The antisemitism and neo-nazism among the young Republicans is a huge problem. Here in Florida there have been news stories made of not one but two instances of young college Republicans going full Nazi, earlier at Florida International University (FIU) and more recently at the University of Florida.
Kent is part of that movement, along with folks like Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes.
Does this just come with the territory? I am confused as to how this suddenly became cool and edgy with this crowd. Antisemitism is one of the oldest, tiredest and most worn out forms of bigotry out there and yet like a dog to its vomit.
As Charlie Sykes has pointed out, there has always been some fringe element like this in the Republican Party. What was once a small recessive gene has become larger and a lot less on the fringe.
They don't know how old antisemitism is. To them history began roughly when they were born. Nothing that happened before then has any relevance to them and probably isn't real to them...just some lies told by people they don't know or respect.
Many of the statements made about the IDF, recently in Gaza and over the years, have had a strong resemblance to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion stuff.
Except the IDF has committed war crimes in Gaza and lied about what their soldiers did, and had to change the story as more evidence came out — evidence they thought didn’t exist — most notably the attack and massacre of the paramedics and Red Crescent workers on 03/23/2025. This doesn’t make me confident I can trust what the IDF says about their conduct. But that isn’t antisemitism but rather the Israeli army not being honest about their conduct and worried more how that looks than accountability for what happened. Demanding accountability from Israel is not the veering into the Protocols of Zion.
There ought to be a way for people to voice criticism of the Israeli government's conduct of the war on Gaza. The destruction of so much infrastructure and the high civilian casualties in Gaza have been appalling.
Criticizing Israel for that is justified, I think.
The antisemitism shown by those college students is something darker and unacceptable.
Quite frankly, the more you and others conflate criticism of Israel and antisemitism, the more claims of antisemitism ring hollow and people learn to ignore them. Please read the story of the boy who cried wolf. Claims of antisemitism related to Israel are already to the point where I and many others begin with a strong presumption that they are made in bad faith.
That presumption has rarely been shown to be wrong.
If it were only the Republicans. The antisemitism is coming from all areas, I think. But yes, these young college clubs of rich kids get a lot of press for their reprehensible views. I somehow suspect the poor kids aren't doing much better.
Tucker Carlson. What do we do if he's our next POTUS? Things can get worse. I mean, I try to remind myself that good things can happen. But with Tucker Carlson in charge? Nope, no they can't.
Tucker for President would present a humorous conundrum for Faux News - once one of his own who became its sacrificial lamb - if it ever started to look like he could win the GOP primary - oh lordy....
Imagine A25 pushing Trump out giving us Vance as POTUS. Who would he pick as a VP? Tucker? There is no respite except drawing out the next couple of years into a legal challenge gridlock.
I think this war opens up the very real possibility that Carlson campaigns for president on an anti-war platform, ha ha ha ha ha giddy laughter ... what is happening here?
I had those same doubts about just about every single elected Republican, and yet there they are, trying to cancel measles vaccines and kissing Putin's ass and somehow not being ridden out of town on a rail.
At one time people laughed about Donald Trump. Then he is elected twice. Carlson is such a low possibility but given American voters lately, it can't be dismissed.
Nah. Not electable. His maniacal cackle is worse than Ms. Harris's chuckle was, and that laugh was a big reason she was unelectable. No worries. ( /s )
(Okay, typed in sarcastic font but it occurs to me that many American voters might really choose candidates based on personal mannerisms rather than experience, ideology, or policy proposals - so who knows at this point. )
It’s sad. AIPAC is in bed with the leadership, but the young guns are all Full throated Nazi’s on Crack. It should be interesting watching as this movement self implodes!
What’s the adage: “Beware of what you wish for”……:)
There’s nothing new here. Antisemitism is a tried and true centuries old tradition among people looking for a scapegoat for their self sabotaged lives.
Tom Lehrer put it this way over 60 years ago:
Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics
And the Catholics hate the Protestants
And the Hindus hate the Moslems
And everybody hates the Jews
Does anyone think that we’re in the times we’re in because people are mentally and emotionally healthier??
Neither are the grown-ups alright. In the '30s, Heinrich Himmler maintained a slush fund. Corporations, including American corporations, were required to contribute on a regular basis as a condition of doing business in Germany. The money was used to fund the SS. Currently, Trump appears to be working on a scheme in which companies wishing for favor use Trump's stablecoin, USD1, to do business. US dollars are what makes stable coins stable, and the issuer of stable coins must hold the real money until and unless someone wants to redeem. While the cash is held, it is invested in US Treasuries, or similar. In just a year, USD1 has gone from nothing to holding more than $5 billion, which earns the owners of the fund hundreds of millions per year in interest. Chengpeng Zhao, of Binance, and the UAE have already been beneficiaries. It is reported that the nation Pakistan has pledged to use USD1 for all foreign transfers.
Just wait, this is just cover for more white supremacy action against the 'browns and blacks'. Even browns and blacks have their anti Semitic adherents. This reminds me of when the GOP used anti abortion rhetoric as a more acceptable moral issue to rally around as cover for their real issue, maintaining segregated private schools. The Klan was also anti semitic, but Jews were never the real target.
