Writes Mickey Kaus in "Wokeism Should Terrify Liberals... Here's a job for Joe...."
December 29, 2020
"We're told Biden doesn't have a 'vision.' He doesn't. We’re told he doesn’t have an ideology. He doesn’t. But he has a public image..."
"... which is that he’s a middle-class guy in the center who knows what he doesn't like — and he doesn’t like departures from common sense. In this initial, breath-gathering post-Trump moment, that might do as a Vision Substitute. It’s not asking not what your country can do for you or having a dream or a shining city on a hill or 'as Americans that is not enough we must be equal in the eyes of each other.' It’s just 'C'mon man.' Like Biden, it might do."
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We're told Biden doesn't have two brain cells to rub together. He doesn't.
Sounds like Kaus's strategy is hope.
I like Mickey and I like that he's trying to be optimistic, but c'mon man. He's a demented old coot, and approximately half the country if not more thinks the deep state stole the election. May Mickey continue to probe the out limits of contrarianism, but I can't take this prognostication particularly seriously.
“[R]acial and ethnic minority groups are under-represented among adults 65 [and over].”
The longest-lived racial and ethnic groups are Asians and Hispanics, both of whom live longer than Whites.
However the Special Racial Minority does have a slightly shorter lifespan, and that's what really matters.
I'm expecting a milquetoast presidency where the grifters grift freely and nothing much else happens.
What does common sense Pedo Joe think of a demented Pedo running the country?
I know Anthony Weiner is happy.
Joe is the emptiest empty suit in the room, and that suits the people behind him just fine. The notion that "no malarkey Joe" can serve as some bastion of common sense in a storm of sinister wokeness is about the silliest thing Kaus has said in a while. Because of his near monomaniacal focus on the negative impacts of immigration and "free trade," it shouldn't take Kaus too long to realize how wrong he is, just until the "Biden administration" makes its position on these matters known.
Biden's vision is to sell out his country to foreigners and make sure his worthless family is rich.
Biden is a total fucking fraud, an idiot and senile to boot.
Kaus wants Medicare for All but doesn't want a woke CMS. What's he going to do when he gets just that and doesn't like the care he's getting from the woke CMS? Medicare for all is fascist medicine - All in MFA, none out of MFA, all for MFA. There won't be any other medical care, so he'll just have to suck it up when he gets lousy medicine.
Baseless Biden will spend all his time in the White House basement while Comrade Kamala rules the peasants into poverty.
"Like Biden, it might do."
Why the hell didn't the Biden campaign use that slogan? It's an improvement on Build Back Better:
"Vote for Biden. He might do."
Wokeism Should Terrify Liberals.
“Should” is doing all the work in that sentence.
Biden's plan is unfettered immigration.
Biden's plan is to give money to Iran so they can get a nuke.
Biden's plan is to continue to be on the wrong side of every foreign policy until Kamala officially assumes the Big Chair.
Biden's plan is to let his family use their family name to sell favors to foreign nations.
Biden's plan is to sniff unwilling children and generally be a weirdo.
Biden's plan is treat criminals like royalty and the law-abiding like pariahs.
If AOC isn't down with this, it won't work. Biden can't control AOC or can he?
Resist!
Mickey sees it but he doesn't see it. Biden must resist, Mickey says, because the wokies aren't making sense and will destroy Democratic party credibility forever; and Biden can resist, says Mickey. It seems right now that he is right, that Biden can resist. But "Biden's resistance" at this moment only means that the wokies are dialing back their aggressions to try to win the Georgia election and get through the inauguration without the suburbs turning on them. After January 21, we'll see the media narrators narrating all the stories about Joe Biden's corruption and mental challenges which they covered up during the election. Biden won't be able to resist, the wokies will run wild. After January 21, you'll have to be Donald Trump and his supporters to stand up to the wokies. The others? They'll try to stick their heads in the sand as before but the ground is frozen hard ... and then? I say Mickey Kaus will turn into Mickey Mouse.
Not my President
The Dems aren't liberal anymore.
There is no respect for personal liberty or concern for the powerless. Quite the opposite, in fact. The hold liberty in contempt and their greatest concern is for the powerful.
The driving motivation for liberals, the reason that people become democrats, is hatred. The subject of the hatred is arbitrary, it's the hate that matters.
I never thought I would live to see the day when a senile, crook was "elected" President and the media just went along.
What the hell is going on in the state legislatures of AZ, WI, MI, PA and GA? Only Steve Bannon reports on it.
At this point, Trump has a 2% chance of pulling this off. Everyone is corrupt.
Wokism is an internal strategy on the left. The point is to demonstrate to other progressives your moral superiority, and your ability to effectively organize fellow progressives in support of some policy position. The problem is that this makes it difficult to escape, because there is always an incentive to cheat and go more woke than your opponents for the short-term gains. It's basically a version of the prisoners dilemma.
Kaus for one is happy to welcome our new owners.
Daily I check only 3 blogs: AA, Kaus (his Twitter), and Instapundit.
