Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

“But what about the lurkers?”

T R E 4 5 O N

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

People are weird.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

“In this country American means white. everybody else has to hyphenate.”

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

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

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

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

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / Dank Grey Dawn Open Thread: RFK Jr, the *Authentic* Trump Alternative

Dank Grey Dawn Open Thread: RFK Jr, the *Authentic* Trump Alternative

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A quick round-up of recent stories. From what I’m seeing, any hardcore Trumpist who’s afraid the God-Emperor might actually decompensate past the point of electability before November should be glad to vote RFK Jr instead:

Very fine people!


Chatting with Tim Pool is a red flag in any case, but:

… Speaking to podcast host Tim Pool in a “Timcast IRL” episode Friday, Kennedy — who is mounting a long-shot bid for the White House — said he doesn’t think “it’s a good, healthy thing for any culture to erase history,” when asked for his thoughts on the removal of Confederate monuments around the country.

“I have a visceral reaction against, against the attacks on those statues,” he said. “There were heroes in the Confederacy who didn’t have slaves and, you know, I just, I just have a visceral reaction against destroying history. I don’t like it. I think we should celebrate who we are.”

He added: “We should celebrate the good qualities of everybody. … If we want to find people who were completely virtuous on every issue throughout history, we would erase all of history.”…

“Values change throughout history, and we need to be able to be sophisticated enough to live with, you know, our ancestors who didn’t agree with us on everything and who did things that are now regarded as immoral or wrong,” he said. “Maybe they had other qualities that we wanted to celebrate, and clearly Robert E. Lee had extraordinary qualities of leadership.”…

Take it from someone who knows the breed: Mike Barnicle is an old-fashioned Irish mucker, a guy whose greatest joy lies in F*cking Around even with full awareness that he will Find Out. If Barnicle thinks RFK Jr is too damaged, well… Can’t say we didn’t warn ya!


Screwing over small (political) contractors…

AMID VOTER DISENCHANTMENT with a Trump-Biden rematch, third-party activist Joseph Wendt believed 2024 could transform American politics. And Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might be the candidate to do it…

So Wendt started the process of reconstituting the long-defunct Natural Law Party of the United States with the Federal Election Commission and he resurrected its Florida branch. He planned to hold a convention and nominate Kennedy for president so that RFK could appear on the Florida ballot as the Natural Law Party candidate. Kennedy’s campaign loved the idea. And the two sides started talking money. Wendt signed a $10,000-a-month consulting contract with Kennedy’s campaign on February 24.

“I was over the moon,” Wendt said. “We could get him on the ballot. It might have an impact. But it turned into a nightmare.”

Bureaucratic delays and mistakes turned into mistrust. A bitter rift grew. Wendt was ultimately paid nothing. And he lost control of the Natural Law Party of the United States, which was taken over by Kennedy allies…

Both sides deny wrongdoing. But a close look at the record of the dispute provides a window into the obstacles third-party candidates face and shines a light on the Kennedy campaign’s aggressive efforts to get on the ballot. RFK’s campaign has tapped a constellation of third-party groups in various states, all of which have different rules.

Why? Because states generally provide presidential candidates ballot access if they’re nominated by a verified political party, regardless of its size. Otherwise, campaigns usually have to rely on paid petition-gatherers, which, according to experts familiar with the process, can cost as much as $1.7 million in a state like Florida…

Breaking! The NYTimes tentativly decides to withdraw the hems of its soiled credibility from this particular grifter’s clutches…

After all, Grifter knows grifter!

Reader Interactions

70Comments

  1. 1.

    karen marie

    The idea that traitors should be celebrated as honorable men makes my mind reel.

  2. 2.

    WereBear

    Like all con artists, they lie as they play with words, waiting for the mark’s eyes to brighten or otherwise indicate they’ve hit a nerve.

    I think they are ALL “visceral reactors” because they don’t THINK. Growing up in small towns I sadly know the people who let everyone else do their thinking for them, because they were raised that way.

    They don’t grow up. They just get angrier because nothing they were told was true.

  3. 3.

    Tony Jay

    It could have been worse. Maybe it was. s/

      “We shouldn’t let reprehensible awfulness colour our attitudes to great men of power and capability. That’s a betrayal of our shared humanity. An example of the ‘Othering’ the Radical Left is always chiding us for. We shouldn’t let ourselves fall into that trap.”

    “Do you have any examples you can point to?”

    “History. History is full of them. Nero. Yes, his excesses were shocking even for the time, but he loved music. Who can’t relate to that? Napoleon. Brought war to every corner of the world and cost France a generation of young men, but he also toppled monarchies just like our Founding Fathers. I could go on.”

