Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Vengeance

Well, President-elect Donald Trump certainly is off to a roaring start, isn’t he? Ensconced at his Mar-a-lago beach club with the richest man in the world glued to his side every moment, he’s getting a whole new band together for his second term. Aside from his choice of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for Secretary of State, this time there’s nary an establishment figure anywhere to be seen as he chooses his new cabinet and White House staff. He’s going directly to the life-blood of MAGA and picking the most controversial, lib-triggering extremists he can find.

I mentioned his first group of nominees earlier this week none of whom have anything to particularly recommend them for these jobs but they at least have some government experience behind them. The choice of FOX News celebrity Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense was the first inkling that this was about to go seriously off the rails.

Hegseth has no experience running anything and has no government experience beyond serving as a National Guard officer in Iraq and Afghanistan and a prison guard at Guantanamo prison. From his perch as a talking head on Fox News he was able to convince former president Trump to pardon war criminals against the wishes of the Pentagon so he does have that going for him. And aside from the fact that Trump chose him because he “has the look” as Salon’s Amanda Marcotte reported, he is a fierce critic of the military brass, suggesting that at least a third of the 800 general and flag officers are “complicit” in the “politicization” of the military. He says he will clean house and that’s what Trump has hired him for.

Hegseth’s startling choice was quickly overshadowed by the absolutely shocking announcement the next day that he was naming former Hawaii representative Tulsi Gabbard as the Director of National Intelligence and (now former) Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz as Attorney General. I would guess that most of America either gasped or laughed when they heard. I suspect that only picking Georgia firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene for Surgeon General would have been more stupefying.

Gabbard never served on any of the intelligence committees during her eight years in congress and has no relevant outside experience. Her claim to fame is as a Democratic apostate with very bizarre foreign policy ideas, including a soft spot for Syrian strongman (and Russian ally) Bashar al-Assad with whom she personally met and Russian president Vladimir Putin. She claims that America wants to destroy Russia and provoked it into invading Ukraine so that it could impose draconian sanctions on the country. She has put forward Russian propaganda so often that the country’s state media even calls her “our girlfriend.” She also grew up in and remains a member of a cult called the  Science of Identity Foundation whose leader is heralded by members as a deity in his own right.

Gabbard and Trump share a weird affection for Vladimir Putin but they also share a belief that they are being persecuted by the US Intelligence community which Gabbard claims has put her on a secret domestic terrorist watch list which no one can confirm.

Kamala says she believes in freedom, but I was put on a secret terror watch list after I publicly criticized her. No one will be safe from political retaliation under a Harris administration. I put my life on the line for this country. Now the government calls me a terror threat. pic.twitter.com/3xjgjmrLhD

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) September 4, 2024

And then there’s Matt Gaetz. Apparently, he wasn’t on anyone’s short list but was on Trump’s plane and they had a chat after which Trump said he wanted him for Attorney General. He is totally unqualified for the job. He barely ever practiced law and spent his entire time in the congress as a political gadfly. He did defend Donald Trump on television and he and Trump share an antipathy for the Justice Department having both been criminally investigated. Both men remain bitter and vengeful about that which is undoubtedly the main reason Trump believes that Gaetz will be a perfect Attorney General.

A Trump adviser told Marc Caputo at the Bulwark:

“None of the attorneys had what Trump wants, and they didn’t talk like Gaetz,” the adviser said. “Everyone else looked at AG as if they were applying for a judicial appointment. They talked about their vaunted legal theories and constitutional bullshit. Gaetz was the only one who said, ‘yeah, I’ll go over there and start cuttin’ fuckin’ heads.’

This nomination isn’t some 4 dimensional chess as some are suggesting. Trump wants Gaetz confirmed and there’s no reason to think he won’t get that done.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, on Thursday Trump announced that he had chosen Robert F. Kennedy Jr for Secretary of Health and Human Services. He is a batshit conspiracy theorist who says he had a worm in his brain and admits to picking up a dead bear on the side of the road and dumping it in Central Park for a laugh.

