Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

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

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

This fight is for everything.

I really should read my own blog.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

We will not go back.

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

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

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

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

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

“woke” is the new caravan.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Dear elected officials: Trump is temporary, dishonor is forever.

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Bark louder, little dog.

When we show up, we win.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Wednesday Morning Open Thread: President Joe, Vintage Connoisseur

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: President Joe, Vintage Connoisseur

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Reposting this clip, because last night’s post got pushed down so quickly. I remember the ‘bless oneself to ward off the devil’s work‘ as a standard of Irish-American sarcasm, and I’m happy to see President Joe revive it for a new generation!

Man knows how to work a crowd:

Not if Our Failed Media Villagers have anything to say about it:

Reader Interactions

167Comments

  2. 2.

    Baud

    Did Damon get a second op-ed, or is that the DeSantis one from before?

    If it’s the same, I missed the “cry wolf” part, so I’m glad you’re calling it out

    ETA: In fairness, there’s a lot of competition for the role of being the liberal that conservatives  (and the NYT, by extension) love, and Damon seems to be a real contender.

  3. 3.

    Ken

    the only evidence they have is Nixon, and Reagan, and Bush, and Bush, and Trump

    I’ll just assume the list is limited to presidents, for obvious reasons (and if they’re not obvious, see last night’s CPAC thread).

  4. 4.

    RedDirtGirl

    Are the Merrick Garland hearings going to be televised? And if so, will there be a thread?

  5. 5.

    Jeffro

    Those two tweets (ok post guy + newswords5) 110%, forever.

    Team Lib = Team We Warned You = Team We Told You So since 1968.

  6. 6.

    Frankensteinbeck

    I expect Biden’s popularity to skyrocket in 2024 as with the election going the media feels compelled to actually put his speeches on screen and the electorate goes “FUN UNCLE JOE IS BACK!”

  7. 7.

    Baud

    @Ken:

    You notice that all the examples of Dem hysteria are Republicans who lost.  Makes it easy to create an alternative history where those Republicans wouldn’t have been awful.

  9. 9.

    Jeffro

    Btw, MTG and Boebert and Gaetz made simply ASTOUNDING asses out of themselves yesterday, live on camera.

    If our snooze media ever gets bored with creating various “here’s how Biden can ditch Harris” scenarios and concern-troll bullshit from Linker, they’re always welcome to highlight how incredibly dumb these three GQP clowns are.  D-U-M dumb.

  10. 10.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Baud: He is a religious conservative and used to be a philosophy professor at Brigham Young University.  So a RWNJ with pretty words and academic training to dress up abominable opinions in intellectual jargon

    He is a never Trumper not a liberal.

  14. 14.

    catclub

    but the only evidence they have is Nixon, and Reagan, and Bush, and Bush, and Trump.

     

    Also Dick Cheney. Also the Texas GOP, also the Florida GOP, also the Mississippi GOP, etc etc

     

    I have serious doubts that there were any hysterical warnings from Democrats about Romney.

  16. 16.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    A little background on our “fellow liberal” Damon Linker, courtesy of DougJ on twitter. He’s a former editor of First Things, left the GOP over Iraq. He rather preciously describes himself as a “liberal, properly understood”, i.e. in the European sense, more akin to a center rightist in the US. And based on the podcast I heard him on a couple of weeks ago, a smug and condescending douchebag. He describes himself as a good friend (and I’ll add ideological ally) of Andrew Sullivan

  17. 17.

    Baud

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Ah, so it is the same guy.

    He rather preciously describes himself as a “liberal, properly understood”, i.e. in the European sense

    That’s like using metric but pretending you’re using Imperial. Very misleading.

  18. 18.

    Jackie

    Another win for Biden!
    “Eli Lilly will cap the out-of-pocket cost of its insulin at $35 a month, the drugmaker said Wednesday. The move, experts say, could prompt other insulin makers in the U.S. to follow suit.
    The change, which Eli Lilly said takes effect immediately, puts the drugmaker in line with a provision in the Inflation Reduction Act, which last month imposed a $35 monthly cap on the out-of-pocket cost of insulin for seniors enrolled in Medicare.”
    https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/eli-lilly-caps-cost-insulin-35-month-rcna72713

  20. 20.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Baud: ​
      Linker is from the Mark Lilla* school of Dems are too into identity politics and if only they would do (x)** they would get the white working class back.

    *Lilla was actually his mentor at NYU.
    **(x) to be defined as desired for the particular conversation.

