..we will make sure Wall Street, hedge fund managers, and mega-millionaires pay their fair share by enacting a financial transaction tax on trades of stocks, bonds, and derivatives. The savings could then be used to cut taxes for working families and reinvest in the American people.
I’ll fight for a tax code that ensures the wealthiest Americans and corporations like Amazon and don’t get away with scamming the system, and finally pay their fair share like the rest of us….
It’s time we crack down on the big corporations who are making record profits while jacking up prices for all of us. We need to prosecute the executives of huge corporations, including the big oil companies and meatpacking companies who are artificially driving up prices, gouging consumers at the pump and at the grocery store.
Big oil companies like Chevron, Exxon, and Shell have seen their profits increase 200% since last year, but they’re still charging us sky-high prices for gas. Companies like Tyson posted over a billion dollars in profits last quarter, while raising prices on meat products our families depend on.
It’s gross, and deeply unpatriotic, for the big corporations to be rolling around in cash while charging us record high prices for gas and groceries.
Instead of raising costs at the pump or in the grocery store, these companies should be working to help drive prices down, even if it means their CEOs make a little bit less. It’s time to take on the big corporations and special interests, and bring down prices for the American people….
He wants punitive taxes and jail time because prices are “too high”. We can disagree about whether that’s truly “socialism”, but it is indeed moronic.
And he’s still all in on abortion and LGBTQ issues.
Hmm. Let’s call him “conflicted”. Inconsistent? Hypocritical?
Certainly, his support for trans athletes, more specifically, males competing in women’s sports, is bizarre…
(Hey, maybe he DOES need to wear a bollocks pouch…)
Oh well. While we’re trying to figure out who (or where) the real Fetterman is, we might try to—somehow—enjoy the following, awesome, historico-theological grand tour…which the author offers to try to provide the country, and its citizens, a way out of the current cul-de-sac.
@Barry Meislin:Let’s call him “conflicted”. Inconsistent? Hypocritical?
I don’t think he is. I think someone at zerohedge is trying to sell narrative hopium, and they are not the only ones when it comes to Fetterman.
The story is that reporters used to say “if your mother says she loves you check it out”. Nobody bothers with that any more, new media or old media doesn’t matter.
On the Virginia court, this legal observer, David Schnare, sees more maneuvers coming. The Dems have applied to the court for a re-hearing, which puts the ruling on hold temporarily. If they are able to push through a change in the retirement age for justices, thus eliminating the entire court, and appoint a new court, that court could reverse the ruling which threw out the re-districting amendment. They’d have to move very fast to make the August primary possible. BUT if they got a favorable hearing out of the newly compliant court, the GOP would promptly file for a re-hearing on that, thus possibly pushing the whole mess past the August primary deadline (especially considering Virginia’s 45-day early voting period, which makes the real deadline sometime in July). As this author says, pass the popcorn.
Kate,
I saw that move of setting the retirement age to one year less than the youngest judge. That could be a huge issue legally and politically. Such a blatant power move could tip things to an ugly status…I can imagine that outside of the DC burbs that it would be met with “fierce” opposition.
physicsguy, I hope they won’t do it, and I do think it would energize outside-the-Beltway Virginians who oppose the power grab. But the now-ruled-illegal referendum already did that. I’ll watching the news. If they’re going to try it, things will have to move very fast. The person in charge of elections in Virginia has already said that tomorrow, May 12, is as late as district changes could be made and still allow preparation for the August primaries.
Leftist politico goes after Becerra in California governor’s race. With the ouster of Swalwell, California goes from the frying pan into the fire.
Becerra’s rise baffles his former Biden colleagues
Biden White House alumni have been marveling at Becerra’s stroke of luck in the California gubernatorial race.
Democrats wanted a frontrunner in California’s gubernatorial race. What they did not envision was Xavier Becerra, whose abrupt rise from afterthought to favorite has left former Biden administration officials — his one-time colleagues — reacting with a mix of incredulity, mockery and resignation.
“It’s like: ‘We need to figure out a candidate who can win!’ But then…him? Really?’” said one former Biden administration official. “It’s amazing.”
In the last several weeks, as former Rep. Eric Swalwell’s flameout catapulted Becerra to the front of a crowded June primary, Biden White House alumni have been marveling at his stroke of luck — and the growing possibility that a Cabinet official who was widely derided and deemed to have been in over his head could soon be the governor of the country’s largest state.
Six former Biden administration officials, all of whom were granted anonymity to speak candidly about a former colleague, acknowledged the subject of Becerra’s unlikely rise has come to dominate their group chats and conversations. “It gets the biggest laugh every time we send around a poll,” the first former official said, describing the perception across the administration that the former HHS secretary was ineffective on the Covid response, a migrant health crisis at the border and other matters.
“He ran one of the most consequential agencies in government at the height of the pandemic,” the former official continued. “But he took a backseat to Dr. Fauci and his team, didn’t visibly lead on implementation and had to go through layers to get to POTUS even as a Cabinet member.”
Remember: Pratt is forcing them to face Reality and Truth…which are both extremely toxic substances to Democrats at this stage of the game…
– – – – – – –
Regarding Becerra, I really don’t see what the problem is. He proved—to all doubters—that he’s as incompetent as the rest of ‘em; and seeing that incompetence is a pre-requisite for Democratic Party policies of destruction, he should be supported with open arms.
Besides, he’s pretty capable as far as the word salad goes…
They (Democrats) will do whatever it takes, for the greater good (of the Party). (Sarc)
Related—between a rock and a hard place, the Democrats simply cannot afford to alienate a core voting bloc:
Maybe as far as Fetterman goes, it’s a meds issue. If not, then he’s a great actor.
I still would prefer to believe that he has a spine and that he’s driving his party colleagues bananas.
– – – – – – –
Related…
Pretty sure you can’t make this up…but here’s proof that Liberal Utah judges don’t take a back seat to nobody…
It’s clear that Iran is still in FA and now it’s time they FO.
The US and Israel have had time to restock their materiel. Back to the military options.
