Finally decorated my lawn pic.twitter.com/vvJzSAbIL6
— FORMER MAGA REPUBLICAN (@rodroob2) September 6, 2022
Today, I met with my Cabinet to lay out how we’re going to swiftly implement recent legislative wins like the Inflation Reduction Act.
This experienced and dedicated Cabinet is working to lower costs for families, create good-paying jobs, and increase American manufacturing. pic.twitter.com/liVG3y9O5b
— President Biden (@POTUS) September 6, 2022
The Cabinet Biden met with today is identical to the one at his first Cabinet meeting in April 2021 — there has been zero turnover since he took office. That's a sharp break from his predecessor https://t.co/Z3AHBZSII8
— Kevin Liptak (@Kevinliptakcnn) September 6, 2022
President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, are set to revive the tradition after a gap during the Trump years when they host the Obamas for their portrait reveal. https://t.co/DySFMbI0QR
— WUSA9 (@wusa9) September 3, 2022
Here’s @HouseGOP’s Extreme MAGA Agenda:
1. Criminalize women’s health care by banning abortion nationwide
2. Harm seniors by dismantling Social Security & Medicare
3. Attack Democracy by undermining electionsRepublicans are For Their Power. Democrats put #PeopleOverPolitics.
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) September 4, 2022
Gas supply surging after Biden decision to mix in 40% Republican tears on top of 10% ethanol https://t.co/wuBup3A3fn
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) September 6, 2022
Is there such thing as a Joe Biden superfan?
Yes. Well, sort of. But they’re quieter and harder to spot than the Trump fanatics, writes Paul Schwartzman. https://t.co/77EPIeXaEU
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) September 5, 2022
We’re grownups. We can like & admire the man without trying to force everyone around us to agree that he walks on water:
… “We don’t like to stand out and be noticed,” says James Bento, 32, a lab technician in Albuquerque who owns a fly swatter sold by the Biden-Harris campaign and two kitchen magnets, one of which says “No Malarkey” and the other in the shape of an ice cream cone emblazoned with the president’s name. Bento was in college when he fell for Biden. The moment, he says, may have been when a hot mic caught Biden murmuring to President Barack Obama that the Affordable Care Act was a “big f—ing deal.” “I thought, ‘This guy is great,’ ” Bento says. But he cautions that passionate Biden followers — because they can be moderate, like their man — tend to express their appreciation quietly.
“The ones who are against him are loud and obnoxious,” Cathy Woerner says. “The ones who like him are more polite.”
Woerner is a clerk at the information desk at the Biden Welcome Center on I-95 in Delaware, where handouts invite those so inclined to “Visit Northern Delaware, Walk in the Footsteps of President Biden.” (“Walt’s Flavor Crisp Chicken Express” is where the Bidens purportedly go when they need a “fried chicken fix,” the handout advises.) Sometimes, Woerner says, when she answers the phone at work, she has listened to complaints about gas prices and had to explain to callers that they have reached a rest stop, not the president’s office. At other times, people stand at her counter and recite their grievances to her face. “I say, ‘I don’t work for Biden, it’s not my fault,’ ” Woerner says.
Of course, there are Biden supporters who make more of a to-do about their affection. Amanda Linton, who lives in Virginia, named her dog after Biden. Her friend in South Carolina, Lisa Izzo, 55, made cookies in the shape of letters that spell out Biden’s name. One year, she placed next to her Christmas tree a life-size cutout of Biden in a Santa hat. When she cheered Biden’s entry in the 2020 race, Izzo said, a couple of her friends “were looking at me like I had three heads, like, ‘Oh my God, you’re crazy.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I’m Biden all the way.’ ”…
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a New York University history professor who studies dictators, says Biden is unlikely to attract a mass following of “die-hard fans” because his sober style represents a return to political normality after Trump. “It’s more healthy,” says Ben-Ghiat. “Normality is good.”…
In Scranton, Pa., where Biden spent the first 10 years of his life, there are the signs of hometown pride for the president. A main downtown drag has been renamed Biden Street. Every day, visitors stop to photograph his childhood home. Down the street, Chris Cullen nailed his “Biden for President” sign over his front door to remind doubters that he won in a “fair and free election.” At Hank’s Hoagies, a hole-in-the-wall sandwich shop around the corner from Biden’s old house, owner Tom Owens keeps a trove of memorabilia, including campaign signs, figurines, photos of his visits, and a life-size cutout of Joe at the entrance. On a counter sat a framed needlepoint portrait of Biden that someone had recently delivered.
Angie Budney, 66, who stopped to pick up her hoagie, keeps photos on her phone of herself posing with the Joe cutout at Hank’s, along with snapshots of her and her friends protesting when Trump visited Scranton. “I guess I’m a superfan,” Budney says of her attachment to the president.
Then she added: “You know what? Let’s just call me a fan. I have other things in my life.”
This man KNOWS who put him in the White House and I ?? it!!! https://t.co/dvYgnpqoJw
— Justice for Justin ???????? (@ish_not) September 6, 2022
On The Road – lashonharangue – Galapagos – Part 2
Baud
The other sharp break is that Biden’s cabinet isn’t required to verbally fellate the president at every meeting.
Jeffery
The yard sign photo got a sensitivity warning? How delicate are the fascists? Very apparently.
Baud
Can you imagine a Republican candidate taking a photo with a group of black people and describing them as “working people”? I can’t.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
germy shoemangler
rikyrah
@Baud:
Nope.
Absolutely not😒
rikyrah
@germy shoemangler:
Politico was always garbage😠
Baud
@germy shoemangler:
I’d imagine a lot of media had the same prayer.
What’s odd is that Germans don’t seem all that religious.
Lapassionara
@Baud: That was my thought too. Trump’s cabinet meeting was cringe-worthy.
Baud
Heh. Our people are awesome.
And good on WaPo for visiting Democratic voters for once.
ETA: Where the NYT fears to tread.
germy shoemangler
germy shoemangler
@rikyrah:
Yes. And it’s becoming even more trashy.
CNN is swirling down the drain, too.
Dorothy A. Winsor
After cataract surgery yesterday, my computer screen is very bright. It’s also blurry. My instruction sheet says I may have double vision the next morning because the anesthesia block hasn’t worn off yet. I’m trying to stay calm. I’m seeing the doc for my first post-op appt at 8:15,
In the meantime, I’m eyeing (haha) all those nuclear secret threads. I think I have to browse through them for the schadenfreude.
Baud
@germy shoemangler:
I don’t understand. No one polls a majority of the population.
SFAW
“That’s because Sleepy Joe, the most incompetentest, tyrannical, communistical, fascist LOOZAH surrounds himself with people who will make him seem smart, and he chains them to their desks so they can’t leave.”
— Every MAGAt, everywhere
Or, what Baud said at #1
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
So you see two of me?
germy shoemangler
germy shoemangler
@Baud:
No, but then they claim a majority of the population is against Biden.
If three balloon-juice commenters tell me they hate spinach, I’m not going to say a majority of jackals hate spinach.
Or if one commenter boasts of never wearing pants I should publish an op-ed titled “Balloon-juice, where the majority of commenters go bottomless”
Kevin
It’s nice to have a normal President you don’t have to worry is gonna accidentally say or do something really stupid or potentially catastrophic on any random day.
And it is also very weird that people are so hard on for TFG. I guess it’s the hate he allows people to express that makes the MAGAs that way? That would be an interesting study.
germy shoemangler
I thought they were kidding until I heard the audio.
gene108
@germy shoemangler:
I think the new management were ordered to kill the network by driving away its viewers. Anything else they say is just to obfuscate this.
It’s the only logical explanation for their decisions.
Baud
@germy shoemangler:
Polls are done in a statistically sound way. It’s not the same thing as anecdotal sampling Unless the CNN person is lying about poll results, the criticism is not valid. There are plenty of other legitimate things to criticize CNN about.
narya
Charlie Pierce refers to Politico as “Tiger Beat on the Potomac”; sounds like it needs to change to “Tiger Beat on the Rhine.”
SFAW
@germy shoemangler:
Is Dobrofsky saying that that CNN needed to poll 160-plus million people for the results to be valid? Or is he just making a joke, parodying people who are saying that? I can’t tell. If the former, he’s a moron. If the latter, he’s too fucking subtle for his own good. [As if he’s trying to be a low-rent New York Times Pitchbot, but hasn’t figured out how to do that yet.] And, no, Poe’s Law doesn’t apply here.
I guess there’s a possibility he’s attempting to make some other abstruse point, but since I’m apparently a dumbass, I can’t figure out what it might be.
p.a.
Norm Ornstein is a senior fellow at AEI, and he was very early on and way out front honest publicizing the Rethug Party’s ‘swing’ (more like a rocket-launch) to the whacko-right than any ‘non-partisan’ MSM & cable news entities.
Heritage Foundation was formed in part in response to AEI’s advice (joining liberals) that the US should not invest in the SST jet. HF: consistently wrong since day 1.
gene108
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
My mom had cataract surgery three years ago. It’s a bit rough for a few weeks, but then everything’s much better.
germy shoemangler
@SFAW:
So a majority of Americans really do disapprove of Biden’s performance?
I’m suddenly worried about our chances in 2022 and 2024! /
SFAW
@germy shoemangler:
What? Are you crazy? Who would do that? FAKE NOOZE!!!
