Half the people who stormed the Capitol believe his cousin faked his own death to help Trump purge the land of the transdimensional lizard cabal.
Betting RFKjr, the neediest of all conspiracy brains, would end up defending those people is the easiest money you could ever make. https://t.co/32LGdhGgxB
— zeddy (@Zeddary) April 9, 2024
It would be the wrong kind of attention, if he thought there was any chance of genuinely contesting the election, but since he’s pretty clearly just in it for the grift lulz… USAToday — “RFK Jr., floating conspiracy theory, says ‘reasonable’ people say Jan. 6 wasn’t insurrection”:
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. argued on Friday that the deadly Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack might not have been a “true insurrection,” and said that, if elected, he would appoint a special counsel to investigate whether prosecutions related to the attack were “politically motivated.”
“It is quite clear that many of the January 6 protestors broke the law in what may have started as a protest but turned into a riot,” Kennedy said in a statement. “Because it happened with the encouragement of President Trump, and in the context of his delusion that the election was stolen from him, many people see it not as a riot but as an insurrection.”…
But Kennedy said that, while he had not personally examined the evidence, “reasonable people, including Trump opponents,” suggested there was little evidence of a true insurrection…
Kennedy went on to accuse both Democrats and Republicans of using the Capitol attack to sow greater division in America and questioned whether “political objectives motivated the vigor of the prosecution” of Trump supporters who broke into the Capitol building.
Judges, including those appointed by Republican presidents, who have overseen cases against the protesters have vehemently pushed back against similar claims about political motives.
But Kennedy suggested that, if elected president, he would appoint a nonpartisan special counsel in the Department of Justice to “right any wrongs” and examine whether political motives played a role in the cases…
Here's the thing I don't get about this: it seems like all of this is a pitch for Trump voters to vote for RFK Jr. That would do the opposite of helping Trump. They don't actually think they'd get a majority of NY votes. Seems like an attempt to grift off of stupid Trump voters. https://t.co/2ZBuzCSG31
— That Well-Adjusted Biden Guy (@What46HasDone) April 9, 2024
When you’re that desperate, you can’t be too choosy. Per CNN — “RFK Jr. campaign official attended Jan. 6 ‘Stop the Steal’ rally and wanted ‘favorite President’ Trump to run for third term “:
A New York-based campaign official for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who raised the possibility that voting for the independent presidential candidate would help Donald Trump defeat President Joe Biden previously promoted false claims that the 2020 election was rigged and attended “Stop the Steal” rallies after the election, including the rally on January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC, that preceded the deadly riot at the US Capitol.
Rita Palma, who has identified herself as the Kennedy campaign’s state director in New York, also repeatedly called Trump her “favorite president,” according to tweets along with comments she posted on the conservative social media site Parler that have since been made private.
According to a KFILE examination of those now-private posts, Palma also posed for a photo at the former Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC, alongside Sidney Powell – the pro-Trump attorney who pleaded guilty in Georgia’s election subversion case…
He can see Russia from his bank. #wRongFuckinKennedy https://t.co/OQeOB84nQL
— Ellen Barkin (@EllenBarkin) April 6, 2024
This is true. While Trump and others quote conspiracy theorists who regurgitate Russian propaganda, RFK Jr. mainlines it straight from the source. https://t.co/VS3vEpcd5Q
— Slava Malamud ???????? (@SlavaMalamud) April 6, 2024
… [I]n an interview with Twins Podcast, F. Kennedy Jr. parroted Russian propaganda almost word for word when discussing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, saying that Putin just wanted to “de-Nazify” Ukraine.
“Putin said ‘Look I don’t want to go into Crimea. Let’s negotiate a peace,’” Kennedy said. “Alright, and the three things he wanted — he wanted to keep NATO out of Ukraine. That was number one. He wanted to de-Nazify the Ukrainian government.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish.
Putin said in televised remarks in February 2022 that his goal was to “seek to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation.”
Many Holocaust experts have said his characterizations were grossly misrepresentative and part of an ongoing attempt to delegitimize Ukraine…
When RFKJ talks about Trump, it sounds like Trump when he’s asked about Putin — anything to avoid directly attacking him, even as he slanders and smears Biden constantly. The obvious conclusion is that he made a deal to run this way in exchange for the Trump billionaires’ money. https://t.co/t81gaJW2xI
— Jesse Lee (@JesseCharlesLee) April 5, 2024
Dirty birds of a feather…
The ratfvckers at TYT are making their last stand…..with a deranged antivaxxer who's bankrolled by insurrectionists like Steve Bannon. https://t.co/idaodxw2hh
— Ragnarok Lobster ?? (@eclecticbrotha) April 6, 2024
HumboldtBlue
Virginia GOP rep. Morgan Griffin went to high school today.
