Linky Friday: Sowing Seeds, Reaping Whirlwinds Edition

Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has since lived and traveled around the world several times over. Though frequently writing about politics out of a sense of duty and love of country, most of the time he would prefer discussions on history, culture, occasionally nerding on aviation, and his amateur foodie tendencies. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter @four4thefire and his food writing website Yonder and Home. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast.

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71 Responses

  1. Philip H says:

    LF 6 – that document dump could be very interesting. One suspects it will make Arizona Senate Republicans look quite inept, spawn several lawsuits about misuse of public funds, and make good campaign fodder in an increasingly purple state. One also suspects it will result in huge fund raising hauls for said Republicans who will claim the courts are no longer defending “The American Way of Life.”Report

    • Michael Cain in reply to Philip H says:

      I expect that the document dump will be much smaller than everyone thinks because so many documents were either never produced or not retained.

      There was a public briefing this week with Cyber Ninjas and associates giving information to a select group of Arizona state senators. No questions were allowed. The Ninjas reported that their count of the total number of ballots cast differed from the count provided by Maricopa County, and that the ballots were now being run through yet another set of machines that counted only the sheets of paper but didn’t examine any markings.Report

      • Philip H in reply to Michael Cain says:

        The Ninjas reported that their count of the total number of ballots cast differed from the count provided by Maricopa County,

        Over count or under count?Report

        • Michael Cain in reply to Philip H says:

          They didn’t say. Nor did they indicate the scale. Just “different”.

          Pure speculation on my part, but… They’ve reached the point where they need to give the ballots back. They’ve lost, or at least misplaced, a bunch — I’m thinking thousands — and know it. They know Maricopa County is going to go through the boxes and bundles to verify the stuff they get back keeps them in compliance with federal law on ballot retention. Any deviations will be reported. This latest count of physical ballots is an excuse to go through all the boxes and bundles in hopes of finding the missing ballotsReport

  2. Jaybird says:

    LF7: this has the unfortunate side effect of making people look at previous rebrandings.Report

  3. Chip Daniels says:

    LF3:
    This is the part that stands out for me:

    The Republican Party has rallied around the idea that Trump’s effort to overturn the election was justified. That it is entitled to power, even if it cannot win electoral majorities. That its opponents are inherently illegitimate. That incessant lies about observable facts, even violence against the government, are acceptable.

    Because it isn’t some new turn; The Flight 93 essay, the “But Her Emails” apologists, the “He’s a flawed vessel for God’s will” justification…These are all telling the same story, that Republicans consider their fellow citizens who disagree with them are inherently illegitimate and not entitled to hold power.

    This is a wholesale rejection of the very premise of republican democracy.Report

    • Dark Matter in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      A double digit percentage of the US believes, really believes, that the election was stolen and their guy won.

      That puts us into very weird territory.Report

      • Philip H in reply to Dark Matter says:

        Republican politicians have spent most of the last 40 years building the political and media ecosystem that created that outcome. Many of us on the left spent many a year pointing out – at least broadly – that this was coming. And we were pilloried for it.

        Absent significant election losses – which those same Republican politicians are trying to stave off with ever restrictive laws and ever bigger lies – I don’t see the tide turning easily. What happens when August comes and Trump is STILL not put back in office?Report

        • Dark Matter in reply to Philip H says:

          Republican politicians have spent most of the last 40 years building the political and media ecosystem that created that outcome.

          “Republican politicians”? The media ecosystem is largely (maybe entirely) driven by technology.

          What happens when August comes and Trump is STILL not put back in office?

          Nothing with happen. Just like nothing was going to happen after Bush won in Bush v Gore and the Dems were trying to claim he wasn’t really the President. A sitting President has a ton of power. That the election loser is hurt and badmouthing him is hardly a new thing.

          Trump is the shrinking man. Without constant media exposure he has very little. His lawyers are/will be disbarred. Without the office of the Presidency he can’t, even in theory, help his followers. He has, and has never had, any new or good ideas. He has entertaining bluster and that’s all.

          He may run for office again. He might get the nod but he can’t win. I can’t vote for him after all of this nonsense.Report

          • Chip Daniels in reply to Dark Matter says:

            Even if he were to vanish off the Earth tomorrow, Trumpism is now the established doctrine of the Republican Party.
            That is, the idea that the Republicans alone are legitimate holders of power is the overriding belief of all Republicans at all levels of power.

