The last three words of the Declaration: “our sacred honor.” Cassidy mortgaged his for an imagined political future and, to the surprise of not one of us 75 MM who knew better in 2020, wound up with neither.
Goodbye and good riddance Cassidy. I cannot name too much of anything I will agree on with your voting record, save the only one that mattered. That impeachment for Jan 6 actions was the only course of action for a president who incited an insurrection against Democracy. Rick is right about trump, ETTD. Your epitaph should have a PS, RFK, jr. is my legacy
Cassidy was a smart guy who made a stupid decision. The No Ethicals aka the No Labels clowns tried to claim he was a profile in courage for voting to confirm RFK Jr after getting "assurances" from Kennedy he would follow the science.
The spinelessness of gop'ers is the main source of why we're in this mess. You can blame the Democrats for many things, but you can't accuse them of not trying. History will be unkind them over time. We need to be unkind to them right now.
In '16 >10M Dems didn't vote. Because her emails. Worked so well that in '24 >10M, same, because she laughs too much. And I haven't even touched on Hakeem and Chuck, two guys with less passion and fight than a bag of 2 year old russet potatoes.
I try, YOU try, many others do too.
But we got a big, fat blob of weak kneed purity testers in the party who helped get us into this sinkhole. And I have NO doubt we'll do it again in '28
You're absolutely right in your assessment. I have no love for the purity ponies or the "let's write sternly written letters" crew. I was referring to those (relatively) few Democrats who bring the fire and rain to the gop and actually make a difference in holding this corrupt regime to account. I hope that clarifies things.
For my money, Newsom would be the best '28 candidate. But the purity testers are all over his ass because he shut down some homeless encampments in SF that had become a hellhole of drugs and crime. They call him a fascist for that. Because of course they do. If he's the nominee, they'll probably shank him too
Other issue is his Israel support which is something he and other Dems are gonna have to grapple with. Supporting Israel has become toxic in these times.
I suspect many of those still playing the role of "loyalist" are crossing their fingers and hoping that Trump will drop dead very soon. Then a lot of this charade will end (at least among those who were only going along to keep Trump from unleashing the blackmail photos/audio he has on them). I still hope Trump reveals his secret weapon of blackmail on ALL of those people before he kicks the bucket.
Great post but the Incogni offer is quite deceptive. It says 50 percent off, but when you order it and put in the code, it jacks the list price way up so you actually only get 10 percent off the price they first showed you.
In this current hellscape, the contemptible groveling of people like Cassidy is nauseating. I see it firsthand in my personal life with people still trying to play nice with MAGAs they know personally.
Trump is a narcissist. "They're all narcissists." No. They're not. There are many people in politics who are boorishly selfish. And greedy. And petty.
But Donald Trump is a narcissist. And they require different rules.
First and foremost, when dealing with a narcissist, do not ever assume that there is a limit to his narcissism. By definition, a narcissist is someone who has no bottom. For Cassidy- or any Republican- to assume that he could buck Trump, and then make it up to him as some sort of deal or transaction, is to assume that Trump's narcissism had a limit.
By definition, a narcissist has no such limit.
It's often said that Trump runs his government like a mob boss. In that lens, Cassidy is like Carlo Rizzi. It doesn't matter how good he is after the betrayal, or how mistreated he was before. It similarly doesn't matter that the betrayal was in the distant past. He was disloyal; consequences will ensue.
A Carlo Rizzi reference. We don't get a lot of those these days. Well done. Or Tessio: "Can you get me off, for old times, Tom?" No, GTFOH.
One thing that drives me nuts is when we label all these Trump sycophants as stupid. Some are, like Kari Lake and Bobo. I might throw Hegseth into that category too, although he's mostly overly testosterone'd beta male. Hannity's a dummy. Kilmeade, Bartiromo, too. Ingraham is just evil.
But most are not stupid, and that makes them worse because they know better. Lotta them have been successful in business and politics. Cassidy was a successful MD.
So the through line from that success to their Trump sycophancy is greed, lust for power, sociopathy and moral bankruptcy; imagine watching this express train to Hell and thinking "HEY. I want in on that!"
