The common clay of the New West…
Per WaPo-ABC poll, Americans
• say 63-32% they support Biden’s $1T infrastructure bill
• say 58-37% they support Biden’s ~$2T climate and economic policy bill
• say 59-38% they’re concerned about Biden doing “too much to increase the size and role of government”
¯\_(?)_/¯
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) November 14, 2021
Genuinely good news, I hope:
President Biden named former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu to oversee implementation of the $1 trillion infrastructure plan, the White House said https://t.co/uwPvOzMoS7 pic.twitter.com/FQWUCWhvSg
— Reuters (@Reuters) November 15, 2021
This appointment of ?@MitchLandrieu? is great. He guided the recovery after Katrina that produced levees that held perfectly in our recent Cat4 hurricane, a better school system, and no examples of fraud or abuse. He is persistent, smart, energetic https://t.co/loMru7YVg3
— Walter Isaacson (@WalterIsaacson) November 14, 2021
And, history:
this is in living memory of about 55 million americans
but somehow there are lots of folks who want you to believe that not only is racism not an issue now, but it was never really an issue https://t.co/VMR57yNSap
— Gerry Doyle (@mgerrydoyle) November 15, 2021
"When my daddy and I got out of the car, he just told me to take his hand and look forward." The "New Orleans Four" are honored in ceremonies marking the anniversary of the 1960 integration of the city's public schools. https://t.co/NITHTsNR6f
— The Associated Press (@AP) November 14, 2021
NotMax
A couple of completely unrelated items which caught the eye.
#1:
#2:
debbie
“it’s great when you do stuff for me, but when you start helping other people too…” ??♀️
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone ???
Patricia Kayden
debbie
@Patricia Kayden:
Was he whiny?
Tony Gerace
People like what gummint does, but they hate the gummint. Logic skillz not too good.
“Keep Your Goddamn Government Hands Off My Medicare!” I think that a lot of it is due to fear that those dark-skinned people might get something good.
Ken
@NotMax: Regarding #1, it puts the recent U.S. cases where convicted felons won their party’s nomination into perspective. Or, given the way said party has been behaving, gives them a new goal.
Regarding #2, data transmission by modulated fast neutrons has always been possible. It’s just that no one has bothered because the range would be measured in meters at best; plus, you know, fast neutrons. But I do like the phrase “systems which could, hypothetically, design out issues of security and risk”.
mrmoshpotato
We support these governmental programs, but we don’t want the government to have anything to do with them!
Ken
That’s why under my plan, the whole thing will be privatized. The government’s role will be limited to giving three trillion dollars to a prominent individual — modesty forbids releasing the name at this time — who will decide how to spend it.
(Sigh. Baud! does it so much better…)
rikyrah
Cassandra (@WriterWarrior) tweeted at 6:56 PM on Sun, Nov 14, 2021:
This weekend has opened the eyes of many who were skeptical of any media bias against Kamala Harris.
It existed for Barack Obama, but was ignored. It existed for Hillary Rodham Clinton, but was ignored.
I think more and more people are now very tired of ignoring it.
(https://twitter.com/WriterWarrior/status/1460049021582516228?t=O054T-g8EOwb800OAeVFfQ&s=03)
mrmoshpotato
Haha!
germy
He won an Emmy (temporarily) for playing a governor on TV.
mrmoshpotato
@rikyrah: Good morning. And happy Monday.
Tony Gerace
@Tony Gerace: I think, besides racism, another cause of this “thinking” is the mythology that all Real Americans are self-sufficient pioneers who don’t need or want help from anyone. Therefore, people want benefits from the government but they are ashamed of getting benefits from the government. Hence the double-think: “I want these specific benefits from the government, but I don’t like “government. Besides — I’ve EARNED those benefits — unlike those lazy bums over there..”
mrmoshpotato
@Ken:
Paul Ryan? Is that you, you rat bastard? :)
rikyrah
?FruitKace (@FruitKace) tweeted at 6:54 AM on Mon, Nov 15, 2021:
It’s a sad state of affairs when Dem voters have to be the MSM anti-Democratic Party propaganda police all day everyday. But, that’s where we are. Actually, that’s where we have been for quite some time. Yet, too many folks still don’t get it.
(https://twitter.com/FruitKace/status/1460229776984223746?t=sBKk4WEwAvJ3lqpGIOPPug&s=03)
NotMax
On the somewhat lighter side, don’t try to take on the red paint manufacturers’ lobby.
debbie
@germy:
Unlike TFG, he liked his numbers high?
raven
In Travels with Charley, Steinbeck described the travails of a six-year-old black girl chosen to integrate an all-white elementary school in the Deep South of 1960. At the time, he did not know her name. But thanks to the presentation of the Steinbeck Award to this civil rights icon on February 24, 2016, before a capacity crowd in the Student Union Ballroom, the names John Steinbeck and Ruby Bridges are now linked forever.
