Watching the watchers

 

He's building his personal army

 

And after Gretchen has been so obsequious toward him lately.  He really goes after the people who bend the knee.  He sees them as weak, and he only attacks the weak.

"The Biden stench"

AN IMPORTANT PART OF RECOVERY is owning up to mistakes and taking full responsibility for the harm they caused. And as the Democratic party tries to earn back the trust of voters, its leaders are publicly grappling with one of their biggest missteps from 2024: how they handled Joe Biden.

Nearly five months after the election, the ex-president’s legacy lingers over the party like the stench of rotting food—a reminder that while a good meal was once enjoyed, they were too late in clearing the table.

  The Bulwark

It really is a shame. His legacy might have been quite different had he stepped aside like he said he was going to do.

Party officials have grown more comfortable admitting that Biden’s decision to run again was a mistake. They feel at ease saying that his stubbornness cost Kamala Harris a chance to ramp up a better campaign. Voters, some of whom voted for Joe Biden in 2020 under the belief that he would not seek re-election, now regularly say they felt misled when he ran and gaslighted when party leaders and White House officials said Biden was capable of serving another four years, despite his visible frailty and declining faculties.

[...]

Biden recently signed with the talent agency CAA and has plans for a book, which could give him a platform to share his own point of view on that 2024 decision.

That one's going to be ghost-written, one way or another. Is Biden even still alive now? Haven't heard nor seen anything.

Although a small group of loyal aides have stuck with him to set up his post-presidential office—they’re currently working out of a small office in downtown D.C.—the ex-president has morphed into something of a lightning rod even for those who worked with him. Even those who occupied the upper echelons of White House and administration staff have copped to genuine anger and despair over his decision not to step back sooner.

[...]

A CNN survey released on Sunday found that their favorability rating among all Americans stands at just 29 percent, a record low since the network started polling in 1992. An NBC News poll also released on Sunday found that just 27 percent of registered voters have a positive view of the party, also an all-time low since they started polling in 1990.

Jeezus. I didn't realize it was THAT low.

“Democrats need to acknowledge mistakes not just from this cycle but from decades of allowing jobs to go overseas and factory towns be de-industrialized,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) told The Bulwark. “No one associated with these colossal mess-ups should be part of leading this party’s future.”

Another open question is how much good comes from looking backwards. Much of the polling indicates that Democratic voter dissatisfaction is driven not by anger towards Biden but by a desire to see the party push back more aggressively against Trump.

Can't we do both?

“The sad truth is, there’s not a single remaining member of Congress—not a single Democrat, not a single one, and probably not a single one that will be on that debate stage in 2028—who had the courage to point out the truth and risk their career and lead Democrats to the Holy Land,” Phillips said. “Instead, it’ll be filled with people who chose to be quiet and preserve their futures and subjugate their principles.”

Unless AOC wants to run. Or Pete Buttigieg.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who played an important part in forcing Biden to step down, was asked if he knew about “Biden’s declining faculties” before the debate. “No. . . . I didn’t realize, because my dealings with him were just fine,” Schumer responded.

I sense a contradiction there.

The ex-president’s conduct throughout the 2024 campaign is the subject of a handful of books slated to be released this spring. An excerpt published last week from one of those books—FIGHT: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House, by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes—detailed how Biden personally demanded Kamala Harris remain loyal to him and not criticize his presidency, setting off a fresh round of anger even among those who worked for the president.

“American democracy is supposedly on the line, and yet that’s what he focused on,” another former White House official fumed when I asked for their thoughts on the excerpt.

[...]

Schumer is still feeling the heat from his handling of the government funding bill.

[...]

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday criticized Schumer’s leadership, telling reporters, “I myself don’t give away anything for nothing” (a very Pelosi-like diss). And at a town hall on Tuesday night, Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.) became the first member of Congress to call on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to step down from leadership. Of course, it will take a lot more than that to get Schumer to give up his post. But it’s clear that the anger isn’t going to mellow over anytime soon.

MAGA regret - Part whatever

"I didn't think they'd eat MY face," says member of the Leopards Eating People's Faces party.

UPDATE 02/28/2025:

Google may not be your friend

 

Finding your spine

 

What might have been

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: “It might have been!”

-- John Greenleaf Whittier

Trump 2.0 - Media

All authoritarian regimes seek to control the media.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Joe Biden is still - and will forever be - a dick

Biden is leaving office not only with his legacy endangered by Trump, but convinced he could have beaten him if he'd stayed in the race.

  Axios

President Biden insisted in a new interview out Wednesday that he could have beaten President-elect Trump in the 2024 election, even as he admitted he was unsure that he had the stamina for another term.

[...]

Biden's assessment that he could have beaten Trump would have required overcoming low approval ratings, a disastrous debate performance that raised questions about his mental fitness, and voters' persistently bleak views of the economy.

[...]

"It's presumptuous to say that, but I think yes," Biden told USA Today when asked if he believed he could have won.

[...]

Trump, he added, had complimented some of the Biden administration's economic achievements. "He thought I was leaving with a good record," Biden said.

[...]

In September, he told "The View" that he still believed he could have won against Trump if he'd stayed in the race.

