1 This isn’t funny, ethical, brave or helpful. He should be sanctioned, but House Democrats wouldn’t dare. They know what their members got away with.
2. If Duncan wants to say “Fuck Joe Biden” on the House floor, then let him come out and say it and accept the consequences. At least I can have a measure of respect for that, though not much. Adults snickering at the “Let’s Go Brandon” game remind me of those camp songs like “Shaving cream” or “Helen had a Steamboat” where it was supposed to be hilarious that you never actually said the naughty word that rhymed. The game was just barely tolerable among ten-year-olds, and we have members of Congress who act like this? Be proud, America.
3. The Ethics Alarms position (which cost it about 40% of its readers since 2017) that the office of the President must be accorded a basic level of respect and fairness by the public must apply regardless of who is in the White House, or our republic does not work. One reason I was so critical of the despicable treatment of President Trump across the culture was precisely for this reason: I knew Republicans and conservatives wouldn’t be able resist treating Biden as unethically as Trump was treated, and, if possible, worse.
4. Naturally, the conservative media is giddy with approval. Yeah, let’s tear down our vital institutions for laughs.
5. Not that the Left has a shred of justification for complaining after the kind of destructive behavior it encouraged and participated in. Thor Benson, who writes for many of the left-biased publications and websites, tweeted, “The party of petulant children.” I won’t even go into how ridiculously hypocritical that is. Anyone who doesn’t understand is too dim to participate in this blog.
Ethics Alarms 
I think Rep. Duncan is setting a terrible example as a member of Congress.
I also think the Republican side of the ideological spectrum has FAR lower to sink before it plumbs the depths of what we’ve seen from Speaker Pelosi, Rep. Maxine Waters, the Squad, Rep. Schiff, Joe Scarborough, Don Lemon, and others too numerous to mention.
It is time for Republicans to reject the urge to reciprocate the behavior of their opponents and instead get down to the serious task of presenting ideas and plans that make them more attractive to voters next November. The mantra of “President Biden Sucks” won’t carry them very far.
On the contrary, Biden won precisely because he wasn’t Trump. The downside of being president is that you become the target for everything from the other side, and Biden is ill-equipped for that kind of barrage. As a white male he can’t hide behind any protected characteristic, so the right-wing media is going after him full throttle. And it’s working, as his numbers leave skid marks around the bowl. 😀
Well, at least no Republican ever insulted our intelligence by saying, “When they go low, we go high.”
“The party of petulant children.” Doesn’t that need to be illustrated by video of Nancy Pelosi ripping up Trump’s State of the Union address text? That’s really brazen stuff.
1. If all other slogans can be worn on masks, this one can, and after Nancy Pelosi tearing up Trump’s address, I frankly don’t want to hear criticism, oh, and then there were those two impeachments…
2. Hehe, you forgot “Three Jolly Fishermen.”
3. Well, the Democrats set the precedent, and a lot of folks here, you and I included, said what they did was a bad idea precisely because it would set this precedent. Well, here we are.
4. Of course they are – now it’s their turn to trash the president and there’s not much he can do about it. As for institutions, a good chunk got torn down last year and still more are getting torn down every year.. The left is the party of nihilism.
5. Arrow, meet bullseye.
I DID forget “Three Jolly Fishermen” ! I wanted to forget it!
I’m not the pheasant plucker, and so on.
If the log rolls over we’ll all be dead…If the log rolls over we’ll all be dead…🎶
…so they asked me if I knew Pedro, and I said I had lunch with him. 😀
…and the guy says “read the note!” 😀
My mother’s favorite, which she could do perfectly without an error: the tongue-twister “I slit a sheet, a sheet I slit; upon a slitty sheet I sit!” You have to say it three times, quickly. I still can. It was good training for “The Nightmare Song.”
Haha, ranks right up there with some of the famous Spoonerisms. May I sew you to a sheet? You have hissed all of my mystery lectures and tasted the whole worm. 😀
Mardon me Padame, may I sew you to another sheet.
The favorite Spoonerism of one of my aunts.
Revenge certainly feels good, for awhile, but it isn’t healthy.
How about slogans like: ClosetheborderJo, ReopenthepipelineJo, FollowthescienceJo, wakeupJo, readtheConstitutionJo, USAnotChinaJo, etc.
On a mask? Simple-minded, but not unethical!
The nice thing about simple minded is its efficacy, plus must meet slojo where he’s at.
I am more willing to be unethical than you Jack when it comes to hurting the dems.
Does that mean my time here is limited if I do not come around?
That’s the most frustrating thing to me. This has a lot of popular traction, but it’s low hanging fruit. The president has so many disasters that having to rely on petulant name calling to get the point across actually makes him seem more capable than he is.