SFAW
@Baud:
Even better — she sees TWO sets of pants you’re not wearing.
Baud
@germy shoemangler:
Last I saw, Biden’s numbers had improved recently but was still negative. It sucks that people don’t appreciate him more.
germy shoemangler
One night I dreamed a dream.
As I was walking along the beach with my Lord.
Across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life.
For each scene, I noticed two pairs of pants in the sand,
One belonging to me and one to my Lord.
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: Not like Baud’s cabinet (though I don’t know if cats cleaning him and dogs licking him are the same as fellation. Maybe?).
SFAW
@germy shoemangler:
Who knows? I’m commenting on Dobrofsky, and trying to discern if he was serious, or attempting to be DougJ Jr.
germy shoemangler
SFAW
@Chief Oshkosh:
You really needed to give us a trigger warning before giving us that mental image.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
It’s just bullshit. This guy, according to his own profile, is host of @UncvrngTheTruth, whatever that is. He’s probably too dumb to realize he’s saying that all statistical samples are invalid.
germy shoemangler
@SFAW:
I think he’s just trying to point out the dishonesty of making bigger claims that a single poll justifies. That was my impression, anyway.
CNN is getting lots of conservative talking points handed to its “talent” and the journalists who refused to cooperate are on their way out.
Math Guy
@SFAW: responses are very sensitive to the wording and even the ordering of the questions. You can have two “statistically valid“ polls give very different results because of how they were presented.
Honus
@Dorothy A. Winsor: had the same surgery last monday. You’ll be blurry for a day or two but should clear up pretty quickly.
Baud
@Math Guy:
That’s why people focus on poll averages. And even averages can be wrong. But it’s not untoward for someone to rely on pollimg to assess where the public is. Of course, if the averages had Biden as net positive and someone relied on an outlier poll to portray him as under water, that’s a different matter. But I don’t think the averages are where we want them to be yet.
jonas
@germy shoemangler:
I read somewhere yesterday that the guy now claims it was a lame attempt at humor or something. Even right-wing Germans thought Trump was an utter asshat.
SFAW
@germy shoemangler:
I got that the first time. What I can’t figure out is if it’s because he’s a moron who doesn’t understand how polling works, or because he’s attempting to make fun of people who believe that a poll isn’t valid unless everyone in America is surveyed.
That you and I are having this discussion indicates (to me, at least) that he’s not half as smart as he seems to think he is. As I said, this isn’t a Poe’s Law thing.
Soprano2
That’s my theory, he hates the same people they hate and he allows them to hate openly. IMHO it’s the only thing that makes sense, because his supporters could have gotten everything else he did from any of the other Republican candidates who ran for president in 2016. A lot of MAGA’s are mad that they can’t say the “n” word openly anymore, and they aren’t supposed to harass women, and so on. TFG gives them permission to let their “freak flag” fly, and they love him for it. At this point it’s a cult.
Baud
Of course, even if Biden is still underwater, harping on that fact can be reflection of media bias. (See emails coverage). But that’s also a different matter than making a statement based on what the polls say.
germy shoemangler
@jonas:
Humor? Then why lie?
Baud
Wasn’t the official celebration of the IRA supposed to be yesterday?
When is the Obama event today?
Scout211
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Try not to panic. What you’re experiencing is normal. If it bothers you or gives you a headache, go ahead and tape the patch back on and just see with your non-surgical eye. The time between the first and second surgery can be frustrating with the eyes having different prescriptions and no glasses correction yet.
I had a similar experience with mine. The surgical eye had the replacement IOL with a distance correction, so the close-up and computer vision was essentially gone. But my non-surgical eye still relied on the blended bifocals correction. The eyes competed with each other and gave me a headache. I went to the dollar store and bought several pairs of cheap reading glasses for close-up and computer vision and that helped.
New prescription glasses after the second surgery solved most all of the issues, although I also have a pair of computer glasses.
jonas
@Baud:
My landlord just raised the rent, a dozen eggs is $5, and it still costs $80 to fill up my tank = whoever’s president sucks. That’s pretty much the average voter’s thought process on this question.
Soprano2
@Baud: Watch the price of gas – as it goes down, Biden’s approval rate will go up. That’s sad, but true.
Baud
@SFAW:
I don’t know who this tweeter is, but I think right wingers like to pose as liberals making ridiculous arguments in order to discredit valid arguments. It’s important to remain disciplined.
SFAW
@Math Guy:
I know how polls work, and how they can be manipulated (and I’m not even considering “push polls” in this). That’s not my point.
I shouldn’t have to go through Dobrofsky’s entire twitter history to figure out if he’s trying to imitate NYT Pitchbot, or if he’s just a moron who doesn’t understand polling science and statistics.
lowtechcyclist
@Math Guy: Yeah, sampling error is easy to quantify. Nonsampling error, not so much.
Well, coverage error can be quantified. But things like wording and the interaction between questions, yeah, good luck with that.
Like Baud said, that’s why we want to see averages of multiple polls.
Gin & Tonic
@germy shoemangler: I’ve never understood why one garment is “a pair.”
jonas
Glad to finally see some MSM coverage of the fact that, to date, none of Biden’s cabinet or staff has angrily resigned and called him a “fucking moron” unfit for the office.
SFAW
@Baud:
Yeah, that had occurred to me, and is sort-of my “Option 2” idea (i.e., that he’s making fun of people saying “but-but-but they didn’t ask ME!!!”)
Am I REALLY going to have to go through his tweet history to see if he’s a RWMF who thinks he’s pwning the libs?
ETA: OK, so I went to his twitter home page (or whatever you kids call it). He’s apparently a libtard who hates TFG (and his minions) with a passion. So, basically, he’s just a moron vis-a-vis how polling works.
Soprano2
@Scout211: Computer glasses are the best thing ever! I’m wearing a pair right now. They stopped my daily headaches at work. Once you get bifocals, seeing the computer screen is a real bitch.
Starfish
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Thank you for telling us about this surgery. My mom is having it in a little over a week, and I am a little concerned.
RedDirtGirl
@Jeffery: I was wondering about that.
germy shoemangler
@Gin & Tonic:
Two pant legs. But then why don’t we call a shirt (with two sleeves) a pair of shirts?
zhena gogolia
@Jeffery: I know, what the hell is that about?
JCJ
@narya: After the capital city moved from Bonn to Berlin it should be renamed “Tiger Beat am Spree”
Alce_e_ardillo
@germy shoemangler: That would be a great rotating tag.
Starfish
@gene108: There are no young viewers watching cable TV, so they are trying to adjust TV to the existing TV audience.
Ken
@Gin & Tonic: @germy shoemangler: Historically, pants started out as two separate pieces that were always used as a pair. Possibly at one point each of the pieces was a “pant”, so you had a pair of pants.
Linguistically, “pants” has become a plurale tantum — a word that exists only in plural form. There’s a list of similar words in the wikipedia article: trousers, scissors, glasses, tweezers, genitals…
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: I think polls can be valuable insofar as they show trend. Some polls repeat more frequently as campaigns near the end. I’ll look at month over month, or week over week results for the same polling outfit with interest.
Likewise, I thought last week’s Wall Street Journal poll of Independents voting on a generic Congressional ballot was important. They said that in a comparable poll of Independents in March Republicans were favored by 12 points, but more recently they broke 38-35% Democratic. I took the absolute numbers with a grain of salt, but I thought the trend was significant.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@gene108: @Honus: @Scout211: That’s reassuring. Thanks.
catclub
@Baud:
 
This. CNN and Morning Joe desperately wanted to help trump
satby
@germy shoemangler: Dobrofsky is an out and proud Democratic party booster, and I think he was trying to point out that CNN’s bias because relying on an isolated poll doesn’t necessarily mean anything by itself. Twitter also put up for a test group I seem to be part of a context fact checker about polls and sample sizes and asked me to rate it as helpful or not. Since I thought his point was about CNN’s rightward drift, I rated the poll sampling facts as not relevant to his point.
Starfish
@SFAW: I want to point on that Dobrofsky is a college undergraduate whose social media presence has risen quite rapidly, and I am not sure why people are treating him as some authority.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Starfish: It was painless and quick.
The lens they put in is a toric one, meant to correct astigmatism as well as distance vision. That may make a difference. We’re leaving for the doc’s in five minutes, so I’ll know more after that. The jackals offering reassurance here were helpful.
SFAW
@jonas:
I was unaware that Germans have a sense of humor. Good to know.
Ken
I don’t know if anyone heard, but the classified documents Trump had included assessments of at least one foreign country’s nuclear capabilities. I assume one of the front-pagers will put up a post soon.
…
This has been a test of your emergency snark-detection system.
Gin & Tonic
@SFAW: As you can see, they don’t.
catclub
@Baud:
If you start out with 90% of republicans saying they hate whatever Biden does, no matter what. It takes a lot for the average to go positive. If independents say meh, the average is bad.
Baud
@satby:
@Starfish:
Thanks. Good to know. Everyone makes errors. No reason to pile on.
