10 thoughts on “Wednesday Open Thread”

1. Fani Willis, the Georgia DA who indicted Trump for election interference, won her primary by 89% yesterday. This sets up a fall fight against a Republican opponent. 
    

    

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   1. Meanwhile in DC as we prepare to reauthorize the Farm Bill, our “party of family values” is proposing policy changes that would increase direct and indirect subsidies to the largest crop farmers while cutting $30 billion from food assistance SNAP programs.

      Beware of any Christian movement that demands the government be an instrument of God’s wrath but never a source of God’s mercy, generosity, or compassion.
      ~Rev. Benjamin Cremer

      It’s not unusual. Gardner and Lamborn took their shots when they had a voice, attempting to strip food assistance entirely from the Farm Bill and make it a separate program (so they could drown it in their golden bathtubs).

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      1. The analysts, pundits, and assorted agricultural types were a chorus of concern on U.S.FarmReport last Sunday.. I'm sure it will be a major topic next show.

         I miss John Phipps…☹️

          

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3. ^The trans, the furries, the letting others exist… It’s too much! The Republican need to remove themselves from society. 

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4. AXIOS reports this morning about their look Inside the Colorado GOP's "purify and purge" campaign

   The Colorado Republican Party is in the midst of a "purge" to remove any conservatives not loyal to former President Trump.

   Trust Dick Wadhams for the quote:

   What they're saying: "Williams has decided he must purify and purge the Republican Party with this inquisition," said former Colorado GOP chair Dick Wadhams at a recent Axios Denver newsmakers event. "It's driving this party into obscurity."

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5. Sanity has erupted in the Oregon Democratic Party….

   https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4678842-georgia-kentucky-oregon-california-kevin-mccarthy-fani-willis-mike-schmidt-portland/

   Not only did McLoed-Skinner lose her primary – giving the Dems an excellent shot at recaliming this swing district – but Pramila Jayapal's sister lost in the primary for an open, safe seat depriving the Squad of a new addition.

   And the incumbent prosecutor in Portland lost to a centrist Dem who came up with the novel idea that suspected criminals should be prosecuted.

    

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6. Well, I for one feel much better knowing that a second FDFQ presidency will bring us a "unified reich." Yes, that's "reich," a word most of us should have learned in high school history class. But my question is what number reich would it be? The 4th, assuming the reich count had stalled since the 3rd? The 1st American reich? Or the 2nd, since we skipped a few years of pure-blood leadership after the fraudulent election of 2020?

   https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-69045271

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7. Meanwhile, in the morning newsletter from the Bulwark, we learn

   That’s one of the age-old challenges with covering Trump: You better move fast to fully digest one scandal, because they’re putting another on your plate in just a few hours. Happy Wednesday….

   …

   “The Biden DOJ and FBI were planning to assassinate Pres Trump and gave the green light,” Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted. “Does everyone get it yet???!!!!”

   “WOW!” Donald Trump truthed. “I just came out of the Biden Witch Hunt Trial in Manhattan, the ‘Icebox,’ and was shown Reports that Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ, in their Illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE. NOW WE KNOW, FOR SURE, THAT JOE BIDEN IS A SERIOUS THREAT TO DEMOCRACY.”…

   This particular narrative was launched yesterday by January 6th conspiracy theorist (her words!) and friend of the show Julie Kelly, who while rummaging through filings in Trump’s classified documents case stumbled across some FBI policy statements on how the execution of its search warrant would proceed operationally. One of those documents was a “policy statement” on the “use of deadly force.”

   …

   Even a cursory read of this document makes it painfully obvious that it’s a bog-standard piece of paperwork—copied word for word from the DOJ’s policy book, the Justice Manual—limiting when armed agents are allowed to use force: “only when necessary, that is, when the officer has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person.”

   Looking forward to seeing how many times Donald Trump's FBI had authorization to assassinate someone … and sooner or later, we'll find out if there is "absolute immunity" for such a Presidential command. .

    

    

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8. Neoliberal Watch. Brad DeLong.

   A number of years ago, Brad DeLong said that it was time to “pass the baton” to “The Left”. How’s that working out for us?

   #actually, he had said that we had passed the baton—that the absence since January 21, 2009 (or possibly January 21, 1993) of Republican negotiating partners meant that sensible centrism produced nothing—that Barack Obama had proposed John McCain’s climate policy, Mitt Romney’s health care policy, George H.W. Bush’s entitlement-and-budget policy, Ronald Reagan’s tax policy, and Gerald Ford’s foreign policy, and had gotten precisely zero Republican votes for any of those.

   Therefore the only choice we had was to pass the baton to the Left in the hopes that they could energize the base and the disaffected to win majorities, and then offer strong support where there policies were better than the status quo.

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