The Frankish Reich

Even Mike Judge couldn't have dreamed up this one.

Nothing really reliable yet, although I haven't seen anything disputing the accounts.

In the short term, yes. But it doesn't take long for realignments to happen. In my UK example, the Social Democratic Party started in 1981. The Tories, and then later the Labor Party under Tony Blair had basically co-opted their program and Thatcherism vs. Hard Socialism was essentially done by the end of the decade. It seems like a long time, but it'll be a longer time if we become a country where it's Trump and the Trumpkins vs. AOC and The Squad for the next several cycles.

The emergence of a third party (meaning: a split in the Republican party) may be inevitable. And I think that would be a good thing. Third parties almost never succeed, but they sometimes are able to drag the major parties back into more sensible positions. That happened in the UK when the Labor Party an Conservative Party had both gone too far in their respective directions. The Social Democratic/Liberal Parties emerged, didn't win a whole lot of elections, but then disappeared when Labor became the party of Tony Blair instead of (real, honest-to-goodness) socialists, and the Tories became the party of, well, a lot of forgettable middle-of-the-road types after the key elements of Thatcher's anti-government agenda had taken root. A guy named Donald Trump started to run on the Reform Party ticket back in 2000 ... I read that he was "very pro-choice" and, of course, committed to the elimination of federal deficits. I wonder how that worked out. I better google him. It is. Can't. Make. This. Shite. Up. Same with the dude who gave himself a nut-shot with his pocketed taser while trying to steal a portrait of Tip O'Neil (why?), collapsed, and died of a heart attack. The Trumpian Mount Rushmore.

Really, I want to believe that some of these people were just exercising their First Amendment rights and legitimate frustrations, but ... ... at least as far as the one who entered the Capitol building, I've yet to see anyone with any dignity or honor. Shameful.

I think we agree on the Deep State. Michael Lewis did a nice short book about what the Deep State means in a very mundane sense - it's what I'm defending here. It's people who know what they're doing in their fields of expertise. People who often toil behind the scenes just trying to make government run a little bit better, to anticipate problems before they arise, and to fix problems when they do. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Risk The Trump transition basically shunted these people out of the way in many spheres of government. There was an arrogance there. The idea that if it's entrenched and bureaucratic, well, then it's bad and resistant to change. And then things went wrong. We saw that most obviously with COVID-19, where the Trump Administration thought an office of pandemic planning was just a bureaucratic waste. There's a balance between continuity/preserving established ways of doing things and the need to allow experimentation and elected change to happen. Hence my "two cheers" post. We don't want to continue doing things a certain way just because that's how they've always been done, but we want to be careful that we don't throw away the progress we've made in certain areas just because it is associated with our predecessors. In retrospect, I view that as a squandered opportunity for sensible reform, and an America left in a far worse position than the one he inherited.

How it started: How it ended:

Wouldn't DR's anti-gravity machine that they've been hiding, but now in possession of the white hats, cause that to boomerang back on North Korea? I mean, that's the whole point of having an anti-gravity machine. Unless you're one of the evil X-Men, where it could presumably be used to take over the universe.

Well, I did give you what I think was a pretty well reasoned argument. You responded: Yawn. Feel free to bring things back up a level or two. I'll gladly engage on that level. In fact, I'd actually prefer it.

But, but ... "many people are saying it was the most fraudulent election in history" and "I won by a landslide." C'mon, "everybody knows" that. "Everybody knows." What more do you need?

tl;dr The good guys won; the idiots lost.

Agreed. I'm not one of our All 22 obsessives (though I do enjoy their comments), but just watching the games this year: in his first two years we saw criticism of Allen's accuracy and also his inability to spot the open man. This year, I honestly can't recall a comment from anyone who knows their stuff about Allen throwing into coverage or getting sacked when there was an open receiver he failed to see.

I think that's true around the NFL in general. Crowd noise when your team is on defense is used to create home field advantage by disrupting signal calling. But even the lower db crowd noise when your team is on offense makes it harder to change things at the line of scrimmage. This may be sacrilege, but ... I liked it. I mean, I want crowds, I want noise, but I'm a little tired of the 120 db Seattle 12th man stuff or even the slightly lower Bills noise. Great offense is great football, particularly in the modern era where we no longer celebrate or even allow the "big hit" on defense.

