Glibertarianism

Godsdamned Glibertarians Open Thread: Rand Paul Is At It Again

by Anne Laurie| May 12, 202210:48 pm| 47 Comments

This post is in: Glibertarianism, GOP Death Cult, Open Threads, War in Ukraine

! Rand Paul just unilaterally blocked swift passage of Ukraine aid. He wanted the rest of the Senate add language to the bill he plans to vote against anyway bc debt/inflation.

He has this power because the Senate runs on *unanimous consent*, not nearly unanimous consent.

— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) May 12, 2022

McConnell and Schumer both implored Paul to allow a vote on his amendment but let the bill be voted on today. Their joint entreaty didn’t persuade him.

— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) May 12, 2022

If they had any initiative, McConnell and his henchmen would take up a collection to have Rand Paul’s neighbor come back and finish the job. We Dems couldn’t get away with anything like that, but it’d be a winner for the Red Meat side…

Oh, wait — I forgot for a minute that #MoscowMitch is also on Putin’s payroll!

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Godsdamned Glibertarians Open Thread: Rand Paul Is At It AgainPost + Comments (47)

Same Old Same Old Open Thread: Former South African Reverts to Time-Tested Excuses

by Anne Laurie| April 27, 20229:32 pm| 40 Comments

This post is in: Glibertarianism, Open Threads, MONSTERS, social media

Three things:

1. Implies he’s fine w China, Russia etc dictating his policies, bc their laws authorize censorship, & those laws must be the will of the people

2. Implies he’ll be OK if US govt censors Twitter

2. You can become incredibly rich & still not know how to think https://t.co/I81WCvRjCv

— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) April 26, 2022

When Elon Musk was growing up in apartheid-era South Africa, various combinations of ‘but it’s the law’ and ‘will of the people’ were the English-ancestry minority’s go-to explanation to outsiders. The Boers were stone cold bigots, the Not-Whites were impossible, what could an embattled minority of pale-skinned Anglicans be expected to do about the unfairness of it all?…

I thought I might be the only one biased by such memories, but then a whole bunch of twitter feeds pointed out Ben Shapiro’s response to Mr. Musk:

a truth and reconciliation commission for twitter is the funniest thing i’ve read today, bravo pic.twitter.com/6ThYGkKxxB

— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) April 26, 2022

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Same Old Same Old Open Thread: Former South African Reverts to Time-Tested ExcusesPost + Comments (40)

Late Saturday Night Open Thread: Down Among the Bitconners

by Anne Laurie| April 10, 20222:39 am| 48 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Glibertarianism, Grifters Gonna Grift, Open Threads

Lol you just knew Glem was going to get in on the Bitcoin grift. It was only a matter of time. pic.twitter.com/9430TNwNiZ

— Centrism Fan Acct ?? (@Wilson__Valdez) April 8, 2022

Last year’s con was a superspreader event, but surely by now most of the con-goers have been required to sully their anti-vaxx ideals at the hands of their bosses, their campuses, or their moms…

pivoting to buttcoin because he's realized future checks from Russia are probably a non-starter now https://t.co/LolxNEABt7

— Mike Black (@MikeBlack114) April 9, 2022

Fast Company, not impressed — “Bitcoin struggles to find its star power in Miami”:

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… All over Miami Beach and the hip Wynwood neighborhood, crypto-themed pop-ups try to create some cohesive sense that the city is the home for the Bitcoin cultural movement, but it all feels a bit wonky. And that’s equally true for the conference, housed at a big convention center a few blocks from the water. There’s also a real sense of desperation for some kind of star power that can elevate Bitcoin from digital gold for the techno-libertarian set to the true mainstream cultural movement it needs to be in order to actually catch on. The conference’s expo center features a big fake volcano and a mechanical bull (the latter of which offers a chance at winning one whole Bitcoin), but there’s not a ton to do beyond that.

Cryptocurrency exploded back into the mainstream in January 2021, hot off the heels of a similar, but different viral finance fad: meme stocks. But it wasn’t Bitcoin that was responsible for the 2021 crypto boom, it was Ethereum, the flashier alternative cryptocurrency that supports the majority of NFTs. Since then, Ethereum has continued to be the main driver of popular crypto culture. It’s what backs up the Bored Ape Yacht Club. It’s how decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, organize, including the one that tried to buy a copy of the constitution late last year. When Jimmy Fallon and Paris Hilton are on TV talking about NFTs, they’re talking about Ethereum, not Bitcoin.

