Non-MAGA conservatives have a similar relationship to Trump as a battered wife has to a violent husband with whom she chooses to remain: “I don’t like how often he loses his temper, but he does have many good points as well.”
The press are a different story. Sure, it’s Both Sides and horserace and the never-ending thirst to find the Sane Republicans, but I also think it’s an elaborate kayfabe of rationalization to disguise the fact Trump drives engagement and is wonderful for ratings and clicks. Anything that involves him, pro or con, is newsworthy. That’s why they want him back.
Now that there really isn't a consensus go-to mouthpiece of the News of the Day® I wonder how much of the citizenry actually is attuned to all this. Gas prices (and do not try to suggest the oil industry does not feed that data straight to the brainstems of the influencers every morning), egg prices (chicken abortion, anyone?), the enduring potholes down the way, the kids' failures to understand maths (where's Mr B when we need him?!), and the erectile dysfunctions all take precedence.
How much of the citizenry is attuned — or despite their natures, rapidly becoming attuned anyway — to politics? I'd guess at least 51-53%. Can you guess what they all have in common?
While the RTL movement is working overtime to normalize and acculturate the citizenry to maternal martyrdom while glorifying maternal death, people (including men who are fond of at least some women) are not going to accept this. It's kitchen table politics when the state controls your body.
Could be. Tho I'd posit anything above 50% turnout is just the weight of the presidential office (66% turnout in 2020, v. 49% in 2018, and 46% in 2022*). So we get more voters for president because horse-race, Queensman lovers & haters, and The Economic Doomscroll®.
I think if Biden can find a way to frame the largely good economy in a way that deflects people’s attention away from astronomically high prices at the supermarket – I mean, even I flinch in the checkout line – and can focus on the “they want you dead” draconian GOP position on abortion, and lean into “do you really want the chaotic criminal who told you to drink bleach during a pandemic and tried to overturn an election to be back in the driver’s seat?” he has a chance.
We olds (not sayin' you) are afflicted with the memory of 15¢-per-gallon gasoline (and all the lead we could ingest!).
Countering: The average cost of a gallon now is lower than it was in 2008 – the last year of the Bush2 (SPIT!) administration. Try telling that to a maggot...sorry, MAGAt.
Yeah, gas prices have normalized but grocery prices are still through the roof as compared to just a few years ago. It's impossible to persuade someone who paid $130 for the weekly food shop in 2021 and is now paying $180 for the exact same items that food prices haven't rapidly skyrocketed. So Biden has to find a way to focus elsewhere.
Or redirect the justified anger where it belongs, to the 2-3 mega-corporations that have, through mergers and acquisitions, taken complete control of our food supply. Don't we have audio of the fuckers on their quarterly earnings calls bragging about how profits have been goin' through the roof?
Assign Elizabeth Warren to lead a task force to break up General Foods.
Bingo. The message is "rich corporate Greed Monsters are raping you. Here's what we'll try to do about that." Easy peasy. Now, probably they'll actually accomplish nothing, but it's easy to say, and it's the message that matters: "we know this sucks, we'll try to help."
Indeed. Food prices are mostly due to price-gouging by corporations. To a lesser extent, issues like avian flu make the prices of certain items volatile (but you notice prices don’t go back down after the crisis abates). Then there are occasional supply line issues like the low, drought-stricken Mississippi River hampering barge traffic, which then affects rail traffic and truck traffic and their costs, etc.
You would think the makers of campaign commercials would have an endless smorgasbord of footage from which to choose. Me, I'd intersperse MAGA-swag patriots smearing their feces on the walls of the Capitol with footage of the Ohio woman in shackles after having had a miscarriage.
Hear me out, I've got a different approach, based on a single quote from a woman in a WaPo story interviewing voters in Door County, WI. The quote: "I like Biden, I hardly ever have to think about him."
OK, so here's the big reveal, my new slogan for the Biden campaign: "Biden: Elect Him and Forget Him."
You jest, but this is actually very appealing to a big chunk of voters who don’t care for politics, don’t think about politics, and when forced to think about politics become angry and wonder why you are asking them, didn’t they elect the last guy, isn’t politics his job and if so, why are you asking them to do it. Voting once every four years and then forgetting it exactly what they want to do.
Conservatives/conservatism: What, in all of human history, have they/it done to advance human happiness or comfort? Nothing. Not one fucking iota. I'm no Marxist (or whatever), but this is the only world we have and they're constantly scheming to make it shittier than it already is.
True. When I think of conservatism, I think of older people trying to preserve their wealth and lifestyle. Not moving the needle in a progressive manner, which could have a negative impact on themselves and their way of life.
Hence, Churchill’s famous quote:
“Show me a young man whose a conservative, and I’ll show you a man with no heart; yet, show me an old man whose a liberal, and I’ll show you a man with no brain!”
