Paul F. Tompkins is an American treasure in these trying times.
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“I’m not going to shut down the economy, I’m going to shut down the virus”
Damn I bet trump wishes he would have thought of that. Just shut it down. Smart!
I have a theory based on a lot of stuff posted here and elsewhere. Let’s say there are 3 tiers to Trumpism:
The top of the pyramid is Trump people and political and business operatives who directly benefit from him. The inner-circle.
The next layer is 1000s of performative pundits, influencers and anyone with a following. They need the crazy to continue either for monetary reasons or because it feeds their ego. Think the qanon congress lady chick, Ben Garrison and Scott Adams - and a lot of B, C and D-team versions of them.
The final biggest layer is the frothy base. The people who consume the stuff the first and second layer puts out. The true believers.
As people have mentioned on here - we may be paying too much attention to tier 2 - thinking they are indicative of the entire base. Of course tier 2 is just going to get crazier and crazier right now. Most of them probably get on some level that the grift is up soon.
My hope is that tier 3 is seeing all the craziness and slowly hollowing out as they come to terms. But that’s much harder to see except for Trump flags coming down and stuff like the relatively anemic million MAGA march.
If that happens, Tier 2 turns into more and more just a bunch of influencers posting to other aspiring influencers - which I suspect the majority of influencers are anyway. It’s like when I used to do comedy in SF at coffee shops where the crowd was pretty much all other amateur comedians.
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On the other hand, members of tier 3 are making their way into Congress, state houses, etc.
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I will absolutely be using this in my campaign to drive a wedge between Trumpers and Republican establishment and I gotta say on a small scale so far it has been super effective.
I got several insane maga idiots on a forum basically HATING the Republican party right now and agreeing they plotted against Trump with the dems, stuck the knife in, and their public positions are all bullshit.
So thank you.
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These People! Why are they following the law? Very suspicious! Must investigate!
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https://mobile.twitter.com/JustinEttaputz/status/1329816881209946116
In a letter to Fed Chair Jerome Powell, Mnuchin said the $455 billion allocated to Treasury under the CARES Act last spring, much of it set aside to support Fed lending to businesses, nonprofits and local governments, should be instead available for Congress to reallocate.
being a federal judge is about the status. if you love that status and prestige then obviously its a big deal. it probably pays around the same maybe a bit more as most higher up tenured professor gigs, where you can double dip as “of counsel”.
a lot of super successful attorney’s wouldn’t want it. for instance my law school buddy’s dad and his coworkers laugh at you when you ask the same question, because they all make around a million a year litigating massive plaintiff’s suits and wouldn’t want to take the huge pay cut to have to sit in the same chair everyday.
also i saw a stat somewhere, not sure on the validity, but basically it said that you are roughly 2/3rds more likely to get a judicial appointment if you are a conservative than if you are a liberal, due to both sides appointing about the same number of judges(prior to trump who appointed WAY more) and there just simply aren’t nearly as many law school educated conservatives around.
That is one big fuckin’ cheese grater behind Rush’s head.
Isn’t Rush supposed to be dead by now? Thought he had terminal lung cancer at the beginning of 2020.
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And terminal lung cancer is too kind of a death for him.
he’s had it for years, he was given terminal diagnosis a couple of months ago i think. i don’t know the tables but it could mean 2 or 12 months probably.
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Nice senators you’ve got there, Georgia… be a shame if they got trashed by the sitting President of their own party.
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