"I Watched the Democratic Collapse in Florida. I Fear It’s Happening Nationally."
Plus: Aleppo Fell. The Rest of the Middle East Is Wobbling.
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STEVE SCHALE: I Watched the Democratic Collapse in Florida. I Fear It’s Happening Nationally.
IT IS TIME TO STOP talking about 2024.
Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of opinions about the campaign and the years leading up to it. But that isn’t the conversation Democrats need to be having. The real conversation is how my party went from the broadest electoral mandate of the previous twenty-five years, with the biggest majority in the Senate in the previous thirty years, to a shell of itself—a political organization that can hardly be classified as a national entity anymore.
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Bulwark Podcast with Tim Miller: Rep. Mikie Sherrill: Who Will Be In Charge of Our National Security? [YouTube]
The Next Level: Sorry to Pierce Your Bubble 🔐 [YouTube]
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The Return of Ron DeSantis? (A.B. & Bill's Take) [YouTube]
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ROBERT KUBINEC: Aleppo Fell. The Rest of the Middle East Is Wobbling.
THE SUDDEN LOSS OF ALEPPO, Syria’s second-largest city, to a ragtag group of rebels stunned much of the world this past week. After years of gruesome warfare, the Syrian Civil War had seemed to reach a stalemate—until anti-regime forces recaptured a major city. Now the army loyal to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, backed by Iran and Russia, may be on the run from a Turkish-backed militia with radical Islamist ties.
🚨OVERTIME🚨
Happy Wednesday! While my Cleveland compatriots on the east side battle record Lake Effect Snow, no accumulations yet, just cold. So cold that schools are closed tomorrow, though it’s the wind gusts that are the cause for concern.
Up First… It’s Mona Charen on NPR’s Up First.
I want to believe… but my educated guess is that the weird drones in New Jersey are law-enforcement related. It’s time for a national drone registry. You should be able to see anything capable of seriously harming another person or infringing their rights on an app like FlightRadar24. That’s just my $.02.
Move over Hunter deButts… After an embarrassing fiasco yesterday revealed that Ana Navarro-Cardenas uses ChatGPT for research (pro tip: this is a bad idea!) and doesn’t check it against other sources. Navarro-Cardenas claimed that President Woodrow Wilson pardoned his brother in law, Hunter deButts1. Not kidding!
Maybe don’t use Chat GPT as a search engine?
And also yesterday, another media personality, Charles P. Pierce, Esquire’s resident crank, claimed on their website that President George H.W. Bush pardoned his son, Neil. Unlike Hunter deButts, exists, but there was no such pardon. Rather than retract the piece, Esquire just edited it. #badform.
“‘I'll get sober if I get this job’”…. is not how sobriety works, Jane Coaston observes on Pete Hegseth’s telling promise to Sen. Roger Wicker not to drink if confirmed.
But if it’s not Hegseth… And it turns out to be Ron DeSantis for Defense, Sen. John Fetterman is actually considering supporting him. On one condition: “…if he finally admits that he has lifts in his boots. ... I’m sure he does. Maybe three inches, four inches at least.”
Why do ‘Crunchy Moms’ … love RFK Jr.? The Wall Street Journal talks to some. (tl;dr is he takes quack concerns seriously and runs with them!)
Meanwhile, in Cincinnati… Joe Burrow bought a literal $3M Bat Mobile. Sadly, it’s not street legal, he says.
The Sportscaster Who Scored Big Writing About Spoons, Urinals and Coat Hangers… Adrian Chiles commands a cult audience in the U.K. for his musings on minutiae. (WSJ🎁 )
You haven’t heard the last… of Kelly Loeffler, the year-long Georgia Senator whom Trump is tapping to run the Small Business Administration. Who better than somebody who self-identifies as “More Conservative than Attila the Hun” and makes commercials to that effect?
Felony Charge… Over Raising Cane’s Dipping Sauce Dispute (The Smoking Gun)
The glorious return… of Chi-Chi’s?! (WKRC)
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If there really was a pardon of a guy named Hunter deButts, a lot of kids would have remembered that name. Like Ima Hogg.
