109 Comments

I like how you are expanding the Edroso-verse into the bowels of the Democratic Party power structure! Have you thought about putting these little fictions together and getting Tom Tomorrow or one of your other comic-artist buddies to illustrate them for a book? It could perhaps be the most important chronicle of our times!

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Yes, we could put the stories into a picture book, and then hire people to read the picture book to our disengaged low-info sometimes-voters (perhaps while those sometimes-voters are strapped into a chair with their eyelids wired open, I haven't worked out all the details yet.)

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I am...slightly disturbed by the specificity of your preliminary details. You workin' on some new-school educational techniques, Mr B?

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I just read a very good article by Rebecca Solnit that did a deep analysis of the term “preaching to the choir” and how it is wrong to use it as a pejorative in the mistaken belief that we should be trying to change the minds of our adversaries or try to educate those who don’t want to be educated. It cited a study that found that historically it only took a tiny, highly committed, percentage of the population, something around 3 percent I think, to enact great change, and that in most cases, the American civil rights struggle in the sixties being a good example, the majority was opposed to the tactics that eventually won the day. That, and that non-violent movements were statistically more successful. So if you really care that much, go lay down in front of the jack boots and become a martyr for the cause. Me, being an unserious person, will be right there with you, taking an artsy photo for my Instagram.

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If it comes to it, I'll flop down in fronta the wingtips, if'n ya promise me a link to yer pix.

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Well, this is the whole basis of the goddamn Three Percenters, isn't it?

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I hadn’t heard of them, but if Wikipedia is to be believed, that study is not what they are referring to. Apparently they are referencing some misinformation about the American revolution.

But maybe it is something like 3 percent committed assholes that put Trump over the top. Doesn’t sound too far off.

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Well, no, I know the origin of the Three Percenters, and it's bullshit, but I was making a larger point about the outsized influence that even small groups can have, *especially* when one of them is the wealthiest man on the planet.

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I heartily endorse this, but I imagine both Dan and Roy have enough work as it is.

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Surely a Me thing but I read that sub-head and I think (such as it is): This better be a banger, the post living p to it and all that.

"They’re more inclined to — how can I put it — quieter forms of — non-activism."

I already can't breathe...

"SCHUMER: Well, it’s different where you are. You don’t have Fox News hammering you —

JEFFRIES: Not to mention the New York Times and the Washington Post –"

Oh god (Republican Jesus, specifically).

"PARK: I see. [Pause.] I am sorry that I don’t have much advice for you."

Kill me.

This post is brilliant, just brilliant.

Normally, I'd say at this point it should be an Alicu freebie but nah. This one should be unlocked for, like, the world. This is exactly the nation we are: chosen to accept an opposition party that runs on cowardice in the face of national collapse. I'm not talking the fascistic stuff but the sociopathy -- the hate, the selfishness, choosing elected leaders who have no interest in leading.

Anyway, my thanks to the people of South Korea. Without their exemplary, prompt response to their RWNJ leader's insane attempt a putsch we'd have gotten the issues, as it were, in today's post in the form of an old guy's ranting.

Instead, we got some sort of entertainment.

Seriously, we're much better with this.

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Since I live so close to the Capitol, and the Court, and the Greige House, if y'all were to sponsor me I might be inclined to wander down there of a crisis and give 'em what fer.

I even accept paypal!

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An offer this vague inspires maybe only a contribution to a bail fund.

BTW; if you’re in DC, I have to wonder whether the IC/OG Deep State have any sort of clue about anything actually security-related.

Or maybe you’re imagining things?

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Well there were heads on fire before Jan 6...I was able to follow enough of the watchers' warning posts to know essentially what was gonna happen. It's one of the reasons I went down the Mall that day – I knew I'd get to witness nazis in action. I can't say why the collective agencies had no meaningful response.

One way to think about the derelicts flopped out on the sidewalks 'round the White House and other Spots Of Renown is that half of them are probly SS agents or undercover CAPolice. When things go sideways down there they get up and GO.

So there's that...a mix of a little nitty and a pincha gritty.

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I can't say why the collective agencies had no meaningful response.

Leadership, or lack thereof?

