Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

The willow is too close to the house.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

No one could have predicted…

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Sunday Morning Open Thread: Readership Capture

Sunday Morning Open Thread: Readership Capture

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182Comments

  4. 4.

    Nora

    That’s one thing you always see in Biden: he genuinely likes people and responds to people on a deep, human level. The look on his face when he’s holding that child: that’s the real deal.

  10. 10.

    NotMax

    Cascading effects.

    Without Russian help, climate scientists worry how they’ll keep up their important work of documenting warming in the Arctic.

    Europe’s space agency is wrestling with how its planned Mars rover might survive freezing nights on the Red Planet without its Russian heating unit.

    And what of the world’s quest for carbon-free energy if 35 nations cooperating on an experimental fusion-power reactor in France can’t ship vital components from Russia?

    In scientific fields with profound implications for mankind’s future and knowledge, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is causing a swift and broad decaying of relationships and projects that bound together Moscow and the West. Post-Cold War bridge-building through science is unraveling as Western nations seek to punish and isolate the Kremlin by drying up support for scientific programs involving Russia.
    [snip]
    Russian scientists are bracing for painful isolation. An online petition by Russian scientists and scientific workers opposed to the war says it now has more than 8,000 signatories. They warn that by invading Ukraine, Russia has turned itself into a pariah state, which “means that we can’t normally do our work as scientists, because conducting research is impossible without full-fledged cooperation with foreign colleagues.”

    The growing estrangement is being pushed by Russian authorities, too. An order from the Science Ministry suggested that scientists no longer need bother getting research published in scientific journals, saying they’ll no longer be used as benchmarks for the quality for their work. Source

  12. 12.

    Suzanne

    Weird thing that just happened. I got to my yoga class, and everyone is arriving, putting coats and purses in lockers, etc. One lady comes in wearing an old Conor Lamb baseball cap. Another lady compliments her on it and says, “That’s my brother.”

    Mt. Lebanon, man.

  14. 14.

    OzarkHillbilly

    How did the Russians ever think these people could be conquered, my god.

    SOLDIER: It’s time to go.

    SOLDIER: Did you hear me? This is an evacuation. You understand? You have to come with me.
    OLD WOMAN: Why?
    SOLDIER: Why? Because they told me, so now I’m telling you. Everyone in this village. Everyone. It’s not safe here. There’s radiation in the air. What’s wrong with you?
    OLD WOMAN: Do you know how old I am?
    SOLDIER: I don’t know. Old.
    OLD WOMAN: I am 82. I have lived here my whole life. Right here. That house. This place. What do I care about safe?
    SOLDIER: I have a job. Don’t cause trouble.
    OLD WOMAN: Trouble. Tschh. You are not the first soldier to stand here with a gun. When I was 12, the revolution came. Czar’s men. Then Bolsheviks. Boys like you marching in lines. They told us to leave.
    No.
    Then there was Stalin, and his famine. The Holodomor. My parents died. Two of my sisters died. They told the rest of us to leave.
    No.
    Then the Great War. German boys. Russian boys. More soldiers. More famine. More bodies. My brothers never came home. But I stayed. And I am still here. After all that I’ve seen. So I should leave now– because of something I cannot see at all?

    No.

    It’s like they never read a history book.

  15. 15.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @john (not mccain):

    He’s rapidly becoming my favourite news person. He was especially good this morning.

    AL, thanks for the MMG parody. It’s excellent. That said — and this isn’t a criticism, just an observation — there are lots and lots of other parody-worthy G&S patter songs out there, and I’d love to see a really good take on “The Judge’s Song” or “The Nightmare Song” or “My Name is John Wellington Wells.”

  20. 20.

    SFAW

    That G&S “re-spin” is awesome. I wish I were a quarter as creative as Andrej (or whoever wrote it). [For G&S, one-tenth would be good enough for me.]

  21. 21.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    Chris Wallace, who left Fox News last December after 18 years for cable news rival CNN, said that working at Fox News after the 2020 election was “unsustainable” and he “just no longer felt comfortable with the programming at Fox.”

    “I’m fine with opinion: conservative opinion, liberal opinion,” Wallace told the New York Times in an interview published Sunday. “But when people start to question the truth — Who won the 2020 election? Was Jan. 6 an insurrection? — I found that unsustainable.”

  22. 22.

