1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.Nxe5 O-O 5.Be2 Re8 6.Nd3 Bxc3 7.dxc3 Nxe4 8.O-O d5 9.Be3 Bf5 10.Nf4 c6 11.c4 dxc4 12.Qxd8 Rxd8 13.Bxc4 Nd7 14.Rfd1 Ne5 15.Bb3 b6 16.f3 Nd6 17.Bd4 Ng6 18.Nxg6 Bxg6 19.c3 Kf8 20.a4 f6 21.a5 c5 22.Be3 Bf7 23.axb6 axb6 24.Rxa8 Rxa8 25.Rxd6 Bxb3 26.Rxb6 c4 27.Rb7 Kg8 28.Bc5 Rd8 29.Bd4 Ra8 30.g4 h6 31.h4 Rf8 32.h5 Rf7 33.Rb5 Re7 34.Kf2 Kf7 35.f4 Kg8 36.Rb4 Kh7 37.Rb6 Bd1 38.Kg3 Bb3 39.Ra6 Kg8 40.g5 hxg5 41.fxg5 fxg5 42.Kg4 Kh7 43.Kxg5 Rd7 44.Rc6 Bd1 45.h6 gxh6+ 46.Rxh6+ Kg8 47.Rh1 Bc2 48.Kf6 Rb7 49.Ke6 Bh7 50.Ra1 Be4 51.Rg1+ Kh7 52.Rg4 Bd3 53.Kf6 Rc7 54.Rh4+ Kg8 55.Ke6 Rc6+ 56.Kd5 Ra6 57.Be5 Rb6 58.Rg4+ Kh7 59.Rh4+ 1/2-1/2>

Will ya lookie heah: within 8000 posts of that loathsome number of 60k.

<This week, Mike Johnson floated a wild-eyed theory about the pro-Palestinian protests that have been rocking college campuses. The House speaker called on the FBI to get involved, adding: “I think they need to look at the root causes and find out if some of this was funded by, I don’t know, George Soros or overseas entities.”

Because such talk has become routine, Johnson’s claim didn’t garner much media attention. But Democrats can and should act to <compel> media attention to it. And they have a big opportunity to do so: Johnson is planning high-profile hearings about the protests in coming weeks, which will include grilling university officials about whether administrators are doing enough to combat antisemitism on campuses.

Republicans are being open about their aim here, which is to divide Democrats between those who will defend nonviolent protest and those who fear association with campus unrest. And many Democrats are feeling deeply skittish about all this.

That’s in some ways understandable. But Democrats should view upcoming hearings as an opportunity to reset the argument. Johnson’s Soros quote—and others from Republicans just like it—give Democrats a way to go big. They should hold the GOP and the MAGA media complex accountable for the ugly reality that a whole range of white nationalism-adjacent ideas—especially ones with antisemitic overtones—have been festering inside the House GOP for years and have even been mainstreamed at the highest levels of Republican power.

“They don’t actually care about Jewish people or antisemitism,” Democratic Representative Daniel Goldman of New York told me, speaking of Republicans. “When they start using antisemitic tropes,” such as “globalist” and “elite” in this context, Goldman continued, it “shows their true colors.”

Many Republicans, including Johnson, have also trafficked in the “great replacement theory.” The most important Republican of all, Donald Trump, recently hosted antisemite and white supremacist Nick Fuentes at his Mar-a-Lago resort. As Goldman told me: “These are House Republicans who did not condemn Donald Trump for having dinner with a neo-Nazi.”

Johnson isn’t even the only GOP leader to push the Soros libel. Representative James Comer, chair of the Oversight Committee, says that “global elites are funding these hateful protests.” The language of GOP leaders has merged with that of the fringe: Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted that Soros “funds” the “pro-Hamas protests.”

Several Jewish Democrats have already called this out, with one lawmaker labeling it “one of the oldest antisemitic tropes in the world.” But Democrats can do more. At the hearings, which the political press will cover intensely, they can put those Soros quotes up on big screens and make Republicans defend them.

True, this is tricky political territory for Democrats right now. The party is divided over President Biden’s handling of Israel’s attack on Gaza, with some Democrats demanding that Biden withhold weaponry from Israel that could be used for its expected offensive in Rafah, arguing that the law requires this given Israel’s killing of civilians and blocking of humanitarian assistance to desperate victims.

