;)
The Conversation -- December 5, 2023
Great Battles in Military History: The Spudsville Retreat. Catie Edmonson of the New York Times: "Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, announced on Tuesday that he would lift his blockade of nearly all the military promotions he had delayed for months in protest of a Pentagon policy ensuring abortion access for service members. Mr. Tuberville said he had lifted his holds on about 440 military promotions. 'Everybody but the 10 or 11 four-stars,' he said. 'Those will continue.' The announcement came amid mounting pressure on Mr. Tuberville about his decision, announced in February, to hold up officer promotions over a new Pentagon policy that offers time off and travel reimbursement to service members seeking abortions or fertility care. His blockade, which both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill had vociferously opposed, had for months disrupted the Pentagon's ability to fill its top ranks." An NPR story is here.
A Speaker's Lot Is Not a Happy One. Sahil Kapur of NBC News: "Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., announced Tuesday that he won't seek re-election in 2024, a shocking move to many of his colleagues that will further thin the ranks of Republican institutionalists in Congress. He plans to finish out his two-year term, he said ... on X. McHenry, 48, became the chair of the powerful House Financial Services Committee at the beginning of the year. He gained national attention during his three-week stint in October as House Speaker pro tempore after Republicans ousted Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., from the position." The Washington Post's story is here. MB: Funny how all the GOP speakers -- Newt, Hastert (okay, he landed in jail), Boehner, Ryan -- quit their jobs; rumors abound that My Kevin is about to leave Congress, too. Turns out if you hold the job merely on an interim basis for just a few weeks, it's all too much.
Speaking of Newt.... Ken Meyer of Mediaite: Newt Gingrich said of Fox Monday that any House Republican who votes against an impeachment inquiry into President Biden will get a primary challenge.
** Speaker Johnson Is Protecting Violent Criminals. Igor Derysh of Salon: "House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., drew criticism after telling reporters on Tuesday that Republicans are blurring faces in security footage from the Jan. 6 Capitol attack to protect the rioters. 'We have to blur some of the faces of persons who participated in the events of that day because we don't want them to be retaliated against and to be charged by the DOJ,' said Johnson, who played a key role in ... Donald Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. Numerous MAGA Republicans who falsely alleged that the attack was instigated by federal agents or was largely executed by violent leftists have long called for the release of the footage, which they claim will back up their baseless conspiracy theories.... Andrew Weissmann called ... Mike Johnson's comments 'open contempt for the rule of law and a violation of oath of office.' Despite Johnson's comments, the FBI and DOJ have long had access to the video footage, though blurring people’s faces could prevent civilians from reporting tips to the FBI." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Just think how lawless this is. If you and I proactively hid the identities of violent criminals, we would likely face criminal charges for obstruction of justice. As Steve Benen of MSNBC reminds us, "At a Capitol Hill press conference last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson boasted to reporters, 'We are the rule-of-law team.' The Louisiana Republican quickly added, 'The Republican Party stands for the rule of law.'" (Normally, when you see blurred faces [or license plates or house numbers] in news footage, the images that have been blurred are of children or other innocent bystanders.)
All Those Times Trump Incriminated Himself. Spencer Hsu & Devlin Barrett of the Washington Post: "Federal prosecutors on Tuesday accused ... Donald Trump of a long pattern of lying about elections and encouraging violence, saying he 'sent' supporters on Jan. 6, 2021 to criminally block the election results. In a new court filing, prosecutors working for special counsel Jack Smith went further than in their August indictment in attempting to tie him to that day's violence, saying they intended to introduce evidence of his other acts both before the November 2020 presidential election and subsequent alleged threats to establish his motive, intent and preparation for subverting its legitimate results." ~~~
~~~ Brandi Buchman of Law & Crime: "... prosecutor Molly Gaston cited Trump's eerily familiar sentiment that voting machines had been rigged against Mitt Romney in 2012 when he ran against Barack Obama. The same thing occurred in 2016, Gaston wrote, when Trump 'claimed repeatedly with no basis, that there was widespread voter fraud including through public statements and tweets.'... The special counsel also indicated that they would enter evidence at trial that showed Trump's history of remarks where he 'repeatedly refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power,' the filing states." ~~~
~~~ Katelyn Polantz, et al., of CNN: "Special counsel Jack Smith plans to present evidence at Donald Trump's trial next year that his continued support for US Capitol rioters helps to show he intended to inspire violence on January 6, 2021, as part of a conspiracy he led to overturn the 2020 election. In a court filing made public Tuesday, prosecutors point to Trump endorsing the Proud Boys during a 2020 presidential debate, saying he would pardon January 6 rioters and playing a recording of the National Anthem from imprisoned January 6 defendants at a campaign rally. Prosecutors say the fact that Trump has financially supported -- and celebrated -- January 6 rioters establishes his motive and intent to commit federal crimes." MB: Read the filing, linked above. It contains several examples of Trump's self-incriminating remarks.