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There was deliberate recalcitrance at the Pentagon and WH. Among other things, it hindered (*koffkoff*) coordination with Metro PD.

A great moment in US history which, alas, South Korea obviously learned nothing.

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response determined in large measure by deference to the occupant of the oval office at the time...

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I feel like you're holding a lot back. *Now* I'm concerned about where the nation's headed with you free on the streets of DC.

Anyway, so you're confirming that all the Nazis at the Capitol were peaceful tourists provoked into defensive violence by the Deep State?

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Well, that's an expansive definition of peaceful...

The Great Sideshow that day (like most other rabble enrousement DC-based theater events) was the bible-bangin' boys an' their rapture-raged recruits, all urging the minute-ana-halfmen on. God says: "Kill Cops!" and viola.

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Well done Roy, I didn't know whether to groan or laugh. Maybe one of these decades we'll get a Democratic party that doesn't believe good sportsmanship requires bringing a pool noodle to a gunfight. I live in (dwindling) hope.

I'm sure some of you are already aware of the work of A. R. Moxon, but I've found the theories and ideas for a way forward he's started to outline in his newsletter The Reframe to be one of the few "what now?" ruminations I can tolerate this soon after the election. Highly recommend.

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"Bringing a pool noodle to a gunfight" is now in my list of favorite expressions.

And I second the recommendation for A.R. Moxon.

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My partner has been using "bringing kale to a gunfight" for a few years now, and I like it!

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That only assumes that there is some sort of fight (gun) or otherwise. I've gotten so cynical about the whole thing that I suspect there is no fight, there is no gun, there is just a game.

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If the game is Cosmic Wimpout, count me in!

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That pool noodle will get you a long sentence for deploying a silencer.

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Back when I did political consulting, the few Democrats I had as clients were absolute nightmares. I could not get these guys to take a stand on ANYTHING. As one of them explained it to me, "If I take a position, then I'll have to defend it." As though defending what you believe is somehow unseemly or impossible. (Also, I once had to restrain a client from rushing in to save his opponent after said opponent had seriously shot himself in the foot. My guy wanted to issue a statement declaring that Republican Stiffy Dickhead had been misunderstood when he said teachers should get minimum wage because all they do is babysit. Talk about not taking your own side in a fight!)

So, yeah--I sit here in continuing astonishment at the Democrats' fetish for bipartisanship and reaching across the aisle . . . to the very same people who keep stabbing or chopping off those extended hands. FIGHT, you assholes! Fucking stand up for yourselves, if not for us!

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This, a thousand times. I would join a campaign to have every Democrat in the country send a text/phone call/email to their Dem Rep or Senator, saying only that: FIGHT YOU ASSHOLES!

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"If I take a position, then I'll have to defend it" sounds like a joke. Which I guess it is, in a way.

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Oddly, he wasn't joking and I wasn't laughing.

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Some people won't like it!

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Or can't take a joke, or...well, maybe they can take it, but instead of laughing they just shoot you...

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The actual position he refused to take was "teachers should not have to buy classroom supplies out of their own pockets." He did not want to have to defend such a position because it might lead to a tiny increase in property taxes, and his opponent would attack him based on that. His opponent ripped into him as "a tax-n-spend Liberal" anyway because that's how it works.

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Gosh, an expenditure for children's school supplies, a literal investment in the future. Dunno how you support that!

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Especially when it was under well-known communist Eisenhower that federal funding for schools covered things like textbooks, construction paper, and mimeograph machines.

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Probly would prefer to invest in the past. You know, stocks...in the public square (or mall, if that's all ya got), with plenty of rotted fruit at hand...

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I'm a big fan of Moxon's, too. https://edroso.substack.com/p/and-you-are-not-my-friend

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"...an emerging spirit that believes that everyone deserves access to basic human needs…simply because of the fact of their humanity”

Yep, you caught the bit that makes me a die-hard Moxonite. People have goodness in them, and what's more, most of us are actually getting better, and all we see is a desperate reaction to that embetterment. And that spirit WILL emerge, despite all their efforts to keep it down. Hallelujah, Brothers and Sisters!

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Careful there pal, before you go all messianic on us.