Conservatism is nothing more than a nice why of saying you can’t have what’s mine, and moving the goal posts won’t improve my standing in life, so bugger off!
And yet, most of the people who are conservatives are the “have nots,” voting against their interests...:)
I know that quote. I disagree with the "old man" part! I agree that many/most conservatives are "have nots." But what exactly is it that they don't have, and what do their "leaders" hope they never have?
I do not agree that many/most cons have not. I think they have that cushy sub-urban quarter-acre and believe themselves monarchs of all they survey. Simultaneously lords/ladies of the realm, and salt-of-the-earth, hard-workin' bootstrappers who won't concede nuthin' to nobody 'cause nobody conceded nuthin' to them.
That may be true in the US (I don't know), where (it seems to me) many people don't realize they are "have not." They don't realize that they don't have many of the things that their peers in other countries have (universal healthcare, affordable education, etc.). Last time I was in the US, I was kinda shocked. LAX was a dump run by goons with guns. With no exception, everyone who served me was a native speaker of Spanish (a clear underclass). Outside of military-like checkpoints, any American I've ever met was friendly and helpful. But mention free healthcare in Canada (or wherever), they all get defensive and say "communism!" Frankly, it's both annoying and tiresome explaining that, yeah, life in Canada or Japan (or wherever) is good too! It's actually pretty goddamn offensive
Which is why conservatives tell their rubes everywhere outside their red zones is a hellhole they shouldn't even visit -- for fear they'll learn better.
In the US many conservatives are in the "one-truck" company cohort. They have plenty of money but they have no confidence in themselves to keep that going without Republicans pushing much government largesse their way. These include car dealership owners, and a fair number of other small business owners. These were the ones who did the January 6 stuff. They had the money to get to DC and the easy ability to take time off.
Are these the only conservatives in the US, no; but they might be the scaredest. They have stuff and don't want to lose that6 stuff.
More than 50% of welfare queens are white Christian, unmarried women with kids, who vote Republican. They may not be conservatives, but they vote for the party that wants to take these entitlements away....:)
So many of them own small businesses that they always seem furious never morph into large businesses, and have decided it's liberals who are somehow at fault. Their business acumen is never the question, of course.
I hear there might be a slot in the R.Giuliani (formerly) Esq. enterprise for a landscaping outfit with a large press facility and no snarky web-savvy employees...
I have done our personal wealth calcs on line and remain a little awed at how high we chart among the population overall, and how below average we score on the 'just white folx' chart...
Agreed, or the term is misleading because in today’s Republican Party there aren’t any conservatives; the true conservatives are never Trumper’s or became libertarians...:)
It’s famous (and trite and smug), but it ain’t Churchill’s. I generally consult the invaluable “Quote Investigator” site in these instances, and here summarize my findings:
A French academic, writing in 1874, attributed a form of this nugget to (presumably Edmund) “Burke,” citing a “famous line” that no one else appears to have found in his writings. John Adams is reported to have uttered a like sentiment in 1799, which Thomas Jefferson recorded after it reached him via two intermediaries. Throughout the XIX century we find versions purportedly uttered, according to French sources, by various of their countrymen. An American writing in 1916 credited it to Victor Hugo. Early the following decade the Wall Street Journal moved its provenance to Scandinavia, with Swedish monarch Oscar II as the brainy conservative, but in 1936 a book of quotations has retrieved the honor of France in the person of Georges Clemenceau. In 1977 Laurence J. Peter (he of the “Peter Principle”), brought Disraeli into the mix, and by 1986 the attribution had been updated to Winston Churchill, where it appears to have lodged ever since.
Interestingly, these are all, one way or another, 𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴: a primary source is nowhere in evidence.
Interesting though. I once heard Israel’s prime minister David Ben-Gurion had a conversation with De Gaulle after France sold Phantom Jets to Arab nations in the 1950’s.
Ben-Gurion said, “how can you sell fighter jets to our enemies, I thought you were our friend?”
DeGaulle shot back, “countries have no friends, only interests.”
I always attributed that quote to De Gaulle, but later learned it was actually PM Disraeli of Britain who first used it in 1864.
Funny how many quotes are attributed in error...:)
The so-called anti-Trump conservatives give themselves away when they rail against Joe Biden whom Democratic voters put in the White House because he was the least radical candidate in the 2019 primaries. Imagine a Sanders or Warren presidency: they’d be enthusiastically supporting Trump’s attempt to overturn the election and calling the 1/6 insurrection the Second American Revolution. At the end of the day, nothing is worse to them than a government that works for anyone not a white make Christian.
Agreed, these beltway pundits are like most everyone else; out for themselves. They lost the gravy train to a shameless, sociopathic bandit, who high jacked their loot, and is kept it for himself.
