fall.

    I hope he does. This year the House of Delegates map will be fairly neutral, after the six elections since 2011 held on a Republican drawn map. I think Democrats will have a lot of opportunities there.

    The Senate map is very different from the last one, and Democrats will need to work especially hard in the purple districts. I think the battlegrounds will be in suburbs and exurbs. When the fight is over, hopefully Senator Lucas will be able to add another course to her Brick Wall.

  59. 59.

    Jeffro

    @Kay:

    Boy, DO NOT make fancy people sit thru a corporate training session! They DO NOT like that!

    It’s like we herded these big fucking coddled babies into work camps. They’ve been punishing us for 4 years because they were forced to undergo 4 hours of diversity awareness training.

    this is exactly what set off Christopher Rufo – one not-great diversity training and we’re off to the races, all across the country, with no end in sight

    I wonder if anyone in the media ever interviewed other folks who attended that same training?

    “Well, it was a little boring and the facilitator was a little wound up at times, but it’s nothing we didn’t already know.  Now Chris…he kept having to excuse himself for some reason or another…”

  60. 60.

    Matt McIrvin

    It’s nuanced, right? If you ask them, most Democrats like Biden, think he’s doing a good job, think he’s too old and don’t want him to run again.

    But they won’t necessarily tell you who they want instead (I know some IRL who say Buttigieg; I know many others online who hate Buttigieg with a burning hate that I don’t get 100%; there’s a similar split going on with Kamala Harris, some Dems saying Biden should step aside for her, others saying she’s obviously not the one). And they’ll often dismiss questions of what the hell happens if it’s not Biden.

  62. 62.

    Baud

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    Their goal is probably to try to end employers’ ability to reprimand or fire anyone for racism, misogyny etc

     
    Finally, I can be honest about my feelings towards Jesus!

  63. 63.

    Tony Jay

    So I was lying in bed last night when my Lefty WhatsApp group started going bonkers with this shit taking place not far from me.

    In short, a Far-Right astroturf White Power group called Patriotic Alternative arranged an evening of protest and vilification outside a nearby hotel that is being used to house (as in, intern) asylum seekers. Revved up by the usual copy/paste stories of teenage white girls being accosted by dirty brown perverts (and the Police won’t do nothing in case they get called racist! Honest) and filthy darkies living in luxury while white veterans freeze on the streets, they got a mob going that turned into a minor riot and made the national news.

    I can’t even begin to describe how angry and disgusted this makes me, but I’m not even a little bit surprised. My home town of Liverpool is a proud but poor place, heavily Labour and Lefty after decades of being on the Tory shitlist and bombarded with hateful contempt by the wider national culture. When the Far Right turn up on our streets they get driven off  right fucking quick.

    However, that connection between that ‘Were Scouse, Not English’ mentality and Labour dominance is getting seriously tested by open corruption within the ‘ever so moderate’ Labour-run City Council and the national (New) Labour Party’s cynical campaign to oust any MP, Councillor or Member they deem ‘too Lefty’ (that’s a LARGE majority of the actual Party) by basically shitting all over the Party rule book and suspending anyone who complains.

    As always happens when the main institutional mouthpiece of ‘The Left’ stops even trying to lay the blame for poverty and inequality where it belongs, the Right doesn’t just let out a sigh of relief and move on. The Right funds groups like Patriotic Alternative to slither into the gaping vacuum they’ve left behind and lie their arses off about White Replacement Theory and how the depredations of the Tories are just part of the Woke Agenda that can only be resisted by firebombing powerless brown people.

    I guess spending nearly a decade shitting all over the ‘hole and change’ message that attracted millions of young people to Labour may turn out to have been a major strategic error on behalf of Nu-Lab and the ‘Liberal Media’. if only someone would have told them so at the time (snark).

    So now Liverpool will get shit on even more by the national Press, and in the end it will have to be the actual Left in the city that takes on and beats these racist goons, because there ain’t no one coming to save us but us.

    (Seething)

  65. 65.

    oldgold

    @Gvg:  “If Biden’s health gets bad, he will step aside, and Harris will run. That has been the obvious truth since he picked her her for VP. ”

    Do you think she runs virtually unopposed? If not, what are her chances of securing the nomination?  What are her chances in a Harris/Trump contest?

  66. 66.

    Geminid

    This week Vice President Harris will be flying to Europe also, to attend the annual Munich Security Conference from Friday the 17th to Sunday the 19th of February. She will give a speech to the Conference, and hold a number of bilateral discussions on the side.

    These are usually part photo-op, mostly substantive. Her bilateral meetings last year were very interesting, I thought

  67. 67.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Baud: Exception/carve-out, obviously, for saying anything bad about White People, Men, Christians etc. which will be a criminal offense in the Free Speech For All Act of 2024.

  68. 68.

    delphinium

    @eclare: Yeah, I have to take this training along with IT/Security and HIPAA violation avoidance yearly. Not a big deal-much better than all those ridiculous team building exercises and events that used to be pretty popular.

  69. 69.

