Why are Great Britain Conservative Members of Parliament welcomed into the Labour Party, but here in the US it’s almost impossible for a Republican to successfully become a Democrat?
I recieve daily missives from the bulwark and the Lincoln Project, never Trumpers, and when it comes to Trump, anti semitism and racism they are allies and I appreciate t hem, however they are Reagan Republicans and Libertarians, low taxes (for the wealthy, and de regulation).
They bemoan what the Republican Party has become, a Trump cult, but won't or can't recognize, that it is a logical evolution of Nixon/Reagan ideology and politics, and the very same people that financed and gave us Nixonian/Reagan politics and policy are the same ones financing and backing Trump today.
They can't grab ahold of the fact that Donald John Trump is a logical descendant of William F. Buckley, and Milton Friedman.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step
I've been reading the Bulwark emails lately and I agree. I'm currently reading Jacob Heilbrunn's new book, AMERICA LAST, about the U.S. right's century-long love of dictators. William F. plays a starring role, as do Jeane Kirkpatrick (remember her?) and others. Dana Milbank's THE DESTRUCTIONISTS, which starts from the rise of Newt Gingrich, is also worth reading.
I find that a lot of progressives I know have been "converted." Many of my work colleagues were high ranking military judges, some appointed Republicans under GHWBush and Babybush, who after Trump became president went after our jobs.
I send them Thom's stuff, and they generally agree with everything..
Most probably also agree with me that since 1973, we have acquiesced to foreign governments undermining our economy and national security. All of us had our security clearances stolen by the Chinese military in 2014. Can't tell the players without a scorecard.
I also find that virtually all of the "kids" from my 1961 HS graduating class who came from Protestant Republican families are either Democrats or independents today. Most Republican women from Pennsyltucky of 1970 were "liberal Republicans." Think Arlen Specter who switched parties Specter was a Democrat from 1951 to 1965, then a Republican from 1965 until 2009, when he switched back to the Democratic Party.
But I remind you that we have the capacity to reach about 13 million people who are unregistered but trend heavily Democratic to radically expand our base. 60% of unregistered voters have never been asked to register! They're waiting to hear from us!
To win in 2024, FT6 will reach out to millions of unregistered likely Democrats using a one-of-a-kind database and every outreach method possible (phone and text, postcard, email and targeted ad, and in-person too), where new Democratic voters will make the most impact – in the most flippable states and districts.
It was interesting that today, the NYT podcast ,The Daily, did an honest analysis of what a Trump presidency would look like. They kept it clean of personality deficiencies and focused on how he wants to be an unstoppable authoritarian with few goals other than power ( and staying out of jail). They did mention that they suspect that the Supreme Court would let him do whatever he wants. What I think is becoming clear that if Mike Pence had stopped the vote, SCOTUS would have thrown th election to Congress and we might have had a war. Is the Times responding to all of our criticisms?
The NYT has been rightfully brought into fire, because it, along with other so called "liberal" media, are as responsible for the rise of and presidency of Trump as even Fox, they have legitimized him, and it's editorial board is full on right wing, the journalists, and they are shrinking in number, maybe honest brokers, but they are ruled by the editors.
And it was the NYT that sold Dubya's lies about Iraq, and we can trace the troubles we have today to the unintended consequences of Bush's invasion of Iraq, it was among other things, the impetus for the coalition of the once scattered and competing for resources right wing.
And the current Sulzberger, born on third base and believing he hit a triple, has acknowledged the anti-Biden bias in NYT news coverage is due to Biden not sitting down with His silver Spoonness for a personal interview.
People like Sulzberger are the best example of the need for a 100% Estate Death Tax to clobber the inherited-wealth class.
I saw that. Then again if Biden sat down with the NYT it would be for one of those gotcha sessions. The NYT is not at all liberal, granted it isn't Fox's NY Post, but bear in mind it legitimized Trump and Bush's criminal war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
You're lucky about your HS class. Most of the idiots in the South Denver High School class of 1962 still are, with a large portion of them Trumpers, including one (a successful real estate developer) who is one of the leading Trumpscum in the state of Colorado. There's a reason why I left three days after graduation and only came back for a few holidays and funerals (to insure the body in the casket really was who it was supposed to be). I don't know how my friends who stayed there do it.
I hope what you see is a strong prevalence, Daniel. We don’t need ideologically conservative legislators like Manchin and Sinema … We need the Democratic Party to find its heart again and champion our citizens — our actual human being flesh-and-blood citizens .
My "Jesus" moment came during the pandemic. Locked down, I took Robert Reich's "Wealth & Poverty" class and followed that up with more study. 40-years of Rep Party "trickle down" BS economics have fallen away. (Available for free on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOLArO56vjuoeaIPzKQibBDbx2m_Rfsit)
They gave away the voice of the people to the corportists; hollowing out the middle class - THE driving force of our economy.
I had a repulsive "Jesus" moment last nite watching CNN's special on disinformation flowing thru churches. There was an illustration of Jesus wearing a MAGA hat. Sickening.
