Yeah, makes perfect sense, will do.

Matt Taibbi (before he went crazy) wrote some hilarious bits about sneaking all kinds of stuff into his articles when he was writing for smaller papers, and he said no one ever noticed. I was very saddened when he went over to the darkness for reasons I still don’t understand.

Yeah, makes sense. I just took it out from this post, want me to go back and do the same for earlier posts?

Sure, will do. I generally don’t like dodging around paywalls but The Atlantic for whatever weird reason puts full text of their stories into their RSS feed, so my habit was just to duplicate the story from the RSS feed.

Given your response to ranandtoldthat below though I suspect we don’t really disagree much on the Atlantic’s not-so-great reporting on the topic, though.

Yeah, no disagreement at all. I had no idea until this post how bad their stance on Gaza / Israel was, which definitely makes me look at this article in a new light.

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas had dissented, and that Alito was planning to write a response.

I really hope when this is all over we can put these guys on trial. Impeachment is not enough.

Rashida Tlaib is better on Israel than Shapiro, yes. Go figure. She was not an option for vice president.

The article notes that Tim Walz was the main alternative option being pushed by the anti-Shapiro crowd, and he was objectively worse on Israel in terms of messaging at least.

I do get what you mean. I read the Wikipedia article and watched an interview where he talked about Israel, and I definitely didn’t like him. All his answers are politician answers, very successfully crafted so that it’ll sound to everyone on any side of the issue that he agrees with them. He did say clearly that he prefers a two-state solution but that was about the only non-weaselly thing he said. But yeah, he has a bunch of extremely anti-Palestinian actions and I can definitely see why a committed pro-Palestine person could have a serious problem with him.

Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, nominated by President Ronald Reagan, a Republican, wrote that he and his two colleagues “cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos.”

Until I read this whole verdict, I hadn’t realized why people were making a big deal about it. It’s breathtaking.

The basic differences between the branches mandate a serious effort at mutual respect. The respect that courts must accord the Executive must be reciprocated by the Executive’s respect for the courts. Too often today this has not been the case, as calls for impeachment of judges for decisions the Executive disfavors and exhortations to disregard court orders sadly illustrate.

This is a losing proposition all around. The Judiciary will lose much from the constant intimations of its illegitimacy, to which by dint of custom and detachment we can only sparingly reply. The Executive will lose much from a public perception of its lawlessness and all of its attendant contagions.

The Executive may succeed for a time in weakening the courts, but over time history will script the tragic gap between what was and all that might have been, and law in time will sign its epitaph.

It is, as we have noted, all too possible to see in this case an incipient crisis, but it may present an opportunity as well. We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos.

This case presents their unique chance to vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time.

The person who wrote that should get a medal made of gold.

Full text is in this post.

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Holy shit, you’re not kidding. I generally like The Atlantic for obvious recent reasons but I just looked up their Gaza coverage and about 50% of it is more or less “Why is everyone mad at Israel what have they ever done to anyone” 😳

The point was, just like in the general election, some people were attacking the least genocide friendly of the options, and saying they were doing it because they hated genocide. Which is a weird thing to do (especially since in both cases it seemed to result in the more genocide-friendly option winning).

Jesus Christ man. I didn’t read that far in.

Imagine if she could get kicked out of the country, or deported to a mega-prison, for doing the right thing. That would, presumably, also be a risk, and one that some people in the face of would still do the right thing.

“let’s see if his actions match his words”

Would have been a perfectly reasonable thing to say. On the other hand, you said:

His adoption by a lot of centrist Dems, and his absorption and placement as DNC Vice Chair makes me wonder if he’s just the Centrist Dems’ vehicle to remain the top influence in the party by replacing old Centrists with young Centrists.

… which is a load of puckey. He was elected by the full membership of the Democratic Party. He’s trying to primary old and centrist leaders. Could it all be a smokescreen? Sure. Why are you comitted to shitting on him preemptively and immediately reacting to a story about him refusing to go along with the DNC’s attempts at “party unity” with some of their centrist leaders, and trying to specifically make efforts to primary them, by saying he obviously has the support of centrist leaders so maybe we can’t trust him?

Now, I am very interested in why you seem dead-set on immediately and unwaveringly and unquestioningly trusting him

Pretty sure I did nothing of the sort. When did I do that? Quote me.

Because at this point you’re starting to look like you’re pushing an agenda.

