I sometimes wonder if Tom is willfully obtuse or so hyper focused as some conservative technocrats used to be to the point of no longer seeing the whole of a situation and its stakes.
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I sometimes wonder if Tom is willfully obtuse or so hyper focused as some conservative technocrats used to be to the point of no longer seeing the whole of a situation and its stakes.
The honest response is that politicians have learned they can just skate by any question by giving a bs answer knowing that interviewer usually won't argue with them and will move onto another topic. At best they'll do a "we want to remind" fact check but they say that to viewers not the politician
Because the actual truth is that none of these elected Republicans want their communities hassled by their National Guards either because they know so long as they keep them to blue areas they'll face little pushback from their own voters.
They've all dodged on actually answering yes or no. They just keep either talking about DC or mention "it's an ongoing conversation".
Man, taking that afternoon nap is a gamble sometimes. It's either "Oh nice that was a solid hour and now some dinner" or "Oh Christ it's 10pm and somehow still tired"
And you just know grubby little Vance is washing his hands less and less when he's in the White House just hoping it's something plausibly deniable
True. They're just reciting what has already happened in other cases. The shock at this point would be if the GOP SCOTUS didn't allow the dismissal to remain in force.
Never Trumpers looked the other way inside the GOP for years while the rot set in and now they're asking others in the Democratic Party to do the same when their concern is the rights of their children to live as they are. Negative polarization is what creates the rot you left your party for.
She's asking for Democrats to actively stand up for the rights of her kids instead of just staying quiet hoping the issue set can be argued somewhere else instead. That kind of cowardice is what allows Republicans to frame the entire issue all on their own.
Another sign how much those "conservatives" in the GOP were just bullshitting about their ideology when they were all in defense of Trump doing this during normal times when they hated Obama for doing something similar during the Great Recession. Hmm maybe this is a new recession indicator?
My main reason for preferring MMP is I think the US has a strong preference for local districts that would have to be maintained in some form while also acknowledging we have a partisan system.
Mixed Member Proportional Representation save us from our electoral sins
It does help a lot though when you know what the word means and its history. So that when it pops up in your country you're like hey I read that somewhere...
Tom here clearly has his own resentments about higher education learning, but is he as bad as Rufo? No, because his education in higher concepts and the "woke" words he's railing against here actually help him combat those reactionary impulses. Everyone should be so lucky to be inoculated the same
Education is inoculation against hucksters like Rufo. People like him rely on everyone else to dumb things down because that's his language game he wants to play. Something right wing operatives understand is that being unpopular now can be temporary and is not a barrier to slim majority power.
Right, and part of the way we got here was people like Rufo who spent years laying this language trap for academics to fall into. Make them so afraid of their own words so they won't be able to defend themselves. Intead of defending their ideas and words proudly and calling Rufo the fascist he is.
Tom is a good example of the voting for the lesser of two evils while not having anything that's affirmative in the part in which he's voting for beyond the base constitutional structure Democrats support and Republicans are abandoning.
I wish it wasn't serious, but you know as well as I do that the Trump Administration is appointing a "compliance officer" for Columbia and will likely expand that to other colleges that fold. You also know what they're trying to do to the Smithsonian when it comes to history.
And why are academic institutions crumbling? Because they listened too much to conservatives like Tom who always wanted them to fail but just not in this Trumpy fashion. They make you afraid of talking about your own papers and ideas to the point people outside don't see the value as much anymore
Joe, you need to take this seriously. Your academic peers at Columbia and other colleges are folding because they too have fallen for this word trap. Democrats of the two parties have a better record on LGBTQ rights, including appointing Justices to that effect. Now academics are crumbling.
Notice how you don't have convicted there in your description. It is worrying how many "compassionate Christians" now believe in not welcoming the stranger and in your case believing in guilty until proven innocent. It might explain why more people are turning away from the churches now.
The best evidence the Trump Administration has nothing is that they're trying to use deportation to get a guilty plea instead of going to court. It's just transparently a weak case if they can't make it themselves absent coercion. Shame "Christians" like you don't read anything beyond the Bible.