Iranian sovereignty over the Strait is a nonstarter. Violates international law and would set a horrible precedent for China in the Taiwan Strait.
huxley,
I agree, but it looks like Trump is going to delay more. I assume nothing will happen until after the China trip. I would have bombed last week as the Iranians have zero intention of agreeing to the demands. They are just playing us at this time hoping the Democrats will come to their aid.
physicsguy:
I imagine so. Though we do know Trump likes to surprise people.
Also, I wonder about China. The Hormuz blockade is hurting China, maybe more than any other country and the their economy is already hurting these days.
Are Trump and Xi talking about Iran? I expect so.
I don’t know if Spencer Pratt will win in LA, but his AI-produced ads are a hoot. And I agree that the ability to produce this kind of content without a huge budget may change politics. Pratt has had some previous “real” ads shot around LA, and a very evocative one with his wife and kids at the site of their burned-out home.
New post: France 1940. The defeat was unexpected–what happened?
The VA SC will simply rule any new age requirement cannot apply to the current members, only to new members. More idiotic hopium from the rapidly going extinct donkeys.
@David Foster: Read your post with interest.
You have this as an aside, which probably deserves far more prominence:
“even though France was in a demographic crisis, with both a low birth rate and the effects of the horrendous casualties of 1914-1918”
You can see the hole in population pyramids well into the 1950s. The French dearth of military-aged males was such that they did not even have the number they’d had at the beginning of WWI, out of a population that had not only not materially increased since then but was only about half that of Germany.
Their reluctance to begin an offensive war with Germany is well-justified by that alone, and the culture and society causes you present plausibly have the WWI casualties as a root cause.
Niketas Choniates….French deaths in WWI were something like 25% of the male population aged 18-30. Totally understandable that a defensive strategy was appealing given that background.
Yet if France (together with Britain, ideally) had acted aggressively when faced with the Rhineland incursion of 1933, it is likely that the disaster of 1940…and of WWII in Europe…could have been avoided.
In comments to the France 1940 post, I mentioned two more books which are relevant to the disaster. One of these is ‘Flight to Arras’ by the writer / aviatior Antoine de St-Exupery, who served in a reconnaissance squadron in 1940, It is bot a vivid and a very deep book, I’ve been trying to write a review of it for several years but it’s hard to get one’s arms around. Happily, someone else wrote a good review:
@David Foster:Yet if France (together with Britain, ideally) had acted aggressively when faced with the Rhineland incursion of 1933, it is likely that the disaster of 1940…and of WWII in Europe…could have been avoided.
Easy to say after the fact when all is known, less so in the moment, that attacking a country with twice the population of your own is the safer move. I can see why it was a very tough case to make at the time.
The soectre of verdun and the somme weighed heavily on the french and british people the anti dreyfusard og the general staff the hatred of blum by proxy
We have seen how the smaller debacles of vietnam and the recent expeditions into south asia overshadow recent events
Some of alan furst reflect on that prelude period
How could one assure it would not happen again, they couldnt and hence france and other countries suffered occupation
If you didn’t notice, he’s wearing a bollock dagger. Yes, dudes used to run around with those sticking from their belts. Ain’t history grand?
@ Kate > “On the Virginia court, this legal observer, David Schnare, sees more maneuvers coming.”
The post you linked was part II (2, not 11). The previous article was also informative. Thanks for making that available.
I was not familiar with the “if by whiskey… you mean” paradigm, but it certainly seems to be the norm for politicians, although not all of them are as open about it as the archetypical anecdote.
An “if-by-whiskey” argument is a classic example of evasive, deliberately ambiguous rhetoric in which a speaker appears to support both sides of a controversial issue without actually committing to either. The phrase is now commonly used to describe political double-talk, equivocation, or a statement crafted so carefully that opposing audiences can each hear what they want to hear.
The term comes from a famous anecdote—likely apocryphal but widely repeated—about a speech supposedly delivered by Noah S. Sweat Jr. in the Mississippi legislature in 1952 during debate over alcohol prohibition. Sweat reportedly said:
“If by whiskey you mean the devil’s brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home … then certainly I am against it. But if by whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together … the drink that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips … then certainly I am for it.”
“Political Questions” is the home of Stephen Hayward and other refugees from PowerLine. This post is from the SarcMeister, Anthony “Hates Mayo” Lucido.
Note the acronym hidden in the URL.
It is understandable if one cannot keep up with the hourly deluge of lunacy which is our light-years-beyond-parody news cycle:
…
I don’t blame you if you’ve tried to tune most of it out. It’s too depressing to contemplate.
However, you may have heard that the venerable SPLC, the Left’s go-to authority on The Omnipresent Raciss White Domestic Terror Threat, has been indicted.
…
Fortunately, because of Steve Hayward’s connections in D.C., we have received an excerpted transcript of a recorded conversation between a SPLC “handler” and one of its top informants within the Tuscaloosa Chapter of the KKK. Make of it what you will.
…
Be sure to set all beverages on a secure surface before proceeding.
Re: France after WW II — “Les Trente Glorieuses” — “The Thirty Glorious (Years)”
Between the Marshall Plan, the Baby Boom, and De Gaulle’s heavy-handed reorganization of the French economy, France prospered after WW II, so much so that the French call the years, 1945-1975, “Les Trente Glorieuses.”
Indeed they were. Everything was working well. It did look like the French had some real clues to the Good Life in the 20th C.
However, they were borrowing against the future, De Gaulle turned over too much power to the unions, and the wonderful promise of retiring before 65 became unrealistic but the French people won’t accept it.
Things are not so rosy in France today. The last several French Presidents have all tried to reform France, failed and left office under clouds.
I’m not sure how France comes out of its decline.
@ Barry Meislin > “Whither the Reformation in America?”
A very interesting post on Christian religion in general, and political-religious connections in particular.
I had to look up a number of specialized terms with which I was unfamiliar.
@ David Foster > “New post: France 1940. The defeat was unexpected–what happened?”
