Yeah, fine, populism is bad and damaging to institutions. But which do you prefer, Kash Patel at the FBI or a Supreme Court with 6 Ketanji Brown- Jackson's. Because that's the choice on offer. Personally, I'd prefer a Republican party that moved toward more popular positions on economic and social issues, but the Koch network has been torpedoing that for 30 years.
David's comment is just the conservative tradition of thinking "People who disagree with my politics are also therefore automatically corrupt, immoral, and incompetent."
Also, I think "clown show" would work better than "clown shoes". I wasn't sure if this was a mispelling or a deliberate choice (I mispell a lot in comments so I understand).
Glacier Northwest, Inc. v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters (2023)
In an 8-1 decision, KBJ was the sole judge who ruled that union members could purposely stop concrete trucks with cement in them so the cement would harden and destroy the trucks.
If you extrapolate this ruling she apparently believes that if you are in a union you can just destroy the property that someone else owns. While Kash Pater is a clown, leftists like KBJ are a threat to the basic principles of liberal democracy like property rights.
I'm skimming her dissent right now, looks like you are misrepresenting the reason she dissented?
"Under Garmon, and as relevant here, a court presented with a tort suit based on strike conduct generally must pause proceedings and permit the Board to determine in the first instance whether the union’s conduct is lawful if the conduct at issue is even “arguably” protected by the NLRA...
[...]
Garmon makes clear that we have no business delving into this particular labor dispute at this time..."
Wasn't Hoover enormously racist even by the standards of the era? It seems odd to criticise Patel for abusing his privileges when Hoover did plenty of the same.
If nothing else, Hoover at least had enough sense of shame to try to keep his worst impulses shrouded in secrecy. The fact that Patel proudly advertises his complete lack of qualifications or professionalism is independently awful and probably even more pernicious to the overall institution than his substantive incompetence.
Ah. I makes sense then. I interpreted you literally as in "it's odd to criticize x when not criticizing y" rather than "it's odd to say patel is worse than hoover"
“For some, it’s hard to be truly disgusted with Trump. He’s too funny, and in ways too innocent to hate: a fat toddler approaching 80 who seems to brush off unrelenting hostility from all establishment institutions and the bullets of would-be assassins, and who most of the time barely even pretends that he isn’t lying to you.”
Yes! And oddly I admire that .. I mean the Founders envisioned Farmers and Dry Good Shop Owners and Actors and Lawyers without Degrees rotating into the tightly proscribed role .. I mean no knows Teddy Roosevelt's position on abortion, or on tobacco smoke, because it was irrelevant. In contrast to even Europe even today, where folks, however selected - whether by blood, merit or class, are nonetheless selected, from childhood to train professionally for such positions. Trump is a reminder to us all of the wisdom of the Founders to avoid the temptation to make one man responsible for deciding whether to bribe all 50 States into enacting regulations of their citizens into tying themselves to their horses and wagons with belts and helmets .. and the concurrent expectation that the one man would have the wisdom and knowledge and training to execute that responsibility.
Do what I do: register in the dominant party in your state, vote for the least crazy person in the primary, and then vote for the weaker party in the general.
I don’t want Democratic politicians getting cocky because they win 70-30 all the time, even if I have to vote for a nutjob to send that message.
By not voting for Republicans, (and as far as I can tell, there is not another serious alternate Party), Donald Trump and the rest of his motley crew of Huey Long Populist Democrats (with a scattering of principled Democrat Party dissidents) filled the vacuum.
Well, Marco Rubio did somehow manage to also slip in the door, but that may be the exception who proves the....
Trump didn't appear because a handful of moderates defected to the Dems or stopped voting. He appeared because the median Republican voter LOVED his message, etc.
He got elected due to the defections. He has long appeared on the stage. And he was elected in 2016 due to actual Republican votes being split amongst a very large and prestigious Primary field, despite the efforts of every Republican from Dole to Rush Limbaugh .. indeed it is plausible that Jon Stewart's pleas to Democrats and Independents to PLEASE PLEASE cross-over and vote for Trump put him over the edge. (And indeed, right out of the box, Trump made it known he was done with the Republican Party, and scheduled his first round of meetings with the likes of Al Gore .. Trump was for sale .. but the Democrats decided he would be more useful as a fundraising scare tool than as a partner, so they gave so much Hell to Al Gore for 'normalizing' Trump, that no else dared to do so ... this treatment of Al Gore by the Democrats preceded and was not a small reason for my own eventual defection from the Democrats to someone I decided maybe was needed to break things .. such as the already expanding speech and thought police within my Party. ("Have you now or ever sported an Scots-Irish Rebel flag on your license plate?")
You obviously believe this and there is probably nothing I can do to chagne your mind, but I don't believe this is true at all. Trump won because he appealed to the median Republican voter (and still does in spite of Iran, ICE, corruption, etc). Stunts like Democrats voting Republican in primaries are not enough to move the needle.
Show data. Who are these imaginary voters? I have yet to meet one, they barely even exist on the Internet. You are speculating, which is fine, until you start telling someone else what is going on in THEIR mind. Rather than simply asking them.
So... you mean, if populism leads to incompetence and corruption, one has to put up with elitism, with everything that means, like snobbery? I can make that deal, but I am afraid the less educated cannot. Their biggest fear, hatred and motivator is educated people looking down on them. Like how they called Obama elitist, because he talked like what he was, a professor.
