
Is that a thing? Thank god it’s Saturday.
Sure Jan dot gif
Capitol riot defendants facing jail have regrets. Judges aren’t buying it.
I always get him confused with Josh Hawley. To be fair, they both seem like giant pieces of shit.
Blob fish gonna blob
Cruz pokes fun at Cancun controversy at CPAC
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/540681-cruz-pokes-fun-at-cancun-controversy-at-cpac
This is my shocked face :/
Saudi crown prince approved operation that led to death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, U.S. intelligence report concludes
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/khashoggi-killing-intelligence-report-release-mbs-saudi-arabia/2021/02/26/df5f6e58-7844-11eb-948d-19472e683521_story.html
Brain Drain will be along shortly. I can tell you I’ve been watching The Muppet Show on Disney+.
Enjoy your Saturday!
…do love those muppets…which leaves me oddly conflicted sometimes since on account of their tendency to lurch from disaster to disaster with an almost pathological lack of foresight the term “a bunch of muppets” is one I frequently feel like using to describe, say, boris johnson & his band of lousy political chums
…but at some level I feel like that either comes off as disrespectful to the muppets or implying an entirely unintended sense of underlying affection?
…also madison cawthorn seems like he was/is just made of a collection of the worst clichés about toxic right wing male stereotypes…it’s entirely possible he actually has no redeeming features
I think it’s fair to compare someone’s incompetence/ineptitude to Muppets. I guess the issue is mostly that the Muppets are pretty good-natured, they aren’t bigots, assholes, bullies, predatory, or even mean.
Young representative Cawthorn (he’s all of 25) certainly gives off a Patrick Bateman vibe, doesn’t he?
People in the DC area must be so relieved that CPAC packed up their clown cars and took the circus down to Orlando this year. It’s usually held in this place called National Harbor, a vast multi-use planned community south of DC. A friend of mine who works at National Harbor told me that every year when CPAC descends it’s like a multi-day episode of “American Horror Story.” And these are all DC residents, so the “headliners” like Canadian immigrant Rafael Cruz, Jr. must be familiar sights around town. I’d almost like to go, just for the space/time traveling aspect of it, but I would clutch my return ticket very close. I don’t want a “Jurassic Park”-like experience.
Going back to that brief discussion we had last week, I’m wondering if a liberal version of CPAC would help drag enough of the country back into reality to help with overall messaging. I mean, liberals fucking suck at messaging–particularly liberal politicians–so maybe what we need is a week-long convention where we do nothing but hone the messaging chops and introduce sanity back to the world. The main caveat, of course, is no fucking Clintonite, 3rd-Way, bullshit. Headliners would be people like AOC, Warren, Sanders, Pressly, Hartmann, etc.
…as a hypothetical it’s easy to see how that might be a good idea…but when I try to think about how it might work as a practical thing I don’t know that it seems as clear?
…the fact that the left hand lane seems to get gridlocked while the the traffic on the right never seems to have trouble running at full-throttle is maybe not as direct a comparison as it could be…or at least so it seems to me…the right are pretty clear about their audience…& that audience is largely content with pablum…ring the right bells, beat the right drums & sound the right dog-whistles & their chosen flock will salivate pretty much on demand in a pavlovian fashion
…the left on the other hand is almost divided as a matter of definition…to some it’s a case of “just not the other thing” while to others it’s a constant yearning to have something the rest of the world might recognise as left-wing politics given a shot…& there’s a considerable number of points on that spectrum from which different folks want to argue that “their thing” ought to be more important or urgent than what they see as being the current priorities…hence the cliché about the circular firing squad
…but I do tend to agree that if we could arrive at some straightforward measures that could be achieved which were both simple enough in the broad strokes to allow for a party line that could be stuck to & also relevant enough to the needs the majority of the population have that they might result in some enthusiasm being kindled it would go a long way…& the sort of speakers you mention, along with the likes of katie porter or ilhan omar or stacey abrams are certainly people I think have a proven record of being able to rouse some of that enthusiasm
To hijack your analogy, it’s easy to make traffic flow if everyone is moving the same direction at the same speed. Remember the link to the article on the psychology of conservatives? No nuance, no questioning, everything is black and white, no thinking required. So of course their messaging is on point.
LIberals, on the other hand, question, think, wonder, argue, consider, suggest. Look at what you’re doing with Butcher’s suggestion right now. We don’t move in lockstep because we tend to be smart enough to look at the ramifications of various actions and then we’re willing to listen and reconsider. Except for Butcher’s stance on bacon. He could not possibly be more wrong.
Remember the Star Trek episode about the Nazis? (You can learn everything from Star Trek.) The planet adopted the Nazi mentality because it was horrifyingly efficient and they needed efficiency. Monsters who don’t fight among themselves have an enormous capacity to get things done. The wrong things, of course, but they can certainly accomplish them. That’s one of the best things about the “rift” in Republicans. If they fight each other, they’re not getting evil shit done. Rick Scott is already proclaiming the Republican civil war is over, because HE KNOWS THEY HAVE TO STICK TOGETHER. If they don’ t, they’re like the couple that wanders off in a slasher movie to have sex somewhere. Buh-bye.
