On the presumption that NOTHING matters to a politician more than HIS/HER OWN reelection, there are 20-odd Republican representatives who believe Jordan is bad for their general election prospects either in 2024 or 2026. In swing districts, they may face primary challengers, but I suspect the 2022 MI-3 experience may become wide spread for Republicans.
Will the current hold-outs continue to hold out? Dunno. Maybe multiple votes against the favorite for Speaker could gain them street cred in today's GOP when muscular resistance is valued for its muscularity rather than for such trivia as what's being resisted.
There's a wonky idea floating around that suggests the House should be expanded up to 750 seats. These wonks are real wankers. If anything, the People would be better served if the House were skeletalized to about 100 seats: two to three members for authentically populated states and one for each red wasteland. There is nothing in the Constitution that fixes the number of House seats at 435, that number was Congress's fatuous innovation in the halcyon year of 1929. The Senate would require a Constitutional makeover, but its number, too, should be reduced: two senators for each aforementioned populated state and one ex-con for all of Dixie.
Those Diaz-Balart comments seem almost like a Rorschach test. Some people focus on the anti-Dems part, others focus on the anti-lunatic-Rs part. Maybe he's just an experienced and reasonably skilled politician trying to talk his way through the mess. Not everything that drops from these people's lips is a thesis on the Wittenberg church door.
They've really run their underwear up the flagpole now. We're seeing stuff we don't usually see, not because it's top secret but because it's routine and usually quickly over. So maybe we don't have a full context for how it's /supposed/ to look. For example, I think it's pretty normal that they don't vote for the speaker of the opposite party. So now it's a question of if and when to break the glass. And if they do, they're probably not gonna announce it to the first reporter that walks by. Because if you shoot at the king, don't miss.
To me, Diaz-B seemed more like a guy trying to look like he had a spine while pissing off as few people as possible and trying to hang onto a shred of his legacy. I wouldn't be surprised if the (not sure what we can call them now without evoking a chorus of umbrage -- I'd still say normie*) Rs are even more pissed at the lunatics than the Ds are.
--------------------------
* Now defined as: if someone else would make this all go away, they'd be happy to go along.
“Remember, when you go to the floor—if we go to the floor—everybody votes for whoever they want,” said Diaz-Balart. “I think obviously number one, I will never, ever vote for a Democrat for speaker. Ever. No matter the circumstances.”
This is exactly why average Americans hate politics and are disenchanted with becoming higher-information voters. If the people that are supposed to know better still conclude "losing democracy is worth it, compared to voting for the opposition party" after Trump and all the chaos and demagoguing - these a-holes can go F themselves. What a total joke. And no, I have not heard D's take this position in my lifetime. So inanely stupid...
"The rationale behind Jim Jordan’s bid for the Speakership goes something like this: We have a political terrorism problem in the House, so we need a terrorist in charge to keep it under control. Only an extremist can control the extremists who would otherwise burn the place down."
Sounds very much like his Orange Hero's own case for his Presidency.
I would tell House Republicans what their great statesman Ted Cruz said at the 2016 Republican National Convention, “Vote your conscience.” I mean if you have one.
And to put Jordan in a position to at least try throw the 2024 election to the House where Red states outnumber Blue states and can vote for Trump to be President. I wish reporters would ask Republican Congress members and Gym about his potential Speakership in relation to the 2024 Presidential election.
Edelman and Kramer are spot on. The "realists" who favour rapprochement with Russia are being far from realistic. Russia has become a threat to its neighbours. As Obama said when Crimea was occupied, Putin's regime is on the "wrong side of history". The paranoia and imperial designs that inform Russia's actions work against Russia's own interests as well as those of its neighbours. Sadly, only a dramatic shift in Moscow can change this. Negotiating with these bandits is pointless and it is actually risible for so-called scholars and "experts" to meet with a war criminal like Lavrov who can hardly open his mouth without a lie popping out.
