Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

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

They don’t have outfits that big. nor codpieces that small.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“Alexa, change the president.”

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

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

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

No one could have predicted…

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

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

Optimism opens the door to great things.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

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

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Gaetz of Hell & More

Gaetz of Hell & More

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Now that the House GOP has nominated Steve “David Duke without the baggage” Scalise for Speaker instead of Jim “Serial molester in the OSU athletic department? What serial molester?” Jordan, the question is can Scalise whip a sufficient number of votes on the floor? Maybe.

Scalise seems to have opposable thumbs, an edge over Jordan and the Gaetz Eight, but the conference adjourned without voting today, which isn’t a great sign. In any case, a party that worships the Defendant and contemplates elevating any of the proposed grotesqueries to Speaker left the hell-mouth in the rearview mirror long ago and is speeding toward the hell-anus.

Happy floor voting, assholes! Take all the time you need. It’s not like the world is burning or anything…

***

Speaking of assholes, Israeli PM Netanyahu has formed a unity government with Benny Gantz, leader of the opposition party. I know nothing about Israeli politics (except that Netanyahu is an asshole), but my understanding is this is a good thing because it sidelines Netanyahu’s extremists allies, at least for now.

From Adam’s war updates and independent reading, I get the impression there’s a deep and abiding anger growing in Israel toward Netanyahu because they blame him for being asleep at the switch when Hamas attacked. I have no idea how widely shared that view is, but Jerusalem resident Yossi Klein Halevi, writing for The Atlantic, says two reckonings are coming: the first with Hamas, then with Netanyahu:

If anything, the rage many Israelis feel today toward Netanyahu is far greater (than that toward Golda Meir, who resigned six months after the Yom Kippur War). By tearing apart the country in his attempt to weaken the courts, he knowingly undermined Israeli deterrence. He was repeatedly warned by the IDF of the likely consequences of his judicial revolution, in terms of both the IDF’s readiness for war and the willingness of Israel’s enemies to test its weakness. Netanyahu ignored the warnings, even refusing at one point to meet with the IDF chief, Herzi Halevi…

Netanyahu will stay true to form and try to deflect the blame onto others, beginning with the army but also including the anti-government demonstrators who thwarted his antidemocratic revolution. This time, though, his evasive tactics won’t work. Netanyahu has presided over the most devastating day in Israeli history, the inevitable culmination of the disaster he has inflicted over the past year on his own people.

We’ll see. Like a living trilobite, Netanyahu has proved impervious to previous forces that seemed to all but guarantee the end of his disastrous political career. But first things first, according to Halevi.

***

And finally, to end on a positive note, my favored bruin, the magnificent Grazer, was crowned Fat Bear Week champion!

 

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Congrats, Grazer! It was your brilliant blond ears that put you over the top, girl!

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

164Comments

  2. 2.

    CaseyL

    Congratulations, Grazer!  Yes,  her blond ears get a lot of attention from Fat Bear Week fans :)

    Re your comments on Netanyahu’s staying power:  I take exception to likening him to a trilobite.  I adore trilobites, and deeply wish they were still around today.

    Netanyahu, OTOH, I wouldn’t piss on if he were on fire… unless I had just consumed a vast amount of high-proof alcohol.

  7. 7.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    A friend had her whole family in a betting pool on the fat bears. I am in awe at the size of these critters. Did you know the moms give birth and then sleep for 3 months? Not a bad system.

  9. 9.

    trollhattan

    I already dread this asshat sitting behind Biden for the next SOTU. But since the half-life of a Republican speaker seems to be diminishing, perhaps there will be two or three more by then?

  11. 11.

    smith

    Hmmm…so Scalise voted against both the MLK holiday and Louisiana’s apology for slavery. Somebody ought to let David Due know that Scalise is still carrying his baggage.

  12. 12.

    NutmegAgain

    Love that bear! (In truth I love them all). But special lard-o points for her way of settling her belly carefully down ahead of the rest of her. Gorgeous

     

    Extra thought- Maybe Grazer will take the gig of House Chair. She knows how to accomplish goals, and she could whack the asshole-8 into tomorrow.  OMG, I echoed Baud’s suggestion. It’s a plurality~

  14. 14.

    p.a.

    Riffing on my comment from a few days ago, I think Israeli voters are smarter than America’s from the GWBush “he kept us safe”😡🤢 era.

