Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

T R E 4 5 O N

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

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

This really is a full service blog.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

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

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

This country desperately needs a functioning Fourth Estate.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Another missed opportunity for Jamie Dimon to just shut the fuck up.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

If you are in line to indict donald trump, stay in line.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

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

Democrats have delivered the Square Deal, the New Deal, the Fair Deal, and now… the Big Joe Biden Deal.

Found liable for massive fraud, is required to post a massive bond, gets a break, then files a *fraudulent* bond!

Can we lighten up on the doomsday scenarios?

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

Cole is on a roll !

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

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Monday Morning Open Thread: New Week, More News…

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Good thing Sen. Scott didn’t quit his day job…


Monday Morning Open Thread: Another Week, More News... 1

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131Comments

  2. 2.

    Baud

    A large portion of the SC team had been sent to Iowa in the last month – and now they have to find a way to get them back tomorrow

    They have these things called planes.

  8. 8.

    Karen S.

    And just the other day Tim Scott trotted out some woman who he claimed was his girlfriend to appease potential donors. I hope she’s already cashed her check.

  10. 10.

    Jeffro

    You know what else is on the WaPo front page?

    trump calls political enemies “vermin”, echoing Hitler, Mussolini

    fer real!

    Former president Donald Trump denigrated his domestic opponents and critics during a Veterans Day speech Saturday, calling those on the other side of the aisle “vermin” and suggesting that they pose a greater threat to the United States than countries such as Russia, China or North Korea. That language is drawing rebuke from historians, who compared it to that of authoritarian leaders.

    “We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections,” Trump said toward the end of his speech, repeating his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. “They’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American Dream.”

    And all because Mr. Innocent, Mr. WATB couldn’t be bothered to handle a deadly pandemic, golf a little less, or get off Twitter once in a while.  Too bad, so sad, Orange Hitler!  Off to the dust heap urinal of history with you!

    (and thanks, WaPo!)

  12. 12.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud:

    I’m excited for you.

    Thanks!

    @Baud:

    They have these things called planes.

    Yeah, I assume the issue has to do with campaign finance rules, but Scott’s officially suspending his campaign, so that shouldn’t be an issue.  Unless they’re literally out of money.

  13. 13.

    Nukular Biskits

    Good mornin, y’all!

    Yes, it’s about damned time that the national media starts noticing and reporting about Trump’s authoritarian tendencies.  My problem is with the supposedly liberal local media.

    In MS, Tate Reeves proudly touted Trump’s endorsement … and not a commercial media outlet in the state has asked him about Trump’s use of the term “vermin”, for example. Both US Senators (Roger Wicker & Cindy Hyde-Smith) have been mum and my  current US Rep (Mike Ezell) continues to make excuses for Trump.

    Instead of actual journalism from the local mullet wrapper (Sun Herald), I get a plethora of stories about lottery winners in other states.  FFS.

  14. 14.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Jeffro:

    Glad to see one of the major papers get a clue and front-page these stories.  Maybe the FTFNYT will catch up eventually.

  15. 15.

    Betty Cracker

    @Jeffro: I saw that accurate headline, and yesterday, I heard excellent media critic Dan Froomkin on NPR’s “On the Media” program saying that political coverage has to change because it’s not serving the public during our current fascism crisis. Added to the snippets AL included in the OP, I’d say it’s almost looking like a trend!

  16. 16.

    Tony Jay

    This was mentioned in the dead thread below, so I wrote about it, but as I explained there, I want everyone to know exactly how much I despise these people, and why, so I’ve dropping it here too.

     

    A bit of UK News

    In the least surprising personnel decision since Chris Chibnall was asked to fuck the fuck off out of the Doctor Who hotseat (and continue fucking off at breakneck speed until propelled far enough away from the solar system that he’d run out of of oxygen and heat and float frostily unmourned through the black immensity of Space, leaving both ‘fuck’ and ‘off’ free to journey on to Concept Heaven where they would feast happily forever in the Halls of Profanity singing ribald songs of how they were there when the existential threat of Chibbers setting finger to keyboard and making Doctor Who bad again was finally lifted) our unconvincing 3/5 scale model of a Prime Minister Rishi ‘Gossamer Balls’ Sunak has reshuffled his Cabinet of Fools and found within it no place for the MAGAesque vomit-socket that is former Home Secretary Suella Braverman.

    I wrote about this briefly last week and over the weekend, but I don’t expect anyone to remember that so here it is in typically profuse précis.

