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Militantly superior in their own minds…

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Call the National Guard if your insurrection lasts more than four hours.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Something seems odd about that, but i have been drinking.

Too inconsequential to be sued

Hot air and ill-informed banter

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

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

Shocking, but not surprising

What fresh hell is this?

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

No one could have predicted…

We are aware of all internet traditions.

False Scribes! False Scribes!

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

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Fools! Overton Window!

You are here: Home / Archives for Fools! Overton Window!

Election 2020 Open Thread: Joe Biden Is Fortunate in His Enemies

by Anne Laurie|  December 31, 20192:41 am| 19 Comments

This post is in: 2020 Elections, Open Threads, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome, Fools! Overton Window!, Rare Sincerity, Riveted By The Sociological Significance Of It All

A protester at town hall in Milford, N.H., yells at Biden: “How much did you make from Ukraine?”

Biden responds: “I’ve released 20 years of my tax returns. Your guy hasn’t released one. What’s he hiding?”

Huge applause from the crowd.

— Kevin Robillard (@Robillard) December 29, 2019

The sad thing is that we really have no idea if that was a Trump supporter or a Bernie supporter. https://t.co/mlTr6tkbsh

— Malarksist Revolutionary (@agraybee) December 30, 2019


In New Hampshire? I’d give 50/50 odds it was a capital-L Libertarian, willing to ratfvck the primary in favor of whichever candidate offered them personally the most entertainment.

An 11yo boy in NH asked @JoeBiden a Q about the NRA…and then 20 minutes later a woman interrupts Joe and said she is the boy's teacher. She said she wanted to thank Biden for running as a role model and showing her student "how a man in politics should be behaving."

— Bo Erickson CBS (@BoKnowsNews) December 30, 2019

Boy I'd like see Biden wriggle out of this one.

[Biden gains 1 point in the polling average.]

Ah, nevertheless.

— Malarksist Revolutionary (@agraybee) December 30, 2019

On my crankier days I’m convinced the normies throwing a Biden-sized brick through the window is what the country needs to tamp down on the crazy.

— Starfish Who Sold Out Botswana to the French (@IRHotTakes) December 30, 2019

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Election 2020 Open Thread: Joe Biden Is Fortunate in His EnemiesPost + Comments (19)

Sad Trombone Open Thread: When the Poles on the Horseshoe* Snap Together

by Anne Laurie|  November 23, 20191:43 am| 139 Comments

This post is in: 2020 Elections, Open Threads, Assholes, Bring On The Meteor, Fools! Overton Window!, Go Fuck Yourself

One reason why Obama attempts to rally the base for moderates may be in his difficulty abiding a Democratic Party that even intimates that he failed to tangibly benefit the lives of the working class. https://t.co/z93AKXUzgO

— David Dayen (@ddayen) November 22, 2019

The Cosplay Socialists are determined to set up President Obama as the next ‘No True Progressive’ boogeymonster. (Hillary can’t live forever, and Liz Warren is just not ‘unlikeable’ enough for their needs.) As LBJ once said, “… it gives him a warm feeling, but nobody else much notices.”

But they will definitely work their hardest (wearing blisters on their thumbs, as they batter the social media barricades) to ensure that Preznit NObama never gets a third term…

… I’m sure Obama is confident enough in his political radar that he truly believes his path is the only viable one. It’s probably why he intervened to install Tom Perez over Keith Ellison as chair of the DNC. And he has been railing against imagined enemies like “certain left-leaning Twitter feeds” and “wokeness,” not just recently but for years. But there’s something brittle in this approach. A two-term president who engenders generally warm feelings among the population should not be so sensitive to criticism. Perhaps he reveals too much in his prickliness.