Just looking at Doug Burgum; my GOD. Looks like there are a few little boys in his past.
Liberals continue to think these people are stupid at their own electoral peril. Some are. But Pete Hegseth went to Princeton. Mike Pompeo has a Harvard Law degree and finished near the top of his class at West Point. Ingraham went to Dartmouth. Even Kari Lake– Iowa isn't Harvard; but nor is it state community college. They don't let everybody in.
Some are dumb. Some are crazy. But many are not. Greed and power lust motivate many of these people. Liberals would also be wise to consider loyalty, resentment, and arrogance. Most of these people believe in their own superiority- for one reason or another. They will consider the possibility that they are wrong. They deeply resent liberals who have come to control America's institutions. (Imagine someone like Sam Alito who grew up in a very white, Catholic neighborhood. He studied hard. Played by the rules. And got into some highly prestigious institutions. He signed up for the military. Served in the reserve during Vietnam. Imagine, from his perspective, the success of a draft dodging, pot smoking, philandering hippie like Bill Clinton acceding to the presidency. Or someone like Justice Jackson, whom Alito considers inferior in every way, having the "audacity" to rebuke him publicly.) Last, and most important, loyalty. Sure, with Trump, it's a one-way street. But loyalty motivates many of these people's behavior. Liberals don't value it the same way.
And you're 1,000% correct. Most of these people aren't stupid. It would do liberals well to consider some of these other motivations once in a while.
Not to pick a nit but ... Kari Lake is NOT a smart person.
One thing neither of us mentioned: The influence of decades of Limbaugh, Fox News and now Rogan, Kirk, Tim Poole, et al and Evangelicals who've completely collapsed
This is a media machine built on hate, racism, misogyny and mostly lies and it's been flooding the airwaves and coming into our living rooms and car radios since early 80s. They hate liberals and liberalism, even though they enjoy many of the benefits of liberal legislation.
Entire generations have been lost in this sinkhole. When you've got people being OK with losing their healthcare, even cheering it on when they take more and more away; farmers losing their farms and still supporting this shit; people cheering on an ignorant war ... and more ...
And it's much wider and deeper than Trump. School boards, city councils, Governors, state legislatures and of course Congress are ALL deeply infected with this shit. I mean how the fuck do we come back from all that THAT?
I think it's an act. (I also think Lake might've lost her mind during Covid. Many who knew her seem to think something along those lines happened.)
Regarding Fox News, a couple of things to keep in mind:
1. Not that many people watch it. Remember that even the network news that's in last place (right now, CBS, but it's rotated over the years) has usually enjoyed at least double the audience of Fox.
2. It's dying. Figuratively and literally. In some ways, even faster than its competitors. The average Fox News viewer, per AC Nielsen, is nearly 70 years old. It competitors are losing viewers too, but they're the oldest by far. Also, in general, people don't consume news that way anymore. (And yes, it's quite hypocritical that they lambaste liberals from Radio City every night, and then leave and go to the show.
3. People like Rogan don't have the same pull. People don't view it as news. They think of it as entertainment. That comes and goes just like your favorite TV show.
4. One hole that liberals have dug themselves into is investing too little into communication platforms of their own. They always figured that since they controlled many of the institutions, they wouldn't need their own communication apparatus. The problem with this is that CNN or ABC or CBS or whoever....they work for CNN, for CBS, for ABC. They work to serve their own audience, not the Democratic Party, or liberals. Over time, the upshot is a situation in which conservatives can disseminate their message through their own media; while liberals have had no message.
5. Democrats and liberals need to start putting in the work. They need to be building their own platforms (they're finally starting to). But they also need to be building support in every nook and cranny of the country. They need to stop writing off areas they don't think they can win. You're not going to win every election. But they could win a lot of these school board races with a little bit of effort.
After 2020, the party just stopped trying to register voters. Why? They seldom share voter lists and donor lists across platforms. Why? Someone once described Afghanistan, not as one 20-year war, but as 20 one-year wars. This is what the Dems do every election cycle. They start over from scratch. Why?
