Charlie - I just wanted to add a comment to say "thank you" for the work that you and the entire Bulwark team do. I concur with your response to the wingnut: "nuts" - really spot on!
As regards Laura Ingraham's atrocious comments, the few people I know who are clinging to their Republican identity while deploring Trump claim it's because they still believe in "government getting out of the way of business," or similar things. How can anyone claim with a straight face that that's what they are getting with today's GOP after comments like these and the attack on Disney which are just another iteration of the Dr. Seuss idiocy, and Trump's calls to punish Amazon because he didn't like the Washington Post? It's like Will Hurd pretending that there is some kind of rational moderate-to-conservative, pro-democracy, pro-civil-rights core to today's Republican party. It's deluded.
It's difficult to comprehend this level of evil perpetrated against civilians in Ukraine and the Russian leaders surely will deny it occurred at all. Russians must be confronted with these undeniable images. In 1945, Austrian civilians were required to view Mauthausen concentration camp and dig graves for the dead left behind by the Nazis to break through their denial. https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1154128
I totally stand with you Charlie,JVL,Bill Krystal and the rest of The Bulwark in hoping that there are no land concessions and easing of sanctions.(in any future negotiations) To do so only encourages Putin to continue to do this in the future. *Dave Y
For those who think that Russian generals or even Putin will someday find themselves before an international court or jail need to seriously wake the fuck up. The only way any of these guys gets held accountable is if they are killed in Ukraine while holding the status of active combatants. The militaries of the US/UK/France are *the only* forms of accountability the managers and executioners of these war crimes will ever face, if we have the sand to send that accountability. For now, the military we spend $800B/year on is watching war crimes in Europe go down for months on end from the confines of their barracks. Now we know what living through the 1930's must've felt like. Keep kicking the can down the road folks. The war-crimers are having a great ol time doing what they want because when you're nuclear-armed "they let you do it."
I kind of feel like that Florida bill just made segregated-sex bathrooms for elementary schoolers illegal? I mean, how do you have a little boys' room without also teaching kindergartners which room they're supposed to use?
I don't know how many out there recall "Spoon River Anthology , a remarkable collection of testimonials from the dead in this small town post civil war by Edgar Lee Masters.
It was made into a play which I was fortunate enough to see in San Diego as a teenager and it occurs to me now that the format should be used, now to document the changes in the republican party from the time of Barry Goldwater to the present. Someone here said that the party is 100% performative now and I agree. It's also putrid.
So, it should be on stage under hot lights with each character fulminating about our moral decay. Then, each spew can be followed by a brief presentation of fact. Imagine Tucker Carlson under those lights, alone on a stage. Then Laura Ingraham, then Sean Hannity with Vladimir Puting standing to the side in stony silence.
Couple them all together, force yourself to watch. It's really important now. The (d)'s are not messaging well at all. This tribal BS is out there in relentless assault. Facts can actually be your friends if you allow the light in to watch them grow and prosper,
Good Piece Charlie, and I really, really to do not like Christopher Rufo, if there is any justice in the world, I hope this all comes back to bite him.
( I am a huge Disney fan, and he better leave them alone...lol)
I hear you Don Brazelton from Dallas! My husband and I walk every Sunday near a park here in Boerne, TX. Driving home, for nearly 2 years now, we passed by a house with one faded Trump flag.
Today, they have *3*. Trump 2024, etc. We had the truck flag convoy before 2020 elections. 70% here vote Republican…Chip Roy/21st district.
I voted R for years before Trump. I fear this state, this R party has gone insane. I worry about the teachers, the nurses, the public officials, the police officers who are sane and aren’t lead astray by this madness. But subject to harassment.
I would respectfully disagree with Mr. Brazelton about DJT as symptom vs. cause. The former guy opened Pandora's box, only to have all the curses inflicted upon our body politic we now must endure. That would extend to the 'craziness' a librarian in Grapevine, TX must witness:
Hope is the only good god remaining among mankind;
the others have left and gone to Olympus.
Trust, a mighty god has gone, Restraint has gone from men,
and the Graces, my friend, have abandoned the earth.
Men's judicial oaths are no longer to be trusted, nor does anyone
revere the immortal gods; the race of pious men has perished and
men no longer recognize the rules of conduct or acts of piety. (Theognis)
Everyone should read the whole "poem" begun below and linked. And Norman Raik should send it to those corporations about whom he is (rightly) concerned.
