It doesn’t matter how many times I see Boebert in the news - she still seems to me to be a particularly gross and nasty tweaked-out cam girl who’s inexplicably been allowed to pretend to be a politician.

We’re not getting worse moving to a different hack that can form thoughts on the fly.

Though I don’t like it a bit, that’s my position too, but with one glaring exception.

The thing that keeps haunting me is that I really think there’s a good chance that they’ll go back to Hillary, who’s basically everything that’s wrong with the current Democrats turned up to 11 - a plainly corrupt, transparently power-hungry and entirely self-serving opportunist who gives paid speeches on Wall Street, idolizes Kissinger and has all the charisma of a damp rag. As far as I can see, her only real qualifications for the office are that she wants it so desperately and she’s so willing to sell herself to anyone who will contribute to getting her there. And she’s the one possibility that I would say is far and away the least likely to win. But she brings in the corporate money, and that’s obviously the DNC’s main priority.

If it’s pretty much anybody else, that’s fine by me.

It’s psychopathic fuckwads all the way down.

I would love a real second primary with an array of candidates not all of whom were preselected by the billionaires. And a large inclusive debate or two. Is that what you are suggesting?

Yes.

Sorry - I thought “throw open” was a commonly understood phrase.

It means to open something suddenly and completely - no incremental stages and no limitations - just immediately from closed to fully and completely open.

Whoever ends up being the candidate will get literally billions of dollars in earned media by simply “becoming” the candidate. The whole drama of it suddenly engages what is currently a completely disengaged voting populace.

This is the most important bit IMO.

At this point, I don’t even think of dumping Biden as just a satisfactory fallback position, but as a winning strategy, and specifically for this reason.

It’s not as if Biden suddenly became a weak candidate the night of the debate - he’s been a weak candidate all along. As I just said earlier, the only thing that changed with the debate is that more people came to that conclusion.

And all it would take to motivate the base - to get Democrats enthused in a way that they haven’t been since 2008 - is to throw open the nomination. That would bring the race a sense of excitement and hope that hasn’t just been missing since the debate, but all along.

Any Democrats who can stand up and show leadership right now stand a very good chance of becoming the most powerful person in the world. Trump is a deeply unpopular candidate. It won’t take much to expose his weakness for what it is, we just currently happen to have the weakest possible candidate. Swap the candidate, adopt the positions of the base, and whoever ends up being the nominee can coast into office.

I think this is rather obviously true. Many on the left have been pushing for a different, and presumably better, candidate from the beginning, so in a way, all that’s changed since the debate is that many more have joined them. So really, all the Dems have to do is provide the people with that candidate, and it’ll be a runaway.

BUT…

I’m starting to worry that the DNC is going to fuck it up yet again, and specifically because, just as was the case in 2016 and 2020, they’re not only going to not adopt the positions of the base, but are going to instead manipulate the process in order to shove another establishment hack down our throats. And quite likely not even just any establishment hack, but the one that’s already proven to be even less popular than Biden - Hillary Clinton.

This is a moment for the DNC to get out of the way and let the people come together and choose the candidate they want. That’s the exact thing that will motivate the base, and in turn guarantee Trump’s defeat.

I’m just afraid that the DNC won’t be able to do that - that in their all-consuming self-centeredness and greed, they’re going to fuck it up for all of us, yet again.

Just another example of the right saying the quiet part out loud.

Make no mistake about it - these aren’t just idle threats or emotive rhetoric. These people genuinely want you dead.

Exactly.

Entirely on brand, it’s the classic abusive asshole position - “just do as I say - I don’t want to have to hurt you, but I will.”

And Netanyahu rejects it out of hand in 3… 2… 1…

Ah… yes. You’re undoubtedly right.

Shame I didn’t think of that. I stand behind the spirit of my post, but yeah…

I guarantee that today or tomorrow hundreds of thousands if not millions of Republicans nationwide are going to see that story and think, or even say, “Good! Serves 'em right!”

And they’re also going to continue to insist that they’re the moral ones.

I dunno…

You could well be right, but I have a hard time believing that any court - even this grotesquely corrupt one - would attempt such rulings.