The truth is that Obama, who reiterated his comments to donors in San Francisco on Thursday, presided over a country where inequality continued to worsen, where dominant monopolies continued to consolidate, where regions continued to slip behind a handful of cities on the coasts, where all of the post-recession gains went to those at the top. Obama wasn’t the only factor in this sclerotic improvement; he was handed a deep recession by his predecessor and a right-wing Congress two years into his tenure. But those electoral losses, among the largest for a two-term president since World War II, do reflect the inadequacies of market-driven incrementalism to deliver accountability for the sins of the financial crisis and tangible relief to the millions who suffered as a consequence. If it did, the wealthy donors Obama spends time with while criticizing the left would have less in their bank accounts…

But let’s be honest about the endgame. Obama is intervening on behalf of a cramped, self-censoring politics, one that dreams big but fights small, one that comforts the well-off by assuring them their fortunes will be safe and the game will proceed to their benefit. He has said, according to the Times, that the eventual primary winner “will come back to me when they need me,” and they will. But they might not come back to his policies, and that’s apparently unacceptable…

This is pure fanfiction. (I know the genre; I wrote some of it, back in my late teens, when it was just us Trekkies & the term hadn’t entered into popular use.) It’s a little too dense and allusive for non-believers to follow, but that’s part of the appeal. We few, we happy few, who understand the Canon and cannot be led astray by arguments about ‘verisimilitude’ or ‘scientific possibility’…

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Sad Trombone Open Thread: When the Poles on the Horseshoe* Snap TogetherPost + Comments (139)

Impeachment Inquiry Open Thread: Actions That Don’t Stand Up to Daylight

by Anne Laurie|  November 4, 20198:02 pm| 38 Comments

This post is in: Impeachment Inquiry, Open Threads, Trumpery, All Too Normal, Decline and Fall, Fools! Overton Window!, I Can't Believe We're Still Talking About Fucking Nazis, Let A Thousand Watergates Bloom

There’s plenty of stuff a person with no moral code can get away with, as long as the ‘nice people’ around them are willing to look away. But when those actions are exposed in a larger forum, well… let a thousand Watergates bloom...

Jean Carroll today filed a suit against @realDonaldTrump, alleging he raped her. Trump has argued he can't be prosecuted for *anything* while president. But remember how GOPers pursued Bill Clinton for alleged pre-POTUS sexual harassment? Here's the first page of her complaint. pic.twitter.com/HUh8FB23n8

— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) November 4, 2019

The House Has Begun Releasing Transcripts From The Trump Impeachment Inquiry. Read Them Here. https://t.co/KVn5pRS7uT via @BuzzFeedNews

— Hayes Brown (@HayesBrown) November 4, 2019

Meanwhile, there’s been developments in the ongoing public feud between a couple of the more prominent ‘alt-right activists’; Milo Yiannopoulous ‘leaked’ a tape of ‘dapper Nazi’ Richard Spencer reacting to the murder in Charlottesville. [Shock warning: Spencer uses racist, anti-semitic language.]

Today's a good time to remember that Trump's "very fine people" line was aimed at saving the likes of Richard Spencer and Jason Kessler from their desperate hubris of having invited every aging skinhead, Klansman and swastika-waving Neo-Nazi they invited to CVille.

— Zeddy (@Zeddary) November 4, 2019

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Impeachment Inquiry Open Thread: Actions That Don’t Stand Up to DaylightPost + Comments (38)

Open Thread: Appreciating the 1619 Project for Its Detractors

by Anne Laurie|  August 19, 20198:20 pm| 186 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Racial Justice, Republican Stupidity, Republican Venality, All Too Normal, Clap Louder!, Fools! Overton Window!, I'm Too Big To Cry/Hurts Too Much To Laugh

The intro essay to the 1619 project is an extraordinary tribute to the people who have tried to realize the initially empty promises of American democracy, and I recommend that people actually read it and the other contributions before forming an opinion. https://t.co/YDxUf9PF1K

— Adam Serwer?? (@AdamSerwer) August 16, 2019

An underappreciated virtue of the Times’ 1619 project is its power to reveal who would have defended slavery and Jim Crow in the name of Freedom.

