DL Open Thread: December 3, 2023
A Trump Dictatorship Could Well Be Upon Us. Just in case you were enjoying your Sunday morning coffee. The article is long, but necessary. Please read it.
Bush V. Gore: One reason to refrain from lionizing Sandra Day O’Connor:
Yes, yes, yes, yes, & yes: a recusal, and a 4-4 decision, would have let the state court decision stand.
Yet who cast that fatal vote, a literal thumbs up but a Caesarian thumbs down for 9,810 Americans & countless thousands of Iraqis & Afghans, which allowed all those aforementioned atrocities authored from the Bush 43 West Wing?
One wanting-to-retire Supreme Court Associate Justice, visibly distraught on election eve when the networks first called the Presidency for Gore, all because she and her husband couldn’t return to Arizona, since she didn’t want a Democrat to pick her successor.
All she had to do was recuse herself.
By attending a publicized election party & openly rooting against the chances of a candidate with pressing business before SCOTUS, she placed herself in an unconscionable position, one she could have exited if she simply said “I recuse.”
She didn’t.
Despite the clear conflict, she seized her chance, and she voted.
Justice O’Connor smashed down her thumb on the scales of justice, and she slammed so hard that Lady Justice dropped them altogether, in a cacophonous clattering echoing forward through history yet unwritten.
Secret Santos Knows Who’s Been Bad Or Good: Not really, but it won’t stop him from spilling:
The fallen congressman, ax to grind firmly in hand, lobbed accusations at New York GOP Reps. Nicole Malliotakis, Nick LaLota and Mike Lawler, as well as against New Jersey Democratic Rep. Rob Menendez.
Menendez’ kid is in Congress? How did I miss that? Anyway, I want to know: Are ‘“Botox-fueled fits of rage” a thing?
Israel Strikes Yet Another Refugee Camp. I’m sorry, the ‘genocide’ word is not too strong:
Hani Mahmoud has been reporting from Khan Younis for Al Jazeera during the course of the war, and he says that the recent strike on Jabaliya refugee camp by Israel has left “tens of people killed and more buried under the rubble”.
He reports: “The number is rapidly increasing because these are very densely populated areas. It is difficult for rescuers to reach these people. They are also being targeted.”
Another Al Jazeera reporter has told the network “the scale of destruction is beyond description”, and that an entire residential block was levelled to the ground with many people inside.
Somewhere, Joe Biden mutters something totally ineffectual.
UD’s Move To ‘Big-Time Football’ Designed To Escape The Snows Of Montana? Another inevitable end to a decent season. Kevin Tresolini nails it:
For the third time in four seasons, it was clear Delaware isn’t even close to being Football Championship Subdivision title material.
Maybe there is no better time, then, to see if the Blue Hens can excel at something else, like being a member of the Football Bowl Subdivision’s Conference USA.
Delaware was overmatched from the start, just as it was in lopsided 2021 spring and 2022 playoff defeats at South Dakota State.
And Delaware may start life in Conference USA that way, too, judging by how big and fast and talented Liberty and New Mexico State appeared in Friday night’s league title game won by Liberty.
To be fair, Montana has something that Delaware doesn’t–a burgeoning dental floss industry:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smZA9Jv3qH0
What do you want to talk about?
Robert Kagan is writing apocalyptic fiction. As I point out repeatedly, pissing in your pants gives you a warm feeling, but it leads to doing a lot of unnecessary laundry.
If you removed the word “could” from the media vocabulary, they’d have nothing to say, because they would have to go out and report on WHAT’S ACTUALLY HAPPENING instead of making up scary campfire stories. Don’t worry, except for ProPublica and a couple of other similar operations, they’re too fucking cheap and lazy to do that, so you’ll get another year of “OH MY GOD TRUMP!” bullshit.