  21. 21.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @catclub:

    I have serious doubts that there were any hysterical warnings from Democrats about Romney.

    there was the usual “most important elections of our lifetime” rhetoric in 2012. Was that hysterical? The danger of Romney was that he would have been like the worst aspects of Poppy Bush, an insincere MOTU who would have pandered to the far right to shore up his own political chances. He would have played the Severe Conservative. He wanted to double Gitmo because it sounded tuff. Leonard Leo would have had the same influence wrt to judges as he did with trump. Gutting the New Deal was probably the only thing Our Willard sincerely believed in. We’ve seen since 2016 that he doesn’t have the stuff to stand up to trump or trumpism. Didn’t he give a mealy-mouthed, “I’ll support the Republican nominee” reply a couple of weeks ago, by implication including the guy he voted twice to remove from office, and thus legally bar from future election?

  22. 22.

    glory b

    Biden has done this retail politics thing for a long time. He’s visited lots of places before becoming VP, and a whole lot after. He takes lots of pictures, nowadays, lots of selfies.

    I think almost every local Dem politician here in the Pittsburgh area has a picture with him. And they aren’t afraid to use them in ads. It’s a win/win for them.

    Fetterman ran away from him at first, claiming he couldn’t meet with him when he came for his infrastructure tour (saying he had business in Harrisburg). As it turns out, that was the famous day that one of Pittsburgh’s bridges collapsed, just hours before Biden was to make his speech.

    Fetterman was at home, not in Harrisburg, and (maybe reluctantly) appeared at the collapse site.

    Fast forward to the last days of the general, Fetterman enthusiastically campaigned with Biden and Harris. Biden seems to have that effect on people, he will wear you down into liking him.

  24. 24.

    The Moar You Know

    I have serious doubts that there were any hysterical warnings from Democrats about Romney.

    @catclub: There were, but frankly I’m one of those who didn’t feel it was unjustified.  Romney wanted to get the crazies out of the spotlight and present a leadership of quiet confidence while selling off all our national assets to hedge funds, and the populace into serfdom.

    Romney is a very dangerous man and the only saving grace he’s got is that he doesn’t want to look bad.

  25. 25.

    Jeffro

    OMG the Times is at it again today: My Liberal Campus Is Pushing Freethinkers To the Right.

    (no link necessary – we all could write this one in our sleep)

    Pitchbot, better make a second pot of coffee today, you’re gonna need it.

  26. 26.

    David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    MSNBC played an excerpt of John Roberts saying “controversial” issues like student debt relief should be left to congressional action, not presidential action.

    Yet when Congress did act and overwhelmingly passed the Voting Rights Act and campaign finance reform Roberts had no problem overturning them.

    Heads they win, tails we lose.

  27. 27.

    Marmot

    Hmph.

    Liberals have a long history of hyping fears of Republican presidential candidates, from Lyndon Johnson’s “daisy” ad (about Barry Goldwater and a potential threat of nuclear war) to sometimes hysterical warnings about various dire threats posed by John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012.

    We heard similarly terrible things about Donald Trump in 2016 — but this time they were true. As with the story of the boy who cried wolf, a real wolf had finally arrived.

    …

    Damon Linker, a former columnist at The Week, writes the newsletter “Eyes on the Right” and is a senior fellow in the Open Society Project at the Niskanen Center.

    Self-description on his substack:

    Eyes on the Right is a subscription newsletter devoted to thinking deeply about the most significant political development of our time: The rise (or resurrection) of the antiliberal right in the United States and around the world. I come to this issue from a unique background. After growing up a moderate liberal, I studied in graduate school with students of conservative political philosopher Leo Strauss and spent several years on the intellectual right early in the aughts, contributing to a range of center-right publications and editing First Things magazine. I also converted to Roman Catholicism in this period from the secular Judaism in which I was raised.

    Haha:

    I always read Damon Linker.
    —David Brooks

  28. 28.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @glory b: Biden seems to have that effect on people, he will wear you down into liking him.

    So true.  Look at the consensus of opinion here today as opposed to the three years ago.

  33. 33.

    cain

    @glory b: That timing – talking about infrastructure and having a bridge collapse just hours before – it’s like the universe decided to help underscore his talk.

  35. 35.

    delphinium

    @Jeffro: Yeah, these hearings aren’t going to be the big boost the GOP think they are. I am optimistic that these will backfire and regular people will tire of their flagrant stupidity and willful ignorance.

  37. 37.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @The Moar You Know:

    Romney is a very dangerous man and the only saving grace he’s got is that he doesn’t want to look bad.

    From the nation’s standpoint, his saving grace is that when you get a good look at him he’s totally unlikable to anyone who isn’t a privilege-overdosed rich asshole.  Admittedly that includes most of the national press, but I remember vividly how no amount of fluffing could save Romney from his own unlikability.  Even his base, desperate to pull the black president down, was going “Ugh, this guy?  I don’t know…”

  38. 38.

    Baud

    MSNBC played an excerpt of John Roberts saying “controversial” issues like student debt relief should be left to congressional action, not presidential action

    This should put the nail in the coffin about whether the courts would uphold the platinum coin.

  39. 39.