And so this cultural spotlight on Ethereum has left Bitcoin feeling a little stale. That’s led to a palpable void in Miami this week—one that conference organizer BTC Media and the various sponsors and vendors are hell-bent on filling with a bizarre mix of fairly prominent voices from the world of finance and random celebrities. The end result is an event that feels like a low-level comic convention that’s being held in the same event space as an economic forum. It’s confusing and disjointed: There are presentations on the Federal Reserve and economic theory, but also personal sovereignty and cancel culture.

Bitcoin 2022’s highest-profile guests include Jordan B. Peterson, the controversial right-wing psychologist; former presidential candidate Andrew Yang; Shark Tank‘s Kevin O’Leary; Paypal and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel; a handful of well-known athletes; and, of course, a bevy of homegrown crypto influencers like entrepreneur Anthony Pompliano. (El Salvador’s crypto-loving president Nayib Bukelele was supposed to appear, but dropped out at the last minute.) The guest with the largest selfie line in the conference’s showroom on Thursday was Barstool Sports founder, Dave Portnoy, the controversial self-described “baron of Bitcoin,” whose pandemic-era trading livestreams made him a popular figure in the crypto world…

Murphy the Trickster God, do I pity the poor souls who had to clean the mens rooms after this two-bit bacchanal.

Oh, so you think crypto is a big scam? Well, you know who else doesn't like it? That's right; Hillary Clinton. Guess you're just a big ol' Hillary Clinton lover.

You can see why he fits in so perfectly on the Right. pic.twitter.com/M9rDcxPWK0

— Centrism Fan Acct ? (@Wilson__Valdez) April 8, 2022

Uh-oh…

.@ggreenwald says Edward Snowden is the 'happiest person' he's 'ever met' at bitcoin conferencehttps://t.co/SPpT6cY78v

— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 7, 2022

he's dead, isn't he https://t.co/SXjFZgUtsH

— Anita (@AnitaM86) April 8, 2022

Probably not dead, but pretty clearly on ice… which, for a fame whore, is an even worse fate!

he's dead https://t.co/dqQXbL5Yl5

— Jort-Michel Connard ?? (@torriangray) April 8, 2022

Late Saturday Night Open Thread: Down Among the BitconnersPost + Comments (48)

Saturday Evening Horror-Clown Show Open Thread: The GOP Death Cult Rediscovers ‘America FIRST’

by Anne Laurie| April 2, 20226:35 pm| 170 Comments

This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Glibertarianism, GOP Death Cult, Open Threads, Russia

Stockman said what now. https://t.co/2PgVNS83K6

— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) April 2, 2022

Look what’s bubbling up from the fetid swamps of Gritty Repub Realism, while the rest of us were distracted…

https://t.co/jtjPchbPWH pic.twitter.com/cHOQtLJEn7

— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) April 2, 2022

Jacob Heilbrunn, at Poltico: “Trumpian Conservatives Hold an ‘Emergency’ Meeting Over Russia”:

J.D. Vance was on the warpath. “Using American power to do the dirty work of Europe is a pretty bad idea,” he told a crowd on Thursday, warning against the U.S. getting more involved in Ukraine. “We don’t have that many non-insane people in Washington. I need you to be some of them.”

Vance wasn’t speaking at a campaign stop in Ohio, where he is running for the U.S. Senate, but at the Marriott Marquis hotel in downtown Washington. The audience consisted of over one hundred mostly younger conservatives, and he was sounding the alarm about not just foreign intervention, but about other conservatives — the worrisome resurgence of the Republican establishment.

The event was the “Up From Chaos” conference, a self-described “emergency” meeting organized by the Trumpian wing of the GOP to grapple with the political fallout from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The young men, almost all of them soberly dressed in dark suits, and women, almost uniformly wearing dresses, listened attentively as one speaker after another warned about the perils of intervention for their very own lives. A return to the thinking that led to Iraq and Afghanistan could result in nothing less than World War III over Ukraine, they were warned.

And so, as Putin’s deadly and unprovoked assault drags on, the GOP is also going to war — against itself. As so often, the battle revolves around the America First doctrine first espoused by former President Donald Trump in April 2016, during the Republican primaries, at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel, where he promised that he would perform a U-turn in American foreign policy by shunning military intervention abroad…

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According to Wikipedia, ‘America First‘ was a rallying cry for the execrable Woodrow Wilson, before it was revived by Hitler-sympathetic GOP ‘businessmen’ at the start of World War II. Can’t see as much has changed, since then!