You know the local police let him go, right? And both the state and federal prosecutors didn't bring any charges because they didn't have any evidence of a crime. But instead of you being a rational person about this you've made a choice to be an idiot that swallows right wing headlines.
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I can just as easily say you're a human trafficker too and give you just as much due process as Garcia wasn't given. So funny to see conservatives who used to cry Obama would put soldiers on the streets celebrate when Trump does it. Hypocrites.
Remind me again since you're so obviously educated was Garcia convicted of anything? No, but he was punished anyway. You must really suck at history if you don't know what happens when due process is stripped of entire groups. It never stays to just the first.
I wonder if Tom realizes the implications of what he's saying that if the GOP wins by catering to their base and dragging along their "centrists" with polarization then Dems could/should do the same.
Joe, if "allies" like yourself can't give rhetorical support why would any other voting bloc trust you to put your vote where your mouth isn't on policy?
It's opinions like that, Tom, that make conservatives whining about "too many" liberals in education a laughable premise. Most of y'all self selected yourself out of academia by taking issue with too many syllables. What a tragedy.
You got it backwards. It's the Republicans who have so much riding on this that they're threatening alternative deportation countries to coerce a guilty plea instead of going to court. Sounds more like they're afraid they'd lose in court. bsky.app/profile/brok...
If the Trump Administration had any credibility here they would have indicted and tried Garcia before trying to deport him. Instead they lied saying he was part of a gang, something you could say about the Trump Org just as easily.
Hey, Axios, report this as if it was happening in Russia, Hungary, or Turkey and then you'll understand it's a danger and not some clever political move.
Well yeah, a lot of them started their political careers back then and are stuck in their ways.
He lied. Stop being so weak and just say that.
Incoming shadow docket SCOTUS: Who's to know if this is unconstitutional? Certainly not us right now. Let's just assume the best and let it play out until after the midterms
I think so because The Boys is ending with their next and final season. Gen V Season 1 was a lead in to the previous The Boys season
That "cop" is essentially saying that law enforcement should be openly partisan which spells badly for a country hoping to maintain peace within itself. In other countries when law enforcement becomes political police it's a doom spiral.
TLDR: The core part of "Open"AI will never be shared because it's proprietary but everyone elses IP should be exploited for free with no compensation in return because that's "progress". Hackspeak in a hoodie just like the other guy.
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Anyone still confused if that's fascist or not? Enemies lists in plain view.
It's such an easy response too. "Overly means testing every program has helped break our city further into programs for 'them' and nothing for 'us'. Affordability in the city of New York is a 'we' problem, not just a 'me' problem."
Although to be fair the Republicans have spent a lot of time saying in court that undocumented people aren't persons at all entitled to due process or basic humanitarian detainment while in proceedings. So to them this is the next natural step to make it official that they're not "real" people
Oh come on, Jonathan, surely you don't expect a Republican US Senator to have done the required reading before assuming office? Remember when some Republicans lost their mind at NPR simply reposting parts of the Declaration of Independence as an "attack" on Trump. So much for the originalists.
That pretty much all the conservative establishment flipped to Trump is a telling sign on how weak their professed commitment to "conservatism" always was
Hold on, Rich, there is a valid point Tom has displayed. It's that many conservatives are petty people who hold imagined grievances for decades long after they're resolved by literally everyone else. Oh and that they're the "real" victims of political struggles despite still winning many of them
A difference McCarthy didn't care about
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Axios, just say he lied. Stop being so weak at this point.
The Supreme Court may have a Catholic majority but you can bet the GOP will go after the Catholic Church. They already try to investigate and harass Catholic charities that help migrants.
Fuck 'em. Those ignorant hicks couldn't name half the Founding Fathers let alone why one half hated the other half after the Revolution. People who wear their nationalism (not patriotism) on their sleeves are usually ahistorical morons. Know Nothings indeed.