Let’s hope he got schooled.
eclare
@HumboldtBlue:
Excellent.
Tony Jay
There was some discussion of this yesterday, so I’ll just paraphrase what I said then.
Their candidate looks like thirty mutant walnuts stuffed into a khaki condom. Their platform is cut-and-paste Green Lanternism on the environment and the economy overlaid with flat-Earth conspiracy ravings and podium speeches from this year’s United Russia Party convention. Their only money comes from Hard Right billionaires and their ranks are filled with naïve 17 year olds who are taking orders from morally abyssal vermin one bad WhatsApp leak away from charges for underage procurement who couldn’t even qualify for a job in the real Trump campaign. Their appeal is stronger to the woo-woo elements of Trumpland than it is to any faction of the Progressive Left and that means a high possibility of splitting the MAGA vote while driving weird-adverse normies to vote Blue.
Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if Rat-Fucking Kook x 3 wasn’t just the ‘very best’ candidate the Oligarchs could dredge up to replace Trump as the not-Biden candidate when Stench strokes out in October. A place holder and a spite-pick, not a real strategic asset.
YMMV
eclare
@Tony Jay:
Who the fuck knows? The election will be closer than it should be, thanks to the wretched EC, but I still like Team Blue’s chances.
HumboldtBlue
@Tony Jay:
I hear the Ruben Amorim to Liverpool deal is getting closer…
SpaceUnit
Inserting RFK into this race is a huge political blunder by the Kremlin. It’s the sort of shit you expect from countries like North Korea after they’ve fired and executed all their competent and knowledgable people.
Please continue.
Tony Jay
@eclare:
I’m on record saying Biden and the Democrats will probably get a clean sweep in November and it won’t even be close, as the patchwork GOP machine finally sproings apart from all the internal pressure and decades of conventional wisdom goes up in smoke.
And as November approaches that only gets more likely. The Oligarchs will throw money into the pit and the punditocracy will jabber incessantly about ‘this latest potential game-changer’, but that’s just what they exist to do, they have no other mode of operation.
Far as I can see, it’s just work hard and wait for the win. Oh, and pop a cork in the factionalists trying to mirror the Faux Left’s ‘Ratfuck Over Gaza’ operation from the Xtreme Centre, they’re not helping and that kind of sneering negativity really belongs on the other side of the Blue/Red divide.
@HumboldtBlue:
The only time you’ll ever hear me say this, but I have faith in the business model of the cutthroat multi-millionaires who own FSG and the people they’ve hired to run the Football side of things.
Replacing Klopp is, basically, impossible. Picking the best young manager to take over the Klopp Machine and put his unique stamp on its progress, that’s why they’re paid the big money.
I’m just enjoying (mostly) the title run-in. Never in a million years expected to be joint-top in a comprehensive rebuild season, but I really think this team can do it and send Klopp off with the silverware his inspirational decency deserves.
eclare
@Tony Jay:
You know much more than I, a casual LFC fan, but a season with Salah, Nunez, and Diaz is a rebuilding season?
Betty Cracker
I’m belatedly reading up on the reactions to the AZ Supreme Court sending women’s reproductive rights and bodily autonomy back to the Civil War era, and this quote from Kari Lake jumped out at me:
So, states should decide this “very personal issue,” not the individuals who are experiencing said issue. Jeebus! Can these panicky fuck-knuckles even hear themselves?
JWR
Stephen Colbert reminds me that Donald Trump is going on trial next Monday.
Let that sink in. No, let us savor! ;)
NotMax
@JWR
If he first doesn’t demand a postponement because of the sudden onset of Earthquake Fever (Quaketococcus Fictionalis).
//
HumboldtBlue
@Betty Cracker:
When you get a chance, please email me at humboldtblue65 at gmail…
In the meantime, here’s a cinereous vulture walking.
Jay
@HumboldtBlue:
Dominance Display, not really a “walk”.
WereBear
@Jay: Reminds me of tRump.
HumboldtBlue
@Jay:
OK, captain walk expert.