If you haven’t read Travels with Charley you should. The Ruby Bridges story is last on his trip and the account is really good. The nasty fuckers who were protesting her were Trumpers through and through.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: Glad to hear they still work.
raven
Observations of John Steinbeck on the New Orleans desegregation crisis
Esteemed American novelist John Steinbeck traveled through New Orleans in late 1960 and witnessed firsthand the resistance to school desegregation. Steinbeck described his experiences in his 1962 book, Travels with Charley: In Search of America (New York: Viking Press, 1962), 189, 193–95.
bluegirlfromwyo
@Tony Gerace: Sure, the deserving pioneers got the Homestead Act, don’t cha know? Then the War of Northern Aggression kept the truly deserving plantation owners out of the west cause they couldn’t bring their happy slaves anymore. //
NotMax
@mrmoshpoatato
Call it Britfrastructure.
debbie
@raven:
You can see that in their faces in photographs of people trying to desegregate luncheon counters too. It’s very frightening.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Tony Gerace: This is farmers in Iowa. And btw, I’m not an expert on the payments they get, but I don’t automatically object to them either.
Kay
If we resist an inflation panic, inflation will even out anyway and then Biden can claim credit for it.
Just resist panics of any kind- CRT, inflation, whatever. “Panicked” is no way to run anything and there’s always, always an agenda behind one.
RSA
I think there’s also an element of “I have expensive tastes, but I don’t like paying for it myself.”
Matt McIrvin
@rikyrah: It also reminds me of the whispering campaign about how well-placed unnamed sources in the legal profession had revealed in confidental conversations that Sonia Sotomayor, just between you and me, was kind of a dim bulb.
For a while, the idea that Sotomayor was some kind of dangerously unqualified affirmative-action virtue-signaling hire was the opinion even of liberal commentators who were deep in the Cult of the Savvy. And based on everything she’s done since, it was obvious bullshit. But people believed it.
Kay
@rikyrah:
She gets the double whammy. This is a backwards country regarding women. Falling behind the rest of the wealthy countries. You see it in the coverage of politicians, you see it in the devaluing of the work that women do in the infrastructure vs BBB bills, you see it in the idea that paid family leave is outrageous and will never, ever pass.
We gotta get up with the modern countries on this. We’re 20 years behind.
p.a.
@rikyrah: Doesn’t this mirror the criticism of her Presidential campaign? When they have a meme that works, truth be damned! Lazy: check. Evil: check.
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
The front page of CNN’s online presence has the following headlines right up top:
Three of the five items have outright hostile headlines, and even the one about MVP being “a hit in Paris” drags in the “strain” in Franco-American relations.
Maybe the articles are more nuanced than the headlines. I don’t know, I’m not giving them the click count.
WTAF, CNN?
Starfish
@debbie: It’s not exactly that.
A lot of people in the West want to believe a couple of myths:
1) I am a self-sufficient survivalist
2) Government is inefficient and corrupt
If you believe those two things, a growing federal government scares you. It never occurs to you that “Hey, some problems need to be solved on this scale to be solved efficiently and effectively.”
UPDATE: I see @Tony Gerace got there first.
Betty
@mrmoshpotato: It may also relate to vaccine mandates, an issue the media likes to hype.
Betty
@raven: Heirs of that crowd are attacking school boards now. A sad commentary on the country.
debbie
@Starfish:
I was close enough. “I don’t want my taxes to go to those people.“
Fair Economist
@rikyrah: Is this a reference to that ridiculous unsourced piece about “concerns” in the Biden administration about Harris?
Another Scott
@SiubhanDuinne: The knives have been out for her for a long time, because she is a compelling person and has the potential to be a strong national politician for decades. Too many people are replaying the HRC playbook to weaken her in the eyes of the public.
dick_nixon often gripes about her. He’s been griping about Sec. Pete recently too. It’s disturbing.
Cheers,
Scott.
Betty Cracker
@SiubhanDuinne: This was the dumbest MSM take on Harris in France that I saw. I’m sure there were dumber ones, but JFC:
[FTR for those who can’t watch, Harris said “THE topic” for emphasis, you know, like millions of Americans do every day, e.g., that place has THE best tacos, he went to THE Ohio State University, man that tweet was THE dumbest fucking thing, etc.]
mrmoshpotato
The History Guy – Pineapple: The King of Fruits
Starfish
@rikyrah: The TikTok kids are not having this anti-Harris nonsense.
Matt McIrvin
@Another Scott: dick_nixon is a Berniebro cosplaying as a dead Republican crook (in such a way that he both whitewashes the memory of the dead crook and makes it unclear that his true aims are Berniebro-ish), and all that annoys me far more than it probably should.
Sure Lurkalot
@Kay:
mMichael Hobbes’ good article about fake controversy.
mrmoshpotato
@RSA: Yup. Hooray for “free” stuff.
germy
One of the largest shopping malls in upstate NY is putting itself to some good use:
https://wnyt.com/albany-new-york-news/crossgates-mall-covid-19-vaccination-site-kids-ages-5-11-old-lord-and-taylor-store-/6301435/?cat=10114
Frankensteinbeck
@Matt McIrvin:
I think I see an interesting twist in the misogyny. The same people had the same opinion of Barrett, they just didn’t care. Since she actually is unqualified and incompetent, and works to enforce misogyny, she knows her place and is not a threat. They see no need to attack her for it.
Kay
I wonder how the Trump insurrection would have played with the public had they been given timely information on it, rather than a year late.
We don’t know- we’ll never know- but these people are aware that not releasing information they have until it aligns with their book sales is manipulating public opinion, right?
The only question is to what degree. The act itself is manipulative.
They can’t just pretend “timely” doesn’t matter. It’s a core part of the news business. If they withhold it then they’re political actors and we can and should question the timing. I don’t even believe they do it for political ends- it’s pure profit motive- but it’s completely reasonable for someone to suspect it’s political.
