Don’t you have to be mentally competent to run for president? The Emperor has no clothes. He is mentally ill. Donald belongs in a psych unit not in the white house. Retired nurse here and I have seen this behavior before… in a psychiatric hospital. I don’t know which is worse mentally ill Trump or those financing him in hopes of getting what they want through him! Yikes true insanity.
Corn showed Lowry to be the smug intellectual lightweight he is. Reasonable people can disagree on any number of policy matters (student loan forgiveness, fixing the problems at the southern border, etc.). Lowry even trying to compare it to Trump's conduct on Jan 6 (notice how Lowry skirts Trump's underlying attempts to subvert the election results with phony elector slates and the like) with Biden's conduct just shows he has no real argument. He also has no answer to Corn correctly pointing out that the Supreme Court weighs in on issues of presidential power regularly. It amazes me that Lowry is still at NR. I guess the 50 people who still read it must like him.
Please interview Joel Greenburg's lawyer. He is under some sort of gag order and has hinted that this prosecution uncovered massive Republican corruption in Florida.....time to find out more.
I’d like to remind Charlie and all my fellow Bulwarkians that in fascist Italy the trains did NOT run on time. They were notoriously inconsistent, often late and frequently broken.
Why then does this myth about fascist efficiency exist? Because propaganda. Mussolini was a former politico and he had a flair for this. They made a few tourist carrying lines run hyper efficiently. However the rest of the rails, some 80%+ was horribly mismanaged to the point of absurdity. This Potemkin train lines thing was just done to bolster the image of Il Duce.
The sweet irony is because the fascist Italy railways were bad and the image was pure propaganda, by the time they were in a proper war, they couldn’t access the Mediterranean for fuel. It had to be brought across the Alps. The trains were not up to it. Only 2 of 9 rails through the Alps had double tracks and could move less than 25% of Italy’s peacetime requirements.
It’s all a mirage people. Repeat it loud and clear. Anyone saying the “trains ran on time” is either naive, a bad faith actor, or a rabid authoritarian. Don’t let them get away with spouting nonsense that was disproved a few months into WWII…
Anyone citing "the trains run on time" as an *upside* of authoritarianism. Although the phrase came from Fascist propaganda, it's had a longer life in political science as a metaphor for tradeoffs between efficiency/security and freedom. Very few of the references I've seen over the years were actually talking about Mussolini's Italy, rather than this derived concept.
Indeed, many phrases are usually borrowed or molded into a different scenario as time goes on.
Still think it’s very important we flag the root of it, as without the historical context we lose some of the nuance.
This particular one: trading one’s freedoms for “efficiency”, or the perception of it in this case, and security, is a core tenet of authoritarianism and something that deeply worries me. By making it “just a saying/reference” we devalue the awful stuff that was associated with it.
I regret to inform everyone that the point Rich Lowry was making in that convo with David Corn is the same argument that the great George Will is also currently making: Biden just as bad as Trump because...student loan forgiveness. Just makes me sad.
I never understood why the people who got all cranked up over student loan forgiveness didn't have a similar objection to the PPP or ERC money that was given to businesses.
(Full disclosure: Before I sold my business we took both PPP and ERC payments.)
I think those cranked up people would use the excuse that when Biden did a handout it was by executive order, so...bad. When Trump did it was through congress, so...good. Which I don't completely disagree with, but, still, a handout's a handout. If you're mad about one you should be mad about them all.
I can't fathom it either. It's not like MAGA's kids aren't also suffering from student loan debt. These are the same folks mad cuz young people aren't having babies or buying houses. but when someone point out that student loan debt is a barrier...that's what a lie the left tells you? To bad so sad you buddy, should have thought about that before you went to that fancy elite college (as if you can't have student loans from community or vocational schools??)
I suppose only rich people or "job creators" deserve help. Poor people should have picked rich parents obviously! I hope the future unborn is taking note and pulling credit reports of potential parents. /s
I thought all the conservatives ditched the NFL when Kapernick took a knee.