The pseudo-experts Edelman and Kramer rightly attack seem to think they need to wean Russia away from China. The boot is on the other foot - China needs to decide that its interests are not best served by aligning with Russia. This is doable, but only when Russia is isolated as the rogue state it has become.
I don't know when "realist" became the socially acceptable synonym for "amoral", but it's past time to recognize it and stop treating these so-called "realists" as respectable experts who have something constructive to contribute to the discussion..
The weird thing is, they're not even realists, or at least realists as I picked up back when I did securities studies classes.
A realist might say something like
"Russia has an interest in establishing a sphere of influence in states immediately to its west as a buffer zone. But similarly, those states have it in their interests to not be sucked into the Russian sphere of influence. Personal morality doesn't really have anything to do with this".
But it always seems to be pro-putin apologetics. Hell, I could take a neorealist stance and say
"It is in America's interests to see a weakened Russia. Right now, through an unforced policy error, Russia finds itself mired in a war with Ukraine. Supporting Ukranian martial efforts allows for further weakening of Russia at a tremendously cheap price and doing so is in American interests even before you get into knock-on effects of reinforcing European security in a broader sense. Personal morality has nothing to do with this."
But it always seems to be appeasers and Putin fellators for some reason.
The US is draining a formerly believed ‘Near Peer’ Military and political Adversary for the cost of military aid (along with NATO) and no danger to our troops. That’s what a sociopath like Kissinger would call Realpolitik.
They're realists in the sense that Neville Chamberlain might have been considered a realist, i.e. he convinced himself that if the dictators were allowed to expand to their "natural" limits, they'd stop and everyone else would have peace. Chamberlain's attitude seems to have been based on a naïve confidence in human goodness and a fear that the horrors of the First World War could return otherwise. I can't image what motivates these people; they seem to simply be apologists for dictators.
To be fair, Chamberlain wasn't nearly as feckless as popular history depicts him as. Everyone remembers Munich. What most people forget is that in the weeks after Munich, Chamberlain pushed for almost tripling the UK defense budget. At least in that particular instance, I'm pretty sure the reasoning was "stall Hitler until we have time to get our defense setup in order", despite saying peace in our time.
He was too late in coming to that conclusion, but was an intelligent man, and a good one. I think that Churchill described him fairly at his death. I doubt that any of the people we're talking about will merit that kind of eulogy.
Josh Rogin in WaPo has an article about how Putin is helping Hamas. Republicans, some, are pro-Putin and help his aims by wanting to defund Ukraine. We've all seen R squishyness on Putin.
So if R's support Putin and Putin supports Hamas, then does it follow...
The Saudi crown prince made Blinken wait? Maybe it’s time to stop selling them weapons and flush them like the turds they are. Let’s not forget the saudis helped make 9/11 happen.
He’s only a dangerous leader as long as he’s allowed to be. Start stopping their sports washing, stop selling them weapons and start implementing green energy alternatives more and more until congratulations, you’re living a form of energy no one uses anymore. No one is saying it will be painless but letting monsters like this rule the world and squeeze us is worse
Ah… but they have oil. They flaunt the fact that they control the price of oil. They know that they can get away with being openly and unnecessarily rude because of their oil. May it be an incentive for America and the west to build the alternate-energy infrastructure to be able to not care what the Royal House of Saud thinks or does or does not do. What price freedom…….
Tim Cole has been promoted as an acceptable R alternative for Speaker. Well, he just nominated “his good friend” Jim Jordan as the next Speaker on the House floor. No - Tim Cole is nothing better than the freedom caucus that has destroyed our government since before 2010. I did consider him a moderate R for years, but he too has now succumbed to the irrational lack of governing of radical right. He’s just another Republican proving he has no “profile in courage” character.
Some relevant House Speakership history: The last SUCCESSFUL Republican speaker of the House was Joseph Martin, who presided during the relatively serene administration of Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s. Every GOP speaker since has left the position early, in failure or outright disgrace.