AA and Kaus I find fresh and independent. Instapundit has become more Koolaid R.
I read some Matt Taibbi and Glen Greenwald, even though they are so left they are somewhat right.
I've read Mickey Kaus for years and generally find him to bring some interesting perspective. But this really does sound like 'wait and hope' is what he's describing.
Saying "he’s a middle-class guy in the center is flat out ridiculous. He's acquired MILLIONS from foreign entities. A middle class guy in the center does not work deals on the side with the CCP for checks amounting to millions. He does not get millions from the wife of the Mayor of Moscow, nor companies based in Ukraine. And he does not threaten the Ukraine to fire a special prosecutor in the Ukraine who is trying to investigate your son who receives those checks for you.
He's not a middle-class guy and he's not in the center. But, I'll give him this: He does know what he doesn't like. Although that has changed quite a bit from Joe Biden of two years ago. Or even one year ago.
Mickey thinks that Medicare "works," and wants more of it (Medicare for All).
Medicare, like Social Security, "works" only because it is being subsidized, to the tune of tens of trillions of dollars, by our children and grandchildren, without their consent.
If Medicare and SS had to work in the same sense that everyday life works, it would be universally recognized as not working.
Kaus lies. Biden's public image is of a corrupt life-long politician who has the ethics, morals and behavior of a large, hungry hog at a trough of slops. Keep his trough filled, or offer him another trough with better slops, and he's yours.
What the hell is going on in the state legislatures of AZ, WI, MI, PA and GA? Only Steve Bannon reports on it.
It's a mixture of arrogance, corruption, and stupidity. Trump was an outsider who cut ahead of everyone else in an industry where you're expected to "pay your dues" and respect the hierarchy. He ran by appealing to the base and then attempted to actually fulfil those promises, whereas the GOP leadership was used to selling voters on the idea of conservatism, but pushing policies that generally benefitted corporate supporters instead. And he seemed interested in disrupting the system, which was terrifying to the GOP leadership because they've become a cargo cult who only know how to operate inside the system, not outside of it, and certainly they don't have any idea how the system actually works. The pandemic caused the legislatures to overreact and allow mail-in voting, and when Trump and his supporters pushed back, the legislatures got their backs up and refused to admit that they'd screwed up big time.
Kaus is mixing his infanticidal metaphors: "[Y]ou want to strangle the Woke baby in the bathtub..." No, you strangle the Woke baby in the crib, you drown the Woke baby in the bathtub.
In the campaign trail, SloJoe was asked how many genders there are. He replied, “At least three.“ Not a man of the center, he’ll be as woke as the left demands him to be.
Google and social media's powerful influence far outweighs whatever policy preferences Biden does or doesn't possess. As popular as Trump was and outspoken against fake news, he was powerless against its effects.
Confused that mickey wants MFA but says Biden "stood up to" the left about it?
In what way?
Medicare is changing all the time and I sense rationing already. Turn 70 and they're just not so concerned anymore, ya know?
If Biden is inaugurated I expect the federal government (abided by the mainstream media) to get about the serious business of repressing any expression of anti-globalist opinions. The Fairness Doctrine will be reinstated in order to put an end to right-wing talk radio. Our high-tech overlords will put an end to blogs such as this one because they are forums for "hate speech", "misinformation", and "calls for violence." Any prospective competitors to services such as youtube or twitter will be denied hosting services. A social credit system modeled on China's will be instituted, though it won't be called that. That system, targeted violence towards "haters", and cancel culture will be used to silence any dissent. I expect the professor herself will be un-personed since she provided a forum for haters and racists. The Biden presidency will be a far cry from "boring."
Better yet, you abort the Woke fetus from the womb, and then the Democrats won't have a problem with doing it!
What makes Kaus think a senile, compromised Biden can overcome the Democrats' internal cancel culture when the other half of the country thinks he's flat-out illegitimate.
I've always supported some kind of universal, national health insurance. Medicare seems like a program that works--why not expand it? Claims from conservatives that this gives government too much power have always seemed like a rote application of abstract dogma. Did Medicare — run by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services -- have too much power? Hard to see how. There’s no obvious rationing. No death panels. Of course there are always worries about cost-cutting, and the insidious culture of "good death," including creepy end-of-life maneuvers (like the UKs infamous Liverpool Pathway). Yet we could seemingly rely on voter demand for care to overhwelm lugubrious proponents of medical austerity.
First off, I don't think using Medicare as an example for dismissing worries about giving government too much power is an especially persuasive argument. There are a number of pretty significant issues with Medicare. There's the hundreds of billions of dollars it costs in fraud each year, which everyone pays for indirectly. Plus there's the fact that many Doctors don't take it due to payments taking forever. And because it takes so long it drives up the costs for everyone else.
I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's not Joe Biden.
If one person doesn't care, and another person cares a lot, the second person wins. The same is true if twenty people don't care.
The only way you will stop the Woke is if you care as much as they do. I just don't see Joe Biden filling that role.