I like to think that the cesspool that the GOP has become was not exactly what Buckley and Kirkpatrick and their predecessors had in mind. I can't imagine that the Project 2025 types are all that happy with it either, so I wonder what they have in mind. Without the cesspool supporters, they don't have the votes to implement their program. Hmmm . . .
Nope Buckley and Kirkpatrick didn't have the cesspool of today in mind, but it was a natural, cultural evolution. C onservatism by it's very name and nature is anti progress, and thus regressive, and todays Republican Party, even for the so called moderates like Cheney and Kizzinger is regresive, they live in a fictional, but glorious in their own mind, past.
But "conservatism" *isn't* "by its very name and nature" anti-progress. It's not living in the past either. Are you maybe confusing "conservative" with "reactionary"? "Conservative" is, above all, cautious. It doesn't like change for change's sake. It doesn't want, to coin a cliché, to throw the baby out with the bath water. It wants to save what it considers worth saving. I grew up surrounded by conservatives, and none of them lived in a fictional past, glorious or otherwise.
Susanna there is the dictionary definition and the political definition.
I have my roots, from 1955 to 1989 (prior to 1955 I was preoccupied with young and teen age boy things in the conservative political movement, a 180 since 1989. and the modern conservative movement is indeed regressive, some think back to the 1950's of Father knows best, but it is even more regressive, back to 1860.
Please tell me clearly, itemized, what baby or babies will get thrown out with the bathwater.
Conservatism has indeed become reactionary, and by definition it is reactionary, since it reacts to change the only question before the court is to what degree, how intense is the reaction.
Their intention is rule by the elite.. in their case, the monied elite, not necessarily the educated elite…. The wealthy are the only people they deem appropriate to govern.
Upon starting to read this column my thought was "We should welcome them, how else will America change", by the end I feel like they should be left to stew in their past sins.
Yes I believe the poor Republican voters deserve a dictatorship. They deserve a Hitler, they deserve the dark ages and they deserve to build pyramids in 110° temperature. Trouble is, they will also make life miserable for all of the people who just want to have fun and work towards a Utopia!
Has anyone here read then "The Scheme: How the right wing used dark money to capture the Supreme Court,"by senator Sheldon Whitehouse? There should be necessary reading and all public universities, in high schools, and probably even in grade schools. The nail fastest right wing inferior Catholic Supreme Court has become one of the biggest problems this country has ever had. The bombing of Pearl Harbor and our entrance in World War II? Not even close to the damage the inferior Court with this right wingy dingy members is doing to this country. The lives taken in the Korean War and the Vietnam War? That pales to what the Supreme Court is doing until the United States and the world for that matter. Democrats have got to vote for only Democrats for every political position from dog catcher to president. Because Democrats are not fascists,as the new American fascist party, formerly the Republican party, is fascist, we don't go after people for their views. I don't believe we should ever do that but I do think that we should not now or ever accept, fascism or any form of dictatorship as our form of government. We need to eliminate the fascist Republican Party and the Republicans from the United States government.
If you have not read this Sheldon Whitehouse book I highly recommend it.
True, all true, but when comparing the US to the UK, it's worth noting that the UK has no real equivalent of our federal system, which gives the states a lot of power.* (Not surprisingly, it was devised as a reaction to the British system, which gave the Crown and Parliament too much power, as the colonials saw it.) No MP -- up to and including the prime minister -- runs in a district as large as most US states, and certainly not as large as California, Texas, Florida, or New York.
*The Civil War was fought over states' rights, i.e., the right of states to keep slavery legal, and it's not over yet.
And the states that champion slavery in the form of states rights, still do, child slavery and wage slavery, the people could care less, so long as those 'horin women, the queers, the darkies are taken care of and kept in their place and out of sight.
If you lived in rural America you would know that the pulpit leads and the sheep follow.
The man behind the pulpit is the shepherd and the job of the shepherd is to keep watch over the flock until it is time for the fleeecing and slaughter.
Lisa Murkowski implied that she might consider leaving the MAGA/GOP and become an independent. I don't think she would actually join the Democratic Party, but a move to the middle would help everyone. She seems a bit more aware and less corrupt, but that might only be relative to MAGA.
Alaska is strange. Populated by what is essentially loners or misfits, people who think of themselves as rugged individualists, though no one is, no can live in this world as a rugged individualist we are all dependent on others.. someone manufacturers the ammo, some one buys the gold and fur and none of that would reach them (the consumer) were it not for government and others.
I had a number of team mates, who fashioned themselves such, all retired with government pension, then went to the woods to mine and trap, or live off salmon and caribou. One went from a government job, as an E-7 to a government job as sheriff of Eagle River, yet fancied himself a real independent rugged individual.
This may be true on the national level, but here in Westchester County, NY. (home of the Clintons) we have at least two high ranking Democratic elected officials who were high ranking Republicans. DA Susan Cacace was Assistant DA for DA Jeannine Pirro (REP) before switching parties, now being primaried by "real" Democrat William Wagstaff. And Mike Spano, Mayor of Yonkers, Westchester's largest city, brother of convicted former powerful State Senator Nick Spano (REP). But then, this is New York, where the Democratic Party's obsession with ousting progressives cost five congressional seats in 2022.
That loss in 2022 goes to Sean Mahoney and Adam Schiff.