Most have only one loyalty; to the almighty dollar. They want him gone, yet can’t find the courage to walk out the door and never look back. So they justify the unthinkable to placate what’s ever left of their declining moral compass; if they ever had one at all.
Don’t expect this group of charlatans to save us from Trumpism. They created the FoxEinstein monster, opened Pandora’s Box, and must now live with the consequences. It’s not that they ever supported Trump, be they created the environment and atmosphere for Trump to live and thrive.
Definitely an oxymoron if there ever was one. Although, Trump also claims he’s brilliant because he had an uncle who was a professor at MIT. So there’s that...:)
One time before we moved here I was flying out of Reno, and I had a buncha gummies left uneaten, so I ate them all on the way to the airport. Missed my flight!
I wish I had even your qualified faith in the American people who tolerated slavery and its close replacement Jim Crow for 350 years, who pursued westward expansion at the cost of genocide, voted for the noble experiment of Prohibition while hypocritically violating it, swallowed the fallacy of the Cold War arms race and the Red Scares. Sometimes I think we would have been better off if we lost the French and Indian War. Maybe we would have prospered more gently under the Iroquois Confederacy.
The never Trumpers are funny: Lacking any power, drowning denial blaming party problems on 45 when the problem is the party's positions. All Trump did re Dobbs was appointing ACB which happened because RBG picked an awful time to die. Everything else about eliminating access to abortions and pre-natal care generally and reducing choice to a woman choosing whether to tell her man to fuck off and get slugged or whether to STFU -- all that to one degree or another everything the majority rejects is the party's doing, not Trump's. (Not a defense of the repulsive monster.)
Which is why they're very excited about the "dictator" concept, but want to implement it with someone less volatile like Hailey (we'll all have to answer our phones "It's a great day in America!")
[fine print at the bottom: Offer available only at select locations. Risk of dictatorship is dependent upon long-term precedence of authoritarian tendencies. Your results may vary. Void where inhibited.]
If you ignore Gorsuch and Kavanaugh who both voted for Dobbs. I guess you could put Gorsuch on McConnell and Kavanaugh or Justice Kennedy but Trump appointed both
My bad. SOS my math. I thought RBG was the key vote to save choice.
Still taking credit for Dobbs when all he did is rubber stamp three candidates put forward by Leonard Leo is... taking a lot of undeserved credit -- which, of course, fully on brand.
I think we'll be all right with the election. I figure if it all goes to shit I'll tune out the outside world and pay all my attention to the dogs and the horses and the garden. Read actual books with paper and printing and covers.
I should probably do that whatever happens. I'll be way happier and live longer.
Donald Trump first came to my awareness in the mid-1980s, when I was in my early 20s and getting established in my career and life. He was a court jester of the headlines, a vulgarian in a Rolex watch and a $900 suit with that same cheap-ass rug he seems to have bought from the same place they make hair for little girls' dolls that he wears now. He was a joke even then. Loud, arrogant, and firmly convinced of his own importance despite what others thought of him. He was like Pia Zadora with a dick.
The last 8 years have sorely shaken my faith in our government and the future of our country, but so have roughly the last 8 administrations, beginning with Ronaldo Maximus.
We’ve come a long way from the genial Bryllcreemed racism of Ronald Reagan to the braying circus peanut with his cotton-candy hair. Just imagine what new rough beast slouches towards Washington to be born!
With the obsessive focus on the Republicans primaries (where Trump is CRUSHING IT, I'm told) it's easy to lose sight of the fact that a solid majority of Americans do NOT want this guy to be President. And it's not just the wanting, it's the voting, as they've shown repeatedly in midterm and off-year elections all over the country. Hell, they've got people turning out for School Board primaries just to defeat the Moms For Liberty monsters. A real gift to voter turnout, this Donald Trump and his associated lunacy.
Has there ever been a comparison, statistically or listically, of ratio of prominent GOPers who have denounced Trump and stuck to it, to those who have not? Not sure how instructive it would be, but a lopsided over/under of the latter over the former wouldn’t be surprising. The group of committed anti-Trump Republicans, notably Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, are famous for this, and the legacy media never fails to tag them as such. But when someone like Lindsey Graham comes up, said LM doesn’t regularly mention how he crawled back to Tubby in pathetic obsequiousness after TFG was elected. It’s almost like it’s impolite to say their lack of good faith and hypocrisy.
The number I'm itchin' to know is what percent of Republican voters will either stay home or leave the presidential ballot slot blank in the general election? I'll concede that 90%-plus will do just like Lindsey and come crawling back to him, but it's going to be close and precise numbers matter. If he retains 99%, he can win, if it's "only" 95%, he probably can't win. But the tried-and-true method of interviewing people who have been standing in the cold for hours to get into a Trump rally in Iowa doesn't reveal this number.
You jest, but this very moment, on the home page of the New York Times website, is a photo of a middle-aged Iowa man seated in a church pew holding a Bible and the pull quote "He's got principles, that's the key feature here." Guess who "he" is.