    “Please do.”

    I want to.. maybe this is left-field, but even Hitler.”

    “Adolf Hitler?”

    “Even Hitler. Horrible legacy. Terrible crimes. Yes, but he loved animals and some of the watercolours he painted at Berchtesgaden. Exquisite. Everybody has a soul. Great deeds sometimes come at a great price. We shouldn’t topple history to impose our monochromatic view of Right and Wrong on different eras.”

    “And this is the company you see yourself in? This layer of consequential men?”

    “I don’t… I wouldn’t be so vain. We can only strive to be seen for who we are and hope that our deeds and our misdeeds are judged separately. For example, Vaccine Apologists will shake their heads and try to cancel me, but did you know I bake lasagnas for sick kids?”

    “I did not know that, no.”

    “Well, now you do.”

  4. 4.

    trnc

    @karen marie: ​
     
    But Lee was all leadery, and apparently leaderyness is a great quality, regardless of what he was trying to lead people to do.

  5. 5.

    Geminid

    @trnc: Aside from the fact that he was fighting for an unjust cause, Lee was overrated and still is. His early victories were enabled by incompetent Union commanders. Gettysburg was Lee’s most important battle, and he mismanaged that fight from beginning to end.

  9. 9.

    Honus

    @Geminid: agreed that Lee’s vaunted military prowess was largely a myth.  He never won a battle after Jackson was killed, and he never won a battle north of the Potomac. As AJ Liebling once said of the Army of Northern Virginia “Good club, couldn’t win on the road”

    Add in the fact that all of the confederate statues were erected during periods of civil rights activism (the Charlottesville Lee statue was placed in 1924, 60 years after the war and during the civil rights movement that followed WWI; it was done as a stick in the eye to black people and was publicly celebrated by the KKK) and it’s clear that the “history” they are most connected to is the history of Jim Crow.

  10. 10.

    Honus

    @Geminid: More appropriate and timely, in the interests of preserving history, maybe Germany should erect some statues honoring Erwin Rommel to commemorate D-Day.

  11. 11.

    Honus

    @WereBear: Ty Siedule’s Robert E. Lee and Me also debunks the Lee and Lost Cause myths, from the perspective of an Arlington native, Washington & Lee alum, army officer and West Point military history professor.

  12. 12.

    Geminid

    @Honus: There is an interesting thought experiment I’ve done with Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and William Tecumseh Sherman. Each man was a tall, skinny redheaded stepchild, and they grew up just a couple hundred miles apart, Sherman in Ohio and Jackson in what is now West Virginia.

    So, what if if Jackson had been born an Ohioan, and Sherman a Virginian? I think Jackson would have fought for the Union and gotten himself killed in about a year. I figure Sherman would have thrown in with the Union too, and achieved high rank in the Army of the Potomac. He might eventually have commanded it.

  13. 13.

    NotMax

    First world problems.

    Made the monthly trek into town on Sunday. Planned to stop at an ATM which doesn’t charge a fee for my bank card to replenish a little moolah.

    ATM #1: out of order. ATM #2 (completely different location): out of order.

    Said eff it, counted what was in the wallet and determined that would be my maximum budget at the usual store (Target) where I pay cash for groceries. Managed to ring up under that amount. Third month in a row Target was devoid of the fruit juice I sometimes prefer in the morning while coffee is brewing. Too lazy to also traipse through a supermarket (plus one knee was giving me grief) so grabbed an acceptable alternative juice.

    Also stopped by the ISP (cable) company to pay the monthly bill (same shopping complex as Target). Self-serve kiosk there for some reason just kept spitting out my check so had to go through the rigamarole of signing in and waiting for a customer service person to be freed up.

    Costco no problem as I always pay by check there.

    On the bright side, no one was out of vodka.

  14. 14.

    Gloria DryGarden

    I just read heather cox Richardson’s June 9 letter. Difficult, but I recommend it.

    someone behind the 2025 project, and RNC policy maker to gut our government. RUSSELL VOUGHT.

    im not sure if I’ll be able to link it. I get it on Facebook and by email subscription, not sure if it comes w links embedded.

  15. 15.

    JoyceH

    @Honus: Yes, but Lee LOOKED all wise and noble. What Trump would call central casting. (And what an antiquated term that is!) Just look at the photos of him and compare with Grant lookIng so slouchy and slovenly – you can see at a glance who’s the better general, right? Right?

  19. 19.

    WereBear

    @NotMax: Yes, but it is everywhere because we are undergoing a corporate tantrum where they fired everyone. Now, no one is “emptying the bit bucket,” much less know where it is.

