1000 Americans are dying of Covid every week because Biden will not even tell doctors to wear a respirator mask. It's both deeply immoral and pathetic.
If you want to know other reasons people are upset with Biden? Well, you know he just keeps mailing bombs to Bibi Netenyahu to commit genocide with. And he has let Louis DeJoy continue to wreck the Post Office. He hasn't even bothered to nominate valid candidates to the Amtrak board -- Amtrak Joe hasn't bothered to follow Congress's pro-Amtrak law about Amtrak!
This is pathetic. It's hard to fight against Trump when our candidate is this much of a loser and this unhelpful.
We need candidates with some fire in their belly, who are willing to buck conventionality in order to *solve problems*, rather than cowering in fear to anti-maskers or letting Republican plants like DeJoy hang around.
You’re absolutely right, Rick!! It’s time to take the gloves off and time to focus on preserving the freedom we all take for granted. MAGA and whomever is propping up Trump will do ANYTHING to obtain power. Caveat Emptor, folks!!
You have come a long way from the guy who, in quest for Republican power, created ads that viciously attacked former U.S. Army Captain Max Cleland, the senator from Georgia who lost an arm and both legs while picking up a grenade in Vietnam in 1968.
Upon Max Cleland's death in November 2021, Esquire printed a tribute titled, Max Cleland Did Not Deserve What Rick Wilson Did to Him.
Fourteen years later, in 2016, you said,
The Cleland ad was powerful because it went to his strengths [...] Everyone assumed Cleland was immune to critiques on national security issues. [...] they didn't calculate that I have no moral center when it comes to political ads, and I will destroy the innocent and the guilty".
You promoted the Confederate flag.
You aided and abetted the current state of the Republican Party.
I'm glad you have met your moral center and that Trump and MAGA alarm you, but never forget that you ruthlessly sowed the seeds. Michael Cohen comes to mind. Had Trump not ascended on the ladder you helped build, you'd still be up to your old tricks.
Still, I'm grateful for your fighting against the MAGA scourge.
As a lowly small town, elected official and member of the local DTC, I'd like to emphasize that Every. Single. Person. commenting in this thread needs to be showing up at community meetings and volunteering in elections. Everyone is willing to opine, but we always struggle to get folks to belly up to the bar and take action. Call, Text, Knock Doors, Donate, Drive Candidates around, Attend fundraisers, Run for Office, Vote Every Time on Every Issue!!! (the referendum for our town budget draws a paltry 18-19% of registered voters and guess who ALWAYS turns out and guess what they cut?!!)
I can tell you that the opposition is doing all of those things with great commitment and it is frustrating to hear the "Ya but I'm busy" excuse. We are all busy.
You know who DOES show up? MOMS and GRANDMOMS. Overworked, sleep deprived, and multi-tasking till they break. They make up 70 - 85% of all the people volunteering in meetings and events I've attended. As Rick noted, we have to want to win and right now it seems like many are on the fence about putting in the effort. Let's fix that and save the republic.
If Democrats could call it all out, and stand up and fight, shake shoulders & exhort like you and Steve Schmidt, we'd have a different race. But they don't. And the nice guys may finish last again, and sadly, once and for all.
the issue of "they go low, we go high" has come up before, with talk of never selling our souls or abandoning our principles; well, all that goes to shit if we lose to this neo-fascist mob.
So this time (unless you're ready to throw your hands up in despair and move to Antarctica) when they go low, we go lower. Time to fight fire with fire; no more Mr. Nice Guy Joe, time for fire and brimstone, time to shake things up and hit America in the face with what's coming - anti-abortionists in power, election-deniers in power, white power leaders in power, violent insurrectionist mob rule, crazy bat-shitters in power - all out for RETRIBUTION!
Well, if that's what you want for America, then: they-go-low, we-go-high, and lose.
Or, if America's worth fighting for, then it's time to pull out all the stops and attack these anti-democratic demons head on: call them out as liars, traitors, crooks, Nazis, crazy cultists, attack, attack, attack; never let up, never back down, attack attack attack these dangerous cultists and their Great Leader.
If Democrats don't fight to save America from these neo-fascists, then they deserve the coming nightmare.
I’m scared, not of the polls or prospect of trump winning in a legitimate manner, but of the trumpublican strategy to steal the election via the courts or electoral ballot process. Project 2025 sounds crazy but I have no doubt doable.