    Braverman is sort of what you’d get if you put Candace Williams and a little Nikki Haley dandruff into a malfunctioning teleportation pod with Sidney Powell and raised the resulting garbage spawn to think it was 1000% smarter than it actually was. A crappy lawyer with her eye on rapid progression through the Tory Party ranks by being THE brown best friend of every swing-jawed racist goon and trans-Atlantic ‘New Conservative’ thinktankachik with a victim to blame and an institution to undermine. She was made Attorney-General by Flobalob, Home Secretary by Lizard-Eye Truss and then restored to that post by Sunak after she was sacked by Truss for deliberately sharing confidential information via e-mail. Yes, Sunak gave one of the three great Offices of State back to someone that even The Lettuce That Crashed The Economy had to sack for malicious incompetence, that’s how politically weak and terrified of the Tory Faaaaaaar-Right Our Glorious Leader was on Day One of his awfully big misadventure, and he’s only lost vertebrae every day since then.

    There’s a litany of Right-Populist bile out there with Braverman’s name on it for anyone who likes bathing in cess to look up if they want, from fingerbanging herself to sleep at night at the thought of expelling asylum seekers to Rwandan prison-camps to declaring homelessness to be a lifestyle-choice best dealt with by banning tents, but take it from me, if there’s a space in the schedule marked ‘Leave gobbet of rancid red-meat (pre-chewed) here for the Gammon Swarm to feast on’, you can guarantee it’s been filled in by a singy-songy girly-voiced rant by every decent person’s least favourite Hate Muppet. That’s literally all she’s ever done. Audition after audition after audition for the roll of Führerin of the British Far-Right, not so much moving the Overton Window right as kicking down its front door at three in the morning and dragging it past its screaming children into the back of an unmarked black Mercedes then driving as far to the right as possible to where await the cold-eyed professional convincers with their tools of metal and heat.

    The thing is, she obviously wanted to be sacked by Sunak, everyone knows it. She can see as clearly as anyone else that the Tories are toxic and are going to lose badly in the next Election, and it would do her no good to go down with that ship or to be seen as following the rat exodus overboard closer to the day. No, she wanted out right now with a big, flashy-fashy act of victimitude, stabbed in the back by the unelected wooden spoon of Number 10 because she and she alone was ‘patriotic’ enough to “speak simple common-sense” on behalf of the Tory Party Base and its associated neo-fascist co-dependents. She couldn’t have made it more obvious if she’d walked up to Sunak and gouged chunks out of his smooth, featureless groin with a broken Stella Artois bottle screaming “England Prevails!!”, but this is Modern Britain, where the News Media isn’t there to inform as much as to provide a cheap venue for Le Théâtre Des Merde to act out their solo performance pieces for an audience of four or five disinterested foreign owners.

    The plan was, I suppose, for Braverman to take advantage of the UK’s unsustainably skewed narrative regarding the Israel/Palestine issue (Question Israel = Hate Jews/Support Palestine = Pro-Holocaust) that was thrown together between 2016-19 to protect the country’s owners from paying mildly increased taxes that would fund much needed centre-left reforms (the absolute horror) in order to define herself as the only woman who would – if she was in charge – have had the stones to ban Saturday’s Pro-Peace March in London and have its organisers arrested, jailed and electro-punished for being smelly, Lefty tree terrorist-huggers. A month ago, that would have been fine and dandy, and she would probably have had the tacit backing of most of the Establishment, but the bloodstained reality getting kinetically blasted across the nation’s TV screens from Gaza has shredded that particular narrative like a pair of edible knickers at a Tom Jones concert, and the Tories (like their mirror-images in Nu-New Labour) just haven’t been able to keep up.

    Her spewing bile on the proposed March just focussed attention on who, exactly, was lined up in opposition to it (the Right, the Hard-Right, the Far-Right, the Very Far-Right and the Gibbering Legions of Ryteefashynatzee, The Undying Thing Of Many Angles That Devours Innocent Souls) and then her nudge-nudge, wink-wink calls for Britain’s version of the Proud Boys to come down to the capital all tooled-up and bubbling with amphetamine courage in order to ‘protect the Cenotaph’ January 6th style (since the ‘Woke Police’ wouldn’t)  ensured that the Metropolitan Police, usually the first in line to bash the brains out of the enemies of the status-quo, was left with no choice but to release a very firm and unyielding “No” to any calls for a ban.

    Saturday couldn’t really have gone worse for Braverman and the ideology she represents. The Peace March went off smoothly. Hundreds of thousands of people from all races and religions filing through the streets of London expressing their very diverse opposition to Britain’s foreign policy folly in numbers not seen since Blair was burrowing his way up Bush the Lesser’s fundament, with only about 150 or so detained (but not charged) after the event for being over-excited pricks and a tiny handful (10 at last count) being picked out on social media for wearing or displaying pro-Hamas fuckery and/or shouting antisemitic shit. While over by the Cenotaph and in pubs and train stations nearby, hundreds of bulge-eyed wannabe brownshirts were shown on film charging Police lines, screaming racist insults and generally acting like the rabid pond-scum they are.