David Corn at Mother Jones did a deep dive into RFK Jr’s twisted reality and reported that he once told Trumpy podcasters Joe Rogan and Theo Von that “a global elite led by the CIA had been planning for years to use a pandemic to end democracy and impose totalitarian control on the entire world.” He also said “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese” which is such utter nonsense it makes my head hurt to read it. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Kennedy has done some real harm already. He’s personally responsible for the deaths of more than 80 people in Samoa, most of them children, with his lies about measles vaccines:

Vaccine specialist Dr. Paul Offit says RFK Jr. is directly responsible for the deaths of 83 people in Samoa, most of whom were young children, due to his role in depressing vaccination rates on the island. @DecodingFoxNewspic.twitter.com/QICzTnBYIS

— The Intellectualist (@highbrow_nobrow) June 16, 2024

It is mind-boggling that such a person could be put in charge of the vast US government health care agencies. But all signs say that’s exactly what’s going to happen because the Republican Senate is composed of MAGA cultists and/or invertebrate cowards who are going to try to blame the Democrats for making the confirmations difficult so they can say they have no choice but to allow Trump to give them all recess appointments.

It seems clear that the only way these people will not be appointed is if Trump changes his mind and withdraws the nomination. And he has no reason to do it. Trump will never have to run for president again and in his mind his legacy is secure as the greatest president, maybe the greatest human, who ever lived. If he feels like rewarding people who supported him, he can do that but it’s purely at his discretion and he is not a generous person. Unless someone has something on him that’s so devastating that it will destroy him, he is completely without restraint. He’s already a convicted felon, a fraudster, a sexual assaulter, a proven pathological liar who stole classified documents and refused to give them back so it’s hard to imagine what that might be. At this point, Donald Trump believes he is invincible.

And what that means is that he no longer has anything to lose and there are only two things he really cares about. It’s not taxes or tariffs and it’s not even mass deportation. Sure, he’ll do those things if he can but they were mostly arguments for getting elected so he’ll leave that in the hands of his henchmen and take credit for whatever they manage to do. What he really cares about is money and revenge, the same things he’s always cared about.

He’s worth billions and he’s got the richest man in the world opening up his checkbook. He can now concentrate on what really makes him happy — vengeance. That’s what he’s hiring these crackpots to do for him. He wants payback against the DOJ for all the investigations, the military brass for refusing to abandon their oaths when he wanted them to, the intelligence community for saying the Russians were helping him, and the scientists and health professionals who exposed his lies during the pandemic. They all made him look stupid and he won’t rest until they pay for it.

The following quote is making the rounds on social media in light of these absurd cabinet nominations:

“Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.” – Hannah Arendt in “The Origins of Totalitarianism”

I don’t think I expected totalitarianism to come in service of one very petty narcissist’s wounded ego but it appears that that’s what’s happening. And right now there doesn’t seem to be any will to stop it. 

Salon

But no

How many clowns can Donald Trump fit into that car?

Quite a few, it seems. Including a man who in court documents claimed brain damage.

“The reason we know about RFK Jr’s brain worm is that he mentioned it during a divorce deposition, to argue that he was cognitively impaired and therefore had limited earning potential,” posted Catherine Rampell of The Washington Post.

The reason we know about RFK Jr’s brain worm is that he mentioned it during a divorce deposition, to argue that he was cognitively impaired and therefore had limited earning potential. Now he’s up for a cabinet postwww.nytimes.com/2024/05/08/u…

— Catherine Rampell (@crampell.bsky.social) 2024-11-15T00:00:28.682Z

Trump, himself in mental decline and famous for suggesting people inject bleach to cure COVID-19, chose Brain Worm Guy to head the Department of Health and Human Services. Like his prospective boss, RFK Jr. is a clear and present danger to public health (The Guardian):

Alastair McAlpine, a pediatric physician at British Columbia’s children’s hospital, wrote: “It is hard to overstate what a terrible decision this is. RFK Jr has no medical training. He is a hardcore anti-vaccine and misinformation peddler. The last time he meddled in a state’s medical affairs (Samoa), 83 children died of measles.”