Starfish
@Sure Lurkalot: I follow that guy on Twitter. I did not realize he had a substack. Thanks.
Kay
It is just hysterical that we have this giant media apparatus and “news moves at the speed of light” or whatever, and we’re just now finding out what was going on in our government during an attempted insurrection, partly because individual media figures withheld the information in order to juice books sales.
We’d be better off with a guy on horseback. A town crier. It’s faster.
Geminid
@Kay: Although we are only now learning about what was going on behind the scenes, a lot of the Republican election subversion was happening in plain sight. I remember you sounding the alarm last December.
germy
@Kay:
And nowadays, Woodward does sit!
Ken
3) Water should be free and there is an infinite supply of it
(This last because of generations that have depended on government programs to provide water, which kind of fly in the face of #1 and #2.)
OzarkHillbilly
‘A bold leader’: White House defends Kamala Harris after reports say she’s struggling
SNAFU.
mrmoshpotato
@germy:
Yeah! WTF, Bob?!
Ken
@Betty Cracker: In the spirit of the “SUPERMAN LIVES!” / “SUPERMAN DEAD!” headlines in one of the recent movies, I’m sure that twit-ter user had an alternative ready, where she complains about the VP’s “slurred pronunciation ‘thuh’ instead of the proper ‘thee'”.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: One of the most egregious examples was Bob Woodward squirreling away the conversation from FEBRUARY 2020 when Trump told Woodward how contagious and deadly the coronavirus was while lying to the public about that. Just unconscionable, IMO.
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
Yep, saw that a few days ago. My gob was and remains smacked.
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin: He’s got some interesting insights on occasion, and he’s great on baseball and attacking Marco. But he seems like a whiny mean 4th grader when he talks about MVP and Pete.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Cheers,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@Another Scott: I just think it’s of a piece with a certain segment of the Left (or “Left”) believing that inside your racist cousin in Topeka there is a Marxist revolutionary struggling to get out.
Geminid
@debbie: This discussion of individualism as a political stance makes me want to read Max Weber’s essay, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905). Well, maybe not actually read the essay, just read more about it.
Spanky
@Kay:
Ever notice that every time they do it, it benefits Republicans?
Kay
@Geminid:
I knew the play would be create a question as an excuse to throw it to their patchwork of invented legal theories and mechanisms. The delay was to create a space for conservative legal theorists and elites to validate the question, and that’s all they needed. They’ll do it again. They already have Alito. He’s absolutely on board for this “state legislature” bullshit they pulled out of their ass.
They’ll do it again. Adam is right when he says our current institutions and laws are insufficient to this challenge. No “voting rights law” will reach a legal theory that says state legislatures can overturn election results. It’s outside the scheme.
Matt McIrvin
Michael Harriot and ABL have been speculating about a movement brewing to “leapfrog Buttigieg over Harris”. Thus far I don’t see it–people are more likely to performatively hate both of them equally–but that may be my white left perspective talking. I could see it as a mainstream Democratic response to all this craziness.
Spanky
@Geminid:
Maybe it’s just my current mood, but I skim-read that as The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Cannibalism.
Starfish
@Matt McIrvin: I think they are also afraid of Buttigieg. The way that they attacked his parental leave was something.
But ABL is right in that they are just flat out ignoring Harris and not reporting things she is doing as news while Buttigieg is allowed to go on Fox News.
Matt McIrvin
@mrmoshpotato: Woodward knows which side his bread is buttered on.
Matt McIrvin
@Starfish: I don’t pay enough attention to big political media to get a good sense of what line they’re pushing, I guess.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Woodward is the grandaddy of the business. It’s a sales and marketing decision.
The reporter who did the shitty, biased coverage of Clinton, Amy Chozick, got not only a book out of it but a film deal. She repackaged the same work several times. Currently she’s insisting it’s about “women in political media” but come the fuck on- that book doesn’t sell at all. It’s “about” whatever she thinks will sell.
I think she misread the public though- I can’t be the only person who isn’t interested in revisiting her coverage of the 2016 election. Once was more than enough. They got every drop out of juice out of bashing Hillary Clinton. Luckily, we now have Kamala Harris. It’s just gross.
Soprano2
@SiubhanDuinne: Women as bosses always get this kind of treatment, because women are supposed to be “nice” all the time, and it’s impossible to be nice all the time when you’re the boss! I see those headlines as people who are upset that she got mad at them because they fucked something up – women aren’t supposed to get mad at people, she’s a monster! Kay is right, we’re way behind other countries in how we view women and women in management roles.
Frankensteinbeck
@Matt McIrvin:
Wow, you nailed their attitude exactly.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: And there are people on the left, right, and amoral center who use this Buttegieg v. Harris “controversy” to stir up intra-party conflict. I often see them lobbing apples of discord among Democrats, and we have to be on our guard not to fight over them..
Soprano2
@Kay: I said to my husband this weekend that it’s now crystal clear that the Trump people tried to stage a coup in January, and the press is irresponsible when they don’t report on it like that. There’s way too much evidence that’s what they did to deny it. Too bad the impeachment managers didn’t have those memos for the second impeachment trial! I guess book sales were more important than being a responsible American patriot.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: The “cackle” business is blatantly an old knock on Hillary Clinton with the name scratched out and “Kamala Harris” Sharpied in.
japa21
@Soprano2: They did the same thing to Klobuchar.
