I don't understand why Dems aren't putting up billboards all over the US, but especially in tRump-y areas, with the pic of tRump and Epstein and the slogan "release the files". That seems to be the only thing tRumpers care about and it would drive the orange one crazy.
I would another set of billboards that have a picture of Trump with his quote - "I don't think about Americans' financial situation. I don't think about anybody."
- Remember this next time you fill up your tank, pay for your groceries, or get your next medical bill.
My wife and I have about 100 small stickers of Il Douche with pointing finger, proclaiming "I did that!" Every time we fill up on gasoline, we put several of these stickers on the gas pumps. When we run out of these stickers, we'll buy more. And we'll add some grocery store items (e.g., tomatoes) to the "I did that!" list.
Didn't hit that one, Steve. We hit mostly stations in Fairfax, with occasional hits to refueling stations on long trips. Most hits are to Sunoco and Shell stations. Latest hit was a Shell station outside Winchester this past Saturday. We keep a supply of stickers in the console of each vehicle in our fleet so we're always prepared. If Substack permitted, I'd post a picture of the Winchester hit here.
Maybe, but I don't think that such tactics would be playing to people in the Gene Pool. I think they would be playing to low information voters, who are vaguely aware of little beyond their daily routine.
I think the Epstein files (as I understand them) are so compromised and may have too many traps in them to be virtually useless. Perhaps if the unedited FBI files are included they AES significant. I trust the testimony of the victims more. Let them sav their say and do new investigations for every crime.
Right, because so many of Trump's supporters only watch the wacko far-right news/pundits/podcasts that spew propaganda. But they can't ignore a billboard, can they?
It is past time for journalists to stop being enablers, as well. When Fatboy called Catherine Lucey "piggy," not one journalist stood up for her. Not one had the guts to call him out. Your job is not to be denigrated by a lying felon. When you take the abuse handed out to you, you just encourage your abuser to keep it up. I lose respect for journalists every time something like this happens and no one speaks up.
It has to be Roberts if we are considering long-term damage. Citizens United, by itself, has ruined democracy in this country. Mix in the Court's decisions on abortion, gun control, voting rights, presidential immunity, etc. along with Congress's inability to legislate and our country is set up for a questionable future at best.
This poll was hard to choose from, at least for me. Between Roberts and Johnson, two terrible examples of human beings, I reluctantly went with Johnson although I also believe Roberts to be as bad. Johnson just has more of a detrimental effect on too many people.
Wasn't difficult for me (although if Mitch McConnell had been on the list I would have chosen him instead). The Supreme Court has the ultimate power in the country, and as you know, with ultimate power comes ultimate responsibility. Roberts has abrogated that.
I go with Roberts because he is in the position that should be the furthest away from enabling. Johnson has the excuse that he is in a partisan position albeit one that should be attempting to maintain its independence from the executive branch.
Milquetoast is a visible flag to the willingness of Congress to lie down and let Trump do anything that crosses his empty little mind. But does he really DO anything? I picked Roberts because he has actual power to set precedent that will affect the long term future.
If the Democrats want to practice the art of giving floor speeches in Capitol hallways, they could come down here to Tennessee, where that is happening already. If House Speaker Cameron Sexton, a corrupt snowflake, hears anything from Democrats he doesn't like, he rules them out of order and can forbid them to speak for the rest of the day or even the week. So they have to go outside to be heard. And anyone who isn't working with urgency right now against fascism should come here to see what it's like to live in a blue city that is under occupation by a hostile White Christian Nationalist government.
Which is the worst *current* enabler? Hard to say, though I'd omit the nonentity Vance. But historically I'd have to say John Roberts. So much of what Trump does, or thinks he can do, goes back to that "immunity" decision by a majority of the Supreme Court which said that a president could not be held legally liable for anything he did as part of his duties in office-- and Trump thinks that means everything he does is legal by definition. When Nixon said that, after he'd resigned, it was considered outrageous. Now it's considered perfectly reasonable by the Trump Cult, formerly known as the Republican Party, and worse than that it's been written into the legal code of the United States by a rotten Supreme Court. It will have to be negated by a new and decent Congress.