According to FactCheck.org, in 2018, two infants in Samoa died when nurses accidentally prepared the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine with an expired muscle relaxant instead of water. Following the infants’ deaths, the Samoan government temporarily suspended the vaccination program.

The temporary suspension prompted Kennedy and his anti-vaccine nonprofit Children’s Health Defense to reportedly spread various falsehoods about vaccinations across the island, in turn resulting in a drastic decline in vaccination rates.

A year later, a measles outbreak on the island caused by a sick traveler ended up infecting more than 57,000 people and killing 83, including children.

#BREAKING RFK Jr to head the Department of Dying of a Preventable Disease

— Jeff Tiedrich (@jefftiedrich.bsky.social) 2024-11-14T21:51:49.964Z

We might have done better. We did do better, Heather Cox Richardson reminds her Substack readers:

The Biden-Harris administration today released numbers revealing that over the past four years, their policies have kick-started a boom in the creation of small businesses across the country. Since the administration took office, entrepreneurs have filed more than 20 million applications for new businesses, the most of any presidential term in history. This averages to more than 440,000 applications a month, a rate more than 90% faster than averages before the pandemic. Black business ownership has doubled, and Hispanic business ownership is up by 40% since before the pandemic. 

The administration encouraged that growth with targeted loans, tax credits, federal contracts, and support services. Small businesses are major job creators and employ about 47% of all private sector employees. 

President Joe Biden rejected the “neoliberalism” of the previous 40 years that had moved about $50 trillion dollars from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. Those embracing that theory maintain that the government should let markets operate without regulation, concentrating wealth among a few people who will invest it more efficiently than they can if the government intervenes with regulations or taxes that hamper the ability of investors to amass wealth. 

Biden and Harris returned the U.S. to the model that both parties had embraced until 1981: the idea that the government should regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, promote infrastructure, and protect civil rights. That system had reduced extremes of wealth in the U.S. after the Great Depression and given most Americans a path to prosperity. 

Biden’s policies worked, enabling the U.S. to recover from the pandemic more quickly than any other country with a modern economy, sending unemployment to historic lows, and raising wages faster than inflation for the bottom 80% of Americans. 

It has also had social effects, most notably today with the announcement from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that the U.S. is seeing a historic drop in deaths from the street drug fentanyl. From June 2023 to June 2024, deaths dropped by roughly 14.5%, translating into more than 16,000 lives saved. Experts say the drop is due to better addiction healthcare, the widespread availability of the opioid reversal drug naloxone, and lower potency of street fentanyl. 

Out of spite as much as ignorance, Trumps troop of clowns means to reverse everything the Biden administration accomplished.

Irony, we’ve repeatedly heard, is dead. So may be many who need not die in the near future. The nail in irony’s coffin is that Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, will have leading the drive for more efficient government two billionaires, “Tesla CEO Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.”

RFK Jr. is now an extinction-level threat to federal public health programs and science-based health policy – Science-Based Medicine, Nov. 4, 2024

He wouldn’t last a night as a waiter

What is a man like this doing in “public service”? He wouldn’t last a night as a waiter.

Jessica Valenti posted a TikTok that’s gone viral from a North Carolina a constituent response from a Republican state senator.

ABC11/WTVD-TV (Central NC):

RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) — A viral email from a North Carolina lawmaker’s office is raising eyebrows, after allegedly telling a North Carolina woman to leave the country for raising concerns about our state’s abortion laws.

Video of the email has been circulating all over social media, seen over 200 thousand times on TikTok. It all started from a North Carolina TikTok user Lindsay Talley, who shared an email from her friend who she says has a genetic condition creating life-threatening abnormalities. Her friend wrote to her Republican State Senator Danny Britt concerned about the state’s abortion laws and her ability to expand her family.