Professor Bigfoot
@Tony Gerace: But god forbid they actually admit to it. “I don’t have a racist bone in my body,” they say, “but them lazy and shiftless people don’t deserve to get no benefit from mah hard-earned tax dollers.”
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: It’s all about wanting to win back the white male vote, which the press still sees as the “real, legitimate” vote in this country. The press still promotes whatever white men say are the most important issues, and discount everything else as being “special interest” issues. Probably the biggest issue with the workforce right now is the lack of childcare, but the way it’s covered makes it seem like it’s a “woman’s special interest” rather than something that’s impacting the economy for everyone. I’m convinced that’s why they were so obsessed with interviewing Trump voters and are so uninterested in interviewing Biden voters (other than the ones who now say they regret their vote, those they’re seeking out).
Starfish
@Matt McIrvin: For weeks and weeks, they were asking where Pete was since he is transportation secretary and BIF is an infrastructure bill.
THEY KNEW he was on parental leave, and they were making parental leave for fathers look stupid and unnecessary, which just makes them look both old and homophobic (because what does a gay couple do without parental leave?)
Most daycares do not take infants that are less than three months old. They need more staff for the babies.
The pandemic has destroyed childcare for infants and toddlers, and these idiots are trying to parental-leave shame Buttigieg while companies are trying to make parental leave policies a little more generous so more people don’t just leave the workforce.
It was so completely infuriating.
Kay
@Soprano2:
I was in a pretrial conference Friday in this very conservative juridisction and one of the younger male lawyers noticed us he’s out for paternity leave Jan 1 so we’ll be getting his replacement. I’m all for it, but I was amused – this case is all older wingnutty male lawyers except for me. In these situations I have SOMETIMES been the girl cheerleader, I admit, but fuck that with these people. It’s a part time job trying to move them off their antiquated beliefs. I didn’t say anything other than “thank you”.
If young conservative men want paternity leave they can do their own persuasion, or pay me to do it.
germy
Jennifer Jacobs:
Geminid
@Spanky: Your current mood may be influenced by the Horseradish Media.
Kay
@Soprano2:
I think they did a good job relaying the real peril at the time. They were freaking out. What I object to is how they could have filled that in with information they had and they chose to withhold it. We didn’t have to do so much guessing. I don’t like to guess. I resent them for not giving us the memos. I want those, in a timely manner.
Kay
@Soprano2:
I sometimes judge threats based on the people who are alarmed. My youngest sister is really bright – a lawyer too – but a “moderate” politically and she was genuinely alarmed, to the extent that we texted for weeks on the possible legal plays. She’s better at that than I am. I was so glad to have this person to talk to, because we could “shortcut”- we were both convinced of the threat so I didn’t have to go thru the whole “oh, it’s nothing” delay. At that point I considered that a delay. I was impatient with it, because I had already rejected it. It was kind of big for me- I usually sleep quite well and I wasn’t sleeping. I would text her at 4 AM and she would respond right away – she lives in NY- so she wasn’t sleeping either :)
SiubhanDuinne
@Spanky:
I wouldn’t call you wrong.
Spanky
@SiubhanDuinne: Funny how those two words can so often be interchanged.
Steve in the ATL
Best Microsoft Office alternative?
I recall a recent discussion on this but can’t find the thread. Was LibreOffice the winner?
TIA to anyone with a better memory than mine!
geg6
@rikyrah:
I have been very studiously NOT paying attention to national media. What happened?
Kay
We are in bad shape for the midterms. Ooof. A 10 point R preference on the generic ballot. Biden has to improve or Democrats won’t. That’s not a slam on him, obviously he has fierce media headwinds, but that’s the reality. I don’t know how he would improve, either- what he “should” do. If the plan is we avoid the country collapsing by keeping them out of power we need a Plan B, because they’re on the fucking march here.
Professor Bigfoot
@Another Scott: Sounds like a (forgive me) pretty typical American white guy.
An American white dude has to *work* to recognize his privilege; and he’s got to have some real heart to want to extend that privilege to everyone else.
Damned few American white dudes have ANY interest in that.
Matt McIrvin
@geg6: Media continuing to put weird negative spins on Harris’s highly successful visit to France, including nitpicking about how she pronounced “the”.
Fair Economist
It occurs to me amidst all the current attempts to dirty up Harris that she was assigned the job of handling Central American immigration issues and – I haven’t heard much about immigration issues for a couple months? Which makes me suspect it’s probably improved, and she should get credit for it.
Kay
Things can be not your fault but still your problem. It’s not Biden’s fault but it is absolutely his problem.
Democrats in Congress probably think he’s dragging them down- because that’s their perspective- and they’re not entirely wrong, but I think it explains some of their bickering, etc. We’re “why won’t they support Biden’s agenda?” and they’re “Biden’s at 40 – not tying my approval to that”. It depends on where you’re standing.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
It’s such a funny 1990’s-era attack. “She trying to be FRENCH”. Guffaw.
germy
So it’s official.
https://wnyt.com/politics/democrat-beto-orourke-running-for-texas-governor-in-2022/6302251/?cat=661
Matt McIrvin
@Fair Economist: The right-wing bubble is convinced there’s still a massive immigration crisis destroying the country; a segment of the online left seems convinced that Trump’s abuses just continued unabated under Biden and Democrats hushed it up; the mainstream media doesn’t talk about it much. I admit I haven’t done the deep digging to know much better. I get the impression that Trumpy rogue elements in ICE and CBP are trying to behave as before and maybe not getting enough pushback from above.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: I don’t even understand how that’s supposed to be French. She used “le/la/les”?
