We Lost the Battle for the Republican Party’s Soul Long Ago

[Sparko]

Plato had seeds under his couch? Next to the remote?

Weirdly an athletic sock of some sort. Plato must be interpreted through a careful reading of Portnoy's Complaint

To this day historians disagree about whether Plato referred to the couch as a Chesterfield or Davenport.

He believed the divan was best sought from within with sober reflection.

[KUTradition]

so dumb

‘Absolute Game Changer’—Congress Introduces Radical Bitcoin Bill As Trump Primes Price For A $100 Trillion Surge To Replace Gold

Now, after Trump promised to create a "strategic national bitcoin reserve" and predicted bitcoin could eclipse gold's $16 trillion market capitalization, U.S. senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) has introduced a bill to direct the U.S. Treasury to purchase 1 million bitcoins worth almost $70 billion—while MicroStrategy's Michael Saylor has upped his huge bitcoin price prediction...

https://unu.edu/press-release/un-study- ... ul-product

[jfish26]

Men On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown

https://defector.com/men-on-the-verge-o ... -breakdown

"Tim Walz is not trans," the reactionary influencer Christopher Rufo tweeted on Tuesday. "But he knows about cross-sex hormones. He's familiar with breast binders. He has a soft spot for tucking." Rufo's post goes on like that for a while, in a tone that seems to be aiming for comic escalation and which lands closer to skronking free jazz; the last sentence is, "They will cry when they hear our transgender patriots roar!" Rufo's post is a quote-tweet of a 2019 post by Minnesota Governor and Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz, in which Walz writes, "Our transgender military members are true patriots. They deserve to be thanked, not attacked." Walz was responding to a Trump administration policy that all but banned transgender people from serving in the military; Rufo, five years later, was not so much responding to that response as he was performing his disgust at the concept of trans people existing in any context. The idea was that this would make Walz look bad.

As with so many similar distress signals from the American right, Rufo's post is easy to understand at one level—it's a man getting upset about something in a strange and theatrical way—and pretty much impossible to parse at every other. The tiresome meta-debate over the strategic merit of tagging Trumpist Republicans as "weird" notwithstanding, it is honestly just hard to think of what else to call this sort of thing. It helps a bit if you know what Rufo's particular job is, and how Trump's own bottomless and babyish appetite for umbrage, flattery, and spectacle have reshaped conservative politics into something designed to generate those above any other end. If you think of Rufo as an influencer in the classic hey-guys-please-like-and-subscribe sense, pulling faces and cutting spiteful little promos for his audience of addled conservative elites, the stilted and overstated tone at least begins to make sense.

Both greasy strivers like Rufo and also your more warped and willful elected officials on the right all understand their jobs this way and behave accordingly. If they seem somehow unlike actual people, if they are too big and too mad and too much, it is because they are now full-time content creators, and so actually not quite like actual people at all. They are all pinned into a deteriorating orbit around the dense collapsing star at the center of the conservative universe, but they have committed to at least make their turns around Donald Trump's imperial bulk as loudly as possible. Again, this is the job.

The result of that work is a chunky slurry of gossip and fantasy and rank bigotry blasting from a thousand gilded hydrants at every hour of the day; it amounts to a grim sort of fan service catering to an even grimmer fanbase. This has limited public appeal, just in the sense of not being the sort of thing that most people are interested in hearing about, let alone to the exclusion of any other topic and in the most vexed n' fervid keening imaginable, and that poses an obvious problem for a political party that has entirely given itself over to the making of this kind of noise. The bigger issue, though, is that these imperatives only run in one direction—louder, uglier, more confrontational, further out, more. If the obvious tactical challenge here is that this shit absolutely sucks and most people hate it, the more fundamental one is that the internal incentives are such that it can only ever get worse.

The fantasy of a chastened or refined Trump is, and has long been, the dumbest dream of political media dorks; the followers that put this prissy old dunce at the center of their world, and the mediocrities and opportunists who identified his rancid charisma as their own tickets to ride, know that they can only ever and always do more. This is the nature of this type of content-creation gig, which can never turn off or calm down, but also this is the dead end that conservative politics was steering towards long before Trump took the wheel. A politics whose most fundamental idea is Make Progress Stop Happening would inevitably find itself fetishizing the torment of having to live in a world in which other people, who are not even you, are somehow supposed to matter just as much.