    I’m no expert on Israeli politics, but I guess it will be a question, when the time comes, of which vote wins: dump Bibi as the main one responsible, or reelect Bibi as the best means of inflicting long term revenge.

  15. 15.

    dmsilev

    Happy floor voting, assholes! Take all the time you need. It’s not like the world is burning or anything…

    I think they were going to have the knife fight behind closed doors, and only do an actual House floor vote once there’s unanimity and once Matt Gaetz is wrapped in duct tape and stuffed into an actual ventilation duct.

  16. 16.

    lowtechcyclist

    @trollhattan: ​
     

    I already dread this asshat sitting behind Biden for the next SOTU. But since the half-life of a Republican speaker seems to be diminishing, perhaps there will be two or three more by then?

    Rome had the Year of Four Emperors. Who knows how many Speakers we’ll have?

  17. 17.

    jackmac

    Speaking at a town hall in St.Charles, Ill. last week, Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi said a constituent told him the January battle for House Speaker offered “the best season of C-SPAN” ever.  Looking forward to seeing if this week’s sequel lives up to the original!

  18. 18.

    Baud

    @p.a.:

    I’m not sure “smarter” is correct.  Israelis have obviously kept Bibi in power for a long time. But the context is different than it was during 9/11, and that might lead to a different reaction.

  19. 19.

    RaflW

    Dan Drezner (Tufts prof of international studies & active commenter on global affairs) also wrote about the huge gap in Israeli intelligence that must have gone on to let Hammas stage such an attack.

    This was a colossal Israeli intelligence failure. This should be the one fact that generates across-the-board consensus. Given the scale of the Hamas attack — which involved hundreds of missile strikes, tunneling underneath the Gaza barriers, and penetrating southern Israeli kibbutzim along the border, attacks on land, air, and sea — there should have been observable intelligence that something big was on the horizon.

    The Guardian’s Peter Beaumont correctly notes the attack, “will be remembered as an intelligence failure for the ages…. if it is surprising it is because Israel’s surveillance of Palestinian society is both highly sophisticated and highly invasive, with monitoring of Hamas’s activity in particular one of the most important tasks for the security establishment.

  20. 20.

    lowtechcyclist

    @dmsilev: ​
     

    Technically, there is no species requirement in the Constitution for determining eligibility…

    Since I’ve already mentioned imperial Rome, didn’t Caligula try to appoint his horse as consul?

  23. 23.

    Old Man Shadow

    As I understand it, Benny outright rejects a two-state solution and has been trying to use Hamas to keep the Palestinians divided while being more supportive of settlers taking land because he thinks he is the smartest guy in the room and had everything under control and his policies could never backfire on the nation.

    I hope the bill for his chutzpah comes due immediately after Hamas is held accountable.

  24. 24.

    cain

    @RaflW: Was it a failure when Egypt had the goods? Shouldn’t Israeli’s Mossad had followed up?

    I think Bibi is the real reason – and he probably thought it was all good and that might be a few rockets.

  25. 25.

    Baud

    @RaflW:

    there should have been observable intelligence that something big was on the horizon

     
    Human intel too. This thing was massive.

    The failure here far exceeds Bush’s failure with respect to 9/11, and that’s saying something.

  26. 26.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @RaflW:

    The explanation I heard was that the Israeli government saw all the training and preparations, and believed that it was all busywork and show.  The Israeli government had convinced itself that Hamas no longer cared about confrontation more than needed to maintain power in Gaza.  The reasoning was partly that Netanyahu had for decades been doing something similar, engaging in just enough of a fight to act tough, then turning a blind eye to everything else, to weaken the West Bank Palestinian government that wanted a two state solution.

  31. 31.

    wjca

    @dmsilev: Technically, there is no species requirement in the Constitution for determining eligibility…

    Depending on where she lives, the literacy test to register to vote could be an issue.  But since she’s white, I suppose it might be waived….

  32. 32.

    japa21

    I admit, my vote went to Grazer, who absolutely demolished her opponent, Chunk. My favorite part of voting during Fat Bear Week is to look at the pictures of the bears from July compared to current. That is a lot of salmon being consumed.
    On a sad note, Otis, who is possibly the oldest bear (or one of them) in the wild, has not been seen since October 5. Many regular viewers of the bears are concerned about his status.

  33. 33.