And in response, his official email back told her to leave the country. The email says “Thank you so much for the email, I am not quite certain how we are preventing you from expanding your family. I suggest you move to China immediately and see how that works for you. If for some reason that fails Russia is nice in the winter and Venezuela in the summer.”

The email is signed by Senator Britt but appears to be sent from Senator Britt’s legislative assistant, Camille McDougald. In a follow-up email to Talley, McDougald replied “I responded how Senator Britt wanted to me to. No further comment.”

CBS17 received a note explaining her predicament from the woman who contacted Britt. She requested to remain anonymous:

“We appreciate the support and understand the outrage from Senator Britt’s response. We want to expand our family, but do not feel the laws in North Carolina are inclusive for those who experience rare and uncommon genetic disorders that cause ‘life-altering’ and ‘life-threatening’ abnormalities. These abnormalities that are not compatible with life without extensive medical intervention.

“Many people will think of the common genetic disorders that are tested for early in pregnancy such as T18, Down Syndrome, etc. However, the rare disorders that are uncommon cannot be tested for until 16-weeks and beyond. The doctors are unclear if these types of genetic disorders are considered ‘life-threatening’.

“We are not the only family who is experiencing this type of scenario and want to bring awareness and changes for other families across North Carolina. We respect that some may not agree or fully understand this situation, however we want to emphasize the importance of relying on your doctors, your personal values, and your faith to determine what is best for your family and to do so without government interference.

“We hope that with the collaboration of our governor and local and state representatives, that we can adjust the verbiage of these laws to include genetic abnormalities so families like us can expand their family without fear of retaliation or prevention of medical care. Our intent is to bring awareness and change to better the families of North Carolina.”

Britt’s voters did their own research.

Is Musk already wearing out his welcome?

Tech billionaire Elon Musk was handed a major win Tuesday evening when President-elect Donald Trump announced that the Tesla and SpaceX CEO would co-lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency” with Vivek Ramaswamy.

The announcement reinforces the closeness Musk has managed to achieve with Trump, even after the election. But for some people in Trump’s orbit, Musk’s presence has felt overbearing. 

Musk has been so aggressive in pushing his views about Trump’s second term that he’s stepping on the toes of Trump’s transition team and may be overstaying his welcome at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s home in Palm Beach, Florida, according to two people familiar with the transition who have spent time at the resort over the past week. 

The sources said Musk’s near-constant presence at Mar-a-Lago in the week since Election Day had begun to wear on people who’ve been in Trump’s inner circle longer than he has and who see him as overstepping his role in the transition. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they’re not authorized to speak publicly. 

“He’s behaving as if he’s a co-president and making sure everyone knows it,” one of the people said. 

“And he’s sure taking lots of credit for the president’s victory. Bragging about America PAC and X to anyone who will listen. He’s trying to make President Trump feel indebted to him. And the president is indebted to no one,” this person added. 

Heh. Trump is so weak and feeble that he’s letting Musk take over. Does he have the energy to fight back? I sure hope the media asks him about this the next time they get the chance…

It’s only a matter of time before Trump gets sick of him. He’s an annoying presence anyway and once Trump gets wind of him stealing his thunder it’s going to get unpleasant. There’s a lot of talk about Musk merging Xitter with Truth Social so there might be some money on the line in which case Trump will hold back until that’s settled. But in the end he’s going to have to ease Musk out. Two malignant narcissists can’t be in the same space for long without killing each other.

Former Harry Reid staffer Adam Jentleson gave a rundown on Xitter:

A quick thread on what seems to be Trump’s plan to obliterate the Senate’s advise and consent responsibility so that he can recess appoint his cabinet, or at least those members who lack the votes to get confirmed by the Senate. 

Remember that only the Senate confirms nominees and judges. The House has no role in the confirmation process itself.

The Constitution allows POTUS to make recess appointments, ie to put nominees in place without Senate confirmation. In the past this has been used sparingly. 

