The vote by senate republicans against the burn pit bill is especially galling as at least 4 of them are Iraq/Afghanistan veterans themselves. I hope people from their old units are contacting them in droves and nailing them to the wall over this. Jon Stewart is right in his criticism. He fought the same fight over funding for 9/11 first responders' medical treatment. It's beyond shameful that sick veterans and first responders have to fight at all to get the care they've earned.
On another subject, is it me or do MAGA world men have an obsession with their lack of manhood? It seems the least 'manly' men in that sphere spend the most time talking and now writing about it. But then, these people think Donald Trump is the epitome of manliness, so......
A friend in the publishing industry informed me that everyone’s new favorite short distance runner, Senator Josh Hawley, is working on a book about masculinity for release next year. Apparently, the pitch (reproduced below) made its rounds among publishers before settling on the one publisher (Regnery) who is effective at moving units when there’s actually no readers interested in the proposed volume.
Here’s the chapter outline that my friend’s firm decided to pass on:
1. Introduction: Important lessons in masculinity picked up during a posh gap year spent in London before matriculating at Stanford.
2. Complementarianism and Marriage 101: How to choose a wife with life experiences that you can pretend are your own. (Sidebar: How to tell the difference between flatbed trucks and flatbed trailers.)
3. Hierarchy 101: How to be an effective Beta and finding your own special Alpha. (Special interviews: Lindsey Graham and Kevin McCarthy.)
4. Work 101: How to look like you're doing a job without wasting time and effort to do it. (Sidebar: How to skip the rush hour crowds at the gym and wine store by visiting DURING working hours.)
5. Career Advancement 101: Claiming you were in places that you were not. (Case study: How to claim that you argued in front of the Supreme Court, while you were pushing paper instead.)
6. Collapse of the Family 101: How gays and women seeking their own independence doomed the American Family. (Sidebar: Why women in the workforce are incompatible with Western Civilization.)
7. Complementarianism and Marriage 201: How to limit your wife's options outside the house by casting yourself as a martyr on topics that previously actively disinterested you (and continue to disinterest you to this day).
8. Standing Up 101: How to demonize underpaid public servants as pedophiles and groomers, while remaining silent on abuse and harassment in local houses of worship. (Special interview: Chris Rufo.)
9. Fitness 101: Proper techniques for sprinting and breathing when Discretion suddenly becomes the better part of Valor in the middle of a peaceful protest of patriots.
10. Standing Up 201: Why we shouldn’t waste time demonizing fellow men who are serial adulterers, chronic divorcees, tie women up in their basements, and get caught paying minors for sex. (Special roundtable discussion with Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump, and Eric Greitens)
11. Work 201: Why it's better to pretend to be doing something useful when achieving a position to make a difference, instead of wasting time and effort to actually make that difference. (Sidebar: Why actually Legislating is for Losers.)
12. Bring Home the Bacon 101: Tips to persuade a Social Security recipient to send you a dollar, so that you can spend the vast majority of that dollar to convince the next Social Security recipient to send you another dollar while skimming a few pennies off the top in the process and enriching The Media that you spend so much time complaining about.
13. Parenting 101: How to have a discussion with your child about that time when Daddy was away in another state and Mommy had to deal with an angry crowd in the front yard who wanted to talk to Daddy about his LARPing as an election expert with his friends playing “Clash of the Titans”. (Special guest interviews: Rudy Guiliani and Sidney Powell)
14. Bringing Home the Bacon 201: Tips on pitching a book to publishers that no one is interested in reading.
15. Conclusion: How despite bearing no resemblance to America’s Most Manly Former President (Teddy Roosevelt), Josh is America’s newest foremost expert on masculinity because he once wrote a book about the guy and continues to enjoy his (entirely straight) male companionship with the “Grab ‘em by the pussy” guy (and has titled this book "Manhood", which was Lindsey's suggestion).
I look forward to Hawley's book simply for the thrill of seeing how many people choose not to buy it, and what happens to all those formerly beautiful trees when it becomes a stale doughnut.
There is certainly precedent for that. Scott Walker had his moment in the sun with "Unintimidated," his story of how he proudly picked the wings off of what he considered flies on the Left. Fast forward some months and, while perusing a large thrift shop in Wisconsin, there were some two dozen copies of it, in clearly unused condition and marked down to almost nothing just to get rid of them. Next visit, a month or more later, almost all of them still were there looking for homes. It became the butt of jokes among us that Scott Walker had gone from the Governor of Wisconsin to the King of Goodwill.