    Alison Rose

    Man, fuck 2023. My mom’s younger brother, my Uncle Phil, passed away this morning. Stage 4 prostate cancer. He’d been sent home from the hospital just under two months ago on palliative care, and they thought he had maybe 6 months left. A few days ago, he was transferred to a hospice facility because my aunt was no longer able to care for him herself. (Phil was a big dude, probably the only one in our whole family over 6 feet, and stocky. Evelyn is petite and in her mid 60s.) We thought he had at least another month or so. He was only 68, which is too young to go. His two sons, my only first cousins, are in their late 30s, which is too young to lose a parent.

    And this is just 8 months after my dad died, so my mom is just bereft. And then all the awful shit in the news and the awful ways some are responding and the awful mess in our so-called government…too damn much. Sigh. Hug your loved ones, y’all.

  34. 34.

    bbleh

    @Frankensteinbeck: @MisterDancer: @Roger Moore: @wjca: I was pleasantly surprised by this.  I figured they’d all just get in line.  But it would seem that not all of them — in fact, not even a majority — are so scared of being primaried by the MAGAts that they’ll hand over leadership of the House to a none-too-bright bomb-thrower with some hunky skeletons in his closet.

  37. 37.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    I got the news yesterday that my sister and her husband were in Israel and were trying to get over the border to Jordan so they could fly home from there. Fortunately not near Gaza, they were trying to get help (unsuccessfully) from the US Embassy, so probably Jerusalem?

    The news today is that they crossed over and are now safe in Jordan.

  38. 38.

    Geminid

    @p.a.: Reports now are that PM Netanyahu has signed an agreement with Benny Gantz whereby Gantz will join an emergency “National Unity Government.” The Israeli Knesset will hold an emergency seesion tomorrow to ratify the agreement.

    I put up some more details earlier in WaterGirl’s “Trump and Jordan…” Post, at comments 190 and 192

    Ed. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz is a much better source, however. They have by far the best reporting on Israeli security matters, and apparently have dropped their paywall for now.

  39. 39.

    Princess Leia

    @japa21: ​
      Yes, Otis usually hangs around into late October but was last seen October 5. Hope the “Zen Master” comes back next spring!

  42. 42.

    smith

    @bbleh: Didn’t a fair number of the MAGA primary challengers in 2022 actually lose? Republicans are slow learners, but maybe it has finally penetrated that the mob boss is not all-powerful after all.

  44. 44.

    Mai Naem mobile

    I don’t understand Israeli politics  that well but there is no way I would have offered to form a government with Bibi, especially when he’s in such a vulnerable spot. The POS will figure out a way of surviving this and blame any issues on Ganz. Bibi’s like a black mamba version of a nine lives cat.

  46. 46.

    jonas

    @Frankensteinbeck: Color me surprised that the caucus was willing to buck Trump like that. Has the shine started to come off his gilded shit?

    Who knows? Most of them probably just didn’t want to spend all of next week fighting their way through scrum after scrum of reporters demanding to know why they nominated a guy credibly accused of covering up sex abuse allegations as their speaker. We’ll see what kind of fuckery Trump tries to have Gaetz and his crew pull, though, when it comes to an actual floor vote. My hope is that Scalise will reach out to Jeffries (with whom he supposedly has a good rapport) and see what he can give him in return for some votes from the D side. Scalise definitely does not have all the votes on the R side and has to realize it’s either talk to Jeffries or slog through another circus shitshow like McCarthy’s election. That would be political suicide, given all the shit going on in the world.

  47. 47.

    Ann Marie

    Betty, your second paragraph had me laughing so hard it’s a good thing I have an office with the door closed!  You have a way with words.

  48. 48.

    jonas

    @smith: In statewide races, basically all of them except J.D. Vance in Ohio. It was a MAGA wipeout everywhere else, esp. in GA and PA.

    Trump’s endorsement can help in super-red, gerrymandered R-districts, but it seems increasingly to be the kiss of death in Senate or governor races where non-insane people also get to vote.

  54. 54.

    HumboldtBlue

    Summer Lee is a badass.

    Translation: Election denying Republican who helped cover up college wrestlers being sexually abused by the team doctor & accused a ten-year-old rape victim of lying to get abortion decided to nominate another election denying R who called himself “David Duke w/o the baggage.”

  57. 57.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @jonas:

    Color me surprised that the caucus was willing to buck Trump like that.

    It’s what I expected.  Even while he was President, the Republicans in congress pretty much ignored everything he asked for.  People mistake ‘refuse to let a Republican President be published for anything’ and ‘eager to claim Democrats cheat’ for being interested in Trump himself.

