Republicans Make Me Proud I Voted for Biden
Discover more from The Bulwark
Republicans Make Me Proud I Voted for Biden
Plus, thoughts on the non-serious maskholes and covidiots.
Leading The Bulwark…
Republicans Make Me Proud I Voted for Biden
MONA CHAREN: Their expeditions to new depths of sycophancy and recklessness make mere policy disagreements trivial.
🎧 On the Pods… 🎧
Will Saletan: We Need a Coalition for Truth
On today’s Bulwark podcast, Will Saletan joins Charlie Sykes to discuss his recent article: The Enemy Isn’t Republicans. It’s Liars.
For Bulwark+ Members… 🔐
THE NEXT LEVEL: The Lost Show 🔒
Today’s show was an absolute classic. Cleveland steamers, prima nocta, frazzledrip. But there were some technical . . . problems. And we lost most of it. So enjoy what JVL was able to salvage. It is but a shade of the glory that was.
THE TRIAD: Total Exoneration Is Coming 🔒
JONATHAN V. LAST: Buckle up. It's going to be . . . not awesome.
MORNING SHOTS: What's the GOP's Excuse Now? 🔒
CHARLIE SYKES: The surrender enters a new phase.
From The Bulwark Aggregator…
The GOP’s Sick Game of ‘Russian Roulette’ in a COVID Hotspot – Michael Daly, The Daily Beast
More Freedom Is the Whole Point of Vaccines – Julia Marcus, The Atlantic
How we’re holding Republicans responsible for cleaning up the Trump mess – Elizabeth Neumann and Olivia Troye, USA TODAY
Anti-Trump Republican Adam Kinzinger knows fate is coming for him – Ellen McCarthy, The Washington Post
Senate GOP braces for more retirements after Portman stunner – James Arkin and Burgess Everett, Politico
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene endorsed the execution of Democrats in old Facebook posts, report says – Reis Thebault, The Washington Post
Biden’s Cabinet gradually confirmed by Senate – Morgan Chalfant, The Hill
In Today’s Bulwark….
Can Democrats Abolish the Filibuster—and Should They?
RICHARD NORTH PATTERSON: The Biden agenda and the ‘tyranny of a minority.’
The Next Stimulus Check Should Be a Credit Card
JOHN GUSTAVSSON: If Congress is aiming for a short-term economic boost, they should make it harder for people to save their stimulus money.
🚨OVERTIME🚨
Glenn Beck is a COVIDiot. He might even be a maskhole.
The government puts out a scientifically correct plea: two masks is likely to be better than one, and what does this jabroni do? Puts on 25 masks for his podcast to undermine the point.
Great going.
It reminds me of the time Glenn Beck was “sorry about all of that”, a short period that didn’t last long.
Look, if Trump had “Invoked P” properly, and used the Defense Production Act to make N-95 masks widely available, that’d be one thing. He was an abject failure. As such, people wear “KN-95” (not sure if the KN stands for KNock Off) masks, or cloth ones.
But the science is clear: N-95 masks are best, three layer masks aren’t as good, and cloth masks are better than nothing. Biden/Fauci suggesting you combine the two, since N-95 masks are basically unattainable has become a subject of mockery for right wing cranks like Beck.
If they could look in the mirror, perhaps they would understand perhaps this guidance wouldn’t have come out if the bad orange god king didn’t screw things up so badly. But he did.
Last I checked, Glenn Beck isn’t sorry about all that.
Welcome to the era of Cringe.
Writing in The Washington Post, Sonny Bunch observes:
Cringe is only possible in a cultural and political moment like ours, when we have so effectively surrounded ourselves with those who share our affections and affectations. It’s not until those cultural artifacts break out of our silos — often going viral via mocking screenshot — that we realize just how cringe-tastic they were, and how embarrassing the subservient attitude they represent really is.
President Bush, closer. This story is great:
Blair arrived in College Station in 2003 and quickly grew frustrated by his struggles to recruit players from Houston. Enter the city’s two most famous residents at the time, George H.W. and Barbara Bush. “Here’s the story,” former A&M athletics director Bill Byrne told me a few years ago. “President Bush and Barbara would sometimes sit in a small suite I had at our home football games. It was not long after we’d hired Gary Blair to be our women’s basketball coach, and Gary was obsessed with recruiting a player named La Toya Micheaux from the Houston area. Gary was trying to get her away from LSU and asked if he could bring her by my booth before a game.”
La Toya is the daughter of former University of Houston player Larry Micheaux, a member of coach Guy Lewis’s legendary Phi Slama Jama Cougars teams in the early eighties.
“So here we are, a couple of hours before a game, and Gary nonchalantly sticks his head in the door and sees the Bushes,” Byrne recalled. “George and Barbara say hello, and in walks Larry Micheaux behind Gary.
“‘Larry Micheaux! Phi Slama Jama!’ Bush shouted. ‘What a team you guys had.’ And then La Toya appears behind her father. ‘And you must be Larry’s daughter,’ Bush says. ‘Barbara and I have been talking about how much we’re looking forward to watching you play for the Aggies.'”
Byrne has told that story a time or two and has the punch line down cold. “That was the end of La Toya’s recruiting,” he said. “There was no chance she was going to go anyplace else. And she opened doors for us into the Houston area we hadn’t been able to open. And from her coming to Texas A&M in 2005 had to have played a role in us winning the national championship in 2011.”
Should we give Marjorie Taylor Greene a chance? continued…
Do not taunt Hydroxychloroquine.
This is perhaps my favorite graf:
Though the drug had been widely discredited at that point, Humphrey, who has recently made news for seeking to establish a Bigfoot hunting season in Oklahoma and made waves in 2017 when he referred to pregnant women as “hosts,” encouraged Oklahomans to “take courage and begin treating COVID with Hydroxychloroquine.”
That’s the thing. People want to keep their jobs. Who can blame them? A worthwhile read about the problems of bad people in media management positions, and it reminded me too much of my last job, and why I am so happy here.
Who should get the vaccine? A take you need to read.
Life imitates real life…
California Penal System here we come, Ricky?
A Reply to the Federalist on Impeachment and Mob Rule… At National Review, “Baseball Crank” Dan McLaughlin has a worthwhile #longread.
More on the Capitol siege. We’ve found that another officer committed suicide, and, well, this:
Say a prayer for the MPDC and USCP officers who are going to be mentally dealing with this for far longer than most of us.
We are lucky to have them.
That’s it for me for today. We’ll see you again tomorrow, and hope Bulwark+ members can join the livestream. If you miss it, don’t worry, we will preserve it! Just click the URL in the email(s) I send you so you can watch afterwards.
Questions, comments, concerns? Problems with email? You know how to reach me: swift@thebulwark.com.
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