As bad as the last ten years have been, the next ten years could be worse, as the current crop of young Republicans are very online, they're almost all men, and their entire political experience has been in a post-Trump world. And all day they marinate in gamergate-style edgelord nihilism, where it's a perpetual contest to see who can be the most antisemitic, racist, and misogynist. The GOP of the future is going to be even crazier.
"If only Trump had read this paragraph before launching his hubristic war."
If only trump could read. As we know, he even has difficulty with the teleprompter. Even if he could read, he wouldn't understand. Even if he understood, as is increasingly evident, he wouldn't remember. Even if he remembered, there is little reason to think that it would shape his actions. Those all emanate from his (ample) gut.
I am unable to determine if frump is a 10-year-old spoiled brat or a 79-year-old mentally ill evil man or the combination. I am so confused why the media ignores the obvious decline with vocabulary, memory, and obvious physical declines including sleeping in public.
Our current president now lives totally in his own fantasy world. He has constructed his own version of history in which he never lost an election, he never knew Epstein, NATO never came to our aid, and he carefully planned the war in Iran and was prepared for every possible response. He presents a fantasy present, that he are about to finish the war, take over Cuba, and fight the war in Iran until they.... do something he will decide on soon. His view of the future is that he will be president forever and own all the oil reserves in the world. Anyone who questions these fantasies will be threatened with. the loss of their job, public humiliation, and perhaps bodily harm, but that won't be his fault.
I think that is why we get so much explanation that he was going with his gut and he will know it when he thinks it.
He does not do the deep consideration of all that he has in front of him to make a decision. That has been confirmed by most everyone that has been in his White House.
Decisions are made on what he wants to happen, specifically what will make him look good, richer and more powerful.
Agree. Reading Churchill elegant, concise and inspiring prose -then hearing or reading Trump's latest bleat, tweet or blurt or belch is just sickening by comparison.
If you mentioned Winston Churchill to Trump, he wouldn't know who he was, except that he must be a very very bad person fancy woke show-off using big words and complete sentences that are not even in praise Of our dear Donald. What a loser!
It shows how far America has gone in what Karl Popper,in his 1946 book The Open Society and It's Enemies", called the "revolt against reason".
He was writing about Germany in the 1930's and warning democracies that it could all happen again if they didn't learn from the past. We didn't, and it will.
RE: The NYT report of "the second-biggest four-week [gas price] increase in at least 30 years" with only "Hurricane Katrina [hitting] prices harder during that span."
I guess we should actually count ourselves at least a *little bit* lucky at this point, considering the severity of the continuous, unrelenting and unpredictable gusts from the Category 5 blowhard that's been back in the Oval Office for a little over a year now.
But sadly, I'm guessing FEMA will be of little use at all in helping to clean up the mess after this latest disaster.
It doesn't end with the economic or political ramifications. I'm certain somewhere in the middle east someone(s) are coming together to start planning new waves of terrorist attacks here in the US - probably years from fruition, but I'm certain we've fed the beast.
I had a great laugh when Irish Taoiseach, Michael Martin was defending a British Prime Minister on Saint Patrick's Day against Trump's foolish rants. I guess I wasn't too surprised that Trump didn't know the President of Ireland (a primarily ceremonial post) is a woman. He's lucky that President Catherine Connolly wasn't there. She doesn't suffer fools gladly.
Nick Catoggio in the Dispatch had a long, excellent piece on the Joe Kent resignation. The following are the concluding paragraphs:
Is Stewart Rhodes an earnest postliberal chud? Indubitably. But I think he also senses that soon there’ll be more political juice to be squeezed from the postliberal right by being anti-Israel than by being pro-Trump. The same goes for Joe Kent, who’s never had as much clout as he has now—so much so, I think, that if and when “America Firsters” start sniffing around for a candidate to challenge Vance from the right in 2028, he’ll be an obvious alternative if Carlson refuses to do it.
Especially if this already unpopular war goes bad. Kent is shrewdly pulling the ripcord at a moment when Trump is poised to use ground troops to end the regime’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz; deploying infantry polled terribly when it was hypothetical and will poll catastrophically if it ends with American soldiers being killed. The more dangerous this conflict gets for the United States, the more prescient and defensible Kent’s resignation will seem to many in hindsight. Even to some Republicans who are backing Trump for now.
And honestly, as a matter of basic political calculation, which sounds better? Sticking around as counterterrorism chief for a president whom you know will blame you if Iran manages to pull off a terror attack on U.S. soil? Or bailing out now and having endless bouquets thrown at you by Israel’s many Americans critics for demagoguing the Jewish state so unapologetically?
In a party dominated by postliberal chuds, there’s really no downside to what Kent did. I’m sure his interview with Tucker is already booked.
Nick has seen the MAGA crackup coming for some time. It helps that he's more cynical than JVL when it comes to the moral poverty of the GOP and its voters.
The Dispatch drives me crazy, but if they were all more like Nick Catoggio, I'd probably subscribe as they'd drive me crazy much less. They've grown on me this year, I don't know exactly why. They seem less fascist-curious under Trump II.
I subbed for a year, and every time I read anything that wasn't Nick, I was yelling at my screen. They are the epitome of the anti-anti heads up their own asses, sniffing their own farts cohort. it was just infuriating to read any of them.
Part of it's KDW's (Williamson's) willingness to mince even fewer words than he used to.