— REIGN OF TERROR is coming (@attackerman) August 18, 2019

I’m nowhere near finished reading the NYTimes‘ whole 1619 Project (wish I’d found a print edition yesterday, frankly), but IMO it will have an impact on The Discourse similar to that of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Atlantic article. And, yes, one sure signifier of its importance is the volume and intensity of the hatred directed against it by the Usual Suspects (few, if any, of whom could’ve read so much as Nikole Hannah-Jones’ introductory essay before taking their grievances public). The pushback was, thankfully, immediate…

A very proud moment. https://t.co/Z0fOXSt0Pj

— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) August 18, 2019

It’s a, um, bad look for a self-described “libertarian” to dismiss discussion of the actual history of chattel slavery because such discussion might undermine the mythos of a particular nation-state …

— Josh Chafetz (@joshchafetz) August 19, 2019

Newton Leroy Gingrich, 1943-2019. pic.twitter.com/EtzABTIyo0

— Kevin Gannon (@TheTattooedProf) August 18, 2019

The 1619 project appears to be about 50,000 words. Incredibly jealous of the people who read it all in five minutes and have takes.

— Matt Bors (@MattBors) August 18, 2019

The freak-out by white supremacists – including POTUS — over NYT's 1619 Project is something we should have seen coming. Their entire worldview – depending on people not knowing the 400-year legacy of racism and abusive treatment of African-Americans – is finally under attack

— Will Bunch (@Will_Bunch) August 18, 2019

Conservatives: Slavery can't be all that bad, look at the economic prosperity it created in America.

NYT 1619: Slavery created a lot of America's economic prosperity.

Conservatives: 1619 is anti-American and anyone that reads it hates liberty.

— Actual Scientist (@lcdriammdmph) August 18, 2019

Absolutely shameful that the times looked at slavery through a racial lens. Whats next? The history of the KKK through a racial lens? #liberalmediabias https://t.co/ThhJIHy0r9

— Centrism Fan Acct ?? (@Wilson__Valdez) August 19, 2019

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Open Thread: Appreciating the 1619 Project for Its DetractorsPost + Comments (186)

Economic Terrorism Open Thread: Eat the Rich… ‘s Taxes

by Anne Laurie|  February 12, 20195:48 pm| 127 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Excellent Links, Open Threads, Fools! Overton Window!, Get Mad You Sons Of Bitches, Riveted By The Sociological Significance Of It All

‘It feels like I’m at a firefighters conference and no one’s allowed to speak about water.’ — This historian wasn’t afraid to confront the billionaires at Davos about their greed pic.twitter.com/TiXSJZd89M

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) January 29, 2019

Didn’t find a space to post this during Davos, but now Bregman’s work looks to be going viral, as the Youngs say…

Okay, so now @TuckerCarlson sent me this email, after I asked him when the interview is gonna air (was supposed to be on tonight). Stay tuned. pic.twitter.com/AKaNEjm2S2

— Rutger Bregman (@rcbregman) February 12, 2019

Hard to think of a more fitting poster child for ‘Expropriate Unearned Wealth’ than Tucker Carlson, yes?

More on this topic, from the Guardian:

No, wealth isn’t created at the top. It is merely devoured there (May 2017)

Fightback against the billionaires: the radicals taking on the global elite (Feb 2019)

Economic Terrorism Open Thread: Eat the Rich… ‘s TaxesPost + Comments (127)

Terrifying Read: “‘Nothing on this page is real’”

by Anne Laurie|  November 19, 20188:31 pm| 143 Comments

This post is in: Excellent Links, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome, Fools! Overton Window!, I Reject Your Reality and Substitute My Own, Looks Like I Picked the Wrong Week to Stop Sniffing Glue, Riveted By The Sociological Significance Of It All

A journo-nerd note about the @elisaslow story everyone is rightly praising:

There’s no nut graph, no summation of “what it all means,” and the story is all the better for it.

