Outside the Beltway

Tuesday Tabs

The tabs, they are a clearing.

James Joyner
20

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POLITICO, “Supreme Court Shocker? Here’s What Happens if Trump Gets Kicked Off the Ballot.” Mildly interesting fan fiction by “[l]egal scholars, national security experts and political analysts.”

Vox, “The Senate border bill won’t become law. Here’s why it matters anyway.“ tl;dr: “[I]t reveals how Republicans have pushed Democrats to the right on a key issue in the 2024 election.” (Real answer: It’s a trick question. It doesn’t matter.)

The Hill, “Biden appears to mix up Macron with French president Mitterrand, who died in 1996.” tl;dr: Another day, another gaffe that will be overanalyzed as proof of senility. (Bonus: He also mixed up Germany and France, but corrected himself.)

40%German, “Form a Disorderly Queue.” A Brit marvels at the meticulously timely Germans’ inability to line up properly.

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20 responses to “Tuesday Tabs”

  1. MarkedMan Avatar
    MarkedMan

    Forming a line is a highly regionalized thing. The Brits and Russians (or so my wife tells me, who was six months in Moscow in the early 80’s) are obsessive. The French don’t even have the concept.

    1
  2. Scott Avatar
    Scott

    @MarkedMan: I remember joking with my wife that we cannot go to certain parts of the world because of her inability to not be polite and let people who shove to get in front just go on ahead.

    2
  3. Kylopod Avatar
    Kylopod

    Another day, another gaffe that will be overanalyzed as proof of senility.

    I like how people are always quick to frame their criticisms of politicians they don’t like within preexisting narratives. And yeah, I’m being a little bothsidesy. Dubya’s verbal slip-ups were taken as proof that he was “stupid.” Biden’s are taken as proof of senility, although when he was younger they simply meant he was gaffe-prone–or “stupid,” depending on whom you talked to.

    I guess if Biden spoke about campaigning in “57 states,” like the youthful Obama did back in ’08, that would be proof positive of his Alzheimer’s.

    (The most plausible explanation I’ve heard for the old Obama gaffe was that he was referring to the 57 Democratic contests during primary season. The explanation I heard from right-wingers was that he was alluding to the 57 Muslim nations, to signal his secret heritage he was hiding from the rest of us.)

    2
  4. MarkedMan Avatar
    MarkedMan

    @Kylopod: I never thought of Dubya as stupid, so much as incurious and accepting trite aphorisms as the height of wisdom. His whole, “I’m the decider” thing came straight from the kind of consultants that lurk around weak minded CEO’s, telling them what they want to hear. In this case, that the CEO’s most important job is to decide and to do so with certainty and speedily, and that one could assume that any decision that made it that far up the chain was essentially a toss up so there would be no wrong decision.

    1
  5. Beth Avatar
    Beth

    @MarkedMan:

    I feel the same way about W; not stupid, but very incurious. Which I almost think is worse, but that’s just me.

    6
  6. Blue Galangal Avatar
    Blue Galangal

    @MarkedMan: Just spent two weeks in China and I found that there is no such thing as a line in China! It was quite a culture shock. 😀

  7. Gustopher Avatar
    Gustopher

    Found on Twitter:

    voters: we want more transparency from the government
    Joe Biden: ok, Francois Mitterrand is secretly still alive and is the clandestine monarch of Germany
    voters: no not like that!!

    (Macron and Mitterrand both start with M so it’s really close enough.)

    1
  8. MarkedMan Avatar
    MarkedMan

    @Blue Galangal: There is no more aggressive predator in the world than a 4′ 9″, 78 year old Chinese grandma who has lived through the famines of the cultural revolution and wants to be first in line.

    3
  9. Kylopod Avatar
    Kylopod

    @MarkedMan: @Beth: I agree Dubya isn’t stupid, though I do think he he’s somewhat anti-intellectual in his worldview, and I think he’s always consciously put on a country-bumpkin schtick. It may go back to his early years when he lost a congressional race to a guy who attacked him as out of touch with rural Texans.

    Another thing that I’ve rarely seen people talk about openly is that…well, he just looks kind of dopey. (Will Ferrell played this up in his SNL impressions of Dubya.) And the thought has crossed my mind that he may have lost a few brain cells from coke and booze.

    In any case, people didn’t usually call his dad stupid, even though his dad was just as prone to verbal stumbles. Poppy was depicted variously as an out-of-touch rich guy, a guy without much use for “the vision thing,” as he called it, and, also, a “wimp”–this being applied to a fellow who lied about his age to become a fighter pilot during WWII.

