We can listen to Trump's logorrhea with our jaws on the floor, but honestly, this is the position of the majority of the Republican Party right now: We're not doing enough to help Ukraine (because Biden is the President), but the GOP has no opinion on what we should be doing. You ask a Republican if we should be doing more to help Ukraine, you will get an emphatic yes. You ask them what we should do, you get something like Varney heard from Trump. In reality, there is not much left we can do at this point short of a military intervention, but Republicans and Democrats overall don't want to intervene militarily, so Republicans are left saying we should do more because Biden bad, but they are unwilling to suggest that we actually do the one thing we're not doing. So it's all just tribal, as always.
As far as the SCOTUS turning into a political football, Olsen is basically right, but this is the monster that Mitch McConnell created with his handling of the Garland nomination. That was the watershed moment, and it has possibly permanently damaged the entire process. People can boohoo about how the Kavanaugh hearings went down, but I've never heard anything to undermine Blasey-Ford's credibility, there were other nominees Trump could have chosen, and Mitch McConnell even advised Trump against nominating him, knowing it would be a contentious and difficult confirmation process because of his history of drinking and allegations circulating like Blasey-Ford's.
Fun Fact: Our submarines--both nuclear and conventional--are constantly forward-deployed and operate along the coastlines of hostile nations constantly, we just don't talk out loud about it.
Why do you think Putin wants the Ukrainian coastline so bad? So that he can park more Kilo 636 submarines in the Black Sea and send them into the Mediterranean to fuck with NATO countries like Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, and Turkey. He also wants the warm-water ports for increased trade for future GDP bumps. Russian northern ports are shut down 6 months out of the year, and so their ability to import/export is severely restricted about 6 months out of the year. More ports like Mariupol and Odessa would mark a dramatic spike in Russia's ability to trade with the world, and they also serve as power projection hubs for submarines.
DJT’s word salad is best served with Russian dressing! Trump’s speech is a formal thought disorder, and gross manifestation that he is incapable of logical thought. Before it became politically correct, The American Psychiatric Association classified various degrees of sub normal intelligence with titles: moron, imbecile and idiot. Any of these is appropriate for DJT.
I'd like to make a suggestion. Ignore The Former Guy. Just ignore him. I don't believe this has been attempted for at least the last 6-7 years. Oh, I know the thing about holding your friends close, and your enemies closer; I've even been practicing it for these last years. But let's just give ignoring a try. If cold turkey is too hard, at least cut down on mentioning him...to, say, once or twice a week, tops. Good grief, there's enough big things happening now to make this a propitious time to quit him. At least for a while.
Also, I have "plus" memberships on a couple of other sites, but this has become my fave. Including "Comments", which, happily, is not, as they say, the circle jerk of some other sites. Thanks.
It is so mind-boggling to be hearing about Sarah Palin's verbal meanderings about returning to public office, this time as a mere Senator. Could she be angling for the VP slot behind TFG? What could possibly go wrong with that tag-team?
Re: Cathy Young's piece, and the question of how to understand shouting down a speaker: I think this needs to be approached entirely as an issue of illiberalism rather than freedom of speech (or not), i.e., not unconstitutional but culturally incompatible with a healthy liberal democracy. Yes, the shouters-down are within their First Amendment rights. However, just because there's a constitutional right to do something doesn't mean it's right to do it. It all depends on what kind of society we want to live in.
Sarah Palin: "If I were asked to serve in the House and take his place I would be humbled and honored. In a heartbeat, I would.
“We will see how this process goes in filling that seat – it would be an honor.”
Palin wants to be appointed to fill Young's vacant seat -- there's no way in hell that she has any intent to actually run for it (or for its regular successor term)
Too bad for her that AK Gov doesn't appoint a replacement rep to fill a vacancy -- they call a special election
Interesting to me that the special election will run concurrently/overlap with the regular election for that seat's next full term, with the special election's general election occurring on the same day as the primary for the regular election
CBSNews, 22 Mar: "A special election to fill the seat of Republican Congressman Don Young of Alaska, who died earlier this month, is set for this summer, with a [open] primary slated for June 11 and a special [ranked-choice voting] general election on August 16, the same date as Alaska's regularly scheduled primaries.
"The winner of the special election will finish the remainder of Young's term, which ends in January 2023."