I, too, focused on “current,” which led me to choose Todd Blanche, who believes his role is to serve Trump, even at the expense of his actual clients, we the people. He is supposed to settle viable cases on behalf of our interests, but is instead doling out our money to criminals with ludicrously non-viable claims. I know he wasn’t pretend AG for all of these, but I suspect he had a role. So for me, he’s today’s top toady. For long-term damage to the country, though, that’s a harder choice to make.
A long-ago journalism professor said it was important to have "a finely tuned sense of outrage" — and that's what I saw in "60 Minutes" rather than a progressive bent. Anybody should want journalists to dig deep enough to find the rot that you can smell from the surface.
Also: Is "Enjoy the bagels" the new "But we gave you a pizza party"?
Last year, I had a bagel from Goldberg's deli in New York. It was awful! I had an onion bagel, and it tasted like candy, it had so much sugar in the dough. I will try other places in the future, but I am not hopeful, since the place was packed. The People Have Spoken, but the People were wrong.
As one of the goyim, I'll allow it: Gene is one of the tribe. My best friend always refers to the California burger chain as "Bob's Jewboy" and I never would.
I chose Stephen Miller because he is the most dangerous enabler. As the architect of Trump’s cruel deportations and concentration camps, Miller is pure evil. All the others aren’t even close as enablers.
I think it's a tie between Roberts and Johnson so I picked Robert's because the top two wasn't an option. Roberts is doing long-term damage while Johnson is in charge of the day-to-day insanity. One thing that puzzles me, though, is members of the House tend to think in two-year increments because that's the length of their terms, while the Supremes, theoretically at least, play the long game. So when they ruled that a president of the can basically do whatever he wants and without the fear of legal judgment, they knew that ruling will apply to all presidents in the future. They must be thinking either that a Democrat will never win again, or that no other president will behave as Trump does. That's a pretty slim reed to hang onto.
CBS News, including 60 Minutes, is stone cold dead. It has been dead since the day it was sold to an evil multi-billionaire. It is as dead and gone as The Washington Post. This is what comes from men being rich enough to spend billions of dollars for a media company with hardly a care if it is all lost, because there are more billions where that came from. Pelley should have resigned the day the deal was made. CBS News will not be raised from the dead.
Bari Weiss is not trying but failing to keep 60 Minutes going. She is there to turn the show (which isn't so hot these days anyway) into another propaganda outlet for the benefit of right wing oligarchs.
And as if to disabuse anyone who thinks they have the power to convince her to be less Bari Weiss-ish, there is news today that she may be hiring Joe Rogan (!) as a 60 Minutes correspondent. The horror.
Joe Rogan. Egad... I always knew him from the brilliant old "NewsRadio" show, where he was a funny guy; when he suddenly cropped as a "commentator" I thought at first it had to be an arch joke of some kind -- like a Borat or a Crunk routine. But of course by now I know better, and the thought of him as some kind of Andy Rooney stand-in (the gods help us if he's actually presented as a "correspondent)...!
Catharsis is good; changing outcomes is better and speaking truth to power is too often the former. Moral clarity feels like progress --- articulating exactly what's wrong, in precise and forceful terms produces a sensation similar to accomplishment. The brain registers it as "doing something." But diagnosis isn't treatment. You can be completely right and completely ineffective simultaneously. Authoritarian or entrenched systems, in particular, despite making the requisite menacing noises, are often quite comfortable with vocal opposition, because it provides a pressure release valve without threatening the actual machinery. Dissent that stays rhetorical is manageable. The irony is that the catharsis can actually reduce pressure to do the harder thing, because you've already discharged the emotional urgency that might have driven more strategic action. Organizing, coalition-building, persuading hostile or indifferent audiences, grinding through institutional processes --- these are slower, less emotionally rewarding, and less narratively heroic than powerful speech. Truth-telling can crowd out the unglamorous work that actually moves things. There's a learned skepticism, even among some Democrats, that formal accountability exercises translate into electoral gains. The core tension is that it may serve an important historical and institutional purpose --- creating a documented record --- while doing relatively little as a persuasion strategy for the next election. Ideally, of course, you do both: speak truth and back it up with the critical grunt work.