TBone
On their knees on the floor, speaking in tongues. This is some shit government. I’d like to punt these people into a church that’s on a cliff over the ocean and watch the whole ball of turds fall into the sea in slow motion.
https://twitter.com/dudeonthebay/status/1777753095818080473
Baud
Since they seem to be going with Biden is a threat to democracy as a talking point, why is Biden a threat to democracy? I did not hear what their made up rationale was.
Mr. Bemused Senior
Grim gray pre-dawn indeed! Hello fellow insomniacs and @Tony Jay.
I’m going to try to go back to sleep now and pretend it’s just a dream.
[Cycling Tour, anyone? As in ” no, dear, this is the dream, you’re still in the cell”]
NotMax
@TBone
Saint Wile E. Coyote on the Bluff?
//
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I always consult my state reps before making personal decisions. They’re the ones who convinced me to go with a mohawk.
Betty Cracker
@HumboldtBlue: Done!
Manyakitty
@Betty Cracker: she’s a mother? Yikes. Hope AZ Child Protective Services makes regular well-checks on the poor kid(s).
TBone
@NotMax: 👍
Baud
@Manyakitty:
How she raises her children is a deeply personal decision, so yes, the state should be involved.
Frankensteinbeck
If anyone still thinks the rich are somehow smarter or more strategic than the ‘rubes’, I offer this and No Labels as my evidence. Their attempts to engage in a traditional, unimaginative ratfucking are foundering as they throw their money down sinkholes of grifters and fail to grasp that anyone who agrees with them ratfucks the wrong side.
In separate, off topic news, wealthy super genius Elon Musk decided it would be brilliant to make X automatically search and replace Twitter.com with X.com when displaying tweets. So, for example, a link to NetfliTwitter.com will show up as Netflix.com but link to NetfliTwitter.com
Frankensteinbeck
@Baud:
Unfortunately, conservatives believe exactly that, and if you, say, allow your children to be queer, will try to have those children taken away from you.
Manyakitty
@Baud: that’s the republican dream come true, eh?
Gretchen
« I don’t want to go into Crimea ». So why did you go into Crimea? Nobody made you!
Tony Jay
@eclare:
The Klopp Machine is almost as Midfield driven as Pep’s suffocating passy-passy-pass-some-more version of dominance. It never stops moving, overloads on the press, links up with the roving forward line to attack and shields the defence, allowing the back four to provide width and surge forward, knowing they’ll be covered.
We saw last year what happens when that stops working. No legs in midfield, no energy, we were two different fragments of a team that couldn’t work as a whole and paid for it. Apart from the coming talents like Elliot and Jones, we’ve bought and bedded in an entirely new midfield in Slobo, Macca, Endo-San, Gravy, etc, which is supposed to take a full season of match experience before looking like the finished article but we’ve done it on the fly.
Add in the injuries and the need to rely on academy products like Quansah, Bradley, Clark, Danns, etc (who have all slotted in like old pros when needed) plus the fact that players like Trent, Konate, Salah, and Robbo have been out for long periods, and others like Stefan B have sat the season out, it’s been an incredible rebuild that has succeeded beyond virtually anyone’s wildest expectations.
And while Mo is, well, Mo, Diaz and especially Darwin are still young and learning to replace deadly predators like Mane and Smiling Bobby. They’ve done great, but if they were as 100% efficient this season as they’ll be next season, we’d be 10 points clear with a superior goal difference to Arsenal.
TBone
@TBone: these are Skari Lake’s AZ people on the AZ Senate floor. It explains so much.
NotMax
@Mr. Bemused Senior
“Life Could Be a Dream (Sh-Boom“.
Day dong da ding-dong
Sha-lang-a-la-lang-a-la-lang-a-la-lang-a-la
Woah, woah, bip
Ah bo da do da dip, woah
.
They don’t write ’em like that anymore.
;)
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
As with abortion, they believe in that for other people.
eclare
@Tony Jay:
Gotcha, thanks. I forgot that Mane departed. It’s been fun to watch. A commenter here had the nym Mo Salad, haven’t seen him in a while.
Tony Jay
@Mr. Bemused Senior:
Waves quietly.
Go to sleep
Go to sleep
While through your unlocked doors
We creep
Sssssshhhhhhhhhhhhh
Rusty
@Betty Cracker: Even better, women’s autonomy should be controlled by a law passed before women even had a right to vote. It’s the kind of situation that makes those that to profess to believe in originalism swoon, we are only allowed to live a world where decisions are made by straight white men. Nothing can ever change. Originalism is in herently racist, bigoted and misogynistic because women, minorities, LGBTQ communities, where not heard then, and no law can be enacted that would let them be heard now.