    Suzanne

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    He rather preciously describes himself as a “liberal, properly understood”, i.e. in the European sense, more akin to a center rightist in the US. 

    So this is a pretty common framing on the right. It’s part of the whole “WE’RE FREE SPEECH ABSOLUTISTS!” bullshit while they’re trying to ban drag and take books out of public libraries. It’s an attempt at Overton window-shifting.

  40. 40.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Jeffro: They’re publishing undergraduate essays now.

    By Adam S. Hoffman

    Mr. Hoffman is a senior at Princeton.

    In the not-so-distant past, the Typical College Republican idolized Ronald Reagan, fretted about the national debt and read Edmund Burke. Political sophistication, to that person, implied belief in the status quo.
    Speaking of Sullivan, getting a strong whiff of “I found solace reading Oakeshott in the Widener Library”

  41. 41.

    Jeffro

    @OzarkHillbilly: I’m kinda hoping some front-pager will post the clips!  But…

    • Gaetz was spouting off Chinese propaganda as gospel in a hearing, and got called out on it to his face
    • Boebert was on some stupid rant about the government requiring labels on food, and thought that was ‘disinformation’, as a Brazillian cow “processed” here in America could be labeled US grade-A.  Or something.  It was so dumb she just kind of trailed off.
    • MTG was on multiple rants, both in hearings and on Fox News.  I believe she actually said that RWNJs like herself deserved their own ‘safe space’ from us libs and she REALLY REALLY wants that national divorce thingy.

    Just a clown parade from start to finish!

  43. 43.

    Marmot

    There’s a name for this logical fallacy, but I can’t remember it.

    Liberals have a long history of hyping fears of Republican presidential candidates, from Lyndon Johnson’s “daisy” ad (about Barry Goldwater and a potential threat of nuclear war) to sometimes hysterical warnings about various dire threats posed by John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012.

    We heard similarly terrible things about Donald Trump in 2016 — but this time they were true. As with the story of the boy who cried wolf, a real wolf had finally arrived.

    Kicker is that this dude Linker warns against the fallacy of construction on our side — using an isolated case to describe a whole group. Yeah, like the leader of the Republican Party didn’t try to overturn the US government, while it’s freakin’ crickets from the rest or actual cheers.

  44. 44.

    Jeffro

    @mrmoshpotato: you and me both

    I’ll settle for a prominent Dem publishing, “When’s the last time we were wrong?  NEVER” in time for the 2024 election.

    *sadly, not quite true: I genuinely thought that Mueller was going to drop the hammer on traitor trump.  But other than that?

  45. 45.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    a “liberal, properly understood”, i.e. in the European sense, more akin to a center rightist in the US.

    But I have been told repeatedly that Democrats are center-right by European standards.

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Political sophistication, to that person, implied belief in the status quo.

    Because the status quo gave them what they wanted:  White people on top.

  47. 47.

    Jeffro

    @Baud: If a Dem Congress had proposed it, Roberts would be saying it should be left up to the Executive Branch (provided, of course, that a Republican was president)

    The key question is, are GOP goalposts electric powered, or do they run on diesel?  Nuclear powered?  They sure do run all day and night…

  49. 49.

    Marmot

    @Marmot: There’s a name for this logical fallacy, but I can’t remember it.

    OMG, I think it’s the No True Scotsman fallacy in conservative camo.

  51. 51.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Because the status quo gave them what they wanted:  White people on top.

    I’m guessing young Mr Hoffman has a well-worn copy of whichever book it was in which old man Buckley declared that a conservative is someone who will stand athwart the civil rights movement and cry halt!

    I think that’s the quote.

  52. 52.

    Searcher

    Isn’t the problem that in 2016, it wasn’t a boy that cried wolf, it was a girl, and fuck listening to a girl, what does she know about wolves anyway, it’s probably just a big squirrel?

  56. 56.

    Barbara

    @schrodingers_cat: That pretty much sums up my view entirely.  The disadvantages of being old are pretty obvious.  The advantages of being old such that you actually KNOW what to do based on EXPERIENCE and therefore need much less time, energy or advice to work out the right thing to do are frequently underrated by people who are still young enough not to understand that.  It’s clearly a trade off, not everyone ages well.  But still — the relentless push for new in the political spectrum increasingly looks like a curse to me.

  58. 58.

    Subsole

     

     

    @Suzanne: Also how the word Liberal has become an epithet on segments of the Left. Very popular rhetorical trick with some of the Podcast Proletariat.

    Though I am sure that is entirely coincidental.

  59. 59.

    Barbara

    @Marmot: I do think that people who try to extrapolate from historical events are often misguided, because most events are either one-offs or the result of large trends that rise and fall or taper off and cannot be assumed to repeat themselves in future generations.

    What shocks me the most, I guess, is that someone like Linker can advise people not to extrapolate from Trump to DeSantis without looking at what DeSantis is actually doing in the here and now that is in its own right anti-democratic, authoritarian, and deeply destructive and grotesquely unfair and just, you know, anti-libertarian to every kind of minority interest.