            Any dissenters like Liz Cheney are swept from power and replaced by loyal party apparatchiks.

            Its entirely reasonable to expect them, if they gain a House majority, to refuse to certify any Democratic election victory.Report

            • Oscar Gordon in reply to Chip Daniels says:

              I find it amusing how much the GOP lambasted the old Communist Russia for doing such things to those seen as dis-loyal to the party.Report

              • Pinky in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                No, that’s not what the Communists did to people disloyal to the party. They would imprison people, torture them, maybe kill them and maybe their families too for not reporting them. And they’re doing it right now, this very moment, a bit south of Miami. Real human beings are being killed today for disagreeing with the party.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Pinky says:

                You are right, the communists went way further than what the GOP is doing (because doing so in the US is still illegal for a party, even on in political control), but regardless, the point was that the party brooks no dissent.Report

              • Pinky in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                Again, I think it was more the murder of the dissenters that bothered people than the dislike of the dissenters. But can you even say that the Democrats are more favorable to dissent than the Republicans? Would Manchin be receiving better treatment than Cheney if he were unneeded? Has Hillary Clinton spoken about Biden the way Romney speaks about Trump? Was Gabbard featured at the 2020 DNC? There would be hundreds of thousands (minimum) of new Democratic votes if they allowed wiggle room on abortion; have they done so?Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Pinky says:

                The wiggle room on abortion is if you don’t like it, don’t get one.

                As for the Dems, yes, as much as I find the woke liberal side to be engaging in similar “cast them out” kind of behavior, the mainstream political class isn’t (yet). Maybe it’s for the pragmatic reason you give, or perhaps because being that way will undermine the ‘big tent’ politics the Dems tout, but regardless, they still tolerate dissent.

                Also, my criticism was aimed at GOP directly because they, once upon a time, found that the communists unwillingness to tolerate political dissent to be such a very important criticism of those communists.Report

              • Pinky in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                I’m glad you’re ok with not coercing abortions, but again, that’s something that the communists actually do that people don’t like about them. It’s those kinds of willful acts of violence that put the sting in the intolerance. My grandmom couldn’t tolerate cigarette smoke, but she killed fewer people than the Cuban government is killing today. That’s the problem. That’s what gets people upset. You can picture that Republicans would kill people they disagree with, but that doesn’t happen.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Pinky says:

                You are losing the thread here, Pinky.

                It’s not about killing, it’s about rejecting dissent, being intolerant of dissent.

                Down that path is Cuba.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Pinky says:

                Would Manchin be receiving better treatment than Cheney if he were unneeded?

                He always has.

                Has Hillary Clinton spoken about Biden the way Romney speaks about Trump?

                Why should she? They are in broad agreement and Biden doesn’t have the character issues Trump did and does.Report

              • Mike Schilling in reply to Pinky says:

                Trump planned a coup. The one Republican who objects to this lost her leadership position.

                But BSDI.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Pinky says:

                More importantly, the difference between Republicans and Democrats is what Republicans say about themselves.

                The existential crisis for Republicans, as outlined in the Flight 93 essay and subsequent Tucker Carlson themes is the very existence of Democrats.
                Not anything that the Democrats are DOING, just their existence.

                For example, the Democrats aren’t forcing anyone to have a sex change, just tolerate the existence of those who do.

                All these memes about “this is the future that liberals want” have one thing in common, which is that conservatives are still free to go about their business as they please.

                Those tee shirts saying “Better Russian Then Democrat!” illustrate this, that they would prefer a surrender of America to a hostile foreign tyrant, than allow Democrats win an election.

                Democrats themselves, their very existence, is the enemy for Republicans.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                …the point was that the party brooks no dissent.

                My issue is so important than it must be used as a litmus test on whether you are allowed to have office. If I do this long enough, everyone who is in office with agree with me on my issue. That’s how things are done.

                Now doing that on “Trump won the election” is pretty nuts but that is what is happening.

                A big reason that the GOP is backing the nuts on this issue is there’s no reason not to. Biden is in office. All of the prayer in the world won’t change that.