MARTIN NIEMÖLLER: "FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE SOCIALISTS..."
Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) was a prominent Lutheran pastor in Germany. He emerged as an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler and spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps. He is perhaps best remembered for his postwar words, “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out…”
Hey Charlie (and Tim). I really have to push back on the whole "Biden lied about the laptop (and the media suppressed the story)" narrative. Please feel free to correct if I'm getting anything wrong.
Firstly, Joe Biden's statements regarding the laptop were made, as Tim acknowledged, *during the campaign*. If those statements were being made now that Biden has access to Justice Department information, then I'd agree that he was lying.
But there's no reason to think that Joe Biden would be able to authenticate Hunter Biden's emails any better than anyone else - especially if Joe really did keep his distance from Hunter's business dealings and Hunter wasn't completely honest with his Dad. We don't know this to be the case, of course, but it's certainly no stretch to imagine that Hunter wouldn't be entirely forthcoming, or at the very least would be willing to feign the same ignorance that he did with the general public regarding the laptop.
Also, recall that the notion of Russian disinformation wasn't something Joe Biden pulled out of the back of his khakis. Remember that there were *50 former national security officials* who signed an open letter saying that they *suspected* Russian disinformation. Fifty! While they were careful to note in their letter that it was only a suspicion, before they transparently laid out their argument so that it could be fairly evaluated for what it was, that sort of thing is easily perceived by the general public as "50 experts say it's true, therefore it is". It is not hard to imagine someone in Joe Biden's position coming to the conclusion at the time that it was indeed Russian disinformation. Tim made the claim on Friday's podcast that anyone who evaluated it objectively or fairly would have concluded it obviously wasn't Russian disinformation. Not sure I agree, but in any case, the last person I'd expect to be able to evaluate the issue objectively and fairly would be Hunter Biden's father.
Also, with regard to the culpability of "the media", or "the MSM" as the feudal lords of the Substack like to call it, it needs to be said that *actual media outlets* (like the NYT, Wapo, and WSJ) didn't suppress this story. They reported on it for what it was - an unconfirmed report being distributed by a highly biased and partisan source in the immediate period before an election. And the source (Rudy Giuliani) actually *had been* a conduit for previous Russian disinformation about Ukraine conspiracy theories. Even the NY Post wouldn't publish it under the names of their own reporters, and Giuliani refused repeated requests by some mainstream outlets to give them access to the same hard drives he gave the Post. Nothing suspicious there. Given what happened in 2016 with Jim Comey's inadvertently instigated abundance-of-caution "scandal", which the Times embraced with relish, responsible media was quite understandably hesitant to play the dupe in another bogus Trump October surprise. So they gave it muted, yet ultimately fair, coverage. Not treating something as front page news isn't being dishonest or even unfair, especially considering the circumstances.
But wait - didn't the media actually *kill* the story? Only if you consider Twitter (and other social media outlets) to be "the media". And only if you consider an ill-fated overreaction that blew up in their face to be "killing" a story. The last time I checked, Jack Dorsey wasn't a newspaper editor or network news chief, and Twitter's forum moderators aren't journalists. They're at best amateur fact-checkers for a social media giant who, by law, is *not* a publisher and therefore *not* responsible for what gets pushed out on their platform. The fact that they've been making good faith attempts to be somewhat responsible for disinformation, and to do so in real time no less, is actually quite admirable. Mistakes are to be expected, and the fact that those mistakes are rather quickly acknowledged and corrected is hardly a cause for losing faith in "the media" - quite the opposite, in fact.
My heart breaks daily...thank you for writing about this. We must keep the pressure on in any way possible. Sanctions must increase and continue....this massacre cannot be without consequence. Hard to imagine that one man can drive such evil...but we have plenty of examples from the past.
I understand why we’re outraged by these heinous photos.
However, where is the collective outrage at how the Taliban has executed our Afghan allies that we abandoned?
Where is the outrage and calls not to avert our eyes to the atrocities committed to people who fought and killed the perpetrators of 9-11?
Why is that one deserves more of our attention than the other? One would think that those who fought for us would at least deserve some umbrage? Or is our despicable conduct the impetus by our collective head in the sand?
Charlie - I just wanted to add a comment to say "thank you" for the work that you and the entire Bulwark team do. I concur with your response to the wingnut: "nuts" - really spot on!