    In summary: We don’t need to hate Trump to hate DeSantis, thank you very much.

  61. 61.

    trnc

    My biggest problem with the Ingoglia bill is that it’s just so fucking lazy.

    Ingoglia said Democrats should be called upon to face their past.

    “Some people want to have ‘uncomfortable conversations’ about certain subjects,” he said. “Let’s have those conversations.”

    Yeah, democrats have never had a convo about the old dem party except every day when idiots make bad faith associations. What does Ingoglia have to say about the modern republican party springing up from the southern dems who switched parties? Nothing, because no one ever asks about that.

  62. 62.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Jeffro:

    Btw, MTG and Boebert and Gaetz made simply ASTOUNDING asses out of themselves yesterday

    A day ending in ‘y’ then.

    live on camera.

    OK, that helps.

  63. 63.

    oatler

    There’s St. Thomas Sowell, who conservatives will rave is the greatest economist in history who happens to be black.

  65. 65.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Searcher:

    Isn’t the problem that in 2016, it wasn’t a boy that cried wolf, it was a girl, and fuck listening to a girl, what does she know about wolves anyway, it’s probably just a big squirrel?

    You have a point.

  66. 66.

    Marmot

    @Barbara: Agree.

    Looking at this mofo Linker, I think he’s dodging shame about ever being a Republican.

    Kind of “Don’t say they’re fascist! They used to be very different — there was no indication they’d get so crazy.” But yeah, CPAC.

    (They’re fairly described as a fascist party now, but does it make good politics for mass consumption? No, it does not.)

  67. 67.

    jonas

    @catclub:I have serious doubts that there were any hysterical warnings from Democrats about Romney.

    That he was a typical country-club Republican plutocrat who would run the country solely to serve the interests of people like him and didn’t give a shit about anyone who doesn’t own a home in the Hamptons, yes. But that’s not hysteria. That’s just telling the truth about Republicans.

  69. 69.

    Kay

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    He rather preciously describes himself as a “liberal, properly understood”, i.e. in the European sense, more akin to a center rightist in the US.

    What all the critics have in common is they’re insufferable. Take themselves so, so seriously.

    “I’m a classical liberal. Now let me pen another boring treatise on wokeness”

  73. 73.

    Geminid

    I saw that Aaron Rouse, Virginia’s newest State Senator, tweeted out a picture of himself and Presdent Biden taken at the Virginia Beach event (@AaronRouseVaBch).

    Rouse is a big guy. At 6’4″, he was tall for an NFL safety.

  75. 75.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    It is always, always campaign finance that gets them.

    On this day in 1931, Al Capone was found guilty of tax evasion. The gangster who had reportedly boasted, “They can’t collect legal taxes from illegal money” was sentenced to 11 years in prison for failing to file tax returns.

  76. 76.

    trnc

    @Baud: I like it!

    Although it may be more accurate to say “Democrats have acknowledged their past. When will republicans acknowledge their present?”

  77. 77.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud:

    This should put the nail in the coffin about whether the courts would uphold the platinum coin.

    Do it anyway.  Taking it through the courts uses up some months, and if the Bogus Scotus kills it, then we’re no worse off than we were beforehand.

    Then you try the next thing, whether it’s the 14th amendment thing or something else. I think Krugman said there were four or five things like this, including platinum and the 14th, that could be tried.

    Delay the whole mess into 2024, an election year.  (If you haven’t noticed, at least in this century so far, the Rethugs haven’t threatened either a shutdown or a debt limit crisis in an election year.  There’s a reason for that.)

    Once it’s 2024, a lot more Rethugs in less-than-100%-sure seats are going to be getting a lot more weak in the knees about their support for destroying the economy to own the libs, and the debt limit will be raised without any significant concessions on the Dems’ part.

  82. 82.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Skyleigh Heinen
    @Sky_Lee_1
    – @RepSwalwell
    SLAMS @mattgaetz
    for bringing “somebody that he met at a gun club” to the first House Judiciary Committee hearing to lead the Pledge of Allegiance.

    Gaetz’s honored guest was charged with killing a family member in April 2019.

  83. 83.

    Baud

    @trnc: I’m worried about creating a schism with all the James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson supporters in the party.

  86. 86.

    trnc

    @Geminid: I think it’s better to fight the debt ceiling fight now, and resolve it by July 1.

    What did you have in mind? Don’t you consider LTC’s suggestion part of the fight? If the house repubs won’t vote for it, what is the executive branch able to do that won’t wind up in court?

  87. 87.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Geminid:

    I think it’s better to fight the debt ceiling fight now, and resolve it by July 1.

    If it can be resolved successfully by then, great.  But I don’t get what the issue is.

