Thursday Open Thread

10 thoughts on “Thursday Open Thread”

1. WARNING LABEL:   It comes from the NY Post but I couldn't resist.

   Robert F. Kennedy Jr. press dinner explodes in war of words and farting (pagesix.com)

   The more stinky side of Camelot.

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   1. "RFK Jr. 2024!  It'll be a gas!"

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      1. Giuliani of course will be RFK's running mate.

         Although I'm not sure which will be top and which bottom.

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2. Talk about clouding the issue….

   That was hilarious. Why wouldn’t voters want to elect a guy with supporters like that?

   This refers to LB’s opening post above, regarding the RFK Jr. press dinner.

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3. Weld County Commissioner Scott James is seeking the Republican nomination for CD8.  https://www.fortmorgantimes.com/2023/07/13/weld-county-commissioner-scott-james-announces-bid-for-us-house/

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   1. Oh goody! Just what the GOP needs! 

      Another candidate who is angry, white, cis-gendered male, presumptively heterosexual and over 50.

      At least Lori Saine and Vicky Marbles bring their double “X” chromosomes to the race. That is what passes for diversity in the Party of Trump.

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4. "vast osmotic pressure of cash and oligarch hopes looking for a candidate" Josh Marshall at TPM

   there’s a peculiar feature of the current GOP. It has actually become what many Democrats long claimed: a political party controlled by a small coterie of billionaire oligarchs. Of course ‘controlled’ takes it too far. If it were really controlled by the oligarchs you likely wouldn’t have ever had Trump. You’d have had Rubio or Jeb or maybe even Ted Cruz or Scott Walker. So the GOP isn’t fully controlled by the oligarchs. But it is funded by them.

   This is a quite remarkable development. The Democrats are now funded pretty decisively by small donors. The ‘small donor’ title can be a bit misleading. It’s really a base of middle class and especially upper middle class and affluent donors chipping in tens or hundreds of dollars at a time. There’s a clear class tilt. But it’s still a mass base of donors.

   …

   While a number of GOP oligarchs have expressly foresworn supporting Trump again you can rest assured almost all of them will end up supporting him as nominee. But it’s also true that most of them would really, really like to avoid that. That after all is the origin of the DeSantis campaign, why he raised and is still sitting on a huge amount of money even as his candidacy is flat-lining. He would get rid the GOP of Trump while still owning the libs and delivering on tax cuts and low regulation. That didn’t work out. But the desire to get rid of Trump is still there. There is like a vast osmotic pressure of cash and oligarch hopes looking for a candidate to absorb both.

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5. Best podcast title of the day:
    

   'Musk Is Doing for Zuckerberg What Trump Did for George W. Bush
   https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/13/opinion/social-media-cesspool-twitter-and-threads.html

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   1. Well crap, looks like I may have posted prematurely:

      Brett Kavanaugh: Supreme Court is ‘government at its finest’

      “The court is an institution of law, not of politics, not of partisanship,” Kavanaugh said.

      Read in CNN Politics: https://apple.news/AcXy5rtctR3SXRZPILLOjOg

      . . . and an institution of ethics too, Brett; you forgot to include “ethics”!!

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   2. That analogy is right on the money!

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