                After that you have various GOP officials who are virtue signaling that they’ll never let an election be stolen again. To Team Red this is somewhere between meaningful and worthless. Team Blue spins this into meaning they won’t allow elections because Blue is always looking to make Red look bad.Report

  4. Dark Matter says:

    [LF 3] I think the system will eventually disbar most of the lawyers who helped him so there’s that, and the military managed to not get dragged into this.Report

    • Philip H in reply to Dark Matter says:

      Neither of those things will deter Republicans, who as Chip points out, no longer view anyone else as having a legitimate claim to power.Report

      • Dark Matter in reply to Philip H says:

        Neither of those things will deter Republicans

        The “deterrence” will be whether or not this is an election winner.
        Most elections are won by turning out your base, most of what is going on is that. However my expectation is what they’re doing is nasty enough that the (rare) middle won’t reward them.

        no longer view anyone else as having a legitimate claim to power.

        BSDI.Report

        • Oscar Gordon in reply to Dark Matter says:

          “BSDI”

          True, although it’s a bit of a chicken and egg quandary. I suppose we could say it started with Bush v Gore, although the Dem voices who decided Bush wasn’t legit were a minority, if noisy. The GOP, however, dialed that attitude up to 11 with Trump, so I can understand why avowed Dems find the GOP to losing their legitimacy (I’m not convinced the center is at the same place, though).Report

          • Chris in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

            I wonder, and I haven’t really thought about this, so I’m merely wondering, whether you can trace this back to the GOP reaction to the two presidential elections in the 90s, both of which ended with a Democrat winning with a mere plurality. I know the Republicans repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of Clinton’s presidency, and also adopted the 50%+1 strategy, as a result of those elections. Seems like you could probably trace a pretty straight line.Report

            • Jaybird in reply to Chris says:

              1992 was 43%.

              I remember getting into arguments over whether this was a “mandate”.

              “It was a mandate *AGAINST* Bush!”, I was told. “That’s not what a mandate is!”, I argued back.

              “I can’t believe how dumb this argument is”, I remember thinking.

              How young I was.Report

              • Marchmaine in reply to Jaybird says:

                1992 is the closest we have to an awesome thought experiment around using the French Model for Presidential Elections.

                That is… three candidates getting significant pluralities with a 3rd party receiving 19% of the popular vote.

                Most analysis suggests Clinton would have won… but, since we didn’t actually have a proper run-off system, I’m not entirely sure how the votes would have been allocated given that sort of option.

                That is, without RCV or a meat space runoff option, we can’t really assess what the ‘rational’ voter would have done.

                Moral? End first past the post.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Marchmaine says:

                I think we might really need to as elections get more contentious.Report

              • Mike Schilling in reply to Jaybird says:

                Bush claimed a mandate in. 2000 and he *lost*.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Mike Schilling says:

                I guess that makes it okay?Report

              • Mike Schilling in reply to Jaybird says:

                Every president claims a mandate. You might as well object to people who think their kids are good-looking.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Mike Schilling says:

                I think you misunderstand what the disagreement was.

                It was not over whether Clinton did or did not claim a mandate.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Mike Schilling says:

                Can you imagine Trump claiming a mandate in 2016?

                I imagine you can.

                Can you imagine someone, perhaps someone on this very board, saying “Trump has a mandate!”?

                I imagine you can.

                Can you imagine arguing against this person and saying “Trump doesn’t have a mandate!”?

                I imagine you can.

                Now, can you imagine this person on this board saying “It was a mandate *AGAINST* Clinton!”?

                If you can, then I think we’ll understand the argument I had a million years ago.

                (Now imagine this person telling you “Every president claims a mandate.”)Report

              • Mike Schilling in reply to Jaybird says:

                It was a mandate to destroy the deep state*, personified by Hillary, so why not?

                * which means everyone in government with a sense of responsibility, a regard for procedure, or belief in the rule of law, but that’s another discussion.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Mike Schilling says:

                Well, if you can understand how someone might say to someone claiming that Trump had a mandate something to the effect of “but he didn’t win the popular vote!”, then I think you can still grasp some of the disagreement.

                If you cannot imagine how someone might argue that Hillary Clinton got more votes… well. Yeah. Maybe the way I was thinking about that was pretty impenetrable.Report

              • Mike Schilling in reply to Jaybird says:

                A full-fledged Trumpist thinks Trump won the polar vote in 2016.

                A slightly-less-than-full-fledged one thinks he won if you leave off places that don’t matter, like California.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Mike Schilling says:

                Do you see how someone might not agree with someone who thought that?