    Frankensteinbeck

    How did the Russians ever think these people could be conquered

    According to the leak, you leave the FSB feet-first, and Putin got angry when told the world didn’t work the way he wants.  So they told him that every city in Ukraine already had thousands of people organized and ready to rise up to support Russia, including replacement city governments ready to go.  History repeated itself for the thousandth time, and Sun Pony help us, the shithead believed Russia would be welcomed as liberators.

  23. 23.

    SFAW

    @Baud:

    This frightens me.

    On the plus side: it’s unlikely that children would be allowed to get picked up by (or otherwise be near to) a pantsless Baud, so you’d probably be safe. Relatively.

  25. 25.

    Spanky

    I hate to be that guy, but I think credit should go to Kelly for being the first to post the MMG parody, yesterday at 1320.

    (Edited to remove a stoopid link attempt)

  33. 33.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Frankensteinbeck:  Ukrainians will never surrender. They know what that means.

    Interesting phenomenon now, in addition to markedly strengthening NATO, this invasion is also markedly weakening the position of the Russian language in Ukraine. As most of you may know, Ukraine is to a large degree bilingual. I’ve written about this before, you have talk shows on Ukrainian TV where the host asks a question in one of the languages and the guest responds in the other, and nobody thinks twice. But what has been happening since February is that a lot of people who had previously been primarily Russophone have publicly said they are switching and will be speaking only in Ukrainian from now on. I don’t have it at my fingertips, but a public poll has shown support in Ukraine of Russian as a second official language has dropped precipitously.

  34. 34.

    Spanky

    @Suzanne:  From some comments yesterday, I’m just gonna leave this here:

    French Fries, Primanti Size

    Calories
    2000

    Calories from Fat
    720

    Saturated Fat
    13

    Trans Fatty Acid
    0

    Cholesterol
    0

    Sodium
    3240

    Total Dietary Fiber
    27

    Total Sugars
    15

    Protein
    42

    From their website.

  37. 37.

    BC in Illinois

    The TikTok of the Ukrainian band in uniform reminds me of a young Ukrainian performer I am following and wishing well for. Sofia Shkidchenko.

    I happened on her videos a few months back by accident, while checking out a Swiss yodeling family on YouTube (it’s a long story) and came across Sofia in her 12-year-old “Ukraine’s Got Talent” breakthrough. She’s now 16, and has spent her teenaged years working at being a teen-aged pop sensation. Most of her music is not aimed at my demographic and I just hope she can maneuver her career and keep her head on straight, etc.

    What is striking is that everything changed on her YouTube channel when the Russians invaded on Feb 24. The week before she was putting out a Valentine’s Day video and a cover of Destiny’s Child. On February 28, this 16-year-old girl puts out a video with the Ukrainian Flag — the first of a number of videos in Ukrainian and in English. The Ukrainian National Anthem, with comments on where it comes from and what it means. The most recent, a video on “the Hero City of Mariapol.”

    I have a 15-year-old g’daughter. I think of her and then listen to “Jamala – 1944” and it about breaks my heart.

  39. 39.

    Liminal Owl

    @SiubhanDuinne: My first apartment had outdoor doorbell-buzzers.  I labeled mine “#70 Simmery Axe.” Friends understood.  (Not what you asked for, but I thought you might enjoy anyway. I’ll work on the parody.)

  40. 40.

    BC in Illinois

    One comment before I need to head out:

    Anne Applebaum had a tweet about many moving renditions of the Ukrainian National Anthem. I came across Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin performing a Concert for Peace. March 6. They opened with the Ukrainian National Anthem.

    But, if you can’t listen to the whole hour-and-a-half — Schubert’s “Unfinished” / Beethoven’s “Eroica” —  listen to the first seven minutes. The anthem and Barenboim’s speech (English subtitles). He speaks about Ukraine, courage, freedom, and peace. He also speaks against a misguided anti-Russian reaction — against the Russian people and against Russian culture, music, and literature.

    He talks about bans/boycotts, for example, that target an Italian symposium on Dostoyevsky, or Polish concert halls forbidding the performance of Russian music “no matter from which century.”  As he says, “Russian culture is not the same as Russian politics.”

    A good speech. A great concert.

  43. 43.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @BC in Illinois: Russian culture and Russian politics are not the same, but Russian politics have made Russian culture deeply unfashionable for the foreseeable future.

  46. 46.

    Starfish

    @Jay: A friend left their home last night for this one. They were also evacuated for the other one. This hit the same group of people twice, and that is very hard.