Dr. Seuss on “America First,” July 1941: pic.twitter.com/vyeFd96e6M

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) January 5, 2021

The participants generally described themselves as “realists” and “restrainers,” and the meeting featured what amounted to realist royalty — politicians and thinkers, ranging from GOP Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) and Reps. Thomas Massie (Ky.), Dan Bishop (N.C.) and Matt Rosendale (Mont.) to Michael Anton, Sohrab Ahmari, Mollie Z. Hemingway, and, of course, Vance. It was organized by the American Conservative magazine and American Moment, whose self-described mission is to “identify, educate, and credential young Americans who will implement public policy that supports strong families, a sovereign nation, and prosperity for all,” and which features Vance on its board of advisers. Their explicit aim is to create a young counter-establishment to the hawkish national security network that has flourished in Washington over the past several decades, one that could funnel ideologically reliable appointees into a future Trump, DeSantis, Cruz or Hawley administration.

It was notable that at the conference, speaker after speaker targeted the GOP hawks more often than they spoke about Ukraine itself. Indeed, Kyiv itself was essentially MIA — serving more as a proxy for a dispute about America nationhood than about the country’s own fate as it’s mercilessly pummeled by Putin. The basic argument, outlined in a manifesto titled “Away From the Abyss” appearing in the new Compact magazine, is that aiding Ukraine is tantamount to hurting Ukraine. In resisting deescalation, the U.S. and its allies, so the thinking goes, run the risk of encouraging hapless Ukrainians to battle to the last man, all in the hopes of pursuing a Western-led regime change policy toward Moscow that might well trigger a global cataclysm…

Several of the panelists either avoided talking about Putin or largely elided the brutality of his attempted subjugation of an entire people. But more than a few appear to harbor a conciliatory view of Putin’s prowess that was first enunciated by Patrick J. Buchanan eight years ago in a column in the American Conservative. Buchanan asked, “Is Vladimir Putin a paleoconservative? In the culture war for mankind’s future, is he one of us?” The question was pretty much rhetorical. Buchanan’s argument was that America, not Russia, was the bad guy in the world. According to Buchanan, “President Reagan once called the old Soviet Empire ‘the focus of evil in the modern world.’ President Putin is implying that Barack Obama’s America may deserve the title in the 21st century. Nor is he without an argument when we reflect on America’s embrace of abortion on demand, homosexual marriage, pornography, promiscuity, and the whole panoply of Hollywood values.”…

Dr. Seuss on "America First" and "Adolph the Wolf". pic.twitter.com/iXq30uEqjy

— Jeffrey Levin ?? (@jilevin) December 31, 2020

Saturday Evening Horror-Clown Show Open Thread: The GOP Death Cult Rediscovers ‘America FIRST’Post + Comments (170)

Famous Monsters Open Thread: Peter Thiel Wants to Leave His Mark on America

by Anne Laurie| February 17, 20229:27 pm| 62 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Glibertarianism, GOP Death Cult, Open Threads

Former Gawker editor:

today i learned that peter thiel champions unfettered speech across digital platforms pic.twitter.com/cDdAAQgF00

— John Cook (@johnjcook) February 7, 2022

Not talking about the creepy two-little-fang marks parabiosis thing… Thiel’s hungering for a boot eternally stomping on democracy’s throat. And suddenly he’s getting a lot of attention.

Who is Peter Thiel, the tech billionaire trying to push the U.S. to the right? https://t.co/IY7xxTt1Ox

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) February 9, 2022

… The 54-year-old, whose contrarian and right-wing political views have made him one of the most controversial figures to emerge from Silicon Valley, will focus his time on helping pro-Trump candidates win in November’s midterm elections, according to a person familiar with his thinking who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Thiel has been participating in national politics for most of his life, helping create a conservative journal at Stanford University in the 1980s before diving into tech investing and helping found PayPal. He used the money from PayPal’s sale to invest in other tech companies, becoming the first major outside investor in Facebook and seeing his wealth and influence rocket upward as Big Tech’s dominance grew over the past 20 years.

In 2016, Thiel supported Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and later served on his transition team. Now he’s playing an even more direct role in politics, funding the Senate campaigns of two of his close associates, J.D. Vance in Ohio and Blake Masters in Arizona. At the same time, he’s still a force in tech investing and plays a major role in companies including data-harvesting firm Palantir, where he serves as chairman.