    July 1 is already a postponement by several months of the moment we have to default (originally back in January, IIRC), using accounting gimmicks and stuff.  There’s nothing magical about July 1.  Might as well continue to postpone it by other tricks, whether it’s the platinum coin, selling bonds with no maturity date, or whatever.

    Not sure what the basis is for saying the tricks we’re already using are A-OK, but the tricks we haven’t used yet are tricks and are therefore not OK

    ETA: The Rethugs want to have this battle in an odd-numbered year, relying on the short memories of the electorate to have it disappear from their minds and the media well before fall 2024.  Why fight this battle on their chosen ground?

  89. 89.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @lowtechcyclist: ​

    he’s way worse than I already thought he was

    I thought DeSantis was this cruel. He’s putting too much effort into finding new and uglier ways to be a mean fuck than if he didn’t enjoy it. It’s useful to have confirmation.

  90. 90.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Young Master Hoffman

    Nate @nateffo
    There’s no mention in the @nytopinion bio of the author that the author was involved with Campus Reform, a conservative group operated by the Leadership Institute, whose mission is to ‘increase the number and effectiveness of conservative activists’

    So I’m guessing we’re a few hours away from a Fox segment about this naive undergraduate being viciously attacked by people making fun of him on twitter after his stab at political celebrity
    The Leadership Institute is run by Morton Blackwell, which name rings a vague bell but I’m not sure why.

  91. 91.

    Ken

    @OzarkHillbilly: I’m not surprised the car wash is defunct, with prices like that.

    I am surprised that it wasn’t a Trump business; I would have expected Trump to make kickbacks the price for his endorsement.

  92. 92.

    lowtechcyclist

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Some of the same people wanting Biden to step down because of his age are fans of an even older person. So we can conclude that they are full of BS.

    Sure, but the pundits pushing this BS are mostly the usual center-right suspects at the FTFNYT, WaPo, etc.  They’re the ones who are keeping this nonsense in the public eye, and they’re not BernieBros.

  94. 94.

    lowtechcyclist

    @WereBear:

    I love what Harry S. Truman said:

    One thing (of many!) that I like about Biden is that he’s following that same script – telling the public the truth about those mofos.

  95. 95.

    Ken

    @lowtechcyclist: Might as well continue to postpone it by other tricks, whether it’s the platinum coin, selling bonds with no maturity date, or whatever.

    “The janitor was sweeping up and found $1.8 trillion in pennies behind the couch,” maybe.

    Or dress it up a bit: “We want to thank all of those who demanded we audit the Fed. The audit found an entire vault that had been forgotten, just full to the brim with currency. It seems one of the previous Fed chairs liked to swim around in it…”

  99. 99.

    jonas

    @OzarkHillbilly:Walker’s campaign paid $595,600 to a company called ‘Jetts’ to supposedly charter private planes. However, Fox has learned that ‘Jetts’ is a defunct car wash that was owned by a Walker donor.

    Am I misremembering, or didn’t that ProPublic/TPM article that dropped yesterday on that miserable “healthcare sharing network” scam mention that the family that runs that grift also runs the jet charter company that DeSantis used to fly those asylum seekers up to Martha’s vineyard or something?

  101. 101.

    Bill Arnold

    @Jay:
    Wow. Thanks for the link. Yes, Ron DeSantis is evil.
    Here’s an excerpt (and full link for reference):
    See No Evil (Harpers, 2023/03)

    From a November discussion on the Eyes Left podcast, between Mike Prysner, an Iraq War veteran, and Mansoor Adayfi, a former detainee at Guantánamo Bay.

    prysner: So Ron DeSantis was actually supervising torture, beatings? He was supervising these force-feedings?
    adayfi: I’m telling Americans: this guy is a torturer. He is a criminal. He was laughing. And he was there to ensure we were treated humanely.
    prysner: He was laughing?
    adayfi: Yes, they were looking at us, laughing because we were shitting ourselves. I was screaming and yelling. When your stomach is full of Ensure you can’t breathe. And you are throwing up at the same time. I was screaming. I looked at him and he was actually smiling. Like someone who was enjoying it.

  103. 103.

    WV Blondie

    Re Gaetz’s public idiocy: I worked on Capitol Hill many, many moons ago, and my opinion is that staffers are almost always smarter than the elected officials they work for. And I really doubt that Gaetz found that article on his own.

    So I’m left wondering if he’s the exception to prove the rule – i.e., his staffers are even dumber than he is – or if whoever brought the article to his attention had their own motives …

  105. 105.

    Gin & Tonic

    Haven’t had time to read much ( including this thread) but I see that Isaac Chotiner has a piece up about Jeffrey Sachs. Wasn’t it BCrack who said if Chotiner calls, throw your phone in the swamp, change your name and leave the country? I bet Sachs wasn’t wise enough to do that.

  109. 109.