Thanks you very much!
As regards Laura Ingraham's atrocious comments, the few people I know who are clinging to their Republican identity while deploring Trump claim it's because they still believe in "government getting out of the way of business," or similar things. How can anyone claim with a straight face that that's what they are getting with today's GOP after comments like these and the attack on Disney which are just another iteration of the Dr. Seuss idiocy, and Trump's calls to punish Amazon because he didn't like the Washington Post? It's like Will Hurd pretending that there is some kind of rational moderate-to-conservative, pro-democracy, pro-civil-rights core to today's Republican party. It's deluded.
It's difficult to comprehend this level of evil perpetrated against civilians in Ukraine and the Russian leaders surely will deny it occurred at all. Russians must be confronted with these undeniable images. In 1945, Austrian civilians were required to view Mauthausen concentration camp and dig graves for the dead left behind by the Nazis to break through their denial. https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1154128
I totally stand with you Charlie,JVL,Bill Krystal and the rest of The Bulwark in hoping that there are no land concessions and easing of sanctions.(in any future negotiations) To do so only encourages Putin to continue to do this in the future. *Dave Y
For those who think that Russian generals or even Putin will someday find themselves before an international court or jail need to seriously wake the fuck up. The only way any of these guys gets held accountable is if they are killed in Ukraine while holding the status of active combatants. The militaries of the US/UK/France are *the only* forms of accountability the managers and executioners of these war crimes will ever face, if we have the sand to send that accountability. For now, the military we spend $800B/year on is watching war crimes in Europe go down for months on end from the confines of their barracks. Now we know what living through the 1930's must've felt like. Keep kicking the can down the road folks. The war-crimers are having a great ol time doing what they want because when you're nuclear-armed "they let you do it."
I kind of feel like that Florida bill just made segregated-sex bathrooms for elementary schoolers illegal? I mean, how do you have a little boys' room without also teaching kindergartners which room they're supposed to use?
So Putin's approval rating among Russians climbs as his butchery increases. Is this one of the triumphs of Nationalism of which Rich Lowry speaks?
I don't know how many out there recall "Spoon River Anthology , a remarkable collection of testimonials from the dead in this small town post civil war by Edgar Lee Masters.
It was made into a play which I was fortunate enough to see in San Diego as a teenager and it occurs to me now that the format should be used, now to document the changes in the republican party from the time of Barry Goldwater to the present. Someone here said that the party is 100% performative now and I agree. It's also putrid.
So, it should be on stage under hot lights with each character fulminating about our moral decay. Then, each spew can be followed by a brief presentation of fact. Imagine Tucker Carlson under those lights, alone on a stage. Then Laura Ingraham, then Sean Hannity with Vladimir Puting standing to the side in stony silence.
Couple them all together, force yourself to watch. It's really important now. The (d)'s are not messaging well at all. This tribal BS is out there in relentless assault. Facts can actually be your friends if you allow the light in to watch them grow and prosper,
Good Piece Charlie, and I really, really to do not like Christopher Rufo, if there is any justice in the world, I hope this all comes back to bite him.
( I am a huge Disney fan, and he better leave them alone...lol)
I hear you Don Brazelton from Dallas! My husband and I walk every Sunday near a park here in Boerne, TX. Driving home, for nearly 2 years now, we passed by a house with one faded Trump flag.
Today, they have *3*. Trump 2024, etc. We had the truck flag convoy before 2020 elections. 70% here vote Republican…Chip Roy/21st district.
I voted R for years before Trump. I fear this state, this R party has gone insane. I worry about the teachers, the nurses, the public officials, the police officers who are sane and aren’t lead astray by this madness. But subject to harassment.
OMG Florida! Since when do conservatives support government threats to private industry?
I would respectfully disagree with Mr. Brazelton about DJT as symptom vs. cause. The former guy opened Pandora's box, only to have all the curses inflicted upon our body politic we now must endure. That would extend to the 'craziness' a librarian in Grapevine, TX must witness:
Hope is the only good god remaining among mankind;
the others have left and gone to Olympus.
Trust, a mighty god has gone, Restraint has gone from men,
and the Graces, my friend, have abandoned the earth.
Men's judicial oaths are no longer to be trusted, nor does anyone
revere the immortal gods; the race of pious men has perished and
men no longer recognize the rules of conduct or acts of piety. (Theognis)
Everyone should read the whole "poem" begun below and linked. And Norman Raik should send it to those corporations about whom he is (rightly) concerned.