We already live in a world where someone can use a 3 second video of a 15 year old kid saying the n word like they have heard it in countless rap songs to get that person's acceptance to a college withdrawn 3 years later, and have it wrote up in the NYT as a triumph of justice.
First off, I don't think using Medicare as an example for dismissing worries about giving government too much power is an especially persuasive argument. There are a number of pretty significant issues with Medicare. There's the hundreds of billions of dollars it costs in fraud each year, which everyone pays for indirectly. Plus there's the fact that many Doctors don't take it due to payments taking forever. And because it takes so long it drives up the costs for everyone else.
They always talk about Medicare, rather than Medicaid, which I find interesting. Part of the reason is, I assume, because Medicaid in a lot of states has been shifted to a subsidy to purchase insurance on the private market. It was done because of the problems with direct gov reimbursement to doctors and hospitals.
This is a pleasant fantasy of Mickey's. But if the Trump admin was the wild years, then this next one promises to be the cynical years. We don't get out of this with our innocence intact. If electing buffoonish cartoon character Trump to office undermined a certain class of person's respect for the presidency and our other institutions, well, election 2020 and the elevation of dementia Joe and zero-delegates Kamala does in these institutions for the rest of us. It's sweet for Kaus to be optimistic and naive, but Trump was probably our best shot at a Norman Rockwell/Frank Capra/Jimmy Stewart Washington ending. We're in Orwell country now, so watch out for talking pigs.
At this point, Trump has a 2% chance of pulling this off. Everyone is corrupt.
As of Inauguration Day 2017, Trump had a 0% chance of pulling this off. Which happens to be the exact same odds of any republican ever being elected President again.
We're in Orwell country now, so watch out for talking pigs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXkicQRl6vg
Poor Mickey. His alliances would be shattered if he wrote the truth right now. It's the season for upbeat bridge building insincerity among Democrat pundits who need to stay in the club. Biden will not have a problem with Neverbiden Democrat pundits.
Joe Biden is a man of vision to the same degree that Bullwinkle J. Moose is a real moose.
Oh, and homeschooling will be outlawed and parents contradicting what the schools are teaching their children will be investigated by "children's welfare" agents.
JOE is too old and corrupt to understand the leftwing puppet shoved up his old butt.
The idea Joe is moderate? How? Do you hear moderation out of him? I don't
”The Dems aren't liberal anymore.
There is no respect for personal liberty or concern for the powerless. Quite the opposite, in fact. The hold liberty in contempt and their greatest concern is for the powerful.”
As I’ve said, the Dems are becoming Republicans.
Joe Biden is a man of vision to the same degree that Bullwinkle J. Moose is a real moose.
That trick never works!
The Media are in charge. The media and the Chi-Com democrat party are ONE.
Joe is empty. He will be filled by the corrupt hack-D press.
And what will they be teaching them? Any work of art and literature older than 70 years old and created by a white male is racist and homophobic, and of no value artistic value anyway. Any recent works by straight white males are problematic unless the adhere to the correct ideology, and even then they still have the whiff of patriarchy. The US is an inherently evil nation and every institution needs to be used to bring "equity" to the victims of its "oppressions." In short, pretty much what they are teaching them now.
I am NOT impressed, and I will have NO faith in Joe.
Wouldn't it be pretty if Mickey is right? Keep hope alive, I suppose.
It's not the scenario I would place any bets on. I see Joe caving about the time they light up another police station somewhere. Something will go wrong involving an arrest of some oppressed category of individual, and the black bloc kabuki cranks up its street opera for the next season's show.
Wait until the revolutionary narrative machine starts mining the archives of Delaware Public radio for choice quotes from the 70's. They'll have laser shows with the quotes.
A 15 year old girl elicits more sympathy than an ancient racist cracker in the White House. Please understand how far the Dem left wants to move the window. They see Biden as a Kerensky or a capitalist Breshnev figure. They won't be done until the Trumps are disposed of like the Romanovs.
Mickey asks: (RE: "leveling the playing field" by denying older whites access to the vaccine)
But what happened last week was not abstract: The near-hijacking of a universal medical institution, and a potential denial of care, not in the name of budget-cutting but in the name of two-wrongs-make-up-for-racism social justice. Fight it and you're not just self-interested and wrong. You're self-interested and wrong and racist.
Where’ll this line of argument crop up next? Do I have to worry that in the future, when I'm wheeled into the ER, some Ivy League bioethicist will have decided I'm too white to get care? Or — further up the medical supply chain — that valuable medicines won't even be developed because' If the government paid for this procedure it would save lives, but they would not be diverse lives ...'
As I’ve said, the Dems are becoming Republicans.
That's fatuous. There is a uniparty, with an unfettered grip on our reins of power since at least the 60s, and Trump is the only force in American politics to show any success in beating it back. He's the most radical thing to happen to American politics in the modern era, and yet our self-proclaimed radical class could merely complain about his style, having been fully co-opted by the uniparty regime as their footsoldiers and scribes. The self-proclaimed radicals and leftists united behind Biden to restore the uniparty. This was our radical moment, and the university trained activists and agitators flubbed it completely. If you can't decide between Trump and Biden, you ain't a radical.