Rich Lowry apparently can't stop saying "loan forgiveness". If that's the worst thing that Biden did, I think he and everyone else of his ilk have had a pretty good 3+ years.
"SCOTT: You know, myself and all the voters that support Donald Trump supports a return to normalcy, as it relates to what affects their kitchen table. "
It's that "kitchen table" caveat at the end where Rick Scott gives himself away as complete hypocrite. He knows first, that his fellow Republicans in Congress have failed utterly to focus on kitchen-table issues (despite heroic efforts by president Biden and Democrats to get them to do so), and second, that Mr. Trump is also not going to focus on kitchen table issues if he becomes president again (because he'll be doing, as he has said, "revenge" stuff).
Mr. Scott's statement is an cleverly veiled admission that things are not "normal" now, given how his boss is behaving, but the "kitchen table" caveat gives him an out, if his fellow cultists accuse him of committing heresy.
Maybe they will anyway. The guy even looks like a snake.
We need Trump back in the White House to get things back to normal.
Student loan forgiveness = Attempting to seize power through a multi-pronged coup plot ending in violence and desecration of our Capitol and delaying the certification of a lawful election.
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, along with the NFL, are part of a deep state conspiracy (to do what, I'm not exactly clear).
1) Scott’s answer about voters wanting a return to “normalcy” does grave injustice to the English language. The only way that Trump’s behavior could be considered “normal” is to add the qualifier “normal for Trump”. The next question that Raddatz should have asked Scott is exactly what is “normal” about Trump. It’s the same argument from the Trumplicants complaining about the raid on Mar-a-Lago being “unprecedented”. Sure a raid such as that hadn’t happened before, but they conveniently forget the part that no former President had ever acted like that before.
2) Will Saletan’s point that the conservative Christian Scott is saying that there is no moral dimension to his political thinking is old news for the Evangelical community. After all, they made their peace with Trump long ago, even to the point of completely reversing their “the means justify the ends” philosophy, morphing it into “the ends justifies the means”. And let’s not forget that they credited God with getting Trump elected, yet somehow they seem to forget about 2008, 2012, and 2020. Consistent thinking is so hard (and so passé).
3) The Corn – Lowry exchange is typical of the Trumplicants. Lowry is trying to create a false equivalency between Biden and Trump because both of them did something he considers bad (there are no degrees of “badness”, only “bad” or “good”). So apparently in his mind, trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power by (almost) inciting a riot (and, of course, we have to ignore the fact that zero of the illegal events of January 6 would have happened absent Trump’s support) is no worse than issuing an executive order (which the courts did, in fact, curtail) to forgive some student loan debt. I guess that Lowry would be surprised to find out that there are actually different degrees of murder. And there are things called misdemeanors and things called felonies.
This argument is so outrageously stupid that I can’t believe that anyone would expect us to take it seriously.
Please challenge the anti-Trump Republican leaders -- Where is Mitt, Jeb, W. and the gang? They need to not only be on the record, they need to be defining what moral leadership entails and what is does not. And, they need to be aggressively making the point in every possible medium from now until election. BIG TIME. It's as if that part of the GOP has disappeared; you both have just said it hasn't.
Well, it needs a heck of a lot of reinforcement and it's needed now. I know there are still good guys in the party - I worked for a number of them. But, when it was obvious that caving to the Eagle Forum was worth losing people like me, I was gone. And am I ever relieved. Yet, many decent leaders remained and we are not hearing from them. They need to get back up on the horse (or purple pony) that "throwed" them and let us watch them in the rodeo ring one more time.