If people who are undecided about whether they should organize against Il Douche see public figures calling out lies in no uncertain terms, perhaps they will be encouraged to act.
True --- with several conditional issues. Research suggests that elite cues don’t create motivation from scratch --- they amplify what’s already there. Supported by evidence when: the undecided person already feels uneasy or skeptical, the public figure is trusted or admired by that person, the message evokes strong emotions (anger, anxiety, moral outrage) and the action required is low‑cost (sharing, signing, showing up once). But generally not supported when: the undecided person distrusts the messenger or is indifferent to them, the message feels partisan rather than factual, the person is politically disengaged or conflict‑averse and the call‑out increases confusion rather than clarity.
Good points. I'm thinking that maybe Gene may have considered these points in making his recommendation that Members of Congress simply read Trumpty Dumpty's posts into the record. Simply reading the posts gets the point across without acting like a firebrand.
The hiring of Bilton, like the goings-on at the former WaPo, are classic examples of rearranging or adding new deck chairs on the Titanic. Weiss explicitly told staff that "60 Minutes" needed a “new approach” and a “new chapter,” expanding beyond a one‑hour broadcast into a cross‑platform, digitally fluent brand. Despite obvious demographic and financial hurdles, legacy media can be "modernized" --- but only if you understand what parts of the legacy are the "engine" and what parts are just the "furniture" (audience‑facing, but not identity‑defining). Most attempts fail because leaders confuse the two. A legacy medium can be successfully remodeled only when it amplifies its core strengths rather than replaces them. When modernization tries to turn it into something else, the result is usually incoherent, alienating, or hollow. Examples of successful modernization include the NYT, The Economist, NPR and the BBC. Then there is the former WaPo. The Post’s core was: investigative reporting, political accountability, institutional stability. Modernization tried to turn it into: a growth startup, a digital content factory and a platform chasing “audience funnels.” The result: a wobbly identity, staff defections/layoffs and subscriber decline. Modernization succeeds when it: strengthens the core; translates the identity into new formats; respects the craft and evolves the medium without discarding its grammar. Modernization fails when it: replaces the core; chases platforms; imports leaders who don’t understand the medium/outlet and confuses novelty with innovation.
Gotta be Roberts as the worst. He is a smart man. He appears to be rational. So he knows what is happening. But he continues to give legal authority to his Orange Master. At this stage, if he ever rebels against his Citrus Lord, he will be removed expeditiously and possibly "with extreme prejudice." So in that sense, I suppose he is no longer responsible, having already given all the power away.
It never has, by itself. Conviction by the Senate has to occur to 86 the officer, which has never occurred with respect to a president or justice. (Only one justice was impeached, but he was not convicted.) A bunch of judges have been removed, though, one as recently as 2010. Some resign rather than go through the ordeal, as Nixon famously did, but also including judges, the most recent in 2009. FWIW
You looked under the couch, not inside the couch. Rookie.
He'll learn.....maybe....
😂😂
I don't understand why Dems aren't putting up billboards all over the US, but especially in tRump-y areas, with the pic of tRump and Epstein and the slogan "release the files". That seems to be the only thing tRumpers care about and it would drive the orange one crazy.
I would another set of billboards that have a picture of Trump with his quote - "I don't think about Americans' financial situation. I don't think about anybody."
- Remember this next time you fill up your tank, pay for your groceries, or get your next medical bill.
My wife and I have about 100 small stickers of Il Douche with pointing finger, proclaiming "I did that!" Every time we fill up on gasoline, we put several of these stickers on the gas pumps. When we run out of these stickers, we'll buy more. And we'll add some grocery store items (e.g., tomatoes) to the "I did that!" list.
Did you hit the Sunoco station on Rockville Pike? I took a picture of your sticker and put it on my Facebook page.
