After you slither down the Capitol steps, a dream of public service mangled and stained by seedy compromise, what do you do next with your life? Join the speakers’ circuit, of course.
For a modest and rapidly declining fee, your organization can be treated to the wit and wisdom of former Congressman Trey Gowdy, The Hero of Benghazi. Hear how he combed through tens of thousands of emails to find nothing of any real interest. Sit, riveted to your chair, as he describes the relentless investigative effort that led him into a box canyon of futility.
Do your employees perform meaningless, soul-crushing work with no clear purpose? They’ll thrill to stories of Republican legislative ineptitude, arbitrary government shutdowns and tantrums aimed at imaginary enemies. Need to rally your political group around absurd and improbable fears? Gowdy will wow them with sinister tales laced with evil threated by dark invisible forces.
Say goodbye to tired old speakers who bore you with facts and anchor their tired stories to reality. Your audience will be wowed by the swashbuckling adventures of a True Conservative. Get him drunk after the speech and maybe he’ll tell you what he really thinks of the conspiracy-addled idiots who elected him and the criminal defendants who will line his pockets in the coming years. Act now, before he disappears into the warm, comforting static of obscurity.
One final bit of breaking news, and you may want to sit down for this one:
https://www.chron.com/technology/businessinsider/article/GoFundMe-is-refunding-all-donations-made-to-the-13527385.php?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark
The new project has such fine people like Erik Prince, Kris Kobach, and David Clarke. Totally legit!!
This was so obviously a scam. I can’t believe anyone sent money but Trump supporters are pretty stupid.
A couple of interesting editorials have recently appeared in the Washington Post. This one’s by Trump apologist Henry Olson:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/11/gop-must-stamp-out-seeds-hatred-before-its-too-late/?utm_term=.ebbed468315a
There’s also one by Senator Tim Scott (I’ll post the link in a reply). Here we see some of the GOPers demonstrating enough awareness of reality to understand that bigotry is bad PR. There’s a lot of bashing of the low hanging fruit, Rep Steve King. Regarding the bloated orange elephant in the room, all Olsen has to say is this:
“President Trump can also take advantage of these developments to issue his own statement denouncing racism and religious bigotry. Many of his opponents will question his sincerity and motives, but that makes a strong statement even more in his interest. Nevertheless, the party must act regardless of what the president does.”
Looks like GOP self-awareness can only go so far.
Here’s Sen. Scott’s column:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/11/tim-scott-republicans-can-no-longer-be-silent-bigotry/?utm_term=.ac813b20bad6
He gets that selling economic opportunity doesn’t go well with a side order of bigotry. True that. But I also dispute the notion that current GOP economic policy is all that. Tax cuts for the rich and lax regs on polluters are not making my life better.
I thought this one was very revealing of what makes Trump voters tick.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/8/18173678/trump-shutdown-voter-florida
Essentially, they are small, mean, petty people who want others to suffer.
kayray:
A certain percentage of the population are psychopaths. They are born with their wiring wrong. Nothing can be done to change them. It has always been that way with the species. Most don’t act out on their impulses. Some do, and become serial killers, CEO’s, or presidents.
The smart thing society should do when such a person is identified is to execute them. But no, that is what civil society does.
For those that think my views are extreme, get back to me in the next few years and decades when global warming REALLY kicks in, and you have all the CEO’s and politicians continuing to say “It was too expensive to fix, and hey, just be rich and live in some of the nice places not affected as much, behind big walls with machine gun nests. Yes Chris, there are still cases that walls work, for a time at least until 100,000 starving people come over said wall with weapons and justice in their hearts.
Wait until you have not only people from Banglasdesh, Micronesia, India, Venice claiming refugee status and trying to get into the country, but all the folks in the Dominican Republic, Miami, New Orleans, Houston etc getting uprooted, looking for drier ground and safety.
Ever flown into Logan Airport? How much do you think it would cost to proof that from say, a 2 foot rise in sea levels and a 6 or 7 foot increase in max storm surges.
I read Marco Rubios recent remarks with more than a measure of cynicism. The conversion of the darling of conservatism to warm, fuzzy human popularism just didn’t ring true.