The Bulwark should be able to force these people forward - PLEASE GET ON IT
If Bush and Romney came out against Trump they would just need pilloried by the Trump supporters. I'm sure they'd rather just play golf and be thankful that they are out of it. Don't forget they think Pence should have been killed for refusing to bow to Trumps illegal elector scheme.
true - but since it has already happened, what do they have to lose? And, they could be the persuadable voices needed to move Christie and Haley voters to Biden -
Even convicted criminals regard women abusers as the lowest of the low. And now , again, the former Party of Lincoln has women abuser and well known tax fraud, Mr. Trump, as it's leading candidate for president. I thought that 45 years ago, Nixon and his criminality was the lowest America could go, but Mr. Trump is the winner of the race to the bottom. A hundred years later, Warren G. Hardin is no longer even in the race for worst POTUS.
Will Selber speaks truth about why losing wars and the subsequent lack of accountability among the top brass and the elites of the military-industrial complex helps to deflate America's enthusiasm for military recruitment. We may have entered another era of what used to be called "Vietnam Syndrome" because Americans are not feeling much return on their investment of blood and treasure after Iraq and Afghanistan. One political party is already going Isolationist, not even willing to provide a few bullets to support someone else to fight and degrade our Russian adversary. However, I have a hard time seeing retired generals talking to the local VFW or American Legion about their culpability in the lost wars in the Mid-East. As a former Marine myself from a bygone era, my buddies and I just wanted the bragging rights of belonging to an elite force -- win or lose. I must have picked up this ambition from school because I did not come from a military family. So, allow me to suggest another solution that might help in restoring the motivation to serve: civic education. There should be one full year of this subject in high school. One semester focused upon basic democratic and constitutional principles and one semester for practical citizenship. A democracy cannot survive without a socialized citizenry, schooled in the values and practical skills necessary for a functioning self-governing republic. We need to rebuild intrinsic motivation to serve, and it starts in schools. In his Lyceum Address, Lincoln identified the source of the existential threat: "I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad." And later he added that the Constitution and the rule of law should be "the political religion of our nation".
Agree. And this may not be palatable to many, but I'm a firm believer in 1-2 years of mandatory national service after high school - military or other types of service. It might help instill some sense of national pride, a better understanding of civics and the idea of the common good and maybe most important, help us get to know fellow citizens from different places, cultures and walks of life.
Decades ago, I disagreed. But now, with the fiascos of the Bush presidency where the same people were sent to fight over and over and over again, I've changed my mind. If every American had a stake in the fight, it wouldn't have last 20 years. Everyone with brains was incensed about 9/11. That's when the draft should have been reinstated, along with taxes to pay for the war.
Yes, I understand this concept of universal service. It is unjust and undemocratic for only a small proportion of the population to serve.
Selber's description of how "military families" have tended to carry this value and burden of service cannot and should not sustain the uniformed ranks. However, it is tricky to mandate service (even non-military) in a society and culture like America's. We do not live in Robert Heinlen's world (Starship Troopers). Indeed, armed service recruiters do not want a return of the draft, as it lowers quality and increases disciplinary challenges. Besides, two-thirds of the age appropriate pool of young people are not even physically qualified for military service which is a depressing and deplorable fact. And yet we now see the military lowering minimum qualifications which is extremely dangerous (we can expect routine, operational and training accidental deaths and injuries to increase, at the very least). I just continue to think along the lines of what Lincoln said -- the country depends upon whether its people will think and act to place "the common good" as you say, above their own self-interests. The question is what can be done to encourage, motivate and incentivize people to step up ? Actually, there is much that can be done.
Every criticism Haley utters of Trump softens him up for the general election. I'm a total Biden supporter, but I'm giving money to Haley so she can keep talking. https://nikkihaley.com/
Charlie, I just heard you're leaving The Bulwark. I'm very sad about it.
Please know my prayer for you is everything Good and True and Beautiful.
Thanks for your tireless efforts on behalf of this nation.
I hope to see you on MSNBC again soon.
Take care.
Don’t you have to be mentally competent to run for president? The Emperor has no clothes. He is mentally ill. Donald belongs in a psych unit not in the white house. Retired nurse here and I have seen this behavior before… in a psychiatric hospital. I don’t know which is worse mentally ill Trump or those financing him in hopes of getting what they want through him! Yikes true insanity.
