The Frankish Reich

I think they’re bending over backwards to be fair. Or to not be seen as criticizing a “sex worker.” Or both. Whatever. Combine that with Maureen Dowd’s opinion piece piling on, it’s mission accomplished.

Basically full employment, a now-manageable inflation rate, and a country in which the main concern of the out party appears to be Drag Queen Story Hour? That's a sign that things are going o.k.

Here's the NYT article (NYT!) that started it all - Joe Biden ignores his illegitimate grandchild: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/01/us/politics/hunter-biden-daughter-arkansas.html And for all you "mainstream media spin" types - here's a weird paragraph or two: The pride of her family, the 5-foot-8 Ms. Roberts graduated with honors from Southside High School in Batesville and played basketball for Arkansas State University, where a team biography said she enjoyed hunting and skeet shooting. After graduating, she moved to Washington to study forensic investigation at George Washington University. She never completed the program. Photos from that time show her attending baseball games at Nationals Park and attending Drake and Kanye West concerts. Along the way, she met the son of a future president who was sliding into addiction and visiting Washington strip clubs. In mid-2018, Ms. Roberts was working as a personal assistant to Mr. Biden, according to a person close to her and messages from a cache of Mr. Biden’s files. Their daughter was born later that year, but by then, Mr. Biden had stopped responding to Ms. Roberts’s messages, including one informing him of the child’s birth date. What's missing here? Well, the kinda important fact that Hunter MET HER WHILE HE WAS VISITING ONE OF THOSE STRIP CLUBS, WHERE SHE WAS WORKING AS A STRIPPER. Instead, we have the weird jump from "he was sliding into addiction and visiting Washington strip clubs" to "Ms. Roberts was working as a personal assistant [hah!] to Hunter... ." She had met him "Along the way." What way? The way of giving lap dances to Hunter (and obviously other things too). Talk about burying the lede ...

Welcome to the new talking point. Joe is an ass! He really ought to be inviting that hooker that Hunter impregnated to the White House. Hell, let her come to Rehoboth Beach too! He should put a jumpy castle on the White House lawn for Hunter's illegitimate child too. I mean, wouldn't you do that in your own backyard? Invite her former co-workers too and then we can have the kind of "sexualizing children" when they break out into a pole dance on the jumpy castle supports at the kid's birthday party. Sometimes he yells at staffers! He's ... mean!!

But some people aren't interested in a rational discussion. I say "the United States economy is the strongest in the world now" and they either deny that fact, or say it would be so much better if we didn't have Biden. There's not even a "yes, but ..." like "yes, but the over stimulation of the economy today will come back to haunt us tomorrow." That would be rational. They say we "hate America." But they are the ones constantly, incessantly talking about how America has turned into a trash nation. Some even say it isn't worth saving anymore, that it should be split into two. But they "love America."

Correct. The number of people living in extreme poverty worldwide has plummeted. https://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/end-extreme-poverty-getting-back-pre-covid-19-reduction-rates-not-enough#:~:text=From 1990 to 2014%2C the,in 2014 (Figure 1). From 1990 to 2014, the world made astonishing progress in reducing extreme deprivation: more than one billion people moved out of extreme poverty. The global poverty rate declined by 1.1 percentage points a year on average, from 37.8 percent in 1990 to 11.2 percent in 2014 (Figure 1) Global terrorism seemed to be an intractable problem after 9/11. It may erupt again, but the last significant international terrorist event in the United States was 6 years ago. We've seen significant backsliding in the last decade in freedom worldwide (Hong Kong, Russia), but overall there is far more freedom in the world than there was a generation ago.

I will make a half-hearted attempt to rescue our OP ... ... young, good-looking, single football star soon to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Small town boy, came to rust belt city with charming small town feel, love affair begins. Small town boy, small town sweetheart, the new king and soon-to-be queen of Buffalo. Before too long, becomes seduced by the good life beyond Firebaugh and Buffalo. Starts innocently enough - celeb golf tourneys, invites to the Kentucky Derby and parties with the ultra wealthy and famous. High school romance over. New starlet girlfriend. Buffalo no longer big enough. New So Cal home, but it's o.k, it's not Malibu, it's way down there in Dana Point. Dana Point starts seeming kind of far away from the West LA social scene. So maybe move in a bit closer. Maybe find another starlet girlfriend. We still love Buffalo, but it is ... Buffalo, not LA or Las Vegas. Contracts don't last forever ...

Let's hear it for the Survivor of a Crucifixion! I'll call her Barabbas.

We are so lucky that most criminals really are that stupid. "His cell phone pinged to various robbery locations." You do know you can power down that phone or leave it at home? I guess not.

