Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

White supremacy is terrorism.

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

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

When we show up, we win.

This fight is for everything.

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

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

Human rights are not a matter of opinion!

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

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

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Foreign Affairs Open Thread: Merrie Englund, Proud & Free

Foreign Affairs Open Thread: Merrie Englund, Proud & Free

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Sometimes, when an American official like Greg Abbott or Ron DeSantis is being particularly obnoxious about threatening to saw off their fringe of nation for INDEPENDENCE, I check in on our British neighbors to see how the IRL test of such political theories is going…

Keep the filthy furriners out of our schools!



(Children of Men)
 
… But we have our FREEDUMB!

… Not in OUR back yard!…

I’m pro-personal-gardening, obviously, but not because I delude myself that I could grow enough to feed myself.

Reader Interactions

72Comments

  2. 2.

    AlaskaReader

    I knew better than turn on the teevee news…

    Schumer was holding forth.

    Never could stand it when politicians, like Schumer just did, make press statements to repeat cliches like  ‘the American people want to see Congress working together in a biparttsan manner’, 

    ….gahhhh,    …that’s not happened for several decades.

    …the stop gap funding compromise he’s crowing about is to sunset and leave us right back at the hostage taking situation it arose from.  That isn’t bipartisanship.

    I would tell Schumer, No, we don’t want Congress to work with Republicans, at this late date, I think it more likely a majority of the public would like Republicans banished from our sight and universally shunned for all time.  

    I think Schumer should have stressed that we wouldn’t even be talking about it if it weren’t for fascist-obstructionist Republicans who are willing to continue with an insurrection that’s still rolling right along.

    Schumer should ’do better’.

    No member of the Republican Party has any redeeming value.

    Compromising with terrorists is not bipartisanship.

  3. 3.

    brantl

    I’d live to see Schumer give the Tire Rims and Anthrax speach, but I doubt I will get the pleasure.

  4. 4.

    eclare

    Sigh.  Another own goal from the UK.  Also, funny how so many who were adamantly Brexit are now afraid to eat “‘not meant for EU” food because they think it isn’t held to proper standards.

  5. 5.

    ColoradoGuy

    It astounds me the Tories have engaged in systematic de-industrialization since Thatcher, and Austerity and Brexit only accelerated the economic destruction.

    One big difference between the Tories and the US Republicans is: the Tories are engaged in a society-wide Class Warfare, with the goal being the destruction of the entire UK middle class, while the Republicans are still pro-growth but want to build an entertainment-driven Nazi state.

  6. 6.

    Betty Cracker

    @AlaskaReader: The bipartisanship crap drives me nuts too, but apparently that really is where most Americans are, the dumb asses. The admin seems committed to threading the needle by hammering MAGA extremists as a threat while expressing a desire to work with the dwindling stock of non-MAGA Republicans to do the nation’s business.

  7. 7.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker:

    Agreed. As long as the substance of the compromises isn’t too bad, I’m not going to fret over bipartisanship rhetoric.

    People who actually want to fight Republicans will vote against them anyway. And anyone who wouldn’t isn’t worth chasing with strident rhetoric.

  8. 8.

    Betty Cracker

    O/T, but for reasons I can’t explain, I enjoy looking at apartment listings in New York City via curbed.com. I have absolutely no desire to live there, though I enjoy a visit now and then. It’s just fascinating to see what’s available, the insane prices people are willing to pay for spacious quarters, what’s on offer for folks on tighter budgets and also the weird layout choices people make due to necessity.

  9. 9.

    Brachiator

    @AlaskaReader:

    I would tell Schumer, No, we don’t want Congress to work with Republicans, at this late date, I think it more likely a majority of the public would like Republicans banished from our sight and universally shunned for all time.

    The average citizen doesn’t pay attention to government squabbles and expects things to get done. And yeah, this means bipartisanship. Obviously, this not paying attention works to the advantage of the GOP, but that’s just the way it goes.

    And we can’t banish Republicans. It’s tough enough trying to convince people to vote these asswipes out of office.

  10. 10.

    brantl

    @Betty Cracker: The Democrats need to speak, while displaying their sad faces, saying that they are trying to work with the sane Rethuglicans, but, sadly, few are left. And they need to pound that DAILY. Not strident, just sad, and disappointed.

  11. 11.

    ETtheLibrarian

    What is stupid about that Rwanda policy is that this will end up applying to a couple of thousand people and cost a lot of money. And what Rwanda will be sending refugees to the UK will make up for that. I think the government also admitted that they have no idea where some of the refugees they have already taken in even are.

  12. 12.

    AlaskaReader

    @Baud: We are where we find ourselves, to a large extent, precisely because too many have found it far easier to claim they will be polite rather than be strident when they should have.

  15. 15.