Mahoney was head of DCCC and Schiff majority leader, and they went off junkateering in Paris at a critical time in the election. Arrogant assholes and that cost the Democrats those congressional seats.
You nailed it Thom. We need limits on campaign contributions. I've been saying that ever since before Reagan. Looks like we're moving farther back to the dark ages though.
With a maximum wage and about $100 limit on campaign contributions from unions, corporations and individuals, we could straighten this mess around! The fake media has got the GOP lunatics leaving all the Democrats want to do is legalize gay marriage, have abortions and take their guns away! The Democratic party should have been pushing campaign finance reform and a maximum wage, but instead, they feed at the same trough the GOP does. You can't have democracy when you have liars brainwashing the idiots with their fake media. If the Democrats can get control of all three branches of government the first thing they need to do is replace that Supreme Court.
If the court allowed the voters to vote and that all the votes are counted by honest people who can count, and the court doesn’t invent a way to overrule everyone.
Well, actually Bill, the Libertarians are seeking total freedom from governance of any sort. No Constitutional "law and order" and only a world as they wish it for themselves, with no-one else telling them what to do or think. That was the long lost primordial state of small clan/band egalitarian stateless us against the world lifeway that all of our ancestors once knew, but massive human overpopulation and the conquest of nature demanded the gigantic bureaucratic nation states that we have grown-up in and often hate. Freud wrote brilliantly about this dichotomy in his last book, "Civilization and Its Discontents", spelling out the price we pay in limiting our freedoms for sake of "law and order". Trump is, to his devout MAGATS, the ultimate "free" man, doing just what he damn well pleases, and to hell with those laws and mores the rest of us are confined by. He is an anarchist and leading his flock to chaos with the promise of a government small enough to fit in a bathtub, no taxes, no bothersome legal system to restrain their behavior, and all the goodies for just him and his loyal followers. He is delusional and utterly ignorant of history or the purpose of the massive governmental structures necessary to prevent anarchy. He has the mental capacity of a 2yo, stuck in his "terrible twos", as he is. The attraction is profound and has led to the destruction of many (all?) previous great empires. Ask the German or Italian or Japanese people how that worked out.
Parliament could be another reason. People accustomed to that system have to make coalitions to get any power.
If you watch Washington Journal, you will hear Republicans calling in on the Democrats' line. They CLAIM they are Democrats who are now just loving Trump. It is the over-the-top, cult-sounding nonsense that gives them away. Also, some of them will go on and on about how that poor man has been persecuted. Their compulsion to not follow the rules of the program is exactly like Trump. They have to dominate the phone-lines. They do love their lies!
If it were 2014, I would be a bit more trusting that they had grown a moral compass, but your laundry list is only the half of it these days, Thom. The lies are sickening.
One thing fun about Parliament, there is a lot more raucous than caucus.
Since the MAGATS seem to be so in love with anarchy, which is the obvious extreme destination of all Libertarian BS, they appear to shortly be getting their wish. Sadly, American politics is simple: Sheeple line up zombie-like behind the biggest bully they can find and who shortly thereafter marches them off to the slaughter. No old man/woman, no matter how thoughtful or well meaning, can compete. 'Nuf said.
Acutually Doc it is the opposite of anarchy, they are the ultimate in communists, cultural communists, total conformity, were women know their place as sexual servants, domestic servants and nannies, and queers are nowhere to be seen or heard, and people of color are quiet and submissive and willing to accept crumbs from their betters. That is no anarchy and chaos,not to achieve their demagogic leaders sow chaos, so that the people will clamor for law and order, which they like Adolph and his Sturmabeitlung will be glad to offer.
Any dictatorship, capitalist, socialist, communist ends badly! With a rich trying to undermine democracy by bribing legislators to ruin the government so the masses will beg for a dictator, always ends badly also!
It's kind of horrifying how you list these things out and so many of the transgressions on that list are things that Joe Biden himself has directly been at least partially responsible for! And you blame Citizens United and the Supreme Court for our corrupt political system (almost always citing Republican corruption and never that of Democrats), but there is indeed a choice for politicians to accept that money and thus be influenced by it. Biden has worked against students and the poor by with his 2005 Bankruptcy Bill-- he did it Thom, it was his bill. He also implemented a means-tested, bureaucracy ridden student debt relief program for which applications were not available until two months after the program was rolled out--plenty of time for the expected legal challenges. Even without legal challenges, the complexity of the program would have meant that millions who were eligible likely would not have gotten relief. And why wait over two years to even roll out such a plan? Because he didn't want to do it, that's why. And Biden's plan to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices? Don't even start! It covers 10 medications out of 2000 prescribed in the US and doesn't start for 3 years--enough time for another administration to reverse it. It was negotiated WITH the pharmaceutical industry, that's who Biden works for and that's what they would allow. Staying in the Biden/Clinton/Obama fan club requires a massive lowering of expectations, so that we must be thankful for the scraps we are thrown just because Republicans will throw us fewer while Biden sends billions overseas (much of which stays here for military contractors and others with an investment in perpetual war) in the interest of mass murder and genocide. Oh, and I neglected to mention that Biden himself practically started the for-profit private prison industry you cite with his 1994 Crime Bill. His fingerprints are all over the nightmare we are now living as you ignore nearly 1000 students handcuffed, tazed and prosecuted across the country while Biden labels them antisemites.