Corn showed Lowry to be the smug intellectual lightweight he is. Reasonable people can disagree on any number of policy matters (student loan forgiveness, fixing the problems at the southern border, etc.). Lowry even trying to compare it to Trump's conduct on Jan 6 (notice how Lowry skirts Trump's underlying attempts to subvert the election results with phony elector slates and the like) with Biden's conduct just shows he has no real argument. He also has no answer to Corn correctly pointing out that the Supreme Court weighs in on issues of presidential power regularly. It amazes me that Lowry is still at NR. I guess the 50 people who still read it must like him.
Dead on-but a subtlety lost on Lowry.
Please interview Joel Greenburg's lawyer. He is under some sort of gag order and has hinted that this prosecution uncovered massive Republican corruption in Florida.....time to find out more.
I’d like to remind Charlie and all my fellow Bulwarkians that in fascist Italy the trains did NOT run on time. They were notoriously inconsistent, often late and frequently broken.
Why then does this myth about fascist efficiency exist? Because propaganda. Mussolini was a former politico and he had a flair for this. They made a few tourist carrying lines run hyper efficiently. However the rest of the rails, some 80%+ was horribly mismanaged to the point of absurdity. This Potemkin train lines thing was just done to bolster the image of Il Duce.
The sweet irony is because the fascist Italy railways were bad and the image was pure propaganda, by the time they were in a proper war, they couldn’t access the Mediterranean for fuel. It had to be brought across the Alps. The trains were not up to it. Only 2 of 9 rails through the Alps had double tracks and could move less than 25% of Italy’s peacetime requirements.
It’s all a mirage people. Repeat it loud and clear. Anyone saying the “trains ran on time” is either naive, a bad faith actor, or a rabid authoritarian. Don’t let them get away with spouting nonsense that was disproved a few months into WWII…
Anyone citing "the trains run on time" as an *upside* of authoritarianism. Although the phrase came from Fascist propaganda, it's had a longer life in political science as a metaphor for tradeoffs between efficiency/security and freedom. Very few of the references I've seen over the years were actually talking about Mussolini's Italy, rather than this derived concept.
Indeed, many phrases are usually borrowed or molded into a different scenario as time goes on.
Still think it’s very important we flag the root of it, as without the historical context we lose some of the nuance.
This particular one: trading one’s freedoms for “efficiency”, or the perception of it in this case, and security, is a core tenet of authoritarianism and something that deeply worries me. By making it “just a saying/reference” we devalue the awful stuff that was associated with it.
I regret to inform everyone that the point Rich Lowry was making in that convo with David Corn is the same argument that the great George Will is also currently making: Biden just as bad as Trump because...student loan forgiveness. Just makes me sad.
George Will, IMHO, has been a hack for decades (sorry Charlie)
I never understood why the people who got all cranked up over student loan forgiveness didn't have a similar objection to the PPP or ERC money that was given to businesses.
(Full disclosure: Before I sold my business we took both PPP and ERC payments.)
I think those cranked up people would use the excuse that when Biden did a handout it was by executive order, so...bad. When Trump did it was through congress, so...good. Which I don't completely disagree with, but, still, a handout's a handout. If you're mad about one you should be mad about them all.
I can't fathom it either. It's not like MAGA's kids aren't also suffering from student loan debt. These are the same folks mad cuz young people aren't having babies or buying houses. but when someone point out that student loan debt is a barrier...that's what a lie the left tells you? To bad so sad you buddy, should have thought about that before you went to that fancy elite college (as if you can't have student loans from community or vocational schools??)
I suppose only rich people or "job creators" deserve help. Poor people should have picked rich parents obviously! I hope the future unborn is taking note and pulling credit reports of potential parents. /s
I thought all the conservatives ditched the NFL when Kapernick took a knee.