Straddling the worlds of Silicon Valley and conservative politics has made Thiel a uniquely influential and polarizing individual, though he’s not as widely known as other well-documented political funders such as the Koch brothers. That’s likely to change as he dives deeper into U.S. politics…

In a 2009 essay about his personal political evolution, Thiel described being disillusioned with politics and its ability to accomplish libertarian goals, writing, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” He went on to argue that extending voting rights to women and increasing the number of welfare beneficiaries has made it more difficult to elect libertarian politicians, though he later clarified that he didn’t support taking away the right to vote from women…

Thiel first aligned himself with Trump in the run-up to his election in 2016, donating at least $1.25 million to his campaign, according to the New York Times. The donation came just weeks after a video surfaced of Trump making lewd comments about women. Thiel went on to give a speech at the Republican National Convention and join Trump’s transition team, where he acted as a liaison between Trump and Silicon Valley, helping to install some of his acolytes in positions of power within the administration…

Thiel, whose net worth according to Bloomberg News is about $8 billion, also has a serious interest in shaping tax policy. Last year, ProPublica documented how Thiel has shielded billions of his own money from taxation by running his investments out of a Roth individual retirement account. Last year, Democrats in Congress proposed a bill that would force Thiel and other wealthy people using Roth accounts to pay huge tax bills if they ever withdraw their money. Thiel has also given money directly to anti-tax advocacy organizations, such as the Club for Growth…

A German broadcaster made a full Bond themed song about Peter Thiel for some reason and I'm pretty sure it's going to win a Grammy https://t.co/bXvJfVf96h

— Ryan Metamac ? (@RMac18) February 16, 2022

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Peter Thiel didn't need to leave Facebook's board to focus on the midterms.

But Thiel did need to leave Facebook's board to make it easier for many of his preferred candidates to take his money.

— Dan Primack (@danprimack) February 7, 2022

$20.4 million is the reported dollar value Thiel has donated to 16 Republican House and Senate candidates. https://t.co/FabU3zk8P5

— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) February 15, 2022

nice profile of (one of) the silicon valley billionaires who hates democracy and political equality https://t.co/zWxC5iB5eR

— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) February 14, 2022

"Mr. Thiel showed his provocative side at Stanford in the late 1980s. Classmates recalled Mr. Thiel, who studied philosophy and law, describing South Africa’s apartheid as a sound economic system. (A spokesman for Mr. Thiel has denied that he supported apartheid.)"

— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) February 14, 2022

The lighter side of fascist wanna-bes…

The Smirnoff Icing trump chode John McEntee and Meta trump douche Peter Thiel are starting a dating app called “The Right Stuff”, where unfuckable people can meet. https://t.co/zYpQYGiNO4

— Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) February 15, 2022

Bess Levin, at Vanity Fair, “Want to travel deep into the depths of hell?”:

… According to Axios, the app “isn’t political itself” but will “be catered to conservatives living primarily in big, progressive cities.” It is reportedly the brainchild of former Trump administration aide John McEntee, whose own profile we do hope highlights the fact that he, according to journalist Jonathan Karl, “made the disastrous last weeks of the Trump presidency possible…bossing around Cabinet secretaries, decapitating the civilian leadership at the Pentagon, and forcing officials high and low to state their allegiance to Trump.” That’s the sort of stuff the young single conservative gals are sure to love…

Supplemental reading, from a longer thread:

woah, I missed this. F*%&ing crazy. This NYT report is that, according to a presentation they reviewed, Peter Thiel – forever board member of Facebook – Founders Fund invested in a company that could hack into WhatsApp? Do I have that right? He's a remarkable board member. /1 pic.twitter.com/FgYr3Yk1N1

— Jason Kint (@jason_kint) February 1, 2022

And of course, there is still Palantir, co-founded by Peter Thiel, that – you guessed it – the NYT reported had people who helped Cambridge Analytica scrape its data. Thiel is defendant in shareholder derivative lawsuits since he's both on the board and co-founded Palantir. /3 pic.twitter.com/x89Tqy6CjF

— Jason Kint (@jason_kint) February 1, 2022

And as proper context, I guess we should throw out this Peter Thiel influence on Facebook doozy from a 2019 WSJ report. It's remarkable to consider how much value can be acquired from his sitting on Facebook's board without even owning much stock./5 https://t.co/wpHoKHzqxk

— Jason Kint (@jason_kint) February 1, 2022

Famous Monsters Open Thread: Peter Thiel Wants to Leave His Mark on AmericaPost + Comments (62)

