The circus came to town in DC for the past four days and did a good job of displaying why the Republicans are in a lot of trouble. The CPAC clown show, er, I mean shitshow, er, I mean conference, is proof of the difficulty the party will have in keeping their increasingly fractured coalition together for 2024.
It shocked me when The Times posted my comment about Hogan:
"First, when he describes the republican party he believes in, he is describing the Democratic Party. He should join it and stop consorting with traitors.
"Second, he does not say that he will not vote for the republican nominee if it is someone who is a former republican president or follows in his footsteps--i.e., the governor of Fascistida, or said former president's UN ambassador, secretary of state, or vice-president.
"In other words, Mr. Hogan fits how Eric Sevareid, the CBS News commentator, described another former Maryland governor, Spiro Agnew: He preaches the old-fashioned virtues and practices the old-fashioned vices."
After I wrote that, I saw someone refer to corruption in his administration. Hogan IS a true republican.
The key point is that Cheeto Mussolini (and that's in honor of my father, who died in 2020, who watched one of his speeches, called me, and said, "I saw this as a kid when I watched newsreels. It's Mussolini all over again.") merely said aloud what every single loyal republican either said privately or thought to themselves, except for calling Obama a six-letter word that begins with n and is not nougat--that's the one thing they have kept under wraps. But if you think they don't say it regularly, I have some Florida swampland for you.
Thanks, but it's a funny thing. He wasn't very political until his later years. Then he would call every night at the end of Kindly Doc Maddow, as Charlie Pierce calls her, and say, "Did you see Rachel tonight," and go over the show!
I was thinking that TFG was sounding an awful lot like Mussolini myself. It is extremely frightening when I read about how many people are eating up and believing all of the words that fall out of his mouth.
I don't think he necessarily SOUNDS like Mussolini. for me, it's always been the ridiculous faces he makes, the stupid, stereotyped and badly-practiced hand signals, and body language.
during the 2016 campaign, I vaguely remember somebody reporting that he did, indeed, look at old newsreels of Mussolini and attempt to copy what he saw.
'People have asked, how did it happen in Germany in the 1930s - this is how it happened then and is happening now.' wrote TC. Here's another item for our Americana Fascist file, circa 2020s:
'CPAC Speaker Calls for Eradication of ‘Transgenderism’ — and Somehow Claims He’s Not Calling for Elimination of Transgender People'
'There is no separating a ban on “transgenderism” from an attack on transgender people, says activist Erin Reed: “They are one and the same, and there’s no separation between them”
'THE RIGHT’S WAR on queer and trans people took center stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference as Daily Wire host Michael Knowles on Saturday called for the eradication of “transgenderism.”
'During his speech on Saturday, Knowles told the crowd, “For the good of society … transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely — the whole preposterous ideology, at every level.” (Rolling Stone)
I hadn't heard that one - I'd have really screamed if I had. People say I am extreme when I say the only ones of these scum who are any good are the dead ones.
TC, This is a description in New York Magazine. It is another loud scream for another reason. Hold on; don't fall out of your chair again.
' The 2023 CPAC felt like a mall after all but one of its big department stores has shut down — an emptier, jankier, lower-rent version of conferences past. The rooms were more deserted, the vendors more downmarket, and speakers a little less important.'
'In the exhibit hall, where Facebook once had a booth with virtual reality games, there was now a booth where attendees could stand on a vibrating board promoted as effort-free exercise which could also boost sexual function.' (NYMag)
I suppose the vibrating board is a more public-friendly way of that weird ball tanning.
I used to go to New Age Expos, occasionally with my niece, because they'd have REALLY cool shit, like sample deep tissue massages (always welcome), sample radionics technology (beautiful machines), and aura photography (I had a really pretty aura!).
and the Right-Wing scumbags get a vibrating board!
What happens to a person that generates so much hate and causes empathy and understanding to be a lost emotion? Where does it start with someone like Knowles? Is he born with a missing gene? Or was it the people who raised him? Guess it doesn't matter...
If there was ever a reason or an example of the need to teach tolerance and diversity at the earliest level of education...there it is. Knowles is a broken, evil threat to society. Oy.