    The actual true Trump believers in the House are whining because they didn’t know they were a tiny minority until now.

    EDIT – I don’t know where this will go when Republicans realize how deadlocked they are, though.  They’re going to be very tired of this, fast.  They’re lazy, selfish, cowardly people.  My top guess is they’ll just try to pretend McHenry can finish out the congressional term, but that is definitely ‘a guess’.

  58. 58.

    Betty Cracker

    The weird thing about the Trump cult is that they do sometimes defy him in minor ways and always have, yet they maintain a devotion to him personally. It’s not always transferrable to someone else or definitive for every issue.

    I remember early in his administration, Trump got mad at Harley Davidson over some economic issue and said Bikers for Trump would switch to another brand. They said LOL NO, but their devotion to Trump never wavered.

    Same phenomenon occurred when Trump got booed at a rally for saying something positive about covid vaccines. DeSantis took that as a sign that he could outflank Trump with the anti-vax kooks, but it doesn’t look like that happened either.

  61. 61.

    ...now I try to be amused

    @smith:

    Hmmm…so Scalise voted against both the MLK holiday and Louisiana’s apology for slavery. Somebody ought to let David Due know that Scalise is still carrying his baggage.

    It’s more like a small carry-on by their standards.

  63. 63.

    HumboldtBlue

    @lowtechcyclist: ​ 

    SMH, always thinking about the Roman Empire. Speaking of which, I recently purchased Total War: Rome, and I am a bit daunted at the step-up in game play.

  64. 64.

    smith

    @jonas: Most of them probably just didn’t want to spend all of next week fighting their way through scrum after scrum of reporters demanding to know why they nominated a guy credibly accused of covering up sex abuse allegations as their speaker.

    Funny, that scrum doesn’t ever think to ask why they want an adjudicated sexual predator as their president.

  71. 71.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Proceed with caution on Grazer, the Bears have been on a bad streak lately and the Cubs just blew it​

  72. 72.

    Nukular Biskits

    With an acknowledgement of my limited understanding of Israeli politics, Netanyahu seems to make his way into the the top spot only because of fractious and divisive nature of the electorate which makes it necessary to put together coalition governments.

    I can’t help but believe the hardliners are going to be booted out at the next election.

  73. 73.

    Tony Jay

    The MAGOP House are mostly trying to negotiate the too-tight chicane between getting away with ignoring Trump’s advice (because it could be toxic to their re-elections) and offending the zealots of The Base (which could be toxic to their primary elections). Which is doable with care, but not so much when racing towards default doomsday at a million miles an hour.

    Oh well, sucks to be them. Pity the poor Villagers who want so badly to blame the Democrats for the House’s dysfunction but keep on having to trudge back to their desks laden down with tales of GOP clowns mooning the nation and jabbering in tongues.

  74. 74.

    eversor

    @Baud:

    There obviously was observable intel if the Egyptians are saying they knew about it and sounded the alarm three days in advance and were ignored.

    Gaza is as much of an issue for Egypt as it is for Israel and it’s in Egypts interest not to have shit shows there so of course they run intel operations in Gaza.  If Egypt knew then of course they told other people.

  75. 75.

    dc

    @japa21: People on the Explore chat tend to enjoy worrying too much. Otis is old, he might die any day now or not. Other beloved bears have died, 410 and 409 (and the not so beloved Lurch), and Brooks Falls continued. The greatest threats are the humans who at this late date are still bothering the bears and not following the rules.

  76. 76.

    Tony Jay

    @HumboldtBlue:

    Total War: Rome or Total War:Rome 2?

    The first is one of my fave games ever, the second probably would be too if I ever had time to play it. But yes, the change in how the development trees work baffled me. I just wanna fight enormous battles and get my cavalry in behind the enemy.

  77. 77.

    bbleh

    @smith: @jonas: and AZ.  The problem is that primaries skew extreme — even in non-MAGA-dominated districts, the Republican primary electorate tends to the crazy — and right now, because by far most Republican districts are safely Republican, the greatest threat to an incumbent is the primary.

    I guess the betting in the majority of the conference was, on the one hand, the vote is secret so nobody knows how I voted, and if Jordan loses very few people will remember it in 2024 no matter what TIFG says, but on the other hand I’d have to live with that bomb-thrower in charge for another year and maybe longer, so nuh-uh.