Tonight I read this excellent piece that focuses on Tucker Carlson’s lamentations about how capitalism has hurt working class people. I confess I’ve never been a fan of Carlson, but he is making sense. Further, Carlson appears unafraid to prod fellow conservatives for their lack of acknowledgement of the legitimate problems that exist and dares to hold up capitalism as a major contributor. It’s a great read and even though my cynical nature is screaming “beware”, I am intrigued that these two well-regarded conservatives are expressing such similar views – views, I might add, that echo many prominent Democrats.
https://www.vox.com/2019/1/10/18171912/tucker-carlson-fox-news-populism-conservatism-trump-gop
So, with the puppet tyrant days, maybe hours, away from declaring a “national emergency” and taking a giant step towards gaining some dictatorial powers (and yeah, no one will stop him, you know it) do you really think that this will be the ONLY time he goes there once he has opened this toolbox?
You guys still think that democratic institutions will work at stopping this madman and his enablers / controllers?
There is only one way to stop this tyranny, and hoping/ praying for democracy to prevail ain’t it.
Mueller’s reported to be just one or two months out from his investigation being completed and this whole thing changing, and you’re not convincing anyone of anything before we see what the Mueller Machine can bring to bear on the Don-in-Chief.
Calm thyself.
Off topic, but what is the thinking here about today’s news that Rod Rosenstein will “probably” leave DOJ when Barr is confirmed AG? Trump will have successfully replaced everyone within the line of authority at Justice which cannot help Mueller. Even with the House ready to subpoena the Mueller report in order to bypass a DOJ order to suppress its release, aren’t the next six months critical to the investigation? Mueller asked for and obtained an extension of the grand jury assigned to this case, but if his subpoena power is limited, how will this impact the investigation’s conclusions and capacity to follow critical threads (and we know where they are going and so does trump.)
Rosenstein leaving is not good, but I suspect that Special Counsel Mueller has anticipated this. His operations have been as diametrically opposite from those of the White House clown show/dumpster fire/ train wreck as you can get. His findings are going to get out, that I believe. The question is how bad will they be for Trump, and are they bad enough to sway GOP Senators? No guarantees on that second part, given how spineless and corrupt they are.
Rosenstein has said that he wouldn’t leave until either Mueller or finished or that he was far enough along that the investigation was protected. Let’s have some faith – we really *do* have our best people on this.
Rosenstein may not be in total control of his departure date. There are now 40 lawyers working on a plan (paid for by We the people) to defend his use of executive privilege. If Rosenstein gets in the way of that, I have zero confidence he will be allowed to stay. History is pretty clear that trump’ utterly disregards normal protocol and doesn’t care about anything other than what is best for him.
Here’s some red meat for the regulars:
https://thebulwark.com/the-tired-argument-that-nevertrumpers-are-to-blame-for-trump/
First, I’m glad that they started up The Bulwark. Good luck to them. But second, I’m going to throw down the first bit of criticism in that article. I take issue with praising Flake for “giving up a Senate seat”. Rather he gave up using those 2 years to do any real checking of Trump’s abuses. He was all talk and very little action. While I agree with the conservative anti-Trumpers that Trump is a danger to the republic, I don’t agree with the amount of absolution they’re trying to award themselves here.
Nice find, Flypusher. Yeah, I disagree with the article too. They conveniently disregard the racism that has been part and parcel of the Republican plan since at least Reagan blamed black welfare “queens” for the blue collar job losses that were a direct result of conservative economic policies. Did any principled conservative decry Bush’s Willy Horton ads? Or the swift boating of Kerry?
Most Middle Americans are the exact opposite of so-called principled conservatives: socially conservative and fiscally liberal. They think Hollywood is corrupting their kids and they want to tax the hell out of the rich.
The only way conservatives sold their deeply unpopular policies was by exploiting their supporters’ racism, xenophobia and paranoia. They can’t whine when someone else has beat them at their own game.
With all that said though, if they’ve really had a come to Jesus moment and sincerely regret their past stoking of the flames that Trump came from, then it’s time to forgive them and move on to figuring out how we can work together. Regardless of the past, many of them I think really do want to talk about policy in a rational way, and seek ways to bridge the divide with liberals. We should welcome that.
Why should this traitor get to make coin doing just what you described, making ONLY hundreds of thousands, as opposed to millions annually. This monster is one of many that has done lasting damage to the country, democracy, and by extension, the planet.
Why is this slime allowed to profit from all the misery he has caused?
Is he available as a target for rotten mushy produce? I would so pay for that opportunity.
Years of comfortable obscurity… We can only hope he does well enough on the speakers circuit that he isn’t tempted to “serve” the public in any other position.
His Benghazi legacy has been deeply planted in the minds of millions of people who believe every conspiracy story ever told about Hillary Clinton. His conservative credentials are full intact.