    Holy PR Balls-Up, Batman!

    In the aftermath and up until this morning Braverman and the usual suspects in the Press tried to fight a rearguard action against unwelcome reality. Condemning the entire March as a ‘vile celebration of hatred’, threatening after-the-fact investigations to ‘find the perpetrators’ and generally trying to draw an equivalence between the far-Right mob violence against the Police they’d encouraged and half a million plus people saying they’d rather that their Government didn’t aid and abet the slaughter of children, thanks very much. Meanwhile the professional outrage feeders like the Campaign Against Antisemitism and certain really vile TV celebrities were reduced to accusing the Police of “letting Britain’s Jews down” by not banning the March. Weak sauce.

    So, come this morning, Sunak held a hasty reshuffle of his Cabinet and, lo and behold, Braverman is out. It says absolutely everything that needs to be said about how terrible Sunak is at everything to do with politics that he waited to do it until after the significance of him booting Braverman was drained away by inaction and the fiction of it being just another unconnected bureaucratic move to ‘freshen up his team’.

    Lying about why he did it won’t make the Tory Right despise him less, it won’t stop Braverman monetising her getting the sack by going on GB News and whining about the betrayal, and it certainly won’t win him any plaudits from outside the Right Wing bubble where the time to show strength and punish her for openly defying him and openly promoting mob violence was BEFORE THIS MORNING’S PANICKED RESHUFFLE YOU HOLLOW VESSEL OF LAQUER AND VARNISH!!!

    And then he brings back David ‘Mister Luvva Luvva Ham’ Cameron to be Foreign Secretary. For fucks sake! The man who brought us Austerity and Brexit before wandering off into the mists of nowhere like a third act extra in a Julian Fellows film about privileged toffs being splendidly normal chaps. All that tells everyone is that the Tory cupboard is entirely bare, and the Civil War ignited by Cameron’s cowardly decision to put an EU Referendum in the Tory manifesto is well and truly on.

    This is Britain. What a state we’re in.

  17. 17.

    Scout211

    I just wasted an entire few minutes reading an article on Politico, written by JMart, who is the most brilliant political strategist who ever lived, just ask him.  He has advice for the Biden campaign on how to “turn things around.” It involves some “brilliant” strategies, like bringing in Rahm Emmanuel, Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney! Genius!

    There’s more brilliance, but don’t waste 5 minutes of your morning like I did.

    NEW: How Biden can turn it around. Not since 2016 have Democrats been so despairing. And the anxieties are uniform, not limited to one faction and hardly just DC. So what can be done? My column with insights from a range of Dems >https://t.co/VI7nEweu9P— Jonathan Martin (@jmart) November 13, 2023

  19. 19.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @Baud: And those things called tickets, and that thing called money, which may well be in short supply for some of those volunteers who got flown down to South Carolina…

  20. 20.

    WaterGirl

    @Scout211:

    He has advice for the Biden campaign on how to “turn things around.” It involves some “brilliant” strategies, like bringing in Rahm Emmanuel, Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney! Genius!

    That part should have come with a trigger warning!  Geez.  How stupid are these people?

  22. 22.

    hueyplong

    Wake me up when one of these media outlets finds a 2020 Biden voter who plans to switch his* vote to Trump next year.

     

    *Dobbs rules current elections, so it’s a waste of time pondering hypotheticals about female Dem voters embracing the p grabber who brags about how “we killed Roe v Wade.”

  27. 27.

    WaterGirl

    @MazeDancer: I wonder if everybody got the same memo – we are officially cutting Trump loose – so cover it as you will. Or maybe cover it this way, calling out the authoritarianism.

    So many “news” outlets shifting at once, sure looks like enemy action to me, or at least like coordinated talking points.

    We’ll know soon, I imagine.

  28. 28.

    Kay

    @Scout211:

    It’s not that bad. But I think they’re wrong that Dobbs is the only reason Democrats are winning. As it turns out, no one gives a shit about “wokeness” which no one in media will ever admit but is true. Republicans have now lost two cycles running against woke. I would have thought the absolute implosion of Ron DeSantis would have convinced conservatives/media that anti woke is a loser, but apparently not.

  32. 32.

    Kay

    @Scout211:

    Is Bill and Hillary on I/P a bad idea? The issue is bad politically for Biden and the Clintons are genuinely good negotiators – I know the Right would go bananas but who gives a shit? Normies might like it.

  33. 33.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @WaterGirl:

    Was it Romney or Trump who left their peeps stranded away from home and didn’t cover tickets for the campaign people?

    I can’t remember that incident, but frankly, neither would surprise me.

  34. 34.

    lowtechcyclist

    @MazeDancer:

    Maybe something’s happening. Maybe.

    Morning Joe has been focussed on “vermin” and Project 2025 all show.