Though he had a reputation for not mincing words before, writing for a readership inevitably depends somewhat on what the readership is willing to hear. Someone relatively willing to broach tough truths about a coalition to those in the coalition may still mince words to do it. (Back when I read NR with any regularity, I had supposed the readership might be ready to hear some of the warnings KDW was already giving. Apparently a lot less ready than I had expected!) He's mincing less now.
I used to read The Dispatch, but they seemed too wanly anti-Trump for me. Sarah Isgur seemed like she thought Trump was just a speed bump which conservatism would soon get over. Maybe Trump 2.0 has wised them up,
"If only Trump had read this paragraph before launching his hubristic war. If only Pete Hegseth had read it before boasting about our inevitable success. I suppose it’s out of the question that either would have done so. But is it out of the question to look forward to a day when we will once again have leaders who might not only know the name Churchill, but have learned from him?"
Bill, come on. You know that to read, and more importantly, understand Churchill one needs more than third grade reading and comprehension skills, while learning from him is at least Junior High School (and I mean no disrespect to third graders or Junior High School students).
Probably all Trump knows about Churchill is that he is revered as a great leader. He has no idea that that leadership was employed in the defeat of men like him.
Andrew: "Trump, he wrote, had been “deceived” by “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media” into abandoning his antiwar instincts and charging into an unwinnable conflict in Iran."
Someone should ask Kent what evidence is there that Trump had antiwar instincts to begin with. After all, Trump's the same guy that threatened to take Greenland by force and is the same guy that attacked Iran last summer. If Trump were antiwar, why is Canada running scenarios of a US attack? Trump *ran* on being antiwar, but like everything else, you can't believe a word coming out of his mouth.
The thing that I've always found amusing about guys like Kent is they believe we can't draw our own informed conclusions about how Trump behaves.
Kent, like so many, can’t simply say “the President was wrong.” It’s always “bad advice.” But if DJT is the mega-genius strategist, bad advice wouldn’t matter. These deflections just make DJT look weak and easily manipulated—which is probably true, but not what Kent is trying to say.
I think this is spot-on, but the sad truth is that the Trumpista segment of MAGA appears utterly incapable of recognizing that Trump is an easily-led moron.
So while the dictator-president being led around by a variety of sycophants and charlatans looks weak to us, the people who we've somewhat Quixotically wished would "wake up" will never see it.
The usefulness of this break-up will depend on whether the isolationist MAGAs will stick to their guns, or if they'll just throw in with the Trumpistas in supporting Trump III, or whoever becomes the annointed successor, when the isolationist wing loses in the primary--or vice versa.
Remember the "country club Republicans" who despised Trump but threw in with him in the end because "nothing could be worse than Hillary" (or Biden, or a woman of color, or whatever they're busy hating today)...among whom I count a lot of former friends.
Yair Rosenberg at the Atlantic wrote about this in his newsletter this morning. Trump is very obviously pro-war, always has been, and he's especially belligerent to Iran. Rosenberg went back to the 1980s to show that Trump has been drooling for war since then. I mean, it's a shame nobody did this during the election season, but also, do we have to spoon feed people information when they're the damn director of the National Counterterrorism Center? That's a guy who can't read?
Well my Costco Phoenix gas station went from $2.75 four weeks ago to $4.29 this morning, and that’s the lowest price according to Gas Buddy, at least in my area of Phoenix. So that’s up $1.54 in less than a month. CNBC reported a sharp rise in the producer price index this morning, and this did not include the full effects of energy price increases. This would never have happened if Trump was President. Joe Biden is destroying the economy.
Don’t forget it was also Hillary, Kamala & Barrack HUSEIN Obama! It’s all the weak democrats fault. And somehow, these accusations are embraced by the ship of fools led by the Orange ‘very stable’ genius
"Yesterday, a Washington Post report on the vibe shift among the right-wing youth of D.C. contained this interesting quote: “What is cool now is being brave enough to critique the administration for not fulfilling their campaign promises.”"
AH HA HA HA HA remember when the Post used to be a newspaper?
I wish there was a contest for the dumbest line ever printed by a newspaper because this has got to win, hands down. If only the Post was as cool as the cool kids who ... critique administrations? Yeah, that's a coolness the Post will never understand, even though they helped invent it. Sad, really. But also darkly funny in a gallows sort of way. Especially since I know a few Zoomers and they and their friends critique the administration by calling them racist pedophiles. But the Post missed that elephant, yet again.
Do the cool kids read Marc Thiessen and or the current Editorial Board blather? WAPO continues to shed subscribers, I keep my sub only because after multiple attempts at cancellation it is too cheap to ignore the observation of decline.
At $1 a month, I find their original reporting valuble, and it is still the local paper that's still somewhat useful for local news. But I'm willing to pay more for the Bulwark than the Post, which is a strange state of affairs.
Since Ireland was mentioned, I wanted to give a tariff story. I had not purchased sweaters in years so went to the Irish Store a website that sells woolen goods made in Ireland.
These are a specialty and they sell particularly to Americans and Canadians of Irish descent.
The wool from Ireland is exceptional for these warm sweaters. The knitting is an Irish specialty - often a home craft, even now.
There is no American equivalent, nor should there be. But I had to pay "duties" just because a crazy person thinks it helps.