I always appreciate a new history lesson.
Only a little of what was discussed in your post, the comments here, and those at Chicago Boyz, was covered in anything I ever read about WW1, WW2, and the in-between years (it’s necessary now to use Arabic rather than Roman numerals, although one might convincingly argue that there actually were 9 intervening “cold” world wars).
In the original video of the Jan. 22, 2025, event, posted on YouTube (archived here), Omar misspeaks and then corrects herself:
“The last time the Alien Enemies Act was invoked, it was used to detain and deport German, Japanese, Italian immigrants during World War Eleven. Oh, two. Sorry.”
IMO, as with some of the Obamateurisms chronicled by Ed Morrissey in 2008-2009 (he stopped then, as they occurred more than once a day), some politicians don’t read their scripted remarks prior to delivering them. However, even reading by rote, that Omar even considered “eleven” a possible interpretation of “II” was abysmally amateurish and uneducated.
When looking at the phrase, she should have paused briefly and gotten it correct the first time.
Niketas Choniates …re the Rhineland in 1933….Andre Beaufre, whose book I cited in the post, said that one major reason for the failure to act in 1933 was the French military planning had developed no plans that did not require *total* mobilization…millions of men, requisitioning of vehicles, etc…which the politicians felt was too disruptive and the military felt unable to quickly create a partial-mobilization plan.
Another reason was fear that the ‘neutrals’ (probably especially the US) would accuse France of being the aggressor.
And there were also those arguing that Versailles, including the provisions for the Rhineland, had been unfair in the first place
Another reason was fear that the ‘neutrals’ (probably especially the US) would accuse France of being the aggressor.
— David Foster
A well-founded fear. There would indeed have been many such allegations. Some Americans would have said France was just trying to keep Germany down, some actively sympathized with Germany’s agenda, some would have simply followed the old simplistic, ‘Who shot first?’ logic. But many in America would have seen Anglo-French action as improper.
(Just look at how many Americans instinctively side against Israel now, when they are self-evidently in the right.)
And there were also those arguing that Versailles, including the provisions for the Rhineland, had been unfair in the first place
— David Foster
Which it was. Worse, it was stupid and short-sighted. Wilson’s day-dreamy idealism only made it worse.
Not that Germany didn’t impose just as nasty a treaty on Russia when they pulled out of WW I.
HC68…the Rhineland demilitarization seems more justifiable than some other provisions of the Versailles treaty. Churchill notes that Foch demanded that the French frontier should henceforth be the Rhine:
“Germany might be disarmed; her military system shivered in frag- ments; her fortresses dismantled; Germany might be impoverished; she might be loaded with measureless indemnities; she might become a prey to internal feuds; but all this would pass in 10 years or in 20. But the Rhine, the broad, deep, swift- flowing Rhine, once held and fortified by the French army, would be a barrier and a shield behind which France could dwell and breathe for generations. ”
But Foch didn’t get this provision in the treaty, of course, demilitarization was the compromise. And the re-militarization by Germany was a pretty good indicator of aggressive intent.
If I’m not mistaken, the Rhineland was remilitarized in 1936.
==
I’d hesitate to say much as we have Turtler checking in here, but I do wonder if it might have been feasible and more sustainable to have concluded the war with territorial re-balancing and left it at that. No attempt at collective security schemes, no contrived disarmament, no reparations, no war guilt clause. Just, you lost your overseas dependencies on the battlefield and they stay lost, you lose any territory populated with those other than your core nationality, and the German states henceforth are assembled into a Prussian federation (2/3 of the total population) and an Austrian federation (1/3). (It is curious that the antique German monarchies just melted away in a matter of weeks). Reduce the Ottoman state to its Turkish core and divvy up the Hapsburg dominions into seven or eight parcels.
@Art Deco:the German states henceforth are assembled into a Prussian federation (2/3 of the total population) and an Austrian federation (1/3).
Trouble with that one is that Germany did not lose WWI so catastrophically that the Allies were free to just completely make over Germany as they did at the end of WWII, and the Central Powers each had separate treaties, and the United States and Russia treated separately from the Versailles Treaty.
Trouble with that one is that Germany did not lose WWI so catastrophically that the Allies were free to just completely make over Germany as they did at the end of WWII,
==
You could argue. They managed to coerce the German states into doing a mess of other things not in their material interest.
==
Here’s a question: what would have been more appealing to the south German populations – their own federation or continuing to be appended to Prussia?
As we know now the Germans evaded the disarmament commission (i recall from the krupps manchester profile) they trained their wehrmact in oart in Russia (which was ironic) to payback for germany occupying russia right after the revolution? Count mirbach and the like (from reilly ace of spades) who was targeted by the social revolutionaries (who proved a noxious force in russian politics) some of the training officer rose to high rank until the purges
@Art Deco:They managed to coerce the German states into doing a mess of other things not in their material interest.
Sure, that’s what happens when people lose a war, but what they’re willing to accept in order to get out of it has a limit depending on their ability to further resist–we’re seeing that in Iran right now–and those were just very different propositions in WWI as opposed to WWII.
Here’s a question: what would have been more appealing to the south German populations – their own federation or continuing to be appended to Prussia?
Hard to say, but they haven’t been trying very hard to get off on their own since then, although a lot has changed since then.
@HC68
Nah, I can confirm that Brest-Litovsk, Bucharest, and most of the other plans actually on the table for the Central Powers to impose had WWI gone their way were vastly, vastly worse than Versailles. The OHL had concluded that full implementation of the food plans they had in mind would cause the death by starvation of at least a quarter million throughout the former Russian Empire, and likely far more. Not only was this not viewed as a disqualifying or at least significant moral problem, by the end Ludendorff was arguing rather loudly that it would be a good thing and was trying to make inroads to fully sway Wilhelm II and the cabinet to it. Plans for Western Europe were somewhat better but not by as much as people like to believe and involved the chopping up or annexation of most of the polities in Western Europe between the Pyrenees and the Alps.