~~~~~~~~~~
** Presidential Race 2024, Hair-on-Fire Edition
Ishan Tharoor of the Washington Post: "'One of the things that we see happening today is a sort of a sleepwalking into dictatorship in the United States," [Liz] Cheney said [in a CBS interview that aired Sunday].... In her CBS interview, Cheney said a Trump victory could mark the end of the American republic. 'He's told us what he will do,' she said.... 'For many Americans, a turn toward authoritarianism isn't seen as a negative,' [WashPo columnist Philip] Bump wrote [last month]. 'Many Americans support that idea.'" Read on.
Charlie Savage, Jonathan Swan & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: Donald "Trump's violent and authoritarian rhetoric on the 2024 campaign trail has attracted growing alarm and comparisons to historical fascist dictators and contemporary populist strongmen.... As he runs for president again facing four criminal prosecutions, Mr. Trump may seem more angry, desperate and dangerous to American-style democracy than in his first term. But the throughline that emerges is far more long-running: He has glorified political violence and spoken admiringly of autocrats for decades.... What would be different in a second Trump administration is not so much his character as his surroundings. Forces that somewhat contained his autocratic tendencies in his first term ... would all be weaker.... It is likely that Republicans in Congress would be even more pliable in any second Trump term.... Parts of Mr. Trump's agenda ... are aberrational.... More than anything else, Mr. Trump's vow to use the Justice Department to wreak vengeance against his adversaries is a naked challenge to democratic values."
Jan-Werner Müller in a Guardian op-ed: "... with today's pioneers of autocracy, things tend to only get really bad when they enter office the second time.... Authoritarians like ... Viktor Orbán, or Polish strongman Jarosław Kaczyński ... considered it deeply unfair that they had suffered election defeat (duly attributed to various enemies, from judges to hostile media outlets). When they came back to power, they had learned one thing for sure: not to waste political capital on culture wars, but to capture state institutions, ideally on day one, with the judiciary and the state bureaucracy as primary targets.... If Trump wins, he will claim that 'the people' -- for only his voters are the 'real people' -- democratically decided in favor of revenge and destruction."
Ken Meyer of Mediaite: "The Atlantic announced that their first issue of 2024 will focus on what they believe to be the potentially disastrous consequences of Donald Trump returning to the White House. 'The next Trump presidency will be worse,' the magazine declared Monday on X (formerly Twitter). It outlined The Atlantic's planned January/February 2024 issue, in which 24 of the publication's contributors will lay out the 'potential ramifications' on a variety of subjects if Trump is reelected. As of this writing, The Atlantic has published eight of the 24 essays they promised for 'If Trump Wins,' which focus on Trump and autocracy, NATO, his loyalists, immigration, the Justice Department, misogyny, climate, and journalism. The issue also includes a note from Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who warned that America endured 'serious damage' from Trump's first term, and a second one 'will be much worse.'" ~~~
~~~ Steve M. notes that MSM journalists hav sidelined themselves for decades with the naive belief that nobody could really be as depraved as Newt Gingrich & Rush Limbaugh & Donald Trump appeared to be. "... so [these journalists] also couldn't imagine that the souls of millions of rank-and-file right-wingers were being poisoned by this hateful rhetoric." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Several other factors operate against realistic MSM reporting: (1) editors insist reporters be "neutral" and not criticize political candidates; (2) editors assign reporters to "granular" tasks like covering a particular politician's rally in Sioux City, so reporters seldom have a professional opportunity to step back and see the big picture; (3) editors assign reporters to get out & "understand" voters, and voters are liars; (4) publishers think (rightly or wrongly -- I don't know) that horse-race stories sell newspapers.
AND last week the Washington Post published a dire warning by conservative Robert Kagan: that "a Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable." As of this morning, the Kagan essay (which we linked last week) is still up on the WashPo's front page. BTW, the citation there is from the headline writer, not from Kagan. I don't think "increasingly inevitable" makes sense. "Inevitable" is like "unique": it is or it isn't; there are no shades of gray.