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Looking back on that, I think I was going farther than Moxon would, he's wiser than I am and would probably just say it's a struggle and we can't know the outcome.

But that's me, I just throw all caution to the wind.

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Timothy Snyder gotcher back.

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Make it four for Moxon.

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"Maybe one of these decades"

Now there's an optimist, thinking there will be future decades. Shine on you crazy diamond!

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If centuries or millennia aren't enough for you, there's always Epochs. Fuck this Holocene shit, let's make a new one!

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Ah, yes, the Neocene. Or rather, the Glowocene. Not just for radium dials anymore!

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The Derpocene

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Not bad. Not bad at all.

"Why are there no alien civilizations?" Uhhhh, yeah.

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Unfortunately these are Epoch Times times.

Was watching a short with The Mads last night and Trace made an Epoch Times reference. Had to go back so I could be sure of it! I KNEW I loved MST3K for a reason!

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2 carats!

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South Korea is about the size of Oregon with 50 million people in it. ( There are 3 million people in Oregon. ) " Let's go down to the government office s and rock some shit" is a little easier to pull off. And really, right now, wouldn't you have to go down to Mar a Lago to protest the right people?

Were the George Floyd protests that big?I know Fox News made it out to be the worst , city killing riots in history. When I heard that I just assumed the Floyd protests were mostly families dressed for church holding hands walking down the street singing We shall overcome.

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Yeah that was pretty much what I witnessed.

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There's a reason why, in most US states, the State Capitol is NOT the most populous city. And of course the founders originated that idea, putting the national capitol in a swamp in coastal Virginia instead of New York or Philadelphia. Fuckers knew what they were doing.

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Well, yeah, slaveholders had a notion to stay right close so's they could keep an eye on things...

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Technically, they put the capitol in Independence Hall and Congress Hall in Philadelphia, Federal Hall in New York City, and five additional locations: York, Pennsylvania, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the Maryland State House in Annapolis, Maryland, and Nassau Hall in Princeton, New Jersey, and Trenton, New Jersey before DC.

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New York's capital is not in NYC or an industrial center like Buffalo or Rochester, but in Albany, where I am given to understand there is both jack AND shit within hundreds of miles.

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But not so many of THOSE people IYKWIM.

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I'm on vacation this week, so I have silenced my 5:00 a.m. alarm and the first one of the day goes off at 6:30 a.m. for me to take my morning meds and vitamins. This week it is also my feed the cats alarm, not that all three of them aren't up my ass by then anyway because they're not being fed at 5:00 a.m. like usual 😂

Anyhoo ... My ringtone and alarm are both snippets of the Indigo Girls hit, "Closer to Fine," and if there's anything sweeter than having Amy Ray and Emily Saliers sing me awake, it's coming back to bed after slopping the livestock and having my first contact of the day with the outside world be REBID. ❤️

In some ways, right now is a scary time to be alive. You help it be a little less scary, Roy. I thank you.

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I thank you, the cats th – ah, who'm I kiddin'...

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First thing in my morning is either Wonkette Tabs or REBID, after of course feeding Hangly Man, and I usually get so involved I don't get back to sleep promptly and end up dragging ass the rest of the day.

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How is Wayne doing?

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Rotten brat is doing well; the stomach problem seems to be long gone and he's tearing around the house attacking pieces of paper and spots on the wall and people on TV. But he can be a really sweet boy when he settles down. He's my happy place. 😸

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Cool! It does take some kitties a while to settle down. Early in the time after we got our Francesca, I had a phrase for it: "Ten minutes of sleep, thirty minutes of explode." Neither of us had ever had a cat as young as she was - she was about five weeks old when I found her (which is a good story, I'll probably put it up as a note here, I think?). It was a definite learning process! I'm glad you're having a great time with Wayne.

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If EVER there was an OOF...

I liked the trivia bit about Journalist Sarah Jeong, "who found herself entirely unexpectedly in the middle of a coup and, recognizing that she was in a historic moment, snapped to work to do all she could to keep the rest of us informed. “I’m f*cking blasted and hanging out in the weirdest scene because history happened at a deeply inconvenient hour,” she wrote on Bluesky. “[S]o it goes.”

