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Monday 18th of March 2024

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American exceptionalism In most western democracies, the defeated can go on to make a living in business. America is almost unique in being able to keep election-losers in handsome employment within  politics. There is always a television slot, a think-tank sinecure, a tax-exempt political action committee, a speaking gig, a book deal. Think of the incentive structure here. Why moderate to win office if you can have the same trappings out of it? Fear of unelectability is what keeps political parties from embracing wild ideas. If that fear goes … an important check on extremism falls away. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, Feb. 27, 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Early retirement offer We have a special offer for you tonight: We are prepared to offer you $1 million a year for the rest of your life, if you simply agree to leave the Supreme Court immediately and never come back. This is not a joke. If you watch our show, you know jokes aren’t really our thing. This is real. A million dollars a year — until you or I die. John Oliver's offer to Clarence Thomas,  Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Feb. 18, 2024 [Thomas was given 30 days to respond.  Oliver also offered him a new $2.4 million Prevost  motor home to replace the one he bought in 1999 with a $267,000 loan from Anthony Welters, which was forgiven in 2008] © 2024 Kwiple.com
Elites The most important social tensions are within the elite — not, as a decade of populism has pretended, between the elite and the people.  The person likeliest to tear down a nation's establishment is a half-member of it. He or she is close enough to have felt its condescension (which must be largely theoretical for a total outsider) and to know its weak points. Donald Trump, disdained as a bridge-and-  tunnel vulgarian for all his material privilege, is the most famous example. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, February 16, 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Evolution In a world of synthetic gene drives, the  border between the human and the natural, between the laboratory and the wild, already deeply blurred, all but dissolves. In such a world, not only do people determine the conditions under which evolution is taking place, people can — again, in principle — determine the outcome.  Elizabeth Kolbert, Under a White Sky  © 2024 Kwiple.com
Immigration The secret's out. For Republicans, the border is a moneymaking grievance machine. And if we passed our border bill and fixed the problem, Republicans literally wouldn't know what to do with their days. Republicans killed the toughest bipartisan border bill that they have ever seen because they don't want to fix the border. They want to keep it a mess because they think it helps them politically. Chris Murphy,  the Democrat who negotiated the border bill with Republican James Lankford that Trump ordered Republican senators to kill, which they did © 2024 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Count votes in Congress by: 1. Calculating a Member's Proportional Vote (MPV) for each member, as follows: MPV = SPNP / NLRS where: SPNP = State's Percentage of the National Population NLRS = Number of Legislators Representing the State (in that legislature) 2. Totaling “yes” MPVs and “no” MPVs 3. Passing if total MPV is more than 50 OTHERWISE Abolish the Senate © 2019 Kwiple.com
Nature The issue, at this point,  is not whether we're going to alter nature, but to what end?  Elizabeth Kolbert, Under a White Sky  © 2024 Kwiple.com
Nature The Louisiana delta is now often referred to by hydrologists as a “coupled human and natural system,” or, for short, a CHANS. It's an ugly term  — another nomenclatural hairball — but there's no simple way to talk about the tangle we've created. A Mississippi that's been harnessed, straightened, regularized, and shackled can still exert a godlike force; it's no longer exactly a river, though. It's hard to say who occupies Mount Olympus these days, if anyone.  Elizabeth Kolbert, Under a White Sky  © 2024 Kwiple.com
Nature [N]ow what's got to be managed is not a nature that exists — or is imagined to exist — apart from the human. Instead, the new effort begins with a planet remade and spirals back on itself — not so much the control of nature as the control of  the control of nature. First you reverse a river, then you electrify it. Elizabeth Kolbert, Under a White Sky  [The flow of the Chicago River was reversed to prevent waste from flowing into Lake Michigan.  Years later, portions of it had to be electrified to  prevent carp from invading the Mississippi Basin.] © 2024 Kwiple.com
Post-2022 Senate shituation 15 states (Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming) 2020 population: 40,737,128 Senators: 30 Republicans 1 Senator per 1,357,904 people 1 state (California) 2022 population: 39,995,077 Senators: 2 Democrats 1 Senator per 19,997,539 people 19,997,539 / 1,357,904 = 14.7, therefore: average 15er's vote is worth nearly 15 times a Californian's, a Californian's vote is worth less than 7% of an average 15er's 1 state (Wyoming) 2022 population = 579,495, therefore: 1 Senator per 289,748 Wyomians, a Wyomian's vote is worth 69 times a Californian's, a Californian's vote is worth 1.4% of a Wyomian's  © 2023 Kwiple.com