Didn't hit that one, Steve. We hit mostly stations in Fairfax, with occasional hits to refueling stations on long trips. Most hits are to Sunoco and Shell stations. Latest hit was a Shell station outside Winchester this past Saturday. We keep a supply of stickers in the console of each vehicle in our fleet so we're always prepared. If Substack permitted, I'd post a picture of the Winchester hit here.
I love this so much.
There could be a sequel to "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri."
Xlnt as well!
I think it's a matter of keeping their powder dry. If they ignite the outrage too early, it will become background noise by November.
Maybe, but I don't think that such tactics would be playing to people in the Gene Pool. I think they would be playing to low information voters, who are vaguely aware of little beyond their daily routine.
I think the Epstein files (as I understand them) are so compromised and may have too many traps in them to be virtually useless. Perhaps if the unedited FBI files are included they AES significant. I trust the testimony of the victims more. Let them sav their say and do new investigations for every crime.
Right, because so many of Trump's supporters only watch the wacko far-right news/pundits/podcasts that spew propaganda. But they can't ignore a billboard, can they?
Xlnt!! Let’s do it!
It is past time for journalists to stop being enablers, as well. When Fatboy called Catherine Lucey "piggy," not one journalist stood up for her. Not one had the guts to call him out. Your job is not to be denigrated by a lying felon. When you take the abuse handed out to you, you just encourage your abuser to keep it up. I lose respect for journalists every time something like this happens and no one speaks up.
How about this for a response?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxQLPizz9sI#ddg-play
Ah, yes, the genius of Mel Brooks!
hear hear!!
It has to be Roberts if we are considering long-term damage. Citizens United, by itself, has ruined democracy in this country. Mix in the Court's decisions on abortion, gun control, voting rights, presidential immunity, etc. along with Congress's inability to legislate and our country is set up for a questionable future at best.
This poll was hard to choose from, at least for me. Between Roberts and Johnson, two terrible examples of human beings, I reluctantly went with Johnson although I also believe Roberts to be as bad. Johnson just has more of a detrimental effect on too many people.
Wasn't difficult for me (although if Mitch McConnell had been on the list I would have chosen him instead). The Supreme Court has the ultimate power in the country, and as you know, with ultimate power comes ultimate responsibility. Roberts has abrogated that.
Congress is supposed to have the ultimate power, but since its demise, Roberts has usurped it.
It is a tough choice. I went with Roberts over SCOTUS' ruling on presidential immunity
I go with Roberts because he is in the position that should be the furthest away from enabling. Johnson has the excuse that he is in a partisan position albeit one that should be attempting to maintain its independence from the executive branch.
Milquetoast is a visible flag to the willingness of Congress to lie down and let Trump do anything that crosses his empty little mind. But does he really DO anything? I picked Roberts because he has actual power to set precedent that will affect the long term future.
If the Democrats want to practice the art of giving floor speeches in Capitol hallways, they could come down here to Tennessee, where that is happening already. If House Speaker Cameron Sexton, a corrupt snowflake, hears anything from Democrats he doesn't like, he rules them out of order and can forbid them to speak for the rest of the day or even the week. So they have to go outside to be heard. And anyone who isn't working with urgency right now against fascism should come here to see what it's like to live in a blue city that is under occupation by a hostile White Christian Nationalist government.
NAT Cs.
Which is the worst *current* enabler? Hard to say, though I'd omit the nonentity Vance. But historically I'd have to say John Roberts. So much of what Trump does, or thinks he can do, goes back to that "immunity" decision by a majority of the Supreme Court which said that a president could not be held legally liable for anything he did as part of his duties in office-- and Trump thinks that means everything he does is legal by definition. When Nixon said that, after he'd resigned, it was considered outrageous. Now it's considered perfectly reasonable by the Trump Cult, formerly known as the Republican Party, and worse than that it's been written into the legal code of the United States by a rotten Supreme Court. It will have to be negated by a new and decent Congress.