It does not. I can afford the duties for these wonderful woolens but... why the tariff?
in any case, this does not represent a career path for Americans. We don't have the sheep with heavy coats of wool to protect from the cold and damp, and we don't have legions of persons who grew up learning the various stitches for the wonderful designs. And the shipping is done by Fed Ex which has a branch located almost next door to the Irish store - so an American shipper carries the freight. It is absurd.
We visited Belfast and the wall that separated the Protestant and catholics.( I told this story once before but it gives me laughs).At a particular stop, our tourist guide gave us all sharpies so we could write a message on the wall. My part of the wall had quite a few messages with expletives about DJT. So in my snarkastic, smart ass attitude I wrote just above them: Pete Buttigieg for President in 2028!
"Is it out of the question to look forward to a day when we will once again have leaders who might not only know the name Churchill, but have learned from him?"
More important question: Can we peer far enough into the future to imagine a public with the wisdom and fortitude to elect and support such leaders? I regret to say that my old eyes cannot.
Bondi's supposed appearance by subpoena is, sadly, irrelevant. Swearing the oath to be truthful is irrelevant to the supporters of the orange narcissist-felon. Comer will lob soft balls, Bondi will evade and obfuscate vs. every question she finds contrary to her self-interest--serving the orange narcissist-felon slavishly.
I picked the word 'slavishly' with care. The army of sycophant-enablers--the GOP members of 'congress,' the 'supreme' court, every other significant administrative activity--is in thrall to the orange narcissist-felon. Nothing will sway them in their position, regardless of the facts about the ill-advised war, the economy, inflation . . . the gamut of misery foisted on us, the people, by the fleeting whims of a man whose hypnotic influence is changing the world, for the worse.
Bondi has been far more aggressive in hearings, equipped with her pre-written barbs directed at various House members. Noem didn't seem to have that sort of aggression and somehow lost the bravado she once had. Perhaps she already knew she was on the White House's bad list.
If Trump had been part of the UK Conservative Party in the late ‘20s and early ‘30s, during Churchill’s wilderness years, he would have said “I don’t know the guy.”
"From a purely tactical point of view, is a divided MAGA better for the country than a united MAGA? Or will internal competition just make them all even more nuts?"
Clearly, a divided "opposition" should be applauded by the D leadership (assuming such an entity exists). Any time "the other side" fights among themselves, the only winner is the side not riven by internal strife. That said, it also requires a degree of unanimity on the D side, at least to the extent of presenting what appears to John Q. Voter as a united front FOR something different than whatever it is that the pieces of the "other side" are pushing.
And, as far as "internal competition ...mak(ing) them all even more nuts", why not let them show their true beliefs and bents, different from one another as they are from the D side? How does that negatively impact the (hopefully) sensible, in-tune with the voters, plan from the Ds?
The goal only has to be to have unhappy ex MAGA types finding no one on the ballot they like and staying home. As long as the split is a total break, that’s a win.
I think a divided internally squabbling MaGA will start losing elections which will drive voters away. No one wants to be on a losing team. This second term is driving away a lot of *independents* who were down with a good economy and less foreign intervention, but not ok board for the crazy.
The only answer to the original question posed is the time-tested wisdom, "divide and conquer." The counter argument seems like pretty weak sauce to me.
The cries about anti-semitism in the colleges and universities were a ploy and it worked.
But Jews are much safer in an Ivy League campus than they are in the heartland. Yes there is genuine anti-Israel sentiment among young progressives - and much comes from the general thrust of anti-colonialism. But the anti semitism that is really pervasive and will outlast the recent wars, well it is not centered in universities.
The antisemitism and neo-nazism among the young Republicans is a huge problem. Here in Florida there have been news stories made of not one but two instances of young college Republicans going full Nazi, earlier at Florida International University (FIU) and more recently at the University of Florida.
Kent is part of that movement, along with folks like Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes.
The kids are not alright.
Does this just come with the territory? I am confused as to how this suddenly became cool and edgy with this crowd. Antisemitism is one of the oldest, tiredest and most worn out forms of bigotry out there and yet like a dog to its vomit.
Every conspiracy theory leads here, and the podcasters have been bragging about how cool their conspiracy theories are for a decade.
Indeed. Once you start down that conspiracy theory rabbit hole, it always gets to the Jews. 100% of the time.
Yes. They have been railing against George Soros for a long time as an example.
As Charlie Sykes has pointed out, there has always been some fringe element like this in the Republican Party. What was once a small recessive gene has become larger and a lot less on the fringe.
They don't know how old antisemitism is. To them history began roughly when they were born. Nothing that happened before then has any relevance to them and probably isn't real to them...just some lies told by people they don't know or respect.
Many of the statements made about the IDF, recently in Gaza and over the years, have had a strong resemblance to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion stuff.
Except the IDF has committed war crimes in Gaza and lied about what their soldiers did, and had to change the story as more evidence came out — evidence they thought didn’t exist — most notably the attack and massacre of the paramedics and Red Crescent workers on 03/23/2025. This doesn’t make me confident I can trust what the IDF says about their conduct. But that isn’t antisemitism but rather the Israeli army not being honest about their conduct and worried more how that looks than accountability for what happened. Demanding accountability from Israel is not the veering into the Protocols of Zion.
There ought to be a way for people to voice criticism of the Israeli government's conduct of the war on Gaza. The destruction of so much infrastructure and the high civilian casualties in Gaza have been appalling.