Another false dichotomy. Two choices. Biden or Fascism.
He who is without sin casts the first stone. Your hero Putin is a war criminal. You don't have to be a Christian to accept that all sinners should repent to meet Jesus. To preclude absolution is a cardinal sin.
It's telling that you call Putin a war criminal and think that Biden is not one and somehow not a fascist as he calls student protestors antisemites and does nothing to stop their abuse at the hands of the state that he runs. What's with the bible junk as well? Are you a Trumpist theocrat like Netanyahu? Perhaps your heroes are racist genocidal maniac Netanyahu and his accomplice Biden? Perhaps you are a fascist McCarthyite accusing people you don't even know of conspiring with "the enemy?" Biden is a fascist just as Trump is, and Democrats are for the democracy defined by their donors and they'll make it a police state to keep it that way.
Boris The Putinista tries to pull the both sides ism ploy. And what a phony you are invoking antisemism, when your other posts are antisemitic.
If you are truly concerned about a possible police state, then you would be a vehement anti Trumper, and not waste your screeds on defending Putin by attacking Biden.
You must have shit a brick, when congress passed the Ukraine aid bill.
I will give you his Boris, you have no shame, blatantly stumping for Trump and Putin.
It boils down to this and you know it. If not Biden then Trump and if Trump then Putin.
You are obtuse but not obscure.
And a phony opportunist to boot. The last think you care about is genocide, because if you did you would be up in arms about Putin, now there is the real genocide, and IAW the UN convention on Genocide, Article II, which clearly states that intention is required, and your fuck buddy Putin has clearly stated his intention to genocide the Ukrainians.
Nah, Boris, aka Barry, is a Putin troll, he doesn't come out and champion Putin, but does so obliquely by attacking Biden, He is an opportunist, he doesn't give a rat about any issue, be it Gaza, or Israel,but only Putin's agenda and he is mouth shut about Putins war crimes and genocide,and tries to deflect to Biden. The campus idiots are the best friends Putin could have. College students today, and in the 1970's, are anti democratic and Marxist authoritarian, they have been fed feces, convinced it is ice cream. I got my undergraduate in the midst of the anti war protests in a private university,so have personal knowledge. Ignorant, spoiled brats, easily brainwashed.
And as for you William Farrar, as a Jew who has been involved in many benefits for my synagogue and whose grandparents were killed in the Holocaust, you should be ashamed of your immature and incendiary behavior. But I expect nothing less from Thom's listeners these days.
All spoken like true Trump supporters as well as bastions of democracy. All you've got is personal insults because you know that Biden is toxic and a mass murderer of the first degree. The things you say about me wreak of McCarthyosm.and Zionism and what does who I would vote for have to with any of this? Why does everyone have to say how horrible Putin or Hamas is before they tell the truth about Israel or US foreign policy history? Nobody here can cite anything I've said that isn't true, and your personal attacks show you are as desperate as Biden and the Democrats (Republicans as well) to cover up Israel's crimes as they take and assault college professors and students. Your "protecting democracy" campaign proves to be total nonsense as you join in the silencing of dissenting voices.
In a just world the Dems would claw back all the losses to the American people and take it from all those responsible. The baby tears from them would warm my heart.
There is no such thing as fair in nature and there is no just world. But humans can't deal with that. We think that with our brains and hands we have bent nature to our will, but it is only an illusion and the victory is temporary, because there is a cost to everything and the bill does come due.
The laws of physics apply to everything. You can't break even, you can't win, and you can't get out of the game. Any win is temporary,
And Justice is not blind, the phrase is aspirational , but not reality., most often it isn't even aspirational, but window dressing. To wit SCOTUS.
If Republicans who become Democrats turn out to e Blue Dog Democrats, that serves to be more obstructionist than helpful. Democrats want to support candidates and legislators who have Democratic and Liberal policies in mind, not just someone who’s out of love with the Republicans.
This information I have not heard before-…”children being torn from the arms of their nursing mothers and then trafficked into the Red State kids-for-sale marketplace like Trump did (almost a thousand are still missing)?”…
I recieve daily missives from the bulwark and the Lincoln Project, never Trumpers, and when it comes to Trump, anti semitism and racism they are allies and I appreciate t hem, however they are Reagan Republicans and Libertarians, low taxes (for the wealthy, and de regulation).
They bemoan what the Republican Party has become, a Trump cult, but won't or can't recognize, that it is a logical evolution of Nixon/Reagan ideology and politics, and the very same people that financed and gave us Nixonian/Reagan politics and policy are the same ones financing and backing Trump today.
They can't grab ahold of the fact that Donald John Trump is a logical descendant of William F. Buckley, and Milton Friedman.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step
I've been reading the Bulwark emails lately and I agree. I'm currently reading Jacob Heilbrunn's new book, AMERICA LAST, about the U.S. right's century-long love of dictators. William F. plays a starring role, as do Jeane Kirkpatrick (remember her?) and others. Dana Milbank's THE DESTRUCTIONISTS, which starts from the rise of Newt Gingrich, is also worth reading.
