Open Thread
DL Open Thread: Thursday, September 8, 2022
Steve Bannon: A Case Study In Conservative Grift: The outsize role of grift in American conservatism is a story that goes back at least a half century. But Trump glommed on to those tendencies while also exacerbating them in his own ugly ways, and the Bannon saga is a particularly grotesque example of that. Bannon […]
DL Open Thread: Sunday, September 4, 2022
News Of Lydia York’s Demise Is Greatly Exaggerated. She had a great day of campaigning at the Arden Fair. Three hours spent equally between the parking lot where the visitors get the buses and at the Fair proper campaigning with the indefatigable Colleen Davis. No sign of her convict opponent. It’s precisely where Lydia should […]
DL Open Thread: Saturday, September 3, 2022
Happy Arden Fair Day! Sen. McConnell Is–Mitcher Lonely: Not even Peter Thiel will return his calls: Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell’s grand vision for a Republican sweep in the midterm elections is not going according to plan. On Wednesday, The Washington Post reported that billionaire Peter Thiel, who funded the insurgent primary campaigns of J.D. […]
DL Open Thread: Friday, September 2, 2022
Trump And MAGAts Threaten Democracy, Biden Says. Yes, they do. Or, at least, what passes for democracy: “We are still at our core a democracy — yet history tells us that blind loyalty to a single leader, and the willingness to engage in political violence, is fatal to democracy,” Biden said. “There is no question […]
DL Open Thread: Thursday, September 1, 2022
Trump Tries His Hand At Three-Dimensional Chess, Loses At Checkers. His call for a special master to review documents led to this photo: Those Secret and Top Secret documents are but a few of those that a special master would have been expected to review. Trump tried to play rope-a-dope, but the dope got roped. […]
DL Open Thread: Sunday, August 28, 2022
Trump Judge Makes New Law To Give Trump ‘Special Master’ To Review Classified Documents. Pure insanity: And now the Trump-appointed judge has broken with all legal precedent, and written wholly new law in the process, to give Donald Trump exactly what he wanted—a special master. Judge Aileen Cannon didn’t stop with saying she intends to […]
DL Open Thread: Saturday, August 27, 2022
Yes, The Feds Had Loads Of ‘Probable Cause’ To Raid Mar-A-Lago: The details contained in a search-warrant affidavit and related memo crystallize much of what was already known about the criminal probe into whether Trump and his aides took secret government papers and did not return all of the material — despite repeated demands from […]
DL Open Thread: Friday, August 26, 2022
Don’t Intellectuals Have Anything Better To Do? ‘Some’ argue against using the term ‘progressive’: But a backlash has been brewing. Some thinkers on the left question whether embracing “progressive” implies a certain level of comfort with the idea that history is guided by a hidden hand and somehow moves in a way that makes each […]
DL Open Thread: Thursday, August 25, 2022
Student Debt Forgiveness: More Creeping Incrementalism From Biden. Did you expect anything–more?: The Biden administration has already approved nearly $32 billion in loan forgiveness to 1.6 million people through targeted actions for disabled borrowers and those defrauded by their colleges. But Biden had drawn the ire of activists and some student loan borrowers who were […]
DL Open Thread: Sunday, August 21, 2022
Could Pipelines Be Part Of The CO2 Capture Solution? It’s…complicated: Designed to increase the flow of some of the world’s dirtiest oil, the Dakota Access Pipeline became a poignant symbol of the United States’ failure to enact a serious, long-term national plan to stop adding heat-trapping gasses to the atmosphere. It galvanized a worldwide climate […]
DL Open Thread: Saturday, August 20, 2022
There’s No DeJoy In Gasville. Although the rogue head of the Post Office could still insist on a modicum of gas guzzlers: The Inflation Reduction Act, which President Biden signed into law this week, includes a windfall for the United States Postal Service: $1.29 billion for the purchase of zero-emission delivery trucks, plus $1.71 billion […]
DL Open Thread: Friday, August 19, 2022
How Russian Spies Misread Ukraine And Misled the Kremlin. Faulty intelligence is not, as it turns out, the exclusive domain of the U. S.: KYIV, Ukraine —In the final days before the invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s security service began sending cryptic instructions to informants in Kyiv. Pack up and get out of the capital, the […]
DL Open Thread: Thursday, August 18, 2022
Trump Goes After FBI. Trying to attack the most culturally-conservative, white Christian, Fed agency is kinda ironic: Historically, though, the F.B.I. has been arguably the most culturally conservative and traditionally white Christian institution in the entire U.S. government. It’s an institution so culturally conservative, even by the standards of law enforcement, that Democratic presidents have […]
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