Rich Lowry apparently can't stop saying "loan forgiveness". If that's the worst thing that Biden did, I think he and everyone else of his ilk have had a pretty good 3+ years.
"SCOTT: You know, myself and all the voters that support Donald Trump supports a return to normalcy, as it relates to what affects their kitchen table. "
It's that "kitchen table" caveat at the end where Rick Scott gives himself away as complete hypocrite. He knows first, that his fellow Republicans in Congress have failed utterly to focus on kitchen-table issues (despite heroic efforts by president Biden and Democrats to get them to do so), and second, that Mr. Trump is also not going to focus on kitchen table issues if he becomes president again (because he'll be doing, as he has said, "revenge" stuff).
Mr. Scott's statement is an cleverly veiled admission that things are not "normal" now, given how his boss is behaving, but the "kitchen table" caveat gives him an out, if his fellow cultists accuse him of committing heresy.
Maybe they will anyway. The guy even looks like a snake.
OK, it was Tim Scott.
But Rick Scott still looks like a snake.
Let me get this straight -
We need Trump back in the White House to get things back to normal.
Student loan forgiveness = Attempting to seize power through a multi-pronged coup plot ending in violence and desecration of our Capitol and delaying the certification of a lawful election.
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, along with the NFL, are part of a deep state conspiracy (to do what, I'm not exactly clear).
And this is one day's newsletter.
Tay Tay to TFG, “I have more followers, better hair, skin and will soon pass your ass on the Fortune 500 list.”
A few comments….
1) Scott’s answer about voters wanting a return to “normalcy” does grave injustice to the English language. The only way that Trump’s behavior could be considered “normal” is to add the qualifier “normal for Trump”. The next question that Raddatz should have asked Scott is exactly what is “normal” about Trump. It’s the same argument from the Trumplicants complaining about the raid on Mar-a-Lago being “unprecedented”. Sure a raid such as that hadn’t happened before, but they conveniently forget the part that no former President had ever acted like that before.
2) Will Saletan’s point that the conservative Christian Scott is saying that there is no moral dimension to his political thinking is old news for the Evangelical community. After all, they made their peace with Trump long ago, even to the point of completely reversing their “the means justify the ends” philosophy, morphing it into “the ends justifies the means”. And let’s not forget that they credited God with getting Trump elected, yet somehow they seem to forget about 2008, 2012, and 2020. Consistent thinking is so hard (and so passé).
3) The Corn – Lowry exchange is typical of the Trumplicants. Lowry is trying to create a false equivalency between Biden and Trump because both of them did something he considers bad (there are no degrees of “badness”, only “bad” or “good”). So apparently in his mind, trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power by (almost) inciting a riot (and, of course, we have to ignore the fact that zero of the illegal events of January 6 would have happened absent Trump’s support) is no worse than issuing an executive order (which the courts did, in fact, curtail) to forgive some student loan debt. I guess that Lowry would be surprised to find out that there are actually different degrees of murder. And there are things called misdemeanors and things called felonies.
This argument is so outrageously stupid that I can’t believe that anyone would expect us to take it seriously.
They think everyone is as stupid as they and the MAGAs are.
Please challenge the anti-Trump Republican leaders -- Where is Mitt, Jeb, W. and the gang? They need to not only be on the record, they need to be defining what moral leadership entails and what is does not. And, they need to be aggressively making the point in every possible medium from now until election. BIG TIME. It's as if that part of the GOP has disappeared; you both have just said it hasn't.
Well, it needs a heck of a lot of reinforcement and it's needed now. I know there are still good guys in the party - I worked for a number of them. But, when it was obvious that caving to the Eagle Forum was worth losing people like me, I was gone. And am I ever relieved. Yet, many decent leaders remained and we are not hearing from them. They need to get back up on the horse (or purple pony) that "throwed" them and let us watch them in the rodeo ring one more time.