Kay
I’m having “early Thanksgiving” Thursday for my daughter and her husband and the baby because they’re on call that day and my youngest is disgusted. Thinks I’m “controlling” holidays. Why, yes! I am! That’s just how powerful I am.
Don’t gas light him! It’s not Thanksgiving!
Another Scott
@Steve in the ATL: LibreOffice is excellent. Not perfect with its PPTx compatibility, but excellent.
Cheers,
Scott.
Starfish
@Kay: Was she supposed to go over there and call the country “Freedom?”
SiubhanDuinne
@Spanky:
Milton Friedman: Cannibalism and Freedom
Ayn Rand: Cannibalism: The Unknown Ideal
Karl Marx: Das Kannibal
Ken
“But you haven’t paid taxes for twenty years, since you fell off the roof at work and went on disability SSI.”
“It’s the principle of the thing.”
hueyplong
It will always be something on the propaganda networks. What better proof can you possibly have than the decision to run with the pronunciation of “the?”
What’s next? “The pace of her breathing was distinctly un-American.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Another Scott:
I’ve always thought that Twitter Nixon has better insights on internal GOP goings on than of those on the D side.
Geminid
@Fair Economist: The border situation may have improved enough for the conservatives to “tag off” (to use a wrassling metaphor) to lefties who now attack the Biden administration for being too harsh to immigrants. Neither side has ever liked Kamala the Socialist, or Kamala the Cop.
Ksmiami
@Betty: meanwhile I just ran into a bunch of kids carrying clear backpacks because while teaching the history of racism in the US generates weeping and wailing, but military grade weapons in school- meh
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
I think it was “the” so like cartoon French? I don’t know. They’re baffling to me.
They’re rigidly conventional people. It’s not ideological. They are more conventional than any random collection of Rotary members. They enforce.
It’s just hard for me to believe this country has huge and pressing problems given what these people talk about. These are the people who spent a solid fucking year on “cancel culture”. That was the existential threat.
Spanky
@SiubhanDuinne: Are you sure Das Kannibal wasn’t written by Kafka?
Matt McIrvin
@Geminid: The kind of squeeze where the administration is too A and too not-A at the same time, so they get it from both sides, seems strikingly effective.
Barbara
@Kay: Yes, of course. It’s probably no good to say that the best way not to be dragged down is to do your part to lift things up, but it really is.
This is my own perspective. I think we are dragging ourselves down by reacting constantly to whatever MSM deems to be newsworthy. This focus on Sinema and Manchin was for the most part a waste of energy. Not everything can be ignored, but becoming part of someone else’s obsession is rarely the answer. I am looking for one Senate election and a few House elections to meaningfully help out in the next year. I just don’t really see any other path forward.
And, umm, isn’t Harris a fluent French speaker, having gone to high school in Montreal? But this is all a part of making sure the glass ceiling stays intact.
Ksmiami
@Kay: wait until the Supreme Court overturns Roe…. We can mobilize women again
Spanky
Well, Steve Bannon has now turned himself in, defying my expectation.
germy
@Barbara:
If you want to know who they feel threatened by, look at who they try to diminish and undermine.
Harris has them frightened.
Barbara
@Kay: To be more succinct, they are followers. They do not have original thoughts.
germy
zhena gogolia
@Soprano2: The impeachment managers had all the evidence any sane person would need. A few more memos would have made zero difference.
Professor Bigfoot
@germy: She’s Black, and she’s a woman.
Their entire ethos is built on a hierarchy: God over man, man over woman, black over white, etc. etc. etc.
To have that Black woman “over” them is just more than conservatives can handle.
I’m reminded of 1860 and the aftermath of the election of Ol’ Abe.
Barbara
@germy: What has them frightened is the idea of actually being forced to succeed on pure merit. They were comfortable with Trump because it makes them feel good to believe that a person who was born on third base can get away with pretending he was a self-made businessman. To one degree or another, that’s an awful lot of journalists.
Nettoyeur
@NotMax: You cans send digital code by alternately shielding and unshielding a nuclear radiation source.
Jeffro
Hopefully stirred up by Klobuchar…”howzabout you two fight?” =)
Nettoyeur
@NotMax: You cans send digital code by alternately shielding and unshielding a nuclear radiation source.
@Ken: With neutrons, you could a msg that would be lethal to receive if not properly shielded. Now that is security.
L85NJGT
@Matt McIrvin:
An inevitable pitfall of electing someone Joe’s age is the succession games.
Nettoyeur
@Professor Bigfoot: They love Authority but gabble about Freedom. Animal Farm.
gene108
@Sure Lurkalot:
I think Hobbes misses a key point.
Moral panic journalism isn’t just about sloppy journalism, but in the case of the lady burning herself with McDonald’s coffee 30 years ago is a deliberate attempt by conservatives to enact an agenda, and a lazy MSM just running with conservative framing and not doing any reporting on their own.