There is some power in that, but because that appeal is grounded in humiliation and retribution and anger, its expression will naturally tend to come out vengeful and sour. This might, and mostly has, resonate with a base of people who feel those feelings and get some low thrill from how angry it makes them, but it will struggle to win over people who not only do not feel that way, but quite naturally don't want to feel that way. There are a lot of people out there who really want to punish other people, and who will indulge that fantasy until it is big enough to crowd out every other thing in and around them, but there are also people who aspire to something more than that. The former population will tend to think the latter secretly wants the same things they do, and hate them for not admitting it; the latter will hold the former in contempt, not just because of their backwards and shabby aspirations but because of how unappealing—how much smaller and more anxious and more spiteful—those desires have made them. That assessment is easy, less automatic than autonomic. It's the sort of decision that gets made in the same part of your brain that tells you not to eat a hot dog you see lying on the sidewalk.

It is very important to Christopher Rufo that he be seen as a master political communicator; if he didn't insist upon his own brilliance so vigorously, Rufo would be very difficult to distinguish from the other severe, offended, invariably bearded "traditionalists" in his cohort. Plenty of institutions have been willing to take Rufo at his word on this, but the perverse institutional tics and tendencies that compel the New York Times to treat Rufo as an actual authority don't apply to any normal person trying to figure out what the fuck this guy is even on about. If someone dressed rather ostentatiously as a clown hands you a business card identifying themselves as a Certified Children's Entertainment Professional, it would be reasonable to assume that they are what they look like.

The contrast provided by the quoted material in Rufo's "Tim Walz isn't trans" tweet doesn't flatter either the form or the substance of Rufo's performance—in Walz's post you see a straightforward affirmation that some people are worthy of respect; in Rufo's you get a screeching, pop-eyed, manically cartwheeling refusal of that premise. If the current Democratic campaign gambit of painting contemporary American conservatism as the province of lonely fuming weirdos, sociopathic local gentry, and busybody billionaires is working—if it feels not just overdue but liberating to be able to call this goof troop of aggro freaks and slavering mediocrities by their rightful names—it is mostly because it is so obviously, manifestly correct. There are other, nicer names for whatever this is, but none quite so accurate.

But that contrast is important, too. Rufo's jag of delirious nastiness looks weirder and uglier—or, maybe, just as weird and ugly as it is—because of the simple and humane assertion to which it is responding. The same goes for GOP Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance's answer, on Wednesday, to a question from local media asking, "What makes you smile, what makes you happy?" Vance grimaced and huffed and answered, "Well, I smile at a lot of things, including bogus questions from the media, man," before delivering a spectacularly mirthless laugh and steering things back towards what he was angry about. It was a bad answer, badly delivered, but it was also a disciplined one. The idea was to get back to being upset, both in the broadest possible sense and more specifically about the litany of vibe-y cable-news fixations that define the Trump/Vance campaign, such as it exists.

Again, some of this is just how conservative politics works; in lieu of any solution to any problem, lavishing attention upon the problem and identifying it as what the other guys want becomes the move more or less by default. But, again, the limitations of this approach are not just obvious but overbearing. If the only answer available to the vice presidential nominee when asked what stuff do you like is a tremulous go fuck yourself, something has gone wrong; if the only possible engagement with any or every other person is to antagonize or dominate, you will wind up lonely. There's no levity or recognizable human brightness to be found here, but there is also no air, nothing but grievance and its performance.

Again, a lot of this is just a politics built around one strange man mirroring that man's decline and serving his catastrophic tastes; as Trump's former insult-comic zest has slumped into recursive and increasingly obscure complaint, his movement has followed suit, to the point where aspirants like Ron DeSantis seem somehow to have un-learned how to smile as a strategic gambit. A political movement built on conservatism's signature combination of servility, sadism, and selfishness would naturally be inclined towards someone like Trump, who authentically embodies those, uh, let's call them "values." But installing someone that relentlessly corrupt and fundamentally unhappy atop a movement so inclined towards degrading mimesis would eventually turn it inward in destructive ways. The crises and anxieties feed on and fight with each other; they multiply, and grow louder and more chaotic. It gets weirder and weirder without any of the people inside of it noticing. They are all always saying the same things, but somehow never in any kind of harmony.