The Boys is ending with the next season, Gen V I think will only get one more season, and this probably won't last that long either
And again the gun cosplaying won't fix those broken men at all. It's more likely to turn them into assholes who wonder why women won't date assholes.
Umm it was the gun loving GOP that deployed the military on US streets so...just admit the 2nd Amendment people were just always closet fascists pretending to hate the federal government until it was their guy sending out the army.
It is unsurprising that so many of those gun nuts can't hold a marriage to save their life, like literally half of the time they turn it on themselves because they cared more about range accuracy than emotional wellbeing.
Going to the range ain't going to fix why he got divorced. It's not going to fix why he falls for the marketing gimmick that a gun is an identity instead of just a weapon. You want to talk propaganda? Read the article and how they try to sell those classes and the "I'm not a prepper but" customers
Oh and you can bet for sure that the only reason in this article they admonished one of the regulars from yelling while firing with a Punisher emblem was because the reporter was there and they didn't want to look bad for normally allowing it among themselves.
"After nearly a decade working as an occupational therapist, a divorce, cross-country moves and hobbies that offered only fleeting escapes from his day job" Guns don't start or remake lives they're made to end them. This guy needs mental healthcare not more training with weapons.
So people like Tom wanted Bork treated like a baby when he was Nixon's henchman and despised modern civil rights law and that's Dems fault that Reagan chose a shit nominee that deserved to be outed as vile? Bork would have voted to overturn Roe V Wade in the 90s with Casey for sure
I think Matthew is correct. Anyone trying to cite Bork in 1988 as a rationale for why Republicans now choose just as bad or worse nominees is lost in the DC pundit sauce. It's a petty grievance from decades ago that no one except elites care about and stupid to cite when Republicans kept SCOTUS.
"they didn't want a conservative on the court" You're still doing the laundering thing, Tom. Pretending Bork was some sort of "normal" conservative when he's more like the current Trump reactionary judicial picks who have made massively unpopular judicial rulings at SCOTUS now.
Considering GOP Ford pardoned GOP Nixon for Watergate and GOP Reagan's genius idea was to nominate one of Nixon's henchmen to the Supreme Court, it seems clear Democrats had to do something to prevent the return of the rot, even some Senate Republicans believed that too to kill Bork's nomination.
Deep cut burn
And for what it's worth the death marriage between organized Christianity and the right wing hasn't helped them stem the rise of secularism in the US. I think it's just made them sound more like lobbying group than a faith cohort. www.pewresearch.org/religion/202...
Was it? Leading Republicans then also cheated on their wives, abused staffers/pages, or hurt random men/women and it did nothing to stop the conservative project of degradation. Stop trying to justify the Christian Right now excusing Trump as Clinton's fault when they hated him for less.
GOP: Democrats MADE us appoint Justices to overturn Roe V Wade in 2022 because they didn't let us appoint a Justice who wanted to overturn Roe V Wade in 1988! 🙃
"Today, of course, the court has a conservative majority, and liberal victories are, indeed, being overturned." Written in 2011 and still true, yet the bitterness of conservatives continues unabated anyway.
"There was tremendous fear that if Bork were confirmed, he would swing the court to the conservatives and important liberal victories would be overturned — starting with Roe v. Wade." Hmm now why would Democratic Senators be concerned about that? Oh right because it's what the GOP ended up doing
THIS is a very conservative sickness. It doesn't matter that the truth is that Bork was voted down by both Republicans and Democrats because of his role in Watergate and views against civil rights laws. The baby GOP didn't get their bottle once and never let it go, even though they still won SCOTUS
Tom has himself said as younger man he held the same grudge that other conservatives had about Bork. It's that same rotten impulse that has led the GOP to this moment, and some Never Trumpers will never admit to themselves how they helped get us here.
Is Tom better though? If there's one thing about conservatives that's known it's that they will concoct a grudge and hold it for decades while normal people move on. Like honestly, still whining about a SCOTUS nomination from the 20th century when there's been more relevant ones the last decade
Yes! What happened AFTER Republicans and Democrats killed Bork's nomination? Reagan's next pick in Justice Kennedy was confirmed!