So there will be two overlapping races for AK's House seat --
(1) the special election to fill the seat thru the end of Young's term in Jan 2023 with an 11 Jun open primary and a 16 Aug ranked-choice general election and
(2) the regular election for a two-year term with an 16 Aug open primary and an 8 Nov ranked-choice general election
I imagine Alaskans are feeling grateful for mail-in voting -- or will
"But he’s killing tens of thousands of people, far more than they’re reporting", says Trump..who apparently gets secret information about death totals routed to him. Probably from his pal Putin, who of course wants casualty numbers to be higher.
Ms.Palin was such a bang-on success as a governor (who BTW didn't have the werewithal to finish even one term) that she surely would bring her acumen as a skilled legislator... (breaking down in peals of laughter).
Listening to today's Bulwark with AB Stoddard. I'm confused on two aspects of the conversation. When you guys talked about the Democrats' brains being broken about the Court, but you acknowledge how folks on the right view control of the Court in a Flight 93 way because of abortion rights, etc. I mean, isn't it possible that the side with the extremist views about SCOTUS is the side whose brain is broken?
Re: the Bork nomination - I don't remember this and am depending on retrospective sources. Why would his role in the "Saturday Night Massacre" *not* made him problematic to reasonable people? I get that a lot of his views reflected (and probably still reflect) a lot of conservatives' at the time, but how would his willingness to be part of President Nixon's awfulness not sway the average conservative?
C'mon Charlie, this is unfair...DJT has already proved that he is a genius. Didn't he pass that tough cognitive test with flying colors? He also memorized "person, woman, man, camera, TV". What more do you want the poor guy to do? It is not his fault that others don't have the intelligence to decipher his gibberish.
But seriously, he has a strangle hold on almost half the country. Some of it is tribalism and just wanting to stick it up to the other side, but also TFG's ability to understand what that base needs and manipulate them to his advantage. What we think of as reckless/ignorant behavior is exactly what he wants to sell to that base.
DJT reminds us (again)...
It is so effing depressing to still have to talk about Trump.
We can listen to Trump's logorrhea with our jaws on the floor, but honestly, this is the position of the majority of the Republican Party right now: We're not doing enough to help Ukraine (because Biden is the President), but the GOP has no opinion on what we should be doing. You ask a Republican if we should be doing more to help Ukraine, you will get an emphatic yes. You ask them what we should do, you get something like Varney heard from Trump. In reality, there is not much left we can do at this point short of a military intervention, but Republicans and Democrats overall don't want to intervene militarily, so Republicans are left saying we should do more because Biden bad, but they are unwilling to suggest that we actually do the one thing we're not doing. So it's all just tribal, as always.
As far as the SCOTUS turning into a political football, Olsen is basically right, but this is the monster that Mitch McConnell created with his handling of the Garland nomination. That was the watershed moment, and it has possibly permanently damaged the entire process. People can boohoo about how the Kavanaugh hearings went down, but I've never heard anything to undermine Blasey-Ford's credibility, there were other nominees Trump could have chosen, and Mitch McConnell even advised Trump against nominating him, knowing it would be a contentious and difficult confirmation process because of his history of drinking and allegations circulating like Blasey-Ford's.
The future GOP leadership team of Palin, MTG, and Boebert is going to be something to behold.
Fun Fact: Our submarines--both nuclear and conventional--are constantly forward-deployed and operate along the coastlines of hostile nations constantly, we just don't talk out loud about it.
Why do you think Putin wants the Ukrainian coastline so bad? So that he can park more Kilo 636 submarines in the Black Sea and send them into the Mediterranean to fuck with NATO countries like Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, and Turkey. He also wants the warm-water ports for increased trade for future GDP bumps. Russian northern ports are shut down 6 months out of the year, and so their ability to import/export is severely restricted about 6 months out of the year. More ports like Mariupol and Odessa would mark a dramatic spike in Russia's ability to trade with the world, and they also serve as power projection hubs for submarines.
DJT’s word salad is best served with Russian dressing! Trump’s speech is a formal thought disorder, and gross manifestation that he is incapable of logical thought. Before it became politically correct, The American Psychiatric Association classified various degrees of sub normal intelligence with titles: moron, imbecile and idiot. Any of these is appropriate for DJT.
I'd like to make a suggestion. Ignore The Former Guy. Just ignore him. I don't believe this has been attempted for at least the last 6-7 years. Oh, I know the thing about holding your friends close, and your enemies closer; I've even been practicing it for these last years. But let's just give ignoring a try. If cold turkey is too hard, at least cut down on mentioning him...to, say, once or twice a week, tops. Good grief, there's enough big things happening now to make this a propitious time to quit him. At least for a while.