Criticizing Israel for that is justified, I think.
The antisemitism shown by those college students is something darker and unacceptable.
Quite frankly, the more you and others conflate criticism of Israel and antisemitism, the more claims of antisemitism ring hollow and people learn to ignore them. Please read the story of the boy who cried wolf. Claims of antisemitism related to Israel are already to the point where I and many others begin with a strong presumption that they are made in bad faith.
That presumption has rarely been shown to be wrong.
If it were only the Republicans. The antisemitism is coming from all areas, I think. But yes, these young college clubs of rich kids get a lot of press for their reprehensible views. I somehow suspect the poor kids aren't doing much better.
Tucker Carlson. What do we do if he's our next POTUS? Things can get worse. I mean, I try to remind myself that good things can happen. But with Tucker Carlson in charge? Nope, no they can't.
Tucker Carlson President? No way. Won’t happen. Next thing you’ll be telling me is Donald Trump could be President. Get real.
Tucker for President would present a humorous conundrum for Faux News - once one of his own who became its sacrificial lamb - if it ever started to look like he could win the GOP primary - oh lordy....
Imagine A25 pushing Trump out giving us Vance as POTUS. Who would he pick as a VP? Tucker? There is no respite except drawing out the next couple of years into a legal challenge gridlock.
I think this war opens up the very real possibility that Carlson campaigns for president on an anti-war platform, ha ha ha ha ha giddy laughter ... what is happening here?
Is Carlson electable? I have my doubts!
I had those same doubts about just about every single elected Republican, and yet there they are, trying to cancel measles vaccines and kissing Putin's ass and somehow not being ridden out of town on a rail.
He's as electable as Trump
And take everybody seriously, not dismissively.
At one time people laughed about Donald Trump. Then he is elected twice. Carlson is such a low possibility but given American voters lately, it can't be dismissed.
Nah. Not electable. His maniacal cackle is worse than Ms. Harris's chuckle was, and that laugh was a big reason she was unelectable. No worries. ( /s )
(Okay, typed in sarcastic font but it occurs to me that many American voters might really choose candidates based on personal mannerisms rather than experience, ideology, or policy proposals - so who knows at this point. )
Actually I think Mr. Carlson IS electable. :-/
It’s sad. AIPAC is in bed with the leadership, but the young guns are all Full throated Nazi’s on Crack. It should be interesting watching as this movement self implodes!
What’s the adage: “Beware of what you wish for”……:)
There’s nothing new here. Antisemitism is a tried and true centuries old tradition among people looking for a scapegoat for their self sabotaged lives.
Tom Lehrer put it this way over 60 years ago:
Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics
And the Catholics hate the Protestants
And the Hindus hate the Moslems
And everybody hates the Jews
Does anyone think that we’re in the times we’re in because people are mentally and emotionally healthier??
also cue up Kingston Trio Merry Minuet. Writer Sheldon Harnick didn't specifically mention Jews as a target but might be between the lines?
Neither are the grown-ups alright. In the '30s, Heinrich Himmler maintained a slush fund. Corporations, including American corporations, were required to contribute on a regular basis as a condition of doing business in Germany. The money was used to fund the SS. Currently, Trump appears to be working on a scheme in which companies wishing for favor use Trump's stablecoin, USD1, to do business. US dollars are what makes stable coins stable, and the issuer of stable coins must hold the real money until and unless someone wants to redeem. While the cash is held, it is invested in US Treasuries, or similar. In just a year, USD1 has gone from nothing to holding more than $5 billion, which earns the owners of the fund hundreds of millions per year in interest. Chengpeng Zhao, of Binance, and the UAE have already been beneficiaries. It is reported that the nation Pakistan has pledged to use USD1 for all foreign transfers.
Just wait, this is just cover for more white supremacy action against the 'browns and blacks'. Even browns and blacks have their anti Semitic adherents. This reminds me of when the GOP used anti abortion rhetoric as a more acceptable moral issue to rally around as cover for their real issue, maintaining segregated private schools. The Klan was also anti semitic, but Jews were never the real target.
The hunger of the boot is never satiated. It will consume everyone and everything in it's path and then consume itself.
True the antisemitism is what gets talked about, but really that sometimes masks the iceberg floating beneath.
"First they came for..."
We have all been labelled the Enemy Within. Order of coming for TBA.
Typo? At all bright?
The scary thing is the antisemitic youth movement in the GOP shows quite a bit of low cunning
Low cunning is what a belly-crawling fox trying to score in a poorly guarded hen house might exhibit. Not necessarily something to emulate.
In Lake Woebegone, the children are all above-average.
And the woman good looking.
The GOP is returning to its 1920s-1930s incarnation, when it was virulently nativist and sympathetic to fascism.
As bad as the last ten years have been, the next ten years could be worse, as the current crop of young Republicans are very online, they're almost all men, and their entire political experience has been in a post-Trump world. And all day they marinate in gamergate-style edgelord nihilism, where it's a perpetual contest to see who can be the most antisemitic, racist, and misogynist. The GOP of the future is going to be even crazier.
"If only Trump had read this paragraph before launching his hubristic war."