Sure it’s low hanging fruit and Jack has scorched Duncan for his unethical mask message but conservatives are losing the culture war being all proper and well mannered.
Don’t ethics change in wartime?
Just so long as it’s still dignified. That’s not a matter of ethics so much as it’s a matter of effectiveness. Ditching restraint can be justified, but it still needs to be charismatic in order to win support. I find that usually translates to demonstrating strong character and sticking to criticizing the most important things, but it doesn’t preclude mockery.
“The party of petulant children.”
Damn, I keep forgetting whose turn it is today.
What I do know is that this kind of title-sharing hasn’t worked out well since the days of Atreus and Thyestes or Polyneices and Eteocles.
The problem here is the double-entendre.
I agree that Fuck Joe Biden is bad. Eliminating the profanity to F—- Joe Biden does not make it better.
But, “Let’s go Brandon” is as much or more of a criticism of the press as it is a rebuke of Biden. This is a ridiculous euphemism for Fuck Joe Biden that was created by the press. They deserve to have it thrown in their face at every opportunity.
One could credibly argue that let’s go Brandon does not even mean the insult that it was meant to cover up.
I like let’s go Brandon just for the sheer ridiculousness of it. It would be no less offensive if it had replaced Go home Biden. If you agree with that statement, the Fuck part of it is immaterial.
-Jut
I was going to say something similar.
“Listen to that crowd; Let’s go Brandon!”
Kind of perfectly encapsulates the “it isn’t what it is” tone of the Biden presidency. We’re 10 months in and Joe has the kind of baggage you’d expect from a two term presidency, we see what’s going on in real time, we’re experiencing the fallout, and we’re being told that our eyes deceive us. We apparently aren’t seeing someone experiencing cognitive difficulties associated with age. The withdrawal from Afghanistan was a success. Inflation isn’t happening, or if it is, it’s temporary, and if it isn’t temporary it’s actually good. The supply chain issues are an upper-class problem, and you can go without your Peloton for a little while longer, at least until Mayor Pete has some bonding time with the young’uns. The border isn’t being overrun, Biden isn’t running the same child detention centers Trump was. We’ve always been at war with eastasia.
Is “Fuck Joe Biden” vulgar? Sure. But they aren’t saying that, are they?
Is “Let’s Go Brandon” a stand in for “Fuck Joe Biden”? I don’t know… Is it?
It hits me that the one time they’ve admitted that their narrative might have just been a lie (He’s the most popular president ever, don’t you know, his approval rating is just like Obama’s!) wasn’t the most obvious, bald faced of lies (though it’s quite up there), it was the one that they think they can weaponize; “Fine! They are chanting “Fuck Joe Biden”, those monsters!” I’m not getting excited over this.
HT, you could make a lot of money messaging for Ron Klain. You’ve clearly go it down pat.
Have you ever listened to the Ruthless podcast? It’s hosted by Josh Holmes, a former Chief of Staff for Mitch McConnel and Comfortably Smug, a twitter troll with a handle near and dear to my heart.
Reason I bring this up is that every episode they do at least two things: Do an interview (and the number of Senators, Governors, and House Members they’ve interviewed is insane), and play a game. The games are kind of golden. There are three they play: King of The Hill, Dem or Journo, and Klain to Fame.
With King of the Hill, Josh and Smug pick a champion out of a slate of “Republicans”, those quotes doing some heavy lifting, and compete for which of their champions have the worst Tweets of the Week… Jennifer “brainworms” Rubin usually wins.
With Dem or Journo, Josh and Smug are presented with four statements, three from journalists, and one from an administration official, and they’re asked to identify which of the four statements came from the Democrat operative.
And with Klain to Fame, Josh and Smug are presented with four absolutely guano-insane tweets, and they’re asked to identify which of the three was not retweeted by Ron Klain.
What I like about the last two games is that they highlight the sheer loss of credibility of these people and institutions… When you have a hard time differentiating “journalists” from party operatives or batshit insanity from something the White House chief of staff tweets into the ether, you got a problem.
How’s this for batshit crazy (I haven’t gotten past the headline posted on Real Clear Politics, and not sure I want to): https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/bidenomics-is-working/ar-AAQ0MwM
Yes, news outlets posting crackpot pieces by party operatives as if they are opinion pieces (and more often news!) is absolute malpractice, but standard operating procedure evidently.
“The Ethics Alarms position (which cost it about 40% of its readers since 2017) that the office of the President must be accorded a basic level of respect and fairness by the public must apply regardless of who is in the White House, or our republic does not work. ”
If your position cost you 40% of your readers then they were here for the wrong reasons initially and when they were unable to get you to crumble they left in a huff. Such readers do not have much to offer or are terribly unsure of themselves to such a degree they choose not to debate the issues with you.