I find that a lot of progressives I know have been "converted." Many of my work colleagues were high ranking military judges, some appointed Republicans under GHWBush and Babybush, who after Trump became president went after our jobs.
I send them Thom's stuff, and they generally agree with everything..
Most probably also agree with me that since 1973, we have acquiesced to foreign governments undermining our economy and national security. All of us had our security clearances stolen by the Chinese military in 2014. Can't tell the players without a scorecard.
I also find that virtually all of the "kids" from my 1961 HS graduating class who came from Protestant Republican families are either Democrats or independents today. Most Republican women from Pennsyltucky of 1970 were "liberal Republicans." Think Arlen Specter who switched parties Specter was a Democrat from 1951 to 1965, then a Republican from 1965 until 2009, when he switched back to the Democratic Party.
I also distinguish among MAGATs and politicians and others who owe their jobs to the party. My cause this morning are SSI recipients who are registered Republicans. I'm asking their lawyers, who are usually the most trusted and most authoritative people in their likes, to convince them to switch. https://danielsolomon.substack.com/p/political-suicide?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=742145&post_id=144123211&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=zc69i&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
I have other projects like this: Amish. Veterans.
But I remind you that we have the capacity to reach about 13 million people who are unregistered but trend heavily Democratic to radically expand our base. 60% of unregistered voters have never been asked to register! They're waiting to hear from us!
To win in 2024, FT6 will reach out to millions of unregistered likely Democrats using a one-of-a-kind database and every outreach method possible (phone and text, postcard, email and targeted ad, and in-person too), where new Democratic voters will make the most impact – in the most flippable states and districts.
https://www.mobilize.us/ft6/?event_type=17&show_all_events=true
It was interesting that today, the NYT podcast ,The Daily, did an honest analysis of what a Trump presidency would look like. They kept it clean of personality deficiencies and focused on how he wants to be an unstoppable authoritarian with few goals other than power ( and staying out of jail). They did mention that they suspect that the Supreme Court would let him do whatever he wants. What I think is becoming clear that if Mike Pence had stopped the vote, SCOTUS would have thrown th election to Congress and we might have had a war. Is the Times responding to all of our criticisms?
The NYT has been rightfully brought into fire, because it, along with other so called "liberal" media, are as responsible for the rise of and presidency of Trump as even Fox, they have legitimized him, and it's editorial board is full on right wing, the journalists, and they are shrinking in number, maybe honest brokers, but they are ruled by the editors.
And it was the NYT that sold Dubya's lies about Iraq, and we can trace the troubles we have today to the unintended consequences of Bush's invasion of Iraq, it was among other things, the impetus for the coalition of the once scattered and competing for resources right wing.
And the current Sulzberger, born on third base and believing he hit a triple, has acknowledged the anti-Biden bias in NYT news coverage is due to Biden not sitting down with His silver Spoonness for a personal interview.
People like Sulzberger are the best example of the need for a 100% Estate Death Tax to clobber the inherited-wealth class.
I saw that. Then again if Biden sat down with the NYT it would be for one of those gotcha sessions. The NYT is not at all liberal, granted it isn't Fox's NY Post, but bear in mind it legitimized Trump and Bush's criminal war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
You're lucky about your HS class. Most of the idiots in the South Denver High School class of 1962 still are, with a large portion of them Trumpers, including one (a successful real estate developer) who is one of the leading Trumpscum in the state of Colorado. There's a reason why I left three days after graduation and only came back for a few holidays and funerals (to insure the body in the casket really was who it was supposed to be). I don't know how my friends who stayed there do it.
I hope what you see is a strong prevalence, Daniel. We don’t need ideologically conservative legislators like Manchin and Sinema … We need the Democratic Party to find its heart again and champion our citizens — our actual human being flesh-and-blood citizens .
Need to win big. Maybe Florida, Ohio, Tejas.
Ya think.?.
Oh yes Susanna I remember I use to hang on every word of Buckley and Kirkpatrick. Then in 1989 I had a come to "Jesus" moment.
Just your mention of Newt Gingrich made my blood pressure rise.
My "Jesus" moment came during the pandemic. Locked down, I took Robert Reich's "Wealth & Poverty" class and followed that up with more study. 40-years of Rep Party "trickle down" BS economics have fallen away. (Available for free on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOLArO56vjuoeaIPzKQibBDbx2m_Rfsit)
They gave away the voice of the people to the corportists; hollowing out the middle class - THE driving force of our economy.
I had a repulsive "Jesus" moment last nite watching CNN's special on disinformation flowing thru churches. There was an illustration of Jesus wearing a MAGA hat. Sickening.
My first sign a conversion was coming happened when Dump declared his candidacy.
I laughed out loud, “That friggin’ idiot. He’s nothing more than a two but NY shyster in love with himself.”
I don’t laugh about it anymore and I get sick every time I see/hear the turncoats, Mitch the Bitch and Graham - and now Barr - get behind Dump.
Every one of these idiots knew he wasn’t fit for office. They sold their souls and helped pave the way for the death of our liberal democratic order.