Honestly, I’m just irritated at pointless fact free purity-testing of anyone who is left who is trying to accomplish anything at all. It had partly nothing to do with anything you said, it’s just I’ve lost patience with this kind of harassment and questioning of anybody at all who has a realistic chance of doing something good. Let the fucking guy make some progress without immediately starting to bite your nails about what flaws he might have. Maybe he’s a horrible centrist in disguise. Sure, could be. On the other hand, he could be somebody who is trying to do what you say you want to see happen. Let’s see without starting to throw “centrist dems” “old centrists” “young centrists” at him for more or less no reason at all.

If anyone is splintering or diffusing progress, it would be someone other than them popping up and trying to do their own thing.

So no one is allowed to “pop up” and start to try to make progress. Otherwise, they’re “splintering.” Got it.

And like I said, if he does push for progressives, that would be good.

Quick question: What is he doing, as the main topic of the article you’re posting under?

I mean it’s just weird. I won’t say you’re in any way wrong to be suspicious of anything DNC-related. But it just seems weirdly and pointlessly extra in this case. And this precise suspicious hyper-criticism of anything in the left that seems to be helping but doesn’t pass some weird purity test (or even, as in this case, maybe doesn’t pass some weird purity test, just based on no knowledge at all) does a lot of damage. It’s a good way to splinter and diffuse progress and put up obstacles to people who are trying to accomplish something.

Put it this way: If one mid-level priest said he wanted to do something about pedophilia in the Catholic Church, that would be good. It wouldn’t really make me decide to be Catholic, but it seems like a good indication about them. If someone said “Yeah but he’s CATHOLIC CHURCH so how do we know he’s not a pedophile himself!” then that’s weird. Even if maybe the person has a point to be cautious, it’s just a weird point to decide to make.

Centrist Dems are half the reason we have Trump.

More than half, I’d say. That’s precisely one reason I think it’s weird that you’re coming out against someone who wants to get rid of them.

Don’t try to frame this as some anti-Left thing

I mean, this guy’s left, and you’re anti- him. Sounds like it is an anti-left thing. Again, that’s actually what irritated me about your message.

this is about milquetoast, feckless neolibs who have and still do spend enormous effort preventing the party from actually aligning with its voting base.

Absolutely.

If he’s not that, I support him fully!

Yeah. If he’s not a child molester, then I support him fully too! Isn’t that a weird way to frame things?

Makes perfect sense. After all:

• We can’t support the Democrats until they get better on Gaza
• We can’t support the people who want to improve the Democrats until they don’t have the support of “centrist” Democrats and thus demonstrate their cred <- You are here
• We can’t support the independents like Bernie Sanders until they stop being “sheepdogs” or whatever
• We can’t support the et cetera you get the idea

Bottom line, we can’t support anything on the left. It’s better to just let the right wing (or the conservative/corporate wing of the Democrats or et cetera) win whatever contests, until we all go to El Salvador.

Got it. I completely agree with you. This is totally sensible.

/s

The beauty of it is that it is stochastic. It doesn’t need to be an organized effort that would be detectable systematically and could be punished accordingly, it just needs thousands of random people to make thousands of random decisions and all add up.

Seriously. It’s more like the citizens are wondering if it’s safe to stay or how we should be getting visas somewhere else, or if it’s better to stay and fight. Coming in a on visa right now is not smart.

IDK. I asked one of the Cornel West boosters for why they supported him, and they linked me to a speech that was a mixture of incoherence, empty self-boosterism, and random things that pretty much everyone agrees with (“it’s a problem that there’s no much money in politics, the whole thing is corrupt” like yes dude I think we figured that out at this point).

Out of curiosity, I read some of “Race Matters” which I guess was part of what put him on the map originally, and I thought it was genius. The parts of it I happened to read just sampling it were honestly some of the best stuff on the issue I’ve ever read. One random example, he talked about the spread of cynicism and nihilism in the black community as a huge impact of these systemic problems, and then how it can compound a lot of the problems that they face and make it difficult to ever navigate their way out of it on an individual level. I have never heard anyone with a public voice talk about it the way he did, without then turning it around as a reason to blame the black community for their own problems (by pretending that it arose from nowhere, or because of racial reasons, as opposed to being an incredibly logical and natural reaction to the way they’re being treated by social and governmental systems). And, he basically said that it’s the black community’s problem to overcome that challenge, since it’s there and present, and there’s no one else who can come in from outside and solve it for them. Even though it’s not their fault.

So I do respect him intellectually (at least as of the point when he wrote that book). I don’t feel like the people who were boosting him as a spoiler candidate are even aware of any of that, though, and I think the reason they were promoting him are potentially pretty much the exact same reasons why some people might start promoting Smith.