Such a movement would be unstable, of course, but all the more so because it can no longer speak or see beyond itself. This is the conflict that Trumpism can't resolve, the thing that makes even the most gently lobbed of softball questions impossible to handle and what makes an assertion like Walz's—other people are just as real as you, and they deserve respect—not just unanswerable, but incomprehensible. It's not just the idea that Walz is expressing but the very idea of someone like Walz expressing it that is so fundamentally confounding to operators like Rufo; the concept of a normal, empathetic, passably happy heterosexual white man who is not constantly afraid and angry and arguing with everyone around him simply does not compute.

It would be a fitting end for such a cynical movement to wind up so entangled in the performance of its various individuated grifts that it can't do anything but thrash itself further into entanglement. The movement's seething antiheroes can't even afford to win, really, because of the threat that any such resolution poses to their all-devouring hustle. It has forgotten how to do anything else; for Trump and his acolytes and impersonators, to do less would mean humiliation, to change would be something like death. They will drown themselves on principle; we might as well leave them to it.

[japhy]

invariably bearded "traditionalists"

Damnit, I wish I had written that.

[Sparko]

Artful. Highlights of course the danger of autocracy. Enemies of the state are the only thing pursued as policy.

[jfish26]

Hey look! We found one!

To Save Conservatism From Itself, I Am Voting for Harris

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/11/opin ... rtion.html

I believe life begins at conception. If I lived in Florida, I would support the state’s heartbeat bill and vote against the referendum seeking to liberalize Florida’s abortion laws. I supported the Dobbs decision and I support well-drafted abortion restrictions at the state and federal levels. I was a pro-life lawyer who worked for pro-life legal organizations. While I want prospective parents to be able to use I.V.F. to build their families, I do not believe that unused embryos should simply be discarded — thrown away as no longer useful.

But I’m going to vote for Kamala Harris in 2024 and — ironically enough — I’m doing it in part to try to save conservatism.

Here’s what I mean.

Since the day Donald Trump came down that escalator in 2015, the MAGA movement has been engaged in a long-running, slow-rolling ideological and characterological transformation of the Republican Party. At each step, it has pushed Republicans further and further away from Reaganite conservatism. It has divorced Republican voters from any major consideration of character in leadership and all the while it has labeled people who resisted the change as “traitors.”

What allegiance do you owe a party, a movement or a politician when it or they fundamentally change their ideology and ethos?

Let’s take an assertion that should be uncontroversial, especially to a party that often envisions itself as a home for people of faith: Lying is wrong. I’m not naïve; I know that politicians have had poor reputations for honesty since Athens. But I have never seen a human being lie with the intensity and sheer volume of Donald Trump.

Even worse, Trump’s lies are contagious. The legal results speak for themselves. A cascade of successful defamation lawsuits demonstrate the severity and pervasiveness of Republican dishonesty. Fox paid an enormous settlement related to its hosts’ relentless falsehoods during Trump’s effort to steal the election. Rudy Giuliani owes two Georgia election workers $148 million for his gross lies about their conduct while counting votes. Salem Media Group apologized to a Georgia voter who was falsely accused of voter fraud and halted distribution of Dinesh D’Souza’s fantastical “documentary” of election fraud, “2,000 Mules.”

And that’s hardly an exhaustive list. Several additional defamation cases are pending against MAGA networks and MAGA personalities.

Let’s take another assertion that should be relatively uncontroversial: Political violence and threats of violence have no place in the American democratic process. Yet threats and intimidation follow the MAGA movement like night follows day. One of the saddest stories of our time is the way in which even local election officials and local school board members fear for their safety. The level of threat against public officials has escalated in the MAGA era, MAGA Republicans often wield threats as a weapon against Republican dissenters, and every American should remember Jan. 6, when a mob of insurrectionists ransacked the Capitol.

I know that threats and violence aren’t exclusive to the right. We all watched in horror as a man tried to assassinate Trump; another man threatened Brett Kavanaugh’s life; and no one should forget the horrific congressional shooting, when an angry liberal man attempted a mass murder of Republican members of Congress on a baseball field.