  47. 47.

    zhena gogolia

    @Gin & Tonic: We had a webinar with Ukrainians, including a city official in a city I won’t name. We’re a small place and the one Ukrainian-speaking student wasn’t there that day, so they had enlisted a Belarusian student, and she asked him to speak Russian. He started speaking Russian, with native fluency, but you could feel the words sticking in his throat. Then one of the Ukrainians on the screen broke in and asked him to speak Ukrainian and she would do the translating. It was a very telling moment, I thought.

  48. 48.

    zhena gogolia

    @Omnes Omnibus: Just like my course on the Central and East European novel has been deeply unfashionable for 20 years (I barely make the enrollment limit), but I keep stubbornly teaching it anyway.

  51. 51.

    zhena gogolia

    I’m old enough to remember when I was labeled a “Cold Warrior” for my attitude toward Putin and people like Gergiev, while the New York music world was kissing their asses.

  52. 52.

    Betty Cracker

    @Suzanne: I’m a Southerner, so I generally like unhealthy food and thought there could be no excess of fatty substances in a menu item that could disgust me. Then I read about a new chain restaurant in Orlando called Fat Shack. They have gross things like cheesesteak sandwiches with fried chicken strips and mozzarella sticks and French fries — all in the sandwich. Come on, man!

  53. 53.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @zhena gogolia: As you should.  I was thinking in terms of popular fashion.  Perversely, a newly antagonistic relationship with Russia could trigger increased academic interest in it.  Maybe not for the literature per se, but for the language, etc.  I took several Russian/Soviet related government and history courses as an undergrad in the ’80s.  I would guess that fewer people went that direction in the ’00s.

  54. 54.

    Starfish

    @Betty Cracker: As a Southerner, I told coworkers in Maryland that you could fry hotdogs wrapped in bacon, and I regret any future heart attacks I may have caused by sharing this information. These dudes who counted mushrooms as the only vegetables they ate were making them to watch sportsball.

  56. 56.

    Anyway

    @Suzanne:

    I hate the PA senate race.  Lamb and Fetterman have joined the ad blitz – it was just Oz and the other Republican for a while.

    Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

  59. 59.

    Betty Cracker

    @Omnes Omnibus: It is good — retweeted. I also hope Biden has a talk with the WH communications shop. The clean-up on aisle 46 could have been handled better!

  60. 60.

    debbie

    @zhena gogolia:

    Sorry the formatting isn’t clearer:

    “Global Uproar” The only foreign officials cited in this article are: 1. Dmitri Peskov: “That’s not for Biden to decide. The president of Russia is elected by Russians” & 2. “Some officials” who said off the record that “Biden’s comment was an honest acknowledgment of reality”

    The “global uproar” doesn’t include France, China, Turkey, Germany, etc. Even Russia was fairly restrained in response. The uproar was literally just journalists & others on twitter choosing to ~manufacture~ a dramatic narrative shift about foreign policy

    Whether Biden should be criticized for his comments is an entirely different matter. What is *not* debatable is that journalists should have waited for the full context of the quote &, additionally, should have relied on their background knowledge to interpret U.S. foreign policy

    I am legitimately baffled by how we have spent the last several weeks debating Biden’s choice to NOT implement a no fly zone & then flip around & claim he is calling for *regime change*. That’s a pretty serious interpretative mistake, no?

    It’s not just the NFZ. We’ve also spent the last weeks arguing about so-called offensive weapons, which, again, Biden has been cautious about providing to Ukraine due to fear of escalation. Is it good journalism to forget any of this has taken place & declare “Regime change!” ?

    And I can’t stress this enough: other than Peskov, there is not a single foreign official cited in this article. Even the Kremlin is downplaying this. The headline is wildly inaccurate.

    This is all pretty serious and it’s not about defending Biden. There probably *was* an uproar or at least some drama at the state department. Biden’s comments should have been parsed. That said, it is incumbent upon journalists to accurately describe critical U.S. foreign policy

  61. 61.

    Betty Cracker

    Regarding boycotts of all things Russian, I’ve read that in the U.S. during WWI, people were sometimes accosted by strangers while walking their Dachshunds and berated for owning an “unpatriotic” dog breed. Boycotting Tchaikovsky, Dostoyevsky, non-Russian-made vodka, etc., because of Putin’s aggression seems similarly misguided. 

  62. 62.

    debbie

    @Betty Cracker:

    My mother’s father’s family emigrated from Latvia around 1903. In the 1910 census, they claimed they came from Germany. In the 1920 census, they were Russians. So much for the honor system. //

  63. 63.