He cites a Reagan anecdote, “As early as 1986, Ronald Reagan speeches included a laugh line about a woman who sued her doctor after a CAT scan robbed her of her psychic powers. (In reality, the woman had an allergic reaction to a surgical dye, suffered severe headaches for the rest of her life and had her lawsuit thrown out. She never received a dime)”, but fails to realize Reagan was a shrewd political operator carrying forward an agenda for the conservative movement.
Yes, a lot of moral panic journalism could easily be debunked with a bit of effort by journalists, but most of it exists because conservatives flood the zone with these unsubstantiated anecdotes to advance their agenda.
UncleEbeneezer
@Tony Gerace: You can’t really separate Anti-Govt sentiment from Racism, in the US. The two have been pretty intimately linked for a very long time. Heather McGhee’s The Sum of Us tells this story rather clearly with the filling of public pools with concrete (rather than sharing them with Black people) as one of the more obvious examples. She also notes that a majority of Americans supported a Universal Basic Income and Job Guarantee (60-something percent approval) but then that number dropped in half after only a couple years of the Civil Rights Movement pushing that govt programs should go to ALL Americans. Anti-Govt sentiment in the US surely started as a thing to protect Elites from any/all govt restrictions, taxation etc., but it gained widespread support when Racism was inject into the mix.
geg6
@Matt McIrvin:
Oh. Whatever with these assholes. They are why I have stopped paying attention to the MSM. I wasn’t even aware she was in France. Not paying attention has made my life infinitely better. I still know all I need to know about whatever is happening, but I’m not being subjected to stupid shit like this.
Jeffro
Just open criminality at this point: GQP warns of “payback” for Dems enforcing subpoena against insurrection organizer
(that’s not what the headline says, but it should)
Testify about what? Trying to competently run a government?? Tell them to go fuck themselves with a sharp, rusty implement, Dems!
And man that Stefanik…she sure caught a bad case of trumpov, didn’t she? I don’t even want to think about what triggered such a fall into disgrace but whew.
Steve in the ATL
@gene108:
I don’t recall the details getting much air time, but (1) the poor woman suffered third degree burns on her last parts, and (2) ended up getting only $20,000 for her injuries.
Geminid
@Ksmiami: Ah, a Texan. I’m curious: Do you think O’Rourke can make Texas Republicans pay a price for last years power failures during the big freeze? That seems like it could be a real kitchen table issue, one that calls into question twenty years of Republican dominance. “Thow the rascals out!” can be a potent political message.
rikyrah
@Kay:
So absolutely phucking tired of them not doing their GODDAMNED JOBS so that they can keep shyt for their phucking BOOKS
Kay
@Ksmiami:
I don’t see “women” as a coherent or organizable political entity. I have never seen any evidence of it. I would like it to be true, I just don’t think it is.
They’re going to lose this right and they don’t seem to care. If they cared we wouldn’t be seeing a 10 point R preference on a generic ballot.
Kay
@rikyrah:
I hate the books too. Like it’s not bad enough we also get these stupid books. I feel like saying “too late! I needed that info last year, we figured it out without you”
gene108
@Soprano2:
60% to 2/3’s of white men vote Republican, depending on the election. This is why Republicans will always be taken seriously by the media no matter what they do, like lie about Iraq’s WMD program to launch an unjust war to planning an insurrection.
I don’t see how this changes.
frosty
@Steve in the ATL: Yes, Libre Office. I tried it then paid $150 for the single use no-subscription MS Office. Didn’t want to have to learn all the new menus.
hueyplong
@Steve in the ATL: As is the case in most trials, the more detail you learn about the actual case, what evidence went into the record and what instructions the judge gave the jury, the more reasonable the result seems.
Matt McIrvin
@gene108: Even when it’s real, it can be bogus in a deeper sense. Remember the prototypical “welfare queen”, the lady who was defrauding various public assistance programs and pulling in all this money? She really existed, but she was this terrifying sociopath who defrauded everyone she came into contact with, hardly a typical welfare recipient. But to Reagan she was the face of welfare, and public assistance had created her.
gene108
@Kay:
I think Democrats in Congress do not understand the importance of optics, and public perception in engaging voters, and how that can only be achieved by standing solidly with their Democratic President.
Republicans figured this out post-Watergate, which is why they don’t have messy spats between a Republican controlled Congress and Republican President, like the Dems endure with getting BBB passed.
99% of people have no fucking clue what policies impact their lives, because most people are stable and don’t need government services as a backstop. Just pass laws and declare victory. The media and thus the public will respond positively to a victory tour.
Matt McIrvin
@gene108:
They do, but many think it’s about not being too far left, not about presenting a unified front. If Biden is taking hits, they want to distance themselves from him as protection. Given their constituencies I don’t even know if they’re wrong.
rikyrah
@Betty Cracker:
Woodward ain’t shyt.
Soprano2
@zhena gogolia: I still wish we’d had that evidence for them to talk about then, rather than 10 months later!
rikyrah
THEY CUT PENCE’S KEY CARD SO THAT HE COULD NOT GET ACCESS AND GET TO SAFETY.
How much clearer do you have to be that they wanted to kill him and Pelosi that day.
Amir Khalid
@mrmoshpotato:
As a South East Asian, I dispute this. The durian is the king of fruit.
