Weekend Open Thread

13 thoughts on “Weekend Open Thread”

1. You have an error in the quote above. It's Harry S Truman, not Harry S. Truman.

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2. Hey Alva, our good friend, Michael Bowman is unable to log in . He is using Safari and asked me to give you a heads up. Can you help him…?
   Thanks, Alva.

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   1. Safari users have had luck by deleting your cache and shift+refreshing on the site to ensure the latest version is loading. We are actively working this login problem in every case, so thanks for the heads up.

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      1. Alva – I'm on my iPhone and after three attempts it let me reply to you.  There are times on my laptop (Safari) that it will log me in but then, there'a no comment box although the "post comment" button is there. 
          

         For the rest of you, this may be the best political ad I've ever seen.  She's my new political crush. 

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         1. That ad. WOW! 

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         2. Passing this all on to the developers. We won't rest until it's all working, and thank you for your patience.

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            1. Alva, are the developers going to fix the embed codes? I have to guess whether they will work. They used to light up a different color in the text. Now they only do it when they are clicked on.

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         3. She might be your political crush Michael, but you're going to have to fight me off because SHE'S MINE!!! Really good stuff.

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3. Here is a call to action for Republicans to save our democracy.

   https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/12/07/robert-kagan-trump-dictatorship-how-to-stop/?wpisrc=nl_ideas

   “The Republican Party is finished as a coherent legitimate political party. Either it is about to become the party of the Trump dictatorship or it is going to break up into Constitutional and anti-Constitutional wings. The two-party arrangement the nation has known since the Civil War ended when the Trump cult captured the GOP. We are heading into a new era of politics in America. We could do worse than go into it with a coalition of Democrats and Constitutional Republicans. The fact is, even if Trump is defeated in November, the nation will still be in crisis as Trump leads his supporters in rebellion against that outcome. Democrats and Constitutional Republicans will need to stick together then, too.


   Can a Trump dictatorship still be prevented? Yes. It does not require a miracle, only courage. But will the people do what they need to do? Human frailty being what it is, and ambitious and selfish politicians being what they are, it is probably fanciful to imagine that the right combination of people will turn up and show a wisdom and courage they have not shown for the past eight years. Even now, we are being treated to what Abraham Lincoln called the “lullaby” arguments, the ones that urge you to go back to sleep and stop worrying. Such as: The voters will see reason. The polls are unreliable. The court system will work. Trump won’t do what he is threatening to do. Even as we get closer and closer to the possibility of a dictatorship in America, we accept the same assurances we have been accepting for the past eight years. Do we think that this time we will get a different outcome? There is a word for that.”

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4. How do imbeciles likes these rise the level of being presidents of major universities?

   Penn president resigns; Stefanik vows Harvard and MIT next – POLITICO

   If you aren't smart enough to navigate your way safely through a bunch of taunting soundbites hurled at you from Elise Stafanik and the other MAGA morons on a House committee, you have no business running a major university.

   And to answer my question:  They are good at fundraising.

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   1. Apparently it was a setup by the "odious mendacious weasel" Elise Stefanik. Via Josh Marshall at TPM.

      "So how did this happen, how did these three come up with the same catastrophically bad set of answers as Penn President Liz Magill acknowledged in an apology video released a day later? (As I wrote this, news broke that Claudine Gay, President of Harvard, also issued an apology.) I told my wife a couple days ago the exchange would make some sense if it was immediately preceded by a discussion of the role of targeting and the speech/conduct distinction in university harassment policies and then Stefanik used this as an opening for her gotcha questions. Admittedly, I hadn’t found time to go back and watch the whole hearing to see if something like this was the case. But this morning I found out that Times columnist Michele Goldberg did do this. And there was something at least somewhat like this. Here’s the relevant excerpt from Goldberg’s piece in today’s Times."

      But while it might seem hard to believe that there’s any context that could make the responses of the college presidents OK, watching the whole hearing at least makes them more understandable. In the questioning before the now infamous exchange, you can see the trap Stefanik laid.

      “You understand that the use of the term ‘intifada’ in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict is indeed a call for violent armed resistance against the state of Israel, including violence against civilians and the genocide of Jews. Are you aware of that?” she asked Gay.

      Gay responded that such language was “abhorrent.” Stefanik then badgered her to admit that students chanting about intifada were calling for genocide, and asked angrily whether that was against Harvard’s code of conduct. “Will admissions offers be rescinded or any disciplinary action be taken against students or applicants who say, ‘From the river to the sea’ or ‘intifada,’ advocating for the murder of Jews?” Gay repeated that such “hateful, reckless, offensive speech is personally abhorrent to me,” but said action would be taken only “when speech crosses into conduct.”

      So later in the hearing, when Stefanik again started questioning Gay, Kornbluth and Magill about whether it was permissible for students to call for the genocide of the Jews, she was referring, it seemed clear, to common pro-Palestinian rhetoric and trying to get the university presidents to commit to disciplining those who use it. Doing so would be an egregious violation of free speech. After all, even if you’re disgusted by slogans like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” their meaning is contested in a way that, say, “Gas the Jews” is not. Finding themselves in a no-win situation, the university presidents resorted to bloodless bureaucratic contortions, and walked into a public relations disaster.

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5. For those of you who are interested, the Heritage Foundation has been meeting with Viktor Orban to set the Republican strategy on cutting off military aid to Ukraine.  For real – I am not making this up.

   https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/10/hungary-viktor-orban-republicans-ukraine-aid

   It is a two-pronged strategy where they are looking to cut off the aid from EU members of NATO as well.  

   Jesus Christ on a pogo stick … 

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   1. Wow…

      I am really unsurprised by it. Trumplicans have no loyalty to the United States nor its constitution.

      Yeah… I find myself more amazed and alarmed than anything. Open subversion is being perpetrated by "American" legislators, judges , and Republican officials. They have come to reject democracy because they believe, rightly so, it will not deliver them a society lodged in White privilege. The one they so desperately want to keep.

      Will they accept defeat at the polls? We already know the answer to that. Will the OD behave like a third world dictator if he regains the presidency? Yep..that is a definite yes. 

      Look to the South American Free Market Experiment to envision what life in the US becomes if the MAGA future is realized.

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