The reason for that is that there is also the opposite, a mostly-educated, not-too-well-paid class, whose primary hobby is dunking on the uneducated, because they do not actually experience that much of the other kinds of success, achievement, power or status. So the contempt the uneducated feel is 100% real, but not really coming from the governing class, but from far lower.
So politics is entrapped by a battle between two non-governing classes, the (more or less) journalist or schoolteacher, and the hick. And this is not the kind of thing that results in competent people governing. Something is broken about this.
Maybe I'm the last classical liberal who hasn't defected to the MAGA or anti-MAGA tribes.
Yes, the Trump administration has done many many very bad things. Including Kash Patel.
Yes, the Biden administration also did many many very bad things.
Yes, Kamala Harris would have done many many very bad things.
The question is which is worst? Trump has been fixing a lot of things that needed fixing. And breaking a lot of other things that were working reasonably well.
Since we never actually had a Biden Presidency, it is hard to compare. (And that to this day, there seems to be no one, certainly no one from the establishment, openly curious as to exactly HOW (and by whom) the Executive Branch was continuing to function without a President is the biggest invisible elephant still in the room. Honestly, I think no one wants to know.)
A reason I am not concerned about Donald Trump is that his changes are ephemeral .. Executive and Emergency Order experiments (which, as a silver lining, allow us to judge without committing what, for example, a Border Patrol unleashed within the border would actually look like). I feared Hillary Clinton due to her actually knowing how government worked and knowing that she would not waste her time making changes that would vanish when she would, and she not only knew how to make real, permanent, structural changes, but also knew how to not speak her actual mind in order to ensure plausible denial in case any of them did not work out as envisioned. That said, I could not quite bring myself to vote directly for Don Rickles, but I still would not rule out doing so tomorrow if I could (and of course only because he is 79, not 49).
You being unable to compare Biden to Trump 2 shows you are no classical liberal. You are maga melted I hated to break it to you. It's not both sides are the same... That's what maga media has been pumping you with.
I think we have a bit of "good-old-days" revisionism happening here. As others have pointed out, J. Ed was no choirboy. In truth he was horrendous, capricious, weird and paranoid, extraordinarily political, and wielded near-absolute power for decades.
Comey may have looked and acted like boy scout, but he allowed top assistants to harass candidate, and then President Trump with the wild goose chase which was the Russia Collusion hoax, for years. Yes, Patel has become an embarrassment, but being of a protected class he must be given more leeway than a conventional appointee. Have patience. He will soon be leaving to "spend more time with his family."
Maybe in your dreams, but I'm pretty sure that if it were ever confirmed that the President of the United States were a Russian asset there would be some consequences. Furthermore, Bob Mueller, dozens of investigators, and $40 million in tax money spent on a wide-ranging, months long investigation beg to differ.
You’re conflating two things - a legitimate investigation and media claims that Trump was an asset. The investigation found gobs of collusion (and a lots of destroyed evidence like deleted text messages and Manafort’s use of “foldering” for email communications - an espionage technique). This has never happened in the history of the country. The issue is that collusion is not specifically a crime. The only feasible crime is pre-arranged conspiracy. Manafort lied about his role and then refused to testify because he correctly surmised that Trump would pardon him.
I love these vague assertions: "found gobs of evidence," but not one actual example, and "found destroyed evidence" which is a contradiction. The only thing they had, which they found by way of one of the four fabricated FISA warrants, was that Gen. Flynn had a conversation with his Russian counterpart during the transition period, which you would expect him to do. They had a recording of it, a stunning breach of protocol. Months later, they surprised Flynn with an in office visit, in which they asked him detailed questions about the conversation. He recounted it to the best of his ability but got a couple of minor details slightly wrong, as you or I would have done, which they used to charge him with "lying to the FBI." They then threatened to go after his son. He folded to the blackmail and gave them the testimony they wanted, which was as mundane as it could be.
Manafort was convicted of financial crimes. He concealed a relationship with a skeevy Ukrainian entity. Nothing more. There was no political angle and no Russian connection. Except maybe that Ukraine is next door to Russia, and Ukrainian and Russian are similar languages. Close enough! Basically they went after him because he ignored their subpoenas and would not bend to their will.
People see what they want to. But only a bloody fool, a paranoid, or deranged hater could look at a guy like Donald Trump and see a traitor. It's profoundly dumb. You guys use that term so lightly, but to a person of Trump's generation and societal standing, that is the blackest of insults. A hundred years ago, you would be within your rights to kill a man over such an insult. It's insane to think he would risk capital punishment and total ruin in a relationship with our civilizational enemies.
While President, Trump slapped Russia with the toughest sanctions ever. He also armed the hell out of Ukraine, irritating Putin very much. Does that sound like a Russian asset.
What else you got? Let me guess. Nine Eleven was an inside job!!! The moon landings were faked!!! Fluoridation is mind control!!
Not to mention .. what exactly would be the problem with a President being a 'Russian asset'. It is a free country. (And of course everyone avoids what is meant by "asset". Should England be embarrassed that they are very openly a US asset? James Bond/Ian Fleming was not. Mexico would dearly love being recognized by a President as an asset to America, not a detriment or problem to be solved.