I like to think that the cesspool that the GOP has become was not exactly what Buckley and Kirkpatrick and their predecessors had in mind. I can't imagine that the Project 2025 types are all that happy with it either, so I wonder what they have in mind. Without the cesspool supporters, they don't have the votes to implement their program. Hmmm . . .
Nope Buckley and Kirkpatrick didn't have the cesspool of today in mind, but it was a natural, cultural evolution. C onservatism by it's very name and nature is anti progress, and thus regressive, and todays Republican Party, even for the so called moderates like Cheney and Kizzinger is regresive, they live in a fictional, but glorious in their own mind, past.
But "conservatism" *isn't* "by its very name and nature" anti-progress. It's not living in the past either. Are you maybe confusing "conservative" with "reactionary"? "Conservative" is, above all, cautious. It doesn't like change for change's sake. It doesn't want, to coin a cliché, to throw the baby out with the bath water. It wants to save what it considers worth saving. I grew up surrounded by conservatives, and none of them lived in a fictional past, glorious or otherwise.
Susanna there is the dictionary definition and the political definition.
I have my roots, from 1955 to 1989 (prior to 1955 I was preoccupied with young and teen age boy things in the conservative political movement, a 180 since 1989. and the modern conservative movement is indeed regressive, some think back to the 1950's of Father knows best, but it is even more regressive, back to 1860.
Please tell me clearly, itemized, what baby or babies will get thrown out with the bathwater.
Conservatism has indeed become reactionary, and by definition it is reactionary, since it reacts to change the only question before the court is to what degree, how intense is the reaction.
Their intention is rule by the elite.. in their case, the monied elite, not necessarily the educated elite…. The wealthy are the only people they deem appropriate to govern.
Upon starting to read this column my thought was "We should welcome them, how else will America change", by the end I feel like they should be left to stew in their past sins.
Yes I believe the poor Republican voters deserve a dictatorship. They deserve a Hitler, they deserve the dark ages and they deserve to build pyramids in 110° temperature. Trouble is, they will also make life miserable for all of the people who just want to have fun and work towards a Utopia!
Agreed, would a farmer let a fox into the henhouse?
Has anyone here read then "The Scheme: How the right wing used dark money to capture the Supreme Court,"by senator Sheldon Whitehouse? There should be necessary reading and all public universities, in high schools, and probably even in grade schools. The nail fastest right wing inferior Catholic Supreme Court has become one of the biggest problems this country has ever had. The bombing of Pearl Harbor and our entrance in World War II? Not even close to the damage the inferior Court with this right wingy dingy members is doing to this country. The lives taken in the Korean War and the Vietnam War? That pales to what the Supreme Court is doing until the United States and the world for that matter. Democrats have got to vote for only Democrats for every political position from dog catcher to president. Because Democrats are not fascists,as the new American fascist party, formerly the Republican party, is fascist, we don't go after people for their views. I don't believe we should ever do that but I do think that we should not now or ever accept, fascism or any form of dictatorship as our form of government. We need to eliminate the fascist Republican Party and the Republicans from the United States government.
If you have not read this Sheldon Whitehouse book I highly recommend it.
True, all true, but when comparing the US to the UK, it's worth noting that the UK has no real equivalent of our federal system, which gives the states a lot of power.* (Not surprisingly, it was devised as a reaction to the British system, which gave the Crown and Parliament too much power, as the colonials saw it.) No MP -- up to and including the prime minister -- runs in a district as large as most US states, and certainly not as large as California, Texas, Florida, or New York.
*The Civil War was fought over states' rights, i.e., the right of states to keep slavery legal, and it's not over yet.
And the states that champion slavery in the form of states rights, still do, child slavery and wage slavery, the people could care less, so long as those 'horin women, the queers, the darkies are taken care of and kept in their place and out of sight.
If you lived in rural America you would know that the pulpit leads and the sheep follow.
The man behind the pulpit is the shepherd and the job of the shepherd is to keep watch over the flock until it is time for the fleeecing and slaughter.
Lisa Murkowski implied that she might consider leaving the MAGA/GOP and become an independent. I don't think she would actually join the Democratic Party, but a move to the middle would help everyone. She seems a bit more aware and less corrupt, but that might only be relative to MAGA.
Alaska is strange. Populated by what is essentially loners or misfits, people who think of themselves as rugged individualists, though no one is, no can live in this world as a rugged individualist we are all dependent on others.. someone manufacturers the ammo, some one buys the gold and fur and none of that would reach them (the consumer) were it not for government and others.
I had a number of team mates, who fashioned themselves such, all retired with government pension, then went to the woods to mine and trap, or live off salmon and caribou. One went from a government job, as an E-7 to a government job as sheriff of Eagle River, yet fancied himself a real independent rugged individual.
This may be true on the national level, but here in Westchester County, NY. (home of the Clintons) we have at least two high ranking Democratic elected officials who were high ranking Republicans. DA Susan Cacace was Assistant DA for DA Jeannine Pirro (REP) before switching parties, now being primaried by "real" Democrat William Wagstaff. And Mike Spano, Mayor of Yonkers, Westchester's largest city, brother of convicted former powerful State Senator Nick Spano (REP). But then, this is New York, where the Democratic Party's obsession with ousting progressives cost five congressional seats in 2022.