Meanwhile, Democrats are divided over the protests themselves. When President Biden spoke out about them this week, he rightly distinguished between peaceful protest and unacceptable violence, casting the latter as a threat to civil society, but he conspicuously said little about how appallingly disproportionate the police response has been. Some Democrats seem reluctant to seriously defend peaceful dissent, which is what many of the protests have offered.

But surely Democrats can navigate their differences and get the balance on all this right. They can use the hearings to voice support for core, clarifying principles: It’s possible to condemn the horrifying outbreaks of antisemitism on campuses, some of them violent, while also insisting it isn’t inherently antisemitic to criticize Israel’s treatment of Palestinian civilians. It’s possible to draw a line between civil disobedience with a long tradition in American life and wanton, destructive violence—even if the exact location of that line is hard to pin down and will be deeply contested....>

<....And it should be possible to call out the towering absurdity of the Republican effort to cast the Democratic Party as an aider and abettor of antisemitic violence. “It’s entirely navigable,” Goldman told me. “You can oppose U.S. policy toward Israel” and also “oppose antisemitism on campus,” he said, while also challenging those who are “exploiting antisemitism for purely partisan gain.”

Others might object that indicting Republicans over all this is a tough sell. After all, Johnson is himself denouncing antisemitism. How can he simultaneously be pushing an antisemitic trope? Did he really intend the Soros smear that way? The truth is we don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter what he intended.

What does matter is that this kind of talk has become tantamount to the air Republicans and many of their voters breathe. As the Anti-Defamation League explains, Soros’s identity is well known. He’s been elevated for decades by malignant nationalists across the world into a symbol of nefarious globalist forces seeking to manipulate fifth-column agitators to destabilize nations from within. People steeped in these ideas will receive such remarks in exactly that way.

Some Republicans have ventured another version of these claims, insisting Soros funds organizations behind the protests. But Politifact looked exhaustively at this and found that it relies on a comically tortured chain of logic. As The Washington Post’s Philip Bump noted, the connections are “so tenuous as to be obviously contrived.” The crucial point here is that such conspiracy theories often map onto a kind of a spectrum, where softer versions are available that allow proponents to invoke the most pernicious versions while retaining plausible deniability. That doesn’t make it any more defensible.

Indeed, this is exactly how “great replacement theory,” also works: Many Republicans, including Johnson, push a soft version that doesn’t accuse Jewish elites of promulgating the conspiracy. But that’s what untold numbers of people will hear, and its proponents know it.

On top of all this, Democrats should challenge the GOP push aggressively because Donald Trump is advancing a vile line of propaganda, in which violent protesters are getting lenient treatment while the insurrectionists of January 6, 2021, are victims of overzealous law enforcement. More broadly, as Substacker Jamison Foser notes, Trump is openly campaigning on the language of authoritarians and dictators, and talk of an axis of “globalists” and domestic leftist agitators is a central pretext for threatening an authoritarian crackdown as president. The valorization of Trump’s paramilitary mobs as patriots and heroes alongside the demagoguing of protesters as the “real” enemy within, the vow to persecute “vermin” and prosecute treasonous political foes, the threat of mass removals of alien “invaders”—they’re all part of the same ugly story, and all should be contested vigorously.

So come on, Democrats: Use the hearings to remind everyone that Trump and the complicit GOP are the party that brought us the most serious outbreak of U.S. political violence in recent memory. Who do Republicans think they’re kidding, using campus protests to push their contemptible historical mythmaking designed to transparently sanitize that all away? Treat GOP demagoguery about the protests with the unbridled contempt it deserves.>

<A game as notable as any kibitz of <perfy>.>

<1. People who never apologize.

2. People who are only ever positive.

3. People who never want to slow down.

4. People who flatter you to get something from you.

5. People who always play the victim.

6. People who tell minor lies.

7. People who name-drop to boost their popularity.

8. People who talk badly about others they call their friends.

9. People who change their personality based on who they’re with.

10. People who always mention how honest they are.

11. People who never disagree with you.

12. People who constantly trauma dump.

13. People who only hang out with you to take pictures for social media.

14. People who refuse to respect your boundaries.

15. People who don’t ask about your life.>

For the twin axes of evil: how many of the categories of toxicity do <you> fulfil?

<GOP Rep. Don Bacon has had it with the far-right of his conference.

They’ve thrown out one House speaker and are trying to dump another one, all while scuttling their leadership’s agenda and now actively campaigning against incumbent Republicans — including himself.

After House Freedom Caucus Chairman Bob Good of Virginia announced his support for Bacon’s GOP rival ahead of his May 14 primary, the Nebraska Republican now plans to take matters into his own hands.