I want you to think long and hard about the fact that Joe Biden, before leaving office, pardoned Michael Conahan (the judge from Luzerne County, PA, who took bribes to send hundreds of innocent juveniles to private prisons). How can one possibly make a "rule-of-law" based defense for a party whose leader finds Conahan a sympathetic figure? As for me, I'd much rather live under the garden-variety corruption that we get with Trump and Patel.
Your pearl clutching is cute. Sorry Republicans have no morals anymore. Keep talking about petty crimes of the Democrats while ignoring the felonies the Trump admin commits.
Michael Conahan is a felon if there ever was such a thing. He sentenced 2,401 juveniles to various punishments (usually the longest prison term he could give them) in cases that were later expunged when he was discovered to be getting kickbacks from the owners of a for-profit prison. Most of those children never recovered (socially and reputationally) from what happened to them, and several ended up committing suicide.
How you can compare Biden's commutation of Conahan's sentence to Trump pardoning J6 rioters (whose actions were a spur-of-the-moment thing, without any of the premeditation that Conahan showed, and without doing any harm to anyone's person, and find Trump's actions worse, is beyond me.
You see to think that impartiality in government just means giving more lenience to the crimes of people who went to good schools, and know how to look dignified in public, and how to cry crocodile tears when they're told they've done wrong. Hence why James Comey is getting so much sympathy right now after getting arrested for his dumbass "86 47" stunt, from people who had no sympathy at all for the man who erected the fake gallows on Capitol Hill for Mike Pence back in 2021, even though (1) both men had put a lot of effort into gestures saying "There's a guy I kinda sorta want to see assassinated," and (2) Comey has a bigger audience than the Hang-Mike-Pence guy ever did.
I for one am glad to see the double standards falling.
You are being tricky with your choice of words there. "Released from prison" refers to him being moved to house arrest along with hundreds of other old prisoners so as to reduce the chance of them dying of covid. It was a spurZ-of-the -moment decision, perhaps rash but not really reflective of sympathy for the criminals in question, and it was probably made by people who'd worked in the Justice Department long before Trump became president.
The decision to commute Conahan's sentence (which I think it the only one that showed real sympathy for his crimes) was made by Joe Biden, at around the same time he broke his repeated promise not to pardon Hunter. So yes, it does reflect worse on Biden than on Trump.
I looked this one up because I hadn't heard it before, and I agree it wasn't a good move although I disagree that it invalidates the ability to ever make a rule-of-law defense of any Democrat.
I will point out that the first Trump DOJ, not Biden, released Conahan from prison to home confinement along with about 1000 other criminals as part of the CARES act (he counted as an elderly and non-violent criminal; I think non-violence would be news to his victims).
It is true that Biden commuted the sentences of all CARES act detainees who were still under house arrest at the end of his administration, although it's not the case that he pardoned them.
I have some sympathy for the commutation decision for many CARES act recipients, and for the decision not to differentiate CARES act detainees with respect to them, although I don't think Conahan should have gotten this special treatment.
It caught me too. He was certainly a privately weird person -- essentially a hypocrite of the worst kind. But Hoover as a political actor may be a different kind of historical warning: the true-believer zealot, who felt his ends (battling communism) entitled him to employ any means, even if contravening the law he was supposed to uphold. Or do you feel that his stance on communism was not really ideological zealotry, but simply a means of advancing his own power and disguising his own personal peculiarities? Could be.
Sure, "people in the government" are worried about Patel's alleged drinking problem. Maybe he misses his pie hole sometimes with beverages because of his strabismus? Who knows? It's easy to bash Kash, but who is your picture of competence? Jim Comey?
Good piece as usual, but I encourage you to do a deeper dive on Hoover. It is very unlikely that Kash ends up doing anywhere near the amount of damage to the country that Hoover did.
I don't think the country can sustain the substance and style of Trump for very long. But, the contempt, antipathy, zeal, and violence of the left, not to mention the media's disdain for him, are tells that he, uniquely, has provided meaningful pushback to the left's erosion and destruction of America. Richard seems oblivious to Trump's gifts and proclivities in effective defense of American values. Richard's good is his criticism of both sides. His weakness is his failure to appreciate the problems that only the Trump administration has acknowledged and assaulted. The alternative to Trump, thus far, has been a feckless Republican party, with no seeming conception, nor effective rebuke to the left's progressive fiscal and cultural Marxism.
OK, I read the article and ran it through Grok for verification. It passed. You have valid points.
It's not exactly flattering to Trump but the bottom line is that there was no criminal conspiracy. Yeah, there were a lot of contacts between Russians and I would say that Trump used the Russians pretty successfully, and that there was no identifiable quid pro quo. The contacts go back many years, to well before his Presidential run.
So ask yourself: You are an underdog in a tough fight against a better-connected, better financed, pretty unscrupulous competitor who is heavily favored by the establishment. Then along comes these guys you've had dealings with over the years now offering damaging information on that competitor that might give you an edge. What would you do? The Clinton email leaks were very damaging, for sure, but we really needed to know this stuff. We were better off knowing the dirt. Furthermore, were the shoe on the other foot and the Russians offered the Clinton campaign dirt on her opponent, do you think she would hesitate for even a second? Fuck no. She'd be all over it, and pay dearly for the privilege, as she paid dearly for the bogus Steel Dossier.