  20. 20.

    Barbara

    @Honus: ​The Union generals considered Lee to be a traitor. They would be disgusted at the fealty shown to him by subsequent generations but perhaps not surprised.

  21. 21.

    gene108

    Sherman was Grant’s senior in the Army by a few years. Usually more senior officers got commands over junior officers. Sherman put this aside and served under Grant.

  22. 22.

    Gin & Tonic

    @WereBear: “Emptying the bit bucket” makes me think of the bin underneath punch card machines that would collect those tiny rectangles that were punched out. Great confetti.

  29. 29.

    Tony Jay

    @sab:

      Extract of document 137#5a (most confidential – not to leave archive)

    (Nr Sharpsburg. 16th September, 1862.)

    … I am troubled, dearest Mary. Despite frequent communications with gentlemen much involved in the affairs of our fence-splitting friend, I have yet to receive steadfast confirmation of the leniency offered to Ourselves. Perhaps in exercising a limiting influence on the martial exertions of the troops JD has placed under my stewardship in the coming battle I can effect a degree of voltaic stimulus to his memory and lay evidence of my great willingness to aid the cause of the Union…”

     

    Extract of document 374#2a (most confidential – not to leave archive)

    (Outskirts of Gettysburg. 1July. 1863)

    … more can I do, my dear Mary, to bring this uncomfortable period of agonising suspension to a satisfactory conclusion? Have I not proven my character and capability as a True Son of these United States? When will M…..r L……..n grant me clemency to cross the line of conflict and wear the Blue openly? Must I send these brave Southern boys marching uphill into the very guns of their Northern brothers? What further sacrifices must I make to secure our future and the sanctity of our family’s patriotic reputation? This is most unfair…”

    Maybe that’s why? 🤷🏼‍♂️

  30. 30.

    lowtechcyclist

    he doesn’t think “it’s a good, healthy thing for any culture to erase history,” when asked for his thoughts on the removal of Confederate monuments around the country.

    @karen marie: ​

    The idea that traitors should be celebrated as honorable men makes my mind reel.

    This. And the whole framing of the statues being ‘history’ is bullshit to begin with. Statues, as you say, are all about who we honor. Most of us don’t honor them anymore, thank goodness, so that’s why they’re coming down.

    The history of the statues is of course important: the history of when the statues went up, and who put them up and why. The lessons to be learned from that (already discussed here!) can be learned just as well (better, actually!) after the statues themselves have been removed and melted down.

  31. 31.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @satby: Thanks for linking heathers letter from yesterday.
    If anyone clicks and reads it, I’d like to hear your thoughts. I find it deeply disturbing, and I need to get talked down from despair.

    Y’all, please click up to satbys HCR Link above to read…#28.

  34. 34.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @lowtechcyclist: history can be in books, and the stories we retell. And I’d rather not have anybody s history censored, or repressed or banned. I agree monuments might be best used to celebrate good people who make positive differences.
    I think I heard a bunch of the confederate statues went up as part of Jim Crow, and for the purpose of intimidation. I’m a bit vague on this. It’s Not folks who should be celebrated..

  35. 35.

    Honus

    @Geminid: I think if Jackson had fought for the Union (or US Army, as Seidule insists) the war would have been over in a year.  Jackson was key figure in exposing the early Union commander’s ineptitude (Valley Campaign) and was Lee’s most effective tactical battle commander.  As I noted above, Lee never won a battle after Jackson was killed, and never lost a battle while he was alive.
    As for Sherman, he perfectly predicted the course of the war before it even started in his open letter to the people of New Orleans. I always wondered why such a putatively brilliant strategist didn’t also see this:
    “You people speak so lightly of war; you don’t know what you’re talking about.War is a terrible thing!  You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it … Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth — right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with.  At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see in the end that you will surely fail.”
    — Gen. William T. Sherman, a southerner trying to warn his people against the coming folly of their hubris

  37. 37.

    Baud

    @Honus:

    You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it

     

    Ooh. Today, we could say the same thing about libs.

  40. 40.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @WereBear: ah punch card machines and card sorting machines. I vaguely remember retiring the boards for different functions. Also taking a corner in the hall to fast and having a card deck tray fly off a cart. Good times.    I am in similar situation at my job but  got 12 weeks short term disability for surgery recovery and two weeks before my surgery the only other IT person for both labs put in his notice. Oh and there’s a hiring freeze so they can t replace them. And I am retiring this fall. The thinking at the top just astounds me…good times

  41. 41.

    Kay

    Wow. I had no idea he accused two black men of murder to protect Skakel. That is just wild.

