Excellent Links

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Credit Where Due

by Anne Laurie| January 27, 20217:02 am| 164 Comments

This post is in: Excellent Links, Open Threads, President Biden, Proud to Be A Democrat

As progressives, it is easy to become jaded about the possibility of meaningful change.

The fight for a more democratic America is far from over, but in just the first week, the Biden Administration has acted on many of progressives’ top asks. (Thread)https://t.co/1RY5kL1iQv

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) January 26, 2021

Quick side note: Senator Leahy is home and doing fine. (My personal guess is that listening to a bunch of Repubs alternately whine & lie for several hours would be enough to make any sane person ‘feel ill’.)

Back to Rep. Omar:

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Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Credit Where DuePost + Comments (164)

If You Read Nothing Else

by John Cole| January 25, 20219:13 pm| 76 Comments

This post is in: Excellent Links

Please check out Seth Rogen’s twitter timeline, which for the last week has been dedicated to pantsing Ted Cruz:

Your lies got people killed. You have blood on your hands. https://t.co/eoy1uUDK73

— Seth Rogen (@Sethrogen) January 24, 2021

It’s been a week of him just shitting all over the zodiac killer and it has been beautimous. Although it has been kind of disgusting that this appears to be the only repercussion for attempting a coup.

If You Read Nothing ElsePost + Comments (76)

Excellent Link: Concerning Another Fraught Inauguration

by Anne Laurie| January 16, 20216:14 pm| 146 Comments

This post is in: Biden-Harris 2020, Excellent Links, Information As Power

We’ve been good, warmhearted, gracious jackals for a whole afternoon, so here’s some quality snark!

“Hey, CivilWarHumor, have we been here before — an inauguration beset with assassination plots and insurrection, with doubts raised about the loyalty of law enforcement, troops, and even congresspeople?”

Of course! But back then, Winfield Scott was on the case.

/THREAD pic.twitter.com/MNEMsgqdKR

— Civil War Humor (@CivilWarHumor) January 13, 2021

Matt Palmquist, “writer/editor. Connoisseur of the last Civil War. Here’s hoping we avoid another one“:

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Excellent Link: Concerning Another Fraught InaugurationPost + Comments (146)

Late Night Schadenfreude Open Thread: Final Daze

by Anne Laurie| January 15, 202111:00 pm| 177 Comments

This post is in: Excellent Links, Open Threads, Repubs in Disarray!, Trump Crime Cartel, Lock Him Up...Lock Them All Up, Schadenfreude

I’m also giving Trump a major send-off, I’m just not sure I can build the catapult fast enough. https://t.co/7jiTTcHs9a

— Mig Greengard (@chessninja) January 15, 2021

After this week, we’ve all earned some easy targets…

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Trump has banned aides from mentioning Richard Nixon's name. https://t.co/cKcpEYzqkr

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 15, 2021

In his final days in office, President Donald Trump has found the parts of the job he loved replaced by cold legal warnings, forced video addresses and a shrinking circle of downtrodden aides, all anxiously wondering what life will be like after noon on January 20.

Gone are the clicks of flashing cameras. Absent is the roar of a cheering crowd. Instead of a commanding final full week of winning, the President is playing the role of victim and not a gracious leader departing office.

Trump has been consumed by the unraveling of his presidency during his last days in office, according to people around him, which included a casual discussion among advisers recently about a possible resignation…

He told one adviser during an expletive-laden conversation recently never to bring up the ex-president ever again. During the passing mention of resigning this week, Trump told people he couldn’t count on Vice President Mike Pence to pardon him like Gerald Ford did Nixon, anyway…

Inside the building, Trump has been weathering a second impeachment and growing isolation from his onetime allies in sullen desolation. He has grown more and more worried about what legal or financial calamities may await him when he is no longer president, people who have spoken to him said, fueled by warnings from lawyers and advisers. He is weighing pardons, including for himself and his family, as he attempts to muster a legal team for another impeachment trial. And he is resentful of Republicans who he feels abandoned him in his hour of need, including the GOP leaders of the House and Senate…

As one of their final acts, Trump’s team is working to organize a crowd to see him off on the morning of Biden’s inauguration, when he plans to depart Washington while still president and is expecting a major send-off. Even though some of his allies had encouraged him to attend Biden’s inauguration, and Trump quizzed his circle on whether he should, few ever expected him to participate in the swearing-in of his successor.

Trump told people he did not like the idea of departing Washington for a final time as an ex-president, flying aboard an airplane no longer known as Air Force One. He also did not particularly like the thought of requesting the use of the plane from Biden, according to a person familiar with the matter…

Lots more at the link.