Wanderer
I have read the 3 posts regarding the nuclear information that was retrieved during the FBI search in Florida and I have a question: wouldn’t anyone caught with classified nuclear information be detained and questioned by authorities? I honestly don’t know why any relevant authorities would not want to discuss this immediately, in a secure space, with all relevant people involved. This seems to be a rather large National/International security issue to me or am I just being all too movie plot here? I understand there are other serious legal issues being investigated but national security would seem to be in a completely different and superseding category. Beuller? Beuller?
germy shoemangler
@Ken:
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2022/09/nuclear-information-at-mar-a-lago
Cheryl Rofer is on the job.
SFAW
@Gin & Tonic:
Well, my heritage is half Germanic, so maybe I’m half-witty?
RandomMonster
For Trump’s official portrait, how about a cheap knockoff of Duchamp’s Fountain.
Baud
@catclub:
I agree. There’s a hard cap on how high Joe can go.
JPL
@germy shoemangler: Thanks. So did he sell Israel’s documents to Russia or Saudi Arabia? Maybe both.
Imagine what we don’t know.
SFAW
@Wanderer:
Not if he were the world’s smartest and bestest person; then he’d suffer “reputational harm,” and we can’t have that.
Baud
@Wanderer:
There’s no way to force Trump to talk.
WereBear
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Best wishes for a very speedy recovery. That’s disconcerting.
The Thin Black Duke
@Wanderer: Rich white conservative men rarely go to jail. Rick Scott stole millions from Medicaid. Matt Gaetz was in an improper relationship with a preteen. And so on.
satby
What makes you think they haven’t been or aren’t currently? Just because there haven’t been press conferences about it doesn’t mean they haven’t been investigating/ doing damage control for months, or more likely as soon as TFG walked out of the WH.
edit: and since the Nat Sec guys have known the whole family was a threat since pretty immediately after he was elected, I wonder how much of the stuff that he got was altered just enough to track and catch whoever leaked it. That stuff was compromised long ago, we’re in the accountability phase now.
JPL
@Baud: I imagine that Stormy could get him to whisper a few words.
Starfish
@Baud: I wasn’t trying to pile on.
Dash is very much indicative of what I have seen in local politics.
Basically, there are a lot of young men elevated quickly into local Democratic leadership, and I don’t see the same being done for/with young women.
He is being amplified and elevated because he is saying things people want to hear in an authoritative way.
There are other (mostly men) on Twitter that amassed really large followings based on their political content, but all of their content relies on actual reporters (which they are not.) They are also less likely to verify what they are saying the way news reporters do because they are not news people.
Uncle Cosmo
@Gin & Tonic: Then you’d just love Czech, wherein every door is plural: dveře. As in the phrase heard all the time on the Prague metro: Ukončete prosim vystup a nastup, dveře se zaviraji. (“Please finish [your] entry and exit, the doors are closing.”) Of course, in the Prague metro the doors really are plural…
Baud
@Starfish:
I didn’t mean you were piling on. Just that we all don’t need to speculate about his intentions. Sounds like he just made a bad argument, rather than being a bad faith or consistently wrong actor.
ETA: I agree with you about the still prevalent male bias in social media and elsewhere.
SFAW
@Uncle Cosmo:
“My hovercraft is full of eels”?
ETA: Shit, I forgot; that’s Hungarian, not Czech.
Marmot
@Baud:
This is my feeling about eversor.
lowtechcyclist
@Soprano2:
So am I! I can’t imagine doing without them anymore. A desktop monitor is just a bit too far away for reading lenses, and way too close for distance lenses.
Not to mention if you’re wearing bifocals, you’ve got to tip your head way back to see the screen through the reading lenses.
WereBear
@gene108: The other logical explanation is how all Republicans live in their own bubbles, insulated from reality.
Geminid
@JPL: If the document is in fact about Israel, trump may have grabbed it out of spite with no particular thoughts as to its disposition, at least at the time.. Reports are that trump was furious at then-Prime Minister Netanyahu’s call on November 8, 2020 in which the PM congratulated Joe Biden on his win. trump fook this as a personal betrayal.
Baud
@Marmot:
Could be. His comments aren’t so much about factual errors but rather come pretty close to the line when it comes to hate speech.
satby
@Baud: gah! it wasn’t about the specific poll, it was about CNN’s rightward tilt slanting their reporting. germy didn’t quote the entire tweet, which doesn’t even point to a specific poll:
CNN’s editor Nathan Gonzales said a majority of Americans “disapprove” of the job Biden is doing. This is statistically incorrect. CNN has not polled a “majority of Americans.” They are now crafting anti-Biden narratives & branding them as ‘facts.’ Literal fake news
Baud
@Geminid:
I wonder what Israel will do if Israel thinks it’s about Israel.
Baud
@satby:
This is the part that’s nonsensical. Even if his point about CNN is otherwise valid.
Quiltingfool
@Soprano2: I was in Springfield yesterday to shop for fabric (my weakness!) and the gas prices look good – $3.09 at Casey’s! Our prices at the Lake (of the Ozarks) are about 30 cents higher. Better than they were, though.
Marmot
@Baud: Yup. I’m pleased to see pretty much nobody joins in with him. More “that’s dumb; you’re dumb.”
PST
@Baud:
And I have my doubts that they will be any time in the foreseeable future, for Biden or his successors. We are so hyperpartisan these days that something like 40 percent of respondents will always be an automatic no. I can’t imagine telling a pollster that I “approve” of any Republican president I can imagine. So at the margin the approval deficit represents Democrats and Democrat-leaning voters who are down on Biden at the moment but would probably vote for him anyway. In fairness, I think that the mirror image was true for Trump. No one is going to get high approval if we spot disapproval 40 percent.
satby
@Baud: yeah, but it wasn’t the point of the tweet. Getting wrapped around the axle of how polls work when it was a throw-away lede is like the argument about not being able to talk about gun control if you call a magazine a clip, or whatever the fuck gun nuts go on about.
Geminid
@Baud: They’ll gripe about it for sure. Israel isn’t really in a position to retaliate, though and now there’s a different administration anyway.
Marmot
@Baud:
Steal more military secrets from us? Doesn’t take much prompting.
Baud
@satby:
A tweet is only so many words. He used a lot of them to make a dumb statement that distracted from his point. No big deal. It happens. But the blame is his alone.
Matt McIrvin
@germy shoemangler: Biden’s approval numbers are still underwater, about 53% disapproval to 43% approval according to 538’s aggregate. They were worse earlier in the summer. They’ve been improving rapidly of late and he’s back above the Trump baseline from 4 years ago.
He’s never going to be a really popular President in absolute terms because no Democrat can ever be one under modern conditions–likely over 40% of the population is implacably opposed to anyone with a D after their name. So it’s just playing on the margins.
Biden was in positive approval territory until the withdrawal from Afghanistan; he got huge negative press at that point and slid to net disapproval. Then there was the Omicron surge, supply-chain issues, the rise in gas prices and inflation and the media were just murdering him through all of this. So it’ll likely take a lot of recovery to get back from there.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
As I recall, when trump burned a deep cover agent (if I’m remembering my Le Carré/Len Deighton terminology) embedded in Syria, Bibi was having a giggly photo-op with trump while Mossad agents read their US counterparts three or four riot acts
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
True. Bibi will probably find a way to blame Biden once he is PM again.
sdhays
@Geminid: But it could reorient how close they get to Republicans. With Democrats, they may not get everything they want, but they won’t betray them in a fit of pique (and/or greed).
dr. luba
@gene108: Ditto here. And afterwards she noted that she could really see colors again. They had slowly faded for her, and she hadn’t relaized how much she had lost,
Wanderer
@satby: I take for granted that there is a lot the general population will never know, I am ok with that. I also suspect the last presidency was seen from day one as a security risk but at this point that group of people are no longer in that privileged position. I agree that accountability is necessary.
Continuing to allow free roaming contact anywhere and with any one, given what has been released to the public, seems overly lax in the accountability department.
satby
Not political fun tweet for your enjoyment.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: The thing that kills me is, if you look at the approval trendline, the thing that really tanked him was getting out of Afghanistan, and he’s still paying for that–even though the public obviously don’t care one bit about Afghanistan. That’s all top-down pushing of the “beleaguered President” story by media people who were pissed that they got their war taken away.
He also got near-zero credit for it from antiwar progressives who had been bashing Democrats over the War on Terror for 20 years.
germy shoemangler
@satby:
The part that amazed me was the petting. I didn’t think the bird would allow something like that. Maybe they’re friendlier in the sky.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
It’s frustrating. But we have a chance to do better than expected in the November elections and that’s what’s important. We just have to follow Biden’s example and keep plugging away.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Matt McIrvin: right, but as you point out above, the withdrawal coincided, or immediately preceded, problems with a lot of things people do care about.
As for the “anti-war left”, it’s clear now what a lot of us suspected all along: The “anti-war left” was in no small part a costume for the anti-Dem left. You never heard much about DRONZE when trump dramatically increased their use, the “Mother Of All Bombs” has faded from memory
JPL
@Geminid: That’s a big possibility, although if trump was offered money for the information, he’d take it.
frosty
@Gin & Tonic: Binoculars. They’re a pair too; makes sense since there’s one for each eye. You can buy a single one too. But it’s not a single “binocular”, it’s a monocular.
English, WTF?
Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
@Baud: I assumed it was a poll that had around 40% approval for Biden and that “don’t approve” + “no opinion” were the other 60% with no disambiguation.