    Kay

    @Jeffro:

    The centrists and liberals and Leftists who went along and promoted this panic are ninnies- they are bad at identifying real threats and should have no role at all in real-world political strategy or tactics.

    You watch- now that there is real state action threat to speech they’ll be fucking useless. Someone else will have to clean up after them. They’re all such snobs too. The real victims of the “woke” panic the ninnies started and promoted are not working in higher ed- the real victims are public school teachers. They’re the people taking the brunt of this, but the antiwoke warriors are too snobby and full of themselves to consider them part of “education”.

  70. 70.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @gene108:

    Trump talked about cheap affordable healthcare, taxing Wall Street, and strengthening Social Security and Medicare and Republican voters happily embraced it.

    Because it was all in the context that only white people would benefit.  He fed his followers hate, and everything else was a detail.

    @gene108:

    the current conservative plan

    is to make racist and sexist behavior not only permitted, but normal.  That’s the entire point of the anti-woke mob.

  71. 71.

    eclare

    @delphinium:   Those classes were much better and shorter than our annual picnics.

    I just sat and sweated through those since they were in June and featured softball and volleyball.  Literally nothing for a non-athletic person such as myself to do.  And yes, it was not specifically stated, but attendance was for all intents and purposes mandatory.

  72. 72.

    delphinium

    @Frankensteinbeck: ​
    This. They are invested in hate first and foremost.

    Because it was all in the context that only white people would benefit. He fed his followers hate, and everything else was a detail.

  73. 73.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    “is to make racist and sexist behavior not only permitted, but normal.  That’s the entire point of the anti-woke mob.”

    Bingo.  This is what they mean by “Great Again.”  Sure they want to ban abortion, strip voting rights etc., and do all those bigger, worse things, but honestly I think they would have been willing to trade most of those for simply being able to “say it” (and I think you know what I mean) again, without repercussions and social stigma.  Nothing Trump (or DeSantis) promotes get them as excited as restoring open bigotry to our cultural norms.

  78. 78.

    Gvg

    @Jeffro: yeah well, if corporations don’t fire bigots, a bunch of their customers will shop elsewhere and their profits will get hurt. Dummies.

    People don’t like you because you aren’t likable. Acting worse doesn’t fix the problem. You think we are being MADE to act mean to you. Actually we are being prevented from hauling off and beating you up because that would be descending to your level. Look in a mirror. You are wrong, that is why people are not being nice to you anymore.

  79. 79.

    lowtechcyclist

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    Their goal is probably to try to end employers’ ability to reprimand or fire anyone for racism, misogyny etc.  They are deeply resentful of the fact that anyone, anywhere should ever suffer consequences for bigoted behavior.  These are the same people who will literally equate “I can’t even say (epithet/slur) anymore” with Slavery.

    I believe it, but that’s gonna be a heavy lift.

    As is, employers can fire their workers for just about any reason, or no reason at all – except as discriminatory conduct on the basis of things like sex, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual oriention, etc.  But there’s only a handful of these categories.

    I could see them trying to strip the existing anti-discriminatory language out of the laws and make firing at-will across the board, but there really wouldn’t be a good way to make racist, misogynist, etc. into protected classes.

    They’d have to find a way to put those categories into the law in a way that’s legally enforceable.  And I’m thinking good luck with that – the answer to the question, “did you fire soandso for racist/sexist/etc/ remarks?” would be, “no, I fired him because he was an asshole. He was an asshole in those ways, but his assholism was hardly confined to them. So I got rid of him, because teams don’t work well together when there are assholes on them.”

  80. 80.

    Gvg

    @oldgold: it depends on the timing. If there is a primary, no, it will be a real one and again the serious contestants will be careful not to a attack in ways that give the GOP weapons in the general. She will have Biden’s support in ways that leave him able to support someone else if the voters pick someone else. It’s going to be Dems against the evil clowns.

    If he has to step down after winning again or during a term and she is the incumbent then I think the primary will be in name only, unless she is so damaged by something like Johnson was by Vietnam that she chooses not to run. Like I said…dems against the evil clowns.

  81. 81.

    gene108

    @Jeffro:

    I think people who identify as social conservatives are a broader group than just conservative evangelicals.

    I think people who are truly socially liberal is a small group.

    I think a lot of folks think it’s bad for police to murder unarmed people, but the protests should be peaceful, and police reforms shouldn’t interfere with keeping me safe.

    Most people are okay with things that don’t directly impact them, like gay marriage, but they aren’t so invested in preserving minority rights that they’d do anything if those rights disappeared.

    I think there’s a sweet spot where a politician could demand a reduction in university DEI administrators, while plowing the savings into campus improvements.

    At some level what I’m thinking is an updated version of the New Deal coalition that wedded some social conservatives and economic liberals together, with little active pursuit of civil rights issues.

  82. 82.

    Gvg

    @gene108: he didn’t do it though so you can’t say for sure that they really embraced that part over the racism which he did do and gained more loyal support over that. I always thought that was bull and I suspect many of his voters ignored it.

    He did not have establishment support at first because of things like that and couldn’t get much done luckily. He said a lot of things. What he did was racist hate.

  83. 83.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @oldgold: ​Do you think she runs virtually unopposed?