Joe will not do. Joe is done.
Blogger tim maguire said...
I'm expecting a milquetoast presidency where the grifters grift freely and nothing much else happens.
Hoping, you mean. Me, too.
"Medicare for all" means "Medicaid for all." Obamacare is Medicaid with higher income eligibility limits. When we moved to Tucson I was frankly surprised to fine primary care docs who accepted Medicare. I expected only cash practices for us. By the end of 2024, that may be our only choice.
the delusion about Biden runs deep.
Biden is a crook and the only thing that matters is making sure a Special Counsel is set in place to investigate the corruption and international money grubbing done by the Biden family - to enrich the Biden family - using the Biden name and pay-to-play access.
It's interesting how weak Kaus' examples of Biden's opposition to wokeism are.
1. Biden "worries" about 2 million people on our border.
2. There are "signs" Biden won't restore a "fair housing" policy where the "signs" consist entirely of those responsible for implementing the policy recognizing how stupid it is.
Meanwhile Joe's support was critical in implementing Title IX lunacy which he has vowed to restore "Day One".
Kaus is fantasizing - as is anyone who thinks Joe has any interest in reining in the far left.
Tim M said...
I'm expecting a milquetoast presidency where the grifters grift freely and nothing much else happens.
As are we all.
Media will continue to be an arm to one political Party (D). Works nicely to cover up all that gifting.
wild chicken,
Are you pretending you have not supported Biden (at least since the election) but will now complain about the coming Democratical policies?
I hope you stretch on a regular basis.
Not my President
Joe will not do. Joe is done.
Well put, and also why I find Dr. Jill such a pernicious character, she and everyone associated with that sham of a campaign did Joe a bad turn, but they really done the rest of us.
Robert Cook,
I will admit that you are recognizing Democraticals are just like the Republicans of your fevered dreams.
And Republicans are Democratical-lite.
Now the question becomes whether you will ever understand conservatives.
And why your religion (cum politics) is wrong.
As I’ve said, the Dems are becoming Republicans.
The Democrats have been America's unofficial fascist party since Wilson, the only thing that has changed is the loss of patriotism. Fascism without patriotism is a dead end.
Wokism is different than the Red Scare. McCarthy could be targeted and blamed. His figurative head was removed.
Wokism is basically crowdsourced totalitarianism. It’s head cannot be removed because it has no head. There’s no public leader of wokism - only its agents.
Wokism’s standard for acceptable thought is always moving. But, rest assured someone’s getting cancelled every day for doublebad wrongthink. And no one can be woke in all things at all times.
That we have woke cancel culture married to Covid 19 - where guys like Fauci admit to lying to us but doctors get canceled for calling out the lies - well, that just seems way to much of a coincidence to me. That we have an election that doesn’t add up but Facebook and Twitter will cancel you for stating what’s obvious - again, such a happy coincidence for all these tools of authoritarianism to come together at the same time.
All these trolls against our sensible president elect.
"he doesn’t like departures from common sense"
Sure. It's just common sense to get rid of a prosecutor in Ukraine, like we do commonly do, and get someone in there who is nicer to the company paying your son the big bucks.
"It’s just 'C'mon man.' Like Biden, it might do."
Sure. It's just common sense to elect a 40-year grifter.
"Wokeism Should Terrify Liberals... Here's a job for Joe...."
Who would be these terrified liberals? Sure, some people who still profess to be liberals fear they might lose an election or two, but most liberals are already woke. They are only terrified that the country isn't going woke as fast as they want.
Up on Instapundit is a video of important Ukraine government people going on about corruption. They name the Biden family specifically and a bunch of Democrat lawmakers. The Ukrainians want their money back.
No wonder the cheat was in, If Biden didn't get elected, in an honest world he and his friends would be going to jail.
Biden doesn't have a vision? Visions of sugar plums dance in his head.
The nation didn't elect Joe, it elected Not Trump.
Wokeism is competitive. One must be seen to be more woke than the other guy, so it takes some imagination to winkle out undiscovered offenses. As we have seen, this leads to ridiculous extremes, but the sky's the limit.
The thing that I find most alarming about Kaus is that he actually seems to think that Senile Joe Biden has any say whatsoever in what would happen in an Administration of his. At this point, he is lucky to remember his kids’ names. Probably thinks that Dr Jill is his physician, and maybe why she insists on being addressed as “Doctor”.
Biden is already, and has been for a long time, an empty suit. In the past, whether it was for MBNA or the CCP, he did and said what would bring in the most money to his family enterprise. Now, I think he has transcended that. He likely just floats, day to day, not fully aware of much going on around him. As with Obama, the Dems are propping up an empty suit. And, as before, the preverbal question is who is animating that empty suit? Who is pulling the puppet strings? Who would actually be running the country? My assumption is that it is an internationalist coalition, with significant input from the aforementioned CCP. My point though is that we just don’t know.