May Hawley enjoy the same taste of fleeting fame and lasting ridicule.
As far as I can tell, the GOP strategy is to vote against bills that are popular, pretty seriously important, and that they themselves support, and say the Democrats made them do it. It really does test how big of a bullshit sandwich their voters are willing to wolf down. And it probably will work for them.
And good work, Charlie, making a difference in the world. Airing clips of you in the courtroom to bring that scumbag down is phenomenal.
It was only a matter of time and exposure before Mastriano completely tanked. The night he got the nomination, he gave his acceptance speech in a tie with a forking cross on it.
I don't think that guy could get elected governor of Tennessee, much less Pennsylvania.
The same thing is going to happen to DeSantis once he's under the presidential campaign press spotlight. He's...fine to be governor of a major state. But that's the ceiling for his personality and political abilities.
It is obvious every single day that the Republicans are working for Putin. I find it shocking and appalling. But it's a very wrong-headed path they've all chosen for themselves. I wouldn't be opposed to deporting most of them to Russia. They belong there, not in America.
Seems like a lot of guys want to define masculinity these days—Hawley, Geatz, even this guy from the Claremont Institute thinks Trump is a manly man. So, it is this all about guys feeling threatened? Left behind? Egos so fragile.
What gets me is the exemplars of “manhood” among Republicans. Really? Hawley and Carlson have to be two of the prissiest SOBs on the planet. Just the way they whine when they speak. 🙄
Senate Republicans can dish out the hardball politics but they can't take it. Susan Collins was happy to shove Brett Kavanaugh down our necks after he lied to her face and was credibly accused of sexual assault. She also didn't hesitate to fill a stolen SCOTUS seat with Neil Gorsuch. Payback sux. Be a grown-up, take your licks, and learn to play nicer. Republicans are unfit to govern.
"With Trump’s reissuance of the Schedule F executive order, our national government would start to resemble Tammany Hall—a corrupt political machine."
Trumpers talk a lot about "draining the swamp" and decry "corruption." But when they, or at least their thought leaders, speak of "corruption," they don't seem to mean "exploiting public office for personal gain" so much as "getting in the way of our agenda." They cast anyone who upheld lawful guardrails against Trump as representative of the D.C. "swamp."
Conservatives have raised legitimate criticisms of how the "administrative state" lets "unaccountable" bureaucrats stymie elected officials. But their case loses credibility when their heroic fighter against the permanent bureaucracy is Donald Trump -- someone who evidently didn't know (or care to learn) what the president's constitutional power actually ares, but asserted that they are "total" and was frustrated to be told they aren't, and when informed that something he wanted done was illegal, replied "Who would prosecute me?"
Trumpites who speak of a need for "accountability" can't really mean accountability to law or ethics. They're comfortable with Trump's expressions of despot-envy, and with Trump-loyal officials profiting from their positions in government. What they really want is a chief executive with unlimited power, as long as the executive will do what they want.
Even if Schedule F becomes detached from Trump and Trumpites, a full-on assault on the civil service tends to suggest a preference for autocratic personal rule, as against institutional continuity.
Just for grins, I checked the Amazon rating for Hawley’s book- #246,783 in books. It may be remaindered before it even hits the shelves. I’m not the least bit gleeful about that. /s
Josh Hawley is writing a book on "Manhood", and how to be one. Includes tips on marathon training. Barbie is coming out with an autobiography on what it's like growing up as a real girl.
Setting aside the "hypocrisy...lies...[and] cowardice" of Republicans (because while they hold the lion's share of these political commodities, they don't actually have the market 100% completely cornered quite yet, in spite of their Herculean efforts in this area), when it comes to today's GOP and "cruelty", one of two things is invariably true: either the cruelty is, in and of itself, absolutely the point, or it is completely and absolutely beside the point for them. They're more than fine with cruelty being a regular 'feature' and not an infrequent and unintended 'bug' in this clusterfuck we call our politics. They've got the market completely sewn up on this one, have had for quite a while, and will not turn down any opportunity to increase their holdings.
You don't have to 'like it', Jon. And you don't have to accept it, any more than I do. But you'd damned well better get used to and always expect it. Because this ugly and reprehensible 'feature' of Republican politics is here to stay, unless and until enough people who continue to support this morally bankrupt entity called the GOP decide there's a difference between driving a hard bargain and pulling the wings off of flies. And that's not likely to happen any time soon.
I hope the good senator gives Donald Trump a copy of the book so that he can hold Senator Hawley’s manhood. I mean, again.