It makes readers’ minds turn, without telling them to.

https://t.co/RaKwZkMvYd

— Eric Umansky (@ericuman) November 19, 2018

It is, in truth, one heckuva story. Neither of the main characters have anything but the best of intentions, and yet… Kudos to the Washington Post for demonstrating “How lies become truth in online America“:

NORTH WATERBORO, Maine — The only light in the house came from the glow of three computer monitors, and Christopher Blair, 46, sat down at a keyboard and started to type. His wife had left for work and his children were on their way to school, but waiting online was his other community, an unreality where nothing was exactly as it seemed. He logged onto his website and began to invent his first news story of the day…

He had launched his new website on Facebook during the 2016 presidential campaign as a practical joke among friends — a political satire site started by Blair and a few other liberal bloggers who wanted to make fun of what they considered to be extremist ideas spreading throughout the far right. In the last two years on his page, America’s Last Line of Defense, Blair had made up stories about California instituting sharia, former president Bill Clinton becoming a serial killer, undocumented immigrants defacing Mount Rushmore, and former president Barack Obama dodging the Vietnam draft when he was 9. “Share if you’re outraged!” his posts often read, and thousands of people on Facebook had clicked “like” and then “share,” most of whom did not recognize his posts as satire. Instead, Blair’s page had become one of the most popular on Facebook among Trump-supporting conservatives over 55.

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Terrifying Read: “‘Nothing on this page is real’”Post + Comments (143)

Repub Horrorshow Open Thread: A Clown Car Full of Pennywises

by Anne Laurie|  September 25, 20184:57 am| 47 Comments

This post is in: Activist Judges!, Dolt 45, Open Threads, Republican Stupidity, Republican Venality, All Too Normal, Assholes, Decline and Fall, Fools! Overton Window!, Fucked-up-edness

McConnell going deep on his strategy of “Don’t Blame Mitch McConnell if this Kavanaugh Thing Doesn’t Happen” https://t.co/5eIimYwkWw

— Michael Cohen (@speechboy71) September 24, 2018

The entire Republican party has devolved into an authoritarian cult where aging white men vow to destroy the world to protect the purity of their essence. And now everybody within earshot of the national news knows it!

Mr. Charles P. Pierce, “I am living in the middle of a pornographic Allen Drury novel—Advise And Lack Of Consent“:

…Anybody who tells you that they know what happens next is lying. So far, El Caudillo Del Mar-A-Lago is making brave noises. Senator Dianne Feinstein wants all hearings into the nomination postponed until an FBI investigation into this mess is concluded but, at the moment, there’s no stomach for what an FBI investigation might reveal. Senator Mitch McConnell, who warned the White House that Kavanaugh would be a tough sell, knew about the Ramirez allegations a week ago, so it is fair to assume that, whatever else may be out there, he already knows it, and yet he told the Values Voters Summit last week that he was going to “plow on through” with the nomination, which is a very unfortunate metaphor in this context. In addition, McConnell’s response to the news that the latest allegations were going to come up was to try and put the nomination into hyperdrive. However, McConnell is also pragmatist enough to know when to cut bait. If the Republicans decide to pull this nomination, it has to happen early in the week. Waiting until Wednesday—or, worse, until Thursday, when Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford are scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee—is completely untenable…

Fox News reporter:

Kavanaugh nomination is in trouble. That's why McConnell made blistering speech today. Baseball teams mail it in once they are out of pennant race. McConnell trying to get GOPers to run out out every ground ball in effort to salvage nomination. Kavanaugh lacks the votes right now

— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) September 24, 2018

And so it was – a classmate who heard about it at the time told me he has thought of it every time he's heard Kavanaugh's name – for the last 35 years! https://t.co/T2dRDUvTG3

— Jane Mayer (@JaneMayerNYer) September 24, 2018

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Repub Horrorshow Open Thread: A Clown Car Full of PennywisesPost + Comments (47)

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