Versailles and its sisters get a lot of flak even in comparison to what they deserve, and I agree that Wilson’s particular flavor of dreamy idealism and racism generally made things worse, but while they were unfair they were unfair in part to balance out the truly staggering damages inflicted in the war and the occupation (especially since even before the murders in Sarajevo usually identified as the start of the war the German government was declaring orders for a confiscation of circulating gold in order to prep for a war footing, in line with the records we have from 1911-13 anticipating a major war and the likely need to start it as the aggressors).
That said that is easier to see in hindsight especially now that we have access to the Prussian State Archives and a bunch of other sources we did not have access to, with more concrete details on what the CP intended.
But I can confirm that the fear of the French being blamed as the aggressors was well founded. Just years after the Armistice you had the likes of Gerald Nye and Smedley Butler peddling “alternate facts” about how the US was driven to war by war profiteers and fear they would lose their investments, and you still had significant isolationist or pro-German sentiment (one thing I have learned from digging in is the sheer number of American nationals and resident aliens – a bunch born in the US – that went over the Atlantic to serve in the militaries of their ancestors, and while with say the Western Allies like Britain, France, Belgium, Italy, or Greece this isn’t viewed as that surprising or controversial even if it probably should be, but this also included in Russia, Germany, the Habsburg Empire, and Bulgaria). But the main reason France did not march into the Rhineland was due to financial turmoil and the need to secure a large credit agreement to shore up the franc and the French economy. Hitler and his goons picked the time well, and correctly read that the rest of the West would not stop German remilitarization of the Rhineland and that France would not act alone.
But i think it was as simple as the Great War was such a ghastly business because of krupp or vickers or what have you that the people of europe didnt want to revisit it,
Even a victor like england suffered under the burden as it sought to discharge itself of colonies like aden or egypt, part of the chronicle of the partition i related earlier
Within a decade labour was briefly back in power, and they were not well disposed to rearmament but neither was baldwin or chamberlain
@Art Deco
I’d hesitate to say much as we have Turtler checking in here, but I do wonder if it might have been feasible and more sustainable to have concluded the war with territorial re-balancing and left it at that. No attempt at collective security schemes, no contrived disarmament, no reparations, no war guilt clause.
In a word no, not at all. For starters, about half of the Allies by 1918 if not 1917 had no direct territorial bone in the game, or at least none regarding something to be ripped out of Germany. And as dramatic and alarmist and imho frankly wrong as the likes of “War is a Racket” is on the reasons the US entered WWI, it at least does not pretend the US wished to carve a new star for the flag out of Germany or even German colonial territory; after all Butler had spent decades fighting in countless bush wars and incidents across the Western Hemisphere and Pacific Rim without large scale territorial adjustments.
The likes of the US, Andorra, Brazil, etc weren’t fighting the war over Revanche style desires for German territory, or even British concerns of diplomatic balance and what might happen if hostile powers expanded their control over the oceanic ports in the Low Countries and Adriatic. A lot of the “New Allies” were fighting overwhelmingly because of Central Powers funny business with their neutral rights and diplomatic interests, and for those reparations, the War Guilt Clause, and recognition of their rights were even more relevant than territorial claims.
And even among a lot of the older allies with territorial ambitions like Serbia, there was an overriding need for vindication and large scale repatriation and reparations after being bled white from the war and often very abusive occupation policies.
That did not mean that something like the League of Nations would be cobbled together in some grandiose desire for a Peace to end all Peaces, but it did mean that trying to diminish this into some adjustment of borders was not going to work at least after 1915.
Just, you lost your overseas dependencies on the battlefield and they stay lost,
Which had happened outside of maybe two exceptionally 1916 at the latest.
you lose any territory populated with those other than your core nationality,
Good luck defining what that is or drawing the lines there. The French, Italians, and Romanians are going to seethe heavily over that regarding Alsace.
and the German states henceforth are assembled into a Prussian federation (2/3 of the total population) and an Austrian federation (1/3).
Good luck there. France is going to tap at 1870 and point out that it, Denmark, and some others have a poor recent history with Germanic Federation organizations, especially since there will be the issue of what the devil you do if they start trying to unify in an even larger scale like we saw by 1918 with the “Republic of German Austria”.
(It is curious that the antique German monarchies just melted away in a matter of weeks).
The degree to which they melted away in that span of time is overstated. In reality it was more like the culmination of months of not years of war damage, disillusionment, and increasing reliance on military strong men to prop up the systems in the face of demands for reform, democratization, some kind of devolution, etc. Especially given how extremely harsh the measures to keep that going wound up being and how once the means to carry on fell apart with military collapse, the tide of anger and frustration was more destabilizing than even a lot of dissidents wished (Ebert for instance did not want a Republic, he wanted a reformed Monarchy with a social democratic element after the Imperial Dictatorship and “War Socialism” got jettisoned, and he declared it in an attempt to head off the proto-Spartakists).
And even then it’s worth noting that you had significant holdovers. Neo-absolutist sentiment entrenched hard into the bureaucracy and military of a lot of these states and stayed there, you had significant forces out East that weren’t defeated yet and became one of the few bulwarks against a Bolshevik attempt to conquer the continent even if they were also a threat to the independence of the new states. And people ignore that Hungary remained legally committed to a Habsburg Restoration and Hungarian revanche under “Regent” and “Admiral” Horthy, and such. Restoration was only stopped due to threats from almost all of Hungary’s neighbors that they would invade and go to war to stop it.
So the idea that the old monarchies faded away in the span of a few weeks like spring snow is I think a mistake or at least over-reading of the situation. A lot of monarchist sentiment and restorationist movements remained and frankly not all of them would probably have been hostile or adverse, esp from a Western POV (for instance, a Habsburg system under Karl would probably have been less trouble than Horthy’s Greater Hungary Revenge Trip, and some kinds of constitutional monarchies in say Bavaria or Saxony may have been more independently stable and beneficial than one big Weimar), but they often had a lot of unpleasant baggage, especially with the individual royals like say the Hohenzollern losing their throne because literally none of the Imperial family could be trusted not to go back to the bad old ways.