    Geminid

    @Betty Cracker: Then there’s the counter example: this morning the cashier at the local grocery store got to talking about her gardening and asserted that nothing beat a fresh tomato-mayonaise sandwich. With good bread and good mayonnaise that’s probably a wholesome “sammich.”

  66. 66.

    Betty Cracker

    @Geminid: Yep — I am already looking forward to the tomatoes my husband is growing, and each year, I bake a loaf of homemade bread so we can have tomato sandwiches with the first ones. Just tomato, salt, pepper, mayo and bread, and there’s nothing finer.

  67. 67.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Betty Cracker:

    Counterpoint – the year my mom bought my wife and I season tickets to Actors Theater of Louisville, which decide to devote the entire season to the plays of Chekhov.

    If you ever wanted to have a season of gloom, you’ll go to a season of nothing but Chekhov – it’s nothing but mundane social scandal, misery and suicide.

  72. 72.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Betty Cracker:  And yet … there’s a restaurant in Portland, Maine, called “Duckfat” (I think they write it as one word) where they use Maine potatoes fried in duck fat as French Fries. They are sublime.

  73. 73.

    Geminid

     

    @Betty Cracker: The young Georgia O’Keefe thought she had found a good place teaching school in Amarillo, Texas. Then the U.S. entered the “War to End All Wars,” and teachers were required to swear a loyalty oath expressing vengeance towards Germany. O’Keefe would not do it, so she had to leave Amarillo and Palo Duro Canyon behind and go back east.

  75. 75.

    Gin & Tonic

    @debbie:

     journalists should … have relied on their background knowledge to interpret U.S. foreign policy

    This is a joke, right?

  81. 81.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Betty Cracker: During WWI, Canada sent Ukrainian immigrants in the western provinces to internment camps – the “reasoning” being that the area they came from, which was until then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was “German.”

  85. 85.

    Betty Cracker

    The NYT quotes Lindsey Graham — yes, Lindsey Graham — in an article on the lack of comity in judicial confirmations:

    Graham: Judicial confirmation process could get even more toxic

    Jesus God. Yes, let’s ask the stunt-senator who staged two post-hissy fit walkouts in the latest hearings about comity and bipartisanship.

    “Godzilla warns city planning sessions could get even more messy!”

  88. 88.

    sixthdoctor

    Question for Juicers: What do you think we can do as individuals to create incentives for moderate Republicans to speak up against the Qanon takeover of their party? I see no reason for any sane old school conservative to get into politics when the “reward” is threats and targeting by Fox News. There’s a serious collective action problem now and I don’t see any solution. I don’t even know if there is one.

  89. 89.

    Another Scott

    @Omnes Omnibus: +1

    FTFNYT is garbage.  And the headline writers are at the bottom of the garbage pile.

    Biden knew what he was doing.  He knows foreign policy and he knows VVP.  Part of his job, at the moment, is to increase the amount of stuff that VVP needs to worry about.  The official US government policy clearly has not changed; reminding the world of the moral stakes is a good thing.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  93. 93.

    debbie

    It amazes me that no one batted an eye when both Bush father and Bush son were advocating for “Saaadam’s” demise, but Biden says Putin must go, and the streets are suddenly filled with countless fainting couches.

  95. 95.

    Jerzy Russian

    @Betty Cracker:   Have you ever had deep-fried chicken skins?    A local place down the street used to have those.  They are actually tasty, but it is very easy to overdo it.   That establishment has sadly gone out of business, mostly because of the pandemic.  The owner seems to be concentrating on his other place, a place that specializes in Texas BBQ.

  96. 96.

    Starfish

    @sixthdoctor: The Republicans in Utah who took a stance against persecuting trans-students should be thanked. They are going to get a lot of hate mail.

    The garbage that allows people to bring guns to NRA Day at the capitol needs to be stopped too. That is where “Hey, it is cool for right wingers to menace the politicians” garbage started.

  97. 97.

    Kalakal

    @Betty Cracker: The English did a lot of that in WW1, it’s the reason  ‘German Shepherds’ are called ‘Alsatians’ in the UK. It was supposed to evoke the French region of Alsace which the fiendish Hun had captured in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and hung onto ever since, the initial tryout of ‘Belgian Police Dog’ never caught on. There were lots of reports of vandalism against anything ‘German’ including people kicking Daschunds, oddly people didn’t try kicking German Shepherds, Rottweilers, and Dobermans, not twice anyway. The Royal family became ‘Windsor’ instead of ‘Saxe-Coburg-Gotha’ and their cousins the ‘Battenbergs’ became the ‘Mountbattens’

  98. 98.

    mrmoshpotato

    @SFAW:

    On the plus side: it’s unlikely that children would be allowed to get picked up by (or otherwise be near to) a pantsless Baud, so you’d probably be safe. Relatively. 