Politics is dirty. Maybe getting dirtier, or maybe it's just always been this way but we are now finding out. Biden and Harris both had major, disqualifiying ethical issues, but got a pass from a complicit, ideologically captured press.
Trump is probably the most scrutinized, most heavily attacked personality in my lifetime. Yet somehow he always skates. How does he do it? Probably because he's not even a fraction as bad in real life as his haters think. He's also cagey AF, and knows exactly where the bright lines are. He strolls right up to them but does not cross.
It's a dangerous world, and I would rather have an asshole with a gangster streak in charge than a boy scout.
Since you bring up the “kids do the darndest things” lovable rascal defense of Trump, and since your 2024 article you link to highlights the wacky comedy value he gives the country as a genuine plus, I shall put forward the modest proposal that Democrats nominate Nicolas Maduro as their 2028 nominee. If we are really using humor as a metric, I honestly believe he is a *lot* funnier than that worn-out, overexposed headcase. So what if he sinks the US beneath the waves? If Republican voters get to indulge their id every time at the polls, it’s only fair that the opposition party gets their endorphin kicks, too!
I am not sure what the argument that this article is trying to make is.
If the argument is that 'Kash Patel is bad because he acts like an idiot to appeal to low human capital', this thesis is obviously flawed. Kash Patel drinks on the job, has been embroiled in numerous personal scandals, is actually bad at the gruntwork of being the head of the FBI, and seems like he is going to get fired any day now. The parsimonious explanation that connects this stuff and his rhetorical idiocy is 'he is a dysfunctional and not put together guy' much more than it is 'he is some galaxy brained strategic operator who acts like an idiot to make Benny Johnson like him'. We do know that Patel is a brownnoser, but this quality seems somewhat disconnected from his flaws, or compensatory of them.
If the argument is that 'Kash Patel is bad because he himself is an idiot', this argument has work to do. It is true that authoritarian leaders select more on loyalty at expense of credentials and intelligence than non-authoritarian leaders do. However, Patel was able to pass the Bar Exam, which means that he is not an actual idiot. Having an IQ of 130 instead of 145 does not explain why an active FBI director would shill memecoins and get drunk before briefings. Even in absence of standards condemning these practices, most IQ 130 lawyers would not be this unprofessional in how they ran the FBI. This article seems to be conflating 'doesn't have the IQ of James Comey' with 'has the IQ that produces the dysfunctional behaviors of the American underclass' in this sense.
The argument could be that the Trump administration is so repulsive to most educated people that the ones who would be willing to work under it are just a rough group. I am not sure I buy this: Trump is supported by most Republicans these days, and even if Republicans are losing educated people, there are still presumably many educated people that are still Republican Trump supporters in raw numbers. Presumably most would be more professional in major government positions than Patel. You would have to take the 'negative selection' argument to absurd extremes to argue otherwise.
In a broader sense, I think Trump administrations selects for people who are high in trait openness and low in trait conscientiousness. High conscientiousness people around Trump would be a disaster: all of his ideas, if rigidly implemented, would lead to nationwide ruin. The high conscientiousness people Trump had around him in his first term mostly dealt with this by ignoring him and telling friends and media sources they were ignoring him, which Trump parsed as a betrayal (in comparison, Patel not executing an order because he lacked the executive function to do so does not come off as betrayal). Low openness people would end up being turned off by Trump's personal eccentricity: his sexual history, his lack of religion, his deviations from conservative doctrine. So I think we ended up in this equilibrium where the people Trump surrounds himself by are just naturally high openness and low conscientousness because other configurations create friction with him.
Yeah, fine, populism is bad and damaging to institutions. But which do you prefer, Kash Patel at the FBI or a Supreme Court with 6 Ketanji Brown- Jackson's. Because that's the choice on offer. Personally, I'd prefer a Republican party that moved toward more popular positions on economic and social issues, but the Koch network has been torpedoing that for 30 years.
Thanks for displaying your chudness for everyone, David.
Women love chuds
Do they?
I seem to recall endless discourse over the last several years about how chuds are sad and lonely virgins and that it's liberals fault.
Can you get your story straight?
I think you confused chud with incel. Women love chuds.
Google chud and get back with me. LOL
Trump is a chud, much loved by the ladies. Try again. It's now obvious you're only on the internet in boomer circles
I don't particularly like or respect KBJ, but I'd take a court with six of her over Kash and the rest of Trump's clown shoes cabinet any day.
Exactly.
David's comment is just the conservative tradition of thinking "People who disagree with my politics are also therefore automatically corrupt, immoral, and incompetent."
Also, I think "clown show" would work better than "clown shoes". I wasn't sure if this was a mispelling or a deliberate choice (I mispell a lot in comments so I understand).
Trump bought his cabinet large shoes. Its being interpreted as a loyalty test, publicly humiliate yourself for the boss.
Touche!
I totally missed your joke!
Can you be specific about the Ketanji Brown-Jackson rulings which you feel are *so* terrible that they are worth jeopardizing the republic for?
Glacier Northwest, Inc. v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters (2023)
In an 8-1 decision, KBJ was the sole judge who ruled that union members could purposely stop concrete trucks with cement in them so the cement would harden and destroy the trucks.
If you extrapolate this ruling she apparently believes that if you are in a union you can just destroy the property that someone else owns. While Kash Pater is a clown, leftists like KBJ are a threat to the basic principles of liberal democracy like property rights.