Philip Rivers' old commute-in-style van is available! https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/philip-rivers-to-make-hellish-l-a-commute-in-200000-luxury-office-on-wheels/

I take pride in having an open mind, so I did watch this video. Lindsay is indeed far better than most of these public intellectuals of the new right. I can't really argue with anything in the first half of the video. It is a defensible take on Marx and Marx's purpose. (I will disagree, however, with the silly characterization of Marx as a "theologian" rather than an economist. True, he wasn't an economist - there really wasn't any such thing in his time, as we understand "economist" today - but calling him a theologian is just saying that anyone who envisions a better future for humanity is necessarily a religious-type leader. Which he wasn't.) It goes awry in the second half. Yes, a lot of the modern "critical" studies are grounded in what academics would call "Marxian" (as opposed to "Marxist") thinking. That is, analysis of the type that couldn't be done if Marx hadn't existed, but that isn't expressly following Marx's lead. But it's way, way overwrought. Example: Proposition: Disney supports a woke (hence Marxist) agenda, both explicitly (by criticizing Florida law) and implicitly (by putting out "entertainment" projects that undermine bourgeois values). But: in reality, Disney is doing exactly what a Marxist believes a capitalist would do. It is "appropriating" its critics, throwing them a bone by acting all "woke" in things that don't really matter to "capital," like support of drag shows. Meanwhile, it continues to do what it does best: the "commodification of leisure." The best Marxist explanation I've ever heard was in this little rhyme from the old English (Marxist) band, Gang of Four: "The problem of leisure, What to do for pleasure." Disney exists - thrives, makes tons of money - by convincing you that it's not good enough to have leisure time at home to spend eating, drinking, playing games with your family, friends, and neighbors. No! That doesn't make (much) money for anyone. You must haul the family to a designated Pleasure Location where you will spend money to have "fun," and spend even more money to cut in line ahead of the funseekers who have a little less money than you have. Jim Gaffigan nails it - everyone asks him what he's doing this summer, as if "staying home, relaxing, and enjoying the fine weather" isn't enough: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jim-gaffigan-does-not-have-summer-plans/ You must consume their movies and TV, and then be convinced to buy their tie-in merchandise. And while there may be some concessions (appropriation?) to "woke" values, on the whole their entire operation reinforces traditional bourgeois values: family fun (which must be structured and monetized), traditional gender roles (some boys may want to be princesses, but from my experience ALL little American girls want to be princesses), etc., etc. Leisure is not a wonderful outgrowth of our capitalist system that allows you to have a surplus of time to spend away from productive activity. It is a problem to be solved by a capitalist colossus like Disney (or Universal, or Apple, or Taylor Swift). Marxists call it the commodification of leisure. We can recognize that this has happened but still not agree with Marx's prescription. So what I'm saying is that Lindsay is a good cultural critic himself, but that he's missing the forest for the trees.

You should archive this alongside my other MAGA whiner favorites: - I couldn't afford NY Strip steaks for the family 4th of July - My usual 300 count of wings for Sunday just set me back $250 At lest Deek buys his BMW EV and gloats about it like a good old fashioned Republican. I don't think he even mentioned what it cost.

And they made a big deal about Michelle Obama touching the Queen when she initiated the contact. These silly rules are rules for The Queen/King's subjects, not for us! I think we may have fought a war over who should be considered British subjects ... ... the Fake Indignation Machine will not be stopped!

Russell Wilson WAS the best at not taking hits when scrambling. The historical durability of running (not scrambling/buying time - I mean tucking the ball and taking off) QBs is not promising...

Right. If Murray is getting regular work, then something (injury, Cook not stepping up, etc.) has gone wrong. Having said that, in a sea of "everything's gone wrong" last year in Denver, Murray stood out as a steady, productive back.

Nice job of equating "Disney movie features trans character" with "creep drugged and raped 17 men."

Expensive tastes. We've been through this before. They can price it at that absurd level because they will find buyers at that absurd level. https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/subaru/ascent A perfectly utilitarian 8 passenger SUV for around 50K. Buy 2, pocket the $17,000 savings!

And also excellent points. Guy who knows U.S. law enforcement is onto him tries to turn himself into a whistleblower in a politically motivated prosecution. We'll find out more as the case progresses.

The Biden Administration deserves credit for ensuring that the Turkey-Sweden rift didn't compromise U.S./NATO interests. https://www.rferl.org/a/nato-turkey-sweden-takeaways/32498758.html

I think ideally the Bills would've won the Super Bowl and Mitch would've walked away. He seems like a great person with a lot of commitments outside the game. It would be awful to see another concussion dictating the decision for him.

My point exactly. Although I think some of our posters here would choose the former ...

Good points. Look, anti-Biden people are jumping to the conclusion that this is an attempt to silence a guy who has the dirt on the Bidens. But ... maybe it does the opposite: this guy would know about Biden corruption because he himself is corrupt. You're not gonna find a squeaky clean source on any illegal activity.

The demanding a trade to the Rams part of the process.

Imagine what he could have built right on Harlem Rd. for $7 million. Didn't anyone pitch him that opportunity?

Yes, it would be. Even better: stop trying to prop up local economies that time has passed by. We hate to see it happen, the slow death of a marginal community. But it is happening regardless of what the governments do. Back when Republicans like to call themselves "the party of ideas," there was an idea here: give people money to move away from dying localities to the parts of the country that are thriving and desperate for workers. It made sense. You know what happened to that idea? The realignment of party coalitions happened, with rural America voting Republican. What are the chances that Mitch McConnell would approve of a plan that gave Appalachian Kentuckians the means to resettle in Texas? In Idaho? Slim and none. So both the Republicans and the Democrats must continue to subsidize their base voters: rural/small town Americans for Republicans, even if they're in a dying local economy; urban Americans in rust belt cities for Democrats.