    Maybe they got a clue when the FTFNYT was lambasted for treating the ‘vermin’ speech like business as usual.

  35. 35.

    smith

    @lowtechcyclist: Maybe they got a clue when the FTFNYT was lambasted for treating the ‘vermin’ speech like business as usual.

    Maybe they finally woke up to the reality that they won’t in fact be the favored exceptions when TFG suspends the Constitution, and that they’ll end up on the cattle cars with the rest of us. Despite all they’ve done for him.

  38. 38.

    Chris

    @Tony Jay:

    Well, glad it went as badly for Braverman and the rest of the Tories as it did, at any rate.

    As in America, I’d love to believe that cops seeing themselves repeatedly assaulted by brownshirts will finally get them as an institution to wake the fuck up that the people they need to worry about aren’t on the left; heck, I’d settle for “we will keep fucking with the left but we must also start fucking with the right.”  In America at any rate, there was never much chance of that happening, even after 1/6.

  39. 39.

    Geminid

    I see that newly-elected Representative Gabe Amo will be sworn in today. A bright, young addition to the Democratic Caucus.

  40. 40.

    Soprano2

    @MazeDancer: Maybe the outright use of the word “vermin” to describe his political opponents, which exactly echoes Hitler, was finally too much even for much of the press who has been trying to prop him up. We can hope it finally got someone’s attention, because I’m afraid most of the usual suspects will still tell us we’re all hyperventilating and “it’s just words” when we say how concerned we are about how inflammatory his rhetoric has gotten. As one person I knew who studied these things said, violence rarely happens without words being used first.

  42. 42.

    RaflW

    @yellowdog: The cheapest one way ticket Des Moines > Charleston any day in the next 7 is $381. I’m sure volunteer campaign operatives are happy to shell out.

    eta: @WaterGirl Well, yes, but that’s if you’re organized, compassionate, and not dead broke.

  43. 43.

    Chris

    @Kay:

    It’s not that bad. But I think they’re wrong that Dobbs is the only reason Democrats are winning. As it turns out, no one gives a shit about “wokeness” which no one in media will ever admit but is true.

    Like I said last week: as times and national electorates change, social conservatism especially on sex-related matters has gone from being an asset to a liability (I think some time in the late 2000s was the exact moment it happened), and not only Republicans but the media and to some extent the entire political establishment, which is still wired for twentieth century thinking, still can’t quite believe it’s happening.

    I’m a millennial (born late 1980s).  I and, I think, most people my age didn’t know what the hell “transgender” was growing up.  But we knew what “gay” was.  And we’re not so dumb that we haven’t noticed that the current Trans Panic is just an exceptionally shitty remake of the Gay Panic from our childhoods.  And most of us knew the Gay Panic was bullshit even then, so, well, draw your own conclusions.

  44. 44.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: Interesting idea. Even beyond the freak-out from the right, there might be a lot of Beltway media harrumphing about the lack of bipartisanship, but is there even a credible Repub foreign policy elder left who isn’t tarred by an association with GWB or Trump? I can’t think of one off hand. And maybe Netanyahu’s partisan meddling needs to be repaid in kind. If the majority of Israelis and Palestinians agree on anything, it might be that Netanyahu has to go to make any progress at all.

  46. 46.

    RaflW

    @Chris: I actually think that, to the modest extent that people care about ‘wokeness’, they’ve come to understand that Republicans banging on about it is code for book banning and meddling in schoolday operations, and don’t like it.

    Wokeness isn’t why their rent has gone up faster than their paychecks (though the latter has indeed also happened). Wokeness isn’t why college is incredibly expensive for their kids. And it isn’t why there’s two really terrible wars under way overseas.

    Voters know our country is wobbly.* They also know that a GOP buzzword (which is all it has become) isn’t why.

    *It is far less so than 3 years ago, Biden has done a ton to improve things, but as he notes in his own campaign coms now, he’s eager to finish the work he’s started.

  48. 48.

    lowtechcyclist

    Terry Pratchett, in Carpe Jugulum:

    “There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment about the nature of sin, for example,” said Oats.
    “And what do they think? Against it, are they?” said Granny Weatherwax.
    “It’s not as simple as that. It’s not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of gray.”
    “Nope.”
    “Pardon?”
    “There’s no grays, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.”
    “It’s a lot more complicated than that . . .”
    “No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”
    “Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes . . .”
    “But they starts with thinking about people as things . . . ”

    Once you start defining a group of people as being less than human, you’re giving permission to yourself and your followers to do anything they want to the people in that group, because you don’t see them as human beings anymore. What does one do with vermin? You exterminate them if you can.

  50. 50.

    hueyplong

    “Woke” is recycled “PC” with a little more than a soupcon of blacketty black inference.  Its shelf life could be expected to be a single election cycle, especially if they won with it so that its reality could be exposed by its use in local power.