I'm skimming her dissent right now, looks like you are misrepresenting the reason she dissented?
"Under Garmon, and as relevant here, a court presented with a tort suit based on strike conduct generally must pause proceedings and permit the Board to determine in the first instance whether the union’s conduct is lawful if the conduct at issue is even “arguably” protected by the NLRA...
[...]
Garmon makes clear that we have no business delving into this particular labor dispute at this time..."
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-1449_d9eh.pdf
which interpretation of what what by her do you object to in that case
This is particularly weak sauce even by the standards of modern Republican whataboutism. We should expect better no matter which party is in charge!
Wasn't Hoover enormously racist even by the standards of the era? It seems odd to criticise Patel for abusing his privileges when Hoover did plenty of the same.
If nothing else, Hoover at least had enough sense of shame to try to keep his worst impulses shrouded in secrecy. The fact that Patel proudly advertises his complete lack of qualifications or professionalism is independently awful and probably even more pernicious to the overall institution than his substantive incompetence.
True, that's a valid point.
Is there some norm that criticizing contemporary politicians without criticizing past politicians who did same violates?
What? Richard was claiming that Patel is bad even compared to Hoover, which I think is a bit of a stretch.
Ah. I makes sense then. I interpreted you literally as in "it's odd to criticize x when not criticizing y" rather than "it's odd to say patel is worse than hoover"
It was worth my time reading just to get to this:
“For some, it’s hard to be truly disgusted with Trump. He’s too funny, and in ways too innocent to hate: a fat toddler approaching 80 who seems to brush off unrelenting hostility from all establishment institutions and the bullets of would-be assassins, and who most of the time barely even pretends that he isn’t lying to you.”
Yeah, I'm also more disgusted by the movement, and it can be funny thinking about how absurd it is that Donald Trump is the president.
Yes! And oddly I admire that .. I mean the Founders envisioned Farmers and Dry Good Shop Owners and Actors and Lawyers without Degrees rotating into the tightly proscribed role .. I mean no knows Teddy Roosevelt's position on abortion, or on tobacco smoke, because it was irrelevant. In contrast to even Europe even today, where folks, however selected - whether by blood, merit or class, are nonetheless selected, from childhood to train professionally for such positions. Trump is a reminder to us all of the wisdom of the Founders to avoid the temptation to make one man responsible for deciding whether to bribe all 50 States into enacting regulations of their citizens into tying themselves to their horses and wagons with belts and helmets .. and the concurrent expectation that the one man would have the wisdom and knowledge and training to execute that responsibility.
Did they? They were pretty elitist. Lawyers and wealthy farmer aristocrats.
Did I claim otherwise?
You write wonderfully about the situation. If your book doesn't tell us what to do about it, I'm going to want my money back
Here's a start: Don't vote for Republicans!
Vote in Republican primaries for the non-stupid corrupt MAGA retard, e.g. Cornyn over Paxton.
Or vote in Dem primaries for non-stupid left-wing retards.
Of course that is just shouting into the void in my case as I live in red DeSantisland.
Do what I do: register in the dominant party in your state, vote for the least crazy person in the primary, and then vote for the weaker party in the general.
I don’t want Democratic politicians getting cocky because they win 70-30 all the time, even if I have to vote for a nutjob to send that message.
Well I live in DeSantisland so voting Democrat is like shouting into the void. I still do it though.
By not voting for Republicans, (and as far as I can tell, there is not another serious alternate Party), Donald Trump and the rest of his motley crew of Huey Long Populist Democrats (with a scattering of principled Democrat Party dissidents) filled the vacuum.
Well, Marco Rubio did somehow manage to also slip in the door, but that may be the exception who proves the....
Trump didn't appear because a handful of moderates defected to the Dems or stopped voting. He appeared because the median Republican voter LOVED his message, etc.
A truth that you guys simply don't want to face.
He got elected due to the defections. He has long appeared on the stage. And he was elected in 2016 due to actual Republican votes being split amongst a very large and prestigious Primary field, despite the efforts of every Republican from Dole to Rush Limbaugh .. indeed it is plausible that Jon Stewart's pleas to Democrats and Independents to PLEASE PLEASE cross-over and vote for Trump put him over the edge. (And indeed, right out of the box, Trump made it known he was done with the Republican Party, and scheduled his first round of meetings with the likes of Al Gore .. Trump was for sale .. but the Democrats decided he would be more useful as a fundraising scare tool than as a partner, so they gave so much Hell to Al Gore for 'normalizing' Trump, that no else dared to do so ... this treatment of Al Gore by the Democrats preceded and was not a small reason for my own eventual defection from the Democrats to someone I decided maybe was needed to break things .. such as the already expanding speech and thought police within my Party. ("Have you now or ever sported an Scots-Irish Rebel flag on your license plate?")
Also, what do you mean by "you guys", kemo sabe?
You obviously believe this and there is probably nothing I can do to chagne your mind, but I don't believe this is true at all. Trump won because he appealed to the median Republican voter (and still does in spite of Iran, ICE, corruption, etc). Stunts like Democrats voting Republican in primaries are not enough to move the needle.
Show data. Who are these imaginary voters? I have yet to meet one, they barely even exist on the Internet. You are speculating, which is fine, until you start telling someone else what is going on in THEIR mind. Rather than simply asking them.
