MMR February 21 2024 - Free State of Amaska

Why can't she be my governor 🤨

'That a joke or did the prosecution actually try to run with this?

Not a joke according to emptywheel. Hannity even had a segment on it where he tried to gaslight his audience into believing it was cocaine.

Y'know.... I'm a lot disturbed by how much circle the wagons stuff there was about Jon Stewart's criticism of Biden. Nate Silver trying to justify why we ask these questions about Biden and not Trump is the dumbest fucking thing I've ever read from him and I watched him bitch endlessly about closing schools when I've seen that the modelling was so fucking straight forward that it started as a Science Fair project that caused the CDC to do a double take and nobody fucking listens to it because they're so horrified at the prospect of the kids staying home rather than, y'know, alive (seriously, all of that is 100% true)

But Jon Stewart's criticism was reasonably contextualized. It should be noted, Jon is a progressive. Progressives generally aren't fans of Biden. They hold their nose and vote for him because he's way fucking better than any of the last 10 Republican options but they look at Biden as "we're stuck with him". Jon Stewart wasn't a fan of Kerry or Clinton either. This is hardly news

But let's consider what he actually said.

I mean, he starts the episode by contrasting the Special Counsel hit job against Trump's deposition but even goes and points out the Trump children seem to forget basic things in depositions. He then shows Biden handling the press conference very well and punching back but then it transitions into Israel where Jon Stewart correctly objects to Biden's tempered criticism. He also makes a joke about how Biden confused Mexico and Egypt when talking Israel - which, sure, you could argue that Jon could've highlighted that he named the correct President and identified the correct policy of said President and it was literally only a flub on Mexico vs Egypt but that's a pretty normal joke. And then he criticizes the TikTok gimmick over the Super Bowl weekend because Jon Stewart always criticizes gimmicks but he contrasts it to Trump's Pennsylvania lunacy. Which leads to a good 2 minutes of how Trump "needs a wellness check". This sets up "what the fuck is this election?" He shows how both parties are circling the wagons and trying to justify the age of the candidates but aren't doing things to actually solve the problem. His states "it's not the job of voters to not ask questions, it's the job of the candidates to answer those questions" referring specifically to Biden's age. He acknowledges that Biden's not Trump and lists the 5000 disqualifying reasons we all hate Trump, but then monologues about how that doesn't mean we shouldn't question Biden but rather necessitates that we take a close scrutiny of Biden because "when the barbarians are at the gates, you want Conan, not [cookie guy]"

Calling that bothsiderisms is inherently dishonest. At every stage, he's clearly stating that Trump is way worse. He uses bothsiderisms to highlight that Biden is being unfairly maligned about his age and that Democrats are circling the wagons as hard as Republicans. He's not arguing that Biden's problems are as bad as Trump's. He makes multiple asides in a 20 minute session questioning Biden's fitness to make very clear that Trump is infinitely worse. But you could summarize that entire session as "Democrats, are you sure this is the guy you want to go to November with?" Which is valid and would be expected of Stewart anyways.

So yeah, I don't really have much patience for the complaints about Stewart. He's never been the guy to line up behind the party line just because people want him to. In fact, his effectiveness is because he hasn't been that guy.

Probably wouldn’t have been such a big deal if the mainstream media outlets had not been pushing the Biden age stories for weeks essentially creating a negative narrative for Biden while seeming to ignore the menace’s deranged rants. As for the question to Democrats about the candidate they need to go with, it is a moot point since Biden did not step aside and is actually a good president. I get tired of all the second guessing and pearl clutching the pundit class engages in often when it is too late to do anything about it. Stewart included.

Cash Crunch in MAGA-land

I have always assumed Trump would have more than enough money to finance his campaign. There’s a lot of cash floating around and the MAGA cult loves to give him money. Still, this doesn’t seem like good news…

digbysblog.net/2024/02/21/cash-crunch-in-maga-land/https://digbysblog.net/2024/02/21/cash-crunch-in-maga-land/

Auston Matthews gets 50 in 54. The closest we've had to 50 in 50 since the 90s. The last time it happened was 95-96 with Mario Lemieux for player 50 or 91-92 by Brett Hull for team 50*.

*The 50-in-50 metric is normally measured on the team's first 50 games since it's baselined against a time when the regular season was only 50 games but we can acknowledge those who would have done it in their first 50 but for an injury...