    Did I miss the annual October-early November scary caravan, or is that only an even-year event?

  51. 51.

    Keithly

    @Tony Jay: Reposting some parody lyrics I wrote in response to your piece in the downstairs thread:
    Braverman, Suella,
    Was sacked for talking rot.
    She was not afraid to lie
    Oh, brave Suella.
    She was not at all afraid
    To be slagged in nasty ways.
    Brave, brave, brave, brave Suella!

  53. 53.

    TS

    @Tony Jay:

    And then he brings back David ‘Mister Luvva Luvva Ham’ Cameron to be Foreign Secretary. For fucks sake! The man who brought us Austerity and Brexit before wandering off into the mists of nowhere like a third act extra in a Julian Fellows film about privileged toffs being splendidly normal chaps. All that tells everyone is that the Tory cupboard is entirely bare, and the Civil War ignited by Cameron’s cowardly decision to put an EU Referendum in the Tory manifesto is well and truly on.

    Not even a vague thought that this was going down – and asking the King for a peerage to avoid anything resembling a pesky election – which he would probably lose. Almost like Australia making Tony Abbott PM – but even he didn’t get recycled.

  56. 56.

    Geminid

    @WaterGirl: Jonathan Martin is disappointed that Joe Biden’s Campaign Manager and Assistant Campaign Manager are not “stars” like Rahm Emmanual, but instead are young, experienced pros who are too busy working to give him the time of day.

  57. 57.

    Tony Jay

    @Keithly:

    I just saw that!

    I’ll say this for Braverman, she understands her place in the wingnut bubble universe and she’s feeding it all the mouldy milk it can stomach.

  58. 58.

    Chris

    @lowtechcyclist:

    He’s putting it in plainer language, but I appreciate that this is pure Kant:

    “So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.”

  59. 59.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    And maybe Netanyahu’s partisan meddling needs to be repaid in kind

    Bill Clinton is a hard ass. He was always a wily hard ass underneath all the emoting and pain-feeling. I think we could use someone who knows Netanyahu will screw us and stays ahead of that. Because he will screw us. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.

  61. 61.

    Tony Jay

    @TS: Mad, isn’t it? David Cameron? Are they that desperate for votes they’re hoping to nail down the pig seducer demographic?

  63. 63.

    Nelle

    OT (Open Thread?  Off Topic?) – Anyone else think of what they should have said the next day?  Here goes, in relation to my post yesterday.  It got derailed just a bit, or redirected, by someone criticizing a young woman whom I reported as being terrified of school shootings.  That reaction is precisely why people are shamed, why they shut up, why they feel deligitimized, why they don’t bother with politics.  Their experiences are devalued.  That opinion scolds, doesn’t listen, and is about the speaker, who is totally ignorant of the young woman, her life, her context, but yet is confident to pronounce that she is wrong to feel that way.  She could already be traumatized and mass shootings and the media mesmerization of them may be the cherry on top of a shit sundae.

    What I want to encourage people to do is to think of conversation as hospitality in the truest sense of the word, as an invitation to come to the table of words, ideas, and values without prejudgment.  I’m particularly interested in young women in service roles; I want them to know their worth, not just for serving coffee nicely, but as thinking people who have a place in our lives.  I hope to bring them into our political lives, if they are not there already.  Dobbs has also given a big opening for that.

    Now, back to other conversations

  64. 64.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    My only fear with Bill Clinton is he’s spent too long at those idiot Aspen events so is now a weak, vapid moron. We need the attorney general of Arkansas Bill Clinton.

  65. 65.

    Chris

    @catclub:

    Yeah.  Lots of American conservatives ape fascist language without really thinking about it, and then get outraged if you point out what they’re doing, but it’s always been clear to me at least that Trump isn’t one of those.  His line about “were we even on the right side of that one?” in re WWI or WWII, which the media happily ignored, was what cinched it for me; it’s pretty clear that he grew up in a household where “America made a huge mistake in supporting the Allies” was accepted wisdom.

  66. 66.

    Geminid

    @eclare: I think high profile mediators will only get in the way. This war needs a durable ceasefire first, and that will not be possible until the IDF either fails or succeeds in their campaign to remove Hamas from power. They are 13 days into this invasion and they’ll be at it 13 more at least. Then it will be Egypt and Qatar who broker a ceasefire, like they did in the 11-day war in May of 2021.

  67. 67.

    Geminid

    @Kay: It will be up to the Israelis to toss Netanyahu out. They may do that later rather than sooner, but they will do it.

  69. 69.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: Agree 100% about Netanyahu. How about a tag team of Hillary Clinton and Samantha Power? I’m sure Clinton is well over the “monster” dust-up from aught-8! ;-)

  70. 70.