Philip Bump of the Washington Post homes in on Trump's formula for using lies to his advantage: "He gets buy-in on a familiar claim [like Joe Biden called parents at school board meetings 'domestic terrorists' (he didn't)] and then pivots it to his advantage, either by depicting himself in opposition to shared enemies or by leveraging the credibility he earns to make other false statements.... Another point of his falsehoods: throw out so much garbage that the truth is obscured.... One thing that has changed since 2015, when Trump first deployed this approach to politics, is that nearly the entire right-wing media and political ecosystem is now oriented around boosting similar falsehoods. There's no fringe anymore, really." ~~~
~~~ digby covers a number of these Trump Tricks, and warns of the consequences: Trump "instinctively understands the power of turning his own flaws into his rivals' and then criticizing them for it. Psychologists call this 'projection' and it is. But it's more than that. Trump is corrupt and incompetent and he's projecting that on to Biden to be sure. But he's also feeding the cynicism that has overtaken our political culture. His own followers may believe that he is an innocent martyr being persecuted unjustly, but all those swing voters or 'low information' voters who may be unhappy about other things can be persuaded that 'they all do it' ... so what's the big deal? He knows that all he has to do is get his fan base out and convince a small sliver of the rest of the voting population that there's not a dime's worth of difference between him and Joe Biden and he could pull off another win like he did in 2016."
Burgess Everett, et al., of Politico survey Congressional sheeples to see how they would maneuver a second Trump presidency*: "Congressional Republicans are steeling themselves for a return to daily life with Donald Trump -- which means constant, uncomfortable questions about his erratic policy whims and political attacks.... But Hill Republicans are girding to treat Trump the third-time nominee the same way they did Trump the neophyte candidate and then president. They're distancing themselves and downplaying his remarks.... Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) said plenty in the GOP dread Trump's return to the political spotlight but 'everybody is being more private about it.'"
In Other Election News
Kierra Frazier of Politico: "North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum dropped his bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination on Monday after repeatedly polling in the single digits and failing to qualify for the third and fourth GOP debates. Burgum is the latest candidate to drop out of the race, following former South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, Vice President Mike Pence, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, former Rep. Will Hurd and businessperson Perry Johnson." (Also linked yesterday.)
Rebecca O'Brien & Reid Epstein of the New York Times: "A super PAC backing the independent presidential candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is planning to spend $10 million to $15 million to get Mr. Kennedy on the ballot in 10 states, a substantial effort that, even if partly successful, could heighten Democratic concerns about his potential to play the role of spoiler in 2024. The hefty sum underscores the challenge facing Mr. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and prominent purveyor of conspiracy theories, as he pursues his long-shot White House bid. It also shows the substantial financial support he has generated so far."
Karoun Demirjian & Lara Jakes of the New York Times: "The White House warned congressional leaders on Monday that the United States would run out of money to send weapons to Ukraine by year's end, severely jeopardizing Kyiv's ability to defend itself against Russia if lawmakers fail to approve emergency military aid soon. The urgent warning from President Biden's top budget official, delivered in a blunt letter, was the administration's latest bid to pressure the Republicans resisting another infusion of aid to Ukraine to drop their opposition. It came at a critical time in the war, as Ukraine struggles to push back Russian troops in a counteroffensive that has largely stalled. President Vladimir V. Putin has continued to send a steady stream of his forces into the conflict, willing to endure high casualties amid signs of flagging resolve from Kyiv's Western allies."
Jacqueline Alemany & Matt Viser of the Washington Post: "As House Republicans move toward a floor vote to authorize an impeachment inquiry against President Biden, House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) has again mischaracterized evidence of payments from Hunter Biden to his father. In an email to reporters, a spokesperson for Comer claimed that the House Oversight Committee, which is investigating Biden, had obtained bank records revealing that Hunter Biden's law firm, Owasco PC, which had received payments from Chinese-state-linked companies and other foreign companies in the past, made direct monthly payments to Joe Biden.... The three payments of $1,380 that occurred in September, October and November 2018 -- nearly two years after Biden had left the vice presidency -- were actually for a 2018 Ford Raptor truck Joe Biden had purchased that Hunter Biden was using.... Other expenses listed in [Comer] email verified by The Post included payments for health insurance, college and high school tuition for Hunter Biden's children, the Yale Club and a storage unit."
