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Welsh rarebit @welshrarebit.bsky.social · 59m

So this is one of these fake cabinet meetings where he blathers for an hour and the others sit there like cabbages.

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Welsh rarebit @welshrarebit.bsky.social · 1h

Meaning that the amounts involved are much smaller?

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Welsh rarebit @welshrarebit.bsky.social · 1h

Is the Post picking up new subscribers to make up for those who have canceled, or is Bezos just accepting the losses knowing that thanks to his toadying there’ll be greater compensations elsewhere?

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Welsh rarebit @welshrarebit.bsky.social · 6h

The movie Alone in Berlin is based on the book.

Welsh rarebit @welshrarebit.bsky.social · 7h

Correct. In the conventional understanding a king rules according to law. The ruler who sets himself above the law is a tyrant.

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Welsh rarebit @welshrarebit.bsky.social · 9h

One feels that if only Comey could be publicly humiliated by a perp walk Trump would be satisfied and drop it. It’s always the image, never the substance.

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Welsh rarebit @welshrarebit.bsky.social · 10h

A factor in play in the interwar period - maybe now also - is that many people supported fascism who saw themselves as conservatives. They believed in the same things (country, order) and hated the same things (socialism, decadence). That enabled the drift from one to the other.

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Welsh rarebit @welshrarebit.bsky.social · 20h

In theory she’s the nation’s top law officer, mandated to protect the rule of law. In practice she’s more like a consigliere for a crime family.

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Welsh rarebit @welshrarebit.bsky.social · 1d

The fact that he got reelected despite being found liable in the E Jean Carroll case suggests that Americans don’t care all that much about these sexual offenses. If someone is rich and famous they tend to get a free pass.

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Welsh rarebit @welshrarebit.bsky.social · 1d

Yes, that remark was the giveaway, wasn’t it.

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Welsh rarebit @welshrarebit.bsky.social · 1d

Putin’s great insight, which he probably reached 20 years ago or more, is that racism is the Achilles heel of western societies. With brilliant success he continues to exploit and exacerbate it in order to further Russia’s recovery of its great power status.

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Welsh rarebit @welshrarebit.bsky.social · 1d

There’s a whole theory that Brexit was dreamed up and funded by people who wanted to protect their access to tax havens, which was being threatened by EU policy. It was then sold to the masses as a patriotic thing.

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Welsh rarebit @welshrarebit.bsky.social · 2d

Um … Justice Kavanaugh would like a word.

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Welsh rarebit @welshrarebit.bsky.social · 2d

That’s right, nothing new. I think it’s really helpful to place the current crisis in that historical perspective.

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Welsh rarebit @welshrarebit.bsky.social · 2d

Jefferson Cowie’s book Freedom’s Dominion is an eye-opener in that regard.

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Welsh rarebit @welshrarebit.bsky.social · 2d

You might think so, but … States’ rights were a tactical slogan in the South’s fight to resist federal (ie liberal) authority. Now that the South is on the front foot it of course sees its epochal struggle against liberalism as nullifying the rights of liberal states.

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Welsh rarebit @welshrarebit.bsky.social · 2d

Highlighting the weird disconnect within a party that nominally advocates small government but in practice is instituting a dictatorship.

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Welsh rarebit @welshrarebit.bsky.social · 2d

Putin is trying to relitigate not only 1989-91 but also 1945-49. He aims at re-establishing Russian dominance not only over Eastern and Central Europe but over the whole continent.

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Welsh rarebit @welshrarebit.bsky.social · 2d

So if the migration crisis is the symptom, the cause is what? A crisis of the liberal state?

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Welsh rarebit @welshrarebit.bsky.social · 2d

Is he trying to make us believe all this hasn’t happened yet?

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Welsh rarebit @welshrarebit.bsky.social · 3d

Man, does she plan on him being President for the next 250 years?

Welsh rarebit @welshrarebit.bsky.social · 3d

Yet more evidence of how Trump encourages people to give in to their worst impulses.

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Welsh rarebit @welshrarebit.bsky.social · 3d

When someone told Adlai Stevenson that he had “all thinking people” on his side, he famously replied “That’s not enough, madam. I need a majority.”

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Welsh rarebit @welshrarebit.bsky.social · 4d

There’s also an implied threat, isn’t there. If you show insufficient gratitude, we may withdraw the favor that we’ve shown you (by pretending to treat you as an equal).

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Welsh rarebit @welshrarebit.bsky.social · 4d

By naming Stone etc he also just confirms that this is all about payback, not about the merits of the case.

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