I, too, focused on “current,” which led me to choose Todd Blanche, who believes his role is to serve Trump, even at the expense of his actual clients, we the people. He is supposed to settle viable cases on behalf of our interests, but is instead doling out our money to criminals with ludicrously non-viable claims. I know he wasn’t pretend AG for all of these, but I suspect he had a role. So for me, he’s today’s top toady. For long-term damage to the country, though, that’s a harder choice to make.
The simple fact that we are having trouble deciding "who is the worst" is significant. So many choices, all of which can be convincingly defended.
A long-ago journalism professor said it was important to have "a finely tuned sense of outrage" — and that's what I saw in "60 Minutes" rather than a progressive bent. Anybody should want journalists to dig deep enough to find the rot that you can smell from the surface.
Also: Is "Enjoy the bagels" the new "But we gave you a pizza party"?
The bagel thing ... It has long been that way in Jew York.
Last year, I had a bagel from Goldberg's deli in New York. It was awful! I had an onion bagel, and it tasted like candy, it had so much sugar in the dough. I will try other places in the future, but I am not hopeful, since the place was packed. The People Have Spoken, but the People were wrong.
Just reclaiming the slur, like the n-word spoken by Black folk and queer used in LGBTQ+ communities. Um...right Gene?
Whoa and Ouch Gene. Language matters. Linda Spiegler
Jew York.? Gene, Gene, Gene
As one of the goyim, I'll allow it: Gene is one of the tribe. My best friend always refers to the California burger chain as "Bob's Jewboy" and I never would.
I chose Stephen Miller because he is the most dangerous enabler. As the architect of Trump’s cruel deportations and concentration camps, Miller is pure evil. All the others aren’t even close as enablers.
I didn't pick Miller because I don't see him as an enabler, but as a puppet master.
But I think of His Orangeness enabling Miller. I think the latter actually has an agenda beyond get all the money you can.
I think it's a tie between Roberts and Johnson so I picked Robert's because the top two wasn't an option. Roberts is doing long-term damage while Johnson is in charge of the day-to-day insanity. One thing that puzzles me, though, is members of the House tend to think in two-year increments because that's the length of their terms, while the Supremes, theoretically at least, play the long game. So when they ruled that a president of the can basically do whatever he wants and without the fear of legal judgment, they knew that ruling will apply to all presidents in the future. They must be thinking either that a Democrat will never win again, or that no other president will behave as Trump does. That's a pretty slim reed to hang onto.
CBS News, including 60 Minutes, is stone cold dead. It has been dead since the day it was sold to an evil multi-billionaire. It is as dead and gone as The Washington Post. This is what comes from men being rich enough to spend billions of dollars for a media company with hardly a care if it is all lost, because there are more billions where that came from. Pelley should have resigned the day the deal was made. CBS News will not be raised from the dead.
Bari Weiss is not trying but failing to keep 60 Minutes going. She is there to turn the show (which isn't so hot these days anyway) into another propaganda outlet for the benefit of right wing oligarchs.
And as if to disabuse anyone who thinks they have the power to convince her to be less Bari Weiss-ish, there is news today that she may be hiring Joe Rogan (!) as a 60 Minutes correspondent. The horror.
Serenity now.
Joe Rogan. Egad... I always knew him from the brilliant old "NewsRadio" show, where he was a funny guy; when he suddenly cropped as a "commentator" I thought at first it had to be an arch joke of some kind -- like a Borat or a Crunk routine. But of course by now I know better, and the thought of him as some kind of Andy Rooney stand-in (the gods help us if he's actually presented as a "correspondent)...!