Chris Johnson
TYT are responsible for so much, and not in a good way. Talk about poster children for the Kremlin ‘left’. Tankies demonstrating the reality of horseshoe theory, at least that part of it that’s clearly paid vast sums by Russian oligarchs to execute the plan.
lowtechcyclist
@HumboldtBlue:
Would be nice if the FTFNYT and the other media that follow its pathetic example would try to up their game to ask politicians questions that were half as tough as what a bunch of high school kids can come up with.
Baud
@Chris Johnson:
Most of the left doesn’t fall for TYT, I think. But as decent Christians found out, if you don’t stand up to bad people who claim to represent your identity, they’ll come to dominate that identity.
Princess
Sure, fine, all of this. But I don’t see how any part of what’s in this post wins RFKjr one single Dem (Dem, Dem-leaning, disaffected Dem, Independent-Dem) vote. Maybe the point is to attract the whackadoodle non-voters? I dunno. Maybe I’m missing something but all Biden’s opponents seem really bad at this — like, I don’t see how Attacking Haley voters helps Trump. Are they all lost in their own news bubbles?
Anne Laurie
Biden, with his evil minions Dr. Fauci and Pete Buttigieg, personally forced social media platforms to take down ‘life saving knowledge’ about how vaccines were killing innocents & that the ‘real cure’ was gobbling ivermectin and avoiding ‘lamestream media disinformation’.
Also, many people were ‘forced’ to vaccinate themselves, and even their poor little children, solely to enrich Big Pharma and advance Bill Gates’ plan to take over humanity via 5G nanobots.
Young Prince Rand Paul, with the help of Mike Lee(...roy Jenkins!) has just grabbed some more media attention by threatening to impeach Fauci for his many crimes against humanity and also against God-Emperor Trump. This will probably mean another clip-friendly struggle session with Fauci patiently explaining to Prince Rand and ‘Hates Everything’ Mikey the difference between science and superstition… although, were I Dr. Fauci, I’d send out an all-media message that Rand should go talk to his angry neighbor again. And take RFK Jr with him!
Nukular Biskits
@Baud:
“Well, it’s because … uh … you see … uh … SHUT UP, STUPID LIBTARD! THAT’S WHY! GAWD BLESS MURKA!”
Baud
@Anne Laurie:
Thanks.
Chris Johnson
@Baud: When part of the strategy is demanding that you be counted as the only true identity so you can dump propaganda unhindered, that’s kind of a social advantage over normal people who aren’t as motivated to DEMAND that they be recognized as the only true identity.
Sucks to be a lefty when the most heavily funded ‘lefties’ are every bit the Putin-slobbering ‘wilmers’ folks try to paint us all as. This is why it’s worth so much money to Putin to do this in all positions on the political spectrum. It undermines everything. Sucks.
I suppose it sucks to be a conservative for exactly the same reasons, but my sympathy is limited there. Maybe it shouldn’t be.
Baud
@Chris Johnson:
Sympathy is your choice but that is what happened to conservativism. If you’re in a coalition with fascists, you’ll eventually be subordinate to the fascists.
Chris T.
These are folks who are “proud to be a-merkin“.
piratedan
@Betty Cracker: the only thing that the AZ GOP is in agreement on is that the supreme court ruling that they all worked for and enabled happening is a very bad thing for their election chances.
The receipts are on file and ready to be used. AZ Dems and thos in state office are well aware and ready to use those receipts to speak to the manager (AZ voters).
BretH
@Anne Laurie:
Nailed it.
Princess
@Betty Cracker: Interesting how she personifies the state as female, which I think isn’t really customary — like Arizona is big mommy who knows best and can tell us all her babies what to do. I also thought Lake and the Republicans were very strict on the whole gender matches genitals thing, but I guess when it suits them….
hueyplong
If our side had decided that the number of Q-anon voters was, say, 10 times current estimates and determined to run a spoiler candidate to bleed those votes from Trump, how would that candidate differ from Kennedy?
And how on earth could we pull off tricking Trump minions into financing the con?
Kay
Arizona is a 50/50 state but all seven supreme court justices are far Right?
Just ridiculous.
Baud
@Kay:
It only recently became 50/50.
Kay
Far Right religious have made such a mess of things since Dobbs. Read the absolute chaos in laws in both Arizona and Florida and imagine being a health care provider. They can’t have any idea what is legal and what is not, so they’re going to err on the side of not providing medical care to women.