So... you mean, if populism leads to incompetence and corruption, one has to put up with elitism, with everything that means, like snobbery? I can make that deal, but I am afraid the less educated cannot. Their biggest fear, hatred and motivator is educated people looking down on them. Like how they called Obama elitist, because he talked like what he was, a professor.
The reason for that is that there is also the opposite, a mostly-educated, not-too-well-paid class, whose primary hobby is dunking on the uneducated, because they do not actually experience that much of the other kinds of success, achievement, power or status. So the contempt the uneducated feel is 100% real, but not really coming from the governing class, but from far lower.
So politics is entrapped by a battle between two non-governing classes, the (more or less) journalist or schoolteacher, and the hick. And this is not the kind of thing that results in competent people governing. Something is broken about this.
I think you're correct here.
Maybe I'm the last classical liberal who hasn't defected to the MAGA or anti-MAGA tribes.
Yes, the Trump administration has done many many very bad things. Including Kash Patel.
Yes, the Biden administration also did many many very bad things.
Yes, Kamala Harris would have done many many very bad things.
The question is which is worst? Trump has been fixing a lot of things that needed fixing. And breaking a lot of other things that were working reasonably well.
The answer is not obvious to me.
What was your biggest fear of a Kamala presidency? I think saying Biden was comparable to Trump is insane.
Since we never actually had a Biden Presidency, it is hard to compare. (And that to this day, there seems to be no one, certainly no one from the establishment, openly curious as to exactly HOW (and by whom) the Executive Branch was continuing to function without a President is the biggest invisible elephant still in the room. Honestly, I think no one wants to know.)
You’re a crazy person
Source?
A reason I am not concerned about Donald Trump is that his changes are ephemeral .. Executive and Emergency Order experiments (which, as a silver lining, allow us to judge without committing what, for example, a Border Patrol unleashed within the border would actually look like). I feared Hillary Clinton due to her actually knowing how government worked and knowing that she would not waste her time making changes that would vanish when she would, and she not only knew how to make real, permanent, structural changes, but also knew how to not speak her actual mind in order to ensure plausible denial in case any of them did not work out as envisioned. That said, I could not quite bring myself to vote directly for Don Rickles, but I still would not rule out doing so tomorrow if I could (and of course only because he is 79, not 49).
You being unable to compare Biden to Trump 2 shows you are no classical liberal. You are maga melted I hated to break it to you. It's not both sides are the same... That's what maga media has been pumping you with.
I get it - anybody who can't clearly see which is worse is on the opposite side from you.
Yes. You are either too low IQ, or too low information to be voting.
I think we have a bit of "good-old-days" revisionism happening here. As others have pointed out, J. Ed was no choirboy. In truth he was horrendous, capricious, weird and paranoid, extraordinarily political, and wielded near-absolute power for decades.
Comey may have looked and acted like boy scout, but he allowed top assistants to harass candidate, and then President Trump with the wild goose chase which was the Russia Collusion hoax, for years. Yes, Patel has become an embarrassment, but being of a protected class he must be given more leeway than a conventional appointee. Have patience. He will soon be leaving to "spend more time with his family."
It was not a hoax. The Republican Senate Intel Committee confirmed that.
It was worse than a hoax. It was a bona fide malevolent conspiracy.
Maybe in your dreams, but I'm pretty sure that if it were ever confirmed that the President of the United States were a Russian asset there would be some consequences. Furthermore, Bob Mueller, dozens of investigators, and $40 million in tax money spent on a wide-ranging, months long investigation beg to differ.
But by all means, feel free to educate me.
You’re conflating two things - a legitimate investigation and media claims that Trump was an asset. The investigation found gobs of collusion (and a lots of destroyed evidence like deleted text messages and Manafort’s use of “foldering” for email communications - an espionage technique). This has never happened in the history of the country. The issue is that collusion is not specifically a crime. The only feasible crime is pre-arranged conspiracy. Manafort lied about his role and then refused to testify because he correctly surmised that Trump would pardon him.
I love these vague assertions: "found gobs of evidence," but not one actual example, and "found destroyed evidence" which is a contradiction. The only thing they had, which they found by way of one of the four fabricated FISA warrants, was that Gen. Flynn had a conversation with his Russian counterpart during the transition period, which you would expect him to do. They had a recording of it, a stunning breach of protocol. Months later, they surprised Flynn with an in office visit, in which they asked him detailed questions about the conversation. He recounted it to the best of his ability but got a couple of minor details slightly wrong, as you or I would have done, which they used to charge him with "lying to the FBI." They then threatened to go after his son. He folded to the blackmail and gave them the testimony they wanted, which was as mundane as it could be.
Manafort was convicted of financial crimes. He concealed a relationship with a skeevy Ukrainian entity. Nothing more. There was no political angle and no Russian connection. Except maybe that Ukraine is next door to Russia, and Ukrainian and Russian are similar languages. Close enough! Basically they went after him because he ignored their subpoenas and would not bend to their will.
People see what they want to. But only a bloody fool, a paranoid, or deranged hater could look at a guy like Donald Trump and see a traitor. It's profoundly dumb. You guys use that term so lightly, but to a person of Trump's generation and societal standing, that is the blackest of insults. A hundred years ago, you would be within your rights to kill a man over such an insult. It's insane to think he would risk capital punishment and total ruin in a relationship with our civilizational enemies.