    Still a little surprised they had that much spine, but maybe they can be housebroken

    @Tony Jay: in fairness, Teh Media have been pretty good about making the story that it’s Republican dysfunction, not “Congressional” or something more even-handed, and there has been very little why-didn’t-the-Democrats-clean-up-the-latest-food-tantrum screeching except from the few very most predictable sources.

  81. 81.

    Geminid

    @Baud: One aspect of this debacle is that the Israelis knew Hamas had thousands of rockets and that they had hundreds of well-armed and well-trained fighters. Saturday’s attack was within Hamas’s known capabilities.

    But the Israeli government thought their air power would deter Hamas from such an all-out sttack. They never asked themselves, “What if Hamas chooses not to be deterred?”

    If they had, they wouldn’t have left the Gaza border area so lightly defended.

    The aspect of surprise can be explained in part because Hamas has an extended tunnel network that runs right up close to the border, and their fighters could approach unseen. Meanwhile the rockets kept in other in other tunnels could be pulled out and fired immediately. They timed everything, so that when the rockets were fired, the fighters climbed out of the tunnels, stormed the border fortifications and continued on to attack the lightly manned IDF posts and undefended civilian populatiion.

    As to intelligence, Hamas kept the operation closely held, and orders were given in face-to-face meetings. And they knew Israel had moles in their organization, but evidently they tracked them down and exterminated them over the past year.

  82. 82.

    smith

    @Mai Naem mobile: Bibi’s like a black mamba version of a nine lives cat.

    I have often thought, with no little amount of despair, that TFG might turn out to be our version of Bibi or Berlusconi — like a really bad infection that simply won’t go away. No matter how many powerful and advanced antibiotics you use to try to eradicate it, it just keeps coming back.

  83. 83.

    Matt McIrvin

    I get the impression there’s a deep and abiding anger growing in Israel toward Netanyahu because they blame him for being asleep at the switch when Hamas attacked.

    This fascinates me just because it’s so alien to my experience as an American. We would never turn on a right-wing government for this reason. For a dozen other reasons, yes. But when you get attacked you rally around Strong Daddy, and it seemed to work that way for Netanyahu as well.

    Maybe it’s that we have relatively little experience of this, and they’ve had enough.

  84. 84.

    Roger Moore

    @jonas:

    I suspect some of it is they aren’t going to obey Trump mindlessly when it’s something that affects them personally.  This isn’t a case where their actions primarily affect other people.  The Speaker’s main job is to run the House, and they’re the ones he’s going to be interacting with.  Getting someone they’re comfortable working with is critical.  It doesn’t mean they won’t listen to Trump on other stuff, just that this is a special case because it affects them and nobody else.

  89. 89.

    Baud

    @Geminid:

    And they knew Israel had moles in their organization, but evidently they tracked them down and exterminated them over the past year

     
    That in itself is another aspect of the failure.

  94. 94.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I don’t know.  The only real example we have is Bush. It’s not really enough to establish a pattern. And the Dems were frankly in a pretty low place at the time.

  95. 95.

    Tony Jay

    @bbleh:

    As I understand it (from on the spot accounts here) that’s a recent development that’s basically been forced on the Media by the scale of Republican dysfunction and the countervailing unity of Democratic messaging. Without a clear idea of what the GOP are even trying to achieve other than the collapse of Government and a handful of DINOs willing to go in front of the cameras bemoaning Jeffries’ stubborn refusal to meet “Republican moderates” half-way, they’re left with just the basic facts to report – and those facts have a Liberal bias.

  96. 96.

    RaflW

    @cain: It could be a “bin Laden determined to strike America” type moment, yes. We’ll see what leaks out/eventually gets investigated.

  105. 105.

    Roger Moore

    @Betty Cracker:

    The weird thing about the Trump cult is that they do sometimes defy him in minor ways and always have, yet they maintain a devotion to him personally.

    The way that I might say it is that Trump is an avatar of their grievances rather than a god.  They love what he represents, and they’re deeply devoted to him because of that, but their devotion is contingent on him continuing to represent what they believe.  They’ll obviously listen to him- and usually obey him- on topics where they don’t have a settled opinion, but they won’t change their mind on something important just because Trump tells them to.

  108. 108.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Tony Jay: ​ 

    Total War: Rome, the original, but the add-on pack I bought also had Total War: Alexander, I also purchased Total war: Empire, which involves the conquering of North America, and it looks absolutely fabulous, if, very daunting.