But only one party has nominated a man who was indicted for his role in the criminal scheme to steal an American election, a scheme that culminated in a violent political riot. Only one party nominated a man who began the first rally of his 2024 campaign with a song by violent insurrectionists. He played “Justice for All,” a bastardized version of the national anthem by a group called the J6 Prison Choir. The song features the “Star-Spangled Banner” interspersed with excerpts of Trump reading the Pledge of Allegiance.

It’s not just Trump’s lies that are contagious, but his cruelty as well, and that cruelty is embedding itself deeply within one of Trump’s most loyal constituencies, conservative evangelicals. It is difficult to overstate the viciousness and intolerance of MAGA Christians against their political foes. There are many churches and Christian leaders who are now more culturally Trumpian than culturally Christian. Trump is changing the church.

And to what end?

It is fascinating to me that there are voices online who still claim that a person can’t be Christian and vote for Democrats, when the Trump campaign watered down the Republican platform on abortion to such an extent that it’s functionally pro-choice. Earlier generations of the pro-life movement would not have tolerated such a retreat. They would have made it clear that there were some principles Republicans simply can’t abandon without becoming a fundamentally different party.

It becomes even stranger to claim that Christians can’t vote for Democrats when the prime-time lineup at the Republican convention featured an OnlyFans star, a man who publicly slapped his wife, a man who pleaded no contest to an assault charge, and another man who had sex with his friend’s wife while the friend watched — and that’s not even including any reference to Trump himself.

Even if you want to focus on abortion as the single issue that decides your vote, the picture for abortion opponents is grim. Trump should get credit for nominating justices who helped overturn Roe (though the real credit for the decision goes to the justices themselves, including the George W. Bush appointee Samuel Alito, who actually wrote the majority opinion).

But when we’re dealing with a complex social phenomenon, political and legal issues are rarely simple. For the first time in decades, abortion rates and ratios increased under Trump. In addition, the best available evidence indicates that abortion rates are up since the Dobbs decision.

Barack Obama was an unabashedly pro-choice politician, yet there were 338,270 fewer abortions in 2016 than there were in 2008, George W. Bush’s last year in office. Though Trump nominated anti-abortion justices and enacted a number of anti-abortion policies, there were 56,080 more abortions the last year of his term than there were in the last year of Obama’s presidency.

Even worse, after Dobbs the pro-life position is in a state of political collapse. It hasn’t won a single red-state referendum, and it might even lose again in Florida, a state that’s increasingly red yet also looks to have a possible pro-choice supermajority. According to a recent poll, 69 percent of Floridians support the pro-choice abortion referendum, a margin well above the 60 percent threshold required for passage.

If the ultimate goal of the pro-life movement is to reduce the number of abortions, not just to change legal precedent, then these numbers and these electoral outcomes are deeply alarming. If present trends continue, then abortion opponents will have won an important legal battle, but they’ll ultimately lose the more important cultural and political cause.

Reasonable people disagree with me. I have friends and family members who will vote for Trump only because he is more moderate than Harris on abortion. I hate the idea that we should condition friendship or respect based on the way in which a person votes. Time and again we make false assumptions about a person’s character based on his or her political positions. There are truly bad actors in American politics, but we cannot write off millions of our fellow citizens who vote their consciences based on their own knowledge and political understanding.

At the same time, we should make the argument — firmly but respectfully — that this is no ordinary race and that the old political categories no longer apply.

For example, how many Republicans would have predicted that voting for a Democrat would be the best way to confront violent Russian aggression and that the Republican would probably yield to a Russian advance? In many ways, the most concretely conservative action I can take in this election is to vote for the candidate who will stand against Vladimir Putin. By voting for pro-life politicians down ballot, I can help prevent federal liberalization of abortion law. But if a president decides to abandon Ukraine and cripple NATO, there is little anyone can do.

While there are voters who are experiencing a degree of Trump nostalgia, remembering American life pre-Covid as a time of full employment and low inflation, there is a different and darker story to tell about Trump’s first term. Our social fabric frayed. It’s not just that abortions increased: The murder rate skyrocketed; drug overdose deaths hit new highs; marriage rates fell; and birthrates continued their long decline. Americans ended his term more divided than when it began.

I’m often asked by Trump voters if I’m “still conservative,” and I respond that I can’t vote for Trump precisely because I am conservative. I loathe sex abuse, pornography and adultery. Trump has brought those vices into the mainstream of the Republican Party. I want to cultivate a culture that values human life from conception through natural death. Yet America became more brutal and violent during Trump’s term. I want to defend liberal democracy from authoritarian aggression, yet Trump would abandon our allies and risk our most precious alliances.