However, in my rural redder than purple county, a blue candidate finished first over a red incumbent. Hope is a brilliant shade of blue!
hope is the abortion issue, call it the women's reproductive freedom issue, make it a headline every-day. With all the weak-hearted Dems abandoning Biden for 3rd party causes and Palestine-supporters thinking Trump or RFK is their savior, while the Right is gaining steam every day. My bet is that Trump skates on all his charges with his Judges-in-the-pocket delaying tactics. There is only one issue that can save America from this Far Right Christo-Fascist onslaught and that's women and their reproductive freedom.
If Women don't come out in masses to stop Trumpism, then America goes back to the good-old-days of Men In Control. No surprise that Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale is one of the first books banned in far-right states - that's the future if this ugly far-right mob gets back in - and trust me, once they're back, they'll never leave.
Tim Snyder said: any election can be the last. If Trump isn't stopped, this will be the last.
You have described the challenge before us with eloquent clarity, Rick. The malevolent forces of authoritarian fascism have been seething for years while gathering strength. But those forces have now coalesced around their monkey and are surging at us in a tsunami.
We have to rise to the occasion. God help us if we fail.
I've been warning about the ascension of the neo-fascists for a couple of years, and at first no one took me seriously; i was over-reacting, fear-mongering, etc.
Well, the devil is right in our faces now, and smells blood, and Dems are becoming too fractured to get their act together.
Reminder: Hitler came to power in 1932 with the slogan Make Germany Great Again. And how did that turn out?
The reluctance of the mainstream media (with exceptions such as The Guardian) to address the existential threat that we face is mind-boggling. I can only suppose that they are too beholden to their corporate advertisers and the need to keep increasing their revenue streams to trouble themselves with something as bothersome as the survival of democracy.
What I would like to know, however, is why our intelligence services have not redoubled their investigations into the evil nexus between Putin and Trump? There is simply no way for the US Intelligence Community (the FBI, CIA, NSA et al) to be unaware that Trump, this treasonous thug and Putin's puppet, is acting on orders to destroy this country from within. The evidence is as plain as day and the intelligence services must have so much more information than we do. But why this deafening silence from them? Or is it not their foremost duty to defend the Constitution and the values that define us? I mean, it's only the fate of this nation, and by extension the world, that hangs in the balance?
What am I missing? Will someone please explain? Abraham Washington, Rick Wilson, anyone?...
The attack against American ideals of liberty and justice for all under the rule of law has been direct, persistent, and thorough, I agree. DJT is a sideshow, I agree, a circus performer. We are in a fight for our lives as Americans, I agree. We can win. It will take great courage and grit and determined desire to win, I agree. Will we? I sure hope so.
there's so much dirt on Trump and his acolytes and his judges and his enablers - where's the press, the media, attack attack attack, wake up the sleeping masses, the devil's on the doorstep.
We have to get louder. The media is not going to help. We have put on a show. It’s apparently what people want. We need to be in the places where people are consuming their content. We’ve got to get flashier to attract people’s attention. We have yo keep hammering that women are going to be dragged back to the dark ages with no freedom whatsoever. We have to bring home how much better life in now than 2020. All of it.
Yeah, I've answered all his posts and he's a troll's troll; he was banned by Rick before. I have a kind of unhealthy love for chasing these creatures down, but it's bad for the community.
If not a troll he has been totally radicalized. One of the worst I've heard from and I comment on a number of sites...most times I don't respond. Wonder if he's an Incel? On meds?
Both; he's a radicalized troll. He had a weird ideological evolution, from a self-proclaimed neocon until Trump came around. His offense at the (appropriately) scabrous language used to describe Trump and his movement, especially the psychological explanations, somehow led him into French post-structuralism and the Situationists, then Marx and finally down the deepest alt-right black holes of the so-called Dark Enlightenment, the neo-reactionaries and Nick Land, the father of accelerationism. He calls himself landpilled and a Landian virulent nihilist. He's the perfect illustration of how the radical left seamlessly merges into the radical right.
I take him at his word that he has a Masters and leads Marxist study groups. He seems intelligent, very young and gaga about it all. But the violent rhetoric could not stand.
Heidegger's body of philosophical work is separable from the Third Reich (as Shostakovich's musical work is separable from Stalin). Carl Schmitt's legal philosophy, however, is not.
Your Arendt crack just demonstrates your own sexism. With all that time down the alt-right rabbit hole, I'm sure you spent your fair share in the manosphere.
