I’m so buried in grading that I shouldn’t take a break, and in particular, I shouldn’t take a break to look at the news…
AAARGH. FUCK! SHIT NO! Do not trust this man ever. I’m seeing all this nonsense about how we ought to be conciliatory now that we won one election, and my rage knows no bounds. I’m just someone who is seeing those MAGA chuds trying to destroy and criminalize mere science, I can’t even imagine how people whose very existence has been targeted for annihilation would feel. No. Just no. No apologies to Republican scum. Their poisonous ideas need to be hounded out of the body politic — they can go join the Nazis in the hall of infamy.
This is how I feel about these people now saying it’s time to make nice.
Give up nothing. Fuck Charles Koch.
I guess I’m going to go play a game of Among Us with people who aren’t toxic assholes, before I get back to grading.
Charles Koch was a mistake.
Related is this very good book-It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump
by Stuart Stevens
“From the most successful Republican political operative of his generation, a searing, unflinching, and deeply personal exposé of how his party became what it is today
Stuart Stevens spent decades electing Republicans at every level, from presidents to senators to local officials. He knows the GOP as intimately as anyone in America, and in this new book he offers a devastating portrait of a party that has lost its moral and political compass. ‘
This is not a book about how Donald J. Trump hijacked the Republican Party and changed it into something else. Stevens shows how Trump is in fact the natural outcome of five decades of hypocrisy and self-delusion, dating all the way back to the civil rights legislation of the early 1960s. Stevens shows how racism has always lurked in the modern GOP’s DNA, from Goldwater’s opposition to desegregation to Ronald Reagan’s welfare queens and states’ rights rhetoric. He gives an insider’s account of the rank hypocrisy of the party’s claims to embody “family values,” and shows how the party’s vaunted commitment to fiscal responsibility has been a charade since the 1980s. When a party stands for nothing, he argues, it is only natural that it will be taken over by the loudest and angriest voices in the room.
Are we going to get a mea culpa from Rupert Murdoch too? Posthumous ones from Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler, Jack the Ripper, Caligula?
@chesapeake:
Trump is just an average Fox News binge watcher. And the reason he got popular was because he is the idiot who actually believed most of what they say on Fox and so he started to say the quiet parts loud.
Back when Democrats had cojones, one I admire a lot said “‘We cannot negotiate with people who say what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is negotiable.”
JFK was talking about the Soviet Union, but it is so true when you deal with Republicans. “Bipartisanship” to a Republican just means “We’ll pretend to play nice until we figure out how to take everything.” And after each attack, they demand “civility” from their opponents, who sadly comply.
It is a ratchet (and a racket) that has been going on at least 40 years, and Democrats never learn.
A generous interpretation is that Koch, a free-market libertarian nutcase has suddenly taken a look around and found himself appalled by hyper-nationalist religious nutcases. A less generous one is that he knows exactly what’s going on and is playing our side for suckers the way they usually do.
Either way, it does not change my opinion appreciably.
@3
Doubtful, but maybe we could dig up the bloated corpse of Roger Ailes just to see if he has anything to say. It’s doubtful, but I’m all for giving him the change to redeem himself.
Yeah. One of the grand founts for Wingnut Welfare?
I’ll believe ‘im when he demonstrates these new-found principles.
He wants to reconcile? He can start by giving away 99% of his wealth to various social-good charities, no strings attached, and fuck off and await death. Then we can reconcile so we can stop talking about those Kochs.
He is also still spending money in the Georgia senate run-off. One guess who that money is supporting.
So Stuart Stevens made a living for years screwing over America and now he’s making money telling how he did it. Same scam as the Lincoln Project and Chuckie’s bullshit. Fuck ’em all.
The best way I can think of to relax is doing some research on the price of rural land in Ireland and starting on more concrete plans for that alpaca farm (like finding how do you take care of those weird-looking critters anyway).
This wasn’t the best electoral outcome I can imagine, but it least it bought me some breathing space.
Completely OT: Virus news.
.
Just in: Baricitinib is promising for treating moderate to severe COVID19, according to an article in “Science Advances” and Volker Lauschke et al at Karolinska Institute.
Karolinska is where they pick Nobel price winners for medicine, which is encouraging.
And Science is one of the two most prestigeous journals in the world, which is promising.
And now back to the regular programs.
Yeah, and Koch just dumped a ton of money into David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler’s campaigns in Georgia.
It’s as if they think we can’t see when they’re lying to our faces while showing the evidence.
How many of his supporters turned out for the million march in Washington ?
If you want to read pure delusion ,i mean 100% ,grass fed delusion ,why not check out stand for trump .
Koch has noticed something tons of economists noticed before him: the pandemic is bad for business. You can only bleed the population so much, and at some point, you’re running out of population.
Koch paid for this enormous pile of shit to fertilize his ideology. If he doesn’t like the smell, he can damned well pay to haul it away again.
Trumpers wore t-shirts that said Fuck Your Feelings. The AP went on one of those Cletus Safaris to hear from grieving Trump voters. I’m glad I’m not a Christian so I can hate my enemies.
@18 Anyone know how many went to the wrong Washington ? HAHAHA .