    Hahaha from a pantsless potato

  99. 99.

    sixthdoctor

    @Starfish: Thank you, that’s the type of advice I’m seeking. I know I need to work more and push myself out of my comfort zone, but what we’re dealing with now is mostly a failure of Republicans to clean up their party (esp. since Trump came on the scene) so I feel like anything I can do to encourage those who are doing this important and frightening work should be helped as much as possible.

  102. 102.

    zhena gogolia

    @Miss Bianca: American productions of Chekhov are a crime against humanity. Gogol as well.

    The only good production of Chekhov I’ve seen was by a group of undergraduates who had spent a semester studying the play (Sea Gull) with a world-class Chekhov scholar. It was performed in a professor’s backyard and living room and it was fabulous.

  104. 104.

    MomSense

    @zhena gogolia:

    Biden’s Reckless words underscore the U.S. use of Ukraine as a proxy war- and he goes on to blame US and NATO for everything.  Early comments are a shitshow.

  108. 108.

    zhena gogolia

    My dearest wish for Glenn Greenwald is that he be transported to a shitty apartment in Ekaterinburg tout de suite.

  112. 112.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @debbie: ​
     They are not journalists. They are PR flacks, at best, and outright propagandists, at worst. Mostly, though, they’re engaged in naked clickbaiting. CREAM, you know.

  113. 113.

    Geminid

    @sixthdoctor: I don’t know how to incentivize these Republicans, but I’m not sure they need any. They are already incentivised by their position in the party, as part of a larger “Chamber of Commerce” faction that’s getting pushed around more or less by the radicals, bible thumpers and Q-Nuts

    This struggle will play out in primaries this cycle, like those for the North Carolina Senate and Georgia Governor’s nominations. As a practical matter, Democrats will back Cherie Beasley and Stacey Abrams for these seats no matter how the intra-party fight turns out for Republicans.

    I guess if I lived in the S.C. 7th C.D. I would come out and vote for Impeacher Tom Rice over his trumpist challenger in that open primary.. But I don’t so that is just another contest to observe along those in North Carolina and Georgia.

  116. 116.

    Miss Bianca

    @zhena gogolia: I had this weird dream once where I was directing a production of The Cherry Orchard as if it were taking place in the American South. And it was hilarious.

    Not sure I would or could ever try it. Directing Chekhov, I mean. But after reading Anatolii Efros’s The Joy of Rehearsal and how lovingly he talks about rehearsing Chekhov plays, I find myself tempted. I think I’d have to do it like a theater professor would – we’d have to study the plays in-depth with an expert before trying a production.

  117. 117.

    zhena gogolia

    @Heidi Mom:
    You probably want to see this list of Ukrainian novels translated into English:
    https://bookriot.com/ukrainian-books/

    My course is heavily weighted toward Czech, so my top five has to include Bohumil Hrabal, especially I Served the King of England (should be I Waited on the King of England).
    We loved Olga Tokarczuk, Flights (should be Runners).
    Written in English, Aleksandar Hemon’s The Question of Bruno is great.
    An acquired taste is Witold Gombrowicz, Trans-Atlantyk (Danuta Borchardt translation).
    Despite all its sexism, Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being still holds up.
    And for a portrait of Austria-Hungary in its decline, nothing beats Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

    ETA: A great masterpiece, but not an easy read, is Mesa Selimovic’s Death of the Dervish.

  119. 119.

    Ruckus

    @Baud:

    He knows exactly how much some people suck.

    He doesn’t let that rule every thought and feeling in his head.

    He knows that some people suck some of the time and some people suck all of the time and that some people don’t really suck, they just occasionally have a bad day, because they are human. Like him.

  121. 121.

    Ruckus

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    FWIW, I think the GOP needs to clean up their own house.

    Do you think that thought has ever crossed their minds?

    Or that if it has, that any of them did anything but think – bullshit?

    I do actually agree with you, I’m just not in any way sure that they haven’t invested so deeply into their bullshit that they can ever move on and see reality.

  122. 122.