  43. 43.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @Gloria DryGarden: the thing is its not banning history to forbid the glorification of the symbols and leaders of a bloody toxic insurrection.  We need to actually teach the actual horrors of slavery and the actual reasons for the US Civil War. The Germans banned Nazi symbols for good reason. Allowing statues and monuments to treasonous insurrectionists and the use of one of the seceded states battle flags was beyond stupid, unfortunately it was seen as a good idea by politicians at the time. And if I see one more Confederate flag or “Heritage Not Hate” bumper sticker on a truck in Central NY I may throw something.

  46. 46.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @Kay: yes the entire investigation of Martha Moxley’s murder was in my opinion botched because the police did not want to piss off a wealthy politically connected family. The murder weapon as I recall was a golf club belonging to the Skakel family. But the theory put about was that some random stranger snuck through town and beat a teenage girl to death with a weapon from the neighbors house.

  47. 47.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    Oh please. Let those among us who have not falsely accused black men of crimes cast the first stone.

  49. 49.

    satby

    @OzarkHillbilly: I’m confident NotMax at least balances his checkbook. My friend uses checks and never even bothers. She has a debit card, but doesn’t use it, preferring to slow down everything while she writes her check. They never bounce, but she never knows how much is in her checking account either. Makes me nuts.

  51. 51.

    jimmiraybob

    “We should celebrate the good qualities of everybody. …”

    I hear that Adolf Hitler, NAZI Fascist dictator, liked dogs.  And got highways built.  Some say that he got more things done than any other dictator ever.  Nobody’s ever seen anything like it.

  52. 52.

    NotMax

    @OzarkHillbilly

    Big believer in a paper trail. Never put much trust in plastic, basically for emergency use only. or a few regular known purchases (cigars, Amazon, streaming subscriptions).

    Nice thing about Costco is all one need do is sign the check (which I do at home before going into town). Their register prints all the rest out on its own and then the cashier holds it up so i can read and confirm the data.

  53. 53.

    Kay

    Tim Pool is far Right but Bill Maher is supposedly a centrist and he has interviewed and promoted RFK Jr.

    It was on Bill Maher’s show that RFK Jr. put forth his explanation for school shootings – antidepressants. Maher sits there smirking while RFK Jr. spouts his idiocy unrebutted. So, so clever! And with a much bigger reach of “normies” than Pool could ever dream of.

  55. 55.

    Geminid

    @Honus: Sherman: “You guys have been reading too much Sir Walter Scott, and not enough Carl von Clausewitz.”

  56. 56.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @EmbraceYourInnerCrone: exactly. The stupid statues have nothing to do w history. And I agree, the real stuff needs to taught. Slavery, etc.

    as a white person, I learned more about slavery from an opening poem in Alice walker’s  “Horses Make a Landscape More Beautiful “..

  58. 58.

    jimmiraybob

    Of course, not all southern men fought for the Confederacy and the preservation of chattel slavery. Many served and many died for the Union cause – if today’s movement to “preserve southern history” were genuine about honoring the fallen these are the ones that should be given recognition and monuments.

    Dear RFK, Jr., maybe this could be your mission; more monuments to the forgotten loyalist Southern Man.

  59. 59.

    cmorenc

    @Geminid:

    @trnc: Aside from the fact that he was fighting for an unjust cause, Lee was overrated and still is. His early victories were enabled by incompetent Union commanders. Gettysburg was Lee’s most important battle, and he mismanaged that fight from beginning to end.

    Fact is that Lee was a better general leading a more effective army (despite smaller numbers) than any the Union had up through Gettysburg, and the South came perilously close to effectively winning the war at several points up through summer 1863.  The Union Army of the Potomoc had performed with hapless ineptitude while led by George McClellan and his next couple of successors (e.g. Ambrose Burnside), but fortunately for the Union, over in the western theater a better general than Lee (Grant) was developing his chops e.g. at Fort Donaldson and Shiloh.

    Lee’s hubris in trying to win an outright military victory in Union territory and Stuart’s irresponsible cavalry side adventure (which left Lee blind of critical info about Union army positioning) would combine to produce disastrous defeat for Lee on the 3rd day at Gettysburg.  Pickett’s Charge was the biggest blunder of the entire war on both sides.  But the real hero of Gettysburg for the Union was the New York unit who just barely held off the confederates from taking the strategically vital Little Round Top – the critical Union defenders only beat a Confederate Texas unit to Little Round Top by about 5 minutes.  Without holding Little Round Top, the entire Union line would have been disastrously exposed on its flank, and Gettysburg instead could have been remembered as yet anouther critical Union army defeat.

