DL Open Thread Sunday, Feb. 19, 2023
An ex-president is dying, but it’s the wrong one. Jimmy Carter, who at 98 has lived longer than any U.S. president, has entered hospice care. Speculation on how Republicans will disrespect his memory has already begun.
Revelations that Fox News is actually a propaganda operation has prompted calls for revocation of Rupert Murdoch’s citizenship. Tucker Carlson agrees: He thinks a rich foreign-born guy shouldn’t be allowed to influence our elections. He was talking about Soros. Wonder how he feels in private about all those foreign-born immigrant gentiles like Murdoch, Musk and Thiel.
See, conservatives only like immigrants when they’re rich and selfish about it. Ghoulish stick insect Ann Coulter let the mask slip with her reaction to Nikki “Nimrata” Haley’s presidential campaign. It ain’t pretty. “Her candidacy did reminds me that I need to immigrate to India … What’s with the worshipping of the cows? They’re all starving over there. Did you know they have a rat temple, where they worship rats?” Sounds like Ann is jealous.
Florida already is home to all America’s dumb old people, so now Meatball Ron DeSantis wants to dumb down the young ‘uns, too. He wants to get the state to reject the SAT and ACT in favor of Christian instruction and testing that glorifies the country’s Christian heritage, as Jesus so clearly intended. I wonder if they’ll emphasize that Jesus was a Jew?
But hope is on the horizon. The Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is collapsing. Scientists have dubbed it the “doomsday glacier” because it will raise global sea levels significantly once it finishes falling into the ocean, which would be bad news for Florida. Ironically, the glacier is about the size of Florida — or, rather, the size Florida is today.
Man, that Republican electorate is just throbbing with Incel Energy. Chelsea Handler, guest-hosting “The Daily Show,” did a silly little piece mocking the idea that childless women are miserable, and Tucker Carlson went ballistic. Amanda Marcotte noted, “The way that the right-wing media freaked out over Handler’s video made it clear they see insecure, bitter men as their primary audience.” Trust me, Amanda, they have lots of data proving exactly that.
WordPress is starting to groan about all the links, so that’ll have to do for now. The floor’s yours.
The News Journal’s claim to be a local newspaper has sunk to a new low: The lead story on its web site this morning is about the shooting of a Temple University cop in Philadelphia.
Apparently nobody who works there on Saturdays is aware that crime in Philadelphia is of approximately zero interest to Delawareans.
I knew in advance that Florida’s war on education would not stop with demonizing CRT (A.K.A. the truth about slavery) and “finding it” in math books. Also knew they’d try to insert religion into education, and that would be of the Evangelical version of Christianity. Still believe DeSantis will not sell in a general election, from a performance point of view he’s got no game and it’s obvious. It’s the same game Youngkin is playing in Virginia, and as such Texas is next.
Conservative seem to really love the gimp suit that a foreign-born billionaire makes them wear. Oh well, anything to protect the stock price.
Jimmy Carter was proto neoliberal. Capitulated to capital and was anti union. Horrible president.
He scrubbed his rep framing houses.
Reagan moved the ball further w.r.t. deregulation and privatization, but he made people feel good about getting screwed.
Austerity began with Carter.
He tried to align our foreign policy with our espoused values of freedom and democracy.
It was in response to the oil crisis. Nobody knew how to handle it, and that was the consensus view because neoliberalism wears blinders. I think anybody would have done pretty much the same.
I think his greater mistake was introducing fundamentalist Christianity into the political arena.