The only real hope for restoring a conservatism that values integrity, demonstrates real compassion and defends our foundational constitutional principles isn’t to try to make the best of Trump, a man who values only himself. If he wins again, it will validate his cruelty and his ideological transformation of the Republican Party. If Harris wins, the West will still stand against Vladimir Putin, and conservative Americans will have a chance to build something decent from the ruins of a party that was once a force for genuine good in American life.

[Overlander]

Great read, thanks for sharing JFish

[KUTradition]

MAGA Colorado Clerk Found Guilty of Election Tampering

A former Colorado county clerk and close ally of Mike Lindell was found guilty on seven charges related to election tampering during the 2020 presidential count…

[Overlander]

MAGA Colorado Clerk Found Guilty of Election Tampering

A former Colorado county clerk and close ally of Mike Lindell was found guilty on seven charges related to election tampering during the 2020 presidential count…

Every

Single

Accusation

[jfish26]

I have a feeling this clerk was as much victim as perp. Fell for and swept away by modern-day Lyle Lanley’s jingle.

[jfish26]

I recall that there has, on occasion, been a fondness for Ben Sasse in these parts. Let's check in on the go-getter, shall we?

Sasse’s spending spree: Former UF president channeled millions to GOP allies, secretive contracts

https://www.alligator.org/article/2024/ ... -contracts

In his 17-month stint as UF president, Ben Sasse more than tripled his office’s spending, directing millions in university funds into secretive consulting contracts and high-paying positions for his GOP allies.

Sasse ballooned spending under the president’s office to $17.3 million in his first year in office — up from $5.6 million in former UF President Kent Fuchs’ last year, according to publicly available administrative budget data.

A majority of the spending surge was driven by lucrative contracts with big-name consulting firms and high-salaried, remote positions for Sasse’s former U.S. Senate staff and Republican officials.

Sasse’s consulting contracts have been kept largely under wraps, leaving the public in the dark about what the contracted firms did to earn their fees. The university also declined to clarify specific duties carried out by Sasse’s ex-Senate staff, several of whom were salaried as presidential advisers.

The university said Sasse’s budget expansion went through the “appropriate approval process” but did not answer questions about how Sasse bankrolled his splurges, where the funds originated or who authorized the spending.

Keeping friends close

Amid protests over his conservative track record as a Nebraska Republican senator, Sasse promised during his ascension to the UF presidency in Fall 2022 that he would divorce himself from partisan politics under what he called a vow of “political celibacy.”

But the senator-turned-university president quietly broke that promise in his 17-month term at the university’s helm, hiring six ex-Senate staffers and two former Republican officials to high-paying, remote jobs at the university.

Under Sasse’s administration, two of his former Senate staffers — Raymond Sass and James Wegmann — were among the highest-ranking and highest-paid officials at UF. Both worked remotely from the D.C. area, roughly 800 miles from UF’s main campus in Gainesville.

Sass, Sasse’s former Senate chief of staff, was UF’s vice president for innovation and partnerships — a position which didn’t exist under previous administrations. His starting salary at UF was $396,000, more than double the $181,677 he made on Capitol Hill.

Wegmann, Sasse’s former Senate communications director, is UF’s vice president of communications, a position he works remotely from his $725,000 home in Washington, D.C.

Salaried at $432,000, Wegmann replaced Steve Orlando, who made $270,000 a year in the position and had nearly 30 years of experience in media relations at UF before he was demoted to be Wegmann’s deputy.

The Alligator first reported on Wegmann and Sass’ appointments last October, but an additional four who followed Sasse from the Senate to the Swamp have gone unnoticed by the press.

Sasse appointed his former Senate press secretary, Taylor Sliva, as UF’s Assistant Vice President of Presidential Communications and Public Affairs, a new position. Sliva’s $232,000 salary made him the second-highest-paid employee in UF’s Office of Strategic Communications and Marketing, trailing only Wegmann.