    AlaskaReader

    @Brachiator: If no one is willing to tell the public that it’s not actually ‘bipartisanship’ at all, the public will continue to believe in the myth.

    I’m not ready to cede that is the correct path to recommend.

  18. 18.

    AlaskaReader

    @Baud: How are ‘the people’ to ‘unify’ if no one is willing to tell those people what it means to unify or not?

    Someone can mumble the same platitudes and cliches that do nothing but advance myth, or maybe it’s time to start being a bit more ‘impolite’.

    …and by ‘impolite’, I mean telling the truth in plain speak.

  20. 20.

    R-Jud

    Yeah, the news over here is depressing. I keep thinking maybe it’s time to move back to the USA after 18 years over here. But on the one hand, Brexit. On the other hand, guns and private healthcare.

    The Child will decide when she’s 18 in a few years—she says she wants to live in the US.

    Meanwhile, I’m hoping the NHS can be salvaged under a future Labour government, even a triangulating right-leaning one under Starmer.

  21. 21.

    mrmoshpotato

    @p.a.:

    Can’t wait to hear from Tony-Not-for-EU-Jay about this! 

    Do you have a very comfy chair to sit in? 😁

  22. 22.

    Viva BrisVegas

    That racist policy made up out of thin air is actually a direct lift from the policy of our previous conservative government, which was  to pick up refugees arriving in Australia and drop them into concentration camps on Nauru and in New Guinea.

    It cost taxpayers untold (literally) billions and billions of dollars to implement a policy that kept a few thousand refugees away from this country, but fortunately the money spent went mostly into the pockets of contractors who happened to be friends of the (conservative) Liberal party. Some of it went to bribing various officials to look the other way as people were mistreated and occasionally brutalised. In the end the courts intervened and declared the whole thing an abomination and people mostly ended up where they intended to go in the first place, only now with shattered and wasted lives behind them.

    The political result though was pure gold. The policy kept these slimey scumbags in power for nine years since it was popular with the local redneck population of what are here called marginal electorates (swing districts?). It certainly wasn’t for any displays of anything resembling competence or humanity.

    The effect of this bribe money in PNG and Nauru is still being felt, as those with their hand out are now looking for a new sugar daddy and the Chinese are waving dollar bills at them and pointing at their lap.

    All in all, it was policy of genius from a collection of the most scrofulous, soulless fuckwits to ever grace this continent since the Rum Corp (Captain Bligh reference).

  23. 23.

    Baud

    @AlaskaReader:

    There’s plenty of truth telling about Republicans. You think more people are listening to Schumer’s press conferences than Dem campaign ads?

    Unfortunately, interested parties are evenly divided between the two parties, and normies aren’t that interested in partisan fighting. So as a partisan, I don’t see much gain in spending time complaining about Dem rhetoric about bipartisanship. All that does is turn whoever’s listening off of supporting Dems, for no good reason.

  26. 26.

    AlaskaReader

    @Baud: You think more people are listening to Schumer’s press conferences than Dem campaign ads?

    If I thought the issue was limited to Schumer’s presser I’d consider whether more people see a scrap of the nightly news with Schumer presented to them vs whether they turn off campaign material, any of it, out of hand.

    But that’s not central to the point I brought up about being a bit less polite and a lot more honest.   Everyone, not just Schumer.

    Continuing to give air to myth and lies, empty platitudes and meaningless cliches, isn’t any way to conduct politics and expect to see a change.

  27. 27.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: I don’t consider critiques of Dem rhetoric and messaging strategy a waste time, or at least no more so than any other type of political discussion that takes place here and in similar spaces. We’re interested for good reason because a lot is at stake. Talking it out is therapeutic in a stressful situation and can even have practical benefits.

    For example, making an effort to understand why Dems take the approach they do can be a good thing because if you’re persuaded by the logic, you can communicate more effectively within your own circles. I think that’s at least as likely as a scenario where someone stumbles across a discussion and decides not to support Democrats because they’re insufficiently mean to Republicans.

  30. 30.

    AlaskaReader

    @Betty Cracker: Insufficiently mean to Republicans?

    Unless I widely miss your point, that meme is a bit problematic too, isn’t it?

    ….we are talking about the ‘fuck your feelings’ folk, right?

  31. 31.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker:

    IMHO there is an obsession with rhetoric and messaging on the Internet that has tended to dwarf other factors.

    Dems aren’t going to stop talking about bipartisanship any more than they’re going to accommodate nervous Nellies who think Dems are too mean to Republicans.

     

    @AlaskaReader:

    It’s a way to get votes from people who aren’t like us. And getting votes is how you get change.

  32. 32.

    Baud

    I mean, we could be talking about what an amazing job they’ve done dealing with GOP hyeneas and keeping the government from shutting down completely, which is something people were pissing their pants about last year.