  109. 109.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @Alison Rose: condolences on the loss of your uncle. I don’t know if your mom has a large extended family don’t be surprised if you lose a bunch of them in a short period of time.  I’ve lost 4 uncles and 2 cousins in law in the last 2 years (as far as I know non COVID related) in a large extended family.  It’s not surprising because they were pretty much born one after another(no birth control!)

  110. 110.

    Baud

    @louc:

    Wow.

    ETA: I would have gone with “Thanks Biden!”, but the Israelis might not be aware of all American Internet traditions.

  111. 111.

    Geminid

    @RaflW: The intelligence failure is certainly an issue. But setting that aside, the flagrantly negligent way the government left the area near Gaza so lightly defended was a terrible and obvious failure.

  113. 113.

    Tony Jay

    @Baud:

    If only the House had a couple of Manchins or a Sinema or three to open gaps in the Democratic phalanx, the Media’s light dragoons could ride in there and raise bloody hell, but since they don’t, we get to enjoy the unaccustomed sight of them trotting up and down in front of the GOP’s ragged lines crying and begging them to stop shooting each other in the junk.

    Sorry, I’ve got Total War analogies on the brain.

  119. 119.

    WaterGirl

    @bbleh: but this was spine on a secret ballot behind closed doors

    edit: basically a secret ballot so they could find out which way the wind was blowing.  As it turns out, it was apparently blowing in both directions, with a slightly stronger wind in one of them.

  121. 121.

    Tony Jay

    @HumboldtBlue:

    Love TW:Rome. I found Alexander a bit simplistic when I played it (keep your phalanxes together, defend your flanks, repeat) but the original game is a design classic. Three Roman factions, lots of barbarian and post-Alexandrian cultures, some bloody huge cities to lay siege to. Great fun.

    Never did get the hang of the gunpowder empire way of fighting battles when I played TW:Empire. Much preferred the TW:Barbarian Invasion extension pack. Late Roman period. West collapsing, East doing okay except for the inevitable arrival of the bloody Huns.

    Oh, now I want to play it!

  127. 127.

    Tony Jay

    @bbleh:

    It must be horrible for them. Those cocktail parties must be gloomy affairs these days. And soon Marty Gaetz won’t even be around to provide the chicks and trips entertainment. So sad.

  128. 128.

    bbleh

    @WaterGirl: Prozackly.  And see also Roger Moore at 84 supra. 

    NOW since we’re speculating, what happens if/when Scalise is anointed and ascends, and some Coalition Of The Minimally Sensible does away with the single-member MTV?  Does Scalise turn hard right, “Jim Jordan without the baggage,” or does he try to be a little more statesmanlike, and if the latter, what do the Jordan supporters do?  Republicans In Disarray?

    I’m gonna keep watching this show for a while.  Really glad the writers’ strike is over.

  129. 129.

    Subsole

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Or, perhaps (against all odds and the general bent of the world) the Israelis remembered how rallying around a shifty little dipshit who was comically out of his depth worked out for all involved, and  actually managed to learn from our fuckup.

  135. 135.

    Betty Cracker

    @Raven: Yes! I’m rooting for them now since my team ran out of gas. (Grew up rooting for the Braves before MLB came to FL.)

  136. 136.

    Tony Jay

    @bbleh:

    Yup. Far too late they realise that he was the one placating the Deep Dark Ones with offerings of souls and now they’re crawling out of the Pit to take back what is owed them.

  143. 143.

    Jay C

    @bbleh:

    Just a WAG, but I’d figure a Scalise Speakership would likely simply shape up as a second act of McCarthy’s shitshow: i.e., mainly performative nonsense:  endless “investigations” (Hunter Biden’s junk likely featuring prominently), endless ranting about “border invasions”, incessant whining about the Biden Admin “destroying the country”; every nutcase in the caucus given ample airtime/floortime to promulgate whatever tinfoil-hat idiocy is trending that week – all the while trying desperately to see to it that the actual work of legislating (e.g., funding the government) gets done: even if behind-the-scenes, and without publicizing the Primal Heinous Sin of today’s GOP: actually talking to (still less, negotiating with) the Democrats – aka The Party Of Satan….

  144. 144.

    Tony Jay

    @Baud:

    “Remember the last guy? Half an hour on Twitter, nail the lede, rest of the day free?”