*Also too, some of those disapprovers think Biden isn’t doing enough Liberal things.
Immanentize
I laughed hard at this and thought y’all might like it:
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I also think some of the lefty reactions to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine brought that home (with respect to the West in general).
Baud
@Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!):
That doesn’t really matter, does it? I get that approval/disapproval doesn’t line up exactly with voting behavior, but it’s still disapproval.
The Moar You Know
Yup. Been one for a long time. And he is exceeding my expectations.
Ken
@germy shoemangler: There was a recent post, or maybe it was a comment, with a video of people hugging and petting animals, with the animals seeming to enjoy it. They weren’t domesticated animals, but it looked like many of them were being kept by the humans. Maybe the bird had the same sort of relationship?
satby
How do you know? Were there polls? Influenced by slanted reporting? Which comes first? / not serious questions before someone tries to six sigma me on how polls work.
Soprano2
@catclub: They knew their ratings would slide a lot if “boring” Joe Biden got elected. They don’t like actually covering real governing, because it’s hard and boring – you actually have to learn things! Covering the batshit insane things TFG did and said was easy, because no knowledge or research was required – you just had to report what different people were saying about it and then opine about it yourself, which is relatively easy, plus people always want to rubberneck at a car wreck. I’m sure they’re all thrilled that he’s back in the news more now.
Wapiti
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I had cataract surgery in just one eye, two years ago. By closing one eye and then the other, it’s easy to notice the sepia tint in my non-operated eye. Everything is much brighter to the operated eye.
Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
@Baud: It only matters in the sense that they probably won’t vote for a MAGA Republican. Of course they might stay home.
Starfish
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Obama was making the data on drones and who was killed by them more open and accessible. That data access went away under Trump. Instead of attempting to find other sources for the same data, those folks just vanished.
The discussions on drones have come up again recently because Biden is trying to minimize civilian casualties in drone strikes.
satby
@germy shoemangler: I wonder if the bird considered the hanglider a different kind of bird. Humans don’t fly, but birds hitch rides on bigger birds occasionally.
Baud
@Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!):
Right. And it also matters in the sense that the media will erase the lefty disapprovers. The media did the same thing to Obamacare — lefty disapprovers were merged with righty disapprovals to portray Obamacare as unpopular because it went too far.
Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
@Baud: Yep, and congressional “approval” poll interpretations are even worse.
The Pale Scot
@germy shoemangler:
He’ll have a nice time in prison
The Moar You Know
@Baud: Oh, I beg to differ. George W. and his Satanic sidekick, Richard Cheney, have shown us the way.
eclare
@Immanentize: Love it!
Baud
@The Moar You Know:
Hmm. Trump is unreliable. Information obtained through torture is unreliable. So does that mean torturing Trump would produce reliable information?
Sometimes it sucks being the moral party.
Eyeroller
@germy shoemangler:
It’s a captive bird. This video went around some months ago. You can see the falconry strap when it lands.
The Moar You Know
@Marmot: There have always been those who want a left-wing dictatorship. They are, fortunately, a small minority. But damn, what that guy does not get is that if you want to get anything done in this country you gotta have allies who are probably not going to be marching to your same anthem.
I really don’t like most of those of the Christian persuasion either (exceptions made for the liberal variety, even the liberal evangelicals, which do exist!) but you don’t see me advocating for their being rounded up and put in camps. Or even being locked out of the political process. They are an absolute majority of Americans and that is not going to change in my lifetime or his.
Matt McIrvin
@satby: I’m mostly basing that on the way the big slide in Biden’s approval polls happened before the Omicron surge got really bad, or any of the other stuff that soured the “Biden recovery”, and then the numbers just sort of stayed down from there. The big negative Biden story when the slide happened was Afghanistan.
But then there was a further drop in summer 2022 that was almost certainly brought on by high gas prices and inflation (and all the stories about “Biden’s agenda” being torpedoed by the Senate Republicans, Manchin and Sinema).
We’re coming out of that now–gas prices are coming down, the passage of the big Inflation Reduction Act was a huge legislative win, and then Dobbs suddenly made abortion rights salient in a way that people mostly did not blame on Biden, but on conservatives.
Biden is inching up toward the numbers Obama had when he was running for reelection in 2012 (and many counted him out).
SFAW
@satby:
That’s not how Six Sigma works. Ya see, “sigma” is … blah blah blah etc etc
[Sorry, not being serious, just trying to live up/down to your “expectations” re: nit-picking.]
James E Powell
@Scout211:
What are computer glasses?
Matt McIrvin
@James E Powell: Glasses for intermediate-range viewing such as a computer screen.
I tried getting a pair several years ago but I found the eyestrain made them not worth using. These days I just take my glasses off–my vision in that distance range isn’t that bad, though I’ve needed distance glasses since adolescence and lately I need reading glasses to read tiny text.
oatler
@Ken:
If ‘genitals’ is the plural, what does ‘genitalia’ mean?
Geminid
@Baud: There’s a good chance Netanyahu will not be Prime Minister after the November 1 election. Polls keep showing his 4-party bloc hovering around 58 or 59 projected Knesset members, and he needs 61 to form a government (the Israeli Knesset has 120 members).
Israeli voters seem pretty locked in to pro- and anti-Netanyahu blocs. Historically, these polls have been fairly accurate in their projections..
Baud
@Geminid: Sounds like Israel will need a sixth election.
James E Powell
@Matt McIrvin:
And it wasn’t just Afghanistan. The Village used that event to go negative on Biden across the board. They’ve never turned back.
jonas
@Baud: My guess is that IF this is about Israel’s nukes, the Israelis are positively fuming, but will keep quiet. Also, I can only presume that the Mossad, along with every other major intelligence agency in the world, is well-represented among select employees and members of Mar-a-Lago, so if something like this was floating around there, they knew about it long before the search was executed.
eversor
@James E Powell:
Computer monitors burn your eyeballs out, so you need a special monitor or special glasses. A monitor that does not fry your eyes uses Low Blue Light tech and has a refresh rate north of 120hz. But these are expensive, and you cannot use those features on a mac.
eversor
@The Moar You Know:
The younger generations are not religious. Christians will be a minority, and we are going to roll back all the religious liberty bullshit. They will also be locked out of respectable society. This will happen, and their children will not be welcome at other peoples homes.
This will happen.
JPL
trump’s mug shot would make a perfect portrait.
Elizabelle
@James E Powell: That’s what I think, too.
Surprise is on you, media. Biden turns out to be a decent and effective President.
Omnes Omnibus
@eversor: That is as may be, but, here today, you are a bigot.
eversor
@Omnes Omnibus:
You going to defend the KKK or Republican party next?
zhena gogolia
Nice Hillary clip.
Omnes Omnibus
@eversor:
Nice try.
zhena gogolia
This is funny. Posted by Asha Rangappa.
Geminid
@Baud: If Netanyahu’s bloc doesn’t get 61 MKs, either:
1) Israel will have its sixth election since 2019. It would be in the Spring and Yair Lapid would remain acting PM in the meantime, or
2) Defense Minister Benny Gantz will form a government led by his centrist “National Unity” party. He’d have to entice the two Ultra-Orthodox, or “Haredi” parties into a coalition, but they don’t like being out of government and have no deep loyalty to Netanyahu. Yair Lapid has already shown that a left/center/right government can be made, and Gantz’s potential coalition could prove more durable than Lapid’s.
SFAW
@eversor:
Please explain to me/us how you are different from the fanatical RWMF evangelicals, the Taliban, the Inquisitors, et al. Because from where I stand/sit/whatever, as a devout atheist, you’re pretty much the same in terms of your viewpoint regarding your own religious beliefs and the beliefs of others.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: @Baud:
Call it hate speech, call it bigoted. Whatever you call it, @eversor, you are walking really close to the line, and sometimes you are way over the line.
From the John’s Balloon Juice comment policy:
Next time you cross the line, eversor, I plan to call Cole’s attention to your comments.
lowtechcyclist
@eversor:
Like most people I know, my job for the past quarter-century has involved spending most of my day staring at a computer screen. And I’m sure that they didn’t spend more than they had to for our monitors.
Plus, also like most people I know, I spend a lot of my spare time as well staring at a computer screen, and my monitors have been basic off-the-shelf stuff.
When do my eyeballs start burning out? My glasses prescriptions involve a bit more correction than they did 25 years ago, but that’s about it.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
CALM DOWN, WILL YOU!!!
Kristine
@Kevin:
If memory serves, after the 2016 election there was a flurry of reports of women being harassed and the men doing the harassing telling them that it was okay to do it now. In at least one case, the old fart got decked by the object of his attentions. Idk if that’s still the case and we no longer hear about it.
Omnes Omnibus
@zhena gogolia: How could you not dedicate this to s_c and hatred of the chai tea redundancy?
eversor
@Omnes Omnibus:
Don’t need to try. What I want and predict is going to come true. There’s a staggering drop off to the point where the younger generations are more non religious than they are religious, mostly because of how vile christianity is and they see it.
If you don’t see the cross being as bad as the swastika and the bible mein kampf in our lives you’re whistling past a confederate grave yard singing dixie.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Well, I’m back.