12 of the Republicans who voted for Jordan yesterday are on the “crossover” list, meaning they’ll have to justify their vote to a district that chose Biden.
They must fear facing their base in a primary more than they fear the voters in the general. In a little over 13 months they’ll find out that they chose wrong.
The Israeli-Hamas conflict is starting to feel fully like an Occam's Razor situation. An organization dedicated to wiping Israel off the map sees normalization talks with other Arab countries happening and will do literally anything to derail those talks. And yet, the reflex yesterday in the media was to believe Hamas about the hospital bombing. FFS.
Honest question for anyone: What is going on with Ken Buck? He's not anybody's definition of a moderate, but he's out here holding the line on election deniers.
Is anybody else out there getting tired of how shallow, repetitive, and incomplete "news reporting" has become?
Here are a few answerable questions about what's happening now that could be reported on and answered by the "media" - instead of subjecting us to the same stories over and over again all day long from all the usual talking heads, who rarely, if ever, have something useful or informative to say beyond what we already know.
1. How accurately is Israel able to target the missiles it is launching into Gaza. The IDF almost certainly knows the GPS coordinates of every building in the GAZA strip. Are its missiles GPS guided?
2. If the answers to 1. is: "Yes - the IDF's missiles are GPS guided," then the question is whether the IDF is following its policy of not targeting hospitals. (A pertinent related question: does Hamas have any history of using hospitals in GAZA as shields for its materiel, personnel, communications, or other infrastructure?)
3. How many fighters does Hamas have? How many are in Gaza? Where else are they located? (I think I heard one commentator - retired General Barry McCaffery - mention in passing in one of his MSNBC commentaries that Hamas has 10,000 fighters, but other wise it's been crickets on this obvious question.)
4. What exactly is the scenario motivating the US putting two carrier groups in the eastern Mediterranean beyond "discouraging other players from entering the war." What does that mean? Does it mean that if other players enter the war and attack Israel, the US will launch air attacks from the carriers against those players - in which which case has the Congress given its permission for that to be done? If such attacks are launched, will they be restricted to occur only on Israeli territory being attacked by those other players? Or does it mean, the carriers will respond only if they themselves are attacked, which leads to the question: does somebody actually think it's possible other potential players wuill attack the carrier groups?
5. Is it true that some of the leaders in Hamas live in Qatar (not the Gaza strip? What are their names and where are they living in Qatar?
6. Now that Ukraine has used ATACM's to attack what have previously been secure Russian forces deep in eastern Ukraine, why isn't the US providing Ukraine with F-16's as well to attack Russian forces wherever they are in Ukraine?
7. At what point does it become clear that Putin is not going to order the use of nuclear weapons on Ukraine - or anywhere else, for that matter - no matter how badly Russia keeps being defeated on the Ukrainian battlefields? Is it possible he recognizes that if he were to issue such an order, cooler heads in the Kremlin and Russian military (who fully understand the existential consequences that could have for Russia) would unite against him and remove him from office?
8. If a pollster calls me, should I take the time to answer the questions? Why? (In particular, would my answering help to ensure the pollsters are getting truly random samples of potential and/or likely voters?)
Yes! I am beyond frustrated with the media coverage and am starting to tune it out because I'm learning nothing. I wait for updates on my phone from NYT or WaPo and try to sort it out from there.
On the presumption that NOTHING matters to a politician more than HIS/HER OWN reelection, there are 20-odd Republican representatives who believe Jordan is bad for their general election prospects either in 2024 or 2026. In swing districts, they may face primary challengers, but I suspect the 2022 MI-3 experience may become wide spread for Republicans.
Will the current hold-outs continue to hold out? Dunno. Maybe multiple votes against the favorite for Speaker could gain them street cred in today's GOP when muscular resistance is valued for its muscularity rather than for such trivia as what's being resisted.