Whether or not he’s convicted will have a big influence on that. I’ve heard up to 25% of Republican voters would not pull the lever for TFG if he were.
So... doing the math... if 80% of those people are lying to us now and still vote for him, that gets me to the 5% of all Republicans not voting for him that I'd like to see.
The number of anti-Trumpers who are also publicly willing to say Biden would be a lot better and we should vote for him could fit in a phone...ok, there are no more phone booths...broom closet?
Chest-beating, breast-beating – we know which one's the best beating!
Give Queensman a test-beating, then commence with all the rest-beating!
Yer on a roll
So, you're today's master of beating???
Partway there; quartermaster, roughly...
You'll be at half-mast in no time. It won't be hard.
I was going to make a comment about "crotch-beating", but I see we're already there, so carry on.
Sooo... quarter master beater...?
See thread about change...master of quarters – that's me!
you really baited him there!
Motorboating In Service Of The State
Non-MAGA conservatives have a similar relationship to Trump as a battered wife has to a violent husband with whom she chooses to remain: “I don’t like how often he loses his temper, but he does have many good points as well.”
The press are a different story. Sure, it’s Both Sides and horserace and the never-ending thirst to find the Sane Republicans, but I also think it’s an elaborate kayfabe of rationalization to disguise the fact Trump drives engagement and is wonderful for ratings and clicks. Anything that involves him, pro or con, is newsworthy. That’s why they want him back.
A common thread between conservatives and the dipshit Centrist press: “We need a strong Republican Party.”
I'll set the bar low - multiple parties, none of them like the GOP.
Hasn't Nancy Pelosi also said this?
I committed a PLAGIARISMS by not citing her quote.
You been a very naughty Norski!
No Harvard Presidency for YOU!
[wailing] Could I at least have Brown?!
Brown. Charles Brown.
Yeah, and they never really say WHY.
Now that there really isn't a consensus go-to mouthpiece of the News of the Day® I wonder how much of the citizenry actually is attuned to all this. Gas prices (and do not try to suggest the oil industry does not feed that data straight to the brainstems of the influencers every morning), egg prices (chicken abortion, anyone?), the enduring potholes down the way, the kids' failures to understand maths (where's Mr B when we need him?!), and the erectile dysfunctions all take precedence.
Who's got the time fer all that politickin'?
How much of the citizenry is attuned — or despite their natures, rapidly becoming attuned anyway — to politics? I'd guess at least 51-53%. Can you guess what they all have in common?
While the RTL movement is working overtime to normalize and acculturate the citizenry to maternal martyrdom while glorifying maternal death, people (including men who are fond of at least some women) are not going to accept this. It's kitchen table politics when the state controls your body.
Could be. Tho I'd posit anything above 50% turnout is just the weight of the presidential office (66% turnout in 2020, v. 49% in 2018, and 46% in 2022*). So we get more voters for president because horse-race, Queensman lovers & haters, and The Economic Doomscroll®.
*Per Pew Research
~60% was the average turnout in 2008, 2012 and 2016 according to Wikipedia
Yeah. Turnouts higher around presidence.
I think if Biden can find a way to frame the largely good economy in a way that deflects people’s attention away from astronomically high prices at the supermarket – I mean, even I flinch in the checkout line – and can focus on the “they want you dead” draconian GOP position on abortion, and lean into “do you really want the chaotic criminal who told you to drink bleach during a pandemic and tried to overturn an election to be back in the driver’s seat?” he has a chance.
We olds (not sayin' you) are afflicted with the memory of 15¢-per-gallon gasoline (and all the lead we could ingest!).
Countering: The average cost of a gallon now is lower than it was in 2008 – the last year of the Bush2 (SPIT!) administration. Try telling that to a maggot...sorry, MAGAt.
Yeah, gas prices have normalized but grocery prices are still through the roof as compared to just a few years ago. It's impossible to persuade someone who paid $130 for the weekly food shop in 2021 and is now paying $180 for the exact same items that food prices haven't rapidly skyrocketed. So Biden has to find a way to focus elsewhere.
Or redirect the justified anger where it belongs, to the 2-3 mega-corporations that have, through mergers and acquisitions, taken complete control of our food supply. Don't we have audio of the fuckers on their quarterly earnings calls bragging about how profits have been goin' through the roof?
Assign Elizabeth Warren to lead a task force to break up General Foods.
Bingo. The message is "rich corporate Greed Monsters are raping you. Here's what we'll try to do about that." Easy peasy. Now, probably they'll actually accomplish nothing, but it's easy to say, and it's the message that matters: "we know this sucks, we'll try to help."