Off topic ,but over here in GB ,dom cummings ,a slimy twat faced ,bollock brained ,,bat shit crazy wackaloon ,slimy turd ,has resigned as head of johnsons “Lets leave Europe and kill 50,000 Brits ,give out multi million pound track and trace contracts that don’t work ,to our chums Team .
Yes I know I twice said he was slimy ,that’s how slimy he is .
Someone here said that Steve Schmidt was a bad guy and responsible for Sarah Palin. According to the book Game Change he was not. And when she had been accepted by the team he was interviewing her, assuming she knew as much as the average governor about wold events and asked her why we invaded Iraq. She said it was because we were attacked on 9/11 by Sadamm Husain. Steve told her that Hussein has nothing to do with 9/11. Later her asked her the same thing and she gave the same answer. He also asked her what would be the first thing to happen if we wanted England to join us in a military venture. She said that first the president would talk to the queen. It had to be explained that the queen was not the head of state. Schmidt then told the team that was to prepare here for the debate that “She knows nothing!” It’s my impression from the book and having seen Schmidt many times on MSNBC that he is a good guy.
I haven’t read Koch’s book, but my presumption is that he hasn’t changed his ideas, just wishes he’d spent the money to corrupt more Democrats, and not just Republicans.
To the MAGAts, I can only say: Fuck your feelings.
@20 Um, the Queen is the Head of State, what she isn’t is the “Head of Government”.
Yeah, right. The president would talk to the prime minister.
I’m dubious about Steve Schmidt and the rest of the Lincoln Project. I’ve seen Schmidt on some cable shows and don’t think he’s worth the time to listen to. I don’t care about any atonement he might want to make and he and the rest of the Lincoln Project are pretty ineffectual at countering the crazy they help create.
@birgerjohansson #13:
No comment on Volker Lauschke, but the Karolinska institute is also where a surgeon killed or maimed more than a dozen people with his procedure (tested only in as much as he already knew it did not work). The leadership rallied around him (and/or the prestige of employing a leading innovator in regenerative medicine) and destroyed the careers of the whistleblowers. See here, for instance.
COVID-19 research is also where a lot of substandard stuff is being published under accelerated schedules, so we need to take even peer-reviewed papers with a grain of salt.
@19 on The Dom:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2020/nov/14/exit-dominic-cummings-brexits-little-helper-cartoon
@#24, captainjack:
And well you should be skeptical of the Lincoln Project. The whole claim was that they were going to get Republicans to vote for Biden. They took vast sums from Democrats who claim to be Liberal, all of which went into Republican bank accounts, and The result? In 2016, 90% of Republicans voted for Trump, while in 2020, 93% voted for Trump. The Lincoln Project funded no door-to-door work, no phone banks, and no voter registration drives.
Think what might have been if, say, Democrats who donated to the Lincoln Project had not done so, but had given ⅓ as much to the various projects to get out black and latino votes. That might actually have turned Texas blue, rather than the Lincoln Project’s lies about maybe possibly doing so if they only got a little more money.
If he:
a) signed a legally binding gag order to never talk politics again
b) donated tens of billions to progressive causes (and none to republiclowns or democrata)
I might say he deserves prison instead of a guillotine for his crimes.
@28 Nah, a sharp blade on the guillotine would be my best offer.
The price of oil on Friday was $40/barrel.
The Koches made their money on fossil fuels, mostly oil.
At $40/barrel, they aren’t making much money.
In times past oil was up around $100/barrel for years at a time.
Not much to show for spending tens of billions of dollars trying to rule the USA.
Part of the reason for the low oil price is the Covid-19 pandemic.
Unemployment is way up and people aren’t traveling much for many reasons so demand collapsed.
Who wants to risk getting on an airplane right now anyway?
And Trump/GOP completely failed to do much of anything to slow down or stop this pandemic.
I’m willing to give Charlie Koch the benefit of the doubt: he gives almost all his wealth, as much as he can free up, to charity right now. I mean a REAL charity that actually helps people.
I extend this challenge to all billionaires, no matter how liberal they may imagine themselves to be. Quit being a parasite on society and live a materialistic life on a tiny percentage of the wealth you have now.
I’m waiting…
Should Koch happen to be sincere (??!?!) in his “Gee golly, I made a mistake!” routine, he’d have to do what nomadiq @9 and intransitive @28 say.
Then, considering the magnitude of the harm he did, only ritual suicide could assuage it. That wouldn’t be enough, but it’s a start.
Giliell@16
You’d think. So why is my investment portfolio worth more than ever? In March, I was prepared to lose a lot (easy come, easy go) and defer my retirement by years I had to.
I’m personally relieved, but also appalled that a crisis like this causing widespread human suffering doesn’t seem to have caused capitalism to skip a beat. There appears to be a total disconnect.
@#27, Vicar:
I don’t think much of you either. Fuck off, Asshole.
@26 Early on in the first lockdown ,he had covid ,he drove from London all the way up to Barnard Castle ,about 250miles ,which to us Brits is a long way .
His excuse ,he wanted to have his eyes tested ,hahaha .There are memes out there of him visiting Specsavers .
And the residents of Barnard Castle are getting sick of all the attention .