                Or do you see those views and immediately think “every president claims to have won the popular vote!”Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Jaybird says:

                Mike, maybe you ought to re-phrase the question so we can get something that looks something like an answer.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

                CJ, I stand by my original point:

                Clinton fans were claiming in 1993 that Clinton had a mandate. (Yes, “not all Clinton fans”.) I argued against some of them. “It was a not-Bush mandate!” was one of the dumb arguments given in defense of Clinton having a mandate.

                This argument does not cease to be a dumb argument just because Bush (or Trump!) fans used it too.

                You’d think that Bush (or Trump!) fans using it would underline how dumb the argument was.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Jaybird says:

                Well, only you can say what your “original point” was supposed to be, and if you say that’s what it was I suppose we have to believe you. The rest of us had to work with what you actually wrote.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

                My original comment was here.

                I guess people will have to decide for themselves if a dumb argument stops being dumb when Bush fans (and Trump fans!) adopt it.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Jaybird says:

                That was your original comment, all right, but the issue was your original point. Figuring out your point, or whether you have one, is half the fun around here.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to CJColucci says:

                It was doing a “yes/and” to Chris’s comment, which it was a reply to.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Mike Schilling says:

                Mine are.Report

              • Brandon Berg in reply to Mike Schilling says:

                The difference, of course, being that kids are real, and that mandates are not. You either have a solid enough majority in both houses to tell the XINOs to go fish themselves, or you don’t.Report

            • Oscar Gordon in reply to Chris says:

              I think the GOP didn’t like Clinton, and would have loved to have gotten him bounced via impeachment, but I don’t recall them questioning his legitimacy to the office or the results of the vote.

              But I was just becoming politically aware back then, so perhaps I missed something.Report

              • Pinky in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                Traditionally, Republicans would typically turn on their own, and Bush had just broken his “no new taxes” pledge, so that’s how it played out.Report

              • Chris in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                It was definitely a thing, though perhaps not on the scale and with the impact that we see now. It was a rhetorical ploy to undermine any legislative agenda (though I think it’s used that way in Biden’s case as well, there are more sinister undertones now compared to then).Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Chris says:

                I think a lot of those undertones are (hang on, gotta find where I put this particular horse carcass…) the result of both parties apparent zeal for an imperial presidency/unitary executive. This idea that the winner of the POTUS somehow confers a ‘mandate’ of the people is a delusion. Now, getting solid majorities in both the house and senate and getting the presidency could be seen as a mandate, but not even Biden has a mandate.

                Anyway, when the office has so much power, and even worse, is seen as such a politically important prize, the need by the opposition to de-legitimize whoever holds the office is proportionally great.Report

          • Pinky in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

            Well, remember that less than a year after that election you had people saying 9/11 was an inside job, so we know exactly what the move from election frustration to delusion looks like.Report

          • Dark Matter in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

            I suppose we could say it started with Bush v Gore

            Hardly. It’s just Bush v Gore was 21 years ago, so most of us remember it.

            I expect serious efforts to delegitimize your political opponent started right after Washington (George was very popular with everyone). I remember some very old political advise on how to create the idea that your opponent has had sex with a pig.

            Even if we want limit efforts to the last 5 years we have things like a Supreme Court Justice being falsely accused multiple times of rape, and the usual na.zi/deathcamp/racist allegations.Report

        • Philip H in reply to Dark Matter says:

          Nope.

          1) None of the democratic led states have tried, much less passed, and legislation to alter elections in such a way as to exclude Republicans. In fact Democratic led states have sought to broaden voter participation.

          2) During 8 years of Obama’s Presidency, and for all the months Biden has been in office, Republican politicians have openly stated their intentions to not act in a bipartisan fashion even on legislative questions that have overwhelming national and thus bipartisan support. Republicans have voted in a way to back these statements up.

          3) Al Gore and Hillary Clinton both conceded their losses. Trump has yet to do so and many prominent Republican politicians still refuse to say publicly that Biden was legitimately elected (even when they eat dinner at the White House.)