Reduce the Ottoman state to its Turkish core and divvy up the Hapsburg dominions into seven or eight parcels.
That’s more or less what happened to the extent it wasn’t spontaneously happening even before the Allies began doing it (the Habsburg Empire in particular began imploding so fast that Italian frogmen planning to blow up the SMS Viribus Unitis found out she was officially the Jugoslavia of a new, supposedly neutral confederal state and their attempts to warn their new neutral captors about the placed mines were misinterpreted with explosive consequences). And we saw how imperfect those results were, not helped by the failure of the Allies to keep imposing the terms meant for the Ottomans.
From the 14th century to the most recent of our II World Wars – what a time trip through history!
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Cute.
Next up, Friar Tuck?
Anyway, here’s the hoodie and shorts guy…
(No bollocks pouch but he appears somewhat sane—not to mention courageous—which is certainly refreshing…)
“…Fetterman Blasts Democrats For Running On ‘F*ck Trump’; Calls Socialism Moronic”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/watch-fetterman-blasts-democrats-running-fck-trump-calls-socialism-moronic
@Barry Meislin:Calls Socialism Moronic
His website doesn’t seem to have got the memo, it says the following:
He wants punitive taxes and jail time because prices are “too high”. We can disagree about whether that’s truly “socialism”, but it is indeed moronic.
And he’s still all in on abortion and LGBTQ issues.
Hmm. Let’s call him “conflicted”. Inconsistent? Hypocritical?
Certainly, his support for trans athletes, more specifically, males competing in women’s sports, is bizarre…
(Hey, maybe he DOES need to wear a bollocks pouch…)
Oh well. While we’re trying to figure out who (or where) the real Fetterman is, we might try to—somehow—enjoy the following, awesome, historico-theological grand tour…which the author offers to try to provide the country, and its citizens, a way out of the current cul-de-sac.
“Whither the Reformation in America?”—
https://americanreformer.org/2026/03/whither-the-reformation-in-america/
H/T Mosaic Magazine
@Barry Meislin:Let’s call him “conflicted”. Inconsistent? Hypocritical?
I don’t think he is. I think someone at zerohedge is trying to sell narrative hopium, and they are not the only ones when it comes to Fetterman.
The story is that reporters used to say “if your mother says she loves you check it out”. Nobody bothers with that any more, new media or old media doesn’t matter.
On the Virginia court, this legal observer, David Schnare, sees more maneuvers coming. The Dems have applied to the court for a re-hearing, which puts the ruling on hold temporarily. If they are able to push through a change in the retirement age for justices, thus eliminating the entire court, and appoint a new court, that court could reverse the ruling which threw out the re-districting amendment. They’d have to move very fast to make the August primary possible. BUT if they got a favorable hearing out of the newly compliant court, the GOP would promptly file for a re-hearing on that, thus possibly pushing the whole mess past the August primary deadline (especially considering Virginia’s 45-day early voting period, which makes the real deadline sometime in July). As this author says, pass the popcorn.
https://stevehayward.substack.com/p/virginias-if-by-whiskey-fizzle-part
Kate,
I saw that move of setting the retirement age to one year less than the youngest judge. That could be a huge issue legally and politically. Such a blatant power move could tip things to an ugly status…I can imagine that outside of the DC burbs that it would be met with “fierce” opposition.
physicsguy, I hope they won’t do it, and I do think it would energize outside-the-Beltway Virginians who oppose the power grab. But the now-ruled-illegal referendum already did that. I’ll watching the news. If they’re going to try it, things will have to move very fast. The person in charge of elections in Virginia has already said that tomorrow, May 12, is as late as district changes could be made and still allow preparation for the August primaries.
Peachy Keenan: L.A. Needed a Savior. Enter Spencer Pratt.
Mark Halperin thinks Pratt will win.
Leftist politico goes after Becerra in California governor’s race. With the ouster of Swalwell, California goes from the frying pan into the fire.
Becerra’s rise baffles his former Biden colleagues
Biden White House alumni have been marveling at Becerra’s stroke of luck in the California gubernatorial race.
Democrats wanted a frontrunner in California’s gubernatorial race. What they did not envision was Xavier Becerra, whose abrupt rise from afterthought to favorite has left former Biden administration officials — his one-time colleagues — reacting with a mix of incredulity, mockery and resignation.
“It’s like: ‘We need to figure out a candidate who can win!’ But then…him? Really?’” said one former Biden administration official. “It’s amazing.”
In the last several weeks, as former Rep. Eric Swalwell’s flameout catapulted Becerra to the front of a crowded June primary, Biden White House alumni have been marveling at his stroke of luck — and the growing possibility that a Cabinet official who was widely derided and deemed to have been in over his head could soon be the governor of the country’s largest state.
Six former Biden administration officials, all of whom were granted anonymity to speak candidly about a former colleague, acknowledged the subject of Becerra’s unlikely rise has come to dominate their group chats and conversations. “It gets the biggest laugh every time we send around a poll,” the first former official said, describing the perception across the administration that the former HHS secretary was ineffective on the Covid response, a migrant health crisis at the border and other matters.
“He ran one of the most consequential agencies in government at the height of the pandemic,” the former official continued. “But he took a backseat to Dr. Fauci and his team, didn’t visibly lead on implementation and had to go through layers to get to POTUS even as a Cabinet member.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/07/xavier-becerra-california-governor-race-biden-officials-00909552?stream=top&utm_campaign=newsletter_axioslocal_sandiego&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter
Ah, but does LA wish to be saved?
(Or saved by a Republican…)
Remember: Pratt is forcing them to face Reality and Truth…which are both extremely toxic substances to Democrats at this stage of the game…
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Regarding Becerra, I really don’t see what the problem is. He proved—to all doubters—that he’s as incompetent as the rest of ‘em; and seeing that incompetence is a pre-requisite for Democratic Party policies of destruction, he should be supported with open arms.