The scary thing right now is that so much of the political and financial elite are just fine with that. Republican politicians turning on Trump in a heartbeat. The judiciary, despite record setting appointments by Trump, deciding to run cover for the theft of the election, instead of standing up for our Constitution and its Republican form of government. Trump couldn’t even get the vote of a single one of the three Justices he nominated to the Supreme Court. I fully expect that Justice Gorsuch’s mother, Anne, is turning over in her grave.
F**k Illegitimate Joe and the votes of the America haters he rode in on.
“Mickey [Kaus] sees himself as a liberal whose mission in life is to correct the flaws of liberalism.” ~Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Nonapod said...
I've always supported some kind of universal, national health insurance. Medicare seems like a program that works--why not expand it? Claims from conservatives that this gives government too much power have always seemed like a rote application of abstract dogma. Did Medicare — run by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services -- have too much power? Hard to see how. There’s no obvious rationing. No death panels. Of course there are always worries about cost-cutting, and the insidious culture of "good death," including creepy end-of-life maneuvers (like the UKs infamous Liverpool Pathway). Yet we could seemingly rely on voter demand for care to overhwelm lugubrious proponents of medical austerity.
*********************
The flaws in that line of thinking are obvious: EXPANDING Medicare and making it mandatory for all is precisely what will lead to rationing and death panels. People will no longer be able to choose their doctors or their level of service. We've already seen that with Obamacare.
On top of that, we've got "Woke" idiocy infecting our public health programs as it is now. Steyn reported last night that in Mass., more than 6,000 young people have got the covid vaccine, but only about 700 in the high risk over-75 group.
Why? Because old people are expendable, while young workers are "essential". Never mind that the latter don't DIE from the disease.
Next step: outside Boston the boxcars are already being prepared to be loaded up with geezers in nursing homes, to transport them by rail to a seniro facility called "A Better Place".
It has a slogan over the gate: "Gesundheit Macht Frei".
This bar is so low it's subterranean, but Uncle Joe will never piss off Republicans as much as Trump pissed off Democrats. So, in a way, that will cause a net increase in civility in our public life.....Uncle Joe is dim and occasionally befuddled, but he doesn't arouse any great hostility. I suppose his family dabbles in corruption, but they never broke the one hundred million mark like so many of their contemporaries. Bill and Hillary remain the champs. They invented and perfected the tax deductible bribe. The Bidens are chumps compared to them. The IRS will probably make the Bidens pay taxes on their bribes. It's unfair, but the Bidens will do their duties as patriotic citizens and pay taxes on their bribes. So right there that's an improvement on Hillary and Bill.....I have hopes for Biden. I think most of his failures will be manageable and that he will get a few things right.
If you're a Big Government liberal, you want to strangle the Woke baby in the bathtub, before it grows up to thoroughly undermine public support for finishing the great Democratic project
That would be wonderful, Micky, except for the fact that the Woke Left isn't going to go down quietly or easily, and I just don't see the moderate Left as having the cojones to take on this project. After all, the moderates are counting on their hard-lefty foot soldiers (such as Antifa) to do their dirty work if it ever comes to a shit-show with the Right & their 300 million guns.
It isn't always true that the Bolsheviks win. But it is always true that the first victims of the Bolsheviks are the Mensheviks. It used to be that liberal publications like The New Republic preached the dangers of the hard left for the moderate left. Those publications are long gone, and Kaus is a fossil from that past.
Sad.
Joe Biden doesn't have the stones to stand up against his handlers. And for that matter I don't think he has the inclination to do so.
Cookie's got it wrong again. Dems aren't "becoming" anything, they are - like Cookie itself - Maoists and have been for about 20 years now. Cookie is one of those rooting for the shooting to start, having hated America and Americans for many, many years.
Wokeism should terrify them? It's about power, and the professional woke live for power.
Liberals will stop at nothing to be able to smash your face into the dirt and tell you to like it.
And yet, not a single Biden voter on this blog has explained why Biden isn't the dumbest president in history.
They can't defend him because he's a drooling mess.
But vote for him? Sure. Because he's a means to an end.
I'll be fine...I'm relatively rich. I'm afraid of the future my hard-working kids will have to face.
"and he doesn’t like departures from common sense"
Odd, n'est pas, that the Democrat version of common sense always means more government and more taxation. And, "We gotta get rid of that pesky Constitution and its limits."
Biden has a plan.
Clear?
What the hell is going on in the state legislatures of AZ, WI, MI, PA and GA? Only Steve Bannon reports on it.
I'll tell you what happened --- a faction within the Democratic Party wanted to get rid of Trump so badly that they'd do ANYTHING to do it, even take the US to the brink of civil war. They "crossed the Rubicon", and what was Caesar crossing the Rubicon with his army all about? It was a declaration of civil war on the seated government at Rome.