Jeffro
@rikyrah: yup – clear as can be
Address the nation and remind them that as horrible as 1/6 was, it could have very easily included the execution of the VP and Speaker right there on the Capitol steps.
Just Chuck
I love how the marshal that’s right behind Ruby in that pic has a smile on his face.
Matt McIrvin
This is going to sound like the kind of doomerism that people hate here, but I think we have to at least think about the possibility that we have just structurally lost, permanently, and while doing the best we can in elections is still important, we need to shift to figuring out how to survive in a polity, that on the federal level, will be a one-party Republican authoritarian state with bogus Russian-style elections for the next 50-100 years–with an eye toward restoring real democracy at some point in the possibly distant future.
Actual democracy is still alive and well in some states, but the ones where it isn’t have an increasing lock on national politics, and I expect a Republican-controlled federal government to meddle increasingly at the state and local level if that’s necessary for Republicans to rule–we know that the conservative commitment to light-handed government and separation of powers is largely imaginary and contingent on partisan advantage. We may have to have a bunch of state-level “color revolutions” sooner or later.
The real wild card here is how the increasingly catastrophic effects of climate change affect all this, especially if our ruling cadres are committed to barfing out as much CO2 as possible for partisan signaling purposes.
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
Oh, fuck Jacobs, especially when she posts the equivalent of “read the fine print” in this tweet with no photo to keep it from being missed:
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
I basically agree. It’s more than a tough environment. I worry sometimes that not admitting that makes it impossible for people with new approaches to come up with them. Necessity really is the mother of invention. People need to see a different approach as necessary, and if we downplay what are increasingly structural disadvantages we won’t give those people room to work.
I’m basically a conventional person. I would like nothing better than to say “this is working okay” but the stars are not aligning in a great way. It’s mostly moving in their direction.
debbie
@Kay:
All of these tell-all authors, particularly Bob Woodward, have a lot to answer for.
debbie
@Geminid:
Not easy reading, for sure.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: I am a basically catastrophizing thinker and it’s hard for me to tell whether my grim imaginings are running away with me. So of course I’m going to imagine maximally scary things, like the white supremacists getting their racial holy war. But “Republicans solidify counter-majoritarian power through constitutional hardball, with some help from violent goons” is probably more realistic.
Kay
@debbie:
Oh, like any of them will “answer” for them. They won’t even admit the obvious and extensively documented Clinton email freakout, nor have they ever offered an explanation for it.
They just did it again. They don’t give a rat’s ass about Afghanistan. They covered it for exactly 4 weeks. They care as much about Afghanistan as they do about secure email servers, so, not at all. Andrea Mitchell is still pulling down her multimillion dollar salary. They never fucking get fired. For anything.
debbie
@Matt McIrvin:
Bob Woodward is the Paul McCartney of journalism. Nothing more than a wildly overrated hack.
debbie
@Kay:
Guess there were too many unicorns in my breakfast cereal this morning. I still believe they will get what they deserve: No one beats karma.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: If, for instance, we move de facto back to a situation where Presidential votes by individual citizens literally do not matter at all and the Presidential electors are blatantly picked by gerrymander-ensconced state legislatures, will most Americans see that as normal and OK? It’s hard for me to imagine because the Presidential election is seen as the sine qua non of elections here, for better or for worse. But we seem to be moving in that direction.
If we follow the pattern of authoritarian states, the Republicans may be able to permanently capture the popular-vote majority anyway through a hammerlock on national media, so it might not even have to come to that.
Matt McIrvin
@debbie: Hey, McCartney had real talent when he was a kid. Woodward, I dunno.
Ksmiami
@Kay: the Dems need to call out the Republicans for the sick fucks they are… there’s your pivot. What job allows you to do nothing but still get paid and just make up bs?
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
I don’t think it will be like that. That to me is like the people “it’s not a coup! Coups have tanks!” :)
This will be state sanctioned. Codified. Under the color of law. It won’t be any less awful but it will be orderly and have a veneer of democratic governance, although anti-majorian. That’s actually the hopeful part. That’s a structure within which people can engineer different outcomes. But it has to be more than “turnout”. If your position is “we lose the country if the other side wins” that’s an admission it’s broken, and an insufficient and probably not successful plan to stop it. Admitting the extent of brokeness is powerful. It frees people to think differently.
Your car battery is dead and you keep jumping it and driving here and there and then it’s dead again when you go out to start it. I can tell you it’s “working”- keep jumping it!- or I can tell you “it’s dead- come up with something else”. You’re going to get to “dead” anyway, eventually. All I’m doing is telling you to start looking for a different way out of the problem.
debbie
Speaking of karma: As egregious as Ohio’s proposed Congressional redistricting is, Gym Jordan’s proposed redistricted district is not to his liking. Fun times!
Ksmiami
@Geminid: I think they key is under cutting the whole bs pro-life pro economy facade that Republicans run on. A pro life government doesn’t let its citizens freeze to death and then charge them for it. A pro economy governor doesn’t wage war on academic institutions and so on. That’s where the Democratic Party needs to go; undercut the bs arguments and make the perceived GOP strengths their weakness…
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
What I find recently most alarming is GOP governments ignoring and then subverting the referendums on redistricting that were passed- Ohio and Utah. They rode right over really popular laws that were passed by citizens in those states. They simply don’t care- they’re not afraid of public opinion or dissent at all. They’re not afraid of it because they’re creating a system where it won’t matter.