Quite a description of Trump's epic failures, from @djrothkopf:https://t.co/ZXxnAbZ7iQ pic.twitter.com/If2w1AGjtA

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) January 14, 2021

Reuters also puts the boot in — “Inside Trump’s final days: Aides struggle to contain an angry, isolated president“:

… Trump had wanted to join the thousands of hardcore followers who assembled at Capitol Hill on Jan. 6. He told aides in the days leading up to the rally that he planned to accompany them to demonstrate his ire at Congress as it moved to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s November election victory.

But the Secret Service kept warning him that agents could not guarantee his safety if he went ahead, according to two people familiar with the matter. Trump relented and instead hunkered down at the White House to watch television images of the mob rioting he is accused of triggering…

Trump has suffered a sudden rupture with his vice president, the departure of disgusted senior advisers, his abandonment by a small but growing number of Republican lawmakers, the loss of his cherished Twitter megaphone, and a rush by corporations and others to distance themselves from him and his businesses…

Trump’s focus on claims of voter fraud, egged on by personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, consumed most of his days. Two days after the election, said a source familiar with the meeting, daughter Ivanka Trump was in a meeting with senior White House staff and said words to the effect that, “We accomplished so much and we had a great run.” A representative for Ivanka Trump declined to comment.

But no one in Trump’s orbit could convince him to explicitly acknowledge defeat and use his remaining weeks in office to hold events to tout accomplishments that he and his aides are proud of…

Even before the riot, Trump’s mood had been darkening as dozens of court cases filed by his legal team and surrogates failed to overturn the voting results in key swing states, people familiar with the matter said.

Aides who would enjoy dropping by the Oval Office to check on Trump found themselves avoiding him lest he give them an assignment related to voter fraud that they knew was impossible, three sources said…

Pence and Trump did not speak for days after the Capitol riot. The vice president had to be spirited to safety in the Capitol basement after rioters, some chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” penetrated the building…

would he settle for me launching water balloons filled with cat piss at him as he’s wheeled out of town in a garbage can https://t.co/QtqNmum4ri

— kilgore trout, brad r’s brother (@KT_So_It_Goes) January 15, 2021

Tonight | As he leaves office, Trump owes hundreds of millions to a bank that doesn't want to do business with him.@davidenrich tells @caroloffcbc "He's going to need to find money…and I frankly don't know where he's going to get it." pic.twitter.com/GWohkYrBOc

— As It Happens (@cbcasithappens) January 14, 2021

Pence. Kushner. McEnany. Ingraham. Even Giuliani… Here Are All People Trump Now Reportedly Feels Have Betrayed Him https://t.co/gYVRKrAckH

— Jacqueline (@jptrib1) January 14, 2021

Late Night Schadenfreude Open Thread: Final DazePost + Comments (177)

Credit Where Due Open Thread: Not All GOP Michiganders

by Anne Laurie| January 10, 202111:04 am| 323 Comments

This post is in: Excellent Links, local races 2019/2020, Open Threads

Yesterday’s assault on the Capitol didn’t have to happen. Politicians who spread the lies that incited this violence bear responsibility. Politicians who continue to lie in order to shift blame and falsely claim this was Antifa or BLM, are contemptible. More thoughts: pic.twitter.com/ZbMPfPXEi5

— Rep. Peter Meijer (@RepMeijer) January 7, 2021

It ain’t all kakistocrats, even in Betsy deVos’s back yard. Peter Meijer (grandson of the man who founded the deservedly beloved Meijers chain) brings the truth:

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We can’t paper over the assault on the Capitol with empty calls for ‘unity.’ Unless my party faces the truth of what happened and holds those responsible to account, we will never regain the public’s trust and earn the honor of leading the nation forward. https://t.co/QudmjFEZ8o

— Rep. Peter Meijer (@RepMeijer) January 10, 2021

On Wednesday afternoon in the House Chamber, I assured a colleague we were in the most secure possible place as we unpacked gas masks.

Tear gas had been deployed after violent protestors stormed the rotunda, but as we took cover under bulletproof chairs I assured my colleague we would be fine. After all, there had been incidents in the past, but Capitol Police had maintained control over the seat of our democracy since 1814.

The mob then rushed the barricaded doors to the chamber, trying to break them down. The illusion of security, of the sanctity of our constitutional order, collapsed. With guns drawn, police ordered us to evacuate, leading to chaos as we fled down corridors and into the tunnels beneath Capitol Hill. Several times our group of lawmakers found ourselves alone, with no police escort, fearful of what threats might lie around the next corner…

My colleague told me that efforts to overturn the election were wrong, and that voting to certify was a constitutional duty. But my colleague feared for family members, and the danger the vote would put them in. Profoundly shaken, my colleague voted to overturn.

An angry mob succeeded in threatening at least one member of Congress from performing what that member understood was a constitutional responsibility…

Worse yet, while a dead woman’s blood dried mere feet from our chamber, other Republican colleagues doubled down, repeating lies of a stolen election, baselessly deflecting blame for the Capitol assault from Trump loyalists to Antifa, doing whatever they could to justify, equivocate, rationalize or otherwise avoid taking responsibility for the consequences of their actions.