Doc says I’m actually doing better than he expected. So I’m going to be patient.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Betty Cracker
@Matt McIrvin: I’m not convinced the Afghanistan withdrawal (or media reaction to it) was the main factor that pushed Biden’s approval ratings down. If you look at the 538 polling aggregate, the approval ratings started a steep slide before the Afghan government collapsed — well before the media hysteria began.
It sure didn’t help! But I think people got disgruntled because they thought COVID was over and it wasn’t. Omicron didn’t hit hard until that fall, but the trendlines were worrying over the summer (remember “pandemic of the unvaccinated”?), inflation was already rising sharply, there was much intra-Dem posturing over BBB, etc., as summer turned into fall.
None of that was Biden’s fault, but people aren’t rational about whom they blame. Exhibit A: Most Americans want the U.S. to help Ukraine and support sanctions. If they were rational, they’d blame Putin for gas price spikes, but they blame Biden. If you’re the president when bad shit happens, you get the blame. Maybe it’s as simple as that.
SFAW
@lowtechcyclist:
I think there’s a correlation between that and seeing TFG’s ugly mug on your screen.
WaterGirl
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Yay!! Glad that some BJ peeps who have been through that were able to reassure you while you waited to see the doc.
eversor
@lowtechcyclist:
It’s a known issue, was worse with CRT tech though. https://www.displayninja.com/what-is-low-blue-light-technology/
This is a known issue. Low refresh is also a known issue.
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus: I didn’t want to stereotype! I hope she sees it — she doesn’t seem to be around this morning.
eclare
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Yay!
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Given that the GOP was in charge, that part is arguably reasonable.
zhena gogolia
@Dorothy A. Winsor: It’s hard, I know! I hope it resolves quickly.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Yay!
SFAW
@Betty Cracker:
At a local gas station, prices have dropped from around $3.75 per gallon one or two weeks ago, to around $3.35 yesterday. [They had topped out at just under $5, about two (I think) months ago.] I am 1000 percent certain that Biden will get credit for this.
Omnes Omnibus
This is a confusing to me. Am I whistling or singing.*
*I really can’t whistle, but I am not sure that helps with your idiom.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@jonas:
Ironically, the only intelligence agencies not at MIL was US intelligence, who were probably too busy conducting surveillance of pacifists.
SFAW
@Baud:
Wasn’t the 2006 election when the Dems started regaining control of Congress? [Sincere question. I don’t know what Masters was like in those days, no matter that he’s a RWMF fascist today. I mean, I agree with your point re: W’s reign, but not sure what Masters was “thinking” about.]
satby
@lowtechcyclist: Most glasses (speaking very generally) filter some uv light. Studies have shown that blue uv light may be implicated in cataract formation, so now they offer blue light screening lenses for glasses and filters for monitors /tablets. Also available on Apple products. That’s been available for years, as has automatic ambient light settings on most mobile products.
as in so many things, eversore is wrong on the internet.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
If you’re going to sing, do you do requests?
Baud
@SFAW: I don’t know what he was thinking. Dems won big in November 2006 and took control of Congress in January 2007.
SFAW
@Baud:
Yeah, I know. I’m just having a hard time wrapping my head around giving Masters credit for anything.
Omnes Omnibus
@SFAW: No. My artistic sensibilities mean that my set list is my set list and, if I don’t want to do fan faves, you just fucking lump it, mate.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@SFAW: I wouldn’t so much give him credit as note that he seems to have an erratic, edge-lord temperament, like fellow Arizonan Kyrsten Sinema on the proverbial steroids, or Ron Paulite-to-Chapo weirdo Dave Weigel
or whatever the hell’s going on with Greenwald
frosty
@eversor: Because of your rants you have no credibility on this or any other topic. You’ve burned out any professional expert advice in IT or whatever else you may be doing for a living. G’bye.
eversor
@satby:
No I’m right.
apple itself does not make low UV monitors as most are not. Nor are their desktop monitors 144z or higher, which is also needed. They enable night shift which is not the same, and they do not support high refresh either (I have a 360hz). Ambient light is also not the same thing, you don’t know what you are talking about.
The “good for eyes monitors” don’t look all that good and that’s now what apple is about. So they sell sort of half assed tech at the 1500-5000 dollar mark that neither does fast response well at the low end, nor has safety features and at the high end doesn’t come close to 40,000 buck actual mastering monitors.
I work in this real, and you are just dead wrong.
trollhattan
Heh, top image blocked as “potentially sensitive content.” Trigger warning for Democratic candidate yard signs.
I guess so, nary a Brandon to be seen.
rikyrah
Leah McElrath![]()
(@leahmcelrath) tweeted at 7:32 AM on Wed, Sep 07, 2022:
Hundreds of law enforcement officers, elected officials, and military members appear on leaked membership rolls of the Oathkeepers—a far-right extremist group involved in the January 6th insurrection:
https://t.co/G6iqGSra2z
(https://twitter.com/leahmcelrath/status/1567490969418743810?t=25tM1uIBxEdW0HR1Nxpj2Q&s=03)
Geminid
@SFAW: People’s political outlook can be be pretty fluid when they are in their 20s. I think Masters made his career in the tech/venture capitol sector, and he embraced the feral libertarianism common in that culture. It seems that Peter Thiel was Masters’ mentor as well as his political sponsor.
rikyrah
Brian Deese (@BrianDeeseNEC) tweeted at 7:36 AM on Wed, Sep 07, 2022:
The Inflation Reduction Act in action, cont.
“Investments in battery factories, solar panel manufacturing and mining will help the Biden administration meet targets for reducing greenhouse gases.”
https://t.co/SoCwknnyDJ
(https://twitter.com/BrianDeeseNEC/status/1567492081152626691?t=qIwzsFN__Pm1-elXbzurig&s=03)
JAFD
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I had cataracts removed in November and December of ’20. Remember posting here about it, IIRC, think I said “Took the eyepatch off – everything’s so bright”, Does the light seem to have a bluish glow, like sunlight reflecting off new-fallen snow ?
Didn’t drive for a couple of months after the surgeries – but then I don’t own a car ;-)
My mother, God rest her soul, would have been among the Biden superfans.
lowtechcyclist
@eversor:
The weird thing is, I don’t feel personally attacked by any of your anti-Christian stuff, because Lord knows the vast majority of coverage of ‘Christians’ in America is all about the right-wing religious nuts. And as a born-again Christian, those people piss me off as much as anyone. There’s only so much I can do about it, but I hate that those people are defining my faith in the eyes of most people.
But you’re really not doing yourself any favors by spouting over-the-top crap like this. You’re really not. You’re just making a fool out of yourself, and your frequent repetition of the same rant is getting tiresome. I may not take offense to it the way Omnes does, but really, give it a rest.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
From what I hear, he’s working on his new exposé — Protocols of the Elders of Democrats.
Ken
While waiting for Tony Jay’s incisive analysis, I’ve been keeping up with UK political news through Larry the cat’s twitter feed. Number10cat reports that one Liz Trussman, whose twitter handle is LizTruss but who is definitely not the new UK prime minister, has been receiving congratulations and invitations from slightly-confused foreign governments. She may want to contact Matthew Gertz for pointers.
trollhattan
For the record. Put another way, the 1924 all-time record high of 114 went down yesterday with a whimper–downtown Sac’s new mark is 116. Yay, us. 🥂
Pondering 114 sans air conditioning is a different topic entirely. Sprinkle in some yellow fever and good times are guaranteed for all.
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: AP had a good story about this morning. Surprise, surprise, the sheriffs etc. are quoted as saying they no longer belong; just paid dues in 2014, didn’t understand what Oathkeepers was about, blah blah blah.
AP:
Elected officials, police chiefs on leaked Oath Keepers list
SFAW
@eversor: Still waiting to hear how you’re any different from the (practicing) religious nutjobs.Not that I really care, of course, but a bigoted, fascist, fanatical motherfucker ought to be held to account.
lowtechcyclist
@SFAW:
My peril-sensitive computer glasses take care of that. :-)
different-church-lady
@Starfish:
You answered your own question in the earlier part of that same sentence.
rikyrah
I had no idea that this was happening.
Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) tweeted at 5:12 AM on Wed, Sep 07, 2022:
20% of Biden’s ambassadorships are vacant.
One reason? Women nominees have a hell of a time getting out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Republican members hold them up because they don’t like their “tone” or assume they are rabid abortionists.
Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) tweeted at 5:26 AM on Wed, Sep 07, 2022:
“There is a layer of unconscious bias holding back women, that isn’t there for the male nominees. This includes spouses saying things about Trump or the way in which women talk and represent themselves, where Rs have been viscerally opposed to just how the women communicate.”
Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) tweeted at 5:26 AM on Wed, Sep 07, 2022:
Other women have been pressed by Committee Republicans on their stances on abortion, even if the position they are nominated for has nothing to do with women’s health, let alone abortion.
Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) tweeted at 5:45 AM on Wed, Sep 07, 2022:
As soon as this story went live, people started to come out of the woodwork to share more crazy stories. Here’s another one: two women nominees forced to apologize to Senators on the Foreign Relations Ctte for foreign policy positions they took in the past *as part of their jobs*
Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) tweeted at 5:45 AM on Wed, Sep 07, 2022:
And another one: a woman nominee had to be escorted into meetings by an official from the State Department due to harassment by Senate staff during courtesy meetings.