It is too late for so many fellow Americans and their ‘face’, the former president, god help us, who believe tolerance is weakness (wokeness) and diversity is reverse racism. They want to keep those beliefs and have shown us how far they are willing to go to put them into practice. The criminal justice system had better work.
To me, when the cloud of sawdust in the circus tent clears, the net here is that it is up to the millions of the rest of us--who are still sane, can still read big words, can still comprehend complex problems, can still smell the difference between a nice fresh, organized, unadulterated array of facts and a steaming pile of crazy, random, bullshit--to work our asses off--AGAIN--and organize like mad and march and donate way more than we can afford to the most kick-ass Democratic candidates and grassroots GOTV organizations, from now through early November 2024, to rescue our country, our democracy, and our future from a large, loud gaggle of idiot fascist lunatics and crooks. I forget who said there is nothing more dangerous than stupid people in large groups. Democracy is not a spectator sport.
Over 50 years ago, my psychology professor commented that in a mob, the IQ of each participant is reduced to equal the IQ of the dumbest in the group. Sounds like a Trump rally to me.
having been part of a mob or two, I can attest that your psychology professor was exactly right. but I have trouble trying to imagine how stupid the stupidest person at a TFF rally could possibly be.
My inbox is full of so many requests for money that I stopped reading them entirely. I funnel what I can to those I think will make the biggest difference and hope that the rest and the best of us are doing the same. Then I walk the dog or pick up my latest knitting project and try to erect a protective barrier of calm.
Each of us does what we can. I did the same thing, Jeri: Donated myself into a _big_ hole last year. It will take me a year to get out of negative numbers. In the meantime, I am writing postcards, which seem to have a big effect for a small expense. I will also join phonebanks.
TC, your last sentence is the absolute truth and everyone needs to inscribe it somewhere visible. May We the People mobilize!! What a post. On target everywhere. They are total loonies, but while we may laugh and chuckle, they are sending out the messages and controlling the narrative, whatever others think.. They have the labels--socialist and more---that no one successfully contests. (My constant gripe; but maybe someone out there is saying things---I read certain good substacks and watch PBS.---read NYT, WaPo and the Guardian. No TV. So I'm insulated of course. Oh I did read a feed from the New Republic (listen to the enemy) and I do get GOP fund raising screeds by accident. Sorry to ramble. I'll be clearer tomorrow.) ADDENDUM: When Trump says "This is the final battle" he is tapping into a rich and deep vein of conservative attention to the Book of Revelation and the End of Time and Apocalyptic thought. The Final Battle is the cosmic struggle of Good against Evil---he is casting the upcoming election in the guise of this Final Battle---and he is tapping into the Evangelical/Frundametalist/Right Wing Christian fascination with this Battle. Many of the right wing militias are training, suiting up, and stocking up for this Final Battle. The Trump Speech was not only a Nuremberg Rally, it was a call for Arms for the Final Cosmic battle. Notice if his side loses, "we" no longer have a country---it it is "all' over. Sorry to rant, but don't dismiss this a 'crazy religion". It is a powerful motivating force that can't be neglected---and brings out people ready to do real battle....... End of rant, which I hope makes sense. Now going to watch the second half of the movie "Seabiscuit'...... Have a good evening everyone. Peace and Courage........
Would anyone not be surprised had a great bolt of lightening from the heavens struck the CPAC as Trump completes his speech? Destroying most of those in attendance as they applaud and Trump shouting "We are purified!" while those at home declare Trump "The Chosen One." And, at the same moment blame the Democrats for defiling the masses?
The Last Battle is about a foolish donkey who makes a great deal of trouble by pretending to be Aslan, which causes a battle between the other rulers of the land, in turn leading to the ruin and end of Narnia.
Fuckknuckles is right Ally!! Seems they are out to destroy anyone that isn’t white, straight and Christian. They make me sick but I will take an antiemetic and put my boxing gloves on. They will not win!
It sounds like Trump has a new speech writer who is able to string together a cohesively insane tirade. If he really delivered it the way it was written, he must have been undergoing some serious coaching. This might be an incentive for some of his supporters to change their minds about him. If his gibberish starts sounding too elite they won’t be able to relate to him.
Can anyone convince me now that this isn't part of the oligstchy',s 100 Year Plan? Thats the one they revise every month in all the biggest businesses in Wall Street.