That’s really what you’re up against with today’s Republicans (yes, I’m leaning into Godwin’s Law). They move in lockstep, they have the exact same WRONG goals and values, and they have no moral structure or intellect to slow them down with pesky questions or considerations. That’s why Trump was able to weaponize Twitter. It’s the perfect vehicle to reach people who don’t like to read, think, or accept alternative viewpoints.
And when we do bumble into a slogan like “defund the police” the right uses communication judo and turns it against us, because the actual meaning is far more nuanced and detailed. But their constituency literally DOES NOT BELIEVE such nuances exist, and they’re certainly not willing to consider “fictions.”
That’s why “unity” and “reaching the right” and all that other feel-good stuff will never work. You’re trying to describe the color red to a person that’s been blind from birth.
Moving back to Butcher’s idea, is it possible? Yes, it is, but you’d have to get all those people to agree to one coherent, pithy message and STICK TO IT AT ALL COSTS. No, Bernie, no ad libs. No, Joe, no “bipartisanship.” No, AOC, you have a perfect right to articulate your experience and you’re absolutely right but today you stay on-message. And therein lies the true difficulty. It’s herding cats.
Well, to add a little clarity, I don’t think the “message” of such a convention would require lock-step-no-thinking-required speeches. It would simply require actually elevating liberal thinking and policy in a concentrated form. That would be the beauty of it. People would see that it’s not a bunch of Stepford Wives robotically parroting talking points–but that what they are talking about is real shit that is actually fact-based.
Plus, the continental breakfast in the halls outside of the big ballrooms would need to have crispy bacon. That would be a slam dunk.
Madison Cawthorn starts off as Billy Ocean
Then turns into Death Proof.
Some happy thoughts for your weekend?
https://thomhartmann.medium.com/theres-a-nefarious-plot-underway-around-the-state-of-the-union-address-65173df22c35
Ha! I fell for your sarcasm. After reading about that Madison dude then this…I’m glad it’s pancake breakfast in my house this morning. Time to eat my feelings.
That’s … distressingly plausible. I hope Biden doesn’t fall for it. There’s no need to pander to the right-wing bullshit chorus.
Qanon conspiracy believers are promoting another “rally” in DC on March 4th, the date they think Donald Trump will be proclaimed “President of the World.”
predident of the world?
thats a case americans thinking the us of a is the world right?
coz im definitely not signing up for that
Re: Madison Cawthorn. At first, I felt like it was unnecessary and uncouth to use sayings like “stands for” or “walked back”. As I continued to read the article, my feelings about that quickly morphed into schadenfreude. Fucking smarmy serial predator. If only his friend had abandoned him as he claimed.
Yeah, he gives off a serious “Patrick Bateman” vibe. That article is creepy as hell. It makes you wonder what he’d have done if he wasn’t paralyzed.
I would argue that becoming paralyzed is what exacerbated his sociopathic behavior and personality. That coupled with his white male entitlement and fragility.
Hmm. Counterpoint: Brett Kavanaugh. Beer boy displayed sociopathic tendencies and is credibly accused of assaulting women without the handy excuse of paralysis.
Looking at it from another angle, I might argue that Republican politics attracts sociopaths, whatever the origin of their mental disorders. That encompasses the “white male fragility and entitlement” of your hypothesis.
Republicans: A broad enough tent to include any white male with psychiatric disorders. And some white women, too!
I’m from the state where Hawley, um, . . . has spent time in at least (since he ran for attorney general about five years ago and didn’t even go a fucking year serving as that before he announced his bid for the Senate), so I can discern some of the nuances, if you can call them that. (And if not, he’s the one who doesn’t have the neo-Nazi haircut or use the wheelchair.)
As for Cawthorn, I’m sure his infamous CNN interview was posted before here at the time, but it bears reposting:
…so the specific piece of the constitution he claimed was relevant to drop boxes only talks about how the state legislature gets to determine how electors are selected…which would be by holding a popular vote in said state…which is what happened
…dropboxes don’t in & of themselves constitute ballot harvesting however many times you repeat the two words close together…hence the lack of merits to that case & it’s utterly flawed premise & argument…just like all the others
…zero actual research on his part…no consistency to his responses…no grasp of his own arguments…or even the relevant facts…indeed no counter to anything she said
…& yet zero willingness to acknowledge that made him demonstrably wrong at every turn
…yup…that’s definitely the guy I was thinking of
Remember when we thought Todd Akin “the human body can shut that down” was the worst thing we’d have to be embarrassed about with Missouri politicians!
THOSE WERE THE GOOD OLD DAYS
Hell, I still remember when the voters in this fucking state were willing to go for a dead guy over a Republican!
This title was pretty much my first coherent thought today. I got up, shut off my alarm, turned the lights on, started fishing out clothes and other work-prep stuff for a good minute or two before I paused, checked my computer, and realized it was Saturday, and then crawled back into bed.
Everytime I see the name Madison Cawthorn I fee like it must be a douchebag smarmy fuck bad guy in a soap opera