Moscow Mitch is speaking tonight. Let’s raise some money for the Democrat running against him, Amy McGrath. It’s a tough race but…fuck Mitch.
Archives for August 2020
Republican Convention – Dumpster Fire and Authoritarian Marching: Day 4
Here you go. Republican Convention, Day 4.
Only one more day of all these vile creatures gathered in one place.
I love this floating dumpster fire so much. Still, I hope that soon we will have no more reason to use it.
……………..
I thought some authoritarian marching might be appropriate for tonight, so I asked for links in last night’s thread. Leto was kind enough to send one with music.
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Happy 51st Anniversary, Mom and Dad
It’s the parents 51st anniversary, and since they are still on lockdown, we could not go out like we did last year to the Italian restaurant whose name I can not even remember. At any rate, Devon and I decided we would do something for them, and since mom and dad both loved Maryland crabs, we did that. I went to Maryland this morning and picked up a half a bushel and some Utz’s potato chips, Devon made a gazpacho and a corn salad, and we surprised them for dinner:
If you look to the left, you can see my bear paw, but as dad and Chris are more photogenic, the rest of me was not in the frame. Crabs look good, though:
Ironically, both mom and dad, lifelong Republicans, are almost as eager as I am to vote for Biden. They just LOATHE Trump. At any rate, Happy 51st.
Thursday Evening Open Thread: Last Night of the RNC Con
Full-page ad on the back of the A-section of today’s @washingtonpost — pic.twitter.com/LaivusLlrn
— Karen Tumulty (@ktumulty) August 27, 2020
And the @nytimes as well.
— Karen Tumulty (@ktumulty) August 27, 2020
The message of this convention is that Trump has no friends that he doesn't pay.
— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) August 27, 2020
Or that don’t pay him...
No Kukli, but I’ll take it. https://t.co/6bgVxFJoN9
— Mig Greengard (@chessninja) August 27, 2020
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Sen. Kamala Harris Speech
This is good. You can rewind and go back and listen from the beginning.
I believe we need, and will try to be the one to offer, a bit of positive political news several times a week about Biden-Harris and any of the Senate/Congressional campaigns and positive voting news.
Send me your links to any good political news you want to share.
Open thread
Dollar Store Sarah Palin Jukes the Stats
So, South Dakota Governor/Failer Kristi Noem gave a convention speech last night. Today, this appeared on the South Dakota State Department of Health COVID dashboard:
Note my highlights in red. The state under-reported in the two-day run up to Kristi’s speech. Wonder why that was. Also note that while cases are way, way up, South Dakota’s testing goals are not. North Dakota, which is roughly the same size as South Dakota, has processed a total of 450K tests. South Dakota has done less than half of that testing.
Kristi is probably a little disappointed because giving Trump a model of Mt Rushmore with Trump’s face on it didn’t make Trump replace Pence with her. Still, as a loyal Trumper, she’s happy to under test, under trace and generally fuck things up to kiss his ass.
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Media Ofdonalds
Zeynep Tufekci, sociologist and academic who studies the effect technology has on society and one of the first writers to warn about the dangers of big data and social media-driven political campaigning, is also a thoughtful media critic. She laid out our current Beltway media problem in a Twitter thread yesterday with uncommon clarity:
Remarkable that a media person can write “Do you think a single person outside the Beltway gives a hoot…” without realizing it means that so many of in media failed so staggeringly in their job that they’re perceived as little more than cynical gossips. Institutional failure. https://t.co/rCmzIkqMtT
— zeynep tufekci (@zeynep) August 26, 2020
Here’s the rest of the thread, de-twittified:
“Do you think any persuadable voter even notices?” That’s the job! We can roll our eyes without their help; media’s only remaining job is to inform and highlight what’s important, not roll their own eyes preemptively. Amazing that so many in media are [s]till blind to this in 2020.
Also Politico published play-by-play gossip from the Wikileaks hacks daily in 2016—didn’t roll their eyes then. I tried to shout this before 2016 and I’ll say it again. The condition we face is widespread and profound *elite failure* in our institutions during a tough transition.
In the run-up to 2016, it was staggering how many individual reporters were consumed looking up their and colleagues names in the Wikileaks hack and snickering on Twitter and then writing pieces about it, instead of actual reporting on important stuff on either Trump or Clinton.
How many of them learned anything since 2016? Not very hopeful here. In an age where digital technology has eaten up the easy advertising dollars, the only hope traditional media has is to make a case that it’s relevant and important or be reduced to virality chasers.
Also, “Persuadable voter” is not some fixed category. If there is no informative reporting; if there is no contextualization; if there is no explanation of what happened, and then people are less likely to be persuaded by that particular issue.
From my book (written before Trump’s win). One key goal of authoritarianism is to produce “resignation, cynicism, and a sense of disempowerment”—not by censoring info (not that easy anymore) but making information irrelevant to action. Some media are handmaidens of exactly this.
Maybe institutions are like dominoes — when one falls, it knocks over the next, and so on. Open thread.