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Schmidt Versus Gabriel; Who Do You Got?
Never Trump likes to think of themselves as the thoughtful, reasoned, and above all principled(TM) alternative to MAGA. They are the wise, diplomatic Picards to MAGA’s boorish James T. Kirks. Which makes watching Lincoln Project founder Steve Schmidt’s descent into madness so compelling. And the most recent target of his outrage is our own fearless leader, Jon Gabriel. Who, according to Mr. Schmidt, is “a Christian Nationalist … an extremist and a fascist.”
The backstory is here. The TL;DR version is that Mr. Schmidt gets very, very testy when people point out that one of his Lincoln Project co-founders, John Weaver, had an unsavory interest in teenage boys and that this troubled the rest of his Lincoln Project cohorts about as much as teaching five-year-olds about gender ideology bothers Disney executives. After this and another recent Schmidt Twitter tirade against Sarah Palin (whom Schmidt called a “nut ball”) and Meghan McCain whom he called insane; Mr. Gabriel gently recommended Mr. Schmidt should perhaps seek help. And it was this that prompted Schmidt’s “Christian Nationalist, extremist, and fascist” riposte. Mr. Gabriel handled the insult with the class and aplomb we have come to expect.
Seriously, though, it does kinda look like the shingles are coming off Mr. Schmidt’s roof and maybe someone ought to look into that.
Really wanted to work in a reference to the crack pipes that the corporate media claimed no way would there be crack pipes in the taxpayer-funded safe smoking kits the Biden administration was distributing, but yeah, there totally are crack pipes in those kits, but… maybe I’m feeling too nice today to suggest a metaphorical connection between Mr. Schmidt’s tirades and the contents of the Biden Administration’s safe-smoking kits.
By the way, the “principled conservatives” at the NAMBLincoln Project have laid out their “2022 Roadmap for Republican Defeat.”
“The Lincoln Project’s mission heading into 2022 is simple and direct: Defeat the Republican Party and their candidates in key states and Congressional districts.”
Certainly sounds like something a group led by principled conservatives who aren’t at all a grift operation fronting for the Democratic Left would say.
Speaking of things angry people say on Twitter, Texas Republican Dan Crenshaw says if you don’t support sending billions of dollars to Ukraine with no financial oversight, you’re probably a Russian stooge.
Published in General
Then we’re cool. Let it be between those two combatants, and we can butt out.
The point is, we’re not. We’re escalating the conflict. Both materially and rhetorically. For some weird reason, China Joe and his handlers are uninterested in helping hammer out some kind of cease fire and want to “fight to the last Ukrainian.” And our members of Congress definitely see this as a war between the U.S. and Russia. Seriously, you really do need to listen to the way they talk about it. On Friday Steny Hoyer said it was wrong for Republicans to criticize the President “in a time of war,” and repeated his comment that “we’re at war.” For them it’s our war, fought on Ukrainian soil with Ukrainian bodies. So far.
For us to be at war with Russia requires a formal declaration by Congress. So let’s do that. Get them on record. Start up World War III. They’re already talking as if this is it (and I believe it is, we just haven’t called it that yet).
“Escalating the conflict.” This is an interesting rhetorical device. It is used to suggest that things will get worse and more destruction will occur. This is the first time I recall people using this term in regards to helping a nation defend itself. If somebody would have stepped in and armed the Tibetans against getting brutally taken over by China and having an estimated one-million Tibetans killed and jailed over the years, I guess you could have called that “escalating the conflict.” Arming the Jews of Europe against Nazi takeover and extermination too, would be “escalating the conflict.” I think I would consider myself “pro-escalation.”
Sure, if you want to microfocus on just the last eighty years. But before that…and during the trough between 1968 and the mid-1980s…it’s been close if not majority isolationist.
They think Ukraine is next to Quebec. Or next to Corsica. Or somewhere between Madagascar and Rwanda. Geography is so very difficult.
Actually, if we were fighting Russia directly, we would be replacing them a lot faster and all have our little ration books and five gallons of gas a week and a much larger IRS audit division with new uniforms sporting flashy brown shirts.
It really is. I really don’t care for either of them.
You think if Team Biden started a war with Russia, they would have started building new anti-tank missiles any faster?
They can be real whips when motivated. I’m not hearing about any pudding cup shortages.
And yet there’s shortages of baby formula, and grain, and so many other things Biden doesn’t need personally. I tend to think that military items would receive a level of attention more like baby formula, than pudding cups. Or ice cream.
I guess we’ll find out.
Because they will.
But Americans don’t seem to care as long as it’s Ukrainian homes being destroyed and Ukrainian bodies piling up. We’re quite willing for them to sacrifice, aren’t we?
Just wait until our Congressors start sending American troops.
My deeper point to this is that doing nothing to help Ukraine will result in more death, more ruination of lives, loss of liberty for generations, and who knows what else? You can’t argue that helping people defend their homeland is bad for them. You would have to argue that it was wrong for us to arm England against the German Blitzkrieg. They would have had less death and destruction if they just took Mohatma Ghandi’s advice and unconditionally surrendered to the Jerries.
I think many who are against arming the Ukraine say this “escalation” rhetoric because they don’t like to admit that they just don’t care what happens to the people. It is distasteful to have to say that, so they invented the “escalating the war” rhetoric in order to make it look like they are not insensitive oafs.
There is nothing wrong with the attitude of not caring what happens in foreign lands. We mostly don’t care what happens to other people around the world, me included. I have little interest of what is happening inside North Korea, China and many African countries, while I know at the same time that they are suffering greatly. I “chose” to care about the Ukraine war because of the possible instant mass extermination threat due to military technology, the implications for the rest of us from the destruction of a peaceful Western country which includes a resuscitation of an evil empire, and the familiarity with a people of roughly the same cultural and religious values.