Jonathan Dienst, et al., of NBC News: "At least four gold bars found in the FBI search of Sen. Bob Menendez's home had been directly linked to a New Jersey businessman now accused of bribing Menendez, the state's senior senator, Bergen County prosecutor's records from a 2013 robbery case show. The businessman, Fred Daibes, reported to police that he was the victim of an armed robbery in 2013, and he asked police to recover the gold bars stolen from him. Daibes reported that $500,000 in cash and 22 gold bars were stolen, Edgewater, New Jersey, police records show. Police later caught four people with the stolen goods. To get his property back, Daibes signed 'property release forms' certifying the gold bars belonged to him, the records show. 'Each gold bar has its own serial number,' Daibes told investigators in a 2013 transcript made by prosecutors and police who recovered -- and returned to Daibes -- the stolen valuables.... decade later, it said, the FBI found four gold bars with [the same] unique serial numbers in the Clifton, New Jersey, home of Menendez and his wife, Nadine."
Trump Brings Conspiracy Theories to Court. Rachel Weiner & Isaac Arnsdorf of the Washington Post: "Ever since he was indicted on charges of interfering in the 2020 election results, Donald Trump has relished the chance to use the case in Washington as a venue to air his baseless claims of fraud. Now he is using it to circulate a new set of falsehoods: that the federal government staged or incited violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to discredit Trump and his supporters.... Trump is ... suggesting that the government is withholding information on people known as 'Fence Cutter Bulwark' and 'Scaffold Commander' -- nicknames given by conspiracy theorists to people they claim are government agents who instigated the Jan. 6 riot.... He also asked for any intelligence the government had on 'Antifa,' on pipe bombs found near the Capitol on Jan. 6, and on 'informants, cooperators [and] undercover agents ... involved in the assistance, planning, or encouragement' of the events of that day. These are all references common on right-wing social media...."
Please, Please, Let Me Keep Doxxing & Dissing the Clerk. ABC News live-updated developments yesterday in the Trump Organization's civil fraud trial in New York: "... Donald Trump's request for an expedited grant of leave to appeal the gag orders in his civil fraud trial was denied Monday afternoon. The gag order is now likely to still be in effect on Monday when Trump takes the witness stand in his own defense. Trump's lawyers requested that Judge David Friedman, who initially lifted the gag order, permit them to appeal the final decision that reinstated the gag order to New York's Court of Appeals. 'You had a decision by a panel of judges. A single judge cannot undo a panel's decision,' Lauren Holmes, a court attorney, said during a scheduling meeting Monday afternoon at the Appellate Division.... Dennis Fan, a lawyer for the New York Attorney General, also declined to consent to expediting the briefing schedule." (Also linked yesterday.)
Trump, the Cartoon. Lee Moran of the Huffington Post: First Frames: "In [Liz] Cheney's upcoming 'Oath and Honor,' the former lawmaker said Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) had told her he'd visited Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home in the aftermath of the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot -- in what was essentially the first step toward the rehabilitation of Trump's image among Republicans -- because he'd been told Trump wasn't eating." Last Frame: Trump, in a rant Monday on Liars' Social, wrote, "I was not depressed, I WAS ANGRY, and it was not that I was not eating, it was that I was eating too much." MB: So he's fat because Joe Biden.
Guns America. Bonnie Berkowitz of the Washington Post: "In less than 90 minutes on Sunday afternoon, two 911 calls led police in Texas and Washington to two mass shootings that pushed the nation to a gruesome milestone. They were the 37th and 38th shootings this year in which four or more victims were killed, the highest number of mass killings in any year since at least 2006. Last year's 36 was the previous record. In Dallas, a 21-year-old man who was supposed to be wearing an ankle monitor because of a previous aggravated assault charge walked into a house and shot five people, killing a toddler and three adults. He fled in a stolen car, police said, but fatally shot himself as highway patrol officers chased him. In a suburb of Vancouver, Wash., five family members died in what sheriff's deputies think was a murder-suicide."
Kevin Breuninger of CNBC: "A major Swiss bank admitted to conspiring with U.S. taxpayers and others to hide over $5.6 billion from the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Justice announced Monday. Banque Pictet, the private banking division of the 218-year-old Pictet Group, will pay about $122.9 million in restitution and penalties as part of an agreement with prosecutors. Between 2008 and 2014, the bank had 1,637 accounts on behalf of American clients, who collectively evaded approximately $50.6 million in U.S. taxes, the DOJ said."