"But Democrats declared war on Bork to the point where his name became a verb for personally destroying nominees." Cut the bullshit. Actually engage with WHY Bork was controversial and blocked by both Democrats AND Republicans. For being a writer for The Atlantic you sure can be purposefully obtuse
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I hope they feel faint around a deli counter from the memory
Meanwhile the Swiss with their collective executive council giving us the side eye.
That's one of the parts that's so upside down. Local officials will plead with their state reps for expansion while the state reps just toe the national party line that Medicaid expansion is some sort of trap from big government liberals....
bsky.app/profile/kevi...
And what happened after? Reagan got to fill the seat with his other pick during an election year, unlike McConnell who blocked Obama's pick in similar circumstance. McConnell was there too in the US Senate for all of this. So cut the bullshit here of excusing GOP entitlement even when they win
Tom, you're not a stupid man, and yet here you are dismissing why Bork was the problem and not the blocking of his nomination. Gee, why would Senators of both parties have an issue with the guy who fired the Special Counsel into Watergate and despised civil rights law? Hmm
GOP 2012: If Obama is reelected he's going to put soldiers in the streets like a dictator! GOP 2025: You hate this country if you don't submit to the military without question! Next year will be 250 years since the Declaration of Independence and the GOP won't see abuses in it are repeated now
Lied. He lied. Stop being so useless.
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Beto was always a let's figure out our principles first and worry about the politics later kind of guy. On the one hand you get credit for being honest about how you get there but on the other you either get tagged as naive or too brazen to be electable.
Another way regimes sow the seeds of their own unpopularity is by always claiming to take actions to solve major problems while in reality being shallow shows of force that divert resources from actual important work. Military parades. Soldiers directing traffic.
I really do wonder what outlets like Axios think will happen to them when this Administration gets around to finding an excuse to either shut you down or appoint a government overseer like they're doing for CBS.
"Rhetoric" Axios, if Biden was sending out the National Guard into DC under normal circumstances you'd already be knee deep in Fox News hysteria about martial law. Yet when Trump wants to send US soldiers into the streets you treat him with baby gloves. Shameless.
The Mike Johnson types don't become the face of Christianity in politics without the decades of work of certain other conservatives for years believing they could ride that bull into the halls of Congress without the faith being corrupted in return.
Man, I used to binge watch HW Brands lectures he gave at conferences and speaking events on YT. Nice he took the time to review your book!
Exactly! Vance is Mister C to the exact dimension. Some dudes will overthrow a constitutional republic rather than reconcile their personal family issues.
Another Ivy League graduate whining about the elites. I'll say this for Vance the only thing left of him from where he grew up is being bitter
Also very ironic for Vance to try and blame "the left" for hate when his and Trump's entire political project is hating the modern world as it is and trying to turn back the clock to a 19th century idea of America that died and changed for many reasons.
JD Vance: This country isn't a contradiction. Everyone else: How do you square the Founders speaking of freedom while holding people in bondage as slaves? JD Vance: 🤬 You should be grateful we're not putting you back in chains yet! Everyone else: ....yet?
Yeah, you should be made aware that conservatives have also attacked that in the past as racial/ethnic diversity by other means. Their core issue is they don't like diversity in higher education at all.
Here in Texas and across the US I'd argue the average Evangelical is much more politically extreme than the average atheist who just as often is a cynic who doesn't believe in any grand projects
To be fair there were post Watergate laws passed, but you're correct it was not a sustained movement to curtail executive power.
It's been quite the sight to see the same clergy who hated Bill Clinton for professed moral failings to embracing Trump while saying his own moral failings make him all the more fit to fight for their Christian nationalist agenda.
Illegal and unconstitutional is what you mean. Say that.
Oh jeez, it's not as if every other US military intervention in Latin America has created a wave of refugees and asylum seekers to the US as a result. They really have no idea what they're doing beyond this weeks headlines and chryons on cable news