          4) Republican politicians believe they can not be reelected without openly supporting Trump, regardless of whether that looses them Independents in the general. They clearly have no desire to court Democrats.Report

          • Pinky in reply to Philip H says:

            Do Gore and Clinton still maintain that they lost? They’ve made some statements that implied the opposite.Report

            • Philip H in reply to Pinky says:

              They have spoken about the situations and pointed out – correctly I believe – that those situations were indicative of things going wrong generally in our democracy. But at the time they conceded and quite publicly, and neither of them has gone back to campaign style rallies to raise money all the while repeating a lie that the election was stolen via massive and continuing fraud.Report

          • Dark Matter in reply to Philip H says:

            Al Gore and Hillary Clinton both conceded their losses.

            Bhahahahaha. Gore tried to use the courts to overturn the election when he lost by the normal process. The Supreme Court was correct in ruling 7-2 that you’re not allowed to count likely Blue votes extra special. They should have stopped there since there was no way Gore could win even in theory at that point.

            Now what Trump has done is past what Gore did and deep into insanity so there’s that.

            Republican politicians have openly stated their intentions to not act in a bipartisan fashion even on legislative questions that have overwhelming national and thus bipartisan support.

            And we’ll see BSDI the moment we get a Team Red president.Report

  5. fillyjonk says:

    LF4: it does seem strange, and I wonder if there WERE some instances of “brushing scam” and similar mixed in with all the forgotten orders.

    I remember the news story and how first people thought it was some kind of really nefarious doings (trying to poison US farming with engineered seeds) that eventually defaulted to “oh it’s some kind of a scam to SEO-promote their business” and it seems really….anticlimactic….to learn that it was probably (mostly?) people who ordered a bunch of stuff randomly online and forgot about it because international shipping was so snarled up it took months?

    I dunno. I get having “pandemic brain,” I am still suffering from it (I have to keep extensive lists of what I need to do, never had to do that before), but the couple times I ordered something that didn’t show up until weeks and weeks later, and I didn’t remember exactly what it was (happened a few times with books, the package would show up and I’d be like “what was this now?”), as soon as I opened it I was like “oh yeah, i remember ordering that.” It still happens with books I pre-order from Bookshop; in some cases it’ll be six months before it comes out and I’ll have forgotten I ordered it until it shows up.

    I mean, maybe it wasn’t a massive coordinated scam operation or anything, but…..it still seems odd that it was seeds, and that it was that many people (And that it was through Amazon? I would never think of ordering seeds from them. Burpee’s or Gurney’s, yes. But maybe there were bad enough shortages last year? I didn’t mail order any seeds from Burpee’s last year, in fact, I usually buy seeds locally from a store)

    also wonder if there’s some overlap with LF5 on this.Report

    • I’m probably reading too much into this, but we are the only ones out of 70 responses who remarked on LF5 at all. I also wonder if there is any overlap between LF4 and LF5 although I am inclined to ascribe it to generalized Amazon degradation as an e-marketplace.

      Amazon is a mess for customers! It is a schlock shop for almost everything except… books! Maybe that isn’t such a bad thing for consumers, even if the shine wears off for $AMZN speculators.

      By the way, I too like Schirmer classics as a publisher of sheet music! I visited your bloggy home and browsed your right margin wish list 🙂Report

  6. Oscar Gordon says:

    So this is good, that Illinois passed a law prohibiting police from lying to minors during interrogations.

    What is disturbing is the first line of the article, that Illinois is the first state to pass such a law.Report

    • Marchmaine in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

      Ah, the Irish Catholic employment act they call it.Report

    • Slade the Leveller in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

      “SB 2122 was supported not only by individuals who themselves falsely confessed to crimes, but also by the state’s Chiefs of Police, the Illinois State’s Attorneys’ Association, and the Office of Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx.”

      Color me very surprised (except for Foxx).Report

      • Oscar Gordon in reply to Slade the Leveller says:

        It’s because lying to children during interrogation leads more reliably to false confessions. And those false confessions get overturned often enough to cost the state money and make leadership look like a bunch of monsters.

        I mean, leadership could have just said, “Hey, officers, don’t lie to minors during interrogation.”, but apparently, asking leadership to, you know, lead, is just too much, so you gotta pass a law.Report

  7. LeeEsq says:

    LF3: There aren’t really many good options for the Democratic Party here. No democracy really developed a good solution when one of their big parties and their voters moved in a totally illiberal direction. It forces everybody else to work together in unstable coalitions. Politicians are unsure whether outright denouncing tens of millions of voters will work or whether they should just speak the plain truth and hope it sticks.Report