The vote by senate republicans against the burn pit bill is especially galling as at least 4 of them are Iraq/Afghanistan veterans themselves. I hope people from their old units are contacting them in droves and nailing them to the wall over this. Jon Stewart is right in his criticism. He fought the same fight over funding for 9/11 first responders' medical treatment. It's beyond shameful that sick veterans and first responders have to fight at all to get the care they've earned.
On another subject, is it me or do MAGA world men have an obsession with their lack of manhood? It seems the least 'manly' men in that sphere spend the most time talking and now writing about it. But then, these people think Donald Trump is the epitome of manliness, so......
A friend in the publishing industry informed me that everyone’s new favorite short distance runner, Senator Josh Hawley, is working on a book about masculinity for release next year. Apparently, the pitch (reproduced below) made its rounds among publishers before settling on the one publisher (Regnery) who is effective at moving units when there’s actually no readers interested in the proposed volume.
Here’s the chapter outline that my friend’s firm decided to pass on:
1. Introduction: Important lessons in masculinity picked up during a posh gap year spent in London before matriculating at Stanford.
2. Complementarianism and Marriage 101: How to choose a wife with life experiences that you can pretend are your own. (Sidebar: How to tell the difference between flatbed trucks and flatbed trailers.)
3. Hierarchy 101: How to be an effective Beta and finding your own special Alpha. (Special interviews: Lindsey Graham and Kevin McCarthy.)
4. Work 101: How to look like you're doing a job without wasting time and effort to do it. (Sidebar: How to skip the rush hour crowds at the gym and wine store by visiting DURING working hours.)
5. Career Advancement 101: Claiming you were in places that you were not. (Case study: How to claim that you argued in front of the Supreme Court, while you were pushing paper instead.)
6. Collapse of the Family 101: How gays and women seeking their own independence doomed the American Family. (Sidebar: Why women in the workforce are incompatible with Western Civilization.)
7. Complementarianism and Marriage 201: How to limit your wife's options outside the house by casting yourself as a martyr on topics that previously actively disinterested you (and continue to disinterest you to this day).
8. Standing Up 101: How to demonize underpaid public servants as pedophiles and groomers, while remaining silent on abuse and harassment in local houses of worship. (Special interview: Chris Rufo.)
9. Fitness 101: Proper techniques for sprinting and breathing when Discretion suddenly becomes the better part of Valor in the middle of a peaceful protest of patriots.
10. Standing Up 201: Why we shouldn’t waste time demonizing fellow men who are serial adulterers, chronic divorcees, tie women up in their basements, and get caught paying minors for sex. (Special roundtable discussion with Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump, and Eric Greitens)
11. Work 201: Why it's better to pretend to be doing something useful when achieving a position to make a difference, instead of wasting time and effort to actually make that difference. (Sidebar: Why actually Legislating is for Losers.)
12. Bring Home the Bacon 101: Tips to persuade a Social Security recipient to send you a dollar, so that you can spend the vast majority of that dollar to convince the next Social Security recipient to send you another dollar while skimming a few pennies off the top in the process and enriching The Media that you spend so much time complaining about.
13. Parenting 101: How to have a discussion with your child about that time when Daddy was away in another state and Mommy had to deal with an angry crowd in the front yard who wanted to talk to Daddy about his LARPing as an election expert with his friends playing “Clash of the Titans”. (Special guest interviews: Rudy Guiliani and Sidney Powell)
14. Bringing Home the Bacon 201: Tips on pitching a book to publishers that no one is interested in reading.
15. Conclusion: How despite bearing no resemblance to America’s Most Manly Former President (Teddy Roosevelt), Josh is America’s newest foremost expert on masculinity because he once wrote a book about the guy and continues to enjoy his (entirely straight) male companionship with the “Grab ‘em by the pussy” guy (and has titled this book "Manhood", which was Lindsey's suggestion).
I look forward to Hawley's book simply for the thrill of seeing how many people choose not to buy it, and what happens to all those formerly beautiful trees when it becomes a stale doughnut.
There is certainly precedent for that. Scott Walker had his moment in the sun with "Unintimidated," his story of how he proudly picked the wings off of what he considered flies on the Left. Fast forward some months and, while perusing a large thrift shop in Wisconsin, there were some two dozen copies of it, in clearly unused condition and marked down to almost nothing just to get rid of them. Next visit, a month or more later, almost all of them still were there looking for homes. It became the butt of jokes among us that Scott Walker had gone from the Governor of Wisconsin to the King of Goodwill.
May Hawley enjoy the same taste of fleeting fame and lasting ridicule.