Good job, Right wing lawyers. Excellent work. No one knows what the law is anymore, and if they do figure it out it changes six months later.
The fucking incompetence is just the icing on the cake.
Baud
@Kay:
Incompetence, or deliberate obfuscation?
Kay
@Baud:
I hope they have age and/or term limits. Their high court is like some kind of wacky religious tribunal.
Kay
@Baud:
It’s incompetence. I read them. They all blame medical providers, who I guess are supposed to untangle this fucking mess they made and risk a felony charge.
They had 50 years to come up with these state laws and they’re incoherent garbage that read like they were written by middle schoolers.
hueyplong
@Kay:
@Baud:
If speculating (and that’s kind of what we do), I’d say the first and nearly only qualification is blind loyalty.* The incompetence in setting clear boundaries (thus chilling behavior of their enemies) is a happy side-effect.
*Watch Trump’s pick of VP. He actually thinks the only mistake he made in office was to pick a VP who “lacked courage” on J6, i.e., didn’t blindly follow orders. This time he won’t risk someone who not only won’t do as told when things get tough, but also won’t get in the car. MTG is probably too nutty even for him, but at least she’s got that G.Gordon Liddy “you can have me assassinated on a street corner” vibe.
Baud
@hueyplong: it won’t be MTG because Trump knows she’s kill him to become president and then claim immunity.
Kay
Backing “spoiler” candidates like Trump’s donors are doing isn’t a confident move. Hoping to eke out a victory by tricking people into “taking votes away” from Biden isn’t a confident move.
Political media may all think Trump is going to win but Trump’s campaign does not behave like people who think they have a majority movement.
Her’s weaker than media say (and promote) and his campaign and financial backers know it.
hueyplong
@Baud: I was going to say that even Putin probably worries about whether MTG might see an angle for herself, but instead he’s probably noting that she’d have two full terms ahead of her without amending the Constitution. Trump is expendable and his sell-by date fast approacheth.
Kay
You don’t see Biden’s campaign or donors promoting RFK Jr in an attempt to peel off Trump voters. You only see this kind of weak, loser behavior from the Trump campaign.
prostratedragon
@Kay: I read somewhere that two of them are on retention ballots this fall, so it’s not a life appointment.
hueyplong
@Kay: Another tell was that GOPer saying people in nursing homes have no business voting. Their strategy is to turn minority to majority via directed vote suppression and they’re bouncing from demographic to demographic looking for the path that works. They used to know what path worked. The ever-expanding list of people whose ballots should not count is a serious admission.
SFAW
@Baud:
Snark HoF candidate? Intertubez won for today? Even if not, a truly excellent comment.
SFAW
I’m a little ashamed that I didn’t know the lizard cabal was transdimensional. For some reason, I thought they were “home-grown” (so to speak). I mean, look at all the RWMFs in power.
SFAW
@Kay:
When all they have is cheating (or cheating-adjacent) to win, they go with the old standbys.
SFAW
@Baud:
The Wisconsin template, sounds like.
Kay
@hueyplong:
I agree.
We’re lucky too- if this decision hadn’t landed we would have had a solid two weeks of media campaigning for Trump as the pro choice candidate. They were primed to do it. This decision knocks them off narrative.
Baud
@Kay:
Cable newe chyrons everywhere: “Do Dems Support Post-Birth Abortions?”
hueyplong
@Kay: Yes, big time. The Arizona action really helps politically (and, as usual, at human cost).
Kay
@Baud:
I overheard like 2 minutes of NPR and someone was on there saying Trump’s abortion statement was his “sister soulja moment”
I just cannot stand how conventional and boring they are. DECADES, and they all sound the same. You could run a tape from 1994 and political coverage from today would sound exactly the same. RIGID people. It’s more than “not being imaginative” or “not looking around” – it’s a deliberate, stubborn narrowness and clinging to stories about how the world works that comfort them.
Another Scott
@Kay: Google tells me that all 7 of the AZ supreme court justices were appointed by GQPers. 5 by Ducey, 2 by Brewer.
(Montgomery recused himself from the case.)
Ducey is shocked, shocked that they decided in a way that “he would not have preferred.”
🤡
Here’s hoping that AZ voters, and voters around the country, are paying attention. The GQP will continue to get more and more extreme until they pay a price for their extremism.
Grr…,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
@Rusty: This ban was written while Black women were enslaved and forced to breed.
Baud
@Kay:
Let’s hope abortion is Tump’s Katrina.