Besides, he’s pretty capable as far as the word salad goes…
They (Democrats) will do whatever it takes, for the greater good (of the Party). (Sarc)
Related—between a rock and a hard place, the Democrats simply cannot afford to alienate a core voting bloc:
https://instapundit.com/796096/
Maybe as far as Fetterman goes, it’s a meds issue. If not, then he’s a great actor.
I still would prefer to believe that he has a spine and that he’s driving his party colleagues bananas.
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Related…
Pretty sure you can’t make this up…but here’s proof that Liberal Utah judges don’t take a back seat to nobody…
“Judge Who Oversaw Utah Gerrymander Resigns For Affair With Plaintiff’s Attorney”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/judge-who-oversaw-utah-gerrymander-resigns-affair-plaintiffs-attorney
Um, er, Utah??
So Iran’s official treaty counteroffer is:
* separate nuclear bargaining to a different track
* retain Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz
* reparations to rebuild Iran
Trump says “Nuts” to that:
____________________________
“I have just read the response from Iran’s so-called ‘Representatives.’ I don’t like it — TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE!” Trump said on Truth Social.
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5872149-iran-counteroffer-us-demands/
____________________________
It’s clear that Iran is still in FA and now it’s time they FO.
The US and Israel have had time to restock their materiel. Back to the military options.
Iranian sovereignty over the Strait is a nonstarter. Violates international law and would set a horrible precedent for China in the Taiwan Strait.
huxley,
I agree, but it looks like Trump is going to delay more. I assume nothing will happen until after the China trip. I would have bombed last week as the Iranians have zero intention of agreeing to the demands. They are just playing us at this time hoping the Democrats will come to their aid.
physicsguy:
I imagine so. Though we do know Trump likes to surprise people.
Also, I wonder about China. The Hormuz blockade is hurting China, maybe more than any other country and the their economy is already hurting these days.
Are Trump and Xi talking about Iran? I expect so.
I don’t know if Spencer Pratt will win in LA, but his AI-produced ads are a hoot. And I agree that the ability to produce this kind of content without a huge budget may change politics. Pratt has had some previous “real” ads shot around LA, and a very evocative one with his wife and kids at the site of their burned-out home.
New post: France 1940. The defeat was unexpected–what happened?
https://davidfoster273133.substack.com/p/france-1940
The VA SC will simply rule any new age requirement cannot apply to the current members, only to new members. More idiotic hopium from the rapidly going extinct donkeys.
@David Foster: Read your post with interest.
You have this as an aside, which probably deserves far more prominence:
“even though France was in a demographic crisis, with both a low birth rate and the effects of the horrendous casualties of 1914-1918”
You can see the hole in population pyramids well into the 1950s. The French dearth of military-aged males was such that they did not even have the number they’d had at the beginning of WWI, out of a population that had not only not materially increased since then but was only about half that of Germany.
Their reluctance to begin an offensive war with Germany is well-justified by that alone, and the culture and society causes you present plausibly have the WWI casualties as a root cause.
Niketas Choniates….French deaths in WWI were something like 25% of the male population aged 18-30. Totally understandable that a defensive strategy was appealing given that background.
Yet if France (together with Britain, ideally) had acted aggressively when faced with the Rhineland incursion of 1933, it is likely that the disaster of 1940…and of WWII in Europe…could have been avoided.
In comments to the France 1940 post, I mentioned two more books which are relevant to the disaster. One of these is ‘Flight to Arras’ by the writer / aviatior Antoine de St-Exupery, who served in a reconnaissance squadron in 1940, It is bot a vivid and a very deep book, I’ve been trying to write a review of it for several years but it’s hard to get one’s arms around. Happily, someone else wrote a good review:
https://substack.com/@intrastellar/p-167521553
@David Foster:Yet if France (together with Britain, ideally) had acted aggressively when faced with the Rhineland incursion of 1933, it is likely that the disaster of 1940…and of WWII in Europe…could have been avoided.
Easy to say after the fact when all is known, less so in the moment, that attacking a country with twice the population of your own is the safer move. I can see why it was a very tough case to make at the time.
The soectre of verdun and the somme weighed heavily on the french and british people the anti dreyfusard og the general staff the hatred of blum by proxy
We have seen how the smaller debacles of vietnam and the recent expeditions into south asia overshadow recent events
Some of alan furst reflect on that prelude period
How could one assure it would not happen again, they couldnt and hence france and other countries suffered occupation
If you didn’t notice, he’s wearing a bollock dagger. Yes, dudes used to run around with those sticking from their belts. Ain’t history grand?
@ Kate > “On the Virginia court, this legal observer, David Schnare, sees more maneuvers coming.”
The post you linked was part II (2, not 11). The previous article was also informative. Thanks for making that available.
https://stevehayward.substack.com/p/virginias-if-by-whiskey-fizzle
I was not familiar with the “if by whiskey… you mean” paradigm, but it certainly seems to be the norm for politicians, although not all of them are as open about it as the archetypical anecdote.
“Political Questions” is the home of Stephen Hayward and other refugees from PowerLine. This post is from the SarcMeister, Anthony “Hates Mayo” Lucido.
Note the acronym hidden in the URL.
https://stevehayward.substack.com/p/supremacy-people-learing-center-the
Be sure to set all beverages on a secure surface before proceeding.
Re: France after WW II — “Les Trente Glorieuses” — “The Thirty Glorious (Years)”
Between the Marshall Plan, the Baby Boom, and De Gaulle’s heavy-handed reorganization of the French economy, France prospered after WW II, so much so that the French call the years, 1945-1975, “Les Trente Glorieuses.”
Indeed they were. Everything was working well. It did look like the French had some real clues to the Good Life in the 20th C.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trente_Glorieuses
However, they were borrowing against the future, De Gaulle turned over too much power to the unions, and the wonderful promise of retiring before 65 became unrealistic but the French people won’t accept it.
Things are not so rosy in France today. The last several French Presidents have all tried to reform France, failed and left office under clouds.