    Betty Cracker

    @sixthdoctor: I don’t know if it’s possible, but I suppose it’s worth trying? The GOP probably won’t change until it loses a couple more elections in a row, and unfortunately, that’s not likely because Americans have the attention span of a fruit fly.

    Someone wrote a letter to the editor of our crappy little county paper today that gently pushes back against the Q-flavored garbage FL’s governor is pushing, plus a dumb local controversy about Pride displays at the library. The theme of the letter is “don’t give in to fear.”

    Maybe that approach would work on people who aren’t completely hopeless. I don’t know.

  123. 123.

    sixthdoctor

    @Omnes Omnibus: Oh, I completely agree, but I’m also interested in any action as a citizen to incentivize them to do so. I know it’s likely a sparrow-wearing-away-a-mountain situation, but this thought exercise will help me break my own inertia and hopelessness if nothing else.

  125. 125.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Ruckus: Never Trumpers, Joe Walsh, Liz Cheney, etc.  As far as the Never Trumpers go, I’d much rather see them try to fix their party than tell us how to run ours.  They were happy to drive the clown car right to the cliff’s edge got scared when it went over.  Fuck ’em.  Fix the GOP or accept our values and come over.  Cole and Jen Rubin (seemingly) made one choice.  The others have to make up their minds.

  126. 126.

    Jeffro

    @sixthdoctor: Some bored Dem should run as a ‘moderate’ Republican, just to show them what one looks like and to show voters just how far off their rocker modern Republicans are.

    No, he or she wouldn’t get many votes – this is just for the ongoing public reminder to Rs that their candidates are nuts.

  128. 128.

    Another Scott

    @Ruckus: TheAtlantic (from March 2013):

    By Garance Franke-Ruta
    MARCH 18, 2013

    The Republican Party on Monday released a 100-page autopsy of how its 2012 presidential campaign was conducted. I’ve picked out the key sections you need to read from the analytic recommendations and critiques made by the party in this “Growth and Opportunity Project” report. The project report also has a long section of recommendations for GOP friends and allies — read, PACs and Super PACS — which I’ve not excerpted from below.

    ***

    The GOP today is a tale of two parties. One of them, the gubernatorial wing, is growing and successful. The other, the federal wing, is increasingly marginalizing itself, and unless changes are made, it will be increasingly difficult for Republicans to win another presidential election in the near future.

    Republicans have lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections. States in which our presidential candidates used to win, such as New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Iowa, Ohio, New Hampshire, Virginia, and Florida, are increasingly voting Democratic. We are losing in too many places.

    It has reached the point where in the past six presidential elections, four have gone to the Democratic nominee, at an average yield of 327 electoral votes to 211 for the Republican. During the preceding two decades, from 1968 to 1988, Republicans won five out of six elections, averaging 417 electoral votes to Democrats’ 113.

    Public perception of the Party is at record lows. Young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the Party represents, and many minorities wrongly think that Republicans do not like them or want them in the country. When someone rolls their eyes at us, they are not likely to open their ears to us.

    At the federal level, much of what Republicans are doing is not working beyond the core constituencies that make up the Party. On the state level, however, it is a different story. Republicans hold governorships in 30 states with 315 electoral votes, the most governors either party has had in 12 years, and four short of the all-time GOP high of 34 governors who served in the 1920s.

    Republican governors are America’s reformers in chief. They continue to deliver on conservative promises of reducing the size of government while making people’s lives better. They routinely win a much larger share of the minority vote than GOP presidential candidates, demonstrating an appeal that goes beyond the base of the Party.

    […]

    There are not two wings of the GQP, if there were back then (and I don’t think there were in 2012 either).

    The report was thrown in the trash in less than a week. And based on the 2016 election results, they’re quite happy to have done so.

    :-/

    Humans dislike change. The people running the GQP are quite happy with their power. The GQP will only change for the better when they have to.

    Grr…,
    Scott.

  129. 129.

    JAFD

    @Geminid:

     Meself, in July or August, fresh Jersey tomatos, Portuguese rolls that go from oven to store to bakery in twelve hours, and Mrs Schlorer’s mayo (more vinegar, less sugar than Hellman’s) – I’d say that is a foretaste of Heaven
    The ultimate MMG parody, IMVAO, is Kevin Wald’s Heroine Barbarian. If you need some amusement, strongly suggest you check at
    https://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/sf/filk/xena.htm

  130. 130.

    oldgold

    This:

    Garry Kasparov

    “No free world leader should hesitate to state plainly that the world would be a far better place if Putin were no longer in power in Russia. A good way to make that come about is to say exactly that. Russia will be pariah until Putin is gone.”