Blood has been spilled, and those who encouraged this insurrection are in too deep.

Those of us who refused to cower, who have told the truth, have suffered the consequences. Republican colleagues who have spoken out have been accosted on the street, received death threats, and even assigned armed security…

It didn’t have to end like this, with five people dead, including a Capitol Police officer. This should be a moment of reckoning for the country as a whole, and the conservative movement in particular.

If the Republican party ever hopes to regain the public’s trust and lead the country forward after this heinous assault, it must first be honest with itself.

I personally think Rep. Meijer is too optimistic about his comrades’ ability to face the truth, but I give him points for speaking up.

While I don’t doubt they said this to Meijer, I think they just felt more comfortable saying that instead of saying they were simply lying for political advantage. https://t.co/cKxN3HpxKB

— Josh Barro (@jbarro) January 10, 2021

(It’s actually a pretty good interview, even if it is Reason magazine.)

Credit Where Due Open Thread: Not All GOP MichigandersPost + Comments (323)

Schadenfreudelicious Link: “”The Stink of His Family Is Nearly Impossible to Get Off”: Jared and Ivanka’s Final Chapter in Washington Demolished Their Future”

by Anne Laurie| January 9, 20214:06 pm| 147 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Excellent Links, Trump Crime Cartel, Lock Him Up...Lock Them All Up

“People used to fear Trump’s wrath,” a former friend of Ivanka’s said. “Now they fear his affiliation.” https://t.co/qknf6igfb0

— Liam Stack (@liamstack) January 8, 2021

Of course, chances are that the younger Trump/Kushners will be miraculously rehabilitated no later than the 2020 midterms, but it’s nice to know they’re currently suffering the worst such can suffer…

… Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, have spent the past five years performing a mincing dance around reality, spinning their own parallel universe instead. When it suited them, they were the loudest, most trusted voices in President Trump’s ear, with outsize presences and responsibilities. When it was less advantageous, they shrunk out of sight. As for their influence, well, there was only so much they could do, they’d say. Dad would ultimately be dad…

There aren’t many friends left, but as of this week, there were plenty of people who would either tolerate Javanka or at least bite their tongues: people who had known them for years, people who’d hold their noses to do business with them, people who didn’t much care for their administration but certainly didn’t mind the lower tax rates, the deregulation, the proximity to power. As such, they kept their disdain quiet, at least beyond their immediate social circles.

That changed on Wednesday…

Other longtime friends told me on Thursday that many people who hadn’t wanted to get political were looking to get their feet wet. “It feels like everyone on the Upper East Side is texting me today. Suddenly they all want to join the Resistance,” the former friend said.

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It’s unlikely that Sommer and Kloss and the uptown Resistance have suddenly grown consciences in the last day. Rather, Wednesday’s depravity and the couple’s role in it officially made them radioactive. For the last four years, it was easier to say nothing. Last week I could have written a story about Kushner’s role in the Middle East peace process and Ivanka’s positioning for a political future in Florida. But by Wednesday evening, that had all changed. Having any association with them suddenly became the more difficult option. “People used to fear Trump’s wrath,” another former friend of Ivanka’s told me. “Now they fear his affiliation. The stink of his family is nearly impossible to get off. How do you associate yourself with the worst, most toxic people in U.S. history?”…

His daughter and son-in-law lost their power along with him. It didn’t help that they looked craven while everything burned, people around them noted. Ivanka had seemingly been trying to launch her political career, campaigning in Georgia and posting old photos of herself handing out vegetables in Florida, they said. “The finance world knew Jared was in the Middle East when all of this was happening, too, so their self-serving was laid bare,” one person told me. “The narrative going around is that Jared & co. plan to buy up all the distressed assets created by the pandemic he created, like a fucking oligarch.”

Optically, it didn’t help that someone caught a moving truck outside their Kalorama home in Washington on Thursday morning. A man lugging boxes from the garage loaded them into an orange truck with “College Hunks Hauling Junk” printed across the side. A spokesman could not be reached for comment.

Someone just sent me this photo of moving trucks at Jared and Ivanka's house. pic.twitter.com/fll6OiiBHX

— Hunter Walker (@hunterw) January 7, 2021

From commentor Mary G, early this morning:

Ivanka’s on Parler shilling for contributions to Trump Media and bragging they’ve already sold $100,000 coffee mugs. How the mighty have fallen. At the beginning of Twitler’s term she was pushing a $10,000 bracelet from her jewelry line, now it’s something that costs $1.59 to make that they get $15 at most for.