The Bulwark should be able to force these people forward - PLEASE GET ON IT
If Bush and Romney came out against Trump they would just need pilloried by the Trump supporters. I'm sure they'd rather just play golf and be thankful that they are out of it. Don't forget they think Pence should have been killed for refusing to bow to Trumps illegal elector scheme.
true - but since it has already happened, what do they have to lose? And, they could be the persuadable voices needed to move Christie and Haley voters to Biden -
Does Rich Lowery always look so unwell? Or maybe he was getting over a recent cold?
I just watched some of the interview and I had never seen him before, only ever read his words as cited in the Bulwark.
Even convicted criminals regard women abusers as the lowest of the low. And now , again, the former Party of Lincoln has women abuser and well known tax fraud, Mr. Trump, as it's leading candidate for president. I thought that 45 years ago, Nixon and his criminality was the lowest America could go, but Mr. Trump is the winner of the race to the bottom. A hundred years later, Warren G. Hardin is no longer even in the race for worst POTUS.
Will Selber speaks truth about why losing wars and the subsequent lack of accountability among the top brass and the elites of the military-industrial complex helps to deflate America's enthusiasm for military recruitment. We may have entered another era of what used to be called "Vietnam Syndrome" because Americans are not feeling much return on their investment of blood and treasure after Iraq and Afghanistan. One political party is already going Isolationist, not even willing to provide a few bullets to support someone else to fight and degrade our Russian adversary. However, I have a hard time seeing retired generals talking to the local VFW or American Legion about their culpability in the lost wars in the Mid-East. As a former Marine myself from a bygone era, my buddies and I just wanted the bragging rights of belonging to an elite force -- win or lose. I must have picked up this ambition from school because I did not come from a military family. So, allow me to suggest another solution that might help in restoring the motivation to serve: civic education. There should be one full year of this subject in high school. One semester focused upon basic democratic and constitutional principles and one semester for practical citizenship. A democracy cannot survive without a socialized citizenry, schooled in the values and practical skills necessary for a functioning self-governing republic. We need to rebuild intrinsic motivation to serve, and it starts in schools. In his Lyceum Address, Lincoln identified the source of the existential threat: "I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad." And later he added that the Constitution and the rule of law should be "the political religion of our nation".
Agree. And this may not be palatable to many, but I'm a firm believer in 1-2 years of mandatory national service after high school - military or other types of service. It might help instill some sense of national pride, a better understanding of civics and the idea of the common good and maybe most important, help us get to know fellow citizens from different places, cultures and walks of life.
Decades ago, I disagreed. But now, with the fiascos of the Bush presidency where the same people were sent to fight over and over and over again, I've changed my mind. If every American had a stake in the fight, it wouldn't have last 20 years. Everyone with brains was incensed about 9/11. That's when the draft should have been reinstated, along with taxes to pay for the war.
Yes, I understand this concept of universal service. It is unjust and undemocratic for only a small proportion of the population to serve.
Selber's description of how "military families" have tended to carry this value and burden of service cannot and should not sustain the uniformed ranks. However, it is tricky to mandate service (even non-military) in a society and culture like America's. We do not live in Robert Heinlen's world (Starship Troopers). Indeed, armed service recruiters do not want a return of the draft, as it lowers quality and increases disciplinary challenges. Besides, two-thirds of the age appropriate pool of young people are not even physically qualified for military service which is a depressing and deplorable fact. And yet we now see the military lowering minimum qualifications which is extremely dangerous (we can expect routine, operational and training accidental deaths and injuries to increase, at the very least). I just continue to think along the lines of what Lincoln said -- the country depends upon whether its people will think and act to place "the common good" as you say, above their own self-interests. The question is what can be done to encourage, motivate and incentivize people to step up ? Actually, there is much that can be done.
Every criticism Haley utters of Trump softens him up for the general election. I'm a total Biden supporter, but I'm giving money to Haley so she can keep talking. https://nikkihaley.com/