Rebecca Carballo of the New York Times: "Hackers, using old passwords from customers of the genetic testing company 23andMe, were able to gain access to personal information from about 6.9 million profiles, which in some cases included ancestry trees, birth years and geographic locations, the company said on Monday. In October, a hacker posted a claim online that they had 23andMe users' profile information, the company wrote in a Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure on Friday. 'We have not learned of any reports of inappropriate use of the data after the leak,' a 23andMe spokeswoman said on Monday."
Lori Aratani of the Washington Post: "Alaska Airlines has reached a nearly $2 billion deal to buy Hawaiian Airlines, executives with the two carriers announced Sunday."
~~~~~~~~~~
Pennsylvania. Olafihimihan Oshin of the Hill: "Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have publicly condemned the antisemitic protest that took place outside a restaurant that serves Israeli food in Philadelphia. Demonstrators supporting Palestinians gathered outside of Goldie which is part of a restaurant group co-owned by Israeli-born Michael Solomonov, calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war Sunday night, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. Protesters were seen chanting 'Goldie, Goldie you can't hide, we charge you with genocide.' They also marched through the Center City neighborhood, calling out Philadelphia Eagles fans who were watching their team play in local bars.... 'Tonight in Philly, we saw a blatant act of antisemitism -- not a peaceful protest," Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) wrote on X.... 'A restaurant was targeted and mobbed because its owner is Jewish and Israeli.'... The Biden administration also condemned the demonstrators in front of Goldie's, calling it 'completely unjustifiable.'" (Also linked yesterday.)
~~~~~~~~~~
Israel/Palestine
The Washington Post's live updates of developments Tuesday in the Israel/Hamas war are here: "Israel's military is advancing into southern Gaza in a push that ushers in a new phase of its war against Hamas -- and an increasingly perilous situation for Palestinian civilians who have few safe places left to flee. Israel says Hamas leaders who planned the Oct. 7 attack are sheltering in the south.... 'For people ordered to evacuate, there is nowhere safe to go and very little to survive on,' a spokesman for U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said. A territory-wide communications blackout also hampered the humanitarian response overnight." ~~~
~~~ The New York Times' live updates for Tuesday are here. CNN's live updates are here.
Michael Shear of the New York Times: "Vice President Kamala Harris's trip to the Middle East over the weekend was both a major foray into wartime diplomacy and an effort to show that the administration is taking a harder line with Israel about the civilian toll of its war against Hamas.... Over the course of just three hours at the U.N. climate summit in Dubai, Ms. Harris juggled four high-stakes meetings or calls with kings and presidents. Her message on the war, privately and publicly, was one of the most pointed pronouncements from any American official -- including [President] Biden -- establishing guidelines for how Israel should fight its war and what the country should do once the fighting is over. 'Under no circumstances,' her office wrote in describing her remarks in a face-to-face meeting with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, 'will the United States permit the forced relocation of Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank, the besiegement of Gaza, or the redrawing of the borders of Gaza.' Jake Sullivan, the president's national security adviser, said on Monday that 'there's no daylight' between the vice president and Mr. Biden...."
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Reader Comments (17)
Something more substantive later… but first…
Marie, with more appreciation for words than that WaPo headline crafter, writes: “ I don't think ‘increasingly inevitable’ makes sense. ‘Inevitable’ is like ‘unique’: it is or it isn't; there are no shades of gray.”
Quite.
It’s like “absolutely, maybe”.
I’ve pretty much given up being pissed every time someone uses “very unique”. It’s unique (one of a kind) or it’s not. Really, really one of a kind makes no sense. Unless you’re six. Or write for the Washington Post.
Okay. Mini kvetch absolutely over. Maybe.
Maybe they were trying to save a comma, as in "Increasingly, a badabing seems inevitable. "
A comma saved is a comma earned.
Death by a thousand morons.
Little by little, step by step, PoT goons infect the body politic with their screw job ideological pathogens, or maybe that should be an illogical ideological pathogenic screw job (and I’ll happily stipulate that when taking about the right “illogical ideology” is a tautology).