Kosh III
Doesn’t Kennedy need a short vacation? Maybe to Chappaquiddick?
Kosh III
” so they’re going to err on the side of not providing medical care to women.”
Exactly.
A few months ago the wife of a good friend went to the ER. She was told she was 6 weeks pregnant but the fetus wasn’t viable. If she tried to carry to full term she and the fetus would die. But they would not do an abortion.
She went to two other doctors who confirmed this and that they wouldn’t help her.
They ended up driving 350 miles each way to a legal state to get what was needed.
Frak them all.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
What is TYT?
There are acronyms I’ve learned, there are acronyms I’ve briefly learned the meaning of and then forgotten, but I think this is a new one to me.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
The Young Turks. Cenk’s show.
Another Scott
@lowtechcyclist: The Young Turks – Cenk et al.
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
Manyakitty
@Kosh III: only if Teddy’s driving
UncleEbeneezer
@Omnes Omnibus: “enslaved and raped” would also be accurate.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
@Another Scott:
I see – while I kinda know who Cenk Uygur is, I wasn’t even aware that he had a radio show or whatever. And of course the phrase ‘Young Turks’ as a descriptor has been around since roughly forever, never needed an acronym before. (IIRC, it goes back to Kemal Attaturk and his allies.)
(HTH? Yes, it does! HTH was very helpful when we had a backyard pool an eon ago. We used their chlorine. :-)
Marcopolo
@Kay: According to someone I read yesterday (maybe Simon Rosenberg or Charles Gabba) two of the seven have retention votes coming up in November. Hope they get clobbered and that being on the same ballot as the ballot initiative to legalize abortion seals their fate.
Marcopolo
@Kay: Also, how many people are around who even get that reference? What has this person been doing for the past quarter century? I guess they’ll be making references to Obama’s porch beer summit in a decade or so.
RevRick
@Betty Cracker: This gobbledygook is a bait-and-switch tactic. We know they’re lying about it, because we have the receipts. They’re hoping that the Supreme Court does their dirty work for them via the zombie Comstock Act or if they’re given the chance they’ll enact a national ban. Every time GOP lawmakers have had the chance, they’ve enacted bans, because that’s what their fanatical base demands. They won’t stop short, because they can’t.
Kathleen
@Omnes Omnibus: Heather Cox Richardson also had an enlightening historical perspective today:
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-9-2024
Paul in KY
Even if incompetently pulled off or tried, it can still damn sure be an insurrection!
NutmegAgain
I am reminded that Grandpa Joe was as nasty, venal, and crooked as they come. Tree, apple, falling, distance, etc.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: The “Young Turks” movement was a broad-based effort to reform the Ottoman political system and modernize the Empire. It arose after the disastrous Balkan Wars of 1911-12, but a promising start led to far greater disasters.
The Young Turks movement brought together most of the empire’s liberal elements including the Armenians who later staged Operation Nemesis, the assasination campaign against the organizers of the Armenian Genocide of 1915. Those were the “Three Pashas,” senior generals who gained control of the Empire and brought the Ottomans into the First World War on Germany’s side, as well as their leading henchmen. The Operation Nemesis leaders said they felt obligated to act because the Young Turks movement they had joined led to the genociadal military Junta.
In 1912, Kemal was a young cavalry colonel distinguished for his fighting in Libya against Italian forces. He participated in the Young Turk revolution but not the power-grab that followed. Kemal later won fame in the First World War, when his forces contained the British landings at Gallipoli.
Kemal is most famous as Turkiye’s charismatic leader in its War of Independence, 1921-23, where he earned the title “Ataturk.” He then revived the original program of the Young Turks by helping modernize and westernize the new Republic.
wjca
Not sure I would go quite that far. I expect that a few incumbent Republican Senators will keep their seats regardless. And I don’t see Biden managing to win all 50 states. But yeah, a huge landslide seems, at this point, to be a not unreasonable bet.
wjca
Definitely shouldn’t be. After all, we’ve been voting upwards of 95% Democratic at least since the Tea Party nut jobs. Some of us longer.
Geminid
@wjca: That’s probably what Mr. Jay meant: a “clean sweep” in that Democrats hold the White House and the Senate and pick up the House. Holding the Senate seems like the heaviest lift of the three.
wjca
True. Although the Republicans in Montana seem to have picked a candidate designed to improve Tester’s chances.
Tony Jay
@wjca:
Ha! No, not that far. Clean sweep as in win the House, the Senate and the Presidency.