  131. 131.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Betty Cracker:

    Regarding boycotts of all things Russian, I’ve read that in the U.S. during WWI, people were sometimes accosted by strangers while walking their Dachshunds and berated for owning an “unpatriotic” dog breed.

    The one time I saw Molly Ivins give a live talk was around 2004 or 05, and she was talking about “liberty cabbage” and whatnot in the context of Freedom Fries. She mentioned reports of people kicking Dachshunds on the streets of New York, and drawled in her inimitable fashion, “Y’all notice none of them ever tried to kick a German Shepherd…”

  132. 132.

    Miss Bianca

    @zhena gogolia: You…SAW…an Efros production?

    May I touch your hem?//

    ETA: He talks about that play in his book, btw. I had never heard of it, now I want to read it!

  135. 135.

    Geminid

     

    @sixthdoctor:  There are non-affililated “independents out there who may be moved by the anti-Q argument, but a more hopeful would be to steer them towards the Democratic coalition rather than towards straightening out the other party.

    Magdi Semrau had some interesting comments on the politics of the small town/rural area of Pennsylvania she recently moved to. The Republicans, she felt, were basically unreachable. She saw a fair amount of independents with a mistrust of government that she thought could be won over with convincing outreach, as might some of the many un-registered. It could be that arguments along different lines than Q-resistance might work better with them.

    Semrau, I believe, is an educator with a social science background and not a political organizer. She is a perceptive, open-minded  person, though, so her observations may have value.

  136. 136.

    Gin & Tonic

    what you see is the russians performing distance mining of Kharkiv region with the latest remote mining system called “Zemledeliye” (Agriculture)… it lays mines at a distance of 5 to 15 km.

    needless to say, that this is meant to kill civilians and make farming near impossible. pic.twitter.com/dqUZ4dDYes
    — Roman Motychak (@motytchak) March 27, 2022

  137. 137.

    debbie

    @Geminid:

    They may be alarmed by the GQP, but they’ll see that as a less horrible alternative to the Democratic Party. Speaking as one whose family is filled with these critters, I think think we’ll just have to wait for all of them to die off.

  138. 138.

    Ruckus

    @sixthdoctor:

    I don’t even know if there is one.

    I don’t believe there is a way out, at least not one that will take less than 20-40 years. This is less a transition of concept and more one of degree, especially of who is actually setting conservative policy. And that is the overall take up of monetary superiority of the conservative party – which summed up means that their goal is money, as in Scrooge McDuck level admiration for piles of money as the ends of the means. We all like money, they Love Money. They worship money. Not the concept of what it can buy but the concept of having piles of money. OK they do like that it can buy some humans but still, it’s about the money. Equality – no fucking way. A betterment of all mankind – no fucking way. Worship of them for having money – now you’re talking. We like to break it down to politics but that is a means to an end for them. The only thing they want to conserve is the ability to get and stay wealthy in any way possible.

  139. 139.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, …

    Marjorie Taylor Greene’s race will probably cost more than every Michigan Senate race combined and she’ll win by double-digits no matter what.https://t.co/6Mk752DBgW

    So why don’t you help flip the Michigan Senate– and ruin Trump and MTG’s plan to steal our state — instead? https://t.co/kqByHOnxmV

    — LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) March 27, 2022

    Eyes on the prizes. All the prizes.

    [eta:] Donated.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  140. 140.

    sixthdoctor

    @Geminid: Following Semrau now, thank you, and thank you for all the thoughts and responses. Keeping notes and will follow up with actions.

  141. 141.

    Just One More Canuck

    @Jay: Grew up in Victoria.  I miss it, especially this time of year.  Spring here in suburban Toronto is approaching tentatively, probably another 3 or 4 weeks before it’s in full swing

  144. 144.

    Montanareddog

    @zhena gogolia: I was Peter Ivanovich Bobchinsky in a production of The Government Inspector at school and I was hilarious. At least, according to my mother.

  148. 148.

    Nettoyeur

    @Omnes Omnibus: I wonder about that too. I was at MIT in the 1970s, when Slavics was a thing in universities, and got a superb Russian education which has been very important in my physics career. By  2000, university Russian enrollments had collapsed, Russian speakers not of Russian parentage are now rare. But the Putler regime looks far darker and more dangerous than the late Cold War, relaunch may not be easy. I am busy with German just now (have big project in NE Germany), but now Ukrainian is on my study list. Already picking up some via Twitter……

  150. 150.

    germy

    @zhena gogolia:

    I recently read a collection of Chekhov’s short stories and I found them hilarious.  One short story, about an officious retired military man who’d appointed himself the cop of the neighborhood (I can’t remember the title offhand) was memorable.  He comes across a drowned man on the beach and complains about the crowd gathering.  “Why is that drowned man there?  What right does he have to lie there?”