If only trump could read. As we know, he even has difficulty with the teleprompter. Even if he could read, he wouldn't understand. Even if he understood, as is increasingly evident, he wouldn't remember. Even if he remembered, there is little reason to think that it would shape his actions. Those all emanate from his (ample) gut.
I love what you did there! Kind of like below, except there was actual method to the old lady's madness!
"There was an old lady that swallowed a dog;
What a hog to swallow a dog!
She swallowed the dog to catch the cat,
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird,
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her,
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;
I don't know why she swallowed a fly – perhaps she'll die!"
I am unable to determine if frump is a 10-year-old spoiled brat or a 79-year-old mentally ill evil man or the combination. I am so confused why the media ignores the obvious decline with vocabulary, memory, and obvious physical declines including sleeping in public.
That is assuming he can read which I have my doubts. Remember his Presidential briefings are done in graphics to hold his attention.
Our current president now lives totally in his own fantasy world. He has constructed his own version of history in which he never lost an election, he never knew Epstein, NATO never came to our aid, and he carefully planned the war in Iran and was prepared for every possible response. He presents a fantasy present, that he are about to finish the war, take over Cuba, and fight the war in Iran until they.... do something he will decide on soon. His view of the future is that he will be president forever and own all the oil reserves in the world. Anyone who questions these fantasies will be threatened with. the loss of their job, public humiliation, and perhaps bodily harm, but that won't be his fault.
I think that is why we get so much explanation that he was going with his gut and he will know it when he thinks it.
He does not do the deep consideration of all that he has in front of him to make a decision. That has been confirmed by most everyone that has been in his White House.
Decisions are made on what he wants to happen, specifically what will make him look good, richer and more powerful.
That’s much easier analysis.
Agree. Reading Churchill elegant, concise and inspiring prose -then hearing or reading Trump's latest bleat, tweet or blurt or belch is just sickening by comparison.
If you mentioned Winston Churchill to Trump, he wouldn't know who he was, except that he must be a very very bad person fancy woke show-off using big words and complete sentences that are not even in praise Of our dear Donald. What a loser!
It shows how far America has gone in what Karl Popper,in his 1946 book The Open Society and It's Enemies", called the "revolt against reason".
He was writing about Germany in the 1930's and warning democracies that it could all happen again if they didn't learn from the past. We didn't, and it will.
He'll get to it as soon as he's finished Mein Kampf.
RE: The NYT report of "the second-biggest four-week [gas price] increase in at least 30 years" with only "Hurricane Katrina [hitting] prices harder during that span."
I guess we should actually count ourselves at least a *little bit* lucky at this point, considering the severity of the continuous, unrelenting and unpredictable gusts from the Category 5 blowhard that's been back in the Oval Office for a little over a year now.
But sadly, I'm guessing FEMA will be of little use at all in helping to clean up the mess after this latest disaster.
It doesn't end with the economic or political ramifications. I'm certain somewhere in the middle east someone(s) are coming together to start planning new waves of terrorist attacks here in the US - probably years from fruition, but I'm certain we've fed the beast.
...so this is Trump's Katrina? Wow, another way he's copying Dubya!
Drill baby drill! :(
I had a great laugh when Irish Taoiseach, Michael Martin was defending a British Prime Minister on Saint Patrick's Day against Trump's foolish rants. I guess I wasn't too surprised that Trump didn't know the President of Ireland (a primarily ceremonial post) is a woman. He's lucky that President Catherine Connolly wasn't there. She doesn't suffer fools gladly.
DJT seems to be having trouble keeping his genders straight. He calls the President of Ireland he and the woman President of Venezuela, he.
Nick Catoggio in the Dispatch had a long, excellent piece on the Joe Kent resignation. The following are the concluding paragraphs:
Is Stewart Rhodes an earnest postliberal chud? Indubitably. But I think he also senses that soon there’ll be more political juice to be squeezed from the postliberal right by being anti-Israel than by being pro-Trump. The same goes for Joe Kent, who’s never had as much clout as he has now—so much so, I think, that if and when “America Firsters” start sniffing around for a candidate to challenge Vance from the right in 2028, he’ll be an obvious alternative if Carlson refuses to do it.
Especially if this already unpopular war goes bad. Kent is shrewdly pulling the ripcord at a moment when Trump is poised to use ground troops to end the regime’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz; deploying infantry polled terribly when it was hypothetical and will poll catastrophically if it ends with American soldiers being killed. The more dangerous this conflict gets for the United States, the more prescient and defensible Kent’s resignation will seem to many in hindsight. Even to some Republicans who are backing Trump for now.
And honestly, as a matter of basic political calculation, which sounds better? Sticking around as counterterrorism chief for a president whom you know will blame you if Iran manages to pull off a terror attack on U.S. soil? Or bailing out now and having endless bouquets thrown at you by Israel’s many Americans critics for demagoguing the Jewish state so unapologetically?
In a party dominated by postliberal chuds, there’s really no downside to what Kent did. I’m sure his interview with Tucker is already booked.
Nick has seen the MAGA crackup coming for some time. It helps that he's more cynical than JVL when it comes to the moral poverty of the GOP and its voters.
The Dispatch drives me crazy, but if they were all more like Nick Catoggio, I'd probably subscribe as they'd drive me crazy much less. They've grown on me this year, I don't know exactly why. They seem less fascist-curious under Trump II.