    Paul in KY

    @Jay: Sure sounds like him. One of his college baseball teammates said he was the most cruel person he ever met. Loved to humiliate people.

  110. 110.

    Paul in KY

    @trnc: Pretty sure we had a convo back in 64 when Pres. Johnson hammered through the great civil rights legislation.

  111. 111.

    glory b

    @Jay: You know this wll just make him more popular with his base, right? He’s hurting the people they want to get hurt.

    As per the title of Adam Serwer’s book, “The Cruelty is the Point.”

  114. 114.

    Bill Arnold

    @Gin & Tonic:
    Piece on it at LGM. Sachs comes across as condescending, unwilling to provide evidence/sources, and the “do you know how important I am” sort of arrogant. And a full-throttle tankie. I’m only a little sad he wasn’t pressed on his COVID-contrarianism. (That’s a reliable marker of mind-damage.)

  115. 115.

    Paul in KY

    @Ken: I think vis a vis TFG, you will have to buy a whole bunch of Trump Steaks, at his suggested retail price. There’s other junk to buy, if you don’t want the unrefrigerated ‘steaks’.

  116. 116.

    Redshift

    @catclub:

    I have serious doubts that there were any hysterical warnings from Democrats about Romney.

    Oh, it’s an absolute article of faith among Republicans that Democrats were completely out of line with how mean they were to Romney, and none of that stuff is true. That probably qualifies as “hysterical warnings” to Linker.

    Never mind that, even if it were the case that the attacks on Romney were completely untrue, Republicans do that to every Democratic candidate, so the complaint is really just that we’re not playing the game the way Democrats are supposed to. (It also gives away that they actually know Shrub, etc. are bastards, because Romney is the only one where they argue he’s so nice he didn’t deserve that.)

  119. 119.

    Barbara

    @Gin & Tonic: Basically, whenever Chotiner asks Sachs to justify allegations he makes about US policy and actions (e.g., US was decisive in jinxing supposed Syrian ceasefire), Sachs says, “I am an important person with access to high level sources who knows more than you do.”  When Chotiner really gets Sachs on the ropes he starts whining about  how he only agreed to talk about some topics and not others.

    My understanding is that Sachs was front and center in recommending “shock therapy” as the Soviet Empire dissolved.  Is that wrong?  Because it seems like that policy was more than a little responsible for the ultimate downward spiral of Russia into its current authoritarian state.  It really burns me that people like Sachs are never held accountable for being wrong. It’s usually, “Oh, well they didn’t really listen to me, if they had, things would have turned out fine.”

  120. 120.

    Redshift

    @schrodingers_cat:

    He is a never Trumper not a liberal.

    Ah, that makes his argument much more understandable. If your only breaking point with the GOP was Trump, then criticism of the terrible people you supported before that must be hysterical, because otherwise you’d have to consider that you might have been wrong.

  121. 121.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    speaking of Bernie…

    FactsLivesMatter  @Facts0601 23h
    So Nevada Democratic Party Chair Judith Whitmer is a convicted felon. She was charged with organized fraud and grand theft for cashing fraudulent checks. The corruption of the Bernie Socialist-led Democrats in Nevada runs deep.

    Nina Turner and David Sirota are signal-boosting all the RW propaganda about Buttigieg and East Palestine. Tulsi Gabbard, until very recently a Sanders Institute Fellow, and grifting clown Tara Reade are promoting Russian propaganda on the Hannity program. He sure does like to surround himself with the stupid, the grifters and the frauds.

  122. 122.

    PJ

    @Barbara: Sachs was certainly the most prominent academic advocating for shock treatment for the Soviet Union, which predictably facilitated the wholesale transfer of formerly public assets to nomenklatura and criminals, resulting in the impoverishment of much of the population.  This was a country where almost everyone had no memory of a market economy, there were no securities laws or regulations (because there had been no securities), there was no financial law enforcement, and self-dealing and conflict of interest by public officials was rampant.

  123. 123.

    Geminid

    @trnc: What do I have in mind regarding the debt ceiling fight? What Joe Biden, Janet Yellen and Democratic Congressional leaders are doing and will be doing.

  124. 124.

    Bill Arnold

    @glory b:

    You know this will just make him more popular with his base, right?

    Serious question; how well does torture poll in the USA? For example, threats of/lack of concern about thermonuclear war were popular with Goldwater’s base, but they were used against him politically.

  126. 126.

    Jeffro

    Whoa.  The Virginia Supt of Public Ed just resigned, effective (almost) immediately.

    I wonder if she wasn’t on board with whatever ol’ Smiling Glenn Youngkin has cooking up for 2024?

    (or more likely, she got tired of being hated by basically everyone at all levels of Virginia education)

  127. 127.

    zhena gogolia

    @Jeffro: PRINCETON? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? PRINCETON IS LIBERAL???