When she finally went home, Jeong wrote: “I expensed my cab ride home. I’m tired so I put ‘korea coup’ down in the expense code field.”

So next time you need to expense something...plan ahead.

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Jeong's posts are a treat.

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Thank you for this. I am not shy about how much I've enjoyed your skewering of the various right wing douchebags and criminals over the years, but the serial capitulators of the Democratic establishment deserve it at least as much. That photograph of Trump and Biden having a friendly fireside chat was just as cringe, and more sickening, than the famous one capturing Trump forcing a sheepish Romney to have a candlelit dinner with him (for which he received bupkus). You would think the Democrats would have learned something after such a humiliating defeat, but I'm not counting on it.

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I gotta say I can't be hard on Joe for that photo op with Trump. From his perspective, after a campaign where Democrats did everything they could think of to warn the voters while offering a cuddly and inclusive alternative, and Trump did everything he possibly could to tell voters "yes, the Democrats are exactly right about me", the voters chose Trump. The System Worked As Designed, a line a contractor I knew pulled out when somebody reported a software bug in his product. The Voters Chose Trump, and since liberals cannot wrap their heads around this its open season on the Democratic party. They Did It Wrong. Surely the voters would reject Trump if Democrats "fought harder". The ironic echo of the leftist critique that the Democrats strategy was to tell people to "vote harder" is serendipitous.

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I get why he did it, norms and all that. I still didn't like it, and I guarantee you that Harris would never have received a congratulatory phone call from Trump had she won.

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We care too much about what they think; they don't care at all about what we think.

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It's the same with "the norms". The Reps/magas don't care about either, except as a cudgel to bash Dems with, while they ignore them in their entirety.

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Well, a carefully cultivated 24 or so percent of the American people chose Lumpy Shit Führer. And I suspect shenanigans even with that number. I wouldn't put it past them to have Elmo shift just enough votes to elect his BFF.

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"voters", not "people"

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Nope - maybe 47% of *voters*, but only a quarter of the total population. The same dinky pool of assholes and fuckwits we've suffered all these years.

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Fair, but 70 million is well under 24% of the 'Merkin population, and yes, include the kids, 'cause they're the ones who hafta live with this crap.

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But Shirley, a democratic system operated properly according to the Book of Instructions should not produce a result like this.

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It's almost like the candidates claiming Trump was a fascist didn't really believe it, and the electorate could sense that and so didn't buy the rhetoric

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I think you're being very generous to the electorate. Lots of people don't fear Trump like I do, I've got all sorts of theories to explain that, none of them very flattering to the people involved.

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Fair, but you can't be suggesting our entreaties would harsh their mellow, as they appear to have insufficient mellow to harsh.

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As the character King Faisal in Lean's Lawrence of Arabia says, "You tread heavily, but you speak the truth."

How do the Bedu fight on the sea of sand? Meanwhile we seem to be at sea in a sieve.

I like the characterization of Schumer here. I hear his voice. He could say such stuff, alas.

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Periodic reminder that South Korea was a *military dictatorship* up to 1987. The explosive growth of the South Korean economy happened *after* the dictatorship.

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Shirley this cannot be correct? When everyone knows that what the economy needs is a strongman - preferably a businessman, or failing that, someone who played a businessman on TV - who can GET THINGS* DONE.

*Stop asking, I don't know either.

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This is dark and bleak and scathing, and I am here for it.

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Here's a more realistic take.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrbv40ENU_o

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I get a kick out of Tom, course he's in Copenhagen there, having to explain The Huntley-Brinkley Report. I remember The Huntley-Brinkley Report (and still get a kick out of Keith Olbermann using that same intro, Beethoven's 9th, 2nd movement. And Keith knows I know) Good night, David. Goodnight Chet. And goodnight from NBC News..