That loss in 2022 goes to Sean Mahoney and Adam Schiff.
Mahoney was head of DCCC and Schiff majority leader, and they went off junkateering in Paris at a critical time in the election. Arrogant assholes and that cost the Democrats those congressional seats.
T he general rule is all politics is local.
This struck my eye: "This is not to say there aren’t any corrupt Democrats...." Equally on point, are there ANY non-corrupt Republicans?
Mic drop. LOL
You nailed it Thom. We need limits on campaign contributions. I've been saying that ever since before Reagan. Looks like we're moving farther back to the dark ages though.
With a maximum wage and about $100 limit on campaign contributions from unions, corporations and individuals, we could straighten this mess around! The fake media has got the GOP lunatics leaving all the Democrats want to do is legalize gay marriage, have abortions and take their guns away! The Democratic party should have been pushing campaign finance reform and a maximum wage, but instead, they feed at the same trough the GOP does. You can't have democracy when you have liars brainwashing the idiots with their fake media. If the Democrats can get control of all three branches of government the first thing they need to do is replace that Supreme Court.
If the court allowed the voters to vote and that all the votes are counted by honest people who can count, and the court doesn’t invent a way to overrule everyone.
Well, actually Bill, the Libertarians are seeking total freedom from governance of any sort. No Constitutional "law and order" and only a world as they wish it for themselves, with no-one else telling them what to do or think. That was the long lost primordial state of small clan/band egalitarian stateless us against the world lifeway that all of our ancestors once knew, but massive human overpopulation and the conquest of nature demanded the gigantic bureaucratic nation states that we have grown-up in and often hate. Freud wrote brilliantly about this dichotomy in his last book, "Civilization and Its Discontents", spelling out the price we pay in limiting our freedoms for sake of "law and order". Trump is, to his devout MAGATS, the ultimate "free" man, doing just what he damn well pleases, and to hell with those laws and mores the rest of us are confined by. He is an anarchist and leading his flock to chaos with the promise of a government small enough to fit in a bathtub, no taxes, no bothersome legal system to restrain their behavior, and all the goodies for just him and his loyal followers. He is delusional and utterly ignorant of history or the purpose of the massive governmental structures necessary to prevent anarchy. He has the mental capacity of a 2yo, stuck in his "terrible twos", as he is. The attraction is profound and has led to the destruction of many (all?) previous great empires. Ask the German or Italian or Japanese people how that worked out.
Best post of the day in my opinion Greeley.
Parliament could be another reason. People accustomed to that system have to make coalitions to get any power.
If you watch Washington Journal, you will hear Republicans calling in on the Democrats' line. They CLAIM they are Democrats who are now just loving Trump. It is the over-the-top, cult-sounding nonsense that gives them away. Also, some of them will go on and on about how that poor man has been persecuted. Their compulsion to not follow the rules of the program is exactly like Trump. They have to dominate the phone-lines. They do love their lies!
If it were 2014, I would be a bit more trusting that they had grown a moral compass, but your laundry list is only the half of it these days, Thom. The lies are sickening.
One thing fun about Parliament, there is a lot more raucous than caucus.
Since the MAGATS seem to be so in love with anarchy, which is the obvious extreme destination of all Libertarian BS, they appear to shortly be getting their wish. Sadly, American politics is simple: Sheeple line up zombie-like behind the biggest bully they can find and who shortly thereafter marches them off to the slaughter. No old man/woman, no matter how thoughtful or well meaning, can compete. 'Nuf said.
Libertarianism: a perfect scheme for the governance of a group of 100 highly intelligent people.
Until the first one discovers how easy it is to "get over" on the other 99.
Acutually Doc it is the opposite of anarchy, they are the ultimate in communists, cultural communists, total conformity, were women know their place as sexual servants, domestic servants and nannies, and queers are nowhere to be seen or heard, and people of color are quiet and submissive and willing to accept crumbs from their betters. That is no anarchy and chaos,not to achieve their demagogic leaders sow chaos, so that the people will clamor for law and order, which they like Adolph and his Sturmabeitlung will be glad to offer.
Any dictatorship, capitalist, socialist, communist ends badly! With a rich trying to undermine democracy by bribing legislators to ruin the government so the masses will beg for a dictator, always ends badly also!
It's kind of horrifying how you list these things out and so many of the transgressions on that list are things that Joe Biden himself has directly been at least partially responsible for! And you blame Citizens United and the Supreme Court for our corrupt political system (almost always citing Republican corruption and never that of Democrats), but there is indeed a choice for politicians to accept that money and thus be influenced by it. Biden has worked against students and the poor by with his 2005 Bankruptcy Bill-- he did it Thom, it was his bill. He also implemented a means-tested, bureaucracy ridden student debt relief program for which applications were not available until two months after the program was rolled out--plenty of time for the expected legal challenges. Even without legal challenges, the complexity of the program would have meant that millions who were eligible likely would not have gotten relief. And why wait over two years to even roll out such a plan? Because he didn't want to do it, that's why. And Biden's plan to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices? Don't even start! It covers 10 medications out of 2000 prescribed in the US and doesn't start for 3 years--enough time for another administration to reverse it. It was negotiated WITH the pharmaceutical industry, that's who Biden works for and that's what they would allow. Staying in the Biden/Clinton/Obama fan club requires a massive lowering of expectations, so that we must be thankful for the scraps we are thrown just because Republicans will throw us fewer while Biden sends billions overseas (much of which stays here for military contractors and others with an investment in perpetual war) in the interest of mass murder and genocide. Oh, and I neglected to mention that Biden himself practically started the for-profit private prison industry you cite with his 1994 Crime Bill. His fingerprints are all over the nightmare we are now living as you ignore nearly 1000 students handcuffed, tazed and prosecuted across the country while Biden labels them antisemites.
