Tuesday’s Tabs
- Via Kevin Drum: Here’s the latest version of “Kids these days have lousy work skills”. It is as if every generation forgets that at one point they were “the kids.”
- Speaking of Texas A&M, via the Texas Tribune: Top Texas A&M officials were involved in botched recruiting of journalism professor, who will receive $1 million settlement.
- Via the NYT: $60 Million Refund Request Shows Financial Pressure on Trump From Legal Fees.
- Via the NYT: Trump’s Legal Team Is Enmeshed in a Tangle of Possible Conflicts.
- Via the Daily Beast: ‘Come Here, Big Tits’: Rudy Giuliani’s Sex Abuse Accuser Has the Tapes.
- Via NBC News: Gay Louisiana doctor says he’s leaving the state over its ‘discriminatory’ legislation.
- Via Politico: Ramaswamy: I ‘don’t believe’ the 9/11 Commission report.
- Via WaPo: John Eastman shows the path from misinformation to revolution.
“There’s actually a provision in the Declaration of Independence that says, you know, a people will suffer abuses while they remain sufferable. Or: tolerable. While they remain tolerable,” he said at one point. “But at some point, the abuses would become so intolerable that it is not only their right, but their duty to alter or abolish the existing government. So that’s the question. Have the abuses and the threat of abuses become so intolerable that we have to be willing to push back?”
Well, millions more Americans said that, no, they haven’t been, and tens of millions of others didn’t feel any urgency to cast a ballot. Eastman’s argument here is, in essence, that a minority that can’t win electoral support should have the right to “push back” against the majority. After all, the left “poses an existential threat to the very survivability” of the country, as he said! How could he not try to keep Trump in office?
As he put it to Klingenstein, there has been “an exponential increase” in the radicalization of the left over the last few years.
“You’re going to let 50-year-old men, naked, into teenage girls’ showers at public pools?” he said, echoing overheated but increasingly common right-wing rhetoric. “Or — or drag queens doing story hours to 6-year-olds?”
What choice did he have but to try to overthrow Biden’s election?
In the article on Ramaswamy, he doesn’t just question the 9/11 commission, he also casts doubt on the moon landings:
This reminds me of when some Republicans were saying about Obama, “He says he isn’t a Muslim, and I take him at his word.”
This is the method where you try to have it both ways when it comes to conspiracy theories. You imply–falsely–that there’s no evidence one way or the other, then you act like you’re choosing to give the person the benefit of the doubt. It’s the coward’s way of pandering to crackpots.
With regard to Bump’s WaPo editorial, I am struck by the constant exchange between the right and left that the other side plans to end Democracy as we know it. We all do it here about Trump and Eastman is making the same argument about Democrats.
I think the difference is that Trump is literally explaining how he intends to end democracy and, frankly Eastman’s argument appears to be that his side is entitled to abolish the existing government if it is intolerable to his constituency, i.e. if it democratically votes for a different set of policies than Eastman’s constituents want. Eastman (and his ilk), on the other hand, constantly point to some bogeyman version of the radical left for which there is zero evidence that they control any significant percentage of the Democratic Party, let alone are on the verge of changing America. Hell, when was the last time when even AOC, Jayapal or Bernie was the face of a Democratic legislative agenda.
Yet again, every complaint by people like Eastman and Trump is a projection.
Ramalamadingdong;
Just more of MAGA working from their emotions and not…you know…facts.
POLITICO via Political Wire notes that Eastman has asked for a delay in his CA disbarment proceedings. He says he can’t properly defend himself as he may have criminal charges pending so he’d have to plead the fifth to disbarment questions. On the one hand, he’s probably right legally that it should be delayed. On the other hand it makes the need for eventual disbarment sound pretty open and shut. Making Attorneys Get Attorneys. And may I add that this couldn’t all happen to a more deserving person.
You know, I just have to note that Eastman uses the phrase “teenage girls” in the exact same mendacious way as GWB used “weapons of mass destruction”. Because well, a 19-year-old adult woman is still, in some sense, a “teenager”. And in a club locker room, yes, they would all be there together. And yet “teenage girls” is meant to make you think of a 13-year-old girl.
You know, just as how “weapons of mass destruction” referred to chemical weapons, but was meant to make people think of nuclear weapons.
And furthermore, even the threat of chemical/biological weapons turned out to be way, way overblown. Just like the normal intelligence procedure had concluded. But that had to be wrong so they cherry-picked stuff because ‘deep state’ or something.