Indeed. Food prices are mostly due to price-gouging by corporations. To a lesser extent, issues like avian flu make the prices of certain items volatile (but you notice prices don’t go back down after the crisis abates). Then there are occasional supply line issues like the low, drought-stricken Mississippi River hampering barge traffic, which then affects rail traffic and truck traffic and their costs, etc.
Bust 'em down to corporal!
The lead was heavy, and it menaced you from all directions.
I managed somehow to refrain from chewing on the house paint [shiver]
It occurs to me that any interior color other that white would have been irresistible to tots. Especially a gloss.
As PVP put it, "you mean 'wall candy'?"
You would think the makers of campaign commercials would have an endless smorgasbord of footage from which to choose. Me, I'd intersperse MAGA-swag patriots smearing their feces on the walls of the Capitol with footage of the Ohio woman in shackles after having had a miscarriage.
I agree. Maybe the ads are coming this year, because there is certainly a smorgasbord of footage to choose from.
Hear me out, I've got a different approach, based on a single quote from a woman in a WaPo story interviewing voters in Door County, WI. The quote: "I like Biden, I hardly ever have to think about him."
OK, so here's the big reveal, my new slogan for the Biden campaign: "Biden: Elect Him and Forget Him."
You jest, but this is actually very appealing to a big chunk of voters who don’t care for politics, don’t think about politics, and when forced to think about politics become angry and wonder why you are asking them, didn’t they elect the last guy, isn’t politics his job and if so, why are you asking them to do it. Voting once every four years and then forgetting it exactly what they want to do.
Yes, in this the interests of the average voter and the interests of the New York Times diverge.
Hey, the Grand Jury decided not to indict
Sure wish there was a mic in that room...
Whatever happened to Drudge as the assignment editor?
Must have succumbed to the mind-numbing drudgery.
Conservatives/conservatism: What, in all of human history, have they/it done to advance human happiness or comfort? Nothing. Not one fucking iota. I'm no Marxist (or whatever), but this is the only world we have and they're constantly scheming to make it shittier than it already is.
True. When I think of conservatism, I think of older people trying to preserve their wealth and lifestyle. Not moving the needle in a progressive manner, which could have a negative impact on themselves and their way of life.
Hence, Churchill’s famous quote:
“Show me a young man whose a conservative, and I’ll show you a man with no heart; yet, show me an old man whose a liberal, and I’ll show you a man with no brain!”
Conservatism is nothing more than a nice why of saying you can’t have what’s mine, and moving the goal posts won’t improve my standing in life, so bugger off!
And yet, most of the people who are conservatives are the “have nots,” voting against their interests...:)
I know that quote. I disagree with the "old man" part! I agree that many/most conservatives are "have nots." But what exactly is it that they don't have, and what do their "leaders" hope they never have?
I do not agree that many/most cons have not. I think they have that cushy sub-urban quarter-acre and believe themselves monarchs of all they survey. Simultaneously lords/ladies of the realm, and salt-of-the-earth, hard-workin' bootstrappers who won't concede nuthin' to nobody 'cause nobody conceded nuthin' to them.
That may be true in the US (I don't know), where (it seems to me) many people don't realize they are "have not." They don't realize that they don't have many of the things that their peers in other countries have (universal healthcare, affordable education, etc.). Last time I was in the US, I was kinda shocked. LAX was a dump run by goons with guns. With no exception, everyone who served me was a native speaker of Spanish (a clear underclass). Outside of military-like checkpoints, any American I've ever met was friendly and helpful. But mention free healthcare in Canada (or wherever), they all get defensive and say "communism!" Frankly, it's both annoying and tiresome explaining that, yeah, life in Canada or Japan (or wherever) is good too! It's actually pretty goddamn offensive
Which is why conservatives tell their rubes everywhere outside their red zones is a hellhole they shouldn't even visit -- for fear they'll learn better.
Minneapolis is burned to the ground weekly! (But at least it melts off the snow.)
I, conversely, have fond memories of LAX (tho I'll admit those are late-1970's memories...)
Zoomin' thru that place in a wheelchair* was a gas!
*VERY long story
Oof.
Jumpin' Jack Bern
In the US many conservatives are in the "one-truck" company cohort. They have plenty of money but they have no confidence in themselves to keep that going without Republicans pushing much government largesse their way. These include car dealership owners, and a fair number of other small business owners. These were the ones who did the January 6 stuff. They had the money to get to DC and the easy ability to take time off.
Are these the only conservatives in the US, no; but they might be the scaredest. They have stuff and don't want to lose that6 stuff.
More than 50% of welfare queens are white Christian, unmarried women with kids, who vote Republican. They may not be conservatives, but they vote for the party that wants to take these entitlements away....:)
So many of them own small businesses that they always seem furious never morph into large businesses, and have decided it's liberals who are somehow at fault. Their business acumen is never the question, of course.
"Sorry, but there's a limited market for landscaping services in the greater Fayetteville area."
