Clear thinking on the ongoing stupidity of “bi-partisanship”

This guy - Duncan Bowen Black (better known by his pseudonym Atrios) constantly provides the clearest, most cogent criticism of our dystopian mania for Coonsian "compromise" politics. Like this for example:

The Opposition Opposes

I keep saying this, but it's actually appropriate for Mitch McConnell to behave as he does (mostly). Doesn't mean I like him! He's a Republican! I don't like Republicans! But he's doing what an opposition is supposed to do.We don't have a parliamentary system, but we should and can be more like one, both in practice and in "our" understanding of how things are supposed to work. A contest between competing visions and governances is superior to endless compromises which please no one, and that was true even when those compromises sometimes actually happened. But they don't happen anymore, and that's ok!
by Atrios at 08:30
A little more about Black from wikipedia:
His weblog is called Eschaton. Black was also a regular guest economics expert on Air America Radio's The Majority Report and is currently a regular commentator on Sam Seder's internet radio (Majority.fm) Majority Report and an op-ed contributor to USA Today. After obtaining his BA from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Black obtained a Ph.D. in economics from Brown University in 1999. He has worked at the London School of Economics, the Université catholique de Louvain, the University of California, Irvine, and, most recently, Bryn Mawr College. He is now a Senior Fellow at the media research group Media Matters for America.
He also makes the case regularly that Elon Musk is a fraud and a hustler.

Minority Rule

Timothy Synder is a Yale University history professor and the author of the excellent short book, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. He's an expert on the history of fascism and totalitarianism and in the latest issue of his newsletter he describes how the United State in on a fast track to tyranny.
The scenario then goes like this.
  • The Republicans win back the House and Senate in 2022, in part thanks to voter suppression.
  • The Republican candidate in 2024 loses the popular vote by several million and the electoral vote by the margin of a few states.
  • State legislatures, claiming fraud, alter the electoral count vote.
  • The GOP House and Senate accept that altered count.
  • The losing candidate becomes the president.
  • We no longer have "democratically elected government."
No one is seeking to hide that this is the plan.  It is right there out in the open. The prospective Republican candidates for 2024, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Josh Hawley, are all running on a big lie platform.  If your platform is that elections do not work, you are saying that you intend to come to power some other way.  The big lie is designed not to win an election, but to discredit one.  Any candidate who tells it is alienating most Americans, and preparing a minority for a scenario where fraud is claimed.  This is just what Trump tried in 2020, and it led to a coup attempt in January 2021.  It will be worse in January 2025. 9/11 led us to the invasion of Iraq, the foreign policy disaster that marked our century.  1/6 leads us to a catastrophe on that scale, but inside our own country.
Via BoingBoing

DL Open Thread Monday June 7th 2021

In today's news, some guy from Dover is getting some national attention for getting the Mandalorian Party recognized by the Dept of Elections because the new loves stupid bullshit. "Digital producers" on Gannett’s Atlantic Digital Optimization (DOT) team have decided to unionize.  Good for them, I suppose. John Carney's take on legalizing marijuana is straight out of 'Reefer Madness'. I'm beginning to believe that Carney is just not that smart. And speaking of dim bulb elected... Joe Manchin reviews are coming in.

Shorter Joe Manchin

The terrorists who are trying to end voting must be included in the effort to stop the terrorists who are trying to end voting.