Part of overlapping business plans, I'm sure. "The Family", a supposedly Christian group funded by foundations (like Heritage), corporations (like Dow Chemical) and Big Oil (like Koch Bros.), way back in the 1930's created a long term plan to establish the USA as oligarchy. They are succeeding, no revisions necessary, except instead of radio and pulpits they have a mass of mass media to buy and exploit. Oh, and the Supreme Court, with help from Catholic (not to be confused with Christian) Leonard Leo's group. All just ducky. (Read "The Family" by Jeff Sharlet).
Howard Dean's 50-state strategy - which gave us a filibuster-proof Senate and veto-proof congress, which Obama needed, except the day after they got in ofice, he appointed @#$##@!! Rahm Emmanuel, who started tearing that down the first minute he was in the CofS office.
"The decision to shunt Organizing for America into the DNC had far-reaching consequences for the president’s first year in office. For starters, it destroyed his hard-earned image as a new kind of politician, undercutting the post-partisan aura that Obama enjoyed after the election. “There were a lot of independents, and maybe even some Republicans, on his list of 13 million people,” says Joe Trippi, who launched the digital age of politics as the campaign manager for Howard Dean in 2004. “They suddenly had to ask themselves, ‘Do I really want to help build the Democratic Party?'”
In addition, with Plouffe providing less input in his inner circle, Obama began to pursue a more traditional, backroom approach to enacting his agenda. Rather than using OFA to engage millions of voters to turn up the heat on Congress, the president yoked his political fortunes to the unabashedly transactional style of politics advocated by his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. Health care reform — the centerpiece of his agenda — was no longer about mobilizing supporters to convince their friends, families and neighbors in all 50 states. It was about convincing 60 senators in Washington. It became about deals.
“There were two ways for Barack Obama to twist arms on Capitol Hill,” says Trippi. “You can get the best arm-bender in town to be your chief of staff — and I don’t think there’d be many people who would deny that Rahm is a pretty good pick. Or the American people can be your arm-bender. What I don’t understand is why the White House looked at it as an either/or proposition. You could have had both."
Perry Johnson! Thought we killed his political ambitions in Michigan last year:
"OXON HILL, Md. (AP) — Republican businessman Perry Johnson has announced his long-shot bid for president.
"Johnson, who tried to run for Michigan governor last year but was deemed by the state’s elections bureau to have filed thousands of fraudulent nominating signatures, announced his White House candidacy to a group of supporters on Thursday night, his campaign said."
Johnson knows he's found his home with Republicans because they embrace crooks, liars, fraudsters and losers. Capone would be their nominee if he were still around because "retribution" and revenge are at the heart of their party. Johnson just doesn't pack that terrible swift sword the wingers worship. He's in it for the elbow-rubbing.
Saying your last sentence got me banned on FB and Twitter, two years ago. The evil has been lurking since and the cult gaining ground since the prophetic escalator ride, and likely before. What will restore sanity now that Ike is gone…
You can look at the history of the last one to be successful - the GOP. Raised up on the ruins of the Whigs, responding to a great national crisis and willing to act on the solution to that crisis, which brought believers and supporters to the party. And Bill's comment fills in the rest.
In that the current Republican Party has essentially embraced fascism, double speak and crazy ass fantasies in general, it will be getting much worse, real soon. In other words, the deplorables will have to be even more deplorable before some semblance of a center right reasonable alternative starts to assert itself.
We need to ask ourselves questions like this. What would it take for Mitt Romney and Susan Collins to completely disown the GQP? How low does their party have to go? Until something like that happens, we will be in verbal, spriritual, social and political combat with the heirs of Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot.
Paul Ryan and Nikki Haley trying to walk a tightrope won't be the answer. They are cowards. Somebody who believes in truth and decency needs to step up from the right and say the stuff that needs to be said. And that will be a career ending proposition. But the history books could record their actions as honorable and a "break point".
I don't think that is in the near future. I am not sure I will live long enough to see it.
Yikes. I think the last time a long term successful party was established it was just before a civil war. I believe we are headed for another one. Not an army combat style, hopefully. But I am convinced we are breaking down into three camps. Us, them and the zombies who don't pay attention.