“I am supporting Bob Good’s opponent now … because Bob Good came out and endorsed my opponent,” Bacon, who says he has never endorsed against a colleague until now, told CNN. “So we’re going to go in with everything we’ve got. That’s how it works.”

It has long been a breach of protocol on Capitol Hill to campaign against sitting members of the same party. But the 118th Congress has seen the House GOP descend into a seemingly endless series of intraparty wars, with members hurling personal insults at each other, pointedly blaming each other for their failures to enact a conservative agenda and now actively stumping to defeat their own Republican colleagues in races that will carry major consequences for the direction of the party.

In Texas, Rep. Tony Gonzales is trying to fend off a challenger backed by GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida and by Good — whom the incumbent Republican recently derided as “scumbags” — ahead of his May 28 runoff. In South Carolina, members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus are rallying around conservative state Rep. Adam Morgan, who is trying to knock off Rep. William Timmons in the June 11 primary. In Virginia, center-right Republicans and the ousted former Speaker Kevin McCarthy are helping Republican challenger John McGuire ahead of the June 18 primary against Good, one of eight Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy last fall.

Other intraparty feuds are also taking shape — in defiance of House Speaker Mike Johnson, who has told his colleagues to “knock it off” and stop campaigning against each other.

Rep. Dan Newhouse of Washington state, one of two remaining Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump in the wake of the 2021 Capitol insurrection, faces the ire of the MAGA base with Trump publicly calling for his defeat. Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, a former Freedom Caucus leader, told colleagues recently he was looking into the race to consider whether to prop up Newhouse’s GOP challenger, Jerrod Sessler, according to a source familiar with the matter. (Perry’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

And in the eleventh hour before a filing deadline late last month, a primary challenger emerged against Gaetz — the leader of the effort to oust McCarthy — who has made no secret of his desire to see Gaetz’s career come to an end. The development comes as some McCarthy associates had been trying to recruit a candidate to topple Gaetz. Now McCarthy allies in the House GOP Conference are considering giving a boost to Aaron Dimmock, the retired Navy officer facing off against Gaetz in the August 20 primary.

“I would really like it if someone were to come here and focus on governing instead of getting on television,” Rep. Derrick Van Orden, a Wisconsin Republican who recently called Gaetz “tubby” in a tense confrontation on the House floor. “The entire conference is sick and tired of Matt Gaetz, Bob Good and (Rep.) Chip Roy (of Texas). They’re bullies and the only way to get back at a bully is to push back hard on that.”

Gaetz’s response: Bring it on.

Gaetz brushed aside his primary challenge, attacking his foe as out-of-step with his Florida panhandle district and saying that the race makes him “as excited as a Golden Corral buffet.”

The battles underscore the larger debate within the GOP between members who are open to bipartisan deals to govern incrementally in a divided Washington and hardliners who view such compromises as an affront to conservative orthodoxy — a feud that intensified in the 2010 tea party wave and has grown more pronounced in the Trump era. And while the outcomes in most of these primary races won’t impact the GOP’s efforts to keep the majority, they will shape the makeup of the next House Republican Conference and how they pursue their agenda.

“We go for the most conservative of people to run for office,” said Rep. Ralph Norman, a Freedom Caucus member who is backing GOP challenger Morgan against Timmons, a fellow South Carolinian. “This country is in trouble. We got to step out. And that’s what we’re willing to do.”.....>

<....Unlike in the other races, Bacon’s is a true swing seat — given that Joe Biden carried the district in 2020 — and could help tilt the balance of power in November. Already, both Democratic and GOP groups have poured in roughly the same amount on the airwaves — with a total of $3 million in ad spending so far.

Democrats are hoping state Sen. Tony Vargas can knock off Bacon, who is heavily favored to win his primary against Dan Frei — a conservative candidate who emerged on Nebraska’s political scene in the tea party era a decade ago in an unsuccessful primary bid against former Rep. Lee Terry. He has made the national debt and illegal immigration a centerpiece of his campaign against Bacon.

“He’s been there eight years. When he went there, we were roughly $17 trillion in debt. We’re $34 trillion in debt,” Frei said in an interview. “When he first got there we had tens of thousands of people crossing the border, we now have millions in this country.”

Asked whether it was fair to single out Bacon, Frei said: “How can you not blame those that are there?”

Another Bacon foe trying to undercut his bid: Eric Underwood, the GOP chairman of the Nebraska Republican Party.