1. The constitutional fabric held. It was disturbing to see how fragile it is when men and women of good faith (well, a man of bad faith) do not occupy the positions of power. But in the end the final attempt to stack the Supreme Court prior to the election so that it would reach a result-oriented decision in any election litigation failed. And the final, final attempt to bully the VP into violating his duty to report the electoral college result failed. And the final, final, final attempt to disrupt the operations of the Congress before that business could be completed failed, and failed miserably. 2. The Deep State is nothing more than a shorthand for "those in government who see the value in continuity." I honor that as a conservative value. The Deep State is nothing more than the people who understand how we got here, and who have an institutional interest in making sure that honor how that history and push back against wild disruptions in the separation of powers. To paraphrase Chesterton, a man who wants to tear down a fence ought to know the reason the fence was put up in the first place. Trump tore down a lot of fences without understanding why they were erected. Thankfully he was stopped before he was able to tear down the fences that control our electoral system. 3. It is easy to criticize elitists. And there's something there: up until Amy Coney Barrett, every single Supreme Court justice had attended Harvard or Yale (RBG attended Harvard, but then transferred to lowly Columbia to finish law school). This is preposterous. Up until Biden, the last President without an Ivy League degree was Reagan, who left office 32 years ago. Surely there is a pool of talent and good sense that hasn't been cultivated in that rarefied atmosphere. But if "elitism" is bad, it doesn't follow that its opposite is good. There is a lot of wisdom and common sense in the ordinary working men and women of America. There is also a lot of foolishness, short-sightedness, and petty, envious score-settling. And boy was that out in force on Wednesday. I have respect for the good sense and values of the common man. I just don't necessarily want him running my government, at least not without leaning heavily on the expertise and experience of the so-called "elite." That's what causes governments to fail miserably when trying to deal with a novel problem like a deadly pandemic. And I really don't want an elitist pandering to the masses by pretending he's one of them, and by rejecting experience and expertise because he thinks he alone is a stable genius. Grow up, America. We need the "Deep State." We depend on "Elitists." There's a damn good reason our republic has lasted 230 years: it was designed by elitists.

Thanks. I'll be the first to admit that Americans are generally oblivious regarding the politics of our neighbors. I try to follow a bit, but I've never heard of Bernier and it does surprise me that a Quebecker would some closest to fitting the nationalist bill given that the dominant "nation" is Anglo. But what do I know about Canada.

Serious question: is there a Canadian Trump? Mr. Wonderful was going to make a run, but he seems positively sensible compared to Trump. Are there Canadians who want their own Trump/Trump-controlled Conservative Party?

And she was carrying a Don't Tread on Me Flag. Really.

Well, there's a stand-up guy. I think you're probably in the fringe 5% (I hope its not more) of true believers. But at least you admit it.

Well, that's a special kind of blame shifting. So now that you folks are back, please answer the following: 1. Do you believe Trump acted appropriately in encouraging his supporters to come to DC on the morning of 1/6, stating that it will be "wild"? 2. Do you believe Trump's speech, and the speeches of the others he invited (Giuliani) were appropriate, including comments about proceeding to the Capitol and referring to this as "combat"? 3. Do you believe Trump acted appropriately in the timing and substance of his statements to his supporters after it became obvious that this had descended into a riot?

Trump's cowardice. Something that has been largely ignored in the thousands of media accounts and reflections on Wednesday's outrage. Trump's speech clearly indicate that he would be walking with his supporters to the Capitol. Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we're going to walk down and I'll be there with you. We're going to walk down-- We're going to walk down. Anyone you want, but I think right here, we're going to walk down to the Capitol-- And then his minions did walk to the Capitol. Some smashed their way inside the Capitol. And Trump? He got back into his motorcade and returned to the White House. He didn't lead the march at all. Given the crowd, I've seen some of the protesters (and yes, there were some there to protest only, not to riot) say that they were under the impression right up to reaching the Capitol steps that Trump was actually leading the march. He wasn't. He was hiding, letting others do his bidding. John Lewis led a march across the Edmund Pettus bridge. Led a march. Didn't tell his group they would be crossing the bridge only to hop into a car and go back to watch the march on TV. When he knew he'd be arrested or worse; he was beaten. That's why when he died he was hailed as a hero. Trump? A coward to the end.

I hope that part is true. I hope, but I doubt that it's true. There will be a concerted effort by the old powers that be to reconstruct some version of the Republican Party as it existed before Trump's takeover -- a takeover that old guard largely allowed to happen (Wall Street Journal types, and I'm a subscriber, but maybe not for long) or even encouraged (the Lindsey Grahams who have now reverted to their 2015 opinion of Trump). I don't know if it can happen. They may have forever lost the suburban upper middle class voters, and if you can't get them back, all that's left are the grievance-obsessed nationalist types. I want it to happen. We need a credible opposition party to rein in the worst impulses of the Democratic Party, which now (thanks to Trump) controls the House, Senate, and White House. It starts with marginalizing Trump himself, and his idiot adult children. They should never be allowed to hobnob in polite society again.

Trump plans trip next week to the Mexican border. The president quietly made plans to take a trip next week to the southwestern border to highlight his hard-line immigration policies, which have inflamed Washington over the years, according to a person briefed on the planning. He also told advisers he wanted to give a media exit interview, which they presumed might undercut any conciliatory notes. But the first family has discussed leaving the White House for good on Jan. 19, the day before the inauguration. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/01/08/us/trump-biden Maybe Mexico will give him asylum. The least we can hope for is that they'll permanently separate him from his adult children.

Why are some of our exiles returning? Was the nutcase Q-inspired fiction on the other site too much for even them? Welcome back.

"Never confuse activity with achievement." - John Wooden I will gladly take the second coming of Ronald "I never miss my afternoon nap or dinner with mommy" Reagan over either of these guys.

Probably the best leverage we could have had against China on the economic side was through the Trans-Pacific Partnership that Obama negotiated. Thanks to Bernie Sanders on the left (with Hillary being forced to join him in opposing it) and Trump on the right, we pulled out of the agreement. And just to clear up a common misconception: the TPP did NOT include China. It would have allowed the USA and non-Chinese countries to expand trade among themselves, cutting China out.