So now, everyone is sitting around going "What Next?". We really don't have the constitutional tools to deal with this. If the Republican Party fights this now, they have to admit the severity of what was done, and that very well may lead to massive violence, as the Left will not surrender what they believe was a legitimate win against the forces of American Fascism. So, for now, the Republican party elders are going to live through four years of Slo-Joe, and hope against hope that they can prevent the Dems from doing it again in 2024.
Me, I'm expecting that Trump & his supporters are not going to let this go. It's going to take time, court cases, and investigative shoe-leather, but, in a about two years, it's going to become really obvious that the election was fraudulent. And then what? How do we move forward? I don't know, but I fear for our country.
It's a little disappointing that the guy who gave us "Petrified Zombie Biden versus Full Strength Boastful Biden" isn't more critical, but Kaus has to do what he can to keep up his claim to be a Democrat.
The "Decent, Honest Joe Biden" routine doesn't really work for me. It seems to be based on the idea that Biden is too dumb to be crooked. But Biden's been in politics for a half century and he's made all the compromises, and taken all the occasions to change his positions, sell out the voters, or advance his career that every other career politician has.
Somebody downtown still has their "We Choose Truth Over Lies - Biden 2020" banner up. My thought - and I'm going to apologize for it in advance - was "We Choose Shit Over Shinola - Biden 2020." Sorry again, it's all in fun, people.
Dissent is the highest form of patriotism. I know this to be true because I read it on so many bumpers back when Bush was president.
That trick never works!
It's only hurts when I laugh, and that one hurt a lot. (I think "I gots the covid!" so took the nose test yesterday but no results for 3 to 5 days, which seems a bit bogus. Haven't felt that sick in many years although the bad part only lasted about 2 days).
If you believe the antidote to left-wing revolution cosplay is right-wing revolution cosplay, Kaus won’t make much sense to you.
I enjoyed reading Kaus's article.
left-wing revolution cosplay
It's not cosplay.
Wokism and Cancel Culture on the left is swiftly causing our country to descend into a Communist Police state where informants are everywhere just waiting to report misdeeds and what someone said, whether it is to a government agency (currently public education institutions but local, state, & federal agencies are not far behind - eg CDC deciding who gets treated based on political correctness and not actual medical situations) OR private entities like our mass media and big tech companies. We will be having unelected civil service bureaucrats deciding who gets punished for “incorrect thoughts”. If that doesn’t scare our citizens, we are f***ed as a country. Unfortunately, many of these citizens keep electing and enabling politicians who are working to make our country a police state with the encouraging of informants, inside and outside of government.
A former colleague worked on the Hill for decades. Liberal, leaning to more on the left side. Knew Biden and his reputation on the Hill. His take away was that if you planned to open an upscale steak restaurant in DC, and wanted a greeter/maitre d type to make your guests feel comfortable, that would be a perfect job for Joe. He really is a dim light.
The soft bigotry of no expectations.
So Kaus is on Substack now, too? A lot of political commentators have made that migration recently. The "free" Internet seems to be diminishing.
Of course, Substack is all reader-supported, and the only one I've paid so far is Andrew Sullivan. I wonder how much Greenwald, Yglesias, Kaus I'll need to read before they start billing me.
For me, Biden's biggest appeal is that he had a stolid, unimaginative middle class upbringing, and he's too dumb to fall for high-concept woke nonsense now. He's a social climber so he'll mouth the words, but he'll never be a true convert. He may be the most comprehensively mediocre President we've had in my lifetime, but you know --
there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they, and a little chance?
I pull up that quote from Senator Hruska a lot, I know, but there's a kind of wisdom there, I think.
If you believe Leftist Collectivist Corporatist Fascism is the answer to Trump's focus on middle class wage growth, nothing you type will make sense to anybody who reads what you write.
Mickey also retweeted this hard-hitting story from the Washington Post:
Perspective | Kamala Harris’s marriage inspires so many of us still searching for our Dougs. Harris and Emhoff's courtship offers hope — and a little instruction.
Of course he must have been sarcastic about it. I'm torn between wonderment at how strange the world is and nausea.
And for people pointing out that Biden has benefited from influence peddling and the like (corrupt, perhaps, but not necessarily illegal), look, better a corrupt slimeball than a true blue progressive missionary. A corrupt politician is literally a man one can do business with. That's what makes him corrupt!
I don't see how you get from Biden or Harris to anything resembling actual socialism, but they are sure to get plenty of goodies for their donors and supporters and the major blocs in their party (including the left).
Wokeism should terrify anyone who wants calm and boring because at its center it is about compliance to someone else's vision of what you ought to believe, do, and be. Cancel Culture is Wokeism in action.
"Medicare for all" means "Medicaid for all."
Something happened to me this year that convinces me that healthcare should be addressed at the state level. I live in Minnesota. Have for decades. I retired in July. When I did, I no longer received Cadillac health insurance from my multi-billion-dollar employer. Being affluent, I didn't very much care. I now accept Social Security. I also have two fully vested pensions, one from my former employer and one from a global corporation I left over 20 years ago. I have a fat 401(k), money in the bank, own my house (free, clear and unencumbered as they say) and have no meaningful debt (it's important to maintain a little). But because I elected to take SS mid-year, I signed an agreement that any income I derived from those resources during the remainder of 2020 would have to be given back to the federal government. I'm not stupid. And because I'm not stupid, I understand the importance of health insurance, so I looked into my options.