And this death by a thousand morons takes place in every corner of public and private life. So here we have this numbskull, leading the pack for a senate seat in Montana, who wants to turn all our healthcare over to private operators. And if you haven’t heard anything truly scary for a while (with the Orange Monster on the loose, that’s a near impossibility, but stay with me here), how ‘bout this for a loosening of the colonic tract…this idiot, Tim Sheehy, promises to “put all healthcare into the hands of insurance companies”.
Let me repeat that. He wants to “put all healthcare into the hands of insurance companies”. Full stop.
Two things. First, if you’ve gotten medical attention lately, you know that most healthcare is ALREADY in the hands of insurance companies. “What seems to be the problem, ma’am? Oh…oh. Your insurance company won’t cover that.” “Cancer of all internal organs, at once? Okay. Your insurance company will cover three days of chemo and no more than four tablets of ibuprofen.”
But let’s put ALL healthcare in the hands of an industry that makes money by denying you coverage. At least now there is a buffer (your doctor) between you and some 22 year old kid in Wichita reading actuarial tables to decide how long he’ll let you live.
Truly Republican idea. The private sector will take care of everything.
But here’s another classic blithering idiot statement:
“I mean, healthcare worked before health insurance existed. Each town had a doctor that would drive to your house, take care of you and you’d pay him,”
Unless he hated you. Or you were black.
Yeah. Back in good old all white 19th century Currier and Ives ‘merica, old Doc Johnson would get in his buggy with his little bag, drive out to the farm and say “Anything beyond a broken arm and a cold, you’re on your own. Five dollars, please.”
These are the kinds of people you wish would have to actually live with (or die from) their own blindingly stupid ideas. Ideas they promise to inflict on all the rest of us.
And don’t be too sure they can’t do it.
@Patrick: Your speculation about a dropped comma reminds me of the supposed Pence added comma. The pence comma was mentioned in an ABC News report I linked last week, but I don't think I said anything about it in my short synopsis of the report:
"Sources said that [Jack Smith's] investigators’ questioning became so granular at times that they pressed Pence over the placement of a comma in his book: When recounting a phone call with Trump on Christmas Day 2020, Pence wrote in his book that he told Trump, 'You know, I don’t think I have the authority to change the outcome' of the election on Jan. 6.
"But Pence allegedly told Smith's investigators that the comma should have never been placed there.... Pence told Smith's investigators that he actually meant to write in his book that he admonished Trump, 'You know I don't think I have the authority to change the outcome,' suggesting Trump was well aware of the limitations of Pence's authority days before Jan. 6 -- a line Smith includes in his indictment."
And we won't even get into the infamous Second Amendment comma. Innocent people have died because of that comma.
While most of the MSM downplays the threat posed by the Fat Fascist through a combination of both siderisms, horse race polls, and screaming about Biden’s age, Fox looks at Trump’s promises of mass deportations, kangaroo trials, concentration camps, wholesale firings of civil servants, and four years of authoritarian revenge, yawns and sez no big deal.
Brit Hume blows off all trepidation about Trump’s fascism as “overwrought”.
Nothing to see here. Go back to sleep.
But vote for Trump.
re Pet Grammer Peeves:
Folks who can't hear or understand the difference between effect and affect use impact for both. That's not so bad, but now a thing is often said to be impactful. Whats next? Impactfulness?
There must be a lot of low IQ republican impeachers (is that a word?)
if they think the Bidens would be writing checks trying to hide
money.
They surely must know that hiding money is done via a Swiss bank
account.
What next? They'll want to check under the Biden's bed for gold
bars, or under the mattress for tons of cash.
NBC News
"Indictments dropped against 17 Texas police officers over tactics used during 2020 George Floyd protests
Democratic Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza, who was elected months after the protests and ran on promises to hold police accountable in Austin, said his office would still move forward with prosecuting four other officers"
Paul Waldman on digby
"What if instead of thinking about our vote for president as a profound expression of our innermost self in all its complexity, we think about it as just one piece of our more complex engagement with the political world, and one that doesn’t have to be expressive and inspiring, not because it isn’t important, but precisely because it is?
Your presidential vote doesn’t have to give you a sense of fulfillment and joy. It can be purely instrumental — often, it may be just insurance, contributing to one outcome you’re only partly in favor of to avoid a much worse outcome. Making that choice doesn’t mean you aren’t idealistic or principled, it just means you see politics in a holistic way."
D: "Impaction"
You can look it up.
@Patrick: But that's pretty much all about shit problems. Appropriately enough, I reckon.
Thanks Patrick,
The next time I hear someone speak of being impacted by something, I'll suggest they see a gastroenterologist.