I’m not sure how France comes out of its decline.
@ Barry Meislin > “Whither the Reformation in America?”
A very interesting post on Christian religion in general, and political-religious connections in particular.
I had to look up a number of specialized terms with which I was unfamiliar.
@ David Foster > “New post: France 1940. The defeat was unexpected–what happened?”
I always appreciate a new history lesson.
Only a little of what was discussed in your post, the comments here, and those at Chicago Boyz, was covered in anything I ever read about WW1, WW2, and the in-between years (it’s necessary now to use Arabic rather than Roman numerals, although one might convincingly argue that there actually were 9 intervening “cold” world wars).
****
For the record
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/fact-check-real-video-shows-003751788.html
IMO, as with some of the Obamateurisms chronicled by Ed Morrissey in 2008-2009 (he stopped then, as they occurred more than once a day), some politicians don’t read their scripted remarks prior to delivering them. However, even reading by rote, that Omar even considered “eleven” a possible interpretation of “II” was abysmally amateurish and uneducated.
When looking at the phrase, she should have paused briefly and gotten it correct the first time.
Niketas Choniates …re the Rhineland in 1933….Andre Beaufre, whose book I cited in the post, said that one major reason for the failure to act in 1933 was the French military planning had developed no plans that did not require *total* mobilization…millions of men, requisitioning of vehicles, etc…which the politicians felt was too disruptive and the military felt unable to quickly create a partial-mobilization plan.
Another reason was fear that the ‘neutrals’ (probably especially the US) would accuse France of being the aggressor.
And there were also those arguing that Versailles, including the provisions for the Rhineland, had been unfair in the first place
— David Foster
A well-founded fear. There would indeed have been many such allegations. Some Americans would have said France was just trying to keep Germany down, some actively sympathized with Germany’s agenda, some would have simply followed the old simplistic, ‘Who shot first?’ logic. But many in America would have seen Anglo-French action as improper.
(Just look at how many Americans instinctively side against Israel now, when they are self-evidently in the right.)
— David Foster
Which it was. Worse, it was stupid and short-sighted. Wilson’s day-dreamy idealism only made it worse.
Not that Germany didn’t impose just as nasty a treaty on Russia when they pulled out of WW I.
HC68…the Rhineland demilitarization seems more justifiable than some other provisions of the Versailles treaty. Churchill notes that Foch demanded that the French frontier should henceforth be the Rhine:
“Germany might be disarmed; her military system shivered in frag- ments; her fortresses dismantled; Germany might be impoverished; she might be loaded with measureless indemnities; she might become a prey to internal feuds; but all this would pass in 10 years or in 20. But the Rhine, the broad, deep, swift- flowing Rhine, once held and fortified by the French army, would be a barrier and a shield behind which France could dwell and breathe for generations. ”
But Foch didn’t get this provision in the treaty, of course, demilitarization was the compromise. And the re-militarization by Germany was a pretty good indicator of aggressive intent.
If I’m not mistaken, the Rhineland was remilitarized in 1936.
==
I’d hesitate to say much as we have Turtler checking in here, but I do wonder if it might have been feasible and more sustainable to have concluded the war with territorial re-balancing and left it at that. No attempt at collective security schemes, no contrived disarmament, no reparations, no war guilt clause. Just, you lost your overseas dependencies on the battlefield and they stay lost, you lose any territory populated with those other than your core nationality, and the German states henceforth are assembled into a Prussian federation (2/3 of the total population) and an Austrian federation (1/3). (It is curious that the antique German monarchies just melted away in a matter of weeks). Reduce the Ottoman state to its Turkish core and divvy up the Hapsburg dominions into seven or eight parcels.
@Art Deco:the German states henceforth are assembled into a Prussian federation (2/3 of the total population) and an Austrian federation (1/3).
Trouble with that one is that Germany did not lose WWI so catastrophically that the Allies were free to just completely make over Germany as they did at the end of WWII, and the Central Powers each had separate treaties, and the United States and Russia treated separately from the Versailles Treaty.
Trouble with that one is that Germany did not lose WWI so catastrophically that the Allies were free to just completely make over Germany as they did at the end of WWII,
==
You could argue. They managed to coerce the German states into doing a mess of other things not in their material interest.
==
Here’s a question: what would have been more appealing to the south German populations – their own federation or continuing to be appended to Prussia?
As we know now the Germans evaded the disarmament commission (i recall from the krupps manchester profile) they trained their wehrmact in oart in Russia (which was ironic) to payback for germany occupying russia right after the revolution? Count mirbach and the like (from reilly ace of spades) who was targeted by the social revolutionaries (who proved a noxious force in russian politics) some of the training officer rose to high rank until the purges
@Art Deco:They managed to coerce the German states into doing a mess of other things not in their material interest.
Sure, that’s what happens when people lose a war, but what they’re willing to accept in order to get out of it has a limit depending on their ability to further resist–we’re seeing that in Iran right now–and those were just very different propositions in WWI as opposed to WWII.
Here’s a question: what would have been more appealing to the south German populations – their own federation or continuing to be appended to Prussia?
Hard to say, but they haven’t been trying very hard to get off on their own since then, although a lot has changed since then.
@HC68
Nah, I can confirm that Brest-Litovsk, Bucharest, and most of the other plans actually on the table for the Central Powers to impose had WWI gone their way were vastly, vastly worse than Versailles. The OHL had concluded that full implementation of the food plans they had in mind would cause the death by starvation of at least a quarter million throughout the former Russian Empire, and likely far more. Not only was this not viewed as a disqualifying or at least significant moral problem, by the end Ludendorff was arguing rather loudly that it would be a good thing and was trying to make inroads to fully sway Wilhelm II and the cabinet to it. Plans for Western Europe were somewhat better but not by as much as people like to believe and involved the chopping up or annexation of most of the polities in Western Europe between the Pyrenees and the Alps.
