Always prefered Milo Hamilton’s call. RIP Hank Aaron.
Category: Uncategorized
The president of the United States incited/commanded a mob to attack a joint session of Congress, in order to stop through murderous violence […] the legal installation of his successor. The president of the United States is quite literally guilty of felony murder, as well as sedition. He came close to getting his own vice president murdered in front of the man’s own family.
Paul Campos writing for Lawyers, Guns, and Money. Every time the microphone is turned on, this needs to be said by every Democrat. Every member of the GOP needs to be asked to acknowledge this as fact any time they are in public and every time forever from now on until Trump is removed from office, prosecuted, and if found guilty sentenced to jail. Any member of our government who denies these facts should be, at a minimum, censured. Insurrectionists like Cruz and Hawley (among many others) should be expelled and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
[Bloomberg] clearly was not prepared for these rather obvious questions, perhaps because he is a cloistered plutocrat surrounded by yes men and toadies, or perhaps because there is no defense at all. He appeared very much like what he in fact is — a very rich man who is likely facing bitter, unfiltered criticism to his face for the first time in years.
Ryan Cooper writing for The Week.
While I’m sure we’ll get plenty of “why are they so mean to Bloomberg” takes today, I’d say his ~$500M attempt to buy his way into both the Democratic party and the White House are effectively over.
Welcome to the Bullshit Economy
This whole thing needs to be the one and only speech any and all Democratic candidates for President give over the next, oh, five months; but I’d even settle for just a paragraph:
The Iowa disaster is a sign that our economic structures are breaking down, that private enterprise has become a shell game, where who you know matters more than what you can do. The bullshit economy has bled over into politics, with the perfect president but also the perfect amount of grifting and consultant corruption and unbridled tech optimism. This has long been part of politics—anything with that much money sloshing around will invite a little corruption—but the combination of political grift, the ardor for public-private partnerships, and the triumph of ambition over talent has created a fetid stew.
I am not interested in someone’s heartfelt account of their near-collision with actual integrity.
Charlie Pierce captures the essence of the whole Anonymous leader of The Resistance inside the White House thing. This is shameful, not brave or daring and should be characterized as such.
[Assuming] a wildly optimistic scenario in which Dems do about as well as they can be reasonably hope to do in the 2020 Senate elections and a majority decides to eliminate the filibuster, passing any legislation will require at least two Democratic senators who are refusing to even commit to endorsing the Democratic nominee in 2020. Medicare For All is not going to be passed in the next Congress. Joe Biden’s robust public option, for that matter, is not going to be passed by the next Congress. This is true no matter who becomes president. This is about establishing long-term goals and mobilizing voters — that’s it. So Warren’s plan is fine, Bernie’s plan is fine, and to act as if difference in minor details in them will have policy consequences for the next administration or should influence anybody’s primary vote either way is nuts.
Scott Lemieux, writing for Lawers, Guns, and Money. This seems so self evident as to be utterly banal were we living in any reasonable simulacrum of a shared reality, yet here we are. It’s almost as if those fanning the flames of this “disagreement” have motives that aren’t entirely pure.
I don’t care which party has the right ideas — or which party has the wrong ideas. I am very, very, very interested in civility.
The late Cokie Roberts, champion of civility uber alles. So long as the children are going into the cages in a polite, dignified fashion, the policy is, by definition, perfectly fine and above question.
…kids are in danger when they go to school and their peers offer them a Juul hit in the bathroom, but they’re also in danger when their peers show up with semiautomatic rifles and shoot them. Yet while e-cigarettes constitute something people choose to put in their own body—that is, not an express violation of other citizens’ rights—they’re up for a ban. Insanely powerful weapons of war, which are regularly used to infringe on the rights of other citizens, must be freely available to all in perpetuity.
Mango Juuls don’t kill people, people smoking Mango Juuls kill people. Which is why we’re banning Mango Juuls.
Charlie Pierce writing for Esquire. Nothing else to say but: Yep.
Why Nancy Pelosi Won’t Impeach
Required reading from Elizabeth Spiers. Two particularly salient excerpts:
By implying that impeachment in the Senate is the point, Pelosi denies the importance of the process itself—without which impeachment in the Senate wouldn’t happen in any case. And others have argued better and more persuasively than I could that Senate impeachment isn’t the primary or best reason to do it. Referral to the Senate may be in fact be unnecessary and undesirable.
[…]
A slim minority—just 19 percent—of polled opinion supported Richard Nixon’s impeachment at the outset of the Watergate scandal, and by the end of the House Judiciary Committee’s televised impeachment hearings, a strong majority supported it. And that shift in opinion translated into a massive wave of Democratic gains in the 1974 midterm balloting.
Lemkin 