The GOP should be fighting wickedness instead of "wokeness". They need a psychiatrist for a leader whether they win any elections or not. And if they can read, they should review John McPhee's first chapter in The Control of Nature about when the Atchafalsya will eventually spill its contents all over the Mississippi River delta and wiping out all the industries perched on its banks. THEN the oligarchy will ROAR about government controls !
It shocked me when The Times posted my comment about Hogan:
"First, when he describes the republican party he believes in, he is describing the Democratic Party. He should join it and stop consorting with traitors.
"Second, he does not say that he will not vote for the republican nominee if it is someone who is a former republican president or follows in his footsteps--i.e., the governor of Fascistida, or said former president's UN ambassador, secretary of state, or vice-president.
"In other words, Mr. Hogan fits how Eric Sevareid, the CBS News commentator, described another former Maryland governor, Spiro Agnew: He preaches the old-fashioned virtues and practices the old-fashioned vices."
After I wrote that, I saw someone refer to corruption in his administration. Hogan IS a true republican.
The key point is that Cheeto Mussolini (and that's in honor of my father, who died in 2020, who watched one of his speeches, called me, and said, "I saw this as a kid when I watched newsreels. It's Mussolini all over again.") merely said aloud what every single loyal republican either said privately or thought to themselves, except for calling Obama a six-letter word that begins with n and is not nougat--that's the one thing they have kept under wraps. But if you think they don't say it regularly, I have some Florida swampland for you.
Excellent points about Hogan. Reading that your dad said that, I see where you come from.
Thanks, but it's a funny thing. He wasn't very political until his later years. Then he would call every night at the end of Kindly Doc Maddow, as Charlie Pierce calls her, and say, "Did you see Rachel tonight," and go over the show!
That must have been very nice.
Smiling!
Right on Michael Green! The specter of Mussolini hovers in the background---inching forward....
I was thinking that TFG was sounding an awful lot like Mussolini myself. It is extremely frightening when I read about how many people are eating up and believing all of the words that fall out of his mouth.
Especially since they are word salad dressed as patriotic bull schitt
Likely the only salad they consume.
I don't think he necessarily SOUNDS like Mussolini. for me, it's always been the ridiculous faces he makes, the stupid, stereotyped and badly-practiced hand signals, and body language.
during the 2016 campaign, I vaguely remember somebody reporting that he did, indeed, look at old newsreels of Mussolini and attempt to copy what he saw.
All the standing t here with his head raised and his "jaw" jutting (through the fat piggy jowls).
that stuff exactly!
'People have asked, how did it happen in Germany in the 1930s - this is how it happened then and is happening now.' wrote TC. Here's another item for our Americana Fascist file, circa 2020s:
'CPAC Speaker Calls for Eradication of ‘Transgenderism’ — and Somehow Claims He’s Not Calling for Elimination of Transgender People'
'There is no separating a ban on “transgenderism” from an attack on transgender people, says activist Erin Reed: “They are one and the same, and there’s no separation between them”
'THE RIGHT’S WAR on queer and trans people took center stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference as Daily Wire host Michael Knowles on Saturday called for the eradication of “transgenderism.”
'During his speech on Saturday, Knowles told the crowd, “For the good of society … transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely — the whole preposterous ideology, at every level.” (Rolling Stone)
I hadn't heard that one - I'd have really screamed if I had. People say I am extreme when I say the only ones of these scum who are any good are the dead ones.
TC, This is a description in New York Magazine. It is another loud scream for another reason. Hold on; don't fall out of your chair again.
' The 2023 CPAC felt like a mall after all but one of its big department stores has shut down — an emptier, jankier, lower-rent version of conferences past. The rooms were more deserted, the vendors more downmarket, and speakers a little less important.'
'In the exhibit hall, where Facebook once had a booth with virtual reality games, there was now a booth where attendees could stand on a vibrating board promoted as effort-free exercise which could also boost sexual function.' (NYMag)
I love it!
What a great description you quoted Fern. Thanks! Downscale, to say the least---but still dangerous.......
What a fabulous board, aye, Grover.
Laughing out loud til I can't stop coughing!
Oh, dear gods!
But the crowds who still “shop” vote, especially in primaries
Tragically!
Actually sexual dysfunction!
Thanks for being a sitting down comedian, Louis.