And also the peoples of Africa and many other places, could be doing a lot more to help themselves, if only they would.
The great Sam Kinnison! What would the left be doing about this guy today? I can’t imagine.
Seriously, I have never been interested in what Hoyer has to say about anything and that kind of bs doesn’t make me want to start now.
The war had already escalated long before the moron in the Whitehouse figured out the Ukrainians weren’t going to be easily crushed. This thing started eight years ago. This was supposedly only about Ukraine’s eastern provinces but the conflict spilled over and 3rd party non-combatants were murdered by the Russians as a result – Malaysian Airlines Flight 17. The reason this war is no longer memory-holed is because Russia escalated the conflict in February.
By the same token, it’s just as valid to say that you just don’t care what happens to the United States. You don’t that we’re sending billions overseas while Americans struggle to make ends meet. You don’t care about poor people. You don’t care if we’re drawn into World War III with Russia. You don’t care if more American soldiers end up in another quagmire or Putin finally decides to launch those nukes.
I mean, if you want to shoot slanderous accusations at me, I got a high-powered slander-gun, too.
You’d better pay attention when members of Congress start talking like that.
And you care? What American is calling on the Ukrainians to sacrifice? This is their homeland! They are fighting for themselves. Zelensky addressed our Congress. He came to us for help. You think we should look away and that’s what caring looks like? Who are these Americans who don’t care about Ukrainians homes being destroyed and Ukrainian bodies being piled up?
I really don’t care that much about poor people in America, at least enough to start giving them more free stuff. We already spend 2/3rd’s of our national budget on entitlements. We have some of the highest living standards of any country that has ever existed., and we have the best opportunities of any country to not be poor. Most of what we call poor would be rich by most world standards. The people I care about are the one’s who actually make an effort to get ahead and suffer setbacks through no fault of their own. They are definitely not in the majority of our poor.
As far as World War III with Russia, If that’s what it takes to stop them from becoming the evil empire that swallows up a hemisphere, then yes, I would support it. If Russia can’t manage to get more than a couple hundred kilometers through Ukraine in three months without losing 1/3 of their army and equipment and can’t even use their aircraft or ships, then what makes you think fighting them will be a quagmire? If you ask me, it looks like we would obliterate them in a matter of weeks like the first Gulf War. We’d have even more allies to draw from, too.
He was playing a stupid political game, trying to get people to rally around a failed presidency. I don’t have to play too.
This is what Principles First thinks. I’m not sure this guy is in the group, but all of his friends are. He talks like this every single day.
The government’s PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITY is to its own citizenry. It is out of our abundance that we can be generous with others.
You do NOT rob from the mouths of your own people to wield a war to protect your corruption scheme in another country.
The moral position is not with those who support sending $40 billion to Ukraine on top of the 13 we already sent.
I don’t think you’re really paying attention to the intentions of our government. They’ve made it perfectly clear, and yet people keep waving off because obviously they don’t mean it like that.
They mean it.
When they say they want a Green New Deal, we laugh it off because AOC is crazy, and it’s so obvious it would destroy our economy.
And then gas prices go up, and oil and gas leases are cancelled, . . . and Granholm says crazy garbage about how this is all part of transitioning to running the country entirely on renewables . . . and you begin to realize that they’re implementing it anyway.
They mean what they say, even (especially) the crazy ones like Pelosi and Schiff and Cheney and Kinzinger and the squad, and we ignore it to the nation’s peril.
And we cannot ignore this. We cannot just roll our eyes and think “nobody really believes that.” They do, and they will implement their plans.
I used to think that the stereotype of the heartless Republican who didn’t care about the poor was just malicious slander. But I’ve met quite a few of them on Ricochet recently.
And the neocon warmonger slander. But that, too, seems to be true. Well, at least we’ve got someone here on record as supporting a third world war, so the next time I hear “Nobody actually supports that!” I can point to you.
How is it that the people who keep pointing out how inept the Russian military seems to be are the same ones convinced that Russia is going to take over the world if we don’t stop them.
Those things can’t both be true. If the Russian military is as bad as everyone says, then all that talk about how Putin is going to continue through Ukraine and on into the rest of Europe is just nonsense.
Yes, they mean all of that nonsense but none of that has anything to do with sending troops to Ukraine. That simply isn’t going to happen. As for the green new deal think build back better. Where is that now? It’s not like they aren’t getting pushback. Biden’s job approval is 12 points underwater and he’s about to lose the House.
We can’t run on renewables. It is simply not doable. It doesn’t matter what they want to implement. If it can’t be done, it can’t be done.
And Democrats haven’t changed direction on anything.
They’re doing it anyway.
Or listen to Buttigieg talk about how the poors just need to buy electric cars.
This has been a crisis by design since Day 1 of the Biden administration, and they have not changed direction one bit. Just last week Biden ended even more oil leases in Alaska and the Gulf. He (or his puppeteers) don’t care about the pain facing everyday Americans. His sinking poll numbers don’t matter to him (or his puppeteers).
When Democrats tell you what they’re going to do, listen.
I pay for proprietary interviews of hedge fund guys. Trust me, they are planning on those guys doing a lot of damage before the idiots stop doing it. The grifters and their lobbyists and the hedge fund guys are going to do fine.
One guy I follow has call options all the way up to $200 on oil.
Which will only make their defeat this November larger.
No they are not doing it anyway. They are talking about it. It can’t be done. The generating capacity renewables provide are a peehole in a snowdrift compared to current demand. They can no more meet future demand than i can give birth. Newsome in California just got wobbly over a deadline to shut down Diablo Canyon. Listen to Michael Shellenberger about this. He’s been pressing the argument for nukes for years. He knows how significant Newsome’s statement was.