I hear there might be a slot in the R.Giuliani (formerly) Esq. enterprise for a landscaping outfit with a large press facility and no snarky web-savvy employees...
It’s not a perfect quote but the point is that older wealthy people fear change...:)
Oh, to be both old and wealthy!
I have done our personal wealth calcs on line and remain a little awed at how high we chart among the population overall, and how below average we score on the 'just white folx' chart...
I believe if you have a net worth in the positive numbers you're better off than about half of Americans.
Oh I get that fearing change thing - as soon as anyone hands me any coins, I dump 'em in the hand of a local street urchin. I HATE change.
Except for those cute customized quarters – the new Jovita Idar quarters are the coolest US coins I've ever seen.
Yes, now that you ask – I AM the QUARTERMASTER!
Here, the concept of fascism is illuminative.
Whoa, hold it with this "concept" stuff, this is American voters we're talkin' about.
Problem with American conservatives is that they aren't conservatives. They're reactionaries.
Agreed, or the term is misleading because in today’s Republican Party there aren’t any conservatives; the true conservatives are never Trumper’s or became libertarians...:)
I'm perfectly willing to accept their claim at face value because I like the idea of discrediting conservatism generally.
Self-discreditization ought to be more widely recognized.
Anent “Churchill’s famous quote”:
It’s famous (and trite and smug), but it ain’t Churchill’s. I generally consult the invaluable “Quote Investigator” site in these instances, and here summarize my findings:
A French academic, writing in 1874, attributed a form of this nugget to (presumably Edmund) “Burke,” citing a “famous line” that no one else appears to have found in his writings. John Adams is reported to have uttered a like sentiment in 1799, which Thomas Jefferson recorded after it reached him via two intermediaries. Throughout the XIX century we find versions purportedly uttered, according to French sources, by various of their countrymen. An American writing in 1916 credited it to Victor Hugo. Early the following decade the Wall Street Journal moved its provenance to Scandinavia, with Swedish monarch Oscar II as the brainy conservative, but in 1936 a book of quotations has retrieved the honor of France in the person of Georges Clemenceau. In 1977 Laurence J. Peter (he of the “Peter Principle”), brought Disraeli into the mix, and by 1986 the attribution had been updated to Winston Churchill, where it appears to have lodged ever since.
Interestingly, these are all, one way or another, 𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴: a primary source is nowhere in evidence.
And then we come to 2024, when it is pasted in front of a picture of Morgan Freeman and loosed on Facebook. The End.
Thank you Rand, I stand corrected..:)
Interesting though. I once heard Israel’s prime minister David Ben-Gurion had a conversation with De Gaulle after France sold Phantom Jets to Arab nations in the 1950’s.
Ben-Gurion said, “how can you sell fighter jets to our enemies, I thought you were our friend?”
DeGaulle shot back, “countries have no friends, only interests.”
I always attributed that quote to De Gaulle, but later learned it was actually PM Disraeli of Britain who first used it in 1864.
Funny how many quotes are attributed in error...:)
Maybe if the famous and powerful could come up with a wider range of ideas, we wouldn't need to credit the same quote to a half-dozen of 'em.
No doubt about it – I gotta get a better leader!
Huh, almost like folks manipulate history to suit present biases!
Wonder if anyone's written a novel based on an idea like that... hrm...
Exactly, and as Napoleon once said (quote attributed correctly), “history is a series of lies; agreed upon!”...:)
The chances of that happening are 1:1,984. (Additional commas and zeroes may be added as necessary.)
Or'swell that ends well...
Easy now, Pops. Let's just get you back on the meds...
I'm on meds already! That's the PROBLEM. Why the fuck isn't the shit I'm paying for making me "normal"? And what DID do it?
Just assume they're all courtesy Ben Franklin. It makes life much simpler.
and yet here I am a 62 year old liberal with a very high IQ (according to me for recent takes)
So am I; except 58...:)
The so-called anti-Trump conservatives give themselves away when they rail against Joe Biden whom Democratic voters put in the White House because he was the least radical candidate in the 2019 primaries. Imagine a Sanders or Warren presidency: they’d be enthusiastically supporting Trump’s attempt to overturn the election and calling the 1/6 insurrection the Second American Revolution. At the end of the day, nothing is worse to them than a government that works for anyone not a white make Christian.
Agreed, these beltway pundits are like most everyone else; out for themselves. They lost the gravy train to a shameless, sociopathic bandit, who high jacked their loot, and is kept it for himself.
Most have only one loyalty; to the almighty dollar. They want him gone, yet can’t find the courage to walk out the door and never look back. So they justify the unthinkable to placate what’s ever left of their declining moral compass; if they ever had one at all.
Don’t expect this group of charlatans to save us from Trumpism. They created the FoxEinstein monster, opened Pandora’s Box, and must now live with the consequences. It’s not that they ever supported Trump, be they created the environment and atmosphere for Trump to live and thrive.