Catharsis is good; changing outcomes is better and speaking truth to power is too often the former. Moral clarity feels like progress --- articulating exactly what's wrong, in precise and forceful terms produces a sensation similar to accomplishment. The brain registers it as "doing something." But diagnosis isn't treatment. You can be completely right and completely ineffective simultaneously. Authoritarian or entrenched systems, in particular, despite making the requisite menacing noises, are often quite comfortable with vocal opposition, because it provides a pressure release valve without threatening the actual machinery. Dissent that stays rhetorical is manageable. The irony is that the catharsis can actually reduce pressure to do the harder thing, because you've already discharged the emotional urgency that might have driven more strategic action. Organizing, coalition-building, persuading hostile or indifferent audiences, grinding through institutional processes --- these are slower, less emotionally rewarding, and less narratively heroic than powerful speech. Truth-telling can crowd out the unglamorous work that actually moves things. There's a learned skepticism, even among some Democrats, that formal accountability exercises translate into electoral gains. The core tension is that it may serve an important historical and institutional purpose --- creating a documented record --- while doing relatively little as a persuasion strategy for the next election. Ideally, of course, you do both: speak truth and back it up with the critical grunt work.
If people who are undecided about whether they should organize against Il Douche see public figures calling out lies in no uncertain terms, perhaps they will be encouraged to act.
True --- with several conditional issues. Research suggests that elite cues don’t create motivation from scratch --- they amplify what’s already there. Supported by evidence when: the undecided person already feels uneasy or skeptical, the public figure is trusted or admired by that person, the message evokes strong emotions (anger, anxiety, moral outrage) and the action required is low‑cost (sharing, signing, showing up once). But generally not supported when: the undecided person distrusts the messenger or is indifferent to them, the message feels partisan rather than factual, the person is politically disengaged or conflict‑averse and the call‑out increases confusion rather than clarity.
Good points. I'm thinking that maybe Gene may have considered these points in making his recommendation that Members of Congress simply read Trumpty Dumpty's posts into the record. Simply reading the posts gets the point across without acting like a firebrand.
Stephen Miller is not an enabler, he is an architect. If anything, Trump is HIS enabler
The hiring of Bilton, like the goings-on at the former WaPo, are classic examples of rearranging or adding new deck chairs on the Titanic. Weiss explicitly told staff that "60 Minutes" needed a “new approach” and a “new chapter,” expanding beyond a one‑hour broadcast into a cross‑platform, digitally fluent brand. Despite obvious demographic and financial hurdles, legacy media can be "modernized" --- but only if you understand what parts of the legacy are the "engine" and what parts are just the "furniture" (audience‑facing, but not identity‑defining). Most attempts fail because leaders confuse the two. A legacy medium can be successfully remodeled only when it amplifies its core strengths rather than replaces them. When modernization tries to turn it into something else, the result is usually incoherent, alienating, or hollow. Examples of successful modernization include the NYT, The Economist, NPR and the BBC. Then there is the former WaPo. The Post’s core was: investigative reporting, political accountability, institutional stability. Modernization tried to turn it into: a growth startup, a digital content factory and a platform chasing “audience funnels.” The result: a wobbly identity, staff defections/layoffs and subscriber decline. Modernization succeeds when it: strengthens the core; translates the identity into new formats; respects the craft and evolves the medium without discarding its grammar. Modernization fails when it: replaces the core; chases platforms; imports leaders who don’t understand the medium/outlet and confuses novelty with innovation.
Gotta be Roberts as the worst. He is a smart man. He appears to be rational. So he knows what is happening. But he continues to give legal authority to his Orange Master. At this stage, if he ever rebels against his Citrus Lord, he will be removed expeditiously and possibly "with extreme prejudice." So in that sense, I suppose he is no longer responsible, having already given all the power away.
How does one go about removing a Supreme, other than a John Grisham-esque assassin scenario?
They can be impeached.
I never knew that. But as we've seen, being impeached no longer means being removed from office.
It never has, by itself. Conviction by the Senate has to occur to 86 the officer, which has never occurred with respect to a president or justice. (Only one justice was impeached, but he was not convicted.) A bunch of judges have been removed, though, one as recently as 2010. Some resign rather than go through the ordeal, as Nixon famously did, but also including judges, the most recent in 2009. FWIW
Fantastic idea! And wouldn’t all the comments then be entered in the Congressional Record? Or has that been changed too?
Members can go back and edit comments.
Only their own, or others' as well?