I subbed for a year, and every time I read anything that wasn't Nick, I was yelling at my screen. They are the epitome of the anti-anti heads up their own asses, sniffing their own farts cohort. it was just infuriating to read any of them.
Part of it's KDW's (Williamson's) willingness to mince even fewer words than he used to.
Though he had a reputation for not mincing words before, writing for a readership inevitably depends somewhat on what the readership is willing to hear. Someone relatively willing to broach tough truths about a coalition to those in the coalition may still mince words to do it. (Back when I read NR with any regularity, I had supposed the readership might be ready to hear some of the warnings KDW was already giving. Apparently a lot less ready than I had expected!) He's mincing less now.
I used to read The Dispatch, but they seemed too wanly anti-Trump for me. Sarah Isgur seemed like she thought Trump was just a speed bump which conservatism would soon get over. Maybe Trump 2.0 has wised them up,
"If only Trump had read this paragraph before launching his hubristic war. If only Pete Hegseth had read it before boasting about our inevitable success. I suppose it’s out of the question that either would have done so. But is it out of the question to look forward to a day when we will once again have leaders who might not only know the name Churchill, but have learned from him?"
Bill, come on. You know that to read, and more importantly, understand Churchill one needs more than third grade reading and comprehension skills, while learning from him is at least Junior High School (and I mean no disrespect to third graders or Junior High School students).
Probably all Trump knows about Churchill is that he is revered as a great leader. He has no idea that that leadership was employed in the defeat of men like him.
After all, Trumpster once asked who the good countries were in WW1 and WW11
Andrew: "Trump, he wrote, had been “deceived” by “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media” into abandoning his antiwar instincts and charging into an unwinnable conflict in Iran."
Someone should ask Kent what evidence is there that Trump had antiwar instincts to begin with. After all, Trump's the same guy that threatened to take Greenland by force and is the same guy that attacked Iran last summer. If Trump were antiwar, why is Canada running scenarios of a US attack? Trump *ran* on being antiwar, but like everything else, you can't believe a word coming out of his mouth.
The thing that I've always found amusing about guys like Kent is they believe we can't draw our own informed conclusions about how Trump behaves.
Kent, like so many, can’t simply say “the President was wrong.” It’s always “bad advice.” But if DJT is the mega-genius strategist, bad advice wouldn’t matter. These deflections just make DJT look weak and easily manipulated—which is probably true, but not what Kent is trying to say.
I think this is spot-on, but the sad truth is that the Trumpista segment of MAGA appears utterly incapable of recognizing that Trump is an easily-led moron.
So while the dictator-president being led around by a variety of sycophants and charlatans looks weak to us, the people who we've somewhat Quixotically wished would "wake up" will never see it.
The usefulness of this break-up will depend on whether the isolationist MAGAs will stick to their guns, or if they'll just throw in with the Trumpistas in supporting Trump III, or whoever becomes the annointed successor, when the isolationist wing loses in the primary--or vice versa.
Remember the "country club Republicans" who despised Trump but threw in with him in the end because "nothing could be worse than Hillary" (or Biden, or a woman of color, or whatever they're busy hating today)...among whom I count a lot of former friends.
Yair Rosenberg at the Atlantic wrote about this in his newsletter this morning. Trump is very obviously pro-war, always has been, and he's especially belligerent to Iran. Rosenberg went back to the 1980s to show that Trump has been drooling for war since then. I mean, it's a shame nobody did this during the election season, but also, do we have to spoon feed people information when they're the damn director of the National Counterterrorism Center? That's a guy who can't read?
Thank you for putting the fadas in Micheál Martin's name. A lot of media just skip them. But it means a lot to those of us who speak Irish.
Well my Costco Phoenix gas station went from $2.75 four weeks ago to $4.29 this morning, and that’s the lowest price according to Gas Buddy, at least in my area of Phoenix. So that’s up $1.54 in less than a month. CNBC reported a sharp rise in the producer price index this morning, and this did not include the full effects of energy price increases. This would never have happened if Trump was President. Joe Biden is destroying the economy.
Lol. Pop quiz for the nation: Who was president in 2020?
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Don’t forget it was also Hillary, Kamala & Barrack HUSEIN Obama! It’s all the weak democrats fault. And somehow, these accusations are embraced by the ship of fools led by the Orange ‘very stable’ genius
Oh but Trumpster says gas prices will come quickly!
OMG the Footnotes.
"Yesterday, a Washington Post report on the vibe shift among the right-wing youth of D.C. contained this interesting quote: “What is cool now is being brave enough to critique the administration for not fulfilling their campaign promises.”"
AH HA HA HA HA remember when the Post used to be a newspaper?
I wish there was a contest for the dumbest line ever printed by a newspaper because this has got to win, hands down. If only the Post was as cool as the cool kids who ... critique administrations? Yeah, that's a coolness the Post will never understand, even though they helped invent it. Sad, really. But also darkly funny in a gallows sort of way. Especially since I know a few Zoomers and they and their friends critique the administration by calling them racist pedophiles. But the Post missed that elephant, yet again.
Do the cool kids read Marc Thiessen and or the current Editorial Board blather? WAPO continues to shed subscribers, I keep my sub only because after multiple attempts at cancellation it is too cheap to ignore the observation of decline.