While President, Trump slapped Russia with the toughest sanctions ever. He also armed the hell out of Ukraine, irritating Putin very much. Does that sound like a Russian asset.
What else you got? Let me guess. Nine Eleven was an inside job!!! The moon landings were faked!!! Fluoridation is mind control!!
The report is 400 pages long. I'm not going to recapitulate all the evidence for you. Go read this: https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-situation--the-enduring-truths-of-the-mueller-report
For good measure, the Senate Intel Committee report had even more evidence.
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/collusion-reading-diary-what-did-senate-intelligence-committee-find
Not to mention .. what exactly would be the problem with a President being a 'Russian asset'. It is a free country. (And of course everyone avoids what is meant by "asset". Should England be embarrassed that they are very openly a US asset? James Bond/Ian Fleming was not. Mexico would dearly love being recognized by a President as an asset to America, not a detriment or problem to be solved.
I want you to think long and hard about the fact that Joe Biden, before leaving office, pardoned Michael Conahan (the judge from Luzerne County, PA, who took bribes to send hundreds of innocent juveniles to private prisons). How can one possibly make a "rule-of-law" based defense for a party whose leader finds Conahan a sympathetic figure? As for me, I'd much rather live under the garden-variety corruption that we get with Trump and Patel.
This is a wild comment. Hard to believe someone could write it in earnest.
It's even harder to believe that someone who cares about the rule of law could pardon Michael Conahan.
The fact you could think Trump's corruption is garden-variety and/or somehow less bad than literally any other President in history is wild as hell.
Your brain is broke.
Rude. And wrong.
Your pearl clutching is cute. Sorry Republicans have no morals anymore. Keep talking about petty crimes of the Democrats while ignoring the felonies the Trump admin commits.
Michael Conahan is a felon if there ever was such a thing. He sentenced 2,401 juveniles to various punishments (usually the longest prison term he could give them) in cases that were later expunged when he was discovered to be getting kickbacks from the owners of a for-profit prison. Most of those children never recovered (socially and reputationally) from what happened to them, and several ended up committing suicide.
How you can compare Biden's commutation of Conahan's sentence to Trump pardoning J6 rioters (whose actions were a spur-of-the-moment thing, without any of the premeditation that Conahan showed, and without doing any harm to anyone's person, and find Trump's actions worse, is beyond me.
You see to think that impartiality in government just means giving more lenience to the crimes of people who went to good schools, and know how to look dignified in public, and how to cry crocodile tears when they're told they've done wrong. Hence why James Comey is getting so much sympathy right now after getting arrested for his dumbass "86 47" stunt, from people who had no sympathy at all for the man who erected the fake gallows on Capitol Hill for Mike Pence back in 2021, even though (1) both men had put a lot of effort into gestures saying "There's a guy I kinda sorta want to see assassinated," and (2) Comey has a bigger audience than the Hang-Mike-Pence guy ever did.
I for one am glad to see the double standards falling.
But the DOJ that released Conahan from prison 6 years early in 2020 was Donald Trump's. Do you think that this was a correct decision?
You are being tricky with your choice of words there. "Released from prison" refers to him being moved to house arrest along with hundreds of other old prisoners so as to reduce the chance of them dying of covid. It was a spurZ-of-the -moment decision, perhaps rash but not really reflective of sympathy for the criminals in question, and it was probably made by people who'd worked in the Justice Department long before Trump became president.
The decision to commute Conahan's sentence (which I think it the only one that showed real sympathy for his crimes) was made by Joe Biden, at around the same time he broke his repeated promise not to pardon Hunter. So yes, it does reflect worse on Biden than on Trump.
I looked this one up because I hadn't heard it before, and I agree it wasn't a good move although I disagree that it invalidates the ability to ever make a rule-of-law defense of any Democrat.
I will point out that the first Trump DOJ, not Biden, released Conahan from prison to home confinement along with about 1000 other criminals as part of the CARES act (he counted as an elderly and non-violent criminal; I think non-violence would be news to his victims).
It is true that Biden commuted the sentences of all CARES act detainees who were still under house arrest at the end of his administration, although it's not the case that he pardoned them.
I have some sympathy for the commutation decision for many CARES act recipients, and for the decision not to differentiate CARES act detainees with respect to them, although I don't think Conahan should have gotten this special treatment.
I was with you until your comment on J Edgar Hoover.
It caught me too. He was certainly a privately weird person -- essentially a hypocrite of the worst kind. But Hoover as a political actor may be a different kind of historical warning: the true-believer zealot, who felt his ends (battling communism) entitled him to employ any means, even if contravening the law he was supposed to uphold. Or do you feel that his stance on communism was not really ideological zealotry, but simply a means of advancing his own power and disguising his own personal peculiarities? Could be.
I don't know but he was Deep State and did not really assist in protecting JFK. Plus he was extremely peculiar
Fair points. We can certainly agree he was a bad guy and tarnished the reputation of the FBI
Sure, "people in the government" are worried about Patel's alleged drinking problem. Maybe he misses his pie hole sometimes with beverages because of his strabismus? Who knows? It's easy to bash Kash, but who is your picture of competence? Jim Comey?