I know it's overwhelming. But if Dems did just a few of these things, it'd go a long way.
I am unaware of the poor Fox ratings you cite. Is that true? I thought they were still the #1 cable n/w.
Btw, no one really watches Fox for the news. They watch for the hate, the racism, the owning of the libs.
Just speaking for myself: I don’t watch cable for “news”. I never look at CNN, not even on line. I get news from sites like BlueSky where a handful of great commentators like Rick tell us what’s going on. And maybe Nicolle Wallace and O’Donnell.
#1 in cable. That’s kind of like the old joke about being the smartest kid with Down Syndrome. Network TV audiences usually dwarf those of cable news.
It doesn’t matter. They’re all dying. Every year the audience gets smaller and smaller.
Fox’s audience isn’t even big enough to turn a profit on its own. The only reason Fox even makes money is that cable carriers charge more per user for that network than they do every other network. Otherwise Fox would be in the red.
There are so many parallels to dating/marrying a pathological narcissist. Everything is calm as long as you toe the line, and they are allowed control. But the moment they sniff out that you're rejecting their absolute control - when they sense they've lost their grip on you, it's a LIGHT SWITCH. This is the point the punishment is planned. They WILL punish you. Then throw you away like a piece of trash. It's a pattern every narcissist follows. It's a highly studied phenomenon.
I fear for the punishment Trump brings to bear when it's not just individuals, but the whole country that rejects him. However we try to educate how truly dangerous this personality disorder is, most cavalierly reject seeing the truth, at all our peril.
I’m so sick of these people who only find their spine after the damage is done.
The last three words of the Declaration: “our sacred honor.” Cassidy mortgaged his for an imagined political future and, to the surprise of not one of us 75 MM who knew better in 2020, wound up with neither.
Same as the Mafia. It never dies until the head and tentacles are destroyed.
Goodbye and good riddance Cassidy. I cannot name too much of anything I will agree on with your voting record, save the only one that mattered. That impeachment for Jan 6 actions was the only course of action for a president who incited an insurrection against Democracy. Rick is right about trump, ETTD. Your epitaph should have a PS, RFK, jr. is my legacy
Collins is on the way out, and dear God, I hope Murkowski too at some point
Cassidy was a smart guy who made a stupid decision. The No Ethicals aka the No Labels clowns tried to claim he was a profile in courage for voting to confirm RFK Jr after getting "assurances" from Kennedy he would follow the science.
The spinelessness of gop'ers is the main source of why we're in this mess. You can blame the Democrats for many things, but you can't accuse them of not trying. History will be unkind them over time. We need to be unkind to them right now.
"but you can't accuse them of not trying"
You're joking, right?
In '16 >10M Dems didn't vote. Because her emails. Worked so well that in '24 >10M, same, because she laughs too much. And I haven't even touched on Hakeem and Chuck, two guys with less passion and fight than a bag of 2 year old russet potatoes.
I try, YOU try, many others do too.
But we got a big, fat blob of weak kneed purity testers in the party who helped get us into this sinkhole. And I have NO doubt we'll do it again in '28
You're absolutely right in your assessment. I have no love for the purity ponies or the "let's write sternly written letters" crew. I was referring to those (relatively) few Democrats who bring the fire and rain to the gop and actually make a difference in holding this corrupt regime to account. I hope that clarifies things.
"Relatively few" being the operative words.
For my money, Newsom would be the best '28 candidate. But the purity testers are all over his ass because he shut down some homeless encampments in SF that had become a hellhole of drugs and crime. They call him a fascist for that. Because of course they do. If he's the nominee, they'll probably shank him too
Other issue is his Israel support which is something he and other Dems are gonna have to grapple with. Supporting Israel has become toxic in these times.
I suspect many of those still playing the role of "loyalist" are crossing their fingers and hoping that Trump will drop dead very soon. Then a lot of this charade will end (at least among those who were only going along to keep Trump from unleashing the blackmail photos/audio he has on them). I still hope Trump reveals his secret weapon of blackmail on ALL of those people before he kicks the bucket.