Speak for yourself. I (a disabled middle aged woman) am ready to fight with every tool available to me for this country. I’m a tech person, why don’t we have pro-democracy troll farms? They are kicking our butts in that world.
This is no time for "we're the good guys" or "we fight fair"
Time to pull out all the stops and fight fire with fire.
Seems like half the world lives online now, and Putin and China and every strongman and demented mischief-maker is trolling to the max.
Plato said that the weakness of democracy was that skilled conmen could sell bad ideas with attractive rhetoric that swayed the mob. Well, Trump and company are swaying the mob, and democracy itself is at risk.
They. believe the lies because they want them to be true, and now because they can't admit they were wrong, or they've been conned. So they're doubling down. Like losing investors putting more money into a losing trade because they believe they're right, they want to be right, and they can't admit they're wrong.
Trump is all a phony con, but he knows the mob's buying it.
When Hitler's advisors said (about Mein Kamph's radical agenda) that it would scare off voters, Hitler said "never underestimate the stupidity of the public." And Trump knows that well. Both his ex-wife and his biographer both confirm that his bed-side reading was "Hitler's Speeches".
Trump is now insatiable in his need to be America's Fuhrer, and he has an army of soul-less opportunists, enablers, and apologists.
So yes, Britta, it's time to fight "with every tool available" to save America from a psychopathic narcissist with a Hitler-complex.
Yep we have to pull it together. I don't think they want it more than we do. I think it's because our side is just plain EXHAUSTED!! We've been fighting some version of this battle since 9-11. Some of the people I know just want to bury their heads in the sand--but we can't. Somehow, we've got to get the energy back to fight all over AGAIN. It's unthinkable what will happen if he wins...
Totally agree with you, Rick! We must go about thus campaign with a hunger and ferocity never seen before! Keep leading the way. Millions are on board and seeking direction.
Biden has been objectively god-awful on Covid.
https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/hospitals-are-killing-patients-because?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
1000 Americans are dying of Covid every week because Biden will not even tell doctors to wear a respirator mask. It's both deeply immoral and pathetic.
If you want to know other reasons people are upset with Biden? Well, you know he just keeps mailing bombs to Bibi Netenyahu to commit genocide with. And he has let Louis DeJoy continue to wreck the Post Office. He hasn't even bothered to nominate valid candidates to the Amtrak board -- Amtrak Joe hasn't bothered to follow Congress's pro-Amtrak law about Amtrak!
This is pathetic. It's hard to fight against Trump when our candidate is this much of a loser and this unhelpful.
We need candidates with some fire in their belly, who are willing to buck conventionality in order to *solve problems*, rather than cowering in fear to anti-maskers or letting Republican plants like DeJoy hang around.
You’re absolutely right, Rick!! It’s time to take the gloves off and time to focus on preserving the freedom we all take for granted. MAGA and whomever is propping up Trump will do ANYTHING to obtain power. Caveat Emptor, folks!!
Thanks. You said what I've been thinking out loud.
Rick,
You have come a long way from the guy who, in quest for Republican power, created ads that viciously attacked former U.S. Army Captain Max Cleland, the senator from Georgia who lost an arm and both legs while picking up a grenade in Vietnam in 1968.
Upon Max Cleland's death in November 2021, Esquire printed a tribute titled, Max Cleland Did Not Deserve What Rick Wilson Did to Him.
Fourteen years later, in 2016, you said,
The Cleland ad was powerful because it went to his strengths [...] Everyone assumed Cleland was immune to critiques on national security issues. [...] they didn't calculate that I have no moral center when it comes to political ads, and I will destroy the innocent and the guilty".
You promoted the Confederate flag.
You aided and abetted the current state of the Republican Party.
I'm glad you have met your moral center and that Trump and MAGA alarm you, but never forget that you ruthlessly sowed the seeds. Michael Cohen comes to mind. Had Trump not ascended on the ladder you helped build, you'd still be up to your old tricks.
Still, I'm grateful for your fighting against the MAGA scourge.
the seeds.
As a lowly small town, elected official and member of the local DTC, I'd like to emphasize that Every. Single. Person. commenting in this thread needs to be showing up at community meetings and volunteering in elections. Everyone is willing to opine, but we always struggle to get folks to belly up to the bar and take action. Call, Text, Knock Doors, Donate, Drive Candidates around, Attend fundraisers, Run for Office, Vote Every Time on Every Issue!!! (the referendum for our town budget draws a paltry 18-19% of registered voters and guess who ALWAYS turns out and guess what they cut?!!)