There's a wonky idea floating around that suggests the House should be expanded up to 750 seats. These wonks are real wankers. If anything, the People would be better served if the House were skeletalized to about 100 seats: two to three members for authentically populated states and one for each red wasteland. There is nothing in the Constitution that fixes the number of House seats at 435, that number was Congress's fatuous innovation in the halcyon year of 1929. The Senate would require a Constitutional makeover, but its number, too, should be reduced: two senators for each aforementioned populated state and one ex-con for all of Dixie.
Yeah, a hundred seats sounds like the Senate which is the least democratic body.
The South is risible again!
Nice dream
Those Diaz-Balart comments seem almost like a Rorschach test. Some people focus on the anti-Dems part, others focus on the anti-lunatic-Rs part. Maybe he's just an experienced and reasonably skilled politician trying to talk his way through the mess. Not everything that drops from these people's lips is a thesis on the Wittenberg church door.
They've really run their underwear up the flagpole now. We're seeing stuff we don't usually see, not because it's top secret but because it's routine and usually quickly over. So maybe we don't have a full context for how it's /supposed/ to look. For example, I think it's pretty normal that they don't vote for the speaker of the opposite party. So now it's a question of if and when to break the glass. And if they do, they're probably not gonna announce it to the first reporter that walks by. Because if you shoot at the king, don't miss.
To me, Diaz-B seemed more like a guy trying to look like he had a spine while pissing off as few people as possible and trying to hang onto a shred of his legacy. I wouldn't be surprised if the (not sure what we can call them now without evoking a chorus of umbrage -- I'd still say normie*) Rs are even more pissed at the lunatics than the Ds are.
--------------------------
* Now defined as: if someone else would make this all go away, they'd be happy to go along.
“Remember, when you go to the floor—if we go to the floor—everybody votes for whoever they want,” said Diaz-Balart. “I think obviously number one, I will never, ever vote for a Democrat for speaker. Ever. No matter the circumstances.”
This is exactly why average Americans hate politics and are disenchanted with becoming higher-information voters. If the people that are supposed to know better still conclude "losing democracy is worth it, compared to voting for the opposition party" after Trump and all the chaos and demagoguing - these a-holes can go F themselves. What a total joke. And no, I have not heard D's take this position in my lifetime. So inanely stupid...
"The rationale behind Jim Jordan’s bid for the Speakership goes something like this: We have a political terrorism problem in the House, so we need a terrorist in charge to keep it under control. Only an extremist can control the extremists who would otherwise burn the place down."
Sounds very much like his Orange Hero's own case for his Presidency.
I would tell House Republicans what their great statesman Ted Cruz said at the 2016 Republican National Convention, “Vote your conscience.” I mean if you have one.
And to put Jordan in a position to at least try throw the 2024 election to the House where Red states outnumber Blue states and can vote for Trump to be President. I wish reporters would ask Republican Congress members and Gym about his potential Speakership in relation to the 2024 Presidential election.
Edelman and Kramer are spot on. The "realists" who favour rapprochement with Russia are being far from realistic. Russia has become a threat to its neighbours. As Obama said when Crimea was occupied, Putin's regime is on the "wrong side of history". The paranoia and imperial designs that inform Russia's actions work against Russia's own interests as well as those of its neighbours. Sadly, only a dramatic shift in Moscow can change this. Negotiating with these bandits is pointless and it is actually risible for so-called scholars and "experts" to meet with a war criminal like Lavrov who can hardly open his mouth without a lie popping out.
The pseudo-experts Edelman and Kramer rightly attack seem to think they need to wean Russia away from China. The boot is on the other foot - China needs to decide that its interests are not best served by aligning with Russia. This is doable, but only when Russia is isolated as the rogue state it has become.
I don't know when "realist" became the socially acceptable synonym for "amoral", but it's past time to recognize it and stop treating these so-called "realists" as respectable experts who have something constructive to contribute to the discussion..
The weird thing is, they're not even realists, or at least realists as I picked up back when I did securities studies classes.