The remaining three ex-Senate staffers — Raven Shirley, Kari Ridder and Kelicia Rice — served as presidential advisers to Sasse, though their specific duties remain unclear. Rice, Sasse’s Senate scheduler, is listed as a presidential adviser in UF’s salary directory but in practice remained as Sasse’s scheduler, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Sasse raised his former Senate staffs’ salaries at UF by an average of 44% compared to their Capitol Hill pay, contributing to a $4.3 million increase in presidential salary expenses over Fuchs’ last year in office.

Outside of his Senate staff, Sasse also tapped former Republican Tennessee Commissioner of Education Penny Schwinn as UF’s inaugural vice president of PK-12 and pre-bachelors programs. Schwinn, with a starting salary of $367,500, worked the newly-created position from her $1 million home in Nashville, Tennessee.

Additionally, Sasse hired Alice James Burns, former scheduler for Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), as Director of Presidential Relations and Major Events. Burns, salaried at $205,000, also worked for UF outside of Florida.

Citing his wife’s recent epilepsy diagnosis, Sasse abruptly resigned from his post in July — leaving the future of his UF inner circle unclear. The university did not respond to questions about whether his political appointees were fired, non-renewed or resigned following his departure.

Fuchs, who began as interim president Aug. 1, kept a relatively small staff of less than 10, compared to Sasse who employed more than 30 in his office.

Jet-setting on UF’s dime

All but one of Sasse’s political appointees worked for UF outside of Florida and commuted to Gainesville on the university’s dollar when needed — a move reflected in his office’s travel expenses.

In Sasse’s first full fiscal year at the university’s helm, travel expenses for the president’s office soared to $633,000 — over 20 times higher than Fuchs’ annual average of $28,000. Sasse spent more on travel in his 17 months at UF than Fuchs’ entire eight-year tenure.

It is not unprecedented for UF employees to work outside of Florida, but out-of-state positions have typically been reserved for those representing the university as federal lobbyists in its Washington, D.C. office. It is virtually unprecedented for top UF officials and rank-and-file administrators to work outside of Florida.

The university hasn’t responded to requests for a complete log of Sasse’s travel expenses, leaving it unclear how much of his sky-high travel expenditures were spent shuttling his remote hires to campus. A partial report shows Sasse spent over $20,000 between April 29 and July 29 to fly his employees to campus.

Taylor Sliva, Sasse’s press secretary, was the only one of Sasse’s political hires to work in Florida. His employment contract, obtained from a public records request, included a $15,000 relocation stipend. He currently rents out a house in Gainesville.

McKinsey comes to the Swamp

When Sasse took over UF in February 2023, he knew he’d need a hand.

His track record in higher education administration was limited to his five-year presidency at Midland University, a small, private liberal arts college in Fremont, Nebraska. At UF, which enrolls over 60,000 students and pulls in an annual $1 billion in research grants, Sasse faced a steep learning curve.

He turned to consultants for help.

During his presidency, Sasse spent $7.2 million in university funds to consultants for advice on his strategic planning and to fill leadership gaps — over 40 times more than Fuchs’ total consulting expenses over his eight-year term.

Sasse paid nearly two-thirds of the $7.2 million to McKinsey & Company, where he once worked as an adviser on an hourly contract. The firm carries prestige as one of the “big three” management consulting giants, but is notoriously secretive about its dealings and shielded its work from public view using records laws protecting trade secrets.

A critical “scope of work” attachment, which would outline McKinsey's responsibilities to UF, was redacted from a copy of the contract obtained from a public records request. The redaction, permissible under state public records laws, makes it virtually impossible for the public to know what the firm did to earn its fees.

A UF spokesperson said McKinsey was using data analysis to help Sasse build his strategic plan, but the university hasn’t disclosed further details about its $4.7 million contract with the firm since The Alligator first reported its existence last August. Public records requests for any reports, presentations and data produced under the contract have yielded no responsive documents.

Sasse offered the only public glimpse of McKinsey’s work at UF last fall during “roadshows” of his strategic plan. Accompanied by slides displaying “sobriety data” provided by McKinsey, Sasse argued some faculty weren’t pulling their weight and had “quiet retired.”

One slide showed only 10% of research faculty drove 39% of research awards on campus. Another showed in one unidentified 47-person department, only 13 were engaged in research.

In two roadshows that were open to the press, Sasse skipped over a slide that sparked controversy after the Alligator reported on anonymous faculty accounts of previous presentations. The slide suggested reducing UF's total number of departments from 200 to an ideal number of 140.