I can tell you that the opposition is doing all of those things with great commitment and it is frustrating to hear the "Ya but I'm busy" excuse. We are all busy.
You know who DOES show up? MOMS and GRANDMOMS. Overworked, sleep deprived, and multi-tasking till they break. They make up 70 - 85% of all the people volunteering in meetings and events I've attended. As Rick noted, we have to want to win and right now it seems like many are on the fence about putting in the effort. Let's fix that and save the republic.
If Democrats could call it all out, and stand up and fight, shake shoulders & exhort like you and Steve Schmidt, we'd have a different race. But they don't. And the nice guys may finish last again, and sadly, once and for all.
the issue of "they go low, we go high" has come up before, with talk of never selling our souls or abandoning our principles; well, all that goes to shit if we lose to this neo-fascist mob.
So this time (unless you're ready to throw your hands up in despair and move to Antarctica) when they go low, we go lower. Time to fight fire with fire; no more Mr. Nice Guy Joe, time for fire and brimstone, time to shake things up and hit America in the face with what's coming - anti-abortionists in power, election-deniers in power, white power leaders in power, violent insurrectionist mob rule, crazy bat-shitters in power - all out for RETRIBUTION!
Well, if that's what you want for America, then: they-go-low, we-go-high, and lose.
Or, if America's worth fighting for, then it's time to pull out all the stops and attack these anti-democratic demons head on: call them out as liars, traitors, crooks, Nazis, crazy cultists, attack, attack, attack; never let up, never back down, attack attack attack these dangerous cultists and their Great Leader.
If Democrats don't fight to save America from these neo-fascists, then they deserve the coming nightmare.
Here, here.
I’m scared, not of the polls or prospect of trump winning in a legitimate manner, but of the trumpublican strategy to steal the election via the courts or electoral ballot process. Project 2025 sounds crazy but I have no doubt doable.
However, in my rural redder than purple county, a blue candidate finished first over a red incumbent. Hope is a brilliant shade of blue!
hope is the abortion issue, call it the women's reproductive freedom issue, make it a headline every-day. With all the weak-hearted Dems abandoning Biden for 3rd party causes and Palestine-supporters thinking Trump or RFK is their savior, while the Right is gaining steam every day. My bet is that Trump skates on all his charges with his Judges-in-the-pocket delaying tactics. There is only one issue that can save America from this Far Right Christo-Fascist onslaught and that's women and their reproductive freedom.
If Women don't come out in masses to stop Trumpism, then America goes back to the good-old-days of Men In Control. No surprise that Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale is one of the first books banned in far-right states - that's the future if this ugly far-right mob gets back in - and trust me, once they're back, they'll never leave.
Tim Snyder said: any election can be the last. If Trump isn't stopped, this will be the last.
You have described the challenge before us with eloquent clarity, Rick. The malevolent forces of authoritarian fascism have been seething for years while gathering strength. But those forces have now coalesced around their monkey and are surging at us in a tsunami.
We have to rise to the occasion. God help us if we fail.
Absolutely right.
I've been warning about the ascension of the neo-fascists for a couple of years, and at first no one took me seriously; i was over-reacting, fear-mongering, etc.
Well, the devil is right in our faces now, and smells blood, and Dems are becoming too fractured to get their act together.
Reminder: Hitler came to power in 1932 with the slogan Make Germany Great Again. And how did that turn out?
The reluctance of the mainstream media (with exceptions such as The Guardian) to address the existential threat that we face is mind-boggling. I can only suppose that they are too beholden to their corporate advertisers and the need to keep increasing their revenue streams to trouble themselves with something as bothersome as the survival of democracy.
What I would like to know, however, is why our intelligence services have not redoubled their investigations into the evil nexus between Putin and Trump? There is simply no way for the US Intelligence Community (the FBI, CIA, NSA et al) to be unaware that Trump, this treasonous thug and Putin's puppet, is acting on orders to destroy this country from within. The evidence is as plain as day and the intelligence services must have so much more information than we do. But why this deafening silence from them? Or is it not their foremost duty to defend the Constitution and the values that define us? I mean, it's only the fate of this nation, and by extension the world, that hangs in the balance?
What am I missing? Will someone please explain? Abraham Washington, Rick Wilson, anyone?...