While I don’t always agree that the President of the US must be given due respect especially when he routinely engages in ad hominem attacks or fabricates an evolving narrative to fit an agenda that far too often is designed to vilify one group or to pit one group against another, I do understand why you feel that way; the president is the walking, talking embodiment of what is the United States.
In short, you did not lose 40% of the readership you simply allowed the deadweight to jettison themselves.
If you lost 40% of your readers, then you surely gained some as well. I don’t know if there are any other blogs I have been reading every day for the past 5+ years aside from yours.
It is partly your positions, partly your writing, but also the commentariat you have attracted to your blog. It is like no other I’ve ever seen. I read some of the comments on a couple of Turley’s postings today, and I think my monitor had to take a shower afterwards.
This blog is special.
Diego Garcia wrote, “I read some of the comments on a couple of Turley’s postings today, and I think my monitor had to take a shower afterwards.”
Turley does have a few rather outspoken regular internet trolls on his site but there are some decent commenters there too. Heck, once in a while I “troll” his site too. 😉
Diego Garcia wrote, “This blog is special.”
Yes it is!
1. Exactly. These are the New Rules.
2. We’re not that far from the actual F word being used. Wait for the next Republican president.
3. “There have been two different reactions among those on our general side of the fight to the reactions to Alec Baldwin’s fall from, well, not exactly grace. One is to recoil with horror at the accident and assert that this is a time when we should offer our thoughts and prayers for the victims and for Baldwin, who one would hope is devastated by what he has done. Nice people tend to have this reaction, those who want to live in a more genteel world than we do. I sympathize, in that I would like to live in such a world. I would also like a unicorn pony.
“Then there was the opposite reaction, in which our folks ran up the score, skewering the gun control zealot’s failure to zealously control his gun. This is playing by the new rules of gladiatorial combat in the cultural coliseum. Those burned out on the lies and calumny we are bombarded with daily tend to go this way; they are angry, and they are more than willing to give Alec a good, hard dose of his own medicine.”
– Kurt Schlichter, Townhall.com, Oct. 25 2021
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2021/10/25/the-alec-baldwin-conundrum-n2597927
To expand on this – the first time I heard/saw John Lewis speak, it was in the spring of 1995, when Republicans were trying to reform a welfare system that was clearly broken. I watched as he smeared them as Nazis.
I’ve seen numerous other lies, and I am [bleep]ing sick of them. At some point, ethical decency crosses the line into unethical uniateral disarmament – really a slow-motion form of suicide.
4. See #3. And, I’ll add another quote from the Schlichter column:
“As for us modeling to the world, does that ever work? Has us not matching punch for punch with the cultural left ever made them hold up and think, ‘Gosh, the conservatives’ refusal to stoop to my level has made me rethink this whole pursuit of power thing – I will forgo it and return to the norms of yesteryear’? Of course not.”
5. Of course the Left is. They view themselves as having a “moral” right to rule, a twist on the “divine right of kings” from a long ago era.
“…House Democrats wouldn’t dare. They know what their members got away with.” I believe you underestimate the hypocrisy and lack of self awareness of democrats in congress. Perhaps Hillary Clinton’s and Stacey Abrams’ positions on lost elections and sexual harassment claims aren’t as representative as i thought though.
If you only have to treat Democratic Presidents with respect, you will only get Democratic Presidents. You can’t fix this by having Republicans commit political suicide. The Democrats have demonstrated that they will not change, their unethical conduct WORKS and they will not abandon it as long as it keeps working. They only care about power. If the Republicans take the high ground, it leads to perpetual Democratic rule and we can look to Australia to see what that means (Australia is voting this week to make their suspension of rights and rule by dictatorship permanent). Republicans are about 2-4 years from being listed as domestic terrorists and arrested. If the Republicans respond in kind, we either have to live with the fact that this is how politics is now (but at least the competition may allow us to keep some of our rights longer) or it finally burns the system down and we can get something better.
Conservatives need more and better generals.
We have to treat the President of the United States with deference and respect, regardless of party. That has always been part of the political tradition, much as it is with the Queen (or King) in Great Britain. It is realted to the requirement that members of Congress treat each other respectfully in debates. What we have now is a death cycle in civility and respect for our own government. The way to stop it is to stop it, unless the objective is to destroy the nation. It cannot be preserved by a policy of mutual destruction.
Well, the UK parliament are decidedly looser about throwing insults at one another, and their system is still going. The Democrats would be doing a LOT better if they had not run a candidate far past his pull date and lied about how he would govern.
Maybe, except I think that if they hadn’t run Biden it is quite likely Trump would have won.
Hmmm, so would they be better off with four more years? At least they’d be unified.
It’s crass and need to stop.
Full stop.