Beyond the $4.7 million contract, Sasse payrolled three former McKinsey consultants as full-time employees in his office, with salaries ranging from $150,000 to $200,000, according to university records.

It remains unknown who Sasse paid the remaining $2.5 million in consulting expenses to. Public records requests for the president’s consulting contracts were not fulfilled in time for publication.

McKinsey’s contract allowed for UF to pay additional fees for consulting services until February 2025. The university has gone months without responding to public records requests for invoices related to the contract.

[KUTradition]

ironic swampiness…on numerous levels

[Shirley]

I recall that there has, on occasion, been a fondness for Ben Sasse in these parts. Let's check in on the go-getter, shall we?

Sasse’s spending spree: Former UF president channeled millions to GOP allies, secretive contracts

https://www.alligator.org/article/2024/ ... -contracts

smh. Yet more proof I don't have any ____ing idea what a "conservative" is.

[Sparko]

Grift machine. No handle to pull. Just fast ones.

[jfish26]

I recall that there has, on occasion, been a fondness for Ben Sasse in these parts. Let's check in on the go-getter, shall we?

Sasse’s spending spree: Former UF president channeled millions to GOP allies, secretive contracts

https://www.alligator.org/article/2024/ ... -contracts

smh. Yet more proof I don't have any ____ing idea what a "conservative" is.

At present anyway, it’s “someone who uses all available means to conserve resources and power for themselves and those they favor.”

[RainbowsandUnicorns]

J.D. for the L
https://twitter.com/TrumpsTaxes/status/ ... 1408435631

and

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1823788502980735158

[KUTradition]

another day ending in “y”

another hollow comer investigation

[jfish26]

There is perhaps no better example of the authoritarian capture of the Republican Party than that THIS argument from THIS guy will not matter to anyone left in that tent.

Endorsement of Vice President of the United States Kamala Harris

Almost four years ago now, on January 6, 2021, a stake was driven through the heart of America’s Democracy, and on that day American Democracy was left teetering on a knife’s edge. On that day, the prescribed day for choosing the American president, there was not a peaceful transfer of power in the United States of America — for the first time in the almost 250 years since the Founding of the Nation.

As a consequence of the former president’s continued denial of that appalling day, and his defiance of America’s Democracy to this day almost four years later, millions of Americans still believe that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” from the former president, despite the fact that he lost that election fair and square in what has been proven over and over to have been the freest, fairest, and most accurate election in American history.

Because of the former president’s continued, knowingly false claims that he won the 2020 election, millions of Americans no longer have faith and confidence in our national elections, and many never will again.

Because of the former president’s knowingly false claims, many Americans — especially young Americans, tragically — have even begun to question whether constitutional democracy is the best form of self-government for America.

The 2020 presidential election of course was not “stolen” from the former president and he knows that. It was the former president who attempted to steal the 2020 presidential election from the American People, not they from him. To attempt to steal an election in the United States of America is to attempt to steal America’s Democracy.

For the former president to continue to persist in the knowingly false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him is a profound affront to American Democracy and to the Constitution of the United States — an affront without any precedent in all of American history.

In his utterly inexplicable obsession to this very day to deny, attempt to justify, even to glorify January 6, and to bludgeon Americans into believing that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him when he knows it was not, the former president has corrupted America’s Democracy.

Yet, to this day — to this day still — not only does the former president, and now the Republican Party of which he is again the standard bearer, continue to falsely claim that the former president won the 2020 election. He and his Party defiantly refuse even to pledge that they will honor and respect the vote and the will of the American People in the upcoming presidential election. In this defiant refusal, the Republican candidate for the presidency and the Republican Party have literally taken America political hostage, threatening the Nation with the specter of another January 6, 2021 on January 6, 2025, if the former president again loses his campaign for the presidency by a vote of the American People.

Until January 6, 2021, there was a peaceful transfer of power from one President of the United States to his successor for almost 250 years. The peaceful transfer of power from one President of the United States to the next and the commitment of presidential candidates and their respective political parties to the peaceful transfer of power in the next election are fundamental tenets of our constitutional Republic. Adherence to these tenets is essential to American Democracy, American governance and government, and to the Rule of Law in the United States of America. Without the peaceful transfer of power, America would have no democracy.