The attack against American ideals of liberty and justice for all under the rule of law has been direct, persistent, and thorough, I agree. DJT is a sideshow, I agree, a circus performer. We are in a fight for our lives as Americans, I agree. We can win. It will take great courage and grit and determined desire to win, I agree. Will we? I sure hope so.
The quickest way to stop a bully is to bloody his nose.
Which is hard to do when he’s hiding behind the robes of corrupt judges.
there's so much dirt on Trump and his acolytes and his judges and his enablers - where's the press, the media, attack attack attack, wake up the sleeping masses, the devil's on the doorstep.
We have to get louder. The media is not going to help. We have put on a show. It’s apparently what people want. We need to be in the places where people are consuming their content. We’ve got to get flashier to attract people’s attention. We have yo keep hammering that women are going to be dragged back to the dark ages with no freedom whatsoever. We have to bring home how much better life in now than 2020. All of it.
yes, yes, yes
Hey Wax...What Bob McKeown said...geez.
Yeah, I've answered all his posts and he's a troll's troll; he was banned by Rick before. I have a kind of unhealthy love for chasing these creatures down, but it's bad for the community.
I beg everyone's indulgence.
If not a troll he has been totally radicalized. One of the worst I've heard from and I comment on a number of sites...most times I don't respond. Wonder if he's an Incel? On meds?
Both; he's a radicalized troll. He had a weird ideological evolution, from a self-proclaimed neocon until Trump came around. His offense at the (appropriately) scabrous language used to describe Trump and his movement, especially the psychological explanations, somehow led him into French post-structuralism and the Situationists, then Marx and finally down the deepest alt-right black holes of the so-called Dark Enlightenment, the neo-reactionaries and Nick Land, the father of accelerationism. He calls himself landpilled and a Landian virulent nihilist. He's the perfect illustration of how the radical left seamlessly merges into the radical right.
I take him at his word that he has a Masters and leads Marxist study groups. He seems intelligent, very young and gaga about it all. But the violent rhetoric could not stand.
Rick, just a word up. You need to delete this fascist Wax Meber.
His whackadoodle Communist / Fascist posts calling for violence against our community are irredeemable.
That's a lie and projective identification.
Carl Schmitt was the legal theoretician of the Third Reich.
You are engaged in projection and gaslighting because you're incapable of making any kind of argument without offending people, and that's on you.
Heidegger's body of philosophical work is separable from the Third Reich (as Shostakovich's musical work is separable from Stalin). Carl Schmitt's legal philosophy, however, is not.
Your Arendt crack just demonstrates your own sexism. With all that time down the alt-right rabbit hole, I'm sure you spent your fair share in the manosphere.
Speak for yourself. I (a disabled middle aged woman) am ready to fight with every tool available to me for this country. I’m a tech person, why don’t we have pro-democracy troll farms? They are kicking our butts in that world.
right, Britta.
This is no time for "we're the good guys" or "we fight fair"
Time to pull out all the stops and fight fire with fire.
Seems like half the world lives online now, and Putin and China and every strongman and demented mischief-maker is trolling to the max.
Plato said that the weakness of democracy was that skilled conmen could sell bad ideas with attractive rhetoric that swayed the mob. Well, Trump and company are swaying the mob, and democracy itself is at risk.
They. believe the lies because they want them to be true, and now because they can't admit they were wrong, or they've been conned. So they're doubling down. Like losing investors putting more money into a losing trade because they believe they're right, they want to be right, and they can't admit they're wrong.
Trump is all a phony con, but he knows the mob's buying it.
When Hitler's advisors said (about Mein Kamph's radical agenda) that it would scare off voters, Hitler said "never underestimate the stupidity of the public." And Trump knows that well. Both his ex-wife and his biographer both confirm that his bed-side reading was "Hitler's Speeches".
Trump is now insatiable in his need to be America's Fuhrer, and he has an army of soul-less opportunists, enablers, and apologists.
So yes, Britta, it's time to fight "with every tool available" to save America from a psychopathic narcissist with a Hitler-complex.
Yep we have to pull it together. I don't think they want it more than we do. I think it's because our side is just plain EXHAUSTED!! We've been fighting some version of this battle since 9-11. Some of the people I know just want to bury their heads in the sand--but we can't. Somehow, we've got to get the energy back to fight all over AGAIN. It's unthinkable what will happen if he wins...
Totally agree with you, Rick! We must go about thus campaign with a hunger and ferocity never seen before! Keep leading the way. Millions are on board and seeking direction.