Late Night Open Thread: But My Giant Space Peni… Rocket!

by Anne Laurie| February 13, 20221:06 am| 75 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Glibertarianism, Tech News and Issues

Elon Musk said he was ‘highly confident’ his new SpaceX Starship, designed for voyages to the moon and Mars, will reach Earth orbit for the first time this year, despite a host of technical and regulatory hurdles yet to be overcome https://t.co/ykx6obNRDD pic.twitter.com/uBig9EmOp6

— Reuters (@Reuters) February 11, 2022

What an amazing thing it is, to have a Fandom of one’s very own…

California is suing Elon Musk's Tesla, alleging it runs a "racially segregated" workplace and discriminates against Black employees.

Black workers report being concentrated in parts of its factory (one called "the plantation" by other workers) and hearing slurs up to 100x daily. pic.twitter.com/2vmD3oo13G

— AJ+ (@ajplus) February 10, 2022

Think that’s Jordan Peterson between Musk & Rogan:

One thing to ask yourself as you take in this image: why would Musk alienate the affluent, largely left-of-center demographic that made up the initial core of Tesla's customer and evangelist base?

One answer: many of them were already turned off by the ownership experience. https://t.co/gZ3bkeqHFK

— E.W. Niedermeyer (@Tweetermeyer) January 30, 2022

having interviewed with elon companies, the reverence is not just a trope.

once was unironically told that "Elon is very focused on embedded security", so engineers not whistleblowing is not surprising

— Rum and Cokes for President (@RnC_for_pres) February 2, 2022

just to give you a comparison, waymo has 0.033 disengagements per 1000 miles. tesla "full self driving" has 0.22 disengagements _per mile_.

— ?? (@Theophite) February 2, 2022

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Late Night Open Thread: <em>But My Giant Space Peni… Rocket!</em>Post + Comments (75)

Late Night Open Thread: When Peter ‘Bathory’ Thiel Abandons the Zuckerverse…

by Anne Laurie| February 11, 202212:38 am| 35 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Glibertarianism, Open Threads, Tech News and Issues

Peter Thiel is leaving the board of directors of Facebook parent company Meta. The Silicon Valley billionaire and advisor to ex-President Donald Trump has been an increasingly polarizing figure among the company’s directors. https://t.co/2rAQZFMHty

— The Associated Press (@AP) February 8, 2022

A bad day for Facebook is probably a good day for democracy

— Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) February 4, 2022

It’s bad new for both Mark Zuckerberg and our democracy…

if peter thiel is leaving facebook who’s going to ruin the entire planet just kidding the answer is everybody else at facebook

— World Famous Art Thief (@CalmSporting) February 7, 2022

i think this is right, but a key difference is that MSFT could be boring and stupid and terrible for several years until they got their shit together. FB doesn’t have legacy enterprise shit every company on earth will keep buying while they fuck around. https://t.co/PTQQkSffXr

— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) February 3, 2022

they’re absolutely still printing money, no doubt, but if they let zuckerberg continue to call all their shots, they’re going to run into serious trouble.

MSFT is fun to make fun of (esp. as a longtime mac / ios person), but the whole cinematic universe of O365 / azure / BI products is very forward thinking for enterprise business software. i haven’t seen even any *inkling* that facebook has anything similar for consumers.

not for nothing, but also, the MSFT experience on mac is finally now mostly not bad for most people, after several centuries of it being absolutely awful.

my crackpot hot take is that facebook is a lot more like walmart than microsoft.

oh no, not extremely belated and measured consideration of consumer privacy! anything but that! https://t.co/ejoOSvVA9P

— Karl Bode (@KarlBode) February 4, 2022

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Late Night Open Thread: When Peter ‘Bathory’ Thiel Abandons the Zuckerverse…Post + Comments (35)

This really is a full service blog.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

No one could have predicted…

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

In my day, never was longer.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

“But what about the lurkers?”

T R E 4 5 O N

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

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

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Godsdamned Glibertarians Open Thread: Rand Paul Is At It Again

Late Saturday Night Open Thread: Down Among the Bitconners

Saturday Evening Horror-Clown Show Open Thread: The GOP Death Cult Rediscovers ‘America FIRST’

Famous Monsters Open Thread: Peter Thiel Wants to Leave His Mark on America

Late Night Open Thread: But My Giant Space Peni… Rocket!

Late Night Open Thread: When Peter ‘Bathory’ Thiel Abandons the Zuckerverse…