Presidency The presidency is a performance. You are not just making decisions, you are also acting out the things people want to believe about their president — that the president is in command, strong, energetic, compassionate, thoughtful, that they don’t need to worry about all that is happening in the world, because the president has it all under control. Whether it is true that Biden has it all under control, it is not true that he seems like he does. Ezra Klein, The Ezra Klein Show, Feb. 16, 2024 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Problem solving We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. Attributed to Albert Einstein © 2024 Kwiple.com
Public discourse Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Missile launch. Woosh. Boom.  Donald Trump, describing a missile launch © 2024 Kwiple.com
Public discourse You can’t get in trouble for what you don’t say. Mitch “The Taciturn” McConnell © 2024 Kwiple.com
Reading If  I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them. Donald Trump, denyimg he kept a copy of My New Order, a volume of Hitler's speeches, in a cabinet beside his bed  © 2024 Kwiple.com
Snapshot A despicable human being. Donald Trump portrayed by Mitch McConnell © 2024 Kwiple.com
Social mobility When white Americans tell the Negro to lift himself by his own bootstraps, they don't look at the legacy of slavery and segregation. I believe we ought to do all we can, and seek to lift ourselves by our own bootstraps, but it's a cruel gesture to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps. And many Negroes, by the thousands and millions, have been left bootless as a result of all these years of oppression and as a result of a society that deliberately made his color a stigma and something worthless and degrading. Martin Luther King, Jr. © 2023 Kwiple.com
State of the union They’ve kind of had it with wars and forever wars. Mark Milley, on Americans, quoted in Financial Times, March 1, 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
State of the union We are barely two months into the republic’s year from hell. In 2024, US politics is hitting a perfect storm of partisan loathing in a society where algorithms become ever more skilled at generating outrage among the exhausted majority. Conditions are as good as they get for an outrage entrepreneur like Trump. The rest of this year promises to be nastier than anything we have seen. Edward Luce, Financial Times, February 29, 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Trumpists [W]hile the Republicans would rather win than not, defeat isn’t a disaster. For the grassroots, there is still the feeling of tribal belonging that Trump confers on his flock. It isn’t results-dependent. In fact, as the Alamo showed, and Dunkirk too,  group identities can grow stronger in defeat. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, February 27, 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say Embryos, to me, are babies. Nikki Haley © 2024 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say Every single thing you can think of is worse under Joe Biden. Sean Hannity © 2024 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say I believe, in the best interest of bringing the country together, I would pardon Donald Trump [if he were convicted of a felony]. Because I think it’s important for the country to move on. We’ve got to leave the negativity and the baggage behind.  I don’t want this country divided any further. I don’t think it’s in the best interests for America to have an 80-year-old president sitting in jail and having everybody upset about it. I think this would be the time that we would need to move forward and get this out of the way. Nikki Haley, February 18, 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say I don’t care what the hell happens in this world. If President Trump gets reelected, the border’s going to be sealed, the military will be deployed, the National Guard will be activated, and the illegals are going home. Stephen Miller © 2024 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say  I would not have done what Mike Pence did. I don’t think that was the right approach. Elise Stefanik, auditioning to be Trump's running mate by respondiing to Kaitlin Collins, who aske her,  “Had you been vice president on January 6, 2021, what would you have done?”, with an answer confirming that she would have violated the Constitution and participated in Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election © 2024 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say  If I had been vice president [on Jan. 6, 2021],  I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania,  Georgia, and so many others, that we needed to  have multiple slates of electors, and I think the  U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there. That is the legitimate way to deal with an election that a lot of folks, including me, think had a lot of problems in 2020. I think that’s what we should have done. J. D. Vance, auditioning to be Trump's running mate by confirming that he would have violated the Constitution and participated in Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election  [Over 60 courts denied Trump's claims of there being "a lot of problems" in the 2020 election] © 2024 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say  Navalnys death in prison is a brutal reminder that jailing your political opponents is inhumane and a violation of every principle of a free society. Watch the Biden Administration speak out against Putin and his jailing of his leading political opponent while Democrats in four different jurisdictions try to turn  President Trump into an American Navalny. The hypocrisy and corruption of the left is astonishing. Newt Gingrich, 12:52 PM – Feb 16, 2024, comparing Trump's legal troubles and court- imposed fines to Putin killing Alexei Navalny [The stupidity of Newt's tweet is breathtaking] © 2024 Kwiple.com