At $1 a month, I find their original reporting valuble, and it is still the local paper that's still somewhat useful for local news. But I'm willing to pay more for the Bulwark than the Post, which is a strange state of affairs.
I need to cancel again! I am $4 a month!
Since Ireland was mentioned, I wanted to give a tariff story. I had not purchased sweaters in years so went to the Irish Store a website that sells woolen goods made in Ireland.
These are a specialty and they sell particularly to Americans and Canadians of Irish descent.
The wool from Ireland is exceptional for these warm sweaters. The knitting is an Irish specialty - often a home craft, even now.
There is no American equivalent, nor should there be. But I had to pay "duties" just because a crazy person thinks it helps.
It does not. I can afford the duties for these wonderful woolens but... why the tariff?
To protect the American sheep that follow the Orange Shepard
I was in Northern Ireland last year. Heard about those sweaters!
in any case, this does not represent a career path for Americans. We don't have the sheep with heavy coats of wool to protect from the cold and damp, and we don't have legions of persons who grew up learning the various stitches for the wonderful designs. And the shipping is done by Fed Ex which has a branch located almost next door to the Irish store - so an American shipper carries the freight. It is absurd.
We visited Belfast and the wall that separated the Protestant and catholics.( I told this story once before but it gives me laughs).At a particular stop, our tourist guide gave us all sharpies so we could write a message on the wall. My part of the wall had quite a few messages with expletives about DJT. So in my snarkastic, smart ass attitude I wrote just above them: Pete Buttigieg for President in 2028!
"Is it out of the question to look forward to a day when we will once again have leaders who might not only know the name Churchill, but have learned from him?"
More important question: Can we peer far enough into the future to imagine a public with the wisdom and fortitude to elect and support such leaders? I regret to say that my old eyes cannot.
Bondi's supposed appearance by subpoena is, sadly, irrelevant. Swearing the oath to be truthful is irrelevant to the supporters of the orange narcissist-felon. Comer will lob soft balls, Bondi will evade and obfuscate vs. every question she finds contrary to her self-interest--serving the orange narcissist-felon slavishly.
I picked the word 'slavishly' with care. The army of sycophant-enablers--the GOP members of 'congress,' the 'supreme' court, every other significant administrative activity--is in thrall to the orange narcissist-felon. Nothing will sway them in their position, regardless of the facts about the ill-advised war, the economy, inflation . . . the gamut of misery foisted on us, the people, by the fleeting whims of a man whose hypnotic influence is changing the world, for the worse.
Wish i could disagree by even one minuscule point. But - i cannot
Oh great! Another Pam Bondi shriek fest! I can hardly wait!
Comer will, but others on the committee will be harsher. Noem was fine until she wasn’t. Perhaps a staffer has been able to turn over some rocks.
(One can hope. Though I’m sure the next atty general would be worse, if that’s possible.)
Bondi has been far more aggressive in hearings, equipped with her pre-written barbs directed at various House members. Noem didn't seem to have that sort of aggression and somehow lost the bravado she once had. Perhaps she already knew she was on the White House's bad list.
Depress me summore, why dontcha? The brainwashed followers of the orange narcissist-felon will not be moved (until they are).
If Trump had been part of the UK Conservative Party in the late ‘20s and early ‘30s, during Churchill’s wilderness years, he would have said “I don’t know the guy.”
Trump would have been leading the Nazi Rally at Madison Square Garden in 1939, with Musk, Thiel, and Miller saluting at his side!
In court divorce filings, Ivana said that “The Donald” kept a copy of Mein Kampf at his bedside! And here we are!..:)
A volume of Hitler's speeches is what was alleged, not Mein Kampf, but that's not exactly any better.
"From a purely tactical point of view, is a divided MAGA better for the country than a united MAGA? Or will internal competition just make them all even more nuts?"
Clearly, a divided "opposition" should be applauded by the D leadership (assuming such an entity exists). Any time "the other side" fights among themselves, the only winner is the side not riven by internal strife. That said, it also requires a degree of unanimity on the D side, at least to the extent of presenting what appears to John Q. Voter as a united front FOR something different than whatever it is that the pieces of the "other side" are pushing.
And, as far as "internal competition ...mak(ing) them all even more nuts", why not let them show their true beliefs and bents, different from one another as they are from the D side? How does that negatively impact the (hopefully) sensible, in-tune with the voters, plan from the Ds?
The goal only has to be to have unhappy ex MAGA types finding no one on the ballot they like and staying home. As long as the split is a total break, that’s a win.
The wider the cracks in the Crackpot Coalition, the better for all the rest of us.
I think a divided internally squabbling MaGA will start losing elections which will drive voters away. No one wants to be on a losing team. This second term is driving away a lot of *independents* who were down with a good economy and less foreign intervention, but not ok board for the crazy.
The only answer to the original question posed is the time-tested wisdom, "divide and conquer." The counter argument seems like pretty weak sauce to me.
This makes way too much sense, David. The D’s have to save the country from the country…..
The cries about anti-semitism in the colleges and universities were a ploy and it worked.
But Jews are much safer in an Ivy League campus than they are in the heartland. Yes there is genuine anti-Israel sentiment among young progressives - and much comes from the general thrust of anti-colonialism. But the anti semitism that is really pervasive and will outlast the recent wars, well it is not centered in universities.
Well said!