    4
  10. CSK Avatar
    CSK

    @Kylopod: @MarkedMan: @Beth:

    I’ve always wondered why Biden’s gaffes are proof of senility while Trump’s stream of incomprehensible babble isn’t, at least by MAGA.

    As for Bush, I think his perpetual frat-boy persona obscures his intelligence. Expect a goofball, get a goofball. I read in several places that Bush reads 200 books a year, which is not an activity I associate with stupid people.

  11. gVOR10 Avatar
    gVOR10

    @CSK:

    I read in several places that Bush reads 200 books a year, which is not an activity I associate with stupid people.

    Depends on the books, and whether he understood them. I see W as average intelligence or a bit above. Good enough for most jobs, but one might hope for better in a president. “Incurious is one word for it, “lazy” is another.

    1
  12. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    @CSK:

    I read in several places that Bush reads 200 books a year, which is not an activity I associate with stupid people.

    That’s possible only for someone who has no job, or whose job is to read books.

    Between audiobooks and ebooks, averaging about 2.5-3.5 hours reading per day, I managed 56 books last year. That’s better than one book per week, but far short of 200.

    Given the work a president is expected to do, never mind the hours taken up by campaigning, a person with that job would be lucky to manage 20 books in a year.

    1
  13. Grumpy Realist Avatar
    Grumpy Realist

    @MarkedMan: A friend of mine did business with G. “Dubya” Bush for many years and said that Bush was the stupidest person he had ever worked with.

    Can’t even think what he would have said about The Cheeto Blob.

    1
  14. CSK Avatar
    CSK

    @Grumpy Realist:

    Let others help you:

    Rex Tillerson — “A fucking moron.”
    James Mattes — “A sixth grader.”
    John Kelly — “An idiot.”

    I could go on..and on.

    3
  15. wr Avatar
    wr

    @Kylopod: “The most plausible explanation I’ve heard for the old Obama gaffe was that he was referring to the 57 Democratic contests during primary season.”

    Hmmm. My memory is that there were only three states he hadn’t visited, and he meant 47 states but misspoke…

    1
  16. a country lawyer Avatar
    a country lawyer

    @Beth: I’d say Bush is of average intelligence. He’s also lazy and lacks ambition. Were he not the heir to a wealthy family, he’d be selling sunglasses at a kiosk in the mall.

  17. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @wr: I think it was clearly a verbal “typo”: https://youtu.be/EpGH02DtIws

  18. Flat Earth Luddite Avatar
    Flat Earth Luddite

    @MarkedMan:

    Indeed, I have several of them as customers. Ruthless and terrifying.

    1
  19. Liberal Capitalist Avatar
    Liberal Capitalist

    Sometimes I hate the fact that I have a degree in both political science and sociology.

    While at times it has been beneficial to me, allowing me to profit from early trends, sometimes it is disturbing to be prescient. A Willy Wonka nightmare of “wait, stop, don’t” that will never be heeded.

    Today is one of those days.

    Today will be the day remembered in future history books as the day that Trump replaced the GOP with MAGA in his march for power.

    * The Border Bill and Ukraine Aid is dead, all by Trump’s doing.
    * The RNC Leadership is resigning, with expectations of Election Deniers replacing the vacated spots
    * The House already had fallen to MAGA, but now we see the collapse of Senate GOP Leadership.
    * The House is putting forward a (nonbinding) resolution that stated that Trump is NOT an insurrectionist, signed by 60(!) House Members.

    Today, MAGA has won and become empowered to be… whatever nihilistic thing that it is. Much like Seinfeld, it is a party about nothing, but with a vengeance for violence. Brownshirts looking for a fight, empowered by ignorance.

    The Big Lie is KNOWN to be a lie, but close to half the country just doesn’t care.

    Trump will continue to lose, but his losses will not prevent his attempt to take power.

    There will be blood. And we can’t do a damned thing to prevent it.

    3
  20. al Ameda Avatar
    al Ameda

    @Kylopod:

    I like how people are always quick to frame their criticisms of politicians they don’t like within preexisting narratives. And yeah, I’m being a little bothsidesy. Dubya’s verbal slip-ups were taken as proof that he was “stupid.” Biden’s are taken as proof of senility, although when he was younger they simply meant he was gaffe-prone–or “stupid,” depending on whom you talked to.

    I too never thought “W” was stupid, but I always thought he played up that ‘down home’ stuff to appeal to the non-elitist-down-home regular guys at the bar.

    Hell, Republican Senator John Kennedy of Lousiana plays up a very cornpone down-home-accent too, which belies the fact that he graduated from Vanderbilt University, then the University of Virginia School of Law, and attended Oxford University in the UK.

    3

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