  Axios

The fact of the matter is, someone else could have won if Joe had announced he wouldn't be running again - like he said when he was elected in 2020 - and kept out of the way.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Boo Hoo

Jill Biden was asked by WaPo about Nancy Pelosi’s call for Joe to drop out of the race after his debate with Trump: “Let’s just say I was disappointed with how it unfolded. I learned a lot about human nature. It’s been on my mind a lot lately. We were friends for 50 years. It was disappointing.”

  Meidas Touch

Nancy was thinking about the country and the Democratic Party. Jill was only thinking about Joe (as was Joe).

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Where is the opposition party?

Trump is a trip too far for neocon author of PNAC, Bill Kristol.

Democrats in Washington are, as a matter of governing, irrelevant for the next year.

They cannot pass or propose legislation. They cannot hold hearings. They are in no position to stop the Trump administration from doing whatever it wants.

The job of the Democratic party, then is to get into position to get into position. That job comes in two parts.

First: Do not help Republicans. Not in any way. On any issue. Republicans can’t pass a budget, or raise the debt ceiling? Tough luck. Do not provide them any bailout votes on any issue. Period, the end.

  The Bulwark

They'll never go for that. What else?

Second: Make Donald Trump own every bad outcome that happens, anywhere in the world while paying special attention to areas where Republicans are particularly vulnerable. Like housing and Ukraine.

[...]

To start with, housing was the one valid economic complaint people had during the Biden years.

Biden didn’t start the housing affordability crisis—that train left the station in the late ’90s. It got worse under Trump. And then it got even worse under Biden.

[...]

Something like a quarter of the construction workers in America are here illegally. That’s just the national average. In Texas the number is estimated to be 60 percent.

You can’t address housing affordability without substantially increasing the housing supply. But if Trump is serious about mass deportations, then housing starts will be under downward pressure.

[...]

Democrats ought to talk about housing all day, every day. Make it the new price of eggs.

[...]

Trump has set up impossible expectations: He promised to end the war in 24 hours. Starting on January 22, Democrats should ask, every day, why the war is still ongoing.

[...]

It is not inconceivable that Ukrainian defenses could collapse and Russia could start advancing with alacrity.

Presidents own the wars they inherit. Always. Nixon didn’t send troops to Vietnam, but he owned the conflict anyway. Biden didn’t sign the surrender with the Taliban, but he owned the withdrawal and everything bad that came with it.

If things go south in Ukraine, Democrats should make sure that Trump owns every death, every horrible picture, every atrocity.

Yeah, they're not good at that sort of thing, either.

The job of an opposition party is to impose political pain. The point of political pain is to make the president unpopular.

[...]

I feel silly even saying this because it’s Politics 101. It’s like explaining to a fish that water is supposed to be wet.

But Democrats aren’t acting anything like an opposition party. Joe Biden is bragging to USA Today about how Trump said something nice about him. Merrick Garland is deferring to Aileen Cannon. John Fetterman is vouching for Kash Patel’s sacred honor. Chuck Schumer is playing footsie with Trump’s Gulf of America nonsense.

What is wrong with these people?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Fuck you, Joe Biden

Arrogant, self-serving prick.

Peaceful and certified because he won

Nancy Mace yesterday:

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 02:26 pm:  And yet, they're not happy with the win...

Perception

Either that, or the people polled came into sudden windfalls in November.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Pathetic

They loved her and touted her for years as the most accurate pollster on the planet until Trump's ridiculous suit against her for being wrong.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The million dollar club

One million gets you six tickets to the inauguration and a dinner with Trump. Or something like that. Obviously, that's not what Altman is really buying.

Bezos and Zuckerberg have both also contributed $1 million to the inauguration fund.  

Watch for Google and other corporations to donate their million soon.

Thing is, the fund has to name its donors and the amounts they give, but it doesn't have to say how it spends the money.  An accounting for Trump's first inauguration leaves some question as to where the money went.  We know some of it was improperly spent, because Trump had to pay a settlement to the District of Columbia for funneling donations to the Trump Hotel.

Where do you think all the money is going?

But what will one BILLION get you?

President-elect Donald Trump vowed Tuesday that people or companies who invest at least $1 billion in the U.S. will get “fully expedited approvals and permits.”

Trump said in a post on Truth Social that environmental approvals are included as part of that investment incentive.

“Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals. GET READY TO ROCK!!!” Trump wrote.

  CNBC

Yes, America - indeed the earth's environment - is for sale.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

MAGA, you voted for it

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it the poor slobs who support Trump who were hating on Obama for the bank bailouts?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 12/13/2024:

I fear he's right.  They're used to complaining.  They know their lives are never going to be better.  They just want to have people punished. America is the poster child for cutting off your nose to spite your face.  But why do they want to punish people who are no better off than they are?  Why do they allow the "haves" to go unpunished? 

At least SOMEBODY's courts are working

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Being Trumpist means not having to hide your evil deeds

Dinesh D’Souza also criticized the [Hunter Biden] pardon. Dinesh had his felony fraud conviction pardoned by Trump. He also admitted the day before this that the premise of his movie ‘2000 Mules’, was based on a complete lie. The movie was heavily promoted by Trump and was probably D’Souza’s single most profitable production of his life. It misled millions about the 2020 election and he made millions off it. Most people would sit this one out, but that’s not the MAGA way, where shamelessness is the brand.

  Meidas Touch

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Seems appropriate

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.