    Lee picked the wrong traitorous side in the Civil War, and we should be glad he wasn’t just a bit better general than he was, his staff recklessly losing Lee’s battle plans (to be found by Union soldiers) just prior to the battle of Antietam, the Union’s first critical victory of the war.  But the whole notion that the South could not have won the Civil war is bullshit – we can be thankful the traitors were only almost good enough the first couple of years to pull it off.

  61. 61.

    jimmiraybob

    @Gloria DryGarden: ​
     
    Just as we see now, the people of the first major rebellion against the Constitution and the liberal democratic order were prone to rally around populist leaders that were all about preserving the economic system built on chattel slavery that really only benefited an elite (from plantation owner to the masters of the economic engine).

    Many a unquestioning poor white farmer, bowing to the alternative-fact laden reality constructed by the elite in order to preserve the elite, paid the price. They were taught to hate their fellow citizens that didn’t fit the alternative reality (you are either loyal MAGA or you are not). Their descendants are still being deceived to hate for the benefit of the elite. A large part of continuing the process was monuments to preserve the myth of the failed rebellion.

    “These Phase Two monuments, erected from the 1890s through the 1930s, coincide with the expansion of the white supremacist policies of the Jim Crow era.” – Atlanta History Center

    atlantahistorycenter.com/learning-and-research/projects-initiatives/confederate-monument-interpretat…

  62. 62.

    snoey

    @Gloria DryGarden: There’s actually a whole lot of history in how a Confederate monument was erected in Helena Montana. The history though is that of the racism when it was erected, not battles 50 years before that.

  63. 63.

    jonas

    “Maybe they had other qualities that we wanted to celebrate, and clearly Robert E. Lee had extraordinary qualities of leadership.”

    So did Rommel. We still don’t put up statues of him in the town square.

  66. 66.

    wjca

    @Geminid: Lee was overrated and still is. His early victories were enabled by incompetent Union commanders. Gettysburg was Lee’s most important battle, and he mismanaged that fight from beginning to end.

    Only consider that, had he not decided to ignore his oath, he might well have been selected to command the Union Army.

  67. 67.

    artem1s

    @Geminid: ​ 
    First, the Ohio territory that Sherman and Jackson were born into was Virginia up until 1787 when Ohio became a territory. The northern part of Ohio, the Connecticut Reserve wasn’t conceded until 1802. Ohio had only been a state for 17 years when Sherman was born. You’re assuming that his potential to rise to Commanding General of the Union Army was impeded by being born in a backwater state. Lancaster, Ohio was far from being a backwater. Cump was a member of two highly influential and powerful families in DC politics – the Shermans and the Ewings. Senators, Judges, military officers, cabinet members, signers of the Declaration.

    Second, Sherman did not want command of the Union Army. He turned Lincoln down when he wanted to appoint him to his cabinet as Secretary of War. When he came back from private life (he retired as Captain in 1858. He attended West Point just like Lee) to join the Union Army he stipulated that the troops he wanted to lead were the volunteer armies. He and his brothers were DC elite.
    Sherman supported Grant as Commanding General because he knew he would take the fight to the enemy. McClellan wanted to be close enough to DC to go back and party at the end of the day.
    This is what he said about Grant.
    I am a damned sight smarter man than Grant. I know more about military history, strategy, and grand tactics than he does. I know more about supply, administration, and everything else than he does. I’ll tell you where he beats me though and where he beats the world. He doesn’t give a damn about what the enemy does out of his sight, but it scares me like hell.
    Sherman knew what would take to win the war; four years and 600,000 troops. He got laughed out of DC for that prediction. Sherman didn’t give a shit about glorified titles. He could have been elected President but famously told the GOP to fuck right the hell off. The only reason he rejoined the army was because he knew what it would take to win the war and preserve the Union. Past that, he wanted nothing to do with politics or power.

  68. 68.

    The Lodger

    @Baud: I’ve always been a bit surprised that there weren’t more baby boys in 2009-2016 named Barack.

  70. 70.

    Geminid

    @artem1s: You have read something into my comment that simply was not there. Ohio provided over 200 regiments to the Union Army so I’m not assuming anything about Sherman being from a backward state. Had Sherman remained in the east he might have  risen more slowly, but that’s because so many other top officers were assigned to the Army of the Potomac; there was better competition for Corps-level commands and for overall commander.

    And Sherman wasn’t laughed out of DC for his prediction; he was commanding in Kentucky when he made it and newspaper reporters said he was crazy. Not long after, Sherman was transferred from that command under a cloud that took a while to dispel.

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