(https://twitter.com/juliaioffe/status/1567464124774338560?t=uwguKVG7Cg-X9Ro2QwGhVQ&s=03)
trollhattan
@Baud: Heh.
Wondering how he’ll react to losing Bolsonaro in the upcoming election–fascism we can believe in.
IIUC he has been in office long enough to have permanently destroyed a significant chunk of Amazonian rain forest, which cannot rebound and will instead become savannah. All in contravention of Brazilian law, naturalisch.
Glem lurves him some dictators.
dm
@germy shoemangler:
Maybe the “lie” was, “I wouldn’t have said anything like that — I wanted a Biden victory”, because, maybe he didn’t want Trump to win, and didn’t believe he’d say something like that.
Then, when shown his email, “Oh, it must have been an attempt at a joke”, because it was an attempt at a joke.
I don’t know. I haven’t been following the story closely, but it’s about Tiger Beat on the Potomac, so why should I?
lowtechcyclist
@eversor:
OK, but a quarter-century of half or more of my waking time in front of a computer screen and no apparent effects suggest that it’s a very weak phenomenon.
Also, what does critical race theory have to do with it? (So that’s why the wingnuts are so upset about it!)
rikyrah
And, this is bad because? I honestly don’t get the continued GOP tweets about the success of grabbing those drugs at the border. That means that they’re doing their phucking job!
Joni Ernst (@SenJoniErnst) tweeted at 10:01 AM on Tue, Sep 06, 2022: Enough fentanyl to completely wipe-out entire cities in the U.S. has been seized at the Southern border. (https://twitter.com/SenJoniErnst/status/1567166059194499072?t=eU1H_TpQq9VbaonGAEFf3A&s=03)
Wanderer
@Baud: I agree, these are things worth wondering about.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Speaking of Dave Weigel, on the MA gov’s race
I wonder how many times a day Charlie Baker gazes into the alternate timeline where the GOP figured out how to stop trump in ’16 and he, Baker, rode to glory, and the Oval Office, as the moderate savior of the party
Baud
@rikyrah: yeah, I remember when cops were proud of how huge their drug bust were.
Elizabelle
From the AP story:
Chris Johnson
@Baud: Absolutely. I watch a lot of Vaush and that guy’s worked overtime calling out faux lefties like Jimmy Dore and Caleb Maupin who are straight up working for RT and doing exactly that ‘anti-war left’ thing.
Caleb Maupin was not only literally working for RT, but was also a sex pest cult leader. A bunch of these objectionable people are not only toxic, but actual literal enemies of the left.
I spotted it first when ‘Chapo Trap House’ started decrying Russiagate and I got suspicious. The suspicions have only been more and more confirmed.
Ukraine is a damn good litmus test for leftists. If they’re RT fake left, to them it’s all about US imperialism and US-backed NATO aggression and this is so far from reality that I can’t even.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Good. Too many NE states still believe in reasonable Republican governors. And it appears that is something the Republican parties in those states will no longer put up with.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@rikyrah: it makes no sense, but just saying “border border BORDER!” seems to work in keeping their voters scared and angry
We don’t need no taco trucks in Ottumwa! We got Taco John’s!
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: Ernst is reminding us how filthy it is, south of the border, and that we can blame our drug problems on them.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: That’s great news! Since we already knew that a lot of law enforcement were likely on them, it’s great news that they have been outed.
Truly great news!
I am reminded of the membership rolls that were leaked for – was it called Ashley Madison or something like that – for people who were cheating on their spouses?
WaterGirl
@JAFD: Did your vision ever resolve to the point that you were happy that you had it done?
dm
Is the idea that Trump’s nuclear-secrets stash was about Israel backed up by anything, or is it just speculation?
Is it possible that the data was about Iran? That would be consistent with Trump policies, and also eminently sellable to the Saudis. Of course, a lot of that material might expose Israeli sources and methods, too….
(ETA: I see that Iran was a possibility on Cheryl Rofer’s list, too. I should have read her post first.)
Betty Cracker
@rikyrah: I don’t think we’ll ever get effective police reform until there’s a large-scale federal effort to root out Oath Keepers, Three Percenters and other far-right/white supremacist groups from police ranks. These puffed-up militia creeps are a problem on the scale of the KKK in the 1960s, IMO.
The Moar You Know
@rikyrah: There’s enough water in a backyard swimming pool to drown 100,000 people. Where’s the media?
WaterGirl
@Elizabelle: And as soon as they found out what the Oathkeepers were all about, they immediately cancelled their memberships, right?
Baud
@dm: Speculation.
trollhattan
Is this the Nazi equivalent of an Antifa “member” complaining he just can’t find any details on when the next board meeting is?
Amir Khalid
@germy shoemangler:
Language is not logic. It’s often maddening but that’s just how it is.
JAFD
@Ken: You’ve heard of the Southern belle on a diet, who ordered a grit for breakfast ?
lowtechcyclist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Not that there was really any chance of this. They’ll nominate a relative moderate for governor of a liberal state like Maryland or Massachusetts, because a typical Rethug doesn’t stand a chance. But people like Baker or Hogan wouldn’t stand a chance in the GOP Presidential primaries. They’d have more support from pundits than from actual GOP voters.
Elizabelle
@WaterGirl: Remains to be seen. LOL. We will have to see how local press follows up on this, too.
And the extremists in the military is a real problem. I don’t know how many would align with Oathkeepers as a group, but they are embedded in there. Suspect the brass is having a lot of discussions about how to handle them.
phdesmond
@narya:
would that be “TigerBeat-am-Rhein”?
Knally
@oatler:
It’s a Roman festival to celebrate Genit, the God of Bonking.
JAFD
@WaterGirl: Yes, _definitely_. I still wear glasses most of the time, but now I can read comfortably without them. Convenient if I’m reading myself to sleep ;-)
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker: Yes. Exactly.
And it’s ridiculous to be training them in warfare techniques, when they’re snugged into the military.
Suspect it will take their colleagues informing on them. They’re like the bad cops, who drag the good ones down with them, or make them complicit, because they have power.
Baud
The Obama portrait event is at 1:30 Eastern.
rikyrah
Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) tweeted at 8:28 AM on Wed, Sep 07, 2022:
When Licht took over, CNN’s journalists were confused about exactly what he wanted from them. But he’s spoken by firing perceived Trump critics, and they’ve gotten the message about what to do to keep their jobs.
(https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1567505017313132546?t=MI09TjyrfZ5jlg6oCawolg&s=03)
different-church-lady
@lowtechcyclist: In MA at least, some of these GOP govs have been the result of the Dem machine coughing up terrible furballs in the primaries.
lee
The GOP nominee for TX-3 is a nutter. The previous office holder got caught in an extra-martial affair with a terror adjacent lady.
The new guy (Keith Self) did not secure all of the domains he should have so I spent some time yesterday creating a web site for one of the domains he missed.
https://keithself4congress.com/
rikyrah
Christopher Bouzy (@cbouzy) tweeted at 8:34 AM on Wed, Sep 07, 2022:
Bill Barr still has plenty of friends at the DOJ, and he knows what is happening behind the scenes. Barr went on Fox News and made a case for why the DOJ should indict Trump. Barr is covering his a.., and that is all you need to know about how much worse this will get.
(https://twitter.com/cbouzy/status/1567506606321016832?t=YqMlL9wOK90-dbQLdYOmDw&s=03)
Old School
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Taco trucks don’t have Potato Olés.
rikyrah
I haven’t met a Libertarian yet that defends the rights of me as a Black or as a Woman. They always will purse their lips to tell me why the laws defending my rights ‘ aren’t really necessary.’
🐝⚖️ Dr. Yadira Caraveo for CO-08 (@Needle_of_Arya) tweeted at 4:40 AM on Wed, Sep 07, 2022:
in order to be a ground-level Libertarian, you know, the type of person who wants to be a conservative but who can’t bear to call themselves a Republican, is to pretend that all of the things Libertarians do at the state/national level & at the 1% level isn’t actually happening
(https://twitter.com/Needle_of_Arya/status/1567447650911256580?t=x79G8GipiALivgFOaAvUbw&s=03
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@WaterGirl: You got it in one: Ashley Madison.
I only remember it from the time Wil Wheaton was on the Critical Role Dungeons & Dragons stream, got a natural 20 on an insight check, and said:
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin: You’ve been on fire here lately. I hope you have a bigger platform to share with the greater world – seriously. It seems like Substack has been the Next Big Thing for a while*, do you have anything there?
(* – which probably means that it’s old news today.)
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@JAFD: Oh, yay!
Eunicecycle
@Chris Johnson: I have known Caleb Maupin since he was a little boy. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when he was a teenager. His parents tried hard to keep him on medication but once he was an adult and moved to NY they couldn’t anymore. It has made me wonder how many others are undiagnosed or unmedicated for a mental illness. This is not an excuse, but it just makes me sad for Caleb. And his family.
rikyrah
What Biden Has Done (@What46HasDone) tweeted at 5:27 AM on Wed, Sep 07, 2022:
One of the reasons I think the Biden administration will hold up extremely well in history is because a decade from now, we are going to be the clean energy and advanced tech manufacturing leaders of the world, and it will all be because Joe Biden got us there.
(https://twitter.com/What46HasDone/status/1567459454093754372?t=Jg_zqngAwvUnf6OxTf4Vcw&s=03)
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: Applause, applause.