Good riddance!...:)
Took a second with "FoxEinstein." "FoxEpstein," surely?
Fair enough..:)
I didn’t mean a combination of Einstein, should have been FoxEnstein for Frankenstein..:)
Good to know, just putting "Fox" and "Einstein" next to each other could cause a matter-antimatter reaction that could destroy the planet.
Definitely an oxymoron if there ever was one. Although, Trump also claims he’s brilliant because he had an uncle who was a professor at MIT. So there’s that...:)
“Good bloodlines” he wheezed between bites of his third Big Mac.
EinsteinStickingOutTongue dot jpg
As opposed to Eisenstein sticking out tongue
When they came out with "Baby Einstein" products, I went straight from there to "Baby Eisenstein."
Put that hair on a baby and you've got a troll doll with chops
The cutest Potemkin Steps scene!
Wait. Which one matters, and which doesn't?
Well, one doesn't help the baby, and the other's hypothetical
So, the second one, then...?
How many gummies would I have to ingest to attempt a Truman-Trump analogy? The answer is many, many gummies.
Carry on, carry on...and report back when you regain consciousness.
One time before we moved here I was flying out of Reno, and I had a buncha gummies left uneaten, so I ate them all on the way to the airport. Missed my flight!
Missed one of them, anyway...
Once an edibles mistake starts to ramp up, all you can think is "when is it gonna stop getting more intense"
Yoicks.
Given Trump's mental state, I'm not sure you want to be likening him to the only American president to use nuclear weapons.
To be fair, several prez's have used them, but only one fit for purpose, if you catch my drift (and if you are downwind you will)...
That Bill Kristol, don't stop him when he's riffin'
I wish I had even your qualified faith in the American people who tolerated slavery and its close replacement Jim Crow for 350 years, who pursued westward expansion at the cost of genocide, voted for the noble experiment of Prohibition while hypocritically violating it, swallowed the fallacy of the Cold War arms race and the Red Scares. Sometimes I think we would have been better off if we lost the French and Indian War. Maybe we would have prospered more gently under the Iroquois Confederacy.
"Sometimes I think we would have been better off if we lost the French and Indian War." Now THERE's a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure.
I bet there'd be no National Review
Revue Nationale, Shirley.
Don't call me Shirley, and: I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue
Didn't know it was a seasonal thing.
I read Charlie Sykes for entertainment.
The never Trumpers are funny: Lacking any power, drowning denial blaming party problems on 45 when the problem is the party's positions. All Trump did re Dobbs was appointing ACB which happened because RBG picked an awful time to die. Everything else about eliminating access to abortions and pre-natal care generally and reducing choice to a woman choosing whether to tell her man to fuck off and get slugged or whether to STFU -- all that to one degree or another everything the majority rejects is the party's doing, not Trump's. (Not a defense of the repulsive monster.)
Then of as much value as 99.9999% of pundits.
Which is why they're very excited about the "dictator" concept, but want to implement it with someone less volatile like Hailey (we'll all have to answer our phones "It's a great day in America!")
Shorter NR/Haley/DeSantis: "Try new Trump Lite! Same great policies, slightly lower chances of dictatorship!"
[fine print at the bottom: Offer available only at select locations. Risk of dictatorship is dependent upon long-term precedence of authoritarian tendencies. Your results may vary. Void where inhibited.]
I'mo use a slightly modified version of that proclamation next month in Costa Rica...
All Trump did re Dobbs was appointing ACB
If you ignore Gorsuch and Kavanaugh who both voted for Dobbs. I guess you could put Gorsuch on McConnell and Kavanaugh or Justice Kennedy but Trump appointed both
My bad. SOS my math. I thought RBG was the key vote to save choice.
Still taking credit for Dobbs when all he did is rubber stamp three candidates put forward by Leonard Leo is... taking a lot of undeserved credit -- which, of course, fully on brand.
National Review, cleaving.
That sounds pretty dire!
I think we'll be all right with the election. I figure if it all goes to shit I'll tune out the outside world and pay all my attention to the dogs and the horses and the garden. Read actual books with paper and printing and covers.
I should probably do that whatever happens. I'll be way happier and live longer.
Donald Trump first came to my awareness in the mid-1980s, when I was in my early 20s and getting established in my career and life. He was a court jester of the headlines, a vulgarian in a Rolex watch and a $900 suit with that same cheap-ass rug he seems to have bought from the same place they make hair for little girls' dolls that he wears now. He was a joke even then. Loud, arrogant, and firmly convinced of his own importance despite what others thought of him. He was like Pia Zadora with a dick.
The last 8 years have sorely shaken my faith in our government and the future of our country, but so have roughly the last 8 administrations, beginning with Ronaldo Maximus.