Another false dichotomy. Two choices. Biden or Fascism.
He who is without sin casts the first stone. Your hero Putin is a war criminal. You don't have to be a Christian to accept that all sinners should repent to meet Jesus. To preclude absolution is a cardinal sin.
It's telling that you call Putin a war criminal and think that Biden is not one and somehow not a fascist as he calls student protestors antisemites and does nothing to stop their abuse at the hands of the state that he runs. What's with the bible junk as well? Are you a Trumpist theocrat like Netanyahu? Perhaps your heroes are racist genocidal maniac Netanyahu and his accomplice Biden? Perhaps you are a fascist McCarthyite accusing people you don't even know of conspiring with "the enemy?" Biden is a fascist just as Trump is, and Democrats are for the democracy defined by their donors and they'll make it a police state to keep it that way.
Boris The Putinista tries to pull the both sides ism ploy. And what a phony you are invoking antisemism, when your other posts are antisemitic.
If you are truly concerned about a possible police state, then you would be a vehement anti Trumper, and not waste your screeds on defending Putin by attacking Biden.
You must have shit a brick, when congress passed the Ukraine aid bill.
Why is so many of you DO's are fucking morons? Do you learn it in school?
I will give you his Boris, you have no shame, blatantly stumping for Trump and Putin.
It boils down to this and you know it. If not Biden then Trump and if Trump then Putin.
You are obtuse but not obscure.
And a phony opportunist to boot. The last think you care about is genocide, because if you did you would be up in arms about Putin, now there is the real genocide, and IAW the UN convention on Genocide, Article II, which clearly states that intention is required, and your fuck buddy Putin has clearly stated his intention to genocide the Ukrainians.
So naturally, you'll be voting for RFK Jr, yes?
Nah, Boris, aka Barry, is a Putin troll, he doesn't come out and champion Putin, but does so obliquely by attacking Biden, He is an opportunist, he doesn't give a rat about any issue, be it Gaza, or Israel,but only Putin's agenda and he is mouth shut about Putins war crimes and genocide,and tries to deflect to Biden. The campus idiots are the best friends Putin could have. College students today, and in the 1970's, are anti democratic and Marxist authoritarian, they have been fed feces, convinced it is ice cream. I got my undergraduate in the midst of the anti war protests in a private university,so have personal knowledge. Ignorant, spoiled brats, easily brainwashed.
And as for you William Farrar, as a Jew who has been involved in many benefits for my synagogue and whose grandparents were killed in the Holocaust, you should be ashamed of your immature and incendiary behavior. But I expect nothing less from Thom's listeners these days.
All spoken like true Trump supporters as well as bastions of democracy. All you've got is personal insults because you know that Biden is toxic and a mass murderer of the first degree. The things you say about me wreak of McCarthyosm.and Zionism and what does who I would vote for have to with any of this? Why does everyone have to say how horrible Putin or Hamas is before they tell the truth about Israel or US foreign policy history? Nobody here can cite anything I've said that isn't true, and your personal attacks show you are as desperate as Biden and the Democrats (Republicans as well) to cover up Israel's crimes as they take and assault college professors and students. Your "protecting democracy" campaign proves to be total nonsense as you join in the silencing of dissenting voices.
You morons are dumber that Orangatang County dentists.
I'm sure Thom is proud to have supporters like you.
In a just world the Dems would claw back all the losses to the American people and take it from all those responsible. The baby tears from them would warm my heart.
There is no such thing as fair in nature and there is no just world. But humans can't deal with that. We think that with our brains and hands we have bent nature to our will, but it is only an illusion and the victory is temporary, because there is a cost to everything and the bill does come due.
The laws of physics apply to everything. You can't break even, you can't win, and you can't get out of the game. Any win is temporary,
And Justice is not blind, the phrase is aspirational , but not reality., most often it isn't even aspirational, but window dressing. To wit SCOTUS.
True. The only justice is what you yourself do because you want to and can. But every dog has his day. We can hope however slim it is
Ouch !!
If Republicans who become Democrats turn out to e Blue Dog Democrats, that serves to be more obstructionist than helpful. Democrats want to support candidates and legislators who have Democratic and Liberal policies in mind, not just someone who’s out of love with the Republicans.
This information I have not heard before-…”children being torn from the arms of their nursing mothers and then trafficked into the Red State kids-for-sale marketplace like Trump did (almost a thousand are still missing)?”…
What is Thom referring to??