Also, I have "plus" memberships on a couple of other sites, but this has become my fave. Including "Comments", which, happily, is not, as they say, the circle jerk of some other sites. Thanks.
It is so mind-boggling to be hearing about Sarah Palin's verbal meanderings about returning to public office, this time as a mere Senator. Could she be angling for the VP slot behind TFG? What could possibly go wrong with that tag-team?
Re: Cathy Young's piece, and the question of how to understand shouting down a speaker: I think this needs to be approached entirely as an issue of illiberalism rather than freedom of speech (or not), i.e., not unconstitutional but culturally incompatible with a healthy liberal democracy. Yes, the shouters-down are within their First Amendment rights. However, just because there's a constitutional right to do something doesn't mean it's right to do it. It all depends on what kind of society we want to live in.
a. Bork's role in Watergate rightly disqualified him, yet The GOP still tried to ram his authoritarian, anti-American keister onto the SCOTUS.
b. Marsha Blackburn suddenly thinks Title IX is aces after years of running it down.
c. Ms. Logan certainly would know white supremacy being a beneficiary of apartheid
.
Sarah Palin: "If I were asked to serve in the House and take his place I would be humbled and honored. In a heartbeat, I would.
“We will see how this process goes in filling that seat – it would be an honor.”
Palin wants to be appointed to fill Young's vacant seat -- there's no way in hell that she has any intent to actually run for it (or for its regular successor term)
Too bad for her that AK Gov doesn't appoint a replacement rep to fill a vacancy -- they call a special election
Interesting to me that the special election will run concurrently/overlap with the regular election for that seat's next full term, with the special election's general election occurring on the same day as the primary for the regular election
CBSNews, 22 Mar: "A special election to fill the seat of Republican Congressman Don Young of Alaska, who died earlier this month, is set for this summer, with a [open] primary slated for June 11 and a special [ranked-choice voting] general election on August 16, the same date as Alaska's regularly scheduled primaries.
"The winner of the special election will finish the remainder of Young's term, which ends in January 2023."
So there will be two overlapping races for AK's House seat --
(1) the special election to fill the seat thru the end of Young's term in Jan 2023 with an 11 Jun open primary and a 16 Aug ranked-choice general election and
(2) the regular election for a two-year term with an 16 Aug open primary and an 8 Nov ranked-choice general election
I imagine Alaskans are feeling grateful for mail-in voting -- or will
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/special-election-alaska-congress-don-young-death/
.
"But he’s killing tens of thousands of people, far more than they’re reporting", says Trump..who apparently gets secret information about death totals routed to him. Probably from his pal Putin, who of course wants casualty numbers to be higher.
Ms.Palin was such a bang-on success as a governor (who BTW didn't have the werewithal to finish even one term) that she surely would bring her acumen as a skilled legislator... (breaking down in peals of laughter).
Listening to today's Bulwark with AB Stoddard. I'm confused on two aspects of the conversation. When you guys talked about the Democrats' brains being broken about the Court, but you acknowledge how folks on the right view control of the Court in a Flight 93 way because of abortion rights, etc. I mean, isn't it possible that the side with the extremist views about SCOTUS is the side whose brain is broken?
Re: the Bork nomination - I don't remember this and am depending on retrospective sources. Why would his role in the "Saturday Night Massacre" *not* made him problematic to reasonable people? I get that a lot of his views reflected (and probably still reflect) a lot of conservatives' at the time, but how would his willingness to be part of President Nixon's awfulness not sway the average conservative?
Oh no 🙈 no. OMG no sarah palin
"And in the end, everyone comes away a little more convinced that people on the other side are either terminally dumb or intellectually dishonest."
And to some extent both sides ARE both terminally dumb (willfully and/or invincibly ignorant) AND intellectually dishonest.
C'mon Charlie, this is unfair...DJT has already proved that he is a genius. Didn't he pass that tough cognitive test with flying colors? He also memorized "person, woman, man, camera, TV". What more do you want the poor guy to do? It is not his fault that others don't have the intelligence to decipher his gibberish.
But seriously, he has a strangle hold on almost half the country. Some of it is tribalism and just wanting to stick it up to the other side, but also TFG's ability to understand what that base needs and manipulate them to his advantage. What we think of as reckless/ignorant behavior is exactly what he wants to sell to that base.