We’ve come a long way from the genial Bryllcreemed racism of Ronald Reagan to the braying circus peanut with his cotton-candy hair. Just imagine what new rough beast slouches towards Washington to be born!
A bald guy would be a denouement, in terms of hair at least. A smooth-domed post-fascist, I can practically see him now. The end of history!
A combination of Telly Savalas and an Elder God.
Cthulhu 2028! Iä! Iä!
We already have the lurker at the threshold.
Now im imagining the president with a lollipop 🍭 🤣
[horrific, rotting, sepulchral voice] “Who loves you, baby?” [all hearing it are driven insane]
Bwahahahahaaaaaaaaa
"I mean, not me, not me – you're not my type, but hey, the hair...
And you could use a little lift here and there, maybe onea those, whtta they call 'em, corsages? Cinch it up a little, you know? But still..."
(Periodic reminder that America's last balding President was Gerald Ford.)
That was one appointment he shoulda missed...
"... bought from the same place they make hair for little girls' dolls ..."
Nice, I'm gonna have to remember this one
With the obsessive focus on the Republicans primaries (where Trump is CRUSHING IT, I'm told) it's easy to lose sight of the fact that a solid majority of Americans do NOT want this guy to be President. And it's not just the wanting, it's the voting, as they've shown repeatedly in midterm and off-year elections all over the country. Hell, they've got people turning out for School Board primaries just to defeat the Moms For Liberty monsters. A real gift to voter turnout, this Donald Trump and his associated lunacy.
Sometimes our sclerotic Democratic elders are extremely lucky in their enemies.
"Shut up! Don't talk to me! Just go away and leave me alone so I can vote against THAT GUY!!"
"OK, just make sure you vote for Bi..."
"Stop! I know! Just leave me alone!"
Has there ever been a comparison, statistically or listically, of ratio of prominent GOPers who have denounced Trump and stuck to it, to those who have not? Not sure how instructive it would be, but a lopsided over/under of the latter over the former wouldn’t be surprising. The group of committed anti-Trump Republicans, notably Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, are famous for this, and the legacy media never fails to tag them as such. But when someone like Lindsey Graham comes up, said LM doesn’t regularly mention how he crawled back to Tubby in pathetic obsequiousness after TFG was elected. It’s almost like it’s impolite to say their lack of good faith and hypocrisy.
The number I'm itchin' to know is what percent of Republican voters will either stay home or leave the presidential ballot slot blank in the general election? I'll concede that 90%-plus will do just like Lindsey and come crawling back to him, but it's going to be close and precise numbers matter. If he retains 99%, he can win, if it's "only" 95%, he probably can't win. But the tried-and-true method of interviewing people who have been standing in the cold for hours to get into a Trump rally in Iowa doesn't reveal this number.
Yeah, will they really turn out on the premise that Biden is a dictator whose second term will destroy the country and bring on World War Two?
Well, our reporter did talk to this one guy at a Trump rally in Iowa and he found that to be a compelling argument.
You jest, but this very moment, on the home page of the New York Times website, is a photo of a middle-aged Iowa man seated in a church pew holding a Bible and the pull quote "He's got principles, that's the key feature here." Guess who "he" is.
As a card-carrying atheist, I endorse this effort to further discredit Christianity.
No trinity for YOU, maths guy!
Whether or not he’s convicted will have a big influence on that. I’ve heard up to 25% of Republican voters would not pull the lever for TFG if he were.
So... doing the math... if 80% of those people are lying to us now and still vote for him, that gets me to the 5% of all Republicans not voting for him that I'd like to see.
He has no convictions to speak of, so he's off the hook.
at the end of the day, Trump gives them exactly what they want.
Not even trying to expand his base is Trump's greatest weakness. Firing up a shrinking base only goes so far.
THIS THIS THIS.
The number of anti-Trumpers who are also publicly willing to say Biden would be a lot better and we should vote for him could fit in a phone...ok, there are no more phone booths...broom closet?
I don't need anyone to make a public statement, I just need about 5 million of them to decide they're busy on election day.
I passed a phone booth in London the other day and an alternate universe broke out!
On the playlist today:
Janet Jackson, "Rhythm Nation" http://tinyurl.com/m6xsahs2
En Vogue, "Hold On" http://tinyurl.com/evw2w8jn
Kicking it old school, Gen Z edition
I got Grant Green doin "Idle Moments" and Jon Faddis doin' a particularly greasy version of "West End Blues".
Get with it, Junior!
Exemplary picks!... I'm usually on the jazz.
Here's one of the many flavors of 1967:
Casino Royale - The Look of Love - Dusty Springfield
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDMT6uYuDvM
Never trust a rich spy.
I'm in a "Bumpin' On Sunset" mood right now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqn3PF_DcSg
Whoa. Whoa.
Slow down, bro. We got some considerations to attend to down here on Sunset.