    Chekhov really captured a certain type.

  152. 152.

    Geminid

    @sixthdoctor: There is a New Mexico jackal with a lot of hands-on experience at political organizing, including outreach to young people. Recently I suggested that they do a guest post on the topic. They demurred, but went on to give some pointers. One was that housing affordability is a very salient issue, for young people especially.

  153. 153.

    Kathleen

    @Miss Bianca:  A whole season of Chekov pails in comparison with the first half of Long Day’s Journey Into The Night. As people poured into the lobby at intermission I heard endless groans and mutterings of “my God that’s the most depressing thing I’ve ever seen.” I had to remind my companions that “We O’Neill’s are not a fun people.”

  155. 155.

    Ruckus

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Got it – and agree.

    We can’t clean up their garbage, they have to clean up after themselves. But they have to recognize the problem and come up with the solution and I don’t see that happening, at least not any time soon. There doesn’t seem to be enough of them that recognize that there is even a problem, let alone to work up a solution. And it is much more difficult because the problem is so vocal about how everything is caused by everyone else. They can’t seem to recognize their lack of, well everything other than overwhelming greed. OK add in self aggrandizement. Which they seem to think is grand. IOW everyone else not like them is the problem – as they see it. Except too many like them is competition rather than suckers. Is it possible that they will solve the problem by figuratively, or actually, shooting themselves in various sensitive body parts? Or is that just wishful thinking?

  156. 156.

    artem1s

    Hi, don’t want to bigfoot the fundraiser auction thread upstairs so I’ll post this here. If you support college radio and independent music, this is the final day of the WRUW FM, 91.1 annual fundraiser. Based at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH. Help them reach their goal of $91.1K and pick up a nice premium while you are at it.
    WRUW annual fundraiser.
    If you can’t today, no problem the link to donate is on their front page and the fundraiser will be open to donations for a month or so after. And you can always listen live by going to the links at WRUW 91.1 FM

  161. 161.

    Ruckus

    @Another Scott:

    I agree with your summary.

    Humans don’t mind change when it obviously benefits them personally. And that benefit can be illusionary, as long as it is believable to them. Humans like change they think is for the better. It is because most of us are somewhat skeptical about the unknown, which the future is. We like what we know, not because it is good or better but because it is not unknown. There are people who will jump out of planes to see what it’s like. They are rather few in numbers. And people will listen to people like them or who want to conserve what they know. Hence conservatism – it is a lack of change which is easier to understand than to work to create a more equitable world.

  163. 163.

    a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio

    @Spanky: 
    Well, there’s protein in flour. Not lots, unless the flour is protein-enriched, but there’s some in there.

  165. 165.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @germy: Chekov writing about poor children gutted me. There’s a story about a little boy apprenticed to a house where he’s abused and he writes a letter home to ask his grandfather for help and the only address he knows is “To Grandfather in the Village”

  168. 168.

    TonyG

    @OzarkHillbilly: I think that Putin and his cronies are using thug logic.  If Russia can kill enough Ukrainians, the rest will eventually surrender.  If that means killing 90% of the people of Ukraine, that’s something that Putin can certainly live with.

  173. 173.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, CalculatedRiskBlog:

    re: Census data on adult (age 25+) educational attainment in the USA.

    […]

    The trend towards more education has been ongoing, and there are now only 20 million adults without a high school education. There are about 120 million with a high school education or some college.

    And a record 85 million with bachelor’s degree or higher.

    The second graph shows the same data as a percent of the population.

    Educational Attainment In 1940, about 76% of the adult population (over 25) had less than a high school education. That has declined to less than 9% now.

    And in 1940, only 4.6% of the population had a bachelor’s degree or higher. Now that is at a record 37.9%.

    More education is one of the reasons I’ve argued the Future is Bright!

    +1

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  178. 178.

    grandmaBear

    @zhena gogolia: late to the thread, but I wanted to thank you for the reference to the Riasanovsky history. I’ve just started it but it’s very readable and looks like an excellent resource. Thanks for this list too. I’m already planning to get at least one of these.

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