    (haven’t read it yet, but for fuck’s sake)

  129. 129.

    mrmoshpotato

    @The Moar You Know:

    Romney is a very dangerous man and the only saving grace he’s got is that he doesn’t want to look bad. 

    I’d rather he just flat out punch us all in the face.  Fuck ’em both, but I respect outright assholes more than two-faced, sly motherfuckers who would fuck you over “for your own good” like Mittens.

  131. 131.

    prostratedragon

    @catclub:  And let’s not forget a personal fave, Bruce the Vandal Rauner, who among other achievements singlehandedly downgraded Illinois debt credit rating a couple of steps in less than one term.

  132. 132.

    different-church-lady

    @trnc: “Slavery was bad. It’s over. Systemic racism is also bad. It’s not over. We want to do something about that and you don’t. Your turn to talk.”

  133. 133.

    Geminid

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: The Nevada DemocraticParty showdown comes this Saturday when the party’s Central Committee meets. There may be a credentials fight; Whitmer’s party secretary threw around 40% of the Comnittee members off for alleged non-attendance.

    It sounds like Whitmer’s bad check case stayed unnoticed because it was in Florida and she was using the name “Judith Sprayberry.”

  136. 136.

    Mike in NC

    I have no doubt that the Republican party will try to puke up in 2024 a Trump/Greene fascist ticket just to prove they’re not quite done wrecking this country. The GQP House seems to relish the prospect, plus they’re actively pushing for some sort of trade war — or maybe even a shooting war — with China because they’ve wanted that for years.

  138. 138.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Bill Arnold: 9/11 led to a rise in overt enthusiasm for torture. I mean, people outright saying torturing terrorists was good and we should do it as much as possible.

    Things might have changed since then though.

  139. 139.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: My impression is that Bernie and Biden sincerely like each other, though, regardless of what their fans might think. Different situation than with Hillary Clinton.

  141. 141.

    patrick II

    Accusing Goldwater of considering the use of nuclear weapons was not hype, Goldwater had already said the use of nuclear weapons “may become necessary”.  After Johnson’s daisy ad, Goldwater modified his stance.

    And it wasn’t just Goldwater, Nixon was at least as dangerous:

    Nixon to Kissinger: “I’d rather use the nuclear bomb … Does that bother you? I just want you to think big.”

    About casualties, Nixon said: “I don’t care”…”I don’t give a damn”.

    Kissinger talked him out of it.

    George Bush senior was the exception and the first republican president in a while who didn’t threaten to use Nukes.

    His son’s administration was different in that Cheney was considering using nuclear bunker busters to get at Iranian nuclear facilities deep underground.

    And then, of course, there was Trump who, in the context of warning Russia about our powerful nuclear forces, would send some jets over but with Chinese flags painted on them so the Russians would believe the Chinese did it.  They would never figure it out.

    What a fucking genius.

    Anyhow, keep electing Republicans and sooner or later one of them will actually follow through.

  142. 142.

    Jackie

    @Mike in NC: Even TFG’s not stupid enough to choose crazy MTG for his running mate. The non-MAGAs will revolt and either not vote or hold their noses and vote for Biden.

  143. 143.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Mike in NC: Trump couldn’t stand the attention that Marjorie Taylor Greene would take away from him. He needs a boring yes-man running mate like Pence, though, at this point, obviously not Pence.

  145. 145.

    trnc

    @Paul in KY: ​
     

    Pretty sure we had a convo back in 64 when Pres. Johnson hammered through the great civil rights legislation.

    Yes, of course we did. That’s my point. Repubs continue to skip the part where the modern dem party repudiates the southern dems, which leads to them becoming republicans, and we keep having to hear this BS decades later. It’s just so stupid, but of course it appears to have some traction with their fans.

  146. 146.

    Betty

    @RedDirtGirl: From what I have seen on Twitter, it should be. Senate Republicans disgracing themselves in new levels of ignorance and rudeness. Trying to show how very manly they are. Just mean bullies.

  148. 148.

    prostratedragon

    @Barbara:

    My understanding is that Sachs was front and center in recommending “shock therapy” as the Soviet Empire dissolved.

    You remember correctly. I haven’t noticed him in years, but would guess that plays a role in what’s wrong with him now.

  150. 150.

    Matt McIrvin

    @trnc: It’s just trolling; the bad faith in accusing modern Democrats of being the real slavers/segregationists is completely transparent, and in fact I think they like it that way, because they’re getting away with a rhetorical Weird Trick. Checkmate libs.

    I’ve had people pull the “I bet you didn’t know the old Southern segregationists were Democrats!” on me more than once. I guess it shuts up people who are really uninformed, I don’t know.

  151. 151.

    Barbara

    @Jeffro: She’s leaving effective March 9.  Something must be up.  I think she wanted to use the position as a platform for vouchers or charter schools but that obviously hasn’t happened.  Still, it seems really sudden.

  152. 152.

