Calvin Coolidge

@PAManufacturers @baseballcrank @AndrewCMcCarthy @NRO *Taps the sign* x.com/silent_calvin/…

@Silent_Calvin @baseballcrank @AndrewCMcCarthy @NRO Certainly nothing that would require a Presidential pardon

Still more examples from @AndrewCMcCarthy @NRO of why the Democrats mad at Trump's abuses aren't mad about the abuses, they're mad that it's Trump doing it this time:

@PAManufacturers @baseballcrank @AndrewCMcCarthy @NRO Oh yeah, that was crazy. I wonder if there was ever a congressional investigation of that. If there was, I’m sure it wouldn’t have been a waste of time and resulted in nothing.

@Silent_Calvin @baseballcrank @AndrewCMcCarthy @NRO Ten percent for the Big Guy!

@gringaxox @Camman1233 @wells_sl @factpostnews @TheDemocrats @grok I support the troops unless their wife missed an appointment when she was 1. Then I do not support the troops.

@Silent_Calvin @Camman1233 @wells_sl @factpostnews @TheDemocrats @grok Even younger lol she was 1

ICE has detained Annie Ramos, the newlywed spouse of an Army sergeant training to deploy. Ramos was taken from the military base where the couple planned to live.

@Camman1233 @Lindsey121985 @wells_sl @factpostnews @TheDemocrats @grok Incorrect; 6 years ago she submitted her DACA paperwork but it was never processed since the Trump administration temporarily halted the program for new applicants. But sure, keep inventing lies to feel better about detaining a Sunday School teacher.

@Lindsey121985 @Silent_Calvin @wells_sl @factpostnews @TheDemocrats @grok She had a appointment 6 years ago- when she was 17, and did nothing after but go off

@Camman1233 @wells_sl @factpostnews @TheDemocrats @grok That’s a great point, she shouldn’t have made the decision to come here when she was … 2.

@wells_sl @factpostnews @TheDemocrats @grok Eh feel like some nuances got left out there. She only applied for DACA in 2020 and was never approved. She only tried for a green card recently so she could live on base. I’m sympathetic but it’s a slap in the face to people who actually go through the right processes

@WeatherBrew @HistoryDean @walterkirn I don’t understand what’s controversial about this. Using someone’s death as an opportunity to mention what a dirtbag you thought they were in life is not “empathy”. Did hundreds face punishment after making posts about Charlie Kirk because they were being empathetic?

@HistoryDean @Silent_Calvin @walterkirn Even Vox made fun of it. Everyone has their own reality though. I try and let people live in their own when I can.

Non-believers don't believe that believers really believe. It harms their understanding of the world.

@HistoryDean @walterkirn Pretending you know the thoughts of a person so you can justify your dislike and name-call them when they die isn’t empathizing. It’s called fantasizing. You’re decrying the lack of empathy in this country without having a firm grip on what that word means.

No. I put myself in his shoes. He didn’t like the result of an election so he used his power to try and invalidate the vote. He did the same thing James Comey did against Hillary. Ken Starr was criticized for the same thing. I understand why they did it. That’s why I disagree and I’ll criticize the as much as I do anyone who undermined our democracy. We criticize McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover and Watergate. I don’t think it’s good for the country to say we can’t criticize law enforcement or anyone else. They have way too much power. Mueller made his choices. He was so horrified by the guy who won the election that he just had to do something. I guess he thought it was worth it. I disagree with that position. I hope you can put yourself in my shoes and empathize with that. I want our elections fought fairly. If and when people collude with enemy nations, nail them to the wall. But don’t launch a new Red Scare and exploit those fears to undermine democracy. When the Soviets approached VP Hubert Humphrey while he was running in ‘72 against Nixon and offered to bankroll his campaign, he told them no thank you. I’ve cited that in columns. Imagine if he’d won and a former FBI director had used that to target HHH as having colluded with Russia and being their puppet. Jeff Sessions met the Russian ambassador as a senator, when they meet with ambassadors all the time, and it was at a party. That’s far flimsier ground than what happened with Humphrey. Look at @GeorgePapa19. They approached him to tell a tale about Russia hacking Hillary and then they sent someone else to ask if he’d heard anything about Hillary and the emails. Fortunately they were dumb enough to send a woman named Turk to a Greek guy and he didn’t trust her. He pled guilty to lying to the FBI, okay. But had they not targeted him based on a story they gave him, it never would have happened. If they could do all this to a president, I’m worried about what they can do to you or me. If we can’t criticize FBI agents, they have free rain to do whatever the hell they want.

@HistoryDean @walterkirn Dude you were just dunking on Robert Mueller on the day of his death because you didn’t agree with him.

The inability to put yourselves in the shoes of others — to empathize or sympathize even if you don’t agree — is a plague. Nobody can put themselves in anyone else’s shoes or wants to. It’s why Hollywood movies are increasingly just people inserting themselves as characters instead of creating characters.

@colorblindk1d @Odoyle1201 @jonathanchait Oh so in addition to not knowing how courts work, you also don't know how a statute of limitations works.

@Silent_Calvin @Odoyle1201 @jonathanchait Do you not think that if they had enough evidence they would have tried to get him on criminal charges? Do you not find it absurd that leftwing donors passed a law to get rid of the statute of limitations for just one year and the suit against him dropped the same day?

I can think of a certain unprogressive sexual predator who got off the hook

@colorblindk1d @Odoyle1201 @jonathanchait “New York charged him in civil court.” Cool okay so you don’t know how courts work.

@Odoyle1201 @jonathanchait Yet New York had to change the law to temporarily abolish statutes of limitations and charge him in a civil court where you don't need to prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt and even then they did not provide enough evidence that he raped her.