It won’t be raving bands of Right wing thugs. I mean, it WILL be – we already have those- but that won’t be the mechanism. It won’t be a “failed state”. It will be a Potemkin state. One where people vote and it just doesn’t matter. The process will still exist- there will be a challenge, it will go to a court, it’ll look valid, but it won’t be and everyone will know it’s not.
Geminid
@debbie: How does Shontell Brown’s district look? I noticed that her principal primary opponent was promising a rematch
Ksmiami
@Matt McIrvin: but Republican rule always turns into catastrophe so if it’s not solvable by ballots, then America will cease to exist and there will be violent separation. Why should California underwrite morons in Kentucky? Without a voice in National governance, wouldn’t the west be better off aligning with Canada etc?
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: There’s a sort of mystification with plausible deniability. “Well, the state lege is only picking the electors over the people’s vote because there were legitimate concerns of fraud.”
I suppose calling bullshit every time is important, but do you get people to listen? How far can they push it against actual popular opposition? If the police are all on their side, that’s a big advantage in force.
debbie
@Geminid:
I’m really not sure. I wasn’t paying much attention in general because lawsuits are being filed as we type about the unfairnesses of the new maps. I heard some of my longtime “hippie” friends will now be in Jordan’s district so I had a feeling there would be conflict, but hearing about Gym’s displeasure less than two hours ago has made this a rollicking Monday!
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
Jonathan Karl
@jonkarl
·15h
More from “Betrayal” Maria Bartiromo called Attorney General Bill Barr shortly after the election demanding he stop Democrats from “stealing” the election “She called me up and she was screaming,” Barr told me. “I yelled back at her. She’s lost it.”
Just completely normal in the US now- weird Right wing media personality calls the top US law enforcement official and “screams” at him that her demands must be met.
Barr took the call. They hope to normalize this level of corruption, and they have succeeded.
You try calling the AG. Let me know when you get him on the phone.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: The thing that strikes me is that Barr was a complete toady and enabler for Trump on this stuff and ultimately he seemed to be taken aback by the depth of crazy he’d help to unleash. Much like Mike Pence, who was a loyal soldier the whole time and discovered he had become the villain of the story and candidate for lynching the moment there was a line he wouldn’t cross.
debbie
@Matt McIrvin:
Unbelieveably, he’s back to being a TFG apologist, downplaying the attempted coup!
sab
@Geminid: We don’t know yet because there are two Republican map versions, one from Ohio House and the other from Ohio Senate. The Senate version has most of Cuyahoga County in District Eleven, except for some of the SW suburbs, which are all Republican. So it would be a very Democratic district. The primary would be the election. Brown wouldn’t have the Summit County voters that carried her in the 2021 elections.
The House version has chopped up all the cities so much that it is impossible to tell what is going on. I can’t even tell which district she would be in
ETA: House version 11th would be mostly Cleveland. 14th is probably Republican. She would be in one of those two districts
ETA If Nina Turner thinks she can run against her then that would put her in the 11th. The primary would be the race. If she is in the 13th then she would probably be unopposed in the primary and run against Dave Joyce in the heneral and get beaten.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: Barr was always a gimlet-eyed gunslinger for wealthy conservatives like those who control the Federalist Society. He and they got as much as they could out of trump. That’s why Barr took the job. But they never respected trump, and they did not see any long term value in propping him up.
dopey-o
I am still scalded over the McDonald’s Coffee Hysteria. Lots of RW outrage over a 78 y o woman burning herself thru her own damn carelessness.
then the facts came out: prior to this event, McD had settled almost 300 scalding claims. McD had determined that serving coffee at 10 degrees above the average for other chains would allow the use of cheaper coffee. I believe Stella Liebeck spent 3 days in the hospital being treated for burns.
some smart McD lawyers looked at her age, consulted the actuarial charts, and decided that she wouldn’t out-live a court case.
RONG!
Here’s a synopsis if you’re bored.
https://www.ttla.com/index.cfm?pg=mcdonaldscoffeecasefacts
dopey-o
Is he the cute one?
debbie
@dopey-o:
Ick.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: I think even many people who self-identify as liberal have this intuition they may never explicitly state that if you don’t win white men, any win you get is kind of a cheat.
I was going to say it’s a “majority of a majority” attitude but men aren’t even a majority, let alone white men.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
Nope. Nope. Nope.
Just ain’t nothing special about white men.
Brachiator
@dopey-o:
I had read that this was more about McD wanting customers to be able to drive home and still have warm coffee. There is a fast food laboratory dedicated to finding ways to keep fries hot for a ten minute drive from store to home.
The average 79 year old American woman can expect to live more than 10 years. They would have had to drag this case out a long ass time.
Ruckus
@Kay:
Seems like a lot farther.
Maybe because I’ve been watching for a long time.
sab
@Brachiator: Who drives McDonald’s coffee home? I always used to get it for breakfast at the start of my commute, amd it was u drinkable for about the first half hour of said commute. Very annoying.
J R in WV
@Steve in the ATL:
I think so, myself. Use it for lots of stuff, partly because MS Office won’t run on Linux OSes. Might not be perfect for giant docs with lots of images, etc, but seems to work OK for normal documents.
J R in WV
@germy:
Already contributed to that campaign !!! I hate TX, but I’m willing to try to help them out of their fascist morass.