Versailles and its sisters get a lot of flak even in comparison to what they deserve, and I agree that Wilson’s particular flavor of dreamy idealism and racism generally made things worse, but while they were unfair they were unfair in part to balance out the truly staggering damages inflicted in the war and the occupation (especially since even before the murders in Sarajevo usually identified as the start of the war the German government was declaring orders for a confiscation of circulating gold in order to prep for a war footing, in line with the records we have from 1911-13 anticipating a major war and the likely need to start it as the aggressors).
That said that is easier to see in hindsight especially now that we have access to the Prussian State Archives and a bunch of other sources we did not have access to, with more concrete details on what the CP intended.
But I can confirm that the fear of the French being blamed as the aggressors was well founded. Just years after the Armistice you had the likes of Gerald Nye and Smedley Butler peddling “alternate facts” about how the US was driven to war by war profiteers and fear they would lose their investments, and you still had significant isolationist or pro-German sentiment (one thing I have learned from digging in is the sheer number of American nationals and resident aliens – a bunch born in the US – that went over the Atlantic to serve in the militaries of their ancestors, and while with say the Western Allies like Britain, France, Belgium, Italy, or Greece this isn’t viewed as that surprising or controversial even if it probably should be, but this also included in Russia, Germany, the Habsburg Empire, and Bulgaria). But the main reason France did not march into the Rhineland was due to financial turmoil and the need to secure a large credit agreement to shore up the franc and the French economy. Hitler and his goons picked the time well, and correctly read that the rest of the West would not stop German remilitarization of the Rhineland and that France would not act alone.
But i think it was as simple as the Great War was such a ghastly business because of krupp or vickers or what have you that the people of europe didnt want to revisit it,
Even a victor like england suffered under the burden as it sought to discharge itself of colonies like aden or egypt, part of the chronicle of the partition i related earlier
Within a decade labour was briefly back in power, and they were not well disposed to rearmament but neither was baldwin or chamberlain
@Art Deco
In a word no, not at all. For starters, about half of the Allies by 1918 if not 1917 had no direct territorial bone in the game, or at least none regarding something to be ripped out of Germany. And as dramatic and alarmist and imho frankly wrong as the likes of “War is a Racket” is on the reasons the US entered WWI, it at least does not pretend the US wished to carve a new star for the flag out of Germany or even German colonial territory; after all Butler had spent decades fighting in countless bush wars and incidents across the Western Hemisphere and Pacific Rim without large scale territorial adjustments.
The likes of the US, Andorra, Brazil, etc weren’t fighting the war over Revanche style desires for German territory, or even British concerns of diplomatic balance and what might happen if hostile powers expanded their control over the oceanic ports in the Low Countries and Adriatic. A lot of the “New Allies” were fighting overwhelmingly because of Central Powers funny business with their neutral rights and diplomatic interests, and for those reparations, the War Guilt Clause, and recognition of their rights were even more relevant than territorial claims.
And even among a lot of the older allies with territorial ambitions like Serbia, there was an overriding need for vindication and large scale repatriation and reparations after being bled white from the war and often very abusive occupation policies.
That did not mean that something like the League of Nations would be cobbled together in some grandiose desire for a Peace to end all Peaces, but it did mean that trying to diminish this into some adjustment of borders was not going to work at least after 1915.
Which had happened outside of maybe two exceptionally 1916 at the latest.
Good luck defining what that is or drawing the lines there. The French, Italians, and Romanians are going to seethe heavily over that regarding Alsace.
Good luck there. France is going to tap at 1870 and point out that it, Denmark, and some others have a poor recent history with Germanic Federation organizations, especially since there will be the issue of what the devil you do if they start trying to unify in an even larger scale like we saw by 1918 with the “Republic of German Austria”.
The degree to which they melted away in that span of time is overstated. In reality it was more like the culmination of months of not years of war damage, disillusionment, and increasing reliance on military strong men to prop up the systems in the face of demands for reform, democratization, some kind of devolution, etc. Especially given how extremely harsh the measures to keep that going wound up being and how once the means to carry on fell apart with military collapse, the tide of anger and frustration was more destabilizing than even a lot of dissidents wished (Ebert for instance did not want a Republic, he wanted a reformed Monarchy with a social democratic element after the Imperial Dictatorship and “War Socialism” got jettisoned, and he declared it in an attempt to head off the proto-Spartakists).
And even then it’s worth noting that you had significant holdovers. Neo-absolutist sentiment entrenched hard into the bureaucracy and military of a lot of these states and stayed there, you had significant forces out East that weren’t defeated yet and became one of the few bulwarks against a Bolshevik attempt to conquer the continent even if they were also a threat to the independence of the new states. And people ignore that Hungary remained legally committed to a Habsburg Restoration and Hungarian revanche under “Regent” and “Admiral” Horthy, and such. Restoration was only stopped due to threats from almost all of Hungary’s neighbors that they would invade and go to war to stop it.
So the idea that the old monarchies faded away in the span of a few weeks like spring snow is I think a mistake or at least over-reading of the situation. A lot of monarchist sentiment and restorationist movements remained and frankly not all of them would probably have been hostile or adverse, esp from a Western POV (for instance, a Habsburg system under Karl would probably have been less trouble than Horthy’s Greater Hungary Revenge Trip, and some kinds of constitutional monarchies in say Bavaria or Saxony may have been more independently stable and beneficial than one big Weimar), but they often had a lot of unpleasant baggage, especially with the individual royals like say the Hohenzollern losing their throne because literally none of the Imperial family could be trusted not to go back to the bad old ways.
That’s more or less what happened to the extent it wasn’t spontaneously happening even before the Allies began doing it (the Habsburg Empire in particular began imploding so fast that Italian frogmen planning to blow up the SMS Viribus Unitis found out she was officially the Jugoslavia of a new, supposedly neutral confederal state and their attempts to warn their new neutral captors about the placed mines were misinterpreted with explosive consequences). And we saw how imperfect those results were, not helped by the failure of the Allies to keep imposing the terms meant for the Ottomans.
From the 14th century to the most recent of our II World Wars – what a time trip through history!