Good piece as usual, but I encourage you to do a deeper dive on Hoover. It is very unlikely that Kash ends up doing anywhere near the amount of damage to the country that Hoover did.
I don't think the country can sustain the substance and style of Trump for very long. But, the contempt, antipathy, zeal, and violence of the left, not to mention the media's disdain for him, are tells that he, uniquely, has provided meaningful pushback to the left's erosion and destruction of America. Richard seems oblivious to Trump's gifts and proclivities in effective defense of American values. Richard's good is his criticism of both sides. His weakness is his failure to appreciate the problems that only the Trump administration has acknowledged and assaulted. The alternative to Trump, thus far, has been a feckless Republican party, with no seeming conception, nor effective rebuke to the left's progressive fiscal and cultural Marxism.
You should go to Africa or the Middle East to have gangster leaders, America doesn't do warlords little bro.
OK, I read the article and ran it through Grok for verification. It passed. You have valid points.
It's not exactly flattering to Trump but the bottom line is that there was no criminal conspiracy. Yeah, there were a lot of contacts between Russians and I would say that Trump used the Russians pretty successfully, and that there was no identifiable quid pro quo. The contacts go back many years, to well before his Presidential run.
So ask yourself: You are an underdog in a tough fight against a better-connected, better financed, pretty unscrupulous competitor who is heavily favored by the establishment. Then along comes these guys you've had dealings with over the years now offering damaging information on that competitor that might give you an edge. What would you do? The Clinton email leaks were very damaging, for sure, but we really needed to know this stuff. We were better off knowing the dirt. Furthermore, were the shoe on the other foot and the Russians offered the Clinton campaign dirt on her opponent, do you think she would hesitate for even a second? Fuck no. She'd be all over it, and pay dearly for the privilege, as she paid dearly for the bogus Steel Dossier.
Politics is dirty. Maybe getting dirtier, or maybe it's just always been this way but we are now finding out. Biden and Harris both had major, disqualifiying ethical issues, but got a pass from a complicit, ideologically captured press.
Trump is probably the most scrutinized, most heavily attacked personality in my lifetime. Yet somehow he always skates. How does he do it? Probably because he's not even a fraction as bad in real life as his haters think. He's also cagey AF, and knows exactly where the bright lines are. He strolls right up to them but does not cross.
It's a dangerous world, and I would rather have an asshole with a gangster streak in charge than a boy scout.
Since you bring up the “kids do the darndest things” lovable rascal defense of Trump, and since your 2024 article you link to highlights the wacky comedy value he gives the country as a genuine plus, I shall put forward the modest proposal that Democrats nominate Nicolas Maduro as their 2028 nominee. If we are really using humor as a metric, I honestly believe he is a *lot* funnier than that worn-out, overexposed headcase. So what if he sinks the US beneath the waves? If Republican voters get to indulge their id every time at the polls, it’s only fair that the opposition party gets their endorphin kicks, too!
I am not sure what the argument that this article is trying to make is.
If the argument is that 'Kash Patel is bad because he acts like an idiot to appeal to low human capital', this thesis is obviously flawed. Kash Patel drinks on the job, has been embroiled in numerous personal scandals, is actually bad at the gruntwork of being the head of the FBI, and seems like he is going to get fired any day now. The parsimonious explanation that connects this stuff and his rhetorical idiocy is 'he is a dysfunctional and not put together guy' much more than it is 'he is some galaxy brained strategic operator who acts like an idiot to make Benny Johnson like him'. We do know that Patel is a brownnoser, but this quality seems somewhat disconnected from his flaws, or compensatory of them.
If the argument is that 'Kash Patel is bad because he himself is an idiot', this argument has work to do. It is true that authoritarian leaders select more on loyalty at expense of credentials and intelligence than non-authoritarian leaders do. However, Patel was able to pass the Bar Exam, which means that he is not an actual idiot. Having an IQ of 130 instead of 145 does not explain why an active FBI director would shill memecoins and get drunk before briefings. Even in absence of standards condemning these practices, most IQ 130 lawyers would not be this unprofessional in how they ran the FBI. This article seems to be conflating 'doesn't have the IQ of James Comey' with 'has the IQ that produces the dysfunctional behaviors of the American underclass' in this sense.
The argument could be that the Trump administration is so repulsive to most educated people that the ones who would be willing to work under it are just a rough group. I am not sure I buy this: Trump is supported by most Republicans these days, and even if Republicans are losing educated people, there are still presumably many educated people that are still Republican Trump supporters in raw numbers. Presumably most would be more professional in major government positions than Patel. You would have to take the 'negative selection' argument to absurd extremes to argue otherwise.
In a broader sense, I think Trump administrations selects for people who are high in trait openness and low in trait conscientiousness. High conscientiousness people around Trump would be a disaster: all of his ideas, if rigidly implemented, would lead to nationwide ruin. The high conscientiousness people Trump had around him in his first term mostly dealt with this by ignoring him and telling friends and media sources they were ignoring him, which Trump parsed as a betrayal (in comparison, Patel not executing an order because he lacked the executive function to do so does not come off as betrayal). Low openness people would end up being turned off by Trump's personal eccentricity: his sexual history, his lack of religion, his deviations from conservative doctrine. So I think we ended up in this equilibrium where the people Trump surrounds himself by are just naturally high openness and low conscientousness because other configurations create friction with him.