  33. 33.

    AlaskaReader

    @eclare: Ah, …that joggles the phrase loose, I have heard the lyric, likely it is in my library.

    I was thinking ‘building membranes’, that house uses that material, so I was a bit fuzzy.

  35. 35.

    AlaskaReader

    @Baud:

    It’s a way to get votes from people who aren’t like us. And getting votes is how you get change.

     

    It’s one way to attempt that feat.

    Proof of concept is another thing all together.

  38. 38.

    Baud

    @AlaskaReader:

    My proof of concept is Biden 2020.

    Where is your proof of concept? Who has been successful using your preferred messagimg outside of deep blue districts?

  39. 39.

    AlaskaReader

    @Baud:

    we could be talking about what an amazing job they’ve done dealing with GOP hyeneas and keeping the government from shutting down completely

    What I was hoping Schumer had made mention.

  43. 43.

    AlaskaReader

    @Baud: I’ll just say there’s a vast difference between ‘being in one’ face’ and speaking plainly without resorting to myth and lies.

    The definition of ‘politic’ doesn’t stop with ‘polite’.

    I lean toward the sensible and judicious, and have little respect for political posturing, especially if all it does is reinforce myth and lies.

    …and change evolves from a whole lot more than just votes, there’s maybe more important avenues that need attention too.

    Most of the social change has not arisen from votes, those votes follow public sentiment.  Shake people out of their doldrums and perhaps they’ll head to the polls.  Feed them platitudes and myth?  I’m thinking that turns most folks off.

  44. 44.

    Betty Cracker

    @AlaskaReader: My point is that in a closely divided country where people who don’t pay much attention end up deciding elections, a wholly partisan message (ex: all Republicans are terrible) is unlikely to resonate outside the already committed base, even if it’s true.

    So, I think it’s a smart strategy for Biden and elected Dems to divide Repubs into two categories, i.e., MAGA extremists who are nuts and a threat and normal Republicans we can work with. I get where you’re coming from because I hate the bipartisan prattle too! But I’ve come to believe it’s not only smart framing from a messaging standpoint but also important as a way of modeling how democratic governance is supposed to work.

  45. 45.

    AlaskaReader

    @NotMax: …I’m very good at avoiding clickbait.

    …I might come back to it, maybe tomorrow, it’s late on my schedule…

  48. 48.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Betty Cracker:

    My point is that in a closely divided country where people who don’t pay much attention end up deciding elections, a wholly partisan message (ex: all Republicans are terrible) is unlikely to resonate outside the already committed base, even if it’s true.

    Wholly partisan, even eliminationist rhetoric seems to work fine when the other side uses it.

  49. 49.

    AlaskaReader

    @Betty Cracker: I don’t think we’re far apart.

    I don’t expect Schumer to choose a copy of my rhetoric which is offered within a controlled environment such as this one, but I do wish instead of just mumbling that meaningless cliche, he had actually spoken to the work that has been obstructed, and will be obstructed in the near future.  When a word like bipartisan is used in a situation that does not and has not demonstrated bipartisanship, I don’t feel as it that was the best choice for framing.

    I’m not thinking I have the power to control the narrative, I don’t feel as though I have the wisdom or judgement to expect everyone should agree with my thinking when it comes to what the overall makeup or tone of the narrative should be.

    I’m just tired of hearing the same myths and lies excused away because ‘polity’.

    I think there’s enough evidence to demonstrate that doesn’t actually work very well.

  52. 52.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud: ​
     

    We are where we are because too many people have come up with excuses not to be unified when deciding who should run this country.

    You realize this makes no sense. There is no single deciding; there are hundreds of millions of individual and governmental decisions at different times, and the vast majority of them vote for unity.

    We elected a President in 2020. We elected the current House of Representatives in 2022, but its composition was dictated to a large extent by redistricting decisions made either in the wake of the 2010 midterm, or in the time since. The current Senate was elected in a combination of 2018, 2020, and 2022. So we’ve got at least four different elections – 2010, 2018, 2020, and 2022 – that contribute to the current legislative branch.

    Then you’ve got losing the Senate in 2014, followed by losing the White House in 2016, that resulted in the current composition of the Supreme Court.

    Who are these people who, when deciding for or against unity, came up with excuses to not be unified? And when did they make that decision against unity, and what were their excuses?

  54. 54.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: I admit, there’s a part of me that keeps asking “when do WE get to bring the crazy?” There’s a freeing quality to it, being able to just say hateful shit that doesn’t make sense. But our side’s crazies always seem to turn it inward.

  55. 55.

    Baud

    @lowtechcyclist:

    Each decision is individual. That’s why we’re awash in propaganda that comes up with different reasons for different people to not associate with us.  They only need to convince a small percentage to win elections.