I suppose the vibrating board is a more public-friendly way of that weird ball tanning.
I used to go to New Age Expos, occasionally with my niece, because they'd have REALLY cool shit, like sample deep tissue massages (always welcome), sample radionics technology (beautiful machines), and aura photography (I had a really pretty aura!).
and the Right-Wing scumbags get a vibrating board!
And we could have a debate about that . . . :-)
I Laughed Out Loud.
Funny, I have the same sentiment about CPAC.
What happens to a person that generates so much hate and causes empathy and understanding to be a lost emotion? Where does it start with someone like Knowles? Is he born with a missing gene? Or was it the people who raised him? Guess it doesn't matter...
If there was ever a reason or an example of the need to teach tolerance and diversity at the earliest level of education...there it is. Knowles is a broken, evil threat to society. Oy.
It is too late for so many fellow Americans and their ‘face’, the former president, god help us, who believe tolerance is weakness (wokeness) and diversity is reverse racism. They want to keep those beliefs and have shown us how far they are willing to go to put them into practice. The criminal justice system had better work.
Ah, Bill, what you say is true for all us. You and me, too.
To me, when the cloud of sawdust in the circus tent clears, the net here is that it is up to the millions of the rest of us--who are still sane, can still read big words, can still comprehend complex problems, can still smell the difference between a nice fresh, organized, unadulterated array of facts and a steaming pile of crazy, random, bullshit--to work our asses off--AGAIN--and organize like mad and march and donate way more than we can afford to the most kick-ass Democratic candidates and grassroots GOTV organizations, from now through early November 2024, to rescue our country, our democracy, and our future from a large, loud gaggle of idiot fascist lunatics and crooks. I forget who said there is nothing more dangerous than stupid people in large groups. Democracy is not a spectator sport.
(Ed McMahon voice): You are correct, Ma'am!
Over 50 years ago, my psychology professor commented that in a mob, the IQ of each participant is reduced to equal the IQ of the dumbest in the group. Sounds like a Trump rally to me.
Indeed, people I knew to be smart, fell off the cliff
My late treasured friend would often say ‘if you live with the lame the you learn to limp’!
I think that my IQ is on the rise as a result of my affiliation with this 'mob.' Thanks, TC and CO.
having been part of a mob or two, I can attest that your psychology professor was exactly right. but I have trouble trying to imagine how stupid the stupidest person at a TFF rally could possibly be.
If our survival depends on my donations, we are in deep dodo. Sorry but I donated myself in a hole last fall.
My inbox is full of so many requests for money that I stopped reading them entirely. I funnel what I can to those I think will make the biggest difference and hope that the rest and the best of us are doing the same. Then I walk the dog or pick up my latest knitting project and try to erect a protective barrier of calm.
Each of us does what we can. I did the same thing, Jeri: Donated myself into a _big_ hole last year. It will take me a year to get out of negative numbers. In the meantime, I am writing postcards, which seem to have a big effect for a small expense. I will also join phonebanks.
Yep...know the feeling.
‘…when the cloud of saw dust clears,….’ The gop elephants ‘road chips’ can’t be hidden by the ‘cloud’!
TC, your last sentence is the absolute truth and everyone needs to inscribe it somewhere visible. May We the People mobilize!! What a post. On target everywhere. They are total loonies, but while we may laugh and chuckle, they are sending out the messages and controlling the narrative, whatever others think.. They have the labels--socialist and more---that no one successfully contests. (My constant gripe; but maybe someone out there is saying things---I read certain good substacks and watch PBS.---read NYT, WaPo and the Guardian. No TV. So I'm insulated of course. Oh I did read a feed from the New Republic (listen to the enemy) and I do get GOP fund raising screeds by accident. Sorry to ramble. I'll be clearer tomorrow.) ADDENDUM: When Trump says "This is the final battle" he is tapping into a rich and deep vein of conservative attention to the Book of Revelation and the End of Time and Apocalyptic thought. The Final Battle is the cosmic struggle of Good against Evil---he is casting the upcoming election in the guise of this Final Battle---and he is tapping into the Evangelical/Frundametalist/Right Wing Christian fascination with this Battle. Many of the right wing militias are training, suiting up, and stocking up for this Final Battle. The Trump Speech was not only a Nuremberg Rally, it was a call for Arms for the Final Cosmic battle. Notice if his side loses, "we" no longer have a country---it it is "all' over. Sorry to rant, but don't dismiss this a 'crazy religion". It is a powerful motivating force that can't be neglected---and brings out people ready to do real battle....... End of rant, which I hope makes sense. Now going to watch the second half of the movie "Seabiscuit'...... Have a good evening everyone. Peace and Courage........