@GWHayduke97 @ClwnPrncCharlie @JacobAShell There’s a word for the thing where 99 people who don’t own a piece of property get to decide what the person that owns the property does with it, and it’s not “capitalism”.

@ClwnPrncCharlie @JacobAShell Because, for instance, in a neighborhood of 100 people, 99 of them all have a strong and important interest in not allowing the one guy looking for a big payout to have a high-rise casino built on his plot.

Here's the theory-level question yimbies havent answered: why should 10 million ppl who want to be in, say, Boston for totally banal, horde-like reasons get to have a say about what the future shape of that city will be, rather than the people who own the city? What is yimbies' larger polticial theory which disfavors the preferences of owners (who want Boston kept "artificially" small and pricey) and favors the preferences of this vast abstract horde? I could see a communist answer to the question: the owners of the city should lose their ownership because they're now "historically obsolete"'...a state apparatus dominated by workers' organizations should grab all the land...etc etc etc. Sure. But last I checked, yimbies arent communists! They say they believe in capitalism. And if you're taking capitalist property rights seriously, then why arent you taking seriously owners' rights to do what they want with the physical environment that they own? If what owners want to do is pool political resources to set up zoning laws they like, then this is just spirit of capital doing its thing, isn't it? Since when does big capital not get to set anything up as exclusive? And BTW, in the "communist" version of the thought experiment, I am not sure the communist state would tear down historical Boston to put up giant housing boxes everywhere. Maybe they'd do that (producing the kinds of cities China has), or maybe they'd preserve it as some kind of "dialectical political symbol," like the Soviets did with St Petersburg (Petrograd) or Novgorod.

@HistoryDean Agreed. It’s really out of line to try and use a culture you’re not a part of to settle political debates.

Don’t presume to quote Greeks and tell us what they meant. That’s our culture. You don’t get to use it. I can 100% guarantee you that the ancient Greeks, had the purge and spent 50 years calling for the death of them all, murdered them, would’ve one day decided that it was time to take action.

@sfrantzman Lol. cnn.com/2021/09/13/pol…

Melania is a decent person and it’s incredibly unfair to be critical of her. She’s never done anything negative in her public career. Compared to the other corrupt charlatans and terrible people at the UN, she’s a saint How many of these UN bureaucrat monsters were not only corrupt but leaned into abuses and genocide?

It’s not making a mockery. A mockery was when Kurt Waldheim was UN Secretary General and he was apparently a former Nazi. A mockery was all the failures of the UN to stop genocide such as in Rwanda. Our First Lady is not a mockery. She’s decent and honorable

@smod4real I didn’t realize Trump avoided Afghanistan from 2017-2021.

The neocons/liberals were responsible for two lengthy conflicts with U.S. ground forces, and for pouring gasoline on more than a few bloody civil wars. Trump has avoided these outcomes so far, and tho I disagree with his war making decisions, I will judge them by their fruits.

@sfrantzman @RyanNewYork @MattWalshBlog Who in history has ever avoided war with the US due to America’s well armed contractors? I’m not saying well armed militias. I’m referring to individuals with “small arsenals”.

@RyanNewYork @MattWalshBlog You underestimate how well armed we are. My contractor builds his own guns, has a small arsenal, so do several other neighbors I know where I live. People take this seriously. And they are well trained and good shots.

The whole debate about which countries have "the right to exist" is based on a false premise. There is no "right to exist" for nations. What does that even mean? How can a country be entitled to exist? Every country on Earth came into existence through force and remains in existence through force. If you can't defend your existence, you will not exist anymore. The history of civilization is full of countries that existed and then ceased to exist. Are the rights of those countless now non-existent countries being perpetually violated by their non-existence? It makes no sense. If you can defend your existence, then you can exist. If you can't, then eventually you won't exist. It's really that simple. A right is an entitlement, by definition, and there is no country that has an eternal entitlement to exist whether it can defend and support itself or not. The very concept is absurd, meaningless.

@frankieboy1 @atlanticesque Trump would never fire someone.

@atlanticesque To a working-class guy Romney always came off as the guy who just laid you off from work.

Gosh, looks like whoever is in the “Low Education” quadrants tends to win! Clinton ‘96, Bush ‘00 and ‘04, Obama ‘08 and ‘12, Trump ‘16 and ‘24. Only 2020 breaks the trend. Seems clear to me that if you want to actually win the election, you should appeal to cranks, not wonks!

@AuburnJPJ @AndrewCFollett @MeghanMcCain “The Press called McCain Hitler” “When?” “On this Fox show” “That’s Family Guy” “Well, on this NPR show.” “Read the transcript, that’s not true.” “Well, they said McCain was either a cynical asshole or America’s Hitler.” “That’s JD Vance talking about Trump.”

@Silent_Calvin @AndrewCFollett @MeghanMcCain “No one was doing it” “Family guy isn’t press” “It was the press but just a panel discussion” “Yes we did it and it was the right thing to do” Every single time.

You guys only loved and appreciated him when he never become president and then died. I get the point but he was called a racist by the entire democrat party for years for daring to run against Obama ultimately leading to the rise of Trump. If you cry wolf enough - sometimes the beast shows up.

@AuburnJPJ @AndrewCFollett @MeghanMcCain TIL having a panel discussion about the attack ads from the McCain camp is the same as calling him Hitler.

@Silent_Calvin @AndrewCFollett @MeghanMcCain How about NPR? npr.org/2008/10/10/955…

@AndrewCFollett @MeghanMcCain I didn’t realize “Family Guy” was the press.

@MeghanMcCain I wasn't old enough to vote for your dad on election day 2008... But, I was old enough to be horrified how he was treated by our press. He went from "every Democrat's favorite Republican" to "literally Hitler" the instant he became a political threat.