Talk about impact(ed)…
I didn’t listen to or watch the Gavin Newsome-Ronito DeSantolini smackdown, but I have since caught clips of that encounter. One in particular I found amusing.
Ronito, being on Fox, with help from traitor Sean Hannity, tried to attack Biden’s abilities, which he described as negligible due to cognitive decline. Of course being on Fox, as I say, he didn’t feel the need to offer any factual evidence to back up any of his claims. Newsome proceeded to drill him a new one, using things both hated and feared on Fox: facts.
In a quick, but comprehensive review of how the economy is faring under Biden, he dismantled DeSantolini’s lies. But as soon as he rounded it up by saying something like, of course this is not anything you’ll ever hear on Fox, Hannity awoke from his fact induced paralysis and quickly sputtered “Um, okay, moving right along…” hahaha. It was perfect. In other words “No facts, please. Baseless right wing propaganda only!”
I suppose intellectual impactedness is at least a partial cause for how full of shit these assholes (literally) are.
D,
Impactful, impactfulness, impactocity, impactication, impactfulnessationary, impactessence, impactpachydermy? Impactpachydermyitis? How about hard hitting. Hard hittingness? Not so hard hittingness? Wicked hard hittingaciousness?…
Then there’s anti hard hittingaciousness…
Principles à la baked potato head…
Picking up on our lexical peregrinations prior to the sun crossing the meridian, I pose the question of whether one who claims to have principles can be half-principled, or quarter-principled, sorta-kinda principled, or principled some of the time. I would suggest that as with “unique” and “inevitably” there is an absolute quality to the concept of having principles. If they are malleable, cursory, conditional, or shaky, can they actually be called principles?
With an unprincipled (QED) lout like Potato Head, it’s all about the show. If these people really believed abortion was murder, why admit any options? Some don’t. Louts like Potato Head have “principles” only insofar as he gets something from it. As soon as it becomes clear that his accounts are in the red, it’s “Okay. I’ll allow it. But not for those six guys! Harrumph! After all, I have PRINCIPLES!”
Schmuck.
Ak: The sun is well below the yardarm here, and a comment on principles seems timely.
By definition, mine are not yours. We may start from the same set, and you may recall Sr. Caedmon (Dominican, in 4th grade) and Br. Peter (in HS, Forever Selling Chances - FSC = Christian Brothers), and all the others whose mission was to make you a real person, inculcating not only the basics in the Baltimore Catechism, but expansion into Aristotle, Plato and others who sought to define and seek "the good." And it wasn't "religion", it was "what works."
But then time passed and the infinite permutations of life reshaped all that for each individual. Some of us got lost, most of us changed our basic assumptions, some of us found totally new things different from our foundational beliefs. So, along with those permutations, we all developed, and continue to develop, revised principles.
So, it is natural for our principles to change as do our lives. And, as we are individuals, our principles will differ to reflect our different experiences.
What may be unnatural, for many of us, is to hold to the idea that our own, individual, principles reflect our own understanding of "the good" and of "virtue", even though we can see that others hold different values. Without thinking less of those others for the difference.
Patrick,
Quite right. Our understanding of the world and our place in it, which for almost all of us*, changes over time, as we learn and grow, and most certainly affects how we respond to events and people. Certain principles, as Kant would say, remain (or, in his estimation) should remain inviolable. Murder is wrong, for instance.
At some point, most of what we might call principles become pretty well set. You’re correct, that what we learned from the Baltimore Catechism (“Why did God make me?” “To love honor and serve him”) were less personal principles than received commands. I mean, most seven year olds can’t be expected to have developed a consistent and well thought through set of principles. Those precepts and our sense of order in the world most certainly can, and in many cases, should change or at least be susceptible to modifications.
My jab at Potato Head, and people like him, arises more in response to the way they trumpet their beliefs in a way that allows them to assert that their principles are sacrosanct and morally impervious to any other points of view. In other words, they claim the principled high ground from which they can assault the rest of us. My point then is that, unlike those of us whose ideas that govern our understanding of the world can change over time, they find such an admission anathema and rather attempt to assert their moral superiority even when they hypocritically and obviously have changed their position.
*I’m reminded of the remembrance of a college roommate of Cancun Ted Cruz who said that Cruz’s position on almost every subject was, as he passed into his mid forties, exactly the same as when he was 18, which I find beyond disturbing.