The politicians tell us that America’s Democracy and the Rule of Law are too “abstract” to “resonate” with American voters. If that was ever true in the past, which I do not accept, it is emphatically not true today. For reasons we all know too well, there could not possibly be any more concrete and consequential issues for the Nation and the American voter today than America’s Democracy and Rule of Law. America’s Democracy, and along with it the Rule of Law, were almost stolen from us on January 6, 2021, by the former President of the United States, who is, today, asking us to return him to the Highest Office of trust in the land.

America’s Democracy and Rule of Law are the defining features of our Nation. It is America’s Democracy, Constitution, and Rule of Law that have made America the envy of the world and the beacon of democracy and freedom for the world for almost 250 years.

This presidential election is a test of Americans’ commitment to America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law. It is so because the former president and the Republican Party have shamefully made it so.

The often lofty, at times even noble, policy differences that have been the hallmark of American Politics and partisan debate for almost a quarter of a millennium pale in comparison to the foundational national policy issues of America’s Democracy, Constitution, and Rule of Law. American Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law are the stakes — the only real stakes — in the upcoming election. Having made them so, these foundational issues of our times cannot now be wished away by the former president and his Republican Party, as they would have it. And they must not be wished away by the American People.

The fact remains to this day that even the loftiest and noblest of policies and policy differences will be comparatively inconsequential unless and until we Americans bring to an end the war on America’s Democracy that was instigated by the former president and his allies on January 6, 2021. For their part, the former president and the Republican Party have determined to prosecute their war against America’s Democracy to its catastrophic end. As a consequence, for our part, “We the People” must bring this unholy war to an end – now.

The Founders of our Nation and the Framers of our Constitution feared most of all this very moment in American history, when the American People would be tempted by the seductive demagoguery of a modern-day populist demagogue. In a letter to George Washington in 1792, over 230 years ago, Alexander Hamilton warned of this day and this demagogue, who would “mount the hobby horse of popularity” and whose “objects” “may justly be suspected to throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.’”

Thomas Jefferson agreed with Alexander Hamilton about very little, except about the existential danger to the Republic of a populist demagogue. “If once elected, and at a second or third election outvoted by one or two votes, he will pretend false votes, foul play, hold possession of the reins of government, be supported by the States voting for him,” Jefferson presciently wrote to James Madison in 1787.

The time for America’s choosing has come. It is time for all Americans to stand and affirm whether they believe in American Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law, and want for America the same — or whether they do not.

The former president and the Republican Party have cynically framed this choice as a Hobson’s choice and they have cynically forced their supposed Hobson’s choice upon the Nation. But they have chosen as their standard bearer the one man who is singularly unfit to embody and represent not only to the Nation, but to the world, America’s sacred Democracy, Constitution, and Rule of Law.

In a word, for America and Americans, this is no Hobson’s choice at all.

America’s two political parties are the political guardians of American Democracy. Regrettably, in the presidential election of 2024 there is only one political party and one candidate for the presidency that can claim the mantle of defender and protector of America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law.

As a result, I will unhesitatingly vote for the Democratic Party’s candidate for the Presidency of the United States, Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris.

In voting for Vice President Harris, I assume that her public policy views are vastly different from my own, but I am indifferent in this election as to her policy views on any issues other than America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law, as I believe all Americans should be.

In the 2024 election for President of the United States, there are no more important issues for America.

It is our Democracy, our Constitution, and our Rule of Law that bind us together as Americans. We Americans must never allow ourselves to be put asunder from this that binds us by the siren calls of the politicians and the political sophists, the mercenaries and the opportunists, who entreat us that the only thing that matters in this presidential election is the candidates’ different positions on the sundry policies of the day. All, as if nothing had come before. We Americans know all too well what has come before.

We understand what the political class does not want us to understand. That in the presidential election of 2024, the candidates’ policy differences are the least that matters to the United States of America.

J. Michael Luttig

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents ... ndorsement

[Sparko]

That has been the essential truth of the election. A malign, demented dictator empowered by an oligarch-fueled Congress. Versus democracy, prosperity and preservation of the last great hope for the world as it confronts incredible, existential problems.

[Shirley]

Thanks for sharing that, jfish.

I can't understand how people like pdub, ousdahl, et al, can vote third party, for all the reasons Luttig lists.

I hope the letter forms a permission structure for other truly conservative Republicans.