A realist might say something like
"Russia has an interest in establishing a sphere of influence in states immediately to its west as a buffer zone. But similarly, those states have it in their interests to not be sucked into the Russian sphere of influence. Personal morality doesn't really have anything to do with this".
But it always seems to be pro-putin apologetics. Hell, I could take a neorealist stance and say
"It is in America's interests to see a weakened Russia. Right now, through an unforced policy error, Russia finds itself mired in a war with Ukraine. Supporting Ukranian martial efforts allows for further weakening of Russia at a tremendously cheap price and doing so is in American interests even before you get into knock-on effects of reinforcing European security in a broader sense. Personal morality has nothing to do with this."
But it always seems to be appeasers and Putin fellators for some reason.
The US is draining a formerly believed ‘Near Peer’ Military and political Adversary for the cost of military aid (along with NATO) and no danger to our troops. That’s what a sociopath like Kissinger would call Realpolitik.
They're realists in the sense that Neville Chamberlain might have been considered a realist, i.e. he convinced himself that if the dictators were allowed to expand to their "natural" limits, they'd stop and everyone else would have peace. Chamberlain's attitude seems to have been based on a naïve confidence in human goodness and a fear that the horrors of the First World War could return otherwise. I can't image what motivates these people; they seem to simply be apologists for dictators.
To be fair, Chamberlain wasn't nearly as feckless as popular history depicts him as. Everyone remembers Munich. What most people forget is that in the weeks after Munich, Chamberlain pushed for almost tripling the UK defense budget. At least in that particular instance, I'm pretty sure the reasoning was "stall Hitler until we have time to get our defense setup in order", despite saying peace in our time.
He was too late in coming to that conclusion, but was an intelligent man, and a good one. I think that Churchill described him fairly at his death. I doubt that any of the people we're talking about will merit that kind of eulogy.
Jordan is much too valuable screaming on the back bench. GOP must find someone who can pretend to be nice.
That's a tough ask: they purged them all in 2022.
Josh Rogin in WaPo has an article about how Putin is helping Hamas. Republicans, some, are pro-Putin and help his aims by wanting to defund Ukraine. We've all seen R squishyness on Putin.
So if R's support Putin and Putin supports Hamas, then does it follow...
The Saudi crown prince made Blinken wait? Maybe it’s time to stop selling them weapons and flush them like the turds they are. Let’s not forget the saudis helped make 9/11 happen.
Shades of Putin, who is famous for asserting dominance this way. MBS is not our friend. I fear he could be a dangerous leader for decades to come.
He’s only a dangerous leader as long as he’s allowed to be. Start stopping their sports washing, stop selling them weapons and start implementing green energy alternatives more and more until congratulations, you’re living a form of energy no one uses anymore. No one is saying it will be painless but letting monsters like this rule the world and squeeze us is worse
Ah… but they have oil. They flaunt the fact that they control the price of oil. They know that they can get away with being openly and unnecessarily rude because of their oil. May it be an incentive for America and the west to build the alternate-energy infrastructure to be able to not care what the Royal House of Saud thinks or does or does not do. What price freedom…….
Exactly. We could boycott their oil and move into green energy. The faster we do the sooner things improve world wide
I thought Leah Libresco Sargeant's piece "The Republican Bankruptcy" was super helpful, with a lot of new (to me) insights that seem highly plausible.
Tim Cole has been promoted as an acceptable R alternative for Speaker. Well, he just nominated “his good friend” Jim Jordan as the next Speaker on the House floor. No - Tim Cole is nothing better than the freedom caucus that has destroyed our government since before 2010. I did consider him a moderate R for years, but he too has now succumbed to the irrational lack of governing of radical right. He’s just another Republican proving he has no “profile in courage” character.
Some relevant House Speakership history: The last SUCCESSFUL Republican speaker of the House was Joseph Martin, who presided during the relatively serene administration of Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s. Every GOP speaker since has left the position early, in failure or outright disgrace.