  56. 56.

    lowtechcyclist

    @AlaskaReader: ​
     

    I think Dem leaders should (a) consistently affirm their willingness to work with the Republicans, but (b) remind people of what they’re up against. They really could do something analogous to tire rims and anthrax, by saying what they’re trying to accomplish, and comparing it with what House Republicans are voting for (on those infrequent occasions when they can get their act together enough to even vote).

  57. 57.

    Jeffg166

    @Betty Cracker: A young couple, who work from home, moved in across the street from me. They are renting. They moved to Philadelphia from Queens NYC. They are probably paying less per month for three times or more the space that had in Queens.

  59. 59.

    Baud

    And to be honest, if you’re looking for strong Dem rhetoric, there’s probably more of it now than at any time in recent memory.

  64. 64.

    Princess

    @eclare: It’s hilarious because one of the oldest British ejections to the EU was that they were forced to adhere to European food standards and labelling. I remember a very funny very old Yes Minister episode featuring the “euro sausage.”

  65. 65.

    Citizen Alan

    @Betty Cracker:  Deep down, everyone who talks about bipartisanship really means “we’ll all get along when everyone submits to my demands.” There are literally no issues on which any Republican will move towards a Democratic position because the only thing Republicans care about is Democrats losing.

  66. 66.

    Tony Jay

    The Rwanda Policy is, at its core, exactly what it looks like. A three word slogan that acts as a password into whatever Bubble reality those hearing it want to access. It only means “an impossibly contradictory nonsense plan that solves nothing, costs hundreds of millions and serves only to terrorise asylum seekers” to those silly people who look at the text of the agreement, listen to what everyone involved is actually saying and make their judgements accordingly, but they don’t breed clickbait engagement or ginger up the horserace, so who cares what they think?

    The people Sunak is appealing to are the kind of frothing ichor from the eyeballs Global Konservatism acolytes who think the Tory Party is a squishy, centrist failure on the issue of race and that Reform UK (the post-Farage astroturf group that succeeded the parts of the Brexit Party/UKIP that didn’t become Tories) might be a better bet. To these nutters, marinaded as they are in the very same Hard Right lunacy as your own MAGAts, what the UK really needs is a proper White Supremicist regime willing to prioritise ‘native culture’ and ally with other Konservative regimes to redress the mistakes of the 19th and 20th centuries and bring back an ‘improved’ version of the world where White Men are simply born superior and everything is rosy-toasty.

    Sunak knows he’s a political failure. He knows that Flobalob and Mad Liz (and the shift in Media narrative post-Corbyn) cost the Tories the wilful suspension of disbelief that kept ‘The Centre’ receptive to the illusion of relative competence that was Conservatism’s main selling point. He’s hoping that a screamingly racist red-meat offering like The Rwanda Policy will act like Get Brexit Done and entice enough single issue voters on the Right to give the Tories their support on the promise that The Rwanda Policy is just code for “Put the darkies in their place, show Our Kind you’ll peel skin for them, make The Left cry”, with more extremism to come.

    Combine that with electoral boundary changes that make it harder for non-Tories to win majorities, the single-minded determination of Nu-New Labour to drive away millions of icky Lefty voters, the successful post-2010 campaign to turn the BBC into a Tory mouthpiece, very loose and easily dodged campaign finance laws and whatever convenient ‘rally around the flag’ warlike scenario they can drop the UK into by polling day, and it’s theoretically possible that Sunak (or whoever takes over from Sunak if he doesn’t successfully convince the Hard Right that they only get The Rwanda Policy if he stays in charge) could limit Tory losses in the next Election to a hundred or less.

    It’s not likely, but it’s his and the Party’s only viable way out of the problems Brexit led them into.

  67. 67.

    Betty Cracker

    @R-Jud: That will be quite a transition for y’all if you decide to do it. I agree guns and the shitty private healthcare system would be the chief worries if you move back here.* I’ve been unfortunate enough to have to access the latter recently and was shocked anew by just how fucking bad and dysfunctional it is, even for those of us with employer-based insurance.

    *Maybe also the fact that future pandemics will have to just sweep the land unchecked across the U.S. because Republicans have convinced tens of millions of idiots that public health officials are the devil’s handmaidens, and now we’re incapable of collective action on that score. My sense is it’s not as bad in the UK, but maybe I’m wrong about that… 

  70. 70.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Tony Jay: It reminds me very much of the stunts where DeSantis or Abbott scoops up a bunch of random immigrants under false pretenses, puts them on a bus and drops them in a random blue state to prove something or other about the Border Crisis and the hypocrisy of liberals.

    (DeSantis had to go out of state to get some! They weren’t even in Florida!)

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