Tick, tick, tick…. Florida man Cesar Sayoc was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2019 for sending over two dozen inoperative pipe bombs to perceived enemies of then-President Donald Trump. None exploded. No one was injured. His intended victims were lucky. Politics in the U.S. is not yet full-on blood sport, but there are days it trends that way. Taunts, red hats, belligerence and semi-autos are at any moment inches away from mayhem. People have had to go into hiding over viral accusations disseminated both by social media, propaganda outlets such as Fox News, and political figures such as Donald Trump. The right-wing media complex has yet to feel enough pain in its pocket to pull back from provoking its audience to credible threats of violence. In the case of the Jan. 6 insurrection, it was actual violence. One victim of Tucker Carlson gets a profile this morning in The New York Times: What’s known about the man — a two-time Trump voter named Ray Epps — is that he took part in demonstrations in Washington that day and the night before. He was captured on camera urging a crowd to march with him and enter the Capitol.
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Why Trump is beating DeSantis It’s still a long way until the first Republican primaries but unless something changes quickly, it is looking more and more grim for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and more and more secure for former President Donald Trump. The polls in the early primary states show that Trump is still polling at least 20 points higher than DeSantis who still isn’t catching on. DeSantis appeared on Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo’s show this weekend and insisted that he’s floundering because the News Media doesn’t want him to be the nominee which isn’t true at all. If anything they were champing at the bit for a real horse race against Donald Trump because that would make excellent copy. But it is reasonable to ask why has been sinking in the polls over the last few months. The consensus among the pundit class seems to be that he’s just unlikable so the more people see of him the less they like him. I suspect there’s some truth to that. But it may just be the contrast between him and Trump, the political superstar.
Trump said over the weekend that Joe Biden is the most corrupt president in history. Uh huh. Check out his latest grift with his good pals the Saudis: The LIV Golf League’s season-ending team championship will be played at Trump National Doral Golf Club in Miami for the second straight year. LIV Golf League officials announced Monday that the $50 million team championship will be played Oct. 20-22 at Trump National Doral, which is owned by former U.S. President Donald Trump. The three-day team championship was originally scheduled to be played Nov. 3-5 at Royal Greens Golf & Country Club in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. LIV Golf League officials have been working to move it back to Trump National Doral, where it was staged in the league’s inaugural season in 2022. The Jeddah event, now scheduled for Oct. 13-15, will be the final regular-season tournament. The Republicans are relentlessly investigating Hunter Biden’s alleged influence peddling from years ago. This is not of interest to them. Hmmm.
The real problem is the right’s massive case of arrested development This is enough to make me hurl. And it’s not just Elon and Zuck. With Nikki Haley being the only woman in the race, the GOP primary is also a dick measuring contest: Francis Suarez is bragging about placing sixth in an Independence Day 5K in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Vivek Ramaswamy, a former nationally ranked junior tennis player, is flexing his weekly pickup victories over former collegiate athletes at a Life Time Fitness outside Des Moines. And Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the muscle-bound, 69-year-old longshot Democratic presidential hopeful, went viral for doing pull-ups shirtless at a Gold’s Gym. Even Asa Hutchinson, the 72-year-old former Arkansas governor, is boasting about still playing full-court basketball. More than a month before the election cycle’s first debates, the 2024 presidential contest has careened into a kind of testosterone primary, a frenetic fit boy summer sidequest in which candidates are drawing fewer contrasts on policy and proving more keen on comparing feats of strength.
Well, it looks as though they’ve another way to perform for the cult. It’s a meaningless waste of time but it does have the benefit of degrading our democracy even further. Hunter at DKos has the story: Well, here we go again. House Republicans have been shrieking that they’re going to impeach a whole passel of top officials in the Joe Biden administration for supposed crimes that include investigating seditionist Donald Trump too much and investigating Hunter Biden too little, but every once in a while one of them remembers that Congress also has the power to simply zero out the salaries of any executive branch employees they don’t particularly like. It’s akin to a bill of attainder targeting a particular executive official’s career. Frustrated congressional cornballs have been sporadically remembering the power for years now, especially whenever some government agency does something that they really super do not like but can’t muster the legislative votes to actually change.
Nothing to see here Without comment. Plowable hail.
We’re not as right as we think we are Loss of the ability to laugh at oneself is the first warning sign of fundamentalism. It’s a personal maxim that has served well. Not unrelated is a shtick that comes in handy now and again. Jab your finger in the air toward someone as if punctuating an argument, and declare confidently, “Oh yeah? Well, I’m not as smart as I think I am.” Let’s back up. Heather Cox Richardson in her “Letters from an American” installment for July 9 observes that on this date in 1868, Americans ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. It eradicated the infamous Dred Scott decision by a Supreme Court then controlled by states’ rights advocates and “southerners and Democrats … adamantly opposed to federal power.” The drafters meant to ensure that southern states who recently fought a war to preserve slavery could not reimpose it under color of law in their legislatures. They did anyway for the next 100 years under Jim Crow until the post-World War II Supreme Court flexed the equal protection and due process clauses to dismantle it.
We will not allow you to exploit the innocence of our children to advance your agenda. When you come after our kids, we fight back. We are no longer silent. We are united. We are Mamas for DeSantis. …and we will elect @RonDeSantis President of the United States. Join our… pic.twitter.com/jo6HUATaVa — Casey DeSantis (@CaseyDeSantis) July 6, 2023 I’ll just leave that here.
Dan Pfeiffer with the bad news: Why Threads Won’t Solve the News Crisis Like more than 70 million other refugees from Twitter, I downloaded Threads — Meta’s new Twitter clone — and immediately started “threading.” This wasn’t an easy decision. I generally believe that through a toxic combination of avarice and incompetence, Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook have done tremendous damage to the world. My most recent book was subtitled “How Fox, Facebook, and the MAGA Media are Destroying America.” So, it’s safe to say that I am not exactly a Zuck stan. But despite my trepidation, I started using Threads. Compared to other erstwhile Twitter replacements — Mastodon, Bluesky, Post, etc. — Threads was a huge success. It was easy to set up and even though I joined only a few hours after it launched, many people and media outlets were already posting on the app. The utility of a Twitter-like product is dependent on two interconnected questions — one, will enough interesting people share interesting content; and two, is the audience large and engaging enough to make sharing feel worth it?
And yes, I’m talking about Chris Christie He may not try to overturn an election but if you think this guy wouldn’t use his power to go after his enemies you are mistaken. He hasn’t changed: GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie weighed in on the investigation of President Biden’s son Hunter Biden and the plea deal reached in the case, calling the probe as well as the U.S. attorney who oversaw it not truthful or incompetent. “U.S. Attorney [David] Weiss has to explain himself and he has to explain himself in public,” Christie told Shannon Bream on “Fox News Sunday. “You know, the fact is that this investigation of Hunter Biden in Delaware is either a lie or it’s incompetent.