DL Open Thread: Saturday, Jan. 8, 2022
Lani Guinier Dies. Clinton Threw Her Under The Bus In Clintonian Fashion:
Lani Guinier, a civil rights lawyer and scholar whose nomination by President Bill Clinton to head the Justice Department’s civil rights division was pulled after conservatives criticized her views on correcting racial discrimination, has died. She was 71.
(Bill) Clinton, who knew Guinier going back to when they both attended Yale’s law school, nominated her to the Justice Department post in 1993. But Guinier, who wrote as a law professor about ways to remedy racial discrimination, came under fire from conservative critics who called her views extreme and labeled her “quota queen.” Guinier said that label was untrue, that she didn’t favor quotas or even write about them, and that her views had been mischaracterized.
Clinton, in withdrawing her nomination, said he hadn’t read her academic writing before nominating her and would not have done so if he had.
She had the courage of her convictions. Clinton had no convictions. He learned how to effectively fake sincerity, however, and rode that to the Presidency.
More Anti-Vaxx Sadness. I’m starting to worry: If all the QAnon influencers die of Covid, who will remain to lead their drooling-idiot followers to The Great Beyond? But, I digress. The latest entry is a doozy:
Cirsten Weldon had amassed tens of thousands of followers across right-wing social media networks by promoting the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy under the screenname “CirstenW.” She was prominent enough to become a sort of QAnon interpreter for comedian conspiracy theorist Roseanne Barr and started recording videos about QAnon with her.
Weldon focused on attacking vaccines and other efforts to fight COVID-19, saying in one video that Dr. Anthony Fauci “needs to be hung from a rope.” She claimed the vaccine killed people and even recorded herself yelling at people standing in line to receive vaccines.
“The vaccines kill, don’t get it!” Weldon warned the waiting vaccine recipients in an undated video posted to one of her online accounts. “This is how gullible these idiots are. They’re all getting vaccine!”
You know what happens next:
In late December, however, Weldon started showing symptoms of coronavirus infection. In her last video, posted on Dec. 28, Weldon struggled through her remarks about the coming overthrow of the United States government, coughing and complaining that she was exhausted.
Three days later, Weldon was hospitalized in Camarillo, California. She posted a picture of herself wearing an oxygen mask to Instagram and claimed she had “bacterial pneumonia.” Weldon wrote in a post on the social media network Telegram that she refused to take coronavirus treatment remdesivir, calling it “Dr Fauci’s Resmedervir (sic).”
Poor Ted Cruz. Tucker Carlson wouldn’t let him off the hook for his Jan. 6 walk-back. I still think Carlson could be the Rethug nominee in 2024.
Recovery Centers Of America: Scam? I asked myself that question after seeing their endless stream of TV commercials. So, I checked. The answer? Pretty much. With high-end amenities:
Hmmm, looks like the entire industry needs a huge dose of oversight. Who knows what Delaware’s laws are? Please let us know.
So. I go to my e-edition of the News-Journal. I click on ‘news’ at the top of the screen. A list of articles pops up. This, with no disclaimer, was one of them. Schell Brothers–environmental despoilers and reporters of the news. Who do they think they are? Chris Kenny?
What do you want to talk about?
The Clintons really set the stage for our truly horrible present day Democratic Party.
Also – I said this yesterday but it isn’t getting to the people who need to hear it – You must be FULLY vaccinated like Tucker Carlson to lead the anti-vax movement. C’mon, people.
Clintonism and Carperism are the same thing: The corporatization of the Democratic Party.
What you say about Clinton is true (and equally true about Obama). But in 1991 the alternative to Clinton was a second GHWB term and a 1996 Dan Quayle candidacy. People forget how unstoppable conservatives seemed to be, and how not-ready voters were for more left-leaning candidates.
Clinton’s strongest primary opponent was Jerry Brown, who in retrospect would have been a great president, but in 1991 the press was still smearing him as Governor Moonbeam (a successful tactic which they would perfect with the Dean Scream).
In 1994 we gave Clinton a Republican Congress. I am grateful Clinton was there to veto the Contract with America bills, which Bush would surely have signed. And Clinton vetoed Joe Biden’s repeal of consumer bankruptcy protections.
I have no problem with Clinton triangulating to defeat Reagan’s VP. Clinton’s sin was in not moving left in his second term (well, one of his sins anyway).
Alternative history is fun, but you have no idea how conservatism would have played out if GHWB got a second term.
That said – props for seeing that voters being “not ready for more left-leaning candidates” was a media constructed bandwagon that a large cohort of boomers who felt burned by McGovern were all too eager to jump on.
Those boomers elected Jimmy Carter, then fell for the media hit job on Carter and became Reagan Democrats.
As my friend & comrade Professor Harvey J Kaye always reminds us, it was Carter who capitulated to capital and introduced austerity.
Reagan revolution happened because Carter was horrible.
Also very good historian on this topic is Rick Perlstein.
I agree about Clinton, he wouldn’t know principles if they bit him, and they probably did. Sad truth that both parties are degraded from those who went before them. Also remember Clinton folded on Lani Guinier in a heartbeat. As for the Q Crowd find that whoever will lead them is irrelevant, they’ll find some one to follow mindlessly, half dead on a ventilator or not.