Speaking of ProPublica and similar operations, this is a good time of year to donate to my fave e-publications:
ProPublica:
https://give.propublica.org/give/346423/#!/donation/checkout?c_src=UpRed
Mother Jones:
https://secure.motherjones.com/flex/mj/key/7LIGHTB/src/7EGP014|PEGP014/
The Guardian:
https://support.theguardian.com/us/contribute?REFPVID=lppn0pvsfhmu08wjwqxz&INTCMP=header_support_2023-11-22_HEADER_TEST_EOY_R2__US_CONTROL&acquisitionData=%7B%22source%22%3A%22GUARDIAN_WEB%22%2C%22componentId%22%3A%22header_support_2023-11-22_HEADER_TEST_EOY_R2__US_CONTROL%22%2C%22componentType%22%3A%22ACQUISITIONS_HEADER%22%2C%22campaignCode%22%3A%22header_support_2023-11-22_HEADER_TEST_EOY_R2__US_CONTROL%22%2C%22abTests%22%3A%5B%7B%22name%22%3A%222023-11-22_HEADER_TEST_EOY_R2__US%22%2C%22variant%22%3A%22CONTROL%22%7D%5D%2C%22referrerPageviewId%22%3A%22lppn0pvsfhmu08wjwqxz%22%2C%22referrerUrl%22%3A%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fus%22%2C%22isRemote%22%3Atrue%7D&numArticles=0
I think this position comes from a place of exceptional privilege. When you are not a white male with a dual-citizenship escape strategy, the stakes are much higher. So far the Biden presidency has been more or less a tourniquet of a massive social wound, but this country is in desperate need of advanced care. gangrene is starting to set in. I haven’t lost any more ground post-trump, but I am objectively worse off today compared to 2016. There are a lot of ways that Biden and the dems can fuck it up between now and November 7. Being marginally less shitty is no longer a reliable winning strategy
I hope you are right though; can you share some commentary to the contrary of WaPo?
I don’t have dual citizenship.
Yes, a Trump presidency would harm me far less than anyone who isn’t a well-heeled white male, but I pretty much guarantee I want him gone as much as you do.
But explain for me the value of worrying about it. All this hand-wringing amounts to “you’re doing it wrong,” in other words, setting up a Trump re-election as somehow Biden’s fault.
Bullshit. People don’t like Biden because prices are high? Show me the evidence Republicans would bring them down. People don’t like him because he backed Israel? Show me evidence the Republicans wouldn’t. And so on, ad infinitum.
If the American public is stupid enough to vote Trump into office, it’s their fault, nobody else’s. And given that there’s nothing you can do to alter the outcome – Delaware is voting for Biden no matter what you or I do – I don’t see the value in worrying about it.
And one thing I’m absolutely certain of: Nobody in the pundit class writing all these articles about how Biden and the Democrats are doomed actually knows jack shit about running a campaign, and neither do the legions of internet randos who spout off about it, either.
For some reason I’ll never understand, people enjoy scaring themselves. I don’t watch horror movies, either, and don’t understand those who do, just as I don’t understand the perpetual liberal hand-wringing.
As far as I’m concerned, in American corporate news all possible stories are run through the “bottom line” calculator. Stories about Trump are run because someone in the corporate hierarchy has determined that the story is the path to the biggest profits. Cynical? Relative to the facts, not a bit.
Disaffected people don’t vote. If Biden didn’t improve my material conditions post trump, why should I bother voting at all? Honestly if it squicks nice white people like you then maybe it’s what you deserve. My people have been taking it in the gut for 300 years, what’s another 4?
Im still waiting on this bidenomics to trickle down. Where was the police reform? Everything costs more and the my day-to-day lived experience is worse. Tired of old
white guys lecturing us about how their geriatric honky is the correct honky and if we just shut up and stop resisting we might see progress instead few decades.
Madinah for president 2024
Not saying he’s the correct honky. I’m saying he’s one of the two on offer and the other one is worse.
But I won’t be around all that much longer, so it’s your generation that will have to live with whatever lies ahead. So go ahead and stay home. Are you under the impression your face will look better without a nose?
My nose is already broken and bleeding from successive democratic and republican sucker punches. I wish I had the kind of privilege to experience a state of being “less fucked”
As I said, I won’t be around for it, but I’m afraid it gets worse from here no matter who gets elected. Climate change is gonna fuck up things in ways nobody has yet imagined or talked about, and the rich will as usual elbow everyone else away from the trough.
This country had a chance to do right by its citizens, but it ended with the sinkhole that was Vietnam. The forces of greed have held sway ever since.
I haven’t lost all hope. Once my age cohort is gone things will change, and maybe for the better. But that’s 20 years off, so I won’t see it.
I might add that if I want to worry about something I can’t do anything to fix, I choose global warming.
In this moment, is there ANYONE who could mutter something effectual with the Israeli right-wing cabal?
Yes. “The money spigot is hereby turned off.”
The Israelis Biden must negotiate with are so conservative, so motivated by revenge for the glory of revenge, so caught up in their ultra-conservative religious beliefs, that I am willing to bet a majority of the Israeli government would tell us to stick that money where the sun don’t shine. Remember who we are dealing with on the Israeli side…
These current Israelis in charge are much like our GOP, who do cut off their noses to spite their collective faces.