MARTIN NIEMÖLLER: "FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE SOCIALISTS..."
Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) was a prominent Lutheran pastor in Germany. He emerged as an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler and spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps. He is perhaps best remembered for his postwar words, “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out…”
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-niemoeller-first-they-came-for-the-socialists?msclkid=1ca0a2afb35e11ec80000f44738b7c91
Hey Charlie (and Tim). I really have to push back on the whole "Biden lied about the laptop (and the media suppressed the story)" narrative. Please feel free to correct if I'm getting anything wrong.
Firstly, Joe Biden's statements regarding the laptop were made, as Tim acknowledged, *during the campaign*. If those statements were being made now that Biden has access to Justice Department information, then I'd agree that he was lying.
But there's no reason to think that Joe Biden would be able to authenticate Hunter Biden's emails any better than anyone else - especially if Joe really did keep his distance from Hunter's business dealings and Hunter wasn't completely honest with his Dad. We don't know this to be the case, of course, but it's certainly no stretch to imagine that Hunter wouldn't be entirely forthcoming, or at the very least would be willing to feign the same ignorance that he did with the general public regarding the laptop.
Also, recall that the notion of Russian disinformation wasn't something Joe Biden pulled out of the back of his khakis. Remember that there were *50 former national security officials* who signed an open letter saying that they *suspected* Russian disinformation. Fifty! While they were careful to note in their letter that it was only a suspicion, before they transparently laid out their argument so that it could be fairly evaluated for what it was, that sort of thing is easily perceived by the general public as "50 experts say it's true, therefore it is". It is not hard to imagine someone in Joe Biden's position coming to the conclusion at the time that it was indeed Russian disinformation. Tim made the claim on Friday's podcast that anyone who evaluated it objectively or fairly would have concluded it obviously wasn't Russian disinformation. Not sure I agree, but in any case, the last person I'd expect to be able to evaluate the issue objectively and fairly would be Hunter Biden's father.
Also, with regard to the culpability of "the media", or "the MSM" as the feudal lords of the Substack like to call it, it needs to be said that *actual media outlets* (like the NYT, Wapo, and WSJ) didn't suppress this story. They reported on it for what it was - an unconfirmed report being distributed by a highly biased and partisan source in the immediate period before an election. And the source (Rudy Giuliani) actually *had been* a conduit for previous Russian disinformation about Ukraine conspiracy theories. Even the NY Post wouldn't publish it under the names of their own reporters, and Giuliani refused repeated requests by some mainstream outlets to give them access to the same hard drives he gave the Post. Nothing suspicious there. Given what happened in 2016 with Jim Comey's inadvertently instigated abundance-of-caution "scandal", which the Times embraced with relish, responsible media was quite understandably hesitant to play the dupe in another bogus Trump October surprise. So they gave it muted, yet ultimately fair, coverage. Not treating something as front page news isn't being dishonest or even unfair, especially considering the circumstances.
But wait - didn't the media actually *kill* the story? Only if you consider Twitter (and other social media outlets) to be "the media". And only if you consider an ill-fated overreaction that blew up in their face to be "killing" a story. The last time I checked, Jack Dorsey wasn't a newspaper editor or network news chief, and Twitter's forum moderators aren't journalists. They're at best amateur fact-checkers for a social media giant who, by law, is *not* a publisher and therefore *not* responsible for what gets pushed out on their platform. The fact that they've been making good faith attempts to be somewhat responsible for disinformation, and to do so in real time no less, is actually quite admirable. Mistakes are to be expected, and the fact that those mistakes are rather quickly acknowledged and corrected is hardly a cause for losing faith in "the media" - quite the opposite, in fact.
My heart breaks daily...thank you for writing about this. We must keep the pressure on in any way possible. Sanctions must increase and continue....this massacre cannot be without consequence. Hard to imagine that one man can drive such evil...but we have plenty of examples from the past.
I understand why we’re outraged by these heinous photos.
However, where is the collective outrage at how the Taliban has executed our Afghan allies that we abandoned?
Where is the outrage and calls not to avert our eyes to the atrocities committed to people who fought and killed the perpetrators of 9-11?
Why is that one deserves more of our attention than the other? One would think that those who fought for us would at least deserve some umbrage? Or is our despicable conduct the impetus by our collective head in the sand?