    Kay

    @hueyplong:

    I think the difference this time between “PC” and “woke” is woke had a huge group of insufferable “public intellectuals” who were convinced it was an existential threat to the enlightenment. That’s why Republicans hung onto it past the DeSantis and Youngkin wins. It should have been one cycle except the NYTimes and the Atlantic and 5000 Substacks kept it alive. But VOTERS didn’t give a shit.

  71. 71.

    wjca

    @Kay:  I would have thought the absolute implosion of Ron DeSantis would have convinced conservatives/media that anti woke is a loser, but apparently not.

    The thing is, there are so many other reasons to be repelled by DeSantis.  So it’s not necessarily obvious that it was just a failure of “wokeness” as a campaign linchpin that did him in.

  73. 73.

    smith

    @Kay: I don’t want to sound like a common ageist political pundit, but the last time I saw Bill on the TV he was looking really wobbly. That was in 2016, when he was, I think, only 70. Certainly Hillary is up for it, but I think Bill’s time has passed.

  74. 74.

    catclub

    @Ladyraxterinok: Pretty sure it was Romney

     

    I remember now it was Romney on election night. The campaign workers did not get to use their travel cards on end of (losing) campaign liquor up. He is Mormon after all.

  76. 76.

    wjca

    @yellowdog: But once the campaign is suspended I don’t  think they are allowed to spend money on campaign expenses.

    Nothing (except bad planning or total indifference) keeps a campaign from buying the tickets before announcing that it is suspending operations.

    EDT I see at least two others got here first.  Which just means it’s totally obvious that there was a solution.  (Makes me think it was Trump’s campaign.   It’s his longtime MO.)

  78. 78.

    3Sice

    I’m working on resurrecting New Deal zombie voters.

    Test subjects keep saying “brains” rather than “economic insecurity”… so if any of you lot have any ideas, I’m open to suggestions.

  79. 79.

    smith

    @Kay: In my opinion, it was #MeToo that broke the public intellectuals more than “woke.” Suddenly the formerly-established perk of powerful men to hit on young women in less-powerful positions had some real potential consequences, and many of them knew they were personally vulnerable.

  80. 80.

    wjca

    @WaterGirl: Yeah, I guess fake girlfriends don’t come cheap!

    Well, if the writers’ strike was still on, an out of work actress might not have been that expensive….

  81. 81.

    smith

    @catclub: OK, I haven’t seen him recently, so he may have bounced back. In 2016, it was kind of shocking, as the contrast with his former self was dramatic.

  83. 83.

    Geminid

    @RaflW: Actually, it sounds like Rahm Emanuel is doing pretty well as Ambassador. Besides the typical work he’s doing strengthening bilateral and regional relations, Emanual is also gently prodding the Japanese to accept same-sex marriages.

  84. 84.

    lollipopguild

    @Kay: They can very quickly separate deathsantis from “woke” desantis is a LOSER  but bashing Woke is a sure winner.

  85. 85.

    Scout211

    @Geminid: Jonathan Martin is disappointed that Joe Biden’s Campaign Manager and Assistant Campaign Manager are not “stars” like Rahm Emmanual, but instead are young, experienced pros who are too busy working to give him the time of day.

    Exactly!

    @Kay: Yes, JMart has some advice that is not that bad.  But it’s all conventional wisdom that has to do with campaign strategies that are best suited for next year, not almost 12 months out.  And there is no doubt that the Biden team is looking at all aspects of their strategies.  They don’t need his advice.

    IMHO, bringing back the Clintons and Rahm Emanuel is not good advice if the Biden team needs to counter the trope that Biden is too old and out of touch.  And courting Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney and Joe Manchin is just ridiculous.

    But not focusing so much on the specifics of JMart’s advice, it’s the stark underlying message of his commentary.  He is giving Biden’s team his brilliant advice one, because he is brilliant and two, because the Biden team is a complete failure.  All of his Democratic sources say so!  They are in despair!

    Waste of time, JMart.

  87. 87.

    RaflW

    @Kay: It’s funny (ok, not at all) how so many of the orgs/people you reference who’ve been up in arms for years about free speech on college campuses – and by that, I mean that ‘woke’ has dared to tell fascist and other whiteness projects to STFU – have pussy footed around actual campus book banning, curriculum-constricting, etc.

    Really proved themselves to be pro rich white male status quo. Not freedom of thought or freedom to teach or any of that.

  88. 88.

    Chris

    @RaflW:

    Honestly, a stupendous amount of these people were bad faith actors right off the bat, even the ones that weren’t openly Republicans.

  89. 89.

    Citizen Alan

    @WaterGirl: IIRC, RMoney canceled all his election staffers’ credit cards the morning after the election with no warning. Those who were away from home at the time had to make their own travel arrangements to get back.

  90. 90.