For recess appointments to happen, the Senate has to be in recess. For a decade or so, the Senate has not been going into recess when it adjourns but pro forma sessions, which can last up to 3 days. Long story, it goes back to Rs blocking Obama from doing recess appointments. 

Gonna try to avoid the weeds here, but the fact that Senate has been going into pro forma sessions is why you have the odd spectacle of senators gaveling the Senate in and out of session every three days during longer “recesses” like holiday breaks. ANYWAY… 

To recess, the Senate needs to pass an adjournment resolution, which is and has always been a majority-rule vote (because nearly everything in the Senate used to be majority-rule until relatively recently). The House has to approve the Senate’s adjournment res, and vice-versa. 

The Constitution gives POTUS the authority to adjourn both the House and Senate “in case of disagreement between them” about when to adjourn and for how long. Here’s Article II, Section 3.

In theory – and I think this is Trump’s – he could adjourn the Senate even if it did not want to adjourn. The House passes an adjournment resolution, sends it to the Senate and the Senate rejects it, thus setting up the “disagreement” that triggers POTUS adjournment authority. 

At this point, the Senate would be in a formal recess and Trump could theoretically appoint as many officials as he wants. It wouldn’t matter if his nominees have the votes to be confirmed by the Senate because Trump would have taken the Senate out of the process entirely. 

While the process is a little convoluted, the precedent is not: Trump wants to end the Senate’s advise and consent role in presidential nominations. Period, end of story.

On the politics, it doesn’t seem like Trump is nominating Gaetz and Gabbard as a bankshot play where he sacrifices them to get Hegseth. I think he really wants Gaetz and Gabbard, and will do whatever it takes to get them. 

Some folks are rightly pointing out that while the adjournment resolution is a majority-rule vote on passage, it is amendable, which means Democrats could try to filibuster it by offering endless amendments – but i don’t think that changes the outcome for a few reasons.

Think of this as replicating the Senate from 1917 to the early 2000s when cloture was available but rarely used.

The opposition could delay but whenever they tired the business at hand would come up for a majority-rule vote.

This would be a talking filibuster, basically. 

So problem #1 is the standard limitation on the talking filibuster – if Dems ever ran out of energy to hold the floor and offer amendments, the adjournment resolution would could up for a majority-rule vote.  

Problem #2 is that at any point, Republicans could change the rules and to limit amendments, speeches etc., via a majority-rule vote. Even if they didn’t have the votes initially, it’s easy to see how they would get them after a prolonged delay, under pressure from Trump. 

Problem #3 – and I want to caveat this because I’m not a constitutional scholar – is that under Trump’s theory it is not clear the Senate has to pass an adjournment resolution at all, since the POTUS adjournment power kicks in in case of a disagreement between the chambers.  

This is for the courts to decide, but under Trump’s theory, the House passes an adjournment resolution and if the Senate doesn’t, that constitutes “disagreement.” Who knows if that holds up in court but if things go this way I bet Trump will test it.

If I had to guess I think that under this threat the Senate will simply confirm all of Trump’s nominations quickly and without any controversy. They will be afraid that if he adjourns the Senate to do this thing that he will not call it back into session for any reason except maybe passing a budget which he will write and for which he will expect full approval. As long as Trump has Johnson there ready and willing to create the “disagreement” he can simply make congress irrelevant. The acquiescent House Speaker makes that all possible under the Constitution. I can’t imagine this SCOTUS saying otherwise.

So, l look for Gaetz and Hegseth and Gabbard to be easily confirmed and watch as the Democratic voters who will understandably fail to understand the arcane dynamic I just described, get more and more disillusioned with the Democratic party and withdraw even further from politics.

Neat trick. The only thing that could stop it is if Johnson refuses or the Senate Republican majority rebels. Neither of those things are remotely likely.