One of those options was MinnesotaCare. And lo and behold, due to my current monthly income, the cost of that health insurance is a whopping $25.00 per month and I was able to continue getting healthcare from North Memorial Health, the very same places I received healthcare from all through my working life and even prior to that. Only a fool would pass that up. Just had my annual physical in October. I have yet to see a bill. I plan to continue this path until I am Medicare eligible in 2022.
So, one thing I learned is that anyone who claims the poor can't afford health insurance, at least in this state, is either misinformed or a lying sack of shit.
So out of curiosity, I decided to go online to see about getting benefits via the Minnesota Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The first financial question they asked was about my net worth. And that ended that.
So the one thing I learned from this is that the State of Minnesota is compassionate, but certainly not stupid. However, during the Obama years I would have been eligible for SNAP benefits, so it might have been me you saw buying fillet mignon and lobster with my SNAP card and then getting into my BMW.
Conclusion: Poverty should be addressed at the state level. However, to that some retort, "But what about the poor in Mississippi?" Well, that's the citizens in the state of Mississippi's problem to figure out.
"Wokism is basically crowdsourced totalitarianism. It’s head cannot be removed because it has no head. There’s no public leader of wokism - only its agents."
I like that! And would like to see a cartoon of Medusa with the snakes of her head labeled accordingly.
And would like to see a cartoon of Medusa with the snakes of her head labeled accordingly.
The Hydra might be more approiate (specifically the Ray Harryhausen creature from Jason and the Argonauts).
To understand wokeism, just rent this:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405094/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
“And for people pointing out that Biden has benefited from influence peddling and the like (corrupt, perhaps, but not necessarily illegal), look, better a corrupt slimeball than a true blue progressive missionary. A corrupt politician is literally a man one can do business with. That's what makes him corrupt!”
My problem there is that the people bribing the Bidens are not the guy down the street, but our biggest geopolitical enemies, and, esp the Red Chinese. Sure, they have been bribing everyone they could, before Trump was elected. But the result has been pro-Chinese, and anti-American, government policies. Take the most obvious one - the Paris Accords, to fight the CAGC/CAGW/CAGCC climate hoax, which effectively exempted the Chinese, allowing them to build coal plants as quickly as they could, while we were trying to switch to exorbitantly expensive “renewable” energy sources (somewhat dependent on Chinese rare earths). Dem Administrations have shipped critical missile technology, and Dem politicians have installed voting machines that have Chinese circuitry.
Accepting politicians taking bribes to affect our policy towards them is a really, really, bad thing when they are our mortal enemies.
"The Hydra might be more approiate"
That's what I meant. Thanks for the correction. Haven read any Greek mythology since grade school.
Sundown, you better take care. When you find Joe stammering and sniffin' hair.
Bruce Hayden said...My problem there is that the people bribing the Bidens are not the guy down the street, but our biggest geopolitical enemies, and, esp the Red Chinese.
--
Come on, man. "They're good folks."
Kimchee Mitch agrees!
gadfly said...
“Mickey [Kaus] sees himself as a liberal whose mission in life is to correct the flaws of liberalism.” ~Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
If I were a liberal focused on how my policies effected Americans this is exactly who I'd listen to. To me it's revealing (a) Kaus, Althouse, and McWhorter are among the very few public liberals (very few as in this list may be complete) who care about the topic (b) every other public voice claiming to be liberal understands them as the opposition.
Every other "liberal" cares only about achieving left wing policy regardless of the impact thus they still think Obamacare is a success. Their incompetence is so complete they don't even care whether their policies work or not. This is why their use of Denmark as a role model is so offensive - especially to Danes.
Rick,
Wasn't there a prominent California pol a few years ago admitting a policy didn't work but was the right thing to do?
Off by one syllable. We're not told. We're sold. They are trying to sell Biden.
Sorry. Not buying.
Walter:
Economically, a $15 minimum wage doesn’t make much sense for many parts of California.
Even Gov. Jerry Brown, who on Monday signed a bill to increase California’s minimum wage to that level, knows that.
In what could go down as one of the most honest moments in political history, Brown told reporters that raising the minimum wage was more about culture and politics than about economics.
“Economically, minimum wages may not make sense,” Brown says in a video posted online by the Sacramento Bee newspaper. “But morally, and socially and politically, they make every sense because it binds the community together.”
______________________________________________
Who do you suppose has a tighter sense of community: someone with a job or someone without?
Ah..of course. Moonbeam.
Tomorrow's headlines today: Joe Biden killed my Grandpa.
Benice if we had a president whose vision included liberty, but I guess in the waningdays of the Republic, that's too mush to ask for.