On target
Would anyone not be surprised had a great bolt of lightening from the heavens struck the CPAC as Trump completes his speech? Destroying most of those in attendance as they applaud and Trump shouting "We are purified!" while those at home declare Trump "The Chosen One." And, at the same moment blame the Democrats for defiling the masses?
Reminds me of C.S. Lewis.
The Last Battle (1956)
The Last Battle is about a foolish donkey who makes a great deal of trouble by pretending to be Aslan, which causes a battle between the other rulers of the land, in turn leading to the ruin and end of Narnia.
What they want to eradicate is the acknowledgement that transgender people exist. I cannot stand these fuckknuckles.
Fuckknuckles is right Ally!! Seems they are out to destroy anyone that isn’t white, straight and Christian. They make me sick but I will take an antiemetic and put my boxing gloves on. They will not win!
That's cool that you changed your avatar to that photo of the rock band. :-)
Yeah, the good old days
Great work TC. I can feel the rage simmering.
Yeah, I had to take the lid off the pot or make a mess in the kitchen. :-)
It sounds like Trump has a new speech writer who is able to string together a cohesively insane tirade. If he really delivered it the way it was written, he must have been undergoing some serious coaching. This might be an incentive for some of his supporters to change their minds about him. If his gibberish starts sounding too elite they won’t be able to relate to him.
Yes, I think you are right. I wondered, though how he got out "globalist" without choking.
Hahahaha
Steven Cheung(sp?) is Trump's new
mouth piece. He's harsh.
Clowns, with flamethrowers can turn everything to ash.
Yes, as Charlie Sykes says all the time, "Clowns with flamethrowers, still have flamethrowers."
Yep---need to keep that in mind. They may be "deplorable" but deplorables can be very dangerous---and very focused.
It’s the cult mentality all over again. Putin waiting in the wings for his victory parade.
"People have asked, how did it happen in Germany in the 1930s - this is how it happened then and is happening now" SCARY!
Can anyone convince me now that this isn't part of the oligstchy',s 100 Year Plan? Thats the one they revise every month in all the biggest businesses in Wall Street.
Part of overlapping business plans, I'm sure. "The Family", a supposedly Christian group funded by foundations (like Heritage), corporations (like Dow Chemical) and Big Oil (like Koch Bros.), way back in the 1930's created a long term plan to establish the USA as oligarchy. They are succeeding, no revisions necessary, except instead of radio and pulpits they have a mass of mass media to buy and exploit. Oh, and the Supreme Court, with help from Catholic (not to be confused with Christian) Leonard Leo's group. All just ducky. (Read "The Family" by Jeff Sharlet).
Oligstchy? 100 year plan? They?
YES! Every Race Counts Everywhere or we have no "united" except tRump Troops or DeSatan Brown Shirts..
Howard Dean's 50-state strategy - which gave us a filibuster-proof Senate and veto-proof congress, which Obama needed, except the day after they got in ofice, he appointed @#$##@!! Rahm Emmanuel, who started tearing that down the first minute he was in the CofS office.
"The decision to shunt Organizing for America into the DNC had far-reaching consequences for the president’s first year in office. For starters, it destroyed his hard-earned image as a new kind of politician, undercutting the post-partisan aura that Obama enjoyed after the election. “There were a lot of independents, and maybe even some Republicans, on his list of 13 million people,” says Joe Trippi, who launched the digital age of politics as the campaign manager for Howard Dean in 2004. “They suddenly had to ask themselves, ‘Do I really want to help build the Democratic Party?'”
In addition, with Plouffe providing less input in his inner circle, Obama began to pursue a more traditional, backroom approach to enacting his agenda. Rather than using OFA to engage millions of voters to turn up the heat on Congress, the president yoked his political fortunes to the unabashedly transactional style of politics advocated by his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. Health care reform — the centerpiece of his agenda — was no longer about mobilizing supporters to convince their friends, families and neighbors in all 50 states. It was about convincing 60 senators in Washington. It became about deals.