Perfectly fine. Nothing weird happening here in the United States. Move along:

A retired U.S. Army officer who clashed with senior officials in Donald Trump’s first White House looked into acquiring Italian citizenship in the run-up to this month’s election but wasn’t eligible and instead packeda “go bag” with cash and a list of emergency numbers in case he needs to flee…

And a former U.S. official who signed a notorious October 2020 letter suggesting that emails purportedly taken from a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden could be Russian disinformation is seeking a passport from a European country, uncertain about whether the getaway will prove necessary but concluding, “You don’t want to have to scramble.”

All spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid undermining their own preparations. The planning, they acknowledge, responds to a hypothetical worst case in which a second Trump presidency ushers in systematic suppression of free speech and criminalization of dissent. Trump’s victory alone has set off alarms among some of his most outspoken critics, as well as within parts of the intelligence and national security communities he denigrated as the “deep state” and accused of subverting his agenda.

Their anxiety has intensified amid the drumbeat of picks for critical Cabinet posts. Trump said Wednesday he would make Rep. Matt Gaetz, the Republican firebrand from Florida, his attorney general and Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii and fervent critic of the foreign policy establishment who told world leaders to “embrace the spirit of aloha” after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, his director of national intelligence, a role overseeing the nation’s 18 spy agencies.

“I feel like I’ve stepped through the looking glass,” said the retired Army officer who considered Italian citizenship. Unlike the ordinary Americans who joke each election cycle about leaving the country when their preferred candidate loses, this group of anxious retired officers or government officials includes people whom the incoming president and his allies havesubjected to withering criticism. Even before the election, some were subpoenaed by Trump-aligned members of Congress. Others were placed on watch lists compiled by pro-Trump activists.

Scarcely any described firm plans to leave the country. But they’re also not brushing off the threats as they keep track of personnel named to influential government jobs. Following the selection of Gaetz to lead the Justice Department, many are watching whether Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist who appended a “deep state” list to his 2023 book, “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy,” lands a senior role at a top agency such as the FBI.

Matt Gaetz rode on Trump’s plane yesterday and they had a long talk. Trump then nominated him for AG, surprising his own staff who didn’t know he was under consideration. It’s clear to me that he simply promised Trump that he would go hard after all of his critics without any disclaimers about that pesky “rule of law” or the constitution which, I imagine, his other potential nominees had done.

They’re going to do it, either at DOJ or at the DOD where Trump wants to install his wingnut buddy Hegseth. All these people are right to be concerned.

Josh Marshall has an insightful piece up today called “Reckonings of Contempt” in which he discusses how so many people, including many liberals, hold the Democrats. He looks at some of the many pieces that are offering up criticism of the Harris campaign and the Democrats’ failure in general starting off with a piece by Eric Levitz at Vox which, as I have done here as have many others, looks at the global anti-incumbency mood as well as the more ominous implication of rightward move among the working class of all races and ethnicities. Pretty standard stuff and I think probably correct. However:

Then there’s this piece in Axios. It probably won’t surprise you that I wasn’t terribly impressed with it.

It starts …

Democrats are a lost party. Come January, they’ll have scant power in the federal government, and shriveling clout in the courts and states … The traditional media structure sympathetic to their views, and hostile to Trump’s, was shattered … But the road to the Democrats’ Damascus requires deep, honest self-reflection — and, many party insiders tell us, entirely new leadership … When journalists held up a mirror, they often looked away … Harris just lost what Democrats considered an eminently winnable race, despite relatively light scrutiny and more money than any candidate in U.S. history.

What’s notable is that the Axios piece isn’t so different from stuff you can read in publications at least notionally friendly to Democrats. Another example is this one by Alex Shephard in The New Republic. The tone in both cases is what can only be called one of contempt. But it’s contempt of a particular sort.