    Betty Cracker

    @smith: I’m not sure it makes sense to separate #MeToo from the anti-woke panic. #MeToo scared the shit out of elite media/culture gatekeepers because, as we subsequently saw when the credible accusations flooded out, many elite gatekeepers considered it their right to hit on/masturbate in front of, etc., their subordinates. #MeToo made them feel vulnerable.

    But the post-BLM panic about “woke” was a similar reaction to a new vulnerability vector, so maybe it’s not separate. For the gatekeepers, now not only were women not going to put up with their unwanted advances, they feared people who aren’t white, people who are queer, etc., would no longer tolerate being denigrated and discriminated against. For the gatekeepers, this was another loss of impunity to resent. 

  91. 91.

    Chris

    @Citizen Alan:

    Perfect way to wrap up the campaign, wasn’t it?  At the height of the worst economy since the Great Depression, Republicans decided it was a good idea to run “Mitt Romney, Your Dickbag Boss.”  Great thinking, guys.

  93. 93.

    Soprano2

    @smith: I’m waiting for stuff to come out about Bill Maher. He’s one of the biggest anti-woke people out there, and being anti-Me Too is part of that. All the ladies are making too much out of some harmless fun, don’tcha know?

  95. 95.

    Bill Arnold

    @lowtechcyclist:

    Maybe they got a clue when the FTFNYT was lambasted for treating the ‘vermin’ speech like business as usual.

    Maybe, but the use of the word “vermin” to describe opponents of Trump is Fascism Language 101, and easily understood as such. And it wasn’t just one time; it was (at least) three times. (That’s an interesting number, BTW.)

  96. 96.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Scout211:

    They are in despair!

    Every girl and boy!

    But when JMart the Pundit gets here, everybody’s gonna jump for joy! barf on his shoes!

  97. 97.

    Soprano2

    @RaflW: “Free speech/anti-cancel-culture warrior” Bill Maher was applauding the idea that people would lose job offers because of their opinion about the Israel/Gaza war just a few weeks ago. Because of course the idea of unfettered free speech not getting you “cancelled” is only for unpopular conservative opinions.

  98. 98.

    gvg

    @Kay: Is Bill still with it? I haven’t heard much from him for several years, and I had the impression his health was going downhill. In fact, I was sort of worried that he might be getting dementia, not Joe. He may have chosen to step back to give Hillary a chance, but her campaign was awhile ago.

  99. 99.

    smith

    @Betty Cracker: Yes, certainly both were assaults on white male privilege — or perhaps impunity is a better word — and both deeply undercut opinion-makers’ and public intellectuals’ assumptions about their place in the world.

    It must be uncomfortable for them to realize that their only political refuge for countering “woke” is  the less salubrious faction of Republicanism. That could be why they’ve been so reluctant to acknowledge the grimier aspects of MAGA.

  100. 100.

    Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog

    @lowtechcyclist:

    Maybe the FTFNYT will catch up eventually.

     
    On past performance, they’ll wait a very, very, decent interval, and then take a look at their own reporting and asking for form’s sake if they went off track, and maybe starting another iteration of their Credibility Project, which will, like version 1, disappear without a trace within weeks.

    Also, congratulations!

  101. 101.

    Chris

    @Soprano2:

    Bill Maher actually got canceled in 2002 for daring to offend the precious fee-fees of the post-9/11 blood frenzy crowd.  He knows there’s consequences to offending conservatives.  He has no such concerns about offending liberals.

  102. 102.

    opiejeanne

    @smith: In 2019 our youngest got us tickets to hear Hillary Clinton speak in Seattle. The host was Bradley Whitford, and Bill was on stage too and Bradley asked him some questions, too. He looked good, and he’s still very angry about the way Hillary was treated by the media and Comey and the butter emails crowd. It was very apparent how much he admires her, is proud of her, and loves her.

  103. 103.

    Chris

    @smith:

    It must be uncomfortable for them to realize that their only political refuge for countering “woke” is  the less salubrious faction of Republicanism. That could be why they’ve been so reluctant to acknowledge the grimier aspects of MAGA.

    This is one of the many problems that “both sides do it! (but liberals are worse)” ideology is supposed to solve.

  104. 104.

    Soprano2

    @Chris: I remember that, I was hoping he learned something from that, but evidently all he learned was not to piss off right-wingers.

  106. 106.

    RaflW

    @Geminid: OK, well it sounds like he’s got a full plate and should stick with that. I dislike him greatly, but if he’s doing the work and keeping his arrogant head down, all the better.

  107. 107.

    Betty Cracker

    @smith: Great point about their reluctance to acknowledge the ugliness of the MAGA movement. It’s not all about tax cuts and deregulation!

  108. 108.

    Sure Lurkalot

    Someone in a thread yesterday proposed some AV knowledgeable person switch in Hitler giving a speech halfway through one of Trump’s diatribes at a rally.