As far as I can tell, the GOP strategy is to vote against bills that are popular, pretty seriously important, and that they themselves support, and say the Democrats made them do it. It really does test how big of a bullshit sandwich their voters are willing to wolf down. And it probably will work for them.
And good work, Charlie, making a difference in the world. Airing clips of you in the courtroom to bring that scumbag down is phenomenal.
It was only a matter of time and exposure before Mastriano completely tanked. The night he got the nomination, he gave his acceptance speech in a tie with a forking cross on it.
I don't think that guy could get elected governor of Tennessee, much less Pennsylvania.
The same thing is going to happen to DeSantis once he's under the presidential campaign press spotlight. He's...fine to be governor of a major state. But that's the ceiling for his personality and political abilities.
It is obvious every single day that the Republicans are working for Putin. I find it shocking and appalling. But it's a very wrong-headed path they've all chosen for themselves. I wouldn't be opposed to deporting most of them to Russia. They belong there, not in America.
Seems like a lot of guys want to define masculinity these days—Hawley, Geatz, even this guy from the Claremont Institute thinks Trump is a manly man. So, it is this all about guys feeling threatened? Left behind? Egos so fragile.
I'm sure that one of the key virtues of manhood is good cardio, and senator Hawley obviously can tell us a lot about that.
What gets me is the exemplars of “manhood” among Republicans. Really? Hawley and Carlson have to be two of the prissiest SOBs on the planet. Just the way they whine when they speak. 🙄
Senate Republicans can dish out the hardball politics but they can't take it. Susan Collins was happy to shove Brett Kavanaugh down our necks after he lied to her face and was credibly accused of sexual assault. She also didn't hesitate to fill a stolen SCOTUS seat with Neil Gorsuch. Payback sux. Be a grown-up, take your licks, and learn to play nicer. Republicans are unfit to govern.
Josh “ Hubris” Hawley. What a puffed up phoney.
"With Trump’s reissuance of the Schedule F executive order, our national government would start to resemble Tammany Hall—a corrupt political machine."
Trumpers talk a lot about "draining the swamp" and decry "corruption." But when they, or at least their thought leaders, speak of "corruption," they don't seem to mean "exploiting public office for personal gain" so much as "getting in the way of our agenda." They cast anyone who upheld lawful guardrails against Trump as representative of the D.C. "swamp."
Conservatives have raised legitimate criticisms of how the "administrative state" lets "unaccountable" bureaucrats stymie elected officials. But their case loses credibility when their heroic fighter against the permanent bureaucracy is Donald Trump -- someone who evidently didn't know (or care to learn) what the president's constitutional power actually ares, but asserted that they are "total" and was frustrated to be told they aren't, and when informed that something he wanted done was illegal, replied "Who would prosecute me?"
Trumpites who speak of a need for "accountability" can't really mean accountability to law or ethics. They're comfortable with Trump's expressions of despot-envy, and with Trump-loyal officials profiting from their positions in government. What they really want is a chief executive with unlimited power, as long as the executive will do what they want.
Even if Schedule F becomes detached from Trump and Trumpites, a full-on assault on the civil service tends to suggest a preference for autocratic personal rule, as against institutional continuity.
Just for grins, I checked the Amazon rating for Hawley’s book- #246,783 in books. It may be remaindered before it even hits the shelves. I’m not the least bit gleeful about that. /s
Josh Hawley is writing a book on "Manhood", and how to be one. Includes tips on marathon training. Barbie is coming out with an autobiography on what it's like growing up as a real girl.
RE: Jon Stewart's quote about "the cruelty"
Setting aside the "hypocrisy...lies...[and] cowardice" of Republicans (because while they hold the lion's share of these political commodities, they don't actually have the market 100% completely cornered quite yet, in spite of their Herculean efforts in this area), when it comes to today's GOP and "cruelty", one of two things is invariably true: either the cruelty is, in and of itself, absolutely the point, or it is completely and absolutely beside the point for them. They're more than fine with cruelty being a regular 'feature' and not an infrequent and unintended 'bug' in this clusterfuck we call our politics. They've got the market completely sewn up on this one, have had for quite a while, and will not turn down any opportunity to increase their holdings.
You don't have to 'like it', Jon. And you don't have to accept it, any more than I do. But you'd damned well better get used to and always expect it. Because this ugly and reprehensible 'feature' of Republican politics is here to stay, unless and until enough people who continue to support this morally bankrupt entity called the GOP decide there's a difference between driving a hard bargain and pulling the wings off of flies. And that's not likely to happen any time soon.