Elsewhere, Melania mourns that now she will never be known as ‘the GOP Jackie Kennedy’…

"Her disinterest in addressing the country was indicative of being 'checked out,' said another White House source, who added, 'she just isn't in a place mentally or emotionally anymore where she wants to get involved.'
Except with the furniture." https://t.co/IbmC6vl6L7

— Kate Bennett (@KateBennett_DC) January 8, 2021

(She was actually supervising a photo shoot for a projected coffee-table book on her White House renovations when the Trump Insurrection took place.)

Schadenfreudelicious Link: “”The Stink of His Family Is Nearly Impossible to Get Off”: Jared and Ivanka’s Final Chapter in Washington Demolished Their Future”Post + Comments (147)

Sunday Evening Open Thread: Well-Crafted Maledicta

by Anne Laurie| December 27, 20207:01 pm| 265 Comments

This post is in: Excellent Links, Trumpery

Opinion | Dragging out Trump and 2020 https://t.co/cs1GD4p72e

— Ann Telnaes (@AnnTelnaes) December 25, 2020

(Absolutely worth the click!)

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Why is Trump the worst President ever, you ask. It's actually pretty easy to prove. Much easier than most proofs in my Geometry class.
(Thread)
First of all, let's agree on this. With the exception of only a few Presidents, most are remembered for one or two things. No more…

— Slava Malamud (@SlavaMalamud) December 21, 2020

Twitter-stripped from a longer thread:

First, let’s look at all the Great Accomplishments he and the cult love to boast about. The wall? If it doesn’t fall down into the Rio Grande by 2025, it will be forgotten by 2026. The economy? Sorry, this shit’s gone to trash with the pandemic. Trade wars? Already forgotten…

Jerusalem and the Great Tremendous Abraham Accords? Give me a fucking break. The Wonderful Very Talented Highly Respected Justices? Depends on what they do, but even so, justices are not remembered for who appointed them. Who appointed Taney? Who appointed Marshall? Nobody cares.

Likewise, you might hate Trump, but history won’t remember most of his stupid tweets, his embarrassing behavior at the rallies, his constant lies and name-calling, the tax break for the rich, “shithole countries”, “fine people on both sides” and defending Confederate statues…

Even the Russiagate and the Ukraine impeachment will be mostly curiosities for history buffs (like the Andrew Johnson impeachment, Teapot Dome or the Petticoat Scandal) than some universally acknowledged presidency-defining event, akin to Watergate…

And as much as I want the Summer of George Floyd to become a major watershed event in the history of US race relations, we probably have an extremely long and arduous road to cover on that front, with many, many more events like this ahead. So Trump’s flirtation with racism? Par.

So, when your grandkids are sitting in their virtual Social Democratic Republics of America History classes in 2080, what they’re likely to know about the Trump era is:
1) 100s of thousands died of a pandemic he badly mismanaged
2) he refused to concede and undermined elections..

He’s treated every issue, every assessment of every crisis and every personnel move based on what it does for him personally.
Trump mismanaged COVID not because he believed wrong things about how the pandemic works but because he made it about his own reelection chances…

Trump made his entire presidency about proving how great his was to his own damaged ego, to the ghost of his daddy, to New York elites who have always despised him, to Obama and to tragically deluded yokels who just loved how he hated the “right” folks…

Trump is the worst president ever because he was never the President of the United States. He was the Supreme Commander of His Own Fucking Demons. It was all, all of it, every single thing, every second of the way, about him. About making him feel great. All of it. As we died…

He’s undermining our democracy not because he worries about election integrity and not because he cares about what happens to the country under Biden. He’s simply lashing out because the country refused to affirm his own delusions of grandeur. The asshole was dreaming of Rushmore.

That’s truly it. Nothing more. Nothing more is needed. For the first time in history, the nation has not only elected a person who was unqualified, dangerous and immoral, but a person who was the absolute polar opposite of what a President should be.
Nobody is close, frankly. Fin

Sunday Evening Open Thread: Well-Crafted MaledictaPost + Comments (265)

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Four legs? good! two legs? we’re not so sure…

How has Obama failed you today?

Gastritis broke my calculator.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Mission Accomplished!

I swear, each month of 2020 will have its own history degree.

Just a few bad apples.

… down to kool-aid drinkers and next of kin at the trump White House

Lighten up, Francis.

… makes me wish i had hoarded more linguine

I can’t take this shit today. I just can’t.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Let there be snark.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Nevertheless, she persisted.

What fresh hell is this?

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Credit Where Due

If You Read Nothing Else

Excellent Link: Concerning Another Fraught Inauguration

Late Night Schadenfreude Open Thread: Final Daze

Credit Where Due Open Thread: Not All GOP Michiganders

Schadenfreudelicious Link: “”The Stink of His Family Is Nearly Impossible to Get Off”: Jared and Ivanka’s Final Chapter in Washington Demolished Their Future”

Sunday Evening Open Thread: Well-Crafted Maledicta