“There were two ways for Barack Obama to twist arms on Capitol Hill,” says Trippi. “You can get the best arm-bender in town to be your chief of staff — and I don’t think there’d be many people who would deny that Rahm is a pretty good pick. Or the American people can be your arm-bender. What I don’t understand is why the White House looked at it as an either/or proposition. You could have had both."
Rolling Stone, February. 2010.
Absolutely. The. Truth.
Stupid, angry, and heavily armed. What could possibly go wrong?
Perry Johnson! Thought we killed his political ambitions in Michigan last year:
"OXON HILL, Md. (AP) — Republican businessman Perry Johnson has announced his long-shot bid for president.
"Johnson, who tried to run for Michigan governor last year but was deemed by the state’s elections bureau to have filed thousands of fraudulent nominating signatures, announced his White House candidacy to a group of supporters on Thursday night, his campaign said."
Definitely aq candidate for permanent residence in a rubber room.
Johnson knows he's found his home with Republicans because they embrace crooks, liars, fraudsters and losers. Capone would be their nominee if he were still around because "retribution" and revenge are at the heart of their party. Johnson just doesn't pack that terrible swift sword the wingers worship. He's in it for the elbow-rubbing.
Yes: "Capone would be their nominee if he were still around because "retribution" and revenge are at the heart of their party."
Saying your last sentence got me banned on FB and Twitter, two years ago. The evil has been lurking since and the cult gaining ground since the prophetic escalator ride, and likely before. What will restore sanity now that Ike is gone…
"People have asked, how did it happen in Germany in the 1930s - this is how it happened then and is happening now."
I am going to share this colum with that quote on fb now, Jeri, and hope that fb is now more "woke". Terrifying Truth.
You can't use Faceblock and "woke" in the same sentence. :-)
There's that.
And to think that the big split sat behind the Resolute Desk for four sad years.
In days of old, the expression ‘————— would be a good place to give our culture an enema!’ My vote is the odious CPAC convention hall!
As a nurse, I respect that.
As always, Thank You TC! Any insights on how NEW political parties start? Not the Nazi kind, I mean.
You can look at the history of the last one to be successful - the GOP. Raised up on the ruins of the Whigs, responding to a great national crisis and willing to act on the solution to that crisis, which brought believers and supporters to the party. And Bill's comment fills in the rest.
So who will play Lincoln in this version?
He runs as a Democrat nowadays.
I know. Just hoping for a "good ole" Republican to speed the split from the trumpnazis.
In that the current Republican Party has essentially embraced fascism, double speak and crazy ass fantasies in general, it will be getting much worse, real soon. In other words, the deplorables will have to be even more deplorable before some semblance of a center right reasonable alternative starts to assert itself.
We need to ask ourselves questions like this. What would it take for Mitt Romney and Susan Collins to completely disown the GQP? How low does their party have to go? Until something like that happens, we will be in verbal, spriritual, social and political combat with the heirs of Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot.
Paul Ryan and Nikki Haley trying to walk a tightrope won't be the answer. They are cowards. Somebody who believes in truth and decency needs to step up from the right and say the stuff that needs to be said. And that will be a career ending proposition. But the history books could record their actions as honorable and a "break point".
I don't think that is in the near future. I am not sure I will live long enough to see it.
Yeah, I hate the fact I agree completely with your last sentence.
Just, sadly, wow. Unless
https://apnews.com/article/adam-kinzinger-book-c221d4ba44b66bb240bfbcd24cc8c919
Yikes. I think the last time a long term successful party was established it was just before a civil war. I believe we are headed for another one. Not an army combat style, hopefully. But I am convinced we are breaking down into three camps. Us, them and the zombies who don't pay attention.
Yes.
The GOP should be fighting wickedness instead of "wokeness". They need a psychiatrist for a leader whether they win any elections or not. And if they can read, they should review John McPhee's first chapter in The Control of Nature about when the Atchafalsya will eventually spill its contents all over the Mississippi River delta and wiping out all the industries perched on its banks. THEN the oligarchy will ROAR about government controls !