He tried. Oh how he tried: The long line there was the Special Counsel he had Bill Barr name to “investigate the investigators” — the Durham investigation. Like all the others they came to nothing because there was nothing. He, on the other hand, tried to overturn an election and incited an insurrection and then stole a bunch of classified documents and refused to give them back. Big difference. Yuge.
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I remember it well. Sadly it’s just as relevant today as it was then:
Let The Brotherhood Of The Damned be your tour guide Kamala HQ flagged this clip of tech bro “thought leader” Curtis Yarvin advocating an American Caesar as the next step for America. This is the guy incels and billionaire tech autocrats like Peter Thiel (J.D. Vance’s mentor) look to for envisioning a future with them running the world and getting laid, like, anytime they want. Gaze upon Yarvin, all ye who dream big. TPM’s Josh Marshall quipped, “Amazing that this college sophomore level thinker is a major force in Silicon Valley.” I’m reminded of the formulaic pap The Sphinx (Wes Studi) spouted as wisdom in Mystery Men (1999). Invisible Boy (Kel Mitchell) gazes on in wonderment (or is it befuddlement?) and remarks, “It’s cool, isn’t it? It goes right up to the point of being, like, confusing.” Shallow and stupid or not, don’t think they won’t attempt something like this. Marcy Wheeler predicts they’ll try. Violently, preferably. https://mstdn.social/@lolgop@journa.host/113068278494067131 Vote like you mean it. ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● It’s Labor Day.
I was going to deconstruct Trump’s inane interview on Fox last night but Tom addressed it well earlier and I came across this and thought it was well done. Trump ran through most of his greatest hits, mangling them like an aging crooner who forgot the words. And Levin sat there like a potted palm. (I know that Steve Schmitt is an asshole — at best — but when he’s right, he’s right. Especially about Mark Levin.)
The Republicans have spent the last four years caterwauling about the “Biden Crime Family” and its alleged connections to foreign countries, especially China. They called it the greatest corruption scandal in American history. There was no evidence of this, of course. But they just repeated it relentlessly and pushed hearings and investigations until the old “where there’s smoke, there must be fire” dynamic kicked in. Well, here’s a raging, out of control conflagration and nobody cares: [W]ith Trump running for the presidency once more … foreign governments — including brand-new regimes that weren’t involved in Trump’s first whirlwind in the White House — have only spied new opportunities to burrow into his pockets and into a second administration. Many of these networks are already known, if forgotten. Trump’s financial links with regimes in places like China, Kazakhstan, or Indonesia were already reported in detail during his presidency.
Since Trump is determined that we are going to talk about the Afghanistan withdrawal let’s talk about it. Kevin Drum has the best discussion that I’ve seen: The entire operation had only one serious failure: the death of 13 American service members (and 170 Afghans) to an al-Qaeda suicide bomber at Abbey Gate. Multiple investigations by the Pentagon concluded that there wasn’t really anything that could have stopped it. Everyone processes grief differently, and I can’t bring myself to reproach the families that blame Biden for the deaths of their children. But the fact remains that Biden wasn’t at fault; the Army wasn’t at fault; and deaths in the line of duty are a natural occurrence in war. The withdrawal wasn’t handled perfectly, but there weren’t any huge mistakes. Nor was it really possible not to withdraw given the situation Biden inherited: the Taliban’s takeover was inevitable as soon as Trump signed the withdrawal agreement with them. It might well have been inevitable even without that.
Zach Beauchamp at Vox wrote this sometime back: On November 21, 1922, the New York Times published its very first article about Adolf Hitler. It’s an incredible read — especially its assertion that “Hitler’s anti-Semitism was not so violent or genuine as it sounded.” This attitude was, apparently, widespread among Germans at the time; many of them saw Hitler’s anti-Semitism as a ploy for votes among the German masses. Times correspondent Cyril Brown spends most of the piece documenting the factors behind Hitler’s early rise in Bavaria, Germany, including his oratorical skills. For example: “He exerts an uncanny control over audiences, possessing the remarkable ability to not only rouse his hearers to a fighting pitch of fury, but at will turn right around and reduce the same audience to docile coolness.” But the really extraordinary part of the article is the three paragraphs on anti-Semitism.
The Clown Prince of Grievance Every time one thinks Donald Trump cannot possibly get more demented, he surprises. It’s as if Mark Levin were interviewing The Joker. Except The Joker sports a wide, lipstick-red smile. Trump: “Who ever heard you get indicted for interfering with a presidential election where you have every right to do it.” Who ever heard you get indicted for embezzling billions from the U.S. Treasury when (immunized by “conservatives” on the U.S. Supreme Court) you “have every right to do it”? Think “the short-fingered vulgarian” won’t plunge his stubby mitts into the national cookie jar if reelected? That is, if he hopes to impress Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and get richer doing it? No one more sentient than mold slime doesn’t know that’s exactly what Trump will do. Maybe even before sending troops into the streets to apprehend and throw into concentration camps anyone brown and migranty-looking . For context, Trump was commenting on the superseding indictment filed last week by special counsel Jack Smith in the stolen documents case.
Trump is cooking up some plans of his own too He’s going to let the foxes right into the henhouse and one fox in particular: Behind closed doors, former president Donald Trump and his advisers have been talking for months about forming a commission led by prominent business executives to comb through the government books to identify thousands of programs to cut. Lately, one particularly famous candidate has made clear he’d be up for it: Elon Musk. And he may have much to gain personally from the endeavor. On several occasions, including on X, the social media platform he owns, the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive has expressed interest in being part of a “government efficiency commission” aimed at eliminating wasteful regulations and spending. Musk in August posted an apparently artificial intelligence-generated image of himself behind a lectern labeled “Department of Government Efficiency,” with the acronym DOGE — a meme-based cryptocurrency Musk has previously embraced.
It’s labor day and the blue-collar billionaire, friend of the working man has quite the record: Here’s something he said just a couple of weeks ago that ought to make his union fans think twice, but it won’t: That’s illegal, of course. But as we know, the law means nothing to Trump. Or Musk, for that matter. How about this one? Happy labor day to all the suckers and losers who work for a living.