That’s true. I don’t know if we will be the leader, per se, but we will have made serious inroads. And, maybe the leader!
rikyrah
L. Louise Lucas (@SenLouiseLucas) tweeted at 6:04 PM on Thu, Sep 01, 2022:
Instead of helping our poorer school districts obtain more funding to recruit + retain high quality teachers the Governor signed an Executive Order today to attempt to put “anyone with a pulse” in our classrooms. This will lead to more disparities and worse outcomes.
(https://twitter.com/SenLouiseLucas/status/1565475737511116800?t=xTHW56ZPFfbW3YkiVQoJuA&s=03)
rikyrah
Michelle_BYoung (@michelle_byoung) tweeted at 1:37 PM on Tue, Sep 06, 2022:
“The most important thing is stopping those who are in denial from continuing to be in denial. Put another way, some Americans have always desired dictatorship – redhat fascism against democracy – but deny having desired it. Biden’s speech makes their balancing act impossible.”
(https://twitter.com/michelle_byoung/status/1567220364203200514?t=Z4JHU4wo9POtRdwXF9iN4w&s=03)
Captain C
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Or perhaps David Horowitz, who pretty much went straight from Ramparts editor to far-Right buffoon without any time in between.
catclub
@Wanderer:
A little thought says that TS/SCI document custodians were ‘hair on fire screaming” the last 19 months over missing documents. But all inside of SCIF’s, so you never heard it.
Chris Johnson
@satby: As a working Mac dev, furthermore:
Much like on iOS, MacOS Monterey defaults to ‘ProMotion’ on new laptops, going from 25hz to 120hz as needed by what’s on the screen. This also serves as a battery-saving feature, seems to work quite well. As for blue light, the screen defaults to TrueTone which adjusts for ambient lighting, and has NightShift built into the OS (used to be a third party option) which specifically kills the intense ‘daylight blue’ at night when you need to be able to get to sleep. I’m not currently using NightShift as I do video editing and color correction, but it’s built right in.
Don’t feed the troll or believe the things it says. Might be just some guy in St. Petersburg whose job it is to find something plausible to make you think your side is divided, or to sway your side to a division-inducing position that can be weaponized to sway some OTHER side (‘look, see how the libs want to round up all Christians into camps! that’s definitely a real lib saying that, are you scared yet?’)
Stands to reason that shit is on the boil, it’s the only effective means of warfare Russia has been able to do in the last fifty fucking years.
Another Scott
@satby:
The Boing-Boing story indicates it’s his pet. (Birdie apparently has his own IG page.)
Cheers,
Scott.
ian
@rikyrah:
Weird take from Ernst, for sure. To me it argues that the ‘open border’ they complain about is not, in fact, open.
A crazy take away from the fentanyl problem would be to legalize drugs, so that licensed chemists and retailers could distribute drugs without the impurities in them. You won’t see the republicans advocate for this, which implies that they don’t seem to care about the fentanyl part at all, just looking for a way to demonize their opponents.
Mike in NC
As if we needed a reminder that Trump’s fucked up cabinet meetings were similar to Stalin’s speeches, where nobody dared to be the first to stop applauding or else they might be rewarded with a bullet to the back of the head.
catclub
Except it should be noted, that after Baker the MASS GOP nominated a Trump backed election 2020 truther.
livewyre
@Chris Johnson: Yeah, at this point the high persistence combined with lack of apparent affect or personal stakes (This is simply true. I am telling you what is simply true. I will continue telling it.) convinces me it’s for effect, specifically in driving a wedge between the party and religious groups that intersect with it – particularly ones that both organize for the party and advocate for minority rights.
eta: Of course, this makes me wonder if they’re responsive to feedback such that the next one along will have a heartrending narrative about why The Church Must Burn instead of just flatly repeating it.
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
OMG, I know her! Used to see her every year at SLC meetings*. Have had several very good talks with her, at dinners and receptions and on the margins of all the keynote sessions and committee meetings.
*Southern Legislative Conference, one of the four regional organisations of the Council of State Governments. I attended their annual meetings regularly for as long as I was Political Officer at the Canadian Consulate.
Chris Johnson
@Eunicecycle: That is what made him a target for RT, and for being basically a Russian agent. That would be the weakness that allowed him to be weaponized and put to work as Russia’s guy.
Doesn’t change anything, and I don’t have to have sympathy for Caleb Maupin. Not my tragedy. If you’ve seen what he’s been up to in recent years, it’s definitely a tragedy but not my tragedy
also: OUR military recruits POC, gay, trans people etc to make a fighting force that is diverse and has a range of experience, which is better for readiness and problem solving. Russia promotes and seeks out broken people to further brokenness everywhere, and doesn’t care for its own people or weapons. I am not a fan.
Barbara
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I don’t wonder about this at all. There had to be a point where it became clear to anyone in the Republican Party that at the national level, at least, it is impossible to win without accommodating increasingly deranged and dangerous beliefs. Baker is included in that — and certainly, some of his policies on Covid reflected that. I wouldn’t say that Trump was inevitable, but the speed with which he was able to take over the party is more than enough proof about where it was going to head whoever was in charge.
Baud
@Barbara:
That’s only because we were mean to Romney.
J R in WV
@Geminid:
Mossad is way more professional than the KGB, GRU, FSB whatever they are today. Trump might wake up with a very brightly colored tiny frog in his mouth, from the Amazonian jungle.
They have names like “Poisonous Frog” and “Very Poisonous Frog” and “Really, Really Extremely Poisonous Frog!!!” — the brighter their color the more deadly they are. Not a joke at all.
Jared should be careful too!! He got the money for 666 Park Ave, after all…..
JPL
@rikyrah: Biden should go to the border and thank them. That would shut up the republicans.
not really
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Wanderer: It was pretty obvious to most of us on the Dem side that he was an open Russian asset, and a useful idiot to many other intelligent services because of his flagrant disregard for security (e.g., looking at TS stuff at Mar-a-Shithole while all the guests looked over his shoulder).
So yeah, I imagine people actually entrusted with the secrets had to consider the unprecedented situation of a President, the ultimate classification authority, who can’t be trusted with secrets. Do you follow the law or protect the secrets?
My hope is that some people put their careers on the line by opting to protect the secrets from TFG, despite the letter of the law. But we’ll never know.
Hair probably been on fire since early in 2017.
trollhattan
@rikyrah: Libertarians “believe” everybody has equal access to lawyers and the court system and thus, pesky government is not necessary to protect individual rights–take it to the courts!
(How the courts are not government is not a conversation libertarians are eager to have.)
How you or I can gain access to a legal team equal to what a billionaire or large corporation can wield is not an issue, evidently.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist:
Those days may be over.
Frankensteinbeck
@Marmot:
Christ on a stick, yes, in any communications outlet that lets them do so, it’s a whole Thing for them. Usually it’s a simpler, “As a black person who has always voted Democrat until now, I say Biden is the real racist” with a Shutterstock photo as their ID. A couple of public figures have actually been caught doing it when they posted from their regular account by accident instead of their fake minority account. It makes sense if you think of it as conservatism = trolling.
@rikyrah:
It is what it looks like: They’re stupid. They’re so fucking dumbass and knee-jerk hateful and head-up-their-ass not caring about facts that if something kinda sounds bad, that’s it, they run for it. They see a story about lots of drugs coming from Mexico, ergo Biden is letting the US be flooded with drugs. That the story, even the headline means the opposite. If you can reach the conservative conclusion in a knee-jerk hateful reaction from a sound bite, most conservatives consider it a proven fact they will build on from there.
Chris Johnson
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Which was the military guy who flipped on trump, who said that trump constantly was trying to get his hands on documents but was always completely disinterested in reading them?
Some of this has always been ‘too obvious to see’. The idea I guess being, if you’re so totally brazen it’s ridiculous, people will not register what you’re doing because nobody would be fool enough to be that obvious.
When this fails it fails HARD, but becomes a huge PR problem. Which is where we are, and I think it’s being handled as well as it can be handled. I trust our DOJ folks and Dems in general, with this. There’s a lot of people now who know what is up. Hell, Hillary called it from the start, and has only been corroborated on every imaginable level.
Another Scott
@Chris Johnson:
I’ve wondered for a while if there really was any good science behind the “blue blocking helps sleep” stuff. I think the story is more complex than the popular picture (which isn’t surprising given how complicated bodies are and how powerful the placebo effect is). PubMed study of pregnant women (from 2022):
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@Another Scott: Thanks. To the extent that I have any kind of public blog, it’s a Dreamwidth account that is a continuation of my ancient LiveJournal from the early 2000s. But these days, I have no desire to rattle on about current politics there–it’s reviews of books and reports of amusement-park visits, mostly. For a while I was going on about flight-simulator software and topics in recreational mathematics. You don’t know what you’re going to get.
https://mmcirvin.dreamwidth.org/
Apart from that, my social-media activity has mostly retreated to private posts on Facebook, because the response to anything I do that is very public gives me a headache (the “wanna screw” spambot posts ALONE).
