President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

His kindred spirit is the My Pillow guy
A couple of con men

 

Only the best people for northeast Georgia! Too bad Herschel Walker doesn't know a good lawyer.

(Actually, Stan Gunter -- my state rep -- is reasonably well-educated compared to the rest of the political flotsam and jetsam in my neck of the sticks.)

 

Quite good I thought. (Disclaimer: I am not well-read on the 1970’s. The Truman and Carter administrations were weak spots for me, something I’ve been rectifying the last couple years. So there are things that were new for me that someone who lived through the era or had read more would’ve found to be rehashes.)

There was no effort to rehabilitate the Carter Presidency, but a straightforward, case-by-case laying out of the facts of his four years in office. He is judged by each case, without narrative. Unlike the way the media treated him. (Looking at you Ms. Graham!) Bird is again surgical and only is interested in the Presidency. Very little on anything before 1970 or after 1980.

In some cases Carter’s instincts were well ahead of his time. In others he was the disconnected, churlish, provincial President his critics painted him as. The unifying thesis was that Carter was a unique President, a creation of his time, from the strange place the country was in after Watergate to the way he left, saddled with a hostage crisis and inflation. In another era, I’d argue Carter has a Presidency much like Obama. But in another era a man like Carter never becomes President. He tackled difficult problems, a politically stupid but morally brave decision, that really only paid off in the peace deal. And even then Begin hoodwinked him in a way right out of a bad movie by never signing the settlement document.

Brezinski gets hammered. Hard. The look at Bill Casey’s Iran subterfuge is fascinating, although I don’t know how much of that is new reporting.

For a person who didn’t live through it and is just delving into that era, it was a great read. It’s no American Prometheus, but what story really can rival Oppenheimer’s? It’s an all-timer, something from Shakespeare.

 

Golly, somebody suspended this guy's Twitter account!

 

Yeah, it's like he combined every kind of novelty scam out there - NFTs, Crypto, sweepstakes, Christmas - all in one thing. All it was missing was saying a portion of the proceeds would go to veterans or police officers.

 

As much as I enjoy the thought of McCarthy squirming for the votes, it would be funny if the Freedom Caucus types don't vote for him, denying him the majority, and then enough Dems switch their votes to McCarthy to give him the edge. It won't just undermine McCarthy, but every Republican who voted for him. Given the trouble the Freedom Caucus types have caused Republicans, I'm surprised most of them weren't squeezed into tougher districts during redistricting.

 

McCarthy wouldn't show one bit of gratitude to any D.

 

It wouldn't be about expecting gratitude, it'd be about causing trouble within the House Republican caucus. I don't think the Democrats would do this, but if they even tried, it'd be the end of McCarthy's career. He'd be branded as the ultimate RINO.

 

Because it's working so well in the U.S. -- fukchead authoritarian rising in Canada.

The world will never learn.

https://thewalrus.ca/pierre-poilievre-the-secret-to-his-success/

 

Opinion | The Left’s Fever Is Breaking

But as Mitchell wrote in his essay, social media platforms reward shallow polemics, “self-aggrandizement, competition and conflict.” These platforms can give power to the powerless, but they also bestow it on the most disruptive and self-interested people in any group, those likely to take their complaints to Twitter rather than to their supervisors or colleagues. The gamification of discourse through likes and retweets, he said, “flies in the face of building solidarity, of being serious about difference, of engaging in meaningful debate and struggle around complex ideas.”