    “That’s the problem. Brandon don’t tweet.”

    “The horror. The horror.”

  145. 145.

    Geminid

    @louc: Former Knesset member Einat Wilf  said on Saturday that she appreciated th statement President Biden made when he heard of the attack:

       At least President Biden is speaking to the Israeli people (unlike our MIA government).

    @EinatWilf

    As a young woman, Ms. Wilf served in the Mossad and on Prime Minister Rabin’s team that negotiated the Oslo accords.

    Wilf commented Saturday on the faulty distribution of Army units that bolstered protection of West Bank settlers at the expense of residents in southern Israel:

        Abandon those who live within the borders of the State of Israel and its sovereign territory, those who are entitled to the protection of the state and its army, for those who jump on hilltops outside the border of the state. The lack of a clear border in the West Bank and the collection of delusional messiahs who are only trying to stretch the borders are a disaster for Israel. We will have to establish a clear border and protect those within it.

    [Machine translated from the original Hebrew]

    This was on the day of the attack, and the statement Wilf made a about Netanyahu was relatively restrained:

        Other countries can afford to occasionally have weak and ineffective leaders. Israel cannot.

     

  146. 146.

    HumboldtBlue

    PHUCK YES BRYCE HARPER!!!

    THE MAN WAS MADE FOR THE BASEBALL PLAYOFFS!

    PHUCK THE BRAVES!

  148. 148.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @WaterGirl:

    edit: basically a secret ballot so they could find out which way the wind was blowing.  As it turns out, it was apparently blowing in both directions, with a slightly stronger wind in one of them.

    Yes. The GOP has locked itself in a room while each side tries to break more wind their way. Predictably, the outcome stinks.

  149. 149.

    Citizen Alan

    @Baud: I am convinced it is. I’m not a 9/11 conspiracy believer, but I have always believed that the Bushie’s know something was coming with Al-Qaeda. I just think they greatly underestimated the scope of it, but they absolutely knew something was coming and they were happy to let it proceed so they could get some bloody shirts to wave. The principle is the same here.

  150. 150.

    Princess Leia

    @dc: ​
      I love it!! I do think there are a lot of Brooks Bears Fans inside jokes (like 83 getting Grazered off the cliff!!!!)

  151. 151.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    I’ll add that if I was one of the less crazy GOPers, then I would threaten to vote for Jeffries if they don’t consolidate around my candidate.

  152. 152.

    Geminid

     

     

    @Subsole: Early in his term, Trump met with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and their Ambassador in the Oval Office and blabbered out the existence of an Israeli agent in Syria. On Russian TV!

    The Israelis got him out in time though, like immediately.

  154. 154.

    Geminid

    @Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: You would need a small group of like-minded colleagues, but I suspect there is such a group now.

    If I were them, I would not make the threat explicit. If I wanted Scalise, a threat could be counterproductive because the knuckledraggers might take it out on him. Then I wouldn’t get my first choice. My colleagues and I could get the threat across by starting to huddle off in the corner wiith a few Democrats.

    By the time 5 or 6 of us had a 7-minute huddle with Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar, the other Republicans would understand that they had one more chance to elect Scalise and that if they didn’t, it would be Speaker Jeffries.

    Or Speaker Reed. Back when Republicans voted for Speaker the first time, Don Bacon (R-NE) floated a scenario that got my attention: a small group of Republicans would make a deal where a retired, responsible Republican like Tom Reed (NY) would serve as a Speaker pledged to put vital legislation on the floor for a majority vote. Charlie Dent (PA) might also be suitable for the job.

    Hakeem Jeffries might take that deal.

  156. 156.

    Jinchi

    I’m worried that Netanyahu thinks his path to redemption is vengeneance on the entire population of Gaza. I don’t think he sees a difference between a Hamas terrorist and a Palestinian child.

  160. 160.

    Dave

    @Geminid: It’s unlikely to happen but it would probably be the best deal better then if Jeffries were to become Speaker while being in the minority.

  164. 164.

    Geminid

    @Dave: This scenario has always been unlikely. But as the chances of the Republicans deadlocking over a Speaker rise, so do the chances for the alternatives and this is one of them. Like you suggest, I think it would be preferrable to Jeffries as a minority Speaker. That’s why I think Jeffries would take this deal.. He’ll Speaker anyway in January of 2023, and with a solid majority I believe.

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