Marshall concedes, of course, that losing elections often produce contemptuous retrospectives of the campaigns, the politicians, strategists and pundits who they believe should have seen it all ahead of time (even when they, themselves, did not.) But that’s not what he’s talking about here:

When you sift through the tone, the nature of the indictments and its totality, it is really more a contempt for Democrats generally, a contempt for the kind of people who make up Democratic majorities when they win and minorities when they lose — their condescension and obliviousness, their empty bromides and obsessions, above all their failure. We hear a lot of derision for the “resistance” and especially “resistance moms,” over-educated and out of touch, whiners, stuck in the “MSNBC bubble.” In a Washington Post article whose headline said the Democratic Party is now in “shambles,” Joe Manchin’s chief of staff Chris Kofinis put it in a multiply revealing line: “If you try to win elections by talking to the elites of this country, you’re going to get your ass kicked — there are not enough Beyonces, Oprahs or Hollywood elites to elect anyone.”

Many of the blows in these write-ups remind us of the way even some of the kinder young boys on an elementary school playground will be motivated to get in a punch, while the animal spirits are running, on that one boy who is always the target of bullying. It’s the lure of the predator.

Considering that the tone of so much of those criticisms are sexist and misogynistic — everything is so female coded — that the better analogy would be when some of the kinder boys join in on a sexual assault on a girl — while the animal spirits are running, if you know what I mean.

As Josh says, these are not the type of people you want to listen to in order to improve or correct mistakes.

I found this clarifying. I have been distinctly uncomfortable with the whole “we must find ourselves a Joe Rogan” a guy’s guy who can talk to the men who we desperately need to appease in order to win elections. It’s not because I don’t think liberals and progressives need to adapt themselves to a new media landscape and claim some of that territory for ourselves. This is a new world and the old so-called liberal media is dysfunctional. But the canonization of the dumbshit bro talk as the the only way to do it strikes me as wishful thinking on the part of a whole lot of lefties (you know who you are) who really relate to that stuff and think the whole “girlification” of the Democrats is a drag. The fact that the majority of Democrats are women is considered a liability apparently. Good to know.

There needs to be some creativity here, people. Running with stupid (or pretending to) isn’t going to get it done. Looking down on the Democratic party for not being the kind of people you want to have a beer with is well… stupid. This isn’t about your social life.

Marshall goes on to offer up some of his own analysis on what may have gone wrong and it’s worth listening to. Click over for the whole thing. It’s really good.

As he says, “Voters often want new leaders. But things are always a bit out of joint when it’s leaders who want new voters.”

We have to remember that, traditionally, an incoming administration awards the various constituencies that got it elected with some sort of representation.So the tech bros get Elon, anti-vax freaks get RFK Jr, dog killers get Noem, white nationalists get Hegseth, pedophiles get Gaetz…

— Kevin M. Kruse (@kevinmkruse.bsky.social) 2024-11-13T23:50:51.147Z

And Russia gets Tulsi!

Alex Jones found out

NBC News:

The Onion, the satirical news company that repeatedly spoofed conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, has won the bankruptcy auction for control over his media empire — most notably InfoWars, the far-right, conspiracy-minded website that served as Jones’ primary online platform.

Jones announced the sale on X Thursday morning.

“I just got word 15 minutes ago that my lawyers and folks met with the U.S. trustee over our bankruptcy this morning and they said they are shutting us down even without a court order this morning,” Jones said.

“The Connecticut democrats with The Onion newspaper bought us,” he added.

For those needing a reminder of what this is all about, The Washington Post explains:

Infowars and its property are among the personal assets Jones was forced to sell in a court-ordered auction after a bankruptcy judge in June sought to compel Jones to paythe roughly $1.5 billion in damages he owes for claiming the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax.

Families from the Connecticut-based defamation lawsuit against Jones agreed to accept a smaller recovery to increase the overall value of the Onion’s bid, which enabled its success, according to a Thursday statement from the families’ lawyers.

The auction win gives the Onion control of Infowars’ website, archive, mailing list and production equipment, among other assets, ending Jones’s control of the media company after 25 years.