Al Wilson. The Snake. A song not a poem.
https://youtu.be/ULx9k2QkL94
As Cassidy kisses his lame duck ass goodbye we wonder who will be served up next in the coming Tuesdays.
#FDT. I live for the day to open the bottle.
Great post but the Incogni offer is quite deceptive. It says 50 percent off, but when you order it and put in the code, it jacks the list price way up so you actually only get 10 percent off the price they first showed you.
In this current hellscape, the contemptible groveling of people like Cassidy is nauseating. I see it firsthand in my personal life with people still trying to play nice with MAGAs they know personally.
I always thought the snake in the story was Trump?
Trump is a narcissist. "They're all narcissists." No. They're not. There are many people in politics who are boorishly selfish. And greedy. And petty.
But Donald Trump is a narcissist. And they require different rules.
First and foremost, when dealing with a narcissist, do not ever assume that there is a limit to his narcissism. By definition, a narcissist is someone who has no bottom. For Cassidy- or any Republican- to assume that he could buck Trump, and then make it up to him as some sort of deal or transaction, is to assume that Trump's narcissism had a limit.
By definition, a narcissist has no such limit.
It's often said that Trump runs his government like a mob boss. In that lens, Cassidy is like Carlo Rizzi. It doesn't matter how good he is after the betrayal, or how mistreated he was before. It similarly doesn't matter that the betrayal was in the distant past. He was disloyal; consequences will ensue.
A Carlo Rizzi reference. We don't get a lot of those these days. Well done. Or Tessio: "Can you get me off, for old times, Tom?" No, GTFOH.
One thing that drives me nuts is when we label all these Trump sycophants as stupid. Some are, like Kari Lake and Bobo. I might throw Hegseth into that category too, although he's mostly overly testosterone'd beta male. Hannity's a dummy. Kilmeade, Bartiromo, too. Ingraham is just evil.
But most are not stupid, and that makes them worse because they know better. Lotta them have been successful in business and politics. Cassidy was a successful MD.
So the through line from that success to their Trump sycophancy is greed, lust for power, sociopathy and moral bankruptcy; imagine watching this express train to Hell and thinking "HEY. I want in on that!"
Just looking at Doug Burgum; my GOD. Looks like there are a few little boys in his past.
Fuck them all. And I didn't even mention Elmo
Liberals continue to think these people are stupid at their own electoral peril. Some are. But Pete Hegseth went to Princeton. Mike Pompeo has a Harvard Law degree and finished near the top of his class at West Point. Ingraham went to Dartmouth. Even Kari Lake– Iowa isn't Harvard; but nor is it state community college. They don't let everybody in.
Some are dumb. Some are crazy. But many are not. Greed and power lust motivate many of these people. Liberals would also be wise to consider loyalty, resentment, and arrogance. Most of these people believe in their own superiority- for one reason or another. They will consider the possibility that they are wrong. They deeply resent liberals who have come to control America's institutions. (Imagine someone like Sam Alito who grew up in a very white, Catholic neighborhood. He studied hard. Played by the rules. And got into some highly prestigious institutions. He signed up for the military. Served in the reserve during Vietnam. Imagine, from his perspective, the success of a draft dodging, pot smoking, philandering hippie like Bill Clinton acceding to the presidency. Or someone like Justice Jackson, whom Alito considers inferior in every way, having the "audacity" to rebuke him publicly.) Last, and most important, loyalty. Sure, with Trump, it's a one-way street. But loyalty motivates many of these people's behavior. Liberals don't value it the same way.
And you're 1,000% correct. Most of these people aren't stupid. It would do liberals well to consider some of these other motivations once in a while.
Not to pick a nit but ... Kari Lake is NOT a smart person.
One thing neither of us mentioned: The influence of decades of Limbaugh, Fox News and now Rogan, Kirk, Tim Poole, et al and Evangelicals who've completely collapsed
This is a media machine built on hate, racism, misogyny and mostly lies and it's been flooding the airwaves and coming into our living rooms and car radios since early 80s. They hate liberals and liberalism, even though they enjoy many of the benefits of liberal legislation.