12 of the Republicans who voted for Jordan yesterday are on the “crossover” list, meaning they’ll have to justify their vote to a district that chose Biden.
They must fear facing their base in a primary more than they fear the voters in the general. In a little over 13 months they’ll find out that they chose wrong.
The Israeli-Hamas conflict is starting to feel fully like an Occam's Razor situation. An organization dedicated to wiping Israel off the map sees normalization talks with other Arab countries happening and will do literally anything to derail those talks. And yet, the reflex yesterday in the media was to believe Hamas about the hospital bombing. FFS.
Honest question for anyone: What is going on with Ken Buck? He's not anybody's definition of a moderate, but he's out here holding the line on election deniers.
Election denying didn't go over all that well in Colorado. Boebert came very close to losing her seat in a red district.
Nope, can't disagree at all.
Is anybody else out there getting tired of how shallow, repetitive, and incomplete "news reporting" has become?
Here are a few answerable questions about what's happening now that could be reported on and answered by the "media" - instead of subjecting us to the same stories over and over again all day long from all the usual talking heads, who rarely, if ever, have something useful or informative to say beyond what we already know.
1. How accurately is Israel able to target the missiles it is launching into Gaza. The IDF almost certainly knows the GPS coordinates of every building in the GAZA strip. Are its missiles GPS guided?
2. If the answers to 1. is: "Yes - the IDF's missiles are GPS guided," then the question is whether the IDF is following its policy of not targeting hospitals. (A pertinent related question: does Hamas have any history of using hospitals in GAZA as shields for its materiel, personnel, communications, or other infrastructure?)
3. How many fighters does Hamas have? How many are in Gaza? Where else are they located? (I think I heard one commentator - retired General Barry McCaffery - mention in passing in one of his MSNBC commentaries that Hamas has 10,000 fighters, but other wise it's been crickets on this obvious question.)
4. What exactly is the scenario motivating the US putting two carrier groups in the eastern Mediterranean beyond "discouraging other players from entering the war." What does that mean? Does it mean that if other players enter the war and attack Israel, the US will launch air attacks from the carriers against those players - in which which case has the Congress given its permission for that to be done? If such attacks are launched, will they be restricted to occur only on Israeli territory being attacked by those other players? Or does it mean, the carriers will respond only if they themselves are attacked, which leads to the question: does somebody actually think it's possible other potential players wuill attack the carrier groups?
5. Is it true that some of the leaders in Hamas live in Qatar (not the Gaza strip? What are their names and where are they living in Qatar?
6. Now that Ukraine has used ATACM's to attack what have previously been secure Russian forces deep in eastern Ukraine, why isn't the US providing Ukraine with F-16's as well to attack Russian forces wherever they are in Ukraine?
7. At what point does it become clear that Putin is not going to order the use of nuclear weapons on Ukraine - or anywhere else, for that matter - no matter how badly Russia keeps being defeated on the Ukrainian battlefields? Is it possible he recognizes that if he were to issue such an order, cooler heads in the Kremlin and Russian military (who fully understand the existential consequences that could have for Russia) would unite against him and remove him from office?
8. If a pollster calls me, should I take the time to answer the questions? Why? (In particular, would my answering help to ensure the pollsters are getting truly random samples of potential and/or likely voters?)
I've been listening to NPR and they have had some excellent reporting. You are asking great questions. Send these to them!
Good questions! I share them and the thinking behind them.
WRT to Question 5, The Economist (British, not American, of course) published an informative interview with Moussa Abu Marzouk, a Hamas leader in Qatar on October 11. Apparently they DO have a bifurcated leadership, one part in Gaza and one part in Qatar, and the two parts have growing political differences: https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2023/10/11/a-hamas-leader-refuses-to-admit-his-group-planned-to-kill-civilians
Yes! I am beyond frustrated with the media coverage and am starting to tune it out because I'm learning nothing. I wait for updates on my phone from NYT or WaPo and try to sort it out from there.