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This bit about the Romanian elections has me thinking that not all voters believe - as Chuck Schumer does - that bipartisanship is the highest virtue:

"For the past 35 years, Romania’s two dominant parties – centre-left social democrats and centre-right liberals – have presided over corruption scandals, nepotism, politically connected fraud and opaque use of public funds. Their decision to govern together in a coalition for the past three years has only deepened public mistrust, reinforcing the perception that they are all in it together against the people."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/29/romania-elections-calin-georgescu-president

Hmm... "governing together...deepened public mistrust, reinforcing the perception that they are all in it together"? I have to admit I felt that way when the two parties "governed together" to give us the Wall Street "reforms" that later gave us a massive financial crisis, and when the two parties "governed together" to invade the country that was NOT behind 9/11. But I thought that was just me.

I know, let's give these people - the ones who are even more distrustful when they see the two parties working together - a nifty name, like "Soccer moms" ("Distrustful Dads"?) and then maybe the Democrats might acknowledge they exist?

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Not to mention the knock-ons from both the above-mentioned disasters: that is, the utter lack of rational response to either, with added massive corrupt failing upwardnesses and deliriously vast, concentrated fortune-amassing at the expense of the rest of humanity.

Or, another way of putting it – Tuesday.

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"failing upwardness"

AKA PetE Hegseth

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And "Hegseth" deserves to be a verb, perhaps for half-assedly doing a job that you're not even remotely qualified for. Used in a sentence:

"Nah, never done an appendectomy before, I'm just gonna Hegseth it."

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Hey he promised no alcohol would touch his lips after he become Sec. of Defense. Of course you can drink and not have the liquid touch your lips, but his Mom says he has reformed from his bad boy ways

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"you can drink and not have the liquid touch your lips"

Just once I wish we could have a Trump nominee with no talk of boofing.

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I mean, he didn't say "no ether".

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Thank you for this. I am usually not into hearing critiques of the Democrats particularly right now, but this is timely and right on. I am tired of pre-caving.

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I've had my fill of "This is the ONE WEIRD TRICK that would have won Harris the election!" Especially when it always turns out to be the one tired hobbyhorse the author has been riding their whole career. What a coincidence that the one thing you obsess over also happens to be the one key to winning! What're the odds, huh?

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I like how at the end Schumer and Jeffries gloat like they’ve delivered the most epic burn. It’s like a couple of deluded Miss Havishams thinking they’re Dorothy Parker at the Algonquin Round Table.

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But--hear me out--if we, say, kill Hunter Biden, maybe the Repubs won't will be discouraged from hurting us.

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"Well, SURE you killed Hunter Biden, so he couldn't testify, just like you killed Epstein! Oh, you liberals, there's no limit to your evil!"

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Like all great satire, there is a core of truth here. Democrats chant incantations about bipartisanship because its all they have as a way to attempt to govern. The Republican model of propaganda for the base while protecting the oligarchs who fund them simply can't work for the Democratic party, and what's their alterative, "fighting"? Somehow Biden passing legislation with a razor-thin majority is not "fighting", and neither is a Democratic House blocking Republican legislation. "Fighting" seems to be performative, like preventing a trans legislator from using women's bathrooms. Will stunts like these rile up the Democratic base to hold boat parades for Bernie Sanders? Or at least vote? Maybe, Republicans are clearly insane, maybe its time for the Democratic party to Let's Go Crazy too. At least they've already got the song.

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Cue Sefton Delmer.

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TIL what real propaganda looks like.

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Sadly, many centrist Dems want bipartisanship

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I think they imagine it's what we want? Or what the magical undecided voter wants?

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I don’t think there’s all that much mystery. What they really want is a sinecure.

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"Somehow Biden passing legislation with a razor-thin majority is not "fighting", and neither is a Democratic House blocking Republican legislation."

Yeah, I'm sure I'm setting the bar too low, but if the Dems run a candidate for office, and if that candidate winning means a Republican doesn't occupy that seat, does that qualify as a form of "fighting"? Anyway, that's the fighting you get from a political party.

I can't understand why people who have so much contempt for Democrats and their leadership (well-earned contempt, IMO) would want the Democrats leading the resistance.

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Because Only Democrats Have Agency.

(This has been, &c.)

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Well,, then we are all well and truly fucked, because the Agency closed for the week and their voicemailbox is full.

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Because of our stupid first past the post system, we get two big parties. When one wins, the other is supposed to oppose

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