    Reasonably likely.

    If not, what are her chances of securing the nomination?

    Good.

    What are her chances in a Harris/Trump contest?

    Great.​

  84. 84.

    The Moar You Know

    I wonder what’s going to happen to precious white conservative children, when they enter an ever more diverse workforce and, since they never had any DEI or SEL training, say something racist or sexist that gets them fired?

    @gene108: I can tell you because this happened last year in my workplace; they fuck up, get ordered to take training, whine, threaten to sue, we drop the demand that they get trained and pray they quit.  Nobody wants to go through a lawsuit.  I myself have been through one.  Never again.

  85. 85.

    Citizen Alan

    @Jeffro: We would have had scandinavian style socialism for the past 50 years if only they could figurgrout how  legally limited to white people.

  88. 88.

    piratedan

    @p.a.: for the most part, yes, he’s moved the largest part of his presence over to The Derm…. (Mastodon) in addition to his own site.

  91. 91.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @eclare: ​
      A couple of years ago, my company did bowling as a team building happyfuntime. Bowling. The last time I had bowled was a fraternity pledge bowling thing* in January of 1986, and that was far more an exercise in public depravity than actual bowling.

    *On the day that we got our new pledges, we would pick them up from their dorm rooms, bring them to the fraternity house, and do the pledging ceremony. After that, we had a fancy lunch and everyone changed into “bowling clothes” and we piled onto a bus to go a bowling alley (a new one every year for some unknown reason). Then the drinking began… After we we were asked to leave the bowling alley, we would come back and dress up again for a nice dinner. After dinner, the sororities would visit each fraternity house, so everyone could see who joined what. Then more depravity (mostly in the form of singing and drinking, mostly). Then, at some point, it was Sunday morning and one’s head hurt.

  92. 92.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud:

    Truly is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

    Yeppers. Last time I checked, at least half of people identifying as Democrats considered themselves liberal.

  98. 98.

    matt

    I don’t really understand why people engage with Chait. He’s a shitbird who says stuff to help the Republicans. He should be kicked in the teeth.

  99. 99.

    Kay

    @gene108:

    I think there’s a sweet spot where a politician could demand a reduction in university DEI administrators, while plowing the savings into campus improvements.

    Just interesting to me what triggered this passionate interest in “bloat”. They’re all managers now? In addition to being (low quality) public intellectuals they also want to run the university budget? “Bloat” was fine until someone told them they had to sit thru a training where they were told they might have unconscious bias.
    How DARE you. They are IMMUNE from bias. No matter that we have reams of studies that show AA children are punished more harshly than white children for the same offenses in school, not put into gifted programs when they should be, and given less challenging work at school.
    No one has any bias, they’re all “colorblind”,but weirdly these unfair things that show bias keep happening.

  101. 101.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Cameron:

    The governor himself,of course,went to Harvard and Yale.

    Like how his entourage wanted to ban guns at his election party and blame someone else because guns everywhere is the ultimate in safety everywhere…except near me and my loved ones.

    https://wapo.st/3xdS1p1

    The guy is the hyp in hypocrite.

  102. 102.

    J R in WV

    @gene108: ​
     

    I think people who are truly socially liberal is a small group.

    I think you are wrong, and I’ll tell you why. Watching TV news the commercials today have families with two guys/women as parents of a loving group of kids. We see two guys, young and in love, kiss in ads.

    There is nothing as competitive as advertising. Nothing…

    If the ad people didn’t know those ads were going to sell their product, those ads would not be created and paid to be run on major networks. The culture war is over, we won. That simple.

    Things could change if the Christo-Fascists take over, of course. Not likely, those people are despicable, and obviously so.

  103. 103.

    Kay

    @gene108:

    They thought once they defeated the wokesters Chris Rufo would consult with these “liberals” and they would all discuss academic freedom and speech and come up with a code that is “color blind”

    What actually happened is Rufo said ” we’re in charge now” (real quote) and told them all to get fucked.

    Hopefully when they purge all the liberals from Florida public schools and universities the ninnies who jumped on the antiwoke bandwagon are the first to get canned. They deserve to have to live with the consequences of their stupid, ginned up panic.

  104. 104.

    mrmoshpotato

    He’s not facing a challenger because he’s very popular among the party and he’s had a productive first term. I know trying to explain this to pundits is like trying to explain Mozart to a penguin but most Democrats like Biden and think he’s doing a good job.

    A penguin would understand Mozart better!

  105. 105.

    H.E.Wolf

    @Steeplejack:”
    @H.E.Wolf:
    Darth Santis.
    ”

     I initially mis-read your comment as “Death Santis” and nodded sagely about your insightfulness… however, your actual comment is much better than my misreading!

  107. 107.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: On the internet  portion of Maher’s show last week Bari Weiss claimed that most of the liberals she knows are “identifying” as gay  now because among liberals it’s not “cool” to be straight. She provided no proof, and there was no pushback at all. That’s why it’s important to know what kind of bullshit they’re pushing. I’m sure it’s a lie, but lots of people will think it’s true! 🙄🙄🙄

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