I’m gonna go through the logic, but I have no illusion that I’ll ever change Eastman’s mind. But there might be others on the fence.
* No trans woman is going to ever risk getting outed in a bathroom or locker. They will find ways to not be there.
* Did you ever consider there might be 50-year-old lesbians in that locker room? Who are enjoying the view, probably surreptitiously?
* The issue is not someone’s identity. The issue is whether someone is causing a problem.
* If someone comes in to a bathroom or locker room actually meaning to cause a problem or take advantage, I feel that you would be glad if some of the trans women I know were in there with you. They would be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
Not emotions you woke SJW libtard, alternative facts.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Ah…my bad!
In addition to everything else, the man has no class. “Big Tits” is a terrible nickname, even if he is addressing the tits.
Where is the romance? Where is the poetry? Where is anything even remotely clever?
He’s like a 1970s caricature of a creepy old man.
@Gustopher: A while back, shortly following the incident where shit-colored dye was running down his cheek at a stop-the-steal event, one podcaster I watch compared Rudy to an ogre. He didn’t mean that word in the sense of “reprehensible person,” though of course Rudy is that, too, in spades. He meant a Shrek-style ogre, a guy you suspect has a showerhead installed in his home that spurts crap instead of water. He’s a gross, disgusting, gag-worthy person on every level. And the weird thing about this sexual-harassment case is that he seems like even more of a cartoon slug in private.
@Gustopher:
I much prefer “sugar tits”
@Daryl: “Stevia Tits”for those watching their sugar intake.
@Gustopher:
Splenda Tits could be taken a couple of ways.
@Joe:
The difference is when bigoted corporate shill Republicans like Eastman and Trump talk about the left ending democracy as we know it, what they’re mad about is center-left’s success at making the US more democratic.
As a former McCain voter turned doctrinaire liberal Democrat, I do fully intend to keep life working to change American democracy as we know it. Because American democracy as we know it has meant concentrating power and influence in the hands of a few, namely white conservatives. With exceptions here and there, “American democracy” has thus not been democratic, instead building a government responsive mostly to the priorities of rich, straight white male Christians.
The new right is infuriated at the rising power and influence of the rest of us: women, people of color, alphabet people, and educated whites who increasingly see that uplifting less privileged will benefit all everyone longterm — economically, environmentally, and socially.
Republicans, their hatemongering base, and their corporate backers can’t stand that. So they are hellbent on reversing America’s drive towards a more just, tranquil, egalitarian society — a society that is truly democratic. Today’s “conservatives” (lol) know their policies are unpopular and demographic trends are not on their side. They thus intend to turn America towards proto-fascist and authoritarian extremism. They’re upset our republic is no longer working just for their preferred fake-Christian white supremacy.
@Gustopher:
Trademark this. Lolololol
@CSK: Hahahaha…..Splenda Tits would be an awesome stage name for a splendidly-endowed stripper. 😛 😛
@Gustopher:
I guess you’re more of a “who has put pubic hair on my Coke” kind of guy?
@Jax:
For some reason “Turmeric Testicles” and “Dill Dick” just doesn’t have the same ring to them. Women today really don’t understand how privileged they are. Men can’t even get a decent objectifying anatomical nickname.
ETA: Cardamom Cock?
@Kurtz: YES!
Whatever else you have to say about Clarance Thomas, the man has a way with words. Awful meanings behind his words, but a bit of absurdist poetry of horror to it.
“Who put this pubic hair on my coke?”
You shudder at the possibilities. Did he do it himself? Was it left by some Suessian villain?
And then you wonder if there was some unfortunate PR flack at Coca-Cola who had to respond to this, distancing their product from pubic hair. Or worse, some unfortunate PR hack at Pepsi trying to figure out how their product could get that level of attention.
Pepsi: The Choice of A New Generation That Shaves Down There.
@Kurtz: Well, you’re not thinking far enough ahead, nor have you watched enough Magic Mike. Picture this…..Randy Rosemary, Turmeric Tom, and Dilly Dan set out to win a baking and pickling competition, only it’s ALLLLLL strip club innuendoes.
So much flour to be spilled. 😛 😛
@Kurtz:
Maybe it’s just me, but stodgy grammar and sex don’t mix well for me.
Then again, maybe it’s just because I’m having trouble today fixing agreements after editing.
@Kurtz: You’re not the audience. The baking ladies are. 😉
Did I forgot to mention the Do the Dishes guy? That’s pretty hot. 😛