Underwood told CNN his decision to endorse Frei was a personal one and argued Bacon doesn’t represent the values of Nebraska Republicans, citing Bacon’s position on same-sex marriage and his support for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, though the incumbent has also backed more stringent border security measures.

The chairman also defended working against an incumbent from his own party. “There’s a lot of misconceptions of what a party is supposed to be doing,” Underwood said in a phone interview. “The objective of the party is to further our principles and the maintenance of the government, of, by and for the people.”

Asked whether he’s worried Frei could cost Republicans the seat in November, Underwood told CNN: “We believe that everybody’s electable if they put the work and the effort into it, and surround their campaign with the values and the principles of the party.”

Underwood said there would be no financial resources or fundraising done by the party for Frei’s campaign. But a pro-Frei mailer attacking Bacon, shared with CNN, indicates it was paid for by “the Nebraska Republican Party.”

Underwood maintains they were fully reimbursed by the Frei campaign for the mailer, and said it’s just one of several party resources that endorsed candidates are allowed to take advantage of.

Good, the House Freedom Caucus chairman, declined to comment on Capitol Hill last week when asked why he was backing Bacon’s opponent. And his office didn’t respond to a request seeking comment.

National groups are coming to Bacon’s defense.

“We wish we weren’t having this internal fight,” said Sarah Chamberlain, head of the center-right Republican Main Street Partnership, which is dropping $450,000 in ads to boost McGuire, Good’s primary challenger in his rural Virginia district.

In an interview, Bacon pushed back against his foes and defended his record. And he said the critics represent a “Steve Bannon faction” of the Nebraska GOP, adding this of his party chairman: “He says he wants unity. I’ve seen more disunity from this leadership team back there dividing us.”

Johnson has endorsed Bacon and campaigned for the congressman in his district in December. Bacon has over 100 endorsements, and no elected official from Nebraska is supporting Frei.

Bacon said that his critics may take issue with some of his votes, including to approve billions in aid to Ukraine. “I’m more of a traditional Republican and some of these folks are definitely isolationist,” he said. “It’s their right to feel that way. I don’t think that’s a Republican.”

Bacon, who has aligned himself with his party’s leadership on key issues, criticized his colleagues for undercutting “the norms” of the House — including by stymying legislation on the first procedural vote, something that had rarely been done before but has been weaponized by hardliners in this Congress.

“It’s all the norms have been undermined by these guys,” Bacon said.>

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 g6 3.c3 d5 4.exd5 Qxd5 5.d4 Nf6 6.Be2 Bg7 7.O-O O-O 8.c4 Qd6 9.dxc5 Qxd1 10.Rxd1 Ne4 11.Na3 a6 12.Nd4 Nxc5 13.Be3 Ne6 14.Nac2 Nxd4 15.Nxd4 e5 16.Nb3 Nc6 17.Bf3 Rb8 18.Bc5 Re8 19.Bd6 Ra8 20.Nc5 Ra7 21.Bd5 Nd4 22.Bb8 Ra8 23.Bc7 Ne2+ 24.Kf1 Nf4 25.Ne4 Nxd5 26.cxd5 Bd7 27.Nc5 Bb5+ 28.Kg1 Bf6 29.a4 Be2 30.Rd2 Bg4 31.f3 Bf5 32.g4 Bg5 33.Re2 Bc8 34.d6 Be6 35.d7 Rf8 36.Rd1 Be7 37.Bd6 Bxd6 38.Rxd6 Rfd8 39.Rxe5 Kf8 40.Nxe6+ fxe6 41.Rexe6 b5 42.Rf6+ Ke7 43.Rde6+ Kxd7 44.Rxa6 Rxa6 45.Rxa6 bxa4 46.Rxa4 Ke6 47.Re4+ Kf6 48.Kf2 Rd2+ 49.Re2 Rd3 50.b4 Rb3 51.Re4 g5 52.Rc4 h6 53.Rc6+ Kg7 54.Rb6 Kh7 55.b5 Kg7 56.Rb8 Kh7 57.b6 Kg7 58.b7 Kh7 59.Ke2 Kg7 60.Kd2 Rb6 61.Kc3 Rb1 62.Kc4 Rc1+ 63.Kd5 Rd1+ 64.Ke6 Rb1 65.Rd8 Rb6+ 66.Rd6 Rb5 67.Rd7+ Kg6 68.Kd6 h5 69.Kc6 Rb3 70.Rd6+ Kg7 71.gxh5 1-0>

<<fred> have you ever replayed ANY of the games <perfy> is spamming on his personal forum?>