    Similarly, I wish someone would substitute Steven Miller’s ghoulish head on video of Trump spouting the vermin/Marxist/enemy within words that Miller surely wrote.

  110. 110.

    smith

    @Betty Cracker: It must really chafe that they had to lie down with such flea-infested avatars of definitely-not-the-Right-Sort to get any political cover to defend their privilege. I wonder if the reason they are now willing to highlight both TFG’s apparent dementia and his outright fascism is that it relieves them of some of the cognitive dissonance they must feel.

  111. 111.

    laura

    @Nelle: Beautifully off topic. I try to avoid using my life as a measuring stick- and it’s not easy. Thanks to you, I’m adding active looking for the space in interactions to find the thing to apply some kindness and acknowledgment.

  112. 112.

    Neal

    I have to admit that I am a bit worried about my personal safety should Trump be reelected as I am a died in the wool Marxist.

    A Night At The Opera, Duck Soup, and Animal Crackers are all favorites or mine. Those plus a number of Groucho’s interviews make for time well spent.

  113. 113.

    Soprano2

    @Nelle: This is a great way to think about it. When you tell people their opinions and beliefs are stupid right upfront, they aren’t going to listen to a word you say after that. (I don’t know how I would react to a QAnon spouting person, though). I had an incident with a friend who had experience with dementia problems because her mother had them. I shared something that happened with my husband that was hurtful to me, and instead of sympathy or empathy I got a lecture (that’s how they are, you’d better get used to it) and a bunch of suggestions for things to do that I already knew. What I learned from that is not to expect any sympathy from this person at all.

  114. 114.

    smith

    @Neal: Clearly, you’re snowflake overreacting to a little bit of dramatic rhetoric, at least according to Stephen Cheung:

    Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, told The Post “those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and their entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.”

    See? No big deal.

  116. 116.

    smith

    @RaflW: Wouldn’t it be refreshing if, when the inevitable Republican shows up on a Sunday show, he/she is challenged to defend this crap? I just saw that TFG is also now promising to confine Jack Smith and Letitia James in mental institutions when he takes office. That also seems to be his solution to the homelessness problem. Funny, I vaguely remember another government or two that used that genius idea.

  117. 117.

    Betty Cracker

    @Soprano2: I don’t know your friend and you do, so I’ll assume your diagnosis is correct and she behaved like an insensitive clod you cannot rely on for sympathy. But I know people who seem that way at first who instead turn out to be “fixers” — folks whose first thought when someone they like is experiencing difficulty is “how can I solve this problem” instead of “how can I comfort my friend.”

    I tend to be a fixer too and didn’t realize how it came across sometimes until a friend pointed out that sometimes we just need someone to hear us and respond with empathy. I guess I was an insensitive clod for not understanding that intuitively, but I’m grateful to the friend who pointed it out. I think it has made me a better friend because now I don’t always leap immediately into problem-solving mode.

  121. 121.

    Soprano2

    @Betty Cracker: I’ve been trying to think of a way to mention this to her. If all she had done was offer helpful suggestions (they were good, but I already knew them all) I would think about it that way, but the “That’s the way they are, you just have to get used to it” statement is what got me. In that moment it wasn’t helpful to be told “Sorry, your feelings are going to get hurt a lot, better get used to it”. I doubt you ever did anything like that! That showed zero sympathy for my pain at what had happened. Plus, having a spouse with dementia is different than having a parent with it, I have to keep reminding myself of that.

  122. 122.

    JoyceH

    I think “vermin” broke through because it’s just not a word in common usage these days. I don’t think even the pest control companies use it. So if you go back to its use in other speeches, it’s going to be immediately apparent that it is and was most commonly used by authoritarians whipping up hatred against a targeted group. And Trump is using it against at least half his own countrymen. That will set off even the oldest and most rickety alarm bell.

    Something occurred to me the other day. We know a lot about what Trump was up to, before, during and after his time in office. But once he’s finally removed from the board, in prison, hospital or grave, once he’s finally not just removed from power but from the possibility of returning, more is going to come out – a LOT more. That’s been the history of these lifelong villains- the really awful stuff comes out later. Given the horrors that we already know, geez, what’s the other stuff going to be?

  124. 124.

    Citizen Alan

    @Sure Lurkalot: While I have limitless disdain for the MAGA freaks, I find it hard to believe that even they wouldn’t notice that something has gone wrong if Shitgibbon suddenly starts speaking German.

  125. 125.

    dexwood

    @gvg: Bill C was in Santa Fe for Bill Richardson’s memorial service in September. I saw two local news stories from that day where he was briefly interviewed. He looked and sounded good.

  130. 130.

    evodevo

    @Baud: ​
      Wonder if his campaign will do them like RMoney did to his back in the day, and leave them stranded with no money or tickets…

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