So far, while obviously a significant threat, their immunity rulings have actually been broadly in line with established precedent. And they specifically stated that the precise definition of an “official act” was something that was going to have to be worked out in future rulings.

Even with as cynical as I am, I find it hard to believe that they actually intend to rule that anything that might be done in the midst of carrying out some entirely and completely unrelated official act is afforded the same protection as that official act. That would rather obviously make it so that the president could, for instance, pause in the middle of signing a bill and do literally anything - absolutely anything at all - and be entirely immune from any and all consequences.

Yes - it is possible that they’ll rule that way, but again, even as cynical as I am, I can’t imagine that they actually will, if for no other reason than that that would empower the president to order the summary execution of all Supreme Court justices.

There’s nothing I can add to that, so all I’ll do is signal my complete agreement.

On second thought…

That last bit neatly illustrates why it was that, in the face of the utter failure of both of the establishment hacks who were set to get the nominations in 2016, and the support in both parties for populists, the GOP went along with their populist while the DNC sabotaged theirs.

The GOP accurately saw Trump as an entirely unprincipled and wholly narcissistic idiot who could be manipulated into serving their interests, while the DNC equally accurately saw Sanders as a man of principles and determination who could not be manipulated into serving theirs.

“Corporate” is the key word there.

Major corporations, including but by no means limited to those that have bought up all of the major news outlets, are, along with a number of destructively insane billionaires, the main financiers of this attempted fascist takeover. They’re the real driving force behind it.

They see this, and accurately, as a significant moment in human history - the point at which modern civilization might just come to broadly recognize the significant harm done by the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few and much more to the point, might take steps to prevent it. And that’s a direct threat to their entirely unearned, undeserved and grotesquely destructive privilege, and in their literally insane lust for wealth and power and the privilege they bring, they’re going to stop at nothing to prevent that.

People talk about a class war - the class war is already well under way. The oligarchs have been actively fighting it for years now. Most of the people just haven’t realized that yet.

Since the Heritage Foundation just overtly declared war on American democracy, complete with a thinly veiled threat of violence and bloodshed, it’s just that much more important that news like this is spread as widely as possible.

The fascists riding Trump’s coattails aren’t even hiding their intentions any more. We must not let them succeed in destroying the few remaining vestiges of American democracy, and the first step in that is keeping that loathsome lunatic Trump out of office.

I’d sure as hell hope not.

There has to be a limit to the corruption and duplicity of this facsimile of a Supreme Court, and I would have to think that it’s somewhere short of ruling that efforts to cover up the misappropriation of campaign funds and filing of fraudulent financial reports count as “official acts” of a president.

But then again, they are painfully obviously grotesquely corrupt and duplicitous…

And I ask again - exactly how the fuck does Israel “approve” the forcible annexation of Palestinian land?

Israel self-evidently, by definition, has no legitimate jurisdiction over Palestinian land, and can’t “approve” anything regarding it.

I grow more convinced every day that if there are future historians, they’re going to dub our current age something like “the Lunatic Age” - the regrettable and inexplicable period in human history during which, for no discernible reason from the point of view of a future civilization, in spite of worldwide communication and thus the full awareness of the extent of it, people largely stood idly by in the face of, and in all too many cases actually supported, the profound and undeniable evil of governments, politicians and business leaders.

Any article that cites Krugman is self-evident bullshit.

Krugman has made an entire career out of carrying water for the ruling class.

What the fucking fuck?!

Those fucking psychopaths actually want to punish Mexico for experiencing a drought?

Ah - just went and read the article, and what it actually centers on is a sugar cane industry that’s been wedged into south Texas (undoubtedly with big fat bribes paid to politicians).

Sugar cane is notoriously water-intensive, and likely should’ve never been grown in south Texas in the first place. It’s near certain that the sugar cane industry is actually the most significant proximate cause of the very drought conditions that are now a problem. So in effect, it’s the US, at the behest of Texas legislators and interests, wanting to punish Mexico because the Texas sugar cane industry wasted all of the available water and still wants more.

A similar entirely contrived “problem” exists in south Florida, in which the heavily subsidized sugar cane industry and their legion of wholly corrupt politicians are the proximate cause of the draining of the Everglades.

A gratuity is just a postdated bribe, and everybody including the Supreme Court knows it.