Entire generations have been lost in this sinkhole. When you've got people being OK with losing their healthcare, even cheering it on when they take more and more away; farmers losing their farms and still supporting this shit; people cheering on an ignorant war ... and more ...
And it's much wider and deeper than Trump. School boards, city councils, Governors, state legislatures and of course Congress are ALL deeply infected with this shit. I mean how the fuck do we come back from all that THAT?
I think it's an act. (I also think Lake might've lost her mind during Covid. Many who knew her seem to think something along those lines happened.)
Regarding Fox News, a couple of things to keep in mind:
1. Not that many people watch it. Remember that even the network news that's in last place (right now, CBS, but it's rotated over the years) has usually enjoyed at least double the audience of Fox.
2. It's dying. Figuratively and literally. In some ways, even faster than its competitors. The average Fox News viewer, per AC Nielsen, is nearly 70 years old. It competitors are losing viewers too, but they're the oldest by far. Also, in general, people don't consume news that way anymore. (And yes, it's quite hypocritical that they lambaste liberals from Radio City every night, and then leave and go to the show.
3. People like Rogan don't have the same pull. People don't view it as news. They think of it as entertainment. That comes and goes just like your favorite TV show.
4. One hole that liberals have dug themselves into is investing too little into communication platforms of their own. They always figured that since they controlled many of the institutions, they wouldn't need their own communication apparatus. The problem with this is that CNN or ABC or CBS or whoever....they work for CNN, for CBS, for ABC. They work to serve their own audience, not the Democratic Party, or liberals. Over time, the upshot is a situation in which conservatives can disseminate their message through their own media; while liberals have had no message.
5. Democrats and liberals need to start putting in the work. They need to be building their own platforms (they're finally starting to). But they also need to be building support in every nook and cranny of the country. They need to stop writing off areas they don't think they can win. You're not going to win every election. But they could win a lot of these school board races with a little bit of effort.
After 2020, the party just stopped trying to register voters. Why? They seldom share voter lists and donor lists across platforms. Why? Someone once described Afghanistan, not as one 20-year war, but as 20 one-year wars. This is what the Dems do every election cycle. They start over from scratch. Why?
I know it's overwhelming. But if Dems did just a few of these things, it'd go a long way.
I am unaware of the poor Fox ratings you cite. Is that true? I thought they were still the #1 cable n/w.
Btw, no one really watches Fox for the news. They watch for the hate, the racism, the owning of the libs.
Just speaking for myself: I don’t watch cable for “news”. I never look at CNN, not even on line. I get news from sites like BlueSky where a handful of great commentators like Rick tell us what’s going on. And maybe Nicolle Wallace and O’Donnell.
#1 in cable. That’s kind of like the old joke about being the smartest kid with Down Syndrome. Network TV audiences usually dwarf those of cable news.
It doesn’t matter. They’re all dying. Every year the audience gets smaller and smaller.
Fox’s audience isn’t even big enough to turn a profit on its own. The only reason Fox even makes money is that cable carriers charge more per user for that network than they do every other network. Otherwise Fox would be in the red.
Cassidy is gone. But will he be replaced by someone worse? I wouldn't celebrate too soon.
Of course! There is only “worse” in this MAGA Party.
There are so many parallels to dating/marrying a pathological narcissist. Everything is calm as long as you toe the line, and they are allowed control. But the moment they sniff out that you're rejecting their absolute control - when they sense they've lost their grip on you, it's a LIGHT SWITCH. This is the point the punishment is planned. They WILL punish you. Then throw you away like a piece of trash. It's a pattern every narcissist follows. It's a highly studied phenomenon.
I fear for the punishment Trump brings to bear when it's not just individuals, but the whole country that rejects him. However we try to educate how truly dangerous this personality disorder is, most cavalierly reject seeing the truth, at all our peril.
Yep, Rick got it right. As you keep telling us: ETTD. 🙏🕊️