Another tough love newsletter
Plus: An update on civility
Plus: Imagine there's no Facebook
Congress plays multiple games of chicken
I’ll vote against the party threatening the republic—simple as that.
They know how to turn their weakness into strength.
Few of us want to pay attention to Madison Cawthorn. In less than a year in Washington, the freshman representative from North Carolina has built the wrong kind of national reputation with allegations of sexual assault, a steady drip of misinformation, and far too many palm-to-face-moments. Just last week, Cawthorn proudly proclaimed that he had “formally requested that the U.S. cabinet invoke the 25th Amendment” and remove President Joe Biden, although that’s not something a U.S. representative can “formally” do. That request also misspelled the name of Vice President Kamala Harris. Such antics leave Democrats incredulous and at least some Republicans shaking their heads. For all, Cawthorn is a somber and regular reminder that our country has grown so polarized that Republican voters felt compelled to pull the lever for a candidate with a glaringly thin resume and a bloated history of lying.
Plus: The GOP's Gangster Politics
It will take renewal, not just rebuttal, to bring an end to the conspiracy-theory right.
And Ted Cruz fucking knows damn well they’ve already been vetted.
It’s bad enough that Ted virtue signals and grandstands every chance he gets, but particularly disgusting when he does it when lives are at stake. Especially the lives of people who have risked theirs specifically to help the U.S.
Making sense of tragedy and disaster.
Police who defended the Capitol on January 6 are now left to fend for themselves.
“Back the Blue!” from Republicans has always been and continues to be pure bullshit. This just drives that point home.
The government can’t love you, and when it works from the premise that it can, folly or tyranny follow.
The former president said there is no vetting of those coming to the U.S.
Republicans are running on a whole lot of unpopular views.
The abysmal coverage of the U.S. withdrawal is a sharp reminder of how two decades of failure were foisted on us in the first place.
Thread by @ezraklein: This is worth reading, as it illustrates a peculiar pathology in modern conservatism: The idea that the US government is too incompetent to execute domestic policy well, but it has extraordina...…
Honestly trying to wrap my head around this concept of Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan amounts to trusting terrorists, while Trump’s deal-making with said terrorists and having a great relationship with said terrorists does not apparently equal trusting terrorists.
I could be very wrong but, if you’re making a deal with someone, or you’re claiming to have a great relationship with someone, trust is implied. It’s even more implied when both deal making and great relationship-having are happening.
Also I’m wondering exactly what the folks accusing Biden of trusting terrorists while conveniently leaving out Trump’s trust of same were expecting to happen when the U.S. left Afghanistan. Did they think the fucking Taliban was going to just stand aside despite the deal and that a non-terrorist government was just going to pop up and magically maintain power?
Don’t get me wrong. I think there absolutely things worth criticizing about Biden’s withdrawal and specifically how it’s been executed. but “He’s trusting the terrorists!” is definitely not one of those things, unless there’s some alternative I don’t know about where the Taliban is kept from assuming power without our maintaining a continuous troop presence and basically making Afghanistan a client state.
Oh look the right is suddenly feminist again!
Seriously though you guys have your own problems with your own anti-immigrant anti-refugee contingent you might want to see to that before you start pretending to be the best of feminists.