"It's not about your rights, man"--Dementia Joe.
Bruce,
"...while we were trying to switch to exorbitantly expensive “renewable” energy sources..."
Yes, but please don't forget to include "unreliable" as part of the description.
The Lincoln Project
@ProjectLincoln
· 4h
China will end 2020 as the only major country to see its economy grow, not shrink. Is this what #MAGA looks like to you @realDonaldTrump ...
Biden doesn't have a 'soul'. He doesn't.
Blogger gadfly said...
“Mickey [Kaus] sees himself as a liberal whose mission in life is to correct the flaws of liberalism.” ~Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Talk about your job security!
“ China will end 2020 as the only major country to see its economy grow, not shrink. Is this what #MAGA looks like to you ”
Should it surprise anyone that the biggest reason for the worldwide economic crash was the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, and that it is highly likely that the SARS-CoV-2 virus, causing the pandemic, was created in a virology lab in Wuhan, China, and more likely than not by their PLA. The virus looks very much like it was artificially created - for one thing, there is no genetic residue from a cross species transfer, which would have been the case if it had developed spontaneously in another species, then jumped to ours, already optimized for Human ACE-2 receptors. Nope. Doesn’t happen. In real life, it would have been optimized for a deferent species’ ACE-2 receptors, and had to adopt to ours. It doesn’t really matter whether it was gene edited, or created through forced evolution - the important thing is that it was very likely created by Red Chinese virology researchers. It is also interesting that it seems to effect Han Chinese in particular, and probably Mongoloids in general, less than it does other races and ethnicities. Yes, the same Chi Coms who gave the Biden family over a billion dollars to invest for them, etc. 2 1/2 million around the globe dead, 1/4 million here, and the country creating the virus is one of the least effected both economically and in deaths.
If I wanted to make a point about how a lot of people would say this kind of thing about whoever replaced Trump regardless of their ability to do the job, I'd pick an imaginary replacement with dementia, too old to have the energy, with a long career of failure, sloth and corruption. I'd imagine someone turned down repeatedly by the American people so much that our election system would have to be gutted and rigged to get him elected.
The U.S. election system is now regarded globally as the most fraudulent in the free world. Our enemies are simply overjoyed and have great plans for their money and reach in the coming years.
Who do you think has more influence on the outcome of our elections now, 1000 honest American voters or one rich Chinese national? It's not even close.
I am relatively certain the US will have net positive GDP growth for 2020.
After 2020 Q3 the US was almost back to previous levels.
If the Atlanta Fed projection of 11% growth in Q4 is correct and there are no significant reductions in past quarters' growth, I think the US will have shown it's resilience in advance of Biden crushing the economy.
Of course, federal spending will have been a major reason.
The private, dynamic part of the economy will have been crushed by governors.
Maybe I will prove wildly wrong.
Robert Cook said...
”The Dems aren't liberal anymore.
There is no respect for personal liberty or concern for the powerless. Quite the opposite, in fact. The hold liberty in contempt and their greatest concern is for the powerful.”
As I’ve said, the Dems are becoming Republicans.
MSNBC tried to be the Fox of the left. But they weren’t the Fox of the left, they were the liberal fantasy of Fox for the left. Fox was never what the left imagined it to be.
Same here. The Dems aren’t turning into the left-wing version of the Reps, they are turning into the left-wing version of your fantasy of the Reps. We would all be much better off if you were right, but, sadly, you are not.
A trans-partisan outcry from left, right, center, and Tulsi -- plus opposition from higher ups like HHS Secretary Azar -- put a partial stop to this idiocy. Now people 75 and up will apparently be recommended for priority, with the 65-74 and "essential-but-not-frontline" group fighting it out after that.
Yes, but you have to notice that the trans-party outcry didn't include or even involve Biden.
As far as leading the country goes, he might as well still be in his basement in Delaware.
I'm anticipating an extremely passive president who exerts only titular control of the Executive Branch.
Zach (9:14pm):
When writing of a politician who's been videotaped many times sniffing women's and little girls' hair, grabbing their shoulders, and reaching lower, please don't use the word "titular". A little too on-the-nose.
Joe Biden is mirage. It is clear from public records that he lives the life of a billionaire, in houses and cars purchased with dirty money, held in the names of his family members.
The scam is that he doesn't have to disclose them. And the other scam is that the source of the money is corruption.
Insiders say he isn't that nice of a guy either. He is often guilty of the same cringy behavior and language as Trump.
SensibleCitizen wrote: "Joe Biden is mirage. It is clear from public records that he lives the life of a billionaire, in houses and cars purchased with dirty money, held in the names of his family members."
Here in Georgia, the Senate run-off has gone into classic "Liberal" class warfare and envy stage, with commercials pointing out that Perdue and Loeffler have nicer and pricier homes than the average Georgian, implying that is prima facie evidence of skulduggery; and yet the Hive would never make similar implications about Bidens, the Clintons or the Obamas. I guess to the Hive, only State-fuckers have the right to be wealthy.
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