Barbara
@J R in WV: I don’t think they would bother unless they think he is a continuing danger. They aren’t likely to commit acts of revenge as such, but would be focused on preventing damage. And I will go out on a limb and state that US’s main goal, whether NARA, DNI, or DOJ, is to get those documents back, which they seem to have done. It would not surprise me in the least how many prosecutions are not launched over the mishandling of documents on the belief, whether mistaken or not, that publicity could do further damage. This isn’t my arena but I think these agencies engage in a lot of tactical considerations when they make decisions. Why Trump felt the need to publicize the search — I assume to raise money — I don’t know, but if he had not, DOJ would not be under any pressure from anywhere to indict him.
Geminid
@rikyrah: Bill Barr is a dedicated Republican and he knows his party needs to put trump in the rear view mirror, and the sooner the better.
Congressional leaders know this too, but they are desperate to win back power in the House and Senate. They need trump’s adherents to pull this off, so until the midterms they’ll do their squid imitation and retreat behind clouds of ink whenever trump’s treason comes up.
Miss Bianca
@Jeffery: Yeah, I noticed that, too. WTF
Brachiator
@Geminid:
Barr is a mid level flunky. He gives good interview, so pundit show producers love him. Nobody else cares about what he has to say.
Some keep insisting that the GOP will shake Trump off. A variation of this has been offered from the moment Trump decided to try for the GOP presidential nomination in 2015. And like a bad rash he is still around causing irritation.
Trump is getting fired up. He knows that he has to increase his political profile in order to avoid or at least delay political indictment. And aside from Cheney and a few others, no major GOP political figure has disavowed Trump.
Trump could offer to sell nuclear secrets live on TV and the Republicans would keep quiet about it.
The sad bottom line is that Trump doesn’t need the GOP. Nor can they damage him. But he might be able to inflict damage on the Republicans.
His political career might be over. But he is working his former president status and all his lies to protect his own ass. That is all he cares about.
Geminid
@SiubhanDuinne: Louise Lucas had an interesting career before entering politics. In 1969 she went to work at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard as a naval architectural draftsperson. Lucas came in as an Assistant Shipfitter and by 1973 she was the shipyard’s first woman Shipfitter.
While working or the shipyard, Lucas took classes at Old Dominion University and earned a Masters Degree in management. After retiring from the Navy in 1990, Lucas started a nonprofit community action organization and also won a seat in the General Assembly (a part time job).
Now Lucas is the senior Democrat in the General Assembly and the rookie Governor’s chief tormentor. She’s also part owner of Norfolk’s medical cannabis dispensary.
Chris Johnson
@Miss Bianca: Could well be exploiting of an automated system, where the Trumpists know that if you file a whole bunch of reports on an innocuous but political image, you can get the twitter-machine to block viewing of it without any humans having to make the call.
Then you just send an email to your adjoining cubicles in the St Petersburg IRA, everybody runs the script to have all their twitter bots report the image, and hey presto, you have your result. This is very easy to do if you have a bot network and are working as a team.
The purpose of doing it would be mostly to make libs think Twitter is out to get them, which is an important enough meme that it’s worth doing stuff like this. It’s less important if Twitter is actively supporting your political aims, but if Twitter thinks it can be nonpartisan or exist without you, that’s the time to pull shit like this and make people mistrust Twitter and turn to Truth Social or whatever.
I’m very sure no human at Twitter decided to hide that image for that reason. I’m very sure it’s a bot network coordinated to send vast numbers of reports, firing off an automated system to hide objectionable material and flag it for later review.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
Not that I ever expected him/her to respond, but you’ll notice that our resident religion-hating bigot has not bothered to ‘splain to me how he/she is different from religious fanatics. I guess it’s because I’m just not worthy of consideration etc etc
Miss Bianca
@SFAW: Don’t even bother. Dude is not arguing in good faith. Since he, in fact, spits on the notion of “faith” to begin with.
Shunning appears to be the only option when it comes to dealing with him. And I have no doubt that he will eventually cross whatever line triggers the banhammer these days, and then we’ll be done with him.
Geminid
@J R in WV: The Iranians also have it in for trump on account of the killing of General Solomeini. This could bring a rare instance of cooperation between Israel and Iran!
Like a drone strike on the 12th green at Bedminster.
Baud
@Geminid:
We’ll regret making Uranus an enemy.
ETA: drat. You edited
Geminid
@Baud: And I’ll regret not getting a better proofreader. I’m always correcting that lazy bum’s work.
catclub
yep, Pompeo could have said something but has been extremely quiet. Is Rex Tillerson even alive?
Soprano2
@lowtechcyclist: Before I got computer glasses, I looked like a bobblehead, and I had headaches almost every day.
Soprano2
@Quiltingfool: $3.09 is the cheapest I’ve seen here, at some stations on Glenstone and the Price Cutter gas station at St. Louis and National. I keep waiting for it to go below the $3.00 mark.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: I just heard a story teased on NPR this morning where they said “everyone agrees that the withdrawal from Afghanistan was a disaster”, or something similar! For some reason the withdrawal made the press really mad, they’ve been after Biden ever since then.
Soprano2
@lowtechcyclist: If you don’t wear bifocals, you’re fine without computer glasses. It’s when you start wearing bifocals that the problem starts. Your reading vision is too close for the monitor, and your distance vision isn’t close enough. There’s a space between the two on your glasses where it focuses, but it’s really small and hard to hit, thus behaving like a bobblehead all the time trying to find the “sweet spot”.
You might be lucky and not need them, but they saved my sanity.
Barbara
@Soprano2: It made them mad because the “experts” that they relied on for information suddenly found themselves deprived of outside income and/or a high profile platform. They became irrelevant. We spent a lot of money on “outsourcing” services of all kinds in Afghanistan, everything from supplying troops to community development assistance. That money isn’t fungible — they won’t get to use it on something else. Most of the press was just a mouthpiece for those people.
Soprano2
@rikyrah: They seem to believe that no drugs came into the U.S. from Mexico while TFG was in office. We all know that’s not true, but that’s what they want people to believe.
Geminid
@Baud: Now I see I should have left my comment uncorrected. That was a funny rejoinder! A lesson in vanity for me.
Soprano2
@trollhattan: My old boss tried to tell me once that my department wasn’t actually part of city government, but instead was a utility! My paychecks say “City of Springfield”, so I’m sure we’re part of the government. That’s how far some people will go to kid themselves they aren’t part of that big bad government.
J R in WV
@lee:
Thanks for sharing, and for the work you did to put that great page up. And for the Donate button as well.
Great Job, you must plan a future in politics !!!
MisterForkbeard
@The Moar You Know: We produce enough ammo in the US to kill everyone in the country 27 times. Every year.
No, really! We make and receive over 9 billion rounds per year.
I hope this becomes the new metric, because it’s ridiculous.
MisterForkbeard
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: Wil Wheaton is a national treasure, for this and many other reasons.
Eunicecycle
@MisterForkbeard: but you know when Trump came into office the military told him they were out of bullets! Not one to be had!
StringOnAStick
@dm: I agree with you, I think the nuclear secrets document is about Iran, something both SA and Israel would pay for. Also really likely to expose sources and methods.
As another posted here earlier, the IC was freaked out about tRump and especially Jared’s intense interest in national security information from the beginning; I recall reading several stories about that at the tine, especially when Jared couldn’t pass the security investigation to get TS clearance and tRump just overrode that and gave it to him. I have no doubt that there are tRumpist IC personnel but I sincerely hope there aren’t many and that some of those freaked out at various points, like when he burned that Israeli source or stated that he believed Vlad. I’m sure there was a lot of scrambling to protect our secrets from the 45 administration, and that a lot got through too, hopefully with just enough traceable misinformation to ID who did it. The likelihood is we’ll never know though.
El Muneco
@Frankensteinbeck: “They see a story about lots of drugs coming from Mexico, ergo Biden is letting the US be flooded with drugs. That the story, even the headline means the opposite”
There’s a long tradition of this. Remember all the pearl-clutching about US courts “imposing Sharia law”? All the court documents they linked as evidence were found by a simple text search on the word “Sharia” – and the vast, vast majority of them were a judge explaining why Sharia was _not_ an appropriate resolution for the case.
StringOnAStick
@Soprano2: Here in central Oregon gas is still closer to $5 than to $4. The national gas price map shows that all 3 west coast states are the most expensive for gas now (not counting Hawaii and Alaska, which appear to have more to do with distance from refineries).
Matt McIrvin
@StringOnAStick: The regional differences in gas prices are particularly huge right now. The prices seem to have gone down much, much further in the South than in the Northeast, and on the West Coast they’re still really high.
JAFD
@Matt McIrvin: A lot of the gas price difference is distance from the refineries – I used to drive down to fill up in Marcus Hook, waybackwhen $0.02 cheaper was significant difference ;-)
Ruckus
@Baud:
Statistics is the premise that if you count a large enough cross section of people involved in whatever you are polling about, you will have a reasonable idea of something. And if you know what you are doing you can make anything sound as if people agree with what you are asking. Statistics is the premise that one can find a cross section to answer your question in a reasonable manner. So if you go to Kansas and ask 100 people that do not live in a city if they like Joe Biden you will likely get an overall negative response. Statistically that may be a perfectly valid answer. It says shit about the actual answer to the question in a country of 329 million people. The actual pertinent questions are who, what, when, where, and how. That is if you actually want a valid answer. Does our current news media overall want that? In any way, shape or form?