The “global conglomerate” that purchased InfoWars explains the decision on The Onion’s website:

Today we celebrate a new addition to the Global Tetrahedron LLC family of brands. And let me say, I really do see it as a family. Much like family members, our brands are abstract nodes of wealth, interchangeable assets for their patriarch to absorb and discard according to the opaque whims of the market. And just like family members, our brands regard one another with mutual suspicion and malice.

All told, the decision to acquire InfoWars was an easy one for the Global Tetrahedron executive board.

Founded in 1999 on the heels of the Satanic “panic” and growing steadily ever since, InfoWars has distinguished itself as an invaluable tool for brainwashing and controlling the masses. With a shrewd mix of delusional paranoia and dubious anti-aging nutrition hacks, they strive to make life both scarier and longer for everyone, a commendable goal. They are a true unicorn, capable of simultaneously inspiring public support for billionaires and stoking outrage at an inept federal state that can assassinate JFK but can’t even put a man on the Moon.

Through it all, InfoWars has shown an unswerving commitment to manufacturing anger and radicalizing the most vulnerable members of society—values that resonate deeply with all of us at Global Tetrahedron.

No price would be too high for such a cornucopia of malleable assets and minds. And yet, in a stroke of good fortune, a formidable special interest group has outwitted the hapless owner of InfoWars (a forgettable man with an already-forgotten name) and forced him to sell it at a steep bargain: less than one trillion dollars.

Make no mistake: This is a coup for our company and a well-deserved victory for multinational elites the world over.

What’s next for InfoWars remains a live issue. The excess funds initially allocated for the purchase will be reinvested into our philanthropic efforts that include business school scholarships for promising cult leaders, a charity that donates elections to at-risk third world dictators, and a new pro bono program pairing orphans with stable factory jobs at no cost to the factories.

As for the vitamins and supplements, we are halting their sale immediately. Utilitarian logic dictates that if we can extend even one CEO’s life by 10 minutes, diluting these miracle elixirs for public consumption is an unethical waste. Instead, we plan to collect the entire stock of the InfoWars warehouses into a large vat and boil the contents down into a single candy bar–sized omnivitamin that one executive (I will not name names) may eat in order to increase his power and perhaps become immortal.

All will be revealed in due time. For now, let’s enjoy this win and toast to the continued consolidation of power and capital.

Infinite Growth Forever,

Bryce P. Tetraeder, Global Tetrahedron CEO

Gotta love The Onion. Now more than ever.

Rolling onto their backs for the big dog

Donald Trump is an idiot. He’s always been an idiot. And much, much worse. That much he’s proved. What’s kept him from falling out of the lifestyle into which he was born is Daddy Fred’s money and his feral instincts honed by Roy Cohn. Trump exerts dominance as instictively as Maverick flies jets. Don’t think. Just do. Not thinking is the easiest part.

Trump nominating a rogues’ gallery of misfits and lackeys to his cabinet is another loyalty test for a man who offers none in return, as Ezra Klein insists. But that’s just the first layer of this onion.

[Having trouble with embeds this morning.]

The second layer is Trump’s goal to demoralize any opposition, tweets Trump niece Mary Trump. “Elevating incompetent fascists” like Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, and Matt Gaetz to the cabinet is meant to humiliate his opponents.

He’s gotten away with fomenting an insurrection and stealing state secrets. Now he’s testing how much lower he can go.

Thank you, sir. May I have another?

Getting the GOP-led Senate to confirm these clowns to the president’s cabinet is the third layer. It’s the dominance move. It will show Trump he has broken his allies’ will to his own. If they will roll over on their backs and pee in the air when he barks (submissive peeing), there’s no Trump whim to which they won’t accede. Confirming the unconfirmable is not the floor. It’s the celiing.

Republicans in the House are already on their backs, and Trump hasn’t even started barking.

There will be some opposition. But if they don’t roll over, they’ll be gone swiftly. Elon Musk is already making noise about funding primary opponents to Republicans who won’t kowtow low enough.

Stay tuned.