Happy Hour

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What Are We Doing Here

One doesn't have to fear nuclear retaliation to worry that escalation without clear goals is unlikely to achieve anything other than death and destruction. But, hey, it's Biden.

Also you can fear nuclear retaliation, even though all the serious voices have increasingly started lecturing us not to.  Because they have.

Speaking Of

I have a friend (Catalan) who is a big deal in the opera world. Years ago he was flying to Chicago for work-related stuff. He was supposed to attend a show that evening, but was barely going to make it, if at all, given the timing of the flight arrival.

Being in a hurry, after getting off the plane, he and his partner stupidly started running, which especially in the post 9-11 era was a bit of a nono. It was certainly a lot of a nono before clearing immigration/customs.

A security guard quickly stopped them.

Uh, sirs, what the hell do you think you are doing?

My friend [flustered and determined, with far from perfect English]: I am going to see [Spanish accent/pronunciation] Oh-pay-rah!

The security guard sprung into action, quickly escorted them to the front of the line, and rushed them through.

His partner, also Catalan, but much more familiar with the US, had to explain:

He thought you were going to be appearing on Oprah.

America's Worst President

Joe Biden.

The effort is serious enough that the White House has launched a pointed pushback. “Disapproving arms purchases for Israel at this moment would …put wind in the sails of Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas at the worst possible moment,” the document from the Biden administration reads.

The document additionally appears to endorse continued fighting despite the administration’s public narrative that it is seeking settlements to end the deadly Israeli military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon.

Everyone who stuck with this administration until the end should be occasionally politely asked to leave restaurants (the most extreme form of elite accountability there is).

Every Time

After the election, well-meaning people were like "let's heal, and regroup," while the ghouls with the money and the microphones set to work blaming everybody but themselves.

The irony here is that Jentleson is describing a campaign that looks a lot like the one that Harris ran, and lost. As progressives quickly pointed out in response, in 2024 Harris did indeed say no to the kinds of groups he mentioned, leaning on celebrity endorsements and vague pronouncements of “joy.” The special interests that were most influential this cycle weren’t progressives but AIPAC, cryptocurrency PACS, and Uber, whose former chief counsel Tony West (Harris’s brother-in-law) urged the candidate to moderate her message so as to better appeal to corporate interests.

As journalist Dan Denvir wrote before the election, Democrats this cycle fell back on an old playbook of trying to outflank Republicans on immigration. They championed a bill chock-full of the right’s preferred policies, like expanding ICE detention capacity and restricting asylum, then campaigned on the fact that the GOP voted it down when Trump told them to. Having previously called Trump’s border wall a “medieval vanity project,” Harris then pledged to spend hundreds of billions of dollars building it. As Denvir writes, “Given the choice to pander to reactionaries or shore up the party’s left wing, Democrats tend to prioritize the former. The result is a dangerous asymmetric polarization: Republicans radicalize on immigration, while Democratic elites chase after them. The ‘normal’ position on immigration moves ever rightward.”

What precisely might Harris have said to better convince voters that she would be adequately tough on immigration? And if her fatal flaws in Jentleson’s view mostly come down to things she said in the 2020 primary, does that mean that all candidates should ignore the realities of the race that they’re currently in—including in relatively progressive seats—so as to avoid Republican blowback if they run for something else in the future? The trouble with the “moderation” pitch isn’t just that it ignores the reality of the election that just happened. It also leaves Democrats playing catch-up in debates whose terms are perpetually set by Republicans, whatever the real-world consequences. The demand that the party embrace whatever positions happen to be popular at the moment imagines public opinion as exogenous to the work of politics. What precisely is the “moral imperative” to win elections if Democrats are merely choosing the correct position among the options that the right lays out for them?

Vive la Résistance!

Amazing shit in the New York Times.

A central pillar of American democracy is that no man is above the law. But Mr. Trump isn’t an ordinary man.

There's no point in arguing with this stuff. Pointing and mocking is all it deserves.

He's A Very Generous Man

I don't see the problem.

The House Ethics Committee obtained records, including a check and records of Venmo payments, that appear to show that then-Rep. Matt Gaetz paid more than $10,000 to two women who were later witnesses in sexual misconduct probes conducted by both the House and the Justice Department, according to documents obtained by ABC News.

The Venmo records show that between July 2017 and late January 2019, Gaetz -- who was first elected in 2016 -- allegedly made 27 Venmo payments totaling $10,224.02 to the two witnesses, who were over the age of 18 at the time.

Wednesday Morning

It's taboo to trash Oprah, but I do not think her net impact on the world has been good.

Tuesday Night

Rock on.

Happy Hour

Get happy.

You First

No one's stopping you. Put on a hard hat. Chew some tobacco. Curse a bit more. Whatever you think this is, [checks wikipedia] you Cornell graduate.

At a post-election DSCC briefing with winning Dem candidates.

Elissa Slotkin: “I personally think that identity politics needs to go the way of the dodo.” Dems should take language “not from the faculty lounge, but the assembly line.”

— David Weigel (@daveweigel) November 19, 2024

I think she's saying Dems need to do some code switching. Or cosplaying.

Burn It All Down

YES! YES!

The Big Donors

While we are on money, it is important to note that the reason to please "big donors" isn’t simply because you want their money for your campaign. There are a lot of reasons to want to have rich people on your side - some practical, some craven - and their disproportionate influence isn’t simply because they write big checks.

Lunch

eat

The Big Money

I do wish campaigns would learn that there is some cost to sending out dozens of campaign fundraising emails every day. If you are doing so when you have so much money that you can't spend it fast enough, it is fair to ask just what the fuck you are doing?

Vive la Résistance!

Choose your fighters.

Yesterday, as outraged "Morning Joe" fans registered their objections on social media sites, Scarborough defended his outreach to Trump, telling associates that having face time with a world leader is a no-brainer. Some of his MSNBC colleagues agreed. But there was more to the Mar-a-Lago meeting.

According to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter, Scarborough and Brzezinski were credibly concerned that they could face governmental and legal harassment from the incoming Trump administration. Knowing that Trump has threatened retribution against his perceived political opponents, and that Trump has promoted lies about Scarborough and Brzezinski in the past, the MSNBC hosts decided to reach out to the president-elect.

Scandals

It is quite funny remembering all of the reasons people have failed to get/had to drop out from Cabinet nominations due to "scandals" that would be laughable now. Some of them were actually a bit laughable at the time, to be fair.

Florida attorney Joel Leppard said in an interview with The Washington Post that one of his clients witnessed Gaetz having sex with the minor at a drug-fueled party in July 2017 — and that Gaetz was unaware of her age at the time but subsequently was told she was underage. ABC News first reported the news.

This woman and a second woman, also represented by Leppard, testified that they were paid by Gaetz to have sex with him and other individuals who attended these “sex parties.” They were paid through Venmo or other conduits — including the PayPal of Nestor Galban, whom Gaetz has referred to as his “adopted son.”

Morning

Taco Tuesday.

Happy Hour

Get happy.

That Guy

A regular type I've come across in The Discourse is people who spend about 80% chastizing The Left for their hysterical, rude, and inappropriate criticisms of Republicans, and then the other 20% calling conservatives/Republicans the new MegaHitler while, of course, yelling at The Left for failing to realize this!!!

Joe Scarborough, you are no longer welcome in The Resistance.