    Skepticat

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: The danger of Romney was that he would have been like the worst aspects of Poppy Bush, an insincere MOTU who would have pandered to the far right to shore up his own political chances.

    When he was governor of Massachusetts, I served on Romney’s Council of Economic Advisers. He earned the nickname Mitt the Twit, and I’m not certain he’s capable of being truly dangerous except by accident, though I agree with your assessment. That said, I’d have taken him rather than Chump in any event.

  153. 153.

    JWR

    Florida Man: State Senate edition. (From NBC)

    A Republican in Florida’s state Legislature has filed a bill that, if enacted, would eliminate the Florida Democratic Party.

    “The Ultimate Cancel Act,” filed on Tuesday by state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, would require the state’s Division of Elections to “immediately cancel” the filings of any political party whose platform had “previously advocated for, or been in support of, slavery or involuntary servitude.

    Never mind “previously advocated for”, how about “currently advocates for”?

  155. 155.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Skepticat:

    I served on Romney’s Council of Economic Advisers. He earned the nickname Mitt the Twit, and I’m not certain he’s capable of being truly dangerous except by accident, t

    No shit? this actually surprises me. I always figured Our Willard as smart but limited, a financial hedgehog, because he was bred to believe in the White Horse and capitalism.

  156. 156.

    lowtechcyclist

    @PJ:

    Sachs was certainly the most prominent academic advocating for shock treatment for the Soviet Union, which predictably facilitated the wholesale transfer of formerly public assets to nomenklatura and criminals, resulting in the impoverishment of much of the population.

    I remember being appalled at the way ‘shock treatment’ was being pushed at the time.  And of course because Bush the Elder was President, there wasn’t much pushback from the Administration.  If any.

    Communism in the USSR was a terrible system, but it did take care of its people after a fashion: they had food, clothing, and shelter, at any rate, and it might all be crappy, but it was there for them.  Sachs and all those other assholes wanted to just sweep that away rather than figure out how to gradually supplement and later supplant it with the rudiments of a free market.

    And as you mentioned, one of the biggest effects was that state assets were grabbed up by whoever was best positioned to do so.  And so Russia is now the world’s biggest kleptocracy.

  157. 157.

    lowtechcyclist

    @different-church-lady:

    “Slavery was bad. It’s over. Systemic racism is also bad. It’s not over. We want to do something about that and you don’t. Your turn to talk.”

    Perfect.

  158. 158.

    catclub

    @Matt McIrvin: Pew poll of whether people are for using torture on suspected terrorists

     

    Distinction between right-wing christian terrorists  versus muslim terrorists? White militia terrorists?

  159. 159.

    catclub

    @Matt McIrvin: ​
     

    “I bet you didn’t know the old Southern segregationists were Democrats!”

    response: and they all became republicans after 1964.

  160. 160.

    RSA

    @Marmot:

    Liberals have a long history of hyping fears of Republican presidential candidates, from Lyndon Johnson’s “daisy” ad (about Barry Goldwater and a potential threat of nuclear war) to sometimes hysterical warnings about various dire threats posed by John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012.

    We heard similarly terrible things about Donald Trump in 2016 — but this time they were true. As with the story of the boy who cried wolf, a real wolf had finally arrived.

    This. Makes. No. Sense.

    Here are some things that might have happened if we had taken option A.  So instead we took option B.

    What kind of impaired reasoning lets someone conclude that we were wrong about what would have happened because we didn’t let it happen?

  161. 161.

    cain

    @JWR: I’m kind of wondering if this is gonna be one of those “please proceed, wingnut” episodes. Law of unintended consequences.

  162. 162.

    Barbara

    @RSA: It’s like he forgot that the choice is binary, and that for all intents and purposes the choice between A and B is often profound, never mind if B isn’t the worst of the worst.  President Gore would not have invaded Iraq and would have made a lot more progress on climate change.  Hell, he might have even avoided the 9/11 catastrophe.  President Hillary Clinton would not have nominated Amy Coathanger or Brett the Demon Drunk for the Supreme Court, again, with profound consequences for many of us, if not Damon Linker personally.

    Which is to say, the whole column is a misdirect because the only choice that matters is not the kind of abstract analysis he sets up as a strawman.

  163. 163.

    Skepticat

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Let’s just say that Mitt is extremely easily bored. I also think the novelty of being governor wore off quickly when he realized there was actual work rather than posturing to be done. You’re spot on with “limited.”

  165. 165.

    artem1s

    @catclub: ​
     

    I have serious doubts that there were any hysterical warnings from Democrats about Romney.

    We did point and laugh at him a lot so there’s that. Obama even asked him to “Please proceed, Governor!”.

  166. 166.

    Ohio Mom

    @Subsole: I think “liberal” has always been a put down in certain lefty circles. Remember the Phil Ochs song, “Love me, I’m a liberal”?

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